Desdemona Despair

By Reed Landberg
25 January 2012

Sugar and wheat farming probably will become more productive as the average temperature rises across the U.K. in the next 40 years, the government concluded in a report [pdf] assessing the impact of climate change.

Sugar beet yields may rise 20 percent to 70 percent and wheat yields by as much as 140 percent because the atmosphere is warming, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said today.

“A warmer climate presents opportunities to grow new crops such as soya, sunflowers, peaches, apricots, and grapes,” the department said a statement in London.

The study also found that climate-related deaths would increase in the summer and decline in the winter and that both floods and dangerous droughts would become more frequent. The report is meant to advise Prime Minister David Cameron’s government on the measures it needs to endorse to adapt to climate change.

“Without an effective plan to prepare for the risks from climate change, the country may sleepwalk into disaster,” John Krebs, a lawmaker who leads the Committee on Climate Change, said in the statement.

The number of days that the temperature rises above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) may increase from about 18 currently to 27 to 121 days by the 2080s, Defra said. That would reduce the need for heating in buildings and increase the demand for air conditioning.

Premature deaths in cold weather that currently range from 26,000 to 57,000 a year in the U.K. may decline to 3,900 to 24,000 by the 2050s. An additional 580 to 5,900 people may die in heat waves by then, the report said.

U.K. Expects Warming to Boost Crop Yields From Sugar to Wheat

DAVOS, 26 January 2012 (The Times of India) – Pointing out that Pakistan has "excellent" relationship with India, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Thursday said cooperation between the two to tackle climate change was "doable".

He said Islamabad wants to work with New Delhi on this front.

"Yes, certainly there can be cooperation. We have excellent relationship with India and we want to work together," Gilani said when asked if India and Pakistan can work together to tackle climate change.

"We have been having a number of delegations from both countries on various matters like finance and industry. Certainly cooperation is doable", Gilani said during a panel discussion on climate change at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012.

Earlier in his address, Gilani said Pakistan has been hit by "horrible" droughts and floods last year and sought a "global fund" to tackle the climate risk issues.

"It (climate change) is quite visible in my country. We have suffered both drought and heavy rains in past one year. It was horrible, not just by our estimates but also as per the estimates of World Bank and Asian Development Bank," Gilani said.

"There has to be global solution to these problems. The first step we can take is establishing a global fund to tackle the climate risk issues and Pakistan would be happy to partner," Gilani said.

The United Nations has already proposed a USD 100 billion Green Climate Fund.

The fund was central to agreements reached in 2010 by UN treaty negotiators in Cancun, Mexico.

"If the glaciers in Himalayas melt, there will be huge floods in Pakistan," he said adding that Pakistan has taken some steps by creating a disaster management cell which he himself was overseeing.

Gilani arrived here yesterday from Islamabad. This is his first visit outside Pakistan since the memo scandal erupted late last year throwing his government in a political whirlpool that even threatened his continuity at office.

One year after the worst flooding disaster in the history of the region, more floods triggered by heavy rains had devastated parts of Southern Pakistan last year.

Pakistan wants to work with India on climate change: Yousuf Raza Gilani

[This is Desdemona’s kind of satire.]

WASHINGTON, 26 January 2012 (The Onion) – Saying there's no way around it at this point, a coalition of scientists announced Thursday that one-third of the world population must die to prevent wide-scale depletion of the planet's resources—and that humankind needs to figure out immediately how it wants to go about killing off more than 2 billion members of its species.

Representing multiple fields of study, including ecology, agriculture, biology, and economics, the researchers told reporters that facts are facts: Humanity has far exceeded its sustainable population size, so either one in three humans can choose how they want to die themselves, or there can be some sort of government-mandated liquidation program—but either way, people have to start dying.

And soon, the scientists confirmed.

"I'm just going to level with you—the earth's carrying capacity will no longer be able to keep up with population growth, and civilization will end unless large swaths of human beings are killed, so the question is: How do we want to do this?" Cambridge University ecologist Dr. Edwin Peters said. "Do we want to give everyone a number and implement a death lottery system? Incinerate the nation's children? Kill off an entire race of people? Give everyone a shotgun and let them sort it out themselves?"

"Completely up to you," he added, explaining he and his colleagues were "open to whatever." "Unfortunately, we are well past the point of controlling overpopulation through education, birth control, and the empowerment of women. In fact, we should probably kill 300 million women right off the bat."

Because the world's population may double by the end of the century, an outcome that would lead to a considerable decrease in the availability of food, land, and water, researchers said that, bottom line, it would be helpful if a lot of people chose to die willingly, the advantage being that these volunteers could decide for themselves whether they wished to die slowly, quickly, painfully, or peacefully.

Additionally, the scientists noted that in order to stop the destruction of global environmental systems in heavily populated regions, there's no avoiding the reality that half the world's progeny will have to be sterilized.

"The longer we wait, the higher the number of people who will have to die, so we might as well just get it over with," said Dr. Chelsea Klepper, head of agricultural studies at Purdue Univer­sity, and the leading proponent of a worldwide death day in which 2.3 billion people would kill themselves en masse at the exact same time. "At this point, it's merely a question of coordination. If we can get the populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Beijing, India, Europe, and Latin America to voluntarily off themselves at 6 p.m. EST on June 1, we can kill the people that need to be killed and the planet can finally start renewing its resources." […]

Scientists: 'Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?' via Ketsugami

By Gopal Sharma; editing by Paul Casciato
27 January 2012

BARAHBISE, Nepal (Reuters) – Looking at the swirling grey waters of the Bhote Koshi River, Ratna Kaji remembers when it turned into a "monster," leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.

"It came down roaring, washed away homes and people when they were sleeping," the 77-year-old said of the 1996 flood, caused by a massive landslide that blocked the river which eventually gushed out by breaking its mud wall.

"People had hardly any time to gather their belongings."

Within minutes, the flood washed away 54 people in this beautiful but rugged area, destroying 22 houses and a section of the Kodari road, a major artery connecting the Nepali capital of Kathmandu to Tibet. The road is also used by climbers to get to the northern side of Mount Everest.

That wasn't the first time that Kaji saw tragedy strike the area around Barahbise, a trading town of more than 6,000 people some 100 km (62 miles) northeast of Kathmandu -- and climate scientists fear it won't be the last.

Global warming, which is hitting Nepal particularly hard, is causing glaciers to melt, raising the spectre of another disaster like the one in 1981. Then, the flow from a glacial lake in Tibet set off a flood that killed at least five people in Nepal and caused widespread destruction.

There are more than 3,200 glaciers in Nepal, and 14 of them are at risk of bursting the dams which control the melting water that flows from them, officials say.

"The melting of glaciers that forms lakes can only be attributed to climate change," said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, climate change specialist at the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which studies climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalayas.

"There is no reason other than this for the change in the glaciers."

According to ICIMOD, which oversees a vast swathe of rugged land from Pakistan to Myanmar, the earth's temperature has increased by an average of 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years.

But warming across the Himalayas has been greater than the global average, with dire consequences.

Government officials said the average temperature in Nepal was rising by 0.06 degrees Celsius annually, due in part to its location between India and China, two of the world's heaviest polluters.

Over the past three decades, Bhutan's glaciers have shrunk by 22 percent and Nepal's by 21 percent, according to three studies recently released by ICIMOD.

They add that the melting glaciers will have an adverse impact on biodiversity, hydropower, industries, and agriculture, flooding hydroelectric plants and inundating fields.

The region is also becoming ever more dangerous to live in.

The area in Tibet where the Bhote Koshi River originates has several glacial lakes, Shrestha said. Nine of them are at risk of bursting their dams.

"This could happen any time and the downstream areas are at very high risk of another flood," said the bespectacled scientist. […]

"Monster" rules Nepal village on climate frontline

By David Fogarty; Editing by Ron Popeski and Sanjeev Miglani
26 January 2012

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A 15-km (10 mile) stretch of crisp white beach is one of the key battlegrounds in Singapore's campaign to defend its hard-won territory against rising sea levels linked to climate change.

Stone breakwaters are being enlarged on the low-lying island state's man-made east coast and their heights raised. Barges carrying imported sand top up the beach, which is regularly breached by high tides.

Singapore, the world's second most densely populated country after Monaco, covers 715 square km (276 sq miles). It has already reclaimed large areas to expand its economy and population -- boosting its land area by more than 20 percent since 1960.

But the new land is now the frontline in a long-term battle against the sea.

Every square metre is precious in Singapore.

One of the world's wealthiest nations in per-capita terms, it is also among the most vulnerable to climate change that is heating up the planet, changing weather patterns and causing seas to rise as the oceans warm and glaciers and icecaps melt.

Late last year, the government decided the height of all new reclamations must be 2.25 metres (7.5 feet) above the highest recorded tide level -- a rise of a metre over the previous mandated minimum height.

The additional buffer was costly but necessary, Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told Reuters in a recent interview.

"You are buying insurance for the future," he said during a visit to a large flood control barrier that separates the sea from a reservoir in the central business area.

The decision underscores the government's renowned long-term planning and the dilemma the country faces in fighting climate change while still trying to grow. It also highlights the problem facing other low-lying island states and coastal cities and the need to prepare.

A major climate change review for the Chinese government last week said China's efforts to protect vulnerable coastal areas with embankments were inadequate. It said in the 30 years up to 2009, the sea level off Shanghai rose 11.5 centimeters (4.5 inches); in the next 30 years, it will probably rise another 10 to 15 centimeters. […]

The U.N. climate panel says sea levels could rise between 18 and 59 centimetres (7 to 24 inches) this century and more if parts of Antarctica and Greenland melt faster. Some scientists say the rise is more likely to be in a range of 1 to 2 metres.

Singapore could cope with a rise of 50 cm to 1 m, coastal scientist Teh Tiong Sa told Reuters during a tour of the East Coast Park, the city's main recreation area.

"But a rise of two metres would turn Singapore into an island fortress," said Teh, a retired teacher from Singapore's National Institute for Education. That would mean constructing more and higher walls to protect against the sea. […]

Climate change presents a host of other challenges.

More intense rainfall has caused embarrassing floods in the premier Orchard Road shopping area.

And the government says average daily temperature in tropical Singapore could increase by 2.7 to 4.2 degrees Celsius (4.9 to 7.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from the current average of 26.8 deg C (80.2 F) by 2100, which could raise energy use for cooling.

Here lies another dilemma. The country is already one of the most energy intensive in Asia to power its industries and fiercely air conditioned malls and glass office towers -- a paradox in a country at such risk from climate change. […]

Singapore raises sea defences against tide of climate change

[Apologies in advance for the ad.]

By Kyung Lah, CNN
26 January 2012

Inside Fukushima Exclusion Zone, Japan (CNN) – When you stand in the center of Japan's exclusion zone, there is absolute silence. The exclusion zone is the 20-kilometer (12-mile) radius around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an area of high radiation contamination.

On March 12, the day after the quake and tsunami hit, 78,000 people were evacuated out of this area, believing they would return within a few days. As such, thousands of people left with their dogs tied up in the backyard, cats in their houses and livestock penned in barns.

Nearly a year later, animal carcasses litter the region.

Cows and pigs starved to death, their bones still in pens. Dogs dropped dead with disease. A cat skull sits on a neighborhood road.

This is perhaps an inevitable outcome to a nuclear emergency, but animal rights activists call it an outrage.

"It's shameful," says Yasunori Hoso with United Kennel Club Japan. "We kept asking the government to rescue these animals from the beginning of the disaster. There must have been a way to rescue the people and the animals at the same time following the nuclear disaster at Fukushima."

Japan's environmental agency tells CNN the government's position has been to rescue as many livestock and animals possible. But it points out that because of the risk posed to people entering the contaminated area, the government has chosen to take a prudent attitude toward animal rescue.

Last December, the government allowed animal rights groups like UKC Japan to enter the exclusion zone and rescue any surviving animals. Hoso entered with his members, carrying cages and food.

On one of those days, Hoso's group approached a house. A six-week-old female puppy lay dead in the living room in a pool of blood. It appeared to have died from disease. From the back of the house, the UKC volunteers heard weak barking. The puppy's two brothers were still alive, hiding in another part of the house. They were traumatized and afraid of the rescuers, having never been around people before. The volunteers soon rounded up their mother.

Those dogs now reside at the UKC Japan shelter near Tokyo. 250 dogs and 100 cats, all from the exclusion zone, live in cramped cages at the shelter. UKC Japan, which survives on donations, says it has tracked down 80% of the owners.

But that hasn't meant the animals can reunite with owners. Shelters and temporary apartment housing have not allowed the owners to live with their pets, Hoso said.

Unfortunately, he added, the owners can't live with their animals because they are homeless themselves.

Fukushima's animals abandoned and left to die

By arevamirpal::laprimavera
26 January 2012

When it was someone else's problem (Chernobyl), Japan was telling the truth about the effect of radiation, particularly on children.

Here’s Tokyo Brown Tabby's translation and captioning of a TV program from 1993.

Ironically, the female newscaster has morphed into one of the strongest proponents (even today) of nuclear power generation. The journalist on the right has remained a journalist; he was seen investigating and reporting from the high-radiation areas in Fukushima, right after Reactor 1 blew up at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

Tabby's description of the YouTube video:

This video is from a Japanese evening news program broadcast on Nihon TV, seven years after the Chernobyl accident (around 1993).

I hope the families in Fukushima who still hesitate to voluntarily evacuate their children will watch this and change their minds.

The original video is at: http://youtu.be/tWWICnIQE9k.

The German version is at 007bratsche's channel: http://youtu.be/_9F9M1Sq7KI.

The French version is at kna60's channel: http://youtu.be/oWvQT6ei8C0.

What Happened to Chernobyl Children 7 Years after the Accident (from a Japanese TV program in 1993)

Industrially produced nutrient fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus) are essential to global food security and have been the main driver of dramatically improved agricultural yields over the last sixty years to feed a growing population. At the same time, excess nutrients from inefficient use in farming and insufficient treatment of nutrients in wastewater, have made their way into rivers, aquifers, coastal areas and oceans, leading to degradation of marine ecosystems and groundwater at a global scale.

Nutrient loads from continents to oceans and the coastal zone have increased roughly three fold from pre-industrial levels, primarily from agricultural run-off and poorly or untreated sewage. Mainly due to the addition of manufactured nitrogen (from atmospheric nitrogen and natural gas), the amount of reactive nitrogen entering the earth’s biogeochemical system has increased by about 150% compared to pre-industrial times.

A 2009 Nature Report, “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity”, determined that excess nitrogen in the environment was one of 3 of the 9 ‘planetary boundaries’ that had already been exceeded. In effect, mankind is ‘mining’ the atmosphere for nitrogen; with a practically limitless supply, this process could proceed for hundreds if not thousands of years leading to continually worsening conditions for coastal areas and groundwater.

The environmental and socioeconomic impacts of nutrient pollution are massive and occurring over wide areas globally. The occurrence of coastal hypoxic zones caused by
eutrophication has increased exponentially in recent years, and nitrate pollution is one of the main groundwater contaminants in the developed and also increasingly in the developing world. Coastal hypoxia impacts fisheries, tourism and various ecosystem services provided by healthy coastal ecosystems. For the EU alone, the economic costs of damage to the aquatic environment from excess reactive nitrogen are estimated at up to € 320 billion per year. Initial evidence from the EU and US suggests that the overall benefits from improved nutrient management exceed costs and that this cost/benefit calculus occurs in other parts of the world.

A paradigm shift is needed in the way we produce, use and treat nutrients, from a dominantly ‘linear’ approach to a much more cyclic approach with substantial recovery of ‘waste’ nutrients. Without this change our oceans will continue to degrade through increased hypoxic zones with disastrous consequences to coastal communities dependent on marine resources for food and livelihoods. The ‘business as usual’ approach where we use sizeable fossil fuel energy resources to convert atmospheric nitrogen to fertiliser for production of food, and then use significant energy and infrastructure through conventional wastewater treatment to convert a portion of this reactive nitrogen back to atmospheric nitrogen, is highly wasteful. A move to a far more efficient and closed recycling approach to nutrients will not only protect the freshwater and ocean environment from pollution but will improve livelihoods through creation of new business and job opportunities and reduce fossil fuel energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Green Economy in a Blue World [pdf]

26 January 2012 (AP) – Thailand's revered national symbol, the elephant, may face a new threat of extinction: being poached not just for their tusks, but for their meat.

Two wild elephants were found slaughtered last month in a national park in western Thailand, alerting authorities to the new practice of consuming elephant meat

"The poachers took away the elephants' sex organs and trunks ... for human consumption," Damrong Phidet, director-general of Thailand's wildlife agency, told The Associated Press. Some meat was to be consumed without cooking, like "elephant sashimi," he said.

Consuming elephant meat is not common in Thailand, but some Asian cultures believe consuming animals' reproductive organs can boost sexual prowess.

Damrong said the elephant meat was ordered by restaurants in Phuket, a popular travel destination in the country's south. It wasn't clear if the diners were foreigners.

Poaching elephants is banned, and trafficking or possessing poached animal parts also is illegal. Elephant tusks are sought in the illegal ivory trade, and baby wild elephants are sometimes poached to be trained for talent shows.

"The situation has come to a crisis point. The longer we allow these cruel acts to happen, the sooner they will become extinct," Damrong said.

The quest for ivory remains the top reason poachers kill elephants in Thailand, other environmentalists say.

Soraida Salwala, the founder of Friends of the Asian Elephant foundation, said a full grown pair of tusks could be sold from 1 million to 2 million baht ($31,600 to $63,300), while the estimated value of an elephant's penis is more than 30,000 baht ($950).

"There's only a handful of people who like to eat elephant meat, but once there's demand, poachers will find it hard to resist the big money," she cautioned.

Thailand has fewer than 3,000 wild elephants and about 4,000 domesticated elephants, according to the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department.

The pachyderms were a mainstay of the logging industry in the northern and western parts of the country until logging contracts were revoked in the late 1980s.

Domesticated animals today are used mainly for heavy lifting and entertainment.

New extinction risk to Thai elephants: eating them