Archive for the ‘Climate Change’ Category

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Coal is the enemy of the human race, mainstream economics edition

Monday, October 10th, 2011

… noted a new paper in theAmerican Economic Review: “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy.”   Brad Johnson has a longer summary here.   I want to emphasize the paper’s conclusions and make a few related points. But mostly I want to beg everyone: spread this around. Coal’s net economic effects on the U.S. are poorly understood, to say the least, and this paper’s findings are stunning.

Once you strip away the econ jargon, the paper finds that electricity from coal imposes more damages on the U.S. economy than the electricity is worth. That’s right: Coal-fired power is a net value-subtracting industry. A parasite, you might say. A gigantic, blood-sucking parasite that’s enriching a few executives and shareholders at the public’s expense.

– From the Grist Blog ( www.grist.org ) 

– To more of the original article…  ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Human Rights, Pollution, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Arctic ozone loss in 2011 unprecedented

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Record ozone depletion over the Arctic early this year rivals what was observed in the Antarctic when holes in the protective atmospheric layer first appeared there during the 1980s.

The observation raises concerns that portions of the Northern Hemisphere might periodically begin experiencing potentially harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation during early spring, an international team of scientists reports online October 2 in Nature.

“It was significantly worse than anything we have ever seen,” says Geir Braathen of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, who was not one of the authors of the Nature paper. Typically, spring Arctic ozone depletion has maxed out at a drop of between 20 and 30 percent, the atmospheric chemist notes. “But in 2011, we had a loss of around 40 percent.”

In Antarctica, 70 percent of the ozone can disappear in springtime, Braathen says. Within a 5- to 7-kilometer–thick band of the stratosphere, ozone concentrations actually plummet to zero, he says.

Arctic conditions have not gotten nearly that bad, says Michelle Santee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., one of 29 authors of the new Arctic ozone analysis.

Although ozone can be found at any altitude over the Arctic, most accumulates between 14 to 21 kilometers up. There, concentrations hover around 4.5 parts per million much of the year. But in late March, “there was an approximately 2-kilometer altitude region where ozone fell to around 0.7 ppm,” Santee says — “meaning the ozone was pretty much gone.” In small regions, she adds, patches of the Arctic stratosphere saw ozone drop to 0.5 ppm.

It takes four things to destroy much of the stratosphere’s ozone: sunlight; very prolonged cold temperatures; a stable vortex of winds that prevents ozone losses inside it from being replenished with more from outside; and the presence of special clouds that foster the transformation of benign chlorine molecules into ozone-vanquishing types. For the first time in the Arctic, all of these conditions aligned for months, says JPL atmospheric scientist and coauthor Nathaniel Livesey, “making it the perfect storm.”

– More… ➡

 

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Arctic sea ice melts at fastest rate for 40 years

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972.

“On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.240 million square kilometres (1.637 million square miles). This is a new historic minimum,” said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics in Germany.

The new mark is about half-a-per cent under his team’s measurements of the previous record, which occurred on September 16, 2007, he said.

– more… ➡

 

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Greenland’s ice sheets face new threat

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Substantial warming well below ocean’s surface will pose risk in this century.

Scientists have uncovered a potentially potent risk to Greenland’s ice sheets during the next century and beyond: rapidly warming deep water. The subsurface ocean off Greenland is now expected to warm at roughly double the rate that is projected for such waters globally, including off the coast of Antarctica.

Calling the ocean “the 900-pound gorilla of global warming and climate change,” oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., says he’s excited to finally see long-term climate projections homing in on the ocean’s role. “How the oceans affect the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could mean the difference between getting two feet and six feet of sea level rise in the coming century,” observes Willis, who had no role in the new analysis. “So this is a big deal.”

Until now, “no one had noticed that the ocean surrounding Greenland and Antarctica will warm very differently during this century and the next,” says climate modeler Jianjun Yin of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who led the new study, published online July 3 in Nature Geoscience. Although his group’s conclusions come from computer analyses, Yin notes that the study’s projections “are quite consistent with recent observations of subsurface ocean temperatures around Greenland.”

– More… ➡

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Global carbon emissions reach record, says IEA

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Energy-related carbon emissions reached a record level last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The watchdog says emissions rose again after a dip caused by the financial crisis in 2009, and ended 5% up from the previous record in 2008.

China and India account for most of the rise, though emissions have also grown in developed countries.

The increase raises doubts over whether planned curbs on greenhouse emissions will be achieved, the group says.

At a meeting last year in Cancun, Mexico, world leaders agreed that deep cuts were needed to limit the rise in global temperature to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

But according to the IEA’s estimate, worldwide CO2 emissions from the energy sector reached a record 30.6 gigatonnes in 2010.

The IEA’s Fatih Birol said the finding was “another wake-up call”.

“The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2C target is to be attained,” he added.

“Unless bold and decisive decisions are made very soon, it will be extremely challenging to succeed in achieving this global goal agreed in Cancun.

– To the original:  ➡

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Scientists’ Report Stresses Urgency of Limiting

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

– Would you, dear readers, be more impressed if I also went back and provided links for the last three or four times that such warnings have been issued; each with more stridency?    I could, you know.

– I/we just keep watching these warnings go by.

– And then one day, we’ll all hear it said, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?   Why didn’t anyone do anything to prevent all this?”  Why, indeed.

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The nation’s scientific establishment issued a stark warning to the American public on Thursday: Not only is global warming real, but the effects are already becoming serious and the need has become “pressing” for a strong national policy to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The report, by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, did not endorse any specific legislative approach, but it did say that attaching some kind of price to emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, would ideally be an essential component of any plan.

“The risks associated with doing business as usual are a much greater concern than the risks associated with engaging in ambitious but measured response efforts,” the report concludes. “This is because many aspects of an ‘overly ambitious’ policy response could be reversed or otherwise addressed, if needed, through subsequent policy change, whereas adverse changes in the climate system are much more difficult (indeed, on the time scale of our lifetimes, may be impossible) to ‘undo.’ ”

The report, “America’s Climate Choices,” was ordered by Congress several years ago to offer “action-oriented advice” on how the nation should be reacting to the potential consequences of climate change.

But the answer comes at a time when efforts to adopt a climate-change policy have stalled in Washington, with many of the Republicans who control the House expressing open skepticism about the science of climate change. Other legislators, including some Democrats, worry that any new law would translate into higher energy prices and hurt the economy.

More… ➡

– Research Thanks to Robin S.

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John Holdren relishing Congress climate opportunity

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

– “Any objective look at what science has to say about climate change ought to be sufficient to persuade reasonable people that the climate is changing and that humans are responsible for a substantial part of that – and that these changes are doing harm and will continue to do more harm unless we start to reduce our emissions.

– Speaking to BBC News at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington DC, Professor John Holdren

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The US president’s chief science adviser says the nation’s current efforts to tackle climate change are insufficient in the long-term.

Speaking to BBC News at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington DC, Professor John Holdren said the current US Congress was unlikely to pass new legislation to put a price on CO2 emissions.

President Obama’s administration’s efforts, he said, would instead have to focus on developing cleaner technologies, expanding the use of nuclear power and improving energy efficiency.

But he admits that in the long term, these initiatives on their own will not be enough.

“Ultimately, we will have to look to a future Congress for the more comprehensive approach that climate change will require,” he said.

For the time being, Professor Holdren faces a more sceptical Congress than he would like, and one that proposes a series of congressional hearings to assess the science of climate change.

Professor Holdren says he is relishing the opportunity.

– more… ➡

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Deforestation, Desertification, Extinctions, Food Shortages, Methane, Ocean Acidification, Politics, Pollution, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

Study reveals rapid deforestation in Malaysia

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

New satellite imagery shows Malaysia is destroying forests more than three times faster than all of Asia combined, and its carbon-rich peat soils of the Sarawak coast are being stripped even faster, according to a study released yesterday.

The report commissioned by the Netherlands-based Wetlands International says Malaysia is uprooting an average 2 percent of the rain forest a year on Sarawak, its largest state on the island of Borneo, or nearly 10 percent over the last five years. Most of it is being converted to palm oil plantations, it said.

The deforestation rate for all of Asia during the same period was 2.8 percent, it said.

In the last five years, 353,000 hectares (872,263 acres) of Malaysia’s peatlands were deforested, or one-third of the swamps which have stored carbon from decomposed plants for millions of years.

“We never knew exactly what was happening in Malaysia and Borneo,” said Wetlands spokesman Alex Kaat. “Now we see there is a huge expansion (of deforestation) with annual rates that are beyond imagination.”

– More… ➡

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Deforestation, Extinctions, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

The world is only one poor harvest away from chaos

Friday, January 14th, 2011

BY Lester Brown

12 JAN 2011 3:39 PM

Our early 21st century civilization is in trouble. We need not go beyond the world food economy to see this. Over the last few decades we have created a food production bubble — one based on environmental trends that cannot be sustained, including overpumping aquifers, overplowing land, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.

If we cannot reverse these trends, economic decline is inevitable. No civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural support systems. Nor will ours.

Thos who forget history are doomed to re-heat it

The archeological records of earlier civilizations indicate that more often than not it was food shortages that led to their downfall. Food appears to be the weak link for our global civilization as well. And unlike the recent U.S. housing bubble, the food bubble is global.

The question is not whether the food bubble will burst but when. While the U.S. housing bubble was created by the overextension of credit, the food bubble is based on the overuse of land and water resources. It is further threatened by the climate stresses deriving from the excessive burning of fossil fuels. When the U.S. housing bubble burst, it sent shockwaves through the world economy, culminating in the worst recession since the Great Depression. When the food bubble bursts, food prices will soar worldwide, threatening economic and political stability everywhere. For those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, survival itself could be at stake.

The danger signs are everywhere. In the summer of 2010, record high temperatures scorched Moscow from late June through mid-August. Western Russia was so hot and dry in early August that 300 to 400 new fires were starting every day.

The average temperature in Moscow for July was a scarcely believable 14 degrees Fahrenheit above the norm. Watching the heat wave play out over the seven-week period on the TV evening news, with the thousands of fires and smoke everywhere, was like watching a horror film. Over 56,000 people died in the extreme heat. Russia’s 140 million people were in shock, traumatized by what was happening to them and their country .

The record heat shrank Russia’s grain harvest from roughly 100 million tons to 60 million tons. This 40-percent drop and the associated grain export ban helped drive world wheat prices up 60 percent in two months, raising bread prices worldwide.

Crop ecologists estimate that for each 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees F) rise in temperature above the norm during the growing season, grain yields decline by roughly 10 percent. In parts of Western Russia, the spring wheat crop was totally destroyed by the crop-withering heat and drought. As the Earth’s temperature rises, the likelihood of more numerous, more intense heat waves increases.

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to LA

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Last December UK’s coldest for 100 years

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Last month was the coldest December documented for the UK since nationwide records began 100 years ago, the Met Office has confirmed.

For central England, it was the second coldest December since 1659.

However, the first analysis released of global temperatures shows 2010 was one of the warmest years on record.

The UK’s harsh weather was caused by anomalously high air pressure that blocked mild westerly winds and brought cold air south from the Arctic.

The provisional monthly Met Office figures show the UK temperature averaged -1C – a long way below the previous coldest December, in 1981, which registered -0.1C.

The December average for the century-long series is 4.2C.

It was also the coldest calendar month since February 1986, the Met Office reports.

“It’s been an exceptional month, there’s no question about that – it will go down in history as one to remember,” said chief meteorologist Ewen McCallum.

“Our records go back to 1910 and it’s certainly the coldest since then, so it’s the coldest December in 100 years,” he told BBC News.

– More… ➡

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