Climate Articles

Officials fear ship breaking apart on Barrier Reef
BRISBANE, Australia – A coal-carrying ship that strayed outside a shipping lane and ran aground in protected waters was leaking oil on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and was in danger of breaking apart, officials said Sunday.
The Chinese Shen Neng 1 ran aground late Saturday on Douglas Shoals, a favorite pristine haunt for recreational fishing east of the Great Keppel Island tourist resort. The shoals — off the coast of Queensland state in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park — are in a protected part of the reef where shipping is restricted by environmental law.
Authorities fear an oil spill will damage the world's largest coral reef, which is off northeast Australia and listed as a World Heritage site.
The ship hit the reef at full speed, nine miles (15 kilometers) outside the shipping lane, State Premier Anna Bligh said.
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Phil Jones Exonerated by British House of Commons
The British House of Commons today issued a report exonerating Professor Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Dr. Jones was embroiled in controversy following the theft of internal emails and documents from the University's servers in November of last year. The report states that "the focus on CRU and Professor Phil Jones, Director of CRU, in particular, has largely been misplaced," and that Dr. Jones's actions were "in line with common practice in the climate science community," and the CRU's "analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified." The review by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee began in January in the wake of the 'Climategate' media frenzy. While the committee's report recommends that climate scientists should seek to improve transparency in their work, release raw data when possible, and provide more detail on their methodologies, the committee firmly concludes that there was no dishonesty on the part of Dr. Jones and the CRU. The committee compared the results of other independent analyses of climate data to that of the CRU, and found that they are consistent and independently verifiable.
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Second Tropical Cyclone Ever Forms in South Atlantic
The second ever tropical cyclone to form in the South Atlantic has been spotted about 180 miles off the coast of Brazil.
Tropical cyclones typically don't form in the Southern Atlantic because the waters are usually too cool.
However, forecasters at the Naval Research Laboratory noted on Tuesday that a low pressure system off the coast of Brazil appeared to have tropical storm-force winds. The storm has been dubbed Tropical Storm 90Q.
The first known South Atlantic tropical cyclone (the collective name for tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons) was seen in 2004 and called "Catarina."
"The only other tropical cyclone known to have occurred in the Southern Atlantic Ocean developed in March, 2004," said Hal Pierce, meteorologist on the TRMM satellite team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "That's when a hurricane called "Catarina" made landfall on March 28, 2004 near the town of Torres in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina (thus, the storm's name). It was the first "hurricane" ever observed by satellite in the south Atlantic."
While tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere spin counterclockwise, those in the Southern Hemisphere spin clockwise.
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The Northeast has been walloped with record-smashing deluges and flooding.
I have called this type of rapid deluge, "global warming type" record rainfall, since it is one of the most basic predictions of climate science — and it's an impact that has already been documented to have started, as I'll discuss.
Of course, in this country, you'll be hard pressed to find any discussion of global climate change in connection with this deluge. The Today Show ran 3 stories this morning and never mentioned climate change at all. But is it too much to ask after so many in the media mislead the public into thinking that the record snow was somehow evidence against human-caused global warming?
Other countries don't have a problem explaining to the public that extreme weather is already becoming common, just as scientists said it would (see "Must re-read statement from UK's Royal Society and Met Office on the connection between global warming and extreme weather"). Indeed, at the very same time all the U.S. records were being smashed, the UK's Guardian reported that China is taking action to deal with warming-driven extreme weather:
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Frequent Flooding: Climate change, development blamed for rapidly rising number of '100-year storms'
In their worst form, they were known as "100-year storms": catastrophes that occurred once a century and caused devastating floods.
And yet, in just the past four years, three times the Merrimack Valley and Southern New Hampshire have been hard-hit by storms that once came with interludes of decades between them.
The most recent deluge was last week, when residents of Andover and Lawrence were forced out of their homes as their properties became drenched and heavily damaged by the waters of the Spicket and Shawsheen rivers. In New Hampshire, residents of Salem and surrounding communities were also affected by the flooding. A nor'easter dumped nearly 10 inches of rain on the Merrimack Valley from Saturday through Monday, creating scenes reminiscent of the Mother's Day floods of 2006 and their memorable encore in April 2007.
"It's becoming too common of an occurrence," said state Rep. Barry Finegold, D-Andover.
As officials tally the cost of the latest storm, people are wondering why these floods keep happening. And they want to know what, if anything, the region can do to prepare for the next onslaught.
Local environmental groups say the blame lies with a variety of culprits: development, outdated flood data, and beavers, to name a few.
It's not a case of more rain falling, officials say. Rather, storms are increasingly intense, and that's courtesy of climate change.
Mark Torres has watched this firsthand. The Methuen resident has lived on Armory Street for 10 years and dealt with three floods in that decade.
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Report: Climate change is taking a toll on U.S. bird populations
North American bird species are "facing a new threat—climate change—that could dramatically alter their habitat and food supply, and push many species towards extinction," said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Thursday when he announced the new report, "The State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change." According to the report, climate changes will have "an increasingly disruptive effect on bird species in all habitats." Oceanic migratory species and birds living in Hawaii will face the greatest threats, according to the report.
The report was a collaborative effort between the U.S. North American Bird Conservation Initiative, federal and state wildlife agencies, and organizations including the American Bird Conservancy, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Klamath Bird Observatory, National Audubon Society, and The Nature Conservancy. Among the report's key findings:
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Aquatic 'Dead Zones' Contributing to Climate Change
Cambridge, Md. (March 11, 2010) – The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" along the world's coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters can elevate concentrations in the atmosphere, further exacerbating the impacts of global warming and contributing to ozone "holes" that cause an increase in our exposure to harmful UV radiation.
"As the volume of hypoxic waters move towards the sea surface and expands along our coasts, their ability to produce the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide increases," explains Dr. Codispoti of the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory. "With low-oxygen waters currently producing about half of the ocean's net nitrous oxide, we could see an additional significant atmospheric increase if these 'dead zones' continue to expand."
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Can Smiley Faces (and a 14-Step Program to Stop Overconsumption) Save the Global Climate?
Energy efficiency seems to make rational economic sense—the less energy used, the more money saved. Yet, in the real world it's actually competition with neighbors rather than cost savings that can drive people to turn down their thermostats, install insulation or simply switch off the lights when they leave a room. Such is the lesson of a host of efforts, ranging from a group called OPOWER's comparative use utility billing to switching from miles per gallon to rate vehicle efficiency to gallons per mile.
Now a new collaborative study from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Garrison Institute's Climate, Mind and Behavior Project reveals that such simple actions—from taking one fewer flight per year to wasting less food—can add up. The environmental group estimates that if all Americans adopted 14 such steps over the next decade the country would avoid one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020—or the equivalent of the entire annual greenhouse gas emissions of Germany.
"Much of this is eliminating waste—and most waste costs you money," says NRDC's executive director Peter Lehner. "If all Americans did take a fairly modest range of actions, most of which actually save you money, we can make a big difference."
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Miami Waterworld? It Could Happen
World's top Arctic scientists meeting in Miami: Ground Zero for sea level rise Just ask Lester Hernandez. He and his family live several miles from the beach. But new scientific projections of accelerating sea level rise say, within our lifetime, hurricane storm surges could reach his neighborhood and nearly all neighborhoods east of I-95.
"To tell you the truth," said Hernandez as he strolled on the sidewalk in his South Dade neighborhood, "I wouldn't have imagined it."
The challenge is this: the cause of this slow, insidious rise in the sea level is coming from thousands of miles away at the Greenland ice sheet. Additionally, new data says the polar ice cap will be completely without ice during a summer within a few years, which compounds the problem under the Florida sunshine. That is the heavy burden carried by the world's top Arctic scientists studying the worsening crisis at the top of the world. So it's entirely relevant that they came to Miami, which lies only feet above sea level.
"So the combination of heavier development on the coast and rising sea levels coupled with hurricanes," said University of Miami Rosensteil oceanographer David Kadko, "Even if they were not more destructive - and there are arguments that they will be more destructive because of climate change - will cause huge amounts of destruction of property and, of course, our insurance rates will go up."
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Large majority of Americans continue to believe global warming is real and trust scientists
After analyzing all of the data from 2009 survey, Krosnick and his Stanford colleagues concluded that the 5-point drop in the percentage of Americans who believe in the global warming was largely made up of people who both mistrust scientists and think that the Earth is cooling down naturally.
We're subjected to many dubious claims about science messaging — stuff like, "the world's scientists are struggling with the unsettling feeling that the more they talk about climate change, the less progress they make."
Scientists may have that feeling, but it has little basis in fact. You can't discuss this subject in a serious fashion without looking at key factors like the anti-science disinformation campaign, the he-said/she-said coverage by the media, the decision by many enviros to downplay talk of global warming, and, in the U.S., the relatively coolish temperatures of the past two years (see "The disinformers are winning, but mostly with the GOP").
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Science Times stunner - NYT
: "... a majority of the section's editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity."
Okay, it's not a 'stunner' for CP readers that the NY Times doesn't get it. Still, it's nice to see independent confirmation. What's the point of having a blog if you can't say, "I told you so"?
In an otherwise silly article criticizing efforts to improve climate science messaging, John Horgan, a former Scientific American staff writer who directs the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, reports:
I teach at an engineering school, and about one third of my students identify themselves as global-warming skeptics. They tend to know more about global warming than students who accept it as a fact. Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times have told me that a majority of the section's editorial staff doubts that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity. And this guy argues that just telling people the science is all that is needed to persuade them!
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Is human-caused climate change killing the great forests of the American West?
Montana entomologist on bark beetles: "A couple of degrees warmer could create multiple generations a year. If that happens, I expect it would be a disaster for all of our pine populations."
Climate change inherently favors invasive pests. On the one hand, milder winters since 1994 have reduced the winter death rate of beetle larvae in places like Wyoming from 80% per year to under 10%. On the other hand, hot-weather uber-droughts — aka "global-change-type droughts" — have made trees weaker, less able to fight off beetles.
Forest Ecology and Management just published a major new study by 19 researchers around the word, "A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests." Its key conclusion — that human-caused climate change is already killing forests, releasing carbon, and amplifying warming — will be a shock only to the anti-science crowd:
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What's Killing the Great Forests of the American West?
Across western North America, huge tracts of forest are dying off at an extraordinary rate, mostly because of outbreaks of insects. Scientists are now seeing such forest die-offs around the world and are linking them to changes in climate.
For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That's when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again.
Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And that's not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees; now they do so all the time. What's more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, it's decreased to one year.
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Talking about climate change
NAIROBI, 17 March 2010 (IRIN) - God, not global emissions, is to blame for climate change, according to a survey conducted in 10 African countries. A close second, however, came deforestation, underlining the argument that there is information available – just not sufficient or effective enough to help people understand the reasons behind environmental issues.
"(God) punishes people because we do bad things. He shows his strength with the hurricanes and storms," said a young Senegalese woman interviewed by the BBC World Service Trust, which, with the British Council, launched Africa Talks Climate in Nairobi on 17 March.
The findings are the result of discussions conducted in 2009 with more than 1,000 citizens and 200 policy-makers, opinion leaders, media and business people in Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
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The Big Melt
Glaciers in the high heart of Asia feed its greatest rivers, lifelines for two billion people. Now the ice and snow are diminishing.
The gods must be furious.
It's the only explanation that makes sense to Jia Son, a Tibetan farmer surveying the catastrophe unfolding above his village in China's mountainous Yunnan Province. "We've upset the natural order," the devout, 52-year-old Buddhist says. "And now the gods are punishing us."
On a warm summer afternoon, Jia Son has hiked a mile and a half up the gorge that Ming­yong Glacier has carved into sacred Mount Kawagebo, looming 22,113 feet high in the clouds above. There's no sign of ice, just a river roiling with silt-laden melt. For more than a century, ever since its tongue lapped at the edge of Mingyong village, the glacier has retreated like a dying serpent recoiling into its lair. Its pace has accelerated over the past decade, to more than a football field every year—a distinctly unglacial rate for an ancient ice mass.
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Americans for Prosperity: Distorting climate change science and economics in well-funded campaign
Next week (on March 22) in Arkansas, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) will kick off a nationwide "Regulation Reality Tour" to block U.S. efforts under the Clean Air Act to protect the health and welfare of Americans by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. AFP describes itself as "an organization of grassroots leaders who engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels." Its tax-exempt, nonprofit arm Americans for Prosperity Foundation, is "committed to educating citizens about economic policy and a return of the federal government to its Constitutional limits." With strong and generous support from Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of Koch Industries (see box), AFP claims that actions to address climate change are based on "global warming alarmism" and will wreck the economy. AFP is part of larger network of libertarian organizations with close ties to the Koch brothers that distort climate change science and economics to undermine public support for government action to address the problem.
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NASA: On Course for Record 2010
Must-read draft paper: "We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade" and "that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s."
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has released a draft paper "Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis." It is a must read for warming junkies, but, as James Hansen notes in an e-mail, "it is too long for popular use." So Hansen offers "some of the main conclusions," as well as a description of a rather shocking hack of the GISS website (all of which is reprinted below). The first conclusion is:
1) Contrary to popular belief, global warming has not stopped nor has the rate of warming even slowed down in the past decade (Figure 21).
The paper predicts a new record 12-month global temperature record, and says the calendar year (2010) is likely to set the global surface temperature unless "El Nino conditions deteriorate rapidly by mid 2010 into La Nina conditions" [as happened in 2007]. NASA notes:
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Temperatures have risen steadily since the 1970s, Jim Hansen and fellow scientists conclude.
Global warming has neither stopped nor slowed in the past decade, according to a draft analysis of temperature data by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The analysis, led by senior scientist Jim Hansen, attempts to debunk popular belief that the planet is cooling. It finds that global temperatures over the past decade have "continued to rise rapidly," despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with the tropical El Niño-La Niña cycles.
The analysis also predicts, assuming current El Niño conditions hold, that 2010 will go down in history as the hottest year on record despite an unusually snowy winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
"Communicating the reality of climate change to the public is hampered by the large natural variability of weather and climate," the Goddard scientists wrote in the draft, which was circulated by Hansen Friday evening and posted on the ClimateProgress.org blog shortly after.
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Tipping towards the unknown
Researchers propose critical planetary boundaries, transgressing them could be catastrophic. But there is hope.
New approaches are needed to help humanity deal with climate change and other global environmental threats that lie ahead in the 21st century. A group of 28 internationally renowned scientists propose that global biophysical boundaries, identified on the basis of the scientific understanding of the Earth System, can define a 'safe planetary operating space´ that will allow humanity to continue to develop and thrive for generations to come.
This new approach to sustainable development was conveyed in Nature and Ecology and Society where the scientists have made a first attempt to identify and quantify a set of nine planetary boundaries.
The human pressure on the Earth System has reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. To continue to live and operate safely, humanity has to stay away from critical 'hard-wired´ thresholds in the Earth´s environment, and respect the nature of the planet's climatic, geophysical, atmospheric and ecological processes, says lead author Johan Rockström, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
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Earth 'entering new age of geological time'
The Earth has entered a new age of geological time – the epoch of new man, scientists claim.
Humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes on the planet that we may be ushering in a new period of geological history.
Through pollution, population growth, urbanisation, travel, mining and use of fossil fuels we have altered the planet in ways which will be felt for millions of years, experts believe.
It is feared that the damage mankind has inflicted will lead to the sixth largest mass extinction in Earth's history with thousands of plants and animals being wiped out.
The new epoch, called the Anthropocene – meaning new man – would be the first period of geological time shaped by the action of a single species.
Although the term has been in informal use among scientists for more than a decade, it is now under consideration as an official term.
A new working group of experts has now been established to gather all the evidence which would support recognising it as the successor to the current Holocene epoch.
It will consider changes human activities have brought to Earth's biodiversity and rock structure as well as the impact of factors including pollution and mineral extraction.
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James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change
In his first in-depth interview since the theft of UEA emails, the scientist blames inertia and democracy for lack of action
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.
It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.
"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."
One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
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The Making of The Age of Stupid - Watch for the Movie in April
Today, guardian.co.uk/environment is exclusively launching The Making of The Age of Stupid. There is nowhere else you can watch this film except on the lap of its director, Franny Armstrong.
The Making of Documentary charts the six-year history of the film and its many incarnations, false starts and screening hiccups. Armstrong's father tells her in The Making of … that the film is a "disaster" until the radical introduction of Pete Postlethwaite as its narrator. Thanks to a stellar cast behind the scenes such as Oscar-winning John Battsek, Armstrong goes back to the cutting room to make a much better film.
At times funny, irreverent and moving, The Making of ... documentary will give you a flavour of The Age of Stupid without giving away the whole story and the many surprising twists throughout the film.
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Lebanon's liquid treasure is just trickling away
Rose Hatem's home overlooks the Mediterranean and is just a short distance from one of Lebanon's longest rivers. But twice a week the 60-year-old has to buy water for her daily needs.
"I have been buying in water since I moved here 14 years ago," Hatem told AFP in the picturesque village of Amsheet, north of the Lebanese capital Beirut. "In the summer, when demand is high, I'm often left without a drop."
Hers is a story repeated across Lebanon, one of the rare countries in the Middle East considered relatively rich in water. But many people still have to buy it because of a lack of a proper supply network and effective conservation.
Experts warn that unless Lebanon takes proper measures to protect its precious water resources, little will be left for future generations as the population, which currently stands at four million, increases.
Fadi Comair, who heads hydraulic and electrical resources at the energy and water ministry, said that unless the problem is addressed -- and quickly -- Lebanon could even run dry within four years.
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UN: Polluted water killing, sickening millions
More people die from polluted water every year than from all forms of violence, including war, the U.N. said in a report Monday that highlights the need for clean drinking water.
The report, launched Monday to coincide with World Water Day, said an estimated 2 billion tons of waste water — including fertilizer run-off, sewage and industrial waste — is being discharged daily. That waste fuels the spread of disease and damages ecosystems.
"Sick Water" — the report from the U.N. Environment Program — said that 3.7 percent of all deaths are attributed to water-related diseases, translating into millions of deaths. More than half of the world's hospital beds are filled by people suffering from water-related illnesses, it said.
"If we are not able to manage our waste, then that means more people dying from waterborne diseases," said Achim Steiner, the U.N. Undersecretary General and executive director of UNEP.
The report says that it takes 3 liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water, and that bottled water in the U.S. requires the consumption of some 17 million barrels of oil yearly.
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Greenland Ice Sheet Collapse
New study of Greenland under "more realistic forcings" concludes "collapse of the ice-sheet was found to occur between 400 and 560 ppm" of CO2
A new study has lowered the carbon pollution threshold or "tipping point" for collapse of the Greenland ice sheet to 400 to 560 ppm. We're currently at about 390 parts per million atmospheric concentrations of CO2, rising about 2 ppm a year (and yes, total collapse would take a while).
Another new study documents the unexpectedly fast spread of ice loss into northwest Greenland (animation below). And the Director of the International Polar Year [IPY] Program Office, Dr. David Carlson, told the Senate last year:
"A clear consensus has emerged during IPY that the Greenland Ice sheet will disappear as a consequence of this current global warming." Carlson added that a "very plausible outcome" was "a meter or more of sea level rise in this century from Greenland alone."
So, as part of the Climate Science Project, I'll review what scientists have learned recently about the accelerating mass loss of an ice sheet that by itself could raise sea levels over 20 feet.
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Hard Plastics Decompose in Oceans, Releasing Endocrine Disruptor BPA
ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2010) — Scientists have reported widespread global contamination of sea sand and sea water with the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA) and said that the BPA probably originated from a surprising source: Hard plastic trash discarded in the oceans and the epoxy plastic paint used to seal the hulls of ships.
"We were quite surprised to find that polycarbonate plastic biodegrades in the environment," said Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D. He reported on the discovery March 23 at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, being held in San Francisco.
Saido and Hideto Sato, Ph.D., and colleagues are with Nihon University, Chiba, Japan. "Polycarbonates are very hard plastics, so hard they are used to make screwdriver handles, shatter-proof eyeglass lenses, and other very durable products. This finding challenges the wide public belief that hard plastics remain unchanged in the environment for decades or centuries. Biodegradation, of course, releases BPA to the environment."
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Soils emitting more carbon dioxide
Soils around the globe have increased their emissions of carbon dioxide over the past few decades, according to an analysis of 439 studies.
The findings1, published in Nature today, match predictions that increasing temperatures will cause a net release of carbon dioxide from soils by triggering microbes to speed up their consumption of plant debris and other organic matter.
Ben Bond-Lamberty and Allison Thomson, terrestrial carbon research scientists at the University of Maryland's Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, conducted the study by stitching together almost 50 years of soil-emissions data — 1,434 data points — from 439 studies around the world. To compare measurements, the researchers accounted for differences between the studies, such as mean annual temperatures and techniques used to gauge carbon dioxide levels. They totalled the data for each year to create a global estimate of soil respiration — the flux of carbon dioxide from the ground into the atmosphere. The researchers found that soil respiration had increased by about 0.1% per year between 1989 and 2008, the span when soil measurement techniques had become standardized. In 2008, the global total reached roughly 98 billion tonnes, about 10 times more carbon than humans are now putting into the atmosphere each year. The change within soils "is a slow increase, but the absolute number is so large, even a small percentage increase is quite a bit," says Bond-Lamberty.
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The Secret of Sea Level Rise: It Will Vary Greatly by Region
As the world warms, sea levels could easily rise three to six feet this century. But increases will vary widely by region, with prevailing winds, powerful ocean currents, and even the gravitational pull of the polar ice sheets determining whether some coastal areas will be inundated while others stay dry.
For at least two decades now, climate scientists have been telling us that CO2 and other human-generated greenhouse gases are warming the planet, and that if we keep burning fossil fuels the trend will continue. Recent projections suggest a global average warming of perhaps 3 to 4 degrees C, or 5.4 to 7 degrees F, by the end of this century.
But those same scientists have also been reminding us consistently that this is just an average. Thanks to all sorts of regional factors — changes in vegetation, for example, or ice cover, or prevailing winds — some areas are likely to warm more than that, while others should warm less.
What's true for temperature, it turns out, is also true for another frequently invoked consequence of global warming. Sea level, according to the best current projections, could rise by about a meter by 2100, in large part due to melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. But that figure, too, is just a global average. In some places — Scotland, Iceland, and Alaska for example — it could be significantly less in the centuries to come. In others, like much of the eastern United States, it could be significantly more.
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EARTH OUT OF SYNC: Rising Temperatures Throwing off Seasonal Timing
A newly hatched chick waits with hungry mouth agape for a parent to deliver its first meal. A crocus peaks up through the snow. Rivers flow swiftly as ice breaks up and snows melt. Sleepy mammals emerge from hibernation, and early frog songs penetrate the night.
Spring awakening has long provided fodder for poets, artists, and almanac writers. Even for a notoriously fickle time of sunshine, rain, and temperature swings, some old-fashioned seasonal wisdom was consistent enough to be passed down through generations. The first blooming of a specific flower, for example, could traditionally signal when to find certain fish running the rivers, when to hunt for mushrooms, or when to plant crops. The timing of such seasonal events is coordinated in an intricate dance—a dance underappreciated, perhaps, until something jolts it out of step.
With global average temperatures up 0.5 degrees Celsius since the 1970s, springtime warming is coming earlier across the earth's temperate regions. A number of organisms have responded to the warming temperatures by altering the timing of key life-cycle events. The problem, however, is that not all species are adjusting at the same rate or in the same direction, thus disrupting the dance that connects predator and prey, butterfly and blossom, fish and phytoplankton, and the entire web of life.
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Planning for Climate Change
So what are the likely economic effect of tighter greenhouse gas regulations and the adoption of a cap-and-trade system for pricing carbon emissions? Conservatives insist it would devastate the economy, but in California, at least, a new report says the effect would be pretty small:
It concluded that the measure will yield modest job gains statewide, will have a negligible effect on the state's overall economy — the eighth largest in the world — and could benefit some sectors like alternative energy businesses.
...."These policies can shift the driver of economic growth from polluting energy sources to clean energy and efficient technologies, with little or no economic penalty," the report said. Thousands of manufacturing, mining and utilities industry jobs will be lost, but service, finance, and other sectors will gain similar numbers, leaving the most populous U.S. state about the same in terms of total jobs, income and growth, the report said. Five scenarios found a maximum effect of tens of billions of dollars on state output of $2.5 trillion in 2020.
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Is Earth Past the Tipping Point?
For 10,000 years, our world seemed endless. The sky was the limit. But today's world looks much smaller. We've cleared, consumed and polluted our way across the globe. The planet is shrinking. Have we pushed Earth past the tipping point? That's a critical issue we explore in our second Big Question video, which draws on research from "Planetary Boundaries: A Safe Operating Space for Humanity," published this past fall in the journal Nature.
This video coincides with "Boundaries for a Healthy Planet," IonE Director Jonathan Foley's cover story in Scientific American magazine's April 2010 issue.
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Climate Change in the United States: The Prohibitive Costs of Inaction
Download: Climate Change in the United States: The Prohibitive Costs of Inaction
If global warming emissions continue to rise unabated, we will see growing costs related to climate change. This fact sheet reports some of the projected damages—to our coasts, our health, our energy and water resources, our agriculture, our transportation infrastructure, and our recreational resources—that will occur in states and regions throughout the United States. Making the choice to dramatically lower our emissions at least 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050 will help avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change.
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Big benefits in anti-warming policies
Policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, if swiftly implemented, would create 45 trillion yen ($486 billion) in new business and 1.25 million new jobs, the Environment Ministry said.
Contrary to calculations by the previous administration headed by Taro Aso that said measures against global warming could hinder economic growth, the ministry's report Friday concluded both can be achieved.
According to the report, policies that subsidize solar power generation and tighter standards on housing heat insulation would generate new investments totaling 33 trillion yen in 2020 for the development of energy-saving technologies and other purposes.
Exports of the new technologies would create 12 trillion yen more in new demand, it said.
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