Archive for the ‘CrashBlogging’ Category

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Stealth release of major federal study of Gulf Coast climate change transportation impacts

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008

On March 12 the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) released the assessment report Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Transportation Systems and Infrastructure: Gulf Coast Study, Phase 1. This report, 400+ pages long, is a major study of the implications of climate change for Gulf Coast transportation—including roads and highways, transit services, oil and gas pipelines, freight handling ports, transcontinental railroad networks, waterway systems, and airports. Transportation systems and infrastructure are likely to be adversely impacted by climate change, including warmer temperatures and heat waves, changes in precipitation patterns (extreme precipitation events, flooding), sea level rise, increased storm intensity, and damage associated with storm surge. The study talks about how climate change considerations need to be incorporated in transportation planning and investment decisions.

A link to the full report, which was posted on the CCSP Web site at about noon yesterday.

Three hours later DOT issued a pro forma, uninformative, and misleading press release on a different Web site, 3 links away from the report itself. There appears to be no other rollout activity in connection with this major climate change risk assessment-preparedness study. The press release lists only one contact, a press official who is a former Republican congressional staffer. It does not list as contacts any of the lead authors of the report—the individuals with the real expertise to discuss its contents.

More… ➡

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Politics - The Wrong Way, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

We’re all doomed! 40 years from global catastrophe

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

The weather forecast for this holiday weekend is wildly unsettled. We had better get used to it.  According to the climate change scientist James Lovelock, this is the beginning of the end of a peaceful phase in evolution.

By 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine.

The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain.

We will, he says, have to set up encampments in this country, like those established for the hundreds of thousands of refugees displaced by the conflict in East Africa.

Lovelock believes the subsequent ethnic tensions could lead to civil war.

More… ➡

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

Global crisis deepening: IMF Chief

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn says global financial crisis worse that originally believed, and worsening.

PARIS (AP) — The collapse of a Wall Street institution over the weekend shows the global financial crisis is broader than policy makers realized and it is growing worse, the head of the International Monetary Fund said Monday.

“The financial crisis which started in the United States is more serious and more global than it was a few weeks ago,” IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Paris.

“The risks and dangers are very high. The economic environment is still worsening.”

The current crises will require a “global answer,” Strauss-Kahn said.

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Posted in CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Dangerous wheat-killing fungus detected in Iran – UN

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

5 March 2008 – A dangerous new fungus with the ability to destroy entire wheat fields has been detected in Iran, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported today.The wheat stem rust, whose spores are carried by wind across continents, was previously found in East Africa and Yemen and has moved to Iran, which said that laboratory tests have confirmed its presence in some localities in Broujerd and Hamedan in the country’s west.

Up to 80 per cent of all Asian and African wheat varieties are susceptible to the fungus, and major wheat-producing nations to Iran’s east – such as Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan – should be on high alert, FAO warned.

“The fungus is spreading rapidly and could seriously lower wheat production in countries at direct risk,” said Shivaji Pandey, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division.

He urged the control of the rust’s spread to lower the risk to countries already impacted by high food prices.

Iran has said that it will bolster its research capacity to tackle the new fungus and develop wheat varieties that are rust-resistant.

Called Ug99, the disease first surfaced in Uganda and subsequently spread to Kenya and Ethiopia, with both countries experiencing serious crop yield losses due to a serious rust epidemic last year. Also in 2007, FAO confirmed that a more virulent strain was found in Yemen.

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Posted in Biodiversity Loss, CrashBlogging, Food Shortages, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace

Monday, March 17th, 2008

SACRAMENTO — Where did they go?

The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry.

Whatever the cause, there was widespread agreement among those attending a five-day meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Management Council here last week that the regional $150 million fishery, which usually opens for the four-month season on May 1, is almost certain to remain closed this year from northern Oregon to the Mexican border. A final decision on salmon fishing in the area is expected next month.

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– This article is from the NY Times and they insist that folks have an ID and a PW in order to read their stuff. You can get these for free just by signing up. However, a friend of mine suggests the website bugmenot.com :arrow: as an alternative to having to do these annoying sign ups. Check it out. Thx Bruce S. for the tip.

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, CrashBlogging, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Alarming Growth In Expected Carbon Dioxide Emissions In China, Analysis Finds

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

The growth in China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is far outpacing previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases even more difficult, according to a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Diego.

Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the region that includes China will see a 2.5 to 5 percent annual increase in CO2 emissions, the largest contributor to atmospheric greenhouse gases, between 2004 and 2010. The new UC analysis puts that annual growth rate for China to at least 11 percent for the same time period.

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Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger, New Studies Say

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

– This quote, from the article referenced below, is at the core of Perfect Storm concerns:

Although many nations have been pledging steps to curb emissions for nearly a decade, the world’s output of carbon from human activities totals about 10 billion tons a year and has been steadily rising.

— — — — — — —

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.

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Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Desertification, Food Shortages, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages | No Comments »

US Stands To Lose A Generation Of Young Researchers

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

– I’ve written before about this here: ➡, ➡ and ➡. 

= = = = =

Five consecutive years of flat funding the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is deterring promising young researchers and threatening the future of Americans’ health, a group of seven preeminent academic research institutions have warned. In a new report released here, the group of concerned institutions (six research universities and a major teaching hospital) described the toll that cumulative stagnant NIH funding is taking on the American medical research enterprise. And the leading institutions warned that if NIH does not get consistent and robust support in the future, the nation will lose a generation of young investigators to other careers and other countries and, with them, a generation of promising research that could cure disease for millions for whom no cure currently exists.

The report, “A Broken Pipeline” Flat Funding of the NIH Puts a Generation of Science at Risk,” was co-authored by Brown University, Duke University, Harvard University, The Ohio State University, Partners Healthcare, the University of California Los Angeles, and Vanderbilt University.

It profiles 12 junior researchers from institutions across the country who, despite their exceptional qualifications and noteworthy research, attest to the funding difficulties that they and their professional peers are experiencing. These researchers are devising new ways to manipulate stem cells to repair the heart, revealing critical pathways involved in cancer and brain diseases, and using new technologies to diagnose and treat kidney disease.

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Global Warming to Affect U.S. Transport

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

Flooded roads and subways, deformed railroad tracks, and weakened bridges may be the wave of the future with continuing warming, a new study says.

Climate change will affect every type of transportation through rising sea levels, increased rainfall, and surges from more intense storms, the National Research Council said in a report released Tuesday.

Complicating matters, people continue to move into coastal areas, creating the need for more roads and services in the most vulnerable regions, the report noted.

“The time has come for transportation professionals to acknowledge and confront the challenges posed by climate change and to incorporate the most current scientific knowledge into the planning of transportation systems,” said Henry Schwartz Jr., past president and chairman of the engineering firm Sverdrup/Jacobs Civil Inc., and chairman of the committee that wrote the report.

Five Major Threats

The report cites five major areas of growing threat:

—More heat waves, requiring load limits at hot-weather or high-altitude airports and causing thermal expansion of bridge joints and rail track deformities.

(Related story: Global Warming Likely Causing More Heat Waves, Scientists Say [August 1, 2006])

—Rising sea levels and storm surges flooding coastal roadways, forcing evacuations, inundating airports and rail lines, flooding tunnels, and eroding bridge bases.

(Related story: Rising Seas Threaten China’s Sinking Coastal Cities [January 17, 2008])

—More rainstorms delaying air and ground traffic, flooding tunnels and railways, and eroding road, bridge < recent (see>, and pipeline supports.

—More frequent strong hurricanes, disrupting air and shipping service, blowing debris onto roads, and damaging buildings.

—Rising arctic temperatures thawing permafrost, resulting in road, railway, and airport runway subsidence and potential pipeline failures.

(Related story: Arctic Summers Ice Free by 2040, Study Predicts [December 12, 2006])

System Not Built for Change

The nation’s transportation system was built for local conditions based on historical weather data, but those data may no longer be reliable in the face of new weather extremes, the report warns.

More… ➡

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

Australia’s food bowl lies empty

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

As the BBC looks at the impact of rising food prices around the world, Sydney correspondent Nick Bryant reports from Australia on how the worst drought on record has slashed its exports of wheat.

Though located in a remote corner of the planet, the fields of Australia’s food bowl are central to the worldwide price of wheat.

In this part of rural New South Wales, water-starved farms and cavernous empty grain silos have the potential to create a ripple effect which spreads around the globe.

And that is precisely what is happening right now.

Low yield

After America, Australia is normally the second largest exporter of grain, and in a good year it would hope to harvest about 25 million tonnes.

But the country remains in the grip of the worst drought in a century, which is why the 2006 crop yielded only 9.8m tonnes.

Global wheat stocks are at their lowest levels since 1979, and the ongoing Australian drought is one of the reasons why.

More… ➡

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Desertification, Food Shortages, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages | No Comments »

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