Infratil buys 24% stake in TrustPower -
Utilities investor Infratil has announced bought Alliant Energy's 24 per cent stake in TrustPower to give it 50 per cent control of the country's fifth-largest power company.
Infratil paid the US company $NZ445 million in cash plus took over $65 million of debt for Alliant's New Zealand's assets.
These are the TrustPower stake plus a 5.1 per cent stake in Infratil.
Before the purchase, Infratil had 35.2 per cent of the Bay of Plenty-headquartered power company, while the Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust held 28.6 per cent.
Infratil said it proposed to retain a minimum of 15 percent of TrustPower through the Alliant holding company it bought.
Infratil said it will sell down around 4 percent of TrustPower to increase liquidity.
Infratil chairman David Newman said it and Alliant had worked together since 1999.
Infratil bought into TrustPower in 1994 and believed it will continue to be an exceptional performer.
"As a renewables generator it will also benefit from the global drivers associated with climate change, as these forces work their way into Government policies," he said.
The purchase will be debt financed.
Having over 50 percent of TrustPower would allow Infratil to consolidate it into its balance sheet and get control of cashflows.
Infratil director Lloyd Morrison said Infratil's debt levels had to be viewed in the context of the very strong balance sheet of TrustPower and Infratil's other subsidiaries.
Infratil and the Tauranga trust had co-operated in the past and Mr Morrison said Infratil believed the trust had also benefited from this joint effort.
Infratil has agreed to give the trust an option for the Trust to buy up to 14 million TrustPower shares (4.4 percent of the company) at $5.90 per share plus an option to purchase up to 10.95 million Infratil shares at market price.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Howard, Beazley trade blows over climate change.
Prime Minister John Howard has attacked the Labor Party's call for Australia to ratify the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases as an "inane mantra".
Climate change is dominating the political debate following the release of a report in Britain which finds global warming could cost $9 trillion.
The Labor Party insists that ratifying the protocol is an important response to the problem of global warming.
Mr Howard has told Parliament he will never support Australia becoming part of the Kyoto protocol in its current form.
"I as Prime Minister am not going to take decisions that will put at risk the jobs and the investments associated with the natural advantages that this country enjoys," Mr Howard said.
"Others may, others may choose to do that, but while I am Prime Minister of this country I am not going to betray the natural advantages that this country has.
"I'm not going to betray those associated with the resource industry."
The Opposition says the Government is wrong to say that Australia will meet the Kyoto protocol's greenhouse gas reduction target.
The Government says it will cut its emissions by the amount that would be required under the protocol.
Labor leader Kim Beazley says new figures show Australia will not meet the target of keeping emissions from rising more than 8 per cent above 1990 levels.
"Is the Prime Minister aware of figures released last night by the secretariat for the United Nations framework convention on climate change that Australia's greenhouse emissions rose by 25.1 per cent between 1990 and 2004?" he said.
"Prime Minister, doesn't this United Nations report show that Australia will not meet its Kyoto target on current performance?"
Mr Howard rejects the figures.
"It's misleading to quote the UN report figures because they do not include all sectors of the economy," he said.
"They exclude land use change and forestry, in other words the Leader of the Opposition is relying on bodgy figures."
Prime Minister John Howard has attacked the Labor Party's call for Australia to ratify the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gases as an "inane mantra".
Climate change is dominating the political debate following the release of a report in Britain which finds global warming could cost $9 trillion.
The Labor Party insists that ratifying the protocol is an important response to the problem of global warming.
Mr Howard has told Parliament he will never support Australia becoming part of the Kyoto protocol in its current form.
"I as Prime Minister am not going to take decisions that will put at risk the jobs and the investments associated with the natural advantages that this country enjoys," Mr Howard said.
"Others may, others may choose to do that, but while I am Prime Minister of this country I am not going to betray the natural advantages that this country has.
"I'm not going to betray those associated with the resource industry."
The Opposition says the Government is wrong to say that Australia will meet the Kyoto protocol's greenhouse gas reduction target.
The Government says it will cut its emissions by the amount that would be required under the protocol.
Labor leader Kim Beazley says new figures show Australia will not meet the target of keeping emissions from rising more than 8 per cent above 1990 levels.
"Is the Prime Minister aware of figures released last night by the secretariat for the United Nations framework convention on climate change that Australia's greenhouse emissions rose by 25.1 per cent between 1990 and 2004?" he said.
"Prime Minister, doesn't this United Nations report show that Australia will not meet its Kyoto target on current performance?"
Mr Howard rejects the figures.
"It's misleading to quote the UN report figures because they do not include all sectors of the economy," he said.
"They exclude land use change and forestry, in other words the Leader of the Opposition is relying on bodgy figures."
Scientists, American public disagree sharply over global warming
WASHINGTON - When it comes to global warming, scientists and the American public aren't talking on the same wavelength.
Most scientists believe that humans and their machines are mainly responsible for the 1.4 degree Fahrenheit rise in the world's average temperature in the last 100 years. Most Americans think otherwise.
Last Wednesday, a group of 18 climate scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court declaring that they're 99 percent certain that "greenhouse gas emissions from human activities cause global climate change, endangering human health and welfare."
Only 41 percent of those polled last summer by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, however, accepted the argument that climate change is due primarily to human activities, such as burning fossil fuels in cars, trucks and factories.
The rest of the 1,501 adults in the survey either said there's no solid evidence that the Earth is warming, or that if there is, the extra heat is the result of natural climate patterns, such as fluctuations in the sun's radiation.
This public skepticism flies in the face of the most widely accepted scientific assessment of the cause of global warming, which lays the blame primarily on "greenhouse gases" generated by humans.
The leading greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), which is emitted by cars, trucks and factories and traps the sun's heat in the atmosphere.
The official scientific consensus is contained in a massive report issued in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization that the United Nations created to collect and assess the work of climate scientists.
The IPCC report concluded that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." The authors defined "most" to mean more than half and "likely" to mean that they're 66 percent to 90 percent sure that their statement is true.
Hundreds of scientists from around the globe are now working on an updated IPCC report to be completed next year. The report will reflect the results of the last five years of research and more accurately define the human and natural roles in global warming.
"It will be much better quantified," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate analyst at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "But there are no major new revelations."
Disentangling the causes of warming is a complicated detective story.
"Nature is a perverse old girl, and she doesn't tell us how much (warming) is due to her and how much is due to us," said Stephen Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "So we look for fingerprints that you'd expect if the cause was humans rather than nature."
One "fingerprint," for example, is the observation that the lower atmosphere is warming while the upper atmosphere is cooling. Schneider said that's one piece of evidence that the phenomenon is caused by people, not the sun, because the sun would warm all levels of the atmosphere equally.
Despite the uncertainties and controversies, continued research has strengthened confidence in the IPCC's conclusion.
"You're never going to say you're 100 percent sure," Schneider said. "You have to lay out the odds."
Thomas Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., told the House Government Reform committee in July that "the odds are better than two to one" that humans have caused most of the warming.
"The chances are two out of three that this is right and only one out of three that it's wrong," Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and one of the IPCC authors, said in an e-mail.
When skeptics recently raised objections to one line of evidence of CO2's role in global warming, the House Government Reform committee asked the National Academies to clarify the issue.
In June, a special committee of the Academies, headed by Gerald R. North, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station, declared that there are "multiple lines of evidence for the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities."
The North committee found that volcanic activity and natural variations in the sun's radiation can explain most of the ups and downs in the Earth's temperature before 1750, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
But since 1750, the committee declared, only a combination of natural and human causes can explain the rising temperatures. And human activity "dominates the warming" since 1950, another report from the National Academies said last year.
"Human activities are almost definitely required to explain the observed climate changes since the mid-20th century," said Peter Thorne, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, England. "Natural causes and natural climate variability alone are an inadequate explanation."
Since 1750, more than 300 billion tons of carbon have been added to the atmosphere, according to the Energy Department. This raised the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by 35 percent and accounts for about half of the warming effect so far.
"The predominant cause of this increase in carbon dioxide is the combustion of fossil fuels and the burning of forests," Karl said in his congressional testimony.
Another important greenhouse gas is methane, a type of natural gas produced by cattle raising, rice cultivation and cement manufacture. Ozone and nitrous oxide from agricultural and industrial sources also contribute to warming.
Variations in the amount of heat radiated by the sun, such as during its 11-year sunspot cycle, make little difference in the long-range rise in Earth's temperature.
"The energy reaching the Earth from the sun has been measured precisely enough to conclude that Earth's warming was not due to changes in the sun," the National Academies committee reported.
Some factors, both human and natural, help cool the planet rather than warm it.
Volcanoes, for example, throw up tons of sulfur and ash that reflect the sun's heat back into space. Aerosols from refrigerators, tailpipes and other human sources also reflect rather than absorb heat. Some clouds trap heat in the atmosphere; others bounce it back into space.
On balance, however, the warming outweighs the cooling and is expected to accelerate for the rest of the century.
For more information, go to www.nap.edu/books/0309095069/html/
WASHINGTON - When it comes to global warming, scientists and the American public aren't talking on the same wavelength.
Most scientists believe that humans and their machines are mainly responsible for the 1.4 degree Fahrenheit rise in the world's average temperature in the last 100 years. Most Americans think otherwise.
Last Wednesday, a group of 18 climate scientists, including two Nobel Prize winners, submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court declaring that they're 99 percent certain that "greenhouse gas emissions from human activities cause global climate change, endangering human health and welfare."
Only 41 percent of those polled last summer by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, however, accepted the argument that climate change is due primarily to human activities, such as burning fossil fuels in cars, trucks and factories.
The rest of the 1,501 adults in the survey either said there's no solid evidence that the Earth is warming, or that if there is, the extra heat is the result of natural climate patterns, such as fluctuations in the sun's radiation.
This public skepticism flies in the face of the most widely accepted scientific assessment of the cause of global warming, which lays the blame primarily on "greenhouse gases" generated by humans.
The leading greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), which is emitted by cars, trucks and factories and traps the sun's heat in the atmosphere.
The official scientific consensus is contained in a massive report issued in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization that the United Nations created to collect and assess the work of climate scientists.
The IPCC report concluded that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations." The authors defined "most" to mean more than half and "likely" to mean that they're 66 percent to 90 percent sure that their statement is true.
Hundreds of scientists from around the globe are now working on an updated IPCC report to be completed next year. The report will reflect the results of the last five years of research and more accurately define the human and natural roles in global warming.
"It will be much better quantified," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate analyst at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "But there are no major new revelations."
Disentangling the causes of warming is a complicated detective story.
"Nature is a perverse old girl, and she doesn't tell us how much (warming) is due to her and how much is due to us," said Stephen Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "So we look for fingerprints that you'd expect if the cause was humans rather than nature."
One "fingerprint," for example, is the observation that the lower atmosphere is warming while the upper atmosphere is cooling. Schneider said that's one piece of evidence that the phenomenon is caused by people, not the sun, because the sun would warm all levels of the atmosphere equally.
Despite the uncertainties and controversies, continued research has strengthened confidence in the IPCC's conclusion.
"You're never going to say you're 100 percent sure," Schneider said. "You have to lay out the odds."
Thomas Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., told the House Government Reform committee in July that "the odds are better than two to one" that humans have caused most of the warming.
"The chances are two out of three that this is right and only one out of three that it's wrong," Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and one of the IPCC authors, said in an e-mail.
When skeptics recently raised objections to one line of evidence of CO2's role in global warming, the House Government Reform committee asked the National Academies to clarify the issue.
In June, a special committee of the Academies, headed by Gerald R. North, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station, declared that there are "multiple lines of evidence for the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities."
The North committee found that volcanic activity and natural variations in the sun's radiation can explain most of the ups and downs in the Earth's temperature before 1750, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
But since 1750, the committee declared, only a combination of natural and human causes can explain the rising temperatures. And human activity "dominates the warming" since 1950, another report from the National Academies said last year.
"Human activities are almost definitely required to explain the observed climate changes since the mid-20th century," said Peter Thorne, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell, England. "Natural causes and natural climate variability alone are an inadequate explanation."
Since 1750, more than 300 billion tons of carbon have been added to the atmosphere, according to the Energy Department. This raised the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by 35 percent and accounts for about half of the warming effect so far.
"The predominant cause of this increase in carbon dioxide is the combustion of fossil fuels and the burning of forests," Karl said in his congressional testimony.
Another important greenhouse gas is methane, a type of natural gas produced by cattle raising, rice cultivation and cement manufacture. Ozone and nitrous oxide from agricultural and industrial sources also contribute to warming.
Variations in the amount of heat radiated by the sun, such as during its 11-year sunspot cycle, make little difference in the long-range rise in Earth's temperature.
"The energy reaching the Earth from the sun has been measured precisely enough to conclude that Earth's warming was not due to changes in the sun," the National Academies committee reported.
Some factors, both human and natural, help cool the planet rather than warm it.
Volcanoes, for example, throw up tons of sulfur and ash that reflect the sun's heat back into space. Aerosols from refrigerators, tailpipes and other human sources also reflect rather than absorb heat. Some clouds trap heat in the atmosphere; others bounce it back into space.
On balance, however, the warming outweighs the cooling and is expected to accelerate for the rest of the century.
For more information, go to www.nap.edu/books/0309095069/html/
Britain to use climate change report to push for global deal - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (AFP) - Britain will use a major report on climate change to push for a global deal to slash carbon emissions within two years and for major reform of international institutions to oversee the report's recommendations, it was reported here.
The government has already pledged to pass a bill that will put into law its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050, and has also said it is considering the possibility of implementing so-called green taxes to encourage people to be more energy-efficient.
But government ministers, along with the author of the report, were united in their belief that international agreement was necessary for any change to occur.
'It has to be international action,' said Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank chief economist who authored the 600-page report that analysed the economic consequences of global warming.
'Countries have to get together and work out what they're going to do together,' he told the BBC on Monday.
The broadcaster said that Prime Minister Tony Blair will start the campaign for a new international agreement on Friday, in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Blair said on Monday that negotiations started at last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, were now 'key' to securing action after the Kyoto agreement, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gases, expires in 2012.
Germany takes over both the G8 and European Union presidencies next year, and Britain will lobby for climate change to be at the top of both agendas. A spokeswoman for Blair's Downing Street office, speaking to AFP, was unable to confirm the meeting.
Citing unnamed sources in Blair's office, meanwhile, The "
The government has already pledged to pass a bill that will put into law its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050, and has also said it is considering the possibility of implementing so-called green taxes to encourage people to be more energy-efficient.
But government ministers, along with the author of the report, were united in their belief that international agreement was necessary for any change to occur.
'It has to be international action,' said Nicholas Stern, the former World Bank chief economist who authored the 600-page report that analysed the economic consequences of global warming.
'Countries have to get together and work out what they're going to do together,' he told the BBC on Monday.
The broadcaster said that Prime Minister Tony Blair will start the campaign for a new international agreement on Friday, in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Blair said on Monday that negotiations started at last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, were now 'key' to securing action after the Kyoto agreement, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gases, expires in 2012.
Germany takes over both the G8 and European Union presidencies next year, and Britain will lobby for climate change to be at the top of both agendas. A spokeswoman for Blair's Downing Street office, speaking to AFP, was unable to confirm the meeting.
Citing unnamed sources in Blair's office, meanwhile, The "
Australia spurns Kyoto despite warming warning - Yahoo! News: "SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change despite a major new report warning of catastrophe unless urgent action is taken to stave off global warming.
Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern said in a report commissioned by Britain that Kyoto should be seen as a first step towards global emissions trading.
Australia, like the United States, has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement, and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said the Stern report would not change the government's mind.
Australia was nevertheless on track to meet its target of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
'Australia will be the only country in the world without nuclear energy that will reach the Kyoto target,' Macfarlane told Australian television.
'The sort of things that Sir Nicholas Stern is saying has to be done in the western world are already being done here in Australia.'
Stern warned that the economic fallout of global change could be on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, putting the cost of doing nothing at 6.9 trillion dollars.
'There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if we act now and act internationally,' he said as he launched the report in London on Monday.
Macfarlane said Australia had committed two billion Australian dollars (1.5 billion US) to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and had last week announced major environmental projects.
'(Kyoto) is a scheme which encompasses less than half of the world's emissions, and it is a scheme which will fail dismally to reach the targets,' he said.
Treasurer Peter Costello said developing countries such as China and India needed to do more to curb their gre"
Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern said in a report commissioned by Britain that Kyoto should be seen as a first step towards global emissions trading.
Australia, like the United States, has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement, and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said the Stern report would not change the government's mind.
Australia was nevertheless on track to meet its target of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
'Australia will be the only country in the world without nuclear energy that will reach the Kyoto target,' Macfarlane told Australian television.
'The sort of things that Sir Nicholas Stern is saying has to be done in the western world are already being done here in Australia.'
Stern warned that the economic fallout of global change could be on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, putting the cost of doing nothing at 6.9 trillion dollars.
'There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if we act now and act internationally,' he said as he launched the report in London on Monday.
Macfarlane said Australia had committed two billion Australian dollars (1.5 billion US) to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and had last week announced major environmental projects.
'(Kyoto) is a scheme which encompasses less than half of the world's emissions, and it is a scheme which will fail dismally to reach the targets,' he said.
Treasurer Peter Costello said developing countries such as China and India needed to do more to curb their gre"
Australia spurns Kyoto despite warming warning - Yahoo! News
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change despite a major new report warning of catastrophe unless urgent action is taken to stave off global warming.
World Bank' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern said in a report commissioned by Britain that Kyoto should be seen as a first step towards global emissions trading.
Australia, like the United States, has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement, and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said the Stern report would not change the government's mind.
Australia was nevertheless on track to meet its target of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
"Australia will be the only country in the world without nuclear energy that will reach the Kyoto target," Macfarlane told Australian television.
"The sort of things that Sir Nicholas Stern is saying has to be done in the western world are already being done here in Australia."
Stern warned that the economic fallout of global change could be on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, putting the cost of doing nothing at 6.9 trillion dollars.
"There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if we act now and act internationally," he said as he launched the report in London on Monday.
Macfarlane said Australia had committed two billion Australian dollars (1.5 billion US) to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and had last week announced major environmental projects.
"(Kyoto) is a scheme which encompasses less than half of the world's emissions, and it is a scheme which will fail dismally to reach the targets," he said.
Treasurer Peter Costello said developing countries such as China and India needed to do more to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.
"There's no point in Australia meeting its emissions target if you're going to have major emitters such as China and India, which are increasing every year their emissions by more than the total of Australia's," he said.
Opposition Labor Party leader Kim Beazley said, however, that if Labor came to power it would sign the
Kyoto protocol' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Kyoto protocol, engage in emissions trading and focus on renewable energy and the development of clean coal technologies.
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change despite a major new report warning of catastrophe unless urgent action is taken to stave off global warming.
World Bank' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern said in a report commissioned by Britain that Kyoto should be seen as a first step towards global emissions trading.
Australia, like the United States, has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement, and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane said the Stern report would not change the government's mind.
Australia was nevertheless on track to meet its target of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
"Australia will be the only country in the world without nuclear energy that will reach the Kyoto target," Macfarlane told Australian television.
"The sort of things that Sir Nicholas Stern is saying has to be done in the western world are already being done here in Australia."
Stern warned that the economic fallout of global change could be on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, putting the cost of doing nothing at 6.9 trillion dollars.
"There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if we act now and act internationally," he said as he launched the report in London on Monday.
Macfarlane said Australia had committed two billion Australian dollars (1.5 billion US) to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and had last week announced major environmental projects.
"(Kyoto) is a scheme which encompasses less than half of the world's emissions, and it is a scheme which will fail dismally to reach the targets," he said.
Treasurer Peter Costello said developing countries such as China and India needed to do more to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.
"There's no point in Australia meeting its emissions target if you're going to have major emitters such as China and India, which are increasing every year their emissions by more than the total of Australia's," he said.
Opposition Labor Party leader Kim Beazley said, however, that if Labor came to power it would sign the
Kyoto protocol' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Kyoto protocol, engage in emissions trading and focus on renewable energy and the development of clean coal technologies.
Britain to use climate change report to push for global deal -
LONDON (AFP) - Britain will use a major report on climate change to push for a global deal to slash carbon emissions within two years and for major reform of international institutions to oversee the report's recommendations, it was reported here.
The government has already pledged to pass a bill that will put into law its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050, and has also said it is considering the possibility of implementing so-called green taxes to encourage people to be more energy-efficient.
But government ministers, along with the author of the report, were united in their belief that international agreement was necessary for any change to occur.
"It has to be international action," said Nicholas Stern, the former
World Bank' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Bank chief economist who authored the 600-page report that analysed the economic consequences of global warming.
"Countries have to get together and work out what they're going to do together," he told the BBC on Monday.
The broadcaster said that Prime Minister
Tony Blair' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Tony Blair will start the campaign for a new international agreement on Friday, in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Blair said on Monday that negotiations started at last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, were now "key" to securing action after the Kyoto agreement, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gases, expires in 2012.
Germany takes over both the G8 and
European Union' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> European Union presidencies next year, and Britain will lobby for climate change to be at the top of both agendas. A spokeswoman for Blair's Downing Street office, speaking to AFP, was unable to confirm the meeting.
Citing unnamed sources in Blair's office, meanwhile, The Guardian daily said that the prime minister wanted an agreement that tackled targets for stabilising carbon emissions, a global fund for new green technologies, and a regime to cap and trade emissions.
He is said to want the agreement to include China, India and the United States -- three critical states who failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
The Guardian also said, citing unnamed finance ministry sources, that finance minister Gordon Brown will push for reform of the
United Nations' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> United Nations and the World Bank to better equip them to oversee an expanded carbon-trading scheme -- one of the central planks of Stern's report.
The Stern review estimates that worldwide inaction could cost the equivalent of between five and 20 percent of global gross domestic product every year, forever.
By contrast, the cost of action is equivalent to one percent of
GDP' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> GDP, a "manageable" increase equivalent to a one-off one percent goods price increase, Stern said.
Carbon pricing and policies to support low-carbon technologies are among the possible solutions proposed by the economist, who also advocated expanding international frameworks on technology cooperation, deforestation and adaptation to climate change.
In an effort to foster an international consensus, Stern will himself embark on a tour of China, India, the United States and Australia to set out his position, and Brown has appointed former US vice president turned environmental campaigner
Al Gore' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Al Gore his adviser on green issues.
British newspapers said the report sets the ball squarely in the court of the world's political leaders.
The Guardian noted grimly that what "is lacking is for the world's politicians to think beyond the confines of the next four or five years, and to consider a statesmanlike span of 50 years or more, because what is at stake is ... the survival of the planet."
Another left-wing daily, The Independent, which dedicated its first 10 pages to the Stern review, echoed those views, with its editorial concluding that "what is required now is a generation of politicians around the world with the courage to do what is necessary."
The Times, a right-of-centre paper, called on Britain and other Western nations to take the lead, noting that international cooperation should not mean that all countries contribute equally to fighting climate change.
"Developing countries such as India and China may be the fastest growing contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, but this must be seen in context," the newspaper's editorial read.
"It is incumbent on the West to take a lead."
The newspapers did not reach agreement, however, on how much Britain and governments around the world should intervene in terms of taxation and other issues -- The Daily Telegraph, for example, titled its leader: "Why governments can't save the planet".
The right-wing daily called instead for governments to implement a framework within which business can take the lead, pointing out that climate change is "a global rather than national problem and should be treated as such."
"That means business -- not bureaucrats -- are best placed to take the lead role within a broad framework set by national governments."
They all managed to agree, though, that time was of the essence, with the Financial Times concluding that while the 1997 Kyoto agreement, which aimed to cut greenhouse gases, took five years to negotiate, "the world, and its atmosphere, cannot afford to wait that long again."
LONDON (AFP) - Britain will use a major report on climate change to push for a global deal to slash carbon emissions within two years and for major reform of international institutions to oversee the report's recommendations, it was reported here.
The government has already pledged to pass a bill that will put into law its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2050, and has also said it is considering the possibility of implementing so-called green taxes to encourage people to be more energy-efficient.
But government ministers, along with the author of the report, were united in their belief that international agreement was necessary for any change to occur.
"It has to be international action," said Nicholas Stern, the former
World Bank' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> World Bank chief economist who authored the 600-page report that analysed the economic consequences of global warming.
"Countries have to get together and work out what they're going to do together," he told the BBC on Monday.
The broadcaster said that Prime Minister
Tony Blair' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Tony Blair will start the campaign for a new international agreement on Friday, in a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Blair said on Monday that negotiations started at last year's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, were now "key" to securing action after the Kyoto agreement, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gases, expires in 2012.
Germany takes over both the G8 and
European Union' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> European Union presidencies next year, and Britain will lobby for climate change to be at the top of both agendas. A spokeswoman for Blair's Downing Street office, speaking to AFP, was unable to confirm the meeting.
Citing unnamed sources in Blair's office, meanwhile, The Guardian daily said that the prime minister wanted an agreement that tackled targets for stabilising carbon emissions, a global fund for new green technologies, and a regime to cap and trade emissions.
He is said to want the agreement to include China, India and the United States -- three critical states who failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
The Guardian also said, citing unnamed finance ministry sources, that finance minister Gordon Brown will push for reform of the
United Nations' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> United Nations and the World Bank to better equip them to oversee an expanded carbon-trading scheme -- one of the central planks of Stern's report.
The Stern review estimates that worldwide inaction could cost the equivalent of between five and 20 percent of global gross domestic product every year, forever.
By contrast, the cost of action is equivalent to one percent of
GDP' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> GDP, a "manageable" increase equivalent to a one-off one percent goods price increase, Stern said.
Carbon pricing and policies to support low-carbon technologies are among the possible solutions proposed by the economist, who also advocated expanding international frameworks on technology cooperation, deforestation and adaptation to climate change.
In an effort to foster an international consensus, Stern will himself embark on a tour of China, India, the United States and Australia to set out his position, and Brown has appointed former US vice president turned environmental campaigner
Al Gore' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Al Gore his adviser on green issues.
British newspapers said the report sets the ball squarely in the court of the world's political leaders.
The Guardian noted grimly that what "is lacking is for the world's politicians to think beyond the confines of the next four or five years, and to consider a statesmanlike span of 50 years or more, because what is at stake is ... the survival of the planet."
Another left-wing daily, The Independent, which dedicated its first 10 pages to the Stern review, echoed those views, with its editorial concluding that "what is required now is a generation of politicians around the world with the courage to do what is necessary."
The Times, a right-of-centre paper, called on Britain and other Western nations to take the lead, noting that international cooperation should not mean that all countries contribute equally to fighting climate change.
"Developing countries such as India and China may be the fastest growing contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, but this must be seen in context," the newspaper's editorial read.
"It is incumbent on the West to take a lead."
The newspapers did not reach agreement, however, on how much Britain and governments around the world should intervene in terms of taxation and other issues -- The Daily Telegraph, for example, titled its leader: "Why governments can't save the planet".
The right-wing daily called instead for governments to implement a framework within which business can take the lead, pointing out that climate change is "a global rather than national problem and should be treated as such."
"That means business -- not bureaucrats -- are best placed to take the lead role within a broad framework set by national governments."
They all managed to agree, though, that time was of the essence, with the Financial Times concluding that while the 1997 Kyoto agreement, which aimed to cut greenhouse gases, took five years to negotiate, "the world, and its atmosphere, cannot afford to wait that long again."
MPs told not to be mesmerised by Stern report.
The Prime Minister has told Coalition MPs not to get mesmerised by the Stern report on the implications of climate change.
The report, commissioned by the British Government, says if countries do not act now the world will face a depression worse than that of the 1930s.
The report also puts the worldwide cost of global warming and its effects at $A9 trillion.
John Howard has told his party room that science shows the globe is getting warmer and the issue has escalated in the public consciousness.
But he says they should not be mesmerised by one report.
The Labor leader, Kim Beazley, has told his party room that the Government is not sincere on climate change and does not understand it.
He says Labor has been arguing for the sort of solutions that Sir Nicholas Stern calls for in his report.
The Greens leader, Bob Brown, says Australia should be leading the fight against climate change.
He is calling on the Government to appoint a minister to deal with the problem.
"This nation will not get on track with climate change until there is a coordinated responsibility across the board for the economic, social and environmental impacts of climate change," he said.
Report welcomed
Meanwhile the head of one of Australia's largest companies has welcomed the report.
The managing director of the Insurance Australia Group, Michael Hawker, says the report will help business adapt to the challenge of climate change.
He says he supports a carbon emissions tax and the report's findings do not come as a shock.
"I'm not shocked in terms of the change to living standards," he said.
"What I think we didn't have a handle on was on the economic cost.
"I think the impact, the economic impact is startling and one which will drive a lot of behaviour."
Concern for natural icons
The CSIRO says natural icons such as the Great Barrier Reef will still be at risk if the minimum action suggested in the Stern report is taken.
CSIRO research scientist Roger Jones says even if the essential greenhouse reductions nominated by Sir Nicholas are met, there is still an environmental cost.
"We've calculated that there's still a fair risk that some [of] our climate sensitive icons could still suffer significant damage - the Great Barrier Reef, the alpine areas and some of our endemic flors and fauna," he said.
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The Prime Minister has told Coalition MPs not to get mesmerised by the Stern report on the implications of climate change.
The report, commissioned by the British Government, says if countries do not act now the world will face a depression worse than that of the 1930s.
The report also puts the worldwide cost of global warming and its effects at $A9 trillion.
John Howard has told his party room that science shows the globe is getting warmer and the issue has escalated in the public consciousness.
But he says they should not be mesmerised by one report.
The Labor leader, Kim Beazley, has told his party room that the Government is not sincere on climate change and does not understand it.
He says Labor has been arguing for the sort of solutions that Sir Nicholas Stern calls for in his report.
The Greens leader, Bob Brown, says Australia should be leading the fight against climate change.
He is calling on the Government to appoint a minister to deal with the problem.
"This nation will not get on track with climate change until there is a coordinated responsibility across the board for the economic, social and environmental impacts of climate change," he said.
Report welcomed
Meanwhile the head of one of Australia's largest companies has welcomed the report.
The managing director of the Insurance Australia Group, Michael Hawker, says the report will help business adapt to the challenge of climate change.
He says he supports a carbon emissions tax and the report's findings do not come as a shock.
"I'm not shocked in terms of the change to living standards," he said.
"What I think we didn't have a handle on was on the economic cost.
"I think the impact, the economic impact is startling and one which will drive a lot of behaviour."
Concern for natural icons
The CSIRO says natural icons such as the Great Barrier Reef will still be at risk if the minimum action suggested in the Stern report is taken.
CSIRO research scientist Roger Jones says even if the essential greenhouse reductions nominated by Sir Nicholas are met, there is still an environmental cost.
"We've calculated that there's still a fair risk that some [of] our climate sensitive icons could still suffer significant damage - the Great Barrier Reef, the alpine areas and some of our endemic flors and fauna," he said.
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Bus depot gears up for gas -
LEICHHARDT'S transport depot will become clean and green under a $34 million plan to make it home to Australia's first environmentally friendly, mostly gas-powered bus fleet.
State Transit wants to expand and convert the historic depot - which began life as a tram storage depot - into a base for 200 gas buses, which are quieter and less polluting than diesel.
The chief executive of State Transit, John Lee, said the change would save just under 3 million kilograms of carbon dioxide a year.
"In terms of our own business, that's more than a 20 per cent reduction in emissions."
The upgrade will more than double the number of buses that can be kept at the depot. It will also involve restoring historic sections such as the tram shed, cable store and office buildings. A 100,000-litre rainwater tank will supply the water for washing buses and irrigating gardens.
Mr Lee said the upgrade was a blueprint for the future of Sydney Buses.
But it was hard to have a completely gas powered fleet, he said, because the vehicles needed high-pressure pipelines, which did not exist in some parts of Sydney.
■ An industry analysis has found that natural gas is the obvious alternative to coal-fired or nuclear power stations but has been ignored as a preferable energy source.
A report commissioned by the Australian Pipeline Industry Association says if greenhouse emissions are to be a priority, natural gas and renewable energies will have to be used as the least damaging to the environment. Natural gas is the sensible alternative in the short to medium term, the report says, with greenhouse emissions from natural gas about half those from brown coal power generators.
The report, by a greenhouse energy consultant, Derek Sullens, questions the worth in the medium term of proposals for underground sequestration of carbon dioxide from coal generators.
LEICHHARDT'S transport depot will become clean and green under a $34 million plan to make it home to Australia's first environmentally friendly, mostly gas-powered bus fleet.
State Transit wants to expand and convert the historic depot - which began life as a tram storage depot - into a base for 200 gas buses, which are quieter and less polluting than diesel.
The chief executive of State Transit, John Lee, said the change would save just under 3 million kilograms of carbon dioxide a year.
"In terms of our own business, that's more than a 20 per cent reduction in emissions."
The upgrade will more than double the number of buses that can be kept at the depot. It will also involve restoring historic sections such as the tram shed, cable store and office buildings. A 100,000-litre rainwater tank will supply the water for washing buses and irrigating gardens.
Mr Lee said the upgrade was a blueprint for the future of Sydney Buses.
But it was hard to have a completely gas powered fleet, he said, because the vehicles needed high-pressure pipelines, which did not exist in some parts of Sydney.
■ An industry analysis has found that natural gas is the obvious alternative to coal-fired or nuclear power stations but has been ignored as a preferable energy source.
A report commissioned by the Australian Pipeline Industry Association says if greenhouse emissions are to be a priority, natural gas and renewable energies will have to be used as the least damaging to the environment. Natural gas is the sensible alternative in the short to medium term, the report says, with greenhouse emissions from natural gas about half those from brown coal power generators.
The report, by a greenhouse energy consultant, Derek Sullens, questions the worth in the medium term of proposals for underground sequestration of carbon dioxide from coal generators.
NPR : Bolivia Completes Takeover of Natural Gas Fields
This past weekend, Bolivia's President Evo Morales pulled off what many said was unlikely. He completed the nationalization of several Bolivian natural gas fields that had been developed by foreign companies.
This past weekend, Bolivia's President Evo Morales pulled off what many said was unlikely. He completed the nationalization of several Bolivian natural gas fields that had been developed by foreign companies.
Top scientist backs carbon emissions tax.
The head of a group of international scientists tracking the effects of greenhouse pollution says climate change cannot be stopped while the most polluting fuels remain the cheapest.
A climate change report by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern says 1 per cent of the world economy should be spent tackling climate change.
The report also recommends a global carbon emissions trading scheme.
The Australian Government has ruled out taxing carbon emissions.
But the executive director of the Global Carbon Project, the CSIRO's Dr Pep Canadell, says a carbon emissions tax is the only way to go.
"If there is not a price signal for polluting carbon, for using fossil fuel, it is not possible that any industry or government would change what they've done until now," he said.
"They would keep using what's the cheapest solution."
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says it would be extremely difficult to implement a global carbon emissions trading scheme.
He says it is an extraordinarily ambitious plan, and governments have to look at other options in the meantime.
"That's why our Government released the Energy White Paper two-and-a-half years ago, which contained the policies we are now seeing implemented in a practical sense," he said.
"The $250 million in four projects announced over the past week, we'll see $1.5 billion invested by industry in a public private partnership."
Environment Victoria executive director Marcus Godhino has backed calls for the introduction of a carbon emissions tax.
"Ideally we'd see the Federal Government introducing a charge on pollution, perhaps an emissions trading scheme that would take place at a national level," he said.
"But in the absence of that, the states need to get together and push for an emissions trading scheme."
Urgency
The Stern report also warns that the economic consequences of climate change could be greater than a combination of World War I and II and the Great Depression.
Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese says Australia cannot afford to put off signing the Kyoto protocol.
Mr Albanese says climate change could have a severe impact on Australia.
"We face a 30 per cent drop in rainfall in southern Australia, more extreme weather events in the north, a loss of our iconic areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu," he said.
"And Sir Nicholas points towards the fact that early action will save money."
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says the Government is already taking action to address the problem, but it cannot do it alone.
"We are on track to meet our Kyoto targets - and let me underscore that again for about the fourth time," he said.
"But the biggest issue here is to get countries like China and India and other countries, which have huge impacts on the globe, into these international arrangements."
Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says Labor has developed a plan with real solutions to fix the problem of climate change.
"It's there for ratifying Kyoto, it's there about emissions trading, it's there for setting realistic but necessary targets, it's there for focussing on renewable energy, it's there for focus on Australia's advantage in developing those renewables and Australia's advantage in ensuring the development of things like clean coal coal technologies," he said.
In other developments:
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says there is no point in Australia reducing its greenhouse gas emissions when China and India are such major global polluters. (Full Story)
The head of a group of international scientists tracking the effects of greenhouse pollution says climate change cannot be stopped while the most polluting fuels remain the cheapest.
A climate change report by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern says 1 per cent of the world economy should be spent tackling climate change.
The report also recommends a global carbon emissions trading scheme.
The Australian Government has ruled out taxing carbon emissions.
But the executive director of the Global Carbon Project, the CSIRO's Dr Pep Canadell, says a carbon emissions tax is the only way to go.
"If there is not a price signal for polluting carbon, for using fossil fuel, it is not possible that any industry or government would change what they've done until now," he said.
"They would keep using what's the cheapest solution."
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says it would be extremely difficult to implement a global carbon emissions trading scheme.
He says it is an extraordinarily ambitious plan, and governments have to look at other options in the meantime.
"That's why our Government released the Energy White Paper two-and-a-half years ago, which contained the policies we are now seeing implemented in a practical sense," he said.
"The $250 million in four projects announced over the past week, we'll see $1.5 billion invested by industry in a public private partnership."
Environment Victoria executive director Marcus Godhino has backed calls for the introduction of a carbon emissions tax.
"Ideally we'd see the Federal Government introducing a charge on pollution, perhaps an emissions trading scheme that would take place at a national level," he said.
"But in the absence of that, the states need to get together and push for an emissions trading scheme."
Urgency
The Stern report also warns that the economic consequences of climate change could be greater than a combination of World War I and II and the Great Depression.
Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese says Australia cannot afford to put off signing the Kyoto protocol.
Mr Albanese says climate change could have a severe impact on Australia.
"We face a 30 per cent drop in rainfall in southern Australia, more extreme weather events in the north, a loss of our iconic areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu," he said.
"And Sir Nicholas points towards the fact that early action will save money."
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says the Government is already taking action to address the problem, but it cannot do it alone.
"We are on track to meet our Kyoto targets - and let me underscore that again for about the fourth time," he said.
"But the biggest issue here is to get countries like China and India and other countries, which have huge impacts on the globe, into these international arrangements."
Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says Labor has developed a plan with real solutions to fix the problem of climate change.
"It's there for ratifying Kyoto, it's there about emissions trading, it's there for setting realistic but necessary targets, it's there for focussing on renewable energy, it's there for focus on Australia's advantage in developing those renewables and Australia's advantage in ensuring the development of things like clean coal coal technologies," he said.
In other developments:
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says there is no point in Australia reducing its greenhouse gas emissions when China and India are such major global polluters. (Full Story)
BP 'knew of Texas safety worries'
BP knew of "significant safety problems" at its Texas City refinery well before a deadly explosion in March 2005, according to US investigators.
The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) found a catalogue of internal BP reports highlighting maintenance backlogs and poor infrastructure at the site.
The blast killed 15 workers and injured 180, the worst US industrial accident in more than a decade.
BP has agreed it was preventable and has allocated $1.6bn in compensation.
"The CSB's investigation shows that BP's global management was aware of problems with maintenance, spending and infrastructure well before March 2005," said CSB chairman Carolyn Merritt.
"BP implemented a 25% cut on fixed costs from 1998 to 2000 that adversely impacted maintenance expenditures and infrastructure at the refinery.
"Every successful corporation must contain its costs. But at an ageing facility like Texas City, it is not responsible to cut budgets related to safety and maintenance without thoroughly examining the impact on the risk of a catastrophic accident," she added.
Maintenance spending
Since the Texas City blast, a series of other problems have left BP facing intense scrutiny from US authorities.
The firm had to close part of its Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska earlier this year, after leaks were discovered in one of its pipes.
BP has also been hit by an oil leak scandal in Alaska
In early September, lawmakers at a congressional hearing said BP's neglect of pipelines in Alaska was "unacceptable".
The company is also being investigated over the alleged manipulation of crude oil and petrol prices.
Responding to the CSB report, BP said its own investigation's findings were "generally consistent with those of the CSB".
But spokesman Ronnie Chapman added: "The BP Texas City fatal investigation team did not identify previous budget decisions or lack of expenditure as a critical factor, or immediate cause of the accident."
He said that maintenance spending at Texas City had increased 40% over the previous five years and was higher than the industry average per barrel of throughput.
The CSB is due to give a briefing on its investigations on Tuesday, before unveiling its full report next March.
BP knew of "significant safety problems" at its Texas City refinery well before a deadly explosion in March 2005, according to US investigators.
The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) found a catalogue of internal BP reports highlighting maintenance backlogs and poor infrastructure at the site.
The blast killed 15 workers and injured 180, the worst US industrial accident in more than a decade.
BP has agreed it was preventable and has allocated $1.6bn in compensation.
"The CSB's investigation shows that BP's global management was aware of problems with maintenance, spending and infrastructure well before March 2005," said CSB chairman Carolyn Merritt.
"BP implemented a 25% cut on fixed costs from 1998 to 2000 that adversely impacted maintenance expenditures and infrastructure at the refinery.
"Every successful corporation must contain its costs. But at an ageing facility like Texas City, it is not responsible to cut budgets related to safety and maintenance without thoroughly examining the impact on the risk of a catastrophic accident," she added.
Maintenance spending
Since the Texas City blast, a series of other problems have left BP facing intense scrutiny from US authorities.
The firm had to close part of its Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska earlier this year, after leaks were discovered in one of its pipes.
BP has also been hit by an oil leak scandal in Alaska
In early September, lawmakers at a congressional hearing said BP's neglect of pipelines in Alaska was "unacceptable".
The company is also being investigated over the alleged manipulation of crude oil and petrol prices.
Responding to the CSB report, BP said its own investigation's findings were "generally consistent with those of the CSB".
But spokesman Ronnie Chapman added: "The BP Texas City fatal investigation team did not identify previous budget decisions or lack of expenditure as a critical factor, or immediate cause of the accident."
He said that maintenance spending at Texas City had increased 40% over the previous five years and was higher than the industry average per barrel of throughput.
The CSB is due to give a briefing on its investigations on Tuesday, before unveiling its full report next March.
Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming – Caps Year of Vindication for Skeptics
One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.
Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France’s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (For English Translation, click here: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 ) detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the “cause of climate change remains unknown” and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.
“Following the month of August experienced by the northern half of France, the prophets of doom of global warming will have a lot on their plate in order to make our fellow countrymen swallow their certitudes,” Allegre wrote. He also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”
Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.” See: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/sciwarn.html
Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States.
Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to “Holocaust deniers.” See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers."
This increase in rhetorical flourish comes at a time when new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists’ computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.
60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears
Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called “consensus” that the Earth faces a “climate emergency.” On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.
“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,” the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605
“It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas,” the 60 scientists concluded.
In addition, an October 16, 2006 Washington Post article titled “Climate Change is Nothing New” echoed the sentiments of the 60 scientists as it detailed a new study of the earth’s climate history. The Washington Post article by reporter Christopher Lee noted that Indiana University geologist Simon Brassell found climate change occurred during the age of dinosaurs and quoted Brassell questioning the accuracy of computer climate model predictions.
“If there are big, inherent fluctuations in the system, as paleoclimate studies are showing, it could make determining the Earth’s climatic future even harder than it is,” Brassell said. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500672.html
Global Cooling on the Horizon?
In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html
Sun’s Contribution to Warming
There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml
“Global Warming” Stopped in 1998
Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming – it stopped in 1998. “According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. “…this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled “There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
“Global?" Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming
In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to “global warming theory” and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word “global” in “global warming” may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be “Northern Hemisphere” warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern-hemisphere-ignores-global.html
Alaska Cooling
According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was “0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average.” See: http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2006/jul06/noaa06-065.html
Oceans Cooling
Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans “certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.“ See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/
Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter
Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006’s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.
Droughts Less Frequent
Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming “shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.” http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/where-are-the-droughts
Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age
Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study “claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world…Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,” according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/overturning-ocean-hype
‘Hockey Stick’ Broken in 2006
The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was found to be unsupportable by the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts in 2006. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697
Study Shows Greenland’s Ice Growing
A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.
Polar Bears Not Going Extinct
Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media’s unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419
Media Darling James Hansen Hypes Alarmism
As all of this new data debunking climate alarmism mounts, the mainstream media chooses to ignore it and instead focus on the dire predictions of the number-one global warming media darling, NASA’s James Hansen. The increasingly alarmist Hansen is featured frequently in the media to bolster sky-is-falling climate scare reports. His recent claim that the Earth is nearing its hottest point in one million years has been challenged by many scientists. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N39/EDITB.jsp Hansen’s increasingly frightening climate predictions follow his 2003 concession that the use of “extreme scenarios” was an appropriate tactic to drive the public’s attention to the urgency of global warming. See: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html Hansen also received a $250,000 grant form Teresa Heinz’s Foundation and then subsequently endorsed her husband John Kerry for President and worked closely with Al Gore to promote his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” See: http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6 & http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
American People Rejecting Global Warming Alarmism
The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.
Senator Inhofe Chastises Media For Unscientific & Unprincipled Climate Reporting
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented last week on the media’s unfounded global warming hype and some of the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called “consensus” that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet.
“The American people are fed up with media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only “emergency” confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,” Senator Inhofe said last week. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264616
“The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows,” Senator Inhofe explained.
Eco-Doomsayers’ Failed Predictions
In a speech on the Senate floor on September 25, 2006, Senator Inhofe pointed out the abject failure of past predictions of ecological disaster made by environmental alarmists.
“The history of the modern environmental movement is chock-full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict,” Senator Inhofe said on September 25th. See: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759
Related Links:
For a comprehensive review of the media’s embarrassing 100-year history of alternating between promoting fears of a coming ice age and global warming, see Environment & Public Works Chairman James Inhofe’s September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech debunking the media and climate alarmism. Go to: (epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)
To read and watch Senator Inhofe on CNN discuss global warming go to: (http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264308 )
To Read all of Senator Inhofe’s Speeches on global warming go to: (http://epw.senate.gov/speeches.cfm?party=rep)
“Inhofe Correct On Global Warming,” by David Deming geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264537)
One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific “consensus” on climate alarmism.
Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France’s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (For English Translation, click here: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 ) detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the “cause of climate change remains unknown” and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.
“Following the month of August experienced by the northern half of France, the prophets of doom of global warming will have a lot on their plate in order to make our fellow countrymen swallow their certitudes,” Allegre wrote. He also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that “the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!”
Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.” See: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/sciwarn.html
Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States.
Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a “consensus” about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to “Holocaust deniers.” See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers."
This increase in rhetorical flourish comes at a time when new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists’ computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.
60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears
Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called “consensus” that the Earth faces a “climate emergency.” On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.
“Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future…Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,” the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605
“It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas,” the 60 scientists concluded.
In addition, an October 16, 2006 Washington Post article titled “Climate Change is Nothing New” echoed the sentiments of the 60 scientists as it detailed a new study of the earth’s climate history. The Washington Post article by reporter Christopher Lee noted that Indiana University geologist Simon Brassell found climate change occurred during the age of dinosaurs and quoted Brassell questioning the accuracy of computer climate model predictions.
“If there are big, inherent fluctuations in the system, as paleoclimate studies are showing, it could make determining the Earth’s climatic future even harder than it is,” Brassell said. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/15/AR2006101500672.html
Global Cooling on the Horizon?
In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun’s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html
Sun’s Contribution to Warming
There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml
“Global Warming” Stopped in 1998
Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming – it stopped in 1998. “According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. “…this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled “There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.” See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
“Global?" Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming
In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to “global warming theory” and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word “global” in “global warming” may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be “Northern Hemisphere” warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern-hemisphere-ignores-global.html
Alaska Cooling
According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was “0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average.” See: http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/releases2006/jul06/noaa06-065.html
Oceans Cooling
Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans “certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.“ See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/
Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter
Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006’s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year’s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.
Droughts Less Frequent
Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming “shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.” http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/where-are-the-droughts
Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age
Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study “claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world…Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,” according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/overturning-ocean-hype
‘Hockey Stick’ Broken in 2006
The “Hockey Stick” temperature graph’s claim that the 1990’s was the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was found to be unsupportable by the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts in 2006. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=257697
Study Shows Greenland’s Ice Growing
A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930’s than today.
Polar Bears Not Going Extinct
Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media’s unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006. See: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419
Media Darling James Hansen Hypes Alarmism
As all of this new data debunking climate alarmism mounts, the mainstream media chooses to ignore it and instead focus on the dire predictions of the number-one global warming media darling, NASA’s James Hansen. The increasingly alarmist Hansen is featured frequently in the media to bolster sky-is-falling climate scare reports. His recent claim that the Earth is nearing its hottest point in one million years has been challenged by many scientists. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N39/EDITB.jsp Hansen’s increasingly frightening climate predictions follow his 2003 concession that the use of “extreme scenarios” was an appropriate tactic to drive the public’s attention to the urgency of global warming. See: http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh6.html Hansen also received a $250,000 grant form Teresa Heinz’s Foundation and then subsequently endorsed her husband John Kerry for President and worked closely with Al Gore to promote his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” See: http://www.heinzawards.net/speechDetail.asp?speechID=6 & http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/dai_complete.pdf
American People Rejecting Global Warming Alarmism
The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.
Senator Inhofe Chastises Media For Unscientific & Unprincipled Climate Reporting
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented last week on the media’s unfounded global warming hype and some of the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called “consensus” that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet.
“The American people are fed up with media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ‘consensus’ that SUV’s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ‘climate emergency’ that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only “emergency” confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,” Senator Inhofe said last week. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264616
“The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows,” Senator Inhofe explained.
Eco-Doomsayers’ Failed Predictions
In a speech on the Senate floor on September 25, 2006, Senator Inhofe pointed out the abject failure of past predictions of ecological disaster made by environmental alarmists.
“The history of the modern environmental movement is chock-full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers’ predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict,” Senator Inhofe said on September 25th. See: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759
Related Links:
For a comprehensive review of the media’s embarrassing 100-year history of alternating between promoting fears of a coming ice age and global warming, see Environment & Public Works Chairman James Inhofe’s September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech debunking the media and climate alarmism. Go to: (epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)
To read and watch Senator Inhofe on CNN discuss global warming go to: (http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264308 )
To Read all of Senator Inhofe’s Speeches on global warming go to: (http://epw.senate.gov/speeches.cfm?party=rep)
“Inhofe Correct On Global Warming,” by David Deming geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264537)
X-to-Liquids – Take Your Pick: X = gas, coal, biomass
There is a reason why oil is the premier fuel of the world economy. It’s a liquid and it can be transported, it can be stored, and it can be handled more easily than any other fuel.
Although worldwide there are approximately the same volumes of recoverable oil and natural gas reserves, the energy content of gas consumption is less than half that of oil consumption. This is because many gas reserves are stranded and far from consumption markets. Long pipelines are costly and risky, especially when more than one country is traversed.
An option that has been increasingly adopted to monetize stranded gas reserves is liquefied natural gas, or LNG. This involves deep refrigeration of natural gas, converting it to liquid and reducing its volume about 600 times, followed by its transport in special ships. Although the process is simple – there is not much required beyond refrigerating the gas – large investments are needed for the liquefaction and regasification terminals. In addition, security issues have led many cities to decline the installation of a nearby terminal. A less expensive solution is compressed natural gas, CNG, a process that involves simply pressurizing or even chilling the gas and transporting it in special ships, which act like floating pipelines. But CNG is only competitive for small distance and small volume transportation. The problem with both LNG and CNG is that at the receiving end gas is still gas, burdened by the same problems that have consistently kept its use lagging behind oil.
An alternative option that has received increasing attention is the so-called gas-to-liquids or GTL technology, which is a chemical transformation of natural gas into fuel products. In this case, not only is there monetization of stranded natural gas reserves after transportation to the consuming market, but value is added through transformation into high-quality petrochemical naphtha, premium diesel, specialty lubricants, and food grade paraffin. GTL technology opens up a whole new world of refining and refining routes.
Conventional GTL technology has three steps: reforming natural gas into synthesis gas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide); conversion of the synthesis gas into liquid hydrocarbons and water; and product upgrading to adjust the final product properties.
A significant amount of fuel was produced by this process (using coal gasification instead of natural gas) in Germany before and during World War II, and in South Africa in response to the embargo imposed against its apartheid regime. Today, only a very small number of players possess commercial GTL plants: SASOL and PetroSA, both in South Africa, and Shell in Malaysia. Nevertheless, a big number of companies have been investing in the development of GTL technologies, and quite a number of new large-capacity projects have been announced, particularly in Qatar. Should all the new world-scale plants announced by Shell, SasolChevron, and ExxonMobil become reality, Qatar will become the GTL capital of the world.
Henrique S. Cerqueira is a senior chemical engineer and Eduardo Falabella Sousa-Aguiar is the GTL manager at PETROBRAS Research and Development Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This article has additional information available
There is a reason why oil is the premier fuel of the world economy. It’s a liquid and it can be transported, it can be stored, and it can be handled more easily than any other fuel.
Although worldwide there are approximately the same volumes of recoverable oil and natural gas reserves, the energy content of gas consumption is less than half that of oil consumption. This is because many gas reserves are stranded and far from consumption markets. Long pipelines are costly and risky, especially when more than one country is traversed.
An option that has been increasingly adopted to monetize stranded gas reserves is liquefied natural gas, or LNG. This involves deep refrigeration of natural gas, converting it to liquid and reducing its volume about 600 times, followed by its transport in special ships. Although the process is simple – there is not much required beyond refrigerating the gas – large investments are needed for the liquefaction and regasification terminals. In addition, security issues have led many cities to decline the installation of a nearby terminal. A less expensive solution is compressed natural gas, CNG, a process that involves simply pressurizing or even chilling the gas and transporting it in special ships, which act like floating pipelines. But CNG is only competitive for small distance and small volume transportation. The problem with both LNG and CNG is that at the receiving end gas is still gas, burdened by the same problems that have consistently kept its use lagging behind oil.
An alternative option that has received increasing attention is the so-called gas-to-liquids or GTL technology, which is a chemical transformation of natural gas into fuel products. In this case, not only is there monetization of stranded natural gas reserves after transportation to the consuming market, but value is added through transformation into high-quality petrochemical naphtha, premium diesel, specialty lubricants, and food grade paraffin. GTL technology opens up a whole new world of refining and refining routes.
Conventional GTL technology has three steps: reforming natural gas into synthesis gas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide); conversion of the synthesis gas into liquid hydrocarbons and water; and product upgrading to adjust the final product properties.
A significant amount of fuel was produced by this process (using coal gasification instead of natural gas) in Germany before and during World War II, and in South Africa in response to the embargo imposed against its apartheid regime. Today, only a very small number of players possess commercial GTL plants: SASOL and PetroSA, both in South Africa, and Shell in Malaysia. Nevertheless, a big number of companies have been investing in the development of GTL technologies, and quite a number of new large-capacity projects have been announced, particularly in Qatar. Should all the new world-scale plants announced by Shell, SasolChevron, and ExxonMobil become reality, Qatar will become the GTL capital of the world.
Henrique S. Cerqueira is a senior chemical engineer and Eduardo Falabella Sousa-Aguiar is the GTL manager at PETROBRAS Research and Development Center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
This article has additional information available
Clean energy projects announced
A $125 MILLION investment in two Victorian energy projects would help cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions, the federal government said today.
Treasurer Peter Costello and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane today announced the first two projects under the $500 million low emissions technology demonstration fund (LETDF).
The first is a $75 million grant for a $420 million large-scale solar concentrator in northwestern Victoria to be built by Melbourne-based Solar Systems Pty Ltd.
The project will start in 2008 and reach full capacity by 2013.
The second grant is $50 million towards a $360 million pilot for a brown-coal drying and a post-combustion carbon dioxide capture and storage project at the International Powers' Hazelwood facility in Gippsland.
Construction is to begin early next year with the project to be completed by the end of 2009.
Both projects also received funding from the Victorian Government.
Mr Costello said the energy sector had been instrumental in Australia's economic success and ensuring it was environmentally sustainable in long-term was a key factor in the Government's climate change strategy.
"Technological improvements will be instrumental in delivering large-scale reductions in emissions both in Australia and throughout the rest of the world," Mr Costello said.
Mr Costello later said Australia would meet its Kyoto protocol greenhouse emissions targets even though it would not ratify the agreement.
He said he accepted the scientific evidence on global warming and "that it is caused by carbon emissions, that restraining the increase in carbon emissions will counteract that process of global warming and that we should play our part".
But Mr Costello said Australia produced only a small percentage of greenhouse emissions compared to China.
"You will never do anything internationally or globally unless you bring developing countries into this program, in particular countries like China and India."
Mr Costello signalled more announcements about the LETDF in coming weeks.
Opposition resources spokesman Martin Ferguson said the Government had finally decided to follow the lead of the Labor Party.
"We have to act on the issue of energy and obviously with a heavy reliance on coal, especially the difficulties of brown coal in Victoria, you have to invest in clean coal technology," he said on ABC radio.
"The initiative today, a joint initiative of Victorian Labor and the Howard government, is about trying to finally make some progress."
ACF executive director Don Henry said the solar project, tipped to be the largest of its kind in the world, showed solar could be a serious player in the alternative energy mix.
"But the truth is, in our fight to tackle climate change, this is a small first step when we really need a huge leap forward," he said on ABC radio.
"For example, our governments could require and assist us all to have solar hot water on every roof.
"That's the equivalent of a brand new power station being built in Australia."
Mr Henry said that to actually reduce emissions in a serious way, the announcements totalled a small drop in the ocean of what was needed.
Greenpeace spokesman Danny Kennedy said the Government was starting to bow to growing public pressure and concern about climate change with today's announcement.
"The proposed $400 million Solar Systems plant is a step in the right direction but what is needed most is long-term signals and structural changes, not one-off announcements," he said.
"If the federal Government's strategy is to lay out a series of LETDF announcements from now to the election, it is a thinly disguised attempt to avoid the real action that is needed - moving Australia away from polluting coal."
A $125 MILLION investment in two Victorian energy projects would help cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions, the federal government said today.
Treasurer Peter Costello and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane today announced the first two projects under the $500 million low emissions technology demonstration fund (LETDF).
The first is a $75 million grant for a $420 million large-scale solar concentrator in northwestern Victoria to be built by Melbourne-based Solar Systems Pty Ltd.
The project will start in 2008 and reach full capacity by 2013.
The second grant is $50 million towards a $360 million pilot for a brown-coal drying and a post-combustion carbon dioxide capture and storage project at the International Powers' Hazelwood facility in Gippsland.
Construction is to begin early next year with the project to be completed by the end of 2009.
Both projects also received funding from the Victorian Government.
Mr Costello said the energy sector had been instrumental in Australia's economic success and ensuring it was environmentally sustainable in long-term was a key factor in the Government's climate change strategy.
"Technological improvements will be instrumental in delivering large-scale reductions in emissions both in Australia and throughout the rest of the world," Mr Costello said.
Mr Costello later said Australia would meet its Kyoto protocol greenhouse emissions targets even though it would not ratify the agreement.
He said he accepted the scientific evidence on global warming and "that it is caused by carbon emissions, that restraining the increase in carbon emissions will counteract that process of global warming and that we should play our part".
But Mr Costello said Australia produced only a small percentage of greenhouse emissions compared to China.
"You will never do anything internationally or globally unless you bring developing countries into this program, in particular countries like China and India."
Mr Costello signalled more announcements about the LETDF in coming weeks.
Opposition resources spokesman Martin Ferguson said the Government had finally decided to follow the lead of the Labor Party.
"We have to act on the issue of energy and obviously with a heavy reliance on coal, especially the difficulties of brown coal in Victoria, you have to invest in clean coal technology," he said on ABC radio.
"The initiative today, a joint initiative of Victorian Labor and the Howard government, is about trying to finally make some progress."
ACF executive director Don Henry said the solar project, tipped to be the largest of its kind in the world, showed solar could be a serious player in the alternative energy mix.
"But the truth is, in our fight to tackle climate change, this is a small first step when we really need a huge leap forward," he said on ABC radio.
"For example, our governments could require and assist us all to have solar hot water on every roof.
"That's the equivalent of a brand new power station being built in Australia."
Mr Henry said that to actually reduce emissions in a serious way, the announcements totalled a small drop in the ocean of what was needed.
Greenpeace spokesman Danny Kennedy said the Government was starting to bow to growing public pressure and concern about climate change with today's announcement.
"The proposed $400 million Solar Systems plant is a step in the right direction but what is needed most is long-term signals and structural changes, not one-off announcements," he said.
"If the federal Government's strategy is to lay out a series of LETDF announcements from now to the election, it is a thinly disguised attempt to avoid the real action that is needed - moving Australia away from polluting coal."
M.Stanley Gives US$3 Billion Confidence Vote in Kyoto
Investment bank Morgan Stanley said on Thursday it plans to invest US$3 billion in carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol to 2012, a huge vote for a pact which has faced doubters including most recently Canada.
Kyoto sets greenhouse gas emissions limits on 35 industrialised countries -- which they must meet by 2012 -- but allows countries busting these like Japan, Spain and Italy to fund cuts elsewhere and count them as their own.
This carbon market is seen peaking next year and in 2008, and specialist investors are hoovering up emissions-permitting carbon credits ready to offload these to countries chasing targets as the 2012 date nears.
It is this intermediary role -- buying direct from emissions-cutting projects now and selling on to national governments and industry later -- that Morgan Stanley hopes to profit from.
"We're talking a lot to the utilities and industrials and national governments too," said a Morgan Stanley spokesman.
"We do see a healthy demand. We're seeing a lot of interest from Japan too."
Some market players say demand is unsure for Kyoto-style carbon credits, given the option for countries to achieve their targets by buying other countries' rights to emit -- unsympathetically dubbed "hot air" by greens because such deals do not link directly to emissions cuts.
Austria, a big Kyoto laggard, says it wants to close such deals in the next year or two.
The United States pulled out of Kyoto in 2001 and Canada said this year it has no chance of meeting its Kyoto target, which it is busting by some 35 percent.
But carbon investors point to the fact that most countries are lagging their targets, and so are a source of demand, and to the prospect that carbon markets will become the world's climate change strategy of choice as the threat of global warming grows.
EXPANSION
The global carbon market was worth US$21.5 billion in the first nine months of 2006, the World Bank said in its market update on Thursday, up from about US$11 billion for all of 2005.
The Morgan Stanley move marks a significant expansion of the bank's existing carbon trading activities that it launched in 2004 within its commodities division.
The new investment, over five years, will put more capital behind the carbon trading business and also includes some direct investment in projects and initiatives related to emissions reduction, the bank said.
Other investment banks are involved in carbon emissions trading in a global carbon market that is fast developing in Europe, the United States and in emerging markets.
Morgan Stanley's carbon trading business is headed by Simon Greenshields, who is global head of power, associated power fuels and carbon/emissions trading and structuring.
"We strongly support the use of market-based solutions to meet environmental policies and objectives," he said.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley said on Thursday it plans to invest US$3 billion in carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol to 2012, a huge vote for a pact which has faced doubters including most recently Canada.
Kyoto sets greenhouse gas emissions limits on 35 industrialised countries -- which they must meet by 2012 -- but allows countries busting these like Japan, Spain and Italy to fund cuts elsewhere and count them as their own.
This carbon market is seen peaking next year and in 2008, and specialist investors are hoovering up emissions-permitting carbon credits ready to offload these to countries chasing targets as the 2012 date nears.
It is this intermediary role -- buying direct from emissions-cutting projects now and selling on to national governments and industry later -- that Morgan Stanley hopes to profit from.
"We're talking a lot to the utilities and industrials and national governments too," said a Morgan Stanley spokesman.
"We do see a healthy demand. We're seeing a lot of interest from Japan too."
Some market players say demand is unsure for Kyoto-style carbon credits, given the option for countries to achieve their targets by buying other countries' rights to emit -- unsympathetically dubbed "hot air" by greens because such deals do not link directly to emissions cuts.
Austria, a big Kyoto laggard, says it wants to close such deals in the next year or two.
The United States pulled out of Kyoto in 2001 and Canada said this year it has no chance of meeting its Kyoto target, which it is busting by some 35 percent.
But carbon investors point to the fact that most countries are lagging their targets, and so are a source of demand, and to the prospect that carbon markets will become the world's climate change strategy of choice as the threat of global warming grows.
EXPANSION
The global carbon market was worth US$21.5 billion in the first nine months of 2006, the World Bank said in its market update on Thursday, up from about US$11 billion for all of 2005.
The Morgan Stanley move marks a significant expansion of the bank's existing carbon trading activities that it launched in 2004 within its commodities division.
The new investment, over five years, will put more capital behind the carbon trading business and also includes some direct investment in projects and initiatives related to emissions reduction, the bank said.
Other investment banks are involved in carbon emissions trading in a global carbon market that is fast developing in Europe, the United States and in emerging markets.
Morgan Stanley's carbon trading business is headed by Simon Greenshields, who is global head of power, associated power fuels and carbon/emissions trading and structuring.
"We strongly support the use of market-based solutions to meet environmental policies and objectives," he said.
$600m wind farm given go-ahead
THE largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere today received the go-ahead from the Victorian Government.
AGL will build the $600 million wind farm at Macarthur in the state's west.
Planning Minister Rob Hulls said the 183-turbine farm, spread over 55 square kilometres, would have the capacity to generate up to 329 megawatts of electricity.
Mr Hulls said the electricity generated would be enough to power almost 190,000 homes every year.
"The approval at the Macarthur wind farm shows that the Bracks' Government is certainly taking climate change seriously," he said today.
Mr Hulls said the wind farm would help the Government reach its target of sourcing 10 per cent of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2016.
THE largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere today received the go-ahead from the Victorian Government.
AGL will build the $600 million wind farm at Macarthur in the state's west.
Planning Minister Rob Hulls said the 183-turbine farm, spread over 55 square kilometres, would have the capacity to generate up to 329 megawatts of electricity.
Mr Hulls said the electricity generated would be enough to power almost 190,000 homes every year.
"The approval at the Macarthur wind farm shows that the Bracks' Government is certainly taking climate change seriously," he said today.
Mr Hulls said the wind farm would help the Government reach its target of sourcing 10 per cent of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2016.
Gov't Gives 450M to Coal Research
AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced on Friday $450 million in grants during the next decade to further research into technology that would lessen the environmental impacts of coal use.
Thirty percent of the grant money, or $134 million, will be awarded to groups supporting the research in Kentucky, said Bodman at an energy roundtable hosted by Republican Rep. Geoff Davis.
The Department of Energy projects that a process called coal sequestration could play a major role in meeting the Bush administration's goal of reducing the intensity of greenhouse emissions by 18 percent by 2012. The process involves capturing emissions, separating the carbon dioxide and sequestering it for commercial use or for injection back into the earth to flush out oil. "Sequestration technology holds the key to the continued environmentally responsible use of coal," Bodman said. The roundtable, featuring experts from the Southern States Energy Board, the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Office of Energy Policy, was held in Ashland, a major coal processing city in Davis' district. Kentucky ranked third in the nation in coal production in 2005, behind Wyoming and West Virginia.
AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced on Friday $450 million in grants during the next decade to further research into technology that would lessen the environmental impacts of coal use.
Thirty percent of the grant money, or $134 million, will be awarded to groups supporting the research in Kentucky, said Bodman at an energy roundtable hosted by Republican Rep. Geoff Davis.
The Department of Energy projects that a process called coal sequestration could play a major role in meeting the Bush administration's goal of reducing the intensity of greenhouse emissions by 18 percent by 2012. The process involves capturing emissions, separating the carbon dioxide and sequestering it for commercial use or for injection back into the earth to flush out oil. "Sequestration technology holds the key to the continued environmentally responsible use of coal," Bodman said. The roundtable, featuring experts from the Southern States Energy Board, the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Office of Energy Policy, was held in Ashland, a major coal processing city in Davis' district. Kentucky ranked third in the nation in coal production in 2005, behind Wyoming and West Virginia.
We must pay now to avoid climate disaster, says Blair Climate change
Tony Blair today said that the world was facing "nothing more serious, more urgent, or more demanding of leadership" than climate change and that Britons must be prepared to pay now to avoid future disaster.
Speaking at the launch of Sir Nicholas Stern's review on tackling global warming, the prime minister said there was "overwhelming scientific evidence" that climate change was taking place and that the consequences of failing to act would be "disastrous
"This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime. Unless we act now ... these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible," he said.
"There is nothing more serious, more urgent, more demanding of leadership - here, of course, but most importantly in the global community."
Mr Blair said the UK would "have to be bolder" in its approach to green issues in order to have international credibility. The cost of doing nothing would be at least five times that of acting now, Mr Blair said.
"Put it another way, for every £1 spent now, we save £5 in the future."
But Mr Blair said international action was needed to tackle the problem "on the scale that is needed".
He said if all Britain's carbon emissions were stopped in one fell swoop, they would be replaced within two years by the increase in Chinese emissions.
"Should we fail to rise to this challenge I don't believe we will be able to explain ourselves to future generations that we have let down," Mr Blair said.
The environment secretary, David Miliband, this afternoon told the Commons that the upcoming climate change bill due to be announced in the Queen's speech would contain "four pillars".
First, he said, the government would enshrine into law Britain's target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050 from 1990 levels. It would also establish an independent carbon committee to ensure cuts in carbon use over time.
"Third, we believe that targets need to be accompanied by substantive measures if they are to have credibility.
"This legislation will create enabling powers to put in place new emissions reduction measures," Mr Miliband said.
The final pillar would be to assess what additional reporting and monitoring arrangements were necessary to ensure emission reduction aims were met.
Unveiling his report, former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas said the action needed to avert the worst effects of climate change was "manageable", adding: "We can grow and be green."
The global community should aim to stabilise CO2 levels in the atmosphere - currently at 430 parts per million (ppm) - at around 450-550ppm, he said. He warned that continuing with business as usual could mean levels rising to as much as 850 ppm, resulting in global temperatures rising by more than 5C and causing "transformational" changes to human lifestyles.
The last ice age was the result of a dip in global temperatures of around 4C to 5C, he pointed out.
Damage caused by floods, rising sea levels and more violent weather could be the equivalent of losing 5% to 20% of total human consumption a year, he warned.
But Sir Nicholas said the cost of acting now to stabilise atmospheric CO2 at acceptable levels would be around 1% of GDP.
"This is the equivalent of paying 1% more for what we buy," he said. "It is like a one-off increase by 1% in the price index. That is manageable. We can grow and be green."
Also, the scientific and technological advances needed to tackle climate change could produce a boost to the British economy in terms of improved efficiency and the development of valuable new technology, he said.
"Economically speaking, mitigation is a very good deal," said Sir Nicholas. "Business as usual, on the other hand, would eventually derail growth."
Sir Nicholas said that action on global warming must be global, long-term and flexible enough to cope with considerable risks and uncertainties.
Policy should be based on the establishment, by both trade and regulation, of a carbon-pricing system.
And it should involve the promotion of technological solutions to the problem through scientific research and development.
The chancellor, Gordon Brown, who commissioned the review, said climate change was "the world's biggest market failure" and that Britain would become the leading country in pushing for low carbon emissions.
He called for a long-term framework of a worldwide carbon market, leading to "a low-carbon global economy".
He set out proposals for a new European-wide emissions reduction target of 30% by 2020, and at least 60% by 2050 - eventually to be extended worldwide.
"Building a low carbon economy in Britain and across the world means higher productivity from increased energy efficiency, it means new markets, jobs and exports from environmental technologies and products," he said.
"As the international community begins to build the long-term framework that I am describing, as the European trading scheme expands into a global carbon market, a new low-carbon global economy will take shape."
Commenting on the report, Professor Michael Grubb, a professor of climate change and energy policy at Imperial College, London, and Cambridge University said: "The Stern Review finally closes a chasm that has existed for 15 years between the precautionary concerns of scientists, and the cost-benefit views of many economists.
"It finds that most economists' methods have been inadequate for a problem of this scale. Argued with meticulous economic detail, Stern concludes that the problem is indeed massive and urgent - but that it can be solved.
"The most encouraging feature of the Stern review is its conclusion that the problem can be solved by building upon the existing foundations of emissions trading and the Kyoto protocol, combined with strengthened attention to the other pillars of behaviour, efficiency and technological innovation.
Professor Neil Adger, an environmental economist at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Reseach, said: "The economics of Nicholas Stern is not the 'dismal science' of standard economics.
"The review shows with clarity and vision how climate change can be tackled head on by governments using clear goals and sustained investment, and by harnessing ingenuity and technology.
"But it goes further to demonstrate, using the economic language loved by exchequers, that climate change is a moral policy issue where the countries of the world are completely interdependent but with different responsibilities for action."
Tony Blair today said that the world was facing "nothing more serious, more urgent, or more demanding of leadership" than climate change and that Britons must be prepared to pay now to avoid future disaster.
Speaking at the launch of Sir Nicholas Stern's review on tackling global warming, the prime minister said there was "overwhelming scientific evidence" that climate change was taking place and that the consequences of failing to act would be "disastrous
"This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime. Unless we act now ... these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible," he said.
"There is nothing more serious, more urgent, more demanding of leadership - here, of course, but most importantly in the global community."
Mr Blair said the UK would "have to be bolder" in its approach to green issues in order to have international credibility. The cost of doing nothing would be at least five times that of acting now, Mr Blair said.
"Put it another way, for every £1 spent now, we save £5 in the future."
But Mr Blair said international action was needed to tackle the problem "on the scale that is needed".
He said if all Britain's carbon emissions were stopped in one fell swoop, they would be replaced within two years by the increase in Chinese emissions.
"Should we fail to rise to this challenge I don't believe we will be able to explain ourselves to future generations that we have let down," Mr Blair said.
The environment secretary, David Miliband, this afternoon told the Commons that the upcoming climate change bill due to be announced in the Queen's speech would contain "four pillars".
First, he said, the government would enshrine into law Britain's target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by 2050 from 1990 levels. It would also establish an independent carbon committee to ensure cuts in carbon use over time.
"Third, we believe that targets need to be accompanied by substantive measures if they are to have credibility.
"This legislation will create enabling powers to put in place new emissions reduction measures," Mr Miliband said.
The final pillar would be to assess what additional reporting and monitoring arrangements were necessary to ensure emission reduction aims were met.
Unveiling his report, former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas said the action needed to avert the worst effects of climate change was "manageable", adding: "We can grow and be green."
The global community should aim to stabilise CO2 levels in the atmosphere - currently at 430 parts per million (ppm) - at around 450-550ppm, he said. He warned that continuing with business as usual could mean levels rising to as much as 850 ppm, resulting in global temperatures rising by more than 5C and causing "transformational" changes to human lifestyles.
The last ice age was the result of a dip in global temperatures of around 4C to 5C, he pointed out.
Damage caused by floods, rising sea levels and more violent weather could be the equivalent of losing 5% to 20% of total human consumption a year, he warned.
But Sir Nicholas said the cost of acting now to stabilise atmospheric CO2 at acceptable levels would be around 1% of GDP.
"This is the equivalent of paying 1% more for what we buy," he said. "It is like a one-off increase by 1% in the price index. That is manageable. We can grow and be green."
Also, the scientific and technological advances needed to tackle climate change could produce a boost to the British economy in terms of improved efficiency and the development of valuable new technology, he said.
"Economically speaking, mitigation is a very good deal," said Sir Nicholas. "Business as usual, on the other hand, would eventually derail growth."
Sir Nicholas said that action on global warming must be global, long-term and flexible enough to cope with considerable risks and uncertainties.
Policy should be based on the establishment, by both trade and regulation, of a carbon-pricing system.
And it should involve the promotion of technological solutions to the problem through scientific research and development.
The chancellor, Gordon Brown, who commissioned the review, said climate change was "the world's biggest market failure" and that Britain would become the leading country in pushing for low carbon emissions.
He called for a long-term framework of a worldwide carbon market, leading to "a low-carbon global economy".
He set out proposals for a new European-wide emissions reduction target of 30% by 2020, and at least 60% by 2050 - eventually to be extended worldwide.
"Building a low carbon economy in Britain and across the world means higher productivity from increased energy efficiency, it means new markets, jobs and exports from environmental technologies and products," he said.
"As the international community begins to build the long-term framework that I am describing, as the European trading scheme expands into a global carbon market, a new low-carbon global economy will take shape."
Commenting on the report, Professor Michael Grubb, a professor of climate change and energy policy at Imperial College, London, and Cambridge University said: "The Stern Review finally closes a chasm that has existed for 15 years between the precautionary concerns of scientists, and the cost-benefit views of many economists.
"It finds that most economists' methods have been inadequate for a problem of this scale. Argued with meticulous economic detail, Stern concludes that the problem is indeed massive and urgent - but that it can be solved.
"The most encouraging feature of the Stern review is its conclusion that the problem can be solved by building upon the existing foundations of emissions trading and the Kyoto protocol, combined with strengthened attention to the other pillars of behaviour, efficiency and technological innovation.
Professor Neil Adger, an environmental economist at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Reseach, said: "The economics of Nicholas Stern is not the 'dismal science' of standard economics.
"The review shows with clarity and vision how climate change can be tackled head on by governments using clear goals and sustained investment, and by harnessing ingenuity and technology.
"But it goes further to demonstrate, using the economic language loved by exchequers, that climate change is a moral policy issue where the countries of the world are completely interdependent but with different responsibilities for action."
Opposition attacks Govt over climate change.
The Federal Opposition is stepping up its attack on the Government over climate change in the wake of the Sir Nicholas Stern report.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the world needs to invest heavily in fighting climate change if it is to avoid a future economic catastrophe.
The British Government has released a comprehensive report on climate change and the global economy.
Mr Blair says the Stern report is the most important report on the future that he has ever received as Prime Minister.
"It has demolished the last remaining argument for inaction. Urgent action will prevent a catastrophe and investment will pay us back many times in the future," he said.
Undertaken by the former World Bank chief economist, the report says 1 per cent of the world economy should be spent tackling climate change. It also recommends a global emissions trading scheme.
Later this year, Sir Nicholas will go to the US, alongside former vice president Al Gore, to promote a unified global approach.
'Frozen in time'
Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese has accused the Government of dodging the issue.
"On this - the most important issue facing the global community - you can't fudge," he said.
"You can't say on the one hand - Kyoto Protocol, if we ratified it would ruin the economy, and then in the next breath say, we'll meet the target. It doesn't make sense."
Mr Albanese says the Stern report on climate change is being ignored by the Government.
"We are so far behind the rest of the world on climate change that it is an embarrassment," he said.
"The Howard Government is frozen in time while the globe warms around it."
Labor says the report highlights the need for an emissions trading system and for Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
The Government says it would support a new global emissions trading system, provided all major countries sign up.
Parliamentary secretary for the environment Greg Hunt says the Government is already acting.
"I say there is a better way and that is what we are doing which is investing directly on the supply side of emissions control," Mr Hunt said.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has defended Australia, saying the nation is taking action on climate change. She says the US has also changed its attitude on the issue.
"It isn't the case that nothing is happening in Australia. Australia has more cause than many other countries in the world to understand the force of these arguments," she said.
'Kyoto flawed'
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane wants a completely new approach.
"Sir Nicholas Stern said we need a global carbon trading arrangement - Kyoto is not a global trading arrangement," he said.
"It is around about or even less than 45 per cent of the global emitters."
Mr Hunt also says the entire Kyoto protocol is flawed.
"What is happening as a result of this great moral measure that they talk about is a movement of emissions from one position to another and that's why because there is a fundamental flaw and they don't want to acknowledge it," he said.
The Federal Government points to its $2 billion low emissions technology fund as an example of its action against climate change.
The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) in Australia has welcomed the Stern report on the economics of dealing with climate change.
BCSE executive director Rick Brazzale says the Federal Government must accept the urgency of Australia curbing greenhouse emission from the energy sector.
"It's not really going to cost a lot of money and it's not really going to adversely impact on our economic growth," he said.
"It might just slow our economic growth a little bit over the course of the next 20 years, but it's not a significant cost at all.
"Certainly compared to the costs of more severe drought, more severe bushfires and the water challenges that we have at present."
The Federal Opposition is stepping up its attack on the Government over climate change in the wake of the Sir Nicholas Stern report.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the world needs to invest heavily in fighting climate change if it is to avoid a future economic catastrophe.
The British Government has released a comprehensive report on climate change and the global economy.
Mr Blair says the Stern report is the most important report on the future that he has ever received as Prime Minister.
"It has demolished the last remaining argument for inaction. Urgent action will prevent a catastrophe and investment will pay us back many times in the future," he said.
Undertaken by the former World Bank chief economist, the report says 1 per cent of the world economy should be spent tackling climate change. It also recommends a global emissions trading scheme.
Later this year, Sir Nicholas will go to the US, alongside former vice president Al Gore, to promote a unified global approach.
'Frozen in time'
Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese has accused the Government of dodging the issue.
"On this - the most important issue facing the global community - you can't fudge," he said.
"You can't say on the one hand - Kyoto Protocol, if we ratified it would ruin the economy, and then in the next breath say, we'll meet the target. It doesn't make sense."
Mr Albanese says the Stern report on climate change is being ignored by the Government.
"We are so far behind the rest of the world on climate change that it is an embarrassment," he said.
"The Howard Government is frozen in time while the globe warms around it."
Labor says the report highlights the need for an emissions trading system and for Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
The Government says it would support a new global emissions trading system, provided all major countries sign up.
Parliamentary secretary for the environment Greg Hunt says the Government is already acting.
"I say there is a better way and that is what we are doing which is investing directly on the supply side of emissions control," Mr Hunt said.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has defended Australia, saying the nation is taking action on climate change. She says the US has also changed its attitude on the issue.
"It isn't the case that nothing is happening in Australia. Australia has more cause than many other countries in the world to understand the force of these arguments," she said.
'Kyoto flawed'
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane wants a completely new approach.
"Sir Nicholas Stern said we need a global carbon trading arrangement - Kyoto is not a global trading arrangement," he said.
"It is around about or even less than 45 per cent of the global emitters."
Mr Hunt also says the entire Kyoto protocol is flawed.
"What is happening as a result of this great moral measure that they talk about is a movement of emissions from one position to another and that's why because there is a fundamental flaw and they don't want to acknowledge it," he said.
The Federal Government points to its $2 billion low emissions technology fund as an example of its action against climate change.
The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) in Australia has welcomed the Stern report on the economics of dealing with climate change.
BCSE executive director Rick Brazzale says the Federal Government must accept the urgency of Australia curbing greenhouse emission from the energy sector.
"It's not really going to cost a lot of money and it's not really going to adversely impact on our economic growth," he said.
"It might just slow our economic growth a little bit over the course of the next 20 years, but it's not a significant cost at all.
"Certainly compared to the costs of more severe drought, more severe bushfires and the water challenges that we have at present."
Developing countries must do more to reduce emissions: Costello.
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says there is no point in Australia reducing its greenhouse gas emissions when China and India are such major global polluters.
Mr Costello is reacting to the UK's Stern report on global warming.
Its author, leading economist Sir Nicholas Stern, has described climate change as the biggest market failure the world has ever seen.
Mr Costello says the claims have to be kept in perspective and while Australia is on track reducing its emissions, developing countries need to do more.
He says Australia should try to get other nations to cut theirs.
"There's no point in Australia meeting its emissions target - and we are on track to do so, and I believe we ought to do so when we're less than 1 per cent of global emissions - if you're going to have major emitters such as China and India, which are increasing every year the emissions by more than the total of Australia," he said.
Labor's environment blueprint
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says the findings from the Stern report support Labor's environment blueprint.
Mr Beazley says if elected, Labor would sign the Kyoto protocol, engage in emissions trading and focus on renewable energy and the development of clean coal technologies.
He says the Government has failed to provide any long-term solutions to climate change.
Mr Beazley has accused Prime Minister John Howard of looking for a quick political fix to the problem.
"We are now into the period of an absolute requirement for action and already we are behind the clock, we are late," he said.
"That is why we don't have a moment to lose of the implementation of the sorts of propositions we put forward in our climate change document."
In other developments:
The Federal Opposition is stepping up its attack on the Government over climate change in the wake of the Sir Nicholas Stern report. (Full Story)
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello says there is no point in Australia reducing its greenhouse gas emissions when China and India are such major global polluters.
Mr Costello is reacting to the UK's Stern report on global warming.
Its author, leading economist Sir Nicholas Stern, has described climate change as the biggest market failure the world has ever seen.
Mr Costello says the claims have to be kept in perspective and while Australia is on track reducing its emissions, developing countries need to do more.
He says Australia should try to get other nations to cut theirs.
"There's no point in Australia meeting its emissions target - and we are on track to do so, and I believe we ought to do so when we're less than 1 per cent of global emissions - if you're going to have major emitters such as China and India, which are increasing every year the emissions by more than the total of Australia," he said.
Labor's environment blueprint
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley says the findings from the Stern report support Labor's environment blueprint.
Mr Beazley says if elected, Labor would sign the Kyoto protocol, engage in emissions trading and focus on renewable energy and the development of clean coal technologies.
He says the Government has failed to provide any long-term solutions to climate change.
Mr Beazley has accused Prime Minister John Howard of looking for a quick political fix to the problem.
"We are now into the period of an absolute requirement for action and already we are behind the clock, we are late," he said.
"That is why we don't have a moment to lose of the implementation of the sorts of propositions we put forward in our climate change document."
In other developments:
The Federal Opposition is stepping up its attack on the Government over climate change in the wake of the Sir Nicholas Stern report. (Full Story)
Greenhouse gas emissions rising
The UN has released new data showing an upward trend in emission of greenhouse gases, and called for urgent action from rich countries.
The data showed a 2.4% total increase in emissions across 41 industrialised countries between 2000 and 2004.
Britain, France and Germany were "relatively close" to achieving Kyoto Protocol targets, the UN said.
The US remained the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter - its emissions increased 15.4% between 1990 and 2004.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries agreed in 1997 to cut emissions of the gases blamed for human-induced climate change to 5% below 1990 levels.
Overall emissions have decreased by 3.3% since 1990.
But this is largely because rising emissions in rich countries have been offset by the massive decline in industry in Eastern European and former Soviet countries following the collapse of communism.
And Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat in Bonn, said it was "worrying" that the new data showed that even those countries' emissions had risen 4.1% between 2000 and 2004.
The figures were published as the British government released a report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%.
But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says.
'Act urgently'
Mr de Boer said that overall, Kyoto signatory countries had a "good chance" of meeting their targets if they moved fast to implement proposed strategies.
But he warned that the targets were small compared to the ultimate challenge, pointing to information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
"It's showing us that by the middle of the century, emissions probably need to be reduced by 60% or 80%, at least by industrialised countries," he said.
At-a-glance: Stern Review
Analysis: A stark warning
Will Stern make a difference? "It's telling us is that we need to act on climate change very urgently or else it's going to get very expensive."
The new UN data also showed some countries were far from the hoped-for reductions.
The US originally agreed to work towards a 6% reduction from 1990 levels, but later pulled out of the protocol, saying implementing it would be detrimental to its economy.
By 2004, US emissions were 21.1% above 1990 levels and accounted for nearly a quarter of all global greenhouse emissions, the UNFCCC said - although the rate of increase of emissions had slowed in recent years.
Japan and Spain had fallen behind targets. Japan's emissions have increased 6% since 1990, despite a 2012 target of a 6% decrease.
And Spain had pledged to allow its emissions to rise 15% by 2012, but by 2004 they were already 49% above 1990 levels.
Mr de Boer pointed to Britain and Germany as positive examples, demonstrating that it was possible to sustain economic growth while cutting emissions.
"It is possible to decouple economic growth and climate change," he said.
The figures come ahead of UN-sponsored talks on the Kyoto Protocol next week in Nairobi.
The UN has released new data showing an upward trend in emission of greenhouse gases, and called for urgent action from rich countries.
The data showed a 2.4% total increase in emissions across 41 industrialised countries between 2000 and 2004.
Britain, France and Germany were "relatively close" to achieving Kyoto Protocol targets, the UN said.
The US remained the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter - its emissions increased 15.4% between 1990 and 2004.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries agreed in 1997 to cut emissions of the gases blamed for human-induced climate change to 5% below 1990 levels.
Overall emissions have decreased by 3.3% since 1990.
But this is largely because rising emissions in rich countries have been offset by the massive decline in industry in Eastern European and former Soviet countries following the collapse of communism.
And Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat in Bonn, said it was "worrying" that the new data showed that even those countries' emissions had risen 4.1% between 2000 and 2004.
The figures were published as the British government released a report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%.
But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says.
'Act urgently'
Mr de Boer said that overall, Kyoto signatory countries had a "good chance" of meeting their targets if they moved fast to implement proposed strategies.
But he warned that the targets were small compared to the ultimate challenge, pointing to information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):
"It's showing us that by the middle of the century, emissions probably need to be reduced by 60% or 80%, at least by industrialised countries," he said.
At-a-glance: Stern Review
Analysis: A stark warning
Will Stern make a difference? "It's telling us is that we need to act on climate change very urgently or else it's going to get very expensive."
The new UN data also showed some countries were far from the hoped-for reductions.
The US originally agreed to work towards a 6% reduction from 1990 levels, but later pulled out of the protocol, saying implementing it would be detrimental to its economy.
By 2004, US emissions were 21.1% above 1990 levels and accounted for nearly a quarter of all global greenhouse emissions, the UNFCCC said - although the rate of increase of emissions had slowed in recent years.
Japan and Spain had fallen behind targets. Japan's emissions have increased 6% since 1990, despite a 2012 target of a 6% decrease.
And Spain had pledged to allow its emissions to rise 15% by 2012, but by 2004 they were already 49% above 1990 levels.
Mr de Boer pointed to Britain and Germany as positive examples, demonstrating that it was possible to sustain economic growth while cutting emissions.
"It is possible to decouple economic growth and climate change," he said.
The figures come ahead of UN-sponsored talks on the Kyoto Protocol next week in Nairobi.
Monday, October 30, 2006
New kind of hybrid fuel is 'doable' now, experts say
Ignore the funky paint job, and the 2005 Toyota Prius looks - and drives - like any other year-old hybrid passenger vehicle on the road.
That's kind of the point.
Engineers were aiming for what Robert Stempel calls "acceptability."
"That's what we tried to do, so when you got in, it would be like driving your normal car," said Stempel, chairman and chief executive of Rochester Hills-based Energy Conversion Devices Inc.
But this isn't any other hybrid. There are some who are betting that vehicles like the ECD Prius will deliver the U.S. automotive industry from the quagmire in which it is bogged down, struggling with dwindling petroleum reserves, volatile fuel prices and changing consumer likes and dislikes.
This Prius runs off a battery - and on hydrogen, the most common element in the universe.
"This would be a bridge to promote the hydrogen fueling infrastructure and increase the public's awareness and use of hydrogen," said Jeffrey Schmidt, a systems energy for Ovonic Hydrogen Systems, LLC, one of the companies under the ECD umbrella. "And, in the future, the use of fuel cells."
While hydrogen-powered cars might seem the stuff of science fiction, "this is doable technology today," Schmidt said.
Indeed, Stempel said hydrogen-powered vehicles using internal combustion engines similar to the one in the Prius could be commercially available by 2010.
"What we would probably do is target the fleets where you have the same stopping point every night," he said.
In recently published interviews, high-ranking offi cials at General Motors Corp. said hydrogen-powered vehicles could be available in massproduction volumes by 2011.
The company last month showed off the hydrogen-powered Sequel concept vehicle to journalists in California. It also announced it will test more than 100 hydrogen-powered Equinox vehicles in 2007 in California, as well as in New York City and Washington, D.C.
"The day is getting closer when we would have to consider this as a possible entry into the marketplace," said Byron McCormick, executive director of GM's fuel cell activities.
Fill 'er up?
While the day may be getting closer, hydrogen-powered vehicles face roadblocks, chief among them fueling infrastructure.
Schmidt, who drives the ECD Prius from Southgate most weekdays to the company's headquarters off Auburn Road, fuels at a hydrogen pump on site.
But drivers of hydrogen cars can't just go down to the corner service station. Schmidt, for example, was loading the Prius onto a trailer recently to take it to a demonstration across the state in Muskegon.
"If there were hydrogen fueling stations between here and Muskegon today, I'd hop in the car and drive it," he said. "I would have no qualms about driving this car to Muskegon."
In the early days of the automobile, pioneering motorists had to go to the hardware store to pick up a can of gasoline. The gas station infrastructure grew rapidly, however, once there were enough motorists to make such an operation economically viable.
Developing the hydrogen infrastructure might follow the same route, according to McCormick.
"It's like rural electrifi cation," he said. "We're trying to get enough vehicles out there that use hydrogen so it makes sense to invest in other forms of (making hydrogen)."
And those forms might follow a less traditional route. Richard Thompson, ECD director of communications, likes to show visitors a room stocked with models of the company's products, ranging from solar roof shingles to fuel cells. In one corner is what looks like a child's model of a service station.
"There's a lot of hydrogen produced today industrially, but it's produced from natural gas," he said. "This company thinks the better way of producing hydrogen is the green way."
The roof of the service station is covered with a photovoltaic material that produces electricity from sunlight - and which is manufactured by yet another ECD company, United Solar Ovonic, in Auburn Hills. The current runs to a plate suspended in a small tank of water. When Thompson flips a switch, bubbles form on the plate.
"That's electrolysis," he said. "That's hydrogen being produced.
"This is the company's answer to producing hydrogen the green way, through our solar panels."
The same type of technology could be adapted to home use, McCormick said.
"You could contemplate that, I will take care of a percentage of my transportation costs by putting some solar cells (on the roof) and making hydrogen from electrolysis of water,' " he said.
Hydrogen also is produced by industrial processes such as metal plating, McCormick said. It's currently vented to the atmosphere, but that hydrogen could conceivably be captured.
"When I talk to the person in Japan responsible for the hydrogen program in Japan, they have identified the sources of hydrogen that are byproducts, and they believe they might be able to cover the first 10 million vehicles in Japan (using waste hydrogen)," he said.
Roland Hwang, vehicle policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that while there's a "lot of excitement" regarding the potential of hydrogen, the jury is still out on making it work and building the infrastructure.
"It's a heck of a challenge to get the hydrogen out there and the fuel cells out there in numbers," he said.
Environmental debate
Surprisingly, perhaps, some environmental groups like the NRDC have cast a jaundiced eye on hydrogen and hydrogen-fueled vehicles.
According to Hwang, "what casts a big shadow or pall over hydrogen work is it's clearly being used by the Bush administration and the auto companies as an excuse not to take meaningful action ... on fuel economy."
Environmentalists believe the administration is holding out the carrot of clean-burning hydrogen in 10 to 20 years in exchange for business as usual right now. They claim reducing emissions and increasing fuel efficiency immediately would do much to reduce global warming as well as reduce dependence on petroleum.
"The problem with the argument is it's much faster to raise the fuel economy of a gasoline vehicle, which we can do right away," Hwang said.
"It's much faster to raise fuel economy ... than it is to try to get tens of thousands of fuel cells out on the road."
Instead of one or the other, Hwang said, car companies need to both develop new technologies and improve fuel economy.
"Our position is we don't have 10 years or 20 years to wait," he said. "Start getting the carbon out of the air and start reducing our petroleum dependency now.
"In a hole, the first rule is to stop digging, and we need to do that."
For their part, companies such as ECD point to the potential benefits for the environment hydrogen holds.
Schmidt said the internal combustion engine in the Prius hybrid emits water vapor and about 1.6 grams of carbon dioxide - mainly due to trace amounts of engine oil burned during the combustion cycle.
"A normal car would be in the thousands," he said. "An ultra low-emissions vehicle (gasoline hybrid) puts out 176 grams."
Burning anything for fuel burns hydrogen, he said - pollution results from the "stuff" that holds the hydrogen.
"We've gone from early man burning wood, to coal to natural gas," Schmidt said. "Eventually you move to hydrogen if you follow the natural progression."
"I might say it slightly differently," McCormick said. "One way to look at it, whether we're talking about petroleum or natural gas or whatever, most of the energy is hydrogen.
"If you look at the history of man, when we started burning wood, started burning petroleum, we have progressively been adding more hydrogen to the carbon," he said.
"That trend continues today. Low sulfur gas or diesel - we add hydrogen to it to get that other junk out of there."
Some environmental groups remain skeptical, however. They prefer a mix of options, including biofuels produced from agricultural crops such as corn and soybeans, as well as hydrogen.
"Hydrogen is not the silver bullet," Hwang said. "We don't have a silver bullet. What we do have are some pretty darn good solutions that can break our dependence on petroleum."
What the future's like
Silver bullet or not, ECD, GM and other manufacturers see concepts like the Prius and other hydrogen-burning vehicles as stepping stones toward the ultimate goal - vehicles powered by fuel cells.
A fuel cell, McCormick said, is essentially a battery that combines hydrogen with oxygen from the air to make water and electricity.
"The advantage is a fuel cell is substantially more effi cient than the burning process," McCormick said. "The amount of energy you can effectively extract is much more effi cient than when you burn (hydrogen)."
Engineers at ECD added a turbocharger to the Prius in order to boost its horsepower back to levels approximating what it would have if it burned gasoline.
Fuel cells, said McCormick, would double the energy output produced by burning the same amount of hydrogen.
"For the same amount of hydrogen, you'd get twice the range," he said. "That extra efficiency is what gives you the ability to get enough hydrogen on board to get the range and utility our customers are looking for."
Hwang, however, said fuel cell technology could be 20 years in the future - something McCormick disputes.
"I think, sort of stay tuned," he said. "Our progress is absolutely huge on fuel cells.
"I'll believe you'll see them well before that."
Ignore the funky paint job, and the 2005 Toyota Prius looks - and drives - like any other year-old hybrid passenger vehicle on the road.
That's kind of the point.
Engineers were aiming for what Robert Stempel calls "acceptability."
"That's what we tried to do, so when you got in, it would be like driving your normal car," said Stempel, chairman and chief executive of Rochester Hills-based Energy Conversion Devices Inc.
But this isn't any other hybrid. There are some who are betting that vehicles like the ECD Prius will deliver the U.S. automotive industry from the quagmire in which it is bogged down, struggling with dwindling petroleum reserves, volatile fuel prices and changing consumer likes and dislikes.
This Prius runs off a battery - and on hydrogen, the most common element in the universe.
"This would be a bridge to promote the hydrogen fueling infrastructure and increase the public's awareness and use of hydrogen," said Jeffrey Schmidt, a systems energy for Ovonic Hydrogen Systems, LLC, one of the companies under the ECD umbrella. "And, in the future, the use of fuel cells."
While hydrogen-powered cars might seem the stuff of science fiction, "this is doable technology today," Schmidt said.
Indeed, Stempel said hydrogen-powered vehicles using internal combustion engines similar to the one in the Prius could be commercially available by 2010.
"What we would probably do is target the fleets where you have the same stopping point every night," he said.
In recently published interviews, high-ranking offi cials at General Motors Corp. said hydrogen-powered vehicles could be available in massproduction volumes by 2011.
The company last month showed off the hydrogen-powered Sequel concept vehicle to journalists in California. It also announced it will test more than 100 hydrogen-powered Equinox vehicles in 2007 in California, as well as in New York City and Washington, D.C.
"The day is getting closer when we would have to consider this as a possible entry into the marketplace," said Byron McCormick, executive director of GM's fuel cell activities.
Fill 'er up?
While the day may be getting closer, hydrogen-powered vehicles face roadblocks, chief among them fueling infrastructure.
Schmidt, who drives the ECD Prius from Southgate most weekdays to the company's headquarters off Auburn Road, fuels at a hydrogen pump on site.
But drivers of hydrogen cars can't just go down to the corner service station. Schmidt, for example, was loading the Prius onto a trailer recently to take it to a demonstration across the state in Muskegon.
"If there were hydrogen fueling stations between here and Muskegon today, I'd hop in the car and drive it," he said. "I would have no qualms about driving this car to Muskegon."
In the early days of the automobile, pioneering motorists had to go to the hardware store to pick up a can of gasoline. The gas station infrastructure grew rapidly, however, once there were enough motorists to make such an operation economically viable.
Developing the hydrogen infrastructure might follow the same route, according to McCormick.
"It's like rural electrifi cation," he said. "We're trying to get enough vehicles out there that use hydrogen so it makes sense to invest in other forms of (making hydrogen)."
And those forms might follow a less traditional route. Richard Thompson, ECD director of communications, likes to show visitors a room stocked with models of the company's products, ranging from solar roof shingles to fuel cells. In one corner is what looks like a child's model of a service station.
"There's a lot of hydrogen produced today industrially, but it's produced from natural gas," he said. "This company thinks the better way of producing hydrogen is the green way."
The roof of the service station is covered with a photovoltaic material that produces electricity from sunlight - and which is manufactured by yet another ECD company, United Solar Ovonic, in Auburn Hills. The current runs to a plate suspended in a small tank of water. When Thompson flips a switch, bubbles form on the plate.
"That's electrolysis," he said. "That's hydrogen being produced.
"This is the company's answer to producing hydrogen the green way, through our solar panels."
The same type of technology could be adapted to home use, McCormick said.
"You could contemplate that, I will take care of a percentage of my transportation costs by putting some solar cells (on the roof) and making hydrogen from electrolysis of water,' " he said.
Hydrogen also is produced by industrial processes such as metal plating, McCormick said. It's currently vented to the atmosphere, but that hydrogen could conceivably be captured.
"When I talk to the person in Japan responsible for the hydrogen program in Japan, they have identified the sources of hydrogen that are byproducts, and they believe they might be able to cover the first 10 million vehicles in Japan (using waste hydrogen)," he said.
Roland Hwang, vehicle policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that while there's a "lot of excitement" regarding the potential of hydrogen, the jury is still out on making it work and building the infrastructure.
"It's a heck of a challenge to get the hydrogen out there and the fuel cells out there in numbers," he said.
Environmental debate
Surprisingly, perhaps, some environmental groups like the NRDC have cast a jaundiced eye on hydrogen and hydrogen-fueled vehicles.
According to Hwang, "what casts a big shadow or pall over hydrogen work is it's clearly being used by the Bush administration and the auto companies as an excuse not to take meaningful action ... on fuel economy."
Environmentalists believe the administration is holding out the carrot of clean-burning hydrogen in 10 to 20 years in exchange for business as usual right now. They claim reducing emissions and increasing fuel efficiency immediately would do much to reduce global warming as well as reduce dependence on petroleum.
"The problem with the argument is it's much faster to raise the fuel economy of a gasoline vehicle, which we can do right away," Hwang said.
"It's much faster to raise fuel economy ... than it is to try to get tens of thousands of fuel cells out on the road."
Instead of one or the other, Hwang said, car companies need to both develop new technologies and improve fuel economy.
"Our position is we don't have 10 years or 20 years to wait," he said. "Start getting the carbon out of the air and start reducing our petroleum dependency now.
"In a hole, the first rule is to stop digging, and we need to do that."
For their part, companies such as ECD point to the potential benefits for the environment hydrogen holds.
Schmidt said the internal combustion engine in the Prius hybrid emits water vapor and about 1.6 grams of carbon dioxide - mainly due to trace amounts of engine oil burned during the combustion cycle.
"A normal car would be in the thousands," he said. "An ultra low-emissions vehicle (gasoline hybrid) puts out 176 grams."
Burning anything for fuel burns hydrogen, he said - pollution results from the "stuff" that holds the hydrogen.
"We've gone from early man burning wood, to coal to natural gas," Schmidt said. "Eventually you move to hydrogen if you follow the natural progression."
"I might say it slightly differently," McCormick said. "One way to look at it, whether we're talking about petroleum or natural gas or whatever, most of the energy is hydrogen.
"If you look at the history of man, when we started burning wood, started burning petroleum, we have progressively been adding more hydrogen to the carbon," he said.
"That trend continues today. Low sulfur gas or diesel - we add hydrogen to it to get that other junk out of there."
Some environmental groups remain skeptical, however. They prefer a mix of options, including biofuels produced from agricultural crops such as corn and soybeans, as well as hydrogen.
"Hydrogen is not the silver bullet," Hwang said. "We don't have a silver bullet. What we do have are some pretty darn good solutions that can break our dependence on petroleum."
What the future's like
Silver bullet or not, ECD, GM and other manufacturers see concepts like the Prius and other hydrogen-burning vehicles as stepping stones toward the ultimate goal - vehicles powered by fuel cells.
A fuel cell, McCormick said, is essentially a battery that combines hydrogen with oxygen from the air to make water and electricity.
"The advantage is a fuel cell is substantially more effi cient than the burning process," McCormick said. "The amount of energy you can effectively extract is much more effi cient than when you burn (hydrogen)."
Engineers at ECD added a turbocharger to the Prius in order to boost its horsepower back to levels approximating what it would have if it burned gasoline.
Fuel cells, said McCormick, would double the energy output produced by burning the same amount of hydrogen.
"For the same amount of hydrogen, you'd get twice the range," he said. "That extra efficiency is what gives you the ability to get enough hydrogen on board to get the range and utility our customers are looking for."
Hwang, however, said fuel cell technology could be 20 years in the future - something McCormick disputes.
"I think, sort of stay tuned," he said. "Our progress is absolutely huge on fuel cells.
"I'll believe you'll see them well before that."
Tassie’s weather confuses all
There’s an old joke about Tasmania: ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes’. How true. In recent weeks our weather has done it all. We’ve gone from heatwaves and roaring bushfires [see below] to deadly frosts [which wiped out half the fruit crops in southern Tasmania] to widespread snow yesterday [October 27] and overnight. Keep an eye on our webcam focussed on Mt Wellington day and night for updates.
There’s an old joke about Tasmania: ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes’. How true. In recent weeks our weather has done it all. We’ve gone from heatwaves and roaring bushfires [see below] to deadly frosts [which wiped out half the fruit crops in southern Tasmania] to widespread snow yesterday [October 27] and overnight. Keep an eye on our webcam focussed on Mt Wellington day and night for updates.
U.K.'s Miliband Says Climate Change Costs Will Rise If Delayed
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By Mark Deen
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- British Environment Secretary David Miliband said that delaying efforts to combat climate change will be more costly than tackling it now.
Cutting carbon emissions today will cost about 1 percent of economic output, compared with between 15 percent and 20 percent of gross domestic product if it is left for 40 years, Miliband said on BBC Radio 4, citing a report on climate change to be published by the Treasury's Nicholas Stern tomorrow. Some scientists attribute global warming to carbon dioxide emissions.
``The costs of climate change will become dramatically greater if we don't act,'' Miliband said. ``If Nicholas Stern does deliver a strong message, he also said the technology does exist, the financing exists and the international mechanisms exist to get to grips with this problem.''
Stern's report will recommend new taxes on cars, heating fuel, air travel and consumer goods, The Mail on Sunday reported, citing an Oct. 18 letter to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown from Miliband. The environment secretary refused to comment directly on the newspaper article.
Miliband and Brown are trying to gain the upper hand in the climate change debate after Conservative leader David Cameron put the environment at the top of his agenda as part of an effort to change his party's image with voters. About 33 percent of voters say Cameron would do the most to tackle climate change, compared with 20 percent for Labour's Gordon Brown, according to an ICM Ltd. poll conducted for the BBC.
Brown, who commissioned former World Bank economist Stern to prepare the report, is the only Cabinet member to say he wants to replace Prime Minister Tony Blair when he steps down next year.
Global Warming
Stern's 700-page report will estimate that global warming will cost the world as much as 3.68 billion pounds ($6.98 trillion) and trigger the migration of 200 million people around the globe unless carbon emissions reach their peak within the next 10 or 15 years, The Observer reported.
``The scientific debate is closed on global warming,'' Miliband said on Sky News television. ``We've got 10 to 15 years to radically change.''
Miliband's letter asked Brown to consider a ``substantial increase'' in road taxes and levies that would encourage people to use smaller cars, The Mail said. He also suggests that taxes on gasoline should increase if oil prices decline, according to the newspaper.
David Cameron, who has also pledged more green taxes if he wins the next election, said today that he's ready to consider increasing duties on air travel.
``I don't want to stop people going on a family holiday,'' Cameron said on BBC television. Still, if dealing with climate change ``means putting a tax on air travel, then yes, that's something we'd be prepared to do.''
Wind Turbine
Cameron's West London home has a wind turbine on its roof and the opposition leader frequently travels to work by bike, though his government car follows him carrying paperwork.
Cameron's popularity lead over Brown is widening, a poll showed last week. When asked to choose between them, 46 percent of respondents said they would vote for Cameron, and 33 percent Brown, according to a YouGov Plc poll published two days ago. The 13-point difference compares with 7 points a month ago.
Blair has promised to step down before next September. The lawmaker chosen by the Labour Party to succeed him will become prime minister and can then determine the timing of a general election, which must be held by mid-2010 at the latest.
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