Science and Environment
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  Tuesday, 20 January 2009


Dengue fever epidemic hits Cairns. Queensland Health is setting up an incident management team in Cairns to combat the spread of type 3 dengue fever across the city. [ABC News: Breaking Stories]
10:36:03 PM    

  Monday, 19 January 2009


Most glaciers will disappear by middle of century and add to rising sea levels, expert warns.

Most of the planet's glaciers are melting so fast that they will disappear by the middle of the century, a leading expert has warned. Figures from the World Glacier Monitoring Service show that although melt rates for 2007 fell substantially from record levels the previous year, the loss of ice was still the third worst on record.

The total mass left in the glaciers is now thought to be at the lowest level for "thousands of years".

Even under moderate predictions of global warming, the small glaciers, which make up the majority by number, will not recover, said Prof Wilfried Haeberli, the organisation's director.

The warning will raise concern among those who say that glacier melting is one of the greatest threats of climate change because it raises the risk of sudden avalanches of rocks and soil released from the ice, threatening the livelihoods of more than 2 billion people who depend on melt-water to feed rivers in summer. Glacier melting will also add to rising global sea levels.

"If the climate is not really cooling dramatically, they'll retreat and disintegrate," said Haeberli. "This means many will simply be lost in the next decades - 10, 20, 30, 40 years.

"If you have a realistic, mid-warming scenario, then there's no hope for the small glaciers - in the Pyrenees, in Africa, in the Andes or Rocky mountains. The large glaciers in Alaska and the Himalayas will take longer, but even those very large glaciers will change completely; they will be much, much smaller, and many of them will disintegrate, forming lakes in many cases."

The WGMS, whose backers include UN agencies and scientific bodies, collects annual data for up to 100 glaciers around the world, including 30 "reference" glaciers in nine different mountain ranges on four continents, for which data goes back nearly three decades.

Figures for 2005-06 showed the biggest loss of ice in a single year since those records began, and based on historic reconstructions, it was thought to be the worst year for 5,000 years.

The latest data for 2006-07 shows that 22 of the 27 reference glaciers for which data has been supplied lost mass, as did 55 of a longer list of 74 glaciers. The total losses were half that of the previous year, but still the third largest on record. In Europe it is thought glaciers have lost one quarter of their mass in the last eight years alone, said Haeberli.

Although the mass balance of glaciers would fluctuate with natural changes in temperatures and snowfall, climate scientists believe the sustained losses of recent decades are partly due to man-made global warming, with the 10 hottest years on record coming in the last 11 years.

"The general trend to increased loss rates is continuing," Haeberli said. "The year was a little bit less terrible than [the previous] year ... but still a very heavy loss. It's still two times the average loss rate of the 20th century."

Although the data only covers some of the world's glaciers, its figures are mirrored by reports from experts from around the globe.

Two years ago the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast that if current trends continue, 80% of Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 30 years, although more recent estimates have suggested the 2060s or later.

Last year the UN environment programme and the WGMS jointly published data for 1,800 glaciers on all seven continents, which warned losses had been accelerating globally since the mid-1980s, so that the annual average decline for 1996-2005 was double that of the previous decade, and four times that of the decade before. Last week China Dialogue, a London-based organisation dedicated to debate on China's environment issues, launched a campaign to highlight the same trends in melting in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau.

Those glaciers feed all the main river systems in Asia, depended on by the estimated 40% of the world's population that lives in northern India, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, said Isabel Hilton, China Dialogue's editor.

"In a region that is already fractured and unstable, the melting of the 'third pole' glaciers is one of the most important challenges facing humanity in the 21st century," she said.

In December the US Geological Survey also warned that sea-level rise could be even worse than feared, as much as 1.5 metres by the end of this century, partly due to increased melting of the volume of water stored in glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland.

Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for UNEP, said the latest findings should encourage more governments to follow moves by some politicians to invest billions of dollars in clean energy and efficiency as a way of curbing greenhouse gases.

He urged world leaders to agree a treaty to cut emissions. Water experts have also called for more investment in better water management.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

[Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk]
8:19:01 PM    

  Monday, 12 January 2009


According to the Greenhouse Indicator Report released by The Climate Group today, emissions originating with energy consumption in Australia's eastern states rose during 2008.

Emissions in Victoria rose by 2.2 million tonnes and in Queensland by 2 million tonnes; but in New South Wales, emissions fell by 0.5 million tonnes.

A grimmer picture is painted when comparing emission to previous years. When comparing with levels in 2000, emissions were collectively up 19 per cent. Going back to 1990, the Kyoto Protocol benchmark, in Queensland greenhouse gas emissions have risen 116 per cent, NSW has experienced a 30 per cent rise and in Victoria, emissions are up 32 per cent .

[Source: Energy Matters]

4:21:41 PM    

First flight of algae-fuelled jet. Continental Airlines is the latest to test fly a jet biofuel, this time with a product derived partially from algae. [BBC News | Science & Environment | World Edition]
12:33:01 PM    

  Wednesday, 7 January 2009


Milky Way 'bigger than thought'. The Milky Way has 50% more mass and is travelling 120,000km per hour faster than once thought, a study shows. [BBC News | Science & Environment | World Edition]
10:40:26 PM    

  Monday, 5 January 2009


Australia's plan to produce 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020 includes incentives for solar panels, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong.

Wong, releasing draft laws for the target today in Brisbane, said it would include so-called Solar Credits for people who use energy from the sun. The laws also expand the target of electricity from renewable sources to 45,000 gigawatt-hours in 2020 from the existing 9,500 GWh in 2010.

"We are building the low pollution economy of the future by putting a cost on carbon pollution and driving investment in renewable technologies like wind, solar and geothermal energy," Wong said in an e-mailed statement.

Australia's renewable energy target is part of the government's aim to reduce greenhouse gases 60 percent by 2050 to address climate change. Wong this week said the government would use emissions trading to cut pollution 5-15 percent by 2020.

The plan will allow consumers to earn five credits, or Renewable Energy Certificates, for each mega-watt hour of solar energy produced by their panels. These RECs will act as an up- front capital cost worth A$7,500 ($5,194) for purchasers of household photovoltaic systems, Wong said.

"These Solar Credits will help households, small businesses and community groups get assistance with the up-front cost of new solar systems," Environment Minister Peter Garrett said in the statement. "This will provide the industry with a firm footing for the future"

Solar thermal plants might provide half of the renewable target, WorleyParsons Ltd., Australia's biggest engineering company, said in August.

Australian investment in solar power systems may reach as much as A$17.9 billion over the next 20 years with the introduction of a feed-in tariff, the Clean Energy Council, an industry lobby group, said in November.

The council said today the expanded renewable energy target for electricity will trigger more than A$20 billion of new investment and drive immediate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gemma Daley in Canberra at gdaley@bloomberg.net
11:36:12 PM    


  Tuesday, 23 December 2008


Would you Adam and Eve it? Quarter of science teachers would teach creationism.

More than a quarter of science teachers in state schools believe that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in science lessons, according to a national poll of primary and secondary teachers.

The Ipsos/Mori poll of 923 primary and secondary teachers found that 29% of science specialists agreed with the statement: "Alongside the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory, creationism should be TAUGHT in science lessons"

Some 65% of science specialists disagreed with the statement. When asked if creationism should be "discussed" alongside evolution and the Big Bang 73% of science specialists agreed.

That such a large minority of science teachers advocate teaching creationism has dismayed prominent scientists who believe supernatural explanations for the origin of the universe have no place in school science lessons. Professor Richard Dawkins, Britain's best-known evolutionary biologist and a leading secularist, called the findings "a national disgrace".

The teachers who advocate teaching creationism are also directly contradicting the government's guidelines on the subject, which state: "Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science national curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science." The sample includes teachers from all types of maintained schools including comprehensives, grammars, faith schools and academies. It does not include fee-paying schools.

The survey also indicates strong support for the views of the Royal Society's former director of education, Professor Michael Reiss. He resigned in September over his views on how to include creationism in science lessons. But a majority of science specialists polled endorsed his argument that creationism should be "discussed" in science lessons.

In response to the poll, Reiss said: "School science lessons provide wonderful opportunities for students of all ages to be introduced to scientific thinking about the origins of the universe and evolution of life. At the same time, some students have creationist beliefs. The task of those who teach science is then to teach the science but to treat such students with respect."

Reiss argues that creationism should not be treated as a misconception but as a world view. "Just because something lacks scientific support doesn't seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson," he wrote on guardian.co.uk shortly before his resignation. "When teaching evolution, there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have ... and doing one's best to have a genuine discussion."

At the height of the row, two Nobel prize winners and Fellows of the Royal Society - Sir Harry Kroto and Sir Richard Roberts - publicly called for Reiss to be sacked.

The Ipsos/Mori poll also canvassed support for the more hardline position of only mentioning creationism in the context of dismissing it. It found that only 26% of all teachers and 46% of science specialists agree with Professor Chris Higgins, vice-chancellor of the University of Durham, who is quoted as saying "the only reason to mention creationism in schools is to enable teachers to demonstrate why the idea is scientific nonsense".

The poll was conducted between 5 November and 10 December and the results are statistically weighted by sex, age and teaching phase to the known profile of primary and secondary school teachers in England and Wales. Many of the primary teachers polled for the survey may have a science specialism, but teach a range of subjects day to day.

Higgins said creationism as an alternative to Darwin's theory had been "thoroughly discredited". He added: "If a pupil raises it as a hypothesis then a brief discussion as to why creationism is wrong might be appropriate ... But it would undermine any educational system to purposefully teach discredited ideas which are now only perpetuated through ignorance or flawed thinking - one might as well teach astrology, flat Earthism, alchemy or a geocentric universe."

Phil Willis MP, chair of the parliamentary innovation, universities, science and skills select committee, said: "There are ample opportunities elsewhere in the curriculum to discuss belief rather than scientific theory. Science teachers should simply explain why evidence is crucial to good scientific practice."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

[Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk]
1:37:16 PM    

  Tuesday, 8 July 2008


G8 to agree on "shared vision" for climate: source. TOYAKO, Japan (Reuters) - The Group of Eight leaders are likely to refer to a "shared vision" to halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in a statement to be issued later on Tuesday, a source briefed on negotiators' talks said.

[Reuters: International News]
6:24:39 PM    


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