Norway is to double carbon tax on its North Sea oil industry and set up a £1bn fund to help combat the damaging impacts of climate change in the developing world. [Guardian]
In one of the most radical climate programmes yet by an oil-producing nation, the Norwegian government has proposed increasing its carbon tax on offshore oil companies by £21 to £45 (Nkr410) per tonne of CO2 and a £5.50 (Nkr50) per tonne CO2 tax on its fishing industry.
Norway will also plough an extra £1bn (Nkr10bn) into its funds for climate change mitigation, renewable energy, food security in developing countries and conversion to low-carbon energy sources, Environmental Finance reported.
The solar panel manufacturing industry in the United States and Europe has begun a volley of trade cases against imports, following the same track as the steel industry before it — and for many of the same reasons. [New York Times]
A big new report from the Global CCS Institute takes stock of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects around the world as of 2012. And progress has been… rather slow. [Wonk Blog]
Babies who are exposed to ambient air traffic pollution are likely to have poorer lung function up to the age of eight, especially those who are sensitized to common allergens, say researchers. [Medical News Today]
Ongoing resistance and confrontations over the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline have reportedly sparked the detainment of two journalists in Texas this week. [Huffington Post]
Carmakers and the federal government are pouring resources into “lightweighting” auto platforms to meet the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards. [New York Times]
An environmental group is calling on President Obama’s campaign to take down a TV ad criticizing Republican challenger Mitt Romney for declaring years ago that a Massachusetts coal-fired power plant “kills people.” [Washington Post]
Royal Dutch Shell said late Thursday it has applied for a permit from the U.S. Department of Commerce to export crude oil in a sign of how a boom in U.S. oil production from shale rock is reshaping the country’s role in the global energy marketplace. [Wall Street Journal]
The recent rash of extreme weather and climate events — droughts, heat waves, extreme precipitation — has provided a greater impetus for taking action to reduce planet warming greenhouse gas emissions. But a lack of political will and the complexities of the climate system pose enormous obstacles, according to international development and climate scientists who spoke at a Columbia University forum on Thursday. [Climate Central]
A Yale Foundation study has found that Indians understand and respond to the idea of climate change affecting their lives and their future prospects, and have faith in science to tackle it. [The Financial Express]
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
I may be in some sort of weird post bizarro debate fog . . . but I swear I saw not one but 2 stories pertaining to climate change on the Weather Channel web site this morning:
Today’s Top Stories:
New Poll: Americans Are Feeling Climate Change
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/angelafritz/comment.html?entrynum=28
Followed by another (from yesterday with horrid title) on increasing Antarctic ice.
New research, published October 11, in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, has shown that CO2 molecules may be having a more direct impact on the ice that covers our planet.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute for Technology have shown that the material strength and fracture toughness of ice are decreased significantly under increasing concentrations of CO2 molecules, making ice caps and glaciers more vulnerable to cracking and splitting into pieces, as was seen recently when a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica spawned a glacier the size of Berlin.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121010191749.htm
wow!
Thanks for the heads up. The IOP article by Qin and Buehler is available for free for 30 days from publication under fair use practices. Having looked it over, it is a computational model, with powerful implications.
At this point, a lab study of ice fracturing at a range of CO2 concentrations and temperatures would be most welcome, as the computational model hasn’t been tested for quantitative relationships.
The ‘unknown unknowns’ yet again. The unpleasant surprise that no-one expected. We are for the high jump, no doubt about it.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2012/10/melting-greenland-ice-has-consequences/
Additional energy and climate headlines for 10/12 are published at http://www.marcaccicomms.com/news/energy-and-environment-news-roundup-10-12-12/
Some interesting climate related research from the UK featured here:
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/publications/planetearth/2012/autumn/planet-earth-aut12.pdf
Kevin Trenberth shares his concerns about the IPCC process and denialist campaigns:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-scientist-loses-faith-in-the-ipcc-20121011-27fk8.html
The food crisis emerging gets more coverage in the UK where the wet weather has impacted adversely on many harvests:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/12/bad-harvest-rising-prices
I have just returned from Tjuntjunjarra where the Tjun Tjun are really getting worried now because the kangaroos and emus are nowhere to be found and have been replaced by feral camels and rabbits which destroy the land. Their original theory was that the natives had migrated because of rain further north but their place is covered in grass now and the animals have not returned and they have to eat rabbits, ME
Climate Portals shared a link.
8 minutes ago
Clean Energy Primed to Replace Nuclear Power Plant « EcoWatch: Uniting the Voice of the Grassroots E
ecowatch.org
Indian Point Energy Center is a three-unit nuclear power plant station located in Buchanan, New York just south of Peekskill.
sigh…
Climate Portals shared a link.
26 minutes ago
Saudi Arabia to Lead $740 Billion Oil Spending Through 2017
http://www.bloomberg.com
Oil producers in the Middle East and North Africa plan to invest $740 billion on energy projects in the next five years, led by Saudi Arabia, according to Arab Petroleum Investments Corp.
Climate Portals shared a link.
26 minutes ago
China Needs Its Own Dream
http://www.nytimes.com
The so-called American Dream won’t work for China. How will its new leaders handle the dramatic growth of its emerging middle class?
Climate Chaos shared a link.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Climate-Chaos/187700434593711
“It’s been the worst year in living memory,” says Jonathan Lukies, who farms 288 hectares (720 acres) of arable and fruit orchards near Stansted, Essex. “It was horrific.”
Weather-beaten UK farmers lament a dismal year for food production
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Already squeezed by supermarket dominance, all types of farmer have had to endure drought and flooding this year too
shocking…
The year the grains failed: Why poorer countries are scheduling ‘food-free days’
http://www.independent.co.uk
World grain prices have risen so high that families in poorer countries are being forced to schedule “food-free days” each week, according to one of the leading experts on global agriculture.
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Despite weak El Nino/neutral conditions in the Pacific Ocean, September was statistically tied with 2003 for 3rd warmest September on record according to NASA GISS data published today:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
Most areas of the world, especially the Arctic, were much warmer than average:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2012&month_last=9&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=09&year1=2012&year2=2012&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
I wish people would stop talking about the complexities of the climate system. It puts ordinary people off in droves. When it is explained to people simply in terms of CO2 trapping excess energy which then sloshes around the world impacting everything it touches, they understand why it ends up as extreme weather and other phenomena, ME
Let me start by saying that I personally appreciate that the Norwegian government is putting policy in order to reduce their carbon emissions. However this article needs to be scrutinised, and the figures and facts analysed. Norway is the 3rd largest exporter of oil in the world, producing 3 billion barrels of oil per day. With the current rate of a barrel of oil going for around $90, that means Norway could theoretically bring in 270 million Dollars per day. The fact that they are ONLY willing to put 1 billion Euros into combatting climate change is shocking. They are the third richest country in the world per capita and yet limit their input to that marginal amount. They claim to be making progress by aiming for newly built carbon neutral houses by 2015 and research into solar power ect. yet they are now going in search of new oil to extract in the Barents Sea. I believe that the government of Norway is trying to create a false sense of shifting policies to a carbon neutral society while they are actually busy trying to increase their extraction. Claiming they are doing this to raise funds in order to shift to a “green” society are hard to follow as they seem persistent in finding and sucking dry the last few oil deposits it has access to. In order for Norway to be showing REAL progress they should be putting a lot more towards a renewables and “green” technologies and not be ploughing investment into more oil extraction infrastructure.