All In One Boat

“The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists’ projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.

The new numbers, called “scary” by some, were a surprise because scientists thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output jumped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.

That’s an amount that exceeds the most dire outlook for emissions from burning coal and oil and related activities as projected by a Nobel Prize-winning group of international scientists in 2007.

Meanwhile, forests and oceans, which suck up carbon dioxide, are doing so at lower rates than in the 20th century, scientists said. If those trends continue, it puts the world on track for the highest predicted rises in temperature and sea level.”

CO2 Increases

Says Lester Brown:

“Let’s Use Wind to Power Cars

Legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is half right. We do need to harness this country’s wind resources for a homegrown source of electricity, as he has been urging this summer in expensive television ads. And we do need to reduce the $700 billion we may soon be paying annually for imported oil.

But part two of Pickens’s plan — to move natural gas out of electricity production and use it to fuel cars instead — just doesn’t make sense.

Why not use the wind-generated electricity to power cars directly? Natural gas is still a fossil fuel that emits climate-changing gases when burned.”

Read All

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will smash up its its first proton beams this weekend in a test, arousing the fears of conspiracy lovers everywhere. If you’ll recall, the LHC is that super-mega physics experiment in Switzerland’s CERN Lab that some believe might destroy the world by producing black holes. Above, you can see a visualization of how large the facility is, as it loops under the ground outside Geneva. So what’s in store tomorrow when the first beams start circling?

LHC Fired Up

Then there’s this:

Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a T***

“Researchers are developing a solar collector to turn roads and parking lots into cheap sources of electricity and hot water. “Asphalt has a lot of advantages as a solar collector,” says Rajib Mallick of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “For one, blacktop stays hot and could continue to generate energy after the sun goes down, unlike traditional solar-electric cells.

Plus there’s already gynormous acreage of installed roads and parking lots. They’re resurfaced every 10 to 12 years. The solar retrofit could be built into that cycle. No need to transform other landscapes into solar farms. Or maybe not as many.

Furthermore, extracting heat from asphalt would cool the urban heat-island effect, cooling the planet a wee bit. Finally, solar collectors in roads and parking lots would be invisible, unlike those on roofs. Cuz we all know how attractive roads are.”

Solar Superhighways

Not the usual fare here, but as a digital dependent media we have an obligation to help keep the net clear. From the SF Chronicle Tech Chronicles.

Latest spam e-mails pose as CNN alerts

Google, which tracks spam as part of its program to offer businesses e-mail security, has seen a 600 percent increase in unwanted e-mails since July 20, many disguised as personalized CNN newsletters, marketing manager Sundar Raghavan said Monday.

The company is warning users not to click on these e-mails, which are cleverly written and contain some valid links.

The spammers don’t appear interested in stealing data, Raghavan said. Rather, anyone who clicks on the e-mails downloads code that turns his or her machine into a spam-spewing bot.

Google advises recipients not to click on links or attachments in e-mails from people they don’t know. If you’re curious about a CNN alert, search for the story on CNN’s Web page.

Google figures that 93 percent of all inbound e-mail is now spam and that the average corporate employee has received around 26,000 messages so far this year, up from around 18,000 in all of 2007. On a peak day for this attack, July 24, Google saw 10 million messages pass through its servers, Raghavan said.

- Deborah Gage

It’s a rare day that something significant about the environment doesn’t appear on the front page of the SF Chronicle. I’m forgiving them for the bad old days of murder following mayhem

California, six other Western states and four Canadian provinces launched plans on Wednesday for one of the world’s largest carbon-trading systems, a sweeping effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

The North American program, like a similar market-based system in Europe, focuses on heavy polluters such as electric utilities, oil refineries and large industrial and commercial facilities.

Environmental groups immediately questioned whether the plan will be tough enough on polluters, while industry groups said the program lacks details.

California officials said the proposal will be an integral part of the Golden State’s ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020, as required by the landmark legislation AB32 that the Legislature approved and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed in 2006.

Carbon Trading Plan

Only slightly tongue in cheek Ezra points out:

Each time you have a plant-based lunch like a PB&J you’ll reduce your carbon footprint by the equivalent of 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over an average animal-based lunch like a hamburger, a tuna sandwich, grilled cheese, or chicken nuggets. For dinner you save 2.8 pounds and for breakfast 2.0 pounds of emissions.

Jam On

“I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse - much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland’s largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.

Two major studies from military intelligence experts have warned our leaders about the dangerous national security implications of the climate crisis, including the possibility of hundreds of millions of climate refugees destabilizing nations around the world. ”

Gore on Crisis Facing US

Andrew Revkin presents the speech broken down by paragraphs, each one allowing comments. Remarkable number pooh-poohing it all…

Jerome a Paris posts a long technical response at The Oil Drum. His final paragraph:

While a goal of 100% of carbon-free electricity is probably unrealistic, it therefore seems possible to get pretty close to that, especially if nuclear and hydro are included in the mix. A plan that announced a specific goal of 40-50% of wind-generated electricity by 2020 and 10-20% of solar, with the appropriate feed-in mechanisms, demand guarantees for manufacturers and investment in the grid would therefore be realistic, make economic sense, and fulfill two major strategic goals: reduce carbon emissions, and lower fossil fuel demand.

And Texas is well on the way, with T. Boone Pickens investing millions in windmills and today the Texas PUC voted for new transmission lines to get the power into the cities.

In what experts say is the biggest investment in the clean and renewable energy in U.S. history, utility officials in the Lone Star State gave preliminary approval Thursday to a $4.9 billion plan to build new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from gusty West Texas to urban areas like Dallas.

You are likely to know that CFSs (Compact Flourescent Lamps) while using much less energy per lumen than incandescent bulbs do, have a wee problem: mercury. Broken or tossed in land-fill they are a hazard to human and microbe. LED (light emitting diodes) have been said to be the light to wait for. As recently as a few years ago, however, all you could get were small pin-point lights. Things look like they’re changing now, with bulbs you can screw into your standard holder.

See the interesting CleanTechBlog for more.

Don’t know why this got put in the Style section, but what the heck. I think we can all relate.

Ms. Burnham, 35, recycles religiously, orders weekly from a community-supported farm, buys eco-friendly cleaning products and carries groceries in a canvas bag. But she admits to information overload on the environment — from friends, advice columns, news media, even government-issued reports. Much of the advice is conflicting.

“To say that you are confused and a little fed up with the often contradictory messages out there on how to live lightly on the earth is definitely not cool,” she said in an e-mail message. “But, heck, I’ll come out and say it. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

She is, in other words, a victim of “green noise” — static caused by urgent, sometimes vexing or even contradictory information played at too high a volume for too long.

Green Noise

Andrew Revkin, Science Editor for the Times, follows up in his blog.

In this fairly terrifying report from BBC, large cracks are shown to be appearing in some of the oldest ice in the shelf.

“One of the expedition’s scientists, Derek Mueller of Trent University, Ontario, told me: “I was astonished to see these new cracks.

“It means the ice shelf is disintegrating, the pieces are pinned together like a jigsaw but could float away,” Dr Mueller explained.

According to another scientist on the expedition, Dr Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, the new cracks fit into a pattern of change in the Arctic.

“We’re seeing very dramatic changes; from the retreat of the glaciers, to the melting of the sea ice.

“We had 23% less (sea ice) last year than we’ve ever had, and what’s happening to the ice shelves is part of that picture.”

When ice shelves break apart, they drift offshore into the ocean as “ice islands”, transforming the very geography of the coastline. ”

BBC Report

1940, 1982, 1996 and 2005 showing the dramatic retreat of the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia.

Let’s hold another vote on this, shall we? Voting while the glaciers go.

A landmark climate study released Wednesday reports that global warming is changing the life cycles of thousands of animals and plants — as well as hundreds of physical systems — worldwide.

It documents rapid glacier melts in North America, South America and Europe; trees and plants sprouting leaves much earlier in the spring in Europe, Asia and North America; permafrost melting in Asia; and changes in bird migration patterns across Europe, North America and Australia, all in response to rising global temperatures.

USA Today

NASA

“Burma: ‘I stopped counting bodies on journey down river of death’

Corpses litter the landscape as the cyclone survivors are forced to fight for life alongside a tide of mortality.

River of Death

*

There have been a few reminders floating around the web-mind that natural disasters followed by inept response of the authoritarians in charge have led to regime change. The devastating 1972 earthquake in Nicaragua under Somoza comes to mind. Not to mention Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Our favorite climate guy at wunderground reminds of of another.

The deadliest tropical cyclone of all time, the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970, killed upwards of 550,000 people is what was then called East Pakistan (and now called Bangladesh). A statement released by eleven political leaders in East Pakistan ten days after the cyclone hit charged the government with “gross neglect, callous indifference and utter indifference”. They also accused the president of playing down the news coverage. The dissatisfaction with the government response to the disaster boiled over into full-fledged civil war the next year, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the government and the establishment of the new nation of Bangladesh. As bad as the West Pakistani response to the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970 was, the response of the Myanmar government to Nargis is far worse. The slowness of response to this tropical cyclone disaster is unprecedented in modern times.

For at least the second day, citizens of Somalia in Mogadishu rioted over the price of food.

Thousands of angry Somalis rioted Monday over rising food prices and the collapse of the nation’s currency, culminating in clashes with government troops and armed shopkeepers that killed at least five protesters, witnesses and officials said.

Shops and markets throughout Mogadishu quickly shut their doors as protesters, including many women and children, stoned storefronts and chanted slogans accusing traders of cheating them.

Somalia Misery: LAT

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast….

The little brightly colored Saturday Earthweek panel in the newspaper caught my eye today, as it often does: monkeys, or elephants, on the rampage, flooding, drought, ice-storms — all the weird weather highlights and animal response in one tight package. And this in particular: “Jet Stream Shift.”

The jet stream, as most of us know, is the enormous river of air, rushing from west to east at about 30,000 feet and up, which we ride for faster trips east, and our pilots try to avoid flying west. More importantly, it is the big player in our everyday weather. Storms, fair weather, heat and cold all are mixed, are shoved and follow this big, undulating air-born boa. And it’s shifting. What could this mean? Isn’t it moving all the time?

Yes it’s moving, as a dancer moves, but the dynamic average of its movement is shifting, away from the center (the tropics) to the edges (the poles.) Both the northern and southern jet streams are inching away from the tropics — which is to say, enlarging the tropics, moving the temperate zones north, making the north and south less arctic.

According to a paper published Friday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters the Northern Hemisphere’s jet stream moved northward on average at a rate of about 1.25 miles a year, 18 feet a day, from 1979 to 2001. The climate follows this movement. The tropics expand at this rate. The butterflies try to respond. The transitional vegetation gets less moisture, more heat: die or mutate. Life changes.

“Bascially look south of where you are and that’s probably a good guess of what your weather may be like in a few decades.”

AP Report

This study follows other reports in 2006 that reversed the cause and effect but were recording the same phenomenon: the widening of the tropics, the dimunition of the poles — with effects already being felt in southern Australia, where as we have seen in recent weeks the 7th year of drought has contributed to alarming spikes in price of grains around the world.

Satellite measurements made from 1979 to 2005 show that the atmosphere in the subtropical regions both north and south of the equator is heating up. As the atmosphere warms, it bulges out at the altitudes where the northern and southern jet streams slip past like swift and massive rivers of air. That bulging has pushed both jet streams about 70 miles closer to the Earth’s poles.

Deserts Expanding

It is not a case of a straight line poleward movement of increased heat, of course. The jet stream undulates, and is now undulating differently. Observers in England in 2007 and Southern California in 2005, of weeks of unusual torrential rain, pointed to unexpected and unexplained swings of the jet stream.

A Change In the Wind

Though none of the scientists involved in the observation and measurement of this movement can pin-point a connection to the larger issue of climate change, they are pretty sure the connection will be found. Meanwhile, the studies go on. The details are filled in. Citizens and governments notice more and being to connect local conditions to larger patterns, call for response. Will it be enough to change our habits and patterns or will they be changed for us by a changing world?

The Vulcan Project, an US wide data mapping of CO2 emissions, appears at first to correlate emissions with population density. However, closer inspection reveals surprises, such as carbon dioxide clustered in semirural areas of the Southeastern United States, where manufacturing has shifted from the Northeast and Midwest.

“We’ve pushed power plants to where people don’t live, so emissions have gotten spread out. Interstates run out in the middle of nowhere,” Gurney said.

Read more about Vulcan

Git’jir boots on…

Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates.

While the overall loss is a tiny fraction of the miles-deep ice that covers much of Antarctica, scientists said the new finding is important because the continent holds about 90 percent of Earth’s ice, and until now, large-scale ice loss there had been limited to the peninsula that juts out toward the tip of South America. In addition, researchers found that the rate of ice loss in the affected areas has accelerated over the past 10 years — as it has on most glaciers and ice sheets around the world.

“Without doubt, Antarctica as a whole is now losing ice yearly, and each year it’s losing more,” said Eric Rignot, lead author of a paper published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking despite land temperatures for the continent remaining essentially unchanged, except for the fast-warming peninsula.

The cause, Rignot said, may be changes in the flow of the warmer water of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles much of the continent. Because of changed wind patterns and less-well-understood dynamics of the submerged current, its water is coming closer to land in some sectors and melting the edges of glaciers deep underwater.

Increasing Ice Loss

Jeez, if China can do this why can’t California? How about Chinatown, San Francisco? How about the home delivery newspapers?

Declaring war on the “white pollution” choking its cities, farms and waterways, China is banning free plastic shopping bags and calling for a return to the cloth bags of old — steps largely welcomed by merchants and shoppers on Wednesday.

The measure eliminates the flimsiest bags and forces stores to charge for others, making China the latest nation to target plastic bags in a bid to cut waste and conserve resources.

Purging Plastic