Texas Blasts Federal Efforts to Fight Global Warming

Texas elected officials Tuesday railed against federal efforts to curb global warming, claiming it would throttle the state's economy -- one of the few that generated job growth last year.

State comptroller Susan Combs said that if passed, a landmark climate change bill winding its way through Congress could cost the state 164,000 jobs and shave some $25 billion per year, or 2%, off the state's total economic output.

"Texas is the kitchen of the country. We cook up all of the products that are used elsewhere," said Ms. Combs, a Republican, referring to the state's large petrochemical and plastics industry. "The recipe for disaster is being cooked up in Washington D.C.," she added.

Ms. Combs joined Gov. Rick Perry, also a Republican, at a meeting with industry leaders in the state capitol to discuss the threat of federal climate-change policy and underscore the energy-producing state's skittishness towards the environmental concerns that are at the core of the Obama administration's policy-making.

"I happen to think that what they are discussing could wreck our traditional energy industry and put a very serious dent in our economy," said Mr. Perry. He repeated his view that the proposed provisions that recently passed out of committee in the House of Representatives amounted to the largest tax increase in history. The provisions would put a limit on emissions of the gasses blamed for climate change and require companies to pay for permits to pollute. As a result, "Every American that uses any source of energy would see their bills go up," he said.

The impact would be felt acutely in Texas, home to a giant refining complex. Refineries under the legislation would be forced to purchase emissions permits, driving up the cost of producing fuel. It is also home to the corporate headquarters of the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp., and the largest refining company based on refining capacity, Valero Energy Corp., as well as another major oil company, ConocoPhillips.

Political observers have pointed out that Mr. Perry has a political agenda for attacking Washington D.C. He will likely face a stiff challenge from within his party next year in the Republican gubernatorial primary from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. His critique of Washington regulations has traditionally played well with Republican primary voters, and might be Mr. Perry's strongest strategy for fending off the challenge from Ms. Hutchison, a three-term U.S. Senator, to win an unprecedented third term.

Ms. Hutchison, however, also stands against a carbon cap-and-trade system. "A cap and trade approach to address climate change is onerous and misguided, and it will raise energy prices for consumers and adversely impact workers and small businesses during a time of economic hardship," she said Tuesday in a statement.

Blair urges global warming fight

pa.press.net

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said that tackling global warming during the economic downturn was important if the world was to avoid the future costs of climate change.

In an interview with CNN, Mr Blair said that in the long-term, the price of environmental and weather change would be much more than if measures to curb emissions were not implemented.

The former British leader urged US president Barack Obama to continue with "a bold, assertive line" from the beginning on global warming as he also tackled the challenges of economic crisis and security threat.

Asked if he thought Mr Obama was overreaching in the first few weeks of his administration, Mr Blair said: "It would be neat in a way to say, 'Let's deal with the global economic crisis first, then move on to the security threat and then deal with global warming'.

"I'm afraid they are all there and in the entree and that is why, no, I think on the contrary - by taking a very bold, assertive line from the beginning, I think his leadership is giving people some hope that these problems that are major and difficult - difficult challenges to meet - will be met."

Mr Blair was in Washington to attend a global symposium on the response to climate change.

Asked if it was wise to push forward with taxes and caps to reduce carbon emissions at a time of economic strife, Mr Blair said that it was not about imposing a burden, but giving people an opportunity to cut their electricity bills.

He told CNN: "We were hearing from business people, American power companies, business people, people who are there to make a profit that are also saying how by introducing energy saving devices the consumer could actually cut the amount of money it was paying on its energy bills. So there are opportunities here, as well. Yes, of course, there are big challenges, but there are opportunities.

"And if you think going forward if we don't resolve this problem and we end up with major climate change happening, it's going to impact here and it's going to impact right around the world and of course impose its own cost."

He added that during the global climate change symposium, he presented a study showing how much more the world would have to pay if it did not deal with major environmental and weather change problems.

Study Shows Stimulus Will Fight Global Warming

We're finally starting to move beyond the era of fossil fuels. According to a new study that my colleagues and I at Greenpeace commissioned from the prestigious consulting firm ICF International, the energy portions of the economic recovery package proposed by President Obama could reduce U.S. carbon dioxide pollution by at least 61 million tons, or about one percent of our annual total.

That's truly extraordinary. Traditionally, if the government spent $800 billion, it would create massive pollution. But by investing in measures like , home weatherization, federal building efficiency enhancements, and simple things like compact fluorescent light bulbs and better appliances, this stimulus package will not only create millions of jobs, but also give us a jump start on fighting the climate crisis and save people cold hard cash..

The other reason that's good news is that global warming is already taking a major toll on the economy. According to NRDC, floods, droughts, sea level rise, and other global warming impacts will create a $271 billion drag on the U.S. economy by 2025 alone. Any effective stimulus must address the growing threat of global warming.

Of course, the stimulus package is far from perfect. In particular, it includes about $30 billion in transportation spending that's slated for state governments to spend how they wish. If they spend it stupid, by putting it into new highway construction (which creates sprawl and paradoxically attract more cars) it would cause 10-50 times the global warming pollution than a similar expenditure on light rail or repairing existing roads. It would also create 19 percent fewer jobs than investing in transit.

And the Senate version includes $50 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear energy, which generates fewer jobs per dollar of investment than any other energy source. With the same investment, we could create 4.4 times the number of jobs through energy efficiency. If we want to maximize our job creation bang for our stimulus buck, Congress has got to shift way more of the stimulus package to ultra-high job intensity green options like land conservation, efficiency, and mass transit.

Want to Fight Global Warming? Plant the Right Crops

British researchers are proposing an intriguing idea: That by planting the right kinds of wheat, we can affect how much light is being reflected back into space and thereby counteract global warming. The effect might cool swathes of North America and Europe by as much as one-degree Celsius in summer, with a world-wide average effect of .1 degree. That's a big number—about a fifth of the warming that has occurred in the last 100 years. (Estimates for Global Warming's effects by the year 2100 are typically about two degrees.)

The idea is the newest in a long line of geoengineering proposals that hope to fight global warming with massive attempts to re-engineer the environment. The ideas have ranged from sending mirrors up to space, to seeding the ocean with iron, feeding algae that consume carbon dioxide, and they've attracted fierce interest in the last couple years. But these proposals have quickly run into dire limitations: The iron seeding idea, for example, could produce disasterous side effects; larger projects seem prohibitively expensive.

But the new work, from Andy Ridgwell at University of Bristol, elegantly sidesteps those problems. It doesn't propose any great overhaul of what we already do—in North America and Europe, millions of acres of wheat are planted every year, so this wouldn't necessarily require a massive intervention with unknown technology or an unimaginably large engineering effort. Ridgwell simply proposes that we choose those varieties that reflect the most heat. He also suggests that eventually we might selectively breed wheat (as we've done for thousands of years) for its reflective properties, in addition to crop yield and hardiness. Perhaps that sounds too good to be true. Stay tuned.

Inauguration day and climate change politics

Inauguration day 2005: 35 °F Mostly cloudy with some sunny breaks.
Northwest wind 14 mph. Around 1″ of snow lay on the ground.
More inauguration day weather history is available here

There is much speculation about the weather on Tuesday, January 20th, which is the inauguration day of president Obama. Particularly it is being conjectured widely on the blogosphere that a colder than normal day might have some chilling effect on climate change thinking in Washington. After all, it is not unlike politicians to grasp onto ancillary topics and use them as the focal point for forming opinions.

For example, as reported here, The last time Dr. Roy Spencer testified before Congress, committee chair Barbara Boxer appeared more interested in discussing Rush Limbaugh than she did in discussing science. That is not necessarily a sensible way to weigh trillion dollar policy decisions.

Here is another example. When Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress in June, 1988, on the topic of global warming, Senator Timothy Wirth took several deliberate steps to make sure that the room was oppressively hot. This excerpt below is from a PBS Frontline interview:

TIMOTHY WIRTH: We called the Weather Bureau and found out what historically was the hottest day of the summer. Well, it was June 6th or June 9th or whatever it was. So we scheduled the hearing that day, and bingo, it was the hottest day on record in Washington, or close to it.DEBORAH AMOS: [on camera] Did you also alter the temperature in the hearing room that day? TIMOTHY WIRTH: What we did is that we went in the night before and opened all the windows, I will admit, right, so that the air conditioning wasn’t working inside the room. And so when the- when the hearing occurred, there was not only bliss, which is television cameras and double figures, but it was really hot.

That is going to be a lot tougher now, after two more decades of unprecedented global warming.

As of Saturday morning, NCEP is forecasting severe cold along the East Coast for the end of the month, and well below normal temperatures for the inauguration of president Obama. Perhaps the chill will freeze out some the early political rhetoric in Washington? Some prominent members of Congress now claim that they can legislate the climate, which requires that they also are able to control volcanoes, ocean circulation patterns, and solar activity.

Here is the NCEP CONUS temperature forecast for now to election day:

Click for a larger image

One wonders though, it the weather patterns were shifted west to east in the anomaly graph below, and we had a warmer than normal inauguration day in Washington, would it provide lawmakers with a personal confirmation bias much like that day in June, 1988?

Thanks to wattsupwiththat

Global warming may leave half of world's population without food by 2100

Washington, Jan 9 : Global warming is likely to give rise to severe food shortage by the end of this century, according to researchers, who claim that the rapidly warming climate may alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics.

And the worst hit will be the regions where the poorest people already live that is the tropics and subtropics.

According to the researchers, there is greater than a 90 percent probability that by 2100 the lowest growing-season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than any temperatures recorded there to date.

"The stresses on global food production

from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn't take into account

water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

"This is a compelling reason for us to invest

in adaptation, because it is clear that this is the direction we are going in terms of temperature and it will take decades to develop new food crop varieties that can better withstand a warmer climate.

"We are taking the worst of what we've seen historically and saying that in the future it is going to be a lot worse unless there is some kind of adaptation," he added.

During the study, the researchers combined direct observations with 23 global climate models that contributed to Nobel prize-winning research in 2007 and used the data as a filter to view historic instances of severe food insecurity,

They concluded that such instances are likely to become more commonplace.

Those include severe episodes in France in 2003 and the Ukraine in 1972. In the case of the Ukraine, a near-record heat wave reduced wheat yields and contributed to disruptions in the global cereal market that lasted two years.

The serious climate issues will not be limited to the tropics, the scientists conclude.

As an example, they cite record temperatures that struck Western Europe in June, July and August of 2003, killing an estimated 52,000 people.

The summer-long heat wave in France and Italy cut wheat yields and fodder production by one-third. In France alone, temperatures were nearly 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term mean, and the scientists say such temperatures could be normal for France by 2100.

In the tropics, the higher temperatures can be expected to cut yields of the primary food crops, maize and rice, by 20 to 40 percent, the researchers said. But rising temperatures also are likely to play havoc with soil moisture, cutting yields even further.

"We have to be rethinking agriculture systems as a whole, not only thinking about new varieties but also recognizing that many people will just move out of agriculture, and even move from the lands where they live now," Naylor said.

Temperature increases from climate change are expected to be less in equatorial regions than at higher latitudes, but because average temperatures in the tropics today are much higher than at midlatitudes, rising temperature will have a greater impact on crop yields in the tropics.

The research appears in journal Science.

Scientists seek clues in historic global warming

Climate experts today began a major conference in Wellington canvassing evidence of climate change before humans .

The conference at Te Papa, organised by GNS Science, is probing evidence of greenhouse effects in the climate of the Paleogene period, 65 to 35 million years ago.

This is thought to be the most recent time the Earth experienced global warming on a scale similar to what is now being projected as a result of human activity.

On Wednesday, leading scientists will stage a one-day symposium to showcase the role that research into the ancient greenhouse world can play in advancing understanding of modern climate change.

Speakers will explore the role of greenhouse gases in driving Paleogene episodes of extreme global warming, the effects that warming had on biological systems, how natural feedback systems modulate climate and atmospheric greenhouse gas levels and the effectiveness of climate models in simulating greenhouse climate states.

Conference organiser Chris Hollis said there was growing evidence that temperatures in high latitude places like New Zealand have been far higher than previously thought.

In a paper on global temperature over the past 100 million years, Professor Peter Barrett, of Victoria University, said the "greenhouse world" was 6degC to 7degC warmer than today with only small ice sheets in the interior of Antarctica.

Antarctic ice core records from relatively recent times showed a close association between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperature over the past 800,000 years.

"It seems that from a geological perspective, without concerted intervention now, there is a credible risk of Earth's climate, by the end of the century, reverting to greenhouse world temperature, but with `residual' polar ice sheets," he said.

Yellow submarine to probe Antarctica glacier

PUNTA ARENAS, Chile (Reuters) – A yellow robot submarine will dive under an ice shelf in Antarctica to seek clues to world ocean level rises in one of the most inaccessible places on earth.

The 7-meter (22 ft) submarine, to be launched from a U.S. research vessel, will probe the underside of the ice at the end of the Pine Island glacier, which is moving faster than any other in Antarctica and already brings more water to the oceans than Europe's Rhine River.

Scientists have long observed vast icebergs breaking off Antarctica's ice shelves -- extensions of glaciers floating on the sea -- but have been unable to get beneath them to see how deep currents may be driving the melt from below.

Reuters – The Nathaniel B. Palmer U.S. ice breaker, carrying scientists
and a British robot submarine, docks at …

They are now stepping up monitoring of Antarctica, aware that any slight quickening of a thaw could swamp low-lying Pacific islands or incur huge costs in building defenses for coastal cities from Beijing to New York.

The rate of flow of the Pine Island glacier in west Antarctica has quickened to 3.7 km (2.3 miles) a year from 2.4 km in the mid-1990s.

"It's taken everyone by surprise," Adrian Jenkins, leader of the "Autosub" mission at the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters just before leaving this week after preparations in Chile. The submarine cost several million dollars to develop.

"If you just make measurements at the ice front all you have is a black box," Jenkins said. "What we are doing is observing what is going on within the box."

Antarctica holds more than 90 percent of the world's fresh water and would raise ocean levels by 57 meters (190 ft) if it were all to melt, which would take thousands of years.

The U.N. Climate Panel projected last year that world sea levels would rise between 18 and 59 cms (7-24 inches) by the year 2100, driven by global warming caused mainly by human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"Pine Island glacier and the glacier alongside, the Thwaites, are moving faster than any other glaciers in Antarctica," said Stan Jacobs, the chief scientist on the ice breaker, of Columbia University in the United States.

"They are also accelerating," he said aboard the U.S. Nathaniel B. Palmer vessel in Punta Arenas at the southern tip of Chile just before the 54-day voyage.

THINNING SHELF

Pine Island, Thwaites and the nearby Crosson glacier add 0.25 mm a year to global sea levels -- 2.5 cms over a century even if unchanged.

The Autosub, driven by 5,000 batteries of the kind used to power torches, has a top speed of 3.4 knots, a range of 400 kms (250 miles) and can dive to 1,600 metres. The Pine Island ice shelf is about 400 meters thick at its seaward edge on the Amundsen Sea.

Other projects the research vessel will carry out include tethering devices to the seabed to monitor ocean temperature, salinity and currents for two years.

At Pine Island, the thinning of the shelf seems to be linked to a shift in deep ocean currents that are bringing warmer water from the depths and melting the ice. No one knows why. On the Antarctic peninsula further north, several ice shelves have disintegrated in recent years apparently because of a 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) warming of air temperatures in the past 50 years that may be linked to global warming. In much of Antarctica, temperatures are little changed.

Whatever the causes, glaciers may slide off the land more quickly if ice shelves vanish, adding water to the ocean and nudging up sea levels.

"You have to start worrying whether the system is speeding up, moving ice more rapidly into the ocean than it was even 50 years ago," Jacobs said. Shifts in winds might be causing currents to suck warmer water from deeper parts of the ocean.

The submarine, which takes sonar readings and measurements of the saltiness of the water under the ice -- glacier ice is made of fresh water -- is the successor to one lost near the start of a similar mission in 2005 beneath an ice shelf in east Antarctica.

"People are surprised to hear that it's powered by 5,000 'D' sized alkaline torch batteries," said Steve McPhail of the British National Oceanography Center in Southampton who engineered the Autosub.

"This is the most economical way of powering a submarine like this," he said. The submarine is due to make a half-dozen missions under the ice -- its route has to be programed in advance but it can maneuver around hazards.

He said the submarine is yellow because it makes it easy to spot when it surfaces, and its color has "absolutely nothing" to do with the Beatles song "Yellow Submarine."

Tossing iron powder into ocean to fight global warming

NEW DELHI: Can tossing tonnes of iron powder into the ocean help the world fight global warming? A team of Indian scientists, along with their counterparts from Germany and elsewhere, is embarking on an ambitious 70-day ocean expedition on Wednesday to find answers to that question.

Twenty-nine scientists from India, eleven from Germany and ten others will board German research vessel, Polarstern, in Cape Town and head to the experiment site in southwest Atlantic near Antartica. They will stay in the cold and notoriously stormy waters for nearly two months to test a controversial hypothesis that, experts say, has the potential to clean up as much as 1 billion tonne (1 Gt) of CO2 from the atmosphere every year and store it below the ocean for centuries.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas chiefly responsible for global warming. According to current estimates, world emits 7 Gt of carbon into the air every year.

"We hope to have a deeper understanding of the technique than previous researches,'' S W A Naqvi of National Institute of Oceanography, who is the chief Indian scientist for the expedition, told TOI on email from Cape Town.

The experiment, called LOHAFEX loha for iron and FEX for fertilization experiment will test the efficacy of a technique that could not only become the most important way to dispose of CO2, but which also has millions riding on it by way of carbon credits. At least two US companies hope to profit from ‘ocean iron fertilization’ (OIF), as the method is called, by selling credits.

During the $2 million experiment, scientists will throw 20 tonnes of dissolved iron sulphate in 300 sq km of ocean. The iron is expected to stimulate a rapid blooming of phytoplankton, a microscopic algae that grows on the ocean surface.

Like all plants, phytoplankton takes up CO2 from air and converts it to carbon compounds like carbohydrates. The plant quickly dies and starts sinking, taking the carbon with it. What happens thereafter is the key to the technique's efficacy: If it sinks well below the ocean surface, the carbon would effectively have been put away for a long period.

The nutrient-rich but iron-deficient southern ocean is seen as an ideal site for OIF. The area is spread across 50 million sq km 15 times the size of India. The math done by scientists show that if the entire southern ocean were fertilized by iron and a sizeable fraction of the phytoplankton sank well below 1,000m, then about 1 Gt of carbon would be isolated for centuries. Water at depths below 500m takes about 100 years to come to the surface.

The scientists say the carbon footprint - additional carbon emitted by the technique - would be minor as compared with the gains.

For seven weeks, LOHAFEX's team of physicists, chemists, biologists and geochemists will study the effects of the algal bloom on the exchange of CO2 between ocean and atmosphere as well as on the oceanic food chain and the organisms of the underlying sea floor.

As Prof Naqvi put it, "The core issue the fate of organic matter produced due to iron fertilization is still not settled. It is not clear whether this material gets recycled in the near-surface layer (which would make OIF not very useful) or a substantial fraction of it gets transported to the deep sea (which will make OIF a useful technique to isolate CO2). LOHAFEX is better equipped to track the fate of this carbon than previous researches.''

The researchers will also study krill, a shrimp-like animal which feeds on phytoplankton and is the main food of Antarctic penguins, seals and whales. Krill stocks have declined by over 80% in past decades and their response to the iron-fertilized bloom could give clues to help in recovery of the decimated great whale populations as well.

"India hasn't carried out such an experiment in the ocean so far. It requires a high level of expertise not found elsewhere in the Third World. So, apart from the scientific gains, the experiment itself should enhance our prestige. Significantly, more than half the Indian participants are students (from NIO),'' Naqvi said.

But OIF remains controversial, with many environmentalists saying it amounts to major tinkering with the marine eco-system. If done on the scales proposed in the future, it could have unforeseen consequences, they warn.

EU leaders agree on climate change deal

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- European leaders agreed Friday to stick to an ambitious plan to fight global warming through emissions cuts and renewable energy, and on ways to share the hefty costs of setting a global example.

The plan includes concessions to heavy industry and countries in Eastern Europe worried that the cost of curbing pollution would impede economic growth. The expense of the plan had caused uproar among many countries as the continent grapples with economic downturn.

The plan, agreed at an EU summit, lays out how the 27 member countries will cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the bloc's rotating leadership, called the agreement historic and urged global partners to follow Europe's example at U.N. climate change talks in Poznan, Poland.

The French president says the 27-nation bloc has "now delivered" and it was "now the time" for others, including the United States and China, to follow suit.

"People will not follow Europe unless we set the example," he said.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the plans "the most ambitious proposals anywhere in the world."

"Europe has passed its credibility test," he said.

An EU deal could breathe new life into the U.N. climate talks, which were expected to wrap up Friday with a work plan for talks over the next year on a new global warming treaty. But that plan needs worldwide support.

The eyes of Europe's economic rivals were on the EU talks to see how the bloc manages to balance economic growth while keeping intact promises to rein in emissions.

"The overall political message that we have sent to the rest of the world is that Europe is taking the lead," Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a news conference after the talks, confirming that the leaders agreed on the climate package.

European diplomats haggled through the night on complex plans to fulfill promises made last year to meet so-called 20-20-20 targets: reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and ensuring that 20 percent of energy comes from wind, sun and other renewable sources by 2020.

Desperate to get a deal, France backed several opt-outs to the strict reductions it wants industries to make. The opt-outs are aimed at heavy industry that might flee abroad to regions with looser environmental rules.

France also proposed leeway for countries very dependent on coal and oil for power generation -- but the EU plan that this must be temporary.

The leaders also agreed on a euro200 billion ($258 billion) Europe-wide economic stimulus package to ease the effects of a recession. The downturn overshadowed talks on the costly climate deal.

Amazing discovery of green algae which could save the world from global warming

Melting icebergs, so long the iconic image of global warming, are triggering a natural process that could delay or even end climate change, British scientists have found.

A team working on board the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance off the coast of Antarctica have discovered tiny particles of iron are released into the sea as the ice melts.

The iron feeds algae, which blooms and sucks up damaging carbon dioxide (CO2), then sinks, locking away the harmful greenhouse gas for hundreds of years.

British scientists have discovered that green algae could bury CO2 omissions at the bottom of the ocean

The team think the process could hold the key to staving off globally rising temperatures.

Lead researcher Professor Rob Raiswell, from Leeds University, said: ‘The Earth itself seems to want to save us.’

As a result of the findings, a ground-breaking experiment will be held this month off the British island of South Georgia, 800 miles south east of the Falklands. It will see if the phenomenon could be harnessed to contain rising carbon emissions.

Researchers will use several tons of iron sulphate to create an artificial bloom of algae. The patch will be so large it will be visible from space.

Scientists already knew that releasing iron into the sea stimulates the growth of algae. But environmentalists had warned that to do so artificially might damage the planet’s fragile ecosystem.

Last year, the UN banned iron fertilisation in the Great Southern Ocean.

The team working on board HMS Endurance off the coast of Antartica have discovered tiny particles of iron are released into the sea as ice melts

However, the new findings show the mechanism has actually been operating naturally for millions of years within the isolated southern waters. And it has led to the researchers being granted permission by the UN to move ahead with the experiment.

The scientist who will lead the next stage of the study, Professor Victor Smetacek, said: ‘The gas is sure to be out of the Earth’s atmosphere for several hundred years.’

The aim is to discover whether artificially fertilising the area will create more algae in the Great Southern Ocean. That ocean is an untapped resource for soaking up CO2 because it doesn’t have much iron, unlike other seas.

It covers 20million square miles, and scientists say that if this could all be treated with iron, the resulting algae would remove three-and-a-half gigatons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to one eighth of all emissions annually created by burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

It would also be equal to removing all carbon dioxide emitted from every power plant, chimney and car exhaust in the rapidly expanding industries of India and Japan.

However, the experts warn it is too early to say whether it will work.

The team from ice patrol ship HMS Endurance used sledgehammers to chip deep into the interior of a 33ft-long mass of polar ice from half-a-dozen house-sized icebergs that had blown ashore in Antarctica.

Once back in the UK, they used a special microscope to analyse the samples, which revealed what they had been looking for – tiny iron particles, only a few millionths of a millimetre wide, embedded deep within the ice. Until now, it was thought that the only source of iron in the Southern Ocean was wind blowing in metal compounds from the deserts of nearby continents like Australia. But the research has disproved this.

Lead researcher Prof Rob Raiswell thinks the process could hold the key to staving off globally rising temperatures

Prof Raiswell said: ‘These particles measure only a fraction of a millimetre, but they have great importance for the global climate.’

Rising global temperatures, particularly over the past 50 years, have increased the rate at which polar ice melts, causing sea levels to rise.

Ten of the warmest years on record have been since 1991, with experts predicting that 2009 could be the hottest year yet.

The climate-change effect is set to substantially increase over the coming decades, as developing industrial nations pump out more CO2. Temperatures along the Antarctic Peninsula alone have increased by 2.5C over the past 50 years.

But for every percentage point increase in the amount of ice that breaks off, Prof Raiswell calculates that a further 26million tons of CO2 is removed from the atmosphere.

Polar expert Professor Smetacek and a 49-strong German research team is due to set sail from Cape Town in the icebreaker Polarstern in the next few days to conduct their groundbreaking experiment.

Crucially, the scientists want to know how much algae will sink to the bottom of the ocean where the CO2 will be safely trapped.

Rob Raiswell a geochemist at the University of Leeds believes the project is controversial as they are unsure of the effects on the ecosystem

Algae that falls a couple of miles below the surface will remain there for hundreds of years; algae that remains only a few hundred metres from the surface releases carbon back into the atmosphere.

Dr Phil Williamson, scientific co-ordinator of the Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere study, funded by the UK’s National Environment Research Council, called the research ‘exciting’.

‘We have images from satellites which show the ocean stays green for weeks afterwards but the
key will be whether it stays that way,’ said Dr Williamson.

Schemes to fertilise the seas with iron have in the past been driven by commercial interests. This is the biggest ever scientific attempt.

Last May, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity called a halt to fertilisation around the Antarctic until there was more detailed scientific data. But the British findings led to the go-ahead for Professor Smetacek’s team from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Nonetheless, even Prof Raiswell has called the project ‘highly controversial’. He said: ‘Oceans aren’t isolated boxes and it would affect the surrounding areas as well.

‘We don’t know what effect that would have. The ecosystems are very complicated. If the iceberg iron is useful, then it will just buy us more time.

‘The Earth might have fightback mechanisms but we must still try to reduce our CO2 emissions.’

Prof Smetacek said the issue is too complex not to be explored by scientists. He warned: ‘Objections will be swept away when our powerlessness in the face of climate change becomes apparent.’

No Matter What Happens, Someone Will Blame Global Warming

Global warming was blamed for everything from beasts gone wild to anorexic whales to the complete breakdown of human society this year -- showing that no matter what it is and where it happens, scientists, explorers, politicians and those who track the Loch Ness Monster are comfortable scapegoating the weather.

FOXNews.com takes a look back at 10 things that global warming allegedly caused — or will no doubt soon be responsible for — as reported in the news around the world in 2008.

1. Cannibalism

In April, media mogul Ted Turner told PBS's Charlie Rose that global warming would make the world 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years. "Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable," he said.

Turner blamed global warming on overpopulation, saying "too many people are using too much stuff."

Crops won't grow and "most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals," Turner said.

2. The Death of the Loch Ness Monster

In February, Scotland's Daily Mirror reported that 85-year-old American Robert Rines would be giving up his quest for Scotland's most famous underwater denizen.

A World War II veteran, Rines has spent 37 years hunting for Nessie with sonar equipment. In 2008, "despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming."

3. Beer Gets More Expensive

In April, the Associated Press reported that global warming was going to hit beer drinkers in the wallet because the cost of barley would increase, driving up the price of a pint.

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said Australia would be particularly hard hit as droughts caused a decline in malting barley production in parts of New Zealand and Australia. "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," Salinger said at a beer brewer's convention, the AP reported.

4. Pythons Take Over America

Giant Burmese pythons – big enough to eat alligators and deer in a single mouthful – will be capable of living in one-third of continental U.S. as global warming makes more of the country hospitable to the cold-blooded predators, according to an April report from USAToday.com.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the spread of "invasive snakes," like the pythons, brought to the U.S. as pets. The Burmese pythons' potential American habitat would expand by 2100, according to global warming models, the paper reported.

"We were surprised by the map. It was bigger than we thought it was going to be," says Gordon Rodda, zoologist and lead project researcher, told USAToday.com. "They are moving northward, there's no question."

5. Kidney Stones

A University of Texas study said global warming will cause an increase in kidney stones over the next 30 years, the Globe and Mail reported in July.

Scientists predict that higher temperatures will lead to more dehydration and therefore to more kidney stones. "This will come and get you in your home," said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they're doing to the climate."

6. Skinny Whales

Japanese scientists, who have claimed that the country's controversial whaling program is all in the name of science, said in August that if they hadn't been going around killing whales, they never would have discovered that the creatures were significantly skinnier than whales killed in the late 1980s, the Guardian reported in August.

The researchers said the study was the first evidence that global warming was harming whales by restricting their food supplies. As water warmed around the Antarctic Peninsula, the krill population shrank by 80 percent as sea ice declined, eliminating much of the preferred food of the minke whale.

The whales studied had lost the same amount of blubber as they would have by starving for 36 days, but the global warming connection couldn't be proven because no krill measurements are taken in different regions.

7. Shark Attacks

A surge in fatal shark attacks was the handiwork of global warming, according to a report in the Guardian in May.

George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert that maintains an attack database, told the Guardian that shark attacks were caused by human activity. "As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites," he said.

Shark attacks could also be the result of global warming and rising sea temperatures, the Guardian said. "You'll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn't in the past with some regularity," Burgess said.

8. Black Hawk Down

Although it happened in 1993, the crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Mogadishu that became the film "Black Hawk Down" was blamed on global warming by a Massachusetts congressman in 2008.

"In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine,” Rep. Edward Markey told a group of students who had come to the Capitol to discuss global warming, according to CNSNews.com. "That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down."

9. Frozen Penguin Babies

Penguin babies, whose water-repellant feathers had not grown in yet, froze to death after torrential rains, National Geographic reported in July.

"Many, many, many of them—thousands of them—were dying," explorer Jon Bowermaster told National Geographic. Witnessing the mass penguin death "painted a clear and grim picture" of global warming.

"It's not just melting ice," Bowermaster said. "It's actually killing these cute little birds that are so popular in the movies."

10. Killer Stingray Invasion

Global warming is going to drive killer stingrays, like the one that killed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, to the shores of Britain after a 5-foot -long marbled stingray was captured by fishermen, the Daily Mail reported in June.

A single touch can zap a man with enough electricity to kill, the Mail said, and global warming is bringing the Mediterranean killers north.

"Rising sea temperatures may well have brought an influx of warm water visitors," sea life curator Alex Gerrard told the Mail. "Where there's one electric ray, it's quite likely that there are more."

Michigan press offers online read of its Santa book about global warming

A children's book author hopes that her new Christmas story will help kids realize that they can have an impact on global warming.


"Santa Goes Green" (Mackinac Island Press, $15.95) is the story of a boy, Finn, who writes Santa and asks him to help raise awareness about global warming. Finn is interested in the issue because he has adopted a polar bear, and polar bears are losing their habitat.

Finn tells Santa he does not need any toys for Christmas, but instead he wants the jolly old elf's help. "Santa can do anything in (Finn's) mind," says author and publisher Anne Margaret Lewis.

The book has sold about 13,000 copies since the small Traverse City children's books publisher put a previewable version of the entire book online last month (at mackinacislandpress.com). Now in its second printing, it's a runaway hit.

Success has come without the embrace of mass-market booksellers, although Borders Books bought some for its Great Lakes-area stores. Librarians across the country are ordering "Santa" and other books, too, says associate publisher Brian Lewis. "It's really word-of-mouth people buying copies," he says. "It's this organic growth that we love."

ExtraordinaryMommy.com blogger Danielle Smith, bought "Santa" and other titles after looking at them online. She began touting the books. "People get to see every single page and every single detail," she says.

The "Santa Goes Green" "artistry is so rich, and the story is so sweet and well-told," Smith says. "I think that it resonates this time of year. And green is something we try to do in little bits and pieces, and when you have it in front of you, it's tangible on a child's level."

The project is a Lewis family affair. Anne, who has written 10 children's books, has been married to Brian for 22 years. And their son, Cameron, who is 6, gave Anne the idea for the book.

The Lewises married several years after they met in northern Michigan while windsurfing. She worked part time, then full time at Sleeping Bear Press, a small publishing firm that Brian started and sold six years ago. Before that, he also sold Lewis Publishers, an environmental publishing company started with his father in 1984. Then in 2004, Anne started Mackinac Island Press.

Theirs is not the only new, green Santa book. Another is "When Santa Turned Green" (Thomas Nelson Publishers, $15.99), but what makes the Lewises' book different is that you can see the whole book online before committing to buy it. "This mechanism has opened the door," says Brian Lewis. "We don't have to rely entirely on someone in New York City" to decide the fate of their product.

Early last summer, Anne and Cameron were reading a "National Geographic" article about how global warming has melted glaciers, which in turn reduced places for bears to live and hunt. "He asked how we could help the polar bears, so we started going around the house every time we left a room and shut the lights off. Then we would say, "We just saved another polar bear,' " she says. "I was trying to convince him that you can make a difference, and it worked."

That got Lewis to wondering whether she could write a book that would pass along the feeling. "I wanted it to be about polar bears because of how it came to be," she says. "And then I thought, who would a child think is the most powerful person who could help him do that? Santa. The story just started evolving."

Such a story of self-sacrifice fit into her writing style. "I tend to hide messages in books because I want (children) to learn through characters and the actions of characters that they can have fun or be a loyal friend," Lewis says. "My message is that kids can make a difference."

Snow in Vegas??

Praise Al Gore!!!

I'm so happy that most of the world has listened to him because we now see the end of global warming. All of Al Gore's hard work has paid off. Why, things have gotten so good that global warming has completely reversed itself and it is now snowing in Las Vegas.

And just so you don't think it is only Sin City that has been wonderfully blessed by Al Gore's pious efforts, it has snowed in Houston, New Orleans, and Mississippi. (OK, technically it was only sleet in Mississippi).

The world has been told for the last few years that we are all going to be drowning under the antarctic ice melt, but this year is the coldest year in the last decade. Of course a look at the graph shows a scary comparison between the last 2 decades and the 1800's. Well, there was this little thing called the "little ice age" that ended in the 1800's, which caused lower than average temperatures.


But there is even more urgent news. Al Gore needs to save the Universe, not just our measly little planet.

Recent reports show that Mars is experiencing global warming. The polar ice caps on Mars have been retreating. A treasure like Al Gore is just too valuable for us to keep all to ourselves, we need to immediately launch him on a rocket to Mars to save that planet. Do you think those little rovers that have been running around Mars were made from SUV parts? Maybe by launching industrial products to the surface of Mars, we have inadvertently caused the whole planet to go into a tailspin.

But wait, the problem is not just limited to Earth and Mars, we need Al Gore on Jupiter and Pluto. Those planets have also been seeing a warming period. Please, oh please, is there some way to clone Al Gore? We need Al to wade into the liquid nitrogen pools on Neptune's moon, Triton.

Or, perhaps a better idea would be to realize that all of this talk of global warming is really just hogwash and that global warming is really quite more attributable to solar activity and cycles than it is about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A recent article that was widely spread by the Associated Press exclaimed that Barack Obama had precious little time to save the planet. Well, as you guessed, it was all just hysteria.

More than ever, we need to make sure that decisions are based on fact and science, not just feel good hysteria promoted by a washed up politician like Al Gore. The Obama cabinet that will have the most influence on energy and environmental policy is a who's who for the global warming movement. The last thing that we need is to send the economy further into a tailspin by throwing billions and billions of dollars to try and save a planet that does not need saving or forcing the American automobile companies to start producing little green cars that so far, few have wanted to buy.

UPDATE:I knew that our Savior Al Gore would not let his dear friends in Hollywood down and only help Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas. It is now snowing in Malibu. Do they make a parka for "Malibu Barbie"? All hail our savior Al Gore!!! Maybe they will do a movie on Al's accomplishments. I'm sure Brad Pitt would be willing to play the lead role. Could they convince Angelina Jolie to play Tipper?

European leaders clash over pledges on global warming

The EU summit must decide how the bloc will achieve its target of 20% emissions cuts by 2020. Photograph: PA/Haydn West

European leaders gather in Brussels today for a crunch summit, acutely divided over how to deliver on pledges to combat global warming almost two years after declaring they would show the rest of the world how to tackle climate change.

The EU is split between the poorer east and the wealthy west. Germany says that most of their industries need not pay to pollute, Italy says it cannot afford the ambitious scheme, and Britain says that the package on the table could result in huge windfall profits for companies.

"There is a very big chasm between the various parties," said a senior European diplomat.

Prime ministers and presidents appear to be getting cold feet over key decisions that need to be taken by the weekend to enact laws that will make the climate change package binding for 27 countries.

Failure is not an option, they say. But Polish veto threats, Italian resistance, and German insistence that it will not jeopardise jobs to help save the planet, suggest that the action plan will be diluted. The risk is the EU will draw withering criticism from climate campaigners and signal weakness and indecision to the US, China, India and other key players in the global warming fight.

"It's a question of credibility," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission who described the summit as the most important of his five-year term. "It would be a real mistake for Europe to give the signal that we are watering down our position."

A negative outcome to the talks would moreover cast a pall over the latest round of UN negotiations to secure a post-Kyoto treaty to limit global greenhouse gases.

But at talks in Poznan, Poland, on Wednesday, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, said: "There are a few issues left but I cannot imagine that we're not going to get an agreement on Friday. We are going to deliver the targets."

The EU package represents the most ambitious legislative effort on climate change anywhere which includes four laws that mandate cuts in greenhouse gases by one-fifth by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, reduce energy consumption in Europe by one-fifth by the same deadline and stipulate that 20% of Europe's energy mix comes from renewable sources.

Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel engineered the deal as EU president in March last year. Since then the EU has been bragging about leading the world in the race to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2C.

It falls to Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to end his dynamic six months in the EU hot seat with a deal that could see the entire package turned into law before Christmas.

Sarkozy is staring failure in the face. But he is widely viewed as a consummate fixer who may pull it off. The disputes are fundamentally about costs, a disagreement that has become magnified in the current economic climate. While everyone agrees the headline target of 20% cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020 is sacrosanct, the disputes are about how to get there.

The heart of the scheme is the "cap-and-trade" or emissions trading system which is to supply around half of the cuts in greenhouse gases. The ceiling for industrial pollution levels is progressively lowered and industries and companies pay to pollute by buying permits in an auction system.

The pay-to-pollute principle is supposed to kick in from 2013, but is hugely contentious. Germany, in particular, is demanding that 30 industrial sectors be given their permits free of charge. The sectors are responsible for 90% of emissions in the scheme. If the Germans win the argument, the incentives for going greener will be minimised and revenue from the scheme will collapse.

"The Germans have set out an extreme negotiating position," said another diplomat. "They want absolute protection for all of their industry."

The mighty industrial lobbies in Germany are complaining that their global competitiveness will be wrecked if they need to pay for the pollution permits and are threatening to move out of Europe.

Merkel this week said that the summit "must not take decisions that would endanger jobs or investments in Germany. I will see to that."

The dispute between "old" and "new" Europe is also deep, with many seeing it as the biggest obstacle to an agreement.

The poorer post-communist states of central Europe, led by Poland, feel they are getting a raw deal, that they cannot afford the package, that their economic development will be affected and that their costs of living will soar.

Poland, for example, generates more than 90% of its electricity from dirty coal. It wants its power stations exempted from buying the permits until 2019 as well as massive transfers of funds from west to east.

The subsidies are supposed to be funded from the proceeds of the permit auctions. But the pot of money will be small if Germany wins the free permits argument. Britain is leading opposition to this form of subsidy, arguing that transfers of money to central Europe should come from the EU budget.

Silvio Berlusconi, the unpredictable Italian prime minister, has also warned he could veto the package on the grounds that he was not in office when it was agreed in spring last year.

Since then, the financial meltdown and the threat of a deep economic recession have dampened enthusiasm among European leaders.

While Barroso and Gordon Brown emphasise the opportunities for investment and job creation through tackling climate change, the German and Italian leaders are spreading the gloomier message that fighting global warming will cost jobs and growth.

If a deal is struck, it will result from Sarkozy twisting arms in a series of face-to-face meetings with other leaders likely to run into the small hours of Saturday morning.

The deadline is daunting. If the laws are not enacted within a couple of months, the momentum will be lost because the current European parliament ends its term in the spring and a new European commission is due next October.

The Europeans will have forfeited the leadership role on global warming to the incoming Obama administration in Washington.

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What is proposed: from old-fashioned trading to futuristic burials
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The greening of Europe - aimed at making the EU the world's first low-carbon economy - is to be carried out through four EU directives, binding on 27 countries:

Emissions Trading Scheme
The cap and trade scheme limits industrial emissions and forces companies to pay to pollute by buying permits for each tonne of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The permits are to be traded in an auction system. The new law revises the ETS, which has been operating in embryo since 2005. This scheme is supposed to supply about half the greenhouse gas cuts. The draft exempts some sectors from paying on competition grounds. But Germany wants to vastly expand the exemptions and Poland wants to get its power stations' permits for nothing.

Effort-sharing
This law covers the other half of the pollution total from sources not subject to the ETS, such as emissions from farming, the building sector and transport. While the ETS is to be run on a Europe-wide basis, the effort-sharing targets are to be prescribed nationally. Connected to this, there have already been agreements on new car emissions and road fuel, cutting CO² emissions from most new cars by 19% over a three-year period from 2012 and stipulating that 10% of transport fuel is to be non-fossil.

Renewables
An agreement was reached on Tuesday that 20% of Europe's energy mix will come from renewable sources, such as windfarms and hydro-power, by 2020. Progressive national targets and quotas have been set, with Britain needing 15% from renewables by the deadline.

Carbon Capture and Storage
A new law envisages the establishment of 12 "demonstration" CCS projects to sequestrate and bury CO² from power plants. Expensive and futuristic, the scheme is to be off the ground by 2015, but is the subject of dispute over which countries get the pilot projects and how they are funded.

California moves on global warming

California, the leading U.S. state on climate change, set detailed goals on Thursday to cut greenhouse gases and address global warming but faced criticism the plan's economic assumptions were hopelessly optimistic.

Home to the world's eighth largest economy, California confirmed its U.S. environmental trendsetter status with an ambitious 2006 law that seeks to cut carbon emissions linked to global warming to 1990 levels by 2020.

The law spearheaded by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the first in the country to set carbon targets. The federal government still has no firm plan.


"(The plan) provides a road map for the rest of the nation to follow," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. Democratic President-elect Barack Obama has promised to make climate change a priority when he takes office on January 20.

The California Air Resources Board voted on Thursday to adopt a plan to fill in details of how to cut carbon emissions, from forest conservation to energy efficiency and carbon emissions from industry and cars and trucks.

The goal of cutting carbon emissions about 30 percent below projected business-as-usual levels by 2020 has been widely accepted as a desirable target, and debate has moved to a cost-benefit analysis of means to make the cuts in the midst of an economic meltdown.

"We have laid out a plan which if followed can transform our economy and put us on the road to a healthier state," board Chairman Mary Nichols said as all eight board members approved the plan.

Measures include requiring that 33 percent of electricity be from renewable sources, regional transportation emissions targets and a cap-and-trade system for cutting industrial pollution by letting utilities and other companies trade emissions permits.

Much more remains to be done over the next few years. The plan has been compared to a menu for a meal, with recipes for dishes yet to be worked out.

"TRAIN WRECK" OR "GUIDEPOST?"

Critics have urged the board to reconsider, including some economists who argue the analysis is full of rosy assumptions and ignores potential problems.

"All economists are skeptical when approached with a free lunch," said University of California, Los Angeles economist Matthew Kahn. "I wonder if there would be less likelihood of a backlash if there were more discussion now."

Companies throughout California fear rising electricity and other costs will put them out of business.

"This plan is an economic train wreck waiting to happen. Up until now, that train wreck has only existed on paper," said California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce Legislative Affairs Chairman James Duran.

The board, responsible for carrying out the 2006 law, said it saw the growth of green business more than making up for the costs. Its analysis shows per-capita income rising about $200 a year as a result of the changes to the economy and a $7 billion per year rise in the gross state product of California -- a relatively small effect on the nation's most populous state.

James Fine, an economist for the Environmental Defense Fund, argued that the impact more than a decade from now of major changes to the state economy today was impossible to tell with the precision demanded by critics. The bottom line, he said, was that the economic impact was negligible.

"It doesn't make a lot of sense to argue about whether the economic effects are going to be a little bit positive or a little bit negative," he said.

Fine and others expect California's plan to spur action from the U.S. Congress, which has failed to pass a cap-and-trade system for carbon that is central to the California plan.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson and Syantani Chatterjee; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Fighting global warming

The PM has approved a $135m plan to tackle global warming over the next seven years.

The Red River in Ha Noi during the dry season. A US$135 million programme to deal with climate change has been approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. — VNA/VNS Photo Truong Vi

HA NOI — Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has approved a seven-year VND2.3 trillion (US$135 million) national programme to deal with climate change.

The programme, to begin next year, will focus on the rate of change and introduction of an action plan to deal with the short and long-term consequences of climate change.

The programme’s major tasks will include:

Assessment of the impact of climate change on Viet Nam;

Mapping measures to cope with its consequences;

Building scientific and technological programmes for climate change;

Raising public awareness about climate change; and Increasing international co-operation to deal with the consequences of climate change and devising actions plans for each locality and sector.

Viet Nam was among the countries that would be hardest hit by the global warming and rising sea levels, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan told a Vietnam News Agency reporter at the 14th session of the Climate Change Convention in Pozna, Poland on Thursday.

"Implementing this programme will require a huge use of resources – both the workforce and finance," he said.

"It must be considered a major challenge to Viet Nam in the context of the global financial crisis and its impact on the economy."

Viet Nam would mobilise all its resources to implement the programme, including the negotiation of international financial assistance in the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol and the UN’s framework climate-change convention.

"Viet Nam is a reliable destination for foreign investors and has received many pledges from the international community in development investment," the deputy prime minister said.

"We have also received pledges to support the programme from other governments and hope to receive more."

The Government would ask the National Assembly to approve an appropriate budget for the programme.

The World Bank lists Bangladesh, the Bahamas, Egypt, Surinam and Viet Nam as the five countries likely to be most adversely affected by rising seas.

Viet Nam will lose 70-80 per cent of the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta; 12-15 million tonnes of rice a year with 20 million people made homeless by 2050, if the sea rises 1m.

Oxfam warning

Likely yearly damage is estimated at $17 billion or 20 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.

The Cuu Long would disappear if the sea rises 5m.

Britain’s Oxfam warns that millions of Vietnamese could slide into poverty unless action is jointly taken by relevant ministries and agencies to mitigate environment-related disasters.

About 70 per cent of Viet Nam’s population live in disaster-prone zones.

The intensity and frequency of disasters have led to severe flooding, intense cold spells and prolonged drought, it says.

Oxfam bases its forecasts on a report by two of its researchers in disaster-prone Ben Tre Province, in the south, and Quang Tri, the centre.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment’s Meteorology, Hydrography and Environment Institute director Dr Tran Thuc said Viet Nam’s average temperature was forecast to increase to 30 degree Celsius and the sea level may rise 1m by 2100.

Action taken

Climate change made disasters, particularly storms, floods and drought, more severe and thus their impact on life, production and development much worse, he said.

Ten storms have hit Viet Nam so far this year.

Viet Nam signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change after it was introduced at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992, and approved in 1994.

Viet Nam had continued to attend all important international conferences and negotiations to ensure the convention’s targets were met, said Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan.

Viet Nam delegation of high ranking officials to the 14th session of the Climate Change Convention in Pozna, proved the country’s role at international gatherings and its worries about climate change, he said.

"We have joined in the activities of the G-77 and China - a diverse group with differing interests in climate change issues - individual developing countries that participate in the debates - the East Asia Forum and the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN)," the deputy prime minister said.

"And we have actively discussed and suggested ways to implement the convention’s articles at these gatherings."—VNS