Global warming: New research emphasizes the role of economic growth

It's a message no one wants to hear: To slow down global warming, we'll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world's economies work.

That's the implication of an innovative University of Michigan study examining the evolution of atmospheric CO₂, the most likely cause of global climate change.

The study, conducted by José Tapia Granados and Edward Ionides of U-M and Óscar Carpintero of the University of Valladolid in Spain, was published online in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Policy. It is the first analysis to use measurable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to assess fluctuations in the gas, rather than estimates of CO₂ emissions, which are less accurate.

"If 'business as usual' conditions continue, economic contractions the size of the Great Recession or even bigger will be needed to reduce atmospheric levels of CO₂," said Tapia Granados, who is a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

For the study, the researchers assessed the impact of four factors on short-run, year-to-year changes in atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, widely considered the most important greenhouse gas. Those factors included two natural phenomena believed to affect CO₂ levels—volcanic eruptions and the El Niño Southern oscillation—and also world population and the world economy, as measured by worldwide gross domestic product.

Tapia Granados and colleagues found no observable relation between short-term growth of world population and CO₂ concentrations, and they show that incidents of volcanic activity coincided with global recessions, which brings into question the reductions in atmospheric CO₂ previously ascribed to these volcanic eruptions.

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/uom-gwn050112.php

Bill McKibben - Too Hot Not to Notice?

The Williams River was so languid and lovely last Saturday morning that it was almost impossible to imagine the violence with which it must have been running on August 28, 2011. And yet the evidence was all around: sand piled high on its banks, trees still scattered as if by a giant’s fist, and most obvious of all, a utilitarian temporary bridge where for 140 years a graceful covered bridge had spanned the water.

The YouTube video of that bridge crashing into the raging river was Vermont’s iconic image from its worst disaster in memory, the record flooding that followed Hurricane Irene’s rampage through the state in August 2011.  It claimed dozens of lives, as it cut more than a billion-dollar swath of destruction across the eastern United States.

I watched it on TV in Washington just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline.  Since Vermont’s my home, it took the theoretical -- the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure -- and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad.

And I’m not the only one.

New data released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they’re drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives. After a year with a record number of multi-billion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.” No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011.  As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175537/

Julia Whitty - Big Changes in Ocean Salinity Intensifying Water Cycle

A paper [1] in Science today finds rapidly changing ocean salinities as a result of a warming atmosphere have intensified the global water cycle (evaporation and precipitation) by an incredible 4 percent between 1950 and 2000. That's twice the rate predicted by models. 

These same models have long forecast that dry areas of Earth will become drier and wet areas wetter in a warming climate—an intensification of the water cycle driven mostly by the capacity of warmer air to hold and redistribute more moisture in the form of water vapor.

But the rate of intensification of the global water cycle is happening far faster than imagined: at about 8 percent per degree Celsius of ocean warming since 1950.

At this rate, the authors calculate:

• The global water cycle will intensify by a whopping 16 percent in a 2°C warmer world
• The global water cycle will intensify by a frightening 24 percent in a 3°C warmer world

Read More:

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/04/warming-climate-driving-huge-salinity-and-water-cycle-changes-ocean

Study finds warming speeding up rainfall cycle

An Australian study of ocean salinity over the past 50 years has revealed a "fingerprint" showing that climate change has accelerated the rainfall cycle, according to a researcher.

The study published in the journal Science and conducted by Australian and US scientists looked at ocean data from 1950 to 2000 and found that salinity levels had changed in oceans around the world over that time.

Co-author Susan Wijffels said the figures were revealing because ocean salinity was indicative of changes in the water cycle of rainfall and evaporation.

"What the results are saying is we have an ocean fingerprint, a very clear fingerprint, that the earth's water cycle has already spun up," she told AFP.

"What we see in the observations of how the salinity field has changed already over the last 50 years, (is) our hydrological cycle has already intensified significantly."

Wijffels said the pattern was amplifying over time and it could be inferred that the same dynamics were also happening over land.

"What it really means is that the atmosphere can actually shuttle more water from the areas that are drying out to the areas that have lots of rain faster," she said.

"And essentially it means that the wet areas are going to get wetter and the dry areas are going to get drier."

Read More:

http://news.yahoo.com/study-finds-warming-speeding-rainfall-cycle-060240114.html

John Vidal - Earth faces a century of disasters, report warns

World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid “a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills”, warns a major report from the Royal Society. Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.

The assessment of humanity’s prospects in the next 100 years, which has taken 21 months to complete, argues strongly that to achieve long and healthy lives for all 9 billion people expected to be living in 2050, the twin issues of population and consumption must pushed to the top of political and economic agendas. Both issues have been largely ignored by politicians and played down by environment and development groups for 20 years, the report says.

“The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption … or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future”, it says.

Read More:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/25/earth-faces-a-century-of-disasters-report-warns/

Michael Marshall - Arctic methane leaks threaten climate

As Arctic sea ice breaks apart, massive amounts of methane could be released into the atmosphere from the cold waters beneath.

High concentrations of the greenhouse gas have been recorded in the air above cracks in the ice. This could be evidence of yet another positive feedback on the warming climate – leading to even faster Arctic warming.

The Arctic is home to vast stores of methane – there are billions of tonnes of methane in permafrost alone. It is a potent greenhouse gas, so a major methane release would greatly accelerate climate change. The gas is found in icy crystals called hydrates beneath the shallow seas that flood some areas of the continental crust, as well as in permafrost. It is also being released from Arctic wetlands.

But this doesn't explain why Eric Kort of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues found patches of methane in remote regions of the Arctic Ocean, far from any of these known methane sources.

The team found the patches during five flights over the Arctic Ocean between 2009 and 2010, as part of a project to systematically map greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere.

Read More:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21733-arctic-methane-leaks-threaten-climate.html

Gar Alperovitz - Environmental Movement at a Crossroads

This Sunday marks the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day. I was privileged to be legislative director for Senator Gaylord Nelson, who had the vision in 1970 for Earth Day’s “national teach-in on the environment,” and who helped make that vision a reality. Over the past four decades, I have witnessed and cheered the growth and development of the modern environmental movement. Yet, even as the achievements of the movement are honored, we should also be honest: viewed with any serious attention to long and deep trends, the environment is in serious and ever-growing danger.

This is in no way to minimize the successes of the movement. There have been significant gains in connection with air quality, the incidence of lead, and water pollution, to name three issues that were the subjects of an explosion of public concern around the time of the original Earth Day. Between 1970 and 2010, concentrations of six principal air pollutants declined by almost 71 percent; and in just the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, an estimated 200,000 premature deaths and 700,000 cases of chronic bronchitis were prevented. The percentage of children with elevated blood-lead levels dropped from 88 percent in the 1970s to just 4.4 percent in the mid-'90s. Similarly, lead air pollution decreased 98 percent by 2000. Prior to 1972, industrial waste and sewage had made approximately two-thirds of waterways unsafe for recreation and fishing use. Three decades later, in 2004, 53 percent of assessed river miles and 70 percent of bay and estuarine square miles were safe for recreation and fishing. 

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155083/earth_day_2012%3A_environmental_movement_at_a_crossroads

David Korten - A Plea for Rio+20: Don’t Commodify Nature

“Time is life.”"As alert citizen groups are pointing out," writes Korten, "the proposals being advanced would result in the ultimate commodification and financialization of nature for the short-term benefit of the same global profiteers who created the mortgage bubble that brought down much of the global economy in 2008."

With these three words, Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of the Bhutan Gross National Happiness Commission, ended his brief description of Bhutan’s distinctive approach to economic development. It caught my attention because of the striking contrast to our common Western phrase, “Time is money.”

The event I was attending was a small international gathering primarily of indigenous environmental leaders. I was privileged to be among the few nonindigenous writer-activists invited to join them.

Tshiteem was seated to my left. Winona LaDuke, program director of Honor the Earth and a celebrated Native American environmental author and activist, was on my right. Tom Goldtooth, global environmental leader and executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, sat directly across from me. Next to him was Pablo Solón, former Bolivian Ambassador to the United Nations. Pablo was a principal driver behind the 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Read More:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/a-plea-for-rio-20-dont-commodify-nature

Study: Historic Rise to Sea Levels in Pacific Ocean Linked to Climate Change

A rapid rise in sea levels in Southwest Pacific Ocean has ocurred, according to a new study, and researchers say human-made climate change is likely the cause for significant rises in the 20th century. Scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia, partnered with other British universities, measured sea levels going back 6,000 years and spotted significant increases in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of note is that a major spike in the late 20th century, starting around 1990, is likely linked to human-created climate change, researchers said.

"The 1990s peak is most likely indicative of human-induced climate change," said Patrick Moss, a scientist from the University of Queensland. "Any drastic changes from the norm, which persist for several decades and over a wide area, represent important climate signals."

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/04/13-2

Drastic changes needed to curb most potent greenhouse gas

Meat consumption in the developed world needs to be cut by 50 per cent per person by 2050 if we are to meet the most aggressive strategy, set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to reduce one of the most important greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide (N2O).

This is the finding from a new study, published today, 13 April, in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters, which also claims that N2O emissions from the industrial and agricultural sectors will also need to be cut by 50 per cent if targets are to be met.

The findings have been made by Dr Eric A Davidson of The Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts, and demonstrate the magnitude of changes needed to stabilise atmospheric N2O concentrations as well as improve the diets of the growing human population.

N2O is the third highest contributor to climate change behind carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4); however, it poses a greater challenge to mitigate as nitrogen is an essential element for food production.

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/iop-dcn041112.php