By E. Lynn Grayson, Partner, Jenner & Block An estimated 15,000 people, including officials and environmental leaders from 194 countries, will attend the UN's Climate Change Conference at the Moon Palace Hotel in Cancun, Mexico. The 12-day conference and associated meetings will seek to...
By E. Lynn Grayson, Partner, Jenner & Block The UN announced yesterday the launch of a website to help developing countries make sense of the multiple funds available to finance climate change-related needs. It estimates that developing countries will require as much as $100B a year for adaptation...
By E. Lynn Grayson , Partner, Jenner & Block Executive Director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres, opened the conference saying "You are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason...
"If the shipping industry were a country, it would be the sixth-biggest industrial carbon emitter in the world. Whereas big countries have plans for cutting emissions, shipping does not. The UN climate talks in Cancún are unlikely to change that. But customers, who indirectly pay for shipping...
To assist Cal-EPA with the examination of potential environmental justice concerns associated with climate change, Cal-EPA requested the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) [best known for its role in setting drinking water related Public Health Goals and in overseeing much of the...
As noted in prior posts, Aspen trees in the West have been dying. There appears to be no single cause. However, drought in the 1990's and early 2000's probably made the trees more susceptible to cankers, fungi, and other maladies. The result is that some sites have lost as much as 2/3 or more...
Numerous past posts have noted that evidence for global warming can be found in the numerous reports on specific environmental conditions and events around the globe (for example, the migration of corals around Japan, the trend in lakes around the world to become warmer). Although these events and conditions...
Concern has been expressed in recent years over the contribution of aircraft to GHG emissions. Some airlines have gotten favorable publicity for experimenting with bio-derived fuels. But, what if aircraft were to target reducing fuel consumption by half, or more. That will require some radical rethinking...
Serendipity has helped more than a few scientists with insights and discoveries. Researchers were chatting, and realized that data from work one of them was focused upon various crop trials spread across southern and eastern Africa, if correlated with local weather conditions (other than drought), could...
Prior posts have noted the impact of fires in Southeast Asia on air pollution throughout the region. While it has been known for decades that large wildfires can create or enhance thunderstorm clouds, leading to what are called pyrocumulonimbus clouds ("pyroCbs"), only recently have researchers...
Prior posts have noted both the various impacts of Global Climate Change ("GCC") on various aspects of the Earth and its atmospheric systems, as well as the failure of many/most models to include such impacts within their parameters. For example, a recent post noted that the solar cycle has...
Prior posts, occasionally with tongue planted firmly in cheek, have noted that human impact on carbon loading in the atmosphere goes back to well before the industrial era. A recent assessment has calculated that over the eight millennia before 1850, clearing land (for both hunting and for farming...
By Patrick Greissing, Alston & Bird LLP A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that despite the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 1998 to 2008, global surfaces temperatures have leveled off. The researchers, led by Robert Kaufman, a professor...
Researchers have been following the penguin population off the tip of the West Antarctic Peninsula since the 1970's. Winter air temperatures in the region have climbed a significant 5 to 6 degrees Celsius in recent decades with a concomitant loss of sea ice; this region is one of the fastest warming...
By the end of the 15th century, between 40 and 80 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua, and other countries. About 500 years ago, this charcoal...
In Nov. 2010 the California Building Industry Association (CBIA) filed suit against the Bay Area Air Quality Management District's (BAAQMD) CEQA Guidelines re GHG emissions. Among other requirements, environmental evaluations were required if a project was to be built within 1,000 feet of a freeway...
First, some good news. Prior posts have noted repeatedly the key role that methane plays in global warming (the longterm trend in temperature, not seasonal or annual variations). Prior posts have also noted the role that particulates-aerosols play in global warming, and their adverse effect on human...
Climate change has, on average, raised the surface of the world's oceans in recent decades by melting glaciers and causing seawater to expand as it warms. But the rise has not been uniform, just like the increase in ocean temperature. As noted in prior posts, both temperature increases and rising...
By Dianne Saxe, Ontario Environmental Lawyer The Canadian federal government does not like to talk about climate change, so the Insurance Bureau of Canada has released a hard hitting report on the damage that climate change is already causing in Canada: Telling the Weather Story: Can Canada Manage...
By Dianne Saxe, Ontario Environmental Lawyer Everywhere I look, I see galloping evidence of climate change. Last weekend, southern Ontario watched ski trails and ice rinks melt under the onslaught of record high temperatures and heavy rain. Spring perennials and bulbs were blooming in Toronto gardens...