http://www.alternet.org/water/78676/?source=cmailer

Brian Fagan believes climate is not merely a backdrop to the ongoing drama of human civilization, but an important stage upon which world events turn.

As it turns out, the anecdotal evidence of climate change in this, the 21st century, shares much in common with a historical antecedent, the Medieval Warm Period, circa AD 800 to 1200, that radically shaped societies across the globe.

The Medieval Warm Period was a time when the capacity of agriculture rapidly expanded and enabled people to flourish in Europe. Yet elsewhere, extended lack of rainfall, or too much of it, brought famine, plagues, and wars.

This bout of global warming was followed by the Little Ice Age that lasted roughly from AD 1300 until the middle of the 19th century and cast Europe and North America back into a big chill. Since then, mean global temperature has been slowly and steadily rising, accompanied by huge leaps in agricultural output and skyrocketing human population.

Today, climate experts tell us that over the past two decades, temperature has registered an alarming unnatural spike and is expected to keep climbing.

Despite the well-established fact that Earth is heating up, skeptics still are trying to poke holes in the assertion that it is owed to humans pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. Climate change is, and always has been cyclical, they say. Or maybe, some insist, it is God who has his hand on the thermostat.

As polar icecaps melt and glaciers disappear, thus causing seas to rise, low-lying coastal areas may indeed be inundated, creating millions of environmental refugees. But it is the inland agricultural breadbasket regions that feed the world that stand to suffer the greatest upheaval if reliable precipitation patterns vanish.

Such a scenario is not speculative, Fagan insists; it's based upon not only sophisticated computer models, but also the precedent of what's already happened during episodes of climate change half a millennium ago -- in the Arctic, Europe, China, the Southern Hemisphere, and in America's own backyard. By taking readers back to the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, Fagan argues that history "shows how drought can destabilize a society and lead to its collapse."

Amid disturbances to growing seasons, humans suffered mightily, though our ancestors proved their resilience by adjusting opportunistically to changes that manifested over generations. That's the good news.

But the difference between then and now is that climate is changing faster today and the corresponding effects of drought over the next century have implications for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people, some living in the wealthiest of nations, who Fagan believes are unprepared to cope with severe water shortages.

"Droughts are expensive in human terms and also carry a high economic price," he writes. "The notorious Dust Bowl droughts of the 1934-40 over the Great Plains scarred an entire generation. Three and a half million people fled the land." Imagine the Dust Bowl lasting centuries with no end in sight.

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There could be some truth in that sprintcyclist.  Even NSW has had some record cold days over the last couple of months comparable to temperatures recorded half a century ago.  But they would have to go back further than a century to get a true comparison.

Although I'm still sitting on the fence with global warming - I believe that we need to clean up this planet urgently and by using clean energy and minimising greenhouse gasses  - we can reduce pollution which is so harmful to the environment and living creatures.  The planet is just a toxic rubbish tip and getting worse.

At least freezing to death would be a less painful option.

mantra wrote on Mar 10^th, 2008 at 4:49am:


green house gasses arnt bad in themselves unless you subscribe the the humanity causing global warming theory.

Other pollutives from coal etc are bad though.

Natural Gas is cleaner than coal, but I don't think it's a long-term solution.

Personally I think Nuclear is a wasted opportunity. In that respect, I agree with James Lovelock on that.

Has anybody else read his latest book, "The Revenge of Gaia" ? He makes some grim predictions for the world population by the end of the century. From memory, he was talking about a residual population of 2 billion.

I don't envy generations who will live (and die) through that period.

The minor water related squabble that was Somalia will soon be forgotten by the end of the century. Other wars related to dwindling resources will probably be much more memorable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/18/fossilfuels.carbonemissions

Clean coal's definition changes according to whom the industry is lobbying. Sometimes it means more efficient power stations - which still produce almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas plants. Sometimes it means removing sulphur dioxide from the smoke, which boosts the CO2. Sometimes it means carbon capture and storage: stripping the carbon out of the exhaust gases, piping it away and burying it in geological formations. None of these equate to clean coal, as you will see if you visit an opencast mine. But they create a marvellous amount of confusion in the public mind, which gives the government a chance to excuse the inexcusable.

In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80% to 90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.

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The European Union summit reveals plenty of hypocrisy over climate-change targets

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10879737

DEMAND agreement on a divorce settlement before you marry, and the world may believe many things of you: that you are prudent, or cynical, or just a bit mean. What it will not believe is that you are a swooning romantic, moved only by the high ideals of love. You can boast you are an idealist, in other words, or you can make a pre-nuptial agreement: you cannot plausibly do both.

Just such a test faced European Union leaders at their recent summit, when they reviewed their year-old plan to lead the world in the fight against climate change. A year ago they were brimming with selfless idealism. They agreed to make deep cuts in carbon emissions (by a fifth from 1990 levels by 2020), even if other rich countries did not follow. The signal was clear: Europe will start saving the planet now, even if the selfish Americans (not to mention the Chinese and Indians) are not ready. Bigger cuts were promised if other countries joined in, prompting much self-congratulatory talk about the EU's “leading role”.

That was then. A year on, with the world economy looking wobblier, the March summit was a less uplifting affair. Leaders from countries with powerful heavy-industry lobbies called for explicit measures to “protect” European firms in case talks on a global climate-change deal failed (and left the Europeans pushing ahead with tough curbs on their own). In a move that would make an American divorce lawyer proud, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic all asked the EU to plan for failure, insisting that defensive measures must be agreed before climate-change talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

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Vast iceberg breaks off Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctic

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3621685.ece

A vast iceberg has broken away from the Antarctic coast, threatening the collapse of a larger ice shelf that is now “hanging by a thread”.

Satellite images have revealed that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Shelf have been lost since the end of February, suggesting that climate change could be causing it to disintegrate much more quickly than scientists had predicted. “The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey(BAS). “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

Professor Vaughan was a member of a BAS team that predicted in 1993 that the Wilkins Shelf could collapse within 30 years, if the pace of global warming continued.

“Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it’s happened twice as fast as we predicted.”

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Vicious crabs poised to invade as the Antarctic warms up

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3378819.ece

Predators such as crabs, rays and even sharks are ready to invade the Antarctic as global warming raises sea temperatures. Their arrival could devastate the continent’s fragile and unique marine ecosystem.

The alien species, armed with bone-crushing jaws and claws against which native species have no defence, are extending their range in the Southern Ocean towards Antarctica’s continental shelf, new research has found.

Because very cold temperatures have kept predators away, some of the world’s most bizarre animal life thrives in Antarctica, including giant sea spiders the size of dinner plates, isopod crustaceans that resemble aquatic woodlice, and sea snails.

As none of these species has evolved alongside swift and voracious predators such as crabs and bony fish, they have few defences against them. The Antarctic’s native fish, which make antifreeze proteins so that their bodily fluids do not freeze, eat small, shrimp-like crustaceans and other soft foods. The main predators on the sea floor are slow-moving sea stars and giant, floppy ribbon-worms.

This sounds reasonable. Pointing the finger at poor countries and expecting them to make sacrifices while we are still emitting far more per capita is diplomatically naive, at best. Cap and trade schemes that start with 'current' or 1990 levels of emissions are fine for developed countries, but poor countries will not accept greater financial burden merely because they have caused less pollution in the past.

Rich states failing to lead on emissions, says UN climate chief

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/14/climatechange.carbonemissions

Developing countries, including China and India, are unwilling to sign up to a new global climate change pact to replace the Kyoto protocol in 2012 because the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions, according to the UN's top climate official.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said too many rich countries, including the US, had failed to take the action needed to convince the developing nations to sign up to a deal in Copenhagen next year that could help to stabilise global emissions.

"You may not be able to get an agreement in one shot, let's say by Copenhagen, that sets you on the path of stabilisation in keeping with some kind of long-term target," Pachauri told the Guardian. "Looking at the politics of the situation, I doubt whether any of the developing countries will make any commitments before they have seen the developed countries take a specific stand."

He said there were "reasons for dismay" at the rich countries' failure to cut carbon emissions. "This really doesn't give anybody the conviction that those that had agreed to take action as the first step are really serious about doing so. And in several developing countries you get the feeling - in fact people state it very clearly - that these guys [rich countries] are going to shove the whole burden on to our shoulders. That's why it's necessary for the developed world to establish a certain credibility."

Pachauri said Germany had set a good example, with significant investment in renewable energy, and Britain had done "quite well". The UK is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as required under Kyoto, but will miss a separate domestic goal to reduce carbon dioxide pollution by 20% on 1990 levels by 2010. If emissions from aviation and shipping are included, Britain's carbon dioxide emissions are higher now than in 1990.

Analysts say a new global deal needs to be agreed at the Copenhagen meeting for it to come into force by 2012, because it will take several years to be ratified by countries. If a new deal is not in place when Kyoto expires, then confidence in emerging carbon trading markets - seen as a key way to reduce greenhouse gas pollution - could collapse. Schemes such as the European emissions trading scheme, set up under Kyoto, force polluting companies to invest in carbon credits or cleaner technology, but rely on carbon caps continuing past 2012.

Pachauri, who is also director general of the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India, said: "I don't think they [China and India] will come on board in the first round. I think they would like to see some level of ambition on the part of the developed countries before they make any voluntary commitments of their own."

Last year Pachauri, an economist and environmental scientist, collected the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, which it won jointly with the American former vice-president Al Gore. The IPCC analyses the state of climate science and issues reports that form the foundation for international action under the UN.

Any reluctance by China to participate in a new agreement would spell problems for the new US president, who could sign a deal in Copenhagen next year and then find it rejected by the US Senate. Several leading figures in the US have said the Senate would be unlikely to pass a new treaty that did not require China to act on its soaring carbon emissions. All three presidential candidates have promised stronger domestic action on global warming, and are expected to play a more constructive role in the search for a new international treaty than the Bush administration.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told an IPCC meeting in Budapest this week that it would be "very, very difficult" to reach an agreement. He warned that if the carbon emissions of China and India continue to grow at the same pace as their economies, mankind would be unable to prevent a critical level of warming.

Pachauri said there was still time for the developed countries to convince India and China to sign a new deal next year, but that it would require a series of "measures and actions" in the next few months.

He urged other rich countries to follow Europe's lead and set ambitious carbon reduction targets for the next 10 years. He said more money was needed to help poorer countries adapt to the likely impact of global warming, as well as "some tangible efforts to make technology transfer a reality".

Rich nations could help China to invest in more efficient coal power stations, for example. "If there was low interest financing of some of these measures, it would make it very attractive to developing countries."

This carbon bank is an interesting idea, though perhaps a bit premature. The reserve banks works because there is underlying bipartisan support for it, as well as support from economists. It also had a few decades of 'bad experiences' that proved it was necessary. You don't set up independent governing bodies when policies are changing, you set them up when you want policies to remain unchanged.

I also don't see the need for 'cutting edge' management of our northern rivers, when there is such low demand placed on them.

Carbon bank pushed at 2020 summit

http://news.smh.com.au/carbon-bank-pushed-at-2020-summit/20080419-278z.html

An independent carbon bank not unlike the Reserve Bank of Australia was among ideas offered to tackle climate change in the 2020 summit's environment stream.

Participants focusing on global warming said the bank would be part of a national climate strategy which also included flagship clean energy projects, an independent climate information trust and a dedicated education program.

Insurance executive Sam Mostyn said the carbon bank would be "of a similar quality and character to the Reserve Bank that was enduring long-term and not caught up in the three-year cycle of the federal government".

"The underpinning framework (would be) a climate strategy that runs across the whole of government that informs the way we think about economic decisions, our financial institutions," Ms Mostyn said.

Two of the four groups in the environment stream backed a concept which came out of last weekend's Youth Summit of having public transport close to all city residents.

"All people in cities by 2020 should be living no further than 800 metres from a public transportation hub," population expert Bernard Salt said of his group's consensus.

"We also said that hopefully all homes and buildings will be carbon neutral by 2020."

The water group's top idea was preserving the water resources of northern Australia.

"By 2020 Australia will be a global leader in tropical water system conservation and sustainable use," Queensland water Commission chairwoman Elizabeth Nosworthy said.

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Newcastle climate protesters charged

http://news.smh.com.au/newcastle-climate-protesters-charged/20080419-278c.html

Police have charged a group of environmental activists who stormed the construction site of Newcastle's third coal terminal early on Saturday.

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Climate change: Progress at polluters' talks, but obstacles ahead

http://news.smh.com.au/climate-change-progress-at-polluters-talks-but-obstacles-ahead/20080418-273v.html

Talks among major carbon emitters aimed at speeding negotiations towards a new pact on climate change ended Friday after making some headway but failing to remove roadblocks ahead of a summit in July.

"We achieved a consensus on the need for long-term and medium-term goals for reducing greenhouse-house gases... but we have not quantified targets at this stage and we regret this," said France's secretary of state for European affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet.

The two-day talks in Paris gathered ministers from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

The 16 economies account for around four-fifths of global output of greenhouse gases -- the carbon pollution, stemming mainly from fossil fuels, that traps heat from the Sun and is damaging Earth's climate system.

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Antarctic waters worry climate experts

http://news.smh.com.au/antarctic-waters-worry-climate-experts/20080419-2773.html

Scientists studying the icy depths of the sea around Antarctica have detected changes in salinity that could have profound effects on the world's climate and ocean currents.

The scientists returned to the southern Australian city of Hobart on Thursday after a one-month voyage studying the Southern Ocean to see how it is changing and what those changes might mean for global climate patterns.

Voyage leader Steve Rintoul said his team found that salty, dense water that sinks near the edge of Antarctica to the bottom of the ocean about 5 km down was becoming fresher and more buoyant.

So-called Antarctic bottom water helps power the great ocean conveyor belt, a system of currents spanning the Southern, Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans that shifts heat around the globe.

"The main reason we're paying attention to this is because it is one of the switches in the climate system and we need to know if we are about to flip that switch or not," said Rintoul of Australia's government-backed research arm the CSIRO.

"If that freshening trend continues for long enough, eventually the water near Antarctica would be too light, too buoyant to sink and that limb of the global-scale circulation would shut down," he said on Friday.

Cold, salty water also sinks to the depths in the far north Atlantic Ocean near Greenland and, together with the vast amount of water that sinks off Antarctica, this drives the ocean conveyor belt.

This system brings warm water into the far north Atlantic, making Europe warmer than it would otherwise be, and also drives the large flow of upper ocean water from the tropical Pacific to the Indian Ocean through the Indonesia Archipelago.

If these currents were to slow or stop, the world's climate would eventually be thrown into chaos.

Biodiversity Is Crucial To Ecosystem Productivity

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424112451.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2008) — In the first experiment involving a natural environment, scientists at Brown University have shown that richer plant diversity significantly enhances an ecosystem's productivity. The finding underscores the benefits of biodiversity, such as capturing carbon dioxide, a main contributor to global warming.

Osvaldo Sala, director of the Environmental Change Initiative and the Sloan Lindeman Professor of Biology at Brown, and Pedro Flombaum, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown, said the results confirmed tests charting how biodiversity affects aboveground plant productivity in artificial ecosystems. Aboveground plant productivity (ANPP) is the amount of biomass, or organic material, produced by plant growth.

But the Brown team also learned that the correlation between plant species richness - the number of plant species in a unit of area - and ANPP in a natural ecosystem was greater than had been expected. What that means, the researchers wrote in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that the greater the number of plant species, the more productive the ecosystem.

Conversely, species loss has a decidedly negative impact on ecosystems. This is especially true in light of the role ecosystems play in capturing the global warming gas carbon dioxide: The fewer the plant species in a given natural environment, the less carbon dioxide they capture.

"It's a double whammy," Sala explained. "We not only are disturbing our planet by putting more carbon into the atmosphere, but we're reducing the ability of ecosystems to capture and store it."

Sala and Flombaum conducted their experiments in the Patagonian steppe, a semiarid grassland located on the east side of the Andes Mountains in Argentina. They marked 90 plots, each containing three species of native grasses and three species of native shrubs. The team then removed a certain number of species from the plots and measured each revised plot's productivity.

"The water is the same, the nitrogen is the same, the sunlight is the same," Sala said. "What is different is the diversity of the plants."

What the researchers also learned in their experiments, which ran from 2002 to this year, is that plant productivity in a flourishing ecosystem is enhanced because each species assumes a specific niche. Ecologists call this "niche complementarity." The plants use the resources available to the whole system harmoniously, such as extending their roots at different depths in the soil, using different forms of nitrogen, and staggering when they photosynthesize.

"We are deeper into understanding the mechanisms of an ecosystem's productivity," Sala said.

Brown University, the InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research, Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica and Argentina's National Research Council funded the research.  

Adapted from materials provided by Brown University.

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World may be heating quickly: scientist

http://news.smh.com.au/world-may-be-heating-quickly-scientist/20080507-2bul.html

Climate change is happening faster than predicted and the world could be as much as seven degrees hotter by the end of the century, a CSIRO scientist says.

New Australian research showed current policies did not go far enough to manage the risks posed by climate change, according to Dr Roger Jones, a climate risk analyst with CSIRO's energy transformed flagship.

Global action was needed by 2015 to adequately reduce those risks, he said.

The research, conducted by CSIRO and Victoria University, showed even if severe emissions cuts were implemented from 2030, warming of 2.2 to 4.7 degrees could still happen by 2100.

If the present high emissions path was followed, the most likely warming was between 3.4 and 7.2 degrees.

The risks posed by climate change were worse than had been predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2000, Dr Jones said.

The world had moved on to a new economic path, driven by developing countries and commodity-producers like Australia, which would lead to more serious emissions scenarios than the panel's scientists had forecast.

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Clark backpedals as financial realities put paid to worthy dream

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10508400

The Government looks like it is retreating on its big climate change push as quickly as it advanced the surprise concept of a 'carbon neutral' New Zealand.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's announcement of a two-year delay to transport's inclusion in the flagship emissions trading scheme yesterday can only be seen as backpedalling.

It is understandable backpedalling - the kind of pragmatic move an experienced politician like Clark makes when she senses the public tide is turning.

It is only 18 months since the Prime Minister first voiced the aspirational target of taking the country to carbon neutrality. A lot has changed since, with food and oil prices surging as high mortgage rates also begin to bite on household budgets.