New Zealand melted before our very eyes at Wednesday night’s launch of Hot Topic, but serious flooding of the Minter Ellison boardroom was avoided, thanks to carefully planned adaptive strategies (and two large blue buckets). Scott Gallacher from Minter Ellison got things moving, followed by AUT vice chancellor Derek McCormack, who welcomed the arrival of AUT Media’s first book. I did my mini-Al Gore presentation – just the one slide, showing water plunging down a moulin in Greenland – and then David Cunliffe, who holds ministerial portfolios for Immigration, Communications, Information Technology and Associate Economic Development (standing in at short notice for David Parker, the climate change minister), made it clear to all that the government intended to take the issue very seriously. Then it was down to the real business of assessing the carbon neutral status of Grove Mill‘s products. A good night was had by all, including at least one freeloader, who has subsequently offered the contents of his/her “goody bag
Tag: ice
Books at last
The rural postie delivered my first copies of Hot Topic this morning. After months of staring at a computer screen and agonising over proofs, it’s nice to see the thing realised as ink on paper. I’m biased, but I think it looks pretty damn good. The team at HB Media (for AUT Media) have done a great job – the embossing and varnishing of the melting NZ on the cover looks lickable (as they say). Meanwhile, the media schedule for next week’s launch is filling up. We have a launch event at sponsor Minter Ellison in Auckland on Wednesday evening, with special guest David Parker, the climate change minister. I’m told there will be an ice sculpture, which will presumably melt and flood the room. Can’t wait…
On thin ice
Glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula are thinning and speeding up, according to new research by the British Antarctic Survey. They tracked 300 glaciers using aerial and satellite imagery, and report that 87% are retreating. Ice flow has speeded up by 12% from 1993 to 2003. From the BAS press release:
These observations – that echo recent findings from coastal Greenland – indicate that the cause is melting of the lower glaciers, which flow directly into the sea. As they thin, the buoyancy of the ice can lift the glaciers off their rock beds, allowing them to slide faster.
BBC coverage here.
At the other end of the planet, Reuters has been blogging (here and here) the activities of Koni Steffen of the University of Colorado and Jay Zwally from NASA as they make their annual visit to the Swiss Camp research post high on the Greenland ice sheet. Asked if he thought the IPPC’s fourth report underestimated future sea level increase, Steffen did not pull any punches:
I think it definitely underestimated. We complained heavily before it was released and that’s why they added a few lines that if there is a dynamic response of ice sheets the upper uncertainty might be higher. That tells you that the current IPCC report only takes into account the current understanding. We can model melt but we cannot model the dynamics.
And that’s why I keep covering this stuff…
Meanwhile, two Belgian explorers have been walking across the Arctic from Siberia to Greenland, taking snow measurements to help calibrate a new ESA satellite. ESA were able to help them to avoid early sea ice break-up to the northwest of Greenland in the Lincoln Sea. Story here, with some very cool animated pix of sea ice. For a look at the ice today, go to the NSIDC’s sea ice snapshot. Considerable thinning north of Alaska, where last year there was an unusual polynya. Cryospshere Today shows the same thing.
Aussie carbon trading: big bikkies for grandad?
John Howard’s Task Group on Emissions Trading has produced its report [PDF]. It concludes that an emissions trading regime is the way forward for Australia, but fails to suggest targets. It’s a very useful overview of how carbon trading mechanisms might be made to work, but has clearly been hamstrung by the current political realities in Australia. It remains to be seen how John Howard, with his noted aversion to targets for greenhouse gas reductions will handle setting up a trading scheme if re-elected – or how he will be able to ignore section 7.2.1.
Adopting a credible long-term aspirational goal for national emissions reduction is critical. It sets the framework for Australia’s overall abatement efforts. Such a goal could be described in terms of the percentage reduction in emissions from a particular point in time, or in terms of the maximum number of tonnes of CO2-e that Australia is aiming to emit by a particular year.
Some Aussie press coverage here and here. Science Alert commentary here. The Australian Stock Exchange is slavering at the bit.
The scope for handouts to industry through grandfathering, as has effectively happened in Europe, is huge. BBC Radio 4’s File On Four claims that the EU’s carbon trading scheme has increased electricity bills, given a windfall to power companies and failed to cut greenhouse gases:
Power generators received their allowances free of charge but were allowed to reflect the value of those in increased prices to customers, as if the companies had actually had to buy the allowances. Energywatch believes this increased electricity bills by about 7% in 2005. And according to one government estimate, that delivered windfall profits of up to £1.3bn to the generators in that year – higher than environmental campaigners had claimed last year.
No Right Turn has an interesting post on how this problem might be addressed in NZ, warning that badly set up emissions trading schemes amount to taxpayer handouts to emitters.
Greenland: ice, water and diamonds
More news of melting ice from the top of the world. According to Marc Tedesco, lead author of a paper in the May 29 issue of the American Geophysical Union’s Eos:
“The sensors detected that snowmelt occurred more than 10 days longer than the average over certain areas of Greenland in 2006