Thought you might like to see this extract from Lloyds List todays date.
SHIPPING often describes itself as the greenest form of transport, but the criteria are changing.
Ships move a very high percentage of the world’s raw materials, foodstuffs and finished goods at costs far lower than any other transport mode, and they do so with the lowest energy consumption per unit of cargo carried.
And the large diesels powering most oceangoing tonnage are easily the most efficient internal combustion engines ever developed.
In addition, these engines burn heavy bunker oil, which is basically refinery waste with few other natural markets. The fact that modern marine engines can burn this residue without need of additional refining or having to send it to landfill is a remarkable achievement.
Some would have the shipping industry stop using this fuel and turn to distillate fuels. But why spend energy on refining residue only to burn it again?
It is the non-hydrocarbon substances in residual fuels which cause marine stack emissions, SOx, NOx and particulate matter, to be environmentally unwelcome. Although largely released while ships are at sea, some studies indicate both that many ocean voyages are within 200 miles of land and that these emissions may be blown over land in many parts of the world. While questions remain on harmful amounts actually deposited in such areas, measures to reduce such emissions are being considered.
Ship-source emissions caused the International Maritime Organization to adopt Annex VI to Marpol some years ago with the intention of increasingly controlling releases over time if justified by further study.
The annex included the concept of SOx emission control areas (Secas) and defined in Appendix III the process for contracting states to justify the need for a Seca to protect themselves from environmental harm and human health impacts of ship source air emissions.
The shipping and oil industries, along with environmental scientists, have been intensively studying not only the various means for complying with emission targets, but also the actual need for stiffer targets than those currently in Annex VI.
Next month, the Bulk Liquid & Gases Sub-Committee of the MEPC will meet in London to consider changes to the annex and the debate is expected to be lively.
At present two conceptually very different approaches for complying with Annex VI emission targets have been proposed.
The Oil Companies International Marine Forum has said: “It is imperative to understand both the need for and impact of any change in current regulations.”
The International Chamber of Shipping advocates taking “a goal-based and holistic approach” to compliance and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association has expressed “willingness to partner with others … in scientific process to analyse the environmental need and justification for a lower Seca sulphur limit”.
Essentially these industry bodies are advocating working within the existing Annex VI framework to identify any change.
By contrast, Intertanko, supported by the Hong Kong Shipowners’ Association and in part by the US EPA, has proposed that by a future date of 2010-2015 all marine fuel should be distillate. Before discussing the pros and cons of these two approaches, a look at some of the factors involved is in order.
A former Exxon colleague, Rudolph Kassinger, now of DNV Petroleum Services, using data mostly from the ‘BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2006’, has brought some interesting points into focus. Marine residual fuel consumption is about 5.3% of global oil consumption but only 1.9% of global energy consumption — not a very large figure.
But global CO 2 release from marine fuels is about 6.6% of total global releases from all fuels. And from US EPA estimates of SOx emissions for mobile sources (ships, cars, trucks, trains and planes) marine SOx is projected to grow from a 1996 level of 21% to a 2030 estimated level of 81% — which without change clearly is unlikely to be acceptable.
An island made by global warming
By Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor
Published: 24 April 2007
The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.
Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland's remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea.
Shaped like a three-fingered hand some 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it has been discovered by a veteran American explorer and Greenland expert, Dennis Schmitt, who has named it Warming Island (Or Uunartoq Qeqertoq in Inuit, the Eskimo language, that he speaks fluently).
The US Geological Survey has confirmed its existence with satellite photos, that show it as an integral part of the Greenland coast in 1985, but linked by only a small ice bridge in 2002, and completely separate by the summer of 2005. It is now a striking island of high peaks and rugged rocky slopes plunging steeply to a sea dotted with icebergs.
As the satellite pictures and the main photo which we publish today make clear, Warming Island has been created by a quite undeniable, rapid and enormous physical transformation and is likely to be seen around the world as a potent symbol of the coming effects of climate change.
But it is only one more example of the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, that scientists have begun to realise, only very recently, is proceeding far more rapidly than anyone thought.
The second-largest ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica), if its entire 2.5 million cubic kilometres of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet.
That would inundate most of the world's coastal cities, including London, swamp vast areas of heavily-populated low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh, and remove several island countries such as the Maldives from the face of the Earth. However, even a rise one tenth as great would have devastating consequences.
Sea level rise is already accelerating. Sea levels are going up around the world by about 3.1mm per year - the average for the period 1993-2003. That is itself sharply up from an average of 1.8mm per year over the longer period 1961-2003. Greenland ice now accounts for about 0.5 millimetre of the total. (Much of the rest of the rise is coming from the expansion of the world's sea water as it warms.)
Until two or three years ago, it was thought that the break-up of the ice sheet might take 1,000 years or more but a series of studies and alarming observations since 2004 have shown the disintegration is accelerating and, as a consequence, sea level rise may be much quicker than anticipated.
Earlier computer models, researchers believe, failed to capture properly the way the ice sheet would respond to major warming (over the past 20 years, Greenland's air temperature has risen by 3C). The 2001 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was relatively reassuring, suggesting change would be slow.
But satellite measurements of Greenland's entire land mass show that the speed at which its glaciers are moving to the sea has increased significantly in the past decade, with some of them moving three times faster than in the mid-1990s.
Scientists estimate that, in 1996, glaciers deposited about 50 cubic km of ice into the sea. In 2005, it had risen to 150 cubic km of ice.
A study last year by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology showed that, rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the "lubricant" of meltwater forming at their base. As the meltwater seeps down it lubricates the bases of the "outlet" glaciers of the ice sheet, causing them to slip down surrounding valleys towards the sea,
Another discovery has been the increase in "glacial earthquakes" caused by the sudden movement of enormous blocks of ice within the ice sheet. The annual number of them recorded in Greenland between 1993 and 2002 was between six and 15. In 2003, seismologists recorded 20 glacial earthquakes. In 2004, they monitored 24 and for the first 10 months of 2005 they recorded 32. The seismologists also found the glacial earthquakes occurred mainly during the summer months, indicating the movements were indeed associated with rapidly melting ice - normal "tectonic" earthquakes show no such seasonality. Of the 136 glacial quakes analysed in a report published last year, more than a third occurred during July and August.
The creation of Warming Island appears to be entirely consistent with the disintegrating ice sheet, coming about when the glacier bridge linking it to the mainland simply disappeared. It was discovered by Mr Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, California, who has known Greenland for 40 years, during a trip he led up the remote coastline.
According to the US Geological Survey: "More islands like this may be discovered if the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to disappear."
A self-governing dependency of Denmark, Greenland is the largest island in the world but is inhabited by only 56,000 people, mainly Inuit. More than 80 per cent of the land surface is covered by the ice sheet.
First, all new houses should/must be built with solar panels, recycleable water systems [i.e. use washing shower/bath water to flush loos, it should be compulsory to make them energy and resource efficient. Currently new developers put somewhere between a 30-60% profit margin on a new property, this should be stopped [might also bring down soaring house prices].
Next, put a premium tax on all non-energy efficient white goods.
Importantly, actually develope a true integrated, affordable public transport system. If people had an alternative means of transport to/from work etc. they would use it instead of car but sadly there is often no other option. I work in Felixstowe and there is no way I can get to my work via public transport.
Safeguard more of the planets natural forests both rain and temperate and consider putting a premium tax on all goods imported from countries which are heavy polluters.
It ain't rocket science and I am sure I may have missed some valid arguments but the above is a start for consideration.
Did anyone watch Global Warming the Swindle on the tv last night? It had some very interesting points to think about .
Now I am not sure who I believe............
Saw this in today's Indy.
C4 accused of falsifying data in documentary on climate change
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 08 May 2007
The makers of a Channel 4 documentary which claimed that global warming is a swindle have been accused of fabricating data by one of the scientists who participated in the film.
The Great Global Warming Swindle was broadcast on 8 March and has been criticised by leading scientists for errors, distortions and misrepresentations.
The film has also been referred to the regulatory watchdog Ofcom which is considering a complaint from 37 senior scientists that the programme breached the broadcasting code on the misrepresentation of views and facts.
Now even a climate sceptic whose dissenting views were used by the film- makers to bolster their claims about the "lies" and "swindles" of global warming has accused the documentary of promulgating falsehoods.
Eigil Friis-Christensen, director of the Danish National Space Centre, has issued a statement accusing the film-makers of fabricating data based on his work looking at the links between solar activity and global temperatures.
Dr Friiss-Christensen said that a graph he had produced some years ago showing the link between fluctuations in global temperatures and changes in solar activity - sunspot cycles - over the past 400 years had been doctored. The documentary used the graph to pour scorn on the idea that the global warming in recent decades is the result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide. Solar activity, the programme stated, is the cause of global warming in the late 20th century.
However, Dr Friiss-Christensen has issued a statement with Nathan Rive, a climate researcher at Imperial College London and the Centre for Climate Research in Oslo, distancing himself from the C4 graph. He said there was a gap in the historical record on solar cycles from about 1610 to 1710 but the film-makers made up this break with fabricated data that made it appear as if temperatures and solar cycles had followed one another very closely for the entire 400-year period.
"We have reason to believe that parts of the graph were made up of fabricated data that were presented as genuine. The inclusion of the artificial data is both misleading and pointless," Dr Friis-Christensen said.
"Secondly, although the commentary during the presentation of the graph is consistent with the conclusions of the paper from which the figure originates, it incorrectly rules out a contribution by anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse gases to 20th century global warming," he said.
Dr Friis-Christensen, a physicist, believes that solar cycles play an important role in climate change and that not enough effort has gone into addressing the theory. The fabricated data did not, he said, make any difference to the overall view he takes but he is still critical of the way the film handled the scientific evidence. Asked by The Independent whether the documentary was scientifically accurate, Dr Friiss-Christensen said: "No, I think several points were not explained in the way that I, as a scientist, would have explained them ... it is obvious it's not accurate."
The C4 programme also used out-of-date solar cycle data relating to the past 30 or 40 years which made it appear as if temperatures and solar activity were rising together when in fact solar activity has levelled off for the past few decades. "After 1985 we don't see any rise or shortening of the solar cycles compared to what we saw in the temperature [record]," Dr Friiss-Christensen said.
Dr Friis-Christensen is the second scientist to appear on the programme who has criticised the way the film was made. Professor Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the way his interview was edited gave the misleading impression that he was not concerned about rising levels of carbon dioxide - a diametrically opposite view to his stated position.
Martin Durkin, who wrote and directed the programme, was unavailable for comment but admitted in an email to Mr Rive that the graph was wrong. "Thank you for highlighting the error on the 400-year graph. It is an annoying mistake which all of us missed and is being fixed for all future transmissions of the film. It doesn't alter our argument," Mr Durkin said.
However, the graph and its fabricated data will still be included in the DVD of the programme which went on sale yesterday. The advertising for the DVD says: "Everything you've ever been told about global warming is probably untrue. This film blows the whistle on the biggest swindle in modern history."
Mr Durkin has already apologised for an error in another graph used in the film which had to be corrected before the film's second transmission on the digital channel More 4.
The scientists who have written to Ofcom include Sir John Houghton, the former chief executive of the Met Office, Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past-president of the Royal Society, and Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. In a letter to Mr Durkin they call for changes to the programme before the DVD version is released, even though DVDs are not covered by the Ofcom Broadcasting Code.
"So serious and fundamental are the misrepresentations that the distribution of the DVD without their removal amounts to nothing more than an exercise in misleading the public," they say
Did you hear the proffesor talking about the way the sea is reacting to CO2. After a ten year study recently there has been a change of magnitude in the amount of CO2 it will absorb.
The Prof says if it does not start absorbing CO2 at former levels it will be of major concern. Should know over the next ten years.
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