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. 

  • A climate warning from the deep

    Bryozoans make unlikely prophets of doom. Nevertheless, scientists believe these tiny marine creatures, which live glued to the side of boulders, rocks and other surfaces, reveal a disturbing aspect about Antarctica that has critical implications for understanding the impact of climate change.

    British Antarctic Survey researchers have found the dispersal of these minute animals suggests a sea passage once divided Antarctica 125,000 years ago. The discovery was made for the ongoing Census of Antarctic Marine Life project and involved comparing bryozoans from the Ross and Weddell seas. These two seas are separated by the west Antarctic ice sheet, one of the planet’s largest masses of ice. Bryozoans found in the Ross and Weddell seas should have been fairly different in structure if the sheet had been stable and ancient. The two populations would have slowly evolved in different manners, if the sheet was millions of years old.

    But Dr David Barnes and his team discovered that the two populations were almost identical, indicating the two seas must have been connected by a major sea passage in the recent past, around 125,000 years ago. “What we’ve got is this group of animals that don’t disperse very well because the adults don’t move at all and the larvae are short-lived and sink, so they find it difficult to get around,” says Barnes. “So you’re left with this nice signal of where things used to be connected and, in this case, it appears to be a connection between what is now an ice sheet.”

    The impact of the west Antarctica ice sheet melting sufficiently to let a major sea passage extend through it would have been considerable. A complete collapse of the sheet today would lead to a sea-level rise of between 11ft and 16ft, for example, though the event uncovered by Barnes may only have been a partial one. Nevertheless, the research indicates that the great ice sheet, once thought to be impregnable, is really highly vulnerable.

  • Tibetan nomads struggle as grasslands disappear from the roof of the world

     

    Grassland degradation is evident along the twisting mountain road from Yushu to Xining, which passes through the Three Rivers national park, the source of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. Along some stretches the landscape is so barren it looks more like the Gobi desert than an alpine meadow.

    Phuntsok Dorje (name has been changed) is among the last of the nomads scratching a living in one of the worst affected areas. “There used to be five families on this plain. Now we are the only one left and there is not enough grass even for us,” he says. “It’s getting drier and drier and there are more and more rats every year.”

    Until about 10 years ago the nearest town, Maduo, used to be the richest in Qinghai province thanks to herding, fishing and mining, but residents say their economy has dried up along with the nearby wetlands.

    “This all used to be a lake. There wasn’t a road here then. Even a Jeep couldn’t have made it through,” said a Tibetan guide, Dalang Jiri, as we drove through the area. By one estimate, 70% of the former rangeland is now desert.

    “Maduo is now very poor. There is no way to make a living,” said a Tibetan teacher who gave only one name, Angang. “The mines have closed and grasslands are destroyed. People just depend on the money they get from the government. They just sit on the kang [a raised, heated, floor] and wait for the next payment.”

    Many of the local people are former herders moved off the land under a controversial “ecological migration” scheme launched in 2003. The government in Beijing is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. According to state media, this programme aims to restore the grasslands, prevent overgrazing and improve living standards.

    The Tibetan government-in-exile says the scheme does little for the environment and is aimed at clearing the land for mineral extraction and moving potential supporters of the Dalai Lama into urban areas where they can be more easily controlled.

    Qinghai is dotted with resettlement centres, many on the way to becoming ghettos. Nomads are paid an annual allowance – of 3,000 yuan (about £300) to 8,000 yuan per household – to give up herding for 10 years and be provided with housing. As in some native American reservations in the US and Canada, they have trouble finding jobs. Many end up either unemployed or recycling rubbish or collecting dung.

    Some feel cheated. “If I could go back to herding, I would. But the land has been taken by the state and the livestock has been sold off so we are stuck here. It’s hopeless,” said Shang Lashi, a resident at a resettlement centre in Yushu. “We were promised jobs. But there is no work. We live on the 3,000 yuan a year allowance, but the officials deduct money from that for the housing, which was supposed to be free.”

    Their situation was made worse by the earthquake that struck Yushu earlier this year, killing hundreds. People were crushed when their new concrete homes collapsed, a risk they would not have faced in their itinerant life on the grasslands. Many are once again living under canvas – in disaster relief tents and without land or cattle.

    In a sign of the sensitivity of the subject, the authorities declined to officially answer the Guardian’s questions. Privately, officials said resettlement and other efforts to restore the grassland, including fencing off the worst areas, were worthwhile.

    “The situation has improved slightly in the past five years. We are working on seven areas, planting trees and trying to restore the ecosystem around closed gold mines,” said one environmental officer. The problem would not be solved in the short term. “This area is particularly fragile. Once the grasslands are destroyed, they rarely come back. It is very difficult to grow grass at high altitude.”

    The programme’s effectiveness is questioned by others, including Wang Yongchen, founder of the Green Earth Volunteers NGO and a regular visitor to the plateau for 10 years. “Overgrazing was considered a possible cause of the grassland degradation, but things haven’t improved since the herds were enclosed and the nomads moved. I think climate change and mining have had a bigger impact.”

    Assessing the programme is complicated by political tensions. In the past year, three prominent Tibetan environmental campaigners have been arrested after exposing corruption and flaws in wildlife conservation on the plateau.

    Infestation

    Another activist, who declined to give his name, said it was difficult to comment. “The situation is complicated. Some areas of grassland are getting better. Others are worse. There are so many factors involved.”

    A growing population of pika, gerbils, mice and other rodents is also blamed for degradation of the land because they burrow into the soil and eat grass roots.

    Zoologists say this highlights how ecosystems can quickly move out of balance. Rodent numbers have increased dramatically in 10 years because their natural predators – hawks, eagles and leopards – have been hunted close to extinction. Belatedly, the authorities are trying to protect wildlife and attract birds of prey by erecting steel vantage points to replace felled trees.

    There is widespread agreement that this climatically important region needs more study.

    “People have not paid enough attention to the Tibetan plateau. They call it the Third Pole but actually it is more important than the Arctic or Antarctic because it is closer to human communities. This area needs a great deal more research,” said Yang Yong, a Chinese explorer and environmental activist. “The changes to glaciers and grasslands are very fast. The desertification of the grassland is a very evident phenomenon on the plateau. It’s a reaction by a sensitive ecosystem that will precede similar reactions elsewhere.”

    Phuntsok Dorje is unlikely to take part in any study. But he’s seen enough to be pessimistic about the future. “The weather is changing. It used to rain a lot in the summer and snow in the winter. There was a strong contrast between the seasons, but not now. It’s getting drier year after year. If it carries on like this I have no idea what I will do.”

    Additional reporting by Cui Zheng

    • To order Jonathan Watts’ book, When a Billion Chinese Jump, for £9.99 (rrp £14.99) call 0845 606 4232 or visit guardianbooks.co.uk.

     

  • Gillard faces Rudd-Made climate trap

     

    Related Coverage

    The Prime Minister’s plan to have a 150-member people’s assembly to create a consensus on climate change is already marked for the waste basket.

    The proposal for another talk-fest was always a dubious idea but it was a Labor climate change policy promised during the election campaign that the Greens have supplanted with a climate change committee that will include Labor and Greens MPs.

    Reaching a consensus at a people’s assembly is not going to mean much if the climate change committee takes a different stance and, after July 1 next year, a more radical climate change plan, acceptable to the Greens, is put to the Senate.

    In Rudd’s early days an emissions trading scheme, ill-defined, became part of a mantra for cutting carbon pollution and heading off catastrophic climate change and extreme weather, which included Australia’s prolonged drought and accompanying water shortages in southeastern Australia. The political issue that was to become a defining difference between the Howard government and the Rudd opposition was the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Ratifying Kyoto was a potent symbol because Howard would never agree to the ratification, although Australia was already a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, because he believed to do so worked against Australia’s economic interests as one of the world’s biggest suppliers of coal.

    The refusal to ratify Kyoto played into the image of Liberal dinosaurs who were “climate-change deniers”, old-fashioned and backward-looking.

    Rudd campaigned on the issue, forced the Howard government to shift ground and put forward its own belated plans for an ETS; to put a price on carbon.

    Rudd convinced the public of the importance of action on climate change by political leaders in Australia.

    Addressing the “greatest moral and economic challenge of our time” to protect our children and grandchildren became Rudd’s political hallmark.

    There was overwhelming public support for action on climate change and Labor soared ahead of the Coalition on the question of who was better able to handle the issue.

    Rudd exploited the political potential, but during the 2007 election campaign was careful to leave his policy options within acceptable limits by quickly repudiating remarks by the then climate change spokesman, Peter Garrett. The new frontbencher suggested it wouldn’t be necessary for developing nations to face binding commitments at the same time as Australia and other developed nations. As Labor leader Rudd reacted quickly and killed off what could have been a disastrous blow to climate change politics.

    It was this point that led to the failure of the UN’s Copenhagen climate change conference last year.

    In the end Rudd’s framing of the climate change action argument contributed greatly to the vision of an old and tired Coalition government and contributed to Howard’s defeat.

    The irony is that the creation of public demand for action on climate change meant a political problem was created, and the problem was insoluble.

    Howard was only the first leadership victim of the inherent problem of reconciling genuine concern about climate change with practical, effective and cost-efficient action.

    His Liberal Party successor, Brendan Nelson, was dumped as opposition leader in 2008 because he got caught between a shadow ministry that felt compelled to take climate change action and a back bench baulking at an ETS because of popular opposition in their electorates.

    Malcolm Turnbull took the opposite position to Nelson – who had sought to delay action on an ETS until after Copenhagen – and decided to speed through an ETS with Coalition amendments.

    Last year Turnbull argued that it was better to appear as a co-sponsor of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme with Coalition changes and then move on from climate change than continue to be painted as climate-change denying dinosaurs.

    But Turnbull’s position was opposed by his Coalition partners, the Nationals, and split the Liberal Party.

    In the end it was Tony Abbott’s opposition to an ETS that defeated Turnbull and made Abbott the fourth Liberal leader in just three years.

    Rudd’s demise followed his failure to pass legislation on an ETS, the despondent reaction to the Copenhagen fiasco and the final abandonment of the CPRS. Remember, it wasn’t just Coalition opposition that defeated Rudd’s CPRS but Greens opposition as well.

    Gillard has now agreed to meet Greens leader Bob Brown and new Greens MP Adam Bandt every parliamentary sitting week, “principally to discuss and negotiate any planned legislation”.

    According to the signed agreement: “When parliament is not in session, the Prime Minister, or her delegate, will meet with Senator Brown and Mr Bandt, or their delegate, at least once each fortnight, principally to discuss the upcoming legislative agenda.”

    Brown and Bandt have nominated gay marriage and a price on carbon as their top priorities.

    Having opposed gay marriage, not just on Labor policy but personal grounds, Gillard faces another difficult issue.

    It’s the return to finding a politically acceptable solution to Rudd’s insoluble problem.

     

  • Atlantic Rising: sea level rise threatens the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela

    Atlantic Rising: sea level rise threatens the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela

    Will Lorimer

    1st September, 2010

    Rising sea levels are forcing the migration of indigenous peoples and threatening the freshwater ecosystem of catfish and piranha found in the Orinoco Delta near the coast of Venezuela

    The Warao are a river people. Found in the Orinoco Delta, they live between the expansive ranches ringing the upper delta and the mangrove swamps of the coast. But sea level change is becoming an ever-pressing concern, threatening their way of life and unique knowledge they hold.

    The 25,000 Warao who populate the delta have lived on the Orinoco for hundreds of years. Everything in their lives comes from the jungle, shaped with techniques passed down through generations. It is knowledge derived from a particular time, a particular relationship to the land and a particular set of resources.

    The plants and animals on which the Warao depend – the Moriche palm, the Orinoco catfish, the piranha – are freshwater species. But 80km from the coast there is still a tidal range of one metre. Now the balance of the delta’s salinity is shifting.

    ‘This last dry season has been very hard,’ said Maria Cabrella who lives in the delta. ‘The water was transparent, because of the salt coming in from the sea. And we are now seeing mangroves in places where we have never seen them before.’

    Loss of freshwater

    For the Warao, encroachment of salt water means a loss of drinking water. They have to search by boat to find fresh water.

    If this trend continues the Warao will be forced to move, away from the water’s edge and away from the environment that has defined their culture.

    Cabrella said: ‘The salt water coming means the end of Warao culture.’

    The Warao people will settle in villages and towns outside the delta. But the tragedy will be the loss of knowledge. The practices of weaving, fishing, hunting; the knowledge of how to translate the palms and trees into hammocks, houses, and canoes; the language and song which pertained to all of these things.

    Useful links
    Atlantic Rising

  • Not carbon offsets, but carbon upsets

     

    As with the existing offset approach, financial benefits could be shared in the case of legal and political activities that are “sponsored” by an international partner. Imagine a world in which global financial giants like Goldman Sachs devote themselves not to the exploitation of dubious arbitrage opportunities like HFC-23 capture, but to the identification and promotion of critical political interventions by disempowered voices for sustainability. In that world, the landmark deal recently brokered by the UN development programme to preserve Ecuador’s Yasuni national park would become a model of climate capitalism.

    The carbon upset approach does not directly promote transformative clean-energy technologies. Instead, it aims to disrupt the political and economic inertia of the status quo. But that’s precisely the disruption we need. Conventional policies such as carbon offsets and allowance giveaways have the perverse effect of further subsidising already massively subsidised and politically dominant industries. Moving to a carbon upset system would open space for more dramatic transformations by empowering groups that stand opposed to the interests of business-as-usual beneficiaries. With the playing field tilted this way, who knows what might be possible?

  • Expert rubbishes splar storm claims

     

     

    11-year cycle

     

    The Sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle moving from a period of low activity called solar minimum to a time of heightened activity called solar maximum.

    During solar maximum there is an increase in sun spot activity, which are dark patches on the Sun’s surface caused by magnetic field lines breaking through the Sun’s surface.

    Because the Sun is not a solid object like the Earth, different parts of it rotate at different speeds, which cause these magnetic field lines to twist and stretch, eventually snapping like elastic bands.

    When they snap, they produce an eruption of electromagnetic energy called a solar flare and are sometimes accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME).

    If directed at Earth, charged particles within the CME slam into the magnetosphere, resulting in the northern and southern auroral lights.

    Previous CME events have damaged spacecraft, interfered with communications systems and overloaded ground-based power grids.

     

    Precautions

     

    Despite the potential threat, Dr Wilkinson says authorities are aware of them and are taking precautions.

    “We monitor solar activity and issue warnings if something is heading our way,” he said.

    “That will be at least a few hours [in advance], enough time to prepare.”

    He says while some satellites could be damaged by a future CME, others could be protected by being placed in “safe mode”.

    Dr Wilkinson adds the impact on power grids would be minimal.

    “At worst, it’s a regional thing, not a global thing as these reports imply,” he said.

    He says high frequency communications may also be affected, but it would be temporary.

    According to Dr Wilkinson, the Sun has been through a long solar minimum and appears to be heading into a low solar maximum.

    Previous observations have shown this could result in high spikes of CME activity.

    “It means we could see auroral activity over all of Australia rather than just the higher latitudes,” Dr Wilkinson said.

    “It’s unusual, but not unprecedented. James Cook made mention of just such an event off Timor.”

    Tags: emergency-planning, planets-and-asteroids, earth-sciences, physics, stars, nsw

    First posted 1 hour 39 minutes ago