The BBC reports:

Polar bears have shrunk over the last century, according to research.

Scientists compared bear skulls from the early 20th Century with those from the latter half of the century.

Their study, in the Journal of Zoology, describes changes in size and shape that could be linked an increase in pollution and the reduction in sea ice.

Physical “stress” caused by pollutants in the bears’ bodies, and the increased effort needed to find food, could limit the animals’ growth, the team said.

Okay, it’s not most important climate story in the world, but it does let me use the above photo again.  I should note that the NYT‘s Revkin blogged last month, “More Polar Bear Populations in Decline“:

There is rising concern among  polar bear biologists that the big recent summertime retreats of sea ice in the Arctic are already harming some populations of these seal-hunting predators. That was one conclusion of the  Polar Bear Specialist Group, a network of bear experts who  met last week in Copenhagen to review the latest data (and data gaps) on the 19 discrete populations of polar bears around the Arctic. The group, part of the  International Union for Conservation of Nature, includes biologists in academia and government and at nonprofit conservation organizations. Only one bear population is increasing (in the Canadian high Arctic), while eight are declining in numbers, the scientists said. At its last meeting, in 2005, the group concluded that five populations were in decline. Three populations appear to be stable and seven are too poorly monitored to gauge a trend.

As for the new study, here’s the abstract for “Craniometric characteristics of polar bear skulls from two periods with contrasting levels of industrial pollution and sea ice extent” (subs. req’d):

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As the debate over rising health care costs reaches a fever pitch, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) warns that “global warming is a medical emergency.” In a press teleconference unveiling a new report on the human cost of increased heat waves, PSR executive director Peter Wilk, M.D. described global warming as “one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today”:

Global warming is one of the gravest health emergencies facing humanity today. It’s life threatening, it’s affecting us now, and if we don’t take bold and effective action, it could dramatically affect how we life on earth.

“More Extreme Heat Waves: Global Warming’s Wake Up Call,” jointly issued by PSR and the National Wildlife Federation, explains that scientists have found that global boiling will disproportionately threaten the health of the very old and very young, as well as the poor and those who live in big cities: Read more

I’m delighted to have the great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, as the guest blogger for this big story. Note that Pachauri was the guy handpicked by Bush to replace the “alarmist” Bob Watson. But it’s the facts that make people alarmists, not their politics or professional background (see “Desperate times, desperate scientists“).

This blog was the very first place to take note of an oped I wrote for the Washington Post in late December of 2007, which in turn was the first public notice of a talk Jim Hansen had given a few days earlier at the AGU conference in San Francisco. That was where Hansen announced his finding:  350 ppm CO2 represented the bottom line for the planet.

In the 18 months since, as we’ve built 350.org, we’ve found lots of support–from Al Gore, from 94 of the world’s smallest and poorest nations, and so on. But today may have been the biggest breakthrough of all: Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, said clearly and unequivocally that 350 is the number. Here’s a few lines from his interview with Agence France Presse:

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce — the 97-year-old organization that bills itself as the “voice of business” — wants to put climate science on trial. As the Environmental Protection Agency nears a final ruling that manmade global warming endangers the public health and welfare, “the chamber will tell the EPA in a filing today that a trial-style public hearing” on the science of climate change is needed to “make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science.” William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs, told the Los Angeles Times this hearing would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century“:

It would be evolution versus creationism. It would be the science of climate change on trial.

In 1925, Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was indicted for teaching evolution against state law. His trial, intended as a test of the law, became a national phenomenon when as the World Christian Fundamentals Association and the American Civil Liberties Union brought the famed lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow into battle. Scopes was found guilty. Even though the state supreme court overturned the verdict of the “bizarre case” on a technicality, the public fallout was intense. The anti-evolution movement lost steam (before being reborn as “intelligent design“) and science textbooks with biblical quotations were phased out.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking a similarly bizarre approach here, calling for a show trial of climate science. Perhaps Kovacs and other officials at the U.S. Chamber believe that the rest of the business world shares their extremist views. After all, U.S. corporations continue to fund their multi-million-dollar lobbying against health care and energy reform.

It’s also possible this is an attempt to disrupt the effort to fight global warming with a culture war, tying the science of climate change to fundamentalists’ unease with evolution. Conservative activists have already made the connection. “It’s still a theory,” a town hall protester confronted Rep. Mike Castle (D-DE) after he supported climate legislation in June. “So is Darwin’s theory of evolution! And yet we have the audacity to say global warming is accurate, it’s more than a theory?”

There aren’t many natural parallels between the physics of greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels and the biology of natural selection, but the American conservative movement depends on the cozy relationship between oil and the Christian right. It seems like a high-risk strategy to convince Americans that God means for us to pollute His creation on behalf of oil and coal tycoons. But when reality is not on your side, there’s not much else left.

[upd

Who ever could have imagined that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would publicly — and proudly — equate climate science with evolution and their denial with a belief in creationism?  Time now for the the major businesses on the Chamber’s board to speak up since many of them publicly claim to support strong climate action (see here).  It might also be time for advocates to start boycotting those brand-name companies if they don’t act swiftly to stop

First, however, the mind-boggling L. A. Times story:

The nation’s largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, trying to ward off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to hold a rare public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

Chamber officials say it would be “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” — complete with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge who would rule, essentially, on whether humans are warming the planet to dangerous effect.

“It would be evolution versus creationism,” said William Kovacs, the chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs. “It would be the science of climate change on trial.”

The goal of the chamber, which represents 3 million large and small businesses, is to fend off potential emissions regulations by undercutting the scientific consensus over climate change. If the EPA denies the request, as expected, the chamber plans to take the fight to federal court.

What’s the next step for the Chamber — calling for a law banning the teaching of climate science comparable to the 1925 Tennessee law banning the teaching of human evolution that was the basis for the Scopes trial?

You probably thought that the crafty global warming deniers — especially the corporate ones who represent businesses with lots of customers — had gotten together in a room and decided to focus on the economics of the bill or on China’s and India’s intransigence, while keeping their flat-earth views to themselves for fear of not being taken seriously, for fear of being seen as far outside the mainstream.

How wrong you were.  Apparently global warming denial is the new creationism.  The funny thing is, most creationists themselves realized a while back how transparently untenable their public arguments were, so even they have created the media- and moderate-friendly term “intelligent design.”  The Chamber’s head is so stuck in the ground that they actually think it makes sense to analogize their desire to put climate science on trial with the famous Scopes Monkey case, which ultimately “caused millions of Americans to ridicule religious-based opposition to the theory of evolution.”

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Indian Government unveils cap and trade market worth $15 bln

India has approved in principle new trading plans centred on energy efficiency as part of efforts to shift to a greener economy to fight climate change, opening up a potential market worth more than $15 billion by 2015.

Energy efficiency is a key focus in India’s national climate change policy, unveiled last year and which lays out a roadmap to a green economy but doesn’t fix a target for carbon emissions.

Officials said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday approved in principle the national energy efficiency plan, which puts in place new financial architecture chiefly centring around trading of efficiency certificates and the carbon market….

A government statement said the efficiency mission would ensure an annual saving of 5 percent of India’s total energy consumption and a cut of about 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year from its annual emissions of about 3 [1.5] billion tonnes now.

Not certain how Reuters got India’s CO2 emissions wrong by a factor of 2!

“It’s a fairly ambitious beginning,” said K. Srinivas, former climate campaigner of Greenpeace India. “We have reached the stage where we are willing to cap and trade. Now they have to ensure sustained implementation.”

Climate change on the agenda of China’s NPC

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Guest blogger Brad Johnson has an excellent summary of efforts to make the American Clean Energy And Security Act stronger in a post first published here.