Earth’s call for help.

NUSSU S.A.V.E is bringing us a talk titled: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change: Economics and Business. The description of the talk is as follows:

‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as it is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.”

- IPCC

Global warming and climate change is a very pressing and urgent issue facing humanity in the 21st century. Environmental problems are not only a matter for hard science to examine and resolve. They are inseparable from the dynamics of society, politics and the economy. Because of the complexity of environmental issues, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to address global warming and climate change.

 

Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change: Economics and Business

 

Speaker 1: Professor Parkash Chander, Head, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

 

Topic:       Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol

 

Speaker 2: Dr Scott Valentine, Researcher, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Asia-Pacific Centre for Environment Law

 

Topic:        When is Green Gold?

 

Chair:         Professor Daniel Chan, Associate Provost (Graduate Education), Office of Provost

Date & Time: Monday, 4th February 2008 @ 1800hrs - 2300hrs
Venue: University Hall Level 3 Tan Chin Tuan Wing, National University of Singapore
Price: Free. Dinner is provided.
Agenda: To raise awareness and understanding on climate change and to encourage students to take ownership in the fight against climate change.

Opening press release.

United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali poised for
political breakthrough

(Nusa Dua, 3 December 2007) – The United Nations Climate Change Conference - Bali, 2007 got underway Monday, poised for a breakthrough in international climate change negotiations.

The two-week conference, the thirteenth Conference of the 192 Parties to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the third meeting of the 176 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is expected to result in negotiations on a climate change deal for the period post-2012, the year the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

“The scientific debate has been conclusively laid to rest by the latest scientific findings
from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - climate change is unequivocal and accelerating,” said Indonesian Environment Minister and President of the conference, Rachmat Witoelar.

“Countries now have to agree on the agenda for the negotiations. This will cover the key
areas for the new climate change deal and what the organisational and procedural arrangements are to get to this result,” he said. President Witoelar clearly pointed out that the Bali conference will not deliver a fully negotiated climate change deal. “However, whilst the launch of negotiations and a clear deadline of 2009 to end the
negotiations would constitute a breakthrough, anything short of that would constitute a failure,” he added.

Areas which countries have already indicated a new deal is likely to cover are mitigation -
including reducing emissions from deforestation - adaptation, technology and financing.
In addition to the future climate change process, other important ongoing issues will be
under negotiation at Bali. These include adaptation to climate change, the management and operation of a fund for adaptation, technology transfer, reducing emissions from deforestation and issues relating to the international carbon market spawned by the Kyoto Protocol.

“It is essential that vulnerable developing countries are in a position to draw up plans to
prepare for climate change impacts,“ said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. “It is also essential that agreement is reached on how the Kyoto Protocol’s Adaptation Fund is managed so that the Fund can begin financing real adaptation projects,” he added.
Progress on technology is needed to reach agreement on a framework for technology cooperation for the next few years. The UNFCCC’s Expert Group on Technology Transfer (EGTT) facilitates access by developing countries to clean technologies.

A decision to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing countries is anticipated to
include an agreement on methodological work on measuring avoided emissions, pilot projects in developing countries and resources for developing countries to do this.
For the UNFCCC Executive Secretary, ongoing work to strengthen the Kyoto Protocol’s
clean development mechanism is indicative of how industrialised countries can continue to take the lead in reducing global emissions.

“Action in the North is needed to fuel clean growth in the South,” he said. “Whilst it is
clear that we will need to continue using fossil fuels for some time to come, we can’t afford
conventional technologies to continue to keep a grip on the world,” he added.

According to Yvo de Boer, items relating to the ongoing work under the Convention and
Protocol need to be speedily concluded at Bali in order to free up the negotiation capacity needed for the post-2012 process.

“Parties need to create the tool box that can reduce emissions cost-effectively and enable
economic growth, he said. “The final step of the two-year negotiating process will be to define targets and the type of legal instrument that is needed to make the new international deal work,” he added.

Source: UNFCCC

Virginia Key (FL) - Researchers investigating a proposed “biological pump” solution to curb global warming, one which would fertilize the oceans so that large algal blooms arise, suck carbon dioxide out of the air, and then die and sink to the ocean floor, thereby trapping the carbon, may be fundamentally flawed.  The scientists investigating the process say that the original proposal overlooks realities seen in nature.

Researchers wanted to test the theory of algal bloom deposition on the ocean’s floor, called carbon sequestering.  They began by looking at what nature already does.  During the summer months, large algal bloom growths occur naturally, but what they found was that during the summer months the least amount of carbon sinks to the bottom of any season, suggesting that the rest is recycled through normal processes and life.  This brings into question the potential benefit of the $100 billion ocean fertilization proposal.  If large algal bloom growths do not result in greater carbon deposition on the ocean’s floor, then what’s the benefit?

Lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said, “This discovery is very surprising.  If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks. More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss.  Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they ignore the natural processes revealed by this research.”

Source: tgdaily.com 

Creates renewable energy R&D group and supports breakthrough technologies

Mountain View, Calif. (November 27, 2007) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. The newly created initiative, known as RE<C, will focus initially on advanced solar thermal power, wind power technologies, enhanced geothermal systems and other potential breakthrough technologies. RE<C is hiring engineers and energy experts to lead its research and development work, which will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas. In 2008, Google expects to spend tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy. As part of its capital planning process, the company also anticipates investing hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns.

“We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products. “We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”

Page added, “There has been tremendous work already on renewable energy. Technologies have been developed that can mature into industries capable of providing electricity cheaper than coal. Solar thermal technology, for example, provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are also very interested in further developing other technologies that have potential to be cost-competitive and green. We are aware of several promising technologies, and believe there are many more out there.”

Page continued, “With talented technologists, great partners and significant investments, we hope to rapidly push forward. Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades.” (One gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco.)

“If we meet this goal,” said Page, “and large-scale renewable deployments are cheaper than coal, the world will have the option to meet a substantial portion of electricity needs from renewable sources and significantly reduce carbon emissions. We expect this would be a good business for us as well.”

Coal is the primary power source for many around the world, supplying 40% of the world’s electricity. The greenhouse gases it produces are one of our greatest environmental challenges. Making electricity produced from renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a key part of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.

“Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind,” added Sergey Brin, Google Co-founder and President of Technology.

Strategic Investments and Grants

“Lots of groups are doing great work trying to produce inexpensive renewable energy. We want to add something that moves these efforts toward even cheaper technologies a bit more quickly. Usual investment criteria may not deliver the super low-cost, clean, renewable energy soon enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” said Dr. Larry Brilliant, Executive Director of Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, “Google.org’s hope is that by funding research on promising technologies, investing in promising new companies, and doing a lot of R&D ourselves, we may help spark a green electricity revolution that will deliver breakthrough technologies priced lower than coal.”

Working with RE<C, Google.org will make strategic investments and grants that demonstrate a path toward producing energy at an unsubsidized cost below that of coal-fired power plants. Google will work with a variety of organizations in the renewable energy field, including companies, R&D laboratories, and universities. For example, Google.org is working with two companies that have promising scalable energy technologies:

• eSolar Inc., a Pasadena, CA-based company specializing in solar thermal power which replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with heat produced from solar energy. eSolar’s technology has great potential to produce utility-scale power cheaper than coal. For more information, please visit http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/esolar.pdf.
• Makani Power Inc., an Alameda, CA-based company developing high-altitude wind energy extraction technologies aimed at harnessing the most powerful wind resources. High-altitude wind energy has the potential to satisfy a significant portion of current global electricity needs. For more information on Makani Power, please visit http://www.google.com/corporate/green/energy/makani.pdf.

Ongoing Commitments

Today’s announcement represents just the latest steps in Google’s commitment to a clean and green energy future.
Google has been working hard on energy efficiency and making its business environmentally sustainable. Last spring the company announced its intention to be carbon neutral for 2007, and is on track to meet that goal. To this end, the company has taken concrete steps to reduce its carbon footprint and accelerate improvements in green technology, including:

• Developing cutting-edge energy efficiency technology to power and cool its data centers in the U.S. and around the world.
• Generating electricity for its Mountain View campus from a 1.6 Megawatt corporate solar panel installation, one of the largest in the U.S.
• Accelerating development and adoption of plug-in vehicles through the RechargeIT initiative, including a $10 million request for investment proposals (http://www.google.org/recharge/)
• Joining with other industry leaders in 2007 to form the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a consortium that advocates the design and use of more energy-efficient computers and servers (http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/).
• Working on policies that encourage renewable energy development and deployment, such as a U.S. Renewable Energy Standard, through Google.org.

For more information on Google’s commitment to a clean energy future, see http://www.google.com/renewable-energy

For broadcast-standard video and other multimedia files for the announcement, see http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/index.html

For more information on recruitment for RE<C, see http://www.google.com/jobs/energy/

Author’s notes:

Hopefully this trend will catch on to major tech. companies. We have to start looking for alternative means of getting energy for sustainable development. One that is cost efficient, environmentaly friendly and socially accepted. With the increased CO2 emissions through burning of conventional fossil fuels and the depletion of these fossil fuels, there is a demand for renewable energy source to support the lifestyle that we are having now. Coal is currently one of the cheapest renewable energy source right now (compared to the fluctuating cost of oil) and if a source of renewable energy can be produced at a cheaper price, it would be revolutionary!

Will Google start the ball rolling for others to follow suit? I sure hope so.

Global warming is the increase in average temperature of the Earth’s land and oceanic surface. Although global warming has been around for years, keeping the earth’s temperature above freezing levels, enhanced global warming is causing the earth to be much warmer than usual. Some scientists argue that global warming is a natural process due to natural events like variations in solar radiation that the earth receives. However, recent studies (with the help of advanced technologies) have shown that global warming is indeed caused by men’s actions. A recent study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that “increased global temperatures in the 20th century are caused by the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases.” Simply said, Men’s actions have increased the amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and Methane (CH4) which traps outgoing terrestrial radiation and causes an increase in the earth’s temperature. Though these gases have increased slightly in the atmosphere, their capability to trap heat is very significant. Global warming brings about both positive and negative impacts to our environment. It is the negative impacts that scientists are more worried about.

I will cover the negative impacts in other articles soon. Do stay tuned.