Is compressed air powered cars a solution? YES Tata the biggest industrial group in India is going to build it!

India's Tata Motors and France's MDI sign agreement to build compressed air-powered cars

Posted Feb 8th 2007 11:01AM by Sebastian Blanco
Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Natural Gas
India's largest automaker, Tata Motors, announced this week it will partner up with MDI of France, a technology invention company, to develop engines powered by compressed air. Tata says the agreement "envisages Tata's supporting further development and refinement of the technology, and its application and licensing for India." MDI is the company behind The Air Car.

The way the Air Car's CAT (compressed air technology) works is that an "innovative system" - MDI isn't releasing true technical details because of corporate secrecy - controls the movement of four two-stage pistons (giving eight compression/expansion chambers) and a single crankshaft. A 5kW electric moto-alternator compresses air, recharges the battery, serves as an electric moderator/brake and as a temporary power supply (e.g. for parking).

That sounds positive, but reader Fabio Alemagna says the key problem for MDI's technology is the fundamental problem that the "fuel" conducts freeze thanks to the subzero temperature of the compressed air.

Tata is also working on engines powered by Hithane, a mix of hydrogen and compressed natural gas. For its part, MDI is not limiting itself to India or Tata. MDI president Guy Negre said his company was happy to work with Tata but, "We are continuing the development with our own business concept of licensing car manufacturers in other parts of the world where the production is located close to the markets."

Related:
India mixing hydrogen and compressed natural gas
Tata Considering Entry into China
Old video of air-powered car making the rounds at YouTube

Monsanto dumped toxic waste in UK

PCBs, Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins dumped by Monsanto in the environment 30 years ago. Shall we wait 30 years to condemned the obvious contamination impact of the GMO? J-L Roux

Inquiry after chemicals found at site 30 years after their disposal
John Vidal, environment editor
Monday February 12, 2007

Guardian
Evidence has emerged that the Monsanto chemical company paid contractors to dump thousands of tonnes of highly toxic waste in British landfill sites, knowing that their chemicals were liable to contaminate wildlife and people. Yesterday the Environment Agency said it had launched an inquiry after the chemicals were found to be polluting underground water supplies and the atmosphere 30 years after they were dumped.

According to the agency it could cost up to £100m to clean up a site in south Wales that has been called "one of the most contaminated" in the country.

A previously unseen government report read by the Guardian shows that 67 chemicals, including Agent Orange derivatives, dioxins and PCBs which could have been made only by Monsanto, are leaking from one unlined porous quarry that was not authorised to take chemical wastes.

The Brofiscin quarry on the edge of the village of Groesfaen, near Cardiff, erupted in 2003, spilling fumes over the surrounding area, but the community has been told little about the real condition of what is in the pit. Yesterday the government was criticised for failing to publish information about the scale and exact nature of this contamination.

Douglas Gowan, a pollution consultant who produced the first official report into the Brofiscin quarry in 1972 after nine cows on a local farm died of poisoning, said: "The authorities have known about the situation for years, but have done nothing. There is evidence of not only negligence and utter incompetence, but cover-up, and the problem has grown unchecked."

Much of the new information about Monsanto's activities in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s has emerged from court papers filed in the US and previously unseen internal company documents. They show how the company knew from 1965 onwards that the PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls used mainly as flame retardants and insulaters - manufactured in the US and at its plant in Newport, south Wales, under the trade name Aroclor, were accumulating in human milk, rivers, fish and seafood, wildlife and plants.

The documents show that in 1953, company chemists tested the PCB chemicals on rats and found that they killed more than 50% with medium-level doses. However, it continued to manufacture PCBs and dispose of the wastes in south Wales until 1977, more than a decade after evidence of widespread contamination of humans and the environment was beyond doubt.

A high-level committee within the company was given the task in 1968 of assessing Monsanto's options and reported contamination in human milk, fish, birds and wildlife from around the world, including Britain. "In the case of PCBs the company is faced with a barrage of adverse publicity ... it will be impossible to deny the presence and persistence of Aroclors. The public and legal pressures to eliminate or prevent global contamination are inevitable and probably cannot be contained successfully," the committee reported.

The report, which was shown to only 12 people, said: "The alternatives are [to] say and do nothing; create a smokescreen; immediately discontinue the manufacture of Aroclors; respond responsibly, admitting growing evidence of environmental contamination ..." A scrawled note at the end of the document says: "The Big Question! What do we tell our customers ... try to stay in business or help customer's clean up their use?"

Monsanto stopped producing PCBs in the US in 1971, but the UK government, which knew of the dangers of PCBs in the environment in the 1960s, allowed their production in Wales until 1977.

Yesterday Monsanto, which has split into several corporate entities since 1997, said in a statement: "On behalf of [former parent company] Pharmacia Corp, Monsanto is handling issues related to the historical manufacture of PCBs in Wales. We continue to work with the Wales Department of Environment and other regulatory bodies to resolve these issues. A thorough review ... will show that Pharmacia did inform its contractors of the nature of wastes prior to disposal, and that Pharmacia did not dump wastes from its own vehicles."

Solutia, the spin-off from Monsanto which now owns the Newport site, said it was giving Monsanto and the regulatory agencies "information as requested".

The Environment Agency Wales said it was investigating the contents of the site: "This is one of the most contaminated sites in Wales and it is a priority to remediate because it is so close to habitations," said John Harrison, the agency's manager of the Taff/Ely region. "There is ground water pollution, but we do not think at present there is any danger to human health. We have spent about £800,000 so far investigating the tip. Our legal team is gathering all the evidence and we are trying to apportion costs."

Is industrial poultry a non sense?

Nobel prizewinners and campaigners called for the elimination of large scale intensive livestock farming

Some figures and facts

( see The Guardian click on the title)

- Britain's £3.4bn poultry industry, which produces 800 million birds a year
- UK produce 16 million chickens a week in this country and some 500,000 are not wanted
- UK is preparing very, very seriously and thoroughly for the possibility of a pandemic flu. It is a very remote risk, but if it did happen it could be very serious indeed.
- Nothing has given us any indication whatever that this event is linked directly to wild birds," said Lawrence Woodward, director of the Elm Farm Research Centre, who sits on the Defra committee of avian flu stakeholders. "The idea that a solitary bird carrying H5N1 is flying around East Anglia out of the migratory season and then falls down a ventilation shaft of the biggest poultry farm in Britain is just not viable," he said.
- The UN senior coordinator for avian flu and human influenza, David Nabarro, said in Indonesia that he expected an increase in bird flu around the world: "At the moment there are rather a lot of [cases] ... that is why everybody needs to be a little anxious about what is happening."
- In a letter to the Guardian, Nobel prizewinners and campaigners, including Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein called for the elimination of large-scale intensive livestock farming which they argue is "accelerating the development of new pandemic diseases".

We cannot let the Kyoto debacle happen again

Some key cote of Sir King Charles - Chief scientific advisor of of Tony Blair
"
The message for policy-makers is clear: climate change is not a passing fancy for environmentalists. It represents a challenge on a scale that will affect societies and economies across the world."

"It is important to remember that, beyond the next two decades or so, the future severity of climate change and its impacts lies in our hands. We have the knowledge, technologies and capability to transform our economies, if we have the commitment to do so."

"it is not only governments that should hear these messages. As individuals, we can make adjustments that together can have a big impact. As consumers, we can transform markets through our purchasing choices. And as concerned citizens, we can encourage governments, nationally and locally, to show leadership."

"The IPCC's work is vital in providing a solid foundation of evidence on which these crucial decisions can be made. We have lost 17 years since Kyoto. Now we have to act."

Climate change: In graphics

It is "very likely" that human activity is the cause for climate change, scientists from over 130 countries have concluded. The graphics below illustrate their predictions on just how much global temperatures may rise over the next century.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that temperatures are most likely to rise by 1.8C-4C by 2100. But the possible range is much greater; 1.1C-6.4C. The maps above show how a range of three different scenarios will affect different parts of the planet.
The emissions scenarios, A1B, A2, B1, used to create the maps above, are based on a range of detailed economic and technological data. These versions of the future consider different population increases, fossil and alternative fuel use, and consequent CO2 increases. The broad range of outcomes they show is displayed in the charts below.



Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas, its rise since the industrial revolution is clear. Burning coal, using oil and deforestation all place CO2 into the atmosphere.

Humans blamed for climate change

IPCC IVth Report Assessment: humans blamed for climate.

Even if the IVth report of the International Panel of Climate Change experts seems to be strong their is other scientist voices saying that the report seems below the thruth so a study published on the eve of the IPCC report suggested that the international body's previous reports may have actually been too conservative.

Writing in the journal Science, an international group of scientists concluded that temperatures and sea levels had been rising at or above the maximum rates proposed in the last report, which was published in 2001.

The paper compared the 2001 projections on temperature and sea level change report with what has actually happened.

The models had forecasted a temperature rise between about 0.15C-0.35C (0.27-0.63F) over this period. The actual rise of 0.33C (0.59F) was very close to the top of the IPCC's range.

A more dramatic picture emerged from the sea level comparison. The actual average level, measured by tide gauges and satellites, had risen faster than the intergovernmental panel of scientists predicted it would.

The IPCC's full climate science report will be released later in the year, as will other chapters looking at the probable impacts of climate change, options for adapting to those impacts, and possible routes to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

If you want to read the IPCC report go to this link : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_02_07_climatereport.pdf

INEQUALTY INCREASES IN THE WORLD

"Inequality growth is fare more important to solve than poverty if the world want to keep peace" said Jean-luc Roux

January 04, 2007
Picturing Global Inequality: Some Preliminary Figures
Posted by Todd Moss at 06:28 PM

Thanks to our friend Nick Seaver for posting on the Huffington Post one of the figures we created after playing around with some of the available stats on global income inequality. The idea was to get a very rough sense of what global income distribution looks like: Is it a bell curve? Where might an average American fit?

Ideally, we would have wanted income information on every person on the planet and then just line them up and see what it looks like. Of course, no such figures exist. The best we have is average income, plus some distribution data for large countries. So we took every country that was at least 1% of global population and disaggregated average incomes by decile (Iran and Japan by quintile), then added in every other country with their total population at the national average. This is far from perfect, we realize. But this may be less of a problem than it first appears because of the dramatic scale difference among countries: Given the relative enormity of China and India and the other big countries, counting all the middle class or millionaires in Togo (or, for that matter, in the UK) has almost no visual effect. Given those caveats, the picture here is one way to see what the figures look like. You can also view the graph (pdf) with the axes flipped in a normal histogram, plus a fuller explanation on what we did with the data. For a more thorough discussion of some of these issues, we recommend the work of economist Branko Milanovic (see, e.g., his figure on p 17 of this paper [pdf]) and the 2005 WIDER Lecture by CGD president Nancy Birdsall, The World is not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in our Global Economy (.pdf).

CO2 growth in 2006 was still higher than average and four of the last five years have been higher than average.

"Co2 emission speed up and scale up. We do not have more time to change our lifestyle and economical model' said Jean-Luc Roux

UPDATE: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has now told us that the story below is based on preliminary data for December, which it should not have published. It has withdrawn the data pending further analysis. As a result, the provisional annual growth rate for 2006 displayed on the Noaa website now does not include December, which means it is now lower than the 2.6ppm we reported. Pieter Tans, the scientist in charge of the data, said: "It doesn't affect the trend, there is definitely something there. CO2 growth in 2006 was still higher than average and four of the last five years have been higher than average."

Article continues
Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than scientists expected, raising fears that humankind may have less time to tackle climate change than previously thought.

New figures from dozens of measuring stations across the world reveal that concentrations of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, rose at record levels during 2006 - the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase. Experts are puzzled because the spike, which follows decades of more modest annual rises, does not appear to match the pattern of steady increases in human emissions.

To read more please click on the title of this article

Supermarket giant to introduce Carbon emission labels

"This is a real and key first step to reduce the consummer co2 budget and make it concrete" said Jean-Luc Roux
You've checked the price and calorie count, now here's the carbon cost


· Supermarket giant to introduce emission labels
· Tesco promises 'green consumption revolution'

Julia Finch and John Vidal
Friday January 19, 2007
The Guardian

Supermarket chain Tesco pledged last night to revolutionise its business to become "a leader in helping to create a low-carbon economy" with a raft of new measures to help combat climate change.

In the most significant step announced yesterday, the UK's biggest retailer, which produces 2m tonnes of carbon a year in the UK, said it would put new labels on every one of the 70,000 products it sells so that shoppers can compare carbon costs in the same way they can compare salt content and calorie counts.

Article continues
The company also pledged to cut the emissions produced by its stores and distribution centres by 50% by 2020 and slash by 50% within five years the amount of CO2 used in its distribution network to deliver each case of goods.

To get more click on the title of this article

Toward a Flexible Energy Future

by Lord Andrew Turnbull

London, January 15, 2007 -- With the price of carbon-based fuel becoming increasingly volatile and new sources of alternative energy coming online each year, governments must adopt flexible, market-based approaches to energy investments. This will help establish a framework for energy prices and protect governments from overreliance on any single source of energy. A sensible energy investment strategy, which recognizes the need to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and emphasizes the importance of safe, secure energy sources, will enable governments to avoid major energy catastrophes in the future.

To read the full Resilience Report:
http://www.strategy-business.com/resilience/rr00040

The Doomsday Clock: Nuclear threat to world 'rising'

The Doomsday Clock: Nuclear threat to world 'rising'
For 60 years, it has depicted how close the world is to nuclear disaster. Today, scientists will move its hands forward to show we are facing the gravest threat in at least 20 years
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 17 January 2007

Five years of international headlines tell of growing turmoil in the Middle East, international terrorism in Western capitals and more countries seeking the ultimate national security insurance policy.

Now climate change and oil insecurity is driving countries to seek nuclear power, bringing with it new dangers of proliferation in volatile parts of the globe.

Today the Doomsday Clock, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 at the dawn of the nuclear age, will make official what most thinking citizens feel in their bones - that the world has edged closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the most precarious moments of the Cold War in the early 1980s.

The nuclear threat has also acquired an added and unquantifiable dimension, thanks to global warming - prompting the Bulletin to warn of a "Second Nuclear Age". The existing dangers could not be more obvious: the problem is where to start. What about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons, and the thinly veiled warnings from the undeclared but assumed nuclear power Israel that it will strike first to remove what it sees as an existentialist threat comparable to the Holocaust?

Or the nuclear test last year by North Korea, a member of George Bush's "axis of evil", which could have neighbouring Japan and South Korea seeking protection with nuclear weapons of their own? Or the nuclear arsenal of unstable Pakistan, where Islamic extremists have staged several assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf?

Or - perhaps the greatest danger of all - that having visited conventional terror on an unprecedented scale upon New York City on 11 September 2001, al-Qa'ida or some similar organisation will either get hold of a ready-made nuclear device or build one of its own, and then use it?

And why not? Grave doubts surround Russia's ability to secure its nuclear materials, many of them dating from the Soviet era, and to prevent its nuclear scientists from selling their skills to the highest bidder. If a terrorist group did explode even a crude dirty bomb (and the US claims to have disrupted such plots) the taboo that has prevented states from using nuclear weapons in anger since 1945 might be broken.

And in this new nuclear age, the deterrence doctrine of "mutually assured destruction", or MAD, that kept the Cold War cold, would not apply. The US and Russia may have 2,000 launch-ready weapons between them - but these would be of no more use against an amorphous terrorist group than Israel's nuclear arsenal against the Palestinians. Even so, a threshold would have been crossed and a regional, even generalised nuclear war, would become conceivable.

In 1947, the Doomsday Clock was first set at seven minutes to midnight, exactly where it has stood since 2002. On the Bulletin's reckoning, the planet's closest brush thus far with Armageddon came in 1953, when the clock's hand moved to two minutes to midnight after the US and the Soviet Union tested hydrogen bombs within nine months of each other.

Thereafter the clock has tracked the chills and thaws of the Cold War, and the successive arrival of Britain, France, China, India and Pakistan as recognised nuclear powers. The hand reached its "safest" point - 17 minutes to Armageddon - in 1991 when the US and the soon-to-disappear Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and that year's Gulf War, driving Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, seemed to herald an era when the great powers could work together under the auspices of the UN. The 2003 Iraq invasion destroyed any such illusions. Once there were five proven nuclear powers. Now there are nine.

Global warming, argues the Bulletin, indirectly increases this risk. Civil nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gases, is back in fashion and hundreds of nuclear reactors will be built. Yet enriched uranium, to power them, and plutonium are also the vital raw materials for nuclear weapons.

In this Second Nuclear Age, there will be more of these deadly commodities around. Small wonder the hand on the Doomsday Clock will move towards midnight. The only question is, how close will it get?

To read more click on the title

EU: Climate change will transform the face of the continent

As many reports hold by the European commission as well as the United Nations they are making the right diagnosis: the world is dying. BUT no one is giving the right scenario to really face the problem. Why? and how could this be taken as an oppotunity by the NGOs, Civil Society and Collective Intelligence?
Your comments are welcome.
Jean-Luc

Article by Michael McCarthy and Stephen Castle
Published: 10 January 2007

Europe, the richest and most fertile continent and the model for the modern world, will be devastated by climate change, the European Union predicts today.

The ecosystems that have underpinned all European societies from Ancient Greece and Rome to present-day Britain and France, and which helped European civilisation gain global pre-eminence, will be disabled by remorselessly rising temperatures, EU scientists forecast in a remarkable report which is as ominous as it is detailed.

Much of the continent's age-old fertility, which gave the world the vine and the olive and now produces mountains of grain and dairy products, will not survive the climate change forecast for the coming century, the scientists say, and its wildlife will be devastated.

Europe's modern lifestyles, from summer package tours to winter skiing trips, will go the same way, they say, as the Mediterranean becomes too hot for holidays and snow and ice disappear from mountain ranges such as the Alps - with enormous economic consequences. The social consequences will also be felt as heat-related deaths rise and extreme weather events, such as storms and floods, become more violent.

The report, stark and uncompromising, marks a step change in Europe's own role in pushing for international action to combat climate change, as it will be used in a bid to commit the EU to ambitious new targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

The European Commission wants to hold back the rise in global temperatures to 2C above the pre-industrial level (at present, the level is 0.6C). To do that, it wants member states to commit to cutting back emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, to 30 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, as long as other developed countries agree to do the same.

Failing that, the EU would observe a unilateral target of a 20 per cent cut.

The Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, gave US President George Bush a preview of the new policy during a visit to the White House this week.

The force of today's report lies in its setting out of the scale of the continent-wide threat to Europe's "ecosystem services".

That is a relatively new but powerful concept, which recognises essential elements of civilised life - such as food, water, wood and fuel - which may generally be taken for granted, are all ultimately dependent on the proper functioning of ecosystems in the natural world. Historians have recognised that Europe was particularly lucky in this respect from the start, compared to Africa or pre-Columbian America - and this was a major reason for Europe's rise to global pre-eminence.

"Climate change will alter the supply of European ecosystem services over the next century," the report says. "While it will result in enhancement of some ecosystem services, a large portion will be adversely impacted because of drought, reduced soil fertility, fire, and other climate change-driven factors.

"Europe can expect a decline in arable land, a decline in Mediterranean forest areas, a decline in the terrestrial carbon sink and soil fertility, and an increase in the number of basins with water scarcity. It will increase the loss of biodiversity."

The report predicts there will be some European "winners" from climate change, at least initially. In the north of the continent, agricultural yields will increase with a lengthened growing season and a longer frost-free period. Tourism may become more popular on the beaches of the North Sea and the Baltic as the Mediterranean becomes too hot, and deaths and diseases related to winter cold will fall.

But the negative effects will far outweigh the advantages. Take tourism. The report says "the zone with excellent weather conditions, currently located around the Mediterranean (in particular for beach tourism) will shift towards the north". And it spells out the consequences.

"The annual migration of northern Europeans to the countries of the Mediterranean in search of the traditional summer 'sun, sand and sea' holiday is the single largest flow of tourists across the globe, accounting for one-sixth of all tourist trips in 2000. This large group of tourists, totalling about 100 million per annum, spends an estimated €100bn (£67bn) per year. Any climate-induced change in these flows of tourists and money would have very large implications for the destinations involved."

While they are losing their tourists, the countries of the Med may also be losing their agriculture. Crop yields may drop sharply as drought conditions, exacerbated by more frequent forest fires, make farming ever more difficult. And that is not the only threat to Europe's food supplies. Some stocks of coldwater fish in areas such as the North Sea will move northwards as the water warms.

There are many more direct threats, the report says. The cost of taking action to cope with sea-level rise will run into billions of euros. Furthermore, "for the coming decades, it is predicted the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events will increase, and floods will likely be more frequent and severe in many areas across Europe."

The number of people affected by severe flooding in the Upper Danube area is projected to increase by 242,000 in a more extreme 3C temperature rise scenario, and by 135,000 in the case of a 2.2C rise. The total cost of damage would rise from €47.5bn to €66bn in the event of a 3C increase.

Although fewer people would die of cold in the north, that would be more than offset by increased mortality in the south. Under the more extreme scenario of a 3C increase in relative to, there would be 86,000 additional deaths.

The Person of the Year is YOU!

Time magazine's "Person of the Year" is You

Sat Dec 16, 2006 10:30 PM ET

By Michelle Nichols

NEW YORK (Reuters) - You were named Time magazine "Person of the Year" on Saturday for the explosive growth and influence of user-generated Internet content such as blogs, video-file sharing site YouTube and social network MySpace.

"For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is you," the magazine's Lev Grossman wrote.

The magazine has put a mirror on the cover of its "Person of the Year" issue, released on Monday, "because it literally reflects the idea that you, not us, are transforming the information age," Editor Richard Stengel said in a statement.
"These blogs and videos bring events to the rest of us in ways that are often more immediate and authentic than traditional media," Stengel said.

"These blogs and videos bring events to the rest of us in ways that are often more immediate and authentic than traditional media," Stengel said.

"Journalists once had the exclusive province of taking people to places they'd never been. But now a mother in Baghdad with a videophone can let you see a roadside bombing or a patron in a nightclub can show you a racist rant by a famous comedian," he said.

Arctic sea ice 'faces rapid melt'

Arctic sea ice 'faces rapid melt'

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

A new model forecasts largely ice-free summers by 2040

The Arctic may be close to a tipping point that sees all-year-round ice disappear very rapidly in the next few decades, US scientists have warned.

The latest data presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting suggests the ice is no longer showing a robust recovery from the summer melt.

Last month, the sea that was frozen covered an area that was two million sq km less than the historical average.

"That's an area the size of Alaska," said leading ice expert Mark Serreze.

"We're no longer recovering well in autumn anymore. The ice pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very rapid losses in the near future," the University of Colorado researcher added.

The sea ice reached its minimum extent this year on 14 September, making 2006 the fourth lowest on record in 29 years of satellite record-keeping and just shy of the all time minimum of 2005.

'Feedback loop'

Dr Serreze's concern was underlined by new computer modelling which concludes that the Arctic may be free of all summer ice by as early as 2040.

The new study, by a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that the ice system could be being weakened to such a degree by global warming that it soon accelerates its own decline.

"As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice," explained Dr Marika Holland.

"This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region."

Eventually, she said, the system would be "kicked over the edge", probably not even by a dramatic event but by one year slighter warmer than normal. Very rapid retreat would then follow.

Sooner or later

In one of the model's simulations, the September ice was seen to shrink from about 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles) to 1.9 million sq km (770,000 square miles) in just a 10-year period.

By 2040, only a small amount of perennial sea ice remained along the north coasts of Greenland and Canada, while most of the Arctic basin was ice-free in September.

"We don't think that state has existed for hundreds of thousands of years; this is a dramatic change to the Arctic climate system," Dr Holland told the BBC.

Dr Serreze, who is not a modeller and deals with observational data, feels the tipping point could be very close.

"My gut feeling is that it might be around the year 2030 that we really see a rapid decline of that ice. Now could it occur sooner? It might well. Could it occur later? It might well.

"It depends on the aspects of natural variability in the system. We have to remember under greenhouse warming, natural variability has always been part of the picture and it always will be part of the picture."

The average sea ice extent for the entire month of September this year was 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles). Including 2006, the September rate of sea ice decline is now approximately -8.59% per decade, or 60,421 sq km (23,328 sq miles) per year.

At that rate, without the acceleration seen in the new modelling, the Arctic Ocean would have no ice in September by the year 2060.

Carbon 'credit card' considered

Watts in your wallet?

Carbon 'credit card' considered

Mr Miliband called for Labour to get its idealism back
Carbon "credit cards" could be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme, Environment Secretary David Miliband has suggested.
An annual allowance would be allocated, with the card being swiped on various items such as travel, energy or food.
Mr Miliband said people who used less than their allowance could sell any surplus to those who wanted more.

A feasibility study says many questions remain on such a plan, but Mr Miliband says "bold thinking" is needed.
Mr Miliband told the Guardian that the scheme had "a simplicity and beauty that would reward carbon thrift".
Mr Miliband, who commissioned the feasibility study, said the scheme could be working within five years.

You cannot just rely on the state
David Miliband

Send us your comments

Individuals and communities had to be empowered to tackle climate change - "the mass mobilising movement of our age".
"You cannot just rely on the state," he said.

The feasibility study was carried out by the Centre for Sustainable Energy for the Department of the Environment (Defra).
It says there are questions over whether a scheme would be acceptable for politicians and the public, but could be fairer than imposing carbon taxes.
The report seeks to separate a carbon trading scheme from the proposed ID card scheme, to avoid it being attacked on the same civil liberty basis as identity cards.

'Consistent radicalism'

Defra said the government was now developing a work programme "which should provide the information to lead to a decision on whether or not a personal carbon allowance is a realistic and workable policy option".
Mr Miliband predicted the environment would be a key issue in the next election, requiring Labour to "change our policies and our politics in fundamental ways so that we are seen as the change in the next election".
"I'm a great believer in the Arsene Wenger school of management - which is, you don't worry about the opposition, you just get your own act together," he said.

He insisted that climate change required "cumulative, consistent radicalism" rather than "one shot wonders".

Watts in your wallet?

Environmental measures in last week's pre-Budget report, including a 1.25p per litre increase in fuel duty and a doubling in air duty, were called "pretty feeble" by green groups.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth said the principle of using a limited "budget" of carbon per person was sound, but the implementation - especially as it would involve a government IT project - was a cause for concern.

Friends of the Earth climate change campaigner Martin Williams said: "What worries us is that it could take quite a long time to implement it and really we don't have that long to tackle climate change."

At a meeting in Downing Street on Monday, the prime minister met business, media and religious leaders to promote "collective action" against climate change.

The Bishop of London and the chief executives of B&Q, BSkyB, the Carphone Warehouse, HSBC UK, Man Investments, Marks & Spencer, O2, Starbucks UK, the director general of the BBC and Tesco formed a partnership to publicise "practical, simple solutions". A public campaign will be launched in March 2007.

MORE : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4479226.stm

When science depends from industry!

Industry 'paid top cancer expert'

Sir Richard was an acclaimed scientist but he hiddens that he was paid by Monsanto and falsified the results of his research! said Jean-Luc Roux
His views on the chemical were used by the manufacturers' trade association to defend it for more than a decade, The Guardian said.

The scientist who first linked smoking to lung cancer was paid by a chemicals firm while investigating cancer risks in the industry, it has emerged. Professor Sir Richard Doll held a consultancy post with US firm Monsanto for more than 20 years.

During that time he investigated the potential cancer causing properties of the powerful herbicide Agent Orange, made by the company. But a former colleague said he gave money he was paid to charity.

It does not in any sense suggest that his work was biased
Professor Sir Richard Peto

Professor Sir Richard Peto, a fellow expert in cancer, said there were no rules governing disclosure of consultancies of this type 20 years ago.

He said: "Everybody working in this area knew that Richard worked for industry and consulted for industry, and would do court cases.

"It does not in any sense suggest that his work was biased. He was incredibly careful to avoid bias."

The BBC has seen private letters which show that Sir Richard, who died in 2005 aged 92, received a US$1,500-a-day consultancy fee from Monsanto in the mid-1980s.

During that period, Sir Richard wrote to an Australian commission on the results of his investigation into whether Agent Orange, famous for its use by the US during the Vietnam War, caused cancer.

He argued in his letter that there was no evidence that Agent Orange caused cancer.

Should come clean

Professor Lennart Hardell, of the Oncology Department at University Hospital Orebro, Sweden, has also studied the potential hazards posed by Agent Orange. He was one of the scientists whose work was dismissed by Sir Richard. He told the BBC Sir Richard's work was tainted. He said: "It's quite OK to have contacts with industry, but you should be fair and say 'well, I'm writing this letter as a consultant for Monsanto."

"But he does it as president, Green College, UK - a prestige position; also the Imperial Research Cancer Organisation in the UK. "And that makes a different position of the paper because you are an official university-employed person giving this position."

Further documents obtained by The Guardian newspaper allegedly show that Sir Richard was also paid a £15,000 fee by the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and chemicals companies Dow Chemicals and ICI for a review of vinyl chloride, used in plastics, which largely cleared the chemical of any link with cancers apart from liver cancer.

According to the newspaper, this is a view with which the World Health Organisation disagrees.

Sir Richard's views on the chemical were used by the manufacturers' trade association to defend it for more than a decade, The Guardian said.

Sir Richard was the first to publish a peer-reviewed study, in 1951, to demonstrate smoking was a major cause of lung cancer.

Alvin Toffler The increasing role of unformal economy

Alvin Toffler: The Thought Leader Interview
by Lawrence M. Fisher

Thirty-six years after his book Future Shock, the world’s most influential futurist sees the informal economy as a basis of revolutionary wealth.

Photograph by Vern Evans

When Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock (Random House) first appeared in 1970, Richard Nixon was in the White House, the United States was in Vietnam, and the first personal computers were still several years away. Yet with notable prescience, Mr. Toffler wrote that the years to come would be marked by information overload, an acceleration of technological change, and a resultant social upheaval that he likened to mental illness: “Citizens of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.”

In retrospect, Mr. Toffler was less a reliable prophet than a brilliant synthesist. Future Shock and its successors, The Third Wave (Morrow, 1980) and Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (Bantam, 1990) were at their best not when predicting what would happen, but when drawing from a vast array of disciplines — science, technology, sociology, and religion — to explain the circumstances of the world at large.

That is true as well for the new book, Revolutionary Wealth (Knopf, 2006), this time credited to Mr. Toffler and his wife, Heidi, who collaborated on the earlier books as well. In their latest book, the Tofflers argue that more and more economic activity takes place through processes that do not involve the exchange of currency. The rapid rise of this nonmonetary wealth system has major implications for both the global economy and for humanity in general — implications that have been unmeasured and underestimated.

That will come as no surprise to Microsoft, which now battles for market share with Linux, the free operating system software maintained by a global army of volunteer programmers, or to the entertainment industry, which successfully blocked the music file-sharing Web site Napster only to see a dozen clones rise in its place, now joined by sites offering illegal downloads of feature films. According to the Tofflers, countless other industries and institutions face waves of “prosumers,” who produce and consume products and services outside the monetary economy. This is a historic change in the way wealth is created, the Tofflers write, spearheaded (for now, at least) by the United States.

The Tofflers also see a growing de-synchronization of society’s institutions. Financiers invent new derivatives faster than governments invent new regulations; schoolteachers working from dated textbooks struggle to retain relevancy for students who Google from cell phones; and audit firms search for a way to value increasingly intangible assets. Some de-synchronization is inevitable and even positive because it spurs innovation, the authors say, but too much risks the implosion of economies, governments, even whole civilizations.

Despite the gloomy language of some of their work, the Tofflers have never been doomsayers. Amid the current era of economic, ecological, and geopolitical anxiety, we thought it particularly worthwhile to hear the Tofflers’ vision of the years ahead. Mr. Toffler sat down with strategy+business at a hotel in San Francisco. The early days of the 21st century may indeed be challenging, but as Mr. Toffler, now 77, said in opening the conversation: “What an absolutely fascinating time to be alive.”

worldwide seafood stocks will be gone by 2048 because of overfishing

November 28, 2006—Unless humans make drastic changes now, worldwide seafood stocks will be gone by 2048 because of overfishing, scientists warned earlier this month in the journal Science.

But the damage is reversible—as long as governments have the political will to protect and police large portions of the ocean, the researchers say.

Dive beneath the waves to see the many fish species threatened by humankind's ever-growing appetite, and learn what one of the scientists who issued the dire warning thinks can be done to save the oceans.

National Geographic Digital Media

SEE VIDEO ATTACHED : Time Running Out to Save Seafood

Al Gore Interview: "It Is Not Too Late to Stop This Crisis"

National Geographic News

November 27, 2006

It's been six months since the surprise hit movie and book An Inconvenient Truth transformed Al Gore from the man who, as he puts it, "used to be the next President of the United States" to global warming's archenemy

We have to stop dumping 70 million tons [64 million metric tons] of global warming pollution every single day into the Earth's atmosphere.

So, Al Gore has decided to become carbon neutral, which means we reduce CO2 [carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to warming in the atmosphere] to the maximum and then purchase offsets to offset the remainder with reductions in CO2 elsewhere.

HOW?

Well, he has changed the lightbulbs to the more efficient kind [compact fluorescent, or CFL, lightbulbs] and switched to a hybrid [vehicle], and we use clock thermostats, and we're installing solar panels.

click on the titlr to now more

Le changement climatique : peut-on justifier de ne pas agir "au nom de l'économie" ?

Extraits de Jean-Marie Jancovici:

Est-ce que cela a un sens de chiffrer l'externalité due à l'effet de serre ?

En effet, il faut bien distinguer deux choses que l'on mélange pourtant très souvent : le coût d'évitement d'un dommage, et le coût de réparation dudit dommage. Ainsi, l'article du Monde mentionné ci-dessus agrège dans les externalités un coût de réparation des infrastructures avec un "coût d'effet de serre", sans autre précision.

Un lecteur profane aurait tendance à penser que cela signifie qu'il faudrait faire payer cette somme - modeste en l'occurrence - aux camions et voitures pour se constituer une épargne servant, le jour venu, à réparer les dégâts du changement climatique, comme on répare les routes. On est donc tenté de considérer qu'il s'agit d'un coût de dommage, ce qui sous-entend que les dommages du changement climatique peuvent se voir attribuer une contrepartie monétaire.

Or estimer un coût de dommage objectif pour l'effet de serre est tout simplement impossible, car l'espérance mathématique de ce dernier est infinie.

Peut-être, avant d'aller plus loin, faut-il rappeler ce qu'est l'espérance mathématique. Elle correspond à la notion intuitive de ce que l'on peut attendre lorsque l'on sait ce qui se passe "en moyenne" quand on répète un acte un grand nombre de fois. Quand "en moyenne" je mets 15 minutes pour aller d'un endroit à un autre, je peux m'attendre à mettre un temps voisin la prochaine fois que je ferai le même déplacement, et donc "l'espérance mathématique" du temps pour ce déplacement est de 15 minutes : c'est le temps le plus probable que je mettrai à faire le déplacement à l'avenir compte tenu de ce que j'ai mis dans le passé.

L'espérance mathématique est donc la "moyenne" de toutes les valeurs possibles d'un événement futur (et c'est toujours la valeur moyenne que nous nous attendons à trouver). Elle vaut par définition

Somme, pour tous les événements possibles, de (valeurs de l'événement possible x probabilité de l'événement possible)

On voit immédiatement sur cette formule que si l'un des termes a une valeur infinie avec une probabilité non nulle, la somme est infinie.

Pour en revenir au changement climatique, pour justifier par des arguments économiques qu'il est "rentable" ou "pas rentable" de lutter contre, il faut donc pouvoir attribuer un coût à un certain nombre de dommages possibles, ainsi qu'une probabilité de survenance à chaque dommage, pour voir si l'espérance mathématique du coût de dommage est supérieure ou pas au "coût de l'action".

En outre, l'action est pour tout de suite, alors que les dommages sont surtout pour "plus tard" ; il faut donc leur attribuer une valeur dite "actualisée", c'est-à-dire avec une décote liée au fait qu'ils sont futurs. Mais pour faire ce calcul, nous allons nous heurter à un problème de taille ! En effet, quelle valeur attribuer, en 2004, des événements suivants, tous possibles dans le cadre du réchauffement en cours :

la mort de 30% de l'humanité par maladies tropicales d'ici à 2089 ?

Un arrêt du Gulf Stream en 2120 ?

10 mètres d'eau en plus pour l'océan mondial en 2350 ?

La désertification de la moitié du globe en 2080 ?

Une divergence du processus par déstockage du carbone après 2055, et la mort de 99% des hommes en 2200 ?

Bien évidemment, aucun modèle économique n'est capable d'attribuer une valeur financière à de tels événements, ni même de leur attribuer une borne supérieure : tout dépend des hypothèses ! On peut donc dire que le "coût" de ces éventualités, si elles survenaient (surtout la dernière !), est inifini, puisque personne ne peut leur attribuer de borne supérieure. Personne ne peut non plus dire aujourd'hui que les éventualités ci-dessus sont totalement impossibles, donc que leur probabilité de survenance est nulle.

En conséquence du fait que l'une des possibilités a un coût de réparation infini (ce qui signifie qu'il n'est pas réparable, cf. plus haut), l'espérance mathématique du coût de réparation est infinie aussi, quelle que soit la probabilité de survenance de l'événement (dès lors qu'il est possible) et même quel que soit le taux d'actualisation associé à un tel dommage. De ce fait, il n'est pas possible de dire, aujourd'hui, qu'il est 'économiquement non fondé" de lutter contre le changement climatique.

Pour ceux que la comptabilité ne rebute pas : rions un peu Toute comptabilité se doit d'être prudente. Supposons que le législateur (ou même simplement le juge, puisque le principe de prudence de la comptabilité est déjà contenu dans le Code de Commerce), dans sa grande sagesse, oblige toute entreprise qui utilise des combustibles fossiles - c'est-à-dire toute entreprise, de fait, puisqu'il suffit d'avoir des locaux chauffés pour émettre des gaz à effet de serre - à passer dans ses comptes une "provision pour remise en état du climat", à due concurrence de ses émissions cumulées de gaz à effet de serre (ce qui aurait un sens, puisque cette entreprise contribue à dégrader le climat, à due concurrence de ses émissions cumulées de gaz à effet de serre). Cela revient, d'une certaine manière, à attribuer à cette entreprise sa quote part des dégâts futurs, la valorisation monétaire de ces derniers ne faisant l'objet d'aucune actualisation. Comme il n'y a pas de limite monétaire au montant des dégâts futurs, il n'y en a pas non plus pour la quote part revenant à l'entreprise, et donc un tel principe conduirait à rendre n'importe quelle entreprise déficitaire. Et pourtant, sur le plan conceptuel, est-ce qu'une telle règle serait si absurde ?

Et si on veut vraiment compter, ca donne quoi ?

En novembre 2006, l'ancien économiste en chef de la Banque Mondiale, Sir Nicholas Stern, s'est néanmoins livré à une analyse de type "évaluation économique des dégâts". Il a donc pris les simulations climatiques régionales, qui sont ensuite utilisées pour alimenter des simulations agronomiques, a rajouté par dessus des hypothèses économiques sur les dommages (il a supposé, par exemple, que les dommages causés par le vent croissait comme le cube de la vitesse, ou que la production agricole suivait une courbe en cloche en fonction de la température, etc), puis il a mis des hypothèses économiques là-dessus et en est sorti avec un chiffre : si nous ne faisons rien contre le changement climatique, il nous coutera plusieurs dizaines de points de PIB en 2050 par rapport à une croissance "normale".

L'objet ici ne sera pas de discuter les hypothèses - et donc le résultat : vous seriez profondément endormi (et moi aussi probablement) avant que je n'arrive au bout. Il est plutôt de commenter quelques citations trouvées dans le résumé de ce rapport, parce qu'elles me semblent très bien traduire, en langage économique, des évidences "physiques" de ce dossier, et qu'elles restent valables quel que soit le niveau des dommages. J'ai assorti ces déclarations - dont je rappelle à nouveau au lecteur qu'elles sont "signées" par un individu qui a été un des plus grands argentiers de la planète - de quelques commentaires personnels.

Citation : "Climate change presents a unique challenge for economics : it is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."
Traduction proposée : Le changement climatique offre un défi unique pour l'économie : c'est le dysfonctionnement du marché le plus grand et le plus étendu que nous ayons jamais vu."
Commentaire jancovicien : Voilà ce que donne (sans surprise pour votre serviteur) l'économie orthodoxe quand l'économiste prend la peine de se documenter sur les processus physiques qu'il commente. Question : avant de propager des inepties, les Lomborg et autres Fourçans ont-il seulement pris la peine de savoir de quoi ils parlaient autrement qu'en lisant le journal ?

Citation : "The evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion : the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs."
Traduction proposée : Les éléments rassemblés par les auteurs amènent à une conclusion simple : les bénéfices d'une action résolue et immédiate sont considérablement supérieurs aux coûts".
Commentaire jancovicien : avec une telle affirmation, où est la défense des modestes ? Dans l'effort immédiat, qui certes va leur coûter, ou dans le laisser faire, qui va leur coûter bien plus quand il faudra passer à la caisse, eux compris ?

Citation : "The [economic] analysis should not focus only on narrow measures of income like GDP".
Traduction proposée : "L'analyse ne doit pas se centrer uniquement sur des indicateurs étroits de revenu comme le PIB"
Commentaire jancovicien : Ca ne vous rappelle pas un certain ouvrage ?

Citation : "CO2 emissions per head have been strongly correlated with GDP per head."
Traduction proposée : "les émissions de CO2 par habitant ont été fortement corrélées au PIB par habitant"
Commentaire jancovicien : sans stratégie de rupture, le "business as usual" continue donc à augmenter les émissions.... tant que ca passe, et ca cesse de passer bien avant que la Chine n'atteigne seulement le niveau de consommation d'un Polonais. Vouloir le bonheur des peuples à long terme et encourager autoroutes, aéroports, et grandes surfaces est donc paradoxalement antinomique. Amusant, non ?

Citation : "Stabilisation of greenhouse gases at levels of 500-550ppm CO2-e will cost, on average, around 1% of annual global GDP by 2050. This is significant, but is fully consistent with continued growth and development, in contrast with unabated climate change, which will eventually pose significant threats to growth."
Traduction : "la stabiliation des gaz à effet de serre à 500-550ppm de CO2-equivalent nous coutera, en moyenne, 1% du PIB en 2050. C'est significatif, mais toujours compatible avec la croissance et le développement, par opposition à un changement climatique non maîtrisé, qui va au final constituer une menace sérieuse pour la croissance".
Commentaire jancovicien : la prolongation tendancielle, si on ne fait rien, ce n'est pas la croissance non contrainte, c'est la décroissance subie. Que disait le Club de Rome en 1970 ? Exactement la même chose, avec exactement les mêmes échéances...

Citation : "Uncertainty is an argument for a more, not less, demanding goal, because of the size of the adverse climate-change impacts in the worst-case scenarios."
Traduction : "L'incertitude est un argument en faveur d'un objectif plus ambitieux, et non moins ambitieux, à cause de l'ampleur des impacts dans le pire des scenarios"
Commentaire jancovicien : dire "je n'agis pas parce que je suis pas sûr de ce qui va se passer" est donc un argument économique non recevable (incidemment c'est facile de s'en rendre compte : si vous n'êtes pas sûr que votre enfant se fera renverser s'il traverse la rue les yeux bandés, est-ce une raison pour le laisser faire ?).

Citation : "Establishing a carbon price, through tax, trading or regulation, is an essential foundation for climate-change policy."
Traduction : "donner un prix au carbone, via la taxe, un mécanisme de quotas, ou des régulations, est une fondation essentielle pour une politique contre le changement climatique".
Commentaire jancovicien : comme le même auteur a déjà exposé que lutter contre le changement climatique, c'est social (puisque le prix de la prévention est inférieur au prix des conséquences, prévenir est donc social), et que toute lutte passe par une taxe carbone ou équivalent (comme des quotas allant en baissant continûment), la taxe carbone, c'est social ! Il suffisait de le dire....

Citation : "In order to influence behaviour and investment decisions, investors and consumers must believe that the carbon price will be maintained into the future."
Traduction : "Pour influencer les décisions concernant le comportement et les investissements, les investisseurs et les consommateurs doivent croire que le prix du carbone sera constant à l'avenir".
Commentaire jancovicien : pas de taxe qui monte et descend à la petite semaine, en fonction de qui a crié le plus fort la semaine d'avant, quoi... mais une vision claire de l'avenir, avec une règle bien établie pour le long terme. Ca ne vous rappelle pas étrangement la conclusion d'un certain livre ?

Citation : "A shared global perspective on the urgency of the problem [is] essential to respond to the scale of the challenge."
Traduction : "un consensus sur l'urgence du probleme (est) essentiel pour répondre à l'ampleur du défi".
Commentaire jancovicien : Voilà qui légitime tous les efforts pour que les media parlent plus et mieux du problème, clairement.

Citation : "It is still possible to avoid the worst impacts of climate change; but it requires strong and urgent collective action."
Traduction : "il est toujours possible d'éviter les pires impacts du changement climatique, mais cela demande une action collective forte et urgente".
Commentaire jancovicien : no comment...

***