Daily Telegraph – Using biofuel in vehicles could be destructive to the rainforest as well as leading to higher green house gas emissions than using just petrol and diesel, a fuels watchdog has claimed. Fuel providers are compelled to add an increasing proportion of biofuel to diesel and petrol under the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation. This year 3.23 per cent must be made up of biofuel and by 2020 that increases to 13 per cent. However, the first annual report by the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) claims that fuel companies are exploiting a loop hole which means they are not required to disclose the origin of nearly half the biofuel supplied to filling stations in 2009. Read Article
Deutsche Welle – Ecuador’s proposal to have rich nations pay them not to drill for oil – in one of the most bio-diverse areas in the world – is under threat. President Correa accuses potential donor countries of setting too many rules. In no other nature reserve in the world is there so much plant and animal diversity as in Yasuni National Park, in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to a new scientific study published in the journal “PLoS ONE.” “These rainforests are extremely bio-diverse…scientists have counted more than 600 different tree species in just one hectare. It’s also the homeland of indigenous people,” Klaus Schenck of the German organization Rainforest Rescue told Deutsche Welle. But now its future appears to be in jeopardy after Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Fander Falconi – the man charged with the difficult task of protecting it – quit on Tuesday. Falconi had been spearheading a 2.5 billion-euro (3.5 billion-dollar) initiative, whereby wealthy countries would pay Ecuador not to drill for oil in the nature reserve. Read Article
Jakata Post – The pace of deforestation in Java from 2007 to 2010 has reached 10,000 hectares and has become a serious threat to people and protected wildlife on the island. East Java is recorded as the biggest contributor to deforestation in Java, at a rate of 438.1 hectares annually. ProFauna Indonesia campaign officer Radius Nursidi said recently the actual pace of deforestation is believed to be higher than the data issued by the government. The deforestation rate of 10,000 hectares is based on data issued by the Forestry Ministry and took place from 2003 to 2006. The deforestation rate in Java is recorded at 2,500 hectares annually, or 0.2 percent of Indonesia’s total, which is 1.17 million hectares annually. Read Article
USA Today – Haiti’s recent earthquake, combined with its widespread deforestation, heighten its risk of more landslides, scientists warn.In poverty-stricken Haiti, many people cut down trees to use as fuel, so its natural forests are almost totally destroyed, according to a National Geographic story. This poses a stability risk, because tree roots help keep soil from shifting.”If you remove the trees, you have no buffer. So the water” “”and soil”” “tends to very quickly move downhill,” Mark Ashton, a professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, tells National Geographic. Read Article
Business Week – Thirty years ago, Nepalese farmer Badri Prasad Jangam realized that the once thickly wooded hillside that overlooks his home had been transformed into a barren slope.Decades of deforestation had taken their toll, stripping away the topsoil, affecting vital underground water sources and threatening to bring disaster to a community entirely dependent on farming for its livelihood. Now the trees are back, thanks to an innovative government scheme that won international plaudits for handing responsibility for the preservation of Nepal’s forests over to local people. Read Article
Brunei Direct – Brunei is doing “very well” in protecting its inland forests, but should continue to be vigilant at the same time by promoting awareness of reforestation due to increasing impacts of human settlements along coastal areas, said an expert yesterday.With evident conservation efforts of forest protection, Prof K M Wong of University of Malaya said, “I think people in Brunei are aware that with an increasing population growth, there will be consequential impacts on the environment!’ Following his presentation on “Climate change consequences for rainforests and human health” yesterday, he told The Brunei Times that apart from conservation of inland forests, it was obvious that the coastal belts in Brunei have been the most impacted by deforestation. Read Article
The Nation – The United Nations is marking 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity to curb the unprecedented loss of the world’s species due to human activity at an alarming rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression. In this connection, a slew of events highlighting the vital role of the phenomenon play an important role in maintaining the life support system on Earth, the Environment, Wild Life and Flora and Fauna related organisations informed The Nation on Saturday. “Humans are part of nature’s rich diversity and have the power to protect or destroy it,” the secretariat of the convention on biological diversity, which is hosted by the UN Environment Programme UNEP, said in summarising the year’s main message, with its focus on raising awareness to generate public pressure for action by the world’s decision makers. Read Article
Daily Telegraph
1. Tiger
2. Polar Bear
3. Pacific Walrus
4. Magellanic Penguin
5. Leatherback Turtle
6. Bluefin Tuna
7. Mountain Gorilla
8. Monarch Butterfly
9. Javan Rhinoceros
10. Giant Panda
Read Full Article
Ed – As we have noted before the Polar Bear entry on this list is potentially spurious and probably there for political reasons due to the cult of “man-made climate change”. The reasons behind the other 9 however are much more down to mankinds inability to (currently) live in harmony with the eco-system in which we live
Washington Times – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has ordered his staff to revise a computerized forecasting model that showed that climate legislation supported by President Obama would make planting trees more lucrative than producing food. The latest Agriculture Department economic-impact study of the climate bill, which passed the House this summer, found that the legislation would profit farmers in the long term. But those profits would come mostly from higher crop prices as a result of the legislation’s incentives to plant more forests and thus reduce the amount of land devoted to food-producing agriculture. Read Article
Ed – It is one thing not to deforest the world further, and to return recently deforested land back to nature, however to convert long existing productive agricultural land away from food production so to “fight global warming” is plain immoral when there are a billion malnourished human’s, irrespective on where you stand on CO2
New York Times – Raimundo Teixeira de Souza came to this sweltering Amazon outpost 15 years ago, looking for land. He bought 20 acres, he said, but more powerful farmers, who roam this Wild West territory with rifles strapped to their backs, forced him to sell much of it for a pittance. Raimundo Teixeira de Souza held the residents’ card of his stepson who was killed, probably in a land dispute.Then someone shot and killed Mr. de Souza’s 23-year-old stepson in the middle of a village road two years ago, residents said. No one has been arrested. In fact, the new police chief has no record that the crime was even investigated by his predecessor. It is hardly surprising, the chief said, considering that he has only four investigators to cover an area of rampant land-grabbing and deforestation the size of Austria. Read Article
Korea Times – A famine-prone, energy-starved North Korea has destroyed forests in its search for arable land to grow crops and vegetables.South Korea has seen a greater increase in urbanization but has better environmental protection than its northern neighbor thanks to its reforestation efforts. In a report by the Ministry of the Environment, “land cover mapping,” a method of showing geography by using satellite images and aerial photographs, showed that the North was chopping down forests to create farmland over a great deal of its territory, especially in areas near Haeju, South Hwanghae Province. The wood-for-land method is now rarely used in the South because of fears of landslides. Indiscriminate lumbering for cultivation is said to be a key factor behind flash floods in North Korea. Read Article
PhysOrg – A new article in the December 4 issue of Science addresses how the combined efforts of government commitments and market transition could save forest and reduce carbon emissions in Brazil. The Policy Forum brief, entitled “The End of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon” was authored by contributors from the Woods Hole Research Center, Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazonia (IPAM), Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Aliança da Terra, Environmental Defense Fund, University of Florida, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, and the Universidade Federal do Pará. Read Article
Ed – A case of wishful thinking we fear
BioScience Technology – A new scientific organisation is needed to monitor the commitments that will be made by developing countries at Copenhagen to cut their deforestation rates, according new research at Leeds. Existing government agencies and research groups have failed to make full use of the thousands of satellite images of the Earth’s surface collected each week to monitor tropical forests. Read Article
ANI – Scientists have come up with a computer model that predicts future changes in the world’s forests, which has forecasted deforestation in the Congo Basin rainforest in the future. Read Article
AFP – Hundreds of Greenpeace activists rallied Saturday in support of a commitment by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation. Read Article
Ed – Rampant deforestation is morally, logically and ecologically wrong. It is not however going to cause the Earth to heat up through CO2 emissions. It will have climatic implications however due to moisture normally trapped by the forests no longer being trapped leading to local drying which on a large scale will have some implications for world climate patterns.
BBC – The stumps of 10 rainforest trees, complete with their roots, have been placed around Trafalgar Square to highlight the issue of deforestation.Laser beams will mark the height the trees would have reached in the wild in comparison to Nelson’s Column. The legally logged trees will highlight deforestation in countries like their native Ghana which has lost 90% of its rainforest in the past 50 years. Read Article
AP – Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon dropped nearly 46 percent from August 2008 to July 2009 – the biggest annual decline in two decades, the government said Thursday. Analysis of satellite imagery by the National Institute for Space Research shows an estimated 7,008 square kilometers (2,705 square miles) of forest were cleared during the 12-month period, the lowest rate since the government started monitoring deforestation in 1988.  Read Article
New Scientist -Â ECUADOR’s unprecedented offer to accept payment for not extracting oil from beneath the Amazon rainforest is beginning to draw interest. The move could usher in a new way to both combat climate change and prevent damage to ecologically diverse and sensitive regions. More than two years ago, Ecuador said it would abandon plans for drilling in Yasuni National Park, one of the few pristine regions of Amazon rainforest remaining, if it was paid half of the $7 billion that it expected to earn from tapping the oilfield. ” Read Article
BBC - More than a third of species assessed in a major international biodiversity study are threatened with extinction, scientists have warned. Out of the 47,677 species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 17,291 were deemed to be at serious risk.These included 21% of mammals, 30% of amphibians, 70% of plants and 35% of invertebrates. Conservationists warned that not enough was being done to tackle the main threats, such as habitat loss. Read Article
Jakata Post -Â The Belitung regency administration in Bangka Belitung province will develop its tourism, agricultural and fishery sectors in a bid to curb the rapid pace of deforestation caused by extensive tin mining in the area. Belitung Regent Darmansyah Husein said recently that to show its seriousness in developing the non-mineral sector, the local administration would allocate all of its development funds in the 2010 regency budget that was being formulated by legislative and executive institutions. Read Article
Reuters – A pioneering solar energy project is using green technology to improve the lives of isolated villagers living beyond the reach of power lines on Argentina’s windswept Andean plains. Llama-herding communities have relied on firewood to cook and to heat their mud-brick homes for centuries in this remote corner of the vast South American country, causing deforestation and soil erosion. Read Article
The Independent – A vital safeguard to protect the world’s rainforests from being cut down has been dropped from a global deforestation treaty due to be signed at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December. Under proposals due to be ratified at the summit, countries which cut down rainforests and convert them to plantations of trees such as oil palms would still be able to classify the result as forest and could receive millions of dollars meant for preserving them. An earlier version of the text ruled out such a conversion but has been deleted, and the EU delegation ““ headed by Britain ““ has blocked its reinsertion. Read Article
The Historian – Irrespective of whether or not CO2 causes climate change, what legislation that comes in will have one primary purpose, not to protect the environment, but to make money. Trillions upon trillions of dollars flowing each and every year into the coffers of big banks and government treasuries.
The Independent – One of the most cherished articles of faith of the green movement ““ that wood-fuelled power stations can help save the planet ““ is being increasingly challenged by campaigners and conservationists around the world. The power companies say the source will be “sustainable forests”, but campaigners and ecologists claim that untold damage will be caused by the burgeoning market for wood. They say that, although traders in the developing world are being tempted to grub up and sell native forests, the chief danger is in the creation of monoculture plantations, where single species of trees are grown in straight rows and little wildlife can establish a home for itself. Read Article
NPR - On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to give a price tag for the Senate’s global warming bill. That will frame next week’s scheduled debate on the legislation. According to current biofuel laws, if you burn ethanol from corn in your car, the government doesn’t count the carbon dioxide that comes out of the tailpipe as an actual carbon emission. One key part of the climate bill has to do with fuels made from green plants. These can reduce the use of fossil fuels, and they also are a big draw for farm-state votes. But scientists writing in the current issue of Science magazine point out a huge error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming.. Read Article
The Historian – As usual with anything to do with Anthropogenic Global Warming (supposedly caused by man’s CO2 emissions) the real immorality is ignored. By using agricultural land to create bio-fuels there is less land available to produce food. Therefore global food prices rise, thus making the struggle for LIFE a lot more difficult for the unlucky 3 billion.
On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to give a price tag for the Senate’s global warming bill. That will frame next week’s scheduled debate on the legislation.
According to current biofuel laws, if you burn ethanol from corn in your car, the government doesn’t count the carbon dioxide that comes out of the tailpipe as an actual carbon emission.
One key part of the climate bill has to do with fuels made from green plants. These can reduce the use of fossil fuels, and they also are a big draw for farm-state votes.
But scientists writing in the current issue of Science magazine point out a huge error in existing biofuel laws that could actually make climate change worse. They say these rules inadvertently encourage deforestation, which in turn contributes to global warming..
Al Jazeera - Severe deforestation is taking place in Australia, as well as countries like Brazil and Indonesia. In Tasmania, forests have been shrinking steadily over the past 50 years due to the state’s billion-dollar timber industry. Read Article
