ScienceDaily (July 2, 2009) – New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics.

There are of course neither satellite images nor instrumental records of the climate all the way back to the 13th century, but nature has its own ‘archive’ of the climate in both ice cores and the annual growth rings of trees and we humans have made records of a great many things over the years – such as observations in the log books of ships and in harbour records. Piece all of the information together and you get a picture of how much sea ice there has been throughout time.

Modern research and historic records

“We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate” explains Aslak Grinsted, geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

In order to determine how much sea ice there has been, the researchers needed to turn to data from the logbooks of ships, which whalers and fisherman kept of their expeditions to the boundary of the sea ice. The ship logbooks are very precise and go all the way back to the 16th century. They relate at which geographical position the ice was found. Another source of information about the ice are records from harbours in Iceland, where the severity of the winters have been recorded since the end of the 18th century.

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E&E News: Mount Speke — once one of the highest snowcapped peaks of Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains, with 536 acres of ice coverage — has been reduced to a dismal 46 acres, according to the Climate Change Unit at Uganda’s ministry of water and environment, which blames global warming for the melting.

Satellite images taken in 1987 and 2005 show that much of the disappearance occurred over the past two decades. Uganda’s National Environmental Management Authority predicts that if melting continues at the current rate, the ice will be gone by 2023.

“The ice is literally disappearing. In some cases it has disappeared, and I am more than certain that this is a result of global warming,” said Philip Gagwe, who heads the Climate Change Unit.

The drastic melting has adversely effected agriculture and health in surrounding populations (Ben Simon, Agence France-Presse/Yahoo! News, June 15).

Argentina’s Perito Moreno glacier remains unfazed, despite rising temperatures that are threatening ice fields worldwide.

The 3-mile-wide glacier grows continuously with nourishment from Andean snowmelt until it expands enough to touch a point of land across Lake Argentina, forcing a massive ice dam that bursts from the pressure of mounting water. The cycle, which occurs every few years, has maintained a nearly perfect equilibrium since measurements began more than a century ago.

“We’re not sure why this happens,” said Andres Rivera, a glacialist with the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. “But not all glaciers respond equally to climate change” (Jeannette Nuemann, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, June 15). – LZ

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By Jean-Marie Macabrey

E&E News: BRUSSELS — Yesterday, as European leaders gathered to ponder ways to pay for the fight against climate change, three scientists meeting only a few blocks away had a strong message for them: A soft climate change agreement may not stop the climate from reaching a tipping point.

The trio of scientists was presenting a report synthesizing new research results on climate change and reviewing options for tackling the problem. The report, meant as an inspiration for politicians, stems from work done at a major conference attended by 2,000 scientists from more than 70 countries, held this past March in Copenhagen.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who will host the U.N. conference on climate change coming up in Copenhagen in December, received the text yesterday in Brussels.

Alluding to Japanese and U.S. greenhouse emission reduction targets, John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a member of the report’s writing team, termed “reckless” any aim for what he called a “lukewarm” approach in Copenhagen.

“‘Lukewarm’ would mean ‘Don’t hurt anybody, do what the smallest political denominator tells you,’” said Shellnhuber in an interview. “This is almost a wartime situation. We are at war with nature now, and in wartime, you have to make decisions which hurt.”

Schellnhuber wants the European Union to make an unconditional commitment in Copenhagen to a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions: “Either it’s technologically feasible and you can do it immediately, or it’s not feasible and it’s just a game you’re playing,” he said. So far, the European Union has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020, as compared to 1990 levels, and has offered to reduce emissions by 30 percent if other developed countries do the same.

2 degrees warmer could reach a ‘tipping point’

According to Schellnhuber, there is evidence that just 1 to 2 degrees of warming may trigger so-called “tipping points” caused by man-made climate change. Within this context, a “tipping point” is defined as a situation in which “change is abrupt, large, and potentially irreversible in time frames relevant for contemporary society.”

Among the tipping points scientists are studying are: the melting of the Greenland ice sheet; changes in the Asian monsoon; loss of water storage capacity in the Himalayan glaciers; and ocean acidification, which could create oxygen-deprived oceanic areas, in turn placing habitats such as the Great Barrier Reef at risk.

“The problem [of climate change] is so big already that you either decide you want to solve it, and that means the transformation of our infrastructure in the next decade, or you say this thing is too big for us, let’s leave it alone, let’s try to raise the sea walls,” said Schellnhuber. “Either you make a decision like Churchill in the war and talk about blood, sweat and tears, or you say, ‘Let’s surrender.’”

According to the report presented yesterday in Brussels, data collected since the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that a number of climate indicators — sea level rise, ocean temperature, glacier melt, Arctic sea ice melt and ocean acidification — are now undergoing changes at the maximum rate projected in 2007, or even faster.

“The newest evidence indicates that society faces serious risks, even if the global temperature rises only about 2 degrees,” said Katherine Richardson, a University of Copenhagen professor and chairwoman of the report’s writing team. “The greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are already at a level that is predicted to cause warming of around 2 degrees, so major emission cuts should be made immediately to [restrain] climate change. The clock is ticking.”

Changes reaching the upper boundary of predictions

Yesterday’s report in Brussels lists six key findings for politicians heading for Copenhagen:

• Greenhouse gas emissions and many aspects of the climate are now evolving near the upper boundary of the IPCC’s projection range.

• Societies and ecosystems are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change.

• Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of serious impacts — including the crossing of tipping points — and make the task of meeting 2050 targets harder and more costly.

• An effective, well-funded adaptation safety net is required for those people least able to cope with the impact of climate change, and equitable mitigation strategies are needed to protect the poor and most vulnerable.

• Inaction is inexcusable: Society is already equipped with many tools and approaches for dealing effectively with climate change, and must use these vigorously and widely.

• A number of significant constraints (such as inertia in social and economic systems) must be overcome, and critical opportunities (such as building on a public desire for governments to act on climate change) must be seized.

The Danish government will convey these points to the delegates set to attend the Copenhagen conference.

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GreenWire: India announced it plans to reject any new global warming treaty that requires the country to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will harm its energy consumption, transportation and food security.

“India cannot and will not take emission reduction targets because poverty eradication and social and economic development are first and over-riding priorities,” said Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh in a statement.

India’s announcement comes in advance of the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

Ramesh said his country would voluntarily agree to prevent its per-capita greenhouse emissions from surpassing that of developed countries (Matthias Williams, Reuters, June 30). – JK

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GreenWire: Scientists are enlisting puffins — short, stubby birds with lopsided beaks — to investigate the steep decline of seabirds across the British Isles.

Over the past eight years, seabird numbers in the North Sea have declined by up to 40 percent. And just last year, the puffin population crashed, with malnourished puffins washing up on beaches all along the United Kingdom’s coast.

On an archipelago 50 miles off the Northumberland coast, scientists are affixing small digital recorders onto the backs of up to three dozen puffins. The recorders will monitor their movements using GPS and other technologies. It’s hoped that the study will shed more light on puffins’ lives at sea, said Richard Bevan, a zoologist at Newcastle University.

“All we can record at the nests is the number of chicks, how quickly the chicks are growing and the numbers that fledge,” he said. “But what we don’t know is what they do as soon as they fly away.”

The data should help establish whether puffins have regular feeding grounds and if those feeding grounds are expanding due to the regional decline of sandeel, the slender fish that is their primary food source. Sandeel have been in decline for a decade, though whether this decline has been caused by climate change or increased trawling is debatable.

Bevan believes the population crash of last season may be explained by ill-timed north-easterly winds, which cooled the seas during breeding season. But there are many changes to the marine environment that are not understood, Bevan said.

“We don’t know what’s happening out there,” he said. “There’s a change in the ecology of the North Sea. What the implications are of that, we have no idea” (Severin Carrell, Guardian, July 1). – PV

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By: Phil Taylor

GreenWire: The American chestnut tree, which towered over eastern U.S. forests before succumbing to a deadly fungus in the early 20th century, appears to be an excellent sponge for greenhouse gases, according to a new study.

If scientists can develop a fungus-resistant version of the tree, the chestnut could play a key role in the battle against climate change, Purdue University scientists say.

“Maintaining or increasing forest cover has been identified as an important way to slow climate change,” said Douglass Jacobs, whose chestnut tree study appears in the June issue of Forest Ecology and Management.

In a study conducted at four sites in southwestern Wisconsin, the American chestnut grew much faster and larger than the black walnut and northern red oak, allowing it to soak up more carbon dioxide, the study found. The tree’s higher carbon capacity makes it an ideal candidate for forest restoration projects and carbon offset schemes, particularly on marginal farmland in the Midwest.

“Generally, the faster a tree grows, the more carbon it is able to sequester,” Jacobs said. “And when these trees are harvested and processed, the carbon can be stored in the hardwood products for decades, maybe longer.”

The chestnut also compared favorably when cross-referenced to studies of quaking aspen, red pine and white pine.

The trees eventually absorb the same amount of carbon, but the fast-growing chestnut can store more carbon in a shorter amount of time, Jacobs said. The tree was found to carry up to three times the biomass of the others at various points in its growth cycle.

Moreover, the chestnut is a prime species for furniture and housing products, which allow it to store carbon for extended periods after harvest. By contrast, carbon stored in newsprint is stored for an average of six months, said Bryan Burhans, CEO of the American Chestnut Foundation in Asheville, N.C.

“It’s simply taking atmospheric carbon and turning it into a compound that is stored in the tree,” said Burhans, a biologist who was not part of the Purdue study. Chestnuts that are not harvested, he said, can live between 250 years and 300 years, compared to an oak’s average lifespan of 100 years to 150 years.

Worldwide, trees store a sixth of the CO2 emitted each year, but they could be managed to store much more, scientists say.

A sweeping climate and energy bill passed by the House last week would create opportunities for investing in reforestation projects to offset carbon emissions. The legislation sponsored by Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts requires half of the 2 billion tons of carbon offsets allowed each year to be purchased in the United States.

Reintroducing the American chestnut

Once known as the “redwood of the east,” the American chestnut represented up to 45 percent of the forest canopy in parts of its native range, which extended from southern New England and New York southwest to Alabama. The tree is all but wiped out by a red fungus known as the “chestnut blight,” which was first discovered in 1904 after being imported in the chestnut’s Asian variety. One thousand American chestnuts are believed to remain in the wild.

The tree’s survival depends on the development of a hybrid that can withstand the fungus while retaining most of the American chestnut’s qualities. Scientists at the American Chestnut Foundation say they are close to developing a blight-resistant hybrid and plan to begin full reintroduction of the plant within the next five years.

“We’re making real progress right now,” Burhans said.

At a southwest Virginia farm, American chestnuts are being cross-bred several times with a Chinese variety to create a fungus-resistant species with 94 percent American genes. Already, thousands of the seeds have been planted in three national forests in the Southeast to test the hybrid’s growth.

Wider production of the seed is limited by the two-year period scientists must wait for new trees to produce their first fruits and prove their resilience to the fungus. While full restoration could take more than 100 years, Burhans believes the reintroduction programs could see significant progress in a matter of decades.

The tree’s nonresistant variety has already been shown to grow well in an otherwise inhospitable environment: reclaimed surface mines.

The Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, a five-year partnership between the foundation and the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, was announced last October as a way to prevent soil erosion on abandoned coal mines (Greenwire, Oct. 10, 2008). Companies that are normally required to compact abandoned surface mines and plant grasses are being asked to break up soil to reintroduce native hardwood forests that include the American chestnut.

“The American chestnut has proven a very successful survivor on these dried, unwelcoming sites,” Burhans said, adding that initial results from the program suggest the fungus-immune hybrid could eventually be used for more extensive mine reclamations.

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The Scottish executive has published a plan outlining how it hopes to stimulate renewable energy in the country to make the most of its natural resources.Go to original Source

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Isn’t it the best when environmental ideals, thriftiness, and saving time all point to the same solution?

Take compact fluorescent light bulbs: Good for the planet, and they last so much longer than old-school bulbs, thereby saving money, trips to the store and time spent climbing up on chairs to change the ceiling fixtures.

Online shopping, done right, also serves both the environment and your busy schedule. It’s convenient—sneaky people can even do it at work! —and can be far more carbon-efficient than getting into your car and heading to the store.

Of course, online shopping isn’t going to replace the real deal for every purchase your family makes, but following these tips can help you green your family’s clothing buying style without putting a crimp in it. Follow these enviro-shopping tips to keep your clicking earth-friendly.

Don’t worry—You can do this without wearing tie-dye caftans and rope sandals

The fashion industry is realizing that consumers want chic, wearable apparel that has been produced sustainably and ethically. There are more choices out there than ever, and these items are often easier to find online. Sites like Adili, Stewart Brown, Cool Not Cruel, and Green Loop all have a wide variety of seriously wow-worthy pieces that you can feel good about wearing. Who wouldn’t feel good in this Sarah Zins dress, made from reused and remnant materials?

Use the Internet for what it does best: Search

No need to go from store to store, or even mall to mall, looking for what you need. Finding the products you want is easier online, it’s easier to compare prices and find deals, and you can even find products you didn’t already know about.

The search term “eco-friendly sneakers,” typed into Google, will return the information that Adidas has a line of shoes made with hemp and recycled materials.

Greenmaven, is a “green search engine” that uses Google technology to give you results pages full of sustainable, eco-friendly options. Searching “fashion” will give you 158 results, including Tdama, a company that makes incredibly modern, color-blocked hoodies from 89% recycled post-consumer recycled plastic.

Ship wisely

Online shopping saves you the time you’d spend driving or taking the bus to the store, but when it comes to shipping, taking the slow road is a more eco-friendly choice. Picking 3-day or overnight delivery means your package is coming on a big gas-guzzling airplane. Opt for ground shipping instead.

Also, look for information about how your purchase will be packaged. You want a retailer who uses recycled products, and skips Styrofoam peanuts in favor of creative solutions like biodegradable air-filled pillows.

If the site where you are shopping doesn’t inform you about the packaging practices, ask. One eco-clothing site, nau.com has four pages explaining their carefully thoughtout shipping and packaging choices—and cute clothes to boot.

If you buy clothes on Amazon, check out the Facebook application ShipTogether. It allows you to pool your purchases with others who live near you to save on shipping costs and reduces the number of times delivery trucks need to drive to your neighborhood. Once again, saving money and saving the world coincide!

You Can Shop Online and Still Support Local Businesses

Online shopping isn’t just for the big chain stores; many locally-owned businesses have websites too. Use the site to see if what you want is in stock and plan your trips accordingly. Even the superhip clothing store down the street from you likely has an online shop.

If you’re looking for a black dress and there isn’t one on the site, you’ve saved yourself a trip—and the danger of buying something you don’t need just because you saw it in the store. You can also use the web to find local businesses with green inventory.

Try a directory like CitySearch or Yahoo! Local to seek out local stores that carry organic clothing. Try Treehugger.com’s green buying guides. (The denim guide has a lot of brands, including some you probably aren’t familiar with.)

Other good browsing spots: Green America’s Greenpages, the blog Greenzer.com (use the “eco-friendly clothing” tag to drill down), and Big Green Purse’s listings of environmentally sound clothing options.

A recent British study found that consumers need to buy at least 19 items on a shopping trip in a car to match the carbon efficiency of shopping online. Be even greener and carpool with a few friends.

Buying vintage or used clothes on eBay is a no-brainer. Everything’s cheaper, and re-using something rather than buying something newly manufactured is the oldest green move in the book. REI has a handy eco-friendly clothing page on their site that gathers together all the recycled fleece gloves and organic cotton trail shorts in one place.

Remember, you don’t have to overhaul your whole wardrobe to be eco-chic—just using some of the tips above and being more thoughtful about your choices will make a big difference in terms of  your environmental impact.

You can do your part for the planet, and consider the time and money savings to be your reward—that, and the cute clothes.

More from ecomii.com

• Eco-Chic Fashion: It’s Here to Stay.
• Eco-Friendly Accessories
• Top Five Reasons to Buy Organic Cotton
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Fashion
• Fair Trade Fashion Marketplace

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Sal Scuderi and his engine model
in Manhattan. (Photo: Jim Motavalli)

Everyone wants to have the next big thing in auto technology, and when they think they have the tiger by the tail, they call me to come take a look.

Here are a few recent contenders:

I am in the ballroom of a Manhattan hotel near Grand Central Station looking at an engine. Well, not an engine exactly, but a cutaway working model of one. There are cool lights blinking, and pistons moving up and down. This is the Scuderi engine, the great hope of a family enterprise.

Sal Scuderi is the son of the late mechanical engineer Carmelo Scuderi, who designed this new type of  low-emission, internal-combustion power plant, and he is endeavoring to explain the “split-cycle” technology to me as several other company folks, including Sal’s brother, sit around the ballroom ordering lunch. The one-liter, turbocharged Scuderi engine, he said, takes the traditional four-cycle design and splits it over two paired cylinders, one for intake/compression and the other for power and exhaust.

On conventional engines, pistons fire at top dead center, but this one fires later to “produce highly efficient, cleaner combustion with one cylinder and compressed air in the other.” The engines in every gas-powered car since the Duryea brothers take two crankcase revolutions to complete a combustion cycle, but Scuderi says his engine takes just one. “They waste energy and lose work because they compress the gas twice,” Scuderi says. “Our process delivers very rapid atomization of the fuel.”

Scuderi claims its revolutionary two-cylinder engine reduces nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 85%, and emissions overall by 80%. He also says overall fuel efficiency is much improved.

Is this a big breakthrough that will have automakers all over the world booking flights to Springfield, Massachusetts for licensing talks? It’s kind of above my pay grade, but Scuderi did finally get the engine running yesterday.

Dan Kapp, the man behind Ford’s new direct-injection EcoBoost engine as director for powertrain research and advanced engineering, told me Ford has “touched base” with Scuderi. “Flow loss and inefficient combustion on the expansion stroke are drawbacks,” he said. “I don’t want to be in a position of critiquing their work, but aren’t you asking two cylinders to do the work of one? We’d need to see a lot more, to try and understand how they will meet some of the challenges.”

***

I am on the phone last year talking to Shiva Vencat, who heads Zero Pollution Motors, the U.S. arm of a French company that thinks we’ll all soon be running around in cars powered on compressed air. There is a sense of déjà vu, because I had a similar conversation with Vencat circa 2000, the first time they said French air cars were coming to the U.S.

The French company, Motor Development International (MDI), has entered its compressed-air cars in the Auto X Prize, and its U.S. web page says the latest start date is Spring 2009, for some very peculiar cars called the AIRPod Urban Transporter. They look like pastel-colored ladybugs. They claim 136 miles of range on compressed air, which would be quite a lot. I’ve seen MDI claim ranges of more than 800 miles using some form of heating to expand the air.

Experts I’ve talked to say the energy density of air does not favor this form of transportation, but people love the idea. “Have you heard about the air car?” they ask me. Yes, I have. I’m ready whenever MDI is to take a ride. I’d love to see it happen.

***

I am at the Concours d’Elegance in Greenwich, Connecticut last month, and in the center of the field, among the Duesenbergs and Packards, is what looks suspiciously like an airplane. But it’s also ground transportation, heir to a rich history of flying cars. I wrote about the car after it made its maiden flight, but this is the first time I’m seeing it in the flesh. It’s the Terrafugia Transition, and it’s bigger than I thought.

The Terrafugia Transition car/plane in Greenwich. (Jim Motavalli photo)

At my request, the Terrafugia guy pushes a button and folds the wings up. On the road, the folded wings are vertical, which eats into visibility somewhat. But the carbon fiber car/plane is quite light (1,350 pounds), and supposedly gets 27 mpg on the road, and 30 in the air, where it cruises at 115 mph.

CEO Carl C. Dietrich tells me that one of the big selling points for this 4,000 device is that “it eliminates hangar fees — you drive from airport to airport.” Caught in bad weather? No problem: Just touch down, fold the wings and drive off. Windshield wipers are included. Some 60 people have put down ,000 refundable deposits. The Terrafugia first flew last March, and since then the company says it has gone in the air 27 more times.

Will the Terrafugia succeed in the marketplace? I have no idea, but several others, including the fascinating Robert Edison Fulton, Jr. (the “Airphibian”), have tried and failed. Other contenders, from the late 40s to the mid-50s, have included Moulton Taylor (he built as many as five Aerocars), and Consolidated-Vultee, which made one working model. 

Automotive dreams forever take wing and sometimes literally.

More from The Daily Green

• The Eight Weirdest Car Fuels: Which Will Win Out?
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• Win Free Green Stuff!

Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc

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