Smile, this guy says we're all screwed!

It's not the way I wanted to start my Saturday, reading that James Lovelock, the author of the Gaia hypotheses, is predicting that we have already passed the tipping point and so we might as well "enjoy life while you can." Worse, I have heard a similar prediction from Dr. Andrew Weaver, Canada's highly respected climate scientist and Nobel-winning lead author on the IPCC report.

Dr. Weaver gave it more like 40 years, but then he and most scientists are quite conservative about these things. I must say, my own research leads me to conclude that, if we have time to make change, it isn't much at all. Unless the world as-a-whole undertakes a radical wartime-like effort to completely retool the economy and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, it will all be over except the crying.

And, unfortunately, the wars and rape and murder and robbery and all the other things that happen as a civilization collapses. I encourage everyone to do their own research, but certain facts seem incontrovertible:

1. The IPCC predictions are conservative.
2. The IPCC predictions do not take into account certain positive feedback loops that will accelerate climate change and its effects.
3. The actual, measured events have generally occurred much more quickly than predicted.

The Arctic ice melt is the most recent and obvious example of the latter. Scientists are now saying that the summer ice may all be gone within a few years. That would be catastrophic, as the Arctic ocean would then absorb heat rather than reflect it back into space, as happens when it is covered by ice and snow. As the Arctic sea ice goes, it is very likely that methane - 23 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide - will be released in vast quantities from the permafrost.

And there will nothing to stop Greenland from melting - again, likely much more quickly than predicted - raising sea levels 7m or 20 feet. Each one metre rise in sea level will create 100 million refugees, and I would not be at all surprised if that figure was conservative.

So, what to do? I think it is the duty of enlightened people, and the Green Parties, to propose rapid and decisive action. We are faced with a crisis and must respond appropriately. Lovelock predicts that 80% of the human population will be dead by 2100, and I have heard similar predictions elsewhere. It is not hard to imagine that, as civilization collapses, the social effects of the climate crisis - war, murder, rioting, widescale food and water theft - will result in more immediate deaths than actual shortages.

What would you do if you knew the world was going to end in 20-40 years? And what do you think a lot of other people will do?

We must have a plan for this change. Half measures are inadequate, and we certainly don't have time for 'the market' to respond if we simply remove subsidies and implement a carbon tax. We must lay out a program of rapid change that moves us to a green economy with almost zero greenhouse gas emissions within four years. We must retrain all those who lose their jobs, we must invest immediately in clean and green research, we must bring corporations and vested interests to heel, and we must repair our democracy. And we must do it all very bloody fast.

 

 

Global Warming is Racist

The world's poorest people are also taking the brunt of global warming's negative effects.

Although the average African produces 13 times less harmful emissions than their North American counterparts, the African ecosystem is suffering far greater damage. Droughts and floods, as well as shifting ecosystems throughout the continent, threaten the welfare of both the people and wildlife of Africa.

Scientists warn that rising temperatures could cause massive extinctions for wildlife, including lions, elephants, and mountain gorillas. The climate change has also been blamed as the alleged cause of droughts which have left nearly 1.8 million Africans without a sufficient supply of clean water. The water shortage has caused outbreaks of malaria and cholera, as well as an increase in poverty.

Experts say most African nations are ill-prepared to fight global warming, although improved land management and natural gas use in place of coal could both help. University of Cape Town climatology specialist Professor Bruce Hewitson says that many African countries do not have the cash to meet the 2005 Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets.

"The major challenge for developing countries is that they need more money and resources to help them fight the potentially devastating effects of climate change," Hewitson said.

Africa's ecological future largely depends on the actions of the world's largest polluters, including the US, UK, India and China. If these countries don't act to reduce their emissions of harmful pollutants, Africa likely faces devastating climate problems in the future.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN panel which recently won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change, has warned that greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise over the next decade, further threatening Africa's already precarious future.

Only time will tell if the rest of the world will fight to improve their emissions and help end the scourge of global warming, or sacrifice Africa through inaction

Birth Defect Explosion in China

40% more children in China are born with birth defects than 6 years ago according to a World Health Organization study.

The WHO study found that birth defects rose from 104.9 per 10,000 births in 2001 to 145.5 per 10,000 last year. The higher number has mostly been attributed to high levels of environmental pollution.

China is well known in environmental circles for its appalling pollution record, and it appears the population is suffering the effects. Shanxi province, home to a variety of heavy industry including coke and coal plants, had the highest level of birth defects

Written by Robert · Filed Under Ecology 

 

Uh oh! There's an impending world food crisis

A scientist from the UN-affiliated World Meteorological Organisation announced today that the spread of deserts due to global warming could result in serious food shortages in the near future.

Speaking prior to a UN conference on desertification in Madrid at the beginning of September, M V K Sivakumar told a Geneva news conference that it was time to worry about land being ruined for agriculture through heat waves, floods, landslides and forest fires.

At the present time, 11% of the world's land surface is suitable for food production. However, as climate change causes extreme weather events, and desert areas increase, this will reduce and make it harder to feed the rapidly growing global population. In Sivakumar's words, "Will we be able to feed the 8.2 billion that we expect to populate the globe in 2020 if even less land is available for farming?"

Desertification is expected to affect sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia the hardest, but southern Europe is also at risk. This summer's forest fires in Greece are thought to have destroyed vegetation on 268834 hectares of land. Italy has suffered four serious droughts since 1990 and is thought to have ten million hectares of land at risk of desertification, according to Francesco Ferrante, director of charity Legambiente.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that, due to climate change, agriculture dependent on rain-fall could be cut in half by 2020.

This warning comes in the same week that newspaper The Guardian voiced concern over world food supplies, as increasing commitment to biofuel crops takes agriculture away from food production. 20% of maize grown in the US is now sold for biofuel production. America is the main exporter of maize worldwide, and as a result its price has doubled in 10 months; meanwhile, the price of wheat has risen by about 50%.

Lester Brown, president of the American Worldwatch Institute thinktank, told the Guardian that in seven of the past eight years the world has actually grown less grain than it consumed.

Sivakumar concluded that it is vital for the international community to help put innovative and adaptive land-management practices into action to prevent a world food crisis in the future.

Sources include: Reuters; The Guardian; IPCC; University of Newcastle

"The largest man-made environmental catastrophe"

The annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society was rocked yesterday by the announcement by an international team of scientists that arsenic contamination in drinking water is "the largest identified man-made environmental catastrophe". A presentation by Cambridge University researchers revealed that 60 countries over 5 continents have been affected by arsenic contamination, with South East Asia, particularly Bangladesh, as the worst off. The health of 140 million people is threatened by the presence of arsenic, mostly in developing countries.

Whilst arsenic is naturally present in groundwater in some areas, it is through human error that it has entered the food chain in such large quantities. The pollution occurs when dead organic matter in the rock layers around the groundwater decay, creating an environment without oxygen. This leads to the microbial dissolution of iron oxides, releasing the arsenic that is usually strongly bound to the iron oxides.

Despite a heavy natural arsenic presence in the Ganges Plain of India and Bangladesh, international aid agencies, including UNICEF and the World Bank, began the practice of digging down to access groundwater to avoid the surface contamination in the 1970s. The project was initially a success, with levels of diarrhea-type illnesses and infant mortality cut in half. However, concerns about arsenic contamination surfaced, and Dipankar Chakraborti brought the problem to international attention in 1995. His research found 900 villages with arsenic above the government limit, but he described this figure as "only the tip of the iceberg."

Allan Smith of the University of California, Berkeley, commented that in the long term 1 in 10 persons with high concentrations of arsenic in their drinking water die from it. Arsenic is a carcinogen, causing many cancers, but most often affecting the lungs. Smith added "Other environmental exposures do not result in commensurable mortality risks… I don't know of one government agency which has given this the priority it deserves."

Contamination on a large scale has been found throughout Asia in countries such as China, Cambodia and Vietnam, as well as in South America and Africa, though it is less of a problem in North America and Europe where most water is provided by utilities. Peter Ravenscroft of Cambridge University said his team has developed a model to enable them to identify regions at high risk of contamination.

In addition to concerns about drinking water, researchers have found that arsenic could be transferred from soil to rice crops, leading to concerns for people whose diet included large amounts of rice. Andrew Meharg of Aberdeen University suggested that this could be an issue, not just for those who live in contaminated areas, but for anybody worldwide for whom rice formed a staple part of their diet

Extreme weather destroys Great Wall of China

It's a huge part of the national psyche. Rumours abound that it can be seen from space (it generally can't). Kafka wrote a short story about it. But now the Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that parts of the wall are being destroyed – not by the Mongolian hordes it was built to deter, but by sandstorms.

The Great Wall is not a continuous structure, but was built in sections, with different dynasties favouring different building methods. The section under attack is that built during the Han dynasty, composed of bricks of packed earth.

An estimated 25 miles of wall in the dry and remote Gansu province have already been eroded. Archaelogist Zhou Shengrui commented that "Frequent storms not only eroded the mud, but also cracked the wall and caused it to collapse or break down."

The wall is also under threat from human behaviour, with partygoers and migrant workers using sections as a toilet, and tourists hunting for souvenirs. Farmers also attack the stonework to reuse it for their own buildings

Written by Maryking · Filed Under Science/Tech