By Catherine Brahic
    NewScientist.com

    Thursday 16 August 2007

    It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.

    They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.

    The reason is that producing biofuel is not a "green process". It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make "green" fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn - an alternative to oil - "it's essentially a zero-sums game," says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France (see Complete carbon footprint of biofuel - or is it?).

    What is more, environmentalists have expressed concerns that the growing political backing that biofuel is enjoying will mean forests will be chopped down to make room for biofuel crops such as maize and sugarcane. "When you do this, you immediately release between 100 and 200 tonnes of carbon [per hectare]," says Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, UK, a conservation agency that seeks to preserve rainforests.

   
    By Alok Jha
    The Guardian UK

    Thursday 16 August 2007

    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.

    In drawing together research on tipping points, where damage due to climate change occurs irreversibly and at an increasing rate, the researchers concluded that the risks were much greater than those predicted by the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    If the Greenland ice sheet melted completely, for example, it would raise global sea levels by seven metres. According to the IPCC report, the melting should take about 1,000 years. But the study, by Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia, showed the break-up could happen more quickly, in 300 years. Professor Lenton said: "We know that ice sheets in the last ice age collapsed faster than any current models can capture, so our models are known to be too sluggish."

    
    By Jerome Taylor
    The Independent UK

    Friday 17 August 2007

    The environmental campaign against air travel moved towards a more confrontational phase and spread outside the climate-change camp at Heathrow yesterday as small groups of protesters launched simultaneous demonstrations against two airports in the South-east.

    Eleven people were arrested outside Biggin Hill in Kent, an airport popular with business figures and celebrities flying private jets, after protesters chained themselves to gates and lay down on the main access road to the airport yesterday morning.

    Twenty protesters at Farnborough airport in Hampshire launched a similar protest, blockading the main gate for about two and a half hours. They dispersed peacefully without any arrests being made. The campaigners at Biggin Hill said they chose that particular airport because of its popularity with clients using private jets, which they said was one of the most inefficient and polluting ways to travel.

    Richard George, speaking on behalf of the Kent protesters, said: "This is a protest against the super-rich with their own planes, who are putting two fingers up to attempts by the rest of us to try to cut our carbon emissions by saying they will not only continue to fly, but they will fly in the most carbon-inefficient way possible."

   
    By David Adam
    The Guardian UK

    Wednesday 15 August 2007

    Millions of people across Britain think their behaviour does not contribute to climate change and find it too much effort to make green changes to their lifestyle, a government survey suggests.

    About a quarter of people polled agreed with statements such as: "It takes too much effort to do things that are environmentally friendly" and "I don't believe my behaviour and everyday lifestyle contribute to climate change". About half the people disagreed with the statements.

    There were some signs that the environmental message is getting through. Over half those polled said they never leave the television on standby overnight or their mobile phone chargers plugged in, and that they always switched off lights when they left the room. But a fifth keep their televisions on standby, and a similar proportion leave the tap running when they brush their teeth.

    The results of the survey of public attitudes and behaviour were released yesterday by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. About 3,600 people were asked about issues such as transport, waste recycling and buying habits. It follows five similar surveys over the past 20 years, the last in 2001.

   
    By Suzanne Bohan
    Inside Bay Area

    Sunday 12 August 2007

Element quietly rivaling CO2 as a global climate threat.

    On an overcast day in April, Stuart Weiss stood in the rolling hills of a Bay Area nature preserve and lifted a bag of nitrogen-based fertilizer to his shoulder.

    The heavy sack, the Menlo Park ecologist explained to a small crowd gathered before him, symbolized the unprecedented release of nitrogen into the Earths air, land and water, and the insidious environmental changes under way globally from the potent fertilizer.

    At Edgewood Park in Redwood City where he stood, nitrogen from vehicle exhaust on a nearby freeway has led to the local demise of a threatened butterfly population, according to research Weiss conducted. The clear link he established between the exhaust and the butterflies decline attracted international attention among the growing federation of scientists studying nitrogen pollution.

    I call it the biggest global change that nobody has ever heard of, Weiss said at the spring event. The planet has never seen this much nitrogen at any time. Human activity now releases 125 million metric tons of nitrogen from agricultural activities and fossil fuel combustion a year, compared to 113 million metric tons annually from natural sources, according to a 2007 United Nations report called Human Alteration of the Nitrogen Cycle.

    In 1860, the U.N. report noted, there was virtually no release from human activity. The consequences of this spike, the report added, are profound.

   
    By Andrew Gumbel
    The Independent UK

    Tuesday 14 August 2007

    Los Angeles - The Bush administration has consistently thwarted efforts by the World Bank to include global warming in its calculations when considering whether to approve major investments in industry and infrastructure, according to documents made public through a watchdog yesterday.

    On one occasion, the White House's pointman at the bank, the now disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, personally intervened to remove the words "climate change" from the title of a bank progress report and ordered changes to the text of the report to shift the focus away from global warming.

    But the issue predates Mr. Wolfowitz's appointment as president of the bank in June 2005. According to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which has tracked efforts to censor debate on global warming, environmental specialists at the World Bank tried unsuccessfully to press for consideration of greenhouse- gas emissions in a paper written - but never published - in 2002.

    It was politics that prevented the publication of that paper, according to one senior bank insider who spoke to the Los Angeles Times, and politics that has been the principal obstacle to progress since. Only now, with the Bush administration on the ropes politically and the scientific evidence for global warming reaching such critical mass that even President George Bush has been forced to acknowledge its reality, are those same bank officials trying again to put the issue on the agenda. "Our biggest obstacle has been that politically, [climate change] is very controversial," Kristalina Georgieva, the bank's strategy and operations director for sustainable development, told the LA Times.