Climate scientists say they have solved riddle of rising sea

Massive extraction of groundwater can resolve a puzzle over a rise in sealevels in past decades, scientists in Japan said on Sunday.

Global sea levels rose by an average of 1.8 millimetres (0.07 inches) per year from 1961-2003, according to data from tide gauges.

But the big question is how much of this can be pinned to global warming.

In its landmark 2007 report, the UN's Nobel-winningIntergovernmental Panel onClimate Change (IPCC) ascribed 1.1mm (0.04 inches) per year to thermal expansion of the oceans -- water expands when it is heated -- and to meltwater from glaciers, icecaps and the Greenland and Antarctica icecaps.

That left 0.7mm (0.03 inches) per year unaccounted for, a mystery that left many scientists wondering if the data were correct or if there were some source that had eluded everyone.

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http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Climate_scientists_say_they_have_solved_riddle_of_rising_sea_999.html

Raffi Cavoukian - The Environment Is Dead: Long Live Mother Nature

“Environmentalism has failed” is a statement that deserves attention. It comes from famed environmentalist David Suzuki marking 50 years since Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, helped spark the modern environmental movement.

Suzuki’s recent essay, Environmentalism Has Failed: On Adopting a Biocentric Viewpoint, on the fundamental failure of environmentalism is ominous. The world faces not only environmental calamities such as deforestation, coral reef depletion, and freshwater shortages, it is also mired in economic crises and harsh political realities. Despite the promise of “Arab Springs” and the global Occupy movement, we are increasingly in planetary peril. Throughout his life, David Suzuki has been a leading educator on planetary health; his conclusion about the environmental movement’s failure must be agonizing. Perhaps that’s why his blog offered no new way forward.

What now?

If decades of environmental campaigns produced significant gains but have lost the overall struggle to protect planetary life, that raises key questions:

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/23-1

Severe Nuclear Reactor Accidents Likely Every 10 to 20 Years, European Study Suggests

Western Europe has the worldwide highest risk of radioactive contamination caused by major reactor accidents.

Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) -- some 200 times more often than estimated in the past. The researchers also determined that, in the event of such a major accident, half of the radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area of more than 1,000 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor. Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an area is defined as being contaminated with radiation from this amount onwards. In view of their findings, the researchers call for an in-depth analysis and reassessment of the risks associated with nuclear power plants.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120522134942.htm

Tom Philpott - What Do the World's Most Powerful Pesticide Honchos Eat For Dinner?

I've made a career of sorts writing about the "big six" agrochemical companies—Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, DuPont, Syngenta, and BASF—that produce the great bulk of the world's pesticides and, increasingly, seeds. [1] But last week, I did something different. Rather than investigate and critique these companies in print, I broke bread with some of their executives. And then, in a public forum live-cast on the internet from DC's Newsuem, I told them bluntly what I thought of their industry.

They seemed a bit stunned by the spectacle, rapt in attention but increasingly silent as my critique went on. From my perspective, I was looking into a sea of dark suits, red ties, and wide eyes, with only the stray vigorous shake of the head to register open dissent from my critique.

The event was the annual policy summit held in Washington, DC, by CropLife America [2], the trade group representing Big Agrochem/Biotech and the suppliers and retailers that sell their goods throughout farm country. The group had invited me to speak at the behest of my friend, green-business journalist Marc Gunther [3], who has an annual gig moderating the event.

My foray into agrochem-exec shoulder-rubbing began the night before the conference, when I attended the pre-event speakers' dinner in a private dining hall of a DC hotel.

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http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/dinner-pesticides-monsanto-bayer-syngenta-dow-croplife

Stephanie Pappas - Report: Global Biodiversity Down 30 Percent in 40 Years

The world's biodiversity is down 30 percent since the 1970s, according to a new report, with tropical species taking the biggest hit. And if humanity continues as it has been, the picture could get bleaker.

Humanity is outstripping the Earth's resources by 50 percent — essentially using the resources of one and a half Earths every year, according to the 2012 Living Planet Report, produced by conservation agency the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Colby Loucks, the director of conservation sciences at WWF, compared humanity to bad houseguests.

"We're emptying the fridge, we're not really taking care of the lawn, we're not weeding the flower beds and we're certainly not taking out the garbage," Loucks said.

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http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/44400

Pam Frost Gorder - Statistical Analysis Projects Future Temperatures In North America

For the first time, researchers have been able to combine different climate models using spatial statistics - to project future seasonal temperature changes in regions across North America. They performed advanced statistical analysis on two different North American regional climate models and were able to estimate projections of temperature changes for the years 2041 to 2070, as well as the certainty of those projections.

The analysis, developed by statisticians at Ohio State University, examines groups of regional climate models, finds the commonalities between them, and determines how much weight each individual climate projection should get in a consensus climate estimate.

Through maps on the statisticians' website, people can see how their own region's temperature will likely change by 2070 - overall, and for individual seasons of the year.

Given the complexity and variety of climate models produced by different research groups around the world, there is a need for a tool that can analyze groups of them together, explained Noel Cressie, professor of statistics and director of Ohio State's Program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Statistics.

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http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Statistical_Analysis_Projects_Future_Temperatures_In_North_America_999.html

Jan Haverkamp - Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Socializing Risks, Privatizing Profits

Last week, the inevitable finally happened. The company responsible for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has been nationalized. Japan’s trade and industry minister Yukio Edano announced a de facto state take-over of the company with a further injection of $12.5bn, bringing the total of state capital in TEPCO to $33.2bn. Edano has said that: “Without the state funds, (TEPCO) cannot provide a stable supply of electricity and pay for compensation and decommissioning costs”.

The Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe has cost TEPCO over $100bn in estimated costs, which includes compensation and clean-up costs. However, the actual costs are much bigger. Many Japanese are bearing the brunt of the damages in their daily lives with most of their claims and losses going uncompensated and most of their suffering unrecognized.

The nationalization of TEPCO, together with a legal practice called “channeling of liability” in which all liability related to the Fukushima nuclear disaster has to be channeled to TEPCO, means Japanese taxpayers and ratepayers will foot most of the bill.

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http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/fukushima-who-profits-who-pays/blog/40463/

UMD Finding May Hold Key to Gaia Theory of Earth as Living Organism

Discovery ultimately could lead to better climate understanding and prediction

COLLEGE PARK, Md.  Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land -- interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.

The Gaia hypothesis -- first articulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s -- holds that Earth's physical and biological processes are inextricably connected to form a self-regulating, essentially sentient, system.

One of the early predictions of this hypothesis was that there should be a sulfur compound made by organisms in the oceans that was stable enough against oxidation in water to allow its transfer to the air. Either the sulfur compound itself, or its atmospheric oxidation product, would have to return sulfur from the sea to the land surfaces. The most likely candidate for this role was deemed to be dimethylsulfide.

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http://newsdesk.umd.edu/uniini/release.cfm?ArticleID=2698

Tiny Plants Could Cut Costs, Shrink Environmental Footprint

Tall, waving corn fields that line Midwestern roads may one day be replaced by dwarfed versions that require less water, fertilizer and other inputs, thanks to a fungicide commonly used on golf courses.

Burkhard Schulz, a Purdue University assistant professor of plant biochemical and molecular genetics, had earlier found that knocking out the steroid function in corn plants would create tiny versions that only had female sex characteristics. But brassinazole, the chemical used to inhibit the plant steroid biosynthesis, was prohibitively expensive.

One gram of brassinazole could cost as much as $25,000, so Schulz started looking into other options. He found that propiconazole, used to treat fungal dollar spot disease on golf courses, is more potent and costs about 10 cents for the same amount.

"Any research where you needed to treat large plants for long periods of time would have been impossible," Schulz said. "Those tests before would have cost us millions of dollars. Now, they cost us $25. This will open up research in crops that was not possible before."

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515104638.htm

New Report Reveals Scale of Edison Steam Generator Failures at San Onofre Nuclear Plant

Southern California Edison avoided federal regulatory guidelines when replacing defective steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear power plant -- a costly mistake that can’t be fixed by plugging the tubes that carry radioactive steam or by operating the plant at reduced power, according to a new report released today by Friends of the Earth.

The content of the report by nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen details the significant design changes that should have triggered a license review which would have uncovered problems that subsequently led to serious damage and the release of radiation from the defective equipment at San Onofre in January.

Gundersen also criticizes Edison's plans to rapidly restart the damaged reactors at lower power after having done minimal plugging of damaged tubes carrying radioactive water. He warns that these are “non-solutions” that could lead to even more significant equipment failure and releases of radiation.  Edison is expected to propose running the reactors at between 50 and 80 percent power. The report challenges the safety and effectiveness of such an approach, concluding:

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http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2012-05-new-report-reveals-scale-of-edison-steam-generator