CARBON-BALANCE

UN board could rein in $2.7 billion carbon market UNITED NATIONS An obscure U.N. board that oversees a $2.7 billion market intended to cut heat-trapping gases has agreed to take steps that could lead to it eventually reining in what European and U.S. environmentalists are calling a huge scam. At a meeting this week that ended Friday, the executive board of the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism said that five chemical plants in China would no longer qualify for funding as so-called carbon offset credits until the environmentalists' claims can be further investigated. The "CDM" credits have been widely used in the carbon trading markets of the European Union, Japan and other nations that signed onto the 1997 Kyoto Protocol requiring mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases. Rather than cut their own carbon emissions, industrialized nations can buy the credits which then pay developing countries to cut their greenhouse gases instead. But environmentalists say rich n...

Some rich countries are seeking new rules under the UN climate convention that campaigners say would allow them to gain credit for "business as usual". This is all related to land-use change, which can either release or absorb carbon, depending mainly on whether forests are planted or chopped down.

Interesting news leading up to the weekend. What is the implication for future global climate talks? ...the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.

The Case for OTEC in Florida

This is worth exploring especially in small islands...More of a discussion to follow

Just in case some of you missed the the news last December as we got caught up in the Copenhagen Conference. The World Bank announced $5.5 billion dollars of investment money for North African solar power projects. Initial investments will be $750 million dollars from the Clean Technology Fund with the rest on the way from other sources. Planned to be completed by 2015, the project would span five countries and triple world wide concentrated solar power capacity....By 2020, the North African project should total 900 MW in capacity.

As I continue to update and build on the current theme " After Copenhagen What Next?". Here is the first official UNFCC Post-Copenhagen response.

What is on the agenda following what many define as the Copenhagen fiasco? My aim over the next few days is series of post to address this issue. Here is a lively CNN Debate to open up the discussion.