Giant Antarctic ice shelf breaks into the sea

Wednesday March 26 2008
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday March 26 2008. It was last updated at 12:23 on March 27 2008.

A vast hunk of floating ice has broken away from the Antarctic peninsula, threatening the collapse of a much larger ice shelf behind it, in a development that has shocked climate scientists.
Satellite images show that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins ice shelf has been lost since the end of February, leaving the ice interior now "hanging by a thread".
The collapsing shelf suggests that climate change could be forcing change much more quickly than scientists had predicted.
"The ice shelf is hanging by a thread," said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "We'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."
The Wilkins shelf covers an area of 5,600 square miles (14,500 sq km). It is now protected by just a thin thread of ice between two islands.
Vaughan was a member of the team that predicted in 1993 that global warming could cause the Wilkins shelf to collapse within 30 years.
The shedding of peripheral floating ice shelves has occurred elsewhere on the peninsula, allowing inland ice to move towards the sea and cause rising sea levels.
Some areas of the frozen continent have been cooler in recent years, and have added ice through accumulated snowfall. This year, the thin floating layer of sea ice that forms each austral winter and fades in summer has in fact been larger than usual, in contrast to the Arctic.
But in other parts — such as the West Antarctic ice sheet — ice is being lost to the sea.
The darker area shows the chunk that has broken away. Picture: Nasa Climate scientists around Antarctica were taken by surprise by the new find. "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula yet to be threatened," Vaughan said.
"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it's happened twice as fast as we predicted."
The retreat of the shelf was first spotted from satellite data by Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado.
He alerted the BAS, which sent an aircraft to assess the extent of the damage.
Jim Elliott, who filmed part of the breakup, said: "It was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble — it's like an explosion."
The Antarctic peninsula, which stretches north from the frozen continent towards South America, has experienced unprecedented warming over the past 50 years.
Six other ice shelves have already been lost entirely — the Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and Jones shelves.
But the Wilkins shelf is farther south than other ice that has retreated, so should be better protected by colder temperatures.
Vaughan said: "It's bigger than any ice shelf we've seen retreating before, and in the long term it could be a taste of other things to come. It is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region."

Going green on the festival scene

Cars and rubbish can make a festival an eco-disaster. But now organisers are tackling their carbon footprint.


Independent
Nick Hasted reports
Friday, 7 March 2008

Photo Timothy Allen


Thom Yorke's statement at a press conference for Friends of the Earth last week that Radiohead won't be playing Glastonbury this year, because it lacks "a public transport infrastructure", has brought home an uncomfortable truth. The churned, litter-embedded wasteland left behind the day after a typical rock festival already looks like a Friends of the Earth recruiting poster. But as the summer festival season grows more packed and varied, Yorke has identified a sea-change. Travellers to the glorious West Country, where Glastonbury is one of many festivals this year, are getting used to the fact that their trip is environmentally damaging. Traditional rock fans at Reading and Leeds, meanwhile, are being encouraged to return their beer-cups for recycling, preferably before urinating in them to hurl at Funeral for a Friend.

Most festivals claim to be taking some sort of "green" stand this year. Glastonbury's Michael Eavis, though, doesn't need Yorke to see a starker choice. "The environmental impact of festivals is disastrous," he states bluntly. "To pretend they're green is ridiculous. You can recycle like mad, you can bring people on public transport, which we do. Overall, though, with generator-diesel and travel, the greenest thing to do is not to run the event. But if we want something like Glastonbury, if it's part of our culture, that's the price one has to pay. The spiritual high that people get across the nation, and the moral integrity of the crowd, outweighs the environmental impact. We've always minimised the damage. But if you switched off everything that created carbon, we'd be bored to tears."

Smaller, newer festivals have nevertheless done their best. "We started wanting to make as little carbon impact as possible," recalls Graeme Merrifield, organiser of Wychwood, now in its fourth year at Cheltenham Racecourse. "Festivals who call themselves green actually go to a greenfield site in the middle of nowhere. They have to bring infrastructure in, and there's no public transport – cars are easily festivals' biggest environmental cost. We have a very strong alliance with Friends of the Earth, to build sustainable plans. We're creating a small community of like-minded people. We have workshops about green issues; ideas people can put in their lives if they want. But being carbon-neutral is fanciful."

Chris Tarren, production manager for both Wychwood and Dorset's End of the Road festival, has detailed green policies for both: low-energy light-bulbs, lessening the power pumped by generators; daylight sensors on lighting; over 60 per cent of waste recycled on-site. Wychwood has a solar cinema. End of the Road's food is locally (where possible) and ethically sourced, with biodegradable cutlery. Its co-creator Sofia Hagberg, coming from Sweden's micro-recycling culture, ensures even cigarette butts are sifted out. "I believe every little thing counts," she says. "I was surprised at how well the site looked at the end. People take responsibility when they see we care."

"You can try to have a carbon-neutral festival," believes the Isle of Wight's John Giddings. "With wind turbines and waves, you've got things at your disposal that you don't get in downtown Fulham. There are going to be elements of wind-power in the festival. We're also negotiating to plant 50,000 trees, one for every festival-goer. We're just wondering where to fit them on the island...."

The latter policy sounds like a benign gesture that hasn't quite been thought through, something that exercises Tarren. "There's a serious lack of understanding," he says. "Everyone thinks it's all about this buzz-word the Government keeps coming out with, cutting your 'carbon footprint'. But people don't understand what that means, or how individual efforts might make a difference. Why are we promoting the fact that we're going to be as green as possible, when we're still creating carbon? If the Government helped with costs, instead of buzz-words... I'd love to use green generators. But the green tax puts fuel costs up 80 per cent."

The attractions of the smaller festivals, though – their human, approachable scale, and personal, not corporate priorities – are having wider benefits, as Andrew Haworth, the major promoter and Live Nation's new environmental officer, explains. "Smaller festivals are incredibly useful for trailing initiatives that we can then scale up and try on a much larger scale. I could, theoretically, ensure solar panels [were in place] all over Hyde Park for our Wireless festival. But if the weather's not right those four days, we have no power. We can't take those risks. It's also easier if festivals start from scratch. If you're trying to take a big established festival in a direction it hasn't followed previously, you have to take baby steps. You can't outrun audience expectations. But it makes moral and business sense to harness live music's energy at putting over what's possible – to reduce our environmental footprint."

Hearing Melvin Benn, who as managing director of Festival Nation promotes Reading, Leeds, Glastonbury, Download and Latitude, earnestly discuss a new form of recyclable wax paper for Reading's beer cups, shows how things are changing. Suffolk's Latitude is his eco-flagship for older, family audiences, and even the bars serving its local cider are made from sustainable timber. But where Latitude's patrons have reusable beer-cups worth £2, this would, he says, get them "nicked or thrown" at Reading or Leeds, where returning one nets you 10p. More than 90 per cent recycling was the result. Two bags of recyclable rubbish got you a beer.

As Benn accepts, responsible behaviour at rock festivals is a contradiction. "Teenagers are teenagers. My 18-year-old's environmentally conscious, but can I get him to turn the light off? Work within what the audience actually are, rather than pretend they'll automatically change. They need an endgame – a can of beer. Not just the promise that they'll feel good. On the other hand, I have 70,000 young people camping at Reading. Not one has a TV, record-player, hair-drier or lights. At home, they'd be burning electricity. At festivals, their carbon footprint is near-zero. And they're seeing 30 to 50 bands at one go."

"They're all changing as fast as they can," pressure group A Greener Festival's Ben Challis admits. "The guy who used to run Download was quite brutal about it. He got a £250,000 landfill bill, went green, then worked out that some people might want a green festival, and he could make money. Then he felt a warm glow. Now, it's up to the audiences to do more. Driving to a festival without thinking about lift-share now starts to feel irresponsible. What Thom Yorke is doing is great, but he's not quite right; the real carbon footprint is from the audience, not the band."

This remains the elephant in the room for fans. Glastonbury has always been green at heart. Reading, often indifferent but in walking distance from a train station, is greener. But, though there are beautiful city festivals such as Leicester's Summer Sundae, the point of most is to experience strange music in an inaccessible, probably West-Country setting far from normal life. End of the Road, for all its shuttle-buses and lift-shares, is aptly named. But, like Glastonbury, its heart-stopping beauty is worth more, I would contend, than the carbon-benefits of central London.

"Can it be justified?" Hagberg agonises. "Depends who you're asking. Mother Earth, probably not. The people who leave full of positive memories, in a more idealistic frame of mind? Maybe so."

Offsetting code confirmed

Wednesday 20 February 2008

The Government has urged the carbon offsetting industry to aim for higher standards, as it launched the new Code of Best Practice on the subject this week. The code, which is to be backed by a quality mark, will be initially based on schemes using Kyoto-compliant credits. The aim of the programme is to create a transparency for consumers in order to introduce confidence in the market.“I think it’s right that we set a high standard. It’s important that consumers who want to buy carbon offsets with confidence can do just that. When a customer buys a tonne of carbon with the Government’s quality mark, they’ll know they’re buying a full tonne of carbon,” said Environment Secretary Hilary Benn. “However, we recognise that credits from the unregulated market may be innovative and of a very high standard. So we’re leaving the Offsetting Code open to high-quality voluntary offsetting products, provided the industry can provide a similar level of assurance about the standard of the credits. The challenge to the offsetting industry is clear: to establish a clear, rigorous standard for voluntary projects that deals with the concerns that have been raised. We will support them in developing that standard – and when we have the necessary guarantees, we’ll include high-quality voluntary offsets in the Code.”Green group Friends of the Earth sounded a warning over the Government’s offsetting accreditation, on the basis that it could provide encouragement for people to continue emission-heavy practices with a clear conscience, doing nothing to promote genuinely greener living.“Carbon offsetting cannot substitute cutting emissions here and now,” said FoE’s Energy Campaigner Mary Taylor. “This code will still allow offsets to be sold for our increasingly polluting lifestyles – such as sports utility vehicles and flying on extra weekend holidays.”

Livingstone announces major cycling scheme

By Jeremy Lovell Reuters - Monday, February 11 05:13 pm

LONDON (Reuters) - London will adopt a bicycle hire scheme similar to a popular initiative in Paris under a $1 billion (513 million pound) cycling investment package announced by the mayor on Monday.

Under the plan, part of a series of environmental measures due in coming days, 6,000 bicycles will be available for hire from ranks every 600 feet throughout the city centre.

London, which accounts for seven percent of the country's climate changing carbon emissions and is at the forefront of efforts by major cities around the world to combat global warming, plans to cut carbon emissions by 60 percent by 2025.

The Paris bike scheme lets riders with an electronic card take a bike from one rank and return it at another rank anywhere in the city. It has proven popular, transforming traffic in the French capital since it came into operation last July.

Mayor Ken Livingstone's initial announcement did not give details of how much the cycles would cost to rent in London or how Londoners would pay for them.

"We will spend 500 million pounds over the next decade on cycling -- the biggest investment in cycling in London's history, which means that thousands more Londoners can cycle in confidence on routes that take them quickly and safely to where they want to go," Livingstone said in a statement.

"Around 20 percent of the carbon emissions savings we've calculated we can make from transport by 2025 will come from changing the way we travel," he added.

Other aspects of the scheme include new cycle paths and exclusive cycle zones and more bike parking facilities at underground stations across the capital.

Livingstone, facing a tough mayoral election in May with the environment as one of the major campaign issues, said he wanted five percent or 1.7 million of all daily trips in London to be by bike by 2025.

On Tuesday Livingstone is expected to announce his decision to go ahead from October with a plan to charge drivers of gas-guzzling Sport Utility Vehicles 25 pounds a day to drive in central London's congestion charge zone. Ordinary cars pay eight pounds a day to drive in the zone.

A low emission zone targeting heavy lorries came into force on Monday in the 600 square mile area inside the M25 ring road circling the sprawling city.

Added to that, Livingstone was also due to announce a comprehensive plan to fit new filters and equipment to all municipal buildings in the city to cut their carbon emissions.

China's freak snow means wildfires to come

China's freak snow means wildfires to come

The freakish snowstorms which have been sweeping across China since early January have damaged one tenth of the nation's forests. The State Forestry Administration reports that 17.3 million hectares of forests have been affected - an area larger than England.

Trees suffer from the weight of heavy snowfall, which can bend or break branches, and even kill the whole tree, depending on the species and their size.

Research has shown that death by snow and ice can have all sorts of implications for forests, from boosting regrowth to boosting biodiversity (both a result of more light and "vacant" ecological niches).

On the grimmer side of things, they also generate dead plant debris excellent fodder for summertime forest fires. Already, a SFA spokesman has warned that trees killed by the cold weather could lead to fire disasters later this year.

This year's snowstorms have been the worst in 5 decades. The total cost of the damage has yet to be determined. On 31 January, the SFA announced that the storms would cost 16.2 billion yuan (about $2.5 billion) in damaged forests, but the storms have been sustained since then, and more are predicted for this week.

Meteorologists have blamed the weather on La Nina, which warms up Pacific waters off the coasts of Asia. As a result, warm moist air comes in over the land and mixes with cold air from the north, resulting in heavy snow.

Catherine Brahic, online environment reporter New Scientist

Government to spur research into climate impact on poor

Reuters - Wednesday, February 6 02:34 pm
LONDON (Reuters) - The government will increase research into the possible impacts of climate change on the world's most vulnerable people, including deeper poverty and conflict, the international development minister said.
Secretary of State Douglas Alexander said his department will spend 20 million pounds a year over the next five years, a tenfold increase, to pinpoint where global warming will hit hardest and show how to proof development against more extreme weather and rising seas.
"Climate change is a defining global social justice issue," Alexander said on Wednesday.
Droughts and heatwaves from Kenya to Australia and southern Europe have been blamed on global warming which is happening already. Six of the first seven years this century were among the seven hottest since reliable records began in 1850, says the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
Poor countries will be hit hardest because they have the least resources to cope when crops fail or storms wreak havoc.
Rich countries' efforts to help developing nations are not entirely altruistic, as concern rises that climate change may trigger more conflict, for example over water, and migration.
"By the middle of this century there could be as many as 200 million people forced from their homes because of rising sea levels, heavier floods and more intense droughts. Where will they go?" said Alexander.
"If today's image of climate change is the polar bear tomorrow's could be the AK47."
The extra funding announced on Wednesday was separate from 800 million pounds that Britain last year pledged to support developing countries' fight against climate change, through a World Bank fund expected to be detailed at the Group of Eight leaders' summit in Japan in July.
Japan presented a $10 billion (5.1 billion pound) package last month to help emerging countries tackle climate change.
The United States said in January it would commit $2 billion over the next three years to promote clean energy technologies and help developing nations fight climate change.
(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Matthew Jones)

Bush's climate talks 'engaging'

By Roger Harrabin Environment Analyst, BBC News

The latest US-led climate talks in Honolulu, Hawaii, have been described by delegates as the most frank and engaging climate negotiations so far.
It was the second in a series of Major Economies Meetings called by US President George W Bush.
He called the first in Washington last year after expressing a desire to find a solution to the climate issue.
That first meeting was described by angry EU delegates as a waste of time, a PR stunt for the American elections.
But this time the tone was very different.
One EU delegate said: "I came expecting nothing and was very pleasantly surprised. Normally, we get sterile pre-prepared statements of policy, but this time there was a very frank discussion exploring the very difficult and different conditions facing each of the countries. It was very constructive."
Brice Lalonde, the French climate ambassador, added: "It was very low-key but people just got on with it. The talks were very positive… until the final statement was discussed."
At that point, he said, Russia and India refused to include a statement that they had been discussing mandatory, internationally binding commitments, even though that is exactly what had been discussed.
A number of delegates offered a degree of optimism that the big economies might this year agree a global target for cutting emissions by 2050.
Issues aired
The US is said to be moving slowly towards a figure, but India is holding out because a long-term global target implies emissions cuts for them. They feel that with per capita emissions a twentieth of the Americans, it is unfair to expect them to reduce emissions overall.
Part of the idea of the meetings is to air issues like this.
EU delegates said that for the world to achieve any serious long-term target on CO2, new technologies would be needed that would benefit India as much as America.
The US offered at the talks to commit its national energy policies to a UN-shared agreement if all major economies agreed to do the same.
The Europeans said any American commitment that did not include a firm pledge to actually cut greenhouse gases (rather than increase energy efficiency) was inadequate.
Boyden Gray, the US envoy to the EU who was present in Honolulu, said he believed that the progress made in the recent UN climate talks in Bali and now in Honolulu, meant the world looked to be on track for a comprehensive global agreement on climate by the end of 2009.

Planetary emergency

By Simon Sturdee AFP - Thursday, January 24 10:28 am
DAVOS, Switzerland (AFP) - Climate change is occurring far faster than even the worst predictions of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change foresaw, Al Gore warned Thursday.
New evidence shows "the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us," the former US vice president and climate campaigner told delegates at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.
There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice cap may disappear entirely during summer months in as little as five years, Gore said.
"This is a planetary emergency. There has never been anything remotely like it in the entire history of human civilisation. We are putting at risk all of human civilisation," he added.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report the size of three phone books on the reality and risks of climate change, its fourth assessment in 18 years.
In October both Gore and the IPCC, comprising around 3,000 experts, jointly won a Nobel prize for their roles in highlighting climate change.
Gore said a "little bit of progress" had been made at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.
He added though that there was a "big, large blank spot" in the road map agreed in Bali, reserved for the United States' environmental policy once a new president is elected in November and inaugurated in January.
He said that the single most important policy that could be implemented would be a tax on carbon emissions that is applied across the whole world, "so that those who don't pay the price for carbon don't have an advantage over those who do."
"I think it is really important from a climate change point of view to move away from the idea that personal actions from each of us represents the solution to this crisis.
"These are important... but in addition to changing the light bulbs it is important to change the laws," Gore said.
He stopped short of endorsing any US presidential candidate but said that "whoever is elected will have a better position" on climate change than the current administration of US President George W. Bush.
Gore was appearing at Davos beside Africa activist and U2 frontman Bono in an effort to combine the fights against climate change and poverty.
"The brunt of this climate crisis is going to be felt in the developing world. All your work... will be undone if you don't focus on this," Bono said.
"It is clear that those people who have least created this climate crisis... are the least equipped to deal with it."
Gore added: "I want to say to everyone who wants to solve the climate crisis, they have to take Bono's agenda on extreme poverty, on fighting disease and dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis and make it an integral part of the world's effort to solve the climate crisis."

Analysis: Nano Hypocrisy?

Michael Renner – January 16, 2008 – 6:00am Tata Nano.Photo courtesy of bbjee via Flickr

One car gets 46 miles per gallon, features fancy accessories, and sports two engines with a combined 145 horsepower. The other car reportedly gets 54 miles per gallon, runs on a diminutive 30-horsepower engine, and is positively spartan in its interior trimmings. The first is a darling of the environmentally conscious. The latter is reviled as a climate wrecker. These two vehicles are the Toyota Prius and the newly unveiled Tata Nano, dubbed “the people’s car.” Is there a double standard?
Advertised as the world’s cheapest car, the Nano is a no-frills automobile designed by Indian conglomerate Tata to be affordable for millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of people who are newly joining the middle class in India and elsewhere in the developing world. Such mass sales might overwhelm halting efforts to ward off catastrophic climate change. As Indians (and others) join the love affair with the private automobile, many in the West are suddenly aghast at the prospect of Nano becoming a household term like Chevy or Mercedes. The German weekly Der Spiegel termed it an “eco-disaster.”
Indeed, transportation has the fastest growing carbon emissions of any economic sector. Proliferating numbers of automobiles are a key reason. More than 600 million passenger cars are now on the world’s roads, and each year some 67 million new ones roll out of manufacturing plants.
But amid the finger pointing, let’s remember who has driven the planet to the edge of the climate abyss. People in Western countries and Japan—less than 15 percent of the world’s population—own two-thirds of all passenger and commercial motor vehicles in the world. Although they are rapidly expanding their fleets, India and China, with a third of the world’s population, so far account for only about 5 percent of vehicles. In 2005, China’s ratio of motor vehicles to population was at about the level the United States had reached some 90 years earlier. India’s ratio is less than half that of China.
Westerners not only have far more cars, but the distances they drive are also 3–4 times longer on average than those of Indians and Chinese. The United States alone—where monster SUVs roam and driving is considered a birthright—claims about 44 percent of the world’s gasoline consumption. Fuel economy has stagnated for a quarter-century as cars grew larger, heavier, and more muscular. Here in New York, a Nano might be mistaken for a golf cart.
So if it’s true that Asia’s (and Latin America’s and Africa’s) teeming billions can’t indulge in the same reckless habits as Westerners, then neither can Americans, Europeans, or Japanese. Delhi and Beijing know hypocrisy when they encounter it. Nonetheless, they have good reason to take action irrespective of what Western countries say or do. Residents of many Asian cities are exposed to a lethal brew of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, particulates, and toxics from motor vehicles of all stripes. Breathable air is every bit as important as climate stability.

Leaner engines and cleaner fuels are essential. The Nano may well be a cleaner option than the highly polluting motorcycles, motor rickshaws, and diesel buses (and many of the Western-designed cars) already clogging India’s roads. But the mass market that Tata is hoping for will render putative gains ephemeral.
All countries need to seriously rethink their transportation policies. Such an effort has to go far beyond the pursuit of alternative fuels and even beyond making cars more efficient. Denser cities and shorter distances reduce the overall need for motorized transportation and make public transit, biking, and walking more feasible. Those who will never be able to afford a car will have more options instead of being marginalized by the onslaught of private automobiles.
In a BBC World Service call-in debate, Malini Mehra, founder of the Centre for Social Markets in Kolkata, India, questioned those who regard car ownership a right. And Sunita Narain, head of India’s Centre for Science and Environment, has pointed out that private motor vehicles “are providing transport only to 20 percent of people in Delhi.” She called on Tata and other manufacturers to “provide solutions for public transport.”
The change needed is more than a matter of technology. It requires questioning shortsighted personal choices by consumers who buy unnecessarily large or powerful vehicles, as well as confronting the auto and oil companies that derive enormous profit from the status quo.
This story was produced by Eye on Earth, a joint project of the Worldwatch Institute and the blue moon fund. View the complete archive of Eye on Earth stories, or contact Staff Writer Alana Herro at aherro@worldwatch.org with your questions, comments, and story ideas.

GREEN FESTIVALS TO GET INSURANCE DISCOUNTS

International insurance brokers Robertson Taylor have teamed up with environmental advice website http://www.agreenerfestival.com/ to offer greener festivals and events substantial savings on insurance premiums. The new initiative allows festivals who sign up to at least five environmentally friendly actions from a list drawn up by Robertson Taylor to save energy - and save money. Robertson Taylor will also sponsor Agreenerfestival's annual awards scheme for greener festivals in 2008. Robertson Taylor have negotiated discounts on Employers Liability (up to GBP 10,000,000) and Public/Products Liability (up to GBP 5,000,000) and will also offer discounts in premiums for All Risks Equipment cover up to values of GBP10,000,000. There are sixteen green initiatives that Robertson Taylor suggest in a list endorsed by Agreenerfestival; These include ensuring traders use only bio-degradable disposable cups, cutlery and plates; ensuring traders only use eco-friendly cleaning products; ensuring traders recycle and provide recycling facilities for the public; provide separate bins for recycling (paper, metals, food, plastics); minimise water wastage and use grey water; Provide 50% composting toilets; involve the crowd by supplying recycling bin bags; have either a returnable rubbish tax or reward incentives for re-use; Use all organic as compost; in 2008 ensure festival power is at least 25% from bio diesel, solar or other sustainable sources; implement a full environmentally friendly transport policy including provision of public transport; encourage car shares and apply car park charges to green initiatives. Robertson Taylor and Agreenerfestival have said that they hope to extend the scheme to Europe in early 2008 and are also looking to include cancellation insurance.