Friday, December 30, 2011

'Terrible' and Plenty of It: The Oil That Comes in from the Cold by Humberto / Inter Press Service / Common Dreams

Published on Friday, December 30, 2011 by Inter Press Service

'Terrible' and Plenty of It: The Oil That Comes in from the Cold

by Humberto

CARACAS - Thanks to soaring oil prices and new technology, oil producers in the hot sands of Arabia, the torrid Niger delta or the humid plains of the Orinoco are facing new competition from rivals in the frozen North.

Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo (left) before boarding the Cairn Energy oil platform in the Arctic, 120 km from the Greenland coast. (Credit:Jiri Rezac/Greenpeace) The Anglo-Dutch Shell group was given the green light by the U.S. environmental agency to drill for oil off the coast of the northern edge of Alaska from July 2012, a project in which the company has already invested 3.5 billion dollars.
Meanwhile U.S. oil giant Exxon signed an agreement with Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer, to invest 3.2 billion dollars in exploring for oil and gas under the Kara sea, in northwest Russia. Another alliance, between BP (British) and TNK (Russian), is regretting its failure to win this opportunity.
"Estimated reserves of 100 billion barrels of crude lie under the Arctic ocean, as much as in Iraq or Kuwait, as well as 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids (like propane and butane) and 80 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," Kenneth Ramírez, an expert on geopolitics and oil issues at the Central University of Venezuela, told IPS.

The Danish island of Greenland has also called for bids for offshore oil exploration, and Exxon and the U.S.-based Chevron have been quick to express interest.

Canada, for its part, has Arctic oil deposits to add to the tar sands in its western provinces, putting it among the countries with the world's largest oil reserves. It also has the advantage of proximity to the largest market in the world, the U.S.

Between 13 and 20 percent of the undiscovered oil on the planet is under the Arctic ocean, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), most of it at accessible depths, which increases the likely profits if demand increases as expected and prices remain at or above 100 dollars a barrel.

"Economic growth in China and India, and above all OPEC policies, have paved the way for producers like Russia to exploit more of their reserves and compete with oil from tropical regions," Víctor Mijares, a professor of international relations at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, told IPS.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, produces about 30 billion of the 88 billion barrels a day of crude consumed worldwide, and supports the price of oil by cutting down on production when the market is over-supplied.

Exploring for oil under the Arctic ocean boosts the commitment of the global energy industry and the world economy to fossil fuels; reflects the strategies of traditional and emerging powers; and demonstrates the persistence of environmental risks associated with the oil and gas industry.

Contradicting those who hold that oil supply is declining inexorably, Leonardo Maugeri, a top executive at Italian energy company ENI and author of the 2006 book "The Age of Oil: The Mythology, History, and Future of the World's Most Controversial Resource", proposed that the present level of proven crude reserves might expand substantially due to new finds and technologies that allow higher recovery from oil deposits.

Proven crude oil reserves stand today at 1.5 trillion barrels, enough to supply the world for 40 or 50 years, but it is estimated that barely one-third of the reserves can be recovered. However, according to Maugeri, technological advances will mean more than 50 percent of the known oil will be recoverable by 2030.

As new reserves are discovered every year, Maugeri estimates that there will be over four trillion barrels of recoverable oil by 2030, "more than enough" for the entire 21st century.

Brazil, for instance, could add 50 to 80 billion barrels to its 14 billion barrels of proven reserves, as a result of confirmed oil findings in the deep presalt layer in the Atlantic ocean.

The Arctic is a prime example: crude and gas were virtually impossible to extract because of the harsh conditions, but with the melting of polar ice accelerated by climate change, high energy prices and new technology, its energy resources have become more attractive.

The polar region may contain the equivalent of 400 billion barrels of oil, or 10 times the volume of all the crude extracted so far from the North Sea.

"The truth is, there is a lot of interest in continuing to extract crude, and that's why the situation is not favourable for alternative energies, because oil is still abundant, convenient and cheap - even at current prices, it's an affordable form of energy for most societies," said Mijares.

The progressive melting of the Arctic icecap is also opening new shipping routes, handy for transporting the oil. "Russia is avid to relaunch itself as a great world power through the control of reserves, routes and supplies, while it makes the most of the technology provided by the West," said the Central University of Venezuela's Ramírez.

Mijares said that "in the era of the former Soviet Union, Russia displayed its power through its nuclear weapons and the Red Army…but now it depends on its energy capacity as the lever to maintain its place as a very important global actor."

As for the United States, it is probably delighted with the diversification of fossil fuel sources, which reduces its dependence on Middle East oil, so that it can exert greater pressure on the domestic policies of oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia.

The experts who spoke to IPS also remarked on the emergence of Canada as an energy power and, therefore, as a global player. It has withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, "and is increasing its military spending in order to stand up to the presence of new rivals in the Arctic."

Meanwhile, further environmental effects are awaited. Scientists like Peter Wadhams of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, U.K., have warned how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to deal with a catastrophic oil spill in the Arctic like the one that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

"If there is serious oil spill under ice in the Arctic…it will be very much harder to deal with than a major spill in open water," Wadhams told the British newspaper The Independent. "The oil is caught underneath the ice, so you can't get at it immediately to clean it up or burn it off. You don't know exactly where it is, and then it gets encapsulated in the new ice which grows underneath, so you then have a kind of oil sandwich inside the pack ice.

"And that's being transported around the Arctic and isn't released until spring, when it may be several hundred or even a thousand miles from the source of the spill…Once it is released in springtime, it's very toxic, because the encapsulation in the ice preserves the oil from weathering…Not great for the environment. In fact, I think the appropriate word would be 'terrible'."

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Keystone Victory by Mark Hertsgaard / The Nation / Common Dreams

The Keystone Victory

by Mark Hertsgaard

Victories against climate change have been rare, so it’s vital to recognize them when they happen. The Obama administration’s decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline is one such victory—arguably the most important achievement in the climate fight in North America in years.
True, the administration’s November 10 statements did not outright kill the 1,700-mile pipeline, which the TransCanada company wants to build to transport highly polluting tar sands from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas coast. Yes, President Obama or his successor could try to greenlight the project in 2013, when the State Department’s new review of the project is due. But that’s unlikely, as TransCanada’s CEO, Russ Girling, has acknowledged. The project’s contracts require the pipeline to be completed by 2013, or refineries will be free to look elsewhere for supply, which Girling expects they will.
In any case, such caveats mean only that the Keystone victory is not absolute. But when a $7 billion project involving the number-one US trading partner and oil supplier, a project that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only a year ago said she was “inclined” to approve, is very publicly postponed—even as the inspector general of the State Department launches an investigation into cronyism involving a former top aide to Clinton—good luck putting that Humpty Dumpty together again.
The climax of the Keystone campaign came November 6, when some 12,000 activists surrounded the White House (evidently a first) to urge Obama to honor his 2008 campaign pledge to fight climate change. “We want jobs but not as gravediggers for the planet,” Roger Toussaint, head of Local 100 of the Transport Workers of America, told the crowd in one of the strongest green declarations by a US labor leader. (Unfortunately, other elements of organized labor did not play against stereotype; the Building Trades Unions went so far as to team up with the oil industry to launch a “Jobs for the 99” campaign, co-opting Occupy rhetoric for their pro-pipeline propaganda.)
The breadth of the anti-pipeline coalition—indigenous people, progressive labor unions, youth, faith, farmer, community and environmental activists—was just one way this crusade contrasted with previous environmental campaigns. Other key differences: demands were more concrete and more radical. Strategy was set more by grassroots activists than by Beltway insiders. Tactics stressed people power—putting feet on the street, going to jail—over policy papers. The message was comprehensible to ordinary people rather than off-putting. And thanks to the Occupy movement, journalists were primed to pay attention to street protests.
All these factors combined not only to deliver the immediate victory over Keystone but to reanimate a movement that had been reeling after the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 and the defeat of climate legislation on Capitol Hill in 2010. “You need victories to build a movement, and how you win can be as important as what you win,” explained Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, an NGO that punctured the “energy independence” rationale for Keystone by revealing that the oil it transported to Texas would be sold on the world market, not reserved for American gas tanks. Kretzmann added, “For once a big battle coming out of the environmental community was not about an obscure policy proposal, like cap and trade. [The pipeline] was made into a moral issue about what we want the future of our country to be and what we’re willing to do about it. At the White House, I had one seasoned activist tell me, ‘I feel like I finally can crawl out of the fetal position I’ve been in since Copenhagen.’”
As with the Occupiers, establishment voices quickly registered their disapproval—and their political tone-deafness. Some, like Council on Foreign Relations fellow Michael Levi, even suggested that the delay would hurt the climate fight, because Bill McKibben and other climate organizers had muddied their message by taking advantage of the “not in my backyard” sentiments of Midwestern farmers who—oh the horror!—are Republicans. Such NIMBYism, Levi sniffed, could be used to undercut future deployment of wind farms and other clean energy sources.
The truth, as McKibben has said many times, is that he and his colleagues came to the Keystone party fairly late. “The indigenous peoples in Canada have been fighting this from the start, and then folks along the route” got active, McKibben told The Nation. “I joined in this spring, when [NASA scientist James] Hansen made clear the size of the [tar sands] carbon pool. Our role was to take a regional fight and make it national and international, which I think we managed to do.”
And not a moment too soon. One day before Obama’s announcement, the International Energy Agency released its annual report on the “World Energy Outlook.” The IEA is no den of subversives; it’s run by many of the world’s largest oil-consuming nations. Its report warns that without radical changes in the world’s energy infrastructure in the next five years, humans will make climate change irreversible. In this context the defeat of Keystone is exactly the kind of radical change, in infrastructure and activism, that’s needed.

Mark Hertsgaard (markhertsgaard.com), a fellow of The Nation Institute and The Nation's environment correspondent, is the author of five books, which have been translated into sixteen languages. His next book, Living Through the Storm: How We Survive the Next 50 Years of Climate Change, is forthcoming from Houghton-Mifflin.

Extreme Weather Set to Worsen With Climate Change: IPCC by Elias Biryabarema / Reuters / Common Dreams

Published on Friday, November 18, 2011 by Reuters

Extreme Weather Set to Worsen With Climate Change: IPCC

by Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA - An increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms, U.N. scientists said on Friday.

An increase in heat waves is almost certain, while heavier rainfall, more floods, stronger cyclones, landslides and more intense droughts are likely across the globe this century as the Earth's climate warms, U.N. scientists said on Friday. (AFP Photo/Ethan Miller) The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) urged countries to come up with disaster management plans to adapt to the growing risk of extreme weather events linked to human-induced climate change, in a report released in Uganda on Friday.
The report gives differing probabilities for extreme weather events based on future greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, but the thrust is that extreme weather is likely to increase.
"It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes ... will occur in the 21st century on the global scale," the IPCC report said.
"It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase," it added.
"A 1-in-20 year hottest day is likely to become a 1-in-2 year event by the end of the 21st century in most regions," under one emissions scenario.
An exception is in very high latitudes, it said. Heat waves would likely get hotter by "1 degrees C to 3 degrees C by mid-21st century and by about 2 degrees C to 5 degrees C by late-21st century, depending on region and emissions scenario."
Delegates from nearly 200 countries will meet in South Africa from Nov. 28 for climate talks with the most likely outcome modest steps towards a broader deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change.
CARBON EMISSIONS UP
The United Nations, the International Energy Agency and others say global pledges to curb emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are not enough to prevent the planet heating up beyond 2 degrees Celsius, a threshold scientists say risks an unstable climate in which weather extremes become more common and food production more difficult.
Global carbon emissions rose by a record amount last year, rebounding on the heels of recession.
"It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of heavy rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe," especially in "high latitudes and tropical regions."
For the IPCC, "likely" means a two-thirds chance or more.
It said there was "medium confidence" that this would lead to "increases in local flooding in some regions", but that this could not be determined for river floods, whose causes are complicated.
The report said tropical cyclones were likely to become less frequent or stay the same, but the ones that do form are expected to be nastier.
"Heavy rainfalls associated with tropical cyclones are likely to increase with continued warming. Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely," the report said.
That, coupled with rising sea levels were a concern for small island states, the report said.
Droughts, perhaps the biggest worry for a world with a surging population to feed, were also expected to worsen.
The global population reached 7 billion last month and is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, according to U.N. figures.
"There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st century ... due to reduced precipitation and/or increased evapotranspiration," including in "southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil and southern Africa."
There is a high chance that landslides would be triggered by shrinking glaciers and permafrost linked to climate change, it said.

(Writing and additional reporting by Tim Cocks; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Climate change episode of Frozen Planet won't be shown in the U.S. as viewers don't believe in global warming Climate change particularly sensitive during presidential race BBC says Attenborough features heavily on final episode, and he is not famous outside UK Environment groups brand decision 'unhelpful' By Daily Mail Reporter / ICH

Climate change episode of Frozen Planet won't be shown in the U.S. as viewers don't believe in global warming

Climate change particularly sensitive during presidential race
BBC says Attenborough features heavily on final episode, and he is not famous outside UK
Environment groups brand decision 'unhelpful'

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:46 PM on 15th November 2011

An episode of the BBC's Frozen Planet documentary series that looks at climate change has been scrapped in the U.S., where many are hostile to the idea of global warming.
British viewers will see all seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature series throughout the Autumn.
But U.S. audiences will not be shown the last episode, which looks at the threat posed by man to the natural world.
It is feared a show that preaches global warming could upset viewers in the U.S., where around half of people do not believe in climate change.

Sir David Attenborough presents and authors the 'On Thin Ice' episode. It looks at how the planet's ice is changing and what it means not only to the animals and people at the Poles but also the rest of the planet

The series of six episodes has been sold to 30 countries, including China, one of the world's biggest polluters.
World TV networks have the option to buy a seventh 'companion' episode, along with behind-the-scenes footage.
Ten of the countries have chosen not to use the final episode on climate change
In the U.S., Frozen Planet is being aired by Discovery. They were involved in the joint-production of the series. Yet they are still refusing to accommodate Frozen Planet in its entirety.

More...

Lara Croft lookalike Charlotte Uhlenbroek says female academics must look like 'frumps' to be taken seriously

The timing of a one-sided global warming programme could be particularly sensitive in the U.S., where climate change is an issue in the presidential race.
GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry accuses climate scientists of lying for money.
A poll earlier this year found that the majority of Americans believe that if climate change does exist, it is not caused by humans.
Fifty-three per cent of Republicans say there is no evidence of climate change, while the number is far higher among Tea Party supporters, with 70 per cent saying the theory is 'junk science' pushed by groups with a vested interest.
Sir David Attenborough presents and authors the series, the seventh episode of which, entitled 'On Thin Ice', looks at how the planet's ice is changing and what it means not only to the animals and people at the Poles but also the rest of the planet.

In mother's footsteps: More than 30 international networks have bought the Frozen Planet series

The series examines various aspects of the polar wilderness over the seasons and follows the lives of creatures from polar bears and wolves in the Arctic to killer whales and penguins in the Antarctic

A spokesman for the BBC said it would not make sense to force television networks outside the UK to buy the episode as it features 85-year-old Sir David talking a lot of the time to camera, and in many parts of the world he is not famous.
The broadcaster refused to say which countries had shunned 'On Thin Ice'. They said it wasn't included in the main package because it features Sir David 'in vision' which would make it hard for other countries to translate into their own language.
Discovery had dropped the full seventh episode due to 'scheduling issues', the spokesman added.
However, environmentalists branded the decision 'unhelpful'.
Harry Huyton, head of climate change for the RSPB, accused networks who haven't bought the final episode of 'censoring the issue'.
A Greenpeace spokesman said: 'Climate change is the most important part of our polar story.'
The show cost an estimated £16million and took four years to make and has proved hugely popular.
It examines various aspects of the polar wilderness over the seasons and follows the lives of creatures from polar bears and wolves in the Arctic to killer whales and Adelie penguins in the Antarctic.
It has been produced by the BBC's Natural History Unit in Bristol in conjunction with the Discovery Channel and The Open University.
The climate change episode will be aired on December 7 at 9pm.

New Analyses Show Oil and Gas Industry Is Inflating the Job-Creating Potential of Shale Gas Development / Food & Water Watch / Common Dreams

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 15, 2011
1:51 PM

CONTACT: Food & Water Watch

Kate Fried, Food & Water Watch, (202) 683.2500, kfried(at)fwwatch.org

New Analyses Show Oil and Gas Industry Is Inflating the Job-Creating Potential of   Shale Gas Development

   Food & Water Watch Study Shows One Job Claim Exaggerated by 900 Percent

WASHINGTON - November 15 - Will the oil and gas industry create 1 million new jobs for Americans, as its latest advertisement claims? The American Petroleum Institute and major oil and gas corporations are spending millions to convince Americans that with unrestricted access to natural resources, they can lift us from our economic slump in part by fracking our nation’s shale gas reserves. But Exposing the Oil and Gas Industry’s False Jobs Promise for Shale Gas Development, a new set of analyses released today by the national consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch, finds that the oil and gas industry is exaggerating the capacity of shale gas development to generate jobs and economic opportunity for Americans, in one case exaggerating projected job creation by 900 percent.
“The oil and gas industry has tried to stand on three legs, claiming that shale gas is good for the environment, good for American energy security and good for the economy. The first two legs have already been kicked out, and our new analysis kicks out the third,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “They have no legs left to stand on.”
A 2011 report by the Public Policy Institute of New York State (PPINYS) claimed that by 2018, developing 500 new shale gas wells each year in five counties in New York would create 62,620 jobs. Food & Water Watch closely examined the PPINYS report and found it riddled with flaws; in fact, the economic forecasting model that PPINYS used actually only supported a claim of 6,656 jobs. PPINYS inflated the job-creation potential of shale gas development by almost 900 percent. According to Food & Water Watch, even the corrected PPINYS jobs projection is overly optimistic because it fails to account for negative effects that shale gas development would have on other key parts of the economy, such as agriculture and tourism.
Exposing the Oil and Gas Industry’s False Jobs Promise for Shale Gas Development examines employment data, revealing that opening up five counties in the southern tier of New York to shale gas development can be expected to generate a net gain in employment of only about 2 jobs per well. This calculation, derived from data on actual employment, is in stark contrast with the forecast of 125 jobs per well in the PPINYS report. According to Food & Water Watch, an employment gain of just 2 jobs per shale gas well does not justify the inevitable costs to public health, public infrastructure and the environment that the industry would bring to New York.
Across the United States, shale gas development has generated a barrage of costly consequences:
-To date, over 1,000 cases of drinking water contamination have been reported near shale gas development sites around the U.S.
-In 2008, a fracking wastewater pit in Colorado leaked 1.6 million gallons of fluids, some of which contaminated the Colorado River.
-In Wise County, Texas, properties with fracking wells have lost 75 percent of their value.
-In 2009, Pennsylvania regulators ordered the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation to cease all fracking in Dimock, Pa., after three spills at one well within a week polluted a wetland and endangered fish in a local creek. The spills leaked 8,420 gallons of fluids that contained potential carcinogens. The state fined the company $240,000, and it cost more than $10 million to deliver potable water to the affected homes. A legal battle has now ensued over who should be responsible for providing Dimock residents with clean water.
-Scientists have found that 25 percent of the hundreds of chemicals used in fracking can cause cancer, 37 percent can disrupt the endocrine system and 40 to 50 percent can affect the nervous, immune and cardiovascular systems.
-Fracking wells in Pennsylvania, a state with many active sites, are expected to create 19 million gallons of wastewater this year, yet many municipal treatment plants lack the capacity to treat fracking wastewater in part because it often contains radioactive elements.
Many of the flaws in the PPINYS report come from a series of studies led by Timothy Considine of the University of Wyoming. His series of studies have informed many evaluations of the economic potential of shale gas development by policymakers, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Shale Gas Subcommittee.
The industry’s jobs projections are used to make the case for deregulation, but the oil and gas companies’ recent record tells a different story. According to a report released in September by Congressman Ed Markey (D-Ma.), ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, all involved in shale gas development, paid their executives a total of nearly $220 million and recorded $73 billion in profits in 2010. However, the Big 5 oil companies reduced their global workforce by a combined 4,400 employees that same year.
“While President Obama’s recent move to delay his decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline is a sign that his administration is attuned to public concern about the negative effects of tar sands, we hope he will not replace it with shale gas development,” said Hauter. “The oil and gas industry has exploited our economic woes to promote shale gas, yet actual employment data shows that it is not a cure-all for our nation’s economic challenges; the money to be made from shale gas development will mostly just benefit oil and gas executives.”
Exposing the Oil and Gas Industry’s False Jobs Promise for Shale Gas Development is available here.

###

Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.

Fukushima Fallout Fears Over Japan Farms / Jennifer Carpenter / BBC / Common Dreams

Published on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 by BBC News

Fukushima Fallout Fears Over Japan Farms

by Jennifer Carpenter

New research has found that radioactive material in parts of north-eastern Japan exceeds levels considered safe for farming.

The findings provide the first comprehensive estimates of contamination across Japan following the nuclear accident in 2011.

Food production is likely to be affected, the researchers suggest.

The results are reported in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.

In the wake of the accident at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive isotopes were blown over Japan and its coastal waters.

Fears that agricultural land would be contaminated prompted research into whether Japanese vegetables and meat were safe to eat.

An early study suggested that harvests contained levels of radiation well under the safety limit for human consumption.

Contaminated crops

Now, an international team of researchers suggests this result deserves a second look.

To estimate contamination levels, Teppei Yasunari, from the Universities Space Research Association in the US state of Maryland, and his colleagues, took measurements of the radioactive element caesium-137 in soil and grass from all but one of Japan's 47 regions and combined these results with simulations based on weather patterns following the meltdown.

Caesium-137 lingers in the environment for decades, and so is more of a concern than other radioactive elements released in the cloud of steam when the reactors' cooling systems failed, leading to explosions.

The team found that the area of eastern Fukushima had levels of the radioactive element that exceeded official government limits for arable land.

Under Japanese Food Sanitation Law, 5,000 becquerel per kg (Bq/kg) of caesium is considered the safe limit in soil (caesium-137 makes up about half of total radioactive caesium, and therefore its safe limit is 2,500 Bq/kg).

The researchers estimate that caesium-137 levels close to the nuclear plant were eight times the safety limit, while neighbouring regions were just under this limit.

The study showed that most of Japan was well below (average about 25 Bq/kg) the safety limit. Relatively low contamination levels in western Japan could be explained by mountain ranges sheltering those regions from the dispersal of radioactive material, the authors said.

Food production in the most contaminated regions, the researchers write, is likely to be "severely impaired", and that Fukishima's neighbouring regions, such as, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata, Niigata, Tochigi, Ibaraki, and Chiba are likely to also be affected.

"Some neighbouring prefectures... are partially close to the limit under our upper bound estimate and, therefore, local-scale exceedance is likely given the strong spatial variability of [caesium-137] deposition," the researchers explained in PNAS.

They urge the Japanese government to carry out a more thorough assessment of radioactive contamination across Japan before considering future decontamination plans.

A second study, published in the same edition of PNAS, collected over a hundred soil samples from within 70km of the Fukishima plant, and found similarly high caesium-137 levels across the Fukishima prefecture, and its neighbouring regions.

Radioecologist Nick Beresford from Centre of Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster explained that once in soil, caesium will become bound to mineral components, which limits its uptake into plants.

However, this process depends on the soil type. "Caesium stays mobile for longer in organic soils, hence why England and Wales still have some post-Chernobyl restrictions in upland areas," he told BBC News.

Ploughing, and some fertilisers can help farmers reduce plants' uptake of the dangerous elements, and binding agents can be added to animal feed to reduce their uptake from the gut, he added.

Local recordings

New figures on background radiation levels recorded 60km northwest of the Daiichi power plant have also been released this week by Japanese physicist Tsuneo Konayashi from Fukushima Medical University.

Dr Konayashi saw an initial spike reaching over nine times the usual levels hours after the explosions at the plant; five months later levels have dropped to one and a half times those expected.

He continues to monitor radiation levels and distribute his data around campus.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Greenhouse Gases Rise by Record Amount / Associated Press / Common Dreams

Published on Friday, November 4, 2011 by Associated Press

Greenhouse Gases Rise by Record Amount

Levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago

The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide has jumped by a record amount, according to the US department of energy, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

The figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
"The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, the co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
The world pumped about 564m more tons (512m metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009, an increase of 6%. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries, China, the US and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.
It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate department of energy figures in the past.
Extra pollution in China and the US account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.
"It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, the director of the energy department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."
Boden said that in 2010 people were travelling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.
India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8% in 2010.
"The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."
In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4-6.4 Celsius) by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees (4 Celsius).
Even though global warming sceptics have criticised the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.
Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme".
"Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."
But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8% below 1990 levels. The US did not ratify the agreement.
In 1990, developed countries produced about 60% of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50%, Reilly said.
"We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us."

Social Psychosis and Collective Sanity / by Winslow Myers / CommonDreams.org

Published on Thursday, November 10, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Social Psychosis and Collective Sanity

by Winslow Myers

We know from the sad experience of Nazi Germany or Khmer Rouge Cambodia that it is possible for whole nations to become mentally ill, with horrendous consequences. At the time, however, the Nazis or the Khmers had no idea that they were deeply out of touch with the reality that all people are equally worthy of respect and care.
The population of the earth recently surpassed 7 billion. As we move further into the condition of global villagehood, it becomes more important than ever to assess our shared mental health. Collectively we can less and less afford the distortions that afflict the psyches of individual persons, such as denial, regression into infantile rage, fantasy ideation, or blind projection outward onto “enemies” of our unresolved inner tensions. Everyone is aware of the potential horror, for example, of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of someone not in the clearest of minds.
The social psychosis of denial is one of the greatest of our temptations. As I write I’m sitting outdoors on my back porch in Boston. It is November 8. The “expected” temperature for an average day at this time of year might be around 40. Today it is 70. News stories in the last week have once again sounded the alarm of the amounts of CO2 going into the atmosphere being much greater than previously estimated. The displacement of millions of people by climate instability has the potential to be the primary cause of future conflict.
No upstanding citizen from whatever country will find it congenial to be lumped together with the coldly murderous Nazis or the ruthless Khmer Rouge—or even with the notion of the “good German” who professed not to know what was happening to the Jews around him. It is painful enough merely to think of ourselves as people who, because we did not do enough, accelerated untenable conditions with which our children and grandchildren will have to cope down the time-stream. No previous generation has had to make prospective judgments about what they needed to change or sacrifice to ensure the distant future for the entire human species.
Few of our national figures are leading on such issues. Instead, the value-ideal of consumerist economic prosperity built upon models of endless growth continues to dominate the marketplace of ideas and determine the criteria for political success.
This growth model has a momentum of its own, not necessarily connected to our best interests. Take nuclear weapons. Almost 60 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States is still planning to spend 700 billion dollars on new and upgraded nuclear arms, including building 12 new ballistic missile submarines. But the U.S. is not alone. Russia, China, India, Israel, France and Pakistan are all setting aside vast sums for nuclear missile delivery systems of various sizes. Each nation rationalizes its actions on the basis of what its supposed rivals are doing. The net result will not be the intended increase in security, but a gross diminishment of collective security potentially ending in disaster.
If this is not a form of social madness, of collective insanity, what is? If the weapons are ever used there will be no victory, and the money spent on these useless weapons becomes unavailable for meeting challenges like global climate change and basic budget balancing. Perhaps most importantly of all, there are new models and processes that humans can use to diminish the original tensions that motivate the proliferation of such weapons. We know more than ever about how to overcome the fear within our own psyches that drives the engine of international hostility. At the same time there are enormous new opportunities for people to meet either virtually or face-to-face and learn how much they have in common—in short, to change from imaging others as enemies to interacting as friends, because survival and the greater good demands it.
The hope of reconciliation has its roots deep in a past that we tend to forget. Few among us recall the Kellogg-Briand pact outlawing war. Written by the great diplomat and poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960, St. John Perse, enthusiastically endorsed by hundreds of thousands of citizen-activists around the world, the pact was signed in 1928 by the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Weimar Germany, and many other nations. It is still the law of the land in the U.S. today—clearly honored more in the breach than the observance. It may be as Keats asserted, that poets really are the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Carol Daniel KasbariThe fate of peace lies more now with ordinary people than with the Gandhis and Nobel Prize winners. Carol Daniel Kasbari is an activist-citizen in the Middle East—a Palestinian scholar, writer, wife, and mother. This accomplished facilitator of change suggests a number of actions to help end potential or actual war:

Cross borders to successfully engage perceived adversaries in authentic, face-to-face, ongoing dialogue; tell your story to the world.
Invite news professionals to document what you experience and what progress you create with others; expand the circle to include vastly more interested citizens and, yes, also the skeptics and the unconvinced—all the voices.
Strengthen your own support system at home by involving people who matter most to you, so they also experience how easily the ice of alienation can be broken.

Here is the URL of a 20 minute talk by Ms. Kasbari: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxJaffa-Carol-Daniel-Kasbari
Both the Arab Spring and the global Occupy movement are at least potentially geared in the direction of this understanding of interdependence and relationship. There are thousands of non-governmental organizations that are working to build friendships and break down barriers of alienation and misunderstanding. These too could benefit from an infusion of funds presently delegated to the insanely wasteful upgrading of nuclear weapons systems. If we are going to have a growth model, let it be growth in breaking down artificial barriers of tribe, race and religion, growth in the deep realization that all seven billion of us are in this together. That way lies collective sanity.

Winslow Myers, the author of “Living Beyond War: A Citizen’s Guide,” serves on the Board of Beyond War, a non-profit educational foundation whose mission is to explore, model and promote the means for humanity to live without war.

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Robin Hood Tax Gains Ground at the G-20 by Mary Bottari / PRWatch.org / Common Dreams

Published on Friday, November 4, 2011 by PRWatch.org

Robin Hood Tax Gains Ground at the G-20

by Mary Bottari

The G-20 meeting in Cannes got underway this week. The sunny beach resort, playground to movie stars and media moguls was an odd choice for a somber G-20 meeting. As President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner touched down in Air Force One, the Greek government was on the verge of collapse, austerity was sweeping Europe and the future of the Eurozone in doubt.

But the first day of talks offered a ray of hope for the entire global economy. For the first time, the 20 most powerful countries in the world sat down to discuss taxing the financial service industry. And for the first time, the U.S. blinked.
Welcome Change of Tune for the U.S. GovernmentPresident Sarkozy of France has long championed a small sales tax on the financial services industry. "At a time when states are making remarkable efforts to restore their public finances... how can the financial sector triumphantly continue to march, indifferent to the world around it, carelessly and without a care for the disorder it has more than its share in causing," Sarkozy said. Angela Merkel of German agrees.

President Obama too has supported the idea. Ron Suskind revealed in his new book Confidence Men that Obama thought the tax was a no brainer right after the banks collapsed the global economy -- until his economic team told him otherwise.

Behind the scenes, the “opponent in chief” has been U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who has protected his friends on Wall Street by privately characterizing the tax as unworkable, easy to evade and not likely to bring in much income. Geithner doesn't just oppose the tax for the U.S., he has opposed the tax in the context of the G-20 and as EU member nations move forward to apply the tax in their member states.
Now the White House appears to be changing its tune. Reuters is reporting that the U.S. government is backing down from its long standing opposition to the tax.

An unnamed source told Reuters the United States now seemed "less problematic than the U.K." in resisting the idea. The U.S. is still opposed to the idea in principle but would not block others from going ahead. The Wall Street Journal confirmed the story quoting White House adviser Mark Froman as saying that the governments had decided to pursue different financial taxes, but: “I think there is broad consensus between the Europeans that the president met with this morning and ourselves about the ability of each to pursue this in their own way, whatever way they see to be most effective." Translation: Go for it, but the U.S. won’t join you.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board wasted no time, savagely attacking the idea and calling on Geithner for help.
Nurses Hold Geithner's Feet to the FireThe news reports hit the wire almost at the exact same moment that thousands of nurses took the fight for a fair economy right to Tim Geithner’s doorstep with signs demanding "An Economy for the 99%" and “Tax Timmy’s Friends.” Nurses and other groups are fed up with Geithner's soft pedaling every action that might hold the big banks accountable for the meltdown of the global economy.

The noon rally at the Treasury marks an increased effort by unions to convince the Obama administration that more needs to be done to fix the country’s broken financial system and create jobs. Obama's reelection campaign recently announced that they were hoping to turn anger against Wall Street to their advantange in the next election cycle. Hard to do if the 99% are knocking on your door, calling for meaningful measures to make Wall Street pay. The nurses later fanned out across Capitol Hill, delivering 322,844 petitions in support of the idea to Finance Chair Max Baucus and other members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (the Super Committee).

“It is long past time for Secretary Geithner and President Obama to get on board with other world leaders in supporting this common-sense approach to raise badly needed revenues to help fund the critical programs we need to revive the U.S. and other global economies,” said NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro, who traveled to Cannes to join with nurses from around the world at a press conference and rally close to where world leaders were meeting.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was also in Cannes, quietly pushing the White House to do the right thing. The American labor leader was joined by one of the richest men on the planet, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who presented a paper to the G-20 leaders advocating for the transaction tax to aid the developing world. An increasing number of unions and grassroots groups, including SEIU, AFSCME, Oxfam, Public Citizen, Rebuild the Dream and National People's Action are adopting the tax and campaigning on it, and the Occupy Wall Street crowd has embraced it as well holding small actions across the country October 29th.

The Pope was not present, and neither was the Archbishop of Canterbury, but both men came out for a financial transaction tax as economically feasible and morally right in recent days.

Actor Bill Nighy, the British actor who has long campaigned for the "Robin Hood Tax" as it is called in the U.K. and who did a wonderful video popularize the idea joined the nurses in Cannes. “I heard a banker remark the other day that 'the time for atonement is over'. I must have been out of the country at the time, or looked away momentarily because I don't remember that period of atonement taking place. It would not affect their multimillion bonuses, “ Nighy dryly observed to the Guardian.
Tax Faces Continued Opposition in the United StatesWhile the domestic implementation of the tax faces continued opposition from the U.S. Congress, Geithner and the White House, proponents reintroduced the legislation this week and are rapidly picking up co-sponsors. Oregon Rep. Pete DeFazio and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin introduced a modest version of the transaction tax (HR 3313) in an effort to get the Super Committee to take a closer look. While the financial services industry will work hard to convince Congress that any tax will result in the immediate collapse of the global financial system and that grannie will be hardest hit, the facts are that the modest fee proposed in this legislation is miniscule in comparison to the management fees applied by some mutual funds.

"Wall Street is 40 percent of the economy. They don't make things. They don't feed people. They churn. They create volatility,” said DeFazio. “The first step on the long path to recovery happens when we rein in the excessive speculative activity that has destabilized our financial system.”
Much more work needs to be done to get the Obama administration to adopt the idea, even more work to get it though Congress, but the tax now has a growing list of powerful allies and a simple common sense appeal.
As Trumka puts it: "It is time to put Wall Street to work rebuilding Main Street with a financial speculation tax to create jobs, rein in speculation and lay the groundwork for long-term economic prosperity."

Mary Bottari is the Director of the Center for Media and Democracy's Real Economy Project and editor of their www.BanksterUSA.org site.

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Maine Farmer Heads Group Challenging Genetics Giant Monsanto by Avery Yale Kamila / Portland Press Herald (Maine)

Published on Thursday, November 10, 2011 by the Portland Press Herald (Maine)

Maine Farmer Heads Group Challenging Genetics Giant Monsanto

by Avery Yale Kamila

A fight to maintain consumer choice and farm independence has landed Maine farmer Jim Gerritsen on Utne Reader's list of "25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World," published in the November/December edition of the magazine on newsstands now.

Organic seed potato farmer Jim Gerritsen heads a trade association that is suing chemical giant Monsanto. (photo: Charlotte Hedley ) Gerritsen, wife Megan, and their four children run the Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, which produces and sells organic seed potatoes to kitchen gardeners and market farmers in all 50 states. Gerritsen is also president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, and it was that role that led to the Utne recognition.
The nonprofit organization created a stir in food and farming communities when, with legal backing from the Public Patent Foundation, it filed a lawsuit in March against the chemical and biotechnology giant Monsanto. OSGATA has since been joined in the lawsuit by 82 other seed businesses, trade organizations and family farmers, which together represent more than 270,000 people.
The lawsuit questions the validity of Monsanto's patents on genetically modified seeds, and seeks protection from patent-infringement lawsuits for the plaintiffs should their crops become contaminated with Monsanto's transgenic crops.
"The viewpoint of Monsanto is that (in such a situation) we have their technology, even though we don't want it and it has zero value in the organic market," Gerritsen said. "We think they should keep their pollution on their side of the fence."
Laws prohibit certified organic crops from containing genetically modified ingredients, and Monsanto's patents prohibit farmers from growing its seeds unless purchased from the company. Yet pollen doesn't heed certification or patent laws, and regularly drifts from transgenic crops to contaminate nearby non-genetically altered ones.
To add insult to injury, Monsanto has a reputation for suing or threatening to sue farmers for patent infringement in cases involving its genetically altered seeds, action reported in numerous media outlets as wide ranging as the Columbia Daily Tribune, CBS News and the New York Times.
Despite this well documented legal tactic, Monsanto spokesperson Thomas Helscher stated in an email: "Monsanto has never sued and has publicly committed to not sue farmers over the inadvertent presence of biotechnology traits in their fields. The company does not and will not pursue legal action against a farmer where patented seed or traits are found in that farmer's field as a result of unintentional means."
"Inadvertent" and "unintentional" are the key words here, but for farmers to prove that Monsanto's transgenic seeds are unwanted invaders in a court of law is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. A 2005 report from the Center for Food Safety, an organic-food and sustainable agriculture advocacy group, contends that Monsanto had at that time filed 90 lawsuits against American farmers. The report also contends that the corporation employed 75 people armed with a budget of $10 million devoted "solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers."
Pre-trial motions are still being filed in the lawsuit brought by OSGATA, with the most recent from Monsanto asking that the lawsuit be dismissed.
Helscher said the motion to dismiss results from the corporation's pledge to not sue farmers "where patented seed or traits are found in that farmer's field as a result of inadvertent means. Accordingly, there is no real controversy between parties and the OSGATA case should be dismissed."
Gerritsen views Monsanto's statements as part of a disinformation campaign designed to prolong the lawsuit.
"What they typically try to do is drag out lawsuits as long as they can, hoping the plaintiffs will run out of funding," Gerritsen said. He is confident OSGATA has the resources necessary to pursue this lawsuit for years, if necessary.
Unlike open pollinated crops such as corn and canola, which have suffered from widespread contamination by genetically modified seeds, potatoes remain relatively safe, Gerritsen said.
Monsanto developed multiple strains of transgenic potatoes in the 1990s under the name New Leaf. However, when major food companies such as McCain, which operates a french fry processing plant in Easton, and McDonald's rejected genetically-modified potatoes, Monsanto was forced to pull its transgenic strains off the market.
Gerritsen said the lawsuit will also seek to clarify what he sees as Monsanto's contradictory stance on its genetically modified seeds.
When arguing against labeling of transgenic food, Monsanto and other biotech companies claim that genetically modified seeds are substantially equivalent to traditional seeds. However, when seeking patents, the same companies claim the insertion of foreign genes creates unique seeds deserving of patent protection.
"Which is it?" Gerritsen asked. "It's one or other, but it can't be both. Is it the same? Or is it different?"
All genetically modified seeds are designed to do something different from the original seed. This can mean the modified seed will produce increased quantities of a particular substance inherent to the plant, manufacture chemicals foreign to the original plant, or withstand heavy applications of herbicides and pesticides manufactured by the same corporation seeking the seed patent.
Helscher said, "these genetic modifications in seeds do not significantly change composition, nutrition or safety of resulting food products and thus the food products are not required to be labeled." He did not comment on why seeds that he states do not contain significant changes from the originals would merit patent protection.
Despite Monsanto's legal muscle, Gerritsen remains convinced the current lawsuit will succeed. He also sees hope in the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has spread rapidly around the world and has demanded an end to corporate greed and dominance.
"What I understand the Occupy movement to represent is resistance to the growing tradition of power concentrated in the hands of the few, which is most often corporations," Gerritsen said.
Citing the revolving door between corporations (including Monsanto) and the government agencies which purport to regulate them, Gerritsen said, "we basically have a dysfunctional government. The Occupy Wall Street concept is to try to give power back to the people."
In the same vein, the lawsuit against Monsanto seeks to restore the power of citizens and farmers to choose food free from genetically modified organisms.

Year of Extremes Underscores Need for Better Preparedness, Emissions Reductions Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) / Common Dreams

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 9, 2011
3:10 PM

CONTACT: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)

Elliott Negin
Media Director
202-331-5439
enegin@ucsusa.org

Year of Extremes Underscores Need for Better Preparedness, Emissions Reductions

WASHINGTON - November 9 - The United States this year experienced an incredible string of extreme weather events, many of which are expected to become worse as the climate changes.

So far, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has recorded 10 disasters between January and August that have each inflicted more than $1 billion in damage. Severe snowstorms, massive spring floods, oppressive heat waves and hurricane flooding took a toll in 2011 on the U.S. Recent events could drive the 2011 total to a record-breaking 14 weather disasters, adding up to an estimated $53 billion in costs, according to a preliminary analysis by Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at Weather Underground.

While efforts are underway to reduce the emissions that drive climate change, some global warming is locked in, and many people will have to cope with the impacts it has on extreme weather, their daily lives, health and economic well-being.

Below, UCS has assembled information on the science regarding three types of extremes—heat, drought and intense rainfall—that are most strongly linked to climate change, along with summaries of how such extreme events affected the United States in 2011 and how they may affect the country in the future. Please also find updates on efforts to reduce emissions and provide relevant climate science information to decision makers.

Climate Change and Extreme Heat

For the continental United States, 2011 was the hottest summer since the Dust Bowl. Forty-two states had above-normal temperatures for the summer months and four states broke records for extreme summer heat. During a July heat wave, the National Weather Service had issued heat alerts for areas home to approximately 141 million people and media reports indicate that dozens of people may have died from the extreme heat.

Extreme heat is a public health threat and an economic drain.
More than 8,000 Americans died from extreme heat between 1979 and 2003, more than were killed by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, lightning, and tornadoes combined.
In addition to the direct effects of heat stress, higher temperatures also cause increased ozone pollution which triggers breathing problems. The heat also drives spikes in energy demand as people crank up their air conditioners. During the 2011 heat wave, peak power prices in affected areas jumped from $100 per megawatt hour to $350.
Extreme heat can have a disastrous impact on the nation’s largest industry—agriculture. It can drag down yields for corn, soybean, wheat and cotton. For livestock, extreme heat can reduce milk production by as much as fifty percent, lower the rate at which livestock gain weight, and greatly reduce reproduction rates.

The link between extreme heat and climate change is found in how climate change alters the distribution of weather toward more heat and less cold. Warmer air holds more moisture, causing heat indices, which conveys what it feels like outside, to rise. Climate change is also driving up night-time temperatures even faster than day-time temperatures, meaning there is less relief from extreme heat at night.

In the 1950s, record high temperatures were just as likely to occur as record cold temperatures. But over the last decade, the United States has set twice as many record highs as record lows. Similarly, there has been an increase in high-humidity heat waves characterized by high nighttime temperatures.

According to the last National Climate Assessment, staying on a high emissions path is likely to make extreme heat events that occurred just once every 20 years in the past happen every two years, if not every single year, throughout the country by the end of the century. In some areas, future summers may be comprised of months-long periods of “extreme” heat today. Over the very long term, higher temperatures could make it very difficult, if not impossible, for people to tolerate the outdoor heat during the hottest months of the years in many parts of the world.
If we do nothing to curb the emissions that drive climate change, the number of days over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago per year, for instance, could spike from an historical average of less than 10 to between 30 and 45 days by the end of the century under the current higher emissions path.
But under a lower emissions path it could remain about the same as today.

Climate Change and Heavy Flooding

Two great American rivers, the Missouri and Mississippi, broke their banks due to a combination of climate and weather factors this year.

Both floods made NCDC’s list of $1 billion plus disasters. An initial tally of the damage from the Missouri flood exceeded $2 billion, including the cost of 11,000 evacuations in Minot, ND, breached levees and thousands of flooded acres of farmland. Meanwhile, NCDC initially pegs the cost of the Mississippi flood at between $2 billion and $4 billion. Damages include “$500 million to agriculture in Arkansas; $320 million in damage to Memphis, Tennessee; $800 million to agriculture in Mississippi; $317 million to agriculture and property in Missouri's Birds Point-New Madrid Spillway; $80 million for the first 30 days of flood fighting efforts in Louisiana.”

More broadly, according to NOAA, flash flooding and river flooding in the United States caused an average of $2.7 billion in property and crop damages annually from 2000 to 2010 (in 2007 dollars). Climate change certainly plays a role in heavy precipitation and this year was consistent with a 50-year-long shift toward heavier precipitation, but other factors combined to make April 2011 the 10th wettest on record in the United States. La Niña and the buildup of snowpack in cold mountain regions – which can rapidly melt when temperatures warm – set the stage for dramatic floods when intense spring rains arrived.

Additionally, scientists know that higher temperatures lead to more water evaporation from the ocean and soil into the atmosphere. As average global temperatures rise, the warmer atmosphere can also hold more moisture, about four percent more per degree Fahrenheit temperature increase.
Accordingly, with around a degree Fahrenheit warming that has occurred, worldwide, water vapor over oceans has also increased by about four percent since 1970 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Small changes in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can have a major impact on storms, which draw upon water vapor from regions 10 to 25 times larger than the specific area where the rain or snow actually falls.

According to the most recent National Climate Assessment, scientists have observed less rain falling in light precipitation events and more rain falling in the heaviest precipitation events across the United States. From 1958 to 2007, the amount of rainfall in the heaviest one percent of storms increased 31 percent, on average, in the Midwest and 20 percent nationally. The increase in the Northeast has been the largest, at 67 percent.
The 2009 National Climate Assessment projected that climate change is likely to increase the disparity between light and heavy precipitation events. Under the current higher-emissions scenario, by the end of the century the amount of precipitation in the heaviest events would more than double, but under a lower-emissions scenario would only increase slightly above current levels.

Climate Change and Drought

The Southern Plains and U.S. Southwest continued to be dogged by persistent drought conditions throughout 2011. According to NCDC, direct losses to agriculture, cattle and structures associated with drought, wildfires and extreme heat in the region tally “well over” $9 billion.
Broadly, the cost of drought in property and crop damage averaged $1.1 billion per year between 2000 and 2009 according to NOAA. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, has estimated the total annual cost of drought to the U.S. at $6 billion to $8 billion.

Drought leads to serious water shortages. Drought conditions negatively affect plants’ growth and survival, and trees and plants can become more susceptible to diseases or pests after suffering from drought. Droughts can also harm animals that depend on water sources, including fish that inhabit drying lakes and streams. Water shortages also can reduce water availability for hydropower. Finally, droughts increase the likelihood of wildfires, which threaten lives and can destroy hundreds of acres of forests and millions of dollars in property and crops in addition to introducing extra pollution and carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Texas is currently suffering from its worst and most costly drought. Agricultural losses tallied in August added up to $5.2 billion. Livestock and cotton production were among the worst affected economic activities. Summer wildfires burned a record 127,000 acres. Texas State Climatologist, John Nielson-Gammon, has raised the sobering prospect that the state could be in the middle of a mega-drought that endures for years, perhaps even through 2020.

While it’s difficult for scientists to precisely tease out the role climate change has played in the region’s droughts historically, it’s clear that climate change is intensifying the dryness of already arid regions, making them more susceptible to drought.

Climate change affects drought in several ways. Most directly, higher temperatures cause more moisture to evaporate from soil. The shift away from lighter precipitation events and toward heavier events may mean more opportunities for drought in between rainy periods, especially in regions with the steady or declining total annual rainfall. Finally, the earlier arrival of spring has caused mountain snowpack to melt earlier and, in some cases, more intensely, again robbing lowlands of a reliable supply of water during the dry season.

Scientists have already observed an increase in drought globally over the past century. Global dry areas have doubled since the 1970s, and the primary factor influencing the expansion of dry land areas since the mid-1980s has been increased surface temperatures. Areas of the western and southwestern United States have experienced persistent drought conditions since the 1990s, and in the southwest United States, three of the 11 most extreme droughts recorded since 1916 have occurred since the year 2000, during time periods associated with warmer-than-average temperatures.

Climate models project that dry regions in the west and southwestern United States will likely face an increased risk of drought as global warming continues. Models project considerably more drought for the southwest in the second half of the 21^st century. In areas dependent upon Colorado River water supplies, dry spells are projected under one scenario to increase from a historical average of 4 to 10 years to 12 years or more.

How States and the Country Can Reduce the Threats from Climate Change

Scientists caution that continuing to overload the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases will increase the risk of more wild weather. Unfortunately, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief heat-trapping gas driving climate change, saw their largest ever increase in 2010, according to a Department of Energy analysis. Emissions now exceed the worst-case scenarios scientists analyzed in a landmark 2007 IPCC assessment.
On Nov. 18, the IPCC is slated to release a long-anticipated report examining the science linking climate change to certain types of extreme weather and steps governments can take to prepare for harder-hitting weather as the climate changes. Meanwhile, the United States is embarking on its next National Climate Assessment, which is slated to deliver critical information to local and state policymakers to help them prepare their communities for growing risks from climate change.
Despite the need for more information about how climate change is affecting us, the future of federal climate science in the United States remains murky. For example, the White House requested nearly $350 million to create a National Climate Service within NOAA, modeled on the agency’s successful National Weather Service. In July, a key House of Representatives committee passed a bill that cut all that funding. The corresponding Senate committee in September voted to partially fund the service, but at only half the level of the president’s request.
On reducing emissions, states continue to lead the way. California, for example, has instituted an economy-wide program for cutting emissions and increased its requirements for utilities to switch to renewable energy. The federal government has continued to lag behind on comprehensive climate and energy policy, although the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to update the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon emissions from power plants and possibly refineries in the near future.
According to UCS, the United States needs to invest in building resilience to climate change consequences, as well as take aggressive measures to reduce carbon emissions and the risks of climate change. Preventative public health measures and local preparedness are critical for protecting public health and saving lives. But in order to effectively prepare for climate change, the United States needs to build on current federal and state actions and adopt a comprehensive national strategy to create climate-resilient communities and reduce the emissions that drive climate change.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.

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