Australians warned climate change could impact food choices

Australia's peak scientific research body, the CSIRO, has warned Australians climate change could soon influence their menu choices.

The scientific body says Australia's fisheries and aquaculture industries could suffer huge reductions in catch, because of rising sea temperatures and changes in ocean habitats.

They predict the Tasmanian salmon, rock lobster and abalone industries will be among the hardest hit by the warming of waters in southern Australia.

In Queensland and the Northern Territory barramundi, prawn and mudcrab fisheries will be impacted by changing rainfall patterns.

The industries are worth more than $US1.5 billion annually to the country's economy.

Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, says the industries need to plan for change.

"This report is a contribution to these industries to enable some of the thinking about that adaptation to occur," she said.

The report points out that despite the negative impacts of climate change, there are potential gains for smart businesses.

Al Gore Urges 'Civil Disobedience' Toward Coal Plants

Al Gore called Wednesday for "civil disobedience" to combat the construction of coal power plants without the ability to store carbon.

The former vice president, whose efforts to raise awareness of global warming have made him the most prominent voice on that issue, made the comment during a session at the fourth annual Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan.

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore said, according to Reuters.

It wasn't clear what specific action he intended by "civil disobedience," which calls for the intentional violation of laws deemed to be unjust.

Since leaving the White House after losing to George Bush in the 2000 presidential election, Gore has turn his focus to environmental issues, a longtime passion. The 2006 documentary based on his lecture, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. In addition, he received a Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change work.

Global warming will lead to biodiversity loss

WASHINGTON: An analysis, carried out by a scientist of Indian origin, along with his colleagues, has shown that irreversible global warming will lead to biodiversity loss and substantial glacial melt.

The scientist in question is Professor V. Ramanathan from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC (University of California) San Diego.

The analysis has estimated that the earth will warm about 2.4 degree C above pre-industrial levels, even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios and under the assumption that efforts to clean up particulate pollution continue to be successful.

That amount of warming falls within what the world's leading climate change authority recently set as the threshold range of temperature increase that would lead to widespread loss of biodiversity, de-glaciation and other adverse consequences in nature.

The researchers argue that coping with these circumstances will require "transformational research for guiding the path of future energy consumption."

"This paper demonstrates the major challenges society will have to face in dealing with a problem that now seems unavoidable," said the paper's lead author, Scripps Atmospheric and Climate Sciences Professor V. Ramanathan.

"We hope that governments will not be forced to consider trade-offs between air pollution abatement and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions," he added.

In their analysis, Ramanathan and co-author Yan Feng, a Scripps postdoctoral research fellow, assumed a highly optimistic scenario that greenhouse gas concentrations would remain constant at 2005 levels for the next century.

For the concentrations to remain at 2005 levels, the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide must decrease drastically within the next decade.

Economic expansion, however, is expected to see emissions increase.

The researchers then analyzed expected future warming by assuming that the cooling effect of man-made aerosol pollution will be eliminated during the 21st Century.

Because soot and similar particles remain airborne only for a matter of weeks, it is expected that clean-up efforts produce relatively immediate results.

Therefore, the authors based their projections of temperature increase assuming the absence of these pollutants in the atmosphere.

By contrast, greenhouse gases can remain in the atmosphere for decades or, in the case of carbon dioxide, more than a century.

Ramanathan and Feng estimated that the increase in greenhouse gases from pre-industrial era levels has already committed Earth to a warming range of 1.4 degree C to 4.3 degree C.

About 90 percent of that warming will most likely be experienced in the 21st Century.

"Given that a potentially large warming is already in our rear-view mirror, scientists and engineers must mount a massive effort and develop solutions for adapting to climate change and for mitigating it," said Ramanathan.

"Drastic reduction of short-lived warming agents is one way to buy the planet time for developing cost-effective ways for reducing CO2 concentrations," he added.

MIDDLE EAST and CARBON CREDITS

An overwhelming majority of primary CDM credits now being traded or used for compliance are coming from only two countries – China and India. Though these two giants still present attractive opportunities for carbon investment, the geographical concentration of such a large amount of carbon is a key concern for those who need to buy this booming new commodity. China’s unofficial price floor, and uncertainties with projects in India, are only some of the major issues that project developers and their clients face in trying to source for credits to fulfill regulatory obligations and CSR targets in their countries of operation.

A unique combination of qualities makes the Middle East and North Africa a potentially lucrative new region for hosting CDM projects.

First, though the countries in the region are not the world’s heaviest emitters, due to inexpensive energy they house sizeable energy-intensive and carbon-intensive industries such as aluminum production, not to mention oil and gas.

Second, the region has some of the world’s wealthiest institutional and individual investors who can help with financing suitable projects for mitigating climate change. Attesting to this fact are massive projects completed or now underway for record-breaking 7-star accommodation in Dubai, buildings that generate their own energy in Bahrain, and even a carbon-neutral city in Abu Dhabi.

Third, interest is now rising steadily among the region’s governments, investors and local industry leaders in the benefits of projects and investment for sustainability.

Now is the time to catch that interest and build your business case with local stakeholders, get the inside track speaking with regulators about current trends and outlook, and learn effective strategies for dealing with the complex local landscape from project participants themselves.

Time to aim high on climate change

The latest report on climate change by the economics professor Ross Garnaut is the most disheartening government report I've read. It tells us how hugely destructive climate change is likely to be, but doubts that the world's governments will be able to agree on effective action to halt it. Now you know why economics is called the dismal science.

Garnaut quotes an authoritative American study of the consequences if nothing is done to fight climate change and average temperatures rise by 5 or 6 degrees by the end of this century.

Such a change would be "catastrophic", posing "almost inconceivable challenges as human society struggled to adapt". "The collapse and chaos associated with extreme climate change futures would destabilise virtually every aspect of modern life," the study concluded.

Among the destruction would be the extinction of more than half the world's species. The Great Barrier Reef and other coral formations would almost certainly be killed and much Australian farmland rendered useless.

Worse, the Greenland ice sheet and parts of Antarctica would be highly likely to melt, greatly raising the sea level and inundating coastal areas in Australia and many other countries. These changes would be irreversible.

Garnaut says that to reduce these risks to acceptable levels, we need agreement and action by all the major countries to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million - although 400 would be better.

(Note that we've already reached 455 parts per million, so we'd go well above the 450 target before eventually getting back down to it.)

But Garnaut doubts that any comprehensive agreement will be forthcoming from the post-Kyoto negotiations at Copenhagen in December next year or in negotiations soon after.

Summoning all the optimism at a dismal scientist's disposal, however, he says "there is a chance, just a chance, that humanity will act in time and in ways that reduce the risks of climate change to acceptable levels".

But don't get your hopes up, because time's running out. "Opportunities to hold risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels diminish rapidly after 2013 if no major developing economies are accepting constraints to hold emissions significantly below business as usual by that time."

There you see the source of Garnaut's pessimism: the rapid growth in greenhouse gas emissions by the developing countries in general, and China in particular.

He asserts that the best hope of achieving a comprehensive global agreement would be to settle for a target of stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases at 550 parts per million.

The trouble with this, however, is that such a level would still leave high risks of damage to the reef and farmland and reaching tipping points on ice melting - as Garnaut readily concedes.

This is the reason for the strong criticism of Garnaut's recommendations from environmentalists and some scientists. It's not that he doubted the scientists' warnings, or got his calculations wrong, or said the loss of economic growth would be too high a price to pay, but that he hasn't been ambitious enough in the bargaining position he wants Australia to take to Copenhagen.

The critics think we should aim high and let others beat us down from there rather than aim low and end up lower.

I agree. Our goal can't be to cut our emissions hard for its own sake. Without an effective agreement by all major emitters, what we do makes no difference. So all our effort must go into helping to achieve such an agreement, and that means being willing to put an offer of big cuts on the table.

Garnaut argues eloquently that what we offer to do matters, that other countries will be watching us closely and that we can have a disproportionate influence on the outcome of negotiations.

Great. Let's do it.

Garnaut says that for a global agreement on a target of 550 parts per million, we should offer to cut our emissions in 2020 by 10 per cent of their level in 2000. For a target of 450, we should offer to cut them by 25 per cent in 2020.

So Kevin Rudd could answer much of the criticism - and make a much more constructive contribution to the negotiations - by advocating the lower, tougher target with the greater cut.

Garnaut's calculations show that the increased degree of adjustment and loss of economic growth involved in cutting emissions by 25 per cent rather than 10 per cent would be surprisingly small.

But Garnaut has made his recommended cut of 10 per cent look smaller and easier than it really is by proposing that we advocate a move to a system where the size of each country's reduction in emissions is set in a way that leads over the long term to all countries accepting roughly the same size cuts when expressed as cuts per person.

In other words, he wants account to be taken of population growth, with countries with growing populations allowed to make smaller cuts in total emissions while countries with declining populations are required to make larger cuts in total emissions.

Unless you believe the system should create an incentive for countries to reduce their birthrate - or that migration makes a significant difference to global emissions - this is a fair and sensible idea. And the developing countries want it.

But it favours countries such as Australia, the United States and India, while disadvantaging Western Europe and Japan.

And it makes our offer of a 10 per cent cut in our total emissions by 2020 look a weaker effort than it is. That translates to a cut of 30 per cent per person, while a 25 per cent total cut translates to 40 per cent per person (that's the surprisingly small difference I mentioned).

The European Union has made an unconditional offer to cut its total emissions by 20 per cent, whereas Garnaut says we should offer unconditional cuts of a pathetic 5 per cent.

But get this: translated into cuts per person, the EU's 20 per cent shrinks to 17 per cent whereas our 5 per cent expands to 25 per cent. Now who's not trying?

With one stroke, Garnaut has given unwarranted offence to environmentalists while giving false comfort to our short-sighted and selfish big business lobby.

Causes of climate change

The earth's climate is dynamic and always changing through a natural cycle. What the world is more worried about is that the changes that are occurring today have been speeded up because of man's activities. These changes are being studied by scientists all over the world who are finding evidence from tree rings, pollen samples, ice cores, and sea sediments. The causes of climate change can be divided into two categories - those that are due to natural causes and those that are created by man.

Natural causes

There are a number of natural factors responsible for climate change. Some of the more prominent ones are continental drift, volcanoes, ocean currents, the earth's tilt, and comets and meteorites. Let's look at them in a little detail.

Continental drift

You may have noticed something peculiar about South America and Africa on a map of the world - don't they seem to fit into each other like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle?
About 200 million years ago they were joined together! Scientists believe that back then, the earth was not as we see it today, but the continents were all part of one large landmass. Proof of this comes from the similarity between plant and animal fossils and broad belts of rocks found on the eastern coastline of South America and western coastline of Africa, which are now widely separated by the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery of fossils of tropical plants (in the form of coal deposits) in Antarctica has led to the conclusion that this frozen land at some time in the past, must have been situated closer to the equator, where the climate was tropical, with swamps and plenty of lush vegetation.

The continents that we are familiar with today were formed when the landmass began gradually drifting apart, millions of years back. This drift also had an impact on the climate because it changed the physical features of the landmass, their position and the position of water bodies. The separation of the landmasses changed the flow of ocean currents and winds, which affected the climate. This drift of the continents continues even today; the Himalayan range is rising by about 1 mm (millimeter) every year because the Indian land mass is moving towards the Asian land mass, slowly but steadily.

Volcanoes

When a volcano erupts it throws out large volumes of sulphur dioxide (SO2), water vapour, dust, and ash into the atmosphere. Although the volcanic activity may last only a few days, yet the large volumes of gases and ash can influence climatic patterns for years. Millions of tonnes of sulphur dioxide gas can reach the upper levels of the atmosphere (called the stratosphere) from a major eruption. The gases and dust particles partially block the incoming rays of the sun, leading to cooling. Sulphur dioxide combines with water to form tiny droplets of sulphuric acid. These droplets are so small that many of them can stay aloft for several years. They are efficient reflectors of sunlight, and screen the ground from some of the energy that it would ordinarily receive from the sun. Winds in the upper levels of the atmopshere, called the stratosphere, carry the aerosols rapidly around the globe in either an easterly or westerly direction. Movement of aerosols north and south is always much slower. This should give you some idea of the ways by which cooling can be brought about for a few years after a major volcanic eruption.

Mount Pinatoba, in the Philippine islands erupted in April 1991 emitting thousands of tonnes of gases into the atmosphere. Volcanic eruptions of this magnitude can reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, lowering temperatures in the lower levels of the atmosphere (called the troposphere), and changing atmospheric circulation patterns. The extent to which this occurs is an ongoing debate.

Another striking example was in the year 1816, often referred to as "the year without a summer." Significant weather-related disruptions occurred in New England and in Western Europe with killing summer frosts in the United States and Canada. These strange phenomena were attributed to a major eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia, in 1815.

The earth's tilt

The earth makes one full orbit around the sun each year. It is tilted at an angle of 23.5° to the perpendicular plane of its orbital path. For one half of the year when it is summer, the northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun. In the other half when it is winter, the earth is tilted away from the sun. If there was no tilt we would not have experienced seasons. Changes in the tilt of the earth can affect the severity of the seasons - more tilt means warmer summers and colder winters; less tilt means cooler summers and milder winters.

The Earth's orbit is somewhat elliptical, which means that the distance between the earth and the Sun varies over the course of a year. We usually think of the earth's axis as being fixed, after all, it always seems to point toward Polaris (also known as the Pole Star and the North Star). Actually, it is not quite constant: the axis does move, at the rate of a little more than a half-degree each century. So Polaris has not always been, and will not always be, the star pointing to the North. When the pyramids were built, around 2500 BC, the pole was near the star Thuban (Alpha Draconis). This gradual change in the direction of the earth's axis, called precession is responsible for changes in the climate.

Ocean currents

The oceans are a major component of the climate system. They cover about 71% of the Earth and absorb about twice as much of the sun's radiation as the atmosphere or the land surface. Ocean currents move vast amounts of heat across the planet - roughly the same amount as the atmosphere does. But the oceans are surrounded by land masses, so heat transport through the water is through channels.

Winds push horizontally against the sea surface and drive ocean current patterns.
Certain parts of the world are influenced by ocean currents more than others. The coast of Peru and other adjoining regions are directly influenced by the Humboldt current that flows along the coastline of Peru. The El Niño event in the Pacific Ocean can affect climatic conditions all over the world.

Another region that is strongly influenced by ocean currents is the North Atlantic. If we compare places at the same latitude in Europe and North America the effect is immediately obvious. Take a closer look at this example - some parts of coastal Norway have an average temperature of -2°C in January and 14°C in July; while places at the same latitude on the Pacific coast of Alaska are far colder: -15°C in January and only 10°C in July. The warm current along the Norewgian coast keeps much of the Greenland-Norwegian Sea free of ice even in winter. The rest of the Arctic Ocean, even though it is much further south, remains frozen.

Ocean currents have been known to change direction or slow down. Much of the heat that escapes from the oceans is in the form of water vapour, the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth. Yet, water vapor also contributes to the formation of clouds, which shade the surface and have a net cooling effect.
Any or all of these phenomena can have an impact on the climate, as is believed to have happened at the end of the last Ice Age, about 14,000 years ago.

Human causes

The Industrial Revolution in the 19th century saw the large-scale use of fossil fuels for industrial activities. These industries created jobs and over the years, people moved from rural areas to the cities. This trend is continuing even today. More and more land that was covered with vegetation has been cleared to make way for houses. Natural resources are being used extensively for construction, industries, transport, and consumption. Consumerism (our increasing want for material things) has increased by leaps and bounds, creating mountains of waste. Also, our population has increased to an incredible extent.

All this has contributed to a rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas supply most of the energy needed to run vehicles, generate electricity for industries, households, etc. The energy sector is responsible for about ¾ of the carbon dioxide emissions, 1/5 of the methane emissions and a large quantity of nitrous oxide. It also produces nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) which are not greenhouse gases but do have an influence on the chemical cycles in the atmosphere that produce or destroy greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases and their sources

Carbon dioxide is undoubtedly, the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Changes in land use pattern, deforestation, land clearing, agriculture, and other activities have all led to a rise in the emission of carbon dioxide.

Methane is another important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. About ¼ of all methane emissions are said to come from domesticated animals such as dairy cows, goats, pigs, buffaloes, camels, horses, and sheep. These animals produce methane during the cud-chewing process. Methane is also released from rice or paddy fields that are flooded during the sowing and maturing periods. When soil is covered with water it becomes anaerobic or lacking in oxygen. Under such conditions, methane-producing bacteria and other organisms decompose organic matter in the soil to form methane. Nearly 90% of the paddy-growing area in the world is found in Asia, as rice is the staple food there. China and India, between them, have 80-90% of the world's rice-growing areas.

Methane is also emitted from landfills and other waste dumps. If the waste is put into an incinerator or burnt in the open, carbon dioxide is emitted. Methane is also emitted during the process of oil drilling, coal mining and also from leaking gas pipelines (due to accidents and poor maintenance of sites).
A large amount of nitrous oxide emission has been attributed to fertilizer application. This in turn depends on the type of fertilizer that is used, how and when it is used and the methods of tilling that are followed. Contributions are also made by leguminous plants, such as beans and pulses that add nitrogen to the soil.

How we all contribute every day

All of us in our daily lives contribute our bit to this change in the climate. Give these points a good, serious thought:

- Electricity is the main source of power in urban areas. All our gadgets run on electricity generated mainly from thermal power plants. These thermal power plants are run on fossil fuels (mostly coal) and are responsible for the emission of huge amounts of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.
- Cars, buses, and trucks are the principal ways by which goods and people are transported in most of our cities. These are run mainly on petrol or diesel, both fossil fuels.
- We generate large quantities of waste in the form of plastics that remain in the environment for many years and cause damage.
- We use a huge quantity of paper in our work at schools and in offices. Have we ever thought about the number of trees that we use in a day?
- Timber is used in large quantities for construction of houses, which means that large areas of forest have to be cut down.
- A growing population has meant more and more mouths to feed. Because the land area available for agriculture is limited (and in fact, is actually shrinking as a result of ecological degradation!), high-yielding varieties of crop are being grown to increase the agricultural output from a given area of land. However, such high-yielding varieties of crops require large quantities of fertilizers; and more fertilizer means more emissions of nitrous oxide, both from the field into which it is put and the fertilizer industry that makes it. Pollution also results from the run-off of fertilizer into water bodies.

Arctic's grazing animals help global warming on its way

COULD vegetation help to offset global warming? Not if grazing animals such as caribou and musk oxen are allowed to do their worst.

As global temperatures rise, the shrubby vegetation at high latitudes should grow more strongly, allowing it to act as a green lung to soak up carbon dioxide. To test the effect of grazing on these growth rates, Eric Post from Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, placed 25 open-topped glass cones, each one 30 centimetres high, in 15 square kilometres of shrubland in West Greenland.

The glass sides act like a greenhouse, trapping warm air inside, mimicking the effects of global warming. Caribou and musk oxen were allowed to graze the shrubs through the open tops of 13 of the cones. The remainder were fenced off to keep the animals out.

Post found that over five years, shrubs such as dwarf birch and willow trees grew better inside the cones than outside, as expected. However, grazing reduced this increase in growth by a fifth (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0802421105). Post hasn't yet plugged his data into a climate simulation, but thinks previous models have overestimated the capacity of the Earth's vegetation to absorb CO2 by 10 per cent.