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Warmer seas bring whales, dolphins to Scottish waters
Melanie Reid, The Australian
WHALES and dolphins from the Mediterranean are for the first time being regularly seen in northern Scottish waters.
Scientists say that the phenomenon may be the result of rising sea temperatures off the west coast of Scotland.
The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust has also recorded changes in the habits of minke whales. Until 2005, minkes arrived in the (northern) spring and stayed until October and November, but they are now leaving in July and August. The trust monitors whale and dolphin populations around the Argyll Islands, which are regarded as an important European cetacean habitat.
Nearly a third of the world’s population of whales, dolphins and porpoises have been recorded there.
Cally Fleming, the chief executive of the trust, said warm-water species such as the striped dolphin and common dolphin, both of which are from the Mediterranean, were regularly sighted in Argyll.
Sightings of basking sharks and beaked whales, a warm-water species rarely seen in the Hebrides, were also becoming increasingly common. There has been a corresponding decline in sightings of colder-water cetaceans such as the white-sided dolphin and the white-beaked dolphin. ..
(21 June 2007)
Rich nations accused of ‘green imperialism’
Associated Press
Asian business and government leaders have accused rich countries of hypocrisy, saying they run polluting industries with cheap labour in China and then blame the country for worsening climate change.
“This is green imperialism,” Nor Mohamed Yakcop, Malaysia’s deputy finance minister, told a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum on east Asia, a two-day conference in Singapore.
A Chinese aviation tycoon told the forum that the west was the original polluter, while an American businessman noted that Asia’s energy consumption is relatively disproportionate to its contribution to the world economy.
But all participants agreed that instead of apportioning blame, the problem should be solved internationally and with private sector participation.
China has come under increasing pressure from the west to take more forceful measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The country relies on coal – among the dirtiest of fuels – to provide two-thirds of its energy.
At the conference, the US and Australia were also criticised for not signing the Kyoto protocol, which caps the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that can be emitted in industrialised countries.
(25 June 2007)
Also at Common Dreams and Yahoo News.
Arnie’s uphill climb
The Economist
California’s confident approach to climate change has inspired America and the world. But things do not look so good in the state itself
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IN MOST parts of the world, climate change is a worrying subject. Not so in California. At a recent gathering of green luminaries-in a film star’s house, naturally, for that is how seriousness is often established in Los Angeles-the dominant note was self-satisfaction at what the state has already achieved. And perhaps nobody is more smug than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unlike Al Gore, a presidential candidate turned prophet of environmental doom, California’s governor sounds cheerful when talking about climate change. As well he might: it has made his political career.
Although California has long been an environmentally-conscious state, until recently greens were concerned above all with smog and redwood trees. “Coast of Dreams”, Kevin Starr’s authoritative history of contemporary California, published in 2004, does not mention climate change. In that year, though, the newly-elected Mr Schwarzenegger made his first tentative call for western states to seek alternatives to fossil fuels. Gradually he noticed that his efforts to tackle climate change met with less resistance, and more acclaim, than just about all his other policies. These days it can seem as though he works on nothing else.
Mr Schwarzenegger’s transformation from screen warrior to eco-warrior was completed last year when he signed a bill imposing legally-enforceable limits on greenhouse-gas emissions-a first for America. The bill, which is just 13 pages long, obliges California to cut its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That alone is ambitious, considering that the state’s population is expected to increase by 42% in the period. But Mr Schwarzenegger has set up two other targets. He wants the state to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010, and to slash them to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.
Thanks mostly to its lack of coal and heavy industry, California is a relatively clean state. If it were a country it would be the world’s eighth-biggest economy, but only its 16th-biggest polluter. Its big problem is transport-meaning, mostly, cars and trucks, which account for more than 40% of its greenhouse-gas emissions (see chart) compared with 32% in America as a whole.
(21 June 2007)
The Economist Tories Loved, Then Silenced
Tom Barrett, TheTyee.ca
Mark Jaccard’s tough takes on global warming.
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Simon Fraser University economist Mark Jaccard and his team of researchers have done something that’s rare in politics.
They’ve reached a set of conclusions that poke holes in just about everyone’s plan to fight global warming.
Jaccard upset many environmentalists in the spring when he argued that it’s too late for Canada to reach its targets under the Kyoto Accord. But he pleased federal Environment Minister John Baird — who also says that Kyoto is a lost cause.
Jaccard, Baird said at the time, is one of the best economists in the country.
Then, earlier this month, Jaccard and his team released a study for the C.D. Howe Institute that concluded that the federal Conservative government’s plans to reduce greenhouse gases won’t come anywhere near their targets.
The study didn’t attract a great deal of media attention, but it was apparently noticed by the government.
Jaccard was scheduled to appear in Ottawa before the Commons environment committee a few days after the release of the C.D. Howe report. Instead, the Conservative chair of the party stepped down and no other Tory volunteered to fill in for him — throwing the committee into limbo.
Opposition MPs charged that the move came out of the government’s playbook on how to shut down committees that might generate negative publicity for the Stephen Harper Tories.
(25 June 2007)
