Climate Change

Total news: 15
Last news: June 28, 2007 12:05:37

Announcements from the U.S. Global Change Research Information Office

Total news: 15
Last news: May 18, 2007 06:34:33

Reports published by EEA (Theme: climate, Audience: all, Sorted on: publish date)

Total news: 61
Last news: June 14, 2007 14:00:00

A new study by United Nations University suggests climate change is making desertification [more] "the greatest environmental challenge of our times". They report that some 50 million people may be displaced within the next 10 years as a result of desertification [search], and that ultimately some one-third of the Planets population is threatened by expanding deserts. The process of desertification is the ultimate end result of most poor environmental stewardship, a synthesis of climate change and land clearing, that quite literally makes the Earth a burning hell. They are not making much new land, so just exactly where will the natural resources, food and water come from to care for an increasingly urban world. Hello?! Is anyone home? Is there anybody in there? How many more reports on looming environmental catastrophe can be ignored without major loss of life and a severe decline in the complexity and habitability of the Earth? Are we so into our ipods and Paris Hilton that we can not see the Earth is dying? Climate change, water scarcity, over-fished oceans and desertification; to say nothing of AIDs, terrorism, militarism and poverty; threaten our very being. Yours. Your childrens. It is essential that policy and strategy to fight global threats are integrative, and willing to propose and implement actions that are up to the task of reversing monumental adverse trends. Fifty million people, driven from their land, because we refuse to stop wantonly procreating and consuming. I am stunned, shocked, dismayed (and yes deeply hurt) to read dispassionate accounts of the ecological foundation of being dismantled tree by tree, SUV by SUV. We shall learn to live differently with the Earth or we shall not live at all. Please forgive the emotions as I mourn the looming end of being, Eden turned to dust, by igorance and vanity.

Climate change impacts both ecologically and socially appear to be going from 0 to 60 mph in 2 seconds. Dramatic news regarding ice melt in Greenland [more | search] as this huge ball of ice is starting to become lubricated from intra-ice melt water flows. There exist very large differences in estimates for how fast Greenland will melt and thus how quickly sea level will rise. Recent IPCC figure is 79 cm by end of century, but other recent studies have suggested that if the whole Greenland icecap was to melt that it would be more like a 7 meter (23 feet) surge! All my ecological observation and intuition indicates in my own life that the climate is changing perilously fast and chaotically, and reading of melting polar ice just strengthens conclusions based upon what I see around me. This week also saw talk of the "military aspects" of climate change [more], as the UK army was called to be ready to deal with challenges posed by failed states. While there have been frequent discussions of national security impacts, and we know the U.S. military has reported upon their concerns, this was the first news item that really addresses climate change as a military matter. So UK troops are going to take resources at the end of a gun? Hmm... not so new afterall. Are we really approaching a point where climate change induced scarcity will heighten military tensions and lead to various types of armed conflict? As a last note, Tony Blair moved on this week -- he has tried to get out from under Bushs dead-no willingness to negotiate on climate, to no avail; yet hope he stays involved in the issue. But on the up side, his friend Arnie of CA came to say good-bye!

Per-capita an individual American still far out-emits all

According to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Chinas emissions of carbon dioxide have exceeded those of the United States. The report released this week said that Chinas emissions for the year surpassed those of the U.S. by 8% [more]. Congratulations China on becoming the worlds greatest national greenhouse gas emitter! In total as a nation, you are now doing the most to kill the Earth through short-sited economic gain at the expense of the biosphere, something to be proud of indeed! Important honorable mentions however must go to all the worlds citizens, particularly in the over-developed world, that buy all the consumer "crap", much of which we do not really need, being made in China causing the pollution in the first place. We are witnessing the logical consequences of moving the worlds industrial base where labor is cheapest and environmental regulation lax. And it does not take a math genius to figure out that per person, with a much smaller population of people at ~ 300 million versus Chinas one billion plus, that Americans as individuals are still the champions in the category of carbon released per individual person. "700 million Chinese people live on less than $3 a day and on average their greenhouse gas impact last year was only a quarter that of an American, or half that of someone in Britain."

Neither the United States nor China must follow limits on greenhouse gas emissions set in the the 1997 Kyoto Protocol - the Americans out of obstruction, the Chinese out of feigned developing status. Both along with India, Brazil, Mexico and other emergent nations that though not rich, are causing a large enough proportion of the global problem, simply must take part in mandatory carbon cut targets. It is if global nececessity to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. A successor agreement to Kyoto -- perhaps called Kyoto 2 -- must swiftly be negotiated. Any agreement must include a much larger grouping of the worlds leading emitting countries as a nation, while still holding for much greater cuts by rich nations as a matter of equity and justice.

In yet another indication of the abrupt and serious warming occurring in the Arctic, researchers have found that Arctic spring has moved a month earlier in only a decade [more]. "Rising temperatures are causing snow to melt sooner than before, extending the summer period and dramatically disrupting the fragile ecosystem... They recorded a clear shift in the time of year plants came into flower, birds laid their first eggs and insects and other creatures emerged to forage for food." Such patterns in the timing of annual biological and ecological events are called phenology [search], and these dramatic changes in phenology in an extremely short period of time reinforces the fact that something dramatic, awry and scary is happening with the Arctics climate [search]. Changing phenology consistent with global heating is evident to a lesser extent around the world, as spring has generally advanced by 5.1 days a decade for animals and plants around the world, and 2.5 days a decade for European plants. In a geological or evolutionary time frame, these are amazinging dramatic and fast rates of change. And herewithin lies the greatest potential harm from human-induced climate change -- that ecosystems will simply be unable to respond fast or well enough to essentially completely different climate regimes. Clearly the Arctic regions dramatic changing seasonality and loss of sea ice is the canary in the heatwave as far as indicating humanity and the Earth have a serious global warming problem that must be addressed strongly now.

This report is the annual submission of the greenhouse gas inventory of the European Community to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It presents greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2005 by individual Member State and by economic sector. The report shows that between 2004 and 2005 emissions in the 15 pre-2004 Member States decreased by 35.2 million tonnes or 0.8% and total EU-27 emissions decreased by 0.7%. EU-15 emissions in 2005 were 2% below base year levels under the Kyoto Protocol and EU-27 emission were 7.9% below 1990 levels. - [Read more]

While trumpeting yet more rhetoric on climate change absent action goals and timetables as a victory, the G8 leaders have failed to reach agreement on immediate emission targets to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The G8 meeting [news search] failed to gain concensus on a mandatory 50 percent reduction in global emissions. The US and Russia remained isolated in their refusal to accept binding emission cuts; as Europe and Japan embraced goals of cutting greenhouse gases by 50% by 2050. The Bush administration has evaded mandatory emission cuts saying they will "seriously consider" setting reduction targets with the rest of the world at a later date. About the only immediate good news of any substance to come out of the G8 climate change meetings is a pledge for talks on a Kyoto successor. There appears at least rhetorically to be a renewed political mandate to start negotiating a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol during climate meetings in Bali in December. This is something that Ecological Internets network campaigned for in recent weeks, as 2709 people sent 637,868 protest emails to UNFCCC government focal points. I would very much love to be proven wrong, but Bushs recent pronouncements do not make him a friend of global climate. When climate science indicates 80-90% cuts in carbon dioxide and other GHG are required by 2050 to avert abrupt climate disaster, it is terrible that Bushs reengagement in international climate policy making seems limited to floating proposals to delay and further obstruct active measures with goals and timetables. World leaders are failing their citizens, countries and Earth by constantly dragging their feet on getting going with mandatory emission reduction targets.

A user pointed out this popular media account of a recent Science journal article that finds "the world is now on track to experience more catastrophic damages from climate change than in the worst-case scenario forecast by international experts". The research found that between 2000 and 2004 global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels increased by three times greater than in the 1990s. The person that forwarded this to me pointed out that "we are beyond A1F1 which with carbon feedbacks [search] means we on track for over +8 degrees C in warming... Over 5.5 degrees C, at this rate of global change, would by best guess be limit of survival for humanity... Coupled with the recent news on the Antarctic Ocean means that IPCC 4 is hopelessly out dated now." The accumulation of recent science beyond the pondering, politicalized IPCC process would seem to indicate that we have entered a period of abrupt, perhaps run-away climate change that will have severe consequences for the Earths future habitability. Most scientists are too cautious to make such predictions -- indeed the traditional scientific method seems ill-prepared to counter a once off planetary emergency that threatens the survival of existence. It is well past time for drastic measures if we are to have any chance of fighting global heating and winning. I am dismayed by the helter-skelter of schemes and projects that seek to profit from the situation without offering a vision of what must be done to survive. UPDATE: Here is more information [more2] on the finding that CO2 has been found to be rising three times faster than expected -- this is an indicator that climate change is on track to be abrupt [search] and perhaps runaway [search].

Fourth National Communication of the U.S. under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The review draft is open for public comment until noon, 1 June 2007 (extended from the original deadline of 18 May 2007). See also Federal Register notice of 4 May 2007.  (link updated 18 May 2007) - [Read more]

Report (submitted 3 May 2007) from the Office of Management and Budget. (link posted 17 May 2007) - [Read more]

Here is an excerpt and link to my recent personal Earth Meanders essay:

The Earth is entering a new phase in its human caused decline. We are witnessing the advance edge of bioregional and continental scale ecological collapse -- the final stage of environmental decline before global ecological collapse. For millennia human caused ecosystem loss and decline has destroyed plant communities and devastated landscapes, but generally the global matrix of terrestrial, oceanic, aquatic and atmospheric cycling of energy and nutrients continued relatively unabated. Until now, as the cumulative impact of poor land, water and ocean management, and a failing atmospheric system, is becoming widely evident. Humanity has become the dominant force of nature. We are witnessing the logical consequences of over-developing large regions and even continents without regards to ecology... we are witnessing the phenomena of environmental decline that is of unprecedented scale and intensity... As abrupt and run-away climate change, terrestrial ecosystem collapse, droughts, floods, lack of pollinators and a whole host of other environmental malignancies ripple through cosseted human civilizations; we are talking of widespread death and social disintegration... I believe we are talking of the end of being -- either the complete loss of advanced life including humans, or humanity reverting to barbarity... As the magnitude of ecological dysfunction increases the only sufficient response is for conservation to think bigger and more ambitiously... We need to build the political movement to do what is necessary based upon global ecological science to save the Earth, ourselves, and species with who we share existence.

TAKE ACTION: Given the science and evident abrupt climate changes, Kyoto successor agreement must be negotiated now that includes mandatory emissions reductions for all major emitting economies

More than 1,000 government delegates are now meeting in Bonn to try to break gridlock in international climate change negotiations amid widening public concern and widely evident global warming impacts. This is the first time government climate delegations have met since the U.N. sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a spate of reports this year, drawing on the studies of some 2,500 scientists, which predict grim consequences of global warming if swift action is not taken. These climate change policy-makers must be challenged to develop a strengthened Kyoto regime as soon as possible that transitions the world to low carbon societies. Current Bonn talks are preparing for a meeting of environment ministers in Bali, Indonesia, in December. It is essential formal negotiations are launched in Bali to widen and strengthen the U.N.s Kyoto Protocol as soon as possible. With the strengthened science, evident climate impacts now, and the rapidity of their advancement; negotiations must commence immediately, or at the latest in Bali in December, for a strengthened and expanded Kyoto system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This can not wait until 2012 when the present Kyoto protocol expires. As was done to successfully address the ozone hole under the Montreal Protocol, timetables must be advanced and mandatory participation in emission cuts expanded if the world is not to burn. TAKE ACTION

Agreement has just been reached by UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delegates, a grouping of climate science experts, regarding the best ways to mitigate climate change [more | news search]. Importantly, the main conclusion is that the world has what it takes to fight climate change and that such climate mitigation policies are affordable [more | more2]. This Working Group III Report "Mitigation of Climate Change" [official summary] is the third segment of a larger IPCC report. The first concluded global warming is almost certainly human caused and the second warned of the consequences already occurring and yet to come such as massive human death and disease, droughts, floods, and storms. The new climate mitigation [search] report proposes limiting concentrations of greenhouse gases to between 445 parts per million and (gulp!) 650 parts per million (we are at 380 now). China replaced the US as the primary obstructionist, fearing the lower end target would harm its booming economy, yet it appears scientific recommendations emerged largely unscathed by government representatives. Key recommendations for stopping the rise in carbon dioxide levels include not waiting for new technologies but proceeding with the tools and policies we have now. Available policies that it is suggested must be intensified include shifts away from coal, embracing energy efficiency, reducing deforestation, fuel taxes, strengthen Kyotos binding emission limits, and advances in solar and other renewable technologies. Climate Ark has been advocating these policies for years.There are concerns in the report as well -- an emphasis upon nuclear energy, biofuels and little mention of ancient forest logging. Yet, in balance it is refreshing the report focuses upon real ways to reduce emissions now rather than pie in the sky technology for later.

Men of courage such as Prince Charles have called for a rapid response to climate change akin to fighting WWII, George Monbiot continues to show through methodical research that dramatic emission cuts are the only way forward, and lesser men such as myself have pointed out the need for serious structural changes in how society is organized to fight climate change; including population controls, carbon taxes, a ban on coal, an end to ancient rainforest logging [alert] and rapid, ambitious renewable targets, if we and the Earth are to survive. Forget about geoengineering proposals including seeding the ocean with iron (plankton blooms = ocean dead zones), orbiting Earth mirrors to reflect radiation, and distant plans to filter and sequester carbon from coal and the atmosphere. Doing so will lead to severe negative and chaotic follow-on effects, and distracts from the obvious - climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions and it will only be successfully addressed by starting to dramatically reduce these emissions now. In addition to the Chinese and American governments, and the UN IPCC process; individuals such as Laurie David, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson and even Al Gore who sell easy, painless chimerical solutions are full of it. Climate change and the whole raft of attendant global ecological emergencies will only be solved through extreme personal sacrifice and learned voluntary simplicity, and major societal restructuring of economics, agriculture, transport and others. Those looking for easy answers that allow continued profligate energy consumption and living large are delaying the hard choices necessary to save being. Cimate change incrementalists do a disservice to truth and the Earth.

All of the predicted catastrophic consequences of climate change are happening already, though not yet ramped up to their full potential for death and destruction. We are already witnessing the worlds first climate change war in Darfur, Sudan [more | more2]; and the first continental scale emergency in Australias "big dry" drought. It has been suggested that the real root of the Darfur conflict is ferocious drought and famine that since mid-1980s transformed Sudan and the whole Horn of Africa, diminishing rainfall in northern Darfur by 40 percent and turning farmers and pastoralists into competitors for land and water. "Those who were prepared to kill, rape and pillage were drawn from the ranks of the desperate, ripped from their traditional way of life by a catastrophic change in the weather.. there is the very real prospect it [climate change] will lead to more conflicts like Darfur, as groups who have coexisted until now begin to feel a sense of urgency over the diminishing resources of water and land." Not even the developed world is immune to climate change havoc, as Australia undergoes one of the most intensive droughts [search] in its history. As major rivers run dry, freshwater stocks are so low that irrigation of the nations largest food growing area may be halted soon. What is clear in both instances is that climate change threatens core human needs. Even as we grapple as a species with learning to reduce our emissions and live in balance with Gaia, you might as well fasten your safety belt and expect continued "extreme water events".

New polls show the vast majority of Australians and Americans to be concerned with climate change. Bipartisan majorities of Americans (90% Democrats, 80% Independents and 60% Republicans) say "the heating of the earthÂ’s atmosphere is having serious effects on the environment now or will soon and think that it is necessary to take immediate steps to reduce its effects". And more than 90% of Australians believe "climate change is a vital issue" -- perhaps not surprising given the climate induced "big dry" drought [search] that is decimating the Australian continent and may be the first large scale planetary climate emergency. Yet the executive leadership in both countries continues to stonewall even modest Kyoto emission reduction goals, and the opposition parties offer tepid alternatives that are nowhere near as robust as necessary to solve the problem. For the planets atmosphere to continue operating we need an urgent and dramatic decarbonization of the economy [search] including dramatic emissions reductions of at least 80% asap; an end to coal power to be replaced by renewables such as solar, wind and local biofuels; a significant global carbon tax and well-regulated carbon market to clearly set a price on and reduce carbon emissions; and major efforts to increase energy conservation and efficiency. This as well as addressing underlying problems causing global heating including over-population, militarism and terrorism, lack of global equity and justice, and over-consumption by many as others starve. Change your light bulbs, drive a hybrid if you can, and take countless other personal actions to reduce you carbon footprint, but without these grander societal changes truly adequate to protect the biosphere and atmosphere in particular, the human family is toast.

In order to get on with major reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, within both a still functional biosphere and viable capitalistic system, the price of emitting carbon must be set -- and quickly and accurately. There are two primary methods of doing so - the establishment of carbon markets [search] and the levying of carbon taxes [search]. The conservative newspaper Financial Times favors carbon taxes, as does Ecological Internet within our Lincoln Plan carbon tax campaign, and today ran an interesting series of articles which essentially find a carbon tax to be easier and more effective in pricing carbon. A recent report likens the individual market in carbon credits to "Offsetting Indulgences for your Climate Sins". The Financial Times was equally skeptical, as their investigation of carbon credit trading concludes: "Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on carbon credit projects that yield few if any environmental benefits." They found some carbon reductions paid for in carbon offset schemes are never carried out, and others would have been made anyway. The European carbon market which has been in existence the longest and is most established has given out so many carbon credits that very little reductions in emissions were necessary by industry. Ecological Internet supports a global carbon market that is well regulated, but not as a replacement for carbon taxes, which we are convinced will address the issue of pricing carbon more quickly, effectively and simply. We concur that "while short-term politics favour markets, taxes would be better in the long term because industry needs certainty for investments... A government committing to painful taxes signals the seriousness of its intentions..."

Even as the Bush government continues its criminal climate change obstruction [search], yet another U.S. institution has entered the fray regarding the seriousness of dramatically reducing carbon emissions to mitigate against the worst possible impacts of sudden or abrupt climate change. This time is is eleven former high-ranking U.S. military and international security issue specialists warning that "climate change threatens to prolong the war on terrorism and foster political instability that some governments will be unable to cope with... it has the potential to create sustained natural and humanitarian disasters on a scale far beyond those we see today." In the United States this is likely to play itself out with severe fluctuations in water from drought to flooding. These are the sort of fighting words of apocalyptic warning that have gotten me in trouble for years in my personal writings. Through its disruption of ecological systems, economies and societies; climate change has the potential to gravely impact international security [search]. This is why on the spurring of the UK, climate change will shortly be taken up by the Security Council of the United Nation. People from Al Gore to Military personnel can see the threat to our very being, yet from 1990-2005 U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Up 16%. What a myopic, slovenly country that can know all the implications of inaction, studying them with weekly new reports of ever more detail and certainly, and yet fail so utterly to make the changes in energy sources, conservation and efficiency necessary to avert global crisis. Yet a nascent protest movement is emerging in the U.S. [more] that by taking to the streets just may be enough to stop the U.S. from hindering efforts to save the Planet.

Here is my latest missive from my personal essays entitled "Earth Meanders":

Climate change is the collapse of the global atmospheric systems processes and patterns and represents a massive environmental challenge to maintaining a habitable Earth. Yet climate is but one of several planetary scale ecological crises that threaten existence and are occurring now concurrently.

While climate change is so omnipresent that it interacts with and exacerbates virtually every other environmental crisis, it remains but one symptom of a much more malignant systematic breakdown in the global ecological system. Global heating could stop being a major issue tomorrow (it will not) and there are at least half a dozen ongoing ecological catastrophes that could still destroy the Earth and civilization such as it is.

It is critical in a post-natural ecological world that these global crises are understood to be connected and addressed holistically if there is to be even a sliver of hope of a human future... Global heating and all the attendant changes in ocean currents, atmospheric circulation and temperature and precipitation patterns may well kill us off by itself. But sadly, climate change is not the only or perhaps even the major global ecological issue threatening global ecological sustainability, sustainable development, equity, justice and international security. [entire essay].

Links to information related to the Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (posted 6 April 2007) - [Read more]

According to Article 21 of the Emissions Trading Directive Member States shall report annually on the application of the directive. The reporting obligation will allow the European Commission to continuously follow the implementation of the directive and provide information for the European Commissions review report under Article 30 of the directive. This is particularly important for the first set of reports. - [Read more]