Climate Click

The effects of climate change could seriously damage the Chinese economy in the near future, according to the Chinese government’s latest research into the phenomenon. Both food and water supplies are threatened with critical shortages, while an increase in flooding and drought could ravage vulnerable areas.

The 710-page “Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change” was published last year, but only recently entered the public domain. Authored by teams of government-supervised scientists, the report builds on an initial assessment conducted in 2007 to provide evidence and forecasting which will shape, rather than set, government policy.

The booming industry that has put millions of new cars on China’s roads and sprouted legions of factories has helped propel China towards its current status as the world’s second-largest economy. However, it has also made China the world’s biggest producer of the harmful greenhouse gasses which now present a long-term threat to the impressive growth in prosperity.

According to the report, China’s carbon-dioxide emissions (a major “greenhouse gas”) will only begin to diminish after 2030, with no significant drop until around 2050. By then, if current global warming trends are allowed to continue unhindered, China’s grain output could fall by up to 20 percent. This, says the report, could potentially be offset to a degree by the fertilizing effects of more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, in addition to shrewd crop choices and improvements to farming practices.

However, by the end of the century, based on the results of various projections of greenhouse gas levels, China’s atmospheric temperature will increase by between 2.5 and 4.6 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average. It is the effect this warming will have on the country’s water which poses the greatest danger to society.

Penguins are in dire peril due to climate change and a resurgence of hungry whales, according to the results of a long-term study.

Back in the early 80s, about half of Adelie and chinstrap penguins on the West Antarctic Peninsula returned to their breeding grounds after hatching. That number has plummeted to just 10 percent today – the implication being that the AWOL penguins have starved to death.

Biologist Wayne Trivelpiece of the National Marine Fisheries Service, a researcher in the study who has been on the penguin case since the 1970s, thinks he knows what’s killing off the birds: a lack of krill. These tiny shrimplike crustaceans are a huge food source to young penguins, and without enough of them the creatures are essentially screwed.

Around half of businesses have said the government's carbon reduction commitment energy efficiency scheme (CRC) is an unneccessary burden whose league table will be meaningless, a survey suggests.

The survey, conducted for npower, also found that 41 per cent of firms felt the CRC should be postponed until the UK's financial recovery is more secure. A similar number want financial incentives reintroduced and through that the CRC is now effectively a tax.

npower claimed that a significant number of firms will also miss the next milestone of the scheme - the submission of the first footprint report at the end of July. 

The United Nations is compiling pledges by developing countries to fight climate change, from Mongolia's plan to set up solar power stations in the Gobi Desert to promises by the Central African Republic to cover a quarter of its territory with forests.

The pledges are voluntary, and many nations made them conditional of financial and technical help from the industrial world.

But the list  released Monday  helps satisfy demands by wealthy countries, which are obliged to cut carbon emissions under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, that all countries help fight global warming.

Last December rich countries approved plans for a Green Fund to administer billions of dollars for developing nations, but further action to define the fund has been delayed.

One group in Brattleboro England, has decided to spend Lent reducing their carbon footprint. The Brattleboro Area Interfaith Initiative is taking part in a carbon-fast, an idea that originated in England, spread to Boston and now Vermont, and is expanding its reach even more.

The New England Regional Environmental Ministries is sending daily emails to people in more than 30 states with tips on ways to cut their carbon emissions. And 5,600 people have already signed up on-line to take part.

VPR's Mitch Wertlieb speaks with Fred Taylor is an environmental studies professor and writer who lives in Dummerston. He helped get churches in the Brattleboro area involved in the project. 

Former US Vice President Al Gore said on Monday that Turkey could be a leader in its region in reversing the effects of global warming through the climate policies it has the option of endorsing.

Gore, who has become the most insistent voice sounding the “wake-up call” for governments around the world to preemptively contain global warming, said at a forum in İstanbul that Turkey has the ability to provide leadership and support for the changes in policy that the world needs. Gore’s remarks came at a seminar in İstanbul late Monday at the Leaders of Change Summit, where many international figures, academics, intellectuals and senior government officials convened to discuss ways to positively contribute to change.