Green Options » Climate Science and Research

New Report Shows that Climate Change “Literally Affects People in Their Backyards”

Ruedigar Matthes — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:58:18 +0000

It’s in the papers and on TV. It spreads across the Internet (including this very post), and it is finding its way into the classroom. Global climate change is nothing new. And it certainly isn’t going away. Not yet, anyway.

A report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” was put out on June 16, 2009. The report compiles years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes.

West Antarctica Soon to be under Full Observation

Joshua S Hill — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:16:20 +0000

Antarctica has always been the last frontier for scientists on Earth. It even parallels to space exploration, considering just how inhospitable its lands are. Windy, cold, and for half the year a perpetual night time are not conditions that make for a comfy science exploration.But nevertheless, scientists are hell-bent on getting to know the southernmost continent.

So, in this spirit, for the first time West Antarctica (or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)) is to be monitored, 24/7, 365 days a year, to witness the interaction between ice and the earth below. The mission, to be lead by a team from Ohio State University, has just been awarded $4.5 million by the National Science Foundation.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, saw Terry Wilson, leader of the mission entitled POLENET, explained how they would overcome the harsh conditions.

First off is to fly ski-equipped aircraft to remote locations across the WAIS, and plant the instruments – GPS trackers and seismic sensors – on the bedrock that cradles the WAIS. These instruments will send signals back to the United States via satellite, and work year round.

“We’ll be able to do systems-scale science in Antarctica. That wasn’t possible before,” said Wilson, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State. “This instrumentation is designed to run and record data year-round, through the dark polar night. Previous instrument deployments have largely operated only for a few months, or less, each year. This allows us to do new science.”

The first expeditions for POLENET began arriving in early December, and by the end of February 2008 the POLENET scientists plan to have 17 new GPS trackers installed across the WAIS, along with about 11 new seismic sensors. By 2010 the network will be complete, and will hopefully record data well in to 2012.

International Polar Year Newswire - Scientists to Monitor West Antarctica 24/7
Some Key Findings of the report are:

1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced. Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. (p. 13)

2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow. Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow. (p. 27)

3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase. Climate changes are already affecting water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and health. These impacts are different from region to region and will grow under projected climate change. (p. 41-106, 107-152)

4. Climate change will stress water resources. Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the potential impacts varies. Drought, related to reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and increased water loss from plants, is an important issue in many regions, especially in the West. Floods and water quality problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions. Declines in mountain snowpack are important in the West and Alaska where snowpack provides vital natural water storage. (p. 41, 129, 135, 139)

5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged. Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate. However, increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production. (p. 71)

6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge. Sea-level rise and storm surge place many U.S. coastal areas at increasing risk of erosion and flooding, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Pacific Islands, and parts of Alaska. Energy and transportation infrastructure and other property in coastal areas are very likely to be adversely affected. (p. 111, 139, 145, 149)

7. Threats to human health will increase. Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts. (p. 89)

8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses. Climate change will combine with pollution, population growth, overuse of resources, urbanization, and other social, economic, and environmental stresses to create larger impacts than from any of these factors alone. (p. 99)

9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems. There are a variety of thresholds in the climate system and ecosystems. These thresholds determine, for example, the presence of sea ice and permafrost, and the survival of species, from fish to insect pests, with implications for society. With further climate change, the crossing of additional thresholds is expected. (p. 76, 82, 115, 137, 142)

10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today. The amount and rate of future climate change depend primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles. Responses involve reducing emissions to limit future warming, and adapting to the changes that are unavoidable. (p. 25, 29)

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Saharan Dust Responsible for 2006 Hurricane Season?

Joshua S Hill — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:52:13 +0000

The hurricane seasons of 2005 and 2006 have posed a bit of a mystery to climatologists recently. After a whopping 15 hurricanes were forged out of the North Atlantic in 2005, including the devastating Katrina, only 5 hurricanes appeared a year later.

Most scientists will lay the blame for 2005’s record amount of hurricanes at the feet of a warming ocean. Heat from oceans increases the amount of hurricanes produced as well as their ferocity. So it seems only likely that a temporary cooling of the waters is the reason there were so few the following season.

Now, William Lau and Kyu-Myong Kim at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., have pointed to airborne Saharan dust that made its way out over the North Atlantic as the reason for this cooling.

The pair reported Dec. 8, 2007 in the American Geophysical Union’s Geophysical Research Letters that the westerly driven sands of the Sahara had probably ended up blocking the sunlight above the water, effectively dropping the temperature of the North Atlantic. This is the first time that quantitative evidence showing the role that dust plays in the North Atlantic, and dusts role in hurricane activities.

“Previous studies have looked at how hot, dry air associated with a Saharan dust outbreak affects an individual storm, but our study is the first to focus on dust’s radiative effect on sea surface temperatures, which may affect storms for the entire season. Nobody had suggested that link before,” Lau says.

To investigate the link between dust and sea surface temperatures, Lau and Kim calculated the cooling pattern that Saharan dust should produce on temperatures as a result of its sun blocking. They then compared the results to observed temperature patterns. Using data collected by the National Center for Environmental Prediction, the pair found out how much solar energy enters Earth’s atmosphere, and subsequently reaches Earth’s surface free of any interference, such as dust and clouds.

With the concentration of atmospheric dust as measured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard a NASA satellite, Lau and Kim went about calculating the level of heat that could penetrate the dust and reach the surface of the North Atlantic waters. All of these calculations were found to closely match the observable evidence, thus supporting a link between the Saharan dust and the cooling levels of the North Atlantic.

The pair also looked back as well, examining historical dust and sea surface temperature records, to see if there was a link. What they found only further confirmed their original findings, with cooler North Atlantic surface temperatures occurring in more dusty years.

“We’re not saying that El Nino does not have a substantial influence on sea surface temperatures, but rather that dust is an important factor that we cannot ignore anymore. The 2007 hurricane season appears to be another one in which forecasts for an above normal hurricane season have failed,” Lau says.

ENN - Saharan Dust Has Chilling Effect on North Atlantic
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Small Coalition of US Scientists Still Believe Global Warming Not Man-Made

Joshua S Hill — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:12:56 +0000

From the beginning of the second paragraph onwards, my very opinionated voice will disappear from this article. I do not want to put any emphasis or spin on what I’m going to write. These are facts and their opinions, and they are what they are - incontrovertible in and of themselves.

In a world that has all but determined global warming is our fault, there are a few hold outs. A small group of US scientists are among them, who point to large pools of data and evidence that do not support such a conclusion.

To these scientists, experts in their field, global warming is nothing but a natural phenomenon. The International Journal of Climatology, a publication of Britain’s Royal Meteorological Society, will soon see a paper written by these scientists. It will endeavor to portray what they believe to be the real story.

“The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, doesn’t show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming,” wrote lead author David Douglas, a climate expert from the University of Rochester, in New York (state). “The inescapable conclusion is that human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.”

According to another author of the paper, John Christi from the University of Alabama, satellite data “and independent balloon data agree that the atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface,” while greenhouse models “demand that atmospheric trend values be two to three times greater.”

The authors add that the data from their satellite observations “suggest that greenhouse models ignore negative feedback produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects” of human co2 emissions.

Fred Singer, third author of the paper and a climatologist at the University of Virginia, looks to the evidence to see that the global warming “trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep sea sediments and stalagmites . . . and published in hundreds of papers in peer reviewed journals.”

The authors of the paper admit that they do not know how these cyclical climate patterns take place, but suggest that they “are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on cloudiness, and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface and thus the climate.”

Singer also points to other evidence, further putting a murky haze over global warming. Between 1900 and 1940 temperatures rose, obviously well before humanity began to burn the large amounts of hydrocarbons that it does today. But then during the next 35 years these emissions decreased, as oil and coal use increased.

The paper sheds light on many of the uncertainties in the case for a man-made global warming. And the only way to effectively do this is to have based their conclusions in fact, exactly what they have done. Whether other scientists, more deeply ingrained in the man-made opinion, will knock them down is just reason to wait and see.

AP via PhysOrg - Small group of US experts insist global warming not man-made
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Arctic Ice in Battle for its Life

Joshua S Hill — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:17:19 +0000

You know, I really thought I was done with the ‘Arctic Ice’ stories. One would have thought that the entire world by now knew that it had not been a good year for the sea-ice up north. Record losses, the disappearance of the Northwest Passage for the first time in millennia; really not a good year at all!

But the Arctic is fighting back, even if it seems to be a losing battle.

Data from the NASA Earth Observatory has shown that the Arctic sea-ice has been re-freezing at a record pace. Over a ten day period in late October and early November, a new record was set with some 58,000 square miles of ice reforming per day.

Nevertheless, despite its best attempts, the sea-ice is still well below the median extent recorded over the past 25 years. In the summer of 1980 for example, the North Pole was covered by an ice-sheet that was comparable in size to the continental United States of America. This summer however, that same ice-sheet wouldn’t have covered the states west of the Mississippi.

Before we hit on what it is that has caused this turn of events, the NASA release has this to say about the ‘not so surprising’ regrowth of sea-ice;

The more ice that survives the summer melt, the less open water there is for new ice to grow. When summertime ice extent hits a record low, on the other hand, large areas of open water provide room for the ice to grow once temperatures cool off enough.

The images to the right (or left) show the extent of sea-ice on September the 16^th (bottom) and on November the 14^th (top). The yellow line encompasses the area in which there was at least 15 percent ice cover in at least half of the Novembers in the record (median sea ice extent).

As for what has caused it, let’s be really clear here;

IT IS NOT ALONE GLOBAL WARMING!

To say that the dangerously low amount of ice in the Arctic this year (and in previous years) was entirely the fault of human initiated global warming would be naïve and foolish. The real causes are many and various.

The fluctuations in the Arctic climate are among the hardest to diagnose for climatologists and scientists the world round. So to entirely blame global warming would be the height of ignorance. And while a catalyst might be laid at our feet for letting the earth degrade, a combination of cyclical patterns have increased the problems the Arctic is facing.

Consider that the ice-sheets of our planet have for a long time reflected much of the heat back in to space. Now we may have begun a process in which the ice decreased a little, and again, we may not have. But the problem is that with less ice, comes less reflectivity. Thus, the heat that was reflected goes in to the waters, warming them further, and diminishing the ice further. It is a cyclical problem that may or may not be our fault alone, or it may be a problem that has just crept up unluckily.

The Daily Green - Arctic Sea Ice Re-Freezing at Record Pace

Top Image Courtesy of wili_hybrid via Flickr
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Western Rockies under Climate Change attack

Joshua S Hill — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:06:51 +0000

Many of us have those geographical features that are, for all intents and purposes, our definition of home. For me personally, my ‘home’ is at the beach, and if I had the chance I’d be working down there in an instant. But it varies from person to person. My brother is more at home amongst hills and mountains than I’ve ever seen anyone, and my mum loves both mountains and ocean.

But unless I move to the center of Australia where Uluru sits, I live in a country that doesn’t necessarily have the bountiful plethora of geographical landmarks that some places do.

Take America, where I admit I would love to live. From the Grand Canyon to New England, the Rockies to California; it is a veritable geographical pleasure ground. And you ask most people who live there, or near similar landmarks worldwide, and these are the things that make home ‘home.’

All of this is just to bring your mind to the same place as mine and ask you, what would happen if those geographical features were at risk?

Messing with Probabilities, Impacts, Black Swans

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:43:08 +0000

How do you prepare for “high impact-low probability” events? That’s a phrase that crops up regularly in global warming research and insurance industry talk. It’s also one that’s given me increasing pause, especially since I’ve begun reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.”

Taleb’s argument is this: that it’s the low-probability, high-impact, random and unpredictable events that have shaped human history, rather than the events everyone “saw” coming (only in retrospect, typically).

Thinking about this, I realized the same argument applies to Earth’s history. How, after all, do we slice up 4.5 billion years of geological time? We use geologic periods whose boundaries are usually catastrophic — low-probability but high-impact — events.

For instance, the “Great Dying” between the Permian and Triassic ages around 250 million years ago, caused more species to die out than any other mass extinction event on Earth. One theory for its cause was a huge meteor impact — something that wasn’t predictable then, but might be today. Another hypothesis, though, suggests a sudden and massive release of clathrates, which are basically greenhouse gases stored in crystalline form under the floors of the oceans.

Now, consider the present day. There are still clathrates under the oceans and methane stored in permafrost. There are also tons of human-created carbon that has — until now — been safely stored away in the seas, soils, plants and trees. And there’s a body of scientific opinion that states we’re already in the midst of the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.

To all the uncertainties that already guide Earth’s path through time, we’re now deliberately throwing gasoline onto the fire in fhe form of ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions. In a recent study on “Florida and Climate Change,” Tufts University researchers Elizabeth A. Stanton and Frank Ackerman put it this way: we’re changing our deck of climate cards — already impossible to predict for each individual draw — by adding more cards that change the odds further.

That sounds to me like we’re making the “low probability-high impact” event even more probable. What do you think?
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

UK Energy Power to go Windy

Joshua S Hill — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:56:07 +0000

There is no doubt in many of your minds that I am a bit of a wind-power nut. I love to focus on it at any chance I get, but I’m sometimes held in check by a modicum of editorial power. Thankfully, when there is news like this, editorial power goes out the window in the face of a big story.

John Hutton, the British energy secretary, will this week announce plans to build offshore wind-farms that will generate almost half of the mother countries power requirements.

Britain has already been making steps towards increasing the amount of energy generated by wind-farms. Currently Great Britain’s power generation is focused in a range of coal, gas and nuclear stations, generating a total of 75 gigawatts (GW). Of that, only 0.5GW comes from wind-power.

But planning consents have already been given to increase that amount by 3GW, and the government has made it known that it would like to increase that further to 8GW.

Speaking at an energy conference in Berlin on Monday, Hutton will announce that he wants that target to be raised to 33GW by 2020. This number would, if consumption figures remain constant, mean wind would power every home in the UK.

His plan proposes that there will still be a need for fossil fuel stations to be built, on standby to fill in for windless days. However new research suggesting the linking of wind-farms may also make this necessity moot.

Britain has already seen the development of wind-farms pop up around its coasts, with test developments in 2001 and 2003. At the moment these farms are out of site well off the coast, but if Hutton’s plan follows then wind-farms would become a common site along the British coast.

Hutton has opened up the entire British continental shelf for development with few exceptions (for fishing and commercial shipping). The relatively shallow waters in the North Sea will also increase the probability of success, as developers will not have to deal with massive structural integrity bills needed for deep water construction.

Sadly, predictions of public outcry are already surfacing due to the possibility of wind-farms being within site of the coast. At heights that reach 850ft into the sky, and dotted along the entire coast, this would be an obvious issue. However one hopes that the human skepticism and ignorance, and the fossil fuel companies, will keep their mouths shut!

Already about to overtake Denmark in terms of offshore wind-farm energy production next year, Maria McCaffery, chief executive of the British Wind Energy Association, believes that this expansion could put the UK’s offshore market at twice the size of any other nations by 2015.

So if you are a Brit reading this article, or know of one, make some noise! I’ve personally never understood the problem with wind turbines, as they seem somewhat elegant. Add to that their purpose, and it seems a no-brainer to me. So let us hope that after environmental assessment, this plan will push past any naïve public opposition.

The Sunday Times - Giant offshore wind farms to supply half of UK power

Image © Elsam A/S - make sure you click on the image for a bigger look! It’s majestic!
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Save the Amazon, Save the World

Joshua S Hill — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:39:54 +0000

Just as to ‘Save the Cheerleader’ was to ‘Save the World’, so we too must save the Amazon Rainforest, or risk letting our planet slide further in to a global warming epidemic. And I say ‘risk’ because the Amazon is simply too large and complex to rely fully on what research we have. But the question as always remains; do we do nothing, and risk everything? Or do we do something, and risk nothing?

A new report released by the World Wide Fund (WWF) For Nature based on several recent new studies, points towards the danger of letting the Amazon Rainforest die.

“The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe’s climate cannot be underplayed,” said Daniel Nepstad, author of the report. “It’s not only essential for cooling the world’s temperature, but also such a large source of fresh water that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that, it’s a massive store of carbon.”

The Amazon Rainforest measures 1.6 million square miles (4 million square kilometers), and it crosses over 9 nations, including covering nearly 60% of Brazil. Though largely unexplored we do know that it contains one fifth of the world’s freshwater supply and about 30 percent of the world’s plant and animal species.

But, possibly more valuably, is the fact a forest the size of the Amazon is a terrific carbon sink.

UN Climate Panel to Tackle Greenland Next

Joshua S Hill — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:06:17 +0000

The award winning UN Climate Panel that took home this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (along with Al Gore) hopes to look towards the mysteries of Greenland. After three successive overall reports, released in 1995, 2001 and 2007, the panel may look towards more specific research targets.

One of these is the effect a thaw of the Greenland ice-sheet could have upon the world.

Dutch scientist Bert Metz, a senior member of the panel, said that the risks of an accelerated ice-melt in Greenland were among the unsolved issues in the most recent report. “There are still questions about the behavior of the big ice sheets, like Greenland, and the consequences of sea level rise,” he told Reuters.

One of the major issues that have recently been brought to scientist’s attention is the risk of great chunks of the Greenland ice-sheet falling in to the ocean. This poses problems unlooked for, compared to a slow melt of surface ice.

Recent research conducted in Antarctica has shown the terrible effects caused by global warming. Instead of a runoff in to the ocean the ice-melt acts like droplets of acid on paper; they work their way down through the ice-sheet and pool beneath it. This not only degrades the integrity of the sheet, but provides lubrication. The end result, as witnessed on the Antarctic Peninsula recently, is a massive break off of ice in to the surrounding waters.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel is currently awaiting the OK from their governments, for funding for new research projects. “There are voices that say we should postpone a global overview a bit and in the meantime do more focused special reports,” said Metz, who will be one of the 25 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize awarded on December the 10^th.

The reports conducted by the IPCC believes that sea-levels will rise between 18 and 59 centimeters (7-23 inches) this century alone, but they do not take into consideration an accelerated Greenland melt, nor a melt of large areas of Antarctica, which is much less likely.

A few years ago “we thought a thaw of Greenland might happen but it would take thousands and thousands of years — ‘this chunk of ice will melt gradually from the outside’,” Metz said. “But now the latest information is that there may be different mechanisms, of water going down into crevasses and acting as a lubricant” beneath large areas of ice, he said.

The main risk, even greater than an unexpected rise of sea levels, is the effect such an event could have on the Gulf Stream.

At the end of the last ice-age when the North American Laurentide ice sheet retreated northwards, it left behind a great pool of freshwater. This inland ocean was the formation for the Great Lakes, but not until a great majority of the water spilled out in to the North Atlantic. The influx of freshwater stopped the Gulf Stream, which caused a brief cold period for Europe known primarily as the Younger Dryas.

The threat at hand today is that an influx of low-salinity water from chunks of ice off the Greenland ice-sheet could once again cause problems for the Gulf Stream. This could create a pocket-cooling across Europe, while the rest of the planet warms.

The latest IPCC report states that such a shutdown of the Gulf Stream is “very unlikely” but that the risks beyond that eventuality cannot be confidently reckoned.

Reuters via ENN - Greenland ice could be next puzzle for U.N. panel

Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Multiply Your Wind-Farms like you would your Hamsters

Joshua S Hill — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 18:54:19 +0000

The continuing quest for cleaner power has finally brought humanity to kneel before Mother Nature, pleading for some help. We have damaged her planet so effectively, and now we are asking for her good favor in return. We’ve turned to the sun, the waves and also the wind.

And it is winds that many believe will be our salvation.

A recent study by Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson, published in the November issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, has presented a new way to use wind power.

One of the criticisms that has been directed at wind farms is the sporadic nature of their energy generation. One farm’s power generation capabilities are entirely dependent upon there being wind, 24/7; obviously, this is unlikely.

However, the study posits that if the wind farms were linked their chances of continual power generation would increase, allowing wind power to be a baseload power generator. Baseload power is the amount of steady and reliable electric power that is constantly being produced, typically by power plants, regardless of electricity demand.

“This study implies that, if interconnected wind is used on a large scale, a third or more of its energy can be used for reliable electric power, and the remaining intermittent portion can be used for transportation, allowing wind to solve energy, climate and air pollution problems simultaneously,” said Archer, the study’s lead author and a consulting assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and research associate in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution.

There is an analogy that is both unyieldingly cute, as well as perfect in its descriptive abilities.

Consider your power generation needs hinged upon a giant hamster you keep in your backyard. He must run around on his treadmill to provide you with power to watch television, surf the net or reheat leftovers. But the poor guy has to sleep at some point, and eat at others. So when he isn’t running, you don’t have any power.

But consider that you have a bunch of hamsters, each on different sleeping and eating schedules, and each with a treadmill connected to your power generation. Your chances of continual power generation increase with each additional hamster that is added. And because all are linked together, even if one is asleep at the wheel (sorry) then there’s a pretty good chance at least one of the others will still be running.

This analogy is the perfect explanation for how the study views connected wind farms.

“The idea is that, while wind speed could be calm at a given location, it could be gusty at others. By linking these locations together we can smooth out the differences and substantially improve the overall performance,” Archer said.

There is another advantage by linking together wind farms, and that’s the actual transmission of energy. Instead of having multiple wind farms, all providing power long distances, you would have one central point from which the energy is distributed, just like creeks and streams depositing in to one river, instead of all hoping to carve out their bit of countryside to reach the ocean.

Another type of cost saving also results when the power combines to flow in a single transmission line. Explains Archer: Suppose a power company wanted to bring power from several independent farms—each with a maximum capacity of, say, 1,500 kilowatts (kW)—from the Midwest to California. Each farm would need a short transmission line of 1,500 kW brought to a common point in the Midwest. Then a larger transmission line would be needed between the common point and California—typically with a total capacity of 1,500 kW multiplied by the number of independent farms connected.
However, with geographically dispersed farms, it is unlikely that they would simultaneously be experiencing strong enough winds to each produce their 1,500 kW maximum output at the same time. Thus, the capacity of the long-distance transmission line could be reduced significantly with only a small loss in overall delivered power.
“Due to the high cost of long-distance transmission, a 20 percent reduction in transmission capacity with little delivered-power loss would notably reduce the cost of wind energy,” added Archer, who calculated the decrease in delivered power to be only about 1.6 percent.

Archer believes that if countries started implementing such a design, from a master plan, the long term costs would decrease, and it would heighten market penetration. Already the most inexpensive clean and renewable energy source, wind power would eventually have a marked difference on a solution to global warming.

So the only question is, what’s stopping you?

Excerpts courtesy of Stanford University via PhysOrg - Study finds that linked wind farms can result in reliable power
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

More Storms and More Dry Thanks to Expanding Tropics

Joshua S Hill — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:19:16 +0000

Climate science is really one of those things that I’ve developed quite an attachment to. If I ever manage to get back in to university, it will definitely be high on my priority list. But for the moment, I have the enviable joy of reporting about it. And this one really sprung to mind as interesting.Apparently, according to recent research, our tropical belt is expanding.Most of you are well aware that our tropical belt is the giant swath of our planet, between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. However for climatologists, the tropical belt is determined by long standing weather patterns and atmospheric data.

Now the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer won’t be moving anytime soon, but scientists have found that the tropical belt according to its climate has expanded. According to meteorological studies conducted by independent teams, it’s been found that the tropical belt has expanded anywhere between 2 and 4.8 degrees of latitude. That equates to a total expansion of between 140 and 330 miles.

The issue that arises as a result of this is twofold.

Tropical conditions are, by and large, wet. That is what we think of when the word tropic is thrown around, and that is pretty much what the locals of tropical locations think too. However, right next to those tropical locations are the subtropical locations.

This is what has always confused me among many. The Tropic of Capricorn cuts Australia in half, and for those who know anything about Australia, they are well aware that the center of Australia is desert. The same can be said for the South of North America, which is not exactly teeming with rainforests.

So with the tropical belt expanding north and south, the fear is that the subtropic conditions will also follow. The dry subtropical bands could eventually include heavily populated locations, including the Mediterranean, the U.S. Southwest, northern Mexico, southern Australia, southern Africa and parts of South America.

For those in the middle latitudes though, like most U.S., European and Asian residents, the changes could affect the storm patterns. These storm patterns are what annually direct the weather patterns, and a shift could definitely mix matters up.

Reuters via ENN - Expanding tropics could spur storms: studyAP via PhysOrg - Earth’s Tropics Belt Expands
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License

Is Indonesia to Shrink due to Climate Change?

Joshua S Hill — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 22:02:46 +0000

Much of the environmental news at the moment is focusing on the Bali summit. Well, I’ve reported on that summit for much of the lead up, and I’m altogether sick of it. So I shall be leaving that to other hands. In the meantime, I shall endeavor to raise those stories that would otherwise be washed away.

And, in a shameless segue, being washed away is exactly what I want to discuss.

There’s been mention over the past month of those nations that will be most affected by the changing climate. Of those likely to be worst affected soon, the pacific countries and state islands that are being swamped are at the top of the list.

Indonesia is already feeling the affects of rising sea levels which are not necessarily proven to be as a direct result of the warming temperatures. Nevertheless, the need to act is no less prevalent, because the catalyst is different. Just last week tides burst through sea walls in Jakarta, cutting off a main road to the international airport.

“Island states are very vulnerable to sea level rise and very vulnerable to storms. Indonesia … is particularly vulnerable,” Nicholas Stern, author of an acclaimed report on climate change, said on a visit to Jakarta earlier this year.

Alarmists take these warnings provided by scientists just that step further, and add dates to catastrophic events. They predict that by 2035 the Indonesian international airport will be flooded by sea water and thus useless; and by 2080 the tide will be crashing down upon Jakarta’s presidential palace, 10 kilometers inland.

Stepping away from the doomsayers, the experts are still predicting that Java, an island that accounts for more than half of Indonesia’s 226 million people, would be worst hit. Three of the islands biggest cities would be swamped by rising tides, driving people further inland, or to a different island entirely.

Setting aside the travesty of letting an island sink underneath the waves if it could have been saved, the sheer humanitarian need that would arise is beyond measurement.

“Tens of millions of people would have to move out of their homes. There is no way this will happen without conflict,” Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said recently.”The cost would be very high. Imagine, it’s not just about building better infrastructure, but we’d have to relocate people and change the way people live,” added Witoelar.

So with time seemingly running out, the Indonesian government has set about attempting to identify all the islands that make up the country of Indonesia. Across the 5,000 km – the equivalent of going from Ireland to Iran – country, islands that aren’t even named could soon be wiped off the map altogether.

And this will also have an effect on the gross national product of the country as well. According to Armi Susandi, a meteorologist at the Bandung Institute of Technology, disappearing islands will take with it access to vital mineral resources.

With 42 million people in Indonesia living in areas less than 10 meters above the average sea level, this is still a problem that cannot be resolved simply by talking.

Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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Climate Change Could Leave Florida Hotter, Smaller

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 20:19:38 +0000

You’ve got to hand it to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Even though he’s cut from the same political cloth as fellow Republican Sonny Perdue, Georgia’s governor, Crist is doing a lot more than praying when it comes to dealing with climate change.

Still, you could understand if Crist and his fellow 18 million-or-so Floridians — myself included — felt the need to throw a few extra appeals heavenward last week. That’s when Tufts University released a new report that — for residents of the Sunshine State — reads like a horror story, with them as the main characters.

“Florida and Climate Change: The Costs of Inaction” sketches out two alternative scenarios for what Florida will look like at mid-century and century’s end. One potential future — the better one — comes if we all take action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2050, and by three-fourths by 2100. The other one — the now infamous “business-as-usual” case — leaves Florida far hotter, smaller and poorer than today.

By rapidly stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions globally, Florida could manage to escape with an average temperature increase of only 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit and a sea-level rise of only 7.1 inches. Keep doing what we’re doing, though, and the Sunshine State takes a big hit of both heat and water: an average temperature increase of 9.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and a sea-level increase of 45.3 inches.

At that rate, some 4,700 square miles — about 9 percent of the state’s land area — would be under water by 2060, according to the Tufts study. That includes 99.6 percent of the state’s southwestern-most county and the Keys, and 70 percent of Miami-Dade County. Areas that would be inundated are now home to 1.5 million people, as well as to two nuclear reactors, 68 hospitals, 74 airports, 341 hazardous-material cleanup sites and 19,684 historic structures.

Oh, and if you think Florida’s hot and muggy now, consider this: “Miami will become several degrees hotter than today’s Bangkok (probably the world’s hottest, most humid major city at present), and daily highs in many Florida cities will exceed 90 degrees nearly two-thirds of the year.”

Of course, among the areas to go under first will be some of the state’s greatest natural attractions: its sandy beaches, the Everglades and the Keys. The resulting financial hit to tourism is likely to total $40 billion by mid-century, and $167 billion by century’s end.

“To reject a potential 10ºF increase in temperature and 3 feet or more in sea-level rise this century, Floridians — and residents of other U.S. states and of other nations — must commit to beginning in the very near future to take steps to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions,” write the report’s authors, Elizabeth A. Stanton and Frank Ackerman. “The only other available option is to place a very risky bet — that somehow, despite the most current scientific knowledge, business-as-usual emissions will not trigger a climate catastrophe. If we gamble and lose, we and our children cannot walk away from the consequences.”

For all the scary stuff in the Tufts reports, the document also features one of the most elegantly clear explanations for why we can’t assume uncertainties in today’s climate predictions mean we might be able to escape global warming unscathed.

Imagine, Stanton and Ackerman say, that predicting future climate is like drawing cards from a standard 52-card deck. While you can’t say with certainty what number you’ll draw, over time, the average number will approach seven (if you count aces as ones and face cards as 11, 12 and 13). If the dealer takes out all the six, seven and eight cards, your average draw will still be seven over time — but the odds of you picking a very low or a very high number have just increased. And if the dealer adds extra face cards instead of removing the sixes, sevens and eights, the average number you’ll draw over time will be higher than seven.

The authors then conclude the analogy with their kicker:

“Climate change is like drawing a card from a changing deck,” they write. “There is no way of predicting the next card you will draw from a well-shuffled deck. But the message of climate science is that the deck of climate possibilities is changing in disturbing directions, both toward more variability and more extreme outcomes, and toward worsening averages. The same logic applies in reverse: reducing greenhouse gas emissions will not guarantee better weather next year, but it will ensure that in the future we and our descendents will be able to draw from a better deck.”
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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Climate Change to Drive Trees Northward

Joshua S Hill — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:02:12 +0000

Over the past two years in my role as an editorial and journalistic reporter, I’ve become more and more interested in earth’s millennia long history. The theories of evolution, ice-ages, periods of warming and continental shift have all opened up to me as they never did in high school (probably because I went to a Christian school in the late 90’s).

Of all that I’ve learnt, I have found a particular attachment to the Northern Hemisphere. Its formational changes at the hands of glacial plates, sliding south then north again; the mass-extinction of the North American mega-fauna; and the ever shifting landscapes have compelled me to know more, as my own countries history never has.

So I find myself once again drawn to the news that a new study predicts an evolutionary relocation for 130 North American tree species.

The study has been conducted by Daniel W. McKenney along with his colleagues at the Canadian Forest Service. His study was based upon extensive data-gathering, and as a result was more comprehensive than previous studies. Data collection effort’s extended into Canada as well as focusing on the United States.

McKenney found that if the trees responded to climate change by dropping their seeds towards more favorable locations northward – away from warming areas closer to the equator – ranges of the tree species studied would move northward by some 700 kilometers. Sadly, they would also decrease by an average of 12%, with some species increasing and others decreasing.

Conversely, if the species were unable to disperse to areas healthier for them, the range shift was 320 kilometers, but the reduction was “drastic” at a 58% drop. The authors of the study though believe that most species will fall somewhere between these two extremes.

As part of the study the team used heat and moisture – two important gradients for plants – as climate measures. Two scenarios were modeled, one assuming that CO2 levels would decrease, and one predicting that they would increase. Both scenarios were investigated with three well-known models of Earth’s climate, and all produced broadly similar results.

The authors noted that their study focused only on a sample of the 700 tree-species in North America. They suggest that under a climate change, new species may sprout and colonize in the southern part of the continent, ranging from the tropical conditions.

So as Americans worry about the continued droughts being suffered down south, is anyone really looking at what is happening north?

American Institute of Biological Sciences via PhysOrg - Climate change predicted to drive trees northward
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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Have Eco-Anxiety? You Probably Do, But There’s Hope

Max Lindberg — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 13:20:29 +0000

More and more people are showing up at their therapists these days with signs of what is called eco-anxiety, or fear concerning environmental issues. Santa Fe, NM therapist Melissa Pickett says this unrest has been growing in the last two years, and may be the tip of the iceberg.

Michael d’Estries wrote about Melissa in May, and I had the occasion to interview her recently about this issue, and the field of eco-psychology. You can hear the interview at The Lindberg Report.

Melissa spent several years in the corporate world as a banking executive and trainer for a marketing firm. In an effort to sharpen her people skills, she went back to school and earned a Masters Degree in Counseling. Finding the field personally rewarding, she shifted her business emphasis from organizational development to private counseling.

Melissa has been in practice since 2000, and is President of Soulways Center for Conscious Evolution. The first signs of eco-anxiety emerged in sessions with her clients on a large scale within the past two years, and it appears to be growing. Her work has led to interviews on Canadian television, in TIME Magazine’s online edition, and publications in Spain and Brazil.

What is eco-anxiety? How do we know if we have it, and what can we do to ease the discomfort? My podcast interview with Melissa is HERE…
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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Cooking Oil Powers Jet Plane

Max Lindberg — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:28:49 +0000

They loaded up the fuel tanks with fresh canola oil refined to biodiesel, started the engines, and the 1968 L-29 Czechoslovakian jet, nicknamed BioJet 1, soared into the sky from a Reno, NV airport. It’s the first recorded time that a jet plane used biodiesel as a fuel.

It was a three minute flight, revving the engines to 98 percent of capacity, but certainly enough to be a nonissue in climb performance and time to attain altitude.

The jet was acquired from the Ukrainian military and is one of the few planes capable of using biodiesel. It has a built-in fuel warming system that keeps biodiesel fluid at colder temperatures.

Doug Rodante, president of Green Flight International said a 20 percent blend of biodiesel and normal jet fuel would work perfectly well in other jet aircraft without modifications. That would mean fewer emissions of carbon dioxide by as much a 50 percent.

Tests are continuing at Green Flight and the jet has been grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration for until proved safe to fly long distances. Once done, Rodante plans to fly the jet from Reno, Nev to Orlando, FL in eight stops. After that, he hopes to fly a similarly fueled plane around the world.
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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The Air in Your Home May be a Toxic Dump

Max Lindberg — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:20:12 +0000

Going outside for a breath of fresh air never meant more than it does today, according to an article in our hometown paper, The Arizona Daily Star. While the article is geared for the Tucson area, the implications are that indoors is a dirtier place to be than outdoors.

Homes, according to the article, are toxic hotspots, up to 100 or 1000 times greater than stepping outdoors into the polluted air we’re trying to clean up. Dangerous chemicals are in the rugs we walk on, toys, clothes, water bottles, walls, cabinets and even the stuff we clean them with and the spray we use to eliminate those pesky bugs.

The Arizona Daily Star investigation claims that household chemicals are linked to cancer and other diseases, but there’s still disagreement on their safety.

Toxic mold is present almost everywhere, and Arizona is considered a hotspot for mold in homes.

Dryclean your clothes? There’s a cancer-causing solvent used by an estimated 85 percent of dry cleaners. It cleans your clothes, but what else does it do?

According to Charles Weschler of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, there are chemicals in our indoor air that didn’t exist 50 years ago. They’re used for killing cockroaches, making cleaning products smell better, reduce the risk of fire and make plastics perform better, to name a few.

Conventional poisons including asbestos, organic chemicals, carbon monoxide, lead, formaldehyde and radon were the big concerns at that time. Indoor levels of most of these have declined since the 1970’s.

Endocrine disruptor’s or environmental estrogens now join the older list of chemicals. You’ll find them in metal food cans, food, toys, cosmetics and plastic bottles to name a few. The risks of long term exposure can lead to a myriad of physical and mental disorders.

The article is worth a serious read, I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg. Makes me want to get a tent and live in the yard.
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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Looks Good on Paper: Study Says Emissions Cuts Don’t Have to Harm Economy

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:23:10 +0000

Once again, another report has come out showing that — with the right actions — we could see a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next couple of decades. Once again, the news raises the same question as previous reports: will we ever see enough political will to make the possible become reality?

This week, the management consulting firm McKinsey and Company released a report, “Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?,” showing how the U.S. could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by as much as half by 2030 … without wreaking havoc on the economy or placing faith on pie-in-the-sky technological fixes.

There’s a caveat, of course: “Achieving these reductions at the lowest cost to the economy, however, will require strong, coordinated, economy-wide action that begins in the near future.”

What kind of action? The report’s authors looked at more than 250 ways to reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, analyzing the potential costs and impacts of each. These included everything from improving the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, building more nuclear power plants and generating more wind and solar energy to putting more energy-efficient, lightweight fleet vehicles on the road and, eventually, developing more ways to capture and store carbon emissions.

The report sets out three scenarios for future emissions: a low-range case in which we make only incremental changes from “business as usual” (for annual emissions reductions of 1.3 gigatons by 2030); a mid-range case that would require concerted action across the economy (for reductions of 3 gigatons); and a high-range case that would need “urgent national mobilization” (4.5 gigatons).

For comparison’s sake, as of 2005, the U.S. put out about 7.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions each year. Those emissions are expected to rise by 35 percent to 9.7 gigatons by 2030.

“The high-range case suggests an extremely ambitious effort across all sectors of the economy and parts of the country,” the report states. “Increasing the nuclear generation fleet by 50 percent net of retirements, building 80 gigawatts of (carbon capture and storage)-equipped generation capacity, and expanding biofuels to 67 billion gallons (reaching 30 percent of the forecast gasoline pool) could each be considered challenging goals. Achieving an entire set of such ambitious goals is thus unlikely without widespread and sustained national commitment.”

“Few of these opportunities can be realized without the right policy incentives, and many of them could slip away if we don’t grab them soon,” said Peter Goldmark, director of the climate and air program at Environmental Defense, one of the sponsors of the report. Other sponsors included DTE Energy, Honeywell, National Grid, the Natural Resources Defense Council, PG&E and Shell.

That’s the rub, of course. The goals look great on paper, but will they ever see the real light of day?
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

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It’s Not Easy to Fool Mother Nature

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:04:36 +0000

If you remember the ’70s, you also remember Chiffon Margarine teaching us that “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Today, though, we’re learning a new lesson: “It’s not as easy to fool Mother Nature as some presumptuous humans might think.”

Take, for example, one of the hot new technology fixes being proposed for global warming: ocean fertilization. The idea is to seed the oceans with iron or other nutrients to encourage naturally occurring algae to go into photosynthetic overdrive. Algae absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and, in theory, dump it safely away deep underwater when they die. More algae = less carbon = global warming, solved.

Except that Mother Nature and real life might not work that way. A new study just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that, when natural algal blooms are at their peak during the summertime, less carbon — not more — actually sinks below the surface than during other times of the year.

Researchers from Stanford University and Oregon State University set out to test how effective ocean fertilization might be by measuring seasonal variations in both natural algae abundance and carbon sinking rates. Using specially designed mathematical algorithms to conduct this first-ever analysis, they ended up an unexpected result: when algae is at its peak, carbon sinking is at its lowest.

“This discovery is very surprising,” said Michael Lutz, a lead author of the study. It also indicates ocean fertilization schemes might not work as well as presumed, he said, “because they ignore the natural processes revealed by this research.”

So why does less carbon sink when more algae blooms? The reason appears to be that algal blooms are like “ringing the marine ecosystem dinner bell,” Lutz said. Everything from microbes on up move in to eat the abundant algae while it’s fresh, leaving less to die a natural death and sink to the bottom with its carbon.

The finding “makes sense if you consider how this ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss,” Lutz said. “Our study highlights the need to understand natural ecosystem processes, especially in a world where change is occurring so rapidly.”

The discovery is especially timely, considering ocean fertilization is one of the topics on the agenda for next month’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali. Maybe attendees should take a cue from the London Convention, which earlier this month warned that ocean fertilization experiments “are currently not justified.”

So what do you think? Is ocean fertilization still worth investigating? Or is it, as Law of the Sea expert Rosemary Rayfuse put it, “dumping”? I think she makes a strong case when she says, “There is no point trying to ameliorate the effects of climate change by destroying the oceans — the very cradle of life on earth. Simply doing more and bigger of that which has already been demonstrated to be ineffective and potentially more harmful than good is counter-intuitive at best.”
Some Key Findings of the report are:

Watch Video Coverage of the presentation of the report on youtube.

Photo Credit: bbum via flickr under Creative Commons License

Photo 2 Credit: Dimit®i via flickr under Creative Commons License