EcoRadio

Category: Climate chaos

The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity. 

  • On our Radar: The Danube ices over

    Beijing plans to reduce air pollution levels by 30 percent by 2020 by phasing out old cars, relocating factories and planting new forests, state news reports say. [Reuters]

    A federal magistrate in New Orleans rules that lawyers for plaintiffs suing BP and others for damages related to the 2010 gulf oil spill won’t be able to introduce some of the corporate defendants’ internal e-mails as evidence at trial. [Bloomberg]

    Scientists at Cambridge University have developed a new type of solar cell that could harvest 25 percent more energy from the sun than traditional ones. The cell, a hybrid, absorbs red light and harnesses the extra energy of blue light to boost the electrical current. [Click Green]

  • Oceanography News

    Deconstructing a mystery: What caused Snowmaggedon?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2012 12:28 PM PST

    Scientists are using computer models to help unravel the mystery of a record-setting snowfall in the Washington, DC area in early 2010.

    Ocean microbe communities changing, but long-term environmental impact is unclear

    Posted: 09 Feb 2012 11:40 AM PST

    As oceans warm due to climate change, water layers will mix less and affect the microbes and plankton that pump carbon out of the atmosphere – but researchers say it’s still unclear whether these processes will further increase global warming or decrease it. It could be either, they say.

    Ocean warming causes elephant seals to dive deeper

    Posted: 09 Feb 2012 11:02 AM PST

    Global warming is having an effect on the dive behavior and search for food of southern elephant seals. Researchers have discovered that the seals dive deeper for food when in warmer water. The scientists attribute this behavior to the migration of prey to greater depths and now wish to check this theory using a new sensor which registers the feeding of the animals below water.

    Global sea level rise: NASA mission takes stock of Earth’s melting land ice

    Posted: 09 Feb 2012 07:05 AM PST

    In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, researchers have used NASA data to calculate how much Earth’s melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise. Using satellite measurements from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), the researchers measured ice loss in all of Earth’s land ice between 2003 and 2010, with particular emphasis on glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica. The total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica and Earth’s glaciers and ice caps during the study period was about 4.3 trillion tons (1,000 cubic miles), adding about 0.5 inches (12 millimeters) to global sea level. That’s enough ice to cover the United States 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) deep.
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  • Scientists say ozone layer depletion has stopped

     

    The Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010 report said a 1987 international treaty that phased out chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) – substances used in refrigerators, aerosol sprays and some packing foams – had been successful.

    Ozone provides a natural protective filter against harmful ultra-violet rays from the sun, which can cause sunburn, cataracts and skin cancer as well as damage vegetation.

    First observations of a seasonal ozone hole appearing over the Antarctic occurred in the 1970s and the alarm was raised in the 1980s after it was found to be worsening under the onslaught of CFCs, prompting 196 countries to join the Montreal Protocol.

    “The Montreal Protocol signed in 1987 to control ozone depleting substances is working, it has protected us from further ozone depletion over the past decades,” said World Meteorological Organisation head of research Len Barrie.

    “Global ozone, including ozone in the polar region is no longer decreasing but not yet increasing,” he told journalists.

    The 300 scientists who compiled the four yearly ozone assessment now expect that the ozone layer in the stratosphere will be restored to 1980 levels in 2045 to 2060, according to the report, “slightly earlier” than expected.

    Although CFCs have been phased out, they accumulated and persist in the atmosphere and the effect of the curbs takes years to filter through.

    The ozone hole over the South Pole, which varies in size and is closely monitored when it appears in springtime each year, is likely to persist even longer and may even be aggravated by climate change, the report said.

    Scientists are still getting to grips with the complex interaction between ozone depletion and global warming, Mr Barrie explained.

    “In the Antarctic, the impact of the ozone hole and the surface climate is becoming evident,” he said.

    “This leads to important changes in surface temperature and wind patterns, amongst other environmental changes.”

    CFCs are classified among greenhouse gases that cause global warming, so the phase out “provided substantial co-benefits by reducing climate change,” the report found.

    Mr Barrie estimated that it had avoided about 10 gigatonnes of such emissions a year.

    However, the ozone-friendly substances that have replaced CFCs in plastics or as refrigerants – hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — are also powerful greenhouse gases.

    HFCs alone are regarded as 14,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is the focus of international efforts to tackle climate change, and HFC emissions are growing by 8 per cent a year, according to UN agencies.

    “This represents a further potential area for action within the overall climate change challenge,” said UN Environment Programme chief Achim Steiner in a statement.

    – AFP

    Tags: environment, climate-change, science-and-technology, united-states

    First posted 3 hours 38 minutes ago

  • The Scale of the low-carbon task is immense

     

    A new paper in Science by Dr Steve Davis and colleagues at Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, gives us a clear estimate. Davis says that our existing energy infrastructure will put about 500 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2 into the atmosphere during the course of its life (this is about 15 times the world’s annual emissions from all sources today).

    The paper calculates this number by examining the number of power plants, motor vehicles and homes around the globe and estimating how long they will remain in use. The research team found that in the past, the average electricity-generating station lasted about 35 years before being demolished. Cars typically run for about 17 years before being scrapped, lorries and buses nearer 30. Since we know when all the power plants in the world were constructed and the average age of the planet’s vehicles, Davis and his colleagues could estimate how much carbon dioxide will be emitted by existing infrastructure during the remainder of its life.

    Put another 500Gt of CO2 into the atmosphere between now and 2050, and the expected temperature rise will be about 0.5C of extra warming on top of what we have already seen. (Of course there is a very wide range to this forecast because of the uncertainties in the models of how temperature change is related to emissions). Davis and his colleagues make the point that if we stopped building new coal-fired power plants tomorrow and manufactured no new cars or trucks we would therefore keep warming well below the 2C increase which global scientists think is the maximum tolerable. Davis’s climate models suggest that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere would rise to about 430 parts per million (ppm), a rise of about 40ppm on today’s level and well below the 450ppm level that scientists often associate with 2C of warming.

    That’s the good news – today’s energy infrastructure probably isn’t enough, by itself, to topple us into wholly unmanageable climate change. The bad news is that this figure assumes that we build no fossil fuel power stations in the future and that all our new vehicles and homes are zero-carbon. That’s not going to happen and the scale of the challenge is grimly indicated by the current rate of growth in low-carbon electricity. Of the 1,300 gigawatts of new power station capacity built since 2000, 31% uses coal, 34% gas and 4% oil. This leaves 2% nuclear and 17% renewables. And even this number substantially overestimates the share of future electricity production coming from renewables since both wind and solar power plants only produce a fraction of their maximum output. The wind and the sun aren’t available all the time.

    In a perspective in Science, Dr Marty Hoffert of New York University looks at how much energy we are likely to need to meet the world’s requirements in future. Keeping the world’s economy going requires continuously production of about 14,000 gigawatts of energy. That’s equivalent to about 10,000 large-scale power plants. As the world economy grows, this is likely to rise to at least twice this level by 2050, even if we achieve major gains in the efficiency with which we use energy. So the challenge is to run down existing carbon-polluting energy sources rapidly and to replace them with atmosphere-friendly equivalents.

    The scale of this task is immense. My rough calculation is that the world needs to ramp up its yearly rate of installation of low-carbon energy about 30-fold from today’s levels within the next couple of decades.

    A few wind turbines aren’t going to be enough.

     

    • Chris Goodall is a businessman, author and climate change expert

  • Deadly flood threat hangs over French Alpine village

     

    The danger may be invisible but it is real enough. One such disaster remains in Saint-Gervais’s collective memory. In 1892, 80,000 cubic metres of water that had collected in a sub-glacial cavity burst through the ice “cork” that was holding it in. A torrential flow of water tore down rocks and trees in its path and buried Saint-Gervais in mud and debris, leaving 175 dead.

    According to the current mayor, Jean-Marc Peillex, far greater damage would be caused now, “due to urbanisation and the large number of tourists visiting the glacier”. As many as 900 houses could be swept away.

    The alarm was first sounded in 2007, when the thickness of the ice was measured by radar. “Nobody thought there might be water under the glacier,” Vincent said. “But the images showed something abnormal about 10 metres above the bedrock.”

    In 2009 this was confirmed by proton nuclear magnetic resonance, a technique similar to a medical MRI scan. It proved that an enormous pocket of water – or possibly several pockets – was locked deep inside Tête-Rousse. The reason for the water collecting lies in climate warming. But paradoxically – grassroots science being more complex than theoretical models – this has led to a cooling of the lower part of the glacier. The probable process, as described by Vincent, is that the water from thawing in the upper part of the glacier trickles down on to the bedrock though micro-fissures until it finds an outlet.

    In the case of Tête-Rousse, the warming observed over the past decades has reduced the thickness of the snow cover (the firn, which provides thermal protection), and to a greater extent in the lower part of the glacier than in the upper part.

    As a result, during a recent cold snap, the thinner spur of ice below cooled more rapidly than the ice at the glacier’s summit (there being a difference of more than 2C between the two), resulting in the formation of a dam that blocked the water trickling down from above. However, being unable to find an outlet, the water has accumulated and now the pressure is rising – and threatening to burst like a pressure cooker.

    A scientific report issued in July by three Grenoble laboratories concluded that it was necessary to pump the water out the sub-glacial cavity as soon as possible. A warning system, costing $640,000, was immediately set up. Two metal cables were placed across the glacier, which, if broken, would trigger a siren in the valley below. The nearest inhabitants have been informed about the 17 rallying points on high ground, and would have 10 minutes to reach the nearest one if the alarm sounds.

    The pumping of Tête-Rousse began last month. Powerful boring machines and pumps were transported by helicopter to the glacier. The water will be pumped out within a month and gradually released. The whole operation will cost $2.5m, 80% of which will be paid for by the French government and the European Union.

    Is that the end of the story? “In a year or two we will have to check if the pocket is filling up again,” says Vincent. “If that is the case, we will have to consider boring a permanent channel to drain the water.” Models show that the water collected in just two years.

    Reservoir formation under glaciers is a rare phenomenon. But with global warming these risks are increasing, such as the collapse of surface ice and, with the receding permanent snowline, the formation of proglacial lakes whose natural barriers will give way, up there between earth and sky.

    Keeping the lights on

    In Chamonix, climate change is also a reality for EDF, the French electricity giant. The Mer de Glace glacier has been retreating fast in recent years and is threatening the sub-glacial water intake in the Les Bois hydroelectric power plant.

    When this plant came on stream in 1973, the intake took place 200 metres under the ice. In spring 2009, it was out in the open, and, to make matters worse, covered by a mass of glacial rock and sediment following a number of storms.

    EDF now has to maintain electricity production while carrying out the work needed to adapt to the new circumstances – and keeping the Les Bois plant “at the highest level of environmental integration”.

    Not without reason: the 12km Mer de Glace is the longest French glacier and something of a national treasure.

    The stakes for the Haute-Savoie region are considerable. The Bois hydroelectric plant produces 113m kWh per year, mostly during the thaw, which is the domestic consumption of 50,000 inhabitants, or a town the size of Annecy.

    However, the glacier has been retreating at a rate of about 30 metres a year since 2003. “And the pace has increased in the past few years,” said an EDF official. At the Rochers de Mottets level, for instance, ice thickness has been falling by between eight and 10 metres a year since 2004.

    “We anticipated this situation, and after some research, we decided to move the intake upstream in the glacier under 100 metres of ice, which won’t change anything to the scenery or the tourism business,” said EDF, before launching the $19m project. Work started in 2008 on an underground channel to divert the water permanently to the new intake area – no easy matter under such difficult geographic and climatic conditions. The installation is due to come on stream in the spring.

    Meanwhile, a temporary solution was found by digging a channel a few dozen metres long to emerge below the glacier. That will provide sufficient water to feed the plant until 2011.

    This article originally appeared in Le Monde

  • Mozambique’s food riots- the true face of global warming

     

    The immediate causes of the protests in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, and Chimoio about 500 miles north, are a 30% price increase for bread, compounding a recent double-digit increase for water and energy. When nearly three-quarters of the household budget is spent on food, that’s a hike few Mozambicans can afford.

    Deeper reasons for Mozambique’s price hike can be found a continent away. Wheat prices have soared on global markets over the summer in large part because Russia, the world’s third largest exporter, has suffered catastrophic fires in its main production areas. These blazes, in turn, find their origin both in poor firefighting infrastructure and Russia’s worst heatwave in over a century. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin extended an export ban in response to a new wave of wildfires in its grain belt, sending further signals to the markets that Russian wheat wouldn’t be available outside the country. With Mozambique importing over 60% of the wheat its people needs, the country has been held hostage by international markets.

    This may sound familiar. In 2008, the prices of oil, wheat, corn and rice peaked on international markets – corn prices almost tripled between 2005-2008. In the process, dozens of food-importing countries experienced food riots.

    Behind the 2008 protests were, first, natural events that looked like an excerpt from the meteorological section of the Book of Revelation – drought in Australia, crop disease in central Asia, floods in south-east Asia. These were compounded by the social systems through which their effects were felt. Oil prices were sky-high, which meant higher transport costs and fossil fuel-based fertiliser prices. Biofuel policy, particularly in the US, shifted land and crops from food into ethanol production, diverting food from stomachs to fuel tanks. Longer term trends in population growth and meat consumption in developing countries also added to the stress. Financial speculators piled into food commodities, driving prices yet further beyond the reach of the poor. Finally, some retailers used the opportunity to raise prices still further, and while commodity prices have fallen back to pre-crisis levels, most of us have yet to see the savings.

    Is this 2008 all over again? The weather has gone wild, meat prices have hit a 20-year high, groceries are being looted and heads of state are urging calm. The view from commodities desks, however, is that we’re not in quite as dire straits as two years ago. Fuel is relatively cheap and grain stores well stocked. We’re on track for the third-highest wheat crop ever, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). While all this is true, it misses the point: for most hungry people, 2008 isn’t over. The events of 2007-2008 tipped more than 100 million into hunger and the global recession has meant that they have stayed there. In 2006, the number of  undernourished people was 854 million. In 2009, it was 1.02 billion – the highest level since records began. The hardest hit by these price rises, in the US and around the world, were female-headed households.

    Not only are the hungry still around, but food riots have continued. In India, double-digit food price inflation was met by violent street protests at the end of 2009. The price rises were, again, the result of both extreme and unpredictable monsoons in 2009 and an increasingly faulty social safety net to prevent hunger. There have been frequent public protests about the price of wheat in Egypt this year, and Serbia and Pakistan have seen protests too.

    Although commodity prices fell after 2008, the food system’s architecture has remained largely the same over the past two decades. Bill Clinton has offered several mea culpas for the international trade and development policies that spawned the food crisis. Earlier this year, he blamed himself for Haiti‘s vulnerability to price fluctuations. “I did that,” he said in testimony to the US Senate. “I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.” More generally, Clinton suggested in 2008 that “food is not a commodity like others… it is crazy for us to think we can develop a lot of these countries [by] treating food like it was a colour television set.”

    Yet global commodity speculators continue to treat food as if it were the same as television sets, with little end in sight to what the World Development Movement has called “gambling on hunger in financial markets”. The recent US Wall Street Reform Act contained some measures that might curb these speculative activities, but their full scope has yet to be clarified. Europe doesn’t have a mechanism to regulate these kinds of speculative trades at all. Agriculture in the global south is still subject to the “Washington consensus” model, driven by markets and with governments taking a back seat to the private sector. And the only reason biofuels aren’t more prominent is that the oil they’re designed to replace is currently cheap.

    Clearly, neither grain speculation, nor forcing countries to rely on international markets for food, nor encouraging the use of agricultural resources for fuel instead of nourishment are natural phenomena. These are political decisions, taken and enforced not only by Bill Clinton, but legions of largely unaccountable international development professionals. The consequences of these decisions are ones with which people in the global south live everyday. Which brings us back to Mozambique.

    Recall that Mozambique’s street protests coincided not only with a rise in the price of bread, but with electricity and water price hikes too. In an interview with Portugal’s Lusa news agency, Alice Mabota of the Mozambican League of Human Rights didn’t use the term “food riots”. In her words: “The government… can’t understand or doesn’t want to understand that this is a protest against the higher cost of living.” The action on the streets isn’t simply a protest about food, but a wider act of rebellion. Half of Mozambique’s poor already suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the FAO. The extreme weather behind the grain fires in Russia transformed a political context in which citizens were increasingly angry and frustrated with their own governments.

    Yesterday, I reached Diamantino Nhampossa, the co-ordinator of Mozambique’s União Nacional de Camponeses (National Peasants Union of Mozambique). “These protests are going to end,” he told me. “But they will always come back. This is the gift that the development model we are following has to offer.” Like many Mozambicans, he knows full well which way the wind blows.