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EarthWire UK
The latest environmental news from the UK, brought to you by UNEP/GRID-Arendal.

Carbon Emissions

The Great British Refurb campaign

Kevin McCloud backed by the WWF has handed in a petition to the government, asking to improve the energy efficiency of existing UK housing. Called 'The Great British Refurb' campaign, the aims are to improve Britains poorly insulated housing stock. To publicise the campaign, Kevin built a 'mini' house near the Houses of Parliament...




The Great British Refurb campaign

Last Updated (Monday, 27 July 2009 11:50)

 

Acidic Seas and Oceans

One of the biggest but rarely told stories at the heart of anthropogenic climate change is the changing chemical make up of the seas as a result of increasing levels of CO2. For this reason, CO2 can be classed as a pollutant.
Increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, results in a proportion of that CO2 being absorbed by the water in our seas and oceans. This has both positive and negative impacts. The positive result of this absorbtion is that the amount of global warming is greatly reduced (whilst the seas and oceans can continue acting as a carbon sink). The negative result is the acidification of the seas and oceans.

This change to our seas and oceans is causing problems for a lot of life below the waves. In particular, creatures that create shells have serious problems. But also many fish depend on water with a specific range of ph level and temperature, if these change, then they can be forced to migrate or risk becoming extinct. A small number of species may benefit from the changes, such as some species of  'star fish'.

The Telegraph
Environment News Service
Environmental Research Web

Last Updated (Tuesday, 02 June 2009 14:37)

 

Time is running out

New research published in Nature this week shows that time is running out if we are to limit global temperature rises to below 2oc. Scientists are saying we need to put the brakes on the carbon emission producing society within a few decades. When we reach a trillion tonnes of anthropogenic CO2, it is likely that global temperatures would exceed the 2oc average increase that earths governments are trying to limit to.
In order to prevent temperatures exceeding the 2 degree limit, fossil fuel consumption world wide would need to be cut to a third of the total that could be recovered.

Nature (editorial)
RealClimate (Hit the brakes hard)
Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C (Malte Meinshausen et al)
Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne (Myles R. Allen et al) 
 

China's emissions accounted for

New research has shown that about half of China's increasing emissions are due to the production and exporting of products for Western nations. What this effectively means (and has been known for a while, although not proven) is that the US, Europe etc. have exported (outsourced) many of their manufacturing emissions to China.

This is particularly bad for the US since it hasn't reduced emissions significantly even with the manufacturing moved to China, it is also bad news for the UK since it really means that manufacturing emissions per capita have not come down, they have just been moved to a new location.

This makes a mockery of the way the UK government calculates manufacturing emissions. As a result our carbon foot prints per capita are greater than officially reported.

The Chemical Engineer Today
Mongabay.com
The Guardian

Last Updated (Saturday, 28 February 2009 13:32)

 

Coal Power stations are to be financed by clean energy fund

The World Development Movement has found that the World Bank Clean Technology Fund, originally promoted by George W Bush, will be funding coal fired power stations in developing countries. The clause in the funding rules mean that many coal fired power stations pass the weak emissions criteria in the rules. In order to get funding, A coal power station project only needs to produce 0.005 tonnes of CO2 less than the current average for existing power stations.

Alarmingly the UK government is planning to put hundreds of millions of pounds into the fund.

World Development Movement article
New Scientist

Last Updated (Saturday, 28 February 2009 12:28)

 
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