Monthly Archives: November 2009

Staggering Global Warming Statistics Emerge As UN Meeting Looms

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From Red Orbit

Since the 1997 international agreement to address global warming, climate change has seen its ups and downs, including extremely bleak warnings.

So far, the world’s oceans have raised an inch and a half, serious droughts have plagued parts of the world, temperatures everywhere are warmer, and several endangered species continue to be threatened.

“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, to AP News.

It is suspected that since the original agreement signed in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has grown 6.5%. Officials will meet in Copenhagen next month to seek create a new pact, which President Barack Obama says “has immediate operational effect … an important step forward in the effort to rally the world around a solution.”

From 1997 to 2008, world carbon dioxide has leapt up 31%. Emissions from China have doubled since 1997.

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Climate change sceptics and lobbyists put world at risk, says top adviser

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By David Adam, environment correspondent, writes for The Guardian

Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world’s chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the department for environment and rural affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.

His comments come ahead of key UN negotiations on a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen next month that the UK government insists should still aim for a 2C goal, despite doubts over whether a meaningful deal can be sealed.

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Warmer means windier on world's biggest lake

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From The Times of India

WASHINGTON: Scientists have found that rising water temperatures are kicking up more powerful winds on Lake Superior in the US, with consequences for currents, biological cycles, pollution and more on the world’s largest lake and its smaller brethren.

Since 1985, surface water temperatures measured by lake buoys have climbed 1.2 degrees per decade, about 15% faster than the air above the lake and twice as fast as warming over nearby land.

“The lake’s thermal budget is very sensitive to the amount of ice cover over the winter,” said Ankur Desai, atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“There is less ice on Lake Superior during the winter, and consequently the water absorbs more heat,” he added.

A wide temperature differential between water and air makes for a more stable atmosphere with calmer winds over the relatively cold water.

However, as warming water closes the gap, as in Lake Superior’s case, the atmosphere gets more turbulent.

“You get more powerful winds,” Desai said. “We’ve seen a 5 percent increase per decade in average wind speed since 1985,” he added.

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Women 'bearing brunt' of climate change

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By Simon Hooper for CNN

“There is less water now,” says Leocadia Quispe, a 60-year-old mother, grandmother and potato farmer. Seven of her eight children have left the region, she says, because there is no way for them to make a living. Most of the men of the village have also gone, heading to the conjoined urban sprawl of nearby La Paz and El Alto in search of work, returning just once or twice a month to see their wives and families.

Each day Quispe spends hours hauling two five-litre containers of water by hand from a nearby river. “We used to be able to get water for irrigation from the streams that came down from the glacier. But the streams are no longer there, so now we supplement the water from a river further up in the valley,” she explains.

Jaime Nadal, the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) representative in Bolivia, said that Quispe’s situation was far from unusual. “Young people tend to leave these areas. Old women are typically left in the community having to perform harder and harder tasks to keep up the household. We already see mostly old women in many of these communities.”

In a report released on Wednesday, UNFPA warns that it is women in the developing world such as Quispe who are bearing the brunt of the worsening and accelerating impact of climate change.

“Women are on the front lines of many societies buffeted by climate change — and research indicates they tend to be more vulnerable to these impacts,” said the report’s lead author, Robert Engelman.

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Dalai Lama appeals to China on drying Tibet rivers

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Reporting by Gavin Jones, Editing by Sonya Hepinstall for REUTERS

ROME, Nov 18 (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama on Wednesday appealed to China to take action to stop Tibet’s glaciers melting, saying the environmental crisis was more urgent than a political solution over Tibet’s future.

Attending a U.N. summit on global hunger in Rome, the exiled Buddhist leader warned rivers from Tibet’s glaciers and snow-covered mountains may dry up in 15 to 20 years and asked China to study the problem together with Tibetan experts.

“A political solution (for Tibet) may take time, but that’s okay, we can wait,” the Dalai Lama told reporters.

“But damaging the ecology, year by year, is happening, so we really need serious studies and to make a plan to protect the environment. That is very, very important.”

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the source of many of Asia’s great rivers including the Yangtze and the Mekong.

Chinese officials and envoys of the Dalai Lama have recently held eight rounds of talks over the future of Tibet but little of substance has been achieved.

The Dalai Lama, dubbed a separatist by Beijing, says he is merely seeking autonomy for his homeland, which last year erupted in riots and protests against the Chinese presence.

[Ed-Apols for full quote]

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