Date Posted: 03-Jul-2009

OBAMA PITCHES CLIMATE TREATY

US President Barack Obama has pitched a global climate treaty framework to cut greenhouse gas hydrocarbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and over 80 percent by 2050.

The framework mirrors the approved US climate change bill that encourages the use of alternative energy such as solar and wind and proactively supports clean technologies to capture and store emissions from coal-burning plants, as well as a cap and emissions trading system.

The US bill effectively establishes the first national limits on greenhouse gases through a trading system for emission permits which provides incentives to alter how both individuals and corporations use energy.

Leases for offshore wind development have been approved off the Atlantic Ocean coasts of New Jersey and Delaware after  Obama asserted his new administration would "transform the way we produce and use energy in America."

Measures are now being taken for American industry and business companies to switch from higher-polluting oil and coal to cleaner energy alternatives.

Obama said it's now time to "confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet."

But the climate plan hit an immediate snag from Big Oil that gave notice it would fight the climate change bill in the Senate and elsewhere.

The American Petroleum Institute that represents the major US oil companies described the climate bill as "fundamentally flawed" and said it would "cost Americans billions of dollars in higher costs, kill jobs and will not deliver the environmental benefits promised."

Scientists from the respected UK Tyndall Centre scientists have warned that emissions are rising faster than expected, and that climate change could strike harder and faster than predicted.

The British scientists urged governments to set targets of cutting carbon emissions 34% by 2020, as part of worldwide efforts to limit temperature rise to 2C.

Date Posted: 02-Jul-2009

EUROPEAN ALPS IN DECLINE

The northern ranges of the European Alps are suffering more serious flooding while the parched southern mountains are much less seasonal snow.

According to a report by the Convention on the Protection of the Alps precipitation in the southeast of the region had fallen nearly 10 per cent in the past 100 years.

Another scientific report - published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - predicts that by 2050 most of the glaciers in the Alps will have disappeared along with most of Europe's ski slopes.

The report stressed that in the Alps, which were "particularly sensitive to climate change" were warming at triple the global average rate.

The years 1994, 2000, 2002, and particularly 2003 have been the warmest on record in the Alps in the past 500 years.

The situation across the Alps has been made worse by the increasing demand for artificial snow created during the winter months by snow machines working on the ski slopes.

Around 16 million people in eight countries live in the arc of Europe's biggest mountain range. Rain and snow from its mountains provide the Danube, Rhine, Rhone and Po rivers with up to 80 per cent of their water.

Glacier shrinkage earlier this year led the Italian and Swiss governments to propose the first changes in the borderline between the two countries in more than a century.

Climate change is also driving Alpine species further up the mountains while exotic species including palms get a foothold lower down.

Climate models predict even greater changes in the coming decades, including a reduction in snow cover at lower altitudes, receding glaciers and melting permafrost at higher altitudes, and changes in temperature and precipitation extremes."

Date Posted: 01-Jul-2009

AQUARIUS PROBES OCEAN SALT

Over the last 50 years the subtropical Atlantic has been getting gradually saltier suggesting that global warming is changing precipitation patterns over our planet.

Higher temperatures increase evaporation in subtropical zones. The moisture is then carried by the atmosphere towards higher latitudes (towards the poles), and by trade winds across Central America to the Pacific, where it provides more precipitation. This process concentrates the salt in the water left behind in the North Atlantic, causing salinity to increase.

The correlations between climate change and the saltiness of oceans is what Gary Lagerloef and Amit Sen will be examining over the next three years. Both are the principal investigators and project managers of Aquarius - the satellite mission that will be launched into orbit in May 2010.

Aquarius is the first NASA instrument designed to track sea salinity from space. The three-year mission is named after the "cup-bearer to the gods" in Greek mythology.

Aquarius will be equipped with radiometer technology that is essentially a sensitive radio receiver capable of detecting microwave radiation given off by the sea surface. The radiated power of the microwaves that are emitted enables scientists to calculate the saltiness of the water at the surface.

Aquarius will also shed light on El Nino and La Nina, phases of the world's most powerful climate phenomena as well as revealing insights into how monsoons develop.

By comparing the data to climate models that correct for naturally occurring salinity variations in the ocean, Stott has found that man-made global warming - over and above any possible natural sources of global warming  - are likely to be responsible for making parts of the North Atlantic Ocean more salty.

Along with temperature salinity directly affect seawater density (salty water is denser than freshwater) and the circulation of ocean currents from the tropics to the poles.

These currents control how heat is carried within the oceans and ultimately regulate the world's climate.

Sea surface salinity is intimately linked to Earth's overall water cycle and to how much freshwater leaves and enters the oceans through evaporation and precipitation.

Date Posted: 01-Jul-2009

DOMINATING OCEAN JELLYFISH

Giant jellyfish are taking over parts of the world's oceans due to overfishing and other human activities, researchers say.

Nomura jellyfish are the biggest in the world and can grow as big as a sumo wrestler. They weigh up to 200 kilograms and can reach two meters in diameter.

Dr Anthony Richardson and his colleagues from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research says jellyfish numbers are increasing, particularly in South East Asia, the Black Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

"We need to take management action to avert the marine systems of the world flipping over to being jellyfish dominated," says Dr Richardson, who is also a marine biologist at the University of Queensland.

Jellyfish have tentacles containing pneumatocyst cells, which act like little harpoons that lodge in prey to sting and kill them.

The location and number of pneumatocysts dictate whether jellyfish are processed for human consumption. And while fried jellyfish with soya sauce is a delicacy served in Chinese weddings and banquets the large jellyfish that are rising in numbers can't be eaten.

The Japanese have a real problem with giant jellyfish that burst through fishing nets.

Researchers are experimenting with different ways of controlling jellyfish, including using sound waves to explode jellyfish and using special nets to try and cut them up.

Jellyfish are normally kept in check by fish, which eat small jellyfish and compete for jellyfish food such as zooplankton, he says.

But with overfishing, jellyfish numbers are increasing. Jellyfish feed on fish eggs and larvae, further impacting on fish numbers.

Nitrogen and phosphorous in run-off cause red phytoplankton blooms, which create low-oxygen dead zones where jellyfish survive, but fish cannot.

Researchers say climate change encourages more jellyfish to the point of "jellyfish stable state" in which jellyfish rule the oceans.

Jellyfish are considered simple jelly-like sea animals, which are related to the microscopic animals that form coral. They generally start their life as a plant-like polyp on the seabed before budding off into the well-known bell-shaped medusa.

Date Posted: 30-Jun-2009

AMAZON FOREST BLOODSHED

Bloodshed in the Amazon forests has resulted from the Puru government's decision to allow open mines and drilling for oil in the rainforest region.

Indigenous protesters and Peru's army were locked into two battles in the Amazon jungle that killed at least 50 people in the country's worst crisis that underscores deep divisions between elites in Lima and the rural poor that has derailed the government's push to further open up Peru to foreign investors.

Thousands of Indians dug into blockades on the Amazon highways. Eleven police died when they broke up a roadblock, about 870 miles north of Lima along a stretch of highway known as "Devil's Curve".

Tribes are worried they will lose control over natural resources and have been protesting against foreign mining and energy companies to invest billions of dollars in the rain forest.

Critics accuse the government of failing to lift the poverty rate from 36 percent despite an economic boom time during the worldwide recession.

Indigenous groups oppose attempts to bring Peru's regulatory framework into compliance with a free-trade agreement with the United States.

Date Posted: 30-Jun-2009

MEGA AFRICA SOLAR STATION

A consortium of around 20 companies, including Munich Re, Siemens, RWE and Deutsche Bank, plans to build a 400 billion euro ($555.3 billion) solar power project in Africa, a Munich Re executive told a German newspaper on Tuesday.

The project, led by Munich Re, would use the energy from the Africa-based solar project to provide electricity to German households, Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworek said in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The consortium members plan to meet in Munich on July 13 to set up the group formally, he added.

He decline to give full details about members but said they include Siemens, RWE, Deutsche Bank, the German Economy Ministry and the Club of Rome, a non-government group based in Zurich.

"We want to start an initiative that would present concrete plans in two to three years time," Jeworek said.

Date Posted: 29-Jun-2009

CALIFORNIA COUNTS GREEN COSTS

California faces a huge bill for its ambitious clean energy plan that will result in a 28 percent rise in electricity rates and $115 billion in construction.

The cost of going green in a time of economic turmoil has come under the financial spotlight as Congress considers federal legislation to address global warming, which is the impetus of the California push.

California faces a litany of environmental conflicts over building transmission and power plants in pristine areas that will be dependent on largely untested technology called solar thermal, and conflicting state priorities.

The state's ambitious goal is based on environmental consensus about what is needed to avoid unsustainable climate change, rather than a bottom-up view of what could be done.

The state intends having 33 percent renewables in 2021 after lifting renewable energy 20 percent by 2010.

California's future energy scenario is based on contracts and discussions in process, which are strongly focused on solar thermal. It uses the sun's rays to heat fluids that create steam to turn turbines.

California's plan is a 14-fold increase over current global solar thermal capacity, the report said, illustrating the technology risk inherent in the buildout.