Tzeporah Berman: Canada far behind even the US when it comes to renewable energy
Berman: States and provinces are way in front of federal governments in environmental legislation
Source: The Real News
Canada desperately needs a new and positive vision in the fight against global warming.
Many countries are working hard at solutions and building new economies along the way
Source: Power Up Canada
Hacked climate change emails – a tempest in a teapot or a real storm? Paul Jay talks to Michael Brklacic
Source: The Real News
Mike Brklacich’s teaching and research interests reflect his long-term interests in interdisciplinary approaches for assessing relationships between human use and impacts on environmental and natural resources, and in the application of science to public policy. Over the past decade, he has collabotated with Agrciulture Canada and Environment Canada on several projects investigating:
Source: Carleton University
This morning on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” billionaire investor and prominent Obama supporter Warren Buffett slammed the administrations proposed $646 billion carbon tax known as cap and trade as a regressive tax that customers are going to pay for.
As the days tick by, the world’s climate nears a critical turning point. This December in Copenhagen, Denmark officials from almost 200 countries will attend the UN Climate Change Conference to negotiate an international treaty as we enter into the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
This conference has the potential to set global emission standards, provide adaptation funding to developing countries, and support green technologies – but only if global leaders take responsibility for their country’s contributions to climate change.
We know climate change is happening, but why is it important? Link TV’s new series Climate Change Hits Home brings the issue to the kitchen table, showing with weekly stories that the impact of climate change is not a foreign subject. Browse these pages for facts, videos, and action ideas –and understand why the world is watching the Countdown to Copenhagen.
Source: Link TV
Bob Brown talks about Mr Rudd’s “Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme” saying it locks in failure with its unacceptably low targets and its $16 billion handout to polluters
Donate at www.greens.org.au to help put this ad on television.
Source: Australian Greens
This ETS-lite deserves to be rejected
The Rudd Government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) is a thoroughly compromised version of an emissions trading scheme (ETS). It deserves to be rejected in the Senate even if it requires an unholy alliance between the Greens and the climate change deniers in the Coalition parties.
Australia (and other countries) would be better off with no ETS (Emissions Trading System). Two recent reports – The Brave New World of Carbon Trading by Australian ecological economist, Clive L. Spash, and A Dangerous Obsession by Friends of the Earth – spell out in detail why the attempt to deal with global warming by setting up ETS schemes have already failed, why they will continue to fail and also why governments, in thrall to financial interests, continue to persevere with them.
According to both studies, carbon trading is failing against its fundamental purpose – it hasn’t achieved the levels of emissions cuts promised nor is it driving the major technological innovations that are needed to shift our economies on to more low-carbon paths.
For polluters whose emissions exceed their permits, carbon trading makes lower-cost permits an alternative to the higher cost investments that they would otherwise be forced to make.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
A Big Ball of Mud
Over dinner I was contemplating the similarities between software architecture and legal architecture. After all — reading something like the Waxman-Markey Bill or the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation is very much like reading source code. Then it dawned on me — in the field of software development, there is a way of describing the climate architecture that is being discussed in the UNFCCC negotiations. It is called a big ball of mud. Wikipedia describes it as follows:
In computer programming, a big ball of mud is a system or computer program that appears to have no distinguishable architecture. It usually features other anti-patterns.
Here is a definition:
A Big Ball of Mud is a haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape-and-baling-wire, spaghetti-code jungle. These systems show unmistakable signs of unregulated growth, and repeated, expedient repair. Information is shared promiscuously among distant elements of the system, often to the point where nearly all the important information becomes global or duplicated. The overall structure of the system may never have been well defined. If it was, it may have eroded beyond recognition. Programmers with a shred of architectural sensibility shun these quagmires. Only those who are unconcerned about architecture, and, perhaps, are comfortable with the inertia of the day-to-day chore of patching the holes in these failing dikes, are content to work on such systems.
A big ball of mud is the architecture you get when there is no architecture. This is why the legal architecture of a post-2012 framework is so important.
Swiftboating the climate scientists 23 November 09
The outcry over emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit’s server and then plastered all over the internet by climate change deniers shows a worrying trend. Moving on from targeting Al Gore and environmentalists, the denial conspiracists are now moving on to attacking science itself.
The theft put the scientists in question in a very difficult position. If they refused to comment – on the reasonable grounds that this was stolen property – then they risked looking secretive. If they did comment, then they would become embroiled in a defensive battle over the contents of private correspondence often written over ten years ago
Source: Mark Lynas
Source: Its the End of the World of We Know It, Submedia.TV
Could global warming be a hoax? Some people believe they’ve found proof that it is. Recently hackers broke into the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University computers and hacked over 1000 emails between global warming scientists discussing the “extra proof” they had to use to pad the global warming theory. These emails have leaked across the internet and in several it’s admitted that global warming is in fact declining. It doesn’t need to be said the questions that these emails have raised so many questions: whether the emails are authentic or falsified? Whether scientists have been stretching the truth on global warming?
Source: Gather.com
It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.
Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released(2,3), and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request(4).
Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics(5,6), or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(7). I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.
But do these revelations justify the sceptics’ claims that this is “the final nail in the coffin” of global warming theory?(8,9) Not at all. They damage the credibility of three or four scientists. They raise questions about the integrity of one or perhaps two out of several hundred lines of evidence.
Source: The Knights Carbonic, Monbiot.com
We have a problem. We’re flying too much, and it’s changing the earth’s climate. Aviation is the fastest growing cause of climate change. But instead of doing anything about it, the Government is planning more flights and larger airports.
Source: Plane Stupid
Tipping Points from WWF on Vimeo.
Source: WWF, Allianz
Berlin, 23rd November 2009 – The world’s diverse regions and ecosystems are close to reaching temperature thresholds – or “tipping points” – that can unleash devastating environmental, social and economic changes, according to a new report by WWF and Allianz.
Often global warming is seen as a process similar to a steady flow of water in our bathrooms and kitchens, where temperature goes up gradually, controlled by a turn of the tap.
But the report ‘Major Tipping Points in the Earth’s Climate System and Consequences for the Insurance Sector’ documents that changes related to global warming are likely to be much more abrupt and unpredictable – and they could create huge social and environmental problems and cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars.
Without immediate climate action, sea level rise on the East Coast of the USA, the shift to an arid climate in California, disturbances of the Indian Summer Monsoon in India and Nepal or the dieback of the Amazon rainforest due to increasing drought, are likely to affect hundreds millions of people and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
The study explores impacts of these “tipping points,” including their economic consequences and implications for the insurance sector. It also shows how close the world is to reaching “tipping points” in many regions of the world, or how close we are to tipping the scales toward disaster.
“If we don’t take immediate action against climate change, we are in grave danger of disruptive and devastating changes,” said Kim Carstensen, the Head of WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Reaching a tipping point means losing something forever. This must be a strong argument for world leaders to agree a strong and binding climate deal in Copenhagen in December.
According to the report, carried out by the Tyndall Centre, the impacts of passing “Tipping Points” on the livelihood of people and economic assets have been underestimated so far. The report focuses on regions and phenomena where such events might be expected to cause significant impacts within the first half of the century.
“As an insurer and investor, we must prepare our clients for these scenarios as long as we still have leeway for action,” says Clemens von Weichs, CEO of Allianz Reinsurance. “Setting premiums risk-appropriately and sustainably is of vital interest to everyone involved, because this is the only way to ensure that coverage solutions will continue to exist.”
Allianz intends to address climate change by entering into dialogue with its clients at an early date. This will allow it to point out countermeasures in a timely way, and work together to develop specific coverage concepts, whether for existing assets or for future climate-compatible projects like alternative energy and water supply concepts, dyke construction, or protection against failed harvests.
Global temperatures have already risen by at least 0.7 degrees Celsius. Global warming above 2-3 degrees in the second half of the century is likely unless strong extremely radical and determined efforts towards deep cuts in emissions are put in place before 2015.
The melting of the Greenland (GIS) and the West Antarctic Ice Shield (WAIS) could lead to a Tipping Point scenario, possibly a sea level rise of up to 0.5 meters by 2050. This is estimated to increase the value of assets at threat in all 136 global port mega-cities by around 25.000 billion USD.
On the North-eastern coast of the USA and due to a localized anomaly, the sea level could rise up to 0.65 meters, increasing the asset exposure from 1.350 to about 7.400 billion USD
The South Western Part of the USA, namely California, is likely to be affected by droughts and levels of aridity similar to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. The annual damages caused by wildfires could be tenfold compared to today’s costs and could reach up to 2.5 billion USD per year by 2050 increasing to up to 14 billion by 2085.
70 percent of working population may be put at risk by droughts in India. The future costs of droughts are expected to rise to approx. 40 billion USD per decade until the middle of the century.
In a tipping point scenario, dieback of the Amazon Rainforest could reach 70% by the end of the century as a consequence of a significant increase in the frequency of droughts in the Amazon basin. The impacts include loss of biodiversity and massive carbon release. Costs could reach up to 9.000 billion USD for a surface of around 4 million square kilometers.
“The Tipping Points report shows how quickly we are approaching dangerous and irreversible levels of global warming,” Carstensen said. “Economic consequences of passing the climate tipping points are absolutely overwhelming.”
“There is still a chance to avoid the worst and this report shows how urgent it is to act immediately. A strong climate agreement in Copenhagen in December is the best, if not the only chance to prevent the worst impacts of devastating climate change.”
Today’s insurance industry has learned lessons from its experiences after major losses caused by hurricanes like Andrew (1992), Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005). Better models will help people understand the frequency and strength of natural disasters. “But good models will not be enough to protect the climate,” explains Michael Bruch, of Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, the Allianz Group’s industrial insurer. “The human component is playing an ever-increasing role in reducing the risk from natural disasters, in terms of both risk management and combating the human causes of climate change.”
So far, Obama has tried to co-opt the corporations into his agenda by ensuring they will profit from any changes, but this inevitably waters down the proposals, often to the point of uselessness. The Cap and Trade legislation before Congress, for example, will barely limit carbon emissions at all because it has been gutted to please the polluters.
He will only achieve significant progressive change if he reforms the political system itself – to make it accountable to the American people, not the corporations. He needs to change the rules of the game. Ban big business from making political donations, and replace it with state funding. Shut down the lobbying industry. Make a big populist speech announcing you are driving the money-lenders out of the temple of democracy: it’d be surprisingly popular in a country where people can see they’re being ripped off every day. The alternative is to become rapidly complicit in a system where defending rape and slavery is seen as just another day’s work in Washington DC.
Source: The Independent, UK
Permaculture TV video commons: New Videos| CC+ 2011 Permaculture TV free video cooperative | By Permaculture Cooperative ~ government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth | Suffusion WordPress theme by Sayontan Sinha |
permaculturetv
niccolox
Kirstie Stramler
Eric Toensmeier
calea68
alexmccausland
Recent Comments