You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October, 2008.
Updated Sat. Aug. 30 2008 7:27 AM ET
Andy Johnson, CTV.ca News Staff
Arctic sea ice is melting at an alarming rate, and some scientists have little hope the downward trend can be reversed before the ice disappears altogether.
The National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado released its latest ice report this week, showing ice coverage in the region is at its second lowest level in 30 years.
Two aspects of sea ice change show that as the years unfold, September sea ice has gradually dwindled between 1979 and 2006. (The National Snow and Ice Data Center / Google)
The updated time series plot puts this summer’s sea ice extent in context with other years. 2007, shown in solid blue, is far below the previous record year of 2005, shown as a dashed line; September 2007 was 39 per cent below where we would expect to be in an average year, shown in solid gray. Average sea ice extent from 1979 to 2000 was 7.04 million square kilometres. (The National Snow and Ice Data Center)
“It’s very different from in the past when you had a low year and you tended to rebound. We haven’t been doing that anymore,” Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist at the centre, told CTV.ca.
As of this week, 2008 is in second place for the lowest amount of sea ice since satellite measurements were first taken in 1979.
And with several weeks left in the melt season, 2008 could still surpass September 2007 for the lowest amount of sea ice since satellite measurements were first taken in 1979.
At last measure on Aug. 26, Arctic sea ice coverage was at 5.26 million square kilometers — a decline of 2.06 million square kilometres from the beginning of August.
In September of last year, a record low was recorded, with 5.69 million square kilometres of sea ice recorded.
It’s not a benchmark that Stroeve is proud of, but she’s also not surprised by the chilling picture the numbers provide.
“I guess the main thing people should understand is this is just a continuation of that long term downward trend. I think whether or not we break the record it’s just the continuation of what we’ve been seeing since 2002, where every year we’re losing ice and we’re not recovering at all,” she said.
Much of the ice coverage in the Arctic normally melts each summer and reforms in winter. However, Stroeve said more and more of that ice is being lost to the sea, and failing to reform in winter.
The result is a sort of reverberating effect. Ice serves to reflect up to 80 per cent of the suns rays, and heat, back into space, helping keep the Arctic cool. But as the ice disappears, more and more of the sun’s heat is absorbed in the ocean, then released to the air during fall cooling. That speeds up the warming process and makes the ice melt even faster.
Last year was a particularly bad year for sea ice in the Arctic, Stroeve said. Heavy storm conditions took a toll on ice off the coasts of Siberia and Alaska, unusually clear skies and warm ocean and atmospheric temperatures created a “perfect storm.”
“You had a lot of things that happened together that caused a lot of ice loss,” Stroeve said.
“But had that perfect storm happened say in the 1970s, you probably wouldn’t have lost so much ice like you did last year. And the key thing seems to be the ice is just becoming really thin and it’s that much more vulnerable to natural variability.”
Other experts said the ice has reached a tipping point, and melt will be much more severe from here on in. Stroeve said she wouldn’t characterize it as such, but said projection models have shown that with ice thinning at its current rate, it could all disappear — in summer — within a decade.
The most immediate effect of the ice loss, Stroeve said, is that animals that depend on the ice, such as polar bear and seals, are finding it harder and harder to survive as the winter ice shrinks, and takes longer to refreeze in the fall.
Observers from the U.S. federal government doing a whale survey in mid August reported seeing nine polar bears swimming off Alaska’s northwest coast.
The bears were between 20 and 100 kilometres from shore. Some were swimming north, apparently trying to reach the polar ice shelf, which was more than 600 kilometres distant.
While polar bears have been known to swim 100 kilometres, but can often become dangerously weak from the ordeal.
Stroeve said she has also heard reports of seals being spotted further north than ever before as they travel further and further north to find ice.
“It’s scary. It’s such a huge change that’s happening very quickly and it makes me very sad because I just can’t see how the species that rely on the ice can survive this,” Stroeve said.
While scientists have developed climate models to predict the future of ice in the Arctic, little is known about how those changing temperatures and conditions will play out in more southerly latitudes.
“That’s the area I think science needs to go into next. We don’t really know what this is all going to mean. We know everything is connected, so when you change one part everything is affected. But how exactly it’s going to play out is still not very clear,” Stroeve said.
Source: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080828/arctic_ice_080827/20080830?hub=TopStories
Hobby clubs are watching their membership rolls swell as environmentalists and business types join long-suffering aficionados. Patrick White reports
VANCOUVER — The grey-haired man in the straw hat carries a teetering bowl of potato salad to the back yard. His hosting duties have been reduced to an endless relay of food and drink, house to porch.
Out back, his son tends two sizzling barbecues, barely keeping up with guests’ appetites.
The Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association’s annual barbecue is just starting and already Harry Snalam’s 25 lawn chairs are filled. Nearly as many people stand, paper plates in hand.
When Mr. Snalam joined VEVA seven years ago, attendance rivalled that of a rural knitting club.
Enlarge ImageHarry Snalam, in the driver’s seat, and his son, Andrew, are happy to show off the 1984 Mazda RX-7 they converted to electric together in Richmond, B.C. The car has ‘more torque than you need,’ Harry Snalam says. (John Lehmann for The Globe and Mail)
But 18 months ago, things got crazy.
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth rattled North America’s faith in internal combustion while the documentaryWho Killed the Electric Car? highlighted the virtues of battery-powered transport. These cultural touchstones merged with the recent economic bombshell of soaring gas prices, prompting many drivers to seekalternatives to gas-guzzling vehicles.
The result? “We need a bigger room for our meetings,” says Mr. Snalam. “There are upwards of 120 coming out every month.”
Where five electric cars once rolled into VEVA events, some 25 do today.
The Vancouverites who spend their downtime here talking amps, batteries, the vagaries of electric car laws and the ills of internal combustion engines are a curious mix of gear-head and environmentalist, businessman and mechanic.
“It’s not just geeky engineering types any more,” said Phil Dayson, partner in a truck-body manufacturing business and a five-year VEVA member. “Very quickly, we’ve become mainstream.”
But that has done nothing to dilute members’ enthusiasm. When Mr. Snalam learns that one attendee has never ridden in an electric car, he drops everything (except the spud salad, which he places ever so carefully on a table). “Come around front and hop in,” he says excitedly.
A sporty 1984 Mazda RX-7 sits in Mr. Snalam’s front yard, extension cord dangling from where the gas nozzle should go. Within minutes, he’s working through the gears on Westminster Highway in Richmond. “There’s more torque than you need,” he says, flooring the gas, er, amp pedal, sending the car flying past others on the road in excess of 65 kilometres an hour. Many club cars reach speeds higher than 110 kilometres an hour.
Club members are constantly battling the perception that electric cars are poky and impractical. Mr. Snalam drives his to work at a steel fabrication plant every day. He converted the car with his son in the front yard. The 18 batteries cost $1,000 and give him a range of 112 kilometres. More expensive lithium-ion batteries ($7,000) would easily double that range.
And you can’t beat the price of a fill-up. “The hot tub uses more energy,” he says.
As proof of electric engine reliability, the club maintains a Detroit Electric. Built in 1912, the car still has its original engine and the batteries have been replaced just once.
The Detroit and several electric cars owned by club members have become a popular draw at local car shows. “The car clubs are phoning us now,” says Alan Cumberlidge, who maintains the Detroit.
While the technology to mass-produce electric cars has been around for a century, the will to build them has ebbed and flowed with economic conditions. Some members recall first falling in love with the idea of electric cars when General Motors announced the Electrovair in 1964, an electric version of the Corvair that never saw mass production. During the energy crisis of the 1970s, North American car makers again teased consumers with promises of electric cars – promises they never kept.
The Big Three auto makers produced several workable electric cars in the 1990s, including GM’s EV1, subject of Who Killed the Electric Car?, but scrapped them all.
Formed in 1987, VEVA has outlived the many fits and starts of the electric car industry. Older members think their time has finally come. “With peak oil and all the environmental and economic concerns, it’s more of a done deal now,” says 18-year member Mr. Cumberlidge. “Electric is the way to go. Car manufacturers will realize this or die.”
Perhaps the most daunting challenge VEVA and other electric car clubs face is legislation. British Columbia and Quebec are the only provinces that permit LSVs, or low-speed vehicles, a class of small electric vehicle that travels under 40 kilometres an hour. Ontario’s Zenn Motor Company manufactures the cars but can’t sell them in the province.
“You can buy a Zenn in 42 states, but not in most of Canada,” says J.P. Fernbach, president of Durham Electric Vehicles Association in Durham, Ont., another electric car club that’s seen a surge in interest recently.
Instead of waiting for mass production and retail availability, VEVA is opening its own shop where owners can have their cars converted to electric. They hope to open in October.
As attitudes toward electric cars shift, club members have one emerging concern.
“We may become redundant,” says Mr. Cumberlidge, as he considers a second helping from the barbecue. “That day is just around the corner. We’ll all have to find a new hobby.”
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080822.wlelectric22/BNStory/lifeMain/
Last Updated: Friday, June 27, 2008 | 8:15 PM ET
The Associated Press
A leading American ice scientist says there’s a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history.
Mark Serreze, senior researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said the weather and ocean conditions in the next couple of weeks will determine how much of the sea ice will melt, and early signs are not good.
He said the chances for a total meltdown at the pole are higher than ever because the layer of ice coating the sea is thinner than ever.
Serreze said there is nothing scientifically significant about the North Pole, but there is a cultural and symbolic importance. Last August, the Northwest Passage was open to navigation for the first time in memory.
Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is “considerably thinner” than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said Friday. He thinks there is slightly less than a 50-50 chance the North Pole will be ice-free.
Last year was a record year for ice melt all over the Arctic and the ice band surrounding the North Pole is even thinner now.
“A large area at the North Pole and surrounding the North Pole is first-year ice,” Serreze said. “That’s the stuff that tends to melt out in the summer because it’s thin.”
A more conservative ice scientist, Cecilia Bitz at the University of Washington, put the odds of a North Pole without ice closer to 1-in-4. Even that is far worse than climate models had predicted, which was 1-in-70 sometime in the next decade, she said.
But both she and Serreze agree it’s just a matter of time.
“I would guess within the next 10 years it would happen at least once,” Bitz said.
Already, figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center show sea ice in the Arctic as a whole at about the same level now as it was at its low point last year in late June and early July.
The explanation is a warming climate and a weather phenomenon, scientists said.
For the last couple of decades, there has been a steady melt of Arctic sea ice, which covers only the ocean and which thins during summer and refreezes in winter. In recent years, it has gradually become thinner because more of it has been melting as the Earth’s temperature rises.
Then, this past winter, there was a natural weather shift called the Arctic Oscillation, sort of a cold weather cousin to El Nino.
That oscillation caused a change in winds and ocean that accelerated a normal flushing of sea ice in the Arctic. That pushed the older thicker sea ice that had been over the North Pole south toward Greenland and eventually out of the Arctic, Serreze said. That left just a thin one-year layer of ice that previously covered part of Siberia.
© The Canadian Press, 2008
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/06/27/iceless-arctic.html
Last Updated: Monday, July 7, 2008 | 12:14 PM ET
The Associated Press
Toyota’s Prius gas-electric hybrid will become even greener next year with solar-powered air conditioning on some high-end models, The Nikkei reported Monday.
The solar panels on the roof of the new Prius model will provide two to five kilowatts of electricity, the major Japanese business daily said in a report without citing sources.
Toyota Motor Corp. plans to purchase the panels from Japanese electronics maker Kyocera Corp., the newspaper said. Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco declined comment, saying the company doesn’t comment on product plans.
A Toyota official, speaking on condition of anonymity because product plans are not supposed to be disclosed to the media ahead of time, said details on what will be a third-generation Prius will likely be revealed in May 2009. He did not elaborate.
Prius sales have been booming, thanks to soaring gas prices and growing worries about global warming. A hybrid delivers better mileage by switching between a gasoline-fuelled engine and an electric motor.
Toyota has made hybrid technology the pillar of its growth strategy, promising to deliver hybrids in every model in its lineup soon after 2020. Toyota has sold more than a million Prius models over the past decade and is planning to sell a million hybrids a year sometime after 2010.
Toyota is also pursuing an aggressive strategy for ecological production by using solar panels and other technology at its plants.
Adding solar panels to a model targeting mass consumers would mark a first for a major automaker, The Nikkei said.
© The Canadian Press, 2008
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/07/07/toyota-solar.html
Updated Fri. Apr. 18 2008 9:48 AM ET
The Associated Press
PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the fight against climate change needs massive new amounts of private investment and globally regulated “green” markets to succeed.
Speaking a the climate talks currently underway in Paris, the French leader said about 90 per cent of the money for fighting global warming will come from the private sector over the long term.
But he says that mobilizing a few hundred million euros, or dollars, is not enough.
Instead, he says the international community must “massively redirect financial flows toward this new low-carbon economy.”
The U.S.-sponsored talks in Paris this week are aimed at ironing out disagreements between leading economies such as the United States, the European Union, China and India over how to reduce global warming.
They are meant to feed broader UN efforts to work out a follow-up plan to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which requires signatories to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases that contribute to global warming.
Sarkozy said the current climate negotiations should pay greater attention to the financial side of a post-Kyoto plan. The protocol expires in 2012.
U.S. officials agreed. “I commend the president for making this point,” Alexander Karsner, an assistant U.S. energy secretary, told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the talks.
Such private financing is a “cornerstone” of what the United States has been doing to fight global warming, he said.
The U.S. government has pushed private investment in so-called green technology, but has run into opposition from many countries for its calls for voluntary emission cuts by the private sector instead of government-mandated ones.
Sarkozy said the carbon credit market and other environmental financial tools currently used in Europe should be “globalized and regulated.”
Karsner, however, said he saw little need for a globalized carbon market.
Boyden Gray, special U.S. envoy for European affairs, said he did not foresee such a global system “any time soon.”
A carbon trading market – or “cap-and-trade” system – works much as any commodities market does, except that traders earn their fees selling a tonne of carbon dioxide instead of corn or copper.
Countries that agree to reduction targets are given permits for allowable carbon dioxide emissions, and the permits are passed on to businesses. Companies can choose to cut their emissions by retrofitting a factory and selling their permits for a profit – or continuing to pollute and buying additional units of carbon dioxide on the open market.
A UN climate panel of scientists released reports last year warning of fast-rising seas, extensive droughts and flooding, severe heat waves and other dire effects from global warming.
Source: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080418/climate_sarkozy_080418/20080418?hub=World
Recent Comments