EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • British industrialists in denial about climate change

    Related article from UK Guardian

    Senior figures in the manufacturing industry do not accept that human activities are driving global warming or that action needs to be taken to prepare for its effects, the UK government’s science minister said today.

    Lord Drayson said recent discussions with leaders in the car industry and other businesses had left him “shocked” at the number of climate change deniers among senior industrialists. Of those who acknowledged that global temperatures were rising, many blamed it on variations in the sun’s activity.

    Speaking in London to mark the launch of a new centre that will gather information from satellites to improve understanding of how the Earth’s environment is changing, Lord Drayson said there was an urgent need to restate the scientific evidence for global warming and called for companies to focus on their environmental obligations despite the pressures of the economic downturn.

    “There is a significant minority of senior managers who do not accept the evidence for climate change and don’t see the need to take action,” Drayson said. “It really shocked me that those views are held, and it’s not limited to the car industry.”

    “The industrialists are faced with a very difficult challenge, which is huge infrastructure investment in existing ways of doing business and very difficult global economic circumstances.

    “The temptation is to say we’ll get round to dealing with climate change once we’ve fixed all this other stuff. We need to present them with the evidence to say this can’t wait, we need to fix both,” he added.

    The new centre will receive 33m pound over the next five years and will coordinate research using Earth-observing satellite data at 26 British universities and institutions. Known as the National Centre for Earth Observation, it will focus on ways to improve climate change models, sea level rise estimates, flooding forecasts and ways to predict earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. It also hopes to develop improved weather forecasting software ahead of the London Olympics in 2012.

    A major task for the centre will be to use real-time measurements of sea ice melting, droughts and atmospheric conditions to hone computer models that climate scientists use to predict future warming and its effects.

    “Earth-orbiting satellites are revolutionising our understanding of planet Earth, in terms of how it works and what forces work against it, not least from climate change. But in order to get more from that data, to get climate information on 10 year scales, and on regional scales, we’ve got to iron out some significant issues we have with the computer models,” said Alan O’Neill, director of the centre.

    Some environmental processes are so poorly understood that they hinder the ability of climate models to make accurate predictions. The amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from deforestation in the tropics is so uncertain that estimates range from 0.7 to 2.6bn tonnes a year. Other scientists say that some feedback processes in the atmosphere are so unclear they do not even know if they will speed up global warming or slow it down.

    The centre was due to take data from Nasa’s ill-fated Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite, which crashed into the ocean near Antarctica shortly after take-off last month. The satellite was designed to bolster understanding of climate change by mapping levels of CO² in the atmosphere.

    Three new Earth observing satellites are scheduled to launch this year, including the European Space Agency’s Goce probe, which by mapping the Earth’s gravity field will reveal details of changes in ocean currents. Another satellite, Smos, will measure soil moisture and ocean salinity, with the third, cryosat-2, monitoring the thickness of continental ice sheets and sea ice cover.

  • Rainforest drought speeds up global warming

    Related article from Science Daily

    The Amazon is surprisingly sensitive to drought, according to new research conducted throughout the world’s largest tropical forest. The 30-year study, published in Science, provides the first solid evidence that drought causes massive carbon loss in tropical forests, mainly through killing trees.

    “For years the Amazon forest has been helping to slow down climate change. But relying on this subsidy from nature is extremely dangerous”, said Professor Oliver Phillips, from the University of Leeds and the lead author of the research.

    “If the earth’s carbon sinks slow or go into reverse, as our results show is possible, carbon dioxide levels will rise even faster. Deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilise our climate.”

    The study, a global collaboration between more than 40 institutions, was based on the unusual 2005 drought in the Amazon. This gave scientists a glimpse into the region’s future climate, in which a warming tropical North Atlantic may cause hotter and more intense dry seasons.

    The 2005 drought sharply reversed decades of carbon absorption, in which Amazonia helped slow climate change.

    In normal years the forest absorbs nearly 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. The drought caused a loss of more than 3 billion tonnes. The total impact of the drought – 5 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – exceeds the annual emissions of Europe and Japan combined.

    “Visually, most of the forest appeared little affected, but our records prove tree death rates accelerated. Because the region is so vast, even small ecological effects can scale-up to a large impact on the planet’s carbon cycle,” explained Professor Phillips.

    Some species, including some important palm trees, were especially vulnerable”, said Peruvian botanist and co-author Abel Monteagudo, “showing that drought threatens biodiversity too.”

    The Amazon accounts for more than half of the world’s rainforest, covering an area 25 times as great as the United Kingdom. No other ecosystem on Earth is home to so many species nor exerts such control on the carbon cycle.

    The study involved 68 scientists from 13 countries working in RAINFOR, a unique research network dedicated to monitoring the Amazonian forests.

    To calculate changes in carbon storage they examined more than 100 forest plots across the Amazon’s 600 million hectares, identified and measured over 100,000 trees, and recorded tree deaths as well as new trees. Weather patterns were also carefully measured and mapped.

    In the wake of the 2005 drought the RAINFOR team took advantage of this huge natural experiment, and focused their measurements to assess how the drought had affected the forest.

    The study found that for at least 25 years the Amazon forest acted as a vast carbon sink. A similar process has also been occurring in Africa.

    In fact, over recent decades the tropical forests have absorbed one fifth of global fossil fuel emissions.

    But in 2005 this process was reversed. Tree death accelerated most where drought was strongest, and locations subject even to mild drying were affected. Because of the study, we now know the precise sensitivity of the Amazon to warming and drought.

    If repeated, Amazon droughts will accelerate climate warming and make future droughts even more damaging.

    The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

     

  • 40 nations condemn UK as climate criminal

    Related article from The Observer

    A global protest against UK plans to build new coal power plants is being launched today by campaigners from more than 40 developing countries accusing the government of being a “climate criminal”.

    They have written an open letter to energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband that follows repeated warnings from UK groups that the decisions to approve new coal power plants and the expansion of Heathrow airport would damage the nation’s position in international negotiations when it tries to persuade other countries to cut global-warming emissions.

    The 27 groups, including campaigners from India, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines and Uganda, say they are “alarmed” that the UK government is considering allowing new coal plants to be built, including one at Kingsnorth in Kent. They blame emissions from rich countries for causing global warming and the “increased floods, droughts, sea-levels and disease” that threaten the livelihoods of “hundreds of millions of people”.

    “Coal power is the most climate-polluting way to generate electricity,” continues the letter. “New coal power stations in the UK will exacerbate the impacts of climate change on impoverished communities in the south[ern hemisphere] … A decision to support new coal power stations will confirm the UK as a climate criminal in the international climate-change negotiations.”

    The groups oppose the current plans to build coal plants with no equipment for carbon capture and storage (CCS), and existing proposals for a “demonstration” of the technology are inadequate, said the World Development Movement, the UK-based poverty campaigning charity which coordinated the letter.

    The letter also criticises proposals to offset the carbon dioxide from coal plants by investing in clean technology projects in the developing world through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism, which the groups say has “continuously had negative impacts on communities in the global south while failing to cut emissions”.

  • Turnbull discovers biochar

    From Australian Associated Press

    AUSTRALIA could reduce greenhouse gas emissions annually by 150 million tonnes more than the Federal Government proposes, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has said.

    Mr Turnbull has flagged a more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target than the Government’s 5-15 per cent by 2020, and a less complex scheme for achieving the target.

    “We could, at relatively low cost … cut an additional 150 million tonnes a year by 2020, and do that very, very realistically without rocket science technology,” he said on ABC radio.

    Mr Turnbull says the government’s planned emissions trading scheme (ETS), due to start operating in July 2010, is “incredibly cumbersome”.   “(It) seems to disappoint everybody,” he said, adding the scheme was also ineffectual and economically damaging.

    Australia’s carbon emissions should be reduced by using such measures as environmental forestry and bio-char technology, Mr Turnbull said.  “The objective is to reduce emissions, not to have an ETS.”

    Mr Turnbull said the Opposition was not prepared to finalise a reduction scheme until it was known what the rest of the world planned.

    Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has said the Government has always acknowledged the need for additional policies, but turning Australia from one of the most carbon-intensive economies in the world to a low-pollution one requires the “hard” economic reform of an ETS.

    “Mr Turnbull knows this,” Senator Wong said.  She said Mr Turnbull was opposing an ETS simply because it did not have support in his party.   “Many … simply do not want to take action on climate change.”

    She said Mr Turnbull’s idea of using environmental forestry would require planting an area half the size of Tasmania every year for a decade to implement, Senator Wong said.  “That gives you an example of how much of what Mr Turnbull is talking about is nothing more than a mirage.”

  • UK government infighting fails climate

    Britain’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have been hampered by government infighting and a reluctance to stand up to industry, according to the UK’s former climate change minister.

    Elliot Morley, head of the new energy and climate change select committee, said tensions between different government departments had undermined moves to cut greenhouse gas pollution. Policies to cut carbon and help the environment were dismissed inside Whitehall as “idealistic and not giving enough attention to the pragmatic needs of industry”, he said.

    Read the full story

  • Rudd in the cold on warming

    Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said indecision and internal division were behind Thursday’s decision to dump a House of Representatives inquiry into the ETS.

    The BCA, which gave guarded approval to Labor’s plans last year, now says the Government has to find a way to minimise the initial cost of the scheme if it comes into effect in July next year. Policy director Maria Tarrant said the economic crisis meant “the Government has to think of a way to minimise the scheme’s impact in the early years after its introduction on July 1 2010”.

    “There are likely to be big questions as to whether companies will have the cash flow to buy the permits they need, or invest in the emission-reducing technologies they need at that time and still remain viable,” Ms Tarrant said. “It could put many companies’ ongoing operations at extreme risk.”

    With green criticism intensifying, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong yesterday warned environmentalists the ETS was their best chance to see an early reduction in Australian greenhouse gas emissions. Green groups have argued the scheme’s lack of ambition and already generous industry compensation means it is fatally flawed.

    Senator Wong said: “We have a chance now to reduce Australia’s emissions next year or, if we fail, to simply allow our emissions to grow. The most responsible thing to do, even in this economic environment, is to start the hard task of reducing our emissions right now.”

    Australia Institute executive director Richard Denniss and others have advanced the argument that an ETS means an individual’s or state’s efforts to voluntarily reduce emissions have no impact on the country’s total level of greenhouse gas, and that a carbon tax would be a better answer.

    But Senator Wong rejected those arguments as well.

    “If you are serious about climate change a carbon tax is not the answer,” Senator Wong told The Weekend Australian.

    But the federal Coalition appears to be hardening in its opposition to the scheme.

    And the Australian Industry Group agrees the Government needs to “look at every option” to ameliorate the early costs, warning the effects of the economic crisis risk “fracturing any consensus around this issue”.

    Among options being canvassed by industry groups are a plan advocated by Professor Ross Garnaut for a low fixed price on carbon in the first two years of the scheme, offering trade-exposed industries all their permits for free in first few years, starting the scheme as a “dry run” without actually charging for permits and offering industries exemptions or holidays from the cost of the renewable energy target.

    Coalition emissions trading spokesman Andrew Robb told Sky news yesterday the scheme was a “total failure”.

    And Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said the global financial crisis had “amplified the negative effects of the emissions trading scheme many times over”.

    Executives from Virgin Blue also told the Senate fuel and energy committee yesterday they were “deeply concerned about the planned timing of the introduction” of the emissions trading scheme.

    “Even in the most benign circumstances, the (emissions trading scheme) is effectively a tax on investment and growth,” said Virgin Blue general manager Simon Thorpe.

    The Government is drafting its legislation. It says it intends to try to pass it through both houses of parliament by June, but most observers believe debate will continue later in the year.

    The Greens have said they are willing to negotiate with the Government over the legislation, but also believe the scheme as it stands is deeply flawed.