Other stories below: Africa Leads Climate Push as its People Go Hungry; Easy Loans Now a Burden for Chinese Solar Firms?
AP Photo/Chris Gardner
Beware climate change risk from aircon, fridge gases-UN
Soaring use of man-made gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and fire extinguishers risks speeding up global warming and industry should adopt alternatives, a U.N. report said on Monday.
In the most dire forecast, unless governments and industry act to limit the growth, the annual emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, by 2050 could equate to pumping nearly 9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — about a third of mankind’s CO2 emissions now.
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HFCs have been phased in since the 1990s to replace chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which have damaged the Earth’s protective ozone layer and are also very powerful greenhouse gases.
On average, HFCs survive in the atmosphere for 15 years and are about 1,600 times more potent in trapping heat in the air than CO2, underscoring growing alarm about these compounds.
Debate Pits Montana’s Vast Coal Reserves Against Climate Concerns
Several times a day, long trainloads of coal trundle through Missoula to power plants in Washington.
Those routine runs generate lots of electricity for homes and lots of consternation for politicians and scientists concerned about the trade-offs. In the short term, coal’s convenience and low price make it a simple answer to the nation’s energy needs. But its pollution, damage to water supplies and impact on global climate may produce a long-term cost we’re unable to afford.
“Two years ago, the United States was on the verge of adopting a comprehensive climate bill,” said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School climate change expert who visited Missoula last week. “That fell apart, and we now have at best paralysis and at worst an effort to move backward. All this is happening in the face of a stream of new scientific evidence showing the serious worsening of climate problems. And the U.S. is now standing virtually alone in the world among major countries listening to voices that deny the reality of climate change.”
Africa Leads Climate Push as its People Go Hungry
Africa is leading the push for clean energy policy-making as climate change turns millions of its people into “food refugees,” the head of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) Achim Steiner said.
“On the African continent, there is sometimes more leadership being shown by countries, by governments, than we see in some of the industrialized nations,” Steiner told Reuters.
“Kenya is currently doubling its energy and electricity generating infrastructure largely using renewables. These are policies that are pioneering, that are innovative,” he said.
Kenya generates most of its energy from hydroelectric dams but water levels have fallen due to recurring drought. It is now investing heavily in geothermal and wind power.
The African Development Bank is financing Africa’s biggest wind farm on the shores of Lake Turkana, one of the windiest places on Earth. The $819-million project aims to produce 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity per year, boosting Kenya’s energy supply by 30 percent.
Toyota and Hyundai are building a fourth geothermal power station in Naivasha, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Nairobi, which will increase geothermal capacity from 115 MW to 395 MW by 2014.
Chevron Takes Full Responsibility for Brazil Oil Spill
U.S. oil company Chevron will fully clean up a spill off Brazil’s coast, George Buck, the CEO of the local subsidiary said on Sunday, taking responsibility for an accident that has become a major test for one of the world’s fastest-growing oil frontiers.
About 18 vessels were supporting well-plugging operations and sheen cleanup, the company said in a later statement, adding that no new oil was being emitted.
Buck said the leak from the undersea well, owned in partnership with Brazil’s state-controlled Petrobras and a Japanese consortium, has been plugged.
“Chevron takes full responsibility for this incident,” Buck told reporters in Rio de Janeiro. “We will share the lessons learned here in the hope that this sort of incident won’t happen again in Brazil or anywhere else in the world.”
The spill, one of the largest to hit Brazil’s growing offshore oil industry has raised questions about its safety and ability to respond to accidents.
Easy loans now a burden for China solar firms
Generous state bank loans to Chinese solar companies, a bone of contention for their Western counterparts, are threatening the financial health of the firms, as they grapple with falling product prices and tumbling demand from their biggest customer, Europe.
The huge funds that flow into China’s solar sector, in which local governments hold stakes, have boosted production in the first half despite fragile demand, depressing product prices and setting off an anti-dumping probe by the United States.
State banks provide easy loans to the sector amid the Chinese government’s push to develop clean energy. Provincial governments that have helped build solar companies are also pressuring banks to continue lending, which may add to the woes of the struggling industry.
The glut of production and swelling inventories of the panels that turn sunlight into electricity have already driven down prices by about 40 percent so far this year. Analysts expect prices to slide by another 10 percent by early next year.
“The longer and larger the Chinese bank lending bubble for solar inflates, the sharper and more unpredictable will the eventual fundamental correction be due to industry consolidation,” Credit Suisse analyst Satya Kumar said.
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Feds to invest $20-million in climate change adaptation in Canada’s northern and aboriginal communities
Framing the problem as a “security issue,” NRTEE recommended that the federal government account for climate risks in its policies, and “[b]uild community capacity to address climate risk to northern infrastructure and take advantage of opportunities.”
The Arctic Council, of which Canada is a member, has also provided a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change on the far North. The council’s Arctic Climate Impact Assessment reported that the Arctic is experiencing the most rapid effects of climate change, which is contributing to shifting vegetation zones, unpredictable weather patterns, and sudden changes to biodiversity, resulting in “major economic and cultural impacts,” for the region’s indigenous communities.
http://www.firstperspective.ca/news/3433-feds-to-invest-20-million-in-climate-change-adaptation-in-canadas-northern-and-aboriginal-communities.html
Climate change effect on release of CO2 from peat far greater than assumed
Drought causes peat to release far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than has previously been realized
Climate change effect on release of CO2 from peat far greater than assumed Drought causes peat to release far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than has previously been realised.
Dr Nathalie Fenner and Professor Chris Freeman of Bangor University explain how the drought causes an increase in the rate of release of CO2 for possibly as long as a decade. It was originally assumed that most of the CO2 was released from the dry peat. Now scientists realise that the release of CO2 continues, and may even increase, when the peat is re-wetted with the arrival of rain. The carbon is lost to the atmosphere as CO2 and methane and to the waters that drain peatlands as dissolved organic carbon (DOC).
“As our global climate and rainfall patterns change, our peatlands may not have sufficient opportunity to recover between these drought-induced episodes of CO2 loss,” explains the paper’s lead author, Dr Nathalie Fenner. “What we previously perceived as a ‘spike’ in the rate of carbon loss during drying out, now appears far more prolonged- with a potential peak after the initial drought period is over.”
As well as contributing further to climate change, as CO2 is one of the ‘greenhouse gasses’, the loss of carbon from the peat has other consequences. Dissolved organic carbon in the water as a result of this process, could adversely affect the quality of drinking water. Much of our drinking water comes from these upland sources. The increase of dissolved organic carbon in the water is likely to bring extra problems and expense to the water supply industry because it interferes with the treatment process.
Loss of carbon could ultimately lead to severe degradation of the peatland itself. Occurring on upland regions of the northern hemisphere, the loss of peatland could contribute to an increased frequency of lowland flooding occurrences as the peat acts as a natural ‘sponge’ for heavy rainfall. There would also be a consequent loss of habitat and species loss as well as a change in the look and feel of our uplands.
“The previous focus of research in this area has been on the drought period, and our own work identified how the release of CO2 occurs,” explains Prof Chris Freeman, who leads the Wolfson Peatland Carbon Capture Laboratory at Bangor University. “We were initially surprised at finding that the effects are so prolonged- we think what’s happening is microbial and that this activity has been triggered by the introduction of oxygen into previously waterlogged conditions. Once the water returns, conditions have changed and the microbes are further able to thrive until conditions eventually return to normal.”
The paper’s authors suggest that geo-engineering solutions may have to be considered to preserve the water table and reduce the effects of drought on upland peat. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/bu-cce111711.php
If the gov’s in China create demand themselves with their own local deployment, then many more people could learn of such being an advantage to the society.
solar electric power that is a benefit to their society.
Record high greenhouse gases to linger for decades
“Even if we managed to halt our greenhouse gas emissions today, and this is far from the case, they would continue to linger in the atmosphere for decades to come and so continue to affect the delicate balance of our living planet and our climate,” he said.
The report adds to a number of warnings that time is running out to act on climate change and prevent worsening extreme weather as the Earth’s temperature rises.
Between 2009 and 2010, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by 2.3 parts per million, higher than the average for both the 1990s (1.5 parts per million) and the past decade (2.0 parts per million), the report said.
The second biggest greenhouse gas, methane, has been growing in the past five years after leveling off between 2000 and 2006, for reasons that are not fully understood.
The third biggest greenhouse gas is nitrous oxide, which can trap almost 300 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Its main human source is the use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, which the report said had “profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle.”
The impact of fertilizer use is so marked that more nitrous oxide is detected in the northern hemisphere, where more fertilizer is used, than in the south.
The WMO data showed no pause in the growth of greenhouse gases, and more work needs to be done to help understand which policies would have the most effect, the report’s authors said.
So far, the clearest discernable impact of policies was a decrease in chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which were banned because they caused depletion of the ozone layer.
But hydrofluorocarbons, which have replaced CFCs, are also potent greenhouse gases and their abundance in the atmosphere, while still small, is rising at a rapid rate. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-greenhouse-idUSTRE7AK0NB20111121
“produce 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity per year”
Stephen Lacey, did you write that? You can do better! MW is a unit of power, not energy.
Have you all seen Douglas Brinkley give it to Rep. Young of Alaska?
http://current.com/community/93549024_don-young-doug-brinkley-argue-in-house-natural-resources-committee-hearing.htm?xid=RSSfeed
OT
I’d like to share a new blog i started today.
Teh top Movies!
Here i collect my favorite movies(many classics), check it out …
http://tehtopmovies.wordpress.com/
About the HFC emission increase-
With the likelihood of another scorcher in the Northern Hemisphere in 2012, the intensity of using – and wearing out- HFC-cooled equipment is likely to rise.
DuPont, a major manufacturer of HFCs, has a technical paper on fluorocarbons and environmental impacts. On page 9 of their pdf it has an expanded pie chart of all emissions in CO2 equivalents, including HFCs. The pie chart seems to suggest that HFCs are a tiny sliver, compared to CO2 generation. Does anyone want to take a look and comment?
www2.dupont.com/FE/…/k22197_Role_of_HFCs_white_paper.pdf
“HFCs are used as solvents, residential and commercial refrigerants, firefighting agents, and propellants for aerosols.”
http://205.254.135.24/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/gwp_gases.html
The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed
http://www.sciguru.com/newsitem/11361/Ignorance-bliss-when-it-comes-challenging-social-issues