City in Las Vegas darkens for Earth Hour on Saturday

According to the environmental activists, the “Earth Hour” in Las Vegas on Saturday was a huge success. Now the nations have a behest to deal with the climatic change.

According to the sayings of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), last Saturday hundreds of millions of people worldwide followed its call to turn-off lights for a full hour. From an Antarctic research base and the Great Pyramids of Egypt, from the Colosseum in Rome to the Empire State building in New York, lit up that the piece of the globe went obscure on last Saturday inorder to focus the menace of drastic climatic change. Nearly 4,000 cities and 88 countries dimmed dispensable lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

World Wildlife Fund conducted an Australian event in 2007 which flourish 400 cities worldwide in last year. Ambassadors from 175 countries gathered on Sunday in Bonn for the latest round to craft a deal to control emissions of the heat-trapping gases, which is responsible for the massive climatic change. German boy and girl scouts on Sunday presented theYvo de Boer with a blue “ballot box” symbolically representing the world’s vote the night before to save the earth. A young girl said to Mr. Boer, that we will soon lose our future, if the world keeps polluting.

The young people as well as the World Wildlife Fund was thanked by the climatic chief for activating the massive show of support. Mr. Boer said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was actually the largest public demonstration that there has ever been on an issue like this. Finally, Andy Ridley the executive director of earth hour said that “Earth Hour has always been a positive campaign”

Lights out in 84 countries for Earth Hour 2009

CHICAGO – The lights are going down from the Great Pyramids to the Acropolis, the Eiffel Tower to Sears Tower, as more than 2,800 municipalities in 84 countries plan Saturday to mark the second worldwide Earth Hour.

McDonald's will even soften the yellow glow from some Golden Arches as part of the time zone-by-time zone plan to dim nonessential lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. to highlight global climate change.

"Earth Hour makes a powerful statement that the world is going to solve this problem," said Carter Roberts, chief executive of the World Wildlife Fund, which sponsors Earth Hour. "Everyone is realizing the enormous effect that climate change will have on them."

Seven times more municipalities have signed on since last year's Earth Hour, which drew participation from 400 cities after Sydney, Australia held a solo event in 2007. Interest has spiked ahead of planned negotiations on a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen, Denmark this December. The last global accord, the Kyoto Protocol, is set to expire in 2012.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon encouraged the convention to reach a fair and effective climate change agreement and promoted Earth Hour participation in a video posted this month on the event's YouTube channel.

"Earth Hour is a way for the citizens of the world to send a clear message," Ban said. "They want action on climate change."

Other videos have been posted by celebrities such as rocker Pete Wentz and actor Kevin Bacon and WWF has offered Earth Hour iPhone applications. Search engine Yahoo! says there's been a 344 percent increase in "Earth Hour" searches this February and March compared with last year.

New studies increasingly highlight the ongoing effects of climate change, said Richard Moss, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and WWF's climate change vice president.

"We have satellites and we have ships out at sea and we have monitoring stations set up on buoys in the ocean," Moss said. "We monitor all kinds of things people wouldn't even think about. The scientific research is showing in all kinds of ways that the climate crisis is worsening."

But not everyone agrees and at least one counter-protest is planned for Saturday.

Suburban Philadelphia ice cream shop owner Bob Gerenser, 56, believes global warming is based on faulty science and calls Earth Hour "nonsense."

The resident of New Hope, Pa., and owner of Gerenser's Exotic Ice Cream planned to illuminate his store with extra theatrical lighting.

"I'm going to get everyone I know in my neighborhood to turn on every light they possibly can to waste as much electricity as possible to underline the absurdity of this action ... by being absurd," he said.

Earth Hour 2009 has garnered support from global corporations, nonprofit groups, schools, scientists and celebrities — including Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

McDonald's Corp. plans to dim its arches at 500 locations around the Midwest. The Marriott, Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont hotel chains and Coca-Cola Co. also plan to participate.

Nearly 200 U.S. cities, towns and villages have signed on, from New York City — which will darken the iconic Empire State Building and Broadway marquees — to Igiugig, population 53 on Iliamna Lake in southwestern Alaska.

Among the efforts in Chicago, 50,000 light bulbs at tourist hotspot Navy Pier will dim and 24 spotlights that shine on Sears Tower's twin spires will go dark.

"We're the most visible building in the city," said Angela Burnett, a Sears Tower property manager. "Turning off the lights for one hour on a Saturday night shows our commitment to sustainability."

The Commonwealth Edison utility said electricity demand fell by 5 percent in Chicago and northern Illinois during last year's Earth Hour, reducing about 840,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

"It goes way beyond turning off the lights," said Roberts of the WWF. "The message we want people to take away is that it is within our power to solve this problem. People can take positive constructive actions."

___

On the Net:

Earth Hour: http://www.earthhour.org

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Earth Hour video: http://sn.im/enqwn

Global meeting: Climate is No. 1 threat to polar bears

Global meeting: Climate is No. 1 threat to polar bears

A meeting of representatives from around the world in Norway has declared that climate change is the greatest threat to the survival of polar bears. Here, a polar bear mother and her two cubs are seen on the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, in November 2007.

OSLO (AP) — The very survival of polar bears depends on how well humans fight climate change, which is the biggest threat facing the giant carnivores, the five nations bordering the Arctic said Thursday.

Representatives from the U.S., Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark noted with "deep concern" that global warming was melting the Arctic ice that is home to polar bears and their main prey: seals.

"Climate change has a negative impact on polar bears and their habitat and is the most important long-term threat facing polar bears," the five nations said in a joint declaration after a three-day meeting in Tromsoe, northern Norway.

Without action, 60% of the world's polar bears could disappear by 2050, Norway's Directorate for Nature Management said separately.

The meeting in Tromsoe was the first time in 28 years the Arctic nations had reviewed their 1973 Polar Bear Agreement, meant to protect the world's estimated 20,000-25,000 polar bears.

"The parties agreed that long term conservation of polar bears depends upon successful mitigation of climate change," the statement said, and called on other forums to take "appropriate action" to mitigate it.

However, the statement did not do as the meeting's host, Norway, had asked. Norwegian officials had hoped for a direct appeal for action to the U.N. climate talks in December in Copenhagen, intended to produce a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"In an ideal world we would have liked that," said Clive Desire-Tesar, a spokesman for the Worldwide Fund for Nature. "But we recognize that major climate initiatives have to come from the ministerial level."

Desire-Tesar said the 30 or so delegates in Tromsoe were lower echelon bureaucrats, indicating that the countries had not come to the meeting looking for major political breakthroughs.

The Arctic nations' final statement said polar bears are also threatened by man made toxins that reach the Arctic; possible increases in shipping, oil and industrial activities in their realm; and possible over-hunting.

The statement said there was a need to manage harvests for indigenous peoples who depend on polar bear hunts for food and income.

The final statement said the next meeting will be held in Canada in 2011, followed by one in Russia in 2013.

Europe's green billions

Clean-energy investments target eastern Europe, but it remains to be seen whether they will create as many new jobs as hoped.

Quirin Schiermeier

Wind farms could benefit from greater investment by the European Commission.B. STRONG/REUTERS

Three months after European Union (EU) leaders committed themselves to cutting greenhouse gases by at least 20% from 1990 levels by 2020, the European Commission has announced that it will subsidize 'green' programmes and infrastructures with €105 billion (US$136 billion).

The windfall comes from the union's €347 billion in 'structural' funds. It is the second-largest budget in the commission's portfolio, behind agriculture, and is aimed at creating equal standards of living across the EU.

Although no fresh money is involved — the size of the structural funds was agreed in 2007 — the amount allocated to green projects is nearly triple that of the previous budget period, from 2000 to 2006. Regions within the EU are free to decide how to spend the money, as long as they meet the general criteria and priorities set by the commission.

The money is necessary if Europe is to deliver on its high hopes for wind and other low-carbon energy sources, says Greg Arrowsmith, a policy officer with the European Renewable Energy Centers Agency in Brussels. Just €2.3 billion of the EU's €51-billion Seventh Framework Programme — Europe's main source of research funding — is earmarked for non-nuclear energy technologies.

The new investment will not cover carbon capture and storage projects, but it does address many others related to energy and climate. Around €9 billion is targeted for renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects, and an additional €29 billion will be invested in modernizing railways and in urban transport projects aimed at reducing emissions from cars. Significant funding will also be available for water and waste-management projects, biodiversity and nature conservation, and for encouraging the development of eco-friendly goods and services by small and medium-sized enterprises.

The commission hopes that the investment will create new jobs and help to revive regions that are suffering in the current economic downturn. "Support for the green economy and the environment goes hand-in-hand with the cohesion policy's objective to deliver sustainable growth, jobs and competitiveness," regional policy commissioner Danuta Hübner said when announcing the figures on 9 March.

The bulk of the money (€60 billion) will go to countries in eastern and southeastern Europe that lag behind the rest of the union, economically and environmentally. The largest beneficiaries will be Poland (€18 billion), Spain (€12 billion), the Czech Republic (€11 billion) and Hungary (€9 billion). Money from the regional funds could, for example, be used to convert old ports on Poland's Baltic coast into transit points for testing and installing off-shore wind turbines. It is, however, up to local politicians to decide exactly how to apportion the funds.

The plan exceeds the expectations of many economists and energy experts, who had hoped that the economic crisis would create an impetus for 'greening' the economy, as has happened with massive investments in countries such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Germany.

“The massive public stimulus will give a lot of extra impetus to green investment.”

"This is the way to go," says Claudia Kemfert, an expert on climate, energy and transport at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. "This kind of economic stimulus makes a lot more sense than bonuses to people who give up old cars to buy new vehicles." A €2,500 'car-scrapping' incentive, part of Germany's own €50-billion stimulus package, is boosting car sales, but has been criticized on economic and environmental grounds.

Oliver Schäfer, policy director at the Brussels-based European Renewable Energy Council, says that the EU's renewable-energy industry — involving some 350,000 jobs, and generating €40 billion a year in business volume — will benefit substantially from the boost in public funding. Experts have estimated that it will take around €600 billion to help the EU increase the amount of energy it obtains from renewable sources from the current 8.5% to its goal of 20% in 2020. Subsidies through the structural funds programme will provide start-up financing for new solar, hydro- and wind-power facilities, for wires needed to transport 'green' electricity to consumers, and for decentralized energy supplies such as through rooftop solar-energy collectors.

But promises of funding injections have hit stumbling blocks in the past. The commission's economic recovery plan, proposed last November, foresees €3.5 billion in unspent money from the past budget period being reallocated to investment in energy technologies, including €500 million for offshore wind projects and €1.5 million for carbon capture and sequestration. But several groups in the European Parliament, which will vote on the issue later this month, are seeking to stop the plan. Critics say that few of the envisaged projects will materialize soon enough to help economic recovery.

Regardless, the €105 billion from the structural funds will still flow. "Sustainable funds have had renewable energies and water projects on their radar for quite some time," says Rolf Häßler, an analyst with the rating agency Oekom Research in Munich, Germany. "The massive public stimulus will give a lot of extra impetus to green investment."

GARNMENT INDUSTRIES RESPONSIGARNMENT INDUSTRIES RESPONSIBLE FOR CLIMATIC CHANGE:BLE FOR CLIMATIC CHANGE:

The raising and production of organic natural fibers and their manufacturing into fabric and apparel would have a small impact on improving Global Warming. All the hazardous and toxic chemicals involved in conventional cotton clothing contributes hugely to poisoning our planet’s agricultural lands, turning ground water and rivers into potentially carcinogenic waste waters, causing the deaths of tens of thousands of agricultural workers worldwide, encouraging the social pollution of sweatshops, and aggravating chemical sensitivities and health problems in a growing number of people wearing conventional chemical clothing. Increase in the elongation of textiles, has simultaneously led to incretion in pollution, high energy consumption and harmful emissions. It is being estimated that clothing is responsible for one ton of individual's CO2 emissions involved in the process of washing and drying.

The textile and garment industries share in contributing to Global Warming from the growing of fibers through manufacturing through distribution and transportation of clothing to stores and customers through energy guzzling and conventional dry cleaners and finally ending in mountains of discarded clothes. Here is a partial list of the ways that the clothing, garment and textile industries contribute to global warming and environmentally-friendly green steps that can be taken to reduce the impact to global warming. We’ll work our way through the clothing product lifecycle from beginning to end.

Now, with the imminent threat of global warming, and developing consumer awareness of the ecological impact, there is a demand among people for eco friendly clothing, and energy efficient products. Increase of the consumers' interest towards eco friendly clothing is in parallel to the concern for the planet's future.
As a developing country with unbroached markets, India lacks sensitivity to the practice of eco friendly production. Although a fringe intellectual trend and weak policy posture is evident. Adequate production strategies are not incorporated for sustainable way of production. Green manufacturing and recycled materials will be become a 'short-term trend' if specific standards are not set, and practices are not followed religiously.

The industry needs to proactively work towards a sustainable supply of chain. Cotton waste recycling, low carbon manufacturing programme, carbon accounting in factories, and carbon footprint calculation projects. Benchmarking energy consumption across the textile and apparel supply chain are some issues that need to be done on private-public partnership mode. Being one of the few countries with an integrated supply chain in place, India can ensure a sustainable chain from fibre to apparel.

Half the world could become unliveable

Global warming could make half the world’s inhabited areas too hot to live in and southern Europe may be turned into semi-desert, climate experts warned at a scientific congress in Copenhagen.

Marianne Bom:

The human body is unable to sweat as much as may be needed in half the world’s inhabited areas at the end of the century. If pollution by greenhouse gases continues to rise huge areas will become 'unliveable', Steven Sherwood, a climate expert at Yale University, said at a scientific climate congress in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The human body will simply reach its physiological limits if the average temperature rises by 7 degrees Celsius in some places of the Earth, said Sherwood, on Thursday, according to The Guardian.

»There will be some places on Earth where it would simply be impossible to lose heat," Sherwood said. "This is quite imaginable if we continue burning fossil fuels. I don't see any reason why we wouldn't end up there.«

According to the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the average temperature could rise by 6 degrees Celsius this century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current rates.

Climate change could also lead to severe droughts every other year and semi-desert in Europe at the end of the century, if temperature rises by four degrees Celsius, said climate expert at the University of East Anglia Rachel Warren. Climate change could turn off rainfall in Spain, Portugal, southern Italy, Greece and numerous other countries, leaving large areas of land from Portugal to Ukraine, as well as southern England, severely affected.

At the congress Rachel Warren was asked what life would be like in those areas.
»Hell, I should think. It is incomprehensible to imagine adapting to that level of drought,« Warren replied according to The Guardian.

European leadership on the road to Copenhagen

The financial and economic crisis continues to dominate the news, and understandably so. In the short term we all face a painful reduction in global prosperity. But in the long term perhaps the greatest threat of all – not only to our prosperity but also to the survival of millions of people in vulnerable areas of the globe – comes from climate change. by Stavros Dimas, European Commissioner for the Environment

The Lincoln Plan about climate change

The Lincoln Plan

Climate change is a complex issue, but it can be summarized rather simply: the consensus of science is that global warming is a threat (1); the consensus of economics is that a carbon tax would be a cost-effective remedy (2). A carbon tax is a charge for emitting carbon dioxide (CO2), the main heat-trapping culprit.

For the last several years Ecological Internet has proposed a small U.S. government federal charge initially of $5 per ton of carbon emitted as CO2, which for gasoline is about 1 cent per gallon. Since Lincoln's portrait appears on both the penny and the $5 bill, the plan goes under his name - the "Lincoln Plan". A fundamental question in addressing climate change is whether cap-and-trade or a carbon tax would be more cost-effective. For a discussion of this matter, please see the following articles: Limiting Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Prices Versus Caps and After Kyoto: Alternative Mechanisms to Control Global Warming.

$5/ton is a very good starting point for a carbon charge - it would allow implementation mechanisms to be developed, and is modest enought to be politically achievable. Most of the revenue from the tax would be used to pay for measures to reduce CO2 emissions such as conserving forests, increasing energy efficiency, and adopting cleaner energy supplies.

As a stepping-stone to a $5 carbon tax, the U.S. Congress could give the public discounts on such things as compact fluorescent lights and 100 mpg vehicles. The cost would be about $1.5 billion. Congress could also announce that once a tax (or cap) was passed the discounts would be tripled. So most households could easily make more money on rebates and energy savings than the tax would cost them.

The size of the charge could then be increased as needed. Extra revenue from a charge over $5/ton would be used mostly to lower other taxes -- the plan would tax pollution rather than employment and savings.

From $5/ton, the carbon price could rise $10 a year for six or seven years, and $5 a year after that. By 2015 the charge would reach $75/ton of carbon, or about $20/ton of CO2. This is around 20 cents per gallon of gasoline and 2 cents per kWh of electricity from traditional coal-fired plants. A price trajectory such as this would appear to be reasonable. And it would greatly speed up the adoption of current low-carbon technologies and the development of new ones.

Further boosting the plan's attractiveness would be its considerable side benefits. Saving forests, particularly tropical forests (3), would help safeguard the majority of Earth's species; efficiency gains could save us a lot of money (4) while reducing dependence upon overseas sources of energy; and moving to cleaner energy supplies would reduce harmful pollutants of many kinds. Indeed, these ancillary benefits are so large that the plan would be worth trying even apart from its core benefit of climate protection.

Sensible climate protection should, indeed, be profitable. As Amory Lovins writes, "If properly done, climate protection would actually reduce costs, not raise them. Using energy more efficiently offers an economic bonanza...because saving fossil fuel is a lot cheaper than buying it."

In short, the Lincoln Plan could handle a serious problem with great effectiveness and at low, even negative, cost. Those who would like to contact a legislator or write a letter to the editor in support of the plan may forward this page or quote from it as they wish.

UPDATE, 2008

It now seems advisable to ramp up the carbon price more quickly than was envisioned above--perhaps $5 per metric ton of CO2 (about 5 cents a gallon of gas) for the first year; $10 for the second and third years; and $5 for the fourth. This builds on British Columbia, Canada's schedule of $10,5,5,5, and 5.

Rising air pollution clouds climate debate ?

Darker skies have uncertain effect on global warming.

Quirin Schiermeier

Air pollution that is harmful to human health has increased over all populated continents except Europe since 1973, according to an extensive survey.

I can see dimly now: air pollution is on the rise in most areas of the world.punchstock

The results play into a long-standing debate over whether the Earth's skies are dimming or brightening, how this affects the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface and what that means for climate change.

Two studies published in Science in 2005 concluded that a global dimming trend that began in the 1950s has been replaced since 1990 by global brightening^1,2. The likely effect of all that extra solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface would be faster global warming.

Now a study published in Science concludes that in fact skies became dimmer over most land areas between 1973 and 2007³. Only in Europe have skies become cleaner than they were some 30 years ago; there, industrial production declined sharply after the collapse of communist governments around 1990, and air quality regulations have had a big effect since. Air quality in North America has changed little during the study period.

Kaicun Wang, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park, and his colleagues based their conclusions on visibility measurements, a good proxy for aerosol pollution, from 3,250 meteorological stations around the world. They found that visibility has tended to decrease over that period, the most pronounced dimming having occurred in South Asia and South America. Various types of aerosol have contributed to the trend, but sulphate and soot particles from fossil fuel burning are the main culprits, the team found.

"Most countries have realized by now that air pollution is a serious health risk," says Wang. "But attempts, such as China's, to regulate air quality have not yet borne fruit."

Cloudy understanding

Significant questions remain about what these results means for climate change, because soot and different kinds of aerosols can affect cloud formation in very different ways.

In come circumstances, aerosol particles can act as seeds for clouds, which help to reflect the Sun's rays back into space and so cool the planet. Aerosols can also reduce cloudiness, however, as probably happens in northern China, meaning that the net effect of aerosol pollution on global temperatures is worryingly uncertain.

Another complication is that soot from burning biofuels, widely used for cooking and heating in India and Africa, tends to absorb sunlight rather than scattering it back into space. This means that it warms the troposphere in much the same way as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases⁴.

Wang suspects that the poor understanding of these effects might explain why previous studies, which measured incoming solar radiation rather than visibility, concluded that the skies have brightened over most land areas, including China.

"The issue of global dimming versus global brightening is not just a question of aerosols," agrees Martin Wild, an atmospheric scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who led one of the Science studies in 2005. "One must indeed consider clouds as well."

Wang is optimistic, however, that the air in China could become cleaner in the near future — as it did in Europe in the 1980s and previously in North America — if coal is replaced by oil and natural gas as an energy source, and if particulate filters in cars and factories become more common.

Rising air pollution clouds climate debate ?

Indonesia to sell carbon credits to conserve forests

Indonesia has applied to join a World Bank programme intended to help developing nations fight deforestation by selling tradeable carbon credits.

International climate negotiators are working to allow developing nations the right to sell some carbon credits if they clamp down on deforestation, which is responsible for roughly 20% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. The World Bank's US$300-million Forest Carbon Partnership Facility is designed to lay the groundwork for such an international agreement.

The programme already includes 25 countries, but Indonesia, the world's third-largest greenhouse-gas emitter, had remained on the sidelines until it applied in Feburary. The bank estimates that the country could earn between US$400 million and $2 billion selling credits for protecting forests.

Did you know that the average server produces the same emissions as a 15 mpg SUV?

HostGator hosts over 1,300,000 websites on its shared and reseller servers. That means a lot of servers, and a lot of carbon emissions. So we asked ourselves, What can we do to be part of the climate change solution? We took steps to minimize our environmental impact at the office, but still we weren't satisfied. We then switched to 36% more efficient servers, but still we weren't satisfied!

All of our shared and reseller servers are now 130% wind powered!

That's right! 130%!
We're not just neutralizing our environmental impact, we're reversing it!

HostGator has purchased certified Renewable Energy Credits representing 130% of the electricity used to both power and cool every last one of our shared and reseller servers!

Is there a technological solution to global warming?

A German research ship, the Polarstern, is steaming towards a region off the coast of Argentina in the South Atlantic, where it intends to release six tons of iron sulphate over an area of 115 square miles. The scientists point out that this supports the idea that iron-rich seas result in greater amounts of carbon being sequestered in deep layers, because atmospheric carbon dioxide is drawn into the sea by the vast blooms of plankton at the surface.

The flood due to Global Warming risks California:

Sea level rise compelled by global warming could flood parts of the California coast in coming decades. The report by an independent Oakland research group, the Pacific Institute, says that nearly half a million people statewide and 110,000 in Orange County could be at risk by the year 2100 under some climate change scenarios. In Orange County which means a 55 percent increase over those already known to be at risk for a 100-year flood.

The level of risk is going to increase in the future and there are folks already in the flood plain who are going to experience increased risk. It will reach higher and reach further inland in some cases.

The strategy is to look at different sectors of the economy -agriculture, energy, water supply, forestry, parks, transportation. It helps the climate action team focus priorities for informed policy. The study says that the rise in sea level of four to five feet would place an additional 220,000 people statewide at risk in a 100-year flood event from 260,000 estimated to be at risk in 2000 to 480,000.Nearly a quarter of those would be in Orange County, the study says, although Los Angeles, Monterey, San Mateo, Sonoma and Ventura counties would have significant populations at risk as well.

In all, some $100 billion in buildings would be placed at risk along the California coast. The flooding could affect roads, hospitals, schools, emergency facilities and railroads. Wetlands and natural ecosystems also could be destroyed by changes in sea level.

Potential costs in Orange County, part of the estimated $17 billion total, include $14 billion in residential costs, $2.3 billion for commercial facilities, $610 million for industrial facilities, and $110 million each for educational and religious facilities. Because of these the actual market costs could be several times higher. Even places that are not directly subject to flooding could suffer erosion because of sea level rise. And sea level rise in Northern California could have troubling effects in the south. Increased salinity in the California delta could reduce supplies of drinking water piped to Southern California.

The report draws a distinction between mitigation measures to reduce the effects of global warming, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and “adaptations” to coming changes along the coast -changes that will be inevitable, even if we reduced greenhouse gas emissions to zero tomorrow.

California is already moving to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But a variety of stakeholders, including those involved in everything from shipping, boating and recreation to habitat conservation, must come together. The choices we make in the next few years are going to have a big bearing on whether this plays itself out or not, both in terms of mitigation- greenhouse gas reduction -and in terms of adaptation.

Action Alert: Critical Elephant Corridor in India to be Severed

The largest and potentially most viable population of Asian elephants is found in the mountains of the Western Ghats where the three Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka meet. You may recall that Ecological Internet's Earth Action Network first worked on Asian elephants in India, with some positive outcomes, in October of 2006.

Of a total population of about 2000 elephants surviving in Peninsular India in various fragmented habitat islands, the largest single population which may number over 1000 individuals is found in a near contiguous habitat extending over this 4500sq km tract. The best forage is in the Tamil Nadu section but the elephants need to migrate to Kerala and Karnataka each summer when water and food become scarce in Tamil Nadu

Direct movement from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka is no longer possible because of clearing and development and so now the only way for the elephants to migrate from the east to the west in the dry time and return during the wet season is via the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu, to the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala. But due to habitat fragmentation this route must now pass through a corridor which is only about 2.5 km wide extending from Mulehole in Karnataka to Muthanga in Kerala.

The major inter-state highway linking Bangalore with Calicut passing through this corridor is used by hundreds of vehicles round the clock. Recently a decision was made to relocate four different Kerala government departmental check-posts to within the corridor involving all manner of infrastructure - building complexes, housing, offices, toilets and dormitories for drivers, a fuel filling station and so on. The checkpoint clearance takes hours, so there would constantly be hundreds of lorries parked along the road on either side of the checkpoints within the forests preventing elephants from using the corridor. A suitable alternative site for these check-posts exists outside the forest.

In another part of this elephant population's range, the proposed establishment of the India Based Neutrino Observatory (INO) in Singara, within the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve and in the buffer zone of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, threatens to further fragment elephant migration routes.

The Wayanad Nature Protection Group (Wayanad Prakruthi Samrakshana Samati) has appealed to the world community to help prevent the severance of this critical corridor.

ENVIRONMENT: Algae Against Climate Change?

Algae absorb carbon dioxide. Credit:Photo Stock

until very recently, the proliferation algae was interpreted as an undesirable consequence of the overuse of agro-chemicals, whose immediate results included skin irritation in humans and the death of aquatic fauna from lack of oxygen.

But their potential for absorbing one of the principal greenhouse gases - which cause global climate change - could be crucial for avoiding environmental catastrophes. Like terrestrial plants, the algae consume carbon during photosynthesis.

"We took algae from the ocean, we put it in plastic containers in greenhouses, where we fed it with carbon dioxide produced by conventional electric generators," explained Laurenz Thomsen, a bio-geologist from Jacobs University in the northern German city of Bremen.

"Exposed to solar light, the algae transform the carbon dioxide into biomass that can later be used as biodiesel, whose combustion doesn't emit greenhouse gases," he added.

The Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Project (GGMP) is coordinated by Thomsen, with cooperation from the Bremen polytechnic university, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Marine Research, and several companies, including the European electricity supplier E.ON.

Thomsen has dubbed the small greenhouse "Algenreactor", set up at Jacobs University, where the algae transform carbon dioxide into organic fuel. The project is operating at the experimental phase, producing just a half-litre of biofuel.

"The diesel that we refine here is absolutely organic. It satisfies the European standards. I'm confident that we will be able to move on to an industrial phase in the coming months," he added.

Fritz Henken-Mellier, director of the Farge thermoelectric plant just outside Bremen, agrees with that prediction. Some of the carbon dioxide emissions from this coal-fired generator were captured by GGMP.

"Surely we need to build a much bigger greenhouse, covering hundreds of square metres, so that the capture of carbon dioxide and the production of biofuel correspond to the scope of a commercial energy plant," he said in an interview for this report.

Henken-Mellier calculates that "the capture of just 10 percent of the gases emitted by the Farge plant means a reduction of 600 tonnes daily of carbon dioxide."

According to Thomsen, the area of a greenhouse capable of absorbing the carbon dioxide from a 350-megawatt electrical plant and transforming it into biofuel would have to be 25 square kilometres and would cost some 480 million dollars.

The sum is small compared to the cost of conventional crops to produce biofuel and reduce toxic gases at a scale similar to that of the "algae-based reactor." An equivalent planting of rapeseed, for example, could cost as much as 25 times more.

But Thomsen's project doesn't convince everyone. "Those calculations are very ingenuous," said Karl-Herrman Steinberg, director of one of Europe's leading algae producers, located in the northern German city of Kloetze.

"The costs of growing algae, the elimination of the water and distillation of the combustible oil are very high for this to be profitable on an industrial scale," said Steinberg.

Thomsen admits that the location of the greenhouses should be decided based on available sunshine. In northern Germany, with relatively few hours of sunlight, the model would not work. "The greenhouses would have to be built in the south and southeast of Europe," he said.

"We are already negotiating with German and foreign firms, from Brazil and India, which manage large algae crops," he added.

The GGMP is not the only project of its kind. During the first global oil crisis, in the 1970s, U.S. scientists came up with a similar process for transforming algae into biofuel. But the attempt was abandoned in 1996, when low oil prices erased the incentives to study organic fuels.

Now, with the current energy and environmental crisis, the U.S. company GreenFuel, in the north-eastern state of Massachusetts, is planning a greenhouse to cover at least one square kilometre for 2009.

Isaac Berzin, of GreenFuel, says that to capture the carbon dioxide released by a 1,000 gigawatt generate would require an algae greenhouse between eight and 16 square km, which could produce more than 150 million litres of biodiesel and 190 million litres of ethanol.

Scientists explore role of algae in climate change

The Arctic Ocean could be a sink for carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to global climate change, say scientists studying the marine ecosystem.

Researchers from Canada and nine other countries are on board the Amundsen icebreaker off Baffin Island. They're studying the exchange of carbon dioxide between the ocean and the atmosphere, which they say is key to understanding climate change.

Entrance to the Clark Fiord on the east coast of Baffin Island. (Courtesy: Patricia Bell)

As part of the research, an instrument called a rosette is raised from the seabed of Lancaster Sound, stopping at different depths to add water into each of its 24 bottles. It's just 4 a.m. – as Jean-Eric Tremblay of Montreal's McGill University prepares to study the samples to learn more about phytoplankton.

The tiny photosynthetic algae are an important food source in the Arctic marine ecosystem. They also absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As sea ice shrinks from warming, the algae could play an important role in slowing climate change, said Tremblay.

"The more open water there is, the more the phytoplankton are able to consume carbon dioxide and limit the effect of the greenhouse gas over the Arctic Ocean," he said. "This is one of the loops that we are looking at, but the net effect of all these processes is not known at present."

Scientists are also looking at the full cycle of carbon as it moves through the food chain, said Karine Lacoste of the Ocean Science Institute in Rimouski, Que. She explained that they're trying to determine what the capacity of the ecosystem is for taking out extra carbon dioxide from cars and industry.

Lacoste and Tremblay say they're working to understand if there is more carbon dioxide going into the ocean than coming out, and how melting sea ice may effect the cycle.