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. 

  • Sea-level fears as Greenland ice begins to melt

     

    At present, the ocean watermark is rising at about 3 millimetres per year, a figure that compares with 1.8 millimetres annually in the early 1960s.

    But Greenland’s contribution has more than doubled in the past decade, and scientists suspect climate change is largely to blame, although exactly how this is occurring is fiercely debated.

    Some theories point to air temperatures, which are rising faster in far northern latitudes than the global average.

    A rival idea is that shifting currents and subtropical ocean waters moving north are eroding the foundation of coastal glaciers, accelerating their slide into the sea, especially those inside Greenland’s many fiords.

    Agence France-Presse

  • Carbon trading fraudsters steal permits worth 2.7 Bn UK in ‘phishing'[ scam

     

    Phishing attacks are similar to online banking scams, in which users are sent emails asking them to enter their details on a facsimile of a website.

    Hans-Jurgen Nantke, the head of the German emissions trading authority, said that users had been warned and new passwords set. But he added it would be impossible to track the European emissions trading scheme permits as they would have been traded soon after they left the companies’ accounts and changed hands several times since.

    He said: “It’s not a problem of carbon trading, it’s a problem of the internet. The phishing attacks on banks has now spread to carbon trading. The phishers have already earned their money so we can’t do anything about the permits. The problem now is to find the culprits and that’s police a matter.”

    Nantke stressed that the German carbon register DEHSt was safe, adding that it has 2,000 companies and only seven were affected. But European carbon trading authorities have not yet confirmed how many companies were affected across Europe.

    Europe’s main mechanism for reducing emissions from industry has been targeted by criminals before. Last year so-called “carousel fraud” criminals were found to be cashing in on permits bought in countries without paying VAT by selling them on with VAT, and then disappearing without handing the VAT to the tax authorities. Three British men were arrested last month in Belgium and accused of failing to pay VAT worth €3m (£2.7m) on carbon credit transactions.

    Barbara Helfferich, environment spokeswoman at the European Commission, said that an investigation had been launched into the phishing attack, but admitted the website had not yet been shut down or the culprits found.

    Helfferich said that preventing future attacks was a priority, particularly because of the new European carbon registry scheduled to begin trading in 2012 which will include permits from the aviation industry. “We’ll have to look at whether we need to improve security for this registry,” she said.

    Carbon trading around the world, beyond the European Union’s emission trading scheme, is done via an international transaction log run by the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) under the Kyoto agreement.

    The UNFCCC said in a statement on its website: “The secretariat of the UNFCCC has been informed by some national registries operated by parties to the Kyoto protocol that last week, a series of phishing attacks had stolen passwords from some users of these registries.

    “The UNFCCC secretariat is collaborating closely with the remaining national registries to ensure that access to their systems is secured. Meanwhile, these registries have been disconnected from the international transaction log (ITL), which is under the control of the secretariat.

    “The ITL validates and records all transactions of Kyoto protocol units. It has not been subject to interference and remains fully secure and operational.”

  • Abbott’s absurdity: “20 million trees” while libs destroy nations biggest forests.

    2 February 2010
    Abbott absurdity: “20 million trees” while Libs destroy
    nation’s biggest forests

    The Opposition’s plan to plant 20 million trees while
    its own Regional Forest Agreements foster the destruction of Australia’s
    biggest forests is incongruous, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said
    today.

    “The Howard government legislated the destruction of
    Australia’s biggest carbon banks – in New South Wales, Victoria,
    Tasmania and Western Australia, largely for woodchip export to Japan,
    converting these forests into greenhouse gases.

    “If Mr. Abbott or Prime Minister Rudd were to end the
    destruction they would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15-20%.

    “Planting 20 million seedlings while cutting millions of
    trees in mature forests is an Abbott absurdity,” Senator Brown said.

    Media contact: Erin Farley 0438 376 082
    www.greensmps.org.au <http://www.greensmps.org.au/>

  • US sets 17% carbon emission reduction target

     

    Senator Wong said Australia would not raise its target above 5 per cent until “global ambitions” became clear, including verifiable reductions from China and India.

    In a letter to UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, US climate envoy Todd Stern said: “The US submission reflects President Obama’s continued commitment to meeting the climate change and clean energy challenge.

    “We expect that all major economies will honour their agreement in Copenhagen to submit their mitigation targets or actions.” he said.

    The summit asked nations to report by January 31 whether they would associate themselves with the accord and join efforts to draft a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, whose legal obligations run out at the end of 2012.

  • Alaskan senator seeks to block EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases

     

    “We cannot turn a blind eye to the EPA’s efforts to impose back-door climate regulations,” Lisa Murkowski told the Senate in prepared remarks. Murkowski’s motion of disapproval, though unlikely to become law, is widely seen as a barometer for the chances of getting a climate change bill through the Senate this year.

    In an ominous sign for supporters of a climate law, she had the support of three Democratic Senators, further underscoring the unease in Obama’s own party in enacting legislation to tackle global warming.

    Delivering new laws to tackle global warming was not just a key pledge of Obama’s, but is being closely watched around the world as global climate change negotiations struggle to recover from the disappointment of the UN summit in Copenhagen. An environment official in the European Union said: “It’s clearly a setback.”

    Murkowski’s move, brought under the Congressional Review Act, would remove the Obama administration‘s “Plan B” for dealing with climate change, resorting to the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions if Congress fails to act.

    The motion of disapproval, called the “nuclear option” by environmentalists, would also ban the administration from drafting any new regulation that would be substantially the same. That would make it even more difficult for any US government to regulate power plants and other big emitters.

    Environmentalists say the proposal is unlikely to pass, but ensuring its defeat could require a new round of partisan warfare that could be damaging for Democrats and Obama’s agenda.

    In her speech, Murkowski argued that giving the EPA the authority to act on global warming would cost jobs and hurt the economy: “Under the guise of protecting the environment, it’s set to unleash a wave of damaging new regulations that will wash over and further submerge our struggling economy.”

    She said she supported efforts to get a climate change law, but said: “This command-and-control approach is our worst option for reducing the emissions.”

    Murkowski has tried to cast herself as a moderate Republican who would be prepared to act on climate change. But she has voted against such legislation in the past, and has been criticised this week by environmentalists for her links to the energy industry.

    According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Murkowski, from the oil-rich state of Alaska, has received $244,000 (£151,205) in campaign funds from oil and gas companies since 2005, and consulted two energy industry lobbyists before launching today’s proposal.

    Even before the upset in Massachusetts, Democrats in the industrial heartland and from oil and coal states were wary – or in some cases flatly opposed – to action on climate change.

    Murkowski was joined today by Mary Landrieu, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana who has repeatedly expressed concern for her state’s oil refining business; Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Murkowski also claimed support from governors of her home state of Alaska, Mississippi and West Virginia as well as business organisations. Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, has also expressed support for Murkowski.

    But there has also been a strong push back against Murkowski from environmental organisations and other business groups. A coalition of 80 companies from Virgin America to eBay wrote to Obama today urging action on climate change.

    The Alaskan’s resolution would overturn the EPA’s finding last month that greenhouse gas emissions were a public health threat. The so-called endangerment finding compelled the agency under the Clean Air Act to introduce regulations for the pollutant.

    Murkowski’s strategy hinges on using the Congressional Review Act, a law used for the first time in the early days of the George Bush era to throw out new ergonomic standards for workplaces passed under Bill Clinton. The measure would require only 51 votes for passage and the Senator is confident of signing up all 40 Republicans as well as some Democrats.

    The White House, the EPA, and even the Democratic leadership in Congress have all said they would prefer to have climate change legislation from Congress rather than resorting to the agency’s regulatory powers. But the prospect of EPA regulation had been seen as an important nudge to get the Senate to act.

    The House of Representatives passed a climate change bill last June, but progress in the Senate has stalled. An effort led by Democrat John Kerry to craft a bill that could pull in Republican support has yet to produce a draft proposal.

    The move by Murkowski brought a furious response from Democratic leaders and a coalition of environmental, business and religious organisations. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat said blocking the EPA was a radical move that would expose Americans to public health risks from global warming. The Union of Concerned Scientists said it was an assault on science, and California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote a letter asking his fellow Republicans to let the EPA do its work.

  • Haiti earthquake: city’s plight leads to worst humantitarian crisis in decades

     

    “The Asian tsunami may have strained the emergency services of countries, but it did not disable capital cities like Jakarta or Colombo … Haiti is very poor. It just does not have the resources or the money to respond to an emergency. What capacity it did have to respond was completely knocked out. This earthquake hit a country which was already barely functional.”

    Factors specific to Haiti have made the emergency harder than usual to respond to. The UN already fed more than 1 million people in Haiti before the quake, which destroyed many of its warehouses as well as its Port-au-Prince headquarters. Key Haitian government officials and civil servants also died, making co-ordination between the emergency services and the international aid effort more complex.

    Alison Evans, director of the Overseas Development Institute, said contact between citizens and the government was important for recovery efforts, and the lack of government institutions would slow down any legitimate relief.

    Evans also said the element of surprise in the Haiti earthquake meant it had been harder to mobilise relief efforts compared with natural disasters in other poor countries.

    “Often with flood warnings or food crises there’s a degree of warning and a period of being able to build up a response. But the Haiti earthquake was absolutely like a bolt out of the blue,” she said.

    Oxfam’s International’s director, Penny Lawrence, said: “It was made far worse because all the leading international organisations lost staff and equipment. We all had contingency plans and equipment stores in Haiti. But everyone’s warehouses were damaged in the earthquake. We lost 90% of our emergency kit. Pre-positioned water [purification] equipment, tanks, latrines, pumps were all buried … We managed to rescue some tools, but we lost satellite phones, everything.”

    Another problem was that almost all communication systems were destroyed. Mobile and landline phone services were lost, and for more than 48 hours it was only possible to make contact on satellite phones, although many of these had also been lost. This meant that organisations could not communicate with either their staff or with each other.

    The mobile phone system only started working yesterday.

    The first few days of a major disaster are always chaotic, but Haiti has presented unique logistical problems. Although its small airport is open, it is only able to handle a few planes an hour and has no fuel to allow aircraft to leave.

    The main port is unable to offload supplies from ships, and the key road to neighbouring Dominican Republic is clogged, as hundreds of lorries try to get in and out of Haiti. Governments and NGOs say that the full aid effort will not be possible without sea and road access.

    “It is not possible to do everything by air. You need sea or land access to feed and water so many people. And we just have not had that,” said Laurent Dedieu, a Médecins Sans Frontières logistics supervisor. “We cannot find any diesel fuel in the city. We have roughly two to three days maximum of fuel in stock. So we need to start work on an emergency supply chain, either from Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, or from Miami.

    “We are assessing the possibility of using sea transport, but the problem is that the city’s port is damaged.”