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This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity
George Monbiot, the Guardian
This is the moment at which we turn and face ourselves. Here, in the plastic corridors and crowded stalls, among impenetrable texts and withering procedures, humankind decides what it is and what it will become. It chooses whether to continue living as it has done, until it must make a wasteland of its home, or to stop and redefine itself. This is about much more than climate change. This is about us.

The meeting at Copenhagen confronts us with our primal tragedy. We are the universal ape, equipped with the ingenuity and aggression to bring down prey much larger than itself, break into new lands, roar its defiance of natural constraints. Now we find ourselves hedged in by the consequences of our nature, living meekly on this crowded planet for fear of provoking or damaging others. We have the hearts of lions and live the lives of clerks.

The summit's premise is that the age of heroism is over. We have entered the age of accommodation. No longer may we live without restraint. No longer may we swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way. In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live in the moment, as if there were no tomorrow.

This is a meeting about chemicals: the greenhouse gases insulating the atmosphere. But it is also a battle between two world views. The angry men who seek to derail this agreement, and all such limits on their self-fulfilment, have understood this better than we have. A new movement, most visible in North America and Australia, but now apparent everywhere, demands to trample on the lives of others as if this were a human right. It will not be constrained by taxes, gun laws, regulations, health and safety, especially by environmental restraints. It knows that fossil fuels have granted the universal ape amplification beyond its Palaeolithic dreams. For a moment, a marvellous, frontier moment, they allowed us to live in blissful mindlessness...
(14 Dec 2009)

Oil sands emissions polluting waterways, study finds
Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe and Mail
Water pollution levels around the Athabasca River and its tributaries have risen because of emissions from the oil sands, a research paper released Monday says , contradicting a view in the energy industry and the Alberta government that the massive mining of bitumen hasn't contaminated waterways.

The finding, published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is likely to add to the environmental headaches of the oil sands industry, which has been in a negative spotlight for its large-scale emissions of greenhouse gases.

The research, conducted mainly by scientists at the University of Alberta, found that concentrations of polycyclic aromatic compounds, or PACs, were far higher at sites near and immediately downstream from mining operations and upgraders than they were upriver from oil sands developments. The paper also estimated airborne emissions of PACs from the industry's activities as amounting to a major oil spill each year if they were in a single place.

PAC are a component of oil and a major concern to public health authorities and environmentalists because they can be toxic to fish embryos, even at vanishingly small concentrations, and are linked to cancer...
(7 Dec 2009)

Brown offers £1.2bn in a bid to break climate deadlock
Andrew Grice and Michael McCarthy in Copenhagen, The Independent
Gordon Brown is preparing to offer more money from Britain to help the world's poorest countries combat climate change in an attempt to break the deadlock at the Copenhagen summit.

Aides to the Prime Minister, who has already announced £1.5bn over the next three years for African and other nations affected by global warming, said he is also planning to contribute to a separate £15.3bn global fund to reduce deforestation. A payment of similar proportions would mean an extra £1.2bn coming from British taxpayers.

However the Prime Minister faces questions about how Britain will find the money when it has a £178bn budget deficit in the current financial year. The £1.5bn will come from the existing budget of the Department for International Development. Any top-up would be new money which would have to found despite the squeeze on public spending signalled in last week's pre-Budget report...
(15 Dec 2009)

A Second Life For Orbiting Carbon Observatory?
David Richardson, Miller-McCune
A Taurus launch vehicle rose from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base in late February, ferrying the Orbital Carbon Observatory into space. The rocket streaked toward an orbit 705 miles above the Earth; from there the OCO and its single scientific instrument were to deploy to look back at the planet's surface, producing complete carbon dioxide maps of Earth every 16 days for two years.

Minutes into the flight, something went wrong. The satellite failed to shed its protective faring as it neared orbital velocity. Weighed down by the shielding material, the satellite never made it to orbit, but rather, crashed off the coast of Antarctica. "Most of it burned up in the atmosphere," said David Crisp of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After nearly a decade under development, the OCO would spend eternity underwater.

"It was a big loss," said Kevin Gurney, leader of the Vulcan Project. He had been keen to use data from the $209 million OCO project to advance the search for the elusive carbon sinks.

Urgent Calls
Crisp, the leader of the OCO scientific research team, said he received a call shortly after the mishap from halfway around the world. The director of Japan's GOSAT mission, launched a month earlier, wanted to borrow the OCO team's expertise to analyze data that he expected would soon come pouring in from Ibuki, the Japanese Space Agency's own greenhouse gas satellite.

...Crisp said if natural sinks could be found and carefully managed, that "could buy us more time to get off our fossil fuel diet."

He said OCO has the tools for the job. It has its greatest sensitivity to CO2 near the surface, but can make measurements of "the complete atmospheric column as high as planes fly."

The replacement OCO would follow a special orbit similar to the original flight plan, keeping pace with the afternoon sun. Wherever it carries out its observations it will always be 1:18 p.m. on the ground below, providing researchers with handy comparable measurements based on a standard time of day...
(8 Dec 2009)

Sunspots do not cause climate change, say scientists
Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Independent
Leading scientists, including a Nobel Prize-winner, have rounded on studies used by climate sceptics to show that global warming is a natural phenomenon connected with sunspots, rather than the result of the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.

The researchers – all experts in climate or solar science – have told The Independent that the scientific evidence continually cited by sceptics to promote the idea of sunspots being the cause of global warming is deeply flawed.

Studies published in 1991 and 1998 claimed to establish a link between global temperatures and solar activity – sunspots – and continue to be cited by climate sceptics, including those who attended an "alternative" climate conference in Copenhagen last week.

However, problems with the data used to establish the correlation have been identified by other experts and the flaws are now widely accepted by the scientific community, even though the studies continue to be used to support the idea that global warming is "natural".

The issue has gained new importance in the light of opinion polls showing that nearly one in two people now believe global warming is a natural phenomenon unconnected with CO2 emissions. Public distrust of the accepted explanation of global warming has been exacerbated by emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which appeared to suggest that scientists were engaged in a conspiracy to suppress contrarian views...
(14 Dec 2009)

Cooling the Asphalt Jungle
Enrique Gili, Miller-McCune
The asphalt jungle is due for a makeover as tar beach becomes a sanctuary for native plants, wildflowers and winged pollinators. Like mushrooms after a spring rain, "green roofs" are proliferating on rooftops across the United States and throughout Europe, gaining adherents among sustainable design advocates intent on creating more livable and greener cities.

While rooftop gardens have been a part of city life since the 19th century (if not earlier), their environmental benefits are just beginning to be fully realized. As global temperatures creep upwards, scientists are glancing at the skyline, looking for ways to cool down concrete-bound cities and the planet. One proposal has been to install white roofs, which would reflect solar heat and require less energy to cool urban areas. Another idea is to absorb — or sequester — heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide by using rooftops as yards.

In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at Michigan State University have calculated the carbon sequestration benefits extensive green roofs can provide. Findings from horticulturalists Kristen Getter and Brad Rowe in October's Environmental Science & Technology revealed green roofs' potential as carbon sinks.

During photosynthesis, plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store CO2 in the leaves, soil and root system, converting sunshine into carbon-based compounds such as carbohydrates and sugar. According to Environmental Protection Agency statistics, U.S. forests sequestered 637 million metric tons of the carbon dioxide emitted by made-sources such as coal, fuel and natural gas. Urban forests sequestered on average an additional 74 million metric tons. (All told, the U.S. offsets about an eighth of the carbon it produces, and the vast majority of the offset comes from forests.)..
(11 Dec 2009)

'At this rate, Copenhagen will be a disaster'
Mark Lynas, The Independent
The battle lines are drawn. The armies are lined up. The guns are loaded. But here in Copenhagen, a phony war is underway.

For the past two days, negotiators have been bogged down in minor technical details and endless delays. For hours plenary meetings have been taken up by countries complaining about the process. Then finally solutions are agreed, and everyone files out to the relevant gatherings – only to find them cancelled on arrival. All of Monday disappeared down that hole.

Today, it looked like some real work was getting done. But with just hours left before the ‘high-level’ segment (with ministers, and – increasingly – heads of state themselves) begins, several different texts were in circulation, all laden with square brackets (indicating disagreement) around even minor issues of contention that should have been resolved last week.

At this rate, Copenhagen will not only fail, it will be a disaster...
(15 Dec 2009)