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Yesterday’s House passage of cap-and-trade legislation designed to confront climate change is a landmark achievement, the first tangible step taken by the country that emits more greenhouse gas per capita than anyone in the world.
The bill itself still faces a tough test in the Senate. Passage is far from assured, and without similar actions by other major emitting countries, it won’t mean much. But it does finally demonstrate to the rest of the world that the United States is prepared to do its part, which puts the pressure on them to follow suit.
The bill itself, the product of a thousand political compromises, also isn’t perfect. But it also isn’t what its hysterical opponents claim it is. As Bryan Walsh acknowledges in Time:
… critics have vastly overstated the likely cost. In fact, they’re all but lying. During the House debate, Republican whip Eric Cantor, using numbers from an American Petroleum Institute study, said that the bill would eventually cost more than $3,000 per family per year — but those numbers assume that billions of tons worth of inexpensive carbon offsets won’t be available under the bill, which would significantly inflate the overall cost. That’s not going to happen. A more reliable study from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast that the bill would cost the average U.S. household $175 in higher energy costs annually by 2020 — and other studies estimate that the energy-efficiency provisions in the bill might even save Americans money over time.
When opponents are forced to lie so blatantly — in this case exaggerating the likely cost 17 times over — they don’t have much of an honest argument.
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GEF and UNEP Launch Global Platform for Efficient Lighting
25 September 2009: The Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have launched the “Global Market Transformation for Efficient Lighting Platform,” a public-private partnership directed at reducing global energy demand for lighting.
The Platform aims to transform lighting markets, primarily in developing countries, by fostering the usage and production of energy efficient lighting while gradually discontinuing use of incandescent lighting, and substituting traditional fuel-based lighting with modern, efficient alternatives such as solid-state lighting (SSL) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) lamps. It is hoped that, through these efforts, global demand for lighting energy can eventually be reduced by up to 18 percent.
In attendance for the event was UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, who noted that “in terms of climate change, this is among the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Eight percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are linked with lighting; this project can by 2014 make a big dent in these while saving people money too.” [UN News Centre] [GEF press release]
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Reversal of fortune
To unlock the vast, untapped potential of the world’s drylands, we must learn from the people who live in them, says Dr Jonathan Davies.
Drylands are a major global biome, home to a great diversity of species and some of our most treasured natural heritage. They are also home to over 2 billion people and in the developing world in particular they are associated with poverty and social inequity. Global development and environment goals are not being met in the drylands: by 2015 many dryland regions are set to fail to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, whilst progress towards the goals and objectives of the UN environmental conventions (the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Convention on Biological Diversity in particular) is generally poor.
Recent experiences in the drylands of emerging countries, such as China and India, illustrate that economic development in drylands can outpace that in areas that are usually considered “high potential”. Although development is often associated with degradation, experiences in Sub Saharan Africa illustrate that economic development can be greatly enhanced through protection of biodiversity as a source of income. By taking an even broader, global view of drylands and examining industrialised dryland countries, it becomes clear that for every seemingly-insurmountable challenge we are able to find evidence of a viable solution somewhere in the world.
To address the challenges of the drylands, we need to understand their unique features and how these have to be managed. Perhaps the most important of these is climate unpredictability: the amount of precipitation varies enormously between areas, between seasons and between years. The sheer magnitude of this uncertainty is hard to grasp, but in many drylands the normal range of rainfall, drought-years aside, can be plus or minus 50% of the average. Yet development in many water-deficit areas continues to favour agricultural practices that expose farmers to huge risks whilst simultaneously degrading the natural resource base on which they depend.
Climate change is a cause for concern in dryland areas, but also an opportunity for new approaches and new learning that illustrate the value of dryland areas. Dryland ecosystems and people are highly adaptable and can survive in their uncertain climate.. Whether drylands become wetter or drier as a result of climate change, they will almost invariably become more unpredictable and their adaptive capacity will be vital to their future. Drylands more than any other ecosystem have the capacity to deal with that unpredictability and we have a great deal to learn from them.
Contrary to popular perception, drylands are not necessarily poverty traps. Dryland ecosystems and their goods and services already contribute significantly to national and international economies. The vibrant tourism sector in Eastern and Southern Africa relies heavily on the biodiversity of drylands. Globally-important dryland commodities include grain, meat and milk and dryland goods like Gum Arabic, Henna, Aloe, and Frankincense. Recent years have seen the commercial development of natural medicines from drylands, and untold numbers of medicinal plants remain un-researched, known only to the dryland inhabitants who have used and conserved them for centuries.
Local knowledge of the drylands is rich and is a powerful resource to be harnessed. There has been a tendency to dismiss this knowledge, because local dryland practices have been portrayed as backward or inappropriate and in need of replacing. The current emergency in the Horn of Africa graphically illustrates the outcome of this attitude: populations are exposed to insupportable risk as a result of losing their traditional strategies and being pushed into new ways of life that simply don’t work. Where people are driven towards catastrophe it is almost guaranteed that the environment will face similar consequences. Customs and cultures that are intimately connected to biodiversity become contorted into a system of pure survival where respect for the environment becomes an unaffordable luxury.
The scientific explanation of the rationale behind traditional strategies has been known for long enough to develop innovative new approaches to sustainable drylands management. Development support has to enable management of the extreme climatic uncertainty of drylands and needs to be built on understanding of the drivers of continuous change in dryland ecosystems. These are dynamic ecosystems in which adaptation and flexibility are pre-requisites for survival. We need to learn from past failures and successes and ensure that development and humanitarian interventions recognize dryland characteristics and build on local knowledge and capacity to turn the existing opportunities into equitable and sustainable wealth creation. In particular we need to generate greater awareness of the tremendous opportunities for strengthening biodiversity-based livelihoods to diversify dryland economies and strengthen resilience.
IUCN’s vision 2020 emphasizes the need to strengthen the Union’s work on conserving the diversity of life while also connecting nature conservation to wider societal objectives such as security and poverty reduction. This vision cannot be reached if we fail to understand and address the unique challenges of the drylands. IUCN, with its great diversity of members and commission members, has a vital role to play in securing effective global action to address dryland issues and in enabling dryland communities to develop their nature-based solutions to risk management and sustainable development.
Dr Jonathan Davies is Coordinator of IUCN’s Global Drylands Initiative.
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Creator: Gust, Iris
Description: The brochure promotes urban transportation policy to increase the use of renewable energy to 100%. Seen globally, transport is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet fossil fuels are becoming scarce, will become increasingly expensive and will eventually stop being viable as transport fuels. Before this happens, climate change will have begun to have a serious impact on human lives. The authors believe that it is crucial to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy as soon as possible, especially in the transport sector. Making urban transport independent of fossil fuel is a great challenge, but the authors cite growing evidence that it can be achieved.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries
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Fewer rare sea turtles will die on the swordfish industry's longlines in Hawaii under an agreement between environmental groups and the government. The agreement settles a lawsuit challenging the federal government's plans that would have dramatically increase the number of turtles that could be killed. The Turtle Island Restoration Network, Center for Biological Diversity and KAHEA sued the National Marine Fisheries Service for allowing 46 imperiled Pacific loggerhead turtles to be hooked last year. The new court-ordered settlement caps the number at 17 per year. Meanwhile the National Marine Fisheries Service is weighing whether loggerheads need more protection under the Endangered Species Act.
"It made absolutely no sense to have one arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service increasing the lethal capture of loggerheads, while the other arm is in the process of determining whether loggerheads should be uplisted from threatened to endangered," said Todd Steiner, biologist and executive director of Turtle Island Restoration Network. "With extinction looming, these animals need more protection, not less."
"With this decision, Hawaii's public-trust ocean resources can be better managed for our collective best interest, and not just the interests of this commercial fishery," said KAHEA program director Marti Townsend. "This is a victory not just for the turtles, but for Hawaii's people who rely on a healthy, functioning ocean ecosystem."
Conservation groups represented by Earthjustice filed a federal lawsuit challenging a 2009 rule allowing the swordfish fleet to catch nearly three times as many loggerhead sea turtles as previously permitted. This settlement freezes the number at the previous cap of 17 while the government conducts additional environmental studies and decides whether or not to classify the loggerhead as endangered, rather than its current, less-protective status of threatened. For leatherback turtles, the bycatch limit remains at 16 per year. In 2010, eight Pacific leatherbacks and seven loggerheads were caught in the longline fishery, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. There have already been 4 loggerheads captured in 2011, which has sea turtle conservationists concerned.
"Sea turtles have been swimming the oceans since the time of dinosaurs. But without a change in management, they won't survive our voracious quest for swordfish and tuna," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "If loggerheads are going to survive in the North Pacific, we need to stop killing them in our fisheries."
"Pacific loggerhead sea turtles are nearly extinct, so this bycatch rollback helps right a serious wrong," said Teri Shore, program director at Turtle Island Restoration Network. "We can't allow these rare sea turtles to disappear for a plate of swordfish. It's tragic that it took a lawsuit to correct this fishery problem."
Swordfish longline vessels trail up to 60 miles of fishing line suspended in the water with floats, with as many as 1,000 baited hooks deployed at regular intervals. Sea turtles become hooked while trying to take bait or become entangled while swimming through the nearly invisible lines. These encounters can drown the turtles or leave them with serious injuries. Sea birds such as albatross dive for the bait and become hooked; marine mammals, including endangered humpback whales and false killer whales, also sometimes become hooked when they swim through the floating lines.
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Rodrigues, A.S.L., Andelman, S.J., Bakarr, M.I., Boitani, L., Brooks, T.M., Cowling, R.M., Fishpool, L.D.C., da Fonseca, G.A.B., Gaston, K.J., Hoffmann, M., Long, J.S., Marquet, P.A., Pilgrim, J.D., Pressey, R.L., Schipper, J., Sechrest, W., Stuart, S.N., Underhill, L.G., Waller, R.W., Watts, M.E.J. and Yan, X. (2004) Effectiveness of the global protected area network in representing species diversity. Nature, 428 (6983). pp. 640-643. ISSN 0028-0836Full text available as:
The Fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa, announced in September 2003 that the global network of protected areas now covers 11.5% of the planet's land surface. This surpasses the 10% target proposed a decade earlier, at the Caracas Congress, for 9 out of 14 major terrestrial biomes. Such uniform targets based on percentage of area have become deeply embedded into national and international conservation planning. Although politically expedient, the scientific basis and conservation value of these targets have been questioned. In practice, however, little is known of how to set appropriate targets, or of the extent to which the current global protected area network fulfils its goal of protecting biodiversity. Here, we combine five global data sets on the distribution of species and protected areas to provide the first global gap analysis assessing the effectiveness of protected areas in representing species diversity. We show that the global network is far from complete, and demonstrate the inadequacy of uniform—that is, 'one size fits all'—conservation targets.
|Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:||© 2004 Nature Publishing Group|
|Academic Units:||The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biological Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (Sheffield)|
|Depositing User:||Repository Officer|
|Date Deposited:||12 Jan 2005|
|Last Modified:||08 Feb 2013 16:47|
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World’s poorest on front line in climate change fight
24 July 2008 | News story
Climate change is already happening – and it hits poor people most. The effect of more frequent hurricanes, floods and droughts on developing countries is devastating, as this year’s cyclone Nagris proved again in southern Myanmar, leaving over 130,000 people dead or missing.
To protect the world’s poor against today’s more frequent extreme weather events, some US$ 2 billion is required according to the Internacional relief agency Oxfam. However, commitments so far only total US$173.
The need for innovative means to mitigate climate change impacts and help poor countries adapt is high on the agenda of the World Conservation Congress, held by IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature from 5-14 October in Barcelona.
- In 2007, there were 950 natural catastrophes in 2007 compared with 850 in 2006, according to Munich Re, one of the world’s largest insurance companies. This is the highest number recorded since the company started compiling annual disaster reports in 1974.
- The burden of the disasters fall on the poor who are least to blame for climate change. Benin, and Bangladesh, for example, are at particularly high risk from rising sea-levels and storm surges, yet their per capita contribution to greenhouse gas output is one eightieth that of the United States, according to the British Institute of Development Studies.
- “What worries us the most is the impact on the poorest countries which have the least capacity to respond to the challenge,” said Yvo de Boer, secretary of the Convention on Climate Change.
- A healthy environment can help people survive. Healthy mangrove forests and coral reefs, for example, can serve as barriers and prevent coastal erosion; a solid forest cover prevents flooding in times of heavy rainfall.
- “There are positive examples of local level adaptation to the impacts of climate change, such as replanting mangrove forests that can serve as buffers against more frequent storms. But to implement these solutions on a larger scale, substantial financial support is required,” says Ninni Ikkala, Climate Change Officer at IUCN.
Upcoming media products:
6 August – International Press Release – Primates Red List update
12 August – International Press Release – Cetacean Red List update
Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN’s Director General.
Ninni Ikkala, IUCN Climate Change Programme
Brian Thomson, IUCN Global Communications, m +417972182326, e email@example.com.
Carolin Wahnbaeck, IUCN Global Communications, m +41 79 85 87 593, e firstname.lastname@example.org
World Conservation Congress, Barcelona (5-14 October)
The World Conservation Congress (WCC) brings together 8,000 leaders from the public sector, government, business and non-governmental organizations for what is the premier summit on sustainable development in 2008. Over ten days they debate the best ways to tackle environmental and development challenges. They share pragmatic solutions to pressing issues. And they commit to collaborative action.
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color="#FFFFFF" size="2">Back to Regional News Digest
Saturday, September 19, 1998 Last modified at 3:24 a.m. on Saturday, September 19, 1998
State gets more rain, except in plains
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - Slightly higher averages of rain in New Mexico this summer masked big differences in precipitation levels statewide, the National Weather Service said.
The state's June-through-August average was 5 percent wetter than normal. But while summer rains fell on the western and northern parts of the state, the eastern plains were dry, said Charlie Liles, head of the weather service's Albuquerque office.
Liles said you could draw a line south from Clayton and Las Vegas, N.M., through Cloudcroft to see the demarkation: It mostly was dry to the southeast and wet in the northwest. Part of weather systems that steered rain away from Texas did the same to eastern New Mexico.
"The dry east and southeast plains shows the westward expansion of the Texas drought that has taken place the past three to four months," Liles said.ce
Clovisn got 61 percent less rain this summer, he said.
Monsoons caused an unusually wet July across the rest of the state but then stopped in August, said Dave Gutzler, a climate researcher at the University of New Mexico.
Jal, in the southeast, was the driest spot for the three-month period, with just 1.43 inches of rain, 72 percent below normal. The wettest spot was Black Lake near Angel Fire, with 14.53 inches, Liles said.
Albuquerque was two percent below normal with 3.42 inches, while Socorro was nearly 50 percent above normal with 5.6 inches. Santa Fe had 33 percent more rain at 7.15 inches, while Las Cruces was 47 percent below normal at 2.37 inches.
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Arctic meltdown not caused by nature
Rapid loss of Arctic sea ice - 80 per cent has disappeared since 1980 - is not caused by natural cycles such as changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun, says Dr Karl.
The situation is getting rather messy with regard to the ice melting in the Arctic. Now the volume of the ice varies throughout the year, rising to its peak after midwinter, and falling to its minimum after midsummer, usually in the month of September.
Over most of the last 1,400 years, the volume of ice remaining each September has stayed pretty constant. But since 1980, we have lost 80 per cent of that ice.
Now one thing to appreciate is that over the last 4.7 billion years, there have been many natural cycles in the climate — both heating and cooling. What's happening today in the Arctic is not a cycle caused by nature, but something that we humans did by burning fossil fuels and dumping slightly over one trillion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere over the last century.
So what are these natural cycles? There are many many of them, but let's just look at the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles relate to the Earth and its orbit around the Sun. There are three main Milankovitch cycles. They each affect how much solar radiation lands on the Earth, and whether it lands on ice, land or water, and when it lands.
The first Milankovitch cycle is that the orbit of the Earth changes from mostly circular to slightly elliptical. It does this on a predominantly 100,000-year cycle. When the Earth is close to the Sun it receives more heat energy, and when it is further away it gets less. At the moment the orbit of the Earth is about halfway between "nearly circular" and "slightly elliptical". So the change in the distance to the Sun in each calendar year is currently about 5.1 million kilometres, which translates to about 6.8 per cent difference in incoming solar radiation. But when the orbit of the Earth is at its most elliptical, there will be a 23 per cent difference in how much solar radiation lands on the Earth.
The second Milankovitch cycle affecting the solar radiation landing on our planet is the tilt of the north-south spin axis compared to the plane of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. This tilt rocks gently between 22.1 degrees and 24.5 degrees from the vertical. This cycle has a period of about 41,000 years. At the moment we are roughly halfway in the middle — we're about 23.44 degrees from the vertical and heading down to 22.1 degrees. As we head to the minimum around the year 11,800, the trend is that the summers in each hemisphere will get less solar radiation, while the winters will get more, and there will be a slight overall cooling.
The third Milankovitch cycle that affects how much solar radiation lands on our planet is a little more tricky to understand. It's called 'precession'. As our Earth orbits the Sun, the north-south spin axis does more than just rock gently between 22.1 degrees and 24.5 degrees. It also — very slowly, just like a giant spinning top — sweeps out a complete 360 degrees circle, and it takes about 26,000 years to do this. So on January 4, when the Earth is at its closest to the Sun, it's the South Pole (yep, the Antarctic) that points towards the Sun.
So at the moment, everything else being equal, it's the southern hemisphere that has a warmer summer because it's getting more solar radiation, but six months later it will have a colder winter. And correspondingly, the northern hemisphere will have a warmer winter and a cooler summer.
But of course, "everything else" is not equal. There's more land in the northern hemisphere but more ocean in a southern hemisphere. The Arctic is ice that is floating on water and surrounded by land. The Antarctic is the opposite — ice that is sitting on land and surrounded by water. You begin to see how complicated it all is.
We have had, in this current cycle, repeated ice ages on Earth over the last three-million years. During an ice age, the ice can be three kilometres thick and cover practically all of Canada. It can spread through most of Siberia and Europe and reach almost to where London is today. Of course, the water to make this ice comes out of the ocean, and so in the past, the ocean level has dropped by some 125 metres.
From three million years ago to one million years ago, the ice advanced and retreated on a 41,000-year cycle. But from one million years ago until the present, the ice has advanced and retreated on a 100,000-year cycle.
What we are seeing in the Arctic today — the 80 per cent loss in the volume of the ice since 1980 — is an amazingly huge change in an amazingly short period of time. But it seems as though the rate of climate change is accelerating, and I'll talk more about that, next time …
Published 27 November 2012
© 2013 Karl S. Kruszelnicki Pty Ltd
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The transportation sector is responsible for an enormous amount of pollution, from fuel extraction and processing to greenhouse gas emissions and smog. Thankfully, old and new technologies alike can help us clean up our footprint as we get from here to there. Here are three options to consider.
1. Cargo Bike
A cool trend in green transportation is the use of cargo bikes (sometimes called pedicabs), mainly in cities. The idea is that pedal power transports people or bins of cargo (see photo above) — meaning goods can be delivered and people can get around without the use of fuel. Some companies that operate locally are even delivering their goods with bike power.
You can create your own cargo bike by hooking a small cart to the back of your bicycle. You can take your recycling to the recycling center or take trips to the store or farmers market and transport your goods home without relying on a vehicle.
To learn much more about this trend, see Cargo Bikes and Pedicabs.
2. Commuter Bicycle
To make your daily commute to work — or even your weekly commute around town to run errands — there are many great bike options. Biking is a win-win: You get great exercise, enjoy fresh air, and can feel great about using a green form of transportation.
If you’ve thought about commuting by bike, but aren’t sure which bicycle is right for you, check out the tips in What the Right Bike Can Do for You.
3. Green Car
If the distance between point A and point B is too great for a bicycle or walking — and mass transit isn’t an option — a car can be a necessity. There have been many great strides made in green car technology over the past decade, and your options (check out Best Green Cars for some of them) now extend far beyond the well-known Prius hybrid. New all-electric vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf, are getting great expert and driver reviews.
While the upfront cost of a hybrid or electric vehicle may be prohibitive, the car can pay for itself over time in fuel cost savings and maintenance cost savings (think no oil changes for an electric car!). Plus, you can take advantage of a $7,500 federal tax credit for the purchase of many green cars — and be sure to look into what state tax incentives may also be available in your area.
You may have heard some common arguments against green cars. Probably the most common is that if an electric car runs on electricity generated by a coal-fired power plant, it isn’t actually cleaner than a regular gas car. The math has been crunched on this issue, and you can find the answers in the article Why Electric Cars Are Cleaner.
There have also been some recent concerns about the safety of electric and hybrid cars; rumors on this issue were fueled by a Chevy Volt catching on fire. The green cars on the market today actually have excellent safety ratings, and you can read much more about this issue in The Truth About Electric Car Safety.
If you do drive a gas-only car, you can still make driving it as clean as possible by hypermiling (using driving techniques that help you get better gas mileage). Learn how in Save Gas with Hypermiling.
What are your favorite means of green transportation?
Photo by Metro Pedal Power
Read more: Conscious Consumer, Eco-friendly tips, Green, Technology, Transportation, bicycles, Bikes, care2 earth day, cargo bikes, cars, commuting, electric cars, green cars, green transportation, hybrid cars, hybrids, pedicabs, vehicles
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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NOAA scientists agree the risks are high, but say Hansen overstates what science can really say for sure
Jim Hansen at the University of Colorado’s World Affairs Conference (Photo: Tom Yulsman)
Speaking to a packed auditorium at the University of Colorado’s World Affairs Conference on Thursday, NASA climatologist James Hansen found a friendly audience for his argument that we face a planetary emergency thanks to global warming.
Despite the fact that the temperature rise has so far been relatively modest, “we do have a crisis,” he said.
With his characteristic under-stated manner, Hansen made a compelling case. But after speaking with two NOAA scientists today, I think Hansen put himself in a familiar position: out on a scientific limb. And after sifting through my many pages of notes from two days of immersion in climate issues, I’m as convinced as ever that journalists must be exceedingly careful not to overstate what we know for sure and what is still up for scientific debate.
Crawling out on the limb, Hansen argued that global warming has already caused the levels of water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the two giant reservoirs on the Colorado River than insure water supplies for tens of millions of Westerners — to fall to 50 percent of capacity. The reservoirs “probably will not be full again unless we decrease CO2 in the atmosphere,” he asserted.
Hansen is arguing that simply reducing our emissions and stabilizing CO2 at about 450 parts per million, as many scientists argue is necessary, is not nearly good enough. We must reduce the concentration from today’s 387 ppm to below 35o ppm.
“We have already passed into the dangerous zone,” Hansen said. If we don’t reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, “we would be sending the planet toward an ice free state. We would have a chaotic journey to get there, but we would be creating a very different planet, and chaos for our children.” Hansen’s argument (see a paper on the subject here) is based on paleoclimate data which show that the last time atmospheric CO2 concentrations were this high, the Earth was ice free, and sea level was far higher than it is today.
“I agree with the sense of urgency,” said Peter Tans, a carbon cycle expert at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration here in Boulder, in a meeting with our Ted Scripps Fellows in Environmental Journalism. “But I don’t agree with a lot of the specifics. I don’t agree with Jim Hansen’s naming of 350 ppm as a tipping point. Actually we may have already gone too far, except we just don’t know.”
A key factor, Tans said, is timing. “If it takes a million years for the ice caps to disappear, no problem. The issue is how fast? Nobody can give that answer.”
Martin Hoerling, a NOAA meteorologist who is working on ways to better determine the links between climate change and regional impacts, such as drought in the West, pointed out that the paleoclimate data Hansen bases his assertions on are coarse. They do not record year-to-year events, just big changes that took place over very long time periods. So that data give no indication just how long it takes to de-glaciate Antarctica and Greenland.
Hoerling also took issue with Hansen’s assertions about lakes Powell and Mead. While it is true that “the West has had the most radical change in temperature in the U.S.,” there is no evidence yet that this is a cause of increasing drought, he said.
Flows in the Colorado River have been averaging about 12 million acre feet each year, yet we are consuming 14 million acre feet. “Where are we getting the extra from? Well, we’re tapping into our 401K plan,” he said. That would be the two giant reservoirs, and that’s why their water levels have been declining.
“Why is there less flow in the river?” Hoerling said. “Low precipitation — not every year, but in many recent years, the snow pack has been lower.” And here’s his almost counter-intuitive point: science shows that the reduced precipitation “is due to natural climate variability . . . We see little indication that the warming trend is affecting the precipitation.”
In my conversation with Tans and Hoerling today, I saw a tension between what they believe and what they think they can demonstrate scientifically.
“I like to frame the issue differently,” Tans said. “Sure, we canot predict what the climate is going to look like in a couple of dcades. There are feedbacks in the system we don’t understand. In fact, we don’t even know all the feedbacks . . . To pick all this apart is extremely difficult — until things really happen. So I’m pessimistic.”
There is, Tans said, “a finite risk of catastrophic climate change. Maybe it is 1 in 6, or maybe 1 in 20 or 1 in 3. Yet if we had a risk like that of being hit by an asteroid, we’d know what to do. But the problem here is that we are the asteroid.”
Tans argues that whether or not we can pin down the degree of risk we are now facing, one thing is obvious: “We have a society based on ever increasing consumption and economic expectations. Three percent growth forever is considered ideal. But of course it’s a disaster.”
Hoerling says we are living like the Easter Islanders, who were faced with collapse from over consumption of resources but didn’t see it coming. Like them, he says, we are living in denial.
“I think we are in that type of risk,” Tans said. “But is that moving people? It moves me. But I was already convinced in 1972.”
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Indonesia is known for being prone to natural disasters of all kinds, ranging from climatic (floods, drought) to geologic (earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc.), biological (avian influenza) to man-made (deforestation, mining, conflicts). With an already high level of food insecurity, households' vulnerability to shocks is high as the assets and structures of communities are jeopardized by these complex emergencies and a general lack of disaster risk reduction and management. Over the past five years, more than 1,500,000 people have been directly affected by natural disasters, primarily in West Sumatera, West Java, Central Java, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara and Papua. Following the tsunami of 2004, the government of Indonesia has become more aware of the risks, both real and potential, affecting the provinces, and has taken steps to build the capacity of its staff in disaster risk reduction.
Emergency preparedness and response has also become a priority for the Indonesian Church, specifically the national Caritas office—KARINA—and a growing number of dioceses. Various disasters over the past five years offered opportunities for the dioceses in those areas to contribute to the disaster responses and increase their response and management capacities. This has provided Catholic Relief Services Indonesia with greater opportunity to work with and support the local Church and other organizations to improve their capacity in emergency response programming.
Latest Stories From Indonesia
View all stories »»
See all the different ways your support helps people around the world after disasters strike. »»
The latest eruption from Indonesia's Mount Merapi volcano killed 70 people and forced thousands to flee from their homes. »»
When Sumatran villagers were left homeless after an earthquake, a CRS program helped them build 11,000 houses in just a few months. »»
|Population:||248,645,008 (July 2012 est.)|
|Size:||735,358 sq. mi.; slightly less than three times the size of Texas|
|People Served:||863 (2012 est.)|
Since 1957, Catholic Relief Services has been helping rural communities in Indonesia alleviate human suffering, eradicate poverty and become self-reliant. Over the past five years, CRS in Indonesia has responded to various disasters and helped more than 60,000 people rebuild their lives. Our response to the West Sumatera earthquake in 2009 through cash grant for transitional shelter has been widely appreciated by the local government and donor community as the most effective strategy to provide timely, appropriate, accountable and high quality interventions.
PartnersKARINA (Caritas Indonesia)
CORDAID and Caritas Australia
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
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the energy [r]evolution
The climate change imperative demands nothing short of an Energy [R]evolution. The expert consensus is that this fundamental shift must begin immediately and be well underway within the next ten years in order to avert the worst impacts. What is needed is a complete transformation of the way we produce, consume and distribute energy, while at the same time maintaining economic growth. Nothing short of such a revolution will enable us to limit global warming to less than a rise in temperature of 2° Celsius, above which the impacts become devastating.
Current electricity generation relies mainly on burning fossil fuels, with their associated CO2 emissions, in very large power stations which waste much of their primary input energy. More energy is lost as the power is moved around the electricity grid network and converted from high transmission voltage down to a supply suitable for domestic or commercial consumers. The system is innately vulnerable to disruption: localised technical, weather-related or even deliberately caused faults can quickly cascade, resulting in widespread blackouts. Whichever technology is used to generate electricity within this old fashioned configuration, it will inevitably be subject to some, or all, of these problems. At the core of the Energy [R]evolution there therefore needs to be a change in the way that energy is both produced and distributed.
4.1 key principles
the energy [r]evolution can be achieved by adhering to five key principles:
1.respect natural limits – phase out fossil fuels by the end of this century We must learn to respect natural limits. There is only so much carbon that the atmosphere can absorb. Each year humans emit over 25 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent; we are literally filling up the sky. Geological resources of coal could provide several hundred years of fuel, but we cannot burn them and keep within safe limits. Oil and coal development must be ended. The global Energy [R]evolution scenario has a target to reduce energy related CO2 emissions to a maximum of 10 Gigatonnes (Gt) by 2050 and phase out fossil fuels by 2085.
2.equity and fairness As long as there are natural limits there needs to be a fair distribution of benefits and costs within societies, between nations and between present and future generations. At one extreme, a third of the world’s population has no access to electricity, whilst the most industrialised countries consume much more than their fair share.
The effects of climate change on the poorest communities are exacerbated by massive global energy inequality. If we are to address climate change, one of the core principles must be equity and fairness, so that the benefits of energy services – such as light, heat, power and transport – are available for all: north and south, rich and poor. Only in this way can we create true energy security, as well as the conditions for genuine human wellbeing.
The Advanced Energy [R]evolution scenario has a target to achieve energy equity as soon as technically possible. By 2050 the average per capita emission should be between 1 and 2 tonnes of CO2.
3.implement clean, renewable solutions and decentralise energy systems. There is no energy shortage. All we need to do is use existing technologies to harness energy effectively and efficiently. Renewable energy and energy efficiency measures are ready, viable and increasingly competitive. Wind, solar and other renewable energy technologies have experienced double digit market growth for the past decade.
Just as climate change is real, so is the renewable energy sector. Sustainable decentralised energy systems produce less carbon emissions, are cheaper and involve less dependence on imported fuel. They create more jobs and empower local communities. Decentralised systems are more secure and more efficient. This is what the Energy [R]evolution must aim to create.
To stop the earth’s climate spinning out of control, most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves – coal, oil and gas – must remain in the ground. Our goal is for humans to live within the natural limits of our small planet.
4.decouple growth from fossil fuel use Starting in the developed countries, economic growth must be fully decoupled from fossil fuel usage. It is a fallacy to suggest that economic growth must be predicated on their increased combustion.
We need to use the energy we produce much more efficiently, and we need to make the transition to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels quickly in order to enable clean and sustainable growth.
5.phase out dirty, unsustainable energyWe need to phase out coal and nuclear power. We cannot continue to build coal plants at a time when emissions pose a real and present danger to both ecosystems and people. And we cannot continue to fuel the myriad nuclear threats by pretending nuclear power can in any way help to combat climate change. There is no role for nuclear power in the Energy [R]evolution.
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Located above the surface of our planet is a complex mixture of gases and suspended liquid and solid particles known as the atmosphere. Operating within the atmosphere is a variety of processes we call weather. Some measurable variables associated with weather include air temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind, and precipitation. The atmosphere also contains organized phenomena that include things like tornadoes, thunderstorms, mid-latitude cyclones, hurricanes, and monsoons. Climate refers to the general pattern of weather for a region over specific period of time. Scientists have discovered that human activities can influence Earth’s climate and weather producing problems like global warming, ozone depletion, and acid precipitation.
Widespread urban development alters weather patterns
Research focusing on the Houston area suggests that widespread urban development alters weather patterns in a way that ...
Laptev SeaLast Updated on 2013-05-14 at 14:23
The Laptev Sea is a saline water body, lodged between the Kara Sea and East Siberian Sea. The chief land boundary of this marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean is the Siberian... More »
East Siberian SeaLast Updated on 2013-05-14 at 14:09
The East Siberian Sea is a saline marine body, which is a southern marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean.
To the east is found the Chukchi Sea and to the west beyond the New... More »
Baffin BayLast Updated on 2013-05-14 at 12:11
Baffin Bay is a margibnal sea of the North Atlantic Ocean located between the Canada's Baffin, Devon and Ellesmere islands and Greenland.
To the south the Davis Strait... More »
Andaman SeaLast Updated on 2013-05-13 at 23:06
The Andaman Sea is a body of marine water in the northeastern corner of the Indian Ocean that lies to the west of the Malay Peninsula, the north of Sumatra, the east of the... More »
Molucca SeaLast Updated on 2013-05-13 at 23:02
The Molucca Sea (also Molukka Sea) is a semi-enclosed sea, surrounded by a variety of islands belonging to Indonesia, most significantly the island of Sulawesi (Celebes)... More »
Levantine SeaLast Updated on 2013-05-13 at 22:31
The Levantine Sea is most eastern unit of the Mediterranean Sea, and also the most saline portion of the Mediterranean Basin.
The Levantine Sea, also known as the Levant... More »
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Bali Climate conference has a message for rural community
The world leaders recognised that 20% of the global emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) can be contained by forestation. The programme, Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) aims to compensate the developing countries in the tropical region to maintain their forests and discourages deforestation. It allows developing countries to sell carbon offsets to rich countries in return for not burning their tropical forests from 2013.
REDD initiative is the need of the hour when largescale deforestation is taking place across the world for urbanisation, oil palm, soyabean and bio-fuel crop plantation.
The Bali conference also stressed upon the urgent need to cut carbon and methane emissions from tropical forests.
The Bali conference also adopted a resolution on adaptation fund to help poor nations to cope with damage from climate change impact like droughts, extreme weather conditions or rising seas. The Adaptation Fund now comprises only about $36 million but might rise to $1-$5 billion a year by 2030, if investments in green technology in developing nations surges. The fund distinguished the responsibilities of the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank. The fund would have a 16-member board largely from developing countries and would start operating from 2008.
Senior researchers of the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) had urged the developed countries to urgently discuss adaptation funds as the key to solution of the problems. The Lead author of the recent UNDP report, Kevin Watkins said that as per estimate $86 billion annually. "The figure looks large, but actually it is only 0.2% of the rich countries GDP," he said and added that adaptation fund sourced from multilateral funding in the last two years was only $26 million—the amount spent by UK alone on flood control for a week.
A group of small island communities led by Biotani Indonesia Foundation has urged that the adaptation fund should include a special corpus to cover their initiatives.
The Bali conference succeeded in adopting a resolution on technology tranfer and also Its monitoring. It, however, failed address the vital issue of cut in GHG emissions and deferred it till 2009.
It also postponed until next year any consideration of a plan to fund an untested technology which captures and buries the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, emitted from power plants that burn fossil fuels.
It also failed to agree whether or not to allow companies to sell carbon offsets from destroying new production of powerful greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). Benefiting factories have been the biggest winners under a UN scheme to reward companies which cut greenhouse gas emissions.
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India's rice output expected at 100 mn tons in 2012-13: FAO
The global body on the farm sector had earlier forecast the rice output in India, the world's second largest producer, at 98.5 MT. This was due to late onset of monsoon rains leading to deficit in key northern and southern growing areas.
FAO in its latest 'Food Outlook' report said that output prospects in India were marred until August by below-normal precipitation, but have since been bolstered by a revival of the monsoon rains.
"As a result, the country is predicted to harvest 100 MT in 2012-13, 4 MT less than its outstanding 2011-12 season, but still the second best result in history," FAO said.
The country had harvested a record 104.32 MT of rice in the 2011-12 crop year (JulyŅJune).
"While the resulting replenishment of water reserves should foster an expansion of secondary rabi (winter) crop, the rains may have come too late for the main kharif (summer) crop to be unscathed," it added.
The past few months of the 2012 season were dominated by concern over a possible recurrence of an El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) weather anomaly and slow progress of the monsoon rains in India, it said.
"However, in August and September, India's fears were tempered by more generous pattern of the rainfall, and meteorological centre's predictions reverted back to a weak
or neutral ENSO," it added.
According to the
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Australia's “exceptional” heatwave has produced record-breaking temperatures, with at least six of the first seven days of 2013 among the top 20 hottest days in the past century.
The extreme January heat has prompted the Bureau of Meteorology to issue a special climate statement, with further updates planned as the scorching temperatures continue.
Data for Monday is still to be fully analysed by the weather bureau, but it may be the hottest of the series and could generate a record average maximum beyond the 40.17 degrees reached on December 21, 1972.
Such a result would make it six days in a row when the national average has been above 39 degrees; tomorrow is expected to make it seven. Prior to this series, the longest run of 39 degrees or more was four days, in 1973.
“This event is ongoing with significant records likely to be set,” the bureau statement said. “A particular feature of this heatwave event has been the exceptional spatial extent of high temperatures.”
The final four months of 2012 were the hottest on record for Australia and January is making an early run at adding to the sequence of especially hot weather.
“Australia-wide, and for individual states, we are currently well above average by many degrees,” said Aaron Coutts-Smith, the bureau's NSW manager for climate services.
Sydney is set to cop its first major blast of the searing heat that has grilled much of Australia for the past week, with 43 degrees forecast.
Today's 40-degree prediction for Perth is one sign that any relief for the bulk of central and southern Australia from the current sweltering temperatures will be shortlived.
“We are seeing that re-intensification” of the heat, said Dr Coutts-Smith.
Melbourne, which is expecting 31 degrees today will feel chilly on Wednesday with a maximum of just 20 degrees before the mercury starts climbing back to 37 degrees on Friday, the bureau predicts.
The data for national averages shows the maximum reached 39.2 on January 2, 39.6 on January 3, 39.3 on January 4, 39.3 on January 5 and 39.6 on January 6.
Interestingly, none of the states has broken individual maximum highs, at least in the data until January 6, underscoring how large in size the overall weather pattern is. The weather bureau's manager for climate monitoring, Karl Braganza on Monday described the event as a "dome of heat" over the continent.
NSW, which is likely to endure extreme temperatures today, has to exceed 44.1 degrees on average to beat the record set on January 14, 1939. This year, the hottest day was on January 5 when maximums averaged 41.1 degrees, with Hay Airport hitting 47.9 degrees, according to data up until January 6.
For Victoria, the hottest day on record was 44.5 degrees on Black Saturday, February 7, 2009, when bushfires left 173 people dead. In the current spate of heat, the hottest day was January 4 when temperatures across the state averaged 41.2 degrees.
Up until January 6, Yarrawonga had posted the hottest temperature in the state at 45.7 degrees on January 5, while Portland's 42.1 on the previous day was a new daily maximum for that location, the bureau said.
Nationwide, the hottest single temperature recorded during the heat - up to January 6 - has been the 48.6 degrees reached at Red Rocks Point in WA on Jauary 3. That's about 2 degrees below the 50.7 degrees all-time record set on January 2, 1960.
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In fact, the United States apparently just emerged from the hottest spring on record.
The period between June 2011 and May of this year was the warmest on record since NOAA record keeping began in 1985. Aside from Washington, every state experienced higher-than-average temperatures during that period, which also featured the second-warmest summer and fourth-warmest winter in almost 28 years.
The nation's average temperature during those 12 months hovered at 56 degrees Fahrenheit, reportedly 3.2 degrees above the long-term average, surpassing the previous record, which was just set in April, in an analysis of temperatures between May 2011 and April 2012. The warmer-than-average conditions persisted through the winter and spring, resulting in a limited snowfall that the Rutgers Global Snow Lab reports was the third-smallest on record for the contiguous U.S.
The rising temperatures may have altered precipitation patterns as well, according to NOAA. While the country as a whole actually experienced a drier spring than usual, the West Coast, Northern Plains and Upper Midwest regions were simultaneously wetter than average.
On a more concerning note, the prevalence of natural disasters, such as the disastrous tornado in Joplin, Mo., and the massive, hurricane-caused flooding in Vermont, that plagued the country over the past year were also far form usual. The U.S. Climate Extreme Index, which tracks extremes in temperatures, precipitation, drought and tropical cyclones, reached 44 percent this past spring. That's twice the average value.
The NOAA report is not the only recent analysis to note the prevalence, and consequences, of rising temperatures. On Thursday, NASA reported that scientists have discovered unprecedented blooms of plant life beneath the waters of the Arctic Ocean. While that certainly does not seem like cause for concern, NASA noted it was likely caused by a thinning of the Arctic Ocean's three-foot thick layer of ice, allowing the sun to penetrate that ice to foster plant life under the sea.
A continuous rise in summer temperatures is expected to triple the number of heat-related deaths in the U.S. by the end of the century, the Natural Resources Defense Council reported last month. In an analysis of peer-reviewed data, the organization said summer temperatures could rise by 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by that time due to human-induced climate change, which could increase the number of summer heat-related deaths from 1,300 to 4,600 a year.
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The satellite images displayed are infrared (IR) images. Warmest (lowest) clouds are shown in white; coldest (highest) clouds are displayed in shades of yellow, red, and purple. Imagery is obtained from the GOES and METEOSAT geostationary satellites, and the two US Polar Orbiter (POES) satellites. POES satellites orbit the earth 14 times each day at an altitude of approximately 520 miles (870 km). As each orbit is made the satellite can view a 1,600 mile (2,700 km) wide area of the earth. Due to the rotation of the earth the satellite is able to view every spot on earth twice each day. Data from multiple orbits are mosaicked together to provide wide scale global and full earth views in a single image. Occasional dark triangular areas that occur on POES images are a result of gaps in data transmitted from the orbiters.
A weather satellite
is a type of satellite that is primarily used to monitor the weather
of the Earth. These meteorological satellites, however, see more than clouds
and cloud systems
. City lights, fires, effects of pollution, auroras, sand and dust storms, snow cover
, ice mapping, boundaries of ocean
currents, energy flows, etc., are other types of environmental information collected using weather satellites.
Weather satellite images helped in monitoring the volcanic ash cloud from Mount St. Helens and activity from other volcanoes such as Mount Etna. Smoke from fires in the western United States such as Colorado and Utah have also been monitored.
Other environmental satellites can detect changes in the Earth's vegetation, sea
color, and ice fields. For example, the 2002 oil spill off the northwest coast of Spain was watched carefully by the European ENVISAT, which, though not a weather satellite, flies an instrument (ASAR) which can see changes in the sea surface
El Niño and its effects on weather are monitored daily from satellite images. The Antarctic ozone hole is mapped from weather satellite data. Collectively, weather satellites flown by the U.S., Europe, India, China, Russia, and Japan provide nearly continuous observations
for a global weather
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Information contained on this page is provided by an independent third-party content provider. WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith. If you have any questions or comments about this page please contact email@example.com.
SOURCE Ford Motor Company
DEARBORN, Mich., March 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --
Ford reduced the average amount of water used to make each vehicle by 8.5 percent between 2011 and 2012 – putting the company more than halfway toward its current goal of using an average of just 4 cubic meters per vehicle globally by 2015.
Since 2000, Ford has reduced the amount of water it uses in everything from cooling towers to parts washing and paint operations by 10.6 billion gallons, or 62 percent. That's equal to the amount of water used by nearly 99,000 U.S. residences annually, or enough to fill 16,000 Olympic-size pools. Ford's reduced consumption rates mean even more to regions around the world struggling with water-related issues like drought and extensive population growth.
Ford's water reduction success is a result of the company's commitment to reduce the amount of water it uses by aggressively monitoring and managing just about every drop of water going into and out of its facilities and properties, says Andy Hobbs, director, Environmental Quality Office.
Since 2000, Ford decreased the total amount of water used around the world annually from 64 million cubic meters to 24 million cubic meters.
"That's about 10.6 billion gallons of water that was conserved and went to use somewhere else," says Hobbs.
Ford voluntarily launched its Global Water Management Initiative in 2000, putting in place ways to manage water conservation, quality and reuse of storm and process water. Ford's water strategy complements the company's overall Code of Human Rights, Basic Working Conditions and Corporate Responsibilities.
"Ford recognizes the critical importance of water, and is committed to conserving water and using it responsibly," says Robert Brown, vice president, Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering. "Many vehicle manufacturing processes require water and the resource is used at every point in our supply chain."
Ford aims to use an average of 1,056 gallons of water to make each vehicle globally – consistent with its overall goal of a 30 percent reduction in the amount of water used per vehicle between 2009 and 2015. That is slightly more than the 1,000 gallons fire engine tankers in the U.S. are required to contain in their tanks. One cubic meter of water is equal to 264 gallons.
Continuing the progress
Ford had a positive impact on the world's water supply in many ways during 2012. The Ford Fund, for example, supported 19 different water-related projects in China, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, India, Germany and South Africa.
One project in arid Southwest China, for instance, involved 60 Ford employees from Nanjing, who helped eight families build water cellars designed to capture water during the rainy season to store and use during drier times of the year.
At the same time, Ford's biggest water-related projects were within its own facilities and included:
These accomplishments reflect Ford's overall approach to water use, which emphasizes several goals:
More information about Ford's water use-related efforts can be found in the company's annual sustainability report that is released annually every June. The most recent version can be found here.
About Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F), a global automotive industry leader based in Dearborn, Mich., manufactures or distributes automobiles across six continents. With about 171,000 employees and 65 plants worldwide, the company's automotive brands include Ford and Lincoln. The company provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company. For more information regarding Ford and its products worldwide, please visit http://corporate.ford.com.
©2012 PR Newswire. All Rights Reserved.
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The aviation sector is renowned as a carbon intensive business, but an increasing number of airports are looking to change that by integrating the latest green-tech into their daily operations.
Air travel and transport accounts for two percent of all human generated greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- with airports contributing five percent to the overall aviation figure.
By adapting clean energy policies and technologies, eco-conscious airport operators hope to make a dent in these numbers and boost the industry's environmental street-cred.
"We are making our airports greener, while balancing the tremendous economic impacts they deliver for our region," says Amy Malick, deputy commissioner of sustainability for the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA), which will host the fifth annual Airports Going Green conference this November.
The conference provides a platform for over 400 airport executives and green thinkers from around the world to present programs, strategies, and lessons-learned regarding airport sustainability.
"(We are) committed to implementing sustainable initiatives at our airports that enhance the quality of life for citizens," she adds.
Malick highlights how the CDA has installed over 230,000 square feet of vegetated roof space at Chicago O'Hare and Midway International Airport, ensured all Chicago airport trucks are fueled with ultra-low sulfur diesel gas and insisted recycled materials are utilized in all airports when possible.
As a result, the CDA has saved 76,000 tons of CO2 from being pumped out by Chicago's airports alone, she claims.
Across the U.S. like-minded schemes are taking off with increasing regularity. Airports such as Boston Logan and Denver International now generate a small percentage of their energy requirements from renewable energy sources (such as on site wind and solar).
In Europe meanwhile 64 airports have joined the Airport Carbon Accreditation program, which recognizes innovative eco-airport efforts. A further five sites have signed up to the scheme in Asia.
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On February 1st, the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the “Convention”) announced the pledges made by countries under the Copenhagen Accord (the “Accord”). Developed country parties to the Accord pledged greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets to be achieved by 2020. Most notably, developing country parties to the Accord also pledged mitigation actions. By the January 31st deadline, pledges had been provided by countries representing approximately 80% of global GHG emissions.
pledges made under the Accord
Adhering to legislation passed in its House of Representatives, the U.S. pledged a 17% reduction from 2005 levels.1 Canada also pledged a 17% reduction from 2005 levels, “to be aligned with the final economy-wide emissions target of the United States in enacted legislation.”2 Like Canada, many parties made pledges contingent on action by others. The European Union, for example, pledged to reduce its emissions 20% below 1990 levels, or by 30% should other parties make comparable commitments.
As an example of a mitigation action pledge of a developing country, China pledged to lower its carbon intensity (per unit GDP) by 40-45% by 2020, to increase to 15% the share of non-fossil fuels used in primary energy consumption, and to increase its forest coverage and forest stock volume.3 In comments following the announcement of the pledges, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change, Todd Stern has made it clear that the U.S. expects of developing countries, stronger mitigation actions than those contained in the Accord.4
the 2009 UN climate change conference
The Accord was the outcome of the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (the “Conference”) to the Convention,5 attended by yours truly. In an unprecedented display of the prominence that climate change is gaining on the world stage, the Conference was attended by 115 heads of state and over 40,000 delegates.
The stage that was the Conference was not without its share of theatrics. When the leaders arrived in the final days to find that little progress had been made, the drama moved behind the scenes. In a telling moment, frustrated by negotiating only with Chinese Premier Wen’s aides, U.S. President Obama walked in on a private meeting between Wen and the leaders of Brazil, India, and South Africa.6 It was largely these five major economies that would go on to produce the Accord, which calls for any global temperature increase to be limited to two degrees Celsius.7
However the parties to the Convention’s Kyoto Protocol (the “Protocol”), the first commitment period of which ends in 2012, were unable to agree to its extension. The lack of consensus leaves in suspension the status of the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the value of the Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) generated by thousands of projects thereunder. The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which held a parallel conference, nevertheless remains optimistic: “an international injection of increased demand remains a strong possibility over investment timescales but still has to be treated as an upside rather than a given.”8
back on the home front
As mentioned above, Canada’s climate change policy is explicitly tied to that of the United States. 2009 saw in the U.S. the passage in the House of Representatives of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (“Waxman-Markey”). Waxman-Markey calls for a 17% reduction of emissions below 2005 levels by 2020 and provides for the trading of allowances.9 Debate in the U.S. Senate of the similar Kerry-Boxer bill is nominally scheduled for debate this spring, though it may be 2011 before it comes to a floor vote. Tri-partisan senators John Kerry (D), Lindsey Graham (R) and Joe Lieberman (I) have taken it upon themselves to ensure passage of a climate (or “energy independence”) bill.
For many U.S. senators, any climate legislation must be accompanied by developing country emissions reductions and the international verification thereof. As China and others are less keen on international monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), the Accord features compromise language. Countries will communicate their actions “with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure national sovereignty is respected.”10 In any case, with more than two thirds of Americans supporting the regulation of GHG emissions,11 the passage of legislation through Congress and, consequently, Canadian federal regulation, may be on the horizon.
International climate change negotiations will occur in a number of fora this year. While the sixteenth Conference of the Parties will occur in December in Cancun, one might now wonder how much can be expected of 192-party negotiations. In June, Canada will host the G8 and G20 summits, and it is rumoured that climate change policy may be included on the agenda.12 Finally, it is likely that a second meeting of the Major Economies Forum will occur later this year to discuss climate policy.13
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My Beef With Meat
If it has a face, it probably gobbles up global resources along with its grass
By Stett Holbrook
Last month, the federal government released a much-anticipated report on global climate change. It paints a chilling picture of what will happen if global warming continues unabated. "This report is a game-changer," said the new director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco, at a press conference last week. "I think that much of the foot-dragging in addressing climate change is a reflection of the perception that climate change is way down the road, it's in the future and it only affects certain parts of the country. This report demonstrates in concrete scientific information that climate change is happening now, and it's happening in our back yards."
The report, issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, compiles work from 13 different government agencies. In a refreshing break from the science-averse Bush administration, the report states unequivocally that climate change is human caused. The report details changes scientists are already seeing and predicts how the climate will change if greenhouse-gas emissions aren't curtailed. The report also discusses how decisive policies can roll back the impending doom. (Read the report at globalchange.gov.) Here are two of the key findings:
• Climate changes are under way in the United States and are projected to grow. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt and alterations in river flows.
• Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate, but increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production.
There have been many reports on global warming and dire predictions from respected scientists. So far not much has changed. I hope that President Obama uses the power of his position to spur the dramatic and speedy action needed to reduce the profound impacts of the crisis. The challenge Obama faces is convincing people that the time to change our ways is today, not tomorrow. The trouble is, we don't usually realize we're in trouble until the roof starts caving in. For example, only when we faced global financial meltdown did world leaders act. A global recession is real and painful, but compared to the apocalyptic effects of unchecked global warming, it's but a pinprick.
What does all this have to do with food? Well, while the U.S. government appears to be finally getting serious about acting against global warming, we the people need to do as much as we can. Food strikes me as particularly target-rich as we seek to reduce global warming. I see reducing our consumption of meat as the single most important action we can take as individuals. I've come to view a double bacon cheeseburger as the culinary equivalent of dumping dirty motor oil into a clear mountain lake. If eating burgers was only detrimental to those who eat them that would be one thing, but the production of meat and dairy across the world is an environmental catastrophe.
I'm a firm believer in spending more for quality, food included. But eating well shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. I guess it's all in how one defines "eating well." For me, that means little or no processed food and plenty of fresh produce in season. Food is of course a necessary expense, but there's a lot of discretion on how to spend your food dollar. But the ironic thing about food when you buy fresh, unprocessed ingredients and cook for yourself rather than opening a can or box, eating well generally costs less. At least that's my belief.
According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world's greenhouse gases, more than transportation. Animal agriculture is the leading source of methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which--combined with carbon dioxide--are the primary causes of global warming. Livestock production accounts for more than 8 percent of global human water use, the FAO says. Evidence suggests that it is also the largest source of water pollution thanks to animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides used for feed crops, and sediments from eroded pastures. An estimated 30 percent of the Earth's ice-free land is involved in livestock production. Approximately 70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon is used as pasture, and feed crops cover a large part of what's left.
Eating organically raised, grass-feed beef is a far better option than the factory-farmed garbage that most of us eat. But organically raised or not, livestock still sucks up scarce natural resources and contributes to global warming. I'm not saying we should give up meat entirely. Just eat less of it. Given the severity of the climate crisis, reducing our consumption of meat is a painless step everyone can take. What if President Obama declared he was willing to go without meat a few days a week for the sake of the planet? I'm not holding my breath for that one, but more often than not I'm going to hold off on eating meat.
Send a letter to the editor about this story.
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http://www.metcruz.com/bohemian/07.08.09/eats-0927.html
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Air pollution health alert and advisory issued through Wednesday, March 10
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has issued an air pollution health ALERT for today and tomorrow, March 8 and 9 and an air pollution health ADVISORY for Wednesday, March 10 for the Twin Cities and Rochester area. The Air Quality Index values (AQI) in the Twin Cities exceeds the level considered unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Dense fog overnight, which aids in fine particle production, and calm winds, have allowed fine particle concentrations to build to levels considered unhealthy for sensitive groups. Fine particle levels are expected to gradually fall this afternoon as the fog dissipates. However, calm winds and high relative humidity will continue to trap pollutants, keeping air quality conditions unhealthy for sensitive groups. Weather conditions are supposed to improve the air quality to good AQI levels by Thursday, March 11.
Those who have respiratory or cardiovascular problems, young children, the elderly, and individuals whom are physically active are considered especially sensitive to elevated levels of air pollution. Be prepared to postpone or reduce vigorous activity. Ozone and fine particles can be drawn deeply into the lungs, so reduce activities that lead to deep or accelerated breathing. Even individuals that are otherwise healthy may experience health effects when air pollutant levels increase.
How you can help:
Residents can take simple steps to help reduce emissions that create smog. Motor vehicle emissions contribute to fine particle pollution. To lower levels of air pollution, the MPCA is urging residents to use alternate modes of transportation such as mass transit, car pools, biking and walking to work or shop.
Other measures that will help reduce emissions on days when the Index reaches 100 and above include:
1. Limit driving - share a ride to work and postpone errands until the next day.
2. Don’t idle your vehicle for more than three minutes**
3. Refuel your vehicle after 6 p.m.
4. Leave your car at home and walk, bike, carpool or take public transportation whenever you can.
5. Postpone using other gasoline-powered engines, like garden and recreational equipment.
6. Postpone indoor and outdoor recreational fires.
7. To reduce the demand on power plants, turn off as many electric items as possible.
8. If you fall in the sensitive group category, arrange to work indoors for the day.
**The City of Minneapolis approved limits on vehicle idling that aim to reduce air pollution in Minneapolis. The ordinance, which was passed in 2008, limits most vehicle idling to three minutes, except in traffic. Reducing vehicle idling in Minneapolis translates into less air pollution, protecting the public health and the environment and saving money in fuel. Vehicle motors release particulate matter, dirt, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the air.
Published Mar. 8, 2010
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You're using more water than you think
A water footprint is the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed. Here are some ways to lighten your water footprint.
Fri, Aug 31 2012 at 11:28 AM
Prodded by environmental consciousness — or penny pinching — you installed low-flow showerheads and fixed all the drippy facets. Knowing that your manicured lawn was sucking down an unnatural amount of water — nearly 7 billion gallons of water is used to irrigate home landscaping, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — you ripped up the turf and replaced it with native plants.
You’re still using a lot more water than you think.
The drought of 2012 has generated images of parched landscapes and sun-baked lakebeds. At least 36 states are projecting water shortages between now and 2013, according to a survey by the federal General Accounting Office. Water supplies are finite, and fickle.
Water, we all know, is essential to life. It is also essential to agriculture, industry, energy and the production of trendy T-shirts. We all use water in ways that go way beyond the kitchen and bathroom. The measure of both direct and indirect water use is known as the water footprint.
Your water footprint is the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed, according to the Water Footprint Network, an international nonprofit foundation based in the Netherlands. The Water Footprint Network has crunched the numbers and developed an online calculator to help you determine the size of your footprint.
You’ll be astonished to know how much water you’re using … once you’ve converted all those metric measurements into something you can understand.
The average American home uses about 260 gallons of water per day, according to the EPA.
That quarter-pound burger you just gobbled down? More than 600 gallons of water.
That Ramones T-shirt? More than 700 gallons.
So, adjustments to your diet and buying habits can have a much greater impact on the size of your water footprint than taking 40-second showers.
A pound of beef, for example, takes nearly 1,800 gallons of water to produce, with most of that going to irrigate the grains and grass used to feed the cattle. A pound of chicken demands just 468 gallons. If you really want to save water, eat more goat. A pound of goat requires 127 gallons of water.
We’ve been told to cut down on our use of paper to save the forests, but going paperless also saves water. It takes more than 1,300 gallons of water to produce a ream of copy paper.
Even getting treated water to your house requires electricity. Letting your faucet run for five minutes, the EPA says, uses about as much energy as burning a 60-watt light bulb for 14 hours. Reducing your water footprint also reduces your carbon footprint, the amount of greenhouse gases your lifestyle contributes to the atmosphere and global warming.
So, you could say that conserving water is more than hot air. It’s connected to almost everything you do.
Related water stories on MNN:
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If a powerful hurricane slams the Louisiana coast during the Republican National Convention, the resonances with Katrina will be bad enough. But the storm would also showcase the GOP’s position on climate change, which is, increasingly, to deny the scientific consensus that fossil-fuel pollution contributes to a warming atmosphere and destructive weather patterns—including stronger hurricanes.
Although scientists caution that no single weather event can be attributed directly to climate change, major events such as Katrina and this summer’s drought fire up a debate that has become more incendiary in recent years as more Republican lawmakers doubt climate science.
The question of whether the GOP accepts climate science didn’t come up in 2008, when Hurricane Gustav slammed into the Gulf Coast during the party’s Minnesota convention. That’s because the nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, believed in climate change and professed a desire to solve it.
Since then, the mainstream GOP view is to deny the scientific findings that link man-made pollution to climate change, and Mitt Romney has publicly walked back his onetime position that humans contribute to warming. Vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan has also questioned the science.
But stronger hurricanes are among the most serious consequences of climate change induced by the burning of fossil fuels (the Romney campaign favors such burning), and the Gulf Coast is likely to experience the worst effects, according to a 2012 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a 2009 report authored by 13 federal agencies.
Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has authored one of many reports on the increasing frequency of high-intensity hurricanes, said that the data link warming air and water surfaces to stronger, more devastating hurricanes.
“As the temperature of the tropical ocean increases, you see greater intensity and the frequency of intense storms goes up,” Emanuel said.
Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University and a member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the science shows clearly that reducing oil, coal, and gas pollution could help prevent damage related to climate change. “There’s a risk, which scientists have identified, that it’s likely we’ll have more strong hurricanes, and one of the things we can do to prepare is reduce fossil-fuel emissions,” he said. “It’s just like building levees.”
Environmentalists are targeting Republicans for their views. Around Tampa, the Florida Wildlife Federation has posted billboards of prominent Republicans, such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who have acknowledged climate change as a problem and called for solutions.
“We think this is one of the most important policy issues that there is,” said Federation President Manley Fuller. “It’s treated as a partisan issue, and it should not be. The billboards remind Republicans of what well-known Republicans have said about this.”
Last week, the League of Conservation Voters launched a $1.5 million campaign to defeat five House Republicans who deny the science of climate change. The “Flat Earth Five” campaign is the first time the League has targeted a group of lawmakers explicitly because of their positions on climate.
Want to stay ahead of the curve? Sign up for National Journal’s AM & PM Must Reads. News and analysis to ensure you don’t miss a thing.
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http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/as-isaac-bears-down-little-talk-of-climate-change-20120827
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Oct. 9, 1998 COLUMBIA, Mo.--Ducks, geese and bald eagles soaring over areas the size of small towns are envisioned when talking about federally protected wetlands, not areas that are maybe as big as a small swimming pool and apparently void of life. University of Missouri-Columbia Professor Ray Semlitsch is trying to change that view and explain the importance of smaller wetlands before they are managed out of existence.
"Large wetlands are beautiful and need to be protected, but for some animal species such as frogs, toads and salamanders, it is small wetlands that support greater species diversity," said Semlitsch, who along with his graduate research assistant, Russ Bodie, recently published their research in Conservation Biology. "These smaller, temporary wetlands--because they are dry at certain times during the year--are much harder to appreciate than vast marsh areas. But without these smaller wetlands, it is very possible that much of the animal and plant life that make wetlands rich, productive habitats would not survive. We need to worry about the conservation of smaller wetlands as well as the larger ones."
Small wetlands currently are defined as being less than 4 hectares, or about 8 to 9 acres. The majority of the nation's wetlands are much smaller than might be imagined, closer to 1 to 2 acres and sometimes as small as several square yards. These small wetlands may comprise the majority of wetlands in the United States and help support a vast diversity of wetland species. However, unlike the large wetlands, these smaller areas are not protected to the same extent.
Recently, the Army Corp of Engineers, which manages wetlands of all sizes throughout the United States, drafted regulations that will change the way wetlands are managed in the future. They have put off any change in management regulations until April, but the MU researchers argue that the changes in the regulations could manage these smaller wetlands out of existence.
"Right now we can't detect losses of small wetlands by satellite imagery, a technique used to assess environmental change," Bodie said. "We lose thousands of acres each year in wetlands and these smaller ones are not even taken into account. Yet, they play a vital role in the ecosystem and support a great variety of organisms."
Research done by Semlitsch and Bodie has indicated that when some individuals of a species move between wetlands, this increases their chances of survival. By populating many different wetlands, various species thrive, even during drought years when some wetlands are dry. When smaller wetlands are destroyed, the chances of survival for many species' populations may decrease dramatically because distances between individual wetlands become longer, making movement between wetlands more difficult. These small wetland breeding sites for amphibians are especially critical in light of purported world-wide declines, Semlitsch said.
Wetlands in general also have direct benefits to humans as they filter out chemicals and silt, buffer lands from flooding, and are a favorite of hunters and fishers. They also are very costly and difficult to develop for construction or other purposes.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University Of Missouri, Columbia.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981009081539.htm
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Giant Water Scavenger Beetle
|Geographical Range||North America|
|Scientific Name||Hydrophilus triangularis|
|Conservation Status||Not listed by IUCN|
The name says it all. This large beetle lives in water, where it scavenges vegetation and insect parts. The insect can store a supply of air within its silvery belly, much like a deep-sea diver stores air in a tank.
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http://www.stlzoo.org/animals/abouttheanimals/invertebrates/insects/beetles/giantwaterscavengerbeetle/
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They are not expecting any angry birds, but bird-watchers are already seeing evidence of what is expected to be a major invasion of hungry birds winging through the region.
Normally content to hang out in the deep forests of Canada, grosbeaks, pine siskins, finches, redpolls and other seed-eaters are winging their way south, hoping to find something to eat. The tree seed crop, normally plentiful in the forests of Ontario and Quebec, has in some cases failed completely, causing what is known as a bird irruption.
“The invasion is under way,” said David Small, president of the Athol Bird and Nature Club and one of the Central Massachusetts bird count leaders. “I had redpolls Sunday at the home feeder, which don't show up every year, and often not until January or February.”
Mr. Small, who is a supervisor at the Quabbin Reservoir, said he has been seeing pine grosbeaks at the reservoir headquarters and several locations. Central Massachusetts birders also report seeing white-winged and red crossbills.
“I was at Plum Island and Salisbury in early November and saw 250-plus white-winged crossbills,” he said. “So a big year is upon us. I can't recall a year it started this early with such diversity and large numbers.”
Based on data from ornithologists in Ontario, the National Audubon Society issued a winter bird warning — not really warning of disaster — that because there is so little to eat up north, a bird invasion is under way. The warning was issued more for the interest of those who will take part in the Audubon's Christmas Bird Count, which takes place all over the country from Dec. 14 through Jan. 5. The bird count often offers up data to support what ornithologists are predicting based on climate conditions. The seed crop failure may have been connected to a lack of rainfall. Central and Eastern Canada experienced long-term drought conditions this year.
Over the years, some species of seed-eating birds have been seen in small numbers; some are not seen for several years at a time, but the region saw a flood of pine siskins pass through in October and November. The birds enjoyed what they could get from the limited number of feeders out in Central Massachusetts at the time and headed off, possibly making their way as far south as North and South Carolina.
This year's small bird irruption followed a banner year for the eye candy of wild birds — snowy owls. The large white raptors were seen throughout the country as they, too, went off in search of food.
Irruptions occur regularly when food supplies of various types are disrupted. In the case of the owls, it was a lack of small mammals for them to eat.
Local birders have been keeping close watch on the ebb and flow of species. Recently there have been reports on WPI's Central Massachusetts Bird Update list of pine grosbeaks at Quaboag Pond in Brookfield and Worcester Airport. There have also been large numbers of pine grosbeaks seen in downtown Westminster, Royalston Common and several areas of Gardner and Lunenburg.
Bill Cormier, co-owner of The Bird Store and More in Sturbridge, said bird activity has been very active this early winter.
“There was a big wave of pine siskins that came through here earlier in the season,” he said.
Mr. Cormier said he is interested to see what is collected during the Sturbridge Christmas Bird Count, set for Dec. 18. The count will be led by local bird observer Mark Lynch; after 24 hours of recording birds, volunteers will report their data to compilers at The Bird Store.
Along with bird counts in Athol and Sturbridge, there will be counts in Worcester, Uxbridge and Westminster.
Feeders are an important part of the bird-count effort, and Mr. Cormier said he recommends black oil sunflower seeds with some nuts mixed in.
“Nuts are a major ingredient,” he said.
The birds expected or already seen in this irruption are mostly regular sights in Central Massachusetts, although in smaller numbers, but a few are fairly rare.
“We rarely get a hoary redpoll,” Mr. Small said.
The hoary redpoll's range is mostly no farther south than the Canadian border, but Mr. Small said even it is a possibility this year.
The Athol and Worcester Christmas Bird Counts will be held Dec. 15, Westminster will be Dec. 23 and Quabbin and Uxbridge will be Dec. 29.
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WAKING the GIANT Bill McGuire
While we transmit more than two million tweets a day and nearly one hundred trillion emails each year, we're also emitting record amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). Bill McGuire, professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, expects our continued rise in greenhouse gas emissions to awaken a slumbering giant: the Earth's crust. In Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes (Oxford University Press), he explains that when the Earth's crust (or geosphere) becomes disrupted from rising temperatures and a C[O.sub.2]-rich atmosphere, natural disasters strike more frequently and with catastrophic force.
Applying a "straightforward presentation of what we know about how climate and the geosphere interact," the book links previous warming periods 20,000 to 5,000 years ago with a greater abundance of tsunamis, landslides, seismic activity and volcanic eruptions. McGuire urgently warns of the "tempestuous future of our own making" as we progressively inch toward a similar climate.
Despite his scientific testimony to Congress stating "what is going on in the Arctic now is the biggest and fastest thing that Nature has ever done" and the "incontrovertible" data that the Earth's climate draws lively response from the geosphere, brutal weather events are still not widely seen as being connected to human influence. Is our global population sleepwalking toward imminent destruction, he asks, until "it is obvious, even to the most entrenched denier, that our climate is being transformed?"
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SEA level rises and climate change are linked, say top scientists as they prepare the next major global climate change update.
More than 250 experts from 39 countries are in Hobart this week to review the latest draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report including a new chapter on sea level.
The co-ordinating lead author on the new chapter, CSIRO's Dr John Church, said sea level is clearly linked to climate change.
"The sea level is rising, the rate of the rise has increased and will continue to increase," he said.
He said the rate had increased from a few tenths of a millimetre a year before the 20th century to more than 3mm a year in the past 20 years.
"It's clear the rate of sea level rise has already increased," he said.
"Whether that 3mm is a further acceleration or not is yet unclear but we do expect a further acceleration during the 21st century and it's clearly linked to greater levels of greenhouse gases."
He said thermal expansion because of ocean warming and the melting of glaciers were two key causes of sea level rise.
CSIRO's Dr Steve Rintoul, who is involved with the report's ocean observations chapter, said oceans were very important for climate because of the amount of heat they absorbed and stored.
He said the temperature of the ocean surface had increased by 0.3-0.5C over the past 50 years.
"There's no disputing the oceans are warming," he said.
"It's clear from the published literature that greenhouse gases as well as natural variability have contributed to this observed warming of the ocean."
He said oceans around Tasmania were changing, with recordings showing that temperatures around Maria Island have increased by 1.5C over the past 60 years.
"It's a very large number compared with other parts of the ocean," he said.
The Hobart conference is the last meeting before scientists prepare the final draft of the IPCC report's physical science section. The final report will be submitted in September.
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At Walmart, we talk a lot about learning from one another and working in partnership to create global change. A recent report, “Smart Moves,” examines some of the best practices by companies working to cut emissions from transportation.
Emissions from freight transportation are no small problem. The report’s author, Jason Mathers of the Environmental Defense Fund, points out that freight emissions are expected “to increase 74 percent from 2005 to 2035” in the U.S. Mathers’ report looks at some of the best strategies and most creative thinking at work today to cut pollution caused by shipping.
Justin Gerdes’ Forbes commentary highlights the report and notes that “any CEO concerned about his or her company’s carbon footprint must account for shipping’s growing contribution to climate change…” As Gerdes points out, the report is loaded with statistics about shipping emissions as well as examples of smart moves by companies that reduced emissions and saved money at the same time. Here’s what he highlighted about Walmart:
Wal-Mart: Direct shipment
Wal-Mart worked with Minute Maid to eliminate one stop in the chain used to deliver Minute Maid’s Simply Orange Juice to Wal-Mart distribution centers. Now, the product moves directly from a production facility in Florida to Wal-Mart distribution centers. Eliminating delivery to Minute Maid’s own distribution centers slashed CO2 emissions by 1,500 metric tons annually and added six days to the shelf life of the orange juice.
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http://www.walmartgreenroom.com/2012/02/forbes-how-nike-wal-mart-and-ikea-save-money-and-slash-carbon-by-shipping-smarter/
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What is Rainwater Harvesting?
Rainwater harvesting is an ancient practice of catching and holding rain for later use. In a rainwater harvesting system, rain is gathered from a building rooftop or other source and is held in large containers for future use, such as watering gardens or washing cars. This practice reduces the demand on water resources and is excellent during times of drought.
Why is it Important?
In addition to reducing the demand on our water sources (especially important during drought), rainwater harvesting also helps prevent water pollution. Surprised?
Here’s why: the success of the 1972 Clean Water Act has meant that the greatest threat to New York’s waterbodies comes not from industrial sources, but rather through the small actions we all make in our daily lives. For example, in a rain storm, the oil, pesticides, animal waste, and litter from our lawns, sidewalks, driveways, and streets are washed down into our sewers. This is called non-point source (NPS) pollution because the pollutants come from too many sources to be identified. Rainwater harvesting diverts water from becoming polluted stormwater; instead, this captured rainwater may be used to irrigate gardens near where it falls.
In New York City, keeping rainwater out of the sewer system is very important. That’s because the city has an old combined sewer system that uses the same pipes to transport both household waste and stormwater to sewage treatment plants. During heavy rains, the system overloads; then untreated sewage and contaminated stormwater overflow into our rivers and estuary, with serious consequences:
Who is Harvesting Rainwater in New York City?
Back in 2002, a drought emergency pushed many community gardens to the brink of extinction. For the first time in twenty years, community gardeners were denied permission to use fire hydrants, the primary source of water for most community gardens. This crisis led to the formation of the Water Resources Group (WRG), an open collaboration of community gardening and environmental organizations. With help from the WRG, rainwater harvesting systems have now been built as demonstration sites in twenty NYC community gardens.
At community gardens that harvest rainwater, rain is diverted from the gutters of adjacent buildings and is stored in tanks in the gardens. A 1-inch rainfall on a 1,000-square-foot roof produces 600 gallons of water. The tanks are mosquito proof, so the standing water does not encourage West Nile virus. Because rainwater is chlorine free, it is better than tap water for plant growth, meaning healthier plants. And it’s free!
What are Other Cities Doing?
Many cities have adopted creative, low-cost ways to stop wasting rainwater by diverting it from their sewage systems and putting it to use where it falls. Here are some examples:
What Can I Do?
Spread the word! Educate those around you on the importance of lifestyle decisions.
Tell people not to litter, dump oil down storm drains, or overfertilize their lawns.
Install a rainwater harvesting system at your home, school, business, or local community center.
Contact your local elected officials, and let them know you support rainwater harvesting!
Supporting rainwater harvesting Jade Boat Loans
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by Bruce Boyers,
Our system of factory agriculture is exacting a great toll on our planet: 40 percent of the land and 70 percent of the fresh water on Earth is devoted to the growing of food, which, in the process, creates some 30 percent of greenhouse gases. Compounding these issues is the fact that commercial produce is often transported thousands or even tens of thousands of miles to its point of sale, consuming tons of fossil fuel. It is evident that our current agricultural model is a failed experiment in search of a more sustainable solution.
In an effort to bring needed fresh produce closer to home with far greater sustainability, a movement in urban agriculture is rapidly gaining momentum. New York City, having such a large and diverse population, is a metropolis ripe for green urban agriculture and is now home to an innovative commercial operation called Gotham Greens.
Gotham Greens has now gone into full production and is providing much-needed locally and sustainably grown produce for the greater New York City area. "My partners and I had a vision for a local farm operation here in New York City that could provide New Yorkers-which would include restaurants, retailers and consumers-with premium quality, fresh, nutritious culinary herbs and greens, salad greens and lettuces," Puri said. "They would be grown year round so that we could reliably and consistently supply our customers with local produce. Obviously our climate in New York doesn't support year-round agriculture of a lot of these crops, so we thought we would try to do something in a greenhouse. A greenhouse climate allows you to potentially grow year round, at the same time protecting crops against extreme or detrimental weather events."
Gotham Greens was founded in 2008 by Puri and Eric Haley; then in 2009 Jennifer Nelkin joined as a partner to head all greenhouse operations. Puri himself had previously developed and managed start-up enterprises in New York City, in Ladakh, India, and in Malawi, Africa, focusing on green building, renewable energy and environmental design. Haley, who is currently employed by a Manhattan-based investment bank and private equity fund, also brought business acumen to the operation. The farm know-how comes from Nelkin, who cultivated her expertise in greenhouse systems and management at the University of Arizona. In addition to greenhouse system design, her skillset includes plant nutrition and crop and pest management. She has managed greenhouses in far more extreme circumstances than New York-namely two different locations in Antarctica, providing fresh vegetables for US research scientists.
House of Greens
The choice of a rooftop was made quite deliberately. "New York City obviously doesn't have a lot of arable or available land, so it seemed to us that one underutilized resource was rooftops," said Puri. "You're seeing more and more innovative uses of the rooftops now in urban areas nationwide."
Getting a rooftop greenhouse up and operational-especially one of this size and scope-was no mean feat. "It was extremely challenging," Puri recalled. "I would say the biggest challenge was just having any real path to follow. There's not a lot of precedent for what we're doing.
"The first thing was finding a building owner who wouldn't mind us building a greenhouse on his or her roof. We also had to find a building that met all the construction criteria, both structurally and for the obtaining of utilities. In addition there had to be access, and the evaluation of how we would get stuff up and how we would get stuff down. On top of that we had to make sure the plan would meet all zoning and building codes."
The Gotham Greens operation, as one might imagine, represents an enormous saving in resource usage. "We employ a recirculating hydroponic technique that actually goes back and captures all irrigation for reuse," Puri explained. "It's the most water-efficient form of agriculture in the world. We use ten times less water than conventional agriculture. Even though we are not in an area that is susceptible to drought, we still think that it's a great demonstration of a technology that is very water efficient." The hydroponic growing environment is sterile as well, which eliminates the risk of pathogens-particularly important in light of the increase in foodborne illnesses, such as E. coli and salmonella, from fresh vegetables.
Puri and his partners have seen to the frugal use of energy too. "We have 55 kilowatts in solar panels that produce electricity to help meet the electrical needs of the facility," said Puri. "Along with that, we've spent a lot of effort here to design our facilities to be as energy efficient as possible. We've installed increased insulation in many areas; the glazing material that we selected helps insulate the greenhouse; and we've deployed heat curtains and heat blankets in the winter to reduce space in the greenhouse that needs to be conditioned." Additionally, a sophisticated computer control system ensures that climate-control equipment operates efficiently to reduce resource consumption.
Perhaps the most significant saving in terms of resources is that of fossil fuels, as the distance from farm to consumer is considerably shorter. "Of course, we sharply reduce the transportation of our product and the associated carbon emissions that are caused because of that," Puri added.
All nutrition and pest control is done naturally and sustainably, which was also one of the goals for Gotham Greens. "We utilize mineral salts that we dissolve in the water," Puri said. "These contain minerals such as nitrogen, magnesium and potassium, along with micronutrients like selenium. In controlling pests, we mostly rely on beneficial insects; there's a whole program in integrated pest management for which a fair bit of monitoring goes on. If we do find a pest in here, we will introduce its natural predator-for instance, we have ladybugs and lacewings to control aphids."
It's in the Taste
Like many others concentrating on great flavor, Puri and his team have found that truly caring for the plants will result in the superiority they seek. "The biggest thing in obtaining that flavor is really taking care of our crops-making sure they have ideal growing conditions in climate, humidity, temperature, and so forth. We're also making sure they're getting all the nutrients that they need, along with the right amount of irrigation, the right amount of dissolved oxygen. The foremost belief is that healthy plants are going to make for tastier plants.
"And then because we are so close to our customers, we never have to harvest anything before it's completely ready. Many conventionally grown crops have to be refrigerated and transported long distances, so they are picked early and then artificially ripened. We don't have to do anything like that; we can harvest crops when they are at their optimal freshness, size, flavor, profile and color. We can harvest any item in the morning and have it to a supermarket or a restaurant in the afternoon."
In addition to supplying locally grown produce, Gotham Greens contributes to the local economy by providing badly needed jobs. All staff are residents from the nearby community. As production expands, they also plan to offer their products to more local areas that have limited access to fresh produce.
They're Buying It
For more information on Gotham Greens, visit www.gothamgreens.com.
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Eighteen years ago, the eminent conservation biologist Gary Meffe warned of what he considered to be the greatest problem in human history – humanity’s inexorable and exponential increase in numbers.
Meffe’s paper, entitled ‘Human Population Control: The Missing Agenda’ published in the journal Conservation Biology, outlined the threats posed by an ever-increasing human population to biodiversity in terms of species extinctions, and to the ecosystem services necessary for our survival. These include water and air purification, hydrologic cycling and food production. Not only is humanity’s deluge drowning the creatures we share the Earth with, but it also runs the risk of submerging itself too. But was this ‘missing agenda’ acknowledged? Was a dam constructed to stem our exponential flow?
Nearly two decades later and we see the publication of the UN’s State of World Population report 2011. It announced that on October 31st we reached the population milestone of seven billion people inhabiting our world. Instead of warning of future population growth and the associated negative impact, it had a more positive tone that encouraged us to ask “What can I do to make our world better?” rather than “Are we too many?” This is the United Nations after all, and understandably it has to take a progressive and reassuring stance rather than one of doom and gloom. But the angle taken is perhaps revealing of the prevailing attitude of the global collective consciousness – population growth is inevitable and cannot be stopped. Of course there’s no such thing as a global collective consciousness, explaining in part why Meffe’s view has been largely ignored, because humanity lacks a collective impetus and so anything that requires mass cohesion, for instance only having one child or reducing carbon emissions, is doomed to fail.
Seven billion people – it’s enough to make you feel insignificant. Except it’s not, it’s just a number. A very big number too large to visualise, grasp or comprehend. Incidentally, if you’re ever having trouble feeling insignificant, then listen to what the ‘Woody Allen’ of science, Lawrence Krauss has to say. In his recent lecture on cosmic connections for The School of Life he stated that “you are much more insignificant than you thought” before going on to compete with Brian Cox for the title of ‘King of making outlandish profound points’, by explaining how we are all quite literally “made of stars”. Every atom in our bodies comes from the remnants of an exploded star. It turns out Moby was right (see video below).
This digression aside, the ineffably large human population will continue to increase and even if we wanted to implement population control, doing so would be unethical and practically speaking impossible. Very few people, not even many devout conservationists, would be willing to sacrifice the right to have children. I for one wouldn’t, it is in our evolutionary spirit.
Instead of tackling the so called ‘root cause’ of the population problem by implementing unrealistic, unfavourable, and unwanted population control, efforts have been directed at addressing offshoot issues such as those relating to overconsumption and overexploitation of natural resources. If we can adopt new cleaner technologies and practices to ensure our impact on the environment is neutral or at least negligible, it will be a step in the right direction.
Just this week the production of a ‘microbial fuel cell’ has been announced which can purportedly produce electricity from human urine! Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE) have found that by utilising anaerobic bacteria as they metabolise organic waste waters, electrons can be harnessed and useful electricity generated. By ‘useful’ it is meant that enough electricity would be generated to charge a battery say, but presumably not enough to heat a home for instance, yet.
For now, no one is suggesting this is the answer to the world’s problems, but switching to technologies that rely less on finite Earth resources and more on recycling waste products will help ameliorate the effects our species has on the planet. Unfortunately though, those who sing the praises of such advances are often branded with the stigma of being too ‘preachy’. Increasing public apathy to important issues such as clean technology, climate change and biodiversity decline should be at least as worrying to everyone as financial crises or global terrorism.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics
1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2009–10
Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 04/06/2010
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FEATURE ARTICLE: HOUSEHOLDS AND RENEWABLE ENERGY
Householders have increased their use of energy saving measures in their homes. In 2008, 59% of households had energy saving lighting installed (up from 33% in 2005) (graph 2.40); and energy star ratings were the main household consideration when replacing refrigerators, freezers, dishwashers and clothes dryers. Counteracting this, graph 2.39 shows more households now own coolers (66% in 2008 up from 35% in 1999) and dishwashers (45% in 2008 up from 30% in 1999) and other appliances, such as LCD and plasma televisions, the latter using almost three times the amount of energy compared to a standard television (End note 6).
Types of energy
Electricity is the main energy source used in people's homes. In 2007-08, about half (49%) of the energy used by households was sourced from electricity. Household electricity consumption rose to 210 petajoules (PJ) in 2007-08, up 48% from 1990-91 (ABARE, 2009).
In March 2008, electricity was the primary source throughout Australia for household cooking (three-quarters of ovens used electricity and more than half (56%) of cooktops) and for hot water systems (46%). There has been a fall in the use of electricity for hot water systems between 2002 and 2008 from 61% to 46%.
Of those homes with heaters, electricity was the main source of energy for space heating (45%), followed by gas (41% for mains gas and LPG/bottled together) and wood (13%).
Natural gas is the second most common source of energy used in the home, used by more than six in ten households (61%) in 2008. In total, households used 137 PJ of natural gas in 2007-08, equivalent to almost a third (32%) of total household energy use (ABARE, 2009).
For almost one in three Australian households (31%), gas (mains or LPG/bottled) was the main source of energy for space heating and 37% used gas for hot water systems. In the main gas-producing states of Victoria and Western Australia, gas was used as an energy source in nine out of ten households (90% and 87% respectively, compared with six out of ten households nationally).
Used primarily as a source of heating, wood use by households has declined 26% in the last 10 years, from 82 PJ in 1997-98 to 60 PJ in 2007-08 (ABARE, 2009).
In 2008, 13% of Australian households used wood as a source of energy in the home. More than one-third (35%) of households in Tasmania used wood as an energy source, a decrease from more than half (52%) in 2002 (graph 2.41). Due to air pollution concerns, households have been encouraged to stop using wood for heating or to convert open fires to slow combustion fires, which are more energy efficient and produce less greenhouse emissions than open fires. Firewood collection can have a detrimental effect on Australia's native wildlife, as dead trees and fallen timber provide habitat for a diverse range of fauna including a number of threatened species (End note 7).
A range of government grants and rebates have been made available to households in recent years to encourage people to use solar energy in the home. In 2008, 7% of households used solar energy to heat water, up from 4% of households in 2005. More than half of all households in the Northern Territory used solar energy to heat water (54%) - a much larger proportion than in Western Australia (21%) and no other state or territory exceeded 10% (graph 2.42).
GreenPower provides an option for people to pay a premium for electricity generated from renewable sources that is fed into the national power grid. GreenPower was first established in New South Wales in 1997 and since then has spread to other states and territories. By March 2009, just over 984,000 households were paying for GreenPower, up from 132,300 customers in March 2005 (End note 8).
There has also been an increase in the awareness of GreenPower products in the past decade. In 1999, less than one-fifth (19%) of households were aware of GreenPower. Nearly a decade later, this had risen to more than half (52%) of all households in 2008, including 5% who reported that they were already paying for GreenPower.
Households in the Australian Capital Territory had the highest rate of GreenPower awareness (71%, including 5% who were paying for GreenPower) while Western Australian households had the lowest awareness (39%) (graph 2.43).
Biomass is plant material, vegetation or agricultural waste used as a fuel or energy source. Biomass can also be processed to produce liquid biofuels (biodiesel) or a gas biofuel (biogas).
Hydro-electric power is electricity produced from the energy of falling water using dams, turbines and generators.
Solar/solar photovoltaic: Photovoltaics (PV) convert sunlight directly into electricity. Photovoltaic systems differ from solar hot water systems that absorb sunlight directly into the water-carrying tubes contained in the panel.
Wind turbines can be used to drive a generator to create electricity.
1. Australian Energy Regulator, State of Electricity Market 2008, viewed 22 January 2009, <http://www.aer.gov.au>
2. Department of Climate Change (DCC), Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts: National Inventory by Economic Sector 2007, last viewed 20 October 2009, <http://www.climatechange.gov.au/inventory>
3. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), Energy Update 2009, electronic datasets, viewed 22 September 2009, <http://www.abare.gov.au>
4. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), Energy Update 2009, Table f, viewed 22 September 2009, <http://www.abare.gov.au>
5. Department of Climate Change (DCC), Australia's National Greenhouse Accounts: National Inventory by Economic Sector 2007, DCC, 2009, Canberra.
6. Energy Australia, Typical Household Appliance Wattages, viewed 29 January 2009, <http://www.energy.com.au>.
7. Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, Land pressures, viewed 28 October 2009, <http://www.environment.gov.au/land>
8. GreenPower, You Can Bank on GreenPower, viewed 26 November 2008, <http://www.greenpower.gov.au>.
This page last updated 21 January 2013
Unless otherwise noted, content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence together with any terms, conditions and exclusions as set out in the website Copyright notice. For permission to do anything beyond the scope of this licence and copyright terms contact us.
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Report Highlights Declining Health of Caribbean Corals
7 September 2012: A new International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report highlights that average live coral cover on Caribbean reefs has declined to just 8% of the reef today, compared with more than 50% in the 1970s. The report stems from a workshop held by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network (GCRMN) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama, from 29 April-5 May 2012.
According to the report, rates of decline on most reefs show no signs of slowing. However, many reefs in the Netherlands Antilles and Cayman Islands have 30% or more live coral cover. The causes of these regional differences in reef conditions are not well understood, beyond the role of human exploitation and disturbance.
Carl Gustaf Lundin, Director, IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme, notes that the major causes of coral decline include overfishing, pollution, disease, and bleaching caused by rising temperatures resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
IUCN has recommended local action to improve the health of corals, including limits on fishing through catch quotas, an extension of marine protected areas (MPAs), a halt to nutrient runoff from land, and a reduction on the global reliance on fossil fuels. [IUCN Press Release] [Publication: Tropical Americas Coral Reef Resilience Workshop: Executive Summary]
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The well-being of people all over the world depends on the various goods and services provided by ecosystems, including food, fuel, construction materials, clean water and air, and protection from natural hazards. Ecosystems, however, are under increasing pressure from unsustainable use and other threats including outright conversion. To address this concern, IUCN promotes the sound management of ecosystems through the wider application of the Ecosystem Approach – a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that places human needs at its centre, through the Ecosystem Management Programme.
The Ecosystem Management Programme works on four key programmatic areas for IUCN:
- Drylands, where the programme aims to demonstrate the importance of dryland ecosystem services for livelihood improvement and for adapting to climate change.
- Climate Change, where the Climate Change Initiative aims to include biodiversity concerns in adaptation and mitigation polices and practice, as well as furthering natural resource management strategies that help biodiversity and people to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The Initiative coordinates Climate Change work across IUCN's programmes, regions, Commissions and member organizations.
- Islands, where the Islands Initiative focuses on addressing integrated management challenges for marine, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems, for the conservation of island biodiversity and the sustainable development of island communities, and facilitates IUCN’s work on islands across the Union.
- Disaster Risk Reduction, where the programme aims to promote integration of ecosystem management, livelihoods, community vulnerability and climate change adaptation to disaster management.
In addition, the Programme provides technical input on integrating wider ecosystem-scale biodiversity issues into IUCN’s programmes globally, regionally and nationally.
The Programme also serves as a focal point in the Secretariat for IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM), a network of more than 800 volunteer ecosystem management experts from around the world. The Ecosystem Management Programme works in close collaboration with CEM to realize the Commission’s objectives in enhancing the implementation of the Ecosystem Approach. CEM members also contribute technical information to the Ecosystem Management Series: a compilation of best practices and lessons learnt in implementing the Ecosystem Approach.
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News tagged with renewable energy
Related topics: energy , wind turbines , electricity , solar panels , fossil fuels
Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished). In 2006, about 18% of global final energy consumption came from renewables, with 13% coming from traditional biomass, such as wood-burning. Hydroelectricity was the next largest renewable source, providing 3% of global energy consumption and 15% of global electricity generation.
Wind power is growing at the rate of 30 percent annually, with a worldwide installed capacity of 121,000 megawatts (MW) in 2008, and is widely used in European countries and the United States. The annual manufacturing output of the photovoltaics industry reached 6,900 MW in 2008, and photovoltaic (PV) power stations are popular in Germany and Spain. Solar thermal power stations operate in the USA and Spain, and the largest of these is the 354 MW SEGS power plant in the Mojave Desert. The world's largest geothermal power installation is The Geysers in California, with a rated capacity of 750 MW. Brazil has one of the largest renewable energy programs in the world, involving production of ethanol fuel from sugar cane, and ethanol now provides 18 percent of the country's automotive fuel. Ethanol fuel is also widely available in the USA. While most renewable energy projects and production is large-scale, renewable technologies are also suited to small off-grid applications, sometimes in rural and remote areas, where energy is often crucial in human development. Kenya has the world's highest household solar ownership rate with roughly 30,000 small (20–100 watt) solar power systems sold per year.
Some renewable energy technologies are criticised for being intermittent or unsightly, yet the renewable energy market continues to grow. Climate change concerns coupled with high oil prices, peak oil and increasing government support are driving increasing renewable energy legislation, incentives and commercialization. New government spending, regulation, and policies should help the industry weather the 2009 economic crisis better than many other sectors.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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Like the Sound of Music‘s Von Trapp family hiding in the Alps, plants may find refuge from a warming climate in the mountains.
Research in the Swiss Alps suggests diverse mountain habitats could act as stepping stones to allow plants to escape into more hospitable hideaways as their usual homes heat up.
A large, flat savannah offers little variation in temperature. If the temperature warms up, the whole area warms up.
But Daniel Scherrer and Christian Körner from the University of Basel, Switzerland found a broad spectrum of habitats in the central Swiss Alps after studying an alpine meadow for two seasons. In the rugged mountain landscape, different conditions existed close together.
The plants growing in those varied conditions were adapted to the particular set of temperatures of the micro-climates, the scientists found. The research suggests that these plants could start growing in neighboring habitats as the temperature increases.
To test this, Scherrer and Körner used a computer model to simulate what would happen if the temperature went up 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. They found that only 3 percent of all temperature conditions disappeared. Some of the cooler habitats shrank or shifted, but pockets remained. This suggests that plants have the opportunity to shift habitats, instead of just dying off.
Preserving mountain habitats is even more new important now in light of this research. A diverse Alpine meadow could save many different habitats, compared to a single habitat in a grassland of equal size.
“It is known from earlier geological periods that mountains were always important for survival of species during periods of climatic change such as in glacial cycles, because of their ‘habitat diversity,’” concluded Körner.
“Mountains are therefore particularly important areas for the conservation of biodiversity in a given region under climatic change and thus deserve particular protection,” Körner said.
Photo: Different habitats exist close together in the Alps. Wikimedia Commons
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Washington, Aug 9 (IANS) The formation in the air of sulphuric acid, which smells like rotten eggs, is significantly impacting our climate and health, says a study.
The study led by Roy Lee Mauldin III, research associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder's atmospheric and oceanic sciences department, charts a previously unknown chemical pathway for the formation of sulphuric acid, which can trigger both increased acid rain and cloud formation as well as harmful respiratory effects on humans.
Sulphuric acid plays an essential role in the Earth's atmosphere, from the ecological impacts of acid precipitation to the formation of new aerosol particles, which have significant climatic and health effects. Our findings demonstrate a newly observed connection between the biosphere and atmospheric chemistry, Mauldin was quoted as saying in the journal Nature.
More than 90 percent of sulphur dioxide emissions are from fossil fuel combustion at power plants and other industrial facilities, says the US Environmental Protection Agency, according to a university statement.
Other sulphur sources include volcanoes and even ocean phytoplankton. Sulphur dioxide reacts with hydroxide to produce sulphuric acid that can form acid rain, harmful to terrestrial and aquatic life on Earth.
Airborne sulphuric acid particles, which form in a wide variety of sizes, play the main role in the formation of clouds, which can have a cooling effect on the atmosphere, Mauldin said.
Most of the lab experiments for the study were conducted at the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, Germany.
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DUBAI, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- With new oil and gas nations coming up and renewable energy usage gaining global momentum, the fossil fuels-rich Gulf states might run into rough waters in the upcoming decades.
The Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are today synonyms for oil, but that could change soon.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Gulf monopoly of oil supply is contested by the United States which is on the way to become the largest oil exporter throughout the world by 2030.
Meantime, Lebanon and Israel, two old arch-foes in the Middle East technically still at war, started digging deeply off the Mediterranean coast in search for oil and gas.
In addition, the global rise of solar power, wind energy and bio-thermal heat rivals the fossil fuels' monopoly as the only safe and reliable source of energy.
At the 6th World Future Energy Summit (WFES) that was held on Jan. 15-17 in Abu Dhabi, the participants were able to see how the world would function without the use of oil and gas or at least with less fossil fuels.
The Catecar, a Switzerland-based company, presented the Dragonfly, a solar-powered hybrid which does not need to be plugged because the solar panel is fixed on the roof.
Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi's environmental city Masdar launched a pilot project aiming at running sea-water desalination plants with solar or wind power by 2020 "in order to reduce the very expensive use of oil and gas to run such plants," said Dr. Sultan Al-Jaber, the chief executive of Masdar.
At present, half of the world's desalinated water is produced in the Gulf Arab region.
During the summit, the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council presented how we live next in the Estidama-house, a building equipped only with environmentally-friendly installations that secure an efficient use of water and electricity.
Washington's independence on Arab oil till 2030 would have deep implications for U.S. military bases in the region, where two thirds of the world's known oil reserves are located, the German daily Die Welt reported in a secret study which the German intelligence service BND released.
The report estimated that most of Middle Eastern oil would flow to East Asia.
Moreover, the United States is sitting on large shale gas reserves as a source of natural gas. Due to shale gas discoveries, the world's largest economy might also become autonomous in producing its own natural gas.
However, the method to access shale gas through "fracking" is strongly slammed by environmentalists who see huge danger for nature if shale gas is extracted from mountainous regions.
Meanwhile, Lebanon, known so far as the only Arab country without a desert and without oil, held the country's first International Oil and Gas Summit in Beirut.
The summit was held after an exploration company from Norway found huge gas reserves beneath the Eastern Mediterranean Sea offshore of Lebanon, which would have the potential of becoming a second Kuwait once it starts exporting gas.
Lebanon's southern neighbor Israel claims parts of that field known as Leviathan, comprising 17 trillion cubic foot of natural gas.
A Dubai-based economist, who requested anonymity, said that the disputed gas field might lay the foundation for the next Middle East war.
Morten Mauritzen, the president for the Gulf region at U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil, said at the energy summit in Abu Dhabi, which harbors some 7 percent of the world's known oil reserves, that the demand for oil and gas would rise 35 percent until 2040, dampening hopes that renewable energy like wind power, solar energy or thermal earth-heat would play a significant role in the future.
"Oil and gas are reliable, safe and accessible for all, while solar energy is not scalable to satisfy the huge demand," said Mauritzen.
According to ExxonMobil's forecast, world population will grow to 8.7 billion in the next 30 years, up from the current 7 billion.
ExxonMoil currently upgrades together with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company drilling technologies in the Upper Zakum, the world's largest offshore oilfield.
"We are reclaiming land to build four artificial islands in the Upper Zakum in order to build stations for machines and staff," said Mauritzen.
He noted that this was a unique example how oil exploration can be done in a cost-efficient way.
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Warmer temperatures, variable monsoons, and other signs of climate change are a hot topic of conversation among many Himalayan villagers, according to scientific sampling of climate change perception among local peoples.
“This area is cold and it’s often raining. Even during the non-monsoon times there is mist and fog so inevitably conversations here turn to weather,” said Kamal Bawa, biologist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB), and president of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bangalore, India. “When you stop and have a cup of tea in someone’s kitchen, the conversation invariably turns to the weather. But then they soon start talking about how the weather has been changing.”
Bawa is also a member of the National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration.
Bawa didn’t set out to study Himalayan perceptions of climate change. But after hearing the same themes repeated again and again during household conversations he decided to investigate. With UMB graduate student Pahupati Chaudhary, he surveyed some 500 homes spread across 18 villages in Darjeeling Hills, West Bengal, India and Nepal’s Ilam district. The pair found some surprisingly consistent observations.
Three-fourths of the people surveyed believe that their weather is getting warmer and two-thirds believe that summer and monsoon season have begun earlier over the past ten years. Seventy percent believe that water sources are drying up while forty-six percent said that they think there is less snow on the high mountains.
Many villagers also told Chaudhary they’d noticed shifts in some species ranges and earlier flowering and budding of plants. New pests have also arrived, villagers routinely reported, to plague crops and people—including mosquitoes where none had been before.
Most of these changes were reported by much higher percentages of people living at higher altitudes than by those at lower altitudes. “We’ve shown in earlier research that people at high altitudes seem to be more sensitive to climate change, and of course it’s known that climate change is more severe at higher altitudes, so that’s not a surprise,” Bawa said.
Many Himalayan peoples live in areas where predicted and observed impacts of climate change, like species migration, are more acute. Many of them also live “close to the land,” where agricultural-based livelihoods make them especially attuned to weather patterns.
Listening to Locals Can Help Climate Science
Scientific data on climate change have been hard to come by in the region, Bawa reported. Few weather stations dot remote and high-altitude locales and where they do exist their data are often incomplete.
But where data can be found they seem to corroborate local observations, Bawa said, citing his own research on temperature and rainfall records as well as the work of other scientists listed in recent Biology Letters and Current Science reports of Bawa and Chaudhary’s research.
“Governments in the region are now gearing up towards more research,” Bawa said. “But it will take time to gather this climate data.” That’s why local knowledge can be such valuable human intelligence, he added. It can be gathered quickly and widely and used to “jump start” scientific efforts.
“There seems to be quite a bit of knowledge residing with local communities, in the Himalaya and elsewhere, and we can really use that knowledge to formulate scientific questions for further research and make more rapid assessments of the impacts of climate change.”
Bawa said it’s hard to determine to what extent local peoples are familiar with the global dialogue on climate change, or how much that might have influenced their perceptions. But most of those he spoke with didn’t identify a clear cause for the changes they’d observed.
“We’re saying that people seem to be aware that the climate is changing, but they may not necessarily be aware of why it’s changing. I think when you come to that question people don’t have any ideas—or they may have some very different ideas.”
Bawa pointed to a recent study of this topic in Tibet, where many respondents believed that humans are causing climate change—but not by producing greenhouse gasses as most climate scientists believe. “They seem to think that the climate is changing because the Gods are not happy and perhaps the people in the younger generations are not praying enough.”
This research was supported in part by a Committee for Research and Exploration grant of the National Geographical Society.
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I’ve seen several articles debating when oil production will peak. For those of you who have missed them, oil prices rise due to scarcity (real or not) or increased production costs, and the latter become important sometime around when oil production peaks. Also, the time for us to go through the second half of the world’s oil will be considerably less than the history of oil use to date, and our transportation infrastructure in particular is heavily oil-based.
Among climate change scientists, there seems to be less worry about running out of oil, and considerably more worry about its use. Recent readings have given me some understanding.
David Greene, et al, from (pdf file) Running Out of and into Oil: Analyzing Global Oil Depletion and Transition Through 2050
“It is possible that the world could go partway down the path of developing unconventional oil resources and later reverse direction. But such a strategy would strand huge investments in the more capital-intensive production and refining of unconventional oil. If the transition to unconventional oil is gradual, there might be time to introduce low-carbon alternatives and a reversal might not be too costly. But if the transition to unconventional oil is sudden and massive, the world’s economies might quickly become locked into a high carbon future. Avoiding or even slowing the transition to unconventional fossil resources might improve the world’s chances of successfully dealing with global climate change.”
The unconventional oil sources referred to are coal to liquids (synfuel), for example, or natural gas to liquids (isn’t all natural gas needed for electricity and heating?) Both increase carbon emissions, in part because of the energy needed to convert them to liquid. Both are expensive because they require so much energy for the process.
Oil prices will rise if we hit a peak, but Europeans and others are already living with much higher gasoline prices.
Detour: A vote on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is expected soon. My understanding is that oil companies are not particularly interested in drilling there without some kind of guarantee (a large guarantee, but will that dissuade Congress?), as there is relatively little oil, and it’s relatively far from where it would be used. I’m not sure why anyone would vote for opening up the site to oil drilling, both for practical reasons and because it’s nice to imagine those few places in the world not crowded by us. What I hear is, “got you, you crummy environmentalists”, but perhaps our legislators have other reasons, poorly articulated to date. Certainly these reasons have little to do with oil security, even for the rare person who also votes to increase car mileage standards. That said, the overwhelming concern to the caribou is not the drilling, but the use of oil. Climate change alters the environment at high altitudes faster, and refuge status will not protect ANWR.
Return: From my reading, it is apparent that the rest of the world, as non-OPEC is generally referred to, is running out of oil much faster than is OPEC. Fareed Zakaria in The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad points out that governments that finance themselves without taxes are not as accountable to citizens. Hence there is worldwide discomfort at financing these governments. But the discomfort is not great enough here in the United States to taxing oil in order to encourage us to change our behavior.
We would be much better off raising taxes on oil use today. Even a moderate tax, perhaps as little as $1/gallon, will begin to shift behavior, to help stretch out our current oil supply and allow the transitions away from fossil fuels, so that we don’t finance OPEC governments so heavily.
Oh, I’ve heard many, particularly poor people, say, but we can’t afford it. Perhaps more earned income credit, or some other mechanism, could help the poor in this transition, and let people choose whether to spend the extra money on a car or the bus. It isn’t right to ignore those who will be hurt in a transition. But we are wrong if we do not transition. Some talk about making the carbon tax revenue neutral, an idea I was more sympathetic to until the Bush deficits, and back when I thought roads and bridges are paid for by the current gasoline tax rather than out of general revenue.
We could do more regional planning of mass transit systems. We could use some of the gasoline tax to pay for the roads and mass transit that makes our roads less crowded. We could teach bicycling as a PE option, as those who learn to bicycle and signal correctly are less dangerous to themselves and others and are more likely to continue bicycling as adults. This would leave more oil for those of you who can’t or don’t want to bicycle. There’s lots we can do.
The cost of our transportation continues to increase. The obvious increases in price are accompanied by the continued power of corrupt governments, the costs to agriculture and water supplies and human settlements and peace from climate change. Let’s add some of these costs, or the desire to avoid these costs, to the price of gasoline. The costs will be paid, either as lower costs consciously assumed today or higher costs imposed tomorrow.
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With the worlds energy needs growing rapidly, can zero-carbon energy options be scaled up enough to make a significant difference? How much of a dent can these alternatives make in the worlds total energy usage over the next half-century? As the MIT Energy Initiative approaches its fifth anniversary next month, this five-part series takes a broad view of the likely scalable energy candidates.
Of all the zero-carbon energy sources available, wind power is the only one thats truly cost-competitive today: A 2006 report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration put the total cost for wind-produced electricity at an average of $55.80 per megawatt-hour, compared to $53.10 for coal, $52.50 for natural gas and $59.30 for nuclear power.
As a result, wind turbines are being deployed rapidly in many parts of the United States and around the world. And because of winds proven record and its immediate and widespread availability, its an energy source thats seen as having the potential to grow very rapidly.
Wind is probably one of the most significant renewable energy sources, simply because the technology is mature, says Paul Sclavounos, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and naval architecture. There is no technological risk.
Globally, 2 percent of electricity now comes from wind, and in some places the rate is much higher: Denmark, the present world leader, gets more than 19 percent of its electricity from wind, and is aiming to boost that number to 50 percent. Some experts estimate wind power could account for 10 to 20 percent of world electricity generation over the next few decades.
Taking a longer-term view, a widely cited 2005 study by researchers at Stanford University projected that wind, if fully harnessed worldwide, could theoretically meet the worlds present energy needs five times over. And a 2010 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the United States could get more than 12 times its current electricity consumption from wind alone.
But impressive as these figures may sound, wind power still has a long way to go before it becomes a significant factor in reducing carbon emissions. The potential is there with abundant wind available for harvesting both on land and, especially, over the oceans but harnessing that power efficiently will require enormous investments in manufacturing and installation.
So far, installed wind power has the capacity to generate only about 0.2 terawatts (trillions of watts) of energy worldwide a number that pales in comparison to an average world demand of 14 terawatts, expected to double by 2050. The World Wind Energy Association now projects global wind-power capacity of 1.9 terawatts by 2020.
But thats peak capacity, and even in the best locations the wind doesnt blow all the time. In fact, the worlds wind farms operate at an average capacity factor (the percentage of their maximum power that is actually delivered) somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, depending on their location and the technology.
Some analysts are also concerned that widespread deployment of wind power, with its inherently unpredictable swings in output, could stress power grids, forcing the repeated startup and shutdown of other generators to compensate for winds variability. Many of the best wind-harvesting sites are far from the areas that most need the power, necessitating significant investment in delivery infrastructure but building wind farms closer to population centers is controversial because many people object to their appearance and their sounds.
One potential solution to these problems lies offshore. While many wind installations in Europe have been built within a few miles of shore, in shallow water, there is much greater potential more than 20 miles offshore, where winds blow faster and more reliably. Such sites, while still relatively close to consumers, are generally far enough away to be out of sight.
MITs Sclavounos has been working on the design of wind turbines for installation far offshore, using floating platforms based on technology used in offshore oilrigs. Such installations along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States could theoretically provide most of the electricity needed for the eastern half of the country. And a study in California showed that platforms off the coast there could provide more than two-thirds of the states electricity.
Such floating platforms will be essential if wind is to become a major contributor to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, says research engineer Stephen Connors, director of the Analysis Group for Regional Energy Alternatives (AGREA) at the MIT Energy Initiative. Wind energy is never going to get big if youre limited to relatively shallow, relatively close [offshore] sites, he says. If youre going to have a large impact, you really need floating structures.
All of the technology needed to install hundreds of floating wind turbines is well established, both from existing near-shore wind farms and from offshore drilling installations. All thats needed is to put the pieces together in a way that works economically.
But deciding just how to do so is no trivial matter. Sclavounos and his students have been working to optimize designs, using computer simulations to test different combinations of platforms and mooring systems to see how they stand up to wind and waves as well as how efficiently they can be assembled, transported and installed. One thing is clear: It wont be one design for all sites, Sclavounos says.
In principle, floating structures should be much more economical than wind farms mounted on the seafloor, as in Europe, which require costly construction and assembly. By contrast, the floating platforms could be fully assembled at an onshore facility, then towed into position and anchored. Whats more, the wind is much steadier far offshore: Whereas a really good land-based site can provide a 35 percent capacity factor, an offshore site can yield 45 percent greatly improving the cost-effectiveness per unit.
There are also concerns about the effects of adding a large amount of intermittent energy production to the national supply. Ron Prinn, director of MITs Joint Center for the Science and Policy of Global Change, says, At large scale, there are issues regarding reliability of renewable but intermittent energy sources like wind that will require adding the costs of backup generation or energy storage.
Exactly how big is offshore wind powers potential? Nobody really knows for sure, since theres insufficient data on the strength and variability of offshore winds. You need to know where and when its windy hour to hour, day to day, season to season and year to year, Connors says. While such data has been collected on land, there is much less information for points offshore. Its a wholly answerable question, but you cant do it by just brainstorming.
And the answers might not be what wind powers advocates want to hear. Some analysts raise questions about how much difference wind power can make. MIT physicist Robert Jaffe says that wind is excellent in certain niche locations, but overall its too diffuse that is, too thinly spread out over the planet to be the major greenhouse gas-curbing technology. In the long term, solar is the best option to be sufficiently scaled up to make a big difference, says Jaffe, the Otto (1939) and Jane Morningstar Professor of Physics.
Connors is confident that wind also has a role to play. This planet is mostly ocean, he says, and its pretty windy out there.
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
Explore further: Study IDs two compressed air energy storage methods, sites for the Northwest
More information: Tomorrow: Vast amounts of solar energy radiate to the Earth constantly, but tapping that energy cost-effectively remains a challenge.
-- Read part 1: "What can make a dent?"
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According to news reports, the recent heat wave in California resulted in about 150 deaths. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that global warming will exacerbate the problem dramatically, doubling or tripling the number of heat-related fatalities in North American cities in the next decade. The UN is dead wrong, because it assumes what climate researchers call the “Stupid People Hypothesis”: that people will simply sit around and fry to death without doing anything to beat the heat.
Global warming or not, our cities are warming, and will continue to do so. Sprawling masonry and blacktop retain heat, and the density of urban construction prevents wind from cooling it off. (Here in D.C., there’s an additional warming effect: waste heat from all the money changing hands.)
But heat and heat-related deaths are not synonymous. In fact, in several refereed papers published in recent years, my Virginia colleague Robert Davis and I demonstrated that heat-related deaths have, in aggregate, declined significantly as our cities have warmed. In fact, in a statistical sense, we have completely engineered heat-related mortality out of several of our urban cores, particularly in eastern cities like Philadelphia.
Considering every decade of mortality data at once is misleading; examining it decade-by-decade is more informative. When looked at sequentially, the data reveals a remarkable adaptation: as cities have warmed, the “threshold” temperatures at which mortality begins to increase have also risen — more than the temperatures of the cities.
For example, in Philadelphia in the 1960s, mortality began to increase once the high temperature exceeded 83 degrees. In the 1970s, the mortality threshold rose to the low 90s. In the last decade, there has been little evidence for any threshold at which mortality increases. In other words, people have adapted to their changing climate.
How? Instead of simmering, people buy air conditioning. Every level of government warns of the danger of excessive exposure to heat, and people seek out cooler places.
Social adaptation can take place very quickly. In mid-July 1995, over 500 people died from an intense weekend heat wave in Chicago. Research by University of Illinois climatologist Michael Palecki, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2001, shows that a 1999 Chicago heat wave of comparable intensity resulted in only 15 percent as many deaths.
This summer’s heat is a bit unusual. Usually, when it’s very hot in the eastern U.S., temperatures are normal or below average in the West, or vice-versa. This year it’s hot everywhere.
Is history repeating itself, or is global warming at work? It’s hard to say. Several summers in the 1930s were known for intense heat across the nation. Nineteen-thirty was a scorcher: in rural Virginia, far from Washington’s sprawl, people suffered a total of 21 triple-digit days. Even with the excess heat contributed by the growth of the city, Washington currently averages only one 100 degree day per year.
The fact is that we cannot completely discriminate between repetitive history and prospective warming when it comes to a single summer. The better place to look for warming is in the winter. Greenhouse-effect theory predicts that the coldest temperatures of winter will rise much more sharply than the hottest ones of summer. And indeed, for the last several decades, winter’s lows have warmed out of proportion to summer’s highs.
All of which illustrates the complexity of global warming. Would people accept — even welcome? — climate change that greatly alleviated winter discomfort at the cost of slightly higher summer temperatures?
Clearly, people have adapted to the heat. The evidence shows that, the warmer the city, the more quickly its residents adapt. Heat-related deaths are increasing in only one major American city: chilly Seattle. San Francisco and Los Angeles, two other cities that are relatively cool in the summer compared to those to their east, show no change in mortality.
As the UN’s climatologists should recognize, heat waves are dangerous when they are rare and unexpected, because people are unfamiliar with them and slow to take appropriate actions to minimize their exposure. As heat waves become more common, we will simply be better prepared for them and incorporate them into our daily lives and routines — just as the people of Phoenix and Dallas and Houston and New Orleans do, every summer day. Because they’re not stupid.
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Coral reefs aren't just pretty, they're also vital to marine species and island communities. But they're also facing threats from warming seas. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
More than half of 82 species of coral being evaluated for inclusion under the Endangered Species Act "more likely than not" would go extinct by 2100 if climate policies and technologies remain the same, federal scientists concluded.
The experts cited "anthropogenic," or manmade, releases of carbon dioxide as a key driver of warming seas and oceans absorbing more CO2, in turn making waters more acidic.
"The combined direct and indirect effects of rising temperature, including increased incidence of disease and ocean acidification, both resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, are likely to represent the greatest risks of extinction to all or most of the candidate coral species over the next century," the experts concluded in a report released Friday by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The report was part of a process to determine which species, if any, merit protection. The Center for Biological Diversity in 2009 had petitioned for the review of 82 species it considered in jeopardy.
Of the 82 species, all of which are in U.S. waters, 46 are "more likely than not" to face extinction by 2100, while 10 are "likely," the report stated.
The authors did note that the limited science of corals meant that "the overall uncertainty was high."
The fisheries service will next seek public comment as it considers the petition for listing.
The Center for Biological Diversity, which in 2006 petitioned and got protection for staghorn and elkhorn corals, said conditions have only worsened for corals.
"Coral reefs are home to 25 percent of marine life and play a vital function in ocean ecosystems," the center said in a statement. "Since the 1990s, coral growth has grown sluggish in some areas due to ocean acidification, and mass bleaching events are increasingly frequent."
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:
- Baseball-sized hail, 40 tornadoes reported as dangerous storms slam Midwest
- NRA official accuses media of sensationalizing Trayvon Martin story
- Reports: Secret Service personnel accused of hiring prostitutes
- American Nazi Party gets its first lobbyist
- Judge in Zimmerman case cites possible conflict of interest
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“Eau Canada” brings together 28 of Canada’s top water experts to debate Canada’s most critical water issues, and to map out solutions.The diverse range of contributors – geographers, environmental lawyers, former government officials, aquatic scientists, economists, and political scientists – reflects the broad range of issues involved in water management debates. Contributors argue that weak governance is at the heart of Canada’s water problems. The first three sections of the book provide background on Canadian water uses (and abuses), identify key weaknesses in Canadian water governance, and explore controversial debates over jurisdiction, transboundary waters, water exports, and water privatization. Solutions for more sustainable water management are mapped out in the final sections of the book, including a cross-Canada consensus on water policy, water conservation and pricing, and an engagement with the implications of new legal frameworks on Indigenous People’s water rights.
The book is targeted at a broad audience with the objective of promoting informed debate about some of the most controversial and pressing water issues facing Canadians. It will be of relevance to academics and students of geography, politics, economics, environmental studies, engineering, and Canadian studies. It will also be of particular interest to water supply managers, environmental and water policy analysts, government officials, community groups, and politicians from across Canada.
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- Date: January 25, 2011
- In This Story:
Asian tiger reserves can support more than 10,000 wild tigers—three times the current estimate—if they are managed as large-scale landscapes that protect core breeding sites and benefit local communities, according to the world’s leading conservation scientists in a new study published on January 25. This positive news reveals that doubling the number of tigers in the wild is feasible.
“In the midst of a crisis, it’s tempting to circle the wagons and only protect a limited number of core protected areas, but we can and should do better,” said Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Chief Scientist at WWF and co-author of the study. “We absolutely need to stop the bleeding, the poaching of tigers and their prey in core breeding areas, but we need to go much further and secure larger tiger landscapes before it is too late.”
Wild tiger numbers have declined to as few as 3,200 today compared to 100,000 a century ago, due to poaching of tigers and their prey, habitat destruction and human-tiger conflict. “A Landscape-Based Conservation Strategy to Double the Wild Tiger Population” in the current issue of Conservation Letters provides the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries at November’s historic tiger summit to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022. The study found that the 20 priority tiger conservation landscapes with the highest probability of long-term tiger survival could support more than 10,500 tigers, including about 3,400 breeding females.
“Tiger conservation is the face of biodiversity conservation and competent sustainable land-use management at the landscape level,” said study co-author Dr. John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “By saving the tiger we save all the plants and animals that live under the tiger’s umbrella.”
The study also revealed that major infrastructure projects such dams, roads and mines will threaten tiger landscapes in the next decade. However, channeling revenues to communities from wildlife tourism, forest management in corridors and buffer zones, and earning carbon credits will provide new opportunities.
Read the full study
View a map of the 12 best places to double the number of tigers in the wild
Learn more about wild tigers
“Without strong countervailing pressures, short-term economic gains will inevitably trump protection of the critical ecosystems necessary for sustainable development,” said Keshav Varma, Program Director of the Global Tiger Initiative at the World Bank.
The study calls for mainstreaming wildlife conservation to shift to well-funded efforts to protect core areas and larger landscapes, a challenging task that will require innovation through arrangements that benefit the rural communities living in these landscapes. Countries like Nepal are already looking closely at building alliances and partnerships for better landscape management that benefits both people and tigers.
"Following the St. Petersburg Declaration, Nepal has committed to the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers across our country by 2022,” said Deepak Bohara, Nepal’s Minister for Forests and Soil Conservation. “This analysis shows that it can be done, not just in Nepal, but, if done right with careful study and planning, across the entire tiger range. It is also worth noting that the tiger conservation provides carbon credits, protects water resources, and complements community development efforts. Thus, it is important to promote regional cooperation to maintain a healthy tiger corridor between different reserves.”
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The Americas IBA Directory
The conservation of rare birdlife has been the focus of Birdlife International for many years. In 1995 they began a project by the name of IBA, or Important Bird Area Program, to pinpoint areas across the globe that are home to endangered species, identifying the various species and protecting those areas to assist in conserving vital birdlife. At present, more than ten thousand of these areas have been identified, and conservation and environmental initiatives have been implemented. Now a new program has been established, namely the Americas IBA Directory.
Hundreds of bird species will benefit from the Americas IBA Directory, as it will be a guideline for both conservationists and for authorities. The directory covers 57 different countries and has 2 345 of the most significant areas listed that need to be protected at all costs. Authorities will be able to refer to the directory to find out which of their areas are vital to the survival of birdlife, which bird species are located in that area and the biodiversity of the area, to enable them to take the right steps in protecting the natural habitat and the birds. Some areas that have been listed are significant in the migratory patterns of certain species, while others are crucial nesting sites for numerous endangered birds. Due to a number of these areas being inhabited by local communities, also relying on the natural resources such as water, authorities can assist these communities with sustainable development that will not only benefit the communities but the birdlife as well.
Hundreds of organizations have provided support and assistance in the compiling of the Americas IBA Directory. President of Bird Studies Canada, George Finney, explained: “From breeding grounds in Canada, to wintering sites in the south, and all points in between, it is imperative that we understand what is happening to bird populations and the forces that drive change. Bird Studies Canada is proud to work closely with our international partners on this issue, so that better management decisions and conservation actions can be taken.” A large number of agencies will be working together as IBA Caretakers, tracking migratory patterns and data in regard to bird populations, to note changes being made by the birds, and keeping the IBA Directory as up to date and accurate as possible.
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Drive by a local wetland on an early spring evening, and if you're lucky you'll hear a harbinger of the changing season - the clear chirping chorus of tiny frogs known as spring peepers, classified by biologists as Pseudacris crucifer.
Few themes in literature are more alluring than the lost world. Places such as Atlantis, Shangri-La, Conan Doyle's "Lost World", and now the bestselling "The Lost City of Z" conjure up images of strange landscapes, exotic civilizations and hidden treasures.
Ecologists study phenology, which is the orderly progression of seasonal events in nature, such as the springtime arrival of migrating birds, the first chorus of spring peepers in vernal pools, and the development of tree colors each autumn
Despite the fact 60 percent of us in Dutchess County drink groundwater every day, and all of us eat food irrigated by ground water, very few people know where it comes from, where it goes, or that groundwater is full of life
Thankfully, the argument about the reality of global climate change seems finished. The majority of the public now joins the consensus of climate scientists, who have furnished compelling proof that the planet is warming and that humans are at least partly to blame.
What if our children could recognize the birds, plants and insects in their backyards as well as they know the brands of shoes on their feet or the secret weapons they need to get to the next level in a video game?
If you ever saw "Star Wars," you'll remember the trash compactor scene: Trying to escape from the Imperials, Luke and his friends duck into what turns out to be a trash compactor, where things go from bad to worse.
New York state is taking an essential step to deal with invasive species, one of the most damaging and difficult environmental problems of our time, by proposing to limit the importation of ballast water into the state.
Dengue (pronounced DEN-ghee) fever is caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes. It was formerly called "break-bone fever" because it causes excruciating pain to the muscles and joints of its human victims.
We tend to think of nature as having reliable patterns; the leaves turn color each autumn, seasonal birds come and go. But there are also examples of sudden, unexpected changes in the environment around us.
Specific trails and roads on our 2,000 acre research campus have been designated for public access, and our grounds provide visitors with a unique opportunity to connect with nature and view local wildlife.
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Michael Specter has an interesting article in The New Yorker about global warming and how "dazzlingly complex" it all is once you start to take all of the factors into account.
the calculations required to assess the full environmental impact of how we live can be dazzlingly complex. To sum them up on a label will not be easy. Should the carbon label on a jar of peanut butter include the emissions caused by the fertilizer, calcium, and potassium applied to the original crop of peanuts? What about the energy used to boil the peanuts once they have been harvested, or to mold the jar and print the labels? Seen this way, carbon costs multiply rapidly. A few months ago, scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon footprint of Christmas—including food, travel, lighting, and gifts—was six hundred and fifty kilograms per person. That is as much, they estimated, as the weight of “one thousand Christmas puddings” for every resident of England.
This passage caught my attention. We need to look at the whole picture and not just the impact of our individual actions. Remember all of the "save the rain forest" campaigns during the 1980's? My 7th grade science class wrote a letter to the Ecuadorian Embassy to encourage them to stop deforestation. It's great that carbon emissions are getting so much attention, but they're just a piece of the overall puzzle.
Just two countries—Indonesia and Brazil—account for about ten per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Neither possesses the type of heavy industry that can be found in the West, or for that matter in Russia or India. Still, only the United States and China are responsible for greater levels of emissions. That is because tropical forests in Indonesia and Brazil are disappearing with incredible speed. “It’s really very simple,” John O. Niles told me. Niles, the chief science and policy officer for the environmental group Carbon Conservation, argues that spending five billion dollars a year to prevent deforestation in countries like Indonesia would be one of the best investments the world could ever make. “The value of that land is seen as consisting only of the value of its lumber,” he said. “A logging company comes along and offers to strip the forest to make some trivial wooden product, or a palm-oil plantation. The governments in these places have no cash. They are sitting on this resource that is doing nothing for their economy. So when a guy says, ‘I will give you a few hundred dollars if you let me cut down these trees,’ it’s not easy to turn your nose up at that. Those are dollars people can spend on schools and hospitals.”
The ecological impact of decisions like that are devastating. Decaying trees contribute greatly to increases in the levels of greenhouse gases. Plant life absorbs CO2. But when forests disappear, the earth loses one of its two essential carbon sponges (the other is the ocean). The results are visible even from space. Satellite photographs taken over Indonesia and Brazil show thick plumes of smoke rising from the forest. According to the latest figures, deforestation pushes nearly six billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. That amounts to thirty million acres—an area half the size of the United Kingdom—chopped down each year. Put another way, according to one recent calculation, during the next twenty-four hours the effect of losing forests in Brazil and Indonesia will be the same as if eight million people boarded airplanes at Heathrow Airport and flew en masse to New York.
Read Big Foot In measuring carbon emissions, it’s easy to confuse morality and science. by Michael Specter
Via: The Frontal Cortex
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http://www.design21sdn.com/organizations/197/posts/1466?page=1
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Food systems are often described as comprising four sets of activities: those involved in food production, processing and packaging, distribution and retail, and consumption. All encompass social, economic, political, and environmental processes and dimensions. To analyze the interactions between global environmental change and food systems, as well as the tradeoffs among food security and environmental goals, a food system can be more broadly conceived as including the determinants (or drivers) and outcomes of these activities. The determinants comprise the interactions between and within biogeophysical and human environments that determine how food system activities are performed. These activities lead to a number of outcomes, some of which contribute to food security and others that relate to the environment and other societal concerns. These outcomes are also affected directly by the determinants.
Food security is the principal policy objective of a food system. Food security outcomes are described in terms of three components and their subcomponents: food availability, i.e., production, distribution, and exchange; food access, i.e., affordability, allocation, and preference; and food use, i.e., nutritional and social values and safety. Although the food system activities have a large influence on food security outcomes, these outcomes are also determined directly by socio-political and environmental drivers. These outcomes vary by historical, political, and social context.
To capture these concepts holistically and to allow the analysis of impacts of global environmental change, adaptations, and feedbacks, a food system must include:
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http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art14/appendix1.html
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Satellites are tracing Europe's forest fire scars
Burning with a core heat approaching 800°C and spreading at up to 100 metres per minute, woodland blazes bring swift, destructive change to landscapes: the resulting devastation can be seen from space. An ESA-backed service to monitor European forest fire damage will help highlight areas most at risk of future outbreaks.
Last year's long hot summer was a bumper year for forest fires, with more than half a million hectares of woodland destroyed across Mediterranean Europe. So far this year fresh fires have occurred across Portugal, Spain and southern France, with 2500 people evacuated from blazes in foothills north of Marseille.
According to the European Commission, each hectare of forest lost to fire costs Europe's economy between a thousand and 5000 Euros.
The distinctive 'burn scars' left across the land by forest fires can be identified from space as a specific reddish-brown spectral signature from a false-colour composite of spectral bands from optical sensors in the short wavelength infrared, near infrared and visible channels.
A new ESA-backed, Earth Observation-based service is making use of this fact, employing satellite imagery from SPOT and Landsat to automatically detect the 2004 burn scars within fire-prone areas of the Entente region of Southwest France, within the Puglia and Marche regions of Italy and across the full territory of Spain.
Burn scar detection is planned to take place on a seasonal basis, identifying fires covering at least one hectare to a standard resolution of 30 metres, with detailed damage assessment available to a maximum resolution of 2.5 metres using the SPOT 5 satellite.
Partner users include Italy's National Civil Protection Department, Spain's Dirección general para la Biodiversidad – a directorate of the Environment Ministry that supports regional fire-fighting activities with more than 50 aircraft operating from 33 airbases – as well as France's National Department of Civil Protection (DDSC) and the country's Centre D'Essais Et De Recherce de l'Entente (CEREN), the test and research centre of the government organisation tasked with combating forest fires, known as the Entente Interdépartementale.
"To cope with fire disasters, the most affected Departments in the south of France have decided to join forces to ensure effective forest fire protection," explained Nicolas Raffalli of CEREN. "Within the Entente region we have an existing fire database called PROMETHEE, which is filled out either by firemen, forestry workers or policemen across the 13 Departments making up the region."
Current methods of recording fire damage vary greatly by country or region. The purpose of this new service – part of a portfolio of Earth Observation services known as Risk-EOS – is to develop a standardised burn scar mapping methodology for use throughout Europe, along with enabling more accurate post-fire damage assessment and analysis of vegetation re-growth and manmade changes within affected areas.
"We want to link up PROMETHEE with this burn scar mapping product from Risk-EOS to have a good historical basis of information," Raffalli added. "The benefit is that it makes possible a much more effective protection of the forest."
Characterising the sites of past fires to a more thorough level of detail should mean that service users can better forecast where fires are most likely to break out in future, a process known as risk mapping.
Having been validated and geo-referenced, burn scar maps can then be easily merged with other relevant geographical detail. The vast majority of fires are started by the actions of human beings, from discarding cigarette butts up to deliberate arson. Checking burn scar occurrences against roads, settlements and off-road tracks is likely to throw up correlations.
These can be extrapolated elsewhere to help identify additional areas at risk where preventative measures should be prioritised. And overlaying burn scar maps with a chart of forest biomass has the potential to highlight zones where new blazes would burn the fiercest. Once such relatively fixed environmental elements, known as static risks, are factored in, other aspects that change across time – including temperature, rainfall and vegetation moisture – can be addressed. These variables are known as dynamic risks. At the end of the risk mapping process, the probability of fire breaking out in a particular place and time can be reliably calculated.
The Risk-EOS burn scar mapping service began last year. The intention is to develop further fire-related services by the end of 2007, including daily risk maps combining EO with meteorological and vegetation data.
Another planned service will identify 'hot spots' during fires, and map fire events twice a day, permitting an overall assessment of its development and the damage being done. A 'fires memory atlas' set up at national or regional level will allow the routine sharing of all information related to forest fire events and fire risk.
"For the future I think near-real time fire and hot spot mapping would obviously be extremely useful," Raffalli concluded. "With these products those managing the situation could see where the fire is, as well as the hot spots inside it. They can then deploy ground and aerial resources with maximum efficiency."
Building on ITALSCAR
Italy's National Civil Protection Department is providing advice on the implementation of the Risk-EOS service, based on previous experience with an ESA Data User Programme (DUP) project called ITALSCAR.
Run for ESA by the Italian firms Telespazio una Societá Finmeccanica and Vitrociset, ITALSCAR charted burn scars across the whole of Italian territory occurring between June and September during the years 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000.
For the last quarter of a century, Italian legislation had required that all burned areas be recorded and mapped, as no land use change is permitted to occur on such terrain for 15 years after a blaze, no new building construction for the next ten years, and no new publicly funded reforestation for a half-decade.
However the mapping of burn scars is the responsibility of local administration and their methodologies and overall effectiveness are highly variable. No central cartographic archive of burn scar perimeters exists: the closest equivalent is a cardset index (Anti Incendio Boschivi or AIB) recording fire-fighting interventions by the Italian Forest Guards.
The ITALSCAR burn scar maps were produced across a wide variety of different forest classes. Burn scars were mapped pixel by pixel using an automated software system, followed up with manual photo-interpretation for quality assurance. To ensure confidence in the results they were validated using ground surveys and checked against reports from local fire brigades and Forest Guards' AIB records.
The Risk-EOS burn scar mapping service is based around this same methodology.
Managed by Astrium, Risk-EOS also incorporates services for flood as well as fire risk management. It forms part of the Services Element of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), an initiative supported jointly by ESA and the European Commission and intended to establish an independent European capability for worldwide environmental monitoring on an operational basis.
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|"money doesn't grow on trees" = don't waste money because it isn't always easy to come by|
"Watch how much you spend because money doesn't grow on trees."
"have a green thumb" = special ability at making plants grow well
"She has a real green thumb for growing beautiful decorative trees."
More of Randall's Favorite Learning Resources
[ Quiz Script | Text Completion Quiz ]
Recycling and protecting the environment is very important in our world today. Now, you will listen to an award-winning essay on trees in which a girl explains why she loves trees? What ideas would you expect to hear in such an essay?
|I. Pre-Listening Exercises [Top]|
HELPFUL TIP: Deforestation is a serious problem around the world, and planting new trees never seems to keep up with the demand. You can help by recycling paper and even just simply reusing paper for different purposes.|
Listen to the conversation by pressing the "Play Audio" button and answer the questions. Press the "Final Score" button to check your quiz.
|II. Listening Exercises [Top]|
[ Other Audio Options: Play RealMedia | Play Window Media ]
Listen to the conversation again as you read the Quiz Script and do the Text Completion Quiz.
|III. Post-Listening Exercises [Top]|
What environmental problems can you think that pose great danger to nature and our world (e.g., acid rain, deforestation, water pollution)? Are these threats caused by human activity or by natural occurrences? What are some solutions to these problems? Share your ideas on these important issues.
Now, write your opinions on a similar topic at Randall's ESL Blog HERE.
Randall's Sites: Daily ESL | ESL Blog | EZSlang | Train Your Accent | Tips For Students | Hiking In Utah
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With predictions of polar bears being extinct in 50 years, On Thin Ice follows bears as they emerge from their dens and navigate their rapidly changing environment. On Thin Ice shows how the frozen expanses of the Arctic are shrinking at an unprecedented rate, with the very survival of the polar bear literally on thin ice.
Over the last year, producer/presenter Greg Grainger has mounted a series of expeditions across the Arctic to document the plight of the polar bear.
* Researcher Nick Lunn tranquillises polar bears from his helicopter, cataloguing the diminishing health of the Western Hudson Bay bear population and finding the remains of a bear thought to have died from starvation.
* Close and wild encounters with rangers from the Polar Bear Alert team as they chase bears out of the township of Churchill, built in the middle of the bears’ migration route. Follow one family of bears that have to be darted after they attempt to break into a building food for food, while another bold bear becomes trapped inside a garbage truck.
* Hungry bears and husky dogs fighting one another at an isolated weather station north of Norway.
* Polar bears in the wild as they capture seals and devour whale carcasses.
There is no more iconic symbol of strength and adaptation to survival than the polar bear.... an animal so superbly suited to its environment that it thrives in the most hostile corners of the planet – until now.
On Thin Ice - A moving account of Polar bears struggling to survive as climate change melts their summer hunting ground - the Arctic sea ice.
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Amid doubt, disappointment and division, the world's governments came together in Rio on Friday to declare "a pathway for a sustainable century".
At the close of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, heads of state and ministers from more than 190 nations signed off on a plan to set global sustainable development goals and other measures to strengthen global environmental management, tighten protection the oceans, improve food security and promote a "green economy".
After more than a year of negotiations and a 10-day mega-conference involving 45,000 people, the wide-ranging outcome document – The Future We Want – was lambasted by environmentalists and anti-poverty campaigners for lacking the detail and ambition needed to address the challenges posed by a deteriorating environment, worsening inequality and a global population expected to rise from 7bn to 9bn by 2050.
But the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon said the document would guide the world on to a more sustainable path: "Our job now is to create a critical mass. The road ahead is long and hard."
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said it was a time to be optimistic. "A more prosperous future is within our reach, a future where all people benefit from sustainable development no matter who they are or where they live."
However, civil society groups and scientists were scathing about the outcome. Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo called the summit a failure of epic proportions. "We didn't get the Future We Want in Rio, because we do not have the leaders we need. The leaders of the most powerful countries supported business as usual, shamefully putting private profit before people and the planet."
Rio+20 was intended as a follow up on the 1992 Earth Summit, which put in place landmark conventions on climate change and biodiversity, as well as commitments on poverty eradication and social justice. Since then, however, global emissions have risen by 48%, 300m hectares of forest have been cleared and the population has increased by 1.6bn people. Despite a reduction in poverty, one in six people are malnourished.
While the problems have grown, the ability of nations to deal with them has diminished because the EU is distracted by economic crisis, the US is diverted by a presidential election, and government power has declined relative to that of corporations and civil society.
With Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and David Cameron absent, the BRICS nations dominated proceedings.
Brazil artfully – and, according to some delegates, aggressively – pushed through the compromise text, thereby avoiding the conflict and chaos that marked the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009. But that also left heads of state and ministers with little but a ceremonial function, wasting an opportunity for political leaders to press for a more ambitious outcome.
"Our final document is an opportunity that has been missed. It contributes almost nothing to our struggle to survive as a species," the Nicaraguan representative Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann at the conference. "We now face a future of increasing natural disasters."
Other delegates expressed disappointed, but said the agreement could be built upon. "The document does not entirely match our ambition or meet the challenge the world faces. But it's an important step forward … That's why we support it. That's why we must engage with it," said Janez Potočnik, European commissioner for environment.
The main outcome of the conference is a plan to set sustainable development goals (SDGs), which Brazil described as the "crown jewels" of the conference. But the gems have not yet been chosen, let alone cut, polished and set. Negotiators at Rio were unable to agree on themes, which will now be left to an "open working group" of 30 nations to decide upon by September 2013. Two years later, they will be blended with Millennium Development Goals.
The new goals look set to be the focus of tussles between rich and poor nations over the coming years. The G77 group of developing countries is adamant that the goals must include strong social and economic elements, including financing and technology transfer.
"When the EU, US say land, water – they usually emphasise environment. The G77 insist that it also has strong economic and social pillars. It needs to be better and bolder than the millennium development goals," said Bhumika Muchhala, of the Third World Network.
The 49-page document contained many other – mostly loosely defined – steps.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), long a poor relation of other UN organisations, will get a more secure budget, a broader membership and strong powers to initiate scientific research and coordinate global environment strategies. Rio+20 also established a "high-level" forum to coordinate global sustainable development, though its format is still to be defined.
Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said it was an agenda for change: "World leaders and governments have today agreed that a transition to a green economy – backed by strong social provisions – offers a key pathway towards a sustainable 21st century."
Hopes that Rio would commit the world to move towards a green economy were diluted by suspicions among some developing nations that this was another way for wealthy nations to impose a "one-model-fits-all" approach. Instead, the green economy was merely named as an "important tool" that countries could use if they wished.
Nations agreed to think about ways to place a higher value on nature, including alternatives to GDP as a measure of wealth that account more for environmental and social factors, and efforts to assess and pay for "environmental services" provided by nature, such as carbon sequestration and habitat protection.
Among the many vague, but potentially promising developments, was a recognition by all 192 governments that "fundamental changes in the way societies consume and produce are indispensable for achieving global sustainable development". This appeared to mean different things to different people. EU officials suggests it could lead to a shift of taxes so workers pay less and polluters and landfill operators pay more. Hillary Clinton said it should be reflected in the way products are advertised and packaged. All nations "reaffirmed" commitments to phase out harmful fossil fuel subsidies.
Such changes will cost, but nobody wanted to put money on the table, which was cited by the G77 as a major cause of the weak outcome.
Developing countries wanted a $30bn per year fund to help in the transition to sustainability, but in the midst of a financial crisis in Europe, nobody was willing to say how much money they would contribute. Instead, there was a promise to enhance funding, but by how much and by whom were left to future discussions.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said rich nations had not kept Copenhagen promises on "green funding" and so were in no position to criticise others for a lack of ambition: "All countries must take responsibility. Nobody can point the finger."
There was frustration that Rio+20 did not do more to guarantee the reproductive rights of women or to protect the world's oceans. A plan to rescue the high seas – which are outside national jurisdictions – was blocked by the US, Nicaragua, Canada and Russia. Instead, leaders say they will do more to prevent over-fishing and ocean acidification. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature called the decision a "deep disappointment".
The strongest initiatives were made outside the negotiating halls, where significant agreements have been struck on investing in public transport, commitments made to green accounting by corporations and strategies agreed by cities and judicial bodies on reducing environmental impacts. The dynamism has been found in a 10-day "People's Summit" and campaigns to reduce plastics in the ocean and create a new sanctuary in the Arctic.
"There are real solutions to the problems governments have been unable to solve and those solutions have been on display all week in Rio, just not at the conference centre," said Lidy Nacpil, director of Jubilee South – Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development.
The weak leadership shown in the conference halls has prompted many in civil society to rethink their strategies.
Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, said a "red/green alliance was the only way forward". If the current development model doesn't change, "we are going to see economic dislocation greater than we're facing now," she said.
"There will be more wars around water and energy, so we need labour and environment walking hand in hand."
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/23/rio-20-earth-summit-document
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The water runs low at Lake Harbor park in Norton Shores, Mich. Lake Michigan's water levels set record lows in January. / Kimberly P. Mitchell, Detroit Free Press
NEW BUFFALO, Mich. - This town has 1,884 residents and almost 1,000 boat slips filled by summer visitors, so low water levels in Lake Michigan threaten its economic stability and its identity as "the heart of harbor country."
No wonder Jim Oselka, who runs Oselka Marina, a family business founded here in 1957,says, "Every time I see it raining, I'm like 'Yes!' "
The water lapping against the marina's 150 boat slips is 15 inches lower than it was a year ago, forcing Oselka to consider dredging for the first time since the 1960s. He has to have enough clearance to accommodate sailboats with 5-foot keels.
"I'm anticipating a good season. And I'm hoping and praying that water levels have hit their low, and they're going to go back the other way," Oselka says.
That wish is shared by communities and businesses all along the coasts of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which set record lows in January and are expected to stay 2 feet below long-term averages at least through August. Blame the extended drought and hot weather that speeds evaporation, says Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the Army Corps of Engineers' Detroit district.
The mean water level in January was 576.02 feet above sea level, he says, breaking the previous record of 576.05 in March 1964. The corps started keeping records in 1918.
Declining lake levels are causing problems across the region, says Chuck May of the Great Lakes Small Harbors Coalition, which represents small harbors authorized and maintained by the federal government. Michigan has 56 of the 112 Great Lakes small harbors.
"It gives me chills just to think about what will happen if we don't do something about it," he says. "Harbor after harbor is in danger of shutting down this summer."
Inaccessible harbors mean trouble for marinas, restaurants, resorts and almost every other business in waterfront towns, May says, and commercial shippers must lighten their loads, increasing costs for their customers and consumers.
A lack of Army Corps of Engineers funding means communities must rely on state and local money for dredging, he says. The organization supports pending federal legislation that would require the corps to spend the $1.5 billion raised annually through harbor maintenance taxes on harbors; much of the money now goes into the treasury.
The problem extends beyond lakes Michigan and Huron. Mike Waterhouse, sportfishing coordinator for Orleans County Tourism in New York state, says its Lake Ontario harbor has less than half its usual 8-foot depth and there's little chance of dredging this year.
That endangers the area's 33 charter boats and a fishing fleet that contributes $7 million annually to the local economy, he says. "Last year we had 12 reported incidents of boats either going aground coming into our harbor or doing damage to their drive structures," he says, "and that was just the reported incidents. Something has to be done."
New Buffalo used to get federal funds for dredging its harbor, but this year's project - which could cost more than $1 million - is being paid for by state money, a city emergency dredging fund, local businesses and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, which operates the Four Winds Casino here.
The city is seeking bids now for dredging the waterway from the city boat launch through a channel by April 30, says Ryan Fellows, assistant to the city manager. The Michigan Legislature is considering bills that would cut costs for dredging permit fees and allocate $21 million for emergency dredging of 49 public harbors.
Fellows says dredging alone won't fix New Buffalo's problems: In a few years, dredging could expose the bottom of the seawall, allowing water to flow beneath it.
New Buffalo harbor master Robin Abshire says this spring's dredging is essential. Sailboats with 5-foot keels would be unable to access the city marina now. Some slips were unusable last fall because low water left a stretch of lake bottom exposed, she says, and some vehicles were damaged by a gap between the city boat launch and the water.
Abshire says a long-term plan to keep harbors open and the money to pay for maintenance are essential. The harbor generates $7.7 million in annual revenue for the area and supports 130 jobs that produce $2.5 million in labor income every year.
"If this harbor were closed," she says, "New Buffalo would be a ghost town."
Oselka, who has 12 full-time employees and hires more workers in the summer, is rooting for state legislation that would give private marina owners low-interest loans for dredging, and he's grateful New Buffalo's harbor will be dredged.
"We're in better shape than a lot of harbors," he says.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Low water levels bedevil Great Lakes harbors
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http://www.indystar.com/usatoday/article/1992719
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Improve community infrastructure, health, resiliency and economic opportunities in Indonesia’s most challenging urban and coastal areas.
About half of all Indonesians live on less than a dollar a day. Employment growth has been slower than population growth. Public services remain inadequate by middle-income standards, and health indicators are poor.
- Economic opportunity: Providing technical assistance, training and financial services to microfinance institutions throughout the country
- Health: Raising awareness and supporting mothers to practice and promote exclusive breastfeeding
- Children & Youth: Addressing childhood malnutrition through healthy, affordable food carts in Jakarta
- Water: Improving sanitation and hygiene in crowded urban areas with a mobile sludge removal service
- Disaster preparedness: Identifying and mapping areas at risk and helping those communities plan, train and practice how to respond when disasters occur
- Emergency response: Maintaining a response team ready to quickly deploy and provide immediate relief to survivors during the critical first months after a disaster strikes
All stories about Indonesia
Indonesia: Mercy Corps Program in Indonesia Issues 500th Grant June 10, 2003
In May 2003, in Maluku Province, Indonesia Mercy Corps issued its 500th grant to Yayassan Ina Hasa Laut, a local NGO to rehabilitate a water system in Desa Paperu, Saparua Island. This project will improve the lives of over 249 conflict-affected families.
Indonesia: A Glass of Hope April 30, 2003
Indonesia: Sewing a Brighter Future March 3, 2003
Indonesia: Reaching Her Dreams January 21, 2003
Indonesia: Where there is a Will, There is a Way December 16, 2002
Indonesia: When Mothers Speak, Milk Prices Come Down - And So Does a Government November 7, 2002
Traditionally, women in Indonesia are often not involved in decision making, even over everyday household and community issues. But in 1998, small groups of Indonesian women initiated protests that helped to change the history of the world's fifth most populous nation.
Indonesia: Peaceful Water to Cool Conflict October 2, 2002
Indonesia: Microfinance for the Poor August 28, 2002
Microfinance is considered to be one of the most effective tools to combat poverty, but the question that one needs to ask is: "Do poor people get access to financial services through microfinance?"
Indonesia: Making Peace In Maluku June 20, 2002
For over two years, Mercy Corps has been working in Maluku province in eastern Indonesia, where communal conflict has been ongoing since early 1999.
Indonesia: Heavy Rains leave 300,000 homeless in Indonesia February 1, 2002
Torrential monsoon rains have caused widespread flooding in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta this week, forcing more than 300,000 residents to flee their homes in search of shelter in mosques, churches and schools.
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Take a $20 bill. Now strike a match and watch the money go up in smoke. Pretty crazy idea, right? Yet many of us do something similar every time we drive. We fill up our gas tanks, then burn through extra fuel - and money - that we could be saving.
The good news is that it doesn't take much to start saving money at the gas pump. By tweaking your driving habits and adopting a few simple car maintenance tips, you can easily cut your fuel consumption and get more mileage out of your vehicle. Getting 30 MPG instead of 20 MPG saves the average driver about $990 per year in fuel costs!
There are other benefits, too. Reducing the amount of fuel you use improves air quality, since motor vehicles account for about half of all greenhouse gas emissions in North Carolina and up to 70 percent in urban areas. That means everyone - you, your grandma, the family next door – can breathe easier.
No matter what you drive, you can reduce carbon dioxide and save money - right now.
This page will show you how to start driving green and saving green.
Download and print these free posters to spread the word about Drive Green, Save Green.
Every five miles per hour you go over 60 can cost you an extra 20 cents per gallon.
Notes that drivers can save $40 a year and help the environment by clearing out their trunks.
Learn how small changes in your driving habits, like going a little slower, using cruise control or cutting off the AC can add up to big savings.
Tips for simple, regular maintenance that can help you save on gas and avoid more costly repairs.
Find public transit in your area, locate a carpool buddy, and get information on biking and walking in North Carolina.
Keeping tires properly inflated saves you one tank of gas a year?
For every 5 mph you go over 60 mph, you’re paying 20 cents more per gallon for gas?
Your air conditioner can consume up to one gallon of gas per tank to cool the vehicle?
Using cruise control on 10,000 of the miles driven in a year could save you nearly $200?
You can lose 30 gallons of gasoline annually by not tightening your fuel cap?
On a 10-minute trip, rushing to get to your destination – i.e. flooring it at every green light and slamming on your brakes – will get you there only 24 seconds sooner, but reduce your fuel efficiency from 25 mpg to 17 mpg?
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http://www.ncdot.gov/travel/drivegreen/default.html
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Global climate change presents challenges associated with balancing potential environmental impacts with a wide variety of economic, technical, and lifestyle changes that may be necessary to address the issue.
A government-industry task force is working to develop technologies and infrastructure for carbon capture and sequestration with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that can contribute to global climate change.
US Outer Continental Shelf oil and gas development opponents complained that the Department of the Interior and Minerals Management Service’s preliminary final 5-year OCS plan goes too far, while proponents declared that it doesn’t go far enough.
Newark East field in North Texas, center of the Mississippian Barnett shale play, was Texas’s largest gas-producing field in 2006 and could become the largest in terms of ultimate recovery in the Lower 48.
A recent study of the European refining industry from Concawe (Conservation of Clean Air and Water in Europe) concludes that the imbalance between demand for gasoline and middle distillates will continue to increase.
Changes in the vertical relative position of two liquids pipelines laid in the same trench (one crude, one products) produce only small changes in the temperature of the crude oil, allowing this approach to be used as a viable alternative to dual trenching.
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Water and sediment testing
EPA is currently collecting and analyzing water and sediment samples to help states and other federal agencies understand the immediate and long-term impacts of oil contamination along the Gulf coast. The results and the interpretation of all data collected by EPA will be posted to www.epa.gov/bpspill.
Water and sediment samples are being taken prior to oil reaching the area to determine water quality and sediment conditions that are typical of selected bays and beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle. This data will be used to supplement existing data generated from previous water quality surveys conducted by states, EPA, and others.
Water sampling will continue once the oil reaches the shore; periodic samples will be collected to document water quality changes. EPA will make data publicly available as quickly as possible. Other state and federal agencies make beach closure and seafood harvesting and consumption determinations, but the data generated by EPA will assist in their evaluations.
Why is EPA sampling and monitoring the water?
EPA is tracking the prevalence of potentially harmful chemicals in the water as a result of this spill to determine the level of risk posed to fish and other wildlife. While these chemicals can impact ecosystems, drinking water supplies are not expected to be affected.
The oil itself can cause direct effects on fish and wildlife, for example when it coats the feathers of waterfowl and other types of birds. In addition, other chemical compounds can have detrimental effects. Monitoring information allows EPA to estimate the amount of these compounds that may reach ecological systems. When combined with available information on the toxicity of these compounds, EPA scientists can estimate the likely magnitude of effects on fish, wildlife, and human health.
To Learn More:
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More 60-Second Science
Plants can pull carbon dioxide, the planet-warming greenhouse gas, out of Earth’s atmosphere. But these aren’t the only living organisms that affect carbon dioxide levels, and thus global warming. Nope, I’m not talking about humans. Humble sea otters can also reduce greenhouse gases, by indirectly helping kelp plants. That finding is in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. [Christopher C Wilmer et al., Do trophic cascades affect the storage and flux of atmospheric carbon? An analysis of sea otters and kelp forests]
Researchers used 40 years of data to look at the effect of sea otter populations on kelp. Depending on the plant density, one square meter of kelp forest can absorb anywhere from tens to hundreds of grams of carbon per year. But when sea otters are around, kelp density is high and the plants can suck up more than 12 times as much carbon. That’s because otters nosh on kelp-eating sea urchins. In the mammals’ presence, the urchins hide away and feed on kelp detritus rather than living, carbon-absorbing plants.
So climate researchers need to note that the herbivores that eat plants, and the predators that eat them, also have roles to play in the carbon cycle.
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sea-otters-fight-global-warming-12-09-14
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Electrical research institute selects IPP as participant in carbon dioxide study
The Intermountain Power Project has been selected as one of five electric utilities in the United States and Canada to participate in a study of technology for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fueled electrcity generation facilities.
Conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute, the study will examine the impacts of retrofitting advanced amine-based post-combustion carbon dioxide capture technology to existing coal-fired power plants, indicated EPRI representatives.
As global demand for electricity increases and regulators worldwide look at ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, post-combustion capture for new and existing power plants could be an important option.
However, retrofit of systems to an existing plant presents significant challenges, including limited space for new plant equipment, limited heat available for process integration, additional cooling water requirements and potential steam turbine modifications.
"EPRI's analyses have shown carbon capture and storage will be an essential part of the solution if we are to achieve meaningful carbon dioxide emissions reductions at a cost that can be accommodated by our economy," pointed out Bryan Hannegan, vice president of generation and environment at the research institute.
"Projects such as this, in which a number of utility companies come forward to offer their facilities and form a collaborative to share the costs of research, are critical to establishing real momentum for the technologies that we will need."
In addition to IPP, power plants in Ohio, Illinois, North Dakota, and Nova Scotia will participate in the project.
Individual sites offers a unique combination of unit sizes and ages, existing and planned emissions controls, fuel types, steam conditions, boilers, turbines, cooling systems and options for carbon dioxide storage, pointed out EPRI representatives.
The study - to be completed during 2009 - will provide the participants with valuable information applicable to their own individual power plants.
A report for an individual operation will:
â¢Assess the most practical carbon dioxide capture efficiency configuration based on site constraints.
â¢Determine the space required for the carbon dioxide capture technology and the interfaces with existing systems.
â¢Estimate performance and costs for the post-combustion capture plant.
â¢Assess the features of the facility that materially affect the cost and feasibility of the retrofit.
"The participants in the Intermountain Power Project are committed to maintaining high environmental standards," said general manager James Hewlet. "This study will help us evaluate options for managing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the future. It is a meaningful step in our three-decade track record of continually improving the power plant's environmental performance."
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Cloudy outlook for climate models
More aerosols - the solution to global warming?
Climate models appear to be missing an atmospheric ingredient, a new study suggests.
December's issue of the International Journal of Climatology from the Royal Meteorlogical Society contains a study of computer models used in climate forecasting. The study is by joint authors Douglass, Christy, Pearson, and Singer - of whom only the third mentioned is not entitled to the prefix Professor.
Their topic is the discrepancy between troposphere observations from 1979 and 2004, and what computer models have to say about the temperature trends over the same period. While focusing on tropical latitudes between 30 degrees north and south (mostly to 20 degrees N and S), because, they write - "much of the Earth's global mean temperature variability originates in the tropics" - the authors nevertheless crunched through an unprecedented amount of historical and computational data in making their comparison.
For observational data they make use of ten different data sets, including ground and atmospheric readings at different heights.
On the modelling side, they use the 22 computer models which participated in the IPCC-sponsored Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison. Some models were run several times, to produce a total of 67 realisations of temperature trends. The IPCC is the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and published their Fourth Assessment Report [PDF, 7.8MB] earlier this year. Their model comparison program uses a common set of forcing factors.
Notable in the paper is a generosity when calculating a figure for statistical uncertainty for the data from the models. In aggregating the models, the uncertainty is derived from plugging the number 22 into the maths, rather than 67. The effect of using 67 would be to confine the latitude of error closer to the average trend - with the implication of making it harder to reconcile any discrepancy with the observations. In addition, when they plot and compare the observational and computed data, they also double this error interval.
So to the burning question: on their analysis, does the uncertainty in the observations overlap with the results of the models? If yes, then the models are supported by the observations of the last 30 years, and they could be useful predictors of future temperature and climate trends.
Unfortunately, the answer according to the study is no. Figure 1 in the published paper available here[PDF] pretty much tells the story.
Douglass et al. Temperature time trends (degrees per decade) against pressure (altitutude) for 22 averaged models (shown in red) and 10 observational data sets (blue and green lines). Only at the surface are the mean of the models and the mean of observations seen to agree, within the uncertainties.
While trends coincide at the surface, at all heights in the troposphere, the computer models indicate that higher trending temperatures should have occurred. And more significantly, there is no overlap between the uncertainty ranges of the observations and those of the models.
In other words, the observations and the models seem to be telling quite different stories about the atmosphere, at least as far as the tropics are concerned.
So can the disparities be reconciled?
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/27/anton_wylie_climate_models/
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Over 8,000 websites created by students around the world who have participated in a ThinkQuest Competition.
Compete | FAQ | Contact Us
The Kyoto Protocol: Changing Climates
This site makes concepts like climate change and the Kyoto Protocol interesting and fun for teenagers. It contains information on climate change, the history and contents of the Kyoto Protocol and visual and oral sources of information. The site aims to help teenagers understand the current and important issue as clearly and enjoyably as possible.
19 & under
Science & Technology > Earth Science
History & Government > International Politics
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|© 2007 CARE|
|Already inundated from previous cyclones, Madagascar’s northern and northwestern regions were hit by Cyclone Indlala on 15 March.|
By Blue Chevigny
NEW YORK, USA, 19 March 2007 – The rain is coming down in sheets over the capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo, in the aftermath of Indlala, the latest cyclone to hit the island nation.
Madagascar is in the midst of an extreme cyclone season, with four major storms already having devastated the country since December, the most recent one on 15 March. Tropical Cyclone Indlala destroyed 90 per cent of the traditional homes in the northern Antlaha region where it touched down that day, as well as disabling electricity and communications, destroying many administrative buildings and ravaging the area’s crops.
According to UNICEF Communication Officer Misbah Sheikh, 293,000 families are already affected by the floods from previous storms. “With Indlala, the numbers will go up,” she adds.
Continuing impact on children
Ms. Sheikh worries about the effects on families and children in the north and northwest of the country, the regions hardest-hit by the latest storm. A rapid assessment team has been sent by UNICEF to survey the damage.
“Seventy per cent of Madagascar’s population is rural,” says Ms. Sheikh. “They live in wooden houses, sometimes with thatched roofs, so they have probably experienced a lot of damage. Children are over half of the population and are, of course, the first affected.”
|© UNICEF video|
|Much of the population in flood-affected rural areas of Madagascar lives in wooden houses with thatched roofs that are likely to sustain serious storm damage.|
In the regions of Madagascar stricken by the previous cyclones, UNICEF had already been providing relief in the form of tents, water purification supplies and water canisters, as well as nutritional support and emergency school supplies. No sooner did the situation begin to stabilize than Cyclone Indlala hit.
Ms. Sheikh says this pattern is a huge problem. “Every time we attack an emergency, another pops up,” she laments.
UN issues flash appeal
Complicating matters further, in the south of Madagascar – which is a huge country the size of France, Belgium and Luxembourg combined – an entirely different problem persists. While flooding afflicts the country’s northern and central regions, the population in the south has been overwhelmed by a severe drought, which has led to undernutrition, water and sanitation problems and a loss of agricultural livelihood.
“Where we have one region inundated with water, we have another one, in the same country, where thousands of children haven’t seen rain,” says Ms. Sheikh.
Between the flooding in the north and the drought in the south, many of the basic necessities of life – including safe water, adequate sanitation, public health, nutrition and education – are lacking, especially for vulnerable children. On 16 March, the United Nations issued a humanitarian ‘flash appeal’ to donors in an effort to raise much-needed funds to help alleviate the crisis.
For UNICEF in particular, these funds will be used in the areas of water and sanitation, nutrition, rapid assessment and educational support. “Without adequate financing, we will not be able to work as effectively to address these emergencies as they arise,” asserts Ms. Sheikh.
19 March 2007:
UNICEF Communication Officer Misbah Sheikh discusses the effects of flooding on children in areas of northern Madagascar devastated by Cyclone Indlala.
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If you really want to hit a home run with a global warming story, manage to link climate change to the beloved rainforest of the Amazon. The rainforest there is considered by many to be the “lungs of the planet,” the rainforest surely contains a cure for any ailment imaginable, all species in the place are critical to the existence of life on the Earth, and the people of the Amazon are surely the most knowledgeable group on the planet regarding how to care for Mother Earth.
The global warming alarmists have taken full advantage of the Amazon and they are very quick to suggest that the Amazon ecosystem is extremely sensitive to climate change. Furthermore, not only can climate change impact the Amazon, but global climate itself is strongly linked to the state of the Amazon rainforest.
But, as usual, there is more to this story than meets to eye (or, rather, the press).
For instance, a headline last year from USA Today sounded the alarm declaring “Amazon hit by climate chaos of floods, drought”. In the first few sentences, we learn that “Across the Amazon basin, river dwellers are adding new floors to their stilt houses, trying to stay above rising floodwaters that have killed 44 people and left 376,000 homeless. Flooding is common in the world’s largest remaining tropical wilderness, but this year the waters rose higher and stayed longer than they have in decades, leaving fruit trees entirely submerged. Only four years ago, the same communities suffered an unprecedented drought that ruined crops and left mounds of river fish flapping and rotting in the mud. Experts suspect global warming may be driving wild climate swings that appear to be punishing the Amazon with increasing frequency.”
This piece is typical of thousands of other news stories about calamities in the Amazon that are immediately blamed on global warming. Other headlines quickly found include “Ocean Warming - Not El Niño - Drove Severe Amazon Drought in 2005” or “Amazon Droughts Will Accelerate Global Warming” or “Amazon Could Shrink by 85% due to Climate Change, Scientists Say.” Notice that climate change can cause droughts and floods in the Amazon PLUS droughts in the Amazon can cause global warming (by eliminating trees that could uptake atmospheric carbon dioxide). Throughout many of these stories, the words “delicate” and “irreversible” are used over and over.
As we have discussed countless times in other essays, climate models are predicting the greatest warming in the mid-to-high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during the winter season. The Amazon is not located in a part of the Earth expected to have substantial warming due to the buildup of greenhouse gases. Somewhat surprisingly, the IPCC Technical Summary comments “The sign of the precipitation response is considered less certain over both the Amazon and the African Sahel. These are regions in which there is added uncertainty due to potential vegetation-climate links, and there is less robustness across models even when vegetation feedbacks are not included.” Basically, the models are not predicting any big changes in precipitation in the Amazon due to the change in atmospheric composition, nor are the models predicting any big change in temperature. Should the people of the Amazon deforest the place down to a parking lot, there is evidence that precipitation would decrease. There is a lot going on in the Amazon – deforestation, elevated carbon dioxide levels, global warming, and all these reported recent droughts and floods. One would think that the entire place is a wreck!
A recent article in Hydrological Processes might come as a huge surprise to the climate change crusade. The first two sentences of the abstract made this one an immediate favorite at World Climate Report. The author has the nerve to write “Rainfall and river indices for both the northern and southern Amazon were used to identify and explore long-term climate variability on the region. From a statistical analysis of the hydrometeorological series, it is concluded that no systematic unidirectional long-term trends towards drier or wetter conditions have been identified since the 1920s.” We should leave it at that!
The author is José Marengo with Brazil’s “Centro de Ciéncia do Sistema Terrestre/Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais”; the work was funded by the Brazilian Research Council and the “UK Global Opportunity Fund-GOF-Dangerous Climate Change”. Very interesting – we suspect the “Dangerous Climate Change” group was not happy with the first two sentences of the abstract.
José Marengo begins the piece noting “The main objective of this study is the assessment of long-term trends and cycles in precipitation in the entire Amazon basin, and over the northern and southern sections. It was addressed by analysing rainfall and streamflow indices, dating from the late 1920s”. The Figure 1 shows his subregions within the greater Amazon basin.
Figure 1. Orientation map showing the rainfall network used on this study for (a) northern Amazonia (NAR) and (b) southern Amazonia (SAR) (from Marengo, 2009).
The bottom line here is amazing. The author writes “The analysis of the annual rainfall time series in the Amazon represented by the NAR and SAR indices indicates slight negative trends for the northern Amazon and positive trends for the southern Amazon. However, they are weak and significant at 5% only in the southern Amazon” (Figure 2). So, nothing is happening out of the ordinary in the north and the south is getting wetter. There is definitely variability around the weak trends, but it all seems to be related to natural variability, not deforestation or global warming.
Figure 2. Historical hydrometeorological indices for the Amazon basin. They are expressed as anomalies normalized by the standard deviation from the long-term mean, (a) northern Amazonia, (b) southern Amazonia. The thin line represents the trend. The broken line represents the 10-year moving average (from Marengo, 2009).
Marengo notes “Since 1929, long-term tendencies and trends, some of them statistically significant, have been detected in a set of regional-average rainfall time series in the Amazon basin and supported by the analysis of some river streamflow time series. These long-term variations are more characteristic of decadal and multi-decadal modes, indicators of natural climate variability, rather than any unidirectional trend towards drier conditions (as one would expect, due to increased deforestation or to global warming).” [emphasis added]
José – nice work, have a Cuervo on us!!!
Marengo, J.A. 2009. Long-term trends and cycles in the hydrometeorology of the Amazon basin since the late 1920s. Hydrological Processes, 23, 3236-3244.
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5th Forum Top 25 Highlights - Thematic Programme
During the scores of discussions in over one hundred sessions, some overall messages emerged:
- Water is a common denominator for many development issues and the key to successfully resolving those challenges.
- Because of the interrelatedness of water issues across so many different sectors, progress can only be achieved through an interdisciplinary approach. There is a need to reinforce the preliminary linkages made at the 5th World Water Forum and continue to think out of the box.
- Education, capacity development and financial support are needed in virtually every domain to support further progress.
- Solutions must be sustainable and flexibly adapted to specific local or regional circumstances: no “one size fits all” approach can be applied to water management.
- Stakeholders need to be engaged through participatory processes in the earliest stages of water resource development strategies.
- The 5th World Water Forum enabled greater focus and synergies to move forward on today’s water-related challenges and to create more political will.
Climate Change, Disasters and Migration
While climate change, disasters and migration are distinct in scope and challenges, joint reflection on these issues at the 5th World Water Forum concluded that good adaptation measures implemented for climate change and disasters will, in fact, assist in mitigating migration. One billion slum dwellers worldwide demonstrate that unsolved rural problems lead to urban problems. Therefore, more work is needed to continue to dovetail efforts before crises arise, despite disparities among these domains. In addition, the message that water is the medium through which climate change acts and the work on “hotspots” and recommendations formulated at the 5th World Water Forum will be channeled into the UNFCCC CoP15 processes, as well as to other international processes.
Advancing Human Development and the MDG’s
Regardless of whether or not the MDG’s are achieved, after 2015, the remaining half of the population will still need to be served. At the 5th World Water Forum, the main impediments to reaching the MDGs were identified as a lack of effective management, investment, institutional capacity and political priority. One suggested instrument to ensure coverage for all school-aged children was the creation of a global convention to implement WASH in schools.
However, the necessity was also made clear to move away from increasing crisis management toward a process steered by more long-term development objectives, in which the challenges are recognized as all being interconnected. This will be especially important in harmonizing water use between energy production, food production and other uses, so that these needs complement each other rather than compete against one another. The fundamental baseline associated with all development and environmental challenges is that by 2050, the world’s population will rise to over 9 billion people, and all will need water and sanitation.
Managing and Protecting Water Resources
This theme perhaps offered the most fertile terrain for building bridges between polarized viewpoints: on transboundary issues, on storage issues, on infrastructure and environment, and between policy and implementation. Generally, it was agreed that river basin organizations offer a vehicle through which a range of partners can work together. In addition, a “Handbook on Integrated Water Resources Management in Basins” was presented, providing useful advice on how to improve governance of freshwater resources in basins. It was also recommended that IWRM needs to be practiced at different scales in order for it to be helpful in enabling Governments and all stakeholders to determine how to allocate water appropriately and which global solutions are most appropriate for any given situation. But most of all, these recommendations must lead to action.
Governance and Management
A wide majority of stakeholders reaffirmed support for the right to water and sanitation, already extensively recognized by many States, and supported further efforts for its implementation. In addition, a better understanding of the complementary roles of public and private sectors was achieved, recognizing that specific circumstances call for specific solutions. Moreover, 10 priority issues for catalyzing institutional change and policies were identified. In an effort to address corruption issues, participants called for the creation of an international tribunal to address violations and launched an appeal to incorporate anti-corruption safeguards into project designs. The need for public participation as an essential component of good governance was also emphasized.
Through a series of panels, sessions and side events throughout the week, financing issues received much greater attention than ever before from Forum participants. Despite recognition that financing needs for the water sector are still enormous and remain a major constraint for further development, the discussions enabled a much better understanding of the fundamentals of water economics. It was agreed that funds need to be allocated where they can have the biggest impact. By flexibly balancing “The 3 Ts: Tariffs, Taxes and Transfers”, the sector is consciously shifting its operational paradigm from “full cost recovery” to “sustainable cost recovery.” Although higher priority for water should still be requested in national budgets, increased efficiency and greater innovation can actually reduce financing needs.
Education, Knowledge and Capacity Development
With a view of strengthening science and education, participants called for:
- Enhancing knowledge and capacity development within the water sector;
- Improving data gathering, sharing and dissemination mechanisms;
- Promoting knowledge-based integrated approaches and informed decision making in water resources management;
- Actively engaging professional associations and all stakeholders.
To accomplish these objectives, guiding principles for education, knowledge and capacity development were drafted. Both Youth and network associations were recognized as powerful agents for change in this domain, especially in the advent of new technologies that will improve interconnectedness in future water management strategies. Partners also committed to improve the organization and availability of water-related data, building upon existing systems.
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Japan has been hit by the worst crisis since 1945, as an earthquake and tsunami have killed 10,000, destroyed tens of thousands of buildings, displaced hundreds of thousands, and left millions without power or water. As the nation braces for more aftershocks, people have resorted to using sea water in an attempt to prevent a nuclear meltdown from adding a third catastrophe, which has already leaked and caused a mass evacuation. According to Greenpeace,
"We are told by the nuclear industry that things like this cannot happen with modern reactors, yet Japan is in the middle of a nuclear crisis with potentially devastating consequences…The evolving situation at Fukushima remains far from clear, but what we do know is that contamination from the release of Cesium-137 poses a significant health risk to anyone exposed. Cesium-137 has been one if the isotopes causing the greatest health impacts following the Chernobyl disaster, because it can remain in the environment and food chain for 300 years.”
Whereas the first two catastrophe’s were natural and unpredictable, a nuclear meltdown is entirely unnatural and entirely predictable. According to the local anti-nuclear group, Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre,
The nuclear crisis comes a month before the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the largest nuclear meltdown in history, which showered Europe in a radioactive cloud causing a quarter of a million cancers, 100,000 of them fatal. As of this writing the disaster in Japan is already the third worst in history, behind Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979, and comes only 12 years after a fatal overexposure of workers at a nuclear plant in Tokaimura, Japan. Even without the inherent risk of a meltdown, nuclear power is a threat to health. The problem is not just the few terrible times when they don't work, but the daily experience of when they do work. As climate campaigner George Monbiot wrote more than a decade ago,
“The children of women who have worked in nuclear installations, according to a study by the National Radiological Protection Board, are eleven times more likely to contract cancer than the children of workers in non-radioactive industries. You can tell how close to [the nuclear plant in] Sellafield children live by the amount of plutonium in their teeth.”
Add to this the morbidity and mortality or working in uranium mines and the dangers of disposing of radioactive waste, and you have negative health impacts at every stage of nuclear power (for a summary see the UK’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). Despite this, governments have invested massively in the nuclear industry and globalized the risk. Canada has exported nuclear reactors while building seven of its own, and despite concerns about safety the Ontario government plans on investing $36 billion into nuclear power at the same time as its backing off wind power.
REASONS AND EXCUSES
While nuclear power is a clear and present danger to the health of the planet and its people, it is a thriving industry driven by economic and military competition. Vandana Shiva—who studied nuclear physics and now leads the climate justice movement in India—has exposed the hypocrisy of US hostility to Iranian nuclear power when it is doing the same thing to promote nuclear power and weapons in India as a bulwark against China:
As Shiva summarized in her book Soil Not Oil, “nuclear winter is not an alternative to global warming”, and it is a tragedy that Japan has become the test case against both military and civilian arms of the nuclear industry--from the atomic bomb 65 years ago to the nuclear meltdown today. But instead of admitting the problems of nuclear power, the nuclear industry and its supporters have greenwashed it and presented it as a solution to global warming. Some environmentalists, such as Gaia theorist James Lovelock, have fallen prey to these claims. Lovelock, whose ideas are driven by apocalyptic predictions and an extreme pessimism, has gone so far as to claim that “nuclear power is the only green solution”.While former US president George Bush defended his country’s 103 nuclear power plants as not producing "a single pound of air pollution or greenhouses gases”, Dr. Helen Caldicott has refuted the claim in her important book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, which proves that even without meltdowns nuclear power is a threat to the planet:
The false dichotomy between carbon emissions and nuclear power is also refuted by those developing the Tar Sands, who have proposed using nuclear power to pump Tar Sands oil.
PEOPLE POWER, GREEN JOBS
Fortunately there are growing anti-nuclear campaigns uniting indigenous groups, NGOs and the broader climate justice movement to challenge nuclear power in all its stages—from mining to use to waste disporal. As Vandana Shiva writes in Soil Not Oil,
Meanwhile in Canada indigenous groups are leading opposition to transportation of nuclear waste through the Great Lakes and their surrounding communities, declaring “what we do to the land, we do to ourselves.” Last year the German government extended nuclear power against the will of the majority but after news of the leak in Japan, 50,000 people formed a human chain from a nuclear reactor to Stuttgart demanding an end to nuclear power.
Uniting these campaigns with the labour movement raises the demands of good green jobs for all, to transform our oil and nuclear economy into one based on ecological and social sustainability and justice. Instead of the billions in subsidies for the nuclear industry, governments could be investing in solar, wind and clean electricity, while retrofitting buildings, which could solve the economic and climate crises without the inherent dangers of nuclear power. As Greenpeace wrote,
"Our thoughts continue to be with the Japanese people as they face the threat of a nuclear disaster, following already devastating earthquake and tsunami. The authorities must focus on keeping people safe, and avoiding any further releases of radioactivity...Greenpeace is calling for the phase out of existing reactors, and no construction of new commercial nuclear reactors. Governments should invest in renewable energy resources that are not only environmentally sound but also affordable and reliable.”
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If the city feels hotter to you in the summer, you're right.
The Japan Meteorological Agency has proved that all the asphalt and tall buildings and exhaust heat are indeed to blame.
"Urban heat islands" raised the daily August temperatures by 1 to 2 degrees in Japan's three biggest megalopolises of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, the JMA said July 9.
This is the first time the JMA has analyzed the effects of urban heat islands, where asphalt, buildings and heat from the exhaust of automobiles and air conditioners and other factors contribute to a rise in temperatures.
The JMA used data from last August to simulate air temperatures on the assumption that all ground surface was covered by grassland and that there was no exhaust heat from human activities in the three megalopolises, and compared the numerical outcomes with what was actually recorded.
The urban heat islands accounted for rises of about 2 degrees in the cities' central areas and about 1 degree on their outskirts, JMA officials said.
It is believed that air temperatures have risen about 3 degrees in the three big cities during the last 100 years due to both global warming and urban heat islands, but the JMA has never evaluated to what extent the urban heat islands are responsible.
"Urbanization accounted for as much part of the temperature rises as global warming," a JMA representative said. "The situation is thought to be similar in other regions of advanced urbanization."
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In a new study launched Wednesday by the International Energy Agency (IEA), weeks ahead of the Durban Climate Change talks, scientists warn that if the current trend to build high-carbon generating infrastructures continues, the world's carbon budget will be swallowed up by 2017, leaving the planet more vulnerable than ever to the effects of irreversible climate change.
According to the IEA's World Energy Outlook, today's energy choices are likely to commit the world to much higher emissions for the next few decades. The current industrial infrastructure is already producing 80% of the world's "carbon budget".
The report estimates that global primary energy demand rebounded by a remarkable 5% in 2010, pushing CO2 emissions to a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2010. Subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption of fossil fuels jumped to over $400bn (£250.7bn).
The IEA warns of a "lock in" effect; whereby high-carbon infrastructures built today contribute to the old stock of emissions in the atmosphere, thus increasing the danger of runaway climate change.
According to the report, there are few signs to suggest that the urgently needed change in direction in global energy trends is under way.
As the world gears up towards the Durban talks later this month and Rio+20 in seven months, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) plans to launch a new report on 23 November 2011 that reviews the latest data on the gap between commitments by nations to reduce their emissions and the actual emissions reductions required to keep global temperature rise under 2 degrees C. The report also tackles the question - How can the gap be bridged?
The new report is a follow up to "Bridging the Gap", which was launched last December and became a key benchmark for the international climate negotiations in Cancun.
UNEP will also launch on 25 November a study that will outline the measures and costs of reducing black carbon and non-CO2 gases to slow climate change. The new UNEP report outlines a package of 16 measures which could reduce global warming, avoid millions of premature deaths and reduce global crop yield losses by tackling black carbon, methane and ground-level ozone - substances known as short-term climate forcers.
The report demonstrates that half of these measures can deliver net cost savings over their lifetime, for example, from reduced fuel consumption or the use of recovered gas.
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Hinsley, S.A., Hill, R.A., Bellamy, P. E., Broughton, R.K., Harrison, N.M., MacKenzie, J.A., Speakman, J.R. and Ferns, P.N., 2009. Do Highly Modified Landscapes Favour Generalists at the Expense of Specialists? The Example of Woodland Birds. Landscape Research, 34 (5), pp. 509-526.
This is the latest version of this eprint.
Full text not available from this repository.
Demands on land use in heavily populated landscapes create mosaic structures where semi-natural habitat patches are generally small and dominated by edges. Small patches are also more exposed and thus more vulnerable to adverse weather and potential effects of climate change. These conditions may be less problematic for generalist species than for specialists. Using insectivorous woodland birds (great tits and blue tits) as an example, we demonstrate that even generalists suffer reduced breeding success (in particular, rearing fewer and poorer-quality young) and increased parental costs (daily energy expenditure) when living in such highly modified secondary habitats (small woods, parks, farmland). Within-habitat heterogeneity (using the example of Monks Wood NNR) is generally associated with greater species diversity, but to benefit from heterogeneity at a landscape scale may require both high mobility and the ability to thrive in small habitat patches. Modern landscapes, dominated by small, modified and scattered habitat patches, may fail to provide specialists, especially sedentary ones, with access to sufficient quantity and quality of resources, while simultaneously increasing the potential for competition from generalists.
|Subjects:||Geography and Environmental Studies|
Science > Biology and Botany
|Group:||School of Applied Sciences > Centre for Conservation, Ecology and Environmental Change|
|Deposited By:||Dr Ross Hill|
|Deposited On:||01 Nov 2009 12:25|
|Last Modified:||07 Mar 2013 15:17|
Available Versions of this Item
- Do Highly Modified Landscapes Favour Generalists at the Expense of Specialists? The Example of Woodland Birds. (deposited 21 Nov 2008 20:00)
- Do Highly Modified Landscapes Favour Generalists at the Expense of Specialists? The Example of Woodland Birds. (deposited 01 Nov 2009 12:25) [Currently Displayed]
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Monday, April 2, 2012 - 15:31 in Earth & Climate
Corals may be better placed to cope with the gradual acidification of the world's oceans than previously thought – giving rise to hopes that coral reefs might escape climatic devastation.
- Corals 'could survive a more acidic ocean'Mon, 2 Apr 2012, 10:11:13 EDT
- Studies shed light on collapse of coral reefsThu, 28 May 2009, 14:26:24 EDT
- Acid oceans demand greater reef careMon, 14 Feb 2011, 10:03:09 EST
- Rising Co2 'will hit coral reefs harder'Tue, 28 Oct 2008, 10:44:19 EDT
- New ocean acidification study shows added danger to already struggling coral reefsMon, 8 Nov 2010, 15:52:09 EST
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The characteristic features of the climate of Malaysia are uniform
temperature, high humidity and copious rainfall and they arise
from the maritime exposure of the country.
Winds are generally
light. Situated at the equatorial doldrum area, it is extremely rare
to have a full day with completely clear sky even in periods of
severe drought. On the other hand, it is also rare to have a stretch
of a few days with completely
no sunshine except during the northeast monsoon seasons.
Wind flow in Malaysia
Though the wind over the country is generally light and variable,
there are, however, some uniform periodic changes in the wind flow
patterns. Based on these changes, four seasons can be distinguished,
namely, the southwest monsoon, northeast monsoon and two shorter
inter monsoon seasons.
The southwest monsoon is usually established in the later half of
May or early June and ends in September. The prevailing wind flow is
generally south westerly and light, below 15 knots.
The northeast monsoon usually commences in early November and ends
in March. During this season, steady easterly or north-easterly
winds of 10 to 20 knots prevail. The more severely affected areas
are the east coast states of Peninsular Malaysia where the wind may
reach 30 knots or more during periods
of intense surges of cold air from the north (cold surges).
The winds during the two inter monsoon seasons are generally light
and variable. During these seasons, the equatorial trough lies over
It is worth mentioning that during the months of April to November,
when typhoons frequently develop over the west Pacific and move
westwards across the Philippines, south-westerly winds over the
northwest coast of Sabah and Sarawak region may strengthen reaching
20 knots or more.
As Malaysia is mainly a maritime country, the effect of land and sea
breezes on the general wind flow pattern is very marked especially
over days with clear skies. On bright sunny afternoons, sea breezes
of 10 to 15 knots very often develop and reach up to several tens of
kilometre inland. On clear nights, the reverse process takes place
and land breezes of weaker strength can also develop over the
The seasonal wind flow patterns coupled with the local topographic
features determine the rainfall distribution patterns over the
country. During the northeast monsoon season, the exposed areas like
the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia, Western Sarawak and the
northeast coast of Sabah experiences heavy rain spells. On the other
hand, inland areas or areas which are sheltered by mountain ranges
are relatively free from its influence. It is best to describe the
rainfall distribution of the country according to seasons.
Seasonal Rainfall Variation in Peninsular Malaysia
The seasonal variation of rainfall in Peninsular Malaysia is of
three main types:
(a) Over the east coast districts, November, December and January
are the months with maximum rainfall, while June and July are the
driest months in most districts.
(b) Over the rest of the Peninsula with the exception of the
southwest coastal area, the monthly rainfall pattern shows two
periods of maximum rainfall separated by two periods of minimum
rainfall. The primary maximum generally occurs in October - November
while the secondary maximum generally occurs in April - May. Over
the north-western region, the primary minimum occurs in January -
February with the secondary minimum in June - July while elsewhere
the primary minimum occurs in June - July with the secondary minimum
(c) The rainfall pattern over the southwest coastal area is much
affected by early morning "Sumatras" from May to August with the
result that the double maxima and minima pattern is no longer
discernible. October and November are the months with maximum
rainfall and February the month with minimum rainfall. The March -
April - May maximum and the June -July minimum are absent or
Seasonal Rainfall Variation in Sabah and Sarawak
The seasonal variation of rainfall in Sabah and Sarawak can be
five main types:
(a) The coastal areas of Sarawak and northeast Sabah experience a
rainfall regime of one maximum and one minimum. While the maximum
occurs during January in both areas, the occurrence of the minimum
differs. In the coastal areas of Sarawak, the minimum occurs in June
or July while in the northeast coastal areas of Sabah, it occurs in
April. Under this regime, much of the rainfall is received during
the northeast monsoon months of December to March. In fact, it
accounts for more than half of the annual rainfall received on the
western part of Sarawak.
(b) Inland areas of Sarawak generally experience quite evenly
distributed annual rainfall. Nevertheless, slightly less rainfall is
received during the period June to August which corresponds to the
occurrence of prevailing south-westerly winds. It must be pointed out
that the highest annual rainfall area in Malaysia may well be found
in the hill slopes of inland Sarawak areas. Long Akah, by virtue of
its location, receives a mean annual rainfall of more than 5000 mm.
(c) The northwest coast of Sabah experiences a rainfall regime of
which two maxima and two minima can be distinctly identified. The
primary maximum occurs in October and the secondary one in June. The
primary minimum occurs in February and the secondary one in August.
While the difference in the rainfall amounts received during the two
months corresponding to the two maxima is small, the amount received
during the month of the primary minimum is substantially less than
that received during the month of the secondary minimum. In some
areas, the difference is as much as four times.
(d) In the central parts of Sabah where the land is hilly and
sheltered by mountain ranges, the rainfall received is relatively
lower than other regions and is evenly distributed. However, two
maxima and two minima can be noticed, though somewhat less distinct.
In general, the two minima occur in February and August while the
two maxima occur in May and October.
(e) Southern Sabah has evenly distributed rainfall. The annual
rainfall total received is comparable to the central part of Sabah.
The period February to April is, however slightly drier than the
rest of the year.
Being an equatorial country, Malaysia has uniform temperature
throughout the year. The annual variation is less than 2°C except
for the east coast areas of Peninsular Malaysia which are often
affected by cold surges originating
from Siberia during the northeast monsoon.
Even there, the annual variation is below 3°C.
The daily range of temperature is large, being from 5°C to 10°C at
the coastal stations and from 8°C to 12°C at the inland stations but
the excessive day temperatures which are found in continental
tropical areas are never experienced. It may be noted that air
temperature of 38°C has very rarely been recorded in Malaysia.
Although the days are frequently hot, the nights are reasonably cool
Although the seasonal and spatial temperature variations are
relatively small, they are nevertheless fairly definite in some
respects and are worthy of mention. Over the whole Peninsula, there
is a definite variation of temperature with the monsoons and this is
accentuated in the east coast districts. April and May are the
months with the highest average monthly temperature in most places
and December and January are the months with the lowest average
monthly temperature. The average daily temperature in most districts
to the east of the Main Range is lower than that of the
corresponding districts west of the Main Range. The differences in
the average values in the east and the west are due almost entirely
to the low day temperatures experienced in the eastern districts
during the northeast monsoon as a result of rain and greater cloud
cover. At Kuala Terengganu, for example, the day temperature rarely
reaches 32°C during the northeast monsoon and often fails to reach
27°C. A number of occasions have been recorded on which the
temperature did not rise above 24°C which is quite frequently the
lowest temperature reached during the night in most districts. Night
temperatures do not vary to the same extent, the average usually
being between21°C to 24°C. Individual values can fall much below
this at nearly all stations, the coolest nights commonly follow some
of the hottest days.
As mentioned earlier, Malaysia has high humidity. The mean monthly
relative humidity falls within 70to 90%, varying from place to place
and from month to month. For any specific area, the range of the
mean monthly relative humidity varies from a minimum of 3% to a
maximum of about 15%. In Peninsular Malaysia, the minimum range of
mean relative humidity varies from a low 84% in February to a high
of only 88% in November. The maximum range is found in the northwest
area of the Peninsula (Alor Setar) where the mean relative humidity
varies from a low of 72% in February to a high of 87%. It is
observed that in Peninsular Malaysia, the minimum relative humidity
is normally found in the months of January and February except for
the east coast states of Kelantan and Terengganu which have the
minimum in March. The maximum is however generally found in the
month of November.
As in the case of temperature, the diurnal variation of relative
humidity is much greater as compared to the annual variation. The
mean daily minimum can be as low as 42% during the dry months and
reaches as high as 70% during the wet months. The mean daily
maximum, however, does not vary much from place to place and is at
no place falls below 94%. It may reach as high as nearly 100%.
Again, the northwest states of Kedah and Perlis have the largest
diurnal variation of relative humidity.
Sunshine and Solar Radiation
Being a maritime country close to the equator, Malaysia naturally
has abundant sunshine and thus solar radiation. However, it is
extremely rare to have a full day with completely clear sky even in
periods of severe drought. The cloud cover cuts off a substantial
amount of sunshine and thus solar radiation. On the average,
Malaysia receives about 6 hours of sunshine per day. There are,
however, seasonal and spatial variations in the amount of sunshine
received. Alor Setar and Kota Bharu receive about 7 hours per day of
sunshine while Kuching receives only 5 hours on the average. On the
extreme, Kuching receives only an average of 3.7 hours per day in
the month of January. On the other end of the scale, Alor Setar
receives a maximum of 8.7 hours per day on the average in the same
Solar radiation is closely related to the sunshine duration. Its
seasonal and spatial variations are thus very much the same as in
the case of sunshine.
Source - Malaysia Meteorological Service
information - details -
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A few months ago we wrote about Kristianstad, Sweden, an area that now uses biomass to generate all of its heat and some of its electricity. That city pioneered use of this renewable technology, and gradually biomass evolved from a niche component of its fuel mix to the backbone of its fuel supply.
A number of rural areas in Germany and the Netherlands have undertaken similar projects. As the article noted, while biomass could be deployed in similar agricultural regions in the United States, adoption has been slow in this country.
That looks as if it might be changing.
This week the federal Department of Agriculture announced a host of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in rural America, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is touring the Midwest, seeding biomass projects as he goes.
On Friday, the departments of Agriculture and Energy announced that up to $30 million would go toward supporting research and development in advanced biofuels, bioenergy and “high-value biobased products” over the next three to four years.
The money is to be dispensed through the Biomass Research and Development Initiative, which started accepting proposals last year.
If properly produced, biomass heat and power produce fewer emissions than fossil fuels like coal or oil because much of the material used as fuel would otherwise sit in landfill releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as it rots. The use of biomass could also reduce the need to import oil. President Obama has called for a one-third reduction in the nation’s oil imports by 2025.
Biomass can include old tree cuttings, rice husks, corn stalks, manure -– almost any kind of biological farm waste. In the past these leftovers were typically left to rot. So a growing number of agricultural regions are burning them or degrading them through chemical digestion to produce biogas.
But new forms of biomass, like the algae biomass produced at the plant that Secretary Vilsack is visiting Friday afternoon, do not use agricultural leftovers; they rely on farmers or factories that grow plants specifically for use as fuel. That involves a different kind of trade-off, since those fields and farms could instead be growing food.
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By Alan Mozes
THURSDAY, Jan. 3 (HealthDay News) -- It's possible that a serious mosquito-borne virus -- with no known vaccine or treatment -- could migrate from Central Africa and Southeast Asia to the United States within a year, new research suggests.
The chances of a U.S. outbreak of the Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) varies by season and geography, with those regions typified by longer stretches of warm weather facing longer periods of high risk, according to the researchers' new computer model.
"The only way for this disease to be transmitted is if a mosquito bites an infected human and a few days after that it bites a healthy individual, transmitting the virus," said study lead author Diego Ruiz-Moreno, a postdoctoral associate in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "The repetition of this sequence of events can lead to a disease outbreak."
And that, Ruiz-Moreno said, is where weather comes into the picture, with computer simulations revealing that the risk of an outbreak rises when temperatures, and therefore mosquito populations, rise.
The study analyzed possible outbreak scenarios in three U.S. locales.
In 2013, the New York region is set to face its highest risk for a CHIKV outbreak during the warm months of August and September, the analysis suggests. By contrast, Atlanta's highest-risk period was identified as longer, beginning in June and running through September. Miami's consistent warm weather means the region faces a higher risk all year.
"Warmer weather increases the length of the period of high risk," Ruiz-Moreno said. "This is particularly worrisome if we think of the effects of climate change over [average] temperatures in the near future."
Ruiz-Moreno discussed his team's research -- funded in part by the U.S. National Institute for Food and Agriculture -- in a recent issue of the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
CHIKV was first identified in Tanzania in 1953, the authors noted, and the severe joint and muscle pain, fever, fatigue, headaches, rashes and nausea that can result are sometimes confused with symptoms of dengue fever.
Few patients die of the illness, and about one-quarter show no symptoms whatsoever. Many patients, however, experience prolonged joint pain, and there is no effective treatment for the disease, leaving physicians to focus on symptom relief.
Disease spread is of paramount concern in the week following infection, during which the patient serves as a viral host for biting mosquitoes. Infected mosquitoes can then transmit the virus and cause a full-blown outbreak.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention became aware of the growing threat of a global outbreak in 2005 and 2006, following the onset of epidemics in India, Southeast Asia, Reunion Island and other islands in the Indian Ocean. In 2007, public health concerns mounted following an outbreak in Italy.
To assess the risk of a U.S. epidemic, the authors collected data concerning regional mosquito population patterns, daily regional weather and human population statistics.
They ran the information through a computer simulation designed to conservatively crunch the numbers based on the likelihood that an outbreak would occur in the coming year after just one CHIKV-infected individual entered any of the three test regions.
The results suggested that because environmental factors affect mosquito growth cycles, the regional risk for a CHIKV outbreak is, to a large degree, a function of weather. The authors said that public health organizations need to be "vigilant," while advocating for region-specific planning to address varying levels of risk across the country.
However, Dr. Erin Staples, a CDC medical epidemiologist based in Fort Collins, Colo., said that although the study was "carefully and nicely done" the investigation's focus on the role of temperature in CHIKV outbreak risk should not negate the importance of other key factors such as human behavior.
"We're aware of the potential introduction and spread of this virus, as well as several other mosquito-borne diseases," she said. "We've been working to create and prepare a response to the risk that this virus could expand into the U.S."
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Heaven and Hope
The Wilderness Society 2010-2011, “Heaven and Hope” written by Jeff Rennicke
The lands that belong to all Americans have long provided wilderness, recreation, and heavenly scenery. Now, scientists say, protecting them just might hold our best hope of saving the planet.
“As confusing as these numbers seem, one number is increasingly clear, says Harvey Locke of The WILD Foundation: 50 percent. For decades, according to Locke, conservationists pushed for protection of 10 to 12 percent of the Earth as a “politically acceptable” goal. “When those other targets were set they were bold and visionary,” he says, “but the world has changed and those…targets no longer conform to what we’ve come to understand scientifically nor to the current very serious conditions that exist around the world for nature.”
His ambitious goal is the target of a new program called “Nature Needs Half,” which seeks the designation of at least 50 percent of the world’s terrestrial surface to a level defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. That would require the protection of some tribal, corporate, and private lands, yet its success will depend mostly on the protection of our cherished public lands.
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I’ve been looking for a good, easy to read document outlining the latest climate science research and putting it in context for Copenhagen and I think I’ve found it.
Today in Sydney, the Climate Change Research Centre, a unit of the University of New South Wales, released The Copenhagen Diagnosis. It’s free to download or view online in a nice rich text format so credit to the centre for making it accessible in multiple attractive formats. But most praise has to be reserved for the 26 contributing authors who have laid out the science to make it easy to understand for a layman like myself. Chapters cover aspects of climate science including “the atmosphere”, “permafrost and hydrates” and “global sea level”.
Throughout are scattered common questions about climate change and answers designed to clear up confusion. An example: “Are we just in a natural warming phase, recovering from the ‘little ice age?‘.
The document, once pictures and the reference section is including is a slim 50 pages. If you want something to get yourself up to speed on the science ahead of Copenhagen this could well be the document to download. Its even better if you have a colleague willing to run across the road and get it bound for you as I have!
The executive summary of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, which I’ve excerpted below gives the basics you need to know if even 50 pages is too much to handle as we head into the highly-stressful (for everyone other than academics) end of year period.
The diplomats and politicians soon to board flights to Denmark could do worse than slip a copy of The Copenhagen Diagnosis into their cabin luggage.
The most significant recent climate change findings are:
Surging greenhouse gas emissions: Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels in 2008 were nearly 40% higher than those in 1990. Even if global emission rates are stabilized at present-day levels, just 20 more years of emissions would give a 25% probability that warming exceeds 2°C, even with zero emissions after 2030. Every year of delayed action increases the chances of exceeding 2°C warming.
Recent global temperatures demonstrate human-induced warming: Over the past 25 years temperatures have increased at a rate of 0.19°C per decade, in very good agreement with predictions based on greenhouse gas increases. Even over the past ten years, despite a decrease in solar forcing, the trend continues to be one of warming. Natural, short-term fluctuations are occurring as usual, but there have been no significant changes in the underlying warming trend.
Acceleration of melting of ice-sheets, glaciers and ice-caps: A wide array of satellite and ice measurements now demonstrate beyond doubt that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate. Melting of glaciers and ice-caps in other parts of the world has also accelerated since 1990. Rapid Arctic sea-ice decline: Summer-time melting of Arctic sea-ice has accelerated far beyond the expectations of climate models. The area of sea-ice melt during 2007-2009 was about 40% greater than the average prediction from IPCC AR4 climate models.
Current sea-level rise underestimated: Satellites show recent global average sea-level rise (3.4 mm/yr over the past 15 years) to be ~80% above past IPCC predictions. This acceleration in sea-level rise is consistent with a doubling in contribution from melting of glaciers, ice caps, and the Greenland and West-Antarctic ice-sheets.
Sea-level predictions revised: By 2100, global sea-level is likely to rise at least twice as much as projected by Working Group 1 of the IPCC AR4; for unmitigated emissions it may well exceed 1 meter. The upper limit has been estimated as ~ 2 meters sea level rise by 2100. Sea level will continue to rise for centuries after global temperatures have been stabilized, and several meters of sea level rise must be expected over the next few centuries.
Delay in action risks irreversible damage: Several vulnerable elements in the climate system (e.g. continental ice-sheets, Amazon rainforest, West African monsoon and others) could be pushed towards abrupt or irreversible change if warming continues in a business-as-usual way throughout this century. The risk of transgressing critical thresholds (’tipping points’) increases strongly with ongoing climate change. Thus waiting for higher levels of scientific certainty could mean that some
tipping points will be crossed before they are recognized.
The turning point must come soon: If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2 °C above pre-industrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized global society — with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases — needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-95% below the per-capita emissions in developed nations in 2000.
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Hugh Pickens writes writes "Until recently, geothermal power systems have exploited only resources where naturally occurring heat, water, and rock permeability are sufficient to allow energy extraction but now geothermal energy developers plan use a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of the dormant Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Oregon in an effort to use the earth's heat to generate power. "We know the heat is there," says Susan Petty, president of AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle. "The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic." Since natural cracks and pores do not allow economic flow rates, the permeability of the volcanic rock can be enhanced with EGS by pumping high-pressure cold water down an injection well into the rock, creating tiny fractures in the rock, a process known as hydroshearing. Then cold water is pumped down production wells into the reservoir, and the steam is drawn out. Natural geothermal resources only account for about 0.3 percent of U.S. electricity production, but a 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology report projected EGS could bump that to 10 percent within 50 years, at prices competitive with fossil-fuels. "The important question we need to answer now," says USGS geophysicist Colin Williams, "is how geothermal fits into the renewable energy picture, and how EGS fits. How much it is going to cost, and how much is available.""
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The TCBH! Climate Change Report: A Palm Tree Grows Outside Philadelphia
I went out today and checked on my palm tree. It’s a small thing: the trunk is only about a foot from the ground, with the palmate fronds spreading out from the upper part. New fronds appear as compressed blades sticking up from the center. They have a kind of fuzz on them, like the lanugo on a newborn baby. What makes my little palm unusual is it sits in my front yard in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles north of the edge of Philadelphia. It’s clearly not a native species to this area, but it is doing surprisingly well. Although we’ve had a number of nights now when the temperature dropped below freezing, including two when it dropped to about 26 degrees, the fronds are still bright green, and the shoots have continued to grow.
While the palm is pretty, and striking in its own way, standing out against the backdrop of deciduous trees that have finally shed all their leaves for the winter, it is also a little disturbing -- a harbinger of an enormous climate change that is taking place in front of my eyes.
I have good reason to believe that this little tree is going to survive our Philadelphia winter (which last year never went below 25 degrees, and then only for such short periods of time that the ground never froze below about an inch or two of soil), and that it will continue to grow where I planted it, perhaps becoming the first palm in Pennsylvania.
As I write this, negotiators are meeting in Doha, Qatar, supposedly to negotiate a treaty that will lead to serious efforts by the nations of the world to finally start reducing the release of more carbon into the earth’s already overloaded atmosphere. We hear from UN researchers that the global emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere have risen by 54% between 1990 and 2011, and that by the end of this year, that number will be 58%. They were supposed to be going down over that period.
Meanwhile, the evidence that all this carbon is starting to have a snowball effect on global warming. Ice caps in both the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting, and at a faster rate than anyone was predicting even five years ago. The oceans, both as a result of that melting, and thanks to the expansion of the water itself as it warms, are showing a measurable rise, which was one of the reasons for the extraordinary damage done to New York City and the surrounding shorelines by the recent late-season super-storm Hurricane Sandy. A similar superstorm, with winds up to almost 200 mph, located further south than ever recorded in the Pacific, just tore through Mindanao in the southern Philippines. (Both storms were powered by a historically unprecedented rise in ocean surface temperatures.)
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By Mike Stark, Associated Press Writer
SALT LAKE CITY Hey, Great Salt Lake: Your shoreline is showing.
All summer and into the fall, warm temperatures kept evaporation humming, drawing down the lake to near-record low levels and exposing more shore than normal.
But the shrinking appears finally to have stopped.
Wallace Gwynn, of the Utah Geological Survey, says the current lake level — measured at 4,194 feet above sea level — seems to have bottomed out about 6 feet below normal.
"I don't think we're going to go a lot lower than this," Gwynn said.
The lake hasn't been this low since the early 1970s. Some speculated it might slip past the record low of 4,191.35 feet set in 1963. But cooler temperatures this fall are finally bringing the shrinking to a stop.
That's welcome news to boaters driven away by shallow waters.
"Six years ago, when I arrived as park manager, we had 70 sailboats in the marina," said Ron Taylor, who runs Antelope Island State Park in the southern part of the lake. "Now we have two."
The lake has a reputation for being cyclical fluctuations, rising and falling at the whims of temperature, rainfall and other factors.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many worried the lake would completely dry up.
In the 1980s, more than $60 million was spent on gigantic pumps, which for two years funneled water into the desert west of the lake after severe floods along the shoreline.
By 2002 and 2003, the lake shrank again to levels not seen in years.
Like many lakes, the Great Salt Lake collects water from mountain rain and snow. But, unlike most, the Great Salt Lake has no drain and relies on evaporation to help regulate its levels.
"It's pretty predictable," Taylor said.
Not only was the evaporation spurred on by warmer temperatures during the summer but much of the runoff found its way into the soil before it ever reached the lake.
When the year started, there wasn't much moisture in the first 2 feet of soil in some places around the lake, Gwynn said. That soil acts as a sponge for water that runs on top of it.
"If we're trying to fill up the first 2 feet, that takes a lot of water," Gwynn said.
There's another factor at play, too, said Dan Bedford, an associate geography professor at Weber State University who studies the lake: A portion of the fresh water that used to flow to the lake is now diverted for human uses.
Scientists roughly estimate that the Great Salt Lake is typically about 5 feet lower than it would be if received all of the naturally flowing water, Bedford said.
With another million or so people expected to arrive along the Wasatch Front — the urban area in the north-central part of Utah — in the coming decades, that strain on the lake's water supply is expected to deepen. That's not to mention predictions of warmer temperatures and longer droughts for portions of the West, including Utah.
"The trend certainly suggests there's likely to be less water available for the lake in the future unless we're careful about it," Bedford said.
Lower lake levels affect more than boaters and the brine shrimp industry, which scoops the tiny creatures out of the water for sale as fish food and other products.
Exposed shorelines offer easier access for predators such as foxes and coyotes to reach island bird populations, Bedford said. Lake levels also play an important role in the wetlands around the lake that provide habitat for millions of birds each year.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Barbara Heath Land Race – 2012
By the time Barbara Heath visited Horsham, the town and the surrounding Wimmera District of Western Victoria were in the process of recovering from a decade-long drought. To inform her work, which was initially to address issues of drought, Heath held a number of planned and fortuitous conversations with the assistance of Horsham Regional Art Gallery staff, which came to focus on the changes in agricultural practices in the area.
The list of people with whom Heath consulted is lengthy, but Dr Bob Redden, curator Australian Temperate Field Crops Collection of the Grains Innovation Park became her main contact. In an email of August 2011, Dr Redden wrote to Heath: ‘Now with unprecedented population levels and growth, there is a risk of disconnect and taking food supply for granted, even with climate change. Humans will need to change if they wish to continue their increasing diverse interests, but will need to prioritise agricultural research, better understanding our available genetic resources, plant growth and development, and imaginative paths to harnessing science and truly earn the title ‘Homo sapiens’.
Land race is a direct response to the urgency of maintaining biodiversity. Agriculture today requires economies of scale that change the social landscape and limit population diversity. This results in the erasure of many small communities, loss of connection to the past and cultural loss. Dr Redden explained his department’s work to ensure plant gene diversity by sourcing and saving seed from land race crops. ‘Land race’ is the term used to describe heritage seed varieties now being displaced by International Seed Uniformity Standards.
Heath’s Land Race series shows distinct levels, from biodiversity in the soils to the patterns of farming practices above. Each Land Race also features a remnant plant species that reaches up and through the tractor track patterns: briar, apple and aloe.
There are numerous hero shots (one above) and details prepared (below), we will wait for the show to get under way and publicise a little later. The preliminary research is in an earlier blog post – click here.
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Community Based Adaptation
The IFAD adaptive approach to participatory mapping: Design and delivery of participatory mapping projectsSubmitted by c.baldin on Fri, 2013-01-25 20:00
This document reports on an adaptive approach to designing and implementing participatory mapping initiatives within IFAD-supported projects. The adaptive
UNDP/GEF supported CBA Community Based Adaptation Project Pilot Sites: Onamulunga School Garden ProjectSubmitted by andrea on Mon, 2011-09-26 07:09
The Community-Based Adaptation Programme (CBA) is a five-year United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) global initiative funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). UNDP works with a number of partners including the United Nations Volunteers and the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP). Initial CBA investments have been made in 20 communities in the northern parts of Namibia (i.e. Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena, Oshikoto and Kavango Regions). Climate models suggest that these areas are particularly vulnerable and face significant climate change risks, both at present and in future. To facilitate uptake of CBA strategies the Onamulunga Combined School project is focused on integrating adaptation to climate change into school curriculum. The pilot programme at Onamulunga Combined School in the Oshikoto region involves training grade 9 and 10students in adaptation farming methods such as conservation tilling, water harvesting, and micro-drip irrigation and planting drought resistant crops. These methods are subsequently taken up by the students’ native communities. This project directly contributes towards Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2 and 7 and, through a special focus on the inclusion of young women and girls, to MDG 3.The project also indirectly contributes to the realization of other MDGs.
There are various Community Based Adaptation projects in Namibia. The particular project discussed here is implemented by an NGO called Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions (CES) that applies CBA measures through self-help groups. At the Onamulunga Combined School in the Oshikoto region, grade 9 and 10 students receive practical lessons in how to implement improved farming methods for a future affected by climate change.
Results and Learning:
According to a recent field visit by an independent assessor, the Onamulunga Garden project has achieved many of the intended results. Various sites at the school have been prepared for crop agriculture using the latest conservation tilling methods for dry land crops and micro-drip irrigation for vegetables. The project coordinator is Agriculture and Life Science teacher, Johannes Nelongo, who has provided inspirational leadership for 87 grade 9 and 10 students to put the theory they learn in the classroom in practice in the field, growing maize, sunflowers, cow peas, spinach, carrots, onions and other vegetables.They apply conservation furrowing and ripping, water saving techniques, mulching, application of organic and chemical fertilising, crop rotation and alternative growing methods. As such, the project provides learners with practical adaptation techniques. “Practical exercises make it easier for learners to interpret theoretical information. It thus gives them wisdom and insight and teaches them how to apply these methods at home,” says Nelongo.[Refer to the attached document for further details.]
The project has built adaptive capacity for almost ninety learners, with the intention that they take these skills forward and apply them in the decades to come. Already a multiplier effect is noticeable in the children and teachers’ home communities. The project focuses on establishing a strong foundation for the application of adaptation mechanisms in farming practices rather than creating dependency through aid. “Because the programme demonstrates tangible benefits for the communities involved, it is sustainable,” says Marie Johansson from CES. “It will continue even if donor support stops tomorrow. It is important to start with educating kids. Young people, especially girls, pick the skills up quickly. From there on it is easier to integrate the community. Later on, many kids will migrate to urban areas and unfortunately fall in the trap of unemployment. But with the skills they learn here, there is an alternative way to make a living off the two hectares or so near their homestead. In this way even small farmers can become commercial farmers.”
The project has been so successful that it has grabbed the attention of other schools. Four nearby schools are interested and have been invited to participate. As such, Onamulunga can become a centre of learning for the community. This is compounded by the multiplier effect already mentioned, with children introducing the new methods to their parents and villagers coming to the school to see the improved cropping system with their own eyes. “As a school we need to involve communities and share the skills and knowledge that we have,” says Onamulunga principal Immanuel Namupolo. “Now the community helps us to look after the project when the school is closed. We also give parents our surplus maize, so they can sell it. In doing so, the project reaches out to parents. We give them a role to play, so that they are involved in the process of adaptation.”The experiment teaches children to adapt to a situation where fertile land and water are becoming increasingly scarce resources. But the initiative also has a wider effect within the surrounding communities, with children applying their newly acquired skills in the household farm setting. Enthused by the Onamulunga success story, parents and teachers have also started their own gardens. “The proceeds from the garden save people a lot of money. Sometimes you don’t even have to go to the market for a whole month,” one teacher remarks.
Implementing Agency and Partnering Organizations:Onamulunga Combined School; Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions (CES). Other stakeholders include: the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Fisheries, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Namibia Agronomic Board, GEF through its Strategic Priority on Adaptation (SPA) programme, UNDP; Small Grants Programme and all its delivery partners.
The Community-Based Adaptation Programme (CBA) is a five-year United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) global initiative funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). UNDP works with a number of partners including the United Nations Volunteers and the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP). Initial CBA investments have been made in 20 communities in the northern parts of Namibia (i.e. Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena, Oshikoto and Kavango Regions). Climate models suggest that these areas are particularly vulnerable and face significant climate change risks, both at present and in future.
There are various Community Based Adaptation projects in Namibia. The particular project discussed here is implemented by an NGO called Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions (CES) that applies CBA measures through self-help groups. At the Onamulunga Combined School in the Oshikoto region, grade 9 and 10 students receive practical lessons in how to implement improved farming methods for a future affected by climate change. Through equipping the students with relevant agricultural adaptation skills, the pilot programme is designed to sow the seeds for uptake and wider spread of adaptation measures throughout the community.
- Outcome 1: Enhanced adaptive capacity allows communities to reduce their vulnerability to adverse impacts of future climate hazards.
- Outcome 2: National policies and programmes promote replication of best practices derived from CBA projects.
- Outcome 3: Cooperation among member countries promotes innovation in adaptation to climate change including variability.
Project Status:Under Implementation
Primary Beneficiaries:Major stakeholders are: the Onamulunga Combined School; Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions (CES). Primary beneficiaries are the grade 9 and 10 students, their families and the communities living within the pilot areas, as well as other schools in the wider area.
UNDP/GEF supported CBA Community Based Adaptation Project Pilot Sites: University of Namibia – Ogongo Campus: The Sweet-stem Sorghum ResearchSubmitted by andrea on Mon, 2011-09-26 06:42
The Community-Based Adaptation Programme (CBA) is a five-year United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) global initiative funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF). UNDP works with a number of partners including the United Nations Volunteers and the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP). Initial CBA investments have been made in 20 communities in the northern parts of Namibia (i.e. Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena, Oshikoto and Kavango Regions). Climate models suggest these areas are particularly vulnerable and face significant climate change risks,both at present and in future. To facilitate uptake of CBA strategies, one project focuses on research into sweet-stem sorghum varieties that are better suited to altered climatic conditions. The purpose is to cultivate one variety that is not only stronger, but also presents the ideal mix of multi-purpose applications, such as food, fodder/silage and sugar extract for ethanol (biofuel). The project pursues multifaceted objectives of food security, environmental sustainability and universal education. These objectives address the three Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 1, 2, and 7. Now entering its final stage, the researchers are focusing on three remaining sorghum varieties. One successful variety will be commercially distributed in the SGP-CBA pilot areas in Namibia.
There are various Community Based Adaptation (CBA) projects in Namibia. The particular project discussed here uses a non-governmental organisation called Creative Entrepreneurs Solutions to implement CBA measures through self-help groups.
Results and Learning:
According to a recent field visit by an independent documenter, the research into sweet-stem sorghum varieties at the Ogongo Campus achieved numerous intended results. On one tenth of a hectare, eight sweet-stem sorghum varieties were grown to select one variety that has the optimal balance of grain, bio-mass and sugar content. The research established that not all varieties were suitable for uptake as multi-purpose crop. Yet, the trial delivered three varieties with a promising combination of grain, biomass and sugar, and also endurance to withstand heavy rain. These three varieties were part of an on-farm trial, specifically focusing on the successful delivery of silage. The farmers involved received training at the University of Namibia (UNAM) on how to farm these varieties. Subsequently, the farmers would produce silage and feed a control group of goats to test results. This trial, however, failed because of this year’s extreme floods. However, the three varieties will be tested further and will form part of new on-farm trials. Ultimately, one crop variety will be selected for distribution within the SGP-CBA and the wider northern area of Namibia, to plant at the household level. This crop will make a simple, but significant contribution towards food security, poverty alleviation and a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The different purposes of the crop are: food, fodder for livestock, chicken feed, and silage for the dry season and sugar extract for ethanol/biofuel. Another possible use for the sugar extract is in fruit juices. The project demonstrates a need for training of farmers in processing for these different applications.[Refer to the attached document for full Results and Learning.]
The results will be sustainable once the best variety is selected. First, future trials and subsequent cultivation of such a variety will provide evidence to support the hypothesis that multi-purpose crops can augment household income and sustainability on various levels and strengthen the climate change response, as well as other national development objectives. Once successfully tested, the small-scale farmers will continue to plant or cultivate the best variety.
[Refer to the attached document for further details.]
Replicability is ensured by distributing the seeds of the successful variety across the Northern regions for free, and subsequently at a subsidized price. The research also ties in with an Africa-wide trial including countries like Zambia and Kenya. It could, therefore be replicated in other areas or on other crops. Multi-disciplinary cooperation through ICRISAT, which is kept abreast of developments in Ogongo, will aid this purpose. ICRISAT currently looks at multiplying the seeds of multi-purpose crops so that they do not become hybrid and infertile. Namibia, as an advanced country, has the potential to serve as a replication model. The results of the trial can be shared with countries with similar climatic conditions, which could duplicate the outcomes. Finally increased yields and income could facilitate further cultivation and initiate the long-awaited ‘green revolution’ in Africa. An agreement over REDD Plus could further enhance agro forestry.
The African Drought Risk and Development Network (ADDN) is a region-wide network for advocacy, capacity building and peer learning. It was initiated by the United Nations Development Programme Drylands Development Centre (UNDP-DDC) and UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) in 2005 with the aim to promote applied discussion and policy dialogue on key issues linking drought risk and development in Africa.
Integrating climate change risks into water and flood management by vulnerable mountainous communities in the Greater Caucasus region of Azerbaijan
Implementing Agency and Partnering Organizations:Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources
To reduce vulnerability of the communities of the Greater Caucasus region of Azerbaijan to water stress and hazards by improved water and flood management.
Windhoek, Namibia: As climate change becomes more eminent, it is the vulnerable who are most affected. One of the worst affected areas is Namibia - the driest country in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Climate change projections for Namibia forecast increased aridity and variable rainfall.
Implementing Agency and Partnering Organizations:UNHCR
UNHCR and its partners, including the Chad government, are addressing the effects of climate change with programmes aimed at better management of dwindling water resources and at holding back desertification by planting trees in one of the driest and hottest countries on earth.
Senior Information Officer
Phone: +41 22 739 86 57
Mobile: +41 79 200 76 17
Project Status:Under implementation
Adapting national and transboundary water resource management in Swaziland to manage expected climate changeSubmitted by JulianneBG on Wed, 2010-06-23 05:17
Implementing Agency and Partnering Organizations:
The goal of the project is to ensure that national and transboundary water resources management is adapted to the expected impact of climate change. The objective of the project is to promote the implementation of national and transboundary integrated water resource management that is sustainable and equitable given expected climate change.
**1.** Promoting informed and inclusive national dialogue around water needs vulnerability to climate change and water allocation in Swaziland among productive and domestic uses.
**2.** Integrating climate risk management into the implementation of national policies and relevant to integrated water resource management.
**3.** Informed negotiations on trans-boundary water resources management.
**1.1** Information on community views on water needs and vulnerabilities to climate change.
**1.2** Information dissemination to raise community awareness regarding climate change impacts and adaptation measures.
**1.3** Policy analysis regarding climate change impacts on water and agriculture sectors.
**1.4** National platform to discuss bottom-up and top-down analysis.
**1.5** National policy dialogues to promote adoption of National Water Policy draft.
**1.6** Knowledge products for policy makers to promote response options in water and agriculture sectors.
**1.7** Partnership between MET Service and policy makers.
**2.1** Guidelines and tools designed to take into account climate change.
**2.2** Investment plans implemented by Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy and Ministry of Agriculture adjusted to take climate change risks into account.
**3.1** Swaziland delegations to trans-boundary water resources management negotiations briefed on implications of climate change.
**3.2** Dissemination of knowledge products on climate change impacts on trans-boundary water resources management and water allocation.
Regional Technical Advisor
+27 12 354 8125
Implementing Agency and Partnering Organizations:
Apart from relatively frequent earthquakes, Turkey is vulnerable to natural disasters such as floods, increasing water stress in parts of the country, and land degradation. Economic losses from flooding and landslides as a proportion of GDP have historically been among the highest in Turkey compared to other countries in Europe and CIS. Landslides and floods have accounted for 25% and 10%, respectively, of Turkey’s natural disasters over the last 25 years.
This joint program's core objective is to develop national capacities to manage climate change risks. This will be achieved through mainstreaming climate change issues into 1) national development framework, 2) local pilot actions, and 3) the UN country programmatic framework.
In pursuant of the core objective, the joint program will achieve the following outcomes:
**Outcome 1.** Mainstreaming climate change adaptation into the national development framework.
The project will target the key strategic planning frameworks to mainstream climate change adaptation. Turkey’s development plan and rural development strategies will be screened and revised to integrate adaptation needs. The screening process will help the national stakeholders to better understand the current and future climate change risks and their implications for economic, human and social development. The project will also initiate legislative and procedural changes to mainstream climate change risks into development and regional planning. A new and revised legal framework will be developed to introduce clear rules and procedures for a mainstreaming routine. National authorities are in full agreement with these proposals.
**Outcome 2.** Developing institutional capacity for climate risk management.
Under this outcome, the program will work with the relevant national and regional institutions to enhance their in-house knowledge and response capacity to effectively manage climate risks in Turkey. The program will specifically target the Regional Development Agency, which has been established to plan and undertake regional development activities, as well as develop the technical capacity of relevant research, monitoring and observing entities for systematic observations and early warning systems. The data generation will be systematized and harmonized across the responsible agencies for improved response capabilities. By building on the First National Communication preparation to UNFCCC, the program will build on and further enhance current technical knowledge and capacity for policy relevant vulnerability assessment.
**Outcome 3.** Developing capacity for community based adaptation in a pilot river basin.
The program will pilot climate change adaptation approaches by introducing the principles of Community Based Adaptation (CBA) in the context of agricultural practices, water management, food security, climate change related disaster risk management, particularly drought management, coastal development, natural resources management, data and information management. CBA approaches will be established as important elements of vulnerability reduction and disaster management strategies. CBA will build on and further develop local capacities and knowledge, including through better data and information management, to cope with climate risks and variability. CBA options will be instrumental not only in formulating local coping and adaptation strategies, but also in situating them within wider development planning and debates by empowering local communities through their increased participation in local planning and decision making. By applying participatory methods, the program will bring together key stakeholders at the local level (planners and decision makers, developers and investors, local communities and most vulnerable groups) in the framework of public private partnership (PPP) to mobilize commitments and local resources in financing adaptation measures.
**Outcome 4.** Mainstreaming climate risk reduction into the UN programming framework.
Under this outcome, the program will establish the guiding principles as well as develop the technical guidelines for integrating climate change concerns into the “One UN” programming. This will be done by using the UNDAF as the programmatic platform for mainstreaming adaptation within the UN system. This approach will ensure the “climate proofing” of all multi-agency development assistance that is targeted to achieving the MDGs.
Tel: +90 312 454 1192
Fax: +90 312 496 1463
Regional Project Coordinator
Tel: +90 312 454 1086
Fax: +90 312 496 1463
Finance and Administrative Officer
Tel: +90 312 454 1181
Fax: +90 312 496 1463
Tel: +90 312 454 1056
Fax: +90 312 496 1463
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This is an introductory level presentation exploring the various definitions of the term "environmental sustainability" and the connection between climate change and human population growth and its impact on the viability of the earth's systems.
To explore the various perspectives of the term "environmental sustainabilty".
“Environmental Sustainability” has different meanings to different people
• “Environmental Sustainability” extends beyond human existence
• Intelligence is not a good predictor of species longevity
• Longevity within species is tied to metabolic rate
• Environmental factors affect human migration, distribution, endeavors
• Structures made by humans are not sustainable
• Growth of human populations and economic systems are accelerating
CONTEXT FOR USE
This presentation can be used as an introduction to the topic of Climate Change or an introduction to Environmental Sustainability. It could also be used for many interdisiclinary courses to incorporate population growth, sustainability and climate change issues. It could also be used for informal education.
ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION AND TEACHING MATERIALS
Download the Pdf of the presentation.
Assessment at at the discretion of the educator and how the presentation is used.
REFERENCES AND RESOURCES
Produced by the faculty of University of North Carolina, see authors.
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February 24, 2013 in Sustainable Development
EMBARGOED until 1800 GMT on Sunday 24 February
By Alex Kirby
A United Nations scheme intended to guarantee everyone access to clean energy could help to keep global temperature rise below 2°C, researchers say, although it would not achieve this without sharp cuts in emissions of all the main greenhouse gases.
LONDON, 24 February – Eradicating poverty by making modern energy supplies available to everyone is not only compatible with measures to slow climate change, a new study says. It is a necessary condition for it.
But the authors say the scheme to provide sustainable energy worldwide will not by itself be enough to keep the global average temperature rise below the widely accepted international target level of 2°C. While the scheme can help measures to tackle climate change, it cannot achieve that by itself.
The scheme, the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative (SE4All), if it proves successful, could make a significant contribution to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, according to the analysis from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and ETH Zurich.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, shows that reaching the three energy-related goals of SE4All would cut GHG emissions and is achievable.
“Achievement of the three objectives would provide an important entry point into stringent climate protection”, says Joeri Rogelj, ETH Zurich researcher and IIASA-affiliated scientist, who led the study.
It found that the short-term goals, due to be reached by 2030, would help achieve long-term climate targets. But to ensure stringent climate objectives were reached, SE4ALL would need to be matched by other measures, the researchers say.
SE4All ‘necessary – but not sufficient’
SE4All’s objectives include providing universal access to modern energy, doubling the share of renewable energy globally, and doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency – all by 2030.
While the objectives do not explicitly address climate change, sustainable energy is accepted as vital for cutting GHG emissions: 80% of CO2 from human activities comes from the global energy system, including transport, buildings, industry, and electricity, heat, and fuel production.
“Doing energy right will promote the Millennium Development Goals and at the same time kick-start the transition to a lower-carbon economy”, says IIASA researcher David McCollum, who also worked on the study. “But the UN’s objectives must be complemented by a global agreement on controlling GHG emissions.”
SE4All has global goals, but the researchers say action at regional and national levels will be essential to achieving them. IIASA’s energy programme leader Keywan Riahi, a co-author of the study, says: “The next step for this initiative is already under way, with a large number of national plans that underpin the global objectives.”
They analysed the likelihood of the world limiting global warming to target levels if each or all of the SE4All objectives were achieved. Using a broad range of scenarios, they found that if all the objectives are met, the likelihood of keeping temperature rise below 2°C will be more than 66%.
If only the renewable energy goal is met, chances of staying below 2°C will range from 40 to 90%, they say, while achieving just the energy efficiency goal will improve the chances to between 60 and 90%.
But the researchers warn that this result depends strongly on what future economic growth is assumed. They say the likelihood of reaching climate targets within the scenarios depend on a range of other factors, including energy demand growth, economic growth, and technological innovation.
The study also found that providing universal energy access by 2030 will not hinder long-term climate goals, thanks to the marked gains in energy efficiency that will result. “Sustainable development and poverty eradication can go hand in hand with mitigating climate risks,” says Rogelj.
He told the Climate News Network: “To ensure effective climate change mitigation, a global treaty on greenhouse gases should enforce a cap on global emissions which limits emissions from all sources.
“With such a cap SE4ALL can help to limit emissions from the energy sector, but other measures will have to tackle those from other sources like deforestation, or other gases, like methane from agriculture and waste, or facilitate an even quicker decarbonization of the energy sector, like carbon-capture and storage.”
The new work also quantified the potential costs of reaching the SE4All objectives, which would amount to increasing energy investment by between 0.1 and 0.7% of global GDP. The authors’ estimates account for the substantial savings in energy use and reduced fossil energy investment that would result from promoting more sustainable energy technologies and lifestyles. – Climate News Network
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(CNN) -- Months after rescuers found them struggling and covered in oil, 33 endangered and threatened young sea turtles are finally going home to the Gulf of Mexico.
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the Audubon Nature Institute freed the turtles Thursday in waters about 40 miles southwest of Grand Isle, Louisiana.
This marked the latest mass release of turtles since about 500 were rescued in the weeks and months after the massive months-long oil spill.
"We were able to release these turtles because they're now healthy, and we're seeing recovery in the surface habitats of the Gulf of Mexico," NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said in a news release.
The spill began after an April 20 explosion on the offshore drilling platform Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 men. Two days later, the platform sank and oil started gushing into the Gulf. In early August, owner BP used cement and mud to plug the damaged Gulf of Mexico well.
Officials formally declared an end to the oil spill disaster on September 19, though considerable efforts remained to clean up area waters and revive wildlife affected by the spill.
Earlier this month, NOAA reopened federal waters off the Louisiana coast to fishing. Thursday's release marked another milestone in the area's recovery, according to those involved.
"Returning this group of sea turtles to their home waters is ... a sign that Louisiana is on the path towards recovery," said Randy Pausina, an assistant secretary for Louisiana's office of fisheries.
The 33 turtles had been rescued more than three months ago by federal officials and state wildlife authorities from Louisiana, Florida and Georgia, as well as the Riverhead Foundation and the In-Water Research Group. They were rehabilitated at the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans.
They included green, Kemp's ridley and hawksbill sea turtles, which are classified as endangered species. There also were loggerheads, which are a threatened species.
With 270 turtles having been cleaned, nursed back to health and released, there are more than 200 still in rehabilitation sites around the area.
Scientists did extensive aerial and shipboard tests earlier this week on the waters near the release point, making sure the sargassum algae was clean. Young turtles thrive in such areas, which provide protection from predators and ample food, including small crabs, snails and other creatures.
"Six months ago, it was nearly impossible to imagine this day would ever come," said Ron Forman, the Audubon Nature Institute's CEO and president.
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What a waste! Picture from space reveals how new U.S. oil field is burning off enough gas to power Chicago AND Washington - because it's cheaper than selling it
This incredible picture from space shows how the U.S. oil industry has boomed to such an extent that a gas field now burns as brightly as a major city.
The rapid increase in shale oil production means it is now often more economical to 'flare off' unwanted gas than to sell it.
As a result, one field in North Dakota, the state leading the energy revolution, is now burning off enough gas to power all the homes in Chicago and Washington D.C. combined.
Scroll down for video
Wasting energy: This NASA satellite image shows how the gas being burned off at the Bakken oil field in North Dakota is almost as bright as the light emitted from major U.S. cities such as Minneapolis-St Paul and Chicago
In a recently released satellite image
from NASA, the light being given off at the Bakken formation, almost
twice the size of Wales, easily competes in intensity with that being
emitted from those cities.
The volume of gas going up in flames at the plant rose by around 50 per cent last year alone in a practice that is causing growing concern about the waste of resources and the impact on the environment, according to the Financial Times.
The trend, which is being replicated in other shale regions such as Texas, has made the U.S. one of the world's worst offenders for gas flaring after the amount it burns off has tripled in the last five years, according to World Bank estimates.
The boom has come after advances in a process known as fracking, where a mixture of sand, water and chemicals is pumped into rocks to open cracks in a reservoir.
Illuminated: The trend, which is being replicated in other shale regions such as Texas, has made the U.S. one of the world's worst offenders for gas flaring
Burning: This map shows how North Dakota is now speckled with gas flares after a boom in shale oil production in recent years
In North Dakota, 150 oil companies have flooded the region drilling up to eight new wells a day and are producing roughly 660,000 barrels of oil.
It has reduced the country's need for oil imports and created thousands of jobs, but the abundant supplies of gas it has unlocked have outpaced development of infrastructure needed to store and pump it to populations.
More than 1,000 wells were connected to the Bakken system in 2012, for example, but that has not been enough to cut the proportion of the state’s gas being flared, currently at about 30 per cent.
But with gas prices having dropped from their 2008 peak of more than $13 per million British thermal units to just $3.40 because of increased production of the resource it is now uneconomic to build pipelines and storage tanks.
Up in flames: A ground flare burns gas at a well near Ray, North Dakota, where about 30 per cent of the natural gas produced is burned as waste
HOW FRACKING HAS FUELLED AMERICA'S INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR OIL AND GAS
With its voracious appetite for energy and a desire to be less reliant on imports, the U.S. became the first country to exploit the potential of fracking.
The process - shorthand for hydraulic fracturing - involves creating little explosions underground, then injecting water and chemicals to release gas and oil trapped in cavities in shale rocks.
In 1996, the U.S. produced just 0.3trillion cubic feet of shale gas.
By 2011, however, that figure had leapt to 7.8trillion, allowing America to transform itself from an importer to a net exporter of gas.
But the abundant supplies of gas have outpaced development of infrastructure around oil plants.
And with gas prices having dropped from their 2008 peak of more than $13 per million British thermal units to just $3.40 it is now uneconomic to build pipelines and storage tanks.
As a result, much of the gas is burned off instead.
Shale gas reserves are plentiful and widespread across much of the world, but until developments in fracking it has been largely inaccessible.
In China, explorable shale reserves are estimated at 86trillion cubic feet, enough to supply the nation's needs for two centuries
Liquid gold: Graphic showing how U.S. oil production outrip that of Saudi Arabia
Adam Brandt, a Stanford academic who studies greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, told the FT: 'The situation in the shale oilfields is similar to the early days of the US oil industry.
'Companies are in a race with their competitors to develop the resource, which means there is little incentive to delay production to reduce flaring.'
Flaring - which has increased emissions from North Dakota by around 20 per cent - has been a serious concern to investors and campaigners because of waste and damage to the environment.
Local farmers complain the constant fires are polluting the atmosphere and say they suspect state officials are granting exemptions rather than dealing with the issue.
The North Dakota legislature is, however, considering a bill which could offer tax breaks to encourage a reduction in flaring.
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Solar could be answer to rising energy bills
Research by leading free solar installer A Shade Greener shows that solar could be the answer to rising energy bills.
Recent research shows that energy prices have double from 1990 to 2011 leaving consumers struggling to pay their energy bills. According to official figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change the average cost of a domestic electricity bill is now £533 and consumers are paying an average of 13.55 pence per kilowatt hour for their energy. The official DECC energy trends publication shows the real cost that consumers paid for their electricity during 2011.
A typical solar electric system has been shown to cut a households electric bill by 37% reducing the average UK bill by £197 based on 2011 DECC figures. The current availability of free solar, the drop in solar costs over the last 2 years and the governments upcoming Green Deal means that consumers have a range of options to use solar PV at home.
Energy costs are predicted to rise significantly over the next 25 years with a typical household electricity bill breaking the £1,000 mark before then.
Stewart Davies, Director of A Shade Greener urged, "Energy bills are only going to get more expensive and we need to be helping households that spend a large proportion of their household income on energy. Solar can help insulate those families against these inevitable price rises."
Stewart continued to demonstrate; "According to our figures a typical household could save nearly £5,000* on their energy bills over a typical 25 year solar pv system lifetime based on 2011 figures provided by DECC. Our customers are currently saving a combined 1.7 million pounds a year on their electricity bills."
*The nearly £5,000 figure is calculated by multiplying the annual £197 saving over 25 years, the agreement time of ASG's free systems. It does not however take into account future energy price rises or inflation which would greatly increase this figure.
It is the lowest income households that are getting hit hardest by rising domestic energy costs. It is only due schemes such as the forthcoming Green Deal and privately funded free solar that are allowing lower income households to be able to benefit.
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Hurricane Joan's passage westward across Nicaragua is a story of extremes. Joan built up strength as it moved across the Caribbean Sea until it came ashore at the town of Bluefields on Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. The hurricane threw everything it had at Bluefields and Corn Island. Now there is nothing left of either community. The material damage left in the hurricane's wake is more than that left by the 1972 earthquake, more than that wrought by Somoza's bombing of the cities during the 1979 insurrection, more than that inflicted by seven years of contra war. And Nicaraguans, who have almost nothing, are giving everything they can.
While it is an exaggeration to say Nicaraguans have given the shirts off their backs, it may not be exaggerated to say that many Nicaraguans have each given their only spare shirt. The Tuesday after the weekend disaster young men from the disabled veterans organization arrived at a Red Cross post with 17 pairs of church. Two children showed up at a church in the poor neighborhood of Ciudad Sandino with a tiny bundle of clothes and a donation of some 30 cents. Women in the Managua barrio of Adolfo Reyes cooked food for the refugees packed into their churches, the few buildings there that could be trusted to withstand the storm.
At Red Cross headquarters in Managua volunteers sorted mountains of donated goods. At one end of the room bags of second-hand clothes rose like the nearby volcanic cone of Momotombo. In the center was Momotombito, the volcano’s smaller island neighbor, a hill of well-used shoes. These were not the fine cast-offs nor the unsaleable new lines that are given to relief agencies in the developed world, but the scuffed and down-at-heel shoes of the poor being passed on to someone in even greater need.
In contrast to the speed of Nicaraguans' response, support from many western nations has been slow in coming, especially given the scale of the disaster. The international relief is neither sufficient nor has it been dispatched quickly enough, said the chairman of the National Emergency Committee, Social Welfare Minister Reynaldo Téfel.
Preliminary official figures give 116 dead from the hurricane, 110 missing and 178 seriously injured. But without the comprehensive civil defense effort that evacuated almost 325,000 people, these tolls could have been much higher. Some 187,000 people were left homeless. Perhaps even more significant, in its long-term impact on the Nicaraguan people, is the damage to the economy. Agricultural production has been crippled in many regions, including direct damage to crops and infrastructure. Agricultural Vice Minister Salvador Mayorga estimates a loss of 1989 exports equaling 20-25% of last year's total. Fishing boats, roads, bridges and warehouses were destroyed across a wide sweep of the country. Years of development work were wiped out in a weekend.
While there’s no good moment to be struck by a hurricane, for Nicaragua Joan's timing was particularly devastating. Nicaragua is a poor country made poorer by seven years of the US-sponsored contra war and over three years of an economic embargo by the United States. It does not have the resources to rebuild and, with the embargo and US pressures on the World Bank and the IMF, it has virtually no access to many sources of international funds. Acting without such assistance, Nicaragua was in the midst of a painful economic restructuring process when the hurricane hit. The most positive sign of economic change had been the mid-year resurgence in agricultural production; there were big increases in the area planted in basic grains, meat exports had risen and there were high hopes for the important coffee crop. These positive features have now been flooded, crushed or blown away.
The double tragedy is that this has happened to Nicaragua. In Nicaragua, since the revolution, people have hoped and worked for more than just relief from poverty. This disaster has struck a country where the government is actively committed to finding ways in which its poor majority can work constructively to cease being helpless victims of poverty or disaster. The government's development goals mesh closely with those of many international aid and development agencies and the government has struggled to meet those goals despite the costs imposed on it by the contra war. Over the last year, Nicaragua has redoubled its ongoing efforts to reach a dignified peace, a prelude to reconstruction. But now, after the hurricane, Nicaragua must fight just to survive. Can it?
Yes. The commitment exists, within the government and among the Nicaraguan people. But reconstruction after war and tempest will require a special kind of international aid effort. There is no feast here for the international media, were they inclined to report it. The more heartrending signs of abject poverty don’t exist to draw sympathy and checks from an international viewing audience. Here what are most at risk are a model for third-world development and hope for change.
These are abstract concepts, hard to capture on film but very real in the lives of Nicaraguans, in the rural cooperatives and schools and health centers. A new rescue mission is needed, not mass media but mass action, drawing on the reservoir of inspiration that the Nicaraguan revolution has generated around the world in more than a decade of struggle.
The build-up and the big blowJoan was an unusual hurricane. It moved west across the southern Caribbean Sea instead of going north or northwest the way hurricanes normally do. As a consequence, few ever menace Nicaragua. Joan was the first to do so since Hurricane Fifi in 1974 and tropical storm Irene three years earlier.
On October 18, Nicaraguan meteorologists issued a national alert that Joan had grown to hurricane strength and was heading straight for the Atlantic Coast. The following day, the government declared a national emergency, giving them effective control over information relating to the hurricane, and activated the National Emergency Committee.
Then Joan stalled for a day, a mixed blessing. It probably increased the strength of the hurricane but also gave Nicaraguans an extra day to prepare.
Prepare they did. The army, the Ministry of the Interior (which mobilized 2,000 people in Managua alone the night of the hurricane), the Red Cross, state workers, FSLN activists and members of the country's mass organizations, such as trade unions and neighborhood committees, were quickly mobilized, carrying out the brunt of preparatory work and actual evacuations. Their work saved hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives.
Sandinista comandantes and civil defense advisers were dispatched to Bluefields and towns in the likely path of the hurricane. In Bluefields, a three-day supply of food, medicine and other emergency items was collected and stored as safely from damage as possible. More than 1,300 tons of medicine and food were distributed nationwide in the two days before the hurricane hit.
On October 21, the country's emergency broadcast system went into effect. The special programming, heard across the radio dial, broadcast constant weather updates and warned people that the storm was likely to hit with an intensity never before seen in Nicaragua. People living in low-lying areas were urged to evacuate, and advised of the location of refugee centers being set up across the country.
Nearly 325,000 people were evacuated across the country (close to one in ten of all Nicaraguans), including over 100,000 in and around Managua, and some 60,000 from the southern Atlantic Coast. As of October 28, almost a week later, 60,000 people nationwide were still in temporary refugee shelters. Many people had been reluctant to move to the shelters, some taken in by assertions broadcast on contra radio stations that the hurricane threat was exaggerated or a hoax, others fearing their few belongings could be stolen if their houses were left unattended. Those who made eleventh-hour decisions to take refuge in local centers were assisted by the emergency crews who continued to work through most of the hurricane, even at great personal risk. The air force evacuated 11,000 people at the last minute, in the teeth of the advancing storm.
The radio linkup was the heart and soul of the civil defense effort. It broadcast crucial information and helped to maintain calm, especially after Saturday night fell with most of the country without electricity and the storm heading towards Managua. Hurricanes often take their time. Joan spun furiously with winds of more than 150 miles per hour but advanced across Nicaragua at only 5 to 12 miles per hour. Corn Island was hit with Joan's first winds on Friday afternoon and it was not until early Sunday morning that the storm rumbled off into the Pacific Ocean.
The radio network tracked it all the way. It broadcast Comandante William Ramirez based in Bluefields speaking with President Ortega by radio at about 1:30 Saturday morning as the storm's full force struck the town. Then even radio contact was lost. As Bluefields took a battering the band played on—reggae, calypso and soca from the Atlantic Coast, normally joyful music that, in the circumstances, sounded like a dirge.
On Saturday night, radio brought listeners the impassioned pleas of Daniel Ortega urging people to stay in their houses or, if they were in danger, to go to the nearest refuge. He stressed that people could replace their belongings but that Nicaragua could not replace its people.
Then, just before midnight, Comandante Omar Cabezas, popular head of the national organization of neighborhood committees and author of a best-selling book on his life as a Sandinista guerrilla, was the author of an inspired moment. He asked everyone listening—Christians, church leaders, all Nicaraguans and foreigners who reside in Nicaragua—to pray "for our brothers and sisters on the Atlantic Coast...and for Nicaragua.” “When 'el muchacho' did that we were very touched.... It made us feel calm and not so alone,” said Concepción Martínez, a cook from the Villa Cuba Libre neighborhood in Managua.
President Ortega and his brother, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, traveled through the most vulnerable of Managua’s barrios on Saturday evening (the President had flown to Bluefields the day before and would go again the day after). The fact that the President (whom people referred to as “Danielito” as they spoke with him that night) had visited was helpful in convincing some people to leave who were otherwise inclined to pooh-pooh the danger. Eighty thousand in Managua were temporarily evacuated as hundreds of rescue workers transported people to the shelters, distributed food, and in more than one case, made human chains to rescue people from certain drowning as drainage ditches turned into raging rivers in a matter of minutes with the torrential rains.
The AftermathBy Sunday morning heavy rains on the Pacific Coast were all that remained of the hurricane. The devastation left behind was only revealed on a region-by-region basis over the following days. There was a little good news: Managua had been spared the worst of the storm and the national death toll had clearly been kept down by the massive civil defense effort. From there on the new got worse.
Corn Island was leveled by the 150-mph winds and all of its 7,50 residents lost their homes. On Saturday morning, a radio-telephone conversation between President Ortega and Ray Hooker, a coast FSLN delegate to the National Assembly who was stationed on Corn Island, was the first time most Nicaraguans realized the true ferocity of the hurricane. "The situation is very difficult," reported Hooker. "There is not a single house with its roof on the island. Promar, the only seafood processing plant, was destroyed, as were the schools and the only clinic. All the churches and the stores were also destroyed.
"Ninety-five percent of the fruit and non-fruit trees were downed by the intensity of the winds. The hurricane lashed us for 14 hours, from three in the afternoon yesterday until five o'clock this morning. There are still intense rains, the population needs medicines, and we have only one doctor.... I lived through the 72 earthquake in Managua and this was much worse."
In Bluefields there was a similar tally of wreckage: 90% of houses destroyed; schools and government offices 90% destroyed; the hospital, post office, communications, electric plant and major fishing company facilities all damaged or destroyed. Bluefields had disappeared; its 43,000 residents were homeless. It was a hard idea to get across. When resident Moisés Hernández told a reporter, “All of Bluefields is destroyed,” he was asked, “Which barrios?” “Everything, everything, everything,” came the reply.
The field of destruction was so expansive it defied even the widest angled lens. No buildings were undamaged; some, like the Bluefields Public Library, the old Standard Fruit warehouse and hundreds of homes, were simply gone—melded into the public domain of timbers and twisted sheets of corrugated zinc roofing that lay several feet deep everywhere.
To the horror of those who took refuge inside seemingly strong churches and government buildings, not even cement withstood the 12-hour battering. When nails could hold no longer, the zinc popped off like buttons, then the acoustical ceiling panels were sucked out and the wooden roof frame flew off. If there were no concrete girders, the unsupported walls undulated visibly and finally collapsed. One woman, who escaped her house only moments before it collapsed and then struggled through the wind, rain, and flying debris to a refuge only to have part of it cave in, gave birth at some point in the endless night.
The Red Cross, charged with distributing government and other provisions, immediately designated posts in each of the barrios and quickly developed a census of most of the remaining families, which changed daily. By the week's end, people were receiving 15-day supplies from the government's stock of rice, beans, soap and sugar, Cuban donations of condensed milk, oil, and canned tuna and juices. Others were at the Ministry of Health Post, which was giving typhoid shots.
The traditional hostility of older Creoles toward the government had been fanned by contra radio reports that the army was stealing food, and some blamed the Cuban milk rather than the fouled water for the children's diarrhea. But President Ortega’s visits right before and after the storm touched many.
At El Rama the rivers rose 46 feet and stayed high for days. When they receded, much of the town had been destroyed. Two days after the water level had dropped, Mayor Samuel Mejía told a group of visiting aid agency representatives that 25,000 people had been seriously affected in the town and surrounding area. About 5,000 homes and food for 10,000 families for 6 months are needed. The dock, the transfer point for goods going by road and river from Managua to Bluefields, has disappeared. The school has lost its roof, the special school and the high school are destroyed, the bank and the warehouses are gone.
Around Mejla the houses of the town were in disarray: some without roofs, others with walls missing, some leaning, others fallen, some lifted and dropped in the middle of the road, others reduced to a small wet woodpile. Mud was everywhere. The town was monochromatic brown. A once two-story building rose from the chaos. The tidemark covered the first floor but above this was the wind's work. On the upper story only two walls remained, providing a splash of blue to the encompassing brown.
A woman in a ripped green nylon skirt and gray blouse too big for her, clutching her small bag of possessions, said she had refused to leave, and been badly knocked about by the hurricane. She showed bruises on her thigh but kept repeating that the worst was a tree branch that came through the house and hit her on the chest. She seemed in shock.
A man, working to salvage something from the ruins of his house, said: "The army, the MINT [Ministry of the Interior] and the Red Cross, they are the ones who did the most here. That has to be acknowledged, they have to be thanked.”
Extensive areas of Region V were either flooded or affected by high winds. Whole towns, including Acoyapa, Santo Domingo, Villa Sandino and La Gateada, were virtually wiped out. Eighty percent of the region’s houses lost their roofs, 90% of the bean and corn crop was lost and 100,000 acres of forest were destroyed.
Two regions lying out of the direct path of the hurricane were particularly badly hit by flooding. Damages sustained in coffee—rich Region VI (Jinotega-Matagalpa), threaten the country’s already weakened economy. Forty-eight lives were lost, 10 bridges (including one of lost, 10 bridges (including one of the country’s most strategic) washed out, and 365 miles of roadway was rendered unusable. The loss of roads and bridges may make it impossible to harvest much of the region’s essential coffee crop, now prematurely ripening. In Region IV, in the hills west of the town of Rivas there was especially heavy flooding. Some 34,000 acres of crops were destroyed and 23 people were killed. “The river betrayed us,” said one peasant.
Health and education infrastructure, already stretched to the limit, was also affected. Nationally 339 schools have been destroyed, 110 in the southern region of the Atlantic Coast, and 190 health centers and 18 local health posts were damaged.
The relief effortRelief efforts were underway even before the hurricane arrived, with aid solicited through advance brief aid solicited through advance briefing for members of the diplomatic corps and representatives of international aid organizations. It was the Cubans who got their goods to Nicaragua first and kept them coming. By Saturday afternoon, before Joan had reached Managua, the first planeload of Cuban supplies was being unloaded at Bluefields. Twenty-three planeloads later, Cuban aid is still arriving. Others have joined in. The Swedish government has donated $3 million, the West Germans (government and churches), $2 million. The Soviets have promised 11,000 tons of rice and a boatload of supplies from the Soviet Red Cross and planeloads of aid are expected or have arrived from a host of other countries, including Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, the European Economic Community, France, Great Britain, Italy, Panama, Spain, Switzerland and Uruguay.
The number of donations is impressive but, in the face of what is needed or what has been given in the past after other disasters, the mountain proves to be little more than a foothill. Wascar Lanzas, deputy director of ENABAS, the agency charged with distribution of basic foods, says there is simply not enough aid to meet Nicaragua's basic food needs.
One country, the United States, is noticeably absent from any list of donors, and many of the western countries' donations have been minimal in comparison with previous contributions. When Hurricane Gilbert recently hit Jamaica, President Reagan promptly promised more than $125 million in food, medical supplies and communications equipment, and sent teams of experts to help with reconstruction.
The White House declared the US would not provide aid to Nicaragua, charging that the Sandinista government could not be trusted to use the assistance for disaster relief. US congressional aid for victims of the contra war was rejected by the Nicaraguan government and the National Assembly earlier in October for the simple reason that the aid was voted in a package designed to keep the contras in the field and fighting. To the Nicaraguans it seemed highly cynical to pay for the fighting and then want to also care for the victims—a case of having your war and feeling good about it too. President Ortega welcomed all relief aid for the hurricane but emphasized again that “the best and only humanitarian aid the United States could give us would be to stop its terrorist policies against Nicaragua.”
US solidarity and aid organizations have been much more forthcoming, with Quest for Peace and Oxfam (US) leading the way. Quest for Peace launched a fundraising drive for $10 million and Oxfam has been advertising for funds in major US daily newspapers. Nicaragua Network, Operation California and the US Catholic Conference have also contributed, among others.
Some one hundred European NGOs are currently working to raise relief aid. The United Nations’ World Food Program donated 900 tons of food. But in general, NGO representatives in Nicaragua report that fundraising is difficult at present because it has been a relatively busy year for natural disasters in the Third World.
In Nicaragua, relief efforts began immediately with collections in the cities on the Pacific plain for money, clothes and other goods. As Managua taxi driver Walter Herrera described it: "I'm no Sandinista but since the revolution, with the autonomy thing, the people, well, we're equal, they are our people, they're like us, we're all part of the same country. The two coasts used to be two countries. It's now our responsibility to help them."
This spirit was at large in Nicaraguan society. Christian base communities in Managua took responsibility for feeding and caring for many refugees. They collected food and clothing and organized children's gamed in the refugee centers. All of the Sandinista delegates to the National Assembly donated 30% of their pay for October and their monthly subsidy of rice, beans and sugar. Various groups of workers donated a day's pay. Managua's rival baseball teams, the Boors and the Dantos, played a game to raise funds for the coast, while students at the Central American University put on a benefit concert.
Overall responsibility for distribution of money and supplies rests with the National Emergency Committee, formed in 1982 to deal with that year's severe flooding. The committee is made up of representatives from international agencies in Nicaragua, including the UN, UNICEF, the International Red Cross, the Pan American Health Organization and UNHCR; international NGOs such as Care and Oxfam; national NGOs, including Caritas, the Protestant development agency CEPAD, the Nicaraguan Red Cross, international aid coordinator FACS, the UNAN and UPOLI universities, the Lions Club, Catholic development agency Juan XXIII, and the CST and ATC unions; and state institutions, such as the Ministry of Social Welfare, Civil Defense, the Sandinista Police, the Foreign Cooperation Ministry and the Ministry of Health.
CEPAD representative Milton Argüello noted that the purpose of the committee is "to coordinate the aid, to know what resources are available, which organizations can respond to which particular need. But each organization continues to do its own work. Things are coordinated, but not centrally controlled.” He stressed that the committee is "very pluralistic, the government has invited everyone to participate."
This committee is worlds away from its namesake set up after an earthquake destroyed the center of Managua in 1972. "A National Emergency Committee, set up under President Somoza's control and run by the National Guard, institutionalized the misappropriation of emergency relief. Realizing that relief supplies were being siphoned off and sold by the National Guard, Oxfam's field director talked Mrs. Somoza into giving permission to bypass the official distribution system. This meant waiting in the aircraft control tower for the right plane to be spotted, then careering onto the tarmac to get the trucks loaded before the National Guard arrived on the scene."*
*From D. Melrose, Nicaragua: “The Threat of a Good Example,” Oxfam Public affairs Unit, Oxfam, Oxford, UK 1985, pp. 6-7
This time Oxfam defends the government. In response to suggestions in the US that the Sandinistas cannot be trusted, James Dawson, Oxfam’s director for overseas development, said, "We have worked with the government and would have no problem delivering aid through that channel."
Non-meteorological attacksNational emergencies present a challenge to any government opposition; it is hard to oppose government efforts to save lives, and organize relief and reconstruction. Often more is to be gained by pitching in and helping; the relief work of El Salvador's FMLN rebels after the 1986 earthquake is an example. But the Reagan Administration, the contras and some members of the internal opposition chose to actively obstruct relief efforts.
Shortly after Joan's passage, the Voice of America broadcast reports suggesting the "international community" doubted that aid money would be spent wisely. Similar views, all without supporting evidence, have been widely aired by La Prensa and contra radio stations beaming into Nicaragua.
As the first news came in, of the destruction in the Atlantic Coast, President Ortega bridled at a US State Department warning to his government not to commit human rights abuses during the state of emergency. "To speak this way with authority they must stop committing abuses like those they have committed over the last eight years against the Nicaraguan people."
This brought another salvo from Washington. Richard Weldon, president of Operation California, a group organizing material aid to Nicaraguan victims of the hurricane, told the Los Angeles Times that the US government was deliberately hindering private aid efforts. "The air force frequently transports, for free, assistance collected by charitable organizations in catastrophes,” Weldon said, but “this time they told us the political instructions were: ‘no aid.’” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater expressed fear that Ortega’s government would use aid funds against the contras.
The contras, for their part, ambushed a Red Cross ambulance taking a sick child from Nueva Guinea to Juigalpa at about 1 am on Saturday, October 22, just before the hurricane hit; the driver and two passengers were wounded. It was the second ambulance attack in three days.
The day before the hurricane hit Bluefields, La Prensa, in an editorial titled “The Militarization of the Hurricane,” countered the widespread calls for volunteer efforts in work-places and barrios, arguing that the civil defense efforts had been taken over by the “frigid, bureaucratic, inefficient state military HQ, which always arrives late and does things badly.” Three days later, the paper did an about-face: “This is not the hour to be political, but to help the victims.” It called for the establishment of a national commission made up of representatives from the government, the Catholic Church, opposition parties and COSEP, the opposition business council.
COSEP, which stopped participating in the National Emergency Committee long before the hurricane, said it would not offer help unless asked officially. President Ortega then reiterated that anyone who wished to participate could join the committee, including those business people who “are truly ready to contribute to this emergency situation.” Indeed many sectors of Nicaraguan society, including those opposed to the revolution, have joined forces with the government and contributed substantially to the relief drive, most notably the Red Cross, but also school children and Explorers, the Lions' Club, Catholic and Protestant churches. Bishops Barni and Schlaefer, as well as Cardinal Obando, issued a call for their parishioners to aid^ in relief work and reconstruction.
Meanwhile, contra attacks continue. The hurricane itself has wiped out many old contra targets such as bridges, schools and health centers, but now there are relief convoys and the important coffee harvest to disrupt. On the morning of October 29, in their worst attack since the signing of the Sapoá peace accords on March 23, the contras killed nine civilians traveling in a passenger bus near San Juan del Rio Coco. The same day, they ambushed a military truck delivering food to hurricane victims in La Esperanza, killing a soldier and wounding two young civilians. The Honduran army stepped up attacks on the Nicaraguan border, even attacking border posts the night the hurricane hit. On October 28, President Ortega had issued a warning, based on intercepted radio reports, of the imminent incursion of 3,000 newly outfitted contras into Nicaragua, taking advantage of the disaster caused by the hurricane.
ReconstructionBeyond the immediate problems of having to feed, clothe and shelter almost 200,000 homeless lies the need to rebuild. Some of this work has already begun, even though a full assessment of the damage to the country's economic resources has still to be completed. Enough is known to realize Nicaragua's situation, in both the short and long term, is very grave.
Recovery depends on getting people back into production as quickly as possible. The two immediate priorities are getting the coffee out and getting the next planting of basic grains in.
Coffee exports bring in half the country's export earnings. But much of the coffee crop is grown in the central highlands where roads and bridges have been destroyed. The first job is to repair these so the crop can be brought out. The second task is to organize coffee-picking brigades from the cities and other parts of the country.
To restore basic grain production in Region V, the Agricultural Ministry plans to put together a simple package of seeds, tools and kitchen utensils for peasants so they can start sowing for the next harvest. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization will assist with 40 tons of beans for seed. The government can also be expected to provide abundant credit for farmers in Regions V and VI. This will add to the inflationary impact of the hurricane but is needed to get fanners back into production quickly.
Both these priorities might delay housing replacement. Dionisio Marenco, head of the FSLN's information department, has said that people on the Atlantic Coast may have to wait for a new house simply because without road repairs there will not be much of a coffee harvest, and without a coffee harvest there will never be replacement housing.
President Ortega expressed particular concern about the impact of the hurricane on Nicaragua's ecological balance, given the devastation wrought on tropical forests, which may be lost forever. He issued a call for ecological experts and representatives of European parties concerned with the environment, such as the West German Greens, to come evaluate the situation and offer plans for recovery.
The government plans to continue using army trucks and air force helicopters and planes for relief work, although an upsurge in contra attacks may severely limit the availability of equipment and men.
There are other restrictions on any rebuilding program for the Atlantic Coast. Access is especially difficult. The road to Rama has been damaged, the wharf at Rama has been destroyed as have been many of the river boats, and if one could get to Bluefields—where the wharf has also been damaged—there .are no warehouses to store goods. The major link is Bluefields’ small airstrip, but Nicaragua has few planes with which to deliver supplies. Consideration is being given to establishing a sea or air bridge between Bluefields and Puerto Lim6n in Costa Rica.
But where does the job begin in Bluefields? There is neither electricity nor enough water. Electrical generators and well-drilling gear are needed as are tents, food and storage facilities. The lack of basic facilities rules out the possibility of bringing outside teams in to mount a large-scale construction effort.
On a larger scale there is the thorny question of the impact the hurricane has on this year’s economic reform packages. It could cause a reversal in the direction of the reforms, perhaps at considerable political cost to the government. The changes were intended to increase exports and agricultural production and to reduce the government’s deficit. The hurricane has damaged production and puts pressure on the government to increase its spending.
It is possible, if production of basic grains falls drastically and the shortfall is not made up with donations, that Nicaragua will have to retreat from its trend towards free market policies and return to rationing basic food supplies. Other goals of the economic reforms may also have to be reversed.
This would not just be economic fine-tuning. The harsh austerity measures of 1988 had been threatening for many years but had been delayed as long as possible to give the government the chance to consolidate its position, especially to take control of the contra war. To make the economic changes carried out this year, the government has had to mortgage some of its political popularity. The urban poor have been hit especially hard. If it now had to reverse direction, having inflicted the economic pain without much of the gain, the political cost would be greater.
Why this is an international disasterThe success of Nicaragua’s civil defense effort in limiting the death toll presents it own problems. Crudely speaking, there aren’t enough deaths to turn this into a gripping international disaster story. For many aid and development agencies, Hurricane Joan is just another natural disaster in a busy year for disasters—and, at that, not a particularly newsworthy one. And without a surge of international public sympathy, big relief funds are hard to gather.
For Nicaragua, Joan is obviously not "just another disaster.” And in several very important ways, this is not just another disaster for the rest of the world.
The hurricane represents an enormous challenge for the Nicaraguan revolution. At best, it will be overcome with the mix of commitment, principle and pragmatism that has become a Sandinista trademark. At worst, the damage done by Hurricane Joan, coming on top of the war and the US embargo, threatens to do long-term damage to the revolution. This is a turning point. The Nicaraguan people will take up the challenge but international aid agencies and solidarity groups also have essential contributions to make.
The hurricane's effects go far beyond Nicaragua. The survival* of the Nicaraguan revolution is at stake, and the Nicaraguan revolution occupies a special place on the world stage. Although battered and bruised it is still struggling to develop a mixed economy, maintain political pluralism and to have, if not full independence, at least a diversified dependence on the larger and richer nations. Nicaragua is not the "good example" it promised to be or may still become. It has been too undermined by the enormous cost of the war for that. But it remains an important symbol of the much wider struggle of small countries to take control of their own destiny.
Nicaragua is particularly significant to aid agencies because its government is committed to the interests of the majority. Aid agencies and solidarity groups find themselves in the all too rare situation of working with, rather than against or apart from, a government. A survey of the experience of western development agencies in Nicaragua makes the point: "For many development agencies, the important difference in Nicaragua today is that there is a considerable degree of coherence between their own development policy and that of the Nicaraguan government. For both, the task of development includes meeting the basic needs of the poor majority of the population—in health, education, housing, and food production."* Aid agencies have been able to work with Nicaragua's committed, not corrupted civil service in a relationship with the government quite different from the paternalistic relationships of the past.
*Aid That Counts—The Western Contribution to Development and Survival in Nicaragua, by Solon Barraclough, Ariane van Buren, Alicia Gariazzo, Anjali Sundaram and Peter Utting; Transnational Institute (Holland) and Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Económicas y Sociales, pp. 98-101.
Hurricane Joan puts at risk the ability of the Nicaraguan revolution to carry out the dream of a better life for its people. A government with humane and equitable development policies has been threatened by seven years of war, trade and credit embargoes, and the flight of its professionals brought on by economic decline. Without an outpouring of aid not only for relief but for development, the hurricane may be the burden that tips the balance. It destroys people’s lives and productive capacity, reverses the few economic advances made this year, puts an unbearable strain on family and government finances and threatens to rob people of hope. And if the Nicaraguan people are robbed of hope, then we are all robbed of hope. That is why this big disaster in such small country will have an impact reaching far beyond its borders.
JUANA, LA HURACANA
We have to pick up the pieces
of everything that was destroyed.
Because this people was born
To overcome hardship
Not to be overcome by it.
—refrain of Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy’s hurricane song, written hours after the storm.
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In 2006, high sea temperatures caused severe coral bleaching in the Keppell Islands, in the southern part of the reef — the largest coral reef system in the world. The damaged reefs were then covered by a single species of seaweed which threatened to suffocate the coral and cause further loss.
A "lucky combination" of rare circumstances has meant the reef has been able to make a recovery. Abundant corals have reestablished themselves in a single year, say the researchers from the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).
"Three factors were critical," said Dr Guillermo Diaz-Pulido. "The first was exceptionally high regrowth of fragments of surviving coral tissue. The second was an unusual seasonal dieback in the seaweeds, and the third was the presence of a highly competitive coral species, which was able to outgrow the seaweed."
Coral bleaching occurs in higher sea temperatures when the coral lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. The reefs then lose their colour and become more susceptible to death from starvation or disease.
The findings are important as it is extremely rare to see reports of reefs that bounce back from mass coral bleaching or other human impacts in less than a decade or two, the scientists said. The study is published in the online journal PLoS one.
"The exceptional aspect was that corals recovered by rapidly regrowing from surviving tissue," said Dr Sophie Dove, also from CoECRS and The University of Queensland.
"Recovery of corals is usually thought to depend on sexual reproduction and the settlement and growth of new corals arriving from other reefs. This study demonstrates that for fast-growing coral species asexual reproduction is a vital component of reef resilience."
Last year, a major global study found that coral reefs did have the ability to recover after major bleaching events, such as the one caused by the El Niño in 1998.
David Obura, the chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature climate change and coral reefs working group involved with the report, said: "Ten years after the world's biggest coral bleaching event, we know that reefs can recover – given the chance. Unfortunately, impacts on the scale of 1998 will reoccur in the near future, and there's no time to lose if we want to give reefs and people a chance to suffer as little as possible."
Coral reefs are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of coastal dwellers around the world and contain a huge range of biodiversity. The UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment says reefs are worth about $30bn annually to the global economy through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection.
But the ecosystems are under threat worldwide from overfishing, coastal development and runoff from the land, and in some areas, tourism impacts. Natural disasters such as the earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 have also caused reef loss.
Climate change poses the biggest threat to reefs however, as emissions of carbon dioxide make seawater increasingly acidic.
Last year a study showed that one-fifth of the world's coral reefs have died or been destroyed and the remainder are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says many surviving reefs could be lost over the coming decades as CO2 emissions continue to increase.
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Participatory Video created by members of various indigenous communities in Itogon, Philippines, tracking the impacts of large-scale mining and now climate change on their environment and culture.
This film was created by members of various indigenous communities in the Cordillera region of the Philippines, during a Participatory Video project facilitated by InsightShare. The participants were taught to use video cameras during an intensive 9-day PV workshop in the barangay of Garrison, in Itogon, and created this 24-minute film to communicate the devastating impacts of large-scale mining wrought on their communities by various companies over the years, and now the increasingly alarming impacts of climate change.
This project was part of Conversations with the Earth project. Launched in April 2009, Conversations with the Earth is a collective opportunity to build a global movement for an indigenous-controlled community media network. CWE works with a growing network of indigenous groups and communities living in critical ecosystems around the world, from the Atlantic Rainforest to Central Asia, from the Philippines to the Andes, from the Arctic to Ethiopia. Through CWE, these indigenous communities are able to share their story of climate change. Through the creation of sustainable autonomous indigenous media hubs in these regions, CWE fosters a long-term relationship with these communities, based on principles of local control and supporting indigenous media capacity.
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Corn estimate lowered to reflect harvestThe U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday slightly lowered its projection for the nation’s corn crop for a fourth straight month, reflecting worse-than-expected news about the actual impact of this year’s withering drought from the farmers busy harvesting their fields. The USDA estimates that farmers will harvest 10.71 billion bushels of corn this year, which would be the smallest amount since 2006. Last month’s estimate was 10.73 billion bushels.
By: By David Pitt, Associated Press, The Jamestown Sun
DES MOINES, Iowa — The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday slightly lowered its projection for the nation’s corn crop for a fourth straight month, reflecting worse-than-expected news about the actual impact of this year’s withering drought from the farmers busy harvesting their fields.
The USDA estimates that farmers will harvest 10.71 billion bushels of corn this year, which would be the smallest amount since 2006. Last month’s estimate was 10.73 billion bushels.
Crop estimates change as fields are harvested and farmers get a better sense of how the weather affected yields. The U.S. has been experiencing one of its worst droughts in decades, and conditions have been particularly harsh in many of the key Midwest and Plains farming states.
Farmers have harvested 69 percent of the nation’s corn already this year, which is well ahead of the 28 percent that would be harvested by this time in a typical year.
The average yield is about 122 bushels per acre, which is down from last month’s estimate of 122.8 bushels. That is the lowest average yield since 1995 and is significantly below last year’s yield of nearly 153 bushels per acre. Although the drought dried up the soil in many parts of the U.S., the corn harvest was surprisingly good in some areas, said Darin Newsom, senior analyst for Telvent DTN, a commodity trading and information provider.
“Is 122 anything great? No. It’s still a dismal yield, still well below what had been anticipated earlier this year,” Newsom added.
In Iowa, for example, the nation’s leading corn producer, production will be about 19 percent lower than last year at about 1.92 billion bushels. Neighboring Nebraska will see production down about 15 percent from last year at 1.3 billion bushels. Illinois was hard hit with production falling 37 percent to 1.22 billion bushels from last year and Indiana’s slid 28 percent.
Minnesota corn farmers lucked out this year, getting at least some rain that helped avert the dire conditions further south. They saw a 15 percent increase in corn production to 1.39 billion bushels and an 8 percent yield increase to 168 bushels per acre from last year’s 156 bushels.
Nationally, farmers planted more corn this year than in any other since 1937, so despite the widespread drought, the U.S. is expected to produce its eighth largest corn crop on record.
Farmers planted about 97 million acres in corn, which is far more than just a decade ago when fewer than 80 million acres were planted. They are expected to harvest about 88 million acres this year.
Corn supply is now estimated at 11.77 billion bushels, which is down from last month’s estimate of 11.98 billion bushels.
The report is expected to boost prices for the next few days as the market reacts to the lower production and tighter supply estimates, but analysts expect a calming of the market now that the harvest is in its final stages and the drought impact is clear.
Corn for December delivery was trading at around $7.71 a bushel. It had hit a record high of $8.49 a bushel in August, but it has since settled down.
The USDA estimated the season average price for corn now at between $7.10 and $8.50 per bushel, about 10 cents lower on both ends of the range from its September estimate.
Still, prices at that level could have in impact on grocery bills, mostly meat and eggs since corn is used as a staple in chicken, cattle and pig feed.
Global supplies of corn remain tight and the major users — livestock farmers, the ethanol industry and other countries importing it — will be forced to negotiate their level of use, a sort of market rationing that takes place in years of low supply.
Soybean production was increased to 2.86 billion bushels as farmers harvest more acres and bring in better yields than had been expected earlier. Soybeans mature later in the growing season than corn and the plants withstood the drought better and some areas received rain in time to help the plants.
Harvested area was increased to 75.7 million acres from 74.6 million acres the month before. The soybean yield is projected at 37.8 bushels per acre, up from the previous month’s estimate of 35.3 bushels.
Soybean supplies were increased 10 percent to 3.05 billion bushels.
“It’s still not going to be enough. It’s going to be a very tight situation,” Newsom said.
Globally soybean demand remains high while supplies are inadequate to meet the level of demand, which likely will keep prices up.
Soybeans for November delivery hit a record high $17.89 in early September but settled down in recent weeks and were trading at $15.48 a bushel.
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Hurricane Sandy has churned northward through the northern Caribbean, across Cuba, and through the Bahamas during the past three days, leaving in its wake plenty of mayhem. Sandy's story may not yet be finished.
While it is quite normal to see tropical cyclones rear their ugly heads across the Caribbean during October and even into November, these storms normally will track northward for a short time before turning harmlessly off to the northeast, into the Atlantic.
The Weather Channel has this special coverage.
Thanks to a large roadblock in the upper atmosphere across the North Atlantic and eastern Canada during the next several days, it appears Hurricane Sandy will not make an escape away from the U.S. East Coast. Blocking high pressure at upper levels from Atlantic Canada to southern Greenland and the North Atlantic as well as a strong upper-level low-pressure area through the east-central Atlantic will combine with a developing upper-level trough through the eastern U.S. to steer the storm into the northeast coast.
The strong upper-level trough diving into the eastern U.S. will likely close off into an upper-level low through the Mid-Atlantic region by Monday and capture Sandy as it moves northeastward then northward through the western Atlantic. Thereafter, as Sandy becomes a very intense post-tropical storm Tuesday, most computer models move the storm northwestward well south of Cape Cod at first and then to the west south of New England to near the New Jersey coast by Tuesday evening.
Thereafter the intense North Atlantic gale is expected to stall briefly before meandering off to the north or northeast across New England or New York state later next week. The aforementioned scenario is quite rare and could even become a historical event before all is said and done. The most recent event with any resemblance would be the now famous "Perfect Storm" of late October 1991.
There were a couple of hurricanes during the past 150 years that have tracked northward toward the Carolinas and then northwestward into the Mid-Atlantic states, most notably Hurricane Hazel in 1954. This storm has potential to outdo all of the above. Sandy is expected to take a track northeastward over the warm Gulf Stream until it reaches a position well east of the Mid-Atlantic Coast. Only then will it be captured and turned to the northwest and west toward the northeast coast. This track will allow the storm to maintain tropical characteristics longer than normal.
By the time Sandy transitions to a post-tropical gale well south of New England Monday night or Tuesday it will then be able to tap into the enormous amount of upper-level jet-stream energy supplied by the developing trough and upper-level low through the Mid-Atlantic states. This transformation could allow post-tropical Sandy to be more intense than the tropical version was when it was moving from Jamaica to Cuba.
The central pressure of the intense gale could produce some all-time low barometer readings for some locations. Computer models are forecasting the central pressure to fall as low as 27.80 inches by Tuesday within this storm.
A major difference from the tropical to the post-tropical Sandy will be the wind field. The strong winds surrounding Hurricane Sandy were mostly within 150 miles of the center. The post tropical version of Sandy should see the gale wind field expand outward to as much as 400 miles in all directions. This is why it is important not to focus on the center of post-tropical Sandy because damaging winds could occur from as far north as Maine to as far south as Cape Hatteras at the same time.
The track of this storm may also bring a significant storm surge and coastal flooding and the associated damage into a large portion of the northeast coast from Maine to New Jersey. Sustained easterly winds could reach as high as 40 to 60 mph along coastal areas with gusts exceeding 75 mph in exposed areas, and this will push ocean waters into the coast. While the exact track of the storm is yet to be set in stone, there appears to be a considerable threat to the New York City area for a large and possibly record storm surge. For this to happen, the post-tropical Sandy would have to track west or northwestward into the central New Jersey coast. A track a little different would probably spare New York City the worst.
The full moon occurs Monday and that only worsens the situation for coastal flooding by adding on a couple of feet of water to the storm surges.
Strong westerly to northwest winds to the south of the storm, possibly through the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay regions, could lead to very low waters at times of low tide. This has been a problem in the past with some notable strong storms.
Other potential problems with this storm will be strong winds across inland areas that could bring down trees and power lines leading to widespread power outages. Heavy rainfall of as much as 2 to 4 inches with local amounts exceeding 6 inches could lead to local flooding early and significant river flooding later on next week. If the current scenario pans out there could be major disruptions to travel throughout a large portion of the Northeast during the early- and mid-week period of next week.
With cold air rushing into the storm as it reaches the northeast coast Tuesday, we can't rule out some snow for portions of the Appalachians from southwest Pennsylvania to West Virginia.
The final track and intensity of post-tropical Sandy is yet to be pinned down, but it does appear with decent certainty that one of the most highly populated portions of the U.S. is going to be dealt a blow of significant proportions from Monday into Wednesday of next week.
Source: The Weather Channel
Posted by Northern Ag Network
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Brazil deforestation hits record low
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest has dropped to its lowest level in 24 years, the government said Tuesday.
Satellite imagery showed that 1,798 square miles (4,656 square kilometers) of the Amazon were deforested between August 2011 and July 2012, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said a news conference. That's 27 percent less than the 2,478 square miles (6,418 square kilometers) deforested a year earlier. The margin of error is 10 percentage points.
Brazil's National Institute for Space Research said the deforestation level is the lowest since it started measuring the destruction of the rainforest in 1988.
If you have any technical difficulties, either with your username and password or with the payment options, please contact us by e-mail at email@example.com
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The Danone Fund for Nature
After a 10-year partnership with Ramsar, another major environmental milestone was achieved in 2008. During the Conference of the Parties to the Ramsar Convention in Changwon, South Korea, the Ramsar Convention, IUCN and Danone signed an agreement: the “Danone Fund for Nature”. This agreement is intended to combat climate change through field projects for the restoration of specific wetlands that make a non-negligible contribution to carbon sequestration. This restoration programme focuses on mangroves, plants with a strong potential for carbon capture and which play a vital role for biodiversity. Indeed, in addition to absorbing CO2, mangroves act as fish “nurseries”, produce fruit, honey, etc. They are also a source of ecotourism, filter water, and provide protection against flooding.
A pilot mangrove replanting project was initiated in Senegal. Four years later, three further field projects in India and Indonesia demonstrated the success of this initiative and, in their wake, a new collaboratively developed methodology was approved by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Photos © J-F. Hellio and N. Van Ingen
For more information about this methodology, which evaluates the impact of mangrove restoration on efforts to combat climate change, see: http://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/DB/CKSXP498IACIQHXZPEVRJXQKZ3G5WQ.
From the “Danone Fund for Nature” to the “Livelihoods Fund”
Thanks to the “Danone Fund for Nature” the Danone Group has developed a new approach to the carbon economy by creating the “Livelihoods Fund”, an Investment Company with Variable Capital (ICVC) enabling it to develop carbon sequestration (like the mangrove restoration project) or energy efficiency projects in developing countries. This Fund works by using the carbon absorption capacity of certain ecosystems, such as mangrove wetlands, to finance economic development of village communities through the restoration of these key environments.
Watch the video clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJaeQeAJHT4
The Livelihoods Fund includes the following components:
Livelihoods Venture: a company which includes all the operational project management, engineering, economic and sustainable development skills. It mission is to identify local programmes with strong ecological, economic and social potential, and replicability; and to implement them in collaboration with local NGOs and rural communities.
Livelihoods Network: an association which facilitates exchanges and sharing of skills among a network of NGOs and experts. It also serves as a think-tank for issues touching on “Livelihoods”.
Livelihoods Steering Committee: this body is made up of representatives of organizations and other personalities including Anada Tiega, Secretary General of the Secretariat of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, and Julia Marton-Lefevre, Director General of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), two organizations that along with Danone initiated the early pilot projects. Other members of the Steering Committee include: Luc Guyau, Independent President of the Council of the FAO, Tony Simons, Director General of ICRAF, the World Agroforesty Centre (Nairobi), Michel Griffon, agronomist and researcher, President of the Scientific Council of the French Global Environment Facility.
For further information on the Livelihoods Fund:
For further information on the IUCN-Ramsar-Danone partnership:
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Adopting a New Flight Plan Whooping Crane Migration Route Shifted West into Safer Air Space
By LEN WELLS Courier & Press correspondent (618) 842-2159 or firstname.lastname@example.org
The route of the annual 1,250-mile migration of endangered whooping crane juveniles, led by an ultralight aircraft, has been shifted this fall to a more westerly route because of concerns about pilot and bird safety.
The route, from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in central Wisconsin to a closed area of the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge on the west coast of Florida, will bring the birds through parts of the Tri-State.
It will take the birds the entire length of Illinois and across Western Kentucky, with overnight stops in Wayne County, Ill., and Union County, Ky.
“The route was shifted west because the easterly route was pretty scary,” said Liz Condie, director of communications for Operation Migration, the group that works to ensure the birds’ survival.
“Going over the Cumberland Ridge, there was no place to set down to retrieve a bird if there had been a problem,” she said.
Officials hope, too, for better weather along the westerly route by picking up more favorable winds.
“For the safety of the birds, we
cannot divulge the exact location of each stopover other than down to the county level,” Condie said. “At each stop, the birds will be housed overnight in portable pens to protect them from predators and to keep them far away from human contact.”
While the stopover locations are kept secret, Operation Migration officials try to schedule gathering sites for local residents to catch a glimpse of the birds as they lift off to continue their southerly trek.
“A few days before the scheduled stopover, we try to alert the local residents of where they can congregate to watch a flyover,” Condie said.
Because of fluctuating weather conditions, those interested in tracking the birds should check Operation Migration’s Web site at www.operationmigration.org for a more specific date and time.
The whooping crane chicks that take part in the reintroduction project are hatched at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Md. There, imprinting begins with the chicks still inside their eggs being exposed to ultralight aircraft sounds. Once hatched, the young chicks are reared in total isolation from humans.
To ensure the impressionable cranes remain wild, each handler and pilot wears a crane puppet on one arm that can dispense food, or by example, show the young chicks how to forage as would their real mother.
At 45 days of age, the young birds are transported by air, in individual containers, to the reintroduction area at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin.
Because of differing age ranges, the birds usually are moved in three shipments and housed at three separate locations within a closed area of the refuge. Over the summer, the Operation Rescue crew of pilots, biologists, veterinarians and interns conditions the birds to follow the aircraft, which, along with its pilot, has been accepted as a surrogate parent.
Once the birds’ dominance structure has been established and their endurance is sufficient, the migration begins, typically in October. Using four ultralight aircraft, Operation Migration’s pilots, along with a ground crew consisting of biologists, handlers, veterinarians and drivers, cover up to 200 miles a day, depending on weather conditions.
This year’s migration to Florida has been scheduled to begin Oct. 17. The shortest migration has taken 48 days to complete. The longest, 97 days, was recorded last year.
Because of destruction of habitat and overhunting, whooping cranes were on the verge of extinction in the 1940s when their population was reduced to only 15 birds. Since falling under the protection of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the only naturally occurring population of migrating whooping cranes has grown to more than 200 birds.
Named for their loud and penetrating unison calls, whooping cranes live and breed in wetland areas where they feed on crabs, clams, frogs and aquatic plants.
An adult whooping crane stands 5 feet tall, with a white body, black wing tips and a red crest on its head.
Anyone encountering a whooping crane in the wild is asked to avoid approaching it, staying back at least 600 feet. In all cases, officials ask that people remain concealed and not speak loudly enough for the birds to hear them. Especially during the migration, residents are warned not to trespass on private property in an attempt to view the cranes.
(c) 2008 Evansville Courier & Press. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.
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Wind Energy Technology
photo of Judith Gap Wind Project by Pat Judge
Harnessing the wind for our power is cost-competitive today. The region has a good start in develooping wind projects, but we could be doing much more with very little effort.
Download this Wind fact sheet here. (536kB PDF file)
As the above table shows, the Pacific Northwest has the potential to generate over 137,000 aMW of electricity from wind power. This is enough to provide nearly four times the current electricity consumption in the region. The majority of the region’s potential wind resources are in Montana, which alone has enough potential wind resources to supply one quarter of the electricity needs of the United States.2
Nearly 2,300 MW of nameplate wind power capacity is currently generated at Northwest wind farms and projects currently in development could triple that figure over the next several years.3 Texas leads the United States in wind development with over 4,350 MW of currently installed capacity each. California, has nearly 2,500 MW of installed capacity and Colorado, Minnesota, and Iowa are also making rapid investments in wind power, with over 1,000 MW currently in service in each state.4
Between 2001 and 2007, the U.S. wind generating capacity expanded at a remarkable rate of 49% per year on average. By the end of 2007, the U.S. had over 16,800 MW of wind capacity online, enough to power over 1.5 million homes for the entire year!5
However, Europe currently remains far ahead of the U.S. in wind development, with 56,535 MW of wind capacity online as of the end of 2007.6
Advances in technology and increased experience have made wind power competitive with many traditional sources of electricity, especially when factoring in risk factors for traditional generation resources such as fuel volatility and future environmental regulation. The price of wind-generated electricity has decreased approximately 90% from the early 1980s; modern wind farms now generally have levelized costs in the range of 4-7 cents per kilowatt-hour over the life of a project (excluding any tax credits) making them competitive with many new coal or natural gas facilities. Costs for individual projects vary and depend on the strength and consistency of the wind, financing terms, and transmission infrastructure. All else being equal, the cost effectiveness of wind farms generally increases with the turbines’ capacity factor, the size of the turbines, and number of turbines installed.7
Tapping our domestic wind resources brings a host of economic benefits. Since the strongest wind resources are often located in rural areas, rural counties and landowners can benefit from wind power. Wind farms are capital intensive, infusing money into the local economy during construction phases and paying property taxes to the host county and royalties to local landowners during operation. At the 24 MW Klondike Phase I Wind Farm in Sherman County, Oregon, the wind project contributes 10% of the county’s property tax base. Wind turbines are also compatible with rural land uses like farming and ranching and can provide extra income to property owners via power sales or royalty payments. On average, landowners make between $2,000 and $7,000 annually for each modern wind turbine located on their land.
In contrast, a natural gas plant drains an estimated $200,000-$350,000 per MW of capacity out of the regional economy annually for fuel imports. Additionally, wind energy produces 27% more jobs per kilowatt-hour than coal plants, and 66% more jobs than natural gas plants.9
Wind energy is clearly a homegrown energy source that strengthens the economy and increases the nation’s energy security.
Turbine blades, modeled after airplane wings, rotate due to a pressure differential caused by air moving over the surface of the blade. The blades cause a rotor to turn, which drives an electrical generator. Turbines can adjust so that they always face toward the wind.
Wind turbines can be designed to operate either at variable speeds or at a single, fixed speed. The variable speed designs are more complex but they convert wind power into electricity more efficiently.
Most wind turbines are designed to use wind blowing anywhere from 8 to 56 mph. Sizes for new U.S. utility-scale turbines for onshore sites range from 850 kW to 2.5 MW and turbines rated 3.5 MW and larger are being used in offshore wind projects.
While variable, wind energy can be integrated into a utility system using existing load-matching capabilities for a minimal cost of 0-0.5 cents/kWh.10 Weather forecasting can predict wind power output with a fair degree of confidence. Additionally, multiple wind sites in different locations can be combined to create a relatively stable power supply curve.
Wind turbines generate electricity without producing any pollutant emissions. In contrast, fossil fuel plants emit toxic mercury, nitrous oxides that cause smog, sulfur dioxide that causes acid rain and large quantities of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Although wind is one of the most benign power sources, if not properly sited, it too may have environmental impacts. Wildlife and avian impacts are often the greatest concern. New tower, blade and turbine designs and careful siting help minimize environmental impacts.
The federal production tax credit offers an important tax credit to new wind production. Each state in the region offers several additional incentives for wind development, from residential projects to utility-scale developments. Oregon, for example, provides personal and business tax credits and low-cost financing for renewable energy projects, while Washington provides small wind turbine owners a strong production incentive and grants sales tax exemptions for renewable energy equipment. Idaho offers a residential tax deduction and a sales tax exemption for renewable energy sys-tems as well as low-interest loans for small-scale wind installations and state-backed bonds for utility-scale wind projects. Finally, Montana offers corporate income and property tax incentives and a residential tax credit for renewable energy installations. Additional incentives are offered as well.
See AWEA's map of wind projects in the US:
Updated February 19, 2008
Sources and Notes:
1. Wind potential from Renewable Energy Atlas of the West, Land and Water Fund of the Rockies, et al. (July 2002).
- Installed capacity from RNP's list of Northwest renewable energy projects, ((add link to project list here)).
- Capacity factor from Fifth Northwest Electric Power and Conservation Plan, Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NWPCC) (May, 2005). See Appendix I.
- Levelized costs include transmission and integration costs and the federal Produc-tion Tax Credit.
2. 2005 Northwest consumption from NWPCC, op. cit. note 1.
- 2004 total U.S. electricity generation from Annual Energy Outlook 2006, Energy Information Administration (Feb. 2006). See Table A8.
3. Installed capacity and projects in development from RNP, op. cit. note 1.
4. “U.S. Wind Energy Projects”. American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) (Jan 16, 2008). www.awea.org/projects/ accessed 2/19/08
5. Annual growth figures from “Wind Power, U.S. Installed Capacity”, AWEA, www.awea.org/faq/instcap.html, accessed 2/19/08.
- 2007 year-end installed capacity from “Installed US Wind Power Capacity Surged 45% in 2007”, AWEA (Jan 17, 2008).
6. “Statistics”, European Wind Energy As-sociation, www.ewea.org/index.php?id=180, accessed 2/19/09.
7. Cost trends from “The Economics of Wind Energy”, AWEA (Feb 2005).
- Levelized costs include transmission and integration costs and the federal Production Tax Credit.
8. Graphic from “Renewable Energy”, New South Wales Department of Energy, Utilities and Sustainability. www.seda.nsw.gov.au/ren_wind_body.asp, accessed 9/27/06 .
9. Natural gas fuel cost assumes a 55% efficient combined cycle plant with a 90% capacity factor using natural gas at $4-$7/mmBtu.
- Jobs figures from “Wind Energy for Rural Economic Development”, US Department of Energy, EERE (2003).
10. Wind Taskforce Report, Western Governor’s Association (March 2006).
11. U.S. from “U.S. Installed Capacity”, AWEA. NW from RNP, op. cit. note 1.
"Montana … alone has enough potential wind resources to supply one quarter of the electricity needs of the United States."
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5 October 2011 | EN | FR
The East Africa famine calls into question the wisdom of investing in early warning systems without improving take-up, writes Linda Nordling.
When the UN declared a state of famine in the Horn of Africa in July, one group of scientists was not surprised. In August 2010, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) had issued a prediction of poor March–May rains this year.
The tens of thousands of people that have died since then in East Africa, and the millions that remain hungry, are a harsh indictment of the ability of science-based early warnings of disaster to make a difference to the continent's most vulnerable people.
As more and better African science data make predictions easier, more effort will be needed to understand and improve the uptake of early warnings at local, national and international levels.
Why warnings fail
So why did the rainfall warning fail to avert the disaster in the Horn of Africa? The problem is multifaceted, and not easy to address.
Writing in Nature, FEWS NET scientist Chris Funk lists a number of reasons, from conflicting climate research predicting wetter conditions in East Africa, to political obstacles (especially conflict in Somalia) and the region's rapid population growth outpacing agricultural yields.
Funk believes the answer is more science and better agricultural practices to improve yields in areas at risk of drought and food shortages. Working towards a more sustainable long-term strategy for feeding the region's population will limit the need for emergency response, he says.
While most media reports have focused on the international community's failure to respond, Funk focuses on what must be done in Africa to improve uptake.
He is right to do so. The failure of warnings to filter down into African policy at all levels is a graver problem than that of mobilising emergency aid, criticised by many observers for creating a dependency culture in formerly self-sufficient regions.
Data poor no more
The past decade's strong science push in Africa has boosted the understanding of its climate, diseases, and political and economic systems.
This data flood has produced a wealth of mathematical models, and systems are now in place — or being set up — for predicting food price variability, malaria outbreaks, floods and even armed conflicts.
They are all being billed as tools that can revolutionise the continent's response to emergencies.
But it is not just FEWS NET that is struggling to live up to expectations. Last month, Nigeria's emergency management agency accused state governments of ignoring early warnings of floods that killed more than an estimated 140 people and left tens of thousands homeless.
In Nigeria, the problem was a failure of state governments to act upon warnings by clearing drains and evacuating people living in flood plains.
The weakest link
Similar barriers held back the famine warning in the Horn of Africa. "There is a weak link between early warning and response," says Gideon Galu, a scientist with FEWS NET based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Although FEWS NET works with decision-makers in the national government to highlight its findings, the link-up to local authorities and rural communities relies on national government structures, he says.
Kenya, for example, has a food security steering group that passes scientific information on to decision-makers. Nongovernmental organisations and other partners can attend meetings and get a consensus on the scale and magnitude of a problem.
But the final link in the flow of information is problematic in Kenya, and in Ethiopia; and it's particularly weak in countries like Somalia where governance is fragile. There are scant resources and information dissemination networks to make sure that messages reach the local level.
These failures illustrate a key obstacle that many African countries must overcome. The impact of science-based early warning systems hinges on governments' capability (and perhaps willingness) to turn warnings into readiness on the ground.
Avoiding warning fatigue
In time, the early warning community will learn from its mistakes as it establishes strong networks that reach down to the community level — an activity that FEWS NET is working on.
The organisation is also working to address the underlying vulnerability to food crises via the US Feed the Future programme, a US$3.5 billion investment in strengthening agriculture in Ethiopia, Kenya and other countries.
Better links to local government and rural communities will also improve FEWS NET's capability to collect data on variables such as rainfall and temperature, making prediction more of a two-way street, adds Gulu. "They are now able to provide us with additional data about what is happening in the field," he says.
But there is a downside: the explosion in early warning systems means that individual warnings could grow into a cacophony of calls to emergency action that compete for policymakers' attention and scarce resources.
Such 'warning fatigue' would make it harder to discern credible alerts and act on them.
In that future, a warning system well-connected to decision-makers with functioning lines of communication with local officials is likely to be more effective than one where all the money has gone to improving the science while neglecting the capacity to put the evidence to good use.
Journalist Linda Nordling, based in Cape Town, South Africa, specialises in African science policy, education and development. She was the founding editor of Research Africa and writes for SciDev.Net, Nature and others.
Funk, C. We thought trouble was coming, Nature, 476, 7 (2011)
Susan fm LWEC ( Living With Environmental Change | United Kingdom )
5 October 2011
This in some ways is a chilling article. However, I had a good insight into early warning fatigue at a Humanitarian Vision/NERC workshop to bring climate scientists into better dialogue with NGOs. We role played how we'd manage early warning of flood and it gave fascinating first hand insights into risk perception and how it varied in the room. Strikes me that this is very relevant in this context
All SciDev.Net material is free to reproduce providing that the source and author are appropriately credited. For further details see Creative Commons.
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As the years tick by with most of the planet doing little in the way of reducing carbon emissions, researchers are getting increasingly serious about the possibility of carbon sequestration. If it looks like we're going to be burning coal for decades, carbon sequestration offers us the best chance of limiting its impact on climate change and ocean acidification. A paper that will appear in today's PNAS describes a fantastic resource for carbon sequestration that happens to be located right next to many of the US' major urban centers on the East Coast.
Assuming that capturing the carbon dioxide is financially and energetically feasible, the big concern becomes where to put it so that it will stay out of the atmosphere for centuries. There appear to be two main schools of thought here. One is that areas that hold large deposits of natural gas should be able to trap other gasses for the long term. The one concern here is that, unlike natural gas, CO2 readily dissolves in water, and may escape via groundwater that flows through these features. The alternative approach turns that problem into a virtue: dissolved CO2 can react with minerals in rocks called basalts (the product of major volcanic activity), forming insoluble carbonate minerals. This should provide an irreversible chemical sequestration.
The new paper helpfully points out that if we're looking for basalts, the East Coast of the US, home to many of its major urban centers and their associated carbon emissions, has an embarrassment of riches. The rifting that broke up the supercontinent called Pangea and formed the Atlantic Ocean's basin triggered some massive basalt flows at the time, which are now part of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, or CAMP. The authors estimate that prior to some erosion, CAMP had the equivalent of the largest basalt flows we're currently aware of, the Siberian and Deccan Traps.
Some of this basalt is on land—anyone in northern Manhattan can look across the Hudson River and see it in the sheer cliffs of the Palisades. But much, much more of it is off the coast under the Atlantic Ocean. The authors provide some evidence in the form of drill cores and seismic readings that indicate there are large basalt deposits in basins offshore of New Jersey and New York, extending up to southern New England.
These areas are now covered with millions of years of sediment, which should provide a largely impermeable barrier that will trap any gas injected into the basalt for many years. The deposits should also have reached equilibrium with the seawater above, which will provide the water necessary for the chemical reactions that precipitate out carbonate minerals.
Using a drill core from an onshore deposit, the authors show that the basalt deposits are also composed of many distinct flows of material. Each of these flows would have undergone rapid cooling on both its upper and lower surface, which fragmented the rock. The core samples show porosity levels between 10 and 20 percent, which should allow any CO2 pumped into the deposits to spread widely.
The authors estimate that New Jersey's Sandy Hook basin, a relatively small deposit, is sufficient to house 40 years' worth of emissions from coal plants that produce 4GW of electricity. And the Sandy Hook basin is dwarfed by one that lies off the Carolinas and Georgia. They estimate that the South Georgia Rift basin covers roughly 40,000 square kilometers.
The authors argue that although laboratory simulations suggest the basic idea of using basalts for carbon sequestration is sound, the actual effectiveness in a given region can depend on local quirks of geology, so pilot tests in the field are absolutely essential for determining whether a given deposit is suitable. So far, only one small-scale test has been performed on any of the CAMP deposits.
Given the area's proximity to significant sources of CO2 and the infrastructure that could be brought into play if full-scale sequestration is attempted, it seems like one of the most promising proposals to date.
PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0913721107
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