Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel - NYTimes.com

Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel - NYTimes.com

This article argues that in order to keep its relevance, the IPCC need to change.

Solar-powered manned flight: Flying for ever

Solar-powered manned flight: Flying for ever | The Economist

A new solar-powered aircraft attempts to fly around the world with zero emissions

Shared via AddThis

Migration and climate change: A new (under) class of travellers | The Economist

Migration and climate change: A new (under) class of travellers | The Economist

The International Organisation for Migration thinks there will be 200m climate-change migrants by 2050, when the world’s population is set to peak at 9 billion. Others put the total at 700m.

Shared via AddThis

Al Gore: the cost of the American Clean Energy and Security Act is a poststamp a day

Al's Journal : What's in a number?

In Washington, the CBO is considered one of the best sources for the cost of legislation. They wrote: "On that basis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net annual economy wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion-or about $175 per household."

That works out to approximately the cost of a postage stamp a day.

Methane = carbon on steroids

Methane controls before risky geoengineering, please - opinion - 25 June 2009 - New Scientist
Kirk Smith, a colleague also participating in the Global Energy Assessment argues that only about half the warming that has occurred up to now is due to CO₂. The rest is caused by other greenhouse gases, particularly methane. Similarly, less than half of the total warming expected over the next 20 years will be caused by CO₂.

Recent modelling shows the way to have the biggest impact on warming over this century is to immediately reduce emission of these gases, and keep them low.

Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO₂. A tonne of methane is responsible for nearly 100 times more warming over the first five years of its lifetime in the atmosphere than a tonne of CO₂. Methane is removed from the atmosphere much more rapidly than CO₂, with a half-life of 8.5 years compared with many decades for CO₂, but a tonne of methane eventually turns to 2.75 extra tonnes of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Even without taking this into consideration, a tonne of methane emitted today will exert more annual warming than a tonne of CO₂ emitted today until 2075. Not until the year 7300 will the cumulative warming exerted by the two become equal. It is truly carbon on steroids.

Reduction of methane can occur in developing countries and bring numerous health and economic benefits.

Green.view: Can the spam | The Economist

Green.view: Can the spam
According to a report from an environmental consultancy, ICF International, commissioned by McAfee, a computer-security company, some 62 trillion unsolicited e-mails were sent in 2008, using 33 terawatt hours of electricity. That is equivalent to the energy consumed by 1.5m American homes or 3.1m cars over a year. If generated by coal-fired power stations it would release 17m tonnes of carbon dioxide, some 0.2% of global emissions of this greenhouse gas.

Fish under threat....

as if you needed anymore proof. When are we going to do something about this?

------
From "A dangerous appetite for reef fish," IHT:

This fierce appetite for live reef fish across Southeast Asia - and increasingly in mainland China - is devastating populations in the Coral Triangle, a protected marine region home to the world's richest ocean diversity, according to a recent report in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. Spawning of reef fish in this area, which supports 75 percent of all known coral species in the world, has declined 79 percent over the past five to 20 years, depending on location, according to the report.