China-US pact heartening but short of what's needed says IPCC
Climate and energy news
US-China climate deal puts pressure on G20 leaders
to step up
Ministers around the world welcomed an announcement by the US
and China to reduce emissions as an important step towards a
successful UN climate agreement next year, reports RTCC.
A separate piecelooks at whether a
“carbon budget” approach could be the basis for global emissions
reductions after 2020, designed to keep the world below 2 Celsius,
the level deemed safe by scientists.
SNP plan for green power is ‘nonsense’ says
expert
Alex Salmond’s vision of a Scotland powered entirely by
renewable energy by 2020 has been dismissed as “nonsense” by one of
the UK’s leading energy economists. In an interview with The Times
Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at the University of
Oxford, insisted it did not make economic sense for Scotland to be
reliant on renewable energy – and nor would it help in the battle
against climate change.
China-US climate change deal a ‘giant leap for
mankind’, says IEA
Wednesday’s pledges from the US and China to cut emissions
takes the world closer to preventing dangerous warming of more than
two degrees above preindustrial levels, the International Energy
Agency has said. The IEA’s central scenario for business-as-usual
in world energy would result in temperature rises of 3.6 Celsius,
reports RTCC. The Guardiancalls the deal “a
historic milestone in the global fight against climate change”,
which marks the start of a solution to global warming after 20
years of tortuous negotiations.
Peru’s forests store more CO2 than US emits in a
year, research shows
Home to the second largest area of Amazon rainforest after
Brazil, Peru stores nearly seven billion metric tons of carbon.
That’s more than US annual carbon emissions for 2013, according to
new research by the Carnegie Institute for Science. Peru will host
for December’s UN climate change summit. The
Guardian, Dan Collyns
Emissions reduction: Tony Abbott says Australia is
acting, not talking
As pressure mounts to match targets set by China and US,
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott insists the country is
focused on the here and now not what might hypothetically happen 30
years down the line. Achieving a greenhouse gas reduction target
for 2025 to match the new US promises could cost as much as $30bn,
the Climate Institute think tank has calculated.
More than a third of natural world heritage sites
face ‘significant threats’
More than a third of the world’s 228 natural heritage sites
face significant threats from invasive species, logging and
poaching. But a major new assessment by the IUCN World Heritage
Outlook suggests climate change may carry the gravest threat.
Blades for world’s most powerful offshore wind
turbine to built in UK
Danish wind energy giant Vestas is set to create 800 jobs in
the UK by choosing to manufacture parts for its massive 8MW
offshore turbines on the Isle of Wight as of next year. The company
said the new blade manufacturing commitment was the first element
of a new industrial strategy for the UK, which could have a
positive impact of £200m on the economy.
Climate and energy comment
How the world uses coal
-interactive
China and the US have agreed a historic deal to cut carbon
emissions – but both countries are still huge consumers and
producers of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. A new
interactive from the Guardian looks at how coal and been the
driving force behind industrialisation for almost three centuries
and asks, can the world wean itself off coal?
What does China need to do to meet its carbon
pledge?
Analysts are looking carefully at what China needs to do to
fulfil its pledge to stop emissions rising by about 2030 and obtain
20 per cent of its energy from wind, solar, nuclear and other
zero-emission sources by the same time. In order to meet its
targets, the country will need to add 800 to 1000 gigawatts of
clean energy – enough capacity to power the entire US, experts
warn.
US-China deal shows all that effort to tackle
climate change might actually be worth
it
After years of seeming to get nowhere at all it looks like we
have the beginnings of meaningful commitments, says Mike Berners
Lee, director of a company helping organisations respond to climate
change. Perhaps it’s too soon to call it success but if other
countries fall in line, for the first time we would have
better-than-nothing global progress on climate change.
New climate science
Global diets link environmental sustainability and
human health
A change in global diets could cut greenhouse gas emission,
save habitat for endangered species and boost human lifespan and
quality of life, a new study finds. But life-cycle analyses of
various food production systems shows that current trends in diets
will lead to an 80 per cent increase in global greenhouse gas
emissions from food production as well as habitat destruction due
to land clearing for agriculture.
Temperature and acidification variability reduce
physiological performance in the intertidal zone porcelain crab
Petrolisthes cinctipes
Journal of
Experimental Biology
Porcelain crabs can adapt to a warming climate but will not
have energy for much else beyond basic survival, according to new
research. The study is the first to explore the response of
creatures in the intertidal zone to combined variation in
temperature and pH, which is expected to intensify due to climate
change and ocean acidification. The findings could be an indicator
of how other intertidal organisms may respond to a rapidly changing
climate.
International trends in public perceptions of
climate change over the past quarter
century
Studies of public perception of climate change show there has
been growing concern in recent years, despite a rise in scepticism
in the late 2000s in some developed countries. The study finds an
imbalance in the literature toward polls and studies in Western
nations (particularly the United States), which leaves much unknown
about the progression of public understanding of climate change
worldwide.
Adapting forest certification to climate
change
Forest certi?cation has emerged as an important arena for
setting international and regional standards for forest management,
but it is unclear to what extent it supports or helps develop
adaptive capacity for climate change. The study finds that the
forestry sector must consider whether sustainable forest management
helps or hinders climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts,
as policies and institutions may no longer be appropriate.