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From The Guardian

There is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of the last two years in the UK are the result of heating elsewhere. With the help of the severe weather analyst John Mason and the Climate Science Rapid Response Team, I’ve been through as much of the scientific literature as I can lay hands on (see my website for the references). Here’s what seems to be happening.

The global temperature maps published by Nasa present a striking picture. Last month’s shows a deep blue splodge over Iceland, Spitsbergen, Scandanavia and the UK, and another over the western US and eastern Pacific. Temperatures in these regions were between 0.5C and 4C colder than the November average from 1951 and 1980. But on either side of these cool blue pools are raging fires of orange, red and maroon: the temperatures in western Greenland, northern Canada and Siberia were between 2C and 10C higher than usual. Nasa’s Arctic oscillations map for 3-10 December shows that parts of Baffin Island and central Greenland were 15C warmer than the average for 2002-9. There was a similar pattern last winter. These anomalies appear to be connected.

The weather we get in UK winters, for example, is strongly linked to the contrasting pressure between the Icelandic low and the Azores high. When there’s a big pressure difference the winds come in from the south-west, bringing mild damp weather from the Atlantic. When there’s a smaller gradient, air is often able to flow down from the Arctic. High pressure in the icy north last winter, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, blocked the usual pattern and “allowed cold air from the Arctic to penetrate all the way into Europe, eastern China, and Washington DC”. Nasa reports that the same thing is happening this winter.

Sea ice in the Arctic has two main effects on the weather. Because it’s white, it bounces back heat from the sun, preventing it from entering the sea. It also creates a barrier between the water and the atmosphere, reducing the amount of heat that escapes from the sea into the air. In the autumns of 2009 and 2010 the coverage of Arctic sea ice was much lower than the long-term average: the second smallest, last month, of any recorded November. The open sea, being darker, absorbed more heat from the sun in the warmer, light months. As it remained clear for longer than usual it also bled more heat into the Arctic atmosphere. This caused higher air pressures, reducing the gradient between the Iceland low and the Azores high.

So why wasn’t this predicted by climate scientists? Actually it was, and we missed it. Obsessed by possible changes to ocean circulation (the Gulf Stream grinding to a halt), we overlooked the effects on atmospheric circulation. A link between summer sea ice in the Arctic and winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere was first proposed in 1914. Close mapping of the relationship dates back to 1990, and has been strengthened by detailed modelling since 2006.

Will this become the pattern? It’s not yet clear. Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute says that the effects of shrinking sea ice “could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia”. James Hansen of Nasa counters that seven of the last 10 European winters were warmer than average. There are plenty of other variables: we can’t predict the depth of British winters solely by the extent of sea ice.

I can already hear the howls of execration: now you’re claiming that this cooling is the result of warming! Well, yes, it could be. A global warming trend doesn’t mean that every region becomes warmer every month. That’s what averages are for: they put local events in context. The denial of man-made climate change mutated first into a denial of science in general and then into a denial of basic arithmetic. If it’s snowing in Britain, a thousand websites and quite a few newspapers tell us, the planet can’t be warming.

According to Nasa’s datasets, the world has just experienced the warmest January to November period since the global record began, 131 years ago; 2010 looks likely to be either the hottest or the equal hottest year. This November was the warmest on record.

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From the New Scientist

A handful of Chinese and Indian chemicals companies seemingly have the world over a barrel or rather a large number of barrels of a super-greenhouse gas called HFC-23, which is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

This week, apparently following Chinese threats to vent stockpiles of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, a UN panel issued two million valuable carbon credits to a company called Juhua. It has a factory in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where the gas can be destroyed.

Nobody needs HFC-23. It is a waste by-product of the manufacture of a refrigerant called HCFC-22, used mostly in developing nations. To curb the release of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, the signatories to the Kyoto protocol agreed to pay carbon credits to refrigerant manufacturers that agree to capture and destroy it. The manufacturers can then sell the credits to western companies that want to offset their obligations to cut emissions of other greenhouse gases, under a Kyoto scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The offer only applies to HCFC-22 plants that were built before 2000. Even so it has proved highly lucrative. By some estimates, the value of the carbon credits is up to 100 times the cost of incinerating HFC-23. The resulting income of Chinese companies alone is estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2012.

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From the BBC

It has been suggested that emissions of greenhouse gases have already put the Arctic ice cap and the polar bear on an irreversible path towards extinction.

But a new study suggests rapid emission cuts could help preserve ice cover to save the iconic bear.

Details are published in the academic journal Nature.

A US Geological Survey team led by Dr Steven Amstrup predicted back in 2007 that two-thirds of the world’s 22,000 polar bears would disappear by half way through the next century.

This was based on industrial emissions continuing on a “business as usual” basis.

Elsewhere, a study suggested industrial emissions of greenhouse gases might have already put the world on target for temperature rises which would result in rapid and perhaps irreversible ice loss in the Arctic.

Dr Amstrup and colleagues now say that such dire forecasts might be avoided if industrial societies act quickly to cut emissions.

Key to their argument is the conclusion that there is no “tipping point” in the Arctic beyond which the battle is lost.

“In this paper we looked at what would happen if we allowed greenhouse gas emission to rise up to the level where some of these rapid ice loss events started to occur but [we] then arrested the increase in emissions at that point,” Dr Amstrup told the BBC.

“What we found is if we did that, then ice didn’t just continue to decline after these rapid loss events, but there was some substantial recovery and then maintenance of sea ice throughout the century.”

“The good news for polar bears is we haven’t crossed a tipping point beyond which polar bears and their Arctic habitat can’t recover.”

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From The Guardian

Co-op and Marks & Spencer named UK’s ‘greenest’ supermarketsThe Co-op and Marks & Spencer are today named as the UK’s “greenest” supermarkets in a new survey which rates retailers’ progress in areas such as sustainable and ethical sourcing. Tesco, Asda and Netto were identified as the three worst performing companies.

As households stock up for the festive season, Ethical Consumer magazine urges shoppers to cut the environmental cost of Christmas by shopping from retailers with a proven track record of pursuing “green policies”.

The environmental and ethical performance of 19 of the country’s leading supermarkets and convenience stores were scrutinised in the survey, included detailed analysis of the companies’ corporate social responsibility reports.

The results reveal a clear divide between the top two performing supermarkets the Co-op and M&S and the other 17 companies.

Policies praised at these two major high street chains include the Co-op’s fish policy, whose goal is to operate its fish-sourcing policy in line with the aims and objectives of the Marine Stewardship Council. The Co-op also sources 98% renewable electricity in its 5,500 sites across the UK.

M&S was highly praised for its palm oil policies. It now stipulates the use of sustainable palm oil in many of its own-brand goods and is advised on the issue by WWF. M&S also scored well for its climate change policies which include a target of using non-crop derived biofuels in its fleet of vehicles.

Rob Harrison of Ethical Consumer, and co-author of the buyers’ guide, said: “If you’re lucky enough to live close to a local independent shop that has an ethical stocking policy then this is where we would recommend people to shop. However the reality is that the vast majority of us now shop in supermarkets and we would therefore urge shoppers to choose either the Co-op or M&S.”

He went on: “These two companies have made genuine efforts to reduce the environmental and ethical impact of their operations and have demonstrated that they are setting the environmental agenda for supermarkets.”

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The next two years will be “make or break” for the electric vehicle market in the UK, one expert has claimed.

Dr Ben Lane, managing editor of nextgreencar.com, said from a “sales point of view” 2010 was not a good year for low carbon vehicles, however he believes now “a number of key elements are all coming into place”.

These elements were said to be manufacturers making high-quality models, advances in lithium battery technology allowing vehicles to travel further between charges and political support for electric cars. “2011 and 2012 will be make or break years and the signs at the moment are that it will be ‘make’,” Dr Lane said.

The comments come following the announcement of the nine models to be covered by the government’s Plug-In Car grant. Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV, the Peugeot iOn and the smart fourtwo electric drive will be the first vehicles eligible for the maximum £5,000 grant when it comes into force in January. The recently named European Car of the Year, the Nissan Leaf, will also be covered by the scheme.

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From The New Scientist

FROGS across Australia and the US may be recovering from a fungal disease that has devastated populations around the world.

“It’s happening across a number of species,” says Michael Mahony at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales, who completed a 20-year study of frogs along the Great Dividing Range in Australia for the Earthwatch Institute. Between 1990 and 1998 the populations of several frog species crashed due to chytridiomycosis infection (chytrid) caused by the pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, but Mahony’s surveys suggest that the frogs are re-establishing.

Barred river frogs (Mixophyes esiteratus) disappeared, he says, but now up to 30 of the animals have returned to streams across Australia’s Central Coast. The tusked-frog (Adelotus) and several tree frog species (Litoria) have also returned there. Ross Alford at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, says tree frogs are also repopulating other areas of the state after their numbers nosedived. Some have even reached pre-infection levels.

In the US there are also signs of recovery. Roland Knapp at Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory at the University of California says mountain yellow-legged frogs (Rana muscosas) – once “driven virtually to extinction” – are returning. The big question is: are frogs now beating chytrid?

Using electronic tagging to track frogs, Knapp (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0912886107) and Mahony have separately found that recovering frogs are living with low-level infections of the fungus.

It is possible, they say, that the fungus has weakened in recovering areas. Knapp says there is evidence that the frogs are evolving. Initial findings from his team show that frogs from recovered populations can survive when challenged with a fungal strain, unlike frogs with no previous exposure to the fungus, which died after it colonised their skin.

At Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, Nashville, Alford and Louise Rollins-Smith found that a population of Australian green-eyed tree frogs previously decimated by the fungus produced more anti-microbial peptides – which inhibit fungal growth – on their skin than a less affected population (Diversity and Distribution, vol 16, p 703). “It’s quite likely that populations are adapting and developing better defences,” says Rollins-Smith.

Worldwide, most amphibian communities are not recovering, though earlier this year Ursina Tobler at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, showed for the first time that even in devastated populations, some tadpoles can survive infection.

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From The New Scientist

Cancún’s climate conference was largely a diplomatic triumph. No nations promised to up their emissions reduction targets from those pledged in Copenhagen. The compromise text that the delegates applauded was only work in progress, full of pledges to settle differences later – differences like the fate of the Kyoto protocol, legally binding emissions targets and the role of carbon markets. The firmest commitment was to meet again next year in Durban, South Africa.

And yet behind the scenes, at side events across Cancún, the architecture of a remarkable new low-carbon world was on display – a world with ambition as great in developing nations as in the rich world.

Dozens of nations – rich and poor, forested and industrialised – came to Cancún having put flesh on promises made in Copenhagen, many of which were unilateral and do not depend on a UN agreement at all. If the talks ultimately founder in Durban or later, that momentum might just save the world without the leadership of the UN or the authority of a UN agreement.
Banking on change

Brazil, which promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 36 to 39 per cent from business-as-usual by 2020, declared that it was on the verge of eliminating one of its biggest sources of emissions: deforestation in the Amazon. Forest loss is down by three-quarters, from 27,000 square kilometres in 2004 to 6500 in the past year.

Satellite monitoring and better policing has helped. But so has a new national ambition. Last week the country’s biggest bank, Banco de Brasil, said soya farmers wanting loans must prove their beans are not grown on newly deforested land.

Meanwhile, researchers from Brazil’s state-backed agricultural research corporation, EMBRAPA, unveiled a plan for national low-carbon agriculture which could meet half of the government’s Copenhagen promise. Gustavo Mozzer said no-till agriculture, which keeps more carbon in the soil, would become the norm for farmers. And ranchers would rehabilitate cattle pastures, turning them from the main driver of deforestation into carbon sinks. In total over 150,000 square kilometres of degraded pastures are earmarked to be rehabilitated in the next decade.

In other signs of independent action, the European Union has made law its promise to cut emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. In the US, Barack Obama’s Copenhagen promise of a 17 per cent cut below 2005 levels by 2020 was derailed by mid-term elections in October, but the country remains the world’s biggest investor in the research and development of green energy. And Texas has some of the world’s largest wind farms – not through any love of the UN or concern for climate, but because wind power is profitable.

Meanwhile California’s cap-and-trade law, once seen as a blueprint for a federal scheme, comes into force regardless of any UN treaty in 2012. Already Californian corporations are planning ways to cut emissions at home and offset more abroad. In Cancún the Governors’ Climate and Forest Taskforce, launched two years ago by Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state governors around the world, showcased offset projects in Acre in Brazil, Campeche in Mexico, Nigeria’s Cross River state and Indonesia’s Aceh.

The hope is to incorporate such schemes into the UN climate agreement’s own programme for channelling western money into forest conservation, known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

The rules for REDD were broadly agreed in Cancún. But Daniel Nepstad, a leading forest ecologist now with the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, said REDD could go ahead even if the wider UN deal falters, funded by carbon traders in the EU, California and elsewhere.

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From The Guardian

Butterflies that flourish on grassland across Europe are in steep decline, indicating a catastrophic loss of flower-rich meadows in many European countries.

Populations of 17 butterfly species widely found in Europe, including the adonis blue, Lulworth skipper and marsh fritillary which fly in Britain, have declined by more than 70% in the past 20 years according to a new study by Butterfly Conservation Europe.

The dramatic decline in butterfly numbers indicates a wider loss of biodiversity, with other insects such as bumblebees, hoverflies, spiders and moths, as well as many plants and birds, disappearing along with the loss of traditional grassland.

Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation (UK), said the data from 3,000 sites in 15 countries showed an urgent need for EU funding to support sustainable “high-nature-value farming”.

Flower-rich grassland created by traditional livestock-grazing and hay-making over centuries of human occupation is either being abandoned, overgrazed or ploughed up for intensive farming, particularly in eastern Europe and mountainous regions.

In areas such as the Picos mountains in Spain, most traditional farmers are in their 80s and their hay meadows and milk and cheese businesses are being abandoned by younger generations because they are no longer profitable.

Many of Romania’s 4.5 million farmers farm just half a hectare in environmentally friendly ways but are too small to qualify for any payments from the Common Agricultural Policy.

“These people are farming probably the most sustainable agriculture in the world but they don’t get any help for it whereas if they ploughed up and intensified their land they would get huge payments from the EU,” said Warren. “We need EU payments to help support social economics in rural areas and keep people on the land.”

UK species in decline across Europe include the wall butterfly, with a 65% decrease in the UK since 1976 compared with a 72% decline over the last 20 years in Europe, and the Lulworth skipper, whose numbers have plummeted by 87% in the past 10 years in the UK. The dingy skipper’s distribution in the UK has fallen by nearly 50% over the past 20 years, compared with a 37% decline across Europe.

Butterflies are one of the best monitored groups of wildlife in Europe and Butterfly Conservation Europe is pressing for them to be adopted as agricultural indicators in the next round of Cap reform in 2013.

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From The Guardian

The UK’s first permanent hydrogen bus will be launched on a popular tourist route in London today. Seven more hydrogen buses will be added to the RV1 route – which takes in Covent Garden, the Tower of London and the South Bank – by mid-2011.

The initiative, which follows a trial of three hydrogen buses in the capital between 2003 and 2007, has been described as a “stepping stone” to rolling out the technology across the country. The launch will also coincide with the opening of the UK’s largest hydrogen refuelling station in Leyton, east London.

The new bus, which was designed specially for London, will begin carrying passengers tomorrow. It produces water vapour from its tailpipe and can operate for more than 18 hours without needing to refuel.

“These are the next generation of hydrogen fuel cell hybrid buses that were designed and developed based on the findings of our trial,” said David Edwards, a spokesperson for Transport for London. “We will be closely assessing the performance of these buses and the new technology they use. Should the buses prove reliable and suitable for the needs of London we could consider extending the fleet.”

The buses contain batteries that can store electricity generated by the hydrogen fuel cell – a device that combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce power and water as a by-product – in addition to energy generated during the braking process. As a result, they can travel much farther than the ones trialled in London as part of the EU-sponsored Cute – Cleaner Urban Transport for Europe – project in 2003. The new buses were designed by the consortium of businesses that furnished Vancouver with a fleet of 39 buses in 2009. “The main difference is that those buses were designed to withstand temperatures below -20C,” said David Hart, a hydrogen fuel expert based at Imperial College who was involved in Cute.

More than 4,300 deaths are caused in London by poor air quality every year, costing around £2bn a year. The new buses will go some way towards tackling this dire problem, says Hart. “All that comes out of these buses is water vapour, so you don’t get all of the nasty nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides and particulate matter that diesel buses pump out into the air.” The buses may also reduce carbon emissions – but only if the hydrogen they run on is generated using renewable electricity rather than electricity produced by burning coal, he said.

One key hurdle to rolling out the buses across the UK is cost – but Edwards is optimistic that the situation will improve soon. “This technology is currently very new, with these buses being designed to suit the London operating environment. As such, with development costs, these buses are typically more expensive than their traditional hybrid diesel counterpart. But as the technology is proven along with the environment benefits they bring, the commercial market for these buses should open up and we expect the costs to drop dramatically,” he said.

London is one of a handful of cities around the world to adopt hydrogen buses. In May 2003, Madrid became the first city in the world to run a regular hydrogen bus service. Hamburg, Perth and Reykjavik quickly followed suit. Berlin’s Clean Energy Partnership project, which began in 2006, aims to put 14 hydrogen buses and 40 hydrogen cars on the road by 2016. The largest hydrogen project in the world – the Hydrogen Highway – is based in California and has so far built 30 refuelling stations. In December 2009, Amsterdam also launched Nemo H2, a tour boat powered by hydrogen.

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A new tool has been launched by Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) and Envido that will allow businesses to calculate the carbon footprint of advertising campaigns.

CarbonTrack, which has been developed in association with the Carbon Trust, has provided a benchmark for the UK advertising industry, estimating it produces two million tonnes of CO2 each year.

This figure is equivalent to the carbon footprint of heating 364,000 homes for 12 months.

The system is capable of taking into account emissions produced from “TV to radio, outdoor, magazines, newspapers, digital display and search”.

Ifti Akbar, co-managing director of Envido, energy, carbon and sustainability consultants, said the development reflects the fact carbon accounting is becoming “more sophisticated and widespread”.

“Companies utilising CarbonTrack will be ahead of the UK legislation curve and actively contributing to reducing the emissions of their industry,” he added.

Over 100 different suppliers have so far provided CarbonTrack with data, however, the system will not allow direct comparisons between different media enterprises.

The Guardian News and Media Group was recently awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for cutting its emissions by 28 percent in three years.

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