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Heatwave with a global grip
The Sunday Times
It looks like being the hottest July on record but Britain is not alone in experiencing extreme conditions, write Jonathan Leake and Alex Delmar- Morgan.
Hot, arid weather is afflicting millions in America and in dozens of countries across Europe and parts of east Asia.
The phenomenon has surprised meteorologists who are used to seeing drought as a regional, not global, problem. This weekend they said early analysis of the hot weather, together with the size of the areas affected, suggested it was linked to global climate change.
“Greenhouse gas emissions raise the likelihood of heatwaves like this one,” said Dave Griggs, a Met Office representative on the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme. “By 2040 this will be just an average summer and by 2060 it will be a relatively cool one.”
Data on the global heatwave have been collated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in America. Its maps show that most of the US is 3-7C above the average for the time of year and several western states have been more than 9C higher.
(30 July 2006)
Methane makers yield to science
Louisa Cheung, BBC
The genetic code of an important group of methane-producing microbes has been sequenced by German scientists.
The archaea are probably the major source of methane emanating from rice fields, contributing up to a quarter of global emissions of the gas.
The new genomic information reveals how the single-celled organisms have adapted to thrive in paddy soil.
The researchers believe the study, published by Science magazine, could lead to ways to control the microbes.
“But whether this really leads to a total reduction of methane emission in the rice paddy soil, it is very difficult to predict,” says Dr Werner Liesack, from the Max-Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology.
Rice is grown on all continents except Antarctica. At least 114 countries are producers, with the greatest tonnages cultivated in China and India.
According to the International Rice Research Institute, the world’s rice fields in 2004 covered some 1,532,570 sq km (600,000 square miles) – an area equivalent to more than six United Kingdoms.
Rice paddies give off substantial quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas; and eight years ago, microbiologists identified what they believed to be the key culprit: a organism group they called Rice Cluster I (RC-I).
The archaea live in the soil, in amongst the root system of the rice plant.
(25 July 2006)
How global warming has thrown nature into disarray
Alan MacDermid, The Herald
SCOTLAND’S wildlife food chains are being thrown out of sync by global warming, putting thousands of creatures at risk of starvation, scientists warned yesterday. A new study shows that animals and plants are responding to climate change, but some more rapidly than others.
The result could be a disastrously late lunch for fish species ultimately dependent on the the most basic plankton at the bottom of the chain.
The disturbing findings appear in a new report prepared by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and published by Scottish
(28 July 2006)
Acid waters, dissolving shellfish
Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe and Mail
New research shows fossil fuels pose a deadly threat to coral reefs and marine life
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Until now, concern about rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been focused on global warming. But scientists have discovered a second reason to worry: About half of the greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels — an amount weighing about the same as 140 billion Volkswagen Beetles — has ultimately ended up in the world’s oceans.
While this has the beneficial effect of slowing down the rate at which the planet’s atmosphere is heating up, ocean researchers have found that the huge influx of carbon dioxide since 1800 is making oceans more acidic than they have been for millions of years. If not reversed, this trend could destabilize — or even threaten –much of the world’s marine life, particularly animals that can’t adapt to living in a more corrosive environment.
So far, the ocean’s pH (the commonly used scale of whether something is acidic or alkaline) has become about 30 per cent more acidic over the past 200 years because humans have added so much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Scientists say this change has never occurred in the recent history of the planet — either in such a massive way, or so quickly.
“The pH changes that are occurring in the ocean today are truly extraordinary,” says Joan Kleypas, a scientist at the U.S. National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and the lead author of a report issued this month that rang alarm bells about the trend. “Unfortunately, this is not an environmental problem that we’ve had to deal with in the past, and so we really don’t have a very good grasp of what this means for ocean biology.”
(29 July 2006)
Capital Pollution Solution?
Jeff Goodell
Richard Sandor, chairman and C.E.O. of the Chicago Climate Exchange, seems to be fond of green. His business card and company stationery are trimmed in green; he wears green neckties. When he is photographed by the news media, there’s lots of green in the frame: green file folders, green paper, anything. For Sandor, it may be a way of signaling that the Chicago Climate Exchange – a commodities market for an unusual kind of commodity, greenhouse gas allowances – is more than just another business venture. It is, as he describes it, the engine of an environmental revolution.
But of course, green is also the color of money. And Sandor, who has been called “the father of financial futures” for his role in creating interest-rate futures in the 1970’s and who made a fortune during the boom years of the 80’s at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the firm of the junk-bond king Michael Milken, is also familiar with that particular shade. However high-minded in principle, the Chicago Climate Exchange is also about making a buck off the planet’s looming climate catastrophe.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, the trading of greenhouse gas allowances, also known as carbon trading, may be capitalism’s best answer to the problem of global warming. To avoid a dangerous degree of climate change, many scientists say, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide will have to be cut by 50 to 70 percent over the next 50 years. The only hope of achieving that, short of an unforeseen technological breakthrough or the passage of draconian environmental laws, is to inspire radical change in the economic system. In a carbon-trading scheme, you must pay to pollute: price tags are placed on greenhouse gas emissions and then the market (not the government) essentially figures out the cheapest, most efficient way to reduce them. “The beauty of carbon trading,” Dan Dudek, chief economist at Environmental Defense, a nonprofit advocacy group, explained to me, “is that it takes a primal human impulse – greed – and redirects it toward saving the planet rather than destroying it.”
Jeff Goodell, a frequent contributor to the [NY Times] magazine, is the author of “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.”
(30 July 2006)
Very good analysis – comprehensive and it seems fair.
