Environment and Cleantech News for 25 Jul 2017
Biofuels needed but some more polluting than fossil fuels, report warns
Biofuel use needs to increase to help fight climate change as liquid fuels will be needed by aircraft and ships for many decades to come, finds a new report requested by the UK government.
The Royal Academy of Engineering report says, however, that some biofuels, such as diesel made from food crops, have led to more emissions than those produced by the fossil fuels they were meant to replace. Instead, the report says, rising biofuel production should make more use of waste, such as used cooking oil and timber.
Ten years ago biofuels were seen as ideal, low-carbon, replacements for the liquid fossil fuels that power the majority of the world’s transport systems. But concerns grew that first-generation biofuels, made from food crops, were increasing food prices and were often as polluting as fossil fuels when all factors in their production were considered.
The new report combines more than 250 analyses of the impact of biofuels around the world, including how demand for food-based biofuels drives the destruction of forests and peatlands when farmers expand into additional areas – the most contentious issue.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2uST67m
Source: The Guardian
Climate Change May Bring Disasters and Deeper Poverty to Asia
Asia and the Pacific, home to two thirds of the world’s poor, are at the highest risk of suffering deeper poverty and disaster due to unabated climate change, reversing current development gains, according to the Asian Development Bank.
The Asian landmass will see a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century under a business-as-usual scenario, ADB said in a statement on Friday. The comment is based on findings included in a report from the bank and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research that analyses climate risks in Asia and the Pacific.
Some countries in the region could experience significantly hotter climates, with temperature increases in Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwest China projected to hit 8 degrees Celsius, ADB said.
Hotter climates would cause drastic changes in the region’s weather system, agriculture and fisheries sectors, land and marine biodiversity, domestic and regional security, trade, urban development, migration, and health, and may even pose an existential threat to some countries, the ADB said.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2uT4EqY
Source: https://about.bnef.com
Catastrophic collapse' of West Antarctic ice sheet could raise global sea levels by three metres, warns scientist
Climate change and the hole in the ozone layer could cause “a catastrophic collapse” of the vast amount of ice on west Antarctica, raising sea levels by 3.3 metres, a leading scientist has warned.
Following the calving of one of the largest icebergs ever known – about a quarter the size of Wales and weighing a trillion tonnes – Professor Nancy Bertler, of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, said global warming and the hole in the ozone layer had caused the sudden break-up of “numerous ice shelves” in the region “some of which have been shown to have existed for 10,000 years or more”.
While these do not add to sea levels, their removal can significantly increase the speed of land ice flowing into the sea.
And that process, Professor Bertler warned, could have serious effects on the planet.
Full story at http://ind.pn/2uSESmS
Source: Independent
Climate change: Nearly 700 'natural thermometers' demonstrate the world is warmer than its ever been
Planet Earth is warmer than it has been for at least 2,000 years, according to a study that took its temperature from 692 different “natural thermometers” on every continent and ocean on the planet.
In the most comprehensive assessment of how the climate has changed over the period to date, researchers looked at a host of sources of historic information, including tree rings, ice cores, lake and sea sediments, corals, mineral deposits and written records.
What they found confirmed the famous “hockey stick” graph, showing an undulating, but broadly flat, line followed by a sharp uptick that begins at around 1900.
The only plausible explanation for this sudden change is fossil fuel emissions, which have increased the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from about 280 parts per million in the 19th century to more than 400 today.
Full story at http://ind.pn/2uSnOxu
Source: Independent
Sea Level Rise Will Flood Hundreds of Cities in the Near Future
Sea level rise caused by global warming is usually cast as a doomsday scenario that will play out so far into the future, it’s easy to ignore. Just ask anyone in South Florida, where new construction proceeds apace. Yet already, more than 90 coastal communities in the United States are battling chronic flooding, meaning the kind of flooding that’s so unmanageable it prompts people to move away.
That number is expected to roughly double to more than 170 communities in less than 20 years.
Those new statistics, compiled in the first comprehensive mapping of the entire coastline of the Lower 48 states, paint a troubling picture, especially for the East and Gulf coasts, which are home to some of the nation’s most populated areas.
By the end of the century, chronic flooding will be occurring from Maine to Texas and along parts of the West Coast. It will affect as many as 670 coastal communities, including Cambridge, Massachusetts; Oakland, California; Miami and St. Petersburg, Florida; and four of the five boroughs of New York City. The magnitude of the coming calamity is so great, the ripple effects will reach far into the interior.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2uTcZLl
Source: National Geographic
Climate change is ‘great opportunity’ says Richard Branson
The Founder and chair of the Virgin Group speaks during a panel discussion in New York on Friday and says the threat of climate change actually offers ‘one of the great opportunities for this world’. Branson urges the business sector to step forward and ‘fill certain gaps that some governments are leaving behind’ in tackling the problem
Full story at http://bit.ly/2uTw0NX
Source: The Guardian
Prepared by @SydesJokes