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Featured stories in this issue...

Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production
  The oil industry this week acknowledged that there are limits to
  the growth of world oil supplies. Industry executives did not exactly
  endorse the "peak oil" theory, but they acknowledged that oil
  production is unlikely ever to exceed 100 million barrels per day (the
  world is presently using 85 million per day). Soon this problem could
  shove global warming off the front page.
U.N. Panel Issues Warnings on Climate Change
  In a grim report released this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on
  Climate Change (IPCC) portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer
  climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering.
  It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize
  by 2015 and go down after that.
Here It Is: The Future of the World, in 23 Pages
  "This is the key document on climate change, and from now on you
  can forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about. This
  is the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled, peer-reviewed
  research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed, without
  qualification, by all the world's major governments."
Key Findings of the Latest Scientific Report on Global Warming
  A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt to
  climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price
  on carbon emissions. The longer action is delayed, the more it will
  cost, according to the latest scientific report.
Alarming UN Report on Climate Change Too Rosy, Many Say
  "The blunt and alarming final report of the United Nations
  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by UN
  Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem of
  climate change, many experts and even the report's authors admit."
A Toxic Trojan Horse: Tiny Plastic Particles Pack a Major Punch
  The world's oceans are full of plastic trash that has broken down
  into microscopic particles. These "microplastics" are impossible to
  clean up. And now research suggests they act like tiny Trojan horses
  as well, carrying toxic chemicals that animals inadvertently swallow.
Early Puberty's Toxic Causes and Effects
  Many girls now start to develop breasts as early as eight years old
  -- two years earlier than they did a few decades ago. The consequences
  of growing up too soon are serious -- depression and anxiety, eating
  disorders, sexual objectification, and early drug and alcohol abuse
  are just a few. And the implications are not just psychological.
  Menarche before age 12 raises breast cancer risk by 50 percent

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From: Wall Street Journal (pg. A1), Nov. 19, 2007
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OIL OFFICIALS SEE LIMIT LOOMING ON PRODUCTION

By Russell Gold and Ann Davis

A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long
deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the
number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.

Some predict that, despite the world's fast-growing thirst for oil,
producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This rough limit --
which two senior industry officials recently pegged at about 100
million barrels a day -- is well short of global demand projections
over the next few decades. Current production is about 85 million
barrels a day.

The world certainly won't run out of oil any time soon. And plenty of
energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the development of
alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But evidence is
mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those
innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a
period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled
competition for fuel.

The current debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-
derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil
theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists,
have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an
irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the
world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their
theory has become debased.

The new adherents -- who range from senior Western oil-company
executives to current and former officials of the major world
exporting countries -- don't believe the global oil tank is at the
half-empty point. But they share the belief that a global production
ceiling is coming for other reasons: restricted access to oil fields,
spiraling costs and increasingly complex oil-field geology. This will
create a global production plateau, not a peak, they contend, with oil
output remaining relatively constant rather than rising or falling.

The emergence of a production ceiling would mark a monumental shift in
the energy world. Oil production has averaged a 2.3% annual growth
rate since 1965, according to statistics compiled by British oil giant
BP PLC. This expanding pool of oil, most of it priced cheaply by
today's standards, fueled the post-World War II global economic
expansion.

On Oct. 31, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of French oil
company Total SA, jolted attendees at a London conference by openly
labeling production forecasts of the International Energy Agency, the
sober-minded energy watchdog for industrialized nations, as
unrealistic. The IEA projects production will grow to between 102.3
million and 120 million barrels a day by 2030. Mr. de Margerie said
production by 2030 of even 100 million barrels a day will be
"difficult."

Speaking Clearly

This is "the view of those who like to speak clearly, honestly, and
[are] not just trying to please people," he bluntly declared. The
French executive said many existing oil fields are being depleted at
rates that will damage their geologic structures, which will limit
future output more than most people allow. What's more, some nations
endowed with large untapped pools of oil are generating so much
revenue from their current production that they feel they don't need
to further develop their fields, thus putting another cap on output.

Earlier this month, James Mulva, the chief executive of
ConocoPhillips, echoed those conclusions in a speech at a Wall Street
conference: "I don't think we are going to see the supply going over
100 million barrels a day.... Where is all that going to come from?"
He questioned whether the industry has enough support services and
people to execute projects to add that much oil production.

Even some officials from member states of the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has long insisted on its ability
to supply the world with fuel for decades hence, are breaking ranks
and forecasting limits. The chairman of Libya National Oil Corp. said
at the same London conference the world will have difficulty producing
more than 100 million barrels a day.

A former head of exploration and production at Saudi Arabia's national
oil company, Sadad Ibrahim Al Husseini, has also gone public with
doubts. He said in London last month that he didn't believe there were
enough engineers or equipment to ramp up production fast enough to
keep up with the thirsty global economy. What's more, he said, new
discoveries are tending to be smaller and more complex to develop.

Many leaders of the industry still dismiss the idea that there is
reason to worry. "I am no subscriber to the theory that oil supplies
have already peaked," said BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, earlier
this month in a speech in Houston.

Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Rex Tillerson has said that if
companies had better access to the world's oil reserves, production
would increase and prices would go down. "Sufficient hydrocarbon
resources exist to play their role in meeting this growing global
demand, if industry is allowed to access them," he said in a speech
this month. If access were granted, Exxon Mobil believes the industry
would be able to raise fuel production to meet demand in 2030 of 116
million barrels a day.

The oil industry has long been beset by doom-and-gloom scenarios,
which so far haven't panned out. "The entire oil industry in the late
1970s was convinced the price [of oil] would be $100 by 1990 and we
would need huge oil shale mines" to exploit oil locked away tightly in
rock, says Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic
Research Inc. Of course, that didn't happen, as discoveries ushered in
new eras of low-priced oil in the mid-1980s through the late 1990s.

U.S. government experts are optimistic -- to a point. The Energy
Information Administration, the data arm of the Energy Department,
forecasts world oil production will hit 118 million barrels a day by
2030. But the agency warns that its prediction might not pan out if
resource-rich nations such as Venezuela and Iraq don't invest enough
in their operations.

"We know that the world is not running out of energy resources, but
nonetheless, above-ground risks like resource nationalism, limited
access and infrastructure constraints may make it feel like peak oil
just the same, by limiting production to something far less than what
is required," said Clay Sell, deputy secretary of energy, in a speech
in October. Resource nationalism refers to tightening state control of
oil fields to achieve political aims, often by restricting outsiders'
ability to develop the oil for world markets.

'Undulating Plateau'

Two or three years ago, it was far more common for oil analysts and
officials to trumpet the potential of new technology to harvest more
oil. In a report last year, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a
prominent adviser to energy companies, made the comforting prediction
that oil production could reach 110 million barrels a day by 2015, and
"more than meet any reasonable high growth rate demand scenario we can
envisage" up to that date. Because of progress being made in
extracting oil through new methods, CERA said it found "no evidence"
there would be a peak in oil flows "any time soon." In a later report,
CERA said world oil production won't peak before 2030 and that even
when it does, production will resemble an "undulating plateau" for one
or more decades before declining gradually.

Oil companies have seen several years of bull-market prices, and thus
of trying to produce more. This has given their executives a better
sense of what is and isn't possible.

One limit: Many people think most of the world's giant fields already
have been discovered. By 1970, oil-industry explorers had discovered
10 giants that could each produce more than 600,000 barrels a day,
according to Matt Simmons, chairman of energy investment banking firm
Simmons & Co. International. Exploration in the next 20 years, to
1990, yielded only two. Since 1990, despite billions in new spending,
the industry has found only one field with the potential to top
500,000 barrels a day, Kazakhstan's Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea.
And Mr. Simmons notes it is proving expensive and difficult to
extract.

Big strikes are still possible. This month, Petroleo Brasileiro SA
announced a deep-water find off Brazil's Atlantic coast that appears
to be the largest discovery since Kashagan.

But some of the most promising geological formations are in locations
that are inhospitable, for reasons of geography or, especially,
politics and strife. Output from Iraq's rich fields is unlikely to
grow much until security improves and outside investment returns. The
future of Iranian and Nigerian production is likewise clouded by
geopolitical and local instability.

Labor and construction bottlenecks also are making it difficult to
develop proven fields. One of the largest obstacles is the booming
commodity markets themselves: The prices of raw materials used in oil-
field platforms and equipment has escalated. And during the years of
low or moderate oil prices in the 1980s and 1990s, companies didn't
develop enough geologists and other skilled workers to supply today's
needs. "Years of underinvestment in new talent have led to a limited
and aging pool of skilled workers," noted Andrew Gould, the CEO of
oil-service giant Schlumberger Ltd., last month.

High oil prices have also led to steep cost inflation for drilling
rigs and other equipment. Costs have soared so much that the industry
is falling behind in the investment needed to sate expected future
demand. To meet demand forecasts of 90 million barrels of oil a day in
2010, the industry needed to have spent $350 billion on drilling and
producing in 2005, argues Larry G. Chorn, chief economist of Platts,
the energy and commodities-information division of McGraw-Hill Cos.
But the International Energy Agency estimates that spending on oil-
field production in 2005 came to only about $225 billion, he says.

A failure to spend enough in the past few years "may have already put
the industry behind the spending curve," Mr. Chorn says. As a result,
he predicts "temporary shortages over several years, causing
debilitating price spikes."

Compounding the problem: Most of the world's biggest fields are aging,
and production at them is declining rapidly. So, just to keep global
production at current levels, the industry needs to add new production
of at least four million daily barrels, every year. That need is
roughly five times the daily production of Alaska, with its big
Prudhoe Bay field -- and it doesn't assume any demand growth at all.

Rate of Decline

Mr. Simmons scoffs at estimates that production from proven fields
will decline only 4.5% a year. He thinks a more realistic rate of
decline is 8% to 10% a year, especially because modern technology
actually succeeds in depleting fields faster.

If he's right, the industry needs to add new daily production of at
least eight million barrels -- 10 times current Alaskan production --
just to stay even.

Mr. Simmons thinks the world needs to shift its energy focus from
climate change to more immediate concerns. "Peak oil is likely already
a crisis that we don't know about. At the furthest out, it will be a
crisis in 2008 to 2012. Global warming, if real, will not be a problem
for 50 to 100 years," he says.

Oil executives who believe a production ceiling is coming are making
plans to stay relevant in a world where oil production is constrained.

Mr. de Margerie said at Total's annual meeting this spring that the
company was "looking into" nuclear-industry investments and had hired
nuclear experts to help make strategic decisions. ConocoPhillips
recently said it was considering building a commercial-scale plant to
turn plentiful U.S. coal into natural gas.

Soaring energy prices have breathed new life into projects targeting
"nonconventional" oil, such as that trapped in sand or shale. But
these sources can't be tapped nearly as quickly or inexpensively as
the big oil finds of the past.

Vivid Example

Canada's massive oil-sands deposits, which hold the largest oil
reserves after Saudi Arabia's, offer a vivid example. They contain an
estimated 180 billion barrels of oil. But after years of intensive
development and tens of billions of dollars of investments, the sands
are producing only a little more than 1.1 million barrels of crude a
day. That's projected to reach three million a day by 2015. The oil
deposits are so heavy that companies must either mine them or slowly
steam them underground to get the oil to flow out of the sand.

Randy Udall, co-founder of the U.S. chapter of the Association for the
Study of Peak Oil and Gas, has written that these unconventional oil
supplies are like having $100 million in the bank, but "being
forbidden to withdraw more than $100,000 per year. You are rich, sort
of."

As these uncertainties mount, there is growing hope that Saudi Arabia,
which has about 20% of the world's oil reserves, would ride to the
rescue if needed. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, has embarked
on an ambitious plan to increase its daily production by 30%, or three
million barrels, early next decade, and thus reclaim the title of top
producer from Russia. But Mr. Al Husseini, the former Saudi oil
executive, now an independent consultant, said others aren't doing as
much, leaving the world entirely dependent on Saudi Arabia to provide
extra capacity.

"Everyone thinks that Saudi Arabia will pull us out of this mess.
Saudi Arabia is doing all it can," he says in an interview. "But what
it is doing, in the long run, won't be enough."

Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com and Ann Davis at
ann.davis@wsj.com

Compare the Energy Watch Group's view at http://tinyurl.com/2q4zvk
(from their report of October 2007, available at http://tinyurl.c
om/2ww8zl.

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From: Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2007
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U.N. PANEL ISSUES WARNINGS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

By Associated Press

Valencia, Spain -- Global warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide
already in the atmosphere commits the world to an average rise in sea
levels of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned
Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.

"Only urgent, global action will do," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon, calling on the U.S. and China -- the world's two biggest
polluters -- to do more to slow global climate change.

"I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more
constructive role," Mr. Ban told reporters. "Both countries can lead
in their own way."

Mr. Ban, however, advised against assigning blame.

Climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet,"
he said, and the effects are "so severe and so sweeping that only
urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must
work together."

According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a
synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has
built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-
thirds of the world's species.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will
suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at
great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report.

Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will
experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for
water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this year.

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a
quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says
emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015
and go down after that.

In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon
already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were
shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level
will reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period,
or about 1850.

"We have already committed the world to sea level rise," the panel's
chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet
melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet
the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.

Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and
glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If
unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put further
stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent
droughts, and could drive up to 70% of plant and animal species to
extinction, according to the panel's report.

The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense negotiations
among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding
the worst catastrophes -- and various possible outcomes, depending on
how quickly and decisively action is taken.

"The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice," Mr.
Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali,
Indonesia, next month. "I expect the world's policy makers to do the
same."

The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide for
the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a global
climate change treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to
reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is
needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press

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From: The Independent (London, UK), Nov. 19, 2007
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HERE IT IS: THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD, IN 23 PAGES

By Mike McCarthy, Environment Editor

It is about the size and weight of a theatre programme and when it was
published in Valencia, Spain, at the weekend, the first eagerly
grabbed copies were held together by a hastily punched staple. Yet
these 23 pages are crucial for the future of the world.

This is the key document on climate change, and from now on you can
forget any others you may have read or seen or heard about. This is
the one that matters. It is the tightly distilled, peer-reviewed
research of several thousand scientists, fully endorsed, without
qualification, by all the world's major governments. Its official name
is a mouthful: the Policymakers' Summary of the Synthesis Report of
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Fourth Assessment. So let's just call it The Synthesis.

It is so important because it provides one concise, easily-readable
but comprehensive text of facts, figures and diagrams -- in short all
the information you need to understand and act on the threat of global
warming, be you a politician, a businessman, an activist or a citizen
(or for that matter, a doubter).

The Synthesis has been distilled from more than 3,000 pages of
research published in the three separate parts of the IPCC's Fourth
Assessment Report, or AR4, during the course of 2007 -- on the science
of climate change, on its potential impacts, and the possible
remedies.

These individual sections -- published in Paris in February, in
Brussels in April and in Bangkok in May -- spelled out comprehensively
that the Earth could warm by an average of up to 6C during the course
of the coming century, and that this would be catastrophic in its
impact for human society, most of all the poor in developing
countries; but they also offered hope that the problem was solvable,
if the governments took rapid and decisive action to reduce the
greenhouse gas emissions causing the warming.

The IPCC, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year (along with Al Gore)
for its efforts to raise awareness of climate change, was set up by
the UN in 1988 and published its first assessment, sounding the
initial warning about rising temperatures, in 1990; it issued
subsequent reports in 1995 and 2001. But this year's fourth assessment
has an importance all its own.

For it is the one where scientists now feel confident enough to
declare that the warming world is a phenomenon beyond all doubt, and
that the likelihood of this being caused by the human actions of
putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -- and not say, by
increased solar activity, as some have argued -- is greater than 90
per cent.

For all but the most perverse of sceptics, it ends the basic argument.
And it also urgently warns that the risks are greater, and possibly
closer in time, than was appreciated even six years ago, when the
third assessment was published.

It is chapter and verse, it is Holy Writ: you may not agree with it,
but this (backed up by the full reports) is what the world scientific
community thinks. Its opening words are magisterial -- almost Biblical
- in tone. "Warming of the climate system," it pronounces, "is
unequivocal" . It goes on to spell out that the atmosphere is rapidly
warming, snow and ice are melting across the world, and the global sea
level is rising at an increasing rate; yet the problem is solvable if
governments act decisively.

It is of immediate importance: for the 10,000 ministers, diplomats,
officials and civil servants from every country in the world who are
assembling in Bali, Indonesia, in two weeks' time to try to sketch out
a new international climate treaty to follow the bruised and battered
Kyoto protocol.

The Bali conference was put back by a month so that the participants
could be in possession of The Synthesis for the talks, and the
document will provide the essential background information against
which all delegates will work. "We expect to see their personal copies
return from Bali, battered and worn from frequent use, with paragraphs
underlined and notes in the margin," said Stephanie Tunmore of
Greenpeace.

Because all governments adopted The Synthesis by consensus (after a
week's negotiations in Valencia), it means they cannot disavow the
underlying science and its conclusions (although it does not commit
them to specific courses of action).

In Bali, delegates will attempt to set a path forward to a replacement
treaty for Kyoto, which runs out in its present form in 2012. The
original protocol called on industrialised countries such as the US
and Britain to cut their carbon dioxide emissions, without imposing a
similar task on developing nations such as China and India -- which
was one of the reasons President George Bush withdrew.

But no new treaty will work unless it brings together both the US and
China -- now jointly the world's greatest CO2 producers -- along with
the rest of the international community in a unified attempt to bring
emissions under control.

The Synthesis shows in its 23 short pages -- just 5,000 words --
exactly why that is necessary. It shows it to governments and it shows
it to all of us. It will be one of history's most important documents,
and because of the phenomenon of the internet you can read it in a
matter of moments and judge for yourself.

Download it here.

Latest statistics and shocks still in store

* 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years
in instrumental records of global surface temperatures (since 1850)

* Global average sea level has risen since 1961 at an average rate of
1.8mm per year -- but since 1993 at an average rate of 3.1mm

* Temperature changes will depend on how much CO2 is emitted, but
different scenarios see the increase by 2100 ranging from 0.3C to 6.4C

* Up to 30 per cent of the world's species are at increased risk of
extinction after a 2C temperature rise

* Between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa could suffer
water shortages by 2020; in Asia, heavily-populated "mega-deltas" are
at greatly increased risk of flooding; tropical forest in eastern
Amazonia will turn to savannah by mid-century

Copyright 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

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From: Washington Post, Nov. 17, 2007
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KEY FINDINGS OF UN SCIENTIFIC REPORT

By The Associated Press

The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

** Global warming is "unequivocal." Temperatures have risen 1.3
degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last 12 years
are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an
average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.

** About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face
the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees
Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit,
between 40 to 70 percent of species could disappear.

** Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions
of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than
the natural range over the last 650,000 years.

** Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt
everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will
suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at
great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect
extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and
hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.

** Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms
will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will
affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of
diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the
quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and
salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.

** Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep
warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring "abrupt and
irreversible" changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the poles,
and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.

** A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt to
climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price
on carbon emissions.

** By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global
economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is
delayed, the more it will cost.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press

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From: International Herald Tribune, Nov. 18, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

ALARMING UN REPORT ON CLIMATE CHANGE TOO ROSY, MANY SAY

By Elisabeth Rosenthal and James Kanter

Valencia, Spain: The blunt and alarming final report of the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released here by UN
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, may well underplay the problem of
climate change, many experts and even the report's authors admit.

The report describes the evidence for human-induced climate change as
"unequivocal." The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere thus far
will result in an average rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, or 1.4
meters, it concluded.

"Slowing -- and reversing -- these threats is the defining challenge
of our age," Ban said upon the report's release Saturday.

Ban said he had just completed a whirlwind tour of some climate change
hot spots, which he called as "frightening as a science-fiction
movie."

He described ice sheets breaking up in Antarctica, the destruction of
the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, and children in Chile having to wear
protective clothing because an ozone hole was letting in so much
ultraviolet radiation.

The panel's fourth and final report summarized and integrated the most
significant findings of three sections of the panel's exhaustive
climate-science review that were released from January through April,
to create an official "pocket guide" to climate change for policy
makers who must now decide how the world will respond.

The first covered climate trends; the second, the world's ability to
adapt to a warming planet; the third, strategies for reducing carbon
emissions. With their mission now concluded, the hundreds of IPCC
scientists spoke more freely than they had previously.

"The sense of urgency when you put these pieces together is new and
striking," said Martin Parry, a British climate expert who was co-
chairman of the delegation that wrote the second report.

This report's summary was the first to acknowledge that the melting of
the Greenland ice sheet could result in a substantive sea level rise
over centuries rather than millennia.

"Many of my colleagues would consider that kind of melt a catastrophe"
so rapid that mankind would not be able to adapt, said Michael
Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University who
contributed to the IPCC.

Delegations from hundreds of nations will be meeting in Bali,
Indonesia in two weeks to start hammering out a global climate
agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the current climate change
treaty. The first phase of the Kyoto Treaty expires in 2012.

"It's extremely clear and is very explicit that the cost of inaction
will be huge compared to the cost of action," said Jeffrey Sachs, head
of Columbia University's Earth Institute. "We can't afford to wait for
some perfect accord to replace Kyoto, for some grand agreement. We
can't afford to spend years bickering about it. We need to start
acting now."

He said that delegates in Bali should take action immediately where
they do agree, for example, by public financing for demonstration
projects on new technologies like "carbon capture," a "promising but
not proved" system that pumps emissions underground instead of
releasing them into the sky. He said the energy ministers should start
a global fund to help poor countries avoid deforestation, which causes
emissions to increase because growing plants absorb carbon in the
atmosphere.

Although the scientific data is not new, this was the first time it
had been looked at together in its entirety, leading the scientists to
new emphasis and more sweeping conclusions.

But even as the IPCC was working toward its conclusions over the past
several years, a steady stream of even more alarming data has come in.

"The IPCC is a five-year process and the IPCC is struggling to keep up
with the data -- we are all being inundated with new evidence and new
science," said Hans Verolme, director of the Global Climate Change
Program at the conservation organization WWF.

"And the new science is saying: 'You thought it was bad? No it's
worse.' "

The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, an engineer and economist from
India, acknowledged the new trajectory. "If there's no action before
2012, that's too late," Pachauri said. "What we do in the next two to
three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

He said that since the IPCC began work on its current report five
years ago, scientists have recorded "much stronger trends in climate
change," like a recent melting of polar ice that had not been
predicted. "That means you better start with intervention much
earlier."

"If you look at the scientific knowledge things do seem to be getting
progressively worse," Pachauri said later in an interview. "So you'd
better start with the interventions even earlier. Now."

The effects will be greatest in the developing world. Even without the
more alarming data, the report says inaction could leave island states
submerged, African crop yields down by 50 percent, and cause a 5
percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

Developments that affect the IPCC predictions and have made such
scenarios even more likely, scientists said, include faster than
expected industrial development in China and India. Economic growth
has a huge effect because these countries' industries are largely
powered by electricity from burning coal, a cheap but highly polluting
source of energy.

"The IPCC report never imagined the world would move back to a coal-
based energy economy -- and that's essentially what we've done," said
Gernot Klepper an economist who studies climate change at the Kiel
Institute in Germany. "If you extrapolate from that we're running into
a disaster."

Part of the reason the scientists inserted their alarming statements
about polar ice melts in the synthesis report is because "recent
observations" were not "fully included in ice sheet models" used by
IPCC, the report said.

Some in the scientific community have gone so far as to question the
effectiveness of the IPCC as the world's early warning system on
climate change.

"Sadly, even the most pessimistic of the climate prophets of the IPCC
panel do not appear to have noticed how rapidly the climate is
changing," said James Lovelock, a British scientist, "Scientists have
let this potentially disastrous future steal up on us unaware."

But most scientists have been awed by the IPCC's deliberate work, for
which it was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Pachauri said that even if reality was worse than the final IPCC
report suggested, that only made it more urgent to act quickly and
forcefully.

"What we brought out is that if you delay action or don't do enough
the impact is quite devastating. This only strengthens that message."

James Kanter reported from Paris. Andrew C. Revkin contributed
reporting from New York.

Copyright 2007 The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com

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From: Toronto Globe and Mail, Nov. 17, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

A TOXIC TROJAN HORSE: TINY PLASTIC PARTICLES PACK A MAJOR PUNCH

By Zoe Cormier

The planet's oceans are full of plastic trash that has broken down
into microscopic particles. These "microplastics" are impossible to
clean up. And now research suggests they act like tiny Trojan horses
as well, carrying toxic chemicals that animals inadvertently swallow.

Scientists at the University of Plymouth [in England] found that
microplastics soaked up far more phenanthrene (a common marine
pollutant) than samples of normal sand -- and when the toxic
microplastics were added to tanks of marine worms, the concentration
of phenanthrene in their tissues shot up 80 per cent.

Professor Richard Thompson, who worked on the study with a team of
scientists at Plymouth, had long suspected that animals might ingest
toxins along with mouthfuls of microplastics. Now, he has proof. But
the full environmental impact has yet to be researched, along with
whether these microplastics and their toxic passengers could work
their way up the food chain, right up to humans, as worms and other
small creatures are eaten by predators.

The answer is not to ban plastics outright, Prof. Thompson says.
Lightweight, durable and sterile, they are essential for modern
medicine and technology. "But what do we do with most of the plastic
we produce? Forty per cent of it is used to make plastic packaging,
which is used once and then discarded. The long-term solution is to be
smarter about our use of plastics."

Zoe Cormier is a science writer based in London.

Copyright Copyright 2007 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

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From: San Francisco Bay Guardian, Nov. 21, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

EARLY PUBERTY'S TOXIC CAUSES AND EFFECTS

New report links chemicals to problematic early development

By Jessika Fruchter

As if growing up weren't hard enough, a new report published by San
Francisco's Breast Cancer Fund says girls, particularly African
American girls, are hitting puberty earlier -- and it's lasting
longer.

Environmental toxins, obesity, and psychological stressors are all
cited as possible reasons for the trend in the report written by
Ithaca College professor Sandra Steingraber. It was commissioned
about a year ago to put together what she calls "pieces of a big
jigsaw puzzle."

Steingraber found that many girls now start to develop breasts as
early as eight years old -- two years earlier than they did a few
decades ago. On average, however, girls begin menstruating only a few
months earlier than they once did -- making puberty a lengthier
process.

The consequences of growing up too soon are serious -- depression and
anxiety, eating disorders, sexual objectification, and early drug and
alcohol abuse are just a few.

"As a mother of a nine-year-old girl," Steingraber says, "I was really
impressed by the consequences, not just the causes. The world is not a
good place for early-maturing girls."

The implications are not just psychological. According to
Steingraber's report, menarche before age 12 raises breast cancer risk
by 50 percent.

"The data is pretty ample linking the two," she says. "The earlier a
girl gets her breasts, the wider the estrogen window." Longer lifetime
exposure to estrogen increases the risk of developing many forms of
breast cancer.

Steingraber points to obesity and endocrine-disrupting chemicals
(toxins that interfere with the hormonal system) as major factors in
the new puberty equation. Phthalates, bisphenol A, and dioxin are a
few of the culprits often cited by environmental health advocates as
contributors to earlier puberty onset. These chemicals are often found
in cosmetics and personal care products like shampoo, hand lotion, and
sunscreen. They are also used in pesticides.

Dr. Tracey Woodruff, associate professor of reproductive health and
environment at UC San Francisco, says the link has been researched and
discussed anecdotally in scientific circles for the past 10 years,
with the last major report issued in 1997.

A big obstacle to keeping kids safe, Woodruff says, is that most
consumer products are not required to undergo US Food and Drug
Administration approval before they are sold to the public, nor are
companies required to disclose all ingredients.

"How chemicals are governed is somewhat archaic," Woodruff says.

Environmental health activists agree. In 2002 a national coalition of
nonprofit organizations launched the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an
initiative to educate the public and influence policy. Marisa Walker
of the Breast Cancer Fund -- a founding member organization -- says
manufacturers jump through big loopholes in federal law to hide
ingredients by claiming that chemicals are trade secrets.

An Environmental Protection Agency-administered program to test new
chemicals was created more than a decade ago, but progress has been
slow at best. In June the EPA announced it was still seeking comment
on a draft list of 73 pesticides to be evaluated under the new
screening program. Chemicals in consumer products are not slated for
review.

The program has received widespread criticism, and in September the US
House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a letter to the EPA
expressing its concern: "EPA's actions have been a continued failure
to protect the American public from these chemicals." The seven-page
letter also requests that the EPA take immediate action.

Meanwhile, Woodruff, Steingraber, and many environmental health
advocates point to Europe and neighboring Canada as better models of
protecting consumer health. Their policies have a heavier emphasis on
precaution. Woodruff says prevention can mean the difference between
responding to a change in hormone levels and coping with a birth
defect.

"At what point is there enough information to take action?"
Steingraber asks. "Chemicals are turning up in the urine of some of
these girls, and while more research needs to be done, we can't even
do more research until the industry gives us more data. The time of
saying, 'Hmmm, that's interesting,' is over. It's time to take
action."

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