Prepare for catastrophic climate change scenario, scientists say

via dailytelegraph.com.au

An increase of 6C would have irreversible consequences, rendering large parts of the globe uninhabitable and destroying much of life on Earth.

The study by Professor Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey and East Anglia University is the most comprehensive so far of how economic changes and shifts in the way people have used land over the past 50 years have affected CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

It also claims the Earth's natural ability to absorb CO2 into soil, forests and oceans is declining.

The nightmarish possibility of a 6C temperature rise was made public by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, when it was then only a worst-case scenario. But according to Professor Le Quere it is now all but inevitable.

"We're at the top of the IPCC scenario," she told Nature Geoscience, a respected science journal which published the study yesterday.

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Catastrophic climate change 'inevitable', scientists warn | World News | News.com.au

via news.com.au

THE world is spinning toward a catastrophic climate change scenario, with temperatures now far more likely to rise by 6C by the end of the century, a leading international team of scientists has warned.

An increase of 6C would have irreversible consequences, rendering large parts of the globe uninhabitable and destroying much of life on earth.

The study by Professor Corinne Le Quere, from the British Antarctic Survey and East Anglia University, is the most comprehensive so far of how economic changes and shifts in the way people used land over the past 50 years have affected CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

It also claims the Earth's natural ability to absorb CO2 into soil, forests and oceans is declining.

The nightmarish possibility of a 6C temperature rise was made public by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, when it was then only a worst-case scenario.

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Al Gore: Supercomputers can reverse climate change - Network World

Supercomputing technology, according to Al Gore, will help the human race reverse climate change, both by aiding the expansion of renewable energy use and by creating models that help people understand the severity of global warming.

How to build your own supercomputer

Speaking Thursday morning at the SC09 supercomputing conference in Portland, Ore., the former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner told researchers that their expertise can help convince the public and politicians that action is needed to reduce carbon emissions.

"Supercomputing has given us the most powerful tool in the history of civilization," Gore said. "It has become a third basic form of knowledge creation, alongside inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Computational science, in some ways a blend of the first two, allows us to vastly extend our ability to understand phenomena and complex realities, and investigate new complex realities that would never be possible except for the ability conferred upon us by supercomputing."

via networkworld.com

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UN climate chief seeks $10 bln rich-nations pledge | Reuters

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The U.N. environmental chief called on rich nations on Thursday to pledge $10 billion a year for three years at next month's Copenhagen summit to help poor states begin to tackle the impact of climate change.

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference that was a short-term figure and that in 10 or 20 years hundreds of billions of dollars would be needed annually to cope with global warming.

The Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen had long been billed as the time when a new treaty to cap greenhouse gas emissions would be signed, but the United Nations has admitted that a legally binding deal will not come until later.

The slippage has been partly blamed on delays in the United States in pushing new climate change legislation through Congress, a move now anticipated early next year.

De Boer listed the $10-billion-a-year pledge as one of his three goals for the summit, along with the submission of emission targets for 2020 by rich countries and of planned actions by developing countries.

He said Copenhagen must clarify how short- and long-term finance was going to be provided to help developing countries mitigate the effects of climate change and adapt to it.

"To my mind rich countries must put at least $10 billion on the table in Copenhagen to kick-start immediate action," he said.

via reuters.com

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Australian heatwave in carbon trade battle | Reuters

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's government demanded on Thursday that conservative rivals stop opposing carbon trade laws, citing a heatwave searing the country's biggest cities as evidence of Australia's vulnerability to climate change.

With Australia on bushfire alert, the government said record temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) across three states this week showed the need to act urgently against climate change.

"November this year has seen a long and intense heatwave across much of southern and eastern Australia. The trend is absolutely clear, the climate is warming," Assistant Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told parliament.

The opposition is negotiating changes to the government's carbon trade laws, which will be voted on next week in parliament's upper house Senate, but some opposition members are not convinced that human activity is driving climate change.

via reuters.com

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Climate change seen turning deadly by 2100

Global temperatures will increase by an average of 6 degrees C by the end of the century as CO2 emissions continue to outstrip the ability of the world's natural "sinks" to absorb carbon, a group of scientists said Tuesday in calling for drastic action to combat such emissions.

By studying 50 years of data on carbon emissions, an international team of 30 climate specialists with the Global Carbon Project deduced that the natural sinks soaking up dangerous greenhouse gases are becoming less efficient, absorbing 55 percent of the carbon now, compared with 60 percent half a century ago.

Carbon emissions from fossil fuel rose 2 percent in 2008, year-on-year, to an all-time high of 8.7 billion tons, leaving Earth on a worst-scenario tract for global warming, the report said.

"The only way to control climate change is through a drastic reduction in global CO2 emissions. The global trends we see with CO2 emissions from fossil fuels suggest that we're heading toward 6 Celsius of global warming," said Corinne Le Quéré of the University East Anglia, who led the study with colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey.

According to the "A1F1" scenario by the United Nation's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Earth's surface will warm by around 4 degrees C by 2100, compared with 2000, a rise that would likely bring widespread hunger, flooding, drought and home-lessness.

via globaltimes.cn

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U.S. and China discuss climate change - UPI.com

U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, on Tuesday pledged a "vigorous response" to climate change, saying they would work toward a global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In a joint statement, the two nations -- the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases -- said climate change was "one of the greatest challenges of our time." They said they agreed that a "vigorous response is necessary and that international cooperation is indispensable in responding to this challenge."

Standing next to Hu, Obama told reporters "there can be no solution to this challenge without the efforts of both China and the United States."

The announcement, as Obama concludes his first state visit to China, comes less than three weeks before the U.N.-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark.

It follows acknowledgement Sunday by Asia-Pacific leaders, including the United States, that a binding global accord on emissions is not reachable in Copenhagen next month.

Obama said that he and the Chinese president "agreed to work toward a successful outcome in Copenhagen."

via upi.com

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Greenpeace chief urges Obama to use 'political capital' to agree climate deal

via guardian.co.uk

The new head of Greenpeace has challenged Barack Obama to agree a binding treaty at the UN Copenhagen climate summit or risk inflaming anti-American sentiment around the world.

Dr Kumi Naidoo, the first African to lead the environmental activist group, said he was not prepared to tolerate "spin and trickery" from negotiators at the crucial meeting.

"It's not to say one is insensitive to the political situation that Obama finds himself in, but we would say he needs to use more of his political capital with the American people," Naidoo told the Guardian in an interview in Johannesburg, South Africa.

He said that after eight wasted years of climate change "denialism" under George Bush, expectations of Obama were far higher, making the US president's recent warning that time had run out to reach a legally binding agreement all the more disappointing.

"There's a missed opportunity for him and the American people around the summit because what it's going to do, sadly, is intensify anti-American sentiment that we've seen rampant in the world, and a lot of the good Obama did through his election and some of his statements potentially will be reversed. Even his Nobel peace prize comes into question."

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New climate change treaty could be ready in 2010, U.N. official says

via edition.cnn.com

Madrid, Spain (CNN) -- A new international treaty to combat climate change will not be ready when 40 world leaders meet next month in Copenhagen but may be finished next year, a top United Nations official said Friday in Barcelona.

"What we will need after Copenhagen is a little time," said Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations climate change secretariat. "I don't know how much time to turn that operational language into a treaty, if that is what governments decide."

De Boer told a news conference the Copenhagen meeting could still be a "turning point" in the worldwide fight to reduce emissions that contribute to harmful global warming, but that governments must make their "commitments clear." He added there's no "time to waste."

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UN Secretary General Pushes for Climate Change Agreement

via english.ntdtv.com

Climate change is a crucial issue that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is concerned about. On November 5, he gave a speech to the Greek parliament in Athens and stressed the importance of reaching an agreement over climate change talks in Copenhagen .

[Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General]:
"Climate change is the leading geopolitical and economic issue of this century, the 21st century. These are crucial days. We have only 4 weeks to go before Copenhagen next month. From the moment I took office as Secretary-General, I have urged leaders of the world to make climate change a top priority."

It will be difficult for the rich and poor nations to reach a deal. The poor countries require the rich countries to do more in reducing its emissions.

Ban Ki-Moon said that developed countries should aim at reducing greenhouse gases by 20 to 40 percent. While poorer countries need financial and technological aid to cut emissions.

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Naked emperors: the Greenpeace Guide to Climate Politics

via greenpeace.org

Barcelona, Spain — You know the story. The clever tailors that convince a kingdom that only intelligent people can see the clothes they make. Everyone talks about how fine the emperor's outfit is, until one audacious voice pipes up to say there's nothing there, the king is naked. When the reality of climate change politics is stripped of rhetoric, most of the industrialised world's leaders are seriously underdressed, and Obama isn't wearing a stitch.

Greenpeace's new Guide to Climate Politics shows just how badly the leaders of rich, industrialised nations are failing in their efforts to address climate change.

In the last year developing nations have made real progress and put a series of offers on the table during the UN climate negotiations. With the final negotiating session just a month away the response of the developed world has been to throw up more obstructions.

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Forty leaders plan to attend climate talks-UN | Reuters

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov 6 (Reuters) - About 40 world leaders plan to go to Copenhagen next month to improve the chances of clinching a U.N. climate deal, the United Nations said on Friday as preparatory talks ended with scant progress.

Developing nations in Barcelona accused rich countries of trying to lower ambitions for a 190-nation deal in Copenhagen with suggestions that up to an extra year may be needed to tie up details of a legally binding treaty.

Inviting world leaders to the end of the Copenhagen meeting on Dec. 7-18 could help overcome disputes, said Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, on the final day of the week-long Barcelona talks.

"My understanding is that 40 heads of state have indicated their intention to be present," he said. They include British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as well as leaders of African and Caribbean nations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering attending, a spokesman said in Berlin. U.S. President Barack Obama is among those undecided.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has not formally invited leaders to the talks, currently due to be limited to environment ministers. "There is no official figure" of how many leaders will come, a Danish spokesman said.

The 175-nation Barcelona meeting ended with little progress towards a deal but narrowed options on helping the poor to adapt to climate change, sharing technology and cutting emissions from deforestation, delegates said.

via reuters.com

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Climate change sceptics a danger: Rudd

via timeslive.co.za

Rudd said naysayers were active in every country as the world approached the United Nations' climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

"They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests," he said.

Rudd said it was difficult to move towards a global agreement in the face of those who denied climate change was caused by human activity, those who refused to act on the evidence, or who wanted other countries to act first.

"As we approach Copenhagen, these three groups of climate sceptics are quite literally holding the world to ransom," he told policy think-tank the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

"Provoking fear campaigns in every country they can; blocking or delaying domestic legislation in every country they can; with the objective of slowing and if possible destroying the momentum towards a global deal on climate change," he said.

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The Press Association: Climate deal essential

Alistair Darling has said that a deal to tackle climate change is "essential", as he prepared for a summit with finance ministers and bankers.

The Chancellor is hosting the G20 talks in Scotland, which bring together the most powerful economies in the world.

Speaking earlier at a dinner in Edinburgh, he said international action would lead to global recovery.

And he stressed the need for "global co-operation on a scale never seen before".

Mr Darling said: "So the G20 must push for a deal on climate financing and governance - this is an essential part of tackling climate change.

"The road ahead will be difficult, there are arguments still to be won. But that's no reason to give up, rather it's a reason to redouble our efforts."

The G20 talks in the ancient university town of St Andrews, in Fife, are the last in a series which saw leaders agree a one trillion dollar "fiscal stimulus" plan in the wake of global recession.

via google.com

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Al Gore 'profiting' from climate change agenda

via telegraph.co.uk

The former US vice president is in line to make a large profit from a firm producing smart meters which monitor household electricity use.

He is a partner in a Silicon Valley venture capital firm which invested £45 million in Silver Spring Networks, a small California company which has been developing technology to monitor household power use to make the electricity grid more efficient.

Last week the US Energy Department announced £2 billion in grants and a proportion of that, thought to be more than £305 million, will go to utility operators with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The venture capitalists who invested, including Mr Gore, now look set to receive a handsome return.

Since leaving office Mr Gore has campaigned relentlessly on green issues. His 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth”, which followed his attempts to educate people about the dangers of global warming, won an Oscar for best documentary. It showed Mr Gore giving comprehensive slide shows about the catastrophic effects of climate change. He has presented the slide show more than 1,000 times.

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Cooler Heads Event with Dr. Richard Lindzen on Cap and Trade

via blip.tv

Proposing their own version of "cap and trade" climate legislation, Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) have put forth a draft of the new "pollution reduction bill." Kerry stressed that the bill is about security. Boxer was interviewed by C-SPAN about her insight of how protecting consumers from energy cost increases will reduce emissions. Dr. Lindzen disputes some of the claims made by global warming alarmists, presents real climate facts, and questions the purpose of the bill.

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The Associated Press: Merkel calls for strong deal on climate change

WASHINGTON — German Chancellor Angela Merkel marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by exhorting the world in a speech to Congress on Tuesday to "tear down the walls of today" and reach a deal to combat global warming.

Frequently interrupted by robust applause, Merkel reiterated her country's commitment to fostering security in Afghanistan and also said that a nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran "is not acceptable."

In the first address by a German chancellor to Congress since Konrad Adenauer in 1957, Merkel put special emphasis on the need for a global agreement on climate change — one she said she hoped could be forged at an international conference next month in Copenhagen.

"We have no time to lose," she declared. Merkel said she recognized that no deal could be successful without the support of China and India — but that if a deal were struck, she said she was sure those two fast-growing economies could be persuaded to sign on.

"Today's generation needs to prove that it is able to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and that, in a sense, we are able to tear down walls of today," she said.

Merkel cited as clear proof of global warming icebergs that are melting in the Arctic, African people forced to flee their homelands because of drought and the rise in global sea levels.

via google.com

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UN secretary general calls for increase in pledged funding for climate change

via guardian.co.uk

Money paid by rich countries to fight global warming will have to "be scaled up" from the $100bn a year on offer, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said today.

Finance is the key, said Ban, to successful negotations on a global treaty to fight climate change, due to conclude at UN talks next month in Copenhagen.

Ban also revealed that he will next week meet all the US Senators involved in deliberations over the energy and climate bill. Agreement on that bill is seen as vital to negotiations, as without it the US team in Copenhagen will have little domestic mandate to agree a deal. The announcement of the personal intervention of the secretary general is a clear sign of the importance of the matter.

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Gore compares global warming skeptics to moon landing deniers

via rawstory.com

Speaking to CBS News host Katie Couric, former Vice President Al Gore panned climate change skeptics, comparing them to people who believe the world is flat, or those who doubt that NASA's Apollo mission actually landed on the moon.

"The United Nations organized, along with the scientific bodies of the national academies of science and their counterparts, the 3,000 best scientists in the world from all of the fields that are relevant to this issue," he explained. "Over the last 20 years they have conducted the most exhaustive examination ever on a challenge like this.

"They've issued four reports -- they've all been unanimous, and the last one called the evidence unequivocal. Now, does that mean there are still some people who are gonna have a contrarian view? No, of course there will still be some. But, there are still some people who believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie lot. You know, a significant percentage as it turns out ... Or that the Earth is flat. But that doesn't lead public policy makers to take both sides of that into account."

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China urged to adopt tougher C02 target

via reuters.com

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt called on China to set a tougher target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions after 2020 as its part of a U.N. climate change agreement to be negotiated in Copenhagen.

China, which recently overtook the United States as the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, has said it will cut its C02 emissions per dollar of economic output by a "notable margin" by 2020 compared with 2005..

But it has resisted calls for quantifiable cuts which the European Union, among others, hopes will be the basis for a United Nations climate treaty to be agreed in the Danish capital in December.

"My message to China is this: raise your ambitions so that emissions peak by 2020 at the latest and then fall," said Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.

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Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate

via guardian.co.uk

Al's Gore's much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.

In his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, the man who won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his touring slideshow on disappearing polar ice and other consequences of climate change, concludes: "Simply laying out the facts won't work."

Instead, Gore tells Newsweek magazine in a pre-publication interview, that he has been adapting his fact-based message - now put out by hundreds of volunteers - to appeal to those who believe there is a moral or religious duty to protect the planet.

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European satellite launched to explore climate change

via telegraph.co.uk

The European Space Agency (ESA) said the £282m device was put into space in the early hours of Monday morning to gauge the impact of climate change on the movement of water across land, air and sea.

It was lifted into space on a Russian Rockot launcher from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia.
As the first space-based measure of the water in Earth's soil and the saltiness of its oceans, scientists hope SMOS will be able to fill important gaps in our knowledge about the planet's vital water cycle.

It could also help develop more accurate weather forecasts.

Yann Kerr, scientific director of the SMOS mission, said: "Climate change is a fact, but its impact on precipitation, evaporation, surface runoff and flood risks is still uncertain.

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CO2 from forest destruction overestimated – study

The carbon dioxide emissions caused by the destruction of tropical forests have been significantly overestimated, according to a new study. The work could undermine attempts to pay poor countries to protect forests as a cost-effective way to tackle global warming.

The loss of forests in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia is widely assumed to account for about 20% of all carbon dioxide produced by human activity – more than the world's transport system. The 20% figure was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 and was widely quoted after being highlighted by the Stern review on the economics of the problem. It is repeatedly used by Prince Charles and others as an incentive to push efforts to include forests in carbon trading.

Curbing emissions from deforestation is one of the main issues being discussed at a UN climate meeting in Barcelona this week, before crucial talks in Copenhagen next month.

But researchers led by Guido van der Werf, an earth scientist at VU University in Amsterdam, say that figure is an overestimate and that the true figure is closer to 12%. Publishing their analysis in the journal Nature Geoscience, they say the 20% figure was based on inaccurate and out-of-date information. "It's a tough message because everybody would like to see forests better protected and it is difficult to tell them that carbon dioxide emissions are less important than assumed. Still, the good news of lower emissions is no bad news for the forests," said Van der Werf.

via guardian.co.uk

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AFP: UN chief in warning over climate change talks

LONDON — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon played down hopes for the key Copenhagen summit on climate change Tuesday, suggesting that detail on an agreement may be lacking.

"I'm reasonably optimistic that this Copenhagen (summit) will be a very important milestone," Ban told reporters after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.

"At the same time, realistically speaking, we may not be able to have all the words on detailed matters."

He added: "We need the political will, if there is a political will I'm sure there is a way we can conclude a binding agreement."

Brown said he thought a deal was possible and restated his pledge to attend the talks in person.

"We will leave no stone unturned in the next few weeks," he said.

"We believe it's possible to get an agreement on long-term targets and intermediate targets."

via google.com

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Deep-sea ecosystems affected by climate change

The vast muddy expanses of the abyssal plains occupy about 60 percent of the Earth's surface and are important in global carbon cycling. Based on long-term studies of two such areas, a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that animal communities on the abyssal seafloor are affected in a variety of ways by climate change. Historically, many people, including marine scientists, have considered the abyssal plains, more than 2,000 meters below the sea surface, to be relatively isolated and stable ecosystems. However, according to Ken Smith, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and lead author of the recent PNAS article, changes in the Earth's climate can cause unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems. Based on 18 years of studies, Smith and his coauthors show that such ecosystem changes occur over short time scales of weeks to months, as well as over longer periods of years to decades.

The recent paper covers two time-series studies—one at "Station M," about 220 kilometers off the Central California coast, and a second on the Porcupine Abyssal Plain, several hundred kilometers southwest of Ireland. The flat, muddy seafloor at these sites lies between 4,000 and 5,000 meters beneath the ocean surface.

via esciencenews.com

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The Associated Press: Global warming: Nepali Cabinet to meet on Everest

KATMANDU, Nepal — Nepal's Cabinet will hold a meeting on Mount Everest to highlight the threat from global warming, which is causing glaciers to melt in the Himalayas, an official said Monday.

The Cabinet will meet at the Everest base camp later this month, just ahead of an international climate change conference next month in Copenhagen, Denmark, Forest and Soil Conservation Minister Deepak Bohara said.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and other Cabinet members will fly by plane to the 17,400-foot (5,300-meter) camp, the starting point for mountaineers attempting to climb the world's highest mountain.

Bohara said the meeting is an attempt to highlight the problem of melting glaciers in the Himalayas.

Glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, creating lakes whose walls could burst and flood villages below. Melting ice and snow also make the routes for mountaineers less stable and more difficult to follow.

via google.com

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Combat global warming by having fewer babies?

via philly.com

In 2006, the last year for which the U.S. Census Bureau has tallied the data, close to 4.3 million babies were born in this country.

That's 11,780 a day, or about 8 a minute.

That's a lot of dirty diapers. A lot of soccer practices. A lot of college tuitions to cover. Above all, a lot of parents' hearts pounding with a sudden avalanche of love for this new creature.

And something else that researchers are beginning to talk about and quantify: a whole lot of planet-warming carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

This should hardly come as a surprise. At its simplest, adding more people to the planet results in an increase of emissions.

Like other avoidances - not turning on excess lights, not driving excess miles - having fewer children would result in less emissions.

Egad! Is anyone really saying that to be green, you shouldn't have kids?

Who shouldn't have them? The poor? The rich?

And where shouldn't they have them? For instance, a U.S. baby will generate, in all likelihood, exponentially more emissions than a child in a developing country.

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Lord Monckton Trashes Al Gore’s Global Warming Nonsense

via newsrealblog.com

Lord Monckton challenged Al Gore to debate him on the science of global warming. Addressing Gore, Monckton said, “and if you don’t dare, I want you to remain silent about that subject forever from now on.”

Of course Gore won’t accept the challenge. Others have asked Gore to debate the science of global warming and he’s consistently refused to do so.

He has much to lose — financially and otherwise.

How is Gore trying to be a climate change profiteer? Essentially, he wants to make a fortune by creating a new market for a product that he is attempting to create by legislative fiat. If he succeeds and carbon emissions trading comes to the United States, Al Gore will be uniquely positioned to cash in. He’s made sure of that.

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Toyota Create New Plant Species to Offset Prius Factory CO2

Toyota Create New Plant Species to Offset Prius Factory CO2

via Change.org's Stop Global Warming Blog by Mike Smith on 11/2/09

Toyota have moved into the horticultural industry, creating two new species of flowers specifically developed for the grounds of the Prius plant in Toyota City, Japan.

The flowers are designed to take heat out of the atmosphere and absorb nitrogen oxides. The leaves of the flowers will also create water vapor, reduce the temperature of the factory's surroundings, lowering the amount of energy needed to cool it.

It's not just a smart and scientifically incredible PR stunt, but part of a 20 year effort to reduce the Prius plant's carbon emissions — since 1990 they've cut it by 55 per cent. Last year Toyota planted 50,000 trees to offset emissions from the factory. But you've got to wonder whether they should focus on producing greener cars, rather than reducing the emissions of the production process. "Critics claim the Prius production process creates more CO2 than normal petrol vehicles, nullifying the lower CO2 output of the car itself," report Drive.com.au. Reported reductions in CO2 needs to be balanced against the net carbon impact of the Prius if Toyota really want to please the grass roots.

Photo credit: Alan Miles

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