Climate – Oct 2

October 2, 2006

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Climate change: ‘One degree and we’re done for’

Fred Pierce, New Scientist
“Further global warming of 1°C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know.”

So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2 °C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback.

Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1 °C of being its hottest for a million years, says Hansen’s team. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change, the study concludes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288).
(27 Sept 2006)
Incidently, when I viewed this article it included a link to an ad for an Australian ethical investment fund showing the Earth rolling down the downslope of Hubbert’s curve, and the words ‘Don’t wait for the crash. Get off now. Invest in oil-free transport — fuel cells, trains and bicycles.’

Remarkable how the potential severity of climate change makes even peak oil — the decline and potential collapse of industrial society — seem cheap and secondary.
-AF


Blasting A/C in the Arctic

Howard Witt, Chicago Tribune
RESOLUTE BAY, Nunavut — They never used to need air conditioners up in the Arctic.

But earlier this year, officials in the Canadian Inuit territory of Nunavik authorized the installation of air conditioners in official buildings for the first time. Artificial cooling was necessary, they decided, because summertime temperatures in some southern Arctic villages have climbed into the 80s in recent years.

Inuit families in the region never used to need to shop in grocery stores, either. But the Arctic seas that always stayed frozen well into the summer have started breaking open much earlier, cutting off hunters from the seasonal caribou herds on which their families depend for sustenance.

And experienced Inuit hunters, as comfortable reading ice conditions as professional golfers are reading greens, had seldom fallen through the ice and drowned. But this year in Alaska, more than a dozen vanished into the sea.
(29 Oct 2006)


Ecological upheaval on the edge of the ice

Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times
ON THE BERING SEA — As the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson steamed toward St. Paul Island, crab fisherman Wayne Baker was holed up in the tiny Alaskan harbor, waiting for a break in the weather.

It hadn’t been a great season so far.

“I’ve never seen so many blanks,” said Baker, who set pots for four days without pulling up a single crab.

St. Paul is a speck of land in the Bering Sea, the treacherous expanse of water that separates Siberia and Alaska near the top of the world.

Since Russian fur-traders came seeking otter pelts in the 1700s, this northernmost reach of the Pacific Ocean has created fortunes and claimed the lives of mariners drawn by its astounding bounty of marine life. Whales, walruses, seals — one species after another was slaughtered to the verge of extinction, yet a wealth of living resources remained untapped.

Today the Bering Sea yields half of all seafood harvested in the United States. The annual catch is valued at $1.7 billion. The bulk of that money goes into the pockets of fishermen and processing companies based in Seattle — a 12-day sail from St. Paul.

But the nation’s richest ocean ecosystem is in the midst of a major upheaval, and scientists suspect global warming is at least partly to blame
(1 Oct 2006)


Cost of saving the planet: a year’s growth

Ashley Seager, The Guardian
The world would have to give up only one year’s economic growth over the next four decades to reduce carbon emissions sufficiently to stave off the threat of global warming, a report says today.

Consultants at PricewaterhouseCoopers offer a “green growth plus” strategy, combining energy efficiency, greater use of renewables and carbon capture to cut emissions by 60% by 2050 from the level reached by doing nothing. Nuclear energy, it says, can play a role, but it is not crucial.

This scenario, which involves little real sacrifice in terms of economic growth, could be achieved only if embarked upon without delay, the report warns.

“If countries adopt a ‘business as usual’ approach, the result could be a more than doubling of global carbon emissions by 2050,” said John Hawksworth, head of macroeconomics at PwC.
(29 Sept 2006)


Accounting for climate change in Northern forests

K.C. Mehaffey, Wenatchee World
NCW forests are on the leading edge of planning to cope with the realities of global warming
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WENATCHEE — The Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests will be among the first in the nation to prepare for global warming.

Forest administrators are working on a plan that includes measuring climate change, and strategies to adapt quickly if changes occur.

The plan, when unveiled in 2007, will take a serious look at how to deal with what experts say may include larger and more frequent wildfires, and massive forest die-backs from pine beetle and other insects.

“The Okanogan, Wenatchee and Colville forests are going to be at the leading edge, at least for this region. They’re going to be the guinea pigs, if you will,” said Rex Holloway, Forest Service spokesman in Portland.
(2 Oct 2006)


Tags: Culture & Behavior