Biology
Breach
November 14, 2013, from BBC
The world's oceans are becoming acidic at an "unprecedented rate" and may be souring more rapidly than at any time in the past 300 million years.
In their strongest statement yet on this issue, scientists say acidification could increase by 170 percent by 2100.
They say that some 30 percent of ocean species are unlikely to survive in these conditions.
The researchers conclude that human emissions of CO2 are clearly to blame.
The study will be presented at global climate talks in Poland next week.
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Climate
Chaos
November 14, 2015, from DesdemonaDespair
... The main water supply in São Paulo has been running on emergency reserves, and the system is only able to deliver about 40 percent of its usual capacity. Before 2014, it was able to supply approximately 8,700 gallons of water per second, but now, it only delivers around 3,500 gallons per second.
Because two-thirds of Brazil's power comes from hydroelectric power plants, electricity has also been in short supply. Widespread blackouts have hit the country's largest cities, and increased energy rationing is a possibility, which could stunt the economy....
November 14, 2011, from The New Yorker
According to the I.E.A., "The door to 2 degrees C is closing." The group warned that unless dramatic action is taken by 2017, so many additional billions of tons of emissions will effectively be "locked in" that a temperature increase exceeding two degrees will become inevitable....
In fact, many scientists have warned that holding the average global temperature increase to "only" two degrees Celsius is a bit like limiting yourself to "only" a few rounds of Russian roulette: unless you're uncommonly lucky, the result is not likely to be happy....
Meanwhile, even if it's only self-interest in the narrowest possible sense that moves people, global warming still ought to be high on almost everybody's list of concerns. Between here and 4 degrees C, or now and the 2070s, there are all sorts of potential calamities of which the punishing drought in Texas, the flooding in Thailand, and the famine that has recently killed tens of thousands of Somalis are just a foretaste.
November 14, 2011, from Springfield Republican
...Winter in Massachusetts is undergoing a redefinition due to a warming climate.
Already, the mean temperature in Amherst in winter - for December, January and February - has risen about 4.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, according to a study by a University of New Hampshire researcher.
And, average winter temperatures throughout Massachusetts may rise an additional 2 to 5 degrees by 2050 and 4 to 10 degrees by 2100 due to continued global warming, according to a new report prepared for the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs.
November 14, 2011, from London Independent
...the Dead Sea is also on the way to becoming a man-made environmental disaster zone. For decades water has been pillaged for agriculture and domestic use from its main water provider, the River Jordan; and secondly from the Sea itself, for the hugely lucrative extraction of its vital minerals.
Now the Sea is shrinking with alarming rapidity. Its level is falling at a rate of 1.1 metres a year. Drive a few kilometres north of here along Route 90 and you arrive at where members of the British Palestinian Exploration Fund in 1917 painted a red line in the primeval limestone cliffs towering above them.
November 14, 2011, from Science News
Even clouds can suffer from inhaling air pollution, a new study finds, resulting in extreme rainfall patterns that appear to be altering climate across the globe.
Farmers, municipal water authorities and others who depend on rainfall prefer moderate, dependable precipitation. But as soot and other minute airborne particles -- a class of pollutants known as aerosols -- get sucked into clouds, the pollution can dramatically alter when clouds deposit rain. The discovery emerged from analyzing every one of thousands of clouds passing over federal monitoring instruments at a site in the western United States over a 10-year period....
The study also reveals unprecedented magnitudes of impacts, says coauthor Daniel Rosenfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
November 14, 2011, from Guardian
During a trip to Italy earlier this year, I asked a local journalist whether climate sceptical views get much of an airing in the Italian media. My query was greeted with an air of slight bemusement, which was followed by a request for me to explain what I meant by the term "climate scepticism". Their facial reaction alone told me that this was something of an alien concept to them.
It supported a hunch I have long believed to carry some substance: climate scepticism is a predominantly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Or, rather, it is a phenomenon that tends to get amplified to a much greater extent in the various English-language media outlets around the world - particularly, in the US, UK and Australia - than it does in other languages or countries.
Until now, there has been very little beyond the anecdotal to support this theory. But the proposition is now on a firmer footing thanks to a new report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, based at the University of Oxford, which firms up some related findings it published last year.
November 14, 2009, from Billings Gazette via DesdemonaDespair
Unusually early snow storms in north-central China have claimed 40 lives, caused thousands of buildings to collapse and destroyed almost 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) of winter crops, the Civil Affairs Ministry said Friday.... The snowfall is the heaviest in the northern and central provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and Henan since record keeping began after the establishment of the Communist state in 1949, the ministry said without giving detailed figures.... More than 7.5 million people have been stranded or otherwise affected by the storms, which caused the collapse of more than 9,000 buildings, damaged 470,000 acres (190,000 hectares) of crops, and forced the evacuation of 158,000 people, the ministry said.
November 14, 2009, from COP15
Acknowledging that the COP15 conference in Copenhagen this December is not likely to produce a final agreement on climate change, an extra summit in spring 2010 is considered, UN official reveals.... The main reason why a final deal is not expected to be reached at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen is the fact that the US Congress will not have national legislation in place before December. Short of a clear picture on which commitments the world's second largest emitter is likely to take, a number of other key players will most likely hide their cards. This situation may have changed by spring 2010, but then one can't be certain right now, which is why the UN has not decided yet if it will recommend a spring conference.
November 14, 2009, from Times Online (UK)
Greenland's ice sheet is melting at an accelerating pace, according to the most detailed observations to date. Until now scientists had been unable to establish whether the loss of the ice sheet had speeded up significantly since the 1990s. Using two independent measurement techniques, the latest study reveals that the melting accelerated rapidly over the period 2000-2008.
If the acceleration of melting continues at the same rate, the sea level from Greenland's ice alone would rise by 40cm by the end of the century. If the melting continues at a steady pace -- the best-case scenario according to Met Office predictions -- Greenland ice will contribute an 18cm rise in sea level.
The Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to cause a global sea level rise of seven metres.
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Resource
Depletion
November 14, 2011, from McClatchy
Yet tuna still aren't fished sustainably, something that conservationists and big U.S. tuna companies are trying to fix. This illustrates one part of the pressure on the world's oceans to feed a growing global population, now 7 billion. It also underscores the difficulties people have in balancing what they take against what must be left in order to have enough supplies of healthy wild fish....
"It's serious. On a global basis, we've pretty much found all the fish we're going to find," said Mike Hirshfield, chief scientist at the advocacy group Oceana. "There's not a lot of hidden fish out there. And we're still heading in the wrong direction, taken as a whole."
Some 32 percent of the world's fish are overfished, up from 10 percent in the 1970s and 25 percent in the early 1990s, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
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Recovery
November 14, 2009, from Helmhotz, via EurekAlert
Policy makers who factor the planet's multi-trillion dollar ecosystem services into their national and international investment strategies are likely to see far higher rates of return and stronger economic growth in the 21st century, a new report issued today says....
Subsidized commercial shrimp farms can generate returns of around $1,220 per hectare by clearing mangrove forests. But this does not take into account the losses to local communities totaling over $12,000 a hectare linked with wood and non-wood forest products, fisheries and coastal protection services (Barbier 2007).
Nor does the profit to the commercial operators take into account the costs of rehabilitating the abandoned sites after five years of exploitation -- estimated at over $9,000 a hectare.... The economic invisibility of ecosystems and biodiversity is increased by our dominant economic model, which is consumption-led, production-driven, and GDP-measured. This model is in need of significant reform. The multiple crises we are experiencing -- fuel, food, finance, and the economy -- serve as reminders of the need for change.
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