Eora Borealis

The three reports that make up the fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be published in full this year and the process begins this Friday in Paris with the publication of the first, which concentrates on the science of climate change. The importance of this and the remaining two reports should not be underestimated.

For the past six years, some 2,000 of the world’s leading climatologists, glaciologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and specialists from dozens of other disciplines have trawled through all that has been published in the scientific literature on climate change and related matters. It has been a mammoth undertaking and the fruits of that work will be there for all to see in the final version of the IPCC’s first report of its fourth assessment: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

Read the whole article: Global warming is not some conspiratorial hoax
Check out: the IPCC website

The US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change (IPCC Fourth Assessment Report), the first part of which will be published on Friday.

The US has also attempted to steer the report away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing treaty which the US administration opposes.

Read the whole article:
US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors

A combination of rich nation import controls and excessive pricing power among too few western importers is disadvantaging biofuels producers in developing countries, the report by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said.

Biofuels are derived from food crops and can be used as alternatives to oil and coal for transport and heat. They are seen as an answer to the growing concerns of global warming and energy security.

Developing countries are the biggest producers of biofuels that are currently competitive with oil, because they have lower costs and their biofuels have a higher energy content than those produced in temperate zones. But under present trade rules rich nations - the biggest biofuels consumers - are disadvantaging developing country producers.

Brazilian president Lula da Silva affirmed at the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that his country volunteers to transfer technology for production of biodiesel and ethanol to poorer countries, most of them in Africa and Central America, for free.

“Biodiesel generates employments, generates income, generates development. Our biofuels program could be an example to be financed by rich nations to poorer nations of Africa and Central America”- said the Brazilian president.

Lula mentioned, as an example, that USA, instead of producing ethanol from corn, could save much money if decided to finance and acquire biofuel production from poorest countries.

Read articles:
Biofuel trade disadvantages poor nations-report
Brazilian president says USA would rather invest in biofuels in poor countries

The United States could shift from the world’s largest exporter of corn to a net importer as its burgeoning ethanol industry continues to expand, but in the meantime sales abroad are poised to rise as farmers boost acreage to cash in on decade-high prices.

“If the US becomes a net importer of corn, it could drastically affect the global corn industry,” said Robert Kohlmeyer, president emeritus of World Perspectives, a group of consultants and analysts based in Washington. “Our ability to export corn will probably be diminished by the increased demand domestically from the energy side.”

President Bush’s State of the Union call for a sevenfold increase in ethanol production within a decade could have the unintended consequence of sparking corn shortages and driving up prices for a wide array of food products.

Bush said Tuesday that he wanted 35 billion gallons of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply by 2017, and he proposed an ethanol subsidy of as much as $17.8 billion over a decade, as well as grants and loan guarantees.

To meet Bush’s goal, a substantial amount of corn that’s now used to feed animals or make food products may be diverted to producing alternative fuels, and that worries cattle ranchers, hog farmers and poultry producers, who depend on feed corn to raise their animals. They’ve already seen per-bushel prices for corn double over the past six months, and they expect further price increases as dozens of ethanol plants open over the next two years.

Read articles:
US corn exports may fall as ethanol use rises
As corn price rises, so could food bills

The IPCC report to be released in Paris on February 2 will include the strongest warning yet that humans are stoking global warming that may cause colossal damage to nature if, like the doomed frog, they ignore rising temperatures. Ex-U.S. Vice President Al Gore tells the story with croaking cartoon frogs in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” to urge more action to save the planet. In his version, a hand dips in and rescues a swooning frog just as the water starts to bubble. And U.N. officials also sometimes mention the boiled frog as a cautionary tale of the dangers of human complacency about global warming.

There is only one problem - it’s not true.

“The ‘boiled frog’…is definitely an urban myth,” said Victor Hutchison, a professor emeritus at the zoology department at the University of Oklahoma in the United States. “I have investigated the thermal tolerance in reptiles and amphibians for many years. If one places the animal in a container and slowly heats it, the animal will at some point invariably try to escape.”

Then, let’s just hope that people are like frogs.

Read the whole article: Facing global warming, are people like frogs?

Last week, a potentially historic meeting took place in the the Cardiff International Arena. Britain’s organic farming community gathered en masse for the annual meeting of the Soil Association, and their theme was peak oil and farming in the post-petroleum era. Organisers and peak-oil whistleblowers alike thought that perhaps this was the first time an organisation in a critically affected sector has held a conference on the theme of peak oil.

If the peak-oil proposition is correct, the tipping point of global oil production will happen - largely unexpectedly - in this decade or early in the next, accompanied by a dire energy shock. The people in the room will be in the front rank of those first affected. They can also be in the vanguard of those who can offer a proactive vision of what a survivable post-shock future could look like…

Read the whole article: Take to the fields

The cost of combating climate change could be 40% lower than the figure given in last year’s watershed Stern report on the economic impact of global warming, according to research presented last week by Lars Josefsson, chief executive of Vattenfall, the Swedish power company. The research is likely to attract particular attention as Josefsson is a special adviser on the environment to Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. Germany took on the presidency of the European Union on January 1 and Ms Merkel has made combating climate change a centrepiece of its rule.

“The cost of limiting the concentration of greenhouse gases is equivalent to 0.6 per cent of the total gross world product - if all the identified potential is exploited,” Mr Josefsson told the FT.

Mr Josefsson’s report says lower costs can be achieved using measures that “pay for themselves”, such as insulation improvements and fuel efficient cars. But it also envisages more use of nuclear power and carbon capture technology.

Mr Josefsson plans to present the research to business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Read the whole article: UK climate change costings ‘too high’
Check out Vattenfall website: Moving towards a low carbon society

Everything’s Cool is a 100-minute film resulting from four and a half years of work, thousands of miles traveled, and hours and hours spent following some of the country’s most ardent climate change activists.

Co-producers Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand finished the final cut of the film just the night before the special pre-screening event at the Sundance Film Festival, and sat down to watch it from credit sequence to credit sequence for the first time along with the audience - and almost all the characters in the film, who were flown in for the screening.

Read the whole article: Climate on the big screen
Visit official website of the film: Everything’s Cool

As the American public continues sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people have just before awakening. It is a particularly American dream on a particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some other means than gasoline. We’ll run them on ethanol! We’ll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used French-fry oil…!

The dream goes around in fevered circles as each gasoline replacement is examined and found to be inadequate. But the wish to keep the cars going is so powerful that round and round the dream goes. Ethanol! Biodiesel! Coal liquids…

Read the whole article here: Finding Hope in a Post-Oil Society

As public debate deals in absolutes, some experts fear predictions ‘have created a monster’. Scientists have substantial evidence to support the view that humans are warming the planet — as carbon dioxide levels rise, glaciers melt and global temperatures rise. Yet, for predicting the future climate, scientists must rely upon sophisticated — but not perfect — computer models.

“We honestly don’t know that much about the big ice sheets,” says Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “We don’t have great equations that cover glacial movements. But let’s say there’s just a 10 percent chance of significant melting in the next century. That would be catastrophic, and it’s worth protecting ourselves from that risk.”

Environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr. at the University of Colorado comments:

“The case for action on climate science, both for energy policy and adaptation, is overwhelming, but if we oversell the science, our credibility is at stake.”

Read the whole article: Climate scientists feeling the heat