By Tim Radford
LONDON, 6 February - Climate change begins at grass roots level – and a metre or two deeper. A team of scientists contemplating the role of earthworms in the release of greenhouse gases conclude in Nature Climate Change that the same little creatures that create fertility in the soil also make a net increase to soil greenhouse gas emissions.
They offer precise figures for others to challenge: earthworms increase carbon dioxide emissions by 33%, and nitrous oxide (N2O - another greenhouse gas) by 42%. The research – if supported by other findings – could settle an old argument about the role of soil in the great carbon dioxide question: is the soil a sink that, overall, stores more carbon than it releases – or does it on balance release more than it stores?
One provisional answer, according to a series of analyses led by Ingrid Lubbers, a soil scientist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and colleagues in Arizona, California and Colombia, is that earthworms add to carbon dioxide emissions.
This does not mean that earthworms are responsible for global warming. But it does help climate scientists understand a little more clearly how the planet could change in the next few decades.
Earthworms are industrious little agents of soil fertility. Charles Darwin in the last years of his life calculated that earthworms silently shifted somewhere between 17 and 40 tonnes of soil per hectare, per year. They digested decaying vegetable matter and delivered fertility, turning the farmland and garden topsoil as efficiently as any plough, and to a much greater depth.
Since land use change – the conversion, for instance, of forest to farmland, or farmland to suburbs – is a powerful factor in climate change, the earthworm must play a part, and as the world warms, this role could increase.
“Over the next few decades earthworm presence is likely to increase in ecosystems worldwide,” the researchers write. “Large parts of North American forest soils are now being invaded by earthworms for the first time since the last glaciations.
"Earthworm abundance and importance in agro-ecosystems will also steadily increase over the coming decades. Higher inputs of organic fertilisers will be applied to agricultural soils to feed the world’s growing population, providing food for earthworms.”
Carbon cycle's complexities
In other words, as human populations grow and economies develop, there will be more demand for food, and more for earthworms to do. The research is one of a whole spectrum of studies intended to explore how the atmosphere works, and why it works as it does, and how a change in one part of the system affects the rest of the package.
Humans remain the principal agents of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Earthworms – like marine algae, soil bacteria, tropical forest canopies, glaciation, erosion, volcanic discharges and oceanic currents – are just one component of the natural carbon cycle: the better the individual parts are understood, the more accurately climate forecasters can tune their models of the future.
The Wageningen research is based on meta-analysis, that is studies of 57 other studies around the world. Dr Lubbers and colleagues urge further research and experiment to examine long-term effects, and variation according to season. The research does not answer the much bigger question of how earthworms affect the long-term stocks of carbon naturally buried in the soil by centuries of leaf fall and decaying vegetation.
“There is more carbon in soil organic carbon than in atmospheric CO2, and agricultural soils are by far the largest source of N2O emissions, because these soils receive large amounts of nitrogen fertiliser,” said Jan Willem van Groeningen, a co-author. “Small changes in soil greenhouse gas dynamics can therefore have important repercussions for global warming.” - Climate News Network
viernes, abril 26, 2013
Rescatan fósiles en la ampliación del Canal de Panamá
Camellos y caballos en miniatura, un rinoceronte, además de un oso-perro gigante, son algunos de los fósiles desenterrados en las recientes excavaciones de la ampliación del Canal de Panamá. Financiado por una subvención de cinco años de duración por la Autoridad del Canal de Panamá al Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales, los resultados ilustran acerca de acontecimientos que hace millones de años alteraron el clima de la Tierra y cambiaron radicalmente la distribución geográfica de las plantas y los animales.
Un capital inicial de $1 millón por parte de la Autoridad del Canal de Panamá fue la base fundamental para la colaboración entre las instituciones. Hoy viernes, 26 de abril 2013, científicos del Smithsonian en Panamá entre ellos Carlos Jaramillo, científico permanente y Bruce McFadden, científico visitante y curador de paleontología de vertebrados de la Universidad de Florida, en conjunto con funcionarios de la Autoridad del Canal de Panamá, como la Ing. Ilya Marotta, VP de Ingeniería y Administración de Programas, se reúnen para celebrar los grandes logros de esta asociación, entre ellos:
* Diez nuevas especies descritas basadas en hallazgos de fósiles
* Más de 6.000 muestras recolectadas y geo-referenciadas
* Nuevos estimados para datar los eventos tectónicos y volcánicos que contribuyeron a la formación del puente terrestre
* 50 publicaciones científicas
* Un simposio internacional en la reunión anual de la Sociedad Geológica de América en el 2012
* Presentaciones en muchas otras reuniones científicas internacionales
* Informes de prensa en Panamá y en los principales medios de comunicación internacionales
"Esta fue una situación provechosa para ambas instituciones y para los profesionales de Panamá," comentó Elena Lombardo, de la Oficina de Asuntos Externos del Instituto. "Así como el Canal de Panamá aporta al mundo una vía acuática fundamental para el comercio, la investigación en Panamá contribuye la comprensión de la historia geológica a nivel mundial y la evolución de la diversidad vegetal y animal en el trópico americano."
Uno de los resultados más importantes fue la contribución del proyecto a la formación de la próxima generación de científicos. La división internacional de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias de EE.UU. (U.S. National Science Foundation) otorgó $4 millones para los investigadores del Smithsonian y la Universidad de Florida para un proyecto adicional de cinco años de duración.
"Estos dos proyectos, junto con el apoyo de la Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación, SENACYT, han dado lugar a la formación de estudiantes de licenciatura y de posgrado aquí y en los EE.UU.,” comentó Oris Sanjur, directora asociada para la Administración de la Ciencia en el Smithsonian en Panamá. "La estudiante de doctorado panameña Catalina Pimiento organizó el primer video-tele-curso en palebiología para estudiantes panameños. El proyecto también llevó a la primera especialización en geología en la Universidad de Panamá, la primera clase de geología en la Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá y principales colaboraciones con la Universidad Nacional de Chiriquí, en el oeste de Panamá."
En la actualidad, la delgada vía acuática que conecta el Pacífico y el Caribe se está ampliando para permitir el paso de barcos más grandes, esto creó la oportunidad del siglo para los geólogos y paleontólogos para poder comprender los acontecimientos que cambian a la Tierra.
La colaboración científica entre Panamá y el Smithsonian comenzó hace más de 100 años, cuando científicos llevaron a cabo el Recorrido Biológico en Panamá, básicamente un estudio ambiental para la construcción del Canal. Las muestras fósiles que aún esperan ser procesadas junto con datos geológicos pendientes por ser analizados, nos llenan de expectativas acerca de futuras noticias durante los próximos años de nuevos descubrimientos sobre la historia geológica y biológica única de Panamá.
El STRI (Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales), con sede en la ciudad de Panamá, Republica de Panamá, es una unidad de la Institución Smithsonian. El Instituto aumenta la comprensión de la biodiversidad tropical y su importancia para el bienestar de la humanidad, entrena estudiantes para conducir investigaciones en los trópicos, y promueve la conservación incrementando el conocimiento público de la belleza e importancia de los ecosistemas tropicales.
Pág. Web: www.stri.org
martes, febrero 05, 2013
UK's nuclear plans come unstuck
By Paul Brown
LONDON, 5 February - The UK Government’s plan to build a new generation of 10 nuclear power stations suffered another severe blow yesterday (4 February) when the British utility Centrica pulled out of the programme, writing off a £200 million investment in the process.
To prop up the industry the Government is faced with breaking two important electoral pledges, and may face legal challenges that it intends to breach European Union subsidy rules in guaranteeing a minimum price for nuclear power.
With the French nuclear industry already in deep trouble over construction delays and cost overruns, the chances of building any new reactors in the UK are fading fast.
Centrica’s chief executive, Sam Laidlaw, said the company had pulled out because the project was more costly and extended further into the future than had been planned four years ag o. Together with its partner, the French Government-owned EDF, Centrica has spent close to a billion pounds on the project and is now writing off its 20% share of £200 million, concentrating instead on renewables and natural gas for electricity generation.
Even before yesterday’s announcement the UK Government was struggling to avert the collapse of its plans. German utilities have already withdrawn from the UK programme and officials were in secret negotiations with EDF to fix a price for nuclear power high enough to persuade investors they would get their money back.
This has led some members of parliament to believe that an illegal subsidy is being created. EDF emphasized the Government’s dilemma yesterday, saying the pull-out by Centrica underlined the challenge for the Government in fixing a price for nuclear,
Ministers will be challenged in a debate in the House of Commons on Thursday (7 February) about the intended price fix.
Sleepwalking towards subsidies
MPs will demand that the government stops its secret negotiations with EDF because the “evidence suggests that (the price) constitutes an unjustifiable subsidy to a mature industry” and does not provide the taxpayer with genuine value for money.
The debate was ordered after concerned MPs went before the Backbench Business Committee and asked for parliamentary time to discuss the subsidy.
Mike Weatherley, MP for Hove, told the committee that as a Conservative he believed in a free market approach “yet that seems to avoid nuclear. Despite Government agreement that we would not have subsidy for it, it seems that some Members, of all parties, are sleepwalking into allowing that to happen.”
Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, claimed MPs from five parties supported scrutiny of the proposed guaranteed price. He said: “A wider issue for Labour members is that the last Labour Government’s pledge not to subsidise new nuclear was central to their Energy Bill, but is now being broken without much public debate.”
MPs will also point out that successive governments have promised that a new generation of nuclear plants would not be built until the problem of disposing of waste from the new stations had been solved.
Last week’s rejection by Cumbria County Council of plans to dump the nation’s nuclear waste in the Lake District means that the Government’s only existing proposal for disposing of waste has been vetoed. So far ministers have not come up with an alternative, so unless they break their promise on waste there can be no nuclear stations. Yesterday a report highly critical of the escalating cost of dealing with waste was issued by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.
The Government has tried to avoid the issue of subsidies for new nuclear by wrapping together support prices for renewables like offshore wind and new nuclear build. The problem it faces is that the price of renewables is coming down and that of nuclear is rising and needs a subsidy to make it competitive.
Nuclear is classed by the European Union as a mature technology and has already received £100 billion in subsidies in the UK. It is therefore not eligible for more under EU rules.
But it is clear that without subsidy – in the form of a high fixed price for electricity that the consumer has to pay for 30 years – nuclear power plants are unlikely to be built.
Chinese success?
The British Government wants the French to build four reactors immediately, two each at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. They are the European Pressurised Reactors, the first of which is under construction in Finland and a second in France.
Both are several years late and massively over budget. Two more are being built in China, both reported to be on time and on budget, although there is no independent verification.
The Finnish plant, the prototype, was started in 2005 and was supposed to be connected to the grid in 2009. The start date had now been put back “beyond 2014” and the cost has risen from three billion euros to more than six billion.
The second plant was the prestige project of EDF but has also gone badly. It was supposed to herald a new generation of stations to replace the ageing plant which provides 75% of France’s electricity. The company owns 58 French and 15 UK reactors but has a falling share price and rising debts.
Its flagship project at Flamanville in northern France is already five years late and six billion euros over budget. It was supposed to be finished in 2011, but now the expected date is 2016 and the cost has risen to 8.5 billion euros.
The company is also faced with spending 10 billion euros to update the safety of its existing reactors following the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Investors have been selling shares in EDF steadily since 2008 and prices have dropped further recently as EDF’s debts have increased, making investment in nuclear plant in Britain without price guarantees unlikely if not impossible. - Climate News Network
LONDON, 5 February - The UK Government’s plan to build a new generation of 10 nuclear power stations suffered another severe blow yesterday (4 February) when the British utility Centrica pulled out of the programme, writing off a £200 million investment in the process.
To prop up the industry the Government is faced with breaking two important electoral pledges, and may face legal challenges that it intends to breach European Union subsidy rules in guaranteeing a minimum price for nuclear power.
With the French nuclear industry already in deep trouble over construction delays and cost overruns, the chances of building any new reactors in the UK are fading fast.
Centrica’s chief executive, Sam Laidlaw, said the company had pulled out because the project was more costly and extended further into the future than had been planned four years ag o. Together with its partner, the French Government-owned EDF, Centrica has spent close to a billion pounds on the project and is now writing off its 20% share of £200 million, concentrating instead on renewables and natural gas for electricity generation.
Even before yesterday’s announcement the UK Government was struggling to avert the collapse of its plans. German utilities have already withdrawn from the UK programme and officials were in secret negotiations with EDF to fix a price for nuclear power high enough to persuade investors they would get their money back.
This has led some members of parliament to believe that an illegal subsidy is being created. EDF emphasized the Government’s dilemma yesterday, saying the pull-out by Centrica underlined the challenge for the Government in fixing a price for nuclear,
Ministers will be challenged in a debate in the House of Commons on Thursday (7 February) about the intended price fix.
Sleepwalking towards subsidies
MPs will demand that the government stops its secret negotiations with EDF because the “evidence suggests that (the price) constitutes an unjustifiable subsidy to a mature industry” and does not provide the taxpayer with genuine value for money.
The debate was ordered after concerned MPs went before the Backbench Business Committee and asked for parliamentary time to discuss the subsidy.
Mike Weatherley, MP for Hove, told the committee that as a Conservative he believed in a free market approach “yet that seems to avoid nuclear. Despite Government agreement that we would not have subsidy for it, it seems that some Members, of all parties, are sleepwalking into allowing that to happen.”
Martin Horwood, Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, claimed MPs from five parties supported scrutiny of the proposed guaranteed price. He said: “A wider issue for Labour members is that the last Labour Government’s pledge not to subsidise new nuclear was central to their Energy Bill, but is now being broken without much public debate.”
MPs will also point out that successive governments have promised that a new generation of nuclear plants would not be built until the problem of disposing of waste from the new stations had been solved.
Last week’s rejection by Cumbria County Council of plans to dump the nation’s nuclear waste in the Lake District means that the Government’s only existing proposal for disposing of waste has been vetoed. So far ministers have not come up with an alternative, so unless they break their promise on waste there can be no nuclear stations. Yesterday a report highly critical of the escalating cost of dealing with waste was issued by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.
The Government has tried to avoid the issue of subsidies for new nuclear by wrapping together support prices for renewables like offshore wind and new nuclear build. The problem it faces is that the price of renewables is coming down and that of nuclear is rising and needs a subsidy to make it competitive.
Nuclear is classed by the European Union as a mature technology and has already received £100 billion in subsidies in the UK. It is therefore not eligible for more under EU rules.
But it is clear that without subsidy – in the form of a high fixed price for electricity that the consumer has to pay for 30 years – nuclear power plants are unlikely to be built.
Chinese success?
The British Government wants the French to build four reactors immediately, two each at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. They are the European Pressurised Reactors, the first of which is under construction in Finland and a second in France.
Both are several years late and massively over budget. Two more are being built in China, both reported to be on time and on budget, although there is no independent verification.
The Finnish plant, the prototype, was started in 2005 and was supposed to be connected to the grid in 2009. The start date had now been put back “beyond 2014” and the cost has risen from three billion euros to more than six billion.
The second plant was the prestige project of EDF but has also gone badly. It was supposed to herald a new generation of stations to replace the ageing plant which provides 75% of France’s electricity. The company owns 58 French and 15 UK reactors but has a falling share price and rising debts.
Its flagship project at Flamanville in northern France is already five years late and six billion euros over budget. It was supposed to be finished in 2011, but now the expected date is 2016 and the cost has risen to 8.5 billion euros.
The company is also faced with spending 10 billion euros to update the safety of its existing reactors following the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
Investors have been selling shares in EDF steadily since 2008 and prices have dropped further recently as EDF’s debts have increased, making investment in nuclear plant in Britain without price guarantees unlikely if not impossible. - Climate News Network
Brazil's stunted generation
By Jan Rocha
SAO PAULO, 4 February - The prediction by scientists that humans would respond to climate change by becoming hobbit-sized in order to survive has already happened in Brazil. A near-starving population in the north-east of the country produced a generation of children who became pigmy-sized adults after being brought up on a diet of rats, snakes and cacti. Adults grew to only 1.35 metres (4ft 6ins).
This is exactly what scientists had predicted. They were looking at the fossil record of the last time the world had warmed by 6°C, 55 million years ago. In a warmer world, the 30 scientists concluded, plants became less nutritious and mammals, insects and even earthworms had to eat more to survive. In response they became smaller and reproduced earlier.
The Climate News Network reported exclusively on the work of the Bighorn Basin Coring Project, involving scientists from the US, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, on 7 January. Dr Phillip Jardine, from the Department of Geography at Birmingham University, said that dwarfism was expected to be a successful survival strategy.
Unknown to the scientists on the project, this apocalyptic vision of the future had, in fact, already occurred. In the 1980s Brazil’s Northeast, the poorest, most backward region of the country, much of it semi-arid, was hit by a prolonged drought that left millions of families starving. Without food, they resorted to eating rodents and cactus plants.
They were encouraged by a local Red Cross doctor, José Pontes Neto, who said: “Go on eating rats, snakes and chameleons, they are a source of protein.” But the doctor warned that the infant population in the drought areas was so riddled with intestinal worms and chronic hunger that the result would be a generation of “nanicos" - dwarfs.
His comments were published in a UNICEF study carried out at the time. It concluded that three and a half million children aged one to five years old were permanently affected by dwarfism. Specialists called it “nutritional dwarfism”.
Man-made hunger to blame
One of Brazil’s leading researchers into nutrition at the time, Dr Nelson Chaves, blamed the region’s chronic sub-nutrition not only on the long-lasting drought, but on the existing unequal social structures.
In a report published in April 1984, entitled Northeast: Drought, Hunger and Misery, carried out by IBASE, the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analyses, a well-respected NGO, he wrote:
“Due to protein deficiency, the stature of the population in Zona da Mata (the main sugarcane growing region) is progressively diminishing, becoming similar to that of African pigmies.
“But the dwarfism of the African pigmy is genetic, while the march towards dwarfism we see here is from sub-nutrition. It is a consequence of progressive endemic hunger, caused and maintained by man. It is hunger resulting from economic and social inequality, from poverty… The final result is a deteriorated population, sick, hungry”.
Dr Chaves said that while the sugarcane plantations, owned by the local elite, received financial support from the then military government, impoverished rural workers were ignored.
At the time, the workers were not even allowed to keep vegetable plots for their own subsistence, because every inch of land had to be used for sugarcane. Underpaid and exploited, people could afford to buy little food. Their basic diet, consisting of beans and manioc flour, lacked protein. Meat was almost never eaten.
Seven years later, on 19 November 1991, the Brazilian newspaper A Folha de São Paulo caused a sensation with a front-page story entitled Gabiru man is a new species in the Northeast.
Reporter Xico Sa wrote: "A new sub-race is appearing in Brazil, made up of tiny people. They are the same size as African pigmies and they have been baptised gabiru men. This ‘sub-race’ is the result of hunger, subnutrition and poverty’."
Life-long consequences
Gabiru is the name of a species of large rat found in the region, and was originally given to the undersized inhabitants by Brazilian sociologist Josue de Castro, in his classic study The Geography of Hunger.
The newspaper story was illustrated with photographs of a so-called gabiru-man, Amauro Silva, just 1.35 cm high.
As a result of the Folha’s story, a parliamentary committee of inquiry was set up to enquire into the causes of hunger in Brazil. It concluded that six million children were undernourished and that 10% of them would suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives.
Since the 1980s nutritional standards in the Northeast region have improved along with the economic situation. Between 1989 and 1997, children’s average height increased by 7 cm, according to research by the government statistics agency, IBGE.
An IBGE researcher said: “Height is one of the best indicators of the quality of life of a population. In the Northeast, logically there are still undernourished and undersized people, but the gabiru is more and more of an exception”.
Since 2002 the introduction of government welfare programmes and increases in the minimum wage have raised millions above the poverty line. IBGE research now shows there are more obese than undernourished people in the region.
These programmes mean that although once again the Northeast is in the grip of a devastating drought, people do not starve. Television coverage shows dried-up riverbeds, withered crops and the carcases of animals that have died of starvation. Water tankers crisscross the dry countryside supplying villages, but people are no longer forced to eat rats and snakes to survive.
The drought cycle in Brazil’s Northeast has existed as long as records go back, but in recent years the droughts have become more frequent. An increase in global warming could make the semi-arid region uninhabitable. - Climate News Network
SAO PAULO, 4 February - The prediction by scientists that humans would respond to climate change by becoming hobbit-sized in order to survive has already happened in Brazil. A near-starving population in the north-east of the country produced a generation of children who became pigmy-sized adults after being brought up on a diet of rats, snakes and cacti. Adults grew to only 1.35 metres (4ft 6ins).
This is exactly what scientists had predicted. They were looking at the fossil record of the last time the world had warmed by 6°C, 55 million years ago. In a warmer world, the 30 scientists concluded, plants became less nutritious and mammals, insects and even earthworms had to eat more to survive. In response they became smaller and reproduced earlier.
The Climate News Network reported exclusively on the work of the Bighorn Basin Coring Project, involving scientists from the US, UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, on 7 January. Dr Phillip Jardine, from the Department of Geography at Birmingham University, said that dwarfism was expected to be a successful survival strategy.
Unknown to the scientists on the project, this apocalyptic vision of the future had, in fact, already occurred. In the 1980s Brazil’s Northeast, the poorest, most backward region of the country, much of it semi-arid, was hit by a prolonged drought that left millions of families starving. Without food, they resorted to eating rodents and cactus plants.
They were encouraged by a local Red Cross doctor, José Pontes Neto, who said: “Go on eating rats, snakes and chameleons, they are a source of protein.” But the doctor warned that the infant population in the drought areas was so riddled with intestinal worms and chronic hunger that the result would be a generation of “nanicos" - dwarfs.
His comments were published in a UNICEF study carried out at the time. It concluded that three and a half million children aged one to five years old were permanently affected by dwarfism. Specialists called it “nutritional dwarfism”.
Man-made hunger to blame
One of Brazil’s leading researchers into nutrition at the time, Dr Nelson Chaves, blamed the region’s chronic sub-nutrition not only on the long-lasting drought, but on the existing unequal social structures.
In a report published in April 1984, entitled Northeast: Drought, Hunger and Misery, carried out by IBASE, the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analyses, a well-respected NGO, he wrote:
“Due to protein deficiency, the stature of the population in Zona da Mata (the main sugarcane growing region) is progressively diminishing, becoming similar to that of African pigmies.
“But the dwarfism of the African pigmy is genetic, while the march towards dwarfism we see here is from sub-nutrition. It is a consequence of progressive endemic hunger, caused and maintained by man. It is hunger resulting from economic and social inequality, from poverty… The final result is a deteriorated population, sick, hungry”.
Dr Chaves said that while the sugarcane plantations, owned by the local elite, received financial support from the then military government, impoverished rural workers were ignored.
At the time, the workers were not even allowed to keep vegetable plots for their own subsistence, because every inch of land had to be used for sugarcane. Underpaid and exploited, people could afford to buy little food. Their basic diet, consisting of beans and manioc flour, lacked protein. Meat was almost never eaten.
Seven years later, on 19 November 1991, the Brazilian newspaper A Folha de São Paulo caused a sensation with a front-page story entitled Gabiru man is a new species in the Northeast.
Reporter Xico Sa wrote: "A new sub-race is appearing in Brazil, made up of tiny people. They are the same size as African pigmies and they have been baptised gabiru men. This ‘sub-race’ is the result of hunger, subnutrition and poverty’."
Life-long consequences
Gabiru is the name of a species of large rat found in the region, and was originally given to the undersized inhabitants by Brazilian sociologist Josue de Castro, in his classic study The Geography of Hunger.
The newspaper story was illustrated with photographs of a so-called gabiru-man, Amauro Silva, just 1.35 cm high.
As a result of the Folha’s story, a parliamentary committee of inquiry was set up to enquire into the causes of hunger in Brazil. It concluded that six million children were undernourished and that 10% of them would suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives.
Since the 1980s nutritional standards in the Northeast region have improved along with the economic situation. Between 1989 and 1997, children’s average height increased by 7 cm, according to research by the government statistics agency, IBGE.
An IBGE researcher said: “Height is one of the best indicators of the quality of life of a population. In the Northeast, logically there are still undernourished and undersized people, but the gabiru is more and more of an exception”.
Since 2002 the introduction of government welfare programmes and increases in the minimum wage have raised millions above the poverty line. IBGE research now shows there are more obese than undernourished people in the region.
These programmes mean that although once again the Northeast is in the grip of a devastating drought, people do not starve. Television coverage shows dried-up riverbeds, withered crops and the carcases of animals that have died of starvation. Water tankers crisscross the dry countryside supplying villages, but people are no longer forced to eat rats and snakes to survive.
The drought cycle in Brazil’s Northeast has existed as long as records go back, but in recent years the droughts have become more frequent. An increase in global warming could make the semi-arid region uninhabitable. - Climate News Network
Antarctic ozone hole 'slows CO2 dispersal'
By Alex Kirby
LONDON, 3 February - The Antarctic ozone hole has changed how the seas around the Antarctic mix, scientists say, threatening their ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide and potentially speeding up global warming. The discovery is important because the Antarctic accounts for about 40% of the total carbon absorbed by the world's seas.
Writing in the journal Science, Darryn W. Waugh, an earth scientist at Johns Hopkins University, and his team show that both the sub-tropical waters in the southern oceans and the upwelling circumpolar waters closer to the Antarctic landmass have changed, in a way they say is consistent with the changes in the westerly winds around Antarctica.
These have grown stronger and moved poleward over the past few decades as the ozone layer has thinned. The new study finds evidence that those shifting winds are speeding circulation patterns in polar waters, with the currents closer to the land pushing more deep water up to the ocean surface.
The scientists' worry is that the increasing upwelling of that water, hundreds of years old and naturally rich in carbon dioxide, is reducing the amount of manmade carbon absorbed by sub-polar waters.
"This may sound entirely academic, but believe me, it's not," said Waugh. "This matters because the southern oceans play an important role in the uptake of heat and carbon dioxide, so any changes in southern ocean circulation have the potential to change the global climate."
Less room for more carbon
The team used measurements taken from the early 1990s to the mid-to-late 2000s of the amount of a chemical, chlorofluorocarbon-12 (CFC-12), in the southern oceans.
CFC-12 was first produced commercially in the 1930s and was widely used in aerosols, refrigeration systems and air conditioning. It was finally phased out by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Because they knew that concentrations of CFCs at the surface increased in tandem with those in the atmosphere, the scientists were able to surmise that the higher the concentration of CFC-12 deeper in the ocean, the more recently those waters had been at the surface, and they worked out how fast the mixing had happened.
They believe north-south circulation in the deep ocean has been speeding up, sending water from the ocean surface near the pole to intermediate depths (500-1,000 metres down) more quickly.
At the same time, the currents closer to Antarctica's shores appear to be pushing more old, deep water up to the surface. If surface waters are already rich in carbon, "that would mean more of the carbon we're producing would stay in the atmosphere, and that would contribute more to climate change," Waugh says.
Michael Meredith, a British Antarctic Survey oceanographer, said the new research drove home the importance of the Southern Ocean carbon sink. "It's doing us a very big favour, if you like, by taking carbon from the atmosphere and slowing the rate of atmospheric climate change," he said.
He believes the question now is what will happen as the ozone layer slowly heals and human activities pump out increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. The ozone hole is expected, on present trends, to have recovered by mid-century. - Climate News Network
LONDON, 3 February - The Antarctic ozone hole has changed how the seas around the Antarctic mix, scientists say, threatening their ability to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide and potentially speeding up global warming. The discovery is important because the Antarctic accounts for about 40% of the total carbon absorbed by the world's seas.
Writing in the journal Science, Darryn W. Waugh, an earth scientist at Johns Hopkins University, and his team show that both the sub-tropical waters in the southern oceans and the upwelling circumpolar waters closer to the Antarctic landmass have changed, in a way they say is consistent with the changes in the westerly winds around Antarctica.
These have grown stronger and moved poleward over the past few decades as the ozone layer has thinned. The new study finds evidence that those shifting winds are speeding circulation patterns in polar waters, with the currents closer to the land pushing more deep water up to the ocean surface.
The scientists' worry is that the increasing upwelling of that water, hundreds of years old and naturally rich in carbon dioxide, is reducing the amount of manmade carbon absorbed by sub-polar waters.
"This may sound entirely academic, but believe me, it's not," said Waugh. "This matters because the southern oceans play an important role in the uptake of heat and carbon dioxide, so any changes in southern ocean circulation have the potential to change the global climate."
Less room for more carbon
The team used measurements taken from the early 1990s to the mid-to-late 2000s of the amount of a chemical, chlorofluorocarbon-12 (CFC-12), in the southern oceans.
CFC-12 was first produced commercially in the 1930s and was widely used in aerosols, refrigeration systems and air conditioning. It was finally phased out by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Because they knew that concentrations of CFCs at the surface increased in tandem with those in the atmosphere, the scientists were able to surmise that the higher the concentration of CFC-12 deeper in the ocean, the more recently those waters had been at the surface, and they worked out how fast the mixing had happened.
They believe north-south circulation in the deep ocean has been speeding up, sending water from the ocean surface near the pole to intermediate depths (500-1,000 metres down) more quickly.
At the same time, the currents closer to Antarctica's shores appear to be pushing more old, deep water up to the surface. If surface waters are already rich in carbon, "that would mean more of the carbon we're producing would stay in the atmosphere, and that would contribute more to climate change," Waugh says.
Michael Meredith, a British Antarctic Survey oceanographer, said the new research drove home the importance of the Southern Ocean carbon sink. "It's doing us a very big favour, if you like, by taking carbon from the atmosphere and slowing the rate of atmospheric climate change," he said.
He believes the question now is what will happen as the ozone layer slowly heals and human activities pump out increasing amounts of greenhouse gases. The ozone hole is expected, on present trends, to have recovered by mid-century. - Climate News Network
Climate action 'could halve energy firms' worth'
By Alex Kirby
LONDON, 2 February - Oil and gas multinationals could lose up to 60% of their market value if the world cuts its carbon emissions to limit climate change, according to the world's second-largest bank.
This is the first time the financial sector has been warned by one of its own that shares could plummet if the necessary action is taken to prevent disaster.
The study, Oil and Carbon revisited: Value at risk from ‘unburnable’ reserves, is published by HSBC Global Research.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its 2012 World Energy Outlook that in order to have a 50% chance of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2°C, only a third of current fossil fuel reserves can be burned before 2050.
Staying within the 2°C limit would mean keeping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm). They are already at 390 ppm, and are increasing by about 2 ppm a year.
To stop them crossing the 450 ppm boundary, scientists say the world can emit only around 1,440 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon between now and mid-century. It has already emitted 400 Gt, leaving only around 1,000 Gt in the budget - one-third of current proven oil and gas reserves.
The 2°C target has been the goal of many policymakers for years, although there is a growing scientific consensus that it is already out of reach.
The World Bank has said that the Earth may warm by as much as 4°C, and some predictions suggest that even a 6°C rise is possible - a prospect whose impacts would be devastating.
"We haven't forgotten climate change, but we have forgotten that we have to do something about it"
The HSBC study says the economic impact on parts of the hydrocarbon industry of exploiting only a third of fossil fuel reserves would also be devastating.
The Norwegian company Statoil would be hardest hit, with 17% of its reserves unburnable. The study says about 6% of BP's reserves are at risk, 5% of Total's and 2% of Shell's.
But it says a bigger risk is that reduced demand for fossil fuels could force down oil and gas prices, meaning that between 40 and 60% of leading fossil fuel firms' current market capitalisation - essentially their net worth - could be at risk.
The study's authors say: "We believe that investors have yet to price in such a risk, perhaps because it seems so long-term.
"And we accept that our scenario probably exaggerates the risk as we assume a low-carbon world today rather than beyond 2020."
They advise investors to focus on companies with low-cost projects, and say they think capital intensive, high-cost projects like heavy oil and oil sands will be the riskiest.
The HSBC authors' argument that much of the world's fossil fuel reserves cannot be used if climate change is to be tackled seriously is not new: it has been advanced by scientists and conservationists for years.
What is striking is that this appears to be the first time the argument has been made by the financial sector itself. James Leaton of the NGO Carbon Tracker told the Climate News Network: "The question this raises for investors is this: is this investment compatible with a 2°C world?"
Andrew Simms, a fellow of the new economics foundation, said: "I wonder whether this will wake us up from the strange spellbound state that has persisted since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009?
"We haven't forgotten climate change, but we have forgotten that we have to do something about it." - Climate News Network
LONDON, 2 February - Oil and gas multinationals could lose up to 60% of their market value if the world cuts its carbon emissions to limit climate change, according to the world's second-largest bank.
This is the first time the financial sector has been warned by one of its own that shares could plummet if the necessary action is taken to prevent disaster.
The study, Oil and Carbon revisited: Value at risk from ‘unburnable’ reserves, is published by HSBC Global Research.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its 2012 World Energy Outlook that in order to have a 50% chance of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2°C, only a third of current fossil fuel reserves can be burned before 2050.
Staying within the 2°C limit would mean keeping carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm). They are already at 390 ppm, and are increasing by about 2 ppm a year.
To stop them crossing the 450 ppm boundary, scientists say the world can emit only around 1,440 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon between now and mid-century. It has already emitted 400 Gt, leaving only around 1,000 Gt in the budget - one-third of current proven oil and gas reserves.
The 2°C target has been the goal of many policymakers for years, although there is a growing scientific consensus that it is already out of reach.
The World Bank has said that the Earth may warm by as much as 4°C, and some predictions suggest that even a 6°C rise is possible - a prospect whose impacts would be devastating.
"We haven't forgotten climate change, but we have forgotten that we have to do something about it"
The HSBC study says the economic impact on parts of the hydrocarbon industry of exploiting only a third of fossil fuel reserves would also be devastating.
The Norwegian company Statoil would be hardest hit, with 17% of its reserves unburnable. The study says about 6% of BP's reserves are at risk, 5% of Total's and 2% of Shell's.
But it says a bigger risk is that reduced demand for fossil fuels could force down oil and gas prices, meaning that between 40 and 60% of leading fossil fuel firms' current market capitalisation - essentially their net worth - could be at risk.
The study's authors say: "We believe that investors have yet to price in such a risk, perhaps because it seems so long-term.
"And we accept that our scenario probably exaggerates the risk as we assume a low-carbon world today rather than beyond 2020."
They advise investors to focus on companies with low-cost projects, and say they think capital intensive, high-cost projects like heavy oil and oil sands will be the riskiest.
The HSBC authors' argument that much of the world's fossil fuel reserves cannot be used if climate change is to be tackled seriously is not new: it has been advanced by scientists and conservationists for years.
What is striking is that this appears to be the first time the argument has been made by the financial sector itself. James Leaton of the NGO Carbon Tracker told the Climate News Network: "The question this raises for investors is this: is this investment compatible with a 2°C world?"
Andrew Simms, a fellow of the new economics foundation, said: "I wonder whether this will wake us up from the strange spellbound state that has persisted since the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009?
"We haven't forgotten climate change, but we have forgotten that we have to do something about it." - Climate News Network
Biofuels 'needn't cause hunger'
By Tim Radford
LONDON, 31 January - Otherwise unproductive land in the American mid-west could grow 5.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year, according to new research.
This could deliver about a quarter of the biofuel from cellulose demanded by US Congress targets by 2022, scientists say.
Cellulosic biofuel can be made from wood, grasses or the inedible remnants of plant crops. It is already manufactured from surplus maize, sugar cane and other agricultural crops, but as the world population moves steadily towards an estimated peak of nine billion, there is obvious pressure to use productive land only for producing food for an increasingly hungry world.
There are also worries about the cost of fertilisers and tilling machinery to deliver high yields, and the cost of the fuels that would be burned in the course of gathering and handling the harvest and delivering it to a refinery.
But Ilya Gelfland of Michigan State University and colleagues report in Nature that they considered marginal land in 10 mid-Western states, and used 20 years of data from the National Science Foundation’s long-term ecological research site, the Kellogg Biological Station.
They made estimates of comparative primary productivity, and looked at the greenhouse gas impacts of different crops, among them corn, poplar, alfalfa and old field vegetation – those annuals that colonise stubble and pasture allowed to go fallow.
Environmental bonus
Altogether, they studied six different cropping systems. They then harnessed a supercomputer to calculate the biomass output needed to support a local biorefinery - no more than 80 kilometres away - with a capacity of at least 24 million gallons of bioethanol a year.
They found that corn, soybean and wheat rotated, without any tilling, could produce about two thirds of the yield of fuel energy delivered by fertilised crops: a clear win for the environment because there would be no carbon debt.
Ultimately investors could expect 21 billion litres of fuel a year from 11 million hectares. Some of this fuel could be delivered by “wild” vegetation on fallow land.
The exercise was a simulation: the real test will come when farmers begin to use farm machinery and manage water to grow and collect increasing quantities of cellulose from otherwise unused land and deliver it to refineries that have yet to be built.
But the research suggests that marginal soils could be a better bet than prime land for such a purpose.
“The value of marginal lands for energy production has been long-speculated and often discounted,” said Philip Robertson, director of the Kellogg station, and a co-author.
“This research shows that these lands could make a major contribution to transportation energy needs, while providing substantial climate and - if properly managed – conservation benefits.” - Climate News Network
Tropical peatlands 'haemorrhage' fossil carbon
By Alex Kirby
LONDON, 30 January - Deforestation is causing carbon dioxide to leak from tropical forests far faster than anyone had suspected, says a team of scientists who have studied the process in south-east Asia.
The team, led by researchers from the UK's Open University, say what is happening is a little-known problem which amounts to a disaster of worldwide significance. Their study is published in the journal Nature.
Tropical peatlands, with their high water tables and low decomposition rates, store huge quantities of organic carbon tens of metres thick. Most of these peatlands are in Indonesia, where the natural swamp forests are increasingly being felled for timber and to allow food to be grown.
Once felled, the forests are often drained and burnt. A common crop is oil palm, used in food and particularly valuable as well for producing biofuels.
Dr Sam Moore, lead author of the study, says: “We measured carbon loss in channels draining intact and deforested peatlands, and found it is 50% higher from deforested swamps.
Ancient deposits vanishing
"Dissolved organic carbon released from intact swamps mainly comes from fresh plant material, but carbon from the deforested swamps is much older – centuries to millennia – and comes from deep within the peat column.”
Dr Vincent Gauci, senior lecturer in earth systems and ecosystem science at the Open University, and one of the study's authors, said: “The destruction of the Asian peat swamps is a globally significant environmental disaster, but unlike deforestation of the Amazon, few people know that it is happening”.
"The scary part of what is happening is the age of the carbon that's being lost"
Carbon lost from the drainage systems of deforested and drained peatlands is often not considered in ecosystem exchange carbon budgets, but the researchers found it increased the estimated total carbon lost from deforested peatlands by 22%
Changes in the water cycle seem to be the main driver of this increase. Much of the rain that falls would normally leave the ecosystem through transpiration in vegetation, but deforestation forces it to leave through the peat, where it dissolves fossil carbon on its way.
Dr Gauci told the Climate News Network: "The scary part of what is happening is the age of the carbon that's being lost.
"No-one had realised before now the real extent of the loss, because researchers had looked only at how much carbon was being lost from the land surface. Now we can see that fossil carbon is disappearing too.
Better off burning fossil fuels
"The pressure on south-east Asia for food, timber and oil palm is huge. Carbon loss following deforestation is also under way in Latin America, though it is not too severely affected yet."
Dr Gauci said the team had been prompted to investigate what was happening in south-east Asia by studies of peatlands in high northern latitudes, including the UK, which revealed a similar process at work.
Long-term research in this area by a co-author of the report, Professor Sue Page, has shown that clearing and draining these ecosystems to grow biofuels is essentially pointless.
Dr Gauci said: "It's really no better to grow oil palm to produce biofuels than to to use the fossil fuels they are intended to replace.
"It releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the fossil fuels would have done, and it destroys biodiversity, including the orang-utans." - Climate News Network
India's climate change challenge
By Kieran Cooke
LONDON, 30 January - India has to find a new model of development if the twin challenges of job creation and climate change are to be met, says an Oxford University academic, Professor Barbara Harriss-White, of the Oxford Department of International Development.
“At present economic development in India is looked at very much in terms of catching up with Europe and East Asia”, says Professor Harriss-White, a South Asia expert and part of an Oxford-based team investigating greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in India's informal economy - a sector, she says, which accounts for about 60% of the country's GDP and for nine out of every ten jobs, yet one that has been “completely neglected” in debates about climate change.
“The position held by the overwhelming majority in India is that the country - which derives 70% of its energy from coal - has the right to pollute based on its relatively small contribution to the historical stock of CO2 in the atmosphere. Understandably, development and poverty reduction are the priorities.
“Yet the country's natural resources are degrading at an alarming rate - a transition to development based on low carbon has to be initiated. And despite the economic growth of recent years, at least 260 million people are malnourished, 45% of them children.
Prodigious increase
"Meanwhile 16 million people are entering the jobs stream each year – most facing the prospect of poor quality jobs, or no jobs at all. All this presents an enormous challenge.”
Professor Harriss-White and her team are at present looking at GHG emissions in rice production and distribution systems. Much of the activity in this sector takes place in the so-called informal economy, based on part-time or seasonal jobs and loose marketing structures.
Over the last 30 years India has nearly doubled its rice production, mainly through the introduction of new, high-yielding varieties. While 95% of production is consumed domestically, India recently supplanted Thailand as the world's biggest rice exporter.
But the increase in rice output has led to a massive over-exploitation of water resources, with millions of farmers using electric pumps to harness well waters for their rice fields.
Gone forever
The Oxford team have found there are GHG emissions in each phase of rice production and its marketing: for example when fields are cultivated and flooded large amounts of soil methane are released. Bullocks also produce a lot of methane.
But it's the coal needed to produce the energy to lift the water that's the biggest problem. Over-exploitation of water resources has not only led to more GHG emissions but could result in future rice shortages.
Professor Harriss-White says: “In many areas we've studied in the east of the country rice production has reached a plateau. This is due both to a lack of new rice strains coming on to the market and to the stress on water resources.
"Many farmers are having to drill bore holes right down to fossil layers for water – and those waters won't be replenished.” Changes in climate are also likely to have an adverse impact on India's rice production.
“Rice is vulnerable to climate change," says Harriss-White. "A rise in temperature means more pests – and a greater likelihood of periods both of flooding and drought. Rice production must adapt to climate change. Most farmers we talk to don't talk in terms of climate change – instead they talk of the monsoons becoming less reliable.” - Climate News Network
LONDON, 30 January - India has to find a new model of development if the twin challenges of job creation and climate change are to be met, says an Oxford University academic, Professor Barbara Harriss-White, of the Oxford Department of International Development.
“At present economic development in India is looked at very much in terms of catching up with Europe and East Asia”, says Professor Harriss-White, a South Asia expert and part of an Oxford-based team investigating greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in India's informal economy - a sector, she says, which accounts for about 60% of the country's GDP and for nine out of every ten jobs, yet one that has been “completely neglected” in debates about climate change.
“The position held by the overwhelming majority in India is that the country - which derives 70% of its energy from coal - has the right to pollute based on its relatively small contribution to the historical stock of CO2 in the atmosphere. Understandably, development and poverty reduction are the priorities.
“Yet the country's natural resources are degrading at an alarming rate - a transition to development based on low carbon has to be initiated. And despite the economic growth of recent years, at least 260 million people are malnourished, 45% of them children.
Prodigious increase
"Meanwhile 16 million people are entering the jobs stream each year – most facing the prospect of poor quality jobs, or no jobs at all. All this presents an enormous challenge.”
Professor Harriss-White and her team are at present looking at GHG emissions in rice production and distribution systems. Much of the activity in this sector takes place in the so-called informal economy, based on part-time or seasonal jobs and loose marketing structures.
Over the last 30 years India has nearly doubled its rice production, mainly through the introduction of new, high-yielding varieties. While 95% of production is consumed domestically, India recently supplanted Thailand as the world's biggest rice exporter.
But the increase in rice output has led to a massive over-exploitation of water resources, with millions of farmers using electric pumps to harness well waters for their rice fields.
Gone forever
The Oxford team have found there are GHG emissions in each phase of rice production and its marketing: for example when fields are cultivated and flooded large amounts of soil methane are released. Bullocks also produce a lot of methane.
But it's the coal needed to produce the energy to lift the water that's the biggest problem. Over-exploitation of water resources has not only led to more GHG emissions but could result in future rice shortages.
Professor Harriss-White says: “In many areas we've studied in the east of the country rice production has reached a plateau. This is due both to a lack of new rice strains coming on to the market and to the stress on water resources.
"Many farmers are having to drill bore holes right down to fossil layers for water – and those waters won't be replenished.” Changes in climate are also likely to have an adverse impact on India's rice production.
“Rice is vulnerable to climate change," says Harriss-White. "A rise in temperature means more pests – and a greater likelihood of periods both of flooding and drought. Rice production must adapt to climate change. Most farmers we talk to don't talk in terms of climate change – instead they talk of the monsoons becoming less reliable.” - Climate News Network
Warming will reduce Pyrenean snowfall
By Tim Radford
LONDON, 29 January - The microstate of Andorra, a tiny Catalan principality in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, could be a victim of global warming. Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia report, in the journal Climate Research, that a warmer world could mean a shorter skiing season – and economic stress for the citizens of Andorra.
Tourism is big business in Andorra: it survives as a duty free shopping centre and tax haven, enclosed by EU states but not an EU member, and is host to 10 million visitors a year, many of them in winter.
The principality has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, and its 85,000 citizens have one of the longest life expectancies. But warming scenarios of 2°C and 4°C could change the picture. Tourism generates 80% of Andorra’s GDP. Snow falls would be unpredictable, and fewer visitors would check into the lower altitude resorts.
“The rapid decrease in glacier mass, quantity and frequency changes of snowfall, level variations and biodiversity distribution are examples of how mountain ecosystems are highly sensitive,” said Marc Pons, leader of the study.
The researchers assessed the snow cover at each of the resorts at altitudes of 1,500, 2,000 and 2,500 metres. To guarantee enough snow to attract snow tourism, the resorts have invested in snow machines.
In the case of a 2°C temperature rise, the ski season would be 30% shorter but only the lower slopes of one resort, Pal-Arinsal, would be affected. In a 4°C scenario all three resorts would suffer badly at the lower altitudes, and not even snow machines could save the situation for Pal-Arinsal. A 15% fall in visitors would cost the Andorrans 50 million euros each season, the researchers calculate. - Climate News Network
LONDON, 29 January - The microstate of Andorra, a tiny Catalan principality in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, could be a victim of global warming. Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia report, in the journal Climate Research, that a warmer world could mean a shorter skiing season – and economic stress for the citizens of Andorra.
Tourism is big business in Andorra: it survives as a duty free shopping centre and tax haven, enclosed by EU states but not an EU member, and is host to 10 million visitors a year, many of them in winter.
The principality has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, and its 85,000 citizens have one of the longest life expectancies. But warming scenarios of 2°C and 4°C could change the picture. Tourism generates 80% of Andorra’s GDP. Snow falls would be unpredictable, and fewer visitors would check into the lower altitude resorts.
“The rapid decrease in glacier mass, quantity and frequency changes of snowfall, level variations and biodiversity distribution are examples of how mountain ecosystems are highly sensitive,” said Marc Pons, leader of the study.
The researchers assessed the snow cover at each of the resorts at altitudes of 1,500, 2,000 and 2,500 metres. To guarantee enough snow to attract snow tourism, the resorts have invested in snow machines.
In the case of a 2°C temperature rise, the ski season would be 30% shorter but only the lower slopes of one resort, Pal-Arinsal, would be affected. In a 4°C scenario all three resorts would suffer badly at the lower altitudes, and not even snow machines could save the situation for Pal-Arinsal. A 15% fall in visitors would cost the Andorrans 50 million euros each season, the researchers calculate. - Climate News Network
domingo, enero 27, 2013
Researchers unravel Greenland ice riddle
By Tim Radford
LONDON, 28 January - Scientists examining ice cores from deep in the glaciers of northwest Greenland have identified a period around 120,000 years ago when temperatures were 8°C warmer than today, they report in the journal Nature.
The good news is that despite this dramatic rise in temperature, the Greenland ice cap remained stable: it shrank to about 130 metres below the present level but the island remained covered by a thick blanket of ice.
The bad news is that – since at the time global sea levels were between four and eight metres higher than today – much of the meltwater that raised sea levels must have come from somewhere else.
Greenland has always been at the heart of concerns about global warming: climate scientists have for decades suspected that the massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and West Antarctica must have melted during the warm periods between the ice ages.
A pointer to the present
A team of 300 researchers from 14 nations has been studying the record of global temperatures preserved in the layers of ice during the Eemian period, a warm spell in the last great Ice Age. Locked in each annual snowfall is a ratio of oxygen isotopes that provides a measure of the atmospheric temperatures prevailing at the time.
With careful analysis of cores from Antarctica and Greenland – backed up by independent evidence from muds from the sea floor and pollens found in old lake beds – climatologists have been able to reconstruct the patterns of temperature for hundreds of thousands of years.
They see the Eemian period as a guide to what might happen as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise in the present century, driving global warming and climate change: during those few thousand years of warming, temperatures were between 5°C and 8°C warmer than the average of the last 1,000 years.
During the Eemian period the glacial surface melted, sank into the underlying snow, and froze again. This is a rare event at such latitudes, but in 2012, while the researchers were camped on the ice, it happened again.
“It was even raining, and just like in the Eemian, the meltwater formed refrozen layers of ice under the surface,” said Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, leader of the project.
“A thick Greenland ice sheet connected to much warmer conditions is astounding but no reason to relax and watch what the future of man-made warming has in store for us,”
“Although it was an extreme event, the current warming over Greenland makes surface melting much more likely, and the warming that is predicted to occur over the next 50-100 years will potentially have Eemian-like climatic conditions.”
The scientists drilled for, and recovered, more than 2,500 metres of ice core, a frozen record of more than 130,000 years of precipitation. The study confirms that, although the glacier at the peak of the 6,000 year warm period was shrinking by six centimetres a year, the island remained sheathed by a huge depth of ice.
The suspicion now must be that colossal melting in west Antarctica may have delivered much of the then-higher sea levels.
“A thick Greenland ice sheet connected to much warmer conditions is astounding but no reason to relax and watch what the future of man-made warming has in store for us,” said Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern.
“The warming was accompanied by a sea level rise of four to eight metres. Such a sea level rise would be a disaster for the more than seven billion people living on this planet today, even if it takes a thousand years to be reached.” - Climate News Network
LONDON, 28 January - Scientists examining ice cores from deep in the glaciers of northwest Greenland have identified a period around 120,000 years ago when temperatures were 8°C warmer than today, they report in the journal Nature.
The good news is that despite this dramatic rise in temperature, the Greenland ice cap remained stable: it shrank to about 130 metres below the present level but the island remained covered by a thick blanket of ice.
The bad news is that – since at the time global sea levels were between four and eight metres higher than today – much of the meltwater that raised sea levels must have come from somewhere else.
Greenland has always been at the heart of concerns about global warming: climate scientists have for decades suspected that the massive ice sheets that cover Greenland and West Antarctica must have melted during the warm periods between the ice ages.
A pointer to the present
A team of 300 researchers from 14 nations has been studying the record of global temperatures preserved in the layers of ice during the Eemian period, a warm spell in the last great Ice Age. Locked in each annual snowfall is a ratio of oxygen isotopes that provides a measure of the atmospheric temperatures prevailing at the time.
With careful analysis of cores from Antarctica and Greenland – backed up by independent evidence from muds from the sea floor and pollens found in old lake beds – climatologists have been able to reconstruct the patterns of temperature for hundreds of thousands of years.
They see the Eemian period as a guide to what might happen as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rise in the present century, driving global warming and climate change: during those few thousand years of warming, temperatures were between 5°C and 8°C warmer than the average of the last 1,000 years.
During the Eemian period the glacial surface melted, sank into the underlying snow, and froze again. This is a rare event at such latitudes, but in 2012, while the researchers were camped on the ice, it happened again.
“It was even raining, and just like in the Eemian, the meltwater formed refrozen layers of ice under the surface,” said Dorthe Dahl-Jensen of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, leader of the project.
“A thick Greenland ice sheet connected to much warmer conditions is astounding but no reason to relax and watch what the future of man-made warming has in store for us,”
“Although it was an extreme event, the current warming over Greenland makes surface melting much more likely, and the warming that is predicted to occur over the next 50-100 years will potentially have Eemian-like climatic conditions.”
The scientists drilled for, and recovered, more than 2,500 metres of ice core, a frozen record of more than 130,000 years of precipitation. The study confirms that, although the glacier at the peak of the 6,000 year warm period was shrinking by six centimetres a year, the island remained sheathed by a huge depth of ice.
The suspicion now must be that colossal melting in west Antarctica may have delivered much of the then-higher sea levels.
“A thick Greenland ice sheet connected to much warmer conditions is astounding but no reason to relax and watch what the future of man-made warming has in store for us,” said Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern.
“The warming was accompanied by a sea level rise of four to eight metres. Such a sea level rise would be a disaster for the more than seven billion people living on this planet today, even if it takes a thousand years to be reached.” - Climate News Network
Urban heat has far-flung impact
By Tim Radford
LONDON, 27 January - Urban real estate is literally hot property – so hot that it can affect not just the countryside a thousand kilometres away, but even weather patterns over whole continents.
A team from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Florida State University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, report in Nature Climate Change that they looked at a phenomenon known as the urban heat island. Meteorologists have known for decades that cities can be up to 5°C warmer than the surrounding countryside, thanks to the greater densities of traffic, people, lighting, heating, air conditioning, factories and the thermal properties of tarmac and concrete.
The world’s cities are growing: more than half of all humanity is now crowded into urban areas. Now it seems that urban waste heat could account for hitherto unexplained patterns of warming by 1°C in winter in northern America and northern Asia.
At the same time, the air temperatures over Europe during the autumn can fall by as much as 1°C, because of the urban heat island effect. The overall effect on global average temperatures is negligible, but the regional effects can certainly be estimated.
Effectively, fossil fuel is a form of stored sunshine: collected by plants over millions of years during the Carboniferous and released on a huge scale in the last 100 years or so. The carbon dioxide released is the prime cause of global warming, but the newly-liberated warmth of the Carboniferous, too, has an impact.
Atmospheric circulation altered
Guang Zhang of Scripps and colleagues considered the human energy consumption in 2006. Of this 16 trillion watts, they calculated that nearly 7 trillion was consumed in 86 metropolitan areas in the northern hemisphere. In Tokyo alone, in the early winter morning, the rate of consumption averaged almost 1,600 watts per square metre.
They modelled the patterns of consumption by computer, and calculated that waste heat would be enough to widen the jet stream, that great circulatory system in the stratosphere, to move heat around and make some regions noticeably warmer, others cooler.
“What we found is that energy use from multiple urban areas collectively can warm the atmosphere remotely, thousands of miles away from the energy consumption regions. This is accomplished through atmospheric circulation change,” said Zhang.
The researchers argue that future simulations of climate change might need to include – along with greenhouse gas emissions, aerosol discharges and land use change – patterns of energy consumption as well.
“A better and more accurate estimate of global energy use based on city-by-city information should be developed to fully account for the climate impact due to energy consumption in future climate change projections,” they conclude. - Climate News Network
LONDON, 27 January - Urban real estate is literally hot property – so hot that it can affect not just the countryside a thousand kilometres away, but even weather patterns over whole continents.
A team from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, Florida State University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, report in Nature Climate Change that they looked at a phenomenon known as the urban heat island. Meteorologists have known for decades that cities can be up to 5°C warmer than the surrounding countryside, thanks to the greater densities of traffic, people, lighting, heating, air conditioning, factories and the thermal properties of tarmac and concrete.
The world’s cities are growing: more than half of all humanity is now crowded into urban areas. Now it seems that urban waste heat could account for hitherto unexplained patterns of warming by 1°C in winter in northern America and northern Asia.
At the same time, the air temperatures over Europe during the autumn can fall by as much as 1°C, because of the urban heat island effect. The overall effect on global average temperatures is negligible, but the regional effects can certainly be estimated.
Effectively, fossil fuel is a form of stored sunshine: collected by plants over millions of years during the Carboniferous and released on a huge scale in the last 100 years or so. The carbon dioxide released is the prime cause of global warming, but the newly-liberated warmth of the Carboniferous, too, has an impact.
Atmospheric circulation altered
Guang Zhang of Scripps and colleagues considered the human energy consumption in 2006. Of this 16 trillion watts, they calculated that nearly 7 trillion was consumed in 86 metropolitan areas in the northern hemisphere. In Tokyo alone, in the early winter morning, the rate of consumption averaged almost 1,600 watts per square metre.
They modelled the patterns of consumption by computer, and calculated that waste heat would be enough to widen the jet stream, that great circulatory system in the stratosphere, to move heat around and make some regions noticeably warmer, others cooler.
“What we found is that energy use from multiple urban areas collectively can warm the atmosphere remotely, thousands of miles away from the energy consumption regions. This is accomplished through atmospheric circulation change,” said Zhang.
The researchers argue that future simulations of climate change might need to include – along with greenhouse gas emissions, aerosol discharges and land use change – patterns of energy consumption as well.
“A better and more accurate estimate of global energy use based on city-by-city information should be developed to fully account for the climate impact due to energy consumption in future climate change projections,” they conclude. - Climate News Network
Europe's climate scheme goes up in smoke
By Paul Brown
LONDON, 27 January - Carbon trading, one of the major European Union policies designed to combat climate change, is failing. A combination of successful lobbying by industry bodies, political interference and lack of economic growth has wrecked the scheme.
It is now cheaper to pollute the atmosphere than to invest in becoming energy-efficient.
Another blow came on Thursday (25 January) when a committee of European MPs voted down a scheme to rescue the carbon trading scheme. But there may still be a slim chance to save it.
The Environment Committee of the European Parliament is likely to be more sympathetic to a rescue package when it votes on 19 February, and with so much depending on the outcome there is potential for the whole Parliament to discuss support for the scheme in March.
The original idea of the EU emissions trading system (or scheme), the ETS, was to set a maximum cap on carbon emissions from each factory or power station. This would force industry to become more efficient or to pay a high price for every extra tonne of carbon over the limit.
Industries would gain credits for reducing their emissions below the set limit and then sell them on the open market to polluters who had failed to act. The plan was to reward those who spent the money they earned on new technology or other efficiency measures.
Hitting the floor
The whole system depended on the price of the units of carbon being high enough to give polluters an incentive to reduce their emissions - but the price has now collapsed to an all-time low.
The scheme was launched on 1 January 2005 with caps on 11,500 plants across the 25 EU countries, amid high hopes that the market for carbon would help the European Union towards a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
Carbon markets were set up to trade these notional units of tonnes of carbon saved. Analysts believed that the price needed to be between 20 and 50 euros a tonne to provide sufficient incentive for industry to become more efficient.
Despite early signs of success - when the price peaked at 30 euros a tonne in the summer of 2008 - the price of carbon never held up to the required level. In April 2010 the price had dropped to 15.30 euros a tonne when Germany sold 300,000 carbon permits. From there it continued to drift down and earlier this month dropped below five euros for the first time. It had become decidedly cheaper to pollute than to become efficient.
On Thursday the price briefly plunged further, to 2.81 euros, after a vote by the European Parliament Energy and Industry committee to support prices by withdrawing permits from the market and reintroducing them later. Members of the committee had been intensively lobbied by the European Steel Association (Eurofer).
"Profit-making and not fighting climate change has become the overriding objective of the players involved in carbon trading.”
This combination of successful lobbying by industry bodies and subsequent political interference has undermined the scheme. Special pleading that EU companies would be made uncompetitive if they had to pay too much for carbon credits, or spend too much on efficiency, meant that many industries were set emission caps that were too lenient.
In fact some were set so high that the industries stayed well below them without taking any efficiency measures at all. They therefore gained carbon credits simply by lobbying governments and were able to profit by selling them.
While the carbon trading scheme was not a disaster in all sectors and all countries, it has failed to achieve its objectives. This has been worsened because, built into the scheme, were forecasts for economic growth which were not fulfilled.
The European Commission failed to adjust the trading scheme to fit these new circumstances, and as a result there are now so many unsold carbon credits on the market that it is hard to see how the price could recover.
The EU began looking at ways to rescue its flagship policy by withholding unused credits and releasing them onto the market later, or simply cancelling millions of them. Germany is lukewarm on these rescue plans and some governments are outright opposed, for example Poland, which has a large coal industry and would lose sales if polluting factories were penalised.
Abolition calls
However, the European Commission has warned that the scheme could become irrelevant unless parties agree a rescue plan. "This should be the final wake-up call both to governments and the European Parliament," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said.
Not all of industry is opposed to the system. Royal Dutch Shell's environment advisor David Hone said what was needed was a clear price on carbon rather than a volatile and unpredictable market.
Some non-government organisations are scathing about the chances of EU efforts pushing the price of carbon back up and believe the whole system is so discredited it should be abolished.
Joanna Cabello from Carbon Trade Watch said: “The ETS is not fit for purpose. It has generated windfall profits for polluting corporations, postponed the needed transition away from fossil fuels, and its unintended consequences are locking the EU into another generation of energy production based on fossil fuels. These structural flaws remain unaddressed by the Commission.
“Instead of taking their responsibility, politicians have voluntarily put their main instrument to fight climate change in the hands of the financial markets. As we know, market mechanisms have their own dynamic. Profit-making and not fighting climate change has become the overriding objective of the players involved in carbon trading.”
She said it was an illusion to believe that proposals by the Commission would be able to improve the scheme substantially. - Climate News Network
LONDON, 27 January - Carbon trading, one of the major European Union policies designed to combat climate change, is failing. A combination of successful lobbying by industry bodies, political interference and lack of economic growth has wrecked the scheme.
It is now cheaper to pollute the atmosphere than to invest in becoming energy-efficient.
Another blow came on Thursday (25 January) when a committee of European MPs voted down a scheme to rescue the carbon trading scheme. But there may still be a slim chance to save it.
The Environment Committee of the European Parliament is likely to be more sympathetic to a rescue package when it votes on 19 February, and with so much depending on the outcome there is potential for the whole Parliament to discuss support for the scheme in March.
The original idea of the EU emissions trading system (or scheme), the ETS, was to set a maximum cap on carbon emissions from each factory or power station. This would force industry to become more efficient or to pay a high price for every extra tonne of carbon over the limit.
Industries would gain credits for reducing their emissions below the set limit and then sell them on the open market to polluters who had failed to act. The plan was to reward those who spent the money they earned on new technology or other efficiency measures.
Hitting the floor
The whole system depended on the price of the units of carbon being high enough to give polluters an incentive to reduce their emissions - but the price has now collapsed to an all-time low.
The scheme was launched on 1 January 2005 with caps on 11,500 plants across the 25 EU countries, amid high hopes that the market for carbon would help the European Union towards a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
Carbon markets were set up to trade these notional units of tonnes of carbon saved. Analysts believed that the price needed to be between 20 and 50 euros a tonne to provide sufficient incentive for industry to become more efficient.
Despite early signs of success - when the price peaked at 30 euros a tonne in the summer of 2008 - the price of carbon never held up to the required level. In April 2010 the price had dropped to 15.30 euros a tonne when Germany sold 300,000 carbon permits. From there it continued to drift down and earlier this month dropped below five euros for the first time. It had become decidedly cheaper to pollute than to become efficient.
On Thursday the price briefly plunged further, to 2.81 euros, after a vote by the European Parliament Energy and Industry committee to support prices by withdrawing permits from the market and reintroducing them later. Members of the committee had been intensively lobbied by the European Steel Association (Eurofer).
"Profit-making and not fighting climate change has become the overriding objective of the players involved in carbon trading.”
This combination of successful lobbying by industry bodies and subsequent political interference has undermined the scheme. Special pleading that EU companies would be made uncompetitive if they had to pay too much for carbon credits, or spend too much on efficiency, meant that many industries were set emission caps that were too lenient.
In fact some were set so high that the industries stayed well below them without taking any efficiency measures at all. They therefore gained carbon credits simply by lobbying governments and were able to profit by selling them.
While the carbon trading scheme was not a disaster in all sectors and all countries, it has failed to achieve its objectives. This has been worsened because, built into the scheme, were forecasts for economic growth which were not fulfilled.
The European Commission failed to adjust the trading scheme to fit these new circumstances, and as a result there are now so many unsold carbon credits on the market that it is hard to see how the price could recover.
The EU began looking at ways to rescue its flagship policy by withholding unused credits and releasing them onto the market later, or simply cancelling millions of them. Germany is lukewarm on these rescue plans and some governments are outright opposed, for example Poland, which has a large coal industry and would lose sales if polluting factories were penalised.
Abolition calls
However, the European Commission has warned that the scheme could become irrelevant unless parties agree a rescue plan. "This should be the final wake-up call both to governments and the European Parliament," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said.
Not all of industry is opposed to the system. Royal Dutch Shell's environment advisor David Hone said what was needed was a clear price on carbon rather than a volatile and unpredictable market.
Some non-government organisations are scathing about the chances of EU efforts pushing the price of carbon back up and believe the whole system is so discredited it should be abolished.
Joanna Cabello from Carbon Trade Watch said: “The ETS is not fit for purpose. It has generated windfall profits for polluting corporations, postponed the needed transition away from fossil fuels, and its unintended consequences are locking the EU into another generation of energy production based on fossil fuels. These structural flaws remain unaddressed by the Commission.
“Instead of taking their responsibility, politicians have voluntarily put their main instrument to fight climate change in the hands of the financial markets. As we know, market mechanisms have their own dynamic. Profit-making and not fighting climate change has become the overriding objective of the players involved in carbon trading.”
She said it was an illusion to believe that proposals by the Commission would be able to improve the scheme substantially. - Climate News Network
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)