2 June 2015, Climate News Network, Glacier loss raises high concern over water supplies: The glaciers of the Everest region of the Himalayan massif—home to the highest peak of all—could lose between 70% and 99% of their volume as a result of global warming. Asia’s mountain ranges contain the greatest thickness of ice beyond the polar regions. But new research predicts that, by 2100, the world’s highest waters—on which billions of people depend for their water supply—could be at their lowest ebb because of the ice loss. Many of the continent’s great rivers begin up in the snows, fed by melting ice in high-peak regions such as the Hindu Kush, the Pamir and the Himalayas. Joseph Shea, a glacial hydrologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal, and French and Dutch colleagues report in The Cryosphere journal that they used more than 50 years of climate data and sophisticated computer models of predicted climate change to study the pattern of snowpack and seasonal melt in the Everest region. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2015
2 June 2015, UN experts voice concern over adverse impact of free trade and investment agreements on human rights: A number of free trade and investment agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), are currently being negotiated. A group of UN experts* have issued the following statement to express concern about the secret nature of drawing up and negotiating many of these agreements and the potential adverse impact of these agreements on human rights: “While trade and investment agreements can create new economic opportunities, we draw attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement. Read More here
2 June 2015, Renew Economy, Big Oil turns on Big Coal, but not to save the planet: In a stunning reversal on years of opposition to a global carbon price, the CEOs of six European oil and gas giants have said they are now ready for a price on carbon. But not so they can save the planet. Big Oil has broken ranks with Big Coal in a bid to save its own business model, hoping that an international carbon price will phase out coal and cause more gas to be consumed.
The CEOs of the European oil giants Shell, BP, Total, Statoil, Eni and BG Group, with a combined revenue of $US1.4 trillion – although notably not the US giants Chevron and Exxon – sent letters last Friday to the head of the UN climate negotiations, Christiana Figueres, and Laurent Fabius, France’s Foreign Affairs and International Development Minister who will also lead the Paris climate talks later this year. Read More here
2 June 2015, Inside Climate News, Bonn Climate Talks Aim to Build a Springboard to Paris, Not a Sinkhole: Six months before what may be the last chance for a global climate agreement in Paris, negotiators get to work on the draft text. As climate talks begin this week in Bonn to work on the draft text of a global agreement, the task of delegates expands to include the twin UN objectives of alleviating poverty and combating global warming. Delegates were also met with a new warning that the widely accepted target of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius may not be enough. Six months from the start of a Paris conference where the United Nations hopes to complete a far-reaching deal on the climate crisis, negotiators meeting in Bonn, Germany this week and next are back to working on their unwieldy draft text even as the treaty’s goals slide over distant horizons. Read More here