Tuesday, June 21, 2005

The Forcast is For More Hot and Stormy Weather

While the Bush Administration moves from dithering to outright fraud when it comes to climate change, the world just continues to warm up and the results are becoming unmistakable. Examples abound:

• Kevin Trenberth head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research has just published a paper "Uncertainty in Hurricanes and Global Warming” in which he writes, "Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions." He says while it in unclear on how such changes may effect the number of hurricanes it is clear such changes will lead to an increase in intensity. "Computer models also suggest a shift in hurricane intensities toward extreme hurricanes," says Trenberth.

• Severe drought is drying up drinking water for cities and towns across Australia and threaten to shut down major population centers. Scientists report that global warming is changing rainfall patterns in Australia causing a long term drop in annual rainfall and increasing weather extremes. Goulburn, population 25,000, southwest of Australia's biggest city, Sydney will soon become the first town to simply run out of water. Reuters Alert reports, “The worst drought in 100 years is forcing Australians to close the tap on profligate water use and turn treated waste, most of which flows into the sea, into drinking water.”

• The Ottawa Sun is reporting that Canada’s eastern Arctic, one of the last places to resist global warming, is now succumbing to it. “The glaciers are retreating. The pack ice is growing thin. Freezing rain causes problems at a time the snow should be falling. Now in the Baffin Island region the winter comes later and leaves earlier, ocean currents are more powerful causing the ice to appear solid on the surface, while it really hides a thick layer of fresh water even in the salt water of Frosbisher Bay. Just about everywhere in Nunavut, everybody has a story to tell that documents the warming. Simon Nattaq, one of the best hunters of Iqaluit says, “The ice is no longer like before. You cannot trust it.” He should know he fell through that ice and ended up losing both of his legs.

• In Siberia global warming is on the verge of giving itself a “big boost by freeing gigantic amounts of carbon that have been on ice in Siberia's vast peat lands”, scientists warn. The Discovery Channel reports that global warming will likely be exacerbated by the release of carbon into streams from the thawing Siberian peat lands thus adding a huge load of carbon to the atmosheere and in turn ramping up the greenhouse effect. "If you were to stand in the middle of one of these streams, it actually looks like tea," said Siberian carbon researcher Karen Frey, of the University of California at Los Angeles. Its possible that some streams will see as much as a 700-percent increase in dissolved organic carbon being released as the permafrost thaws, Frey told the Discovery Channel. The carbon being released is ancient and has been locked away and out of circulation for eons. The thaw of that carbon is just like burning fossil fuels.

• Off the West Coast of Scotland where White-beaked dolphins have been seen for as long as anyone can remember, the sightings have become rare. These cold water dolphins are being replaced by warm water ones. This change has been accompanied by an increase in water temperatures around the UK of up to 0.4oC per decade since 1981 says the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. Colin MacLeod, part of a team of researchers from the University of Aberdeen, the Scottish Agricultural College in Inverness and the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh who have been examining trends in strandings of whales and dolphins since 1948 says, “The disappearance of white-beaked dolphins from the West Coast of Scotland should be a wake-up call for both the general public and politicians alike. It shows that climate change is not something that will only affect the future of people living in far off corners of the world, but is already affecting Scotland’s wildlife.” Mark Simmonds, Director of Science at the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society adds, “Climate change is the greatest threat to all living things and, as this latest research shows, the whales and dolphins are not immune from this… We need to do everything in our power to stop this.”

Meanwhile, a coalition of British aid and environmental groups warns that any efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa will fail unless climate change is reversed. Their report, "Africa - Up In Smoke?", says that African poverty and climate change are inseparably linked.

Tony Juniper, the executive director of Friends of the Earth, said in the Independent: "Policies to end poverty in Africa are conceived as if the threat of climatic disruption did not exist." Nicola Saltman of the World Wide Fund for Nature added: "All the aid we pour into Africa will be inconsequential if we don't tackle climate change."

While environmental groups have long pointed to global climate change as being linked to poverty, the recognition of the overriding importance of climate change is new to many aid groups.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says in the foreword to the new report: "It is important to understand that Africa and climate change are intrinsically linked, as climate change will affect the welfare of Africans for years to come." Western countries have a moral obligation to act over global warming, he says, as these wealthy countries have emitted more than their fair share of greenhouse gases.

The report makes clear what climate change will or has already meant to the African continent. It says,

“…the 14 African countries already subject to water stress or water scarcity will be joined by a further 11 nations in the next 25 years. Rainfall is predicted to decline in the Horn of Africa and some parts of the south by as much as 10 per cent by 2050, while the land may warm by as much as 1.6C, all of which is likely to affect the crop harvests for hundreds of millions of people.”

“The sea level around the coast of Africa is projected to rise by 25cm by 2050, and the west coast, currently affected by storm surges and at risk from extreme storm events, erosion and inundation, is likely to suffer even more. East Africa's coastal zone will also be affected: climatic variation and sea-level rise may decrease coral reefs along the continental shelf, reducing their buffer effects and increasing the likelihood of coastal erosion.”

The report makes clear, "Minor enhancements of debt relief pale into insignificance compared to the negative impacts of global warming. Many places in Africa are overwhelmingly dependent on rain-fed agriculture and so they are vulnerable to even the early phases of climate change: any slight exaggeration of peaks and troughs of climatic extremes hits them instantly.”

As the temperatures rise, sea levels rise as well and the moisture in the soil evaporates. Rainfall will become more erratic, but like hurricanes mentioned earlier storms will (and already are) become more intense. Downpours will wash away crops, drying lowland areas will force farmers to move to areas higher up now covered with forests. The farmers will cut down the trees and more soil erosion will result. And on it will go.

And like the arctic, there are stories to be told in Africa as well.

Jack Karanga told the Independent about a hailstorm he remembers from a couple years ago that shredded the crop in the tea plantations around his home in the Kenyan highlands. His wife and three children went hungry that year. "I normally work six days a week, from 7am till 3pm picking tea," he said. "On a good day, I pick 30kg and get paid 3.50 shillings a kilogram. Even that Ksh105 (75p) is not enough to pay school fees and buy my children clothes, but when the ice fell from the sky, I only had work for two days a week. It was a hard time."

There will be more hard times! Sources: TerraDaily, Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, Ottawa Sun, Discovery Channel, Reuters Alert Net, The Independent (UK), Los Angeles Times

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