By Rachel Oliver
    CNN

    Sunday 04 May 2008

* CO2 capturing takes emissions out of the atmosphere and into underground "lakes"
* Some fear it only encourages fossil fuel use and ignores bigger climate problems
* Cost and effectiveness of methods are still unproven
* Other methods to reduce CO2 in atmosphere include production of biochar

    Despite plans to slash carbon dioxide (C02) emissions, the world still faces a very basic, and very big, problem.

    Many scientists believe the CO2 "tipping point" has been passed already.

    There is already too much C02 sitting in the atmosphere, and put simply, it needs to be somewhere else. That extra carbon has been building up since the advent of the Industrial Revolution and continues to grow apace.

    The latest scientific research says that greenhouse gases are now being pumped out faster than at any point during the 1990's, largely because of the continued dominance of fossil fuels.

    The problem, however, is that fossil fuels don't look like they are going anywhere anytime soon. Britain's leading economist Sir Nicholas Stern predicts that even with the advances being made now in renewable energies, by 2050 half of the world's energy needs will still be served by fossil fuels.

    News like this has effectively boosted interested in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, which boldly promise to prevent 90 percent of power station emissions from reaching the atmosphere.

    
    By Alex Rodriguez
    The Chicago Tribune

    Monday 05 May 2008

Though dismissed in Russia, scientist's climate research in remote Siberia is heating up discussions in the West.

    Chersky, Russia - Sergei Zimov waded through knee-deep snow to reach a frozen lake where so much methane belches out of the melting permafrost that it spews from the ice like small geysers.

    In the frigid twilight, the Russian scientist struck a match to make a jet of the greenhouse gas visible. The sudden plume of fire threw him backward. Zimov stood up, brushed the snow off his parka and beamed.

    "Sometimes a big explosion happens, because the gas comes out like a bomb," Zimov said. "There are a million lakes like this in northern Siberia."

    In a country where many scientists scoff at the existence of global warming, Zimov has been waging a lonely campaign to warn the world about Russia's melting permafrost and its nexus with climate change. His laboratory is the vast expanse of tundra and larch forest along the East Siberian Sea, an icy corner of the world that Zimov has scrutinized almost entirely on his own for 28 years.

    Far from the archetypal scientist, the beefy, 53-year-old Russian with a mound of gray-brown hair and piercing blue eyes reigns over his patch of Siberia not with pipette and beaker, but with the swagger of a Cossack and an encyclopedic knowledge of his surroundings.

   
    Environmental News Network

    Wednesday 30 April 2008

    Climate change is having a greater and faster impact on the Arctic than previously thought, according to a new study by the global conservation organization WWF.

    The new report, called Arctic Climate Impact Science - An Update Since ACIA, represents the most wide-ranging reviews of arctic climate impact science since the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) was published in 2005.

    The new study found that change was occurring in all arctic systems, impacting on the atmosphere and oceans, sea ice and ice sheets, snow and permafrost, as well as species and populations, food webs, ecosystems and human societies.

    Melting of arctic sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet was found to be severely accelerated, now even prompting the expert scientists to discuss whether both may be close to their "tipping point" (the point where, because of climate change, natural systems may experience sudden, rapid and possibly irreversible change).

    "The magnitude of the physical and ecological changes in the Arctic creates an unprecedented challenge for governments, the corporate sector, community leaders and conservationists to create the conditions under which arctic natural systems have the best chance to adapt," said Dr Martin Sommerkorn, one of the report's authors and Senior Climate Change Adviser at WWF International's Arctic Programme.

    "The debate can no longer focus only on creating protected areas and allowing arctic ecosystems to find their balance."

    
    By Craig McInnes
    The Vancouver Sun

    Thursday 01 May 2008

    Victoria, Canada - Ouch.

    Ouch, ouch.

    That, in short, pretty much sums up the reaction from across the province to the carbon tax announced by Finance Minister Carole Taylor in her budget in February and finally introduced as legislation this week.

    British Columbians are starting to read the fine print on the revenue-neutral guarantee, which promises to cut a dollar of other taxes for every dollar raised by the new carbon tax, and are discovering that neutral for the provincial treasury doesn't mean they won't be feeling any pain.

    What galls is the apparent inequity: Islanders complain about having to pay more for ferry service due to rising fuel costs. Northerners feel singled out because of longer winters and the distances they drive. Truckers complain they are being driven to the brink.

    It's the kind of reaction that usually sends politicians scurrying for their bunkers from which they can be expected to emerge with a basket full of loopholes to make everyone happy.

    They know voters who feel unfairly singled out for pain have long memories. But to the surprise of many, the legislation introduced by Taylor this week offered no such relief, nor could it without losing all credibility.

   
    By Gwladys Fouché
    The Guardian UK

    Tuesday 29 April 2008

Buses and lorries running on dead cows and a train station using commuters' body warmth to heat an office block are two innovative solutions to lowering carbon emissions that have put Sweden on top of an environmental league table. Gwladys Fouché reports.

    If there's a paradise for environmentalists, this Nordic nation of 9.2 million people must be it. In 2007 Sweden topped the list of countries that did the most to save the planet - for the second year running - according to German environmental group, Germanwatch. Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.

    Under Kyoto, Sweden was even told it could increase its emissions by 4% given the progress it had already made. But "this was not considered ambitious enough," explains Emma Lindberg, a climate change expert at the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.

    "So parliament decided to cut emissions by another 4% [below 1990 levels]. The mindset was 'we need to do what's good for the environment because it's good for Sweden and its economy'."

    The main reason for this success, say experts, is the introduction of a carbon tax in 1991. Swedes today pay an extra 2.34 kronor (20p) per litre when they fill the tank (although many key industries receive tax relief or are exempted). "Our carbon emissions would have been 20% higher without the carbon tax," says the Swedish environment minister, Andreas Carlgren.

   
    By Elizabeth Weise
    USA Today

    Thursday 24 April 2008

    Every gardener is familiar with the multicolor U.S. map of climate zones on the back of seed packets. It's the Department of Agriculture's indicator of whether a flower, bush or tree will survive the winters in a given region.

    It's also 18 years old. A growing number of meteorologists and horticulturists say that because of the warming climate, the 1990 map doesn't reflect a trend that home gardeners have noticed for more than a decade: a gradual shift northward of growing zones for many plants.

    The map doesn't show, for example, that the Southern magnolia, once limited largely to growing zones ranging from Florida to Virginia, now can thrive as far north as Pennsylvania. Or that kiwis, long hardy only as far north as Oklahoma, now might give fruit in St. Louis.

    Such shifts have put the USDA's map at the center of a new chapter in the debate over how government should respond to climate changes that were described in a report last year by a United Nations-backed panel of scientists. The panel said there was "unequivocal" evidence of global warming fueled by carbon dioxide emissions, which have created an excess of the greenhouse gases that warm the Earth.

    Climate change is reshaping how people garden. Across the agricultural industry, the issue is driving a dispute over climate maps that involves economics, politics and meteorological standards.

    At nurseries across the nation, it has become common knowledge that the government's climate map is out of date. And yet the nursery industry, which had $16.9 billion in wholesale sales in 2006, has joined the USDA in taking a conservative approach to changing the map.

    A big reason: money.