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Amazon deforestation rises sharply as jungle cleared for farming
http://www.agweekly.com/articles/2008/01/31/news/ag_news/news49.txt
Associated Press: The clearing of Brazil's Amazon rain forest jumped dramatically in the final months of 2007, spurred by heavy market demand for corn, soy and cattle, the government and environmentalists said Thursday. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called an emergency meeting of Cabinet ministers to consider emergency measures to stop the deforestation – an apparent reverse of a three-year decline that Silva has repeatedly praised. If emergency measures don't come soon, loggers and ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
America is running dry
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/01/31/sciwater131.xml
Telegraph: An impending crisis in America's water supply is signalled by a study that concludes more than half of the recent decline seen in the west can be linked to human activities. Scientists have been documenting significant changes in water flow in the western United States for the past 50 years. Now it has been found that to 60 percent of the changes in river flow, snow pack and winter air temperatures in the region during this period can be attributed to human-caused climate ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Antarctic ice riddle keeps sea-level secrets
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-31698720080131
Reuters: A deep freeze holding 90 percent of the world's ice, Antarctica is one of the biggest puzzles in debate on global warming with risks that any thaw could raise sea levels faster than U.N. projections. Even if a fraction melted, Antarctica could damage nations from Bangladesh to Tuvalu in the Pacific and cities from Shanghai to New York. It has enough ice to raise sea levels by 57 metres if it melted, over thousands of years. A year after the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Brazil unwilling to stop destruction of Amazon: experts
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/01/2151670.htm
Reuters: Brazil's Government is unwilling and unable to halt destruction in the Amazon rainforest despite emergency measures it announced last week to curb rising deforestation, environmental experts say. High commodity prices and increased land use elsewhere in Brazil are driving ranchers and farmers deeper into the Amazon in search of cheap land, environmentalists say. Between August and December last year, 7,000 square kilometres, or two-thirds the annual rate, were chopped ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Forests Finally Emerging as Climate Issue
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0130-wri_redd.html
Mongabay: The representatives of more than 100 countries in attendance at December's U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, finally focused on the important role tropical forests play in global warming. Developed countries have pledged almost $300 million to help forest-rich developing countries prepare for their new roles and responsibilities in the post Kyoto international climate-change agreement set to start after 2012. Deforestation, especially in the tropics, has been a ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Green groups cry foul as UK claims progress towards Kyoto targets
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/01/carbonemissions.climatechange
Guardian: Britain's greenhouse gas emissions fell slightly last year as homes and offices used less fuel during the mild winter and recycled more waste. Overall, UK greenhouse gas emissions for 2006 dropped to 652.3m tonnes, a reduction of 0.5% on the previous year, figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs show. CO2 emissions, accounting for 85% of the total UK greenhouse gas output, dropped by 0.1% in the same period. The figures put Britain on course ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Groups sue to block Alaska oil drilling plan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7272428
Reuters: Environmental groups sued the Bush administration on Thursday to stop plans to allow oil and natural gas drilling in the icy Chukchi Sea off Alaska, which they claim will endanger polar bears. The U.S. Interior Department plans to lease about 30 million acres of land in the Chukchi Sea -- home to about 10 percent of the world's polar bear population -- on Feb. 6. Environmental groups including the National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Hurricane Activity Linked To Sea Surface Warming
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130130647.htm
Science Daily: The link between changes in the temperature of the sea's surface and increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity has been quantified for the first time. The research - carried out by scientists at UCL (University College London) and due to be published in Nature on January 31 - shows that a 0.5°C increase in sea surface temperature can be associated with an approximately 40 per cent increase in hurricane activity. The study, conducted by Professor Mark Saunders and Dr Adam Lea of ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Brazil: Reports: Brazil's Silva Says Amazon Deforestation Rise Unproven, Causes Uncertain
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080131/brazil_silva_amazon.html?.v=1
Associated Press: A reported jump in the rate of Amazon deforestation is unproven despite a government crackdown on tree cutting, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in comments published Thursday. Silva said figures showing increased deforestation, issued last week by his Environment Ministry, have not yet been confirmed and more research is underway, according to reports in three major newspapers: Folha de S. Paulo, Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo. He compared the situation to a patient ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Scientists warn of looming water supply crisis
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jp1Cb5K67FgNlTuImyhdt0JsP9Qg
Agence France-Presse: Climate change has already dramatically altered the water cycle and these changes signal a looming water supply crisis, according to a prominent group of hydrologists and climatologists writing Thursday in Science magazine. They argue that radical water cycle changes will be widespread and that past trends can no longer be relied upon when planning future water management. "Our best current estimates are that water availability will increase substantially in northern ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Study: Global Warming Responsible for Western Droughts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/31/AR2008013101868.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Washington Post: The persistent and dramatic decline in the snowpack of the mountains of the West is caused primarily by human-induced global warming and not the result of natural variability of weather patterns in the region, researchers reported today. Using data collected over the past 50 years, the scientists confirmed that the mountains are getting more rain and less snow, that the snowpack is breaking up faster, and that more rivers are running dry by summer. The study, published online ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
UN: Climate Change May Cost $20 Trillion
http://www.livescience.com/environment/080131-ap-gw-costs.html
Associated Press: Global warming could cost the world up to $20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns in a new report. Ban's report provides an overview of U.N. climate efforts to help the 192-nation General Assembly prepare for a key two-day climate debate in mid-February. That debate is intended to shape overall U.N. policy on climate change, including how nations can adapt to a ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
US Scraps Plan for Biggest Clean-Coal Power Plant
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46730/story.htm
Reuters: Ballooning construction costs that nearly doubled the price tag for building the world's cleanest coal-burning power plant to US$1.8 billion prompted the US Energy Department on Wednesday to pull the plug on funding the project. A consortium of utility and coal companies in December picked a site in Mattoon, Illinois, to build the so-called FutureGen plant, which would burn coal and sock away heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions underground. However, the Energy Department, ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
US study concludes major crop losses from climate change by 2030 in world's poor areas
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/31/america/NA-GEN-US-Climate-Change-Agriculture.php
Associated Press: Changes in climate brought by global warming could cause major crop losses in many of the world's poorest regions within the next two decades, environmental specialists reported Thursday. The findings foresee alarming consequences for many of the 1 billion poor people who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, largely because agriculture is the human activity that is most vulnerable to changes in climate. The worst affected areas were projected to be southern Africa and ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Warming May Cause Crop Failures, Food Shortages by 2030
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080131-warming-crops.html
National Geographic: Impoverished farmers in South Asia and southern Africa could face growing food shortages due to climate change within just 20 years, a new study says. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, are heating up the planet, with droughts and shifting rainfall patterns predicted for many parts of the world. "The majority of the world's one billion poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods," said the lead author of the new study, David Lobell ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
World urged to help poor adapt to climate change
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN31371273
Reuters: The developed world should help poor countries brace for global warming by assisting them in taking steps like restoring coastal forests and training health care workers, the head of the U.N.'s climate panel said. Recognizing that climate change may be hard to reverse, experts are now examining "adaptation," or how to deal with potential catastrophes such as rising seas as a result of melting glaciers. "In the developing countries it's critical we think of ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Bill Clinton Says Economic Slowdown Could Be Necessary To Fight Global Warming
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009891998
All Headline News: Speaking in Denver on Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton did not mince words on how to combat global warming, telling the crowd that the fight against climate change required industrialized nations to "slow down their economies and cut back on greenhouse gas emissions." Bill Clinton, who was traveling from state to state to campaign on behalf of his wife's presidential bid, spoke to the Colorado crowd about the importance of a good energy plan not only to curb ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Britain in bloom (as spring is sprung earlier than ever)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/britain-in-bloom-as-spring-is-sprung-earlier-than-ever-776174.html
Independent: Gardening enthusiasts could be forgiven for forgetting what month it is when they step outside in the morning, as carpets of snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils – all traditional spring flowers – are in bloom across the country. It has been a record-breaking spell for flowers, with many spring varieties opening their petals a full two weeks before the average time for the decade. The unseasonably warm and wet winter so far in Britain has coaxed plants into early flowering. At Kew ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Candidates line up behind California in greenhouse-gas fight
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/31/BAQLUPSB9.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle: Republican presidential candidates lined up behind California's right to limit tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases in their final debate before Tuesday's primary, joining their Democratic counterparts and indicating the state would be likely to get a green light once President Bush leaves the White House a year from now. All four Republican candidates were asked at Wednesday's debate about the clash between California and the Environmental Protection Agency, which has blocked a ...
Thu, 31 Jan 08
Carbon trading must be globally regulated
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/31/ealinnett131.xml
Telegraph: Simon Linnett, Executive Vice-Chairman of Rothschild, has called for a new international body, the World Environment Agency, to regulate carbon trading. In a recently published paper, Trading Emissions, for the Social Market Foundation, Mr Linnett argues that the International problem of climate change demands an international solution. Unless governments cede some of their sovereignty to a new world body, he says, a global carbon trading scheme cannot be enforced and ...
Sun, 27 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Legal threat to Heathrow plan
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article3257573.ece
Times (UK): GOVERNMENT proposals for a third runway at Heathrow airport are facing a possible legal challenge that could jeopardise the multi-billion-pound plan. Residents living under the flight path, local councils and environmental groups are consulting lawyers. Greenpeace is also seeking a judicial review.They believe there are strong grounds for arguing that the Department for Transport (DfT) consultation process is so flawed that it is not valid. Lawyers are examining ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Antarctic glaciers melting more quickly
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/26/MN50UM20C.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle: Antarctica's massive coastal glaciers are quickly melting into the sea as the oceans around the continent grow warmer - and the pace of ice loss is speeding up. An international satellite network measuring the thickness of the glaciers as they shrink year by year has found that the glaciers have melted so rapidly during the past 10 years that the continent is losing almost as much ice as Greenland, according to researchers gathering the satellite data. The team from Chile, ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Bush Opens Roadless Tongass National Forest to Logging
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2008/2008-01-25-095.asp
Environment News Service: Today, the Bush administration put a "for sale" sign on trees in pristine roadless areas of the Tongass rainforest in Alaska - America's largest national forest. This move by Bush officials to reverse roadless area protections parallels two others made recently in national forests located in Idaho and Colorado. Conservationists from across the country are indignant that roads will be punched through some of the nation's last, best roadless areas to allow private ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Climate change causes new 'epoch'
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-causes-new-epoch-774293.html
Independent: The Earth has entered a new geological epoch because man-made changes to the climate are having a dramatic and long-term impact on the land and the oceans, a study has found. A team of geologists believes that humans have altered the Earth so much since the start of the industrial revolution that we are now living in a new epoch called the Anthropocene, which began when the previous Holocene epoch ended in about 1800. The geologists have proposed that the new epoch should be ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Bono and Al Gore in climate warning
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBE-IvcuTKwK_W7ZJKCkoOfnR6gQ
Press Association: Former US Vice President Al Gore and U2 frontman Bono have offered measured praise for efforts in tackling climate change and global poverty, but warned that conditions are not improving as much as they could. At a session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Gore warned that the climate crisis was worsening. "We could take the whole session talking just about the new scientific evidence of the last few weeks and months," said Mr Gore, who shared last ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Gadget Prods Homeowners to Cut Energy Use
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012501621.html
Washington Post: Most of us think of home energy savings in terms of products, prices and percentages. For instance: A compact fluorescent light bulb costs about five to 10 times as much as a standard incandescent bulb, it uses about 75 percent less energy, and it lasts eight to 10 times longer. But you can also save energy and money simply by getting more information. That means determining the amount of electricity used by all the equipment in your house. This can frequently be significantly ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Is climate change is making us sick?
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/body_and_soul/article3251354.ece
Times (UK): You might think that a little climate change would not go amiss in the British Isles. We'd have more warm summers and fewer freezing winters. What's wrong with that? Ask the people of Yorkshire. As a result of global warming, many homeowners this week are up to their waists inmuddy water. Andflooding could be just the beginning of our worries. This week a paper in the British Medical Journal gave warning that climate change could be particularly damaging to the health of people in ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Lofty Himalaya Magnify Global Warming Impact
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46612/story.htm
Reuters: The Himalayas are suffering the effects of global warming more acutely because of their height and melting glaciers could flood local settlements, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said on Thursday. "The Himalaya, that's really moving very fast. They're being hit very hard," IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefevre told Reuters at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Thousands of glaciers in the Himalaya mountains are the source of water for nine ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
United Kingdom: New green taxes for 'gas-guzzling' cars
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/26/eacar126.xml
Telegraph: Motorists face having to pay new green taxes as ministers step up their war on "gas-guzzling" cars. The Government wants to get people out of high-emissions vehicles by making them more expensive, while also cutting the cost of driving for more environmentally-friendly options. Two recently published reports commissioned by the Department for Transport examine the impact of raising the cost of buying the most polluting cars, and of increasing running costs by raising ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Putting the blame for carbon on planes, not cars, 'is flight of fancy'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3254069.ece
Times (UK): Which is worse for the environment – cars or aircraft? If your answer was aircraft, then you are among a growing crowd of aerophobes egged on by anti-aviation campaigners. But in terms of CO2 emissions you would be wrong. Official figures show an increase in the number of people duped into believing that flights are more damaging than car journeys. The number of people who think that flying contributes more to climate change than car journeys has risen rapidly in the past 18 ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Canada: Alberta Targets Emission Cuts With Carbon Capture
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46611/story.htm
Reuters: Alberta, Canada's biggest oil-producing province, aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent from 2005 levels as part of a climate-change plan that imposes few restrictions on major industrial emitters. The government of Premier Ed Stelmach said Thursday it plans to form a council made up of government and industry officials charged with setting plans to implement carbon capture and storage and furthering the technology. The Alberta government said it could direct as ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Australia: Climate to hurt bush: study
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/news/local/environment/climate-to-hurt-bush-study/1169801.html
Canberra Times: Climate change posed a serious threat to human health and people living in the bush were likely to "bear the brunt", an Australian National University academic said yesterday. National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health fellow Professor Tony McMichael called for "clear and ambitious" targets to tackle climate change. "While we worry upfront the effects on jobs, the economy, infrastructure, valued species ... we really haven't come to terms ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
EU Agrees Goal for Climate Deal by April 2009
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46616/story.htm
Reuters: EU President Slovenia and the three countries that will succeed it in the EU chair agreed with European Parliament leaders on Thursday to aim to enact ambitious laws on energy and climate change by April 2009. Slovenian Environment Minister Janez Podobnik told a joint news conference with his French, Czech and Swedish counterparts the aim was to pass legislation on the measures proposed by the European Commission before the June 2009 European elections. The Commission ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Australia: Greenhouse cuts would land us in the Middle Ages, says Labor sceptic
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/greenhouse-cuts-would-land-us-in-the-middle-ages-says-laborsceptic/2008/01/25/1201157668460.html
Sydney Morning Herald: THE Hawke government finance minister Peter Walsh has warned the Rudd Government that cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 would send Australian living standards back to the Middle Ages. Mr Walsh, who was at the forefront of Labor's conversion to economic rationalism in the 1980s, heads the Lavoisier Group of hardline climate-change sceptics. In a submission lodged with the Garnaut climate change review, the former West Australian senator disputes the scientific ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Iraq ratifies Kyoto Protocol on climate change
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j36Xc3cFAC5MxVU1kzImFlZPv6Mw
Agence France-Presse: Iraq has formally ratified the UN's Kyoto Protocol on climate change, according to a government statement seen by AFP on Saturday. "The presidential council ratified in its session on January 23 a law according to which the Republic of Iraq will join the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol," the statement said. The Kyoto Protocol legally commits industrialised countries which have signed and ratified it to trim their output of ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
United States: Panel backs climate-change report
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004146674_climatechange26m.html
Associated Press: A task force created by Gov. Christine Gregoire approved an interim report Friday that makes a dozen recommendations on responding to climate change in the state. The 80-page report has some suggestions that are reflected in a bill requested by Gregoire, including requiring major sources of greenhouse gases to measure and report their emissions. Gregoire praised the state's current efforts to cut emissions, as well as other initiatives the state has begun to help combat global ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Power, parties - and how to save the world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/26/davos2008.economy
Guardian: I spent five minutes in a small concrete corridor in Switzerland this week and watched the following people pass by: Henry Kissinger, a Chinese telecoms boss, an executive from the Campbell soup company, a rabbi, a Brazilian oil baron, computer pioneer Nicholas Negroponte, a team of aides looking for UN secretary general Ban ki-moon, Peter Mandelson, an up and coming Palestinian writer, a Brazilian brain scientist, a vice-chairman of Merrill Lynch and a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Britain must act quickly or fail to meet its obligations, say experts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/26/windpower.renewableenergy
Guardian: Britain will miss its target of generating 15% of all its energy from renewables by 2020 unless it acts quickly, invests billions and changes its attitude to energy, industry figures said yesterday. The draft target, set this week by the EU, will challenge the government and industry because it means not just vastly increasing the amount of renewable electricity the UK generates, but also changing how we heat homes, power factories and drive vehicles and trains. Britain ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Government faces scrutiny on emissions cutback plans
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1997243.0.government_faces_scrutiny_on_emissions_cutback_plans.php
Sunday Herald: THE SCOTTISH government will face a key test of its environmental commitment this week when it launches a public consultation on plans to cut Scotland's climate pollution by 80% by 2050. The long-awaited report on proposed climate change legislation is due to be unveiled by Scottish ministers at Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens on Tuesday. Although it is not expected to contain any major surprises, it will be closely scrutinised to check that the government is serious about reducing ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Japan, Denmark Set New Climate Goals
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hQNEEOFdc9OxzgM-WgEOFV7CiMZwD8UDNA6G0
Associated Press: The United States, China and India must be part of the follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol and agree to cut carbon emissions, Denmark's prime minister said Saturday. Japan's leader offered them a bold strategy for doing it. Climate change returned to the fore at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, where Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda proposed a 2020 deadline for countries to boost their energy efficiency by 30 percent. He added that Japan would try to spread its ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Putting the brakes on ethanol
http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/common/20080125.html
CBC: Ethanol was supposed to be this great fix for the air we breathe. Now it turns out it might be counterproductive, even dirty. At least, that is the view gaining ground in Europe. In principle, biofuels like ethanol were supposed to partially replace conventional fuels, thereby reducing already heavy demand on fossil fuels and offering a non-polluting alternative. As a bonus, the biofuels are made from plants and so demand for the crops of increasingly desperate farmers would ...
Sat, 26 Jan 08
Claim: Global warming will trigger illness
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/178941,claim-global-warming-will-trigger-illness.html
United Press International: Experts claim global warming will likely cause illness for people in Britain. Officials present during Tuesday's conference at the Royal College of Physicians reportedly will be warned about the negative effects of global warming on the health of British people, The Times of London reported Saturday. "The result will be fewer deaths from colds and flu, but more from strokes and heart attacks because of the heat," said Dr. Hugh Montgomery, the conference's ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Brazil's army to help combat Amazon destruction
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKN2427492820080125
Reuters: Brazil on Thursday unveiled measures to slow deforestation of the Amazon region including one that calls for the army to help carry out inspections.The steps came one day after Brazilian officials said Amazon destruction had surged during the last five months of 2007. Deforestation rose from 94 square miles in August to 366 square miles in December."Our aim is to establish institutional mechanisms to prevent deforestation," Justice Minister Tarso Genro told reporters after an emergency meeting ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Climate change to hit health above economy: study
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKSYD6032420080125
Reuters: Climate change will have potentially devastating consequences for human health, outweighing global economic impacts, researchers said on Friday, calling for urgent action to protect the world's population. "While we embark on more rapid reduction of emissions to avert future climate change, we must also manage the now unavoidable health risks from current and pending climate change," said Australian researcher Tony McMichael, who co-authored a study in the British Medical ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Europe climate targets strong signal to others-UN
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL25770393
Reuters: New European targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases are a strong signal to other countries to reduce their carbon output, the U.N. environment chief said on Friday. The European Commission's plan to cut emissions unilaterally by 20 percent by 2020, announced this week, is "quite far-reaching," Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Programme, said at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. "I think the signal value of the European ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Global warming prompts some lifestyle changes
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKHO56314820080125
Reuters: Britons are starting to change their lifestyles in response to global warming, but few are making the tough choices and in many cases the motivation is fear of punishment, according to a new survey. Top of the list of environmental activities is recycling, with 90 percent of the people surveyed saying they were doing it more than a year ago. But the reasons given were mostly connected with council schemes and punishments rather than altruism, according to the survey by ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Gore says "changing light bulbs" not enough
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL2490201820080125
Reuters: Climate campaigner Al Gore urged world policymakers on Thursday to change laws "not just light bulbs" in tackling global warming, and a U.N. official said world market turmoil must not be allowed to delay action. An annual meeting of world political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, this year has scheduled a record number of sessions and workshops on global warming. But a sharp downturn on markets and fears of recession have dominated discussion. "If we get distracted ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Scientists update climate change position
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/01/25/scientists_update_climate_change_position/7924/
United Press International: The world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists has updated its position, saying the consequences of climate change "are not natural." "The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming," the American Geophysical Union said in a statement released Thursday. "Many components of the climate system -- including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
UN: Water shortage and population growth will create conflict
http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/01/25/UN_Water_shortage_and_population_growth_will_create_conflict
Live Science: Prevention of the looming water crisis should receive top priority in 2008, according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Appealing to business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland yesterday, he said action was needed to prevent conflicts over scarce supplies. Mr Ki-Moon spoke of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan which was touched off by drought echoing recent reports about the threat of eco-terrorism and climate change ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Water Shortage, Warming Threaten Stability
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1230129/water_shortage_warming_threaten_stability/
Red Orbit: This week, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) -- the largest society of Earth and space scientists in the world -- issued a position paper on global climate change, warning that "the Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming," and that these changes are "not natural". The report states that evidence from most oceans and all continents except Antarctica shows warming attributable to human activities. "Many components of the climate system–including the ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Canada: Alberta climate plan lets industry avoid new limits
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=e97103c8-1f8d-4afc-a171-a4d26568c9d4
Vancouver Sun: Alberta will let greenhouse gas emissions rise for more than a decade before emission cuts take hold in a new climate change plan that includes no new restrictions on industrial emitters. The government of Premier Ed Stelmach said Thursday it expects to bring carbon emissions 14 per cent below 2005 levels by 2050, mostly through capture and storage of the gases blamed for global warming. But emissions in the province -- where more than $100 billion of oil sands projects are ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Brazil sugarcane industry eyes EU biofuel market
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5goQpr15wNPArazFwqOy3z5Lf95QA
Agence France-Presse: Brazil, the world leader in making ethanol from sugarcane, is homing in on Europe's biofuel market following a decision by the European Commission to combat climate change by reducing the dependency on petrol. The EU plan calls for biofuels to be used in at least 10 percent of fuels used in transport in the 27-nation bloc by 2020. For Brazil's sugarcane industry, the news is seen as a golden export opportunity. "We see this as very positive because it will allow the ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Davos discusses how to address climate change, poverty alleviation
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iLMFCDWSlAREQUl6v3pLWoI1HEeQ
Agence France-Presse: Corporate responsibility rather than profit took centre stage in Davos on Friday, as the annual get-together of business chiefs turned its attention to issues of health, aid and development. Rock star activist Bono, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and UN chief Ban Ki-moon steered the conversation away from the global economy and geopolitics, towards issues such as malaria eradication, poverty alleviation and climate change. Ban challenged delegates to renew a commitment ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
United States: EPA chief won't budge on waiver
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/660988.html
Sacramento: The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held firm Thursday to his declaration that California is not entitled to strike out on its own to cut vehicle emissions, insisting that there is nothing unique to California about the threat posed by global warming. "My job is to make the right decision, not the easy decision," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The committee's chairwoman, California Democrat Barbara ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Geophysicists: Theory of Global Warming 'Well Established'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,325688,00.html
Live Science: The world's largest society of Earth and space scientists has released a new statement on climate change that unequivocally names human activity as the cause of global warming. "Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming," according to the first paragraph of the statement by the American Geophysical Union. The statement cites many components of the Earth system that are changing at unnatural rates, including rising global temperatures, ice melt, sea ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Canada: Greenhouse gas levels will climb for 12 years
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=39935287-ed3c-48d5-b79d-3e95d663e187&k=62902
Edmonton Journal: The Alberta government's new climate change plan will allow overall greenhouse gas emissions to rise for another 12 years before new technology begins to bring the problem under control. Premier Ed Stelmach's government is pinning its environmental hopes on capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground as a way to reduce projected emissions by 70 per cent by 2050. By that year, the government expects to reduce overall emissions by 14 per cent below 2005 levels. The ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Hewlett Foundation plans climate change grants
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL2579317820080125
Reuters: Trustees of a $9 billion endowment fund founded by the late William Hewlett, of Hewlett Packard, say they want to spend tens of millions of dollars a year fighting climate change as part of a bigger fund. "We've been meeting potential philanthropic investors," said President of the Foundation, Paul Brest, in London on Friday. "We're committing to a long-term grant-making project for climate change. There's a lot of initiatives by U.S. philanthropy, but we haven't ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
India, France issue joint declaration on global warming
http://www.topnews.in/india-france-issue-joint-declaration-global-warming-217047
Top News: France and India have decided to unite their efforts to work against the major challenge of climate change. Their efforts form part of the agenda outlined in the Bali Action Plan adopted on December 15, 2007 during the 13th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNNFCCC) and the 3rd session of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, in keeping with the principle of common, but differentiated responsibilities and respective ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Out of oil within seven years
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/25/out_of_oil_within_seven_years/
Marketplace: Scott Jagow: In Davos, Switzerland, they're wrapping up the World Economic forum. Today, the head of Royal Dutch Shell met with Nigeria's president to talk about security and oil. Shell's CEO is Jeroen Van der Veer. He told his employees something this week that might surprise you: World demand for oil and gas will outstrip supply within seven years. Our European correspondent, Stephen Beard, joins us now. Seven years? That's a lot sooner than we've heard before, isn't ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
UK chief boosts climate ties with China and India
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=4201&language=1
SciDev.Net: The UK prime minister Gordon Brown's visits to China and India have strengthened the relationship between the two biggest developing countries and rich nations in fighting climate change. The UK and Chinese governments signed an agreement in Beijing last week (18 January) in which the United Kingdom promises to offer £50 million (US$100 million) from the UK's environment funds each year in beneficial loans – with no or low interest rates – or grants for research into climate change ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
US pushes its climate change agenda despite criticism
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jlgTTxinVCRqeqRMGI5Zq7bv0jBw
Agence France-Presse: The United States pushed forward with its own agenda on climate change Friday despite criticism that Washington is attempting to undermine the global effort led by the United Nations. But as senior officials outlined the broad agenda of a meeting the United States is hosting next week in Hawaii -- which includes an emphasis on controversial uses of nuclear power and technology to trap emissions from coal plants -- they insisted they are simply supplementing the UN ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
US Renewable Energy Market Reports Record Year in 2007
http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/2008-01-25-voa12.cfm
Voice of America: Last year was a record year for the renewable energy industry in the United States. The development and sale of power from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other renewable sources in 2007 infused $20 billion into the U.S. economy and created tens of thousands of jobs. But as VOA's Rosanne Skirble reports, industry leaders fear that growth could be stalled because of the failure of the U.S. Congress to ensure long-term support for renewable energy projects. Renewable energy in the ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Analysis: Europe's climate action plan
http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Energy/Analysis/2008/01/25/analysis_europes_climate_action_plan/4598/
United Press International: Politicians hail the European Commission's latest energy and climate package as a climate protection milestone, with the fossil fuel-heavy industry warning of job losses. Earlier this week EC officials announced the individual, concrete targets each country will have to meet regarding the use of renewable energy. The targets are part of a plan that has the European Union by 2020 generating 20 percent of its energy needs with renewables, such as wind, solar and biofuels. That ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Canada: BC to set up climate-change institute with $94.5-million endowment
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hlbFanDRNhNIK_tj69jiv2qm7Fcg
Canadian Press: The B.C. government wants to spend $94.5 million to set up a Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions to spark ideas for adapting to climate change and lessen its effects. Premier Gordon Campbell says the Victoria-based institute will bring together top scientists, researchers, government officials and the private sector to develop green products for consumers worldwide and encourage greener lifestyles. He says the institute will be a collaboration between the province's four ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Biofuel Investments Seen Good Bet With Pricey Oil
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46621/story.htm
Reuters: Biofuels made from plants and waste will prove an increasingly efficient and cheap substitute for oil in many areas over the coming five years, industry analysts said. As long as crude sells at prices towards US$100 per barrel, there will be strong demand for cheaper biofuels and manufacturing technology will improve, Vinod Khosla, founder of venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, told Reuters. "It's very clear to me that within the next few years -- about three I would ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Brown calls for a 'green' World Bank
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i43Wl8IXZrvKgPSyh39KdmP8wudg
Agence France-Presse: Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Friday for the World Bank to assume an environmental role capable of taking on the global challenges posed by climate change. Addressing the global political and business elite gathered in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, Brown also pushed for similar operational reforms of other international institutions that had failed to move with the times. "The IMF, the World Bank and the United Nations were built for the problems of the 1940s and ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
United States: Doubling of energy tax credits advances
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1201229709267210.xml&coll=7
Oregonian: The House Revenue Committee voted Thursday to forward an energy tax credit proposal for the full Legislature's consideration next month. The proposal would double the maximum tax credits available to manufacturers of renewable-energy equipment. The draft legislation would create a tax credit similar to the business energy tax credit, which lawmakers expanded last year to give up to a 50 percent tax credit for the costs of a renewable energy project. The expansion nearly ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
EPA chief defends denying Calif. rules
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.hearing25jan25,0,7191822.story
Baltimore Sun: Facing heat from Congress yesterday, the head of the EPA stood by his decision to block California from limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. Maryland was one of 15 states that had been awaiting Environmental Protection Agency approval to begin enforcing the new standards developed by the California Air Resources Board. But Stephen L. Johnson became the first EPA administrator to deny a so-called California waiver last month when he rejected the ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
France set for rapid growth in photovoltaic technology
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/energie_elektrotechnik/bericht-102041.html
Innovations Report: Photovoltaic (PV) technology is set to become one of France's fastest growing energy sources over the next decade, as dramatic increases in world oil prices radically shift the balance in favour of renewable energy sources. France's energy record is already very good – it has one of the lowest carbon footprints in Europe and is meeting its Kyoto Treaty obligations. France has seen energy consumption (calculated per unit of GDP) fall dramatically, with a reduction every year since ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Japanese PM pledges initiatives on climate change, development
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hO7i8vlJDFh9ES5QndftVq-YoqXQ
Agence France-Presse: Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda pledged Tokyo-led initiatives on climate change and economic development in the near future in a comment piece in the Financial Times on Friday. Writing ahead of a speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday, Fukuda wrote that "combating climate change and fostering development, particularly in Africa, are two of the issues that Japan, as chair of the 2008 meeting of the (G8) ... is pushing hard to ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
New radar satellite technique sheds light on ocean current dynamics
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/physik_astronomie/bericht-102065.html
Innovations Report: Ocean surface currents have long been the focus of research due to the role they play in weather, climate and transportation of pollutants, yet essential aspects of these currents remain unknown. By employing a new technique – based on the same principle as police speed-measuring radar guns – to satellite radar data, scientists can now obtain information necessary to understand better the strength and variability of surface current regimes and their relevance for climate change. ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
Scientists Warn Climate Change Rate Could Prompt Wholesale Calamity
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009831645
All Headline News: The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has warned that slashing greenhouse gas emissions to half of the existing rates to stop a 3.6-degree warming could prove calamitous not just for the environment, but also for the economy and our whole future. The report found constant warming alters the Earth's entire ecosystem: atmosphere temperature, land and ocean, the extent of the sea ice, the sea level, the precipitation in terms of quantity and distribution, and the length of seasons. All ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
United States: Senators want to override EPA emissions decision
http://www.mercurynews.com/healthandscience/ci_8074045?nclick_check=1
Mercury News: The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday defended his decision to turn down California's landmark bid to regulate vehicle emissions during a contentious Senate hearing. On the same day, 16 senators launched a rare effort to reverse that decision through legislation. Stephen Johnson, administrator of the EPA, told the Environment Committee that he decided not to "rubber-stamp" California's request - joined by 14 other states - for a waiver of agency rules ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
United States: Snowpack will melt earlier, scientist says
http://www.gjsentinel.com/hp/content/news/stories/2008/01/24/012508_1b_climate_change.html
Daily Sentinel: Abundant snow and cold temperatures might make it seem that climate change hardly affects Colorado, but a U.S. Geological Survey scientist warned that Colorado's runoff season will see dramatic mood swings in the coming decades. David Clow of the USGS told members of the Colorado Water Congress on Thursday that human-caused global warming doesn't seem to be dramatically affecting Colorado's snowpack just yet, but runoff is already occurring two weeks earlier than it did just 27 years ...
Fri, 25 Jan 08
United Kingdom: The Battle of Lewis: wind farm plan is blown off course
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-battle-of-lewis-wind-farm-plan-is-blown-off-course-774277.html
Independent: A huge row over the biggest land-based wind farm ever proposed in Britain is coming to a climax this weekend. A decision on whether to proceed with the 181-windmill development on the Hebridean island of Lewis is imminent – with some reports claiming that Scottish ministers had already turned down the project on environmental grounds. The decision has implications for the growth of renewable energy in Britain, signalled this week by the EU's plans for a massive renewables ...
Thu, 24 Jan 08
Brazil: Amazon destruction soars again
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411366/1555979
Reuters: The destruction of the Amazon forest surged over the last five months of 2007, the Brazilian government said, only months after hailing progress in curbing deforestation. Deforestation in the Amazon, known as "the lungs of the world" for its ability to consume greenhouse gases and produce oxygen - shot up from 243 square kilometres in August to 948 sq km in December. That is four times as much as in the same period of 2004, the government said. It did not provide ...
Tue, 22 Jan 08
As Alps Warm, a Snow-Deprived Ski Resort Sells for $1
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91762
New York Times: Bruno Prior, a British entrepreneur, saw the ad from the Ernen ski-lift company one day as he was sipping coffee and looking through the newspaper in London. Several months later – after paying the token sum of one Swiss franc, or about 90 cents – he is the proud owner of four ski lifts, two trail groomers and a restaurant on 12 miles of ski slopes. Effectively giving the ski operation away was an act of desperation on the part of Ernen, which, like hundreds of other small ...
Tue, 22 Jan 08
Dems Pressed on Global Warming Ahead of South Carolina Vote
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/157062/1/3319
OneWorld U.S.: South Carolina voters concerned about global warming are calling on the Democratic candidates for president to focus on climate change solutions as they stage a public debate in the resort town of Myrtle Beach this evening. "Climate change is a top concern of South Carolina primary voters," said Cynthia Powell, a Myrtle Beach resident and undecided voter. "We see a clean energy future in South Carolina as the best way to create jobs and protect the ...
Tue, 22 Jan 08
United Kingdom: MPs' warning on biofuels angers Brussels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/22/energy.climatechange
Guardian: The EU yesterday denounced a House of Commons report calling for a moratorium on the increased use of biofuels and made plain it would stick to mandatory targets for the use of biofuels in transport when it unveils a climate change package today. Yesterday's report from the Commons environmental audit committee warned that biofuels were too expensive, environmentally damaging and making a negative contribution to cutting greenhouse gases, and said British government and EU plans to ...
Tue, 22 Jan 08
EU Emissions Plan to Cost Billions - German Industry
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46549/story.htm
Reuters: New financial burdens on German industry arising out of greenhouse gas emissions rules due from Brussels later this week could run to 17 billion euros (US$24.92 billion), a German energy users' lobby said on Monday. The European Commission is expected to introduce a new system on Wednesday to auction permits to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) after 2012 as part of proposals to protect the climate. "Should the Commission implement its plans, we calculate that the costs of the ...
Tue, 22 Jan 08
Renault to Develop Electric Cars for Israel
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46560/story.htm
Reuters: The Renault-Nissan alliance on Monday signed a deal to begin mass producing electric cars as part of an Israeli-led project to develop alternative energy sources and slash oil dependency. Renault-Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said the cars, with a range of about 100 km in city driving and up to 160 km on the highway, will accelerate from zero to 100 kph in 13 seconds and have a top speed of 110 kph -- similar to many gasoline-powered cars. Ghosn said a key reason why ...
Tue, 22 Jan 08
U.A.E. Plans Carbon-Capture Project to Increase Oil Production
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=auRzLaJU_TWQ&refer=india
Bloomberg: Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co. plans to build what may become the world's largest project to capture carbon dioxide and use it to boost oil and gas production. The state-owned company has chosen eight sites to inject about 15 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, a quarter of the emissions from Abu Dhabi, one of seven sheikhdoms in the United Arab Emirates. ``We hope to get approval during the first half of 2008,'' said Sam Nader, director of carbon management for the company, ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
11 Multinationals to Assess Their 'Carbon Footprint'
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/20/AR2008012002319.html
Bloomberg: Hewlett-Packard, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble and eight other global companies are assessing the emissions of their supply chains as part of efforts to cut greenhouse gases and inform investors of their so-called carbon footprint. Each picked as many as 50 of their suppliers to reply to questions from the Carbon Disclosure Project by March, the CDP said in an e-mailed statement. The nonprofit project coordinates environmental data requests on behalf of 315 investors with $41 ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Alarm Bells Ringing About Antarctic Thaw - Norway PM
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46519/story.htm
Reuters: Alarm bells are ringing about risks of a quickening thaw of Antarctica that would drive up world sea levels, Norway's Prime Minister said on Sunday after a visit to the icy continent. Scientists say there are hard-to-quantify chances that newly detected lakes under Antarctica's ice sheets might lubricate a slide towards the oceans, or that climate change could warm southern seas and melt floating sea ice holding back glaciers. "It is alarming. Alarm bells are ringing. It ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Brussels urged to fight climate change with tax
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9c619832-c7c3-11dc-a0b4-0000779fd2ac.html
Financial Times: The European Union should fight climate change with a broad-based carbon tax rather than by setting precise targets for the use of biofuels and renewable energy, according to a team of British economists. Europe Economics, a London-based consultancy, argues that biofuel targets amount to "a form of state support for an environmentally and -economically harmful activity designed to consolidate existing price support mechanisms for vested interest groups, most notably ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU says companies profit from carbon trading
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/01/21/cnets121.xml
Telegraph: The European Commission believes that some of the most polluting electricity generators are making huge windfall profits, according to documents leaked to The Daily Telegraph. The commission said it is time to change EU rules to eliminate the practice, which has been strongly denied by power companies, many of which have hiked their domestic prices over the past three weeks. Brussels' admission that some companies are enjoying windfalls at the expense of consumers will add ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU's Barroso says pollution permits to be auctioned
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7243904
Reuters: The European Commission will propose this week auctioning permits to emit greenhouse gases after 2012 in a package of measures to fight climate change, despite protests from business, its chief said on Monday. "Allowances will be auctioned, with revenues going to member states, but any EU company will be allowed to buy allowances in any member state," Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said in a speech prepared for delivery at investment bank Lehman Brothers in ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Europe, Cutting Biofuel Subsidies, Redirects Aid to Stress Greenest Options
http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080121/1194739391218.html?.v=1
New York Times: Governments in Europe and elsewhere have begun rolling back generous, across-the-board subsidies for biofuels, acknowledging that the environmental benefits of these fuels have often been overstated. But as they aim to be more selective, these governments are discovering how difficult it can be to figure out whether a particular fuel – much less a particular batch of corn ethanol or rapeseed biodiesel – has been produced in an environmentally friendly manner. Biofuels vary greatly in ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Global Carbon Trade Rose 80 Pct Last Year - Group
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46518/story.htm
Reuters: Trade in the world greenhouse gas credits market rose 80 percent last year as emissions rules became a concern for more companies, a carbon analysis group said on Friday. Global carbon credit trade rose to US$60 billion in 2007, from US$33 billion the previous year, according Point Carbon, an Oslo-based group of greenhouse gas analysts and consultants. Total traded volume in the global market reached 2.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions reductions in 2007, a 64 percent ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Greenhouse gases at new peak, in sign of Asia growth
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/2008/01/21/139867/Greenhouse-gases.htm
Reuters: Atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas have set another new peak in a sign of the industrial rise of Asian economies led by China, a senior scientist said on Saturday. "The levels already in January are higher than last year," said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, during a visit to the Troll scientific research station in Antarctica by Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. Holmen said measurements at a Norwegian station high ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
New energy behind nuclear power
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-ft-nuclear21jan21,0,4147533.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business
Associated Press: Global warming and rocketing oil prices are making nuclear power fashionable, drawing a once-demonized industry out of the shadows of the Chernobyl disaster as a potential model of clean energy. Britain is the latest nation to announce support for the construction of new nuclear power plants. Nuclear plants produces about 20% of Britain's electricity, but all but one are expected to close by 2023. However, some countries hopping on the nuclear bandwagon have abysmal industrial ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Australia: Pulp mill delays hearten opponents
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23082232-2702,00.html
Australian: MORE than three months after federal approval for Gunns' $2 billion pulp mill, final building contracts, finance, construction approvals and boardroom endorsement have yet to be locked in. The delays, and the global credit squeeze, have left opponents of the Tasmanian project with a new confidence that it will not proceed. Prospective lead financier ANZ Bank, targeted by intense anti-mill lobbying, is requiring Gunns to provide further information before it decides whether to ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Renewable energy's potential
http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Energy/Analysis/2008/01/21/analysis_renewable_energys_potential/6539/
United Press International: Faced with rising energy costs and growing demand, much of U.S. industry and government are turning to renewable energy as a solution, but for many citizens it's unclear when and how well these technologies will work. Given the approximately $2 billion allotted to renewable energy research and development in the recently signed Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, taxpayers may want to know what their money is going to support. Many renewable energy technologies exist, ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Rich countries owe poor ones trillions over environmental damage: study
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jKTBKK0tWNTYm9VZpKtPRLJBujKg
Canadian Press: As rich countries push away from the table after four decades of environmental degradation, the poor ones are stuck with the bill, says new research attempting to assess the costs and causes of human economic activity. According to a paper published Monday in the U.S.-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, low-income nations subsidized the living standards of middle-and high-income nations by more than $3 trillion between 1961 and 2000 - almost all of that caused by ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Rich nations' environmental footprints tread heavily on poor countries
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/uoc--rne011808.php
EurekAlert: The environmental damage caused by rich nations disproportionately impacts poor nations and costs them more than their combined foreign debt, according to a first-ever global accounting of the dollar costs of countries' ecological footprints. The study, led by former University of California, Berkeley, research fellow Thara Srinivasan, assessed the impacts of agricultural intensification and expansion, deforestation, overfishing, loss of mangrove swamps and forests, ozone depletion ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
TVNZ Criticised Over Link to Rainforest Destruction in PNG
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-1-21/64434.html
Epoch Times: TVNZ is facing severe criticism over its decision to allow the National Bank to sponsor its news updates. The National Bank is a subsidiary of the ANZ Banking Group, which is providing financial services to one of the world's largest and most controversial logging companies, Rimbunan Hijau. This Malaysian logging company is responsible for large-scale rainforest destruction in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Greenpeace, the Green Party and the Indonesia Human Rights Committee ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
1st Japanese Rice Ethanol Plant to Start 2009
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46539/story.htm
Reuters: Japan's first commercial plant to produce ethanol for cars from locally grown rice will reach full capacity of 1,000 kilolitres a year by March 2009, a few months behind schedule, a senior manager said on Friday. The project in Niigata, central Japan, for which the Japanese government is paying half the plant construction cost of 1.6 billion yen (US$15 million), is one of Japan's three such government-backed commercial production schemes. It is managed by the National ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi says to invest $15 bln in green energy
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL21281714
Reuters: The Gulf Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi said on Monday it will invest $15 billion in the first phase of an initiative by the oil-exporter to develop green energy. The investment would be made as part of the Masdar initiative to develop sustainable and clean energy, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan told the World Future Energy Summit in the emirate. Sheikh Mohammed did not give a time frame for the investment in Abu Dhabi, one of seven members of the ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
An Oil Giant's Green Dream
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1705616,00.html
Time Magazine: If you filled your tank with gasoline today, or warmed your home with natural gas, there's a decent chance you sent some money to Abu Dhabi. The capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is blessed with fossil fuels, including the fourth-biggest reserves of oil in the world. Selling that petroleum at record prices has helped Abu Dhabi achieve the highest per-capita GDP in the world – wealth that's visible in every luxury hotel rising from the desert or spotless Mercedes prowling the streets. ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
As carbon dioxide levels rise, staple grains could lose some nutritional value
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/21/0121protein.html
Austin American-Statesman: It started with a seemingly off-the-wall question in a 2004 global change biology class at Southwestern University. The discussion was about how increases in carbon dioxide, a contributing cause of global warming, lead to a decline in the amount of proteins in some plants. "How would rising CO2 levels affect the Atkins diet?" asked Holly Allen, then an undergraduate majoring in environmental studies. The Atkins diet, still en vogue then, emphasizes proteins over ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
China's energy policies 'do not tackle climate change'
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=4191&language=1
SciDev.Net: China's economic, energy and environment policies have not been streamlined to fight climate change, according to a new study. Carmen Richerzhagen and Imme Scholz from the German Development Institute reviewed China's recent climate-relevant policies and actions in a study published last month (3 December) in World Development. They found that China has struggled hard to increase its energy efficiency but many of its policies, while contributing to climate change mitigation, ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Climate controls gaining support
Climate controls gaining support
Sacramento Bee: U.S. businesses are betting that the federal government soon will put mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and they're making sure they have a say in shaping a vast new regulatory system. Some of the country's biggest businesses support a cap and trade system, the approach that Congress is considering. Under cap and trade, the government gives or sells companies allowances to emit certain amounts of greenhouse gases, and companies may sell unused allowances to other ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Committee calls for biofuel moratorium
http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL1885287820080121
Reuters: Most biofuels harm rather than help the environment and the government should call a moratorium on increasing their use, a parliamentary committee said on Monday. "Biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road transport -- but at present most biofuels have a detrimental impact on the environment overall," Tim Yeo, chairman of the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) said. Biofuels can be substituted for fossil fuels and are seen by advocates as a way of ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Corporations Team Up to Cut Supply Chain Emissions
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46520/story.htm
Reuters: Eleven of the world's largest companies are teaming up to see how they can work with thousands of their suppliers to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a green consultancy said on Sunday. Cadbury Schweppes, Dell, Nestle, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble and Tesco are amongst the companies in the scheme, called the Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration (SCLC). The venture is being coordinated by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a UK-based non-profit organisation that helps ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Economists help climate scientists to improve global warming forecasts
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/umwelt_naturschutz/bericht-101554.html
Innovations Report: Climate scientists are collaborating with experts in economic theory to improve their forecasting models and assess more accurately the impact of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Although there is broad consensus that there will be a significant rise in average global temperature, there is great uncertainty over the extent of the change, and the implications for different regions. Greater accuracy is urgently needed to provide a sound basis for major policy decisions and to ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU carbon plans seen hurting coal plants
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL2155945220080121
Reuters: European Commission proposals to be published on Wednesday will force power generators to pay for carbon-emissions permits and could chop profits at companies which burn coal to produce electricity, analysts said on Monday. That in turn could re-open a debate about how Europe can safeguard its future energy supplies, especially as Germany plans to phase out nuclear power. "For PPC (Public Power Corp) in Greece and Drax in Britain you could see a more than 50 percent cut in ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU climate change plans to cost 60 billion euros: Barroso
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iAPPqQWjK6iTAOVLv3TTRe_S7aTA
Agence France-Presse: European Union plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions could cost at least 60 billion euros (86.6 billion dollars) a year, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Monday. "Taking action is not cost free, although we think we can limit the cost of our proposals to around 0.5 percent of gross domestic product," he said, according to remarks prepared for delivery in London. Barroso's total estimate, which will apply for the next 12 years, counts on the 27 EU ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU to Set Easier CO2 Regime for Heavy Industries
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46516/story.htm
Reuters: Europe's steel, aluminium and cement industries will have a special, less strict regime for greenhouse gas emissions under European Commission proposals to fight climate change to be announced this week. After weeks of intense lobbying by business and governments, EU sources said on Sunday those three energy-intensive industries would be introduced more slowly into a new system for auctioning permits to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) from 2013. The sources insisted on anonymity ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Everyone's profiting from carbon offsets. Too bad the environment isn't
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080121.RAGENDAMORGAN21_ART_1851/TPStory/Business
Globe and Mail: A cartoon in The New York Times brilliantly captured the mentality behind the latest green trend. It showed a man kneeling at the confessional praying, "Forgive me, but I have SUV'd." The minister takes the proffered bag of money and replies, "Go thy way, thy sins are offset." You too can be forgiven of your carbon emitting sins and achieve the exalted status of being "carbon neutral" without trading in your SUV or cancelling that overseas vacation. It ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Green energy to cost up to £6bn a year
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7fb8f43c-c877-11dc-94a6-0000779fd2ac.html
Financial Times: Delivering the UK's contribution to the European Union's renewables target is expected to cost £2.25bn-£6bn a year, a government study has found. The European Commission will unveil tomorrow the details of its plan to generate 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. As the UK lags behind most other EU member states, getting less than 2 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, it is expected to be set a lower-than-average target of about 15 per cent. José ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Greenpeace blames India for going slow on "Ban the Bulb" campaign
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News_by_Industry/Greenpeace_blames_India_for_going_slow_on_Ban_the_Bulb_campaign/articleshow/2717612.cms
Economic Times: International environmental watchdog Greenpeace has blamed New Delhi for not doing enough to press the "Ban the Bulb" campaign. Holding banners and black balloons, Greenpeace activists marched through the capital on Sunday to protest the tardy progress on global warming. Greenpeace wants India to ban the use of incandescent bulbs. "We are staging this protest to remind Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh that seven months have lapsed and year has also ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Japan to propose 2000 as post-Kyoto base year: report
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxVEKjyBTj2yZGdKKbJZopVm9Ppw
Agence France-Presse: Japan will propose setting 2000 as the reference year for future greenhouse gas emission cuts in a bid to bring more countries aboard a post-Kyoto Protocol deal, a report said Monday. The Kyoto Protocol requires major developed nations to slash emissions causing global warming by an average of five percent from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will propose in a speech Saturday at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to switch the base ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Protecting Minnesota's changing northern forests
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/01/21/forests/?rsssource=1
Minnesota Public Radio: For trees, northern Minn. is something of a cross-roads. The state's hardwood forests blend north into pine and birch, and then, in the northeast lakes area into cold climate species like aspen and jack pine. Cold tolerant trees are a signature feature of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park. That is the southern stretch of the boreal forest, which continues north into Canada. However, according to researchers with the Nature Conservancy, the northern ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Rich countries grow at ecological expense of poor countries
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0121-economics.html
Mongabay: The costs of environmental degradation caused by rich countries are disproportionately falling on the world's poorest countries, reports an analysis published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Tallying the environmental costs of climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, agricultural intensification and expansion, deforestation, overfishing, and mangrove conversion from human activities over 1961-2000, University of California Berkeley researchers ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
States combat global warming
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/environment/2008-01-20-states-emissions_N.htm
USA Today: With proposals to cap greenhouse gas emissions stalled in Congress, more than half the states are moving aggressively to combat the pollution that causes global warming. This year, eight states are slated to release plans to slash emissions of the heat-trapping gases and at least several are likely to recommend specific reduction targets, say state officials and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Seventeen states already have such targets in place. States are deploying ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Sun Rises Slowly on China's Solar Energy Sector
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46532/story.htm
Reuters: Solar power equipment makers will have to wait another half-decade or so before China, one of the world's fastest-growing but most polluted economies, becomes a major market for them alongside Europe. But many are already preparing. A bevy of US-listed Chinese firms such as SunTech Power and foreign players such as Applied Materials Inc are starting to expand capacity in China, ploughing billions of dollars into factories across the country to capitalise on Beijing's ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Trees Lost to Katrina May Present Climate Challenge
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17814049&ft=1&f=1007
National Public Radio: Almost everyone has heard about Hurricane Katrina's toll on the residents of New Orleans. But Gulf Coast trees also took a wallop. Hundreds of millions of trees were destroyed or badly damaged and have become an unexpectedly large contributor to global warming, according to new research. In fact, trees killed by Katrina will release about as much global warming pollution into the air as all the trees across the nation soak in over the course of one year, according to a study by Jeff ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
US warns EU against using environment for protectionism
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5grgs-sW0nQ78bD3C0Od1q1Jc70kA
Agence France-Presse: US Trade Representative Susan Schwab warned Europe on Monday against using environmental issues as an excuse for protectionism amid disputes ranging from biotechnology to greenhouse gas emissions. "We have been dismayed at a variety of suggestions where we see climate or the environment being used as an excuse to close markets," Schwab said after talks with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. She said it was "imperative" to "work with our colleagues ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Big Business Ponders a Low-Carbon Diet
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40868
Inter Press Service: With a tax on carbon emissions appearing to be inevitable, some of the world's largest corporations will be asking their suppliers to report on their carbon emissions as part of future reduction efforts. "Investors are demanding that companies know what their carbon emissions are and consumers want companies to be green," said Paul Dickinson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an independent not-for-profit organisation in Britain that is coordinating the effort. "A ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
California flood risks are 'disaster waiting to happen
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/umwelt_naturschutz/bericht-101629.html
Innovations Report: While flooding in California's Central Valley is "the next big disaster waiting to happen," water-related infrastructure issues confront almost every community across the country, according to engineers at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering in separate reports to California officials and in the journal Science. An independent review panel chaired by Clark School Research Professor of Civil Engineering Gerald E. Galloway said the area between the ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Call to abandon biofuels targets
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7199073.stm
BBC: The EU should abandon its biofuels targets because they are damaging the environment, a committee of MPs says. The Environmental Audit Committee says biofuels are ineffective at cutting greenhouse gases and can be expensive. It also says problematic emissions from cars can be cut more cheaply and with lower environmental risk. The report comes in the week the EU launches a huge, over-arching climate change strategy which includes rules aimed at reducing damage from ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
Climate Laws May Be Used to Limit Exports, Group of 77 Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=a9HLNKV3Ne8E&refer=australia
Bloomberg: The Group of 77 developing nations, representing about two-thirds of the world's population, said it is concerned that climate-protection laws will be used to curb their exports to rich nations. The G77, which includes China, India and 128 other nations, was ``reasonably satisfied'' with an agreement hammered out last month in United Nations climate talks on the island of Bali, Indonesia, said Munir Akram, a Pakistan ambassador and spokesman for the group. Developing nations ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU seeking greener energy but nuclear option fuels dissent
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iJ54A88pIN0Eo_Ye6Ov6sjahD-RA
Agence France-Presse: The European Commission will on Wednesday unveil detailed plans to slash greenhouse gases by 2020, with the focus on renewable fuels and emissions trading, despite French attempts to push the nuclear option. France has recently been joined by Britain at the forefront of the pro-nuclear lobby, extolling it as a more reliable, less polluting fuel supply which cuts down on Europe's huge dependence on Russia and the Middle East for increasingly scarce and expensive fossil ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU to spend parts of emission auction proceeds on climate technology - report
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/01/21/afx4553331.html
Thomson Financial: The European Union plans to spend about a fifth of the proceeds from auctioning off emission rights on research into renewable energy sources and underground storage of carbon dioxide, Financial Times Deutschland reported, without saying where it got the information. Parts of the money would also be spent on preventing deforestation in developing countries, the newspaper said. The EU Commission is currently pressing member states to back the plan, the paper ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
EU's Barroso says 'ready for criticism' over climate change package
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/01/21/afx4554660.html
Thomson Financial: European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU executive is 'ready for criticism' from national politicians over its climate change proposals to be presented on Wednesday. Speaking in London, Barroso said he hopes member states will react positively to proposals which they agreed to in March but is 'ready for criticism from some national politicians'. As part of its package, the commission will propose an EU-wide cap on carbon dioxide emissions so that by 2020 ...
Mon, 21 Jan 08
India: High cost of solar power generation hindering growth
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/004200801211968.htm
Press Trust of India: The high cost of solar power generation in the country was the main factor hindering the growth of the sector, a top official of the ministry of new and renewable energy, said on Monday. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an international conference on solar cells, V Subramanian, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said the department had launched a demonstration project to support setting up a megawatt capacity grid connected solar power generation plants in the ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Biofuels 'do more harm than good'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/20/biofuels.renewableenergy
Guardian: Controversial plans to make cars greener by using fuel made from crops and animal fat will be thrown into doubt this week when MPs are expected to question whether they will do more harm than good. Biofuels have been hailed as a green alternative to oil by some, but in the US, where there are massive plants converting maize (corn), it has been criticised for making food more expensive and being environmentally unfriendly. From April, petrol and diesel sold in the UK must have ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Dark side of a hot biofuel
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/647848.html
Sacramento Bee: Every morning, the cage doors swing open and 34 orangutan orphans climb into the outstretched arms of their human mothers. Grabbing at wrists, tugging at elbows, these baby apes cling to the young women like Velcro, happy to be free of their cages, to play in the dappled sun of the nearby forest for a few hours. It's primate day care, a scene that seems choreographed for the Animal Planet channel. But this spectacle of one hominid helping another is more than entertainment. It ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Ocean floor sensors will warn of failing Gulf Stream
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/20/climatechange.meteorology
Observer: An armada of robot submarines and marine sensors are to be deployed across the Atlantic, from Florida to the Canary Islands, to provide early warning that the Gulf Stream might be failing, an event that would trigger cataclysmic freezing in Britain for decades. The £16m system, called Rapid Watch, will use the latest underwater monitoring techniques to check whether cold water pouring south from melting Arctic ice sheets is diverting the current's warm waters away from Britain. ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
When it comes to keeping the ocean healthy, we can be part of the solution
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/012008/out_20080120003.shtml
Juneau Empire: Most of us are unaware that the health of the ocean underlies all life - even a cactus can't live without the ocean. And almost everyone is unaware that this basis of life on earth is dying. Many marine biologists now call their work "documenting the decline." The ocean provides at least 70 percent of the world's oxygen. Sylvia Earle, a world-renowned oceanographer and director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for many years, puts this figure at 85 percent. ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
British PM visits India in trade and climate change push
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iBJ4Z71MJsUrC0FyTkzTdJpUtM7A
Agence France-Presse: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived Sunday in India from China, looking for movement from New Delhi on tackling climate change while also building on strong trade and investment links. The prime minister's first visit to New Delhi since taking office last June was expected to follow the themes seen in Beijing and Shanghai, where he said Sino-British relations had risen to new levels across the board. Relations between India and the former colonial power are "at ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Brown tackles climate change in China
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/01/20/2003398039
Agence France-Presse: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to China switched to environmental issues yesterday, as he sought to boost cooperation between the two nations on tackling climate change, senior Downing Street officials said. Brown, whose focus on Friday was on furthering business links with the world's fastest-growing economy, was looking to secure backing for a new global deal on fighting greenhouse gas emissions for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. How Britain can help ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Global warming bear campaign is cold comfort for Inuit
http://news.scotsman.com/world/Global-warming-bear-campaign-is.3691618.jp
Scotsman: LEADERS of Canada's Arctic Inuit people have criticised US environmentalists for pushing Washington to declare the polar bear a threatened species. The move is unnecessary and would hurt the economy of the far north of the country, the residents of the remote Nunavut territory claim. The US has delayed a decision on whether global warming threatened polar bears on the grounds that it needed more time to analyse data. Three US green groups said they would sue for quicker ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Japan follows Europe by tapping offshore wind for power
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKT10204120080120
Reuters: Overlooking a mountain lake a few hours drive from Tokyo, dozens of tall wind turbines spin in the breeze creating carbon-free power for the world's fifth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. A sudden change in breeze spins the turbines in a different direction, an apt symbol of Japan's efforts to shift away from fossil fuels for renewable energy such as wind power to help cut its greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Wind farms such as the Nunobiki Plateau Wind ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Report warns of rise in Mediterranean
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/01/20/report_warns_of_rise_in_mediterranean/3031/
United Press International: Both sea levels and temperatures in the Mediterranean have been rising since the 1970s, Spanish scientists report. The study, "Climate Change in the Spanish Mediterranean," warned that the pace of change has picked up in the past decade, the BBC reported. Researchers at the Spanish Oceanographic Institute predict the Mediterranean could rise half a meter (19.5 inches) in the next half-century. The report said rising sea levels could cause major problems in low-lying ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
To work, carbon tax must sting
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Environment/article/295677
Toronto Star: Most Canadians tell pollsters they're concerned about climate change. Many insist they'd like to do something about it, and would even pay for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But propose actual cash amounts – 25 cents a litre on gasoline, perhaps, or a $10 daily commuter toll – and support evaporates. "Once you put a price on it, people tend to think twice about it and say, `Maybe not,'" says Mario Canseco of Angus Reid Strategies, which surveyed about ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Why green power has left us all in the dark
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/20/renewableenergy.carbonemissions
Observer: Once we were offered an easy way to help save the planet: ask an electricity provider to supply you with power from renewable sources and you would reduce carbon emissions and so tackle climate change. But doing the right thing has turned out to be more complicated. There are growing concerns that 'green tariffs' reduce carbon emissions by far less than promised - a point accepted even by government. Supporters still argue they are worthwhile because they boost demand for renewable ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Brown hails environmental work with China
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKPEK32893920080120
Reuters: Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed a new era of environmental cooperation between Britain and China on Saturday and called for a renewed drive for a world trade deal. Brown visited a highly efficient gas-fired power station in Beijing and studied the plans for an environmentally friendly town to be built near Shanghai to underline his keenness to cooperate with China on fighting global warming. "We now enter this new era of environmental cooperation," Brown told a ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
EU to set Finland 38 pct renewables goal-report
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7239865
Reuters: The European Commission will ask Finland to increase its renewable energy output by around a third to 38 percent in draft proposals to be unveiled next week, Finnish public broadcaster YLE said on Saturday. The Commission is due to spell out on Wednesday how it intends to cut greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change, share out the burden of cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) and increase the use of renewable energy sources. "According to information obtained by ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
German farmers cultivate ways to fight global warming
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gU1rS1sJ2SgDLIbwGmhYRkNJ7raw
Agence France-Presse: German farmers attending a week-long agricultural fair -- dubbed Green Week -- are divided on their level of responsibility for the environment and the best methods to fight global warming. The image of a farmer in harmony with nature has long prevented a hard look at the sector's contribution to climate change, notably when farming is compared with much more visibly polluting activities such as the chemical and steel industries and their iconic smokestacks. Farmers are also ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Canada: Planned carbon tax endangers BC's fragile economy
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/editorial/story.html?id=cade30f5-80f2-4076-9e8b-c1654df274ed
Province: It should by now be clear to everyone that, despite the rosy projections of some politicians, B.C.'s economy faces a rough ride this year, due mainly to troubles south of the border. The spillover into Canada of the U.S. subprime mortgage debacle poses a real and present danger to our standard of living. It has battered the assets of some of our major financial institutions. And it is savaging the bottom line of key export industries. It is all very well for Carole ...
Sun, 20 Jan 08
Rising temperatures in California attributed to human activities
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/209215.php/Rising-temperatures-in-California-attributed-to-human-activities
ANI: A new research by scientists has shown that the temperatures in the state of California in US have risen by more than 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit between 1915 and 2000, largely because of human activities. The research, which was conducted at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of California, Merced and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, used data from up to eight different observational records to come up with the findings. According to the ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
An Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91632
New York Times: Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia's largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material. This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
Arctic ice may vanish due to warming
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Arctic_ice_may_vanish_due_to_warming/articleshow/2714083.cms
Times of India: A new study using satellite measurements has revealed that thick Arctic sea ice older than nine years, had all but disappeared by 2007, because of global warming. According to a report in Discovery News , this older ice is giving way to thinner ice which is only two or three years old. In fact, the new ice now accounts for 58 percent of the ice cover - up from 35 percent in the mid-1980s. "The thinning is consistent with long-term warming," said ice researcher James ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
China takes climate change seriously, says British PM
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/calgarybusiness/story.html?id=095068a7-1b54-459e-8151-16f13a423d77
Calgary Herald: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said after meeting his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao that the Chinese premier wants to take action on climate change. Brown, who travelled to Shanghai on Friday after meeting Wen in Beijing, pointed to the damage to China from global warming. The Chinese government recently warned that melting Himalayan glaciers could lead to food and water shortages. "He takes seriously the problem of climate change," Brown told the British ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
Details of Norway's national climate policy agreement
http://www.norwaypost.no/cgi-bin/norwaypost/imaker?id=126468
Norway Post: He says the agreement on climate policy is a sign of Norway's willingness to move forward the target year for becoming carbon-neutral from 2050 to 2030. By doing so, Norway is showing that it is willing to lead the way by setting itself ambitious climate targets. Here are some of the details of the agreement: The parties believe that it is realistic to assume that Norway's annual greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by 15–17 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents by 2020 when ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
EU demands action from Germany on climate goals
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL193227820080119
Reuters: Germany must take concrete steps to tackle global warming instead of protesting when it comes to implementing planned measures, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was quoted as saying on Saturday. In an interview with German magazine WirtschaftsWoche, Barroso hit back against German protests about the Commission's proposals to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). "We agreed on climate policy goals in the EU -- under the German presidency by the way," ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
From Detroit, a Biofuel Breakout
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011702306.html
Washington Post: There were snickers aplenty here last week when General Motors joined hands with an Illinois company to announce a major biofuels initiative. Cynics in the audience at the 2008 North American International Auto Show joked that the union between giant GM and relatively small Coskata has about as much chance of succeeding as a Hollywood marriage. Others found smug comfort in the theory that the whole GM-Coskata affair was little more than a green publicity stunt. Admittedly, on ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
India: Green plan with solar energy
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEQ20080118224936&Page=Q&Title=ORISSA&Topic=0
Express News Service: The ambitious Local Renewables Model Communities Network Project undertaken by BMC to reduce conventional energy consumption by tapping solar energy in the city has been extended by another two years. The programme, being implemented with the active support of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), would see several energy efficient measures like exploitation of solar energy in illuminating streets, parks, running campuses, buildings and traffic ...
Sat, 19 Jan 08
India to stand up to Brown on climate change
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hgfE0llwrvKYvOJonWeQiBMEPp1Q
Agence France-Presse: India will put aside differences with Britain over cutting carbon emissions to pursue closer ties in trade, education and counter-terrorism during a state visit by Prime Minister Gordon Brown starting Sunday, officials said. Brown arrives in New Delhi from China for a two-day visit -- his first official trip to the region since moving into Downing Street last year. Indian foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said the British premier's talks with Indian leaders would cover ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Climate change forces car manufacturing rethink
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/18/2141215.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The head of car giant General Motors has publicly warned the switch to biofuels such as ethanol and electric cars is now inevitable and with oil prices at record highs, motorists may soon become familiar with the phrase "peak oil". It is the theory that more than half the planet's oil reserves have now been used and demand will inevitably outstrip supply, driving prices ever higher. While some experts reject the theory, arguing the planet still holds enormous ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Misery for millions as temperatures plummet across the Middle East
http://news.scotsman.com/world/Misery-for-millions-as-temperatures.3686898.jp
Scotsman: THE Middle East is shivering amid exceptionally low temperatures that have left at least ten people dead in Saudi Arabia alone and killed countless livestock and damaged crops across a region usually associated with sun-baked deserts. Some have had cause to cheer. Children in several countries have been enjoying days of fun after icy temperatures forced the closure of schools. And snow has fallen in Baghdad for the first time in living memory. But the severe cold snap, caused ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
United States: Decide on polar bears first, then oil: lawmaker
http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/29533
Reuters: The U.S. government must decide first if polar bears are threatened by climate change before it opens part of their icy habitat to oil drilling, the head of a congressional environment panel said on Thursday. The decision whether to list the big Arctic bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act was supposed to happen last week but was postponed for up to 30 days. That means it could come after the government offers 29.4 million acres in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Brazil: Destruction of rainforest accelerates despite outcry
http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3348001.ece
Independent: The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has surged in the past four months, raising the prospect of 2008 being a disastrous year for the world's most important eco-system, a senior Brazilian government scientist has warned. Dr Carlos Nobre, a scientist with a government agency that monitors the Amazon said thousands of square miles of rainforest had been destroyed since October, after four years in which deforestation rates had begun to slow. "I think the past four months ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
EU pollution plan threatens million jobs
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pollution/EU_pollution_plan_threatens_million_jobs/articleshow/2711336.cms
Agence France-Presse: German industrialists estimate that one million jobs are threatened in Germany by European Union plans to fight global warming, a sector leader said on Friday in an interview. "If the German government enacts its 2020 goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 per cent, I estimate that one million jobs are threatened," Federation of German Industries (BDI) president Juergen Thumann told the daily Rheinische Post. "Sectors such as chemicals and steel in ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Global carbon trade rose 80 percent last year: group
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKN1832831820080118
Reuters: Trade in the world greenhouse gas emissions market rose 80 percent last year as climate change became a greater concern for more companies, a carbon analysis said on Friday. Global carbon credit trade rose to $60 billion in 2007, from $33 billion the previous year, according to Point Carbon. Total traded volume in the global market reached 2.7 billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions reductions in 2007, a 64 percent jump in the same period. The UN's climate panel last year ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Targets no panacea for climate change: Japan advisor
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUST4013320080118
Reuters: Setting targets for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions is not the only solution to global warming nor a gauge of a country's commitment in fighting it, an advisor to Japan's government said, dismissing criticism that Tokyo's leadership on the issue was too weak. Japanese media have reported that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda will present a goal for Japan to reduce carbon emissions beyond the 2012 expiry of the Kyoto Protocol at a meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Texas is world's seventh biggest polluter
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/18/eatexas118.xml
Telegraph: A love affair with vast, gas-guzzling 4x4 vehicles and contempt for environmental activism has helped Texas become the world's seventh biggest polluter. The challenge facing the green lobby in America is illustrated by the latest figures for the Lone Star state from the US Energy Information Administration. In 2003, Texas pumped 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - more than countries including Britain and more than that of California and ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
The global grain bubble
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080118/cm_csm/efood
Christian Science Monitor: Record prices for grain from corn to rice have ignited food riots from Jakarta to Rome. In Pakistan, troops now guard wheat stocks. China and Russia have imposed price controls. Connect the dots and there's a need for a fix to a crisis that, strangely, isn't caused by smaller harvests. No, the main reasons for a long-term bubble in grain prices lie largely in a number of dubious human actions, related to heightened competition for grain as either fuel or feed. One reason is an ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
The politics of coal
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-coalside18jan18,1,4689013.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
LA Times: Washington politics has played a key role in both the nation's rush toward coal-fired energy and the current pullbacks and delays. During his 2000 run for the White House, George W. Bush promised to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, curbing emissions that contribute to climate change. But he reversed course shortly after taking office in 2001, saying that Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy task force had advised against it. Bush campaign strategist and ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Carbon Capture Remains Elusive
http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/carbon_capture_remains_elusive/C69/L37/
New West: The U.S. Department of Energy will fund a 10-year, $38 million project to study the long-term storage of carbon dioxide in deep geologic formations on the Gulf Coast. For the next 18 months, the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas will pump about a million tons a year of CO2 into brine formations up to 10,000 feet below ground, near the Cranfield oil field about 15 miles east of Natchez, Miss. Part of DOE's 10-year Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Program, ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
EU urged to watch biofuel costs
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CF270C78-D3AE-4873-A8CE-EDE953CA3BAE.htm
Agence France-Presse: An internal European commission study has criticised a European Union (EU) plan to boost the use of biofuels in transport, concluding that their costs outweigh the benefits. A commission spokesman downplayed the study and insisted that the use of biofuels remained at the centre of its strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. The unpublished working paper was written by the joint research centre, the commission's in-house scientific body. It comes ahead of a ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
United States: Protect polar bears, not oil corporations
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_8006777?nclick_check=1
San Jose Mercury News: The polar bear has become an icon of global warming, often pictured amid sheets of melting Arctic ice. Now Ursus maritimus has become a flash point, not just a symbol, in the climate change debate. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a year ago to list the polar bear as a threatened species because its habitat is rapidly melting away. But on the eve of a final decision, the agency on Jan. 7 postponed it by up to a month. Conveniently for the oil-centric Bush ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Sun rises slowly on China's solar energy sector
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7236380
Reuters: Solar power equipment makers will have to wait another half-decade or so before China, one of the world's fastest-growing but most polluted economies, becomes a major market for them alongside Europe. But many are already preparing. A bevy of U.S.-listed Chinese firms such as SunTech Power and foreign players such as Applied Materials Inc are starting to expand capacity in China, ploughing billions of dollars into factories across the country to capitalise on Beijing's ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Tourism at the End of the World
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40837
Inter Press Service: Hurry! Hurry! See the polar bears, penguins, Arctic glaciers, small pacific islands before they disappear forever due to global warming. Tourism companies are now using climate change as a marketing tool: Visit the pacific island paradise of Tuvalu before rising sea levels swallow it in the next 30 to 50 years. See the Arctic while there is still ice and polar bears. "Some companies are using climate change as a marketing pitch, a 'see it now before it's gone' kind of ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
U.S. key factor in new climate deal - Danish minister
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7236826
Reuters: Whether the long road from last year's Bali climate summit to the 2009 Copenhagen gathering ends with a binding deal to replace Kyoto depends crucially on the United States, according to the Danish climate minister. "I think that the United States, and getting the United States to move, is the key to also get China and India moving," Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard told Reuters in an interview this week. The UN climate summit in Bali late last ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
UK set for 15% renewables target
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7195420.stm
BBC: The European Union is expected to tell the UK that 15% of energy needs must be met from renewable sources by 2020. The figure, currently about 2%, will include all energy used for heating and cooling buildings. Experts have called the target challenging because they say heating and cooling are hard to achieve on a mass scale using renewable fuels. The EU, which is trying to create a low-carbon economy in Europe, will announce its decision next week. Tough but ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Zealous nuclear France may be vulnerable at home
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7236433
Reuters: France hopes its prized nuclear industry will be the model for the worldwide renaissance of atomic power, but its reliance on one energy source could leave it vulnerable at home. President Nicolas Sarkozy has placed the French nuclear industry at the heart of his foreign policy. "I am convinced that we need to help those countries on the road to development ... If they have the wisdom to chose French technology it's even better," Sarkozy has said. Chief ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Canada: Alberta premier says oilsands cleaning up its carbon record
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=3796d4c0-9334-4ec7-8b94-3b7117f6a498&k=76176
Canwest News Service: Alberta Premier Stelmach predicted Thursday that the oilsands will be clean enough for any green-fuel standards that California, Washington or other U.S. governments impose. As U.S. activists and even policy-makers grow increasingly wary of the Alberta resource's massive environmental footprint, the premier continued to insist Thursday that critics are seriously misinformed. A day earlier, he expressed fear that California's low-carbon fuel standard will "penalize" ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
United States: Demanding greenhouse curbs
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.warming18jan18,0,2180007.story?coll=bal_tab01_layout
Baltimore Sun: Snow fell on a global warming protest outside the State House yesterday, but it did not dampen the shouts of about 400 activists who urged lawmakers to pass the nation's toughest law to control greenhouse gases. As supporters waved signs, chanted and banged drums, 18 legislators walked down a symbolic green carpet to sign up as co-sponsors of a bill that would require all businesses and institutions in Maryland to cut emissions of global warming pollution by 90 percent by ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
EU climate policy 'too negative'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7194250.stm
BBC: Green groups have accused the European Union of planning for failure in global climate change negotiations. Europe's leaders promised last year to cut greenhouse gases by 20% by the end of the next decade, or by 30% if other big polluters made similar efforts. But a draft document seen by BBC News shows that the European Commission is asking member states to just plan for the lower figure for the time being. Campaigners say the lower target could harm the EU's ...
Fri, 18 Jan 08
Forests, carbon capture keys to climate-Norway PM
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL18833483.html
Reuters: Protecting forests and burying greenhouse gases are key ways of slowing world climate change, Norway's prime minister said on Friday a day after the Nordic nation set a stiff 2030 goal of becoming "carbon neutral". Jens Stoltenberg, in South Africa on a stopover before a weekend trip to Antarctica, said about half the world's emissions of greenhouse gases came from deforestation and from burning fossil fuels in power plants and industries. "Forestry and carbon ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Australia: Coral destruction by starfish spreads
http://www.theage.com.au/news/climate-watch/coral-destruction-by-starfish-spreads/2008/01/16/1200419885338.html
Age: A CORAL killer that has wreaked havoc along the Great Barrier Reef is threatening part of the "coral triangle" – the world's richest centre of coral reef biodiversity. Marine surveys in Halmahera, Indonesia, last month revealed the crown of thorns starfish has almost completely destroyed some of the region's stunning reefs. The predatory starfish feeds on corals by spreading its stomach over them and secreting an enzyme that breaks down the coral tissue. About ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Global food shortages 'avoidable' say experts
http://news.sbs.com.au/worldnewsaustralia/global_food_shortages_39avoidable39_say_experts_538274
Special Broadcasting Service: The world's population now eats more food than it produces, leading to fears of global shortages which could prompt famines and even war. But experts say that given the right research and technology, the damaging effects of a lack of food could be lessened, and even avoided altogether. Australians have already seen the drought push up the prices of meat, dairy products, fruit and vegetables – and those price rises could be about to get much worse. "This brings ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Green-tech investment topped $5 billion in 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/fundsFundsNews/idUSN168041920080117
Reuters: Investments in environmentally friendly "clean-tech" companies rose 44 percent to more than $5 billion last year as soaring oil prices, climate change concerns and government incentives boosted interest in renewable energy, an industry group said. The Cleantech Group LLC, whose members include venture capital firms, investment banks, and other investors, on Thursday said 2007 venture investment in the alternative energy market in North America and Europe was $5.18 billion, ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Scientist says Amazon deforestation surging again
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN169836020080117
Reuters: Deforestation of the Amazon has surged in recent months and is likely to rise in 2008 for the first time in four years, a senior Brazilian government scientist said on Wednesday. The rise raises questions over Brazil's assertion that its environmental policies are effectively protecting the world's biggest rain forest, whose destruction is a major source of carbon emissions that drive global warming. "I think the last four months is a big concern for the government and now ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Solar Industry Faces More Supply, Falling Prices
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46472/story.htm
Reuters: The booming solar power sector is about to get squeezed by the age-old laws of supply and demand. Solar energy companies are scrambling to ramp up production amid skyrocketing interest in renewable energy, but the pendulum is swinging quickly toward oversupply. That places a few players in the sector, including Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd, First Solar Inc, as well as Q-Cells and SolarWorld AG, in the best position to benefit from the changing dynamics, analysts said. ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
New research raises concern on biofuel safety
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0117/p04s01-wogi.html
Christian Science Monitor: Creating fuel from plants seems like a win-win proposition. It reduces dependence on foreign oil, and it doesn't produce the greenhouse gases that cause global warming – at least that's what advocates claim. But biofuels are not without their critics. Some recent research suggests bio fuels could have a greater environmental impact – biodiversity loss, destruction of farmland, and the energy necessary to produce them, for example – than burning fossil fuels, reports The Guardian, a ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Norway says aims to go carbon neutral by 2030
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7233176
Reuters: The Norwegian government has reached an agreement with three opposition parties to bring forward a goal for Norway to go "carbon neutral" to 2030 from an earlier target of 2050, officials said on Thursday. The Labour-led government said last year that Norway would aim to cut net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to nil by 2050 by reducing emissions at home and investing abroad in environmental projects that will give Norway CO2 credits. The parties agreed to set the ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Canada: Oilsands boycott bad for U.S., premier warns
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=dea9494d-660d-439a-95e9-a6c041de63ee
Edmonton Journal: U.S. politicians will hurt their country's hopes of escaping addiction to oil from politically unstable regions if they move against Alberta's oilsands and their environmental impact, Premier Ed Stelmach warned a Washington, D.C., audience on Wednesday. If Americans don't want the lucrative but hard-to-produce resource and try to limit development, countries such as China and India will happily take it, he cautioned in his first foreign speech as premier. It was a message he ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Yangtze hit by drought in China
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7193252.stm
BBC: China is facing its worst drought in a decade, with water in parts of the Yangtze River at the lowest level in 142 years, state media has reported. Millions of people were short of water, and dozens of ships had run aground in the river since October, reports said. Officials said low water levels in the Yangtze were not linked to construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam. China faces droughts and floods annually but has seen a recent increase in extreme weather ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
2007 was tied as Earth's second warmest year
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200801171543.htm
Hindu: Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century. Goddard Institute researchers used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years. The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Atomic power regains its glow
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0117/p08s01-comv.html
Christian Science Monitor: More than two decades after the Chernobyl meltdown, the world again is staring uneasily at the Janus faces of nuclear power. One offers an energy source that won't cause global warming. The other presents challenges in cost, safety, disposal, and nuclear proliferation. Rising energy prices, and especially the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels that pour out greenhouse gases, have put a fresh focus on nuclear power. "We are facing a nuclear renaissance," the head of a ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Eco homes: Sun setting on solar power?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/main.jhtml?xml=/property/2008/01/17/lpgreen117.xml
Telegraph: David Street's house in Nightingale Road, Stoke Newington, is the kind of new home all builders should be constructing. That is if we are to stand any chance of meeting the Government's target to reduce carbon emissions from housing by 60 per cent by 2050. And Friends of the Earth say that is too low - it should be 80 per cent. Unlike its wasteful Victorian neighbours, Mr Street's home consumes approximately two thirds less energy than a conventional house, has ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Insurance premiums continue to rise as flood waters threaten again
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jan/17/homeinsurance.insurance
Guardian: Last year's floods have pushed up the cost of home insurance premiums, research showed today, as more homeowners began mopping up after this week's severe weather. The AA said the floods that hit areas of Yorkshire and Gloucestershire last summer and displaced around 14,500 families had resulted in £750m worth of insurance claims on residential property - costs that insurers were passing on in higher average prices for buildings and contents insurance. Over the past three ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Canada: Ottawa moves to emulate U.S. on new fuel mileage standards
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080117.FUEL17TOR/TPStory/Environment
Globe and Mail: Ottawa will impose new fuel economy standards on auto makers that will match recently enacted U.S. regulations that environmentalists have criticized as being too weak. Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon will announce this morning that Canada wants auto makers' fleets to average the equivalent of 35 miles a gallon by 2020, sources said after a meeting with federal officials on the plan last night. "Their broad goal is to meet the U.S. standard," one source said after ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
China: Three-year plan to renovate nation's dams
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-01/17/content_6400363.htm
China Daily: Global warming and extreme weather conditions have contributed to the deterioration of almost half of the country's 87,000 aging dams, a senior water official has said. Many of the structures were built between the 1950s and 70s, and their construction quality is quickly degrading. "Roughly 37,000 dams across the country are in a dangerous state," Deputy Water Resources Minister Jiao Yong told a national teleconference organized by the State Council and broadcast live ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
As new coal-power plants boom, environmentalists launch legal assault to stop projects
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/01/17/0117coal.html
Associated Press: In federal and state courtrooms across the country, environmental groups are putting coal-fueled power plants on trial in a bid to slow the industry's biggest construction boom in decades. At least four dozen coal plants are being contested in 29 states, according to a recent tally by The Associated Press. The targeted utilities range from giants like Energy Future Holdings Corp., (formerly TXU), Peabody Energy Corp. and American Electric Power Inc. down to small rural ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Cap and trade not enough to cut carbon -Goldman
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7234949
Reuters: Capping and trading carbon emissions will not be enough to fight output of the gases blamed for warming the planet, the managing director of Goldman Sachs' U.S. carbon emissions desk said on Thursday. The bank's carbon head Ken Newcombe was emphatic that cap and trade has huge potential in the United States, the world's largest energy consumer. But government research and development budgets should also be boosted to complement cap and trade's potential to spur innovations and ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Rising Sea Levels Threaten China Cities
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hmOKbkq17ICe03DC7hRIFdrIhCtwD8U7G22O3
Associated Press: Sea levels off Shanghai and other Chinese coastal cities are rising at an alarming rate, leading to contamination of drinking water supplies and other threats, China's State Oceanic Administration reported Thursday. Waters off the industrial port city of Tianjin, 60 miles southeast of Beijing, rose by 7.72 inches over the past three decades, the administration said. Seas off the business hub of Shanghai have risen by 4.53 inches over the same period, the report ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Scientists offer grand plan for solar energy
http://www.wickedlocal.com/reading/news/lifestyle/columnists/x142928432
Reading Advocate: The energy solution may be sun and sand. No, I am not referring to a long relaxing vacation in Santo Domingo or swimming in Key West. I am referring to solar and silicon, two items that combine to make photo voltaics operate; more simply stated: Solar Energy. Ken Zweibel, James Mason, and Vasilis Fthenakis authored the cover feature in January's 2008 Scientific American magazine: "A Grand Plan for Solar Energy." And, grand it is. Their vision is for solar energy to provide 69 percent ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
California scores nearly half of North American green tech capital
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/17/BUHTUGFJM.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle: The flood of money flowing into green tech keeps rising. North American companies that create eco-friendly products raked in $3.95 billion in venture capital during 2007, up 38 percent from the year before, according to data an industry group will release today. California, as usual, scored the largest haul. Venture capitalists poured $1.79 billion into the Golden State's green companies last year, most of them in the Bay Area. That's 45 percent of all green investments in ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Canada plans to reduce car fuel consumption in 2011
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ixXPzO9zrIV07IMaXpjZbScFgKgg
Agence France-Presse: The Canadian government pledged Thursday to reduce fuel consumption in new cars and light trucks in 2011, but environmentalists demanded a more stringent plan to reduce carbon emissions. Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon said the government may set fuel efficiency standards similar to those to be adopted in the United States in 2020 or introduce its own regulations. "We made a commitment to implement fuel consumption regulations for the 2011 model year that are ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
China drought underlines hydropower reliance risks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7232739
Reuters: A major drought has squeezed electricity output at big dams across southwest China, highlighting the risks of Beijing's massive hydropower expansion plans on coal and oil markets in a warmer, drier world. Ships are stranded, millions are short on drinking water, and power supplies to big consumers in several Chinese provinces have been cut back, industry officials and local media have said. And while building more dams will help Beijing meet more of its electricity demand using ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
China's longest river at lowest in 142 years
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSPEK30130
Reuters: China's longest river, the Yangtze, is suffering from a severe drought this year with water levels in some areas falling to the lowest in 142 years, state media said on Thursday. China is suffering its worst drought in a decade, which has left millions of people short of drinking water and has shrunk reservoirs and rivers. Hardest hit are large swathes of the usually humid south, where water levels on several major rivers have plunged to historic lows in recent ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Clearing forests for energy crops
http://www.bangkokpost.com/News/17Jan2008_news99.php
Bangkok Post: As the surge in global oil prices appears unstoppable, governments and investors alike are scrambling to increase output of energy crops, oil palm in particular, to reduce dependence on fossil fuels or to boost biofuel exports for much-needed foreign exchange. Just as the oil-producing countries are reluctant to increase crude output which would certainly force prices down to a more realistic level, or at least make them more stable, the incentives provided by steadily rising oil ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Climate change clues sought in Antarctic lakes
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-01/17/content_7439726.htm
Xinhua: Scientists in search of clues to climate change have begun an exploration of a lake that lies deep beneath an Antarctic ice sheet. While an estimated 150 lakes have been discovered beneath the region, initial tests have revealed Lake Ellsworth has a depth of roughly 350 feet, making it an ideal spot to investigate microbial life and recover climate records, the researchers claim. "We are particularly interested in Lake Ellsworth because it's likely to have been isolated ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Climate Registry nears 1st US emissions reporting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7235262
Guardian: Aiming to get a jump on what they see as inevitable mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, 58 companies, cities and organizations have volunteered to report emissions to the Climate Registry, the nonprofit organization said on Thursday. "The Climate Registry is building the infrastructure and the (reporting guidelines) to get the companies, states and provincial programs started," said Diane Wittenberg, executive director of the Climate ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
United States: Climate Talk's Cancellation Splits a Town
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91556
New York Times: School authorities' cancellation of a talk that a Nobel laureate climate researcher was to have given to high school students has deeply divided this small farming and ranching town at the base of the east side of the Rocky Mountains. The scholar, Steven W. Running, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, was scheduled to speak to about 130 students here last Thursday about his career and the global changes occurring because of the earth's warming. Dr. Running was ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
EU scientists query bloc's biofuel strategy
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f09ceb44-c544-11dc-811a-0000779fd2ac.html
Financial Times: A plan to increase the use of biofuels in Europe, to be outlined next week, may do nothing to help fight climate change and incur costs that outweigh the benefits, says an internal European Union report. The unpublished study by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's in-house scientific institute, was prepared ahead of the commission's meeting next Wednesday when it is set to endorse plans for biofuels to account for 10 per cent of transport fuels in the 27-member EU by ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Australia: Experts warn of global food shortage, eat vegetables call
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23066930-661,00.html
Herald Sun: GLOBAL food shortages could become a reality within years because of climate change and the world's growing appetite for meat. The answer to the looming crisis? Eat more vegetables, according to leading expert. The continuing Australian drought, demand for meat and dairy products, and increased competition for land from crops grown for biofuel was expected to lead to food shortages and dramatic price increases across the globe, experts said today. The disturbing trends ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Plan to cut gas-guzzling hinges on political factors in U.S. and Canada
http://www.canadaeast.com/news/article/185881
Canadian Press: A federal push for new vehicle fuel-economy standards is unlikely to produce concrete results before several political cards fall into place on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. An auto industry insider scoffed at the "political timing" of a two-month consultation process launched Thursday aimed at reaching new rules for fuel economy. Tory Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon said the process will create rules starting in the 2011 model year that will aim to have ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Australia: Rudd again calls on US to ratify Kyoto
http://news.smh.com.au/rudd-again-calls-on-us-to-ratify-kyoto/20080117-1mju.html
AAP: Australia has again called on the US to ratify the Kyoto protocol ahead of its presence at a second round of climate change talks. US President George W Bush has invited Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and the United Nations to send representatives to the January 30-31 meeting in Hawaii. The meeting will discuss reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Scientists predict future Prairie droughts will worsen due to warmer temperatures
http://www.canadaeast.com/news/article/185883
Canadian Press: Researchers from Canada and the United States are sharing ideas this week in hopes of discovering better ways to predict the droughts that devastate crops across the Prairies - dry spells that may get even worse as the climate changes. "I think it's inevitable there will be some changes in droughts in the future," Rick Lawford, a professor at the University of Manitoba, said Thursday. "The warmer it is, the larger the transevaporation losses and the faster the ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Activists lament lack of action post-Bali
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91557
Jakarta Post: Environmental campaigners expressed regret Wednesday about the absence of concrete government action to follow up on the UN-sponsored Bali conference on climate change. Chalid Muhammad from the Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) said the public and activists should put more pressure on the government to take steps that will be effective in turning around human-induced global warming. "The Bali 'party' is over. We reap applause from the world as a good host of ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Australia: Climate change impact on farms under the microscope
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2007/s2140648.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A new study will find out how the drought is affecting farm families. It is part of a broader study by South Australia's Flinders University, looking at social effects of climate change on rural communities. Families will be questioned about how they have dealt with drought. Senior researcher Debra King hopes it will show where families need support. "We're really interested in the kinds of strategies they're using to maximise their livelihood, and their pleasure ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Heated debate as minister makes case for renewables
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Heated-debate-as-minister-.3686947.jp
Scotsman: SCOTLAND neither needs nor wants nuclear power stations, ministers claimed yesterday. JIM MATHER, the energy minister, opened the setpiece debate on power by arguing that Scotland's needs could be met by non-nuclear means. Mr Mather declared: "Our approach is clear – Scotland doesn't want or need new nuclear power. The facts are that we are already meeting a very large part of our energy needs from non-nuclear sources. "We have massive potential for exploiting ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Canada: Oilsands will be 'clean enough': Stelmach
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=6933dad2-0415-48df-8bdc-f60c41ce0326&k=73013
Edmonton Journal: Alberta Premier Stelmach predicted Thursday that the oilsands will be clean enough for any green-fuel standards that California, Washington or other U.S. governments impose. As U.S. activists and even policymakers grow increasingly wary of the massive environmental footprint of the oilsands, the premier insisted Thursday that critics are seriously misinformed. A day earlier, he expressed fear that California's low-carbon fuel standard will "penalize" Alberta oil ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
United States: Administration's credibility disappearing as fast as the rainforest
91633
Ocean City Sentinel: We're not impressed by the excuses why $1.2 million of Ocean City's specially-ordered rainforest wood hasn't arrived in the resort. Reason 1: the wood got stuck on a South American river. Reason 2: a logging truck overturned. Reason 3: the lower value of the American dollar slowed the process. Reason 4: a dingo ate the paperwork. (Okay, we made that one up.) These excuses come after months and months of Mayor Sal Perillo and Business Administrator James ...
Thu, 17 Jan 08
Internal EU report casts doubts on its biofuel strategy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080118/ts_afp/euenvironmentenergyemissionsbiofuels_080118201320
Agence France-Presse: An internal European Commission study, seen by AFP Friday, criticises an EU plan to boost the use of biofuels in transport, concluding that their costs outweigh the benefits. A Commission spokesman downplayed the study and insisted that the use of biofuels remained at the centre of its strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. The unpublished working paper by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's in-house scientific body, makes uncomfortable reading ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Brazil Farming Needs Decade to Stop Deforestation
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46439/story.htm
Reuters: Brazil's farm sector is only just realizing the need to protect the Amazon rain forest but it could be many years before deforestation stops, the agriculture minister said. Brazil's fast-growing agriculture business, one of the world's biggest food providers, is often blamed for much of the destruction of the Amazon. Government authorities, many farm product traders and some producers are beginning to accept the need to conserve the world's largest rain forest but appropriate ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
New test for developers in Maine: climate change
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0116/p01s04-wogi.html
Christian Science Monitor: A plan to build thousands of new homes next to a lake in Maine's north woods faces an environmental test that may one day challenge developers nationwide: What's the carbon footprint of a new subdivision or land development? At hearings last month, Maine environmentalists unveiled for state regulators what is being called a first-in-the-nation study of the greenhouse-gas emissions expected from a huge development planned for Maine's Moosehead Lake. Some observers call it a new front ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Climate change harming seas
http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/sri-lanka/science/climate-change-harming-seas-$1188521.htm
InTheNews.co.uk: Marine climate change is "one of the most serious threats facing" the UK, the Cabinet secretary for the environment said today. Richard Lochhead's comments follow the publication of a report detailing the effects of climate change on the UK's seas. The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) report card for 2007/08 said warmer winters have been strongly linked to reduced breeding success and survival in some seabird populations. Although fewer storms ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
EU's Barroso hits back at critics of climate plan
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL1671990020080116
Reuters: European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso hit back on Wednesday at criticism from member states and industry of planned radical proposals to fight climate change and save energy. A week before the European Union executive unveils a fiercely contested package of proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost renewable energy sources and promote biofuels, Barroso said the EU must "put our money where our mouth is." "We knew from the very beginning that ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
US recession, world food and water crisis top Davos agenda
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/174345,preview-us-recession-world-food-and-water-crisis-top-davos-agenda.html
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: The prospect of US recession and the crisis threatened by future food and water shortages as a result of climate change will top the list of subjects when global political and business leaders descend on the mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland next week. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice heads the list of more than 2,500 political and business leaders from 88 countries invited to attend the five-day annual meeting of the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, WEF, embracing the theme ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Australia: Global warming spreads disease
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20081601-16789-2.html
ScienceAlert: A study co-authored by a Charles Sturt University (CSU) scientist warns that climate change could have far-reaching negative impacts on the health of rural Australians. Professor Kevin Parton, Professor of Business (Strategic) at CSU's Orange Campus, says that the population of rural Australia may be subjected to new or intensified diseases because climate change will alter the distribution of some diseases. This is an opportune time to research this issue. "As 'vectors' that ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Study confirms Greenland ice sheet melt due to global warming
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=28998
Cordis: Global warming is behind the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, new research from an international team of glaciologists and climatologists confirms. The scientists, from the UK, Belgium, Denmark and the US, arrived at their conclusion after analysing glaciological and meteorological records going back some five decades. Their findings are published in the Journal of Climate. Their investigations revealed that between the 1960s and 1990s, changes in the Greenland ice sheet ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
UN climate head welcomes Marshall Plan climate fund
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL1631002320080116
Reuters: U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer on Wednesday hailed as a "Marshall Plan" for climate change news that the United States will set up a multi-billion dollar fund to help developing nations acquire clean power technologies. The "clean technology fund" would help the developing nations meet the estimated $30 billion cost of acquiring expensive low carbon emission power technologies in place of cheaper, but far dirtier, old technologies. "This clean ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
'Big climate impact' on UK coasts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7191196.stm
BBC: Climate change is having a major impact on Britain's coast, the seas around the coast, and the life in those seas, a government-sponsored report concludes. The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) says seas are becoming more violent, causing coastal erosion and a higher risk of flooding. Higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere are making oceans warmer and more acidic, affecting plankton, fish and birds. 2006 was the second warmest year in coastal waters since ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
China wind power hits 5.6 GW
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKPEK2192820080116
Reuters: China's wind power generating capacity surged to 5.6 gigawatts by the end of last year, but over a quarter of it is still not connected to the grid because of bad planning, an industry expert said on Wednesday. Shi Pengfei, vice-president of the Chinese wind energy association, said capacity growth in 2008 is likely to speed up, with another 4 GW expected to be added by the booming industry. This will bring the total amount of turbines erected by the end of this year to nearly 10 GW, ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Green advisers dismiss nuclear plans as 'megafix' solution
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/16/nuclearpower.energy2
Guardian: Two of the UK's chief green advisers yesterday launched a ferocious attack on government saying the national fight against climate change will be hindered by the decision to encourage nuclear power. Sir Jonathon Porritt, the chairman of the government's Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), speaking for the first time since the announcement last week, said that responding to climate change with nuclear power was a "technological megafix". "What is ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Air Pollution at Historic Highs in China's Guangdong
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46460/story.htm
Reuters: Air pollution in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong increased markedly last year, with 27 major cities and counties suffering a record number of hazy days, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday. China's industrial heartland of Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong, recorded an average of 75.7 days of haze in 2007, the highest level since the Communists came to power in 1949 and a "marked increase" over normal years, according to a new report released by Guangdong's ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Climate change causes shift in American bird ranges
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0116-birds.html
Mongabay: Breeding ranges of North American birds have shifted northward coinciding with a period of increasing global temperatures, report researchers writing in the April issue of Conservation Biology. Studying the breeding ranges of 56 species of arboreal and semiarboreal birds using data collected by the North American Breeding Bird Survey, Auburn University researchers Alan Hitch and Paul Leberg sought to determine whether factors – including population expansions and land-use changes – ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Drought Length Influences Survival of Fish in Stream Pools
http://www.physorg.com/news119711366.html
Physorg: University of Arkansas researchers have found that not all pools of water are equal from year to year when it comes to housing fish species during dry spells - a finding that becomes increasingly important during unusual and prolonged drought conditions. Dan Magoulick, associate professor of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and graduate student Matt P. Dekar published their findings in the journal Ecology of Freshwater Fish. ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Ethanol helps to boost U.S. farmers' bottom line
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSN1662976420080116
Reuters: U.S. farmers overwhelmingly said they have benefited from the demand for corn to produce ethanol, with 71 percent of those surveyed saying the renewable fuel has helped boost their bottom line, according to a Reuters poll released on Wednesday. The demand for corn to meet growing consumption by the food and biofuels industries has pushed the price of the grain from about $2 to $3 a bushel, where it was for several years, to an 11-year high of about $5.00 a bushel. David Waide, ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
EU commission refuses to compromise on greenhouse plan
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iDVKsKh2-rs_-GxCWukdD4ChIPkg
Agence France-Presse: European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso refused Wednesday to compromise on a plan for the 27-nation to cut emissions of the gases responsible for global warming. "Do not expect us to compromise on European interests," he told members of the European Parliament. "Both our international credibility and credibility before European Union citizens depend on fulfilment of the targets." Several nations have complained about measures and targets that the EU's ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Exchanges bet on change in climate for carbon trading
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc57d078-c463-11dc-a474-0000779fd2ac.html
Financial Times: On the UN's website for the Framework Convention on Climate Change, there is an interactive map showing the location of all the emissions reduction projects under its clean development mechanism. China and India are speckled with dots – projects in the two countries account for 65 per cent of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by the Kyoto Protocol, and therefore 65 per cent of all the carbon credits generated every year. So it seems natural that the market for trading ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
For sale: Greenhouse gasses by the ton
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/16/news/companies/carbon_sales/
CNN: It's the ultimate business plan: Take something people are willing to pay to get rid of, and sell it to someone else. That's exactly what a handful of small but well-backed companies are doing - or are trying to do - with carbon dioxide, the main culprit behind global warming. The companies include: Blue Source, a firm half-owned by the the private equity group First Reserve; Hydrogen Energy, a joint venture between BP (BP) and the mining giant Rio Tinto (RTP); Edison Mission, ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Global warming will diminish fish catch in the Bering sea
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0115-hance_bering.html
Mongabay: One half of the fish caught in the U.S. annually–and almost a third worldwide–come from the Bering Sea. Yet, this vast resource is increasingly threatened by climate change. A recent study, published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, showed that global warming will greatly affect the Bering Sea's phytoplankton, the cornerstone of the sea's rich ecosystem. "It's all a good start that people get worried about melting ice and rising sea levels. But we're now driving a comprehensive change ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Greenland melts away from the Ice Age
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3193059.ece
Times (UK): Greenland's ice sheet shrank more rapidly last summer than at any other time in the past 50 years, measurements have shown. Researchers said the extent of the melt was evidence that the ice sheet was in "inexorable decline" because of global warming. The researchers found a shift in meteorological patterns over the past 15 years, with a direct correlation being found between Greenland's weather and the generally warmer weather across both the northern and southern ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
Slovaks drop suit against EU over CO2 limit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7230322
Reuters: The Slovak government has dropped a law suit it filed against the European Commission over the national allocation of carbon emission allowances for 2008-2012, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday. The government had challenged the Commission's decision to cut the annual limit for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to 30.9 million tonnes from the 41.3 million requested by Slovakia. But in December the EU raised the limit by 1.7 million tonnes to 32.6 million, opening room for a ...
Wed, 16 Jan 08
US calls January 30-31 climate talks
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hx4KtoIiw5CZVjAgeBeYVjX_nbfA
Agence France-Presse: US President George W. Bush has called major world economies to a second round of climate change talks on January 30-31 in Hawaii, the White House's Council on Environmental Quality announced. "The two day meeting will further the shared objectives of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy security and efficiency, and sustaining economic growth, and will help to advance the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change," it said in a ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Big changes ahead for Britain's birds
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7189750.stm
BBC: Three-quarters of Europe's nesting birds will see their ranges shrink by 2100 as temperature rises push them northeast, the Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds claims. Our environment correspondent Sarah Mukherjee has been to a reserve in southeast England which sees many passing continental birds. "On a clear day, you can see France," says the RSPB's Grahame Madge, as we both peer through the rain-lashed windscreen, summoning up the courage to go outside. ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Big Oil warms to Greenland
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5454173.html
Houston Chronicle: Rising temperatures are giving Greenland the opportunity to tap into billions of barrels of oil and gas trapped under ice. Greenland, a self-governed province of Denmark that's roughly the size of Saudi Arabia, plans to auction off rights to crude oil and natural gas reserves officials believe will become feasible to exploit once the ice recedes. The island is setting a delicate balance for itself as both a bellwether to environmentalists looking for evidence of global warming, and as ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Climate Change Threatens Coasts
http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Jan15/0,4670,BritainClimateChange,00.html
Associated Press: Climate change is warming Britain's waters, eroding its coastline, harming its marine wildlife and increasing the likelihood of devastating storms and floods, the government said in a report published Wednesday. The "Marine Climate Change Impacts" report, drawn up by coalition of government bodies and researchers, said 2006 was the warmest year ever recorded for Britain's waters, and seven of the 10 warmest years have been in the last decade. Milder sea temperatures ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Coalitions geared to block US coal development
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1530481720080115
Reuters: Environmentally-minded coalitions are working overtime to block construction of all new coal-fired power plants in the United States after a "watershed" year in 2007 when plans for dozens of coal units were delayed or scrapped, said one environmentalist. After years of limited success against power-plant construction, concerned groups were buoyed last year by action in California and Florida to restrict imports of power produced from coal. Coal generators release about 40 ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91433
New York Times: In a sign of growing concern about the impact of supposedly "green" policies, European Union officials will propose a ban on imports of certain biofuels, according to a draft law to be unveiled next week. If approved by European governments, the law would prohibit the importation of fuels derived from crops grown on certain kinds of land – including forests, wetlands or grasslands – into the 27-nation bloc. The draft law would also require that biofuels used in Europe deliver ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Lifestyle changes can curb climate change: IPCC chief
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iIVBkZpOUA9Hz3Xc2u-61mDlrw0Q
Agence France-Presse: Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper -- that's how you can help brake global warming, the head of the United Nation's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change said Tuesday. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued last year, highlights "the importance of lifestyle changes," said Rajendra Pachauri at a press conference in Paris. "This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Will the World's Oceans Be Our Next Drinking Tap?
http://www.alternet.org/environment/73512/
AlterNet: Stephen Hawking is no dummy. That much has been established. Yet in 2006, when the acclaimed scientist told an audience of mostly university students and professors in China that he was "very worried about global warming" and that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid,'' the dystopian prediction nevertheless dropped off the cultural radar after a few short weeks. Which, of course, is a sad commentary on the state of our ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Canada: Alberta crude may be too dirty, U.S. law says
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080115.woilsands15/BNStory/energy/home
Globe and Mail: Alberta's oil sands are taking a hit from new U.S. energy legislation passed last month that has an unusual wrinkle suggesting that Canadian crude might be too dirty for the U.S. government. The legislation won't allow any U.S. federal agencies to buy vehicle fuel derived from non-conventional sources unless the life cycle of its greenhouse-gas emissions is the same or less than that of conventional petroleum. The sticky bitumen in Alberta's tar sands is considered one of the ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Canada: Approval of Kearl oilsands project violated federal law, says lawyer
http://finance.sympatico.msn.ca/investing/news/businessnews/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6015105
Canadian Press: A panel violated federal laws when it recommended regulatory approval for a $7-billion oilsands project on the basis of unproven cleanup plans, a lawyer for an environmental coalition argued Tuesday. The panel assessing the impacts of Imperial Oil's (TSX:IMO) Kearl proposal admitted it was unsure about the effectiveness of the plans to deal with mine tailings. But it still decided to advise the federal government that the project posed no significant effects that couldn't be ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Biofuels may not deliver CO2 cuts, scientists warn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/14/biofuels.energy
Guardian: Biofuels have a limited ability to replace fossil fuels and should not be regarded as a "silver bullet" solution to reducing transport emissions, British scientists warned today. The report, Sustainable biofuels: prospects and challenges, from the Royal Society, found that climate change mitigation, energy security, rising oil prices and economic objectives are encouraging "strong interest" in the development of biofuels for the transport sector. Biofuels - ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
British birds face potential eco-disaster
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/15/eabirds115.xml
Telegraph: Familiar British bird species will be driven hundreds of miles further north by the end of the century because of the "potentially disastrous" impact of global warming, according to a new book. If man-made climate change persists at the present rate, eight species including the Scottish crossbill, the snow bunting, pintail and osprey may face total extinction in Britain by 2100 as rising temperatures reduce the areas they can live in, it is claimed. Many more would ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
China to plant 2.5 billion trees in 2008
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/China_to_plant_25_billion_trees_in_2008/articleshow/2700958.cms
Agence France-Presse: China will plant 2.5 billion trees this year, 10 per cent more than last year, as part of reforestation efforts as the country battles increasing environmental problems, state media reported on Tuesday. The newly planted trees will lead to a 5.3-million-hectare (13.1-million-acre) expansion of China's forest area, the China Daily reported, citing the State Forestry Administration. "China has become one of the countries which embrace fast growth of forest coverage," ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Climate change threatening bird species, RSPB says
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/15/conservation.endangeredspecies
Guardian: The RSPB today called for urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a 'calamitous' impact on birds. A new report published today by the conservation charity shows that if climate change is not slowed down, the potential distribution of average bird species by the end of this century will shift nearly 342 miles (550km) to the north-east – equivalent to the distance from Plymouth to Newcastle. The report, A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds, maps potential ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Climate plans spark EU job fears
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7190206.stm
BBC: Trade unions and business leaders say EU plans to cut carbon emissions could harm European jobs and industry. The European Trade Union Confederation fears up to 50,000 steelworkers' jobs could go if their industry moves to areas with lower costs for polluters. And lobby group BusinessEurope says companies will lose competitiveness if they are forced to buy all their rights to emit carbon dioxide. The European Commission's proposals will be revealed next week. ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Detroit says other industries should help on climate
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN15541190
Reuters: With stricter U.S. rules in place to sharply improve gas mileage and reduce tailpipe emissions, domestic automakers now want Washington to look elsewhere for help in achieving climate change goals. Senior company and trade group executives interviewed this week at the North American International Auto Show believe they did enough in the 2007 energy legislation and now want lawmakers and regulators to tap other industries. They declined to name the industries but ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Uganda: Development Should Not Affect Forests
http://allafrica.com/stories/200801150019.html
New Vision: The debate on whether to conserve natural forests or clear them for investment and development projects is intensifying. At the recent international conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, there were proposals to look beyond development and commit more resources towards environment and forest conservation. Land, a key factor of production, is in fixed supply but there is increasing demand for it for settlement and investment projects. This has often caused friction between ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
EU business blasts planned CO2 emissions auction
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL1582331420080115
Reuters: Europe's top business lobby attacked on Tuesday European Commission plans for implementing deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, saying that auctioning pollution permits could hurt industry in global competition. In a letter to Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, BusinessEurope urged the European Union executive to avoid forcing firms to buy carbon dioxide emissions permits, rather than receiving them for free as they do now. The plan to auction off most, and eventually ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
EU rethink over 'damaging biofuels' warning
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/15/eabiofuel114.xml
Telegraph: Brussels announced a rethink of its plans to promote energy crops as scientists warned some biofuels could be more damaging to the atmosphere than fossil fuels. Stavros Dimas, European Environment Commissioner, admitted the EU had underestimated the dangers of causing food shortages of rainforest destruction by dictating a binding target for 10 per cent of all EU road fuels to come from "green" sources by 2020. "We have seen that the environmental problems caused ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
EU Unions Want Import Tax On Countries Not Tackling Emissions
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djhighlights/200801151042DOWJONESDJONLINE000514.htm
Associated Press: European trade unions called Tuesday for a tax on imports from countries that refuse to fight the carbon emissions that cause global warming, saying it was needed to protect thousands of jobs. The European Trade Union Confederation said a carbon tax would be the only fair way to keep jobs in Europe and prevent heavy industry from moving to regions with lower costs for carbon polluters, such as Ukraine, Russia or Turkey. "What we don't want is for companies to fire people ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Fifty times more wind turbines by 2020
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/15/eawind115.xml
Telegraph: Britain will have to install six times more wind turbines on land and 50 times more wind turbines at sea by the end of the next decade under rules to be announced by Brussels next week. Experts say that EU's country-by-country share-out of targets for renewables will mean that Britain has to generate nearly 40 per cent of its electricity by renewable means to help tackle global warming. This is because the mandatory target which EU sources say Britain will face is 13-14 per ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Australia: Global warming to impact health
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/global-warming-to-impact-health-study/2008/01/15/1200159443909.html?s_cid=rss_news
Sydney Morning Herald: Rises in temperature produced by global warming could result in an increase in the number of people being admitted to hospital with kidney disease, heart disease and mental illness in Australian cities, a new study has found. The study, by a team of academics and senior health professionals from across the country, compared the number of hospital admissions, ambulance trips and the deaths in Adelaide during heat waves, with those in normal weather conditions. The heat waves - ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Ocean currents respond to climate change
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2007/s2138697.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The latest ocean research shows currents around Antarctica are responding to climate change. Scientists studying the freshness of seawater have found the ocean is becoming less salty in areas near the Antarctic continent. Salty water is critical to driving the ocean currents, which in turn, send heat around the world. Project leader Steve Rintoul says the findings will help forecast other changes to the climate. "If this process continues for some decades it ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Indonesia: Orangutans miss jungle homes
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91467
Jakarta Post: In the past two years, Unyil, 6, has only been able to exercise by swinging from one rope to another in a square enclosure at the Animal Rescue Center in Petungsewu, Malang, East Java. It is uncertain how long the male Kalimantan orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) will remain in the eight meters square enclosure. This is because all of the enclosures in the orangutan reintroduction center in Nyari Menteng, which is about 30 kilometers away from Palangkaraya, the capital of Central ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Record warm summers cause extreme ice melt in Greenland
http://www.physorg.com/news119627556.html
Physorg: An international team of scientists, led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield, has demonstrated that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. The new research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent satellite observations of Greenland´s shrinking ice mass in a longer-term climatic context. Dr Hanna of the University´s Department of Geography, alongside some of the World´s ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
United States: Regulatory Games and the Polar Bear
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91464
New York Times: Although Congress and the courts have largely frustrated the Bush administration's efforts to open up Alaska to oil and gas drilling, Vice President Dick Cheney and his industry friends remain determined to lock up as many oil and gas leases as they can before the door hits them on the way out. They are certainly not going to let the struggling polar bear stand in their way. The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service has announced that early next month it will sell oil and ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
France: Sarkozy attacks EU carbon targets
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/16da43d6-c30d-11dc-b617-0000779fd2ac.html
Financial Times: Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has weighed into the controversy over the European Union's climate change plans with an attack on some proposals as "neither efficient, fair nor economically sustainable". Just six months before France takes up the EU presidency, Mr Sarkozy has written to Commission president José Manuel Barroso to set out his objections to the plan for reducing carbon emissions to be published later this month. In the letter seen by the ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Scientists sound alarm over starfish threat in Indonesia
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iT63Gl7_Xcwh-VFxmljNJB--yKHw
Agence France-Presse: The predatory crown of thorns starfish is threatening Indonesia's portion of the "coral triangle," the richest area of coral reef biodiversity on the planet, scientists warned Tuesday. The starfish have been discovered in large numbers by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Australian-based ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, who surveyed reefs around Halmahera in Indonesia's Maluku Islands, a press release said. The triangle lies ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Tiny Car, Tough Questions
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402080.html
Washington Post: If you haven't done so already, meet the Nano, possibly the most significant new car of the decade: Small, cute and snub-nosed, it fits four people and a duffel bag, has a single windshield wiper, travels at 65 mph -- and it's all yours for the princely sum of $2,500, roughly the same price as the DVD system in your neighbor's Lexus and about half the price of the cheapest cars on the market. Even better, at least for the philosophically minded, the Nano comes with its own moral ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
With nuclear rebirth come new worries
http://www.onelocalnews.com/prescottherald/stories1/index.php?action=fullnews&id=120507
Associated Press: Global warming and rocketing oil prices are making nuclear power fashionable, drawing a once demonized industry out of the shadows of the Chernobyl disaster as a potential shining knight of clean energy. However, some countries hopping on the nuclear bandwagon have abysmal industrial safety records and corrupt ways that give many pause for thought. Of the more than 100 nuclear reactors now being built, planned or on order, about half are in China, India and other developing ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Worst drought in decades deepens Florida's fire risk
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-firerisk011508,0,2817020.story?track=rss
Orlando Sentinel: Florida is mired in the worst drought the state has experienced since the 1950s, with state officials warily looking ahead to May as a make-or-break month, said State Meteorologist Ben Nelson. "May is going to be really critical as to when that summer thunderstorm pattern begins," Nelson said Tuesday, during a daylong summit of Florida emergency managers, forestry officials and water managers in Tallahassee. "That will be critical in determining whether the ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
'Catastrophic' climate change looms for European birds
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hv3JhXIiSKNpZeAQ3ZCSMaBlLzig
Agence France-Presse: Global warming could be "catastrophic" for European birds by wrecking their habitat, British conservationists warned Tuesday. Three-quarters of Europe's nesting birds are likely to see their ranges shrink by the end of the century, the Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds showed. Rising temperatures could push their distribution an average of 550 kilometres (340 miles) northeastwards, the atlas said. The atlas was drawn up by the Royal Society for the ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Big power companies invest in mini generators
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jan/15/powercompanies.environment
Guardian: Two of Britain's leading energy suppliers have signed agreements with companies aiming to put mini-power stations into Britain's homes. Centrica is investing more than £20m in Ceres Power, an Aim-quoted fuel cell company, for the development of combined heat and power (CHP) products and E.ON is linking with Energetix in Chester to produce a CHP unit. The initiatives come as the government is pushing forward with a series of measures aimed at curbing Britain's carbon dioxide ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Biofuels could make matters worse in battle to prevent climate change
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3187794.ece
Times (UK): Biofuels will cause more harm than good to the environment unless strict controls are imposed on how they are grown, according to the Royal Society. The fuels have the potential to help to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, yet habitats could be devastated, scientists said after a 15-month inquiry. The EU is reexamining its targets for biofuels. Stavros Dimas, the Environment Commissioner, has admitted that the adverse effects on the environment and ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Britain has "ambitious" nuclear plans -UK minister
http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSPAC00911120080115
Reuters: Britain has ambitious plans for nuclear power expansion but it will not subsidise this development, UK Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks said on Tuesday. Britain will let private utilities freely set up the country's energy mix, Wicks also said in a press briefing at the British Embassy. Asked how many nuclear reactors would be built in Britain after the government gave the go ahead last week to a new generation of nuclear power stations, Wicks said: "We don't have a ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Climate change aids nuclear, despite safety fears
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL1457476320080115
Reuters: Half a century after the first atomic power plant opened at Obninsk near Moscow, climate change is widening the environmental appeal of nuclear power despite a lack of final storage for the most toxic waste. The world's 439 nuclear power plants emit almost no greenhouse gases and so avert the equivalent of the emissions of Japan every year, according to some studies, compared with the average for electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. But risks of accidents, such as at ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Australia: Climate change will bring diseases, food poisoning
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23056888-5005961,00.html
AAP: MORE rural Australians will suffer mosquito-borne diseases and food poisoning as climate change causes temperatures to rise, an academic warns. Professor Kevin Parton, from Charles Sturt University in Orange, NSW, said rural Australians will be harder hit by climate change than their metropolitan counterparts, as health services are more difficult to access in the country. "Most of indigenous Australians live in remote regions and they could (also) be more vulnerable as a ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Climate change will ruin European birds: RSPB
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/173878,climate-change-will-ruin-european-birds-rspb.html
Nature: European birds face a growing crisis due to climate change and many rare species could be extinct if steps are not taken to protect them, a new report by researchers at Durham University, Cambridge University and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has predicted. The report said that birds from northern England like black grouse, ring ouzel and twite could disappear unless urgent measures are taken to reduce the impact of climate change. The report called Climatic Atlas ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
EU lawmakers seek more time for car CO2 cuts
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSL1582046520080115
Reuters: Automakers should be given more time to cut carbon dioxide emissions from their cars under legislation proposed by the European Union's executive arm to slow climate change, EU lawmakers said on Tuesday. In a non-binding report, the European Parliament said manufacturers should reduce the average level of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by cars to 125 grams per km by 2015, rather than to 120 grams by 2012 as proposed by the European Commission last month. The Strasbourg-based ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
EU states tussle over emission promises
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/03bb1834-c30d-11dc-b617-0000779fd2ac.html
Financial Times: European states are gearing up for a rearguard action against Brussels' green energy plan, just months after many of them signed up to placing the European Union at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Just days before the European Commission is to unveil its detailed country-by-country targets for cutting emissions, leaders are already privately battling to water down proposals they fear will damage their economies. After the targets were agreed, it was left to Brussels ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
GE to pump another $2-billion into green power
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080115.IBRENEWABLE15/TPStory/Business
Associated Press: General Electric Co.'s energy investment business, buoyed by rising demand for alternative power, said yesterday it will increase its investment in renewable energy by 50 per cent, to $6-billion (U.S.) by 2010. Alex Urquhart, president and chief executive officer of GE Energy Financial Services, cited record-high oil prices, an increased focus on environmental protection and improved technology for boosting interest in wind, solar, biomass, hydro and geothermal power. In ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Germany, Spain warn EU on renewables plan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7227929
Guardian: Germany and Spain have warned the European Commission that an ambitious plan to boost the use of renewable energy sources, due to be unveiled next week, could be counter-productive and wreck existing successful schemes. In a letter obtained by Reuters, ministers from Berlin and Madrid objected to a draft proposal that would encourage companies to trade renewable energy produced from sources such as solar, wind and hydro-electric power as well as biomass. Whether such a system ...
Tue, 15 Jan 08
Greenland thaw biggest in 50 years - report
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-31415520080115
Reuters: Climate change has caused the greatest thaw of Greenland's ice in half a century, perhaps heralding a wider meltdown that would quicken a rise in world sea levels, scientists said on Tuesday. "We attribute significantly increased Greenland summer warmth and ice melt since 1990 to global warming," a group of researchers wrote in the Journal of Climate, adding to recent evidence of faster Antarctic and Arctic thaws. "The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be highly ...
Thu, 10 Jan 08
Japan: Avg 4.7 C temperature rise seen by century's end
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/science/20080110TDY02302.htm
Yomiuri Shimbun: The nation's average temperature is expected to rise by up to 4.7 C by the end of the century when compared with the temperature at the end of the 20th century, the Environment Ministry has said, based on one of the calculation models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The ministry plans to use the results of the panel's report on climate change to study preventative measures against global warming, it said. The estimate was released Tuesday during a meeting of ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
China Launches Surprise Crackdown on Plastic Bags
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46315/story.htm
Reuters: China launched a surprise crackdown on plastic bags on Tuesday, banning production of ultra-thin bags and forbidding its supermarkets and shops from handing out free carriers from June 1. China uses too many of the bags and fails to dispose of them properly, wasting valuable oil and littering the country, China's cabinet, the State Council, said in a notice posted on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn). "Our country consumes huge amounts of plastic bags every ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Papua New Guinea - 'eco hero' to 'eco zero'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/08/eapapua108.xml
Telegraph: Papua New Guinea has been accused of going from "eco hero" at Bali to "eco zero" by allowing the felling of a large area of rainforest on a remote island for a palm oil plantation. The accusation came as satellite images showed that 12 per cent of the forest in part of Papua New Guinea, known as one of the world's wildlife hotspots, was felled between 1989 and 2000. The felling of forest on the island of New Britain badly affected 21 bird species, including ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Will nations build on climate-change momentum of 2007?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0109/p13s01-wogi.html
Christian Science Monitor: If 2007 was the year when an international scientific – and popular – momentum built around tackling global warming, this year is likely to be one of boosting that commitment. Last year, three major reports from the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change covered the science of global warming, its potential effects, and ways for addressing the challenge. A special UN meeting in September ahead of climate-change talks in Bali last month was matched by a Washington-led ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Zeal, and Worry, Greet India's New "People's Car"
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46318/story.htm
Reuters: India's "People's Car" has yet to be unveiled and the advertising campaign has not even begun, but some Indians are already raving about Tata Motor's new US$2,500 car -- despite the fears of environmentalists. "I am really excited and definitely buying the cheapest car in the world as soon as they launch it," said Arindam Sapui, a rice trader in Burdwan, a small town in West Bengal in eastern India. This is exactly the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Cabinet short-circuits obstacles to building 10 nuclear stations
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,,2237526,00.html
Guardian: The cabinet yesterday ended nearly four years of tortuous internal debate and backed plans, due to be unveiled tomorrow, designed to entice the nuclear industry to invest in a new generation of 10 nuclear power stations in Britain. The new stations are intended to provide Britain with energy security by reducing dependence on imported gas and oil. They are likely to produce 20% or more of UK electricity needs and will replace today's generation of ageing reactors. Nothing ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Climate change 'will increase health risk' to rural Australians
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/09/2134638.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Mounting evidence of global warming has led experts to warn of greater health risks for Australians who live in rural and remote areas. A paper from the Department of Public Health at the University of Adelaide warns altered weather patterns will bring changes in the distribution of diseases. The paper predicts climate change will mean variations in the rates of hospital admissions and the use of ambulance services. National Rural Health Alliance executive director ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Japan: Investors find there's money to be made in halting global warming
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200801090061.html
Asahi Shimbun: Increasingly, investors in Japan are learning that they can make green by thinking green. Concerns about global warming have spread, as have business operations related to climate change. Although many companies may still cast doubts on whether global warming really exists, they cannot deny the growing popularity of "eco-funds" or the trend among investors to make decisions from an environmental standpoint. In July last year, a 31-year-old investor living in ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Emissions trading system needs upgrade
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080109TDY04303.htm
Yomiuri Shimbun: The European Union's emissions trading scheme, which is designed to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the region, requires a major overhaul, observers say. It has been learned that some companies in the region have been allocated higher emissions quotas than they need, resulting in a massive amount of extra emissions quotas. The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) have pointed out problems with the system, such ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
New Jersey Might add "Mini" Windmills to Turnpike
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46317/story.htm
Reuters: New Jersey could erect "mini" windmills along the state's Turnpike as a way to generate electricity and cut pollution as part of a plan to create a new agency to raise funds to improve roads and bridges, a state lawmaker said on Monday Senator Raymond Lesniak said mini windmills, each only a few feet high, could be placed on rooftops or atop bridges or towers. "Depending on the wind at that location, they can generate a few megawatts to a hundred ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
'Go-ahead' for UK nuclear expansion
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5ikbH7EPfmM6ve8xsmtStIqmzmmrw
Press Association: The Government will give the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear power stations, sparking a fresh row about cost and safety and risking fresh legal action from environmental campaigners. Ministers supported the move at a Cabinet meeting earlier this week and the announcement will be made in Parliament by Business Secretary John Hutton. The Government is also expected to unveil plans to bury nuclear waste in a new disposal facility underneath the sea, off the coast of ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Could global gardening fix climate change?
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080109/full/451113a.html
Nature: Using biomass fuel on a massive scale in combination with carbon sequestration could return atmospheric carbon dioxide to pre-industrial levels within decades, according to a new analysis. Peter Read calls his proposal global gardening. To make it work, an area the size of France and Germany would have to be enlisted for growing biomass fuels for a quarter of a century . "This is the first time it's been demonstrated that you can manage carbon levels in the atmosphere" using ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
GE to invest in $350 million Texas wind farm
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/5440729.html
Associated Press: GE Energy Financial Services, the investment arm of General Electric Co., said Wednesday it will invest in a $350-million wind-generation project to supply the city of Austin with renewable energy. The parties involved did not disclose a financial breakdown of the deal, which will enhance Texas' position as the nation's leader in wind-generated energy. Project developer Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. is set to begin construction of the wind farm this month in ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Guyana grants 1 million acres of Amazon rainforest to U.S. logging firm
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0109-guyana.html
Mongabay: Guyana has awarded a 988,4000-acre logging concession to a U.S. forestry company, reports the Associated Press. Simon & Shock International, a company based in South Haven, Michigan, will spend $26 million developing the concession, which lies in the near the Brazilian border. Timber harvesting will commence once the first completes an environmental impact study and a tree inventory. The announcement comes just two months after Guyana's President, Bharrat Jagdeo, offered ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Japan temperatures could rise five degrees by 2100--panel
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view/20080109-111353/Japan-temperatures-could-rise-five-degrees-by-2100--panel
Agence France-Presse: Global warming could cause temperatures in Japan to rise an average of 4.7 degrees Celsius (8.5 Fahrenheit) above normal by the last three decades of the century, an environment ministry panel has warned. Japan's rainfall may fluctuate widely between a 2.4 percent decline and a 16.4 percent increase compared with the levels recorded in the final four decades of the last century, the panel said in an interim report this week. The panel is looking to chart out possible scenarios ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Trees absorbing less CO 2
http://www.hindu.com/seta/2008/01/10/stories/2008011050191400.htm
Guardian: The ability of forests to soak up man-made carbon dioxide is weakening, according to an analysis of two decades of data from more than 30 sites in the frozen north. The finding published recently is crucial, because it means that more of the CO2 we release will end up affecting the climate in the atmosphere rather than being safely locked away in trees or soil. The results may partly explain recent studies suggesting that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
WEF warns 2008 uncertainties may hurt climate fight
http://www.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUSL09848920080109
Reuters: A stronger focus on turbulent financial markets and escalating geopolitical tension in 2008 could prompt governments and companies to neglect less immediate risks such as climate change and food security, the World Economic Forum warned. That, the Geneva-based group said, could make it even harder to deal with these critical, longer-term issues in the future. "Action to mitigate climate change, for example, may be put in danger should the global economy weaken ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Climate Change May Spur Viral Diseases in Australia's Outback
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aLGTZ4ziMeOg&refer=australia
Bloomberg: Australians living in the outback may catch more viruses such as Ross River and Barmah Forest because global warming is aiding the spread of mosquitoes that carry the diseases, researchers said. People living in regional and remote areas, especially Aborigines, may suffer the most from the health effects of climate change as they have access to fewer services than those living in urban areas, scientists led by Peng Bi at the University of Adelaide said in a study published in the ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Germany: Green Energy Booming, but Experts Warn of Cloudy Future
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3048106,00.html
Deutsche Welle: Renewable energy made up more than 14 percent of Germany's electricity consumption in 2007, but further progress may be hindered if government support is cut back, according to new statistics. The use of renewable energy reached a record high in 2007, the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) said on Tuesday, Jan 8, as it released new figures on the sector. Renewable energy made up more than 14 percent of Germany's electricity consumption, up from almost 12 percent in 2006 with ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Groups to Sue for Polar Bear Protection
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j9NGJ0_eVkxqgpEFC6RMHVlvT9qwD8U2I4R81
Associated Press: Three conservation groups notified the federal government Wednesday they intend to sue to get polar bears listed as a threatened species due to global warming. The formal notice filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace is a necessary step before a lawsuit is filed. The notice cited a missed deadline by the federal agencies and officials in Washington on whether polar bears will be listed. "The science confirms that ...
Wed, 9 Jan 08
Solar energy stocks slide for fourth straight day
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0960474820080109
Reuters: Solar energy stocks fell for the fourth straight day on Wednesday as investors worried that the recent pullback in oil prices and a weakening U.S. economy could hurt domestic demand for alternative energy sources. Shares of First Solar Inc (FSLR.O: Quote, Profile, Research) slid 7.6 percent at $213.02, while SunTech Power Holdings Co Ltd (STP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) tumbled 12.6 percent to $66.13, and SunPower Corp (SPWR.O: Quote, Profile, Research) slumped 8.7 percent to ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Climate worries complicate Alaska drilling plan
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0108/p03s03-wogi.html
Christian Science Monitor: A controversial proposal to extract vast supplies of oil and gas from Alaska's outer continental shelf pits America's energy needs against environmental protection. Unlike similar clashes in the past, there's a complicating factor this time: global warming. The US Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) is offering the sale of oil and gas leases covering nearly 46,000 square miles in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska. Initial geological studies ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Australia: Modest rise in NSW greenhouse emissions
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/modest-rise-in-nsw-greenhouse-emissions/2008/01/07/1199554571630.html
Sydney Morning Herald: GREENHOUSE gas emissions from power generation in NSW last year were about 7 per cent higher than in 1990. The rise indicates the state is within limits to meet the national Kyoto Protocol commitment of an 8 per cent rise on 1990 levels by 2012, though if NSW builds a coal-fired power station those hopes may be dashed. The non-profit organisation The Climate Group tracked about 95 million tonnes of greenhouse gas released across the state last year, accounting for about 65 per ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Australia: Victoria not in line with Kyoto: scientists
http://www.theage.com.au/news/climate-watch/victoria-not-in-line-with-kyoto-scientists/2008/01/07/1199554571350.html
Age: CLIMATE scientists have challenged a Victorian Government claim that its rising greenhouse gas emissions are in line with Australia's Kyoto Protocol target, arguing it fails to acknowledge pollution must be cut to avoid dangerous climate change. Acting Environment Minister Tim Holding agreed with a Climate Group analysis, revealed yesterday in The Age, that Victoria's annual greenhouse emissions from energy have soared by nearly 30% since 1990. Emissions from NSW have risen only 7% in ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Cleantech funding rising, may overvalue sector: VCs
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0842895820080108
Reuters: Egged on by $100-a-barrel oil and consumers going green, venture capitalists plan to pour ever more cash into environmentally friendly technology this year, prompting talk of a bubble reminiscent of the dot-com era. Some 61 percent of 170 venture capitalists reached by one survey said they believe the inflow of venture dollars into "cleantech" would overvalue the sector, even though many remain convinced of its long-term potential. Too many dollars chasing too few ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Congress and Climate Change
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010702631.html
Washington Post: THE HOUSE and Senate will return to Washington later this month with a host of problems and issues to address and, this being an election year, the certainty that they won't address most of them. But presidential politics should not be an excuse to impede action on the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that the effects of global warming may be irreversible if action isn't taken within the next decade. The ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Energy Bill Troubles Solar Industry
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/01/08/ap4508455.html
Associated Press: The omission of renewed investment tax credits for solar energy in the wide-sweeping energy bill signed by President Bush late last month has put the future health of the U.S. solar power industry in question. The bill includes more stringent mandates for fuel economy and energy efficiency, but it doesn't extend the investment tax credit for companies specializing in solar power systems. That credit, which amounts to 30 percent of the value of qualified residential or commercial solar ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Guyana Awards US Company Large Logging Concession
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/market_news/article.jsp?content=D8U1T0280
Associated Press: A U.S. logging company has won the rights to harvest trees in a large portion of Guyana's Amazon rain forest, the company said Tuesday. The timber concession awarded to Simon & Shock International is one of Guyana's five largest, covering 988,400 acres near the Brazilian border. The South Haven, Michigan-based company will invest at least $26 million to develop the area, in a deal negotiated over three years, chief executive Kelly Simon said. A harvesting license ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Making money in renewable energy
http://money.cnn.com/2008/01/08/news/companies/where_renewable_moneyis/
CNN: Despite the astronomical jump in clean-energy stocks in 2007, investors say 2008 will also be be a good year for most stocks in emerging energy technology. Driven by record oil prices that lifted the broader energy sector in general - and perhaps investor enthusiasm stoked by global warming fears - 2007 was a fantastic year to own renewable energy stocks. The WilderHill clean energy index - an index of 48 large U.S. stocks in the renewable energy sector - rose over 58 percent ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Renewables supply 14 pct of German power -industry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7207967
Reuters: Renewable energy made up more than 14 percent of Germany's power consumption in 2007, up from almost 12 percent in 2006, with wind as the main contributor, the German Renewable Energy Federation (BEE) said on Tuesday. Energy derived from wind, solar, water, biomass and thermal heat accounted for 9 percent of Germany's total primary energy consumption last year, reducing the country's CO2 emissions by 115 million tones, the association said. While growth of renewable energy ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Study looks at transportation's effects on global warming
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-01-08-transportation-co2_N.htm
USA Today: A new study released Monday reports that 15% of the manmade carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere comes from cars, trucks, airplanes, trains, and ships. This is the first study to specifically measure the impact of transportation on global greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 85% of atmospheric CO2 comes from industry, buildings and agriculture, the report said. The study was led by Jan Fuglestvedt and other scientists at the Center for International Climate and ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
'Green' energy up in Germany but future clouding: producers
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hIBtNeaujLCw_SV2dk6_558MXTWw
Agence France-Presse: Germany produced almost a tenth of its energy needs for transport, electricity generation and heating from renewable sources in 2007, an industry group said on Tuesday. The German federation for renewable energy (BEE) warned however that further progress was likely to be hampered by falling investment in renewable energy sources. A total of 9.1 percent of the energy for Europe's biggest economy was produced from sources such as the wind and the sun, compared with eight percent ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
'No clear trend' in forest loss
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7175617.stm
BBC: Data on tropical forest cover is so poor that we do not know if the forests are declining, a study has found. Alan Grainger from the UK's University of Leeds examined UN analyses going back almost 30 years, and found that "evidence for a decline is unclear". Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), he proposes a global forest monitoring system. The UN admits there are problems with the data, but says tropical forests are certainly in retreat. ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Japan: 3 in 4 say Earth sick, 48“ back 'green' tax
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200801080064.html
Asahi Shimbun: Three in four people are worried about the planet's environmental state and nearly half support a "green" tax on consumption of petroleum, coal and other fossil fuels, a poll shows. In an Asahi Shimbun survey on global warming last November, respondents were asked to choose whether they thought the Earth was "very healthy," "healthy," "ill" or "seriously ill." In response, 76 percent said the Earth is "ill" or ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Arctic ice melting at record rate: scientists
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=fe4d46e3-4389-41f1-9e98-4722df69647b&ParentID=6405c6c1-0423-452a-91d2-db506478f57e&MatchID1=4617&TeamID1=3&TeamID2=4&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1163&PrimaryID=4617&Headl
Agence France-Presse: The arctic ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate in mid-2007, losing an area of ice the size of the state of Alaska, US scientists said at a conference this week. "The average rate of loss of sea ice every summer year to year up to 2006 was equal to an area the size of West Virginia," or about 62,800 square kilometers (24,250 square miles), said Michael Steele, the senior oceanographer at the University of Washington in Seattle. However the decrease in ice between ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Bright Future for Biofuels in Congo, UN Says
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46302/story.htm
Reuters: The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of Africa's most promising biofuels producers due to its vast amount of farmland suited to a range of crops from palm oil to soybeans, a top UN economist has said. "The DRC and many of the African countries have an enormous agri-ecological potential," Dr Schmidhuber said a telephone interview. "They have production potential for more than (sugar) cane: palm oil, maize, jatropha, cassava even soybeans -- whatever is suited to ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Canada Needs Carbon Tax Quickly - Gov't Panel
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46299/story.htm
Reuters: Canada's Conservative government needs to quickly impose a price on carbon to stand any chance of meeting its own targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, an official panel said on Monday. The finding is unlikely to please Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who opposes the idea of a carbon tax on the grounds it could damage the economy. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy said Ottawa had the choice of bringing in either a carbon tax or a ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
China seen surging to top wind turbine maker in 09
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7207930
Reuters: China will leap to be the top wind turbine producer in 2009, transforming an already fast-growing renewable energy sector, a leading wind power industry official said. Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), said wind could supply 12 percent of world electricity needs by 2020 against just over one percent in 2007 in a shift that would help curb climate change. "We'd expect that the domestic Chinese manufacturers will have an annual ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
EU Considers Carbon Tariff on Imports
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,527344,00.html
Spiegel: European Union leaders strive to portray themselves as being on the front line of global efforts to combat climate change. They boast that the EU has agreed to cut emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, well beyond the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. And both the United Kingdom (more...) and Germany (more...) recently announced plans to expand their commitment to renewable energy. Their strategy, it seemed, was to lead by example. But they appear to be considering less ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Incurable dengue disease could spread in US: researchers
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gcHgPsUTqnvzhwui4abVOOIpJFJQ
Agence France-Presse: Incurable, mosquito-borne dengue disease could spread from subtropical areas into the United States through global warming, requiring greater efforts to combat it, health authorities said in commentary out Tuesday. "Widespread appearance of dengue in the continental United States is a real possibility," said National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, in commentary published in Journal of the American Medical Association. Dengue ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
United States: Protection of polar bears still undecided
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-polarbears8jan08,1,653455.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Associated Press: Federal officials said Monday that they would need a few more weeks to decide whether polar bears needed protection under the Endangered Species Act because of global warming. The deadline was Wednesday, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it hoped to provide a recommendation to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne so that he could decide by February. The department has never declared a species threatened or endangered because of climate change, said H. Dale Hall, Fish ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
U.N. climate panel head probably seeking re-election
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL0736758520080108
Reuters: India's Rajendra Pachauri said on Monday he will probably seek a new term as head of the U.N. climate panel that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. "I think we are riding a crest ... as far as climate change is concerned, particularly spreading the information of climate change," Pachauri, 67, told Reuters in Oslo after making an evening speech about the risks of global warming. "I feel that even though it's going to be very ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
UK Cabinet Backs New Generation of Nuclear Plants
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=arArd6CQxfXk&refer=uk
Bloomberg: The U.K. Cabinet gave the go-ahead for a new generation of nuclear plants, setting the stage for a clash with environmentalists, who say the option is unsafe. ``There was a very good discussion with many interventions,'' Emily Hands, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, told reporters in London. Asked if any ministers had opposed building new plants, she said: ``Not that I'm aware of.'' The decision clears the way for Britain to embark on its first program of ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
UN Climate Chief to Visit Antarctica
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iQmBUlYskvnKT0CLHBucXxY5_wKAD8U1UQ200
Associated Press: The next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should deal with the "frightening" possibility that both Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets start melting at the same time, the chief U.N. climate scientist said Tuesday. The panel, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, has released four climate assessment reports, including summaries for policymakers that are approved by government representatives. Though there are ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Canada: Alberta to fight carbon tax
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/story.html?id=c09873df-2a3b-4591-b7f0-8f98485bad4b&k=75785
Calgary Herald: Alberta and the federal government rejected a new report Monday that called for a carbon tax and emissions trading system, likely setting up a political showdown at this week's first ministers conference in Ottawa. Premier Ed Stelmach and his provincial counterparts will meet Friday in the nation's capital before heading to 24 Sussex Drive for a tete-a-tete with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss the state of the Canadian economy and high-flying loonie. But with a federal ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Carbon credits come with a cost
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080108.wgtchalk0108/BNStory/Technology/home
Globe and Mail: It's a new year, and with it comes new responsibilities. In August of 2008, the Western Climate Initiative will require B.C. businesses to begin reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 33 per cent below 2005 levels. If these greenhouse gases can't be reduced, companies will be required to offset their pollution via a new form of environmental currency, the carbon credit. Devised by the Kyoto Protocol, carbon credits are meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Canada: Carbon tax proposal a non-starter in Alberta
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/01/08/renner-carbon.html
CBC: Alberta's government says it will oppose any federal efforts to bring in a carbon tax after an advisory panel commissioned by Ottawa released its report Monday. The panel was struck to study ways Canada can make a 60 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Large companies in Alberta that fail to cut their emissions intensity by March 31 will pay $15 a tonne on excess carbon output, which goes into a technology fund. (CBC) The National Round Table on Environment and ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Climate change big threat to East Asia: World Bank
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=f0d2cd48-48b7-4fd1-83b0-39417029690b&ParentID=6405c6c1-0423-452a-91d2-db506478f57e&MatchID1=4617&TeamID1=3&TeamID2=4&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1163&PrimaryID=4617&Headl
Reuters: Climate change is likely to significantly affect economies in the Asia-Pacific region, threatening the increasingly industrialised coastal belt and hurting the region's poor, the World Bank said on Thursday. Rising sea levels, more intense storms and greater extremes of droughts and floods will probably cause greater loss of life and threaten the livelihoods of millions, the Bank said in a report. Countries in the region are partly to blame, the Bank said, because of their ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
United States: Deadline to protect polar bears to be missed
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/170716.html
Nature: The United States missed a deadline in deciding whether global warming was in fact threatening the existence of polar bears, saying that time was needed to analyze new data as well as for public comment. The decision though has riled environmentalists who have pledged to launch a lawsuit for rapid action. Dale Hall, chief of the US Fish and Wildlife Service told reporters Monday that they would be missing the Wednesday deadline to list polar bears under the Endangered Species ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Dengue Fever Threatens U.S. as Tropical Bugs Spread
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWqWwATk6DpA&refer=home
Bloomberg: Dengue fever, a potentially deadly virus usually found in the tropics, could begin spreading widely in the U.S. as mosquitoes that transmit the disease move into more states, according to two leading epidemiologists. The disease has already struck Hawaii, Texas and Puerto Rico after decades of absence in the U.S., Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and colleague David Morens write in the Jan. 9 Journal of the American Medical ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Australia: Farmers blockade planned over Lake Mokoan
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/09/2134633.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Farmers have voted to block highways and rail lines to protest against the Victorian Government's plan to decommission Lake Mokoan near Benalla. Two hundred people attended a meeting last night to discuss the plan to drain the lake and replace it with irrigation pipes and wetlands. Michael Reid, from the Justice for the Broken Valley group told the meeting the decision is a government ploy to win green votes in the city. He is confident peaceful protests will help the ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
French Compressed Air Car Set for Take-Off in India
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46298/story.htm
Reuters: A car that runs on air? What seemed like a pipe dream may soon become reality as Frenchman Guy Negre hopes versions of his compressed air car will be produced in India this year by Tata Motors Ltd after a 15 year quest for backers for his invention. Negre believes the time is right for his design with oil prices at record highs and pressure on carmakers to improve the fuel efficiency of their vehicles. "It is clear that with oil at US$100 a barrel this will force ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
German Company to Build Massive Wind Farm in Australia
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3046204,00.html
Deutsche Welle: German renewable-energy company Conergy announced that it plans to build Australia's largest wind farm in a 50-50 joint venture with the country's Macquarie Bank. The installation planned for Silverton/Broken Hill, which would include 500 turbines, in the continent's south-east region would generate enough electricity for 400,000 homes and save greenhouse gas emissions of three million tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to DPA news agency. "Silverton Wind Farm will ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Germany boosts renewable energy sources
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/170862.html
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: The provision of renewable energy in Germany has reached a new record, data released Tuesday showed. The figures, which were drawn up by Germany's renewable energy federation (BEE), showed the provision of alternative power sources, including wind and sun, represented 9.1 per cent of the nation's energy use last year. "In no other nation has the development of renewable energy being as rapid as in Germany," said the federation releasing the data. The federation said that in ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Greenpeace calls for curbs on India's car emissions
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/world/view_article.php?article_id=111154
Agence France-Presse: Greenpeace on Tuesday called on the Indian government to set mandatory fuel efficiency standards for cars, warning vehicle emissions will contribute significantly to climate change. The group's warning came days ahead of an auto show beginning Thursday in New Dehi where multinational car firms will unveil new models aimed at capturing a slice of the fast-growing Indian automobile sector. India's transport sector accounts for 18 percent of the country's emissions of carbon ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Groups cite oil leases in U.S. delay on rating polar bear's status
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/08/MN60UAQFJ.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle: Environmental groups fear that political meddling and a rush to sell oil leases in Arctic waters are behind the Bush administration's announcement Monday that it will miss a legal deadline to determine whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Federal law requires U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make a final decision on protections for the white furry marine mammal by Wednesday, a year from when the agency first proposed that it be considered a threatened ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Japan to launch G8 energy-saving talks - official
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/01/08/afx4505073.html
Agence France-Presse: Japan will host a series of meetings on energy-saving ahead of this year's Group of Eight summit, where climate change will be high on the agenda, officials said Tuesday. Talks will be held in Tokyo on January 22 and 23 to prepare for a meeting of energy ministers from the eight nations in June in northern Aomori prefecture, said an official at Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. The energy ministers are expected to adopt proposals to present to national leaders ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
United States: Renewable-energy backers to try again
http://origin.denverpost.com/business/ci_7914174
Denver Post: Supporters of renewable energy plan to reintroduce a failed effort on Capitol Hill to require utilities nationwide to generate a portion of their power from renewable sources, U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette said today. The Denver Democrat championed the renewable-standard provision as part of a comprehensive energy bill that passed the House. But the requirement that utilities generate 15 percent of their energy from renewables was stripped from the legislation before it could pass the ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Canada: Tax emissions or miss targets, PM told
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/291952
Toronto Star: Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have to accept carbon taxes or other charges on greenhouse gases if his government is to have any hope of meeting its climate-change targets. That is the main message from a blue-ribbon panel on the environment asked by the federal Conservatives to assess their long-term strategy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The government wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 65 per cent by 2050. Introducing a new charge on fossil ...
Tue, 8 Jan 08
Paper giant illegally clearing Indonesian forests: environmentalists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/sc_afp/indonesiaenvironmentforests_080108184848
Agence France-Presse: Rare elephants, tigers and orangutans are under threat from illegal land clearing on Indonesia's Sumatra island by one of Asia's biggest pulp and paper companies, environmentalists said Tuesday. Regional giant Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) and affiliates are clearing land and building an access road outside their legal concessions in the Bukit Tigapuluh area of Sumatra's Jambi province, a coalition of five environmental groups said in a press release accompanying a new joint ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Australia: Greenhouse emissions soar
http://www.theage.com.au/news/climate-watch/greenhouse-emissions-soar/2008/01/06/1199554485339.html
Age: ANNUAL greenhouse gas emissions from energy in Victoria have soared by nearly 30% since 1990, challenging State Government claims that it is serious about tackling climate change. By comparison, annual NSW emissions have risen by only 7% since 1990, the benchmark year for atmospheric pollution under the Kyoto international climate change treaty. Taken from the first annual report of the greenhouse indicator pioneered by the non-profit Climate Group and The Age, the contrasting ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Australia eyes GM crops after scorching 2007
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20080106220016721C615317
Agence France-Presse: Australia's agriculture minister on Thursday hailed genetically modified crops as a means to help farmers combat climate change, as data showed 2007 was the country's sixth hottest year on record. Agriculture Minister Tony Burke said Australia's farmers needed to face up to climate change, foreshadowing major changes to drought relief payments worth billions of dollars. Burke said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's recently-elected government wanted to improve farmers' ability to deal ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Groups Seek to Stop Relicensing of Nuclear Plants
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46276/story.htm
Reuters: A coalition of East Coast environmental and anti-nuclear groups filed a petition with US regulators Thursday to suspend all pending relicensing efforts by nuclear reactors in the United States. A coalition called Stop the Relicensing of Oyster Creek joined with Riverkeeper to petition the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend the license renewal process "until objective and independent analysis" is used, the groups said in a release. The coalition, six ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
ADM Will Bury Carbon from US Ethanol Plant
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46273/story.htm
Reuters: Archer Daniels Midland Co, a major food processor, said it is working with business and government groups in the US Midwest on an US$84 million project to bury planet-warming gas emissions from an ethanol plant starting next year. The project will be one of the first in the United States to use carbon sequestration technology. Carbon burial is unproven, but has the potential to be a crucial weapon against greenhouse emissions by keeping carbon dioxide from some of the dirtiest ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Clean Power for Norway Oil and Gas Rigs Seen Costly
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46268/story.htm
Reuters: Norway's hopes of supplying cleaner electricity to offshore oil and gas platforms to help fight global warming suffered a setback on Friday when an official report projected higher-than-expected costs. The study estimated it would cost at least 1,600 crowns (US$299) to cut a tonne of carbon dioxide emissions by shutting down offshore power generators run on fossil fuels and laying cables from the mainland, where most power is hydro-electric. By contrast, rights to emit carbon ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Final Phase of Colorado Wind Farm Powers Up
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46286/story.htm
Reuters: The final phase of a 300-megawatt wind farm in Colorado that will make enough electricity to power about 90,000 homes has begun commercial operation, the developers said Thursday. Most of the Cedar Creek wind farm, about 100 miles northeast of Denver, opened in November and the last 20 megawatts have now begun operation and selling power, Babcock & Brown Wind Partners fund and BP Alternative Energy said. Babcock & Brown said the wind farm near Grover, Colorado in Weld ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Japan: TEPCO Delays Nuclear Plant Project by 1 Year - Paper
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46281/story.htm
Reuters: Tokyo Electric Power Co the nation's top utility, will postpone its planned construction of a nuclear reactor in northern Japan by one year to comply with tougher safety rules, Japanese business daily Nikkei reported on Saturday. TEPCO had planned to start building a reactor at the Higashidori nuclear power plant in Aomori prefecture, northern Japan, in fiscal 2008/09 that starts in April. But now with the delay, the plant will probably become operational from fiscal 2015/16, ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Using Climate Change to Justify Bad Policies
http://us.oneworld.net/article/view/156566/1/
OneWorld UK: The controversy over the possible health hazards arising from Britain's switch from traditional light-bulbs to low-energy lighting is a small example of the way that the need to tackle climate change is being seized on by snake-oil salesmen around the world to push their products. Take biofuels. Oil is a major contributor to global warming, they say - so let's run cars, trucks and buses on fuel derived from crops. Lured by the possibility of profits and quick-fixes to a ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Windy promises over power
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anjana_ahuja/article3142109.ece
Times (UK): John Hutton, the Business Secretary, would like to see 7,000 wind turbines built off the British coastline by 2020. That's roughly two a day, if we started construction now, worked flat out, even weekends, had enough engineers for the job (did I mention Network Rail?) and everything went without a hitch. "It's crazy," says Sue Ion, from the Royal Academy of Engineering. "Building wind turbines in a difficult marine environment is not an easy job. This is a serious engineering ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Canadian Panel on Environment Recommends a Carbon Tax
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aIWyHNOBhT4k&refer=canada
Bloomberg: Canada should consider a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide to fight climate change, a government advisory group said today, after Environment Minister John Baird rejected such a levy last year. The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy made the recommendation in a report from Ottawa, saying a ``market-based policy'' was needed, and proposing the tax or a system to cap emissions and allow for trading of carbon credits. The government-created group is made up of ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Canada: Carbon tax in the cards to help cut emissions
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080107.PANEL07/TPStory/National
Globe and Mail: A federal advisory panel will unveil a long-term climate-change strategy today that is expected to back the idea of a carbon tax aimed at substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, The Globe and Mail has learned. The proposal will put pressure on both the Harper government and the Liberal Opposition, which have rejected a carbon tax that would penalize oil producers in the West most heavily. The recommendation will raise a number of questions on Parliament ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Global PV market to hit $32bn by 2012
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2206609/global-pv-market-hit-32bn-2012
Business Green: The global market for photovoltaic (PV) solar cells will more than double over the next five years as increased demand for energy and concerns over climate change combine to deliver a compound average annual growth rate for the sector of almost 15 per cent. That is the conclusion of new research from BCC Research that found that global sales of PV technologies hit $12.9bn last year and predicted that the market would be worth over $32.3bn by 2012. With the cost of solar panels ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Polar bears and warming decision delayed
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN0734805620080107
Reuters: A U.S. decision on whether global warming threatens polar bears will be delayed as much as a month, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service said on Monday, prompting ire from environmental groups. The deadline for deciding whether to list the big white bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act is Wednesday but a government statement said analysis of scientific data and public comment will take more time. "We expect to provide a final recommendation to the ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Canada must adopt carbon tax, cap and trade system: report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080107/sc_afp/canadawarmingpolitics_080107191804;_ylt=AmGBrf55AxJKItEdn3FloArYeMUA
Agence France-Presse: Canada must introduce a carbon tax, or a cap and trade system for greenhouse gas emissions, or both, if there is any hope of the country deeply cutting its CO2 emissions by mid-century, a report commissioned by the government said Monday. And Canada must act now or face higher costs in the future for reducing CO2 output linked to global warming, said the report by the independent National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE). "These findings and ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Canada: Carbon tax among measures proposed to cut global warming
http://www.canada.com/globaltv/national/story.html?id=7fffc291-66d8-42e3-bee5-985f99cd98f0
CanWest News Service: Canada can achieve deep cuts in the amount of heat-trapping gases it is pumping into the atmosphere if it toughens up its own domestic plan with measures such as a carbon tax and a cap and trade system to combat harmful economic activity, a federal advisory panel said Monday. In a new report, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy concluded that Canada could achieve a 65 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by acting as soon as possible. ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Spain: Clean Energy, Questionable Business Practices
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40692
Inter Press Service: Renewable energy sources enjoy excellent prospects in Spain, but there are complaints about business practices in the energy sector and the lack of effective enforcement of environmental standards. Several companies have announced huge investments in clean energy. Among the foremost are Iberdrola, which is to invest 8.6 billion euros (12.2 billion dollars) in renewable energy, including wind power, from 2008 to 2010, and Abengoa, which is investing two billion euros (2.8 billion ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Countries united on rain forests
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_7902190?source=rss&nclick_check=1
Chicago Tribune: At a Bali climate meeting that came close to breaking down but wound up with concessions that will keep countries negotiating a new treaty through 2009, one clear result emerged: Protection of rain forests likely will be part of any future agreement. For the first time, the 187 countries at the United Nations-sponsored talks decided to discuss a plan to grant financially valuable credits -- perhaps billions of dollars worth -- to countries that keep their rain forests ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
EU seeks OK for climate package by mid-2009
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL0772184020080107
Reuters: EU President Slovenia said on Monday it would use its stewardship of EU business over the next six months to try and steer the bloc's proposed package of energy and climate change reforms towards approval by mid-2009. Prime Minister Janez Jansa told a news conference he would aim by the end of the Slovene presidency on June 30 to have had a first reading in the European Parliament of proposals due to be unveiled later this month intended to spur wider use of renewable energies and ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Guyana still open to carbon credits forest deal with UK
http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_general_news?id=56536358
Stabroak News: President Bharrat Jagdeo says it is important for Guyana to either enter into a bilateral agreement or be a part of a market-based carbon trading regime so that it could raise the resources necessary for the fight against climate change. He said that Guyana is still negotiating bilateral arrangements with the United Kingdom and expressed the hope that the country is able to benefit from this until a post-Kyoto arrangement is finalised. Speaking at a press conference held at ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Lake Erie's water level could plunge 3 to 6 feet as Earth's temperature rises
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080107/NEWS06/801070402
Toledo Blade: While there's no quick fix for curbing the greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the Earth's warming climate, the issue is getting more attention in the Great Lakes region, and western Lake Erie in particular. In a three-year study of the Detroit River-western Lake Erie corridor released earlier this month, 75 scientists from nearly 50 government, business, academic, and public-interest groups claimed Lake Erie could drop 3.28 feet to 6.56 feet of water by 2066. The lake's ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Nuclear plan puts Brown's green image in spotlight
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3315029.ece
Independent: Gordon Brown faces the biggest test of his environmental credentials this week, with the Government due to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations. John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, is expected to make an announcement to MPs on Thursday, outlining the decision to allow private power firms to invest in the UK's first new reactors for decades. Yesterday Mr Brown listed ensuring the security of Britain's energy supplies as among the ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Uganda: The Insanity of Planting 'A New' Mabira
http://allafrica.com/stories/200801070531.html
Monitor: The issue of converting close to a third of Mabira tropical rain forest to sugarcane growing has caused an uproar. Scientific facts are likely to be replaced by arguments that will win debate. Have you ever imagined what would happen if a dose prescribed by a doctor for one patient was shared between ten patients or vice verse? What would happen if the civil engineer's advice on ratios of materials for construction of a multi-storeyed building were ignored because cement is ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
China To Help Japan In Achieving Green House Gas Targets
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009635285
All Headline News: Struggling to meet the target of carbon credits under the Kyoto climate change treaty, Japan is planning to take China's help. This will help them to cut green house gas. Both, China and Japan have reached on an agreement to buy credits from China, in the projects which Japan has funded, the largest Japanese newspaper Yomiuri said in its news report. The agreement will be finalized during the visit of Chinese premier Hu Jintao's visit to Japan, expected in late March, reports ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Climate change, overfishing blamed for corals' demise
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/sfl-107coral,0,7049233.story
Washington Post: Climate change and overfishing, rather than pollution, are primarily responsible for killing off coral reefs in the Caribbean, according to a new study. The paper, by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Columbia University and the University of Maryland, examined the effects of two of the most common pollutants: phosphorus and nitrogen. They concluded that nitrogen is the more damaging of the two, but its effects are mostly felt after a reef is dead or dying, because ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Climate Change: Northward Ho?
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40663
Inter Press Service: Dan Bloom thinks it's time to figure out how to build self-sustaining cities in the polar regions because climate change will eventually make most of Earth uninhabitable. These polar cities may be "humankind's only chance for survival if global warming really turns into a worldwide catastrophe in the far distant future," Bloom told IPS. Bloom isn't a scientist or any other kind of expert. A U.S. citizen in his late fifties living in Taiwan teaching English, he's ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Australia: Group calls for Fed Govt review of wood chipping industry
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/07/2133284.htm?site=southeastnsw
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A anti-logging group on the far south Victorian coast wants the new Federal Labor Government to put an end to wood chipping of native forests in the south-east, saying it will help avert climate change. Chipstop has lodged a submission with the Government's review of greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to have the Government force the South-East Fibre Exports processing mill at Eden shift its emphasis from hardwood forests to pine plantations. The Eden-based company has just ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
Marine survey investigates climate change
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2007/s2133113.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A six week survey of marine life on the Antarctic sea floor will help predict the rate of climate change. Global warming is pushing up carbon dioxide levels in the ocean, which causes a slight rise in the acidity level of sea water. Martin Riddle is the voyage leader of the polar ship the Aurora Australis. He says as sea water becomes more acidic, it becomes more difficult for marine organisms to make and maintain their sea shells. "Calcium carbonate is more ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
U.K. Nuclear Operators Must Pay for Decommissioning
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aE76ahRRlHPo&refer=uk
Bloomberg: Prime Minister Gordon Brown will require companies that build nuclear power plants in the U.K. to take on liabilities for decommissioning those stations, when he sets out rules for the industry later this week. ``Owners and operators would have to set aside funds to cover the full costs of decommissioning and their share of the long-term management and disposal costs of waste,'' Brown's spokesman, Michael Ellam, said today in a briefing. Decommissioning costs, which will top ...
Mon, 7 Jan 08
U.S. gov't delays crucial decision on status of polar bears by one month
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5i7oAFDUaP4CL5ygVmvnKtL4fEc4A
Canadian Press: U.S. government agency has announced a month-long delay for a critical decision on whether polar bear populations in Canada and elsewhere are endangered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the delay was necessary in order to assess public comments on new research on the bears that was delivered last September. The agency's recommendation is being closely watched in Arctic Canada, where sport hunts for polar bears are a lucrative industry in an area chronically short of ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Japan, U.S., EU to float energy body
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/20080106TDY01305.htm
Yomiuri Shimbun: Japan, the United States and the European Union will jointly propose at this year's Group of Eight summit meeting that an international organization be established to study and evaluate the energy-saving measures of countries, including China and India, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Saturday. The launch of the organization is part of international efforts to provide emerging large consumers of energy with developed countries' advanced energy-saving know-how, and study the effectiveness ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
A global turning point
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3137468.ece
Times (UK): When a New York oil trader pressed the button to buy a consignment of oil for $100 a barrel last week, he confirmed that we have entered a new era. As British householders are finding out to their cost, the days of cheap energy, responsible for so much modern-day prosperity, are over. If warnings about global warming did not make us change our behaviour, high prices might. The shift we are seeing, however, goes beyond household budgets and setting the thermostat lower. The world is ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Natural causes behind Arctic warming
http://news.smh.com.au/natural-causes-behind-arctic-warming/20080106-1kdm.html
Sydney Morning Herald: A natural cause may account for much of the recent dramatic thawing of the Arctic region, in addition to man-made global warming, a new study finds. New research indicates a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle, according to the study published in the journal Nature. But that energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone, ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Australian climate changing, experts say
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5he0MY6RC0_8xaG8BkUtOSSGKoLmQ
Agence France-Presse: Australia experienced one of its hottest years on record in 2007, and climate experts have warned that the higher temperatures are likely a taste of things to come as weather patterns change. The country has already kicked off 2008 with a spate of extreme weather -- several cities, including Perth and Melbourne, have suffered summer heatwaves, while bushfires have raged on the east and west coasts. Meanwhile, heavy rain has caused flooding along the east coast, huge waves have ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
California Rules
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91090
New York Times: California has now sued the Bush administration over its refusal to allow the state to set its own rules controlling greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. The state's legal arguments are sound and so is its policy, especially when one considers the White House's seven-year failure to seriously confront the problem of global warming. Go to The Board » The Clean Air Act of 1970 allows California to set stronger air pollution standards as long as it gets a waiver from the ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Global Warming Hits China
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/01/04/poyang-lake-china-oped-cx_cob_0106poyang.html
Forbes: There are few more startling embodiments of climate change than the current health of China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi. As is now customary in discussions involving global warming, the following statistics are liable to alarm. The surface area of Poyang Lake has shrunk to 50 square kilometers from its peak of more than 3,000 during the summer--it is 1.67% of its size six months ago. Some perspective is needed. A spectacular ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Soaring price oils wheels for green power
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/06/renewableenergy.energy
Observer: Sarah Hall's novel The Carhullan Army, which won this year's John Llewellyn Rhys prize for literature, paints a bleak portrait of a world where the oil has almost run out. Set in the not-too-distant future, the Orwellian novel describes a Britain run by a dictatorship called the Authority, where electricity is rationed, the miserable population subsists on tinned food and mountain-dwelling outlaws revert to subsistence living. Last week, in the real world, the price of oil finally ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Activists angry about oil auction off Alaska
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22527384/
Associated Press: The federal government will open up nearly 46,000 square miles off Alaska's northwest coast to petroleum leases next month, a decision condemned by environmental groups that contend the industrial activity will harm northern marine mammals. The Minerals Management Agency planned the sale in the Chukchi Sea without taking into account changes in the Arctic brought on by global warming and proposed insufficient protections for polar bears, walrus, whales and other species that could be ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Catching up from eight lost years
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080106/COLUMNIST43/801060792/-1/newssitemap
Herald Tribune: If we can make it through the next 379 days without getting into nuclear war, historians writing 100 years from now will begin their assessment of George W. Bush, not at all kindly, by identifying him as the United States president who caused the world to lose eight years in getting started with serious efforts to save the planet and the inhabitants thereof from the deadly consequences of global warming. Actually, we will not have to wait that long for this concept to be firmly ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Climate Change Catches On, Slowly, As Issue
http://www.courant.com/news/custom/topnews/hc-globalessay.artjan06,0,1470978.story
Hartford Courant: Former Vice President Al Gore could never quite turn his passion for global climate change into an effective campaign issue – at least not while he was running. He might have succeeded this year, though, with some help from the Bush administration. What Gore failed to do while in office or on the campaign trail himself, he managed to do by carting his slide show around the world in an effort immortalized in the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." A lot of people ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
United States: Climate change endangering U.S. salmon
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/01/06/climate_change_endangering_us_salmon/3646/
United Press International: Salmon in the Columbia River and other U.S. streams could face an uncertain future if global temperatures continue to warm, experts say. Experts such as aquatic ecologist Robert Bilby say that with river temperatures increasing, the cold-water fish could soon find themselves fighting for survival, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Sunday. Bilby, who helped assess the changing climate's impact on the U.S. salmon population, said the appearance of more than 100 dead salmon in a ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
United States: Global warming's political winds leave energy producers wary of coal
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/01/06/news/local/news04.txt
Missoulian: Three years into Gov. Brian Schweitzer's first term, Montana has heard plenty about coal development. But a profound political shift is throwing serious coal plans here into limbo. The shift comes because of concerns over global warming, for "developing" coal means burning it - to produce electricity, natural gas or liquid fuel. And burning coal creates carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the prime suspect in global warming. Coal developers in Montana and across the nation expect ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Japan, US, EU eye new energy-saving body: report
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKT19752420080106
Reuters: Japan, the United States and the European Union will jointly propose the creation of a new body to act as an international command centre in efforts to counter global warming, a leading Japanese daily said on Sunday. The proposal would be formally unveiled at a Group of Eight summit on the Japanese island of Hokkaido in July, the Yomiuri newspaper said without quoting specific sources. The new organization would make suggestions on energy conservation measures for countries ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Oil shale rises again in Western Colorado
http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/news080106_7.htm
Durango Herald: Like any good story of buried treasure, X marks the spot. In this story, it's a couple dozen Xes, taped to the side of an ordinary rock face on a corner of Rio Blanco County Road 5, west of Meeker. The Xes mark the outcrop of the Mahogany formation, which gets thicker as it plunges underground. The rocks are made of kerogen, otherwise known as oil shale. Companies have produced oil from these rocks in the past, but they have never done it in a way that makes sense ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Pachauri supports India's nuclear power quest
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200801061421.htm
The Hindu: Supporting India's quest for nuclear power, United Nations climate panel's chief scientist R K Pachauri has said that country should pursue it to contain emission and meet energy needs. "Nuclear power in my mind will have a place in overall scheme of things. Firstly, it is a clean energy as it does not emit any green house gases. Secondly, to certain extent, it would offset the pressure on fossil fuel," Pachauri, chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said. ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
"Sue and sue and sue" for emissions standards
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2004108073_emissionsed06.html
Seattle Times: Washington lined up with California and 14 other states to force the U.S. government out of its unfathomable foot-dragging on improving vehicle-emissions standards. The lawsuit in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seeks to overturn the Bush administration's Dec. 19 rejection of California's application for a federal waiver so it could implement its own new standards. Washington, Oregon and 13 other states embraced them as well, contingent on California's waiver, required under the ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
A Split On Global Warming
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-globalintro.artjan06,0,3028854.story
Hartford Courant: The contrast could not be more striking: Every Democratic candidate for president has put forward an aggressive package of policies and statements on global warming and has made it a cornerstone of his or her campaign. Of the Republicans, just one, John McCain, comes close to matching the Democrats' fervor for the issue. The GOP contenders focus instead on policies aimed at achieving energy independence – a goal that dates to the energy crisis of the 1970s. The contrast in this ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Big oil casts big shadow over Colorado's water future
http://durangoherald.com/asp-bin/article_generation.asp?article_type=news&article_path=/news/news080106_4.htm
Durango Herald: No one has ever rowed a boat across Stillwater Reservoir. Or caught a fish at Fourteenmile Reservoir. Or stood on the beach of Roan Creek Reservoir. These are all imaginary lakes. They exist only in the minds of oil company executives and attorneys. But the oil companies own legal rights to build and fill these reservoirs, which would be in Garfield and Rio Blanco counties. And as the companies take another look at Colorado's oil- shale deposits, which would require vast ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Canada: Buying your way out of carbon debt
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=e5ba4fc1-d8d3-4e58-a976-43d0473de98d
CanWest News Service: The Canadian Football League announced plans in November to make the Grey Cup a "carbon neutral" event. The following month, Aeroplan unveiled a venture that would allow its members to neutralize the environmental impact of their jetliner travel. And when Hollywood attends the Oscars next month, the awards show will declare its presenters have a carbon footprint of zero. In each case, the move toward environmentalism is largely accomplished by the purchasing of "carbon ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Climate close to tipping point, says Hansen
http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/52101/climate-close-to-tipping-point-says-hansen
Earth and Sky: Our planet may have reached what scientists call a "climate tipping point." Earth & Sky spoke with James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard institute for Space Studies in New York. He described what he calls a "climate tipping point," when little if any additional forcing – from the burning of fossil fuels – will be needed to cause large, relatively rapid climate change and impacts. Is our planet there yet? James Hansen: We're a lot closer than we thought we were. If we ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Democratic presidential contenders on energy
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0535687720080106
Reuters: Two of the top Democratic presidential contenders weighed in on the issue of how to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas associated with climate change, during a debate on Saturday. Both Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. Energy Secretary, said they agreed on that a cap-and-trade system, in which polluters have to pay for the right to emit gases and can sell emission rights they do not use, would be a logical approach. BILL ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Green gains small, but marketing hype is huge
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_7890840
Associated Press: Consumer electronics aren't exactly easy on the environment - they consume electricity that contributes to global warming, and toxins leach out of them when they end up in landfills. But the industry that's inviting us to get a new cell phone every year and toss out that old TV in favor of a great new flat panel is also trying to show that it cares. At the world's largest trade show for consumer electronics, starting Monday in Las Vegas, manufacturers will be talking not just ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
United Kingdom: PM Brown faces 'carbon cop-out' claims
http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/PM-Brown-faces-_carbon-cop__out_-claims-newsinkent8450.aspx
Kent News: Environmentalists say the Prime Minister's public stance on green issues lies in tatters this weekend after two pollution-related rows erupted in Kent. The attack came after the introduction of Government-approved, above-inflation train fare hikes which critics warned would force rail commuters back into cars. The Government also appeared to give tacit support to plans for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth. Campaigners say both would result in more carbon ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Canada: Record highs expected Monday, Tueday
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/291448
Toronto Star: Think spring fever, but in January. Record-breaking temperatures are in store for Monday and Tuesday as the mercury is forecast to rise to 13 C, surpassing Monday's record of 6.5 C in 1998 and Tuesday's 11.7 C set in 1965. Many Canadians will be tossing away their toques and shedding those parkas as southern Ontario and the rest of Canada are embracing unusually mild temperatures thanks to a rare phenomenon called the January thaw. According to David Phillips, senior ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Romania to contest EU carbon emission cuts: report
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL0654320720080106
Reuters: Romania has asked for an annulment of a 2007 European Commission decision to cut its carbon emission quota, a government official said. The European Commission decided in October to cut the new EU member's emission quota for 2008-2018 by 20.7 percent and lower its 2007 ceiling by 10 percent. The centrist minority government filed the annulment request with the European Court of Justice on December 21, said Adrian Ciocanea, head of the cabinet's European Affairs ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
The poor shut out of carbons market
http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5132&Itemid=5821
Business Daily: Two months ago, Japan became the first country in the world to receive its purchased allotment of carbon offsets from the UN, under a programme considered critical for combating global warming. The carbon offset initiative has been widely touted as a win-win situation. Rich countries that have promised to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions can essentially pay developing countries to do it for them. But now that the carbon-offset programme is open for business, it is time ...
Sun, 6 Jan 08
Werbach at Wal-Mart?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/06/CM9TTS800.DTL
San Francisco Chronicle: To say that Adam Werbach cultivates controversy is like pointing out that a roll in the grass pleases a dog. Already a budding environmental provocateur as a second-grader in Los Angeles, the young Werbach drew up a petition to get rid of James Watt, Ronald Reagan's troglodyte Secretary of the Interior, who never met a strip mine he didn't like. As the precocious 23-year-old president of the Sierra Club, he faced down a board of senior members to implement radical changes to attract a ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
Canada's Boreal forest the Fort Knox of carbon
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=8fa0a07a-fac5-4109-93a3-104936a562ec&k=91042
CanWest News Service: Canada's forest is emerging as an immense - truly immense - national and international player. The broad swath of often-scruffy timberland stretching from the Yukon to Labrador is one of largest stores of carbon on Earth, making it key to global warming and climate change. It holds an estimated 186 billion tonnes of carbon. That is about 27 times as much carbon as is released globally by the burning of fossil fuels each year. "Canada's Boreal region is a ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
United States: Conservationists blast plans for oil, gas leases
http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2008/01/05/news/regional/ce1c45814a9e376e872573c40082e281.txt
Associated Press: The federal Minerals Management Service gave final approval Wednesday to oil and natural gas development off Alaska's northwest shore, drawing condemnation from environmental groups concerned with the effects on marine mammals. The MMS said it would hold a lease sale Feb. 6 in Anchorage for bidding on nearly 46,000 square miles of outer continental shelf lands in the Chukchi Sea, the part of the Arctic Ocean that begins north of the Bering Strait and stretches between northwest Alaska ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
Low-energy bulb disposal warning
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7172662.stm
BBC: The Environment Agency has called for more information to be made available on the health and environmental risks posed by low-energy light bulbs. It says because the bulbs contain small amounts of mercury, more information about safe recycling is needed. It also wants health warnings printed on packaging and information on how to clear up smashed bulbs in the home. But a toxicologist has played down the risks, saying several bulbs would have to be smashed at once to ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
Solving consumption problems
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/346156_focussecond06.html
New York Times: To mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: It's 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than in the developing world. ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
2007 'second warmest year' in UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7169690.stm
BBC: Last year was the second warmest on record in the UK, according to figures released by the Met Office. The average mean temperature across the UK was 9.6C - slightly cooler than in 2006, but continuing the recent trend towards warmer temperatures. Since UK-wide records began in 1914, nine of the 10 warmest years have happened since 1989. 2007 was no exception despite a natural weather event known as La Nina, which usually reduces global temperatures. It was ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
China to launch pollution survey in February: state media
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h6tJL7WXplzyQEqzZPxh-u4B0wgQ
Agence France-Presse: China, which is facing serious environmental problems due to its booming economic growth, will next month launch its first nationwide survey to identify pollution sources, state media said Saturday. The survey, to be completed in the first half of 2008, will assess the sources of industrial, agricultural and residential pollution, said Zhou Shengxian, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration. The results will be revealed in the first half of 2009, Zhou told ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
Heating with wood can be green
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/290626
Toronto Star: Firewood is the best of all heating fuels and firewood is the worst of all heating fuels. The reality depends on how the wood is burned and what your expectations are. I know because I've spent the past 20 years heating with environmentally harvested wood in one form or another while researching developments in the field. As high fossil fuel prices remain with us, I suspect that homeowners everywhere are looking seriously at the economy of wood heat, many for the first time. ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
Indonesia: Ice Pioneer Eyes Farthest Glaciers
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ggTWKG3NvM4gbUOp-UjylzHyw2vAD8TVREIG0
Associated Press: For 5,000 years, great tongues of ice have spread over the 3-mile-high slopes of Puncak Jaya, in the remotest reaches of this remote tropical island. Now those glaciers are melting, and Lonnie Thompson must get there before they're gone. To the American glaciologist, the ancient ice is a vanishing "archive" of the story of El Nino, the equatorial phenomenon driving much of the world's climate. More than that, the little-explored glaciers are a last unknown for a ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Brown hints at nuclear power plan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7173496.stm
BBC: Prime Minister Gordon Brown has hinted that the government may approve a new generation of nuclear power plants. He told the Observer newspaper that taking decisions on energy sources is "a fundamental precondition of preparing Britain for the new world". He used the interview to accuse his opponents of "opportunism", saying he would put long-term interests first. Mr Brown also indicated his determination to find a compromise on the detention of ...
Sat, 5 Jan 08
Australia: Climate change exposes secret treasure
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23011546-2761,00.html
AAP: WA has arguably the most pristine coral reef remaining on the planet - and it's not Ningaloo. Just 260km off Broome are Rowley Shoals, three atolls on the edge of one of the widest continental shelves in the world. But with climate change, cyclones and illegal fishing all posing a risk, marine scientists have embarked on a three-year mission to protect one of our best-kept underwater secrets. Just back from their first trip, the researchers found the reef was in ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Burning biofuels may be worse than coal and oil, say experts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/04/sciencenews.biofuels
Guardian: Using biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil fuels, according to experts. Although the fuels themselves emit fewer greenhouse gases, they all have higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland. The problems of climate change and the rising cost of oil have led to a race to develop environmentally-friendly biofuels, such as palm oil or ethanol derived from corn and sugar cane. The EU has ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
California to sue government over car emissions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2235171,00.html
Guardian: California has gone head to head with the Bush administration over its approach to global warming, suing the US government for its refusal to allow the state to press ahead with its own cuts in car pollution. The move takes the increasingly adversarial relationship between California and Washington into a state of open confrontation: California which wants to impose sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and accuses the federal government of dragging its feet on the issue. The ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Forests failing in carbon relief role
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/forests-failing-in-carbon-relief-role/2008/01/03/1198949986476.html
Sydney Morning Herald: THE ability of forests to soak up carbon dioxide is weakening, an analysis of two decades of data from more than 30 sites in the globe's frozen north has found. The finding, published yesterday, is crucial because it means that more of the CO2 released by humans will end up affecting the climate in the atmosphere rather than being safely locked away in trees or soil. The results may partly explain recent studies suggesting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Pressure on Brown to veto coal-fired power station
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3307572.ece
Independent: Gordon Brown has been challenged to prove his green credentials by blocking plans to build Britain's first coal-fired power station for 24 years. Environmental activists condemned a decision by councillors to support an application to demolish an outdated plant in Kent and replace it with another that burns coal, widely regarded as the dirtiest fossil fuel. The final decision on allowing the development of the proposed station at Kingsnorth, near Rochester, lies with the ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Australia: This drought may never break
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/this-drought-may-never-break/2008/01/03/1198949986473.html
Sydney Morning Herald: IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation's most senior weather experts warned yesterday. "Perhaps we should call it our new climate," said the Bureau of Meteorology's head of climate analysis, David Jones. He was speaking after the release of statistics showing that last year was the hottest on record in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT. NSW's ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
United Kingdom: £1bn coal-fired power station gets green light
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/04/fossilfuels.carbonemissions
Guardian: The first coal-fired power station in Britain for more than 30 years has been approved by a local government authority, triggering delight from industry but anger from green campaigners who said the government must halt a plan which would increase carbon emissions and undermine the fight against climate change. Medway Council in Kent gave the green light to the £1bn Kingsnorth plant proposed by the German-owned gas and electricity provider Eon, which argued that it was a much cleaner ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Green campaigners furious as new coal-fired power station approved
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3129380.ece
Times (UK): The comeback of coal as an energy source cleared its first hurdle yesterday when a council approved plans for Britain's first coal-fired power station for 20 years. Environmental campaigners and the international development lobby have made it clear that they will continue to fight the planned Kingsnorth power station in Medway, Kent. The £1 billion investment was recommended by Medway council, but still faces a final decision from the Secretary of State for Business. ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
What to do when oil hits $100 a barrel
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0104/p08s01-comv.html
Christian Science Monitor: For the first time, oil prices have nosed above $100 a barrel. Gasoline is higher by 73 cents a gallon from a year ago. In past decades, such price jumps brought a knee-jerk reaction to conserve or to find more oil. The world has done both. Yet prices continue to rise. So what's left to do? Congress tried to mandate more conservation last month when it insisted on better fuel efficiency in automobiles (from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by 2020). But some evidence suggests that better ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
China closes over 10,000 coal mines in last three years
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-01/03/content_7359013.htm
China View: China closed 10,412 coal mines in the last three years amid efforts to improve workplace safety and to check extravagant use of natural resources, the country's top industrial safety inspector said. Li Yizhong, head of the State Administration of Work Safety, said another 1,100 coal mines must be shut soon as the government had ordered the closure of 11,618 coal mines by the end of last November. He made the remarks at a recent meeting on coal mine development in Beijing. ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Grass could help save the world
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/grass-could-help-save-the-world/2008/01/03/1198949986482.html
Sydney Morning Herald: WITH new research showing that the world's forests are absorbing less man-made carbon dioxide each year, two Australian scientists said some plants could store CO2 for thousands of years. Grasses such as wheat and sorghum can store large amounts of carbon in microscopic balls of silica, called phytoliths, that form around a plant's cells as they draw the mineral from the soil, a report in the latest issue of New Scientist says. When a plant dies, the phytoliths, or plantstones, ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Nuclear power consultation flawed
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL033392720080104
Reuters: The government's public consultation last year on the need for new nuclear power plants to tackle climate change and bridge the looming energy gap was flawed and misleading, a group of academics said on Friday. The government, which has said repeatedly new nuclear power stations are needed, was forced by a legal ruling last February to undertake the consultation which ended in October. It is expected early next week to give the green light to a new generation of nuclear power ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Canada: A critical shield against global warming
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080104.BOREAL04/TPStory/Environment
Globe and Mail: The boreal forest occupies nearly half of Canada's land mass, yet it's more significant to national myth and memory - as home to the coureurs de bois and the hewers of wood - than it is to any discussion of a shared future. But the blanket of woodlands that runs all the way from Yukon to the coast of Labrador may play a huge role in the battle to protect the planet from climate change. As one of the last great intact forests on Earth, along with the Russian taiga and the Amazon ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
United Kingdom: A test of the Government's environmental credentials
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article3307550.ece
Leader: The decision Gordon Brown makes on whether to proceed with Britain's first new coal power station in two decades will make or break his environmental reputation. It will either confirm the Prime Minister's claims to be a leader in the struggle against climate change, or expose him as an imposter. The owner of the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, E.on UK, wants to replace the existing plant with two new coal units by 2012. According to the company's chief executive, these units will ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Australia Hit by Floods, Fires Amid Global Warming
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46248/story.htm
Reuters: Australia endured bushfires, floods and record high temperatures in its drought-ravaged foodbowl in 2007 as global warming brought the nation's sixth hottest year on record, the weather bureau said on Thursday. The crucial Murray-Darling river basin, home to 2 million people and almost half the country's fruit and cereal crop, had its hottest known year, the Bureau of Meteorology said in its 2007 Australian Climate Statement. The mean maximum temperature of 28.6 Celsius (83.5 ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Calif., other states challenge US on car emissions
http://www.reuters.com/article/basicindustries-SP-A/idUSN0210469420080104
Reuters: California and 15 other U.S. states on Tuesday sought to overturn a Bush administration decision in December that denied California's attempt to set tough new standards for auto emissions. The legal challenge, which was widely expected, returns the matter to the courts where states have had some success recently in the long-running fight to force the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) hand in the fight against global warming. "The EPA has done nothing at the ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Dramatic food price increases threaten the world's hungry
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/47985/2008/00/4-124656-1.htm
Reuters: World food prices are rising faster than they have for more than 30 years, putting hundreds of millions of vulnerable people at increased risk of hunger and malnutrition, food experts warn. "The world food system is in trouble. The situation has not been this much concern for 15 years", Joachim von Braun, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), cautions in Christian Science Monitor. The end of the cheap food era is likely to see more people ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Indonesia: Farmers suffer from booming palm oil
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=91023
Jakarta Post: The Indonesian Farmers' Union criticized the government Wednesday for mismanagement in the food crop sector, highlighting the massive displacement of farmers by the expansion of oil palm plantations. Union chairman Henry Saragih said the palm oil industry had been aggressively expanding plantations to capitalize on a continuing rise in crude palm oil prices expected to result from higher world demand, especially in India and China. He cited 2006 records of the Agriculture ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Northern plants 'losing carbon' due to warming
http://www.scidev.net/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=4168&language=1
SciDev.Net: Global warming could cause plants in northern regions to lose carbon to the atmosphere rather than sequester it, according to a new international study. The research, published in Nature yesterday (3 January), looked at atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and carbon dioxide held in ecosystems such as forests in the Northern Hemisphere in the past 20 years. It is widely believed that the warming trend in the past two decades – with spring starting earlier and winter ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Pop goes the solar bubble?
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/01/04/solar_bubble/index.html
Salon: Moore's law giveth, and Moore's law taketh away. A little more than a year ago, in a post reviewing Taiwan's charge into solar power, I wrote the following sentence: Few things are certain in this world, but if Taiwanese high-technology companies are betting on the future of solar power, then consumers can expect that prices will drop, fast. If ever there was a country whose citizens operated as if disobeying Moore's Law was punishable by death, it would be Taiwan. ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Saving the Continent's Forests - The 'Lungs of the World'
http://allafrica.com/stories/200801040775.html
Africa Renewal: From the air the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) stretch as far as the eye can see, broken only by distant, shining ribbons of rivers and streams. Dense, deep, seemingly impenetrable, the forests of the Central African region extend over 200 mn hectares, inspiring awe and sometimes dread among residents and visitors, and providing refuge for everything from rare and endangered plants and animals to ferocious militias accused of brutal crimes against humanity. It ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Carbon dioxide pollution kills hundreds a year: study
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKN0433000720080104
Reuters: Climate-warming carbon dioxide spewed by coal-fired power plants and fossil-fueled vehicles has been causing hundreds of premature U.S. deaths each year over the several decades, a new study reported. The deaths were due to lung and heart ailments linked to ozone and polluting particles in the air, which are spurred by carbon dioxide that comes from human activities, according to the study's author, Mark Jacobson of Stanford University. As the planet warms due to carbon dioxide ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
China to Study Sources of Its Pollution
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5icPw8BwDs4EYOrcM2Xe3KOGqPw5gD8TV8T701
Associated Press: China will conduct its first national survey of pollution sources in February to help control environmental deterioration in a country with some of the world's most tainted cities, state media said Friday. The study will identify and collect data on sources of industrial, agricultural and residential pollution for two months, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the head of the State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA. "The results of the census will ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
EU considers carbon tariff
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL0464478420080104
Reuters: The European Commission is debating whether to push for a carbon tariff on imports from countries that do not tackle their greenhouse gas emissions, as part of climate change proposals due out this month. Supporters of the measure say it would level the playing field for European companies facing tougher domestic emissions penalties. The new rules would be part of a raft of post-2012 proposals covering issues including national emissions targets and clean energy ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Plans to drill for Alaskan oil threaten polar bear numbers
http://environment.independent.co.uk/nature/article3307592.ece
Independent: Environment groups are protesting against plans by the US government to open up a vast area of Arctic sea off Alaska for oil exploration, saying it would pose an unacceptable new threat to polar bears and walruses. The Minerals and Management Service, MMS, said it would be seeking bids for petroleum licences in the Chukchi Sea on 6 February. The 46,000-square-mile area, located between Alaska and the coast of the Russian Far East, holds 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil and a huge ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Poll: Most Kansans support blocking construction of coal power plants
http://www.dodgeglobe.com/stories/010408/loc_20080104004.shtml
Dodge City Daily Globe: By a 2-1 margin, Kansas voters favored the state's rejection of two coal-fired electricity plants near Holcomb, according to poll results released Thursday. The Alexandria, Va.-based Democratic political polling firm Cooper and Secrest Associates conducted a telephone poll of 1,007 Kansas voters on energy issues on Nov. 19, 20, 25 and 26. The poll was conducted six or seven weeks after Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Rod Bremby denied Sunflower Electric Corp.'s ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Scientist sees few benefits from biofuels
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL0472485220080104
Reuters: Rising production of biofuels has distorted government budgets, helped to drive up food prices and led to deforestation in south-east Asia, the chief scientist of Defra said on Friday. "The way we are currently producing biofuels is not the way to go," former World Bank chief scientist Robert Watson said, citing the U.S. ethanol programme and German support for biodiesel as among the least cost effective. Watson told the Oxford Farming Conference that biofuels ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Tokyo Eyes Buying Carbon Credits From China - Report
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46255/story.htm
Reuters: Japan is planning to buy up carbon credits yielded by its investments in emissions-cutting projects in China, a newspaper said on Thursday. The two governments agreed the deal on Wednesday and will formally sign it when President Hu Jintao visits Japan, probably in late March, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. Tokyo and Beijing will then select emissions-cutting projects to be funded by yen-denominated loans, the Yomiuri said. A third of the projects funded by such loans ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Carbon dioxide linked to deaths
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/01/04/carbon_dioxide_linked_to_deaths/5602/
United Press International: A U.S. researcher has linked increased mortality to higher levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. Using a computer model of the atmosphere that incorporates physical and chemical environmental processes, Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson found that for each increase of one degree Celsius caused by carbon dioxide, the resulting air pollution would lead to about a thousand additional deaths and many more cases of respiratory illness and asthma in the United ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, Movie Screening
http://www.kwtx.com/iwitness/headlines/13038547.html
KWTX: On Jan. 10 and 11, 2008 in Waco and Dallas---The Redford Center at Sundance Preserve will host free film premiers of its new documentary, Fighting Goliath: Texas Coal Wars, to boost awareness and engagement in the state's battle against conventional coalfired power plants. Narrated by Robert Redford and produced by Alpheus Media, the film follows the story of Texans fighting a high-stakes battle for clean air and centers around the unlikely partners– mayors, ranchers, lawyers, cities, ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
Low prices seen threat to UK organic beef
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL0465677820080104
Reuters: British retailers must pay more for domestically produced organic beef because current prices are unfair and unsustainable, a leading organic food certification body said on Friday. The Soil Association said in a report issued on Friday that some key supermarkets are not paying enough to cover production costs and choosing to import organic beef even though there could easily be enough supply in Britain. The report called on retailers and processors to increase the prices they ...
Fri, 4 Jan 08
U.K. Government Nuclear-Power Inquiry `Failed,' Academics Say
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aAxjVNQrbb8g&refer=uk
Bloomberg: A U.K. government inquiry into whether the state should back the construction of new nuclear power stations ``failed'' because it obscured or overlooked some issues, a group of academics said. ``The key assumptions underpinning the government's approach to the 2007 nuclear consultation remain open to critical analysis,'' the group said in a report published today on its Web site. The report's contributors, led by Warwick University's Paul Dorfman, are `` concerned that these framing ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Italy: Milan's Pollution Charge Gets Off to Smooth Start
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46234/story.htm
Reuters: The Italian city of Milan introduced a "pollution charge" for drivers on Wednesday in an effort to cut smog levels, with light traffic ensuring the system suffered only a few teething troubles. Several motorists complained about a scarcity of outlets selling the pass that allows entrance to the centre of the Italian financial capital and the council Web site allowing online payment collapsed on the eve of the launch. Under the innovative "EcoPass" system ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Warming seas threaten salmon in nation's rivers
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20080103TDY02309.htm
Yomiuri Shimbun: Salmon may disappear from the nation's rivers by the end of this century if sea temperatures continue to rise as a result of global warming, according to researchers. The projection was made by a team of researchers headed by Prof. Masahide Kaeriyama and Prof. Michio Kishi of Hokkaido University. A separate study showed that the number of salmon returning to their native rivers has been declining on the eastern Korean Peninsula, which is located on about the same latitude as ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Beijing Introduces Cleaner Fuel Standards
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46235/story.htm
Reuters: China has introduced cleaner fuel standards in its capital Beijing, its latest effort to curb the city's notorious pollution ahead of the Olympic Games in August. Under the new standards, retailers will be required to supply gasoline and diesel equivalent to the Euro IV standard, a move that will cut emissions of acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide by 1,840 tonnes, the China Daily said on Wednesday, citing Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau. Earlier reports have said the ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
In US, Al Gore has more company on climate change now
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0103/p04s01-wogi.html
Christian Science Monitor: Global climate change promises to be as big an issue in 2008, politically, as it was last year. In the United States, presidential and congressional elections are likely to be a major factor in this accelerating interest. That's particularly true since the issue is closely related to energy policy, not to mention the instability in Iraq, an oil-rich part of the world. The debate in Congress has shifted from what is causing rising global temperatures to the strategies for fighting it. ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Indonesia Flood Death Toll Climbs as Waters Recede
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46241/story.htm
Reuters: At least 112 people have been killed and nine are still missing after landslides and floods hit Indonesia's Java island over the past week, officials said on Wednesday. Some of the 60,000 displaced residents have returned to their homes in parts of Central Java and East Java provinces as floodwaters started to subside. But rescue workers continued their search for several people who may still be buried under thick mud after landslides slammed into their homes following heavy rain ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Australia: Drought relief to be tightened
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23000293-601,00.html
Australian: DROUGHT-RELIEF payments to farmers will be revamped by the Rudd Government amid concerns taxpayers are supporting farms that will never be viable because of climate change. The Government plans to pay incentives to farmers on unviable land if they are prepared to modify their farming practices to regain long-term viability in a move that would reduce the drain on the public purse involved in subsidising marginal properties. And it will back the planned $75 million in research ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Australia: Four states swelter in year of extremes
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23000327-11949,00.html
Australian: LAST year will go down as the warmest on record for South Australia, Victoria, NSW and possibly Tasmania - but the year was also one of extremes. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the February temperatures in Western Australia were more than 5C hotter than average. But Australia had its coldest June on record, with temperatures 1.5C below the average. As the Bureau of Meteorology prepared to release its annual weather review today, Don White from Weatherwatch ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Rising CO2 levels tied to increasing human mortality
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0103-pollution.html
Mongabay: Rising carbon dioxide levels have been tied to increases in human mortality, reports a study to be published in Geophysical Research Letters. Using a complex computer model of the atmosphere, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson estimates that air pollution resulting from each increase of 1 degree Celsius caused by carbon dioxide, would lead annually to roughly a thousand additional deaths and many more cases of respiratory illness and asthma in the United States. Worldwide, ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
North Atlantic warming tied to natural variability; but global warming may be at play elsewhere
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/du-naw010308.php
EurekAlert: A Duke University-led analysis of available records shows that while the North Atlantic Ocean's surface waters warmed in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, the change was not uniform. In fact, the subpolar regions cooled at the same time that subtropical and tropical waters warmed. This striking pattern can be explained largely by the influence of a natural and cyclical wind circulation pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), wrote authors of a study published Thursday, ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
2008 to be in top 10 warmest years say forecasters
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKL0314515220080103
Reuters: 2008 will be slightly cooler than recent years globally but will still be among the top 10 warmest years on record since 1850 and should not be seen as a sign global warming was on the wane, British forecasters said. The Met Office and experts at the University of East Anglia on Thursday said global average temperatures this year would be 0.37 of a degree Celsius above the long-term 1961-1990 average of 14 degrees and be the coolest since 2000. They said the forecast took into ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Australia to become hotter and hotter each year
http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/01/04/Australia_to_become_hotter_and_hotter_each_year
Live News: Water restrictions might be saving billions of litres every year but it seems that's still not enough to keep up with climate change. A survey by the Australian shows in most cases the scheme hasn't been able to keep up with reduced rainfall. 2007 was the country's warmest on record with temperatures more than half a degree above the annual average. This is said to become a common trend with predictions Australia will become a little bit hotter each year. British ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Britain: 2008 May Be Among Hottest Years
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_Y6gucfby0Ylh_h5ByDFV2tFI2AD8TUMLA00
Associated Press: This year is forecast to be among the top 10 hottest years on record, Britain's weather office said Thursday, despite a strong cooling effect predicted from the tropical weather phenomenon known as La Nina. The global surface temperature in 2008 will rise 0.67 degrees Fahrenheit above what climate scientists call the long-term average of 57.2 degrees Fahrenheit, the Met Office said. The average is derived by calculating the mean of surface temperatures registered globally between 1961 ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Council approves plans for Kent coal power station
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/03/energy.fossilfuels
Guardian: A council in Kent last night backed plans for a new coal-fired power station, the first to be built in the UK for more than 30 years. Energy firm E.On's application to build the station at Kingsnorth, near Rochester, was given the green light when the Tory-controlled Medway council voted in favour of replacing an existing power station. E.on UK said the £1bn investment to build two new cleaner coal units would produce power from coal more efficiently and cleanly than ever ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
Global Climate in 2008 May Be Coolest Since 2000
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aBBw.Bw5TOpg&refer=australia
Bloomberg: Average global temperatures will be lower in 2008 than in any year since 2000 because of cooling waters in the Pacific Ocean, according to an estimate from the Met Office, the U.K. weather forecaster. Still, temperatures will be 0.37 degree Celsius above the 14-degree (57.2-degree Fahrenheit) average from 1961 to 1990, and this year will probably be one of the 10 hottest on record, according to a statement on the Met Office Web site. 2007 was one of the 10 warmest years ever, ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
US energy bill won't undercut oil prices for years to come
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/03/business/NA-FIN-US-Energy-Act-Oil-Prices.php
Associated Press: The energy bill signed into law late last year, just weeks before oil first hit $100 a barrel Wednesday, will have little impact on U.S. oil or gasoline prices for years – if at all. Although two of the biggest components of the wide-ranging bill – a renewable fuels mandate and new vehicle efficiency standards – focus on boosting fuel supply and curbing gasoline demand, they are not likely to ease pressure on tight crude and gasoline markets. "In the short term, of course, ...
Thu, 3 Jan 08
World to cool slightly in 2008: British experts
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jqeTAmS2lN1AY5-wJ4OmHAYGbvPg
Agence France-Presse: World temperatures will cool slightly in 2008, but it will remain among the top 10 hottest years on record, British weather experts predicted Thursday. The impact of a strong La Nina climate pattern over the Pacific will help keep temperatures down, according to the annual forecast by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia. Overall the global temperature is expected to be 0.37 degree Celsius above the long-term average of 14.0 degree, making it the coolest year since ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Do polar bears need US protection?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0102/p03s03-usgn.html
Christian Science Monitor: Do polar bears, which have become the poster child for the potential ravages of future global warming, need special protection from Uncle Sam now? That's the question under consideration at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which is poised to recommend whether the icon of the Arctic should be officially designated as a threatened species – even though the bear's numbers currently are not in precipitous decline. The judiciousness of protecting the polar bear under the ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Philippines: Climate change tops DENR priority in 2007
http://www.philstar.com/index.php?Headlines&p=49&type=2&sec=24&aid=20080101135
Philippine Inquirer: As world leaders attempted but failed to formulate a post-Kyoto Protocol agreement to deal with global warming, the Philippines has been ranked as the top victim of extreme weather events in the world in 2006. Based on the international report "Global Climate Risk Index 2006," which environment and development organization Germanwatch and Munich Reinsurance presented during the historical United Nations-initiated climate summit in Bali, Indonesia, the Philippines was the most affected ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Australia: Corals may move from warming seas
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22996611-30417,00.html
Australian: IF their watery world continues to warm as climate change scientists predict, Western Australia's corals may head south to cooler climes. That's the message from US and Australian researchers who compared the behaviour of the state's corals then and now. Since "then" was 125,000 years ago, University of Queensland paleoecologist John Pandolfi and geologist Benjamin Greenstein of Cornell College in Iowa are confident their findings are not a short-term blip. ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Giant sail technology could make shipping greener
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/02/travelandtransport.energyefficiency
Guardian: One of the first large cargo ships in 100 years to cross the Atlantic with the help of the wind will set off from European shores this month on a voyage which is due to make maritime history. When the 10,000-tonne Beluga Skysail is well clear of the land, it will launch a giant kite, which wind tunnel tests and sea trials suggest will tug it along and save 10-15% of the heavy fuel oil it would normally burn. If the journey from Bremen in Germany to Venezuela and back proves ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Italy: Milan Drivers Face Trend-Setting Pollution Charge
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/46227/story.htm
Reuters: Drivers will have to pay a "pollution charge" to enter Milan's city centre from Wednesday in what the Italian financial capital bills as a trend-setting way to cut smog. Milan's "EcoPass", launched as a one-year trial, is aimed at the 89,000 vehicles that each day clog the middle of the northern Italian city, where pollution readings often top European Union (EU) limits. The charge is being billed as the first of its kind among European cities. London, ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
California sues EPA over tailpipe rules
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/california_greenhouse_gases;_ylt=ApVZh9A8Yzs.8Qd1EH78WDbYeMUA
Associated Press: California sued the federal government Wednesday in its ongoing bid to set the country's first greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs, providing new data to show its program is superior to a federal plan. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court of Appeals asks the federal Environmental Protection Agency to review its own decision last month to deny California a waiver it and 16 other states need to regulate greenhouse gases from new cars and trucks. EPA Administrator ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
California sues government for rejecting bid to curb emissions
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-me-epa3jan03,1,6968553.story?coll=la-headlines-business
LA Times: California and 15 other states filed suit against the federal government today for denying them the right to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks, a major cause of global warming. The lawsuit, filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, challenges the Environmental Protection Agency's Dec. 19 decision to deny California a waiver to pass its own tailpipe rules, which is permitted under the 1970 Clean Air Act. When it comes to air pollution, the act allows states to ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Investment in clean energy topped $100 billion for first time in 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/02/business/energy.php
International Herald Tribune: Despite the global credit crunch in 2007, new investment in clean energy industries like wind and solar power rose sharply to break through the $100 billion barrier for the first time, a research group, New Energy Finance, said Wednesday. Michael Liebreich, chief executive of the group, which is based in London, said investments had risen 35 percent to reach $117.2 billion in 2007, from $86.5 billion the year before. The sector had performed well because important factors that ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Of Two Minds on Polar Bears
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=90952
New York Times: Two agencies in the Department of the Interior are nearing significant yet contradictory decisions that will affect the fate of one of America's iconic animal species, the polar bear. As early as this week , the Fish and Wildlife Service could list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, the result of severe habitat loss caused by global warming and the melting of Arctic sea ice. About the same time, the Minerals Management Service will announce its final ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Power firms to pocket £6bn from carbon 'handouts' in new emissions regime
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article3301065.ece
Independent: The UK's biggest polluters will reap a windfall of at least £6bn from rising power prices and the soaring value of carbon under the new European carbon trading scheme that critics say fails to correct the flaws of the system it replaced. From yesterday, the second phase of the European Trading Scheme (ETS) took effect. Analysts have predicted that the price of carbon for 2008, already trading at about ¿22 per ton, could nearly double under the new regime, which sets much lower ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Scientists: We've Entered a New Epoch, the Anthropocene
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=4074374&page=1
ABC News: We humans are having such a dramatic impact on our planet that some leading scientists think the current era needs a new name. We're no longer in the Holocene epoch, they say. We're now well into what they are calling the Anthropocene. This planet is being changed by human activities in ways that will continue to alter Earth for millions of years. The most obvious example is global climate change precipitated by the release of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, but there are many ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Shifting heat layers above Arctic to blame for ice crisis: study
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hWas1ATOsqlUcRqZ021v5ubeO3IA
Agence France-Presse: The dramatic loss of the Arctic ice cap may have been triggered by disruption to the thermal layers of atmosphere stacked over Earth's far north, according to Swedish research to be published Thursday. The study, published in Nature, offers a new explanation for the rise in the Arctic's surface temperature, which over the past century has been nearly two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), or twice the global average. Until now, the big suspect in "Arctic amplification" ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
'Clean coal' is still coal
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080102/OPINION/801020440/1030
Herald-Tribune: Several Democratic and Republican presidential front-runners are touting "clean coal" technology as part of the solution to the nation's energy woes. Congress and President Bush have devoted funding to research and develop the effort. And coal companies, of course, are all for the concept. But some electric utilities appear to be losing enthusiasm for the idea because of uncertainty about costs, regulatory requirements and the reliability of a key part of the ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Calif. Sues EPA Over Greenhouse Gas Regs
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jJH569QSBl-5FfOe4F9liGjADk3gD8TTU4K82
Associated Press: California sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Wednesday for denying its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs, challenging the Bush administration's conclusion that states have no business setting emission standards. Other states are expected to join the lawsuit, which was anticipated after the EPA on Dec. 19 denied California's request for a waiver, required under the federal Clean Air Act. The lawsuit was filed in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Cheney Repeatedly Met With Auto Execs Before White House Killed California's Emissions Law
http://www.coastalpost.com/08/01/06a_Cheney_met.html
Coastal Post: Before EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson "answered the pleas of industry executives" by announcing his "decision to deny California the right to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles," auto executives directly appealed to Vice President Cheney. EPA staffers told the LA Times that Johnson "made his decision" only after Cheney met with the executives. On multiple occasions in October and November, Cheney and White House staff members met with industry ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Clean energy investment up one third in 07 -report
http://www.reuters.com/article/fundsFundsNews/idUSL0228047120080102
Reuters: Investment in clean energy worldwide rose by a third last year to $117 billion, boosted by widespread concerns over global warming, researchers New Energy Finance said on Wednesday. Government measures to combat climate change and support clean energy sources such as wind, biofuels and solar have drawn investment funding into the sector, helping it weather a wider credit crunch which has strained markets and threatened lending elsewhere. The amount of new money invested in ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Concern growing over Great Lake water levels
http://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=838818&auth=Don+Crosby
Owen Sound Sun Times: Concern continues to grow over the local effects of declining water levels in the Great Lakes. In his inaugural address, Bruce County Warden Milt McIver promised to make water levels a priority during his term of office. He wants the county to be involved in discussions on Great Lakes water levels, which are beginning to impact several Bruce County municipalities. "It's having a huge impact for all of us but especially those of us on the lakefront. We see lake levels ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
United States: Experts worry dry conditions threaten S.C. ecosystem
http://www.thestate.com/local/story/272334.html
State: Three of the 11 driest years in 129 years of record-keeping in Columbia have come in the past eight years. Throughout South Carolina, only one year in the past nine has been remarkably wetter than normal. Now, scientists are wondering if the frequent long droughts and infrequent floods of the past decade could change the natural landscape in the state. "I worry about all species," said University of South Carolina naturalist Rudy Mancke. "The drought affects one or two ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Germany begins ban on polluting cars in city centres
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080101/ts_afp/germanyautopollutionenvironment_080101221540;_ylt=Ami5m1KMd4aAaX2eC5TiH1vYeMUA
Agence France-Presse: Three German cities, including the capital Berlin, began implementing a new air pollution system on Tuesday that bans the dirtiest vehicles from their centres. Drivers in Berlin, Cologne and Hanover are now required to display a coloured badge showing the level of pollution caused by their vehicle, with a scale of red, yellow and green. Some vehicles, notably an estimated 1.7 million old diesel cars and vans, will not qualify for even the most polluting red badge and will be ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Global warming and hot air
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_roberts/2008/01/global_warming_hot_air.html
Guardian: Republican candidates for president are straddling the fence on global warming, to rather clumsy effect. The only reason their awkward manoeuvres haven't brought them more grief is that nobody seems to be watching. The media shows no interest in pushing them on the issue, and they don't get asked about it in forums or debates - except for that debate in Iowa where Fred Thompson so courageously refused to raise his hand. (You gotta respect a guy who can make laziness a virtue.) Most of ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Australia: Global warming could see corals migrate, expert says
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/167488.html
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Global warming could send Australia's corals migrating south to where the waters are cooler, scientists said Wednesday. Researcher John Pandolfi looked at the fossil record and found evidence that coral reefs shifted south along Australia's west coast during a warm spell 125,000 years ago. "Back then there used to be rich coral reefs dotted all along the West Australia coastline, from south of Perth to north of Dampier," Pandolfi said in a statement. "When the seas ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Global Warming May Reduce Carbon Sink Capacity In Northern Forests
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080102134142.htm
Science Daily: An international study investigating the carbon sink capacity of northern terrestrial ecosystems discovered that the duration of the net carbon uptake period (CUP) has on average decreased due to warmer autumn temperatures. Net carbon uptake of northern ecosystems is decreasing in response to autumnal warming according to findings recently published January 3rd, in the journal Nature. The carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems is particularly sensitive to climatic changes in autumn ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
India: Govt to provide subsidy for solar power plants
http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-31208620080102
Reuters: India will subsidise the running of solar power plants to help develop a renewable energy infrastructure, where high costs can be prohibitive, the minister for renewable energy said on Wednesday. Renewable energy accounts for about 7.5 percent of India's installed generation capacity of 127,673 MW, a rate that compares favourably with much of the rest of the world. Much of this capacity is wind-based, and the share of solar power is small. "My ministry will provide ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
India's population will harm the country and the planet - III
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=128967
Merinews: APART FORM the list of four reasons discussed in the previous article as to why a burgeoning population does not make economic and environmental sense, there are some other important factors: 5. Health: Quoting from a Wikipedia article on Healthcare in India, "In the mid-1990s, health spending of India amounted to 6 per cent of GDP, one of the highest levels among developing nations. Healthcare facilities and personnel increased substantially between the early 1950s ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Japan to buy China rights on emissions
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/20080103TDY01305.htm
Yomiuri Shimbun: The Japanese and Chinese governments reached a basic agreement Wednesday under which the Japanese government and domestic firms would purchase a portion of China's greenhouse gas emissions quotas that fall under reductions achieved by the country through Japanese yen-loan projects, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. The two nations will seek formal agreement on the matter during Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Japan, scheduled for late March. The move is seen as a major boost ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
New research suggests longer autumns inhibit carbon uptake in forests
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2008/01/02/4749637-cp.html
Canadian Press: New research suggests that longer autumns resulting from climate change may be diminishing the role northern forests can play in the fight against global warming. Soil microbes warmed by the summer and fed by falling leaves emit more carbon than the trees absorb through photosynthesis, said Hank Margolis, one of the authors of the paper published Wednesday in the respected journal Nature. "Our thinking is that the microbes gain more from the autumn warming than the tree ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Time to get serious in the global fight against climate change
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=90951
Jakarta Post: Global attention to climate change issues, including in Indonesia, hit a new high in 2007 after leading climate scientists bombarded the public with a string of reports describing the evidence for human-induced climate change as "unequivocal". The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the United Nation's global body for assessing scientific knowledge of climate change -- issued four reports regarding the issue and its impacts during 2007. The first ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
"Oddball" Weather Events Add to Record-Breaking 2007
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080102-AP-ye-climate.html
Associated Press: Last year, the heat turned on and the weather just got weirder. January 2007 was the warmest first month on record worldwide–1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year. And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. weather stations ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
2007 Was One of the 10 Warmest Years, Met Office Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=a5wPkt73CP5Y&refer=uk
Bloomberg: 2007 was one of the 10 warmest years ever, based on global recorded temperatures, according to the Met Office, the U.K. weather forecaster. Last year ``was certainly a top-10 year,'' Barry Gromett, a Met Office spokesman, said today by telephone. ``It was maybe the seventh-warmest year'' based on preliminary figures, since estimates began around 1850, Gromett said. The Met Office said in June that 2007 may be the world's warmest year. The National Oceanic Atmospheric ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Canada's climate change boomtown
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7155494.stm
BBC: "The next economic boom is going to happen in northern Canada and Churchill's going to be a part of that." So says Mike Spence, a part Cree Indian and part Orcadian Scot who is mayor of the tiny Canadian settlement of Churchill on Hudson Bay. When I first arrived in the sub-Arctic town in early October, I found his claim hard to believe. No one was on the streets as I wandered alongside a freight train which had just arrived from Winnipeg, 1000km (600 miles) ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Climate change debate ignites in QLD
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/2007/s2130348.htm
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: As landholders in northern Queensland continue to watch a monsoon trough in the Gulf of Carpentaria, debate is raging over whether the state's climate is changing. There are hopes the trough, and another low off the east coast, will bring some good summer rain. Most of the state had below average totals in 2007, with Toowoomba, in the south, recording its lowest tally since 1919. In other places though, rain has been above average, with Longreach seeing a 32 per cent ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
United States: Forest protection group closes, turns duties over to new group
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2008/01/02/forest_protection_group_closes_turns_duties_over_to_new_group/
Associated Press: A 14-year-old organization dedicated to creating more federally protected wilderness in Vermont while protecting what now exists is closing its door. Forest Watch is handing over its mission to the larger and better-funded Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, which is opening a regional office in Richmond. One of Forest Watch's recent efforts was to protect 80,000 more acres of wilderness in the Green Mountain National Forest. But Jim Northup of Forest Watch ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
German Dirty Car Ban Fails to Please Greens, Drivers
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aU72F.q6CK0g&refer=germany
Bloomberg: Environmental activists patrolled the streets of Berlin and other German cities today to monitor a car badge system meant to curb pollution, a step green lobbies say doesn't go far enough and motoring groups condemn as unfair. As many as 100 people manned unofficial checkpoints in the German capital, Cologne and Hanover to monitor compliance with new regulations, which require vehicles to carry a badge certifying their level of exhaust emissions. Volunteers handed out chocolates to ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Global Warming Insurance Policy Is Worth Premium
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_sperling&sid=awjzhFJeQdms
Bloomberg: A decade after the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 to discourage the Clinton administration from signing the Kyoto agreement without dramatic commitments from India and China, it is worth asking how much the political climate for climate change has improved. Beyond Al Gore's Nobel Prize, there are some positive signs. Today, far more Republicans, such as Senators John McCain and John Warner, advocate some form of capping and trading of carbon emissions. Republican Governor Arnold ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
India to set up solar power plants
http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Energy/Briefing/2008/01/02/india_to_set_up_solar_power_plants/1742/
United Press International: India has decided to launch a program to support setting up grid-connected solar power generation plants. "The ministry has decided to launch a demonstration program to support setting up of megawatt capacity grid-connected solar power generation plants in the country," Minister for New and Renewable Energy Vilas Muttemwar told a news conference Wednesday. He said the move is aimed at developing and demonstrating technical performance of megawatt-sized grid ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Parched Australia Hoping for Wet New Year
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-01-02-voa8.cfm
Voice of America: There is cautious hope that Australia's long drought is about to break. The La Nina weather pattern has drenched parts of the arid continent in recent months. Sydney had its wettest November in more than a decade, up the coast in Queensland tropical storms have provided relief to hard-pressed farmers. From Sydney, Phil Mercer reports. The grey skies over much of eastern Australia in recent weeks have been welcome. For the past several years, the country has been gripped by the worst ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
United States: Seattle area a new hub for "clean" technology
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004103449_cleantech02.html
Seattle Times: Michael Weaver began thinking about alternative energy while cruising around Puget Sound. About two and a half years ago, the newly minted software millionaire was spending a lot of time with his new yacht, but its poor fuel performance and the foul smell of diesel prompted Weaver to look for a cleaner alternative. "I didn't like the smell of the generator, and I've always been pro-environment," said Weaver, who made his fortune by selling the legal software firm ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
UK seen giving green light to new nuclear plants
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKL192861420080102
Reuters: Britain is expected to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations next week, sparking a frenzy of deal-making by nuclear firms as well as a fresh challenge from environmental campaigners. "I don't think the government has any other option," said analyst David Cunningham at Arbuthnot Securities. "It's a necessary evil." Nuclear operators say they could have new plants running by 2017, helping Britain to meet its 2020 goals for combating ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Vestas Announces Seventh Turbine Order in Two Weeks
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aR9t0sPF2TKo&refer=europe
Bloomberg: Vestas Wind Systems A/S, the world's biggest wind-turbine maker, will deliver 33 turbines to a wind farm in Kansas, its seventh order in the last two weeks. The V90-3 megawatt units were sold to RES Americas Inc., a unit of the U.K.'s Renewable Energy Systems Ltd., Vestas said in a statement today. The company will also deliver 27 V52-850 kilowatt wind turbines to Alerion Industries SpA for an Italian project, it said in a Dec. 28 statement on its Web site. Randers, ...
Wed, 2 Jan 08
Washington joins California lawsuit over car emission regulation
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/northwest/story/278305.html
Associated Press: Washington is among 15 states joining California in a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gas regulations. Washington wants to follow California in setting tougher restrictions on car emissions. But the federal agency said last month that states should follow a national policy and not set separate standards. Gov. Gregoire says Washington has a responsibility to challenge what she calls an " ill-conceived" decision by the Bush ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Eco-conscious palm oil
http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/1/1/lifefocus/19561783&sec=lifefocus
Malaysian Star: Oil palm companies are subjecting themselves to scrutiny to meet consumer demand for eco-friendly palm oil. PALM oil is heading for certification – the first tangible sign of a commitment towards sustainable production of the versatile yet controversial commodity. The first certificate is expected to be issued by the first quarter of 2008, after the call for environmentally and socially responsible production of the crop came five years ago. Buyers are waiting ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Montanans ready to slow global warming
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/12/31/news/state/18-polls.txt
Billings Gazette: A majority of Montana voters believe global warming will produce adverse effects, and they are willing to make personal sacrifices to slow the warming, a Gazette State Poll shows. The poll of 625 Montana registered voters found that 62 percent felt that global warming will result in adverse effects, with 30 percent predicting many adverse effects and 32 percent anticipating some adverse impacts. The two totals were added together to obtain the 62 percent. Thirty-three percent ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Japan: Solar panels to go in 30% of houses by 2030
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080101a5.html
Kyodo: The government will aim for 30 percent of all households to have solar panels installed by 2030 as part of its efforts to fight global warming, officials said. Under the target, the number of solar-powered households would increase to 14 million from the current 400,000, and the capacity of such generation would expand 30-fold from the current 1.3 million kilowatts, the officials said. The target will be incorporated into a program for innovative technologies to cut greenhouse ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
The year that climate change made history
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=328595&area=/insight/insight__international/
Agence France-Presse: When the history of climate change is written, 2007 will deserve a chapter all to itself. In just 12 months, global warming has been elevated to the great challenge of our time, a cause for public and celebrities alike, a Nobel-winning issue and a headache for politicians of every rank. In a vast report, the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its grimmest scientific assessment yet. Its prose lacked varnish, was riddled with jargon impenetrable to ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
United Kingdom: British wildlife in steep decline as man-made activities take their toll
http://environment.independent.co.uk/nature/article3298381.ece
Independent (UK): Several of Britain's best-known animal species, ranging from the hedgehog to the harbour seal, are now suffering declines that require serious conservation action, according to a comprehensive report on the status of British mammals. The report, from the Mammals Trust UK, which is funded by the People's Trust for Endangered Species, identifies an assortment of factors including climate change, the spread of infectious diseases, agricultural and forestry practices, and not least, human ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
United States: Federal judge lets fight over auto emission standards go forward
http://www.projo.com/news/content/BZ_AUTOAIR_LAWSUIT_01-01-08_KC8EMPS_v25.1afbd8e.html
Providence Journal: A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit seeking to prevent Rhode Island from setting its own standards for carbon dioxide pollution from automobiles can go forward. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Ernest C. Torres last month denied a motion by the state to dismiss the lawsuit. Torres issued his ruling two days after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency denied California and 16 other states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the right to set their own auto pollution ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
In 2008, a 100 Percent Chance of Alarm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html?ref=science
New York Times: I'd like to wish you a happy New Year, but I'm afraid I have a different sort of prediction. You're in for very bad weather. In 2008, your television will bring you image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. You will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change – and that these images are a mere preview of what's in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet. Unfortunately, I can't be more specific. I don't know ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
United States: In a Forest's Breath, Deciphering Climate Clues
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17332316
National Public Radio: A place called Harvard Forest sounds like it should inspire deep thoughts about nature. And in fact, it does. This forest in north central Massachusetts is under a microscope. Throughout the forest, you see signs of research under way. Hundreds of trees are labeled and wear shiny metal belts to measure their growth. Buckets collect falling leaves; holes in the ground yield data on the soil. Slowly, the forest is giving up its secrets. One of the most startling ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
The One Environmental Issue
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=90930
New York Times: The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged, calling for large – if still unquantified – national sacrifices and for a transformation in the way the country produces and uses energy. The Republicans do not go much further than conceding that climate change could be a problem and, with the notable exception of John McCain, offer no comprehensive solutions. In 2000, when Al Gore could ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Japan: 5-year period for greenhouse gas cuts starts
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/424149
Japan Today: Japan faces an uphill struggle as Tuesday marks the start of a five-year period during which many of the world's advanced economies must implement international obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by an average of 5%. Japan is required to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 6% under the Kyoto Protocol, but the country's emissions increased by 6.4% to about 1.34 billion tons in fiscal 2006 that ended March 31, 2007, from 1.26 billion tons in the base year ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Anger as rail fares rise by up to 14.5 per cent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/transport/article3298368.ece
Independent: Train companies have been accused of imposing "unjustified and unfair" price increases of up to 14.5 per cent from tomorrow amid warnings that the cost of many season tickets will go up by many times the rate of inflation. Campaigners said that many fare rises would be far higher than the average 4.8 per cent increase on nationally regulated routes. Passenger Focus, the rail watchdog, warned that some annual season tickets would rise by 10 per cent or more, while ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Italy: Bad microbes on the move
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/01/01/bad_microbes_on_the_move/
Boston Globe: SINCE the 1950s, when scientists first identified the mosquito-borne tropical disease known as chikungunya, its reach has been limited to countries near the Indian Ocean. But in August, chikungunya broke out in Italy. Now World Health Organization officials are calling it the first example of a tropical disease, aided by global warming, causing an epidemic in a developed European country. The outbreak should spur efforts both to curb greenhouse gases and to prepare public health defenses ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Japan puts climate change at top of G8 agenda
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/01/2129933.htm?section=world
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Japan wants the fight against global warming as a main topic of discussion at a Group of Eight (G8) nations summit this year. The Japanese Government took over the chairmanship of the G8 group of industrialised nations today. It also wants to discuss development in Africa, high oil prices and preventing nuclear proliferation at the summit. Talks on how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions once the Kyoto Protocol expires look set to dominate events. The G8 ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Japan to lead climate debate as head of G8 rich club
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gYrUNqLOTBGhPLmqrVu1x3gxh5Ng
Agence France-Presse: Japan took over the presidency of the Group of Eight club of the world's leading economies Tuesday, with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda vowing to put a focus on climate change and environmental issues. The world's second biggest economy after the United States, Japan is also the home of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark 1997 treaty that really launched the fight against global warming. So when leaders of the rich club convene for a summit in July in Toyako, a northern resort in the ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Norwegian king calls for global responsibility for climate change
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-01/01/content_7348762.htm
Xinhua: The King of Norway Harald V called on the whole world to take responsibility for the climate change in his traditional speech to the nation on New Year's Eve, according to reports reaching here from Oslo on Tuesday. "We can no longer overlook all the signals and warnings about the climate change and now it is the time to take on a global responsibility and a common course," the Norwegian broadcaster NRK quoted the king as saying. "We must not lose faith in that ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
United Kingdom: Scientist who warned Blair of climate dangers steps down from post
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article3298378.ece
Independent: Sir David King stepped down yesterday as the Government's chief scientific adviser after seven years at the centre of the Whitehall machinery governing science-related topics as diverse as flooding, badger-culling, nuclear power and climate change. As the top science adviser to the Prime Minister, Sir David gave Tony Blair the scientific ammunition to conduct a ruthless campaign of "contiguous culling" during the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2000-2001, when the Government took the deeply ...
Tue, 1 Jan 08
Australia: Year's hot finale bakes the state
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/12/31/1198949746685.html
Age: THE hottest year on record in Victoria ended with the hottest day for 2007 as temperatures in many parts of the state soared above 40. In Nhill in the Wimmera and Hopetoun in the Mallee, the mercury hit 43.7 degrees in mid-afternoon, a record for the year. In Melbourne, the temperature hit 41.1 just before 5pm, the city's hottest day for more than a year. Electricity usage surged as the rising temperature forced householders to switch on the ...