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  • US pledges to cut federal government emissions by 28$ by 2020

     

     

    The announcement was held up by administration officials as evidence of Obama’s commitment to his climate and energy agenda, which has run into opposition in Congress and from coal, oil and manufacturing groups.

     

    The White House said the targets – which are set against 2008 emissions levels – would reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80m metric tons by 2020, and save the government between $8bn (£5bn) and $11bn in energy costs.

     

    Obama will also propose a tripling of government loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors to more than $54bn, an administration official said, a move sure to win over some Republican lawmakers who want more nuclear power to be part of climate change legislation.

     

    The loan guarantees, which follow Obama’s pledge in his State of the Union address to work to expand nuclear power production, will be announced as part of his budget proposal on Monday, the official said.

     

    The federal goverment is the largest single user of fuel and electricity in the country and is responsible for emissions to match. Including the department of defence, it owns nearly 500,000 buildings, more than 600,000 vehicles, and it purchases $500bn in goods and services every year.

     

    “As the largest energy consumer in the US, we have a responsibility to American citizens to reduce our energy use and become more efficient,” said President Obama. “Our goal is to lower costs, reduce pollution, and shift Federal energy expenses away from oil and towards local, clean energy.”

     

    The White House ordered federal government departments last October to begin measuring their use of electricity and fuel, and make energy savings.

     

    Nancy Sutley, the chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the effort was an important show of leadership. “It shows the commitment of federal government to lead by example and to take on its responsibility to reduce pollution and help stimulate clean energy economy,” she said.

     

    The cuts will come from across 35 government agencies and departments. The Treasury department pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33%. The department of Defence – which operates 300,000 of those government buildings – pledged to cut its emissions by 34%. However, that effort excludes combat operations, and would cover just 40% of DoD greenhouse gas emissions.

     

    Sutley said government departments across the country were already taking action, installing solar panels and wind turbines. The National Renewable Energy Labs in Denver was aiming to reduce energy use of its data centre by 65%.

     

    Today’s announcement covers only direct emissions from electricity in government office buildings and military installations, and petrol for government cars. Departments are to report back in 2010 about other potential areas of energy savings, including workers’ commutes. The order also does not cover government contractors, officials said.

     

    The initiative comes at a time when the Obama administration is determined to demonstrate its commitment to action on climate change. Obama in his State of the Union address pledged to work to help build Republican support for climate change proposals now under discussion in the Senate. But most observers think getting a climate bill through Congress in 2010 still remains a long shot.

  • Guardian Daily: Climate science under siege

     

    We hear from the Guardian’s environment team who have worked on the story since it broke last year.

    James Randerson is the editor of environmentguardian.co.uk,
    David Adam is environment correspondent, and Suzanne Goldenberg is US environment correspondent, based in Washington DC.

    For more on the hacked climate science emails click here.

  • 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.”

  • Australia 2050 is a future we can’t afford

     

    Using figures from the government’s intergenerational report, Mr Thorpe and his colleagues have calculated Australia will need 6.9 million more homes to cope with a population of 36 million by 2050. This represents 82 per cent of our existing housing stock.

    Should Australians continue to rely on the car, the country will need 173,348 kilometres of new roads – a 51 per cent rise equivalent to the entire road network of Thailand.

    We would need 3254 new schools, 1370 new supermarkets and 1370 cinema screens.

    In dollar terms, the amount spent by both government and the private sector on infrastructure would need to increase by approximately $2.5 billion every year until 2050.

    The PWC economists say that while the government talks about increasing productivity, it makes no mention of the crucial role the national pool of savings plays in funding infrastructure.

    ”The banks rely quite heavily on the savings of individual people to provide capital for investment in infrastructure. Because as a nation our savings are currently quite low, there is a real risk that there will be a significant shortage of credit.”

    As a result, both the private sector and government have come to rely heavily on foreign capital. But the global credit crunch has dramatically lifted the costs of overseas borrowing, requiring government and companies to take on extra debt.

    The ageing population exacerbates this situation as older people contribute less to the savings pool, and tend to draw more from government coffers in the form of social security and healthcare.

    But a spokesman for the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, dismissed the analysis.

    ”Australia’s reputation as one of the most attractive investment destinations in the world allows it to access large savings pools of foreign investors … to fund high levels of investment in our own economy,” he said.

    ”We are able to be a net importer of capital because foreign investors are confident we use their capital so well.”

  • New wind power tops all other sources in 2009

    New wind power tops all other sources in 2009

    Ecologist

    4th February, 2010

    Wind and solar technology made up over half of Europe’s new electricity generating capacity in 2009, as the number of new coal and nuclear facilities fell

     

    More wind capacity was installed in Europe during 2009 than any other electricity-generating technology, according to statistics released today by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA).

    Wind accounted for 39 per cent of increased European energy capacity, ahead of gas (26 per cent) and solar (16 per cent). In contrast, the nuclear and coal power sectors decommissioned more megawatts of capacity than they installed in 2009, with a total of 1,393 MW of nuclear and 3,200 MW of coal decommissioned.

    Wind investment

    According to the EWEA report, €13 billion has been invested in wind farms across the EU in the last year, which are now capable of meeting 4.8 per cent of EU energy demands.  
     
    Spain is the country with the biggest share of new wind capacity (24 per cent), followed by Germany (19 per cent), Italy (19 per cent), France (11 per cent) and the UK (10 per cent). 
     
    The wind energy sector has grown by an average of 23 per cent over the last 15 years, with annual installations up from 472 MW in 1994 to 10,163 MW in 2009. 
     
    ‘The figures, once again, confirm that wind power, together with other renewable energy technologies and a shift from coal to gas, are delivering massive European carbon reductions, while creating much needed economic activity and new jobs for Europe’s citizens,’ said EWEA CEO Christian Kjaer.

    More growth needed
     
    The British Wind Energy Agency (BWEA) welcomed the UK’s increase in wind energy capacity but said more needed to be done to ensure the sector continued to develop.
     
    ‘The UK has delivered more than 1GW of capacity for the first time in one calendar year, which is enough to power 600,000 homes. It shows that we can deliver as a sector, provided the right policy framework is in place,’ said Nick Medic of the BWEA. 
     
    ‘We need a policy that provides answers to the four big questions – planning, grid, supply chain and finance,’ he added.  

    Useful links
    European Wind Energy Association (EWEA)

  • Scientists, you are fallible. Get off the pedestal and join the common herd

     

    What any layman must find alarming is the paranoia and exclusivity of the climate change community. The preparation of the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was apparently like that of a party manifesto. Data was suppressed and criticism ignored. The IPCC’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, dismissed sceptics as adherents of “voodoo science”. Dark hints were made of commercial interest and Holocaust denial.

    Now barely a week passes without another of the “thousands and thousands of papers” Pachauri calls in evidence having its peer-review credentials questioned. Their authors may plead that the evidence remains strong and theirs is no more than what lawyers call “noble cause corruption”. Anyone reading the University of East Anglia emails might conclude they would say that, wouldn’t they. Yet Pachauri this week issued a Blairite refusal of all regrets for the chaos into which his sloppiness has plunged his organisation.

    Climatology is not the only scientific discipline whose dirty linen is flapping in the wind. The wildly exaggerated flu scares promoted over the past decade by virologists and their friends in government have so undermined trust in epidemiology that people are refusing flu vaccination. In the case of the MMR scare, it took London’s Royal Free Hospital a shocking 10 years to investigate the scientists responsible, and the General Medical Council to discipline them.

    Last week 14 stem cell researchers accused the science journals on which their reputation (and money) depends of corrupting the peer-review process. They protested at their papers being sent for vetting to known rivals. “Papers that are scientifically flawed or comprise only modest technical increments often attract undue profile,” they said, while original new material was delayed or suppressed. Sending research papers to rivals in a field of potential profitability is like asking General Motors to pass judgment on the latest Ford.

    Science enjoys extraordinary privilege in Britain. The media treats it with the deference of a new clerisy. The BBC devotes exhaustive and uncritical ­coverage to its most obscure doings. Melvyn Bragg dances attendance on the Royal Society. Carol Vorderman is recruited by David Cameron to teach the Tories maths. Fairs and prizes are showered on budding scientists. There are no young bankers of the year, no young management consultants, but young scientists galore. The Times newspaper even boasts a column with the desperate title, Sexy Maths.

    I devour popular science, finding its history and its wonder a constant delight. But the public has been asked to put faith in a single profession that it cannot sustain. It is a mystery how so many science teachers can be so bad at their jobs that most children of my acquaintance cannot wait to get shot of the subject. I am tempted to conclude that maths and science teachers want only clones of themselves, like monks in a Roman Catholic seminary.

    Criticise any field of science these days and you grow accustomed to such gentilities of academic discourse from the laboratory cloister as, “How dare you”, “Get off our patch” and “Jenkins, you are a grade-one ­arsehole”. If you report those who regard wind energy as a costly irrelevance to global warming, you cannot discern from the abuse who does and does not have a financial interest in it. (The same is true of blogs.) If you ­question anti-nuclear scaremongering, the threats are little short of “We know where your children live”.

    Two decades of uncritical flattery appear to have eroded what should be science’s central tenets: questioning evidence and challenging assumptions. In the bizarre case of the Himalayan glacier, enough climate change believers wanted cataclysm to be true for none of them to question the evidence, however implausible. Hence the scientist who told a New York Times reporter: “You are about to experience ‘the Big Cutoff’ from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you.”

    My acceptance of the human causation of global warming has, as yet, not been dimmed by the shenanigans of the IPCC or the chicanery of the University of East Anglia. Nor is the reality of flu undermined by the World Health Organisation and its allies in the drugs industry. Nor should stem cell research be balked by the shortcomings of peer review. I can read the material myself.

    What is alarming is the indifference of the leaders of science to the damage done to their cause. The top professional body, The Royal Society, has shown no inclination to judgment on the climate change controversy. Its ­website remains a bland cheerleader for the IPCC alarmists. The Royal Society took no steps of which I am aware to investigate the scandal of pandemic epidemiology, or the allegations against stem cell peer review. Ethics is not a strong suit of so-called big science. It gets in the way of money.

    Science demands, and gets, a weight of expectation. It wants the public to regard its role in society and the economy as axiomatic – with no obligation to prove it. Government buys into this. While the humanities and even social sciences are dismissed as “consumption goods”, science is an “investment in our future”. A student of English or history is a drone, but a student of science is a hero of the state.

     

    If global warming is as catastrophic as its champions in the science community claim – and as expensive to rectify – its evidence must surely be cross-tested over and again. Yet it has been left to freelancers and wild-cat bloggers to challenge the apparently rickety temperature sequences on which warming alarmism has been built.

    No professional body is checking all this. Assertions are treated as scientific fact even when they come from such lobbyists as the World Wildlife Fund (on whose politics see Raymond Bonner’s At the Hand of Man). If their conclusions are wrong, they are demanding money with false menaces. If they are right, their abuse of evidence and political naivety jeopardises life on earth. The chief government scientist, John Beddington, might have opined last week that “there is fundamental uncertainty about climate change predictions”. What is he going to do about it?

    I regard journalism as fallible and its regulation inadequate. But at least, like most professions, it has some. Only when science comes off its pedestal and joins the common herd will it see the virtue in self-criticism. Until then, sceptics must do the job as best they can.