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