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		News Archive     22/07/2008 07:00 AM Brazil: Amazon River Powers Tropical Ocean's Carbon Sink Science Daily: Nutrients from the Amazon River spread well beyond the continental shelf and drive carbon capture in the deep ocean, according to the authors of a multi-year study. The finding does not change estimates of the oceans' total carbon uptake, but it reveals the surprisingly large role of tropical oceans and major rivers. The tropical North Atlantic had been considered a net emitter of carbon from the respiration of ocean life. A 2007 study estimated that ocean's contribution to the ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Britain Must Set Deadline to Close Dirty Power Plants Reuters: The British government must set a deadline for closing all coal-fired power stations whose smokestack emissions have not been slashed by carbon capture technology, a parliamentary report said on Tuesday. The Environmental Audit Committee also warned against the government allowing coal-fired power plants to be built that were "CCS ready" -- able to be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology once it is commercially proven and available. "Carbon capture ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Energy: Coal-fired power stations will lock UK into a high-emissions future, say MPs Guardian: The government will come under increased pressure today to ban new coal-fired power stations such as the one planned for Kingsnorth in Kent unless they are equipped to trap and store carbon pollution underground, as a committee of MPs publishes a critical report. The environmental audit committee urges ministers to make it clear that coal power plants that do not fit carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment will be closed down. It says the government must set a deadline, after ... read more 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 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Population bomb 'ticks louder than climate' Canberra Times: Global population growth is looming as a bigger threat to the world's food production and water supplies than climate change, a leading scientist says. Speaking at a CSIRO public lecture in Canberra yesterday, UNESCO's chief of sustainable water resources development, Professor Shahbaz Khan, said overpopulation's impacts were potentially more economically, socially and environmentally destructive than those of climate change. ''Climate change is one of a number of stresses ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Uganda NFA Says Won't Allocate Mabira Forest For Sugar Cane Dow Jones: Uganda's state-run National Forestry Authority won't allocate part of the Mabira natural forest reserve to Sugar Corp. of Uganda Ltd., or SCOUL, for sugar cane growing because it's a threat to the environment, NFA executive director said Monday. Akankwasa Damian said Mabira's biodiversity maintains the water levels of Lake Victoria and the River Nile and cutting the forest down for sugar cane growing would endanger Africa's largest fresh water lake. "We have made our ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM "Humans Are Now the Primary Drivers of Our Climate" Inter Press Service: Humanity faces enormous challenges at the start of the 21st century, says Sir David King, Britain's former chief scientific advisor and now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University in England. The crises surrounding climate change, population growth, water, food and land are deeply interconnected, Sir David said at the opening of the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Friday. The Forum, known as ESOF, is a biannual gathering of ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Brazil harnesses space tech to monitor deforestation Environmental News Network: Brazil will launch a satellite in 2011 to monitor deforestation and urban expansion around the world, it has been announced. Amazônia-1 will carry a UK-made high resolution camera. The United Kingdom–Brazil collaboration was announced last week (14 July) at the 60th Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Society for Progress in Science. It is part of the continuing UK–Brazil Partnership in Science and Innovation, and stems from discussions between governments and research partners ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Britain 'imports more illegal timber than any EU country' Telegraph (UK): Britain imports more illegal timber than almost any other country in Europe, a new report claims. Almost one-fifth of wood imported into the EU in 2006 came from illegal sources, according to WWF. And the UK imported 3.5m cubic metres of illegal wood making it the second biggest importer behind Finland. This included the biggest quantities of furniture, finished wood products, sawn wood and plywood of all EU states. WWF claims that in total the EU imported between 26.5m ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: C4's climate change documentary 'was unfair but not misleading' Independent: A Channel 4 documentary which claimed that the idea of man-made climate change was a fraud and a conspiracy has been censured by the broadcasting regulator. Ofcom. The Great Global Warming Swindle, written and directed by Martin Durkin, misrepresented the views of the Government's former chief scientific adviser Sir David King, Ofcom said yesterday in a long-awaited judgement. The programme was further found to have unfairly treated Sir David, the American oceanographer ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Carbon capture deadline 'vital' for coal stations InTheNews.co.uk: The government should set a deadline by which coal-fired power stations must have adopted carbon capture and storage (CCS), a committee of MPs said today. In its report on CCS, the environmental audit committee (EAC) says stations that do not meet this deadline should no longer be allowed to operate. CCS is a technique that could prevent up to 90 per cent of damaging carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations entering the atmosphere. But the EAC claimed that unless ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Climate Film Draws a Rebuke New York Times: A controversial British documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" unfairly portrays several scientists and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Britain's television watchdog agency ruled on Monday. The agency, the Office of Communication, issued a report rebuking Channel 4 in Britain, which broadcast "Swindle" last year. But the report said the film, while "intemperate" in its characterizations of the dominant scientific view that humans are the main force in ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM United Kingdom: Draughty companies said wasting $5 billion Reuters: British businesses are wasting 2.5 billion pounds a year in energy bills swollen by inefficiencies such as draughty windows or leaving lights and computers on, the Carbon Trust said on Tuesday. Racing oil prices have added to the cost of wasted energy but businesses are not responding far enough according to the private, government-funded agency whose mandate is to drive cuts in UK carbon emissions and so help fight climate change. "We're talking about money that could be saved ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Icebergs Digging Deep, With Implications for Life on the Bottom of the Sea New York Times: As the Titanic found out, icebergs can cause a lot of destruction. But it isn't just ships that can be damaged; close to the coast the seafloor can take a pounding as icebergs are moved around by currents, wind and tides. This "ice scour" occurs along coastlines at high latitudes in water up to about 1,600 feet deep, depending on iceberg size. It disturbs the ocean bottom just as a forest fire or flood disturbs the landscape. But scientists know much more about the ecological impact ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM In US, Solar Panels Get Aesthetic Designs Reuters: Bulky and obtrusive rack-mounted solar panels may be a thing of the past. Spurred by recent advances in technology, solar panel makers are scrambling to come up with neater and cleaner products that will overcome the aesthetic objections of home owners to traditional solar panels. They are building their technology directly into different kinds of roof tiles, hiding them in walls and lining the tops of patio awnings with them. "Bottom line, people don't want ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM New Solar Thermal Plant Buoys Spanish Investors Reuters: Spain's Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian buoyed hopes in the country's solar power industry on Monday just days after announcing a dramatic cut in subsidies. Madrid last week announced plans to cut by almost 90 percent its subsidies for solar photovoltaic (PV) power after a stampede for support left Madrid with a multi-billion euro liability. But the cuts will not apply to solar thermal, a technology that concentrates the sun's light to produce heat and steam which in turn ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Obama Shifts Stance on Environmental & Climate Issues USA Today: In May 1998, at the urging of the state's coal industry, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill condemning the Kyoto global warming treaty and forbidding state efforts to regulate greenhouse gases. Barack Obama voted "aye." The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee now calls climate change "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation," and proposes cutting carbon emissions 80% by 2050. But as a state senator, from 1997 to 2004, he usually supported bills sought by ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Renewable energy: European utilities acquire Shell's stake in world's largest offshore wind farm Guardian: The world's biggest offshore wind farm was put back on track yesterday as the UK energy minister boasted that the technology could attract £3bn investment to the north-east of England alone. A host of wind schemes have been hit by planning delays, cost-inflation fears and opposition from the Ministry of Defence over concerns that turbines damage the efficiency of local radar. The German-based energy group E.ON and the Danish utility Dong Energy have agreed to acquire Shell's ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM Smoke From Wildfires May Block Warming of Arctic, Study Says Bloomberg: Smoke spreading across the sky from intense wildfires in North America could act temporarily to blunt the effect of global warming in the Arctic, climate researchers said. The Arctic may cool for weeks or months at a time as smoke from northern wildfires drifts into the region, said researchers at the University of Colorado and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The cooling effect was observed above the snow-free tundra, and to a greater extent over the darker, ... read more 22/07/2008 07:00 AM UK Moves Three Steps Closer to Green Energy Goals Reuters: One of Europe's largest onshore wind farms has won Scottish planning approval and the world's largest offshore wind project now has two committed backers, boosting Britain's chances of reaching its ambitious green energy goals. Scottish & Southern Energy PLC has been granted planning permission to build a 456-megawatt wind farm in southern Scotland, while Denmark's Dong Energy and Germany's E.ON will buy Royal Dutch Shell's unwanted stake in the 1,000 MW London Array offshore ... read more News Archive     Back to Homepage
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