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Australia: Climate threat in military’s sights
Tom Allard, Sydney Morning Herald
THE Australian Defence Force has identified climate change as a national security threat for the first time, as it predicted the military would become more involved in stabilising failing states than fighting conventional wars.
Outlining its vision for the future of the armed services to 2030, the force has also foreshadowed an era where crises flare more suddenly while its adversaries, including terrorists and insurgents, become more cunning and capable.
Launching the document – Joint Operations for the 21st Century – the Chief of Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said the military faced security challenges it had not envisaged before, specifically “climate change and the impacts of global demography”.
(17 May 2007)
Study: Southern Ocean saturated with CO2
Reuters
The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported Thursday.
Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming.
The phenomenon wasn’t expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain.
“We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so,” she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide. “So I find this really quite alarming.”
The Southern Ocean is one of the world’s biggest reservoirs of carbon, known as a carbon sink. When carbon is in a sink — whether it’s an ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up carbon dioxide — it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global warming.
The new research, published in the latest edition of the journal Science, indicates that the Southern Ocean has been saturated with carbon dioxide at least since the 1980s.
(17 May 2007)
Bush feels heat on climate change
Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
The president this week announced an auto-emissions plan designed to cut US oil consumption by 10 percent in 20 years.
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In dusting off his State of the Union plan to promote alternative fuels and adjust vehicle fuel efficiency standards this week, President Bush is responding to a multitude of pressures:
• from the US Supreme Court, which last month ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon dioxide;
• from another federal lawsuit argued May 14 in court in San Francisco, in which 11 states say Uncle Sam has failed to adequately raise auto mileage standards;
• from record-high gasoline pump prices;
• and from a Congress controlled by Democrats eager to engage the US government in addressing global warming.
(17 May 2007)
Interesting way to write a newspaper story: tying together recent events with links to other articles. Very like a blog. I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this in the future. -BA
Can Murdoch save the planet?
Mark Lynas, The Guardian
Rupert Murdoch has promised to make his media empire carbon-neutral by 2010. He’s not the first tycoon to boast about his green plans – but will it actually make any difference?
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There can have been few stranger sights in recent weeks than Rupert Murdoch’s sudden apparent conversion from hard-nosed media tycoon to climate-change activist. At a news conference last week, as Murdoch pledged that his media empire, News Corporation, would be entirely “carbon neutral” by 2010, he waxed evangelical on the subject, asking his audience to “imagine if we succeed in inspiring our audiences to reduce their own impacts on climate change by just 1%. That would be like turning the state of California off for almost two months.”
Having calculated its carbon footprint for the whole global business – a not insignificant 641,150 tonnes of CO2 for last year alone – News Corp, according to a 34-page strategy document, will start by offsetting these emissions in the next three years, and then reducing them by 10% by 2012 through energy efficiency measures and buying in renewable electricity.
…Most intriguing of all is the suggestion that News Corp outlets will help to mobilise an otherwise apathetic general public on the climate issue. As Murdoch pointed out, echoing many climate activists: “The climate problem will not be solved without mass participation by the general public in countries around the globe. And that’s where we come in. Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours. That’s the carbon footprint we want to conquer. We cannot do it with gimmicks. We need to reach them in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content – make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behaviour.”
…perhaps we really are in a new situation; the environmental equivalent of the Northern Ireland peace process, where old enemies must learn to drop their decades-old ideological certainties. We all live on the same planet, and even corporate chief executives (and their shareholders) have children…
…the obsession of some campaigners in exposing “greenwash” may be misplaced. Yes, companies will seek to improve their image, but in doing so they have to achieve a real transformation, and also make themselves ever more open to consumer pressure. Moreover, corporations are extremely powerful customers in their own right: when Wal-Mart in the US decided to switch to green electricity, it sent a strong signal to energy generators that investment in renewables should be ramped up. Like it or not, says Tickell, “you have to recognise that this is where power resides in our society – and in some ways corporations are much more accountable than governments…”
Mark Lynas is the author of Six Degrees: our future on a hotter planet, published by HarperCollins.
(17 May 2007)
Project aims to extract dam methane
Tim Hirsch, BBC
Scientists in Brazil have claimed that a major source of greenhouse gas emissions could be curbed by capturing and burning methane given off by large hydro-electric dams.
The team at the country’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) is developing prototype equipment designed to stop the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.
The technology will extract the methane from the water to supplement the energy produced by the dam turbines.
The scientists estimate that worldwide the technique could prevent emissions equivalent to more than the total annual burning of fossil fuels in the UK – and reduce the pressure to build new dams in sensitive areas such as the Amazon.
The project follows a long-running controversy over how clean hydro-electric power really is.
(10 May 2007)
