environment India: animals biodiversity climate refugees endangered species timescale
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 8: The Song Is You
The Deccan Chronicle (India) notices climatogenic changes in bird migration patterns:
Kochi: It was a tradition in Kerala to wait for the vitthum kaikottum (seed and spade) call of the Indian cuckoo, which was the indication for farmers to begin sowing operations as the rains would not be long in coming. But that was then. Today, new species of birds have descended on the state, some never sighted here before. And climate change is said to be the reason. “The Aquila type of eagle, not historically reported in Kerala, is now commonly found.
These are commonly found in the very dry areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab and have migrated to Kerala. The sparrow type wheatear or buntings noticed in the dry areas of central and north-western parts of the country have also been spotted across Kerala in the last few years,” says professor at the College of Forestry of Kerala Agriculture University, P.O. Nameer.
This is a new phenomenon and the presence of these birds is an indication that they are equally comfortable in the southern tip of the country as in northern parts which were their original homeland.
Ornithologist R. Sugathan says these are indications of global warming. “Birds do not migrate or come for fun. When a moist deciduous forest changes into deciduous, shedding its moist tag, a new set of birds and animals takes the place of the old. This is obvious in the changing pattern of migration of birds to Kerala. Some of them are now found going to places in neighbouring Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in search of food and breeding grounds.”
Anthropocentric thinking takes a hit. Sent April 26:
News coverage understandably tends to focus on the human face of climate change. Whether it’s an island nation anticipating its own disappearance beneath rising sea levels, or a farming culture grappling with increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather, there is no shortage of people confronting the grim realities of global warming.
But our own species isn’t the only one affected. At all levels of scale, from microscopic plankton to giant sequoias, the great web of Earthly life is being torn and disrupted by the consequences of industrial civilization’s two-century carbon binge. When hitherto unfamiliar bird species come visiting, it’s as much an indicator of climate change as melting glaciers or drought-cracked farmlands. While the arrival of the Aquila eagle or the Stonechat may be a brief boon for birdwatchers, it is an ominous sign of things to come. It’s not only humans who’re becoming climate refugees as the greenhouse effect intensifies.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: coal Solar sustainability timescale
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 7: There Went The Sun
The Portland Tribune talks about coal. It’s bad stuff:
My greenhouse is covered with a thin plastic film. A few molecules of plastic are all it takes to make it 30 degrees Fahrenheit warmer inside than out.
When coal, gasoline and natural gas are burned, they produce carbon dioxide that traps heat just like the plastic film of my greenhouse.
Green plants recycle carbon dioxide, but they can’t keep up with the amount that we put out. Two hundred years ago, atmospheric CO2 levels were 280 parts-per-million; now they’re more than 395 ppm. Every year globally, we burn 9 billion tons of fossil fuels. None of this is disputed.
The debate is about whether there are any consequences. Six years ago, the consensus among climate scientists was that man was accelerating climate change by burning fossil fuels.
The Earth’s climate has always changed, but never as fast as now. The change we are experiencing is a response to the coal and oil we burned 50 to 100 years ago. Our average temperature has risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the pre-Industrial Age. Sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion.
The scientific consensus is that a rise of 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit would be bad, but survivable. Even if we stopped burning carbon today, scientists forecast that we would blow past this mark just from what we’ve done during the past 50 years.
Each year that we continue our reliance on fossil fuels will add $500 billion to the cost of mitigation. Warmer oceans produce stronger storms, so New York is planning to build a seawall. The Clark County (Wash.) Health Department is planning for refugees coming from the hot southern states by 2030. The forecast is for the oceans and the Willamette River to rise 2 feet by 2050.
It’s all solar. The only difference is how long it’s been sitting around. April 25:
If humans are to make the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, we need to transform the way we think about oil and coal. For too long we’ve considered them an easily-extracted source of cheap energy (just dig a hole!), while ignoring all their costly externalities (health effects, oil wars, environmental pollution, climate change). This faulty accounting has to change, of course.
But something else needs to find its way into our thinking. Fossil fuels are the remnants of the ancient sunlight which shone on the dinosaurs; when we carelessly idle our cars we are burning solar energy that is hundreds of millions of years old. Just as we are outraged when ancient cave paintings are despoiled, so should we be repelled by the profligate destruction of one of our oldest planetary inheritances in the name of convenience. We’ll do far better if we harvest sunlight when it’s fresh.
Warren Senders
Year 4, Month 5, Day 6: The Earth is Sharp. What?
A young man named Jonathan Kamel writes in the Daily Northwestern, advocating a carbon tax:
Recently, I have been thinking about the state of our country and how to make it more secure. We are not on a path for sustainable growth in our economic, fiscal or environmental sectors. As The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argued in his most recent column, we need to invest in the future of the United States through infrastructure improvement, education and national security measures. Yet the federal government remains handcuffed to achieve these efforts due to the state of the economy and the national deficit.
In honor of Earth Week, I am suggesting a “green” solution to our nation’s current financial problems. Ladies and gentleman, it’s time for a carbon tax. This flat rate would tax all carbon emissions from industries ranging from oil to manufacturing. I am not the first person to proclaim a carbon tax as a solution to current environmental and fiscal problems, but it’s an idea worth talking about.
I will not get into the specifics of how high or low a carbon tax should be set — that is for the economists to figure out. According to Friedman, a carbon tax has the potential to generate $1 trillion over 10 years based on current consumption of gasoline and electricity. Besides the economic incentives of a tax on carbon, this initiative would lower U.S. reliance on foreign oil by making gas more expensive, encourage industries to cut greenhouse gas emissions and fuel an emerging alternative energy industry that has struggled to compete with coal and natural gas.
It’s a start. April 24:
Self-styled fiscal conservatives are fond of arguing that policies to address the burgeoning climate crisis are too costly at a time when America is struggling under a burden of debt. This contention fails for multiple reasons. First is the simple fact that climate change is happening right now, and it’s impacting individuals, families, businesses, and whole sectors of our economy in powerful and unpredictable ways. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing, and the longer we wait, the worse the problem is going to get.
Furthermore, while all those unfunded wars and tax cuts indeed increased our deficit, a far graver debt is owed to the natural environmental systems upon which all life depends. We have treated our planetary natural resources as if they were infinite, squandering them like college freshmen with a new credit card. Now the bill is coming due in the form of accelerating global warming, and it’s time to stop the runaway spending of our environmental capital.
A carbon tax alone won’t reverse the damage we’ve caused — but it’s an essential part of the ecologically responsible economy we need if our civilization is to survive and prosper in the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
Year 4, Month 5, Day 5: Just Enough
The LaCrosse Tribune (WI) notes the city’s realistic approach to climate change:
Most of the climate debate occurs at national and global levels. But local officials aren’t ignoring the phenomenon.
La Crosse is working with climate scientists to develop ways to better prepare for more extreme weather and other effects attributed to climate change.
The city also hosted last year a climate change workshop for city and county officials sponsored by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.
The primary focus was to build consensus about pragmatic adaptations authorities can make to changing weather.
“That sends up, I think, a message for municipalities: You need to be prepared for this kind of thing,” said Dick Swantz, La Crosse’s new Common Council president and a member of the city’s sustainability committee who attended the conference.
To that end, the city plans to add more green spaces on the South Side to help handle runoff from major rain storms.
The city is receiving more frequent major rainfalls, assistant city engineer Bernie Lenz said, taxing an infrastructure of pipes meant to divert the water out of the city.
Good. April 23:
Realistic approaches to the deepening problem of climate change have to work on more than one level. Whether it’s changing our lightbulbs or shifting our entire economy towards sustainability, no single act or program will defuse the crisis. Individual actions are easy to initiate and continue, but can only have negligible effects in a world with seven billion people. Global actions, on the other hand, demand overcoming extraordinary levels of political inertia, not to mention the dedicated opposition of the fossil-fuel industry, which fights tooth and nail against any moves to renewable energy.
This is why urban initiatives like La Crosse’s are absolutely crucial. Cities offer the possibility of meaningful and immediate collective responses to the runaway greenhouse effect’s devastating consequences — and as humanity overcomes its reflexive denial of the hard facts about our CO2 emissions and their effect on the planet, we are going to need to work together if our species is to survive and prosper in the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists Republican obstructionism sociopaths sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 4: Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries
The San Angelo Standard-Times runs a column by one Bonnie Erbe, purporting to offer good news:
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Finally, there’s some good news on reducing climate change, which is great news as far as I’m concerned.
I’m a climate skeptic. It’s not that I’m skeptical about the existence of climate change, but I’m extremely skeptical about mankind’s collective willingness to do anything about it in a timely manner.
Late last year, the Global Carbon Project issued a report showing global emissions of carbon dioxide rose to record levels in 2011 and were on track to rise even higher in 2012. Carbon dioxide is produced most often by the burning of coal, the largest global source of energy used to generate electricity.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes glaciers and ice sheets to melt and warming oceans to expand. But a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Scripps Institution for Oceanography, and Climate Central shows that by limiting four other pollutants that might be easier to control, scientists can make significant progress toward stemming rising sea levels.
For a host of reasons, international policy makers have been unable to agree on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas created by human activity. The new study shows that by limiting emissions of four substances — methane, soot, refrigerants and gases that lead to the formation of ground-level ozone — progress could still be made, possibly even more quickly.
Ignoring the elephant in the room, as always. April 22:
As the planetary greenhouse effect accelerates, making catastrophic climate change all but inevitable, any good news is welcome. Certainly, regulating and reducing our emissions of four other pollutants can help slow our headlong rush to disaster, although this cannot be a substitute for the real work of eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy — ultimately the only approach to a meaningful and lasting solution to the climate crisis.
But it’s disingenuous to assert that there is a “host of reasons” for the world community’s failure to make this happen. Ultimately, there is only one reason: money. Big oil and coal corporations reap huge profits from processing and selling the fossilized solar energy of the Carboniferous Era, but they can’t make similar margins from sunlight when it’s fresh. The sums involved are staggeringly huge; buying a few politicians or a few governments is cost-effective for these corporate malefactors, if it can delay a global shift to renewables for even a few more years.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture denialists sustainability wine
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 3: When You Gonna Let Me Get Sober?
The Riverside Press-Enterprise (CA) talks about climate change’s effect on winemakers in the area:
Grape growing in the Temecula Valley Wine Country and other prime wine-producing regions of California would wither by mid-century if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated and farmers don’t make significant adjustments to their crops, say the authors of a new climate change study.
Under a worst-case scenario, the area suitable for wine production in the Temecula region would shrink by more than half by 2050, according to the work by Conservation International and Environmental Defense Fund, which looked at the impacts of climate change on wine production and conservation. The loss would be smaller if international agreements were reached to reduce emissions, researchers said.
“Certainly in the lowlands it looks like there’s plenty of declining suitability,” said study co-author Patrick Roehrdanz, a researcher at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. “We don’t use the word disappear, but you have to do something to compensate for decline in precipitation.”
Under state projections, temperatures around the Temecula wine country would increase about 2 degrees by 2050 under the lowest emission levels. The average temperature in the area was 62.6 degrees in 1975; by 2050, it is expected to be 67.2 degrees, according to the Cal-Adapt website.
And those projections are the conservative ones. April 21:
As California winemakers assess the impact of climate change on their grapes, they can feel comforted that conservative politicians and media figures believe the greenhouse effect is a liberal hoax. These prominent denialists also believe that decades of careful scientific research on the world’s climate are irrelevant, since scientists are only interested in money. By viewing the climate crisis through ideological lenses, they’ve made it impossible to discuss science without a political slant — and the consequences are going to be devastating to agriculture in America and the world.
The undisputed facts of global warming have been part of climate science for decades, but denialists have steadily hindered and delayed action for the basest of motives: short-term greed. Their radical refusal address the consequences of our greenhouse emissions is now bearing fruit, and as Temecula Valley vintners are coming to realize, it’s going to be a bitter vintage indeed.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists economics idiots Republican obstructionism sustainability
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 2: Crips And Dips
The York County Journal-Tribune (ME) talks about Earth Day and climate change:
Climate change is the focus of Earth Day 2013, a movement that is now in its 43rd year, and it’s a timely theme for anyone who cares about the environment in which we live.
For years, this phenomenon was labeled as “global warming,” but it’s much more complex than just increased temperatures. It’s true that Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and it’s projected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next 100 years.
It’s also well-documented by scientific evidence that human beings – particularly our burning of fossil fuels – are the main contributor to this, since greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Global warming, however, is only part of bigger picture of climate change. The extra heat, in turn, causes long-term changes in rainfall that lead to floods, droughts or intense rain; as well as more frequent and severe heat waves, according to the EPA. As well, the EPA notes that oceans are warming and ice caps melting, raising sea levels and changing the nature of the ocean in which so many creatures live.
It’s easy to laugh off “global warming” when you’re shivering in subzero temperatures during a Maine winter, but we have to keep in mind that it’s the big picture over many years, not the day-to-day temperatures, that reveal the warming trend. And this phenomenon is no laughing matter, as it will affect all of our lives through its impact on our health, agriculture, air and water quality, electrical power and transportation.
Political action is necessary to combat climate change, since the biggest problems cannot be addressed by individuals alone. It’s great for each of us to do our own part – by recycling, cleaning up litter on our beaches and parks, conserving energy, planting a tree, and limiting our contribution to pollution – but while those efforts certainly add up to make a difference, they’re small potatoes in the face of major contributors such as the coal burning power industries.
It’s no small task to convince political leaders around the world that we must take significant action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The energy industries are powerful and have significant amounts of money to lobby for their cause rather than for the cause of the environment, which is why the world is so delayed in responding to this threat. As well, some politicians can’t even be convinced that climate change is happening, or believe it’s just the natural course of the environment, despite the solid evidence that it’s a man-made and dangerous phenomenon.
Just reinforcing their sentiments here; these are just ii-V-I licks I’ve strung together. April 20:
Meaningful responses to the threat of climate change have to happen in multiple ways, and on multiple levels. All of us have to be activists and educators — mobilizing our fellow citizens to put pressure on the political establishment, while making it clear to everyone that the science of global heating is absolutely unambiguous. On the individual level, we’ve got to change our lightbulbs and scrutinize our buying habits to eliminate waste — and on the national level, we’ve got to fight against the largest and most powerful corporate lobby in existence.
Major energy corporations are the biggest source of funding for many American politicians, a state of affairs that has hindered the formation of a robust national policy on climate change. Transforming the entrenched thinking of our leadership and the economic models that they exemplify is far more challenging than installing an energy-efficient water heater or composting our lawn clippings.
The coming century could be the saddest story ever told, the farewell of a species doomed by destructive ignorance and hubris. Or it could be the greatest story ever told — a tale of knowledge, conscience, cooperation and progress. The choice is ours.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: infrastructure preparations rising sea levels
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Year 4, Month 5, Day 1: Suck On This
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, on preparations currently underway:
In August, Tropical Storm Isaac flooded neighborhood roads in central and western Palm Beach County, dumping a historic 15 inches of rain in a few hours. In November, Hurricane Sandy washed out a portion of State Road A1A in Fort Lauderdale.
South Florida transportation planners think these examples are the beginning of the impact that rising sea levels, strong storm surges and flooding are going to have on the region’s transportation infrastructure.
“It’s going to happen more often,” said Roger Del Rio, a project coordinator with the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization.
To prepare, they’re urgently moving to see which roads, highways, railroads and other parts of the transportation system are vulnerable to climate change. And for the first time, they’re looking at factoring in climate change when determining future transportation projects.
It’s being done as part of a $642,000 tri-county pilot project with some of the funding coming from a $300,000 federal grant.
The collaborative effort includes Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward transportation planners, the Florida Department of Transportation and the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which runs Tri-Rail.
But you know that Rick Scott is going to pull the plug on this, because Freedom. April 19:
When it comes to our own homes and our own neighborhoods, climate change has become a lot less abstract. For decades we have sustained the comforting thought that the impacts of the accelerating greenhouse effect will only be felt by future generations — that melting Arctic ice is too far away to affect our lives directly. This illusion is crumbling now under a factual onslaught, and regions throughout America and the world are waking up to the fact that planning for a climate-changed future is simply sensible policy.
It should be clear even to the stubbornest denialist: if you know it’s going to be a dry year in the Colorado pine forests, prepare your firefighting equipment. If you know disease-carrying tropical insects will be moving North into your state, prepare your public health infrastructure. If you know a drought is coming, you prepare your irrigation systems. And, of course, if you know rising seas are going to cover your highways, you strengthen your infrastructure accordingly.
Only to the ideologically-driven mind of the movement conservative could such obvious common sense be in any way controversial.
Warren Senders
Education environment Politics: Arctic biodiversity heroes scientific method timescale
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 30: Sink or Swim
The Japan Times introduces us to a polar explorer and total mensch:
RESOLUTE, NUNAVUT – Spending six months of every year in the Arctic, adventurer Tetsuhide Yamazaki sees the impact of global warming firsthand through the region’s thinning sea ice, the expanse of which has roughly halved in the last three decades.
The ice is “very thin this year,” Yamazaki, 45, said after confirming a thickness of 118 cm with a drill during his recent exploration of an area at the North Pole. Sea ice in the area is usually almost 2 meters thick, according to Yamazaki, who senses the ice grows thinner every year.
Born in October 1967 in Hyogo Prefecture and raised in a coastal town in Fukui Prefecture, Yamazaki decided to become an explorer when he was in high school in Kyoto after reading a book by well-known adventurer Naomi Uemura, who climbed Mount McKinley solo in 1970. The explorer was lost on the mountain in February 1984.
After graduating, Yamazaki worked in Tokyo to save funds for his first trip at age 19 — rafting the Amazon. But it ended in failure after his boat capsized. The following year, Yamazaki successfully rafted some 5,000 km down the river in over a span of 44 days.
This February, he camped on an ice floe in the Arctic at a latitude of 74 degrees north. The temperature was minus 41 degrees, and the inside of his tent was covered with frost that formed from moisture released from his body. The dogs drawing his sled were around the tent.
There’s a hero for you. April 18:
While a scientist can observe its impact very clearly in the Arctic, global climate change is no longer something only specialists can detect, but a phenomenon which affects us all, regardless of where we live. The interconnected web of Earthly life is far more sensitive to environmental factors than most of us can imagine, and climatic disruption is making itself felt in ways that will only become more severe as the greenhouse effect intensifies.
When flowers open a fortnight early, the insects that fertilize them may still be in their larval stages. When plants fail to spread their seeds, animals that depend on them for nourishment may have to seek food elsewhere. When agriculture reels under the impact of extreme weather or devastating drought, food prices go up.
For years we have thought of climate change as something that belongs to future times and distant places. Dr. Tetsuhide Yamazaki’s observations confirm: the consequences of industrial civilization’s fossil-fuel consumption belong to us all. There is no time left to waste, and no place left to hide.
Warren Senders
environment India Politics: corporate irresponsibility economics sustainability
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Year 4, Month 4, Day 29: Truth Alone Prevails?
The Hindu (India) lets us know that Bharat Mata is stepping up to the plate:
Stating that India had launched itself to double the renewable energy capacity to 55000 MW by 2017, Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh on Wednseday expressed serious concern over the “painfully slow” progress of climate change talks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday lamented that the goal of stabilising global temperatures at acceptable levels was nowhere in sight.
Delivering the inaugural address at the Fourth Clean Energy Ministerial, Dr. Singh said India had drawn up plans to double its renewable energy capacity to 55,000 MW by 2017 as part initiatives to promote renewable energy use. “It is proposed to double the renewable energy capacity in our country from 25000 MW in 2012 to 55000 MW by the year 2017. This would include exploiting non-conventional energy sources such as solar, wind power and energy from biomass,” he added.
The Prime Minister said rich nations, who were responsible for a bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, were best placed to provide workable solutions to mitigate climate change. “The industrialised nations have high per capita incomes, which gives them the highest capacity to bear the burden. They are technically most advanced, and to that extent best placed to provide workable solutions not only for themselves but for the whole world. Unfortunately, progress in these negotiations is painfully slow. The goal of stabilising global temperatures at acceptable levels is nowhere in sight,” he remarked.
“In India, we have set ourselves a national target of increasing the efficiency of energy use to bring about a 20 to 25 per cent reduction in the energy intensity of our GDP by 2020. The 12th Plan envisaged an expanded role for clean energy, including hydro, solar and wind power. The cost of solar energy for example has nearly halved over the last two years, though it remains higher than the cost of fossil fuel based electricity. If the cost imposed by carbon emissions is taken into account, then solar energy is more cost effective, but it is still more expensive,” added.
Long way to go, but at least headed in the right direction. Sent April 17:
Doubling the role of renewables in India’s energy economy is a hugely important step which can serve both as an inspiration to developing nations and a prod of conscience to the industrialized West. For too long American politicians, deep in the thrall of fossil fuel corporations, have used China and India as excuses for their own failure to act on climate change, arguably the gravest threat humanity has faced in its long and troubled history.
However, Prime Minister Singh is in error when he states that even when carbon emissions are taken into account, solar energy is “still more expensive” than fossil fuels. When we consider the costs of spill and leak mitigation and cleanup, of the complex and problematic public health impacts of these energy sources, and of the grave economic impacts of global climate change, it becomes clear that sustainable energy sources are by far the better deal.
Warren Senders