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.

U.S. Climate Policy a “Disgrace!”

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“In countries like Burundi, you can hold children who are starving and
dying because of weather changes that many experts believe are driven
by our carbon emissions.”

“Not only is the U.S. not leading on climate change, we’re holding
others back,” said Jessica Bailey, who works on climate issues for
the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. “We’re inhibiting progress on climate
change globally.”

” … that’s our national policy toward climate change, and it’s a disgrace.”
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The New York Times
August 16, 2007

The Big Melt

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

If we learned that Al Qaeda was secretly developing a new terrorist
technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force
tens of millions from their homes and potentially endanger our entire
planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy and deploy every possible
asset to neutralize the threat. Continue reading

New historic sea ice minimum

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Thursday, August 9, 2007
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere

Today, the Northern Hemisphere sea ice area broke the record for the lowest recorded ice area in recorded history. The new record came a full month before the historic summer minimum typically occurs. There is still a month or more of melt likely this year. It is therefore almost certain that the previous 2005 record will be annihilated by the final 2007 annual minima closer to the end of this summer.

In previous record sea ice minima years, ice area anomalies were confined to certain sectors (N. Atlantic, Beaufort/Bering Sea, etc). The character of 2007’s sea ice melt is unique in that it is dramatic and covers the entire Arctic sector. Atlantic, Pacific and even the central Arctic sectors are showing large negative sea ice area anomalies.

While we use sea ice concentration data supplied by NASA via the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), there are some differencesbetween the way we and NSIDC process our sea ice indices. NSIDC uses 10-day running means; we use 3-day running means. NSIDC will often report sea ice extent indices and records, we are reporting a new sea ice minima sea ice area. The ice area metric includes year-to-year variations within the central pack ice and not just variations in the southern sea ice edge. Regardless of these differences, the rapid rate of sea ice melt this summer, along with the current negative sea ice anomalies almost guarantees a record Northern Hemisphere summer sea ice minimum this summer, by any metric.

Follow this link for some background information on historic sea ice minima.

Heathrow Airport seeks injunction against UK Camp for Climate Action

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Heathrow airport is targeting climate change activists with a sweeping injunction which could prevent members of the RSPB and the National Trust, plus millions more affiliated to environmental organisations, from attending a green protest.

The airport’s owner, BAA, said it wants to minimise disruption when the Camp for Climate Action is held there from August 14 to 21. The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, gave warning yesterday that disruption to the airport was likely. Continue reading