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		News Archive     22/07/2008 07:00 AM Full speed ahead on new energy Christian Science Monitor: T Boone Pickens and Al Gore have proposed bold plans to radically reduce America's addiction to fossil fuels. These two gadflies just might provide enough bite to provoke the next president to swifter action. Mr. Pickens argues that using wind power for electricity and powering vehicles with domestic natural gas can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports within 10 years. If nothing is done, the conservative Texas oilman says, the US will send $10 trillion out of the ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM '100 months to save the planet' BBC: A "Green New Deal" is needed to solve current problems of climate change, energy and finance, a report argues. According to the Green New Deal Group, humanity only has 100 months to prevent dangerous global warming. Its proposals include major investment in renewable energy and the creation of thousands of new "green collar" jobs. The name is taken from President Franklin D Roosevelt's "New Deal", launched 75 years ago to bring the US out ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Climate report calls for leaders with vision Reuters: The world needs leaders with the vision to forge New Deal-type policies to tackle the potentially disastrous combination of climate change, high inflation and economic slowdown, a British think-tank said on Monday. "A New Green Deal", a report issued by the New Economics Foundation, uses the convergence of the credit crunch, climate change and booming food and fuel prices to make the case for a new economics for the 21st century. Key points in the report are that ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Destruction of wetlands will release massive greenhouse gases Indo-Asian News Service: Destruction of wetlands will release a staggering 771 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, with devastating consequences. Meeting in Cuiaba at the edge of South America's Pantanal wetland on Monday, 700 experts from 28 nations at the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference will prescribe measures urgently needed to manage these vibrant ecosystems. Global warming is speeding both rates of decomposition of trapped organic material ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Global warming is a brutal truth Guardian: There is just one party which doesn't seem to care about the controversy created by The Great Global Warming Swindle. That is the company which broadcast it: Channel 4. In fact it seems rather proud of the fuss, and I suspect that Ofcom's damning verdict won't cause its executives a moment's lost sleep. The channel boasts that the programme generated a huge response, and that favourable comments outweighed hostile remarks by six to one. Though the programme was 90 minutes of ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Gore: Make All US Electricity From Renewable Sources Reuters: Al Gore, the Nobel Prize-winning crusader on climate change, challenged the United States on Thursday to commit to producing all US electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind power in 10 years. "Our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges -- the economic, environmental and national security crises," the former Democratic vice president and presidential candidate in 2000 told a meeting in Washington. ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM It's argued that deforestation has made climate change worse BBC: The town of Cherrapunjee, in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, is reputed to be the wettest place in the world. But there are signs that its weather patterns may be being hit by global climate change. "Not without reason has Cherrapunjee achieved fame as being the place with the heaviest rainfall on earth," wrote German missionary Christopher Becker more than 100 years ago. "One must experience it to have an idea of the immense quantity of ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Kenya Sugar, Biofuel Project Stirs Controversy Reuters: In a clearing on Kenya's coastal grasslands, a group of nomadic herders shout down government officials who have flown in from Nairobi to explain the benefits of a proposed US$350 million sugar project. "If the delta is planted with sugar, we will run out of grazing land for our cattle," local community leader Bile Bundit says. Others wave placards at the flustered officials sitting in a makeshift tent made from wooden poles and sack-cloth. Hoping to plug Kenya's annual ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Lightning Strikes: Get Used to Catastrophic Wildfires and Worse AlterNet: "This is a specter against which grand inquisitors and wars against terrorism are powerless to protect us," Mike Davis wrote in a 2003 essay titled "The Perfect Fire," which was composed against the backdrop of a massive firestorm that callously rampaged across Southern California, burning thousands of homes and billions of dollars in its wake. "It is, of course," he added, "the right time of the year for the end of the world." It still is. In ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Massive Greenhouse Gases May Be Released As Destruction, Drying Of World Wetlands Worsen Science Daily: Leading world scientists convene in Brazil July 21-25 amid growing concern that evaporation and ongoing destruction of world wetlands, which hold a volume of carbon similar to that in the atmosphere today, could cause them to exhale billows of greenhouse gases. Meeting in the city of Cuiaba on the edge of South America's vast Pantanal, the largest wetland of its kind, some 700 experts from 28 nations at the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference will prescribe measures urgently ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM New coal plants in Michigan draw fire Detroit Free Press: Michigan electric companies say the voracious appetite for energy-sucking gadgets like plasma televisions, which use four times the power of old-fashioned screens, are pushing them to build the first new coal plants in the state in 20 years to satisfy the demand. Environmental groups say the sudden rush to build coal plants calls on a 19th-Century technology to solve 21st-Century problems. They oppose the plans, arguing that new coal plants will add global-warming gases at a ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Record growth in renewable energy systems Energy Digital: Last year saw record growth in global renewable energy and energy efficiency investment, according to new figures published by the UN's environment programme (Unep) last week. Spending on clean energy projects rose to almost €94bn worldwide in 2007, up 60 percent on 2006, according to the "Global trends in sustainable energy investment" report. Sustainable energy accounted for 23 percent of total new power generation added worldwide last year, with 31GW of ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Self sufficient 'smart homes' promised by 2010 Guardian: The world's first commercially available "smart" homes, which will be virtually self-sufficient in energy terms by using cutting-edge efficiency and microgeneration technologies, will be available by the end of 2009 for rent in Barcelona and Paris, developers told a conference in Spain yesterday. The Smart Energy Home (SEH) consortium, a collaboration of university researchers, chemical and construction companies, hope that the homes will demonstrate the potential for ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: The public has been swindled Guardian: As the former chair of the IPCC, I welcome Ofcom's ruling today, which states that The Great Global Warming Swindle was unfair in its treatment of the IPCC and leading scientists such as Sir David King and Professor Carl Wunsch, and that it was in breach of due impartiality on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy. However, I am very disappointed that Ofcom did not find that the programme materially misled the ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM The value of China's carbon market United Press International: Carbon finance is a significant tool that can drive China's transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, according to a study released Monday. The study, commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature of Hong Kong, said China's interest in carbon finance was triggered by the Clean Development Mechanism. This arrangement, under the Kyoto Protocol, allows industrialized countries that have committed to reducing their greenhouse gases to invest in projects that reduce emissions in ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Japan: Toyota to Make 100,000 Units of Hybrid Car - Paper Reuters: Toyota Motor Corp plans to produce 100,000 units a year of a new hybrid-only model slated for release in 2009 at a subsidiary in southern Japan, the Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday. The new car, which will be Toyota's second dedicated hybrid model after the hot-selling Prius, will have a 2- to 2.5-litre engine and will also be sold under the company's luxury Lexus brandname, the paper said. Toyota Motor Kyushu Inc, in Fukuoka prefecture, currently builds a ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Unnecessary flights killing the poor says Tutu Reuters:  Businessmen who take flights rather than use video conferencing are adding to global warming that is condemning millions of the world's poorest people to death, according to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. The former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town said developed countries had caused global warming and must therefore take the lead in slashing emissions of climate changing carbon gases. "It is the countries which are the least responsible for causing climate change that are ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Urgent action needed on climate change Radio Australia: A new book says even that is not enough, warning that the global warming threat to the planet has been drastically under-estimated. Presenter: Sen Lam Speaker: David Spratt, co-author Climate Code Red: The case for Emergency Action LAM: David Spratt, first of all, is it to little to late? SPRATT: The Australian Government scheme certainly is. If we contrast that which has made no promises about emissions and when they'll be cut, the prime minister was asked on ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Warming Alters Predator-Prey Balance Washington Post: For six decades since they loped across frozen Lake Superior to reach this rocky island, wolves have roamed 45-mile-long Isle Royale, the nation's least-visited national park. The wolves survived the extermination efforts by the island's few inhabitants, who in the 1950s and '60s saw them as mortal enemies. And they survived an outbreak of deadly canine parvovirus in the 1980s. Now, scientists tracking the wolves in the world's longest-running "single predator-single prey" ... read more 21/07/2008 07:00 AM Warming West is ground zero for wildfires San Francisco Chronicle: California has been hit by 2,000 fires this year, and climate scientists are predicting that the situation will worsen as temperatures rise. The American West has been warming dramatically during the past 60 years at a rate surpassed only by Alaska. This year has been particularly dry for California, with less snowfall, earlier snowmelt and lower summer river flows. Some of the state's top scientists say the changing water picture is caused by humans producing greenhouse gases, ... read more News Archive     Back to Homepage
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