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Category: General news

Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

  • Rajendra Pachauri: Climate scientists face ‘ new form of persecution’

     

    Pachauri also accused critics who have used an error in the 2007 IPCC report to question the scientific basis of climate change of “an act of astonishing intellectual legerdemain [sleight of hand]”. Scientific knowledge of climate change, he says, is “something we distort and trivialise at our peril”.

    Pachauri’s comments come after repeated attacks on the credibility of the IPCC following the high-profile discovery of a mistake about melting Himalayan glaciers in its report. The mistake has prompted calls for Pachauri to resign and forced the IPCC to convene an international panel of experts to review the way it operates.

    In the Guardian article, Pachauri writes: “Thousands of scientists from across the world have worked diligently and in an objective and transparent manner to provide scientific evidence for action to meet the growing challenge of climate change. To obscure this reality through misplaced emphasis on an error in a nearly 3,000-page rigorous document would be unfortunate.”

    He adds: “Even more unfortunate is the effort of some in positions of power and responsibility to indict dedicated scientists as ‘climate criminals’. I sincerely hope the world is not witnessing a new form of persecution of those who defy conventional ignorance and pay a terrible price for their scientifically valid beliefs.”

    This appears to be a reference to James Inhofe, a US senator and long-standing climate sceptic, who last month called for a criminal investigation of climate scientists. Inhofe published a minority report from the Senate committee on environment and public works that claimed climate scientists involved with a controversy over emails from the University of East Anglia released online “violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws”.

    The report named 17 US and British climate experts as “key players” in the affair and highlighted their roles in preparing IPCC reports. The list included Phil Jones and Keith Briffa of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, and Peter Stott, a leading expert at the Met Office.

    Michael Mann, a US scientist at Penn State University, who is on the list, said: “I think the following quote characterises the situation best: ‘Continuous research by our best scientists … may be made impossible by the creation of an atmosphere in which no man feels safe against the public airing of unfounded rumours, gossip, and vilification.’ The quote wasn’t made during the last few months. It was made by US president Harry S Truman in 1948, in response to politically motivated attacks against scientists associated with the dark era of McCarthyism.”

    Mann added: “I fear that is precisely the sort of atmosphere that is being created, and sure, it impacts research. The more time scientists have to spend fending off these sorts of attacks and dealing with this sort of nonsense, the less time is available to them to actually do science, and to push the forefront of our knowledge forward. Perhaps that is the intent?”

    Pachauri says it was “to be expected” that the critical choices that climate change asks of human society “would pose challenges for some stakeholders and sectors of the economy”.

    He added: “But to ignore the IPCC’s scientific findings would lead to impacts that impose larger costs than those required today to stabilise the Earth’s climate.”

  • Having both emissions trading and feed-in tariffs is a waste of time.

    Having both emissions trading and feed-in tariffs is a waste of time

    Dan Box

    12th March, 2010

    The new feed-in tariffs are nothing if not controversial, but they also run the risk of conflicting with other, international, climate change policies

    Government climate change champion Ed Miliband calls it a ‘local energy revolution‘; the Independent ‘a real green money-spinner‘ that will ‘ease your eco-guilt’.

    What are they talking about? None other than the new ‘feed-in tariffs’, which mean that, from April 1st, power companies will pay you to generate electricity from solar panels or wind turbines on your roof.

    Now, I like free money as much as the next man, and my eyes lit up when I first heard of this idea. Only on closer inspection did I establish the problem; that in terms of fighting climate change, feed-in tariffs are a nonsense.

    One issue very well-rehearsed is that the Government’s plans will literally throw billions at promoting solar panels, which are a stupid way to generate electricity in this dark but windy country. Solar panels allow you to ease your eco-guilt expensively – they are effectively a fashion accessory, or eco-bling (there has been a fair ding-dong over this in the pages of the national press).

    Another fault is that forcing power companies to pay person X for his solar power will provoke them to put up all our bills in return – Miliband estimates by about £50 a year, though expect it to be more – creating a merry money-go-round where we pay with one hand and take with another (or, worse, where person X gets paid by person Y, who can’t afford any eco-bling herself).

    But, most seriously, feed-in tariffs simply don’t add up, for one good reason – the European Emissions Trading Scheme. Under the ETS, carbon reductions in one industry can be traded against increases elsewhere. The British launch lags an identical decision by the German government in 2000, a report on which published in the journal Energy Policy says feed-in tariffs ‘do not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ETS alone’.

    Either have feed-in tariffs, or emissions trading. Having both is a waste of time. Miliband’s revolution may be a votewinner, but in terms of cutting Britain’s carbon emissions, it looks dangerously like multi-billion pound coup de theatre, nothing else.

  • Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds

     

    The study does not question that global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the region has passed a climate “tipping point” that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years.

    The new findings also help to explain the massive loss of Arctic ice seen in the summers of 2007-08, which prompted suggestions that the summertime Arctic Ocean could be ice-free withing a decade. About half of the variation in maximum ice loss each September is down to changes in wind patterns, the study says.

    Masayo Ogi, a scientist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, and her colleagues, looked at records of how winds have behaved across the Arctic since satellite measurements of ice extent there began in 1979.

    They found that changes in wind patterns, such as summertime winds that blow clockwise around the Beaufort Sea, seemed to coincide with years where sea ice loss was highest.

    Writing in a paper to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists suggest these winds have blown large amounts of Arctic ice south through the Fram Strait, which passes between Greenland and the Norwegian islands of Svalbard, and leads to the warmer waters of the north Atlantic. These winds have increased recently, which could help explain the apparent acceleration in ice loss.

    “Wind-induced, year-to-year differences in the rate of flow of ice toward and through Fram Strait play an important role in modulating September sea ice extent on a year-to-year basis,” the scientists say. “A trend toward an increased wind-induced rate of flow has contributed to the decline in the areal coverage of Arctic summer sea ice.”

    Ogi said this was the first time the Arctic winds have been analysed in such a way.

    “Both winter and summer winds could blow ice out of the Arctic [through] the Fram Strait during 1979-2009,” she said.

    A number of other factors were also responsible for ice loss, including warming of the air and ocean, she added.

    According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic sea ice “is in a state of ongoing decline”. Since 1979, the ice has shrunk by about 10% a decade, or 28,000 square miles each year. The ice reaches its minimum extent each September, when it begins to reform as the freezing Arctic winter takes hold.

  • The Last Word: A New Beginning

     

    Unlike the US and China, the reaction of most European countries to the crisis has been to issue stimulus programmes focusing on traditional industries like car makers, power utilities and perhaps foremost banks, many of which are in fact the main originators of current global environmental problems. This clearly is a lost chance to engage with new, sustainable economic models. In fact, we owe this missed chance to the lobbyist armies of established industries and the reluctant conservative politicians of EU member states who still refuse to accept the challenges posed in today’s world.

    Germany is a good example of this trend. Despite its miraculously progressive development of the renewable energy sector since 1999, Germany has opted to counter the crisis by supporting classical industries. Parallel to this, lobbyists for conservative energy industries are seeking to take the lead again, pushing for the next generation of coal and nuclear baseload power plants. This is in sharp contrast to the first boom of the renewable sector in the country.

    For decades, power utilities all around Europe and the world have been lobbying for specific power business issues and politicians have been naïvely following their arguments and policies. This is even though 50% of the European energy demand is for heating and cooling, a sector which has been kept out of the energy discussions so far. The consequence is that energy policies revolve around power issues, which account for just 20% of European energy consumption and CO2 emissions. It is, however, obvious we are not going to solve energy problems by only addressing a reletively small fraction of the energy pie chart!

    The year 2009 ended with the ‘Hopenhagen’ Conference that will probably be viewed by historians as the greatest failure of climate politics. Since 1992, politicians have taken to the habit of postponing concrete measures against climate change to the next conference. Although important financial promises were made in Denmark, ‘Hopenhagen’ made no significant difference as it voted once more for the delay of vital decisions. Again, the logic of national egotism, stingy haggling and short-sighted ignorance prevailed.

    But there is also hope, since financial markets teach us that reaching the bottom often means standing at the beginning of the next upswing. Most of us would bet the next ‘real’ economic boom will belong to renewable energies, provided global economics are not taken hostage again by irresponsible bankers, preventing emerging green industries from becoming healthy businesses. Nonetheless, looking at the end of the new millenium’s first decade we must admit that all the main statistical curves related to consumption persist in rising sharply. And, it still seems that despite mounting evidence societies will only adjust their behaviour significantly in the face of huge catastrophic events, seemingly unable to prevent them beforehand.

    Lessons learned from Copenhagen

    With renewable energies providing power and heat by the gigawatt today, the renewable energy industry is already in a much better position than most conservative policy makers would care to admit. Following climate conferences should therefore look less obsessively at the problem itself but rather at its solution. Policies restricting CO2 emissions are much less popular than policies that roll out renewable energy infrastructures. This trend is clearly visible in countries such as Germany, which set many inspiring examples, spurring a motivating climate of positive competition and international partnership.

    Besides many procedural modifications which are clearly necessary following Copenhagen, the psychology of climate conferences must also change. Our policy leaders need to switch from a perception of crisis, to one of opportunity. The progressive, optimistic and straightforward approach which led renewable industries to providing sustainable energies is proof of feasibility and a perfect example of the type of spirit which needs to be spread. While mitigating climate change, these industries already demonstrate their ability to substitute the fossil and nuclear energy base, thereby creating jobs and improving energy security, as well as welfare.

    If global civilisations want to avert the looming energy and climate crisis in time, then all societal forces need now to be convinced, entrained and practically involved in the sustainable energy vision. The concept of sustainable energy infrastructure has to be vigorously pushed through now.

    It is therefore up to progressive politicians, industries and civil societies to convince irresolute conservative capitalists and other doubters of the tremendous potential that is in reach. Inspired by the rapid and successful deployment of renewable energies in Germany and Spain, a growing number of national governments are begining to put the necessary framework conditions in place which will allow renewable energies to quickly take up and unfold their potential. The alternative to investing in a green energy revolution is the much higher cost of climate change.

    I do not personally believe the ‘invisible hand’ of the market will solve problems, for this hand is influenced much more by individual profit maximisation than by public welfare. Sustainable development for the global community’s welfare needs a strong and visible public hand that sets the rules, milestones and targets, steering the course towards a sustainable growth path that will secure and evolve our global civilisation.

    With a great majority of people in most countries clearly stating that solar energy would be their first choice and that renewable energies are clearly preferred to fossil or nuclear options if made available, the big question is how to transform this overwhelming approval into a worldwide new energy culture.

    It will not be achieved by merely informing people about climate, energy and environment problems and asking them to change their lifestyles by limiting consumption, for that is not how the human psyche works: People want to live comfortable lives and they have a tendency to avoid or fade out depressing information. But most people who experience renewable energies are fully convinced and very enthusiastic about the contribution they can make to the environment.

    Once governments set the right framework conditions, it is quite easy to activate the demand that leads to adopting these new energies, as can be seen with the sensational successes of PV and wind energy in Europe, and Germany in particular.

    Instead of spending billions and trillions on decadent industries in need of restructuring, it is time we massively invested in R&D for renewable energies as well as supplying broad information and running demand activation campaigns that can spur enthusiasm and trigger green investment. In Europe, we are presently developing an EU-wide campaign worth €500 million in communication performance that can generate a sectoral turnover of €10 billion on renewable energies and energy efficiency – a return of 2000%. This is also where significant shares of today’s stimulus packages should be invested, because these funds help to quickly and efficiently create a green global economic boom and sustainable business for the long run.

    Today, the industrialised world holds the key to triggering this boom, not only because it posseses the financial means and skills to do so, but also because it created most of the problems and thus has an obligation to act for improvement.

    Olivier Drücke is president of the European Solar Thermal Industry Federation (ESTIF). e-mail: olivier.druecke@estif.org

  • Canadian Government ‘hiding truth about climate change’ ,report claims

     

    Released last fall by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, the report notes that these deaths and losses are not just from the rise in severe weather events but mainly from the gradual environmental degradation due to climate change.

    “People everywhere deserve to have leaders who find the courage to achieve a solution to this crisis,” writes Kofi Annan, former U.N. secretary-general and president of the Forum, in the report.

    Canadians are unlikely to know any of this.

    “Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 percent,” says internal government documents obtained by Climate Action Network.

    The dramatic decline results from a 2007 Harper government-imposed prohibition on government scientists speaking to reporters. Canadian scientists have told IPS they required permission from the prime minister’s communications office to comment on their own studies made public in scientific journals and reports.

    If permission is granted, it requires written questions submitted in advance and often replies by scientists have to go through a vetting process. Within six months, reporters stopped calling and media coverage declined, the leaked report noted.

    While climate experts were being muzzled, known climate change deniers were put in key positions on scientific funding bodies says Saul. The report documents three appointments and their public statements that climate change is a myth or exaggerated.

    “The climate-change issue is somewhat sensational and definitely exaggerated,” said economist Mark Mullins, former executive director of a free-market think tank called the Fraser Institute in 2007, according to the report.

    The Fraser Institute has often cast doubt on seriousness of climate change. In 2009, Mullins was appointed to the board of the major government funder the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

    Mullins is in good company. In late February, Maxime Bernier, a senior member of the Harper government and a former Foreign Affairs cabinet minister, published a letter in a major newspaper saying there was no scientific consensus on climate change and that the world’s national academies of science were exaggerating.

    “The alarmism that has often characterised this issue is no longer valid. Canada is right to be prudent,” he wrote.

    Bernier is considered a possible successor to Stephen Harper.

    Last week, scientists who study climate change from a remote polar science research base on Ellesmere Island said they have run out of funding and will shut down this year.

    Earlier this month, the new federal budget failed to provide any funding for Canada’s main climate science initiative, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmosphere Sciences. Funding everything from global climate models, to the melting of polar ice and frequency of Arctic storms, to droughts and water supply, the foundation will run out of cash early next year.

    “Their (federal government) actions make it clear they don’t care about climate change,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria.

    “This administration is a very different form of government. It is top-down, and run by a small group who are anti-science,” Weaver told IPS.

    Previous governments have always consulted with scientists prior to funding and policy decisions related to science, but the current government does not even consult its own scientists, he said. “They are only interested in issues on their agenda: oil and related industries,” he said.

    Last October, Prime Minister Harper announced a 1.6-billion-dollar, multi-year partnership with the oil industry to reduce emissions from Canada’s tar sands oil projects, saying: “We are taking real action at home and on the world stage to produce real, tangible reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”

    The tar sands, located mainly in the province of Alberta, produce 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, almost all for the U.S. market. The massive project is the single biggest source of greenhouse gases in Canada, has the biggest toxic tailing ponds covering 50 square kilometres, and a much longer list of staggering environmental impacts.

    This “real action” promised by Harper is to invest in an unproven, risky and expensive long shot called “carbon capture and sequestration” that is at least a decade away. Even if this new technology can be developed and works as planned, Canada’s carbon emissions would be reduced far faster, easier and more reliably by improving energy efficiency, experts say.

    Spending 1.6 billion dollars to replace old refrigerators with high-efficiency ones in the average Canadian home brings higher emissions reductions than carbon capture and sequestration in the tar sands ever will, according to information provided by the Pembina Institute, an Alberta NGO.

    “Almost all of the money this government claims is climate change work is about getting more oil out of the ground,” said John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club Canada.

    “Canadian climate science is falling behind and the world is not getting information about what is happening in the Canadian Arctic,” Bennett said in an interview.

    The Harper government sees climate change as a communications problem and is eliminating government-funded climate research so there won’t be any “bad news” about what is happening, he said.

    “This government is doing nothing on climate but they always make sure to sound like they’re doing something to fool Canadians,” Bennett said.

  • Australia getting warmer springs and uneven rainfall

    Bureau of Meteorology Director Dr Greg Ayers said the observed changes showed clear evidence of climate change.
    ‘Australia holds one of the best national climate records in the world,’ Dr Ayers said. ‘The Bureau’s been responsible for keeping that record for more than a hundred years and it’s there for anyone and everyone to see, use and analyse.’

    Temperature

    Since 1960 the mean temperature in Australia has increased by about 0.7°C.

    Some areas have experienced a warming of 1.5 to 2°C over the last 50 years. Warming has occurred in all seasons, however the strongest warming has occurred in spring (about 0.9°C) and the weakest in summer (about 0.4°C).

    Rainfall

    While total rainfall in Australia had been relatively stable, the geographic distribution changed significantly over the past 50 years, with rainfall decreasing in southwest and southeast Australia, the major population areas but increasing in northern and central parts of Australia.

    The Bureau of Meteorology expects average temperatures to continue to rise in the country by between 0.6°C and 1.5°C by 2030, with the most dramatic rises in central and north-western Australia.

    Rainfall is also predicted to fall in southern areas of Australia during winter, in southern and eastern areas during spring, and in south-west Western Australia during autumn.

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