Off to a ski holiday

Today, I am off for a long-awaited ski holiday in the Austrian Alps, specifically the Arlber, partly sponsored by my aunt to reward my efforts in achieving my Masters degree last year.
I will be joined by my sister and my better half too.
It will be freezing up there, as seen by the following screen dump from http://www.lech-zuers.at



While there, I shall be hoping for a deal at Copenhagen...

I hope I will hear good news from there.

Until then! Auf wiedersehen!

Antarctica is actually warming

One of the major issues claimed by skeptics against climate change is that Antarctica is actually cooling. How is this possible when the whole earth should be, according to scientists, warming?

Well an answer has actually been found that rebukes the whole idea. Check this out at The Guardian. A recent investigation into the issue has discovered that while some parts of the frozen continent have been getting slightly colder over the last few decades, the average temperature across the continent has been rising for at least the last 50 years.

How come?

The picture below explains it all:

The Western part of Antarctica (shown in red) has been warming at a rate of 0.17 degrees C every decade for the past 50 years. This outweighs the observed cooling in the Eastern part of Antarctica for a an average heating over the region of 0.12 degrees C per decade. This rate matches the heating rate of the southern hemisphere as a whole.

This was not understood before since there was not much data for the Western Antarctica and / or any date it was not yet analysed. Mainly, satellite data was used for this study. Furthermore, it should be noted that the cooling is caused by the ozone hole, a feature that is healing itself and will eventually close by mid-century. Hence, more accelerated warming is expected.

How to cool the planet

This, I think, really makes sense.

A seemingly simple way of keeping those temperatures cool, especially in view of climate change is:

(wait for it....)

...painting the urban areas white.

From our physics classes, we all learned on black-body radiation...the darker the body, the more heat is absorbed and the less is reflected. Hence, Hashem Akbari a scientist at the prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, came up with the idea of painting roads, pavements and building in light colours to reduce the urban heat island effect and hence save on electricity and pollution. In a few words, we need to increase our albedo.

Easy, simple and cost-effective.

Just some ratios:

Coloured paints have an albedo of 0.1-0.3;
White paints an albedo of 0.5-0.9;
Asphalt road surfaces have albedos as low as 0.05;
Concrete has an albedo of up to 0.3;
Tar and gravel just 0.1.

What does this mean? Take concrete. An albedo of 0.3 means that concrete absorbs 70% of the sun's radiation.

In California warehouses and commercial premises with flat roof have to have them painted white. This has been in force since 2005 (always avant-garde).

Now lets think locally. We should do this in Malta. Think of the picturesque villages in Italy and Greece that are all whitewashed saved for the colourful doors and windows. They did it for a reason!

Sources: The Guardian; New Scientist

Obama speaks on Climate Change.

Obama is the new president of the US. With the Yes We Can and Change campaigns, here is one of his latest interventions, one that he promised the American electorate on.

Sincerely, I hope that his pledges of support and money to the climate change cause are implemented and bring a significant energy shift.

A New Chapter on Climate Change @ Yahoo! Video

Andrew Simms, Met Office and Sarah Palin

Wonder what the above have in common? They all featured in articles on The Guardian today. All were related to climate change.

The article in The Guardian by Andrew Simms it is related to climate change and the need to avert significant change by doing action now. From the whole article, the following paragraph stuck out:

Considering that it took governments in the UK and US just a week to drop decades of hardened economic practice to save the financial system (a subsidiary of the environment) from meltdown, nationalising banks at great public expense, we should be asking why it takes any longer to act to save the planet from runaway warming.

Very true!

The author goes also about the environmental deficit, ie, the use of resources and disposal of waste at a rate which nature cannot recover from. This complements the article on a Met Office report that urges governments to start reducing emissions now before it is too late:

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientific adviser for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said..."If we act now, maybe we have got a fighting chance,"

Very sad!

To close it off, a third article on The Guardian identifies Sarah Palin's (running mate of McCain (Republican)) environmental credentials. Actually, she does not have much. She denies man-made climate change:
"I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made"
and would rather have oil drilling companies doing their job in Alaska rather than declaring the polar bear as an endangered specie. Luckily, she lost the case. However, she has placed an appeal against the decision!

In May the US department of the interior rejected Palin's objections and listed the bear as a threatened species, saying that two-thirds of the world's polar bears were likely to be extinct by 2050 due to the rapid melting of the sea ice. Palin, governor of Alaska and the Republican nominee for US vice-president, responded last month by suing the federal government, to try to overturn the ruling.

Outrageous!

Massive Antarctic ice sheet collapses with global warming

The Wilkins ice shelf disintegrates and loses large chunks of ice into the sea.
A sign of anthropogenic global warming? Scientists think so...

See all the article on The Guardian

Chooseday and Shut the Door!

This week I have read about two community initiatives taken in the UK that try to do simple things that help reduce CO2 emissions and improve our environmental footprint.

The first I read about was Chooseday (sounds like Tuesday). The aim of this initiatives is for people to decide a day of the week in which they will leave their car at home and travel to work by bus or carpooling. The obvious aim is to reduce the number of cars on the road (http://www.chooseday.org/). This is being carried out in Bristol.

An interesting thing I noted is that bus lanes (yes, they caused significant controversy when they were introduced for a few hundred metres in Marsa) can also be used by cars that car pool. So instead of here where bus lanes are used by buses, mini vans and taxis (even if carrying no passengers), this could be extended to allow cars that have more than two passengers. I do not know how many fines were dished or how it is monitored.

The second community initiative I read about was Close the Door. It speaks for itself: Leave doors shut and is targeted at the business community. A lot of energy is wasted by leaving the doors of shops and restaurants open. Huge losses result from lost hot / cool air. Why not close them and save this energy. It was calculated this may bring a 20-25% reduction in electricity bills. The initiative offers stickers to be fixed on doors to explain why the shop is leaving its doors closed. Good one!

I would extend this to offices too. We took a similar initiative at work to keep room doors shut when the air conditioner is on. It may go against what many cry out for the 'open door' attitude (mainly to bridge the physical divide between management and staff). I do not have records of the achievement from our initiates, but electricity consumption did fall.

So try it yourself: carpool and close that door!

As usual, money goes to the wrong priorities

The US Air Force has just announced that it awarded a multi-billion dollar contract to a company called Northrop Grumman to replace its aging air refuelling tankers. The deal is first to replace 179 tankers and eventually the whole 500 of them.

The cost?

$40 billion dollars for replacing 179 expanding to over $100 billion dollars for the whole fleet.

Also, the US military has recently awarded the largest ever contract in history for a $200 billion Future Combat System programme.

The Pentagon is furthermore expected to award a contract of over $200 billion to the future F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

And then they accuse Iran, Russia and all the guys on the 'Axis of Evil' of rearmament. What is that they are spending the money for?

AND THEN the US finds it hard to sign an international treaty to curb CO2 emissions because it will hurt its economy BUT, it is ready to pay those billions of taypayer dollars to enhance its military fleet. Not to mention of the poor of course. This my friend, is the real unjust world.

Climate change progress and the US

Is this deja vu or history repetition?

The conference (in Hawaii) ended with the U.S. agreeing to join nearly 190 countries to craft a blueprint for fighting climate change by 2009. But that only happened after participants loudly booed repeated U.S. objections to the document.

Source: CNN

Now this is a first!

"The Church of England is urging people to cut down on carbon, rather than chocolate, for Lent this year.

The 40-day plan lists simple energy-saving actions that can lead towards a lighter carbon footprint, including snubbing plastic bags, giving the dishwasher a day off, insulating the hot-water tank and checking the house for drafts.

Participants are asked to begin the carbon fast by removing one light bulb from a prominent place in the home and live without it for 40 days, as a constant visual reminder during Lent of the need to cut energy. On the final day of the fast, people are encouraged to replace the missing bulb with an energy-saving bulb."

The article on The Guardian also gives the 40-day plan. Some of the items are pretty simple, others require some investment. Whatever it is, you do not have to be a Church of England follower, or a Christian at all. What is good for the environment is good for Christians, Muslims and Buddhists alike.

Just read and follow.

Please note that the 'carbon fasting' must be carried out through the other 325(6) days of the year, of course.

Biofuel saga again..going the wrong way?

Once again, the biofuel issue is a hot potato. The Guardian has in the last few days mentioned concerns by the EU, as well as scientists, on the actual benefits of biofuel.

The EU has admitted that:

the environmental and social impact of producing the crops may be greater than originally thought

Also, in the US, the cultivation of maize for biofuel, has been accused of increasing food prices and damaging the environment.

A Report in Science has also indicated that biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil since they have higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland.

Another Report from the Royal Society suggested that biofuels risk failing to deliver significant reductions in transport emissions and could even be environmentally damaging unless the government implements the right policies.

Ultimately, the Royal Society was quoted as saying that given biofuels were already in the market, it was "vital that policies that promote biofuel development also address the environmental, economic and social impacts.

Sources: The Guardian
The Guardian

Musical climate change

I tell you, reading climate change science while listening to Sigur Ros in the background is quite problematic. It makes the thing more biased. Sigur Ros are not quite known for their jovial mood in their music. And alas, they are from the cold north ie Iceland.

So imagine listening to the soothing music, imagining yourself in some Icelandic village walking about like a huge mammoth with all the clothes on. And you decide to trek and walk to and on the beautiful pure whiteness. The ice and snow after which Iceland has its own name.

However, deep down you realise that the place may change completely, and that is in a few years time. I tell you, reading climate science on the Arctic (Ok, Iceland is not quiet in the Arctic but close enough) is quite depressing. It makes you loose hope.

I was reading an interesting article from the guys at Real Climate and my God are we in deep shite! Of course, much of the scary observations observed now can never really indicate if all hope is already lost. But, things do not look good.

Read below on what is going on in the Arctic:

Since 2005 there has been a 25% decline in Arctic sea ice at the time of minimum, equal to the combined area of Texas and California

The state of ice thickness observed in 2007 is quite similar to the modelled state in 2020

Will 2007 be remembered as the tipping point for sea ice? Only time will tell.

There has been a decline in prime polar bear habitat in many places, but also some increase in polar bear habitat in the central Arctic. The latter will disappear eventually, as summer sea ice continues to retreat.

The Northwest Passage has opened. The Arctic will be increasingly opened to economic activity like oil drilling, with all the attendant environmental hazards and chances for political dispute

the estimated (see level rise rate) ... is now 2.2mm/yr, of which 30% is due to Greenland and 20% due to Antarctica (ice melt).

Moving on to another blog post, the issue is glacier ice retreat. Another threat that will further decrease albedo, reduce the ice-water reservoir and make history the much frequented skiing pistes..

98% of the named Alaska glaciers are retreating,
95% of 612 studied Tibet glaciers are retreating, and
98% of monitored Alpine glaciers are retreating.

I think I should listen less to Sigur Ros

Waiting for Bali

It is Saturday, 11 am GMT+1. The outcome should have come out by Friday, but talks are still under way.

Yes, I am still waiting for the outcomes of the Bali Conference, where the latest news indicate that something concrete is to come out. Until that moment comes, I will check the news every few minutes or so while listen to a new EP by Sigur Ros.

Hoping.

Hail and Bali

A rather particular event happened to me on my way to work this morning. The sky looked heavy and grey with hugu cumulus clouds waiting for any moment to pour their contents. I was driving along the main road and got stuck in traffic under the 'University Tunnel'. As I was reaching the end of it, I realised that it was pouring heavily on the outside; I entered the tunnel dry. To add to the 'shock' most of the rain was actually hail. So bang bang bang loud on the car, I had to turn up the volume to continue to listen Ghost Reveries (Opeth) (Yeah! Quite a wakeup tune!!).

Apart from that, the temperature is really cold today, at least at work. The a/c does not seem to be providing enough heat.

Anyhow I admit I am a little anxious at the moment. I am awaiting the outcomes of the Bali Conference which, I believe, will have an impact on the way we know and shall know our Earth. Climate-related concerns are very high. The climate itself is already responding with record low ice levels in the Arctic. An expert believes that the Arctic Ocean will be ice free by 2013! That is five years from now!

Let us pray that he's wrong.

Examplary green incentive

Here below is a good incentive proposed by French government to reduce energy consumption and produce less CO2 emissions.

...the French government (started) to offer cash bonuses of up to €1,300 (£940) to buy new low-emission cars and penalties of up to €2,600 for buying the most polluting models.

The French car scheme took effect last week and offers a €1,000 bonus for cars emitting less than 100 grammes of CO2 a kilometre, €700 for those emitting less than 120g and €200 for those emitting less than 130g. A new model emitting more than 250g, such as a Porsche Cayenne Turbo or a BMW X5, carries a penalty of €2,600.

Now isnt' that a bold decision that will make the air we (they) breathe cleaner?

Maltese politicians, get inspired!

I tell you: Scrap Biofuel away!!

Biofuel, Biodiesel, ethanol and the likes. They are pitted as the saviours for our car engines as we seek remedies to do away with fossil fuels. But, alas, not all that glitters is gold.

Research back in August quoted that: increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release between two and nine times more carbon gases over the next 30 years than fossil fuels Source.

One may argue that the debate is wide open, and I fully agree to that. However, what is happening is that biofuels in the form of crop derivations is financially more advantageous for certain sectors of the economy. The most is the farmer. Crops for biofuel are getting a better prices than crops for food.

This was even stated by Pippo Psaila, head of the EORC, a Maltese company that produces biofuel. Although they started and still use used cooking oil as the source of biofuel, the EORC plans to expand. And what does it offer? The end of the article in The Times, Business edition of the 6th of December says it all:

"Farmers could grow jatropha instead of fodder.... In the end, they would be growing something that gives them a much higher income for much less work".

First of all, one must be very careful when introducing new crops. It must be made sure that the plant is not invasive. We do not want jatropha to be another haxixa ingliza do we?

Secondly, the farmer will surely gain, or so he hopes, a higher yield and more valuable crop. But what about the previous user of the fodder?

We all know that food prices have risen tremendously in a few months. It is believed that food stockpiles are very low, at levels last seen in the early eighties. Exchanging food crops with fuel crops will not made the situation better.

I shall end with some text from an article I read on the reasons why food prices have risen so much:

1 Rising consumption: The appetite of fast-growing nations, such as China, is rising as economic booms cause a surge in demand for meat and dairy products

2 Competition from biofuels: The cars of the rich are now rivalling the bellies of the poor for corn, cane and edible oils

3 Climate change: Global warming is putting pressure on water needed to irrigate crops

So what do you think? Would you still go for biofuel?

Xmas lights at the cost of...?

Di-ve.com has just published the following:

Christmas street lightning gets discount
by Chris Galea, di-ve news

VALLETTA, Malta (di-ve news) -- November 26, 2007 -- 1225CET -- Enemalta Corporation has amended its scheme giving a discount to street lighting during the Christmas festivities.

The Corporation will be giving a 50 per cent discount on temporary services for the decoration of streets during the festivities, a scheme which is expected to cost Enemalta around Lm5,000.

Under its previous scheme, Enemalta used to give the first 50 units consumed for free, which effectively represented a reduction of less than Lm3 on the expense. This scheme had last year cost Enemalta less than Lm300.

The Corporation augured that that the contribution would help to further embellish the commercial centres during the festivities.

Xmas spirit apart, this is surely not the way forward to reduce energy consumption.

Climate change slideshow

I have just added a tiny winy widget to this blog, thanks to the Blogger team of course. It is simple. This widget is a slide show. Pics can be your own or from an online archive (Flikr, Picasa). If you choose the latter, you have to insert a tag name that will be used to find images of your choice. Since I do not have many pics on Picasa, I decided to go for the term 'climate change'. What did you expect?

For those who still to not believe!

This photo blogpost is for those of you who still believe that global warming is a myth:

Himalayas: Pictures showing the contrast between glaciers in 1968 (top) and 2007

Sea ice, polar bears' natural habitat, has been steadily receding, leaving their long-term future in doubt

Source: The Guardian

Let the War begin

I feel that sooner or later, the world will be faced with a major war. And by major I mean at a World War scale, not like the current Iraq, Afghan et al wars. The reason for this: the following article I read on The Guardian: Britain to claim more than 1m sq km of of Antarctica.

Now it is becoming evident that the major powers of this Earth are very worried indeed about the prospect of an oil-less future. And no, the worry is not because of renewables that will replace fossils. On the contrary, it is because known sources of oil are reaching their 'expiry date'. Hence, now there is a scramble for vast areas which were previously untouched and which potentially can host vast amounts of oil. I shall mention Antarctica, Greenland and a host of off-limit areas in the middle of the oceans.

In my opinion, this just shows how hypocritical we are. The same nations who claim they are the leaders in climate change policy, mitigation and adaptation are showing that all they are doing is just trying to make us feel good. What shame! On the other hand, I do not blame them. If vast amounts of oil are up for grabs, somebody is surely going to tap the resource one day or another. However, the hypocrisy of it all is too much to swallow.

And to think of it, why on earth should money be spent on renewables research when there is so much of the black stuff left. Who cares about climate change anyway?

Oh, and I had also some evil thoughts following my reading. Think of some big superpower, going to war to find weapons of mass destruction, only to find none, destroy the country but have a foothold in a oily rich country, or region. My my, I feel really sorry for all those people in Iraq who are there for a 'good cause'. No wonder they resist leaving the country.