Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

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Climate Breakthrough: Obama and China Commit to Change

Published on December 6, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

From Mark Hertsgaard, Vanity Fair.

You wouldn’t know it from the coverage in the mainstream media, but last week may go down as a turning point in the history of the climate crisis. After months of putting health care first, President Obama finally stepped up the plate and, amazingly, secured what has long been the Holy Grail of climate diplomacy: a U.S.-China climate deal. Speaking in Beijing on November 17 alongside Chinese president Hu Jintao, Obama said he hoped the U.S.-China accord would “rally the world” toward solutions at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen, December 7 to 18. After months of Obama’s aides lowering expectations for Copenhagen, and even suggesting that he would not attend the summit, the president signaled that climate change is a top priority and that he is prepared to spend real political capital to achieve a breakthrough, both in Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill.

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Global Warming is Still the Most Important Environmental Issue

Published on December 6, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Poll by Roy Morgan Research

The most important environmental issues facing the World today are Global warming related issues (52%, down 1% from May 2009), ahead of Pollution (19%, down 5%), Water management and Drought (19%, up 6%) and Depletion of Resources (12%, down 5%).These are the results of a recent telephone Roy Morgan Survey on the most important environmental issues facing the World and Australia conducted in November 2009.

The most important environmental issue facing Australia today is Water management & Drought (45%, up 9%) ahead of Global warming related issues (34%, up 7%), Natural disasters (29%, up 9%) and Pollution issues (16%, down 3%).

World Environmental Issues

The precise environmental issues to increase since May this year are led by Climate change (21%, up 6%), now only just behind Global warming (23%, down 1%), Water conservation, Water management (11%, up 3%), Drought (8%, up 4%) and Famine (4%, up 3%).

Australian Environmental Issues

Since May several related environmental issues have increased significantly led by Water conservation, Water management (25%, up 5%), Drought (23%, up 7%), Climate change (16%, up 9%) and Bushfires (9%, up 5%).

When asked specifically about Global warming and the associated problems, 34% (up 11%) of Australians mentioned Rising sea levels, 27% (down 3%) cited Climate change, 17% (down 2%) said the Melting of polar ice caps and 13% (up 4%) mentioned the Greenhouse effect, Heating up of planet, Thermal blanket as a problem related to Global warming.

A slightly reduced majority of Australians aged 14+ (57%, down 1%) believe “If we don’t act now it will be too late” in relation to Global warming compared to 26% (unchanged) that say about Global warming that “Concerns are exaggerated.”

Slightly more Australians (13%, up 1%) say about Global warming that “It is already too late” while just 4% (unchanged) can’t say.

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Businesses in U.S. Brace for New Rules on Emissions

Published on December 4, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

articlelarge By Jad Mouawad, in The New York Times.

The nation’s corporations have long been bracing for the day when they would be required to carry out sharp cuts in the emissions that cause global warming. That day seemed to move a bit closer on Wednesday, when President Obama outlined a national target for such reductions.

Much of corporate America has already been thinking about how to comply. Many businesses concluded years ago that such limits were inevitable, and they have been calling on Congress to define the exact rules they will need to follow.

Already, many companies are recording their emissions and analyzing the results. Some have set voluntary targets for reductions and are claiming substantial progress in meeting them. Sustainability — a notion mostly heard in environmental circles only a decade ago — has become a mainstream idea to which some companies are committed and many are paying lip service.

Major corporations, including General Electric, the Ford Motor Company and PepsiCo, have teamed up with environmental groups to set up the United States Climate Action Partnership, a wide-ranging coalition trying to find ways to cut emissions throughout the economy.

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Fuelling Fears: A Uranium Shortage Could Derail Plans to Go Nuclear to Cut Carbon Emissions

Published on December 2, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

climate From Economist.com

There is an awesome amount of energy tied up in an atom of uranium. Because of that, projections of the price of nuclear power tend to focus on the cost of building the plant rather than that of fuelling it. But proponents of nuclear energy—who argue, correctly, that such plants emit little carbon dioxide—would do well to remember that, like coal and oil, uranium is a finite resource.

Some 60% of the 66,500 tonnes of uranium needed to fuel the world’s existing nuclear power plants is dug fresh from the ground each year. The remaining 40% comes from so-called secondary sources, in the form of recycled fuel or redundant nuclear warheads. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is a United Nations body, and the Nuclear Energy Agency, which was formed by the rich countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, both reckon that, at present rates, these secondary sources will be exhausted within the next decade or so.

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Warming Diagnosis: Beyond Worst Case

Published on November 25, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

From Adam Morton, in The Sydney Morning Herald.

KEY climate change measures are tracking near or beyond worse-case scenarios predicted just two years ago, according to a science update drawing on more than 200 recently published studies.

Co-authored by 26 climate scientists, The Copenhagen Diagnosis reports that melting of summer Arctic sea ice, loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and projections of the rise in sea levels have accelerated dramatically since 2007.

It finds the statistical global warming trend has continued over the past decade, contradicting assessments by some scientists – including Copenhagen Climate Council chairman Tim Flannery – that there has been a recent cooling.

The review cites NASA data that shows a trend of a 0.19-degree increase over the past decade despite short-term fluctuations due to El Nino, solar variability and volcanic eruptions.

Matthew England, co-director of the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre, said the world’s three leading climate data series showed claims of temperatures cooling were ”patently untrue”.

”These are the data set even the sceptics go to, and they show that the last 10 years has been one of warming even if you start in [the particularly hot] 1998,” Professor England said.

”Since 2001, every year has been among the top-10 warmest on record. I don’t think that is cooling.”

The diagnosis is billed as a supplement to the 2007 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and aimed at influencing debate at next month’s Copenhagen climate summit. Most of the scientists behind it are intergovernmental panel authors.

Not-so-wonderful Copenhagen: A Forthcoming Climate-change Summit Will Not Produce A Binding Deal On Emissions

Published on November 24, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

climate From The Economist.

Expectations for the Copenhagen climate conference, held next month in Denmark, have been steadily dwindling. On Sunday November 15th, as Barack Obama toured Asia, he and the Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, quietly agreed what many had anticipated—that no binding agreement would be reached at the conference. There is now no hope of new legal targets for emissions-reductions to replace those set out in the Kyoto Protocol and which will lapse in 2012. Instead the pair suggested that the best to be expected is a political deal on cutting emissions.

Some of the blame for this must be directed at Capitol Hill. Not only will Mr Obama now not sign a cap-and-trade bill before Copenhagen; the Senate is not even expected to pass one. The House of Representatives passed in June its version of cap-and-trade but the Senate, preoccupied by a debate over the reform of health care, has left climate talks to inch along slowly behind. John Kerry, one of the Senate’s cap-and-trade champions, now says he hopes for a vote on the bill only in the spring.

But American congressmen are not alone in shouldering responsibility. Each tortuous round of negotiations ahead of Copenhagen has lengthened the list of issues up for debate. The negotiating text is now a snarl of material that few parties can agree upon. And big developing countries have been almost as immovable as America, at least publicly. China’s president said in September that his country would in time cut the amount of carbon dioxide it emits per unit of GDP by a “notable amount”. But Sun Guoshun, a Chinese diplomat in Washington, says that a figure is unlikely to emerge before Copenhagen. India (a much smaller polluter) has steadfastly resisted binding targets for poor countries. Many in Washington believe that America, just as it did at Kyoto, will not accept a deal that requires nothing concrete on emissions from the developing world.

No Sign Yet of Himalayan Meltdown, Indian Report Finds

Published on November 24, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Hanging tough. Gangotri glacier, source of the Ganges River, retreated a few dozen meters from 2004 to 2008—"hardly an abnormal retreat" that would have been expected from rising temperatures, states a provocative new report. CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): IIT MUMBAI; ISHWAR SINGH (PROVIDED BY V. K. RAINA)

From Pallava Bagla in Science.

Are Himalayan glaciers beating a rapid retreatin the face of global warming? That would seem to be the case,according to a flurry of recent reports by BBC and other massmedia. But the picture is more complex—and poses scientificpuzzles, according to a review of satellite and ground measurementsreleased by India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests earlierthis week.

The report, by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, formerlyof the Geological Survey of India, seeks to correct a widelyheld misimpression based on measurements of a handful of glaciers:that India’s 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers are shrinking rapidlyin response to climate change. That’s not so, Raina says. Evenif it were, other researchers argue that severe loss of icemass would not entail drastic water shortages in the Indianheartland, as some fear. Both concerns were cited in the Asiachapter of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s(IPCC’s) 2007 Working Group II report, which asserted that Himalayanglaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of theworld and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood ofthem disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is veryhigh if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”

Obama Hobbled in Fight Against Global Warming

Published on November 16, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

From John Broder, in The New York Times.

President Obama came into office pledging to end eight years of American inaction on climate change under President George W. Bush, and all year he has promised that the United States would lead the way toward a global agreement in Copenhagen next month to address the warming planet.

But this weekend in Singapore, Mr. Obama was forced to acknowledge that a comprehensive climate deal was beyond reach this year. Instead, he and other world leaders agreed that they would work toward a more modest interim agreement with a promise to renew work toward a binding treaty next year.

The admission places Mr. Obama in the awkward position of being, at least for now, as unlikely to spearhead an international effort to combat global warming as his predecessor — if for different reasons.

In Mr. Bush’s case, he remained skeptical about the science of global warming until near the end of his presidency and dubious about the need for concerted global action.

And his reluctance was echoed by a Congress that wanted to see clear commitments from developing countries like China.

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A Chip Off The Old Block

Published on September 4, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

kuch-ferguson

“Dynastic ALP politician Martin Ferguson is one piece of the puzzle of what’s stalling energy and climate policy in Australia…”

Declan Kuch from newmatilda.com writes:

Kevin Rudd might have been elected on a wave of resentment about Howard’s recalcitrant industrial relations and climate policies, but the mythical split between economy and environment has been perpetuated within his administration.

Whereas attempts to reconcile economy and climate have been undertaken in the UK by integrating the Energy and Climate Change ministries, and in the US by appointing a Climate and Energy Czar, Australia has set itself up for failure with two ministers with entirely opposing worldviews — Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson and Environment Minister Peter Garrett — pulling in different directions. More…

New delay on US climate legislation

Published on September 1, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

reid_harry

Marianne Bom for COP15 News:

The Democrats first planned to unveil their legislation in July, then it was delayed to early September, and now the Senate Democrats announce legislation to be ready ”later in September”.

With the new deadline it is unclear if the legislation will be ready before important climate negotiations at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh on September 24 and 25 and UN climate negotiations in Bangkok starting on September 28. It is also uncertain if President Barack Obama will have the US climate legislation approved before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December. More…