Brown proposes global fund to kick-start Copenhagen climate change process

PM says he expects £10bn plan to be backed by Commonwealth leaders, Nicolas Sarkozy and US

Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 November 2009 12.28 GMT
Gordon Brown today proposed setting up a global fund to “kick-start” the Copenhagen climate change process and encourage poorer countries to start cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately.
Days ahead of the vital UN-sponsored climate change conference in the Danish capital, Brown proposed a £10bn rich-world fund, to which Britain would contribute £800m.
The initiative would give incentives to developing countries to halt deforestation, develop low-carbon energy sources and prepare for the effects of a warmer climate.
Covering the years 2010-12, the Copenhagen launch fund would deliver funds to poorer states on a payment by results system, under which those which showed they were taking action to halt climate change would receive more cash.
Brown said he expected the proposal to be welcomed at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, which he is attending in Trinidad today.
He added that he expected it to be backed by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, who is attending the talks to discuss Europe’s response to global warming, as well as by the US.

More than 100 icebergs heading towards N.Zealand: official

A flotilla of hundreds of icebergs that split off Antarctic ice shelves is drifting toward New Zealand and could pose a risk to ships in the south Pacific Ocean, officials said Tuesday.

The nearest one, measuring about 100 feet (30 meters) tall, was 160 miles (260 kilometers) southeast of New Zealand’s Stewart Island, Australian glaciologist Neal Young said. He couldn’t say how many icebergs in total were roaming the Pacific, but he counted 130 in one satellite image alone and 100 in another.

Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline—the first such sighting since 1931.

Maritime officials have issued navigation warnings for the area south of the

In this Nov. 16, 2009 photo an iceberg is seen at Sandy Bay on Macquarie Island’s east coast, in the Southern Ocean 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) southeast of Tasmania, Australia. It is very rare to see icebergs from Macquarie Island and is uncommon to find icebergs in this general region. ((AP Photo/Australian Antarctic Division, Eve Merfield))

country.

“It’s an alert to shipping to be aware these potential hazards are around and to be on the lookout for them,” Maritime New Zealand spokeswoman Sophie Hazelhurst said.

No major shipping lanes or substantial fishing grounds are in the area, but most ships there have little hull protection if they collide with an iceberg—which typically has 90 percent of its mass under water. Very few adventure sailors would be in the waters in November, when it is still the southern hemisphere’s spring.

Maritime New Zealand safety services general manager Nigel Clifford said as the icebergs drift closer “the more the potential risks grow of them posing a hazard to shipping” as they break up and float lower in—or just under—the ocean surface.

The agency was “keeping a close eye on the increasing risk … it’s tracking iceberg positions and has begun initial planning for any incident,” he stated. He also noted the area is not a major shipping lane, with commercial fishing vessels and a limited number of passenger cruise ships passing through and reporting positions for the drifting ice.

New Zealand oceanographer Mike Williams said the icebergs are drifting at a speed of about 25 kilometers (16 miles) a day and he expects most won’t reach New Zealand, as happened during the last major flotilla in 2006 when “a lot of them went out east (carried by ocean currents and wind) away from New Zealand.”

Williams, a scientist with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said he was “pretty sure these icebergs came from the break up of the Ross Sea Ice Shelf in 2000″—an ice shelf the size of France and the origin of the 2006 flotilla of icebergs (right).

Icebergs are routinely sloughed off as part of the natural development of ice shelves, but Young said the rate appeared to be increasing as a result of regional warming in Antarctica.

“Whole ice shelves have broken up,” he said, as temperatures have risen in Antarctica, where they are up as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) in the past 60 years.

But he cautioned against linking the appearance of the bergs in New Zealand waters to global warming: The phenomenon depends as much on weather patterns and ocean currents as on the rate at which icebergs are calving off Antarctic ice shelves.

In the current case, a cold snap around southern New Zealand and favorable ocean currents conspired to push the towering visitors, which have drifted around Antarctica for the past nine years, to the region intact.

“Icebergs this far north (near New Zealand) are not that unusual,” said New Zealand glaciologist Dr. Wendy Lawson Lawson, noting that an iceberg’s reach was determined by its size.

“If an iceberg starts off large, it will last longer in the sea. Its movement and where it ends up is determined by the weather, wind, ocean currents and the temperature,” Lawson, head of the department of geography at Canterbury University, stated.

On Monday, Rodney Russ, expedition leader on the tourist ship Spirit of Enderby, spotted a 500-foot-long (150-meter-long) iceberg about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Macquarie Island and heading north—about 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of New Zealand. Australian scientists reported another mass of 20 icebergs drifting north past Macquarie Island two weeks ago.

Young said satellite images showed the group of icebergs, spread over a sea area of 600 miles by 440 miles (1,000 kilometers by 700 kilometers), moving on ocean currents away from Antarctica.

Icebergs are formed as the ice shelf develops. Snow falls on the ice sheet and forms more ice, which flows to the edges of the floating ice shelves. Eventually, pieces around the edge break off.

Source:
Terradaily, “More than 100 icebergs heading towards N.Zealand: official“, accessed November 25, 2009
Denver Post, “Icebergs head from Antarctica for New Zealand“, accessed November 25, 2009

Ban deplores attack on UN helicopter in DR Congo

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the shooting attack on a United Nations helicopter on Thursday in Dongo in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that left three peacekeepers, a civilian pilot and one member of the Congolese national police wounded.