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.

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

Denmark tops list of clean technology producers; China is No. 2; US at 17 is rapidly expanding

AMSTERDAM — Denmark earns the biggest share of its national revenue from producing windmills and other clean technologies, the United States is rapidly expanding its clean-tech sector, but no country can match China’s pace of growth, according to a new report obtained by The Associated Press.
China’s production of green technologies has grown by a remarkable 77 per cent a year, according to the report, which was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature and which will be unveiled on Monday at an industry conference in Amsterdam.
“The Chinese have made, on the political level, a conscious decision to capture this market and to develop this market aggressively,” said Donald Pols, an economist with the WWF.
Denmark, a longtime leader in wind energy, derives 3.1 percent of its gross domestic product from renewable energy technology and energy efficiency, or about euro6.5 billion ($9.4 billion), the report said.
China is the largest producer in money terms, earning more than euro44 billion ($64 billion), or 1.4 percent of its gross domestic product.
The U.S. ranks 17 in the production of clean technologies with 0.3 percent of GDP, or euro31.5 billion ($45 billion), but those industries have been expanding at a rate of 28 percent per year since 2008.
“The U.S. is growing substantially, so it seems the policy of (President Barack) Obama is working,” Pols said. But the U.S. cannot compare with China, he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/denmark-tops-list-of-clean-technology-producers-china-is-no-2-us-at-17-is-rapidly-expanding/2011/05/08/AFGax6MG_story.html

US cities choke on their own air

The American Lung Association released their annual State of the Air report highlighting the cities with the worse air pollution in America – Bakersfield, California topped the list.
The report measures air quality based on general ozone pollution, short-term particle pollution and year-long particle pollution. Each type of pollutant brings health problems for the people living in the areas where they are in large quantities and often times in areas where the pollution is carries by wind currents.
The report indicated that over 18.5 million Americans live in a region with unhealthy levels of year-round pollution – many in California alone.
“These people live in areas where chronic levels are regularly a threat to their health. Even when levels are fairly low, exposure to particles over time can increase risk of hospitalization for asthma, damage to the lungs and, significantly, increase the risk of premature death,” the report said.
According to the American Lung Association pollution kills thousands of people per year, with 13,000 people dying from power plant pollution alone. Those who live in poverty or have asthma, chronic lung disease, cardiovascular diseases or diabetes are also at higher risk.
According to the report, the worst cities or metro regions in America for air quality are (some are tied):
1. Bakersfield-Delano, California
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside, California
2. Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale, Arizona
2. Visalia-Porterville, California
5. Hanford-Corcoran, California
6. Fresno-Madera, California
7. Pittsburgh-New Castle, Pennsylvania
8. Birmingham-Hoover-Cullman, Alabama
9. Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington, Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana
10. Louisville-Jefferson County-Elizabethtown-Scottsburg, Kentucky-Indiana

http://rt.com/usa/news/air-report-american-pollution/

Groundbreaking News

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates – A major new report by the United Nations-supported Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) launched today underscores the incredible environmental and social advantages of a future powered by renewable energy over the next decades, WWF said. 

The 900-page Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation compares 164 scenarios on renewable energy and is the most comprehensive analysis ever of trends and perspectives for renewable energy.

“The IPCC and governments of the world signal loud and clear: fossil fuels and nuclear are no real alternatives to renewables,” said Dr Stephan Singer, Director for Global Energy Policy for WWF International.

“As oil and gas within easy reach is dwindling, the world needs to move to clean and sustainable sources of energy and avoid any investment into dirty alternatives.”

Although unique in its epic scope, the IPCC underestimates the potential of deploying renewable energy even faster, especially when combined with top level energy efficiency, WWF said. The organisation’s own analysis, called The Energy Report, shows a pathway to a 100% renewable energy future by 2050. This analysis is the first that also indicates the challenges and research needs to make sure this low carbon development respects development needs of up to 9 billion people.

“IPCC delivers a landmark report that shows the rapid growth, low-cost potential for renewable energy – but unfortunately does not endorse a 100% renewable energy pathway until 2050,” said Singer.

“WWF’s report adds that missing piece – a bold vision with a clear timeline. We need to be fast if we want to tackle pressing issues as varied as energy security and efficiency, and at the same time keep climate change well below the danger threshold of 2 degree global warming.

WWF strongly emphasizes that in addition to the climate benefits, the IPCC report documents the plethora of other advantages clean renewables provide including health and security of supply benefits, new job and technology opportunities for all countries and the potential to provide clean and affordable energy to the more than two billion people in parts of the developing world which either have no or only erratic access. 

Link Below:
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/climate_carbon_energy/climate_change/news/?uNewsID=200299

Fracking may be more damaging to climate than coal

Hydraulic fracking, the process by which natural gas is extracted from the earth, could create as much as twice the amount of greenhouse gas pollution as coal, according to a recent study at Cornell University.
Prior to the study the general consensus was that fracking was safer and more environmentally friendly than coal. Even US President Barack Obama applauded natural gas as a true clean energy standard.
But, that view may have changed. Cornell Prof. Robert Howarth argued in a new study that the process which makes natural gas available actually contributes more to global warming than conventional coal. The gas may burn clean, but the process of obtaining it is dangerous to the environment.

http://rt.com/usa/news/fracking-coal-natural-gas-damaging/

Animals Shrinking?

Humanity appears to be ushering in new age of minifauna, a kind of Lilliputian world full of runts and dwarves.

At about the size of a five-cent piece, Kugelann's green clock beetle would never be mistaken for a giant. But in the world of European ground beetles, Poecilus kugelanni is no runt. Indeed, some Belgian biologists recently classified the gaudy, green-winged creature as a 'big' beetle.

Big, however, hasn't proved better. Green clock beetle populations have crashed over the past century due to habitat destruction and other threats, and the insect is now endangered in many places. And it's not alone: dozens of Europe's other big-beetle species are also fading away, even as many of their smaller cousins seem to be holding on.

It's a pattern that researchers seem to be seeing everywhere. Around the planet, relatively large species are in big trouble — from lions and tigers and bears to cod, condors, and conifers. Even some heftier snails and salamanders are struggling.

"Size matters," says biologist Chris Darimont of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who notes that the assaults are coming from several angles. On one front, "a larger body size makes a species more vulnerable to all kinds of problems, from getting hunted by humans to habitat change".

One result: Nearly half of the world's large 'megafaunal' mammals — and more than half of the largest marine fish — are now considered vulnerable to imminent extinction.

Meanwhile, overfishing, overhunting, and pollution — and perhaps global warming — are fueling another downsizing trend. These pressures are causing some plants and animals to evolve with astounding rapidity, producing individuals that are on average shorter, thinner and lighter. In other words, they are literally shrinking.

It's a "vastly underappreciated problem," says Darimont, whose own work has shown that a wide range of hunted organisms now have body sizes that have shrunk on average by one-fifth. And human 'superpredators' are causing this shrinkage to occur incredibly rapidly, sometimes in just a few decades — or up to 300 per cent faster than in natural systems.

Together, the trends have some observers wondering whether we're on the verge of a new "age of the minifauna", a kind of Lilliputian world full of runts and dwarves?

It turns out that this is a very old story with a modern twist. More than 25,000 years ago, one megafaunal species — we humans — began to spread rapidly around the globe and in the process helped to wipe out about half of all land mammals weighing more than 44 kilograms.

Link Below:
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2011/05/09/3208858.htm

New Arctic Ozone Threat

Everybody knows about the ozone hole above the South Pole. But now the North Pole could also be exposed. Never before has the ozone layer above the Arctic been so thin.
The spring of 2011 was exceptional, unfortunately not in a positive sense. Earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes inflicted enormous losses and hardship around the globe.

As if that was not enough, another danger which we’d thought was consigned to history, made a comeback.

"We have seen the greatest loss of ozone in the northern hemisphere on record,” warns Markus Rex, a physicist for the Alfred Wegener Institute and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany.

During late April climate experts warned that an air mass very low in protective ozone could drift from the Arctic as far south as Central Europe or New York, thereby increasing the risk of skin-cancer.

Even though this low-ozone air had only reached northern parts of Russia by early May, it was amazing how long it had persisted, said Rex, who added that we could see the first Arctic ozone hole by the end of the spring.

http://knowledge.allianz.com/?1483/arctic-ozone-hole-threat

The Year of Forests

Forests once covered half of the Earth’s landmass. Now they cover less than one tenth. The UN has declared 2011 the International Year of Forests to better protect the planet’s lungs. 
Tree lovers are no starry-eyed fools. Forests regulate the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate that shapes our lives.

Forests also provide more than one in six humans with a living as part of a 270 billion dollar-a-year industry. By protecting trees we also protect ourselves.

Unfortunately, most of us are not true tree lovers. We treat trees as products or obstructions to economic progress.

Therefore we destroy 130,000 square kilometers of the world's forests every year, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Conversion to agricultural land, timber production, and urbanization are the main culprits.

Meanwhile more frequent fires and outbreaks of pests and diseases are turning some forests from carbon sinks into sources of carbon emissions. Deforestation now accounts for around 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
And so the United Nations will spend 2011 stressing that forests must be conserved or managed sustainably for future generations, not just slashed and burned for short-term gain.

http://knowledge.allianz.com/?915/agenda-2011-the-year-of-forests

The Court and Global Warming

The case about global warming scheduled to be argued on Tuesday before the Supreme Court is a blockbuster. Eight states — from California to New York, plus New York City — sued six corporations responsible for one-fourth of the American electric power industry’s emissions of carbon dioxide.
Rather than seeking money or punishment for the defendants, they seek what everyone should agree is the polluters’ responsibility: abatement of their huge, harmful part in causing climate change. The purpose is not to solve global warming or usurp the government’s role in doing so. It is, rightly, to get major utilities to curb their greenhouse-gas emissions before the government acts.
Because there is no federal regulation of this problem in force, it is fortunate that there is a line of Supreme Court precedents back to 1901 on which the plaintiffs can build their challenge. When this lawsuit began seven years ago, one of the defendants’ main defenses was that, because the Clean Air Act and other laws “address” carbon dioxide emissions, Congress has “legislated on the subject” and pre-empted the suit. The pre-emption claim was spurious when they made it and remains spurious now.
Seven years ago, neither Congress nor the Bush administration showed interest in pushing comprehensive laws or rules to curb these gases. Since then, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that greenhouse gases endanger public health as “the primary driver” of climate change and has regulated vehicle emissions.
But the electric power industry is working to scuttle this regulation, with the help of the Republican-controlled House. In court, the industry pushes for letting the E.P.A. regulate. On Capitol Hill, it tries to torpedo that authority.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/opinion/19tue1.html?scp=4&sq=global%20warming&st=cse

UN Climate change panel concludes renewable energy will be key tackling global warming

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that renewable energy in the coming decades will be widespread and could one day represent the dominant source for powering factories and lighting homes.

"It is likely that renewable energy will have a significantly larger role in the global energy system in the future than today," said the report. "The scenarios indicate that even without efforts to address climate change, renewable energy can be expected to expand."

The report found that renewable energy — including solar, hydro, wind, biomass, geothermal and ocean energy — represented only about 13 per cent of the primary energy supply in 2008. But its growth is picking up with almost half of new electricity generating capacity coming from renewables in 2008 and 2009.

That growth will continue through 2050 with 164 different scenarios predicting the use of renewables significantly increasing as the world shifts to a low-carbon economy.

The most ambitious projected it will represent 77 per cent of global energy sources in 2050.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jeb2u2w7pOJYtxYuXq9eOmKTBxiA?docId=6765062

Global Warming Hits Canada's Remotest Arctic Lands

RESOLUTE BAY, Nunavut - Even in one of the remotest, coldest and most inhospitable parts of Canada's High Arctic, you cannot escape the signs of global warming.
Polar bears hang around on land longer than they used to, waiting for ice to freeze. The eternal night which blankets the region for three months is less dark, thanks to warmer air reflecting more sunlight from the south. Animal species that the local Inuit aboriginal population had never heard of are now appearing.
"Last year someone saw a mosquito," said a bemused Paul Attagootak, a hunter living in the hamlet of Resolute Bay some 2,100 miles northwest of Ottawa and 555 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
"Things getting warmer is not good for the animals, which are our food. We still eat them. We worry about them," he told Reuters as temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit (minus 18 degrees Celsius) well above the seasonal average.
The entire life of the Inuit -- formerly called Eskimos -- is based on the cold. A rapid increase in temperatures could be cataclysmic as prey disappears and ice becomes treacherous.
PERMAFROST CRUMBLES
In recent years there have been drastic signs of climate change in the southern part of Canada's Arctic, where melting ice in Hudson Bay threatens the survival of local polar bears.
Buildings in the port town of Tuktoyaktuk -- on the Arctic Ocean, close to Canada's northern border with Alaska -- are crumbling into the sea as the permafrost dissolves. Remote aboriginal communities are in distress because winter ice roads, needed to truck in supplies, are turning to water.
And now there are signs of change in Resolute Bay, where 250 people live in Canada's second-most northerly town.
"The most striking thing is that the wind doesn't bite any more. It used to take pieces of skin off you," said Wayne Davidson, who runs the local weather monitoring station and has lived in Resolute Bay since 1985.
"The weather here was brutal, probably the coldest, meanest toughest cold weather you could find," he said. But, he said, there have been enormous changes in the temperature. The mean temperature in March was minus 13.4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 25.2 degrees Celsius) compared with the average of minus 24.2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31.2 degrees Celsius) from 1947 to 1991.
"All months are warmer by between 3 and 6 degrees (Celsius). This is beyond the usual variations," said Davidson. "We're in a total transition ... it's a one-way street right now."
U.S. scientists said in September that the Arctic ice was now the smallest it had been for a century, driven by rising temperatures that many experts believe is linked to emissions of greenhouse gases by humans.
Experts say the Arctic is warming more quickly than the rest of the planet because as the dark ground and seas are exposed by the sun's rays, they absorb heat faster than reflective snow and ice.
POLAR BEARS
For the inhabitants of Resolute Bay, this can have dangerous consequences, since the local polar bears have to bide their time on land before they can walk out onto the ice.
"There is quite a lot of change in the bears' behavior. They hang around a lot longer than they usually have," said Tabitha Mullin, a local conservation officer.
"Once in a while they'll kill the dogs tied up by the beach," she said.
For now, the polar bear population in the High Arctic numbers more than 10,000 and is still relatively healthy.
"A lot of time you see mothers with two cubs (the norm). Very rarely do you see them with just one cub," said Mullin, forced indoors by a blizzard which cut visibility to two yards (meters) and closed down the hamlet.
The warmer temperatures mean there is increased moisture in the air, which results in more frequent storms.
"We're seeing more snowfall, not just blowing snow. In the olden days it might rain just once during the summer. Now it happens all the time. It's awful," said Mullin.
In December the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), which represents all northern aboriginals, launched a legal petition against the United States, claiming that its greenhouse gas emissions harmed Inuit human rights. Washington pulled out of the Kyoto accord on climate change in 2001.
Some predict the Arctic waterways could be ice free in summer as early as 2015, which would severely curb the ability of the Inuit to hunt.
"We're an adaptable people but adaptation has its limitations," ICC chair Sheila Watt-Clouthier told Reuters, saying the Inuit would continue urging the world to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
"We're not going to be powerless victims over this issue of climate change ... Science is indicating that we still have about a 10- to 15-year window of opportunity," she said.
The U.S. administration has shifted its position and now agrees that human activity worsens climate change.
This still leaves a few experts who say the gradual warming of the Earth is caused mostly by natural cycles and that human activities have a moderate impact at best.
Far from the war of words down south, the inhabitants of the High Arctic ponder another mystery. Many people say the air is noticeably brighter in the sunless winter months.
Davidson says this is because a blanket of warmer air higher up is acting as a conduit for the light from the south.
"If it keeps on being this warm, the world will change completely," he said.
"When I hear people say there is no such thing as global warming, I find them totally appalling."

Is Pacific Decadal Oscillation the Smoking Gun?

The blogosphere is abuzz with the news that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is reverting to a cool phase. Hot on the heels of this bombshell, a new climate model predicts a cooling North Atlantic Ocean will slow down global warming. This has led to speculation that man-made global warming is no match for natural cycles or even that Pacific Decadal Oscillation is responsible for most of the climate change over the past century including the warming since the mid-70's.

What is Pacific Decadal Oscillation?

The PDO is a climate phenomena found primarily in the North Pacific (as opposed to El Niño which affects mostly the tropical Pacific). It has two phases that it typically alternates between; usually staying in one phase for a significant period of time (as little as 10 and as much as 40 years). However, it's not uncommon for these long periods to be broken by intervals when it switches phases for anything between 1 and 5 years. The phases of the PDO have been called warm phases (positive values) or cool phases (negative values).

Figure 1: Monthly values for PDO index: 1900 to May 2006. Figure source: Climate Impacts Group
So the first lesson of PDOs is that while we talk about a 20 to 30 year period, it is not very clear cut at all. In fact, an analysis of the frequency of the events does not produce much in the way of a firm period. Incidentally back in 1999 it was predicted that we were entering a cool phase.
The second lesson of PDOs is that while we talk about warm phases and cool phases these are more names than physical descriptions. As seen in Figure 2, a cool phase PDO is associated with cool sea surface temperatures along the Pacific coast of North America, but the center of the North Pacific ocean is still quite warm. Consequently it would appear that there is nothing fundamental about a PDO that would cause significant changes to global temperatures.

Figure 2: PDO warm phase (left) and cool phase (right). Image courtesy of JISAO.
Nevertheless, climate is always full of surprises and to be complete we should look at how the PDO's change of phase coincide with a change in climate trends? In 1905, PDO switched to a warm phase as global warming began. In 1946, PDO switched to a cool phase as temperatures cool mid-century. In 1977, PDO switched to a warm phase around the same time as the modern global warming period. Is PDO the smoking gun?

Figure 3: Monthly PDO index (blue) versus monthly global land ocean temperature anomanly (red). Smoothed data and trend lines are added.
While PDO does have some degree of correlation with short term variations in global temperature, the striking feature of Figure 3 is the contrast in trends between PDO and global temperature. Obviously the PDO as an oscillation between positive and negative values shows no long term trend. In contrast, temperature displays a long term warming trend. When the PDO last switched to a cool phase, global temperatures were about 0.4C cooler than currently.
The long term warming trend indicates the total energy in the Earth's climate system is increasing. This is due to an energy imbalance - more energy is coming in than is going out (Hansen 2005). Various factors affect the Earth's energy balance. A brightening sun increases inbound energy. Atmospheric aerosols reflect sunlight, decreasing inbound energy. Greenhouse gases absorb outgoing longwave radiation, reducing the amount of outgoing energy.
The total energy imbalance is expressed as net forcing, the sum of all the various forcings (eg - solar, aerosols, greenhouse gases, etc). Figure 4 compares net forcing to global temperature over the 20th century:

Figure 4: Net forcing (Blue - NASA GISS) versus global land ocean temperature anomaly (Red - GISS Temp).
When all forcings are included, net forcing shows good correlation with global temperatures. There is no single smoking gun. As our climate continues to absorb more energy than it emits, we can expect the long term warming trend to continue with short term fluctuations superimposed. This is the point of Keenlyside 2008 and is echoed by the Hadley Centre who predicted internal variability will partially offset the anthropogenic global warming signal for the next few years (Smith 2007).
Both predictions come from climate models seeking to incorporate ocean dynamics (I'm surprised noone has coined the term GCM 2.0 yet). These new models predict that while warming will slow over the next few years due to internal variability, the warming trend will resume in the long term.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Is-Pacific-Decadal-Oscillation-the-Smoking-Gun.html

Sahara Shrinking

The southern Saharan desert is in retreat, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa.
Burkina Faso, one of the West African countries devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago, is growing so much greener than families who fled to wetter coastal regions are starting to go home.
New research confirming this remarkable environmental turnaround is to be presented to Burkina Faso’s ministers and international aid agencies in November. And it is not just Burkina Faso.
New Scientist has learned that a separate analysis of satellite images completed this summer reveals that dunes are retreating right across the Sahel region on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Vegetation is ousting sand across a swathe of land stretching from Mauritania on the shores of the Atlantic to Eritrea 6000 kilometres away on the Red Sea coast.
Nor is it just a short-term trend. Analysts say the gradual greening has been happening since the mid-1980s, though has gone largely unnoticed. Only now is the evidence being pieced together.

Yes, it is a bit dated, from back in 2002. But, if George Bush’s TANG records from back in the early 70′s are relevant, why not a 4 year old study?
Is this proof that global warming is not really happening, and that the Earth is actually getting cooler? Not according to the Guardian:

Global warming could significantly increase rainfall in Saharan Africa within a few decades, potentially ending the severe droughts that have devastated the region, a new study suggests.
The discovery was made by climate experts at the Royal Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, who used a computer model to predict changes in the Sahel region – a wide belt stretching from the Atlantic to the horn of Africa that includes Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti.

Global warming will heat the land more than the sea, leading to changes in air pressure and weather. When the Netherlands team simulated this effect and combined it with warming caused by the expected rises in greenhouse gas emissions between 1980 and 2080, they found Sahel rainfall in the July to September period jumped 1-2mm a day.
Some scientists suspected that global warming might increase rainfall in the region, causing the so-called greening of the Sahara, but these are the biggest predicted increases so far.

Huh? So it is global warming that is increasing the rainfall that is causing the Sahara to retreat? This is the problem with the scientific research into climate change. Theories abound. Which one is correct?
I am not a big fan of computer models when applied to weather. They cannot accurately tell us what a hurricane will do, nor what the weather the next 10 days will be exactly. So, how am I to believe what the Guardian reported? I will not discount it out of hand, but, more evidence is needed.

Can We Save the World by 2015?

If international leaders were as united as the scientific community on climate change, warming might be a thing of the past. This year the UN's Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a series of reports that laid to rest any doubts that global warming is real — and outlined the frightening consequences of continued inaction. At the release of the IPCC's final summary last month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon — who has made climate change a top priority of his administration — laid out the threat in stark terms. "The world's scientists have spoken clearly, and with one voice," he said. "I expect the world's policymakers to act the same."
Unfortunately, the global political community is a long way from speaking with one voice on anything, and climate change is no exception. We'll know for sure next week, when environment and energy ministers from around the world meet on the Indonesian island of Bali, for the UN's climate change conference. The summit has been held nearly every year since 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) — the document that has since guided international work on global warming — was hammered out. It was at the 1997 conference, held in Japan, that the Kyoto Protocol was passed, but since then, there's been little progress, thanks in no small part to President George W. Bush's determined foot dragging on climate change.
But with the Kyoto set to go into effect in 2008, this year's talks in Bali will be the most important international environmental negotiations in over a decade. The Kyoto Protocol — which requires developed nations who have ratified the deal to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of about 5% below 1990 levels by 2012 — expires in just five years. Given how long international treaties take to be developed and ratified, the world needs to begin immediately at Bali the process of preparing a successor to Kyoto to be ready by the end of 2012 — otherwise, we'll be faced with a global vacuum at the very moment when greenhouse emissions must begin falling in order to avoid dangerous climate change. "It's really critical to get negotiations formally started," says David Doniger, the policy director of the Natural Resource Defense Council's climate center. "We're almost at the point of no return. If we don't turn these emission trends down soon, we're cooked."
The good news is that the White House is seemingly the only place green hasn't gone mainstream. Just last week, 150 top global corporations — including General Electric, Johnson & Johnson and Shell — endorsed a petition calling for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, a business position unthinkable just a year ago. Australia — a Kyoto holdout, like the U.S. — just elected a new Prime Minister with a strong environmental record who says he'll ratify the Protocol. States and cities in the U.S. have taken their own steps on climate change in the absence of action from the White House, and Congress is finally ready to step in; representatives just hammered out the details of a bill raising automobile fuel economy standards to 35 mpg. "The tenor seems to be different this time," says Jennifer Haverkamp, international counsel for Environmental Defense. "There is a building sense that enough time has been wasted and it is time to act."
One major dispute could trip up progress at Bali, however. Under Kyoto, only developed countries were required to make mandatory cuts in their carbon emissions; developing nations like China and India had no such demands. The U.S. has long maintained that it won't sign onto a new deal unless the developing countries are included in a more substantive way — a position unlikely to change even when the occupant of the White House does. Beijing and New Delhi both argue that the vast majority of historical carbon emissions came from the developed nations (CO2 stays in the air for up to 200 years), so action should come from the rich first — a contention arguably supported by the UNFCCC itself, which calls for "common but differentiated responsibilities" between nations on climate change. But the reality is that the bulk of future CO2 emissions will come from rapidly growing developing nations, and a climate deal that gave them a free pass would be useless. "We need a process that opens the door for negotiations for all economies," says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
None of this will actually be decided at Bali. Despite the fact that we are rapidly running out of time to cap carbon emissions — the head of the IPCC has said the world has until 2015 at the latest — Bali is just the beginning of the beginning, not the end. As Claussen points out, a successful summit would be one that, counterintuitively, leaves much undecided — while attaching a firm deadline to the end of negotiations, with 2010 as the latest possible date. With the Bush Administration nearing lame duck status, a 2010 deadline would give a new U.S. Administration time — though not much time — to enter the process and hopefully take a leading position. That extra time might also allow China or India to soften their negotiating tactics, and perhaps accept lesser limitations, such as mandatory targets in energy efficiency or renewable power use. The best contribution President Bush can make for the Bali process is to continue doing what he has done best on climate change: nothing.
The whole process can seem frustratingly slow, considering how dire the threat of climate change is — as if we were convening a town hall meeting to decide to put out a fire that is already raging. "Getting 185 countries around a negotiating table is a difficult way to run the world," says Andrew Deutz, who heads the Nature Conservancy's International Institutions and Agreements team. "But the advantage of the UN process is that it's about the process. It can continue to evolve." That's already begun to happen in recent years, as consensus on global warming has grown in every corner of the world, as businesses have turned to alternative power and governments have begun to set their own caps on carbon. But we're in a race and we're already behind. If we can't get off to a good start at Bali, we may never catch up.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1689985,00.html

Italy, Switzerland change border due to Global Warming

ONCE frontiers were changed by armies. Now the job is done by global warming. Italy and Switzerland are preparing to make—or rather to recognise—alterations to the border that runs through the Monte Rosa massif of the Alps. Despite what romantically minded locals may say, the name of the massif has nothing to with the pink blush its peaks acquire at sunset. It comes from a dialect word meaning glacier.
The massif has nine glaciers. In several places the line between the two countries is set at the watershed. Because of global warming, the glaciers have shrunk, so the watershed has shifted, “in some places by as much as ten metres”, says General Carlo Colella of Italy’s Military Geographic Institute in Florence. In January, after four years of work by the general and his staff, Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet approved a change in the frontier.
The line was first drawn in 1861 and enshrined in a convention 80 years later. The biggest change since came in the 1970s, when a stream that marked the border was diverted to allow construction of the Lugano-Como motorway. The two countries agreed a compensatory exchange of territory. The next Italian-Swiss agreement will be the second of three made necessary by the shrinking Alpine glaciers. Italy has already concluded a deal with Austria and plans to make another with France.
Recognising that global warming will make any line based on the watershed of a glacier temporary, the understanding with Austria has for the first time introduced the concept of a movable border. Experts from both sides will be empowered to alter it at regular intervals. Until, presumably, the glaciers disappear altogether.

http://www.economist.com/node/13496212

The Howling Wilderness of Carbon Credits

One of central causes of the financial meltdown was the lack of transparency in the complex derivatives, like bundled mortgages and credit default swaps.  Advocates of global warming would have us to believe that they can construct a transparent carbon emissions trading scheme that will provide market incentives to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. 

At the center of this trading scheme is the idea of a carbon credit, which is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit one ton of carbon or carbon dioxide equivalent. Think of a carbon credit as property in a free market economy -- Ayn Rand, meet Global Warming.

Excessive Carbon emissions (like smoke from a steel mill or a coal fired power plant) can, in theory, be offset by buying carbon credits.  But the calculations involved will make bundled mortgage derivatives look like second-grade arithmetic, and, as Terry Macalister reported in the Guardian on 4 Feb 2011, carbon credits are very vulnerable to fraud and theft, so traders are wary of them, to say the least [emphasis added]:

Attempts to end the chaos inside Europe's emissions trading scheme (ETS) stumbled today when the market reopened, only for minimal trading to take place.

Traders were said to be worried that business could remain polluted by the theft of carbon credits in Austria and elsewhere that forced a shutdown of the scheme on 19 January, at the estimated cost of £90m in lost business.

The European commission has called on national carbon registries to beef up their IT security systems, but has upset traders by declining to publicly reveal the minimum standards now required.

The ETS is seen as a vital tool in the fight against climate change and the fraud is a setback to attempts to sell the cap-and-trade scheme to the US, Australia and elsewhere. ....[cont.]

I asked my good friend Marshall Auerback, an expert on the machinations of Wall Street who has degrees in philosophy and law, if he could elaborate on this vulnerability.  He responded as follows:

And here's another story, which should make one VERY wary.  The person who developed the credit default swap, Blythe Masters from JP Morgan, is also behind the creation of this carbon capture program.  Leave it to Wall Street to find a way to extract an economic rent from pollution!

The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)  amounts to nothing more than a privatisation of the commons asset which we call the atmosphere. The ETS would create private property relations over public space.  In Europe, it's been a colossal failure. The EU introduced what was known as the Clean Development Mechanism, which was an offset system allowing polluters in Europe to invest in emissions-reduction infrastructure in poor and developing countries and then use the "offsets" to avoid undertaking more costly emission reductions in Europe.

There is ample evidence of the projects having disastrous effects in poor countries and regions. There has been very little technology transfer from the rich to poor countries. The projects undertaken have often brought civic leaders in poor countries into conflict with land-holders with the latter enduring significant reductions in their capacity to feed themselves. Payola is rife!

This article in the Sunday Times (September 13, 2009) said:

The legitimacy of the $100 billion (£60 billion) carbon-trading market has been called into question after the world's largest auditor of clean-energy projects was suspended by United Nations inspectors.

SGS UK had its accreditation suspended last week after it was unable to prove its staff had properly vetted projects that were then approved for the carbon-trading scheme, or even that they were qualified to do so.

It is clear that emissions have not gone down much if at all yet prices of carbon-heavy goods and services have gone up. Yes: profits have gone up among the big polluters. The big winners have been the heavy polluters and the hedge funds (at least prior to the crisis) while the losers have been consumers, the environment, and poor communities.

Market-based systems are insensitive to equity issues. Fortunately, we'll never get this introduced here in the U.S., because it constitutes an attack on the Appalachian coal regions and Obama has already lost West Virginia and probably Ohio.  If he were to try this stuff, he might well lose Pennsylvania in 2012, and he'll be a one-termer."

Note particularly Marshall's comment about leaving it to Wall Street to hijack the "commons asset which we call the atmosphere."  The economic problem of any commons raises all sorts of squishy intellectual problems, because it is fundamentally about a question of moral values, not property values -- it deals with values we profess to uphold and expect others to uphold. 

It is ironic indeed that the assault on the "commons"  by carbon credits is being spearheaded by those advocating policies to reduce global warming.  These people profess to be protectors of the environment.  Yet the seminal article on the moral character of the problems in dealing with a commons, i.e., The Tragedy of the Commons, was written by the respected environmentalist Garrett Harding and appeared in Science in 1968.  In fact, Hardin's brilliant essay became one of the most important sources of intellectual pressure that led to the emergence of a institutionalized environmental protection movement, with the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970!

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/02/the-howling-wilderness-of-carbon-credits/70817/

Revealed: scandal of carbon credit firm

A Sydney carbon credits company thought to have been running some of the world's biggest offsets deals appears to be a fake, shifting paper certificates instead of saving forests and cutting greenhouse emissions.
Shift2neutral says it has made high-profile events such as the Australian PGA golf championship and the Sydney Turf Club's world-first ''green race day'' carbon neutral.
But deals to generate more than $1 billion worth of carbon credits by saving jungles from logging in the Philippines, the Congo and across south-east Asia do not seem to exist.

The global network of investors and carbon offset certifiers supposed to be brokering deals with foreign presidents and the World Bank can be traced to a modest office in a shopping village in Westleigh, staffed by shift2neutral's founder, Brett Goldsworthy.
Mr Goldsworthy insists every certificate for carbon offsets he issues has value and represents a real reduction in greenhouse emissions somewhere in the world. That is what he has told puzzled investors and companies who have unwittingly sought to reduce their carbon footprint.
But when pressed for examples of any specific project that has cut emissions to generate the carbon credits the company offers for sale, he was unable to provide even one.
''I just don't have that information in front of me right now - there are all sorts of projects, it is all legit, I just am not in a position to tell you what they are at short notice,'' said Mr Goldsworthy, who had been provided with written questions 24 hours before.
''There was a waste-to-energy plant in Korea, it would have been in about 2008. I don't have a name for you right now, but given time I can get all the information.''
He said none of his clients had ever raised concerns about where his carbon credits were coming from. But the Herald has spoken to many former investors and businesses who have dealt with shift2neutral.
''I realised there was something strange about Brett when we were negotiating with the tribes in the Philippines and he said he had a boatload of commandos waiting offshore in case he needed a 'hot extraction','' said Robert Hick, who invested in shift2neutral.
The deal, supposedly to preserve $1 billion worth of tribal jungle in Mindanao with financial support from the World
Bank, fell through. Mr Hick is still waiting to see a return.
Mr Goldsworthy, who is in a dispute with Mr Hick, claims delicate negotiations with the president of the Philippines are still under way. He said an arrest warrant had been issued for Mr Hick. But court papers make it clear there is no warrant for Mr Hick.
Redd monitor, a website that examines global implementation of the UN's reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation program, said shift 2neutral is not generating any carbon credits.
''If these deals were genuine, shift2neutral would be one of the biggest companies in the REDD world,'' said a spokesman, Chris Lang. ''Yet he seems to be a one-man band running his company from an office over a shopping centre in a suburb of Sydney.
''Mr Goldsworthy has no experience whatsoever in carrying out forest conservation projects in the tropics.
''In fact he has provided no details about how he intends to reduce deforestation in the areas where he has projects. Vic Vidal, chairman of the Tribal Coalition of Mindanao, points out the destruction of the forests continued regardless of what shift2neutral was doing.''
The Sydney Turf Club - now the Australian Turf Club - said shift2neutral provided carbon credits to offset its ''Green Day at the Gardens'' at Rosehill racecourse in January 2009.
''STC used the carbon credits it received to offset the carbon emissions deemed necessary to produce the day, thus allowing the event to be certified as carbon neutral," the then chief executive, Michael Kenny, said.
The Australian PGA Championship was alerted to problems with its carbon neutral events when contacted this week by the Herald. It confirmed carbon emissions from the 2008 and 2009 championships were offset by certificates from shift2neutral.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/revealed-scandal-of-carbon-credit-firm-20110407-1d6a4.html#ixzz1LbeiY7wu

Global warming doesn't pass wind

While carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to fill the atmosphere and global warming is continuing its affect on the world, one of the key solutions to it — wind energy — isn’t likely to be very affected. Based on the output of several regional climate models,  the  stability of wind energy production in the US seem long term, and shows that over the next 30 to 50 years the industry will be largely unaffected. Wind energy currently accounts for about 2 percent of U.S. energy production; though the Department of Energy and wind industry backers say it could generate 20% by the year 2030.


http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/03/6577306-global-warming-doesnt-pass-wind

Teens Sue Federal Government for Failing to Protect Children from Global Warming

A collection of teenagers is suing the federal government, claiming it has not taken seriously enough its obligation to protect the Earth's atmosphere from global warming. The plaintiffs include Madeleine W., a 15-year-old from San Francisco, who co-founded the Environmental Action Committee at her middle school. Her mother  is representing her. Other plaintiffs include the organizations Kids vs. Global Warming and WidEarth Guardians. According to the claim, the plaintiffs accuse the feds of not maintaining and protecting the "public trust," or the Earth's natural resources. If the government does not take action now, "our children and our children's children will suffer," the claim states.


http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/05/global_warming_teens_lawsuit.php

Bamboo grass may hold key to fighting global warming

The Bulacan Environment and Natural Resources Office (BENRO) emphasized the value of bamboo in Philippine culture as well as its ability to fight the adverse effects of global warming. Recent studies show that since bamboo has a cooling effect to its surroundings, massive planting of it may serve as a “thermostat” of the environment. The study showed that bamboo trees can absorb 33% more carbon dioxide and can emit up to 35% more oxygen as compared to other trees, making it the best solution for carbon sequestration. Another characteristic of the bamboo according to the research, is that it’s the most sustainable tree because in a span of three years, it can be harvested unlike others that will take 10 years.


http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/316976/bamboo-grass-may-hold-key-fighting-global-warming

Climate Change Hinders Crop Yields, Study Finds

Global warming is substantially cutting potential crop yields in some countries — to such an extent that it may even cause food price increases. Wheat yields in recent years were down by more than 10 percent in Russia and by a few percentage points each in India, France and China and Corn yields were down a few percentage points in China, Brazil and France. Some countries saw small gains from the temperature increases, however as the extra carbon dioxide that humans are pumping into the air acted as a fertilizer that encouraged plant growth. But still, the losses in some countries outweigh the gains in others.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/science/earth/06warming.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The troposhpere is warming too!

Not only is Earth's surface warming, but the troposphere -- the lowest level of the atmosphere, where weather occurs -- is heating up too, U.S. and British meteorologists reported on Monday.
In a review of four decades of data on troposphere temperatures, the scientists found that warming in this key atmospheric layer was occurring, just as many researchers expected it would as more greenhouse gases built up and trapped heat close to the Earth.


This study aims to put to rest a controversy that began 20 years ago, when a 1990 scientific report based on satellite observations raised questions about whether the troposphere was warming, even as Earth's surface temperatures climbed.
The original discrepancy between what the climate models predicted and what satellites and weather balloons measured had to do with how the observations were made, according to Dian Seidel, research meteorologist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It was relatively easy to track surface temperatures, since most weather stations sat on or close to the ground, Seidel said by telephone from NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland, outside Washington.
Measuring temperature in the troposphere is more complicated. Starting in the late 1950s, scientists dangled weather instruments from big balloons, with the data sent back to researchers by radio transmission as the balloons rose through the six miles of the troposphere.