Tsunamis
Even Hollywood-scale waves fall short when depicting a tsunami's full size and power. Once launched by an undersea earthquake or landslide, tsunamis can race across the ocean at the speed of a jet liner (500 mph). Wave peaks can be hundreds of miles apart. All that moving water can add up to three storeys of wave crashing into coastlines and the people who live along them. The December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean off Sumatra was a tragic reminder that just because tsunamis are rare doesn't mean we can put them out of our minds.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Abrupt Climate Change
Abrupt Climate Change
studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth's climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade. And abrupt climate change may be more likely in the future.
studies and debates on potential climate change have focused on the ongoing buildup of industrial greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a gradual increase in global temperatures. But recent and rapidly advancing evidence demonstrates that Earth's climate repeatedly has shifted dramatically and in time spans as short as a decade. And abrupt climate change may be more likely in the future.
Global warming is the increase
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century.[1][A] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation.[1] The IPCC also concludes that variations in natural phenomena such as solar radiation and volcanoes produced most of the warming from pre-industrial times to 1950 and had a small cooling effect afterward.[2][3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science,[B] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[4]
Corporate America warms to fight against global warming
Corporate America warms to fight against global warming
By David J. Lynch, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Corporate leaders don't normally invite the federal government to raise their taxes. But that's exactly what Paul Anderson is doing.
Anderson, the chairman of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, wants the federal government to fight global warming by taxing companies based on the "greenhouse gases" they pump into the atmosphere — just the sort of big-government remedy the Bush administration says would hobble the economy.
For his efforts, Anderson has been excoriated by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and threatened with an "exorcism" by an industry peer.
But Anderson, 61, is no closet left-winger. He's a registered Republican, Bush backer and member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. That such a Big Business stalwart is demanding federal action on climate change illustrates an unmistakable evolution in corporate thinking, motivated both by evidence that global warming already is affecting the economy and by the prospect of fat profits from new environment-friendly products.
"If we approach this rationally, it will not be disruptive to the economy and will not turn the world upside down and will, at the same time, address the problem," says Anderson.
Corporate America, which once regarded cries of "global warming" about as favorably as The Communist Manifesto, increasingly is embracing the need for reducing human contributions to the planet's rising temperatures. Forty companies — including Boeing, IBM, John Hancock and Whirlpool — have publicly endorsed the notion that climate change is real by joining a business council organized by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Electric power companies are the single largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, the chief chemical culprit in "global warming." But Duke Energy on the East Coast, California's PG&E on the West Coast, and other utilities see mandatory federal emission caps as preferable to the current patchwork of state regulations they confront. A uniform national standard would eliminate costly uncertainties hanging over investment decisions on new multibillion-dollar power plants, they say.
It's not just power companies that are agitating for action. Institutional investors are demanding that companies disclose their financial exposure to future climate changes. Insurers are abandoning underwriting in coastal areas threatened by costly Hurricane Katrina clones, and companies such as General Electric and DuPont are gearing up to prosper from the transition to a carbon-constrained world. Last year, Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry Paulson, now Treasury secretary-designate, warned that the time needed to address climate change was running out.
"There's a sea change underway in American business," says Al Gore, the former vice president. "What's different in business audiences in the past year or so is a new and widespread receptivity, a keen awareness, an eagerness on the part of large numbers to find out how they can take a leadership position. And a recognition, too, that there are profits to be made."
Insurers may prove to be the canaries in the coal mine of climate change. As global temperatures rise, instances of severe weather — hurricanes, tornadoes, even hailstorms — are expected to become more intense and more damaging. Though no single event can be definitively linked to long-term warming of the atmosphere, Mother Nature is getting more costly for insurers.
Annual weather-related insured losses rose from $1 billion in the 1970s to an inflation-adjusted average $15 billion in the past decade, according to Ceres, a coalition of institutional investors and environmental groups. The group said soaring weather-related insurance claims, which it linked to the warming climate, are leading to higher premiums and greater coverage restrictions for policyholders. As private insurers flee vulnerable areas, state and local government "insurers of last resort" are being left with the bill, Ceres said.
After being battered by losses from four Florida hurricanes in 2004, Allstate last year refused to renew policies with 95,000 homeowners and 16,000 commercial property owners in the state.
"We are girding for the onslaught of the next hurricane season," Allstate CEO Ed Liddy said last month. "What's new is the intensity of this (storm) cycle could be a lot worse than things that we've seen before."
Well before climate change turns Iowa into oceanfront property, its financial impact on insurers could affect everything from building codes to land-use policy, says Tim Wagner, director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance, who chairs a National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) climate-change task force.
The panel was scheduled to kick off its deliberations last year at a September conference in New Orleans, which was washed out by Hurricane Katrina.
In Nebraska, several years of unusually severe hailstorms have prompted insurers to raise deductibles and encourage a shift to hail-resistant roofing — which costs about twice as much as a conventional asphalt roof.
The potential financial impact on insurers is so great that it threatens to paralyze policy-writing in the most vulnerable geographic areas. To ensure the industry has the financial resources to weather repeated catastrophic events, a federal reserve fund financed by a new tax on all insurance policies might be needed, Wagner says.
"Climate change is so big, it's very hard for the man-on-the-street to understand what's taking place. The plain truth of the matter is it's here and it's going to be costly," Wagner says.
By David J. Lynch, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Corporate leaders don't normally invite the federal government to raise their taxes. But that's exactly what Paul Anderson is doing.
Anderson, the chairman of Charlotte-based Duke Energy, wants the federal government to fight global warming by taxing companies based on the "greenhouse gases" they pump into the atmosphere — just the sort of big-government remedy the Bush administration says would hobble the economy.
For his efforts, Anderson has been excoriated by conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and threatened with an "exorcism" by an industry peer.
But Anderson, 61, is no closet left-winger. He's a registered Republican, Bush backer and member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. That such a Big Business stalwart is demanding federal action on climate change illustrates an unmistakable evolution in corporate thinking, motivated both by evidence that global warming already is affecting the economy and by the prospect of fat profits from new environment-friendly products.
"If we approach this rationally, it will not be disruptive to the economy and will not turn the world upside down and will, at the same time, address the problem," says Anderson.
Corporate America, which once regarded cries of "global warming" about as favorably as The Communist Manifesto, increasingly is embracing the need for reducing human contributions to the planet's rising temperatures. Forty companies — including Boeing, IBM, John Hancock and Whirlpool — have publicly endorsed the notion that climate change is real by joining a business council organized by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
Electric power companies are the single largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, the chief chemical culprit in "global warming." But Duke Energy on the East Coast, California's PG&E on the West Coast, and other utilities see mandatory federal emission caps as preferable to the current patchwork of state regulations they confront. A uniform national standard would eliminate costly uncertainties hanging over investment decisions on new multibillion-dollar power plants, they say.
It's not just power companies that are agitating for action. Institutional investors are demanding that companies disclose their financial exposure to future climate changes. Insurers are abandoning underwriting in coastal areas threatened by costly Hurricane Katrina clones, and companies such as General Electric and DuPont are gearing up to prosper from the transition to a carbon-constrained world. Last year, Goldman Sachs Chairman Henry Paulson, now Treasury secretary-designate, warned that the time needed to address climate change was running out.
"There's a sea change underway in American business," says Al Gore, the former vice president. "What's different in business audiences in the past year or so is a new and widespread receptivity, a keen awareness, an eagerness on the part of large numbers to find out how they can take a leadership position. And a recognition, too, that there are profits to be made."
Insurers may prove to be the canaries in the coal mine of climate change. As global temperatures rise, instances of severe weather — hurricanes, tornadoes, even hailstorms — are expected to become more intense and more damaging. Though no single event can be definitively linked to long-term warming of the atmosphere, Mother Nature is getting more costly for insurers.
Annual weather-related insured losses rose from $1 billion in the 1970s to an inflation-adjusted average $15 billion in the past decade, according to Ceres, a coalition of institutional investors and environmental groups. The group said soaring weather-related insurance claims, which it linked to the warming climate, are leading to higher premiums and greater coverage restrictions for policyholders. As private insurers flee vulnerable areas, state and local government "insurers of last resort" are being left with the bill, Ceres said.
After being battered by losses from four Florida hurricanes in 2004, Allstate last year refused to renew policies with 95,000 homeowners and 16,000 commercial property owners in the state.
"We are girding for the onslaught of the next hurricane season," Allstate CEO Ed Liddy said last month. "What's new is the intensity of this (storm) cycle could be a lot worse than things that we've seen before."
Well before climate change turns Iowa into oceanfront property, its financial impact on insurers could affect everything from building codes to land-use policy, says Tim Wagner, director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance, who chairs a National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) climate-change task force.
The panel was scheduled to kick off its deliberations last year at a September conference in New Orleans, which was washed out by Hurricane Katrina.
In Nebraska, several years of unusually severe hailstorms have prompted insurers to raise deductibles and encourage a shift to hail-resistant roofing — which costs about twice as much as a conventional asphalt roof.
The potential financial impact on insurers is so great that it threatens to paralyze policy-writing in the most vulnerable geographic areas. To ensure the industry has the financial resources to weather repeated catastrophic events, a federal reserve fund financed by a new tax on all insurance policies might be needed, Wagner says.
"Climate change is so big, it's very hard for the man-on-the-street to understand what's taking place. The plain truth of the matter is it's here and it's going to be costly," Wagner says.
New hope for Copenhagen deal
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 7:49PM GMT 17 Nov 2009
Earlier in the week world leaders, including President Obama, admitted that it will be impossible to draw up a legal treaty in time for a key UN summit in Copenhagen this December.
Instead they suggested a 'political agreement' that was widely seen as a tactic to give rich countries time to haggle over swinging cuts in pollution.
However Denmark, that has a huge amount of influence as the host country of the summit, has made it clear that the politically-binding agreement will not be an easy option.
Speaking after a meeting of environment ministers in Copenhagen, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister of Denmark, said all rich countries will have commit to targets while poor nations must also agree to cut emissions.
"All developed countries will need to bring strong reduction targets to the negotiating table in Copenhagen," he said.
The pressure is now on for the world's biggest polluters, the US and China, to come up with numbers to show they are willing to make serious cuts in emissions.
During a meeting in China both sides made all the right signals by supporting the principle of a cut in emissions and money to help poor countries adapt to climate change.
President Obama supported the Danish proposal.
"Our aim there [in Copenhagen], in support of what Prime Minister Rasmussen of Denmark is trying to achieve, is not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations, and one that has immediate operational effect," he said
But despite the positive words from politicians, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN negotiations, said the world needed "more movement".
"Industrialised countries must raise their targets and financial commitments further... I look to the United States for a numerical midterm target and a clear commitment on finance," he said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recommended that the rich world cuts emission by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 while poor nations reduce pollution against "business as usual". The rich countries are also expected to put forward billions of pounds every year to help poor countries cut carbon emissions and adapt to climate change.
Environmental groups pointed out that the US and China have still failed to make any firm commitments on money or cutting emissions.
Isabel Sande Frandsen, Climate Advisor for Oxfam International, said rich countries are simply delaying the decision. :
"Instead of simply replacing old political commitments with new ones, rich countries need to focus on delivering the urgent actions required of them by Copenhagen – deep and binding emissions cuts and finance to help poor countries curb their emissions and adapt to climate change," she said.
South Korea was the latest country to sign up to a target this week, promising to reduce greenhouse gases by four per cent on 2005 levels by 2020. Brazil also pledged to cut its emissions by 36 per cent against business as usual by 2020.
Ed Miliband, the UK Climate Change Secretary, said momentum was building for a strong deal at Copenhagen.
“The aim of Copenhagen continues to be to get a comprehensive and ambitious agreement. Today's affirmation from Presidents Obama and Hu that this is their ambition is very welcome and necessary. With less than three weeks to go before the talks start, we must strain every sinew for an agreement with maximum ambition, with immediate action on mitigation and finance and a clear trajectory to peak global emissions by 2020," he said.
Published: 7:49PM GMT 17 Nov 2009
Earlier in the week world leaders, including President Obama, admitted that it will be impossible to draw up a legal treaty in time for a key UN summit in Copenhagen this December.
Instead they suggested a 'political agreement' that was widely seen as a tactic to give rich countries time to haggle over swinging cuts in pollution.
However Denmark, that has a huge amount of influence as the host country of the summit, has made it clear that the politically-binding agreement will not be an easy option.
Speaking after a meeting of environment ministers in Copenhagen, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister of Denmark, said all rich countries will have commit to targets while poor nations must also agree to cut emissions.
"All developed countries will need to bring strong reduction targets to the negotiating table in Copenhagen," he said.
The pressure is now on for the world's biggest polluters, the US and China, to come up with numbers to show they are willing to make serious cuts in emissions.
During a meeting in China both sides made all the right signals by supporting the principle of a cut in emissions and money to help poor countries adapt to climate change.
President Obama supported the Danish proposal.
"Our aim there [in Copenhagen], in support of what Prime Minister Rasmussen of Denmark is trying to achieve, is not a partial accord or a political declaration, but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations, and one that has immediate operational effect," he said
But despite the positive words from politicians, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN negotiations, said the world needed "more movement".
"Industrialised countries must raise their targets and financial commitments further... I look to the United States for a numerical midterm target and a clear commitment on finance," he said.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recommended that the rich world cuts emission by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 while poor nations reduce pollution against "business as usual". The rich countries are also expected to put forward billions of pounds every year to help poor countries cut carbon emissions and adapt to climate change.
Environmental groups pointed out that the US and China have still failed to make any firm commitments on money or cutting emissions.
Isabel Sande Frandsen, Climate Advisor for Oxfam International, said rich countries are simply delaying the decision. :
"Instead of simply replacing old political commitments with new ones, rich countries need to focus on delivering the urgent actions required of them by Copenhagen – deep and binding emissions cuts and finance to help poor countries curb their emissions and adapt to climate change," she said.
South Korea was the latest country to sign up to a target this week, promising to reduce greenhouse gases by four per cent on 2005 levels by 2020. Brazil also pledged to cut its emissions by 36 per cent against business as usual by 2020.
Ed Miliband, the UK Climate Change Secretary, said momentum was building for a strong deal at Copenhagen.
“The aim of Copenhagen continues to be to get a comprehensive and ambitious agreement. Today's affirmation from Presidents Obama and Hu that this is their ambition is very welcome and necessary. With less than three weeks to go before the talks start, we must strain every sinew for an agreement with maximum ambition, with immediate action on mitigation and finance and a clear trajectory to peak global emissions by 2020," he said.
Biomass
Biomass
Ask most people which renewable energy source is the most widely used and they would say either wind or solar, but they’d be wrong or at least they certainly would in America. Since 2000 Biomass has been the most highly produced alternative energy in the United States. Using plant and animal material to create energy isn’t without its downfalls. It would almost certainly meet with competition from residents if biomass power stations were to be created in built up areas. The decomposing plants and animal waste creates an awful smell that is incredibly difficult to mask but it is very renewable (there’s always plants and animal waste)
Ask most people which renewable energy source is the most widely used and they would say either wind or solar, but they’d be wrong or at least they certainly would in America. Since 2000 Biomass has been the most highly produced alternative energy in the United States. Using plant and animal material to create energy isn’t without its downfalls. It would almost certainly meet with competition from residents if biomass power stations were to be created in built up areas. The decomposing plants and animal waste creates an awful smell that is incredibly difficult to mask but it is very renewable (there’s always plants and animal waste)
Wind Energy
Wind Energy
Harnessing the power of the wind and using it to our ends is hardly a new idea. Windmills have been and still are used for many different purposes and have been for a great many years, but the improvement of turbines combined with the improved technology to turn the motion of turbine blades into an energy source has seen the use of turbines explode.
Wind power is very popular, but in order to provide a reasonable amount of power it may prove necessary to have large amounts of turbines. On windy days, and even not so windy days some turbines make a noise that many residents consider to be unbearable. Areas of open countryside are protected by conservation orders, which means they can’t be built there either and if there is no conservation order there are still protestors willing to do almost anything to stop the turbines being built. The only viable option left is to use offshore wind farms and these are being investigated, developed and planned all around the world but it takes too many turbines to create a reasonable amount of power and eventually they will have to be built inland; a matter that will be contested wherever the wind farms are proposed to be built.
Harnessing the power of the wind and using it to our ends is hardly a new idea. Windmills have been and still are used for many different purposes and have been for a great many years, but the improvement of turbines combined with the improved technology to turn the motion of turbine blades into an energy source has seen the use of turbines explode.
Wind power is very popular, but in order to provide a reasonable amount of power it may prove necessary to have large amounts of turbines. On windy days, and even not so windy days some turbines make a noise that many residents consider to be unbearable. Areas of open countryside are protected by conservation orders, which means they can’t be built there either and if there is no conservation order there are still protestors willing to do almost anything to stop the turbines being built. The only viable option left is to use offshore wind farms and these are being investigated, developed and planned all around the world but it takes too many turbines to create a reasonable amount of power and eventually they will have to be built inland; a matter that will be contested wherever the wind farms are proposed to be built.
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