from rjs, November 15, 2014
Cancer Alley Louisiana: The 'Mother of All Sinkholes': Cancer Alley, a stretch of about 100 miles between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is home to some 150 petrochemical plants, making these swamplands perhaps the most industrialized (and polluted) region in the United States. The latest plague ravaging Cancer Alley is that enormous sinkhole in Assumption Parish, a burgeoning cavity that is a pestilence both real and symbolic, relentlessly swallowing land while reminding residents of the despoliation the past 60 years have inflicted on their sinuous bayous and fulsome cypress groves. As Bayou Corne’s citizens abandon their homes, fleeing the specters of methane and vandals and depressed home values, they stand to become yet another Louisiana community sacrificed to the twin gods of oil and gas. Film Produced by Storyhunter: http://storyhunter.tv/
Cod fishery in crisis - The federal government this week enacted what amounts essentially to a 6-month pause in commercial cod fishing in the Gulf of Maine, according to a report by David Abel in the Boston Globe yesterday. This is a sad day for New England's most famous fishery. Cod fishing is a classic example of a situation where free markets would be devastating for everybody, including fishermen and their families. Because overfishing in the past has pushed stocks far below maximum sustainable levels, each fishing boat harms the economic interests of the next. Economists believe that liberated markets serve environmental goals wonderfully in many situations, where property rights to natural resources are well defined, but free markets are a disaster when each producer is chasing a common resource. Nobody thinks the New England cod fishery should be unregulated. Yet, cod fishermen complain about the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) regulators who took action this week. Many fishermen believe the scientific estimates are overly pessimistic, leading regulators to be overly cautious. Here you can inspect the evidence for yourself, in NOAA's report this past August. Using two different models of cod mortality (on the left and right), the figure reproduced here shows the downward trend over time in estimated spawning stocks biomass (top row) and the upward trend in estimated recent fish mortality (bottom row).
Gov. Brown signs bill banning commercial production of genetically modified salmon -- Gov. Jerry Brown signed a North Coast lawmaker’s bill banning the commercial production of genetically altered salmon. AB 504, authored by Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, D-Arcata, extends the prohibition of spawning or cultivating so-called “transgenic salmonids” in the Pacific Ocean to all waters of the state. The hatchery production and stocking of such fish also is prohibited. The legislation protects the state’s native steelhead trout and salmon populations, Chesbro said. He noted that federal food and drug regulators are reviewing an application by a company, AquaBounty Technologies, that seeks to raise genetically altered salmon in the United States. “If these ‘frankenfish’ were to escape into our waters, they could destroy our native salmonid populations through interbreeding, competition for food and the introduction of parasites and disease,” Chesbro stated in a news release. “The only way to ensure this never happens is to ban commercial hatchery production, cultivation or stocking of transgenic salmonids in California.” The legislation prohibits research or experimentation for the commercial production of genetically-altered salmonids. The bill was sponsored by the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations.
The first genetically modified potato - In the modern sense that is, of course potatoes have been genetically modified for a long time: The Agriculture Department on Friday approved the first genetically modified potato for commercial planting in the United States, a move likely to draw the ire of groups opposed to artificial manipulation of foods.The Innate potato, developed by the J.R. Simplot Co., is engineered to contain less of a suspected human carcinogen that occurs when a conventional potato is fried, and is also less prone to bruising during transport. Boise, Idaho-based Simplot is a major supplier of frozen french fries to fast-food giant McDonald’s. The story is here, and you will note that on Tuesday the mandatory GMO-labeling initiatives failed in Oregon and Colorado, the second failure in Oregon and that means failures in four states overall. Less positively, voters in Maui County, Hawaii, chose to restrict GMO cultivation altogether. And now McDonald’s is under pressure not to use these new potatoes for its french fries. But of course you can understand the marketing dilemma of McDonald’s here — they can’t just come out and say “these french fries won’t give you cancer.”
Why GMO labeling in the U.S. needs to win only once - There were no doubt celebrations last week in the boardrooms of corporations that own patents to the world's genetically engineered crops. Proposals to label foods containing these crops--commonly called GMOs for genetically modified organisms--were defeated soundly in Colorado and barely in Oregon. That makes for a perfect record in the United States for the GMO purveyors who have beaten back every attempt to mandate labeling of foods containing GMO ingredients. But, I think the celebrations may be premature. For the advocates of labeling have vowed to fight on. They came within a hair's breadth of reaching their goal in Oregon. Who is to say that another round of voter education might not put them over the top? And, that is the danger for the GMO patent holders. If just one state requires labeling, the food companies will have to make a choice: Special handling and labels for one state or one label for the entire country that also meets that state's standards.* If the first state to implement a GMO labeling requirement is populous, say, California or New York, the decision will be made for the food companies. It won't be sensible to segregate supplies for that state. And, even a less populous state might tip the balance. Some states have passed GMO labeling laws that require enough other states to pass such laws to reach a minimum population threshold of in one case 20 million before the law goes into effect. What complicates matters further is that an increasing number of food processors are opting to exclude GMO ingredients from their products. Many processors proudly display this choice by using the emblem of the Non-GMO Project on their foods (meaning that their GMO-free formulation has actually been verified). Many others will find ways to eliminate GMO ingredients, especially if they represent a small proportion of the total for any product, just to avoid mandatory labeling. All this means that as the momentum for labeling continues to build, the opponents of labeling will have fewer and fewer allies. And, if just one state adopts labeling, those allies will shrink appreciably as more and more food processors abandon the GMO bandwagon just to avoid the labeling requirement.
Best way to get pesticides banned is to claim they’re legal highs: ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners are claiming to get a massive buzz off harmful pesticides in order to get them banned. More than 40 pesticides have been labelled as plant food, given suggestive new names like Gaboon Viper, Wow-Wow Party and Sherbet Revolver, and immediately reclassified as controlled substances. Green activist Susan Traherne said: “Lidilcarb is one of the most dangerous pesticides around, killing swathes of woodland animals and causing calves to be born with five legs, and nobody gives a shit. But when I claimed me and my mate Skins had done two lines of it on Saturday night and were so spannered we buried ourselves up to the knees, it was illegal before I’d finished talking.” Police are already planning raids on large farming cartels around the country, causing the farmers to flush their stashes and kill every living thing downstream for 100 miles.
Monsanto Reaches $2.4M Settlement With U.S. Wheat Farmers – Monsanto agreed Wednesday to pay almost $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by U.S. wheat farmers, after a genetically modified strain of the grain was found in an Oregon field and spooked importers of American wheat.No genetically engineered wheat has been approved in the U.S., but in 2013 wheat matching a strain of an experimental type developed and tested by Monsanto a decade earlier was found growing in a field in Oregon, the Associated Press reports. The modified wheat was not approved by federal regulators, and the seed juggernaut had said it had destroyed the crop. A government report judged the incident to be an isolated case, but it did not conclude how the errant wheat had come to be in the field. Nations wary of genetically modified crops were alarmed: Japan and South Korea briefly stopped importing American wheat, and American farmers cried foul over the damage done to their revenues and reputations.The St. Louis–based company’s settlement includes giving $2.1 million to farmers in the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho who sold soft white wheat between May 30 and Nov. 30 of 2013, as well as paying $250,000 to multiple wheat growers’ associations.
Soybean Demand in China Set to Exceed Supply – Investors by now are well aware of China’s hunger for all sorts of commodities, including food. Nonetheless, recent research from the agribusiness consultancy LMC International revealed some shocking information. LMC’s senior economist Julian McGill, as reported by Agrimoney, said that the growing pace of China’s demand for soybeans will result in the country “trying to import more soybeans than the major producing countries are exporting.” The research forecast’s Chinese import demand to reach 180 million tons of soybeans by 2024. That’s more than the soy production of the biggest producers – United States, Brazil, and Argentina – combined! It doesn’t take an investing genius to realize this supply-demand situation will open up new opportunities for investors. The reason for increased demand is the rising consumption of soybean meal used to feed livestock. China’s huge population is steadily increasing its wealth and socioeconomic standing and thus wants to eat better. That means there’s more demand for meat, poultry, and fish on the average Chinese dinner plate. China’s pork production has increased by 38% since 2000, and the country now houses over half of the world’s pig population. In fact, the pig population there is twice the population of the United States! And in 2013, China produced 55 million metric tons (mt) of pork, five times the amount produced in the United States. Hogs consumer 30% of China’s overall livestock feed. On top of pork, poultry constitutes about 40% of China’s animal feed and production reached 18 million mt last year. Farmed fish accounts for 30% of the feed and produced 45 million mt in 2013.
The TPP: What Might it Mean for Agriculture? – Big Picture Agriculture – The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade and investment agreement under negotiation by 12 countries in the Pacific Rim, including the United States. The twelve countries are Australia, Brunei Darussaiam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam. With a combined population of about 800 million and a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of about $28 trillion, these 12 countries encompassed 11% of global population and almost 40% of global GDP in 2012. The total size of their market for agricultural imports averaged $279 billion over 2010-12, 51% of which was sourced from TPP partners. The TPP accounts for 42% of the global agricultural exports of the United States and 47% of its agricultural imports. [...] Cutting tariffs is only one of the many goals of the TPP negotiations, but it is an important one for agricultural trade. The value of intraregional agricultural trade in 2025 under a tariff-free, TRQ-free scenario is estimated to be 6%, or about $8.5 billion higher (in 2007 U.S. dollars) compared with baseline values. U.S. agricultural exports to the region will be 5%, or about $3 billion higher, and U.S. agricultural imports from the region in 2025 will be 2%, or $1 billion higher in value compared with the baseline.
Britain had one of warmest and wettest years on record – The UK is on course to experience the warmest and one of the wettest years since records began more than a century ago, feeding fears that future droughts and flash floods could cost lives. Figures from the Met Office show January to October has been the warmest since records began in 1910, and also the second-wettest. Unless November and December are extremely cold, 2014 will be the hottest year on record. Experts say this the result of climate change, which they warn could place a burden on the NHS as Britons struggling to cope with future heatwaves end up in hospital. Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said the elderly and those with health problems are particularly at risk and could end up dying in the heat. He warned that as Britain warms it will also grow wetter – raising the spectre of flash floods that could cost lives and cause billions of pounds of damage to households and businesses. Ward said: “A large part of the population is unaware that this risk is increasing, and that is a problem because people are not then able to take the necessary precautions.
El Niño prediction 2014: Why weather forecasters were wrong about a super El Nino. I was wrong. Despite my predictions earlier this year, I’ve already admitted there will be no super El Niño this winter. In fact, according to new information released Thursday, the odds are increasing that there may not even be an official El Niño at all. Given the ridonculous model forecasts back in April, a lot of forecasters (count them: 1, 2, 3, 4 …) took the bait. (Some, to their credit, were more restrained.) First, a quick explanation: For a major El Niño event, the atmosphere and ocean have to join forces. The Pacific trade winds can actually reverse direction during strong El Niños, pulling reinforcing shots of warm water to the surface and initiating a global chain reaction of abnormal weather. In the end, a big El Niño just never happened. And now it looks like even a small one is iffy. What gives? On the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official El Niño blog, Emily Becker writes that weaker events, like the one shaping up this year, are harder to predict. Even though seasonal climate forecasting has been quite good for decades, the majority of missed events have occurred more recently, since 2000, when weaker events have been the rule. Seasonal climate forecasts have a tendency to focus on the telltale central Pacific warming signal that defines El Niño. But this year, the Pacific was warm pretty much everywhere, perhaps throwing the crucial atmosphere-ocean linkage necessary for a mature El Niño out of kilter. In essence, a gradually warming Pacific Ocean is at once reducing our ability to predict Earth’s single most important seasonal climate phenomenon, and tampering with it as well. For forecasters, that means this year’s El Niño tease has been “rather frustrating.” It mirrors another flash-in-the-pan-and-fizzle just two years ago.
The Planet Just Had Its Hottest October On Record --The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reports that last month was the hottest October in more than 120 years of record-keeping — by far. This follows the hottest September, August, June, and March-May in JMA’s records! Projections by NOAA make clear 2014 is increasingly likely to be hottest year on record. And these records occurred despite the fact we’re still waiting for the start of El Niño. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records. The JMA is a World Meteorological Organization Regional Climate Center of excellence. NASA reported Friday very similar observations. In the NASA dataset, last month was tied for hottest October on record with 2005. In this country, temperatures were quite hot in the West, and the fourth-warmest on record for the lower 48. Here is the NASA chart for global temperatures last month:
Climate Model Predicts Very Cold Winter in Northern Hemisphere – About 14.1 million square kilometers of snow blanketed Siberia at the end of October, the second most in records going back to 1967, according to Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab. The record was in 1976, which broke a streak of mild winters in the eastern U.S. In addition, the speed at which snow has covered the region is the fastest since at least 1998. Taken together they signal greater chances for frigid air to spill out of the Arctic into more temperate regions of North America, Europe and Asia, said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, who developed the theory linking Siberian snow with winter weather. “A rapid advance of Eurasian snow cover during the month of October favors that the upcoming winter will be cold across the Northern Hemisphere,” Cohen said in an interview yesterday. “This past October the signal was quite robust.” Cold air builds over the expanse of snow, strengthening the pressure system known as a Siberian high. The high weakens the winds that circle the North Pole, allowing the cold air to leak into the lower latitudes. The term Polar Vortex actually refers to those winds, not the frigid weather. Last year, 12.85 million square kilometers covered Eurasia at the end of October. By January, waves of frigid air were pummeling the U.S. Prices for natural gas, a heating fuel used by half of American households, rose to a five-year high in February.
New study questions the accuracy of satellite atmospheric temperature estimates -- Over the past decades, scientists have made many measurements across the globe to characterize how fast the Earth is warming. It may seem trivial, but taking the Earth’s temperature is not very straightforward. You could use temperature thermometers at weather stations that are spread across the globe. Measurements can be taken daily and information sent to central repositories where some average is determined. A downside of thermometers is that they do not cover the entire planet – large polar regions, oceans, and areas in the developing world have no or very few measurements. Another problem is that they may change over time. Perhaps the thermometers are replaced or moved, or perhaps the landscape around the thermometers changes which could impact the reading. And of course, measurements of the ocean regions are a whole other story. An alternative technique is to use satellites to extract temperatures from radiative emission at microwave frequencies from oxygen in the atmosphere. Satellites can cover the entire globe and thereby avoid the problem with discrete sensors. However, satellites also change over time, their orbit can change, or their detection devices can also change. Another issue with satellites is that the measurements are made throughout the atmosphere that can contain contaminants to corrupt the measurement. For instance, it is possible that water droplets (either in clouds or precipitation) can influence the temperature readings. So, it is clear that there are strengths and weaknesses to any temperature measurement method. You would hope that either method would tell a similar story, and they do to some extent, but there are key differences. Basically, the lower atmosphere (troposphere) is heating slower than the Earth surface.
Amazon rainforest losing ability to regulate climate, scientist warns -- The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists. In a new report, Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science Centre, says the logging and burning of the world’s greatest forest might be connected to worsening droughts – such as the one currently plaguing São Paulo – and is likely to lead eventually to more extreme weather events. The study, which is a summary drawing from more than 200 existing papers on Amazonian climate and forest science, is intended as a wake-up call. “I realised the problem is much more serious than we realised, even in academia and the reason is that science has become so fragmented. Atmospheric scientists don’t look at forests as much as they should and vice versa,” said Nobre, who wrote the report for a lay audience. “It’s not written in academic language. I don’t need to preach to the converted. Our community is already very alarmed at what is going on.” A draft seen by the Guardian warns that the “vegetation-climate equilibrium is teetering on the brink of the abyss.” If it tips, the Amazon will start to become a much drier savanna, which calamitous consequences.
Millions of Asians exposed to big climate disasters - Oxfam - Millions of people in Asia, the world's most disaster-prone region, face the threat of major climate-linked disasters and food crises because government policies fail to protect them, Oxfam warned on Thursday. A year after Typhoon Haiyan wreaked havoc in the Philippines, the aid and development charity warned that governments needed to do more to prevent people losing their lives and homes to extreme weather. Asia, with 4.3 billion people or 60 percent of the global population, has borne almost half the estimated economic cost of all disasters over the past 20 years, amounting to around $53 billion annually, Oxfam said. "Without greater investment in climate and disaster-resilient development and more effective assistance for those at risk, super-typhoon Haiyan-scale disasters could fast become the norm, not the exception," Oxfam said in a report. Scientists say climate change is causing more frequent and intense weather events, and warn current levels of greenhouse gas emissions will push global temperature up by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), an internationally agreed limit. "This will be a global disaster, to be borne disproportionately by Asia's growing population," Oxfam said.
Climate Change: Afghanistan on Front Line (and You Thought the Taliban were Bad) - In northern Afghanistan, the residents don’t often use the phrase – most don’t even know it. But as they describe how increasingly extreme weather patterns are making their lives harder every year, they map out many of the symptoms of climate change. As a new UN report warns that “irreversible” climate change is affecting more people than ever, these Afghans are on the front line. Naim Korbon says he is 90 years old, though he admits he does not really know. Either way he is too old to be carrying cement. Earlier this year his life’s work was destroyed as vicious floods cascaded through the area. It was, local experts say, the worst to hit the region in 42 years. Nearly half of the village was swept away, including Korbon’s home. All down his street buildings – many of them over 50 years old – are slumped; roofs sliding off, surrounded by piles of debris. Floods are not the only weather making the residents’ lives harder. In the nearby village of Baghacha, Khan Mula local representative Abdul Jalote Mufakar pointed at the barren earth with a sense of resignation. “In recent years, there are no crops. Only almonds grow any more,” he said.This pattern of long droughts, poor harvests and flash floods has been a growing trend for the people of northern Afghanistan, with experts largely in agreement that the climate is becoming more extreme. A new report identified Afghanistan as one of 11 countries globally at extreme risk of both climate change and food insecurity.
Groundbreaking Maps Detail Acidity of the Earth's Oceans - A team of scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Colorado at Boulder have published a groundbreaking set of maps that offer a comprehensive picture of the acidity of the Earth’s oceans as they absorb climate change-causing carbon emissions, causing changes to marine ecosystems. “We have established a global standard for future changes to be measured,”said Lamont-Doherty geophysicist Taro Takahashi, one of the team that developed the maps, which were published in Marine Chemistry. The maps take a month-by-month look at the increases and declines in ocean acidity in different seasons and locations, as well as saturation levels of calcium carbonate minerals used by shell-building organisms. They utilize four decades of measurements by Lamont-Doherty researchers and others. Among other things, the maps show that the northern Indian Ocean is 10 percent more acidic than the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and that ocean water as far north as Iceland and as far south as Antarctica are acidifying by about 5 percent per decade, corresponding to the increase in carbon emissions.
Study: Global warming worsening watery dead zones - Global warming is likely playing a bigger role than previously thought in dead zones in oceans, lakes and rivers around the world and it’s only going to get worse, according to a new study. Dead zones occur when fertilizer runoff clogs waterways with nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous. That leads to an explosion of microbes that consumes oxygen and leaves the water depleted of oxygen, harming marine life. Scientists have long known that warmer water increases this problem, but a new study Monday in the journal Global Change Biology by Smithsonian Institution researchers found about two dozen different ways — biologically, chemically and physically — that climate change worsens the oxygen depletion. “We’ve underestimated the effect of climate change on dead zones,” The researchers looked at 476 dead zones worldwide— 264 in the United States. They found that standard computer climate models predict that, on average, the surface temperature around those dead zones will increase by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit (slightly more than 2 degrees Celsius) from the 1980s and 1990s to the end of this century. The largest predicted warming is nearly 7 degrees (almost 4 degrees Celsius) where the St. Lawrence River dumps into the ocean in Canada. The most prominent U.S. dead zones, the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay, are projected to warm 4 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius) and nearly 5 degrees (2.7 degrees Celsius) respectively. Warmer water holds less oxygen, adding to the problem from runoff, said co-author Keryn Gedan, who is at both the Smithsonian and the University of Maryland. But warmer water also affects dead zones by keeping the water more separate, so that oxygen-poor deep water mixes less.
Warmest oceans ever recorded: "This summer has seen the highest global mean sea surface temperatures ever recorded since their systematic measuring started. Temperatures even exceed those of the record-breaking 1998 El Niño year," says Axel Timmermann, climate scientist and professor, studying variability of the global climate system at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. From 2000-2013 the global ocean surface temperature rise paused, in spite of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. This period, referred to as the Global Warming Hiatus, raised a lot of public and scientific interest. However, as of April 2014 ocean warming has picked up speed again, according to Timmermann's analysis of ocean temperature datasets. "The 2014 global ocean warming is mostly due to the North Pacific, which has warmed far beyond any recorded value (Figure 1a) and has shifted hurricane tracks, weakened trade winds, and produced coral bleaching in the Hawaiian Islands," explains Timmermann. He describes the events leading up to this upswing as follows: Sea-surface temperatures started to rise unusually quickly in the extratropical North Pacific already in January 2014. A few months later, in April and May, westerly winds pushed a huge amount of very warm water usually stored in the western Pacific along the equator to the eastern Pacific. This warm water has spread along the North American Pacific coast, releasing into the atmosphere enormous amounts of heat--heat that had been locked up in the Western tropical Pacific for nearly a decade.
Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048 - CBS News: The apocalypse has a new date: 2048. That's when the world's oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change. The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, -- with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama -- was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world. The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise. "I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected," Worm says in a news release. "This isn't predicted to happen. This is happening now," study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release. "If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all," Beaumont adds. Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% -- a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries. But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.
World losing battle against global warming: In the battle to combat global warming, the world isn't moving fast enough to stay in the fight. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which releases a new report every few years — again gave grim news last week as emissions rose 2.3% to a record in 2013, marking the largest year-to-year change in three decades. "We're about at a 3" on a scale of 0 to 10 in reducing emissions that cause global warming, said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University geoscientist and contributing author of an international report out earlier this week that warned of "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage if nations fail to corral greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, Earth is also on target for its hottest year ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as reaching the highest level of atmospheric carbon dioxide in at least 800,000 years. And in the U.S., emissions rose 2.9% in the past year — after several years of declines. "The pace and scale (of efforts to fight warming) needs to increase dramatically," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organization in Washington, D.C. "It is clear that despite all current efforts, much more action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change." Perhaps most stunning in this year's IPCC report was scientists' certainty that humans are behind the warming: 95%. Previous reports by the group didn't provide such harsh language to describe future consequences or such high confidence about humanity's role.
Naomi Klein’s “Hard-Money” Ideas Undermine Her Laudable Climate Action Goals - This is the first of at least two book reviews that I am planning to write about Naomi Klein’s important and occasionally frustrating, quite-large book (466 page) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (which I will abbreviate as TCE). The reasons for more than one book review are several. TCE contains a number of important ideas and insights that are not tightly tied together in one argument. Naomi Klein happens to be one of the more politically-savvy and widely-read public intellectuals currently writing about social, political, and economic issues and TCE dives into a central complex of issues surrounding the gravest and most massive challenge we face as a species, the fight against human-caused climate change. Her previous work in Shock Doctrine and related articles, is “must-read” if you want to understand the predatory nature of neoliberal elites, a feature of our current age which she at least popularized, if not discovered. Naomi Klein is also a leading activist on this and other issues, including her work with 350.org and help in co-planning the People’s Climate March in September of this year. The book is varied in content and focus, therefore the plan to write more than one review of the book, rather than write one very long one. As implied in the last sentence above, TCE is not tightly structured around her central argument, which shifts in its focus as well as in whom she is attempting to address. However what follows here is one, perhaps biased, overview of TCE’s main arguments.
Why two crucial pages were left out of the latest U.N. climate report - Last Sunday, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading authority on the science of global warming, released its latest "Synthesis Report." And it painted a pretty dire picture. Significant global warming, the report said, is already "irreversible" -- and if policymakers don't act, a dangerous 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold will be breached. That's a strong message -- but it might have been even stronger. You see, one of the report's more powerful sections wound up being left out during last minute negotiations over the text in Copenhagen. And it was a section that, among other matters, tried to specify other measures that would indicate whether we are entering a danger zone of profound climate impact, and just how dramatic emissions cuts will have to be in order to avoid crossing that threshold. This outcome -- and the divergent national views underlying it -- is a prelude to the political tensions we can expect at next month's mega climate change meeting in Lima, Peru, and then especially in Paris at the end of 2015, when governments will gather to try to negotiate a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The dropped section in question appeared in an August 25, 2014 draft of the synthesis report, but not in the final version. It was a box entitled "Information Relevant to Article 2 of the UNFCCC" or United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a global treaty signed in 1992-93 by over 160 nations of the world, including the United States. The box would have comprised two pages in the final report, and was worked on by a team of scientists for nearly three years, according to Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a Belgian climate researcher who is vice-chair of the IPCC.
There Should Be No More International Reports on Climate Science - The more things change, the more they stay the same. Scientists are in the news, warning about the dangers of escalating fossil fuel emissions:
“Emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing.”
“These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface.”
“Continued emissions of these gases at present rates would commit us to increased concentrations for centuries ahead.”
“The longer emissions continue to increase at present day rates, the greater reductions would have to be for concentrations to stabilise at a given level.”
“The long-lived gases [like carbon dioxide] would require immediate reductions in emissions from human activities of over 60% to stabilise their concentrations at today’s levels.”
Only thing is, the above statements were written in 1990. Well, we all know what happened next: Greenhouse gases have continued to skyrocket (up 34 percent since 1990—above even the previous worst-case scenario), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s projections of rising temperatures have been exceptionally accurate, “irreversible” change is underway, and still the world has responded with a collective “meh.” On Sunday, the world’s best climate scientists were back at it, gathering in Copenhagen to deliver another report, the culmination of the most comprehensive study ever assembled on global warming. There’s no indication that this week’s report substantially changes the basics we knew back in 1990—though there have been huge advances over the past quarter-century in eliminating the remaining shreds of uncertainty in just how fast we’re screwing ourselves over.
Michael Mann Interview: Very Little “Burnable Carbon” In Our “Budget”; Emissions Ramp-down Must Start Now - One of my hats is as a climate interpreter to the interested lay person. I have something of a science background and can read the papers “in the original.” Another hat is as an occasional interviewer for Virtually Speaking. This month the two hats merged on the same head, and I got to interview the “Hockey Stick graph” climate scientist, Dr. Michael Mann. For this interview I focused on the basics:
▪ Can humans burn more carbon, create more emissions, and still stay below the IPCC’s “safe” +2°C warming target?
▪ Is the IPCC’s +2°C warming target truly “safe” at all?
▪ We’re already experiencing warming of about +1°C above the pre-industrial level. Even if we stop now, how much more is “in the pipeline,” guaranteed and unavoidable?
▪ How do we defeat the Big Money ogre that stands in our way?
And my personal favorite:
▪ Will the answer to global warming come from the “free market”?
The always-defended, sacred “free market” — as close to a religion as you’ll find in modern thought. I’ll have more about the nonexistent “free market” (you read that right) shortly. For now I want to present what Dr. Mann has to say. He was surprisingly plain-spoken, understands the urgency, and says so. I found the interview fascinating, and I hope you do as well.
NYT: U.S. and China Reach Deal on Climate Change in Secret Talks — China and the United States made common cause on Wednesday against the threat of climate change, staking out an ambitious joint plan to curb carbon emissions as a way to spur nations around the world to make their own cuts in greenhouse gases. The landmark agreement, jointly announced here by President Obama and President Xi Jinping, includes new targets for carbon emissions reductions by the United States and a first-ever commitment by China to stop its emissions from growing by 2030. Administration officials said the agreement, which was worked out secretly between the United States and China over nine months and included a letter from Mr. Obama to Mr. Xi proposing a joint approach, could galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement by 2015. It was the signature achievement of an unexpectedly productive two days of meetings between the leaders. Mr. Obama and Mr. Xi also agreed to a military accord designed to avert clashes between Chinese and American planes and warships in the tense waters off the Chinese coast, as well as an understanding to cut tariffs for technology products. A climate deal between China and the United States, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 carbon polluters, is viewed as essential to concluding a new global accord. Unless Beijing and Washington can resolve their differences, climate experts say, few other countries will agree to mandatory cuts in emissions, and any meaningful worldwide pact will be likely to founder.
US and China strike deal on carbon cuts in push for global climate change pact -- The United States and China have unveiled a secretly negotiated deal to reduce their greenhouse gas output, with China agreeing to cap emissions for the first time and the US committing to deep reductions by 2025. The pledges in an agreement struck between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jingping, provide an important boost to international efforts to reach a global deal on reducing emissions beyond 2020 at a United Nations meeting in Paris next year. China, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, has agreed to cap its output by 2030 or earlier if possible. Previously China had only ever pledged to reduce the rapid rate of growth in its emissions. Now it has also promised to increase its use of energy from zero-emission sources to 20% by 2030. The United States has pledged to cut its emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. The European Union has already endorsed a binding 40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030.
We Have A Deal: The U.S. And China Agree To Historic Emission Reduction Targets -- The United States and China, the world’s two biggest contributors to climate change, have struck a new, more ambitious deal to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping jointly announced the deal Wednesday morning, the New York Times reported. The agreement marked the culmination of nine months of quiet dialogue between the two countries, capped off in recent days by Obama’s visit to China.The pledge commits the U.S. to cut its emissions 26 28% below their 2005 levels by 2025. This builds on the current target of a 17% reduction below that baseline by 2020, and could actually double the pace of emission cuts set by that initial goal — from 1.2% a year to as high as 2.8% per year. The White House has actually been looking into the possibility of expanding beyond the 2020 target since 2013, and has been involved in occasional interagency meetings to that effect. For its part, China is committing to get 20% of its energy from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030, and to peak its overall carbon dioxide emissions that same year. China’s construction of renewable energy capacity is already proceeding at a furious pace, and this deal will require the country to deploy an additional 800-1,000 gigawatts of zero-carbon energy by 2030. For comparison, 800-1,000 gigawatts is close to the amount of electricity the U.S. current generates from all sources combined.
Is the U.S.-China Climate Announcement as Big a Deal as It Seems? -- I am just now seeing the announcements from Beijing. The United States and China have apparently agreed to do what anyone who has thought seriously about climate has been hoping for, f