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Lake Mead Could Dry Up by 2021
Andrea Thompson, LiveScience
Lake Mead, a key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, could go dry by 2021, a new study finds.
The study concludes that natural forces such as evaporation, changes wrought by global warming and the increasing demand from the booming Southwest population are creating a deficit from this part of the Colorado River system.
Along with Lake Powell, which is on the border between Arizona and Utah, Lake Mead supplies roughly 8 million people in the cities of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego, among others, with critical water supplies.
(12 February 2008)
Climate change soon could kill thousands in UK, says report
Andrew Sparrow, Guardian
Climate change could lead to a heatwave in the south-east of England killing 3,000 people within the next decade, a Department of Health report said today.
It put the chances of a heatwave of that severity happening by 2017 at 25%.
Without preventative action, the report said that a nine-day heatwave, with temperatures averaging at least 27 degrees over 24 hours, would cause 3,000 immediate deaths, with another 3,350 people dying from heat-related conditions during the summer.
It predicted that there would be an increase in skin cancers due to increased exposure to sunlight and that, over the next half century, air pollution could lead to an extra 1,500 deaths and hospital admissions a year.
While malaria outbreaks were likely to remain rare, the report – Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2008 – said health authorities would need to be alert to the dangers posed by possible larger outbreaks of malaria in continental Europe.
(12 February 2008)
Online PDF of the report (4-MB, 124 pages): Health Effects of Climate Change in the UK 2008.
A New Consciousness About Global Warming
Z. Macintosh, Smith College Sophian
Early-rising students received a cold shower of dire reality at the keynote speech of Focus the Nation, the student-organized day of educational and collaborative talks on global warming on Thursday, Jan. 31 in Weinstein Auditorium.
Michael Klare, Five College professor of peace & world security studies gave his speech titled “Global Warming: the Human Dimension”. The lecture outlined how and why global warming should be considered an urgent issue of national security, instead of an environmental concern.
“As far as I’m concerned, the work of working group one is finished,” Klare said, citing the physical science basis of the fourth assessment report released by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last April, considered to be the world’s authority synthesis of climate change data. “We must continue monitoring, but it should never be necessary again to marshal this kind of evidence,” said Klare.
Promising that global climate change posed the same or more life-threatening impact as nuclear warfare, Klare declared the highest priority to be the prevention of these severest possibilities. His statements reflected the concerns of working group two of the IPCC’s report, “Impacts Adaptations and Vulnerability.”
Citing this document as the source of his analysis, Klare described how climate change would impact specific human communities. He asserted that those already at risk would suffer the most. The first and the hardest hit would be Saharan Africa, and coastal areas experiencing fierce hurricanes and typhoons.
(X February 2008)
GM chief urges dealers to oppose states’ greenhouse gas limits
Associated Press
General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner urged a group of auto dealers Saturday to lobby against individual states trying to set their own limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Wagoner, speaking to the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in San Francisco, said several states want to go beyond requirements passed by Congress.
If that happens and automakers must focus on state regulations, they won’t be able to focus as much on alternative fuel vehicles to reduce oil consumption and pollution, he said.
(9 February 2008)
U.K. deforestation, clean energy representative Eliasch discusses int’l clean energy challenges (video and transcript)
E&E TV
Deforestation is the largest single emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. How should industrialized and developing nations be approaching this issue in order to avoid further destruction of forests and increased emissions?
During today’s E&ETV Event Coverage, the U.K. prime minister’s special representative for deforestation and clean energy, Johan Eliasch, says the most successful way to avoid deforestation is to make standing trees more valuable than logged trees.
Eliasch explains why he believes it is more cost effective to save rainforests than it is to provide subsidies for biofuels. He also gives his views on international efforts to create a post-2012 climate agreement.
(12 February 2008)
Tiny nations seek climate help at UN
John Heilprin, Associate Press
The day’s first word went to a tiny island nation with a big sinking feeling.
Leading off the U.N. General Assembly’s second day of talks on climate change, Tuvalu issued a cry for help Tuesday on dealing with the impact of global warming on its 10,000 people, who live on nine low-lying coral atolls in the South Pacific being lapped at by rising seas.
“Adaptation is undoubtedly a crucial issue for an extremely vulnerable small, island nation like Tuvalu,” said Tavau Teii, the deputy prime minister and environment chief.
“I only need to highlight the fact that our highest point above sea level is only four meters (a little over 13 feet) to emphasize our vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, especially sea level rise,” he said. “It is very clear that financial resources for adaptation are completely inadequate.”
…The United States and China, the two biggest producers of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from fossil-fuel burning, sought to assure other nations that they, too, take global warming seriously and will provide what help they can.
(12 February 2008)
Note: US and China “will provide what help they can.”
