Friday, May 31, 2013

Big companies and UN on Environmental reporting

Big companies should report their impact on the environment in addition to their earnings under a U.N. plan to boost economic growth and ease poverty by 2030, according to recommendations by a panel of world leaders released on Thursday.
 
This is from a UN report. Title of the news item is UN Recommends Big Companies Report Environmental Impacts As Well As Profits. <link here>
 
More from the same source:
 
And aparently, they actually said: "Without environmental sustainability, we cannot end poverty; the poor are too deeply affected by natural disasters and too dependent on deteriorating oceans, forests and soils."
 
Snippets:
 
Australia is on track to generate 22 percent of its energy from renewable resources. [CleanTechnica]
 
The Canadian government refused to detail how $16 million in taxpayer funds was spent to promote oil, gas, and other resources. [Vancouver Sun]
 
AndrĂ© Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, the pilots of Solar Impulse – the first 100% solar-powered plane that flies day and night without fuel –  Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/30/solar-plane-reddit-ask-me-anything-may-31-100pm-et/#dEmmsE0Ic5L1CBKO.99
 
New Jersey is set to increase spending on solar energy by nearly half a billion dollars, meaning almost a hundred more megawatts of new capacity. [Solar Love]

A new special report from USA Today on the impacts of climate change spotlights how increased carbon dioxide creates more pollen, making allergy sufferers miserable. [USA Today]

Former Iowa lawmaker Ed Fallon is organizing a 1,000-person climate march across the country next year, spanning 8 months, thousands of miles, and lots of public curiosity. [Des Moines Register]

 
 

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “reasons for concern”

From their abstract (I deposit it here for later use):
we describe revisions of the sensitivities of the RFCs to increases in GMT and a more thorough understanding of the concept of vulnerability that has evolved over the past 8 years. This is based on our expert judgment about new findings in the growing literature since the publication of the TAR in 2001, including literature that was assessed in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), as well as additional research published since AR4. Compared with results reported in the TAR, smaller increases in GMT are now estimated to lead to significant or substantial consequences in the framework of the 5 “reasons for concern.”


From:
Smith, J. B., Schneider, S. H., Oppenheimer, M., Yohe, G. W., Hare, W., Mastrandrea, M. D., ... & Van Ypersele, J. P. (2009). Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)“reasons for concern”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4133-4137.
Link: http://ateson.com/ws/r/www.pnas.org/content/106/11/4133.full

Monday, May 27, 2013

The FED, Too Big to Fail, Carbon Bubble and pension funds

From: If Alan Greenspan Wants To 'End The Fed', Times Must Be Changing (Forbes, 3/14/2013)
Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island is an excellent account of how the Fed came into being. The fact that this 1994 book is, today, the #2 bestselling book in Amazon.com's Banks and Banking category, the #2 bestselling book in the Economic Policy and Development category, and the #4 bestselling book in the Economic Policy category, shows why crowds start chanting "End the Fed" wherever Ron Paul turns up, with no prompting from him.

In recent years, any attentive watcher has noticed that the Fed has been working rather closely with certain "Too Big to Fail" banks, in ways that are not necessarily in the public's best interest. The fact that the Fed is likely heavily influenced by a certain well-known European banking family — a criticism that president Andrew Jackson applied to its predecessor the Second Bank of the United States, just before he killed it — is all the more reason to eliminate its influence in U.S. affairs.

As a member of the "keep the Fed" camp in prior years, it seems to me now that we will most likely come to that point, in not too many years, where replacing the Fed will be the best and even the easiest path.
We are not there yet.
 
Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – report (The Guardian.uk, 19.04.2013)
"Analysts say you should ride the train until just before it goes off the cliff. Each thinks they are smart enough to get off in time, but not everyone can get out of the door at the same time. That is why you get bubbles and crashes."
'The world's governments have agreed to restrict the global temperature rise to 2C, beyond which the impacts become severe and unpredictable. But Stern said the investors clearly did not believe action to curb climate change was going to be taken. "They can't believe that and also believe that the markets are sensibly valued now." '
 
"This report makes it clear that 'business as usual' is not a viable option for the fossil fuel industry in the long term. [The market] is assuming it will get early warning, but my worry is that things often happen suddenly in the oil and gas sector."
 
I find this next one remarkably important:
The report calculates that the world's currently indicated fossil fuel reserves equate to 2,860bn tonnes of carbon dioxide, but that just 31% could be burned for an 80% chance of keeping below a 2C temperature rise. For a 50% chance of 2C or less, just 38% could be burned.
Carbon capture and storage technology, which buries emissions underground, can play a role in the future, but even an optimistic scenario which sees 3,800 commercial projects worldwide would allow only an extra 4% of fossil fuel reserves to be burned. There are currently no commercial projects up and running. The normally conservative International Energy Agency has also concluded that a major part of fossil fuel reserves is unburnable.
Oh, and the pension funds, you ask?
Pension funds are also concerned. "Every pension fund manager needs to ask themselves have we incorporated climate change and carbon risk into our investment strategy? If the answer is no, they need to start to now," said Howard Pearce, head of pension fund management at the Environment Agency, which holds £2bn in assets.
 
I think this guy [Jeremy Grantham, a billionaire fund manager who oversees $106bn of assets] speaks sense, when he "said his company was on the verge of pulling out of all coal and unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil from tar sands. "The probability of them running into trouble is too high for me to take that risk as an investor."" 
 

Friday, May 24, 2013

What if it's all a big hoax, climate cover-up and Kunt Vonnegut

What if we create a better world for nothing?

 An interesting read has been brought to my attention recently: Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan.
"Climate Cover-Up names names, identifying bogus experts who are actually paid lobbyists and flaks. The authors reveal the pr techniques used to misinform, to mangle the language, and to intimidate the media into maintaining a phony climate change debate."...
 


 It is amazing, how many people continue to argue about it. I for one think it does not matter - we can just dispense with the climate change talk ... and try to deal with the rest of the shit. Inequality, corruption and environmental degradation, with a topping of species loss per day and riots because of too few owning too much. Well, but we've been there, haven't we? We did squat. Sooo, luckily for the planet and ALL its species (including us, humans), we'll face a crisis bigger than anything we've seen before. And then, we'll act. Loosing some billion human lives on the way, but we'll act. And I hope we then truly manage the world in a sustainable, custodian-guardian kind of way. Sigh.

I got the Big Hoax picture from the internet search (type in the text in the speech bouble and you will get it), but one for example is this one [the animated cartoon I don't really get in whole, I'm afraid].



Additionally, "what’s so radical about wanting to protect life-sustaining biosystems? About wanting to only consume as much energy and resources as is sustainable? And about wanting to build an economic system that is equitable?
And ‘equitable’ means equitable for all, including future generations
."

From a great Blog post that is designed to 'lift your spirits':
Was Kurt Vonnegut right (and if so, Now What?), by Mike Targett.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Emissions - 80% of 1990 levels by 2050

Why US States Have A Duty To Reduce Their Emissions to Their Fair Share of Safe Global Emissions: The Case of Pennsylvania.
"A new report that looks at Pennsylvania examines why US states must reduce their greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions to their fair share of safe global emissions. Although this report focuses on Pennsylvania, the conclusions in this report could be applied to other US states as well as sub-national and regional governments around the world."
 
 
via Bill McKibben @billmckibben
 If Alan Greenspan Wants To 'End The Fed', Times Must Be Changing <link here>
 
 
Watching President Obama give his inaugural address was uplifting. "We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations," he said /.../
But I fear the intervening quarter-century has allowed just the tiniest bit of cynicism to seep into my soul.
 Here's why: the president didn't go on to say, "and therefore I'm going to kill the Keystone pipeline just as soon as I can."
If there were ever a stupid and indefensible scheme, it's this long straw from the tarsands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
/.../
In fact, Keystone is the only environmental issue that has drawn large numbers of activists into the streets across the country in many years.
 
Want to know why? Because 18 months ago, our most respected climatologist, NASA's James Hansen, calculated that because that patch of tarsands oil is so big, and because the sandy bitumen it contains is the dirtiest oil on earth, burning it on top of everything else we burn would mean it was "game over for the climate."
The president apparently wasn't quite sure Hansen was correct — he asked for a year's delay to study the pipeline more deeply. In that year, Mother Nature filed fairly compelling public testimony, including the hottest year in American history, the deepest drought since the Dust Bowl, and Hurricane Sandy. Oh yeah, and the Arctic melted — but hey, it's just one of the four or five biggest physical features on earth.
/.../
It will create a few thousand good construction jobs, but every analysis for more than a year has shown these would be far outweighed by the people put to work building a clean-energy economy.
 

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Sustainable cities

A webpage and a book crossed my path. I'll put them right here, so that they can be Found Again:)
 
Sustaining Cape Town - imagining a livable city <link to book's page>
"Sustaining Cape Town ' Imagining a Livable City is a comprehensive book which tackles all possible factors that need to be taken into account when facing sustainability in Cape Town. Municipal finance, economic and industrial development, water, transport, architecture and social justice are just some of the topics covered by 19 contributors who are experts in their respective fields. The book alerts, warns and scares, but even more so it introduces ideas for thinking about sustainability and urban future in new and novel ways." (Quoted from here.)
 
Online Magazine: City Views: Cape Town as a sustainable city <link>
 
Another news item A political stalemate for the environment <link> (07 May 2013)
Could climate adaptation be blocked by a political stalemate at local government level? "Local government is doing more than we think, but they are not doing enough," said Lorena Pasquini (pictured), postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cape Town /.../ <read more>
 
Another online thingy:
Bettery Magazine: Recharging the urban mind
A collection of insights and inspirations from smart cities around the world <link>
 

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Climate Change Summit 2040, To be held on Mount Everest

 
Will say something about this later, but for now:
2012 was the year the Kyoto protocol targets "ran out" (from 2007 - 2012, even though Kyoto was signed in 1997!).
As of now, we DO NOT have a binding international agreement ... not until 2015, when they will try to form another one.
... Which will ENTER in force probably in 2017 or as late as 2020.

... Can you see how ever increasing GHG emissions and environmental degradation, WHILE we talk and quibble (/squabble) about how best to do it will hinder us in the very goals we are trying to achieve?

Mind, there has been an increasing number of studies stating that the 2 degrees target* for the 2050/2100 will be increasingly harder to meet, since we're all going berserk and trying to race each-other in the unsustainable economy. They say that if the most strict emission abatements/reductions were applied by the developed AND developing countries, MAYBE we would JUST achieve the 2 degrees target.

I don't know how much you know about the planetary ecosystem resilience ... I know only enough to know I haven't got a clue. But I do "know" that it's going to be increasingly harder to survive.

See also my blog with many more links (interspersed with some rants, granted): http://aljobaljoenvironmental.blogspot.nl/

The photo is from The Economist, from Kal Cartoons (link also here), though I originally got it from a blog, here. Ha, I used in my MSc thesis presentation. You know, as the classical "end humour" photo.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Tar sands and coal shale is us being junkies

Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and their legs collapse.
Developping tar sands and coal shale is the equivalent.

-- http://www.ted.com/playlists/78/climate_change_oh_it_s_real.html

Meanwhile, Canada is considering bypassing the beleaguered Keystone XL pipeline (which would carry oil from tar sands deposits in Alberta to the US and the Gulf of Mexico) by shipping across the Arctic Ocean instead. <link>
 
Bill McKibben @billmckibben writes today:
Amazon could lose two-thirds of its biomass by 2060? Not really great news http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/05/amazon-deforestation …
This is where we, the average consumers step in. Can you spot the link?:
Brazil is under intense pressure to convert the Amazon forests to produce crops and provide pasture for cattle. But the forests' natural ecosystems sustain wild food production, maintain water and other resources, regulate climate and air quality and ameliorate the impact of infectious diseases. 
They predict that by 2050 a decrease in precipitation caused by deforestation will reduce pasture productivity by 30 percent in the governance scenario and by 34 percent in the business-as-usual scenario. They say increasing temperatures could cause a reduction in soybean yield by 24 percent in the governance scenario and by 28 percent under the business-as-usual scenario.
I used to think that "war-like-mobilisation" to combat #climatechange propagated by @paulgilding was a bit excessive. Now I think he's right. <link>
@paulgilding Referring to the implications of 'Two scenarios' in the article: Amazon -65% by 2060
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/05/amazon-deforestation … via @billmckibben


Renewable energy 'soaring' in Australia as carbon price does what it's supposed to (Carbon price working? Coal slumps, clean energy soars <link>)
Electricity generated by Australia's highly polluting brown coal power plants has fallen 14 per cent since introduction of the carbon price, while renewable power has soared.
/.../ All up, the emissions intensity of the national electricity market has fallen 5.4 per cent since the carbon price was introduced, meaning carbon emissions from power generation is down 7.7 per cent, or 10 million tonnes, from the previous nine months.

The Dem base--even its big donors--are in a real uproar over Keystone. As they should be--it's a fateful decision http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/05/10/activists-compare-keystone-decision-to-lincolns-outlawing-of-slavery/ …
 
 
 Carbon price working? Coal slumps, clean energy soars

Just a test on how this displays:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Amazon could lose two-thirds of its biomass by 2060? Not really great news<a href="http://t.co/1XLOevqH0R" title="http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/05/amazon-deforestation">wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2…</a></p>&mdash; Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) <a href="https://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/332867369540128768">May 10, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
 

Friday, May 3, 2013

Rio+20 Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals

Third session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals
 The intergovernmental Open Working Group on sustainable development goals called for in the Rio+20 Outcome Document will convene its second meeting on 22 – 24 May 2013.
 
The meeting will be broadcasted through United Nations webcast. The links to the sessions will be posted on this page below as they become available. See Draft Programme of Work on Third and Fourth Session of the Open Working Group on SDGs here.