from the London Independent:

Cracking up: the ice shelf as big as Northern Ireland

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

It is one of the biggest in Antarctica and, for the past century, the massive Wilkins ice shelf appeared to have escaped the ravages of global warming. But now, enormous cracks have appeared in this floating ice platform the size of Northern Ireland. Scientists say it is breaking apart at an unprecedented rate after warmer temperatures weakened it.

A thin strip of ice is all that now prevents the Wilkins shelf from disintegrating and breaking away from the landmass of the Antarctic peninsula, scientists said yesterday. The peninsula is the fastest-warming region in the Antarctic and has seen some of the largest temperature rises on earth – 0.5C per decade – which is why the Wilkins ice shelf is on the verge of disappearing completely, said one of the scientists.

Observers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge and the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado said they were astonished to discover just how fast the ice shelf was breaking apart since the first cracks were seen in February.

from the BBC:

The UK’s chief environment scientist has called for a delay to a policy demanding inclusion of biofuels into fuel at pumps across the UK.

Professor Robert Watson said ministers should await the results of their inquiry into biofuels’ sustainability.

Some scientists think biofuels’ carbon benefits may be currently outweighed by negative effects from their production.

The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from 1 April.

Professor Robert Watson warned that it would be insane if the RTFO had the opposite effects of the ones intended.

He said biofuels policy in the EU and the UK may have run ahead of the science.

His comments in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme appear on the day when a coalition of pressure groups from Oxfam to Greenpeace writes to the Department for Transport (DfT) demanding that the policy be delayed until after the review.

from The New Scientist:

Rice is arguably the world’s most important food source and helps feed about half the globe’s people. But yields in many areas will drop as the globe warms in future years, a review of studies on rice and climate change suggests.

The poorest parts of the world, including Africa, will probably be hardest hit, the study says. Rice harvests already need to increase by about a third just to keep up with global population growth.

Predicting how a changing climate will affect crop yields is notoriously difficult. Temperature, carbon dioxide concentration and ozone levels all have a big impact on growth. Yet most studies look at just one of these factors, making it difficult to know what the combined effect will be.

It is also hard to know whether results from experiments in greenhouses with artificial climates will hold true in the real world. But when the evidence from some 80 different studies is combined, the outlook is bleak, says Elizabeth Ainsworth of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Troubling temperatures

In regions where the average daily temperatures are expected to rise above 30ºC, rice yields will start to fall off, and the impact will get worse as the temperature increases.

The drop in yield caused by rising temperatures can be counteracted by the boost to photosynthesis provided by the increased levels of carbon dioxide driving climate change. But when Ainsworth pooled the studies, she found that effect is not strong enough to counteract the stress plants suffer at high temperatures.

At what cost?  The story says that worldwide krill stock has already dropped an estimated 80% due to global warming.  Krill are the foundation of the ocean/planetary life pyramid.  If they’re disappearing from climate change AND we’re sucking them up as never before, what are the whales, seals, and penguins supposed to do?  Trust us?  Like we’ve been trustworthy stewards of the planet!?

The Antarctic, one of the planet’s last unspoilt ecosystems, is under threat from mankind’s insatiable appetite for harvesting the seas.

The population of krill, a tiny crustacean, is in danger from the growing demand for health supplements and food for fish farms. Global warming has already been blamed for a dramatic fall in numbers because the ice that is home to the algae and plankton they feed on is melting. Now ’suction’ harvesting which gathers up vast quantities has been introduced to meet the increased demand. It threatens not just krill, but the entire ecosystem that depends on them, say environmental campaigners. Krill are also believed to be important in removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by eating carbon-rich food near the surface and excreting it when they sink to lower, colder water to escape predators.

‘Whales, penguins, seals, albatrosses and petrels - all those creatures we think are absolute icons of Antarctica - depend on krill,’ said Richard Page, a marine reserves expert with Greenpeace International. ‘It’s part of the global commons, and one of the most pristine environments on Earth. That’s why we should treat it with the greatest of respect.’

 story

Climate change skeptics have made a lot of noise about how cold this winter was and how the Arctic Ocean is once again frozen over.  But January’s snows were followed by February thaws, and satellite data reveals how thin the Arctic icecap has become….what’s the Bush junta doing about this?  Probably cutting funds for the satellites….

A cool Arctic winter has brought sea ice back to broad expanses that melted clear during last summer’s unusual warmth. However, the amount of thick “perennial ice” has declined sharply across the Arctic, and climate experts say that global warming is the cause.

…unless we can capture all the CO2 from them, which of course, we can’t do yet….meanwhile, the Chinese are putting a new coal-fired plant on line at the rate of one per week, and there’s plenty of political rhetoric blowing wind into the sails of more coal plants here in the US.  Hanson says if we don’t stop with the fossil fuels like RIGHT NOW, we’re gonna cook our goose.  His critics say it’s not politically feasible to do that.  What do you call it when it’s “not politcally feasible” not to commit planetary suicide?

Oh yes, the main point of the interview was how both the Bush and Clinton administrations have attempted to censor him….and sometimes succeeded.  Al Gore.  Censoring James Hanson.  Well, OK, it was the Clintons, and that was then and this is now….

from the Democracy Now interview:

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, the most important thing is—if you just look at how much carbon dioxide there is in the different fossil fuels, coal is the really big issue. The important step is to have a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture the carbon dioxide and sequester it. And if we would do that, that’s a good fraction of the solution. But we’re also going to have to use the other fossil fuels more conservatively. We’re going to need to emphasize energy efficiency. And eventually we have to find sources of energy that don’t produce greenhouse gases.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m just looking at a piece in the New York Times from a few days ago by Andrew Revkin that said, “Dr. Hansen “and eight co-authors have drafted a fresh paper arguing that the world has already shot past a safe eventual atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which they say would be around 350 parts per million, a level passed 20 years ago,” Andrew Revkin writes. This is controversial. “Some longtime champions of Dr. Hansen, including the Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm, see some significant gaps in the paper”—still in draft form—“and part ways with Dr. Hansen over whether such a goal is remotely feasible.”

DR. JAMES HANSEN: Well, yeah. Unfortunately, Joe feels that we have to talk about what’s practical. I think we have to look at the science and tell us exactly what it—and tell the people exactly what it is pointing to. And the history of the earth tells us that even 385 parts per million is too much. And we can still go backwards. The ocean does take up carbon dioxide. If we would phase out the use of coal, except to recapture the CO2, then it is feasible to get back below 350 parts per million. But we’re going to have to put a stop on new coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture the CO2.

from the blog of Joseph Romm, author of Hell and High Water…

Hansen (et al) must read: Get back to 350 ppm or risk an ice-free planet

***

Also, if I am reading Hansen et al correctly (and Lord knows I may not be), then I think he may be mostly right for a different reason than he thinks, which is to say, I think the carbon-cycle feedbacks (including the tundra melting and sink saturation) act as the equivalent of the amplifiers that he models (”loss of Greenland and Antarctic ice and spread of vegetation over the vast high-latitude land area in the Northern Hemisphere” — I will come back to that vegatation issue in a future post). In other words, if you get near 450 ppm and stay there for any length of time, you will shoot up to 700 to 1000 ppm, which certainly gets you an ice-free planet. Or perhaps the simplest way to put this — the IPCC is right when it says:

Climate-carbon cycle coupling is expected to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as the climate system warms, but the magnitude of this feedback is uncertain. This increases the uncertainty in the trajectory of carbon dioxide emissions required to achieve a particular stabilisation level of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Based on current understanding of climate carbon cycle feedback, model studies suggest that to stabilise at 450 ppm carbon dioxide, could require that cumulative emissions over the 21st century be reduced from an average of approximately 670 [630 to 710] GtC to approximately 490 [375 to 600] GtC. Similarly, to stabilise at 1000 ppm this feedback could require that cumulative emissions be reduced from a model average of approximately 1415 [1340 to 1490] GtC to approximately 1100 [980 to 1250] GtC.

We’re at 8 GtC/yr and rising 3% annually. We need to average below 5 GtC/yr — and maybe considerably less — for the whole century to avert catastrophe. We need to be near zero or below by 2100.

from the UK Independent:

Martin Warren

A red admiral, normally seen in Britain in summer, was photographed in February among snowdrops

…many of what used to be thought of as the traditional signs of spring are happening very much earlier, causing primroses, for example, spring flowers par excellence, to bloom in some parts of the country as early as November. Other traditional spring plants, such as dog’s mercury and the lesser celandine (a favourite of Wordsworth’s) can be seen in January rather than March.

And in what is perhaps an even more vivid change, dandelions and daisies, which used to come into flower in spring on lawns (where they were permitted), now flower in many places all winter long.

Insects are responding similarly. A number of butterflies that overwinter as hibernating adults can now be seen in January rather than March or April, including the peacock and the comma, and especially the red admiral.

This last species used to be a spring migrant from the Continent but, in the recent warmer winters, it has begun to overwinter here.

Bumblebees have similarly become visible in mid-winter, and frogspawn, usually laid about March, can be seen in December in the South-west and south Wales.

The changes and many others have been monitored in detail because in Britain there has been a renewal of the old discipline of phenology, or the study of the timings of natural events, which was favoured by the Victorians but largely abandoned by the 1950s.

CNN tries to discredit the local food movement but rightly points out that raising animals for meat is an optional activity that contributes heavily to global warming.

They talk about how important it is for equatorial regions to have the jobs and money that come from exporting exotic fruits and vegetables to us northerners, ignoring the fact that malnutrition is endemic among third world people and the energy it takes to send us tropical fruit and out-of-season vegetables would be better spent feeding the third world–but, just as with grain for gasohol rather than tortillas, los ricos blancos have outbid los pobres, and Economics Almighty doth rule…. “the invisible hand” smites who it listeth….and of course, there’s the legal drug trade–coffee…I mean, we have got to have our coffee, right?  But just say no to drugs….

By Rachel Oliver
For CNN

(CNN) — Eating ethically is no easy task these days. One problem is deciding which ethic is more important. Keeping third-world farmers in fair trade jobs by purchasing their produce? Or assuaging your concerns over the environmental impact of getting that produce to your kitchen by shopping locally instead?

Up until recently it has been the latter concern — how food is transported — that has hogged the limelight when it comes to looking at the role the food chain plays in climate change. Statistics such as the fact that the average American meal travels on average 1,500 miles before it gets to the diner’s plate, have led to stronger backing for “grow locally” movements.

But the local food movement has been greeted with dismay by the developing world — and for good reason.

According to the UK-based Food Climate Research Network (FCRN), as many as 1.5 million people in the developing world, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, depend on the export horticulture market. Agricultural exports, meanwhile, have been partly to thank for Africa’s economic growth rates of around 5 per cent a year, according to the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

British shoppers alone spend more than $2 million every single day on fruit and vegetables imported from Africa. Encouraging them to shop locally instead of buying imported produce from the developing world could obviously have disastrous consequences for third-world farmers.

story

This just shows how totally screwed up our economic system really is….

Meat and methane: climate killers?

There is, of course, one other major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the food chain: Meat.

Back in 2006, the FAO revealed that rearing livestock produced more greenhouse gas emissions than the transportation sector — 18 percent of the world’s entire greenhouse gas emissions.

Notably, livestock production generates 37 percent of human-induced methane and 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide emissions. Methane has 23 times the global warming potential of CO2; the impact of nitrous oxide meanwhile is a staggering 296 times more powerful.

Meat and dairy represent 50 percent of “total food related impacts”, according to the Climate Action Program. And in terms of the fossil fuel bill meat runs up, for that family of four who is using up 930 gallons of fossil fuel a year on food, 265 gallons of it goes towards putting meat on their table.

Going vegetarian, or vegan, therefore is being increasingly suggested as one of the best ways to slash our carbon contributions. A University of Chicago study found, for example that meat-eaters individually emit 1.5 more tons of emissions a year than vegetarians or vegans; and according to the OCA, it takes 8 times as many fossil fuels to produce animal protein than their plant equivalent.

Being vegetarian is by no means a panacea, however, as even the OCA concedes that eating a 2 kg box of vegetarian-friendly cereal is the equivalent of burning half a gallon of gasoline.

But perhaps banking on everyone going vegetarian fails to take into account one simple fact: 1.4 billion people work in the global livestock sector and rely on meat-eaters for their livelihoods.

How one would go about telling 1.4 billion people to shut up shop is anyone’s guess.

The same way we tell millions of coal miners and their wealthy bosses to shut up shop–what they are doing is going to get us all killed, and there’s plenty that will help us live that ain’t getting done… 

Back in the early eighties when we first started becoming aware of the fact that humans were about to screw the planet up past fixing, my friend Darryl said that he thought we would probably drive some species critical to our survival to extinction and then notice that it was now too late….it looks like we’re entering that zone of possibilities….from the New York Times:

Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace

Tim Calvert, a fisherman, in San Francisco. The scarcity of Chinook salmon may keep the Pacific fishery closed for the season.

SACRAMENTO — Where did they go?

The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry.