Climate – Dec 8

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

More Than Half of Amazon Will Be Lost by 2030, Report Warns
Alison Benjamin, Guardian
Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the “point of no return” much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.1206 05

Almost 60% of the region’s forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

The damage could release somewhere between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon’s forests and speed up global warming, according to the report, Amazon’s Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire.

Trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, the report says. And, in turn, climate change could speed up the process of destruction by reducing rainfall by as much as 10% by 2030, damaging an extra 4% of the forests during that time.
(6 December 2007)
Also posted at Common Dreams.
Pictures

Cities Rise to Climate Challenge (special section)
Guardian
More than a dozen articles on what cities around the world are doing about global warming.
(6 December 2007)

Virtual climate change
Sarah Phillips, Guaradian
Could virtual conferences hold the key to future climate change negotiations?
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Whilst delegates and activists from 180 nations – estimated to be in the region of around 10,000 people and causing as much pollution as 20,000 cars in one year – have jetted out to Bali to participate in the UN climate change conference, you can actually take part from the comfort of your own chair.

OneWorld.net, the civil society portal, has set up a Virtual Bali on Second Life, for residents of the cyber world to come together and grill representatives from the different countries and organisations attending the main event.

A human ambassador, Daniel Nelson, is streamed live from Bali onto the specially created OneClimate island each day, from 12.30pm GMT, in conversation with conference goers about the progress being made. Sounds a little surreal, but could this be the future of such negotations?

The idea was originally conceived by OneWorld during the Nairobi summit. A trial event proved so successful that it decided to develop the concept on a much larger scale in time for Bali.
(7 December 2007)