Megan Rowling | London | June 24

Reuters - Migrants uprooted by climate change in the poorest parts of the world are likely to only move locally, contrary to predictions that hundreds of millions will descend on rich countries, a study said on Wednesday.

The research from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit London-based think tank, challenges the common perception in the developed world that waves of refugees will try to move there permanently to escape the impact of global warming.

For example, many farmers struggling to grow enough food as seasons change will leave their homes to look for work in nearby towns for short periods only, the study said.

"It seems unlikely that the alarmist predictions of hundreds of millions of environmental refugees will translate into reality," said the paper, presented at a conference on climate change and population organised by IIED and the United Nations.

Johannesburg | June 17

IRIN - It will take at least ten years to develop a variety of staple grain that will survive in the climates caused by global warming in most parts of Africa, and the continent has less than two decades in which to do it, warn the authors of a new study.

"The countries have to start developing varieties now, but many of these countries don't have breeding programmes," said Luigi Guarino, one of three authors of a study to be published on 19 June in the US journal, Global Environmental Change. "This study, we hope, at least raises the flag."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body, has predicted that food production in Africa could halve by 2020 as global warming pushes temperatures up and droughts become more intense.

The new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, in the US, and the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, noted that "For a majority of Africa's farmers, warming will rapidly take climate not only beyond the range of their personal experience, but also beyond the experience of farmers within their own country."

_{Previously posted articles:
** Africa: The Second Scramble for Africa Starts
** Researchers urge rules to stop 'land-grabbing' worsening hunger
** Foreign land grabs for food could fuel unrest
** China's new export: farmers
** Financial crisis may worsen food crunch it eclipsed
** Rich countries launch great land grab to safeguard food supply}

Michael Day | Milan | June 16

The Independent - Global warming is already causing flooding in the north and water shortages in south, report says

The dramatic effect of climate change on the Alps comes into focus as never before this week with the publication of a major report which reveals that the mountain range is rapidly dividing into two contrasting climatic zones, each posing new problems.

The Convention on the Protection of the Alps is a statutory EU body set up in 1991 and its magisterial second report, published tomorrow, which has been seen by The Independent, reveals that the northern ranges of the Alps are suffering ever more serious flooding while the parched southern mountains see less and less snow.

According to the report, precipitation in the south-east of the region has fallen nearly 10 per cent in the past 100 years while rain and snowfall in the north-west ranges has increased by the same amount over this time.

* Michael McCarthy: Don't be fooled by this winter's powder. The Alpine snow line is already in retreat

I caught the second half of ABC's major production on a dismal projected future for the United States due to global warming, and was very impressed to see a network put forward one expert after another with pessimistic scenarios. How refreshing to see that the real debate is more about how bad/how soon than about whether.

Excerpts from ABC's description of the special:

It seems outlandish, extreme -- even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, it is a very real possibility. And unless we make drastic changes now, it could very well happen.

Experts have a stark warning: that unless we change course, the "perfect storm" of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change has the potential to converge in the next century with catastrophic results.

Wellington | May 28

DPA - More than 1.4 tonnes of jet fuel can be saved on a 12-hour flight powered by a new biofuel obtained from the seeds of the African jatropha plant, Air New Zealand said Thursday.

The airline said that scientists made the estimate after Air New Zealand conducted the world's first commercial aviation test flight using a 50-50 blend of jatropha fuel and standard jet fuel in a Boeing 747-400 powered by Rolls-Royce engines in December.

Captain David Morgan, Air New Zealand's chief pilot, said that the highest blend of any type of biofuel was used in that test flight, a joint initiative with Boeing and Rolls-Royce.

He said the blend would now be submitted to rigorous industry evaluation with a view to being certified for everyday use.

Morgan said the blend would save 1.43 tonnes of fuel on a Boeing 747-400 12-hour flight over 5,800 nautical miles, keeping about 4.5 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere.

When shorter-range flights were included, overall savings were estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60-65 per cent compared to jet fuel derived entirely from petroleum, he said.

Andy mead | Hawesville, Ky | May 16

McClatchy Newspapers - Beside a cow pasture in Hancock County, scientists are drilling through 8,000 feet of rock, hoping to learn how to lock away forever an invisible gas that threatens Earth's climate and our way of life.

Science fiction? No, but it's a science experiment that, if it works, would be carried out on a scale never before seen.

The idea is to capture the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that spews into the air when coal is burned to produce electricity. The gas, which also is produced naturally, is one of the causes of global warming.

Drilling began April 24, and the work has continued around the clock. By Thursday, when the media and officials involved in the project were invited for a first look, the drill had sunk to 3,660 feet.

In another month and a half, it will stop at 8,350 feet, in so-called "basement rock" that is more than 1 billion years old. That will make it one of the deepest wells ever drilled in Kentucky.

Bill Curry | Ottawa | May 11

The Globe and Mail - Top Canadian scientists are accusing the Harper government of politicizing science funding and jeopardizing climate research by naming global warming critics to key boards that fund science.

The government's actions are "dreadful," said Garry Clarke, a leading international glaciologist at the University of British Columbia, and undercut public pledges to tackle climate change.

"Their mouths are doing one thing and their hands are doing something different," Prof. Clarke said.

Nicholas Stern and Haruhiko Kuroda | May 5

The Guardian - South-east Asia has the most to lose from global warming but could gain much by developing a low-carbon future

In the middle of this financial crisis there is a debate taking place over whether governments can afford both massive tax-funded spending programmes needed to revive ailing economies, and the emissions cuts that are needed to combat climate change.

Few regions on Earth throw this tension into sharper contrast than south-east Asia, where many nations are highly vulnerable to the effects of global warming while also having the chance to develop low-carbon economies.

The plain truth is that nations can no longer afford to delay action on climate change, even temporarily, and such spending can serve as effective fiscal stimulus. Despite the global economic downturn the world is still warming. A major new report from the Asian Development Bank – The Economics of Climate Change in Southeast Asia: A Regional Review – explains how countries that invest now in climate change adaptation will better protect their people, economy and environment. Even with aggressive adaptation efforts, the negative impacts of climate change will continue to worsen. Only concerted global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can ultimately steer the world off its current calamitous course.

The report examines a wide range of climate change impacts in Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It finds a "business as usual" approach will result in a difficult future for the region and its people.

Oslo | Apr 29

DPA - Interest in the Arctic region has increased as the melting of the Arctic polar cap continues, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said Wednesday in summing up Norway's chairmanship of the eight-country Arctic Council.

The melting sea ice allows for new potential shipping routes, and also opens up new areas for exploration of oil and gas and other minerals, but also poses a threat to sensitive ecosystems.

Rising sea levels also threaten people in low-lying areas around the world, researchers told delegates during a seminar on Tuesday.

Rory Carroll & Andres Schipani in Santa Ana de Chipaya | Apr 24

The Guardian - Its members belong to what is thought to be the oldest surviving culture in the Andes, a tribe that has survived for 4,000 years on the barren plains of the Bolivian interior. But the Uru Chipaya, who outlasted the Inca empire and survived the Spanish conquest, are warning that they now face extinction through climate change.

The tribal chief, 62-year-old Felix Quispe, 62, says the river that has sustained them for millennia is drying up. His people cannot cope with the dramatic reduction in the Lauca, which has dwindled in recent decades amid erratic rainfall that has turned crops to dust and livestock to skin and bones.

"Over here used to be all water," he said, gesturing across an arid plain. "There were ducks, crabs, reeds growing in the water. I remember that. What are we going to do? We are water people."

The Uru Chipaya, who according to mythological origin are "water beings" rather than human beings, could soon be forced to abandon their settlements and go to the cities of Bolivia and Chile, said Quispe. "There is no pasture for animals, no rainfall. Nothing. Drought."

Tom Meersman | Apr 7

Star Tribune - What started as a high school science fair project is the latest piece of evidence that global warming is affecting Lake Superior.

Forrest Howk, now a freshman at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, studied 150 years of data in his hometown of Bayfield, Wis., and found that the harbor's frozen season has shrunk from about 120 days to 80 days.

The findings, published in the latest issue of Journal of Great Lakes Research, are consistent with recent studies showing that maximum ice cover in the Great Lakes has decreased slowly but steadily over the years.

His main sources of information were ferry boat records, the local newspaper and early settler accounts. By compiling the records from 1857 to 2007, Howk discovered that 150 years ago that the ferries usually stopped around Dec. 20 and began about April 20. Now the ferries typically stop the second week of January, and start again in late March.

Three of the four warmest winters on record have occurred since 1997, Howk said. Bayfield's harbor was closed to navigation for only 11 days in 2006, seven days in 2002 and for no days at all in 1998, according to Howk and records from Madeline Island Ferry Line.

Juliette Jowit | Boulder, CO | April 6

The Guardian - Volume of Arctic sea ice last summer may have been lowest on record – and possibly worst in 8,000 years

The total volume of sea ice in the Arctic is likely to have reached a record low last summer, despite previous reports that the area of ice recovered slightly from the previous year's dramatic decline, leading experts have warned.

The latest alarm about the fate of the Arctic sea ice, due to an unusually high proportion of thinner "first-year" ice, raises the prospect of an acceleration in the loss of ice during the warmer summer months, considered a key indicator of climate change.

Alister Doyle | Oslo | Apr 6

The Independent - An ice bridge which held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place shattered at the weekend and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist has warned.

"It's amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact," said David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey.

A satellite picture from the European Space Agency showed that a 25 mile-long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place had splintered at its narrowest point, about 500 metres wide.

The Wilkins, now the size of Jamaica, is one of 10 shelves to have shrunk or collapsed in recent years on the Antarctic Peninsula, where temperatures have risen in recent decades apparently because of global warming.

The satellite image showed a jumble of huge flat-topped icebergs in the sea where the ice bridge had been on Friday.

I first heard about this at the Petrol Pumper, a truck stop and Embers Restaurant located at the junction of Highways 52 and 55. Some fella sitting at the counter was talking to two truckers. I really wasn't paying any attention until he claimed that California was outlawing black paint. My first thought was somebody was listening to Right Wing radio for more than the recommended daily allowance. But, instead of outright dismissing his statement, I decided to engage The Google.

What do you know. He's right. Sort of. It seems that by initiating solar reflection standards, California might be outlawing black paint on vehicles.

(SciGuy) California's new "Cool Cars Measure" (see .pdf of proposal)
may ultimately lead to the removal of black cars from the state's
highways. Cars with darker paint absorb more heat, and therefore their
occupants are more likely to crank up the air conditioning. So, to cut
carbon dioxide emissions, the state:

• Proposes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by reducing interior temperatures of parked vehicles

• Reduced interior temperatures can reduce a/c capacity and likelihood of a/c use

• Smaller a/c or less operation results in less fuel used

• Less fuel used results in less vehicle carbon dioxide emissions

The aim is to reduce the state's carbon dioxide emissions to meet California's goal of cutting emissions by 25 percent by the year 2020. And black paint does not reflect enough heat to meet the new standards.

Michael McCarthy | Mar 16

The Independent - A limit on the hunting of polar bears by sportsmen and native Arctic people will top the agenda at an international summit in Norway tomorrow, seen as vital to the survival of the predator. Although few people outside the Arctic realise it, there is still a major legal hunt for the animals in four out of the five states that host the bears: Canada, Greenland, Alaska in the US, and Russia. In Norway, stalking is banned.

This hunt by Inuit native peoples and in Canada also by sportsmen – referred to as a "harvest" – claims as many as 700 polar bears killed every year, 3 per cent of the entire population. Adding the threat from climate change, which is eradicating the bear's natural habitat, the hunts are seen as no longer "sustainable". Studies from the US Geological Survey and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature suggest that the total population of 22,000 polar bears will fall by up to two-thirds over the next 50 years, leading the creature to the precipice of extinction.

In the age of global warming, Ursus maritimus is coming to replace the giant panda as the world's principal icon of threatened wildlife. Rising temperatures are rapidly melting the Arctic sea-ice the bears use in summer to hunt seals, meaning many cannot build large fat reserves to take them through the winter, and so starve.

** The Bear Hunt: Only the liver is wasted once the Inuits strike

Andrew Revkin | Mar 9

NYT - More than 600 self-professed climate skeptics are meeting in a Times Square hotel this week to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet.

The three-day International Conference on Climate Change — organized by the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group seeking deregulation and unfettered markets — brings together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

Organizers say the discussions, which began Sunday, are intended to counter the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers, who have vowed to tackle global warming with legislation requiring cuts in the greenhouse gases that scientists have linked to rising temperatures.

But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.

Gergely Szakacs | Budapest | eb 27, 2009

Reuters - The world faces a final opportunity to agree an adequate global response to climate change at a U.N.-led meeting in Copenhagen in December, the European Union's environment chief said on Friday.

World leaders from about 190 countries meet in Copenhagen in December to try to agree a global framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming, which expires in 2012.

"It is now 12 years since Kyoto was created. This makes Copenhagen the world's last chance to stop climate change before it passes the point of no return," European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a climate conference in Budapest on Friday.

Suzanne Goldberg | Washington | February 24

The Guardian - Campaign pledge to quickly pass laws to cut emissions faltering in the first weeks of his presidency

Barack Obama has been forced to slow down a key green objective of his presidency: early legislation to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.

Officials now concede that Congress is unlikely to pass such legislation by the end of 2009, a delay that could hurt efforts to reach a global treaty at the climate change conference in Copenhagen this December. It also frustrates hopes that last week's huge infusion of green investment in the $787 bn economic rescue plan would give momentum to efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Duncan Clark | Feb 23

The Guardian - • Consumer exports behind 15% of emissions - study
• Campaigners suggest new criteria for climate deal

The full extent of the west's responsibility for Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases has been revealed by a new study. The report shows that half of the recent rise in China's carbon dioxide pollution is caused by the manufacturing of goods for other countries - particularly developed nations such as the UK.

Last year, China officially overtook the US as the world's biggest CO2 emitter. But the new research shows that about a third of all Chinese carbon emissions are the result of producing goods for export.

The research, due to be published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, underlines "offshored emissions" as a key unresolved issue in the run up to this year's crucial Copenhagen summit, at which world leaders will attempt to thrash out a deal to replace the Kyoto protocol.

Developing countries are under pressure to commit to binding emissions cuts in Copenhagen. But China is resistant, partly because it does not accept responsibility for the emissions involved in producing goods for foreign markets.

The Huffington Post — ...If the world's nations act responsibly, [former chief World Bank economist Lord Nicholas] Stern said, they will achieve "zero-carbon" electricity production and zero-carbon road transport by 2050 _ by replacing coal power plants with wind, solar or other energy sources that emit no carbon dioxide, and fossil fuel-burning vehicles with cars running on electric or other "clean" energy.

Then warming could be contained to a 2-degree-Celsius (3.4-degree-Fahrenheit) rise this century, he said. But if negotiators falter, if emissions reductions are not made soon and deep, the severe climate shifts and sea-level rises projected by scientists would be "disastrous."

Colin Woodard | Feb 16

CSM -

It looks much like any other filling station: Shell-branded gasoline pumps lined up before a brightly lit convenience store on the shoulder of a busy highway. But this is the hub of one of Iceland’s most ambitious projects, an obligatory stop for visiting foreign dignitaries that offers a glimpse of what might be the future of human transportation.

This is no ordinary Shell station. Just to one side, where you might expect to find diesel pumps, stands the world’s first commercial hydrogen fueling station. Pull up in your hydrogen-powered car, swipe your credit card, attach the pump fixture, and in five minutes you’ll be back on the road, your tank full of emissions-free fuel produced right at the filling station from water and sustainably generated electricity.

“It’s a completely green car, with only water coming out of the tailpipe,” says Jon Bjorn Skulason, general manager of Icelandic New Energy, who drives one of the city’s 14 hydrogen-fueled vehicles. “If we complete our plans, we will be a zero-emissions society. We would not have to import fuel from foreign sources, and we would be 100 percent sustainable, which must be the true future of the world.”

Julie Steenhuysen | Chicago | February 14th

Reuters - The climate is heating up far faster than scientists had predicted, spurred by sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries like China and India, a top climate scientist said on Saturday.

"The consequence of that is we are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously," Chris Field, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

Field said "the actual trajectory of climate change is more serious" than any of the

Randall Mikkelsen | Washington | Feb 12

Reuters - The global economic crisis has become the biggest near-term U.S. security concern, causing instability in a quarter of the world's countries and threatening destructive trade wars, U.S. intelligence agencies reported on Thursday.

The director of National Intelligence's annual threat assessment also said al Qaeda's leadership had been weakened over the last year. But security in Afghanistan had deteriorated and Pakistan had to gain control over its border areas before the situation could improve.

"The financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging market nations over the next year," said the report. It said a wave of "destructive protectionism" was possible as countries find they cannot export their way out of the slump.

"Time is our greatest threat. The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests," it said.

The report represents the evaluations of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and serves as a major security reference point for policymakers and Congress. In addition to reviewing potential adversaries, it also considered this year the security impact of issues including climate change, the economy and food and energy supplies.

READ:
** Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence(PDF)
** Highlights(PDF)

(The following is a short, informal, speculative essay that I've written for a class I'm currently taking. I may post more of these, as the course content is very interesting and there are several more such essays due during the semester.)

The current climate change dialogue is entirely rooted in the language of mitigation and avoidance of carbon emissions when it should be thinking in terms of managing both carbon emission and capture. This limitation in perspective does great harm to strategic thinking on how to best manage the planet’s future climate and must be overcome.

The question currently being asked by the climate change dialogue is simply “How can we stop emitting carbon to reduce climate change?” There is an implicit assumption in this question that the human race plays a passive role—it stops emitting and lets natural processes take care of the excess carbon in the atmosphere. Reframing climate change as a question of carbon management shifts the central question of the debate to “How much carbon should we allow into the atmosphere and what kind of global climate do we desire?” This reformulation highlights an active human role in the management of global systems and is a better way to think of the problem given the very long history of human intervention in environmental systems. We are not going to stop emitting and just wait for the climate to stabilize but will instead actively intervene to create our desired environment for various economic, political, and spiritual reasons.

James Lovelock is the originator of the Gaia theory of Earth as a self-regulating system. He is the author of many books, including the soon to be released The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning (2009).

New Scientist: What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?