The Heat is On: Flooding Our Minds, Homes and Streets

The reluctance of our politicians and media to attribute the devastating floods in Queensland to climate change is nothing but cowardice. The science is in. We must accept the verdict that climate change leads to more frequent and severe disasters. So says Matthew Wright writing in the Daily Telegraph. For a slightly more restrained overview, we look to Mike Steketee writing in The Australian, who draws attention to the warming world and the disastrous extreme weather many parts of the world experienced in 2010. He says: Even if the world achieved what so far has proved beyond it – a mechanism to stabilise greenhouse emissions at 450 parts per million of CO2 – global temperatures still will rise by an estimated 2C; that is, four times the increase that has occurred in the past 30 years.  That means further consequences already are locked in and we will have to turn our minds increasingly to adapting to them. For the full story from both of these commentators: Read More

 Matthew Wright writing in the Daily Telegraph (17 January 2011):

I’D LIKE to know how much money the coal industry will chip in? The reluctance of our politicians and media to attribute the devastating floods in Queensland to climate change is nothing but cowardice. The science is in. We must accept the verdict that climate change leads to more frequent and severe disasters.

Denying the link between climate change and extreme weather events such as the Queensland floods is akin to the way the tobacco companies denied the link between smoking cigarettes and cancer.

Just as smoking increases the risk of cancer, emitting carbon changes our climate and increases the risk of extreme weather.

The connection between flood and climate change was put well by home-grown climate scientist David Karoly, who said recently that Australia has been known for more than 100 years as a land of droughts and flooding rains, but what climate change means is Australia becomes a land of more droughts and worse flooding rains. Speaking to The Australian, Monash University’s Professor Neville Nicholls said you’d have to be a brave person to say climate change was not having some sort of effect.

Dozens of scientific studies by governments and the insurance industry released over the last decade, including the Queensland Government’s inland flooding study released last November, accept the link.

The floods have affected an area the size of Germany and France combined. And Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says the reconstruction effort facing the state is one of post-war proportions. The damage is currently estimated at a whopping $5 billion and the economic impact of the disaster is expected to wipe one whole point off GDP.

As flood victims come to terms with their losses and get on with rebuilding their lives with savings, government assistance and charity, I’d like to know how much money the Australian coal industry will chip in?

Given that they are a major driver of climate change, they should be the ones forking out money to help affected Australians recover. Will they pay the increased premiums and cover rises in excesses as everyone’s insurance costs rise?

Eventually tobacco companies were compelled to pay damages to the victims of their harmful product. So too should the coal industry. They have contributed massively to the cumulative carbon emissions and must finance rebuilding Queensland.

Queensland is the world’s largest exporter of seaborne coal. As the floods shut down the state’s supply chain, global coal prices shot up by 20 per cent. This rise clearly demonstrates the scale of Australia’s contribution to the coal market and to climate changes.

The industry should also be held accountable for the impacts of mine heavy metals the waterlogged mines have injected into floodwaters.

While there is no legal precedent or legislation that obliges the coal industry to help pay for the damage it is fuelling through climate change, they have a moral obligation to make sizeable donations to the recovery.

Failure to do so will not only demonstrate contempt for Australia’s fragile climate, but contempt for the flood victims.

Source: www.dailytelegraph.com.au

Mike Steketee in The Australian (8 January 2011):

NOW for the good news: Australia has just had its coolest year since 2001, with a mean temperature in 2010 of 22C.

You probably already had guessed something like that was going on and it may have eased your concerns about global warming.  Perhaps it even made you more inclined to the view of geologist and paleontologist Bob Carter that it is “the greatest self-organised scientific and political conspiracy that the world has ever seen”?

If only.  Being duped is preferable to being fried.  Unfortunately, it is hard to find such comfort from the data.  But then perhaps that is because it has been collected by the alleged co-conspirators.

The Bureau of Meteorology said this week the 2010 mean temperature was above the average of the three decades to 1990, which is the standard reference period, though only by 0.19C.

The first decade of the 21st century was also the warmest since standard records began in 1910.  And based on preliminary data to November 30, sea surface temperatures around Australia were the warmest on record last year, as were those for the past decade.

The news for the rest of the world is not so promising, either.  The World Meteorological Organisation, on the basis of data collected from 189 countries and territories (co-conspirators all?), says the year to the end of October was the warmest since instrumental climate records started in 1850 – 0.55C above the 1961-90 average of 14C.

Perhaps the cold northern winter will bring the final figure, which will not be published until March, down a little but the WMO was confident enough last month to say that 2010 would rate in the top three warmest years.

And the decade also was the warmest on record – despite the annual peak in 1998.

That puts a bit of a dent in the argument that the world has been cooling since 1998.

While the records cover only a relatively short period, the trends happen to follow closely the predictions over the past 40 years of temperature rises resulting from increased greenhouse gas emissions.

In 1972, John Sawyer of the British Meteorological Office estimated an increase of about 0.6C by the end of the century.  The actual figure was about 0.5C.

Most scientists agree that doubling the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to lead to warming of 2C-3C, an amount that risks significant economic and environmental damage.

So far the increase since the mid-18th century of all greenhouse gases has been 38 per cent, including a 27.5 per cent rise from 1990 to 2009.

As well as rising temperatures, the WMO says that Arctic sea ice shrank last year to its third lowest area in the satellite records and was offset only slightly by Antarctic sea ice at just above the long-term average.  Global snow cover is falling and sea levels rising.

Despite that, much of the debate about global warming still is conducted in terms of future and uncertain consequences.

Perhaps we should start looking harder at the present.  Recent extreme weather events include not only the Victorian bushfires and record floods in Queensland.  According to the international insurance group Munich Re, 2010 saw the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980, with 90 per cent of them weather-related.

Australia always has been a land of drought and flooding rains, and weather records are broken as regularly as cricket records. But not in the way they have been recently.

The temperature of 46.4C in Melbourne on Black Saturday was more than 3C above the previous highest for February.

July 29 last year saw the temperature reach 38.2C in Moscow, while for the whole month the mean temperature was more than 2C above the previous record.

Munich Re says the heatwave and associated fires and air pollution in central Russia killed at least 56,000 people, making it the worst natural disaster in Russia’s history.

Pakistan experienced its worst ever floods, costing 1769 lives.  Munich Re says the hurricane season in the North Atlantic was one of the most severe in the last century even though most countries, including the US, had a lucky escape, with the storms mostly over the sea.

So, can we blame climate change?  Probably to some degree, even cautious scientists tend to say.

CSIRO research has identified climate change as contributing to the 20 per cent decline in rainfall in southwest Western Australia over the past 40 years, as well as the reduced rainfall in southeastern Australia.

Neville Nicholls, meteorologist, Monash University professor and one of the lead authors of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, says of the Queensland floods: “The reality is that we don’t know if there is a climate change component in it.”

On his estimate, the current La Nina that usually generates higher rainfall in eastern and northern Australia is the strongest or second strongest we have ever experienced.  While there is no evidence to link La Nina to climate change, one possible connection is that water temperatures in the oceans around Australia have never been so warm and the La Nina has been unusually strong.

“But honestly we don’t know,” says Nicholls.

Nor does he attribute the Victorian bushfires per se to global warming.  “The particular weather situation we had is the kind of weather situation we have had in the past: it was hot, it was dry and it was windy.”

The differences were that the 12 years of drought was twice as long as the previous longest drought in the region, the heatwave at the end of January 2009 was the worst Melbourne had ever experienced and the temperatures on Black Saturday saw a large step up from the previous record.  “What you can say is that there is very strong evidence that global warming exacerbated the fire situation.”

Applying the same reasoning, Nicholls does not argue that climate change is responsible for any other single event.

But he does point to the succession of extraordinary heatwaves, with big jumps in record temperatures, starting in Europe in 2003 and continuing all around the world, culminating in Russia last year.  More than 17 countries broke their maximum temperature records in 2010.  “Putting them together, you really have to strain credibility to say it has nothing to do with climate change,” he says.

“With climate change you expect many more of these really hot events and that is what we are getting.  At the same time there are still records being set for cold temperatures.  But for the last couple of decades we have certainly been getting more hot records being set than cold records.”

Even if the world achieved what so far has proved beyond it – a mechanism to stabilise greenhouse emissions at 450 parts per million of CO2 – global temperatures still will rise by an estimated 2C; that is, four times the increase that has occurred in the past 30 years.  That means further consequences already are locked in and we will have to turn our minds increasingly to adapting to them.

Nicholls says most developed countries, including Australia, already have set up heatwave alert systems.

Other changes will be harder.  Reducing water allocations in the Murray-Darling Basin is still years away at best, and the recent rain will tempt politicians to postpone it further.

Building rail lines that don’t buckle and electricity systems that don’t fail, as they did at the time of the Victorian bushfires, let alone the bigger tasks of managing increasingly vulnerable coastlines and transforming agriculture, will be big challenges but ones that only will get bigger the longer we delay.

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

Meeting of Minds

The great things about being in Singapore and in this line of work, is the opportunity to meet and work with great people, who have a commitment to all things green, sustainable, ecologically and environmentally friendly. The new year continues in that vein, not only because I’ve been in the company of Dr Martin Blake, Chairman of Carbon Zero Solutions, for the best part of the past fortnight, but largely through meetings with many more great thinkers and doers.

It was a pleasure to attend the launch of the Eco Food Court, initiated by the Singapore Environment Council and meet (again) Isabella Loh and Howard Shaw, as well as  the guest of honour, the Minister of State, with responsibility of Environment and Water Resources, Dr Amy Khor.  Building Energy Efficiency supremo from the UK, David Strong, was also in Singapore, conducting a series of workshops for the National Environment Agency and Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore for Energy Managers.

Then there was the international sustainability guru himself, John Elkington – the main who coined the term “triple bottom line” – speaking at a seminar organised by Thomas Thomas and the Singapore Compact. More on all that in future issues. Without wanting to offend by omission many others we met and enjoyed the company of, I will only touch on one other – George Hatzimihalis, MD of the Hatlar Group, visiting from Melbourne, Australia, who is already doing some amazing work in Asia in water and waste management and energy efficiency. If great minds think alike, we all have a lot more work to do!

Ken Hickson

No Longer “Business As Usual”

New Year resolutions might be passé but we have a few recommendations for improvements in human activity in this issue, from American notables, including John Holdren, Glenn Meyers, Anna Clark and a host of business leaders.

There are some interesting developments on the US EPA front and the Carbon War Room has businesses calling for faster action. Weather and climate are the talk of the town, particularly when you are snow-bound or flood-affected as millions have been in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere. Of course, extreme weather has been on the cards ever since climate charge first reared its ugly head. So let’s stop talking about “global warming” if it means some think we will never be cold or wet again.

For CNN, Greenpeace and Professor Kurt Lambeck the weather/climate nexus is in focus, while Michael Richardson takes us below the surface for the impact of CO2. Indonesia and Norway are seeing REDD together, while the BBC reports on a “new” way to harness fuel from sunlight and NCAR has the lowdown on the crucial climate role of dust. Australia is having trouble keeping its RECs up, while Malaysia is moving ahead with its green building schemes. Nirmal Ghosh from Bangkok takes a personal look at his footprint and recommends we “stop collectively sawing at the branch we are sitting on”.

We take the stand and boldly predict: sustainability and a low-to-zero carbon future will start to replace “business as usual” for industry worldwide. And we expect even greater leadership from the new “developing” world, including India, China, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico and South Korea. Here’s to a happier and more sustainable New Year ahead. – Ken Hickson

Profile: John Holdren

Here is the man who famously said: “Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs.” President Obama’s science advisor  John Holdren confirms in an upcoming Science article that “the science of climate change is robust, that the core conclusions of climate science are sound — namely that the climate is changing in ways that are unusual against the backdrop of natural variability and that humans are responsible for a large part of that”.

Preview of article by John Holdren in Science News (15 January 2011):

“There has been a fair amount of talk about congressional hearings looking into climate science. I personally will welcome such hearings.”

Just over a month after the midterm elections, President Obama’s science adviser took the podium in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union meeting. John Holdren, a physicist and climate scientist, said the White House is making strides in improving the nation’s science and technology policies. Later that week, Holdren’s Office of Science and Technology Policy released long-overdue federal guidelines for scientific integrity.

Science News contributing editor Alexandra Witze excerpted his comments from a lecture and later press briefing at the AGU meeting.

How do you respond to criticism that the federal government was slow to request and use outside expertise after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

In the first few days of the spill, I made a number of calls to leaders of major marine science organizations in the country to see what resources and insights and scientific capabilities they could bring to bear. Within the first few days, the White House was convening meetings. Very quickly task forces were set up that reached out into the academic community and the private sector community.

It was a huge challenge. I’m not saying we got everything right at every moment. Certainly there were disagreements about priorities, about approaches, about specific resources. That’s inevitable in any problem of this scale and complexity and with a wide variety of different people. But overall, this actually was handled remarkably well given the magnitude of the mess and its complexity.

How will the White House go about working with the new, more Republican Congress on science issues?

It will be a big challenge working with the new Congress, whose composition is obviously somewhat less favorable to Democrats than the last one. My view is that science, technology and innovation are not fundamentally partisan issues. My hope is therefore we will be able to keep much of this out of the domain of poisonous partisan politics and get quite a lot done. But only time will tell.

There has been a fair amount of talk about congressional hearings looking into climate science. I personally will welcome such hearings because I think what they will reveal is that the science of climate change is robust, that the core conclusions of climate science are sound — namely that the climate is changing in ways that are unusual against the backdrop of natural variability and that humans are responsible for a large part of that. A variety of forms of harm, in a variety of places, are already associated with climate change, and we know that that harm will grow unless and until we significantly reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and other heat-trapping substances. Any set of hearings into the climate science issue are simply going to underscore the reality of those propositions. I think most policy makers will eventually reach the conclusion that betting on mainstream science being wrong is gambling with the public’s welfare against very long odds.

There will be other discussions with the Congress that will be less contentious, because investments in science and technology accelerate the pace of innovation that we need to maintain economic competitiveness, to increase American exports and to create high-quality jobs. That should not be the slightest bit controversial across party lines.

How does the administration intend to move ahead with the control of greenhouse gas emissions?

Investments that we make in clean energy, in more efficient energy systems, in a smart grid are all investments that are valuable, important and productive even if you don’t believe that climate is changing and we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

There are a lot of executive authorities that can be used without the Congress to tackle pieces of the problem. We already saw in the first two years of the Obama administration an agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation to issue the first set of combined … tailpipe standards that address greenhouse gas emissions as well as fuel economy and conventional pollutants. We have an interagency task force on adaptation now in the executive branch. That’s something I think is unlikely to be challenged … because measures you take to increase resilience against storms, shoreline erosion, floods, droughts, heat waves — these are things that one should be interested in doing even if you don’t believe climate is changing. There is enough that we can do without legislation. I think we can get on the emissions trajectory that would ultimately take us to President Obama’s goals for 2020 in the next two years.

Source: www.sciencenews.org

Dr. John P. Holdren is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Prior to joining the Obama administration Dr. Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as professor in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Director of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. From 1973 to 1996 he was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded and co-led the interdisciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources.

Dr. Holdren holds advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics from MIT and Stanford and is highly regarded for his work on energy technology and policy, global climate change, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as foreign member of the Royal Society of London. A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, his awards include a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the John Heinz Prize in Public Policy, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and the Volvo Environment Prize. He served from 1991 until 2005 as a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s board of trustees. 

During the Clinton administration Dr. Holdren served as a member of PCAST through both terms and in that capacity chaired studies requested by President Clinton on preventing theft of nuclear materials, disposition of surplus weapon plutonium, the prospects of fusion energy, U.S. energy R&D strategy, and international cooperation on energy-technology innovation. In December 1995 he gave the acceptance lecture for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures in which he held leadership positions from 1982 to 1997.

Source: www.whitehouse.gov

We reproduce an excerpt from a paper by John Holdren published in the journal “Innovations” in the Fall 2009 issue.

“Energy for Change: Introduction to the Special Issue on Energy & Climate Change”, Journal Article, Innovations, volume 4, issue 4, pages 3-11, Fall 2009

“Without energy, there is no economy. Without climate, there is no environment. Without economy and environment, there is no material well-being, no civil society, no personal or national security. The overriding problem associated with these realities, of course, is that the world has long been getting most of the energy its economies need from fossil fuels whose emissions are imperiling the climate that its environment needs.

Compounding that predicament are emissions from land-use change—above all, deforestation in the developing countries of the tropics. Like society’s choices about energy supply and use, this process has been driven by powerful economic and political forces insufficiently moderated by understanding or consideration of the environmental component of societal well-being.

This is no longer a hypothetical or distant issue. It is real and it is upon us. The climate is changing markedly nearly everywhere. The air and the oceans are warming, mountain glaciers are disappearing, permafrost is thawing, sea ice is shrinking, the great land ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are slipping, and sea level is rising. And the consequences for human well-being are already being felt: more heat waves, floods, droughts, and wildfires; tropical diseases reaching into the temperate zones; vast areas of forest being destroyed by pest outbreaks linked to warming; hurricanes and typhoons of greater power; and coastal property increasingly at risk from the surging seas.

All this is happening faster than was expected. Sea level is rising at twice the average rate for the 20th century. The volume of sea ice in the Arctic (its area times its average thickness), which reaches a seasonal minimum every September, appears to have been smaller in September 2008 than in any year of the last 30—the period in which we’ve been able to estimate this variable. In that same 30 years, the average area annually burned by wildfires in the western United States has quadrupled.

Nor is the primary cause of these changes any longer in serious doubt. The primary cause is the emission of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from our factories, homes, offices, vehicles, and power plants, and from land clearing. We also know that failure to curb these emissions will bring far bigger impacts from global climate change than those experienced so far. Drastic changes in weather patterns, sharp drops in the productivity of farms and ocean fisheries, a dramatic acceleration of species extinctions, and inundation of low-lying areas by rising sea level are among the possible outcomes.

But we also know what we can and must do to avoid the worst of these possibilities. We must work together—East and West and North and South—to transform our technologies for supplying and using energy from polluting and wasteful to clean and efficient. We must create new incentives and agreements to accelerate this transformation, and to bring deforestation and other destructive land-use practices to a halt around the world. And we must invest in adaptation efforts to reduce our vulnerability to the degree of climate change that can no longer be avoided.

We can do this together. And when we do, we will benefit not only by avoiding the worst damage from climate change, but also by reducing our perilous overdependence on petroleum, alleviating the air pollution that afflicts our cities, preserving our forests as havens for biodiversity and sources of sustainable livelihoods, and unleashing a new wave of technological innovation—generating new businesses, new jobs, and new growth in the course of creating the clean and efficient energy systems of the future.

The key question we now need to heed about what the science of climate change is telling us is how much progress we need to make with these measures,and how quickly, to have a good chance of avoiding climate changes more extreme than our adaptation efforts will be able to manage. And the science is increasingly clear in pointing to the conclusion that it will be essential to hold the global average temperature increase to no more than two degrees Celsius if we are to keep climate change to a manageable level.

It is likewise clear that if we are to have a good chance of meeting this goal, global emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants must level off by about 2020 and decline thereafter to something like 50 percent of the current levels by 2050, with continuing declines after that. Allowing for the larger historical responsibility and much higher current per capita emissions of the industrialized countries and for the development trajectories and aspirations of the developing ones, the most likely way to achieve this goal would be for the industrialized world to level off its emissions by 2015 and reduce them thereafter to around 20 percent of current levels by 2050, with the developing countries following after a lag of about a decade, leveling off their emissions by about 2025 and reducing them after that.

These are targets that we can meet. As the content of this special issue of Innovations illustrates, the solutions to our climate challenge aren’t just “out there,” they are right here—before your eyes, in your hands. Climate solutions are in California, which thirty years ago charted a course toward energy efficiency that other states are only now beginning to follow. They are in Brazil, which generates 50% of the fuel used in its cars from home-grown sugarcane. They are in New Hampshire, where a company started by a former nuclear engineer is working to develop the carbon capture and storage technologies that will be essential for a cleaner coal future. They are in Hawaii, where plug-in electric vehicles are quietly becoming a reality. And they are in Arkansas, where the world’s biggest company—Walmart—is establishing standards for energy use and carbon reductions that will apply not only to its global operations but to its entire supply chain.

These and the other innovations described in this special issue are not isolated anecdotes. Nor are they elements of any single grand plan. They are simply a few of the many pathways to progress created every day by citizens, by the businesses that serve them, and by the governments that represent them. Such pathways derive from another other type of energy vital to addressing our climate challenges: the creative energy of people who, through ingenuity, partnerships, and collaborations, are able to cut through complexity to arrive at practical solutions. We can ask for no better guides than they to lead us toward the prosperous and secure future to which we all aspire….”

Source: www.mitpressjournals.org

Should EPA Regulate Big US Emitters Now?

Even though Paul Chesser of the National Legal and Policy Center acknowledges “corporate climateers” Nike and 3M for their awards “the equivalent of an Oscar for the climate change mitigation world” for their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions, he doesn’t like attempts by these businesses (and others) to get the US EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Washington Post thinks otherwise: “Modest EPA regulation can achieve some valuable ends and keep pressure on Congress to do more. The president must resist lawmakers’ efforts to limit the EPA’s power”.

Washing Post editorial (31 December 2010):

ENVIRONMENTALISTS have had a rough year, but over the past week the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals gave them some hope. On December 23 2010 the agency announced a schedule for setting greenhouse gas standards for power plants and oil refineries over the next two years, and on Wednesday the court refused to halt the implementation of the EPA’s carbon-cutting program pending legal challenge.

Congress hasn’t passed a sensible, comprehensive energy policy. EPA regulation of greenhouse gases is one way the government can cut emissions now, using current law. Over the next year, the president should defend his administration’s authority to do so.

With the Supreme Court’s blessing, the EPA has deemed greenhouse emissions threats to public health under the Clean Air Act. That means the agency can require emitters to arrest those gases’ release in various ways. What the EPA will force plant operators to do, though, isn’t yet clear. The guidance it produced for state regulators last month stresses the value of efficiency improvements, such as turbines that convert more of the energy released from burning fossil fuels into usable electricity.

Agency officials insist that requirements will be “cost-effective” and “common-sense.” In a legally distinct but nonetheless related effort, the EPA is also preparing to clamp down on other nasty things that coal-fired power plants spew into the air, such as mercury, which would require other emissions control technologies.

Critics such as Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, insist that both regulatory avenues will seriously harm the economy. They are exaggerating, but it’s true that EPA regulation absent some overarching congressional carbon policy isn’t ideal. Because such a rule raises no revenue, it can’t compensate those consumers who have to pay more for their energy. Because it depends on the policy preferences of the president, new administrations might move to gut the policies, leading to the sort of regulatory uncertainty that is punishing to business. Because it relies on federal mandate, it’s not likely to put America on the cheapest path to sustainable energy production even if it became America’s primary carbon-reducing program.

But Mr. Upton’s GOP colleagues killed the efficient solution: putting a price on carbon and unleashing market forces in the fight against climate change. And carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere. If critics want to be helpful, they should propose a realistic emissions-reduction scheme instead of simply picking on the EPA.

Moreover, EPA regulation done carefully isn’t the worst of carbon-cutting policies. The slow death of the traditional coal plant – one likely outcome of the EPA’s efforts – would be welcome, even if it were just replaced with the traditional natural gas plant, which produces roughly half the carbon emissions. The EPA has also repeatedly signaled that it wants to restrain the ambition of its carbon regulation, writing regulations that target only the largest sources of emissions.

In the long term, this attenuated sort of EPA regulation alone isn’t likely to result in the carbon reductions that America needs to participate seriously in the global response to climate change; it might cut emissions by 5 percent of 2005 levels by 2020, not the 17 percent that is Obama’s stated policy. Congress will have to act, and sooner is better. In the meantime, modest EPA regulation can achieve some valuable ends and keep pressure on Congress to do more. The president must resist lawmakers’ efforts to limit the EPA’s power.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

By Paul Chesser in National Legal and Policy Center (31 December 2010):

Earlier this month corporate climateers including Nike and 3M were given awards — supposedly “the equivalent of an Oscar for the climate change mitigation world” — for their efforts to reduce their carbon emissions. The honors were bestowed by the Carbon War Room, which “harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change.” The Virgin Group’s Richard Branson is one of the nonprofit’s co-founders.

The War Room gave Nike the Gigaton Award for the “consumer discretionary” category. The prize was named for a Clinton Global Initiative project called Gigaton Throwdown, which “encourages companies, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and investors to build big solutions to create climate stability and energy security.” Award winners are chosen by the Gigaton Academy, which consists of alarmist luminaries such as Branson, Ted Turner, UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, Nicholas Stern, and a host of rent-seeking alternative energy industry leaders.

As reported earlier this month by NLPC, Nike also co-signed a letter to President Obama that called for U.S. leadership in an initiative to create and finance the Global Climate Fund, which was established at the UN climate talks in Cancun in early December. Similarly as part of the Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy  – created by environmental pressure group Ceres — Nike endorsed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his colleagues to urge Congress to allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions:

We are writing as major US businesses to urge you to oppose all riders to the FY11 Interior Appropriations bill that would block or delay enforcement of the Clean Air Act and /or specifically curtail EPA’s ability to take action on the regulation of carbon.

For nearly two years, our coalition, Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy [BICEP] has worked with members of Congress toward passage of comprehensive climate and energy legislation because we believe it is critical to the health of our businesses and essential for job creation and innovation in the United States.

It is important to underscore that we have always believed strongly that Congress should lead on setting climate and energy policy for the United States. However, in lieu of Congress’s ability to pass a comprehensive bill we feel that EPA’s legitimate authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions should not be constrained at this time.

Other members of BICEP include Levi Strauss & Co., Starbucks, Timberland, Best Buy, Ben & Jerry’s, eBay, Gap Inc., The North Face, and Target Corporation. Mark them down as corporations who favor the circumvention of the peoples’ right to have their elected representatives make U.S. laws.

Source: www.nlpc.org

Don’t Do a Snow Job on Climate Change

Greenpeace’s Kumi Naidoo worries that if the scientific evidence (for climate change) can be buried, in the eyes of some, by a single heavy snowfall, then we must have new strategies that generate interest in this complex issue and sustain public and political support for action. We have to acknowledge, he says that “the world is no longer as we knew it. It is not possible to backtrack on climate change. It is, however, still within our power to help preserve our planet for future generations.”

By Kumi Naidoo, Special to CNN (29 December 2010):

Kumi Naidoo said Amsterdam snow delightful, but he feared it would fuel global warming denial. He says NASA analysis named 2010 the warmest year on record.

Naidoo: Even those who doubt climate change can take actions that benefit them and the planet. For skeptics, case must be made in terms of better health, water, energy independence

Amsterdam (CNN) — I recently returned to Amsterdam from the latest round of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, and found this city of canals covered in snow. It was a beautiful sight. Yet rather than filling me with joy, it caused me concern.

Over the past few years, climate-change skeptics have repeatedly used cold snaps as proof that our planet is not heating up.

This argument ignores NASA’s recent analysis of 2010 as the warmest year on record and the World Meteorological Organization’s pronouncement of the first decade of this century as the hottest since records began.

Global warming does not simply mean that temperatures are always climbing. What it does mean is that although our planet is steadily heating up, a delicate set of climatic imbalances creates an increase in extreme weather events.

These may include both dramatic heat spells and powerful snowstorms, such as those that have blanketed parts of Europe not used to seeing such weather — as well as the more southerly reaches of the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S.

Most scientists tell us that we must dramatically curb greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avert catastrophic climate change. To do this, it will be necessary to mobilize people around the globe who are not yet concerned about the issue.

But if the scientific evidence can be buried, in the eyes of some, by a single heavy snowfall, then we must have new strategies that generate interest in this complex issue and sustain public and political support for action.

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Joel Pett may have hit upon something with a cartoon he drew for last year’s climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. It shows a scientist addressing a large audience at a climate summit. A spectator at the left side of the panel asks his neighbor: “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?” The answer emerges on the right side of the panel where the following list appears on a chalkboard: energy independence, preserve rainforest, sustainability, green jobs, livable cities, renewables, clean water and air, healthy children, etc., etc.

There is indeed something for almost everyone in climate protection.

A small nonprofit group called the Climate and Energy Project ran with this idea in 2007. It sponsored a yearlong competition between six towns in Kansas with the goal of getting them to lower carbon emissions. They did this by reducing their energy consumption and accepting renewable sources of energy.

A study had shown that a majority of residents in that region believed either that climate change was a hoax or that recent dramatic weather events were simply the result of natural climate cycles. Organizers decided to highlight the more immediate benefits of cutting carbon emissions, including energy independence, development of the local economy and financial savings. The New York Times reported in October that the project’s strategy seems to have worked.

In a year, the article read, “energy use in the towns declined as much as 5 percent relative to other areas — a giant step in the world of energy conservation, where a program that yields a 1.5 percent decline is considered successful.”

Most of the world’s major religions also offer reasons to engage in climate protection. Because taking care of the poor and needy (often disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters) and protecting God’s planet are tenets of most of the world’s major faith-based organizations, environmental protection is commonly becoming part of what they preach.

Some Muslim and Hindu groups, for example, are working on special product labeling that would inform consumers about environmental impacts of the items being purchased.

Similarly, around the globe, diverse organizations — including trade unions, churches, non-governmental organizations and governments — are coming together to find solutions to climate change.

In 2010, the fossil fuel industry offered, albeit by accident, one of the greatest motivations to take action on global warming. BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill resulted in the death of 11 rig workers; local economies suffered deeply, and wildlife in the region could take decades to recover.

The continued disintegration of public trust in government and business policy and procedures surrounding the disaster will, justifiably, have repercussions for a long time to come.

Speaking with a Dutch friend, I commented that the snow — which has caused great travel difficulties around Europe — was at least a wonderful thing for children, who are out in force making snowmen. “Yes,” he replied, but when I was growing up, winters were so cold the canals would freeze over every year, and we could skate on them. Last year was the first time this happened again in over a decade.

The world is no longer as we knew it. It is not possible to backtrack on climate change. It is, however, still within our power to help preserve our planet for future generations.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Kumi Naidoo.

Source: www.edition.cnn.com

Science Academies: Climate Evidence is Strong & Credible

Australian Academy of Science along with several other national science academies – including the Royal Society of Britain and US National Academy of Science – have produced statements detailing the extent of consensus and uncertainty about climate change science. Together, they show that evidence for climate change in response to human activity is strong and credible and that urgent action is required to cut greenhouse gas emissions significantly and quickly. To improve our understanding, extensive research and rigorous debate must continue among scientists. Importantly, communicating this research to the wider public must be effective. This from Professor Kurt Lambeck, immediate past president of the Australian Academy of Science.

Kurt Lambeck In National Times
December 28, 2010 – 8:31AM

The rains have come but that is not a reason to ignore the scientific evidence on climate change. The US National Climatic Data Centre issued figures for the year to the end of October that indicate global average surface temperatures for 2010 are heading for one of the warmest years on record. Climate change is about trends that operate on time scales longer than that of individual human memory.

Ever since it became apparent the atmosphere was warming, people have been questioning the evidence and the nature of the likely causes. This questioning of evidence and of the underlying causes is an essential part of the scientific process.

Understanding what drives climate, and predicting how it may change under a combination of natural and anthropogenic forcing, is possibly one of the most challenging problems for the science community. No single scientist or group of scientists can successfully claim to understand all, free of all doubt. It becomes even more of a challenge for the wider public to understand the science and, in the face of uncertainties, to be able to make informed decisions about how to respond. That challenge becomes even more difficult in the face of seemingly conflicting messages about the science.

It is therefore important for scientists to take stock periodically and focus on the key scientific questions, on what the consequences are of specific uncertainties, and on what is required to resolve remaining uncertainties.

Recognising that the consequences of climate change are potentially global, serious and irreversible on human time scales, the Australian Academy of Science has published such an assessment, The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers.

In the past few months several other national science academies have produced statements detailing the extent of consensus and uncertainty about climate change science too. These include the Royal Society in Britain, the US National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences. In addition, other science bodies, including the Geological Society of London, have expressed their views.

A scientist is not usually elected to a national academy for doing consensus science. These recent academy statements express views that have been robustly debated both by experts in areas of climate science and by eminent scientists with extensive research experience in related fields.

The independent messages from the four academies and the geological society are consistent and urgent. They include that the role of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is well understood, and that increasing the atmospheric concentration of the principal anthropogenic greenhouse gas, CO2, leads to higher mean global surface temperatures. It is accepted that CO2 has increased substantially during the past century, to the highest levels seen in 800,000 years, and that this increase is primarily from human activity as a result of burning fossil fuels, with a lesser contribution from other activities such as the manufacture of cement and deforestation.

They recognise that some of the greenhouse gases from human activities will remain in the atmosphere for a very long time and that, unless these emissions are significantly reduced now, the rise in the global average surface temperature will continue. The importance of the potential effects of CO2 and temperature increases on sea level and ocean acidification are also recognised.

All reports recognise that natural processes have also contributed to past climate change but they also underline, for example, in the words of the geological society, that ”it is not possible to relate the Earth’s warming since 1970 to any . . . geological cause”.

Climate change science is no different to any other experimental science, with the attendant uncertainties, and policy decisions have to be made taking them into account. For example, accurate values cannot yet be given for the likely range of future warming because of current uncertainties in climate sensitivity to small disturbances. But climate models and evidence from past climate change do provide a plausible range of values, and all point in the same direction: the current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are such that they can only lead to global mean surface temperatures that have not been experienced in the present interglacial period.

Likewise, predicting accurate rates for future rises in sea level remains difficult without new information on the responses of ice sheets and mountain glaciers to rising temperatures, but all models and observations point to the same direction of a globally averaged rise in sea level at rates where it is already affecting land use in low-lying coastal areas. Regional climate remains difficult to assess with accuracy, particularly for changes in regional rainfall patterns.

The reports identify where work needs to be done to reduce the uncertainties in the present knowledge but they also stress that these uncertainties do not affect the major conclusions, although they may impinge on precise time scales or magnitudes of change and on the nature of the regional impact.

Together, the statements show that evidence for climate change in response to human activity is strong and credible and that urgent action is required to cut greenhouse gas emissions significantly and quickly.

To improve our understanding, extensive research and rigorous debate must continue among scientists. Importantly, communicating this research to the wider public must be effective.

Scientists have the responsibility of providing the best evidence to help policy makers reach conclusions that are founded in science, that are based on the best current understanding.

The academies’ findings provide a firm basis for understanding the science of climate change, and contribute to the understanding of the science on which any policy response must be debated and constructed.

Professor Kurt Lambeck is a climate scientist and immediate past president of the Australian Academy of Science

Source: www.nationaltimes.com.au

Where There’s Sun, There’s Power To Burn or Store

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun’s energy into fuel. The machine uses the Sun’s rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported. The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide or ceria.

New solar fuel machine ‘mimics plant life’

By Neil Bowdler, Science reporter, BBC News (23 December 2010):

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun’s energy into fuel.

The machine uses the Sun’s rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.

Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.

Details are published in the journal Science.

The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria.

Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down.

If as in the prototype, carbon dioxide and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen produced could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create “syngas” for fuel.

It is this harnessing of ceria’s properties in the solar reactor which represents the major breakthrough, say the inventors of the device. They also say the metal is readily available, being the most abundant of the “rare-earth” metals.

Methane can be produced using the same machine, they say.

Refinements needed

The prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel.

Most of the energy is lost through heat loss through the reactor’s wall or through the re-radiation of sunlight back through the device’s aperture.

But the researchers are confident that efficiency rates of up to 19% can be achieved through better insulation and smaller apertures. Such efficiency rates, they say, could make for a viable commercial device.

“The chemistry of the material is really well suited to this process,” says Professor Sossina Haile of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “This is the first demonstration of doing the full shebang, running it under (light) photons in a reactor.”

She says the reactor could be used to create transportation fuels or be adopted in large-scale energy plants, where solar-sourced power could be available throughout the day and night.

However, she admits the fate of this and other devices in development is tied to whether states adopt a low-carbon policy.

“It’s very much tied to policy. If we had a carbon policy, something like this would move forward a lot more quickly,” she told the BBC.

It has been suggested that the device mimics plants, which also use carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create energy as part of the process of photosynthesis. But Professor Haile thinks the analogy is over-simplistic.

“Yes, the reactor takes in sunlight, we take in carbon dioxide and water and we produce a chemical compound, so in the most generic sense there are these similarities, but I think that’s pretty much where the analogy ends.”

Daniel Davies, chief technology officer at the British photovoltaic company Solar Century, said the research was “very exciting”.

“I guess the question is where you locate it – would you put your solar collector on a roof or would it be better off as a big industrial concern in the Sahara and then shipping the liquid fuel?” he said.

Solar technology is moving forward apace but the overriding challenges remain ones of efficiency, economy and storage.

New-generation “solar tower” plants have been built in Spain and the United States which use an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto tower-mounted receivers which drive steam turbines.

A new Spanish project will use molten salts to store heat from the Sun for up to 15 hours, so that the plant could potentially operate through the night.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Expect More Carbon Action From Businesses, Cities & States

When GreenBiz asked major US business leaders to specify the major challenges expected in 2011, Eric A. Spiegel, President and CEO, Siemens Corporation said “it’s pretty clear that we’re not going to do much in terms of any kind of global or even federal carbon legislation.  The challenge is going to be how do you keep the momentum going in an environment where the federal legislation probably isn’t going to help much?” His prediction: “You’re going to see a lot driven by cities and states”. What do others say?

By Leslie Guevarra in GreenBiz (28 December 2010):

As 2010 drew to a close, GreenBiz asked executives from a range of companies — all of whom have been featured in the news this year — to tell us about their most exciting green prospects, the challenges and the changes they anticipate for 2011, and what they think 2011 will look like from the perspective of 2012.

Here’s what they told us when we asked:

What do you see as the biggest potential challenge for your company in 2011?

Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist, Microsoft:

For Microsoft, our biggest challenge is raising awareness among technology leaders and decision-makers (CIOs and tech purchasers for example) on the challenges presented by energy constraints. Currently, when I look across the industry, I see IT professionals who are not focused on energy; they see it as a mid-term problem rather than near term. There’s a train coming down the track regarding energy consumption. Right now, they don’t see it and they aren’t worried, but they should be.

Joseph Danko, Director of Sustainable Solutions, CH2M HILL:

The economy. We expect continued slow economic recovery and this will impact our rate of business growth.

Michael Meehan, Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder ENXSuite:

The good thing about the cleantech market is that there are a vast number of opportunities and various segments of the market are still quite nascent. Navigating opportunities sounds like a “champagne problem” but it’s not as easy as it sounds — all companies in this space will continue to evolve their go to market and place their bets on the most promising opportunities. Placing the right bets on opportunities in cleantech is the biggest challenge for all companies.

Eric A. Spiegel, President and CEO, Siemens Corporation:

It’s pretty clear that we’re not going to do much in terms of any kind of global or even federal carbon legislation.  And so the challenge is going to be how do you keep the momentum going for an environmental portfolio in an environment where the federal legislation probably isn’t going to help much? My prediction is you’re going to see a lot driven by cities and states.

Suzanne Shelton, Founder, President and CE, Shelton Group:

Though we’re seeing many companies settling into true sustainability commitments, we’re still seeing a lot of resource constraint. There’s been a trend for a while for corporations to name a VP of sustainability, give that person an FTE or two and then no actual budget to do anything meaningful with — from conducting an LCA to building a true brand platform around sustainability.  As long as that continues it will be tough for the folks who actually have a terrific sustainability story to tell to actually tell it, and, as an ad agency exclusively focused in the sustainability space, tough for us to help our clients tell it.

Michel Gelobter, Chief Green Officer, Hara:

Keeping up with demand for our solution and all you can do with it — a good challenge to have! Faced with the radical visibility/transparency on energy and resource use that our software creates, our customers will be demanding help with data-driven innovation in energy use, capital and operating expense optimization, and value creation.

Kevin Surace, Chairman and CEO, Serious Materials:

Initial cost of retrofits for customers.

Lynelle Cameron, Director of Sustainability, Autodesk:

In the last few months, we announced an array of transformational technologies to help our customers imagine, design, and create a better world … We realize that introducing the best technology is only the first step. Changing behavior and getting people to adopt new design paradigms is an even bigger challenge. This will be our biggest challenge and focus for 2011.  We need to educate the design community to use new tools to make smarter, more sustainable decisions at every stage of the design and build process. As a cultural anthropologist by training, changing behavior is the aspect of my job that I love most. At the end of the day, sustainability is a systems problem and will require people coming together in new ways.

David Wilkerson, Corporate Director of Sustainability and Product Stewardship, Shaw Industries:

Even with our strong commercial outlook, the residential market recovery is slow and unpredictable. This will be the biggest challenge for our entire industry in 2011. Prior to the recession, the industry and Shaw, saw a “sustainability boom.” During these difficult financial times, the market is focusing more on cost.  As the market begins to recover, which may be beyond 2011, and manufacturing returns to full capacity, it is vitally important that the market does not lose focus on the environmental impacts and intense focus of the boom.

Tim Carey, Director of Sustainability and Technology, PepsiCo Americas Beverages:

I prefer to view our “challenges” as opportunities!  We’ve got an exciting agenda for 2011, including recycling 20 million pounds of plastic bottles and aluminum cans through the PepsiCo Dream Machine recycling program, demonstrating the potential viability of a first, national-scale low carbon agricultural program for oranges with Tropicana, and expanding our use of 100 percent post-consumer recycled content in our beverage containers.

Adam Lowry, Co-Founder and Chief Greenskeeper, Method:

We bring big innovation to low-interest categories, so our biggest challenge next year is the same as it always is: Making people aware of all the innovation we put into our products. As a relatively small brand, we don’t have unlimited budgets to get people to try our products. We do know, however, that once people try Method, it’s hard for them to buy anything else. So we will remain focused on getting new people to try Method and spread the word within their circles. It’s the way we’ve always grown, and while it might not be the sexiest way to grow, it yields highly loyal advocates and sustainable growth that insulates us from the vagaries of tough economies or massive competitive spending.

Robert Houghton, President and Founder, Redemtech:

The current financial climate will challenge companies’ continued commitment to sustainability. It is up to service providers like Redemtech to help customers quantify and rationalize the benefits of environmentally and socially responsible business practices to the satisfaction of senior leadership and the shareholders. Fortunately, our industry achieved two important milestones in 2010 — launch of the e-Stewards Electronics Recycling Standard and Gartner’s first-ever Magic Quadrant on the IT asset disposition (ITAD) industry — that make it easier for companies to evaluate their choices among ITAD providers and choose a vendor that aligns with financial, environmental and social goals.

Leisha John, Americas Director of Environmental Sustainability, Ernst & Young:

Like many other professional services firms, we’re watching for a potential uptick in travel as the economy improves. It is certainly an ongoing challenge to encourage our people to be mindful of their environmental impact when they travel, but we’re excited by the increase in videoconferencing that has started to become the norm for several leaders within our firm.

Beth Shiroishi, Assistant Vice President of Citizenship and Sustainability, AT&T:

For 2011 the biggest challenge and the most exciting opportunity for AT&T is activating our employees around sustainability in an authentic way.

Joseph Taylor, Chairman and CEO, Panasonic Corp. of North America:

Economic troubles still appear to be dampening consumer enthusiasm for sustainable lifestyles.

Hannah Jones, Vice President of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Nike:

Our goal for 2011 will be to remain focused on making a difference for the things that really matter. We want to build a portfolio of disruptive innovations in sustainable materials and manufacturing that will enable closed loop products and business models. While we can’t flag what those are just yet, but we know we need to head in this direction, and fast, to prepare our company to thrive in a resource-constrained future.

Bill Morrissey, Vice President of Environmental Sustainability, The Clorox Company:

We have a goal to make sustainability-related improvements to one-third of our product portfolio by 2013, our company’s centennial anniversary. This involves addressing more than 300 product items around the world. This is a significant effort that involves multiple areas of our business but we are committed to reducing the footprint of our products as well as our operations.

Jim Hanna, Director of Environmental Impact, Starbucks:

Over the last two years, Starbucks has been very active in advocating for comprehensive federal climate policy in Washington, D.C. We’ve been successful at raising awareness among key elected officials about the importance of strong climate policy, and we’ve helped break down perceptions that the business community is uniformly opposed to strong climate policy. However, this has not translated into moving pertinent legislation through Congress. We anticipate that 2011 will continue to be a challenging year for business leaders and other stakeholders who are advocating for aggressive climate policy in the U.S.

Chuck Bennett, Vice President of Earth and Community Care, Aveda:

Maintaining our momentum if the economy continues to create challenges for our business.

Terry Yosie, President and CEO, World Environment Center:

I believe there are at least three major challenges gaining momentum in the next year:  1) achieving value chain integration within an individual company’s sustainability strategy, while effectively managing the growing complexity of information, logistics and networks of decision makers involved;  2) navigating the plethora of labeling and certification schemes; and 3) developing mechanisms that allow for greater pre-competitive collaboration among participants in key market segments (e.g., agriculture, consumer goods, technology).  A fourth challenge (really a hangover from previous years) is the greater responsibility placed on the shoulders of business in areas where government cannot or will not lead (e.g., education, public health, poverty reduction).

Arlin Wasserman, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility, Sodexo:

Uncertainty in the economy and no clear public policy roadmap on climate change may make it harder to garner investment for long-term initiatives.

 Leo Raudys, Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability, Best Buy:

This year, we announced a new U.S. carbon footprint reduction goal of 20 percent by 2020, and 2011 will be an important year as we work to make serious progress in achieving that goal.

Source: www.greenbiz.com

Nature’s Way of Creating Order Out Of Chaos

Studying the way glass or other brittle objects shatter can help scientists hone their weather forecasts and predictions of future climate. The study found that tiny particles of dust, released into the air when dirt is broken apart, follow similar fragmentation patterns as glass. Jasper Kok of the US NCAR in Boulder, Colorado, said his work suggested there could be several times more dust particles in the atmosphere than previously estimated.

Scientists seek climate clues in shattered glass

By David Fogarty in Reuters Green Business (28 December 2010):

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Studying the way glass or other brittle objects shatter can help scientists hone their weather forecasts and predictions of future climate, a study released last week says.

The study found that tiny particles of dust, released into the air when dirt is broken apart, follow similar fragmentation patterns as glass.

Dust plays a crucial climate role because it can affect the amount of the sun’s energy absorbed by the atmosphere. Dust can also help with cloud formation and distribution of nutrients, such as iron that is vital for plants.

Some particles reflect solar energy, acting as cooling agents, while some trap extra heat.

For example, microscopic clay particles remain in the atmosphere for about a week, helping cool the atmosphere by reflecting heat from the sun back into space. Larger dust particles drop back to earth more quickly and tend to have a heating effect.

The trick is to figure out how much of each type is in the atmosphere and the better the estimate, the more accurate the forecast.

Jasper Kok of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, said his work suggested there could be several times more dust particles in the atmosphere than previously estimated.

This is because shattered dirt appeared to produce a much larger number of dust fragments, a finding that challenges assumptions used in complex computer programs to forecast the weather and future climate.

This is particularly the case for desert regions such as north Africa, parts of Australia and the southwestern United States, where winds can whip up large amounts of nutrient-rich dust into the air and across the sea.

“As small as they are, conglomerates of dust particles in soils behave the same way on impact as a glass dropped on a kitchen floor,” Kok said in a statement with the release of his study in the latest issue of the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Knowing this pattern can help us put together a clearer picture of what our future climate will look like,” he added.

That is crucial for scientists using computer climate models to simulate the amount of dust particles in the atmosphere to figure out the heating or cooling effect.

Kok said his work suggested the amount of microscopic clay particles might be overestimated in many models and that there might be much greater amounts of larger dust particles swirling around, particularly near desert regions.

More study was needed to determine whether future temperatures in those regions would rise more or less than currently indicated by computer models, the statement said.

Mathematical formulae can be used to show how brittle objects crack and break in predictable ways. Using these formulae Kok estimated the size distribution of dust particles blown into the air, with the formulae matching the measurements of particle sizes almost exactly, he said in the study.

“The idea that all these objects shatter in the same way is a beautiful thing, actually,” Kok says in the statement. “It’s nature’s way of creating order in chaos.”

Source: http://www.reuters.com

31 December in Straits Times

JAKARTA: Indonesia has chosen one of its largest and richest provinces to test efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by saving forest and peatlands, a key part of a US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) climate deal with Norway.

Central Kalimantan province on Borneo island is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases among Indonesia’s 33 provinces because of deforestation, destruction of carbon-rich peat swamps and land-use change, the government says.

‘The assessment showed that Central Kalimantan is a province with large forest cover and peatlands and faces a real threat of deforestation,’ top technocrat Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, head of a special presidential delivery unit charged with managing the Norway deal, said in a statement yesterday.

The agreement aims to test efforts that save and restore forests as a way to fight climate change. Forests soak up and lock away large amounts of carbon, while clearing and burning them releases carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

Under the climate deal signed this year, Norway will pay Indonesia for proven emission reductions based on a transparent auditing system, and a key part of the pact is selecting a province to test programmes that boost conservation, training and steps to improve livelihoods.

Overhauling the province’s land-use plan is also key. The deal imposes a two-year national moratorium on new concessions to clear primary forests and peatlands, a step some palm oil and pulp and paper firms fear could disrupt expansion plans.

With nearly a million hectares of oil palm plantations and a rapidly growing coal-mining sector, the province has some of the largest areas of threatened peatlands and peat swamp forests in the country.

The deal also seeks to ramp up a United Nations-backed scheme, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd), that aims to reward poor countries for saving their forests.

Internationally tradeable carbon offsets would be generated by forest preservation projects based on national or regional emission reductions. Rich countries would buy the credits in a future market that could be worth billions of dollars a year, the UN says. A UN climate conference in Mexico this month backed Redd, which has already attracted about US$4 billion in pledges from rich nations, including Norway and the United States.

Indonesia already has about 40 Redd projects at various stages of development, the government says, with two projects totalling more than 300,000ha of peat swamp forests in Central Kalimantan. Australia is also helping to restore 100,000ha of degraded peatlands in the province.

Under the deal, the province, and another to be chosen in 2012, would benefit from some of the US$120 million in the second phase. The bulk of the money would be available in the third phase from 2014, when Norway will pay for measured greenhouse gas cuts based on 2013 emission reductions.

Mr Dharsono Hartono, developer of a Redd project in Central Kalimantan, said: ‘With this selection, the province can finalise its spatial plan, implement its green growth policy and drive bureaucratic reform that can boost jobs and environmental protection.’

REUTERS

Source: www.admpreview.straitstimes.com