Wednesday, April 18, 2007

U.N. chief eyes climate change summit 2008 or 2009

Reuters writes
The United Nations is contemplating a high-level meeting on climate change this year, which could lead to a world summit by 2009, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Financial Times.
The high-level meeting, which could involve ministers and other top delegates, was the most "practical and realistic approach", Ban said in an interview published on Wednesday. Such a meeting -- on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September -- "may be able to give some clear guidelines to the December Bali meeting", he said.Ban was referring to a United Nations conference on climate change to be held on the Indonesian resort island.

If September's high-level meeting was a success "a summit level meeting will have to be discussed later on", Ban told the newspaper. "It may be 2008 or 2009."
The FT reported there had been calls for a summit level meeting on climate change at the United Nations in September.

But Ban said: "One difficulty is whether I can see for sure the participation of all the major countries, including the United States".The U.N. chief said after attending the annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized nations in June "I may be in a clearer position to propose a certain initiative".

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, told Reuters last month that Ban had agreed at talks in New York to send envoys to probe government willingness for a high-level meeting about global warming.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Some deforestation may offset Global Warming
Agence France-Presse writes
Planting new trees in snow-covered northern regions may actually contribute to global warming as they have the counter-effect of tropical forests, according to a study out Monday.

While rainforests cool the planet by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing clouds that reflect sunlight, the dark canopy of Canadian, Scandinavian and Siberian forests catches sunrays that would be reflected back to space by the snow, the study said.

The study, published Monday in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that reforestation projects in the tropics would help mitigate global warming but would be "counterproductive" in high latitudes.

"Our study shows that only tropical rainforests are strongly beneficial in helping slow down global warming," Govindasamy Bala, who led the research, said in a statement.

"It is a win-win situation in the tropics because trees in the tropics, in addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, promote convective clouds that help to cool the planet," he said.

"In other locations, the warming from the albedo effect (sunlight absorption) either cancels or exceeds the net cooling from the other two effects," said Bala, an atmospheric scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Reseachers used a three-dimensional computer simulation to study the effects of large-scale deforestation and look at the positive and negative effects of tree cover at different latitudes.

"When it comes to rehabilitating forests to fight global warming, carbon dioxide might be only half of the story; we also have to account for whether they help to reflect sunlight by producing clouds, or help to absorb it by shading snowy tundra," said study co-author Ken Caldeira.

However, the authors did not endorse deforestation of the boreal forests as a measure against global warming.

"Preservation of ecosystems is a primary goal of preventing global warming, and the destruction of ecosystems to prevent global warming would be a counterproductive and perverse strategy," said Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution.

Researchers from Stanford University in California and Universite Montpellier II in France contribute to the study.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Race for riches in Arctic- global warming is good or bad?????

Associates Press writes

Barren an uninhabited Hans lands near Norway is very hard to find on a map.

Yet these days the Frisbee shaped rock in the arctic is much in demand-so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships.
The reason the international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by impact of global warming on earths frozen north.

The latest report by UNFCC on climate change says the ice caps is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to the green house gases, it is catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for inuit population whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.

But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century.

The US geological Survey estimates the arctic has as much as 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the arctic sector approaching $ 2 trillion.

All this has pushed governments and businesses in to a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly price less seas.

Link Associated Press

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Himalayan meltdown catastrophic for India

The Times of India writes

Don't dismiss it as one of the favourite whines of environmental campaigners. The result of the melting of most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2030, as predicted by the UN panel on climate change, could be truly catastrophic for India and its neighbours. Rivers 'mothered' by the Himalayan glaciers are the lifeline of hundreds of millions of people in the Indian subcontinent and China, most of whom live far from the Himalayas. As much as 70% of the world's fresh water is frozen in glaciers.
The Himalayan glaciers are the largest store of water outside the polar ice caps, and feed seven great Asian rivers — Ganga, Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Salween, Yangtze and Huang Ho (Yellow River). The glaciers are believed to be retreating at a rate of about 10-15 metres a year. The first danger of the meltdown could be widespread flooding. In a few decades, it could be followed by irreversible droughts, threatening the livelihood of millions of people. This would not only mean unprecedented food shortages but also a massive water crisis. The Gangetic basin alone is home to more than 500 million people. Nearly 70% of the discharge into the Ganga is from rivers in Nepal, which means that if the Himalayan glaciers dry up so will the Ganga downstream in India. In some rivers, the flow may go down by as much as 90%, according to glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hosnain, who has conducted extensive studies on Himalayan glaciers. Studies have predicted that in the Ganga, the loss of glacier melt water would reduce July-September flows by two thirds, causing water shortages for 37% of India’s irrigated land. As water flows from glaciers dry up, the energy potential of hydroelectric power will decrease, causing problems for industry, while reduced irrigation means lower crop production. In a report in 2005, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warned that "in the long term, the glaciers could disappear altogether, causing several rivers to shrink and threatening the survival of those who depend on them". What was forecast to happen "in the long term" two years ago, appears imminent now. All is not lost, though. Experts say immediate action against climate change could slow the rate of melting.
The Himalayan glaciers have been found to be in a state of general retreat since 1850. But the retreat has been alarming since the 1970s. The Himalayan region, called the 'Water Tower of Asia', has a glacier coverage of 33,000 sq km. It provides around 8.6 million cubic metres of water annually. Researchers have estimated that about 17% of the Himalayas and 37% of Karakorum is currently under permanent ice cover.
The main glaciers of this region are Siachen (72 km); Gangotri (26 km); Zemu (26 km); Milam (19 km) and Kedarnath (14.5 km). The Gangotri glacier, which supports one of India's largest river basins, is receding at an average rate of 23 metres per year. The Khumbu glacier, a popular climbing route to the summit of Mount Everest, has retreated more than 5 km from where Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set out to conquer the worlds highest peak in 1953
Link Times of India.
Climate change ‘could create 200m refugees by 2050, forty species of flora and fauna face threat, global warming could bring hunger, melt Himalayas

Sunday Times writes
“April 1, 2007

EQUATORIAL lands that are home to hundreds of millions of people will become uninhabitable as food and water run out due to climate change, scientists will warn this week.
A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to be published on Friday, will warn that the temperature rises of 2-3C predicted by 2050 spell global disaster for both humanity and the environment.
It will say that up to 40% of animal and plant species face extinction as rising temperatures destroy the ecosystems that support them. And it will point out that the 29 billion tons of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere each year are acidifying the oceans – threatening to destroy coral reefs, plankton and many commercial fish species.
By the middle of the century, the report will warn, more than 200m people could have been forced from their native lands by rising sea levels, floods and droughts, with many more facing early deaths from malnutrition and heat stress.
The report comes amid government embarrassment over the latest figures for Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions. Last week David Miliband, the environment secretary, admitted they had risen by 1.5% last year despite repeated Labour pledges to cut them.
“The picture that emerges from the research is quite appalling,” said Rachel Warren, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and one of the IPCC’s senior authors. “It is just horrendous realising what damage climate change can do to ecosystems.”
The IPCC report is a collation of the best peer-reviewed scientific research into the impact of climate change, published over the past five years or so.
It will say that many of the worst effects on humans will be caused by water – or lack of it – in the form of floods, drought, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and ocean acidification.
Nearly a third of the world’s land surface may be at risk of extreme drought by 2099, compared with about 1%. Such a change would destroy farmland and water resources and lead to mass migrations of “environmental refugees”.
The IPCC will also warn that the Amazon rainforest could be in danger. Professor Diana Liverman, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, said the region was already experiencing an alarming reduction in rain.
“The warming of the oceans seems to be changing the water cycle,” she said.
In lands close to the equator, especially in Africa, declining crop yields could leave hundreds of millions of people unable to grow food.
In Europe, one of the most obvious early impacts will be the destruction of Alpine ski resorts, with about 70% losing snow cover by 2050.
The IPCC will say it is “too late” to avert some degree of climate change.
It will call on humanity to cooperate on adapting to the changes – while trying to limit them by cutting emission.