Oil spills can increase levels of toxic arsenic in the ocean, creating an additional long-term threat to the marine ecosystem, according to research published today in the journal Water Research. Arsenic is a poisonous chemical element found in minerals and it is present in oil. High levels of arsenic in seawater can enable the toxin to enter the food chain. It can disrupt the photosynthesis process in marine plants and increase the chances of genetic alterations that can cause birth defects and behavioural changes in aquatic life. It can also kill animals such as birds that feed on sea creatures affected by arsenic. In today's study, a team from Imperial College London has discovered that oil spills can partially block the ocean's natural filtration system and prevent this from cleaning arsenic out of the seawater. The researchers say their study sheds light on a new toxic threat from the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. Arsenic occurs naturally in the ocean, but sediments on the sea floor filter it out of seawater, which keeps the levels of naturally occurring arsenic low. However, arsenic is also flushed into the ocean in wastewater from oil rigs and from accidental oil spills and leakages from underground oil reservoirs. In the study, the researchers discovered that oil spills and leakages clog up sediments on the ocean floor with oil, which prevents the sediments from bonding with arsenic and burying it safely underground with subsequent layers of sediment. The scientists say this shutdown of the natural filtration system causes arsenic levels in seawater to rise, which means that it can enter the marine ecosystem, where it becomes more concentrated and poisonous the further it moves up the food chain. The scientists say their work demonstrates how the chemistry of sediments in the Gulf of Mexico may be affected by the current oil leak. Professor Mark Sephton, from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, says: "We can't accurately measure how much arsenic is in the Gulf at the moment because the spill is ongoing. However, the real danger lies in arsenic's ability to accumulate, which means that each subsequent spill raises the levels of this pollutant in seawater. Our study is a timely reminder that oil spills could create a toxic ticking time bomb, which could threaten the fabric of the marine ecosystem in the future." Wimolporn Wainipee, postgraduate and lead author of the study from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, adds: "We carried out our study before the leak in the Gulf of Mexico occurred, but it gives us a big insight into a potential new environmental danger in the region. Thousands of gallons of oil are leaked into the world's oceans every year from big spills, offshore drilling and routine maintenance of rigs, which means many places may be at risk from rising arsenic levels, which could in the long run affect aquatic life, plants and the people who rely on the oceans for their livelihoods." For their research, the team analysed a mineral called goethite, one of the most abundant ocean sediments in the world, which is an iron bearing oxide. The team carried out experiments in the laboratory that mimicked conditions in the ocean, to see how the goethite binds to arsenic under natural conditions. They discovered that seawater alters the chemistry of goethite, where low pH levels in the water create a positive change on the surface of goethite sediments, making them attractive to the negatively charged arsenic. However, the scientists discovered that when they added oil, this created a physical barrier, covering the goethite sediments, which prevented the arsenic in the oil from binding to them. The team also found that the oil changed the chemistry of the sediments, which weakened the attraction between the goethite and arsenic. In the future, the researchers plan to analyse other minerals such as clays and carbonates that are sediments on the ocean floor. Sediment content varies from ocean to ocean and the researchers will analyse how oil affects their ability to bind to arsenic after a spill. Water: an investment to tap in to While you can't invest directly in water yet you can dip into the market through specialist funds and companies supplying water technologies water hosepipe The north-west is suffering its first hosepipe ban in 14 years as reservoir levels fall. Water, as anyone living in the north-west of England will be all too aware, is a scarce commodity. The area is enduring the first hosepipe ban in 14 years as a wet autumn was followed by an exceptionally dry spring and summer. But water is a precious resource in many parts of the world and, as the population rises and industrialisation increases, it will become more so. Simon James, founding partner of Gore Browne Investment Management, points out that there is the same amount of water on the planet as there was a million years ago but there are now almost 7 billion people wanting to use it. In the past century alone, demand for water has risen sevenfold. He adds that, over the next 15 years, the world's population is expected to grow by 18% and the proportion in urban locations by a third and urban living demands a lot more water. The result, according to the UN, is that demand for water by 2050 is likely to be 40% more than in 2000. Unlike commodities such as oil, timber or platinum, it is not possible to invest directly in water: it is not yet a directly traded commodity. Indeed Mike Fox, who runs the Sustainable Leaders Trust for Co-operative Financial Services (CFS), views it as "the one commodity where pricing does not correspond with usage. In farming, particularly, the rate paid is a pittance compared to usage a big issue in drought-ridden places like California." That will have to change eventually. In the meantime, however, there are ways in which investors can make money from water. The most obvious is through the water companies such as the UK's United Utilities behind the hosepipe ban or international companies such as Suez Environment in France and Brazil's Cia de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo. But these are usually highly regulated, so their profits will depend more on the price they are allowed to charge than the availability of water. Another way to tap into water is through the companies that supply engineering and other services to the industry. Ted Franks, an analyst at sustainability specialists WHEB Asset Management, says these companies which will include everything from filtration and desalination experts to conservation and waste management have far higher growth rates than utilities. Their technologies should get even more valuable: the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says that investment in water infrastructure and maintenance will have to grow by 7% a year, in real terms, over the next 20 years. Again, Britain has a few companies specialising in these areas. Fox points to Rotork, which supplies things such as valves for transportation and leakage. WHEB points out that consulting engineer Atkins is working with the Environment Agency to ensure that water resources are sustainably managed. Again, however, the biggest opportunity is in overseas companies such as US group Badger Meter, whose water metres help control usage, or fellow American ITT, whose services include waste treatment. Those who want to get exposure to water could invest directly in these companies, although getting a broad spread of technologies would require a large portfolio and a lot of research. Better to consider a fund although, for most, the water content will be diluted by other technologies and sustainability themes. The CFS fund, for example, invests in urban regeneration and power as well as water. Sarasin's AgriSar fund has India's Jain Irrigation Systems as its largest holding, but is a general agriculture fund. One way to get a pure investment in water is to buy ETF Securities' Janney Global Water Fund. This tracks an index made up of 60 companies, half utilities and half service companies. Rima Haddad, ETF's equity specialist, said that, over the last six months, the water index had fallen less, at 9.2%, than global equities, as measured by the MSCI World Index, which are down 9.9%. Over five years, the outperformance is more substantial, with the Janney index up almost 60% compared with a 21.5% rise in the MSCI World Index. Cities were already known to retain more heat than the rural environments that surround them, but new modeling from researchers in the United Kingdom now suggests that urban areas are also more sensitive to changes in climate. Furthermore, they will experience greater increases in average temperature with rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the cooling effects of night will become more of a memory than a reality. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. -- where Congress is debating over whether to pass a climate bill -- is getting a memorable preview of what new computer models are predicting. Last week's temperatures broke a 100-year record, and forecasters expect this June will be the hottest ever recorded in the area. "We're getting a dramatic taste of the kind of weather we are on course to bequeath to our grandchildren," said Tom Peterson, chief climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. Urban areas produce their own environments. Vegetation is replaced with steel and Concrete. A natural breeze is reconfigured by skyscrapers and other tall buildings. Soil is covered with black asphalt and loaded with automobiles. Each transformation contributes something more to what is known as the urban heat island, or UHI, effect, a phenomenon scientists have known about for almost 200 years. Instead of being consumed by plants or transported away by soil moisture, much of the daytime heat directed into urban areas is absorbed by hard, impermeable surfaces that have no other way of releasing their stored heat except to re-radiate it at night. This gives residents of urban areas little relief from the summer heat long after the sun sets. In New York City, evening air temperatures can be up to 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than those of rural areas that lie within roughly 60 miles, according to a study published by American Meteorological Society in 2009. Feeling a rise of 5 degrees by 2050. This stored heat will only get worse with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, said Mark McCarthy, lead author and a research scientist with the Climate Impacts team at the Met Office, the United Kingdom's weather service. The analysis, published in Geophysical Research Letters, was co-authored with Met Office colleagues Richard Betts, head of Climate Impacts, and Martin Best. The research found that "urban areas are warming faster" than rural ones, in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide, said McCarthy. Their models predict that urban daytime temperatures will rise by more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit in most parts of the world when carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reach 645 parts per million, a figure possible as early as 2050. Nighttime temperatures will also rise by similar numbers. However, in the Middle East, where the UHI effect is the most extreme, cities throughout the region could feel an additional 5 degrees at night. Besides the Middle East, some of the regions whose local climate is most sensitive to urbanization, including central Asia and western Africa, are also expected to double or even triple in population by 2050, according to U.N. estimates. By that time, more than 68 percent of the world's population will reside within urban areas -- up from 50 percent in 2009. These trends in temperature and population migration, McCarthy said, are sure to have significant consequences for human health by raising the possibility of heat-related fatalities. Global Change Research Program, winter cold snaps raise death rates by 1.6 percent, while heat waves are far more lethal, pushing death rates up by 5.7 percent. The report by Sir Muir Russell et al confirms what everybody who has worked with Phil Jones and Keith Briffa knew all along they are honest, hard-working scientists whose reputations have been unjustifiably smeared by allegations of unscrupulous behaviour. These allegations are soundly rejected by the report. I hope that the media will devote as much attention to this comprehensive dismissal of the allegations as it did to promoting the hysteria surrounding the email theft in the first place. Will the Daily Telegraph now retract its claim that the emails revealed "the greatest scientific scandal of our age" and apologise unreservedly to Phil Jones? Will there now be a public inquiry about the erroneous, shallow and repetitive nonsense promulgated in the media over this affair? If there is a scandal to be reported at all, it is this: the media stoked a controversy without properly investigating the issues, choosing to inflate trivialities to the level of an international scandal, without regard for the facts or individuals affected. This was a shameful chapter in the history of news reporting, and a lesson for those who are concerned about fair and honest communication with the public. Many thanks for letting me read this report prior to the embargo deadline. It got me up early on a beautiful sunny day here in Massachusetts for what seems like another day of record-breaking high temperatures. Michael E Mann: Director, Earth System Science Centre, Pennsylvania State University I am pleased that the final of the now five investigations connected with the hacked climate research unit (CRU) emails has come to completion and, like all of the previous investigations, has found that there was no scientific misconduct by any of the scientists. I was pleased to see the committee confirm that there is nothing in the stolen emails that in any way calls into question the validity of their science, or that of their collaborators and the broader climate research community. The committee found that there was no attempt to misrepresent or falsify data, and no withholding of access to raw climate data despite the repeated accusations to the contrary by climate-change deniers. The committee specifically rejected the allegation that tree-ring data has been either inappropriately used, manipulated, or withheld by CRU researchers and their colleagues. Finally, the committee rejected the claim, made frequently by climate-change deniers, that CRU scientists and other climate scientists have in any way subverted the peer-review process or sought to inappropriately influence that process. It is my hope that we can now put this bogus, manufactured scandal behind us, and move on to a more constructive conversation about climate change. It seems particularly ironic that climate-change deniers continue to harp over their now discredited claims regarding decade-old emails while we're experiencing almost daily reminders of the reality of global warming and climate change. We're currently witnessing the warmest temperatures ever globally, and are in the midst of a record-setting heatwave in the US associated with the warmest early summer temperatures ever. Meanwhile, the warmest-ever tropical Atlantic ocean temperatures are likely to lead to a hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season this summer, and Arctic sea ice is on course to plummet to its lowest levels ever this summer/fall. Human-caused climate change is a reality, and it's about time we get on to a meaningful discussion about what to do about it. Gavin Schmidt: Climate scientist, Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York The Muir Russell report is a surprisingly thorough investigation into the practices and methodologies of the CRU team. The report demonstrates again and again that the recent barrage of accusations and insinuations against the scientists and the science had no basis in fact. The authors even created (with only two days work) an analysis of weather station data from public sources that demonstrated the same patterns and trends that CRU has published something the critics have never done. The report is clear about the challenges of data access in an evolving information environment and recommends a number of very sensible changes to practice to help support research groups. However, the spinning of the stolen emails will likely continue apace. People who are claiming rather hyperbolicly that science has been "forever changed" by these events have both a rather limited appreciation of how long "forever" is, and a profound ignorance for what actual scientists have always done and continue to do. The fact is that good scientists are, and have always been, professional sceptics. The recent focus has given the public a very distorted view of the field and if something good can come of this episode, it is that it may inspire people to dig behind the sound bites and headlines and to explore this fascinating topic for themselves. The implications of climate science are too important for all of the media oxygen to be taken up by non-issues. What is the future of climate science and climate policy after the final enquiry into the released emails from CRU? I believe the CRU emails have been a game-changer for science but have done little to alter the policy conundrums raised by climate change. For climate science and scientists, three lessons must been learned: make sure to the extent possible that your analysis can be fully replicated by anyone who wishes to;as much rigour should be applied to communicating the "unknowns" as the "knowns" of scientific knowledge;and climate scientists need to re-emphasise (and maybe relearn) their public duty role as sceptics, scientific enquirers who, in the words of the Royal Society motto, "take nobody's word for it". And for climate policy, I don't think anything much has changed. We know humans have a significant role in changing the climate, but also that the future risks of such interventions cannot and will not be precisely described. The politics of climate change therefore remain, and will continue to remain, turbulent. The key political questions remain the same: what balance to strike between pushing a strong multilateral framework of targets and timetables versus implementing a broad range of diverse multilevel policies which seek to maximise the near-time co-benefits of longer-term climate goals? I favour the latter. And how to arbitrate between the deeply held and very different world views, which largely determine people's reading of scientific claims and which shape their preferred policy prescription? What everyone has lost sight of is the spectacular failure of mainstream journalism to keep the whole affair in perspective. Again and again, stories are sexed up with arch hints that these "revelations" might somehow impact on the evidence for human impact on climate. Yet the only error in the actual data used for climate change detection to have emerged from this whole affair amounted to a few hundredths of a degree in the estimated global temperature of a couple of years in the late 1870s. Having worked in this area for over a decade, I have never used data prior to the 1890s not because I don't like what it tells me, but because the data is so sparse it really doesn't tell us anything at all. Contrary to popular myth, the original "hockey stick" reconstructions of temperatures over the past millennium played no role in the IPCC's 2001 assessment that most of the warming over the past 50 years was likely to have been caused by rising greenhouse gas levels. Possibly the most important criticism in the Muir Russell review is their finding that "given its subsequent iconic significance (not least the use of a similar figure in the TAR), the [hockey-stick] figure supplied for the WMO report was misleading" for not making clear that the tree-ring series had been truncated and instrumental data spliced on. They correctly point out that the WMO report "does not have the status or significance of IPCC reports". What they fail to mention is that the "iconic" version of the figure subsequently produced for the IPCC third assessment made it perfectly clear that the tree-ring series was truncated and the instrumental data was spliced on the two data-types were shown in different colours! In comparison to previous inquiries by the House of Commons science and technology committee, the Oxburgh inquiry, and Penn State University, the report of the ICCER under the direction of Sir Muir Russell has gone further in making a detailed review of the concerns arising out of the CRU emails. Some, but certainly not all, of the concerns have been brought to resolution. For example, with regard to the famous "trick" to "hide the decline", whereas earlier investigations (including Penn State) claimed it was a valid procedure, the ICCER found otherwise, concluding that the figure published in the WMO report "was misleading in not describing that one of the series was truncated post 1960 for the figure, and in not being clear on the fact that proxy and instrumental data were spliced together". It is good to finally have agreement that Jones' graph was misleading, and the attempts to explain this away as an innocent turn of phrase are invalid. There are a number of disappointing weaknesses in the report. However, in Section 9.3 the ICCER presented a detailed discussion of the issues surrounding the use of my 2004 paper with Patrick Michaels in the preparation of the IPCC Report. Unfortunately, the ICCER seemed to lose its way on this issue, making a superficial attempt to pronounce on the scientific controversy (despite acknowledging that it is not its place to do so) while overlooking the procedural issues that were actually in their remit. Their decision to dismiss the allegations in this instance is baseless and flies in the face of the evidence they gathered. This year more than one billion people will go hungry, while another half a billion people will suffer from obesity. Three-quarters of those without enough to eat will be farmers and farm workers (those who produce food), while the handful of agribusiness corporations that control the food chain (those who decide where the food goes) will amass billions of dollars in profits. Now the latest scientific studies are predicting that, in a business-as-usual scenario, rising temperatures, extreme climate conditions and the severe water and soil problems related to them will push many more millions into the ranks of the hungry. As population growth raises demand for food, climate change will sap our capacities to produce it. Certain countries already struggling with severe hunger problems could see their food production cut by half before the end of this century. Yet where elites gather to talk about climate change, very little is being said about such consequences for food production and supply, and even less is being done to address them. There is another dimension to this interaction between climate change and the global food system that reinforces the urgent need for action. Not only is today's dysfunctional food system utterly ill-equipped for climate change, it is also one of the main engines behind it. The model of industrial agriculture that supplies the global food system essentially functions by converting oil into food, producing tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the process. The use of huge amounts of chemical fertilisers, the expansion of the industrial meat industry, and the ploughing under of the world's savannahs and forests to grow agricultural commodities are together responsible for at least 30 per cent of the global GHG emissions that cause climate change. But that is only a part of the current food system's contribution to the climate crisis. Turning food into global industrial commodities results in a tremendous waste of fossil-fuel energy in transporting it around the world, processing it, storing it and freezing it, and getting it to people's homes. All these processes are contributing to the climate bill. When added together, it is not at all an exaggeration to say that the current global food system could be responsible for nearly half of the world's GHG emissions. The rationale and urgency for an overhaul to the world's food system has never been more stark. From a practical point of view, there is nothing preventing transition to a saner system, and people everywhere are showing willingness to change – whether they be consumers searching out local foods or peasants barricading highways to defend their lands. What stands in the way is the structure of power – and it is this, more than anything, that requires transformation. New technologies, feed-in tariffs, and tax credits are helping propel the small wind industry, especially in the United States. Once found mostly in rural areas, small wind installations are now starting to pop up on urban rooftops. The Solarium, a new 8-story apartment building in New York City, is part of a new wave of green buildings in Gotham. Its exterior is made from 100 percent recycled material. The burnished floors are sustainably farmed bamboo. The apartments lack bathtubs in order to save water. Perhaps the most novel green accoutrement of the Solarium, however, is a small, black windmill perched on a short pole rising from the rooftop. Made by Wind Tronics, the windmill went live in April , it is one of the early beta units from the Michigan startup. The company claims a single windmill can supply as much as 30 percent of a household's annual power needs if winds average roughly 10 miles per hour. That is a brisk steady breeze but even homes averaging lesser amounts (5-9 mph winds) can receive significant electrical outputs of 15 to 30 percent of annual power needs. The Solarium's wind turbine will power light fixtures in common areas and a rooftop theater for residents. It has no noise and no vibration,' says Cyrus Claffey, the CEO of Clareo Networks, a real estate technology and design company that researched and planned the project for the Solarium's developers. It is bird friendly. And it has a great design. Power kicks in at a much lower windspeed than comparable products.' The gearless WindTronics system generates energy at the blades' tips and can be installed on a rooftop. This Wind Tronics windmill represents a new wave of technology innovation sweeping through the small wind industry. This innovation combined with national, regional and local incentives, as well as significant cost reductions in installations and products, is driving fast growth for small windmill makers. In 2009, despite an abysmal economy, the U.S. small wind market (turbines with rated capacities of 100 kilowatts or fewer) grew by 15 percent, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). That growth included an increase of 20.3 megawatts of new capacity and $82.4 million in sales. The 2009 tally pushed the total installed capacity of small wind turbines in the United States to 100. 2 megawatts. (That's only equivalent to one-fifth the output of an average coal-fired power plant in the United States. But more than half of that capacity came online in only the last three years, making small wind one of the fastest-growing renewable energy resources around.) This adoption is being driven by government incentives, improved zoning procedures, consumers' growing affinity for residential clean energy, and emerging financing mechanisms. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expanded available federal investment tax credits for small windmills to 30 percent of the total cost of a wind system, an enormous boost that puts small wind on equal footing with the fast-growing residential solar industry. You can add the federal credit on top of state level rebates that can be 20 percent to 25 percent and that pushes the effective price of installing a small residential wind system down to $15,000 on average,' says Ron Stimmel, the legislative affairs manager for AWEA. With such a system, he notes, consumers are effectively pre-paying their electricity bills for decades. According to Stimmel, most windmills have a lifespan of 20 to 30 years. To date, most of the growth in small wind in the United States has come in rural and semi-rural areas. This has been due to the requirement for many types of small windmills to sit atop poles that rise at least 40 feet above To date, most of the growth in small wind in the U.S. has come in rural or semi-rural areas. terra firma. Rural areas have long been more permissive of these types of installations. Looser zoning codes in those areas have allowed farmers to put up windmills without having to go through permitting hoops or angering neighbors who might have to look at the spinning systems. Even in these types of rural regions, however, penetration remains below 5 percent and room for growth is enormous. Some rural states have embraced wind at a policy level. Vermont, for example, became the first state to implement a feed-in tariff (FIT) for small wind systems. This tariff guarantees that small wind farmers can resell excess power back to the big utilities at above market rates. According to AWEA, roughly half of all small wind power additions in 2009 were in the U.S., and the country has more than three times as many small wind manufacturing companies as the next closest competitor, Japan. While the U.S. may lead in small wind innovation, the rest of the world is looking to catch up. Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Germany and Holland all have significant numbers of small wind technology companies. At present, the United Kingdom and Canada have the most well-developed small wind markets outside of the United States. But 33 countries have put in place FITs for small wind power generated by homeowners and small busineses who wish to sell their power back into the grid. Such tariffs are designed to promote the installation of smaller scale renewable power projects. These countries include most of the developed world and emerging giants such as China and India, but also a number of developing economies including the Philippines and Kenya. International policy and finance bodies are pushing hard to bring small wind systems to isolated rural communities, particularly as a complement to solar installations. The World Bank has undertaken an aggressive program to push small wind to developing nations in South America, Asia and Africa as part of its Renewable Energy in the Rural Market initiative. Many existing small wind companies have global dealer networks, and renewable energy project finance is now finally catching up, allowing dealers both in the U.S. and abroad to offer buyers financing options to defray costs or maximize tax benefits. The primary step is going to be distributor financing,' says J.J. Carrasco, a principal at Atoll Financial, Thirty-three countries have put in place feed-in tariffs for small wind power from homeowners and businesses, which signed a deal in 2009 to underwrite purchases of small wind turbines sold by Helix Wind. While Atoll plans to launch its projects in the U.S., We are also interested in bringing U.S. energy applications in developing markets such as China and Brazil,' says Carrasco. Other investors and financiers, like Carrasco, have taken a keen interest in small wind. Over the past five years, venture and private equity investors have poured $252 million into U.S. small wind companies, hoping to reap substantial rewards as the market lights up and more homes, commercial buildings and farms turn to spinning blades to lighten their electric bills. In the U.S., Stimmel and other industry experts believe farmers and others in out-of-the-way tracts will continue to put up tall poles and windmills at increasing rates, effectively hedging themselves against often volatile electricity prices. But smaller windmills are moving closer to the city centers in less dense metropolitan areas and are popping up like mushrooms in exurbs on smaller plots of land of less than an acre. Take the case of Nancy Tabor. The co-owner of McClane Electric, a small alternative energy contracting firm located near Las Vegas, Nev., Tabor signed up as a dealer for Arizona-based Southwest Windpower in January, 2009, after the new federal tax credit for small wind became law. In the wake of the credits, Southwest Windpower secured a financing vehicle for its dealers, allowing homeowners to more easily borrow money to pay for wind turbine installations. Several years earlier, the city of Las Vegas had passed new permitting procedures that made it much simpler for homeowners in some areas to A Hawaii company seeks to produce wind power by capturing flutter and vibration in a stretched membrane, receive approval for wind turbines on plots of land as small as a half-acre. Tabor has installed several units and says many more customers are eager to put up a windmill, pending the requisite collection of wind data for their proposed sites. Out here, you have really good winds in many places, particularly with a little bit of elevation. It's an excellent place for these types of projects,' says Tabor. The arrival of more advanced systems, like the Wind Tronics device, could herald deeper penetration into urban areas previously considered unusable due to the chaotic nature of the breezes and the long periods of relative low winds. The Wind Tronics system, which resembles a fancy racing bike wheel, is vibration- and noise-free. Birds readily recognize the windmill, and it can be installed on a rooftop, eliminating the need for tall, unsightly poles. More importantly, according to Wind Tronics, it begins to generate power at wind speeds as low as two miles per hour, five miles per hour less than more traditional windmill designs, and it can continue to generate power at wind speeds as high as 42 miles per hour, nearly 15 miles per hour higher than standard shut-off speeds for most wind turbines. Many energy experts contend natural gas is the ideal fuel as the world makes the transition to renewable energy. But since much of that gas will come from underground shale, ecologist Daniel B. Botkin writes, potentially at high environmental cost, it would be far better to skip the natural gas phase and move straight to massive deployment of solar and wind power. Wind Tronics is hardly alone in trying to reinvent the small wind turbine. Hundreds of startups and incumbents right now are vying for traction in the nascent market. The vast majority of these small wind players are located in the U.S., making the country the capital of small wind innovation. Systems either proposed or in production range from very standard four- and three-blade systems, to bicycle-wheel designs like that of WindTronics, to vertical-axis windmills that catch wind power in spiraling motions. A novel wind-power startup based in Hawaii, Humdinger Wind Energy, seeks to produce wind power by capturing flutter and vibration in a stretched membrane, a method akin to capturing the energy produced by the snapping of a flag in the breeze. This upswelling of innovation bodes well for the future of small wind and could help bring a wind-driven glow to many more homes and buildings in the not so distant future The Nuclear Power Resurgence: How Safe Are the New Reactors? As utilities seek to build new nuclear power plants in the U.S. and around the world, the latest generation of reactors feature improvements over older technologies. But even as attention focuses on nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels, questions remain about whether the newer reactors are sufficiently foolproof to be adopted on a large scale. In 2007, the first application to build a new reactor in the United States in more than three decades was filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). By the end of that year, four more applications had landed at the agency. In 2008, 12 additional applications arrived, with one more filed in 2009. Nuclear backers proclaimed a renaissance underway. The NRC, which over the years had lost personnel because of a shortage of work, geared up, hiring 1,000 new staffers to handle the licensing requests. Things got so crowded at the Office of New Reactors that in May the agency broke ground for a third office building in suburban Washington. A new generation of nuclear power is indeed taking shape, driven, in large part, by a growing sense among environmentalists and policymakers that any strategy to wean the U.S. off planet-warming fossil fuels must include construction of more nuclear power plants. But how safe will this new generation of nuclear power plants be in comparison to the existing fleet of 104 plants that currently generate 20 percent of the nations electricity? Perhaps the most critical difference is that the new designs are simpler and rely less on human or mechanical intervention in the case of accidents. Settling on a standard design was one recommendation made after the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island. Some designs, for example, use gravity to provide emergency cooling water rather than pumps, which can fail. Some reactors now have redundant safety features, like extra pumps. In addition, the NRC has increased regulatory scrutiny of the new designs, ordering, for example, additional safety features or engineering changes to improve delivery of emergency cooling water. Russ Bell, director of new plant licensing at the industrys Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, maintains that the new plants will be extraordinarily safe. Government risk assessments for the new reactor designs say that an accident that could damage the reactors cores would likely occur once every 10 million years an order or two of magnitude lower than the U.Ss existing nuclear power plants. And even were a core-damaging accident to occur, Bell says that does not mean radiation would escape, since the reactors have containment buildings and systems designed to prevent releases of radioactivity. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, all containment structures on new nuclear plant designs in the U.S. have been re-engineered to withstand the direct impact of a jetliner. This does not mean, however, that new containment designs are foolproof. The containment structure on a popular Westinghouse design, which seven utilities are now considering building, has been upgraded, but the NRC determined it probably wont withstand a severe earthquake. Five New Reactor Designs Under Review by the U.S. Nuclear Plant The growing attractiveness of nuclear power plants as an alternative to burning fossil fuels, coupled with generous federal tax credits and loan guarantees for new reactor construction, has led to a sharp increase in applications to build new nuclear plants in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now reviewing five new reactor designs. Its also worth noting that the NRC does not require the new plants to be any safer than existing ones. Rather, it only requires the plants to provide the same degree of protection as the current generation of reactors. The new reactors remain a work in progress. Even without knowing exactly what the finished reactors will look like or cost some utilities have already made their choices, spurred on by promises of federal subsidies and political pressure to cut carbon emissions. In a speech to industry leaders in May, Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Marvin Fertel said that the construction of nuclear reactors to provide additional power and to replace older plants U.S. reactors are limited to 60 years of operation means that 187 new nuclear power plants must be built by 2050. Many outside the industry believe that figure is unrealistically high. Elsewhere around the globe, nuclear power expansion is underway. Today, 436 reactors are operating in 31 countries, generating about 15 percent of the worlds electricity. Fifty reactors are under construction, primarily in China, South Korea, and Russia, with the fastest growth in Asia. India, France, and Finland also are building new plants. Although the new U.S. reactors will have some design enhancements digital controls versus analog dials, for example at bottom they are based on familiar and proven technology, says Bell. The two underlying Most experts dont expect a new reactor operating in the U.S. before late 2016 or early 2017. Technologies pressurized water reactors and boiling water have been around since the start of the nuclear power era. (In a pressurized water reactor, superheated water is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core;the heated water then transfers its thermal energy to a secondary steam system that turns a turbine to generate electricity. In a boiling water reactor, the water is injected directly into the core, creating a water-steam mixture that turns the turbine. Most reactors in the U.S. are pressurized water reactors.) Those technical similarities are a good thing, according to nuclear safety watchdogs. The further away you are from systems in common use and from actual construction experience, the bigger the uncertainties are going to be, says Edwin Lyman, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has been evaluating reactor safety for four decades. Under ideal circumstances, there would be just one or two designs under consideration, not five. Settling on a standardized design was among the recommendations made by nuclear advocates and critics alike in the aftermath of 1979s accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Having just one or two off-the-shelf designs would simplify licensing, construction and operation, and hold down costs. This countrys existing reactors are custom-made;no two are alike, which means they are extremely complex to build, run, and regulate. But companies hoping to dominate the U.S. market have filed applications to build a variety of designs, and the NRC has committed to reviewing the massive documentation for each. For many at the NRC, this is new work: Half the agencys workforce has been on the job for less than five years. And the information provided by the manufacturers is sometimes lacking. Last year, NRC chairman Gregory B. Jaczko complained that we have incomplete designs and less than high-quality applications submitted for review. It will be at least 2012 before the first new design wins final approval from the NRC. The four other designs are lined up behind that on the NRCs calendar, pushing licensing into the middle of the decade. Indeed, the approval process already is behind schedule because of safety issues with some reactor designs, such as the integrity of the containment dome around the AP 1000 design from Westinghouse. Most experts dont expect a new reactor to be operating in this country before late 2016 or early 2017. The pace of design reviews and licensing contrasts sharply with the political push to build new nuclear plants, which are regarded by many on Capitol. One reason utilities are committing to new construction is to snag financial inducements from Washington. Hill and in the White House as key to combating climate change. That has created the curious situation in which utilities have announced plans to build reactors from specific vendors before they know everything about what theyre buying. Part of the reason utilities are committing to new construction now is to snag attractive financial inducements from Washington that are being offered on a first-come, first-served basis. In recent months, the Obama administration and nuclear backers in Congress have beefed up incentives first offered in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. In February, the White House announced $18.5 billion in tax credits, as well as loan guarantees for new reactors. The Kerry-Lieberman climate bill would raise the guarantees to $54 billion, and some in Congress favor no limits. (The loan guarantees are regarded as critical to help utilities cut their borrowing costs for the first new reactors, each of which is expected to cost $10 billion to $12 billion.) What are the designs under review and what new features do they include? One important distinction is whether the reactors rely on active emergency cooling systems (which depend on mechanical equipment and uninterrupted electrical power supplies) or passive systems (which rely on gravity or other natural features). Current reactors utilize active systems. Adoption of passive systems was ranked high on the list of recommended safety changes in the aftermath of Three Mile Island, although passive systems could pose risks, such as being unable to supply enough water where its needed, when its needed. There is very little actual experience in either the construction or operation of the new reactor designs to guide utilities in making their choices. There doesnt seem to be much difference in the price ranges of the various designs, says Lyman. But a lot of the cost will have to do with the When risks from external events are factored in, the new reactors are no safer than older ones. Learning curve of building new reactors again. (There have been no new reactor construction starts since 1977.) Will this new generation of reactors be safer than the current nuclear plants? Ask that of the industrys Russ Bell and he chooses his words carefully, because to imply that the new reactors are safer than the old ones infers that the existing plants are less safe. We think all our plants are safe, he says. The industry has performed complex mathematical analyses called probabilistic risk assessments to measure the likelihood of a serious accident, says Bell. When you run the numbers on the newer designs, as youd expect, the chance of a damaged core or release of radiation accident is much, much lower than the current fleet, he says. But the numbers are very low for all the plants. The analysis is limited, however. Computed risks for new reactors are lower than for current designs when only internal events are considered, according to a 2009 report that the Nuclear Energy Institute wrote for the NRC. (That includes fires or pipe breaks, for example.) But when risks of damage caused by external events earthquakes, for example are factored in, the new reactors are no safer than older reactors. In addition, because utilities have no operating experience with the new reactors, the probable risk assessments are purely theoretical and not as reliable as years of actual operating data from existing plants. While the NRC continues its evaluation of the five reactors, Lyman argues that none is as safe as it could be. The new designs are engineered only to withstand a predictable sequence of events, something engineers theorize may happen. In nuclear parlance that is called a design basis accident. The new reactors, like their older counterparts, are not designed to survive an unexpected sequence of events. That is the critical flaw, says Lyman: Three Mile Island was a beyond-design-basis accident. Oceans are not only home to a large variety of species of our ecosystem, they are also huge resource for alternative energy. This process of alternative energy is also known as OTEC or "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion". The credit for coming up with this brilliant idea of using Ocean Thermal Energy as an alternative energy source goes to the French Scientist Jack D'Arsonval way back in 1881. However, because of various challenges involved, it is still not a very popular or widely method of alternative energy. This is mainly because of the large costs involved with its implementation. The costs are high due to the intensive utilization of various processes used to harness and use this resource. The fact is that this huge cost deters the widespread funding and exploration of this particular source even though it is a very clean and pollution free and huge resource with phenomenal potential. Thus the sole electricity-producing OTEC plant on this blue planet right now is the NEL of Hawaii. This resource needs much more research and development to ward off its current drawback of potentially hurting local ecosystems and make it cleaner and more efficient. However, let us have a look at different kinds of OTEC- 1. Closed Cycle OTEC uses the process of boiling an intermediate fluid (a liquid with a relatively easily attainable boiling point like propane) along with the warmer water from the outside ocean which is pumped by the OTEC plant and creation of a mass of vapor which creates force on the piston that powers the engine thus generating power for our appliances. The vapor can be cooled down by releasing outside ocean water into the engine and the process can start again. This process can also be utilized for treating chemicals. 2. Open Cycle OTEC operates without the fluid used in closed cycle OTEC and here it is actually the ocean waters that drives the engine's piston. First a vacuum is created which turns the warmer ocean water is pumped in into a thin mist which is then forced into a small area to exert pressure on the turbine and electricity is generated. Again here the vapor is cooled down which takes the salt out of sea water and makes it fit for humans to drink. 3. Hybrid Cycle OTEC is an ambitious theory which postulates the way to most efficiently use the sea's thermal energy. This can theoretically be done by either using a closed loop in order to produce electrical power which can be further used to make the no-pressure situation required for open cycling;or it can be done by a combination of more than one cycles to create twice the amount of drinkable water. However, even in the present form, the functional OTEC plants of both cycling kinds can be used for bringing in outside water to balance the temperature of the system for use in home cooling systems or for mari-culture and aquatic enthusiast projects such as fish farming in the enclosed area. Thus OTEC is a versatile alternative energy source which can be used for a variety of uses if only we have the spirit of initiative to take up this challenge. The global carbon cycle can be divided into two categories: the geological, which operates over large time scales (millions of years), and the biological - physical, which operates at shorter time scales (days to thousands of years) and as humans we meddle with both categories.The global carbon cycle refers to the movements of carbon, as it exchanges between reservoirs (sinks), and occurs because of various chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes. The ocean contains the largest active pool of carbon near the surface of the Earth, but the deep ocean part of this pool does not rapidly exchange with the atmosphere. Below in the diagram, you can get some idea where and how carbon is stored in the whole Earth system. The global carbon cycle is usually thought to have four major carbon sinks interconnected by pathways of exchange. These sinks are;the atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere (which usually includes freshwater systems and non-living organic material, such as soil carbon), the oceans (which includes dissolved inorganic carbon and living and non-living marine biota), and the sediments (which includes fossil fuels ). Carbon exists in the Earth's atmosphere primarily as the gas carbon dioxide (CO2). Although it is a very small part of the atmosphere overall (approximately 0.04% and rising fast), it plays an important role in supporting life. Other gases containing carbon in the atmosphere are methane and chlorofluorocarbons (the latter is one we introduced and are still adding to). These are all greenhouse gases whose concentration in the atmosphere are increasing, and contributing to the rising average global surface temperature. Carbon is taken up from Earth's system in several ways: 1. When the sun is shining, plants perform photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates, releasing oxygen in the process. Deforestation and land clearing pose serious problems to the carbon cycle, and obliterating this sink means more carbon is forced into the atmosphere. 2. At the surface of the oceans towards the poles, seawater becomes cooler and CO2 is more soluble. Cold ocean temperatures favour the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere whereas warm temperatures can cause the ocean surface to release carbon dioxide. With seas warming this means CO2 is not so easily absorbed, and remains in the atmosphere. This is coupled to the ocean's thermohaline circulation which transports dense surface water into the ocean's interior. During times when photosynthesis exceeded respiration, organic matter slowly built up over millions of years to form coal and oil deposits. All of these biologically mediated processes represent a removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storage of carbon in geologic sediments. 3. In upper ocean areas of high productivity, organisms form tissue containing carbon, and some also form carbonate shells or other hard body parts. Apart from trees in forests, phytoplankton in the Earth's oceans are very important organisms that soak up carbon. The seas contain around 36000 gigatonnes of carbon, and again and in warmer seas, organisms cannot produce carbonate shells at the same rate, and increasingly acidic seas dissolve shells, or make it difficult to create shelly material. This means of course that carbon dioxide is not being taken up as quickly through this process and more carbon remains in the atmosphere, propelling global warming. 4. As shelled organisms die, bits and pieces of the shells fall to the bottom of the oceans and accumulate as sediments. Only small amounts of residual carbon from plankton settle out to the ocean bottom but over long periods of time these represent a significant removal of carbon from the atmosphere. Global Carbon Cycle Sources Carbon can be released back into the system in many different ways: 1. Through the respiration performed by plants and animals. 2. Through the decay of animal and plant matter. Fungi and bacteria break down the carbon compounds in dead animals and plants and convert the carbon to carbon dioxide if oxygen is present, or methane if not. The melting permafrost is releasing large amounts of methane, which contributes to global warming at a rate 21 more times than carbon dioxide. 3. Through combustion of biomass which oxidizes the carbon it contains, producing carbon dioxide (as well as other things, like smoke). Burning fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum products, and natural gas releases millions of tonnes of carbon that has been stored in the geosphere for millions of years. Fires also consume biomass and organic matter to produce carbon dioxide (along with methane, carbon monoxide, smoke), and the vegetation that is killed but not consumed by the fire decomposes over time adding further carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Wildfires and forest fires are likely to increase as land masses dry out with higher rates of evaporation. 4. Production of cement. A component, lime, is produced by heating limestone, which produces a substantial amount of carbon dioxide, and impacting upon the global carbon cycle. 5. At the surface of the oceans where the water becomes warmer, dissolved carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere. 6. Volcanic eruptions and metamorphism are part of the global carbon cycle and release gases into the atmosphere. These gases include water vapour, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Find out how volcanic gases are measured here. Latest Trends and Cause for Alarm! There has been a decline in the efficiency of natural land and ocean sinks which soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted to the atmosphere by human activities (anthropogenic) , according to findings published in late Oct 2007, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US (PNAS). The swift increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to faster economic growth coupled with a halt in carbon intensity reductions, in addition to natural sinks removing a smaller proportion of emissions from the air. Carbon intensity is the amount of carbon emitted to produce one dollar of global wealth. The studys lead author, Dr Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, explained Fifty years ago, for every tonne of CO2 emitted, 600kg were removed by natural sinks. In 2006 only 550kg were removed per tonne and that amount is falling. In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slow down of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in carbon intensity. The rise in growth in atmospheric CO2 is generating climate forcings that are bigger and sooner than expected. By altering the global energy balance, these mechanisms "force" the climate to change. We already possess the scientific, technical, and industrial know how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century. A concept known as "carbon wedges" proposes to limit the human contribution to the global carbon cycle, in an effort to reduce global warming. Adoption of the wedge concept is essential if we are going to curb our extraordinary abuse of fossil based fuels. As you may have noticed, scientists remain convinced that humans are altering the global climate with an excess of greenhouse gas emissions—soot, methane and the ever-present carbon dioxide we pump out from our lungs and coal-burning power plants. The question is: how bad is said climate change going to get? After all, concentrations in the atmosphere are going up by roughly two parts per million per year—now hovering at roughly 387 ppm, and climbing. But it may be that the Earth's climate is resilient and can withstand a lot more CO2 and other greenhouse gases before flipping to some altered state. Or it may be that various positive feedbacks—light-reflecting white Arctic ice melting away in favor of warmth-absorbing, dark Arctic waters, et al.—underway have already doomed us to a much warmer planet. In a bid to answer that question, a group of scientists decided to do what I do…interview the experts in a spirit of objectivity. Engineer M. Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University, climate scientist Kirsten Zickfeld of the University of Victoria in British Columbia and physicist David Frame of the University of Oxford in England interviewed 14 "leading climate scientists" about three possible climate scenarios to ascertain what might happen depending on how much heat greenhouse gases end up adding. The experts ranged from Oxford physicist Myles Allen to climate scientist Tom Wigley, who retired from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.—and is a repeat of a similar study conducted by Morgan in the mid-1990s. The goal was to round up the most senior climate experts and gauge their opinions on what is most likely to happen under three scenarios: a high degree of warming, a moderate amount of warming and relatively little warming—as well as to judge when, if ever, the global climate might reach a "tipping point" into a completely altered state, one that might be less amenable to human civilization. One main point from the result published in the June 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: What was most uncertain to all 14 experts was clouds—specifically, whether clouds would exacerbate climate change by trapping more heat or ameliorate it by reflecting more sunlight. Regardless of the unknown effects of clouds, 13 of the 14 judged the odds better than even that if the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases peaked and leveled off at seven watts per meter-squared by 2200—we would see an entirely new climate. In fact, nine of the experts judged the probability of such a "basic state change" in the atmosphere to be at least 90 percent, or more. That corresponds to a warming of as much as 12.5 degrees Celsius—a worst case scenario. Fortunately, the human-induced extra heat at present hovers at about 1.2 watts per meter squared. That's about half what the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere are trapping;we're gaining some counterbalancing cooling from other pollution, such as sulfur dioxide, and those mysterious clouds. All told, Earth's average temperature has warmed by 0.75 degree Celsius, so far, as a result of that extra trapped heat. The worst news? The interviewed experts don't expect to be any more able to understand clouds and the other uncertainties by 2030—even if funding for such research were tripled in the next 20 years. That matches real world results, since the experts interviewed back in the 1990s were just as uncertain about clouds and the like as when re-interviewed in the 2000s. Or, as climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, one of the experts interviewed this time and last, told me last year: "We don't know much more than we did in 1975" about climate sensitivity. Fortunately, as investor Vinod Khosla is fond of saying (about himself and others): "Experts are usually wrong" when it comes to forecasting the future. Let's hope he's right about that at least, in this case. Although sea levels have been rising since the end of the last glaciation (nearly 11,000 years), the rate of rise has increased over the past 200 years as average global temperatures have increased. The rise is due to two factors, the freshwater being added to the oceans from ice melt in the cryosphere , and the thermal expansion of the oceans due to rises in sea temperature. The contribution from Antarctica melt water is uncertain, and there is a distinct possibility of surprises from this southern region. The floating ice shelves, notably the Wordie and Larsen A and B shelves, broke up very rapidly during the 1990s, after rapid regional warming. Climate, like other complex systems do not always vary in a smooth fashion, and sudden changes can occur over wide areas. Critical levels, or thresholds may be reached in a system whereupon drastic, and perhaps disastrous results occur. Threshold events in this case include the complete or partial shutdown of the ocean thermohaline circulatory system, disintegration and melting of Antarctica and Greenland Ice Sheets (the polar caps) , and major changes in the carbon cycle, due to biospheric effects (see the Snowball Earth scenario). The IPCC Report The IPCC 4th Report shows there is strong evidence that global levels gradually rose in the 20th century and is currently rising at an increased rate, after a period of little change between AD 0 and AD 1900. Levels are projected to rise at an even greater rate in this century. The two major causes for the rise are thermal expansion of the oceans (water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice due to increased melting. How Much Is The Sea Rising? Estimates for the 20th century show that global average sea level rose at a rate of about 1.7 mm per year. Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, and shows rising at a rate of around 3 mm per year, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Global levels are projected to rise during the 21st century at a greater rate than during 1961 to 2003. Thermal expansion is projected to contribute more than half of the average rise, but land ice will lose mass increasingly rapidly as the century progresses. An important uncertainty relates to whether discharge of ice from the ice sheets will continue to increase as a consequence of accelerated ice flow, as has been observed in recent years. In particular, the Arctic is warming at a higher than global average, resulting in increasing surface melt from the Greenland Ice Sheet. More detail on how the oceans are measured is available here. IPCC AR4 Global mean sea levels Figure Above: Time series of global mean levels (deviation from the 1980-1999 mean) in the past and as projected for the future. For the period before 1870, global measurements of sea level are not available. The grey shading shows the uncertainty in the estimated long-term rate of change. The red line is a reconstruction of global mean sea level from tide gauges and the red shading denotes the range of variations from a smooth curve. The green line shows global mean sea level observed from satellite altimetry. The blue shading represents the range of model projections for the 21st century, relative to the 1980 to 1999 mean, and has been calculated independently from the observations. Beyond 2100, the projections are increasingly dependent on the emissions scenario. Impacts of Sea Level Rise Rapid urbanisation in low-lying coastal areas of both the developing and developed world is increasing population densities and the value of human-made assets exposed to coastal climatic extremes such as tropical cyclones. IPCC model based projections of the average annual number of people who would be flooded by coastal storm surges is estimated to increase several fold, creating 200 million climate refugees. This is based on what is called a mid-range scenario of a 40-cm sea-level rise by 2080, which is pretty conservative. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notes that the sea level has risen 15 to 20 cm (6 to 8 inches) in the past 100 years, and it is predicted to continue another 50 centimeters (20 inches) over the next century (with some estimates as high as 90 centimeters, or 3 feet). The sea level is definitely rising, and it is jeopardizing rapidly growing coastal communities. Official decisions on evacuation of whole populations from some atolls in the Pacific Ocean have been taken or are being considered. For example, 980 people, the entire population of the Carteret Atoll, will need to be evacuated by 2015, and the island is destined to become history. A similar fate awaits the small nation of Tuvalu and Majuro in the Marshall Islands. The potential of damage to infrastructure in coastal areas from sea-level rise will be tens of billions US$ for individual countries like;Egypt, Poland, and Vietnam. Sea Encroaches Florida Hurricane. The first image above on the far left was taken on 12 August 1997 of a house at Floralton Beach, Florida. When Hurricane Frances came through on 8 September 2004 all vegetation and dune lines were wiped out (middle image). As a result, the house was directly exposed and completely destroyed when coastal surges from Hurricane Jeanne hit on 29 September 2004. It is interesting to note that seventy one percent of annual United States disaster losses are the result of coastal storms. It is estimated that within 60 years, one out of every four of those structures will be destroyed and insurance costs will sky rocket. This is not suprising given that the narrow fringe comprising less than one fifth of the contiguous United States land area, accounts for over one half of the nation's population and housing supply. Below you can watch a video on the impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities in Orissa, India. The poor village literally got sucked into the rising ocean. The sea used to be a half day walk away, now it has claimed their village. Developing countries, many of which have average temperatures that are already near or above crop tolerance levels, are predicted to suffer an average 10 to 25 percent decline in agricultural productivity by the 2080s, assuming a so-called "business as usual" scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. According to a study based on the IPCC findings, rich countries - which typically have lower average temperatures - will experience a much milder or even positive average effect, ranging from an 8 percent increase in productivity to a 6 percent decline. Individual developing countries face even larger declines. India, for example, could see a drop of 30 to 40 percent. Some smaller countries suffer what could only be described as an agricultural productivity collapse. Sudan, already wracked by civil war fuelled in part by failing rains, is projected to suffer as much as a 56 percent reduction in agricultural production potential;Senegal, a 52 percent fal Climate change is already starting to affect some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities around the world. A worldwide average 3° centigrade increase (compared to preindustrial temperatures) over the coming decades would result in a range of localized increases that could reach twice as high in some locations. The effect that increased droughts, extreme weather events, tropical storms and sea level rises will have on large parts of Africa, on many small island states and coastal zones will be inflicted in our lifetimes. In terms of aggregate world GDP, these short term effects may not be large. But for some of the world's poorest people, the consequences could be apocalyptic Climate disasters are heavily concentrated in poor countries. Some 262 million people were affected by climate disasters annually from 2000 to 2004, over 98 percent of them in the developing world. In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries one in 1,500 people was affected by climate disaster. The comparable figure for developing countries is one in 19-a risk differential of 79. In Ethiopia and Kenya, two of the world's most drought-prone countries, children aged five or less are respectively 36 and 50 percent more likely to be malnourished if they were born during a drought. For Ethiopia, that translates into some 2 million additional malnourished children in 2005. In Niger, children aged two or less born in a drought year were 72 percent more likely to be stunted. And Indian women born during a flood in the 1970s were 19 percent less likely to have attended primary school. Christian Aid predicts that, on current trends, a further 1 billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050. Forced migration is the most urgent threat facing poor people in developing countries, they argue, affecting some 155 million men, women and children who have had no choice but to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere in their own countries. This figure of one billion comprises: • 50 million people displaced by conflict and extreme human rights abuses (assuming a rate of displacement of roughly 1 million people a year, which is conservative); • 50 million people displaced by natural disasters (again conservatively assuming that around 1 million people will be displaced in this way every year); • 645 million people displaced by development projects such as dams and mines (at the current rate of 15 million a year); • 250 million people permanently displaced by climate change-related phenomena such as floods, droughts, famines and hurricanes;5 million people will flee their own countries and be accepted as refugees. The human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where over 60 per cent of the world's population, around four billion people, live. Over half of those live near the coast, making them directly vulnerable to sea-level rise. Disruption to the region's water cycle caused by climate change also threatens the security and productivity of the food systems upon which they depend. A decrease in food security due to climate change is likely to exacerbate the monumental problem of malnutrition in the developing world. Just two nations, India and China combined, account for well over one-third of the world's population. Across the two over 250 million people saw their incomes rise above US$1 a day between 1990 and 2001. Yet even at income levels of around US$1 a day, infant mortality rates as high as one in six are common. Malnutrition has also been less effectively tackled, particularly in South Asia, where around half the population of 0- to 5-year-olds are malnourished. Widespread droughts in Indian states, such as Maharashtra, in recent years have contributed to soaring suicide rates among heavily indebted farmers. A WAKE-UP CALL WE START THE new year with a wake-up call to the world. Global warm- ing is a far greater threat to our security than terrorism. This is not a statement from a few concerned ecolog-ists - it comes from the UK government's chief scientist, Sir David King. Global warming is a symptom of our disconnection from the Earth and its living systems. In this issue of Resurgence our contributors not only look at the symptoms, but also explore the causes of climate change. Independent scientist James Lovelock, the author of Gaia theory, believes that the threat of global warming is so great that humanity must immediately cease its consumption of fossil fuels. He advocates a switch to nuclear power to fulfil our energy needs in the short to medium term, until we have developed alternative sustainable energy sources. This is a powerful and shocking indicator of the magnitude of the crisis we face. Many Resurgence readers will find the nuclear option controversial, but the views of an eminent environmental scientist must be listened to, considered and debated. Peter Bunyard, an editor of The Ecologist, makes the counter-argument, suggesting that nuclear power may not provide the solutions we seek. Readers are invited to send their comments as Letters to the Editors. The other articles go deeper into the complexity of climate change. Protection of biodiversity is a powerful way to address this issue. Stephan Harding explains how the intricate patterns of coexistence that have evolved over millennia are fundamental to keeping our delicate climatic systems in a state that supports life. Each loss of species disconnects one of the strands in the web of life and renders the whole system less able to adapt to change. Not only are we rapidly consumingreserves of fossil fuels, we are also depleting the biomass of the planet. We are deforest- ing vast areas of the Earth, losing forests thatfunction as carbon absorbers and homes for biodiversity. David Wilkinson, a conservationist, suggests that we need to rethink our attitudes towards wilderness areas, and restore biomass to the planet. In fact, rethinking our attitudes towards Gaia is fundamental in addressing global change. Until we see ourselves as part of the 'Earthscape', as Anne Primavesi asserts, we will never accept our role in the 'Gaian Community'. In the same spirit as Primavesi, points out that considerations of ethics, values and visions are as essential to the question of climate change as practical ideas and technologies. Thinking of technologies, many people are already coming up with revolutionary solutions. For instance, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Colorado www.rmi.org suggests that all vehicles should have solar panels on their roofs. As most vehicles are stationary for ninety per cent of the time, they could easily be connected up to the national grid, and become net energy producers, rather than net energy consumers. These vehicles could also be retrofitted to run on the electricity they generate. The whole concept of energy conservation and 'negawatts' then becomes a workable reality. The Chinese character for crisis is 'danger and opportunity'. We need to wake up to the opportunities that face us. Cultural Psychotherapy HERE IS A book that deals with climate change, and the reader may readily enquire what its original take on this hot topic is. The subtitle of the book answers the question. It deals with climate change from the viewpoint of hope and the human condition. Hell and High Water is divided into two parts. Part One covers the material on the climate change debate that is covered by many other works. The author, Alastair McIntosh, encourages the reader who is well versed in the climate change debates to consider skipping this section or just skimming it. For the untutored reader on this topic, it is important to carefully reflect on these preliminary chapters as they provide the grounding for the central thesis that is pursued in Part Two. Part Two constitutes the essential core of the work. In his introductory remarks McIntosh discusses his unique contribution: My thesis is that the most galling aspect of the problem is driven not by fundamental human needs but by manipulated wants that find expression in consumerism. To mitigate climate change and even adapt to its consequences without losing our humanity, there needs to be a radical activation of our inner lives. That is not something that we can entirely achieve on our own. It also requires change across society perhaps even what I describe as cultural psychotherapy. McIntosh takes us on a tour of some ancient writings of the past that locate the drama of human predicaments in the depths of the human psyche. Commenting on the ancient wisdoms as seen in Empedocles, Plato, the Old Testament book of Genesis, and the Epic of Gilgamesh, he locates our present global predicament surrounding the issue of climate change in the very depths of the human condition. He demonstrates from these early wisdom writings that there was then, as there is now, a close relationship between social and environmental collapse and the human propensity for hubris that leads to pride, violence and ecocide. He maintains that the power of this earlier thinking constantly throws explanations on the current human condition. In the chapter Dissociation of Sensibility, the author discusses the way in which culturally embedded violence damages peoples capacity to have an inner life. This theme is developed through a sustained critical analysis of the mass media and its role in creating spurious and dysfunctional human needs. With dysfunctional human needs comes an addiction to consumer lifestyles that create entropic ways of living while destroying life processes. McIntosh emphasises that this type of hubristic violence not only destroys the inner life but simultaneously strips sensibility not only from the violent but also to those who suffer violence. With that, he arrives at the conclusion that tackling the roots of violence and untruth supersedes considerations with the immediate and overt symptoms expressed as climate change. This conclusion in no way dismisses the severity of issues associated with climate change: McIntosh holds that both must be taken in tandem. In the chapter appropriately titled Colonised by Death, he examines the influences of modern advertising and its colonisation of the human imagination. We see how the role of propaganda and spin create a consumer consciousness that leads to a state of addictive affluenza a condition in which we are confused about what it takes to live a meaningful life. In the closing chapters of the book, the author explores the condition of hope for our planet in the midst of the climate change crisis. There is no room for a shallow optimism in our present predicament. Hope is a virtue of a different order of magnitude. McIntosh ponders the possibility that we may not be able to head off the consequences of the hubris that afflicts our planet. Within a matrix of hope we must peer into the unthinkable abyss. Here creativity and hope combine synergistically to help the reader to think outside of the box. The challenge of climate change, writes McIntosh, takes us out of our normal constructs of reality. It pushes us to consider the options for creating a very different kind of world. In so doing, hope that if you keep on going, you will find the bottom becomes a veritable survival skill. I do believe that, come hell or high water, love deepens forever, and that is the meaning of this journey. In the final chapter, Toward a Cultural Psychotherapy, McIntosh offers a twelve-step recovery programme inspired by that of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is offered for our consideration as the preliminary steps that he deems necessary for the healing of our collective psychopathology of insensibility. A deep cultural pathology demands a deep cultural psychotherapy. The Language of Nature In this special feature, Climate, Biodiversity &Livelihoods, the Gaia Foundation, in conjunction with Resurgence magazine, has worked with visionary thinkers from all over the world to call for a more profound response to climate change. The key to this is acknowledging the disastrous consequences of our industrial paradigm and its fragmented thinking. Bio-cultural diversity is a critical issue of our time. This is the first of a two-part feature on the subject. Part Two will be published in our September/October 2008 issue, in conjunction with The Christensen Fund. CLIMATE CHANGE is beginning to awaken people to the fact that our species has permanently damaged the planet. In discussions with indigenous elders in Africa and the Amazon, their first question is, what is the source of the crisis now confronting us? The essential truth, which the climate discourse tends to avoid, is the interconnectedness of the symptoms: the sixth mass extinction of species;global warming;depletion of minerals and fossil fuels;escalating social inequity, toxic pollutants in the Earths soils, seas and atmosphere;and the globalisation of the Western industrial model of development penetrating into the farthest reaches of the planetary ecosystem. It is this industrial paradigm which has generated the symptoms of climate change. It has cultivated a belief that the Earths abundant complex living biosphere is nothing more than resources to be exploited. The industrial paradigm has been so well-articulated over the last 200 years, that the education, health, media, government and corporate sectors each reinforce the belief that progress is about more money and things;that consumption brings wellbeing;that endless economic growth will trickle down to the burgeoning poor, despite all evidence to the contrary;and that human nature is inevitably greedy and selfish a necessary belief to drive industrial growth. Even those challenging this thinking seem often to forget that this is a very new philosophy for humans, and there are a myriad other cultures still resisting the industrial onslaught: cultures in which different aspects of human nature are strengthened and nurtured, such as co-operation, community, and reverence for Nature. WHEN HAKIM ABEBECH, a traditional healer from an Ethiopian lineage that goes back thousands of years, was asked how she saw the Western industrial process, she said, It is very young, and from what I see, it will not last because it does not understand or abide by the governing laws of the Earth. Ailton Krenak, the charismatic Brazilian indigenous leader, says, Westernised people behave like teenagers, rebelling against the laws of Mother Earth, taking as much as they can. This cannot go on eventually they will get sick physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The Earth is the source of all nourishment. If we destroy her, we destroy ourselves. The knowledge of indigenous peoples, accumulated over centuries, has developed sophisticated ways of reading the language of Nature, so that they are able to dialogue with Nature and meet their needs in a mutually enhancing way. Respect for the Earth and for the different ways in which cultures nurture these values in society is at the core of indigenous peoples understanding of biodiversity. Lionel Cerruto, a Bolivian indigenous leader, sees the challenge like this: The industrial process fragments society and Nature;it then creates bureaucracies to organise the fragments, and human laws to control them. Our challenge is to rebuild communities in which Pachamama [the living Earth] is understood as the primary source of law and order. Climate change reflects the consequences of breaking these laws and the disorder created as a result. The disorder is at all levels of the Earth system, including human society itself. Climate change is therefore a symptom of a deeper malaise. Our fragmented thinking, which denies the primacy of the Earth as the source of all life, is now our greatest impediment in meeting the challenge of the moment. James Lovelock laments this fragmentation even within the Western scientific tradition: We need to understand the consequences of adding greenhouse gases to the air;but also of removing natural forest we need to understand the influence of clouds, oceans, and the Earths natural ecosystems. Each time we undermine one of these aspects we disable the Earth systems capacity to regulate itself. This is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions are underestimating the severity of climate change, because they do not factor in the whole system. As Lovelock states, In our hubris we believe that we can be stewards of the Earth long before we understand it.In addition to acknowledging our eco-illiteracy, the corporate climate coup also needs to be recognised if we are to see through the present discourse on climate change. Historian David Noble eloquently documents the various corporate climate initiatives, which aim to appropriate the issue in order to moderate its political implications, emphasising the primacy of market-based solutionsand diverting attention from the radical global justice movements, which were challenging corporate power. THIS ISSUE OF Resurgence aims to question some of the basic assumptions which are holding us to ransom in the dominant climate discussions, and to bring in voices that are seldom heard, from Africa and Brazil amongst others. These visionaries are calling for an integrated approach to climate, biodiversity and livelihoods, to overcome the fragmentation that permeates our minds and our society and, thereby, our capacity to respond. The great challenge that climate change presents the Western industrial mind is to learn the language of the Earth, so that we can once again live by her immutable laws. For this, we need to find ingenious ways to reconnect with the natural world, her cycles, abundance and intelligence. Einstein understood this: A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest...a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of Nature in its beauty. Human societies through the ages have transmitted their ways of knowing life on this planet, through teaching stories, images, rituals, poetry and song. This is the perennial wisdom, which also exists in the Western tradition, where the Earth is understood as the primary source of nourishment and meaning. In order to comprehend the complex living system of which we are an inextricable part, we need to reconnect with the poetic language of the imagination through which we can feel for those other than ourselves and our own species. There are social and ecological movements around the planet that are building resilience into new natural systems, from the grassroots up. This is where people are simply getting on with Gandhis ethic of non-participation in systems of violence, while creating real integrated alternatives to the self-destructive industrial mode of being. Let us join them. Solar Market Declines for First Time Ever Global demand for solar cells and panels is likely to drop 17 percent in 2009, says Navigant Consulting. Market recovery won't come quickly. SAN FRANCISCO -- Worldwide demand for solar energy equipment is set to drop about 17 percent in 2009, the first time the market has ever experienced a drop in demand, an analyst said Thursday. Solar cell and panel makers are likely to sell about 4.6 gigawatts this year, compared with about 5.5 gigawatts in 2008, said Paula Mints, principal analyst at Navigant Consulting, at the Solar Energy Investment and Finance Summit in San Francisco. Germany has been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal global market this year. With a still lucrative feed-in tariff that guarantees high solar electricity pricing, the country will account for about 56 percent of the demand in 2009, Mints said. "We've vastly oversold in Germany, and they are not too happy about that," Mints said, adding that it's not healthy to have one country accounting for more than half of the global demand. The German government had expected to see 1.5 gigawatts of new solar installations between Sept. The country actually saw about 2.34 gigawatts during that time. The political coalition that won the federal election in September may cut the subsidies to rein in growth next year (see Germany Installs 2.34GW, FIT to Decline 9-11%). The country has historically been a top market, but it has become a particularly attractive target for manufacturers and developers because they couldn't count on another year of explosive growth in Spain. Solar companies and project developers have expressed mixed views about what 2010 will bring. Sino-American Silicon Products in Taiwan told Reuters that its sales should increase about 30 percent in 2010. Applied Materials, which sells solar factory equipment, doesn't see clear signs that demand will rise significantly next year (see Applied Materials: Plans for Layoffs, Cautious Outlook on Solar). Mints cautioned against overly optimistic forecast, noting that political leaders in Germany haven't said specifically how they might modify the incentive program. Solar companies have pinned their hopes on the United States as the next big market, but growth remains at a slow pace. Global demand for cells/panels could be flat or grow by 10 percent in 2010, Mints said. The supply still far exceeds demand, and that won't likely to change any time soon. In general, manufacturers are moving ahead with factory expansion plans despite the recession, particularly those who are betting that the U.S. market will grow quickly. Meanwhile, some companies have used only half of their factory capacities this year. Companies that have announced plans to build new factories in the U.S. include SunPower, Suntech Power, Clairvoyant Energy, Suniva. The Solar Energy Industries Association is now lobbying federal lawmakers for more tax incentives for manufacturers (see Solar Industry Lobbies for Manufacturing Tax Credit, Cash Grant). Manufacturers who began planning for new factories before the financial market fell onto hard times last fall have since opened their factories. Those companies include SolarWorld, Schott Solar and Sanyo. Hemlock Semiconductor just started building a polysilicon plant in Tennessee. "There isn't going to be much of a chance of an undersupply in the next few years," said Nathaniel Bullard, solar associate with New Energy Finance, at the conference. Some manufacturers have already entered the power plant development market to create sales for their products. First Solar is a good recent example. The Tempe, Ariz.-based company purchased yet-to-be developed projects from OptiSolar for $400 million earlier this year to create demand for its solar panels in the U.S. market In simple terms, a carbon footprint is just the complete amount of greenhouse gases emitted as a result of both direct and indirect human activity. Carbon footprint totals are normally written and spoken of in terms of tons of carbon dioxide. So, when related to everyday activities, the simple act of driving a car to work requires that the car's engine burns (usually) fossil fuel which subsequently creates an amount of carbon dioxide emissions. This amount will typically depend upon the fuel consumption rate of your car as well as how far you actually drive every day. Also, the act of heating your home with any of the fossil fuels, coal oil of gas, also produces and emits levels of carbon dioxide, the levels of which will also depend on how often you use your heating, and to what level. Also, heating your home using electricity will cause levels of carbon dioxide emissions due to the necessary generation of electrical power needed. Also, the purchasing and consumption of goods and foodstuffs lead to certain emission levels of carbon dioxide, generally as a result of the energy needed for their production and manufacture. Simply, everything we do on Earth within any given time frame that leads to emissions of carbon dioxide can be referred to-and recorded as-our carbon footprint. The most common timeframe within which a carbon footprint is measured is a period of one year. One of the principal contributing factors towards racking up a large carbon footprint is the widespread practise of foreign travel for holidays. Plane travel produces a large carbon footprint due to the huge amounts of fuel consumed and emitted as a result of plane travel. Governments are currently looking at methods-including raising taxes on air tickets-to enforce lower carbon footprints as a result of air travel. Also, people's domestic habits have also come under much more personal and organisational scrutiny with regard to individual carbon footprints. Many municipalities and local councils now impose levies and fines on individual households that either refuse to recycle their waste products and refuse or even mistakenly throw out recyclable items. Many companies, mindful of industrial contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, also offer certain incentives to trade-in old fridges and other household electrical items for newer, greener, energy-efficient models. These companies will also receive tax incentives for doing so. Carbon dioxide is, however, just one of the greenhouse gases to take into account with regards to impacting upon a carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. Other gases measured in terms of a carbon footprint according to the Kyoto protocol are methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. A person can add a full 1 kilogram of carbon dioxide to their own personal carbon footprint by traveling by train or bus for between 10-12 kilometres, driving a distance of 6 kilometres (taking into account 7.3 litres of gas per hundred kilometres);flying 2,2 kilometres;producing 5 plastic bags or spend 32 hours on your computer. Clearly, by becoming aware of what impacts upon our carbon footprint, we can take steps to reduce our harmful activities. TIME TO ACT Why are we finding it so hard to address one of the biggest threats of our time? GLANCING SKYWARDS gives the impression of limitless space, a vastness beyond human influence. But most of the greenhouse gases that are causing our world to warm up are trapped in a layer of air less than six miles thick. This thin veneer of atmosphere is where our climate and weather are born, and is where we are now creating rapid and dangerous changes. It is predicted that serious climatic disruption is imminent, which is expected to lead to a global mass extinction of wildlife species. It will create shortages of fresh water, and will affect food production. This in turn will impact on food security. Rising sea levels will eventually deprive the world of food production capacity. A range of climate-change-related impacts working in concert could lead to social instability, mass migrations of people, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and international conflicts. Even the Pentagon, has concluded that "with over 400 million people living in drier, subtropical, often over-populated and economically poor regions today, climate change and its follow on effects pose a severe risk to political, economic and social stability." Strong words from an official body in the country that has done more than any other to deny that human-induced climate change even exists. ALTHOUGH CLIMATIC UPHEAVAL is poised to precipitate a mass extinction, while simultaneously threatening economic collapse and social chaos, it still warrants barely passing recognition in popular and political debate. Tony Blair is unique among world leaders in prioritising negotiations on climate change at key international meetings, but even he is failing to deliver significant progress in reducing pollution in his home country. That global society is finding it so hard to appreciate the scale of threat at hand, let alone do anything about it, is a fact of great historical significance. But what is the problem in getting people to see the importance of what is being said by the scientists, campaigners and politicians, let alone what is obvious from the weather, birds, flowers and frogs? Perhaps one reason is that many people are so divorced from nature that they have few ecological handles upon which they can anchor their experience. Worse still, perhaps, the one bit of nature that people do notice, namely the weather, is in some places more pleasant because of the first noticeable impacts of climate change. The earlier arrival of spring, and summer temperatures lingering into autumn lead some to believe that climate change is a good thing. Perhaps the fact that the world's most industrialised countries are mainly in seasonal temperate zones is a part of the problem. If the people most responsible for causing climate change also perceive a short-term improvement in their weather this can further delay the action needed. Another problem relates to the magnitude of what is happening, and the impression that we humans could not possibly be responsible. The climate is so fundamental (and in popular terms so poorly understood) that it seems to many most unlikely that people could realistically have an impact on it in the first place. And because the issue seems to many people so big and so difficult to comprehend, the small actions needed to deal with it are not seen as sufficient or placed in any kind of meaningful context. One more challenge comes from the tendency for people to see climate change as posing no threat to them, certainly not personally or right now. All of us have only so much capacity to take on the many things we should be worried about, or which we should prioritise for action ourselves. It seems that we are able to concentrate our attention, thoughts and behaviour only on the most immediate threats. Perhaps that is why people responded so much more decisively to what they heard about GM foods. The causes of climate change are also hard to visualise. On top of all that, the substance of greatest concern, namely carbon dioxide, is invisible, occurs in relatively tiny quantities in the atmosphere, occurs naturally and is essential for life on Earth. There is also still considerable popular confusion. Although it is scientifically demonstrated that climate change is occurring now, is caused by people and represents a major threat, it is still portrayed by many as not happening, as a challenge we must face only far into the future or as a natural aberration that can be safely ignored. The confusion that accompanies these messages has undoubtedly slowed down widespread demand for political action - especially in countries where such obfuscation and doubt have been carefully nurtured by various political and industrial special interests. The USA is of course the most notable and damaging case in this respect. EVEN WHEN PEOPLE do take on board the implications of rapid global warming, there is a huge barrier to action arising from the small impact that many individuals perceive they personally can make on such a large-scale and long-term issue, especially when others appear unconcerned, or show no sign of behaviour change. The question then becomes "Why should I do anything if everyone else will carry on as before?" The same argument is played out politically when, for example, some prominent figures in the Western countries say that there is no sense in taking action to reduce emissions because any benefit will be cancelled out by the increasing pollution coming from rampant economic growth in China and India. So, what should be done? It would clearly be folly to put faith in any single technology, or worse still wait for some big disaster that might somehow galvanise action. Disasters are already happening: for example, 25,000 people died from excessive heat in Europe in 2003 and yet there has been no impact on policy resulting from that. In the end a lot of small actions will have to be taken in order to address this problem. These will come about as a result of growing public awareness that changes cultural values that then help shift politics, policy, law and ultimately how we generate and consume energy and how we judge a good life. This leads to two broad conclusions. The first is that since public awareness is the key, we must strengthen all our efforts to spread the word about climate change. Everything from making hard-hitting television programmes to talking about the issue to family and friends, and everything else in between. Secondly, and on the basis of rapidly expanding public awareness, it is vital that governments establish the frameworks necessary to harness effective solutions. Energy-efficient light bulbs and bicycles may seem modest symbols of global survival, but they are real and send powerful signals. While wind turbines are not the whole answer, they are certainly part of it. So are solar power and the new technologies that are emerging to harness the energy in waves and tides. There is also the prospect for huge progress in the form of micro-generation and the development of local electricity distribution grids. Using cars less and making them more efficient, curbing growth in the use of airliners, and developing far higher efficiency standards for a wide range of appliances can all play a central role, too. And by talking about what can be done, as well as the scale of the challenge we face, we can inspire hope. GIVEN THE URGENCY of the problem, and the evident failure of voluntary efforts to curb emissions, Friends of the Earth is campaigning in the UK for new laws that will require the government to make cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions every year starting now. What the new climate law would say is that real cuts must be delivered every year. How it is done will vary depending on the cost and practicality of the different opportunities available at any one time. One year action could be focused on phasing out old coal-fired power stations;another time the emphasis could be on replacing carbon-based fuels with new renewable energy capacity. The point is that the requirement to act would always be there, no matter what party is in power, or how fashionable it is at any one time to make speeches about climate change. It would be a predictable and regular requirement that would in the end bring down emissions by the amount needed. It is positive that there is increasing consensus about the need for long-term targets, but these will not be reached unless we begin the process of change immediately. We need our governments to act, and to act now. Where is carbon trading heading? With UN climate talks in question, serious questions are being asked about the future of carbon trading, while a more detailed survey of new projects and policies shows that carbon markets continue to beat their destructive path. A postscript to Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails It was billed as the last chance to save the climate, but while the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen was long on expectation, it was short on results - with a final Accord of less than three pages of rather vacuous diplomatic ruminations. The carbon market received few explicit mentions in this text or the headlines surrounding it, but remains central to the flows of money and displacement of responsibility that pass for international climate policy. So let's forget Copenhagen for a moment and ask ourselves: "where is carbon trading heading?" Unfortunately, the expansion of such markets across the world continues on its destructive path with or without a new global climate treaty. Let us start, though, with the most significant exceptions to this trend. Right-wing opponents of climate legislation in the USA and Australia are attempting to kill cap and trade. Yet it is worth separating motives from effect. In the US, the DemocratsŽ compromises to hold onto the carbon market look set to open a new era to offer massive concessions to power, heavy industry, off-shore oil drilling and industrial agriculture. In other words, new climate legislation would provide a green light for increased emissions, which the market would serve to outsource and offset. Yet if the bill does not pass it could "change environmental politics in America and beyond", as The Economist points out, providing a stimulus for grassroots opponents of trading schemes, returning the emphasis of climate action to the "command-and-control techniques", and cutting off the major potential source of demand for carbon credits. In either case, the European Union (EU) is likely to remain the largest source of demand for carbon offsets in the next decade. Legislation is already in place for a third phase of the EU Emissions Trading System, from 2013 to 2020, despite considerable evidence that it is failing to reduce emissions. The economic downturn, and the use of offsets, could well lead to such a surplus of permits that the EU might avoid any domestic reductions until 2020. Meanwhile, a series of scandals have spread fresh concerns about the system - including a VAT fraud that accounted for up to 90 per cent of trading in some EU countries, and the "recycling" of CDM credits in Hungary, allowing their "reductions" to be counted twice. A different form of double-counting is state policy in New Zealand, where a new Emissions Trading Scheme initially allows companies to surrender 1 NZU (New Zealand Unit, equivalent to 1 tonne of CO2) for every 2 tonnes of emissions. It also allocates free units to heavy industry (such as aluminium smelting) and agriculture, the main polluting sectors, on an uncapped intensity basis - in effect, subsidising them to increase emissions. With such lax and failing schemes, the question remains: who will buy offsets? The largest direct buyers of CDM credits are all from the financial sector, with the main demand coming from the power sector in the EU, where a series of new coal-fired power plants are under consideration.5 But political difficulties in Copenhagen, Canberra and Washington have sown some doubts, which has seen a stagnation in CDM project development, and has even led some financial speculators to diversify their strategy and bank less upon the growth of carbon markets. Despite this, the damage that CDM continues to do on the ground should not be underestimated. On 6 January 2010, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) registered its 2000th carbon offset project.7 By far the largest share of credits in 2009 come from spurious industrial gas reductions (of HFC23 and N2O), while four of the five largest projects registered in 2009 will subsidise the fossil fuel industry: coal and natural gas in China, and gas flaring in Nigeria. Hydroelectric dams, mostly under construction irrespective of CDM finance, remain a major source of activity too, seeking CDM credits as an additional subsidy stream. Japan and Korea are in the process of setting up new cap and trade markets. In the latter case, the Chicago Climate Exchange - staffed by many of the key protagonists for international emissions trading is the key advisor. It is also a key actor in the creation of a new trading scheme in China, seen as a prototype. Brazil, meanwhile, is considering a carbon market that would allow forestry projects to "offset" the emissions from its new offshore oilfields, Mexico has a trading scheme under discussion, and even the Indian government (which does not expect to take emissions targets) may yet come to view its new scheme for exchanging energy efficiency permits (called "Perform Achieve and Trade", PAT) as a springboard for emissions trading. Meanwhile, the EU - largely sidelined in Copenhagen - continues to push for the creation of new "sectoral crediting" mechanisms, which would extend the logic of offsetting to whole industrial sectors (such as steel) and power production in what it lists as "major industrialising countries (the so-called BASIC grouping: Brazil, South Africa, India and China;plus other members of the G20, such as Mexico and Indonesia). The development of an international framework for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is also geared, ultimately, to the continued exploitation of new sources for offsetting. As UN and World Bank bureaucrats and NGOs argue over certification and "gourmet" REDD schemes, there is growing opposition on the ground against land grabs, with this enclosure process severely threatening the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, forest-dwelling communities and sustainable pastoralists. In this regard, the real world dynamic of carbon trading is more complex than the binaries of international climate talks - whose failure rests, ultimately, on the refusal of industrialised ("Annex 1") countries to take responsibility for their disproportionate historical and current contribution to accelerating climate change. Against this backdrop, resistance to carbon markets, including REDD schemes, remains a crucial element in the struggle for climate justice. The carbon markets provide a green veneer behind which the big energy companies, industrial polluters and agribusinesses can hide while claiming rights to development' in the name of addressing the climate crisis. To continue to build resistance to this smokescreen requires a far broader focus than climate summit protests, which form only one small piece in a vast jigsaw of global struggles to secure energy production, industry and agriculture in ways that promote and rediscover locally-adapted knowledge. To really achieve this, there are no short cuts around political organising - since the struggle against climate change is part of a larger fight for a more just, democratic and equal world. After Copenhagen What came out of Copenhagen? Oscar Reyes assesses the outcomes of the UN climate conference, and suggests much of the process was flawed from the beginning. They came. They saw. They took (yet another) 'first step'. Then the 110 world leaders who attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen flew home again, leaving a trail of recriminations about divide and conquer tactics, and a blame game over why 'Hopenhagen' had become 'Flopenhagen'. Well, what did you expect? The problem with global climate negotiations is not simply one of short-term power politics, but is deeply ingrained in the flawed fabric of international climate negotiations. Copenhagen failed, but it is part of an ongoing process in which many of the key decisions including the fate of potential new carbon markets were postponed when it became clear that no deal was yet possible. This left heads of state clutching onto the Copenhagen Accord, a peculiar 'no-deal deal', while the outcome of the negotiations that have been ongoing for two to four years has been postponed until later this year. A paper-thin 'deal' The Copenhagen Accord amounts to just two and a half pages of rather vacuous diplomatic ruminations. Its form is, perhaps, more expressive than its content. The cover page states merely that the signatories to the UN Climate Change Convention will 'take note of' the Accord, the kind of diplomatic language usually reserved for praise of the host country's catering. An Appendix containing two blank tables where emissions targets and other 'mitigation' actions remain to be listed is tacked onto the back, with unintended irony. A closer look reveals no progress on emissions targets and finance, the main sticking points in most international climate negotiations. The Accord 'recognises' the need to restrict global climate change to 2 degrees Celsius, but with no no means or obligation to enforce this goal, or agreement regarding who should do what, this is little more than lip service. Adding up what has actually been pledged, meanwhile, reveals a very different picture. Even the World Wildlife Fund, which tends to assume (despite mounting evidence to the contrary) that market-driven international climate policies work, calculates that the 15 to 19 per cent reductions that industrialised countries have so far promised by 2020 would amount to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of between 4 and 10 per cent compared to 1990 levels, once a series of loopholes are taken into account. The paucity of the reductions on offer is further disguised by long-term pledges an 80 per cent reduction for industrialised countries by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels) is an oft-cited figure. Yet as Martin Khor, Director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank of developing countries, points out, this would allow developed countries such as the US to continue polluting at two to five times the rate of their Southern counterparts. Headline pledges of billions in new climate financing prove to be equally illusory. The Copenhagen Accord promises a US$10 billion per year new climate change fund to be set up between 2010 and 2012, growing to US$100 billion per year by 2020. But the entire US$10 billion repackages existing aid commitments, the World Development Movement has found, with 50 per cent promised in the form of loans that would increase unjust debts. In the longer term, a significant proportion of what counts for the US$100 billion could include carbon market revenues hardly the same as public finance as reparations for a 'climate debt'. Significant questions remain too regarding who would control such funds, with the USA and Japan leading a charge to channel a significant proportion of this money through the World Bank. As the Bank's largest shareholders, they could then exert considerable influence as to how such money was spent. The blame game No sooner had the non-deal been struck than the blame game started. Ed Miliband, the UK's climate change secretary, claimed in The Guardian that China had 'hijacked' the conference, while Prime Minister Gordon Brown villainised a handful of 'intransigent' countries, including Bolivia, Venezuela and Sudan, which chaired the G77 group of developing countries. Or, to put it another way, a series of countries refused to sign up to an Accord that they considered a disaster for the climate and for any hope of achieving equity. Frustration at the content of the Accord was compounded by the heavy-handed interventions of the Danish presidency, which tore up the UN's bureaucratic rulebook in attempting to engineer a 'consensus' where none existed. As the 'official' talks were driven into the buffers, the Danish government convened a meeting of 26 leaders in parallel to the official talks, over-riding the remaining 167 parties to the UN Climate Change Convention. This was the culmination of a series of informal meetings, hosted by the Danes, which were similar in form to the 'mini-ministerials' and Green Rooms used by the WTO to set the agenda for global trade talks. Such meetings are typically coordinated by a grouping of rich, industrialised countries, with the participation of a regionally balanced (but unrepresentative) selection of developing nations. Copenhagen was no different, and while there was significant dissent led by the ALBA grouping of 9 Latin American and Caribbean states, which decried a process that 'violated all the principles of multilateralism and the United Nations Charter' efforts are now underway to harden the legal status of the Accord. As Ed Miliband put it at the close of the Copenhagen talks, countries are being encouraged to sign on 'so the money can start flowing', a scarcely veiled bribe. Divide and rule The use of informal meetings was part of a wider game of divide and rule played at the UN climate talks. Most notably, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (lead negotiator for the African Union) stopped in Paris on his way to Copenhagen, where he made an agreement with French President Sarkozy that sold out African demands for US$400 billion in climate finance and emissions cuts in line with climate science. A similar 'decapitation' strategy was attempted with Lesotho, head of the Least Developed Countries grouping, which was told that decisions on extension of US$7 million in aid (unconnected to the climate) would be reviewed in light of its cooperation. The UK had a hand in such tactics too, offering carrots as well as sticks as the case of Bangladesh illustrates clearly. In advance of Copenhagen, the UK Department for International Development put together a £75 million 'Awareness Kit' to 'firm up Bangladesh's negotiation positions and action plans,' including a series of policymaker seminars in Dhaka and London. The Embassy of Denmark has chipped in a further DKK 1,14 million towards the costs of hosting a 126 member Bangladeshi delegation in Copenhagen. The money was channeled through the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is headquartered in Geneva. What was the return expected on this investment? The headline on the Danish COP15 website sums it up succinctly: 'Bangladesh: Let the World Bank manage fund for nations at risk.' The underlying story reports that Ainun Nishat, a Bangladeshi delegate, has indicated his country's willingness to let the World Bank manage the climate fund which emerged as part of the Copenhagen Accord 'as per a condition set by the development partners.' NishatŽs day job is Senior Advisor on Climate Change for IUCN Asia. Deeper divisions It would be short-sighted to lay the blame for divisions solely at the door of former colonial powers, however. While the failures of Copenhagen rest, ultimately, in the failure of industrialised countries to take responsibility for tackling climate change, the Copenhagen Accord also gained traction because of the support of the so-called BASIC countries: Brazil, South Africa, India and China.This reaffirms the risks of relying on political elites to secure a just framework for global climate politics. As Praful Bidwai, journalist and author of An India That Can Say Yes, puts it, Copenhagen also served to reveal 'a gaping divide between Indias underprivileged and elite', with the latter consenting to an ineffective framework that can feed their burgeoning consumption of luxury goods while sacrificing the type of effective, equitable deal that would most help the country's rural poor, who stand to be battered hardest by the effects of climate change. To tackle this divide requires a more fundamental rethink in the basic framework of the terms in which global climate negotiations are conducted. Some of the stumbling blocks are intrinsic to the UN negotiating process itself, whose intergovernmental bias pits one country or bloc against another, with each defending a conception of 'national interest' that reflects elite class interests above the needs of the whole population. Amongst other things, this results in the exclusion of Indigenous Peoples and forest communities from formal participation in discussions on deforestation, even as negotiators seek to parcel out and commodify their lands in the form of 'forest carbon.' The issue is not simply one of who negotiates or has access, however, but of how those discussions are framed and tackled. In this regard, carbon trading remains the central means for implementing emissions targets, as well as playing an increasing role in displacing sources of public finance for tackling climate change. The dog that didn't (yet) bark The Copenhagen Accord makes little mention of carbon trading, but the market continues to develop apace. On 6 January, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) registered its 2000th carbon offset project, with the scheme still growing rapidly. The CDM is a scheme to develop 'emissions-saving projects' which supposedly compensate for continued pollution in industrialised countries in the North. In practice, the scheme shifts the responsibility for reducing emissions from North to South, with many of the projects exacerbating local social and environmental conflicts in their host locations. The financiers who stand to gain from such a scheme were, unsurprisingly disappointed by the outcomes of the Copenhagen summit. Yet the International Emissions Trading Association still managed a positive spin: the prospects of a 'new market mechanism' emerging from UN climate negotiations remain 'good', while 'the various Copenhagen discussions on improving the existing private sector financial mechanisms, in particular the CDM, made some progress.' In this respect, Copenhagen simply saw the postponement of several decisions which remain on the cards at subsequent UN climate conferences, in Bonn (June), Mexico (December) and subsequently in South Africa in 2011. A range of geekily technical possibilities remain on the table, but what they boil down to is the extension of carbon offsetting on a global scale. There are three main drivers underlying these proposals. First, they would help wealthy, industrialised (Annex 1) countries avoid having to make emissions reductions domestically although the paucity of ambition in the Copenhagen Accord already sees to this task quite effectively. Second, they represent a means to shift responsibility for taking action for tackling climate change to Southern countries. And third, from the point of view of financial speculators, new carbon markets increase the scope of financial speculation. A broad range of new credits would provide the basis for many new carbon derivatives - similar to the structures that brought the derivatives market to its knees during the recent financial crisis. It is dangerous for the same reason: carbon markets sell a product that has no tangible underlying asset - fertile conditions for the creation of a new bubble'. Traders don't know exactly what they are selling. And it becomes increasingly meaningless to talk about emissions reductions since what is reduced' on paper is so far removed from any measurable change in industrial practice or energy production. Speculation has become an end in itself. Meanwhile, emissions continue to rise. For climate justice Tackling carbon trading head on will remain crucial in the forthcoming climate debates - where the challenge remains to move beyond a global framework which translates the climate crisis into the language of neoliberal economics. Shifting ever larger sums through carbon markets is ultimately a means for stretching out the failed economic and industrial models that have helped to create the climate problem in the first case. Away from Copenhagen's faceless Bella Centre, we need not follow this course. From ending fossil fuel subsidies to new industrial regulations, there are numerous steps that could mark out a different path to tackling climate change, from local to national and international levels. Policy alone will not be enough, though. We need to rethink energy production, industry and agriculture in ways that promote and rediscover locally-adapted knowledge. And to really achieve this, there are no short cuts around political organising since the struggle against climate change is part of a larger fight for a more just, democratic and equal world. High up in the Andean valley, 8,000 feet above sea level, lies Cochabamba, Bolivia. The name, Khocha Pampa, from the indigenous Quechua, means swampy plain. Once a lush and verdant land, its waters have come under pressure from a variety of sources. The first was privatization. This week the Feria del Agua, a water festival and fair, marked the 10th anniversary of the water wars that fought off privatization. Events to celebrate kicked off on Thursday, April 15 with a 4,000-person parade from downtown Cochabamba to the Complejo Fabril (Cochabamba Federation of Workers). Over the next three days at the Fabriles, local groups, area residents and attendees from countries worldwide, ranging from Honduras to Italy, from Uruguay to Spain, shared information about how they self-organize. The Fabriles is an organizing space for workers and was a pivotal space for organizing meetings during the water wars in 2000. The Water Wars In 1995, World Bank Vice-President Ismail Serageldin predicted, "Many of the wars of the 20th century were about oil, but wars of the 21st century will be over water." And the World Bank would know. In 1997, it refused to renew $600 million dollars worth of foreign debt relief, unless Bolivia privatized its water services. So the Bolivian government, then under the leadership of Hugo Banzer (who was dictator of Bolivia from 1971 to 1978), put the municipal agency Servicio Municipal de Agua Potable y Alcantarillado (SEMAPA), which had previously controlled water, up for auction. On September 3, 1999, in a closed-door meeting, the government signed a lucrative contract with Aguas de Tunari, a multinational consortium of companies and a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Bechtel corporation. Aguas de Tunari was the sole bidder, won the contract and was henceforth to provide water to all the residents of Cochabamba. Subsequently, on October 29, 1999, the government passed law 2029 (Drinking Water and Sanitation Law) to regulate drinking water and sewage disposal. Law 2029 stated that water not only in Cochabamba but also in the surrounding agricultural areas would be provided, that is, privatized, by Aguas del Tunari. Irrigation waters had never been under the auspices of the municipal agency SEMAPA and thus should have been exempt. Peasants relied on free access to them in order to survive. So this privatization outraged many peasants living in the area surrounding Cochabamba. Moreover, when Bechtel took over the water services, they increased rates by 35 percent to 50 percent. Bolivia is the poorest nation in South America. Families earning on average $100 per month were suddenly faced with $20 per month water bills. The impact on the population was immediate and drastic. As a result of their dire situation because of these numerous changes, individuals formed La Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida (The Coalition Defense of Water and Life). The Coordinadora included peasant farmers, whose subsistence depended on access to free water, environmentalists and factory workers, led by Oscar Olivera, a rank-and-file delegate, union organizer and leader. Protests erupted the week after the rate hikes, with a broad spectrum of people participating: factory workers, peasants, housewives, street vendors, students, kids. Between January and April 2000, the people shut down the city on three separate occasions with general strikes and road blocks. On March 22, 2000, the Coordinadaro held an unofficial referendum in which 96 percent of 55,000 voters demanded the government end the contract with Aguas del Tunari. Government officials responded that there was nothing to negotiate. In April, demonstrators took over the central plaza in Cochabamba. The next day, April 6, 2000, when leaders of the Coordinadora went to meet with the governor at his office, they were arrested. Meanwhile, protests had spread to other cities, such as La Paz and Potos?. On April 8, 2000, President Banzer declared a state of siege, that is, a suspension of constitutional rights. In power were President Banzer, Governor Walter Cespedes and Mayor Manfred Reyes Villa. (All three trained at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia.) Curfews were enforced, freedom of the press was blocked, gatherings of more than four persons were banned and warrantless searches were conducted. Eventually, on April 10, Olivera and government officials signed a contract annulling the contract with Aguas del Tunari. Control of water was turned over to La Coordinadora, which demanded that law 2029 be repealed. The state of siege was ended on April 13, 2000. Aguas del Tunari brought the matter to the International Centre for Settlement of Disputes (ICSID), the arbitration body of the World Bank, accusing the Bolivian government of breach of contract, but eventually settled with the Bolivian government out of court and agreed not to seek monetary compensation for the annulled contract. Hard Work Still Remains To be sure the water wars were enormously successful. They brought together communities across previously existing geographic or class boundaries. Rural campesinos worked together with urban factory workers to protest the privatization of irrigation waters, and uprisings took place all over the country. The water wars thwarted attempts to privatize water in Bolivia, called attention to attempts to privatize water elsewhere and led to an increasingly widespread discourse on water as a basic right, part of the commons. As Vandana Shiva puts it in the introduction to Cochabamba: Water War in Bolivia, " reclaiming the commons is the political, economic and ecological agenda for our times." Shiva also mentions the worldwide impact of Cochabamba, discussing how it was inspirational for work in India against Suez's attempts to privatize the water of the Ganges River. As Jim Schultz, who is executive director of the Democracy Center in Bolivia and who broke the story of the Cochabamba water wars for U.S. and Canadian audiences, said: "It certainly had an impact on the debate about water privatization. After the water wars in Cochabamba, people challenged water privatization from Argentina to Atlanta." After the water wars, water prices in Cochabamba returned to their rates prior to 2000. The Coordinadora returned control of water to SEMAPA, which community leaders run. Nonetheless, much work remains to be done in order to increase access to water. While 90 percent of the northern and central regions of Cochabamba have regular access to clean water, fewer than 50 percent of the southern barrios do. Moreover, their costs of water, since they acquire it from trucks that distribute water, typically run much higher than the costs for their wealthier northern counterparts, for whom it is delivered directly into the house through pipes. The population of southern Cochabamba is incredibly impoverished. It consists mostly of immigrants from other parts of Bolivia who moved to Cochabamba over the past 40 years. In the 1960s and 1970s, due to droughts and land reforms, many peasants moved to the city from agricultural areas, especially those surrounding La Paz and Sucre. Subsequently, in the 1980s, through the liberalization of industries under Jeffrey Sachs' proposed New Economic Plan (NEP) and decree DS 21060, mines laid off massive numbers of workers. These workers from cities such as Oruro and Potosi migrated to Cochabamba. The residents have self-organized, establishing the Association of the Community Water Systems of the South (La Associac?on de Sistemas Comunitarios de Agua del Sur - ASICA Sur) in 2004. Non-politically aligned, ASICA Sur is an umbrella group for various cooperatives, organizations and committees. Securing a loan from the EU, ASICA-Sur has been digging for water sources, building water towers and constructing pipes from the water towers to distribute water. Codaste 22 Abril, one of the groups within ASICA Sur, organizes in the southern Cochabamba district 14. Filemon Chipana, President of Codaste 22 Abril, said "We are organizing there and laying pipes, drilling for water." Regardless of whether water is state-run or community-organized, one serious impediment that plagues both is funding. Internal funds are limited and external funding remains relatively scarce. The Challenge of Climate Change In addition to the calamity of financing, which makes the improvement of access to potable water and of sanitation difficult, climate change is providing new challenges to water availability. The water table of Cochabamba has dwindled rapidly over the past decade due to population growth and global warming. Bolivia is also home to 25 percent of the world's tropical glaciers. But these are melting at alarming rates, causing water sources to retreat. Last week, in neighboring Peru, with which Bolivia shares the Andes mountain range, a massive chunk of glacier, measuring 1,640 feet by 656 feet, fell into a lake, unleashing a tsunami with a wave up to 75 feet high that washed away villages and people. Approximately 70 percent of the world's tropical ice fields are in Peru, which have been melting at alarming rates due to global warming. Between 1975 and 2006, glaciers in the Cordillera Real, a mountain range in the Andes, lost 48 percent of their volume. In the Chacaltaya mountain range, once reknowned for its ski resorts, the Chacaltaya glacier, which provided water to La Paz, vanished in the last year. The Illimani, a glacier on a mountain that has the same name, is also disappearing. As much as 30 percent of La Paz's water supply comes from glacial melt. Scientists predict that at current rates, glaciers will have melted within 20 years. While climate reparations will be a major focus of discussions at this week's People's World Conference on Climate Change, Bolivian villagers in particular are requesting compensation for the glaciers melting. The water wars in Bolivia thus evidence at once the frontlines of neoliberal privatization efforts a decade ago, which are undoubtedly far from over, and the frontlines of climate change currently, with which this weeks upcoming Peoples World Conference on Climate Change will grapple. Finding a sustainable, realistic source of energy has long been a goal for many developers around the world, with some countries investing heavily in alternative energy production methods in order to better develop both a strong infrastructure for power generation as well as help offset their own individual energy needs throughout the year. While alternative energy is generally hailed as a boon over much of that generated by conventional petroleum-based fuels due to the typically lower carbon dioxide output level this does not mean that it is necessarily positive in all aspects. As but one example of a common drawback that is associated with many alternative energy production methods even simple magnetic discs used for many electricity generating motors (such as those used in wind and water turbines) have take their own environmental toll upon their surroundings during their production. While the primary magnetic source first used by humans was lodestone, modern day magnets necessary for motors to function at the highest possible efficiency are generally made with neodymium – a combination of rare earth elements that can hold a strong, steady charge for the life of the magnet. While lodestone is a naturally occurring substance found within the Earth neodymium magnets require a number of different compounds to be processed and combined for effective use. Unfortunately for our environment, however, these materials are best harvested in one place in particular – land left after the felling of a rainforest. The reason for this is that the trees, during the course of their long growth cycle, have naturally brought up and deposited many of the materials (such as neodymium, iron, iron-boron, dysprosium, cobalt, copper, gallium, aluminum and other trace minerals) towards the surface of the earth and retained them in those aras. By doing so the land under a deforested rainforest patch allows for large quantities of the minerals to be harvested for processing and production with minimal effort. Unfortunately the necessity for the destruction of high carbon-absorbing plants can easily be used to argue that any benefits that could possibly be gained through the usage of magnets for energy generation does not make the end result worthwhile. While this is absolutely true in a short-term perspective from a long-term viewpoint this may not necessarily be the case as the land could be re-cultivated and re-planted once the necessarily minerals have been harvested, and the long-term benefits may in fact outweigh the initial damage in the distant future overall. While this is but one example of some of the drawbacks associated with renewable energy it is not the only one. At the same time, however, renewable energy brings with it many benefits that can generally outweigh these drawbacks. Just be sure as a consumer to bear in mind at all times that there are pros and cons associated with any situation, and approaching everything with an open mind ready to accept each of these is necessary to make the best informed decision possible. With the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen just 13 days away, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has highlighted the need to ensure that the energy needs of developing countries are central to any new climate agreement, after a new report found that almost a quarter of the worlds 6 billion people live without electricity. The majority of the 1.5 billion people who live in the dark are in the least developed countries (LDCs) of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, according to the report, The Energy Access Situation in Developing Countries: A Review Focusing on the Least Developed Counties and Sub-Saharan Africa. Expanding energy access is essential to tackle global poverty. It needs to happen at the lowest cost and in the cleanest and most sustainable way possible to help developing countries establish a low-carbon route to development, Olav Kjorven, UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau for Development Policy, told reporters in New York at the launch of the report. Almost half of humanity is completely disconnected from the debate on how to drive human progress with less emissions and greener energy because their reality is much more basic than that: they carry heavy loads of water and food on their backs because they dont have transport;they cook over wood fires that damage their health, not with electricity, gas or oil, said Mr. Kjorven. We must ensure that the energy needs of these people are central to a new climate agreement, he added, referring to the pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions that countries are hoping to achieve when they meet in the Danish capital in December. Mr Kjorven noted that two million people die every year from causes associated with exposure to smoke from cooking with biomass and coal and 99 per cent of those deaths occur in developing countries. In LDCs and sub-Saharan Africa, half of all deaths from pneumonia in children under five years, chronic lung disease and lung cancer in adults are attributed to the use of solid fuel, compared with 38 per cent in developing countries overall. According to the report, to halve the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015 the first of the eight globally agreed targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 1.2 billion more people will need access to electricity and two billion more people will need access to modern fuels like natural gas or Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also called propane. We have to see Copenhagen as an opportunity. For a climate deal to work, it also has to be a development deal. Developing countries have to see that this deal would help them move forward, not slow down, Mr.Kjorven stated. The report was produced in partnership by the UNDP and the World Health Organization (WHO), with support from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Adequate mitigation of the risks of climate change requires rapid displacement of fossil fuels with carbon-free energy sources. This imperative has prompted a growing chorus of energy analysts, policy makers, and industry advocates to press for a resurgence of nuclear energy. Even some environmentalists are urging reconsideration of the nuclear option, so long anathema to the environmental movement. Yet, with critical problems unresolved safety and cost, waste storage, and nuclear weapons proliferation nuclear power remains a deeply problematic response to the climate challenge, and to the wider challenge of global sustainability. Therefore, the transformative energy strategy of a Great Transition would rely on three major prongs: renewable resources, deep efficiency, and a model of development based on environment-sparing consumption and production patterns. As the imperative to diminish the grave risks posed by climate change grows more urgent, attention is turning to ways to rapidly reduce fossil fuel use, the primary source of carbon-dioxide emissions. In particular, many energy analysts, policy makers, and industry spokespersons are advocating a major expansion of nuclear energy. Even some environmentalists have reluctantly joined the chorus, abjuring the nuclear skepticism long a part of the environmental tradition. A resurgence of nuclear energy would be a reversal of fortune for a moribund technology. In the decades since the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, construction of new plants largely stagnated, especially in industrialized countries. Today, 438 reactors generate about 14 percent of the worlds electricity. But with 44 new plants under construction (primarily in China, Russia, India, and South Korea) and others in planning, some forecasters predict an uptick in nuclear power. Yet, for nuclear energy to contribute to a significant degree to greenhouse gas abatement, the rate of construction would need to vastly accelerate. Offsetting even 10 percent of global carbon emissions by 2050 would be an immense undertaking, requiring some 2,200 new plants, or more than one per week in the coming decades. The nuclear power option faces a set of vexing problems that should temper enthusiasm for an expansion of this scale. Safety and Cost Although no plant design can be risk-free, new research has brought claims of a new generation of nuclear reactors with advanced safety features. However, they have yet to be tested at full scale, and all reactors on order now use conventional technology. Moreover, nuclear power plants are now considered plausible targets for terrorist attacks. Whether caused by accident or malice, a sudden dispersal of radioactivity would have severe community impact, perhaps exacerbated by inadequate evacuation plans. If such an event triggered a renewal of anti-nuclear sentiment in the general public and led to demands for a nuclear moratorium, the resilience and sustainability of the energy system would be greatly compromised. The full economic costs of nuclear energy are difficult to determine. A comprehensive accounting would include accident insurance, safety assurance, decommissioning, and radioactive waste disposal costs that are often buried in generous public subsidies for the nuclear industry or shifted to future generations. As the experience in the U.S. with the first wave of nuclear plants indicated, projected costs will soar as the full costs of the nuclear-fuel cycle are reflected in the price of electricity. Of course, high costs might not be a key issue if nuclear power were the only option for climate mitigation. It is not Waste Storage &Uranium Recycling The need to safely dispose of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years poses daunting technical challenges. Indeed, as no country has yet implemented a functioning long-term waste repository, much of the worlds inventory of waste remains sequestered in temporary casks at dispersed plant sites. It requires considerable technological optimism to be sanguine about finding satisfactory geologic repositories: 2,000 reactors would require new capacity the size of the controversial Yucca Mountain site in the United States every two years into the foreseeable future. It is difficult to imagine that this level of storage capacity could be found and activated. Indeed, after 20 years and $9 billion of investment, the Obama administration has declared Yucca Mountain not an option. Such a waste burden would be reduced if production eventually shifted from conventional once-through light water reactors to advanced closed fuel cycle plants, where spent fuel is reprocessed and re-used. Indeed, some analysts project that uranium reserves will be depleted in the coming decades, making fuel reprocessing and reuse mandatory. However, reprocessing nuclear waste would create massive quantities of weapons-grade material (such as plutonium), bringing increased risk of diversion by terrorists, rogue states, and malevolent individuals. Proliferation and Security Nuclear power cannot be de-coupled from nuclear weapons. Two paths lead from a nuclear energy program to weapons-grade material;one involves uranium and the other plutonium. For use as a nuclear fuel, naturally occurring uranium undergoes enrichment to increase the concentration of fissionable U-235 isotope, and further enrichment can produce weapons-grade material. Consequently, a wide deployment of nuclear power and associated technology would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. This link is underscored in todays headlines on disputes over enrichment programs in North Korean and Iran, putatively for electricity generation, possibly for more. Another pathway from nuclear power to nuclear weapons would be through the recovery of plutonium from spent uranium fuel, either directly or as a by-product of re-processing. A mere six kilograms of such highly fissible plutonium is needed for a simple nuclear weapon, and much less to fabricate a dirty conventional bomb. At the large scales of nuclear generation under consideration, it would become extremely difficult to track and secure the movement of such small amounts of material. Nuclear Power Deflects Us From the Path to Sustainability The transition to a stable, secure, and livable future is a complex undertaking with many interlocking moving parts. We must simultaneously limit climate change, reduce cultural and geopolitical friction, address nagging social inequities, restore environmental health, create a stable world economy, and preserve scarce resources. The argument for a major push on nuclear energy focuses on only one aspect of what is involved the mitigation of carbon emissions while downplaying the daunting and unresolved problems that the nuclear option entails. A systemic perspective highlights these deficits, as well as possible benefits. Considering all the challenges we face, and the burdens and risks nuclear energy carries, the energy path to a sustainable, equitable, and secure future lies elsewhere. A three-pronged strategy is indicated. First, we must harness the massive potential of solar, wind, and other renewable resources, a goal that can be spurred through advanced research and development and appropriate policies (i.e., to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels). Second, we must launch a revolution in efficiency, e.g., reducing energy use in buildings using readily available technology, tripling automobile efficiencies, expanding mass transport, designing compact communities, and creating practices of industrial ecology that recycle materials and energy. Third, we must make human well-being, not consumption and growth, the primary metric of development. This would reduce energy needs in richer countries, and allow poorer countries to leap-frog to a more advanced and ecological form of modernity. The current promotion of nuclear power deflects attention and resources from this pressing program. With its long-term legacy of heightened risks and toxic burden, nuclear power violates a fundamental principle of sustainability: passing on a resilient world to future generations. At the least, a world laced with nuclear power plants and crisscrossed with commerce of fissionable materials would require a strong international regime of security and control, a world more consonant with an authoritarian Fortress World scenario than a Great Transition. The continuous deterioration of the ecosystem components of the Zarqa River Basin since almost three decades is one of the biggest environmental challenges in Jordan. The Zarqa River Basin has been categorized by the Jordanian government as the biggest environmental hotspot, with plans for rehabilitation of the basin being promoted to the top of priorities of environmental management in Jordan. The process of rehabilitation of the Zarqa River Basin is considered as an urgent national demand, even under the current conditions of deterioration that require high investments in rehabilitation. Any concerted effort that starts now will be less costly than any efforts in the future. Moreover, the cost of mitigation measures that can be implemented rapidly is less than the cost of the loss of environmental services in the Zarqa River Basin. Any integrated programme for the rehabilitation of the Zarqa River Basin can be described in twenty necessary steps at the strategic level. At the institutional level, it is vital to institutionalize the national efforts for Zarqa River rehabilitation. This can be done through the establishment of a special unit at the Ministry of Environment which is mandated by the law to protect and sustainably manage the various ecosystems in Jordan. In addition the objectives of rehabilitation should be integrated in the programmes and plans of ministries and public, private, civil and academic institutions. To make this system sustainable a a charter for the protection and rehabilitation of Zarqa River can be adopted by the government, the civil society and all relevant institutions. The charter will provide the values, principles and implementation tools for the rehabilitation of Zarqa River based on a clear national vision and masterplan for this ecosystem. Proper legislation should be developed. The first priority is to enact a legislation that covers all gaps in the specification of river basin ownership and regulating the urban and developmental activities in a way that does not impact the efforts to rehabilitate the River basin and protect it from pollution. The River course should be mapped and zoned as protected from urban expansion with focus on forestation and reintroduction of green cover. Quality infrastructure should be developed and maintained. One of the major requirements is the establishment of a plant, or a group of decentralized plants for the treatment of sludge resulting from wastewater treatment plants in the basin to reduce the pressure on Ain Ghazal and Khirbet As Samra wastewater treatment plants. In addition there should be a prohibition of the discharge of untreated or partially treated wastewater that does not adhere to Jordanian standards into the Zarqa River course. The main principle of rehabilitation is the integrated management of natural resources. This can be achieved through several actions. The first initiative can be periodical clean up and streamlining of the river course and the removal of wastes and obstacles that prevent the natural flow of water. The next step will be promoting the adoption of the principles of integrated natural resource management and the ecosystem approach (land, water and species) in all development project and initiatives along the Zarqa River Basin. This should be done in parallel to taking all necessary steps that can preserve the current quantity of permanent water flow in Zarqa River Basin and planning to introduce additional water quantities from non-conventional sources (fully treated wastewater, rainwater harvesting, grey water, etc…) in the dry areas of the river basin and implementation of natural filtration and constructed wetlands initiatives that are based on ecosystem services. Other sustainable actions include preserving the current water wells and reduction of overabstraction of groundwater to restore the wells' water that has been dried over the last decades. This will assist in recharge of groundwater aquifers in Amman-Zarqa Basin and regulating its use back to safe yield levels to ensure sustainability and reduction of salinity. This can be supported with the establishment of some areas of special protection status that are managed by NGOs or the local community with the objective of rehabilitation and conservation of habitats of special importance in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services that would improve the recreational and tourism potential in the basin. On the agricultural level there is a need for the restructuring of agricultural activities in Zarqa River Basin to match national standards and respond to the changes in the quantity and quality of water and shift to sustainable irrigation and agriculture patterns. This should be associated with the increase in the size of the green cover on the river banks on publicly owned lands and developing forestation partnerships in areas owned by the private sector. Any restoration programme should be implementation within a framework of partnerships with local community. This can be done in two actions. First is the implementation of a series of community based rehabilitation projects through the development of local strategic plans in hotspots along the river. The second is the establishment of a coalition of environmental NGOs or the creation of a specialized civil society organization that is specialized in the conservation and rehabilitation of Zarqa River Basin to act in awareness, education and advocacy. Environmental management tools are essential for the Zarqa River rehabilitation. The main tool is the Developing and implementing a strict monitoring and inspection programme to stop all violations against the River basin whether in the form of waste dumping or the discharge of domestic and industrial wastewater. This must be done in parallel to subjecting all new developmental activities in the basin to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and licensing processes conducted by the Ministry of Environment. For decision making purposes a scientific database about Zarqa River should be established and fed by the results of water, soil and biodiversity monitoring data in addition to specialized research and studies. Other policy tools can be implemented including thedevelopment and implementation of economic, legal and technological incentives to encourage the private sector to carry its environmental and social responsibility in the remediation of current pollution and prevention of future pollution. This should be accompanied with regulating all facilities to zero discharge policies to the river course. Valuation of the economic costs of the ecosystem services in Zarqa River Basin and updating the data periodically while estimating the costs of environmental degradation caused by developmental activities for using such estimates in the proper way to internalize the environmental costs in developmental planning in the basin. Developing and implementing a sustainable partnership programme with specialized international and regional organizations in ecosystem management and restoration will help to utilize all available expertise in transferring updated knowledge, best practices and solutions in integrated natural resource management in river basins and adapting them to Zarqa River Basin. In the final analysis, the restoration of the Zarqa River can be a mission possible but will require a lot of good planning, determination and efficient use of available resources. The acid rain scourge of the '70s and '80s that killed trees and fish and even dissolved parts of statues on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall is back. But unlike the first round, in which sulfur emissions from power plants mixed with rain to create sulfuric acid, the current problem stems primarily from nitrogen emissions mixed with rain to create nitric acid. "Both are strong acids, and both create serious problems for the environment," says William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. Acid rain degrades cement and limestone as well as leaches critical soil nutrients, which injures plants. It also liberates toxic minerals from the ground that flow into stream runoff where they can kill fish. Sulfur emissions from power plants were one of the primary motivations for the U.S.'s Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which set reduction targets for both sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). However, whereas sulfur dioxide emissions decreased almost 70 percent from 1990 to 2008, emissions of one NOxnitrogen dioxide (NO2)went down only 35 percent for that same period, and amendment targets have yet to be made, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "This comes as scientists have grown increasingly aware of the consequences of the remaining nitric acid deposition," Schlesinger says. Schlesinger is one of a number of scientists calling attention to the problem. On June 8 the Integrated Nitrogen Committee of the EPA's Science Advisory board held a public teleconference to discuss a draft report of possible solutions to nitrogen problems, including acid rain. A final report is pending. Nitric acid rain is derived primarily from power plant, car and truck emissions as well as from gases released by fertilizer use. Part of the problem dates back to WWI, when two German scientists invented the HaberBosch process, which took nonreactive nitrogen from the air (N2) and converted it into reactive, usable ammonia (NH3). Most of the nitrogen harvested via this process has been used in fertilizers, and the runoff from farms has created dead zones in Chesapeake Bay and at the mouths of the Columbia and Mississippi rivers. Some efforts have been made to regulate the agricultural nitrogen runoff, but atmospheric emissions of agricultural ammonia remain virtually unrestricted. Agri-ammonia vapors also derive from concentrated animal feeding operations in the U.S. South. The gas rises into the air and is deposited dry or in rainfall where in the ground bacteria breaks it into nitrogen and nitric acid, which can kill fish and plants. "Agriculture is increasingly functioning as an intensively managed industrial operation, and that is creating serious water, soil, and air problems," says Viney Aneja, a professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Aneja says that state's concentrated animal feeding operations may also emit particulate matter from swine and chicken manure into the atmosphere, which can carry diseases. NOx escapes from power plants as a by-product of coal combustion, whereas vehicular engines run at high enough pressures and temperatures to combine nitrogen and oxygen in the air. "Though catalytic converters have decreased the amount of pollution per vehicle, there are more vehicles on the road and more miles driven," Schlesinger says. Emissions from fertilizers are the chief source of atmospheric nitric oxide, but motor vehicles have now overtaken coal power plants as the secondary most critical source of this problem. U.S. EPA is seeking to impose stricter emission regulations on marine vessels along U.S. coastlines, a move expected to dramatically slash air pollution in port cities, Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today. The move makes the United States the first country to ask the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, to create an emissions control area around the nation's coastline. "This is an important and long overdue step in our efforts to protect the air and water along our shores, and the health of the people in our coastal communities," Jackson said at a news conference at Port Newark in New Jersey. "We want to ensure the economic strength of our port cities at the same time that we take responsible steps to protect public health and the environment in the United States and across the globe." Last October, the London-based IMO announced rules that would lower the cap for sulfur content in fuel for ships traveling in international waters beginning in 2012. The rules would also provide more rigorous protections in designated areas with demonstrated air pollution problems. EPA has proposed that a 230-mile buffer zone around the nation's coastline be subject to those tougher regulations. The IMO is expected to review the request at its July meeting, and the designation would go into effect in 2012. Under the IMO's rules, ships entering emission control areas will ultimately be required to cut nitrogen oxide emissions by 80 percent, particulate matter by 85 percent and sulfur oxides by 95 percent, relative to current emissions levels. "We have known for a long time that our families that live around ports have a higher rate of respiratory illness, including cancer," said Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "EPA's announcement today is music to my ears because it means the United States is stepping forward to take a strong leadership role on clean air around ports." Large, ocean-bound vessels account for about 40 percent of all U.S. mobile-source emissions of sulfur dioxide and put out about 745,000 tons of nitrogen oxide per year, according to EPA estimates. The EPA inspector general's office said last week that the agency's efforts to slash ship emissions at ports have not gone far enough to protect human health "For far too long, these tankers and big ships have been poorly regulated, and there's just an enormous amount of progress to be made in protecting human health and the environment by cleaning up the fuel and ensuring that they meet modern emission control standards," said Vickie Patton, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. A report released today by clean air advocacy groups found that more than 87 million Americans live in port areas that do not meet federal health-based air quality standards. Researchers estimate that shipping pollution is associated with 60,000 global deaths annually, according to the report, co-authored by the American Lung Association, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Association of Clean Air Agencies and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. The creation of an emissions control area would save up to 8,300 American and Canadian lives every year by 2020, according to EPA. its hot all over the East Coast. Weather Underground offers this plot of the difference between maximum temperature (the high for the day) and average maximum temperature in degrees F for July 6?: Dr. Rob Carver, filling in for Jeff Masters on vacation in Maine (where Ill be in August), asks Is this heat wave due to global warming? His answer: Ah, the $64,000 question. In the absence of detailed analysis, its hard to specify the exact cause for this heat wave, from a meteorological or climatological view point. However, events like this are consistent with research showing that heat waves are more likely with global warming. I like the metaphor of loaded dice, global warming is not specifically responsible for any heat wave, but it will make them happen more often. True, global warming is not specifically responsible for any specific heat wave, but all heat waves we do experience are added to the overall human-caused warming, and thus will be more and more intense. Carver helpfully notes, The Centers for Disease Control have some tips for dealing with the heat. Here is the Christian Science Monitor: Global heat wave hits US, reignites climate change debate Worldwide, the first five months of 2010 were the warmest on record. With the US now getting its share of a heat wave, how will it affect the public perception of climate change? Beijing hits a near-record 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia break 100 degrees and set new daily highs. Meanwhile, in Baghdad and Riyadh, on July 6 it was 113 and 111 degrees, warmer than average but still cooler than in Kuwait, which set the days world temperature high at 122 degrees. Yes, were suffering a global heat wave. No, its not the apocalypse. But it may be a further sign of climate change. You cant say any one heat wave is caused by global warming. But you can say that what global warming does is it makes events just like this more likely, says Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change. Indeed, 2010 is set to be one of the worlds hottest years on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the first five months of the year was the warmest on record, and 1.22 degrees F warmer than the 20th century average, the NOAA states in its May 2010 State of the Climate Global Analysis. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the Arctic sea ice extent retreated at a rapid pace in May 50 percent faster than the average May melting rate. Africas Lake Tanganyika, the second deepest freshwater lake in the world, is now at its warmest in 1,500 years, according to the journal Nature Geoscience. But if these are all signs of global warming, then why did Americas East Coast get slammed with so much snow this past winter? Climatologists are careful to highlight that no one weather event is a sign of global warming. Just as the blizzards of this past January and February did not debunk climate change, the current heat wave does not prove climate change. What climate change does do is make these kinds of events ever more frequent. It increases the frequency of record-highs, says Dr. Leiserowitz of Yale University. Precisely Here is how the AP handled the story: The temperature broke records for the day in New York, where it hit 103, and in Philadelphia, where it reached 102. It was also over 100 in cities from Richmond, Va., to Boston, and Providence, R.I., and Hartford, Conn., also set records. Its safe to say this is one of the hottest days in about a decade for many locations in the Northeast and even inland, said Sean Potter of the National Weather Service. Youd go back to 2001 or maybe 1999 to find a similar heat wave. A certain segment of the public might look at the thermometer and blame global warming, but the two things arent necessarily related, said Gavin Schmidt, at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. One winter, one heat wave, one snowstorm is not significant. You need statistics over a decade, he said, noting that day-to-day weather and global temperature are two different things. That said, he added, the planet is getting warmer. 2000-2009 was the warmest since the 1850s. And the last 12 months seem to be the warmest. Ah, that certain segment. True, one heat wave is not significant, but then again its hard to say that that its a complete coincidence that NASA reported it was easily the hottest spring and Jan-May in the temperature record (and NOAA, too). To beat a hyperthermic horse, as the UKs Royal Society and Met Office said in their statement on the connection between global warming and extreme weather: We expect some of the most significant impacts of climate change to occur when natural variability is exacerbated by long-term global warming, so that even small changes in global temperatures can produce damaging local and regional effects. I do prefer to look at statistically aggregated data (see Were having a heat wave. New daily high temperature records beat new cold records by nearly 5 to 1 in June). Back to the MSM. You may remember the recent Climate Progress post Rep. Broun (R-GA) says clean energy legislation will cause southerners to die from hyperthermia! Pulitzer Prize winner Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes Broun to task on this: A few weeks ago, U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) stood on the floor of Congress to issue a hyperventilating rant about hyperthermia. Claiming to worry that energy legislation would raise electric rates so high that the elderly couldnt pay for air conditioning, he declaring that cap-and-trade would, in effect, kill old people. Wheres the Congressman today? Is he still worried about seniors dying from hyperthermia? He should be since theyre suffering mightily in the heat wave that is smothering the eastern United States. The miserable heat is scorching the South, too. No one who takes science seriously would suggest that a summer heat wave is evidence of global warming. But a trend, noted by scientists, is something everyone should take seriously, and this heat wave is part of a trend, according to Andrew Freeman, climate blogger for the WaPo First, even before this heat wave began, temperatures had already been running above normal lately. May and June were exceptionally warm across the eastern U.S., especially the mid-Atlantic. As we noted last week, Washington recorded its warmest June on record, along with numerous other cities, mainly along the eastern seaboard. According to Guy Walton of The Weather Channel, many more warm-temperature records were set during May and June than cold-temperature records. In an email exchange, Walton told me there were 3,234 daily record highs (including ties) set nationwide during May and June, compared to 1,493 daily record lows (including ties). There were only five all time record highs set or tied during May/June 2010 and no all time record lows, but there were 102 monthly highs set (or tied) vs. 52 monthly lows set (or tied) during the period. Walton also noted that there were 6,870 daily record high minimums (including ties) vs 2,570 daily record low maximums (including ties) in May/June 2010. This is noteworthy since daily minimum temperatures have been increasing faster than daily maximum temperatures, which is consistent with what scientists expect to happen as greenhouse gas concentrations increase, since such gases inhibit heat from escaping into the atmosphere, especially during the night as radiational cooling sets in. Despite so-called Climategate, the scientific evidence is clear: The planet is warming dangerously, a trend caused by human activity. Alas, Freedmans stuff isnt what gets into the print edition of the Washington Post, which is probably read by ten times as many people. This is what they ran yesterday: What a waste of ink. First off, precisely which climate scientists are predicting a normal July (whatever that means)? Most expert forecasters were predicting that this entire summer was going to be quite hot on the East Coast. Obviously this week was going to be horrendous. So the erroneous opening paragraph merely makes climate scientists look like ivory tower academics. Secondly, while its great the WP discusses what climate researchers expect in the coming decades, is it too much to ask for even the briefest mention of the fact that it is human emissions of greenhouse gases that are the reason climate scientists are making these projections? Third, and this is certainly hopeless for the WP, but the statement that climate researchers now expect a further 6.3-degree increase by the end of this century is somewhere between misleading and outright incorrect. Climate researchers projections of future temperature rise depend critically on their estimation of how high emissions are. They dont expect any particular increase 6.3 degrees F might be near the middle of the broad range of multi-scenario projections. But if we take no significant action to reduce emissions and why should we if the media doesnt explain to the public that emissions are the source of the projections (and probably primary reason for the warming to date) then many scientists expect warming far beyond 6.3 degrees. Rrecent "rainforest safe" book and luxury shopping bag campaigns show they value green washing primary forest logging and sustaining old growth timber markets more than ecological science showing without primary forest logging ban biosphere collapses. Ecological Internet renews demand that RAN stops promoting primary forest logging as a false solution to rainforest loss and diminishment, and resigns from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) immediately. Despite escalating international protest, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) continues to promote Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of first time industrial logging of primary forests. RAN's new "Rainforest Safe Summer Reading List" [1] and "Gucci Shopping Bag" [2] campaigns falsely claim FSC certified paper products are free of rainforest destruction. In fact, most FSC products come from the first time industrial logging of primary forests or from toxic, industrial monoculture plantations which displace old forests. Virtually all of FSC's tropical timbers and fibers come from such sources. "The world's rainforests, biodiversity, ecosystems, climate and biosphere are in a state of severe crisis and are collapsing;and the best Rainforest Action Network can do is continue lying regarding where FSC certified products come from, and shilling for primary forest books and shopping bags? As America's largest rainforest protection group, RAN raises and expends more monies on behalf of rainforests than any organization, yet continues to insist FSC logging of primary forests ‘protects' rainforests. This old forest logging appeasement will continue to be challenged by biocentric ecologists. Unless this NGO greenwash ends, and we join forces to end primary forest logging, the future of Earth and all life are at stake," states Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet President. After years of protest against RAN's support of FSC, and several broken promises to address the matter, RAN is still unable to answer the question of how logging 500 year old trees in millions of year old ecosystem – in this case for children's books and high-end Gucci shopping bags – meaningfully protects rainforests. RAN's "market campaigns" completely miss the point that over-consumption in general and paper in particular is the problem. Having co-founded, been long-time active members, and being one of the leading radical supporters of FSC;RAN and FSC are unable or unwilling to state publicly the exact percentage or even an approximation of FSC certified products which come from primary and old growth forest loss and severe ecological diminishment when selectively logged for the first time. "With FSC having certified over 133 million hectares, Ecological Internet stands by our analysis – using the national certification figures, the only information FSC provides on the matter, and what is known about forestry practices in each country – to estimate 60% of FSC timber comes from first time industrial primary forest logging. This means that FSC and RAN's past and planned certification is destroying for throw-away consumption an area two times the massive state of Texas," says Dr."This is greenwash of an unmatched immensity, and all RAN (and Greenpeace [3]) supporters are responsible for this destruction of the last primary forests to make Gucci bags, books and toilet paper. Ecological Internet understands this campaign makes some conservationists feel uneasy, yet this is ecological skullduggery of unimagined magnitude. This behavior by any other segment of society would be held to account as well. All environmental groups – and their members and donors – supporting FSC primary forest logging must stop their policy of promoting logging of 500 year old trees for throw away consumer items." Primary rainforests have tremendous species numbers, carbon stores and provide ecosystem services – water, nutrient and energy cycling – required for a habitable Earth. When primary rainforests are lost or diminished through first time industrial harvest – be it outright deforestation or ‘selective' first time logging – local ecological and social conditions deteriorate, regional weather and species distributions change, and the global biosphere and its ability to maintain conditions for life are weakened. Recent ecological science makes clear old forests continue to sequester new carbon, and that selectively logging primary forests leads to more forest fires. All global ecological indicators show Earth and humanity have surpassed the amount of primary, old growth and other intact terrestrial ecosystems that can be lost and still maintain a habitable planet. RAN's lack of primary forest protection vision and minor market campaign tinkering would be laughable if wasn't greenwashing industrial primary forest logging of the ecosystems necessary for humanity's shared survival. These books and shopping bags promoted by RAN are likely from clearcut FSC certified primary boreal forests, or from industrial tropical tree plantations displacing native forests and peoples. Cellulose is one of the most abundant organic compounds, available primarily in the primary and secondary cell walls of green plant matter, as well as in some algae, bacteria and some fungus-like organisms. Cellulose can be converted into biofuels, most commonly cellulosic ethanol, via chemical pre-treatment and fermentation. It is also possible to convert saccarides and starches in to ethanol, however, more cellulose per unit land area is attainable and therefore growing cellulose-rich biomass is deemed a better use of land and has become the common basis for industrial production. Accumulating large quantities of cellulose-rich biomass feedstock is the first stage in the sequence of events that ultimately leads to the fermentation of ethanol for transportation fuel. For industrial use, the source stock is often wood pulp (about 50% of wood is cellulose) or cotton (up to 90% of cotton by mass is cellulose) but increasingly comes from specialized high-biomass energy crops such as corn, cultivated poplar trees and low-maintenance perennial grasses like switch-grass. Researchers are examining the potential of dedicated energy crops, including certain wood and grass species, in order to offset the extent to which rising demand for ethanol may effect crops pricing. Once crop has been accumulated, it is pre-treated. Pre-treatment involves soaking the feedstock in concentrated enzymes and acids;pre-treatment can also involve heating the stock. This process disengages unwanted polymers, such as hemicellulose and lignin, from the cellulose base prior to hydrolysis. Under current production standards, pre-treatment is the most expensive step in the production process and is open to refinement through research and development efforts. Next, the pre-treated base undergoes hydrolysis. The goal of the hydrolysis step is to reduce the cellulose in to its component sugars. The hydrolysis can be performed in two ways: chemically using acids, or enzymatically. Enzymatic hydrolysis is a process similar to that which occurs in the stomachs of ruminant animals. Further enzyme treatment with cellulase enzymes breaks down the cellulose in to double glucose molecules, called cellobiose. Cellobiose is then reduced to single glucose by contact with a second type of cellulase enzyme. Chemical hydrolysis is the traditional means of breaking down cellulose in to free sugars prior to fermentation. The cellulose is exposed to acids under heat and pressure. When exposed to water the reaction results in free sugars. A significant disadvantage in this process is that the harshness of the hydrolysis results in the production of toxic by products which can be carried through to hinder fermentation. The final stage in the process is microbial fermentation. Microbes ferment the sugars to ethanol. Bakers yeast has always been the favoured agent in fermenting ethanol from sugars. Recent advances have led to other micro-organisms, such as Escherina coli, which have been engineered to increase fermentation rates. Fermentation yields a mix of ethanol, water, microbes and some residues. The resultant ethanol is purified through distillation. As global demand for ethanol rises, increased research and development efforts will be brought to bear on all stages of the ethanol production process. We can think of a greenhouse in much the same way as a mini version of the Earth, with its atmosphere being made up of glass instead of the layers of gas found surrounding our planet. Much like the Earth as well the earthy greenhouse floor is heated as a result of radiant energy which is subsequently reflected back into the atmosphere (or, in this case, the inside of the greenhouse) as heat. The way in which the greenhouse produces and maintains a decent environment and atmosphere in which its inhabitants can thrive differs greatly from how the Earth's atmosphere operates, however, as a greenhouse maintains a virtual closed system apart from the standard open systems found on the planet. First, the greenhouse's glass roof and sides allow for the entrance of the majority of solar wavelength radiation, with the glass tints generally reflecting the longer wavelengths that are produced as a result of the warmed Earth as well as the plants growing inside the greenhouse. Differing from the Earth's atmosphere, however, greenhouses also prevent warm air from exiting as it rises from the ground inside. This is known as convection. In this way, greenhouses both use radiant energy and also save it via their limiting of convection. Greenhouses must also contain methods of controlling the amount of radiant heat that comes in as well as the circulation of heat. Greenhouses that are on a smaller scale often use black netting which is draped over parts of the building in order to prevent incoming radiation, whereas larger greenhouses may have whitewashed sections to reflect excess energy. Air may also be circulated with the use of fans, which mixes the air as well as forces warm currents downwards from the roof. Fans also work by reducing the internal levels of humidity and condensation, which may well otherwise result in instances of rot and fungus. The maintenance and operation of a greenhouse will also be complicated by daily weather events and cycles. For instance, cloudy and rainy days will result in far less incoming energy for the greenhouse, whereas sunnier days will bring in more. Also, instances of wind, rain and snow take heat from the glass and plastic covering, limited the ecosystem of the greenhouse. The changing seasons as well as changes in temperature can further alter such factors as the actual angle of incoming sunlight which will change the intensity of incoming solar radiation, in turn affecting the internal ecosystem of the greenhouse. In cooler climates greenhouse owners might also need extra heating and lighting sources and equipment in order to keep the atmosphere of the greenhouse stable and consistent for plants, particularly during winter. Owners should be aware of the delicate climate balance on the operation of a greenhouse. For example, a sunny winter's day may well cause a greenhouse to heat to problematic levels more quickly than a cloudy summer's day, due to the fact that it is solar radiation rather than exterior temperature that play the critical role in heating the surface in order to facilitate the growth of plants. It is the management of air-mixing as well as the day-to-day operations that are so crucial in keeping the atmosphere stable and consistent for growing plants. Solar car races have existed for a number of years, with many such as the American Solar Challenge that runs a 1,100 mile course from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma to Naperville, Illinois having gone on for roughly 20 years now. These races have even become so well known in many media cultures to have become the focus of some movies, such as the 1996 comedy-drama Race the Sun. Beyond simply being an interesting pastime, however, these races have a very real benefit to many alternative energy industry personnel and have played an active role in helping to shape the modern solar power industry. Focusing on the most efficient and effective usage of energy possible from solar photovoltaic cells available today, solar car participants must use their engineering skills to develop a vehicle that is both light weight and energy efficient enough to allow them to achieve both speed and endurance into a small craft to make the substantial run between cities. This means that existing designs must be scrutinized, analyzed and modified each year by experienced engineers that may or may not be professionals in their fields in order to bring about the best possible results. Much like the F1 race engineers allow for more than simply the design of cars with their car designs being able to be applied to airplanes and other streamlined vehicles the concepts behind the engineering that is used in these solar races can apply to any number of situations. Higher efficiency energy relays allowing for better collection and conversion of solar power for immediate use, for instance, can be developed for usage in the race setting which can then be converted for usage in other areas of power generation. Further, solar cell arrays that are designed for car usage during the race in order to maximize their potential power collection ability throughout the day can also be applied to stationary structures in order to better allow for energy production in both commercial and industrial scenarios. Finally, the races exist each year as a way to stress test new technologies and techniques that have been under development over the year and need an effective, hands-on way to experiment with new technology in order to fully explore its strengths and weaknesses in highly stressful situations in order to push it to its limit and truly see how effective it can remain in any number of situations other than purely static developments or in specialized lab environments. Finding a sustainable, realistic source of energy has long been a goal for many developers around the world, with some countries investing heavily in alternative energy production methods in order to better develop both a strong infrastructure for power generation as well as help offset their own individual energy needs throughout the year. While alternative energy is generally hailed as a boon over much of that generated by conventional petroleum-based fuels due to the typically lower carbon dioxide output level this does not mean that it is necessarily positive in all aspects. As but one example of a common drawback that is associated with many alternative energy production methods even simple magnetic discs used for many electricity generating motors (such as those used in wind and water turbines) have take their own environmental toll upon their surroundings during their production. While the primary magnetic source first used by humans was lodestone, modern day magnets necessary for motors to function at the highest possible efficiency are generally made with neodymium a combination of rare earth elements that can hold a strong, steady charge for the life of the magnet. While lodestone is a naturally occurring substance found within the Earth neodymium magnets require a number of different compounds to be processed and combined for effective use. Unfortunately for our environment, however, these materials are best harvested in one place in particular land left after the felling of a rainforest. The reason for this is that the trees, during the course of their long growth cycle, have naturally brought up and deposited many of the materials (such as neodymium, iron, iron-boron, dysprosium, cobalt, copper, gallium, aluminum and other trace minerals) towards the surface of the earth and retained them in those aras. By doing so the land under a deforested rainforest patch allows for large quantities of the minerals to be harvested for processing and production with minimal effort. Unfortunately the necessity for the destruction of high carbon-absorbing plants can easily be used to argue that any benefits that could possibly be gained through the usage of magnets for energy generation does not make the end result worthwhile. While this is absolutely true in a short-term perspective from a long-term viewpoint this may not necessarily be the case as the land could be re-cultivated and re-planted once the necessarily minerals have been harvested, and the long-term benefits may in fact outweigh the initial damage in the distant future overall. While this is but one example of some of the drawbacks associated with renewable energy it is not the only one. At the same time, however, renewable energy brings with it many benefits that can generally outweigh these drawbacks. Just be sure as a consumer to bear in mind at all times that there are pros and cons associated with any situation, and approaching everything with an open mind ready to accept each of these is necessary to make the best informed decision possible. Most people understand what an independent public inquiry is. Except climate scientists and politicians. In a public inquiry, a third party with no interest in the outcome typically a judge is appointed by government with a mandate to investigate an issue of public concern. The inquiry has its own legal counsel, investigators and budget. It has the power to compel witnesses to testify publicly, to cross-examine them, to demand documents and call in outside experts. By that standard, the three official inquiries into Climategate the last of which recently exonerated scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (UEA) again were farces. Two were cases of the UEA appointing sympathetic academics to investigate itself. The third was a one-day hearing before a British parliamentary committee in a country that has been at the forefront of global warming hysteria. Climate gate involved the unsanctioned release of thousands of e-mails and documents by leading climate scientists. The most infamous came from former CRU director Phil Jones about using a trick to hide the decline in temperatures, plus discussing with colleagues ways to hide data from freedom of information requests under U.K. law. The latest inquiry found what the two previous ones did the science of climate change is sound (surprise!), but researchers were unprofessionally secretive. While war mists declared victory with each predictable report, and are still fighting skeptics over the credibility of various claims in the 2007 report of the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which basically described global warming as an existential threat, much of the public has stopped listening. International polls show concern over climate change dropping even in countries such as Germany, which has heavily invested in renewable energy and most significantly in the U.S., the worlds No. 2 greenhouse gas emitter. With China, the worlds largest emitter, refusing to accept hard emission targets, global negotiations to draft a successor agreement to the (widely ignored) Kyoto accord, which expires in 2012, are stalled. Therell be another attempt in Cancun this November after talks all but fell apart in Copenhagen last December, but the effort is losing steam. One reason is the realization global, centrally-imposed diktats to cut emissions over mandated time frames mindful of the former Soviet Unions absurd five-year plans for the production of tin dont work. Another is politicians now have to move from promising to lower emissions, which is easy, to lowering them, which, as the public is discovering, is ruinously expensive, doesnt work and will lead to power shortages. Optimists might say, as Newsweek did Monday in an essay, A Green Retreat: Why the environment is no longer a surefire political winner, that climate change is finally being put into perspective as one of many challenges we face, not necessarily the most significant. Unfortunately, the global political fight never has been about the environment, but about expanding government power domestically and creating, internationally, a socialist, money-sucking scheme to transfer wealth from the first world to the third. That effort is proceeding. Its how Stephen Harper accurately described Kyoto, before he became prime minister and stopped talking about the issue honestly. As for the opposition parties, theyre so uninformed about the devastating economic consequences of what theyre advocating, its just scary. Pennsylvania has begun a drive to build the first facility in the nation that would transform coal and biomass into jet fuel. The Pennsylvania Financing Authority gave Houston-based startup Accelergy Corporation $175,000 earlier this month to help fund a study for a $1 billion coal-biomass-to-liquid (CBTL) production plant that would produce 8,000 to 10,000 barrels of fuel a day. The funding will come out of the state's clean energy coffers, despite outrage from critics. Observers say approval of the full facility is very likely. State Rep. David. R. Kessler (D), the lawmaker behind the push, said it would be the first "clean domestic fuel" plant of its kind and would be a boon to clean fuels technology in the state. "This study marks a tremendous step in seeding a renewable energy future for Pennsylvania," Kessler said. "The clean fuels industry has the potential to revitalize our region, providing green jobs and solidifying our Commonwealth as a leader in the New Energy Economy." Supporters, like Kessler, argue that coal-based fuels are greener than conventional crude and ethanol. But environmental groups remain adamantly opposed, warning that any 'green' claims are misleading. Joseph Minott, executive of the Clean Air Council, a statewide environmental group, said it is "absurd" to think of coal as clean energy. "Modern technology might be able to reduce some of the emissions," Minott told SolveClimate. "But coal from cradle to grave produces a tremendous amount of pollution, and there's no way of getting around that." Accelergy, which teamed up with military contractor Raytheon and algae biotech firm A2BE Carbon Capture to develop the plant, says its gasification process would produce 20 percent fewer emissions than conventional sources. This is in large part due to the algae component developed by Denver-based A2BE. The technology would soak up carbon dioxide as the liquid fuel is being made. Further, the oxygen released by the algae farms would be pumped back into the facility to create a more efficient way of using coal, the company claims. Mark Allen, CEO and co-founder of A2BE, called the process a "very good first step" to cut the carbon footprint of coal-based fuels. Air Force Leading the Charge The leftover algae would be used to make a high-energy fertilizer trademarked by A2BE to grow crops and sequester heat-trapping CO2 in the soil, Allen told SolveClimate. The announcement comes as the U.S military scrambles to secure flows of transportation fuel from non-petroleum-based domestic sources. The U.S. Air Force is leading the charge, with a goal of getting 50 percent of its fuel spun from home-grown synthetic sources that deploy carbon capture technologies. In March, Accelergy began production of its CBTL technology at a pilot facility at the University of North Dakota. The U.S Air Force is evaluating the process as the industry standard, the company says. Accelergy CEO Tim Vail said in a March news release that his firm is "the first to provide 100 percent synthetic jet fuel for the [U.S. Air Force]. "The Air Force will likely be the recipient of the fuel at the pilot scale," Allen said of the Pennsylvania plant. Kessler said the Pennsylvania plant would be built alongside a coal plant, produce electricity and fuel and would create 2,500 construction jobs and employ 700 to 1,000 people upon completion. Pennsylvania is the nation's fourth biggest coal-producing state. For Minott, efforts to develop a "new use of coal" is at odds with the push to slow global warming. "Finding more uses for coal seems to me just very counterproductive," Minott said. "There are ways of producing tremendous amounts of electricity and energy that dont pollute the environment and it seems to me thats where taxpayer money should be going not in continuing to exploit coal," he added. Allen said that even if all renewable sources and efficiency upgrades are maximized, the nation would still have an energy gap to fill over the next several decades. "Inevitably coal gets used," he added. "The integrated use of coal and biomass to get the fuel does lower the CO2 emissions in the use of coal, even compared to the use of petroleum." Algae Gets Added to Mix The technology to convert coal into liquid fuel is well-established, dating back to the 1920s. SASOL, a South African coal firm, is the world's largest producer of coal-based liquid fuels and runs a plant that produces around 150,000 barrels a day. The gasification process, known as Fischer-Tropsch, results in twice the levels of CO2 than oil."The best Fisher-Tropsch will get you for each ton of coal two barrels of fuel," Allen said. Accelergy's technology would double that output to four barrels of fuel, he claims. With coal liquefaction technology patented by ExxonMobil, venture capital-backed Accelergy began attracting interest from the Department of Defense in 2008. Its prototype plant will burn a biomass called camellia, a plant native to Europe and Central Asia that has been used produce vegetable oil and animal feed. But it does not solve the problem of carbon pollution, Allen said. This, he added, is where algae comes in. Allen claims that adding algae into the mix increases productivity to six barrels for every ton of coal. The technology is not running on a commercial scale and will debut with the Pennsylvania prototype, said Jeff Mettais, VP of business development at A2BE. Mettais told SolveClimate that A2BE is the "only algae production company involved" in a coal-to-liquids plant production. Minott, of the Clean Air Council, said his group "certainly would look to stop" the plant. According to A2BE, there are now a number of major universities involved and momentum is building up. "The universities, and industry and the political aspects are lining up around this in a very unique way to take this further through the pilot plant and then the real possibility that there will be an integrated refinery in Pennyslvania," Allen said. The process known as the greenhouse effect earns its description from a comparison between the temperature of air inside a greenhouse compared to the air outside. Known to many as global warming, it is one of the most frightening man made phenomena of the 21st century. At the end of 2006, scientists confirm that the average temperature of the planet has shown an increase of up to 1 C every year for the last five. This increase had proved beneficial for just a few regions in the World especially those of higher latitude. However, the negative impacts of the greenhouse effect on the World's climate change are being observed already through the overall effect in constant annual temperature increases. Overall the effects of global warming have proved to be disturbing, a prominent example is the increasing levels of acidity being detected in sea water due to increased evaporation levels. This could trigger off a long term reaction that could bring catastrophic effects on the marine food chain. Changes to the polar ice packs and glaciers are occurring on an ongoing basis, and scientific evidence has proven that these areas are warming up at a much more rapid rate than the global average. The frightening statistic is temperatures in the far north have by between 5-7 degrees Celsius in the last 50 years. No need to say that if the greenhouse effect continues at this level then we can expect a catastrophe of global promotions, and sometime within the next twenty to fifty years. Rainfall has decreased dramatically over the last decade, with drought conditions being felt in Western Australia and the deep south of America, where just a few years ago this situation was unheard of. Shortages of drinking water has become a way of life for billions throughout the World, and with populations rising, this will soon reach epidemic proportions. Water for agriculture is also in increasingly short supply due to the greenhouse effect, bringing with it shortage of the most basic food supplies. There is no doubt that the greenhouse effect has changed our lives, and will affect the lives of our children and our grandchildren even more so. Awareness of the problem is in the increase and technological advances may go a long way to curtailing it in the future. Let us hop for our future that mankind will be able to halt if not reverse the damage being done to the World's climate through the greenhouse effect. Lebanons climate change conundrum As a small country, Lebanon punches above its weight in many spheres. Its financial sector is apparently invulnerable to global shocks;it has the largest stockpile of gold in the Middle East. Lebanons graduates are some to the best qualified on the planet;tri-lingual ex-pat businessmen and entrepreneurs frequently occupy top positions in corporations the world over. But when Prime Minister Saad Hariri spearheads his countrys delegation at this weeks COP15 climate change summit in Copenhagen he will bring with him perhaps the biggest Lebanese surfeit of all: carbon emissions. According to the Beirut-based environmental NGO, the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED), Lebanon produces 0.07 percent of the worlds man-made CO2. Given Lebanons tiny population of around 4 million (no official census has been conducted here since 1936) its per-person CO2 emissions rate is 700 times greater than the global average. For its size, Lebanon is environmentally catastrophic. There are several reasons behind each Lebanese polluting so heavily. As desirably located as it is, on the shore of the eastern Mediterranean, with the soaring Mount Lebanon range giving way to the fertile Bekaa Valley plain, Lebanon possesses no natural resources. Its main power stations, at Jiyyeh and Zouq are oil powered, and coal the worst fossil fuel in terms of carbon efficiency accounts for a worryingly large proportion of electricity production. Wael Hmaidan, climate change coordinator at IndyACT Lebanon said that the Lebanese needed to wean themselves off fossil fuels at the soonest opportunity. Coal produces more CO2 than anything else and coal [usage] will prevent Lebanon getting any assistance in the international energy sector. The best alternative for Lebanon at the moment is to go into natural gas, said Hmaidan. Liquefied gas production emits roughly 40 percent less CO2 than coal. This way Lebanon will be reducing its emissions. Renewable energy needs to be introduced to Lebanon over the years, but gas can be deployed immediately and in significant amounts. Environment Minister Mohammed Rahhal indicated on Friday that plans to introduce renewable energy into fuel-thirsty Lebanon were finally afoot. We aim for 12 percent of Lebanons energy to be produced through alternative sources by the year 2012, he said during an environmental conference in Beirut, adding Lebanon should capitalize on its geography to harness plentiful renewable energy supplies. As laudable as this aim is, workable carbon cuts will require cross-party action, not least from the Public Works and Energy Ministries. Lebanon has no centralized transport system. Although its surface area of just over 10,000 sq km makes Lebanon one of the smallest countries in the world, accessing anywhere off the main coastal highway requires a car. This summers bumper tourist crop saw more than two million visitors swell Lebanons already creaking infrastructure. The year-round traffic that cloys at Beiruts streets worsened;an estimated 600,000 cars were imported to allow rich visitors overwhelmingly from the Gulf to truly enjoy Lebanon as their playground, contributing to its comically-oversized carbon footprint in the process. Najib Saab, secretary general of AFED, said that current taxation laws encourage people to act with environmental abandon. There are no regulations on the use of electrical water heaters, for example, he said. You pay more tax on a hybrid car than you pay on a conventional car. This is crazy. Our calculations show that we can cut emissions by 40 percent by still using conventional fuels but in a more efficient way. Regardless of climate change, this should be done. Water supply is another concern for Hariris delegation. Less than one square kilometer in 10 of Lebanese soil is suitable irrigated. President Michel Sleiman recently put his weight behind plans to build damns in the south to safeguard water supply in what is proving a controversial proposal. Garabed Kazanjian, Oceans Campaigner for Greenpeace Lebanon, said that damns were not the energy and water-supply panacea that many officials had claimed.As a solution to water problems, we can build reservoirs to trap rainwater, and use according to our needs, he said. The dearth of domestic environmental information risks undermining Lebanons negotiating position at Copenhagen, according to Hmaidan. Lebanon needs to strengthen its position radically, he says. The negotiations go into technical details and so far the Lebanese position hasnt gone into the required details. In Copenhagen they are going to talk about numbers. If Lebanon lacks numbers we are not going to be able to have a strong position. Hmaidans plea for concrete figures was partly answered by Rahhal on Friday, although the data made for uncomfortable reading. The state loses up to 550 million dollars (365 million euros) to pollution annually, 100 million of which is due to climate change, he said. The tourism, health and agriculture sectors will be worst affected by the losses, Rahhal added. Lebanon consumes an estimated 8.42 billion kWh of electricity a year, placing it 90th in the world. Considering that it is the worlds 169th largest country, Lebanon chews through far more than its fair share of voltage. It is also the 78th highest consumer of oil. Wars have taken their own toll on Lebanons ability to be environmentally friendly. Areas of Lebanon are frequently without power;even in Beirut, every household suffers at least three hours a day with no electricity. This is partly a result of mismanagement and partly a product of Israels devastating 2006 July-August assault, which damaged vital infrastructure across swaths of the country, including the aforementioned Jiyyeh plant. Petrol-powered generators take up the slack, pumping ever more carbon into the air. For hours at a time each day, every building in Lebanon becomes its own mini-power station. Military and non-military cleanup operations also contribute hugely to Lebanons carbon footprint, although no statistics on the Lebanese Army and Air Forces emissions are available from the Ministry of Information. Whatever the outcome of Copenhagen, Lebanons politicians appear to be realizing that climate change can no longer be overlooked. The need for action is pressing and the political will is growing. A good thing too, according to Hmaidan: If we dont work on climate change there is no need to work on anything else. The ability to produce clean, effective hydrogen for usage in hydrogen fuel cells on a regular basis has been one of the primary challenges that has been difficult to overcome in the past. This is due to the fact that although hydrogen is known to be the most abundant element in the universe being able to actively harvest it for usage. Most conventional methods to harvest hydrogen from common sources such as water are generally highly energy intensive due to the power necessary to separate hydrogen from other molecules, while additional energy is further necessary to compress the resulting molecules into liquid form for easier storage and transportation. Although many attempts in the past have been made to utilize solar power and other renewable energy sources as a basis for hydrogen power production the actual ability to do this has been somewhat limited due to the technical aspects necessary in the process. Utilizing thin titania electrodes, for instance, has proven particularly challenging as any electrode design for the most part that has proven effective in successfully extracting hydrogen molecules has also proven particularly brittle in most users and therefore not very reliable as a whole. New methods are also being explored into utilizing stressed crystal lattice networks powered by solar energy to successfully extract hydrogen particles for usage around the world in both private or commercial senses due to the ability of the crystal lattices to effectively store and release energy as needed. These have proven highly effective in some senses due to the fact the crystal lattice has proven more durable and reliable as an energy transfer conduit and can maintain steadier streams of energy flow, meaning that a system utilizing such a production method in an area as small as a 50×50 foot roof could potentially generate enough hydrogen fuel to provide enough power for a small home with a family of four. The only downsides that need to be considered in many of these harvesting methods, from an ecological standpoint, is the overall environmental impact the production process may have on the surrounding areas. Magnetic energy, for instance, has proven to be an exceptional potential source of power for utilization in wind turbines and other energy producers, yet often to harvest enough materials to make magnets large portions of rain forest land need to be destroyed and cultivated to extract high enough quality minerals for magnetic production – something that may actually offset any potential benefits alternative energy may offer in at least the short-run if developers are not careful. The second Annual Conference of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) got under way in Beirut on Thursday with a dire warning: We are not doing enough to prevent catastrophe. With less than three weeks to go before the COP15 climate change summit in Copenhagen, diplomats, policy makers and academics from across the Arab region convened to tackle the issue of global warming. As secretaries of state from the Gulf, North Africa and Europe assembled in the lavish conference hall at Beirut's Habtoor Hotel, environmental experts warned that the effects of climate change could devastate the Arab region if carbon emissions continue unchecked. Dr. Mostafa Kamal Tolba, president of AFED and co-editor of the report, Impact of Climate Change on Arab Countries, said that far greater effort was required of Arab leaders to tackle environmental damage. "The report for this year reveals a top priority for the whole world, especially given that the Copenhagen summit is happening soon," he said. "Every country in the world will suffer from climate change." Although the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region produces only 5 percent of global carbon emissions, experts warned the area will be especially devastated by projected rises in air and sea temperatures. AFED is an initiative of Le­banon's Environment and Development magazine, whose publisher and editor in chief Najib Saab co-wrote the report with Tolba. Dr. Rashed Bin Fahed, the United Arab Emirates environment and water minister, said the issue must be treated as a higher priority by Arab nations. "There is no doubt climate change today is a fact. It's true that our region is not contributing to this. However, the threats of climate change to our region maybe very dangerous," he said. "We need a long term plan because the Arab region is facing many threats. "We all know our government will pay a high cost, but in the future governments will pay a higher cost still." Thomas Egebo, Danish permanent Secretary of State for the Climate and Energy Ministry and president of Copenhagen summit said that any deal on curbing emissions would need international cooperation. Labeling global warning "the challenge of our time," Egebo called on the Arab world to be a key participant in negotiations. "We need your support and help. Our aim is an agreement that will set the world on track. To achieve this, all countries must be part of the effort, respecting the principle of a common but differentiated responsibility," he said the Copenhagen conference is seeking to draw up a legal framework binding countries to commit to various curbs on their respective CO2 emissions. "We cannot do half at Copenhagen and postpone the rest until later," said Egebo. "The agreement will cover all the key issues. We do not share the view it is possible to do some part of the commitment and not the other. We need the commitment, we need the figures and we need the action." The conference was held under the patronage of President Michel Sleiman. In a statement delivered to attendees, Sleiman stressed that action against climate change required international cooperation. "The diversity of participants [at the conference] highlights the international nature of environmental issues," he said. "Our Arab region, as a part of the earth, is suffering from the negative impact of climate change [such as] scarcity of drinking water ... and the decrease of fertility of land. This is not simple exaggeration;it is fact." Sleiman's statement referred to the issue of water management in Lebanon and criticized Israel for damaging the country natural reserves. "Israel has insistently exploited the use of our water for decades. We need to double our efforts to maintain our water resources," he said. Sleiman also cited the bombing of the Jiyyeh power plant and Israeli cluster bombs as examples of Israeli environmental damage to Lebanon. Thursday's opening featured a presentation from a pan-Arab group of high-school students, who spoke about green initiatives and the importance of preserving natural resources for future generations. Reine Shreiha, 16, from Al-Mawakeb School in Barja, said that a youth contingent at the conference was vital. "Without the youth taking part in any of this, you can't take it for granted that generations to come won't take the same actions as [the current generation]," she said. "The way we are living now is catalyzing [climate change]. If we don't act now, we can't even imagine what will happen." A speech by Suleiman al-Herbish, director general of the OPEC fund for international development (OFID) was interrupted by protesters from Lebanese environmental NGO IndyACT, who stormed the stage and unfurled a banner, which read: "Arabs are more than oil." The gesture emphasizes the challenge facing the oil producing nations of the MENA region. The Gulf alone accounts for a third of the world's crude oil production - exporting roughly 18 million barrels a day - and Herbish stressed that weaning the region onto more sustainable energy forms would not be easy. "This sort of [nonrenewable] energy permitted development for the last 100 years, so moving away from it will be difficult." Tolba criticized Arab governments for not tackling the issue of climate change seriously enough. "We have no Arab policies that are current;in fact, to handle the impact of climate change we have no long term plans," he said. "Efforts from our ministers and ministries are not sufficient at all. We acknowledge that we [humans] are the cause of the problem, but what about the future? "We need to cooperate on an international level;there's no other alternative." Beirut, 20 November 2009 Lebanese President General Michel Sleiman received a delegation of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development board of trustees, who presented to him AFED's annual report about the impacts of Climate Change on Arab Countries. President Sleiman said the state of the environment cannot be improved without the civil society. He told the delegation that, when he was leader of the Lebanese army and saw environmental damage, he dreamt of establishing environmental court martial to stop it, just like military court martial, because these criminal acts cannot wait. The AFED delegation also visited Prime Minister Saad Hariri in the evening and presented the report and the conference recommendations. The AFED annual conference continued its sessions today Friday, about Arab environment: Climate Change. Towards lower carbon economy: challenges and opportunities was the theme of a session chaired my Suleiman Al-Herbish, director general of the OPEC Fund for International Development. Dr. Mohammed El-Ashry, member of the International Commission on Climate and Development, talked about policies of lower carbon economy and implications on developing countries. He said that there is a golden opportunity to confront climate change and to address simultaneously the linked challenges of finance, jobs, energy, health, water and food that the world has been facing recently. In 2008 $155 billion were investment in renewable energy. Recently, a consortium of European corporations and investment banks proposed to develop a massive solar thermal energy project in North Africa generating more than 300,000 megawatts, much of it for export to Europe. Al-Ashry called the Arab countries to become a leader on the mitigation front by investing in clean energy. Carol Sanford, CEO of Development Economics Group International, discussed the transfer from carbon neutral to carbon positive. Dr. Marwan Iskandar, CEO of MIA, noted that while having 60 percent of world oil reserves, Arab countries only supply 20 - 22 percent of world oil consumption. He called Arab countries to sponsor a report on greenhouse gases and development in the Arab world, similar to the Stern Report. An open discussion was followed by two special presentations: State of the Arab environment, and solar feed on the Abu Dhabi grid. Jordanian Environment Minister Khaled Irani chaired a special session about AFED's Arab Green Economy Initiative. Panelists included Hussein Abaza, UNEP Chief of Trade and Economics, Carol Sanford, and Bashar Zeitoun, director of AFED's Corporate Environmental Responsibility Program. It was followed by corporate presentations of good practices, by Louis Hakim, CEO of Philips Electronics ME;Ronald Portelli, Managing Director of AES;and Dr. Aziz Malek from Audi-Saradar Group. Two breakaway meetings were held. The first dealt with sustainable buildings, where architect Wael Al-Masri from Jordan talked about cultural sustainability and learning from traditional architecture, and Dr. Sadek Owainati, founder and former chairman of Emirates Green Building Council, discussed balancing the pillars of the built environment. The second was about how different sectors are addressing climate change. Faris Hasan, OFID's director of corporate planning and economic services, highlighted biofuels environmental impacts and food security issues. Paul Roach, tendering director at AVERDA, discussed waste management to reduce climate change. Participating ministers of environment and energy held a special panel about coherent policies and what needs to be done by Arab countries to face climate change, chaired by Dr. Mostafa K. Tolba. The conference agreed with the AFED Report that Arab countries are among the most vulnerable to the potential negative impacts of climate change, the most significant of which are water stress, decline in food production, impacts of sea level rise, loss of biodiversity, and worsening human health. The conference called upon Arab governments to develop and implement long-term national low-emission development plans and clear emission reduction targets It has been more than 40 days since the USA and China drafted the toothless "Copenhagen Accord" in cooperation with Brazil, India and South Africa during the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The accord that has sidelined the EU and most developing countries has failed in identifying specific targets for emission reductions. It has also asked all industrial countries to have a commitment to emission reduction by the end of January 2010. Obviously, this is not going to happen. The global campaign against climate change needs all the resources it can derive, and the Arab world should not be an exception. Amazingly, the most vivid criticism of global climate policies from the Arab world has came not from governments, NGOs or the private sector but from the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, the world's most destructive terrorist group. In his latest recording Osama Bin Laden stated that "speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact". He went further to analyze global policies and demand more sustainable use of resources. Arab environmentalists can be better off without the support of Bin laden but they have to me more vocal and effective in their pursuit for civic engagement and advocacy to pressure lenient public action on climate change. The Arab world will not be spared from the impacts of climate change, in fact it will be one of the most affected regions. One of the most comprehensive efforts in documenting the current and proposed impacts of climate change on the Arab world was done by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED). In a landmark report published last November, AFED has provided to the Arab world the best scientifically-researched argument for the urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change. A simulation carried out for AFED by Boston University's Center for Remote Sensing revealed that a sea level rise of only 1 metre would directly impact 41,500 km2 of the Arab coastal lands. The most serious impacts of sea level rise would be in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE. The effects on the region's agricultural sector would mostly be felt in Egypt, where a 1 metre rise would put 12% of the country's agricultural land at risk. It would also directly affect 3.2% of the population in the Arab countries, compared to a global percentage of about 1.28%. Human health would be adversely affected by higher temperatures, mainly due to changes in geographical ranges of disease vectors like mosquitoes, waterborne pathogens, water quality, air quality and food availability and quality. Incidence of infectious diseases like malaria and schistosomiasis will increase, mainly in Egypt, Morocco and Sudan. Malaria, which already infects 3 million people annually in the Arab region, will become more prevalent and enter new territories as higher temperatures reduce the incubation period, spread the range of malaria-bearing mosquitoes and increase their abundance. Higher CO2 concentrations and fiercer and more frequent sand storms in desert areas will increase allergic reactions and pulmonary diseases all over the region. Food production would face an increased threat, affecting basic human needs. Harsher and expanding aridity and changes in the spans of seasons may cut agricultural yields in half if no alternative measures are applied. Urgent adaptive measures are required, including changes in crop varieties, fertilizer and irrigation practices. An increase of between 1-4°C in average temperature will cause a drastic decline in the index of tourism comfort all over the region. Areas classified between "good" and "excellent" are likely to become "marginal to "unfavourable" by the year 2080, mainly because of hotter summers, extreme weather events, water scarcity and ecosystems degradation. Bleaching of coral reefs will affect tourism in countries in the Red Sea basin, mainly Egypt and Jordan. Beach erosion and sea level rise will affect coastal tourist destinations, mainly in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, especially in locations where sandy beach stretches are narrow and buildings are close to the shoreline. Biodiversity in the Arab countries, already deteriorating, will be further damaged by intensifying climate change. A 2°C rise in temperature will make extinct up to 40% of all the species. The Arab countries have many unique formations that are especially vulnerable to climate change risk, such as the cedar forests in Lebanon and Syria, the mangroves in Qatar, the reed marshes of Iraq, the high mountain ranges of Yemen and Oman, and the coastal mountain ranges of the Red Sea. Regulations in the Arab region largely ignore basic adaptation requirements to climate change. An estimated 75% of buildings and infrastructure in the region are at direct risk of climate change impacts, mainly from sea level rise, higher intensity and frequency of hot days and storm surges. Reliability of transportation systems, water supply and wastewater networks, and energy generation stations will be at risk The AFED report moves from diagnosis to recommending action as it states that Arab countries should immediately start their preparations to tackle the impacts of climate change in the following sectors: a. Water Resources: Improve efficiency, especially in irrigation, and develop new water resources including innovative desalination technologies. b. Food Production: Develop new varieties of crops that can adapt to higher temperatures and different spans of seasons, need less water, and withstand higher levels of salinity, and establish a regional genetic bank. c. Sea Level Rise: Adapt land use regulations to the potential rise in sea level, by increasing the minimum clear distance required between buildings and shoreline. d. Infrastructure and buildings: Choice of construction materials and techniques used for buildings, roads, and utility networks should consider the risk of rising temperatures and storm surges, to make them resilient to climate change. e. Biodiversity: develop mechanisms for coordinating conservation actions across political boundaries and agency jurisdiction, to support the survival and resiliency of species at a regional scale. f. Human Health: Adapt human health systems and prepare them to respond to the consequences of climate change, mainly the spread of disease vectors, alongside allergic and pulmonary diseases caused by increased drought and fiercer sand storms. g. Tourism: Explore and promote options for alternative tourism less vulnerable to climate variability, such as cultural tourism. Countries with low-lying coastal areas should develop alternative inland tourist destinations. Moreover AFED demands that Arab countries should immediately start implementing programmes for sustainable use of precious and finite oil and gas resources, investments in developing effective technologies for cleaner use of oil like carbon capture and storage, developing programmes for enhancing traditional energy efficiency and renewable energy including the sun and wind. Each country should establish a higher council for climate change with the participation of all relevant ministries and the presidency of the higher authority in the state, in addition to the establishment of a technical committee that provides the council with assessments about climate change and possible response measures. They should also establish a regional center to coordinate research, data and scientific knowledge in climate change issues and support the training and research activities needed to build the capacities of human resources. It is better for Arab governments, NGOs, private sector and academia to take action soon before it becomes too late. Any investment in these efforts now will minimize the eventual cost of mitigation and adaptation after few years as some problems may even become irreversible. Whats Killing the Great Forests of the American West? Across western North America, huge tracts of forest are dying off at an extraordinary rate, mostly because of outbreaks of insects. Scientists are now seeing such forest die-offs around the world and are linking them to changes in climate. For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. Thats when her quarry tiny, black, mountain pine beetles hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again. Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And thats not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees;now they do so all the time. Whats more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, its decreased to one year. Such shifts make it an exciting and unsettling time to be an entomologist. The growing swath of dead lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest is a grim omen, leaving Six and many other scientists and residents in the West concerned that as the climate continues to warm, these destructive changes will intensify. Pine Beetle Damage Photo by iStock Scientists say massive forest die-offs from tree-killing pests are a symptom of a larger problem: warming temperatures and increased stress caused by climate change. A couple of degrees warmer could create multiple generations a year, she said, as she chopped off a piece of bark on a dead lodgepole pine to show the galleries of burrowing larvae. If that happens, I expect it would be a disaster for all of our pine populations. Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an extraordinary scale, unprecedented in at least the last century-and-a-half and perhaps much longer. All told, the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States have seen nearly 70,000 square miles of forest an area the size of Washington state die since 2000. For the most part, this massive die-off is being caused by outbreaks of tree-killing insects, from the ips beetle in the Southwest that has killed pinyon pine, to the spruce beetle, fir beetle, and the major pest the mountain pine beetle that has hammered forests in the north. These large-scale forest deaths from beetle infestations are likely a symptom of a bigger problem, according to scientists: warming temperatures and increased stress, due to a changing climate. Although western North America has been hardest hit by insect infestations, sizeable areas of forest in Australia, Russia, France, and other countries have experienced die-offs, most of which appears to have been caused by drought, high temperatures, or both. One recent study collected reports of large-scale forest mortality from around the world. Often, forest death is patchy, and research is difficult because of the large areas involved. But the paper, recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, reported that in a 20,000-square-mile Dead forests now carpet the mountains and have transformed life in many parts of the Rockies. Savanna in Australia, nearly a third of the trees were dead. In Russia, there was significant die-off within 9,400 square miles of forest. Much of Siberia has warmed by several degrees Fahrenheit in the past half century, and hot, dry conditions have led to extreme wildfire seasons in eight of the last 10 years. Russian researchers also are concerned that warmer, dryer conditions will lead to increased outbreaks of the Siberian moth, which can destroy large swaths of Russias boreal forest. While people in some places have the luxury to doubt whether climate change is real, its harder to be a doubter in the Rocky Mountains. Glaciers in Glacier National Park and elsewhere are shrinking, winters are warmer and shorter, and the intensity of forest fires is increasing. But the most obvious sign is the red and dead forests that carpet the hills and mountains. They have transformed life in many parts of the Rockies. It has hit home for me on a personal level. Virtually every one of the hundreds of old-growth ponderosa pines on the 15 acres of land where I live near Helena, Montana is dead, and we are surrounded by a valley of dead and dying forest. Most trees have been logged and taken to a pulp mill, where they were turned into cardboard for boxes. The tiny mountain pine beetle, which is just a quarter of an inch long, has destroyed nearly 70,000 square miles of forest in the Rocky Mountains. University of Montana ecologist Steve Running says warmer temperatures in the Rockies bring spring earlier and fall later, each by about a week, yet precipitation has remained about the same. That translates into a drought, and stressed trees are highly susceptible to beetle infestations. Wintertime minimum temperatures in the 1950s, meanwhile, ranged from 40 F to 50 F below zero. Thats risen to the 30-below range, and there are fewer days when minimums are reached. Its not getting cold enough anymore to kill the beetles, which over-winter in their larval stage and survive the milder temperatures because they are filled with glycol, a natural anti-freeze. In addition, the past suppression of fire and the fact that many Western trees are reaching the age at which beetles target them 80 to 100 years are also factors in the widespread loss of forests. So the forests across the West are dying, in such large numbers that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar called it the Wests Hurricane Katrina. In Colorado and southern Wyoming, the U.S. Forest Service has created an emergency management team to cut down dead trees around towns and along roads and power lines. Forest Service campgrounds and trails have been closed because of the hazard from dead trees, and communities surrounded by dead forests have drawn up emergency evacuation plans for residents. Large-scale die-offs have occurred in the past. Mountain pine beetles are native to the West and are part of the ecosystem. Lodgepole forests regenerate through large-scale stand replacing events, which include fire and insects. The die-offs now, though, are on a scale unprecedented since Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called it the Wests Hurricane Katrina. the West was settled and are so big that they are having unusual impacts on ecosystems. Diana Six contends that the whitebark pine, once largely protected from the beetles because it grew at high altitudes and was shielded by cold, is nearing functional extinction in large portions of its range and may no longer be able to feed grizzly bears and other species that love its high-fat nut. In Mexico, bark beetles are beginning to kill oyamel fir trees in a rare 139,000-acre biosphere preserve where the majority of North Americas monarch butterflies travel each fall to spend the winter. So far, about 100 acres in a core area of 33,000 acres have been killed by bark beetles. Tree-killing bugs arent the only problem. In 2005 Colorado researchers noticed that aspens were suddenly dying in large numbers. That year they found 30,000 acres of dead aspen forest. The next year there were 150,000 acres, and in 2008 it had soared to 553,000. The die-off is called Sudden Aspen Death, or SAD. Its growing at an exponential rate, said Wayne Shepperd, who researches aspen for the Forest Service. Its pretty sobering when you see a whole mountainside or whole drainage of aspen forest dead. Groves at low elevations and facing south are dying fastest, and scientists believe the cause is hotter temperatures and drier weather. Its not only killing mature trees, but the root mass as well. An aspen grove is the offspring of a large single underground clonal mass, which sends up shoots. The whole organism is disappearing and it has profound implications, Shepperd said. When the roots die, groves that are hundreds or thousands of years old arent going to be there anymore. If the die-offs continue, the loss of the aspen trees would be a blow to goshawks, songbirds, and a number of other species that find food and refuge in the groves. Perhaps more than anyone, Craig Allen is familiar with these large-scale forest die-offs. A forest ecologist with the U.S. Geological Surveys Jemez There isnt enough data to draw a conclusion about the reasons for forest die-offs globally. Mountain Field Station in New Mexico, not only are his office and home surrounded by a pinyon die-off, he also is the lead author of the paper with 19 other authors published in Forest Ecology and Management, which sought to document and begin to understand what is happening to forests in North America and around the world as the result of climate change. Coming up with a definitive understanding at this point is impossible, Allen says. Forests are complex, and unfortunately, woefully understudied, and there isnt nearly enough data to draw a conclusion about the reasons behind forest die-offs globally. Theres huge information gaps and uncertainties, says Allen. What contributors were able to do in the paper is collect anecdotal reports of broad-scale forest mortality from around the world. The point of this paper is to connect the dots, at least the ones we can connect, says Allen. We cant even tell you for sure if theres more forest mortality. Theres not consistent monitoring. In 2005 a strong El Nino caused a dramatic drought in the Amazon. It killed forest across the region and is extremely well documented because so many researchers had existing plots there. The heart of the biggest rainforest in the world turned from a carbon sink to a carbon source, said Allen. If you have long-term drought you can bleed a lot carbon into the atmosphere. A lot of beetles can also turn vast tracks of forest from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Take British Columbia, which is ground zero for the mountain pine beetle infestation in North America. Some 53,000 square miles of mature pine forest is dead and the province is projected to lose 80 percent of its mature lodgepole pine trees by 2013. The second largest known die-off there occurred in the 1980s and claimed just 2,300 square miles. Bill Wilson the provinces director of Industry, Trade and Economics Research said he has flown in a plane for hours over the province and seen nothing but dead forest the entire time. In 2008, so much of British Columbias forests had died they also went from being a net carbon sink to carbon source. Diana Six works in Africa where she has seen other die-offs first-hand. In Africa where I work, suddenly whole hillsides are dropping dead, she said. Its happening so fast people are in shock. Its a tragedy. Species include the quiver tree, camel-thorn, and the giant euphorbia, a 30-foot-tall succulent. The causes are not known, but the suspects are hotter and drier weather, or shifting rainfall patterns. Arctic Tundra is Being Lost As Far North Quickly Warms Arctic Tundra The treeless ecosystem of mosses, lichens, and berry plants is giving way to shrub land and boreal forest. As scientists study the transformation, they are discovering that major warming-related events, including fires and the collapse of slopes due to melting permafrost, are leading to the loss of tundra in the Arctic. The paper that Allen co-authored describes 88 well-documented forest die-offs around the world, going back as far as the 1960s and 1970s, although most are in the 1990s and 2000s.If there was a way to predict die-offs, Allen said, land managers could take preemptive action, such as mechanical thinning or prescribed burning to increase the vigor of forests. What gives researchers pause is that many of these large die-offs have occurred with minimal warming, in just a few years. In the West, for example, the average temperature has warmed on average 1.8 F over the past century. This is before we put two to four degrees centigrade (3.6 F to 7.2 F) into the system, said Allen, referring to forecasts for warming by the end of this century. Trees across the world are stressed already from fragmentation, air pollution, and other problems, he said. I dont know how much stress the forests of the world can take, said Allen Madagascars Political Chaos Threatens Conservation Gains Since the government's collapse after a coup last March, Madagascar's rainforests have been plundered for their precious wood and unique wildlife. But now there are a few encouraging signs, as officials promise a crackdown on illegal logging and ecotourists begin to return to the island. by rhett butler Only 10 years ago, Madagascar the California-sized island off the eastern coast of southern Africa was notorious for its environmental degradation and deforestation;astronauts orbiting the Earth remarked that the red color of Madagascars rivers suggested the country was bleeding to death as its denuded mountainsides hemorrhaged topsoil into its waterways. But that began to change earlier this decade when President Mark Ravalomanana, working with international conservation organizations and local groups, set aside 10 percent of the country as parks and nurtured a thriving ecotourism business, all of which slowed deforestation and safeguarded more of the nations legendary biodiversity. Madagascars park system mandated that half of park entrance fees flow back to local communities, ensuring that at least some benefits of ecotourism two-thirds of visitors come to Madagascar for nature-related activities reached people who might otherwise be disadvantaged by conservation initiatives. Indeed the emergence of ecotourism helped make local people partners rather than adversaries in conservation. In short order, Madagascar went from being a pariah of the conservation world to a model. All of which makes the spasm of forest destruction that has swept the country since a coup last March even more tragic. After President Ravalomanana was chased into exile at gunpoint, the civil service and park management system collapsed, and donor funds, which provide half the governments annual budget, dried up. In the absence of governance, organized gangs ransacked the islands protected rainforests for biological treasures including precious hardwoods and endangered lemurs and frightened away tourists, who provide a critical economic incentive for conservation. Now with the prospect of political stability returning, the question is whether Madagascars once highly regarded conservation system can be restored and maintained. One heartening sign, evident during a recent visit, is that locals who have benefited from ecotourism are now pressuring the government to end the widespread destruction that has been a hallmark of this dark year. Isolated from other land masses for at least 80 million years, Madagascar is home to a remarkable and eclectic collection of plants and animals, more than 80 percent of which are found nowhere else in the world. From its mountain moorlands to tropical lowland rainforests, the island boasts such evolutionary oddities as the fossa, a carnivorous mammal that looks like a cross between a puma and a dog but is closely related to the mongoose;the indri, a cat-sized lemur that sings haunting, whale-like songs;brilliantly colored chameleons;and leaf-tailed geckos that are nearly impossible to distinguish from bark or moss. It has baobab trees, which look like theyve been planted upside down;the rosy periwinkle, a delicate flower used to cure pediatric leukemia and Hogkins disease;and an entire desert ecosystem consisting of just spiny plants, none of which are cacti. Scientists are continuing to discover species. The number of lemurs has risen from 50 in 1994 to more than 100 today, while scientists earlier this year announced a near-doubling of the number of frog species known to occur on the island. All but one are endemic. For all these reasons, scientists have made the island dubbed the Eighth Continent a top conservation priority. In the past half-century, however, this rich biodiversity came under tremendous pressure. Forests that once blanketed the eastern third of the island were degraded and fragmented, while endemic spiny forests have been diminished by subsistence agriculture, cattle grazing, and charcoal production. The central highlands have mostly been cleared for pasture, rice paddies, and eucalyptus and pine plantations. Each year as much as a third of the country burns, the result of fires set by farmers and cattle herders clearing land for subsistence agriculture. Meanwhile industrial miners from developed countries are tearing away at some of Madagascars last remaining forest tracts. This destruction left Madagascar with pockets of extraordinary biodiversity, which President Ravalomanana set out to preserve. Lured by its spectacular landscapes, unmatched wildlife, and cultural richness, tourism grew steadily, reaching $390 million in 2008. But these gains were all but erased by the political crisis in March. The democratically-elected Ravalomanana had become increasingly autocratic in his second term, shutting down opposition media outlets, using without government or international support after the coup, little could be done to stop rampant logging. This political power to further his sprawling business interests, and signing controversial deals, including one that reportedly would have turned over half of Madagascars arable land to Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, for export-only crop production. After a series of demonstrations turned violent under questionable circumstances, a faction of army officers allied with Andry Rajoelina, the mayor of the capital city of Antananarivo, overthrew Ravalomanana, who fled to South Africa. In the aftermath of the coup, Madagascars reserves especially in the northern part of the country were ravaged by illegal loggers. Without backing from the central government or support from the international agencies that withdrew aid following the coup, there was little that could be done to stop the carnage. Armed bands, financed by foreign timber traders and at times in collusion with local officials, went into Marojejy and Masoala national parks, harvesting valuable hardwoods, including rosewood and ebonies. In Marojejy, a forested mountain that is among Madagascars most biodiverse parks, armed marauders invaded the reserve, cutting trails, hunting wildlife, and extracting timber. The chaos forced authorities to close Marojejy to tourists its lifeblood for the first time, effectively blocking outsiders from bearing witness to the plunder. Loggers soon moved into Masoala National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site that is considered one of the jewels of Madagascars protected areas. The Masoala Peninsula the site where the bulk of recent rosewood logging has occurred is a place of spectacular beauty, with lush tropical rainforest extending down relatively steep terrain to sand beaches fringed by clear seas and coral reefs. The forests of Masoala and the neighboring Makira are estimated to house 50 percent of Madagascars biodiversity, despite making up less than 2 percent of its land mass. Logging was so intense in Masoala that the supply of cargo boats in the neighboring town of Maroantstra was fully employed to haul rosewood out of the forest none was available for conventional shipping. All told, logging affected 27,000 to 40,000 acres of protected rainforest, according to estimates from Peter H. Raven and his colleagues at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. More than $100 million of timber was cut. Much of it went to China to make wood products that will eventually be sold in Europe and the United States. What was particularly galling for conservationists was that logging was principally for commercial gain by well-connected traffickers, rather than subsistence harvesting by poor Malagasy. Harvesting these extremely heavy and valuable hardwoods is a labor-intensive activity requiring coordination between local residents who The downturn in tourism has made some Malagasy aware of how important visitors are to their well-being. manually cut the trees, but receive little profit, and a criminal network of exporters, domestic transporters, and corrupt officials who initiate the process and reap most of the enormous profits, said Erik Patel, a researcher from Cornell University who studies the Silky Sifaka in Marojejy. Local people benefit very little from rosewood logging. In most cases, rosewood logging is harmful to local people because of loss of tourism and violation of local taboos.At the same time that northern rainforests were being pillaged for their timber, a disturbing new trade emerged: commercial bushmeat hunting of lemurs. In August, Conservation International (CI), an NGO that has been particularly active in Madagascar, released photos showing piles of dead lemurs that had been confiscated from traders and restaurants in northern towns.What is happening to the biodiversity of Madagascar is truly appalling, and the slaughter for these delightful, gentle, and unique animals is simply unacceptable, CIs president, Russ Mittermeier an expert on Madagascars lemurs said at the time. And it is not for subsistence, but rather to serve what is certainly a luxury market in restaurants of larger towns... These poachers are killing the goose that laid the golden egg, wiping out the very animals that people most want to see, and undercutting the country and especially local communities by robbing them of future ecotourism revenue. Tourist arrivals dropped 50 to 60 percent for the year, badly affecting workers employed in the tourism industry. During a September visit to Perinet Special Reserve, the home of the famous singing Indri lemur, nature guides idled in front of lodges, waiting for tourists, and loitered along the road to a mining area, hoping to pick up work as day laborers. The lucky ones had managed months ago to line up temporary work at a $3.8 billion nickel mine run by Sherritt, a Canadian mining firm. The project will eventually send millions of tons of mining sluice to the coastal port of Tamatave via an 85-mile-long pipeline that runs between two protected areas. In Ranomafana, arguably Madagascars best-managed park, tourist arrivals are down by more than 40 percent. Before the coup, in 2008, 24,000 tourists visited the park, generating $1.72 million in revenue, according to an analysis by Patricia Wright, executive director of the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments at Stony Brook University. Recent studies show that wildlife in some African nations is declining even in national parks, as poaching increases and human settlements hem in habitat. Do these trends portend an Africa devoid of wild animals? Long an isolated land with abundant forests and biodiversity, Laos is rapidly developing as China and other Asian nations exploit its resources. One of the first casualties has been the wildlife, now being rapidly depleted by a thriving black-market trade. The downturn has had one salutary effect, however: It has made some Malagasy aware of just how important visitors are to their well-being.Many people didnt believe that bringing vazaha [the local term for foreigners] to the forest helped them, said Claudio, a nature guide in Masoala National Park. But the crisis has shown them that tourism does bring benefits. Everyone is feeling it now the political crisis has become an economic crisis.The fall in tourist revenue has been exacerbated by the loss of donor support. US AID, a major source of finance for conservation projects, and other organizations have frozen funding, while the Peace Corps pulled its volunteers out of the country for months. NGOs have been pleading for governments to restore aid. There are worries that the suspension of projects has eroded confidence among local communities that conservationists are committed to Madagasar for the long haul.But in the past few months, there have been some encouraging signs as calls from conservation groups and media attention have put pressure on the government to take action. Gendarmerie have been sent back into some vulnerable areas, and several local officials have been sacked following investigations that have tied them to illicit wood shipments. While the current government has temporarily authorized the export of timber, officials have said that the trade will be more closely monitored.Tourists also appear to be returning to the island. Operators such as Cortez Travel and Rainbow Tours reported an increase in interest and bookings this past fall. And foreign governments are taking steps to stem the trade in illegal timber. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has invoked the Lacey Act a provision that requires companies in the U.S. to obey environmental laws in other countries to take action against domestic buyers of illegally sourced rosewood. But Madagascar will need more than admonishments from rich countries and stricter enforcement of trade regulations to restore its once-admired protected areas management system. It needs international support and domestic political will to ensure a future for ecotourism and its spectacular wildlife. Canada's energy superpower delusion This is a review of Chapter 8 of Open Canada's Report: A Global Positioning Strategy for a Networked Age A SUPERPOWER IN NEED OF SUPER POWERS First off, Canada is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, an Energy Superpower. This term was first used by Prime Minister Harper on the eve of the 2006 G8 meeting1. As evidence he stated: Canada is the world's third largest producer of gas, seventh in oil production, the biggest hydro-electric generator and the biggest supplier of uranium. Alberta's tar sands are second only to Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil reserve.' Harper also stated Canada believes in "a free exchange of energy products based on a competitive market - not self-serving monopolistic political strategies."' Harper is an economist by training. Mainstream economics demands growth, and growth in GDP is historically highly correlated with growth in energy consumption. Notwithstanding the fact that they are finite, fossil fuels currently provide more than 80% of Canada's energy. Mainstream economic assumptions that the "invisible hand" of the markets will somehow find an alternative to fossil fuels at the scale they are currently used is a pipedream. No combination of renewable and nuclear energy can come close to the energy throughput currently provided by fossil fuels. The Canadian practice of liquidating non-renewable energy resources as fast possible to stoke economic growth is a sell-out to the energy security of future generations. The "Energy Superpower" mindset of Harper and the authors of the Open Canada report show they are not in sync with the geological realities of the energy production and consumption trajectory the world and Canada are on. Let's look at the facts putting Harper's statements into perspective and then at the conclusions of this chapter of the Open Canada report: Canada may be the third largest producer of gas but ranks only 21st in the amount of proved reserves2. We are liquidating our gas reserves as fast as possible as dictated by the markets, not by any coherent energy policy. In Alberta, which produces 80% of Canadian gas, the average initial productivity of a gas well has declined by 72% since 1995, meaning we have to drill nearly four wells today to equal one average well in 1995. Canada's gas production is declining at 8.7% per year3, and the Alberta Energy and Resources Conservation Board projects a further overall decline in Alberta production of 35% from 2009 levels by 20194, which is likely a best case scenario. Of the major gas producers in the world, only Canada has a lower reserve to production ratio than the US. Comparing Canada's oil sands to Saudi Arabia light oil is like comparing apples to oranges. The purported 174 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the oil sands is very energy- and capital- and time-intensive to produce compared to easier conventional oil. As a result, oil sands require much longer timeframes to ramp up production. Exuberant forecasts of five million barrels per day by 2025 have been toned down to perhaps three and a half5, which is still nearly triple current production. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy includes only "Oil Sands under Active Development" in its yearly global reserve reporting6. This puts Canada 11th, not second, to Saudi Arabia as the mantra of the Alberta and Canadian governments state (the balance of the 174 billion barrels are reported by BP as an external line item recognizing its fundamental differences). The Open Canada report states "...oil sands produce $30 billion to $40 billion in annual revenues (depending on oil prices)". These are gross, not net, revenues. At an average oil price of $70 per barrel, including the discounts for the price of bitumen, and an all-in average production cost of $40 per barrel, the oil sands net about $14 billion. Only a very small fraction of this net revenue is recovered by governments in the form of royalties. The Open Canada report also fails to note that Canada imports 0.77 million barrels per day into the Maritimes. This oil is purchased on the world markets in competition with other major oil importers such as the US and Japan. As of March, 2010, if one subtracts imports from exports, Canada is a net exporter of 1.1 million barrels per day7. Canadian net oil exports currently amount to less than 3.6% of the global oil export market8. Although Canada ranks number one in the world for uranium production it ranks fourth in uranium reserves. Canada has s a reserve to production lifetime of 35 years, the lowest of any major uranium producer9. It is true that Canada is the biggest hydro-electric generator, but more than 60% of available sites have been developed, and hydro developments are associated with major environmental impacts. A couple of fundamental facts underlie any discussion of energy in Canada: Canadians are among the highest per capita consumers of energy in the world, exceeding even Americans, and currently consume five times the world average. More than 80% of this consumption is fossil fuels. The lifestyle of Canadians is underpinned by cheap energy. Canada has been liquidating its inheritance of non-renewable fossil fuels as fast as possible in the name of economic growth. There are currently few restrictions other than the markets on the liquidation of these one-time resources that underpin Canadian energy security. The Open Canada report advocates expanding market options to speed the liquidation of Canada's fossil fuels. These include the construction of the Enbridge Gateway pipeline for oil sands exports from Edmonton to Kitimat on the West Coast as well as the construction of an LNG export terminal in Kitimat. Apache has supported the Kitimat LNG export proposal and has also advocated building a 500 kilometre pipeline to connect Kitimat to gas supplies in northeast BC and Alberta. In reality, there are no worries in having our number one customer for oil sands production accept our product period. Mexico, the number three oil exporter to the US behind Canada and Saudi Arabia, has experienced a collapse in what was the number two producing field in the world Cantarell and may soon become an oil importer. Compared to the majority of oil suppliers to the US, Canada is a model of political stability and reliability.When push comes to shove, the Americans, being the greatest oil addicts on earth, will take our oil as there will be few alternatives. As for exporting gas, this is a delusion, based on hype from the US of the potential of shale gas deposits, which is defied by falling Canadian production (now 8.7% per year). Overall declines in Canadian gas production without drilling are 21% per year due to natural depletion, and even replacing this production is going to be very difficult, as evidenced by the steep declines in AERCB forecasts10, let alone growing it for export. The Open Canada report advocates a "National Green Energy Policy" for Canada, which involves, among other things, re-branding the oil sands through technologies such as carbon 10 Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board Report, June, 2010 capture and storage (CCS) to mitigate their carbon footprint. The futility of CCS at scale to mitigate such emissions is the subject of a separate analysis (involving energy waste, complexity, scale, etc.). Moreover, the much maligned ecological footprint of the oil sands is currently related to the extraction of only four billion barrels of oil, not the mess that will be left after extracting the 33 billion barrels "under active development" or the purported 174 billion barrels ultimately available. An alternative focus for the Open Canada report should have been a "National Green Energy Security Policy" for Canada, recognizing the one-time nature of fossil fuel endowment and its importance for future Canadian energy security. As well, fossil fuels will be needed to build the infrastructure required for a much lower energy footprint, which is the only way forward to a more sustainable future. The Open Canada report does, however, make some sensible recommendations, which include: Imposing a carbon tax, which will provide an incentive to reduce consumption and create resources to build infrastructure necessary to lower energy footprints.The creation of a "Clean Energy Fund" from the revenues of the carbon tax to finance lower impact and alternative energy technologies. Recognizing the need to reduce the rate of expansion in the oil sands these resources are not going away, and they will likely be needed for the foreseeable future. Suffice it to say there is really only one sustainable way to reduce emissions from non-renewable fossil fuels and promote energy security, and that is figuring out every conceivable way not to burn them in the first place. This will involve: Recognizing the finite nature and crucial importance of intrinsic energy resources to current well-being and the construction of infrastructure to lower energy throughput. Understanding that the holy grail of economic growth is not worth liquidating our one time heritage of non-renewable resources as fast as possible. Developing a policy to restrict the plundering of Canada's intrinsic non-renewable energy resources by all comers. Energy is a commodity unlike any other as it underpins all aspects of modern industrial society. The finite nature of non-renewable fuels demands a comprehensive plan to manage the power-down that will occur, whether we like it or not. Canada needs a comprehensive strategy to manage this transition. Although the Open Canada report provides some sensible recommendations, it fails to recognize the longer term trajectory we are on with the supply of fossil fuels and energy security for future generations. Failing to address these issues is at our peril. A Climate Change Corrective Perhaps now we can put the manufactured controversy known as Climategate behind us and turn to the task of actually doing something about global warming. On Wednesday, a panel in Britain concluded that scientists whose e-mail had been hacked late last year had not, as critics alleged, distorted scientific evidence to prove that global warming was occurring and that human beings were primarily responsible. It was the fifth such review of hundreds of e-mail exchanges among some of the worlds most prominent climatologists. Some of the e-mail messages, purloined last November, were mean-spirited, others were dismissive of contrarian views, and others revealed a timid reluctance to share data. Climate skeptics pounced on them as evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate research to support predetermined ideas about global warming. The panel found no such conspiracy. It complained mildly about one poorly explained temperature chart discussed in the e-mail, but otherwise found no reason to dispute the scientists rigor and honesty. Two earlier panels convened by Britains Royal Society and the House of Commons reached essentially the same verdict. And this month, a second panel at Penn State University exonerated Michael Mann, a prominent climatologist and faculty member, of scientific wrongdoing. Dr.Mann, who was part of the e-mail exchange, had been accused of misusing data to prove that the rise in temperatures over the last century was directly linked to steadily rising levels of carbon dioxide. His findings, confirmed many times by others, are central to the argument that fossil fuels must be taxed or regulated. Another (no less overblown) climate change controversy may also be receding from view. This one involves an incorrect assertion in the United Nations 3,000-page report on climate change in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.The U.N. acknowledged the error and promised to tighten its review procedures. Even so, this and one or two other trivial mistakes were presented by some as further proof that scientists cannot be trusted and that warming is a hoax. There have since been several reports upholding the U.N.s basic findings, including a major assessment in May from the National Academy of Sciences. This assessment not only confirmed the relationship between climate change and human activities but warned of growing risks sea level rise, drought, disease that must swiftly be addressed by firm action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Given the trajectory the scientists say we are on, one must hope that the academys report, and Wednesdays debunking of Climategate, will receive as much circulation as the original, diversionary controversies. new study by a team at the Dalton Research Institute in the UK projects that carbon dioxide and other gases from air traffic will become a significant source of global warming as they double or triple by 2050. The study was published in the in ACS journal Environmental Science &Technology. Bethan Owen and colleagues note that aviation is not now one of the main drivers of global warming, with international aviation (the source of 60% of carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft) not even included in the Kyoto Protocol. Global air traffic currently contributes to between 2 and 3% of carbon dioxide emissions. However, the scientists' computer model forecast that emissions of carbon dioxide from aviation will likely double or triple within the next 50 years. By 2100, carbon dioxide emissions could increase by up to seven times the current levels, they say. Even though there have been significant improvements in fuel efficiency through aircraft technology and operational management, this has been outweighed by the increase in air traffic. The calculates future global aviation emissions of carbon dioxide and NOx from air traffic under four of the IPCC/SRES (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change/Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) scenarios: A1B, A2, B1, and B2. In addition, a mitigation scenario has been calculated for the B1 scenario, requiring rapid and significant technology development and transition. The team used a global model of aircraft movements and emissions (FAST) to calculate fuel use and emissions to 2050 with a further outlook to 2100. The aviation emission scenarios presented are designed to interpret the SRES and have been developed to aid in the quantification of the climate change impacts of aviation. The team made demand projections for each scenario, determined by SRES economic growth factors and the SRES storylines. The authors examined technology trends in detail and developed for each scenario plausible projections for fuel efficiency and emissions control technology appropriate to the individual SRES storylines. The technology trends that are applied are calculated from bottom-up inventory calculations and industry technology trends and targets. Future emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to grow between 2000 and 2050 by a factor in the range of 2.0 and 3.6 depending on the scenario. Emissions of oxides of nitrogen associated with aviation over the same period are projected to grow by between a factor of 1.2 and 2.7. New report describes the return of acid rain this time its from farms and cars In the 70s and 80s acid rain received lots of attention for being a scourge upon forests and freshwater lakes and streams, poisoning aquatic life, insects and humans as well as corroding monuments and buildings in urban areas. Acid rain never went away, but its levels changed and its sources shifted. You see, acid rain is produced when either sulfur-oxides or nitrogen oxides interact with water in the atmosphere, reducing its ph levels and making it more acidic resulting in nitric and sulfuric acids. In the 70s and 80s the main source of acid rain was sulfur (or sulphur in the UK) emissions from coal plants. When the coal plants chimneys were fitted with flue gas desulphurisation equipment, enforced by environmental legislation in Europe and America, sulphur emissions went down by as much as 85% in the UK, according to an article in the Independent. From an article in Scientific American: whereas sulfur dioxide emissions decreased almost 70 percent from 1990 to 2008, emissions of one NOxnitrogen dioxide (NO2)went down only 35 percent for that same period, and amendment targets have yet to be made, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The principal causes of acid rain from nitric acid are gasses released from fertilizers used in industrial agriculture (both runoff and concentrated animal feeding) motor vehicle emissions and power plant emissions again, coal burning. Looks like poisonous acid rain is caused by more or less the same things that cause climate change. As with climate change, Europe is ahead of the US on acid rain legislation. The Gothenburg Protocol to Abate Acidification, Eutrophication and Ground-Level Ozone was passed in 1999 and signed by 49 countries, but not by the US. Since Gothenburg, Europes nitrogen emissions have fallen by a third, while the USs havent changed. An increasing global population means more farming, more cars and more power. The growing acid rain problem along with climate change and a host of other issues trengthens the position that the current models of industry, economic growth and lifestyle are simply unsustainable