Most people may drink only two litres of water a day, but they consume about 3,000 if the water that goes into their food is taken into account. The rich gulp down far more, since they tend to eat more meat, which takes far more water to produce than grains. So as the world’s population grows and incomes rise, farmers will—if they use today’s methods—need a great deal more water to keep everyone fed: 2,000 more cubic kilometres a year by 2030, according to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a research centre, or over a quarter more than they use today. Yet in many farming regions, water is scarce and likely to get scarcer as global warming worsens. The world is facing not so much a food crisis as a water crisis, argues Colin Chartres, IWMI’s director-general.

{ Economist | Continue reading }

A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada’s northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.

{ AP/NY Times | Continue reading }

related { Warmer seas linked to strengthening hurricanes | Climate change and the polar bear }

photo { Liu Zheng }

A new calculation suggests that adding vast quantities of limestone to the world’s oceans could be an effective solution to climate change. Experts remain to be convinced, however.

The revised estimate is based on an existing ‘planetary engineering’ theory first mooted in 1995 by Haroon Kheshgi, a scientist with oil conglomerate Exxon Mobil. Kheshgi proposed that adding lime to seawater might help reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, by reacting with the dissolved greenhouse gas and locking it away as calcium bicarbonate.

The process would also turn back the clock on ocean acidification, which is caused by excess CO2 in the water, and poses a threat to the growth or corals and other shelled marine life.

The oceans currently take in approximately one third of the world’s excess CO2, making them the world’s greatest carbon sink.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading }

photo { Torkil Gudnason, Sirens, 2004 }

Sean MacPherson, the New York hotelier, has been to Europe dozens of times. And he knows that across the Continent, many hotel rooms have master switches that help reduce power use.

Usually, a guest inserts a card into a slot when entering the room to turn on the electricity. Removing the card (which doubles as the room key) on the way out the door shuts off the power.

It is an easy way to conserve energy. Yet it is almost never seen in the United States. Guests who are in a hurry — or simply don’t care about saving electricity — leave TVs, air-conditioners and lights on when there is no one in the room. Brian McGuinness, a vice president of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, explained the mind-set of some travelers: “Part of being on the road means the ability to live a little more luxuriously than at home, and that means not having to turn off the lights and the TV.” (…)

Another device, also common in European hotels, raises similar issues. It saves a lot of water, but also forces guests to think about how they use resources.

The device is a dual-flush toilet. Instead of one button to operate the toilet, there are two: one for a 0.8-gallon flush (for liquid waste) and one for 1.6 gallons (for solids). The toilets, which average just under one gallon per flush — as opposed to 7 gallons for some older toilets — are standard in much of the world.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

We’ve added so many greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, for our generation’s growth, that our kids are likely going to spend a good part of their adulthood, maybe all of it, just dealing with the climate implications of our profligacy. And now our leaders are telling them the way out is “offshore drilling” for more climate-changing fossil fuels. (…)

Most people assume that the effects of climate change are going to be felt through another big disaster, like Katrina. Not necessarily, says Minik Thorleif Rosing, a top geologist at Denmark’s National History Museum. “Most people will actually feel climate change delivered to them by the postman,” he explains. It will come in the form of higher water bills, because of increased droughts in some areas; higher energy bills, because the use of fossil fuels becomes prohibitive; and higher insurance and mortgage rates, because of much more violently unpredictable weather.

Remember: climate change means “global weirding,” not just global warming.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { Global Warming is happening too slowly }

photo { Pete Turner }

From Spain to New York, to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread, and they are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before, scientists say. The faceless marauders are stinging children blithely bathing on summer vacations, forcing beaches to close and clogging fishing nets.

But while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world’s oceans. (…)

The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

{ Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) released a few details about the “Zero Emission House.” }

The prudent environmentalist will eat local in order to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense. Bananas shipped from Brazil can’t be good for the environment.

But two Carnegie Mellon researchers recently broke down the carbon footprint of foods, and their findings were a bit surprising. 83 percent of emissions came from the growth and production of the food itself. Only 11 percent came from transportation, and even then, only 4 percent came from the transportation between grower and seller (which is the part that eating local helps cut).

Additionally, food shipped from far off may be better for the environment than food shipped within the country — ocean travel is much more efficient than trucking.

{ The American Prospect | Continue reading }

It’s how food is produced, not how far it is transported, that matters most for global warming. In fact, eating less red meat and dairy can be a more effective way to lower an average U.S. household’s food-related climate footprint than buying local food.

{ ACS | Continue reading }

illustration { Charles Harper, 1954 }

related { $45 trillion urged in battling carbon emissions | The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase }

As thousands of people pour into emergency rooms and millions line up to be vaccinated, Brazil’s public health officials and recently even its military are fighting to control vector-borne diseases. Mosquitoes are carrying illnesses like dengue and yellow fever into Brazil’s largest cities, including Rio and Brasília, and the tropical disease, chikungunya, previously unheard of in Italy, was reported there last year. The two recent outbreaks in Brazil have caused a total of more than 80 deaths, 57,000 new infections, and widespread panic. As a result of global warming, mosquitoes, ticks, rodents and other vectors are expanding their geographic range and altering long-established patterns of disease. Climate changes worldwide are also causing serious problems with food and water supplies, increasing mental health concerns, and exacerbating air pollution, which elevates chronic disease risk.

Global temperature increases of 0.9°F (0.5°C) over the past century have led to an estimated 150,000 deaths and the loss of 5.5 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) annually, with the rates expected to double over the next several decades. The World Health Organization (WHO) has documented 39 new or re-emerging diseases since the 1960’s, many linked to global warming — an explosion of illnesses that has not been seen since the Industrial Revolution when masses of people moved to cities, increasing the spread of disease. (…)

As global climate change produces more extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and flooding, spikes in the prevalence of other weather sensitive diseases can be expected. Furthermore, deforestation, a major contributor to global warming, has brought animals and ticks in contact with humans, resulting in the emergence of a new infectious illness, Lyme’s Disease, first reported in 1975. Global warming is projected to expand the range of ticks that carry this disease.

The earth’s water supply has also been profoundly affected by global warming, endangering the health of people and the planet. Water is essential to all aspects of life, yet 99% of water on Earth is unsafe or unavailable to drink. As a result of global warming, water will become even more scarce and contaminated as climate patterns change, extreme weather events occur, and glaciers melt. The 20th century has witnessed the greatest increase in temperature of any century in the past thousand years, bringing with it a change in precipitation patterns and a rise in sea levels. Global sea levels rose at an average rate of 0.07 inches per year from 1961-2003 (rising at an even greater rate of 0.12 inches per year on average from 1993-2003) reducing fresh water availability and elevating water temperatures that threaten already scarce water supplies. (…)

Changes to the earth’s water supply have threatened populations around the globe with new diseases and sanitation concerns. 1.1 billion people worldwide lack safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation infrastructure. In the United States alone, more than 750,000 cases of diseases associated with unsafe drinking water occurred between 1980 and 1996.

{ Huffington Post | Continue reading }

Climate change might be causing reef fish to get lost, unable to return to breeding grounds from the open ocean, which could have profound implications for the survival of reef ecosystems, Australian scientists say.

Climate change-induced environmental stress, including warmer and more acidic seawater, could be hindering the development of the ear bones in young reef fish, which rely on sound for navigation, the marine experts said on Friday.

The scientists from the James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science found that fish with asymmetrical ear bones struggle to return to their home reef.

‘In our opinion, ear bone asymmetry in the early life stages of reef fish interferes with their capacity to find and settle on coral reefs,’ fish ecologist Monica Gagliano said in a statement.

Fish at the end of their ‘ocean stage’ after hatching navigate by homing-in on reef-associated sounds, such as the gurgling of fish and the snapping of crustaceans, said the scientists, whose study was published on Friday in the British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Vertebrate animals make sense of sounds by comparing differences in the acoustic signal between their two ears. To do this well, ear structures must be relatively symmetrical.

Asymmetrical ear bones do not appear to make the fish deaf, but might interfere with the ability of the fish to hear effectively.

{ The Straits Times | Continue reading }

illustration { Josh Keyes }

{ wieden + kennedy london }

Just seven years ago, climate change wasn’t listed as a potential hazard in Threatened Birds of the World. Now it gets its own heading in the annual book, and with good reason: a new study finds that climate change may trigger the extinction of 30 percent of land bird species by the year 2100. (…)

Using the elevation of species’ ranges, the newest suite of climate predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a set of habitat-loss scenarios, the researchers calculated the extinction risk of more than 8400 species of land birds in the world. In the most likely outcome—a rise of 2.8 degrees Celsius by the turn of the century, according to the IPCC—400-550 birds could go extinct. If temperatures climb even more, that number would increase drastically.

This is due in part to what the researchers call the “escalator effect.” Climate change can cause range shifts as species are forced to leave their current locations when conditions become inhospitable. The most familiar of these shifts are poleward—things in the northern hemisphere move north, and things in the southern hemisphere head south. But on a climate escalator, species that live at higher altitudes may have nowhere to go but up. And up. And up some more, until they reach the highest point available to them. Once that’s topped, there’s often nowhere for them to go but extinct.

{ Conservation Magazine | Continue reading }

illustration { Charley Harper }

In booming economies from Asia to Eastern Europe, cement is the glue of progress. The material that binds the ingredients of concrete together, cement is essential for constructing buildings and laying roads in much of the world.

Some 80 percent of cement is made in and used by emerging economies; China alone makes and uses 45 percent of global output. Production is doubling every four years in places like Ukraine.

But making cement creates pollution, in the form of carbon dioxide emissions, and the greenest of technologies can reduce that by only 20 percent.

Cement plants already account for 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming.

Compounding the problem, cement has no viable recycling potential, as the abandoned buildings that line roads from Tunisia to Mongolia demonstrate. Each new road, each new building, needs new cement.

“The big news about cement is that it is the single biggest material source of carbon emissions in the world, and the demand is going up,” said Julian Allwood, a professor of engineering at Cambridge University.

{ International Herald Tribune | Continue reading }