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Kids For A Cool Climate Cool
Kids For A Cool Climate
| Climate Change News 2007 |
With the will, we can save the Earth
The world now understands that climate change is not just an environmental problem. It's also a security, economic, political and migration problem. What are we going to do when people begin fighting not about politics, but about water? What will we do when people start arriving on our shores fleeing not political persecution, but environmental catastrophe? And what will we do when the countries to which we sell goods can't buy them any more because they are having to deal with rising sea levels or crop failure?
Wildlife 'needs help' in climate change exodus
Animals such as bats, lizards and dormice will need help moving to new habitats in the United Kingdom as climate change brings warmer temperatures, the Wildlife Trusts warned yesterday. Butterflies and birds will also require assistance in shifting their ranges north and west in search of new homes.
Nuclear waste could power Britain
Proposed Sellafield fuel-processing plant could
provide 60 per cent of UK's electricity until 2060
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Airlines face pollution limits after EU deal
The landmark agreement brings aviation into the EU's emissions trading scheme, making air travel subject to restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions in recognition of its environmental impact.
Over the last 25 years, the polar bear population throughout the Arctic has declined to 25,000. The four polar bears found drowned in a storm off the coast of Alaska this year illustrated that thinner adults are less able to cope with the harsh conditions. A report by the Canadian Wildlife Service predicts that if trends continue, polar bears will soon be extinct.
US pours cold water on Bali optimism
The US backtracked yesterday on the climate change agreement reached after marathon talks in Bali, saying it had "serious concerns" about the new global consensus and that developing countries had to do far more if there was to be any pact in two years' time.
Late-night drama pushes US into climate deal
After tears, jeers and a dramatic eleventh-hour U-turn by the United States, a compromise deal for a new international climate change agenda was finally struck in Bali yesterday, just as talks appeared on the brink of collapse. The resulting 'Bali roadmap' is a global warming pact that starts a two-year process of negotiations designed to agree a new set of emissions targets to replace those in the Kyoto protocol.
The 15,000 politicians, activists, MPs, journalists, and civil servants from 180 countries who travelled to Bali for the talks emitted between 60,000 and 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to estimates. This is not far short of what a country like Malawi or Chad emits in a year, the UN said yesterday.
Acidic seas may kill 98% of world's reefs by 2050
The majority of the world's coral reefs are in danger of being killed off by rising levels of greenhouse gases, scientists warned yesterday. Researchers from Britain, the US and Australia, working with teams from the UN and the World Bank, voiced their concerns after a study revealed 98% of the world's reef habitats are likely to become too acidic for corals to grow by 2050.
US proposal threatens climate change deal
The US was accused last night of trying to derail a global agreement on climate change by proposing that it becomes a voluntary agreement where countries set their own targets and timetables for reduction of greenhouse gases, rather than a legally binding one.
Barratt contracted to build UK's first eco-village
Britain's biggest housebuilder is to build England's first eco-village, the housing and planning minister, Yvette Cooper, announced today. Barratt has won the bid to create a new community at the site of the former Hanham Hall hospital near Bristol, which has been commissioned by the government's national regeneration agency, English Partnerships.
US resists setting target on cutting carbon pollution
The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, will today begin attempts to persuade the US administration to agree firm targets on carbon pollution as part of a new deal on global warming. Benn arrived at UN climate talks in Bali last night, as the US said it was unwilling to approve a draft agreement which called on developed countries to reduce emissions by between 25% and 40% by 2020.
The first instance of the disease was recorded in South Africa, but it has since been recognised in most countries in the tropics and sub-tropics.
Government vets have long said that it has been only a question of time and weather before bluetongue reached Britain. The disease is considered a forerunner to others brought by climate change, and has been moving steadily northwards for more than a decade.
How sea tubes could slow climate change
Two of the world's most respected environmental scientists have proposed tackling global warming by churning the oceans with millions of plastic tubes.
James Lovelock, the author of Gaia, and Chris Rapley, newly appointed director of the Science Museum in London, have outlined a plan to dot the world's oceans with 200-metre tubes which would bring nutrients from the deep up to the surface, encouraging algae to bloom. This would suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it away.
Without action, climate law is all hot air
The Bush administration earned the ire of the world community for years by its refusal to recognise the climate change crisis. This spring, however, it had its collective head forcefully removed from the ever-warming sand by the highest court in the land, the US supreme court.
Climate campaign to stop ill wind
The Vegetarian Society is to raise awareness of "emissions" from cattle as a leading cause of global warming with an ad campaign using the strapline "Silent but deadly". Sir Paul McCartney and daughter Stella are patrons of the Vegetarian Society, which argues that "damaging gaseous emissions" from farmed animals exceed those from the world's entire transport system.
How climate change will affect the world
The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said yesterday.
Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought. He said vulnerable people such as the old and poor would be the worst affected, and that world leaders had not yet accepted their countries would have to adapt to the likely consequences.
Arctic thaw opens fabled trade route
For centuries explorers sought the Northwest Passage.
Global warming has finally opened it up
The discovery, revealed through satellite images provided by the European Space
Agency (Esa), shows how bad the consequences of global warming are becoming
in northerly latitudes. This summer there was a reduction of a million square
kilometres in the Arctic's ice covering compared with 2006, scientists have
found.
Ice-free Arctic could be here in 23 years
The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.
Official: it was a crazy summer
Geraint Vaughan, president of the Royal Meteorological Society, is emphatic about Britain's weather this year. 'It has been utterly extraordinary,' he says. More to the point, Vaughan, a 52-year-old physicist who carries out research in atmospheric science at Manchester University, believes the bands of cloud and rain that have swept the country, producing what is likely to be the wettest summer on record, following a record hot one last year, are only a taste of the troubles that lie ahead.
Climate warning raises long-term flood fears
Scientists have urged the government to consider the full impact of global warming when drawing up plans to protect Britain from flooding. A study from the Met Office's Hadley Centre predicts that river levels will rise higher than anticipated because existing computer models do not take into account the effects of climate change on plant life.
Scientists warn on climate tipping points
Some tipping points for climate change could be closer than previously thought. Scientists are predicting that the loss of the massive Greenland ice sheet may now be unstoppable and lead to catastrophic sea-level rises around the world.
Global warming: Met Office predicts plateau then record temperatures
British scientists are predicting a succession of record-breaking high temperatures in the most detailed forecast of global warming's impact on weather around the world.
Powerful computer simulations used to create the world's first global warming forecast suggests temperature rises will stall in the next two years, before rising sharply at the end of the decade.
Unlike most apparently intractable problems, which have a tendency to go away when examined closely and analytically, the climate change predicament just seems to get bigger and scarier the more we learn about it.
Rainfall the worst for 200 years ... in case you hadn't guessed
Torrential downpours which hit last week and left swathes of England and Wales under water were officially the worst in more than 200 years of record keeping, according to figures released by the Met Office yesterday.
Climate change is expected to make extreme weather more common in Britain. While the number of rainy days is predicted to fall in summer, the downpours are set to become more intense. The unusual position of the jet stream, a belt of fast-moving air, has been blamed by some. It normally lies over the north Atlantic holding back bad weather while allowing warm weather to move up from Europe. But it has moved several hundred miles to the south, possibly because of La Niña which occurs when cool water surges from the bottom of the Pacific and cools the air above.
Thousands without fresh water as floods bring chaos
More than 350,000 people are facing days without fresh water supplies and a clean-up operation lasting months as devastating floods this weekend left communities cut off across central and southern England.
The recent deluge across Britain exposed huge gaps in flood defences.
The drumbeat of disaster that heralds global warming quickened its tempo this week; some parts of Britain had a sixth of their annual rainfall in 12 hours - some statistic. It has all been foreseen, and for far too long.
Storing up trouble for the future
Burying their CO2 emissions is the great hope for energy companies, but critics are not convinced
More evacuations as floods threaten to burst dam
Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in Yorkshire today after record rainfall led to a "significant risk" that a dam containing a reservoir could burst. Firefighters were trying to drain the Ulley reservoir, which is less than a mile from the M1 motorway and near a power station that serves most of Sheffield.
Records tumble as Britain is hit by months of extremes
Several weather stations had recorded their highest
levels for June. Sheffield had 236mm by 2pm. "It's not even the end of
the month," said the Met Office.
But is it climate change? The official line is that no one can pin any one event
on anything as vast as global warming. However, with temperatures generally
rising around the world, and subtropical temperatures becoming more common in
Europe, extreme events are predicted, with intense localised storms becoming
the norm. After a drought last year, the autumn and winter combined were the
wettest on record in Britain, and the three months of spring were the hottest
on record for the whole of the UK, since 1914.
Warnings that went down the drain
Only a fortnight ago the government's chief scientist warned that more funds were urgently needed to update the UK's Victorian-era drainage infrastructure. Sir David King told a committee of MPs that while there would be more heat waves like the summer of 2003, the more serious, immediate threat to the UK from climate change was flash flooding.
He said the UK still relied heavily on the drainage system bequeathed by the Victorians. This type of system could handle soft rain adequately, but "with torrential downpours it can't cope".
Sir David probably did not imagine that such dramatic evidence of his assessment would materialise so quickly.
If you need to fly, is it possible to go green?
The green airline is an oxymoron; air travel will be the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions by 2050. By 2020 we'll take half a billion flights annually (up from 189m in 2002), and aviation does far more damage than its perceived 2 per cent of UK emissions when you factor in radiative forcing: at altitude, the negative effects of burning kerosene are amplified to the power of three. Despite this it has a rather charmed life: no VAT, no fuel duty and is exempt from the climate-change levy.
Arctic spring's 'rapid advance'
Spring in the Arctic is arriving "weeks earlier" than a decade ago, a team of Danish researchers have reported. The team warned that the observed changes could disrupt the region's ecosystems and food chain, affecting the long-term survival of some species.
Emissions scheme "seriously undermined", says WWF
The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) uses a tradable permit system to persuade business and industry to reduce their emissions by effectively putting a price on the carbon they release into the atmosphere.
The report, Emission Impossible, looks at the carbon reduction plans of nine EU member states (UK, Germany, Poland, Ireland, France, Spain, Netherlands, Portugal and Italy) and estimates that between 88%-100% of their combined reduction targets under the scheme could be met by buying in credits from outside the EU. This reliance on cheap imported credits means that European industry may not have to reduce its own emissions at all.
Livingstone lends support to Tory tax on frequent flyers
London mayor Ken Livingstone has backed a Conservative proposal to impose carbon taxes on frequent flyer holidaymakers.
He said: "We are not being honest with people about aviation - the rate of increase from emissions from aviation is terrifying. The more £6 holidays to Marbella, the worse it is going to get."
Price of saving London from floods could exceed £20bn
The cost of protecting London and the south-east
from flooding will be at least £4bn as sea levels rise and the south-east
coast sinks over the next century, a report for the Environment Agency has warned.
Experts have recognised that the Thames Barrier should be able to guard against
the possibility of a major flood until 2030, but say that billions need to be
spent on raising 300km of other defences to protect the capital - and even more
than that if the sea level rises still further.
Bush agrees to CO2 cut, with strings attached
George Bush last night pledged the United States
to a "substantial" cut in greenhouse gas as the west's leading industrial
nations agreed to negotiate a new climate change deal within the next two years.
After strong lobbying from EU leaders, Mr Bush agreed to "seriously consider"
a proposal that would result in a 50% cut in carbon emissions by 2050 but made
it clear that US involvement depended on India and China being included in any
agreement.
Hundreds of bird species at risk
Up to 900 threatened by 2050, says global analysis
Habitat loss dwarfs effects of climate change
A combination of climate change and habitat destruction will significantly threaten 400 to 900 bird species by 2050, according to researchers who have carried out a global analysis of the effects of human activities on land-dwelling birds. By the end of the century, the list will be roughly twice as long.
A change in the moral climate?
Sir David Attenborough said yesterday that he detected signs of a "moral change" in the public's attitude to global warming. He accepted that some people may find his views "optimistic" or "naive", but he said that historical examples like the change in attitudes to slavery 200 years ago showed that society could undergo rapid and profound moral shifts.
FirstGroup plans to cut CO2 emissions
FirstGroup joined the ranks of transport operators
eager to prove their green credentials yesterday by announcing a plan to cut
carbon dioxide emissions by up to a quarter. The group, which makes 2bn passenger
journeys per year, announced a climate change strategy to generate 25% less
CO2 at its British rail and bus operations. The pledge means retraining thousands
of FirstGroup rail and bus drivers in fuel-efficient driving techniques, and
running some of its bus fleet on biofuel.
UK records second-warmest January
The records keep on tumbling. This January was the warmest for 90 years. The Met Office began recording UK-wide weather in 1914, with the warmest January since that time coming in 1916.
More and more schoolchildren are promoting the green message - including badgering parents about turning off lights and shunning cheap holiday flights.
Loads more cool kids out there! :-D
Taxes 'fail to curb travel CO2'
Well if taxes were the answer, nobody would smoke or drink alcohol in the UK! I guess it depends what the money raised by these taxes is spent on - hopefully a project that helps offset that CO2.
Bush administration accused of doctoring scientists' reports on climate change
· Inconvenient conclusions censored, hearing
told
· Researchers warned not to talk about global warming
EC bows to industry pressure over car emissions
Surprise, surprise the EU Commission has caved:
"The 27-strong commission is expected to vote on proposals to impose a mandatory CO2 emissions limit of 130g a kilometre on all new cars from 2012. Its original plan to set the target at 120g was shelved last week after a furious dispute."
Panel warns on Great Barrier Reef
Australia's famous Great Barrier Reef could be dead within decades because of the effects of global warming. The report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warns that the reef's coral could be bleached because of warmer seas.
Speed of melting glaciers' destruction revealed
An annual study of glaciers in nine mountain ranges across five continents has confirmed that they receded by an average of 0.6 metres in 2005 alone. Scientists say the average loss for the glaciers in the study since 1980 is nearly 10m, and things are expected to get even worse when figures are collected for last year, which was one of the warmest on record.
Dr Jack Kohler, a glaciologist with the Norwegian Polar Institute, said melting glaciers were thought to be contributing up to nearly half the annual sea level rise of 3mm. There are also fears that as the big ice masses shrink there will be less white ice to reflect the sun's heat back into the atmosphere, accelerating the process of warming and melting.
Blair sees hope of climate deal
Blair feels that a climate deal is possible because of a 'quantum shift' in the attitude of the US.
"But I look ahead in my country and I see a situation where we're going to move, incidentally, from self-sufficiency in gas to importing 90% of it, and I say for reasons both of energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions, how are we going to do that without nuclear energy being part of the mix?" - DISCUSS
US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors
No need for any comment here - weren't Russia suggesting this some years ago?
Energy roadmap backs renewables
It said alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, could provide nearly 70% of the world's electricity and 65% of global heat demand.
Climate 'to affect nuclear sites'
Saviour of Climate Change, Victim or just Disaster Waiting to Happen - DISCUSS
The whole carbon footprint calculations set out for you. Calculate yours, then consider this: To offset your carbon emissions by planting trees you would need to plant 1 tree for every 1 kg CO2 produced (EACH YEAR). If the average is approx 9,000 kg CO2 per year, for 70 years of life that is 630,000 trees. Who has got a back garden big enough for that?
If you want to make a dent in offsetting your carbon emissions do contribute to the Cool Kids Project. Better still, reduce your footprint - holiday in the UK, travel by public transport, buy locally produced food, buy your energy on a green tariff and insulate your home.
Melting glaciers will destroy Alpine resorts within 45 years, says report
The grandchildren of today's skiers are likely to know the white peaks of Switzerland only from the wrappers of chocolate bars. A remarkable report on climate change that will be handed to European governments this week will say that the effect of rising temperatures will mean an end to snow across large areas of the Alps. The report, by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, will predict the disappearance of 75 per cent of Alpine glaciers within 45 years, a surge in avalanches and floods and the closure of all but the highest ski resorts.
Never too old to save the Earth
You don't have to be a kid to be cool
New weather record made in 2006
Record after record broken
Climate change brings malaria back to Italy
Sandwiched between temperate Europe and African heat, Italy is on the front line of climate change and is witnessing a rise in tropical diseases such as malaria and tick-borne encephalitis.
2007 to be 'warmest on record'
The forecast is: HOT
Nimbys can't be allowed to put a block on wind farms
This is crunch time. If Britain is to have any chance of meeting its target to generate 10% of its energy from renewable sources by 2010, then a great leap forward is needed right now. So far only 4.2% of energy is from renewables and three years is not long to more than double it
When, just before Christmas, Uttlesford district council in Essex gave climate change as one reason for turning down plans for a huge expansion of Stansted airport, it showed how even the smallest of local authorities can man the barricades in the battle for the planet.
