Desdemona Despair

November 30 (Reuters) – Canada’s failure to deny reports that it is about to ditch the Kyoto Protocol is “setting a bad example” to other developed nations as global climate change talks enter their third day, China’s official news agency said on Wednesday.

Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent said on Monday that Kyoto was “the past.” but he would not confirm media reports that Ottawa was planning to formally withdraw from the treaty, one of the main topics of global climate talks now under way in Durban, South Africa.

Canada says it backs a new global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, but insists it has to cover all nations, including China and India, which are not bound by Kyoto's current targets.

The commentary published by Xinhua news agency accused Canada of undermining global efforts against climate change and damaging its own reputation in pursuit of short-term interests.

“While delegations from every country attend the Durban climate conference to discuss a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, one can imagine the damage done by this ‘rumor’,” Xinhua said.

“Some are angry and some are depressed, but whatever the expression made by each delegation, they are united in their criticism of Canada.”

The commentary said Canada’s failure to meet its Kyoto Protocol targets had encouraged it to write off the protocol and thereby “smash a pot to pieces just because it is cracked.”

The Kyoto Protocol obliged signatory countries from the developed world to make mandatory cuts in their total greenhouse gas emissions by 2012, when the first commitment period ends.

Canada was obliged to slash CO2 by 6 percent compared to 1990, but by 2009, the total was still 17 percent higher.

Canada was also likely to be using the rumors to try to secure a favorable breakthrough during the Durban talks, Xinhua said, and “as soon as the negotiations do not meet its expectations, it will allow the rumors to become reality.” […]

China decries Canada’s “bad example” in climate talks

By MOLLY MURRAY, The News Journal
30 November 2011 

Tom Owen looked at the state's sea-level-rise projection map of Lewes along Delaware Bay on Tuesday night and was only slightly reassured.

He was one of about 100 people who came to see the state Sea Level Advisory Committee's projections of what gradually rising coastal waters will mean for Delawareans over the next 100 years.

"The cottage on the beach is going to be there," he said. "But we're not going to be able to get to it … and I'm not a boating person."

Sea level is rising in Delaware at a slow but steady pace. So far it has risen about 13 inches over the past 100 years.

But that rate -- about 3.35 millimeters a year -- is nearly double the global average.

One reason: Delaware is sinking at the same time that sea level is rising, said Susan Love, a state planner with Delaware Coastal Programs. A combination of geology and plate tectonics is causing the state to settle, she said.

State environmental officials believe the rate of sea-level rise will speed up over the next 100 years because of climate change. Love said they wanted to take a close look at what rising sea levels will be like so they can adapt, compensate or make location adjustments when planning future infrastructure. The idea is to better plan for a Delaware that could be significantly wetter than it is today. […]

Among the biggest concerns for state environmental officials is the potential impact of sea level rise on coastal wetlands. In the worst-case scenario, "we're going to lose about 95 percent of wetlands" along Delaware Bay, said Sarah Cooksey, administrator of Delaware Coastal Programs. "A lot of people think it's only going to happen along the ocean."

There are concerns about saltwater intrusion both for drinking-water supplies and agricultural irrigation wells.

And loss of wetlands can mean more upland flooding and additional water-quality problems. […]

A grim glimpse into Del.'s coastal future

By James Kirkup, Deputy Political Editor
25 November 2011

As the Italian government struggled to borrow and Spain considered seeking an international bail-out, British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible.

Diplomats are preparing to help Britons abroad through a banking collapse and even riots arising from the debt crisis.

The Treasury confirmed earlier this month that contingency planning for a collapse is now under way.

A senior minister has now revealed the extent of the Government’s concern, saying that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is now just a matter of time.

“It’s in our interests that they keep playing for time because that gives us more time to prepare,” the minister told the Daily Telegraph.

Recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office instructions to embassies and consulates request contingency planning for extreme scenarios including rioting and social unrest.

Greece has seen several outbreaks of civil disorder as its government struggles with its huge debts. British officials think similar scenes cannot be ruled out in other nations if the euro collapses.

Diplomats have also been told to prepare to help tens of thousands of British citizens in eurozone countries with the consequences of a financial collapse that would leave them unable to access bank accounts or even withdraw cash.

Fuelling the fears of financial markets for the euro, reports in Madrid yesterday suggested that the new Popular Party government could seek a bail-out from either the European Union rescue fund or the International Monetary Fund.

There are also growing fears for Italy, whose new government was forced to pay record interest rates on new bonds issued yesterday.

The yield on new six-month loans was 6.5 per cent, nearly double last month’s rate. And the yield on outstanding two-year loans was 7.8 per cent, well above the level considered unsustainable.

Italy’s new government will have to sell more than EURO 30 billion of new bonds by the end of January to refinance its debts. Analysts say there is no guarantee that investors will buy all of those bonds, which could force Italy to default. […]

Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns

By Jonathan Henderson
9 November 2011

This week, the United States Coast Guard concluded that BP can wind down its efforts to clean oil still marring the shores of the Gulf coast, unless officials can prove that the oil is BP’s. For more on this decision and what it means for cleanup efforts, take a look at this AP article published in the Times Picayune.  You can also read GRN’s official response on this troubling decision on our website here.

One of those areas heavily impacted by BP’s oil is the Pass-a-Loutre Wildlife Management Area located in southern Plaquemines Parish at the mouth of the Mississippi River south of Venice, and is accessible only by boat or seaplane. I took reporters and scientists to this area on numerous occasions in 2010 and documented oil as it first began to make land fall there. You can see a blog that I posted on one of those visits here. With me on that trip were author Naomi Klein and a news crew. 

Fast forward to November 4th, 2011 and the oil is still there. Check out the photos below that I took while on a marsh planting tour with the group Restore The Earth. The video in the slideshow is from May, 2010 but all of the photos are from last week. Scott Eustis in our office will be blogging more about the planting soon. You can also check out an interview I did with Fox8 Live where I show my findings from that November 4th, 2011 trip. I’m not sure that I like being referred to as an oil magnet, but what John Snell says is true in the interview. In the over 80 trips that I have taken by plane and sea to the Gulf since April, 2010 I have found oil on the vast majority of them. […]

The Oil Is Still Here--Take A Look

GULFPORT, Mississippi, November 28 (AP) – Two more dead dolphins have washed ashore in Mississippi, but scientists hope an ailing dolphin found in neighboring Alabama will provide answers about what is killing the marine mammals in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mobi Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, said the two dead dolphins washed ashore over a 24-hour period ending Sunday. A female dolphin washed ashore on the beach in Gulfport and the other was a male found on the beach in Pass Christian. Both dolphins were under the age of a year old and were badly decomposed.

Officials planned to take samples for testing, but they also are hoping to get answers about what it causing the deaths by testing a sickly dolphin found Wednesday in a marshy area of Fort Morgan, Ala. That dolphin was taken to Gulfport for treatment and to be studied in hopes of providing answers about the spike in dolphin deaths.

The 2-year-old male is the first to be found alive since a blown out well caused a massive oil spill last spring, Solangi said.

In a typical year, about 30 dead dolphins are found along Mississippi and Alabama beaches, Solangi said. There have been more than 100 over the course of the past year, he said. And more than 540 dolphins have died since February 2010, some three months before the BP oil spill began, when officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration started documenting the unusual number of dolphin deaths.

To date no definitive link has been made between the spill and the deaths, which in south Mississippi and Alabama are three to four times what they are in a normal year.

"From a scientific standpoint, this is a very significant event," Solangi said of the dolphin being found alive. He said two dead dolphins were found within a few miles of the survivor.

A total of five dolphins have now washed ashore along beaches in South Mississippi and Alabama in the last week. […]

More dead dolphins found on Mississippi coast

By aeberman
28 November 2011

During the CNN Republican presidential debate Tuesday, November 23, Newt Gingrich made statements about U.S. potential oil supply that reveal either total ignorance of energy or supremely dangerous demagoguery. He stated that the United States could discover and produce enough oil in 2012 to cause a worldwide oil price collapse.

GINGRICH: But let me make a deeper point. There's a core thing that's wrong with this whole city. You said earlier that it would take too long to open up American oil. We defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan in three years and eight months because we thought we were serious.

If we were serious, we would open up enough oil fields in the next year that the price of oil worldwide would collapse. Now, that's what we would do if we were a serious country. If we were serious…

(http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/11/cnn_republican_debate_nov_22_2.html)

Earlier in the debate, when discussing the impact on Europe and the global price of oil of stopping Iranian exports through sanctioning its central bank, Gingrich said that would not be a problem. The United States would simply provide an additional 4 million barrels of oil per day to Europe to cover the Iranian shortfall. […]

It seems absurd to have to rebut these preposterous statements, but here are the facts.

During the week ending November 18, 2011, the US used 14.8 million barrels (Mbopd) of crude oil as input to refineries. This included 5.9 Mbopd of domestic crude oil production and 8.3 Mbopd of net crude oil imports. From this input, 18.6 Mbopd of petroleum products were produced and consumed.

The U.S. would have to increase field production by more than double current production to become oil independent, by increasing domestic production to 14.8 Mbopd. Even peak production in 1970 of 10,000 bopd would only meet 68% of current crude oil consumption. To bring about a collapse in world oil prices, as Mr. Gingrich suggests, would mean increasing U.S. production by substantially more than this. […]

A Reality Check on Oil Supply for Newt Gingrich

STOCKHOLM, November 24 (AP) – For some reason, Scandinavia is not its frigid self, with unusually warm weather delaying the onset of winter in northern latitudes normally decked in white.

The lack of snow has been bad news for winter sports — World Cup ski races have been dropped, or held on artificial snow, and mountain ski resorts are unable to open.

There are even reports of bird song and blooming gardens in some places typically entering the winter freeze at this time of year.

"Some flowers, like roses, have actually begun to blossom for a second time," said Mats Rosenberg, a biologist in Orebro, south-central Sweden.

Weather experts say this fall is on track to become one of the warmest on record in the northern part of Scandinavia, where the start of winter has been delayed by more than a month in certain locations.

In the Finnish town of Sodankyla, north of the Arctic Circle, snow cover started Nov. 17, the latest date in 100 years, said Pauli Jokinen, spokesman at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Animals — such as stoats, hares and willow grouse — that change color with the season turned white weeks before the snows came, bringing an eerie feeling to the snowless wilds of Lapland.

"It was really very weird — ghost-like white figures darting among the yellow leaves and lichen," said Viljo Pesonen, mayor of the town of 9,000.

"They don't go by the weather conditions, time determines when they turn white. It has also made the place much darker as there has been no snow to lighten the shortening days," he said, adding that heavy rain during the day had already cleared fields of snow. […]

According to Sweden's meteorological office SMHI, the average temperature measured for November so far is 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) above average. […]

Snowless Scandinavians wonder 'where's winter?'

By TOMOHIRO IWATA, Asahi Shimbun Weekly AERA
24 November 2011

During court proceedings concerning a radioactive golf course, Tokyo Electric Power Co. stunned lawyers by saying the utility was not responsible for decontamination because it no longer "owned" the radioactive substances.

“Radioactive materials (such as cesium) that scattered and fell from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant belong to individual landowners there, not TEPCO,” the utility said.

That argument did not sit well with the companies that own and operate the Sunfield Nihonmatsu Golf Club, just 45 kilometers west of the stricken TEPCO plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

The Tokyo District Court also rejected that idea.

But in a ruling described as inconsistent by lawyers, the court essentially freed TEPCO from responsibility for decontamination work, saying the cleanup efforts should be done by the central and local governments.

Although the legal battle has moved to a higher court, observers said that if the district court’s decision stands and becomes a precedent, local governments' coffers could be drained.

The two golf companies in August filed for a provisional disposition with the Tokyo District Court, demanding TEPCO decontaminate the golf course and pay about 87 million yen ($1.13 million) for the upkeep costs over six months.

TEPCO's argument over ownership of the radioactive substances drew a sharp response from lawyers representing the Sunfield Nihonmatsu Golf Club and owner Sunfield.

“It is common sense that worthless substances such as radioactive fallout would not belong to landowners,” one of the lawyers said. “We are flabbergasted at TEPCO’s argument.”

The golf course has been out of operation since March 12, the day after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami set off the nuclear crisis.

The companies wanted to reopen the course in July, but radiation levels, checked by the Nihonmatsu municipal government in June, were above the national safety limits.

On Aug. 10, a level of 2.91 microsieverts per hour was recorded 10 centimeters above ground at the tee of the sixth hole. The level was 51.1 microsieverts per hour near a drainage ditch in a parking space for golf carts, a level comparable to the Ottozawa area of Okuma, 2.4 km from the plant. […]

TEPCO: Radioactive substances belong to landowners, not us

By Matt McGrath, Science reporter, BBC World Service
17 November 2011

UN scientists are warning that a virus attacking the cassava plant is nearing an epidemic in parts of Africa.

Cassava is one of the world's most important crops providing up to a third of the calorie intake for many people.

The food and agriculture organisation of the UN says the situation is urgent and are calling for an increase in funding for surveillance.

None of the varieties of cassava being distributed to farmers in Africa appears to be resistant to the virus.

Cassava is a global food source of particular importance in Africa as it does well on poor soils with low rainfall.

But like many crops it is threatened by a number of pests and diseases that hinder its production. Viral infections have periodically wiped out the crop in some regions leading to famine.

Now the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that another virus is threatening the crop in large parts of East Africa.

The scientists say the Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) is on the verge of becoming an epidemic. It first appeared in Uganda in 2006 but in the past few months has been found in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the first time.

According to Mike Robson, a plant production and protection officer with the FAO it's hard to know exactly where the virus is as surveillance systems are poor.

"It is hard to say precisely but we're finding it where we go looking for it "

Robson says that a particular problem with this virus is that farmers may think they have a healthy crop until the harvest, as the symptoms only show on the roots.

"That's a particularly distressing situation where a farmer thinks he has a healthy field of cassava but when they come to uproot it, their expectations of food are not going to be met." […]

UN warns of staple crop virus 'epidemic' via Wit’s End

By Morgan Kelly
15 November 2011

Princeton University – The first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions has found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet.

Princeton University researchers recently reported in the Journal of Climate that extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common than in the early 1980s, and that swings from thunderstorms to dry days rose considerably since the late 1990s. These swings could have consequences for ecosystem stability and the control of pests and diseases, as well as for industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production, all of which are vulnerable to inconsistent and extreme weather, the researchers noted.

The day-to-day variations also could affect what scientists could expect to see as the Earth's climate changes, according to the researchers and other scientists familiar with the work. Constant fluctuations in severe conditions could alter how the atmosphere distributes heat and rainfall, as well as inhibit the ability of plants to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly leading to higher levels of the greenhouse gas than currently accounted for.

Existing climate-change models have historically been evaluated against the average weather per month, an approach that hides variability, explained lead author David Medvigy, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton. To conduct their analysis, he and co-author Claudie Beaulieu, a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, used a recently developed computer program that has allowed climatologists to examine weather data on a daily level for the first time, Medvigy said.

"Monthly averages reflect a misty world that is a little rainy and cloudy every day. That is very different from the weather of our actual world, where some days are very sunny and dry," Medvigy said.

"Our work adds to what we know about climate change in the real world and places the whole problem of climate change in a new light," he said. "Nobody has looked for these daily changes on a global scale. We usually think of climate change as an increase in mean global temperature and potentially more extreme conditions -- there's practically no discussion of day-to-day variability."

The Princeton findings stress that analysis of erratic daily conditions such as frequent thunderstorms may in fact be crucial to truly understanding the factors shaping the climate and affecting the atmosphere, said William Rossow, a professor of earth system science and environmental engineering at the City College of New York.

"It's important to know what the daily extremes might do because we might care about that sooner," said Rossow, who also has studied weather variability. He had no role in the Princeton research but is familiar with it.

Rossow said existing climate-change models show light rain more frequently than they should and don't show extreme precipitation. "If it rains a little bit every day, the atmosphere may respond differently than if there's a really big rainstorm once every week. One of the things you find about rainstorms is that the really extreme ones are at a scale the atmosphere responds to," he said.

Although climate-change models predict future changes in weather as the planet warms, those calculations are hindered by a lack of representation of day-to-day patterns, Rossow said.

"If you don't know what role variability is playing now, you're not in a very strong position for making remarks about how it might change in the future," he said. "We're at a stage where we had better take a look at what this research is pointing out."

Medvigy and Beaulieu determined sunshine variation by analyzing fluctuations in solar radiation captured by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project from 1984 to 2007. To gauge precipitation, the researchers used daily rainfall data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project spanning 1997 to 2007.

Medvigy and Beaulieu found that during those respective periods, extremes in sunshine and rainfall became more common on a day-to-day basis. In hypothetical terms, Medvigy said, these findings would mean that a region that experienced the greatest increase in sunshine variability might have had partly cloudy conditions every day in 1984, but by 2007 the days would have been either sunny or heavily cloudy with no in-between. For rainfall, the uptick in variation he and Beaulieu observed could be thought of as an area experiencing a light mist every day in 1997, but within ten years the days came to increasingly fluctuate between dryness and downpour.

The researchers observed at least some increase in variability for 35 percent of the world during the time periods analyzed. Regions such as equatorial Africa and Asia experienced the greatest increase in the frequency of extreme conditions, with erratic shifts in weather occurring throughout the year. In more temperate regions such as the United States, day-to-day variability increased to a lesser degree and typically only seasonally. In the northeastern United States, for instance, sudden jumps from sunny to bleak days became more common during the winter from 1984 to 2007.

In the 23 years that sunshine variability rose for tropical Africa and Asia, those areas also showed a greater occurrence of towering thunderstorm clouds known as convective clouds, Medvigy said. Tropical areas that experienced more and more unbalanced levels of sunshine and rainfall witnessed an in-kind jump in convective cloud cover. Although the relationship between these clouds and weather variations needs more study, Medvigy said, the findings could indicate that the sunnier days accelerate the rate at which water evaporates then condenses in the atmosphere to form rain, thus producing heavy rain more often.

Storms have lasting effect on daily weather patterns

Although the most extreme weather variations in the study were observed in the tropics, spurts of extreme weather are global in reach, Rossow said. The atmosphere, he said, is a fluid, and when severe weather such as a convective-cloud thunderstorm "punches" it, the disturbance spreads around the world. Weather that increasingly leaps from one extreme condition to another in short periods of time, as the Princeton research suggests, affects the equilibrium of heat and rain worldwide, he said.

"Storms are violent and significant events — while they are individually localized, their disturbance radiates," Rossow said.

"Wherever it's raining heavily, especially, or variably is where the atmosphere is being punched. As soon as it is punched somewhere in the tropics it starts waves that go all the way around the planet," he said. "So we can see waves coming off the west Pacific convection activity and going all the way around the planet in the tropical band. The atmosphere also has the job of moving heat from the equator to the poles, and storms are the source of heat to the atmosphere, so if a storm's location or its timing or its seasonality is altered, that's going to change how the circulation responds."

These sweeping atmospheric changes can interact with local conditions such as temperature and topography to skew regular weather patterns, Rossow said.

"Signals end up going over the whole globe, and whether they're important in a particular place or not depends on what else is happening," he said. "But you can think of storms as being the disturbances in an otherwise smooth flow. That's why this is a climate issue even though we're talking about daily variability in specific locations."

The impact of these fluctuations on natural and manmade systems could be as substantial as the fallout predicted from rises in the Earth's average temperature, Medvigy said. Inconsistent sunshine could impair the effectiveness of solar-energy production and — with fluctuating rainfall also included — harm agriculture, he said. Wetter, hotter conditions also breed disease and parasites such as mosquitoes, particularly in tropical areas, he said.

On a larger scale, wild shifts in day-to-day conditions would diminish the ability of trees and plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere, Medvigy said. In 2010, he and Harvard University researchers reported in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that erratic rain and sunlight impair photosynthesis. That study concluded that this effect upsets the structure of ecosystems, as certain plants and trees — particularly broad-leafed trees more than conifers — adapt better than others.

In the context of the current study, Medvigy said, the impact of variability on photosynthesis could mean that more carbon will remain in the atmosphere than climate models currently anticipate, considering that the models factor in normal plant-based carbon absorption. Moreover, if the meteorological tumult he and Beaulieu observed is caused by greenhouse gases, these fluctuations could become self-perpetuating by increasingly trapping the gases that agitated weather patterns in the first place.

"We have not yet looked for direct ties between weather variability and increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, but I would not be surprised if they are connected in some way," Medvigy said.

"Increases in variability diminish the efficiency with which plants and trees remove carbon dioxide from the air," he said. "All of a sudden, the land and the atmosphere are no longer in balance, and plants cannot absorb levels of carbon dioxide proportional to the concentrations in the environment. That will affect everybody."

Erratic, extreme day-to-day weather puts climate change in new light via Wit’s End

By David A Gabel, ENN
28 November 2011

As Earth's climate has warmed, one group of species that has not fared well has been corals, the sedentary marine species which lives symbiotically with algae. Warmer waters cause the algae to become heat-stressed, causing them to die or be expelled by the coral. This causes coral bleaching, a fatal phenomenon that has occurred worldwide with increasing frequency. A team of researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University have now revealed the complex molecular signals that lead to the coral's self-inflicted death.

The team conducted experiments with Acropora corals from the reef at Heron Island which is along Australia's Great Barrier Reef. They found that the cascade of molecular signals commences when ocean temperatures reach a level which is 3 degrees lower than those associated with coral bleaching. Therefore, the cascade of events leading to bleaching come before the actual bleaching occurs. The corals have a premonition of warmer waters in their future.

The cascade of events eventually leads to apoptosis, or programmed cell-death. This process is common with living organisms which will deliberately destroy weak or infected body cells, effectively amputating the cell which has become a liability to the body.

"Our results suggest that the control of apoptosis is highly complex in the coral-algae symbiosis and that apoptotic cell death cascades potentially play key roles in tipping the cellular life or death balance during environmental stress prior to the onset of coral bleaching," explains lead author Dr Tracy Ainsworth. "It is also clear that this chain reaction responds significantly to subtle, daily changes in the environment and to sea temperatures which were generally thought till now to have little impact on the function of coral and its symbiotic algae." […]

Corals' Environmental Premonition

By Morgan Kelly
17 November 2011

A cosmic one-two punch of colossal volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes likely caused the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that is famous for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, according to two Princeton University reports that reject the prevailing theory that the extinction was caused by a single large meteorite.

Princeton-led researchers found that a trail of dead plankton spanning half a million years provides a timeline that links the mass extinction to large-scale eruptions of the Deccan Traps, a primeval volcanic range in western India that was once three-times larger than France. A second Princeton-based group uncovered traces of a meteorite close to the Deccan Traps that may have been one of a series to strike the Earth around the time of the mass extinction, possibly wiping out the few species that remained after thousands of years of volcanic activity.

Researchers led by Princeton Professor of Geosciences Gerta Keller report this month in the Journal of the Geological Society of India that marine sediments from Deccan lava flows show that the population of a plankton species widely used to gauge the fallout of prehistoric catastrophes plummeted nearly 100 percent in the thousands of years leading up to the mass extinction. This eradication occurred in sync with the largest eruption phase of the Deccan Traps — the second of three — when the volcanoes pumped the atmosphere full of climate-altering carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, the researchers report. The less severe third phase of Deccan activity kept the Earth nearly uninhabitable for the next 500,000 years, the researchers report. A substantially weaker first phase occurred roughly 2.5 million years before the second-phase eruptions.

Another group based in Keller's lab found evidence in Indian sediment of a meteorite strike from the time of the mass extinction that would have been sufficient to finish off the few but weakened species that survived the Deccan eruptions, according to a report in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL) in October. This same sediment — located in Meghalaya, India, more than 600 miles east of the Deccan Traps —portrayed the Earth during this period as a harsh environment of acid rain and erratic global temperatures.

Taken together, Keller said, the Princeton findings could finally put to rest the theory that the mass-extinction event — known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or KT, for the periods it straddles — was triggered solely by a large meteorite impact near Chicxulub in present-day Mexico. That impact — which occurred around the time of the second-phase Deccan eruptions — is thought to have been 2 million times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb and generated an enormous dust cloud and gases that radically altered the climate. Keller has long held that the Chicxulub impact was not catastrophic enough to cause the KT mass extinction — the newest work from her lab, however, shows that the largest Deccan eruptions were.
 
"Our work in Meghalaya and the Deccan Traps provides the first one-to-one correlation between the mass extinction and Deccan volcanism," said Keller, who is lead author of the Geological Society paper and second author of the EPSL paper after lead author Brian Gertsch, who earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2010. Gertsch is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 
"We demonstrate a clear cause-and-effect relationship that these massive volcanic eruptions were far more destructive than previously thought and could have caused the KT mass extinction even without the addition of large meteorite impacts," Keller said. "But given the environmental instability caused by the massive Deccan eruptions, an impact could easily have killed off the few survivor species at the end of the Cretaceous. It would have been a double whammy." […]

Massive volcanoes, meteorite impacts delivered one-two death punch to dinosaurs

Editor's note: Of the world's 50,000 edible plant species, only a few hundred find their way to menus around the globe. Of those, just three — rice, wheat and maize — make up two-thirds of the human food supply. And only rice is responsible for feeding half the world, or more than 3.5 billion people.

In other words, rice is important. So important, in fact, that a tweak to the way rice is grown, sold or eaten can send ripples through the world economy. Earlier this year, government subsidies for rice in Thailand, where 30 percent of the world's crop originates, did just that. Prices everywhere shot up, though it looks like any looming instability has been offset by other exporters, namely India, steadying the market.

Still, ther point is rice in one place affects millions. Tainted crops in China mean two-thirds of the country's people ingest toxins everyday. In Indonesia, Suharto coaxed a people into growing rice and changed an entire culture. Rice 2.0 is GlobalPost's look at a tiny grain with a giant footprint.

TOKYO, Japan (Global Post) – It's impossible to overstate the importance of rice to the Japanese: the country's origins are rooted in the stuff.

The sun goddess Amaterasu, so the mythology goes, gave grains of rice to her grandson, Jimmu, before sending him off to become Japan's first emperor, 3,000 years ago.

As the annual harvest drew to a close this year in October, rice loomed large in the national consciousness for strictly temporal — and unwelcome — reasons.

Elevated levels of radiation have been found in rice grown near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and opposition to a Pacific free-trade deal is growing among the country's heavily subsidized rice farmers. Domestic consumption, meanwhile, is in decline as consumers make more room in their diet for bread and meat.

But there is a bigger, more insidious threat to one of the few agricultural products in which Japan is self-sufficient: global warming.

Climate change's negative effects on rice quality have been felt most on the southwest island of Kyushu since the early 1990s, but could spread as warmer climates are felt farther north in the decades to come.

Experts at Tsukuba University and the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Studies recently warned that the quality of Japanese rice would continue to decline unless changes are made in the crop's cultivation and management.

The government, they added, must encourage growers to continue developing new rice cultivars that are more resistant to high temperatures.

The Tsukuba team's statistical model predicts rice-quality response to changes in temperature. The prognosis is not good, says Masashi Okada, a graduate student at the university who led the research.

"If farmers keep the types of rice currently grown in Kyushu, then the quality will continue to decrease as the temperature rises," he told Global Post.

Japan's average annual temperature has been higher by between 0.2 degrees Centigrade and 1 degree for the past decade compared with the average base figure for the 30 years up to 2000, according to the meteorological agency.

Those rises have coincided with an increase in immature rice grains, identifiable by their milky white appearance, in newly harvested crops. "Chalky grains increase due to high temperature conditions or insufficient solar radiation during the ripening period," Okada said.

The result is a poor-quality grain containing less starch, which fetches lower prices even though, Okada concedes, the difference in taste is imperceptible to most consumers.

To counter the effects of climate change, experts have developed new grain varieties that are more resistant to rises in temperature. Several have appeared in Kyushu over the past six years, including one that was planted for the first time this spring.

The island's rice crop, however, is dominated by the traditional, trusted varieties that are bearing the brunt of scorching hot summers. It takes time for new arrivals to be accepted by conservative consumers raised on traditional, less temperature-tolerant varieties such as Hinohikari.

Some of the newly developed grains sell for less than their more established counterparts, making them an unattractive prospect for small-time farmers. […]

Rice 2.0: Climate changes rice in Japan

BANGKOK, November 8 (AFP) – The Thai capital, built on swampland, is slowly sinking and the floods currently besieging Bangkok could be merely a foretaste of a grim future as climate change makes its impact felt, experts say.

The low-lying metropolis lies about 30km north of the Gulf of Thailand, where various experts forecast that the sea level will rise by 19cm to 29cm by 2050 as a result of global warming.

Water levels would also increase in Bangkok’s main Chao Phraya River, which already regularly overflows.

If no action is taken to protect the city, “in 50 years … most of Bangkok will be below sea level,” said Anond Snidvongs, a climate change expert at the capital’s Chulalongkorn University.

However, global warming is not the only threat. The capital’s gradual sinking has also been blamed on years of aggressive groundwater extraction to meet the growing needs of the city’s factories and its 12 million inhabitants.

As a result, Bangkok was sinking by 10cm a year in the late 1970s, according to a study published last year by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

That rate has since dropped to less than 1cm annually, they said, thanks to government measures to control groundwater pumping.

If those efforts continued, the report said, they hoped the subsidence rate could slow by another 10 percent each year.

However, Anond disputed their projections, saying Bangkok was still sinking at “an alarming rate” of 1cm to 3cm a year.

While scientists may argue over the exact figures, they agree about what lies ahead for the sprawling megacity.

“There is no going back. The city is not going to rise again,” the ADB’s lead climate change specialist, David McCauley, said.

Faced with the combined threats of land subsidence and rising temperatures and sea levels, the World Bank has predicted that Bangkok’s flood risk will increase four-fold by 2050. […]

Flooding shows what lies ahead as Thai capital slowly sinks

DURBAN, South Africa, November 28 (AP) – Global warming already is causing suffering and conflict in Africa, from drought in Sudan and Somalia to flooding in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma said Monday, urging delegates at an international climate conference to look beyond national interests for solutions [United Nations Climate Change Conference 2011].

"For most people in the developing countries and Africa, climate change is a matter of life and death," said the South African leader as he formally opened a two-week conference with participants from 191 countries and the European Union.

The conference is seeking ways to curb ever-rising emissions of climate-changing pollution, which scientists said last week have reached record levels of concentration in the atmosphere.

Seasoned nongovernment observers said the outcome of the conference, which ends Dec. 9, is among the most unpredictable since the annual all-nation meetings began following the conclusion in 1992 of the basic treaty on climate change.

"Everything seems to be fluid. Everything is in play," said Tasneem Essop, of WWF International.

The main point of contention is whether industrial countries will extend their commitments to further reduce carbon emissions after their current commitments expire next year. Most wealthy countries have said their agreement is conditional on developing countries like China, India and Brazil accepting that they, too, must accept legally binding restrictions on their own emissions.

Zuma said Sudan's drought is partly responsible for tribal wars there, and that drought and famine have driven people from their homes in Somalia. Floods along the South African coast have cost people their homes and jobs, he said.

"Change and solutions are always possible. In these talks, states, parties, will need to look beyond their national interests to find a solution for the common good and human benefit," he said.

The U.N.'s top climate official, Christiana Figueres, said future commitments by industrial countries to slash greenhouse gas emissions is "the defining issue of this conference." But she said that is linked to pledges that developing countries must make to join the fight against climate change.

She quoted anti-apartheid legend and former President Nelson Mandela: "It always seems impossible until it is done." […]

Climate talks open on ever-rising emissions

By Wan Xu and Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Sugita Katyal
28 November 2011

BEIJING (Reuters) – China's chief negotiator for climate change talks is "not very optimistic" about the results of global climate talks in Durban, state radio reported on Monday.

Countries will make a last ditch effort to save a dying Kyoto Protocol at global climate talks starting on Monday aimed at cutting the greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for rising sea levels, intense storms and crop failures.

Major parties have been at loggerheads for years about the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005.

The agreement commits most developed states to binding emissions targets. The talks are the last chance to set another round of targets before the first commitment period ends in 2012.

"Now the prospects are not very optimistic," Chinese negotiator Su Wei told state radio, without elaborating. "However, at least in developed countries, the European Union has expressed willingness to consider the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol."

The report said that there were widespread differences among the parties.

Envoys said there may be a political deal struck with a new set of binding targets, but only the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland are likely to sign up at best.

Any accord depends on China and the United States, the world's top emitters, agreeing binding action under a wider deal by 2015, something both have resisted for years.

China, the world's top carbon emitter, is unwilling to make any commitments until Washington does while Russia, Japan and Canada say they will not sign up to a second commitment period unless the biggest emitters do too.

China says "not optimistic" about climate talks

By Brendan DeMelle
25 November 11

The UK police force tasked with investigating the hacking of emails and documents from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (the debunked "Climategate") seems to have quietly de-prioritized its investigation earlier this year, according to documents released under the UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
 
The Norfolk Constabulary police force’s responses to FOIA requests indicate that the amount spent on attempts to identify the hacker in the last year was just £5,649.09 - with all but £80.05 spent on invoices for work carried out previously by private companies, suggesting police work on the investigation has ground to a halt.

Earlier this week, the hackers (ironically calling themselves “FOIA”) illegally released a second set of hacked material consisting of 5,349 emails and 23 documents from UEA. The university and independent reviews suggest these are leftovers from the initial November 2009 theft – in the words of one climate scientist, “two-year old turkey.”

While nine independent inquiries have cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing in the wake of the baseless ‘Climategate’ episode, the person (or persons) responsible for the hacking has gotten off scot-free to date. The FOIA documents seem to indicate that the police investigation was derailed and perhaps dropped earlier this year.

The grand total spent by Norfolk police on the UEA hacker investigation since the November 2009 theft is just £80,905.11. […]

Did UK Police Quietly Sideline ‘Climategate’ Hacker Investigation? via Wit’s End

November 26 (profi-forex.us) – Nouriel Roubini, an American economist and a Nobel Prize winner in economics, became world-famous after forecasting the latest global economic crisis. His opinion is respected around the world. In his recent article published in The Financial Times, Mr. Roubini says the eurozone may collapse.

Actually, this is not the first time Roubini warned the world of the forthcoming fate of the eurozone and its common currency. The American economist assumes that the current political and economic situation in Italy confirms his expectations. According to him, Italy will most likely have to return to the Italian Lira - its previous national currency - in order to curb the escalating debt crisis. Once Italy leaves the currency union, it will most likely result in a collapse of the entire eurozone.

According to Masterforex-V Academy, Nouriel Roubini offers the following 4 scenarios for the eurozone:

Symmetrical reflation: This is the best option for restoring growth and competitiveness of the eurozone's periphery while undertaking necessary austerity measures and structural reforms. This implies significant easing of monetary policy by the European Central Bank, which can eventually depreciate the common European currency against other major currencies. That is why both Germany and the ECB oppose the idea.

Recessionary reflation: It implies tough austerity policies. However, austerity and spending cuts lead to production cuts, at least in near-term perspective. In order to avoid the negative consequences of such  structural reforms and to improve the balance of trade it is necessary to depreciate the common currency.

A default followed by a withdrawal from the eurozone: The common currency may survive if the sick peripheral eurozone economies go back to their national currencies – lira, drachma, peso etc. However, Euro will also suffer losses because the currencies of the former eurozone members will depreciate.  That will be the European variant of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, which caused the 2008-2009 global crisis.

Peripheral eurozone economies: The EU leaders can try to ignore the economic problems seen in those debt-ridden peripheral eurozone economies. Theoretically, it is possible. However, this would be an extremely costly solution for other eurozone members like Germany and France. […]

Nouriel Roubini names variants of possible eurozone collapse

November 27 (Telegraph) – More than 900 people have called for emergency help and 29 people were rescued from the floodwaters, which on Saturday claimed the life of a three-year-old boy who was swept into a surging storm-water drain.

Officials said the northern New South Wales town of Wee Waa would be cut off for up to one week by the flooding which has reached a deph of seven metres in some parts, after several rivers in the state burst their banks during heavy rains.

The township of 1,800 will only be accessible by boat and helicopter and state emergency authorities said they were working to replenish food supplies.

Evacuations were also underway at nearby Moree, where 60 homes were expected to be cut off as floodwaters reached their peak, while some 150 rural properties in the region were already isolated.

The village of Garah, on the outskirts of Moree, was completely surrounded by water after a levy broke.

The country's weather bureau has forecast heavy rains in coming months due to a La Niña pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which is usually associated with extreme rainfall in Australia and Asia.

Two thousand people stranded by Australian floods

By Melissa Davey
28 November 2011

HELICOPTERS and a plane have dropped food and medical supplies to northern NSW properties as floodwaters have isolated more than 2000 residents.

The State Emergency Service said the 1800 residents of the town of Wee Waa, and about 200 rural properties in the Moree area, had been isolated by yesterday afternoon.

"Wee Waa is expected to be isolated until about Thursday or Friday," an SES spokeswoman said yesterday.

"We drop off food, water, any medicine, and I know of one area where they flew in a doctor just to make sure everyone was OK."

Heavy rainfall across the state has claimed the life of a three-year-old boy, who drowned on Saturday when he was swept into a stormwater drain at Bingara.

The mayor of Narrabri Shire, Robyn Faber, said the Newell Highway, which links Victoria to Queensland and runs through Narrabri, had been brought to a standstill. "It's the busiest highway in Australia, usually one truck passes through Narrabri every 60 seconds," she said. "Now, it's empty. It has been very bad for freight transporters."

She said she was concerned about further forecast rainfall.

"There is nothing to absorb any more rain," she said.

Police last night advised residents in parts of Moree, 100km north of Narrabri, to evacuate as flood levels rose.

Since Tuesday there have been 887 calls for help to the SES, the majority for tree and roof damage in Sydney. Yesterday there were 70 calls for help, including 14 for flood rescues.

Moderate flooding is expected at Tamworth on the Peel River, and flood warnings are in place for the Macintyre, Macleay and Bellinger rivers. The weather bureau predicted that Gwydir River tributaries, at Mehi River and Yarraman Bridge, would peak last night at 10 metres, the highest level since January 2001.

Air drops ease load in flooded regions

By GILLIAN GOTORA, Associated Press
26 November 2011

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) – As she surveys her small, bare plot in Zimbabwe's capital, farmer Janet Vambe knows something serious is happening, even if she has never heard of climate change.

"Long ago, I could set my calendar with the date the rains started," the 72-year-old said. Nowadays, "we have to gamble with the rains. If you plant early you might lose and if you plant late you might win. We are at a loss of what to do."

Paramu Mafongoya, a University of Zimbabwe agronomist, says Vambe's worries and those of millions of other poor farmers — most of them women — across Africa are a clear sign of the impact of climate change on a continent already struggling to feed itself. Changes have been noted in the timing and the distribution of rainfall on the continent. Zimbabweans say the rainy season has become shorter and more unpredictable, Mafongoya said.

Climate change "is a serious threat to human life," Mafongoya said. "It affects agriculture and food security everywhere."

International climate change negotiators meet in the South African coastal city of Durban starting Monday. Their agenda includes how to get African and other developing countries the technology and knowledge to ensure that people like Vambe can keep feeding their families without looking for emergency food aid.

A Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries to help them fight climate change and its effects was agreed on at last year's climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Durban negotiators hope to make progress on addressing questions such as where the money will come from and how will it be managed.

Climate change specialist Rashmi Mistry said her anti-hunger group Oxfam will be in Durban lobbying to ensure that women have a voice in managing the Green Fund, and that their needs are addressed when its money is spent. Most small-scale farmers in Africa are women, and they also are the ones shopping for the family's food. But tradition often keeps them out of policymaking roles.

Mistry said when yields are low and market prices are high, women are the first to suffer.

"She's the one usually who will feed her husband first and feed her children first, and she will go hungry," Mistry said.

Across Africa, said Andrew Steer, the World Bank's special envoy on climate change, farmers need to triple production by 2050 to meet growing needs.

"At the same time, you've got climate change lowering average yields by what's expected to be 28 percent," Steer said. He called for more investment in such areas as agricultural research and water management. […]

Experts worry that one consequence of resources becoming scarcer will be more frequent conflict. Already, Zimbabwe has seen aid used as a political weapon. Those who can prove their loyalty to longtime President Robert Mugabe's party have been seen to be favored when it comes time to hand out seeds or food. […]

Climate change hits Africa's poorest farmers

Relative composition of the periphytic diatom assemblages along the CO₂ gradient, including all genera present over 1% and with all unidentified diatoms grouped as unidentified pennate or naviculoid.

Between September 2009 and October 2010, mean surface seawater pH decreased with increasing proximity to CO₂ vents (S1 = 8.18, S2 = 8.05, S3 = 7.49, n = 18) and was significantly different between all stations (Kruskal–Wallis test, H ₂ = 34.499, P < 0.001). The pH at S1 fell within the normal range of coastal waters (IQ: 8.13–8.22) whilst stations exposed to high CO₂ had a greater range in pH that increased with proximity to the main venting area (S2 IQ: 8.00–8.19, S3 IQ: 7.36–7.89, n = 18).

A significant difference in diatom abundance (mean % cover on slides) was detected between stations (ANOVA, F _(2,33) = 610.212, P < 0.001); greater values were recorded with increasing CO₂ levels (Holm-Sidak pairwise comparisons, S3 > S2 > S1, P < 0.001) (Fig. 3). The highest abundances were found on slides at S3 (60 ± 1.11%), a sevenfold increase from S1 (8.5 ± 0.60%). There was no significant difference in the percentage cover of cyanobacteria in the periphtyic communities between stations (ANOVA, F _(2,33) = 3.041, P = 0.061) that remained relatively low (<2%) across the gradient.

SEM images of slides colonised by periphytic diatoms at the three stations; S1 (1a, 1b), S2 (2a, 2b) and S3 (3a, 3b). Diatom colonisation increases with rising pCO₂ concentrations along the gradient (1a, 2a, 3a). Changes in the community composition also occur with colonies of Grammatophora spp. and Toxarium undulatum dominating in S2 and S3 (2b, 3b) (Scale bars: 1a, 2a, 2b = 100 μm, 1b, 2b, 3b = 50 μm)

ABSTRACT: Increasing anthropogenic CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere are causing a rise in pCO₂ concentrations in the ocean surface and lowering pH. To predict the effects of these changes, we need to improve our understanding of the responses of marine primary producers since these drive biogeochemical cycles and profoundly affect the structure and function of benthic habitats. The effects of increasing CO₂ levels on the colonisation of artificial substrata by microalgal assemblages (periphyton) were examined across a CO₂ gradient off the volcanic island of Vulcano (NE Sicily). We show that periphyton communities altered significantly as CO₂ concentrations increased. CO₂ enrichment caused significant increases in chlorophyll a concentrations and in diatom abundance although we did not detect any changes in cyanobacteria. SEM analysis revealed major shifts in diatom assemblage composition as CO₂ levels increased. The responses of benthic microalgae to rising anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are likely to have significant ecological ramifications for coastal systems. […]

Our findings indicate that periphytic diatoms exhibit a non-uniform response to CO₂ enrichment; this is most likely due to taxon-specific differences in their sensitivity to CO₂ concentrations and presumably due to their kinetics of carbon use. CO₂-induced community shifts have also been observed in many other photoautotrophic assemblages (Tortell, et al., 2002, 2008; Fu, et al., 2007; Russell, et al., 2009; Trimborn, et al., 2009; Connell and Russell 2010; Porzio, et al., 2011) adding to evidence that increasing CO₂ emissions are likely to lead to structural and functional changes in a wide variety of marine and coastal systems. […]

Responses of marine benthic microalgae to elevated CO2 via Ocean Acidification

November 23 (mongabay.com) – A peace accord has been announced to resolve a long-running conflict between a giant state-owned plantation company and local communities on the Indonesian island of Java.

The Forest Trust (TFT), an international NGO that works to improve the environmental performance of companies' supply chains, says it has negotiated a deal under which timber giant Perum Perhutani will no longer use armed guards to patrol its teak plantations. Perhutani security forces had become notorious for their heavy-handed response to those found illegally cutting teak from their plantations. Some illegal loggers were villagers, others were large-scale illegal timber operators. Either way a number of violent incidents — including outright killings with machine guns — had tarnished Perhutani's reputation to the degree to which the company lost its certification under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in 2001.

"Change had to happen," said TFT executive director Scott Poynton. "The big global buyers of teak told Perhutani that armed patrols were not an acceptable answer to illegal logging."

TFT says it worked with Perhutani to "transform" how it manages its plantations, confronts illegal loggers, and interacts with local communities. Central to the effort has been establishing ways for communities to benefit legally from forests. A statement from TFT explains:

The program Perhutani set up has allowed local people to benefit from every harvested tree that they guarded. Between 2005 and 2010, communities received the equivalent of US$19 million (IDR169 billion) from the sale of timber and non-timber forest products. In exchange, villagers have taken on a new role as guardians of the forests.

Perhutani also established small local enterprises and farms inside the forests. Under the trees, villagers grow peanut, rice, beans, corn, bengkuang, mungbean and porang, a crop used for making noodles in Japan. Community members also collect a set amount of firewood every year.

The measures have paid off — Perhutani has now regained its FSC certification for 2 of the 57 districts in which it operates. All districts are now considered "gun-free". […]

"'Gun-free teak' is a step forward," said a forestry analyst who asked not to be named. "Hopefully donors pushing for carbon trading and forest protection will also require 'gun-free carbon' and 'gun-free national parks' as well.

"It is important to note that Perum Perhutani is only one of the violent forestry security forces," the analyst continued. "The Ministry of Forestry's SPORC [Satuan Polisi Kehutanan Reaksi Cepat or Forest Police Rapid Response Force] and Polisi Hutan are heavily armed and are also alleged to engage in violent activities. Indigenous groups in Kalimantan have called for dissolving SPORC. International donors who are providing support for SPORC would do well to carefully assess SPORC's track record." […]

Peace accord reached in violent conflict between locals and Indonesian state plantation company