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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 9, NUMBERS 10-11, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1996

REPORTS...
GENERAL INTEREST

Item #d96oct70

A Review of the U.S. Global Change Research Program [USGCRP] and NASA's Mission to Planet Earth/Earth Observing System [MTPE/EOS]. Second Letter Report, Comm. on Global Change Res. (Board on Sustainable Development, Natl. Res. Council), 18 pp., May 1996 (NRC).

The NRC Committee on Global Change Research has a continuing responsibility to provide scientific review and oversight of the USGCRP. Its first review was published in September 1995. (See GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE DIGEST News and Reports/general Interest, Nov. 1995.) This letter report examines federal agency responses to its recommendations, discussed in a follow-up meeting held in March 1996. Among the topics covered are weaknesses identified but not fully addressed in the first stage of the review: international linkages, terrestrial ecosystems, and human dimensions. The NRC committee intends to move beyond its NASA-centered view of this first phase and complete a balanced, comprehensive review of the USGCRP in early 1997.

Item #d96oct71

Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals, Committee on the National Forum on Science and Technology Goals: Environment (J.F. Ahearne, H.G. Stever, Co-chairs), Sep. 1996 (NRC/Natl. Acad. Press). Also available on-line: http://www.nas.edu.

This committee report results from a forum attended by representatives of science and technology and the public, as well as from a mailed survey. The committee selected these six of a possible 40 goals put forth during the forum: (1) use social science and risk assessment to guide decision making; (2) monitor environmental changes in a more thorough, consistent and coordinated manner; (3) reduce the adverse impacts of chemicals in the environment; (4) move away from the use of fossil fuels; (5) adopt an environmental approach to engineering that reduces the use of resources; (6) substantially increase the understanding of the relationship between population and consumption. The report also includes commissioned papers on major environmental concerns.

Item #d96oct72

The BSE Crisis and UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Policy Briefing No. 1), S. Subak, M. Kelly, 4 pp., Sep. 1996 (CSERGE).

Cattle and their manure are sources of greenhouse gas emissions to the extent that halving the British population would result in a 2-3% decline in UK methane emissions. A long-term decrease in cattle numbers would also free land for carbon sequestration through forestry. The BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) crisis demonstrates the important role that individual decisions regarding consumption play in accelerating or retarding climate change.

Item #d96oct73

A Moment of Truth: Correcting the Errors in Gregg Easterbrook's A Moment on the Earth, Environ. Defense Fund, July 1996, $2 (Part I)/$10 (Part II), EDF.

These reports counter Easterbrook's optimist view that many environmental problems have been overstated, and that human-caused problems, including global warming, are small in scale and moving toward solutions. (Easterbrook's book and some comments on it were listed in GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE DIGEST, Books/General, Jan. 1996.)

Item #d96oct74

World Directory of Country Environmental Studies, 3rd Ed., S. Gordon, D.B. Tunstall, Eds., 272 pp., May 1996 (WRI). Also available on diskette or on WRI's Internet site.

A product of the Intl. Environ. & Natural Resour. Assessment Info. Service. Contains bibliographic citations and abstract information on 414 reports for 181 countries, nearly all of which were published between 1990 and 1995. A summary matrix gives reports by country and by subject, and includes climate change assessments, strategies and action plans. Information for obtaining each report is given with its annotation; many are also available from WRI.