Category: Archive

Real estate industry and councils responsible for energy non-efficient new homes

admin /29 January, 2006

According to a letter-writer to The Advertiser, 27/1/2006, p.
16, “As I travel Adelaide, I see ranks of new houses marching
relentlessly onward, across the outer suburbs in all directions. They
are wood-framed single-brick veneer. They have no verandas, no eaves,
no insulation. There is no solar hot-water system to be seen. Double
glazing? What a joke. Worse yet, the councils have in recent years
allowed the developers to build these places three to the quarter acre,
whereas it used to be one.

Blame Counclis for crimes: There are no backyards, no space to
plant trees for shade and cooling, no space for a reasonable-sized
rainwater tank. Then, there’s the related problem of stormwater runoff,
with the attendant problems of flooding and erosion. The developers and
the real estate industry are responsible for these crimes, motivated by
profits. People who buy these homes face huge bills for winter heating
and summer cooling, and that is what drives the over-reliance on
electricity that leads to power shortages”

Big chill stretches across Europe al the way to Greece

admin /29 January, 2006

The big chill has now reached all the way from Russia to Greece, with
reports yesterday that snow had fallen on the Acropolis and covered
much of Athens and its outlying suburbs, reported The Daily Telegraph, (26/1/2006, p.34).

Casualties in Russia and Moldova: The killer cold wave, blamed
for more than 50 deaths in Russia, claimed at least 13 lives over the
past five days in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, where
authorities said another 30 people – many of them homeless – were in
hospital with hypothermia.

Ice cracks tracks: Vienna’s subway system was brought to a halt
when the cold caused cracks in sections of track. Dozens of drivers
became trapped in their cars because the doors were frozen shut.

Canal freezes over: In southern Germany, officials closed the
Rhine-Main-Danube canal to shipping for the first time in five years
after it iced over. Thick sheets of ice stretching about 80km posed a
danger to ships. An icebreaker had to help six ships in the canal –
which links waterways between the North Sea and the Black Sea – reach
their destinations.

Mass media reports misinterpret research findings that plants contribute to global warming

admin /28 January, 2006

On 18 January the Max Planck Society issued a media statement, ‘Global
Warming – the blame is not with the plants’, responding to media
coverage of the Nature article and reiterating the value of carbon
sequestration through forests.

Emissions minimal, forests worth it: “… the climatic benefits
gained through carbon sequestration by reforestation far exceed the
relatively small negative effect (of methane emissions), which may
reduce the carbon uptake effect by up to 4 per cent,” it said.

Spend more on research, says CRC: The findings of the study
underscore the need for further investment in basic research into plant
processes, according to Professor Graham Farquhar, plant physiologist
at the Australian National University and the CRC for Greenhouse
Accounting .

New research venture: Professor Farquhar said Managing Plants
for Climate, a new venture being developed through a consortium
associated with the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting, proposed to work to:

• broaden understanding of how plants will grow in future climates,
especially with increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere; and on this basis;

• improve our understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle;

• assess impacts, develop adaptation strategies and identify new opportunities for land-based industries and natural resources;

• contribute to the development of improved climate predictions; and

• communicate and inform government, industry and the wider community
on climate change and issues, and train a new generation of research
leaders.

Australia’s CRC changes calculations for greenhouse emissions

admin /28 January, 2006

The Federal government had based its greenhouse arguments on the
accounting services of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for
Greenhouse Accounting. This acts as an arm of Federal and state
governments and some commerical firms, on an income of $78 million a
year.

Holds country’s greenhouse data: Like other CRCs, it acts as a
diplomatic arm of governments in Kyoto and other global standards
bodies. It holds the database used to create the National Greenhouse
Gas Inventory. This is a partnership between the CRC, CSIRO and the
Bureau of Rural Sciences and utilises a 15-node rack-mounted set of
LINUX servers yielding 10,000 gigabytes of storage and multi-processor
capability to archive greenhouse (MODIS LAND data storage and
processing) data for Australia.

The Australian greenhouse gas accounts reflect the CRC’s own research
by centre scientists and commissioned researchers. Out of this it sold
advice to the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) to enable the
satellite map-based National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

How the CRC computes the accounts: “Australia’s National Carbon
Accounting System (NCAS) is an operational system built using available
information. Research in the program is being used to refine the NCAS,
as well as contributing to methodologies used within Australia at the
state level, and internationally via the IPCC Guidelines for greenhouse
gas accounting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change”. The CRC compares NCAS biomass outputs to field and LIDAR
estimates to investigate ways to enhance the calibration of NCAS using
landscape-wide estimates of biomass from LIDAR.

CRC uses own research credit tree roots: The CRC Annual Report
2004-2005 reported the research of Dr Michael Roderick and Professor
Graham Farquhar, which increased credits from vegetation. The Keppler
research reduced it.

Forests long-term carbon sinks claim: The Centre has
demonstrated that forests are a much longer-term carbon sink than
previously perceived or accounted for:, it argued “tree roots decompose
much more slowly, and decomposition rates of (and therefore emissions
from) wood and wood products in landfill are much less than previously
estimated”.

Keppler’s team examine the effects of methane in the atmosphere from forestation and ruminant anim

admin /28 January, 2006

According to David C. Lowe of the Tropospheric Physics and Chemistry
Group, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Wellington,
New Zealand, under the Kyoto rules, as reforestation since 1990 may be
used as a CO2 sink to offset greenhouse-gas emissions from other
sources, “we now have the spectre that new forests might increase
greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by
sequestering CO2”.

Panic for pastoral economies: And in certain countries with
large numbers of sheep, cattle and other ruminant livestock, methane
constituted a signiflcant fraction of total greenhouse gas emissions.
In such countries as Ireland and New Zealand, for example, ruminant
animals grazed on pastures that were originally forested.

Forests not CO2 sink?: Given the flndings of Keppler et al., it
is possible that the forests that once occupied pasture may have
produced as much methane as ruminants and grasses on the same land.
Until now, conventional wisdom was that plants released methane only
through bacterial action in airless environments. But Dr Keppler’s team
revealed that a wide range of plants emit the gas in air, probably
through their leaves.

US move to promote plug-in cars

admin /26 January, 2006

WASHINGTON — A partnership of cities, municipal utilities and organizations — including the cities of Los Angeles and Irvine — kicked off a national campaign Tuesday urging automakers to build plug-in hybrid vehicles. This next-generation type of “green” transportation uses an additional battery to boost mileage and allows drivers to plug their gasoline-electric cars into Continue Reading →