JUNE 2007

THIS PAge will be updated during the month

updated 6.6.07

In Antarctica, proof that action on climate change is more urgent than ever

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Published: 06 June 2007 The Independent

Fears that global sea levels this century may rise faster and further than expected are supported by a study showing that 300 glaciers in Antarctica have begun to move more quickly into the ocean. Scientists believe that the accelerated movement of glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula indicates a dramatic shift in the way melting ice around the world contributes to overall increases in global sea levels.Instead of simply adding huge volumes of meltwater to the sea, scientists have found rising temperatures are causing glaciers as far apart as Alaska, Greenland and now Antarctica to break up and slip into the ocean at a faster rate than expected.

The findings will raise concerns within the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which, earlier this year, downplayed the so-called "dynamic" nature of melting glaciers - when rising temperatures cause them to break up quickly rather than simply melt slowly.

Using radar images taken between 1993 and 2003, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge mapped a 12 per cent increase in the average rate of movement of more than 300 glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula over the period.The scientists believe that their findings are among the first to suggest that as glaciers being to melt they experience a physical transformation that causes an acceleration in their movement into the sea.

"We're only just now getting to grips with just how big these dynamic processes may be. There are still a lot of surprises out there," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey and a co-author of the study."It is yet another example of how subpolar glaciers are responding very quickly to climate change because they are close to the temperature transition from ice to water," Dr Vaughan said."Scientists want to know why these things are happening because that's the route to the prediction of future sea levels."

In its fourth report published in February, the IPCC said sea levels this century could rise by between 20 cms and 43cms but it accepted that this could be a serious underestimate if ice sheets and glaciers undergo the sort of dynamic changes that existing computer models do not take fully into account.

Hamish Pritchard, a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, said the findings demonstrated how melting glaciers can change in a way that speeds up their eventual disappearance into the sea.The study showed that rising temperatures cause glaciers to become thinner, which makes them more buoyant when resting on submerged bedrock, so allowing them to slip faster into the ocean, Dr Pritchard said."The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, nearly 3C over the past half-century. Eighty-seven per cent of its glaciers have been retreating during that period and now we see these glaciers are also speeding up," Dr Pritchard said."They are speeding up in a steady, progressive way. Warming causes widespread thinning, which causes widespread acceleration due to an increase in buoyancy. They speed up and the fronts of the glaciers break off and float away."

Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, said: "Without doubt we are seeing a striking global picture of ice on the retreat."

China takes stand on climate

By Richard McGregor in Beijing Financial Times©

Published: June 4 2007 18:50 | Last updated: June 4 2007 18:50

China will put climate change at the heart of its economic and energy policies but without committing itself to “quantified emissions reduction targets”, according to Beijing’s first comprehensive policy document on the issue. Presenting the document, Ma Kai, the chairman of China’s chief economic planning agency, offered Bejing’s first response to George W. Bush’s new climate change policy, saying the president’s proposal contained many “positive features”. But he said any new accords should build on the Kyoto protocol, the main United Nations treaty, not replace it. Unveiling China’s fullest response yet to climate change, Mr Ma said developed countries had an “unshirkable responsibility” to take the lead. He also robustly defended China’s position as the country soon to be the world’s biggest carbon emitter, offering the familiar line that China needed to continue its economic development before adopting mandatory emissions cuts.

Mr Ma also argued that countries that imported energy-intensive Chinese exports should assume some responsibility for the emissions their manufacture generated. “China exported 24m tonnes of steel and 14m tonnes of coke in 2006, but they were not counted as emissions in the importing countries,” he said. This suggests emissions resulting from low-cost contract manufacturing for multinationals, such as US retailer Wal-Mart, should not be counted as Beijing’s alone.

Mr Ma also called for greater technology transfer from wealthy nations, as envisaged under previous UN agreements. “We have heard a lot of thunder but we have yet to see the rain,” he said.

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Airlines chief calls for zero-carbon aircraft

By Kevin Done, Aerospace Correspondent Financial Times©

Published: June 4 2007 19:40 | Last updated: June 4 2007 19:40

The lead spokesperson for most of the world’s airlines on Monday challenged the commercial aerospace industry to develop a passenger aircraft with zero carbon emissions.

Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association (Iata), said the industry must develop such an aircraft within the next 50 years. Aviation’s carbon footprint was growing, he said, and that was not “politically acceptable, for any industry. Climate change will limit our future.”

In an attempt to galvanise the aviation industry to respond to the growing environmental pressures on air travel, Mr Bisignani told the Iata annual meeting in Vancouver that climate change was a real concern for airline customers and had become a political priority for many governments. Some of the potential building blocks for a carbon-free future were already available, he said, including fuel cell technology. The first solar powered aircraft had been built and it was possible to make fuel from biomass.The leader of Iata, the trade association for most of the world’s airlines, also called on the global leaders in aerospace, the US, Europe, Canada, China, Brazil, Russia and Japan to co-ordinate basic research and then to compete to apply it effectively.

A green industry was “absolutely achievable,” he said. The aerospace sector had already proven that it could produce “amazing results” by going “in a short 50 years from the Wright brothers to the jet age.”Mr Bisignani said the industry already had a good track record, having reduced aircraft noise by 75 per cent in the last 30 years and improved fuel efficiency by 70 per cent in the last 40 years. The billions of dollars being invested by airlines in new aircraft would also make carriers 25 per cent more fuel efficient by 2020.He said aviation had had a poor record in communicating the improvements, however, and was facing “a reputation crisis. That make us an easy target for politicians who think green and see cash.”

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Merkel to push Bush on climate change

By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Hugh Williamsonin Rostock Financial Times©

Published: June 4 2007 03:00 | Last updated: June 4 2007 03:00

One thing that can be said of Angela Merkel is that she does not give up easily. As the German chancellor's aides were dismissing any hope that she could overcome US opposition to her climate proposals at this week's Group of Eight summit, she was planning one last charm offensive.Berlin officials confirmed yesterday that she would meet President George W. Bush for lunch on Wed-nesday - hours before the leaders of the world's eight richest nations sit down for their annual gathering - and cajole him into endorsing her climate strategy. "On climate, I will fight up to the last minute," she said at the weekend.

US-German tension over global warming has added uncharacteristic drama into the preparations for this year's G8 summit, which begins on Wednesday in the Heiligendamm seaside resort in Germany, holder of the club's presidency this year.

Building on decisions by the European Union's 27 member states in March, Germany has suggested that the G8 members should make three promises: to cap global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent of their 1990 level by 2050, and to start work on a global emissions trading system.Washington rejected the suggestions, and tension rose again last week when Mr Bush invited the world's top polluters to meet by the end of the year and set their own emissions targets - a surprising move seen as hostile in Berlin, where the president is suspected of trying to launch a competing initiative to the United Nations-led Kyoto process.

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Ozone Holes Research reveals Past Incident - Telegraph©excerpt - June 2007

The discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 provided an early warning of the dangerous thinning of the ozone layer worldwide, and spurred international efforts to curb the production of man-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are used in aerosols, refrigerants and other applications.

Today, a team from the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge reports it has discovered that there was a massive natural ozone depletion event 251 million years ago, during the greatest mass extinction event of all time, called the Great Dying, in which 96 per cent of all marine species and an estimated 70 per cent of land species perished.The research, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, shows that toxic chemicals released by volcanoes led to a thinning of the ozone layer between the Permian and Triassic geological periods, hundreds of millions of years before modern humans even existed.

New mathematical models developed by the scientists suggest a massive episode of volcanism in Siberia, which coincided with the mass extinction, seriously depleted the ozone shield that protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet-B radiation.The eruptions that sent vast volumes of lava over primeval Siberia injected halogen gases into the atmosphere, and produced potent ozone-destroying chemicals as the hot ascending lava cooked Siberian rocks and underground salt and minerals.The scientists' calculations also help explain fossil finds reported a few years ago of unusual mutated plant pollen in rocks, which dated back to around the time of the mass extinction, and had previously puzzled scientists. These mutations are consistent with damage to plants by extreme UV-radiation.

Unlike our present ozone hole in Antarctica, the ozone destruction caused by the volcanoes is thought to have quickly "healed" as the volcanism waned, because chlorine is rapidly washed out of the atmosphere in the form of rain and snow. Our modern ozone hole, in contrast, will persist for decades because chlorine-containing CFCs take many years to break down.

The scientist leading the research, Prof David Beerling from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "It is the first time anyone has shown how susceptible the ozone shield is to damage by halogen release from these massive bouts of ancient volcanism."The results give us a deeper understanding of environmental change during the largest mass extinction of all time at the end of the Permian Period."

The journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Engineering Mathematical and Physical Sciences was the first ever peer-reviewed scientific journal, initially published in 1665.

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EU states hiding water pollution, Brussels says

31.05.2007 - 17:32 CET | By Honor Mahony
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said it fears member states are removing polluted bathing water from EU quality-monitoring lists in order to keep any dirty waters away from Brussels' eyes.

A report published on Thursday (31 May) found that over 96 percent of coastal areas meet EU hygiene standards, with almost 89 percent of freshwater areas such as lakes and rivers also coming up to scratch. But the commission was not entirely happy with the results."Despite these encouraging results I am very concerned by the number of bathing sites withdrawn from the list," EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a statement.

"Removing sites from the list because they are polluted is not a solution. Member states must instead draw up plans for clearing up these polluted sites," he continued.Member states can choose which sites are put on the list for EU scrutiny with Brussels noting that 88 coastal areas and 166 freshwater sites had been removed since the previous year.

In 2006, a total of 21,094 bathing areas were monitored, slightly up from the previous year - 14,345 of these were in coastal waters and 6,749 in inland freshwater areas.

"The Commission is concerned that in some cases bathing sites are being de-listed to mask pollution problems and artificially improve compliance results without tackling the problem at source," said Mr Dimas' statement.It did not point the finger but noted that last year it started legal proceedings against Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden for delisting sites.
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