Global warming is a fact. It is likely to speed up, with near record growth in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

The recent UK Stern Report warned that if we ignore this we are likely to have an economic impact equivalent to the combined first and second world wars plus the great depression, and that is without considering millions of people displaced around the world.

To put climate change into perspective, during the last ice age global temperatures were only 5°C lower than today and much of Canada, Europe and northern Russia was covered in massive ice sheets several kilometres thick.

Weather extremes and greater fluctuations in rainfall and temperatures caused by climate change are liable to change productive landscapes and exacerbate food, water and energy scarcities in a relatively short time span. Particularly worrying is sea-level rise because of the density of coastal populations and the potential for the large-scale displacement of people in Asia.

Climate change will cause health security consequences, since some infectious diseases will become more widespread as the planet heats up.

Rising global temperatures will see more fires, droughts and flooding over the next 200 years, according to climate scientists from the UK’s University of Bristol.

It is predicted that climate change will contribute to destabilising, unregulated population movements in Asia and the Pacific. While most of population movement is likely to be internal, there will be flow on effects requiring cooperative regional solutions.

Increasingly extreme weather patterns will result in greater death and destruction from natural disasters, and add to the burden on poorer countries and even stretch the coping ability of more developed nations.

For a handful of small, low-lying Pacific nations, climate change is the ultimate security threat, since rising sea-levels will eventually make their countries uninhabitable.

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases now, researchers predict Eurasia, eastern China, Canada, Central America and Amazonia are at risk of forest loss. Global warming of less than 2°C would create a 30% probability of deforestation, while more than 3°C would double the likelihood of loss. (UK research)

Technorati Tags: effects of global warming, global warming, ISO 14001

Runoff to the Barrier Reef comes from, towns (some many kilometers upstream on the rivers as well as the coastal ones), small local industries, cane, bananas, mango and other farms and aquaculture farms. They all contribute to the pollution problems. However, aquaculture and some other industries with a definite outlet pipe have huge remediation and compliance costs. Many others have a diffuse outlet, far greater but they have no monitoring and none of the huge add-on costs.

Off the Adelaide coast there has been very serious loss of the sea-grass meadows and consequent large scale long-shore sand drift resulting in a lowering of the beaches in many places by several metres and very expensive sand trucking and dredging operations. This was caused by a combination of treated sewage effluent outfall and storm-water runoff. The high nutrient water discharged this way encouraged the growth of large amounts of small algae on the sea-grass leaves and the combination of the shading effects of all this algae plus the sediments from the runoff and outfalls shaded the sea-grass so much that it died. Storm-water is very high in nutrients and may contain other many other pollutants. It contains runoff from over watered and over fertilized gardens plus it is the dogs’ sewage system, although this latter is slowly beginning to improve in many places. This damage was clearly a mainly community pollution problem that has seriously impacted on the Adelaide coastal environment.

We all need to be aware of what we throw or pour into drains or onto streets. It is a cumulative community problem and we all need to think where we wash out that paint brush, discharge our swimming pool backwash or where we toss rubbish. It all ends in the sea or in lakes and rivers.

Technorati Tags: marine pollution, marine, marina, pollution, Barrier Reef, Adelaide coast, ISO 14001

At the moment there is confusion about what role we have al played in the global warming story. Many householders think industry is to blame for environmental problems. They don’t differentiate between big industry and smaller businesses. Many small businesses think like many householders do, that “my bit won’t make much difference”. They all forget the cumulative effect. Most businesses, like most individual people don’t deliberately cause environmental damage but they don’t know and they don’t understand. There are some who don’t care. We all need to be aware of how individual actions can affect the cumulative impacts.

Figures from Victoria’s Greenhouse Office show the following breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions on a sectoral basis
• 55% from energy industries
• 17% from transport
• 14% from agriculture
• 2% from industrial processes
• 2% from waste management

And on an ‘end-use’ basis the emissions were:
• 32% from manufacturing
• 22% from residential
• 20% from transport
• 15% from commercial

Further information from the Victorian Greenhouse Office released in 2005, is that increasing temperatures around the world will have the following impacts in Australia and this can be translated roughly to cover much of southern Australia. We can expect to have more hot days (over 35º), fewer frosts with possible frost-free conditions, less rainfall, particularly in winter and spring, experience more intense extreme rainfall events, increased evaporation rates, greater bushfire risk and experience a sea level rise of between 7 and 55 cm

Individual operations need to manage their own effects. This needs to involve all sectors and start with both cross industry dialogue and some leaders from each sector to demonstrate that it is not all too hard. The commercial sector needs to come on board also. There is often a public perception that manufacturing, aquaculture and boating are the sectors that harm the environment. I have heard of commercial business owners’ who state that they don’t have a greenhouse impact. And they run an office, computers, cars ETC!

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, blame for global warming, Victorian Greenhouse Office

It is great to see that world leaders are finally acknowledging that there actually is a problem with our energy use that is leading to Global Warming but it would be even better if they started setting both long and short term targets and even more importantly setting an example! Some leaders are doing this but others are still delaying.

Practical advice for people and especially small business people would be helpful. The small business sector, in particular is overwhelmed by a large collection of competing pressures and feels it is all too hard and their little bit does not make much difference. Support for businesses like my own that work with the small to medium sector would make it easier to reach out to help. Even if we were just listed on a govt website if we had a record of delivering it would help business find us.

Simple things could take place in every office so that every monitor and unnecessary printer, charger etc was turned off when everyone goes home and the use of lights with time switches or sensor switches.

Apparently Mayor Bloomberg in New York has suggested that offices stagger the working hours of people so the roads are less congested because the traffic flow was more even. Great suggestion – it would take pressure off the overloaded roads but also if the cars were moving to and from work, instead of sitting in traffic jams, they would use less fuel. Perhaps people could also have “work from home” days, which is entirely possible in this day and age of the virtual office and the internet.

Technorati Tags: global warming, ISO 14001, Mayor Bloomberg, New York

I was born in Britain in 1942. My earliest memories are about flowers, of walking through grass so high it was over my head and I was trying to keep up with the big legs, of small animals, ducks and water. Between these memories full of joy and wonderment there are memories of fire, sirens and bombs. When I was a little older and the beaches were open, my great joy was to creep along the breakwaters and look at crabs and other things that lived below water. All my childhood homes were filled with my jars of fish, tadpoles, silkworms and as many other creatures my long-suffering mother could cope with. When I was ten, the rock-pools on the wave cut platform at Avoca Beach north of Sydney, Australia were like aquaria; full of striped fish and other wonderful plants and animals – they are no longer like this, when I was thirteen and bought my first mask and snorkel in Adelaide, my mother was terrified I was going to be eaten by a shark as I swam over the “blue line” of sea grass in waist deep water – this is now several kilometres off shore.

I look around with joy at the natural world but back with deep concern about the large environmental changes I have seen in just one lifetime. I look with total horror at what people still do to each other in the name of peace; having been born underneath a war I recognise the full insanity. I have no influence over this so I concentrate on what I can influence in some small way – which is the environment.
My passion has always been trying to understand and preserve the environment that we live in. Helping businesses to understand that improving the environment also improves their bottom line and working with them to achieve this is the logical flow on from this passion. Businesses find that improving their environmental performance also makes very real dollar savings. It is a true win-win.

I started my adult life as a biology teacher, and then took time out to have three children before returning to teaching because it had the right hours and holidays in the days of no childcare. When the kids were old enough to cope with me working strange hours, I returned to University where I did third year science again in the marine subjects that did not exist when I did my first degree. I found the kids were not able to cope with my using a modem to work online on the University Vax computer. The phone being permanently engaged by mum not teenagers caused a major drama. After 6 years of tertiary study in marine biology I worked part time as an environmental consultant but also helped run my family’s computer business. It was here, in the late 1980s and early 1990s that I learned about small business and the pressures it is under as well as getting involved in Quality Assurance when I implemented ISO 9002, or AS 3902 as it was then, for our family business.

One of the roles I had was as Conservation Council’s nominee on the Aquaculture committee. It was here that I first met the tuna farmers and on mass they were very daunting. When I first started work with them, some eight years later I had a fairly difficult job to establish myself as a credible consultant in their industry. There were some funny stories about the guys when I first started – “I thought women were only useful for two things – in the kitchen and the bedroom but you are different”…………….. “It is too rough”, “you will be seasick”, then having to climb from a rubber ducky to a trawler deck in a rough sea to be met by the skipper with a totally bloodied hand outstretched and various other boys games until I became accepted as a useful person who gave good value even if I was a woman.

An industry person has described me as the “greenie that rolled over” and I have been described by some of the green groups as “having gone over to the Dark Side”. If both sides think I am odd, then I have probably hit the middle ground where I want to be.

I want to state clearly that my views on the urgent need to embrace environmental management by the entire community – not just industry, has not changed. I have deep love and awe of the natural world and concern for the decisions my grandchildren and their friends will have to make.

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, Jean Cannon

Norway has become the first to propose becoming a “zero emission” state . It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2020 and eliminate them by 2050.The move outshines the European Union’s proposed plan to cut emissions by at least 20% to 2020. A “white book” on the measure is due to be presented to the Norwegian parliament next month.

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, Norway, zero emission country, emissions

The stories of a wide range of businesses that have improved their environmental performance and at the same time improved their business efficiencies. Most have achieved the International Standard for environmental management, ISO 14001. The book explains the varied approaches to Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and their outcomes.

This is also the story of how one woman has worked with industry instead of “beating them up”. This pragmatic approach cuts through jargon and red tape to deliver straightforward management systems with real environmental and economic outcomes. In the words of one client, this is “no bullshit” EMS

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, International Standard, Environmental Management, EMS, Environmental Management Systems

This a touchy subject in New Zealand where they are suggesting bringing in a tax for methane “exhausts”. When I was there a couple of years ago their newspapers were calling it the ‘fart tax’. Cows and other ruminant animals “emit” large amounts of Methane. What about equating a number of trees planted per cow or other ruminant? Not the same greenhouse gas but an overall balancing perhaps.

There is technology to clean up methane from some sources — A demonstration project begun this week at an abandoned West Virginia (USA) coal mine will test a technology to convert methane into clean energy. The US EPA and Department of Energy have partnered with industry to trial the system, which destroys methane in ventilation air by heating the gas to more than 900 degrees C and converting it to CO2 and water. The heat can be used directly in mining operations, such as coal drying, or to generate electricity.

Technorati Tags: Methane, ISO 14001, New Zealand, US EPA, CO2

It seems to me that leaving fossil fuels in the ground and using renewable energy sources makes sense but some research seems to differ. Biofuels have been made from a variety of substances.

EU legislation to promote the uptake of biodiesel will not make any difference to global warming and could increase greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional diesel, claims a new study reported last week in the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) magazine Chemistry & Industry, calculated that biodiesel derived from rapeseed grown on dedicated farmland emits nearly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions per km driven as does diesel from petroleum sources.

Rapeseed (called Canola in some countries) is the major renewable-derived biofuel used across Europe. Analysts compared the emissions of the two fuels throughout their life cycles, from production to combustion in cars. They found if the land used to grow rapeseed were instead used to grow trees, petroleum diesel would emit only a third of the CO2 equivalent emissions as biodiesel. Would it actually be used for tress though?
The problem here is that annual crops bring in an annual income but farmers need to wait 20-30 years for a return on trees which may make sense to an academic on a salary but it is doubtful that the average farmer would do this without substantial subsidy.

Biofuels have been made from a variety of substances but one of the most interesting is in New Zealand where fuels have made from algae grown on sewage. Sewage is not in short supply and as our population continues to grow, we will produce increasing quantities. Way to go! Fuelled by poo!

Transportation currently accounts for more than a fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions from the EU.

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, biofuels, EU, Rapeseed, Canola

We keep hearing about the desirability of hybrid cars which are great but I worry about recycling the batteries afterwards.

The new European regulations are forcing the manufacturers to produce much more fuel efficient vehicles and I am inclined to think about the new fuel efficient small diesel cars that apparently have about the same impact as the hybrid cars.

Over the weekend while I was at the Ecoliving Expo, I saw a hydrogen adaptation on a family sized petrol car which was supposedly the “bee’s knees” and saved an enormous amount of fuel. I did not get my head around it because it was surrounded by a large number of excited males muttering about butterfly valves or some such and I decided to take a card and find out about this technology peacefully when there was less testosterone in the air.

I personally drive a slowing aging large duel fuel car which runs about 75% of the time on LPG (liquid petroleum gas) and 25% on petrol. This actually has a much lower carbon emission than an all petrol vehicles and is actually very efficient to run. A few months ago I had a minor traffic accident and was horrified by the fuel consumption of the much smaller hatchback car I was lent which seemed to positively guzzle fuel. In the foreseeable future I will be changing cars as mine continues to age and as parking spaces seem to get smaller but for the moment it appears to me that it is having a relatively low impact and I frequently walk, ride my bicycle or catch the bus that stops by my door. Some things need a car though and I have started to address what my options will be.

The large car is the legacy of doing a large amount of rural driving when I was working predominantly onsite with lots of individual businesses. One driver for developing my services as group training and especially online training is to reduce my need to travel.

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, what car to drive, car, recycling