Climate Change
Please email John Gormley now about his Climate Change Bill 2010.
Read all the lastest news on climate change, and our blogs, actions and updates below.
UK Met Office: "Increasingly remote possibility" that humans not causing climate change
Issued in news on March 05, 2010 at 13:10:00.
It is an "increasingly remote possibility" that human activity is not the main cause of climate change, according to a major Met Office review of more than 100 scientific studies that track the observed changes in the Earth's climate system.
The research will strengthen the case for human-induced climate change against sceptics who argue that the observed changes in the Earth's climate can largely be explained by natural variability.
Obama administration backs science and advocates climate law
Issued in news on March 04, 2010 at 15:01:00.
Climate research missteps 'change nothing'
Irish Times weather eye column
THE DISCLOSURE of research "missteps" hasn't shaken the consensus that man-made emissions from burning fossil fuels are contributing to climate change, President Barack Obama's top science adviser has said.
The release of scientists' e-mails and errors in a report by a United Nations climate panel show researchers are human, John Holdren said yesterday at an energy conference in Washington. The errors don't alter the fact that carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth, he said.
...
Carol Browner, Obama's top adviser on energy and the environment, said climate legislation will trigger investment and job creation in industries that build solar panels and wind turbines. "Some have said this legislation is dead," Browner said at the conference. "We don't agree."
Beyond the Pole - Where can you see this award winning arctic comedy?
Issued in news on March 01, 2010 at 14:32:00.
Beyond the Pole is Friends of the Earth supporter Helen Baxendale's award winning arctic comedy.
It follows the frustrations and humiliations of two men trying to be green.
Beyond the Pole is being released in selected cinemas across the UK this spring. The films website has listed Dublin screenings in April, dates are to be confirmed.
Find out if it's showing in a cinema near you - and if it's not, request it! Your local cinema will show the film if enough people demand it.
About the film:
Beyond the Pole is the story of the first carbon neutral, vegetarian, organic expedition to the North Pole.
An extraordinarily dangerous expedition made even more dangerous by the fact that the explorers have never done anything like this before.
AL Gore "We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change"
Issued in news on February 27, 2010 at 13:30:00.
Al Gore
It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
...
I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Harsh winter 'not a sign of stalled warming'
Issued in news on February 26, 2010 at 10:23:00.
THE PACE of global warming continues unabated, scientists have warned despite images of Europe crippled by a deep freeze and parts of the United States blasted by blizzards.
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"It's not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven't warmed in the past 50 years," Australian climate scientist Neville Nicholls said.
"January . . . was the hottest January we've ever seen," said Prof Nicholls. "November to January as a whole is the hottest November to January the world has seen," he said.
Local group meeting with the Minister for Transport.
Issued in news on February 24, 2010 at 12:14:00.
Brilliant news coming to us from Meath. The Meath Climate Change group have been collecting signed postcards calling for a 
strong climate law in and around Navan for a few months. Earlier this month they met with their local TD Noel Dempsey. As minister for Transport, Mr Dempsey is a key figure in the Governments, attempt to tackle climate change. He sits on the important Cabinet sub-commitee on climate change.
Coping with Copenhagen
Issued in the blog on February 24, 2010 at 09:52:00.
Copenhagen was personally very disappointing for me. I did not expect there to be a final legally binding treaty agreed there but I had hoped for better things. I had hoped that perhaps movement would be made on sticky issues in the negotiating texts and that by the time things came to a close there would be maybe three or four areas that still needed to be worked through in 2010. What actually hap pended was that a parallel process developed, the process of drawing together the Copenhagen Accord. This sapped attention and focus from the real texts that have been being negotiated since the UN meeting in Bali two years ago.
Climate Crisis will be the challenge of new decade
Issued in news on January 04, 2010 at 10:41:00.
This is not how it was supposed to end. Internationally, this decade was supposed to give us a comprehensive global treaty to contain climate change. In Ireland, some of us allowed ourselves hope a soft-landing for the Celtic Tiger would herald a "post-materialist" era where environmental and social considerations where given as much weight as economic ones in policy-making.
Instead, the Copenhagen climate talks ended in confusion and recrimination and in Ireland the economic crash has driven us back to very understandable materialist concerns about budget cuts and job losses.
Proposed Copenhagen Accord an embarrassment
Issued in news on December 18, 2009 at 16:59:00.
Rich countries will not avoid a PR disaster by bullying poor countries to accept a climate disaster
Friends of the Earth has described the latest draft text at the UN climate summit as an "embarrassment". Calling on world leaders to stay in Copenhagen until they agree a "real deal with actions strong enough to deliver on their aspirations", the environmental organisation said poorer countries will not be bullied into accepting an unfair and unsafe agreement.
In Copenhagen, Friends of the Earth Policy Officer, Molly Walsh said
Uncertainty in Copenhagen as new draft goes down badly
Issued in news on December 18, 2009 at 10:46:00.
The mood at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen has changed from optimism to uncertainty, after a draft text from a influential group of world leaders went down badly with developing nations.
...Overnight, a group of 26 influential world leaders had worked on a text, a process which the Danish Prime Minister had described as both fruitful and positive.
However this morning, developing nations have reacted negatively to the text, apparently feeling that an agreement was being forced on them by the world's richest nations.
Open the door, De Boer!
Issued in the blog on December 17, 2009 at 15:36:00.
What happened yesterday was a nail in the coffin for any belief I might ever have had left that the UNFCCC is an open democratic and transparent process.We heard a few days ago that every NGO group would only be allowed 20% of their registered people inside the Bella Centre. This was apparently because of capacity. WE were not pleased about this. If a process is to be open and transparent ngos must be able attend and see what is going on. Anyway we did what we were told and just like all the other observer organisations at the COP we picked some of our people to go in. These people were going to be given a white card that would now be needed along with our UN photo id that everyone has around their neck. I was lucky enough to be chosen as one for these people. This system of white cards and primary passes worked OK for Tuesday. Things were a bit quieter but we did manage to do a good flash mob action wearing blue ponchos and chanting "we stand with Africa, Kyoto targets now".Minister Eamon Ryan even joined in a bit, without really knowing what he was being dragged into!
Blog by Leah
Issued in the blog on December 17, 2009 at 10:34:00.
With all the money being thrown around here you would think they could do something about the bloody heating. Maybe its a subconscious corporate lobbying tactic - keep the room temperature in the COP 15 UN Conference centre low, and all those pesky environmental activists wont be so adamant about preventing global warming after all! If the FoEI delegation need something to get hot headed about, however, they need not look any farther than yesterdays announcement by a number of developed countries that have made proposals to merge the two tracks of negotiations going on, the Kyoto Protocol track and the Working Group on Long term Cooperative Action - there is a fear that this will mean a suspension of the only legally binding agreement on a reduction in carbon emissions for developed countries, while merging the two tracks may mean reducing the involvement of developing countries, for whom climate change will have the most devastating effects.
The Lows and Highs of a Day at COP15
Issued in the blog on December 16, 2009 at 07:11:00.
It started as another day of inching along with the crowd seeking to register from around 9 a.m.. This time a further obstacle was presented to NGOs - a magic white pass issued on a quota basis which effectively eliminated entry for thousands of NGO observers who had surmounted the accreditation process successfully. In a scene which made us feel for an instant just a little like they must have felt at Auschwitz or Srebenica, NGOs were herded into a separate queue from the press, media and other observers. Those of us who had braved the 8 hours the previous day knew another similar day was ahead with no guarantee of success at the end. As with all queues, there are times you get your hopes up, only to be dashed. In this case around the 4-hour mark the VIPs began to arrive and the triage system was operationalised. NGOs were back at the bottom of the pile and the queue froze. It was turning into another eight hour queue day and for a time the heavy snowfall didn't help our spirits. The historic achievement of getting past the front gate, with the great co-operation of the Friends of the Earth's Molly Walsh was dashed as it became clear that there was a major logistics problem inside the building. Four hours later the cause of all the problems was apparent. 10-15 administrators were working flat out to register people, each one taking 5-10 minutes in total, or around 100 per hour passing through the system. Trouble was, around 45,000 people had apparently indicated they were coming to the conference and the bulk of these had obviously materialised for the second week. The system was now obviously hopelessly inadequate for the several thousand souls out in the snow. The United Nations got everything right except this crucial detail. 10 times as many administrators were needed at the registration desk and fewer security scanners. There are several good courses in Event Management at Irish universities which I could recommend!
Left in the Cold
Issued in the blog on December 15, 2009 at 23:10:00.
It was 8 a.m. when I alighted from the train from the city centre to register for the conference as an NGO delegate for Friends of the Earth Ireland. In the sub zero temperatures the beginnings of a 500m queue of humanity could just be discerned stretching into the distance beyond the railway station. 3 hours later I had reached the railway station again, cold and weary, but still hopeful that the gates would at last open to the Bella Centre. The crowd around was generally patient and kept alert by the occasional noisy demonstration, extolling the virtues of a vegan lifestyle or denigrating the Australian government for their support of the world's largest coal export industry.
Copenhagen negotiators "playing Russian roulette with the future of humanity"
Issued in news on December 14, 2009 at 00:01:00.
"You can't negotiate with the atmosphere. Physics doesn't compromise" according to leading Irish scientist
Friends of the Earth has accused negotiators at the UN climate talks of "playing Russian roulette with the future of humanity". As ministers begin arriving at the summit in Copenhagen, the environmental organization has called on Presidents and Prime Ministers to end the short-sighted jostling for national advantage and focus on "our common interest in a safe climate". The first week of the conference has been marked by bitter divisions between Western countries and the global south on targets for reducing emissions and finance for coping with the climate change already underway.
From Copenhagen, Friends of the Earth policy officer, Molly Walsh, said:
