Rising Acidity Threatens Oceans

The oceans have long buffered the effects of climate change by absorbing a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. But this benefit has a catch: as the gas dissolves, it makes seawater more acidic. Now an international panel of marine scientists says this acidity is accelerating so fast it threatens the survival of coral reefs, shellfish and the marine food web generally.

The panel, comprising 155 scientists from 26 countries and organized by the United Nations and other international groups, is not the first to point to growing ocean acidity as an environmental threat, but its blunt language and international credentials give its assessment unusual force. It called for “urgent action” to sharply reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

“Severe damages are imminent,” the group said Friday in a statement summing up its deliberations at a symposium in Monaco last October.

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The Hollygrove Market

Across from a baseball park and the Carrollton Boosters' home turf, a bare arc of slatted wood panels will soon be covered with foliage from pots of squash, mirlitons and fresh greens.

  But the edible welcome mat isn't ready yet. The vegetables haven't been planted. The panels aren't all screwed into the frame. The model vision for the Hollygrove Market & Farm's front door — and everything else on the property — won't be completed until late spring.

  The future farm, a collaborative effort with the New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN) and the Carrollton-Hollygrove Community Development Corporation (CHCDC), occupies the former Guillot's Nursery on Olive Street and will operate as a training ground for backyard gardeners in the Hollygrove neighborhood. The urban agriculture training program will provide 35 gardeners with four workshops for two growing seasons. For now, the farm operates as a weekly market hub for backyard growers, community gardeners, urban microfarmers and rural farmers to sell healthy and affordable food, previously a rare commodity in the neighborhood.

  "Hollygrove was an extreme food desert," says Alicia Vance, a community organizer with the NOFFN. Until the opening of Robert Fresh Market on the corner of South Claiborne and South Carrollton avenues, Hollygrove's closest food source came from as far as Orleans Avenue or Airline Highway. But the supermarket's opening didn't necessarily solve the problem of finding affordable food.

  "From a resident's point of view, it's unaffordable to most people, so it hasn't changed shopping behaviors," Vance says. "People don't feel like it's in their income level."

  In early 2007, the NOFFN saw Hollygrove as an ideal location for a Good Food Neighborhood program, a three-year model in which the neighborhood is saturated with programs, educational forums and conversation about food.

  "To have significantly increased access and desire for fresh foods, unless you know how to cook and can appreciate fresh foods — they don't have a place," Vance says. "So we started a conversation with residents, talked about mapping food access in the neighborhood: Where can you buy food? What sort of foods? What fresh foods are available? Part of the conversation is really about the food going from seed to table — what it takes to grow food, to process, get it to market, to purchase, cook and eat it."

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After Katrina, New Orleans is going green

The city known more for French Quarter trash than recycling or renewable energy is going green. In rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina, homes are being fitted with solar panels, organic farming is catching on and the city's got a new fleet of hybrid buses.

On the flanks of those buses, a catch phrase — Cleaner, Smarter — could be the anthem for the movement by institutions and individuals to slowly turn the city's environmentally-unfriendly image around.

Maybe the filthy water that flooded 80 percent of the city after the catastrophe in August 2005 made residents rethink the way to rebuild. Or maybe it's the tax credits or energy price spikes. Whatever the reason, the hurricane created a testing ground for ideas and initiatives.

Before Katrina, government officials rarely talked about renewable energy or "green building." Solar technology powered little more than parking meters. Environmentalists were shut out of Louisiana politics for decades.

Now, they see a watershed era taking shape.

For example, in the Lower 9th Ward, hit particularly hard by Katrina, some 20 energy-saving homes are using solar panels.

"I never knew nothing about solar panels until after the storm," said Mable Howard, an 80-year-old doll maker whose five-room home was flooded. The solar panels were donated and installed for free, and her electric bill has been cut at least in half during some months.

There is also renewed focus on restoring habitats that protected New Orleans from storm surge before the destruction of wetlands by the oil industry, timber companies and levee construction. Near the Lower 9th, for example, there are plans to plant hundreds of bald cypress in a bayou to help restore wetlands.

Urban organic farming also has gained momentum, new bicycle lanes are being planned and even the French Quarter is spiffier, thanks to an aggressive cleaning effort.

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Study Pinpoints Main Source of Asia’s Brown Cloud

South Asia has a cloud over its head — an unpleasant, unhealthy and climate-affecting soup of sooty haze that envelops the region, particularly in winter.

Scientists have studied what’s called the “brown cloud” for years, yet there has always been uncertainty about it. How much of the soot and other carbon-containing aerosols that make up the haze comes from the burning of fossil fuels in cars, power plants and the like, and how much comes from burning wood and other biomass for cooking and agriculture?

Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden and colleagues have now removed the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the brown cloud. Burning of biomass, they report in Science, is the greater culprit.

The researchers used carbon-14 dating of atmospheric soot sampled in early 2006 at Sinhagad in western India and Hanimaadhoo island in the Maldives. They made use of the fact that fossil fuels are millions of years old, and thus the carbon-14, a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 5,700 years, has decayed away. On the other hand, vegetation that is burned when fields are cleared, and wood and dung that are used for cooking, contain “young” carbon, with plenty of C-14.

They found that biomass combustion produced about two-thirds of the pollution, a much larger proportion than found in earlier studies that used different methodologies.

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Environment Blamed in Western Tree Deaths

Rising temperatures and the resulting drought are causing trees in the West to die at more than twice the pace they did a few decades ago, a new study has found.

The combination of temperature and drought has also reduced the ability of the forests to absorb carbon dioxide, which traps heat and thus contributes to global warming, the authors of the study said, and has made forests sparser and more susceptible to fires and pests.

The scientists, who analyzed tree census data collected in 1955 and in later years, found that the mortality of trees increased in 87 percent of the 76 forest plots studied. In some plots, the die-off rate doubled in as little as 17 years; in others, it doubled after 29 years, the study found.

“Summers are getting longer,” said Nathan L. Stephenson, of the United States Geological Survey, a leader of the study with Phillip van Mantgem, also of the geological survey. “Trees are under more drought stress.”

The study will appear in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

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Venice floodgate plan: boon or boondoggle?

As Venice prepares to host its famous carnival next month, the lagoon city's inhabitants have more than masked balls and black-tie parties on their minds.

The architectural gem known historically as La Serenissima – the Most Serene – is slowly slipping beneath the waves.

Rising sea levels and subsidence, resulting from decades of groundwater extraction for agriculture and industry on the Italian mainland, have caused Venice to sink 23 centimeters in the past century. Its Renaissance palaces, historic churches, and stone bridges are now menaced by floods more than 50 times a year.

Last month, the worst flooding in 22 years caused the lagoon to rise more than 5 feet above normal, forcing tourists to bunker down in hotels and shopkeepers to put up sandbag barricades. One wakeboarder streaked across the waters that swamped St. Mark's Square.

It also rekindled controversy over a multimillion-dollar scheme to save Venice's art and architecture. Known as Project Moses, it entails the construction of 78 giant steel gates across the three inlets through which water from the Adriatic flows into Venice's lagoon.

The hinged panels, 92-feet wide and 65-feet high, will be fixed to concrete bases being dug into the sea bed. When a dangerously high tide is predicted, compressed air will be pumped into the hollow panels, forcing them to rise on their hinges, forming a barrier to the waves.

Project Moses is both an allusion to Moses parting the waves of the Red Sea and a neat acronym for the project's name, Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico.

It was inaugurated by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2003 and is now expected to be operational in 2014.

But it has been dogged by political feuding, environmental concerns, accusations of political cronyism, and unease over its price tag: $4.5 billion, with estimated annual maintenance costs of $11.5 million.

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New I-5 bridge design includes wind turbines

Combine river, wind, eco-friendliness and smooth sailing across the Columbia River and what do you have? A new Interstate 5 bridge with wind turbines generating electricity.

You read that right: The latest bridge design features vertically spinning turbines that would generate an unknown amount of juice while proclaiming loudly that the Portland-Vancouver area is the sustainability center of the world.

Or so says the Florida firm that did the design, now winning the affections of leaders from both cities as well as planners trying to eliminate congestion by building a new $4 billion structure.

It's unknown how much energy the turbines would generate or how it would be used. The turbines might help power bridge lights and toll booths. Or they could be merely decorative icons of a green industry hereabouts --a problem for purists who say that's less than sustainable.

Either way, the concept has captured the imagination of local leaders scrutinizing the project and local architects pushing for a bridge that looks as good as it functions.

No one has figured out the cost, either, or potential payback on the energy generation. That comes later, if the project sails.

Oregon and Washington still must persuade Congress to help fund a mammoth construction effort that joins expanded roadway with light rail running to Vancouver. It could take years and exert real force in the way the region continues to develop, particularly north of Vancouver.

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Why Global Warming Portends a Food Crisis

It can be difficult in the middle of winter — especially if you live in the frigid Northeastern U.S., as I do — to remain convinced that global warming will be such a bad thing. Beyond the fact that people prefer warmth to cold, there's a reason the world's population is clustered in the Tropics and subtropics: warmer climates usually mean longer and richer growing seasons. So it's easy to imagine that on a warmer globe, the damage inflicted by more frequent and severe heat waves would be balanced by the agricultural benefits of warmer temperatures.

comforting thought, except for one thing: it's not true. A study published in the Jan. 9 issue of Science shows that far from compensating for the damages associated with climate change (heavier and more frequent storms, increasing desertification, sea-level rise), hotter temperatures will seriously diminish the world's ability to feed itself. David Battisti, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, and Rosamond Naylor, director of the Program for Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University, analyzed data from 23 climate models and found a more than 90% chance that by the end of the century, average growing-season temperatures would be hotter than the most extreme levels recorded in the past. (See the top 10 green stories of 2008.)

That means that barring a swift and sudden reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, by the end of the century an average July day will almost certainly be hotter than the hottest heat waves we experience now. And the extreme heat will wilt our crops. Battisti and Naylor looked at the effect that major heat waves have had on agriculture in the past — like the ruthless heat in Western Europe during the summer of 2003 — and found that crop yields have suffered deeply. In Italy, maize yields fell 36% in 2003, compared with the previous year, and in France they fell 30%. Similar effects were seen during a major heat wave in 1972, which decimated farms in the former Soviet Union, helping push grain prices to worryingly high levels. If those trends hold in the future, the researchers estimate that half the world's population could face a climate-induced food crisis by 2100. "I'm very concerned," says Naylor. "How are we going to feed a world of 8 or 9 billion with the effects of climate change?"

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Heightened fears for lowering lands

The Maldives' idyllic, pristine beaches and tropical reefs attract more than half a million tourists to the small Indian Ocean nation every year.

But an unavoidable catastrophe awaits the Muslim nation and its natural beauty: the threat of global climate change and rising sea levels.

An increase in sea levels of 58cm (22.8in), as projected by the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), could see most of the country's 1,192 islands submerged by next century and leaving many of its 369,000 citizens without a homeland.

But locals say the effects of global warming have begun to show already, with the phenomenon likely to damage significantly the nation's key industries - fisheries and tourism - not far into the future.

The atolls of the Maldives are protected by networks of coral reefs which act as a defence against natural phenomena including flooding, tidal surges and erosion.

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Natural selection gives way to human selection

Humans have become "superpredators," speeding up the evolution of the species they hunt and harvest at rates far above what is found in nature, according to new research, some of it conducted by Canadian biologists.

The researchers believe that many recently observed changes in species, ranging from the shrinkage in the horns of bighorn sheep in the Rockies to the reduction in the size of caribou in Scandinavia, are being driven by humans.

The biologists estimate that hunting has caused such characteristics as body size and reproductive age to change at a rate that is a staggering 300 per cent above the pace that would prevail in nature. This figure is even greater than the change attributed to other human interferences, such as pollution, which was estimated to alter species 50 per cent faster than what normally happens.

"The implications are pretty wide and profound," said Paul Paquet, a University of Calgary biologist who dubs humans "superpredators" for this outsized impact.

A paper outlining the findings was posted yesterday in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In it, Dr. Paquet and others argue that current hunting and harvesting practices are inadvertently causing dramatic changes in the behaviour and appearance of species. The reason: Humans tend to "high-grade" nature, taking out the biggest and best in a species.

The approach is clearest in trophy hunting, where animals with the biggest horns or bodies are killed, while inferior ones are left. But the practice also occurs in commercial fishing, where mesh openings in nets capture the biggest fish while smaller ones escape.

The human approach is the opposite to what happens in nature, where predators kill the easiest-to-catch animals, such as the young, the old and the sick, but are unable to take out the fittest adults, which then reproduce and pass their desirable characteristics on to future generations.

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A Bicycle Evangelist With the Wind Now at His Back

For years, Earl Blumenauer has been on a mission, and now his work is paying off. He can tell by the way some things are deteriorating around here.

“People are flying through stop signs on bikes,” Mr. Blumenauer said. “We are seeing in Portland bike congestion. You’ll see people biking across the river on a pedestrian bridge. They are just chock-a-block.”

Mr. Blumenauer, a passionate advocate of cycling as a remedy for everything from climate change to obesity, represents most of Portland in Congress, where he is the founder and proprietor of the 180 (plus or minus)-member Congressional Bicycle Caucus. Long regarded in some quarters as quixotic, the caucus has come into its own as hard times, climate concerns, gyrating gas prices and worries about fitness turn people away from their cars and toward their bikes.

“We have been flogging this bicycle thing for 20 years,” said Mr. Blumenauer, a Democrat. “All of a sudden it’s hot.”

But Mr. Blumenauer’s goals are larger than putting Americans on two wheels. He seeks to create what he calls a more sustainable society, including wiser use of energy, farming that improves the land rather than degrades it, an end to taxpayer subsidies for unwise development — and a transportation infrastructure that looks beyond the car.

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