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  • Britain brandishes olive branch to restart global climate change talks

     

    Britain’s unilateral move addresses the key issue that doomed Copenhagen – that the rich accept the legally binding commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions enshrined in Kyoto.

    The initiative could lead to two separate global treaties on climate change. It also offers a challenge to China, India and other major developing countries, who have been unwilling to commit legally to acting on climate change because the Kyoto agreement specifically exempts them.

    “We are asking that developing countries internationalise in a legally binding agreement the actions they take domestically,” said the government action plan, published today in advance of formal UN negotiations that reopen next week in Bonn.

    “We would not envisage developing countries being subject to any punitive compliance measures,” it added.

    The move is the strongest signal yet that rich countries’ attempts to sideline or even abandon the Kyoto treaty have failed and that the negotiations will continue within the 192-nation UN climate body and not in smaller groups of countries as the US and other nations had wanted.

    “We hope by doing this we can take away the myth that developed countries were trying to destroy Kyoto,” said Miliband.

    “We are determined to unblock the negotiations. We are willing to offer a second agreement under Kyoto, provided there is a separate legal treaty covering all other countries.”

    The move was immediately welcomed by Bharrat Jagdeo, president of Guyana. But he warned that developing countries would not accept an agreement if rich countries – who have emitted by far the most carbon pollution – did not commit to further deep cuts in emissions.

    Referring to the US, he said: “There are countries who stick out and clearly need to do more work. If the largest [developed] country emitter falls so far below the minimum, it makes it far harder for other countries, and you lose the element of justice and fairness.”

    The diplomatic moves came as Gordon Brown met billionaire financier George Soros; Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers; economist Lord Nicholas Stern and other finance ministers to find ways to raise $30bn (£20bn) a year immediately and $100bn a year by 2020 to enable developing countries to adapt to climate change.

    The high-level advisory group on climate change financing, convened by UN general secretary Ban Ki-moon and chaired by Brown and Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi, will consider at least six ways of raising up to $1tn dollars for climate change adaptation. These include:

    • a small levy on all international aviation and shipping

    • enlarging existing carbon cap-and-trade markets

    • imposing a small “Robin Hood”-type tax on all financial transactions

    • using the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights.

    The group of 19 financial leaders have been asked by Ban to report back by November, when UN climate talks take place in Cancun, Mexico.

    Environment and development groups welcomed the British initiative. Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth’s executive director, said: “It’s positive that the government has restated its commitment to the Kyoto protocol, which enshrines the responsibility of rich countries, as the biggest historical polluters, to slash their emissions first and fastest.”

    Joanne Green, head of policy at development agency Cafod, said: “This shows that Gordon Brown is listening to the concerns of developing countries. This is a first stride in rebuilding the trust desperately needed between developing and developed countries.”

    And Melanie Ward, Christian Aid’s UK political adviser, said: “The positive language needs to be matched by the necessary political choices.

    “These include using international finance to support clean development in poor countries, rather than more dirty coal power stations, and demanding much deeper cuts in EU emissions levels.”

  • Lasers could create clean nuclear energy

     

    Emeritus Professor Heinrich Hora, of the Department of Theoretical Physics at the University of New South Wales, is leading the research effort, and says the process relies on a new generation of extremely powerful and very fast lasers being developed.

    “The key is a very carefully controlled extremely short laser pulse essential for ignition. The pulse would ignite a fuel made of ordinary hydrogen and boron-11,” Professor Hora said.

    “The idea of a hydrogen and boron fusion reaction is interesting because it wouldn’t cause neutron production. Neutrons are a problem because they generate radioactivity.”

    The team’s findings appear in the journal Energy and Environmental Science.

    Professor Hora says his team was originally developing computer models using next generation lasers to duplicate the work being done at the new $4.34 billion National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States.

    The US scientists are developing what is currently the world’s largest laser to ignite highly compressed spheres of deuterium-tritium fuel in a nuclear fusion reaction.

     

    Fast and furious

     

    The laser can produce a pulse of a few billionths of a second duration which produces 500 times more power than all US power stations combined.

    Professor Hora’s team originally rejected the idea of a hydrogen-boron fuel for their simulations “because the higher temperatures and compression needed made it 100,000 times more difficult than the Lawrence Livermore approach, making it just about impossible”.

    “But when we ran computer simulations using these next generation petawatt [quadrillion watt] strength lasers with a hydrogen-boron fuel, we were shocked to find that it’s only 10 times more difficult than deuterium-tritium,” he said.

    “It makes this all within the reach of current technology in a relatively short time. In fact these types of lasers are already in early testing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

    Professor Hora says the key is to ensure the laser pulse is “extremely clean”, lasting no more than a millionth of a millionth of a second.

    “This allows conversion of optical energy to mechanical energy without heating,” he says.

    Professor Hora says the hydrogen-boron fuel has a numberof advantages over deuterium-tritium.

    “It would be largely free of radioactive emissions producing less radiation than that emitted by current power stations that burn coal, which contains trace amounts of uranium,” he says.

    According to Professor Hora, hydrogen and boron are plentiful and readily accessible, and the waste product of ignition would be clean helium gas.

    “The hydrogen-boron fuel would not have to be compressed. This means it needs far less energy to start the ignition,” he said.

    But Professor Hora warns the study only demonstrates the potential of the new process and much work needs to be done to demonstrate it in practice.

    Tags: science-and-technology, energy, engineering, physics, united-states, university-of-new-south-wales-2052

  • Kevin Rudd’s bn health and hospital funding favours labor seats,

     

    The HHF is one of the three “nation-building” funds established by the Rudd government for long-term reforms and to support jobs and economic activity. The funds have played central roles in Labor’s two economic stimulus packages and last year’s budget.

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    Health Minister Nicola Roxon has the final say on which projects receive HHF money – she issues the guidelines for funding evaluation, proposals are assessed by an independent advisory board of experts that she appoints and those projects that meet the conditions go to her for ultimate approval. Not all screened proposals that qualify receive HHF funding.

    Many of the fund projects were deemed “shovel-ready” or have been boosted by state government contributions. They include a new rehabilitation unit at the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, the Parkville Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Melbourne, the Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide, an expansion of Townsville Hospital and the Lifehouse Cancer Centre in Sydney.

    Taking into account last year’s electoral redistributions in Queensland and NSW, which notionally handed five seats from the Liberal to Labor, including Herbert (Townsville) and Greenway (western Sydney), Labor’s share of the HHF pie rises to 83 per cent – or $5 to the government-held electorates for every $1 going to non-Labor seats.

    The HHF figures are in line with the skewed outlays of the government’s $275 million GP Super Clinics program, under which Labor electorates are receiving 80 per cent of the funds to construct the new one-stop medical centres.

    Based on the House of Representatives, where Labor holds 83 of 150 seats, a reasonable share of health funds for its electorates would be 55 per cent.

    The Rudd government has chosen to green-light HHF projects located in ultra-marginal Labor seats such as Solomon in Darwin, Bass in Tasmania and Hasluck in Perth, and in winnable Coalition electorates such as Herbert, Greenway and Hughes in southern Sydney.

    Health policy is shaping up as a key election issue, with Labor’s reform plan proposing majority funding from the commonwealth (by taking one-third of GST funds) and improved local management of hospitals.

    On April 19 in Canberra, the Prime Minister will seek an agreement on his health reforms when he hosts premiers and chief ministers at the Council of Australian Governments meeting.

    Breaking down HHF projects by state, Western Australia (which has 10 per cent of the population) has been handsomely rewarded, gaining an 18 per cent share.

    Victoria, Tasmania and the territories have received funding in excess of their per capita expectations.

    Queensland and South Australia have won funds in line with their size.

    But NSW, long seen as a poorly managed jurisdiction, particularly in containing health costs, has been severely penalised in the HHF process.

    Although the state has 32.5 per cent of the population, it has received only 16.8 per cent of the HHF’s investments.

    Announcing the Building Australia Fund, Education Investment Fund and HHF in his May 2008 budget speech, Wayne Swan lamented the short-sightedness of national budgets.

    “For too long, our national budgets have focused on the next election, not the big challenge facing our country in the next decade and beyond,” the Treasurer said.

    At the time, the federal opposition called the three new investment vehicles, with planned seed capital of $41bn, “slush funds” to be used by Labor to pursue short-term political ends.

    According to its guiding principles, the HHF is geared to investments in major projects that will meet health reform targets as well as strategic stakes that will lead to improvements in “efficiency, access or outcomes of health care”.

    The Health Minister ultimately approves funding for projects that have passed screening by an advisory panel of experts appointed by the minister.

    The HHF advisory board is chaired by private equity figure Bill Ferris, chairman of the Garvan Institute for Medical Research and a former chairman of Austrade.

    Other advisory board members include KPMG partner Patricia Faulkner, Health and Ageing departmental secretary Jane Halton, infrastructure executive Bruce Warner and public health academics Stephen Leeder, John Wakerman and Cindy Shannon.

    In the 2009-10 budget, Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced $3.2bn in new spending from the HHF to upgrade hospital facilities, improve cancer treatment and to promote so-called “translational research” from the laboratory bench to bedside care.

    Most of the money has gone to specific projects, although $532m for a network of regional cancer centres has yet to be allocated.

    And $120m has been provided to BreastScreen Australia for a national mammography program.

    23 comments on this story

  • Coalition to reduce migration

    Coalition to reduce migration

    • Patricia Karvelas, Political correspondent
    • From: The Australian
    • April 06, 2010 12:00Am

    TONY Abbott’s Coalition will cut net migration levels if it wins government, in a bid to stop Australia’s population reaching its predicted size of almost 36 million in 2050.

    Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison yesterday told The Australian the Rudd government had allowed immigration to rise too high and the population figure that Treasury’s Intergenerational Report predicted last September for 2050 was unsustainable.

    Mr Morrison said the Coalition would not allow the average net overseas migration of more than 300,000 a year that had occurred since the Rudd government took power to continue.

    “We want to return to the levels we pursued in government,” he said. “A net overseas migration intake of 300,000 (as occurred under the Rudd government) would not be a feature of future Coalition policy.”

    Mr Morrison said the current population growth rate of 2.1 per cent put Australia ahead of Canada, Britain and the US.

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    “It even puts us ahead of China and India,” he said. “It’s principally fuelled by net overseas migration. A natural increase in the fertility rate has (increased it) but what has been driving the numbers . . . has been spiralling rates of net overseas migration.”

    Mr Morrison said the Coalition would support skilled migrants coming, but was likely to cut other elements of the program, including family reunion.

    “It’s about getting your immigration policy under control,” he said. “The migration program should be tight and focused on skills and productivity.”

    The Opposition Leader last night backed Mr Morrison’s comment that the prediction of a population of 35.9 million was not sustainable, saying the roads of Sydney and Melbourne were already choked.

    But Mr Abbott stopped short of committing the Coalition to a cut in migration, saying decisions on the intake should be taken on a “year by year basis”.

    “Immigration has to be in Australia’s national interest,” he said on the ABC’s Q&A program last night.

    Mr Morrison said the 35.9 million forecast, which Kevin Rudd has endorsed as appropriate, was being driven by net overseas migration well above what it was under the Howard government.

    He said average net overseas immigration under the Coalition had been 126,000 a year, but under Labor it had risen to more than 300,000.

    Mr Morrison said that according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s population was growing in net terms at the rate of one person every minute and 10 seconds, and immigration accounted for more than 60 per cent of the increase.

    The new immigration spokesman toughened the Coalition’s rhetoric on asylum-seekers, challenging the government to take control of Australian borders in the wake of 103 boats carrying 4575 passengers reaching our shores since Labor was elected.

    Mr Abbott last night backed the return of the temporary protection visa system and said a Coalition government would return asylum-seekers to their homelands if they no longer had a fear of persecution.

    Columnist Glenn Milne yesterday wrote in The Australian that the Opposition Leader and Mr Morrison had determined that if Australians were concerned about boatpeople, they were going to have similar concerns about Mr Rudd’s declaration that a “big Australia” of 35.9 million people by 2050 was a good thing.

    Mr Morrison denied the Coalition was pushing a racist agenda by endeavouring to cut migration numbers.

    “It has nothing to do with issues of race,” he said.

    “We did not want to create an unpleasant debate. We were quite serious about having a debate that didn’t degenerate into political name-calling on issues of race.

    “At the end of the day, we will obviously take a more conservative view about intake in the current climate.”

    The business community’s reaction to Mr Morrison’s comments is likely to be tempered by the immigration spokesman’s support for the skilled migration program, which business leaders strongly back because of the nation’s skills shortage.

    Former NSW premier Bob Carr, who has been outspoken on the issue of population, said the government must cut skilled migration. “The argument is about the level of immigration, the rate of immigration . . . we’ve ramped it up to levels the Australian people aren’t comfortable with,” Mr Carr said.

  • Regional NSW ‘to grow 70%’ by 2036

    NB (What idiocy From Planning Minister Kelly.This is based solely
    on the economy. This is a recipe for disaster)

    Regional NSW ‘to grow by 70%’ by 2036

    AAP April 6, 2010, 9:47 am

     

    Population growth in regional NSW over the next 25 years will boost the economy, Planning Minister Tony Kelly says.

    The government on Tuesday released its population forecasts up to 2036, showing regional areas with the strongest projected growth are mostly along the coast or just inland.

    Maitland’s population is expected to rise 71 per cent, Palerang shire, west of Canberra, is set to go up by 69 per cent and Queanbeyan is expected to rise 72 per cent.

    Other areas expected to have strong growth include Eurobodalla, Coffs Harbour and the Yass Valley, the forecasts say.

    Planning Minister Tony Kelly says the projections are pleasing.

    “It’s pleasing to see some of our inland and coastal areas are expected to experience strong growth, helping the state’s regional economy,” Mr Kelly said in a statement.

    The forecasts would allow all levels of government to plan for the future, he said.

    The projections also showed an increase in people aged up to 14 will be limited to metropolitan areas, coastal areas and areas surrounding Canberra.

    An increase in the number of people aged 65 and over will occur in every local area.

    Populations of some Sydney suburbs are set to double or even quadruple.

    Camden’s population will more than quadruple, the forecast says, increasing by 390 per cent to 249,800 people, while Liverpool will almost double, growing by 90 per cent to 324,400 residents.

     

  • Arctic thaw frees overlooked greenhouse gas: study

    Arctic thaw frees overlooked greenhouse gas: study

    Reuters April 5, 2010, 4:26 am

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    OSLO (Reuters) – Thawing permafrost can release nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas, a contributor to climate change that has been largely overlooked in the Arctic, a study showed on Sunday.

    The report in the journal Nature Geoscience indicated that emissions of the gas surged under certain conditions from melting permafrost that underlies about 25 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere.

    Emissions of the gas measured from thawing wetlands in Zackenberg in eastern Greenland leapt 20 times to levels found in tropical forests, which are among the main natural sources of the heat-trapping gas.

    “Measurements of nitrous oxide production permafrost samples from five additional wetland sites in the high Arctic indicate that the rates of nitrous oxide production observed in the Zackenberg soils may be in the low range,” the study said.

    The scientists, from Denmark and Norway, studied sites in Canada and Svalbard off northern Norway alongside their main focus on Zackenberg. The releases would be a small addition to known impacts of global warming.

    Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas from human activities, dominated by carbon dioxide ahead of methane.

    It is among the gases regulated by the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol for limiting global warming that could spur more sandstorms, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

    Nitrous oxide comes from human sources including agriculture, especially nitrogen-based fertilisers, and use of fossil fuels as well as natural sources in soil and water, such as microbes in wet tropical forests.

    The scientists said that past studies had reckoned that carbon dioxide and methane were released by a thaw of permafrost while nitrous oxide stayed locked up.

    “Thawing and drainage of the soils had little impact on nitrous oxide production,” Nature said in a statement of the study led by Bo Elberling of Copenhagen University.

    “However, re-saturation of the drained soils with meltwater from the frozen soils — as would happen following thawing — increased nitrous oxide production by over 20 times,” it said.

    “Nearly a third of the nitrous oxide produced in this process escaped into the atmosphere,” it added.

    (Editing by Philippa Fletcher)