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Paris climate talks: Developed countries must do more than reduce emissions

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Paris climate talks: Developed countries must do more than reduce emissions

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The COP21's aim is to reduce pollution and limit the climat warming at only 2° wheras it's already the limit of safety defined by scientists and the earth is going to be 2°7 warmest.

The development of many countries creates much CO2 in atmosphere and the greenhouse .

There is already victims of the global warming caused by pollution : sea rising, the "smock" in the city which are the more polluted etc

"Countries can then contribute according to their capacities and resource availability and I have no doubt that emerging countries such as India, China or Brazil will be enthusiastic participants in such initiatives." Many countries have the futur of our world in theur hands .

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We are only days away from the climate change summit in Paris. Several world leaders are likely to be present to applaud a successful outcome, which is virtually guaranteed since the bar has been set so low in terms of effort expected from the major industrialized economies.

Under the UN process which the negotiations have been taking place, countries are required only to present their climate pledges (known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs, which are voluntary and subject to an international review but with no strict compliance procedure.

It is this pledge and review system which will become the template for future climate change action. Past experience shows that such weak international regimes, which posit only a best endeavour commitment, rarely deliver expected results.

The UN recently reported that aggregating all the INDCs so far, the world would be on an a trajectory of 2.7C, when a 2C rise is already the limit of safety defined by scientists.

What many people fail to realize is that global warming is the consequence of the stock of greenhouse gas emissions, chiefly CO2, which has accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel based industrial activity in the industrialized countries of the world.

This is the reason why the UN recognizes the historical responsibility of the developed countries in causing global warming even though current industrial activity in major developing countries such as China and, to a much lesser extent, India is adding incrementally to that stock.

If developed countries do not make significant and absolute reductions in their emissions there will be a progressively smaller carbon space available to accommodate the development needs of developing countries. There is a difference between the emissions of developing countries which are "survival" emissions and those of developed countries which are in the nature of "lifestyle" emissions. They do not belong to the same category and cannot be treated on a par.

To blur this distinction is to accept the argument that because "we got here first, so we get to keep what we have, while those who come later must stay where they are for the sake of the saving the planet from the threat of climate change." Far from accepting their historical responsibility developed countries are instead trying to shift the burden on to the shoulders of developing countries.

This they have been doing by keeping attention focused on current emissions while ignoring the source of the stock of emissions in the atmosphere. A sustainable and effective climate change regime cannot be built on the basis of such inequity.

One often hears the argument that it is all very well to preach equity but given the planetary emergency the world faces from the threat of climate change we must set aside the equity principle in the interests of humanity as a whole. This is a wholly specious and self serving argument. It reflects the sense of entitlement to an affluent lifestyle, based on energy intensive production and consumption, while denying the even modest aspirations of people in developing countries.

In a densely interconnected and globalised world, it will be impossible to maintain islands of prosperity in an ocean of poverty and deprivation. It is not that developing countries are claiming the right to spew as much carbon as possible into the atmosphere without regard to the health of the planet.

As the main victims of climate change- the impacts of which they are already suffering - they have a much bigger stake in dealing with this challenge. They are, in fact, doing much more than most developed countries, to adopt energy frugal methods of growth, conserving energy, promoting renewable power and limiting waste within the limits of their own resources.

Climate ​negotiations have become ... more about safeguarding narrowly conceived economic self interests of nations.

They could do much more if they had access to finance, technology and capacity building from developed countries, a commitment which is incorporated in the UN. Success may elude Paris if developed countries continue to evade their responsibility to provide adequate financial resources and transfer appropriate technologies to developing countries to enable them to enhance their own domestic efforts.

Climate negotiations have become less about meeting an elemental challenge to human survival and more about safeguarding narrowly conceived economic self interests of nations. These are negotiations conducted in a competitive frame, where each party gives as little as possible and extracts as much as possible. The inevitable result is a least common denominator result and this is what is expected at Paris.

Imagine if each country came with the intention to contribute as much as it can and take away as little benefit to itself as possible, because we are all faced with an urgent and global challenge. We would then get a maximal outcome - which is what the world requires if it has to escape the catastrophic consequences of climate change. The negotiating dynamic may change dramatically.

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Villagers carry illegally scavenged coal from an open-cast coal mine in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India, trying to earn a few dollars a day. Photograph: Kuni Takahashi/Getty Images

The leaders can capture the imagination of people around the world if they explicitly acknowledge the seriousness of the threat we all confront and commit themselves to a global collaborative effort to deal with it based on the principle of equitable burden sharing.

Why not create a global technology platform which brings together the best minds from developed and developing countries alike to create new climate-friendly technologies which can then be disseminated as global public goods? Given the promise of solar power, why not announce a global solar mission designed to make it a mainstream energy source in a decade? Since coal will continue to be a major source of power generation in many countries of the world, could we collaborate together on a clean coal mission which reduces harmful emissions and increases the efficiency of coal combustion?

Countries can then contribute according to their capacities and resource availability and I have no doubt that emerging countries such as India, China or Brazil will be enthusiastic participants in such initiatives. Even if we are unable at this stage to go beyond the INDCs which have already been submitted the adoption of these initiatives may reassure the world that a new and more promising process has been set in motion to deliver a more sustainable future for our common home.

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cop 21: un climate change conference | paris

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Paris climate talks: Developed countries must do more than reduce emissions | Shyam Saran

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We are only days away from the climate change summit in Paris. Several world leaders are likely to be present to applaud a successful outcome, which is virtually guaranteed since the bar has been set so low in terms of effort expected from the major industrialized economies.

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China underreporting coal consumption by up to 17%, data suggests | World news | The Guardian

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China underreporting coal consumption by up to 17%, data suggests | World news | The Guardian

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China, the world's largest carbon emitter, has been dramatically underreporting the amount of coal it consumes each year, it has been claimed ahead of key climate talks in Paris.

Official Chinese data, reported by the New York Times on Wednesday after being quietly released earlier this year, suggests China has been burning up to 17% more coal each year than previously disclosed by the government.

The revelation - which may mean China has emitted close to a billion additional tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year - could complicate the fight against global warming ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, which begins on 30 November.

In 2012 China consumed 600m more tonnes of coal - or more than 70% of the United States' annual total - than previously disclosed, according to the revised data.

China's national bureau of statistics did not immediately confirm the report. However, speaking at a coal conference in Beijing, an adviser to the natural resources defence council said: "The new figures are more accurate than before."

Zhou Fengqi, the adviser, told AFP the updated figures "more accurately reflect the situation".

Yang Fuqiang, a former Chinese energy official who advises the Natural Resources Defense Council in the US, told the New York Times: "This will have a big impact, because China has been burning so much more coal than we believed."

"It turns out that it was an even bigger emitter than we imagined. This helps to explain why China's air quality is so poor, and that will make it easier to get national leaders to take this seriously."

The report came as Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, said his country had a duty to humanity to bring its emissions under control.

Speaking during a visit to China by the French president, François Hollande, Li said: "For a great many years, we consumed too much energy and resources to achieve our development, and this model has since become unsustainable."

Li Shuo, the senior climate and energy policy officer for Greenpeace East Asia, said the revised data suggested a gap between official statistics and what was happening on the ground.

"It is quite a lot more than previously reported - it is basically equivalent to the whole national consumption of Germany, and Germany is a large coal-consumption country in Europe."

However, Li, who said environment experts and policymakers had been aware of the higher numbers since the start of this year, cautioned against an overly bleak reading of the figures.

China is the world's largest consumer of coal, with Chinese miners digging up 3.87bn tonnes last year alone.

But Li said an economic slowdown and Beijing's bold attempts to reduce its dependency on the fossil fuel meant consumption was now falling.

"China's coal consumption probably won't get as high as what we saw for the past decade," he said. "At [the very] least we are seeing a plateauing period now, which is quite significant."

Beijing was accused of wrecking climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 by opposing legally binding emissions cuts.

But Li predicted China - which has pledged to hit "peak emissions" and make 20% of its energy mix renewable by 2030 - would play a more constructive role in Paris.

"China is making a lot of effort and is actually getting quite proactive these days compared to six years ago in Copenhagen. Part of the reason is that they realise that their emissions portfolio is undergoing a fundamental change and that is working in their favour. That gives them the confidence ... [to act] in a more positive way."

Lin Boqiang, the director of Xiamen University's China centre for energy economics research, also downplayed the impact the revised coal data would have on the Paris talks.

"What people want to know about at the Paris summit are China's future emissions projections. We should look forward rather than backward," he said. "China does have huge carbon emissions but if we look forward China's emissions will soon peak and begin to fall."
Additional reporting by Luna Lin

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cop 21: un climate change conference | paris

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China underreporting coal consumption by up to 17%, data suggests

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China, the world's largest carbon emitter, has been dramatically underreporting the amount of coal it consumes each year, it has been claimed ahead of key climate talks in Paris. Official Chinese data, reported by the New York Times on Wednesday after being quietly released earlier this year, suggests China has been burning up to 17% more coal each year than previously disclosed by the government.

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Russia thwarts plan for Antarctic ocean sanctuary, China on board

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Russia thwarts plan for Antarctic ocean sanctuary, China on board

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This year at the Commission for the Conservation of Antartic Marine Living Ressources (CCAMLR) ,Russia has again refused the project to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in Antartica for the fifth time ! It's the last country who has thwarted the proposition because China hadaccepted it .

Its aim is to protect the marine wildlife and to take global sea food in security .

The CCAMLR was founed in 1982 and it's composed of the european union and 24 others country.

Antarctica is home to more than 10,000 species including most of the world's penguins, whales, seabirds, colossal squid and Antarctic tooth fish.

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Russia has again thwarted attempts to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in Antarctica.

It is the final country opposing the protection of a vast swathe of rich waters from fishing, after a revised international plan won support from China.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) ends a 10-day meeting in Hobart, Australia on Friday without the consensus needed for a deal to conserve and manage the marine ecosystems in the Southern Ocean.

While Russia blocked conservation proposals for a fifth consecutive time, delegates welcomed China's support for the revised Marine Protection Area (MPA) in the icy but fertile Ross Sea put forward by the United States and New Zealand.

"China's support for a revised MPA is a major step forward in reaching the consensus required to put workable protections in place for the Ross Sea," New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said in a statement.

USdelegation leader Evan Bloom told Reuters the ongoing opposition by Russia, which had argued that such a large area closed off to fishing was unnecessary, was frustrating.

"There's also a bit of optimism because now there's just one country left and we're closer than we have ever been before."

The latest proposal includes a new research zone for krill and allows fishing for the tiny creatures that form the basis of the Antarctic food chain in other areas of the expanded 1.5 million square kilometre protected zone.

China has expressed a desire to increase its fishing for krill, used in fish food and human nutritional supplements, throughout the Southern Ocean. Delegates said there were no immediate plans for krill fishing in the Ross Sea and little risk to the vast resource, which is protected by existing quotas and regulations.

The objective of the CCAMLR, which was established by international treaty in 1982, is the conservation of Antarctic marine life "whilst providing for rational use" that takes global food security into account.

The European Union and 24 nations are members of the consensus-based organisation and a further 11 countries have signed its convention.

Antarctica is home to more than 10,000 species including most of the world's penguins, whales, seabirds, colossal squid and Antarctic tooth fish.

"The Ross Sea is one of the last intact, fully functioning marine ecosystems on earth. It's really important to preserve it for its own intrinsic value, " Andrea Kavanagh, a delegate and director of the pro-conservation Pew Charitable Trusts said.

"It's also a really important place for scientists to look at how climate change is affecting healthy ecosystems as opposed to unhealthy ecosystems."

The Southern Ocean represents about 10 per cent of the Earth's surface.

- Reuters

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Russia thwarts plan for Antarctic ocean sanctuary, China on board

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Russia has again thwarted attempts to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary in Antarctica. It is the final country opposing the protection of a vast swathe of rich waters from fishing, after a revised international plan won support from China.

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Keep elephants in the wild where they belong

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Keep elephants in the wild where they belong

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This article is talking about Swaziland's elephants who will be transport to few american zoos. The half of elephant from national park of Swaziland are going to be sell to have more place .

Some of these zoo have already had some case of violence or abuse onto elephant .

Live in zoo isn't a good way to conserve elephant : they haven't enought landscape to walk, to live. They also don't support the cold of winter in the USA ; in canada an elephant became obese beacause it was confined to be not in the cool .

It's not a good way for elephant, planet and environment.

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US wildlife officials are considering an application for a permit to import 18 elephants from the southern African nation of Swaziland to three American zoos.

It seems there are too many elephants in Swaziland. According to the website of one of the zoos that will benefit from the deal, "the large elephant population is negatively affecting the land and natural resources inside the parks, changing dense forests into barren landscapes".

By taking the elephants, the zoos will be saving their lives, since otherwise they would have to be culled. The elephants will be well looked after in their new homes. The zoos will fund conservation projects in Swaziland and use the elephants to teach zoo-goers about conservation and the threats from poaching and ivory trafficking.

A win-win solution? Instinctively, I feel that this narrative is all wrong.

As I sit in my house listening to wild lions roaring in Nairobi National Park, I feel privileged to be a citizen of a country that allows wild animals to be truly wild. What's upsetting me is that these 18 elephants will never again experience the savannah and big skies of Africa; the thought of the life that awaits them in a land where they will endure bitter winters and a diet of hay.

I imagine the elephants confined in pens and small enclosures, disoriented by the screams of excited visitors and the flashing lights of their mobile phone cameras. No more adventure across the African plains, no more mud wallows, or meeting long lost relatives who come back from an adventure in other lands.

They will be mated, if and when the zoo decides, and with whomever the zoo decides to mate them. They will be poked and prodded, injected, and basically forced to do as is expected. They will not be elephants any more; they will be reduced to entertainment for curious human beings.

A closer look at the story reveals that not all is as it appears. News coverage gives the impression that Swaziland is teeming with elephants. In fact, according to the latest IUCN census, there are just 35 elephants in the whole country. Swaziland is planning to send more than half its total population of elephants to zoos in the USA!

Swaziland is sometimes cited as a conservation success story, and there are many things to admire in the country's approach to wildlife, not least the exceedingly severe penalties for poaching.

But Swaziland is a small, landlocked country with a total area less than that of the nearby Kruger National Park in South Africa. Swaziland is too small to make a significant contribution to elephant conservation. Its big game is confined to small, fenced off conservancies that are mainly used for tourism.

The animals here are not really wild; they were reintroduced to the country and placed in areas too small to support truly wild populations, which are carefully managed to resemble natural landscapes.

There is nothing wrong with this. Nor is it wrong to want to reduce elephant numbers to restore the ecological balance of the reserves. Sending them away is surely a better option than previous failed solutions, including grotesque attempts to vasectomise male elephants.

But there are many good reasons not to send them to zoos in the USA. US zoos have a very poor record on elephant welfare. The campaign group "In Defence of Animals" has published an annual list of the ten worst zoos for elephants for the last 11 years. The list for 2014 makes chilling reading, including cases of elephants suffering from frostbite, chained to concrete floors and even being forced to wash cars in a so-called safari park. (This abuse of the noble Kiswahili word "safari" makes me shudder.)

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African elephant Teresita in her compound at Sao Paulo Zoo, Brazil. Photograph: Junia Machado/Courtesy of ElephantVoices

A quick Internet search reveals other monstrosities: captive elephants made to do "yoga" by their keepers and even being used to predict the winner of the Super Bowl. The mental anguish suffering by these elephants is all too clear from their postures and facial expressions, in photographs that I can hardly bear to look at. We are poisoning our own societies with these cruel freak shows.

Faced with public outcry over the treatment of elephants the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) has issued new rules requiring zoos to give elephants more space and keep them in social groups. Many US zoos are unable to comply with these requirements and are getting rid of their elephants.

But this doesn't go far enough. I agree with wildlife activists in the US who are campaigning for elephants to be banned from zoos altogether.

The elephants from Swaziland, we are assured, will be sent to accredited zoos and housed in state-of-the-art enclosures in the company of other animals. Let's look at one of these zoos (chosen at random): Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas. The zoo claims it will offer elephants a "safe, healthy future ... in expansive new herd habitats unlike any seen before, offering the ability to establish multigenerational herds in stimulating environments that meet each elephant's complex physical, mental and social needs".

The artist's impressions of the planned 5 acre enclosure look nice. Still, 5 acres is still an area only about 100 by 200 metres, not much for animals which are accustomed to walking 10 to 20 km a day in the wild, or for six elephants whose natural home range size is measured in tens of square kilometres.

The elephants will still have to spend cold winter days and long winter nights indoors - hardly a "stimulating environment" (although their hardships in this respect will be nothing compared to the suffering of poor Lucy, in Edmonton Zoo in Canada, where temperatures are well below freezing for almost half the year).

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Indian elephant Lucy, during the brief Edmonton summer, showing clear signs of obesity, likely linked to her long periods of winter confinement. Photograph: Courtesy of ElephantVoices

What worries me is Sedgwick Zoo's previous record: this zoo has form in elephant abuse. It currently has one elephant, Stephanie, who has lived alone since she arrived in the zoo as a two-year-old in 1972. According to the zoo's website, Stephanie "seems to enjoy walking backwards".

How quaint! Hasn't it occurred to them that this abnormal behaviour is a symptom of some underlying psychopathology? This is hardly surprising in an animal that has been kept in solitary confinement for more than 40 years. Most likely, it is literally driving her mad.

We don't let proven child abusers adopt children just because they say they have seen the error of their ways. Why should it be different for zoos and elephants?

Finally, the idea that bring elephants to US zoos will help educate US citizens about the poaching crisis in Africa seems far-fetched. Seeing an elephant in a cage or an enclosure provides visitors with a good photo opportunity for their Facebook pages. It teaches nothing about the power and intelligence and rich social lives of these remarkable animals, or about the complexity of the poaching crisis that is threatening their existence in the wild.

If there is money available to educate the US public about ivory trafficking, there are much better ways it could be spent: for example producing films to show on prime-time TV, setting up a trust fund to educate US citizens about wild elephants, forging links between schoolkids in the US and in the elephant range states, or bringing African wildlife activists on speaking tours to America to make the case in person.

And for the Swazi elephants, despite the denials of those behind this scheme, I'm sure that many African countries have plenty of space to move them to, where they can live out their lives with dignity.

CORRECTION: The article incorrectly states that Stephanie lived alone at Sedgwick County Zoo. For most of her life, Stephanie lived with another elephant, Cinda, who died in 2014. My apologies for this error. There is further discussion of this point in the comments on the article.

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Keep elephants in the wild where they belong

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US wildlife officials are considering an application for a permit to import 18 elephants from the southern African nation of Swaziland to three American zoos. It seems there are too many elephants in Swaziland.

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Sharks have a bad reputation : millions of them are murdered but only 5 to 15 humans are killed by sharks.

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If we want a low-carbon future to happen, we should look to Silicon Valley | Environment | The Guardian

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If we want a low-carbon future to happen, we should look to Silicon Valley | Environment | The Guardian

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It's an article about the sustainable development which can start in 'Silicon Valley' .

The journalist explained lot of industrial words and the relation between, for example, Steve Jobs and the new technologies and the climat change .

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Do you really believe? I'm not asking if you 'believe' in climate change - thankfully that question has been delegated to the world of trolls. I mean, do you believe we can build a low-carbon economy in which 9 billion people thrive? That's a much harder question for many of us. But until we all answer with a resounding 'yes!' we won't move far or fast enough.

That low carbon transition requires mass re-engineering of our global infrastructure, economic systems and even our personal behaviours. The scale of revolution is admittedly hard to imagine, until you remember that we've already lived through one. And the leaders of that revolution unequivocally believed not only that it should happen, but that it would.

The internet is almost exactly the same age as I am. In those 40 years the reach, speed and impact on our lives, economies and even built environment has been monumental. Today nearly half the world's population can Skype loved ones, order food and access education and cat videos online. We plan our lives and run our businesses all through a system that didn't exist when I was born.

From daily personal habits to huge infrastructure projects - our political and business leaders have happily turned our established systems upside down for the digital revolution. The British government alone is merrily spending £1bn to upgrade us to 'superfast broadband', without the whimpering even minimal green investment generates. Climate activists can only dream of the public and political support the digital economy enjoys.

Global transformation can be done, and it has been done. Perhaps we can learn from the people who did it. Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, says "Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location." So here are the key terms which underpin that proven world-changing mindset:

Visionary. This overused word is fundamental to how Silicon Valley changed our lives. From Steve Jobs to Elon Musk the term 'visionary' now seems reserved for technology innovators rather than political leaders. While many call for 'vision' within the climate movement we seem to lack those iconoclastic leaders who hold an unwavering expectation and belief in their answers. We need to learn that people follow people not policies.

Pay it forward. On the opposite end to the individual exceptionalism of 'visionaries' is this term for collective benefit. One surprising aspect of the geek world is how highly it values shared learning and a sense of community. There is a philosophy of 'coopertition' and support for unusual partnerships in Silicon Valley. We desperately need a similar alignment within climate action, not only within business or activist communities - but between them. The benefit of coopertition is that it allows for cooperation on the need for action, while reserving the right to viciously compete on which action should win out.

Growth-mindset & fail-fast. Two terms encompass learning, innovating and being open-minded. 'Growth-mindset' was coined by the Stanford University professor of psychology Carol Dweck, and she compares it to the fixed mindset that doesn't allow for flexibility, growth or failure. That's also the root of 'fail-fast' - another beloved tech term. Both reflect an acceptance of trying, learning from failures and not expecting perfection from yourself or others. Especially in the business sector, ambitious plans on climate can be killed by an overly 'fixed' mentality. Fear of critics dampers the innovative failures we could all learn from.

UX. User Experience is the way a technology user (you and I) behaves and feels using a particular product. The holy grail of UX is for a technology to be frictionless - a word for a service so beautifully designed that it's intuitive with inefficiencies and annoyances smoothed out. Attempts to take personal action on climate are rarely frictionless. Indeed the sheer difficulty of taking action over climate change is often held as a badge of personal honour. We need to improve the UX of low-carbon lifestyles.

I've plucked these words from the lexicon of an industry arguably more concerned with making money than changing the world (although they would argue differently). But it's not the worthiness of Silicon Valley's impact I wish to emulate - it's the monumental scale. In fact, that's my favourite tech-term: 'scalable'. And getting scalable seems to have a lot to do with believing it's possible.

* This article is part of the Guardian's Keep it in the Ground campaign. You can receive the latest updates on the campaign by selecting "Follow series" in the Guardian app

* Everything you wanted to ask about the Guardian's climate change campaign

* Got a question about Keep it in the Ground that we haven't covered? Email the team on keep.it@theguardian.com

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If we want a low-carbon future to happen, we should look to Silicon Valley

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Do you really believe? I'm not asking if you 'believe' in climate change - thankfully that question has been delegated to the world of trolls. I mean, do you believe we can build a low-carbon economy in which 9 billion people thrive? That's a much harder question for many of us.

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Volkswagen UK boss Paul Willis: I 'apologise sincerely' over emissions scandal

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Volkswagen UK boss Paul Willis: I 'apologise sincerely' over emissions scandal

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Thr VW's boss said a speech about the car emissions scandal . He "apologised" about that but he denied about the excess of the emissions .

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UK boss Paul Willis apologises to the transport select committee (PA / Wikipedia)

Close to 1.2 million vehicles are affected in the UK with recalls of cars due to start in the first quarter of next year for remedial work.

In a grilling by the Commons transport committee, Volkswagen UK managing director Mr Willis conceded there was "some risk" that a target of doing all the work by the end of next year would be missed.

Some 400,000 would need changes to their fuel injection systems as well as having the software removed, he said - though he was unable to give any technical explanation to the frustration of MPs.

Engineers were under orders to ensure that the fuel efficiency of the cars involved was not reduced as a result of the changes, he insisted.

Asked why cars continued being sold - more than 4,000 after the scandal first broke in the US according to committee chair Louise Ellman - Mr Willis said it was 1,079 after it became clear Europe was affected.

"I couldn't stop selling cars if I didn't know which cars were affected," he told MPs - saying he received those details on September 30, eight days after it emerged Europe was affected and two days after he told the Government sales would stop when they could.

"There were eight days between when we first knew it affected Europe until I stopped selling cars and the reason for that is the complexity of the number of cars involved.

"There are 60 different models, there are five different brands, there are three different engines and two different transmissions.

"I found the VIN numbers out precisely at 9am and at 1:30pm, once I had clarified it with the computer systems, I stopped selling the cars voluntarily."

He said the testing regime was "old fashioned and not fit for purpose" but that was no excuse for the actions of the firm.

"We mishandled the situation. That's why we need to fix the cars, that's why we need to get the customers in and need to put the cars right.

"We mishandled the situation without a shadow of a doubt."

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Volkswagen UK boss Paul Willis: I 'apologise sincerely' over emissions scandal

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UK boss Paul Willis apologises to the transport select committee (PA / Wikipedia) Close to 1.2 million vehicles are affected in the UK with recalls of cars due to start in the first quarter of next year for remedial work.

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Climat change impacts on the ocean and the meteo .

The ice cap melts and polar bear has no house and food to live

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Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean - The Washington Post

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Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean - The Washington Post

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The 8 first mouth of 2015 were the warmest in the world since the 1880 (the beginning of meteo recording). But the Arctic have recorded the coolest temperature!

This year is going to be the warmest. The climate isn't regulate, and the ice cap melt but it is not the reason of rising seas : the water comes from the glaciers of Greenland.

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Update: See also this follow up article, "Everything you need to know about the cold 'blob' in the North Atlantic Ocean."
It is, for our home planet, an extremely warm year.

Indeed, last week we learned from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe's surface land and oceans, based on temperature records going back to 1880. It's just the latest evidence that we are, indeed, on course for a record-breaking warm year in 2015.

Yet, if you look closely, there's one part of the planet that is bucking the trend. In the North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland and Iceland, the ocean surface has seen very cold temperatures for the past eight months.

What's up with that?

First of all, it's no error. I checked with Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, who confirmed what the map above suggests - some parts of the North Atlantic Ocean saw record cold in the past eight months. As Arndt put it by email:

For the grid boxes in darkest blue, they had their coldest Jan-Aug on record, and in order for a grid box to be "eligible" for that map, it needs at least 80 years of Jan-Aug values on the record.

Those grid boxes encompass the region from "20W to 40W and from 55N to 60N," Arndt explained.

And there's not much reason to doubt the measurements - the region is very well sampled. "It's pretty densely populated by buoys, and at least parts of that region are really active shipping lanes, so there's quite a lot of observations in the area," Arndt said. "So I think it's pretty robust analysis."

Thus, the record seems to be a meaningful one - and there is a much larger surrounding area that, although not absolutely the coldest it has been on record, is also unusually cold.

At this point, it's time to ask what the heck is going on here. And while there may not yet be any scientific consensus on the matter, at least some scientists suspect that the cooling seen in these maps is no fluke but, rather, part of a process that has been long feared by climate researchers - the slowing of Atlantic Ocean circulation.

In March, several top climate scientists, including Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Michael Mann of Penn State, published a paper in Nature Climate Change suggesting that the gigantic ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is weakening. It's sometimes confused with the "Gulf Stream," but, in fact, that's just a southern branch of it.
[Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans - with potentially dire consequences]
The current is driven by differences in the temperature and salinity of ocean water (for a more thorough explanation, see here). In essence, cold salty water in the North Atlantic sinks because it is more dense, and warmer water from farther south moves northward to take its place, carrying tremendous heat energy along the way. But a large injection of cold, fresh water can, theoretically, mess it all up - preventing the sinking that would otherwise occur and, thus, weakening the circulation.

In the Nature Climate Change paper, the researchers suggested that this source of freshwater is the melting of Greenland, which is now losing more than a hundred billion tons of ice each year.

I asked Mann and Rahmstorf to comment on the blue spot on the map above by e-mail. Here's what Mann had to say:

I was formerly somewhat skeptical about the notion that the ocean "conveyor belt" circulation pattern could weaken abruptly in response to global warming. Yet this now appears to be underway, as we showed in a recent article, and as we now appear to be witnessing before our very eyes in the form of an anomalous blob of cold water in the sup-polar North Atlantic.

Rahmstorf also commented as follows:

The fact that a record-hot planet Earth coincides with a record-cold northern Atlantic is quite stunning. There is strong evidence - not just from our study - that this is a consequence of the long-term decline of the Gulf Stream System, i.e. the Atlantic ocean's overturning circulation AMOC, in response to global warming.

I also asked Rahmstorf whether, if his thinking is right, we should expect this cold patch to become a permanent feature of temperature maps, even as the world continues to warm. His answer was complex, but not anything that gives you much reassurance:

The short term variations will at some point also go the other way again, so I don't expect the subpolar Atlantic to remain at record cold permanently. But I do expect the AMOC to decline further in the coming decades. The accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet will continue to contribute to this decline by diluting the ocean waters.

Granted, it's not clear that all climate scientists agree with this interpretation of what's happening in the North Atlantic - but clearly some important ones do, and they have published their conclusions in an influential journal.

The longer the situation continues, the more it is likely to attract attention. But it has already been around for a while. "It's been really persistent over the last year and a half or so," NOAA's Arndt says.

Indeed, I spoke with Rahmstorf previously about the cold patch in the North Atlantic in March, when his study came out - and when a NOAA temperature chart for December 2014 through February 2015 also showed record cold in this area. As Rahmstorf wrote back then, "The North Atlantic between Newfoundland and Ireland is practically the only region of the world that has defied global warming and even cooled." Since then, the trend appears to have only continued.

So in sum, if Mann and Rahmstorf are right, a slowing of Atlantic Ocean circulation could be beginning, and even leaving a temperature signature for all to see.

This won't lead to anything remotely like The Day After Tomorrow (which was indeed based - quite loosely - on precisely this climate scenario). But if the trend continues, there could be many consequences, including rising seas for the U.S. East Coast and, possibly, a difference in temperature overall in the North Atlantic and Europe.

So on future climate maps, even as we rack up more hot months and years, we'd better watch the North Atlantic closely.
Also in Energy & Environment: Everything you need to know about the cold 'blob' in the North Atlantic Ocean Climate change is having a surprising effect on bumblebees: Their tongues are shrinking The top five things Pope Francis gets totally right about climate change For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here.

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climate change; warming planet; ocean circulation; north atlantic

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Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold 'blob' in the North Atlantic Ocean

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Update: See also this follow up article, "Everything you need to know about the cold 'blob' in the North Atlantic Ocean." It is, for our home planet, an extremely warm year.

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Thair pollution is under the spotlight in the press : Volskwagen polemic and the number of the death because of the polution are the main subject !

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Fashionable anti-pollution masks make their debut in the UK | News | Lifestyle | The Independent

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Fashionable anti-pollution masks make their debut in the UK | News | Lifestyle | The Independent

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To fight against the air pollution , based on the asian mask , a new fashion mask appareas in London . You can buy it for 129£ !

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Keys? Check. Mobile phone? Check. High-fashion, anti-pollution facewear? Strapped on and ready for the morning commute.

On the grubby streets of east London the air is thick with pollution but my designer mask - billed as the world's first luxury anti-pollution facewear - means I can breathe easy. It is filtering out dirt, dust and harmful particles and, according to its designer, giving me an on-trend fashion edge.

Commuters in smog-filled Asian cities such as Beijing have worn surgical-style face masks for years. With air pollution an increasing concern in Britain's big cities, it is a sad possibility that urbanites will one day don protective masks as readily as a hat or scarf.

Described as a "bold blend of science and style", the £160 Freka mask is ergonomically designed to fit the wearer's face and uses an infusion of Japanese Hiroki wood to calm the senses while a filter blocks out harmful pollutants.

Freka spokeswoman Bhoomika Partap says there is no reason safety gear cannot look good. "Brits generally prefer not to wear something on their face because it's not very comfortable or fashionable," she says. "We wanted to create something of the highest ergonomic quality that made a statement."

It certainly achieves the latter. On the street, passers-by stare or swerve to avoid me. Maybe they think I'm ill or hiding something unsightly. Or about to hold up a bank.

On the tube, a woman laughs and takes my photo. But I'm the one who should be laughing; I'm protected from the PM 2.5 particles that fill London's air - less than a hair's width but linked to around 29,000 deaths a year in the UK.

"In Asia air pollution is a lot more visible, so in the UK it's a little more difficult to get people to notice there's anything wrong with our air quality," says Frank Borsboom, a Dutch engineer who helped design the mask.

Dr Benjamin Barratt from the Environmental Research Group at King's College London said there is "some evidence that a mask can reduce the levels of stress to the heart and lungs caused by breathing elevated levels of air pollution".

He added: "To be effective, a mask must be very well fitting otherwise the gases and tiny particles that make up air pollution will just flow around the mask when you breathe in." Above all, Dr Barratt said, efforts to improve air quality should take precedence over "sticking plaster solutions" such as masks.

To be honest, wearing a piece of silicon on my face is not enjoyable. My breathing is shallow and my peripheral vision is impaired; walking up steps is a nightmare. But is it fashionable? Well, the designers may have been aiming for a catwalk look but a colleague suggested I resembled a giant pigeon.

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Fashionable anti-pollution masks may be making a debut in the UK

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Keys? Check. Mobile phone? Check. High-fashion, anti-pollution facewear? Strapped on and ready for the morning commute. On the grubby streets of east London the air is thick with pollution but my designer mask - billed as the world's first luxury anti-pollution facewear - means I can breathe easy.

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Air pollution 'kills 3.3 million a year worldwide' | Environment | The Independent

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Air pollution 'kills 3.3 million a year worldwide' | Environment | The Independent

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There is too much air pollution , specially in East and South Asia : the pollution is from the burning of fuel for heating and cooking .

The partiles are penetrated in-depth in lungs ; the number of people killed by air pollution will doubled in 2050 .

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Air pollution from outdoor sources kills about 3.3 million people per year worldwide and the numbers are likely to double by 2050 even if every country imposes existing air-quality legislation, a study has found.

Scientists have estimated that outdoor air quality is leading to millions of premature deaths especially in east and south Asia as a result of emissions of damaging microscopic particles into the air that penetrate deep into the lungs.

Most of the air pollutants in Asia come from the burning of fuel for heating and cooking. The estimates do not include the number of deaths from indoor pollution, estimated to be another 3 million or so each year, the scientists said.

While emissions from heating and cooking are most important in India and China, the greatest impact in the United States is from traffic and power-generation pollution whilst in Europe it is mainly from agricultural emissions due to the use of fertilisers, which produces ammonia, the study found.

The researchers used computer models to estimate the health impacts of a range of outdoor air pollutants such as ozone and tiny particles less than 0.0025mm wide, which are known to cause cardiovascular problems and lung disease, said Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, who led the study published in the journal Nature.

"The total number of people who die worldwide together from HIV/Aids and malaria is 2.8 million per year. So that is half a million less than from air pollution, which is a very significant source of premature mortality," Dr Lelieveld said.

The model predicts that if there is "business as usual" and no significant tightening of pollution laws, the mortality rate from outdoor air pollution could jump to 6.6 million deaths per year by 2050, with most of them occurring in Southeast Asia.

"This means a doubling of the number. If this growth in particulate matter is to be avoided, intensive control measures need to be implemented especially in south and east Asia," Dr Lelieveld said.

"Our study clearly shows that it's important to reduce pollution from residential energy use, especially in Asia," he said.

Some of the most dangerous air pollutants in the UK come from mixing traffic fumes with the agricultural pollutants, which causes reactive particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs, Dr Lelieveld said.

"Much of the particulates in cities like London are actually coming from outside the city," he said.

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Air pollution kills 3.3 million people every year

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Air pollution from outdoor sources kills about 3.3 million people per year worldwide and the numbers are likely to double by 2050 even if every country imposes existing air-quality legislation, a study has found.

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UK, France and Germany lobbied for flawed car emissions tests, documents reveal | Environment | The Guardian

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UK, France and Germany lobbied for flawed car emissions tests, documents reveal | Environment | The Guardian

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Volskwagen has place falses detectors of pollution on these car , it creates a big polemic and a lot of air pollution .

Some countries answer and they imposed a real car emission test .

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The UK, France and Germany have been accused of hypocrisy for lobbying behind the scenes to keep outmoded car tests for carbon emissions, but later publicly calling for a European investigation into Volkswagen's rigging of car air pollution tests.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show the three countries lobbied the European commission to keep loopholes in car tests that would increase real world carbon dioxide emissions by 14% above those claimed.

Just four months before the VW emissions scandal broke, the EU's three biggest nations mounted a push to carry over loopholes from a test devised in 1970 - known as the NEDC - to the World Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), which is due to replace it in 2017.

"It is unacceptable that governments which rightly demand an EU inquiry into the VW's rigging of air pollution tests are simultaneously lobbying behind the scenes to continue the rigging of CO2 emissions tests," said Greg Archer, clean vehicles manager at the respected green thinktank, Transport and Environment (T&E). "CO2 regulations should not be weakened by the backdoor through test manipulations."

Vehicle emissions are responsible for 12% of Europe's carbon emissions and by 2021, all new cars must meet an EU emissions limit of 95 grams of CO2 per km, putting accurate measurements of real emissions at a premium.

The loopholes would not only raise real world CO2 emissions from new cars to 110g CO2 per km - well above the EU limit - but increase fuel bills for drivers by €140 per year according T&E.

Huw Irranca-Davies, Labour MP and chair of an influential select committee of MPs, the environmental audit committee, said: "Given that the UK is struggling to bring down carbon emissions and other harmful pollutants from road vehicles it is extremely worrying that the UK government appears to be trying to water down the EU's proposed new road testing regime.

"As well as cutting CO2 emissions, improving the efficiency of vehicles can save lives by reducing the illegal levels of air pollution in UK cities, so the Department for Transport should be making these tests more rigorous not less."

The WLTP test was supposed to remove loopholes that had allowed a gap between real world CO2 emissions and test cycle ones to develop, which EU consultants have estimated at up to 20%.

But the UK lobbied for car makers to be allowed to exploit flexibilities such as externally charging their batteries to full before testing. The Department for Transport also argued that the best available technologies should be shunned in favour of outdated 'inertia classes', which involve manually adding 100 kilo weights to the car to see what effect greater weight on the amount of CO2 the car pumps out.

Research by the International Council on Clean Transportation has found that car manufacturers often game these tests by optimising test car performances at one pound below the desired inertia class.

Germany went further than the UK, calling for the tests to be conducted on sloping downhill tracks, and for allowing manufacturers to declare a final CO2 value 4% lower than the one measured. France supported all the proposed loopholes, bar the 4% lower CO2 value.

Together, these flexibilities would allow some 14% more CO2 to be emitted than EU regulations permit, according to an analysis by T&E. CO2 emissions contribute to climate change, while the nitrogen oxides (NOx) that VW rigged tests for are primarily a cause of local air pollution.

In a letter to the European commission on 29 May, Bob Moran, the Department for Transport's head of regulation and R&D argued that a 'correlation tool' between the old and new tests should include the old procedures for inertia classes and battery recharges.

"It appears to be a common position under NEDC test conditions that manufacturers will (request to) recharge the battery during the soak period, or (request to) replace a partially depleted battery with a fully charged one at the start of the test proper," he wrote. "We believe this commonly used approach should be reflected in the correlation tool."

France backed this position for technical reasons, arguing that it provided "repeatable information". But a fully-charged battery also prevents a car's alternator from kicking in and releasing carbon emissions during tests, as would happen in real world driving situations.

In a sign of growing anger at the VW emissions-rigging scandal, which saw Martin Winterkorn resign on Wednesday, the European parliament's environment committee voted earlier today for real world air pollutant emissions tests to begin no later than 2017.

The panel of MEPs also demanded that no loopholes or deviations be allowed for pollution limits.

"For too long European car makers have been ducking the EU's rules to enable them to keep their highly polluting cars on the road," said Keith Taylor, the Green MEP for south-east England. "The huge scandal with Volkswagen on car pollution rules must focus the minds of EU politicians and the British government. Air pollution kills tens of thousands in the UK every year. With the added unchecked emissions from Volkswagen cars, I worry about how much worse the situation actually is".

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UK, France and Germany lobbied for flawed car emissions tests, documents reveal

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The UK, France and Germany have been accused of hypocrisy for lobbying behind the scenes to keep outmoded car tests for carbon emissions, but later publicly calling for a European investigation into Volkswagen's rigging of car air pollution tests.