Rising sea could swallow Mombasa in 20 years

Mombasa is known all over the world as a city of sun-kissed beaches and luxurious hotels packed with tourists having the time of their lives.

But in just 20 years, this world-renowned tourist haven may become an island of misery in which vast stretches of land are submerged in sea.

Salinity will make the water unfit for human consumption, it is feared, and local agriculture will collapse due to excess salts in the soil.

That is the grim projection of scientists who are now warning that authorities must take urgent steps to save the coastal city from collapsing under the weight of the effects of global warming.

“We are already seeing adverse climate change signals. Some hotels at the South Coast are building sea walls to deal with waves, something we have not seen before,” says Dr Samuel Mariga, assistant director in charge of climate change at the Kenya Meteorological Department. “All our models indicate that temperatures will continue going up and we must put in place adaptation and mitigation measures to deal with the problem.”

Dr Mariga’s views tally with those presented in a new book focusing on how cities can best cope with effects of changing climactic conditions.

The book, "Adapting Cities to Climate Change", highlights challenges facing Mombasa, Dhaka, Cotonou, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Durban.

It is edited by experts from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development and was released two weeks ago.

It warns that Mombasa, home to approximately 800,000 people, is especially vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels due to its low altitude, and high temperature and humidity.

more from the Daily Nation (Kenya)

Our flood risk high on big climate change map

MORE homes, schools and doctors surgeries are vulnerable to flooding in North Somerset than any other county in the South West.

The Environment Agency claims one in three properties in the authority could go under water as the climate change increases coastal erosion and river rises.

A map published by the agency highlights Weston General Hospital, 13 schools and the M5 junction 21 as among those at risk of flooding.

Also illustrated is a corridor between Milton Road and the A370 and villages such as St Georges, Wick St Lawrence, Congresbury and Kewstoke.

The shocking report comes accompanied with a call from the agency for spending on flooding defences in the South West to rise to £1billion by 2035. £377m has been spent so far since 2002, including the £29m seafront defences in Weston.

But North Somerset Council deputy leader councillor Elfan Ap Rees said no further flood management spending was planned after the work.

The former tourism chief pinpointed the low lands from Sand Bay to Clevedon as an area he was concerned about.

He said: "This obviously gives us some concern for the future.

"If severe flooding occurred it would be impossible for the local authority to handle without the help from outside agencies.

"The council needs to ask for more money from the Government and set up agreements with future developments for help with flood defences.

"This is something the local authority cannot simply afford on its own."

from the Weston Mercury (UK)

Riding a bike made of grass

It's light, it sucks carbon out of the air and you could compost it. What more would you want from your bike?

Move over Prius, the bamboo bike is the next hot thing for environmentalists.

"Picture a steel factory in the Midwest U.S. Now picture a place where we source organically grown bamboo in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico," says Jacob Castillo, co-founder of Panda Bicycles, a Colorado-based start-up set to begin producing bamboo bikes this fall.

"We can actually recycle all the materials used and bamboo is a rapidly growing grass. There's the carbon sequestering benefit as well."

Bamboo has long been used for scaffolding in construction sites in Asia. It is known for its strength and flexibility. And it grows like crazy – more than one metre a day, under optimal conditions.

All those things make it a perfect material for bikes, says Marty Odlin, founder of The Bamboo Bike Studio in New York City.

"It's very light and it absorbs all the vibrations of the road compared to an aluminum bike that is very clattery," says Odlin whose two-day workshops on building bamboo bicycles have a "waiting list a mile long. There's a lot of demand for this."

It is considered as strong as light steel. But unlike steel, bamboo is renewable. And it is relatively cheap. Odlin collects his from the side of the highways around New York. He hardens the fibres with flame treatment, glues the tubes together, and binds each joint, wrapping them in epoxy-soaked hemp that hardens.

A team, including Odlin, is working to open a manufacturing plant in Ghana to produce Africa's first locally made bicycles later this year. The sustainable development project, called The Bamboo Bike Project, aims to create cheap bikes to sell to locals and to create jobs.

"If you can make papier mâché, you can make a bamboo bike," says Odlin, who made his first on a living room floor with a cardboard stand.

Sound too good to be true? There is a hitch. The first commercially available bamboo bikes recently went on sale at actor Colin Firth's hip eco-store in London for thousands of dollars.

more from The Star (UK)

Sea change: Will the ocean reclaim Galveston Island in 100 years?

What will Galveston look like in 100 years? It’s a question researchers have been trying to answer.

Most people are drawn to Galveston’s beaches for the waves, the sand and the view.

Lynn Smith is one of those people.

“When we bought this house five years ago, we were the third house from the Gulf, and we were very comfortable with that,” Smith said.

But she’s not comfortable with how the ocean is chipping away at Galveston’s West End, one wave at a time.

Now she owns the second house from the water.

“I’m less comfortable with being the second house. I feel a lot more vulnerable,” she said.

Despite the seawall and the dunes, Mother Nature continues to crawl forward in Galveston, drawing new lines in the sand.

Homes that end up too close to the water have to be torn down.

But losing a few homes pales in comparison to what a Texas A&M researcher says could happen over the next 100 years.

Dr. David Yoskowitz believes that global warming is causing the sea level to rise.

In 100 years, he predicts the sea could rise 1.5 meters. If that happens, the only part of Galveston that would remain above the water is the area built up around the seawall.

Parts of Harris and Chambers counties would also be taken back by the sea, causing billions of dollars worth of damage.

“We focused just on buildings – both private and public buildings. We didn’t take into account roads, utility lines, sewer lines,” Yoskowitz said.

more from Texas Cable News

"Floating islands" to be launched today near Lower 9 to help restore bayou

Students with the University of Wisconsin in Madison and a maker of buoyant marsh mats are teaming up to launch two "floating islands" in an experiment to help restore the badly eroded Bayou Bienvenue near New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.

The floating islands will be launched Tuesday by the students and Floating Islands Inc., a Baton Rouge company.

The floating mats are 35 square feet in size and made from recycled plastic drinking bottles and marsh grasses. The mats will be anchored in the wetlands near the Lower 9th Ward.

The Wisconsin students are trying to restore 427 acres of Bayou Bienvenue.

from the Times Picayune

Climate impact report says 800,000 homes will be at risk of flooding

The threat to Britain posed by floods, heat waves and coastal erosion is far more serious than previously thought, according to a group of experts appointed by the Government.

Their report, to be published today, is expected to be the bleakest official assessment yet of the impact of climate change in Britain over the rest of this century.

It will say that the estimated number of homes at risk of flooding is likely to double to about 800,000 within 25 years because of rising sea levels. Average summer temperatures in the South of England will rise by 2C by the 2040s and up to 6.4C by 2080, it will warn, increasing the risk of skin cancers and insect-borne diseases.

Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, will respond to the warning from the UK Climate Impact Programme (UKCIP) by urging people and businesses to redouble efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Contingency measures will be announced to prevent hospitals becoming overwhelmed during prolonged periods of hot weather. Mr Benn is also likely to signal the urgent need to extend water metering and change agriculture practices as he lays out a “five-point” plan.

more from the Times (UK)

Recalibrating the human carbon footprint from wastewater

New evidence shows that “fossil carbon” derived from pharmaceuticals, food, personal care products, and more could be much more prevalent in the environment than previously thought and could skew current models of the global carbon cycle. These findings, published in ES&T (DOI 10.1021/es9004043) by David R. Griffith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and his colleagues at Yale University, are derived from carbon isotope dating of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). The researchers find that such petroleum waste products make up one-quarter of the DOC that gets dumped into an ecosystem from wastewater effluent.

Such a large number is new for modelers concerned with the carbon cycle, and it’s twice the amount reported in the National Research Council’s 2003 Oil in the Sea assessment. Some estimates assumed that carbon isotope signatures of wastewater would be closer to modern ratios, such as that of modern-day vegetation. But because the petroleum-derived carbon found in these household products is so old, its carbon-14 isotope fingerprint skews estimates of how long total carbon has resided in an ecosystem. For example, combining the age of fossil carbon with total carbon in the Hudson River basin makes that river system’s carbon signature appear to be about 440 years older than it would be without the wastewater input, Griffith and his colleagues calculate.

Carbon component measurements represent averages, says Mary Ann Moran, an ocean microbiologist at the University of Georgia Athens; many different components that come from various proportions of soil, leaves, or other sources could lead to the same average. The identification of fossil carbon in wastewater “threw a wrench” into older interpretations of the average, Moran adds. “It’s saying you can get very old carbon from a source we never thought of before, but that is very ubiquitous.” That discrepancy could possibly throw off models of global carbon cycles, particularly in the oceans, she says, though that remains to be tested.

Griffith and his colleagues estimate that the total petroleum-derived DOC from U.S. treated wastewaters amounts to about 100 million kilograms per year. They base their calculation on two assumptions: that most wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. use the same biologically activated sludge treatment and that the influent source is mainly from residential customers using similar products. However, they acknowledge that industrial effluent from a rubber tire manufacturer, for example, could have a much heavier petroleum carbon fingerprint.

Their measurements are based on northeastern rivers, for now. “What may be [an] interesting [factor] when we expand this out to the U.S. or the rest of the world is changes in human diet,” Griffith says. For example, in an area where the dietary staple is rice rather than corn, the carbon isotope ratio might be different.

more from EST

When nature gets a second chance

Nearly two decades ago, Steven Handel was asked to help breathe new life into a former landfill in Kearny, N.J. The barren tract – bounded by highways, salt marshes, and railroad yards – had been closed and covered for 20 years. But it was an ecological desert, supporting no birds or mammals and home to only two plant species, both of which were alien to northern New Jersey.

After studying the site, its history, and the native flora and fauna of the area, the Rutgers University professor and his team of graduate students began installing groups of native trees in hopes of creating a dynamic, healthy ecosystem on top of the old landfill.

The addition of soil and smaller plants came later. As time passed, researchers studied the changes at the site. Among their observations: Fruiting trees and shrubs attracted birds, which then dispersed seeds over the area. The original plantings matured, and the number of species on the site increased. It had once again become a viable ecosystem.

The Kearny experiment led to an even larger project at the former Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, N.Y. It also launched Dr. Handel on a succession of far-flung restoration projects, which, in turn, advanced the young discipline of urban restoration ecology.

Now, it’s a discipline whose time has come, Handel says. As the world becomes more urbanized, people have become increasingly estranged from nature.

A majority of Earth’s population now live in metropolitan areas, many of which contain ecologically depleted tracts that can’t support the plants, wildlife, and insects that provide what Handel calls “environmental services” – cleaning air and water, pollinating crops, cooling overheated cities, preventing erosion, and improving the quality of human life.

more from the CS Monitor

Urban Farming, a Bit Closer to the Sun

THIS summer, Tony Tomelden hopes to be making bloody marys at the Pug in Washington, D.C., with tomatoes and chilies grown above the bar, thanks to the city’s incentives for green roofs.

Mr. Tomelden, the Pug’s principal owner, says he’s planting a garden to take advantage of tax subsidies the city offers in his neighborhood if he covers his roof with plants.

“If I can do something in my corner for the environment, that seemed a reasonable thing to do,” he said. “Plus I can save money on the tomatoes.”

There won’t be bloody marys at P.S. 6 on New York’s Upper East Side, but one-third of its roof will be planted with vegetables and herbs next spring for the cafeteria. The school is using about $950,000 in city funds that it has put aside, and parents and alumni are providing almost a half-million dollars more.

“For the children, it’s exciting when you grow something edible,” said the school’s principal, Lauren Fontana.

Aeries are cropping up on America’s skylines, filled with the promise of juicy tomatoes, tiny Alpine strawberries and the heady perfume of basil and lavender. High above the noise and grime of urban streets, gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Some are simply finding the joys of backyard gardens several stories up, others are doing it for the environment and some because they know local food sells well.

City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat.

A survey by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, which represents companies that create green roofs, found the number of projects its members had worked on in the United States grew by more than 35 percent last year. In total, the green roofs installed last year cover 6 million to 10 million square feet, the group said.

Steven Peck, its president, said he had no figures for how many of the projects involved fruits and vegetables, but interest is growing. “When we had a session on urban agriculture,” he said of a meeting of the group in Atlanta last month, “it was standing room only.” Mr. Peck said the association is forming a committee on rooftop agriculture.

more from the NY Times

Natural disasters can destroy more than property

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, leaving many homeless and helpless. Now, a new study reveals the stress some of the victims endured may still be contributing to health problems.

Researchers at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic found there was a threefold increase in the rate of heart attacks treated at the hospital since the storm. In the two years before Katrina, the researchers found heart attacks accounted for 150 of the 21,229 patients admitted to the hospital. In the two years since the hospital re-opened in 2006, there were 246 heart attacks out of 11,282 patients.

The post-Katrina heart attack patients were also more likely to need surgery or artery-opening procedures and less likely to have jobs or medical insurance than the prehistoric patients. Many studies have documented increases in heart attacks after a major disaster, but researchers say this may be the first one to show that the increase can happen years later.

more from News 8 Austin

Influential global change model predicts greater warming

Results from the most comprehensive simulations to date of how the global climate is likely to change by 2100 were published online on May 5 in the Journal of Climate (DOI 10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1). Andrei Sokolov of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and his colleagues predict that the median global climate warming will be 5.2 °C by the end of the century. This is more than double previous predictions made with the same widely respected model.

The authors say that the model, MIT’s Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), incorporates the most comprehensive formal treatment of both emissions scenarios and scientific uncertainty compared to other similar models. For example, the IGSM features significantly more chemical and biological detail than the atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) influential Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007.

Since 2003, when its first projections predicting a median rise of 2.4 °C were published, the IGSM has been significantly modified. For example, the new version incorporates a full set of anthropogenic and natural climate factors to evaluate changes that can upset the earth’s atmospheric energy balance; these are called forcings. The newly added 20th-century volcanic-eruptions data play an important role. However, the authors say that the primary basis for the differences in the predictions relates to changes in the input parameters for the model’s earth systems and economic components.

Previously, the global greenhouse gas emissions scenarios were based solely on projections of growth in the gross domestic products of the world’s nations. The model now incorporates details such as estimates of total available fossil resources, particularly coal and shale, and the effects of technological changes, such as moves toward increasing energy efficiency.

The new research involved 400 runs of different model variations believed to have an equal probability of being correct, on the basis of present observations and knowledge. The modelers did not simulate the effects of policy changes in the model runs discussed in the paper.

The authors say that the greenhouse gas concentrations in their simulations are somewhat higher than the AOGCMs in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. This is mainly because the IGSM treats the terrestrial ecosystem differently and takes into account the increase in the natural CH4 and N2O emissions caused by surface warming, they say.

However, Sokolov stresses that the model’s projections “are conditional on the . . . input climate parameters.” For example, if the researchers use alternative data for 20th-century changes in the deep ocean’s heat content, the projected surface warming decreases to 4.1 °C, he points out.

more from EST

Neighbor, Can You Spare a Plum?

THE loquats were ripe and just begging to be picked.

But there was a problem. Although the tree was planted on private property, the loaded branches hung over the street.

Did that make the fruit public property?

In the end, with no one around to ask, Asiya Wadud decided the answer was yes. So she added them to a bag already heavy with Meyer lemons picked (with permission) from a yard a few blocks away. Then she headed off to check on some plum trees.

It was just another day of urban fruit foraging for Ms. Wadud, one of a growing number of people who looked around their cities, saw trees full of fruit and thought, “Delicious.”

A year and a half ago, Ms. Wadud, who studied urban sociology in college and bartended at Chez Panisse, began organizing a little neighborhood fruit exchange called Forage Oakland. She did it as much to build neighborhood relations as to get her hands on some of that fruit.

It works simply. A woman with a yard full of lemon trees, say, can share her bounty in exchange for a paper bag full of someone else’s persimmons when they come into season. So far, 200 people have signed up.

All over the country, the underground fruit economy is growing. At new Web sites like neighborhoodfruit.com and veggietrader.com, fruit seekers can find public mulberry patches in Pennsylvania and neighbors willing to trade blackberries in Oklahoma.

In Royal Oak, Mich., a woman investigated how to start a fruit exchange modeled after Fallen Fruit (fallenfruit.org), an arts group that designs maps of accessible fruit growing in Los Angeles neighborhoods.

In Alaska, cooks used Facebook to find willing donors of backyard rhubarb, the first dessert crop that grows after the long winter. In Columbia, S.C., university students pulled spare peaches from orchards and donated them to a local food bank.

Supporters of this movement hold two basic principles. One, it’s a shame to let fruit go to waste. And two, neighborhood fruit tastes best when it’s free.

“There have always been people harvesting fallen fruit,” Ms. Wadud said, “but there’s a whole new counterculture about gathering and eating public fruit. This tremendous resource is growing everywhere if people just start looking around.”

more from the NY Times