With news that President Obama will fast track the building of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, Texans in its path say their health and property rights are endangered by a torrent of corrosive tar sands oil from Canada. From landowners in the northern parts of the state to residents in the polluted refinery towns along the Gulf, the message is clear: the TransCanada pipeline will bring widespread risk of potential economic and environmental disaster to a state that already is burdened by toxic assaults from the massive petrochemical industry.

“All my life we’ve lived in the shadows of refineries and chemical plants”, says community activist Hilton Kelley, a Port Arthur native son who received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize and met with President Obama last year. “We grew up with the smell of sulfur and various other chemicals that’s being dumped into our environment. A large number of people are suffering from bronchitis, acute asthma, and there’s a lot of folks in this community with liver disease and cancer due to the emissions I believe that are being dumped into our air and the types of chemicals that we’re breathing….we say no to the Keystone XL pipeline because we don’t need any additional pollution being dumped into our air, and that’s what it’s going to bring.”

Check out this video of Port Arthur residents talking about refinery pollution and concerns about the Keystone XL pipeline.

Irma Lee Smith is a Port Arthur resident who says she’s been sickened by living near some of the largest refineries in the world, refineries that will be on the receiving end of  800,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil to be pushed daily through the Keystone XL pipeline.

Smith lives in a two-story housing project just a few hundred yards from chemical plants that dominate the landscape in this once prosperous oil port town, located near the birthplace of Texas’ booming oil patch. In recent decades Port Arthur has fallen on hard times, although its refineries are expanding and concerns about pollution are still very much alive.

Smith describes occasional explosions and gas eruptions from the mammoth chemical complexes that have her reaching for her “breathing machine” that helps medicate her severe bronchitis, a disease she says is common in her family and community.

“Sometimes there will be a lot of noise when they’re letting it out,” Smith says “Be shakin your windows, and I say old Lord, it’s thunder and lightning and I go to door and that’s the refinery….whatever they letting out it makes me short winded.”

Hilton Kelley says about one in five residents of this predominantly African American community close to the refineries has serious respiratory problems. “Port Arthur West side community is being disproportionally bombarded as it is with toxic waste. We do not need this tar sands coming to our area and increasing the heavy toxins in our environment.”

Tar sands oil is particularly nasty stuff in its natural state, but it will also be injected with chemicals so it can be liquefied and pushed through the proposed 1,700 mile Keystone XL pipeline to the Gulf.  In addition to health and environmental threats, the tar sands pipeline will increase oil prices in the Midwest and undermine our national security by creating an easy way to export tar sands oil overseas through tax-free Foreign Trade Zones like Port Arthur. Here’s how NRDC’s Susan Casey-Lefkowitz describes it in her recent blog:

Splitting the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline doesn’t make it any better – not for our energy independence, not for oil prices and certainly not for our health and our environment. Keystone XL in any form would actually undermine national security and increase oil prices by reducing the amount of oil in the Midwest and sending tar sands oil overseas, as this NRDC report shows.  Similarly, a report just out from Cornell University shows that the potential environmental and economic risks from a tar sands pipeline spill – regardless of whether it happens in the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer in Texas or in the Red River and its tributaries along the Texas-Oklahoma border.

Irma Lee Smith, Port Arthur TX                           Photo: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

Residents across the Lone Star state are up in arms over the $7 billion Keystone XL project, including landowners who say they are being railroaded by Big Oil interests to sell their land to a foreign company that will reap big profits, while putting their homes at risk. Wood County resident Eleanor Fairchild, whose husband had been a senior executive with Hunt Oil, says many residents are fed up with the way they’ve been treated by TransCanada and by their politicians.

“It’s not regular crude, it’s the dirtiest crude in the world…I decided this thing was much bigger than by property and I did not think we should have this tar sands coming into the United States. Our lawmakers have made laws that have allowed them to push people around…I do not think it’s just for us, I think they’re looking for a port. I think tar sands should be left in the ground.”

Texas landowners talk about their opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Susan Scott owns 60 acres of land in Woods County TX that she says is being threatened by the Keystone XL pipeline. Scott says she signed an eminent domain agreement with TransCanada to build the pipeline through her land after the Canadian oil firm threatened to take her to court. Scott says the stress has caused her heart problems and forced her to pay expensive medical bills, although she vows to fight on. “We’re just simple country people, we don’t have the money they have to fight this pipeline…I will fight it til the day I fall over I guess.”

From the green hill country of East Texas to the flat Gulf shores of Port Arthur, people like Susan Scott, Eleanor Fairchild, Irma Lee Smith and Hilton Kelley all share concerns about a dangerous pipeline plan that will benefit Big Oil and put their lives at greater risk. The bottom line is a tar sands oil pipeline should not be fast-tracked for political expediency, certainly not a pipeline that is directing dirty Canadian oil toward the export market. 

President Obama needs to hear these voices, Americans on the frontlinesfighting for a healthy economy, a sustainable environment and a clean energy future.These are Americans who need to be a bigger part of this political debate, voices we can all be proud of.

President Obama is speaking about energy this week. He has a lot of important things to say about the very real need to move forward with renewable energy and fuel efficiency, and he has committed to ending subsidies to the oil industry. However, he will also be promoting new oil pipeline infrastructure in the US and there is one proposed pipeline that needs to be called out as different from the others. The Canadian company TransCanada has split its reapplication for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in two. The proposed southern segment of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is one of the possible pipelines to bring oil from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast. But the oil that it will bring is likely to be mostly tar sands oil from Canada, not U.S. oil. This means additional health and safety concerns from pipeline oil spills, as well as concerns for additional pollution in refining communities in the Gulf. Don’t be fooled – tar sands is not your Granddaddy’s oil.

Splitting the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline doesn’t make it any better – not for our energy independence, not for oil prices and certainly not for our health and our environment. Keystone XL in any form would actually undermine national security and increase oil prices by reducing the amount of oil in the Midwest and sending tar sands oil overseas, as this NRDC report shows.  Similarly, a report just out from Cornell University shows that the potential environmental and economic risks from a pipeline spill – regardless of whether it happens in the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer in Texas or in the Red River and its tributaries along the Texas-Oklahoma border.

As for what will actually be moving on Keystone XL’s southern route: TransCanada has made commitments to transport approximately 600,000 barrels a day (bpd) of crude. Of this, TransCanada has said that 380,000 bpd is for Canadian crude – most if not all of which will likely be tar sands. Even if the southern segment is built before the northern segment is completed, TransCanada’s first Keystone pipeline carrying raw tar sands ends in Cushing, Oklahoma and would be bringing raw tar sands right into the southern segment of Keystone XL.  In fact, TransCanada had already committed to move another 155,000 bpd of Canadian crude from the first Keystone pipeline terminus in Cushing to the Gulf Coast refineries. That means that of 600,000 bpd committed capacity of Keystone XL’s southern segment, 535,000 bpd is meant for Canadian crude. In other words, around 90 percent of what will flow in the southern segment of Keystone XL is likely to be tar sands. For more detail see the final environmental impact statement on the Keystone XL project, pages 2-4.

Don’t think a leak could happen? Think again. The first Keystone tar sands pipeline has leaked repeatedly ever since it was constructed – at least 14 times in its first year of operation just in the United States. Along the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, residents are still cleaning up from a July 2010 break of another tar sands pipeline operated by Enbridge Energy that sent close to a million gallons of tar sands oil into the river. About 40 miles of the river is still closed today as cleanup of the most expensive pipeline disaster in U.S. history is ongoing.

Americans have resoundingly said they don’t want another tar sands pipeline. Not in the northern half of our country; not in the southern half of our country. During a single day in February, for instance, Americans sent more than 800,000 messages to their members of Congress condemning the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project.

And President Obama said about the decision to conduct additional review of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline back in November 2011: “Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment, and because a number of concerns have been raised through a public process, we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood.” This statement should hold true equally for the ranchers and landowners along the northern part of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, as for those in Oklahoma and Texas.

“The sea level rise taking place right now is quickly making extreme coastal floods more common, increasing risk for millions of people where they live and work. Sea level rise makes every single coastal storm flood higher,” says lead author Benjamin H. Strauss. (Credit: University of Arizona)

U. ARIZONA (US) — About 3.7 million Americans are at risk for flooding as the sea level continues to rise in the coming century.

The Greenland ice sheet is melting quicker than anyone previously thought. A new estimate lowers the amount of heat necessary, and thus the time needed, to melt the Greenland ice sheet, according to Nature Climate Change. This is important because the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet causes significant sea level rise. Warming is also expected to affect Antarctica and other ice pockets worldwide causing rising sea levels.

Ice cap in Greenland, near Kangerlussuaq Credit: Ludovic Hirlimann/flickr

Guinness Stout is one of the world’s great beverages.  It is the darkest of beers, as hearty and full-bodied as they come, with a characteristic cream-colored head on top.  Its color is black with, to my eyes, a hint of dark chocolaty brown.  It’s been brewed in Ireland for the better part of three centuries and may it never change.

Now, perhaps there’s even more reason to love Guinness because, while its visual impression is dark, its metaphorical color is showing signs of green as the company adopts good environmental practices.  “Sustainability and enhancing the environment of the Dublin communities has been a core philosophy of the Guinness Company since it was founded,” said Paul Carty, Managing Director at the Guinness Storehouse, the brewery’s large and historic facility at St. James’s Gate in the Irish capital.  Last year the Storehouse, now a major tourist attraction hosting a million visitors annually, received a three-star accreditation from Sustainable Travel International for its environmental commitment.  (The actual brewing was moved from the old facility in 1988.)

Among the highlights recognized by the award are these:

• Adoption of environmental performance indicators
• Measures to reduce waste, chemical use, and energy consumption
• Use of paper products derived from sustainably managed forests
• Advanced lighting technology
• Local food sourcing
• Locally sourced construction materials
• Sustainability training for staff

In the first video below, a company spokesperson says that, regarding food, the company works with Good Food Ireland, which according to its own website “was founded to endorse and promote . . . places committed to local food and to link the food producer, farmer and fisherman with the hospitality sector.”

Sustainable Travel International summarizes a number of criteria used to judge whether companies qualify for certification.  In addition to performance regarding the environment, applicants are evaluated on social and cultural impacts, economic impacts, and “innovative best practices.”  Companies must have a “written policy incorporating relevant criteria under each principle category below appropriate to the location, nature and scale of [their] operations.”  Environmental factors include the following:

“Performance areas include but are not limited to: Ecosystem Preservation (e.g., transportation, endangered species, group size), Pollution Prevention (e.g., air, noise, vehicle maintenance), Energy Management (e.g., carbon management and offsets, business travel, client excursions), Waste Management (e.g., reduction of materials, recycling, supply chain management) Water Management (e.g., reduced consumption, waste water, non-point source pollution), and Chemical Management (e.g., cleaning supplies, paint, pesticides).”

Notably, ratings carry an expiration date, presumably requiring subsequent evaluations to maintain a good rating.

As a lover of the Guinness product, I have always been struck by the fact that it simply tastes better in Ireland.  I didn’t realize there was an actual difference in the domestic and export versions, though, until I came across an article by Nicola Twilley on the Good website.  It’s apparently a bit complicated, but stout beers such as Guinness require on-site infusion with nitrogen bubbles.  If you’ve bought cans of the brew in the US, you may have noticed the plastic widget inside.  It contains pressurized nitrogen, which is released when the can is opened (so don’t pour it too quickly or the widget won’t have time to work its magic).  Anyway, Twilley reports that researchers at the University of Limerick have figured out a way to get the same result without the plastic widget, which should reduce waste once the new method is production-ready.

So that black beer might soon get greener still.

We Americans tend to think about things Irish and green on and around Saint Patrick’s Day, of course.  Now, I know some people are intimidated by a perceived heaviness to Guinness.  For you, I recommend Smithwick’s, a yummy amber ale that has gotten a bit easier to find in the US lately.  Either way, now’s the time, and I’m stocked up.  How about you?

I’ll leave you with two videos pertinent to the story and the occasion, respectively.  First, here’s a look inside the Guinness Storehouse and their environmental practices:

And second, here are County Galway’s own Saw Doctors, Kaid’s favorite Irish roots-rock band, singing hearty and well about their home turf:

Related articles:

• A sustainable community in County Galway (March 17, 2011)
• Why we do this: a musical tribute to the Irish landscape (March 17, 2010)
• Ireland’s eco-village at Cloughjordan (March 17, 2009)

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog’s home page.

By: Rebecca Jacobson

Click on the map above for an interactive version.

Will your city or county be flooded by 2020? By 2050? Now there’s a map for that.

As many as 3.7 million U.S. residents in 2,150 coastal areas could be battered by damaging floods caused by global warming-induced storm surges, according to a new report published Wednesday in the journal Environment Research Letters. Sea levels could rise as much as 19 inches by 2050, according to what the report calls “mid-range projections.”

The team used data from the U.S. Geological Survey to map all areas along the continental U.S. coastline containing homes that lie within one to 10 feet from the water level at high tide. Previous estimates only looked at an area’s elevation above sea level, not at the area’s elevation relative to high tide, which underestimated the impact, said Benjamin Strauss, lead author and director of Climate Central’s Program on Sea Level Rise. Climate Central is the nonprofit organization behind the report.

The map shows the areas at risk of flooding with every foot of sea level rise. Move the slider bar at the left to increase the sea level rise, and the areas on the map that are subject to being flooded or entirely underwater grow. As the bar moves, you can watch the population, number of homes and acres of land in danger swell in size. The map also shows the likelihood for each decade that sea level rise plus storm surge plus tide will reach a certain threshold.

Florida, Louisiana, California, New York and New Jersey have the largest populations in the flood zone. Among those, Florida has the highest population density in harm’s way, Strauss said.

The analysis does not take into account protection measures such as sea walls and levees. Strauss also cautioned that the map is better at predicting threat to large areas than at detailing the risk to specific homes. From Climate Central’s website:

“Caution is therefore advised in drawing any conclusions about individual points or addresses on the Surging Seas map. However, errors should mostly cancel out when averaged across larger areas, so greatly more confidence can be placed in the statistics presented for cities, counties and states. This is analogous to how a baseball player’s career batting average characterizes his skill much better than his performance in just one game (which is like dataset performance at just one address).”

We’ll hear more from Strauss in an interview with Ray Suarez on tonight’s NewsHour broadcast.

So where does your city, town, or county fall on the map? Tell us what you discovered with the search tool.

A resident retrieves belongings from the debris in a subdivision hit by flash floods brought by Typhoon Washi in Iligan city, southern Philippines, on December 19, 2011. REUTERS/Erik De Castro

By Thin Lei Win

BANGKOK (AlertNet) – Disaster-prone Asia Pacific will see a surge in climate-induced migration this century and governments need to start planning to avoid humanitarian crises caused by millions of people fleeing their homes, a new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warned Tuesday.

Migration linked to climate change, a phenomenon that will “only become more pronounced in the coming years,” poses a growing humanitarian threat, said Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia Pacific.

The report, available in draft form last year, also said most migration in the region would be within national boundaries, and primarily from rural to urban areas. The movement, the bulk of which will involve poor people, is likely to be influenced by social, political and economic changes as well as climate pressures.

The report urged the region’s leaders to protect migrants, improve international cooperation on migrant issues, draw up more comprehensive systems to manage disaster risks, use migration as a tool to adapt to climate change and remove barriers to insurance schemes and remittances that help communities become more resilient.

“By taking actions today, governments can reduce the likelihood of future humanitarian crises” and maximise the possibilities that people can remain in their communities or, if they are forced to move, relocate to more secure places with livelihood options, the report noted.

“People have moved for environmental reasons since the beginning of time. What has changed lately is the policy awareness about it and also how much climate change aggravates this tendency,” said Dina Ionesco, migration policy officer for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), at the report’s launch in Bangkok.

According to IOM, currently there are around 200 million international migrants worldwide and over 700 million internal migrants, most of them economic migrants.

42 MILLION DISPLACED BY DISASTERS

Storms, floods and other extreme weather events in Asia Pacific displaced more than 42 million people in the past two years, a share of whom became migrants, either unable to return home or opting to relocate, the report said.

The figure does not include those who moved due to slow environmental changes such as desertification, rising sea levels or coastal erosions, problems nations like the the Maldives or Papua New Guinea in particular have suffered.

Numbers of migrants as a result of slow environmental changes are much harder to calculate, partly because such changes take place over a long period of time but also because they are less visible than sudden disasters which displace thousands overnight. However, experts also say these events tend to force people to move away more permanently.

Asia Pacific is already the region most prone to natural disasters, both in terms of the absolute number of disasters and the sheer number of people exposed (60 percent of the world’s population lives in the region).

Climate change is expected to worsen the natural disaster burden, bringing sea level rise, storm surges, flooding and water stress, and leaving more people displaced, at least temporarily.

The report identifies as Asian climate risk ‘hot spots’ booming megacities including Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila, the densely populated low-lying coast of China, southern Pakistan, the deltas of the Mekong, Red and Irrawaddy rivers and the Pacific island states of Kiribati and Tuvalu.

While migration remains a controversial and sensitive issue, governments are realising the importance of a comprehensive migration and resettlement policy, said Bart W. Edes, the director of ADB’s division on poverty reduction, gender and social development.

“I think we’re aided in part by the reality around what we’re seeing – disasters after disasters,” he told AlertNet.

In the Philippines, where ADB is based, a typhoon hit northern Mindanao – an area previously not affected by typhoons – in December, killing more than 1,000 people and leaving tens of thousands displaced.

REMITTANCES FOR RESILIENCE

Coming demographic changes will bring more attention to migration in general, Edes added, and some of the solutions could be applicable to climate-induced migration. He pointed to Japan, which has signed bilateral agreements with Indonesia and Philippines to bring nurses to the country to fill gaps in the labour force left by an aging population.

“This is a practical example, in Asia, of a country that is not famous for being a big land of immigration and yet they have found it their self-interest (to do this),” he said.

The report also stressed the importance of remittances in helping communities deal with climate change and urged for fees surrounding remittances to be lowered.

“Remittances play a massive role in building resilience,” Edes said. In Bangladesh, the Philippines, Tajikistan, and Cambodia, they are “improving livelihoods, diversifying income (and) helping provide a buffer against economic shocks whether environmentally-caused or not.”

And the report singled out AfatVimo, a micro-insurance scheme in India, which covers damage or loss through 19 kinds of disasters, including floods, cyclones, lightning strikes and landslides, as an example of how to build resilience against climate impacts. The annual premium is about $4.50 with a total potential benefit of $1,560.

Migration itself is a crucial means of adapting to climate change, and ultimately affected communities should be allowed to choose to migrate, said IOM’s Ionesco.

“Migration can create alternative livelihoods for people. It can really be part of the solution if it’s well managed, well-planned, well-thought-out and well-integrated in other policies, such as humanitarian, development, adaptation and climate change policies,” she said.

“The idea is to plan and forecast this migration that can be foreseen so it’s not forced, (so) it remains a choice.”

A new report from the Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute shows how the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is an economic liability with the potential to cause significant job losses from a major tar sands spill.  Because tar sands oil is more corrosive and toxic than conventional oil, it can increase the frequency of pipeline spills.  Moreover, a  tar sands spill causes far more damage than a conventional oil spill. Take, for example, the 1.2 million gallon tar sands spill on the Kalamazoo River in Marshall Michigan in 2010 where the clean up costs have been 10 times higher than a typical conventional oil spill.  While there has been a lot of attention to the possible jobs created from the Keystone XL pipeline – far less than what proponents claim – there has been very little attention to jobs that could be lost from a tar sands spill. Keystone XL is expected experience up to 91 significant spills over a 50-year period.    Which jobs are are at risk?  Hundreds of thousands of workers in the agricultural and tourism sectors contribute ten of billions of dollars to the economy in the Keystone XL pipeline states.  The Cornell report helps illustrate yet one more reason why the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline should be rejected.

Here are some of the key findings from the report:

Tar sands spills more likely

Tar sands oil is more corrosive and toxic than conventional oil and can therefore increase the frequency of pipeline spills.  According to the Cornell report, “Between 2007 and 2010, pipelines transporting tar sands oil in the northern Midwest have spilled three time more per mile than the U.S. national average for conventional crude.”

Keystone XL likely to experience significant spills

An independent analysis conducted by the University of Nebraska concluded that Keystone XL over a 50-year period is expected to experience 91 significant spills (greater than 50 barrels).  In fact, the University of Nebraska study found Keystone XL could spill as much as 6.9 million gallons of raw tar sands crude oil at the Yellowstone River crossing.  In just its first year of operation, the first Keystone pipeline operated by TransCanada has spilled 35 times in the United States and Canada in 2010.  This spill frequency is 100 times higher than forecast by TransCanada.

A spill from Keystone XL threatens jobs and the economy in pipeline states

While tar sands spills can have a tremendous impact on the environment, a tar sands spill on the Keystone XL pipeline through America’s agricultural heartland could cause significant economic damage and job losses.  The farming, ranching, and tourism sectors are major sources of employment along the pipeline’s route employing 571,000 workers with an output of $76 billion.  The pipeline will also cross over 90 miles of recreational lands in the pipeline state including state parks, national historic trails, and wildlife refuges.

[pull quote]  The Nebraska Farmers Union has said, “Despite TransCanada’s assurances, we know there will be leaks and spills…It is not a matter of it, it is a matter of when, how often, and how much leakage there will be…When a leak happens, it will be [the farmers’] drinking water, their livestock water supply, and their irrigation supply that will be contaminated.  Their economic well-being is directly impacted by spills and leaks.”

Tar sands spills more devastating than conventional oil spills

The Cornell report also looked closely at the largest tar sands spill in U.S. history on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010 where the costs have escalated to $750 million – 10 times as much per litre as conventional crude.  The clean up of the Kalamazoo river spill which has lasted almost two years has been especially difficult because conventional oil response techniques have been ineffective according to the EPA.   Today, 20 months since the tar sands spill, the entire length of the river (35+ miles) remains closed.   While conventional oil floats on the surface, tar sands is thick and heavy and sinks in water making it very difficult to clean up.

[pull quote]   “Enbridge compensated us for the initial shutdown of our business, but we are concerned about the long-term impact that the spill has had on our business…one and a half years later our business is still suffering financially… Debra Miller, Carpet Story Owner

An accurate assessment of the economic risks still needed

Ultimately, the report said that while there has been significant attention to the Keystone XL pipeline’s potential to create jobs, “scant attention has been given to how existing jobs and economic sector would be impacted from Keystone XL leaks and spills.”  The report said a more detailed risk assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline – one that considers job losses and economic harms from one or more tar sands spills – has not been completed.

Until such as assessment is completed and a full accounting of potential job losses from pipeline spills are considered, the Obama administration should not issue any approvals allowing TransCanada to move ahead with construction of the pipeline.

Image extracted from video.

The new version of the game, developed by Maxis in conjunction with the organization Games for Change, will force players to reckon with the consequences of their energy choices. If you put coal-fired power plants in your city, for example, you may see a rise in pollution and a decline in public health. You also may have negative impacts on nearby cities being run by your gaming friends. The new version is due out next year.

Concept art showing the headquarters of “Coal Enterprises,” from the upcoming version of SimCity. Credit: Maxis.

“In ‘SimCity’ resources are finite, you struggle with decisions people are struggling with today in the real world and your decisions can have a global impact,” said Maxis studio senior vice president Lucy Bradshaw at a recent conference in San Francisco.

The game, which was last updated about a decade ago, will also undergo a major facelift, including the addition of slick 3-D graphics.

The multiplayer features of the new game will enable gamers to act as local, regional and global leaders. “Want to be a bad neighbor? Produce mass pollution and watch your friends’ Sims become sick,” the SimCity official website states. The site notes that gamers can “participate in global challenges like lowering the total pollution output in the SimCity world to unlock a trophy to place in your city.”

Here’s the video trailer for the new game:

By Manipadma Jena

GANJAM, India (AlertNet) – Efforts to secure land ownership for tribal people in one of India’s poorest states are bolstering their economic security in the face of climate-induced hardships, and helping conserve farmland and forest.

In the hamlet of Kharibandh in Ganjam, a coastal district in the eastern state of Orissa (now officially called Odisha), 13 households of the Sabar tribal community each received title to 400 square metres (0.1 acres) of government land two years ago. The families had lived in Kharibandh for three generations, but had no legal right to the land.

Today, Rabibari Sabar, a 51-year-old widow, pedals vigorously on a foot pump to pipe pond water into her plot of seasonal vegetables interspersed with coconut and papaya trees. As well as feeding her family, she earned 1,500 rupees ($30) last year selling tubers and spinach from her homestead farm to neighbouring villagers.

“Simply owning legal documents to the property has brought about amazing motivation and socio-economic transformation,” says Nakula Sarbar, who works with the Rural Development Institute (RDI), a non-governmental organisation based in the state capital, Bhubaneswar. “What was grazing ground and paddy-threshing yard has now been converted into a virtual lifeline during the frequent crop failures.”

The RDI helped tribal families in Kharibandh apply for their plots under the Orissa government’s Vasundhara (“possessor of wealth”) scheme for distributing land to landless rural families. Tribal people make up about 22 percent of the state’s population, nearly three times the national average.

More than four out of five of Orissa’s inhabitants live in rural areas, with the majority earning a livelihood from small-scale agriculture.

The occurrence of droughts and floods in the state has almost doubled since 1999, and their intensity has increased – a trend experts believe is driven by climate change. Farmers who were already struggling have been hit hard by the extreme weather.

“In 2010, some paddy had been harvested and left in the field to dry while the rest was being cut, when unexpected rains in October flooded this region for eight days, and swept away the season’s entire produce,” says Binaya Kumar Das, a revenue official who settles land titles in the area.

ACCESS TO LOANS, COMPENSATION AND HOMES

Sanjoy Patnaik, RDI’s director in Orissa, underscores the economic vulnerability of farmers who do not own their land.

“(With) farmland leasing being banned under Orissa’s land laws, sharecroppers have no buffer against climate contingencies – the owner gets all the compensation,” says Patnaik.

But in cases where former sharecroppers have title to their land, “these farmers now get cash compensation of Rs 8,000 to 10,000 ($160-200) for each seasonal crop loss (and) that is happening almost every year now – a crucial benefit they could not access previously,” says Das, the revenue official who deals with land titles.

When crops fail and sharecropper farmers have little choice but to borrow cash to feed their families and restart production, interest rates on loans, even from relatives, can be as high as 36 percent annually, while money lenders charge even more.

Land titles, however, enable farmers to take out loans from state-run banks with much lower interest rates, Das said.

In Chilipoi village, 20 km from Kharibandh, 39 households of the Sauntia tribal community displaced by a dam project 38 years ago had their applications for homestead land approved in 2010. Their one-hectare farmland titles are in the final stages of being processed.

Chilipoi suffers from chronic water shortages because of its position on slightly raised ground. “It’s tough to pull up water (from) 20 feet below and carry buckets from the two wells to vegetable gardens and paddy farms farther away,” complains 65-year-old Arakhita Pradhan.

But the farmers’ land ownership papers will make them eligible for a 50 percent government subsidy on a bore well, Das said. And a third of Chilipoi’s households have already moved from mud huts into safer concrete homes, which they are entitled to as landowners under a federal housing scheme for the rural poor.

LESS MIGRATION

While Orissa’s economy has grown nearly 10 percent annually over the past five years, the benefits have not reached everyone. Monthly per capita expenditure, an important indicator of poverty, is Rs 551 ($11), among the lowest in the country, according to government statistics.

But land ownership could help change that. In the past, most men in Kharibandh migrated to Mumbai for six months of the year to find construction work. Today, just two villagers are working in the city temporarily. And as families stay together, their children’s school attendance is increasing too.

“The rural poor have more at stake in their farmland when they own it – an emotional attachment that holds them back from migrating,” says Kailash Chandra Dash, executive director of the Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC), an NGO that works on climate change and land rights.

Rabibari Sabar’s son, for example, now earns Rs 3,000 ($60) per month as a school teacher in a nearby village, thanks to the land title that acknowledges his tribal status and gave him access to jobs reserved for tribal community members.

His mother, meanwhile, has invested in her garden. Apart from spending two hours a day tending crops, the village women have formed self-help collectives to produce organic fertiliser by putting vegetable peelings into pots containing earthworms.

“Where farmers do contract farming, loading the soil with chemical fertilisers to maximise output is common. But when they own the land, practices are much more sustainable,” says RCDC’s Dash.

PROTECTING FOREST LAND

There are also hopes that obtaining land titles for communities living on forest land could improve their lives and management of that resource as well.

In western Orissa’s Bolangir district, collectives of indigenous peoples are developing a forest conservation project they hope will ultimately generate income under the U.N. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) scheme, which aims to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests.

The Orissa pilot programme covers 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of forest, including 33 villages and 15,000 tribal people.

According to Ghasiram Panda, who is overseeing the project for RCDC, 31 of the 33 villages have been working with government agencies for more than 10 years to preserve their forests. They are now seeking legal ownership of the land under a 2006 law relating to the land rights of forest-dwelling communities.

Panda is cautiously optimistic about the project’s prospects of generating revenue from the sale of carbon credits.

“Our programme is community-centric, to help forest communities to manage forests sustainably, grow biomass and preserve biodiversity (such as) endemic, rare species and thereby derive more non-timber forest products,” says Panda.

“These activities will automatically develop a more substantial carbon sink; income from sequestering carbon would be a co-benefit,” he adds.

India’s REDD+ framework is still evolving, and RCDC is working with Plan Vivo, a UK-based non-profit organisation that will assess the project and may award credits according to the amount of carbon emissions it reduces.

“If villagers can claim ownership, collectively and individually, over surrounding forest resources, they will have a greater incentive to protect, preserve and use the resources in the most optimum manner. We will see reforestation, not deforestation,” says Barun Mitra, director of Liberty Institute, a property rights think tank in New Delhi.

“After all, people (will) not kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” Mitra said.

Manipadma Jena is an environmental journalist based in India. She can be reached at: manipadma.jena@gmail.com. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

Airbus spokesman Schaffrath told the Associated Press that the Chinese government is refusing to approve orders for 35 Airbus A330 airplanes, and 10 A380 superjumbo jetliners, with a combined list price of about $12 billion. “The economic impact is real,” Schaffrath said.

An Airbus A380 flown by China Southern Airlines. Credit: flickr/Kentaro lemoto.

Airbus, which is the leading European aircraft manufacturer and the chief rival of U.S.-based Boeing, has forecasted that, during the next few decades, China will become the second-largest aviation market in the world. The CEO of Airbus’ parent company, EADS NV, has warned that the emissions scheme would cause European companies to lose business.

The EU’s program, which began on Jan. 1,  is meant to reduce the global warming emissions that come from the aviation sector, which is a rapidly growing source of emissions. The U.S., China, India, and other countries are opposed to having their airlines subjected to Europe’s Emissions Trading System, which allows companies that emit carbon dioxide, a gas that contributes to global warming, to buy and sell a limited amount of emissions permits.

Airlines fear the fees will cause them to lose profits and significantly raise ticket prices. Delta Airlines, the second-largest air carrier in the U.S., has already begun charging small fees to tickets purchased for flights to or from Europe.

The House recently passed a bill that would exempt U.S. airlines from the program, but that has not been signed into law.

State officials have determined that at least 12 earthquakes that occurred in Ohio last December were caused by the injection of brine into hydraulic fracturing disposal wells.  As a result of its findings [pdf], the state has established the nation’s “toughest regulations” for the fracking disposal wells.

Brine is a toxic by-product of the fracking process.  According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the safest way to dispose of it is to store it in underground wells.  However, as residents of Youngstown, Ohio discovered, this technique can cause seismic shifts — the largest of the 12 earthquakes registered 4.0 on the Richter scale.

Geologists were skeptical the earthquakes were caused by the drilling of disposal wells and the subsequent injection of brine; but after in-depth research concluded this process did indeed facilitate the quakes:

“After investigating all available geological formation and well activity data, ODNR [Ohio Department of Natural Resources] regulators and geologists found a number of co-occurring circumstances strongly indicating the Youngstown area earthquakes were induced. Specifically, evidence gathered by state officials suggests fluid from the Northstar 1 disposal well intersected an unmapped fault in a near-failure state of stress causing movement along that fault.”

So, the state has decided to adopt strict regulations in regards to brine disposal wells. Today, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources announced a set of regulations which it believes will eliminate any future occurrence of fracking induced earthquakes.

The most notable of these are: the requirement of gas companies to submit extensive geological data to the ODNR before drilling; mandated implementation of state-of-the-art pressure monitoring systems at well sites; and prohibition any new wells from being drilled in the Precambrian basement rock formation.

The new regulations are particularly important for Ohioians, as the state sits on a sizable chunk of the Marcellus Shale — the world’s largest known deposit of shale gas.

As ODNR Director James Zehringer said in a statement, “Ohioans demand smart environmental safeguards that protect our environment and promote public health. These new standards accomplish this goal.”

The EPA states there are 144,000 Class II disposal wells across the country; gas companies are injecting 2 billion gallons of brine into these wells daily.  To date, six of these wells have been linked to earthquakes.

Image credit: Caitlin Childs via Creative Commons

The average temperature for the Lower 48 states during the December through February period, the time span defined as meteorological winter, was 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1901-2000 long-term average, making it the warmest winter since 2000. The other winters that were warmer than this one occurred in 1992 and 1999.

State by state temperature rankings for December through February 2011-12. Credit: NOAA/NCDC.

Winter was dominated by a northern storm track, which allowed mild air to repeatedly work its way northward, giving 27 states one of their top 10 warmest winters on record. Only one state — New Mexico — had winter temperatures below its 20th Century average, NOAA reported. In Massachusetts, February 2012 tied with February 1998 as the warmest such month on record, with average temperatures nearly 8 degrees F above average.

Interestingly, Alaska wound up having a near average seasonal temperature, despite the extreme cold that gripped the state during January.

According to the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab, wintertime snow cover extent in the Lower 48 states was the third smallest in the 46-year satellite record. The only winter seasons that had smaller snow cover extents were the winters of 1991-92 and 1980-81, NOAA reported.

Syracuse, N.Y., finished the winter season with just 42.7 inches of snowfall, which was nearly 50 inches below average. Buffalo, N.Y., was about 36 inches below average, and a similar snow drought affected much of the Northeast and other parts of the country.

It wasn’t just snow that failed to materialize. Rainfall was below average as well, particularly in the West, where California had its second-driest winter on record.

The warm weather led to a skewed relationship between warm temperature records and cold temperature records across the country. NOAA reported that there were more than 800 daily high temperature records and more than 1,200 record warm daily low temperature records set during February 2012. This compares to just 200 or so daily record cold temperatures, and about the same number of record cold daily high temperatures.

U.S. temperature trends for the months of December through February during the period 1896 through 2012, showing an overall warming trend. Click on the image for a larger version. Credit: NOAA/NCDC.

The U.S. Climate Extremes Index, which measures the highest 10 percent and lowest 10 percent in terms of precipitation, temperature, drought and tropical cyclones, finished the season at its ninth-highest value. This means that much of the country — about one-third, to be exact — experienced climate extremes defined by the index, with much of it driven by record warm temperatures.

The warmer than average temperatures were related to a pattern of weather variability known as the Arctic Oscillation. When the Arctic Oscillation is in a “positive phase,” as it was throughout most of the winter, warmer weather is favored across much of the eastern U.S.

This does not tell the entire story, however, since long-term wintertime warming trends are taking place in part due to increasing amounts of manmade greenhouse gases in the air.

Sebastian Copeland and Eric McNair-Landry at the South Pole. Credit: Sebastian Copeland. 

On Nov. 5, 2011, a photographer, environmentalist and adventurer named Sebastian Copeland set off from the east coast of Antarctica with his traveling partner, Eric McNair-Landry, on an almost absurdly daring and arduous journey: a two-man crossing of the entire frozen continent, on skis — towing all of their supplies behind them on sleds, at 400 lb. per man when they started. They weren’t entirely self-powered: the pair used kites to pull them along when the winds were favorable. But that hardly made the voyage easy.

It wasn’t just a stunt. The trip was, first of all, a commemoration of the first expeditions to reach the South Pole a century ago (this December and January), when Roald Amundsen, then Robert Falcon Scott, clawed their way to the southernmost point on Earth. Amundsen got back safely, but Scott and his party died on the return trek.

It was also an effort to dramatize the dangers of climate change. “. . . the poles are like great receptacles of what happens remotely,” writes Copeland on his website, “and warming activities conducted thousands of miles away are impacting these fragile systems. Small fluctuations in temperatures are generally visible fastest in colder climates, where ice or snow is susceptible to melt.” It’s happening faster in the Arctic, which Copeland skied on a trek to the North Pole in 2009 — but Antarctica is starting to feel it as well, and Copeland and McNair-Landry photographed ice conditions on behalf of the National Snow and Ice Data Center along the way. Thanks to a satellite uplink, Copeland managed to blog just about every day, no matter where they were.

And they made it. On Jan. 23, 2012, 85 days after setting out, Copeland and McNair-Landry reached the continent’s east coast, having traveled some 2,600 miles, visiting both the South Pole and the Pole of Inaccessibility (the point furthest from the continent’s edge), and climbing, then descending, more than 9,000 ft.

According to the NOAA Storm Prediction Center, there is a high probability of thunderstorm activity predicted for late in the day Friday for much of the eastern U.S., though chances for severe weather are highest in the Mississippi, Tennesse and Ohio Valleys. Pictured here is the North American Model output for 7 p.m. EST on Friday. 

Credit: NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Laboratory 

Tropical storm Irina is forecast to strike Mozambique as a tropical cyclone at about 12:00 GMT on 3 March.Data supplied by theUS Navy and Air Force Joint Typhoon Warning Centersuggest that the point of landfallwill benear23.3 S,36.0 E.Irina is expected to bring 1-minute maximum sustained winds to the region of around138 km/h (86 mph).Wind gusts in the area maybeconsiderably higher.

According to the Saffir-Simpson damage scale the potential property damage and flooding from a storm ofIrina’sstrength (category 1)at landfall includes:

• Storm surge generally 1.2-1.5 metres (4-5 feet) above normal.
• No real damage to building structures.
• Damage primarily to unanchored mobile homes, shrubbery, and trees.
• Some damage to poorly constructed signs.
• Some coastal road flooding and minor pier damage.

There is also the potential for flooding further inland due to heavy rain.
The information above is provided for guidance only and should not be used to make life or death decisions or decisions relating to property. Anyone in the region who is concerned for their personal safety or property should contact their official national weather agency or warning centre for advice.

This alert is provided by TropicalStorm Risk (TSR) which is sponsored by Benfield, Royal & SunAlliance,Crawford & Company and University College London (UCL). TSR acknowledges thesupport of the UK Met Office.

The astronomer Carl Sagan famously called Earth a “pale blue dot,” but it originally came from a bright blue cloud. This glowing blob of light is what astronomers call a “reflection nebula.” It’s a giant cloud of interstellar dust, lit up by the glow of a nearby star — here, it’s Merope, one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades constellation, also known as the Seven Sisters. The dust grains in question are mostly carbon, the same substance that, in the form of carbon dioxide, is trapping increasing amounts of the Sun’s heat as humans burn more and more fossil fuels.

The fact that carbon exists both on Earth and in interstellar space is no coincidence. Like most of the other elements our planet is made of, including iron, silicon, nitrogen and oxygen, carbon is forged in the thermonuclear fires inside stars. Most of the substance of our bodies, our houses, our technology — and of the fossil fuels we’re now burning at an unsustainable rate — were once literally in center of a long-dead star. When the stars finally die, these elements are blown out into space where they form into huge clouds, trillions of miles across. Eventually, the clouds collapse to form new stars, and with them, planets and people.

Credit: Leonardo Orazi

What is clean technology? This is a broad term that encompasses any technology that has the potential to improve the environment – clean, in the greenest sense of the word. This includes renewable energy, such as wind, solar, or biofuels – and also extends to technologies that support renewable energy, like smart grids (improving how we build our electrical grid) and energy storage (large batteries). It also includes recycling energy, materials and waste, as well as ways to green transportation and agriculture.

We partnered with Cleantech Group to produce a report that looks at cleantech start-up companies who are creating new, sustainable technologies. We looked at how they started, and – most importantly – how they are growing,

Most of the news that we hear around the environment and climate change is largely focused on policy or on various public attitudes towards climate change or energy. Too rarely do we hear about the innovative and entrepreneurial companies that are making tangible and effective change in this very moment. For this reason, it may come as a surprise that Canada is ranked so highly – 7th of 38 countries. It shows that Canadian entrepreneurs are already on a very positive path to success, regardless of the path taken in Canadian politics.

But that doesn’t mean that government policy isn’t key to enabling success on clean technologies. Policies like feed-in tariffs for renewable energy are key to providing these technologies with momentum, and to allow the technologies to be used at scale. For example, the feed-in tariff policy in Ontario has created huge opportunities for renewable energy technologies in the province. Building codes and efficiency standards are other regulatory pieces that are key enablers for clean technology.

Canada’s potential as a clean technology innovator, coupled with our abundance of natural resources of renewable energy,  is a powerful combination in the future world of energy. It is encouraging to see that our entrepreneurs are grabbing that opportunity and taking the lead. May we all follow suit.

Read the Globe and Mail article, Canada places 7th in creating green-tech firms, February 27, 2012

James Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has a new book out. It is entitled The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

I have not read it yet. So I cannot say much about its contents, but I can say this: The title suggests that Inhofe, like Rick Santorum, is endorsing the global warming conspiracy theory. Indeed, where Santorum only muttered the word “hoax” without a great deal of elaboration, it looks like Inhofe is going to put some real meat onto those paranoid bones.

Let me once again reiterate why the global warming conspiracy theory is, well, just plain ridiculous.

To believe that global warming is a “hoax,” or that there is a “conspiracy,” you must believe in coordinated action on the part of scientists, environmental ministers, politicians, and NGOs around the world. It won’t do just to situate the hoax in the United States and its own scientific and NGO community, because the idea of human-caused global warming is endorsed by scientists, and scientific academies, around the globe.

Any one of these could blow the whistle on the so-called “hoax.” That this has not happened either means there is no hoax, or that the degree of conspiracy and collusion—among people who are notoriously individualistic and non-conformist, by the way—is mindboggling. We’re talking about some serious cat-herding going on.

Oh, and by the way: You also have to believe that the colluding hoaxers have nefarious objectives—basically, they want to kill capitalism and strangle economies. This is even less plausible.

In other words, there is no hoax, and to believe in one is to be a conspiracy theorist. Inhofe himself uses the word “conspiracy” in his subtitle, so I do not think it at all unfair to describe him in this way. Either he is actually right in  his claims—not likely—or else he’s conjuring a conspiracy where none exists. It’s that simple.

I point this out, incidentally, because I am continually amazed that our national discourse basically shrugs at conspiracy theories. That’s saddening evidence that we live in an “anything goes” political culture that has become unmoored from reality.

And how did this happen? Here’s a hint: Inhofe will debut his book on Fox’s Sean Hannity program tonight.

Let me end this post with a dose of reality. Inhofe, the climate conspiracy theorist, not only hails from but represents the state of Oklahoma. Here is what has been happening, climatologically, to Oklahoma lately, according to NOAA and other sources:

* The summer of 2011 was the hottest summer on record for the state. According to the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, “Oklahoma experienced the hottest summer of any state since records began in 1895 with a statewide average of 86.9 degrees.”

* July 2011 was the worst. Says the Oklahoma Climatological Survey: “July’s average temperature was 89.3 degrees, becoming the hottest month for any state on record, besting over 67,000 other months.”

* August also fried Oklahoma, and was the hottest August on record.

* This, of course, caused serious damage and monetary losses: “Agricultural damage alone from the drought and related heat has been estimated as high as $2 billion.”

From the perspective of Inhofe’s constituents—say, an Oklahoma farmer—the global warming conspiracy sounds like an intellectual dalliance that the state simply cannot afford.

[By the way, here’s a great graphic from Grist showing eloquently why the global warming conspiracy theory makes no sense. I don't think the fossil fuel conspiracy theory makes sense either, by the way, but that's a tale for another time.]

Dalmatian pelicans gather in the water area of the Caspian Sea port in Makhachkala in Russia’s Dagestan province. Hundreds of these pelicans have migrated to Makhachkala this winter, which may be due to abnormal frosts and frozen water at their normal habitat.

Credit: Sergei Rasulov/NewsTeam/Handout/Reuters

Source: alertnet // Nelson Rentería

Rescue workers evacuate residents from the Bajo Lempa area in Usulutan, southeast of the El Salvador capital of San Salvador, on October 17, 2011. REUTERS/Roberto Marquez

By Nelson Rentería

SAN SALVADOR (AlertNet) – In an effort to make communities more resilient to disasters, El Salvador’s schools and universities have begun teaching students how to deal with the risks of extreme weather and climate change.

The small Central American country has been hit by three heavy rainy seasons in three years, with storms and flooding causing as many as 200 deaths and serious damage to crops and infrastructure.

From January, the government has now made it mandatory for all public and private educational institutions to incorporate environmental safety considerations into their teaching materials.

In maths, biology and physics, for example, students will undertake exercises that estimate potential damage from climate-linked extreme weather, and explore how to counteract and reduce its effects.

Ignacio Rosa, one 12-year-old pupil in San Salvador, says he believes the new teaching approach will be well received in the classroom, particularly as so many families in El Salvador have had first-hand struggles with the country’s recent extreme weather.

“It seems very good to me, because we will learn something new. Not only will we be taught that two plus two is four, but we will be shown the impacts of rain on our lives,” he said.

Erlinda Handal, the country’s vice education minister, said the awareness-raising initiative is needed to protect both human life and ecosystems in El Salvador.

“Implementing this system is a necessity because of the vulnerability of our territory (to climate impacts),” she said.

The school year also will be modified to enable students to stay at home during the rainy season, in order to prevent disruption of classes by flooding and landslides.

In addition, the government plans to use a range of public awareness efforts, including advertising campaigns, to boost understanding of climate risks among the general public, Handal said.

OCTOBER RAINS CRISIS

Maria Santos Garcia, who lives with her 10 children in the modest Salvadoran beach resort of Jucuarán, is one of those who had her life turned upside down by last October’s torrential rains.

“I lost my house because it was constructed of zinc sheet and palm. Not only that, we also lost our maize field,” said the 44-year-old widow. “I feel very sorry.”

The 15,000 residents of Jucuarán, a town located 130 km southeast of the capital San Salvador, increasingly suffer damage to their homes and crops on an almost annual basis.

A 2010 report from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) warns that 90 percent of El Salvador’s territory is at risk from natural hazards.

Many of the country’s villages are located at the feet of hills and mountains, making them vulnerable to landslides, while others are close to river banks prone to flooding.

Experts predict that climate impacts will continue to have a negative impact on the country’s agriculture, water resources and biodiversity.

Jaime Acosta, a climate change analyst with the non-governmental Centre for Appropriate Technology (CESTA), told AlertNet that El Salvador is likely to experience more heavy rains during the growing season and warmer summer temperatures.

But a recent report on managing the risks of extreme weather from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also said there is a 50 percent chance that droughts in Central America will intensify this century.

The report warns it is likely – a two-thirds chance or more – that climate change will produce tropical cyclones that bring heavier rains and higher wind speeds. The frequency of storms, however, may stay unchanged or decrease, the report predicts.

MOVING PEOPLE OUT OF HARM’S WAY

To deal with increasing severe weather, the government is strengthening weather and climate monitoring systems, including installing radar stations, improving measuring of water levels and constructing river embankments.

It also hopes that teaching students about climate-related disaster risks and launching wider information campaigns will change behaviour among the public, and help people take action to avoid or reduce damage from floods and other hazards.

Since January 2010, the national Civil Protection System has led disaster awareness and prevention efforts in the country’s most vulnerable communities, located on river banks and hillsides, to stop more deaths in the rainy season.

Residents are organised to evacuate in emergency scenarios, and then transported to shelters where they receive assistance from authorities. During last October’s severe rains, nearly 60,000 people from 160 communities were moved temporarily.

“We have greatly improved the ability to reduce loss of life (from disasters) but now the challenge we have is to reduce economic losses,” said Herman Rosa Chávez, El Salvador’s minister of environment and natural resources. “The country cannot afford to lose hundreds of millions (of dollars) every year.”

Preliminary assessments indicate that damage from torrential rainfall and accompanying floods in the last two years amounted to $1.3 billion dollars – equivalent to 6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

HELPING FARMERS

When it comes to agriculture, the government is working to help producers cultivate their fields in the dry season using irrigation.

And in the rainy season, which runs from May to October, they are being encouraged to grow crops that will not be spoiled by heavy precipitation.

Already El Salvador imports 70 percent of its rice, 35 percent of its beans and almost all the fruit and vegetables consumed in the country.

The agriculture ministry plans to expand its Family Agriculture Plan (FAP) – a programme launched in February 2011 to increase yields and diversify crops – so that it includes assistance on managing climate-related risks.

As well as seeds, fertiliser and financing, farmers will receive training and technical assistance on how to adapt to climate change and conserve biodiversity.

Most of the education and agricultural initiatives planned for 2012 are included in the $4.2 billion national budget for this fiscal year, with $79 million designated for the educational programme and $64 million for agriculture. But Rosa Chávez said protecting El Salvador from climate change requires annual spending of around $1.5 billion.

In December, Central American governments appealed to rich nations for $440 million in support to finance reconstruction after the damage wrought by last October’s storms. They also asked for financial, technical and scientific assistance to boost wider efforts to tackle climate change.

Nelson Renteria is a journalist based in San Salvador.

Simulations by researchers from Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed that projected increases in sea level and storm intensity brought on by climate change could make devastating storm surges more frequent. Using the New York City area as a model, the researchers found that floods experienced every century could instead occur every one or two decades. The worst simulated flood (left) was a 15.5-foot storm surge at Manhattan’s Battery (black star) that stemmed from a high-intensity storm (black line) moving northeast and very close to the city. A weaker but larger northwest-bound storm (right) that was further from the city would result in floodwater nearly 15 feet deep as its strongest winds pushed water toward the Battery. The colored contours represent the maximum surge height, from 0 (blue) to 5 (violet) meters.

As the Earth’s climate changes, the worst inundations from hurricanes and tropical storms could become far more common in low-lying coastal areas, a new study suggests. Researchers from Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that regions such as the New York City metropolitan area that currently experience a disastrous flood every century could instead become submerged every one or two decades. The researchers report in the journal Nature Climate Change that projected increases in sea level and storm intensity brought on by climate change would make devastating storm surges — the deadly and destructive mass of water pushed inland by large storms — more frequent. Using various global climate models, the team developed a simulation tool that can predict the severity of future flooding an area can expect.

The researchers used New York City as a test case and found that with fiercer storms and a 3-foot rise in sea level due to climate change, “100-year floods” — a depth of roughly 5.7 feet above tide level that occurs roughly once a century — could more likely occur every three to 20 years. What today are New York City’s “500-year floods” — or waters that reach more than 9 feet deep — could, with climate change, occur every 25 to 240 years, the researchers wrote.

The research is not only the first to examine the future intensity of storm surges, but also to offer a tool for estimating an area’s vulnerability, said co-author Michael Oppenheimer, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton.

“Coastal managers in cities like New York make daily decisions about costly infrastructure that would be affected by such storms. They need a reliable indicator of the risk,” he said.

“Our modeling approach is designed as a key step in this direction,” Oppenheimer said. “As the world warms, risks will increase across a variety of fronts, and the threat to coastal infrastructure in the face of an already-rising sea level and potentially stronger hurricanes could be one of the most costly unless we are able to anticipate and reduce vulnerability.”

Lead author Ning Lin, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, said that knowing the frequency of storm surges may help urban and coastal planners design seawalls and other protective structures. Lin, who received her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2010, began the project at Princeton then continued it at MIT; the current report is based on her work at MIT.

“When you design your buildings or dams or structures on the coast, you have to know how high your seawall has to be,” said Lin, noting that Manhattan’s seawalls now stand a mere 5 feet high. “You have to decide whether to build a seawall to prevent being flooded every 20 years.”

Lin and Oppenheimer worked with study co-authors Kerry Emanuel, an MIT atmospheric science professor, and Erik Vanmarcke, a Princeton professor of civil and environmental engineering. Lin, Vanmarcke and Emanuel also co-wrote a 2010 report on the project published in the Journal of Geophysical Research that was based on Lin’s work at Princeton.

Carol Friedland, an assistant professor of construction management and industrial engineering at Louisiana State University, sees the latest results as a useful tool to inform coastal design — particularly, she notes, as most buildings are designed with a 60- to 120-year “usable lifespan.”

“The physical damage and economic loss that result from storm surge can be devastating to individuals, businesses, infrastructure and communities,” Friedland said. “For current coastal community planning and design projects, it is essential that the effects of climate change be included in storm-surge predictions.”

The researchers ran a total of 45,000 storm simulations for the New York City region under two scenarios: current climate conditions from 1981 to 2000 based on observed data and four global climate models; and projected climate conditions for the years 2081 to 2100 based on the four climate models, as well as future carbon dioxide output as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Oppenheimer is a longtime participant in the IPCC.

Storms in the simulations occurred within a 125-mile (200-kilometer) radius of the Battery, at the southern tip of Manhattan, and generated a maximum wind speed of at least 50 miles per hour. Hurricanes are classified as having a maximum wind speed of at least 74 miles per hour.

Once the researchers simulated storms in the region, they then simulated the resulting storm surges using three different methods, including one used by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). In the days or hours before a hurricane hits land, the NHC uses a storm-surge model to predict the risk and extent of flooding from the impending storm. Such models, however, have not been used to evaluate multiple simulated storms under a scenario of climate change.

Again, the group compared results from multiple methods: one from the NHC that simulates storm surges quickly, though coarsely; another method that generates more accurate storm surges, though more slowly; and a method in between, developed by Lin and her colleagues, that estimates relatively accurate surge floods, relatively quickly.

The researchers found that the frequency of massive storm surges would go up in proportion to an increase in more violent storms and a rise in sea level, the researchers reported. They noted that climate models predict that the sea level around New York City could rise by 1.5 to nearly 5 feet by the end of the 21st century.

Flooding was amplified by the storm’s wind direction and proximity to the city. The worst simulated flood, a 15.5-foot storm surge at Manhattan’s Battery, stemmed from a high-intensity storm moving northeast and very close to the city. On the other hand, a weaker but larger northwest-bound storm that was further from the city resulted in floodwater nearly 15 feet deep as its strongest winds pushed water toward the Battery.

Floods of this magnitude outstrip the most devastating storm surges in the city’s recorded history, Lin said. The worst accompanied the 1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane, which packed winds of 135 miles per hour and is one of only four hurricanes known to have made landfall in New York City since pre-Columbian times.

“The highest [surge flood] was 3.2 meters [10.4 feet], and this happened in 1821,” Lin said. “That’s the highest water level observed in New York City’s history, which is like a present 500-year event.”

The study was published online Feb. 14 by the journal Nature Climate Change, and was supported by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Princeton Environmental Institute through a fellowship from the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy based in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

When Sifrhippus, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale. It weighed in at around 12 pounds — and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia. Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, caused by the release of vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans.

About a third of mammal species responded with significant reduction in size during the PETM, some by as much as one-half. Sifrhippus shrank by about 30 percent to the size of a smallhouse cat (about 8.5 pounds) in the PETM’s first 130,000 years and then rebounded to about 15 pounds in the final 45,000 years of the PETM.

Scientists have assumed that rising temperatures or high concentrations of carbon dioxide primarily caused the phenomenon in mammals during this period, and new research led by Ross Secord of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Jonathan Bloch of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida in Gainesville offers new evidence of the cause-and-effect relationship between temperature and body size. Their findings also offer clues to what might happen to animals in the near future from global warming.

In a paper to be published in the Feb. 24 issue of the international journal Science, Secord, Bloch and colleagues used measurementsand geochemical composition of fossil mammal teeth to document a progressive decrease in Sifrhippus’ body size that correlates very closely to temperature change over a 130,000-year span.

Bloch, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, said multiple trails led to the discovery.

One was the fossils themselves, recovered from the Cabin Fork area of the southern Bighorn Basin near Worland, Wyo. Stephen Chester, then an undergraduate student at Florida, now an anthropology Ph.D. candidate at Yale and a co-author on the paper, had the task of measuring the horses’ teeth. What he found when he plotted them through time caught Bloch and Secord by surprise.

“He pointed out that the first horses in the section were much larger than those later on,” Bloch recalled. “I thought something had to be wrong, but he was right — and the pattern became more robust as we collected more fossils.”

A postdoctoral researcher in Bloch’s lab for the first year of the project, Secord performed the geochemical analysis of the oxygen isotopes in the teeth. What he found provided an even bigger surprise.

“It was absolutely startling when Ross pulled up the first oxygen isotope data,” Bloch said. “We looked at the curve and we realized that it was exactly the same pattern that we were seeing with the horse body size.

“For the first time, going back into deep time — going back 10s of millions of years — we were able to show that indeed temperature was causing essentially a one-to-one shift in body size within this lineage of horse. Because it’s over a long enough time, you can argue very strongly that what you’re looking at is natural selection and evolution — that it’s actually corresponding to the shift in temperature and driving the evolution of these horses.”

Secord, who came to UNL in 2008 as an assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Nebraska State Museum, said the finding raises important questions about how plants and animals will respond to rapid change in the not-too-distant future.

“This has implications, potentially, for what we might expect to see over the next century or two, at least with some of the climate models that are predicting that we will see warming of as much as 4 degrees Centigrade (7 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next 100 years,” he said.

Those predictions are based largely on the 40 percent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (from 280 to 392 parts per million) since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century.

Ornithologists, Secord said, have already started to notice that there may be a decrease in body size among birds.

“One of the issues here is that warming (during the PETM) happened much slower, over 10,000 to 20,000 years to get 10 degrees hotter, whereas now we’re expecting it to happen over a century or two,” Secord said. “So there’s a big difference in scale and one of the questions is, ‘Are we going to see the same kind of response?’ Are animals going to be able to keep up and readjust their body sizes over the next couple of centuries?”

Increased temperatures are not the only change animals will have to adapt to, Secord said. Greenhouse experiments show that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide lowers the nutritional content of plants, which he said could have been a secondary driver of dwarfism during the PETM.

Other co-authors on thepaper are Doug M. Boyer of Brooklyn College, Aaron R. Wood of the Florida Museum of Natural History, Scott L. Wing of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Mary J. Kraus of the University of Colorado-Boulder, Francesca A. McInerny of Northwestern University, and John Krigbaum of the University of Florida.

The research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, with additional support from UNL.

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In this 2008 file photo, an elderly Tibetan woman walks towards the 1000-year-old Tsam Monastery near the Tibetan city of Shigatse. REUTERS/David Gray

By Teresa Rehman

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AlertNet) – Rising temperatures, reduced rainfall and excessive numbers of grazing animals are worsening desertification and drying up grasslands in western Tibet, says a Chinese geologist who has explored one of the region’s uncharted rivers.

Yang Yong said he had observed desertification in parts of the upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, and believes this could be caused by climate change as well as human activity.

The Yarlung Zangbo (also called the Yarlung Tsangpo) is Tibet’s largest river, originating in the west of the region. Along its 2,057 km (1,286 mile) length, it passes through India, where it is known as the Dihang and the Brahmaputra, and Bangladesh, where it is called the Jamuna.

The United Nations Environment Programme says that desertification – land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas, caused by climatic variations and human activities – affects a quarter of the world’s total land area and one-sixth of its population, and is a major factor in widespread poverty.

Yang, who has explored western Tibet three times since his first visit in 1998, has seen that firsthand in the upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo.

“People move due to desertification and their traditional occupation of herding hasn’t changed,” said Yang at a workshop in Kathmandu on climate change effects in the Yarlung Zangbo/Brahmaputra Basin.

The herders that Yang spoke to linked the encroaching deserts to drought brought on by increasing temperatures and reduced precipitation.

“This has deteriorated the quality of the grassland that they used to herd on and increased the possibility of strong winds that turn to sandstorms,” he said.

EXPANDING DUNES

Herders who previously lived by the river have been forced by to move several kilometres away by the growth of sand dunes. They must now graze their herds at altitudes as high as 5,500 metres (18,000 feet), close to the snow line.

Yang said that several villages are now surrounded by dunes up to 40 metres (130 feet) in height and 100 metres (325 feet) wide, although Yang said he had seen some dunes twice this height and width.

Wetlands between the dunes are deteriorating rapidly, and residents are considering relocating farther away from the river. Yang believes the dunes will eventually become connected, causing the wetlands to disappear.

Along the upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo, where the river is known as the Maquan, the connected dunes already extend for 100 km (63 miles) and are 10 km (6 miles) at their widest.

Yang noted that evaporation is intensifying due to global warming and that rainfall has become less predictable. He said that the region he visited now experiences extreme rainfall in summer, contributing a significant portion of the annual total, and that there is now rain in some areas that used not to receive it.

Glacial melting is also making the traditional hydro-geological pattern fragile and less predictable, he said.

Yang pointed out that the river is an important water source for all three countries through which it flows, but especially for Bangladesh, where it passes through heavily populated areas. In India, the Brahmaputra does not flow through many cities, and Yang said it was important to maintain its relatively pristine condition there.

The science of desertification along the Yarlung Zangbo needs to be better understood before steps can be taken to combat the process, he said, emphasizing the importance of reducing human impacts in the region.

“Over-herding is significant and needs to draw more attention,” he said, and both commercial logging and harvesting of vegetation in the middle and lower reaches of the river in Tibet have contributed to the deterioration of land, Yang said.

He also recommended restrictions on industrial development and mining in the region, and said that any hydropower development should include detailed evaluations of environmental impacts, especially in terms of geology and biodiversity.

What the region needs, Yang said, is an integrated river basin plan agreed on by all countries affected by the river system – China, India and Bangladesh. Such a plan, among other things, would need to look at how to control hazards associated with the river, at hydropower plans, at water flow and at demand for water in each country.

Teresa Rehman is a journalist based in Northeast India. She can be reached at www.teresarehman.net.

Soon after my return from Chile, I came across an article in the American Alpine Journal, where climbers report new routes up the mountains of the world. I was struck by a report from Sophie Denis, who recorded her group’s ascent of Huantsan, a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. Her photo of the west face of the mountain shows a sheer, steep face of bare brown rock, with a small cap of frosty glacier at the top.

I know this mountain. But the picture didn’t look like the Huantsan I remember. Back in the summer of 1979, I led a group that made a first ascent of the west face of Huantsan. We were experienced New England climbers, but had little experience with the high altitudes of the Andes. It was a tough, 35-day effort, icy and precarious. Two members of our group spent three nights on an ice ledge just 20 inches wide.

“The mountain…rose out of the green Rajuqolta Valley like a white fountain,” we wrote in our submission to the American Alpine Journal.

Huantsan, at left, in 2010 (credit: Sophie Denis) and in 1979, at right

 As you can see in these photos, both taken at the same time of year–2010 on the left, my group in 1979 on the right–Huantsan can no longer be described that way. The change in snow cover is astounding, and sobering.

Throughout the Andes, glaciers are in retreat, a phenomenon that has become more pronounced and rapid in recent decades. Scientists suggest that global warming is primarily responsible. Peruvian glaciers have lost more than 20 percent of their mass since we made our climb of Huantsan. Bolivia’s 18,000-year-old Chacaltaya Glacier disappeared completely in 2009–scientists monitoring the ice mass thought it would hold out until 2015.

Vanishing glaciers are not merely a cosmetic issue. Glacial melt water provides an important source of drinking water as well as hydroelectric power for Latin American cities. As the glaciers continue to shrink, residents could face water and power shortages, and cities would need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new water and energy supplies. The changing hydrology could also have a profound effect on agriculture as well as mountain wildlife.

In Peru, people say that they will need to change the name of this mountain range, now the Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains). Scientists predict that many low-altitude glaciers in this range could vanish completely in the next 10 to 20 years–a disappointment, perhaps, for avid climbers, but a deeply serious concern for the nations of the Andes.

Global warming, in this part of the world, is not easily dismissed as a “political” issue. The truth is right there on the mountain, for everyone to see.

Aerial view of McClelland lake fen north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.  (c) Jiri Rezak / WWF-UK

Andrew Weaver will take heat for this analysis, no doubt, as it will be seen to give (and might well end up giving) cover to the oil sands industry. In reality, Dr. Weaver and his co-author Neil Swart are doing what good scientists do: provide solid, transparent analyses on important topics. For that, they deserves nothing but thanks. My worry – and the worry of many in my field – is less about the information provided but about how the information will be used. For instance, the Globe article already speculates it will be a hot topic of debate as Canada continues to fight the European Union’s proposed Fuel Quality Directive, which is designed to lower the carbon footprint of gasoline and diesel in the EU. So let’s take a moment to look beyond the spin at what this report means.

That burning all the planet’s coal and natural gas reserves should have a bigger climate impact than Canada’s oil sands is not actually shocking: we have truly vast stores of coal and natural gas all over the world. It’s also not really the point, as Dr. Weaver himself points out. The real problem is our addiction to fossil fuels. Here’s the rub. Currently, the world relies heavily on coal, oil and natural gas for our heating, electricity, and fuel. If we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change, (as most nations, including Canada, have committed to), we must shift away from those energy sources to renewable sources with less greenhouse gas emissions (along with far greater efficiency and conservation). The best scientific estimates suggest we have to reduce ghg emissions by 80 percent by 2050 to have any real chance at avoiding serious climate change. This is a monumental task (though entirely possible – see WWF’s Energy Report).

The problem is, instead of shifting to sources of energy with lower ghg emissions, too often we are investing heavily in developing energy sources with higher ghg emissions, like tar sands and unconventional natural gas. This is why Canada comes under such scrutiny and criticism at international meetings. Instead of supporting the shift we need, our federal government is hell-bent on developing more oil sands as fast as humanly possible, and finding new markets for the stuff. And Canada is working hard to make sure no global agreement is reached that puts any constraints on the development or export of that resource. That’s why little old Canada gets singled out: it’s not just about our poor domestic performance, but how we are hampering others from doing anything meaningful as well.

Andrew Weaver knows this, of course, and is doing his best to make sure the point isn’t lost. For example, he points out that the sole act of producing the oil sands for use in Canada and the United States will take up three-quarters of North Americans’ per-capita carbon allowance if global warming is to be held at 2 degrees Celsius. He’s also argued that Canada should not be investing in infrastructure – specifically including the Enbridge Gateway pipeline – that lock us into using fossil fuels in the future. So the oil sands industry and our federal government ought to be careful about touting this as support for continued development when in fact it’s the opposite. There is no question that to fight climate change we must reduce our global dependence on coal. But if all we do is replace our current use of coal and oil with unconventional sources like shale gas and oil sands, we done worse than nothing. At the moment, that stands to be Canada’s foreign policy legacy. It doesn’t have to be.

New clues as to how Earth’s remote ecosystems have been influenced by the industrial revolution are locked, frozen in the ice of glaciers. That is the finding of a group of scientists, including Robert Spencer of the Woods Hole Research Center. The research will be published in the March 2012 issue of Nature Geoscience. Globally, glacier ice loss is accelerating, driven in part by the deposition of carbon in the form of soot or “black carbon,” which darkens glacier surfaces and increases their absorption of light and heat. The burning of biomass — trees, leaves and other vegetation around the globe, often in fires associated with deforestation — and fossil fuel combustion, are the major sources of black carbon.

Spencer and his fellow scientists have conducted much of their research at the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska. Mendenhall and other glaciers that end their journey in the Gulf of Alaska receive a high rate of precipitation, which exacerbates the deposition of soot, but also makes for a good research site.

“We are finding this human derived signature in a corner of the U.S. that is traditionally viewed as being exceptionally pristine,” Spencer notes. “The burning of biomass and fossil fuels has an impact we can witness in these glacier systems although they are distant from industrial centers, and it highlights that the surface biogeochemical cycles of today are universally post-industrial in a way we do not fully appreciate.”

The key to the process is carbon-containing dissolved organic matter (DOM) in the glacial ice. Glaciers provide a great deal of carbon to downstream ecosystems. Many scientists believe the source of this carbon is the ancient forests and peatlands overrun by the glaciers. However, thanks to new evidence from radiocarbon dating and ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry, Spencer and his colleagues believe that the carbon comes mainly from the burning of fossil fuels and contemporary biomass. Once the organic matter that contains black carbon is deposited on the glacier surface by snow and rain, the resultant DOM moves with the glacier and is eventually delivered downstream in meltwaters where it provides food for microorganisms at the base of the aquatic food web.

“In frigid glacier environments any input stands out, making glaciers ideal sentinel ecosystems for the detection and study of anthropogenic perturbation,” said Spencer referring to the reason why glaciers record the impact of human emissions. “However, the deposition of this organic material happens everywhere and in vibrant ecosystems such as those found in temperate or tropical regions, once this organic material makes landfall it is quickly consumed in the general milieu of life.” The Mendenhall glacier research site therefore allows a unique perspective for studies such as this one.

Glaciers and ice sheets together represent the second largest reservoir of water on the planet, and glacier ecosystems cover ten percent of Earth, yet the carbon dynamics underpinning those ecosystems remain poorly understood. “Improving our understanding of glacier biogeochemistry is of great urgency, as glacier environments are among the most sensitive to climate change and the effects of industrial pollution,” emphasizes Spencer.

The researchers’ findings also reveal how the ocean may have changed over past centuries. The microbes that form the very bottom of the food web are particularly sensitive to changes in the quantity and quality of the carbon entering the marine system. Since the study found that the organic matter in glacier outflows stems largely from human activities, it means that the supply of glacier carbon to the coastal waters of the Gulf of Alaska is a modern, post-industrial phenomenon. “When we look at the marine food webs today, we may be seeing a picture that is significantly different from what existed before the late-18th century,” said Aron Stubbins a collaborator from the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. “It is unknown how this manmade carbon has influenced the coastal food webs of Alaska and the fisheries they support.”

A warming climate will increase the outflow of the glaciers and the accompanying input of dissolved organic material into the coastal ocean. This will be most keenly felt in glacially dominated coastal regions, such as those off of the Gulf of Alaska, Greenland and Patagonia. These are the areas that are experiencing the highest levels of glacier ice loss.

Spencer’s collaborators on the project included Eran Hood and Andrew Vermilyea from the University of Alaska Southeast; Peter Raymond and David Butman from Yale University; George Aiken, Robert Striegl and Paul Schuster from the U.S. Geological Survey; Rachel Sleighter, Hussain Abdulla and Patrick Hatcher from Old Dominion University; Peter Hernes from the University of California-Davis; Durelle Scott from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; and Aron Stubbins from Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.