Earth and Its Climate in 2031

Perhaps you are checking this Blog because of the new Osher catalog for fall 2011.

If yes, I heartily welcome you, and please accept my apology for me being behind on posting about current climate events. I have been very busy, and will continue to be very busy until early September, but then a major portion of my attention will focus on this Blog and the Osher class “Earth and Its Climate in 2031” .

If this subject interests you, in addition to reviewing past posts on this blog, you may also want to review the web site finblizclimate for some background information on climate change, the science behind what has been happening, and some of the earth changes that are predicted, such as rising sea level.

New Study on Sea Level Rise - Gloomier than ever

The linked study led by the University of Arizona predicts sea levels could rise by as much as a meter by 2100. This "would be enough to flood 90 percent of New Orleans, 33 percent of Virginia Beach, Va., and 18 percent of Miami, according to scientists."

The UA research focused on warmer oceans leading to faster glacial melting in Greenland and Antarctica. They also point out that at some point the melting becomes irreversible, even if we manage to reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically (which is unlikely to happen any time soon).

Burning more coal slows down global warming

The title does not seem to match today's science, but read the link and you will see it has a plausible scientific basis. In a nutshell, China doubled its coal burning from 2002 to 2007, and this has been in low tech coal fired power plants which emitted lots of sulfate aerosols. These in turn have reflected back into space a significant portion of the sun's energy. The net result is that the Earth's temperature has increased very little in the last decade.

Now the Chinese do know sulfate aerosols are harmful to people and the environment, so they are working to clean up their power plants. Unfortunately the increased CO2 emitted by these plants will remain in the atmosphere for decades, so when the sulfate aerosol emissions are reduced, global warming will most likely rebound.

The article also points to a role of El Nino in transferring heat from the oceans to the atmosphere. A strong El Nino in 1998 made for a hot year, which then affects how subsequent years are perceived in terms of warming trends.

What You and Others Think About Climate Change

"Scientific Agreement: While approximately 97% of publishing climate scientists agree that climate change is occurring and that it is caused primarily by human activities, this high level of scientific agreement is understood by only 44 percent of the Alarmed, 18 percent of the Concerned, 12 percent of theCautious, and 5 percent or fewer of the Disengaged, Doubtful and Dismissive." Andrew Revkin

Sea Level Rise and the Pine Island Glacier

The title link is to an article about the Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica which based on 2009 studies is loosing ice mass 1.5x as fast as it was in 1994. The cause is not simply ocean warming, but rather a reduction in grounding of the glacier on the land below it so that warm water is getting up under the glacier enabling the land based portion to slide into the ocean at a faster rate.

This mechanism has the potential to continue to accelerate leading to a faster rise in sea level than has been predicted. A more detailed review of this study can be found at Science_MSNBC.

VERGE

This is a very short post about VERGE, a concept and program that sound's very good and very timely as regards sustainability and the environment. RE the latter, below is a photo of a female Ruby-throated Hummingbird on her nest very near to where I live, and which I and friends are protecting from disturbance, that is, we are protecting her small breeding environment.

Geoengineering - Brightening Ocean Clouds

From Mark Guenther's title-linked post: "Marine cloud brightening is one way to manage solar radiation; others include injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere. [See my 2010 post, Geoengineering research, getting real]  Marine clouds cover roughly one-fifth of the earth’s surface, Latham told me, and they already play a role in keeping the earth cooler by reflecting the sun’s rays away from earth. If their surface area could be enlarge, they would be even stronger cooling agents."

John Latham is the scientist who first proposed this approach, and at 73, he is still very actively pursuing it. "Latham says his group has in mind a three-day experiment conducted over an area of about 100 square kilometers. Because of its limited size and scope, it would not affect the global climate, he said. It’s entirely unclear who, if anyone, has the authority to regulate such an experiment. And, in any event, Latham said his group won’t be ready to go forward for several years."

What, Latham was asked, needs to happen to get the U.S. Congress to take the climate crisis seriously?
“Major flooding in New York would probably focus the right attention,” he replied. “I don’t mean to be cynical about that. But Bangladesh could go under with a billion people, and I’m not sure that would provoke the wealthy countries to act.”

Cities and Climate Change, Enter the C40

From the NY Times title link: "It was six years ago when Mr. Clinton, working with Ken Livingstone, the leftist and then-mayor of London, drew together officials from 40 of the world’s largest cities, from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Yokohama, Japan, to share ideas for reducing carbon emissions and dealing with the inevitable impacts of a changing climate........

Cities now house more than half of the world’s population, and while they occupy 2 percent of the globe’s land mass, cities consume 70 percent of global energy and produce 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If anything meaningful is going to happen on climate in the short term, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Bloomberg and their advisers say, it has to start in the cities."

Those impressive figures come from the C40 Cities organization, strongly supported  by a joint effort of Clinton and  Bloomberg to tackle climate change by focusing on the large cities of the world.

“We are putting a stake in the ground around the idea that national and international governments have failed, possibly quite permanently, or at least in a way that they will not make any serious progress before it’s too late,” said Kevin Sheekey, a former deputy mayor of New York and principal political adviser to Mr. Bloomberg. “If you address the problems of the cities, there will be no need for China and India to sign onto some international accord. And thank God, because that’s not going to get done. It’s time to say it.”

The C40 has its next meeting in Sao Paulo Brazil, May 31 to June 2.

Access to Family Planning and Saving the Earth

On Marc Guenther's Blog, he presented the following quote from Ted Turner, of CNN fame:

Food, population and women: “What really concerns me is if we go to 8 or 9 billion. The natural world is collapsing all around us. There are two things we can do that won’t cost a lot of money… Millions of women don’t have access to family planning. If you provide people with  family planning, they won’t have unwanted pregnancies and they won’t have to  have abortions. The second thing we could do and we should have done it a long time ago is half the women in the world don’t have equal rights with men. In the Arab world, people are treated like dogs. They can’t vote in Saudia Arabia. They can’t drive a car. They don’t get an education. Women need to have equal rights with men, and equal education and equal rights to a job, and when women have that, they will choose to have smaller families.”

I have been a supporter of Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) for a long time, and that is certainly what they advocate. A couple more quotes by Ted Turner, that will hopefully inspire you to read the title link:

The defeat of climate bill: “It’s going to go down in history as one of the great tragedies that we’ve ever had.”

Energy poverty: Rich countries should get together to help the two billion people in the world who don’t have access to electricity. “Why not give everyone in the world who doesn’t have electricity a solar panel and a light bulb so their kids can do their homework?”

The Skeptics Side

For the sake of objective presentation...and a few laughs, I wanted point out James Taylor's blog post in Forbes (title link) concerning the recent report from the National Acadeny of Scienes titled America's Climate Choices. If you read the post, also be sure to read the comments by David, as they provide an excellent counter perspective. Or you can make your own assessment of the credentials of the report's authors.

Also see NOAA's comments and the Reuters article by Elizabeth McGowan, Climate Study Congress Requested Falls on Deaf Ears in the Capitol. From this article:

"WASHINGTON—Ho hum.
The average air temperature in the United States has leapt two degrees in the last five decades. Yawn. Coastal regions in the country are disappearing because of rising sea levels. Hit the snooze button. The already-arid Southwest is becoming drier. Snore.......
"If members of Congress challenge the assertions in the report, they should hold hearings," Bledsoe (climate change specialist with the Bipartisan Policy Center) said. "If they believe and accept what's in it, they should hold hearings. One way or another they should deal with it," he concluded. "I don't see how they can ignore it." "

Shrimp Farming and the Environment

My daughter never eats shrimp because of the negative impact so many shrimp operations have on the environment. These negative impacts range from cutting down mangrove forests, to the effluent pollution from poorly operated shrimp farms. In the title link you can learn that these negative impacts  are not inevitable, and that shrimp can be farmed in an environmentally sound manner. The link includes a 16 minute video about Linda Thornton, a major pioneer in these efforts. This video also covers some details about the shrimp farming techniques developed and employed on three shrimp farms in Belize.

There is still a lot of work ahead to get these techniques learned and practiced around the world, but organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund are helping make this happen, and are also developing certification techniques for shrimp raised on environmentally sustainable shrimp farms.