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Global Warming & Climate Change: Humans' Reactions & Responses

intaglio said:
I'm no fan of nuclear power but I have the nastiest feeling that it is going to be the only way to bring CO2 levels down quickly enough
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Unfortunately, I suspect that Nuclear Power is only really efficient and "cost effective" if its being used to produce weapons grade materials.

:(
 
AndroMan said:
Unfortunately, I suspect that Nuclear Power is only really efficient and "cost effective" if its being used to produce weapons grade materials.

:(
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Not even then really - all costings (that take into account the costs of decommisioning and safe waste disposal) show it struggles to break even - it would also be a step backwards (and think of the unresolved terrorist problem in an unsafe world). If the government went all out on environmentally friendly options then it would not only create a growing extra option but if we became leaders in the technology we could help revitalise sectors of the economy. At the moment when the government give with one hand (creating a wave energy hub for different companies to test technology without having to build all the infrastructure) they take with the other hand (slashing grants for solar/PV cells). Just on the latter - current PV technology is nearly as cheap as roof tiles and in London would put electricty back into the grid. If they were serious they could run some tests in different areas to get the technology right and start actually legislating that new properties should have them (along with other energy saving measures). It wouldn't take long for to realise that their friends are actually getting paid rather than paying for their power and things would snowball. As a side bonus the UK would become world leaders in the technology and we could export this globalls - if we could help developing countries like China leapfrog the messy Hydrocarbon Age (we've managed this leapfrogging with CFCs) then that would be a far more significant contribution than just getting our own house in order.

Blair just needs some balls and to pull out all the stops.
 
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

A friend was kind enough to point out this website

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

I dont think it will ever work while it carries the word "Voluntary" in it and it seems pretty tame. Still... I am eligable to join seeing I was snipped in Feb 2000 and have no kids.
 
I shall make sure I know the height of a place above sea level before I buy property.
 
I might live by the sea side but at least I am near the top of a very steep hill.

If I get flooded the rest of the country is doomed.
 
If the Greenland glaciers melt and the Antarctic follows, we'd better grow fins 'n' gills, or blowholes (like the politicians have, but for breathing).
 
If we're going to go afield in this thread and discuss other aspects of environmental concern and efforts, why is there no major efforts or mandates towards recycling in the UK? I'd say that humanity drowinging in their own swill is a far likely immediate problem than the shifting of the North Atlantic Current.
 
Fallen Angel said:
If we're going to go afield in this thread and discuss other aspects of environmental concern and efforts, why is there no major efforts or mandates towards recycling in the UK?
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How do you mean?

Where I live all the paper is recycled as are bottles and cans and I compost all the organic rubbish (they had a big push on it a year ago offering subsidised composters, etc.). The only bugbear is that (at least in my area) they don't do plastic bottles too but that is because of the volume.weight problem meaning transportation is a real killer and you have to wait until a local recyling unit is built.
 
Fallen Angel said:
....why is there no major efforts or mandates towards recycling in the UK? ......
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We are being pushed towards recycling by EU mandates!!!!!!

But the government also slapped on a landfill tax, soon to be increased. Which means that some local councils are looking at INCINERATION, which will shove up the CO2 levels even more!!!!:confused:

The local recycling initiative involves two wheely bins one for recyclables the other for the rest collected alternate weeks. Oh! & a ban on vans & trailors just turning up at local tips, you now need a licence. This is to prevent firms using them, but it's significant that a lot more is being dumped in ditches & back lanes.
 
Recycling facilities in Edinburgh are the worst I've ever seen. For a start just about the only things you can recycle at all are paper and glass and even then you either need a car to transport your stuff to the banks or spend some time walking to them with bags of heavy stuff (unless you are lucky enough to live near one). Even I'm not that keen though I do at least manage the paper. Every so often the council claim that they are trying to encourage people to recycle but so far I have seen no evidence whatsoever.:hmph:
 
Fallen Angel said:
If we're going to go afield in this thread and discuss other aspects of environmental concern and efforts, why is there no major efforts or mandates towards recycling in the UK? I'd say that humanity drowinging in their own swill is a far likely immediate problem than the shifting of the North Atlantic Current.
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It seems to vary a lot around the country. My parents have a bin, a box for cans and bottles and a sack for papers - plus their own compost bin, not the councils. In Hull we just have two bins, one for paper and another for the rest. In Bromley I noticed they give out boxes with internal compartments. In Cottingham they don't seem to bother - a part from having bottle and paper banks outside Safeways.

Back on climate change - I notice the Queen is involved now, along with her son and a surprising number of the Tory Party. I can only think that this means things are very serious :(
 
BBC Springwatch plan - link

City dwellers might be hard-pushed to confidently identify a hawthorn bush or a peacock butterfly. Most, though, could probably point out a bumblebee or a pond full of frogspawn at the bottom of their garden.

The BBC is about to put these observational skills to the test with a nationwide initiative designed to engage the public on a grand scale - as its recent family history series Who Do You Think You Are? has done. This week it will be harnessing the newly recognised power of 'Mass TV' and asking viewers and listeners to join in an unprecedented project to map some of the changes in the climate of the British Isles. Focusing on six key signs that spring has arrived, the BBC will collect data sent in by the public and use it to create its first televised seasonal event - a comprehensive study of a British spring. Viewers will be asked to spot the first blossoming of the hawthorn in their area, and the first appearances of five key creatures, the peacock butterfly, the bumblebee, the frog, the swift and the seven-spotted ladybird.

These markers were selected because they are found across the country, in gardens, parks and school grounds. From Tuesday, the public are being invited to record their findings online at bbc.co.uk/springwatch or by using postcards inside the Radio Times and soon to be placed in civic buildings.

Called Springwatch, the BBC's exercise will be followed in May by a series to be presented by a special environmental 'squad', headed by the wildlife enthusiast and former Goodie, Bill Oddie. The shows will examine viewers' discoveries and film the people who made the findings. The BBC, flushed with the success of The Big Read, the literary campaign of 2003, and the impact of the Restoration project for derelict buildings last year, is convinced it has spotted another national obsession in the making.

'It is very exciting. We will follow the progress of spring through the programmes,' said Paul Manners of BBC Wildlife. 'It will be about participation and about backdoor nature, although we are also working on other related environmental projects, probably based in public spaces, to go on air through the year.'

The Springwatch project has been designed in co-operation with the Woodland Trust, which runs an increasingly popular nature observation, or phenology, network. It has more than 11,000 registered 'recorders' and is the largest network of this kind in the world. Its evidence has indicated that spring is arriving earlier on these shores.

'We really need to know about first sightings all over the country to get a proper comparison,' said Sian Thomas of the trust. 'The more people that take part, the more valuable for science the survey will be.'

The Woodland Trust suspects that 2005 will be a record year. In the south and south west, sightings of snowdrops, primroses and even frogspawn have been made, but the trust says it needs to know if these are freak events or part of a bigger pattern.

Proof is mounting. The mean temperature for January-March in the 1960s was 4.2C compared with 5.6C in the 1990s. The global surface temperature for 2002 was the second highest on record, and in Britain it was the fourth warmest on record.

After its initial Springwatch drive, the BBC and its experts will suggest a number of activities that homeowners can do to encourage any species that are having difficulties in Britain's increasingly warm climate.

Yet some wildlife and conservation groups are sceptical about the level of the BBC's commitment. While the green lobby welcomed an attempt to highlight changes to the timing of the traditional seasonal markers, it remains wary of a project that has at least one eye on ratings rather than political change. A campaign pushing new energy and pollution policies would be more helpful, said a Green Party spokesman.

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: 'Anything that raises public awareness of climate change and its potential impact, in a responsible way, is to be welcomed. However, we have to be guarded about what one year's experience can really tell us.'
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Global warming approaching point of no return

Greets

Global warming approaching point of no return, warns leading climate expert
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

23 January 2005

Global warning has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's top climate watchdog.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that the world has "already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts in the pollution if humanity is to "survive".

His comments rocked the Bush administration - which immediately tried to slap him down - not least because it put him in his post after Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to international action on global warming, complained that his predecessor was too "aggressive" on the issue.

A memorandum from Exxon to the White House in early 2001 specifically asked it to get the previous chairman, Dr Robert Watson, the chief scientist of the World Bank, "replaced at the request of the US". The Bush administration then lobbied other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri - whom the former vice-president Al Gore called the "let's drag our feet" candidate, and got him elected to replace Dr Watson, a British-born naturalised American, who had repeatedly called for urgent action.

But this month, at a conference of Small Island Developing States on the Indian Ocean island, the new chairman, a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute, himself issued what top United Nations officials described as a "very courageous" challenge.

He told delegates: "Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose."

Afterwards he told The Independent on Sunday that widespread dying of coral reefs, and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic, had driven him to the conclusion that the danger point the IPCC had been set up to avoid had already been reached.

Reefs throughout the world are perishing as the seas warm up: as water temperatures rise, they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white. Partly as a result, up to a quarter of the world's corals have been destroyed.

And in November, a multi-year study by 300 scientists concluded that the Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up to 20 per cent in the past three decades.

The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than it was in the 1970s and is expected to disappear altogether by 2070. And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts of the Arctic were having a January "heatwave", with temperatures eight to nine degrees centigrade higher than normal.

He also cited alarming measurements, first reported in The Independent on Sunday, showing that levels of carbon dioxide (the main cause of global warming) have leapt abruptly over the past two years, suggesting that climate change may be accelerating out of control.

He added that, because of inertia built into the Earth's natural systems, the world was now only experiencing the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects would occur as the increased pollution of later decades worked its way through. He concluded: "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603752

mal
 
Okay, call me a pessimist (just not all at once), but I really can't see how any changes are going to be made in time by those that need to do so...
 
Don't worry, Michael Crichton author of the recently published: State Of Fear tells Rupert Murdoch's buttmonkeys at the Sunday Times, why he's shifted to the Right and Global Warming's all hooey:
The Sunday Times - Review
Interview: Jasper Gerard meets Michael Crichton
Global warming? Now that really is fiction
January 02, 2005

A giant wave envelops a tropical island. Victims scramble for survival. The world watches in horror. Michael Crichton has a knack for novels that are of the moment, but never has his fiction collided so savagely and swiftly with reality. Until now, with State of Fear, the Jurassic Park author’s latest blockbuster.

As befits one of the world’s top-selling authors, there is a monster twist in the book. So while the real tsunami was a product of nature, Crichton’s fictional one was started secretly by obsessive environmentalists trying to frighten the world into believing that global warming is about to cause the apocalypse.

For after three years of painstaking research, the father of the techno-thriller believes he has reached a shocking conclusion: global warming is hot air.

We met before the 603-page tree trunk of a novel had lumbered into bookshops, but the internet was already crackling with condemnation. “I have only done one talk show (to promote State of Fear) and people are clearly quite confused. One lady (caller) wanted to know why I wasn’t showing concern for earthquakes being caused by pollution. I said, actually there is no evidence about that.”

Boy, will the green types be hot under the collar. As Britain sweats over missing its carbon dioxide emission targets, Crichton sends a simple message: chill. And if your heart aches for Third World suffering, divert the “trillions of dollars wasted on Kyoto to the 850m people who don’t have clean water, 20,000 of whom die each day”.

If you doubt Crichton’s research, he offers enough footnotes citing scientific journals to fill a hefty volume of their own. As a Harvard physician and at the age of 22 a visiting anthropology lecturer at Cambridge, he is in nobody’s intellectual slipstream. It is not so much that Crichton is being reactionary; rather, his view offends our almost religious veneration of green issues, a faith in mother earth which holds that driving to the bottle bank in a belching 4x4 is a profound act of worship.

Crichton admits his Hollywood cronies express horror at dinner parties as he expounds his theory. In response, he has made the prize chump in State of Fear a Hollywood star who dribbles on about saving the planet. Forget limousine liberals, Crichton’s new target is “Gulfstream environmentalists”.

“I am asked to discuss it — the kind of ‘Why are you a heretic?’ conversation,” he says. “Often they are in the entertainment industry and on the boards of environmental groups. It soon becomes clear they have no information, only attitudes.”

Two developments persuaded Crichton to abandon his Californian liberal world view. One was in 2002 having a gun held to his head by burglars, who tied up Taylor, his daughter, then aged 13. “They told me not to move and I figured it was best not to argue,” he says. It convinced him we must be tougher on bad guys, be they cat burglars or Saddam Hussein.

His second awakening was seeing that scientists had become so cowed by environmental activists and the media that they dared not proclaim what their research showed: that, so far, it appears global warming is hardly happening.

“The global change in temperature that everyone is so excited about is one-third of a degree,” he asserts. “The UK is doing better than most targets. It is extremely hard. In America, where we have had two of the coldest summers in the past century, they are underwhelmed by distressing notions of it getting warmer.”

....
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So, that's alright then. :hmm:
 
Not the most well thought out 'baddies' for a plotline, I must say. Is he slowly turning in Tom Clancy, one wonders...
 
Feeding the World under Climate Change

Greets

Published on Friday, January 21, 2005 by Institute of Science in Society
Feeding the World under Climate Change

by Edward Goldsmith / ISIS

The debate over sustainable agriculture has gone beyond the health and environmental benefits that it could bring in place of conventional industrial agriculture. For one thing, conventional industrial agriculture is heavily dependent on oil, which is running out; it is getting increasingly unproductive as the soil is eroded and depleted. Climate change will force us to adopt sustainable, low input agriculture to ameliorate its worst consequences, and to genuinely feed the world.

But in order to get there, important changes have to be made in international agencies and institutions, which have hitherto supported the dominant model of industrial agriculture and policies that work against poor countries, where farmers are also desperately in need of secure land tenure.

This mini-series is a continuation of many articles that have appeared in our magazine, Science in Society since 2002.

1. Feeding the World under Climate Change
2. Sustainable Agriculture: Critical Ecological, Social & Economic Issues
3. Restoring Degraded Soils a Matter of Urgency
4. Food for Thought



ISIS Press Release 06/10/04


Why sustainable agriculture

The debate over sustainable agriculture has gone beyond the health and environmental benefits that it could bring in place of conventional industrial agriculture. For one thing, conventional industrial agriculture is heavily dependent on oil, which is running out; it is getting increasingly unproductive as the soil is eroded and depleted. Climate change will force us to adopt sustainable, low input agriculture to ameliorate its worst consequences, and to genuinely feed the world.

But in order to get there, important changes have to be made in international agencies and institutions, which have hitherto supported the dominant model of industrial agriculture and policies that work against poor countries, where farmers are also desperately in need of secure land tenure.

This mini-series is a continuation of many articles that have appeared in our magazine, Science in Society since 2002. Feeding the World under Climate Change

Industrial agriculture contributes enormously to global warming, it is increasingly unproductive and heavily dependent on oil that’s fast running out. Nor can it feed us once climate change really gets going. A very different agriculture is needed, says Edward Goldsmith

References for this article are posted on ISIS members’ website. Details here.


Climate change is happening

Climate change is by far and away the most daunting problem that the human species has ever encountered. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its last assessment report expect a temperature change of up to 5.8 degrees within this century. However, the IPCC did not take into account a number of critical factors including the annihilation of our tropical forests and other vegetation. These contain six hundred billion tons of carbon - almost as much as is contained in the atmosphere - much of which is likely to be released into it in the next decades by the increasingly uncontrolled activities of the giant logging companies. The Director General of the United Nations Environment Programme recently stated that only a miracle could save the world’s remaining tropical forests. Nor does the IPCC take into account the terrible damage perpetrated on the planet’s soils by modern industrial agriculture with its huge machines and arsenal of toxic chemicals. Our planet’s soils contain one thousand six hundred billion tonnes of carbon, more than twice as much as is contained in the atmosphere. Much of this will be released in the coming decades; unless there is a rapid switch to sustainable, largely organic, agricultural practices.

The Hadley Centre of the British Meteorological Organisation, by contrast, has taken these and other such factors into account in its more recent models, and concluded that the world’s average temperature will increase by up to 8.8 rather than 5.8 degrees this century [1]. Other climatologists who take into account often largely neglected factors are even gloomier [2].

The IPCC says that we can expect a considerable increase in heat waves, storms, floods, and the spread of tropical diseases into temperate areas, impacting on the health of humans, livestock and crops. It also predicts a rise in sea levels up to eighty-eight centimetres this century, which will affect (by seawater intrusion into the soils underlying croplands and by temporary and also permanent flooding) something like 30% of the world’s agricultural lands [3]. If the Hadley Centre is right, the implications will be even more horrifying. Melting of the secondary Antarctic, the Arctic, and in particular, the Greenland ice-shields is occurring far more rapidly than was predicted by the IPCC. This will reduce the salinity of the oceans, which in turn would weaken if not divert, oceanic currents such as the Gulf Stream from their present course [4]. And if that continues, it would eventually freeze up areas that at present have a temperate climate, such as Northern Europe (see also "Global warming and then the big freeze", SiS 20).

It is indeed ironic that global warming could lead to local or regional cooling. If this were not bad enough, we must realise that even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, our planet would continue to heat up for at least 150 years, on account of the residence time of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, while the oceans will continue to warm up for a thousand years at least. All we can do is take those measures - and very dramatic ones are required to slow down the warming process - so that when our climate eventually stabilises, our planet remains partly, at least, habitable.

Climate change is proceeding faster than predicted. This is becoming apparent, among other things, by the prolonged droughts in many parts of the world. Four years of drought in much of Africa have resulted in thirty to forty million people facing starvation. At the same time, drought in the main bread-baskets of the world: the American corn belt, the Canadian plains, and the Australian wheat belt will seriously reduce cereal exports. The climate in Europe in 2002 was dreadful. Massive floods in Germany are costing at least 13 billion dollars. Terrible storms in northern Italy, with hailstones the size of tennis balls, destroyed crops over a wide area, and drought in southern Europe drastically reduced harvests.

I was driven through endless olive groves in the southern Italian province of Foggia and did not see a single olive on any tree. Climate related disaster have been even more destructive in 2003 and 2004.

All this is the result of no more than 0.7 degree rise in global temperature. What will things be like when we have to grow our food in a world whose average temperature has increased by 2 or 3 degrees, let alone by 5 to 8 degrees as we are told later in this century?

Emissions of nitrous oxide and methane

It is becoming clear that climate change and its different manifestations mentioned above will be the most important constraints on our ability to feed ourselves in the coming decades. We cannot afford to just sit and wait for things to get worse. Instead, we must do everything we can to transform our food production system to help combat global warming and, at the same time, to feed ourselves, in what will almost certainly be far less favourable conditions.

Modern industrial agriculture by its very nature makes and must make a very large contribution to greenhouse gases. Currently it is responsible for 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, 60% of methane gas emissions and 80% of nitrous oxide, all powerful greenhouse gases [5].

Nitrous oxide is generated through the action of denitrifying bacteria in the soil when land is converted to agriculture. When tropical rainforests are converted into a pasture, nitrous oxide emissions increase three-fold. All in all, land conversion is leading to the release of around half a million tonnes a year of nitrogen in the form of nitrous oxide.

Nitrous oxide is up to 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, according to the European Environment Agency, though fortunately atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide are currently less than one-thousandth that of carbon dioxide - 0.31ppm (parts per million) compared with 365 ppm. Nitrogenous fertilisers are another major source of nitrous oxide. Around 70 million tonnes a year of nitrogen are now applied to crops and contributing as much as 10% of the total annual nitrous oxide emissions of 22 million tonnes. With fertiliser applications increasing substantially, especially in developing countries, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture could double over the next 30 years [6].

In the Netherlands, which has the world’s most intensive farming, as much as 580 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen in the form of nitrates or ammonium salts are applied every year as fertiliser, and at least 10% of that nitrogen gets straight back into the atmosphere, either as ammonia or nitrous oxide [6].

The growth of agriculture is also leading to increasing emissions of methane. In the last few decades, there has been a substantial increase in livestock numbers - cattle in particular - largely as the result of converting tropical forests to pasture. Cattle emit large amounts of methane and the destruction of forests to raise cattle is therefore contributing to increased emissions of two of the most important greenhouse gases.

Worldwide, the emissions of methane by livestock amount to some 70 million tonnes. With modern methods of production, cattle are increasingly fed on a high-protein diet, especially when fattened in feedlots. Such cattle emit considerably more methane gas than grass-fed cattle. Even the fertilisation of grasslands with nitrogen fertilisers can both decrease methane uptake by soil bacteria and increase nitrous oxide production, thereby increasing atmospheric concentrations of both these gases [7].

The expansion of rice paddies has also seriously increased methane emissions. Rain-fed rice produces far less methane than inundated rice fertilised with nitrogen fertiliser.

Industrial farming is energy intensive

The most energy-intensive components of modern industrial agriculture are the production of nitrogen fertiliser, farm machinery and pumped irrigation. They account for more than 90% of the total direct and indirect energy used in agriculture and are all essential to it.

Emissions of carbon from burning fossil fuels for agricultural purposes in England and Germany were as much as 0.046 and 0.053 tonnes per hectare, compared with only 0.007 tonnes in non-mechanised agricultural systems, i.e., more than seven times lower [8].

This ties in with the estimate of Pretty and Ball [9], that to produce a tonne of cereals or vegetables by means of modern agriculture requires 6 to 10 times more energy than by using sustainable agricultural methods.

It could be argued that a shift to renewable energy sources such as wind power, wave-power, solar power and fuel cells would avoid having to reduce energy consumption to protect our climate. However, this necessary substitution would take decades; about 50 years according to some estimates.

A radical reduction in gas emissions is needed right now if we are to take on board Hadley Centre’s prediction that rising temperatures within thirty years will begin to transform our main sinks for carbon dioxide and methane - forests, oceans and soils - into sources. If that occurs, we shall be caught up in a ‘runaway’ process, i.e. an unstoppable chain-reaction towards increasing temperatures and climatic instability.

Sustainable agriculture a matter of urgency

We must develop an agricultural system that does not cause these terrible problems, and which on the contrary, helps to revitalise and hence build-up our soil resources. Such an agricultural system would have much in common with those once practiced by our distant ancestors and are still practiced by those communities in the remoter parts of the Third World. They may be "uneconomic" within the context of an aberrant and necessarily short-lived industrial society, but they are the only ones designed to feed local people in a really sustainable manner. Significantly, the most respected authorities on sustainable agriculture, among them Jules Pretty and Miguel Altieri, and there are many others, increasingly use the term "sustainable agriculture" as synonymous with "traditional agriculture".

If traditional agriculture is the solution to feeding people under climate change, one might ask why are governments and international agencies so keen to prevent traditional peoples from practising it anymore and to substitute modern industrial agriculture in its place. The answer is that traditional agriculture is not compatible with the developmental process we are imposing on the people of the Third World, still less with the global economy, and less still with the immediate interests of the transnational corporations that control it all.

That this is so is clear from the following quotes from two World Bank reports. In the first, on the development of Papua New Guinea, the World Bank admits that, "a characteristic of Papua New Guinea’s subsistence agriculture is its relative richness". Indeed "over much of the country nature’s bounty produces enough to eat with relatively little expenditure of effort" [10]. Why change it then? The answer is clear, "Until enough subsistence farmers have their traditional lifestyles changed by the growth of new consumption wants, this labour constraint may make it difficult to introduce new crops", i.e., those required for large scale production for export.

In the World Bank’s iniquitous Berg report, it is nevertheless acknowledged [11] "that smallholders are outstanding managers of their own resources - their land and capital, fertiliser and water". And it is also acknowledged that the dominance of this type of agriculture or ‘subsistence production’ "presented obstacles to agricultural development. The farmers had to be induced to produce for the market, adopt new crops and undertake new risks".

Industrial agriculture is on the way out

Whether we like it or not, modern industrial agriculture is on the way out. It is proving ever less effective. We are now encountering diminishing returns on fertilisers. The Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) admitted in 1997 that wheat yields in both Mexico and the USA had shown no increase in 13 years. In 1999, global wheat production actually fell for the second consecutive year to about 589 million tons, down 2% from 1998. Fertilisers are too expensive and as McKenney puts it [12], "the biological health of soils has been driven into such an impoverished state in the interests of quick, easy fertility, that productivity is now compromised, and fertilisers are less and less effective".

Pesticides too are ever less effective. Weeds, fungi, insects and other potential pests are amazingly adaptable. Five hundred species of insects have already developed genetic resistance to pesticides, as have 150 plant diseases, 133 kinds of weeds and 70 species of fungus. The reaction today is to apply evermore powerful and more expensive poisons, which in the US, cost 8 billion dollars a year, not counting the cost of spreading them on the land [13]. The farmers are losing the battle, the pests are surviving the chemical onslaught but farmers are not. More and more farmers are leaving the land, and the situation will get much worse.

Today we are witnessing the forced introduction of genetically modified crops by international agencies in collusion with national governments, as the result of the massive lobbying by an increasingly powerful biotechnology industry. Genetically modified crops, quite contrary to what we are told, do not increase yields. They require more inputs including more herbicides, whose use they are supposed to reduce significantly, as well as irrigation water. Also, the science on which they are based is seriously flawed. No one knows for sure what will be the unexpected consequences of introducing, by a very rudimentary technique, a specific gene into the genome of a very different creature. Surprises are in store and some could cause serious problems of all sorts [14].

Oil is running out

Another reason why industrial agriculture has had its day, even without climate change, is that it is far too vulnerable to increases in the price of oil; and more so, to shortages in the availability of this fuel.

If three million people starved to death in North Korea in the last few years, it was partly the result of the collapse of the Russian market which absorbed most of its exports, so it could no longer afford to import the vast amount of oil on which its highly mechanised, Soviet inspired, agricultural system had become so totally dependent. Its ‘farmers’ had simply forgotten how to wield a hoe or push a wheelbarrow.

The UK could have been in a similar plight if the transport strike of 2000 had lasted a few more weeks. In an industrial society, oil is required to transport essential food imports, to build and operate tractors, to produce and use fertilisers and pesticides and process, package and transport food to the supermarkets - a more vulnerable situation is difficult to imagine at the best of times - but it is suicidal today.

It is not just temporary oil shortages associated with temporary jumps in the price of oil that we are destined to face but the steady decline in the availability of this commodity. Consequently, oil is due to become increasingly expensive. The truth is that worldwide oil production will peak within the next four to ten years. Oil discoveries have been very disappointing and much of the oil we are using today was discovered some forty years or so ago. The Caspian Sea area which many people in the oil business expected to contain as much as 200 billion barrels of oil; but according to Colin Campbell [15], one of the world’s leading authorities on the oil industry, it is more likely to contain as little as 25 billion barrels and no more than 40 or 50 billion. The world uses 20 billion barrels a year and consumption is increasing at an alarming rate.

Although the US has tried desperately to reduce its dependence on the Middle East and succeeded in doing to a certain extent, alternative sources of oil are drying up more quickly than expected. Iran for instance is unlikely to produce more oil than it requires for its own use in ten or fifteen years. Indeed, in the next twenty years the US will have become more dependent on the Middle East than it is today as oil production of countries like Angola, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Mexico also begin to fall. This explains why the US oil industry, which is now in effect the government of the USA, is so fanatically determined to conquer Iraq. Iraq has 11% of world known reserves, of which only a fraction is exploited, and whose oil is the cheapest in the world. The economic consequences of the coming world oil crisis cannot be over-estimated.

Conclusion

Industrial agriculture contributes a lot to climate change; it is increasingly unproductive and heavily dependent on oil that’s fast running out. Our only option is to switch comprehensively to sustainable, low input agriculture, which not only feeds the world, but also ameliorate the worst manifestations of climate change.
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http://www.energybulletin.net/4101.html

mal
 
Oil firms fund campaign to deny climate change

Greets

Oil firms fund campaign to deny climate change

David Adam, science correspondent
Thursday January 27, 2005
The Guardian

Lobby groups funded by the US oil industry are targeting Britain in a bid to play down the threat of climate change and derail action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, leading scientists have warned.

Bob May, president of the Royal Society, says a "a lobby of professional sceptics who opposed action to tackle climate change" is turning its attention to Britain because of its high profile in the debate.

Writing in the Life section of today's Guardian, Prof May says the government's decision to make global warming a focus of its G8 presidency has made it a target. So has the high profile of its chief scientific adviser, David King, who described climate change as a bigger threat than terrorism.

Prof May's warning coincides with a meeting of climate change sceptics today at the Royal Institution in London organised by a British group, the Scientific Alliance, which has links to US oil company ExxonMobil through a collaboration with a US institute.

Last month the Scientific Alliance published a joint report with the George C Marshall Institute in Washington that claimed to "undermine" climate change claims. The Marshall institute received £51,000 from ExxonMobil for its "global climate change programme" in 2003, and an undisclosed sum this month.

Prof May's warning comes as British scientists publish new research in the journal Nature showing that emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could have a more dramatic effect on climate than thought. They say average temperature could rise 11C, even if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is limited to the levels expected to be reached in 2050.

David Frame, who coordinated the climate prediction experiment, said: "If the real world response were anywhere near the upper end of our range, even today's levels of greenhouse gases could already be dangerously high."

Emission limits such as those in the Kyoto protocol would hit oil firms because the bulk of greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuel products.

Prof May writes that during the 1990s, parts of the US oil industry funded (through the so-called Global Climate Coalition) sceptics who opposed action to tackle climate change. The GCC was "deactivated" in 2001 once Mr Bush made clear he intended to reject the Kyoto protocol."But the denial lobby is still active and today it arrives in London."

The Scientific Alliance was set up in 2001 and is run by Mark Adams, a former private secretary for parliamentary affairs at No 10 and a private secretary to Tony Blair for six months after the 1997 election.

An alliance spokesman said today's meeting was sponsored but its policy was not to reveal its funders. ExxonMobil said it is not involved. The alliance spokesman said funders do not influence policies.

One adviser is Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist at the Harvard Smithsonian Centre, a noted global warming sceptic and senior scientist with the Marshall Institute. In 1998 Dr Baliunas co-wrote an article that argued for the release of more carbon dioxide. It looked like a paper of the US National Academy of Sciences and was mass-mailed to US scientists with a petition asking them to reject Kyoto.

Prof King said several speakers at today's event have been to briefings he attended, including a summit meeting he organised in Moscow last July. "Astonishingly, when I arrived the programme had been dramatically altered. This was in the run up to the ratification of Kyoto by Putin and clearly the same group of people had decided to target our attempt to explain the current science."

Larry Elliott in Davos adds:

Tony Blair yesterday softened his stance on climate change to persuade President Bush to sign a global accord. Giving the keynote address at the World Economic Forum, Mr Blair said climate change was not universally accepted. With chief executives of many US firms in the audience, he said: "The evidence is still disputed."

Evidence of climate change dangers had been "clearly and persuasively advocated" by a very large number of "entirely independent voices ... they are the majority, the majority is not always right but they deserve to be listened to".
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1399420,00.html

mal
 
Science sceptics meet on climate
By Duncan Bain



Sceptics say the weather is not changing dramatically
A conference to question whether global warming will have a catastrophic effect is being held in London on 27 January.
It is being organised by the Scientific Alliance, which says its purpose is to bring together scientists and others to discuss environmental challenges.

One speaker is Richard Lindzen, who is professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Most climate scientists insist, despite the Alliance, that human activity and climate change are directly linked.

The greenhouse warming from increased gas emissions is, as far as we can tell, insignificant

Professor Fred Singer
The meeting takes place shortly before the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, hosts a conference on the science of climate change, from 1 to 3 February.

The Scientific Alliance hopes to address issues it fears will not be addressed by the Hadley Centre participants.

Dr Benny Peiser, one of the speakers at the London meeting, told the BBC: "We are concerned the Hadley Centre conference will ignore key questions, particularly regarding the alarmist nature of future predictions.

"It's important for people to know there are eminent scientists who don't share this viewpoint."

'Inflated' threat

Results from one of the largest climate prediction projects ever run, which were published on Thursday in the journal Nature, suggest temperatures around the world could rise by as much as 11C.

Previous predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested that global average temperatures would increase this century by 1.5-5.5C, with sea levels rising by anywhere from 9 to 88 cm.

Another speaker at the London conference is Professor Fred Singer, a former director of the US Weather Satellite Service.


Drought is not linked to greenhouse gas emissions, speakers say
Asked whether global warming posed a threat, he told the BBC: "It's certainly not a cause for alarm. The greenhouse warming from increased gas emissions is, as far as we can tell, insignificant.

"It's unlikely to be appreciable even a century from now, and we can easily adapt to it.

"The IPCC's predictions are based entirely on models, not observations. You must either improve the models or prove the observations are wrong."

Growing confidence

The International Climate Change Taskforce said in a report this week the world might have little more than ten years to avert catastrophic climate change.

One of its co-chairs, the British MP Stephen Byers, said: "Our planet is at risk.

"With climate change, there is an ecological time-bomb ticking away, and people are becoming increasingly concerned by the changes and extreme weather events they are already seeing."

Most climate scientists, inside the IPCC and outside it, are ready to acknowledge that they still do not know nearly enough about some key aspects of climate change.

But most would say their data is improving, and is already robust enough to show human activities are causing dangerous interference with natural systems.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4203021.stm
 
Climate change 'disaster by 2026'

Dangerous levels of climate change could be reached in just over 20 years if nothing is done to stop global warming, a WWF study has warned.
At current rates, the earth will be 2C above pre-industrial levels some time between 2026 and 2060, says the report by Dr Mark New of Oxford University.

Temperatures in the Arctic could rise by three times this amount, it says.

It would lead to a loss of summer sea ice and tundra vegetation, with polar bears and other animals dying out.

It would also mean a fundamental change in the ways Inuit and other Arctic residents live.

Dr New said: "A very robust result from global climate models is that warming due to greenhouse gases will reduce the amount of snow and ice cover in the Arctic, which will in turn produce an additional warming as more solar radiation is absorbed by the ground and the ocean."

Ice and snow reflect more solar radiation back to space than unfrozen surfaces.

According to the WWF, the perennial ice, or summer sea ice, is currently melting at a rate of 9.6% per decade and will disappear completely by the end of the century if this continues.

Birds affected

Boreal forests would spread north and overwhelm up to 60% of dwarf shrub tundra, a critical habitat and vital breeding ground for many birds.

"If we don't act immediately the Arctic will soon become unrecognisable," said Dr Catarina Cardoso, head of climate change at WWF-UK.

"Polar bears will be consigned to history, something that our grandchildren can only read about in books."

Dr New's paper - Arctic Climate Change with a 2 degree C Global Warming is one of four papers contributing to report by WWF.

They will be presented at the Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change conference in Exeter between 1 and 3 February, which has been organised by the government.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfo ... 218441.stm
 
Foil cloak protects glacier from sun

BBC

Workers at a Swiss ski resort have wrapped part of a retreating glacier in reflective sheeting to protect it, they say, from global warming.

The Gurschen glacier, nearly 3,000m (10,000ft) above sea level, is melting like many others worldwide, with the worst damage done in summer.

The thin protective layer of foil covers an area of 3-4,000 sq m (about 43,000 sq ft).

Officials at the Gemsstock resort think others may follow their lead.

"We think it will become common practice to cover parts of the glaciers," said Urs Elmiger of Andermatt Gotthard Sportbahnen, the cable car operator carrying out the project.

Short-term measure

The Gurschen glacier has sunk 20m (66 feet) in the last 15 years, making Andermatt's ski slopes very inaccessible.

The protection was laid over a ramp of snow that is built up at the beginning of each season but then melts again each summer.

"It needs a lot of work, energy and money to rebuild. And one day, if the melt increases, the cost of rebuilding the ramp will be very, very high," Mr Elmiger said.

Scientists said that while the technique might help preserve snow cover in small areas, it would not address the problem of vanishing ice fields around the world.

"It may be useful very locally, but it would be totally unfeasible - economically and ecologically - to cover completely even a small glacier," geography Professor Wilfried Haeberli, of the University of Zurich, told Reuters.

Researchers at the university say 70% of Switzerland's glaciers will disappear in the next 30 years, due to the effects of global warming.

Environmental groups protested as the glacier was covered, saying a fundamental change in climate policy - not short-term measures - was required.

Martin Hiller, of the WWF International group, said: "The solution is to switch to clean energy; we need to cut down on harmful pollutants, such as CO2."
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Halt the melting of swiss glaciers: Big actic fleece blanket

Swiss put glacier under wraps to slow ice melt
Alarmed by the retreat of its Alpine glacier, a Swiss ski resort wrapped part of the shrinking ice-cap in a giant blanket in a bid to reduce the summer melt.

If successful, officials at the Gemsstock resort above Andermatt in central Switzerland expect the example to be followed elsewhere in the Alps, where scientists say glaciers are under threat from global warming.

"We think it will become common practice to cover parts of the glaciers," Urs Elmiger, a board member of Andermatt Gotthard Sportbahnen, the cable car operator behind the project, told Reuters.

A thin protective layer of artificial textiles, including polyester, was laid over an area of 3-4,000 square metres.

The fleece-like material, hard to distinguish with the naked eye from snow, will reflect the rays of the sun.

The 100,000 Swiss franc ($US83,000) blanket will protect one of the main glacier access ramps, which has to be rebuilt each autumn at the start of the ski season to cover a yawning 20-metre gap opened up by the ice melt.

"It needs a lot of work, energy and money to rebuild, and one day, if the melt increases, the cost of rebuilding the ramp will be very, very high," Mr Elmiger said.

But scientists stressed that while such defensive actions could prove valuable in selected spots, such as access areas or cable car installations, they were not a solution to the overall problem of the vanishing ice fields worldwide.

"It may be useful very locally, but it would be totally unfeasible - economically and ecologically - to cover completely even a small glacier," University of Zurich geography professor Wilfried Haeberli said.

The Alpine glaciers - also in Austria, France and Italy, are losing 1 per cent of their mass every year and, even supposing no acceleration in that rate, will have all but disappeared by the end of the century.

More hot, dry summers like that of 2003 in Europe, when the loss speeded to 5 per cent, could cut the life expectancy to no more than 50 years, Professor Haeberli said.

"We estimate that by the end of the 21st century, with a medium-type climate scenario, about 5 per cent of what existed in the 1970s will have survived," he told Reuters.

For Martin Hiller, spokesman on climate change for environmentalist group WWF International, who was on hand to witness the Alpine experiment, the move was positive but offered no real answer to ice loss.

"The solution is to switch to clean energy, we need to cut down on harmful pollutants, such as CO2 (carbon dioxide)," he said.

- Reuters
Last Update: Wednesday, May 11, 2005. 0:20am (AEST)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1364606.htm
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:shock:
Might help in the short term...
 
Austen said:
rynner said:
Get yer butts out, folks! :D
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Do you think mooning will help conserve water? :lol:
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No, but it might keep people's spirits up in times of adversity!

On the other hand, some folks have too much rain:
Landslide hits Californian homes

A landslide in southern California has destroyed 18 luxury houses causing alarm but no serious injuries.
Residents of Laguna Beach in Orange County were alerted to the landslide at 0700 (1100 GMT) on Wednesday by the sound of cracking wood.

Some residents could be seen fleeing their homes in their pyjamas, carrying possessions and their pets.

The landslide follows the heaviest winter rains in over a century in southern California.

"The pipes started making funny noises and the toilet sounded like it was about to explode," said Carrie Joyce, one of those who fled.

"We had to run for our lives," said another resident Jill Lockhart.

"I don't know how everyone got out alive."

About 350 homes in the area have been evacuated while officials determine whether further slippages are likely.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4602773.stm
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(There's a fuller story on the Telegraph website.)
 
World scientists urge CO2 action


The science academies of the world's leading nations are urging their governments to take prompt action to combat possible climate change.
They have agreed that all countries could and should take cost-effective action to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The statement will be made on Wednesday by the academies of the G8 nations, including the UK's Royal Society, the US National Academy, China and Brazil.

They will make their voices heard ahead of July's G8 meeting in Scotland.

Global agenda

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is to hold talks in the US with George W Bush on Tuesday to discuss the issues at the top of the G8 agenda - aid to Africa and measures to target global warming.

Mr Bush has consistently stressed the uncertainties of climate science.

But the statement will make it much harder for him to scorn the scientific consensus.

Mr Blair's environment advisers are urging him to persuade Mr Bush to commit to concrete measures the world can see.

UK Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said she welcomed the statement.

"This adds to the weight of the global scientific opinion, underlining the Prime Minister's belief that climate change is one of the most important issues on the world's political and scientific agenda," Mrs Beckett said.

"I am delighted that all of the G8's senior scientific academies are now saying the same thing to world leaders."

Mr Blair's G8 ambitions on climate change are to reach agreement on the scientific basis for action, pull the US back into global discussions on emissions cuts, and agree new investment in low-carbon technology.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4616431.stm
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Environment 'needs more effort'


England and Wales have been given a "green health check" in a 13-page document from the Environment Agency.
Called A Better Place?, the "state of the nations" report updates an assessment last made five years ago.

It details areas where environmental markers are getting better, such as the improvement in air quality and the reduction in waste from households.

But it also highlights negative trends, such as the amount of traffic pollution now experienced in many urban centres.

Overall, the Environment Agency says real progress is being made, but adds that the "report card" is undeniably mixed and on some markers a lot of work still needs to be done.

Issues relating to climate change, wildlife and flood risk are flagged as areas where the greatest ground has to be made up, and where future policy action should be concentrated.

"We have split the report into subjects, showed what is getting better and what is getting worse and then outlined what we in the Environment Agency plan to do about them and what society as a whole needs to do," said Barbara Young, the agency's chief executive.

Resource hungry

The agency says the report draws on 80 of the most dependable and revealing environmental data sets for England and Wales, giving the most comprehensive picture of environmental trends in 2005.

Overall, only the quality of water is unequivocally classed as "better".

England's and Wales' rivers and bathing waters are said now to be the cleanest on record.

Eighty percent of bathing waters meet the toughest EU standards, compared with 45% in 2000.

And pesticide levels in rivers fell by 23% in 2003, compared with the mean for 1998-2002.

Other markers, though, have at best qualified ratings.

Air quality, for example, is rated "overall, much better" but many towns and cities suffer from traffic pollution, the agency says, and industrial emissions of nitrogen oxide have increased by 5% since 2000 as a result of an increase in coal-fired electricity generation.

Wildlife is rated "slightly better but still poor".

The agency says many habitats are improving and several species, including coarse fish, otters and woodland birds continue to colonise new areas, but significant numbers of plants, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater fish and invertebrates remain under threat.

Consumption of resources and waste creation get a qualified "slightly better".

Despite strong economic growth, the amount of raw materials being used has been maintained close to 2000 levels.

And households in England and Wales might just have managed to turn the rising tide of domestic rubbish.

The total tonnage of household waste fell for the first time in 2003/04.

At the same time, recycling reached its highest level to date, with on average 17% of the domestic bin being put to new use.

It still takes 75kg of raw materials to make a mobile phone, however, and people are using more and more water despite the signs that climate change will put further pressure on this already scarce resource.

No preparation

On climate change and flood risk, the picture is described as "worse".

The impacts of climate change are becoming more real, the agency says, but while the Kyoto target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% by 2012 will be met, the more challenging target to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20% by 2010 will not, the agency says.

In large part this is because of the growth in road traffic, which increased by 7% between 2000 and 2004.

By 2002, vehicles accounted for a quarter of CO2 emissions in the UK.

And on flooding, the agency says the number of people at risk is going to increase, not least because of the predicted effects of a warmer, wetter climate.

Of the 55 times the Thames Barrier has been raised against tidal surges since it was built in 1983, 28 were in the last five years, the agency points out.

And it is concerned by a survey which shows that only 16% of people living in flood risk areas know how to respond to a flood.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4075140.stm
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