The Global Warming Archive

Monday, February 18, 2008

Juggle a few of these numbers, and it makes economic sense to kill people

Britain's official approach to climate change puts a price on human lives. And the richer you are, the more yours is worth

- George Monbiot
- The Guardian,
- Tuesday February 19 2008

This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday February 19 2008 on p29 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:04 on February 19 2008.

This is a column about how good intentions can run amok. It tells the story of how an honourable, intelligent man set out to avert environmental disaster and ended up accidentally promoting the economics of the slave trade. It shows how human lives can be priced and exchanged for goods and services. The story begins in a village a few miles to the west of London. The government proposes to flatten Sipson in order to build a third runway for Heathrow airport. The public consultation is about to end, but no one doubts that the government has made up its mind.

Its central case is that the economic benefits of building a third runway outweigh the economic costs. The extra capacity, the government says, will deliver a net benefit to the UK economy of £5bn. The climate change the runway will cause costs £4.8bn, but this is dwarfed by the profits to be made.

There is plenty of evidence suggesting that the government's numbers are wrong. An analysis by the environmental consultancy CE Delft shows that the official figures overestimate both the number of jobs the runway will generate and the value brought to Britain by extra business passengers. In an excoriating article last week in the Guardian's Society section, Professor Paul Ekins demonstrates that the government has rigged the cost of carbon. (Delightfully, the web address for the consultation document ends "completecondoc.pdf".) But while the runway's opponents don't like the results, most people seem to agree that weighing up economic costs and benefits is a sensible method of making this decision. The problem, they argue, is that the wrong figures have been used.

When Sir Nicholas Stern published his study of the economics of climate change, environmentalists - myself included - lined up to applaud him: he had given us the answer we wanted. He showed that stopping runaway climate change would cost less than failing to prevent it. But because his report was so long, few people bothered to find out how he had achieved this result. It took me a while, but by the time I reached the end I was horrified.

On one side of Stern's equation are the costs of investing in new technologies - or not investing in old ones - to prevent greenhouse gas emissions rising above a certain level. These can reasonably be priced in pounds or dollars. On the other side are the costs of climate change. Some of them - such as higher food prices and the expense of building sea walls - are financial, but most take the form of costs that are generally seen as incalculable: the destruction of ecosystems and human communities; the displacement of people from their homes; disease and death. All these costs are thrown together by Stern with a formula he calls "equivalent to a reduction in consumption", to which he then attaches a price.

Stern explains that this "consumption" involves not just the consumption of goods we might buy from the supermarket, but also of "education, health and the environment". He admits this formula "raises profound difficulties", especially the "challenge of expressing health (including mortality) and environmental quality in terms of income". But he uses it anyway, and discovers that the global disaster that would be unleashed by a rise in temperature of between 5° and 6°, and that is likely to involve widespread famine, is "equivalent to a reduction in consumption" of between 5% and 20%.

It is true that as people begin to starve they consume less. When they die they cease to consume altogether. But Stern's unit (a reduction in consumption) incorporates everything from the price of baked beans to the pain of bereavement. He then translates it into a "social cost of carbon", measured in dollars. He has, in other words, put a price on human life. Worse still, he has ensured that this price is buried among the other prices: when you read that the "social cost of carbon" is $30 a tonne, you don't know - unless you unpick the whole report and its methodology and sources - how much of this is made of human lives.

The poorer people are, the cheaper their lives become. "For example," Stern observes, "a very poor person may not be 'willing to pay' very much money to insure her life, whereas a rich person may be prepared to pay a very large sum. Can it be right to conclude that a poor person's life or health is therefore less valuable?" Up to a point, yes: income, he says, should be one of the measures used to determine the social cost of carbon. Stern was by no means the first to use such a formula. What was new was the unthinking enthusiasm with which his approach was greeted.

Stern's methodology has a disastrous consequence, unintended but surely obvious. His report shows that the dollar losses of failing to prevent a high degree of global warming outweigh the dollar savings arising from not taking action. It therefore makes economic sense to try to stop runaway climate change. But what if the result had been different? What if he had discovered that the profits to be made from burning more fossil fuels exceeded the social cost of carbon? We would then find that it makes economic sense to kill people.

This is what the government has done. Its consultation paper boasts that "our approach is entirely consistent with the Stern review". It has translated his "social cost of carbon" into a "shadow price of carbon", which is currently valued, human lives and all, at £25 a tonne.

Against this is set the economic benefit of a new runway. Part of this benefit takes the form of shorter waiting times for passengers. The government claims that building a third runway will reduce delays, on average, by three minutes. This saving is costed at between €38 (£28.50) and €49 per passenger an hour. The price is a function of the average net wages of travellers: the more you earn, the more the delays are deemed to cost you, even if you are on holiday.

Consider the implications. On one side of the equation, human life is being costed. On the other side, the value of delays to passengers is being priced, and it rises according to their wealth. Convenience is weighed against human life. The richer you are, the more lives your time is worth. The people most likely to be killed by climate change do not live in this country. Most of them live in Africa and south Asia. Hardly any of the economic benefits of expanding Heathrow accrue to them. Yet the government has calculated the economic benefits to Britain, weighed them against the global costs of climate change and discovered that sacrificing foreigners - especially poor ones - is a sensible economic decision.

I can accept that a unit of measurement that allows us to compare the human costs of different spending decisions is a useful tool. What I cannot accept is that it should be scrambled up with the price of eggs and prefixed with a dollar sign. Human life is not a commodity. It cannot be traded against profits or exchanged for convenience. We have no right to decide that others should die to make us richer.

Salmon's brain gives clues to pesticides toxicity in people

From: ENN

In his research, scientist Nat Scholz examines how pesticides that run off the land and mix in rivers and streams combine to have a greater than expected toxic effect on the salmon nervous system. These pesticides are widely used in the United States and their occurrence as mixtures in the food supply for humans may also pose an unexpected risk for people.

“We have a pretty good handle on how to assess the health effects of single chemicals in conventional toxicity trials,” said Scholz, a fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “But the real world is usually more complex, and exposures to mixtures of chemicals can be more of the rule than the exception. One of the major scientific challenges of our generation is to develop new approaches to anticipate and head off any ill effects of interacting chemicals.”

Scholz will present his research along with five other scientists from the U.S. government, the Canadian government and academia in the symposium entitled “From Kitchen Sinks to Ocean Basins: Emerging Chemical Contaminants and Human Health.” Organized by NOAA’s Oceans and Human Health Initiative, the symposium is one of the features of the AAAS Annual Meeting.

Scholz and his colleagues found that salmon died when exposed to combinations of pesticides that were not deadly when tested in individual trials. The findings for salmon could have important implications for the recovery of many threatened and endangered salmon populations throughout the western United States. The research also points to the need for more study of how combinations of pesticides found on fruits and vegetables may be affecting humans.

Crop biofuels 'create carbon debt'

From: , Science and Development Network, More from this Affiliate

Two studies have shown that changes in land use to produce crop-based biofuels can actually result in more greenhouse-gas emissions than burning fossil fuels.

The studies, both published in Science last week (8 February), estimate the impact of converting forests and grasslands into cropland for the production of biofuels.

Both conclude that the resulting carbon emissions, released through decomposition or burning of biomass, create a 'carbon debt' that takes decades or even centuries to be paid back through biofuel usage.

This finding undermines previous claims that substituting fossil fuels with biofuels should offset greenhouse-gas emissions because biofuels sequester carbon while they grow.

According to Timothy Searchinger, researcher at Princeton University and the lead author of one of the studies, previous assessments did not include the carbon storage and sequestration sacrificed when diverting land from its existing use.

Searchinger and colleagues looked at the use of US cropland to produce corn-based ethanol and calculated it would take 167 years to repay carbon emissions resulting from land-use change, and that in 30 years greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol could be nearly double those from gasoline.

"Biofuels in the US and Europe are increasing the price of crops, which naturally results in more efforts to clear land. In that way, farmers make more money," he says.

Much of this land clearing will occur in Brazil, China and India, the authors write.

In the other study, by the Nature Conservancy and University of Minnesota, researchers estimate carbon debts and pay back years for different cases of conversion from native vegetation.

They found soybean biodiesel produced on converted Amazonian rainforest would take around 320 years to gain a 'carbon benefit' over petroleum diesel. For biodiesel and sugarcane-based ethanol produced on Brazilian cerrado — tropical savannah — the estimations are 37 and 17 years, respectively.

Improving the productivity of agricultural land, creating biofuels from waste biomass and municipal waste, or from biomass grown on abandoned agricultural land, are all ways to avoid the need for a change in land use, the authors suggest.

The results of the studies do not surprise Roberto Schaeffer, researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. "Nobody thought deforestation for biofuel production would be a good solution," he told SciDev.Net.

"Biofuels are only effective in specific situations, as in the case of Brazilian ethanol. It is possible to increase production without devastating forests."

Link to the article by Searchinger et al [85kB]

Link to article by Fargione et al [93kB]

Southern Ocean rise due to warming, not ice melts

From: Reuters

By Michael Byrnes

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Rises in the sea level around Antarctica in the past decade are almost entirely due a warming ocean, not ice melting, an Australian scientist leading a major international research program said.

The 15-year study of temperature and salinity changes in the Southern Ocean found average temperatures warmed by about three-tenths of a degree Celsius.

Satellites also measured a rise of about 2 centimeters (about an inch) in seas in the southern polar region over an area half the size of Australia, Rintoul told Reuters.

"The biggest contribution so far has been from warming of the oceans through expansion," said Steve Rintoul, Australian leader of an Australian-French-U.S. scientific program.

Melting sea ice or Antarctic ice shelves jutting into the ocean do not directly add to sea level rises.

Rintoul was speaking as French ship L'Astrolabe prepared to depart on Monday from Hobart, on Australia's southern island of Tasmania, for its fifth voyage of the current summer season for the Surveillance of the Ocean Astral (Survostral) program.

The research program has been taking temperature and salinity readings for 15 years to a depth of 700 meters along the 2,700 km, six-day route between Hobart and the Antarctic.

This has produced the longest continuous record of temperature and salinity changes in the Southern Ocean for scientists studying how the ocean contributes to global climate.

"Survostral has given us a foundation for much of what is known about the way the ocean in this inhospitable and difficult-to-access region controls the global climate," Rintoul said.

The project leader said sea level rise was not uniform in the Southern Ocean and that rises were not guaranteed to continue at the same rate in the future.

The study had also shown that the Southern Ocean's uptake of carbon dioxide changed with the seasons.

In summer, an increase in phytoplankton brought about by the greater light caused the Southern Ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than in colder months, he said.

The study showed that as waters warmed, some species of phytoplankton were extending further south, although more research was needed to determine the importance of this finding.

"What's significant is that we've detected changes in the physical environment and now we're also detecting changes in the biology in response to those physical changes.

"The next challenge is to figure out what these biological changes mean for carbon uptake and for higher levels of the food chain," he said.

Tiny phytoplankton are at the bottom of the food chain and are a crucial food source for a number of species.

Investigations by the L'Astrolabe in the world's largest ocean current between Tasmania and Antarctica had shown that deep streams of water were taking warming deep into the ocean.

"The program started as just measuring temperature and salinity. We've now recently begun a much more comprehensive chemistry and biology program of measurements," Rintoul said.

This would widen the scientific investigation to the impact of climate change on biology and on the carbon cycle, he said.

(Editing by David Fogarty)

Biofuels and the Fertilizer Problem: Can a 'Renewable Fuel' Rely on Mining a Finite Resource?

From: , Organic Consumers Association, More from this Affiliate

While scrolling through news accounts of the recent boom in the agrochemicals industry -- yes, that's how I spend my days -- I came across an interesting take on biofuels and phosphate, a key element of soil fertility.

The article, from Investors Business Daily, takes a standard rah-rah position on what it deems a "heyday in the heartland." The journal wants to make sure its readers know there's plenty of cash to be made investing in the companies catering to the great boom in industrial agriculture.

With corn and soy prices both at or near record highs, the article tries to handicap which crop farmers will plant more of in the coming growing season. Impossible to tell, it concludes. Nevertheless:

Fertilizer producers benefit either way. Corn demands more fertilizer than soy or wheat. But price competition among the grains, stoked largely by federal supports for ethanol production, has bled generously into fertilizer markets.

That's boilerplate. Anyone who's checked out the stock chart of Mosaic -- the fertilizer giant, two-thirds owned by agribiz behemoth Cargill, recently profiled here -- knows that the fertilizer industry has been essentially printing money.

But the Investors Business Daily article really started to pique my interest when it turned to phosphorus -- the "P" of NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium), the main macronutrients required for plant growth.

Of course, industrial agriculture makes a fetish of NPK. Like a '70s-era faddist who thinks you can maintain health while eating whatever junk food you want, so long as you take a vitamin pill containing "100 percent RDA" of every vitamin, industrial agriculture enthusiasts insist that by isolating NPK and dumping it into soil, you've solved the problem of soil fertility.

NPK mentality neglects micronutrients and forgets that healthy soil relies on teeming populations of microorganisms, whose function we don't fully understand. Lashing the soil with industrial fertilizer doesn't renew life in the soil; it squeezes life out. Someday, I predict, NPK dogma will crumble and seem as absurd as relying on a bowl of Total for nourishment.

For now, though, we live in an NPK world -- and biofuel production relies absolutely on mined and synthesized macronutrients.

OK, back to the Investors Business Daily article and phosphorus. Toward the bottom, we find this:

Phosphates shot to $300 and then to $400 a ton last year, and are now on track to break $800 ... Out of 50 billion tons of potential phosphate rock reserves worldwide, the USGS estimates the U.S. holds only 3.4 billion tons. Morocco owns 21 billion, China has 13 billion. All are keen to closely manage the resource.

Wow, so our big "renewable," domestic energy source relies heavily on a mined substance, of which we own a tiny reserve. The biggest store lies in a nation run by Islamicists, a group with whom we're engaged in hostilities. The second-biggest store is lodged within the borders of a budding geopolitical rival. Hmm.

Then we get this:

Global consumption of phosphate rock is projected to grow 2.3% a year. But that rate of growth could increase due to demand for biomass used in biofuel production.

Farmers are harvesting larger shares of the plant rubble left after harvest -- a natural source of potassium and phosphate when turned back into the soil. The loss of that natural fertilizer means more P & K demand.

What the article is saying is this: If we transition to cellulosic ethanol -- which utilizes whole plants, not just the seeds, as in conventional ethanol -- we'll need even more phosphorus. And demand for this finite resource, located mainly in geopolitically troublesome places, will grower at an even faster clip than the current 2.3 percent compounded annual rate.

I should note here that phosphate mining, as I laid out in the above-linked post on Mosaic, is environmentally ruinous. It leaves behind radioactive waste.

Note further that cellulosic ethanol -- perpetually five years away from commercial viability -- counts in some quarters as biofuel's great green hope.

To me, all of this exposes the folly of relying on industrial agriculture to create a "clean" fuel source for transportation. To avoid the political and ecological troubles of mining, we need to nudge agriculture back toward the nutrient loop -- recycling animal and vegetable waste back into the soil and building true and sustainable soil fertility. I believe we can "feed the world" that way; we surely can't feed the world (or its cars) for long using an agriculture style that relies on finite mined products.

As for biofuels, I don't see how they fit in to a return to sustainable agriculture. Sustainably fertilized land can feed our bellies, but not our cars, too. We surely can't squeeze enough excess grain out of sustainably managed land to make a dent in the fuel demands of a country with a 210 million-plus auto fleet.

Rather than flog biofuels, environmentalists should be pushing for alternatives to the internal-combustion engine -- and for a return to sustainable agriculture.

Here's a talking point. The Global Subsidies Initiative reckons that the U.S. government supports biofuels to the tune of $5.5-$7.3 billion per year. Amtrak gets about $1.2 billion per year. Let's defund biofuels and invest the proceeds in a functional national rail system. No?

Read comments at: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/13/64820/6921

Sharks disappearing as fin chopping rises

From: Reuters
published on ENN.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Populations of tiger, bull, dusky and other sea sharks have plummeted by more than 95 percent since the 1970s as fisherman kill the animals for their fins or when they scoop other fish from the ocean, according to an expert from the World Conservation Union, or IUCN.

At particular risk is the scalloped hammerhead shark, whose young swim mostly in shallow waters along shores all over the world to avoid predators.

The scalloped hammerhead will be listed on the 2008 IUCN Red List as globally "endangered" due to overfishing and high demand for its valuable fins in the shark fin trade, said Julia Baum, a member of the IUCN's shark specialist group.

"As a result of high and mostly unrestricted fishing pressure, many sharks are now considered to be at risk of extinction," Baum said in a statement.

The numbers of many other large shark species have plunged due to increased demand for shark fins and meat, recreational shark fisheries, as well as tuna and swordfish fisheries, where millions of sharks are taken as bycatch each year, said Baum, a fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Last year, IUCN put the great hammerhead, the largest of the nine species of hammerhead, on the Red List as "endangered." IUCN said in September that numbers of the shark in the eastern Atlantic may have crashed by 80 percent in the last 25 years.

Hammerhead meat has a very low value but the sharks are among the most endangered species because their fins are highly prized for the Asian delicacy shark-fin soup. In shark finning, fishermen chop the fins of the animals and dump the sharks back into the sea.

Fishing for sharks in international waters is unrestricted, said Baum, who supports a recently adopted U.N. resolution calling for immediate shark catch limits and a ban on shark finning.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Stuart Grudgings)

Friday, February 15, 2008

Huge study gives wake-up call on state of world's oceans

· Human activity damages more than 40% of seas
· First 'big picture' map worse than expected

Alok Jha in Boston
The Guardian,

This article appeared in the Guardian on Friday February 15 2008 on p14 of the UK news section. It was last updated at 00:25 on February 15 2008.

A global map of the overall impact that 17 different human activities are having on marine ecosystems. Insets show three of the most heavily impacted areas in the world, and one of the least impacted areas.

Fishing, climate change and pollution have left an indelible mark on virtually all of the world's oceans, according to a huge study that has mapped the total human impact on the seas for the first time. Scientists found that almost no areas have been left pristine and more than 40% of the world's oceans have been heavily affected.

"This project allows us to finally start to see the big picture of how humans are affecting the oceans," said Ben Halpern, assistant research scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the research.

"Our results show that when these and other individual impacts are summed up the big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected. It was certainly a surprise to me."

Human impact is most severe in the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf, the Bering Sea, along the eastern coast of North America and in much of the western Pacific.

The oceans at the poles are less affected but melting ice sheets will leave them vulnerable, researchers said.

The study found that almost half of the world's coral reefs have been heavily damaged. Other concerns rest with seagrass beds, mangrove forests, seamounts, rocky reefs and continental shelves. Soft-bottom ecosystems and open ocean fared best but even these were not pristine in most locations.

Previous studies of human impacts have focused on a single activity or on an isolated ecosystem, and rarely on a global scale.

Fiorenza Micheli, an associate professor of biology at Stanford University, said the maps should guide ocean management in future.

"By seeing where different activities occur and whether they occur in sensitive ecosystems we can design management strategies aimed at shifting activities away from the most sensitive areas."

To make the map scientists compiled global data on the impacts of 17 human activities including fishing, coastal development, fertiliser runoff and pollution from shipping traffic.

They divided the ocean into one-square-kilometre cells and worked out which human activities might have touched each particular cell. For each cell, the scientists allocated an impact score to look at the degree to which human activities affected 20 types of ecosystems.

Around 41% had medium high to very high impact scores. A small fraction, 0.5% but representing 2.2m square kilometres (850,000 square miles), were rated very highly affected.

Halpern said the results, which were published in the journal Science and presented yesterday to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, still gave room for hope. "With targeted efforts to protect the chunks of the ocean that remain relatively pristine we have a good chance of preserving these areas in good condition."

Andrew Rosenberg, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire, who was not involved with the study, said: "Clearly we can no longer just focus on fishing or coastal wetland loss or pollution as if they are separate effects.

"These human impacts overlap in space and time, and in far too many cases the magnitude is frighteningly high."

He added: "The message for policy-makers seems clear to me: conservation action that cuts across the whole set of human impacts is needed now in many places around the globe."

Highlighting examples of action, the researchers said that, for example, fishing zones have been shown to help ecosystems survive better, and navigation routes across seas have been altered to protect sensitive ocean areas.

Although the research will be helpful, making conservation decisions will require more detailed research at the local level, said Micheli.

"Our results and approach, augmented with additional local information, can also inform management at a local and regional scale. Looking at the data globally, some information is lost."

Halpern said the map was a wake-up call. "Humans will always use the oceans for recreation, extraction of resources, and for commercial activity such as shipping. This is a good thing. Our goal, and really our necessity, is to do this in a sustainable way so that our oceans remain in a healthy state and continue to provide us with the resources we need and want."

Climate change soon could kill thousands in UK, says report

Andrew Sparrow, senior political correspondent
guardian.co.uk,

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Tuesday February 12 2008. It was last updated at 16:35 on February 12 2008.

Eggborough power station, near Selby. The report says climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people. Photograph: John Giles/PA

Climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people within the next decade, a Department of Health report said today.

It put the chances of a heatwave of that severity happening by 2017 at 25%.

Without preventative action, the report said that a nine-day heatwave, with temperatures averaging at least 27 degrees over 24 hours, would cause 3,000 immediate deaths, with another 3,350 people dying from heat-related conditions during the summer.

It predicted that there would be an increase in skin cancers due to increased exposure to sunlight and that, over the next half century, air pollution could lead to an extra 1,500 deaths and hospital admissions a year.

While malaria outbreaks were likely to remain rare, the report – Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2008 – said health authorities would need to be alert to the dangers posed by possible larger outbreaks of malaria in continental Europe.

The report, a follow-up to a study first published in 2002, said the latest modelling now suggested that temperatures would rise by between 2.5C and 3C over the next century. Periods of very cold weather would become less common, but heatwaves would become more common.

It pointed out that the heatwave in France in 2003, which contributed to more than 14,000 premature deaths, had been attributed by climatologists, in part, to the influence of human behaviour on the climate,

"The air pollution climate of the UK will continue to change," the report went on.

"Though concentrations of a number of important pollutants are likely to decline over the next half-century, the concentration of ozone is likely to increase. This will increase attributable deaths and hospital admissions.

"The increases are likely to be significant: with the least constraining assumptions … up to about 1,500 extra deaths and hospital admissions per annum might be expected."

The report also said that new studies had confirmed the effects of increased exposure to ultra-violet light. "Skin cancers are expected to increase."

On malaria, the report said there was a very slight chance that the disease could return to the south of England during the next 50 to 100 years. But outbreaks were likely to be rare and to involve a small number of people.

However, health authorities would have to be on the alert for the emergence of new, more deadly strains of mosquitoes in Europe and the possibility that they could arrive in wetland areas of Britain.

Warmer summers would also lead to an increase in food poisoning. The report predicted that there would be up to 14,000 more cases of food poisoning, including salmonella, a year – an increase of 14.5%.

Tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease were also likely to become more common, but that was more likely to be due to changes in land use than climate change.

Professor Robert Maynard, chairman of the expert panel that wrote the report, said: "Climate change is likely to be one of the major challenges that humanity faces this century. It is important that we assess the possible health impact and take any actions that could minimise the consequences."

Sir William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency, which published the report jointly with the Department of Health, said: "Climate change is perhaps the most significant environmental problem which mankind will face in the coming century.

"Efforts to reduce the extent of climate change are of course important, but it is likely that we will have to deal with at least some impacts on health."

In a foreword to the report, health minister Dawn Primarolo said the national health service would have to adapt to deal with the problems posed by climate change.

Measures would include: ensuring that hospitals were equipped to deal with the effects of heat, gales, and floods; developing local plans for heatwaves, gales and flooding; disaster preparation; and advising people how to adapt to climate change

Snow shuts down roads in San Diego County

Story Highlights
27-mile stretch of I-8 closed for 12 hours by snow; 500 motorists stranded
At least 30 people taken to temporary shelters; teams check for cars off roads
San Diego County authorities report about triple normal number of accidents

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- A surprise storm lashed San Diego County with rain and snow, stranding as many as 500 motorists on a mountain freeway and pouring mud down onto another roadway but causing no major damage or injuries.

The weather was expected to clear Friday.

A 27-mile stretch of Interstate 8, which runs through the mountains in the eastern county and is a main artery from California into Arizona, was reopened before dawn Friday following a 12-hour shutdown.

The California Highway Patrol began escorting cars through, although big-rig trucks still were not allowed. The freeway was closed shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday when blowing snow and ice made the roadway impassable.

"It was just a big dump of snow, real fast," accompanied by high winds, California Highway Patrol Officer Jim Bettencourt said.

Cars spun out and hundreds of motorists were stopped in their tracks.

"I've been here for a while and trying to get around, but there's no going around, so you just have to be patient," stranded motorist Patty Kresin told KNSD-TV in San Diego.

Search-and-rescue teams went car to car. At least 30 people were taken to temporary shelters at a fire station and a casino nearby, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

By early Friday, authorities were pretty sure they had found all the stranded motorists, but teams were still checking for cars that might have gone over the side of the road, Bettencourt said.

The abandoned cars hampered snow plows.

"Now we have a virtual parking lot of empty vehicles," Bettencourt said. "You've got big rigs that are jackknifed. So it's going to be a pretty daunting task."

The unexpectedly severe weather snarled other roadways. Authorities reported 179 crashes on county roads between midnight and 9 p.m. Thursday, compared to the usual figure of 50 to 75 crashes in a typical day.

Authorities also shut down an 8-mile stretch of road between Poway and Ramona because of mudslides. About 2 feet of mud and rocks slid onto the highway after heavy rain fell in an area burned by last fall's wildfires.

The stormy weather was caused by a low-pressure system that originated in the Gulf of Alaska and unexpectedly moved into Southern California.

Rain, hail and snow also fell in the desert near Palm Springs where temperatures had soared to 85 degrees just days ago.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

True scale of C02 emissions from shipping revealed

Leaked UN report says pollution three times higher than previously thought

Graphic: Pollution on the world's major shipping routes

John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian,

This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday February 13 2008 on p1 of the Top stories section. It was last updated at 04:02 on February 13 2008.

A large cargo ship sits at anchor in the calm waters of a safe harbour. Photograph: Alamy

The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study seen by the Guardian.

It calculates that annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO², or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.

The report suggests that shipping emissions - which are not taken into account by European targets for cutting global warming - will become one of the largest single sources of manmade CO² after cars, housing, agriculture and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, which has been under heavy pressure to clean up, is responsible for about 650m tonnes of CO² emissions a year, just over half that from shipping.

Until now, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated shipping emissions to be a maximum 400m tonnes, but the new draft report by a group of international scientists is a more sophisticated measure, using data collected from the oil and shipping industries for the International Maritime Organisation, the UN agency tasked with monitoring pollution from ships. It not only shows emissions are much worse than feared, but warns CO² emissions are set to rise by a further 30% by 2020.

Contacted about the contents of the report, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, said: "This is a clear failure of the system. The shipping industry has so far escaped publicity. It has been left out of the climate change discussion. I hope [shipping emissions] will be included in the next UN agreement. It would be a cop-out if it was not. It tells me that we have been ineffective at tackling climate change so far."

The figure is highly embarrassing for the four governments, including Britain, that paid for the report. Governments and the EU have consistently played down the climate impact of shipping, saying it is less than 2% of global emissions and failing to include shipping emissions in their national estimates for CO² emissions.

Pressure is now expected to increase on shipowners to switch to better fuels and on the EU to include shipping in its emission trading scheme. Last month aviation was provisionally included following intense pressure - but shipping escaped.

Previous attempts by the industry to calculate levels of carbon emissions were largely based on the quantity of low grade fuel bought by shipowners. The latest UN figures are considered more accurate because they are based on the known engine size of the world's ships, as well as the time they spend at sea and the amount of low grade fuel sold to shipowners.

The UN report also reveals that other pollutants from shipping are rising even faster than CO² emissions. Sulphur and soot emissions, which give rise to lung cancers, acid rain and respiratory problems are expected to rise more than 30% over the next 12 years.

The health implications of shipping emissions are most acute for Britain and other countries bordering the English Channel, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. A recent peer-reviewed study of shipping emissions found world shipping led directly to 60,000 deaths a year.

Peter Smith, managing director of Intertanko, the grouping of the world's largest tanker operators which provided data for the report, said the industry was taking steps to cut emissions. "World trade and ship numbers have seen a steady increase, but in parallel there have been economies of scale with larger, more efficient ships. Individual ships have steadily been reducing their fuel consumption for the last 20 years. One litre of fuel on a modern very large crude carrier moves one tonne of cargo more than 2,800km; this is more than twice as far as 20 years ago."

Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for South-east England, said: "These new figures highlight the shocking complacency of governments which have completely ignored shipping emissions. It is essential that our own government's new climate change bill includes both shipping and aviation emissions and measures are urgently brought forward at EU level."

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the government would support the development of a global emissions trading scheme through the IMO, and was also "investigating the feasibility of including maritime emissions" in the EU's trading scheme. He said the shipping industry must take its "share of responsibility" for tackling climate change.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Plague of rats as UK turns wetter

Even cars are at risk as floods and building sites drive out rodents from their underground lairs

Juliette Jowit, environment editor
The Observer,
Sunday February 10 2008

This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday February 10 2008 on p24 of the News section. It was last updated at 00:27 on February 10 2008.

Driven out of sewers by summer floods and an urban building boom, then nurtured by warmer winters and the leftovers of fast food, rats have been moving into homes, gardens and even cars around the country.

Rat-catchers and companies selling poison and traps are reporting a boom in business, with urban housing estates among the worst affected areas. Long-term growth in rodent populations is also blamed on a decline in 'sewer-baiting', the practice of laying down poison twice a year to prevent rat numbers building up underground.

Because rats breed on average five times a year, with seven or eight in each litter, growth can be rapid. The recent surge in numbers has been linked to a boom in urban development - not least the preparations for the 2012 London Olympics - and last summer's floods, which drove rats out from underground, through holes and cracks in pipes and drains.

Rentokil, the UK's largest pest control company, said demand rose by more than a quarter last year as hits on its website trebled. Killgerm, the country's biggest seller of rat poison, said sales rose by a quarter in 2007.

Rentokil estimates there are 65 million to 80 million rats in Britain, eating their way through 210 tonnes of food a year. This compares with an estimated 45 million to 50 million a decade ago, a rise of nearly 40 per cent, though the company admits such calculations are 'not an exact science'. The biggest increases appear to have been in the south of England, western Scotland and Northern Ireland; only East Anglia and the south Midlands reported a fall. 'It's a bit like crime statistics: it's difficult to tell whether the number of incidents has gone up, or if the reporting is more prevalent,' said Rentokil's UK managing director, Jed Kenrick. 'But there's no doubt that the number of calls we're getting about rodents is significantly up on 12 months ago.' Rats can spread diseases to humans through their urine, including Weil's disease and salmonella, though the Health Protection Agency said cases which could be linked to rats were 'rare' and there was no evidence of any increase in recent years.

Reuben and Louisa Hunter of Palmer's Green, north London, returned from a family holiday in Northern Ireland last month with their 14-month-old baby Sophie, to find that a rat had gnawed its way through the plastic around their car's gear stick, seat belts and the baby seat. 'The car looked like it had been broken into,' Sophie's father said.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) says that rather than call in the pest control experts it is more humane to avoid attracting rats in the first place by keeping food and buildings sealed. 'Rats are highly intelligent, social animals who excel at learning,' said Poorva Joshipura, director of Peta Europe. 'They do not want to die trying to gnaw their leg off in traps or slowly suffering from poison.'

Pest watch: How to keep rodents at bay...

· Place food and rubbish in sealed containers and clean under cookers, fridges and cupboards.

· Store pet food carefully and clean feeding bowls regularly.

· Seal holes into buildings - mice can get through the width of a ballpoint pen - and keep pipes and drains in good repair.

· Check under outside decking, a favourite nesting place for rats and mice.

Biofuel demand leading to human rights abuses, report claims

Jessica Aldred
guardian.co.uk,
Monday February 11 2008

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Monday February 11 2008. It was last updated at 16:04 on February 11 2008.

Palm kernels, harvested in countries such as Indonesia for the oil which is a rich source of biofuel. Photograph: Tengku Bahar/AFP/Getty

EU politicians should reject targets for expanding the use of biofuels because the demand for palm oil is leading to human rights abuses in Indonesia, a coalition of international environmental groups claimed today.

A new report, published by Friends of the Earth and indigenous rights groups LifeMosaic and Sawit Watch, said that increasing demands for palm oil for food and biofuels was causing millions of hectares of forests to be cleared for plantations and destroying the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.

The report, Losing Ground, said many of the 60-90 million people in Indonesia who depend on the forests are losing their land to the palm oil companies.

Pollution from pesticides, fertilisers and the pressing process is also leaving some villages without clean water.

"The unsustainable expansion of Indonesia's palm oil industry is leaving many indigenous communities without land, water or adequate livelihoods. Previously self-sufficient communities find themselves in debt or struggling to afford education and food. Traditional customs and culture are being damaged alongside Indonesia's forests and wildlife," the report reads.

It claims that oil palm companies often use violent tactics as they move in to convert the land to plantations.

"Human rights – including the right to water, to health, the right to work, cultural rights and the right to be protected from ill-treatment and arbitrary arrest – are being denied in some communities.

"If palm oil is to be produced sustainably, the damaging effects of unjust policies and practices in the Indonesian plantation sector must be addressed," the report said.

The alleged human rights abuses come after several recent reports have highlighted the environmental problems caused by the conversion of land for farming palm oil.

Last week a study by the University of Minnesota and Nature Conservancy, published in Science, found that the carbon lost through the clearance of forests, peat lands or even grasslands far outweighs the greenhouse gas savings that can come from biofuels.

Conversion of land for corn, sugarcane, palm oil or soybeans released 17 to 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels with bioethanol or biodiesel, the researchers said.

Last month the Commons environmental audit committee called for a moratorium on targets for the use of biofuels until their impact could be better assessed.

The EU currently wants biofuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel to make up 10% of transport fuel by 2020. Britain has a separate target of 5% of biofuels in petrol and diesel by 2010.

In its energy directive last month, the commission proposed the introduction of sustainability criteria because of fears about the environmental impact of growing fuel crops.

But Friends of the Earth and LifeMosaic said the targets would drive a huge increase in palm oil in Indonesia, adding there were plans for a further 20m hectares of plantations by 2020 – an area the size of England, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined.

Friends of the Earth biofuels campaigner, Hannah Griffiths, said: "As well as being bad for the environment, biofuels from palm oil are a disaster for people.

"MEPs should listen to the evidence and use the forthcoming debate on this in the European parliament to reject the 10% target.

"Instead of introducing targets for more biofuels the EU should insist that all new cars are designed to be super-efficient.

"The UK government must also take a strong position against the 10% target in Europe and do its bit to reduce transport emissions by improving public transport and making it easier for people to walk and cycle," she added.