Mega-fires may be contributing to climate change, UN report finds

10 May 2011 –

The growing number of mega-fires around the world may be contributing to global warming, a new United Nations report says, calling on governments to introduce comprehensive strategies to reduce the risk of such conflagrations. The report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), released today at an international conference in South Africa, says policy-makers need to improve their monitoring of carbon gas emissions from wildfires to better determine the potential climate change impacts.
The report’s release follows a series of high-profile mega-fires, including the February 2009 Black Saturday blazes in Australia that killed 173 people and obliterated many towns, and record-setting fires last year in Russia that claimed the lives of 62 people and burned about 2.3 million hectares.
The report examined recent mega-fires in Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Greece, Russia and the United States.
Pieter van Lierop, a forestry officer with FAO, said today that the problem was becoming more urgent as the frequency and size of mega-fires increase and weather projections indicate hotter and drier fire seasons.
“Mega-fires are mainly caused by humans and are likely exacerbated by climate change, but now we suspect they may also in themselves represent a vicious circle that is speeding up global warming.”
The report found that nearly all the mega-fires studied were started by people, sometimes deliberately to clear land for the purposes of agriculture or development.
In all but one of the examples studied, drought was a factor that prolonged or exacerbated the blazes, with hot, dry and windy conditions also contributing to the intensity of the fires.
But the report noted two examples – one in south-western Australia and one in Florida in the US – where despite all the conditions being in place for the uncontrolled spread of a mega-fire, relatively little damage was done.
The report’s authors cited more balanced approaches by authorities in those areas that featured prevention, mitigation and suppression strategies to minimize the impact of fires.
In Australia, the state Government introduced a controlled burning programme in fire-prone areas, while in Florida a similar initiative by the US Forest Service and that state’s Government helped to reduce the risk from potential fires.
Meanwhile, in a message to today’s conference, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recent fires and other disasters around the world “have made clear how vulnerable our cities and communities are and how much more effort is required to reduce our vulnerability.”
In the message, delivered by Johann G. Goldammer, leader of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)/FAO Team of Specialists on Forest Fire and Coordinator of the Global Wildland Fire network, Mr. Ban welcomed the efforts of fire specialists to build what he described as “a culture of prevention.”
He stressed the need for a coordinated approach to fire management, encompassing agriculture, forestry, health, science, environmental issues, emergency responses and weather forecasting and monitoring.
“I encourage you to identify real solutions that will help communities and nations to better handle the adverse impacts of fires and to build safer, more sustainable societies for all.”

Most-Cited Climate Skeptics Linked to Big Oil

Nine of the ten scientists, who have written the most papers skeptical of man-made global warming, are linked to oil giant ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), according to the blog The Carbon Brief.
Furthermore, those ten authors account for 186 of the 900+ peer-reviewed papers, which climate skeptic group The Global Warming Policy Foundation compiled as proof that there is widespread dissent on climate change science. 
The Carbon Brief's analysis shows that the pool of skeptical scientists is, in fact, much smaller than this list suggests, and it is heavily influenced by funding from Big Oil. 
Sherwood B Idso is the most prolific scientist on the list. He is the author or co-author of 67 of the 938 papers (7%). He is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, a thinktank funded by ExxonMobil. 
Patrick J Michaels is the second most cited author, with 28 papers. He is a well known climate skeptic who  receives around 40% of his funding from the oil industry.
Agricultural scientist Dr Bruce Kimball is third on the list, and all of his cited papers were co-authored with Idso.
The Carbon Brief explains the significance of this analysis:
"Once you crunch the numbers, however, you find a good proportion of this new list is made up of a small network of individuals who co-author papers and share funding ties to the oil industry. There are numerous other names on the list with links to oil-industry funded climate sceptic think-tanks, including more from the International Policy Network (IPN) and the Marshall Institute.
"Compiling these lists is dramatically different to the process of producing IPCC reports, which reference thousands of scientific papers. The reports are thoroughly reviewed to make sure that the scientific work included is relevant and diverse."
The Carbon Brief is headed by Tom Brookes, director of the Energy Strategy Centre, which is funded by the non-profit European Climate Foundation. 

Arctic warming to boost rise of sea levels

OSLO — Global sea levels will rise faster than expected this century, partly because of quickening climate change in the Arctic and a thaw of Greenland’s ice, an international report said Tuesday.
The rise would add to threats to coasts from Bangladesh to Florida, low-lying Pacific islands and cities from London to Shanghai. It would also raise the cost of building tsunami barriers in Japan.
Record temperatures in the Arctic will add to factors raising world sea levels by up to 5.2 feet by 2100, according to a report by the Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), which is backed by the eight-nation Arctic Council.
“The past six years [until 2010] have been the warmest period ever recorded in the Arctic,” the report said.
“In the future, global sea level is projected to rise by 0.9 metres [3 feet] to 1.6 metres [5.2 feet] by 2100 and the loss of ice from Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet will make a substantial contribution,” it added.
The rises were projected from 1990 levels.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its last major study in 2007 that world sea levels were likely to rise by between 7 and 23 inches by 2100. Those numbers did not include a possible acceleration of a thaw in polar regions.
Foreign ministers from Arctic Council nations — the United States, Russia, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland — are due to meet in Greenland on May 12.
“The increase in annual average temperature since 1980 has been twice as high over the Arctic as it has been over the rest of the world,” the report said. Temperatures were higher than at any time in the past 2,000 years, it added.
The IPCC also said it was at least 90 percent probable that human emissions of greenhouse gases, led by burning fossil fuels, were to blame for most warming in recent decades.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/report-global-warming-already-crimping-crop-production-pushing-prices-higher/2011/05/04/AFdsMSzF_story.html

Report: Global warming already crimping crop production, pushing prices higher

The warming of the Earth has cooled the yields of corn and wheat in much of the world, a new study finds.
Although agricultural advances have pushed global production of staple crops skyward, hotter temperatures in Russia, China, Mexico and elsewhere have stunted that growth and contributed to the long-term rise in food prices, says the analysis published Thursday in the journal Science. “This is tens of billions of dollars a year in lost [agricultural] productivity because of warming,” said David Lobell, an Earth scientist at Stanford University and an author on the report.
Three decades of global warming crimped worldwide yields of corn by about 5.5 percent and wheat by about 3.8 percent compared with what would have been produced had world temperatures remained stable, the report says.
A burgeoning global population also needs more crops — and more grain-fed beef — which contributes to rising food prices much more than climate change, Lobell said. This week, the United Nations also projected that the global population will hit 7 billion in October and 10.6 billion by 2050. Such a huge increase will continue to push food prices higher.
For now, the bread basket of America bucked the trend, as agricultural regions of the United States have not warmed much during their growing seasons since 1980. Climate scientists debate the reasons, with some pointing to particulate pollution over the middle of the United States as a possible cooling counterbalance.
This climate hit adds about 6 percent to the cost of wheat and corn, staples whose prices have skyrocketed in recent years. Although global warming is “a small part of the overall story of why prices are going up,” Lobell said, “it’s not negligible.”
Global corn prices doubled between April 2010 and April 2011, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization reported Thursday. Wheat prices are up 60 to 80 percent depending on the strain, said Abdolreza Abbassian, an FAO analyst.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/report-global-warming-already-crimping-crop-production-pushing-prices-higher/2011/05/04/AFdsMSzF_story.html

Will global warming spawn super-giant, flying ants? Science (sort of) says yes.

The fossil of one of the biggest ants ever has been discovered in Wyoming. Over fifty milliion years ago, it crossed the arctic to get there. Scientists have analyzed the data, and believe that a hot planet fosters the spread of super-sized ants.

It's funny how size affects the way people think of things. An adorably small hippo would make an unsettlingly large cat. And that lovable little pipsqueak, the hummingbird, would be a hideous monster if instead of a bird it was an ant. Bad news. At one time - it was an ant. Like a hummingbird, this ancient ant had wings and could fly. It was about two inches long, and spread to Wyoming from Europe, through the arctic.
To be fair, the continents were different shapes and in different places than they are now, so going from Europe to America wasn't the difficult journey it later became. But no matter the duration of the journey, it required heat. The world was a hotter place in the past, and for some reason, 'hot' means 'giant ants'. Researchers believe that the earth was heated by bursts of greenhouse gasses throughout this period, and the heat that generated gave the ants the climate they needed to go through the arctic. Once they'd walked the land bridge between continents, the ants spread down through what would become North America. Impressions in rocks are all that remain of these ants, but that doesn't mean people can breathe easy. When researchers mapped out the habitat of large ants, past and present, they found that they were always associated with warm temperatures. No one is sure why, but if the planet heats up too much, future researchers may get a look at the reason for this enlargement in real time.

Species Invasion! An effect of global warming?

LINK TO ARTICLE

Brown recluse spiders are scary, and they may be coming to a town near you.
A new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, suggests that the potentially deadly spiders might be spreading throughout North America as the planet warms. According to LiveScience, the spider's range, which currently covers a large portion of the southeast, may not be suitable for it by 2080.
However, a changing climate could make parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Nebraska and South Dakota suitable for it. It's not the amount of space that's changing, but the area it covers.
Scientists used predictive mapping to determine the likely redistribution of the spiders, according to Science Daily.
Don't freak out just yet.

Texas Drought!

LINK HERE

LUBBOCK, Texas -- With much of the nation focused on a spring marked by historic floods and deadly tornadoes, Texas and parts of several surrounding states are suffering through a drought nearly as punishing as some of the world's driest deserts.
Some parts of the Lone Star State have not seen any significant precipitation since August. Bayous, cattle ponds and farm fields are drying up, and residents are living under constant threat of wildfires, which have already burned across thousands of square miles.
Much of Texas is bone dry, with scarcely any moisture to be found in the top layers of soil. Grass is so dry it crunches underfoot in many places. The nation's leading cattle-producing state just endured its driest seven-month span on record, and some ranchers are culling their herds to avoid paying supplemental feed costs.
May is typically the wettest month in Texas, and farmers planting on non-irrigated acres are clinging to hope that relief arrives in the next few weeks.
"It doesn't look bright right at the moment, but I haven't given up yet," said cotton producer Rickey Bearden, who grows about two-thirds of his 9,000 acres without irrigation in West Texas. "We'll have to have some help from Mother's Nature."
That the drought is looming over the Southwest while floodwaters rise in the Midwest and South reflects a classic signature of the La Nina weather oscillation, a cooling of the central Pacific Ocean.
This year's La Nina is the sixth-strongest in records dating back to 1949.
"It's a shift of the jet stream, providing all that moisture and shifting it away from the south, so you've seen a lot of drought in Texas," Mike Halpert, deputy director of the federal government's Climate Prediction Center in Silver Spring, Md.
He said the pattern is "kind of on its last legs," and he expects a neutral condition for much of the summer.