AP: ‘Climategate’ report vindicates researchers

Just in from an AP report:

An independent British report into the leak of hundreds of emails from one of the world’s leading climate research centres has largely vindicated the scientists involved, a finding many in the field hope will calm the global uproar dubbed “Climategate.”

Read full story here

Image:Dr. Compton Tucker, senior Earth scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory, discusses "Climategate" in the context of observations of the ocean-land-atmosphere system. This observation shows unambiguous increasing surface temperatures and stress the contribution of space observations that should extinguish the climate change controversy.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Bill Hrybyk

Pension plan to invest in oil sands

Where would you like your pension money to be invested in?

According to the Financial Post, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced it was making a $250-million private placement in Laricina Energy Ltd, a Calgary-based company that has a portfolio of oil sands assets that range from properties in the McMurray formation as well as sites near Grand Rapids and Grosmont. With this investment CPPIB now owns a 17.1% equity interest in the company.

The oil sands are definitely a divisive issue both here in Canada and abroad. I wonder how ordinary Canadians would feel about these funds possibly being placed in a company that they might not agree with...

Image from GoodNCrazy

Voices: Environmentalists on the G20

6 months ago world leaders meeting in Copenhagen for the UN summit declared climate change to be the greatest challenge facing this next generation.

This weekend at the G20 summit in Toronto? Barely a mention. 

Some voices on climate change and the G20 Summit:

Phil Radford, the executive director of Greenpeace USA: "It is like a meal where you ask your friends to come and bring a dish," he said. "Some countries came with things that were half-baked.  Some countries like Canada came with food that was rotten and then others showed up with nothing at all," said Radford.

Kim Carstensen, leader of the WWF Global Climate Initiative: the G20 failed to agree on initiatives that would provide the world's poorest countries with the funding needed to cope with climate change. "The role of G20 is still, I think, in development and there are tensions between countries like China, India and the other emerging economies who want to see climate and other issues dealt with in the U.N. and some of the big developed countries who would like to see more discussion about climate in the G20 setting."

According to Ron Johnson of the EnvironmentaLIST, he summarized what was being hoped for out of the G8/G20 summits on climate change, and what actually happened:

1. Move forward with an aggressive plan to deal with the climate crisis and gain momentum heading into COP16 in Cancun. No such luck. Canada announced some fast track financing, but there were little to no new initiatives discussed at the G8 or G20, and the report coming out of the G8 in Muskoka is almost identical in tone and intent to previous commitments.
2. Get tough and eliminate the billions of dollars of fossil fuel subsidies to companies such as British Petroleum and other upstanding corporate citizens. Uh, wrong again. The whole eliminate fossil fuel subsidies thing must have been decided upon after a long night at the pub because G20 leaders this weekend seemed to be trying hard to forget it ever happened. 
3. Enact a tax on financial transactions, dubbed the "Robin Hood Tax," and earmark the revenues for social spending and climate change. Yes! Nah, just kidding. Wouldn’t that be nice though? A simple .05 per cent tax on transactions from corporations raking in billions in profits and, well, bailout revenue, to go to progressive social and environmental programs. There was lip service paid to keeping banks in line, so that’s good… right?

Is there still a road to Cancun? Or has all momentum that was seen in the lead up to the Copenhagen conference been lost?

Climate change left off the table

I'm sure you've heard by now that the very expensive, highly securitized G20 and G8 summits are coming to Toronto this week. And though there are a lot of important issues to be discussed on the table in these rare occasions that the world's most powerful men and women are in the same room, one is notably missing.

It was barely 6 months ago that these world leaders (and many more) were in Copenhagen for the UN climate summit pledging that climate change was the defining issue our generation was facing. The richer countries made earnest pledges to get the world on track on reducing the harms of climate change, in the face of poorer and more vulnerable countries like the Maldives and Tuvalu crying and begging for the survival of their peoples.

But with climate change now largely left out of the agenda in these coming days of the summit, those sentiments seem to be long gone, but the threat of climate change has not.

I would be okay with the discussion of other truly important global issues at the summit, if they didn't seem so half-hearted, like Prime Minister Harper's pledge to discuss maternal health, yet at the same time leaving abortion rights and birth control out of the funding. 

It looks like world leaders have forgotten the urge and the feeling of crisis that the Copenhagen summit brought with their pledges for financing for vulnerable countries and to create viable national pans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Cancun summit this coming December looks to be renewing just "another round of talks" without a concrete international agreement that was supposed to occur last December.

Things are not good for those eyeing the climate crisis. And it looks like its not getting any better with the start of the talks this week.

Photo: Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrives in Copenhagen, Denmark for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Dec. 17, 2009.

Phantom protesters and vanishing stories don't daunt new reporter

By Jasmeet Sidhu

via thestar.blogs.com

I apologize for not being as active as I used to be on this blog, and especially apologize for this in light of the exciting events and gatherings on environment issues for the G20. I recently started working as a summer intern here at the Toronto Star, and I thought it would be fun to share my thoughts on how the first week event, posted on the "New Kids on the Block" blog.

BP Oil Spill - From Star's Photo Desk

For the few of you who may not have seen the simultaneous incredible yet horrific images by the Star's photo desk in the aftermath of the BP Oil Spill, I would recommend you check out the link here:

http://thestar.blogs.com/photodesk/2010/06/gulf-oil-spill-takes-toll-on-wildlife-.html

In the words of fellow Toronto Star intern Fabiola Carletti: "Remember what a picture is worth and apply it to the BP oil spill."

Young environmentalists finding solutions through science

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending Youth-in-Motion's annual Top 20 Under 20 awards held at Arcadian Court in downtown Toronto, where I got to meet amazing young individuals and their stories and quests to try to make our world a better place.

From cancer survivors that have ridden with Lance Armstrong, to young music execs, to budding entrepreneurs and inventors, this year's crop was astounding, having sat on the board of Youth-in-Motion as a youth member these past two years. I was particularly delighted and intrigued by a couple of the winners, and their passion to merge saving the environment with innovative scientific solutions.

This being a climate change blog, I thought that I would profile some of their work here, just to demonstrate the amazing things young scientists and environmentalists are doing to find creative and groundbreaking ways to make our lives more sustainable.

Here they are. For a full list and bios of this year's Top 20 Under 20, click here. 

Emma Graham
Ottawa, ON
Age at time of award: 16

Living as a child in a heavily polluted environment in China, Emma found breathing difficult and provoked her wish to create safe, effective chemical products. By grade 9, now living in Canada and volunteering in a pharmaceutical company lab, she discovered her love of organic chemistry and soon won a Youth Science Team Canada Award. Since 2009, Emma been developing a natural pesticide enhancer to minimize pesticide-resistance rates in insects, and thereby decrease the overall environmental impact of pesticides. With several firsts in science competitions, Emma attended the 2010 Intel ISEF in California, winning a fourth place in the Environmental Management category.

Cody O’Neil
Kelowna, BC
Age at time of award: 17

With firsts at national and international science fairs, Cody's ability to make effective presentations has been invaluable as he sheds new light on climate change. Cody’s research into this pressing issue takes an entirely new and to some, controversial, point of view: he examines the relationship between astronomy and climate change, a combination typically overlooked, if not ignored, by the scientific community. His theory of “Orbital Forcing” poses a relation between variations in the Earth’s orbit and long-term climatic change. It also attempts to correlate sunspot cycles to short-term climate change. Placing 1st overall at the 2009 Taiwan International Science Fair and the Australian National Youth Science Forum, Cody’s work is gaining acceptance and recognition.

David Castelino
Mississauga, ON
Age at time of award: 19

A 2008 Manning Innovation Achievement Award winner, David has shown a passion for science, innovation and community involvement since childhood. In 2006, David designed an efficient, affordable alternative to silicon solar cells—a dye-sensitized organic solar cell that uses photosynthesis to create electrical energy at a higher rate of return. Sol-Tile is David’s latest invention, a thin-film solar tile using solar paint made from organic dyes, which can easily fit existing roofing. This tile offers an inexpensive, sustainable source of renewable energy for use around the world. The Patent and Trademark Office Society has awarded David with a patent citation for his breakthrough invention.

Yan Yu
Calgary, AB
Age at time of award: 19

Yan Yu has put environmental innovation on the map at Queen’s University. As an intern with the Main Campus Resident’s Council (MCRC) Sustainability Office, Yan brought vision and energy to an indifferent Council. Successfully advocating the creation of a “Sustainability Coordinator” position, Yan promptly assumed the role and transformed MCRC into one of the greenest student governing bodies in Canada. He formed one of the largest environmental groups on campus, the MCRC Green Team, to tackle environmental issues like running a successful weekly campus clean-up crew, reducing cafeteria food wastage, installing indoor vegetable gardens, and establishing a worm-composting system in residence—the first of its kind in Canada. Here’s one measure of their success: in the first four months of the cleanup crew’s existence, recyclable waste collection increased by 57% over the whole of the previous year.

Happening this week: Senate debate on climate bill

I'm back from my little sojourn in Turkey, and I'm very excited for the month of June - with the G20 coming to the city of Toronto, and with it, a gathering of scholars and activists on all sorts of issues including climate change, it should make for an interesting month.

For those more interested in the legislative side of things, the Government of Canada website has posted transcripts (as the normally do) on the Senate debates, in which they are currently discussing Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act (see June 1). A copy of the bill is posted online here. The bill passed in the House of Commons in early May, and is now in its second reading in the Senate chamber. Among other things discussed on June 2, it was brought up that climate change should be an important G8/G20 issue later this month.

My favourite quote from Senator Grant Mitchell, amongst some other points he brought up:

"I want to make the case that we can agree on this, and that it is important that we agree on this. We have this chance to actually agree to do the right thing and to support this measure — I can hardly believe I am saying this — and to see the government gets some credit for doing the right thing on this very important environmental file."

What Earth Day means to me

This Thursday, April 22 marks the 30th year that Earth Day has been celebrated around the world.

Admittedly, Earth Day seemed to have more of a presence when I was in high school. Organizing ‘earth week’s with environment clubs, celebrating with tree plantings and raffles, Earth Day soon began to fall into a time in university when exams and end of year essays were due, and my attention span to the day was decreased.

However, this year more than ever, Earth Day has a special place in my heart. Having witnessed first-hand the dramatic events of the Copenhagen conference unfold last December, and the visceral feeling of failure of watching out governments not rise up to the dangerous challenge of climate change, I will be appreciating what this Thursday means more than ever.

As I write this, I’m wearing a bright-orange t-shirt that says, “How old will you be in 2050?” In 2050, I will be 62. I’ll possibly have kids, and even grand kids at that point. I have no idea what the future holds for my 60-year-old self and my kids if we continue to treat the earth with the disrespect and the negligence that we do today. Many of the decision-makers who are putting our earth on this perilous path will certainly not be in power anymore, and many of them might not be alive. But the effects of their decisions will have lasting impacts on people of my generation and the future residents of our planet. It’s easy to think that the earth we live on will last forever in its current condition. But as we’ve seen, one simple volcano can cause a world of chaos, and the heating of our planet in the next couple of decades will bring a much worse impact, not to the economically fortunate, but to the most vulnerable and poor peoples of the world.

So on this Earth Day, I’ll be thinking about what my world will be like in 2050. And whether the decision-makers of this generation will allow us to live in a healthy that can support the lives and dreams of humanity for generations to come.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to blog for the next month, and I will be taking part into a research-trip with my peers in the Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of Toronto. But when I get back, I’ll be excited to blog about the issues and exciting events surrounding the G8 and G20 summits this upcoming summer.

UN: "A Shocking Disaster"

I'm sorry I've been a bit haphazard in the regularity of my blog posting - indeed, I'm entering the last exams of my university career, so I've been a bit distracted.

However, I did want to post this bit of news up, or more accurately, photos of the drying of the Aral sea in Central Asia.

The Huffington Post posted the photos up late last week, showing  how the lake has shrunk by about 90% in recent years. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday that the drying of the sea is one of the planet's 'shocking disasters'

"It is clearly one of the worst disasters, environmental disasters of the world. I was so shocked," he said.

A pretty sad sight indeed.