Eora Borealis

Natural disasters are far more destructive than wars, and the damage will only worsen unless drastic change is taken to address global climate change, a former UN humanitarian chief said Tuesday.

“Already seven times more livelihoods are devastated by natural disasters than by war worldwide, at the moment, and this is going to be much worse, the way the climate is developing,” Jan Egeland told AFP after addressing the top governing body of the Christian aid organisation World Vision.

Read the whole article: Natural disasters more destructive than wars

Britain is just a few showers away from recording a record wet summer, at the climax of the most remarkable period of broken weather records in the country’s history. All of the smashed records are to do with temperature and rainfall - the two aspects of the climate most likely to be intensified by the advent of global warming.

While no specific event can be ascribed directly to climate change, the sequence of events is strongly suggestive of a climate that is now unmistakably altering before our eyes.

Furthermore, the pattern of increasing heat and wet weather has been visible in the same period all around the globe, with temperature and rainfall records broken in many other countries, from Australia (record drought) and India (record monsoon rains) to Greece (record forest fires).

Yet in the UK alone, in the past 14 months we have experienced the hottest July, the hottest April and the wettest June since records began. We have seen the hottest autumn and the hottest spring, and the second-hottest winter. We have also seen the hottest single month, and - by a considerable margin - the hottest single 12-month period.

Read the whole article:
Extreme conditions: What’s happening to our weather?

Read more:
2007 ‘probably wettest UK summer’
Ireland getting hotter, wetter
Greece suffers more fires in 2007 than in last decade, satellites reveal

Sweden’s Volvo, the world’s second biggest truck maker, unveiled on Wednesday a line of truck engines adapted to run on renewable fuels and called for more efforts to make such fuels commercially available.

The engines are powered by seven types of fuel, ranging from synthetic diesel to a mix of hydrogen and biogas. These are made from renewable raw materials and do not add carbon dioxide to the ecosystem, the company said.

Read the whole article: Volvo unveils green engines for trucks

For decades, the Austrian town of Güssing was a forgotten outpost not far from the rusting barbed-wire border of the Iron Curtain.

Now it’s at the edge of a greener frontier: alternative energy. Güssing is the first community in the European Union to cut carbon emissions by more than 90 percent, helping it attract a steady stream of scientists, politicians and eco-tourists.

“This was a dead-end town and now we’re the center of attention,” said Maria Hofer, a lifelong resident, as she bought organic vegetables at a farmer’s market. “It seems like every week we read about new jobs from renewable energy.”

Read the whole article: ‘Dead-end’ Austrian town blossoms with green energy

Retailers look set to raise meat prices as soaring feed costs and the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease threaten the survival of the livestock industry, consultants Deloitte said on Tuesday.

“Consumers hold the key to a more resilient future. UK shoppers will have to pay more for their meat,” Deloitte’s farming and agriculture partner Richard Crane said in a news release.

Economists have said that Europe’s rising food bills could feed through into higher inflation.

“Increased prices will allow farmers to continue to meet the increasing demand for local, high quality meat,” Crane added.

Read the whole article: Meat prices set to rise as feed costs soar

Global warming may carry a higher risk of flooding than previously thought, according to a study released on Wednesday by the British science journal Nature.

It says efforts to calculate flooding risk from climate change do not take into account the effect that carbon dioxide (CO2) — the principal greenhouse gas — has on vegetation.

Plants suck water out of the ground and “breathe” out the excess through tiny pores, called stomata, in their leaves.

Stomata are highly sensitive to CO2. The higher the level of atmospheric CO2, the more the pores tighten up or open for shorter periods.

As a result, less water passes through the plant and into the air in the form of evaporation. And, in turn, this means that more water stays on the land, eventually running off into rivers when the soil becomes saturated.

Read the whole article: Flooding risk from global warming badly under-estimated

The United States and Europe are working together to tackle global warming, the chief U.S. climate negotiator said Wednesday, deflecting growing criticism within the EU and the developing world over Washington’s perceived go-it-alone stance.

Harlan Watson, leading the U.S. delegation to this week’s U.N. climate talks in Vienna, said Washington remains deeply committed despite its refusal to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The U.S. position has angered many in the European Union, which has adopted new targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions that go beyond its Kyoto commitments.

Read the whole article: U.S. plays down split with EU on climate

Burning fossil fuels could postpone the next ice age by up to half a million years, researchers at a British university said Wednesday.

Rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by burning fuels such as coal and oil may cause enough residual global warming to prevent its onset, said scientists from the University of Southampton in southern England.

The world’s oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but in doing so they are becoming more acidic, said a team led by Doctor Toby Tyrrell, which conducted research based on marine chemistry.

This, in turn, dissolves the calcium carbonate in the shells produced by surface-dwelling marine organisms, adding even more carbon to the oceans. The outcome is elevated carbon dioxide levels for far longer than previously assumed, the scientists argued.

Read the whole article: Global warming could delay next ice age

Energy efficiency for power plants, buildings and cars is the easiest way to slow global warming in an investment shift set to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

A U.N. report about climate investments, outlined to a meeting in Vienna of 1,000 delegates from 158 nations, also said emissions of greenhouse gases could be curbed more cheaply in developing nations than in rich states.

The cash needed to return rising emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to current levels by 2030 would amount to 0.3 to 0.5 percent of projected gross domestic product (GDP), or 1.1 to 1.7 percent of global investment flows in 2030, it said.

Read the whole article: Energy efficiency seen easy way to aid climate

The European Union’s trade and industry chiefs were at loggerheads on Tuesday over a bid to scrap the bloc’s anti-dumping duties on energy-saving light bulbs imported from China, a day before a meeting on the issue.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson wants to eliminate the duties and has the support of most European producers, led by Dutch electronics group Philips, which use China as a source of cheap, energy-efficient bulbs.

But Mandelson is being blocked by Enterprise Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, industry officials said.

Verheugen has expressed concern about job losses at German producer Osram, a unit of Siemens. It imports less from China than its rivals, European Commission officials say.

Read the whole article: Chinese light bulbs cause EU row