As the World Burned: The Campaign and the Environment.
Reporting on major environmental dangers and disasters occurring during the 2012 US presidential campaign and what the candidates state.
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September 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the research she had done establishing a link between DDT and harms to the environment. Some of us may remember that this was one of the founding documents (and more than a document) of the environmental movement. In that spirit, we will conduct our own little study, following the environmental news and the candidates' responses. This is simple scientific study, and aims to report the data fairly: that which is favorable to the hypothesis, and that which is unfavorable.
Here is the hypothesis: While major environmental problems are appearing and worsening daily, with enormous implications for the immediate present and the future of the Earth, both candidates will fail to acknowledge the problems, much less present a response that could approach wisdom.
Should the hypothesis be verified, the conclusion follows that the US political system is incapable of responding to threats that science states are quite grave. What follows from this is for you to decide.
The data itself will no doubt make amusing reading for future readers during the Endless Summer.
August 29, 2012
The day the world went mad
As record sea ice melt scarcely makes the news while the third runway grabs headlines, is there a form of reactive denial at work?
Yesterday was August 28th 2012. Remember that date. It marks the day when the world went raving mad.
Three things of note happened. The first is that a record Arctic ice melt had just been announced by the scientists studying the region. The 2012 figure has not only beaten the previous record, established in 2007. It has beaten it three weeks before the sea ice is likely to reach its minimum extent. It reveals that global climate breakdown is proceeding more rapidly than most climate scientists expected. But you could be forgiven for missing it, as it scarcely made the news at all. . . .
The third event was that the Republican party in the United States began its national convention in Tampa, Florida – a day late. Why? Because of the anticipated severity of hurricane Isaac, which reached the US last night. As Kevin Trenberth of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, noted earlier this year:
"Basic theory, climate model simulations, and empirical evidence all confirm that warmer climates, owing to increased water vapor, lead to more intense precipitation events even when the total annual precipitation is reduced slightly … all weather events are affected by climate change because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than it used to be." (h/t: Joe Romm at Climate Progress)
The Republican party's leading lights either deny climate change altogether, or argue that people can adapt to whatever a changed climate may bring, so there's nothing to worry about. The deluge of reality has had no impact on the party's determination to wish the physical world away. As Salon.com points out, most of the major figures lined up to speak at the convention deny that man-made climate change is happening.
When your children ask how and why it all went so wrong, point them to yesterday's date, and explain that the world is not led by rational people.
The directors of three major United Nations food and agriculture programs sounded the alarm both on the immediate problem of high food prices and the ―long-term issue of how we produce, trade and consume food in an age of increasing population, demand and climate change.‖
Agricultural production has fallen in a number of major crop exporters this summer. Sweltering heat and a severe drought have damaged the corn crop in the United States. Droughts have also hit Russia and Ukraine, hurting the wheat harvest, as well as Brazil, affecting soybean production.
Low yields have translated into high prices. Last week, the World Bank reported that food prices climbed 10 percent from June to July, with the price of both corn and wheat jumping 25 percent to records. Soybean prices climbed 17 percent over the same period, and rice prices declined moderately, the Washington-based institution said.
"We cannot allow these historic price hikes to turn into a lifetime of perils as families take their children out of school and eat less nutritious food," Dr. Jim Yong Kim, who became president of the World Bank in July, said in a statement. "Countries must strengthen their targeted programs to ease the pressure on the most vulnerable population."
To that end, the World Bank and the United Nations food agencies — along with other development and aid groups — have urged countries to prepare for what seems likely to become the third food price shock in five years. Low-income countries that rely on agricultural imports should invest in safety-net programs for the poor, they recommended. They also urged countries to bolster local production.
Groups including the World Bank and the United Nations have also warned against trade protectionist policies in light of climbing food prices.
.... International groups increasingly see inconsistent yields and drastic swings in food prices as a problem driven by climate change — and a global challenge that is not intermittent, but here to stay. Since the food crisis in 2007 and 2008, they have bolstered international cooperation to help foster more stable food supplies and keep the most vulnerable countries prepared.
―We will all feel the impact as prices spike but the poorest people will be hit hardest because they often spend up to 75 percent of their income on food,‖ said Heather Coleman, climate change policy adviser for Oxfam America, in a statement.
The United Nations agencies warned that too few countries were producing too large a proportion of staple crops — leaving the world more vulnerable to droughts and floods. September 10, 2012 Arctic Ice, Coral reefs, World food crisis 2
Fiona Harvey, 2012.
Caribbean coral reefs face collapse. guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 September 2012
Caribbean coral reefs are in danger of disappearing, depriving the world of one of its most beautiful and productive ecosystems
Fiona Harvey in Jeju, South Korea
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 September 2012 22.00 EDT
Caribbean coral reefs – which make up one of the world's most colourful, vivid and productive ecosystems – are on the verge of collapse, with less than 10% of the reef area showing live coral cover.
With so little growth left, the reefs are in danger of utter devastation unless urgent action is taken, conservationists warned. They said the drastic loss was the result of severe environmental problems, including over-exploitation, pollution from agricultural run-off and other sources, and climate change.
The decline of the reefs has been rapid: in the 1970s, more than 50% showed live coral cover, compared with 8% in the newly completed survey. The scientists who carried it out warned there was no sign of the rate of coral death slowing.
Coral reefs are a particularly valuable part of the marine ecosystem because they act as nurseries for younger fish, providing food sources and protection from predators until the fish have grown large enough to fend better for themselves. They are also a source of revenue from tourism and leisure.
Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of the global marine and polar programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which published the research, said: "The major causes of coral decline are well known and include overfishing, pollution, disease and bleaching caused by rising temperatures resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. Looking forward, there is an urgent need to immediately and drastically reduce all human impacts [in the area] if coral reefs and the vitally important fisheries that depend on them are to survive in the decades to come."
Warnings over the poor state of the world's coral reefs have become more frequent in the past decades as pollution, increasing pressure on fish stocks, and the effects of global warming on the marine environment – in the form of higher sea temperatures and slightly elevated levels of acidity in the ocean – have taken their toll. September 10, 2012 Arctic Ice, Coral reefs, World food crisis 3 Last year, scientists estimated that 75% of the Caribbean's coral reefs were in danger, along with 95% of those in south-east Asia. That research, from the World Resources Institute, predicted that by 2050 virtually all of the world's coral reefs would be in danger.
This decline is likely to have severe impacts on coastal villages, particularly in developing countries, where many people depend on the reefs for fishing and tourism. Globally, about 275 million people live within 19 miles of a reef.
IUCN, which is holding its quadrennial World Conservation Congress on Jeju island in South Korea this week, said swift action was vital. The organisation called for catch quotas to limit fishing, more marine-protected areas where fishing would be banned, and measures that would halt the run-off of fertilisers from farmland around the coast. To save reefs around the world, moves to stave off global warming would also be needed, the group said.
On a few of the more remote Caribbean reefs, the situation is less dire. In the Netherlands Antilles, Cayman Islands and a few other places, the die-off has been slower, with up to 30% coverage of live coral still remaining. The scientists noted that these reefs were in areas less exposed to human impact from fishing and pollution, as well as to natural disasters such as hurricanes. The report – compiled by 36 scientists from 18 countries – was the work of the IUCN-coordinated Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network.
'A great silence is spreading over the natural world'
Bernie Krause has spent 40 years recording nature's sounds. But such is the rate of species and habitat loss that his tapes may become our only record of the original diversity of life http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/sep/10/arctic-sunrise-polar-ice-cap?intcmp=122 Further north than expected, the Arctic Sunrise reaches the edge of the ice cap Posted by John Vidal Monday 10 September 2012 06.50 EDT guardian.co.uk
The Greenpeace ship must press deeper into the ice to allow the scientists to find the right ice floe to begin their research
After setting out from northern Norway last week to witness this year's record sea melt in the Arctic, we reached the edge of the Arctic polar ice cap this morning. It's far further north than expected, at around 82 deg N, but the annual sea ice retreat here has been nowhere near as great as on the Alaskan side of the ice cap, where it has dramatically pulled back hundreds of miles further than usual.
.... We are now less than 500 miles from the north pole and the temperature is dropping fast. The plan is to press deeper into the ice to find a good-sized floe where the three scientists, based in Cambridge, Scotland and the US, can set up their instruments to measure ice thickness, wave action and how the waves change as they penetrate the ice.
Nick Toberg from the University of Cambridge is working with Ettiore Pedretti, an engineer from the Scottish Marine Institute in Oban, to see how waves get under the pack ice and break it up. The impact of the waves on the rapid acceleration of ice loss in the Arctic is a little understood area and they have brought a buoy full of instruments which they will test. Next year they want to return with 25 more buoys to monitor wave action over many kilometres. The data could be vital to understanding how waves expose more water to solar radiation and allow the ice to melt from below.
Julienne Stroeve, from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, is here to track and "characterise" the ice we pass though. She mostly works from satellite data, but they can't tell the quality or age of the ice or the way it is moving.
U.S. Declares a Disaster for Fishery in Northeast
BOSTON — The Commerce Department on Thursday issued a formal disaster declaration for the Northeastern commercial groundfish fishery, paving the way for financial relief for the battered industry and the communities that depend on it.
To many here, the declaration underscored the urgency of a groundfish depletion that has become apparent to many scientists and some fishermen who work in New England’s waters. “Fishermen in the Northeast are facing financial hardships because of the unexpectedly slow rebuilding of fish stocks,” Rebecca Blank, the acting secretary of commerce, said in a statement.
The declaration, which allows Congress to appropriate financial relief for the industry but does not guarantee any funds, comes after an assessment last year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that found that the population of Gulf of Maine cod — a critical commercial species here — was about 20 percent of its rebuilding target.
Those findings increased the likelihood that federal catch-limits will be cut significantly in 2013 (regulators say cuts for some species could be higher than 70 percent), which some fishermen feel could further cripple an industry already suffering from withering stocks.
“This year has been the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said John Our, who has caught only 500 of the 180,000 pounds of cod he was allotted this year and has shifted his focus to dogfish instead. “It is a disaster, I’ll give them that. I just don’t see any fish being landed.”
Fishery disaster declarations are not novel for the agency — it often makes at least several per year — but are unusual for a fishery that has been actively managed for decades, according to Peter Shelley, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation, which supported this declaration despite opposing previous calls for such an action.
“The problem wasn’t that fishermen were overfishing,” Mr. Shelley said, “but that their limits were set too high — because of a failure to understand how the system has been changing.”
The declaration comes as fishery management takes a prominent role in some of the region’s political campaigns. Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, recently released an advertisement featuring fishermen in Gloucester, Mass.; Representative John F. Tierney, a Democrat fighting a tough re-election battle in the state’s coastal Sixth Congressional District, and Representative William Keating, a Democrat who is running in the Ninth Congressional District, which includes Cape Cod, have both pushed federal regulators for the declaration.
The Commerce Department also declared commercial fishery disaster relief for three regions in Alaska where Chinook salmon catches have plummeted — on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers, both of which flow into the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast, and in the Cook Inlet southwest of Anchorage.
In asking for federal help this summer, Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, described a ripple effect through an outdoor economy, and the simultaneous challenges for the deeply rural communities where subsistence fishing is an element of culture and survival.
The numbers indicate a sudden, stunning decline in recent years, about which scientists have not settled on an explanation. On the Yukon, for example, 1,488 pounds of salmon were harvested in 2011, down from more than 859,000 pounds in 2006, a state study found.
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