As blanket of ozone over southern pole seals up, temperatures on continent could soar by 3C, increasing sea level rise by 1.4m

The hole in the Earth’s ozone layer has shielded Antarctica from the worst effects of global warming until now, according to the most comprehensive review to date of the state of the Antarctic climate. But scientists warned that as the hole closes up in the next few decades, temperatures on the continent could rise by around 3C on average, with melting ice contributing to a global sea-level increases of up to 1.4m.

The western Antarctic peninsula has seen rapid ice loss as the world has warmed, but other parts of the continent have paradoxically been cooling, with a 10% increase in ice in the seas around the region in recent decades. Many climate change sceptics have used the Antarctic cooling as evidence against global warming.

But John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey said scientists are now “very confident” that the anomaly had caused by the ozone hole above Antarctica. “We knew that, when we took away this blanket of ozone, we would have more ultra-violet radiation. But we didn’t realise the extent to which it would change the atmospheric circulation of the Antarctic.”

These changes in weather have increased winds in the Southern Ocean region and meant that a large part of the continent has remained relatively cool compared with the western peninsula. But because the the CFC gasses that caused the ozone hole now been banned, scientists expect the damage to repair itself within the next 50-60 years. By then the cooling effect will have faded out and Turner said the Antarctic would face the full effects of global warming. This means an increase in average air temperatures of around 3C and a reduction in sea ice by around a third.

The biggest threat to the continent comes from warming seas. Robert Binschadler, a glaciologist at Nasa who monitors Antarctic ice sheets, said: “The heat in the ocean is getting underneath the floating ice shelves, these floating fringes of the ice sheet that are hundreds of metres thick. That warm water is melting the underside of the ice shelf, reducing the buttressing effect.” Thinning of the ice shelf at the fringes leads to glaciers moving more quickly.

The retreat of ice from Antarctica has contributed around 10% to global sea-level rise in recent decades. “The danger is that this warmer water will get under these ice shelves and cause the ice streams to get faster and feed ice out into the ocean,” said Turner.

Published by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), a coalition of international experts that coordinates international research in the region, the report has been published to give negotiators in Copenhagen the most up-to-date science available. “Everything is connected — Antarctica may be a long way away but it is an important part of the Earth’s system,” said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of SCAR. “It contains 90% of the world’s ice, 70% of the world’s fresh water and that is enough, if it melts, to raise sea levels by 63m.”

SCAR’s review also corroborated recent work by Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany, that average sea-level rise will be closer to 1.4m by the end of the century. This is higher than the rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, said Turner, because the IPCC’s forecasts did not include the impact of melting ice sheets on sea level rises. Many of the climate models used by the IPCC have also not taken the ozone hole into account in their simulations.

Sourced from: Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Two reports say scene of 1984 disaster still has alarming levels of poisons, with one 2,400 times the WHO guideline

Groundwater found near the site of the world’s worst chemical industrial accident in Bhopal is still toxic and poisoning residents a quarter of a century after a gas leak there killed thousands, two studies have revealed.

Delhi’s Centre for Science and the Environment said that water found two miles from the factory contained pesticides at levels 40 times higher than the Indian safety standard.

In a second study, the UK-based Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA) found a chemical cocktail in the local drinking water – with one carcinogen, carbon tetrafluoride, present at 2,400 times the World Health Organisation’s guidelines.

Around 5,000 people were killed when clouds of toxic gas escaped from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant at midnight on 3 December 1984. 15,000 more died in the following weeks, and activists say that the disaster is still poisoning a new generation of victims.

The Sambhavna clinic, a charity campaigning in Bhopal, has conducted a survey of 20,000 people and says it has found alarmingly high rates of birth defects. A preliminary study suggests as many as one child in 25 is born with a congenital defect.

“We are seeing birth defects at 10 times the incidence at national levels,” said Satinath Sarangi, of the Sambhavna clinic.

“The government have been trying to say that the factory is safe and open for the public to tour it. But these results show how polluted the site has become.”

Earlier studies have also pointed out that boys who were either exposed as toddlers to gases from the Bhopal pesticide plant or born to exposed parents were prone to “growth retardation”.

Survivors in Bhopal have received meagre compensation: most of them got a Rs 25,000 cheque (£310) for a lifetime of suffering caused by damage to their lungs, liver, kidneys and the immune system.

Mohini Devi, 52, spent three months in hospital after inhaling the gas. For 25 years she has had difficulty breathing and suffered shooting pain through her abdomen. Her children have all been affected – one died from “gas complications” 15 years ago.

“My real worry is my grandchildren. Already some have been born without eyes. Why is nobody doing anything for us?” she said.

In Bhopal the legacy of the city’s night of death is there for all to see. The disused Union Carbide factory remains a rusty symbol of bureaucratic indifference, legal actions and rows over corporate responsibility. Not only did the government wind up research into the after effects of the poison gas in 1994, it failed to gather evidence of culpability in the case against the US company.

Campaigners say the site now contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals that continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 local people. Union Carbide says it is no longer responsible for the factory and pointed out it has already made a settlement of $470m (£284m).

The company’s chief executive at the time, Warren Anderson, was briefly arrested after the leak 25 years ago but was released and fled India. He has been declared “untraceable” by Indian consular authorities although his address in a New York suburb is publicly listed.

The Indian government has also drawn fire for trying to pass the disused factory off as a tourist spot – with local politicians last month proposing to build a Hiroshima-like memorial there depicting a detailed account of the disaster. Adding insult to injury, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh mocked activists on a visit to the city by picking up a fistful of waste and saying “see, I am alive”.

Sarangi says the government has been trying to tempt Union Carbide’s successor, Dow Chemical, back to India and to secure $1bn of investment.

In return, say campaigners, the government plans to let Dow evade its responsibility to clean up the Bhopal plant site. “This is all about the money. Politicians in India would rather do this than fight for people who suffered,” Sarangi said.

Sourced from: Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

A new, government-sponsored, awards scheme is helping to showcase the UK’s innovation in science and green technology

Designing traffic lights to be more energy efficient may not seem the hardest thing to do. Change the energy-wasting incandescent bulbs for modern light sources and you’re done, right? Not quite.

“We’ve reinvented the humble traffic light,” says Matthew Vincent, deputy director of sales and marketing at Siemens Mobility Traffic Solutions. “Previously they used very energy-inefficient [50W] tungsten-halogen lights, which only have a lifespan of six months or so, which means you have lots of maintenance issues with people visiting site to replace them.” The company replaced the bulbs with a cluster of modern LEDs, redesigned the electrical control systems from scratch and lowered the operating voltage from 240V to 48V.

The result is a new set of lights that uses less than a quarter of the electricity of standard traffic lights. There are around half a million tungsten-based traffic lights in operation around the UK and, considering the CO₂ emissions saved by preventing fleets of vans driving around replacing blown tungsten lights, the cumulative benefits to the environment become apparent. Which is perhaps one of the reasons that the Siemens traffic lights won first prize this week in the energy and environment category of the inaugural iAwards.

Showcasing a shift-change

The iAwards, set up by the government’s Business, Innovation and Skills department, are designed to help showcase British science and technology, in big and small companies: a Bafta-style award to give prominence to a field that is sometimes overlooked in the UK. Fighting it out for prizes in 10 categories, small startup firms were pitted directly against multinationals such as Unilever and Siemens.

And environment was a strong theme in the shortlist. “There is a huge amount of interest in sustainability and environment,” says entrepreneur James Caan, chair of the iAwards judging panels and a star of BBC2′s Dragon’s Den. “We are seeing more and more people coming forward with business ideas, entrepreneurs developing that space. There is a shift-change in people recognising its value and importance.”

At Solargorilla, which won the iAward for digital communication, chief executive Jerry Ranger says his company’s invention is all about allowing people to use off-grid technology in everyday life.

The device has two solar panels, each the size of an A4 sheet. A proprietary circuit board stabilises the voltage coming in and a super-efficient battery stores the electrical power generated from the sun. In the northern hemisphere the Solargorilla will charge a standard laptop in around six hours or a mobile phone in under an hour. “We had a guy on Madagascar who ran a laptop for four weeks completely grid-free,” says Ranger.

Other shortlisted companies included AMEE, a company aiming to track and connect the world’s energy and consumption data, and map its environmental impact. AlertMe offered up a smart meter that it says could save consumers 25% of their energy bills, while the radical-looking QR5 wind turbine from Quiet Revolution is designed to fit discreetly to buildings, generating decentralised power in the urban environment. Diverse Energy had its PowerCube – a fuel cell that runs on ammonia and that could replace diesel generators to power mobile phone towers in developing countries – shortlisted for the “next big thing” category.

Paul Drayson, the UK science minister, and a technology-company entrepreneur himself with vaccine company Powderject, says that climate change is a massive market opportunity because the world has no choice but to respond to the problems. But, because it is such a new sector, there are many unknowns for small companies. “The industrial structures haven’t settled down yet,” he says. “In life sciences you have an established structure whereby a startup from university will form the biotech company and have a route to commercialisation, either through licensing or acquisition to a large pharmaceutical company. In clean tech, that route to market has not been well established. That’s all being built and that what’s makes this market area exciting.”

And he says there is no better time for British companies to get moving on green technology. “We’re coming out of a nasty recession; market shares change more rapidly at this stage in the economic cycle than any other time. It’s the companies that are bold now and invest in new technologies that are going to win market share as the economy grows over the next five years.”

Protect your investment

Building a company from scratch may not be the specific expertise of those coming up with ideas, but Drayson has some tips. Anyone thinking of starting up a business should ensure their technology idea is protected, he says. “You have patents and registered designs. Then go and talk to companies operating in that space; don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re unique, don’t make the mistake of thinking you have no competition, you do.”

For small business startups, even in the green technology space where Caan says specific investment funds are increasingly becoming available, would-be entrepreneurs also need to understand that the initial idea is only a part of the business. “The one thing I come across time and time again is that entrepreneurs believe the idea is 95% and execution is 5% and there lies the problem,” says Caan. “Success lies in your ability to execute a journey – it is the development, patent, logistics, manufacturing, distribution, pricing, branding and marketing. People, for some reason, forget all those things.”

Sourced from: Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

12/11/2009

A police offensive and the global economic crisis have combined to produce the largest fall in more than 20 years

The Brazilian government yesterday announced a “historic” drop in the deforestation of the Amazon, weeks before world leaders meet in Copenhagen for climate change talks.

Brazilian authorities said that between August 2008 and July this year, deforestation in the world’s largest tropical rainforest fell by the largest amount in more than 20 years, dropping by 45% from nearly 13,000 square kilometres to around 7,000 square kilometres (5,000 square miles to 2,700 square miles).

“It is an excellent figure – a historic result,” the environment minister, Carlos Minc, said in the capital, Brasilia.

“It is a substantial drop,” said the head of Brazil’s Space Institute, Gilberto Câmara, according to the government news provider Agência Brasil. He claimed it was the most significant cut in deforestation since his institute started monitoring rainforest destruction with satellite technology in 1988.

“This is a very happy moment – to note that the efforts of Brazilian society to contain the deforestation of the Amazon have reached a very satisfactory level.”

The new figures, reportedly rushed out before the Copenhagen talks, come days after Brazil announced ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions by 2020, partly by continuing to battle illegal deforestation.

This week, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, said her country would take proposals for voluntary reductions of 38-42% by 2020 to the Copenhagen summit. Britain’s prime-minister, Gordon Brown, wrote to Brazil’s president this week to congratulate him on the move.

Environmentalists welcomed the news of a drop in rainforest destruction, with Greenpeace’s Amazon director, Paulo Adario, claiming that, “whenever the government followed the law, deforestation fell”. But he warned: “We must stay alert so that this falling trend becomes consolidated and allows us to achieve the dream of zero deforestation in the Amazon. It is an important drop – but a lot of forest is still coming down.”

Rousseff said the figures showed the government had “done its homework” in order to combat illegal rainforest destruction. She pointed to federal police raids on illegal logging operations across the Amazon region, and government attempts to provide economic alternatives to destruction. Since February 2008 the government has been waging an “unprecedented” campaign against the loggers, dispatching hundreds of heavily armed agents to remote rainforest towns where destruction was out of control.

But, in a statement, Greenpeace activists in Brazil said the world financial crisis had also played a part in silencing the chainsaws. “The crisis … has contributed to helping put the breaks on the rhythm of destruction, with a fall in the demand for Amazon products linked to deforestation such as meat, soy and timber,” Greenpeace said.

Tellingly, Mato Grosso, a soy producing Amazonian state that has seen its forests ravished in recent years largely as a result of the Chinese demand for soy, saw a 65% drop in deforestation.

• For news and analysis of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen sign up for the Guardian’s environment email newsletter Greenlight

Sourced from: Environment news, comment and analysis from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Wed Nov 4, 2009
By Green Economy Post – Matter Network
By A Siegel, Author of the Get Energy Smart! NOW! blog.

All too often, those engaged in examining options for “greening” a new or existing building are constrained in a stove-piped cost analysis which (in a very simplified fashion) goes something along these lines:

How much more will it cost to build?
And, how fast will energy and other operating cost (water usage/sewers, maintenance) savings pay for those additional costs?

This typical analytical structure is mistaken on multiple levels. For example, with a truly holistic systems-of-systems process “going green” can actually drove down the initial costs (or remain at levelized cost) because, for example, better insulated and sealed building envelopes enable smaller heating and cooling systems. Thus, the better insulation might increase capital costs while procuring a smaller HVAC system cuts them.

But, putting aside the quite legitimate question as to whether well-designed “greening” actually drives up costs, stove-piping analysis on operating cost savings to pay back increase upfront capital costs excludes what is likely to be the far more significant implications for things like productivity.

A new study, Green Building and Productivity, from researchers at the University of San Diego’s business school institute on real estate focuses directly on this issue. The core question could be phrased as follows: Are workers in “green” buildings more or less productive than those in traditional structures?

The study examines a wide-range of issues related to the difficulties of measuring office productivity, various (potential) impacts on productivity, and studies related to these issues. For this effort, they use sick days and a “self-reported productivity percentage change after moving into a new building” as their metrics. With this in mind, the research team surveyed 154 buildings with some 2000 tenants.

Across these buildings and tenants, they calculated an average salary/benefits of $106,644. And, when comparing “green” to non-green buildings, their work showed a reduction in sick leave of 2.88 days per year, on average, and a 4.88% productivity improvement. That translates, based on the salaries, to a value to the employer of $1,228.54 due to reduced sick leave and $5,204 due to productivity increases.

Healthier buildings reduce sick time and increase productivity. The steps required to provide a healthier building are not that much of a design and engineering challenge. Generally natural light, good ventilation, the absence of organic compounds provides happier, healthier workers. Appropriate temperature ranges or localized controls is also a big plus to workers and past research does support the notion of greater productivity from any or all of these improvements. Sick building syndrome should be a thing of the past, but it is not. Energy Star-labeled buildings need not also be healthier although generally they appear to be and more recently we are finding a surge in LEED buildings which tend to require better and safer environments. We now have some evidence that there is an economic pay-off to tenants who pay attention to space quality.

Okay, a “healthier” working environment is more productive but what is the cost of that productivity? Do the upfront costs outweigh those benefits?

What is increased productivity and reduced sick time worth in net present value terms? The early study by Greg Kats (2003) suggested NPV benefits in the range of $37 to $55 per square foot. For an owner-occupied building we can easily imagine NPVs equal to much more than these figures. For example, discounting $25 per year per square foot for 10 years at 10%, based on the sum of the two benefits shown above and rounded and assuming a 10-year differential for such benefits and a fairly conservative discount rate, we get a present value of $153.61 per square foot. It costs much less than this to building a better environment for workers, so the net present value certainly could reach $100 per square foot or more when an owner-occupant captures those benefits.

In other words, for an owner-occupied building, paying a $50+ premium for “green” on construction would provide a three-to-one payoff, in net present value terms over a 10 year period.

Oh, remember about “stove-piping”? Green Building and Productivity (pdf) is focused on that productivity question.

It is not addressing the utility bill savings (lower energy and water use, reduced sewer fees due to rainwater capture, etc), reduced maintenance costs (such as white roofs lasting longer), and other operating savings that energy efficient “green” buildings show compared to traditional, built-to-code buildings. In other words, the payoff ratios are even better – especially because well-designed “green” projects might not even cost more to build.

We have quite a long way to go before there is true full value analysis in the cost-benefit equation of infrastructure (and other) investment decisions. Even recognizing those limitations, getting building owners (and occupants) to realize that the “greening” value goes beyond energy savings will be quite important.

Sat Nov 7, 2009
By Chris Brandrick – PC World, Reuters

It’s becoming increasingly easier to make your PC setup more eco-friendly, thanks to a wide range of both software and hardware solutions available to help you go green.

The green-computing movement, which begin with the Energy Star program back in 1992, strives to ensure that the computer industry adopts various environmentally sustainable practices, such as creating more environmentally sound products and ensuring that those products’ manufacturing processes, overall design, everyday use and eventual disposal have as small an environmental impact as possible.

It’s no secret that not every manufacturer is as eco-centric as they could be, but with the help of certain product makers and a handful of selected software, you can do your part.

Bad Eco-Design

One example of poor eco-design comes courtesy of the new USB Eco Button.

Saving some money on your energy bills is one thing, but saving the entire planet is a much more admirable goal. Unfortunately the recently released USB Eco Button, which promises to save both the planet and your wallet, fails on both counts, adding to the ever-growing list of useless gadgets.

The device, which is essentially a USB-powered plastic button, puts any Windows based machine, except those running Windows 7, into a low-power energy saving mode. Once activated, the included software will then monitor your computers power usage, in addition to recording how much CO2 the Eco Button has saved.

The problem? The Eco Button is largely unnecessary, since such low-power modes can be implemented via software-only fixes. Considering the materials and energy used to manufacture it, the Eco Button could be doing more harm than good. The final icing on this not-so-green cake? The $14 ‘Eco Button’ seems to be a second-rate imitation of another previously released–and trademarked–’Ecobutton’.

That said, there are numerous other ways to green up your OC.

Environmentally Sound Solutions

Lowering your CO2 emissions (and in turn, your bills) by reducing your power consumption can be achieved by turning to more environmentally friendly products and services. Francine Kizner looks at how you can make your office more green with this run-down of eight handy eco-gadgets, but for those more concerned with going green at home be sure to read over the following tips:

Manage Your PC’s Power Usage With Eco Software

Now that we’ve established that you do not need a plastic button to put your computer to sleep,here are a number of programs can do the job by putting your PC into the deepest sleep possible without compromising your session:

• Edison from Verdiem – Free energy monitoring software that can help reduce your PC’s power usage.
• PowerManager 3 from DSSW – A Mac-only power management app, which aims to save you hundreds of kilowatts-per-hour (kWh) per year. A free 30-day trial is available.
• WatchOverEnergy from AKS-Labs – Although now a fairly old piece of freeware, this Energy Star approved Windows only program could help you save up-to $75 per year in energy thanks to its power management tools.
• PowerSave – Available for both PC and Mac, PowerSave promises intelligent power management. Free trial available.
• BizEE Benchmark from BizEE Software – Although aimed primarily at business users, this software can be tweaked for home use, creating your very own home energy audit.
• JSutils – JSutils has a range of energy saving software worth checking out.

In addition to the various software solutions, the major OSes all have built-in power-saving modes, such as OS X’s Energy Saver and Windows’ Power Options control panel and sleep mode, which my colleague Jason Cross discusses in greater detail here.

Switching To Green Hardware

Changing your PC’s various components, amongst other gadgets, to greener alternatives is another way to reduce your environmental impact. Apple is well-known for its recent green efforts, even managing to please Greenpeace this year and moving up a place in their rankings. Sony Ericsson has also been getting in on the eco-act this year with greener cell phones. Unfortunately due to the economic downturn the interest in tweaking products to be green has decreased, but some companies are still offering ecological hardware options:

• Western Digital – WD offers a whole range of green hard drives, which promise to save, on average, 4 or 5 watts over other similar drives.
• MSI – Last year MSI introduced the Wind board, a motherboard aimed designed to save power. When idle, it uses 10% less power than comparable products.
• Antec – Antec provide a variety of power supply units (PSU) that boldly claim to be amongst the most power efficient PSU’s on earth.
• NEC – A recent offering from NEC is the new eco-conscious MultiSync 17-inch monitor. It has a special eco-mode designed to save over 42% in power versus similar speced monitors. It also has an Energy Star approval.

By using some of the products mentioned above , along with various other alternatives, you can save yourself some money over time, while doing your bit for Planet Earth.

Have you gone green, or do you make use of some green products when it comes to computing? Be sure to let us know in the comments and share your eco-experience.

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