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. 

  • Greens secure Rudd Government backflip to save renewable energy target

    Greens secure Rudd government backflip to save renewable energy target

    Canberra, Friday 26 February 2010

    After months of claiming there was no problem with the Renewable Energy
    Target, Ministers Wong and Combet have today announced a major backflip
    that appears to adopt significant elements of the Greens’ Private
    Member’s Bill introduced yesterday.

    However, with details still to be clarified, important questions remain
    to be answered as to how this will operate into the future.

    “Workers on the Musselroe wind farm in Tasmania, at Keppel Prince in
    Portland and thousands of other Australians employed building and
    running renewable energy power stations can now breathe a sigh of relief
    that their jobs are secure,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator
    Christine Milne said.

    “While the devil may well be in the detail, it looks very much like the
    government has adopted the approach in the Private Member’s Bill I
    introduced yesterday, putting solar hot water and rooftop solar into a
    separate stream of the target.

    “I am so pleased that the Greens have been able to deliver for the
    renewable energy industry, after months of government denials that there
    was a problem with their scheme.”

    The Greens and industry had repeatedly warned since August last year
    that including solar hot water, heat pumps and multiplied rooftop solar
    credits in the renewable energy target would crash the price of
    renewable energy certificates (RECs), stopping industrial-scale
    renewable energy developments from getting off the ground. This would
    not have come to pass if Greens amendments moved at the time had been
    accepted.

    “It was obvious in the design of the scheme that this would happen, but
    both the government and opposition refused to heed the warnings and
    rejected Greens amendments that would have prevented it,” Senator Milne
    said.

    “What this debacle has shown is that the 20% target massively undersold
    Australia’s renewable energy potential. We can and must aim far higher,
    ultimately heading for a 100% renewable energy grid as soon as
    possible.”

    Questions remain, however, about the yet-to-be-released detail of the
    scheme.

    “It would not be a positive outcome if these changes save the wind
    industry but damage the solar industry in the process.

    “Whilst the fixed price removes some uncertainty for solar investors, we
    need to know what long-term certainty the government will offer the
    industry, given that the solar multiplier will phase out over the coming
    few years and uncertainty remains over state programs.

    “The Greens will still be strongly advocating much better long-term
    solutions – a gross national feed-in for all forms of renewable energy
    and a parallel energy efficiency scheme to really get behind sensible
    roll-outs of solar hot water, insulation and more.”

    Tim Hollo
    Media Adviser
    Senator Christine Milne | Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate
    Change Spokesperson
    Suite SG-112 Parliament House, Canberra ACT | P: 02 6277 3588 | M: 0437
    587 562
    http://www.christinemilne.org.au/| www.GreensMPs.org.au
    <http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

  • Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels.

     

    Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper’s estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.

    Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: “It’s one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science.” He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study’s conclusion.

    “Retraction is a regular part of the publication process,” he said. “Science is a complicated game and there are set procedures in place that act as checks and balances.”

    Nature Publishing Group, which publishes Nature Geoscience, said this was the first paper retracted from the journal since it was launched in 2007.

    The paper – entitled “Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level change” – used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct how sea level has fluctuated with temperature since the peak of the last ice age, and to project how it would rise with warming over the next few decades.

    In a statement the authors of the paper said: “Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.

    “One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes.”

    In the Nature Geoscience retraction, in which Siddall and his colleagues explain their errors, Vermeer and Rahmstorf are thanked for “bringing these issues to our attention”.

  • Acidified landscape around ocean vents foretells grim future for coral reefs

     

    The seas are slowly being made more acidic by the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from factories and cars being pumped into the atmosphere and then dissolved in the sea. The likely impact of this acidification worries scientists, because they have found that predicting the exact course of future damage is a tricky process.

    That is where the undersea vents come in, says Dr Jason Hall-Spencer of the University of Plymouth. “Seawater around these vents becomes much more acidic than normal sea­water because of the carbon dioxide that is being bubbled into it,” he told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, California, last week. “Indeed, it reaches a level that we believe will be matched by the acidity of oceans in three or four decades. That is why they are so important.”

    As part of his research, Hall-Spencer has scuba-dived into waters around vents and used submersibles to study those in deeper waters. In both cases the impact was dramatic, he told the conference.

    “The sea floor is often very colourful. There are corals, pink algae and sea urchins. But I have found that these are wiped out when the water becomes more acidic and are replaced by sea grasses and foreign, invasive algae.

    “There is a complete ecological flip. The seabed loses all its richness and variety. And that is what is likely to happen in the next few decades across the world’s oceans.”

    Hall-Spencer also noted that in acidic seawater a type of algae known as coralline algae – which act as the glue holding coral reefs together – are destroyed.

    “When coralline algae are destroyed, coral reefs fall apart,” he said. “So we can see that coral islands like the ­Maldives face a particularly worrying future. ­Rising sea levels threaten to drown them, while acidic waters will cause them to disintegrate.

    “It is a very worrying combination.”

  • Gas pipeline through contaminated Baltic given go-ahead

    Gas pipeline through contaminated Baltic given go-ahead

    Ecologist

    19th February, 2010

    Environmental groups in Germany, Finland and Denmark claim gas pipeline will devastate the Baltic Sea’s already fragile marine ecosystem

    Three legal challenges are being brought against the construction of a major undersea gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

    The €7.4 billion Nord Stream project, heavily promoted in recent weeks by Russian prime minister Vladmir Putin, has now been approved by all the Baltic countries throug whose territorial waters the pipeline will pass.

    Construction is expected to start as early as April this year.

    Legal action

    However, campaign groups in three of the countries that have approved the pipeline are attempting to delay construction, claiming environmental impacts have not been properly assessed. 

    Separate cases being brought in Germany by WWF, in Finland by the Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF) and in Denmark by the Estonian Naturalists Society (ENS), all allege the permits for the project should not have been issued by the national authorities. 

    Jüri-Ott Salm, CEO of the Estonian Fund for Nature, said they were concerned about the toxic sediment that would be released by the construction of the pipe and clearing of munitions dumped in the Sea.

    He said alternative routes overland had not been properly considered and that ELF wanted a new environmental assessment made.

    Munitions dump

    Ivar Puura from the Estonian Naturalists Society, said its case was specifically about munitions dumps in Danish and Swedish waters – which it claims have not been properly assessed.

    ‘If Nord Stream AG [the consortium building the pipeline] is concerned on the environmental safety, it should take time to finish the incomplete assessments of environmental impacts.

    ‘The appeal is seeking the delay in construction and communicates the warning of scientists that there are too many open questions on known risks and uncertanties, that should be answered before the works are launched. Otherwise, the risks to human health and ecosystem services are too high,’ said Puura.

    A spokesperson from Nord Stream said €100 million of environmental surveys had been undertaken and that any complaints were directed against the national authorities rather than them.

    ‘So far we are not aware of any details that could lead to a delay.  We are looking forward to a timely start to work in April.’

    Useful links     
    Nord Stream
    Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF)
    Estonian Naturalists Society (ENS)

  • Gloom obscures M5 tunnel filters

     

    The Daily Telegraph can reveal the RTA this week wrote to those companies applying to build the eastbound filter to say the $20 million project had been dumped.

    The letter, sent to six companies from Australia, Norway, Austria and South Korea, said “a decision has been made not to proceed with the proposed filtration scheme in the eastbound tunnel”.

    An RTA spokesman said no applicants met the assessment criteria, including creating a system that could be placed into the existing roof cavity.

      

    Related Coverage

    “This meant the submissions did not offer the community value for money” and therefore would not proceed, he said.

    The $50 million westbound tunnel filter was being tested just weeks ago but technical glitches have caused a delay.

    The taxpayer-funded was sucking in polluted air but tests found turbulence caused the air to stay inside the structure. The RTA has been forced to fit new parts inside the filter so air will cleaned before being returned to the tunnel as clean air.

    “The RTA is installing guide (air-turning) vanes,” the spokesman said. “The filtration plant is on budget. The trial is planned to start in March.”

    The news comes 18 months after a National Health and Medical Research Council report on air quality and motorway tunnels said the M5 East was one of world’s most polluted tunnels.

    Residents Against Polluting Stacks lobby group spokesman Mark Curran said years of promises had delivered nothing, saying yesterday: “If the haze is visible, it means air in the tunnel is still dangerous.”

     

  • Un top climate change boss quits post

     

    Mr de Boer is known to be disappointed with the outcome of the last summit in Copenhagen, which drew 120 world leaders but failed to reach more than a vague promise by several countries to limit carbon emissions. However, he denied that his decision to quit was a result of Copenhagen.

    Mr de Boer will become a consultant on climate and sustainability issues for global accounting firm KPMG and will be associated with several universities.

    “Copenhagen did not provide us with a clear agreement in legal terms, but the political commitment and sense of direction to a low-emissions world are overwhelming,” he said. “This calls for new partnerships with the business sector and I now have the chance to help make this happen.”

    In recent weeks he came under pressure to sack embattled UN climate change scientist Rajendra Pachauri over his handling of an exaggerated claim about glacial warming in UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.

    Mr de Boer had maintained the credibility of the IPCC, which Mr Pachauri chairs, remained intact despite its admission it had erred by predicting Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 if global warming was not checked.

    Mr de Boer said last night he believed global talks “are on track”, although it was uncertain that a full treaty could be finalised at the next summit in November.

    The partial agreement reached in Copenhagen, brokered by Barack Obama, “was very significant”, he said. But he acknowledged frustration that the deal was merely “noted” rather than adopted by all countries.

    The media-savvy former Dutch civil servant was credited with raising the profile of climate issues through his press encounters and his lobbying of world leaders.

    But his travel and frenetic diplomacy failed to bridge the suspicions and distrust between developing and industrial countries that blocked a final agreement at Copenhagen in December.

    People who know him say he was more disheartened by the snail-paced negotiations than he was ready to admit.

    Mr de Boer, 55, was appointed in 2006 to shepherd an agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required industrial countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions an average 5 per cent. He said the high point of his efforts was the agreement by developing countries, reached at the 2007 conference in Bali, to join efforts to contain global warming in return for financial and technical help from the wealthy nations.

    The Bali meeting was so intense that during its final meeting, when he was accused of mishandling the arrangements, Mr de Boer left in tears. He returned to an ovation.

    AP