London, UK - Ice cream makers Ben & Jerry’s are seeking young people to stop the melt and help lick global warming.

Together with WWF and polar explorer Marc Cornelissen, the internationally-recognized brand is launching the Ben & Jerry’s Climate Change College in support of WWF’s international PowerSwitch! campaign.

The three-year initiative will see six young people - aged 18-25 - each year become Climate Change Ambassadors after graduating from the Ben & Jerry’s Climate College. Successful applicants to the college will be fully trained through internships, workshops, and a visit to the polar region to witness the issue for themselves and support ongoing research into climate change.

“Just like ice cream, if it’s melted it’s ruined,” said Jerry Greenfield, one of the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, who attended the launch of the Climate Change College. “Like everybody in the world, I believe that global climate change is an incredible problem and we need to do something about it.”

“It is this belief that has led us to create the Climate Change College, giving young people the skills to return to their countries to inspire businesses and citizens to start addressing the issue of climate change.”

The project’s main objective is to help these young people develop the practical skills to help fight climate change and prevent the polar ice caps from further melting. This group of international ambassadors will be recruited from the UK and the Netherlands. After completing their college and field mission in 2006 the ambassadors will campaign and spread the message with support from Ben & Jerry’s and WWF.

Scientists fear that by 2100 there may be no sea-ice left during the Arctic summers. This will have far-reaching and non-reversible impacts on local population and wildlife. The second largest freshwater reserve on the planet - the Greenland ice sheet - also shows worrying signs of accelerated melting.

Unless CO2 emissions are drastically cut, we will see warming over Greenland triggering a very rapid meltdown. Over the following centuries this could cause global ocean levels to rise by seven meters. Global warming and the meltdown of the polar ice caps will ultimately affect people and communities the world over.

The main culprit for CO2 emissions is the electricity sector, mainly due to coal-powered stations. The use of coal is especially polluting as it produces more CO2 per unit of energy then any other fuel. WWF’s PowerSwitch! campaign aims at cleaning up the act of the power sector.

“Melting ice caps, violent weather, severe droughts, warming oceans, species forced to move to cooler homes; coal power is responsible for these alarming signs of global warming,” said Imogen Zethoven, leader of the global PowerSwitch! Campaign. “We need to move away from coal and fast.”

Addressing the need for a new generation of young campaigners, the Climate Change College has been created to empower people to challenge the way businesses and individuals impact the environment. The PowerSwitch! campaign will be the maincontent for campaign activities in the college.

“Ben and I built Ben & Jerry’s on the idea that business has a responsibility to the community and environment,” Greenfield said. “Now, when we face a problem like global warming, and you understand that the biggest impacts on global warming come from business and industry. I think business needs to take a leading role. Business can be a source of progressive change.”

During their training, Climate Change Ambassadors will be exposed to leading experts on climate change research and campaigning through a series of lectures and workshops culminating in an educational visit to the Arctic. After completing their time at the college, they will be assisted in setting up meetings, speaking engagements, and campaign plans designed to start affecting real change in their own countries.

“We need to move to cleaner fuels - wind, sun, crops - and we need to get a lot smarter with the way we use energy,” said Andrew Lee, WWF-UK’s Campaign Director. “Our Ambassadors will help us to transform the world’s biggest climate polluter into a clean efficient industry.”

Original press release: Ben & Jerry’s and WWF Launch Climate Change College (WWF)

Climate change has dramatically altered the genetic makeup of vinegar flies along Australia’s east coast over 20 years, Monash University researchers have found.

It’s the first time climate change has been shown to cause such a rapid change to a species’ genetic composition.

The discovery, by researchers from the Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research in Monash’s School of Biological Sciences, means vinegar flies could help alert scientists to climate change, and the possible extinction of species less able to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.

Vinegar flies have a short life cycle, are closely associated with human habitation, and quickly become adapted to their environment such that strains from cool temperate climates are substantially genetically different to strains from tropical regions.

Dr Paul Umina and Associate Professor Stephen McKechnie, in collaboration with Professor Ary Hoffmann from La Trobe University and Ms Alisha Anderson, looked at several genetic ‘markers’ in the vinegar fly that are known to respond to temperature and other environmental variables.

“The markers show variation, first described 20 years ago, that is directly associated with latitude such that if it is known at what latitude the fly was sampled, the frequency of the genetic marker in that population can be predicted,” Dr McKechnie said.

Because climates are changing, the research team re-examined the genetic markers in flies from far north Queensland to Tasmania to see whether the frequencies of the markers in the fly populations had changed since they were first measured.

Their research has been published today in the international journal Science.

“We found that the present day genetic constitution of the species around, say, Sydney is now the same as it was 20 years ago further north in Coffs Harbour. All the fly populations are now genetically equivalent to what they previously were roughly 400 kilometres north.” Dr McKechnie said.

“The flies are adapting as the climate along the eastern coast of Australia is gradually becoming warmer and drier. Mean temperature is increasing at most coastal locations at a rate of 0.1 to 0.3 degrees every 10 years, while rainfall is decreasing at a rate of 10-70mm per year,” he said.

Many species, such as those with long life cycles, can’t adapt to climatic changes as quickly as the vinegar fly, but Dr McKechnie believes the genetic markers of this species, which are so closely associated with climate, could be used to detect climate change early. “This could act as an early warning system so that something could be done locally to combat the threat of extinction for species that can’t adapt quickly, improving their chance of survival.”

Original press release: Humble Fly a Predictor of Climate Change (Monash University)

Advances in annual weather forecasting could be more fully exploited to improve decisions on the delivery of humanitarian aid in Africa, both now and under future climate change, according to scientists speaking on the second day of a Royal Society discussion meeting in London today (Wednesday 27 April 2005).

This two-day international meeting entitled “Food Crops in a Changing Climate” is bringing together world-class scientists in the fields of meteorology, climate science and agriculture, to discuss the impacts of a changing climate on the productivity of staple food crops, grown throughout the world. The second day, on 27 April, will focus on tropical countries where most of the world’s food is grown and where people are most vulnerable to climate change.

Dr Menghestab Haile, UN World Food Programme, said: “Current understanding of seasonal forecasting and weather monitoring in Africa can now reliably tell us whether annual crops are likely to fail before it happens. Tragically, networks for making decisions about how to minimise the negative impacts of weather-induced food shortages are not taking advantage of this valuable information. Predictions of probable crop failure would allow the delivery of timely humanitarian aid before a crisis has arisen. This is most important in allowing farmers to retain their assets in a bad year and leads to a more sustainable long-term approach.”

Africa is consistently predicted to be among the worst hit areas across a range of future climate change scenarios and new data presented at the conference suggest that some seriously damaging trends in the weather are already occurring.

Dr James Verdin, US Geological Survey, Famine Early Warning System, said: “Our monitoring of the weather in East Africa, particularly Ethiopia, shows a steep decline in levels of rainfall in the first part of the growing season over the last ten years. We have also noted increasing surface temperatures in the neighbouring Indian Ocean which appear to be associated with this drop in rainfall. If these trends continue farmers wanting to grow crops successfully in these regions will need to consider shifting from growing increasingly vulnerable long-cycle crops such as maize, to growing short-cycle crops such as barley. This means that higher-yielding, short-cycle crops must be developed and effective programmes developed to introduce them to the farmers.”

Dr Verdin continued: “In addition, we need to put the future of this type of monitoring in the hands of the African scientists. At present they have the knowledge and, more importantly, local expertise to carry out the work, but are lacking the technology required. Resources need to be found to change this if we are to build up an accurate and reliable picture of the current and future climate of Africa, in order to mitigate as many of the predicted problems as possible.”

A report from this meeting will be made available to inform discussions at the G8 summit meeting at Gleneagles in July, with particular reference to food security in Africa.

Original press release: Weather Forecasting Can Improve Delivery of Humanitarian Aid (Royal Society)

BOULDER - The National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC) issued a report today on the scientific and societal value of NASA’s Earth science missions. The report emphasizes the challenges still ahead in understanding life on Earth and highlights urgent investment needs, including resumption of cancelled or delayed space missions as well as long-term investment in research and the technology to support it.

“What we don’t know about our own planet far exceeds what we do,” says Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Anthes co-chairs the NRC committee that produced Earth Science and Applications from Space: Urgent Needs and Applications to Serve the Nation. Berrien Moore III (University of New Hampshire) is the other chair.

In published comments on the release of the report, Anthes wrote:

Our ability to influence the Earth system means that we are active participants in the changing Earth rather than passive observers. The human influences may be relatively minor and benign for some time, or they might suddenly trigger great perturbations to our natural support systems, with devastating impacts on our lives and civilization. We can speculate about the likelihood of these two extremes and an infinite number of scenarios in between, but the fact is we just don’t know enough to say how Earth will evolve and how we must adjust to the inevitable changes.

Original press release: The Future of U.S. Earth Science Space Missions (NCAR)

Large scale ozone losses have occurred above the Arctic this past winter with over 50% of the ozone destroyed at altitudes around 18 km.

Scientists from the EU SCOUT-O3 Integrated Project, which is co-ordinated by the University of Cambridge’s Chemistry Department, have been studying the links between stratospheric ozone and climate change in the Arctic since May 2004. This recent finding was announced during a meeting of the European Geophysical Union in Vienna on Monday, 25 April.

Overall temperatures in the ozone layer were the lowest for 50 years and were consistently low for over three months. From late November to late February, large areas of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) - clouds in the ozone layer- were present over the Arctic region at altitudes between 14 and 26 km. This is the largest in the 50 year record, and especially in the last 20 years, the period when the ozone-depleting compounds have been high.

The chemical balance in the stratosphere is changed significantly by the presence of these clouds, altering the breakdown products from manmade CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) so that rapid chemical ozone destruction can occur in the presence of sunlight. The cold conditions affected the distribution of nitrogen oxides, allowing ozone loss to continue longer than usual.

The European scientists reported the first signs of ozone loss in January 2005. As sunlight returned to northern latitudes the rate of ozone depletion increased and rapid destruction of ozone occurred throughout February and March. In the altitude range where the ozone layer usually reaches its maximum concentration, more than half of the ozone was lost. “Overall about 30% of the ozone layer was destroyed,” said Dr Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany. “This largely prevented the normal seasonal increase of the thickness of the ozone layer during winter and led to a thinner ozone layer in Arctic spring compared to warmer years.”

The overall degree of ozone loss this year was of similar magnitude to the record loss that was observed in the Arctic during winter 1999/2000. During late March the Arctic air masses drifted over central Europe and contributed to individual days of significantly increased UV-B radiation and sunburn risk in parts of Europe. The affected region reached as far south as northern Italy.

Emissions of ozone depleting substances are now largely banned worldwide by the Montreal protocol. As a first success of this milestone of international cooperation in environmental policies the atmospheric concentrations of CFCs started to decrease. But the atmospheric lifetime of these compounds is extremely long and the concentrations will remain at dangerously high levels for another half century.

Over the next few decades the fate of the Arctic ozone layer will mainly depend on the evolution of atmospheric temperatures at the altitude of the ozone layer. Over the past forty years the conditions there have become significantly colder.

“The cooling was particularly pronounced for the cold Arctic winters. Unfortunately these are the winters that result in large ozone losses. In 2005 the average extent of conditions cold enough for the existence of polar stratospheric clouds was four times larger than it has ever been in the sixties or early seventies of the past century,” said Dr Rex.

This continuous cooling trend is qualitatively consistent with what would be expected as a result of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However the coupling processes between climate change and temperatures in the polar ozone layer are complicated by feedback process that are currently not sufficiently understood to make reliable predictions for the future.

“Our aim is to improve the predictions of future ozone and other stratospheric changes as well as the associated UV and climate impact,” said Dr Neil Harris from the University of Cambridge, one of the coordinators of the project.

“Within SCOUT-O3 we have followed the meteorological conditions in the Arctic closely and a suite of atmospheric observations and model calculations was triggered on a very short notice. The Arctic ozonesonde station network started a campaign of coordinated measurements to monitor the chemical ozone destruction. ESA carried out additional measurements of the chemical composition of air in the Arctic ozone layer with the ENVISAT research satellite. The high flying research aircraft Geophysica made a deployment deep into Arctic air masses resulting in additional in-situ observations of key species.”

Preliminary results from all these studies are being presented at the European Geophysical Union meeting in Vienna this week.

Original press release: Large Ozone Losses Over the Arctic (University of Cambridge)

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) will make its debut on the world stage in Punta del Este, Uruguay from 2-6 May at a meeting of 800 government officials and observers committed to ridding the world of some of the most dangerous chemicals ever created.

The Convention, which entered into force on 17 May 2004, targets 12 hazardous pesticides and industrial chemicals that can kill people, damage the nervous and immune systems, cause cancer and reproductive disorders and interfere with normal infant and child development.

“The Stockholm Convention will save lives and protect the natural environment; particularly in the poorest communities and countries,” said Executive Director Klaus Toepfer of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), under whose auspices the Convention was adopted in 2001.

“Eliminating POPs, however, will cost billions of dollars and require countries to adopt new methods and technologies to replace these toxic substances. The hard work has only just begun,” he said.

The main challenges to meeting the Convention’s goal are:

• Minimizing and eliminating releases of dioxins and furans. Reducing these unwanted by-products of combustion and industrial processes will require expensive and innovative new technologies and processes. It will also involve educating people not to burn garbage and other materials in open fires. In Punta del Este, officials aim to advance these efforts with Guidelines on Best Available Techniques and Environmental Practices for preventing or reducing the formation of dioxins and furans.
• Phasing out DDT without undermining the fight against malaria. Until safe, affordable and effective alternatives are in place, governments can continue using DDT to protect their citizens from malaria - a major killer in many tropical regions. The conference will evaluate the continued need for DDT and consider next steps
• Developing alternative for combating termites. These tiny pests cause billions of dollars in economic damage and are particularly difficult to control. The meeting will consider prodecures for handling future requests by governments for exemptions enabling them to continue using three POPs termiticides. It will also evaluate initiatives to reduce and eliminate completely the need for these chemicals.
• Cleaning up old PCBs from aging and widely dispersed equipment. PCBs have been used in electrical transformers and other equipment for decades. They must be eliminated and replaced over the next 20 years. Most developing countries, however, currently lack the facilities, funds and expertise to do so.

Fortunately, these challenges (which are described in greater detail in the articles below) can all be met through win-win solutions that reconcile eventual elimination with immediate human needs. By signalling to governments and industry that certain chemicals have no future while respecting their legitimate short-term concerns, the Convention aims to stimulate the development of new, affordable and effective alternatives to the world’s most dangerous POPs.

The 12 POPs covered by the Convention include nine pesticides (aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex and toxaphene); two industrial chemicals (PCBs as well as hexachlorobenzene, also used as a pesticide); and unintentional by-products, most importantly dioxins and furans. One of the conference’s key tasks is to establish a process for evaluating future candidates for adding to this initial list.

The conference will also consider adopting or endorsing the guidelines on managing POPs wastes that were adopted last year by the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous and Other Wastes. Still another task is to provide guidance to the Global Environment Facility, which serves for the time being as the ‘financial mechanism’ that funds national projects and activities for implementing the Convention.

Some 130 countries are expected to participate in the Punta del Este meeting, which is known formally as the First Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention (COP 1).

While the risk level varies from POP to POP, these chemicals all share four properties: they are highly toxic; they are stable and persistent, lasting for years or decades before degrading into less dangerous forms; they evaporate and travel long distances through the air and through water; and they accumulate in the fatty tissue of humans and wildlife.

Every human in the world carries traces of POPs in his or her body. POPs circulate globally through a process known as the “grasshopper effect”. POPs released in one part of the world can, through a repeated process of evaporation and deposit, be transported through the atmosphere to regions far away from the original source.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to POPs. The problem has been that high costs, a lack of public awareness, and the absence of appropriate infrastructure and technology have often prevented their adoption. Solutions must be tailored to the specific properties and uses of each chemical and to each country’s climatic and socio-economic conditions.

Original press release: Governments Meet to Launch Global Campaign to Eliminate 12 Most Hazardous Chemicals (UNEP)