Science News

The dead of winter especially this winter with its massive snow storms in the eastern United States is not the easiest time to make the case for global warming. Short-term weather events and long-range climate change are not the same thing, of course, but its hard to separate them in the publics mind.

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Industrialized and developing countries are not likely to reach a treaty this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which have sparked fears of weather-related disasters, the U.N. climate chief said Thursday.

Bickering between rich and poor countries over emissions cuts and financial assistance undermined the talks and forced them to settle on a voluntary plan.

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US President Barack Obama on Friday rebuked climate change skeptics who argue that piles of snow dumped on the United States during a frigid winter cast doubt on global warming science.

“Opponents of climate change, they say — see look at that, there is all this snow on the ground — this doesnt mean anything.

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Yvo de Boer, head of the UNs climate change convention, will resign as of July 1, his office announced on Thursday.

The announcement came nearly two months after the Copenhagen summit on climate change, seen even by its supporters as a disappointment and by its critics as a chaotic failure.

De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities, the UNFCCC secretariat said.

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Three major US companies said they were leaving a coalition pushing for action on climate change, dealing a potential fresh blow to landmark legislation to cut carbon emissions.

The three companies — oil groups ConocoPhillips and BP America and equipment maker Caterpillar Inc. — said they backed efforts for a green economy but felt that proposed laws were unfair to them.

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The US pointman on climate change on Tuesday accused vested interests of exploiting recent scientific scandals, saying there was an overwhelming case for the world to take action.

“What you do see sometimes is that people who have an agenda that is directed toward undermining action on climate change grab whatever tidbit they can find,” Stern told reporters.

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U.S. public concern about climate change has waned. The climate changesummit in Copenhagen — largely viewed as a failure — did little toelevate the issue among the public. Climate change is foremost amongthe concerns of our communities. It is our responsibility, as the mediathat serve them, to call for action on this urgent matter.

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Scientists have made lots of projections over the past few years about how warming temperatures and a changing climate will affect the planet. Real-world measurements have confirmed at least some of them: sea level is clearly rising, for instance, and the ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is shrinking and thinning - in the latter case, faster than anyone had expected just a few years ago.

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Residents of Denmark, the host country of Decembers UN climate change summit, are less afraid of the impacts of climate change now than they were two years ago, according to a poll published Friday.

The poll was conducted on 1,186 Danes over 18 years of age on February 9 and 10.

A Gallup poll published in Fridays Berlingske Tidende daily indicated 60 percent of those surveyed feared the consequences of climate change.

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UN chief Ban Ki-moon launched a high-level advisory panel Friday to mobilize funding to help developing nations battle climate change.

The group, evenly balanced between developed and developing nations, “will develop practical proposals to significantly scale up long-term (public and private) financing for mitigation and adaptation strategies in developing countries,” he added.

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