Greenhouse Gas Effect Consistent Over 420 Million Years

New calculations show that sensitivity of Earth's climate to changes in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) has been consistent for the last 420 million years, according to an article in Nature by geologists at Yale and Wesleyan Universities.

A popular predictor of future climate sensitivity is the change in global temperature produced by each doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. This study confirms that in the Earth's past 420 million years, each doubling of atmospheric CO2 translates to an average global temperature increase of about 3 Celsius, or 5 Fahrenheit.

According to the authors, since there has continuously been life on the planet over this time span, there must be an ongoing balance between CO2 entering and leaving the atmosphere from the rocks and waters at Earth's surface. Their simulations examined a wide span of possible relationships between atmospheric CO2 and temperature and the likelihood they could have occurred based on proxy data from geological samples.

Most estimates of climate sensitivity have been based on computer simulations of climate or records of climate change over the past few decades to thousands of years, when carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures were similar to or lower than today. Such estimates could underestimate the magnitude of large climate-change events.

from SPX news service

Fast-growing Phoenix, beset by dirty air, targets construction in cleanup plan

A new plan to clear the skies in the Phoenix area, which has some of the dirtiest air in the nation, calls for major shifts in the way people here live and do business.

Cozy wood-burning fires? Not a good idea, because of the soot.

Leaf blowers? Verboten, at least on "bad air" days. They kick up dust.

And on construction sites where more than 50 acres of land will be disturbed, someone there must be the designated "dust manager."

Those are three on a list of 41 measures that may soon be required of businesses and residents in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, and other communities within America's fastest-growing county. More measures may be added in the months ahead, but that's the blueprint as of Wednesday evening, when the regional Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) approved the cleanup plan.

Maricopa County is only the second locale in the US to have the dubious distinction of being listed on the US Environmental Protection Agency's Five Percent Plan – a move that triggered the need for a cleanup plan. The EPA tagged the county at the end of 2006, after pollution from particulates – known to experts as "fugitive dust" – exceeded the emissions standard for two years running. In 2005, the area had 19 days over the federal limit; in 2006, it broke that record with 27 days over the limit.

Under the Five Percent Plan, Maricopa County must cut its particulate emissions by 5 percent a year, until it reaches the federal standard of 150 micrograms of fugitive dust per cubic meter of air, as measured within a 24-hour period. That means 4,594 fewer tons of airborne dust each year until at least 2009.

from The Christian Science Monitor

EcoWellness: Race and hazardous waste

Twenty years after a landmark study proved a link between hazardous-waste sites and minority neighborhoods, the phenomenon has only settled deeper into U.S. towns and cities, a new report says.

What's more, the racial differences are much greater than previously thought, according to "Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty," a preliminary anniversary report released today. The full report will be made public on April 22, Earth Day.

The updated report found more than 9 million Americans live in neighborhoods within about 2 miles of the 413 commercial hazardous-waste facilities in the United States.

"When we think of the U.S. in the 21st century, we think we've made a great deal of progress in environmental protection and civil rights," said David Pellow, a sociologist and professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. "This suggests the opposite, and it's quite disheartening."

from UPI

New Orleans Proposes to Invest in 17 Areas

New Orleans unveiled its latest redevelopment plan Thursday, choosing 17 zones where the city has decided to concentrate resources in order to stimulate investment and renewal.

The 17 development zones, each about a half-mile in diameter, are scattered throughout New Orleans. They vary from a devastated shopping plaza in the eastern section of the city, to blocks in the ruined Lower Ninth Ward and to areas not hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina but still in need of renewal, as officials put it, including the old St. Roch Market in the Bywater area.

The plan is at least the fourth such effort since the storm, and at about $1.1 billion, notably more modest than its predecessors.

Its modesty provided some hope that, unlike the other plans that have been shelved or are in limbo, the outline presented at City Hall by Mayor C. Ray Nagin and his recovery chief, Edward J. Blakely, may come to fruition in some form.

Indeed, Mr. Blakely, an academic and a recognized expert in disaster recovery, promised “cranes on the skyline” by September. But where exactly they will be, and what they will be doing, was unclear from Thursday’s summary presentation.

from the NY Times

Climate change puts coastal Japan at great risk: report

apan's population has been identified as being at great risk from rising sea levels and more intense cyclones linked to climate change, research released Wednesday revealed.

In the first global study of its kind, the International Institute for Environment and Development, based in Britain, highlighted Japan as the country with the sixth-largest number of people -- a total of 30,477,000 -- living within 10 meters of the average sea level.

In fact, on a map showing population density across the country, many of Japan's largest urban areas, including Tokyo, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Sapporo, have over 1,000 people per sq. km living within the worrying 10-meter elevation coastal zone.

The report cites the "recent expansion of international trade" and Japan's preference for ocean shipping over air freight as contributing factors to the pre-eminence of densely populated urban hubs along the country's coastline.

Report author Gordon McGranahan insists the future is not completely bleak for Japan, however, providing that measures are taken "now."

from the Japan Times

132 million in Asia 'face starvation'

Grain harvests in the Asian region will drop by as much as 30 percent, leading to skyrocketing food prices and the starvation of 132 million people in Asia in the 2050s, if fossil fuels continue to be consumed at the current rate, according to a report of the Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report includes the likely impact of global warming on Asia and assesses the impact of global warming on human activities and the ecosystem. It is expected to be adopted by the U.N. IPCC at a meeting in Brussels starting Monday,

A report of the Working Group I on the cause and environmental predictions of the greenhouse effect was released last month. According to government sources, the report found that many Asian areas, including Japan and eastern Russia, have already seen a decline in grain harvests, a phenomenon that will make it more difficult for developing countries to meet their growing demand for food.

In addition to rising temperatures caused by global warming, chronic flooding, heat waves and droughts are behind the falling harvests, the report says.

In the future, grain harvests will drop by between 2.5 percent and 10 percent in the 2020s, and 5 percent to 30 percent in the 2050s, compared with the amount harvested in 1990, the report says.

Even if the mercury rises by just 0.5 C in winter, the wheat harvest in India would be badly affected, the report says.

from the Daily Yomiuri (JP)

Cities at Risk of Rising Sea Levels

More than two-thirds of the world's large cities are in areas vulnerable to global warming and rising sea levels, and millions of people are at risk of being swamped by flooding and intense storms, according to a new study released Wednesday.

In all, 634 million people live in the threatened coastal areas worldwide - defined as those lying at less than 33 feet above sea level - and the number is growing, said the study published in the journal Environment and Urbanization.

More than 180 countries have populations in low-elevation coastal zones, and about 70 percent of those have urban areas of more than 5 million people that are under threat. Among them: Tokyo; New York; Mumbai, India; Shanghai, China; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The peer-reviewed scientific study said it is the first to identify the world's low-lying coastal areas that are vulnerable to global warming and rising sea levels. It said 75 percent of all people living in vulnerable areas are in Asia, with poorer nations most at risk.

from the AP

Corps team blames poor levees

The failure to build New Orleans-area hurricane levees and levee walls as part of an integrated, well-fortified system doomed the region during Katrina and remains the key finding of a revised report released Monday by an investigation team sponsored by the Army Corps of Engineers.

"The system did not perform as a system," concluded members of the Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force, or IPET, which has spent the past 19 months detailing the causes and effects of Katrina's flooding on the levee system and the metropolitan area.

Katrina's storm surge found a wide variety of weaknesses resulting from the system being built as a series of individual projects: problems such as low levee sections, weak links between levee projects, and failed designs. Those individual failures resulted in water invading the entire protection system, the report concluded.

The report again concludes that "particularly inadequate" designs of levee walls along the 17th Street and London Avenue drainage canals resulted in their failure, despite storm-surge water not overtopping them.

Had the New Orleans area levees been more formidable, such as with armoring or stronger levee walls, damage from Katrina would have been cut dramatically, the report said. It concludes, for example, that half the direct property losses, and much of the indirect damage to the city's economy from the flood, might have been averted if levees and walls had just been overtopped but not breached.

from the Times Picayune

Heat Invades Cool Heights Over Arizona Desert

High above the desert floor, this little alpine town has long served as a natural air-conditioned retreat for people in Tucson, one of the so-called sky islands of southern Arizona. When it is 105 degrees in the city, it is at least 20 degrees cooler up here near the 9,157-foot summit of Mount Lemmon.

But for the past 10 years or so, things have been unraveling. Winter snows melt away earlier, longtime residents say, making for an erratic season at the nearby ski resort, the most southern in the nation.

Legions of predatory insects have taken to the forest that mantles the upper mountain, killing trees weakened by record heat. And in 2003, a fire burned for a month, destroying much of the town and scarring more than 87,000 acres. The next year, another fire swept over 32,000 acres.

“Nature is confused,” said Debbie Fagan, who moved here 25 years ago after crossing the country in pursuit of the perfect place to live. “We used to have four seasons. Now we have two. I love this place dearly, and this is very hard for me to watch.”

from the NY Times

Solar panels, recycled water: a glimpse inside Britain's carbon-neutral estate

When Marianna and Steve Binks get up in the morning, their thoughts are typical, domestic ones - getting themselves and their two children ready for work, school and the normal activities of everyday life. That they are at the cutting edge of the carbon-neutral lifestyle is not uppermost in their minds.

But it is clear to newcomers at the Beddington Zero Energy Development, or as it is more commonly known, BedZED, in Wallington, Surrey, is no ordinary housing estate. 'To be honest, it's only when you see people from all over the world being shown around here, that you realise you are living somewhere very different," says Mrs Binks.

The wind cowls on top of the blocks of flats, sitting adjacent to the wildlife-friendly green roofs and the black-dotted photovoltaic solar panels on walls, immediately mark out the apartment blocks as out of the norm. What is less obvious is that the estate has been built so that the windows are south facing to maximise natural heat and light, and that the large, innocuous-looking building in the corner is in fact a wood-fired combined heat and power plant providing heating and electricity for the residents.

This development, a partnership between the self-confessed "hardline" carbon-neutral architects ZEDfactory, BioRegional, a local charity devoted to sustainable enterprises, and Peabody Trust, could be a model for the future of environmentally sound living of the kind being encouraged by the tax breaks announced by Gordon Brown in this week's Budget.

from the Independent (UK)

City considers routes toward sustainability

Most people strolling on the manicured lawn in front of the Indianapolis Museum of Art don't realize they're walking across a roof.

It's not just a grass-covered roof, either.
Flowers, shrubs and about five-dozen Red Sunset maple trees have all been planted atop a massive underground parking garage.
City officials hope the rooftop can help inspire a larger movement toward more environmentally friendly building practices in Indianapolis as part of Mayor Bart Peterson's pledge to push a "sustainable" city agenda.
Following in the footsteps of cities like Chicago and Seattle, city officials are exploring various measures. Under consideration: switching to alternative fuel sources, planting more trees, upgrading walkways, overhauling the city's recycling program and cutting government energy consumption.
After Mayor Richard Daley created a rooftop garden on Chicago's City Hall in 2000, the city skyline has literally bloomed with more than 200 green rooftops, covering about 2.5 million square feet. Chicago officials are now considering green-roof technology at O'Hare International Airport, as well as requiring that new public buildings be certified as environmentally friendly.
Indianapolis is further behind.

from the Indianapolis Star

Cyclone Kills 69 in Madagascar, Thousands Homeless

A cyclone that swept across Madagascar last week killed at least 69 people and made tens of thousands homeless in the north of the Indian Ocean island, officials said on Friday.

Mudslides have buried whole villages, rivers have burst their banks and roads have been cut off since Cyclone Indlala struck on March 15.

"I have never seen so much damage," Jacky Randimbiarison, executive secretary of the government's disaster management agency, told Reuters.

The agency said it had confirmed 69 deaths, two people missing, and nearly 78,000 people uprooted on the world's fourth largest island that is home to 18.6 million people.

from Planet Ark

Government, industry plan for food shortage during flu pandemic

Food industry representatives will meet with government officials today to strategize about ways of getting food to Canadian stomachs in the event of a flu pandemic.

While much pandemic preparedness has been focused on the health sector, government documents say grocery-store shelves could be emptied if the long-anticipated global influenza were to strike hard and fast.

Worst-case scenarios suggest the disease could take out a third of the work force, borders could close and transportation lines could shut down.

"In a modern-day, just-in-time food-supply chain, also drawing inputs and ingredients from across the world, such [a] pandemic would not only have severe public-health implications but also pose significant economic impacts and challenges across the entire agri-food continuum," says a federal discussion guide written last year.

from the Toronto Globe and Mail

Climate studies show polar warming trend

Three climate studies published Thursday raise new concerns about the effects of warmer temperatures and pollution on polar environments.

A paper by three Colorado researchers says Arctic sea ice, declining in extent by the month since 1979, already may have reached a "tipping point" that could cascade quickly into multiple climate change effects in temperate regions. Those might include less cold, rain and snow here in the West and more precipitation in parts of Europe.

A study by two British scientists says Greenland and Antarctica are losing more ice as large glaciers accelerate their path to the ocean. The researchers suspect global warming is to blame for Greenland's melting. But they also say they can't explain yet if Antarctica's losses are the result of natural variations or human causes.

A report by researchers from France and Norway blames air pollution, largely from Europe and Asia, for creating a man-made "Arctic haze" of ozone, aerosols and soot in winter and spring. They say the pall is another factor, along with "greenhouse gases" from the burning of fossil fuels, in the warming up of the northern polar region.

The three studies, all in Friday's edition of Science magazine, come two weeks after two world science and weather groups launched the International Polar Year, a global research focus on the polar regions in more than 200 projects with thousands of scientists from 60 countries.

from USA Today

Corps plan for storms gutted to studs

If a storm threatens New Orleans this hurricane season, onetime Marine and current Army Corps of Engineers crane supervisor Troy Davis will walk away from his day job, say goodbye to his family north of Hammond and rush to the 17th Street Canal, the new front line in a war to save New Orleans from a Katrinalike catastrophe.

He knows that it could be a dicey post, but he doesn't want to be anywhere else if another storm blows in.

"This is my job, and all the guys on my team have the same outlook," said Davis, who has been with the corps for 15 years. "This is also sort of like military service. We're not going to turn our backs and leave a mission."

from the Times Picayune

Antarctic melting may be speeding up

Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centers already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyze latest satellite data.

A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59 centimeters (7-23 inches) this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 Celsius (3.2-7.8 Farenheit).

"Observations are in the very upper edge of the projections," leading Australian marine scientist John Church told Reuters.

"I feel that we're getting uncomfortably close to threshold," said Church, of Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research said.

Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of meters, he said.

There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion ton iceberg as big as Luxembourg.

But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat.

"There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there's six meters of sea level in west Antarctica," says Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist at the Hobart-based Australian Antarctic Division.

Doomsday has not yet arrived.

But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 meters over 15-16 years.

from Reuters

Thirstier World Likely to See More Violence

"Severe, prolonged droughts are the strongest indicator of high-intensity conflicts," said Marc Levy of the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York.

These are internal conflicts, not between countries, and involving more than 1,000 battle deaths, Levy said at a press briefing in Washington last week.

Such conflicts tend to occur about a year after a "severe deviation in rainfall patterns", he said.

Levy and colleagues used decades of detailed precipitation records, geospatial conflict information and other data in a complex computer model that overlays all this onto a fine-scale map of the world.

"Major deviations from normal rainfall patterns were the strongest predictor of conflicts," he said. "I was surprised at how strong the correlation is."

Levy is careful to say that droughts don't directly cause conflicts but are more likely triggers in regions where there already tensions or low-level conflicts.

For example, in the recent civil conflict in Nepal, the parts of the country where most of the fighting occurred experienced low rainfall for several years and then a severe drought in the late 1990s.

Farmers may have simply given up hope of farming and joined the local rebellion as a way of sustaining themselves and their families, he hypothesised.

And rainfall appears to have a pacifying affect. The wet areas of Africa, for instance, have far fewer years of violent internal conflict than the dry regions, he said.

from the Inter Press News Service

Ice sheet complexity leaves sea level rise uncertain

Ice shed from the giant sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland is responsible for just 12% of the current rate of global sea level rise, according to a new review.

The authors emphasise that it is now clear that the ice caps are losing ice faster than it is being replenished by snowfall. But exactly why this is happening remains unknown, making it difficult to predict the extent of future sea level rises.

The remaining 88% of the current rise is due to the expansion of water as it warms, and melting from mountain glaciers and ice caps outside Greenland and Antarctica. Yet the shrinking of Greenland and Antarctica remains crucial because together they hold enough water to make sea levels rise by 70 metres, submerging vast swathes of land and displacing millions.

Over the past 10 years, satellite measurements have vastly improved the quality of data detailing changes in the ice sheets, say Duncan Wingham from University College London and Andrew Shepherd from the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK.

Having reviewed the latest data, the pair conclude that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute 0.35 millimetres per year to the total rate of sea level rise, estimated at 3 mm per year.

This contribution is close to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest estimate of 0.41 mm from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. According to the IPCC, measurements since 1993 show that the thermal expansion of water is responsible for 1.6 mm of the annual rise and other melting glaciers and ice caps for 0.77 mm.

from New Scientist

Sea lion decline linked to 'junk food' fish

Three decades after a change in ocean climate began creeping into the North Pacific, a team of scientists asserts with unprecedented vigor in a new report that the change is the central culprit in the crash of Alaska's western sea lion population.

Andrew Trites of the University of British Columbia joined 27 scientists ranging from oceanographers to anthropologists in publishing the hypothesis and its evidence in the January issue of Fisheries Oceanography. The ocean still teems with fish, he said, but it's a different mix that now thrives.

"It's still a healthy system; it's just different," he said.

As a leading proponent of the so-called "junk food" theory -- that Steller sea lions in the Gulf of Alaska and the Aleutians are eating fish of lesser energy value than they once got -- Trites said his argument is now more forceful because it includes more parts of the puzzle.

from the Anchorage Daily News

Cities with Less Smog See More Green

As sunburn victims and Al Gore fans well know, we're short on stratospheric ozone these days. But ozone created near the ground—the primary component of urban smog—is one of the country's most widespread and most damaging air pollutants, and few are complaining about its gradual depletion.

Many metropolitan areas have successfully cracked down on their ground-level ozone pollution problems since the Environmental Protection Agency passed the Clean Air Act in 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, ground-level ozone concentration dropped 9.2% on average in the metro areas in which the EPA monitored these data.
Aggressive Reduction of Ozone

Orange County, Calif., reduced its "bad" ozone levels by more than 50% during this time period, rising from the fifth-worst metro area for air quality to the 39th best, out of 197 metro areas. Seattle cut ozone pollution by 43% and San Diego saw a 42.5% decrease. On the East Coast, Atlantic City, N.J., decreased ozone levels by 37% between 1990 and 2005, and ozone pollution in the New London (Conn.) area dropped more than 35%. These measurements are based on the second-highest reading in each area for each year (researchers disregard the highest reading, which is often a fluke that could skew the data).

Unlike "good" ozone, which is produced naturally in the stratosphere (the part of the atmosphere 6–30 miles above the earth's surface), ground-level ozone is created by a chemical reaction between oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) under the influence of sunlight. The chemicals involved come from emissions from industrial factories and electric utilities, motor vehicle exhaust, and vapors from oil wells and gasoline, paint, and other solvents.

from Business Week

Warming Imperils Maryland Species

The Baltimore oriole is the state bird of Maryland. The brown pelican is the state bird of Louisiana. But now, as climate change seems to be leaving its first footprints here, local scientists worry that the Washington area may be slowly trading one for the other.

About 1,000 brown pelican chicks hatched in Maryland last year. That was about 1,000 more of the birds, ungainly fish-eaters comfortable in the steamy Southeast, than there were in the state in 1985.

The oriole, by contrast, might be gone from here in a century. Researchers say that as Maryland's climate warms, the bird could shift its territory to the north, becoming, perhaps, the Philadelphia oriole.

from the Washington Post

Flood pumps put in despite warning

The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly.

The pumps are being pulled out and overhauled because of excessive vibration, Corps officials said. Other problems have included overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets, according to the documents obtained by the AP.

Col. Jeffrey Bedey, who is overseeing levee reconstruction, insisted that the pumps would have worked last year and that the city was never in danger. Bedey gave assurances that the pumps should be ready for the coming hurricane season, which begins June 1.

The Corps said it decided to press ahead with installation, and then fix the machinery while it was in place, on the theory that some pumping capacity was better than none. And it defended the manufacturer, which was under time pressure.

from the AP via the Philadelphia Inquirer

Top Scientists Warn of Water Shortages and Disease Linked to Global Warming

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people will not have enough water, top scientists are likely to say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread, the draft says. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

The draft document, the second of a series of four being issued this year, focuses on global warming’s effects. Written and reviewed by more than 1,000 scientists from dozens of countries, it still must be edited by government officials.

from the NY Times

The Real Riddle of Changing Weather: How Safe Is My Home?

BY now it is no longer news that people are jiggling the planet’s thermostat.

One response is to go green: New Yorkers who were terrified into action by Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” are shaping up their lives and homes with a compulsion formerly reserved for the Atkins diet.

All this carbon cutting is a boon, and it certainly provides a moral high ground. But it fails to address one pesky truth: no matter how green New York City becomes, it remains hostage to huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions already in the pipeline and from the future environmental transgressions of others, facts made clear in the bleak conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last month in Paris.

With no obvious savior in the wings, there is a growing urgency that global warming be understood at a local level, right down to the block, starting with: How could a rising sea level and pummeling storms affect the trillion dollars’ worth of property New Yorkers call home?

“It’s all pointing in a bad direction,” said Stuart Gaffin, an associate research scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. “There’s nothing good to encourage you to think we’re going to avoid long-term flooding events.”

from the NY Times

a simulation of storm surge in the NY area from the NY Times

a simulation of storm surge in the NE US from the NY Times

The Carbon Connection

Having seen pictures of the devastation did not prepare me for the reality of New Orleans. Mile after mile of wrecked houses, demolished cars, piles of debris, twisted and downed trees, and dried mud everywhere. We stopped every so often to look into abandoned houses in the Ninth Ward and along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, to see things close up: mud lines on the walls, overturned furniture, moldy clothes still hanging in closets, broken toys, a lens from a pair of glasses…once cherished and useful objects rendered into junk. Each house with a red circle painted on the front indicated results of the search for bodies. Some houses showed the signs of desperation: holes punched through ceilings as people tried to escape rising water. The smell of musty decay was everywhere, overlaid with an oily stench. Despair hung like Spanish moss in the dank, hot July air.

Ninety miles to the south, the Louisiana Delta is rapidly sinking below the rising waters of the Gulf. This is no "natural" process, but rather the result of decades of mismanagement of the lower Mississippi that began as federal policy after the great flood of 1927. Sediments that built the richest and most fecund wetlands in the world are now deposited off the continental shelf—part of an ill-conceived effort to tame the river. The result is that the remaining wetlands, starved for sediment, are both eroding and compacting, sinking below the water and perilously close to no return. Oil extraction has done most of the rest by cutting channels that crisscross the marshlands, allowing the intrusion of salt water and storm surges. Wakes from boats have considerably widened the original channels, further unraveling the ecology of the region. The richest fishery in North America and a unique culture that once thrived in the Delta are disappearing and with them the buffer zone that protects New Orleans from hurricanes. "Every 2.7 miles of marsh grass," says author and filmmaker Mike Tidwell, "absorbs one foot of a hurricane's storm surge" (M. Tidwell, p.57).

And the big hurricanes will come. Kerry Immanuel, an MIT scientist and former greenhouse skeptic, researched the connection between rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, warmer sea temperatures, and the severity of storms. He's a skeptic no longer (Nature, August 4, 2005). The hard evidence on this and other parts of climate science has moved beyond the point of legitimate dispute. Carbon dioxide, the prime greenhouse gas, is at the highest level in at least the last 650,000 years. CO2 continues to accumulate by 2.5+ parts per million per year, edging closer and closer to what some scientists believe is the threshold of runaway climate change. British scientist James Lovelock compares our situation to being on a boat upstream from Niagara Falls with the engines about to fail.

from The Center for Ecoliteracy

Climate change brews ocean trouble

The year 1972 was a banner one for wheat farmers in the United States, a bad one for Peru's anchovy fishermen, and therein lies a cautionary tale about coastal fisheries, climate change, and their impact on America's pocketbook.

That was the year that the Nixon administration brokered a $750 million deal to export grain to its cold-war rival, the then-Soviet Union. This extra demand for wheat sent US food prices soaring. The increases, followed the next year by an Arab oil embargo and skyrocketing oil prices, contributed to the worst bout of inflation in the US since the end of World War II.

Today, marine scientist Andrew Bakun adds an under-appreciated twist. That year, he explains, a strong El Niño shut down the oceanic "dumbwaiter" off the Peruvian coast that brings cold, nutrient-rich water from great depths up to the surface. The anchovy population collapsed, depriving American farmers and ranchers of a key source of protein-rich feed for their livestock. That sent them to the grain markets as well, adding to the demand that drove up grain prices. The fishery collapse was temporary. But its economic effect lingered.

Evidence is starting to accumulate that global warming may contribute to – or even trigger – troubling ecological changes taking place in these key regions of coastal upwelling, where some of the world's richest fisheries exist.

These coastal upwelling regions – for example, off Peru, northern California, Oregon, and the west coast of Africa – collectively cover less than 1 percent of the ocean. But they But they account for 20 percent of the world's fish catch. Some of these areas have shown remarkable resilience, notes Dr. Bakun, with the Pew Institute for Ocean Science at the University of Miami in Florida. Others have not. The concern, he continues, "is when you might push the ecosystem just a little too far."

This concern has prompted an increased interest in exploring how these ecosystems respond to change.

from the Christian Science Monitor

Desolation row: The betrayal of New Orleans

Jennifer Johansen's belongings have been safely packed up by the movers. She has said goodbye to her friends. This morning she will close the door on her yellow-painted house, take a taxi to the airport, and leave New Orleans for ever for a new life in Seattle.

Johansen's story is the story of the city. It is not the whole story of course: no single narrative can weave together the multiple layers of history and culture, and certainly not the current trauma besetting this remarkable place. But in its own way, her experience provides an insight into the many challenges confronting New Orleans 18 months after Hurricane Katrina.

Johansen is far from alone in making the decision to quit the city. Just quite how many people have decided to leave, having initially tried to rebuild after the storm struck, is unknown. But there are numerous anecdotes of people who, having struggled long enough and hard enough to put their lives back together, could not summon the will to remain. One recent poll suggested that as many as a third of the city's residents are considering leaving within the next two years. As it is, its population is barely half of what it was before the storm struck.

"It's been a gradual thing," says Johansen, quietly reflecting on her decision to leave as she stands in the kitchen of her carefully decorated home, in a part of the city known as the Irish Channel. "There would be crime, then it would go down, then there would be more.

from the Independent (UK)

Hurricanes Not the Key to a Sustainable Coast

In their discussion of the significance of wetland sedimentation during Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, R. E. Turner and coauthors concluded that "riverine sources bring relatively trivial amounts of inorganic sediments into the marsh" ("Wetland sedimentation from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita," Reports, 20 Oct. 2006, p. 449). Although this new study adds to the body of knowledge concerning the role of tropical storms in sediment redistribution, the authors' conclusion about the unimportance of the Mississippi River in delivering sediment to the coast defies all that we know about deltas and their sustainability. The authors also do not mention that although some marshes received sediments, a net total of 562 km2 of coastal marshes, natural levee ridges, and barrier islands was converted to open water during the two hurricanes...



from Science Magazine

A Dose of Dust That Quieted an Entire Hurricane Season?

The 2006 hurricane season was looking grim. Three hurricanes had ripped across Florida during the 2004 season. Four hurricanes, including Katrina, had ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005. Now meteorological signs were unanimous in foretelling yet another hyperactive hurricane season, the eighth in 10 years. But the forecasts were far off the mark. The 2006 season was normal, and no hurricanes came anywhere near the United States or the Caribbean.



Now two climatologists are suggesting that dust blown across the Atlantic from the Sahara was pivotal in the busted forecasts. The dust seems to have suppressed storm activity over the southwestern North Atlantic and Caribbean by blocking some energizing sunlight, they say. "I think they're on to something," says hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Dust "might play a big role" in year-to-year fluctuations in hurricane activity.

from Science Magazine

Last Chance

It took the Mississippi River 6,000 years to build the Louisiana coast.

It took man (and natural disasters) 75 years to destroy it.

Experts agree we have 10 years to act before the problem is too big to solve.

from the Times Picayune

Earthquakes Kill Scores, Indonesian Officials Say

Two powerful inland earthquakes rattled the Indonesian island of Sumatra today, leveling hundreds of buildings and killing at least 70 people, according to government officials in Jakarta.

The death toll was expected to increase as rescue workers continued to dig through the rubble of collapsed buildings. Officials said an accurate count of the dead was not yet possible.

The first earthquake, magnitude 6.3, struck just before 11 a.m. 20 miles below Solok on Sumatra’s western coast.


It was followed by a second aftershock of magnitude 6.1 at around 1 p.m, further east near the city of Pekanbaru, according to the US Geological Survey.

Residents said numerous aftershocks continued throughout the day.

Several large volcanoes in western Sumatra also showed increased activity after the tremors.

from the NY Times

Asian air pollution affecting weather

Asia's growing air pollution — billowing plumes of soot, smog and wood smoke — is making the Pacific region cloudier and stormier, disrupting winter weather patterns along the West Coast and into the Arctic, researchers reported Monday.

Carried on prevailing winds, the industrial outpouring of dust, sulfur, carbon grit and trace metals from booming Asian economies is having an intercontinental cloud-seeding effect, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study is the first large-scale analysis to draw a link between Asian air pollution and the changing Pacific weather patterns.

"The pollution transported from Asia makes storms stronger and deeper and more energetic," said lead author Renyi Zhang at Texas A&M University. "It is a direct link from large-scale storm systems to [human-produced] pollution."

Satellite measurements reveal that high-altitude storm clouds over the northern Pacific have increased up to 50% over the last 20 years as new factories, vehicles and power plants in China and India spew growing amounts of microscopic pollutant particles into the air.
from the LA Times

Bolivia blames rich world pollution for floods

As poor people from Bolivia's Andes to its Amazon lowlands are battered by devastating floods, President Evo Morales is blaming pollution from wealthy nations, and some experts say he has a point.

The floods, droughts and hailstorms that have pounded South America's poorest country for three months were triggered by El Nino, a weather phenomenon believed to be aggravated by global warming, climate experts say.

Bolivia's worst flooding in 25 years has killed 35 people and affected 350,000, dissolving mud-brick homes and washing away the meager belongings of people who were already desperately poor.

Morales declared a national disaster this week after touring the hard-hit northeastern Beni region, in a drainage basin for rivers from all over the country.

He has blamed the floods on industrialized nations "that pollute the environment and change the weather."

Spencer Wear, author of The Discovery of Global Warming, said poor countries are more susceptible to the damage caused by climate change.

"Nobody can say (El Nino) is caused by global warming, but we can say for sure that global warming makes this kind of event more likely," Wear told Reuters.

from Reuters