THE GROUNDBREAKING ‘ENVIRO 1′ IS HERE!

December 9, 2009 at 1:03 am (YOUTH AWARENESS, YOUTH SOLUTIONS)
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ENVIRO 1 – Making It Personal is the first in a collection of books for K-12. Its aim is to spread teen awareness of issues affecting the environment, encouraging them to bring new perspectives to finding sustainable solutions.

The emphasis is on personal responsibility for the environment, connecting self, community, country and the world. The book strives to encourage teens to build a culture of respect for the preservation of the environment.

ENVIRO 1 - Making It Personal is a fictional presentation of environmental threats and offers solutions to those threats. It is thought-provoking, engaging, stimulating and begs the reader to find solutions.

Click here to buy.

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U.S. lawmakers question environmental impact of Canadian pipeline

June 25, 2011 at 8:00 pm (ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT)
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 The proposed Keystone XL pipeline that is scheduled to bring oil to the US from Canada poses environmental threats. Environmental threats on land versus threats at sea generate more pressing concerns because they become more personal as they are closer to home. We have come a long way where environmental assessment is made alongside  economic assessment.

By Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent, Postmedia News June 18, 2011

LINCOLN, Nebraska — Of all the routes a Canadian company would choose to build a major oilsands pipeline, Tony Fulton can’t understand why Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. would propose to go through the heart of one of the most environmentally vulnerable places in America.

“It’s pretty clear to me that they just laid a ruler on the map and drew the shortest distance, and that is a line through our Sand Hills and over the Ogallala Aquifer,” says Fulton, a Republican senator in the Nebraska state legislature. “That’s a problem.”

The $7-billion Keystone XL would cut a swath through the heart of two of Nebraska’s most precious resources, cutting across the largest sand dunes complex in the western hemisphere and 400 kilometres of a vast groundwater source that supplies drinking water and irrigation to most of the state’s population.

Controversy over the pipeline’s route has become a central issue in the Obama administration’s decision whether to grant a ‘presidential permit’ for Keystone XL, a project that would give Canada’s oilsands producers a direct, lucrative route to ship their product to refineries and ports on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

The pipeline presents unique threats to both the Ogallala Aquifer and the Sand Hills, say experts, but there is fierce debate here over whether the warnings of environmental catastrophe are being exaggerated.

The U.S. State Department, which has authority to approve the pipeline, said in a supplemental environment study in April that the “impacts from even very large spills would likely be limited to localized groundwater contamination that would not threaten the regional viability of the aquifer system.”

It’s a conclusion shared by Jim Goeke, a research hydrogeologist the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

According to Goeke, any risk of contamination from an oilsands spill would be restricted to 10 per cent of the aquifer, because of the pipeline’s location and the groundwater’s natural movement from west to east.

A major leak, of up to 50,000 barrels of oil, would likely be localized to between a quarter mile to half mile of the pipeline because the bitumen would congeal after release, he said.

“I think a lot of people labour under the misconception that a leak would imperil the entire aquifer. That is just patently wrong,” Goeke said.

“While it might make a mess, it would not endanger the entire aquifer. It is treatable.”

Those assurances provide cold comfort to many Nebraska state lawmakers and landowners, who are pressing TransCanada to reroute Keystone XL and avoid the heart of the aquifer and the Sand Hills.

Randy Thompson, a 63-year-old landowner whose property lies in the path of Keystone XL, says pipeline workers would face difficult conditions running pipe through sandy soil saturated with water.

The Sand Hills are dotted with “wet meadows” across the landscape where the aquifer’s water table is high.

“If they dig a trench to bury that line, they are going to have to pump water out while they are putting pipe in,” Thompson says.

“They talk about how the oil is not going to travel very far if there is a spill. But what if you get a mile-wide plume and it is stuck under your place, then I guess you are just an acceptable casualty.”

Thompson’s concern about potential threat to water supplies is not hypothetical.

The State Department environmental study found eight public water supplies in five counties are located within one mile of the pipeline route. Another 29 private water wells exist within 100 feet of the proposed line.

In May, TransCanada’s existing Keystone pipeline spilled 20,000 gallons of oil at a pumping station in North Dakota.

Nebraska landowners fear TransCanada is underestimating the challenges of dealing with a catastrophic spill in the remote areas of the Sand Hills, where local fire departments have limited equipment and access to the pipeline would be challenging.

“They need to talk to some folks who live out here,” says Thompson, who has worked on ranches in the Sand Hills.

“You didn’t venture out in the Sand Hills unless you had a damn good four-wheel drive pickup. And if you weren’t real careful, you would end up stuck with that thing. That sand would suck you in,” he says.

“So when they are talking about getting emergency response equipment out there, I don’t think they have any idea what they are going to be contending with.”

TransCanada executives insist the risks are being overblown.

“Building a pipeline through the Sand Hills, or across an aquifer, is not new,” says Robert Jones, the company’s vice president for the Keystone pipeline.

“We have built pipelines in the sand hills in Oregon and in Saskatchewan and in South Dakota, so we do know the technique required in order to build a pipeline in sandy soils.”

Scientists who have conducted testing in the Sand Hills say it can take years, if not decades, to restore a Sand Hills landscape disturbed by construction, whether of highways or pipelines.

Another problem: The prevailing winds in Nebraska blow from the northwest to the southeast, the same direction as the pipeline would run — increasing the risk of erosion even more.

“It just raises the stakes — you have to stop the sand moving if you are going to get the grass growing,” says David Wedin, a professor in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“If you have a native prairie ranch and you have a swath going across your land like an open sore, it is a huge issue for those people.”

But sound reclamation efforts would keep damage localized, says Wedin.

“It won’t spread like a cancer,” Wedin says. “If you have got healthy grasslands on either side of this (pipeline’s) right of way, from our research, within 75 yards most of that sand will stop moving.”

TransCanada, for its part, has promised to be aggressive in efforts to repair landscape disturbed by pipeline installation. The company says it will plant native seed mixes on the pipeline right-of-way, apply straw or native prairie as mulch over the area and limit traffic over high-erosion areas.

But doubt about TransCanada’s ability to repair the Sand Hills grew after reports — and photographs — this April in the Billings Gazette detailed problems in reclamation the company faced on an 80-kilometre segment of a natural gas pipeline in Montana.

“Whoever was doing that contract didn’t do a very good job,” Wedin says.

Ken Haar, a state senator in Nebraska, likens pipeline construction in the Sand Hills to a trying to dig a trench in a child’s sand box.

“The trench has to be pretty wide because the sand keeps falling in. That’s the way the Sand Hills are,” says Haar. “They are very hard to repair … It is almost impossible to restore it to its original state.”

The Nebraska state legislature passed legislation in May requiring TransCanada to reclaim any land disturbed by pipeline construction.

But critics describe the bill as weak and say it does nothing to help protect the aquifer.

Haar says TransCanada lobbyists in Lincoln fought tougher measures.

“Their message is, ‘We’ll be good neighbours. Trust us. But we don’t want no laws,’ ” Haar says.

With all the public uproar about Keystone XL, why doesn’t TransCanada just change the pipeline’s route?

Both of Nebraska’s U.S. senators — and several state lawmakers — have urged TransCanada to consider running XL parallel to the company’s existing Keystone line. That pipeline, known as Keystone Phase 1, began operation in June 2010 and takes a more easterly route through the state.

“If they would move it over to where the east Keystone pipeline is, that goes through more solid soil. There is heavier soil,” says Ernie Fellows, 66, whose land near the Sand Hills would be crossed by Keystone XL.

“That soil did not blow in the 1930s. The Sand Hills blew in the 30s.”

If TransCanada showed a willingness to move XL to the existing Keystone pipeline route, public opposition to the new line might evaporate, says Wedin.

“Putting a pipeline through a corn field (in eastern Nebraska) is different than putting it through native prairie on a sand dune,” Wedin says.

“The ‘trust us, we know what we are doing’ attitude TransCanada has taken just didn’t fly with the local ranchers. Because they know TransCanada doesn’t know as much as they do about their grasslands.”

TransCanada executives say alternate routes would cause more environmental damage.

“The route we have selected … impacts the least amount of landowners, the minimum amount of stream and other environmentally sensitive areas,” says Jones.

“The alternate routes, no matter which one you would have selected, would have all gone through some aquifer. The Ogallala Aquifer virtually covers the entire state of Nebraska … So it really isn’t avoidable.”

Jones acknowledges an alternate, longer route for Keystone XL would also be more expensive.

“Not just for TransCanada but for our shippers and ultimately for the American consumer,” he says. “The longer the pipeline is, the more expensive it is. It is a direct correlation.”

The State Department’s study supports TransCanada’s view that it selected the best route for Keystone XL.

“The alternative (route) would not eliminate risk to the aquifer, but would simply transfer it to other parts of the aquifer system that are more heavily used and that also include areas of shallow groundwater,” the environmental study found.

Still, the battle to keep TransCanada from building Keystone XL across its planned route may be far from over.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week slammed the State Department for conducting a “limited analysis” of the threat to the Ogallala Aquifer.

Nebraska politicians, meantime, are seeking a delay in the Keystone XL decision until May 2012, in the hopes of passing legislation that would give it the authority to regulate the pipeline — including authority to approve the final route.

“The process of approval for this pipeline gives a lot of Nebraska citizens heartburn,” says state senator Bill Avery. “We seem to be completely cut out of the decision-making process. It’s TransCanada, individual landowners and the federal government — as if we (in the legislature) don’t matter.”

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Australia flood costs soar to $7 billion; US House panel adds $1 billion for levee, flood-project repairs

June 25, 2011 at 7:16 pm (ENVIRONMENT, WATER)
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The costs of floods in Australia and the US are erormous. Billions of dollars are being spent to recover, rebuild and relocate as their struggling economies suffer setbacks. Global warming is responsible for some of the flooding, yet the issue continues to be put on the back burner.

Australia flood costs soar to $7 billion

(AFP) – Jun 5, 2011

SYDNEY — The damage bill from massive floods which hit northeastern Australia this year will likely be Aus$6.8 billion dollars (US$7.3 billion) — $1 billion more than previously thought — an official said Sunday.

Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser revised the cost of the natural disaster which affected an area the size of France and Germany combined and was followed within days by the destructive Cyclone Yasi after getting further estimates.

“As well as the tragic human cost, there has also been enormous damage to infrastructure and significant costs incurred in managing the response and recovery process,” Fraser said in a statement.

“Such a big damage bill underlines the enormity of the task ahead.”

Australia suffered historic floods in December and January which swamped coal mines, ruined roads and other infrastructure and destroyed crops and farmland in Queensland.

The first estimate was that Aus$5.8 billion of damage had been caused by the floods which swamped thousands of homes and paralysed the state capital Brisbane.

Fraser said the revised figure was due to local councils increasing their estimate for repairs by $900 million to more than $2.7 billion.

The floods, which claimed more than 30 lives, also helped Australia’s economy to its heaviest contraction for 20 years in the first three months of 2011, according to data released last week.

“It wasn’t surprising the economy contracted by 1.2 percent in the quarter, with the floods and cyclones estimated to have sliced 1.7 percentage points from growth,” national Treasurer Wayne Swan said in his weekly note.

Swan said the floods and cyclones in both northern and western Australia had cost $12 billion in lost production, some $6.7 billion of which was in the March quarter, chiefly in the key coal mining industry.

Australia is home to the world’s largest coal export port and sends millions of tonnes of the fuel annually to Asian steelmakers and power companies, with total 2010 shipments worth Aus$43 billion.

House panel adds $1 billion for levee, flood-project repairs, includes $590 million for lower Mississippi 

WASHINGTON – The House Appropriations Committee added nearly $590 million to a spending bill Wednesday for repairing damaged levees and other flood-control structures in the vast Mississippi River and Tributaries(MR&T) system on the lower Mississippi.

That sum was part of more than $1 billion in extra funding for levee and other flood-damage repair nationwide, with the details on spending priorities to be left to the Army Corps of Engineers after it assesses damages related to this spring flooding on the Mississippi, the ongoing flooding along the Missouri River and other floods.

While Wednesday’s committee action represents only an early step in the long appropriations process, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (right), R-Cape Girardeau, said she expected that the extra funds for the Corps would — if approved — help pay for the repair or restructuring of the  Birds Point levee in southeastern Missouri, which was intentionally breached by the Corps to divert floodwaters from Cairo, Ill.

The MR&T funding is part of an amendment — sponsored Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., who chairs the panel’s energy and water subcommittee — that added over $1 billion in “emergency funding” to the Corps “to repair damage caused by recent storms and floods and to prepare for future disaster events.” Emerson, who chairs another appropriations subcommittee, also pressed for the increase and would have offered a similar measure if necessary.

Under the committee-approved plan, the extra Corps funds would be offset by eliminating as yet unspent high-speed rail funding  approved as part of the 2010 economic “stimulus” bill. The Corps funding was included in the wider, $30 billion House Energy and Water Appropriations Act. It will be voted on later by the full House, but its fate is uncertain in the Senate, which will develop a parallel spending bill. Among the members of the Senate Appropriations panel is U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Emerson, whose district includes the 130,000-acre Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, said in a statement Wednesday that she anticipated that the Corps would use some of the anticipated funds to repair the Birds Point levee. The Mississippi is no longer spilling through the breached levee into the floodway, but local landowners want assurances that their farms and houses won’t be flooded again if the river rises later this year.

“Our levees have suffered extensive damage,” Emerson said. “At Birds Point and in the New Madrid Floodway, the need for repairs and reconstruction is acute and immediate. These funds are an investment in the safety of our families, homes, businesses and communities.”

Last week, the Corps’ chief river engineer visited the Bootheel floodway to survey the damage and check river levels. He echoed recent comments by the commander of the Corps’ Memphis District that the goal was to reset or rebuild the Birds Point levee by next March 1. Emerson and Missouri’s U.S. senators have called that date unacceptable and are pushing for quicker action.

“Until just last week, thousands of cubic feet of the Mississippi River were flowing through the Birds Point levee every second,” Emerson said in a statement. “Some fields are buried under several feet of sand. Farmers are assuming a serious risk by putting in a crop with no flood protection, but they have to try. The alternative is to try to absorb the shock of total losses on their crops for the year.”

Even if the emergency funds for levee repair are left intact by the full House and the Senate, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill’s funding would not be available until Oct. 1. In the meantime, Emerson and other U.S. House members who represent districts along the lower Mississippi — including Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Belleville — have urged the Office of Management and Budget to request an emergency supplemental funding bill to speed repair money to the Corps before October.

Emerson said Wednesday that any extra funding would “give the Corps fewer reasons to delay the site studies, repair and construction of Mississippi River levees in several states. The entire system has been damaged, but some places need more immediate attention.”

Despite the breaching of the Birds Point levee and the deploying of all major flood-control options on the MR&T system, the Corps says that this spring’s flood — now considered the flood of record for most points on the lower Mississippi — displaced an estimated 10,000 people, caused one death and inundated 6.8 million acres between Cape Girardeau and southern Louisiana.

Metro East levee plan released

In other levee-related news, the flood prevention agency that is working to bolster about 74 miles of levees along the Mississippi River in the Metro East region released a draft plan Wednesday. The region stretches from Alton to Columbia, Ill.

Under that five-year proposal by the Southwestern Illinois Flood Prevention District Council, it would cost an estimated $161 million to bring the levee systems in St. Claire, Madison and Monroe counties up to federal standards and erase any doubts about flood insurance eligibility for area residents and businesses. The Corps’ federal funds for levee repair are not likely to be a factor in the Metro East plan.

According to the plan, which was released at a meeting of the flood prevention council, the most expensive single project proposed would involve nearly $60 million to improve the Metro East Sanitary District levees near East St. Louis. Other improvements were proposed for the Wood River, Chain of Rocks and Prairie du Pont and Fish Lake levees and related flood-control structures.

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Maryland Becomes First State to Require ‘Environmental Literacy’

June 25, 2011 at 6:03 pm (ENVIRONMENT)
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Maryland is hailed as the first U.S state to make environmental literacy a requirement for graduation from public schools. Most other states are considering similar requirements. The increase in the popularity of environmental education is a change in the right direction.

6/21/2011

In an historic vote today, the Maryland State Board of Education provided specific guidance to all public schools to require that each student be environmentally literate before he or she graduates from high school. The vote cements Maryland as the first state in the country to approve a graduation requirement in environmental literacy, a credit to Governor O’Malley, to board members, and to Dr. Nancy Grasmick, State Superintendent of Schools.

“This is a momentous day not only for Maryland but for educators across the country who are watching what Maryland does, and hoping to increase outdoor learning in their states,” said Don Baugh, director of the No Child Left Inside Coalition (NCLI). “Governor O’Malley and Dr. Grasmick deserve our profound gratitude. For years they have put Maryland at the forefront of the environmental education movement.”

The state school board vote clarifies for schools that each child must receive a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary environmental education that meets the approval of the State Superintendent of Schools.

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China Faces ‘Very Grave’ Environmental Situation, Officials Say

June 25, 2011 at 5:18 pm (GLOBAL WARMING)
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Labourers worked to drain sewage water from a leaked sewage tank at a copper mine in Shanghang, Fujian province, in 2010.

China grapples with environmental compliance as it balances econmic growth with environmental protection. We wish China environmental success.

 

Reuters

By IAN JOHNSON

Published: June 3, 2011

BEIJING — China’s three decades of rapid economic growth have left it with a “very grave” environmental situation even as it tries to move away from a development-at-all-costs strategy, senior government officials said on Friday.

In a blunt assessment of the problems facing the world’s most populous country, officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection delivered their 2010 annual report. They pointed to major improvements in water and air quality — goals that the ministry had set for itself over a five-year period ending in December.

The targets were met, with pollutants in surface water down 32 percent, and sulfur dioxide emissions in cities down 19 percent.

But officials cautioned that many other problems were serious and scarcely under control.

“The overall environmental situation is still very grave and is facing many difficulties and challenges,” said Li Ganjie, the vice minister. Mr. Li said biodiversity was declining with “a continuous loss and drain of genetic resources.” The countryside was becoming more polluted, he added, as dirty industries were moved out of cities and into rural areas.

Mr. Li said reversing the countryside’s deterioration was a major focus for the coming five-year plan. He also pledged to control contamination by heavy metals, which resulted in nine cases of lead poisoning last year and seven more in the first five months of this year. He said China needed a law to regulate heavy metals, and he was confident it would be written and passed soon.

Founded as an agency 13 years ago, the environmental protection office was upgraded to a ministry in 2007 but has fought an uphill battle for money and power. The government has made growth a priority, worried that unemployment would lead to unrest.

But the signs are growing that environmental neglect is causing instability. Protests in Inner Mongolia last week were partly due to concerns that industries like coal and mining — largely dominated by ethnic Chinese — are destroying the grasslands used for herding by the indigenous Mongolians. Similar conflicts have arisen in other sensitive ethnic areas like Tibet and Xinjiang.

“In some of these areas that are very fragile, we will strictly limit development,” Mr. Li pledged.

He said that more than a fifth of the land that has been set aside as nature reserves had been illegally developed by companies, often with local government collusion. But he said the ministry had deployed a satellite that could detect illegal development and would put pressure on local governments to stop the work. Failing this, Mr. Li said, the ministry has the power to influence officials’ prospects for promotions because environmental compliance is now a part of their performance evaluation.

Independent observers say this is part of a gradual change to give the ministry more power.

“They’re now a serious player as to what happens and where and to what standards,” said Deborah Seligsohn, a senior fellow with the World Resources Institute who is based in Beijing. “You’re seeing a steady trajectory where they’re having more and more impact.”

Recently, the ministry canceled a high-speed train line that had not obtained its approval. Last year, Mr. Li said, the ministry turned down 59 projects worth $15 billion that had not obtained its approval. Well-connected ministries were once able to bypass the environmental ministry, but now, Mr. Li said, it had set up “an impassable firewall” to block harmful projects.

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2011 is deadliest US tornado season in 75 years

June 25, 2011 at 4:37 pm (AIR)
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More extreme weather, this time in the US. The pattern of havoc and destruction continues throughout the world at astronomical costs. Are we to be blamed for any of this?

2011 is deadliest US tornado season in 75 years

By Mira Oberman (AFP) – Jun 2, 2011

CHICAGO — The deadliest US tornado season in 75 years has ripped babies from their mother’s arms and transformed entire towns into apocalyptic scenes of destruction as the toll hit 523.

And it isn’t over yet.

While warmer summer weather should hopefully reduce their intensity, the peak tornado season runs through July and twisters can strike at any time.

The damage is as unimaginable as it is unpredictable.

Funnel clouds drop out of a darkened sky, tossing cars and mobile homes up into the air, pulling huge trees out of the ground and tearing buildings apart.

The smaller ones touch down so briefly that one side of a street is flattened while the other is largely unscathed.

The bigger ones stay on the ground for miles, destroying everything for blocks on either side of their random path.

Two bad days accounted for nearly all the deaths: an outbreak of dozens of tornados that killed 314 people in five states on April 27 and a massive twister that killed 138 in Joplin, Missouri on May 22.

It was the deadliest day and the deadliest single tornado strike since modern record keeping began in 1950. 2011 now ranks as the fifth deadliest year in US tornado history.

“We’re still trying to wrap our heads around this one,” said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s storm center.

It’s not clear whether climate change is playing a role, Carbin said.

Tornadoes are formed when two weather fronts of different temperatures create wind sheer.

The warmer temperatures caused by global warming should reduce wind sheer, but they have also led to more precipitation and could be breeding the thunderstorms that spawn twisters.

It is clear, however, that steady growth in the number of people living in “tornado alley” – the huge area between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains – has led to higher tolls, particularly since so many are living in mobile homes and houses lacking storm cellars.

“We’ve spread out on the landscape,” Carbin told AFP. “It’s easier for a tornado to hit something in this day and age.”

While warning systems have improved dramatically in recent years, sirens can be little help against a twister powerful enough to knock a nine story hospital off its foundation and reduce brick buildings to rubble.

That’s what happened in Joplin, where a nearly mile-wide twister packing winds of more than 200 miles per hour cut a six-mile (nearly 10 kilometer) swath of destruction through the town of 50,000 people.

“I don’t know if man could build something strong enough to handle what came through,” Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said after surveying the damage.

President Barack Obama called it a “national tragedy” and recalled stories of heroism at a memorial service Sunday.

One such hero was pizza shop manager Christopher Lucas, a father of two, who ushered more than a dozen people into a walk-in freezer as the tornado approached.

The freezer door wouldn’t close from the inside, so Lucas found rope and closed it from the outside.

“Christopher held it as long as he could. Until he was pulled away by the incredible force of the storm,” Obama said.

“He died saving more than a dozen people in that freezer.”

The damage was so extensive that it took officials 10 days to identify all the bodies and reunite hundreds of people separated from their loved ones.

For many, days of frantic searching ended in despair.

Like the family of 16-month Skyular Logsdon, who was pulled from his mother’s arms after she was knocked unconscious when the twister ripped apart their home.

Another series of deadly twisters struck just two days after the Joplin tornado, killing 16 people in Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

A pregnant Catherine Hamil cowered in a bathtub with her three young children in Piedmont, Oklahoma that night.

When the storm passed, her 15-month-old son was dead, Hamil and her five-year-old daughter were in serious condition and her three-year-old son was gone.

It took two days to find his body.

Officials predict it will cost billions to repair the physical damage caused by the deadly twisters and months for life to return to normal.

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Floods, Fires, Storms and Droughts

June 25, 2011 at 4:10 pm (FORESTS, GLOBAL WARMING, SOIL, WATER)
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 Canada too is experiencing its share of natural disasters with floods and fires. All this after a long and cold winter. The weather has been extreme, causing destruction to crops, homes and livelihoods. Is this the result of a normal weather cycle or the effects of global warming?  

Floods, Fires, Storms and Droughts 

By Ray Grigg, Courier-Islander June 3, 2011 

The realization that we might be partly responsible for the recent spate of destructive weather is difficult to accept because it requires us to change the image of ourselves from innocent victim to guilty perpetrator. And, given the psychology of denial, we are inclined to avoid this sea-change of perspective. However, as climate science tracks the effects of the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide we emit into the atmosphere from our burning of fossil fuels, its conclusions are forcing us to consider that our behaviour might be implicated in the extreme weather we are getting.

Weather, of course, is difficult to predict — this is why forecasts are often inaccurate. But climate is much easier because general principles apply. Add heat and the weather becomes more active and extreme. Greater temperature differentials cause stronger convection activity and higher winds. When a 1.0 C rise in temperature increases the activity of the hydrological cycle by seven percent, a modest warming translates into higher rates of evaporation and precipitation. (A disturbed hydrological cycle may explain why coastal BC is getting such a cold and wet spring this year — other places are getting our heat while we are getting their rain.) The climatic energy of warmer places always generates more dramatic weather.

Now apply these general principles of climate to the weather extremes that have recently traumatized Canada and the US:

• The Richelieu River in Quebec reached a record level in early May of 30.7 metres above normal. The unprecedented flooding was attributed to heavy rainfall combined with exceptional melt from the high snowfall in the Adirondack Mountains. The excessive rain and snowfall have been attributed to an increase in the activity of the hydrological cycle.

• Flooding has ravaged Manitoba, the worst in at least 300 years. The cause, as in Quebec, is excessive rainfall and the melting of unusually heavy snowpacks.

• Similarly, US states along the Mississippi River have been hit by record floods as unprecedented volumes of water make their way into the Gulf of Mexico.

• In a tragic irony, nearby Texas and the adjacent states of New Mexico and Oklahoma have been hit by record droughts and fires.

• “Unprecedented wildfires” were burning in 30,000 hectares of northern Alberta. Winds of 100 km/h swept one of the province’s 115 forest fires into the town of Slave Lake, burning nearly half the buildings in the settlement of 7,000 people. Similar conditions threatened Russia last year and are of concern again this year as some 400 forest fires burn uncontrolled through its dry forests. Last year, Australia ended a record drought with record floods. Pakistan got only an unprecedented flood. The Amazon, in four years, is in its second once-in-a-century drought.

• The tornado season in the US has been particularly destructive. April saw a record 600 twisters hit the South, causing widespread damage and a death toll of over 300. On a single day in May, a record of 226 tornados terrorized southern states. Then, on May 23, a horrendous tornado touched down in Joplin, Missouri, flattening a 1.6 km swath through the town, obliterating 2,000 buildings and killing 142 people — 90 more are missing. Two days later, 13 people were killed by a twister in Oklahoma. And the tornado season isn’t officially over until the end of June.

No one can be certain that global warming and the resulting climate change are implicated in these extreme weather events. Meteorologists are particularly careful to avoid the implication because the detailed causal connections are characteristically complex and uncertain. But indisputable global measurements show the biosphere is warming and the hydrological cycle is becoming more active. Extreme weather events are consistent with the computer models predicting the consequences of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. The science is clear. It’s the specifics of weather that confuse us. We can’t be certain whether an individual weather event is extreme because of mere probability or because something more systemic and sinister is occurring.

But the simple physics of climate tell us that a gradual increase in global temperature will cause more frequent and sudden outbursts of extreme weather, extremes that we can erroneously attribute to the normally unusual. Such extremes that arrive in the guise of ordinary exceptions are particularly dangerous because each individual event can be rationalized, excused, overlooked and dismissed as if it were nothing portentous.

This has generally been our reaction to extreme weather events — we dismiss each one as a normal exception. Without the perspective of time, we fail to realize that once-in-a-century events are happening more frequently, or that melting ice is actually raising sea levels — BC government planners recently announced that all coastal structures with a design life to 2050 should allow for a 0.5 metre rise in sea level while those with a design life to 2100 should allow for a 1.0 metre rise.

Sea level rise, global warming and increasing storm intensity all came together in an “ecologically unprecedented” 1999 event in Canada’s Mackenzie Delta. High sea levels, the absence of Arctic sea ice to blanket waves, and a large surge from an intense storm all combined to send a flood of salt water 20 kilometres inland. This wide swath of the fresh-water Delta is still dead after 12 years. “It’s just another example of how recent climatic factors seem to be out of our normal range of variability,” said Professor John Smol of the Paleoecological Environment Assessment and Research Lab at Toronto’s Queen’s University. “We actually have evidence now that [global warming] has started happening and it isn’t just part of some natural variability” (Globe & Mail, May 17/11).

We all worry when weather’s variability becomes extreme. But we don’t want to accept that extreme weather events are actually linked to our greenhouse gas emissions, a reluctance that condemns us to be victims of our own doing — a sad irony that makes every weather disaster even more tragic.

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Japan’s Catastrophe and the Future of Nuclear Power

March 14, 2011 at 9:53 pm (AIR, ENERGY, WATER)
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Nature unleashed the calamities of an earthquake and a tsunami upon Japan. The resulting damage to the nuclear power plant brings the issue of safety to the forefront. Ironically,the world is facing political and social upheavel in many Arab countries which supply the bulk of oil to the rest of the world. Because of the threats posed by Japan’s nuclear power plant, other countries are now reassessing their plans to build nuclear plants. Should nuclear power, a source of clean energy, continue to be a viable source of energy given the risks that it presents? How should these risks be mitigated?

Japan’s Catastrophe and the Future of Nuclear Power 

Written by Brian Koenig

Monday, 14 March 2011 15:55

NewAmerican

As the threat of a nuclear meltdown in Japan lingers, the inevitable debate over nuclear power and its impact on the environment and human health is beginning to stir once again. Japan’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and its resulting tsunami last Friday shattered the northeast section of the country, and its after-effects have devastated the infrastructure and surrounding landscape.

A building housing a reactor in the No. 1 sector of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant exploded last Saturday. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) confirmed that the plant’s No. 3 reactor is now experiencing cooling function failure, which may lead to a similar explosion of the No. 1 reactor. Though Saturday’s explosion released small amounts of radiation into the air, it is reported that the levels are not dangerous to humans.

Yukio Edano, the government’s top spokesman, commented that the radioactivity levels near the Daini plant and the nearby Fukushima Daiichi plant, where there has been cooling system failure, pose no serious threat. He said they cannot rule out the possibility of another explosion, but if one does occur, “there would be no significant impact on human health.”

Despite inconclusive evidence of human danger, the debate over whether or not to continue embracing nuclear power, or expanding its capabilities, is arising, and will most likely intensify throughout the next few weeks, particularly in the United States.

Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) stated Sunday morning that they are still open to expanding nuclear power in the United States. In discussing America’s energy independence, Schumer commented on NBC’s Meet the Press, “Prices are up, our economy is being hurt by it, or could be hurt by it. So I’m still willing to look at nuclear [power, and] as I’ve always said it has to be done safely and carefully.” Likwise, McConnell told Fox News Sunday, “I don’t think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy.”

But timing is of the essence for politicians whose strategy is to hawk their agendas after catastrophes, especially ones on an international level. After all, as Rahm Emanuel once quipped, “Never let a good catastrophe go to waste” — in other words, don’t dwell on tragic consequences; use sentimental hype as an opportunity.

Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, alleged in a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the disaster displays “both the fragility of nuclear power plants and the potential consequences associated with a radiological release caused by earthquake-related damage.” Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Mitch Singer retorted, “Even the most seriously damaged of Japan’s 54 reactors has not released radiation at levels that will harm the public, and that’s a testament to their design and construction, and how effective their employees have been at planning and response.”

Japan’s nuclear crisis will assuredly influence the politics of expanding nuclear operations and renewing licenses for existing plants in the United States. America currently has 104 operating power plant reactors, and up until this past weekend, President Obama, some environmental groups, and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have agreed that nuclear power may be a suitable energy source for the future. But action may be sidelined as the world is riveted to the events unfolding in Japan’s earthquake-tsunami aftermath, very much including those related to its shaky nuclear infrastructure.

“I think it calls on us here in the U.S., naturally, not to stop building nuclear power plants but to put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what’s happened in Japan,” Senator Joe Lieberman, an active voice on energy policy, declared on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” White House spokeman Clark Stevens said the president is dedicated to pursuing a diverse set of energy sources and technology including wind, solar, natural gas, clean coal, and nuclear power. “Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from them and ensuring that nuclear energy is produced safely and responsibly here in the U.S.”

The responses so far show little evidence of a future blockade on U.S. nuclear power, but Japan’s catastrophe will undoubtedly create unease throughout the social and political gamut and possibly slow the progression of a nuclear power future in America.

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Australia floods cause ‘catastropic’ damage

January 28, 2011 at 12:59 am (SOIL, WATER)
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More flooding is taking place, this time in Australia. The floods have reaped havoc to homes, crops and businesses, especially mines. In our global marketplace, the affects of these disasterous floods will be felt far away because of disruption in the supply of certain commodities from Australia.

Australia floods cause ‘catastropic’ damage

By Daniel Munoz, Reuters

ROCKHAMPTON, Australia — Australia’s record floods are causing catastrophic damage to infrastructure in the state of Queensland and have forced 75 percent of its coal mines, which fuel Asia’s steel mills, to grind to a halt, Queensland’s premier said on Wednesday.

The worst flooding in decades has affected an area the size of Germany and France, leaving towns virtual islands in a muddy inland sea, devastated crops, cut major rail and road links to coal ports, slashed exports and forced up world coal prices.

“Seventy-five percent of our mines are currently not operation because of this flood,” Premier Anna Bligh told local television. “So, that’s a massive impact on the international markets and the international manufacturer of steel.”

The Australian floods, which have cut off 22 towns and affected 200,000 people, have resulted from the La Nina weather phenomenon, which produces monsoonal rains over the western Pacific and Southeast Asia.

The La Nina is expected to last another three months after it produced Australia’s third-wettest year on record in 2010, the nation’s weather bureau said on Wednesday.

“Queensland is a very big state. It relies on the lifelines of its transport system, and those transport systems in some cases are facing catastrophic damage,” said Bligh.

“Without doubt this disaster is without precedent in its size and its scale here in Queensland. What I’m seeing in every community I visit is heartbreak, devastation.

” Residents in flooded towns scrambled to build sandbag levees on Wednesday in the hope of holding back the rising waters, which analysts estimate could shave around 0.4 percentage point of Australia’s economic activity.

In Rockhampton, a cattle town of 75,000, a rise of just 20 cm in floodwaters would inundate another 400 homes and lap at the front door of a further 4,000 properties.

 ”Let’s hope we dodge the bullet. Every centimetre counts,” said Ian Stewart, Queensland’s state disaster co-ordinator.

Three people have drowned in the floods. Authorities are warning people to stay out of floodwaters not just because of the risk of drowning but because snakes and crocodiles are being washed into homes and shops.

FORCE MAJEURE

Some coal mines in Queensland, the world’s biggest exporter of coal used in steel-making, were resuming production although the outlook remained uncertain.

Macarthur Coal said on Wednesday it had resumed transporting coal by rail to Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal this week, but force majeure notices remained in place and future coal trains would depend on coal availability.

 ”Once the pits are free of water, we’ll have more coal exposed that can be processed and transported,” said Nicole Hollows, Macarthur’s managing director. “It is not possible to predict when we will return to a steady state of mining as that largely depends on any future rain.”

Wesfarmers is resuming output at its Curragh mine in the Bowen Basin, but maintained its force majeure.

A spokesman for Dalrymple port warned that unless mine companies resume production in the nation’s biggest coal region soon, coal export shipments could again be cut.

 Some rail lines carrying coal from inland mines expected to stay partially underwater for another week.

“In terms of river levels, they might recede by next week but these big mining establishments are obviously going to feel the affects for months to come,” said Jess Carey, a flood forecaster for the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Coal mines with annual production capacity of more than 90 million tonnes have issued force majeure notices, which release them from delivery obligations.

The floods are having ramifications far beyond Queensland.

Australia accounts for more than half of global coking coal exports, which are vital to steelmakers, especially in Asian countries such as booming China.

The floods have hit mines which produced 35 percent of Australia’s estimated 259 million tonnes of coal exports in 2009. An estimated $1 billion has been lost in coal production, said the Queensland Resource Council.

The floods weighed on investment sentiment with Australian stocks falling on Wednesday by 0.6 percent to a one-month low.

 Shares in global miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto lost ground and top banks such as Commonwealth Bank fell on concern about their financial exposure to affected firms.

The Australian dollar also slipped back towards parity with the U.S. currency, after shedding 1.2 percent on Tuesday.

 ”Our equity analysts think that a lot of coal mines in Queensland could be shut down for two to three months, so that’s going to be a substantial hit to exports going forward,” said David Forrester, FX strategist at Barclays Capital in Singapore.

Shinichi Taniguchi, executive vice president at Nippon Steel Corp (5411.T), the world’s fourth-biggest steelmaker, said the firm had coal stocks to last up to three months, much higher than in 2008 when there was a similar supply shortage from Australia. 

Eiji Hayashida, president of JFE Steel Corp, the world’s No.5 steelmaker, said the supply crunch had come at a difficult time.

“We are not optimistic of the situation. We are worried, particularly because demand for steel products is tight for the time being.”

Coal buyers like JFE are already talking with other potential suppliers in case Australia’s exports are halted for an extended period.

Spot coking coal prices have risen around 10 percent to around $250 a tonne in a month as rains hit Australia.

 FRESH FLOODS FEARED

Further downstream from the Bowen Basin coal region, more rains are forecast to cause fresh flooding. Flood warnings have been declared for seven river systems, with one swollen river now 6 km wide.

 Rockhampton mayor, Brad Carter, said it would be two weeks before people could move back into their homes.

Residents in the town of St George have built dirt moats to try and stop the floodwaters reaching their homes, but authorities fear 80 percent of the small town will be swamped if the Balonne River reaches a record 14 metres on Saturday.

 ”It’s started to rain here again. We could get a flood on top of our flood,’ said Barnaby Joyce, a National party senator who lives in St George.

Australia is the world’s fourth-largest wheat exporter and the flooding in Queensland, along with heavy rains and earlier flooding across eastern Australia, could mean up to half the national crop — or about 10 million tonnes — could be downgraded to animal feed or low-grade milling grains.

The floods have halted the transport of all grains in Queensland, said GrainCorp Ltd, the country’s largest grain handler. Queensland accounts for about 5 percent of Australia’s total wheat output, or around 1 million tonnes.

Supply concerns sparked by the waterlogged crop in Australia had helped benchmark U.S. wheat futures to reach a 5-month high, before falling back slightly.

“The thing we are all very fearful of is that we’ve only just started our wet season. We’ve got three months of cyclone season to go,” said Brent Finlay, the president of the rural lobby group AgForce.

 ”We’re trying to encourage people to get whatever they can done in anticipation of another hit and the forecast up here isn’t great.”

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“Bulge” in Atmospheric Pressure Responsible for Cold Winter Amid Global Warming

January 27, 2011 at 10:37 pm (AIR, GLOBAL WARMING, WATER)
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The freeze is on! Not even Florida, the sunshine state, can escape the ‘deep freeze’. What’s causing it, global warming?

 

 

 

“Bulge” in Atmospheric Pressure Responsible for Cold Winter Amid Global Warming

The cold in places like Florida actually could be a sign of warming, rather than an argument against the phenomenon

By Christa Marshall, Tiffany Stecker and Climatewire  | January 5, 2011 | 27

 
Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 11 A.M. Eastern time to include comments from meteorologist Joe Bastardi.

Icicle-covered oranges in Florida. The United Kingdom swamped with its coldest December in more than a century. Travelers stranded in airports surrounded by snowy fortresses.

These have been some of the dominant images this winter, and now one forecaster says it’s going to get colder. Yesterday, an AccuWeather meteorologist predicted that January could be the chilliest for the nation as a whole since the 1980s.

“More waves of Arctic air will invade the country, starting late this week and continuing through the next week and beyond,” explained Joe Bastardi of Accuweather in a release. Rare snowfall is headed to Seattle, while the Texas citrus industry may have to prepare for cold-weather damage, according to his forecast.

So how does this fit with global warming models?

According to some climate scientists, the cold in places like Florida actually could be a sign of warming, rather than an argument against the phenomenon.

The ongoing disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic from elevated temperatures is a factor to changes in atmospheric pressure that control jet streams of air, explained James Overland, an oceanographer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. That is because ice-less ocean is darker and, thus, absorbs more solar heat, which in turn spews warmer air than average back into the Arctic atmosphere.

That unusually warm air can contribute to a “bulge” effect to the atmospheric pressure controlling how cold air flows, according to Overland, who works at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. Rather than moving circularly in the Arctic from west to east as typical, the bulge may prompt air to move in a U-shaped pattern down to the southern United States.

How loss of Arctic ice gives you snow in Seattle
Last year was the waviest example of this pressure phenomenon in 145 years, said Overland. What also is happening is that the wavy air flow from north to south is appearing for longer periods of time, rather than just for a week or two, he said.

“You can’t go as far as saying the loss of sea ice is causing cold weather in Florida,” said Overland. “You can say it is a contributing factor.” In October, Overland co-authored part of NOAA’s Arctic Report Card, which included a section on how Arctic weather is influencing weather in mid-latitudes.

He emphasized that more research needs to be done on the cause and effect relationship between disappearing Arctic sea ice and cold weather in southern locations. Other research backs up his argument.

In November, climate scientist Vladimir Petoukhov reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research that the overall warming of Earth’s northern half could result in cold winters. “These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia,” he said in a statement.

The area covered by sea ice hovered near its historic low this summer, and is expected to be largely gone by mid-century (ClimateWire, Dec. 17, 2010).

Another study published in Environmental Research Letters last year, though, predicted colder winters in the United Kingdom because of natural variations in solar activity.

Differing from the majority of scientists, meteorologist Bastardi presented his “global cooling” theory in a December AccuWeather video arguing that carbon dioxide is a trace gas that has less effect on weather than forces such as the sun.

“There’s no need to panic over global warming,” he said.

The key thing is to look at the climate over long periods of time and not try to find meaning in one weather event, said David Easterling, chief of the Scientific Services Division at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

“The flip side is it’s been unusually warm in Canada this winter,” he said.

January aside, the National Weather Service predicts that swaths of the country stretching from the Southwest to the Southeast will be warmer than average this year. Record high temperatures are currently outnumbering record low temperatures by about two to one, and those ratios are projected to be about 20 to 1 by mid-century and 50 to 1 by 2100, said Jerry Meehl, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

How much the existing data registers with politicians and the public is an open question.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who once called global warming a “hoax” and was one of the loudest opponents against climate legislation last year, posted a blog last month mentioning recent cold weather events.

How weather impacts belief
“The fanciful claims surrounding global warming have turned out to be a colossal deception, an artful hoax, and an intellectual fraud,” it said.

According to the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, news coverage of climate change in 50 newspapers around the globe dropped by more than half in late 2009 to 2010. That parallels the time frame that climate change fell off the radar of Capitol Hill and international climate negotiations ended in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Last year also witnessed a drop in public belief in man-made warming. Gallup, for example, reported that the percentage of the population saying that seriousness of warming is “exaggerated” jumped 15 points between 2007 and 2010.

Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion has studied public reaction to the climate change issue since 2008. He and his team found that an individual’s belief or skepticism of its existence lies in personal experience: Unusually hot summers resulted in an increase in the number of believers, while frigid winters led to a greater number of skeptics.

“[Weather] has a big effect on the perception that climate change is happening,” said Borick. “Meteorological phenomena, storms and droughts, can be translated by individuals to their views on what’s happening with long-term climate.”

In a survey last spring, following an unusually cold winter for many parts of the United States, the percentage of climate change believers stood at 52 percent, with 36 percent non-believers and 13 percent unsure. The number of believers rose 8 percent and the number of non-believers dropped 9 percent in the fall survey, taken just a few months after a hot summer.

But Jon Krosnick, a professor at Stanford University, said the only group affected by cold weather in terms of belief about climate change is the 30 percent of the population who distrust scientists. And then they only consider how the most recent season compares to the previous three years in terms of worldwide temperatures, he said.

If this winter is unusually cold, he said, you would expect to see a “small drop” in the percentage of people who think global warming is happening.

“People don’t use their local temperatures as a benchmark,” he said. “They are not dodos.”

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Brazil is grappling with its worst natural disaster in more than four decades.

January 27, 2011 at 10:28 pm (WATER)
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Flooding and mudslides continue around the world in places with warmer climate. Places that are having winter are experiencing extreme cold and lots of snow. Even some places that had flooding last year are now experiencing frigid weather.Everything seems to be extreme.What’s going on?

 

By Vanderlei Almeida

Brazil is grappling with its worst natural disaster in more than four decades.

Jan 24, 2011

More than 500 people died in mudslides and floods near Rio de Janeiro this week, officials on Friday told media, which classed it as the worst disaster in Brazil’s history.

Municipal officials in towns in the mountainous area hit by the catastrophe counted 506 deaths, according to a compiled tally by news websites UOL and other major outlets.

Leading broadcaster GloboNews and UOL said the disaster in the Serrana region was the worst ever to hit Brazil, surpassing a 1967 mudslide calamity in the coastal town of Caraguatatuba in which 436 people perished.

It was feared the death toll from the mudslides in the Serrana, just north of Rio, could climb further as rescuers made their way into cut-off villages.

Storms early on Wednesday dumped the equivalent of a month’s rain in just a few hours before dawn in the region, sending mudslides slicing through towns and hamlets, destroying homes, roads and bridges and knocking out telephone and power lines.

The worst affected towns were Teresopolis, Novo Friburgo and Petropolis.

The death toll from the disaster was higher than the 473 rain-related deaths recorded for all of Brazil over the span of 2010.

It was feared more bodies were yet to be discovered as rescuers finally arrived in villages cut off because of destroyed roads and bridges in the region.

Efforts to locate survivors and bodies were taken under the risk of further mudslides, as rain continued to fall on the waterlogged region, making it even more unstable.

“It’s very overwhelming. The scenes are very shocking,” President Dilma Rousseff said after visiting the area.

She pledged “strong action” by her government, which has already released $US470 million ($A473 million) in initial emergency aid and sent seven tonnes of medical supplies.

The catastrophe was seen as her first big test since taking power two weeks ago, taking over from her popular predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Storms early on Wednesday dumped the equivalent of a month’s rain in just a few hours before dawn, sending mudslides slicing through towns and hamlets, destroying homes, roads and bridges and knocking out telephone and power lines.

The worst affected towns were Teresopolis, which recorded 223 deaths, Novo Friburgo, with 201 deaths, and Petropolis, with 39 deaths. Another 17 fatalities were registered in the village of Sumidouro.

The toll of dead from this one disaster was higher than the 473 rain-related deaths recorded for all of Brazil over the span of 2010.

Churches and police stations were turned into makeshift morgues, the smell of decomposing corpses heavy in the warm air. Thousands of survivors took refuge in shelters.

Outside one morgue in Teresopolis, crowds looked at photos of the dead, searching for loved ones.

“I can’t go inside. I don’t have courage to,” said one woman, Ana Maria, 40.

“You have no idea how hard it is to see the bodies of so many children … It’s horrible,” one fireman there told AFP.

Elsewhere in the town, in a gymnasium, hundreds of people left homeless by the calamity sat around on mattresses, still in shock, some injured.

Edmar Da Rosa, a 44-year-old labourer whose face was badly lacerated, looked lost and unable to comprehend the deaths of family members.

He said a retaining wall fell on part of his house that he shared with his wife, three children and a grandson.

“My wife died. My grandson ended up dying. And the others are hurt,” he said.

A few metres away, 59-year-old Joao de Lima clutched a doll with desolation written on his face.

“I lost my four daughters and everything I had,” he said softly.

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