Global Warming vs. Planes, Trains and Automobiles

By CLAYTON SANDELL (@Clayton_Sandell)

March 11, 2008

Bridges, roads, coastal runways and railways will all suffer the impacts of a warming climate … and steps should be taken now to find ways to design and adapt, according to a new scientific report.
"Climate change will have significant impacts on transportation, affecting the way U.S. transportation professionals plan, design, construct, operate and maintain infrastructure," said the report, "The Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation," compiled by the National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Climate change is not just a problem for the future," the report notes.
The report says the current transportation system was built using historical temperature and precipitation data that global warming's climate extremes are rendering unreliable. Engineers and transportation planners should be considering the impact of climate change on standards of everything from bridges to drainage systems.
"Many infrastructure components are currently designed for the 100-year storm — an event of such severity that it occurs, on average, once in 100 years," the report says. "But projections indicate that what is today's 100-year precipitation event is likely to occur every 50 or perhaps even every 20 years by the end of the current century. What new materials might be needed when very hot temperatures and heat waves become more frequent?"

The report outlines five areas of climate change that could affect U.S. transportation operations and infrastructure: increases in heat waves; increases in Arctic temperatures, rising sea level, increases in intense rainfall events and increases in hurricane intensity.
"We're mostly concerned about the extremes — the surprises that may come forth," said Henry Schwartz Jr., a retired president of a civil engineering firm and chairman of the committee that prepared the report.
Disruptions could not only affect infrastructure, but the day-to-day operations of airlines and other industries.
For example: airlines will have to restrict takeoff weight due to higher temperatures; more frequent predicted downpours will cause more weather-related delays; and flooding at low-lying coastal airports means they might have to be closed, "affecting service to the highest-density populations in the United States."
In places like Alaska, thawing permafrost will deform the ground and compromise roads, railways and pipelines, according to the report.
Increases in intense rain events will flood subway tunnels and wash roads away. It's a particular concern to officials in coastal regions, where 53 percent of the U.S. population now lives.
"We will be assessing the inventory our critical low-lying and coastal highway infrastructure to assess the vulnerability of it to events caused by climate change," said Luisa Paiewonsky, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Highway Department.
There is some good news. The report says that the marine transportation sector could benefit from Arctic seas that are becoming increasingly ice-free, and travel conditions would become safer for people driving in cold and snowy regions.
In addition to the National Research Council, sponsors of the report include the U.S. Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Taco Bell Blamed for Global Warming

IRVINE, CA- A slighted environmental scientist for Gary’s Environmental Survey Group claims Taco Bell is solely responsible for global warming.

“It is no surprise that the true beginning of global warming started about the same time when Taco Bell first opened its doors for business in 1962.” reported Udai Ulibarri.

Although no-one is certain when global warming began, Taco Bell did not sell its first franchise until 1964, and didn’t go public until 1969. But, that didn’t seem to deter Udai as he continued to express his findings, “Just think of all the gas-triggering products produced by Taco Bell: the bean burrito, the bean and cheese burrito, the bean tostada, I can just go on and on. When you get a million people consuming these products at the same time, you end up with poor air-quality that has been known to kill birds, insects, plant life, and even unsuspecting humans.”

When asked how Udai’s hypothesis includes water quality and the melting of the polar caps, Udai explained, “Farts are warm. If everyone is farting at the same time, the air becomes warmer. Therefore, the polar ice caps begin to melt, duh.”

We were able to reach Tara Lopez, spokesperson for Taco Bell’s headquarters located in Irvin, California. She replied to Udai’s findings by saying, “These accusations are preposterous! Why is everyone so interested in Taco Bell all of a sudden, anyways? What did we ever do to deserve this kind of rotten publicity? Is it the E. coli issue? Did David Letterman put you up to this? I quit!” She then stormed out of the office, leaving behind a spot of warm, malodorous air. I too, was forced to leave.

Global warming causes sheep to shrink

Climate change is shrinking Scotland's wild Soay sheep despite the evolutionary advantages of having a large body, report researchers writing in the journal Science.

Arpat Ozgul and colleagues tracked changes in body weight and behavior among female members of a population of Soay sheep on Hirta island since 1985 and found that on average, the sheep have been decreasing in size for the last 25 years. To determine the driver of smaller sheep, the researchers then plugged their data into a numerical model that "predicts how a trait such as body size will change over time due to natural selection and other factors that influence survival and reproduction in the wild." The results suggest that the decrease is primarily an ecological response to environmental variation over the last 25 years, rather than evolutionary change.

Soay sheep on St. Kilda archipelago. Photo by Arpat Ozgul

"It's only in the last few years that we've realized that evolution can influence species' physical traits as quickly as ecological changes can. This study addresses one of the major goals of population biology, namely to untangle the ways in which evolutionary and environmental changes influence a species' traits," said Andrew Sugden, Deputy and International Managing Editor at Science.

"Sheep are getting smaller. Well, at least the wild Soay sheep living on a remote Scottish island are. But according to classic evolutionary theory, they should have been getting bigger, because larger sheep tend to be more likely to survive and reproduce than smaller ones, and offspring tend to resemble their parents," said co-author, Tim Coulson of Imperial College London.

"Our findings have solved a paradox that has tormented biologists for years – why predictions did not match observation. Biologists have realized that ecological and evolutionary processes are intricately intertwined, and they now have a way of dissecting out the contribution of each. Unfortunately it is too early to tell whether a warming world will lead to pocket-sized sheep."

The researchers say that shorter and milder winters mean lambs do not need to put on as much as weight as they once did in order to survive their first year of life. Even slower-growing lambs now have a chance of surviving. The researchers also found that "younger mothers are physically unable to produce offspring that are as big as they were at birth".

"The young mum effect explains why Soay sheep have not been getting bigger, as we expected them to," explained Coulson, "But it is not enough to explain why they're shrinking. We believe that this is down to climate change. These two factors are combining to override what we would expect through natural selection."

Arpat Ozgul at al. The Dynamics of Phenotypic Change and the Shrinking Sheep of St. Kilda. Science 2 July 2009

Fighting Global Warming with Food

Low-carbon choices for dinner

Posted: 24-Jul-2007; Updated: 28-Jul-2009 

There are lots of ways Americans can help fight climate change and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Buying a car or truck with better gas mileage. Using compact fluorescent bulbs. For those who choose it, even eating just a little less meat can help.

Why food choices affect climate change

Farmers are a critical part of our economy. They not only feed us, they’re also at the frontline of conserving America’s environmental resources and fighting global warming.
Just as with any other business, farming requires burning fossil fuels to make fertilizer, run tractors and process and transport food. It takes many calories of grains to make one calorie of meat, and animals and manure produce greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide. As a result, producing meat emits more greenhouse gases than growing crops.

You don’t have to be a vegetarian to make a difference

Even small dietary changes can make a big difference.
If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains, for example, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. And speaking of cars, it takes fuel to transport food, so buying from local farmers and ranchers cuts emissions even if you don’t cut out any meat.

Equivalent emissions savings from weekly dietary changes

If every American had one meat-free meal per week, it would be the same as taking more than 5 million cars off our roads. Having one meat-free day per week would be the same as taking 8 million cars off American roads.

The details—how were these savings calculated?

These calculations are based on a recent paper by researchers at the University of Chicago.

All emissions savings are relative to an “average American diet” (according to data from the UN, 3,774 calories of food are produced per American per day, with 27.7% calories from animal-based products, of which 54% are meats, 41% dairy and 5% eggs). In this diet Americans eat, on average, 199 calories per day from chicken, 209 from pork and 119 from beef.
The “less chicken,” “less pork” and “less beef” diets assume that every American eats one day’s worth less chicken, pork or beef per week. The “one meal with no meat” diet assumes that every American eats 350 fewer calories from meat each week (this is about one-third the average daily meat intake, or one meal’s worth of meat).
For the “one meal with no meat” and “one day with no meat”, avoided calories from assorted meats are in the same proportions as they are consumed in the mean American diet. In all diets, dairy and egg intake remains unchanged and calories frommeat are replaced with calories from plant-based foods.
The emissions savings from these dietary choices are calculated assuming that themeat not consumed by Americans is also not consumed by others outside the U.S., and thus results in a decrease in overall meat production. To the extent that American consumption were replaced by foreign consumption, the overall GHG emission reductions estimated here would be smaller on a global scale.
CO₂ emissions are based on previously published values of the amount of fossil fuel used (and thus the amount of CO₂ emitted) to produce different types of foods. Non-CO₂ emissions (given as “CO₂ equivalents”) from animal-based foods (eggs, dairy, and various meats) are based on data from the U.S. Department of Energy. Only methane and nitrous oxide from animal digestion and manure management are considered. The calculation assumes there are no non-CO₂ emissions from crop production.
Nationwide emissions savings and their car equivalents are calculated assuming 300 million Americans and average car emissions of 35 pounds of CO₂ per day.

Sources

G Eshel and PA Martin, “Diet, energy, and global warming,” Earth Interactions 10, Paper No. 9 (2006): 1-17.
www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html and www.fightglobalwarming.com/page.cfm?tagID=263

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Fight global-warming by eating chicken

by Abha Malpani (RSS feed) on Oct 24th 2007 at 4:10PM

For someone who is a sacrilegious beef-eating Hindu carnivore, I have many 'official' reasons to quit eating meat, but I love my steak and chicken-wings, so that's not going to happen. (In my caste, we cannot even eat egg).

Which is why I was thrilled to read that eating chicken can help combat global warming drastically!

A recent story on Salon explains in a nutshell: the amount of energy and resources we invest in breeding animals for food, alongside naturally toxic excretions of those animals, is more responsible for global-warming than burning fossil fuels. However, poultry are the least polluting. (Gore, did you know this?).

The story throws in some shocking statistics:

• "livestock accounts for 18 percent of global warming emissions worldwide, more than the entire transportation sector" -- why is this not in Al Gore's film?!
• "cattle, bison, sheep and goats burp out a lot of methane that traps 23 times more heat per ton than carbon dioxide" -- and we've been fretting about spraying deodorant?!
• "the difference between a vegan diet and one that includes cheeseburgers is less than 2 tons of greenhouse gases a year -- that's about the equivalent of switching from a Camry to a Prius'' -- I wonder what Toyota would have to say about that.

With that in mind, eating beef is the worst; then comes cattle, sheep and goat; and then pork and dairy products are relatively less harmful. Pork and dairy hold the same place in the environment?!

Conclusion: if you want to change your diet to combat global-warming -- eating chicken is the best thing you can do. Chickens don't "burp" methane and they produce only one-tenth the methane of cattle waste.

Now who would have thought!

So when does global warming get to Chicago?

Dear Cecil:

Not a week goes by, it seems to me, that I don't hear about new evidence of global warming. The ice caps are melting, droughts and hurricanes are increasing, and now I see where the mountain pine beetle, no longer kept in check by now-mild Rocky Mountain winters, will soon wipe out the lodgepole pines of Colorado. Then I look out my office window here in Chicago, see what remains of the snow, and remember a month's worth of ice storms, subzero cold, and near-constant scraping and shoveling. Naturally I think: so when does global warming get here? Not that I would ever doubt Al Gore, or wish ill on the rest of the planet, but we could use a little of that global warming action, and so far I'm not seeing much. What gives?

— Charlie F., Evanston

Cecil replies:

Patience, Charlie. According to the latest research, global warming action aplenty is coming to the central Midwest, Chicago in particular. But I warn you: that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get warm.

I call your attention to the above map, the handiwork of Noah Diffenbaugh, head of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center. (Here's a bigger version.) It appeared in a 2008 paper he coauthored entitled "Climate Change Hotspots in the United States." We'll get into the details in a bit, but first take a gander at the map, which purports to show how the contiguous U.S. and parts of Mexico and Canada will be affected by global warming by the end of this century. Colors on the left (low) end of the scale indicate regions that, relatively speaking, will get a pass, climate changewise. Colors on the right (high) end show areas that are going to catch it in the neck. Several things jump out at you, the most important of which from our standpoint are these: (a) things are going to be comparatively tranquil in the eastern half of the country, but (b) one of the exceptions is us. 

A few other general observations:

1. Bitch as you might about things locally, the part of the country that's really stands to get hammered is the southwest — and if there's one town squarely in the crosshairs, it's Los Angeles. Virtually all of the city and environs is in the red zone, and one sliver makes it all the way to indigo, meaning it'll show the highest responsiveness to climate change of anyplace in the lower 48.  An optimist, noting that the weather in LA is currently pretty nice, may think this merely means it'll get dramatically nicer. Realists, however, will point out that Los Angeles is already notorious for its wildfires, mudslides, blow-dryer-hot Santa Ana winds, and earthquakes. (OK, earthquakes aren't a weather-driven phenomenon, but surely they're indicative of the barely-in-control ethos at the heart of the LA experience.) I profess no expertise in these matters, but my guess is that on or about January 1, 2071, at the corner of Sycamore Drive and Brower Street in Simi Valley, California — ground zero of indigo land, by my reckoning — we'll see the opening of a portal direct to hell.
2. Speaking of 2071, you may wonder where a profession that can't reliably forecast the weather next week gets off predicting what's going to happen 62 years down the road. Presumably the operative philosophy is: one's reach should exceed one's grasp.
3. Then again, I note that among the regions predicted to be least affected by climate change, as indicated by dark green and blue on the map, are (a) the gulf coast, much of which was reduced to rubble by Hurricane Katrina, and (b) the state of Georgia, which is coming off a three-year drought. So, with all respect to the distinguished scientists who developed it, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the climate-change modeling algorithm still has some bugs.

Back to that apparent hotspot around Chicago. I've studied Prof. Diffenbaugh's paper and spoken to him on the phone. Not to belabor the point, but hotspot doesn't mean hot. It means a region more likely than average to see change. Here I think Diffenbaugh's work has benefited from his having spent the past few years at Purdue. All midwesterners recognize the dramatic swings of climate to which the region is prone. If it's 110 degrees one day and 8 above zero the next, you may say on average the weather's nice. However, this statement glosses over significant nuances. Likewise, when the 2001 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says broad swaths of the U.S. will be slightly warmer and experience a little more precipitation than average in winter, the veteran midwesterner thinks: I bet there's a lot they're leaving out.

To deal with this problem, Diffenbaugh and his colleagues did a couple of shrewd things. First, they analyzed much finer-grained geographic detail than previous researchers, using a model that divided the country into a 25-kilometer grid. Next — and in my opinion this is the real breakthrough — they studied climate change not per year but per six-month season, April through September and October through March, lest offsetting changes in the two halves of the year cancel each other out. An impatient midwesterner who's had a spring picnic ruined by a sudden 25-degree drop may object: I'll be impressed when the climate-change timescale gets down to every fifteen minutes. I won't argue. But this is a start.

Anyway, here's a distillation of what Prof. Diffenbaugh had to say:

1. I'll assume you're getting that hotspot doesn't mean "place where it'll be hotter." Now wrap your head around this one: It may not mean mean "place where the weather will be more variable," either. It means "place where weather variability will likely be noticeably different from the way it is now." Since the midwest is already famous for sudden changes in weather, it's not out of the question that in the future the climate here will be less variable, and that it'll be 70 degrees ± 10 degrees every day, just like in LA.
2. But don't hold your breath. Diffenbaugh says the midwestern hotspot is shaped mainly by year-to-year temperature variability in the cold months, with some contribution from precipitation variability in the warm months. I'll go out on a limb and guess this means more summer droughts, plus winters that are mild some years but other years a bitch.
3. That said, the rougher-than-usual winter we're having just now doesn't prove anything. The midwestern hotspot doesn't show up in Diffenbaugh's maps until 2071 — there's no sign of it in earlier decades. "This raises some question about how robust the midwest hotspot is," he says. In contrast, the southwest hotspot — or hot zone, since it covers a huge area — shows up in most maps from 2011 on out, regardless of methodology. So if beetles kill all the lodgepole pines due to higher temperatures, I figure you're not taking too much of a flyer if you attribute this to global warming. Whereas if you get flattened by an ice storm in Chicago, that just means the weather here sucks.
4. Lest you take any comfort in the thought that, while things may not get dramatically better in the eastern half of the country, at least they won't get dramatically worse, you should know that Diffenbaugh's analysis doesn't pick up transitory phenomena such as storms. Thus if you live on the gulf coast, current science says the changes in your weather will be relatively modest. Except possibly for the weekly hurricanes.
5. If you're wondering what's in store for Los Angeles, the big change looks to be greater dry-season variability. Remembering the adage "it never rains in California but it pours," I surmise that means God's own nightmare of wildfires and mudslides. On the other hand, temperaturewise it'll be warm and probably warmer, so you'll still be able to watch all this dressed in shorts.
6. Prof. Diffenbaugh was a bit tetchy on the subject of the reliability of long-term climate projections, pointing out that the models have accurately predicted climate change up to this point. We'll see. I'll be a little creaky in 2071, but you can bundle me up and wheel me out to the lakefront anyway. If there's nothing to be seen but a mud flat, fine, that's global warming. On the other hand, if we observe blizzards, tsunamis, arctic cold, and so on … well, doubtless some will see that as evidence of increased climate variability. But Chicagoans with long memories are likelier to think: eh, more of the same old same old. 

The world weather crisis is causing floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China

– August 11, 2010Posted in: World News

The world weather crisis that is causing floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China is evidence that global warming predictions are correct, according to climate change experts.

Houses are surrounded by flood waters in Kot Addu

Almost 14 million people have been affected by the torrential rains in Pakistan, making it a more serious humanitarian disaster than the South Asian tsunami and recent earthquakes in Kashmir and Haiti combined.

The disaster was driven by a ‘supercharged jet stream’ that has also caused floods in China and a prolonged heatwave in Russia.

It comes after flash floods in France and Eastern Europe killed more than 30 people over the summer.
Experts from the United Nations (UN) and universities around the world said the recent “extreme weather events” prove global warming is already happening.
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, vice-president of the body set up by the UN to monitor global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said the ‘dramatic’ weather patterns are consistent with changes in the climate caused by mankind.
“These are events which reproduce and intensify in a climate disturbed by greenhouse gas pollution,” he said.
“Extreme events are one of the ways in which climatic changes become dramatically visible.”
The UN has rated the floods in Pakistan as the greatest humanitarian crisis in recent history, with 13.8 million people affected and 1,600 dead.

Photo taken on Aug. 11, 2010 shows the mudslide-hit area in Zhouqu County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China's Gansu Province.

Flooding in China has killed more than 1,100 people this year and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage across 28 provinces and regions.

The fires have been sparked by Russia's worst heatwave in decades Photo: AFP/GETTY

In Russia the morgues are overflowing in Moscow and wildfires are raging in the countryside after the worst heatwave in 130 years.
Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, said it was impossible to attribute any one of these particular weather events to global warming alone.
But he said there is “clear evidence” of an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events because of climate change.
“The odds of such extreme events are rapidly shortening and could become considered the norm by the middle of this century,” he warned.
Dr Stott also said global warming is likely to be make extreme events worse. For example, when there is more heat in the atmosphere it holds more water and therefore floods in places like Pakistan are heavier.
“If we have these type of extreme weather patterns then climate change has loaded the dice so there is more risk of bad things happening,” he said.
Professor Andrew Watson, a climatologist at the University of East Anglia, which was at the centre of last year’s ‘climategate’ scandal, said the extreme events are “fairly consistent with the IPCC reports and what 99 per cent of the scientists believe to be happening”.
“I’m quite sure that the increased frequency of these kind of summers over the last few decades is linked to climate change,” he said.

The rain man: Amateur weatherman follows his sun compass to snap stunning pictures .

For many, it is a hobby that would require far too much patience.
But one photographer waits for hours just to capture the perfect images of storm clouds breaking.
Kris Dutson, 53, has spent ten years scouting out the ideal locations across Britain to capture the most astonishing atmospheric shots on his camera as rain falls.

Perfect rainbow: Kris Dutson's most recent photograph taken at North Poorton, Dorset. Following heavy rain last month this brilliant rainbow formed

Remarkable: Clouds pile up over a hill top on a bright day at Colmers Hill, Bridport in Dorset. The photographer spends hours researching the best locations to capture cloud pictures

He carries meteorological charts and a sun compass with him and will patiently wait for clouds to break before capturing the perfect shot.
Kris, from Compton Valence, near Dorchester, Dorset, scours the countryside for the most beautiful and interesting scenes to shoot.
He sometimes waits for months on end before returning to a particular spot at the right time of year to catch these astonishing images.

 

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One of his incredible photos shows a perfectly-formed rainbow stretching across vivid green fields, glowing in front of a moody grey sky.
Another captures billowing white cumulus clouds rising imposingly behind the deep green peaks of Colmer's Hill, near Bridport, Dorset.

Storm clouds gather: Rain approaching the cliffs at Burton Bradstock in south west Dorset. Patient Kris often waits for hours before taking a photograph

Red sky at night: The sun sets over Colmer' Hill in Bridport, Dorset with a covering of cloud overhead. The beautiful glowing skyline was caused by the ash cloud which caused airline chaos

Beauty spot: Stunning picture of Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic Coast at dusk as rain clears. The site attracts one million visitors a year - but few see a sunset as beautiful as this

Others show sinister grey clouds gathering above fields of barley, daisies and rape, while others capture the striking cloud formations above the Jurassic coastline.
One striking image captures a full moon illuminating mist as it rolls over fields, and another shows a stunning panoramic view across Hardy country.
Father-of-four Kris, who has been a photographer for 30 years, said: 'I must be one of the only people in the country hoping for rain.
'I like a nice bright, sunny day to go to the beach, but when I hear people grumbling about the forecast I do rub my hands together with glee.
'My pictures are all based around the weather and the atmosphere it creates - it's absolutely key.
'If it's bright and sunny with blue skies, most people can take a nice picture but they're quite bland.
'But the moody weather enhances the landscape and gives it a feeling. Dark clouds and patchy sunlight makes it atmospheric.

Dark skies: Rain clouds gather over the Mynydd Moel mountain in the Cader Idris range in north Wales. The top of the mountain is completely covered

Beautiful darkness: Moonlit valleys in Compton Valence, Dorset. When most people stay indoors weather nut Kris spends hours out and about waiting for the rain to clear or a break in the clouds to get the perfect shot

Dramatic scenes: A rainbow at the Devils Dyke near Brighton West Sussex, left, and  sunset after a storm on Pulpit Rock, Portland Bill in Dorset, right

The white cliffs of... Sussex: A storm clearing from the Seven Sisters cliffs near Eastbourne on the English Coast

'I travel around Dorset a lot and whenever I come across a location I think might work for a picture I mark it on my sat nav.
'I carry a sun compass, which looks like a credit card with marks around the side, which will tell me what time the sun rises and sets at each point throughout the year.
'Sometimes I think a particular shot will work at dawn, but the sun might not be in the right place for the next six months, so I'll make a note of it in my diary and come back.
'I'll check the weather forecast to see when there will be the right conditions, such as dark clouds in the sky. Sometimes the weather doesn't play ball, so I'll go back the following year.
'I can't compromise or cut corners, so there's a lot of planning and science behind each shot. I need to be very patient, but it's worth it.
'Getting the right shot on the day can take anywhere between minutes and hours.
'I'm very lucky.'

Home Counties: A storm brews over a field of barley in Wiltshire close to Sixpenny Handley in a dramatic image caught by photographer Kris Dutson who has spent a decade capturing these images

Daybreak: Dawn breaks over Portland Bill in Dorset in another image by the photographer on the South Coast

Storm approaching: Rain clouds approach Chesil beach, Portland, in Dorset. Far left, the sky remains blue - but thick black clouds are coming in

In-coming storm: Panoramic view of rain blowing in from the west across Eggardon Hill, close to Bridport, Dorset taken by Kris Dutson

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1363789/The-cloud-chaser-Amateur-weatherman-follows-sun-compass-snap-stunning-pictures.html#ixzz1G255FIHx

Why Global Warming Portends a Food Crisis

China Photos / Getty

It can be difficult in the middle of winter — especially if you live in the frigid Northeastern U.S., as I do — to remain convinced that global warming will be such a bad thing. Beyond the fact that people prefer warmth to cold, there's a reason the world's population is clustered in the Tropics and subtropics: warmer climates usually mean longer and richer growing seasons. So it's easy to imagine that on a warmer globe, the damage inflicted by more frequent and severe heat waves would be balanced by the agricultural benefits of warmer temperatures.
A comforting thought, except for one thing: it's not true. A study published in the Jan. 9 issue of Science shows that far from compensating for the damages associated with climate change (heavier and more frequent storms, increasing desertification, sea-level rise), hotter temperatures will seriously diminish the world's ability to feed itself. David Battisti, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, and Rosamond Naylor, director of the Program for Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University, analyzed data from 23 climate models and found a more than 90% chance that by the end of the century, average growing-season temperatures would be hotter than the most extreme levels recorded in the past. (See the top 10 green stories of 2008.)
That means that barring a swift and sudden reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, by the end of the century an average July day will almost certainly be hotter than the hottest heat waves we experience now. And the extreme heat will wilt our crops. Battisti and Naylor looked at the effect that major heat waves have had on agriculture in the past — like the ruthless heat in Western Europe during the summer of 2003 — and found that crop yields have suffered deeply. In Italy, maize yields fell 36% in 2003, compared with the previous year, and in France they fell 30%. Similar effects were seen during a major heat wave in 1972, which decimated farms in the former Soviet Union, helping push grain prices to worryingly high levels. If those trends hold in the future, the researchers estimate that half the world's population could face a climate-induced food crisis by 2100. "I'm very concerned," says Naylor. "How are we going to feed a world of 8 or 9 billion with the effects of climate change?"
It's true that as temperatures warm, there is likely to be a temporary beneficial effect on agriculture. Like people, plants generally prefer warmth to cold, and they may flourish with rising levels of CO2. But research from Wolfram Schlenker at Columbia University shows that, as average temperatures continue to warm, those benefits dwindle and eventually reverse, and crop yields begin to decline. "It simply becomes too hot for the growing plants," says Naylor. "The heat damages the crops' ability to produce enough yield."
What's more, in their study, Battisti and Naylor looked only at the effect of higher temperatures — not at the possible effect of changing precipitation patterns. Yet many climatologists believe that global warming will make dry areas dryer and further damage farming, which is especially dire news for sub-Saharan Africa, a region that already struggles with heat waves, droughts and famines even as population continues to grow. "Climate change is going to be a major concern for Africa," says Nteranya Sanginga, director of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Nairobi. "We could lose whole growing seasons."
With these frightening predictions in mind, we need to try to heat-proof our agriculture. That can be accomplished by using crops that have proved resistant to extreme heat — like sorghum or millet — to breed hybrid-crop varieties that are more capable of withstanding higher temperatures. We'll need to drop any squeamishness about consuming genetically modified crops. Unless we can tap the power of genetics, we'll never feed ourselves in a warmer world. But we'll need to act quickly. It can take years to breed more heat-resistant species, and investment in agricultural research has shriveled in recent years.
We also need to focus on improving the agricultural productivity of those parts of the world that have been left behind by the Green Revolution — like Africa, where average crop yields per acre remain well below those in Asia or the West. One simple way is to increase the amount of fertilizer available to African farmers. Sanginga notes that about 440 lb. (200 kg) of nitrogen fertilizer is generally needed to grow 5 tons (5,000 kg) of maize, but the average African farmer can afford only 8 lb. of fertilizer. We can also work on safeguarding the degraded soils of Africa, where almost 55% of the land is unsuitable for any kind of cultivated agriculture. Help is on the way: the African Soil Information Service is launching a real-time digital map of sub-Saharan Africa's soils, which should allow farmers and policymakers to make better use of the continent's agricultural resources. "Farmers need to know when to invest and when to hold back," says Sanginga, who is involved with the mapping project.
There's a limit, however, to our ability to adapt to climate change. We need to reduce carbon emissions sharply and soon. If we fail, a warmer future won't just be uncomfortable; it will be downright frightening. "We need to wake up and take care of this," says Naylor. "We won't have enough food to feed the world today, let alone tomorrow."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1870766,00.html#ixzz1G1jgPyOr

Global Warming will wipe out Flowers

Published on Tuesday, June 17, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
Global Warming May Wipe Out a Fifth of Wild Flower Species, Study Warns
by Steve Connor


One in every five species of wild flower could die out over the next century if levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere double in line with predictions, scientists said yesterday.

A study of the impact of global warming on plants has found that most of the environmental changes are likely to result in a substantial loss of plant life. Even though plants need carbon dioxide to survive, the research found that higher levels of the gas reduced numbers of wild flowers by 20 per cent, and cut overall plant diversity by 8 per cent.

Scientists from Stanford University in California altered the environment of 36 open-air plots of land - on which between five and 20 wild plants had been growing - over a period of three years. They doubled carbon dioxide, increased "rainfall" by 50 per cent, caused average temperatures to rise by 1.7C and added nitrogen pollutants to the soil - all of which are likely to happen because of global warming. The researchers, who published their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, described the findings as "dramatic".

Plots that received all four treatments - which emulated the environmental conditions likely to exist 100 years from now - suffered a decline of 25 per cent in wild flowers and even those given extra nitrogen or carbon dioxide suffered a 10 or 20 per cent decline.

Only increased watering resulted in a rise in diversity. The scientists suggested that increased carbon dioxide, temperature and nitrogen allowed some plants to grow faster for longer, making it difficult for other plants to survive.

Professor Christopher Field, who led the study, said the team was surprised to find that increased carbon dioxide and watering caused such opposite effects given that they were both essential for plants to grow.

"One hypothesis is that elevated carbon dioxide added moisture to the soil, which tended to extend the growing season of the dominant plants, leaving less room for other species to grow," Professor Field said.

His colleague, Erika Zavaleta, said the study demonstrated how some wild plants would suffer while others benefited from the effects of climate change. "Certain kinds of species are much more sensitive to climate and atmospheric changes than others. It turned out that wild flowers were much more sensitive to the treatments than grasses were, no matter what combination of treatments we tried," Dr Zavaleta said.

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd