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Secrets of the Rich

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

– Another brilliant piece by George Monbiot of the UK’s Guardian.   I just cannot applaud him enough.

– dennis

————————————–

Billionaires are hiding behind a network of “independent” groups, who manipulate politics on their behalf.

Conspiracies against the public don’t get much uglier than this. As the Guardian revealed last week, two secretive organisations working for US billionaires have spent $118m to ensure that no action is taken to prevent manmade climate change(1). While inflicting untold suffering on the world’s people, their funders have used these opaque structures to ensure that their identities are never exposed.

The two organisations – the Donors’ Trust and the Donors’ Capital Fund – were set up as political funding channels for people handing over $1m or more. They have financed 102 organisations which either dismiss climate science or downplay the need to take action. The large number of recipients creates the impression that there are many independent voices challenging climate science. These groups, working through the media, mobilising gullible voters and lobbying politicians, helped to derail Obama’s cap and trade bill and the climate talks at Copenhagen. Now they’re seeking to prevent the US president from trying again(2).

This covers only part of the funding. In total, between 2002 and 2010 the two identity-laundering groups paid $311m to 480 organisations(3), most of which take positions of interest to the ultra-rich and the corporations they run: less tax, less regulation, a smaller public sector. Around a quarter of the money received by the rightwing opinion swarm comes from the two foundations(4). If this funding were not effective, it wouldn’t exist: the ultra-rich didn’t get that way by throwing their money around randomly. The organisations they support are those which advance their interests.

A small number of the funders have been exposed by researchers trawling through tax records. They include the billionaire Koch brothers (paying into the two groups through their Knowledge and Progress Fund) and the DeVos family (the billionaire owners of Amway)(5). More significantly, we now know a little more about the recipients. Many describe themselves as free market or conservative think tanks.

Among them are the American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Hudson Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Mont Pelerin Society and the Discovery Institute(6). All of them pose as learned societies, earnestly trying to determine the best interests of the public. The exposure of this funding reinforces the claim by David Frum, formerly a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, that such groups “increasingly function as public-relations agencies”(7).

One name in particular jumped out at me: American Friends of the IEA. The Institute of Economic Affairs is a British group which, like all the others, calls itself a free market thinktank. Scarcely a day goes by on which its staff are not interviewed in the broadcast media, promoting the dreary old billionaires’ agenda: less tax for the rich, less help for the poor, less spending by the state, less regulation for business. In the first 13 days of February, its people were on the BBC ten times(8).

Never have I heard its claim to be an independent thinktank challenged by the BBC. When, in 2007, I called the institute a business lobby group, its then director-general responded, in a letter to the Guardian, that “we are independent of all business interests”(9). Oh yes?

The database, published by the Canadian site desmogblog.com, shows that American Friends of the IEA has received (up to 2010) $215,000 from the two secretive funds(10). When I spoke to the IEA’s fundraising manager, she confirmed that the sole purpose of American Friends is to raise money for the organisation in London(11). She agreed that the IEA has never disclosed the Donors’ Trust money it has received. She denied that the institute is a sockpuppet organisation: purporting to be independent while working for some very powerful US interests.

Would the BBC allow someone from Bell Pottinger to discuss an issue of concern to its sponsors without revealing the sponsors’ identity? No. So what’s the difference? What distinguishes an acknowledged public relations company taking money from a corporation or a billionaire from a so-called thinktank, funded by the same source to promote the same agenda?

The IEA is registered with the Charity Commission as an educational charity(12). The same goes for Nigel Lawson’s climate misinformation campaign (the Global Warming Policy Foundation(13)) and a host of other dubious “thinktanks”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is outrageous that the Charity Commission allows organisations which engage in political lobbying and refuse to reveal their major funders to claim charitable status(14).

This is the new political frontier. Corporations and their owners have learnt not to show their hands. They tend to avoid the media, aware that they will damage their brands by being seen to promote the brutal agenda that furthers their interests. So they have learnt from the tobacco companies: stay hidden and pay other people to do it for you(15).

They need a network of independent-looking organisations which can produce plausible arguments in defence of their positions. Once the arguments have been developed, projecting them is easy. Most of the media are owned by billionaires, who are happy to promote the work of people funded by the same class(16). One of the few outlets they don’t own – the BBC – has been disgracefully incurious about the identity of those to whom it gives a platform.

By these means the ultra-rich come to dominate the political conversation, without declaring themselves(17,18). Those they employ are clever and well-trained. They have money their opponents can only dream of. They are skilled at rechannelling the public anger which might otherwise have been directed at their funders: the people who have tanked the economy, who use the living planet as their dustbin, who won’t pay their taxes and who demand that the poor must pay for the mistakes of the rich. Anger, thanks to the work of these hired hands, is instead aimed at the victims or opponents of the billionaires: people on benefits, the trade unions, Greenpeace, the American Civil Liberties Union.

The answer, as ever, is transparency. As the so-called thinktanks come to play an ever more important role in politics, we need to know who they are working for. Any group – whether the Institute of Economic Affairs or Friends of the Earth – which attempts to influence public life should declare all donations greater than £1000. We’ve had a glimpse of who’s paying. Now we need to see the rest of the story.

– To the original and its references:  ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Human Rights, The Perfect Storm, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

Who do you trust on Climate Change?

Sunday, December 2nd, 2012

It’s a valid question.  We all know that there are climate change deniers and climate change proponents out there.  And they each seem to be deeply convinced of their point of view.

One could get cynical and jaded regarding the issue and it’s easy to believe that these ongoing arguments are just the same old arguments being hashed out over and over again with neither side budging year after year.

But is it a static and unchanging argument?

Well, I’m going to tell you that it is not.  And I’m going to give you the proof.  And afterwards, you can ask yourself if,  perhaps, you’ve been a bit too lackadaisical about all of this.

Who loves you, Baby?

When it comes TIME to put your money and your belief down on a issue like this, who would you trust?

Would you trust the tree-huggers who seem to go on and on about saving nature – with seemingly no regard for preserving our jobs, our communities and our way of life?

Or would you trust the big oil, gas and coal corporations who tell us there’s nothing to worry about but whose profits are deeply dependent on all of us continuing to burn the fossil fuels they produce and sell to us?

Well, that’s a tough choice and it’s one we’ve been looking at for some time now.

New boys in town

But there are new players in this game now.  And these new folks have some very serious money and responsibilities on the table.  So, it is worth waking up again on this issue and seeing what they have to say.

Among these new players are the U.S. Pentagon, Lloyd’s of London and The World Bank, to name a few.  I think you’d agree that in a world full of monkey’s, these are some of the gorillas.

All of them have decided that the threat of Global Climate Change sounds serious enough that they’ve commissioned major studies to get at the truth of the matter for their own good.  And it is not surprising that they would.

The World Bank makes huge investments around the world and the success or failure of these investments may hinge on whether the threat of Global Climate Change is real.

Lloyd’s of London sells insurance. And when they do so, they are making a bet that they know what the odds are that a disaster might happen.   The fact that they’ve been in business for centuries, and that they are one of the world’s largest insurance firms, says that they know what they are doing when it comes to estimating risk.

And, of course, the U.S. Pentagon has the enormous responsibility of making sure that United States is, and remains, secure in the face of a changing world.

The studies they’ve commissioned have all come back saying that we, as a world, are proceeding into some very deep and serious problems.  These studies have confirmed what the environmentalists and the climate scientists have been trying to tell us for more than twenty plus years now.

Read it all for yourself

But don’t trust what I have to say on all of this.   Read it for yourself.  Here are the direct links:

The World Bank:

http://climatechange.worldbank.org/

Lloyd’s of London:  http:

//www.lloyds.com/~/media/3be75eab0df24a5184d0814c32161c2d.ashx

U.S. Pentagon:

http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/news/FlipBooks/Climate%20Change%20web/flipviewerxpress.html

The Central Point

The central point in all of this is that Global Climate Change is real and it is a MAJOR threat to all of our futures.

That said, the worst aspects of these threats may still be a decade or two away.   Many of us are old enough (myself included) to think that none of this may matter to us.

But reflect for a moment on those you love.   Your sons, your daughters, your grandchildren and your relatives and their families and all the other folks you care about.

Just imagine the kind of a world we are on the brink of bequeathing them if all of this is true.  I know that none of you would willingly leave your dependents in dire straits.   So, you owe it to yourself and to them to open your mind and take a good look at these issues again, my friends.

A few samples from the reports

Here we’re going to learn that the world is well on its way to being 4°C [7.2°F] warmer by the end of the century.

Ironically, twenty years ago in 1992, the climate scientists who met in Rio then warned that the world could simply not sustain a temperature increase of more than 2°C with out major consequences.

Of that 2°C, we’ve now risen .8°C.

 

The World Bank Report says:

A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided – we need to hold warming below 2°C.  Lack of action on climate change threatens to make the world our children inherit a completely different world than we are living in today. Climate change is one of the single biggest challenges facing development, and we need to assume the moral responsibility to take action on behalf of future generations, especially the poorest.

A 4°C [7.2°F] warmer world would also suffer more extreme heat waves, and these events will not be evenly distributed across the world, according to the report.

Sub-tropical Mediterranean, northern Africa, the Middle East, and the contiguous United States are likely to see monthly summer temperatures rise by more than 6°C [10.8°F]. Temperatures of the warmest July between 2080-2100 in the Mediterranean are expected to approach 35°C [95°F]– about 9°C [16.2°F] warmer than the warmest July estimated for the present day. The warmest July month in the Sahara and the Middle East will see temperatures as high as 45°C [113°F], or 6-7°C [10.8-12.6°F] above the warmest July simulated for the present day.

Hotter weather could in turn lower crop yields in a 4°C [7.2°F] world—raising concerns about future food security. Field experiments have shown that crops are highly sensitive to temperatures above certain thresholds. One study cited in the report found that each “growing degree day” spent at a temperature of 30°C [86°F] degrees decreases yields by 1% under drought-free rain-fed conditions.

The report also says drought-affected areas would increase from 15.4% of global cropland today, to around 44% by 2100. The most severely affected regions in the next 30 to 90 years will likely be in southern Africa, the United States, southern Europe and Southeast Asia, says the report. 

The Lloyd’s of London Report says:

If the sea level were to rise just four meters due to climate change, almost every coastal city in the world would be inundated.

In publishing this report, it is not Lloyd’s intention to take a particular position, or to support a specific scenario. We simply aim to present the facts from the most reliable sources in a way which we hope will be helpful for those who trade in, and with, our market. We also want to generate debate about the specific steps which we might take as an industry to prepare for the increasing volatility of the climate.

Although debate continues, the growing body of evidence on greenhouse gases suggests that significant climate change is inevitable. Even if we stopped producing greenhouse gas emissions immediately, we would still experience rising temperatures for decades to come and sea temperatures will continue to rise for many centuries, due to inertia in the climate system.

We might hope that extreme ‘tipping points’ – the point beyond which change cannot be reversed – can be avoided. However, evidence so far must lead us to conclude that some level of change has already occurred and that it will continue to occur, perhaps at a higher level than previously thought.

One recent paper in Nature warns starkly: “Global warming may proceed at or even above the upper extreme of the range projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

The Pentagon Report says:

Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security. The predicted effects of climate change over the coming decades include extreme weather events, drought, flooding, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, habitat shifts, and the increased spread of life-threatening diseases. These conditions have the potential to disrupt our way of life and to force changes in the way we keep ourselves safe and secure.

The nature and pace of climate changes being observed today and the consequences projected by the consensus scientific opinion are grave and pose equally grave implications for our national security. Moving beyond the arguments of cause and effect, it is important that the U.S. military begin planning to address these potentially devastating effects. The consequences of climate change can affect the organization, training, equipping, and planning of the military services. The U.S.
military has a clear obligation to determine the potential impacts of climate change on its ability to execute its missions in support of national security objectives.

In the national and international security environment, climate change threatens to add new hostile and stressing factors. On the simplest level, it has the potential to create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today. The consequences will likely foster political instability where societal demands exceed the capacity of governments to cope.

Unlike most conventional security threats that involve a single entity acting in specific ways and points in time, climate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within the same time frame.  Economic and environmental conditions in already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and large populations move in search of resources. Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies.

So, what do you do with all of this?

You might wonder why I am writing this?  What do I expect you, my readers, to do with this information?  Maybe you suspect that I am hoping that all of you will undergo a sudden conversion and become rabid tree-huggers?

Nope, it is none of those and this is not a partisan based appeal either.   This is decidedly not about Conservative vs. Liberal or Religious vs. Secular.

It may be true, in general, that Liberals have been quicker than Conservatives to embrace a belief in Global Climate Change. But, in truth, neither side’s response to these problems has been anything other than tepid and lukewarm.  The best you can say for the Liberals is that they are still willing to “talk” about it though they’ve showed no serious signs of engaging it.   And with the Conservatives, it’s even worse as they are seeming moving away from the issues.

In 2008 the Republican party platform at least included language that called for a “decrease in emissions, reduction of excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and mitigation of the impact of climate change“.

By this most recent election cycle, there was a major shift away from this point-of-view.  The Republican 2012 platform eliminated any reference to climate change with the exception of prohibiting the “EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations.”  Their platform also supported vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s accusation that climatologists use “statistical tricks to distort their findings and intentionally mislead the public on the issue of climate change.”

It is deeply scary that the Republican Party, that represents half of the American population, is in active denial of Global Climate Change.  And it is only slightly better that the Democrats at least still profess to still “believe” in the issue.  But all President Obama has really offered up in terms of improving things is to implement some better mileage requirements for cars.  In truth, he’s literally just messing with the deck furniture while the Titanic sails on to its appointment with an iceberg called Global Climate Change.

Folks, I’ll repeat myself.   This isn’t a partisan rant, this isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats.  The  issues we’re talking about here cut a lot deeper than any of that.

What this is about is trying to convince you that these threats are terrifying and real,  And that they are going effect everyone and everyplace on this planet before long and that some of the biggest power players and smartest people on the planet are coming to that profound realization.

Vote – that’s what it’s about

This is about getting you to think about who you vote for because that is the leverage that each of us in a democratic society has to affect things.  Political parties don’t lead.   They simply reflect the beliefs of those whom they consider their electorate.  You, the voters, have to change and your parties will follow.  Show your change by who you vote for.

I urge you to vote for people, regardless of whether they are conservative or liberal, who’ve

A. Shown that they understand the issues around Global Climate Change.

B. And shown that they believe the issues are real and hugely important.

C. And shown that they are motivated to do something about it.

Many of our current politicians on both sides of the aisle  just cannot seem to see that the world is changing around us in dangerous ways.  For whatever reason, many of our current politicians are in serious denial about the coming consequences of Global Climate Change.

And in their denial they are frittering away all of our futures.  And most especially they are frittering away the futures of our children.

If you still have doubts about all of this, then go back and reread the reports I’ve referenced by the Pentagon, The World Bank and Lloyd’s of London again.  And then reflect on who these organizations are.  They are not tree-huggers or environmental destroyers.  And they most definitely are not here with ulterior motives to pull the wool over our eyes.

And these three organizations are not the only ones.  Governments and major business organizations all over the world are beginning to worry about what’s coming.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get the people we elect to wake up  and smell the coffee too?

 

 

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Worst U.S. drought in decades continues

Sunday, November 25th, 2012

The future?

The worst US drought in decades has deepened again after more than a month of encouraging reports of slowly improving conditions, a drought-tracking consortium said today, as scientists struggled for an explanation other than a simple lack of rain.

While more than half of the continental US has been in a drought since summer, rain storms had appeared to be easing the situation week by week since late September. But that promising run ended with today’s weekly US Drought Monitor report, which showed increases in the portion of the country in drought and the severity of it.

The report showed that 60.1 per cent of the lower 48 states were in some form of drought as of Tuesday, up from 58.8 per cent the previous week. The amount of land in extreme or exceptional drought the two worst classifications increased from 18.3 per cent to 19.04 per cent.

The Drought Monitor’s map tells the story, with dark red blotches covering the center of the nation and portions of Texas and the Southeast as an indication of where conditions are the most intense. Those areas are surrounded by others in lesser stages of drought, with only the Northwest, Florida and a narrow band from New England south to Mississippi escaping.

– more… ➡

 

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

Global Warming and New Zealand

Monday, November 12th, 2012

– The New Zealand Listener Magazine has an editorial in their September 22-28, 2012  edition entitled:

GLOBAL WARMING – Record droughts, hottest US summer ever & Arctic sea ice vanishing – What does it mean for New Zealand?

– It makes a lot of good points and I recomend reading it if you are a New Zealander.

– It repeats a point that I’ve made on this Blog for a long time.  And that is that sooner or later, the same factors that brought me, and numerous other new immigrants to NZ, are going to become apparent to greater and greater numbers of folks and the rush to immigrate to NZ is going to be on.

– There will be, in the not too distant future, a lot of reasons to run away from other locations out in the world.  Rising sea levels, water shortages, food shortages, extreme weather and widening social chaos will be among those factors.   We’ve had economic and human rights refugees in the past.  These will increase in the future and to their numbers will be added environmental refugees.

– Right now, NZ is not in bad shape.

Our beautiful refuge

– We generate the majority of our energy needs from benign sources such as hydroelectric and geothermal.

– We also generate two or more times the food that we consume which is why we can do a handsome amount of agricultural exporting.

– We are also protected from the worst of the weather changes because our climate is strongly buffered by the fact that we are an island nation in the midst of a huge surrounding ocean.

– We also have a fairly homogeneous culture which is good.   It means that we, as a people, have fairly uniform ideas about how things should work.

– And, finally, we are protected from unwanted and forced immigration by that same ocean that surrounds us.   Australia is the closest and they are 1000 miles away  and most of the increasingly desperate world lies beyond them on the far side.

– But we will not remain in good shape if we don’t, as a nation, look out for ourselves.

– Should we let foreigners buy farmland here?

– The authors of the article think not and I agree with them.  If push comes to shove in a nastier future and we need the food that grows here to survive, we will not be happy if a significant portion of it belongs to folks from overseas and they want to ship it home to their own people.

– Should we let offshore folks own significant portions of our industries and our means of production?   I think not.  If the world gets tough, they won’t be asking ‘how can they help us with those things’.  They will be asking how those things can be used to help them.

– Should we let large numbers of folks immigrate into NZ from cultures significantly different from ours?  Currently, we are not split, say, over common law verses Sharia Law or whether women should be first class citizens here or not.  Or whether or not everyone should be able to practice their own religion so long as they leave other folks alone.  But, if we don’t watch our immigration rates and types, this situation could get away from us.  For a more detailed discussion of these ideas see here: ➡

– It is indeed sad that we might need to start thinking this way.  Is seems so isolationist and selfish and New Zealand has always been a compassionate and generous nation.

– But, tough times are coming.   The question is not ‘if‘ but simply ‘when‘.  And the question is not, ‘is it going to be bad?‘.   The fact is that it is going to be bad and the estimates of how bad it is going to be are only getting worse as we, as a world, keep continuing along without reacting to the dangers ahead.

– Please read the article.

– We in NZ are probably going to be some of the very luckiest people on the planet when the wheels come off because of our physical isolation, our low population, our excess food production capability and our well organized society.    But those factors are not going to be enough to save us  if we don’t look out for ourselves.

– The Arabs have an expression that comes to mind here:  “Trust in God, but tether your camel.“

– dennis

– Late breaking:  Chinese want to buy into Fonterra.  See ➡

 

 

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Food Shortages, Immigration Stress, New Zealand, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

End of an Era

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

– Parents, it is time to think about where your children are going to be when the sh** hits the fan.  I don’t think we’re going to avoid this mess but you could shift them to a place where another generation or two might have reasonable lives.   If you think that might be in a big city in the U.S., I think you are missing the point.

– Dennis

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 25th June 2012

It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth’s living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the US, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue “sustained growth”, the primary cause of the biosphere’s losses(1).

The future

The efforts of governments are concentrated not on defending the living Earth from destruction, but on defending the machine that is destroying it. Whenever consumer capitalism becomes snarled up by its own contradictions, governments scramble to mend the machine, to ensure – though it consumes the conditions that sustain our lives – that it runs faster than ever before.

The thought that it might be the wrong machine, pursuing the wrong task, cannot even be voiced in mainstream politics. The machine greatly enriches the economic elite, while insulating the political elite from the mass movements it might otherwise confront. We have our bread; now we are wandering, in spellbound reverie, among the circuses.

We have used our unprecedented freedoms, secured at such cost by our forebears, not to agitate for justice, for redistribution, for the defence of our common interests, but to pursue the dopamine hits triggered by the purchase of products we do not need. The world’s most inventive minds are deployed not to improve the lot of humankind but to devise ever more effective means of stimulation, to counteract the diminishing satisfactions of consumption. The mutual dependencies of consumer capitalism ensure that we all unwittingly conspire in the trashing of what may be the only living planet. The failure at Rio de Janeiro belongs to us all.

– More… ➡

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Deforestation, Desertification, Extinctions, Financial melt-down, Food Shortages, Fundamentalism, Human Rights, Immigration Stress, Methane, Nuclear Waste, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Dead Zones, Pandemics, Peak Oil, Politics - The Wrong Way, Pollution, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, Terrorism, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages, Wealth Disparity, Weather deterioration, Women's Rights | No Comments »

Earth to America!

Monday, June 25th, 2012
blue_man_group

blue_man_group

– This is a great little video.  Pass it on….  ➡

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM-mfEMssy8

– research thanks to John P.

 

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Earth Sends Climate Warning by Busting World Heat Records

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

First decade of 21st Century warmest on record; US locations break 7,000 temperature records in March

Accelerated climate change, driven by human activity, has led to soaring temperatures around the world and the decade between 2001 and 2010 was the warmest ever recorded in all continents of the globe, according to a new report released by the World Meteorological Organization.

Additionally, an ‘unprecedented’ heatwave in the United States “has set or tied more than 7,000 high temperature records” across the country, according to a report from Climate Central. “This heat wave is essentially unprecedented,” said the media and research orgnanization’s Heidi Cullen told Reuters. “It’s hard to grasp how massive and significant this is.”

The increase in global temperatures since 1971 has been “remarkable” according to the WHO’s assessment. Atmospheric and oceanic phenomena such as La Niña events had a temporary cooling influence in some years, the report says, but did not halt the overriding warming trend.

The “dramatic and continuing sea ice decline in the Arctic” was one of the most prominent features of the changing state of the climate during the decade, according to the preliminary findings. Global average precipitation was the second highest since 1901 and flooding was reported as the most frequent extreme event, it said.

“This 2011 annual assessment confirms the findings of the previous WMO annual statements that climate change is happening now and is not some distant future threat. The world is warming because of human activities and this is resulting in far-reaching and potentially irreversible impacts on our Earth, atmosphere and oceans,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “The world is warming because of human activities and this is resulting in far-reaching and potentially irreversible impacts on our Earth, atmosphere and oceans,” he added.

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to Kathy G.

 

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Northwest Oyster Die-offs Show Ocean Acidification Has Arrived

Monday, January 30th, 2012

The acidification of the world’s oceans from an excess of CO2 has already begun, as evidenced recently by the widespread mortality of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest. Scientists say this is just a harbinger of things to come if greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar

It was here, from 2006 to 2008, that oyster larvae began dying dramatically, with hatchery owners Mark Wiegardt and his wife, Sue Cudd, experiencing larvae losses of 70 to 80 percent. “Historically we’ve had larvae mortalities,” says Wiegardt, but those deaths were usually related to bacteria. After spending thousands of dollars to disinfect and filter out pathogens, the hatchery’s oyster larvae were still dying.

Finally, the couple enlisted the help of Burke Hales, a biogeochemist and ocean ecologist at Oregon State University. He soon homed in on the carbon chemistry of the water. “My wife sent a few samples in and Hales said someone had screwed up the samples because the [dissolved CO2 gas] level was so ridiculously high,” says Wiegardt, a fourth-generation oyster farmer. But the measurements were accurate. What the Whiskey Creek hatchery was experiencing was acidic seawater, caused by the ocean absorbing excessive amounts of CO2 from the air.

Ocean acidification — which makes it difficult for shellfish, corals, sea urchins, and other creatures to form the shells or calcium-based structures they need to live — was supposed to be a problem of the future. But because of patterns of ocean circulation, Pacific Northwest shellfish are already on the front lines of these potentially devastating changes in ocean chemistry. Colder, more acidic waters are welling up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and streaming ashore in the fjords, bays, and estuaries of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, exacting an environmental and economic toll on the region’s famed oysters.

– More… ➡

-Research thanks to Tony H.

 

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Extinctions, Ocean Acidification, Pollution, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Rivers of ice: Vanishing glaciers

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Stunning images from high in the Himalayas – showing the extent by which many glaciers have shrunk in the past 80 years or so – have gone on display at the Royal Geographical Society in central London.

Between 2007 and 2010, David Breashears retraced the steps of early photographic pioneers such as Major E O Wheeler, George Mallory and Vittorio Sella – to try to re-take their views of breathtaking glacial vistas.

The mountaineer and photographer is the founder of GlacierWorks – a non-profit organisation that uses art, science and adventure to raise public awareness about the consequences of climate change in the Himalayas.

– To the article and pictures… ➡

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Climate change ‘grave threat’ to security and health

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Climate change poses “an immediate, growing and grave threat” to health and security around the world, according to an expert conference in London.

Officers in the UK military warned that the price of goods such as fuel is likely to rise as conflict provoked by climate change increases.

A statement from the meeting adds that humanitarian disasters will put more and more strain on military resources.

It asks governments to adopt ambitious targets for curbing greenhouse gases.

The annual UN climate conference opens in about six weeks’ time, and the doctors, academics and military experts represented at the meeting (held in the British Medical Association’s (BMA) headquarters)argue that developed and developing countries alike need to raise their game.

Scientific studies suggest that the most severe climate impacts will fall on the relatively poor countries of the tropics.

UK military experts pointed out that much of the world’s trade moves through such regions, with North America, Western Europe and China among the societies heavily dependent on oil and other imports.

Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, climate and energy security envoy for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), said that conflict in such areas could make it more difficult and expensive to obtain goods on which countries such as Britain rely.

“If there are risks to the trade routes and other areas, then it’s food, it’s energy,” he told BBC News.

“The price of energy will go up – for us, it’s [the price of] petrol at the pumps – and goods made in southeast Asia, a lot of which we import.”

– More… ➡

 

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