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  • Auto lobby alarmed by plans for emissions cap

    Australia does not have greenhouse emissions or fuel efficiency regulations for transport

    Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Andrew McKellar has declared that such mandatory standards were "impractical" and would clash with the introduction of emisisons trading in Australia, according to The Age (27/7/2007 p. 3).

    International trend towards stricter emissions rules: Speaking at a business lunch in Melbourne, McKellar said local car makers had been alarmed by a footnote in the recent Prime Minister’s taskgroup report on emissions trading, highlighting the international trend towards stricter emissions rules. Australia does not have greenhouse emissions or fuel efficiency regulations for transport.

    Australia still behind other countries in cutting emissions: The industry has a voluntary target of cutting emissions from new light vehicles (including passenger cars, four-wheel-drives and light trucks) by 18 per cent between 2002 and 2010, which McKellar said the industry was on track to achieve. But CSIRO transport expert David Lamb said that even if car makers did make those voluntary savings, Australia would still be a long way behind other countries in cutting transport emissions.

    Strict regulation drives change: "For every change that has been proposed to improve safety or fuel efficiency, the car makers have traditionally reacted by saying ‘this is going to be too expensive or too difficult’," said Lamb, who leads the low-emissions transport section of the CSIRO’s EnergyTransformed Flagship. “But when you look back over recent decades at how we’ve managed to achieve any big improvements in transport like road safety, you can see that strict regulation drives changes much faster than anything else." In 2005, road transport in Australia produced 71 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution or about 13 per cent of the national total.

    The Age, 27/7/2007, p. 3

  • APEC meeting adopts retro climate policy

    "I think in Australia, we could get engagement with some of the more local countries and then extend to the Americas and then possibly one day go globally.

    "To move through the region and to the international stage would be an enormous step forward."

    Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqing said his country supported the use of market-based emissions trading as a method of controlling climate change, but emphasised that China expected developed nations to carry the burden.

    "Greenhouse gas is a serious challenge for us, but the source of most of the greenhouse gas produced came from developed countries," he said.

    "Although China is now the biggest consumer of oil in the world, the per capita petrol consumption in China is one of the lowest in the world."

    Mr Jin said China’s dependence on imported energy could be overstated. He noted that China imported only 10 per cent of its energy needs.

    Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt said the US was committed to working through the UN to develop a response to climate change beyond the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. A summit in Bali is scheduled to develop a new framework.

    He said the US and China remained committed to the Asia Pacific Partnership on climate change, which also includes Japan, India, Korea and Australia.


  • 19 million climate refugees in India

    With rivers bursting their banks along the fertile plains south of the Himalayas, India ordered the army to help evacuate people from some of the worst-hit areas.

    "I have not seen such flooding in the last 24 years. It’s a sheet of water everywhere," said Santosh Mishra, a resident of Gonda district in Uttar Pradesh. "There are no signs of houses, temples or trees," he told the local Sahara Samay television channel.

    Some14 million people in India and five million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by the flooding, according to government figures. At least 132 people have died in recent days because of the floods in India and 46 more in Bangladesh.

    "The situation is grim," said Bhumidhar Barman, a minister in the Assam state Government.

    The monsoon season in South Asia runs from June to September and is vital to agriculture.

    But the monsoons are dangerous; last year more than 1000 people died, most by drowning, landslides, house collapses or electrocution. In New Delhi, India’s Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year had led to heavier rains. "We’ve been getting constant rainfall in these areas for nearly 20 days," said department spokesman BP Yadav.

    Some 100,000 displaced people were staying in government relief camps in Assam, while hundreds of thousands more sought shelter on higher ground, setting up makeshift dwellings. Millions of people have been cut off from the rest of the country.

    Medical teams were trying to visit regions by boat to ensure there were no outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera.

    In Uttar Pradesh, the army was called in to help evacuate people from 500 villages under water, said Diwakar Tripathi, a senior government official. Huge amounts of crops had been destroyed.

  • Reef freezes in recent cold snap

    Coral expert Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Studies, warned researchers along the reef to look for bleaching after Townsville experienced one of its coldest days on record, on June 20.

    Strong and sustained southerly winds that brought heavy rain to much of southeast Queensland in June and July exacerbated the chilly conditions for coral exposed at low tide and weakened the algae on the coral needed to keep it healthy.

    Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said the comfort zone for coral was between 19C and 27C but temperatures had fallen to 8C.

    While bleaching from extreme heat affects entire reefs, the cold bleaching appears to be isolated to the tips of wide areas of coral exposed to the chill.

    Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said the extreme variation in temperature might be more common as climate change caused hotter summers and colder winters.

    CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin said the only noticeably cold currents were further south, around Fraser Island, suggesting water was being cooled at the surface by the air temperature.

  • nations divided over US carbon summit

    Green groups have received the announcement with scepticism and claim it will sideline Prime Minister John Howard’s wish to make September’s APEC meeting in Sydney a platform for discussing strategies on climate change.

    "I warmly welcome the announcement by the US that it will convene a meeting of major economies, including Australia, to determine a common approach towards climate change, in Washington DC on September 27 and 28," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement.

    "Australia will join 13 leading economies and the UN at the meeting, which will take forward President Bush’s initiative to address the environmental, energy security, and economic aspects of climate change.

    "With Australia’s emissions less than two per cent of global emissions, climate change demands an effective global response.

    "Australian action to reduce emissions, while important, will have little meaningful impact if not part of wider international action."

    Mr Downer said an effective international framework was one that included all major emitters, took account of differing national circumstances and goals for sustainable development, and allowed countries to adopt a range of policies to reduce their emissions.

    "This is why climate change is the key focus for the Asian-Pacific leaders at the APEC summit in September in Sydney. Climate change is much more than an environmental issue – it’s an economic one," he said.

    Greens leader Bob Brown said Mr Bush’s announcement gazumped the prime minister’s plan for APEC to be a global climate change breakthrough.

    "While the Bush summit is belated recognition of the reality of climate change and the threat it poses to our Earth, there will be scepticism that President Bush, who spurned the Kyoto Protocol, will now be claiming leadership on climate change," he said in a statement.

    "And Bush’s move leaves Howard and his APEC plans sidelined.

    "At best, APEC will now be seen as preparation for the main event.

    "Clearly President Bush doesn’t know that his friend John Howard, Australia’s man of steel, is facing an election in November."

    But Mr Howard said both meetings were part of the same process.

    "I see this, which will come a few weeks after the APEC meeting here in Sydney, as another step along the road to developing a practical, commonsense international arrangement to follow the Kyoto Protocol which, for very good national interest reasons, Australia has not signed," Mr Howard told reporters.

  • Robots carry machine guns in Iraq

    So the radio-controlled robots were retooled, for greater safety.   In the past, weak signals would keep the robots from getting orders for as much as eight seconds — a significant lag during combat.  Now, the SWORDS won’t act on a command, unless it’s received right away.  A three-part arming process — with both physical and electronic safeties — is required before firing.   Most importantly, the machines now come with kill switches, in case there’s any odd behavior.  "So now we can kill the unit if it goes crazy," Zecca says.

    As initially reported in National Defense magazine, only three of the robots are currently in Iraq.  Zecca says he’s ready to send more, "but we don’t have the money.  It’s not a priority for the Army, yet."  He believes that’ll change, once the robots begin getting into firefights.