The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented. Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’. Read more here.
News
Carbon Emissions Scaling Record Peaks
A new report by a research consortium called the Global Carbon Project has confirmed that China leapfrogged the United States in 2006 as the world’s biggest carbon emitter and India is heading for third place. The report also claims global greenhouse gas levels are “scaling record peaks”. Read more here.
Solar Wind At 50-Year Low: NASA
WASHINGTON — Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun’s current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system.”The sun’s million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy,” said Dave McComas, Ulysses’ solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Ulysses data indicate the solar wind’s global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age.”
The sun’s solar wind plasma is a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun’s upper atmosphere. The solar wind interacts with every planet in our solar system. It also defines the border between our solar system and interstellar space.
This border, called the heliopause, surrounds our solar system where the solar wind’s strength is no longer great enough to push back the wind of other stars. The region around the heliopause also acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off a significant portion of the cosmic rays outside the galaxy.”Galactic cosmic rays carry with them radiation from other parts of our galaxy,” said Ed Smith, NASA’s Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength. If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system.”
Galactic cosmic rays are of great interest to NASA. Cosmic rays are linked to engineering decisions for unmanned interplanetary spacecraft and exposure limits for astronauts traveling beyond low-Earth orbit.
In 2007, Ulysses made its third rapid scan of the solar wind and magnetic field from the sun’s south to north pole. When the results were compared with observations from the previous solar cycle, the strength of the solar wind pressure and the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind were found to have decreased by 20 percent. The field strength near the spacecraft has decreased by 36 percent.
“The sun cycles between periods of great activity and lesser activity,” Smith said. “Right now, we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated.”Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment over the sun’s poles. Data Ulysses has returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 18 years, or almost four times its expected mission lifetime. The Ulysses solar wind findings were published in a recent edition of Geophysical Research Letters.
The Ulysses spacecraft was carried into Earth orbit aboard space shuttle Discovery on Oct. 6, 1990. From Earth orbit it was propelled toward Jupiter, passing the planet on Feb. 8, 1992. Jupiter’s immense gravity bent the spacecraft’s flight path downward and away from the plane of the planets’ orbits. This placed Ulysses into a final orbit around the sun that would take it over its north and south poles.
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Researchers at the Danish National Space Centre claim cosmic rays can influence the Earth’s climate through their effect on cloud formation. Earlier this year I reported on a lecture that I attended given by Dr Eigil Friis-Christensen, the Centre’s Director.
Sun Baking on Low: New Data from Solar Probe Ulysses
The solar wind — a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun’s upper atmosphere at 1 million miles per hour — is significantly weaker, cooler and less dense than it has been in 50 years. And for the first time in about a century, the sun went for two months this summer without sunspots, said NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. Read more here.
Grain Stubble as Petrol
Biofuels made from the stubble left over from harvesting grains could replace around one fifth of the volume of petrol used in Australia.
The article, Grain Stubble Could Power a Greener Future, by Anna Salleh, at ABC Online, doesn’t explain that this depends on second generation bioethanol production becoming an economic reality; but we are hopeful that this lignocellulosic ethanol will become a reality one day.
Michael Dunlop, from CSIRO, is quoted explaining that based on 2001 figures, the 10 main grain crops of Australia produce about 65 million tonnes of stubble. Much of this needs to be left in the ground to protect soil, retain soil carbon and reduce evaporation, leaving just under 15 million tonnes of remaining stubble to be distributed in a way that is economically viable to collect.
“That would be equivalent to roughly 20 per cent of the volume of the petrol that we use,” Dr Dunlop said.
Old Growth Forest as Official Carbon Sink: A Note from Luke Walker
At the United Nations climate conference in Bali last year delegates agreed to include forest conservation in future discussions on a new global warming treaty. If adopted, REDD (Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation) means that the value of carbon in intact forests can be realized in carbon accounting.
Environmentalists see REDD as a useful vehicle for encouraging conservation of rainforests in the Congo, the Amazon and Asia.
This new resource has been termed “Green carbon” to be distinguished from grey carbon in fossil fuels, blue carbon in the oceans and atmosphere, and brown carbon in industrialized forests. There is of course really no real colour difference and the colour is merely a metaphor. [1]
The Green Carbon agenda received more scientific support last week with a major paper in Nature. Entitled ‘Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks’.[2] The paper reports that in forests between 15 and 800 years of age, net ecosystem productivity (the net carbon balance of the forest including soils) is usually positive and this demonstrates that old-growth forests can continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral.
The Kyoto Protocol (Marrakesh Accord) definition of a forest makes no distinction between a natural forest and a plantation.
Under the Kyoto Protocol definition, a “forest” is: A minimum area of land of 0.05 hectares with tree crown cover (or equivalent stocking level) of more than 10 per cent with trees with the potential to reach a minimum height of 2 metres at maturity in situ. It includes (i) young stands of natural regeneration; (ii) all plantations which have yet to reach a crown density of 10-30 per cent or tree height of 2-5 metres; (iii) areas normally forming part of the forest area which are temporarily unstocked as a result of human intervention such as harvesting or natural causes but which are expected to revert to forest.
International negotiations on REDD are still continuing and were high on the agenda at the Accra climate change meeting . However, is REDD all green? What will happen at Copenhagen in 2009? A number of international environmental groups raised alarm bells at the Accra meeting, claiming that allowing developed countries to purchase REDD credits would absolve them of responsibility for reducing industrial emissions at home. Some groups proposed setting firm targets for industrial emissions reductions, which could not be substituted by REDD credits. Others feared that a REDD mechanism would exclude and threaten indigenous communities and serve as an excuse for land grabbing, or endanger sovereignty in rainforest nations.
And, for Australian pastoralists, a key question is whether savanna woodland thickening be considered in the discussions, and if so – is it REDD or rangeland degradation?
Luke Walker
Brisbane, Australia
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[1] Alan Ashbarry has critiqued the concept of Green Carbon in a piece published at this blog on August 11, 2008, entitled: A Critical Review of ‘Green Carbon: The Role of Natural Forests in Carbon Storage’
[2] Old-growth Forests as Global Carbon Sinks, by Sebastiaan Luyssaert, E. -Detlef Schulze, Annett Börner, Alexander Knohl, Dominik Hessenmöller, Beverly E. Law, Philippe Ciais & John Grace, Nature 455, 213-215 (11 September 2008)
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.