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European nations on Friday dared the United States, Russia and China to follow their lead on global warming after agreeing on a plan to meet the so-called “20-20-20″ targets: reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and ensuring that 20 percent of energy comes from wind, sun and other renewable sources by 2020.

But activists said the plan was fatally weakened by a raft of concessions to eastern Europe and heavy industry at a time of worldwide economic crisis.

Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, said the package put the 27-nation European Union on a path to a low-carbon economy.

“We are the only region in the world that is reducing emissions,” Dimas said on the sidelines of a UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, calling the bloc an example that others should follow.

Environmentalists said the concessions made the plan ineffective.

“The deal is a disaster, it’s disgraceful,” said Stephen Singer, a climate specialist for WWF International. “If the world follows the example of the EU, it is on a trajectory to disastrous climate change.”

The plan increased the amount of emissions Europeans could offset by sponsoring green projects in developing countries. Armed with that opt-out, Singer said Europe’s actual emissions reductions would be a mere 4 percent, not the 20 percent the EU claims.

The Brussels summit coincided with the end of a two-week, 190-nation UN conference in Poznan that worked on a global climate treaty to be adopted next year in Copenhagen, Denmark. The treaty would replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol, which required the EU and other industrial countries to cut carbon emissions by an average 5 percent by 2012.

The EU leaders held out an inducement to the Poznan negotiators: If a global climate deal can be reached in Copenhagen, the EU will go even further, cutting its greenhouse gases by 30 percent by 2020.

President George W. Bush has refused to accept mandatory restrictions on the US economy intended to cut carbon emissions, both as outlined in the Kyoto accord and those now being considered. While the United States signed the Kyoto agreement, it was never ratified by the Senate and Bush essentially scrapped it. Since 1990 U.S. emissions have increased by 16.7 percent.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was at the Poznan conference, said he expects the United States to have a climate policy in place within a year that will allow it to join the worldwide effort to combat global warming.

President-elect Barack Obama has called for Congress to establish greenhouse gas limits that would reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and cut them another 80 percent by 2050. He also pledged to invest USD 15 billion a year to develop clean energy projects that produce fewer greenhouse gases.

Yvo de Boer, the top UN climate official, said the EU deal showed that “difficult roadblocks (to a global accord) can be overcome and resolved.”

He said the EU deal was a “sign of developed countries’ resolve and courage the world has been waiting for in Poznan. It shows the world that ambitious emission reduction goals by 2020 are in line with moving economic recovery in a green direction.”

The EU leaders spent two days sorting out differences over sharing the burden of cutting greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and ensuring that 20 percent of energy comes from wind, sun and other renewables by 2020.

When it was over, they claimed global climate change leadership, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the summit chairman, declaring, “No other continent has given itself such binding rules as we have just adopted.”

However, environmental groups called the EU deal a sellout.

Claude Turmes, a Luxembourg Green Party member of the European Parliament, said EU governments were “using the economic downturn as an excuse to water down climate policies.”

The heart of the EU agreement is a system — starting in 2013 — of auctioning industrial emission permits that are now issued free of charge. Major polluters will eventually pay USD 66.1 billion a year for this permission to pollute. Governments will use that income for clean energy development.

But critics say loopholes allow some industries, especially in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, to get largely off the hook, with no incentive to embrace green technologies.

Turmes called the selling of pollution credits “ethically wrong. It implies a neocolonial approach to climate policy.”

Jos Cozijnsen, a carbon-trading expert for the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, calculated Europe would meet half its 20 percent goal by cutting emissions, and half by buying credits. “That’s not bad,” he said. “It’s expensive to do everything domestically.”

Elise Ford of the relief organization Oxfam complained that a proposal requiring some auction revenues to go to poor nations was swept from the table.

The cost of the plan had alarmed eastern European countries at a time of economic slowdown.

Desperate to get a deal, France backed several opt-outs to the strict reductions it wants industries to make. The opt-outs are aimed at heavy industries that might flee abroad to regions with looser environmental rules.

The European Parliament must vote on the climate change package next week. They can expect a pep talk from Sarkozy, who made the climate plan the central goal of his six-month run as EU president. France’s tenure ends Dec. 31.

EU officials stressed Europe’s pollution reduction targets could breathe new life into the UN climate talks. The EU plan also pushes eco-friendly cars, fewer power-draining buildings, greener consumer goods and energy deregulation.

“People will not follow Europe unless we set the example,” said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

EU governments agreed in principle to the emissions cuts last year, but spent months working it out. Friday’s resulting plan came after diplomats worked through the night for a final compromise. It is highly detailed, with targets and timetables differing from country to country.

The leaders also agreed on a USD 258 billion European economic stimulus package to ease the effects of a recession.

In the past decade, the EU has largely stayed on track to meet pollution-cutting targets of the 1997 Kyoto agreement.

In November, the European Environment Agency said the 15 nations that belonged to the EU at the time are on target to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent in the 2008-12 period. Twelve nations have already surpassed or are set to meet the targets, while Denmark, Italy and Spain will not.

Wining, dining and fashion are still a priority for Asia-Pacific consumers, but a regional survey shows that the global financial crisis is motivating them to hunt for bargains and save more.The survey, conducted by MasterCard and released on Wednesday, involved more than 6,000 consumers in 14 markets ranging from Australia to China during September — just as the worst of the global financial crisis was taking hold.

It showed more than 70 per cent are looking to cut back spending on discretionary, or non-essential, items such as travel, entertainment, fashion and accessories over the next 12 months, with people in only four countries optimistic about employment, the economy, the stock market and quality of life.

“In many markets, people are still very keen on certain discretionary items, but there is no escaping the conclusion that people will become more price sensitive,” Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, MasterCard’s Asia-Pacific economic adviser, told Reuters.

CASH IN POCKET BUT CAUTIOUS

According to the MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Purchasing Priorities, consumers in Asia-Pacific currently spend on average 10-20 per cent of their annual income on discretionary items.

Across the region, dining and entertainment is the discretionary spend nearly 60 per cent people regard as the highest priority, followed by fashion and accessories (46 per cent), children’s extra-curricular education (44 per cent) and personal travel (42 per cent).

Hedrick-Wong said the last two items — education and travel — were uniquely Asian, with parents keen to turn their children into over-achievers and more youth keen to see the world.

“Younger consumers in Asia would postpone buying a car, but not put off going somewhere for Christmas,” Hedrick-Wong said. “It’s interesting to see how integrated travel has become into the lifestyles of the region.”

The survey also showed that one in three consumers was looking to save more than 20 per cent of their income over the next year, with this a priority for most Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Indians and Thais.

Australians, New Zealanders and Chinese are among the few consumers not keen on reducing discretionary spending, while this is a priority for most Taiwanese, Filipinos and Koreans.

Even before the crisis gripped the world economy, newly rich consumers in economic giant China, luxury-loving Japan and booming India lapped up luxury goods at a rate unmatched in Europe and the United States.

Hedrick-Wong said that even as recession bites, Asians would continue to spend on luxury goods, but probably with less…

zeal, even though the region is not as badly affected by the financial crisis as other parts of the world.”There are so many more aspiring consumers here than in Europe and the United States,” he said.

“They’re still young and the appetite for luxury is still huge, but even with cash in their pockets, they’re reading about the global crisis every day, and that would make them more cautious and hunt for more bargains.” …

Chile’s official water authority warned on Saturday that the Echaurren glacier near Santiago, which supplies the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, could disappear in the next half century.

In a new report on Chile’s glaciers the main water company — Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) — said the ice fields of Echaurren are receding up to 12 meters (39.37 feet) per year.

“These glaciers are vanishing,” said Antonio Vergara of the DGA, who has worked on glacier research on the fields for 35 years.

At the current rate of decline, Echaurren and other smaller glaciers near Santiago could disappear over the next 50 years.

The river Maipo and its smaller tributaries, key water sources for Santiago, its environs and agriculture in region, all flow from Echaurren.

The water shortage would force Chileans to seek new sources of water and would cause “large-scale population displacement in central Chile,” said Vergara.

Located 50 kilometers (21 miles) east of Santiago, on the western slopes of the Andes mountain range, the Echaurren glacier is one of the 10 most studied ice fields in the world, and is considered a “landmark in the global studies of climate change,” said DGA director Rodrigo Weisner.

A team of scientists has resolved a long-standing puzzle in climate science, by reconciling the differences between simulated and observed temperature trends in the tropics.

Using state-of-the-art observational datasets and results from computer model simulations archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), researchers and colleagues from 11 other scientific institutions have refuted a recent claim that simulated temperature trends in the tropics are fundamentally inconsistent with observations.

This claim was based on the application of a flawed statistical test and the use of older observational datasets.

Computer model simulated changes in surface temperature and sea-ice extent.

The models used to simulate these changes were first run with best estimates of historical changes in human and natural factors over the 20th century, and then driven by estimated future changes in greenhouse gases.

Temperature and sea-ice changes are shown at four different times. Results are averages from the output of nearly two dozen individual climate models.

Climate model experiments invariably predict that human-caused greenhouse gas increases should lead to more warming in the tropical troposphere (the lowest layer of the atmosphere) than at the tropical land and ocean surface.

This predicted “amplification” behavior is in accord with basic theoretical expectations.

Until several years ago, however, most satellite and weather balloon records suggested that the tropical troposphere had warmed substantially less than the surface.

For nearly a decade, this apparent discrepancy between simulations and reality was a major conundrum for climate scientists.

The discrepancy was at odds with the overwhelming body of other scientific evidence pointing toward a “discernible human influence” on global climate.

A paper published online last year in the International Journal of Climatology claimed to show definitively that “models and observations disagree to a statistically significant extent” in terms of their tropical temperature trends.

This claim formed the starting point for an investigation by a large team of climate modelers and observational data specialists, which was led by LLNL’s Benjamin Santer.

In marked contrast to the earlier claim, Santer’s international team found that there is no fundamental discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in tropical temperatures.

“We’ve gone a long way toward reconciling modeled and observed temperature trends in the problem area of the tropics,” said Santer.

“We should apply what we learned in this study toward improving existing climate monitoring systems, so that future model evaluation studies are less sensitive to observational ambiguity,” he added.

It is us, humans, who have been ruining this great earth into garbage and rubbles for our selfishness. We have been destroying the green trees like anything and making this place unlivable for our future generations. It is only recently where we have realized that we should do something for our earth. There are smaller things like buying organic tote bags only and other stuff like which help us in our aim of making our place greener.

No one knows that recycled sports bottles can be reused again. Such ignorance has been costing us a great deal when it comes to making the earth greener. Buying only promotional USB will also help in our goal of making this place greener.

The products like organic tote bags help immensely by way of preserving the green by reusing them and using only organic materials. They also will not pollute our earth unlike their polythene counterparts.

Recycled cards are another way to help make this place a better one to live. They are reused once and can be reused many times.

If only if we vow that to only buy green promotional products like the tote bags, etc we can actually help in smaller ways to make this place greener.

A total of 134 species of birds have wiped out worldwide between 1701 and 2000, the UK-based conservation group BirdLife International said on Monday.

Twenty-seven species were driven to extinction in the 18th century, 51 in the 19th century and 56 in the 20th century; the group said in a report, adding that it is highly possible three species have already been lost this century.

Currently, 1,226 species or 12.4 per cent of the total including species native to Japan such as Blakiston’s fish owl and the Amami woodcock face extinction, it said.

Three human factors — agriculture, logging and human-induced invasive species — are the most threat facing bird species, respectively affecting 1,065, 668 and 625 species, the report said.

These stresses are threatening many of the familiar bird species in parts of the world such as the little tern in Japan, the cuckoo and eastern turtle dove in Europe and the vulture in India, while water birds such as the red knot are showing widespread declines particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, it said.

The report also highlights that a disproportionately high number of threatened birds live on islands, particularly oceanic islands far from land, because these species are often susceptible to the impact of introduced predators due to isolation for thousands of years.

The four extinct species in Japan including the Bonin grosbeak and Ryukyu wood pigeon lived on the Ogasawara Islands and the Nansei Islands, it said.

Over the past 20 years, 225 bird species have been moved to a higher category of threat because of genuine changes in status whereas just 32 species have been moved down to a lower danger category.

The system that we now refer to as MICR, or Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, printing was actually created in the mid 1950’s due to the banking industries increased demand for a streamlined method of check paper processing. This printing process uses a special toner that has magnetic properties so it can be easily read by the bank’s processing and sorting machines. This is generally used for printing the accounting and routing information that is required on all checks. The HP MICR line (which appears at the bottom of the check) is separated into several distinct units, called code line fields. The special symbols are situated at the beginning and end of each field. Some fields have a fixed format, while others can be modified to suit the individual requirements of various banks. The American National Standards Institute agreed on the E-13B font as the typeface because of its readability and there are strict rules regarding the placement of the characters.

The MICR printing process isn’t complicated, but it requires an in-depth knowledge of MICR technology and document production so it is critical you work with a quality MICR toner provider. If printed improperly, you may be looking at long delays in check processing, and even additional fees.

Going-green is the trend those days. In industrial age, e-waste presents a great challenge for environment protection. With EvolveTechCorp.com’s scrap film recycling program, you get the peace of mind that comes from doing what’s right both legally and for the environment. Evolve will handle all aspects of your disposal starting with the film removal from your file locations. They consolidate your scrap into shipping containers and EPA approved recyclers and proceed with the certified destruction of your confidential records. Evolve’s Document Containment Program consists of an assortment of versatile containers especially designed to protect sensitive medical information after it is discarded. The containers are not only tamper resistant, but are also equipped with a narrow slot designed to prevent unauthorized entry. Each secured wastebasket is clearly marked to designate its purpose to receive “HIPAA Regulated” disposable items. Their universal waste pickup goes beyond convenience by supplying your orthopedic pacs with a unique and traceable bill that identifies the tracking information and complies with government rules. They even provide material packaging and the required shipping labels at no charge. For all of your company’s e-waste needs, visit EvolveTechCorp.com today.

If you watch the news or surf the web, then you have surely heard about global warming and the huge impact it is having on our world. But, perhaps what you have not heard or don’t have a full understanding of is that if we all proceed living our lives as we have in the past then we won’t have a world to enjoy. So, we all need to learn how we can help protect our planet and save it from global warming. Of course, a single person can only do so much. But, if you begin wearing organic t-shirts and then you get your friends to then that is a step in the right direction. The same goes for biodegradable cups. Buy them and then talk to your friends about the benefits of them. If you own a company then you may want to promote green habits by giving away green promotional products. It does take some time to adjust and fully understand what is involved in “going green” but once you have it under your belt then you will be prepared! So, go ahead and take your part in the war against global warming. It is time to start!

New to the world is electronic waste, however few people are actually aware of what electronic waste really is. Basically, electronic waste, e-waste for short, is made up of all the different electrical appliances and items out there that nobody wants anymore. This includes cell phones, computers, stereos, entertainment electronics, and much more. Proper computer disposal and other electronic disposal is important because all this waste is filling up landfills and is not biodegrade so it needs to go somewhere. Before PC disposal was not that big a deal but now with everyone owning several computers and throwing out ones that are old or don’t work anymore it has become a necessity. Many types of e-waste are not exactly waste but rather fully functioning electronics that are just no longer wanted. This includes computers, stereos, cell phones, and more that are cast aside as a result of owner upgrades. These types of e-waste should be donated to places that can find a use for them rather than ending up in the landfill. These are the basics when it comes to electronic waste and it is important for everyone to understand exactly what it is and how to keep it under control.