Global warming may or may not be a problem. Man may or may not be driving it. Given the uncertainties, a significant amount of global regret may apply if we divert too much of our global wealth to solving what may be a non-existent or trivial problem, especially if that diversion mires billions in poverty. On the other hand, we may also regret not doing anything if man-made global warming does turn out to be a problem. It is therefore prudent to examine what steps we can take that would prove beneficial whether or not anthropogenic global warming turns out to be a problem. These steps can be termed “no regrets” policies.
What makes a No Regrets Global Warming Policy? A global warming policy can be termed “no regrets” as long as it:
Reduces the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, or
Mitigates, prevents or reduces a harm associated with global warming, or
Provides greater capacity for dealing with problems associated with global warming
Without imposing significant cost or diverting economic activity.
Top Five “No Regrets” Policies
1.) Eliminate all subsidies to fuel use.Subsidies to energy R&D cost taxpayers millions of dollars while producing minimal benefits. While these programs may be relatively small given the size of domestic energy markets, they serve little, if any, useful purpose while subsidizing large corporations at taxpayer expense. The potential threat of global warming, whether it is real or not, is simply one more reason to eliminate these subsidy programs. An international agreement aimed at ending energy subsidy with binding targets would be a significant victory for emissions reduction. Unlike Kyoto, which forces an energy starvation diet on its participants, such a treaty would be a move to combat energy obesity.
2.) Repeal the Federal Flood Insurance Program.Much of the concern over global warming’s potential for harm in the US relates to sea level rise and the flooding that will result. However, much of the investment in potentially vulnerable areas is a result of the Federal flood Insurance Program. This program encourages building in vulnerable areas by acting as a moral hazard: people take greater risks because the government has said it will help bear that risk. Reform would reduce the moral hazard connected with building on vulnerable land, transferring the risk from the taxpayer to the private sector, which is likely to take a more realistic view of the issue.
3.) Reform Air Traffic Control Systems.Greater demand for air travel means more flights, which means greater fuel use and increased emissions. Yet, the current government-operated system of air traffic control, based on a 1920s-era system of beacons, may hinder innovations that could reduce fuel use and emissions. As a general rule, the shorter the flight, the less fuel will be consumed. Yet neither airlines nor pilots have the freedom to choose the most direct and economical route. Giving pilots freedom to map their own course is an attractive and desirable change in the eyes of the industry, and the impact on the environment would be tremendous. As well as saving considerable amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, the policy will deliver significant benefits in terms of time and expense to the US economy. By obviating significant reductions in service levels associated with more routine applications of emissions reduction policy, it is to be preferred to that approach.
4.) Facilitate Electricity Competition.By rejecting the model of central regulation and allowing suppliers to meet their customers’ needs more exactly while relying on distributed generation, energy waste and the associated emissions will reduce considerably. This reduction in waste will prove economically beneficial even if emissions themselves do not cause problems.
5.) Reduce Regulatory Barriers to New Nuclear Build.There is no other technology than nuclear that is proven to be capable of providing emissions-free energy at the scale required to make significant reductions in carbon emissions. The problem is that thanks to anti-nuclear activism by environmentalists in the 1970s, it takes a very long time to build a nuclear plant. This pushes development and construction costs up to the level where it is not economically competitive with higher-emitting forms of electricity generation like coal and natural gas. According to the nuclear energy institute, it takes 10 years from concept to operation to build a nuclear plant, and only four of those are construction, the rest is permit application development (2 years) and decision-making by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (4 years).
Monday, July 13, 2009
Green movement puts memory on hot seat
Internet data centre power requirements are increasing as much as 20 per cent a year; already, according to estimates of experts, these facilities in total consume as much electricity as some countries, including Iran, Mexico, Sweden and Turkey. The industry hopes to reverse the trend by revisiting the design of cooling systems, power supplies and server architectures.
In servers, the notoriously voracious microprocessor is passing the power-hog mantle to the DRAM, which offers fast data access but requires a heat-generating refresh every few milliseconds. Thus the greening of the data centre includes a focus on lower-voltage DRAMs, nonvolatile alternatives and the emerging category of storage-class memories.
Whether the green-memory movement thrives or dies on the vine, the DRAM status quo could be uprooted.
The DRAM's power appetite is not its only problem. As the recession wears on, OEMs are keeping a nervous eye on struggling memory suppliers. "It's not pleasant to see our partners suffer so badly," said Tom Lattin, director of strategic commodities for industry-standard servers at Hewlett-Packard Co.
DRAM scaling, meanwhile, could hit a wall as it becomes increasingly difficult to shrink the capacitor within the device. That could fuel the need for such alternatives as ferroelectric, magnetoresistive, phase-change and resistive RAM.
Don't look for the DRAM to disappear, said Bob Merritt, an analyst with research firm Convergent Semiconductors who believes DRAMs will scale to 20 nanometers. "There will be DRAM applications for the next 10 years," Merritt said, but "you will also see applications" that will turn to nonvolatile alternatives (which don't require refresh to maintain the data) for server main memory.
Bill Tschudi, program manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the drive to make data centres more power efficient will include better IT practices, new power distribution schemes, higher processor utilisation rates and "advancements on the memory side."
"Memory power is a significant portion of platform power," noted Dileep Bhandarkar, distinguished engineer with Microsoft Corp.'s Global Foundation Services unit. "As processor performance increases and virtualisation takes off, the memory footprint will increase. There is a need for lower-voltage DRAMs."
DRAM makers have responded with lower-voltage DDR3 synchronous DRAMs, which have found a home in servers from such vendors as HP, IBM, SGI and Sun.
Meanwhile, solid-state drives (SSDs) and I/O accelerators could shake up the memory and storage hierarchy. And server start-ups Schooner Information Technology Inc. and Virident Systems Inc. have released data centre servers that promise to cut hardware costs as well as power consumption. The potential of the technology has prompted IBM to form an alliance with Schooner.
In theory, green servers could replace traditional X86- or RISC-based systems, possibly displacing DRAM in the process. Schooner and Virident use lower-power, nonvolatile, "storage class" memory to handle the search index and other tasks usually relegated to DRAM.
Market watcher Frost & Sullivan estimates that a typical server farm of 5,000 systems with 32 GB of DRAM each could be reduced to 1,250 systems with 128 GB each of nonvolatile memory, resulting in a 75 per cent reduction in energy over four years, a 75 per cent reduction in the cost of physical space and a 45 per cent reduction in capital expenditures.
Troubling trendsSuch reductions would be welcome news for U.S. data centres, which spend Rs.14,696.08 crore ($3 billion) per year on electricity alone, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA sees U.S. data centre power consumption rising from 6100 crore kilowatt-hours today to 10000 crore kWh in 2011. Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan projects that the total installed base of data centre servers will rise from 22 lakh units in 2007 to 68 lakh units next year.
The typical server consumed about 50 watts before 2000 but draws some 250 W today, according to "Energy Efficiency for Information Technology," a new book published by Intel Corp. And SGI, formerly Rackable Systems Inc., estimates that for every 100 W to power a server, a further 60 to 70 W are needed to cool it.
Processor power consumption ranges from 45 to 200 W, according to Intel. In a server with eight 1-GB dual in-line memory modules, the DIMMs can contribute 80 W to the power budget, according to Intel. In large servers with up to 64 DIMMs, the result could be "more power consumption by memory than processors," Intel notes.
Intel incorporates "automatic memory throttling" on its processors to reduce heat. DRAM vendors are also reducing heat generation in their latest 50-nm-class parts, exemplified by those from Hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung.
Meanwhile, server vendors have been migrating from DDR2 SDRAMs to 1.5-volt and, more recently, 1.35-V DDR3 SDRAMs. DDR3 doubles performance and provides a 60 per cent improvement in power consumption (for the 1.35-V version) over DDR2, said Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor Inc.
By next year, DDR3 modules could migrate from conventional to load-reduced DIMMs, which could boost memory capacity fourfold. And by 2011, vendors could unveil DDR4 SDRAMs, reportedly a 1.2-V technology
But those developments won't take all the pressure off DRAMs. Data centre servers' use of virtualisation, which enables multiple operating systems to run on the same computer, reduces hardware costs but slices up the system workload; not all processors run the same tasks at the same time. Server utilisation ranges from 10 to 30 per cent in a data centre, according to the Uptime Institute.
The use of virtualisation, along with complex multi-core processors, heightens the need for more-efficient memory, said Michael Sporer, director of marketing for enterprise memory at Micron Technology Inc.
"Today, the bottleneck is in the disc and the disc sub-system," Sporer said. "The next bottleneck may be in memory performance, rather than capacity."
Server start-ups Schooner and Virident are pushing similar concepts to address the looming performance squeeze.
Virident's GreenCloudIn April, Virident rolled out its GreenCloud line of X86-based data centre servers, said to deliver up to 70 times the performance of traditional systems. The line uses storage-class memory, which bridges the performance gap between DRAM and mass storage. Virident said the architecture boosts processor utilisation and eliminates I/O overhead by providing random word-level access to large data sets.
Virident's systems still use DRAM for some functions, but storage-class memory is more efficient for search-index and related applications, said president and CEO Raj Parekh. Virident's initial systems use Spansion Inc.'s EcoRAM NOR devices, but the start-up also expects to use NAND and phase-change memory from Numonyx Inc.
Over time, Virident's systems will variously support a single memory technology or a mixture of device types, depending on the application. NAND reads small data chunks at high rates, for example, while NOR is ideal for random read searches and phase-change memory offers high write speeds, Parekh said.
Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, is putting a new twist on a conventional approach with its new ProLiant G6 servers. Based on Intel's Xeon 5500 processors, the G6 deploys thermal sensors and a technology that caps the power drawn by the server.
The servers also use DDR3 memory, which Jimmy Daley, marketing manager for industry-standard servers at HP, called a "major step forward" over DDR2.
HP stopped short of endorsing storage-class memory, but it offers an optional I/O accelerator from Fusion-io Inc. The sub-system, based on a redundant NAND architecture, does not replace the hard drive but sits between the memory and storage system to alleviate system I/O bottlenecks, said David Flynn, chief technology officer for Fusion-io. The accelerator is said to provide more than 10 lakh I/O operations per second in the HP servers.
SGI is keeping an eye on Spansion's EcoRAM and the Fusion-io accelerator, said Geoff Noer, vice president of product management at the server maker. EcoRAM could address "some opportunities," Noer said, but "I don't see it as a mainstream solution."
SGI's new CloudRack C2 is a cabinet design that can pack a number of dense, rack-mount servers in the same unit. C2 supports up to 1,280 processor cores per cabinet. To handle heat, the X86-based offering uses redundant fan arrays and dc power supplies.
The C2 supports DDR3 SDRAMs, and Noer said he is also bullish on solid-state storage. Between 2008 and 2013, according to iSuppli Corp., the use of SSDs could allow data centres to reduce power consumption by a combined 166,643 MWh—slightly more than the total megawatt-hours of electricity generated in the nation of Gambia in 2006.
That's good news. But even as the server supply chain finds ways to rein in power, more data centres will be built, turning up the heat.
That has industry jokesters quipping that perhaps Google should look to erect its next data centre on a rig off the coast of Iceland. Or why not the moon?
In servers, the notoriously voracious microprocessor is passing the power-hog mantle to the DRAM, which offers fast data access but requires a heat-generating refresh every few milliseconds. Thus the greening of the data centre includes a focus on lower-voltage DRAMs, nonvolatile alternatives and the emerging category of storage-class memories.
Whether the green-memory movement thrives or dies on the vine, the DRAM status quo could be uprooted.
The DRAM's power appetite is not its only problem. As the recession wears on, OEMs are keeping a nervous eye on struggling memory suppliers. "It's not pleasant to see our partners suffer so badly," said Tom Lattin, director of strategic commodities for industry-standard servers at Hewlett-Packard Co.
DRAM scaling, meanwhile, could hit a wall as it becomes increasingly difficult to shrink the capacitor within the device. That could fuel the need for such alternatives as ferroelectric, magnetoresistive, phase-change and resistive RAM.
Don't look for the DRAM to disappear, said Bob Merritt, an analyst with research firm Convergent Semiconductors who believes DRAMs will scale to 20 nanometers. "There will be DRAM applications for the next 10 years," Merritt said, but "you will also see applications" that will turn to nonvolatile alternatives (which don't require refresh to maintain the data) for server main memory.
Bill Tschudi, program manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the drive to make data centres more power efficient will include better IT practices, new power distribution schemes, higher processor utilisation rates and "advancements on the memory side."
"Memory power is a significant portion of platform power," noted Dileep Bhandarkar, distinguished engineer with Microsoft Corp.'s Global Foundation Services unit. "As processor performance increases and virtualisation takes off, the memory footprint will increase. There is a need for lower-voltage DRAMs."
DRAM makers have responded with lower-voltage DDR3 synchronous DRAMs, which have found a home in servers from such vendors as HP, IBM, SGI and Sun.
Meanwhile, solid-state drives (SSDs) and I/O accelerators could shake up the memory and storage hierarchy. And server start-ups Schooner Information Technology Inc. and Virident Systems Inc. have released data centre servers that promise to cut hardware costs as well as power consumption. The potential of the technology has prompted IBM to form an alliance with Schooner.
In theory, green servers could replace traditional X86- or RISC-based systems, possibly displacing DRAM in the process. Schooner and Virident use lower-power, nonvolatile, "storage class" memory to handle the search index and other tasks usually relegated to DRAM.
Market watcher Frost & Sullivan estimates that a typical server farm of 5,000 systems with 32 GB of DRAM each could be reduced to 1,250 systems with 128 GB each of nonvolatile memory, resulting in a 75 per cent reduction in energy over four years, a 75 per cent reduction in the cost of physical space and a 45 per cent reduction in capital expenditures.
Troubling trendsSuch reductions would be welcome news for U.S. data centres, which spend Rs.14,696.08 crore ($3 billion) per year on electricity alone, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA sees U.S. data centre power consumption rising from 6100 crore kilowatt-hours today to 10000 crore kWh in 2011. Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan projects that the total installed base of data centre servers will rise from 22 lakh units in 2007 to 68 lakh units next year.
The typical server consumed about 50 watts before 2000 but draws some 250 W today, according to "Energy Efficiency for Information Technology," a new book published by Intel Corp. And SGI, formerly Rackable Systems Inc., estimates that for every 100 W to power a server, a further 60 to 70 W are needed to cool it.
Processor power consumption ranges from 45 to 200 W, according to Intel. In a server with eight 1-GB dual in-line memory modules, the DIMMs can contribute 80 W to the power budget, according to Intel. In large servers with up to 64 DIMMs, the result could be "more power consumption by memory than processors," Intel notes.
Intel incorporates "automatic memory throttling" on its processors to reduce heat. DRAM vendors are also reducing heat generation in their latest 50-nm-class parts, exemplified by those from Hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung.
Meanwhile, server vendors have been migrating from DDR2 SDRAMs to 1.5-volt and, more recently, 1.35-V DDR3 SDRAMs. DDR3 doubles performance and provides a 60 per cent improvement in power consumption (for the 1.35-V version) over DDR2, said Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor Inc.
By next year, DDR3 modules could migrate from conventional to load-reduced DIMMs, which could boost memory capacity fourfold. And by 2011, vendors could unveil DDR4 SDRAMs, reportedly a 1.2-V technology
But those developments won't take all the pressure off DRAMs. Data centre servers' use of virtualisation, which enables multiple operating systems to run on the same computer, reduces hardware costs but slices up the system workload; not all processors run the same tasks at the same time. Server utilisation ranges from 10 to 30 per cent in a data centre, according to the Uptime Institute.
The use of virtualisation, along with complex multi-core processors, heightens the need for more-efficient memory, said Michael Sporer, director of marketing for enterprise memory at Micron Technology Inc.
"Today, the bottleneck is in the disc and the disc sub-system," Sporer said. "The next bottleneck may be in memory performance, rather than capacity."
Server start-ups Schooner and Virident are pushing similar concepts to address the looming performance squeeze.
Virident's GreenCloudIn April, Virident rolled out its GreenCloud line of X86-based data centre servers, said to deliver up to 70 times the performance of traditional systems. The line uses storage-class memory, which bridges the performance gap between DRAM and mass storage. Virident said the architecture boosts processor utilisation and eliminates I/O overhead by providing random word-level access to large data sets.
Virident's systems still use DRAM for some functions, but storage-class memory is more efficient for search-index and related applications, said president and CEO Raj Parekh. Virident's initial systems use Spansion Inc.'s EcoRAM NOR devices, but the start-up also expects to use NAND and phase-change memory from Numonyx Inc.
Over time, Virident's systems will variously support a single memory technology or a mixture of device types, depending on the application. NAND reads small data chunks at high rates, for example, while NOR is ideal for random read searches and phase-change memory offers high write speeds, Parekh said.
Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, is putting a new twist on a conventional approach with its new ProLiant G6 servers. Based on Intel's Xeon 5500 processors, the G6 deploys thermal sensors and a technology that caps the power drawn by the server.
The servers also use DDR3 memory, which Jimmy Daley, marketing manager for industry-standard servers at HP, called a "major step forward" over DDR2.
HP stopped short of endorsing storage-class memory, but it offers an optional I/O accelerator from Fusion-io Inc. The sub-system, based on a redundant NAND architecture, does not replace the hard drive but sits between the memory and storage system to alleviate system I/O bottlenecks, said David Flynn, chief technology officer for Fusion-io. The accelerator is said to provide more than 10 lakh I/O operations per second in the HP servers.
SGI is keeping an eye on Spansion's EcoRAM and the Fusion-io accelerator, said Geoff Noer, vice president of product management at the server maker. EcoRAM could address "some opportunities," Noer said, but "I don't see it as a mainstream solution."
SGI's new CloudRack C2 is a cabinet design that can pack a number of dense, rack-mount servers in the same unit. C2 supports up to 1,280 processor cores per cabinet. To handle heat, the X86-based offering uses redundant fan arrays and dc power supplies.
The C2 supports DDR3 SDRAMs, and Noer said he is also bullish on solid-state storage. Between 2008 and 2013, according to iSuppli Corp., the use of SSDs could allow data centres to reduce power consumption by a combined 166,643 MWh—slightly more than the total megawatt-hours of electricity generated in the nation of Gambia in 2006.
That's good news. But even as the server supply chain finds ways to rein in power, more data centres will be built, turning up the heat.
That has industry jokesters quipping that perhaps Google should look to erect its next data centre on a rig off the coast of Iceland. Or why not the moon?
Pranab hopes to green economy, NGO unimpressed
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee cut customs duty on a key wind turbine component and on bio-diesel while presenting his 2009-10 budget proposals, hoping the move would please environmentalists.But an international NGO said he had done nothing to change the direction o India towards a greener economy
Mukherjee said he would finance the eight national missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change unveiled by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, but did not specify a number. The missions are still being finalised, and minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh had said last week they would be ready by the end of 2009. The finance minister reduced customs duty on bio-diesel from 7.5% to 2.5%. He also said: "It is imperative that the contribution of new and renewable energy sources of power is enhanced if we have to successfully combat the phenomena of global warming and climate change. I am reducing the basic customs duty on permanent magnets - a critical component for Wind Operated Electricity Generators - from 7.5% to 5%." Responding to this, Raman Mehta of Climate Action Network South Asia - a coalition of green NGOs - said: "This budget could have taken the opportunity to attract green investments, but has not done that. There is no change in the trajectory of economic planning." Mukherjee pointed out that the government had recently set up the National Ganga River Basin Authority and said the "budgetary allocation under national river and lake conservation plans are being increased from Rs.335 crore ($67 million) in 2008-09 to Rs.562 crore ($112 million) in 2009-10". Mehta said the National Ganga River Basin Authority was the much-reviled 1985 Ganga Action Plan by another name, "which had been planned very badly, so there is nothing great about this". The finance minister also gave a special one-time grant of Rs.100 crore to the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Dehradun, and Rs.15 crore each to Botanical Survey of India and Zoological Survey of India. An additional amount of Rs.15 crore was allocated for Geological Survey of India. Extending tax benefits to green NGOs, Mukherjee said: "Under the present provisions of section 2 (15) of the Income Tax Act, 'charitable purpose' includes relief of the poor, education, medical relief, and the 'advancement of any other object of general public utility'... "I propose to provide the same tax treatment to trusts engaged in preserving and improving our environment (including watersheds, forests and wildlife) and preserving our monuments or places or objects of artistic or historic interest, as is available to trusts engaged in providing relief of the poor, education and medical relief.
Mukherjee said he would finance the eight national missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change unveiled by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, but did not specify a number. The missions are still being finalised, and minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh had said last week they would be ready by the end of 2009. The finance minister reduced customs duty on bio-diesel from 7.5% to 2.5%. He also said: "It is imperative that the contribution of new and renewable energy sources of power is enhanced if we have to successfully combat the phenomena of global warming and climate change. I am reducing the basic customs duty on permanent magnets - a critical component for Wind Operated Electricity Generators - from 7.5% to 5%." Responding to this, Raman Mehta of Climate Action Network South Asia - a coalition of green NGOs - said: "This budget could have taken the opportunity to attract green investments, but has not done that. There is no change in the trajectory of economic planning." Mukherjee pointed out that the government had recently set up the National Ganga River Basin Authority and said the "budgetary allocation under national river and lake conservation plans are being increased from Rs.335 crore ($67 million) in 2008-09 to Rs.562 crore ($112 million) in 2009-10". Mehta said the National Ganga River Basin Authority was the much-reviled 1985 Ganga Action Plan by another name, "which had been planned very badly, so there is nothing great about this". The finance minister also gave a special one-time grant of Rs.100 crore to the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, Dehradun, and Rs.15 crore each to Botanical Survey of India and Zoological Survey of India. An additional amount of Rs.15 crore was allocated for Geological Survey of India. Extending tax benefits to green NGOs, Mukherjee said: "Under the present provisions of section 2 (15) of the Income Tax Act, 'charitable purpose' includes relief of the poor, education, medical relief, and the 'advancement of any other object of general public utility'... "I propose to provide the same tax treatment to trusts engaged in preserving and improving our environment (including watersheds, forests and wildlife) and preserving our monuments or places or objects of artistic or historic interest, as is available to trusts engaged in providing relief of the poor, education and medical relief.
Big polluters want to help poorer countries adapt
The world's industrialized countries are looking to provide ``significant financial resources'' to the developing world to help them combating global warming and will ask a September meeting of the worlds 20 major economies to take up the issue, US President Barack Obama said.
Poor countries have refused to commit to any reduction targets in their carbon emissions without firm pledges of financing from wealthier countries largely responsible for climate change. The dispute has been a thorn in negotiations for a new climate change treaty and scuttled any major breakthrough on targets from emerging at a Group of Eight summit here this week. Obama told a news conference that finance ministers of the G-20 would take up proposals to finance carbon emissions reductions in the developing world at their September summit in Pittsburgh. "We are looking at providing significant financial assistance to help these countries,'' he said, praising the British and Mexican leaders for having come up with ``creative proposals'' for the G20 to consider. Environmentalists said the move could help break a logjam in negotiations over a new climate control pact that is to be finalized in December in Copenhagen. "There was no real new commitment on finance, that is one of the disappointing outcomes of the G-8, but I take the annoucement by Obama of taking it into the G-20 as a recognition that what they've come up with so far isn't enough," said Kim Carstensen of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. Obama spoke at the end of a meeting of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has become the G-8's main forum for climate change. It includes the G-8, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and the United States, as well as China, which has overtaken the US as the world's biggest polluter, and India, which is close behind. Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea and the European Union also are in that club of the world's major polluters.
Poor countries have refused to commit to any reduction targets in their carbon emissions without firm pledges of financing from wealthier countries largely responsible for climate change. The dispute has been a thorn in negotiations for a new climate change treaty and scuttled any major breakthrough on targets from emerging at a Group of Eight summit here this week. Obama told a news conference that finance ministers of the G-20 would take up proposals to finance carbon emissions reductions in the developing world at their September summit in Pittsburgh. "We are looking at providing significant financial assistance to help these countries,'' he said, praising the British and Mexican leaders for having come up with ``creative proposals'' for the G20 to consider. Environmentalists said the move could help break a logjam in negotiations over a new climate control pact that is to be finalized in December in Copenhagen. "There was no real new commitment on finance, that is one of the disappointing outcomes of the G-8, but I take the annoucement by Obama of taking it into the G-20 as a recognition that what they've come up with so far isn't enough," said Kim Carstensen of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. Obama spoke at the end of a meeting of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has become the G-8's main forum for climate change. It includes the G-8, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and the United States, as well as China, which has overtaken the US as the world's biggest polluter, and India, which is close behind. Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea and the European Union also are in that club of the world's major polluters.
Researchers develop 'green' industrial lubricant
Researchers have developed an eco-friendly
lubricating grease, based on ricin oil and cellulose derivatives. The new formula does not include any of the contaminating components of manufacture traditional industrial Lubricants.
The objective of this research was to develop a product that could be used as a lubricating grease but that was made only from natural materials and was 100 percent biodegradable," said José María Franco, chemical engineer at Huelva University (Spain) and member of the project team. Eco-friendly greases are "oleogels" that use cellulose derivatives from plants and ricin oil (from a bush) as a lubricant base. Franco said these new formulations are "an alternative to traditional lubricating greases, which create pollution that is difficult to combat once discharged into the environment", according to a Huelva University release. Existing lubricants are made from synthetic oils or petroleum derivatives, and thickeners made with metallic soaps or polyurea derivatives (a family of synthetic polymers). These are currently the best performers, but they also imply more problems from an environmental perspective. Millions of tonnes of hydraulic and industrial oils, and others from machinery, are discharged each year into rivers, the sea and fields. Mineral-based oils can contaminate groundwater for more than 100 years, and can prevent the
lubricating grease, based on ricin oil and cellulose derivatives. The new formula does not include any of the contaminating components of manufacture traditional industrial Lubricants.
The objective of this research was to develop a product that could be used as a lubricating grease but that was made only from natural materials and was 100 percent biodegradable," said José María Franco, chemical engineer at Huelva University (Spain) and member of the project team. Eco-friendly greases are "oleogels" that use cellulose derivatives from plants and ricin oil (from a bush) as a lubricant base. Franco said these new formulations are "an alternative to traditional lubricating greases, which create pollution that is difficult to combat once discharged into the environment", according to a Huelva University release. Existing lubricants are made from synthetic oils or petroleum derivatives, and thickeners made with metallic soaps or polyurea derivatives (a family of synthetic polymers). These are currently the best performers, but they also imply more problems from an environmental perspective. Millions of tonnes of hydraulic and industrial oils, and others from machinery, are discharged each year into rivers, the sea and fields. Mineral-based oils can contaminate groundwater for more than 100 years, and can prevent the
Variation in monsoon not due to climate change: Ramesh
Climate model studies has shown no significant impact on change in the mean onset of monsoon in the country, government said
"The long-term mean onset date of monsoon in India is 1st June, with a standard deviation of about 8 days," Environment minister Jairam Ramesh informed Rajya Sabha. "However, year to year variations in the onset or the propagation are part of the natural variability and cannot be attributed to climate change," he said. He however, added that "the government is aware of the challenges posed by climate change and has taken steps in this regard," Ramesh said the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) which was released on 30th June last year outlines steps that will enable the country to adapt to climate change and enhance the ecological sustainability of India's development path. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune is a dedicated centre for climate change research set up to undertake focused research on the science aspects of climate change, the minister added.
"The long-term mean onset date of monsoon in India is 1st June, with a standard deviation of about 8 days," Environment minister Jairam Ramesh informed Rajya Sabha. "However, year to year variations in the onset or the propagation are part of the natural variability and cannot be attributed to climate change," he said. He however, added that "the government is aware of the challenges posed by climate change and has taken steps in this regard," Ramesh said the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) which was released on 30th June last year outlines steps that will enable the country to adapt to climate change and enhance the ecological sustainability of India's development path. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune is a dedicated centre for climate change research set up to undertake focused research on the science aspects of climate change, the minister added.
Japan widens relief for mercury disaster victims
Japan passed a law Wednesday offering financial compensation to tens of thousands more victims of a mercury poisoning disaster in the 1950s
However, victims criticized the new law, which also splits up the company responsible for Japan's worst-ever industrial pollution case, as politicians continued to haggle over the amount of money victims would receive. The new law, which reduces the number of symptoms required for a patient to qualify for relief, is expected to pay an additional 20,000 victims out of an estimated 30,000 seeking compensation, the environment ministry said. The health disaster emerged in the 1950s in the small fishing town of Minamata on Kyushu island where chemical company Chisso Corp had for years dumped methyl mercury into a bay, poisoning fish and residents. Victims suffered spasms, seizures and loss of sensation and motor control that impaired their ability to walk and speak. Babies were born with nervous system damage and other mental and physical deformities. "The Minamata issue was where Japan's pollution and environment problems started," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said. "We have been saying that it's important to solve the problem." But what was intended to lay to rest more than a half a century of grievances and legal battles only further embittered victims, who claimed that the bill serves to bury the company's responsibility. Chisso, which is headquartered in Tokyo and still operates in Minamata, will be split into two entities under the law -- one to oversee the payouts, and another to keep running the company's business operations. The parent company is scheduled to be liquidated once it completes the lump-sum payment for the compensation, which is expected to be gathered through sales of its subsidiary's shares, according to media reports. Hideo Ikoma, 51, who was born suffering from the effects of mercury, said Tokyo's decision to divide the firm was "unforgivable." "Every day has been a struggle between life and death," he said, pronouncing his words with difficulty. "Lawmakers think they can make the Minamata problem disappear by simply switching on their voting buttons. They have no clue what we endure." Ruling and opposition party lawmakers were meanwhile still debating the amount of compensation, with proposals ranging from 1.5 million to three million yen (15,500 to 31,100 dollars). The health problems in Minamata were first reported by a local hospital in 1956 but, although Chisso was immediately suspected, its management denied responsibility and the plant continued dumping mercury until 1968. The company was not officially blamed for the health problems until 1973. A court in 1988 found the then president of Chisso and then director of Chisso Minamata Factory guilty, but handed them suspended jail sentences. In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Japanese government was partly responsible for not stopping the company from continuing to dump the toxic waste into the water. The recent law is the second government act since 1995, when Chisso was ordered to compensate 11,000 patients who had not previously been officially recognized as victims of the Minamata disaster.
However, victims criticized the new law, which also splits up the company responsible for Japan's worst-ever industrial pollution case, as politicians continued to haggle over the amount of money victims would receive. The new law, which reduces the number of symptoms required for a patient to qualify for relief, is expected to pay an additional 20,000 victims out of an estimated 30,000 seeking compensation, the environment ministry said. The health disaster emerged in the 1950s in the small fishing town of Minamata on Kyushu island where chemical company Chisso Corp had for years dumped methyl mercury into a bay, poisoning fish and residents. Victims suffered spasms, seizures and loss of sensation and motor control that impaired their ability to walk and speak. Babies were born with nervous system damage and other mental and physical deformities. "The Minamata issue was where Japan's pollution and environment problems started," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said. "We have been saying that it's important to solve the problem." But what was intended to lay to rest more than a half a century of grievances and legal battles only further embittered victims, who claimed that the bill serves to bury the company's responsibility. Chisso, which is headquartered in Tokyo and still operates in Minamata, will be split into two entities under the law -- one to oversee the payouts, and another to keep running the company's business operations. The parent company is scheduled to be liquidated once it completes the lump-sum payment for the compensation, which is expected to be gathered through sales of its subsidiary's shares, according to media reports. Hideo Ikoma, 51, who was born suffering from the effects of mercury, said Tokyo's decision to divide the firm was "unforgivable." "Every day has been a struggle between life and death," he said, pronouncing his words with difficulty. "Lawmakers think they can make the Minamata problem disappear by simply switching on their voting buttons. They have no clue what we endure." Ruling and opposition party lawmakers were meanwhile still debating the amount of compensation, with proposals ranging from 1.5 million to three million yen (15,500 to 31,100 dollars). The health problems in Minamata were first reported by a local hospital in 1956 but, although Chisso was immediately suspected, its management denied responsibility and the plant continued dumping mercury until 1968. The company was not officially blamed for the health problems until 1973. A court in 1988 found the then president of Chisso and then director of Chisso Minamata Factory guilty, but handed them suspended jail sentences. In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the Japanese government was partly responsible for not stopping the company from continuing to dump the toxic waste into the water. The recent law is the second government act since 1995, when Chisso was ordered to compensate 11,000 patients who had not previously been officially recognized as victims of the Minamata disaster.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)