Eora Borealis

Twenty of the world’s top polluting nations have agreed to discuss binding targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Germany’s environment minister said on Tuesday.

Sigmar Gabriel told a news conference during climate talks in Berlin that all involved, including the United States, had shown willingness to discuss targets proposed by the United Nations special envoy on climate change.

“We agreed…that unequivocally the central task for Bali will be to discuss…these measures,” Gabriel said, referring to U.N. climate talks scheduled for Bali, Indonesia, in December.

Read the whole article: Top polluters to discuss hard climate goals

Biofuels, championed for reducing energy reliance, boosting farm revenues and helping fight climate change, may in fact hurt the environment and push up food prices, a study suggested on Tuesday.

In a report on the impact of biofuels, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said biofuels may “offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal“.

“The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits,” the OECD said.

Read the whole article: Biofuels may harm more than help

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Biofuels may be threat to food supply, increase costs
OECD warns against biofuels subsidies

Climate change will have an overwhelmingly negative impact on health with possibly one billion more people at risk from dengue fever within 80 years, an expert said Tuesday.

While there would be some positive effects, “the balance of health effects is on the negative side,” Alistair Woodward, a professor at the University of Auckland, told a regional meeting of the World Health Organisation.

Woodward was a lead writer for the fourth assessment report of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

Read the whole article: Expert says climate change will spread global disease

The best way of tackling greenhouse gas emissions is for countries to pass laws that enforce the use of existing energy-efficient technology, a UN climate change expert said Monday.

“Most of the technology needed to achieve significant reduction of greenhouse gases actually exists, doesn’t have to be invented and actually is competitive commercially,” said Marcel Alers from the UN Development Programme.

“The experts in this area will all tell you that voluntary is nice but if you want impact, it has to be mandatory … And these things do not cost a lot of money,” he told reporters at a climate change conference.

Read the whole article:
Make energy-efficient technology mandatory, UN expert says

A generation after the world’s worst ever industrial disaster occurred at a U.S. multinational-owned pesticide plant in Bhopal, central India, responsibility continues to be evaded on cleaning up thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals that have contaminated the soil and water in the vicinity.

The U.S. multinational, Dow Chemical, has now offered to partially bear the cost of cleaning the site of the plant that infamously leaked poisonous cyanide gases into the city in December 1984 causing some 4,000 immediate deaths. In return, Dow wants to be freed of legal liability inherited from Union Carbide Corp., which it bought in 2001.

By natural law Dow takes over all its liabilities as well as assets. But Dow has been lobbying hard, both directly and through the U.S. government, to influence senior officials of the Indian government to obtain a ruling in its favour.

If it succeeds, Dow can walk away from its responsibility of clearing the mess left behind by Carbide, which includes over 9,000 tonnes of poisonous chemicals which have contaminated soil and water and affected over 25,000 people living in the plant’s vicinity. Dow is holding out the lure of large-scale investments in India if it is let off the liability hook.

Read the whole article: Cleaning up after Bhopal gas tragedy - not begun
Read more: Bhopal disaster

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday highlighted the huge climate change challenge for India and appealed all Panchayat and municipal bodies to come forward with their water conservation strategies, while putting commercial users of water on notice about possible water charges.

‘Water is life. Yet, humankind has not done enough to replenish, conserve and safeguard our sources of water supply. On the contrary, given the threat of climate change and global warming, we face the real prospect of reduced supply of water,’ Manmohan Singh said.

‘This threat is of particular concern to us in India since we have, since times immemorial, depended on glaciers for our water supply in this part of our subcontinent,’ he said at the National Water Congress-2007, held in the capital.

Read the whole article: Climate change leading to water scarcity in India

Soldiers in motor boats rescued thousands of marooned people and helicopters air-dropped food as the number of people made homeless after some of the worst flooding in years in India’s northeast rose to 3.5 million.

About 10 million people out of the 27 million population of Assam state have been affected by flooding after rains in the past few days. More than 2,000 villages have been completely submerged.

The second spell of flooding in less than a month has also spread across parts of Bangladesh, forcing around a million from their homes and leaving thousands stranded. About 850 people have died in floods there since late July.

Read the whole article: Flooding leaves 3.5 million people homeless in India

From a remote snowcapped mountain in the European Arctic you can detect China in the haze.

In the apparently pure Arctic air, a research station on a Norwegian island mountain ridge finds tiny chemical traces from factories in Russia, pesticides in Israel or China’s coal-fired power plants.

“Some days we can definitely tell that the air has come from China,” said Kim Holmen, research director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, at the station which has spectacular views over fjords, mountains and glaciers of Spitsbergen island.

Read the whole article: In pure Arctic air, signs of China’s economic boom

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its many excellent reports tends to portray climate change as a smooth transition. Although the projections are rarely straight lines the underlying system and its responses appear ”˜linear’ in mathematical terms.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, notable ones being the possible collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation or irreversible melt of the Greenland ice sheet, which both get significant attention in the latest IPCC report. These represent large scale ”˜non-linear’ components of the Earth system.

Read the whole article: Tipping points in Earth system, not always smooth

A second spell of floods in less than a month has spread across parts of Bangladesh, killing seven people and leaving thousands stranded, officials said on Monday.

They said the overall death toll from flooding since July had risen to 840.

The weather continued to worsen on Monday with moderate to heavy showers, meteorology officials said. They forecast more rain under the influence of a very active monsoon that will last until end of the month.

The current floods, which began four days ago, forced over half a million from their homes.

Read the whole article: Thousands stranded as Bangladesh flood spreads