Study: Antarctic Ice Melting From Warm Water Below
by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, April 25, 2012
Antarctica's massive ice shelves are shrinking because they are being eaten away from below by warm water, a new study finds. That suggests that future sea levels could rise faster than many scientists have been predicting.
The western chunk of Antarctica is losing 23 feet of its floating ice sheet each year. Until now, scientists weren't exactly sure how it was happening and whether or how man-made global warming might be a factor. The answer, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is that climate change plays an indirect role — but one that has larger repercussions than if Antarctic ice were merely melting from warmer air.
Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey, said research using an ice-gazing NASA satellite showed that warmer air alone couldn't explain what was happening to Antarctica. A more detailed examination found a chain of events that explained the shrinking ice shelves.
Twenty ice shelves showed signs that they were melting from warm water below. Changes in wind currents pushed that relatively warmer water closer to and beneath the floating ice shelves. The wind change is likely caused by a combination of factors, including natural weather variation, the ozone hole and man-made greenhouse gases, Pritchard said in a phone interview.
As the floating ice shelves melt and thin, that in turn triggers snow and ice on land glaciers to slide down to the floating shelves and eventually into the sea, causing sea level rise, Pritchard said. Thicker floating ice shelves usually keep much of the land snow and ice from shedding to sea, but that's not happening now.
That whole process causes larger and faster sea level rise than simply warmer air melting snow on land-locked glaciers, Pritchard said.
"It means the ice sheets are highly sensitive to relatively subtle changes in climate through the effects of the wind," he said.
What's happening in Antarctica "may have already triggered a period of unstable glacier retreat," the study concludes.
If the entire Western Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt — something that would take many decades if not centuries — scientists have estimated it would lift global sea levels by about 16 feet.
NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati, an expert in Earth's ice systems who wasn't involved in the research, said Pritchard's study "makes an important advance" and provides key information about how Antarctica will contribute to global sea level rise.
Another outside expert, Ted Scambos of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said the paper will change the way scientists think about melt in Antarctica. Seeing more warm water encircling the continent, he worries that with "a further push from the wind" newer areas could start shrinking.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/study-antarctic-ice-melting-warm-water-16212616#
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Tom Schueneman: Redefining prosperity and the fallacy of growth
Tom Schueneman: Redefining prosperity and the fallacy of growth
This is a guest post by Tom Schueneman,a finalist in the TckTckTck Rio Blogger Prize competition. If you would like to see this entrant as the official TckTckTck blogger at Rio+20 this June, please help spread the word by sharing this post on your social networks.
“In an empty world, it was a safe bet that growth was making us richer, but we no longer live in an empty world. We live in a full world” – Ecological Economist Herman Daly.
Victims of our own success
We owe the comfort and abundance of our lives to fossil fuel. Most people, at least in the developed world, enjoy “prosperity” through access to material goods and resources not possible without access to this vast store of “cheap” energy.
Our carbon-based energy economy has been so successful that we are now held in its grip, mesmerized into thinking it will go on forever. It has distorted our definition of prosperity by placing “growth” central on the altar of human intent and interaction with the natural world. To challenge the efficacy of infinite economic growth is suspect, even heretical. But we arrive at the 21st century at a crossroads and challenge it we must if we are to choose a path toward sustainability.
Exponential growth – the Achilles heel of a finite world
As Physicist Professor Al Bartlet warns, failing to understand the exponential function is humanity’s Achilles Heal. The exponential growth in our numbers combined with our ability to extract energy and resources with ever greater effectiveness is at once unsustainable and the accepted foundation of economic theory.
More people mean more consumers equals growing markets and jobs to pay for consumption to support growing markets – plenty for all, and then even more, in an accelerating, unending cycle.
Human ingenuity and innovation notwithstanding, we live within a finite system. Be it climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, sustainable agriculture, mineral depletion or collapsing fisheries, we cannot continually “grow” our way out from the challenges we now face. At the core of any solution for creating a sustainable society is choosing a path based on a new definition of prosperity.
The growth fallacy – speaking the unspeakable
“Limits to Growth” first brought the idea into public discussion in the early ’70’s, and it was squarely rebukedby the “experts” of the day. Forty years later those limits are only more manifest.
“Economic growth as we have known it is over and done with,” says Richard Heinberg in his book The End of Growth. Accepting the fallacy of growth is a disquieting notion because it threatens all we have ever known.
“The prevailing vision of prosperity as a continually expanding economic paradise has come unraveled,” writes Tim Jackson in his book Prosperity Without Growth. “Perhaps it worked better when economics were smaller and the world was less populated. But if it was ever fully fit for purpose, it certainly isn’t now.”
“Climate change, ecological degradation and the spectre of resource scarcity compound the problems of failing financial markets and economic recession. Short-term fixes to prop up a bankrupt system aren’t good enough,” Jackson continues. “Something more is needed. An essential starting point is to set out a coherent notion of prosperity that doesn’t rely on default assumptions about consumption growth.”
Heinberg and Jackson are among a host of thought leaders challenging our devotion to the fallacy of growth and pointing us toward a new path. Documentary filmmaker David Gardner is another such voice, as well as a self-described “growthbuster.”
Becoming a GrowthBuster
In the film "GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth," Gardner exposes the fallacy of growth for a general audience likely uncomfortable with the idea, but also with a growing sense that business as usual is a dead-end street for themselves, their families, and their communities. Increasingly ill-at-ease with a consumer society that demands of them to be just that – consumers; when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, or so it seems.
GrowthBusters examines the beliefs and behaviors that may have worked in an earlier age, but are now pernicious barriers to a sustainable civilization; cultural norms enshrined by the “Great Acceleration” of the last half of the 20th century.
Gardner combines his own experience as a citizen of a growth-obsessed American town with the observations and insight from an array of experts, scientists, and economists.
“We’re faced with a gigantic challenge that we haven’t been prepared for.” Says Stanford professor and biologist Paul Ehrlich in the film, “either in our genetic evolution, or more importantly, in our cultural evolution.”
Instead of focusing on what we must “give up” as we move away from an infinite growth-based society, it clarifies what we’ve given up in our tenacious embrace of it, and the choices we have going forward.
Life after growth
“Beyond the provision of nutrition and shelter, prosperity consists in our ability to participate in the life of society,” writes Jackson Prosperity Without Growth, “in our sense of shared meaning and purpose and in our capacity to dream. We’ve become accustomed to pursuing these goals through material means. Freeing ourselves from that constraint is the basis for change.”
Surely, for those with a full pantry, the latest iPhone, and a big-screen TV, it can be morally suspect to suggest to others to abandon the pursuit of material wealth. Positive change will not come through exhortation. Yet many feel trapped within their own material abundance. Beyond a certain point it no longer serves human prosperity and fulfillment.
“We are not purely greedy selfish individuals, that’s what free marketeers assume that we are,” says Institute for Food and Development Policy fellow Raj Patel in GrowthBusters. “That’s what we are encouraged to be in consumer society. But we are not, we are much, much more beautiful, we are much bigger, we are much … we are much more capable of sharing…
The tools with which we have been raised to help us understand looking at the way the world works and how our future might be delivered to us, well those tools are broken. But it’s OK, because there are loads of solutions around us in which we, we might manage the world differently and more sustainably…”
Among these tools are three principal ideas to help us get started:
- Adapt to a steady-state economic model:
A global transition movement is growing and connecting individuals and communities in learning and adapting to a post-growth, post-carbon world. Networks like these help chart a path toward greater resilience and adaptation to a reworked economy aligned within material limits and focused on human flourishing beyond a consumer-based society.
- Stabilize human population:
Scientific estimates population the Earth can sustainably support range from under 1 billion to 5 billion, depending on how we much we curb our consumer lifestyles in the developed world. We must stabilize and then slowly reduce human population within Earth’s carrying capacity and provide women, especially in developing countries, education and access to health care and birth control.
- End our dependence on fossil fuel:
Climate change is unavoidable. Climate change is here and now. But to avert the worst consequences of climate disruption we must quickly reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. Accomplishing the task requires redesign of our cities, agriculture, transportation, and energy generation.
It’s okay to be a Growthbuster
“It’s not an easy thing to change the inertia of a civilization, but it has to be done…”
What drives our endeavors and sustains our economies will not be tomorrow what they are today. But we have a choice. As Gardner says in his film, we can either turn away from the cliff or keep the pedal to the metal and “go down fighting.”
It is possible to live happy, healthy, prosperous lives within a bountiful – if limited – world. It will not be easy; in fact, it is likely that greatest challenge humanity has yet faced. And there is a price to pay for the damage we’ve already exacted on the Earth. But it can be done, if we accept the challenge for what it is.
“There’s a shift going on, and this is a shift from believing that we have a resources problem to really understanding that we have a cultural problem and that we need to evolve our culture.”
Twenty years after the first global Earth Summit we stand squarely at a crossroads. We cannot be blamed for the road that got us here, but we are responsible for each future step we take. Many, like Gardner and his film Growthbusters, are pointing the way down a path to a sustainable future, helping us see that it’s okay to be a growthbuster.
MAPS: Biblical Flooding Is Coming to a Refinery Near You
MAPS: Biblical Flooding Is Coming to a Refinery Near You
Oil and water don't mix, but that may soon change.
A rare Senate hearing on the threat of rising sea levels last week coincided with a new report from Climate Central, a non-profit that publishes peer-reviewed environmental research, that shows rising seas may soon be lapping at the country's oil and gas refineries, electric and natural gas power plants, and even nuclear facilities.
Climate change has raised global sea levels by eight inches since the late 19th century, amping up storm surges and flooding around the world. Extreme coastal deluges—of the sort that's only supposed to happen once a century—are those that reach at least four feet above local high tides. The rate of this kind of biblical flooding is expected to more than double by 2030, according to the report. Check out the researchers' map of coastal threats from rising waters in your area:
This is bad news for coastal energy facilities. The analysis, which assessed data from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, the US Geological Survey and FEMA, tallied nearly 300 locations, spread across 22 coastal states, which stand on ground below that critical high tide-plus-four level. That includes 130 natural gas, 96 electric, 56 oil and gas, and 4 nuclear facilities. Here's Climate Central's map of of all the at-risk locations. (You can adjust the data to show energy facilities at higher and lower flood levels.)
More than half are in Louisiana. That state can't win.
Ben Strauss, Director of Climate Central's Program on Sea Level Rise, and co-author of the report, who testified at the Senate hearing, says flooding of energy facilities could result in blackouts, damage to critical access roads and destruction of mechanical systems. At refineries storm surges could cause spillage, damage to storage tanks, and national oil supply shortages. Or imagine an American Fukushima, in which flood waters cut off power supplies, keeping reactors from being cooled, and triggering a nuclear meltdown.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the lone Republican at the hearing, called the report's findings "a wake-up call."
Scientists expect waters to rise 20-80 more inches this century, depending on whether the world gets it together policy-wise. Don't hold your breath.
Well, actually, you might need to.
Rare storms causing havoc in Argentina
Scientists say that Argentina, which is recovering from a deadly storm in early April, will likely see more storms as climate changes take effect.
by Karl Younker, The Miami Herald, April 24, 2012
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- A fierce tornado-producing storm early this month caught the heavily populated metropolitan area off-guard, ripping down trees, knocking out basic services, injuring scores and killing 17. One official called it “the worst storm on record.”
It was the latest in a growing number of intense storms caused by higher heat and humidity in the region, said Pablo Canziani, an Argentine physicist who’s a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Canziani told The Miami Herald that these conditions are expected to increase in coming years, creating major governance challenges as climate change brings extreme weather to Argentina and its neighbors, which rarely experience deadly tropical storms.
“It doesn’t mean Argentina is going to turn into the Caribbean,” but there will be more weather typically found in the tropics, Canziani said.
Erica Quintana lost almost everything in the April 4 storm. The 28-year-old mother of four took cover under her bed as the wind whipped outside, toppling a nearby billboard that crushed her shantytown home in “Olympian fashion,” she said.
More than a week later, authorities had not visited her neighborhood to document the damage or provide support, she said.
Robert Meliñir, 38, received bags of pasta and sheets of corrugated metal from the Quilmes municipal government — one of the most affected areas, south of Buenos Aires — but it wasn’t sufficient, he said. The metal strips weren’t long enough to stretch across the gaping hole above his living room.
“I’m not interested in a plate of spaghetti,” he said. “I’m interested in a solution.”
In total, officials estimated some 30,000 homes had their roofs blown off.
The warming of oceans and the atmosphere have strengthened the weather system known as the South Atlantic High, which drives moisture west across the Brazilian Amazon, where it bends south toward Argentina, Canziani said.
Over central Argentina, this increased wet air clashes with cold fronts coming up from the South Pacific, he said, causing “squall lines,” such as the recent storm. Neighboring Paraguay and Uruguay are also likely to see an uptick in severe weather, experts said.
After the recent barrage, Luis Viera, the Argentina country representative for the Salvation Army, said his organization was busy distributing food and water in hard-hit areas. But although President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sent the nation’s armed forces to help clear downed trees and power lines, he called the overall response to the storm “limited” and “lacking resources.”
“There was no massive distribution,” he said.
The recent storm is an example of what Argentina and other developing countries are up against when it comes to climate change, according Nazareno Castillo, the director of Argentina’s Climate Change Office. He says the United Nations’ focus on mitigation through lower greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to new climate conditions is “very difficult” for developing countries, “because they already lack efficient governments.”
The unsteady climate footing could have contradictory effects on the Argentine economy, he says.
In some scenarios, scientists predict that farmers could grow more wheat, corn, and soy in the country’s fertile pampas region, giving a temporary boost to the local economy, while perhaps endangering wine producers in the Andean region who need longer timetables because grapevines have a multi-year lifespan.
Argentina needs large-scale infrastructure changes, Castillo says, but those changes can’t be implemented now because of continued uncertainty in climate models.
“All of the planning up until now has been based on models that measure extreme events looking backward,” he says, “which, of course, become outdated when extremes change.”
His office focuses instead on raising awareness among Argentines and preparing policymakers on how to best coordinate responses to climate change.
In addition, Castillo echoed the most recent United Nations Human Development Report, which highlights how environmental degradation worsen existing inequities for the world’s poor.
“The fastest way to reduce human risk would be to eliminate poverty,” he said. “But now we need to modify the way we do almost everything in complex ways.”
Geophysicist Gabriela Nicora is building a nationwide map for electrical storms, both to warn people about the storms and to pinpoint the most affected areas after a storm. The map would be important as Argentina expands gas and oil pipelines, nuclear power plants and high-voltage electricity lines.
Nicora’s network plugs into a global lightning network at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“The U.S. has an expansive network for monitoring weather patterns and an early-alert system to give warning about storms,” she said. “It’s something that Argentina doesn’t have but needs as it makes decisions about infrastructure projects of all kinds.”
Andrew Freedman: Heat Wave Bakes West, Sets Marks & Hits High Note of 113 F in Death Valley -- highest April temperature recorded
Heat Wave Bakes West, Sets Marks & Hits High Note of 113 F
by Andrew Freedman, Climate Central, April 24, 2012
While the East has been dealing with a powerful Nor’easter that dumped several inches of windswept rain along the coast, and up to 2 feet of snow in the interior, the West has been baking in record heat. The heat is spreading eastward into the Plains states, but it will be short-lived there, eventually settling in the southern tier of the U.S. later this week.
West Texas, which was ground zero for scorching weather last summer, is likely to see temperatures approach or eclipse the century mark this week.
During the past seven days, 746 daily record-high temperatures were set or tied, along with 400 daily record-high minimum temperatures, according to the National Climatic Data Center. According to Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, the 113 °F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, Calif., on April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S.
West Texas, which was ground zero for scorching weather last summer, is likely to see temperatures approach or eclipse the century mark this week.
During the past seven days, 746 daily record-high temperatures were set or tied, along with 400 daily record-high minimum temperatures, according to the National Climatic Data Center. According to Jeff Masters of Weather Underground, the 113 °F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, Calif., on April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S.
View of the records set on April 22, using Climate Central's Record Temperature Tracker. The red dots indicate warm temperature records, while the blue dots show cold temperature records.
Masters wrote: "Nearly every weather station in the Inter-mountain West has broken, tied, or come within 1- 2 °F of their all-time record April heat record since Sunday. Most notably, the 113 °F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, Calif., on April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S. According to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the hottest reliable April temperature ever measured in the U.S. was 113 °F in Parker, Ariz., in 1898. A 113 °F reading was also taken at Catarina, Texas in April 1984."
Also impressive is the fact that 99 monthly record-high temperatures were set or tied during the past week, along with 22 monthly record-high minimum temperatures. (These records and more can be looked up using Climate Central's Record Temperature Tracker.)
This warm wave follows the warmest March on record in the Lower 48 states — when more than 15,000 warm-temperature records were broken during a lengthy heat wave that affected nearly every state east of the Rockies.
The heat has been especially noteworthy in two places known for their sizzling weather during the summer months: Phoenix and Las Vegas. On April 22, Phoenix tied its all-time record-high temperature for the month when the temperature reached 105 °F. Yuma, Ariz., hit 106 °F on the same day, a record daily high for that location. Phoenix also set warm minimum temperature records. The low temperature at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport only fell to 74 degrees on April 23, beating the old record for the date of 71, set in 1997.
As for Las Vegas, the high temperature of 99 °F on April 22 tied that city's all-time high-temperature record for April. This was also the earliest 99 degree reading on record, occurring two days earlier than the previous record of April 24, 1946.
March was the warmest such month on record in the lower 48 states.
More record warmth was expected Tuesday from northeast Montana southward to the Plains states, with conditions heating up in Texas during the next few days. A storm system is expected to move into the West during the next few days, bringing cooler temperatures, along with rain and mountain snows.
So far this year, there have been more than 26,000 warm-temperature records set or tied in the U.S., compared to about 2,600 cold-temperature records set or tied. In recent years, record daily highs have been outpacing record daily lows in a pattern that has been shown to be inconsistent with natural climate variability alone.
So far, this year is consistent with that trend, since daily record highs have been far outpacing daily record lows, with an even more lopsided picture for monthly record highs compared to monthly record lows. If the climate were not warming, one would expect the longer-term ratios to be, on average, closer to 1-to-1.
Energy Infrastructure Threatened by Sea Level Rise
Energy Infrastructure Threat from Sea Level Rise
Map use instructions: Move the slider to see facilities at different elevations; hover over the start of the boxed sentence to choose among different facility types; and hover over a state to see statistics for that state.
To Embed:
Sea level rise from global warming is well on the way to doubling the risk of coastal floods 4 feet or more over high tide by 2030 at locations nationwide. In the lower 48 states, nearly 300 energy facilities stand on land below that level, including natural gas infrastructure, electric power plants and oil and gas refineries. Many more facilities are at risk at higher levels, where flooding will become progressively more likely with time as the sea continues to rise. These results come from a Climate Central combined analysis of datasets from NOAA, USGS and FEMA, published in a Surging Seas Brief and included in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on April 19. For a fuller picture of risk from sea level rise and storm surge, including statistics for 3,000 towns, cities, counties and states, plus threat timelines, see the Surging Seas interactive map.
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