Blame Canada  

It seems Australians and Americans aren't the only people ashamed about their government's stalling efforts on global warming action - Canada's head fossil is now humiliating his citizens too.

Canada has embarrassed itself terribly at the UN's global warming conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Conservative environment Minister Rona Ambrose used the occasion as an opportunity to take a piss at the previous Liberal government and its Kyoto failings instead of outlining any new policy platform or vision for the future.

Ambrose's speech was considered highly inappropriate. A number of environmentalists and opposition parties were openly shocked by her partisan attack. Matthew Bramley, a climate change policy analyst at the Pembina Institute, remarked that "It was like a speech at the House of Commons."

What's particularly upsetting is that Canada is now regarded, quite justifiably, as one of the world's worst contributors to anthropogenic global warming. Just days before Ambrose's speech Canada was given the "Fossil of the Day" prize -- an award given out by environmentalists to nations they say have delayed, obstructed or stalled the negotiations. After yesterday's shameful showing, Canada picked up its second Fossil award. Activist Maia Green said Canada had won again for, among others things, "misleading" the world, "repudiating" the Kyoto Protocol and "flagrantly ... washing its political laundry on the international stage".

Al Gore is in town at the moment training his truth bigade,

IT IS going to be a very long weekend for Felix Riebl.

Over the next three days Riebl, a lead singer with the Melbourne band the Cat Empire, will be lucky to snatch a few hours' sleep between late-night gigs and days spent in intensive training to become one of Australia's first "climate messengers".

The former US vice-president Al Gore is running his first climate workshop outside the US in Sydney. The Australian Conservation Foundation chose 85 Australians from 1700 applications to learn how to spread Mr Gore's message, based on the global warming slide show that featured in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

The head of the IMF has warned that global warming could "devastate" the Australian economy.

Climate change could have a devastating effect on the Australian economy, if the projections of the Stern report on global warming were true, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned today.

IMF managing director Rodrigo de Rato said the report on the economic impact of climate change, by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern released in the UK recently, was alarming.

"The link between greenhouse gas emissions and changes in global temperature is now well-established," Mr de Rato said as a two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the world's 20 largest economies (G20) got underway in Melbourne today. "It is a matter of fact rather than of faith. The consequences of global warming are less certain, but they are expected to be serious."

The Stern report said climate change could cut gross domestic product growth by five to 20 per cent in many countries.

The Herald has a report on the Nairobi global warming conference and the fastest growing market in the world - hot air.

Mr Curnow, 35, a senior associate with the law firm Baker & McKenzie, is like any corporate lawyer advising on big investments - with one exception. The market his clients are investing in is made of air.

The German Government might order a steel company to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent to meet the country's target for lower emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. It is costly for the company to redesign its European refineries to produce less carbon dioxide. So it invests instead in a Chinese company that is ready to switch to cleaner energy but cannot, or does not want to, meet the higher cost of doing so. In return for finance and access to technology the Chinese company hands over the emissions credits it has created by using greener power. The German firm then uses the credits to reduce its emissions.

It is a weird trade. It is also part of what may be the world's fastest-growing financial market.

The carbon market is worth $US22 billion ($29 billion), twice as much as a year ago. A year before that it did not exist. It is also helping Europe meet its Kyoto targets, but to the Prime Minister, John Howard, it was mainly hot air - until this week.

Mr Howard argued, reportedly against the advice of the Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, that Australia did not yet need an emissions trading scheme. He said that the European scheme, which forms the basis of the global market, was flawed. But Mr Curnow believes that by delaying, Mr Howard robbed Australian firms of an incentive to reduce their emissions and gain invaluable expertise in a new market.

James Cameron, the vice-chairman of London's Climate Change Capital, the world's largest carbon bank, with $US1 billion in carbon funds, agrees. "I regularly meet people from the top end of Australian business," Mr Cameron said. "They say they are interested but feel like they can hang on a bit longer. They can't. It is going to be a massive marketplace. We are going to put a value on carbon in everything we do."

Mark Braund notes in The Guardian that concerted international effort is needed if global warming is top be addressed successfully - and that requires a international movement that isn't associated with any particular party or ideology.

George Monbiot is right on the button with his 10-point action plan, but when he suggests that "if we want this to happen, we can make it happen," he appears to lack any sense of the complex dynamics of both domestic politics and global economics.

Monbiot suggests that if, 60-odd years ago, we could transform our economies for war production in a matter of months, then the threat of global warming should provoke a similar response now. It will not. Politicians everywhere lack the courage and wisdom to lead on this key moral issue. But then they largely reflect the apathy and ostrich-like behaviour of the population at large. Despite blanket media coverage this week, it remains the case that too few citizens are sufficiently aware or concerned to unleash a popular movement to sweep the globe and drive politicians from their lethargy.

Jeremy Seabrook's romantic call for an energising myth to inspire collective action sounds great, but that won't happen either. There's only one myth worth clinging to, the myth that democracy provides a mechanism through which citizens can act in concert to force change through the ballot box. Unfortunately, in its current form, democracy is unlikely to help much because its reforming potential has been hamstrung by the process of economic globalisation. While the nation state remains the principal vehicle for political decision-making, citizens of all nation states are now participants in, and reliant upon a single global economy.

In respect of climate change and many other pressing global issues (poverty, trade, fisheries) it's the separation of democracy from the economy which leaves politicians impotent and electorates frustrated. Without an effective global forum for democratic decision-making, little progress can be made towards the adoption of effective policies to tackle global warming. National democracies are largely impotent in the face of a global economy which, by its very nature, can neither respond or adapt to the threat of climate change without a global regulatory framework to guide it. As Calestous Juma wrote, "cooperation at international level is a must". If the only way to tackle climate change is through a concerted, coordinated international effort, then a way must be found.

It's not surprising that the world (or at least our small part of it) only woke up to the enormity of the problem when a renowned and respected economist framed the debate in terms of the future economic costs of inaction. It's ironic, therefore, that the principal obstacle to nation states taking unilateral action to reduce carbon emissions is fear of the economic consequences of so doing.

Given current global economic arrangements, the problem of first-mover disadvantage is the main obstacle to an adequate international response. If the UK was to follow Monbiot's 10-point plan, we might be entitled to feel very pleased with ourselves but as things stand it would be a disaster for the UK economy. We need a way of protecting countries from the economic disadvantage that would inevitably follow from unilateral action. Logic suggests that the only way to do this is to find a mechanism through which all nations can willingly implement the necessary policies simultaneously.

"What hope of that?" I hear you sigh. Well, for the last eight years a little-known and even less-well reported campaigning group, the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) has been working to precisely this end. What's more, it's come up with an ingenious plan to make it happen.

If we are to succeed in tackling climate change, it will be as a consequence of the activism of small numbers of people in many countries. It may not sound very "democratic" but democracy generally works best at promoting progressive social change when a few concerned individuals force such change through the judicious use of whatever social institutions are available to them. The simultaneous policy initiative (SP) provides a mechanism to make this possible on a global scale.

Siberia is still basking in a late Autumn heatwave.

SIBERIA is basking in its warmest November for 70 years, putting its permafrost, wildlife and even the human population at risk.

Russian scientists warned on Thursday that southern Siberia, already known as one of the fastest warming regions on the planet, is facing grave consequences as a result of the unnaturally temperate start to its typically harsh winter.

November is normally a month when silence swathes the vast evergreen forests as migratory birds depart for warmer climes and resident mammals settle down to hibernate.

This year, though, the forests are alive with uneasy sound. Bears and badgers have yet to hibernate, while hares, whose coats have changed from grey to white in anticipation of snow, have become easy prey. Even the plants seem confused. For the first time in memory, dandelions and raspberries have bloomed in several parts.

Some areas are recording highs of 12 degrees, with temperatures across southern Siberia seven to 10 degrees warmer than normal.

A 984,000-square-kilometre expanse of permafrost has started to melt, releasing into the atmosphere large quantities of methane and carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

It seems that the ice caps on Antarctica and Greenland are linked via ocean currents (via Coby at A Few Things Ill Considered).

Greenland and Antarctica are at opposite ends of the planet but their climate systems appear to be linked by a remarkable ocean current, according to a study appearing Thursday. The paper, coincidentally published as a key UN conference on climate change unfolds in Nairobi, also sheds light on man-made climate change, for it implies that Antarctica's ice could eventually start to melt because of localised warming in the far North Atlantic.

The evidence comes from a 2,500-metre (8,125-feet-) deep ice core, drilled in blood-freezing chill by European scientists at Dronning Maud Land, on the part of Antarctica that faces the South Atlantic.

With its compacted layers of ice and telltale concentrations of methane in trapped air bubbles, the core yields a compelling picture of snowfall and atmospheric temperatures going back 150,000 years.

Even better than that, it can be matched with cores of similar amplitude drilled in the Greenland icesheet. Put together, the cores provide the first solid evidence to back a theory that millennial scale climate changes that have unfolded in the far north and south of the Atlantic are not isolated, local events, but linked.

The glacial climate in the Northern Atlantic can swing extraordinarily rapidly, with temperatures rising by between eight and 16 C (14.4-28.8 F) within the space of a few decades at the end of each Ice Age and falling back, albeit more slowly, when the next Ice Age beckons.

Coby's humongous post included a good Wade Davis quote:

"We are living in the midst of an ecological catastrophe every bit as tragic as that of the slaughter of the buffalo and the passenger pigeon. Wherever one looks there are governmental policies that are equally blind, economic rationales equally compelling. All memory is convulsed in an upheaval of violence. There is a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame and reinventing the poetry of diversity is the most important challenge of our time."

-Wade Davis in The Cloud Leopard

MonkeyGrinder notes that Daniel Yergin and CERA can declare "mission accomplished" along with another infallible predictor of events.

Thanks to tireless editors at the Energy Bulletin for covering the vocal and pointed criticism of the CERA report.

However, Daniel Yergin and company win. Not on points. See the above rendering of the CERA report by a journalist who knows nothing about energy short yet clearly pines for something akin to Yergin's Pulitzer. For those new to the topic, every item highlighted in bold in the above article is factually inaccurate. Most laughably so.

CERA has set up camp in the blighted media landscape right next to the global warming deniers, (lately long of tooth and coughing up blood.) They staked their position. A left-right, a liberal media-fox news, a yin-yang.

Every time Peak Oil shows up now in the mainstream press, we'll get a quote from "Investment Banker" Simmons and "Pulitzer Winner" Yergin.

Fair and Balanced.

Mission accomplished, CERA.

Meanwhile it is an open question whether our polygot civilization has less time to deal with global warming, or the effects of energy depletion. I expect a photo finish.

Jim at The Energy Blog has some comments on the merits of "net metering" and its ability to encourage distributed energy generation.

The Network for New Energy Choices (NNEC) report "Freeing the Grid,” is the first report ever to rank and grade the effectiveness of 34 state programs designed to help homeowners and small businesses generate their own distributed energy and sell the excess back to the central transmission grid. These ‘net metering’ programs have been described as having the most potential of any policy tool at any level of government to “green” American electricity sources.

“Every homeowner and every small business is a potential source of reliable, renewable electricity for their community,” noted NNEC Executive Director Chris Cooper. “Smart utilities realize that we will have to tap all of these small sources to meet future demand.”

While I applaud NNEC's efforts to encourage distributed energy, it is only part of the answer to our energy problem. I do not agree that net metering has "the most potential of any policy tool at any level of government to “green” American electricity sources."

Energy conservation through the encouragement of plug-in hybrid vehicles and energy efficient homes using high efficiency lighting (compact fluorescent lights) and higher insulation standards for new homes could have a greater effect in a shorter time period. Net metering and higher insulation standards need legislation to require them, which takes time and is why organizations like NNEC are needed. Government research money for batteries and purchase, not subsidies, of hybrid and plug-in vehicles is perhaps the best use of taxpayer dollars in the field of energy.

Technology Review has another bullish article on the potential of cellulosic ethanol - "Making ethanol from wood chips".

Experimental methods for converting wood chips and grass into ethanol will soon be tested at production scale. Mascoma Corporation, based in Cambridge, MA, is building demonstration facilities that will have the capacity to produce about one-half to two million gallons of ethanol a year from waste biomass. The startup recently received $30 million in venture-capital money, which is fueling its scale-up plans.

While Mascoma has not achieved its ultimate goal of using a single genetically engineered organism to convert wood chips and other cellulosic raw materials into ethanol, the company has developed genetically modified bacteria that can speed up part of the process of producing ethanol. The optimized process shows enough promise to invest in scaling up the technology, says Colin South, Mascoma's president.

Corn grain, the current source of ethanol in the United States, requires large amounts of land and energy to produce. This, along with the demand for corn as food, limits the total amount of ethanol that can be produced from corn to about 15 billion gallons a year--about three times what is currently produced. If the fuel is to supplant a sizable fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed each year in the United States, ethanol producers will need to turn to biomass such as wood chips and switchgrass. These resources are cheaper and potentially much more abundant, and they can be converted to ethanol much more efficiently than corn can because they require less energy to grow (see "Redesigning Life to Make Ethanol").

Indeed, ethanol from such sources could replace "a very large fraction" of the gasoline currently used for vehicles, says Gregory Stephanopoulos, professor of chemical engineering at MIT. He says some experts estimate that with gains in efficiency and high yields of ethanol, all the gasoline for transportation could be replaced; the most conservative estimates say that about 20 percent could be replaced. Hoping to capitalize on this potential, a handful of companies--including Celunol, in Dedham, MA; Iogen, in Ottawa, Canada, which has an existing demonstration scale plant and plans to scale up to commercial production; and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Golden, CO--are working to develop better technology for making cellulosic ethanol.

Despite its potential, cellulosic ethanol is expensive to make today. It requires more costly equipment and more processing steps than does making ethanol from corn grain.

Technology Review also has a brief post on what Blaine Brownell calls "Power Glass".

The next building material to generate solar power may be windows. In a dye-sensitized solar cell, dye molecules attached to nanoscale titania particles are held between two panes of glass; the dye absorbs light and releases electrons, which are harvested by the ­titania. The basic concept was invented 15 years ago by Michaël ­Grätzel, chemistry professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Now, the technology is in limited production by Konarka, a company based in ­Lowell, MA, and will soon be more widely available. "The normal configuration has glass on both sides and can be made to look like a colored glass," Grätzel says. "This could be used as a power-producing window or skylights or building facades. The wall or window itself is photovoltaically active." This could give a whole new meaning to the term "power windows."

I don't even need to go to a conspiracy theory site for tinfoil these days - the Sydney Morning Herald's (mostly front page) coverage of the local political scene in NSW is starting to remind me of Rigorous Intuition ruminating on its most unpleasant theme of all.

FROM the age of six to his late teens he was abused by hundreds of men, thousands of times. Then he, too, became an abuser of young boys and was jailed for it.

Since then, the man - now 46, and dubbed W26 by the Wood royal commission - has been providing information to many people, among them the Liberal senator Bill Heffernan.

This week Senator Heffernan moved to put that information to political use, bringing together W26 and the NSW Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam. The informant made allegations about the Attorney-General, Bob Debus - and both sides of politics are now embroiled in the firestorm incited by those claims.

On Wednesday morning W26 met several senior staff members from Mr Debnam's office. Within hours of that meeting the Liberal leader was using information provided by W26 to ask the Premier, Morris Iemma, whether a minister other than Milton Orkopoulos was the "subject of investigation by a law enforcement authority?"

According to W26, this was despite his plea to tread carefully and not to rush into things. If he did, Mr Debnam could find himself in the same position as the Labor MP Franca Arena.

W26 told the Herald that he had warned the Liberals: "You don't want to die the same political death. Just be careful."

W26 had been a crucial informant for Mrs Arena, whose career was ruined by her parliamentary allegations of a criminal conspiracy among politicians and judges to protect pedophiles.