Climate | News & Views

£250bn tar sands money enough may transform renewables sector

Billions spent developing the Canadian tar sands over the next 15 years could be instead be used to support projects that could secure long-term clean energy supplies for the UK.

A report published yesterday (March 15th) from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) argued that the £250 billion to be spent to be spent producing oil from the Canadian tar sands could also fund projects to accelerate the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy.

According to the authors, the money could ‘transform’ the UK’s power sector, with £264 billion being enough to make the UK meet its target of 15 per cent renewable energy by 2020.

The study also highlighted that the tar sands project is not guaranteed to bring in huge revenues.

“Companies that make big investments in tar sands risk big future losses by focusing on a business area that is only profitable if emitting carbon is cheap, oil prices are stable at a high level, and there is a large market for the oil produced,” claim the report’s authors.

“It has been conservatively estimated that £35.5 billion of UK pension assets are
invested in shares in UK oil and gas.”

Last month, Shell announced that it will continue producing upwards of an additional 100,000 barrels a day from tar sands, despite international protests from activists and environmental groups.

>>> Please read the article here

Defra: air pollution targets could save £24bn

Joint measures to cut emissions and improve air quality could save the UK around £24 billion, according to a new government report.

The Department of Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) published the paper last week outlining new ‘cost-effective’ initiatives to meet EU targets on reducing air pollution.

Defra’s chief scientific adviser, Bob Watson, said: “We’ve seen time and again that dealing with environmental problems in isolation is neither effective nor efficient. We need a coordinated view which confronts the complexities involved and seeks to maximise the co-benefits of actions.”

Studies cited in the report found that air pollution and climate change derived from the same sources. Recent success in improving air quality was attributed in part to reductions in transport emissions.

One of the conclusions of the report is that promoting “non-combustion renewable sources of electricity, promoting the use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and reducing agricultural demands for nitrogen” is key to better air quality in the future.

>>> Please read the full article here

Climate ‘fix’ could poison sea life

By Richard Black – Environment correspondent, BBC News

Fertilising the oceans with iron to absorb carbon dioxide could increase concentrations of a chemical that can kill marine mammals, a study has found.

Iron stimulates growth of marine algae that absorb CO2 from the air, and has been touted as a “climate fix”.
Now researchers have shown that the algae increase production of a nerve poison that can kill mammals and birds.
Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they say this raises “serious concern” over the idea.
The toxin – domoic acid – first came to notice in the late 1980s as the cause of amnesiac shellfish poisoning.

If the end goal is to use it to fight climate warming, then we have to understand the consequences for marine life

It is produced by algae of the genus Pseudonitzschia, with concentrations rising rapidly when the algae “bloom”.
Now, its presence in seawater often requires the suspension of shellfishing operations, and is regularly implicated in deaths of animals such as sealions.

Domoic acid poisoning may also lie behind a 1961 incident in which flocks of seabirds appeared to attack the Californian town of Capitola – an event believed to have shaped Alfred Hitchcock’s interpretation of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds in his 1963 thriller.

Carbon focus

Over the last decade, about 10 research projects have investigated iron fertilisation, with mixed results. But only two of them measured domoic acid production, and only then as an afterthought, explained William Cochlan from San Francisco State University, a scientist on the new project.

“We had a number of major aims in this work; but one of them was to ask ‘do you normally find the species of algae that produce domoic acid, are they producing domoic acid, and will production be enhanced by iron?’,” he said.
In studies conducted around Ocean Station Papa, a research platform moored in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean, the answers to all three questions turned out to be “yes”.

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Tough Love in a Troubled Climate – from the BBC

Governments have now demanded – and will get – an independent review into how the IPCC conducts its work and how well its conclusions stand up to scrutiny.

The decision – taken at the governing council meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Bali – potentially offers everyone a way out of the mire currently engulfing climate science, from top-name researchers to the Joe and Joanna Public whose taxes fund them and who expect them to get things right.

The review should be finished within about six months, and the results discussed – and changes instituted – at the IPCC’s meeting in October.

In some quarters this is being touted as an investigation of IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri, who certainly annoyed some (not least in the Indian government) when he initially rebutted criticism of the Himalayan glacier date error in a manner lacking much diplomacy.

In fact, though, it is envisaged as a process that will be thorough and rigorous, but constructive; what you might summarise as “tough love”.

There is no point in governments either soft-soaping or lambasting the organisation to the extent that it loses all its credibility. After all, its conclusions should in principle have a major role in determining what policy options those self-same governments pursue in the arenas of disaster preparedness and energy supply.

So yes, it is possible that Dr Pachauri will not survive the process; and indeed it is possible that he will not want to, if the job description gets so heavily amended that continuing would result in him having to give up all his other interests.

But there are more important questions to be addressed.

To what extent do conclusions of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report (AR4) from 2007 stand up to scrutiny?

Should its processes for gathering and sifting information be amended – and in particular, is there a case for excluding “grey literature” (anything other than peer-reviewed science)?

Does it select its major contributors as objectively as it should? Does it communicate its conclusions effectively to policymakers and the public?

“Climate-sceptical” organisations may already be in ecstasy about a process that – they will argue – may bring down the IPCC, and by extension block political moves towards regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

And this, in turn, may prompt some people involved with the IPCC to put their heads in their hands and complain that the last thing they need is another process that will see lances levelled at the edifice of anthropogenic climate change.

That, I suggest, would be a mistake. Many commentators sympathetic to the organisation have insisted in recent months that it could do with a dose of reform; so why not have reforms recommended by a review that aims for a constructive outcome, rather than by a host of unsympathetic and unaccountable bloggers whose scientific or pseudo-scientific utterings are sometimes impelled by political theologies?

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, reform ideas for the IPCC produced by sympathetic academics so far include producing shorter, more focused and more intelligible reports; setting itself up as a wiki-form web-based platform; and farming out parts of its function to regional organisations or national science academies.

There are some who’ve argued that because the actual number of mistakes in the AR4 was triflingly small, there is no need for review or reform.

But in significant parts of politics, the media and the public, that argument has already been lost, and now it has been lost in reality as well; the review will happen.

Do we need all major scientific papers on climate to be available to all, rather than hidden from most behind the subscription-only business plans of journals such as Nature and Science?

Another reason for getting such a review up and running now is that in June, governments are due to decide whether they will establish an organisation loosely modelled on the IPCC that will collate and sift scientific evidence on biodiversity loss.

Although governments have decided the IPCC needs a review, they have also decided that the world needs an IPCC. And that should come as welcome news to those who feared that a tide of “denialism” was about to swamp the world’s body politic.

>>> Please read the full article here

Battle over climate science spreads to US schoolrooms

11 March 2010 by Debora MacKenzie

SCHOOLS in three US states – Louisiana, Texas and South Dakota – have been told to teach alternatives to the scientific consensus on global warming. The moves appear to be allied to efforts to teach creationism in public schools. Such efforts have in the past been thwarted when courts ruled them unconstitutional, but those advocating the teaching of sound science may find it harder to fight misrepresentations concerning climate change.

Last week, South Dakota’s state legislature adopted a bill which “urges” schools to take a “balanced approach” to teaching about climate change, because the science is “unresolved” and has been “complicated and prejudiced” by “political and philosophical viewpoints”.

When New Scientist asked what these were, the bill’s sponsor, Don Kopp, mentioned claims commonly cited in opposition to the idea of human-induced global warming: for example, that any global warming is due to changes in solar activity. “I am against bankrupting the country to fight warming,” he said, “without being sure it’s true.”

The measure makes no mention of evolution, but its wording resembles bills in other states primarily aimed at teaching alternatives to evolution. Since a court in Pennsylvania ruled in 2005 that “intelligent design” had religious origins, so could not be taught in state schools, states have used vaguer language in bills when calling for schools to teach alternatives to established science.

In Michigan in 2005, one such bill also called for students to “critically evaluate… theories of global warming”. It failed, as have all similar bills – except in Louisiana, which in 2008 passed a law requiring “open and objective discussion” of warming, evolution and human cloning. Kentucky is now debating a similar bill.

In March 2009, Texas adopted school standards that both allow creationist claims and say students must “evaluate different views on the existence of global warming”. Texas buys more textbooks than any other state, so publishers often conform to Texan demands, including adding scepticism about warming.

Bundling warming with evolution in calls for “academic freedom” may make it harder to challenge these laws. Steve Newton of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, observes that the US constitution restricts the teaching of religious ideas in state schools, but not the teaching of bad science. A study last year found that evangelical Christians, who account for most creationists, are up to three times as likely as other Americans to deny that warming has human origins.

Moves against climate science and in favour of creationism are linked in other ways too: some see warming, like evolution, as the product of a hostile scientific establishment. When the US Chamber of Commerce, which opposes stringent cuts in greenhouse emissions, called for a public hearing on climate science last August, it called it “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century”, after the 1925 Tennessee trial about teaching evolution.

>>> Read the full article here

Scientists to review climate body

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the world’s science academies to review work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Work will be co-ordinated by the Inter-Academy Council, which brings together bodies such as the UK’s Royal Society.

The IPCC has been under pressure over errors in its last major assessment of climate science in 2007.
Mr Ban said the overall concept of man-made climate change was robust, and action to curb emissions badly needed. The Inter-Academy Council will convene a panel of experts to conduct the review, and will be run independently of UN agencies.

One issue that was raised at the UN news conference was how independent the scientists on the Inter-Academy Council’s review panel will be from the scientists who contributed work to the IPCC in the first place. “Let me be clear – the threat posed by climate change is real,” said Mr Ban, speaking at UN headquarters in New York.
“I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of [the IPCC's 2007] report.”

Robbert Dijkgraaf, the council’s co-chair, said the review panel will be chosen so that it includes both inside knowledge of the IPCC and outside perspectives.
“The panel will look forward and will definitely not go over all the vast amount of data in climate science,” he said.

REVIEW’S TERMS OF REFERENCE
Analyse the IPCC process, including links with other UN agencies
Review the use of non-peer reviewed sources, and quality control on data
Assess how procedures handle “the full range of scientific views”
Review how the IPCC communicates with the public and the media

“It will see what are the [IPCC's] procedures, and how can they be improved, so we can avoid certain types of errors.”

But Roger Pielke Jr, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado who has recently criticised the IPCC over its assessment of the costs of climate-related disasters, said the terms of reference appeared to have some significant omissions. “How will it deal with allegations of breakdowns in procedures in the AR4?”, he asked. “The terms of reference say nothing about looking at the AR4 procedures, but it would be difficult to do a serious evaluation without actually evaluating experience,” he told BBC News.

“Should it ignore the AR4 issues, then it will risk being called a whitewash.” Prof Pielke also suggested the panel might look at apparent conflicts of interest within the IPCC’s staff. The conflict of interest charge has been levelled against the IPCC’s chair, Rajendra Pachauri, over his business interests.

But standing alongside Mr Ban, he welcomed the review.
“The IPCC stands firmly behind the rigour and reliability of its Fourth Assessment Report from 2007, but we recognise that we can improve,” he said. “We have listened and learned from our critics, and we intend to take every action we can to ensure that our reports are as robust as possible.”

The review was demanded by world governments at last month’s meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) Governing Council. The Inter-Academy Council has been asked to finalise its conclusions by August, in time that its recommendations can be discussed and adopted at October’s IPCC meeting.

>>> Read the full article here

Whaling worsens carbon release, scientists warn

By Victoria Gill

A century of whaling may have released more than 100 million tonnes – or a large forest’s worth – of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists say. Whales store carbon within their huge bodies and when they are killed, much of this carbon can be released. US scientists revealed their estimate of carbon released by whaling at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Portland, US. Dr Andrew Pershing from the University of Maine described whales as the “forests of the ocean”.

Dr Pershing and his colleagues from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute calculated the annual carbon-storing capacity of whales as they grew. “Whales, like any animal or plant on the planet, are made out of a lot of carbon,” he said. “And when you kill and remove a whale from the ocean, that’s removing carbon from this storage system and possibly sending it into the atmosphere.” He pointed out that, particularly in the early days of whaling, the animals were a source of lamp oil, which was burned, releasing the carbon directly into the air.

“And this marine system is unique because when whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean. “If they die where it’s deep enough, it will be [stored] out of the atmosphere perhaps for hundreds of years.”

In their initial calculations, the team worked out that 100 years of whaling had released an amount of carbon equivalent to burning 130,000 sq km of temperate forests, or to driving 128,000 Humvees continuously for 100 years. Dr Pershing stressed that this was still a relatively tiny amount when compared to the billions of tonnes produced by human activity every year.

When whales die [naturally], their bodies sink, so they take that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean.
Dr Andrew Pershing, University of Maine. But he said that whales played an important role in storing and transporting carbon in the marine ecosystem. Simply leaving large groups of whales to grow, he said, could “sequester” the greenhouse gas, in amounts that were comparable to some of the reforestation schemes that earn and sell carbon credits.

He suggested that a similar system of carbon credits could be applied to whales in order to protect and rebuild their stocks. Other scientists said that he had raised an exciting and interesting problem.

Dr Pershing said: “These are huge and they are top predators, so unless they’re fished they would be likely to take their biomass to the bottom of the ocean [when they die].”

Read the full article at BBC News

Litter: our legacy to future generations

By Jeremy Paxman

Our grandchildren will know us by our discarded cans of Coca-Cola and packets of Walkers crisps

It’s the real thing, all right. That plastic jewel glinting in the verge among the emerging daffodils is a plastic bottle. Probably an empty Coke one.

An organisation called Litter Heroes (surely the most unglamorous club in Britain?) has done something rather useful. They have traced where the crud that morons in cars chuck out of their windows originally comes from. No surprise to discover that the worst-offending brand is Coca-Cola (4.9% of all litter), followed by Walkers Crisps (4.1%) and McDonald’s (3.6%).

And what does Coca-Cola say by way of apology? A company spokesman “acknowledges” the report. How very gracious of him. He goes on to blather that its bottles “carry the Tidy Man and Recycle Now logos”. Well, that should do it.

There is more fatuous wittering from McDonald’s, which even has the nerve to attempt a tone of wronged outrage, saying that “in 2009 we spent over ¬£2m on staff labour alone” picking up litter. That’s ¬£2m out of a turn over of more than ¬£2bn in Britain.

Anyone who walks anywhere in this filthy country knows that what the 39 volunteers from Litter Heroes discovered is true. No one in their right mind talks any longer about a “green and pleasant land”. A beautiful country is being submerged under a rising tide of rubbish.

Worst of all is the fact that whereas paper bags biodegrade, plastic bottles and confectionery wrappers last for generations. Our great-grandchildren will still be living among the gaudy wrapping of the chocolate bar we excreted last month.

The poor saps who have to act as apologists for the fizzy-drink and junk-food manufacturers never use the obvious argument because it would ¬≠insult their customers. Why don’t they try the tactic of US gun ¬≠manufacturers, who say: “It’s not guns that kill, it’s people”? Of course, it’s not the boss of Coke or Cadbury chucking the company products out of the car window; it’s some oaf who doesn’t understand that in tidying up his private space he’s making the shared space filthy.

The turning of verges into rubbish tips is a symptom of the “everyone for himself” attitude that has come to dominate in the last 50 years. What can we do? Local councils are supposed to have a statutory duty to clear up litter, but are largely useless. Ditto the national government. The fault, dear Brutus, is in ourselves. At least future generations won’t lack evidence of the kind of people we were.

Read the full article at the guardian website

Did the Copenhagen Summit Fail?

According to John Vidal, Allegra Stratton and Suzanne Goldenberg – ‘Copenhagen Ends in Failure’ cop15_logo_b_m1

(This article is a summary – read the full article at the guardian.co.uk)

The UN climate summit reached a weak outline of a global agreement in Copenhagen tonight, falling far short of what Britain and many poor countries were seeking and leaving months of tough negotiations to come.

After eight draft texts and all-day talks between 115 world leaders, it was left to Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, to broker a political agreement. The so-called Copenhagen accord “recognises” the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2C but does not contain commitments to emissions reductions to achieve that goal.

American officials spun the deal as a “meaningful agreement”, but even Obama said: “This progress is not enough.”

In a press conference held after the talks broke up, Brown said the agreement was a “vital first step” and accepted there was a lot more work to do to get assurances it would become a legally binding agreement. He declined to call it a “historic” conference:

The deal was brokered between China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, but late last night it was unclear whether it would be adopted by all 192 countries in the full plenary session. The deal aims to provide $30bn a year for poor countries to adapt to climate change from next year to 2012, and $100bn a year by 2020.

But it disappointed African and other vulnerable countries which had been holding out for deeper emission cuts to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5C this century. As widely expected, all references to 1.5C in past drafts were removed at the last minute, but more surprisingly, the earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% was also dropped.

Obama hinted that China was to blame for the lack of a substantial deal. In a press conference he condemned the insistence of some countries to look backwards to previous environmental agreements. He said developing countries should be “getting out of that mindset, and moving towards the position where everybody recognises that we all need to move together”.

Negotiators will now work on individual agreements such as forests, technology, and finance – but, without strong leadership, the chances are that it will take years to complete.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: “The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. Ed Miliband [UK climate change secretary] is among the very few that come out of this summit with any credit.” It is now evident that beating global warming will require a radically different model of politics than the one on display here in Copenhagen.”

Budget Airlines – Better for the Environment

Passengers who fly with no-frills carriers leave a softer “carbon footprint” than those on full-service easyjet airlines, new research has shown.

A couple flying with Ryanair from London to Venice and returning a week later have a carbon footprint of 410kg, while the equivalent journey on Alitalia would produce 977kg. A flight from London to Zurich with easyJet has a carbon footprint of 277kg per couple, compared with 688kg with Aer Lingus.

An easyJet spokesman said: “Our policy is to expand our fleet through the acquisition of the latest-technology aircraft, as these are more fuel-efficient than older models. The average age of an aircraft in our flight is 3.5 years. We also use these aircraft as efficiently as possible, by maximising load factors and seating density.” On an Airbus A319, the average full-service airline has 124 seats; easyJet has 156.

“Our analysis shows that the environmental stigma of budget travel may be unwarranted,” said Gbenga Kogbe of Liligo.co.uk. “Travellers can now assess the financial and environmental costs of travelling with low-cost airlines, traditional airlines and charter-flight companies.”

While many scheduled carriers report dwindling passenger numbers, low-cost carriers continue to see growth: easyJet reported a 9.3 per cent rise in passenger traffic in December compared with December 2008.
Analysts said the airline had benefited from the threat of Christmas strike action against BA and the disruption by snow of Eurostar services.

BA carried four per cent fewer passengers in December compared with the same month last year. Overall, passenger numbers fell by 750,000 to 25.2 million last year. It is not yet clear how damaging the renewed threat of strikes will be to bookings, but several travel agents have already switched flights away from BA since the cabin crew’s union, Unite, announced plans for a new strike ballot. The vote is expected to be held in early March.

Read the full article at the telegraph.co.uk