CCBF Blog

Local college produces: "For the Love of Our Planet"

Guest contribution from Ms. Shirlee Algire (Gammon)

Tai Po Immanuel Lutheran College's WOW Production Studio has produced a 10-min version of their documentary: "For the Love of Our Planet." 

Please support their efforts, and view it on Youtube to help them win the most viewed award of National Geographic Channel's 2009 Think Again Awards!

Gammon's Mr. Eddie Tse was a consultant with the school to help produce this video with the students.

Key Messages from Copenhagen Climate Science Congress 10 – 12 March 2009

by Mr. Robert Gibson

The International Scientific Congress on Climate Change took place in Copenhagen from 10th to 12th March.

Concluding statement:

The congress was attended by more than 2,500 delegates from nearly 80 countries. It preliminary messages handed to the Danish Prime Minister at the end of the Congress are listed below. Its full synthesis report will be issued in June 2009.

Key Message 1: Climatic Trends
Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.

Key Message 2: Social disruption
The research community is providing much more information to support discussions on ‘dangerous climate change’. Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century.

Key Message 3: Long-Term Strategy
Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ regardless of how it is defined. Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of crossing tipping points and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation.

Key Message 4 - Equity Dimensions
Climate change is having, and will have, strongly differential effects on people within and between countries and regions, on this generation and future generations, and on human societies and the natural world. An effective, well-funded adaptation safety net is required for those people least capable of coping with climate change impacts, and a common but differentiated mitigation strategy is needed to protect the poor and most vulnerable.

Key Message 5: Inaction is Inexcusable
There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches - economic, technological, behavioural, management - to deal effectively with the climate change challenge. But they must be vigorously and widely implemented to achieve the societal transformation required to decarbonise economies. A wide range of benefits will flow from a concerted effort to alter our energy economy now, including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalisation of ecosystem services.

Key Message 6: Meeting the Challenge
To achieve the societal transformation required to meet the climate change challenge, we must overcome a number of significant constraints and seize critical opportunities. These include reducing inertia in social and economic systems; building on a growing public desire for governments to act on climate change; removing implicit and explicit subsidies; reducing the influence of vested interests that increase emissions and reduce resilience; enabling the shifts from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society; and engaging society in the transition to norms and practices that foster sustainability.

About the congress
The International Scientific Congress on Climate Change is taking place in Copenhagen 10 - 12 March. More than 2,000 participants are registered. The congress has received almost 1,600 scientific contributions from researchers from more than 70 countries. The preliminary conclusions from the congress will be presented Thursday 12 March at the closing session of the congress and will be developed in a synthesis report to be published in June this year. The synthesis report will be handed over to all participants at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December in Copenhagen by the Danish Government. It is organized by International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU):

Australian National University
ETH Zürich
National University of Singapore
Peking University
University of California, Berkeley
University of Cambridge
University of Copenhagen
University of Oxford
University of Tokyo
Yale University
DISCLAIMER: THIS PRESS RELEASE IS WRITTEN BY THE CLIMATE SECRETARIAT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN. THE PEOPLE QUOTED DO NOT NECESSARILY SHARE THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY OTHERS IN THIS TEXT.

See the attached press release covering the first day of the conference. See http://climatecongress.ku.dk/ for more information.

Our Ocean's Ecological Recession

by Mr. TC Yee

Coral reefs: Vital to the oceans, vital to humans

Coral reefs are dying off at record rates, thanks to pollution, disease and global warming. Scientists worldwide are trying to come up with new ideas to conserve and protect not just the coral reefs, but also the biodiversity and human economies that depend upon them for their survival. Last month, a group of 155 scientists from 26 countries issued a document dubbed "The Monaco ...
Source: Coral reefs: Vital to the oceans, vital to humans [Scientific American]

Bleak forecast on fishery stocks
By James Morgan Science reporter, BBC News, Chicago

The world's fish stocks will soon suffer major upheaval due to climate change, scientists have warned.
Source: Bleak forecast on fishery stocks [BBC News]

Personal views: With the rapid increase of seafood consumption worldwide for health and dining habit change, the demand for various species of fish and shellfish is never witnessed in our nature history. Even the market force has brought in fish farming (aquaculture), the reliance on our oceans to cope with our desires has never diminished. Unfortunately, more and more evidences are exhibited that many fishes and other marine lives are getting less and less in some parts of the world where they used to live in large crowds. Further more alarming news is on reports of the emergence of so called dead zones being found in oceans where practically no life could be traced. Is climate change coupled with deteriorating marine ecologies the culprit to take away the delicious food from people or rather we ourselves are to be blamed?

What's Your Story?

The Climate Change Business Forum has launched its "What's Your Story" campaign.  Learn new best practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, choose your favorites, and submit your own stories. Stay tuned for more.

What's Your Story

Geoengineering experiment raises sail

An Indo-German effort has set sail to experiment and help determine the viability of sequestering carbon by promoting algae blooms with iron.  In areas where iron is a limiting nutrient, geoengineers hope that adding iron sulfate to the ocean will promote (or "seed") algae blooms which in turn will capture carbon dioxide and sequester some of it when the plankton die and sink to the ocean's floor.  Some environmentalists worry that the potential environmental impacts of iron seeding have not been appropriately assessed or considered.

Source: Ocean climate fix remains afloat [BBC News]
For more information on the LOHAFEX effort, see the Indian National Institute of Oceanography.

The CCBF also has more information on the basic science of climate change.

China takes a breather

by Dr. Paul Forster

As 2008 waned, so has China’s energy demand. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics, as analyzed by Stanford University researchers, shows a significant decrease in the growth rate of power generation in China, linked to the current economic turmoil.

“Researchers at Stanford University who closely track China’s power sector, coal use, and carbon dioxide emissions have done an initial rough projection and foresee China possibly emitting somewhere between 1.9 and 2.6 billion tons less carbon dioxide from 2008 to 2010 than it would have under “business as usual” if current bearish trends for the global economy hold up,” Andrew C. Revkin reports.

The good news is that there is less energy consumed, and less greenhouse gases being emitted. With China leading in total aggregate emissions this could be seen as a blessing for climate change.

Cutting CO2 is absolutely necessary.... but what if it doesn't work? Where can we turn next? What is plan B?

by Dr. Adam D. Switzer

I read with great interest this recent article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-scientists-its-time-for-plan-b-1221092.html

The article reports on a poll (of leading scientists) by The Independent in the UK and suggests that some possibly many scientists suggest we need to think about plan B....

The article correctly points out that....

"The collective international failure to curb the growing emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has meant that an alternative to merely curbing emissions may become necessary"

At the bottom of the article a number of 'Plan B's' are presented.... Where do I stand you may ask?

I'm with John Shephard on this one... he stated that "Geoengineering options... must not be allowed to detract from efforts to reduce CO2 emissions directly" ... prepare for Plan B but remember it makes a lot of sense to have a good go at "Plan A" first.... unfortunately we don't seem to be making much progress on Plan A so we may be calling on Plan B earlier then we thought.