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

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/

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/

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

Just hot air? Justices debate lawsuit over global warming

Washington (CNN) -- The Supreme Court appeared reluctant Tuesday to allow a massive lawsuit by several states to proceed against private power companies whose greenhouse-gas emissions are accused of presenting a "public nuisance."
The environmental policy issue could have enormous implications on competing government efforts to control what many have claimed is major factor in global warming.
At issue is whether the federal courts can intervene and unilaterally establish targeted pollution emission levels, or whether federal government regulators should have the final say. Several justices worried that the scope of the problem and possible solutions might be too much for courts to tackle.
"The whole problem of dealing with global warming is that there are costs and benefits on both sides," said Chief Justice John Roberts, "and you have to determine how much you want to readjust the world economy to address global warming, and I think that's a pretty big burden to impose on a district court judge."
"Do you think that you have a federal common law cause of action against anybody in the world?" asked Justice Elena Kagan of the states' attorney. "Is there something that you think limits it to large emissions producers?"
The energy companies, backed by the Obama administration, say federal judges should not be setting environmental policy, especially on such a complex issue as clean air standards. The Environmental Protection Agency claims it has been actively working to beef up rules to control carbon dioxide emissions that cross over state lines from individual power plants.
But several states, backed by land trusts and environmental groups, have sued five private utilities and the federal Tennessee Valley Authority, saying U.S. authorities have not been aggressive enough in curbing emissions, which they say has led to increased smog, soaring temperatures and loss of forests and cropland.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/19/scotus.greenhouse.gasses/index.html?iref=allsearch

The desert city in serious danger of running dry

"Running water would change everything," says Luz Caballero wearily as she stirs a huge pot of beans in the Santa Maria People's Restaurant in Villa El Salavador, a sprawling, dusty shantytown on Lima's southern outskirts. "Living without it is just too hard."

Ms Caballero and the other locals take it in turns to staff the co-operative restaurant, serving up 100 cheap but filling lunches every day. If cooking on this scale seems complicated, then doing so without tapwater takes on an epic quality, with a continuous time-consuming, energy-sapping shuttling of buckets from the plastic barrels in the street outside.

Ms Caballero and her neighbours are among roughly 1.2 million residents of the Peruvian capital without running water. They rely on unregulated private water trucks, which charge up to 30 soles (£6.70) per cubic metre – 20 times what more affluent Peruvians pay for their tapwater – and frequently leave their customers waiting desperately. The new mayor wants to end this exploitation, but she faces immense challenges in a city where climate change has put water sources high in the Andes under unprecedented pressure.

Lima receives less than a third of an inch of precipitation a year and relies entirely on Andean rainfall and glacier melt, both in serious long-term decline. The Rímac, the largest of the three rivers that feeds the capital, has seen its low season flow fall more than 20 per cent in recent years. Satellite photos of the Eulalia Glacier, which feeds into the Rímac, show it to have shrunk dramatically just in the last decade, due, scientists say, to global warming.

With a population of 8.4 million, Lima is the world's second largest desert city after Cairo. However, while the Nile flows at a rate of 2,830 cubic metres per second, the Rímac averages just 29 cubic metres per second.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-desert-city-in-serious-danger-of-running-dry-2248943.html

Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting Faster

Rising sea levels could impact New York, London in just a few decades. 

 

VIDEO CLIP: http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7016584

Climate Change Takes Toll on the Lodgepole Pine

Rising temperatures, drought and the spread of destructive insect pests will shrink the North American range of the lodgepole pine nearly 10 percent by 2020, a new study finds.

The scientists behind the report said the projected decline of the evergreen species, whose range covers much of the Pacific Northwest and extends as far south as Colorado, was backed by observed ecosystem changes dating back to 1980.

The study was conducted by forestry researchers at Oregon State University and the Department of Forest Resource Management at the University of British Columbia. It will appear in the latest edition of the scientific journal Climatic Change.

“For skeptics of climate change, it’s worth noting that the increase in vulnerability of lodgepole pine we’ve seen in recent decades is made from comparisons with real climatic data and is backed up with satellite observations showing major changes on the ground,” Richard Waring, an emeritus professor of forest science at Oregon State University, said in a statement.

The tall, slender pines, once used widely by American Indian tribes as poles for teepee lodges, could largely disappear from the Pacific Northwest by the end of the century if current climate trends persist, the researchers estimated.

The lodgepole pine is just one of a number of North American tree species suffering from climate-related changes. In 2010, an estimated 100,000 spruce trees a day were toppled by a massive spruce beetle infestation in Colorado, according to a study of the state’s forests released earlier this month.

The 2010 outbreak covered nearly 210,000 acres of spruce forests in Colorado, nearly double the size of the affected area the previous year. The state also suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of lodgepole pine and aspen forests.

The threat to lodgepole pines from the destructive bark beetle has risen as decreasing snow cover and milder winters allow more of the insects to survive from season to season.

“Bark beetles in lodgepole pine used to be more selective, leaving the younger and healthier trees alone,” Dr. Waring said.

“Now their populations and pheromone levels are getting so high they can more easily reach epidemic levels and kill almost all adult trees. Less frost, combined with less snow, favors heavier levels of bark beetle infestation,” he said. “We’re already seeing more insect attack, and we project that it will get worse.”

In Colorado, the proliferation of dead trees poses the threat of uncontrollable wildfires, Tony Dixon, the Forest Service’s deputy regional forester for the Rocky Mountains, told The Durango Herald earlier in February.

“Dead zones” where the majority of trees have been killed off by beetle outbreaks are too risky for firefighters to enter on foot because of the risk of falling trees, Mr. Dixon said. Fires fed by fallen timber also burn close to the ground, rendering aerial tankers ineffective.

“We’re probably going to have to allow these fires to grow much larger than we’re accustomed to,” he said.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/climate-change-takes-toll-on-the-lodgepole-pine/

Mainland Shivers, and Hawaii Basks in Tourism

Tourists have been flocking to Hawaii, including Waikiki Beach last weekend. People in Chicago and New York, meanwhile, were thrilled to see the thermometer hit 40

One recent afternoon, as the temperature in their native Nashville dipped to a slim 7 degrees, Blythe Grant and Jordan Tlumak walked along the beach at Waikiki with beers in hand and smiles on their faces. 

“We just left three inches of snow in Nashville,” said Mr. Grant, 26 and buff. “I was pretty pumped to get on the plane.” Mr. Tlumak, his friend, nodded. “Nashville just doesn’t know how to handle that.”
Mr. Grant and Mr. Tlumak are not the only mainlanders to be gloating about their good luck. Hawaiian tourism officials, hotel operators and travel agents — battered by several years of slumping sales — have recently seen a marked increase in arrivals to the islands. And while there are various theories as to why — including favorable currency exchange rates attracting foreign visitors, and Obama on the beach — what most people can agree on is that the rotten weather in much of the rest of the country, including a series of brutal snowstorms in the Midwest and on the East Coast, has been good news in Hawaii. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17hawaii.html?scp=3&sq=weather&st=cse