With the U.S. Congress beginning to consider regulations on greenhouse gases, a troubling hypothesis about how the sun may impact global warming is finally laid to rest.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Peter Adams along with Jeff Pierce from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, have developed a model to test a controversial hypothesis that says changes in the sun are causing global warming.
The hypothesis they tested was that increased solar activity reduces cloudiness by changing cosmic rays. So, when clouds decrease, more sunlight is let in, causing the earth to warm. Some climate change skeptics have tried to use this hypothesis to suggest that greenhouse gases may not be the global warming culprits that most scientists agree they are.
Continuar llegint 13 - Maig - 2009
With global cooperation and investment, renewables’ share will exceed all previous estimates
With adequate financial and political support, renewable energy technologies like wind and photovoltaics could supply 40 percent of the world’s electricity by 2050, according to findings from the International Scientific Congress “Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions.” However, if such technologies are marginalized, its share is likely to hover below 15 percent.
This research was presented at a press conference by Peter Lund of the Helsinki University of Technology’s Advanced Energy Systems in Espoo, Finland, ahead of the scheduled congress session titled, “Renewable Energies: How Far Can They Take Us?”
Continuar llegint 14 - Març - 2009
The new climate and clean energy package proposed by Sweden should serve as an example for all EU countries ahead of crucial global warming negotiations, WWF says. If followed by other industrialised nations the deal could lead towards a low carbon future and help combat climate change.
Sweden is just preparing to take over the EU’s rotating presidency and it is likely to play a major role during important international meetings culminating in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, in December, where leaders from about 190 countries will try to agree a global deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Continuar llegint 14 - Març - 2009
Dos simples consultas en Google producen, según el físico de la Universidad de Harvard Alex Wissner-Gross, «tanto dióxido de carbono como un caldero eléctrico hirviendo». O lo que es lo mismo, cada vez que realizamos una búsqueda a través del popular portal de Internet contribuimos a liberar a la atmósfera siete gramos de CO2.
Esa es la conclusión a la que ha llegado el equipo que dirige este investigador norteamericano, cuyas cifras han sido hechas públicas durante la semana pasada y difundidas por la cadena briténica BBC. Unos resultados, además, que confirman los ya obtenidos por otra reciente investigación, esta vez encargada por la consultora norteamericana Gartner, según la que las Tecnologías de la Información, en su conjunto, serían responsables de hasta el 2 por ciento de las emisiones globales de este gas de efecto invernadero.
Continuar llegint 10 - Febrer - 2009
Tighter emissions laws will prove too expensive with no help, say car manufacturers
Adam Vaughan, BusinessGreen, 19 Dec 2008
European car companies are lobbying governments for financial support to meet new CO2 emissions legislation laid down this week.
After months of being pressured by car makers to water down CO2 targets, the European Parliament announced that new car fleets will have to cut emissions to 120g CO2/km by 2015 from an average of 160g CO2/km today.
Car makers say they need financial support from governments to help them with the combination of the CO2 regulations and an economic slowdown that saw European car sales in November down by a quarter on 2007 figures.
Continuar llegint 19 - Desembre - 2008
WASHINGTON — Declaring it “a leading priority of my presidency and a defining test of our time,” Barack Obama yesterday committed the United States to revolutionary reform in energy self-sufficiency and fighting global warming.
The question, to be answered over the next four years, is whether he can succeed where so many of his predecessors failed.
The president-elect presented his energy and environmental team yesterday, a group with a strong record in energy and environmental reform.
The very nature of the announcement suggests the enormity of the changes ahead. Energy and the environment are often seen as separate files, managed by separate departments and agencies.
Continuar llegint 16 - Desembre - 2008
The big issues to be resolved for a new global climate treaty lie largely unmoved after two weeks of annual UN climate change talks in Poznan, Poland, just as they have throughout all of 2008.
Neither progress towards targets for reducing emissions nor decisions on a global market to preserve forests and to stimulate carbon capture and storage emerged from the meeting as had been hoped.
The headline challenge of agreeing targets and sharing them among developed and developing countries as the foundation of a new treaty remains. A goal of halving emissions by 2050 is still hanging while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s call for developed countries to agree cuts of 25 to 40 per cent in their greenhouse emissions by 2020 looks further from reality than ever.
Continuar llegint 15 - Desembre - 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama has his green team. And for environmentalists, it is a dream team.
Obama on Monday selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Lisa Jackson, the former head of New Jersey’s environmental department, to be administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, will lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner, the longest-serving EPA administrator in history, headed the agency during the Clinton administration’s two terms.
And while it wasn’t officially announced, a transition official said Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado was Obama’s choice to run the Interior Department, which oversees oil and gas drilling on public lands and manages the nation’s parks and wildlife refuges. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting Obama’s announcement.
Continuar llegint 15 - Desembre - 2008
Por ROD McGUIRK – 14/12/2008
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia said Monday it plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by as little as 5 percent by 2020 — a reduction that critics say undermines international efforts to reach an effective global pact next year to avert dangerous climate change.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the interim plan would not affect his commitment to slash the carbon emissions that are blamed for global warming by 60 percent from 2000 levels by 2050.
But Rudd was rebuked by an environmental activist while announcing his 2020 targets at the National Press Club in the capital Canberra on Monday.
Continuar llegint 15 - Desembre - 2008
Dec. 15, 2008 — Joining Brazil among large developing economies to pledge large reductions in greenhouse gases, Mexico said last week that it would slash its carbon pollution by 50% before 2050.
Mexico will reach this goal through voluntary and non-binding commitments to improve energy efficiency in heavy industry, notably in the cement and oil sectors, Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira said. He unveiled key elements of the plan at the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change in Poznan, Poland, where 192 nations are striving to forge a global climate pact before 2010.
The target, he said, was to reach a level of half the 650 million tons of greenhouse gases that was emitted in 2002, the year Mexico will use as a baseline to measure change.
The oil and cement sectors both had “a great potential for reduction,” but Mexico will need help in attaining its goals, said the junior environment minister, Fernando Tudela, also in Poznan. “We need to have secure financing, we can’t rely only on funds coming from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM),” he said. The CDM allows advanced economies to invest in carbon-reducing projects in the developing world as a means of fulfilling their binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases.
Continuar llegint 15 - Desembre - 2008
Por CONSTANT BRAND – 12/12/2008
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — European leaders agreed Friday to stick to an ambitious plan to fight global warming through emissions cuts and renewable energy, and on ways to share the hefty costs of setting a global example.
The plan includes concessions to heavy industry and countries in Eastern Europe worried that the cost of curbing pollution would impede economic growth. The expense of the plan had caused uproar among many countries as the continent grapples with economic downturn.
The plan, agreed at an EU summit, lays out how the 27 member countries will cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020.
Continuar llegint 12 - Desembre - 2008
POZNAN, Poland — Several major developing countries that had long resisted making specific commitments to combat global warming are laying out concrete plans to curb their greenhouse gas emissions at the United Nations climate conference here, a shift that could mark the most positive development in the slow-moving negotiations.
Getting the emerging economies — such as China, Brazil and South Africa — to limit their escalating carbon footprint has been seen as crucial to the prospects for a future global climate pact. For years these nations have argued that the industrial world must first own up to its historic responsibility and commit to binding cuts, while the United States and other developed countries have countered that they cannot afford to limit emissions until their international economic competitors do the same.
The past two weeks, however, have seen an easing of that impasse. Brazil has pledged to cut its annual deforestation rate by 70 percent by 2017 — which could reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 to 45 percent over the next decade — and Mexico has vowed to bring its carbon emissions to 50 percent below their 2002 levels by 2050.
Continuar llegint 12 - Desembre - 2008
POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) — A Chinese minister said here on Thursday that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol should be taken as the basic legal framework for the world to cope with climate change.
Addressing a UN high-level meeting in the central Poland city of Poznan, Xie Zhenhua, minister and vice-director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol are documents reflecting global consensus, and have provided a basic legal framework for addressing climate change.
The UNFCCC, which has 192 parties and entered into force in 1994, set an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, which was reached in 1997, is linked to the UNFCCC and sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community on gas emission reductions.
Continuar llegint 12 - Desembre - 2008
By Gerard Wynn
POZNAN, Poland, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Britain’s energy and climate minister Ed Miliband on Thursday would not rule out committing the UK to more ambitious 2020 climate targets, on the sidelines of a U.N. climate conference in Poland.
The government will respond next summer to recommendations including forcing mandatory cuts in carbon emissions from coal plants and more ambitious national 2020 emissions goals.
Britain’s chief climate change adviser, Adair Turner, made the recommendations earlier this month.
Continuar llegint 11 - Desembre - 2008
La lucha contra el cambio climático ha dado este miércoles un paso adelante en la cumbre del clima de Poznan (Polonia). Un paso enrevesado, complicado, rebuscado, inextricable -como la ONU- y cuyo alcance se podrá valorar con el tiempo. Aunque los 187 países reunidos se dejan el grueso de la negociación para el año que viene, en el texto acordado se alude por primera vez a cifras concretas de limitación de emisiones para los grandes países emergentes como China e India. Tendrán que limitar sus emisiones entre un 15% y un 30% en 2020 respecto a la tendencia actual. Es decir, podrán crecer, pero a menor ritmo. Siempre que haya un acuerdo el año que viene en Copenhague.
Los países reunidos para renovar el protocolo de Kioto han pactado un texto en el que citan otro del presidente del grupo que menciona que los países emergentes deberán limitar sus emisiones en 2020 y que da un rango. Es decir, el texto no menciona las cifras sino que alude a otro que sí lo hace. Esto es un avance respecto a lo acordado hace un año en la cumbre del clima de Bali, ya que allí los países en desarrollo pactaron que limitarían sus emisiones -siempre que recibieran enormes sumas de dinero y tecnología- pero no incorporaron ninguna cifra.
Continuar llegint 10 - Desembre - 2008
Anteriors articles
