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Brazil: Deforestation rises sharply as farmers push into Amazon
Tom Phillips, Guardian
Concerns over the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest resurfaced at the weekend after it emerged that deforestation jumped by 64% over the last 12 months, according to official government data.
Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research this week said that around 3,145 square miles – an area half the size of Wales – were razed between August 2007 and August 2008.
With commodity prices hitting recent highs and loggers and soy farmers pushing ever further into the Amazon jungle, satellite images captured by a real-time monitoring system, known in Brazil as Deter, showed that deforestation was once again on the rise after three years on the wane.
(1 September 2008)
Can engineering the earth save it from catastrophe?
Steve Connor, The Independent
Fears that the world is not doing enough to cut carbon dioxide emissions are forcing scientists to “think the unthinkable” by taking seriously the idea that humans may have to alter the global climate artificially with mega-engineering projects.
The Royal Society will launch a study later this year aimed at reviewing the possibility of saving the planet by “geoengineering” the climate on the grandest scales imaginable.
Geoengineering encompasses schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron filings to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere, creating more reflective clouds, or even pumping vast quantities of sulphate particles into the air to simulate volcanic eruptions that cut out sunlight and lower global temperatures.
Until recently geoengineering has been a technology that dare not speak its name. However, a growing disillusionment with the ability of governments to reduce CO2 emissions has forced scientists to come up with a possible last-ditch technological fix to avert global catastrophe…
(1 September 2008)
The Guardian has several articles on geoengineering:
Extreme and risky action the only way to tackle global warming, say scientists
Geoengineering: The radical ideas to combat global warming
Medicine for a feverish planet: kill or cure? by James Lovelock
Geoengineering is no solution to climate change by Doug Parr of Greenpeace
Australia’s coal emissions are worst, says global study
Olga Galacho, Herald Sun (Australia)
AUSTRALIANS continue to lead the world on emissions from burning coal, pumping out 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year per person.
The Centre for Global Development, a Washington think-tank, yesterday also revealed Australia is the planet’s eighth biggest carbon polluter.
The study of emissions from 50,000 coal-fired power stations put China, the US, India, Russia, Germany, Japan and Britain ahead of Australia in total carbon dioxide output.
But each Australian produced almost the same amount of emissions as Americans — 9.5 tonnes per person — and Indians — 0.6 tonnes — combined.
(29 August 2008)
Reflections on “An Inconvenient Truth”
Dr. Larry Kinney, Global Climate Solutions
As film critic, Roger Ebert, urged-for the first time in his 37-year career-“Go see this movie.” It’s a powerful message powerfully delivered by a man who should have been President of our fragile republic. However, I was disappointed that the message was virtually all about global warming.
When I became impassioned about energy and environmental matters 35 years ago, “global warming” was not part of public parlance. Nonetheless, the authors of The Limits to Growth and such visionaries as Fritz Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered) and the University of Colorado’s own tireless Professor of Physics, Al Bartlett, had already sounded a clarion call about the ravages of exponential growth in the consumption of finite resources and runaway increases in population. This caused some of us to devote our lives to figuring out how to minimize the increasingly wasteful use of fossil fuels.
… Confronted with the enormity of these global phenomena-effectively dramatized by the breaking off of massive portions of polar ice caps-it is only natural to wring our hands in despair and perhaps even kneel in prayer. I hope we will quickly replace hand wringing with the rolling up of sleeves. There’s lots of important work to be done. We must launch a vigorous war on waste and integrate it with shifting to renewable resources. In addition, concerted global efforts in education are necessary to reverse population growth before calamitous events accomplish this end in tragic ways.
In short, in the memorable words of An Inconvenient Truth, let our prayers be accompanied by the movement of feet.
Larry Kinney is easily one among a handful of the world’s top leading experts on building science, energy conservation and efficiency. Larry is presently conducting research and development of several unique and significatly important building systems…
(1 September 2008)
