Archive for the ‘Climate Change’ Category

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Rising Seas Threaten China’s Sinking Coastal Cities

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Sea levels off Shanghai and other Chinese coastal cities are rising at an alarming rate, leading to contamination of drinking water supplies and other threats, China’s State Oceanic Administration reported Thursday.

Waters off the industrial port city of Tianjin, 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Beijing, rose by 7.72 inches (20 centimeters) over the past three decades, the administration said.

Seas off the business hub of Shanghai have risen by 4.53 inches (11.5 centimeters) over the same period, the report said.

Administration experts said global climate change and the sinking of coastal land due to the pumping of ground water were the major causes behind rising water levels.

Salt in the Aquifer

“Sea level rises worldwide cannot be reversed, so Chinese city officials and planners must take measures to adapt to the change,” Chen Manchun, an administration researcher, was quoted as saying on the central government’s official web site.

Globally rising seas threaten to submerge low-lying island groups, erode coastlines, and force the construction of vast new levees. Scientists have warned that melting of the vast glaciers of Greenland will cause a significant rise in sea levels.

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‘Big climate impact’ on UK coasts

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Climate change is having a major impact on Britain’s coast, the seas around the coast, and the life in those seas, a government-sponsored report concludes.

The Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership (MCCIP) says seas are becoming more violent, causing coastal erosion and a higher risk of flooding.

Higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere are making oceans warmer and more acidic, affecting plankton, fish and birds.

2006 was the second warmest year in coastal waters since records began.

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The UK’s new coal age

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

– Everyone is pointing at China these days as the biggest source of global pollution and warming. Especially, with reference to their dependency on coal and the rate at which they are building new coal-fired power plants.

– So here’s a piece coming back from China pointing out some of the hypocrisy of this view. Interesting, to say the least.

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George Monbiot

January 03, 2008

On a green hilltop in Wales — despite huge opposition from local people — diggers have begun excavating what will be the largest opencast coal mine in Britain. Why is this happening? George Monbiot investigates.

As I watched the machine scraping away the first buckets of soil, one thought kept clanging through my head: “If this is allowed to happen, we might as well give up now.” It didn’t look like much: just a yellow digger and a couple of trucks taking the earth away. But in a secure compound behind me were the heaviest beasts I have ever seen — 1,300 horsepower or more — lined up and ready to start digging one of the largest opencast coal mines in Europe. In Romania, perhaps? The Czech Republic? No, in Britain, on a hilltop in south Wales.

The diggers at Ffos-y-fran, on the outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil, are set to excavate 1,000 acres [nearly 405 hectares] of land to a depth of 600 feet [nearly 183 metres]. There has never been a hole quite like it in Britain, and our government’s climate-change policies are about to fall into it.

Everything about this scheme is odd. The edge of the site is just 36 metres from the nearest homes, yet there will be no compensation for the owners, and their concerns have been dismissed by the authorities. Although local people have fought the plan, their council, the Welsh government and the national government at Westminster have collaborated with the developers to force it through, using questionable methods. I have found evidence that suggests to me that a member of former prime minister Tony Blair’s government used false or outdated information to seek to persuade the Welsh administration to approve the pit. But perhaps the most remarkable fact is this: outside Merthyr Tydfil, hardly anyone knows it is happening.

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I’ve got some seaside land to sell – anyone?

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

Here’s a collection of stories about impending sea level rises:

From 27 Jan 06:

Sea level rise ‘is accelerating’

Global sea levels could rise by about 30cm during this century if current trends continue, a study warns.Australian researchers found that sea levels rose by 19.5cm between 1870 and 2004, with accelerated rates in the final 50 years of that period.

The research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used data from tide gauges around the world.

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From 23 Mar 06:

Sea rise could be ‘catastrophic’

Earth could be headed for catastrophic sea level rise in the next few centuries if greenhouse gases continue to rise at present rates, experts say.

A study in the US journal Science suggests a threshold triggering a rise in sea level of several metres could be reached before the end of the century.

Scientists used an ancient period of warming to predict future changes.

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From 14 Dec 06:

Sea level rise ‘under-estimated’

Current sea level rise projections could be under-estimating the impact of human-induced climate change on the world’s oceans, scientists suggest.

By plotting global mean surface temperatures against sea level rise, the team found that levels could rise by 59% more than current forecasts.

The researchers say the possibility of greater increases needs be taken into account when planning coastal defences.

The findings have been published in the online edition of the journal Science.

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From 17 Dec 07:

 

Rising seas ‘to beat predictions’

The world’s sea levels could rise twice as high this century as UN climate scientists have previously predicted, according to a study.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes a maximum sea level rise of 81cm (32in) this century.

But in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers say the true maximum could be about twice that: 163cm (64in).

They looked at what happened more than 100,000 years ago – the last time Earth was this warm.

The results join other studies showing that current sea level projections may be very conservative.

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Arrogance and Warming

Friday, December 21st, 2007

This is so over-the-top it leaves one speechless. The Bush administration refuses to get on-board and provide any meaningful leadership on the global climate crisis and now they are actively blocking folks who want to take action. History will not judge them well.

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Rome burns while Nero fiddles

The Bush administration’s decision to deny California permission to regulate and reduce global warming emissions from cars and trucks is an indefensible act of executive arrogance that can only be explained as the product of ideological blindness and as a political payoff to the automobile industry.

The decision, announced Wednesday by Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, overrode the advice of his legal and technical staffs, misconstrued the law and defied both Congress and the federal courts. It also stuck a thumb in the eyes of 17 other state governors who have grown impatient with the federal government’s failure to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and wanted to move aggressively on their own.

The Clean Air Act of 1970 gave California authority to set its own clean air standards if it first received a federal waiver. The law also said that other states could then adopt California’s standards. In 2004, California asked permission to move ahead with a law requiring automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and light trucks by 30 percent by 2016. That would require improvements in fuel economy far beyond those called for in the energy bill signed this week.

Over the years, California has made 50 waiver requests to regulate smog-forming pollutants and other gases and has never been denied. This was the first request involving emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which the Bush administration has steadfastly refused to regulate.

For three years, the E.P.A. also hid behind the argument that it had no authority over carbon dioxide emissions because carbon dioxide was not specifically identified as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court demolished that argument last April. Subsequent court decisions have upheld the states’ authority to set their own standards while refuting the auto industry’s assertions that meeting the California standards would be technologically and economically impossible.

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– Research thanks to HD

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Politics - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Top 11 Warmest Years On Record Have All Been In Last 13 Years

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) — The decade of 1998-2007 is the warmest on record, according to data sources obtained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global mean surface temperature for 2007 is currently estimated at 0.41°C/0.74°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.20°F.

The University of East Anglia and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre have released preliminary global temperature figures for 2007, which show the top 11 warmest years all occurring in the last 13 years. The provisional global figure for 2007 using data from January to November, currently places the year as the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850.

Other remarkable global climatic events recorded so far in 2007 include record-low Arctic sea ice extent, which led to first recorded opening of the Canadian Northwest Passage; the relatively small Antarctic Ozone Hole; development of La Niña in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific; and devastating floods, drought and storms in many places around the world.

The preliminary information for 2007 is based on climate data up to the end of November from networks of land-based weather stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites. The data are continually collected and disseminated by the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) of WMO’s 188 Members and several collaborating research institutions. Final updates and figures for 2007 will be published in March 2008 in the annual WMO brochure for the Statement on the Status of the Global Climate.

WMO’s global temperature analyses are based on two different sources. One is the combined dataset maintained by both the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorological Office, and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK, which at this stage ranked 2007 as the seventh warmest on record. The other dataset is maintained by the US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which indicated that 2007 is likely to be the fifth warmest on record.

Since the start of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74°C. But this rise has not been continuous. The linear warming trend over the last 50 years (0.13°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment (Synthesis) Report, 2007, “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.”

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Global Warming Is Destroying Coral Reefs, Major Study Warns

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2007) — The largest living structures on Earth and the millions of livelihoods which depend upon them are at risk, the most definitive review yet of the impact of rising carbon emissions on coral reefs has concluded.

If world leaders do not immediately engage in a race against time to save the Earth’s coral reefs, these vital ecosystems will not survive the global warming and acidification predicted for later this century. That is the conclusion of a group of marine scientists from around the world in a major new study published in the journal Science on Dec. 13.

“It’s vital that the public understands that the lack of sustainability in the world’s carbon emissions is causing the rapid loss of coral reefs, the world’s most biodiverse marine ecosystem,” said Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and head of the Coral Disease Research Team, which is part of the international Coral Reef Targeted Research (CRTR) group that wrote the new study.

The rise of carbon dioxide emissions and the resultant climate warming from the burning of fossil fuels are making oceans warmer and more acidic, said co-author Harvell, which is triggering widespread coral disease and stifling coral growth toward “a tipping point for functional collapse.”

The scientists argue that rising global CO2 emissions represent an ‘irreducible risk’ that will rapidly outstrip the capacity of local coastal managers and policy-makers to maintain the health of these critical ecosystems, if CO2 emissions are allowed to continue unchecked.

“This crisis is on our doorstep, not decades away. We have little time in which to respond, but respond, we must!” says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead author of the Science paper, The Carbon Crisis: Coral Reefs under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification.

“Coral reefs have already taken a big hit from recent warm temperatures, but rapid rises in carbon dioxide cause acidification, which adds a new threat: the inability of corals to create calcareous skeletons,” said Harvell. “Acidification actually threatens all marine animals and plants with calcareous skeletons, including corals, snails, clams and crabs. Our study shows that levels of CO2 could become unsustainable for coral reefs in as little as five decades.”

“The livelihoods of 100 million people living along the coasts of tropical developing countries will be among the first major casualties of rising levels of carbon in the atmosphere,” says Professor Hoegh-Guldberg.

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Worries About Water as Chinese Glacier Retreats

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

The Tibetan plateau has been called “the roof of the world” and “the third pole” for its ice-covered peaks. There, global warming is happening faster than at other, lower altitudes, with serious consequences for hundreds of millions of people.

China’s lowest glacier, the Mingyong glacier — an enormous, dirty, craggy mass of ice wedged in a mountain valley 8,900 feet above sea level — is melting. And as it melts, the glacier on the edge of the Tibetan plateau is retreating up the mountain faster than experts can believe.

“It’s truly amazing how much it’s traveled,” says Barry Baker of The Nature Conservancy, part of a team of international scientists who recently visited the shrinking glacier. “It is just unbelievable.”

Baker has been tracking the glacier’s retreat for the past five years. He is flabbergasted by the difference since his last visit two years ago.

“The change is actually really remarkable,” he says. “The glacier looks like it’s gone back up the valley at least 300 feet in just the last two years.”

An Astonishing Increase

Baker says the rate of retreat is increasing quickly.

“When we first started observing this glacier, it was retreating at about 80 feet per year, and now it looks like it’s doubled,” he says.

To explain the change, he cites an increase in temperatures.

“We’ve seen just in this area about a 2.2 degree increase in temperature just in the last 20 years. And it’s interesting because it seems like, from the climate data that we’ve been studying, that this region is warming faster than some of the other parts of China. In fact, from the data that we have, this particular region is warming almost twice as fast as China,” he says.

The scientists must scramble over the rocky debris, known as the moraine — left behind after the ice has melted — to move closer to the snout, or lower end, of the glacier. Studying this ice mass is extremely difficult because local Tibetans see it as a sacred glacier, and they have banned people from touching or stepping on the ice. That rules out normal scientific practices like removing ice cores and sinking stakes in the ice to measure its retreat.

The scientists have to depend on GPS measurements and repeat photography. In this, they are lucky — because explorer Frank Kingdon-Ward snapped pictures of the glacier as early as 1913. Anecdotal evidence indicates the glacier has retreated 1 1/2 miles since the late 1800s, when its tongue was close to Mingyong village.

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Toll Of Climate Change On World Food Supply Could Be Worse Than Thought

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2007) — Global agriculture, already predicted to be stressed by climate change in coming decades, could go into steep, unanticipated declines in some regions due to complications that scientists have so far inadequately considered, say three new scientific reports. The authors say that progressive changes predicted to stem from 1- to 5-degree C temperature rises in coming decades fail to account for seasonal extremes of heat, drought or rain, multiplier effects of spreading diseases or weeds, and other ecological upsets. All are believed more likely in the future. Coauthored by leading researchers from Europe, North America and Australia, they appear in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“Many people assume that we will never have a problem with food production on a global scale. But there is a strong potential for negative surprises,” said Francesco Tubiello, a physicist and agricultural expert at the NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies who coauthored all three papers. Goddard is a member of Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

In order to keep pace with population growth, current production of grain–from which humans derive two-thirds of their protein–will probably have to double, to 4 billion tons a years before 2100. Studies in the past 10 years suggest that mounting levels of carbon dioxide in the air–believed to be the basis of human-caused climate change–may initially bolster the photosynthetic rate of many plants, and, along with new farming techniques, possibly add to some crop yields.

Between now and mid-century, higher temperatures in northerly latitudes will probably also expand lands available for farming, and bring longer growing seasons. However, these gains likely will be canceled by agricultural declines in the tropics, where even modest 1- to 2-degree rises are expected to evaporate rainfall and push staple crops over their survival thresholds. Existing research estimates that developing countries may lose 135 million hectares (334 million acres) of prime farm land in the next 50 years. After mid-century, continuing temperature rises–5 degrees C or more by then–are expected to start adversely affecting northern crops as well, tipping the whole world into a danger zone.

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Shrinking glaciers near crisis

Thursday, December 13th, 2007

New Zealand’s longest glacier has lost 5km to global warming and is expected to lose at least as much again if the climate keeps heating up.

The Tasman Glacier, the massive ice river that sweeps past Aoraki-Mt Cook, has already shrunk to 23km, from the formation of a 5km lake at its snout in the past 30 years.

In that time, New Zealand’s glaciers have lost almost 11 per cent – 5.8 cubic kilometres – of their ice, new research released yesterday has found.

Twelve of the largest in the Southern Alps are unlikely to return to their earlier lengths without “extraordinary cooling of the climate”, says the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research (Niwa).

The warming climate is responsible for more than 90 per cent of the ice loss.

The report comes a day after the starkest warning yet from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which declared the impact of global warming could be “abrupt or irreversible” and no country would be spared.

Niwa said the shrinking of New Zealand’s glaciers had continued despite there being virtually no change in the amount of snow feeding them last year.

The shrinkage of the big glaciers, mostly in the Mt Cook region, is driven mainly by the formation of glacier-snout lakes – which encourage big lumps of ice to break off and accelerate the shrinkage – and surface melting.

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