A leaky Canadian reactor which supplies the United States with about half of its medical isotopes will be shut for much longer than first anticipated.
Atomic Energy of Canada, a government-owned reactor maker and operator, said on Wednesday that it will likely take until late this year to repair the device in Chalk River, Ontario.
Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Hugh MacDiarmid, the company’s president, did not rule out longer delays.
The 52-year-old reactor, which has been plagued with problems in recent years, closed on May 15 after a leak of heavy water, which it uses as a moderator, was discovered. At the time, Atomic Energy estimated that repairs would take three months.
The reactor is the only one in North America that produces isotopes used medical imaging and treatments.
Sourcing isotopes from other reactors is difficult because Chalk River is the world’s largest isotope maker. Medical isotopes also have a relatively short shelf life, making it impossible to build up stockpiles to cover periods when the reactor is out of order.
Some medical imaging and nuclear physics experts have speculated that Chalk River may never reopen, a possibility that Mr. MacDiarmid rejected.
In a joint statement, Leona Aglukkaq, Canada’s health minister, and Lisa Raitt, the natural resources minister, said the continued reactor shutdown “will result in a significant shortage of medical isotopes in Canada and in the world this summer.”
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Two-Degree Solution
I’m going to try to go offline through next Tuesday, but wanted to offer one more piece on climate statements by the Group of 8 industrialized countries.
After years of resisting efforts to define a dangerous level of warming in international climate discussions, the United States joined with the rest of the world’s major industrial powers on Wednesday in a (non-binding) pledge to avoid warming the planet beyond a threshold long favored by European governments and many climate campaigners as a no-go zone.
The chosen danger zone, derived from a host of scientific studies over the last two decades, lies 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) beyond the planet’s average temperature in 1850 or so. (That translates to about a 2 degree Fahrenheit warming from today’s global average, by some ways of measuring, of about 59 degrees.)
But, given the persistent lack of clarity on how much the world will warm from a certain buildup of greenhouse gases and the divergent views around the world on what an ideal climate is in any case, is this threshold meaningful or useful? (And of course there’s the question of whether it’s an utterly wishful goal given emissions trends and energy options, as Richard Black explores on his BBC blog.)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, proscribed from making judgments about how much warming is too much by its charter, has focused on laying out what could happen as warming proceeds, degree by degree, demarcating a list of “ reasons for concern” that build rapidly after such a warming. The purpose of the panel’s “ burning embers” diagram was to convey how dangers build without telling governments which point was excessive.
It’s not hard to find climate scientists and policy experts who strongly feel the world needs to move rapidly to curb emissions, but who say there are no such clean lines. Some go further, saying that setting such thresholds can be counterproductive. I touched on this issue a few months ago in my article and Dot Earth post examining “tipping points” in the climate system.
Back in 2006, Gavin Schmidt, the NASA scientist and Realclimate.org blogger, critiqued thresholds in a piece with a great title, “Runaway Tipping Points of No Return”:
This can lead to two seemingly opposite, and erroneous, conclusions – that nothing will happen until we reach the ‘point’ and conversely, that once we’ve reached it, there will be nothing that can be done about it. i.e. it promotes both a cavalier and fatalistic outlook. However, it seems more appropriate to view the system as having multiple tipping points and thresholds that range in importance and scale from the smallest ecosystem to the size of the planet. As the system is forced into new configurations more and more of those points are likely to be passed, but some of those points are more globally serious than others.
Stephen H. Schneider, the Stanford climatologist I’ve been interviewing since 1988 on this issue, has long favored pursuing climate policies that reflect the overall reality that the risk of bad outcomes rises with gas concentrations:
I like to use the analogy to a kids skateboard park, where the ramp starts up slowly, and gets non-linearly steeper until it is vertical at the top and the kid jumps and the parents hide their eyes! In other words, there are many such threshold tipping points in the bio-geophysical-social system, but the problem is we don’t know precisely where they are — ergo the need to frame it probabilistically and my skateboard ramp is an analogy to the steepening threats as we add warming. The warmer we get the more systems there are at risk and the deeper the impacts.
Kenneth Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University says that implying, as many do, that the 2-degree threshold is defined by science and not politics and values is unwise at best:
This presents a value judgment as if it’s a scientific conclusion. I would personally be in favor of a ban on new CO2-emitting devices, but I wouldn’t think of presenting that as a scientific result. We still don’t know for a CO2 doubling whether Earth will warm 2 degrees, 4 degrees or whatever. And we don’t know exactly how the Earth is going to respond to that 2 or 4 degrees of warming. The situation is that we’re entering risky territory and every emission pushes us deeper into that territory faster.
Here’s more from Realclimate.org on the merits and drawbacks of 2 degrees:
We feel compelled to note that even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture. Given the drought that already afflicts Australia, the crumbling of the sea ice in the Arctic, and the increasing storm damage after only 0.8°C of warming so far, calling 2°C a danger limit seems to us pretty cavalier.
Realclimate.org authors also said (in 2005):
Is there a “point of no return” or “critical threshold” that will be crossed when the forcings exceed this level, as reported in some media? We don’t believe there is scientific evidence for this. However, as was pointed out at an international symposium on this topic last year in Beijing by Carlo Jaeger, setting a limit is a sensible way to collectively deal with a risk. A speed limit is a prime example. When we set a speed limit at 60 mph, there is no “critical threshold” there – nothing terrible happens if you go to 65 or 70 mph, say. But perhaps at 90 mph the fatalities would clearly exceed acceptable levels. Setting a limit to global warming at 2ºC above pre-industrial temperature is the official policy target of the European Union, and may seem a sensible limit in this sense. But, just like speed limits, it may be difficult to adhere to.
By Andrew C. Revkin
After years of resisting efforts to define a dangerous level of warming in international climate discussions, the United States joined with the rest of the world’s major industrial powers on Wednesday in a (non-binding) pledge to avoid warming the planet beyond a threshold long favored by European governments and many climate campaigners as a no-go zone.
The chosen danger zone, derived from a host of scientific studies over the last two decades, lies 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) beyond the planet’s average temperature in 1850 or so. (That translates to about a 2 degree Fahrenheit warming from today’s global average, by some ways of measuring, of about 59 degrees.)
But, given the persistent lack of clarity on how much the world will warm from a certain buildup of greenhouse gases and the divergent views around the world on what an ideal climate is in any case, is this threshold meaningful or useful? (And of course there’s the question of whether it’s an utterly wishful goal given emissions trends and energy options, as Richard Black explores on his BBC blog.)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, proscribed from making judgments about how much warming is too much by its charter, has focused on laying out what could happen as warming proceeds, degree by degree, demarcating a list of “ reasons for concern” that build rapidly after such a warming. The purpose of the panel’s “ burning embers” diagram was to convey how dangers build without telling governments which point was excessive.
It’s not hard to find climate scientists and policy experts who strongly feel the world needs to move rapidly to curb emissions, but who say there are no such clean lines. Some go further, saying that setting such thresholds can be counterproductive. I touched on this issue a few months ago in my article and Dot Earth post examining “tipping points” in the climate system.
Back in 2006, Gavin Schmidt, the NASA scientist and Realclimate.org blogger, critiqued thresholds in a piece with a great title, “Runaway Tipping Points of No Return”:
This can lead to two seemingly opposite, and erroneous, conclusions – that nothing will happen until we reach the ‘point’ and conversely, that once we’ve reached it, there will be nothing that can be done about it. i.e. it promotes both a cavalier and fatalistic outlook. However, it seems more appropriate to view the system as having multiple tipping points and thresholds that range in importance and scale from the smallest ecosystem to the size of the planet. As the system is forced into new configurations more and more of those points are likely to be passed, but some of those points are more globally serious than others.
Stephen H. Schneider, the Stanford climatologist I’ve been interviewing since 1988 on this issue, has long favored pursuing climate policies that reflect the overall reality that the risk of bad outcomes rises with gas concentrations:
I like to use the analogy to a kids skateboard park, where the ramp starts up slowly, and gets non-linearly steeper until it is vertical at the top and the kid jumps and the parents hide their eyes! In other words, there are many such threshold tipping points in the bio-geophysical-social system, but the problem is we don’t know precisely where they are — ergo the need to frame it probabilistically and my skateboard ramp is an analogy to the steepening threats as we add warming. The warmer we get the more systems there are at risk and the deeper the impacts.
Kenneth Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University says that implying, as many do, that the 2-degree threshold is defined by science and not politics and values is unwise at best:
This presents a value judgment as if it’s a scientific conclusion. I would personally be in favor of a ban on new CO2-emitting devices, but I wouldn’t think of presenting that as a scientific result. We still don’t know for a CO2 doubling whether Earth will warm 2 degrees, 4 degrees or whatever. And we don’t know exactly how the Earth is going to respond to that 2 or 4 degrees of warming. The situation is that we’re entering risky territory and every emission pushes us deeper into that territory faster.
Here’s more from Realclimate.org on the merits and drawbacks of 2 degrees:
We feel compelled to note that even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture. Given the drought that already afflicts Australia, the crumbling of the sea ice in the Arctic, and the increasing storm damage after only 0.8°C of warming so far, calling 2°C a danger limit seems to us pretty cavalier.
Realclimate.org authors also said (in 2005):
Is there a “point of no return” or “critical threshold” that will be crossed when the forcings exceed this level, as reported in some media? We don’t believe there is scientific evidence for this. However, as was pointed out at an international symposium on this topic last year in Beijing by Carlo Jaeger, setting a limit is a sensible way to collectively deal with a risk. A speed limit is a prime example. When we set a speed limit at 60 mph, there is no “critical threshold” there – nothing terrible happens if you go to 65 or 70 mph, say. But perhaps at 90 mph the fatalities would clearly exceed acceptable levels. Setting a limit to global warming at 2ºC above pre-industrial temperature is the official policy target of the European Union, and may seem a sensible limit in this sense. But, just like speed limits, it may be difficult to adhere to.
By Andrew C. Revkin
Cleaner Buses in Developing World May Be Key for Climate
Like most thoroughfares in booming cities of the developing world, Bogotá’s Seventh Avenue resembles a noisy, exhaust-coated parking lot — a gluey tangle of cars and the rickety, smoke-puffing private minibuses that have long pBut a few blocks away, sleek, red vehicles full of commuters speed down the four center lanes of Avenida de las Américas. The long, segmented, low-emission buses are part of a novel public transportation system called bus rapid transit, or B.R.T. It is more like an above-ground subway than a collection of bus routes, with seven intersecting lines, enclosed stations that are entered through turnstiles with the swipe of a farecard and coaches that feel like trams inside. Versions of these systems are now being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India, to name a few — providing a public transportation network that improves traffic flow and reduces smog at a fraction of the cost of building a subway.
But the rapid transit systems have another benefit: they may hold a key to combating climate change. Emissions from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles in the booming cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America account for a rapidly growing component of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. While emissions from industry are decreasing, those related to transportation are expected to rise more than 50 percent by 2030 in industrialized and poorer nations. And 80 percent of that growth will be in the developing world, according to data presented in May at a international conference in Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and the Clean Air Institute.
To be effective, a new international climate treaty that will be negotiated in Copenhagen in December must include “a policy response to the CO2 emissions from transport in the developing world,” the Bellagio conference statement concluded.
Bus rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small, private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials.
In recognition of this feat, TransMilenio last year became the only large transportation project approved by the United Nations to generate and sell carbon credits. Developed countries that exceed their emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol, or that simply want to burnish a “green” image, can buy credits from TransMilenio to balance out their emissions budgets, bringing Bogotá an estimated $100 million to $300 million so far, analysts say.
Indeed, the city has provided a model of how international programs to combat climate change can help expanding cities — the number of cars in China alone will quadruple between 2002 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency — pay for transit systems that would otherwise be unaffordable.
“Bogotá was huge and messy and poor, so people said, ‘If Bogotá can do it, why can’t we?’ ” said Enrique Peñalosa, an economist and a former mayor of the city who took TransMilenio from a concept to its initial opening in 2001 and is now advising other cities.
In 2008, Mexico City opened a second successful bus rapid transit line that has already reduced carbon dioxide emissions there, according to Lee Schipper, a transportation expert at Stanford University, and the city has applied to sell carbon credits as well.
But bus rapid transit systems are not the answer for every city. In the United States, where cost is less constraining, some cities, like Los Angeles, have built B.R.T.’s, but they tend to lack many of the components of comprehensive systems like TransMilenio, like fully enclosed stations, and they serve as an addition to existing rail networks.
In some sprawling cities in India, where a tradition of scooter use may make bus rapid transit more difficult to create, researchers are working to develop a new model of tuk-tuk, or motorized cab, that is cheap and will run on alternative fuels or with a highly efficient engine.
“There are three million auto rickshaws in India alone, and the smoke is astonishing, so this could have a huge impact,” said Stef van Dongen, director of Enviu, an environmental network group in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that is sponsoring the research.
Bus rapid transit systems have not always worked well in cities that have tried them, either. In New Delhi, for example, the experiment foundered in part because it proved difficult to protect bus lanes from traffic. And a system that does not succeed in drawing passengers out of their cars just adds buses to existing vehicles on the roads, making traffic and emissions worse.
But with its wide streets, dense population and a tradition of bus travel, Bogotá had the ingredients for success. To create TransMilenio, the city commandeered two to four traffic lanes in the middle of major boulevards, isolating them with low walls to create the system’s so-called tracks. On the center islands that divide many of Bogotá’s two-way streets, the city built dozens of distinctive metal-and-glass stations.
Just as in a subway, the multiple doors on the buses slide open level with the platform, providing easy access for strollers and older riders. Hundreds of passengers can wait on the platforms, avoiding the delays that occur when passengers each pay as they board.
Mr. Peñalosa noted that the negative stereotypes about bus travel required some clever rebranding. Now, he said, upscale condominiums advertise that they are near TransMilenio lines. “People don’t say, ‘I’m taking the bus,’ they say, ‘I’m taking TransMilenio,’ ” he added, as he rode at rush hour recently, chatting with other passengers.
Jorge Engarrita, 45, a leatherworker who was riding TransMilenio to work, said the system had “changed his life,” reducing his commuting time to 40 minutes with one transfer from two or three hours on several buses. Free shuttle buses carry residents from outlying districts to TransMilenio terminals.
To the dismay of car owners, Bogotá removed one-third of its street parking to make room for TransMilenio and imposed alternate-day driving restrictions determined by license plate numbers, forcing car owners onto the system.
With an extensive route system, TransMilenio moves more passengers per mile every hour than almost any of the world’s subways. Most poorer cities that have built subways, like Manila and Lagos, Nigeria, can afford to build only a few limited lines because of the expense.
Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.
Although TransMilenio buses run on diesel, their high-efficiency engines mean they emit less than half the nitrous oxide, particulate matter and carbon dioxide of the older minibuses. Cleaner fuels were either too expensive or did not work at Bogotá’s altitude, 9,000 feet above sea level.
TransMilenio is building more lines and underpasses to allow the buses to bypass clogged intersections, but for the moment the real challenge is overcrowding.
Juan Gómez, 21, a businessman, takes TransMilenio only on days when he cannot drive, and he griped that it was often hard to find a seat.
“It’s O.K., but I prefer the car,” he said.rovided transportation for the masses.
But the rapid transit systems have another benefit: they may hold a key to combating climate change. Emissions from cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles in the booming cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America account for a rapidly growing component of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. While emissions from industry are decreasing, those related to transportation are expected to rise more than 50 percent by 2030 in industrialized and poorer nations. And 80 percent of that growth will be in the developing world, according to data presented in May at a international conference in Bellagio, Italy, sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and the Clean Air Institute.
To be effective, a new international climate treaty that will be negotiated in Copenhagen in December must include “a policy response to the CO2 emissions from transport in the developing world,” the Bellagio conference statement concluded.
Bus rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small, private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials.
In recognition of this feat, TransMilenio last year became the only large transportation project approved by the United Nations to generate and sell carbon credits. Developed countries that exceed their emissions limits under the Kyoto Protocol, or that simply want to burnish a “green” image, can buy credits from TransMilenio to balance out their emissions budgets, bringing Bogotá an estimated $100 million to $300 million so far, analysts say.
Indeed, the city has provided a model of how international programs to combat climate change can help expanding cities — the number of cars in China alone will quadruple between 2002 and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency — pay for transit systems that would otherwise be unaffordable.
“Bogotá was huge and messy and poor, so people said, ‘If Bogotá can do it, why can’t we?’ ” said Enrique Peñalosa, an economist and a former mayor of the city who took TransMilenio from a concept to its initial opening in 2001 and is now advising other cities.
In 2008, Mexico City opened a second successful bus rapid transit line that has already reduced carbon dioxide emissions there, according to Lee Schipper, a transportation expert at Stanford University, and the city has applied to sell carbon credits as well.
But bus rapid transit systems are not the answer for every city. In the United States, where cost is less constraining, some cities, like Los Angeles, have built B.R.T.’s, but they tend to lack many of the components of comprehensive systems like TransMilenio, like fully enclosed stations, and they serve as an addition to existing rail networks.
In some sprawling cities in India, where a tradition of scooter use may make bus rapid transit more difficult to create, researchers are working to develop a new model of tuk-tuk, or motorized cab, that is cheap and will run on alternative fuels or with a highly efficient engine.
“There are three million auto rickshaws in India alone, and the smoke is astonishing, so this could have a huge impact,” said Stef van Dongen, director of Enviu, an environmental network group in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that is sponsoring the research.
Bus rapid transit systems have not always worked well in cities that have tried them, either. In New Delhi, for example, the experiment foundered in part because it proved difficult to protect bus lanes from traffic. And a system that does not succeed in drawing passengers out of their cars just adds buses to existing vehicles on the roads, making traffic and emissions worse.
But with its wide streets, dense population and a tradition of bus travel, Bogotá had the ingredients for success. To create TransMilenio, the city commandeered two to four traffic lanes in the middle of major boulevards, isolating them with low walls to create the system’s so-called tracks. On the center islands that divide many of Bogotá’s two-way streets, the city built dozens of distinctive metal-and-glass stations.
Just as in a subway, the multiple doors on the buses slide open level with the platform, providing easy access for strollers and older riders. Hundreds of passengers can wait on the platforms, avoiding the delays that occur when passengers each pay as they board.
Mr. Peñalosa noted that the negative stereotypes about bus travel required some clever rebranding. Now, he said, upscale condominiums advertise that they are near TransMilenio lines. “People don’t say, ‘I’m taking the bus,’ they say, ‘I’m taking TransMilenio,’ ” he added, as he rode at rush hour recently, chatting with other passengers.
Jorge Engarrita, 45, a leatherworker who was riding TransMilenio to work, said the system had “changed his life,” reducing his commuting time to 40 minutes with one transfer from two or three hours on several buses. Free shuttle buses carry residents from outlying districts to TransMilenio terminals.
To the dismay of car owners, Bogotá removed one-third of its street parking to make room for TransMilenio and imposed alternate-day driving restrictions determined by license plate numbers, forcing car owners onto the system.
With an extensive route system, TransMilenio moves more passengers per mile every hour than almost any of the world’s subways. Most poorer cities that have built subways, like Manila and Lagos, Nigeria, can afford to build only a few limited lines because of the expense.
Subways cost more than 30 times as much per mile to build than a B.R.T. system, and three times as much to maintain. And bus rapid transit systems can be built more quickly. “Almost all rapidly developing cities understand that they need a metro or something like it, and you can get a B.R.T. by 2010 or a metro by 2060,” said Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, in New York.
Although TransMilenio buses run on diesel, their high-efficiency engines mean they emit less than half the nitrous oxide, particulate matter and carbon dioxide of the older minibuses. Cleaner fuels were either too expensive or did not work at Bogotá’s altitude, 9,000 feet above sea level.
TransMilenio is building more lines and underpasses to allow the buses to bypass clogged intersections, but for the moment the real challenge is overcrowding.
Juan Gómez, 21, a businessman, takes TransMilenio only on days when he cannot drive, and he griped that it was often hard to find a seat.
“It’s O.K., but I prefer the car,” he said.rovided transportation for the masses.
Climate impasse at G-8 summit leaves nations mired
Developing nations led by China and India refused Wednesday to back lofty but long-term targets proposed by the Group of 8 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, balking at reluctance by leaders of the world's biggest economies to move more quickly on their own. Inability to bridge the gap between rising carbon-emitting countries such as China and the longtime polluters within the G-8 underscores the steep challenges involved in attempting to strike a comprehensive bargain to contain global warming.
The impasse comes down to the politically sensitive issue of who goes first.President Obama and his counterparts in the G-8, who are holding two days of meetings in the central Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, offered broad agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The statement pledged to slash global emissions by 50%, led by reductions of 80% by the G-8 countries.They also prepared to offer new financial incentives for developing nations to join the effort.
But the G-8 stopped well short of pledging to take aggressive action that could curb emissions more quickly -- at the cost of higher energy prices and a feared worsening of the global economy.And neither the broad promises of future action nor the relatively modest financial incentives were likely to break the standoff between the most advanced economies and the emerging powerhouses. Countries such as China, India and Brazil are unwilling to take the first steps to cut emissions that could choke off economic growth, instead demanding that wealthier nations take the lead."China's not going to do anything until the developed countries send a signal that they're going to do something," said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University and a longtime participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The standoff at the summit perpetuates a divide that must be bridged this year if there is to be a global agreement on curbing emissions.The United Nations is convening a meeting in Copenhagen in December aimed at forging a binding consensus on targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But unless China and other developing nations can be persuaded to sign on to an accord, Obama may find it difficult -- if not impossible -- to convince Congress to go along.The stalemate on the international stage mirrors Obama's problem at home. Though the House approved a major climate bill last month, Republicans and other critics have unleashed a hailstorm of criticism. They argue that emissions limits by the United States and other advanced economies alone would have relatively little effect on global warming, while potentially harming the domestic economy.Obama's climate bill, which narrowly passed the House, could send a strong signal if it becomes law, said Dirk Forrister, who was chairman of the White House climate change task force under President Clinton and now is managing director of the financial firm Natsource LLC.But, he said, "the U.S. Senate will not go along with anything unless it sees some pretty serious action from developing countries." That, analysts say, sums up Obama's conundrum as he tries to push for a meaningful climate agreement during formal treaty negotiations in Denmark this winter. "It looks like it's going to be a pretty tough fight [in Copenhagen], based on what happened in these meetings in Italy," Forrister said.U.S. leaders hinted that a broad coalition of developing and developed nations could announce agreement today to team up on research on renewable energy and technology to scrub and store greenhouse emissions from coal. Michael Froman, Obama's point man at the summit and lead staff negotiator, argued that the major industrial nations' joint statement favoring an 80% reduction in their emissions by 2050 represented "significant cooperation" -- even though it came up short of the draft language that the White House had supported.The G-8 targets roughly followed those in Obama's domestic climate bill.The G-8 countries also set a global goal of 50% emissions reductions by mid-century, and declared that they recognized "the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above preindustrial levels ought not to exceed" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).They did not announce any specific plans to cut emissions or adopt any short- or mid-term reduction targets. The United States pushed, and failed, to get developing nations to join in the reduction pledge. "In any negotiation, you put in a number of points," Froman said.
Sometimes they make it in and sometimes they don't." The statement that did not come -- the one that would have included China, Brazil and other developing countries -- is the one that matters, he acknowledged.
But both Froman and chief Obama climate negotiator Todd Stern argued that there was plenty of room to work out an agreement before the Copenhagen summit."It's a negotiation. Countries may make concessions further down the road," Stern said in an interview. Obama will chair a meeting of the world's largest emitters, including both developing and developed nations, today in Italy.
Analysts said the Obama administration could strengthen its hand in future negotiations with another victory or two at home -- Senate approval of a climate bill and, even better, passage by Congress of a conference version of the bill that Obama could sign into law before the Copenhagen talks."His most powerful weapon is a piece of signed legislation," said Melinda L. Kimble, senior vice president of the United Nations Foundation and a former climate negotiator in the Clinton administration. "If he has that in his pocket," she added, "everything else he has is icing on the cake."
The impasse comes down to the politically sensitive issue of who goes first.President Obama and his counterparts in the G-8, who are holding two days of meetings in the central Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, offered broad agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The statement pledged to slash global emissions by 50%, led by reductions of 80% by the G-8 countries.They also prepared to offer new financial incentives for developing nations to join the effort.
But the G-8 stopped well short of pledging to take aggressive action that could curb emissions more quickly -- at the cost of higher energy prices and a feared worsening of the global economy.And neither the broad promises of future action nor the relatively modest financial incentives were likely to break the standoff between the most advanced economies and the emerging powerhouses. Countries such as China, India and Brazil are unwilling to take the first steps to cut emissions that could choke off economic growth, instead demanding that wealthier nations take the lead."China's not going to do anything until the developed countries send a signal that they're going to do something," said Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton University and a longtime participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.The standoff at the summit perpetuates a divide that must be bridged this year if there is to be a global agreement on curbing emissions.The United Nations is convening a meeting in Copenhagen in December aimed at forging a binding consensus on targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But unless China and other developing nations can be persuaded to sign on to an accord, Obama may find it difficult -- if not impossible -- to convince Congress to go along.The stalemate on the international stage mirrors Obama's problem at home. Though the House approved a major climate bill last month, Republicans and other critics have unleashed a hailstorm of criticism. They argue that emissions limits by the United States and other advanced economies alone would have relatively little effect on global warming, while potentially harming the domestic economy.Obama's climate bill, which narrowly passed the House, could send a strong signal if it becomes law, said Dirk Forrister, who was chairman of the White House climate change task force under President Clinton and now is managing director of the financial firm Natsource LLC.But, he said, "the U.S. Senate will not go along with anything unless it sees some pretty serious action from developing countries." That, analysts say, sums up Obama's conundrum as he tries to push for a meaningful climate agreement during formal treaty negotiations in Denmark this winter. "It looks like it's going to be a pretty tough fight [in Copenhagen], based on what happened in these meetings in Italy," Forrister said.U.S. leaders hinted that a broad coalition of developing and developed nations could announce agreement today to team up on research on renewable energy and technology to scrub and store greenhouse emissions from coal. Michael Froman, Obama's point man at the summit and lead staff negotiator, argued that the major industrial nations' joint statement favoring an 80% reduction in their emissions by 2050 represented "significant cooperation" -- even though it came up short of the draft language that the White House had supported.The G-8 targets roughly followed those in Obama's domestic climate bill.The G-8 countries also set a global goal of 50% emissions reductions by mid-century, and declared that they recognized "the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above preindustrial levels ought not to exceed" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).They did not announce any specific plans to cut emissions or adopt any short- or mid-term reduction targets. The United States pushed, and failed, to get developing nations to join in the reduction pledge. "In any negotiation, you put in a number of points," Froman said.
Sometimes they make it in and sometimes they don't." The statement that did not come -- the one that would have included China, Brazil and other developing countries -- is the one that matters, he acknowledged.
But both Froman and chief Obama climate negotiator Todd Stern argued that there was plenty of room to work out an agreement before the Copenhagen summit."It's a negotiation. Countries may make concessions further down the road," Stern said in an interview. Obama will chair a meeting of the world's largest emitters, including both developing and developed nations, today in Italy.
Analysts said the Obama administration could strengthen its hand in future negotiations with another victory or two at home -- Senate approval of a climate bill and, even better, passage by Congress of a conference version of the bill that Obama could sign into law before the Copenhagen talks."His most powerful weapon is a piece of signed legislation," said Melinda L. Kimble, senior vice president of the United Nations Foundation and a former climate negotiator in the Clinton administration. "If he has that in his pocket," she added, "everything else he has is icing on the cake."
Oregon Scientific Eco weather station ditches batteries
Oregon Scientific has announced the release of the +ECO Clima Control weather station, a new weather station that runs on solar power. Coming with a built-in solar panel, the new weather station gadget allows its users to monitor the current temperature and humidity in up to four locations within the home and outdoors. To do this, it uses remote wireless temperature and humidity sensors for up to 3 months from a single 8-hour charge. The new device, which is available in the US from this month, will be joined by two further eco-friendly devices in September, says the company. The +ECO Solar Weather Station promises to monitor current indoor and outdoor weather temperatures, humidity and shows an iconic future weather forecast, as well as Atomic time while the +ECO Solar Weather Clock will monitor the current indoor and outdoor weather temperatures and humidity, as well the Atomic time. Both products are equipped with detachable solar panels and remote wireless temperature and humidity sensors like the Clima Control offering. .
Japan considers adding noise to hybrid cars
It's been talked up before, but the transport ministry in Japan is currently seriously considering forcing car manufacturers of near-silent hybrid vehicles to add sound to their motors. "We have received opinions from automobile users and visually-impaired people that they feel hybrid vehicles are dangerous", a transport ministry official told the AP. "Blind people depend on sounds when they walk, but there are no engine sounds from hybrid vehicles when running at low speed". A panel of experts including the police and groups representing the visually-impaired have met to discuss the matter and, after the first meeting, decided that a "sound-making function" should be introduced. This would mean hybrid cars, such as the Toyota Prius, would be manufactured to create noise when in electric mode.
eco facts
Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight, much of which is reflected back into space, in turn cooling Earth; but with the ice caps melting, the only reflector is the ocean. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.
Scientists blame global warming for the declining penguin population, as warmer waters and smaller ice floes force the birds to travel further to find food.
Stressed by cyanide fishing, harbor dredging, coral mining, deforestation, coastal development, agricultural runoff, careless divers, and now global warming, there is a devastating loss of coral across the world.
With accelerated global warming, and the ice covering melting, the earth would be absorbing more sunlight, and is on its way to becoming hotter than before.
Due to global warming the polar ice cap in the Arctic region is shrinking and rupturing; if this continues, summers in the Arctic would become ice-free by the end of this century.
Everytime we burn oil, coal and gas to generate electricity and power, we produce the heat trapping gases that cause global warming.
Deforestation is one of the main causes of atmospheric carbon dioxide; burning and cutting millions of acres of trees each year, it is responsible for 20-25 per cent of all carbon emissions.
Water vapor is the most prevalent and most powerful greenhouse gas on the planet; it holds onto two-thirds of the heat trapped by all the greenhouse gases.
Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct!
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
One-third of the water used in most homes is flushed down the toilet.
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours
Energy-saving lightbulbs last around ten times longer than ordinary lightbulbs- over 10,000 hours.
A laptop is more environment friendly than a desktop. It consumes five times less electricity.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15 per cent.
Tissue paper is a major source of waste. It takes 60,00,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.
A ton of recycled paper equals or saves 17 trees in paper production.
A plant on your desk acts as a natural filter, absorbing airborne pollutants and computer radiation while replenishing oxygen levels.
Lawns only need watering once a week, post rain only after two weeks. Do watering early morning for minimal evaporation and water conservation.
Crawling traffic contributes eight times as much air pollution as traffic moving at regular highway speed.
Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year!
Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth and soaping your hands. This can save around 16 litres a day. That's 11,000 litre of water per person per year.
A dripping tap can waste over 20,000 litres of water every year.
Scientists blame global warming for the declining penguin population, as warmer waters and smaller ice floes force the birds to travel further to find food.
Stressed by cyanide fishing, harbor dredging, coral mining, deforestation, coastal development, agricultural runoff, careless divers, and now global warming, there is a devastating loss of coral across the world.
With accelerated global warming, and the ice covering melting, the earth would be absorbing more sunlight, and is on its way to becoming hotter than before.
Due to global warming the polar ice cap in the Arctic region is shrinking and rupturing; if this continues, summers in the Arctic would become ice-free by the end of this century.
Everytime we burn oil, coal and gas to generate electricity and power, we produce the heat trapping gases that cause global warming.
Deforestation is one of the main causes of atmospheric carbon dioxide; burning and cutting millions of acres of trees each year, it is responsible for 20-25 per cent of all carbon emissions.
Water vapor is the most prevalent and most powerful greenhouse gas on the planet; it holds onto two-thirds of the heat trapped by all the greenhouse gases.
Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct!
Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute!
One-third of the water used in most homes is flushed down the toilet.
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours
Energy-saving lightbulbs last around ten times longer than ordinary lightbulbs- over 10,000 hours.
A laptop is more environment friendly than a desktop. It consumes five times less electricity.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15 per cent.
Tissue paper is a major source of waste. It takes 60,00,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.
A ton of recycled paper equals or saves 17 trees in paper production.
A plant on your desk acts as a natural filter, absorbing airborne pollutants and computer radiation while replenishing oxygen levels.
Lawns only need watering once a week, post rain only after two weeks. Do watering early morning for minimal evaporation and water conservation.
Crawling traffic contributes eight times as much air pollution as traffic moving at regular highway speed.
Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year!
Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth and soaping your hands. This can save around 16 litres a day. That's 11,000 litre of water per person per year.
A dripping tap can waste over 20,000 litres of water every year.
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