Climate – Aug 22

August 22, 2006

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Amazonian drought

gavin, RealClimate
There has been a flurry of recent commentary concerning Amazon drought – some of it good, some of it not so good. The good stuff has revolved around a recently-completed interesting field expeThe not-so-good part comes when this experiment is linked too directly to the ongoing drought in the southern Amazon. In the experiment, older tree mortality increased markedly after the third year of no rain at all (with around 1 in 10 trees dying). Since parts of the Amazon are now entering a second year of drought (possibly related to a persistent northward excursion of the ITCZ), the assumption in the Independent story (with the headline ‘One year to save the Amazon’) was that trees will start dying forest-wide next year should the drought continue.

This is incorrect for a number of reasons. Firstly, drought conditions are not the same as no rain at all – the rainfall deficit in the middle of the Amazon is significant, but not close to 100%! Secondly, the rainfall deficits are quite regionally variable, so a forest-wide response is highly unlikely. Also, the trees won’t all die in just one more year and could recover, depending on yearly variation in climate.

While this particular article is exaggerated, there are, however, some issues that should provoke genuine concern. Worries about the effects of the prolonged drought (and other natural and human-related disturbances) in the Amazon are indeed widespread and are partly related to the idea that there may be a ‘tipping point’ for the rainforest (see this recent article for some background). riment that was run out of the Woods Hole Research Center (not to be confused with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), where they have been examining rainforest responses to drought – basically by using a very large rainproof tent to divert precipitation at ground level (the trees don’t get covered up). As one might expect, a rainforest without rain does not do well! But exactly what happens when and how the biosphere responds are poorly understood. This 6 year long field experiment may provide a lot of good new data on plant strategies for dealing with drought which will be used to improve the models and our understanding of the system.
(4 Aug 2006)
Climate scientist discusses the recent articles in the Independent about the dire effect of droughts upon the Amazon rainforest.

Many comments at the original, including this:

Posted on behalf of Daniel Nepstad, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, and lead investigator on the forest drought experiment. (Via Elizabeth Braun, Director of Communications at the Center.) –

On July 23, The Independent report on the recent findings of our forest drought experiment in the Amazon, in which we reduced rainfall inputs to a hectare of forest over a five-year period. This alarmist article involved no interview, and it contains many statements that I do not support.

To clarify, our results do not show that the rainforest ‘could become a desert’. In the third paragraph, the piece implies that I support the position that drought in the Amazon will lead to drought that would spread to Britain, with the world spinning out of control, becoming uninhabitable. That is simply not true.

What our work does show is that the drought we imposed caused big trees to die more than small trees, which was a surprise. We also know that the amounts of carbon that may be going to the atmosphere following Amazon droughts are probably big enough to accelerate global warming. Currently trends suggest that a big chunk of the Amazon forest will probably be displaced by fire-prone scrub vegetation; global warming will probably exacerbate this trend.

The challenges we are confronting and those that we will be faced with in the future are significant. The world’s tropical rainforests will be changed in important ways by global warming. But public understanding of these processes is not served by evoking apocalyptic images. What is needed now is credible reporting and sound journalism so that the global community can act wisely.


Rising Sea Levels Worry Floridians

Mark Weisenmiller, Inter Press Service
TAMPA, Florida – A dramatic rise in sea levels predicted by researchers at a major U.S. government agency has renewed concerns among scientists and community planners about the fate of Florida’s coastlines.

According to “The Probability of Sea Level Rise,” a study written by two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists, sea level rises for the southwest Florida area could range anywhere from 7.1 to 26.9 centimetres by 2025.

The consequences could include higher hurricane storm surges and saltwater intrusion into freshwater catches, and, in the longer term, the disappearance of existing coastal areas and wetlands.

Although the EPA report came out in 1995, the data sets used to create the models are still valid, Daniel L. Trescott, the principal planner for the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council, told IPS.

The report became a subject of debate last week when it was widely released for the first time by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of local, state and federal environmental resource professionals.

“We want to get people to start talking about how their Florida state government will deal with this,” said Trescott, whose main concern is how to mitigate the potential impacts.
(19 Aug 2006)


Ross Gelbspan interview

LateLine, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Tony Jones discusses global warming with Ross Gelbspan, a key advisor to former United States Vice President Al Gore. Ross Gelbspan is also author of The Heat is On and The Boiling Point. Video is available at the orginal article.

TONY JONES: In the story we’ve just seen the local scientist Jonathan Nott who’s an expert in extreme climate events has been sort of a lone voice in that city of Cairns for a long time. He’s been making this argument that terrible things could happen. People thought he was crazy and now they’re starting to listen to him.

ROSS GELBSPAN: I’m glad people are starting to listen. It’s interesting that since global warming really was established by the scientific community in the early ’90s its first consequence is more extreme weather and that’s been universally agreed upon, as the atmosphere warms we have more frequent heatwaves, we have more intense downpours, we get much more of our rain and snow in these severe downpours. We have more protracted droughts and much more intense storms and that’s the first earmark of global warming, basically.

TONY JONES: Can I ask how you got deeply involved in this issue? You’re not an environmentalist, are you? You’ve written you don’t love trees, you tolerate them.

ROSS GELBSPAN: That’s right. I really didn’t get into this issue because of a love of nature. I personally got into this having been an investigative reporter because I found out that the coal industry was paying a handful of scientists in the US to say climate change isn’t happening and I said, “If there’s this cover-up going on, what are they covering up?” There went the next 10 years of my life. But basically you’re right, the impulse that propelled me into this work has nothing to do with a love of nature. It really comes from a deeply-held belief upon which I based a 30-year career as a journalist that in a democracy we need honest information and in this case I found that very large interests were stealing our reality and I think, and I know in my bones from all my experience that really bodes very badly for the democracy. And as we’ve learned since it also bodes very badly for the planet.

TONY JONES: In fact, you’ve said, you’ve written, that the world was effectively blindsided by the pace of climate change. And I’m wondering if you actually believe that was a deliberate policy?

ROSS GELBSPAN: No, I don’t believe it was a deliberate policy. I think there has been this resistance, but I also think that the scientific community in no way expected this to happen as quickly as it has. As you’ve said we’ve been blindsided by the speed with which this has taken place. Global warming wasn’t even on the radar screen in the US until 1988, that’s when the governments of the world formed the inter-governmentalpanel on global warming change. It’s when we went before Congress to say global warming is at hand. A mere 18 years later we’re being told we’re either at, or beyond or approaching the point of no return. And that is way more quick, way more rapid than any of the scientists anticipated. Dr Paul Epstein at Harvard University said to me recently, we are seeing impacts now that we did not project to occur until 2085.

TONY JONES: Indeed the parameters of the debate have changed rapidly, too. It’s not so long ago that the big coal-producing nations like Australia and the US refused to accept the idea of climate change. Now they both do in their official policy. The interesting thing is they have very different solutions. They have coal or fossil fuel solutions that they’re putting forward to fix these problems. This is happening in Australia. The Australian Government believes it’s possible to have cleaner coal, and also to have carbon sequestration. In other words, pump the carbon gas underground from these coal stations. Where do you see these technologies going?

ROSS GELBSPAN: Basically I see them as a real attempt to keep alive the fossil fuel component of our energy diet and I feel that’s extremely wrong-headed and extremely destructive. First of all, you cannot clean the carbon out of fuel, you can clean the low-level air pollutants out of coal, but not take the carbon out of coal, otherwise it wouldn’t burn. In terms of sequestration where you draw the carbon dioxide from power plants and try to bury it under ground, essentially I see that as a public works employment for companies like Bektel and Halliburton. But on a substantive basis there’s no evidence that the carbon dioxide will stay down there and there is new evidence that the carbon dioxide once it’s pumped into these receptacle areas underground produces toxic chemicals that erodes the limestone and sandstone that’s supposed to be capturing it. It really strikes me as a way of avoiding what we need to do which is make a rapid transition to clean energy, to wind and solar and tidal and wave power and eventually to hydrogen and this is essentially an effort by the fossil fuel industry to stave off that inevitable transition.
(22 Aug 2006)