Category: RT Newswire

USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.

From Bali: World Bank Told to Back Off From Native Forests

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GJEP is the North American Focal Point of the Global Forest Coalition

PRESS RELEASE

Friends of the Earth International
World Rainforest Movement
Global Forest Coalition

WORLD BANK HANDS OFF FORESTS          December 10, 2007

BALI (INDONESIA), Dec. 10, 2007  Environmental groups at the United Nations climate talks in Bali today urged governments to reject a new World Bank initiative promoting the inclusion of forests in carbon markets.

The World Bank initiative, known as the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) is set to be launched on Tuesday 11th December in Bali as part of the discussions on Reducing Emissions through Deforestation in Developing countries’ (REDD).

The initiative, which would allow tropical forests to be included in carbon offsetting schemes, fails to combat climate change, the groups said, because it allows industrialised countries and companies to buy their way out of emissions’ reductions.

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Ocean Fertilization No Viable Solution

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071129132753.htm [input]

Ocean Fertilization ‘Fix’ For Global Warming Discredited By New Research ScienceDaily (Nov. 30, 2007) —

Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to global warming. Ocean fertilization, the
process of adding iron or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to deeper waters. This process, which scientists call the “Biological Pump”, has been thought to be dependent on the abundance of algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom, the more carbon is transported, or “pumped”, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. Continue reading

False Solution: Damming the Climate

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This is the first case i know of where researchers publicly sidestep the Precautionary Principle. That is scary-especially for something like this.

ASW

For some time now, deniers/debunkers have claimed that climate change is not caused by consumption of forests and fossil fuels. They have claimed that it is caused by normal variations — including tilting of Earth’s axis.

But even the tilting of Earth’s axis may have human causes.

I don’t have references available, but many on this list have seen studies indicating that the world’s hydroelectric and irrigation dams have measurably changed the planet’s tilt on its axis. So a huge dam like the one described below may have worldwide impact for that reason.
Lance Olsen
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Public release date: 6-Dec-2007
Inderscience Publishers

Contact: Roelof Dirk Schuiling
schuiling@geo.uu.nl

Dam the Red Sea and release gigawatts
50 gigawatts of electrical power could be released by damming the Red Sea

Damming the Red Sea could solve the growing energy demands of millions of people in the Middle East and alleviate some of the region’s tensions pertaining to oil supplies through hydroelectric power. Equally, such a massive engineering project may cause untold ecological harm and displace countless people from their homes.

In the Inderscience publication International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Roelof Dirk Schuiling of Utrecht University in The Netherlands and his colleagues discuss the costs and benefits of one of the potentially most ambitious engineering projects ever.

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Indigenous People Shut Out Of, Protest UNFCC in Bali

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—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: [global-justice-ecology] Indigenous Peoples Protest UNFCCC From:
phiona@globaljusticeecology.org
Date: Fri, December 7, 2007 6:04 am
To: global-justice-ecology@lists.riseup.net
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 7 December 2007

Indigenous Peoples Protest UNFCCC
Indigenous Peoples shut out of Climate Change Negotiations

Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia- Indigenous peoples representing regions from around the world protested outside the climate negotiations today wearing symbolic gags that read UNFCCC, the acronym of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, symbolizing their systematic exclusion from the UN meeting.

Yesterday a delegation of indigenous peoples was forcibly barred from entering the meeting between UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer and civil society representatives, despite the fact that the indigenous delegation was invited to attend. This act is representative of the systematic exclusion of indigenous peoples in the UNFCCC process.

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