The Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions, and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude. An international research team studied ancient plants from Iceland and Canada, and sediments carried by glaciers. They say a series of eruptions just before 1300 lowered Arctic temperatures enough for ice sheets to expand. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they say this would have kept the Earth cool for centuries. The exact definition of the Little Ice Age is disputed. While many studies suggest temperatures fell globally in the 1500s, others suggest the Arctic and sub-Arctic began cooling several centuries previously. The global dip in temperatures was less than 1C, but parts of Europe cooled more, particularly in winter, with the River Thames in London iced thickly enough to be traversable on foot. What caused it has been uncertain.

The new study, led by Gifford Miller at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, links back to a series of four explosive volcanic eruptions between about 1250 and 1300 in the tropics, which would have blasted huge clouds of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere. These tiny aerosol particles are known to cool the globe by reflecting solar energy back into space. “This is the first time that anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age,” said Dr Miller. “We have also provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time.”

The scientists studied several sites in north-eastern Canada and in Iceland where small icecaps have expanded and contracted over the centuries. When the ice spreads, plants underneath are killed and “entombed” in the ice. Carbon-dating can determine how long ago this happened. So the plants provide a record of the icecaps’ sizes at various times – and therefore, indirectly, of the local temperature. An additional site at Hvitarvatn in Iceland yielded records of how much sediment was carried by a glacier in different decades, indicating changes in its thickness. Putting these records together showed that cooling began fairly abruptly at some point between 1250 and 1300. Temperatures fell another notch between 1430 and 1455. The first of these periods saw four large volcanic eruptions beginning in 1256, probably from the tropics sources, although the exact locations have not been determined.
The later period incorporated the major Kuwae eruption in Vanuatu.

Aerosols from volcanic eruptions usually cool the climate for just a few years. When the researchers plugged in the sequence of eruptions into a computer model of climate, they found that the short but intense burst of cooling was enough to initiate growth of summer ice sheets around the Arctic Ocean, as well as glaciers. The extra ice in turn reflected more solar radiation back into space, and weakened the Atlantic ocean circulation commonly known as the Gulf Stream. “It’s easy to calculate how much colder you could get with volcanoes; but that has no permanence, the skies soon clear,” Dr Miller told BBC News. “And it was climate modelling that showed how sea ice exports into the North Atlantic set up this self-sustaining feedback process, and that’s how a perturbation of decades can result in a climate shift of centuries.” Analysis of the later phase of the Little Ice Age also suggests that changes in the Sun’s output, particularly in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, would also have contributed cooling.

From the BBC.

Climate change this century poses both risks and opportunities, according to the first comprehensive government assessment of its type. The report warns that flooding, heatwaves and water shortages could become more likely. But benefits could include new shipping lanes through the Arctic, fewer cold-related deaths in winter and higher crop yields.

The findings come in the Climate Change Risk Assessment. This 2,000-page document has been produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It forms part of the government’s strategy for coping with global warming. The research was carried out over the past three years and involved studying the possible impacts in 11 key areas including agriculture, flooding and transport. The assessments rely on multiple scenarios based on computer modelling of the future climate. The authors admit that there are large uncertainties leading to a wide range of possible results.

The relatively small size of the UK means that modelling at a regional and local level remains a serious challenge. A further limitation is that the studies share the assumption that no sectors of the economy will make any attempt to adapt to future conditions. This is designed to provide a “baseline” for the assessment so that it is easier to demonstrate the risks unless action is taken. However it is acknowledged that many bodies are already responding in different ways.

Headlines for possible negative outcomes, assuming nothing is done in preparation, include:

Hotter summers leading to between 580-5900 deaths above the average per year by the 2050s.
Water shortages in the north, south and east of England, especially the Thames Valley area by the 2080s.
Increased damage from flooding could cost between £2.1bn-£12bn by the 2080s.

The report’s positive findings include:

The melting of Arctic sea ice opening shorter shipping routes to Asia.
Milder winters leading to 3,900-24,000 fewer premature deaths by the 2050s, significantly more than those forecast to die as a result of hot weather.
Wheat yields to increase by 40-140% and sugar beet yields by 20-70% because of longer growing seasons by the 2050s.

Such widely-varied outcomes may lead to the criticism that the results are too vague to be useful for policy makers, businesses and local authorities. All the scenarios rely on computer models of the future climate and therefore inherently involve uncertainties. The report itself acknowledges that the sea-level in London could rise later this century by anything between 30cm and 190cm. “We do not know,” the document says, “how fast greenhouse gas emissions will rise, how great the cooling effects are of other atmospheric pollutants or how quickly the ice caps may melt.”
One of those involved in the report, defending the reliance on models, told me: “They’re the best we’ve got, they’re all we’ve got.”

One aim of the work is to raise awareness of the scale of possible changes and to encourage key organisations to plan ahead. Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman said of the report: “It shows what life could be like if we stopped our preparations now, and the consequences such a decision would mean for our economic stability.”

From the BBC

The government has failed in an appeal against a decision which blocked its attempts to reduce solar subsidies.

The High Court case involved the government’s move to halve the payments made to households with solar panels, which it says are unsustainable.

Solar businesses and campaigners had warned thousands of jobs could be lost as a result of the move.

Under the feed-in tariffs programme, people in Britain with solar panels are paid for the electricity they generate.

The decision means the current tariff of just over 43p is likely to remain in place until 3 March.

The new tariff of 21p per kilowatt-hour, down from the current 43p, had been expected to come into effect from 1 April.

But in October, the government said it would be paid to anyone who installed their solar panels after 12 December, sparking anger from environmental groups and installers.

The tariff for surplus electricity exported to the national grid remains 3.1p per kilowatt-hour.

The government announced a consultation on the proposals, which closed on 23 December. The High Court ruled that changing the tariffs before the end of an official consultation period was “legally flawed”.

A DECC spokesperson said: “The Court of Appeal has upheld the High Court ruling on FITs. We are now considering our options.”

From the BBC

Claims that the costs of wind farms and other low-carbon technology will lead to sharp rises in fuel bills are wrong, government advisers say.

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) says increases in bills over the past few years have been largely due to higher wholesale gas costs.

Members said their “best estimate” was that green policies would add £110 to bills per household in 2020.

It emerged recently that an estimated 1.5m people are in fuel debt in the UK.

The combined gas and electricity bill for typical households could go up from £1,060 in 2010 to £1,250 in 2020, according to analysis by the committee.

But further energy efficiency measures – such as loft and wall cavity insulation – could see the projected 2020 bill fall to £1,085 per household, it said.

CCC chief executive David Kennedy said the committee had analysed the impact of investing in technology including offshore and onshore wind, nuclear and carbon capture and storage.

Mr Kennedy said the cost of this investment was “significantly” outweighed by the benefits – including a reduced reliance on imported fossil fuels.

Looking back, the CCC said an analysis of the average dual fuel energy bills showed an increase of £455 over the six years 2004 to 2010.

However, 80% of this rise was unrelated to low-carbon measures and the biggest contributor was rising gas prices, which added around £290 to bills.

Mr Kennedy said that some people had claimed that energy bills were “through the roof at the moment” because of investment in green energy – but the committee’s analysis showed this “clearly” was not the case.

A second claim that investment in low-carbon technology over the next decade would drive bills to “astronomical levels” was also untrue, he said.

CCC chairman Lord Adair Turner said: “Over the next decade, we anticipate a rise of around £100 in the average bill as a result of investment in low-carbon power capacity, which will benefit the UK in the long run.”
Fuel poverty

The committee’s analysis comes against a background of increased concern about rising fuel costs.

In November it was revealed that the number of people with energy debts had risen by a quarter for electricity and a fifth for gas.

Campaign group Consumer Focus and charity Citizen’s Advice say energy prices increased by seven per cent last winter and warn that further rises of 14% this winter could push more people into debt.

An independent report by Professor John Hills published in October found that 2,700 people died each year from problems linked to fuel poverty such as respiratory or cardiovascular disease.

And government figures released over the summer suggested that more than a fifth of all households in the UK in 2009 were affected by fuel poverty – meaning they spend more than 10% of their income keeping warm.

Professor Hills called for a new definition of fuel poverty, which focuses on people with low incomes driven into poverty by high fuel bills.

Credit: BBC

Half of multinational companies plan to select suppliers based on carbon performance, according to a study by Carbon Trust Advisory.

The research says that 29% of suppliers are likely to lose their places on green supply chains if they do not have adequate performance records on carbon. The research also finds that 58% of multinationals will in the future pay a premium for low carbon suppliers to reduce their overall corporate carbon footprints.

In the U.K., 56% of multinationals said that in the future they expect to drop suppliers based upon low carbon performance, compared to just 28% in the U.S.

The research consisted of 100 interviews carried out by Dynamic Markets. Respondents were from the senior manager level or above, working for companies with at least 1,000 employees and with operations, subsidiaries, or investments in more than two countries.

The respondents highlighted a number of challenges to reducing carbon in the supply chain, including:

difficulty in demonstrating the financial business case (34%)
sustainability considerations being trumped by cost considerations (32%)
difficulty in getting suppliers to act (29%)

The research found that 40% of multinationals are addressing their indirect carbon emissions, compared to 93% for direct emissions. Among the companies not addressing supply chain emissions, 42% said they would do so within the next year, and another 42% within the next two to three years.

BT says it was one of the first companies in the U.K. to introduce a climate change procurement standard, in March. The company spends about £12bn ($ ) a year with 16,700 suppliers.

Next month Marshalls Plc, a supplier of hard landscaping, will be hosting a United Nations Global Compact Supplier event to educate first-tier suppliers on its approach to environmental issues.

In October, the GHG Protocol, a coalition led by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, will unveil the Corporate Value Chain (scope 3) Standard and the Product Lifecycle Standard, in an effort to provide internationally agreed-upon approaches for companies to measure and report their supply chain and lifecycle emissions.

In the Carbon Trust report, 74% of U.K. respondents said shareholder pressure would be a key driver for them in tackling carbon emissions, compared to just 24% in the U.S.

Last week shareholder advocacy group Ceres called on investors to adopt stronger proxy voting guidelines for environmental and social issues. Ceres published what it called 75 leading examples of sustainability-focused proxy voting guidelines.

Credit: Environmental Leader

We are pleased to announce that for the third year running, The Original Carbon Co. has been awarded Ethical Accreditation by the Ethical Company Organisation, which certifies that the Company or Brand in question has scored highly in an overall analysis of its Corporate Social Responsibility record.

The application process takes 6 weeks and involves ECO research teams analysing our record on up to 15 specific criteria under the 3 general headings of Environment, Animals and People. They search for criticisms within several thousand documents from NGO’S, Campaign Groups and Court Reports. Ethical Accreditation screening includes the applicant company and its ultimate holding company. The research is repeated every 12 months to ensure that our Ethical Accreditation status remains up to date.

(Reuters) – Climate negotiators agreed a pact on Sunday that would for the first time force all the biggest polluters to take action on greenhouse gas emissions, but critics said the action plan was not aggressive enough to slow the pace of global warming.

The package of accords extended the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts, agreed the format of a fund to help poor countries tackle climate change and mapped out a path to a legally binding agreement on emissions reductions.

But many small island states and developing nations at risk of being swamped by rising sea levels and extreme weather said the deal marked the lowest common denominator possible and lacked the ambition needed to ensure their survival.

Agreement on the package, reached in the early hours of Sunday, avoided a collapse of the talks and spared the blushes of host South Africa, whose stewardship of the two weeks of often fractious negotiations came under fire from rich and poor nations.

“We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come,” said South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who chaired the talks.

“We have made history,” she said, bringing the hammer down on Durban conference, the longest in two decades of U.N. climate negotiations.

Delegates agreed to start work next year on a new legally binding treaty to cut greenhouse gases to be decided by 2015 and to come into force by 2020.

The process for doing so, called the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, would “develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force” that would be applicable under the U.N. climate convention.

That phrasing, agreed at a last-ditch huddle in the conference centre between the European Union, India, China and the United States, was used by all parties to claim victory.

Britain’s Energy and Climate Secretary Chris Huhne said the result was “a great success for European diplomacy.”

“We’ve managed to bring the major emitters like the U.S., India and China into a roadmap which will secure an overarching global deal,” he said.

U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said Washington was satisfied with the outcome: “We got the kind of symmetry that we had been focused on since the beginning of the Obama administration. This had all the elements that we were looking for.”

Yet U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres acknowledged the final wording on the legal form a future deal was ambiguous: “What that means has yet to be decided.”

A U.N. spokesman said the final texts might not all be publicly available for some days.

Environmentalists said governments wasted valuable time by focusing on a handful of specific words in the negotiating text, and failed to raise emissions cuts to a level high enough to reduce global warming.

Sunday’s deal follows years of failed attempts to impose legally-binding, international cuts on emerging giants, such as China and India, as well as rich nations like the United States.

The developed world had already accepted formal targets under a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of next year, although Washington never ratified its commitment.

Sunday’s deal extends Kyoto until the end of 2017, ensuring there is no gap between commitment periods, but EU delegates said lawyers would have to reconcile those dates with existing EU legislation.

LEAST-BAD OPTION

India’s Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who gave an impassioned speech to the conference denouncing what she said was unfair pressure on Delhi to compromise, said her country had only reluctantly agreed to the accord.

“We’ve had very intense discussions. We were not happy with reopening the text but in the spirit of flexibility and accommodation shown by all, we have shown our flexibility… we agree to adopt it,” she said.

Small island states in the frontline of climate change, said they had gone along with a deal but only because a collapse of the talks was of no help to their vulnerable nations.

“I would have wanted to get more, but at least we have something to work with. All is not lost yet,” said Selwin Hart, chief negotiator on finance for the coalition of small states.

Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, head of the Africa Group, added: “It’s a middle ground, we meet mid-way. Of course we are not completely happy about the outcome, it lacks balance, but we believe it is starting to go into the right direction.”

U.N. reports released in the last month warned delays on a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions will make it harder to keep the average rise to within 2 degrees Celsius over the next century.

“It’s certainly not the deal the planet needs — such a deal would have delivered much greater ambition on both emissions reductions and finance,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Producing a new treaty by 2015 that is both ambitious and fair will take a mix tough bargaining and a more collaborative spirit than we saw in the Durban conference centre these past two weeks.”

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by half in the last 20 years, giving the world much less chance of avoiding dangerous climate change, according to new data.

The research was published as lead negotiators were arriving at the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa, where prospects of a new global treaty on climate change appeared to have stalled, with deep divisions between developed and developing countries.

Last year, emissions from burning fossil fuels rose by 5.9%, bringing the total rise since 1990, the baseline year for calculating emissions under the Kyoto protocol, to 49%, an average rate of increase of about 3.1% a year.

Prof Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, and an author of the research, said the data showed that little had been achieved in the past two decades in reducing the risks from climate change.

“There have been efforts to use more renewable energy and improve energy efficiency but what this shows is that so far, the effects have been marginal,” she said. “We need to do something about the 80% of energy that still comes from burning fossil fuels.”

She said the problem was urgent, as the chances of holding global temperature rises to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels (which scientists regard as the limit of safety) beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible, were dependent on emissions peaking by 2020 at the latest.

Governments meeting in Durban this week are focusing on a new treaty that, if it can be achieved, would not come into force until 2020. “That would be too late, unless strong actions are taken in the meantime,” said Le Quéré.

Some governments and policy advisers have been advocating a different approach to the climate negotiations, suggesting that a system of voluntary reductions in emissions undertaken by national governments and industries could be more effective than a “top-down” global treaty. But this so-called “bottom up” approach did not appear to be working currently, Le Quéré said, as efforts to cut emissions so far had made little impact outside Europe, where emissions have been successfully reduced.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change, found that global carbon emissions were likely to carry on increasing at a rate of about 3% per year. It was accompanied by another study offering new proof that climate change is linked to human activities, in burning fossil fuel.

Prof Chris Rapley, professor of Climate Science at University College London, said: “These two new results offer a stark message. Human carbon emissions are certainly disturbing the climate system upon which we depend, and in spite of the economic slowdown, and despite all the efforts by governments, businesses and people to reduce them, our emissions are reaching new highs. The climatic consequences, already emerging, will grow over time, and are irreversible.

“A new level of decisive action is required now to achieve real emissions reductions. World leaders at the climate negotiations at Durban know the score; the opportunity to act consistent with their responsibilities and rank lies before them. We can only hope that they rise to the challenge.”

Julia Steinberger, lecturer in ecological economics at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, said the research showed that even the recession had barely made a dent on the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

She said: “The worst economic crisis in decades was apparently a mere hiccup in terms of carbon emissions: a temporary drop for the richest countries in 2009, and hardly perceived by emerging economies. These findings are truly shocking, and constitute a global wake-up call.

“The economic crisis should have been an opportunity to invest in low-carbon infrastructure for the 21st century. Instead, we fostered a lose-lose situation: carbon emissions rocketing to unprecedented levels, alongside increases in joblessness, energy costs and income disparities. Surely the transition to a green economy has never seemed more appealing.”

From The Guardian

The annual UN climate conference is well underway in Durban, South Africa. But you wouldn’t know it. Interest in these ‘COPs’ (Conference of the Parties) seems to have waned quickly following the fiasco at COP15 at Copenhagen two years ago. There was much expectation that COP15 would give rise to the next big treaty, to replace the Kyoto Protocol. What we got was the feeble Copenhagen Accord, a mealy-mouthed two and a half pages of vague temperature targets. COP16 in Cancun agreed only to ‘park’ the sensitive issue of proposed emissions cuts and the current COP17 appears doomed to similar deadlock. Canada has announced that it will not accept further emissions cuts, bringing it into line with its southern neighbour. This isn’t really a shock and is somewhat disingenuous given that Canada has entirely ignored its previous commitment to reduce emissions by 6%, instead increasing its emissions by 34%. Japan and Russia have also refused to countenance further emissions cuts, leaving no chance of a comprehensive reductions agreement.

It appears that this apathy and lack of agreement is feeding through into minimal media coverage. Wind back the clock 2 years to Copenhagen and the world’s media and leaders, including President Obama, descended on the Scandinavian capital in order to observe history and bask in the glory of a Treaty that never came. The acrimony that followed COP15 and hopelessness of progress at COP17 combines to ensure that the big beasts of the world political stage will stay away from what many now see as a pointless exercise. Even a repeat of the 2009 ‘Climategate’ emails release last weekend failed to spark the interest of the world’s media not, as some suggest, because that story has run out of legs but more likely because the chances of agreeing a global treaty on emissions reductions has run out of legs.

All in all, unless you are in some way involved in climate science and emissions reduction, you could be forgiven for not knowing the Conference was even happening. And another year passes when we could have been taking the urgent action required. I get the impression that there is a ‘You go first’ issue hampering the process. Governments all seem to accept the science that shows that without urgent action, temperatures will rise to such an extent that human existence in parts of the world will become impossible in some places and much more difficult in many others. And the evidence shoes that early action is cheaper than mitigation after the event. So why can’t they agree? It’s a question of political reality. Most Governments don’t think that their electorates will accept some of the changes that will be needed in order to achieve the emissions reductions. This ‘shyness’ suggests to electorates that the action is not really needed and we enter a negative feedback loop. “If it was a serious issue, our Government would take action,” is inevitably what the public begin to think, and as the public becomes more relaxed about the requirement to act, so Governments become ever shier of taking action. We need to break this loop. But how? I’ll explore that in a post soon…….

From the BBC

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged world leaders to establish a climate fund to help those countries worst affected by climate change.

Speaking at a conference in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, he said efforts must be made to create a $100bn (£63bn) Green Climate Fund.

The global economic crisis should not deter such efforts, he added.

The event was organised by the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which connects countries affected by extreme weather.

Mr Ban said governments meeting in Durban later this month for UN climate talks must make concerted efforts to help countries likely to bear the brunt of climate change.

“Governments must find ways – now – to mobilise resources up to the $100bn per annum as pledged. The fund needs to be launched in Durban,” he said.

“An empty shell is not sufficient. Even in this difficult time we cannot afford the delay.”

He said taking action against climate change was not a luxury.

“It is an imperative which we have to do in all the circumstances. We cannot ask the poorest and the most vulnerable to share the brunt of this impact.”
Climate refugees

Mr Ban also said he expected the Durban meeting to find a compromise on the Kyoto Protocol, to reach a broader comprehensive climate agreement in the future.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, mandated relatively modest reductions of emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised nations.

The CVF was formed in 2009 by countries including the Maldives, Bangladesh and other small island states at risk from cyclones and rising sea levels.

Experts say a 1m rise in sea levels would flood more than 15% of Bangladesh and create millions of climate refugees.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the response from the world community so far had been slow and inadequate.

“Climate change has been seriously affecting us. We are bearing the brunt of the damage though we made negligible or no contribution to the menace. This constitutes a serious injustice and must be acknowledged by the global community,” Ms Hasina said.

Members of the forum argue that their own efforts to cut carbon emissions will also put moral pressure on richer nations.