Insurers warns on climate risk

Insurers will warn this week that urgent action is needed to reduce the risks from climate change if insurance is to remain affordable and widely available in the future.

Insurers representing a significant proportion of the UK market, including the biggest names, will this week sign up to a number of principles, supported by the Prince of Wales, for managing and reducing the risks from climate change.

The principles will attempt to encourage individuals and businesses to mitigate the risks from climate change, and will also endeavour to influence government policy.

The action comes as insurers and reinsurers face £3bn of claims from flooding in the UK, and homeowners and companies in flood-prone areas are expected to face higher premiums.

Peter Hubbard, chief executive of Axa’s UK general insurance business, and chairman of the Association of British Insurers’ working group on climate change, warned that if the risks associated from climate change were not reduced, then customers could see further price rises in the future.

“If we don’t reduce the risk as an industry, in conjunction with government and other stakeholders, the incidence of floods is likely to increase and in fact premiums will go up,” he said.

The action is also being announced just ahead of annual negotiations between insurers and the government over the agreement whereby insurers pledge to continue to insure existing customers at risk of flooding.

Link Financial Times

UN Wants More Funds To Tackle Climate Change

The United Nations climate change watchdog called here Monday for more investment and funds to address climate changes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In a report presented to a preparation meeting for the UN climate change summit slated to be held in Bali, Indonesia in December, the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said additional investment and financial flows of up to $210 billion will be needed each year by 2030 in order to maintain greenhouse gas emissions at current levels.
The UN climate change watchdog said the developing countries need a large share of investment and financial flows because of their expected rapid economic growth.
‘If the funding available… remains at its current level and continues to rely mainly on voluntary contributions, it will not be sufficient,’ the report warns.
On Monday, more than 1,000 delegates from over 100 countries gathered in the Austrian capital for the preparation meeting for the UN climate change summit in Bali, which will focus on the financial and economic aspects of battling climate change.
According to the UN report, while the estimated investment flows to developing countries in 2030 represent 46 percent of global needs, the resulting emission reductions achieved by these countries in 2030 would amount to 68 percent of global emission reductions

Link indiaenews

Time for new climate deal, says UN

The UN says momentum is building for tougher long-term action to fight global warming beyond the UN’s Kyoto Protocol and a climate meeting starting in Vienna on Monday will be a crucial part of the process.
Negotiators from more than 100 countries at the August 27-31 talks will seek common ground between industrial nations with Kyoto greenhouse gas caps until 2012 and outsiders led by the US and China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitters.
"Momentum is very much building," for wider action, Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, said. "And Vienna’s going to be crucial." The Vienna talks will try to break a diplomatic logjam and enable environment ministers to agree at a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December to launch formal two-year negotiations to define stiffer long-term curbs on greenhouse gases.

"All countries need to take more urgent action," South Africa wrote in an advance statement for the Vienna talks. "The pace of the climate negotiations is out of step with the urgency indicated by climate science."
Chances of a deal in Bali have risen sharply after reports this year blamed human activities, led by use of fossil fuels, for a changing climate set to bring ever more severe monsoons, heatwaves, droughts and rising seas.
Link Times of India

Time Bomb Ticks In Arctic

If there were any lingering doubts as to how ill-prepared we are to face up to the reality of climate change, they were laid to rest this month when two Russian mini submarines dove two miles under the Arctic ice to the floor of the ocean, and planted a Russian flag made of titanium on the seabed. This first manned mission to the ocean floor of the Arctic, which was carefully choreographed for a global television audience, was the ultimate geopolitical reality TV.

Russian President Vladimir V Putin congratulated the aquanauts while the Russian government simultaneously announced its claim to nearly half of the floor of the Arctic Ocean. The Putin government claims that the seabed under the pole, known as the Lomonosov Ridge, is an extension of Russia's continental shelf, and therefore Russian territory. Not to be outdone, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper hurriedly arranged a three-day visit to the Arctic to stake his country's claim to the region. Although in some respects the entire event appeared almost comical - a kind of late 19th century caricature of a colonial expedition - the intent was deadly serious. Geologists believe that 25 per cent of the earth's undiscovered oil and gas may be embedded within the rock underneath the Arctic Ocean. The oil giants are already scurrying to the front of the line, seeking contracts to exploit the vast potential of oil wealth under the Arctic ice. The oil company BP has recently established a partnership with Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company, to explore the region.

Aside from Russia and Canada, three other countries - Norway, Denmark (Greenland is a Danish possession that reaches into the Arctic) and the United States - are all claiming the Arctic seabed as an extensionof their continental shelves and, therefore, sovereign territory. Under the Law of the Sea Treaty, adopted in 1982, signatory nations can claim exclusive economic zones for commercial exploitation, up to 200 miles out from their territorial waters. The US has never signed the treaty, amidst concerns that other provisions of the treaty would undermine US sovereignty and political independence. Now, however, the sudden new interest in Arctic oil and gas has put a fire under US legislators to ratify the treaty, lest it is edged out of the Arctic oil rush. What makes the whole development so utterly depressing is that the new interest in prospecting the Arctic subsoil and seabed for oil and gas is only now becoming possible because of climate change. For thousands of years, the fossil fuel deposits lay locked up under the ice and inaccessible. Now, global warming is melting away the Arctic ice, making possible, for the first time, the commercial exploitation of the oil and gas deposits. Ironically, the very process of burning fossil fuels releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide and forces an increase in the earth's temperature, which in turn, melts the Arctic ice, making available even more oil and gas for energy. The burning of these potential new oil and gas finds will further increase CO2 emissions in the coming decades, depleting the Arctic ice even more quickly. But the story doesn't stop here. There is a far more dangerous aspect to the unfolding drama in the Arctic. While governments and oil giants are hoping the Arctic ice will melt quickly to allow them access to the world's last treasure trove of oil and gas, climatologists are deeply worried about something else buried under the ice, that if unearthed, could wreak havoc on the earth's biosphere, with dire consequences for human life. Much of the Siberian sub-Arctic region, an area the size of France and Germany combined, is a vast frozen peat bog. Before the previous ice age, the area was mostly grassland, teeming with wildlife.

The coming of the glaciers entombed the organic matter below the permafrost, where it has remained ever since. While the surface of Siberia is largely barren, there is as much organic matter buried underneath the permafrost as there is in all of the world's tropical rainforests. Now, with the earth's temperature steadily rising because of CO2 and other global warming gas emissions, the permafrost is melting, both on land and along the seabeds. If the thawing of the permafrost is in the presence of oxygen on land, the decomposing of organic matter leads to the production of CO2.

If the permafrost thaws along lake shelves, in the absence of oxygen, the decomposing matter releases methane into the atmosphere. Methane is the most potent of the greenhouse gases, with a greenhouse effect that is 23 times greater than that of CO2. Researchers are beginning to warn of a tipping point sometime within this century when the release of carbon dioxide and methane could create an uncontrollable feedback effect, dramatically warming the atmosphere, which will, in turn, warm the land, lakes and seabed, further melting the permafrost and releasing more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Once that threshold is reached, there is nothing human beings can do, of a technological or political nature, to stop the runaway feedback effect. Scientists suspect that similar events have occurred in the ancient past, between glacial and interglacial periods. Katy Walter of the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and her research team calls the permafrost melt a giant "ticking time bomb". A global tragedy of monumental proportions is unfolding at the top of the world, and the human race is all but oblivious to what's happening.

Link Times of india.

Forests key to climate change battle

Fossil fuels are but the slowly accumulated products of ancient photosynthesis now rapidly being converted into other forms of energy, as well as greenhouse gases. Less obvious is that approximately 23 per cent of greenhouse gases accumulating in the last analysed year came from deforestation and biomass burning.
When those gases are counted in, Indonesia is the world's third largest emitter and Brazil the fourth - based on the last year for which there are global calculations - but since then Brazil appears to have reduced annual deforestation by half. How we manage biology, and forests in particular, is clearly part of the problem and potentially part of the solution.
It undoubtedly was thought of before, but after Helmut Schmidt's 1988 Interaction Council meeting on forests, it was abundantly clear that the world's forests had to be managed in global coordination and that a market for carbon was key. In addition to the carbon/greenhouse gas reductions there would be important gains for biodiversity conservation as well.
At the moment only plantation forestry and other land use change qualify for the Kyoto protocol. Today, almost two decades later and with the effects of climate change already evident, the time is at hand for a global bargain on forests.
Urgent action
In the view of some, inclusion of forests in any global carbon trading system will weaken the incentives for the stiff changes that society as a whole needs to make in its energy base. If, however, one looks squarely at the climate change challenge, and the need to keep climate change below the dangerous level (i.e. below two degrees C), it is more than obvious that we need to be doing absolutely everything we can as fast as we can. The potential impacts on the biological fabric of the planet and freshwater make that imperative.
In that context, moving on forests and carbon, while not without its political, social and economic complications, is something that can be done right away.
At the same time, current renewable energy technologies should be deployed with alacrity. Technologies for clean coal and other acceptable forms of energy must be developed on a crash basis and indeed anticipated in the design of all new coal fired plants so that once available conversion will be easily and quickly achieved.
Australia, once again in the forefront with an important technical contribution, has developed a Carbon Accounting System that makes it possible to track progress or lack thereof in managing carbon, and forest carbon in particular. The $200 million global initiative proposed by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull will assist Indonesia and others in improving management and protection of forests, which is an important step in advance of global mechanisms.
The details of course will be important, such as mechanisms to actually get the financial incentives to the right places, especially the communities in the forested regions that deserve reward for forest protection.
It will be important as well that some forests be protected outright as opposed to selectively logged. Some way will need to be devised to provide a biodiversity premium in those cases.
A careful balance between being careful and thoughtful about details and implementation, vs losing precious time through ponderous bureaucratic procedure, will also be key.
Adaptation
As essential as concerted action to prevent dangerous climate change is, it must be accompanied by the management of nature to ease the adaptation to the climate change already taking place.
Ripples of change are being detected in nature worldwide in response to the 0.7 degrees C warming that has already occurred. Plants and animals are on the move, threshold changes are occurring in some ecosystems, and the seas are already 30 per cent more acidic (affecting organisms with calcium carbonate shells).
We know an equal amount of climate change will occur just from existing greenhouse gas concentrations and the lag in climate response. The ripples of change in nature will be succeeded by the shaking of the very biological underpinnings of human civilisation.
There are two ways to minimise impact: one is to reduce other stresses on natural ecosystems such as pollution and invasive species, and the second is to assure natural connections in the landscape so organisms can move freely in seeking required conditions in a changing world. Without the latter the landscape represents an obstacle course to such movement.
The proposal to increase Australia's National Reserve System made by a June workshop of some of Australia's most prominent scientists under the auspices of WWF and IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) would be a keystone contribution to buffering Australia's extraordinary biota from climate change impacts. The price is modest compared to the $23 billion annual economic benefit of nature related tourism.
Climate change demands new thinking and new ways from all. It can sometimes seem so overwhelming as to engender paralysis.
Yet clearly two things of importance that can be done, and done right away, are the forests and carbon trading initiative with Indonesia, and acting at home to buffer Australia's amazing flora and fauna against climate change that cannot be avoided.
These would be good for Australia but would also be an inspiration for the rest of the world.

Link abc.net

Arctic ice dips, islands emerge

Previously unknown islands are appearing as Arctic summer sea ice shrinks to record lows, raising questions about whether global warming is outpacing UN projections, experts said. Polar bears and seals have also suffered this year on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard because the sea ice they rely on for hunts melted far earlier than normal. "Reductions of snow and ice are happening at an alarming rate," Norwegian environment minister Helen Bjoernoy said at a seminar of 40 scientists and politicians that began late on Monday in Ny Alesund, 1,200 kms of the North Pole. "This acceleration may be faster than predicted" by the UN climate panel this year, she told reporters at the seminar. Ny Alesund calls itself the world's most northerly permanent settlement, and is a base for Arctic research. The UN panel of 2,500 scientists had said in February that summer sea ice could almost vanish in the Arctic towards the end of this century. It said warming in the past 50 years was "very likely" the result of greenhouse gases caused by fossil fuel use. "There may well be an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century," Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told the seminar, accusing the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of underestimating the melt. The thaw of glaciers that stretch out to sea around Svalbard has revealed several islands that are not on any maps. "Islands are appearing just over the fjord here" as glaciers recede, said Kim Holmen, research director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, gesturing out across the bay. "We're already seeing adverse effects on polar bears and other species." "I know of two islands that appeared in the north of Svalbard this summer. They haven't been claimed yet," said Rune Bergstrom, environmental expert with the Norwegian governor's office on Svalbard. He said he had seen one of the islands, roughly the size of a basketball court. Islands have also appeared in recent years off Greenland and Canada. Rapley also said the IPCC was "restrained to the point of being seriously misleading" in toning down what he said were risks of a melt of parts of Antarctica, by far the biggest store of ice on the planet that could raise world sea levels. Still, in a contrast to the warnings about retreating ice and climate change, snow was falling in Ny Alesund on Monday, several weeks earlier than normal in a region still bathed by the midnight sun. About 30 to 130 people live in the fjord-side settlement, backed by snow-covered mountains. Bjoernoy said it was a freak storm that did not detract from an overall warming trend. The US National Snow and Ice Data Center said that Arctic sea ice had "fallen below the 2005 record low absolute minimum and is still melting". Arctic sea ice reaches an annual minimum in September before freezing again. The US records are based on satellite data back to the 1970s. Rapley said that shrinking ice was bad for indigenous peoples and for much wildlife but could help anyone wanting to hunt for oil and gas or open short-cut shipping lanes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Norway hopes the seminar, with delegates from countries including top greenhouse gas emitters the US and China, may put pressure on governments to agree to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, Bjoernoy said.
Links Times of india

North not immune from climate change: WWF

Scientists have ranked it as one of the last remaining natural wonders of the world, alongside the Amazon rainforests and the icy wilderness of the South Pole.
But a new report warns that vast areas of Australia's northern tropics are now at high to medium risk from climate change.
Dr Stuart Blanch heads the northern landscapes division of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which commissioned the study.
"Climate change is not a southern Australian phenomenon," he said.
"Some of the stronger impacts on river flows might be felt in the Murray-Darling Basin, but the best science we have at the moment shows that rivers in the north may be dealing with less water in the future too."
It is the first time scientists have assessed the full impact of climate change on all the major ecosystems in the north, from tropical rivers to coral reefs, wetlands, rainforests, woodland savannah and low islands.
Dr Blanch says the report shows even the most pristine environment is at risk from global warming.
"All aspects of climate change are going to come to bear in northern Australia," he said.
"Hotter temperatures, more variable rainfall, potentially much longer droughts, rising sea levels, much bigger or more intense cyclones."
One of the report authors, Mikila Lawrence, says she hopes the report will curb the rush to exploit water and land in northern Australia as an ill-considered solution to climate change in the south.
"The recommendations were to stop this gut reaction which is happening which is to look at northern Australia as a solution to some of the problems which are already being experienced in the south," she said.
"These are pristine landscapes, that doesn't mean they're not susceptible themselves."
And Dr Blanch says there are clear lessons for politicians and farmers seeking to establish the tropics as the food bowl of Asia.
"If we do try to develop these for farming or intensification for cattle, we risk damaging them," he said.
"With climate change on top of that we might get the double-whammy of climate change and society's response to climate change in the south by sending more farmers north, and that's a real risk."
A prime ministerial task force meets in the remote Kimberley region next week as part of a broad-ranging review of the potential to boost farming in the tropics, to take advantage of the abundant land and rainfall.
But its chairman, Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, says his task force is every bit as environmentally conscious as groups like WWF.
"The notion that there's some great mass migration of farmers and the creation of a huge food bowl is some sort of mythical notion," he said.

Link ABC

Climate change campaigners strip naked on melting glacier

Nearly 600 volunteers have stripped for the camera on a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps for a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change.
The environmental group Greenpeace, which commissioned the photo shoot by world-renowned photographer Spencer Tunick, says the volunteers turned up under blue skies near the foot of the Aletsch glacier, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site.
Nicolas de Roten of Greenpeace Switzerland says there are almost 600 people there.
"It's relatively chilly but that doesn't seem to be disturbing them," he said.
The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers, one clear sign of global warming and of man-made climate change, Greenpeace says.
Greenpeace says the human body is as vulnerable as glaciers like the Aletsch in southern Switzerland - which is shrinking by more than 100 metres a year - and the world's environment.
The group hopes its billboard and poster campaign showing people exposed to the cold will send a shiver down the spines of the public and politicians, and convince them to do more to tackle pollution and climate change.
"They'll be used at the right moment for our campaign, in Switzerland first and then worldwide," Mr de Roten says.
Tunick split the volunteers into two groups of about 300 for separate shots on or around the lower end of the spectacular 23 kilometre long sweeping ice floe, at an altitude of about 2,300 metres and about an hour's hike away from the village of Bettmeralp.
Temperatures were well above freezing - about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius - unlike the riskier snowbound section higher up in the mountains.
The US-born photographer is renowned for his spectacular art photos of hundreds if not thousands of naked people grouped in carefully chosen poses around landmarks.
Tunick calls them "living sculptures" or "body landscapes" and these days he works mainly to order for contemporary galleries.
About 18,000 nudes posed for the US-born photographer in Mexico City's Zocalo Square in May.
Other backdrops have included the Gateshead Centre for Contemporary Art in Britain (2005), the Biennale in Lyon, France (2005), and Grand Central Station in New York (2003).

link ABC.net

Power giants snub marchers
Two of the UK’s biggest greenhouse polluters have declined to meet Christian Aid campaigners who are walking 1,000 miles to draw attention to climate change.
Drax Group and Scottish and Southern Energy have both turned down Christian Aid’s requests to meet with the marchers as they passed the companies’ power stations on Friday, 10 August 2007.
Drax Group owns the UK’s largest coal-fired power station, Drax, which is in Selby, North Yorkshire, and has an output capacity of 4,000 megawatts (MW).
The company says Drax is the “cleanest” coal-fired power station in the UK.
However, coal is inherently dirty, producing more carbon dioxide than any other fuel. The giant power station emits 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – more than countries such as Chad, Mozambique and Senegal.
Scottish and Southern Energy meanwhile owns the Ferrybridge power station in Knottingley, West Yorkshire, which the climate change marchers also hoped to visit.
Ferrybridge is coal-fired, although it also burns some biomass, and has a capacity of 2,000 MW. Scottish and Southern emits almost 26 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year which is more than the annual emissions of countries including Sri Lanka, Jordan, Ghana, Uruguay and Burkina Faso.
Electricity generation is by far the most carbon-intensive of all industrial sectors in the UK because it is done mainly by burning coal and gas in a process which is highly inefficient.
‘They are hurting us’
One of the climate change marchers, Mohamed Adow from Kenya, said he was disappointed by the two companies’ rejections. ‘It is quite disheartening that the major emitters of carbon in the UK will not meet us,’ he said.
‘Their actions, their emissions, are hurting us. Kenya has been ravaged by climate shocks, shocks that emanate from climate change. Part of it is due to the burning of fossil fuels. Countless people have lost their lives and their livelihoods, had their lives devastated.’
Mohamed Adow works with poor farmers in Kenya, helping them to adapt to the drying effects of climate change.
He added that he hoped consumer power would force Drax and Scottish and Southern to work to reduce their climate impact, as people increasingly demand power from renewable sources.
‘People in poor countries are the first and the worst affected by your actions and God in his grace, through the actions of your clients, will make you do justice,’ he said.
‘The world has enough to satisfy our energy needs but nothing to satisfy your greed.’
Christian Aid’s marchers want to meet major companies along the route of their trans-UK walk, to draw their attention to the severe damage that climate change is already doing in countries where the aid agency works.
Half the core team of 20 marchers are themselves from developing countries, including Brazil, Kenya, Tajikistan, India and Bangladesh. The marchers are also asking firms about what they are doing to reduce their contribution to climate change.

link one world

Climate change sucks water from China's two longest rivers


Climate change linked to the contraction of wetlands at the source of China's two longest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River, has reduced the volume of water flowing in the rivers, said Chinese scientists.Scientists from the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) studied changes over the past 40 years to the wetlands on the cold Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in west China where the two rivers have their source.Analyzing aerial photos and satellite remote sensing figures, they found that the wetlands on the plateau have shrunk more than 10 percent over the past four decades. The wetlands at the origin of the Yangtze River suffered the most, contracting by 29 percent.In addition, about 17.5 percent of the small lakes at the source of the Yangtze River have dried up, said the scientists. "The wetland plays a key role in containing water and adjusting the water volume of the rivers," said Wang Xugen, a researcher with the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment.

link

HSBC donates US $100m to tackle climate change
The HSBC Group has announced a five-year US$100m programme to help tackle the causes and impacts of climate change.
HSBC is joining forces with The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and WWF, to form the HSBC Climate Partnership.
Working with four of the world's most respected environmental organisations while creating and mobilising a "green taskforce" of thousands of HSBC employees world-wide, HSBC will tackle the causes and impacts of climate change in a tangible manner.
"The HSBC Climate Partnership is a profound step towards trying to address global climate change and making this commitment pivotal to HSBC's operations globally," Shaun Wallis, HSBC Malta CEO, said. "We, in Malta, will be stepping up our plans locally to help with the environment," he added.
This new partnership will build upon five years of good work done on the group's "Investing in Nature" programme, which was finished last year. This helped train 200 scientists and sent 2,000 HSBC employees on conservation research projects to save 12,000 plant species from extinction.
The new work will focus on four key areas. It will make some of the world's largest cities - Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai - cleaner and greener models for the rest of the world. It will also create "climate champions" across the world, who will participate in field research and return to share their knowledge and experience with their communities.
The partnership will conduct the largest ever field experiment on the world's forests to measure carbon and the effects of climate change. It will also help protect four of the world's major rivers - the Amazon, Ganges, Yangtze and Thames - from the impact of climate change.
The US$100m commitment that HSBC is contributing to the partnership marks the largest ever charitable donation given by a UK-based company. The funds will allow the charities to get more done, in more places, and for more people than they've ever been able to do in the past.

link timesofmalta

U.N. chief eyes climate change summit 2008 or 2009

Reuters writes

The United Nations is contemplating a high-level meeting on climate change this year, which could lead to a world summit by 2009, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Financial Times.
The high-level meeting, which could involve ministers and other top delegates, was the most "practical and realistic approach", Ban said in an interview published on Wednesday. Such a meeting -- on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September -- "may be able to give some clear guidelines to the December Bali meeting", he said.Ban was referring to a United Nations conference on climate change to be held on the Indonesian resort island.

If September's high-level meeting was a success "a summit level meeting will have to be discussed later on", Ban told the newspaper. "It may be 2008 or 2009."
The FT reported there had been calls for a summit level meeting on climate change at the United Nations in September.

But Ban said: "One difficulty is whether I can see for sure the participation of all the major countries, including the United States".The U.N. chief said after attending the annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations in June "I may be in a clearer position to propose a certain initiative".

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, told Reuters last month that Ban had agreed at talks in New York to send envoys to probe government willingness for a high-level meeting about global warming.

Link Reuters

Some deforestation may offset Global Warming

Agence France-Presse writes

Planting new trees in snow-covered northern regions may actually contribute to global warming as they have the counter-effect of tropical forests, according to a study out Monday.

While rainforests cool the planet by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing clouds that reflect sunlight, the dark canopy of Canadian, Scandinavian and Siberian forests catches sunrays that would be reflected back to space by the snow, the study said.

The study, published Monday in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that reforestation projects in the tropics would help mitigate global warming but would be "counterproductive" in high latitudes.

"Our study shows that only tropical rainforests are strongly beneficial in helping slow down global warming," Govindasamy Bala, who led the research, said in a statement.

"It is a win-win situation in the tropics because trees in the tropics, in addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, promote convective clouds that help to cool the planet," he said.

"In other locations, the warming from the albedo effect (sunlight absorption) either cancels or exceeds the net cooling from the other two effects," said Bala, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Reseachers used a three-dimensional computer simulation to study the effects of large-scale deforestation and look at the positive and negative effects of tree cover at different latitudes.

"When it comes to rehabilitating forests to fight global warming, carbon dioxide might be only half of the story; we also have to account for whether they help to reflect sunlight by producing clouds, or help to absorb it by shading snowy tundra," said study co-author Ken Caldeira.

However, the authors did not endorse deforestation of the boreal forests as a measure against global warming.

"Preservation of ecosystems is a primary goal of preventing global warming, and the destruction of ecosystems to prevent global warming would be a counterproductive and perverse strategy," said Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution.

Researchers from Stanford University in California and Universite Montpellier II in France contribute to the study.

Link Agence France-Presse, Yahoo News

Race for riches in Arctic- global warming is good or bad?????

Associates Press writes

Barren an uninhabited Hans lands near Norway is very hard to find on a map.

Yet these days the Frisbee shaped rock in the arctic is much in demand-so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships.
The reason the international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by impact of global warming on earths frozen north.

The latest report by UNFCC on climate change says the ice caps is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to the green house gases, it is catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for inuit population whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.

But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century.

The US geological Survey estimates the arctic has as much as 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the arctic sector approaching $ 2 trillion.

All this has pushed governments and businesses in to a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly price less seas.

Link Associated Press

Himalayan meltdown catastrophic for India

The Times of India writes

Don't dismiss it as one of the favourite whines of environmental campaigners. The result of the melting of most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2030, as predicted by the UN panel on climate change, could be truly catastrophic for India and its neighbours. Rivers 'mothered' by the Himalayan glaciers are the lifeline of hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent and China, most of whom live far from the Himalayas. As much as 70% of the world's fresh water is frozen in glaciers.

The Himalayan glaciers are the largest store of water outside the polar ice caps, and feed seven great Asian rivers — Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salween, Yangtze and Huang Ho (Yellow River). The glaciers are believed to be retreating at a rate of about 10-15 metres a year. The first danger of the meltdown could be widespread flooding. In a few decades, it could be followed by irreversible droughts, threatening the livelihood of millions of people. This would not only mean unprecedented food shortages but also a massive water crisis. The Gangetic basin alone is home to more than 500 million people. Nearly 70% of the discharge into the Ganga is from rivers in Nepal, which means that if the Himalayan glaciers dry up so will the Ganga downstream in India. In some rivers, the flow may go down by as much as 90%, according to glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hosnain, who has conducted extensive studies on Himalayan glaciers. Studies have predicted that in the Ganga, the loss of glacier melt water would reduce July-September flows by two thirds, causing water shortages for 37% of India’s irrigated land. As water flows from glaciers dry up, the energy potential of hydroelectric power will decrease, causing problems for industry, while reduced irrigation means lower crop production. In a report in 2005, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned that "in the long term, the glaciers could disappear altogether, causing several rivers to shrink and threatening the survival of those who depend on them". What was forecast to happen "in the long term" two years ago, appears imminent now. All is not lost, though. Experts say immediate action against climate change could slow the rate of melting.

The Himalayan glaciers have been found to be in a state of general retreat since 1850. But the retreat has been alarming since the 1970s. The Himalayan region, called the 'Water Tower of Asia', has a glacier coverage of 33,000 sq km. It provides around 8.6 million cubic metres of water annually. Researchers have estimated that about 17% of the Himalayas and 37% of Karakorum is currently under permanent ice cover.

The main glaciers of this region are Siachen (72 km); Gangotri (26 km); Zemu (26 km); Milam (19 km) and Kedarnath (14.5 km). The Gangotri glacier, which supports one of India's largest river basins, is receding at an average rate of 23 metres per year. The Khumbu glacier, a popular climbing route to the summit of Mount Everest, has retreated more than 5 km from where Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set out to conquer the worlds highest peak in 1953

Link Times of India.

Climate change ‘could create 200m refugees by 2050, forty species of flora and fauna face threat, global warming could bring hunger, melt Himalayas

Sunday Times writes
“April 1, 2007

EQUATORIAL lands that are home to hundreds of millions of people will become uninhabitable as food and water run out due to climate change, scientists will warn this week.
A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be published on Friday, will warn that the temperature rises of 2-3C predicted by 2050 spell global disaster for both humanity and the environment.
It will say that up to 40% of animal and plant species face extinction as rising temperatures destroy the ecosystems that support them. And it will point out that the 29 billion tons of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere each year are acidifying the oceans – threatening to destroy coral reefs, plankton and many commercial fish species.
By the middle of the century, the report will warn, more than 200m people could have been forced from their native lands by rising sea levels, floods and droughts, with many more facing early deaths from malnutrition and heat stress.
The report comes amid government embarrassment over the latest figures for Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions. Last week David Miliband, the environment secretary, admitted they had risen by 1.5% last year despite repeated Labour pledges to cut them.
“The picture that emerges from the research is quite appalling,” said Rachel Warren, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and one of the IPCC’s senior authors. “It is just horrendous realising what damage climate change can do to ecosystems.”
The IPCC report is a collation of the best peer-reviewed scientific research into the impact of climate change, published over the past five years or so.
It will say that many of the worst effects on humans will be caused by water – or lack of it – in the form of floods, drought, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and ocean acidification.
Nearly a third of the world’s land surface may be at risk of extreme drought by 2099, compared with about 1%. Such a change would destroy farmland and water resources and lead to mass migrations of “environmental refugees”.
The IPCC will also warn that the Amazon rainforest could be in danger. Professor Diana Liverman, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, said the region was already experiencing an alarming reduction in rain.
“The warming of the oceans seems to be changing the water cycle,” she said.
In lands close to the equator, especially in Africa, declining crop yields could leave hundreds of millions of people unable to grow food.
In Europe, one of the most obvious early impacts will be the destruction of Alpine ski resorts, with about 70% losing snow cover by 2050.
The IPCC will say it is “too late” to avert some degree of climate change.
It will call on humanity to cooperate on adapting to the changes – while trying to limit them by cutting emission.

Link Timesonline.U.K

myLot User Profile

posting mylot
myLot User Profile

Ganga and indus rivers are fast dying

Ganga and Indus are among the top ten rivers in the world that are fast dying as a result of over extraction, climate change, pollution and dams, WWF-India has warned.In a report 'World's Top 10 Rivers at Risk' released on the eve of the World Water Day on March 22, the global conservation organisation listed top ten rivers around the world that were fast drying up.Two of the ten rivers -- Ganga and Indus -- were in the Indian subcontinent, which were severely impacted by over extraction and climate change respectively, the report said.Ganga, which flows from India into Bangladesh, was facing serious threat owing to increased water withdrawals. In India, barrages control all of the tributaries to Ganga and divert roughly 60 per cent of river flow to large scale irrigation, it said.link

Green party releases the climate change policy

The Green Party has released a climate change policy that

it says offers real solutions for other parties struggling with the issue.

Russell Norman, the party's co-leader, says they want polluting industries like dairying and transport to buy international Kyoto carbon credits, so the Government can use the revenue to offset the pollution.

Co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says the 'credit' system would save taxpayers from having to foot the bill for the Government's dumped carbon tax proposal. link

Carbon credits can be traded in multi commodity markets?

Even though USA and Australia has not signed the Kyoto protocol, it become blessing in disguise to developing countries like India, China and Brazil, CDM(clean development mechanism) projects are implemented in these countries with latest technologies with the purchase of the carbon credits by developed countries from these projects (annexure I) to offset the emissions.

Many industries in developing countries which are implementing the CDM, looking at the prices of the European union have not realizing the right prices to the CER (carbon emission receipts) due to the currently thriving OTC(over the counter)markets buying the CERs at lower prices than provided by the buyer. Establishment of the European Climate Exchange (ECX) a subsidiary of Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is the place where the sellers get right price for CERs they sell at present.

Commodity exchange is the best places to get fair prices to the CERs. Multi commodity exchange (MCR) which deals with various commodities is right place to market the CER Multi commodity exchange (MCR) can tie up with CCX by launching the carbon financial instrument is the right plat form for efficient price for the CERs

Plant Biodiversity of World

The book “Biodiversity of World” given complete account of the Biodiversity of World. The book contains six chapters, the first chapter deals with different environmental problems faced by world and variety of plant exists in different eco-systems. Second chapter gives details of earlier conservation efforts by different international organization. Chapter three describes Biodiversity convention and Agenda 21. Chapter four deals with after Rio and the follow up of Rio conference. Chapter five deals with Bio Diversity Bill. Chapter six describes different plants of plant kingdom from algae to angiosperms, their habitat, general description and economic importance.

Uniqueness of book is 205photographs taken from the postal stamps of variety plant biodiversity; stamps are collected from different countries of world. The photos include different seasons which affect the life cycle of plant, planet sun, different mushrooms, fern tree, fossil pteridophyte, pines, rare medicinal plants, roses, different rhododendrons, orchids, etc.

The book also deals with “Orchids” and description of different stamps released by different countries on Orchids like, Vanda, Star orchid, Dendrobium etc

The book is meant for environmentalist, foresters, academicians, students and philatelists.

Do you like to travel in car which consumes air instead of petrol to avoid the carbon effluents?

One of the companies that have done extensive research in the area of air engine technology is MDI of France

Read this

One of the companies that have done extensive research in the area of air engine technology is MDI of France. The French company has signed an agreement with Tata Motors. The partnership is expected to work towards developing the air engine for applications in India.

Can a car really runs using just air? Even if such a technology can be developed, will it be economically viable? And what about safety and emissions? Would it be safe to carry compressed air tanks in the car?

The answer to all these questions is yes. Of course, there are a few buts too…

It has been a dream to develop a vehicle that runs on compressed air. It sounds like it will be unbelievably cheap to run, an answer to all of the world’s oil-stained woes, and better still, be a zero-polluting vehicle with the exhaust being just regular air.

HOW DO AIR ENGINES WORK?
Also called CATS (compressed air technology system), these engines feature a specially adapted engine to enable its pistons to be driven simply by the thermal expansion of the compressed air fed into it. There is no combustion of fuel, as in a traditional engine that uses fossil fuels. Instead, the redesigned parts of a two-stroke engine, including pistons, single crankshaft and connecting rods, are all tuned to handle the high pressure of the expanding air.

AIR AND DUAL FUEL
The French company has developed two technologies to meet the different needs, and these include single energy compressed air engines that use only air and the dual energy ones that use compressed air plus fuel. Vehicles with the dual energy engine will work exclusively with compressed air while it is running under 50 km per hour in urban areas. But when the car is used outside urban areas at speeds over 50 km per hour, the engines will switch to the fuel mode.

The engine will be able to use petrol, gas oil, bio-diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, alcohol, etc. Both engines will be available with 2, 4 and 6 cylinders, when the air tanks are empty, the driver will be able to switch to the fuel mode, thanks to the car’s onboard computer.

MDI has also developed vehicles in-house that feature their air engine. These vehicles, including the CityCat and MiniCat, have fiberglass bodies which makes them lightweight and the car’s body is tubular, and is said to be held together using aerospace technology.

The recharging of the car or refilling of air will be done at air stations, once the market is developed. To fill the car’s tanks at the station, which will use a high-pressure delivery system; it will only take about to 2-3 minutes. After refilling, the car will be ready to run 200 km. The MDI car also has a small compressor that can be connected to a domestic electrical network (220V or 380V), which will pump air into and recharge the tanks completely in three-four minutes. Because the engine does not burn any fuel, the car does not need the kind of oils that traditional vehicles use. The MDI engine’s oil is only a litre of vegetable oil that needs to be changed every 50,000km.

Dispute climate change report earn $10,000

Thinktank offers cash to dispute UN climate panel

Do you want to dispute climate change report released.

If you dispute you can earn $10, 000 dollars
read this

A right-wing American thinktank is offering $10,000 to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report released on Friday byte he UN’s top scientists panel, The Guardian reported.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant Exxon Mobil according to the daily, sent letters to scientists in the US, Britain and Else where offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN’s report.
AEI also reportedly offered additional payments, and to reimburse travel expenses.
The report, released on Friday in Paris by the UN’s Inter government panel for Climate Change (IPCC), a gave bleak assessment of the damage to the future of the environment.
It is the culmination of four days of debate between more then 500 scientists at a closed-door meeting in Paris.
Kenneth Green, the AEI visiting scholar, confirmed to The Guardian that the thinktank had approached scientist and analysis to pen essays that would be compiled into an independent review of the IPCC’s report.
“Once group says that anyone with any doubts what so ever are deniers and the others group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don’t think that approach ahs a lot of utility for intelligent policy.” Business line February3, 2007 writes

Top multinationals’ carbon pledge

Some of the very corporations once vilified by environmentalists promised on Thursday to reduce by 10 million tonnes annually their collective output of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, the World Wildlife Fund announced

Business line February3, 2007 writes
Top multinationals’ carbon pledge

Some of the very corporations once vilified by environmentalists promised on Thursday to reduce by 10 million tonnes annually their collective output of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming, the World Wildlife Fund announced.
Sony, Nike, IBM, Polaroid, building –materials gains Lafarge and seven other top multinationals said they would fulfill their carbon pledge by no later than 2010.
“If 1,300 more large companies join into this effort, the Kyoto targets for the industrials world would be researched,” the firms - dubbed “Climate Savers” by the WWF – said in a joint statement.
The Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012, is the only international treaty that sets targets for limiting the fossil fuel pollution that causes the greenhouse effect.
The treaty has been crippled since it was abandoned in2001 by US, which accounts for nearly a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions.
The corporate commitment to help save the planet comes amid a flurry of business and government initiatives to slow global warming, and was timed to coincide with the release of a major report by the UN Inter government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Saturday.
“Fighting climate change can provide business opportunities, and spur innovation and jobs,” said Hans Verolme, Director of the WWF’s Climate Programme.
The Climate Changers companies show that sustainable development” is not in consistent with profit, he said.

Hi
Welcome to My blog, Natural Environment.

Let me introduce my self. I am M.Lokeswara Rao,from India working as civilservant belong to Indian Forest service.

My interest is Philataly, reading, traveling and match box colletion.

The prime aim of this blog is to tell about the recent happening to planet earth and create the awarenwss to save the planet earth especially from the buring issues like climate change.

I will be posting some of the impotant articles on climate change soon................

Till then.

M.Lokeswara Rao