Desdemona Despair

By John Vidal, www.guardian.co.uk
Friday 26 November 2010 16.52 GMT

Last month I went on an extraordinary, epic journey through the Andes mountains of Peru and Ecuador. The aim was to record the stories of the largely hidden people on the frontline of climate change, and see how communities and governments are trying to adapt.

I began at 16,000ft on the snows of Mount Cayambe in Ecuador where the glaciers are in full retreat, and ended in the oilfields of the Amazon. In between, I came across water conflicts, deserts growing, rivers shrinking, extreme temperatures and diseases spreading, individuals who have seen the snows disappear in their lifetimes and are fearful for their future, and governments seriously worried that they will soon be unable to feed or provide water and power for their populations.

Climate change has fallen off the political agenda in rich countries since the shambles of the Copenhagen summit last year, and the headlines have been dominated by global recession. But while politicians fail to act, the phenomenon continues unabated. In the past week, the three major institutes that calculate global warming have said 2010 will at least tie for the hottest year yet recorded, and it is widely expected that global carbon dioxide emissions will hit record levels.

This year summer temperatures in Russia and central Asia were 7.8°C above average for a whole month, the Pakistan floods affected more than 20 million people, and temperature records were set in 17 countries from Finland to Iraq, Burma and Colombia. Again, there was a near-record melting of Arctic sea ice and the UN has recorded more than 700 extreme-weather related disasters.

Yet most of the world has never heard the phrase "climate change" and does not understand the science behind man-induced climate change. Hundreds of millions of people are having to adapt without help to the major changes in the climate which they can see are taking place, for which they are not responsible.

Next week 193 governments meet in Cancún, Mexico, to thrash out a new climate deal. There is no prospect of a legally binding agreement for several years. Instead, there is a massive gap between the pledges made so far by the rich and the actions that science says are needed to avoid the worst of climate change. Latin America, home to 500 million people, will lead the world in demanding more ambition and urgency. This is my account of what I saw there.

4,698m (15,420ft) Mount Cayambe, Ecuador: We are dead on the equator but the wind whips snow from the glaciers and icefields on Ecuador's third highest mountain. The 5,897m (19,350ft) peak is shrouded in cloud but the ice, which used to stretch many kilometres down the mountain, has retreated 600m (2,000ft) up the mountain in 30 years. "Ecuador has nearly lost one third of its ice," says the glaciologist Bolivar Caceres, the head of the government's glacier and meteorology unit. "The speed has been incredible. It started in the 1980s and is still accelerating. The glaciers have all retreated miles. Cayambe has lost 40% of its ice mass, possibly 10% in just the last decade."

His predictions, however, are based on a 1°C rise in temperatures in the next 80 years, which other glaciologists say could be too conservative.

4,100m (13,450ft) Pampa Corral, near Cusco, Peru: The farmer Julio Hanneco grows 215 varieties of potatoes in his highland village. "I live close to two glaciers. They used to give us light in the night and water. I would only have to walk a few metres and I could touch one. Now they have gone. It takes a whole day to get close to one. There have been so many changes in the climate and I don't understand what is happening. The seasons used to be certain and we would know when to plant crops. I feel disoriented. I fear soon we will have no water. If that happens it would be the end of the world for us."

4,058m (13,313ft) La Paz, Bolivia: New peer-reviewed, US-government funded research suggests that Bolivia and Peru face catastrophic food and water shortages if temperatures rise as predicted. Researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), found that Lake Titicaca had twice shrunk 85% following temperature rises only 2-3°C higher than now. "The implications would be profound for over two million people," says NSF's Paul Filmer. In a separate analysis, the cost of climate change to Bolivia, South America's poorest country, could be over 7% of its GDP by 2025 – almost as much as the country's combined spending on health and education. …

A climate journey: From the peaks of the Andes to the Amazon's oilfields via Wit’s End

By Staff Writers
Nov 26, 2010

Nairobi (AFP) - Most African countries will fail to attain the United Nation's Millennium Goals on access to water and sanitation, the world body's environment agency said on Friday.

"Only eight countries in Africa are expected to attain the MDG target of reducing by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to basic sanitation by 2015," the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said.

The eight countries on course to fulfill that provision of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, South Africa, Angola and Botswana.

The finding is part of research carried out for the Africa Water Atlas which UNEP said uses hundreds of "before and after" shots and satellite images to reveal the continent's water crisis with unprecedented clarity.

UNEP also said that only 26 out of 53 African countries were on track to reach the MDG target of halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to drinking water by 2015.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the water atlas provided a volume of information that could be used to tackle Africa's water issues more effectively.

"From the dams triggering erosion on the Nile Delta to pollution in the Niger River Basin, the way infrastructure development or uncontrolled oil spills are impacting the lives and livelihoods of people are all brought into sharp relief," he said.

"The challenges of water scarcity in Africa are compounded by high population growth, socioeconomic and climate change impacts and, in some cases, policy choices," the statement said. …

Africa to fall short on water Millennium Goals: UN

By LESLIE KAUFMAN
November 25, 2010

NORFOLK, Va. — In this section of the Larchmont neighborhood, built in a sharp “u” around a bay off the Lafayette River, residents pay close attention to the lunar calendar, much as other suburbanites might attend to the daily flow of commuter traffic.

If the moon is going to be full the night before Hazel Peck needs her car, for example, she parks it on a parallel block, away from the river. The next morning, she walks through a neighbor’s backyard to avoid the two-to-three-foot-deep puddle that routinely accumulates on her street after high tides.

For Ms. Peck and her neighbors, it is the only way to live with the encroaching sea.

As sea levels rise, tidal flooding is increasingly disrupting life here and all along the East Coast, a development many climate scientists link to global warming.

But Norfolk is worse off. Situated just west of the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, it is bordered on three sides by water, including several rivers, like the Lafayette, that are actually long tidal streams that feed into the bay and eventually the ocean.

Like many other cities, Norfolk was built on filled-in marsh. Now that fill is settling and compacting. In addition, the city is in an area where significant natural sinking of land is occurring. The result is that Norfolk has experienced the highest relative increase in sea level on the East Coast — 14.5 inches since 1930, according to readings by the Sewells Point naval station here.

Climate change is a subject of friction in Virginia. The state’s attorney general, Ken T. Cuccinelli II, is trying to prove that a prominent climate scientist engaged in fraud when he was a researcher at the University of Virginia. But the residents of coastal neighborhoods here are less interested in the debate than in the real-time consequences of a rise in sea level.

When Ms. Peck, now 75 and a caretaker to her husband, moved here 40 years ago, tidal flooding was an occasional hazard.

“Last month,” she said recently, “there were eight or nine days the tide was so doggone high it was difficult to drive.” …

“If sea level is a constant, your coastal infrastructure is your most valuable real estate, and it makes sense to invest in it,” Mr. Stiles said, “but with sea level rising, it becomes a money pit.”

Many Norfolk residents hope their problems will serve as a warning.

“We are the front lines of climate change,” said Jim Schultz, a science and technology writer who lives on Richmond Crescent near Ms. Peck. “No one who has a house here is a skeptic.” …

“The fact is that there is not enough engineering to go around to mitigate the rising sea,” he said. “For us, it is the bitter reality of trying to live in a world that is getting warmer and wetter.”

Front-Line City in Virginia Tackles Rise in Sea

Sea surface and air temperature records for the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sea surface temperature averages for the Gulf of St. Lawrence from May to November, from 1 km2 resolution NOAA AVHRR imagery, are available since 1985 (blue line) and show a 2ºC warming trend between a cooler and a warmer period centered around 1993. The series is well correlated with the average air temperature at nine stations selected around the Gulf available since 1945 (green line), with air temperature data from Charlottetown available from three stations since 1873, and with air temperature data from Pointe-au-Père collected since 1876.

Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat Science Advisory Report 2010/030, 2010 Canadian Marine Ecosystem Status and Trends Report [pdf], July 2010

By Sylvia Westall
Mon Nov 29, 2010 8:25am EST

OLKILUOTO, Finland (Reuters) - On a flat, low-lying island nestled in crisp waters off the west coast of Finland, the first nuclear power plant ordered in Western Europe since 1986 is inching toward start-up.

Over 4,000 builders and engineers are at work on the sprawling Olkiluoto 3 project, whose turbine hall is so cavernous it could house two Boeing 747 jets stacked on top of each other.

When it is dark, which in winter is most of the day, enormous spotlights throw into focus scores of scaffolding towers and the red hauling equipment that encircle the grey, unfinished reactor building.

The heavy reactor vessel, made to withstand temperatures over 350 degrees Celsius, has been gingerly lifted into place by two cranes.

Inside the building, a dozen workers carrying a single pipe across their shoulders create a human caterpillar that carefully wends its way through tarpaulin-covered tunnels lit by lamps and chinks of daylight.

Walking through the expansive complex, still missing a domed cover on the reactor building, it takes a while to make out a peculiar but important detail: many of the engineers and building experts working here are in their late 50s and early 60s; some are in their 30s, but few are in between.

There's a hole in the nuclear workforce, not just in Finland but across the Western world. For the moment, the operator of the Olkiluoto 3 plant, power utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), is getting by with its most experienced staff. As those workers retire, though, the skills shortage could become a crisis.

"The nuclear industry has been in the desert for years and years and the question is how to revamp it and how to revamp human resources," says Colette Lewiner from Cap Gemini, a consultancy firm which raised concerns about the aging nuclear workforce in a report in 2008 and has warned "there will be no nuclear power renaissance" without efforts to tackle the problem. "The industry needs to ramp up and it needs to do it quickly."

Like a growing number of nations, Finland sees nuclear power as vital to its future prosperity. Olkiluoto 3 is the biggest investment in the history of Finnish industry. Helsinki wants nuclear power to provide more than a third of the country's electricity by 2020, reducing its dependence on carbon-emitting fossil fuels and energy imports from Russia. Globally, 15 countries are currently building 63 nuclear power plants, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N.'s atomic body. More than 65 additional states, newcomers to the technology, are jostling for advice on nuclear power.

Completion of Finland's new 1,600 megawatt reactor, built by French energy giant Areva and designed to withstand a plane crashing into it, is running four years late and will turn out far more expensive than its original 3 billion euro price tag. Areva alone has already taken 2.7 billion euros in writedowns on the project.

But delays and cost overruns are nothing compared to the skills crisis the project has helped expose, which is already affecting the nuclear sector around the world. "The global community is facing this big problem -- where is this human resource?" says Yanko Yanev, head of the IAEA's nuclear knowledge management unit, set up 10 years ago when the Vienna-based agency first sounded the alarm. "When we started this program, people said, 'Ah, give us a break!' Now they are realizing the problem is more complex than they had first thought." …

Special Report: Nuclear's lost generation

By JACK HEDIN
November 27, 2010

THE news from this Midwestern farm is not good. The past four years of heavy rains and flash flooding here in southern Minnesota have left me worried about the future of agriculture in America’s grain belt. For some time computer models of climate change have been predicting just these kinds of weather patterns, but seeing them unfold on our farm has been harrowing nonetheless.

My family and I produce vegetables, hay and grain on 250 acres in one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. While our farm is not large by modern standards, its roots are deep in this region; my great-grandfather homesteaded about 80 miles from here in the late 1800s.

He passed on a keen sensitivity to climate. His memoirs, self-published in the wake of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, describe tornadoes, droughts and other extreme weather. But even he would be surprised by the erratic weather we have experienced in the last decade.

In August 2007, a series of storms produced a breathtaking 23 inches of rain in 36 hours. The flooding that followed essentially erased our farm from the map. Fields were swamped under churning waters, which in places left a foot or more of debris and silt in their wake. Cornstalks were wrapped around bridge railings 10 feet above normal stream levels. We found butternut squashes from our farm two miles downstream, stranded in sapling branches five feet above the ground. A hillside of mature trees collapsed and slid hundreds of feet into a field below.

The machine shop on our farm was inundated with two feet of filthy runoff. When the water was finally gone, every tool, machine and surface was bathed in a toxic mix of used motor oil and rancid mud.

Our farm was able to stay in business only after receiving grants and low-interest private and government loans. Having experienced lesser floods in 2004 and 2005, my family and I decided the only prudent action would be to use the money to move over the winter to better, drier ground eight miles away.

This move proved prescient: in June 2008 torrential rains and flash flooding returned. The federal government declared the second natural disaster in less than a year for the region. Hundreds of acres of our neighbors’ cornfields were again underwater and had to be replanted. Earthmovers spent days regrading a 280-acre field just across the road from our new home. Had we remained at the old place, we would have lost a season’s worth of crops before they were a quarter grown.

The 2010 growing season has again been extraordinarily wet. The more than 20 inches of rain that I measured in my rain gauge in June and July disrupted nearly every operation on our farm. We managed to do a bare minimum of field preparation, planting and cultivating through midsummer, thanks only to the well-drained soils beneath our new home.

But in two weeks in July, moisture-fueled disease swept through a three-acre onion field, reducing tens of thousands of pounds of healthy onions to mush. With rain falling several times a week and our tractors sitting idle, weeds took over a seven-acre field of carrots, requiring many times the normal amount of hand labor to control. Crop losses topped $100,000 by mid-August.

The most recent onslaught was a pair of heavy storms in late September that dropped 8.2 inches of rain. Representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency again toured the area, and another federal disaster declaration was narrowly averted. But evidence of the loss was everywhere: debris piled up in unharvested cornfields, large washouts in fields recently stripped of pumpkins or soybeans, harvesting equipment again sitting idle. …

Climate change, I believe, may eventually pose an existential threat to my way of life. A family farm like ours may simply not be able to adjust quickly enough to such unendingly volatile weather. We can’t charge enough for our crops in good years to cover losses in the ever-more-frequent bad ones. We can’t continue to move to better, drier ground. No new field drainage scheme will help us as atmospheric carbon concentrations edge up to 400 parts per million; hardware and technology alone can’t solve problems of this magnitude. …

But my farm, and my neighbors’ farms, can contribute only so much. Americans need to see our experience as a call for national action. The country must get serious about climate-change legislation and making real changes in our daily lives to reduce carbon emissions. The future of our nation’s food supply hangs in the balance.

An Almanac of Extreme Weather

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2010) — In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes, NASA researchers determined Earth's largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate change.

Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.

They reported an average warming rate of 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.81 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

"Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world," said Schneider, lead author of the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes."

Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake's natural ecosystem. …

The largest and most consistent area of warming was northern Europe. The warming trend was slightly weaker in southeastern Europe, around the Black and Caspian seas and Kazakhstan. The trends increased slightly farther east in Siberia, Mongolia and northern China.

In North America, trends were slightly higher in the southwest United States than in the Great Lakes region. Warming was weaker in the tropics and in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The results were consistent with the expected changes associated with global warming. …

Earth's lakes are warming, NASA study finds

By Staff Writers
Nov 27, 2010

Paris (AFP) - Fishing nations opted Saturday to leave catch limits for eastern Atlantic bluefin tuna virtually unchanged despite concerns that the species is perilously close to collapse.

Annual quotas for the sushi mainstay will be trimmed from 13,500 tonnes this year to 12,900 tonnes in 2011, the 48-member International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) decided at the close of a 10-day meeting in Paris.

Some nations here favoured a much lower cap, or even a suspension of fishing, to ensure bluefin's long-term viability.

But industry representatives and the governments that back them insisted the new catch limits were sufficient.

"They will make it possible to reach maximum sustainable yield by 2022, which represents a balance between respecting natural resources and preserving the social-economic fabric," said Bruno Le Maire, France's agriculture and fisheries minister in a statement.

ICCAT scientists calculate that the new catch levels will put eastern Atlantic bluefin on track for a 70 percent chance of reaching sustainability by that date.

The same scientists, however, caution that the data upon which these estimates are based is spotty at best, while conservationists counter that a 30 percent risk of failure is too high. …

The United States, which had pushed for a sharper reduction, expressed disappointment.

"I can't say that we acted in as precautionary a manner as I would have liked," said Russell Smith, a Department of Commerce official and head of the US delegation.

Currently, eastern Atlantic bluefin are at 85 percent of historical levels and 30 percent of "maximum sustainable yield", the target for recovery.

Green groups reacted angrily.

"This outcome confirms that the bluefin's days are numbered and has demonstrated ICCAT's inability to act on its own mandate," said Greenpeace International oceans campaigner Oliver Knowles.

"The word 'conservation' should be removed from ICCAT's name." ..

Sue Lieberman of the Pew Environment Group said current quotas did not take into account ICCAT's history of mismanagement.

"It ignores all the evidence of fraud, illegal fishing and laundering," she said. …

Bluefin tuna gets scant relief at fisheries meet

By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune
Tuesday, November 23, 2010, 11:58 AM 

A peer-reviewed report on the controversial federal estimates of how much oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster remained in the Gulf of Mexico in mid-July found that the estimates were largely accurate, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco said Tuesday.

Lubchenco and other Obama administration officials released a pie chart on Aug. 4 that concluded that 26 percent of the 4.9 million barrels of oil released from the Macondo well remained as "residual," on or just below the surface as light sheen and weathered tarballs, washed ashore or  buried in sand and sediments.

The original report relied on the results of the government's "oil budget calculator" that was created as a tracking system for the gushing oil, and was being used to direct response and clean-up operations, including the use of offshore in-situ burns of surface oil and of dispersants. 

The new report does not address how much oil remains in the Gulf today or the ultimate impact of the oil release, Lubchenco said. That information is awaiting the compilation of results of more than 125 sampling expeditions using 25 deepwater vessels, which have produced 30,000 water and sediment samples from areas along the coast from the Texas-Louisiana border to the Florida Keys and 300 miles out to sea, she said. …

The biggest change in the new report is in the estimate of the amount of oil that was turned into tiny droplets by chemical dispersants. The original report said 16 percent of the oil had been naturally dispersed, while 8 percent was chemically dispersed.

Tuesday's report found that 16 percent of the oil was chemically dispersed and only 13 percent was naturally dispersed. The additional oil moved into the chemically-dispersed category included 2 percent that was originally thought to have evaporated or dissolved, reducing that category to 23 percent, and 3 percent from the "residual" category.

Remaining the same were estimates of the amount of oil that was directly recovered, 17 percent; burned, 5 percent, and skimmed, 3 percent.

Lubchenco said information from sampling taken during research cruises helped the authors of the new report in changing the estimates.

The new report, authored by scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, National Institute of Standards and Technology and NOAA, reduced to 23 percent the amount of residual oil. But Lubchenco said both the earlier estimate and the new estimate were within the range of error calculated in the new report. …

Controversial federal estimates of how much oil remained in Gulf in July were mostly accurate, study says

Met Office Press Office
26 November 2010

Ahead of the latest UN talks on climate change in Mexico, the Met Office analyses long- and short-term trends in climate and reveals that the evidence for man-made warming has grown even stronger in the last year.

There is overwhelming evidence of warming in a wide range of climate indicators, not just surface temperature. The picture for short-term trends is more complicated. Short-term variations are affected by natural variability and other factors as well as long-term warming. In the last 10 years the rate of warming has decreased whilst the rate of loss of sea-ice extent has increased — an apparent contradiction — the Met Office’s latest analysis of the science shows that this is entirely consistent with our understanding of how the climate behaves and with our model projections.

In providing the evidence of continued warming and drawing from the work of more than 20 institutions worldwide, the Met Office Hadley Centre compiled results for a range of climate indicators — not just surface temperature. The multiple data sets used for each indicator are from diverse sources such as satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, ocean buoys and field surveys.

Dr Matt Palmer, an ocean observations specialist at the Met Office, said: “It is clear from the observational evidence across a wide range of indicators that the world is warming. As well as a clear increase in air temperature observed above both the land and sea, we see observations which are all consistent with increasing greenhouse gases.”

These changes include:

• Increases in water temperature at the sea surface down a depth of hundreds of metres.
• An increase in humidity as a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.
• Increases in sea level as warmer waters expand and land-ice melts.
• Shrinking of Arctic sea-ice, glaciers and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover.

Since the late 1970s the long-term rate of surface warming has been about 0.16 °C per decade. However, over the last decade the rate of warming has decreased.

Natural variability within the climate system could explain all of this recent decrease. Other factors could have contributed.

• Changes in stratospheric water vapour
• Solar variability
• Increased aerosol emissions from Asia

The rate of warming has been underestimated in the last decade because of:

• changes to sea-surface temperature measurement practices;
• strong warming in the Arctic — where there are fewer observations.

Dr Vicky Pope said: “Our analysis confirms that the signals of warming are as strong as they ever have been. Improving our understanding of the factors that affect short- and long-term trends is helping us to improve our predictions of the future, helping others to make choices on mitigation and adaptation providing a more resilient future.”

Scientific evidence is Met Office focus at Cancun

By Joe Romm
November 26, 2010

We know from simple on-the-ground knowledge that the 2010 drought was extreme, leading to record lows on some major rivers in the Amazon region and an upsurge in the number of forest fires. Preliminary analyses suggest that the 2010 drought was more widespread and severe than the 2005 event. The 2005 drought was identified as a 1-in-100 year type event.

That’s from an email to CP by forest scientist Simon Lewis, a leading expert on the Amazon (see Scientists: “There are multiple, consistent lines of evidence from ground-based studies published in the peer-reviewed literature that Amazon forests are, indeed, very susceptible to drought stress”).

The figure above is from the University College London Global Drought Monitor via a post by WWF’s Nick Sundt, that I am reposting below.  It represents a 1-month assessment period, through 16 October 2010. …

Another extreme drought hits the Amazon, raising climate change concerns - With exclusive commentary by forest scientist Simon Lewis

By lancefreeman76
April 5, 2010

Americans, I have some bad news for you:

You have the worst quality of life in the developed world – by a wide margin.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia, you’d be rioting in the streets calling for a better life. In fact, the average Australian or Singaporean taxi driver has a much better standard of living than the typical American white-collar worker.

I know this because I am an American, and I escaped from the prison you call home.

I have lived all around the world, in wealthy countries and poor ones, and there is only one country I would never consider living in again: The United States of America. The mere thought of it fills me with dread.

Consider this: you are the only people in the developed world without a single-payer health system. Everyone in Western Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand has a single-payer system. If they get sick, they can devote all their energies to getting well. If you get sick, you have to battle two things at once: your illness and the fear of financial ruin. Millions of Americans go bankrupt every year due to medical bills, and tens of thousands die each year because they have no insurance or insufficient insurance. And don’t believe for a second that rot about America having the world’s best medical care or the shortest waiting lists: I’ve been to hospitals in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore, and Thailand, and every one was better than the “good” hospital I used to go to back home. The waits were shorter, the facilities more comfortable, and the doctors just as good.

This is ironic, because you need a good health system more than anyone else in the world. Why? Because your lifestyle is almost designed to make you sick.

Let’s start with your diet: Much of the beef you eat has been exposed to fecal matter in processing. Your chicken is contaminated with salmonella. Your stock animals and poultry are pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics. In most other countries, the government would act to protect consumers from this sort of thing; in the United States, the government is bought off by industry to prevent any effective regulations or inspections. In a few years, the majority of all the produce for sale in the United States will be from genetically modified crops, thanks to the cozy relationship between Monsanto Corporation and the United States government. Worse still, due to the vast quantities of high-fructose corn syrup Americans consume, fully one-third of children born in the United States today will be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives.

Of course, it’s not just the food that’s killing you, it’s the drugs. If you show any sign of life when you’re young, they’ll put you on Ritalin. Then, when you get old enough to take a good look around, you’ll get depressed, so they’ll give you Prozac. If you’re a man, this will render you chemically impotent, so you’ll need Viagra to get it up. Meanwhile, your steady diet of trans-fat-laden food is guaranteed to give you high cholesterol, so you’ll get a prescription for Lipitor. Finally, at the end of the day, you’ll lay awake at night worrying about losing your health plan, so you’ll need Lunesta to go to sleep.

With a diet guaranteed to make you sick and a health system designed to make sure you stay that way, what you really need is a long vacation somewhere. Unfortunately, you probably can’t take one. I’ll let you in on little secret: if you go to the beaches of Thailand, the mountains of Nepal, or the coral reefs of Australia, you’ll probably be the only American in sight. And you’ll be surrounded crowds of happy Germans, French, Italians, Israelis, Scandinavians and wealthy Asians. Why? Because they’re paid well enough to afford to visit these places AND they can take vacations long enough to do so. Even if you could scrape together enough money to go to one of these incredible places, by the time you recovered from your jetlag, it would time to get on a plane and rush back to your job.

If you think I’m making this up, check the stats on average annual vacation days by country:

Finland: 44
Italy: 42
France: 39
Germany: 35
UK: 25
Japan: 18
USA: 12

The fact is, they work you like dogs in the United States. This should come as no surprise: the United States never got away from the plantation/sweat shop labor model and any real labor movement was brutally suppressed. Unless you happen to be a member of the ownership class, your options are pretty much limited to barely surviving on service-sector wages or playing musical chairs for a spot in a cubicle (a spot that will be outsourced to India next week anyway). The very best you can hope for is to get a professional degree and then milk the system for a slice of the middle-class pie. And even those who claw their way into the middle class are but one illness or job loss away from poverty. Your jobs aren’t secure. Your company has no loyalty to you. They’ll play you off against your coworkers for as long as it suits them, then they’ll get rid of you. …

America: The Grim Truth via Club Orlov

By Mark Grossi, The Fresno Bee
Nov. 24, 2010

After investing millions of dollars, Westlands Water District is pulling out of an extensive planning effort to heal the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, saying high-ranking federal officials are derailing it.

The draft of the Bay Delta Conservation Plan offers hope of restoring slumping water deliveries to west Valley farmers, Westlands officials said this week. But the Department of Interior advocates more limits on deliveries, they said.

"We're not going to spend another dime on this," said Jean Sagouspe, Westlands board president. "They changed the goals because they didn't like what the studies say."

Sagouspe wrote a letter Monday to Interior deputy secretary Dennis Hayes, saying federal officials are sending the message that they will limit water exports even if the ecosystem would not be harmed.

Interior officials Tuesday said the Westlands claim is baseless. No additional restrictions have been proposed, they said. The planning process is expected to last until late 2012 or 2013.

In a response letter Tuesday, Hayes wrote that the conservation plan is too important for Westlands to leave the process now.

"It will be a disservice to all involved if Westlands prematurely walks away from the process based on unfounded conclusions or the mere fact that a range of operational criteria are being reviewed," he wrote.

The exchange between the district and Interior is among many disagreements over the delta, dating to earlier delta restoration efforts in the 1990s.

Environmentalists and fishing groups are involved, too. Last week they criticized the draft conservation plan as a water grab for water users such as Westlands and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. …

Westlands district pulls out of delta water plan

By Staff Writers
Nov 22, 2010

United Nations (AFP) - United Nations leaders will demand "concrete results" from the looming Cancun climate summit as global warming is accelerating, a top UN organizer of the event said Monday.

Robert Orr, UN under secretary general for planning, said the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on global warming will be much worse than the last one.

Representatives from 194 countries are to meet in the Mexican resort city of Cancun from November 29 to December 10 for a new attempt to strike a deal to curb greenhouse gases after 2012.

Orr told reporters that negotiators heading for the Cancun conference "need to remind themselves, the longer we delay, the more we will pay both in terms of lives and in terms of money."

He said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would make it clear to world leaders in Cancun "that we should not take any comfort in the climate deniers' siren call."

"The evidence shows us quite the opposite-- that we can't rest easy at all" as scientists agree that climate change "is happening in an accelerated way."

"As preparations are underway for the next IPCC report, just about everything that you will see in the next report will be more dramatic than the last report, because that is where all the data is pointing."

The fourth IPCC assessment released in 2007 said that global warming is "unequivocal" and mainly caused by human activity.

Its next report, involving contributions from thousands of scientists around the world, is due in 2014. …

Next climate warming report will be dramatically worse: UN

Honolulu HI (SPX) Nov 23, 2010 - Current state-of-the-art global climate models predict substantial warming in response to increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The models, though, disagree widely in the magnitude of the warming we can expect.

The disagreement among models is mainly due to the different representation of clouds. Some models predict that global mean cloud cover will increase in a warmer climate and the increased reflection of solar radiation will limit the predicted global warming. Other models predict reduced cloudiness and magnified warming.

In a paper [pdf] that has just appeared in the Journal of Climate, researchers from the University of Hawaii Manoa (UHM) have assessed the performance of current global models in simulating clouds and have presented a new approach to determining the expected cloud feedbacks in a warmer climate.

Lead author Axel Lauer at the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at UHM notes, "All the global climate models we analyzed have serious deficiencies in simulating the properties of clouds in present-day climate. It is unfortunate that the global models' greatest weakness may be in the one aspect that is most critical for predicting the magnitude of global warming."

To study the clouds, the researchers applied a model representing only a limited region of the atmosphere over the eastern Pacific Ocean and adjacent land areas. The clouds in this region are known to greatly influence present climate, yet current global models do poorly in representing them.

The regional model, developed at the IPRC, successfully simulates key features of the region's present-day cloud fields, including the observed response of clouds to El Nino. Having evaluated the model's simulation of present-day conditions, the researchers examined the response of simulated clouds in a warmer climate such as it might be in 100 years from now.

The tendency for clouds to thin and cloud cover to reduce was more pronounced in this model than in any of the current global models.

Co-author Kevin Hamilton concludes, "If our model results prove to be representative of the real global climate, then climate is actually more sensitive to perturbations by greenhouse gases than current global models predict, and even the highest warming predictions would underestimate the real change we could see." …

Study Could Mean Greater Anticipated Global Warming

By Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk 
Monday 22 November 2010 17.54 GMT

Trawlermen from Shetland have admitted illegally catching more than £37m worth of mackerel and herring during a long-running plot to sidestep the strict quotas introduced to protect against overfishing.

Six trawler skippers today pleaded guilty at the high court in Edinburgh to falsifying records to avoid declaring £15.25m worth of catches between 2002 and 2005. Fourteen men have now pleaded guilty to illegally landing herring and mackerel in Lerwick over that period, a once widespread practice known as "black landings", after a long and complex investigation by fisheries officials, prosecutors and police. In what is believed to be the largest case of its kind in the UK, the skippers admitted making a total of 524 undeclared landings worth £37,212,271 between 2002 and 2005, during three separate court hearings this year.

The skippers, who are expected to be sentenced next year, face substantial confiscation orders and unlimited fines and prosecutors are to be allowed to seize money and assets. A prominent fish processing company in Lerwick, Shetland Catch Ltd, has also pleaded guilty to helping all 14 men make the undeclared landings. Prosecutors said they expected further, related cases to come to court.

Scott Pattison, director of operations at the Crown Office, said: "The ramifications of overfishing on such a scale are extremely serious, due to the potentially devastating impact for the marine environment and the fishing industry itself."

The skippers were accused of "knowingly or recklessly" logging false information about the size of their catches, despite having strictly controlled quotas. Prosecutors said in all these cases "there was a false declaration of the quantity of fish landed. This was the principal method of deception used by the skipper accused throughout the relevant period."

Cephas Ralph, the head of compliance at Marine Scotland, the government fisheries agency, said these offences undermined efforts to make sure fishing was sustainable. "Illegal fishing is a crime committed against the marine environment and the many honest fishermen who abide by the regulations and fish responsibly," he said. …

Scottish fishermen plead guilty to 'black landing' of mackerel and herring

The Daily Telegraph
November 24, 2010 12:00AM

COMMERCIAL tuna fishermen have been accused of using whale sharks as giant lures to increase their catch. Whale sharks naturally attract schools of fish and Greenpeace has accused the industry of setting their nets around the gentle giants after it obtained photos showing a juvenile whale shark being hoisted off a boat.

Whale sharks are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and are protected in a number of countries, including Australia.

Next month the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission will debate banning the practice after research found boats were targeting whale sharks more often than reported.

The commission found nets were being set around whale sharks 13 times more often than captains were reporting in their log books and that 60 of the 180 whale sharks caught in the giant purse seine nets had died.

The Australian and New Zealand Governments have made a joint proposal seeking to extend the ban to all marine mammals.

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke said the practice of using the sharks as tuna lures was unacceptable.

"Setting on these species by purse seine vessels is unacceptable to Australia," Mr Burke said.

Sharks used as tuna lures

By John Vidal, environment editor, www.guardian.co.uk 
Monday 22 November 2010 15.15 GMT

Marine scientists will this week appeal for volunteers to watch for stranded whales and dolphins and report instances as soon as possible to understand why so many are being found on beaches.

It follows the unexplained mass stranding of 33 pilot whales found dead on Rutland island off the coast of northwest Ireland last month and more than 500 dolphins, porpoises and whales stranded on British beaches this year.

New figures to be released this week will show that whale and dolphin strandings are increasing. According to the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) there have been 9,494 recorded strandings on British coasts in the past 20 years, but the number could be much higher because many are likely to go unreported. Most are washed ashore dead but around 10% are still alive.

Strandings have increased by nearly 25% since central records were first kept by CSIP. "In the first 10 years there were between 300 and 400 a year, but since 2000 there have been more. The highest number was in 2003 when 800 were found stranded. Now there are around 500 a year," said Robert Deaville, project manager for CSIP.

"We under-report the numbers. There are several very good volunteer networks in the south west, Wales and Scotland, but we do need more people in England," said Deaville. …

Post mortems show that most stranded animals have died from natural causes but high-powered sonar used by navies and the oil and gas industry is increasingly associated with deaths. …

Scientists think the large pod of pilot whales found dead on Rutland island, Donegal last month was the same seen off the outer Hebrides a few days earlier. It was reported that the Royal Navy had been exercising in the region and could have disoriented the pod with its sonar.

Pilot whales are known to be sensitive to acoustic disorientation and have been found to suffer from a condition known as "gas embolism", which is common to the bends suffered by human divers. …

• For more information about how to report a stranding visit the CSIP website.

Keep an eye out for stranded dolphins, urge scientists

By Athar Parvaiz
November 15, 2010

The devastating flood that struck the normally arid desert of Ladakh, north-west India, in August has multiplied the worries of local farmers, already struggling with water shortages and harsh climatic conditions. Flashfloods and mudslides killed 233 people and damaged 14.2 square kilometres of agricultural land. 

Tucked high up in the western Himalayas, Ladakh is a sparsely populated, rugged desert where people struggle to turn barren and parched soil into cultivable land. The soil of Ladakh is not fertile and absorbs little water. Average rainfall is only 50 to 70 millimetres a year. In these adverse conditions, farming is an unenviable task, but diligent farmers, with support from NGOs, have created an irrigation network covering 50 square kilometres of agricultural land in Ladakh. This allows them to live off the land, against the odds.

But nothing prepared farmers for August’s weather events. Unprecedented cloudbursts triggered flash floods, which in turn deposited thick layers of debris on the agricultural land and destroyed over 70% of the irrigation network built up by the farmers over years of hard work. “Crops can only be cultivated on this land after the flood debris is cleared and the top soil is exposed,” said Lobzang Tsultim, director of local NGO Leh Nutrition Project. “Obviously, the farmers can’t clear this debris manually, they need JCB machines, which the government and NGOs need to provide to them.”

According to Tsultim, the government and non-profit groups are making no effort to restore the damaged land, on which the farmers’ livelihoods depend, to its original state. Apart from tourism, farming is the main occupation of people in Leh district. An average farmer makes up to US$1000 (6,680 yuan) every year by selling crops like barley, potatoes, wheat and other products to the Indian army. 

The recent floods have intensified local people’s fears about the shifting climate. They are unable to decipher or explain the erratic weather patterns, but have no doubts that conditions are changing.

“Glaciers are receding rapidly and the winters are getting shorter and warmer. The snowfall which we do get, melts quickly,” said Tashi Namgiyal, a farmer. He added that the popular “Chadar Trek”, a crossing local Tibetans have made for generations during winter, when the Zanskar River surface – part of the Indus watershed – freezes solid, is now possible only for two months. It was previously possible from December to March.“We are now seeing pests in upper villages that used to be found only in villages lying lower,” he added, pointing out other signs of changing conditions. “We are also witnessing shifts in sowing and harvesting of barley.”

Tsultim agrees with this assessment: “Whether you call it man-made climate change or attribute it to other natural process, we are experiencing a lot of changes around us. Our region is arid and we have small glaciers which we draw water from. But over the last several years, many of these glaciers have receded. Not only this, we have seen some of our limited pasture lands drying up because of water scarcity.” …

Fragile adaptation in Ladakh

By Sean O'Grady, Economics Editor
Thursday, 18 November 2010

A food crisis could overtake the world in 2011, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, an agency of the United Nations.

Climate change, speculation, competing uses such as biofuels and soaring demand from emerging markets in East Asia are the factors that will push global food prices sharply higher next year, claims the FAO.

The FAO warns the world to "be prepared" for more price hikes and volatility if production and stocks do not respond. Price hikes of 41 per cent in wheat, 47 per cent in maize and a third in sugar are foreseen by the FAO. The last time that happened it sparked riots from Mexico to Indonesia.

In its latest Food Outlook [pdf] the FAO says that the prices of many staple crops will rise by up to half next year, with many returning to the peaks seen during the food crisis of 2008, or even exceeding them in some cases. Apart from driving inflation higher in Britain and the rest of the Western world, another bout of food price hyperinflation has grim implications for the poorest people on the planet, even now hardly able to afford to feed themselves.

The FAO's broad global index of food prices has risen to 197.1 points, up about 5 per cent on the previous month alone, and already beyond the levels seen in the initial stages of the prices spikes in 2007 to 2008.

The report states: "Following a series of unexpected downward revisions to crop forecasts in several major producing countries, world prices have risen alarmingly and at a much faster pace than in 2007-08.

"For major cereals, production must expand substantially to meet utilisation and to reconstitute world reserves and farmers are likely to respond to the prevailing strong prices by expanding plantings." …

Environmentalists will be especially concerned that the FAO explicitly acknowledges climate change as a factor in jeopardising food supplies. The FAO say that "adverse weather effects are undoubtedly a primary driver of wheat production shortfalls and, with climate change, may increasingly be so". If that does indeed prove to be the case then food prices seem set for a rise to levels unprecedented in modern times. …

Climate change and disease will spark new food crisis, says UN

By Staff Writers
Nov 21, 2010

Paris (AFP) - Emissions of fossil-fuel gases that stoke climate change edged back less than hoped in 2009 as falls in advanced economies were largely outweighed by rises in China and India, scientists said Sunday.

For 2010, emissions are likely to resume their upward track, scaling a new peak, they warned.

Annual emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of oil, gas and coal were 30.8 billion tonnes, a retreat of only 1.3 percent in 2009 compared with 2008, a record year, they said in a letter to the journal Nature Geoscience.

The global decrease was less than half that had been expected, because emerging giant economies were unaffected by the downturn that hit many large industrialised nations.

In addition, they burned more coal, the biggest source of fossil-fuel carbon, while their economies struggled with a higher "carbon intensity," a measure of fuel-efficiency.

Emissions of fossil-fuel gases in 2009 fell by 11.8 percent in Japan, by 6.9 percent in the United States, by 8.6 percent in Britain, by seven percent in Germany and by 8.4 percent in Russia, the paper said.

In contrast, they rose by eight percent in China, by 6.2 percent in India and 1.4 percent in South Korea.

As a result, China strengthened its unenvied position as the world's No. 1 emitter of fossil-fuel CO2, accounting for a whopping 24 percent of the total.

The United States remained second, with 17 percent. …

There was one spot of good news, though.

CO2 emissions from deforestation fell sharply, thanks to slowing forest loss in tropical countries and to a pickup in reforestation in Europe, temperate zones of Asia and North America.

In the 1990s, emissions from deforestation were more than 25 percent of the global total. In 2009, though, they were only 12 percent.

Despite this, the news for 2010 is likely to be grim. …

No letup in carbon emissions, scientists warn

By Marlowe Hood
21 November 2010

(AFP) PARIS — At least 1.3 million sharks, many listed as endangered, were harvested from the Atlantic in 2008 by industrial-scale fisheries unhampered by catch or size limits, according to a tally released Monday.

The actual figure may be several fold higher due to under-reporting, said the study, released by advocacy group Oceana on the sidelines of a meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

Convening in Paris through November 27, the 48-member ICCAT is charged with ensuring that commercial fisheries are sustainable. It has the authority to set catch quotas and restrictions.

While the global spotlight has been trained on the plight of Atlantic bluefin tuna, many species of high-value sharks are in even more dire straits, say marine biologists. …

Of the 21 species found in the Atlantic, three-quarters are classified as threatened with extinction.

North Atlantic populations of the oceanic white tip, for example, have declined by 70 percent, and hammerheads by more than 99 percent, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Other species -- including the porbeagle, common thresher and shortfin mako -- have also been overexploited, and may be teetering on the brink of viability.

Many are fished for their fins -- prized as a delicacy in Chinese cuisine -- and then tossed, dead or dying, back into the sea once the choice morsels have been sliced off.

The practice is prohibited, but loopholes in the regulation have allowed the ban to be widely ignored. …

Tens of millions of the open-water hunters are extracted from global seas every year.

Regional studies have shown that when shark populations crash the impact cascades down through the food chain, often in unpredictable and deleterious ways.

More than a million Atlantic sharks killed yearly

In July 2010, massive rain in Pakistan led to unprecedented flooding that submerged one-fifth of the country and affected more than 20 million people. While many experts believe the floods were the result of climate change, others say the science is uncertain. Regardless, most agree that natural disasters are occurring more frequently and that the international community is ill-equipped to respond. It is estimated that by 2050, as many as 200 million people will be displaced by natural disasters and climate change. The world’s poorest and most crisis-prone countries will be disproportionately affected.

This report [pdf] explores what climate-induced displacement looks like and outlines steps to ensure that U.S. and international agencies address the threat that climate change poses to economic, political and human security. (See a full list of recommendations on page 20.) By evaluating and learning from the emergency response, the international community can implement more effective mechanisms and programs to prevent and respond to displacement from future natural disasters of this magnitude.

When the flooding began, the United Nations “cluster system” — whereby relief agencies coordinate efforts around a humanitarian service — was unable to respond effectively due to insufficient staff, resources and leadership. The UN should review the mechanisms available to prepare for and respond to large-scale disasters and focus on ways to improve cluster leadership. In regions where future disasters are likely, the UN Country Team should work closely with national governments and in-country climate experts to map at-risk areas and devise potential disaster scenarios. …

If the United States wants to continue to lead the world in humanitarian assistance, it must be prepared to assist the millions of people displaced by climate-related disasters. First, the Secretary of State, in consultation with other relevant federal agencies and non-governmental organizations, should conduct an assessment and develop guidelines for a whole- of-government response to mitigate projected increases in long-term displacement as a result of climate hazards. Second, President Obama should request, and the Congress should pro- vide, increased funding for disaster preparedness and response and for displaced populations through the State Department’s refugee bureau and U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Third, it is critical that the State Department and USAID develop a clear government-wide policy and guidelines for preventing and responding to internally displaced persons.

The floods in Pakistan are an opportunity to draw lessons and address some of the underlying factors that rendered so many people vulnerable to begin with. The failure to do so could undermine the long-term stability of countries likely to experience increased floods, storms, droughts and other climate-related events. Given the high costs of responding to natural disasters, it is in the global community’s best interest to plan now for the massive displacement they cause and protect those most at risk.

Confronting Climate Displacement: Learning from Pakistan's Floods

The Associated Press
November 17, 2010

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (AP) -- With its Macondo well dead and few visitors on the coast during the offseason, BP has launched its biggest push yet to deep-clean the tourist beaches that were coated with crude during the worst of the Gulf oil spill. Machines are digging down into the sand to remove buried tar mats left from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

What's typically a beautiful, quiet stretch of beach in the fall now resembles a construction site. Bulldozers and yellow dump trucks shake the ground; a giant sifting machine spits clean sand out one end, tar balls out another.

The work is getting mixed reviews. Many are anxious to see the beaches cleaned as quickly as possible by whatever means are available. Others say BP may be making matters worse by bringing heavy equipment onto beaches and spreading the petroleum stain.

Some fear fresh environmental damage from the work itself, which can kill tiny creatures that live in the sand. Even BP acknowledges that fresh tar balls are still hitting the coast, meaning some of the work might be premature. Still, local officials have given the company a Jan. 1 deadline to be done. …

A few miles away at Perdido Key, Fla., longtime resident Terry Hanners has his doubts. He sees what appears to be an ever-expanding oil stain on the beach and fears the once-white sand will remain its current brownish tint, which is close to the color of weak tea.

"They're just spreading it," said Hanners. "We have a stain that's going to stay with us a while." …

Today, machines resembling agricultural harvesters move slowly along the beach digging about 18 inches below the surface in search of buried oil. Sand is lifted by a conveyor system and dumped onto screens; clean sand is expelled from the contraption, called a Sand Shark, while rust-colored tar balls, broken shells and other trash collect in a bin.

Workers are using a much larger cleaning system called a Powerscreen to scrub broader areas of beach. Dozers pile up sand, which a big machine with a bucket dumps into the sifter. Cleaned sand is ejected by one belt while tar and other material goes another way.

Workers have dug down about 30 inches so far to find oil, and officials say the dozers can dig as deep as needed to get the worst of the oil deposits. Different, gentler cleaning methods will be used in more delicate areas like Mississippi's coastal islands and the marshlands of Louisiana, the company says. …

The work has raised concern among environmentalists who fear the heavy machinery will kill creatures that live on the beach or cause erosion problems as the natural lay of the land is disturbed. Marine scientist George Crozier says the work is doing some damage, like killing small ghost crabs that live in the dry sand.

"Certainly there's going to be a lot of impact, but I don't know if it's going to be significant impact," said Crozier, the longtime head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. He favors letting the buried oil remain where it is: buried. …

BP deep-cleaning Gulf coast beaches amid new worries