Shale-gas drilling involving hydraulic fracturing has been increasingly used in the United States and Canada.
A new documentary called Gasland focuses on the impact that the natural gas extraction process has on communities and the environment.
Four men from the remote village of Licapa in Peru have decided to combat global warming by painting the Andes white.
In the last 35 years, rising temperatures have reduced the size of glaciers in the Peruvian Andes by 22%. The hope is that the whitewash will reflect heat away and stop the glaciers melting.
Peruvian Andes (by Martin St-Amant via Wikimedia)
As eccentric as it may seem, the whitewashing project was selected as one of the top proposals in the World Bank’s "100 Ideas to Save the Planet" competition held last year. As a result, Eduardo Gold, who proposed the scheme, secured £135,000 ($au 227,000) to carry it out. The funds are being used to paint about 70 hectares on three mountain peaks.
The team is using an environmentally friendly paint, based on an old Peruvian formula. It contains lime, egg whites and water.
For years, we have been warned that low-lying coral island states will be drowned by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite - most have remained stable, while some have even grown, despite rising sea levels, over the last 60 years.
Nanumea Atoll, Tuvalu (NASA image)
Paul Kench at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and Arthur Webb at the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission in Fiji used historical aerial photos and high-resolution satellite images to study changes in the land surface of 27 Pacific islands over the last 60 years. Local sea levels have risen by 120 millimetres during that time but just four of the islands have diminished in size.
Tuvalu, which stands just 4.5 metres out of the Pacific, has been widely predicted to be one of the first islands to drown in the rising seas. Yet Arthur Webb and Paul Kench found that seven islands in one of its nine atolls have spread by more than 3 per cent on average since the 1950s. One island, Funamanu, gained 0.44 hectares, or nearly 30 per cent of its previous area. In the neighbouring Republic of Kiribati, the three major urbanised islands - Betio, Bairiki and Nanikai - have increased by 30 per cent.
The reason is that low-lying Pacific islands are made of coral debris. This is eroded from the reefs that typically circle the islands and pushed up onto the islands by winds, waves and currents. Because the corals are alive, they provide a continuous supply of material. Structures linking islands can boost growth by trapping sediment that would otherwise get lost to the ocean. For example, when hurricane Bebe hit Tuvalu in 1972 it deposited 140 hectares of debris, increasing the area of the main island by 10 per cent.
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Greenpeace International and the European Renewable Energy Council have produced a report titled: "Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook" which provides a detailed blueprint for cutting carbon emissions while achieving economic growth by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency. Acopy of the full 212-page report is here; a 16-page summary is here.
Under the Energy [R]evolution scenario, global CO2 emissions would peak in 2015 and drop afterwards. Compared with 1990 CO2 emissions would be more than 80% lower by 2050. The report says that by 2050 around 95% of electricity could be produced by renewable energy.
The report also says that this phase-out of fossil fuels offers substantial additional benefits such as energy security, independence from world market fuel prices as well as the creation of millions of new green jobs.
By 2015 global power supply sector jobs in the Energy [R]evolution scenario are estimated to reach about 11.1 million, 3.1 million more than in the business-as-usual Reference scenario. By 2020 over 6.5 million jobs in the renewables sector would be created due a much faster uptake of renewables, three-times more than today.
The report finds that this can be achieved with proven technologies by adhering to five key principles:
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The world’s worst underground coal fires are in Inner Mongolia. Some have been burning for 50 years. The amount of coal being burned is estimated to be about 20 million tonnes a year.
The Inner Mongolia regional government has now announced plans and financing of 200 million yuan ($au36 million) to begin extinguishing the fires.
According to the plan, half of the fires could be extinguished by 2012 simply by digging coal out of the path of the fires and covering the fires with sand.
The government said that the fires were caused by "improper mining practices" and "dry weather" but did not explain why it has taken 50 years to produce a plan to put them out.
Collapsing coal seam burning in an open pit mine in the Rujigou coalfield in China.
As disastrous as the Gulf oil spill is, it is dwarfed others aound the world.
The Guardian, for example, has an article about Nigeria where, they say, more oil is spilled every year than has been lost in the Gulf spill - and it’s been happening for 50 years!
Just last month, a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Within days of the Ibeno spill, thousands of barrels of oil were spilled when the nearby Shell Trans Niger pipeline. A few days after that, a large oil slick was found floating on Lake Adibawa in Bayelsa state and another in Ogoniland.
Life expectancy in rural communities in the Niger Delta, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution. "If this Gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention," said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. "This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta."
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Our latest YouTube video clip is a look at what our dependence on oil is doing to the Earth.
Climate change is threatening some of our favourite cliches. These are some that we will need to update:
Images from Wikimedia Commons: "CO2-Temp" by Hanno, "Richmond Flood" by Iridescent, "Running Hare" by Marlene Thyssen, "Black Sea Oil Spill" by Marine Photobank, "Dead Zone" by Jkeiser and "Flowers of Prunus Tomentosa in May" by Pauk
A new study on the likely effect of climate change on tropical cyclones, published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States, predicts slightly fewer but much more destructive cyclones.
John McBride, principal research scientist for the Bureau of Meteorology says one of the most consistent findings is that the southern hemisphere is likely to see a drop in the number of cyclones each year. Australia is likely to see nine cyclones every year instead of the current ten, which will not be very noticeable.
However, the intensify of the cyclones will increase by about 10 percent. In other words, there will be a 10 percent increase in the maximum wind speed. This will make a significant difference because the destructive power of a cyclone is exponentially proportional to its wind speed.
Darwin after Cyclone Tracy
(Image: Billbee via Wikimedia)
(From sources including the ABC)
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