The US EPA issued a report that outlines a strategy to deliver clean, low-cost, and reliable energy to state residents through the use of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean distributed generation. The intent is to provide states with the information they need to determine what energy options would be the most beneficial, practical, and cost-effective.
The potential energy savings achievable through state actions is significant. EPA estimates that if each state were to implement cost-effective clean energy-environment policies, the expected growth in demand for electricity could be cut in half by 2025, and more demand could be met through cleaner energy supply.
This would mean annual savings of more than 900 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) and $70 billion in energy costs by 2025, while preventing the need for more than 300 power plants
and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to emissions from 80 million of today’s vehicles.
Opportunities for State Action State governments are increasingly developing policies and programs that address their energy challenges and spur greater investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean distributed resources. For example, states are: ”? Leading by example by establishing programs that achieve substantial energy cost savings within their own state facilities, fleets, and operations and encouraging the broader adoption of clean energy by the public and private sectors. State governments across the country are collaborating with state agencies, local governments, and schools to identify and capture energy savings within their facilities and operations, purchase or generate renewable energy, and use clean DG/CHP in their facilities.”? Establishing ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs (e.g., public benefits funds) to help over come a variety of first-cost, informational, split-incentive, and other market barriers that limit greater reliance on energy efficiency. Seventeen states and Washington, D.C. have adopted public benefits funds (PBFs) for energy efficiency, and 16 states have developed PBFs for clean energy supply.”? Adopting state minimum appliance efficiency standards for products not covered by the federal government that yield net cost savings to businesses and consumers. Ten states have adopted appliance standards covering 36 types of appliances (Delaski 2005, Nadel et al. 2005).
”? Establishing renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that direct electric utilities and other retail electric providers to supply a specified minimum percent age (or absolute amount) of customer load with eligible sources of renewable electricity. Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C. have adopted RPS requirements, which are expected to generate more than 26,000 MW of new renewable energy capacity by 2015 (Navigant 2005).
”? Reviewing utility incentives and planning processes and designing policies that accurately value energy efficiency, renewables, and distributed resources in a way that "levels the playing field" so public utility commissions and consumers can make fair, economically based comparisons between clean energy and other resources. More than 12 states have developed approaches that remove disincentives for utilities to invest in demand-side resources
Monday, June 22, 2009
Desert icon Joshua trees are vanishing, scientists say
A breeze stirs the silence at Joshua Tree National Park as a red-tailed hawk takes flight from the spiky arm of one of the namesake plants in search of breakfast.
It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.
The ancient plants are dying in the park, the southern-most boundary of their limited growing region, scientists say. Already finicky reproducers, Joshua trees are the victim of global warming and its symptoms -- including fire and drought -- plus pollution and the proliferation of non-native plants. Experts expect the Joshuas to vanish entirely from the southern half of the state within a century.
A breeze stirs the silence at Joshua Tree National Park as a red-tailed hawk takes flight from the spiky arm of one of the namesake plants in search of breakfast.
It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.
The loss would be devastating, said Cipra, who is California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that evaluates conditions at national parks and lobbies for their preservation.
"Joshua trees aren't just iconic pictures on a postcard. They're essential to a functioning ecosystem," he said. "We're going to be losing a lot of what makes this place special
It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.
The ancient plants are dying in the park, the southern-most boundary of their limited growing region, scientists say. Already finicky reproducers, Joshua trees are the victim of global warming and its symptoms -- including fire and drought -- plus pollution and the proliferation of non-native plants. Experts expect the Joshuas to vanish entirely from the southern half of the state within a century.
A breeze stirs the silence at Joshua Tree National Park as a red-tailed hawk takes flight from the spiky arm of one of the namesake plants in search of breakfast.
It's a scene that national parks protector Mike Cipra has witnessed many times. Still, he can't contain his enthusiasm on this early morning outing, despite the gloomy topic he's discussing with a visitor -- the probable extinction of the Joshua tree in the park that bears its name.
The loss would be devastating, said Cipra, who is California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that evaluates conditions at national parks and lobbies for their preservation.
"Joshua trees aren't just iconic pictures on a postcard. They're essential to a functioning ecosystem," he said. "We're going to be losing a lot of what makes this place special
Missing the river for the dam
Two million people have been displaced by the flooding of the river Kosi in Bihar following the breach of the river’s eastern embankment in Nepal on August 18, 2008. The breach, just 12 km upstream of the India-Nepal border, started out measuring 400 m, but is now almost 1.7 km long. Around 800 villages in Madhepura, Supaul and other districts have been affected.
Each major flood in Bihar causes a flurry of aerial surveys, relief packages and evacuations. Each major flood also results in a reiteration of the old demand for a high dam in the upper reaches of Nepal, a demand that Kathmandu rejects, arguing that neither a high dam nor its exaggerated benefits will favour Nepal.
The truth is that Delhi has got its flood action plan consistently wrong over the years, and so has Patna. Shockingly, it is the flood control measures themselves that have over the years turned north Bihar into a watery grave for millions. Over 2 million people are permanently trapped between the flood control embankments which have been built along the Kosi river since the early-1950s (see a story providing the background on this at http://infochangeindia.org/200501156863/Disasters/Related-Features/Abandoned-victims-of-the-Kosi-embankments.html). An estimated 8 million people are faced with acute water-logging outside of the embankments. Strait-jacketing the silt-laden Kosi has actually caused flood-prone areas in the state to increase threefold since independence, from a low of 25,00,000 hectares to a high of 68,00,000 hectares today. No less than 73% of the entire land mass of Bihar remains flood-prone.
The present deluge upstream of the Bhimnagar barrage on the Kosi has only underlined the follies of the embankments.
In March 2008, an independent fact-finding mission set out to investigate the perpetual flooding cycle of north Bihar. I was part of that team. The dilapidated state of the Bhimnagar barrage could not convince us that it could carry its designed discharge of 950,000 cusecs. The east and west bank canals emanating from the barrage are choked by silt, their combined irrigation capacities reduced by two-thirds on account of the defunct silt ejectors.
Sharing preliminary findings with the press, the fact-finding mission had warned: “..not only are floods in Bihar manmade but the worse has yet to come should the political economy of flood control continue to promote ‘embankments’ as the only solution to the scourge of floods.
Over 3,465 km of embankments have been built in Bihar since 1952. More are in the offing; a Rs 792 crore package to tame the Bagmati has been approved and another proposal to embank the tributaries of the Mahananda at an estimated cost of Rs 850 crore has been planned. The business of embankment-building reflects the politician-bureaucrat-contractor nexus at its best.
The efficacy of these embankments has always been suspect. Engineer Captain F C Hirst, in 1908, had commented, “in recent times, on the left bank of the Kosi, in the Purnea district, private enterprise has copied the work of the makers of the Bir Band, giving temporary relief which, as will be seen later, is probably a menace to future welfare”. This century-old observation has proved prophetic.
Embankments may work on rivers that are stable and that carry a moderate silt load. The Kosi, in contrast, is a meandering river with maximum available energy-producing currents. Having drifted 160 km in the past 250 years, the natural tendency of the meandering Kosi disproves the traditional 'steady-state' equilibrium approach of the engineers. Once embanked, the river’s incredible silt load only adds to its defiant nature.
The embankments have proven counterproductive in the case of the Kosi, arresting the natural dispersion of sediment on the floodplains. This increases deposition, raising the level of the riverbed and later causing the breaking of the embankments, with resultant floods and water-logging. Thanks to the embankments, the Kosi riverbed has risen by 12-15 feet on account of silt deposition that otherwise would have been spread over the floodplains.
It is erroneous to assume that north Bihar is geographically positioned to remain flooded. Conversely, it’s the state’s arrogance and misplaced faith in engineering that has stopped these rivers from performing their natural task of land-building. Without the nurturing role of these rivers, Bihar would never have become the centre of knowledge.
Can a high dam over the Kosi reverse Bihar’s misfortune? Like the embankments, the chances of a Rs 35,000 crore project (estimated cost of 269 mt high dam) going wrong are high. While silt deposition by the river is one major issue impacting any dam’s lifespan, its proposed location in Nepal’s Brahashetra will capture only 78% of the river’s catchment, leaving a significant 22% of the flows dangerously unattended.
What then is the option? Having failed to tame the rivers Rhine and Meuse, Dutch hydrologists have come to the conclusion that absolute safety from flooding cannot be guaranteed by technical-infrastructural measures. Adopting spatial flood protection measures, they are now implementing a ‘room for the river’ approach, with broad political support. It is measures like these that need to be negotiated with Kathmandu, but not before the political lobbies of Patna (and Delhi) get rid of their misconceptions.
Each major flood in Bihar causes a flurry of aerial surveys, relief packages and evacuations. Each major flood also results in a reiteration of the old demand for a high dam in the upper reaches of Nepal, a demand that Kathmandu rejects, arguing that neither a high dam nor its exaggerated benefits will favour Nepal.
The truth is that Delhi has got its flood action plan consistently wrong over the years, and so has Patna. Shockingly, it is the flood control measures themselves that have over the years turned north Bihar into a watery grave for millions. Over 2 million people are permanently trapped between the flood control embankments which have been built along the Kosi river since the early-1950s (see a story providing the background on this at http://infochangeindia.org/200501156863/Disasters/Related-Features/Abandoned-victims-of-the-Kosi-embankments.html). An estimated 8 million people are faced with acute water-logging outside of the embankments. Strait-jacketing the silt-laden Kosi has actually caused flood-prone areas in the state to increase threefold since independence, from a low of 25,00,000 hectares to a high of 68,00,000 hectares today. No less than 73% of the entire land mass of Bihar remains flood-prone.
The present deluge upstream of the Bhimnagar barrage on the Kosi has only underlined the follies of the embankments.
In March 2008, an independent fact-finding mission set out to investigate the perpetual flooding cycle of north Bihar. I was part of that team. The dilapidated state of the Bhimnagar barrage could not convince us that it could carry its designed discharge of 950,000 cusecs. The east and west bank canals emanating from the barrage are choked by silt, their combined irrigation capacities reduced by two-thirds on account of the defunct silt ejectors.
Sharing preliminary findings with the press, the fact-finding mission had warned: “..not only are floods in Bihar manmade but the worse has yet to come should the political economy of flood control continue to promote ‘embankments’ as the only solution to the scourge of floods.
Over 3,465 km of embankments have been built in Bihar since 1952. More are in the offing; a Rs 792 crore package to tame the Bagmati has been approved and another proposal to embank the tributaries of the Mahananda at an estimated cost of Rs 850 crore has been planned. The business of embankment-building reflects the politician-bureaucrat-contractor nexus at its best.
The efficacy of these embankments has always been suspect. Engineer Captain F C Hirst, in 1908, had commented, “in recent times, on the left bank of the Kosi, in the Purnea district, private enterprise has copied the work of the makers of the Bir Band, giving temporary relief which, as will be seen later, is probably a menace to future welfare”. This century-old observation has proved prophetic.
Embankments may work on rivers that are stable and that carry a moderate silt load. The Kosi, in contrast, is a meandering river with maximum available energy-producing currents. Having drifted 160 km in the past 250 years, the natural tendency of the meandering Kosi disproves the traditional 'steady-state' equilibrium approach of the engineers. Once embanked, the river’s incredible silt load only adds to its defiant nature.
The embankments have proven counterproductive in the case of the Kosi, arresting the natural dispersion of sediment on the floodplains. This increases deposition, raising the level of the riverbed and later causing the breaking of the embankments, with resultant floods and water-logging. Thanks to the embankments, the Kosi riverbed has risen by 12-15 feet on account of silt deposition that otherwise would have been spread over the floodplains.
It is erroneous to assume that north Bihar is geographically positioned to remain flooded. Conversely, it’s the state’s arrogance and misplaced faith in engineering that has stopped these rivers from performing their natural task of land-building. Without the nurturing role of these rivers, Bihar would never have become the centre of knowledge.
Can a high dam over the Kosi reverse Bihar’s misfortune? Like the embankments, the chances of a Rs 35,000 crore project (estimated cost of 269 mt high dam) going wrong are high. While silt deposition by the river is one major issue impacting any dam’s lifespan, its proposed location in Nepal’s Brahashetra will capture only 78% of the river’s catchment, leaving a significant 22% of the flows dangerously unattended.
What then is the option? Having failed to tame the rivers Rhine and Meuse, Dutch hydrologists have come to the conclusion that absolute safety from flooding cannot be guaranteed by technical-infrastructural measures. Adopting spatial flood protection measures, they are now implementing a ‘room for the river’ approach, with broad political support. It is measures like these that need to be negotiated with Kathmandu, but not before the political lobbies of Patna (and Delhi) get rid of their misconceptions.
Green capitalism
Environmentalists and activists have often been criticised for opposing so-called development projects and not having anything constructive to offer in their place. The late Anil Agarwal, founder of the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, underlined this by pointing out that the greens opposed dams, coal-based thermal power stations and nuclear plants. But, he noted, the dilemma remained: How is a developing country like India going to obtain electricity to run a modern economy?
The question becomes all the more significant in the context of the contemporary “LPG” ideological framework -- liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. How does one combat this juggernaut, which sees all economic growth as an end in itself, no matter that it excludes huge swathes of the population?
Some answers have been provided by the Pune-based Society for People’s Participation in Ecosystem Management. Since 1991, it has been working on participatory irrigation management and has since broadened its activities to include watershed management, gender and livelihoods, water conflicts and river basin studies. Its mentor is K R Datye, who, for 25 years, worked as an irrigation engineer but then turned to exploring various alternative technologies. At the end of March, likeminded activists and academics paid tribute to Datye, who is now 82, by organising a two-day conference on his seminal ideas at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai.
The key word in the deliberations was the emphasis on a “regenerative” economy, as opposed to a “degenerative” one based on fossil fuels and outmoded notions of industrialisation. In Datye’s view, the 73rd constitutional amendment is a vital step forward. He bases his alternative development paradigm on the gram sabha, the smallest unit of self-governance in the village. If one unit in a village consisted of 100 households, the first task was to demarcate its boundaries, including common lands, and to evaluate its resource base. The objective is to establish what entitlement such a unit has to that most previous resource -- water.
The village as a whole, typically, may consist of 400 households. The area suitable for producing crops and biomass (organic matter) may be 800 hectares, while the village would have a watershed extending over 1,000 hectares. After meeting these vital needs, there would be sufficient land available for irrigated commercial crops, dryland cultivation, pastures, grass, shrubs and trees. The average availability of water would be estimated by adding up the surface water, groundwater as delayed run-off and groundwater storage. Half this water, in a regenerative economic model, would be allocated to a 100-household gram sabha for priority use.
But, as has been pointed out time and again in any discussion on rural society, it is far from being homogeneous. Caste and class intervene at every stage to make any equitable distribution of natural resources that much more complicated. This is why Datye and his acolytes refer to the “resource poor” among villagers who, again typically, may comprise 20-40 households out of the 100 in a gram sabha. These are jobless artisans, nomadic and denotified tribes, destitute women and project-affected people awaiting resettlement. They are also entitled, as a priority, to water for domestic use and their cattle.
Proponents of this approach recognise the need to boost land productivity without resorting to capital- and resource-intensive inputs. They believe that this can be achieved by boosting the production of biomass, celebrated in Datye’s book Banking on Biomass. This is radically different from the environmentally destructive production of ethanol and biofuels throughout the world, almost all of which either divert land from food crops or are dependent on expensive inputs.
A fifth of the area available for a 100-household unit could be used to grow wood, bamboo and fibre. Around 15% could be devoted to what is known in foresters’ jargon as “non-timber forestry”. Foodgrain would comprise a fifth, as would sweet sorghum, pulses and fodder 10%, and 4% devoted to organic vegetables. Nitrogen-fixing varieties could be grown on another 10%. The output would be over 1,100 tonnes of biomass a year. Such a gram sabha would be entitled to preferential employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which entitles a person to 100 days of paid work in a year.
K J Joy, who with Suhas Paranjpye is a close associate of Datye’s, breaks down these figures and arrives at a scenario where a poor family of five would produce 18 tonnes of biomass a year. In addition, it would produce 3 tonnes of surplus biomass “for value-addition -- the basis for a transition to a dispersed industrial system”. This surplus consists of fruits, vegetables and other high-value agricultural produce, which is perishable. Instead, other produce like bamboo, fibres, oils or medicinal plants are a valuable alternative. Such an option, it should be noted, is in direct contrast to Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which represent a highly concentrated, egalitarian form of virtual forced industrialisation.
In this situation, there is a distinction between “assured water”, which is the minimum required to guarantee livelihoods and should be 80% dependable, and “variable” water, which could include supplies from outside the area. Joy explains the position succinctly: “We need to use the assured component of water to provide an equitable basic service for all, and utilise the variable component to provide water as an economic service to the enterprising.” If the variable water is used to grow perennial tree species, which produce bulk biomass, these serve as a fallback when the seasonal farm crop fails, as is unfortunately only too often. Indeed, with climate change, such fluctuations in weather are going to become more frequent. The biomass produced per family represents both an energy and capital stock.
Following pioneers such as the late Vilasrao Salunkhe’s pani panchayats, as well as the phad irrigation system in Maharashtra, Datye believes in delinking water rights from land rights. It is this ideology that has inspired movements in southern Maharashtra for the equitable distribution of water, which began with the well-known Bali Raja dam, constructed by local people with their own labour (Bharat Patankar, a veteran of that struggle, was present at TISS). The idea is that all those who depend on land for their livelihood should get a certain minimum amount of water, which includes farmers, landless labourers, artisans, women, dalits, etc, irrespective of their holdings.
The concept does not mean that all the water is divided equally among all the villagers. The basic requirement is for drinking and domestic use, for livestock, for production (agriculture, processing, etc) to meet consumption as well as to generate income for needs that are mediated by the market (like education, health and recreation). In a typical family, this works out in the region of 6,400 cubic metres of water per year. The basic service is a right; only after meeting this minimum should water be provided as an “economic service” for production for the market. As Joy explains, this is roughly equivalent to treating the first component as a social good and the second as an economic good.
Water has to be priced. The basic service is at an affordable cost, primarily to recover operation and maintenance costs. The second could be priced at full recovery, recovering the capital costs over time. Such an approach would address the opposing viewpoints about pricing water. The World Bank prescribes full cost recovery, whereas the Left believes it is a social good and opposes privatisation. According to Datye, there is a third strand that tries to bridge the two polarised positions.
This would mean that the basic service has necessarily to be subsidised, whether by cross-subsidy within the sector or across different sectors. But the economic service has to be charged at full economic cost and at premium rates to subsidise the basic service. Joy says: “It is difficult to see how free markets can even begin to meet these complex and contradictory demands.”
Professor A Vaidyanathan, a former member of the Planning Commission, who was present at TISS and once headed the Irrigation Pricing Committee, advocates a differential or graded tariff system, which can at least partly address the tension between the two components.
Another novel feature of Datye’s regenerative economics is that doles and grants, which make people dependent on the state, have to be replaced by concessional credit which is linked to performance. According to researcher Seema Kulkarni, who presented a paper on the role of institutions and finance in the transition to an alternative system, every gram sabha eligible for employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act will have to agree to norms for allocating resources and their use. Thus, if resource-poor and rich asset-owning households agree to share resources, this would qualify the former for employment assistance. The concessional credit would be available for investing and participating in the biomass-based regenerative system. Additional employment assistance could be secured to create food security and produce energy out of biomass, which would ensure minimum needs.
At the conference, Amita Shah from the Gujarat Institute of Development Research in Ahmedabad elaborated the role of finance and credit in the system. There were investments and subsidies by the state, with special emphasis on employment assistance. The creation of a biomass bank was the main source of credit for developing micro-enterprises in a decentralised setting. Alternative energy modes were promoted and costs recovered through affordable and progressive rates of interest. And even the poorest people -- for instance, tribals -- would have access to the biomass bank.
The strong point about this alternative approach is that these aren’t merely theoretical ideas -- almost wishful thinking -- that remain on paper. They have been tested on the ground at every stage, over the years. A typical initiative in this context is by the Jagrut Mahila Samaj in a village near Ballarpur, in Chandrapur district of eastern Maharashtra, which is a severely drought-prone area. In Kalamana village, through regenerating the local economy, a person with 2 hectares was able to earn Rs 41,000 after two years. In addition, by using the United Nations Development Programme’s small grants scheme, the village started a vermiculture project that generated vermicompost worth Rs 65,000. From experience, a prerequisite was a good women’s group that could handle the funds in such projects.
According to M P Parameswaran, a veteran of the renowned Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat and the literacy movement, “green capitalism” or “solar socialism” was the order of the day. The concept of land ownership would be replaced by the “right to work on land to earn a livelihood”, and growth would be predicated upon sharing, not the accumulation of surplus. He envisages that once, say by 2050, every family is provided with a pucca house, the roofs of all buildings can be designed to collect solar energy. Around 60 square metres of such area would be required to generate photovoltaic electricity -- between 4,800 and 6,000 units a year. He estimated that the average annual household demand would be only around 2,500 units; the rest could be sold to the grid for intensive energy use.
Parameswaran was clear-sighted enough, however, to recognise that “another world was possible”, but not probable. As he put it: “It is impossible within a capitalist regime, where profit is the only motive force. It is based on competition and leads invariably to larger and larger scales, increased urbanisation, growing inequalities and imminent eco-catastrophe.” The only answer, as he saw it, was for hundreds of small-scale experiments to show the way to a regenerative ecosystem. If nothing else, presumably, sheer desperation will drive the poorest people to learn how to live within their own natural resource base and to build an economy from the base, without relying on the illusory trickle-down.
The question becomes all the more significant in the context of the contemporary “LPG” ideological framework -- liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. How does one combat this juggernaut, which sees all economic growth as an end in itself, no matter that it excludes huge swathes of the population?
Some answers have been provided by the Pune-based Society for People’s Participation in Ecosystem Management. Since 1991, it has been working on participatory irrigation management and has since broadened its activities to include watershed management, gender and livelihoods, water conflicts and river basin studies. Its mentor is K R Datye, who, for 25 years, worked as an irrigation engineer but then turned to exploring various alternative technologies. At the end of March, likeminded activists and academics paid tribute to Datye, who is now 82, by organising a two-day conference on his seminal ideas at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai.
The key word in the deliberations was the emphasis on a “regenerative” economy, as opposed to a “degenerative” one based on fossil fuels and outmoded notions of industrialisation. In Datye’s view, the 73rd constitutional amendment is a vital step forward. He bases his alternative development paradigm on the gram sabha, the smallest unit of self-governance in the village. If one unit in a village consisted of 100 households, the first task was to demarcate its boundaries, including common lands, and to evaluate its resource base. The objective is to establish what entitlement such a unit has to that most previous resource -- water.
The village as a whole, typically, may consist of 400 households. The area suitable for producing crops and biomass (organic matter) may be 800 hectares, while the village would have a watershed extending over 1,000 hectares. After meeting these vital needs, there would be sufficient land available for irrigated commercial crops, dryland cultivation, pastures, grass, shrubs and trees. The average availability of water would be estimated by adding up the surface water, groundwater as delayed run-off and groundwater storage. Half this water, in a regenerative economic model, would be allocated to a 100-household gram sabha for priority use.
But, as has been pointed out time and again in any discussion on rural society, it is far from being homogeneous. Caste and class intervene at every stage to make any equitable distribution of natural resources that much more complicated. This is why Datye and his acolytes refer to the “resource poor” among villagers who, again typically, may comprise 20-40 households out of the 100 in a gram sabha. These are jobless artisans, nomadic and denotified tribes, destitute women and project-affected people awaiting resettlement. They are also entitled, as a priority, to water for domestic use and their cattle.
Proponents of this approach recognise the need to boost land productivity without resorting to capital- and resource-intensive inputs. They believe that this can be achieved by boosting the production of biomass, celebrated in Datye’s book Banking on Biomass. This is radically different from the environmentally destructive production of ethanol and biofuels throughout the world, almost all of which either divert land from food crops or are dependent on expensive inputs.
A fifth of the area available for a 100-household unit could be used to grow wood, bamboo and fibre. Around 15% could be devoted to what is known in foresters’ jargon as “non-timber forestry”. Foodgrain would comprise a fifth, as would sweet sorghum, pulses and fodder 10%, and 4% devoted to organic vegetables. Nitrogen-fixing varieties could be grown on another 10%. The output would be over 1,100 tonnes of biomass a year. Such a gram sabha would be entitled to preferential employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which entitles a person to 100 days of paid work in a year.
K J Joy, who with Suhas Paranjpye is a close associate of Datye’s, breaks down these figures and arrives at a scenario where a poor family of five would produce 18 tonnes of biomass a year. In addition, it would produce 3 tonnes of surplus biomass “for value-addition -- the basis for a transition to a dispersed industrial system”. This surplus consists of fruits, vegetables and other high-value agricultural produce, which is perishable. Instead, other produce like bamboo, fibres, oils or medicinal plants are a valuable alternative. Such an option, it should be noted, is in direct contrast to Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which represent a highly concentrated, egalitarian form of virtual forced industrialisation.
In this situation, there is a distinction between “assured water”, which is the minimum required to guarantee livelihoods and should be 80% dependable, and “variable” water, which could include supplies from outside the area. Joy explains the position succinctly: “We need to use the assured component of water to provide an equitable basic service for all, and utilise the variable component to provide water as an economic service to the enterprising.” If the variable water is used to grow perennial tree species, which produce bulk biomass, these serve as a fallback when the seasonal farm crop fails, as is unfortunately only too often. Indeed, with climate change, such fluctuations in weather are going to become more frequent. The biomass produced per family represents both an energy and capital stock.
Following pioneers such as the late Vilasrao Salunkhe’s pani panchayats, as well as the phad irrigation system in Maharashtra, Datye believes in delinking water rights from land rights. It is this ideology that has inspired movements in southern Maharashtra for the equitable distribution of water, which began with the well-known Bali Raja dam, constructed by local people with their own labour (Bharat Patankar, a veteran of that struggle, was present at TISS). The idea is that all those who depend on land for their livelihood should get a certain minimum amount of water, which includes farmers, landless labourers, artisans, women, dalits, etc, irrespective of their holdings.
The concept does not mean that all the water is divided equally among all the villagers. The basic requirement is for drinking and domestic use, for livestock, for production (agriculture, processing, etc) to meet consumption as well as to generate income for needs that are mediated by the market (like education, health and recreation). In a typical family, this works out in the region of 6,400 cubic metres of water per year. The basic service is a right; only after meeting this minimum should water be provided as an “economic service” for production for the market. As Joy explains, this is roughly equivalent to treating the first component as a social good and the second as an economic good.
Water has to be priced. The basic service is at an affordable cost, primarily to recover operation and maintenance costs. The second could be priced at full recovery, recovering the capital costs over time. Such an approach would address the opposing viewpoints about pricing water. The World Bank prescribes full cost recovery, whereas the Left believes it is a social good and opposes privatisation. According to Datye, there is a third strand that tries to bridge the two polarised positions.
This would mean that the basic service has necessarily to be subsidised, whether by cross-subsidy within the sector or across different sectors. But the economic service has to be charged at full economic cost and at premium rates to subsidise the basic service. Joy says: “It is difficult to see how free markets can even begin to meet these complex and contradictory demands.”
Professor A Vaidyanathan, a former member of the Planning Commission, who was present at TISS and once headed the Irrigation Pricing Committee, advocates a differential or graded tariff system, which can at least partly address the tension between the two components.
Another novel feature of Datye’s regenerative economics is that doles and grants, which make people dependent on the state, have to be replaced by concessional credit which is linked to performance. According to researcher Seema Kulkarni, who presented a paper on the role of institutions and finance in the transition to an alternative system, every gram sabha eligible for employment assistance under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act will have to agree to norms for allocating resources and their use. Thus, if resource-poor and rich asset-owning households agree to share resources, this would qualify the former for employment assistance. The concessional credit would be available for investing and participating in the biomass-based regenerative system. Additional employment assistance could be secured to create food security and produce energy out of biomass, which would ensure minimum needs.
At the conference, Amita Shah from the Gujarat Institute of Development Research in Ahmedabad elaborated the role of finance and credit in the system. There were investments and subsidies by the state, with special emphasis on employment assistance. The creation of a biomass bank was the main source of credit for developing micro-enterprises in a decentralised setting. Alternative energy modes were promoted and costs recovered through affordable and progressive rates of interest. And even the poorest people -- for instance, tribals -- would have access to the biomass bank.
The strong point about this alternative approach is that these aren’t merely theoretical ideas -- almost wishful thinking -- that remain on paper. They have been tested on the ground at every stage, over the years. A typical initiative in this context is by the Jagrut Mahila Samaj in a village near Ballarpur, in Chandrapur district of eastern Maharashtra, which is a severely drought-prone area. In Kalamana village, through regenerating the local economy, a person with 2 hectares was able to earn Rs 41,000 after two years. In addition, by using the United Nations Development Programme’s small grants scheme, the village started a vermiculture project that generated vermicompost worth Rs 65,000. From experience, a prerequisite was a good women’s group that could handle the funds in such projects.
According to M P Parameswaran, a veteran of the renowned Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat and the literacy movement, “green capitalism” or “solar socialism” was the order of the day. The concept of land ownership would be replaced by the “right to work on land to earn a livelihood”, and growth would be predicated upon sharing, not the accumulation of surplus. He envisages that once, say by 2050, every family is provided with a pucca house, the roofs of all buildings can be designed to collect solar energy. Around 60 square metres of such area would be required to generate photovoltaic electricity -- between 4,800 and 6,000 units a year. He estimated that the average annual household demand would be only around 2,500 units; the rest could be sold to the grid for intensive energy use.
Parameswaran was clear-sighted enough, however, to recognise that “another world was possible”, but not probable. As he put it: “It is impossible within a capitalist regime, where profit is the only motive force. It is based on competition and leads invariably to larger and larger scales, increased urbanisation, growing inequalities and imminent eco-catastrophe.” The only answer, as he saw it, was for hundreds of small-scale experiments to show the way to a regenerative ecosystem. If nothing else, presumably, sheer desperation will drive the poorest people to learn how to live within their own natural resource base and to build an economy from the base, without relying on the illusory trickle-down.
How big business gets away with environmental violations
March 2005 cartoon in Business India sums up the business strategy of UK-based mining giant Vedanta/Sterlite’s founder-cum-boss Anil Agarwal. The cartoon depicts a corpulent Agarwal squeezing himself through an hour-glass saying, “In India, you must have patience. Everything will come through.” The London-based billionaire’s analysis of India is frighteningly accurate. Indeed, it is borne out by the fact that big business houses are constructing and operating mines and factories in blatant violation of laws. The formula for violating laws is simple: If you want to construct an illegal factory, just do it quick, make it big, and ensure that the investment is substantial.
The legal infrastructure, and judicial and political will to crack-down on blatantly illegal big investments just isn’t there. Increasingly, activists and residents are hesitant to approach courts for relief. Rather than take the violator and complicit regulators to task, the courts have willy-nilly tended to permit the regularisation of illegalities with barely a rap on the violator’s knuckles.
It is in this sobering context that a recent report by a Supreme Court panel on forests and wildlife has to be viewed.
On September 21, 2005, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee on Forests issued a report recommending the revocation of environmental clearances given to Vedanta Alumina Ltd’s 1 million tonne aluminium refinery in the Niyamgiri forests in Lanjigarh, Orissa. The CEC found that Vedanta had falsified information to obtain environmental clearances, destroyed more than 10 hectares of forest land and begun construction work onsite without obtaining necessary clearances under the Forest Conservation Act.Hinting at the complicity of the Union Ministry of Environment and the Orissa government in the violations, the CEC has written that “The casual approach, the lackadaisical manner and the haste with which the entire issue of forests and environmental clearance for the alumina refinery project has been dealt with smacks of undue favour/leniency and does not inspire confidence with regard to the willingness and resolve of both the State Government and the MoEF to deal with such matters keeping in view the ultimate goal of national and public interest.”
The CEC is unequivocal about the legality, or lack thereof, of Vedanta’s investments in Lanjigarh, and the consequences that ought to follow. Referring to the Niyamgiri forests as “an ecologically sensitive area,” the CEC has recommended to the Supreme Court to consider revoking the environmental clearance dated 22.9.2004 granted by the MoEF for setting up of the Alumina Refinery Plant by M/s Vedanta and directing them to stop further work on the project. The refinery project is integrally dependent on the availability of 3 million tonnes of bauxite ore annually from the densely forested Niyamgiri hills for which no clearance has been obtained. The CEC and the Orissa government acknowledge that the area is rich in wildlife, has dense forest cover and was constituted as an Elephant Reserve by the state of Orissa in August 2004.
Curiously, although Vedanta admits that the proximity of the Niyamgiri deposits is what makes the Lanjigarh project commercially viable, it has sought the delinking of the mining proposal from the refinery project. Even more curiously, the Ministry of Environment has obliged.
“Such delinking is objectionable,” reports the CEC. “In the event [that], for the mining component, the environmental clearance and/or the forest clearance is rejected, the expenditure of about Rs 4,000 crore being incurred on the project will become infructuous,” it concludes.
Considering the grave human rights violations committed and abetted by the state and Vedanta, CEC’s ‘Recommendations’ and ‘Observations and Conclusions’ take on all the more significance. Forcible eviction of tribal families from their homes, illegal and violent take-over of private property belonging to tribals, unlawful confinement of local villagers by Vedanta security forces, and the use of police and district administration to suppress dissent – nothing short of a full-blown CBI inquiry will do to unearth the sordid details of how big business conducts itself in India.
Neither Vedanta/Sterlite’s disregard for the law, nor the alleged “leniency” shown by the central and state governments to Vedanta is without precedent. In fact, the Lanjigarh scam is merely one wave in an ocean of scandals. The company, its subsidiaries and its boss Anil Agarwal have been linked to insider trading, harassment of employees, financial malpractices, illegal construction, unsafe workplaces and numerous other illegalities.
Sterlite’s copper smelter in Tuticorin perhaps has the dubious distinction of being among the most illegal facilities in the region. A proposal to set up the facility in the Ratnagiri district of coastal Maharashtra had to be abandoned after farmers and fisherfolk there put up a spirited fight. Upon the invitation of the then Tamilnadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, Sterlite put together a copper smelter in Tuticorin in 1995 using moth-balled equipment from the US and other countries. The proposal was pushed through without public consultation despite vociferous opposition by Tuticorin residents and political parties.
The half-hearted conditions laid down by the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board regarding where the factory should be located, or how much it should produce were promptly violated. Instead of locating the smelter 25 km away from the sensitive coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar marine national park as stipulated in the TNPCB’s consent to establish, the company located the arsenic and sulphur dioxide-spewing smelter 14 km from one of the protected coral islands. Rather than restrict its annual production to 40,000 tonnes of blister copper as per TNPCB’s consent to operate, Sterlite went ahead and milked more than 1,70,000 tonnes of copper anode from its smelter, and proudly announced its production achievements to impress its shareholders.
Operating at higher than permitted capacity, and the setting up of a number of unapproved plants within the complex seems to have had an immediate bearing on the safety, health and environmental conditions within the factory. According to workers and ex-workers, most of the occupational injuries and fatalities go unreported, and the local police and even the district administration “cooperate” with the company to cover up all but the most notorious of incidents. Between 1999 and 2004, the Tuticorin plant reportedly killed 13 people and injured 139. Criminal proceedings have been initiated in only 3 out of 15 incidents reported by workers. Ironically, the Tamilnadu government issued safety awards to the company in 1999 and 2000, during which time at least 11 people were injured, and villagers had apprehended company staff for releasing toxic effluents into a village drinking water pond.
Encouraged by the government’s pliability, the company has gone ahead with an ambitious capacity expansion plan to make its Tuticorin assets more attractive to global investors. A 300,000 tonne smelter, a 127,000 tonne refinery, a power plant, a copper rod unit and an oxygen plant were all set up and were close to commissioning by September 2004 when a Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes (SCMC) visited the plant. Not one of these units had any permits – safety, environmental, revenue or local government clearances had all been ignored.
A day after the SCMC’s visit, the Ministry of Environment rushed in an environmental clearance for the new smelter and refinery. The power plant, copper rod unit and oxygen plants continue to operate without permits. Even the threat of action from the country’s highest court did not daunt the company or government authorities. In April 2005, the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board consented to the operation of the above plants despite the fact that the plants were not even permitted to be built.
Vedanta’s promises to its shareholders, particularly with regard to its Lanjigarh and Tuticorin operations, were built on the company’s confidence that the Indian system will condone its violations. Vedanta’s house of cards may collapse if the Indian “system” should behave uncharacteristically and actually implement the law. But this possibility seems to have perturbed no one, and certainly not the company’s shareholders and financiers. In the lead-up to the company’s London listing, a team of 120 lawyers, bankers and engineers visited India to verify Vedanta’s assets. None seem to have been able to spot, anticipate or take seriously the legal problems resulting from the company’s brash violations.
At Vedanta’s annual shareholder meeting in London in August 2005, a few concerned shareholders raised questions about the viability of Vedanta’s Indian operations. “Preserving throughout the smile of a Cheshire cat and the cool of a well-heeled guru, Agarwal’s main strategy was to agree with what his critics said. Not one of the 15 or so critical questions fired at Vedanta on August 3rd were answered,” writes Roger Moody, a London-based mining industry researcher and observer.
Vedanta’s violations have been brought to the notice of the Supreme Court in the Goa Foundation case highlighting the Union environment ministry’s grant of post-facto environmental clearance to polluting industries, or their condoning of the operation of hazardous units without requisite clearances.
It’s now exactly a year since the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee saw for itself Sterlite’s violations. In these months, the company has illegally doubled its production, and cocked a toxic snook at the apex court and its monitoring committee, even while continuing its tradition of sailing close to the wind.
Unfortunately, it is not just the environment ministry or State Pollution Control Boards that consider environmental regulations a hindrance to the country’s development. Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is guilty of encouraging flexible implementation of environmental laws and due process in the interests of expediting industrialisation. The multi-crore Sethusamudram shipping channel project, for instance, was begun less than a year from the time that it was introduced by the Congress-led government. That is record time considering the scale and environmental ramifications of the project. It was inaugurated by the prime minister at a time when the state government of Tamilnadu and the Pollution Control Board had withheld clearances pending clarification of a number of environmental and technical issues.
The Singh government has got to be the most corporate-friendly government in the history of India. The daily newspapers are agog with stories about our ministers hobnobbing with corporate CEOs.
Seen in this dismal backdrop, it is difficult to imagine that some courageous and upright institution will come forward to hold industrialists to account, or that the law will apply equally to the poor and the rich.
By Nityanand Jayaraman
The legal infrastructure, and judicial and political will to crack-down on blatantly illegal big investments just isn’t there. Increasingly, activists and residents are hesitant to approach courts for relief. Rather than take the violator and complicit regulators to task, the courts have willy-nilly tended to permit the regularisation of illegalities with barely a rap on the violator’s knuckles.
It is in this sobering context that a recent report by a Supreme Court panel on forests and wildlife has to be viewed.
On September 21, 2005, the Supreme Court’s Central Empowered Committee on Forests issued a report recommending the revocation of environmental clearances given to Vedanta Alumina Ltd’s 1 million tonne aluminium refinery in the Niyamgiri forests in Lanjigarh, Orissa. The CEC found that Vedanta had falsified information to obtain environmental clearances, destroyed more than 10 hectares of forest land and begun construction work onsite without obtaining necessary clearances under the Forest Conservation Act.Hinting at the complicity of the Union Ministry of Environment and the Orissa government in the violations, the CEC has written that “The casual approach, the lackadaisical manner and the haste with which the entire issue of forests and environmental clearance for the alumina refinery project has been dealt with smacks of undue favour/leniency and does not inspire confidence with regard to the willingness and resolve of both the State Government and the MoEF to deal with such matters keeping in view the ultimate goal of national and public interest.”
The CEC is unequivocal about the legality, or lack thereof, of Vedanta’s investments in Lanjigarh, and the consequences that ought to follow. Referring to the Niyamgiri forests as “an ecologically sensitive area,” the CEC has recommended to the Supreme Court to consider revoking the environmental clearance dated 22.9.2004 granted by the MoEF for setting up of the Alumina Refinery Plant by M/s Vedanta and directing them to stop further work on the project. The refinery project is integrally dependent on the availability of 3 million tonnes of bauxite ore annually from the densely forested Niyamgiri hills for which no clearance has been obtained. The CEC and the Orissa government acknowledge that the area is rich in wildlife, has dense forest cover and was constituted as an Elephant Reserve by the state of Orissa in August 2004.
Curiously, although Vedanta admits that the proximity of the Niyamgiri deposits is what makes the Lanjigarh project commercially viable, it has sought the delinking of the mining proposal from the refinery project. Even more curiously, the Ministry of Environment has obliged.
“Such delinking is objectionable,” reports the CEC. “In the event [that], for the mining component, the environmental clearance and/or the forest clearance is rejected, the expenditure of about Rs 4,000 crore being incurred on the project will become infructuous,” it concludes.
Considering the grave human rights violations committed and abetted by the state and Vedanta, CEC’s ‘Recommendations’ and ‘Observations and Conclusions’ take on all the more significance. Forcible eviction of tribal families from their homes, illegal and violent take-over of private property belonging to tribals, unlawful confinement of local villagers by Vedanta security forces, and the use of police and district administration to suppress dissent – nothing short of a full-blown CBI inquiry will do to unearth the sordid details of how big business conducts itself in India.
Neither Vedanta/Sterlite’s disregard for the law, nor the alleged “leniency” shown by the central and state governments to Vedanta is without precedent. In fact, the Lanjigarh scam is merely one wave in an ocean of scandals. The company, its subsidiaries and its boss Anil Agarwal have been linked to insider trading, harassment of employees, financial malpractices, illegal construction, unsafe workplaces and numerous other illegalities.
Sterlite’s copper smelter in Tuticorin perhaps has the dubious distinction of being among the most illegal facilities in the region. A proposal to set up the facility in the Ratnagiri district of coastal Maharashtra had to be abandoned after farmers and fisherfolk there put up a spirited fight. Upon the invitation of the then Tamilnadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, Sterlite put together a copper smelter in Tuticorin in 1995 using moth-balled equipment from the US and other countries. The proposal was pushed through without public consultation despite vociferous opposition by Tuticorin residents and political parties.
The half-hearted conditions laid down by the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board regarding where the factory should be located, or how much it should produce were promptly violated. Instead of locating the smelter 25 km away from the sensitive coral reefs of the Gulf of Mannar marine national park as stipulated in the TNPCB’s consent to establish, the company located the arsenic and sulphur dioxide-spewing smelter 14 km from one of the protected coral islands. Rather than restrict its annual production to 40,000 tonnes of blister copper as per TNPCB’s consent to operate, Sterlite went ahead and milked more than 1,70,000 tonnes of copper anode from its smelter, and proudly announced its production achievements to impress its shareholders.
Operating at higher than permitted capacity, and the setting up of a number of unapproved plants within the complex seems to have had an immediate bearing on the safety, health and environmental conditions within the factory. According to workers and ex-workers, most of the occupational injuries and fatalities go unreported, and the local police and even the district administration “cooperate” with the company to cover up all but the most notorious of incidents. Between 1999 and 2004, the Tuticorin plant reportedly killed 13 people and injured 139. Criminal proceedings have been initiated in only 3 out of 15 incidents reported by workers. Ironically, the Tamilnadu government issued safety awards to the company in 1999 and 2000, during which time at least 11 people were injured, and villagers had apprehended company staff for releasing toxic effluents into a village drinking water pond.
Encouraged by the government’s pliability, the company has gone ahead with an ambitious capacity expansion plan to make its Tuticorin assets more attractive to global investors. A 300,000 tonne smelter, a 127,000 tonne refinery, a power plant, a copper rod unit and an oxygen plant were all set up and were close to commissioning by September 2004 when a Supreme Court Monitoring Committee on Hazardous Wastes (SCMC) visited the plant. Not one of these units had any permits – safety, environmental, revenue or local government clearances had all been ignored.
A day after the SCMC’s visit, the Ministry of Environment rushed in an environmental clearance for the new smelter and refinery. The power plant, copper rod unit and oxygen plants continue to operate without permits. Even the threat of action from the country’s highest court did not daunt the company or government authorities. In April 2005, the Tamilnadu Pollution Control Board consented to the operation of the above plants despite the fact that the plants were not even permitted to be built.
Vedanta’s promises to its shareholders, particularly with regard to its Lanjigarh and Tuticorin operations, were built on the company’s confidence that the Indian system will condone its violations. Vedanta’s house of cards may collapse if the Indian “system” should behave uncharacteristically and actually implement the law. But this possibility seems to have perturbed no one, and certainly not the company’s shareholders and financiers. In the lead-up to the company’s London listing, a team of 120 lawyers, bankers and engineers visited India to verify Vedanta’s assets. None seem to have been able to spot, anticipate or take seriously the legal problems resulting from the company’s brash violations.
At Vedanta’s annual shareholder meeting in London in August 2005, a few concerned shareholders raised questions about the viability of Vedanta’s Indian operations. “Preserving throughout the smile of a Cheshire cat and the cool of a well-heeled guru, Agarwal’s main strategy was to agree with what his critics said. Not one of the 15 or so critical questions fired at Vedanta on August 3rd were answered,” writes Roger Moody, a London-based mining industry researcher and observer.
Vedanta’s violations have been brought to the notice of the Supreme Court in the Goa Foundation case highlighting the Union environment ministry’s grant of post-facto environmental clearance to polluting industries, or their condoning of the operation of hazardous units without requisite clearances.
It’s now exactly a year since the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee saw for itself Sterlite’s violations. In these months, the company has illegally doubled its production, and cocked a toxic snook at the apex court and its monitoring committee, even while continuing its tradition of sailing close to the wind.
Unfortunately, it is not just the environment ministry or State Pollution Control Boards that consider environmental regulations a hindrance to the country’s development. Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is guilty of encouraging flexible implementation of environmental laws and due process in the interests of expediting industrialisation. The multi-crore Sethusamudram shipping channel project, for instance, was begun less than a year from the time that it was introduced by the Congress-led government. That is record time considering the scale and environmental ramifications of the project. It was inaugurated by the prime minister at a time when the state government of Tamilnadu and the Pollution Control Board had withheld clearances pending clarification of a number of environmental and technical issues.
The Singh government has got to be the most corporate-friendly government in the history of India. The daily newspapers are agog with stories about our ministers hobnobbing with corporate CEOs.
Seen in this dismal backdrop, it is difficult to imagine that some courageous and upright institution will come forward to hold industrialists to account, or that the law will apply equally to the poor and the rich.
By Nityanand Jayaraman
Landmark Report On Climate Change Impacts
Climate change is already having visible impacts in the United States, and the choices we make now will determine the severity of its impacts in the future, according to a new and authoritative federal study assessing the current and anticipated domestic impacts of climate change.
The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," incorporates the findings of years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes.
With its production and review spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, it offers a valuable, objective scientific consensus on how climate change is affecting-and may further affect-the United States.
"This new report integrates the most up-to-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of the ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experienced by Americans, region by region and sector by sector," said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
"It tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable", he added.
The report, which confirms previous evidence that global temperature increases in recent decades have been primarily human-induced, incorporates the latest information on rising temperatures and sea levels; increases in extreme weather events; and other climate-related phenomena.
Adding greatly to its practical value in the realm of policy and planning, it is the first such report in almost a decade to break out those impacts by U.S. region and economic sector, and the first to do so in such great detail.
"This report stresses that climate change has immediate and local impacts - it literally affects people in their backyards," said Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"In keeping with our goals, the information in it is accessible and useful to everyone from city planners and national legislators to citizens who want to better understand what climate change means to them. This is an issue that clearly affects everyone," she noted.
A product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program, the definitive 190-page report, produced under NOAA’s leadership, is written in plain language to better inform members of the public and policymakers. Commissioned in 2007 and completed this spring, the science-based report is a consensus product spanning two Presidential administrations and transcends political leanings or biases. It underwent intensive review by scientists inside and outside of government and includes information more recent than that incorporated into the last major report on global climate change released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report is not intended to direct policy makers to take any one approach over another to mitigate climate change or adapt to it. But it emphasizes that the choices we make now will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future. "Implementing sizable and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change," the report states, "and would be more effective than reductions of the same size initiated later."
The study finds that Americans are already being affected by climate change through extreme weather, drought and wildfire trends and details how the nation’s transportation, agriculture, health, water and energy sectors will be affected in the future. The study also finds that the current trend in the emission of greenhouse gas pollution is significantly above the worst-case scenario that this and other reports have considered.
Among the main findings are:
Heat waves will become more frequent and intense, increasing threats to human health and quality of life. Extreme heat will also affect transportation and energy systems, and crop and livestock production.
Increased heavy downpours will lead to more flooding, waterborne diseases, negative effects on agriculture, and disruptions to energy, water, and transportation systems.
Reduced summer runoff and increasing water demands will create greater competition for water supplies in some regions, especially in the West.
Rising water temperatures and ocean acidification threaten coral reefs and the rich ecosystems they support. These and other climate-related impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems will have major implications for tourism and fisheries.
Insect infestations and wildfires are already increasing and are projected to increase further in a warming climate.
Local sea-level rise of over three feet on top of storm surges will increasingly threaten homes and other coastal infrastructure. Coastal flooding will become more frequent and severe, and coastal land will increasingly be lost to the rising seas.
By breaking out results in terms of region and economic sector the report provides a valuable tool not just for policymakers but for all Americans who will be affected by these trends. Its information can help:
Farmers making crop and livestock decisions, as growing seasons lengthen, insect management becomes more difficult and droughts become more severe;
Local officials thinking about zoning decisions, especially along coastal areas;
Public health officials developing ways to lessen the impacts of heat waves throughout the country;
Water resource officials considering development plans; and,
Business owners as they consider business and investment decisions.
Responses to climate change fall into two catories.
The first involves "mitigation" measures to limit climate change by reducing emissions of heat-trapping pollution or increasing their removal from the atmosphere. The second involves "adaptation" measures to improve our ability to cope with or avoid harmful impacts, and take advantage of beneficial ones. "Both of these are necessary elements of an effective response strategy," said Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, a report co-chair.
"By comparing impacts that are projected to result from higher versus lower emissions of heat-trapping gasses, our report underscores the importance and real economic value of reducing those emissions," said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. and one of the co-chairs of the report. "It shows that the choices made now will have far-reaching consequences."
The report draws from a large body of scientific information, including the set of 21 Synthesis and Assessment reports from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The government agencies affiliated with the program include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, State, and Transportation; the Environmental Protection Agency; NASA; National Science Foundation; Smithsonian Institution; and the United States Agency for International Development.
The report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," incorporates the findings of years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes.
With its production and review spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, it offers a valuable, objective scientific consensus on how climate change is affecting-and may further affect-the United States.
"This new report integrates the most up-to-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of the ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experienced by Americans, region by region and sector by sector," said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
"It tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable", he added.
The report, which confirms previous evidence that global temperature increases in recent decades have been primarily human-induced, incorporates the latest information on rising temperatures and sea levels; increases in extreme weather events; and other climate-related phenomena.
Adding greatly to its practical value in the realm of policy and planning, it is the first such report in almost a decade to break out those impacts by U.S. region and economic sector, and the first to do so in such great detail.
"This report stresses that climate change has immediate and local impacts - it literally affects people in their backyards," said Jane Lubchenco, under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"In keeping with our goals, the information in it is accessible and useful to everyone from city planners and national legislators to citizens who want to better understand what climate change means to them. This is an issue that clearly affects everyone," she noted.
A product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program, the definitive 190-page report, produced under NOAA’s leadership, is written in plain language to better inform members of the public and policymakers. Commissioned in 2007 and completed this spring, the science-based report is a consensus product spanning two Presidential administrations and transcends political leanings or biases. It underwent intensive review by scientists inside and outside of government and includes information more recent than that incorporated into the last major report on global climate change released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report is not intended to direct policy makers to take any one approach over another to mitigate climate change or adapt to it. But it emphasizes that the choices we make now will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future. "Implementing sizable and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change," the report states, "and would be more effective than reductions of the same size initiated later."
The study finds that Americans are already being affected by climate change through extreme weather, drought and wildfire trends and details how the nation’s transportation, agriculture, health, water and energy sectors will be affected in the future. The study also finds that the current trend in the emission of greenhouse gas pollution is significantly above the worst-case scenario that this and other reports have considered.
Among the main findings are:
Heat waves will become more frequent and intense, increasing threats to human health and quality of life. Extreme heat will also affect transportation and energy systems, and crop and livestock production.
Increased heavy downpours will lead to more flooding, waterborne diseases, negative effects on agriculture, and disruptions to energy, water, and transportation systems.
Reduced summer runoff and increasing water demands will create greater competition for water supplies in some regions, especially in the West.
Rising water temperatures and ocean acidification threaten coral reefs and the rich ecosystems they support. These and other climate-related impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems will have major implications for tourism and fisheries.
Insect infestations and wildfires are already increasing and are projected to increase further in a warming climate.
Local sea-level rise of over three feet on top of storm surges will increasingly threaten homes and other coastal infrastructure. Coastal flooding will become more frequent and severe, and coastal land will increasingly be lost to the rising seas.
By breaking out results in terms of region and economic sector the report provides a valuable tool not just for policymakers but for all Americans who will be affected by these trends. Its information can help:
Farmers making crop and livestock decisions, as growing seasons lengthen, insect management becomes more difficult and droughts become more severe;
Local officials thinking about zoning decisions, especially along coastal areas;
Public health officials developing ways to lessen the impacts of heat waves throughout the country;
Water resource officials considering development plans; and,
Business owners as they consider business and investment decisions.
Responses to climate change fall into two catories.
The first involves "mitigation" measures to limit climate change by reducing emissions of heat-trapping pollution or increasing their removal from the atmosphere. The second involves "adaptation" measures to improve our ability to cope with or avoid harmful impacts, and take advantage of beneficial ones. "Both of these are necessary elements of an effective response strategy," said Jerry Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA, a report co-chair.
"By comparing impacts that are projected to result from higher versus lower emissions of heat-trapping gasses, our report underscores the importance and real economic value of reducing those emissions," said Tom Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. and one of the co-chairs of the report. "It shows that the choices made now will have far-reaching consequences."
The report draws from a large body of scientific information, including the set of 21 Synthesis and Assessment reports from the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The government agencies affiliated with the program include the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, State, and Transportation; the Environmental Protection Agency; NASA; National Science Foundation; Smithsonian Institution; and the United States Agency for International Development.
Green Prosperity - 1 Million New Green Jobs
An important and insightful report was released today by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), in partnership with Green for All and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report ("Green Prosperity") looked at the economic, environmental and social impacts of investing about $150 billion per year in energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.
That number includes funding from the federal stimulus package signed into law in February as well as the proposals in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is currently making its way through Congress
As noted by the report’s authors, the United States faces an enormous challenge-successfully managing the transformation from a carbon-intensive economy to becoming a predominantly clean-energy-based economy. This economic transformation will engage a huge range of people and activities. It is crucial for economic policymakers and the American people to understand the likely effects of the activities and policies enacted.
This report examines these broader economic considerations-jobs, incomes, and economic growth-through the lens of two government initiatives this year by the Obama administration and Congress. The first is the set of clean-energy provisions incorporated within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The second is the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act which is now before Congress. The analysis shows that these measures operating together can generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade. This estimated $150 billion in new spending annually includes government funding but is notably dominated by private-sector investments.
The authors estimate this sustained expansion in clean-energy investments triggered by the economic stimulus program and the forthcoming American Clean Energy and Security Act can generate a net increase of about 1.7 million jobs.
This expansion in job opportunities can continue as long as the economy maintains a commitment to clean-energy investments in the $150 billion per year range. If clean-energy investments expand still faster, overall job creation will increase correspondingly. These investment could, therefore, not only guide us out of our fossil-fuel dependent crisis, but serve as a powerful engine of economic recovery and long-term economic vigor in the U.S.
That number includes funding from the federal stimulus package signed into law in February as well as the proposals in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is currently making its way through Congress
As noted by the report’s authors, the United States faces an enormous challenge-successfully managing the transformation from a carbon-intensive economy to becoming a predominantly clean-energy-based economy. This economic transformation will engage a huge range of people and activities. It is crucial for economic policymakers and the American people to understand the likely effects of the activities and policies enacted.
This report examines these broader economic considerations-jobs, incomes, and economic growth-through the lens of two government initiatives this year by the Obama administration and Congress. The first is the set of clean-energy provisions incorporated within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The second is the proposed American Clean Energy and Security Act which is now before Congress. The analysis shows that these measures operating together can generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade. This estimated $150 billion in new spending annually includes government funding but is notably dominated by private-sector investments.
The authors estimate this sustained expansion in clean-energy investments triggered by the economic stimulus program and the forthcoming American Clean Energy and Security Act can generate a net increase of about 1.7 million jobs.
This expansion in job opportunities can continue as long as the economy maintains a commitment to clean-energy investments in the $150 billion per year range. If clean-energy investments expand still faster, overall job creation will increase correspondingly. These investment could, therefore, not only guide us out of our fossil-fuel dependent crisis, but serve as a powerful engine of economic recovery and long-term economic vigor in the U.S.
Eco Tech: Green Roadway – Converting endless highways into renewable energy generators
Solar and wind generators mounted on highways could be a new way to generate green power.
With the ever increasing demand of green energy, inventors and scientists are working on ways that can by no means be termed conventional. Gene Fein and Ed Merritt are two such inventors who want the endless highways, which we use daily to commute to our places of work, be converted into renewable energy generators, which could one day power our cities with clean energy and can also offer electricity for roadside charging of electric vehicles.
The Green Roadway Project, as the plan has been named, makes use of strings of solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal devices that can convert these natural resources into precious electricity. The technology which would be used in these roads has been patented by the inventors, who hope to capitalize on government economic- stimulus money and tax breaks for clean energy projects by auctioning off rights to use their inventions in each of the 50 states in the U.S.
The proponents believe that a 10-mile stretch of the technology can power more than 2,000 homes with clean energy, for which most people will readily pay more. Talking about the feasibility of the system, the inventors claim that unlike horizontal axis wind turbines, which have been regularly criticized for their unsightly looks, their system would be based on better turbines, which will be no more than 25 feet high and will be placed 500 feet back from the pavement.
With the ever increasing demand of green energy, inventors and scientists are working on ways that can by no means be termed conventional. Gene Fein and Ed Merritt are two such inventors who want the endless highways, which we use daily to commute to our places of work, be converted into renewable energy generators, which could one day power our cities with clean energy and can also offer electricity for roadside charging of electric vehicles.
The Green Roadway Project, as the plan has been named, makes use of strings of solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal devices that can convert these natural resources into precious electricity. The technology which would be used in these roads has been patented by the inventors, who hope to capitalize on government economic- stimulus money and tax breaks for clean energy projects by auctioning off rights to use their inventions in each of the 50 states in the U.S.
The proponents believe that a 10-mile stretch of the technology can power more than 2,000 homes with clean energy, for which most people will readily pay more. Talking about the feasibility of the system, the inventors claim that unlike horizontal axis wind turbines, which have been regularly criticized for their unsightly looks, their system would be based on better turbines, which will be no more than 25 feet high and will be placed 500 feet back from the pavement.
Experts at UN-backed forum call for major investment in green economy
Participants at a United Nations-backed conference heard calls today for greater investment and robust government policies to allow a shift towards a low-carbon, environmentally friendly economy with “green industry” at its core.
“The current global financial and economic crisis must be used to our advantage to bring about a green energy revolution,” said Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
“Promoting domestic and international policies that encourage green investment in the next decade should be a major priority for a climate deal to be concluded in Copenhagen,” stressed Mr. Yumkella, referring to the UN conference in December aimed at reaching an ambitious new greenhouse gas emission reduction agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Mr. Yumkella was speaking at the opening of the three-day event in Vienna, “Towards an Integrated Energy Agenda Beyond 2020,” organized by UNIDO, the Austrian Government, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Global Forum on Sustainable Energy.
The conference is designed to provide a framework to guide the path “towards a low-carbon global green economy powered by green industry,” Mr. Yumkella told some 500 government officials, energy and economics experts, and civil society representatives attending the gathering.
Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, said that energy remained the “missing Millennium Development Goal,” referring to the set of anti-poverty targets world leaders have pledged to try to achieve by 2015.
Mr. Pachauri said that without an adequate supply of energy to the poor, there could be “no talk about eliminating poverty in the world.”
IIASA Director, Detlof von Winterfeldt, stressed that today over 2 billion people were without access to modern energy services, but the Global Energy Assessment (GEA) – the most comprehensive analysis of worldwide energy challenges – suggests energy for everyone is not only achievable but also affordable if the political will exists.
“We are facing a convergence of challenges that require a fundamental transformation of energy systems, ‘business-as-usual’ solutions are not an option,” said Mr. von Winterfeldt.
“The magnitude, pace, and scale of the impact of climate change is greater than predicted even as recently as a couple of years ago – the need to respond to this change is urgent,” he said.
Mr. von Winterfeldt said that a tripling of the current $350 billion annual investment in energy, over $100 billion of which is in renewable energy, is needed to meet global energy challenges, adding that an opportunity exists “in the several stimulus packages introduced by many countries in response to the global financial and economic crisis” to find the funding necessary for the shift towards a green economy.
“The current global financial and economic crisis must be used to our advantage to bring about a green energy revolution,” said Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
“Promoting domestic and international policies that encourage green investment in the next decade should be a major priority for a climate deal to be concluded in Copenhagen,” stressed Mr. Yumkella, referring to the UN conference in December aimed at reaching an ambitious new greenhouse gas emission reduction agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Mr. Yumkella was speaking at the opening of the three-day event in Vienna, “Towards an Integrated Energy Agenda Beyond 2020,” organized by UNIDO, the Austrian Government, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Global Forum on Sustainable Energy.
The conference is designed to provide a framework to guide the path “towards a low-carbon global green economy powered by green industry,” Mr. Yumkella told some 500 government officials, energy and economics experts, and civil society representatives attending the gathering.
Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, said that energy remained the “missing Millennium Development Goal,” referring to the set of anti-poverty targets world leaders have pledged to try to achieve by 2015.
Mr. Pachauri said that without an adequate supply of energy to the poor, there could be “no talk about eliminating poverty in the world.”
IIASA Director, Detlof von Winterfeldt, stressed that today over 2 billion people were without access to modern energy services, but the Global Energy Assessment (GEA) – the most comprehensive analysis of worldwide energy challenges – suggests energy for everyone is not only achievable but also affordable if the political will exists.
“We are facing a convergence of challenges that require a fundamental transformation of energy systems, ‘business-as-usual’ solutions are not an option,” said Mr. von Winterfeldt.
“The magnitude, pace, and scale of the impact of climate change is greater than predicted even as recently as a couple of years ago – the need to respond to this change is urgent,” he said.
Mr. von Winterfeldt said that a tripling of the current $350 billion annual investment in energy, over $100 billion of which is in renewable energy, is needed to meet global energy challenges, adding that an opportunity exists “in the several stimulus packages introduced by many countries in response to the global financial and economic crisis” to find the funding necessary for the shift towards a green economy.
Top UN officials urge governments, industry to invest in clean energy
Renewable and clean energy sources offer the world hope not just in combating climate change but also in reversing the global economic slump, top United Nations officials told the General Assembly today, calling for investment in ‘green’ technology.
“The prospects for renewable energy have never looked better, even in the face of recession,” said General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto.
Mr. D’Escoto voiced hope, especially for the most vulnerable, that the global economic downturn will end before too long. “It would be an enormous step forward if this recovery were coupled with visionary policies, innovative technologies and broad incentives for new and renewable sources of energy.”
He told the Assembly’s thematic dialogue on energy that while technology is constantly being developed, there is a need for incentives to accelerate the process.
“States and the public sector must support the goals of renewable energy, and, by providing appropriate incentives, the private sector can also be mobilized in a concerted fashion,” he added.
Energy is the keystone to all economic development, Mr. D’Escoto said, stressing that “our development and survival as a healthy species depend on the long-term availability of energy from sources that are dependable, safe and environmentally sound.”
In his opening remarks to the gathering, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that climate change is not only posing serious global threat but is generating a “world of opportunities.”
“The Green Economy is the wave of the future,” said Mr. Ban.
He said that the UN conference in Copenhagen this December aimed at reaching an ambitious new greenhouse gas emission reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol can create momentum for the ‘green economy.’
“Copenhagen can give it a massive, even decisive, boost,” he said. “It can support job creation, rural development and environmental protection.
“I believe that more and more people – in government and industry – are seeing the opportunities that are there to be seized,” he said, noting that several economies have earmarked multi-billion-dollar investments in clean energy.
“In fact, 2008 marked the first year that investment in new power generation capacity from renewable energy technologies was more than investment in fossil-fuelled technologies,” he said.
Mr. Ban stressed that the expansion of renewable energy must be made the foundation of development, noting that the transformation of the global energy market is already under way.
“We stand at a crossroads. One direction leads to an abyss. The other direction leads to sustainable, more prosperous, more stable world. The choice should be clear,” he stated.
Today’s meeting follows the launch of the Secretary-General’s Energy and Climate Change Advisory Group, which consists of business leaders and experts who will advise him on related challenges, particularly in identifying key issues in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference.
The Group held its first meeting at UN Headquarters yesterday under the chairmanship of Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and head of the inter-agency mechanism known as UN-Energy
“The prospects for renewable energy have never looked better, even in the face of recession,” said General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto.
Mr. D’Escoto voiced hope, especially for the most vulnerable, that the global economic downturn will end before too long. “It would be an enormous step forward if this recovery were coupled with visionary policies, innovative technologies and broad incentives for new and renewable sources of energy.”
He told the Assembly’s thematic dialogue on energy that while technology is constantly being developed, there is a need for incentives to accelerate the process.
“States and the public sector must support the goals of renewable energy, and, by providing appropriate incentives, the private sector can also be mobilized in a concerted fashion,” he added.
Energy is the keystone to all economic development, Mr. D’Escoto said, stressing that “our development and survival as a healthy species depend on the long-term availability of energy from sources that are dependable, safe and environmentally sound.”
In his opening remarks to the gathering, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that climate change is not only posing serious global threat but is generating a “world of opportunities.”
“The Green Economy is the wave of the future,” said Mr. Ban.
He said that the UN conference in Copenhagen this December aimed at reaching an ambitious new greenhouse gas emission reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol can create momentum for the ‘green economy.’
“Copenhagen can give it a massive, even decisive, boost,” he said. “It can support job creation, rural development and environmental protection.
“I believe that more and more people – in government and industry – are seeing the opportunities that are there to be seized,” he said, noting that several economies have earmarked multi-billion-dollar investments in clean energy.
“In fact, 2008 marked the first year that investment in new power generation capacity from renewable energy technologies was more than investment in fossil-fuelled technologies,” he said.
Mr. Ban stressed that the expansion of renewable energy must be made the foundation of development, noting that the transformation of the global energy market is already under way.
“We stand at a crossroads. One direction leads to an abyss. The other direction leads to sustainable, more prosperous, more stable world. The choice should be clear,” he stated.
Today’s meeting follows the launch of the Secretary-General’s Energy and Climate Change Advisory Group, which consists of business leaders and experts who will advise him on related challenges, particularly in identifying key issues in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference.
The Group held its first meeting at UN Headquarters yesterday under the chairmanship of Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and head of the inter-agency mechanism known as UN-Energy
Suncor Outlines Environmental Goals
Suncor Energy Inc. today announced the release of its web-based 2009 Report on Sustainability - a comprehensive review of the company’s environmental, social and economic performance for the past twoyears.
The seventh biennial report, entitled ’Seeing the Possibilities in a Changing World,’ profiles Suncor’s progress on a wide range of sustainability objectives. For the first time, the report outlines performance goals aimed at reducing the company’s environmental footprint.
"The theme of our report is timely," says Rick George, president and chief executive officer. "Suncor has always been about seeing possibilities when others saw only problems and obstacles. Through our focus on operational excellence, we’re targeting improvements in every aspect of our business. And, with the goals outlined in the report, we’re working hard to produce energy required to fuel our economy in a way that is socially beneficial and preserves a healthy environment."Suncor has set the following company-wide environmental performance goals in relation to its existing assets:- Reduce water intake by 12 percent by 2015- Increase land area reclaimed by 100 percent by 2015- Improve energy efficiency by 10 percent by 2015- Reduce current air emissions by 10 percent by 2015All of the proposed reductions are absolute, except for energy efficiency, which is intensity based (energy used per unit of production). While the goals will require significant financial and human resources, Suncor plans to achieve them even while targeting production growth.
The Report on Sustainability also serves as Suncor’s 15th annual Climate Change report, documenting the company’s progress in managing greenhouse gas emissions using its seven-point climate change action plan. The action plan includes developing renewable energy sources and participating in public policy discussions. As part of its sustainability commitment, the company plans to align its current greenhouse gas (GHG) strategy to address emerging climate change policies by 2010.Suncor’s Report on Sustainability also provides historical performance trends in a number of key areas. Performance highlights include: - A 22 percent reduction in absolute water use over the past six years.- Reclamation of more than 1,000 hectares of land.- A reduction in GHG emissions intensity at its oil sands plant by 45 percent compared to 1990 levels.- A reduction in the frequency of Suncor employee and contractor lost-time injuries by two thirds and a 50 percent reduction in the frequency of recordable injuries.- Investment of $24.9 million in 2007 and 2008 by Suncor and the SuncorEnergy Foundation in hundreds of charitable organizations and non-profit groups.- Over $13 billion in capital spending in 2007 and 2008. Suncor’s supply chain spending reached all ten provinces and the Northwest Territories.- Achieving a $1 billion spending milestone in Aboriginal goods and services, including $367 million in 2007 and 2008.- $2.6 billion in royalty payments to the Alberta government. An additional $2 billion was paid in property and excise taxes to all three levels of government.Suncor compiled the 2009 Report on Sustainability in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative G3 Guidelines - an internationally recognized standard in sustainability reporting. As in previous years, an independent third party verified a number of performance indicators. Suncor also enlisted the guidance of Ceres, a network of investors, labour, environmental, and other public interest groups in developing the report.
The web-based report, which incorporates text articles, photos, data tables, charts, graphs, and videos of Suncor leaders and stakeholders, as well as a summary pdf document, is now available at www.suncor.com/sustainability
The seventh biennial report, entitled ’Seeing the Possibilities in a Changing World,’ profiles Suncor’s progress on a wide range of sustainability objectives. For the first time, the report outlines performance goals aimed at reducing the company’s environmental footprint.
"The theme of our report is timely," says Rick George, president and chief executive officer. "Suncor has always been about seeing possibilities when others saw only problems and obstacles. Through our focus on operational excellence, we’re targeting improvements in every aspect of our business. And, with the goals outlined in the report, we’re working hard to produce energy required to fuel our economy in a way that is socially beneficial and preserves a healthy environment."Suncor has set the following company-wide environmental performance goals in relation to its existing assets:- Reduce water intake by 12 percent by 2015- Increase land area reclaimed by 100 percent by 2015- Improve energy efficiency by 10 percent by 2015- Reduce current air emissions by 10 percent by 2015All of the proposed reductions are absolute, except for energy efficiency, which is intensity based (energy used per unit of production). While the goals will require significant financial and human resources, Suncor plans to achieve them even while targeting production growth.
The Report on Sustainability also serves as Suncor’s 15th annual Climate Change report, documenting the company’s progress in managing greenhouse gas emissions using its seven-point climate change action plan. The action plan includes developing renewable energy sources and participating in public policy discussions. As part of its sustainability commitment, the company plans to align its current greenhouse gas (GHG) strategy to address emerging climate change policies by 2010.Suncor’s Report on Sustainability also provides historical performance trends in a number of key areas. Performance highlights include: - A 22 percent reduction in absolute water use over the past six years.- Reclamation of more than 1,000 hectares of land.- A reduction in GHG emissions intensity at its oil sands plant by 45 percent compared to 1990 levels.- A reduction in the frequency of Suncor employee and contractor lost-time injuries by two thirds and a 50 percent reduction in the frequency of recordable injuries.- Investment of $24.9 million in 2007 and 2008 by Suncor and the SuncorEnergy Foundation in hundreds of charitable organizations and non-profit groups.- Over $13 billion in capital spending in 2007 and 2008. Suncor’s supply chain spending reached all ten provinces and the Northwest Territories.- Achieving a $1 billion spending milestone in Aboriginal goods and services, including $367 million in 2007 and 2008.- $2.6 billion in royalty payments to the Alberta government. An additional $2 billion was paid in property and excise taxes to all three levels of government.Suncor compiled the 2009 Report on Sustainability in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative G3 Guidelines - an internationally recognized standard in sustainability reporting. As in previous years, an independent third party verified a number of performance indicators. Suncor also enlisted the guidance of Ceres, a network of investors, labour, environmental, and other public interest groups in developing the report.
The web-based report, which incorporates text articles, photos, data tables, charts, graphs, and videos of Suncor leaders and stakeholders, as well as a summary pdf document, is now available at www.suncor.com/sustainability
Google Earth to map climate change over next 50 years
Millions of Google Earth users around the world will be able to see how climate change could affect the planet and its people over the next century, along with viewing the loss of Antarctic ice shelves over the last 50 years, thanks to a new project launched today.The project, Climate Change in Our World, is the product of a collaboration between Google, the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey to provide two new 'layers', or animations, available to all users of Google Earth. It was launched by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist conference today.One animation uses world leading climate science from the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre to show world temperatures throughout the next hundred years under medium projections of greenhouse gas emissions, along with stories of how people in the UK and in some of the world's poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns.Users can also access information on action that can be taken by individuals, communities, businesses and governments to tackle climate change, and highlights good work already underway.Another animation, developed by the British Antarctic Survey, show the retreat of Antarctic ice caps since the 1950s, and features facts about climate change science and impacts in the Antarctic.Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: "Climate change is redrawing the map of the world. Unless we act, its impacts will be felt everywhere, as sea levels rise, crops fail, extreme weather increases and more areas are at risk of drought and flooding."This project shows people the reality of climate change using estimates of both the change in the average temperature where they live, and the impact it will have on people's lives all over the world, including here in Britain."By helping people to understand what climate change means for them and for the world we can mobilise the commitment we need to avoid the worst effects by taking action now."International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said: "Climate change is happening and it is the world's poorest who are facing the greatest threat."Now, for the first time, Google Earth maps allow us to see first hand accounts of poor people coming to terms with everything from floods and droughts to melting glaciers. Amidst the massive impact on the world's environment the initiative highlights the personal costs to people least able to withstand the changes."Global action is needed to cut emissions and help communities adapt to changing weather patterns. It can be done - and the lives of those in poverty depend upon the world taking bold action."Met Office Chief Executive John Hirst said: "Climate change is arguably one of the biggest issues facing the world today."Merging the Met Office's unparalleled climate science expertise with the exciting technology of Google Earth is a great way of bringing the impacts of a warming world to life."British Antarctic Survey Director Professor Nick Owens said: "This is a fantastic opportunity to use the power of Google Earth technology to engage people all over the world in the importance and relevance of Antarctica in the climate change story."Ed Parsons, Geospatial technologist at Google, said: "Google Earth brings stories to life and opens up their reach to a limitless number of potential users."We are really excited about the work of the UK Government and its partners to raise the profile of climate change impacts on a global scale."The project is currently a snapshot of some of the recent scientific information about climate change and its impacts. The partners in the project will be looking to develop these ideas further in the future, preferably with additional partners.
Google searches generate 1,400 tonnes of CO2 daily: report
A normal Google search on a desktop computer generates about seven gm of carbon, nearly half the amount of CO2 a kettle generates while it reaches boiling point, reports quoting researchers at the Harward University said.
Considering that Google handles around 200 million searches a day, this would amount to releasing 1,400 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each day, The Times, London said in report on the `Environmental Impact of Google Searches', published in its Sunday edition.
The report is based on research report by Harward researcher Alex Wissner-Gross, who has submitted it for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The researcher has also set up a website called `www.CO2stats.com'.
The report said the carbon impact of the searches come from the enormous power that Google consumes. "Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power," adding that Google seldom reveals the number of its centers or the amount of power it consumes.
Overall, the report said, the IT industry generates about two per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions – equivalent to the total greenhouse gases generated by the world's airlines - according to a recent study by research firm Gartner.
Google, a member of a new group called `Climate Savers Computing Initiative', however, refutes the findings.
Google says the CO2 figure in the research report by Alex Wissner-Gross is "many times too high" and is too inflated. "In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 gm of CO2," it added.
"We have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query," Google said.
Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google, heads the search giant's efforts to fight global warming that aims to reduce computing power consumption by half by 2010.
The organisation is encouraging member companies, including Google, to turn off computers that are not in use. The organisation has targeted reducing carbon releases equivalent of that generated by 11 million cars on the road.
The Google-led not-for-profit organisation has also made a number of recommendations on how to reduce US coal and oil use for electricity generation by 2030.
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, an adviser to president-elect Barack Obama, has also called on the US government to show the political will to foster clean-technology.
Schmidt said Google itself plans to invest more in solar, wind and geothermal energy projects.
Considering that Google handles around 200 million searches a day, this would amount to releasing 1,400 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each day, The Times, London said in report on the `Environmental Impact of Google Searches', published in its Sunday edition.
The report is based on research report by Harward researcher Alex Wissner-Gross, who has submitted it for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The researcher has also set up a website called `www.CO2stats.com'.
The report said the carbon impact of the searches come from the enormous power that Google consumes. "Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power," adding that Google seldom reveals the number of its centers or the amount of power it consumes.
Overall, the report said, the IT industry generates about two per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions – equivalent to the total greenhouse gases generated by the world's airlines - according to a recent study by research firm Gartner.
Google, a member of a new group called `Climate Savers Computing Initiative', however, refutes the findings.
Google says the CO2 figure in the research report by Alex Wissner-Gross is "many times too high" and is too inflated. "In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 gm of CO2," it added.
"We have designed and built the most energy efficient data centers in the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimal. In fact, in the time it takes to do a Google search, your own personal computer will use more energy than Google uses to answer your query," Google said.
Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google, heads the search giant's efforts to fight global warming that aims to reduce computing power consumption by half by 2010.
The organisation is encouraging member companies, including Google, to turn off computers that are not in use. The organisation has targeted reducing carbon releases equivalent of that generated by 11 million cars on the road.
The Google-led not-for-profit organisation has also made a number of recommendations on how to reduce US coal and oil use for electricity generation by 2030.
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, an adviser to president-elect Barack Obama, has also called on the US government to show the political will to foster clean-technology.
Schmidt said Google itself plans to invest more in solar, wind and geothermal energy projects.
Are Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Good for the Environment?
Almost every news story about global warming recommends that consumers switch from incandescent light bulbs to more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs.
But are CFLs really that good for the environment?
Incandescent light bulbs use electricity to heat a filament to a white-hot state, producing light. Yet 90 percent of the energy used is wasted as heat, according to General Electric's Web site.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs use electricity to excite gas within a glass tube. The gas fluoresces, producing ultraviolet light which the human eye cannot see. This UV light then reacts with mercury and a phosphorescent chemical compound inside the tube to create visible light.
Because CFL bulbs do not use heat as the lighting mechanism, less energy is spent to create an equivalent amount of light.
• Click here to visit FOXBusiness.com's Energy Center.
The packaging of an N:Vision-brand CFL bulb purchased at Home Depot, for example, states that it uses only 14 watts to produce the same amount of light, as measured in lumens, as a 60-watt incandescent bulb.
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This decreased demand for electricity reduces the need for electrical generation, which environmentalists point out reduces emissions from coal-fired plants.
In February, Australia announced a nationwide ban on incandescent bulbs, which will go into effect in 2010. The country's environment minister said the move will cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 800,000 tons by 2012, according to Reuters.
But this assumes that Australians will significantly reduce their current levels of electrical consumption.
What if a consumer who has a $100 monthly electric bill reduces it to $50 by installing CFLs, but then leaves the new lights on longer, because he's already accustomed to paying $100 per month?
The consumer would be using less raw electricity than before, but not that much less.
"Sometimes when you cut the cost of things, people use more of them," said James S. Shortle, professor of environmental economics at Penn State University.
"People have a certain lighting requirement," said Shortle, and they would be happy to fulfill that need more cheaply.
He suggested that people probably would not turn on their lights more often. "What they might not do is turn them off."
Manufacturers, meanwhile, tout the savings to consumers in reduced electrical costs over the lifetime of the CFL bulb.
The 14-watt N:Vision states on the packaging that it will save the buyer $46 over its lifetime. How did the manufacturer arrive at that number?
CFL makers claim the bulbs have lifetimes of 10,000 hours each, whereas most equivalent 60-watt incandescent bulbs last 1,000 hours.
Based on a rate of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, a CFL costs $14 to power over its lifetime. The consumer would go through 10 incandescent bulbs in that time, costing a total of $60. Hence, a difference of $46 in electric costs per light fixture.
Since CFLs last longer than incandescents, consumers have to buy fewer bulbs for their fixtures, but here the cost savings are trivial.
At $3.97 for a four-pack of N:Visions versus $1.04 for four Philips incandescents, and assuming 10 incandescents used for every CFL used, a consumer opting for the N:Vision would save about $1.60 per fixture in addition to the electricity conserved.
You won't save a lot of scratch on the bulbs themselves, but at least you'll spend less time changing them.
But what about any drawbacks to CFLs?
CFLs don't operate well in frigid conditions, limiting their use for exterior lighting in cold areas.
According to a spokeswoman from Philips Lighting, most CFLs require a minimum starting temperature of minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit; below that, it's difficult for the bulb's reaction process to begin.
Other problems in cold temps include reduced light output and a pinkish glow, rather than the desirable "soft white" (actually faintly yellow) color.
Those problems alone may make nationwide bans on incandescent bulbs impractical in parts of the United States. Winter temperatures in Australia's southernmost state of Tasmania average 52 degrees Fahrenheit, but Minnesota spends most of its winters between 6 and 16 degrees F.
The bigger problem with CFLs is their mercury content.
Along with the phosphor, which can be one or many of several chemical compounds, mercury helps shift the invisible UV light into the visible part of the spectrum.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association, or NEMA, which sets voluntary industry standards, suggests that CFLs of 25 watts or less — the equivalent of a 100-watt incandescent bulb — contain no more than 5 milligrams of mercury, the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.
Both CFL manufacturers and the Environmental Protection Agency recommend recycling CFL bulbs, since breaking or incinerating them releases mercury into the air. The poisonous metal can then find its way into soil, water, fish and fish-eating humans.
Sites such as epa.gov/bulbrecycling, lamprecycle.org and earth911.org offer information about where CFLs can be recycled, and certain retailers such as IKEA accept used CFLs for recycling.
Should you break out the hazmat suit if you break a CFL at home? The EPA offers a checklist at epa.gov/mercury that suggests you leave the room for 15 minutes, then return to sweep up and double-bag the mess — and not to vacuum unless absolutely necessary.
So handle with care, lest you end up like Brandy Bridges of Prospect, Maine, who broke a CFL bulb in her daughter's room in March and was told that professional environmental cleaning would cost about $2,000.
According to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Bridges was concerned about any amount of mercury in her house, even at levels far below the state hazard threshold. (Hazardous levels were found on an area of carpet "the size of a dinner plate.")
It was in response to her "nervousness" that the DEP responder who came to her house recommended the cleanup service.
Two months after the incident, state DEP officials came back and found no mercury hazard. Even so, they removed the piece of carpet — which Bridges had planned to take up even before the bulb was broken — at her request.
• Click here for the Maine DEP's account of the events (pdf).
In the meantime, manufacturers are racing for bragging rights to the CFL with the lowest mercury content. Philips says that it sells 19 CFL products at Wal-Mart that contain 40 percent to 60 percent less mercury than the suggested NEMA level of 5 milligrams.
Whether decreases in power-plant emissions are offset by people releasing mercury into the environment by disposing of their CFLs improperly remains to be seen.
One thing's for sure: Using compact fluorescent light bulbs makes sense for anyone paying an electric bill — and who doesn't have butterfingers.
But are CFLs really that good for the environment?
Incandescent light bulbs use electricity to heat a filament to a white-hot state, producing light. Yet 90 percent of the energy used is wasted as heat, according to General Electric's Web site.
Compact fluorescent light bulbs use electricity to excite gas within a glass tube. The gas fluoresces, producing ultraviolet light which the human eye cannot see. This UV light then reacts with mercury and a phosphorescent chemical compound inside the tube to create visible light.
Because CFL bulbs do not use heat as the lighting mechanism, less energy is spent to create an equivalent amount of light.
• Click here to visit FOXBusiness.com's Energy Center.
The packaging of an N:Vision-brand CFL bulb purchased at Home Depot, for example, states that it uses only 14 watts to produce the same amount of light, as measured in lumens, as a 60-watt incandescent bulb.
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This decreased demand for electricity reduces the need for electrical generation, which environmentalists point out reduces emissions from coal-fired plants.
In February, Australia announced a nationwide ban on incandescent bulbs, which will go into effect in 2010. The country's environment minister said the move will cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 800,000 tons by 2012, according to Reuters.
But this assumes that Australians will significantly reduce their current levels of electrical consumption.
What if a consumer who has a $100 monthly electric bill reduces it to $50 by installing CFLs, but then leaves the new lights on longer, because he's already accustomed to paying $100 per month?
The consumer would be using less raw electricity than before, but not that much less.
"Sometimes when you cut the cost of things, people use more of them," said James S. Shortle, professor of environmental economics at Penn State University.
"People have a certain lighting requirement," said Shortle, and they would be happy to fulfill that need more cheaply.
He suggested that people probably would not turn on their lights more often. "What they might not do is turn them off."
Manufacturers, meanwhile, tout the savings to consumers in reduced electrical costs over the lifetime of the CFL bulb.
The 14-watt N:Vision states on the packaging that it will save the buyer $46 over its lifetime. How did the manufacturer arrive at that number?
CFL makers claim the bulbs have lifetimes of 10,000 hours each, whereas most equivalent 60-watt incandescent bulbs last 1,000 hours.
Based on a rate of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, a CFL costs $14 to power over its lifetime. The consumer would go through 10 incandescent bulbs in that time, costing a total of $60. Hence, a difference of $46 in electric costs per light fixture.
Since CFLs last longer than incandescents, consumers have to buy fewer bulbs for their fixtures, but here the cost savings are trivial.
At $3.97 for a four-pack of N:Visions versus $1.04 for four Philips incandescents, and assuming 10 incandescents used for every CFL used, a consumer opting for the N:Vision would save about $1.60 per fixture in addition to the electricity conserved.
You won't save a lot of scratch on the bulbs themselves, but at least you'll spend less time changing them.
But what about any drawbacks to CFLs?
CFLs don't operate well in frigid conditions, limiting their use for exterior lighting in cold areas.
According to a spokeswoman from Philips Lighting, most CFLs require a minimum starting temperature of minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit; below that, it's difficult for the bulb's reaction process to begin.
Other problems in cold temps include reduced light output and a pinkish glow, rather than the desirable "soft white" (actually faintly yellow) color.
Those problems alone may make nationwide bans on incandescent bulbs impractical in parts of the United States. Winter temperatures in Australia's southernmost state of Tasmania average 52 degrees Fahrenheit, but Minnesota spends most of its winters between 6 and 16 degrees F.
The bigger problem with CFLs is their mercury content.
Along with the phosphor, which can be one or many of several chemical compounds, mercury helps shift the invisible UV light into the visible part of the spectrum.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association, or NEMA, which sets voluntary industry standards, suggests that CFLs of 25 watts or less — the equivalent of a 100-watt incandescent bulb — contain no more than 5 milligrams of mercury, the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.
Both CFL manufacturers and the Environmental Protection Agency recommend recycling CFL bulbs, since breaking or incinerating them releases mercury into the air. The poisonous metal can then find its way into soil, water, fish and fish-eating humans.
Sites such as epa.gov/bulbrecycling, lamprecycle.org and earth911.org offer information about where CFLs can be recycled, and certain retailers such as IKEA accept used CFLs for recycling.
Should you break out the hazmat suit if you break a CFL at home? The EPA offers a checklist at epa.gov/mercury that suggests you leave the room for 15 minutes, then return to sweep up and double-bag the mess — and not to vacuum unless absolutely necessary.
So handle with care, lest you end up like Brandy Bridges of Prospect, Maine, who broke a CFL bulb in her daughter's room in March and was told that professional environmental cleaning would cost about $2,000.
According to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Bridges was concerned about any amount of mercury in her house, even at levels far below the state hazard threshold. (Hazardous levels were found on an area of carpet "the size of a dinner plate.")
It was in response to her "nervousness" that the DEP responder who came to her house recommended the cleanup service.
Two months after the incident, state DEP officials came back and found no mercury hazard. Even so, they removed the piece of carpet — which Bridges had planned to take up even before the bulb was broken — at her request.
• Click here for the Maine DEP's account of the events (pdf).
In the meantime, manufacturers are racing for bragging rights to the CFL with the lowest mercury content. Philips says that it sells 19 CFL products at Wal-Mart that contain 40 percent to 60 percent less mercury than the suggested NEMA level of 5 milligrams.
Whether decreases in power-plant emissions are offset by people releasing mercury into the environment by disposing of their CFLs improperly remains to be seen.
One thing's for sure: Using compact fluorescent light bulbs makes sense for anyone paying an electric bill — and who doesn't have butterfingers.
Green tea may affect prostate cancer progression
According to results of a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, men with prostate cancer who consumed the active compounds in green tea demonstrated a significant reduction in serum markers predictive of prostate cancer progression.
"The investigational agent used in the trial, Polyphenon E (provided by Polyphenon Pharma) may have the potential to lower the incidence and slow the progression of prostate cancer," said James A. Cardelli, Ph.D., professor and director of basic and translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center, LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport.
Green tea is the second most popular drink in the world, and some epidemiological studies have shown health benefits with green tea, including a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, according to Cardelli. However, some human trials have found contradictory results. The few trials conducted to date have evaluated the clinical efficacy of green tea consumption and few studies have evaluated the change in biomarkers, which might predict disease progression.
Cardelli and colleagues conducted this open-label, single-arm, phase II clinical trial to determine the effects of short-term supplementation with green tea's active compounds on serum biomarkers in patients with prostate cancer. The biomarkers include hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and prostate specific antigen (PSA). HGF and VEGF are good prognostic indicators of metastatic disease.
The study included 26 men, aged 41 to 72 years, diagnosed with prostate cancer and scheduled for radical prostatectomy. Patients consumed four capsules containing Polyphenon E until the day before surgery — four capsules are equivalent to about 12 cups of normally brewed concentrated green tea, according to Cardelli. The time of study for 25 of the 26 patients ranged from 12 days to 73 days, with a median time of 34.5 days.
Findings showed a significant reduction in serum levels of HGF, VEGF and PSA after treatment, with some patients demonstrating reductions in levels of greater than 30 percent, according to the researchers.
Cardelli and colleagues found that other biomarkers were also positively affected. There were only a few reported side effects associated with this study, and liver function remained normal.
Results of a recent year-long clinical trial conduced by researchers in Italy demonstrated that consumption of green tea polyphenols reduced the risk of developing prostate cancer in men with high-grade prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN).
"These studies are just the beginning and a lot of work remains to be done, however, we think that the use of tea polyphenols alone or in combination with other compounds currently used for cancer therapy should be explored as an approach to prevent cancer progression and recurrence," Cardelli said.
William G. Nelson, V., M.D., Ph.D., professor of oncology, urology and pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, believes the reduced serum biomarkers of prostate cancer may be attributable to some sort of benefit relating to green tea components.
"Unfortunately, this trial was not a randomized trial, which would have been needed to be more sure that the observed changes were truly attributable to the green tea components and not to some other lifestyle change (better diet, taking vitamins, etc.) men undertook in preparation for surgery," added Nelson, who is also a senior editor for Cancer Prevention Research. However, "this trial is provocative enough to consider a more substantial randomized trial."
In collaboration with Columbia University in New York City, the researchers are currently conducting a comparable trial among patients with breast cancer. They also plan to conduct further studies to identify the factors that could explain why some patients responded more dramatically to Polyphenon E than others. Cardelli suggested that additional controlled clinical trials should be done to see if combinations of different plant polyphenols were more effective than Polyphenon E alone.
"There is reasonably good evidence that many cancers are preventable, and our studies using plant-derived substances support the idea that plant compounds found in a healthy diet can play a role in preventing cancer development and progression," said Cardelli
"The investigational agent used in the trial, Polyphenon E (provided by Polyphenon Pharma) may have the potential to lower the incidence and slow the progression of prostate cancer," said James A. Cardelli, Ph.D., professor and director of basic and translational research in the Feist-Weiller Cancer Center, LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport.
Green tea is the second most popular drink in the world, and some epidemiological studies have shown health benefits with green tea, including a reduced incidence of prostate cancer, according to Cardelli. However, some human trials have found contradictory results. The few trials conducted to date have evaluated the clinical efficacy of green tea consumption and few studies have evaluated the change in biomarkers, which might predict disease progression.
Cardelli and colleagues conducted this open-label, single-arm, phase II clinical trial to determine the effects of short-term supplementation with green tea's active compounds on serum biomarkers in patients with prostate cancer. The biomarkers include hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and prostate specific antigen (PSA). HGF and VEGF are good prognostic indicators of metastatic disease.
The study included 26 men, aged 41 to 72 years, diagnosed with prostate cancer and scheduled for radical prostatectomy. Patients consumed four capsules containing Polyphenon E until the day before surgery — four capsules are equivalent to about 12 cups of normally brewed concentrated green tea, according to Cardelli. The time of study for 25 of the 26 patients ranged from 12 days to 73 days, with a median time of 34.5 days.
Findings showed a significant reduction in serum levels of HGF, VEGF and PSA after treatment, with some patients demonstrating reductions in levels of greater than 30 percent, according to the researchers.
Cardelli and colleagues found that other biomarkers were also positively affected. There were only a few reported side effects associated with this study, and liver function remained normal.
Results of a recent year-long clinical trial conduced by researchers in Italy demonstrated that consumption of green tea polyphenols reduced the risk of developing prostate cancer in men with high-grade prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN).
"These studies are just the beginning and a lot of work remains to be done, however, we think that the use of tea polyphenols alone or in combination with other compounds currently used for cancer therapy should be explored as an approach to prevent cancer progression and recurrence," Cardelli said.
William G. Nelson, V., M.D., Ph.D., professor of oncology, urology and pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, believes the reduced serum biomarkers of prostate cancer may be attributable to some sort of benefit relating to green tea components.
"Unfortunately, this trial was not a randomized trial, which would have been needed to be more sure that the observed changes were truly attributable to the green tea components and not to some other lifestyle change (better diet, taking vitamins, etc.) men undertook in preparation for surgery," added Nelson, who is also a senior editor for Cancer Prevention Research. However, "this trial is provocative enough to consider a more substantial randomized trial."
In collaboration with Columbia University in New York City, the researchers are currently conducting a comparable trial among patients with breast cancer. They also plan to conduct further studies to identify the factors that could explain why some patients responded more dramatically to Polyphenon E than others. Cardelli suggested that additional controlled clinical trials should be done to see if combinations of different plant polyphenols were more effective than Polyphenon E alone.
"There is reasonably good evidence that many cancers are preventable, and our studies using plant-derived substances support the idea that plant compounds found in a healthy diet can play a role in preventing cancer development and progression," said Cardelli
Pythons Grow Bigger Hearts at Mealtimes
Burmese pythons like a meal they can really get their fangs around, especially since the snakes are known to go half a year or more between meals. That gustatory pause is merely one of pythons' more remarkable adaptations.
New research shows that when the reptiles swallow whole rats, birds, and other prey, the pythons' hearts temporarily grow bigger.Scientists in California say the snakes experience a 40 percent increase in heart muscle mass within 48 hours of feeding. The change enables the pythons to meet the metabolic demands of digesting a meal.
What's more, the process is fully reversible, with the snakes' hearts shrinking back to their original size once feeding ends.
Pythons can offer new insights to understanding heart growth in other species, including humans, according to researchers behind the discovery, which is reported in the current issue of the science journal Nature.
One of the world's largest snakes, the Burmese python can grow as long as 25 feet (7.6 meters) and weigh as much as 200 pounds (90 kilograms). Native to Southeast Asia, it preys on mammals, birds, and other animals, which the reptile swallows whole. But python meals are few and far between.
"These animals have a remarkable ability to shut down their metabolism between meals," said James Hicks, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.
"We currently have 1.5-kilogram [3.3-pound] pythons in the lab that have not eaten for three months and have only lost one to ten grams [four to thirty-five hundredths of an ounce] of weight," noted Hicks, who is also the study's lead author.
But when these reptiles do feed, Hicks added, they often tackle prey that is 50 to 100 percent the size of their own body mass. Such meals require a considerable digestive effort.
"Some investigators have reported as much as a 44-fold increase in metabolism during digestion," Hicks said.
Metabolic Demands
Hicks and his colleagues investigated how Burmese pythons meet the metabolic demands of digestion.
They found that oxygen consumption rose sevenfold in lab pythons after feeding. This was accompanied by an extraordinarily rapid growth in heart size. The snakes' heart ventricle muscle mass (ventricles are the heart's pumping chambers) increased 40 percent in just two days.
The study team was able to link this sudden growth to increased production of a cardiac protein. The protein is associated with cells that enlarge the heart and boost its pumping capacity, a condition known as cardiac hypertrophy.
The researchers say feeding-induced cardiac hypertrophy likely explains why Burmese pythons pump 50 percent more blood per heartbeat while quietly digesting a meal than when slithering at full speed.
Previous studies point to why python hearts need to go into overdrive when these animals digest food. Researchers report livers growing to three times their normal size, intestines doubling in mass, and pancreatic enzyme activity increasing threefold. Such changes within the snake significantly raise the demand for oxygenated blood.
Stephen Secor, a biologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, is among those to have studied digestion in pythons. While most carnivores are able chew, tear up, or crush their prey first, snakes "swallow only intact prey and must delegate to the stomach the whole job of breaking [it] down," Secor said.
Yet once a python has finished its meal, its heart quickly returns to its usual size.
Heart Remodeling
Hicks, the University of California ecologist and evolutionary biologist, said that by quickly remodeling their hearts depending on whether they are feeding or fasting, Burmese pythons are able to match their metabolism to their bodily needs.
Hicks said he is unaware of any other animal that is able to do this with such speed.
His lab is currently investigating other reptiles that feed intermittently, including lizards and crocodiles. American alligators, for instance, exhibited a two- to threefold increase in metabolism during digestion. But, Hicks added, "So far, we haven't seen cardiovascular remodeling."
Nevertheless, hearts are known for their ability to adapt to the physiological demands of their owners. Human athletes, for example, often develop cardiac hypertrophy in response to vigorous training routines. Benefits of the condition include lowered heart rates and improved blood circulation.
The difficulty, Hicks said, is in understanding the mechanisms that lead to heart remodeling in humans and other mammals. Such investigations involve complex and highly invasive surgical procedures that could easily result in death.
Hicks and his colleagues propose the Burmese python as an ideal investigative model instead.
August Krogh, the 20th-century Danish physiologist, once wrote, "For a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied."
Krogh's approach has been a guiding principle for comparative physiology ever since.
Hicks said if we want to better understand how the human heart is able to remodel itself, we should look no further than the Burmese python.
After all, the reptile can grow its heart in the time it takes to eat its lunch
New research shows that when the reptiles swallow whole rats, birds, and other prey, the pythons' hearts temporarily grow bigger.Scientists in California say the snakes experience a 40 percent increase in heart muscle mass within 48 hours of feeding. The change enables the pythons to meet the metabolic demands of digesting a meal.
What's more, the process is fully reversible, with the snakes' hearts shrinking back to their original size once feeding ends.
Pythons can offer new insights to understanding heart growth in other species, including humans, according to researchers behind the discovery, which is reported in the current issue of the science journal Nature.
One of the world's largest snakes, the Burmese python can grow as long as 25 feet (7.6 meters) and weigh as much as 200 pounds (90 kilograms). Native to Southeast Asia, it preys on mammals, birds, and other animals, which the reptile swallows whole. But python meals are few and far between.
"These animals have a remarkable ability to shut down their metabolism between meals," said James Hicks, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.
"We currently have 1.5-kilogram [3.3-pound] pythons in the lab that have not eaten for three months and have only lost one to ten grams [four to thirty-five hundredths of an ounce] of weight," noted Hicks, who is also the study's lead author.
But when these reptiles do feed, Hicks added, they often tackle prey that is 50 to 100 percent the size of their own body mass. Such meals require a considerable digestive effort.
"Some investigators have reported as much as a 44-fold increase in metabolism during digestion," Hicks said.
Metabolic Demands
Hicks and his colleagues investigated how Burmese pythons meet the metabolic demands of digestion.
They found that oxygen consumption rose sevenfold in lab pythons after feeding. This was accompanied by an extraordinarily rapid growth in heart size. The snakes' heart ventricle muscle mass (ventricles are the heart's pumping chambers) increased 40 percent in just two days.
The study team was able to link this sudden growth to increased production of a cardiac protein. The protein is associated with cells that enlarge the heart and boost its pumping capacity, a condition known as cardiac hypertrophy.
The researchers say feeding-induced cardiac hypertrophy likely explains why Burmese pythons pump 50 percent more blood per heartbeat while quietly digesting a meal than when slithering at full speed.
Previous studies point to why python hearts need to go into overdrive when these animals digest food. Researchers report livers growing to three times their normal size, intestines doubling in mass, and pancreatic enzyme activity increasing threefold. Such changes within the snake significantly raise the demand for oxygenated blood.
Stephen Secor, a biologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, is among those to have studied digestion in pythons. While most carnivores are able chew, tear up, or crush their prey first, snakes "swallow only intact prey and must delegate to the stomach the whole job of breaking [it] down," Secor said.
Yet once a python has finished its meal, its heart quickly returns to its usual size.
Heart Remodeling
Hicks, the University of California ecologist and evolutionary biologist, said that by quickly remodeling their hearts depending on whether they are feeding or fasting, Burmese pythons are able to match their metabolism to their bodily needs.
Hicks said he is unaware of any other animal that is able to do this with such speed.
His lab is currently investigating other reptiles that feed intermittently, including lizards and crocodiles. American alligators, for instance, exhibited a two- to threefold increase in metabolism during digestion. But, Hicks added, "So far, we haven't seen cardiovascular remodeling."
Nevertheless, hearts are known for their ability to adapt to the physiological demands of their owners. Human athletes, for example, often develop cardiac hypertrophy in response to vigorous training routines. Benefits of the condition include lowered heart rates and improved blood circulation.
The difficulty, Hicks said, is in understanding the mechanisms that lead to heart remodeling in humans and other mammals. Such investigations involve complex and highly invasive surgical procedures that could easily result in death.
Hicks and his colleagues propose the Burmese python as an ideal investigative model instead.
August Krogh, the 20th-century Danish physiologist, once wrote, "For a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied."
Krogh's approach has been a guiding principle for comparative physiology ever since.
Hicks said if we want to better understand how the human heart is able to remodel itself, we should look no further than the Burmese python.
After all, the reptile can grow its heart in the time it takes to eat its lunch
Global warming not linked to sun
Cyclical changes in the sun's energy output are not responsible for Earth's recent warming, a new study asserts.
The findings put the blame for climate change squarely on human-created carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, reinforcing the beliefs of most climate scientists.
The sun's output waxes and wanes due to a variety of mechanisms. Its power rose during much of the 20th century, but it has declined. “Up until 1985, you could argue that the sun was (trending) in a direction that could have contributed to Earth's rising temperatures,” said study author A. Mike Lockwood of the University of Southampton in Britain.
Two decades ago, “it did a U-turn. If the sun had been warming the Earth, that should have come to an end, and we should have seen temperatures start to go the other way,” Lockwood said.
Yet temperatures have continued to climb since that date, making a strong solar role in warming appear unlikely.
read more >
Global Warring: Climate Change Could Be The Root Of Armed Conflicts
Source - www.sciencedaily.com Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Climate change, and the resulting shortage of ecological resources, could be to blame for armed conflicts in the future, according to David Zhang from the University of Hong Kong and colleagues. Their research, which highlights how temperature fluctuations and reduced agricultural production explain warfare frequency in eastern China in the past, has been published online in Springer’s journal Human Ecology.
Zhang and his team looked at the impact of climate change on warfare frequency over the last millennium in eastern China. The agricultural production in the region supports the majority of the Chinese population. The authors reviewed warfare data from 899 wars in eastern China between 1000 and 1911, documented in the Tabulation of Wars in Ancient China. They cross-referenced these data with Northern Hemispheric climate series temperature data for the same period.
They found that warfare frequency in eastern China, and the southern part in particular, significantly correlated with temperature oscillations. Almost all peaks of warfare and dynastic changes coincided with cold phases.
Temperature fluctuations directly impact agriculture and horticulture and, in societies with limited technology such as pre-industrial China, cooling temperatures hugely impact the availability of crops and herds. In times of such ecological stress, warfare could be the ultimate means of redistributing resources, according to Zhang and his team.
The authors conclude that "it was the oscillations of agricultural production brought by long-term climate change that drove China’s historical war-peace cycles." They recommend that researchers consider climate change part of the equation when they consider the reasons behind wars in our history.
Looking to the future and applying their findings, Zhang and colleagues suggest that shortages of essential resources, such as fresh water, agricultural land, energy sources and minerals may trigger more armed conflicts among human societies.
The findings put the blame for climate change squarely on human-created carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, reinforcing the beliefs of most climate scientists.
The sun's output waxes and wanes due to a variety of mechanisms. Its power rose during much of the 20th century, but it has declined. “Up until 1985, you could argue that the sun was (trending) in a direction that could have contributed to Earth's rising temperatures,” said study author A. Mike Lockwood of the University of Southampton in Britain.
Two decades ago, “it did a U-turn. If the sun had been warming the Earth, that should have come to an end, and we should have seen temperatures start to go the other way,” Lockwood said.
Yet temperatures have continued to climb since that date, making a strong solar role in warming appear unlikely.
read more >
Global Warring: Climate Change Could Be The Root Of Armed Conflicts
Source - www.sciencedaily.com Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Climate change, and the resulting shortage of ecological resources, could be to blame for armed conflicts in the future, according to David Zhang from the University of Hong Kong and colleagues. Their research, which highlights how temperature fluctuations and reduced agricultural production explain warfare frequency in eastern China in the past, has been published online in Springer’s journal Human Ecology.
Zhang and his team looked at the impact of climate change on warfare frequency over the last millennium in eastern China. The agricultural production in the region supports the majority of the Chinese population. The authors reviewed warfare data from 899 wars in eastern China between 1000 and 1911, documented in the Tabulation of Wars in Ancient China. They cross-referenced these data with Northern Hemispheric climate series temperature data for the same period.
They found that warfare frequency in eastern China, and the southern part in particular, significantly correlated with temperature oscillations. Almost all peaks of warfare and dynastic changes coincided with cold phases.
Temperature fluctuations directly impact agriculture and horticulture and, in societies with limited technology such as pre-industrial China, cooling temperatures hugely impact the availability of crops and herds. In times of such ecological stress, warfare could be the ultimate means of redistributing resources, according to Zhang and his team.
The authors conclude that "it was the oscillations of agricultural production brought by long-term climate change that drove China’s historical war-peace cycles." They recommend that researchers consider climate change part of the equation when they consider the reasons behind wars in our history.
Looking to the future and applying their findings, Zhang and colleagues suggest that shortages of essential resources, such as fresh water, agricultural land, energy sources and minerals may trigger more armed conflicts among human societies.
GLOBAL WARMING:Early warning signs
This map illustrates the local consequences of global warming.
FINGERPRINTS: Direct manifestations of a widespread and long-term trend toward warmer global temperatures
Heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather
Ocean warming, sea-level rise and coastal flooding
Glaciers melting
Arctic and Antarctic warming
HARBINGERS: Events that foreshadow the types of impacts likely to become more frequent and widespread with continued warming.
Spreading disease
Earlier spring arrival
Plant and animal range shifts and population changes
Coral reef bleaching
Downpours, heavy snowfalls, and flooding
Droughts and fires
The map of early warning signs clearly illustrates the global nature of climate changes. In its 2001 assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that, ?an increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system."
While North America and Europe—where the science is strongest—exhibit the highest density of indicators, scientists have made a great effort in recent years to document the early impacts of global warming on other continents. Our map update reflects this emerging knowledge from all parts of the world.
Although factors other than climate may have intensified the severity of some of the events on the map, scientists predict such problems will increase if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not brought under control.
You can purchase a copy of the map as a 3 feet by 2 feet display poster. Please note that the hard-copy versions of the map do not contain the recently added map points (points 90 - 156).-->
The following organizations produced GLOBAL WARMING: Early Warning Signs:
Environmental DefenseNatural Resources Defense CouncilSierra ClubUnion of Concerned Scientists
U.S. Public Interest Research GroupWorld Resources InstituteWorld Wildlife Fund
FINGERPRINTS: Direct manifestations of a widespread and long-term trend toward warmer global temperatures
Heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather
Ocean warming, sea-level rise and coastal flooding
Glaciers melting
Arctic and Antarctic warming
HARBINGERS: Events that foreshadow the types of impacts likely to become more frequent and widespread with continued warming.
Spreading disease
Earlier spring arrival
Plant and animal range shifts and population changes
Coral reef bleaching
Downpours, heavy snowfalls, and flooding
Droughts and fires
The map of early warning signs clearly illustrates the global nature of climate changes. In its 2001 assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that, ?an increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system."
While North America and Europe—where the science is strongest—exhibit the highest density of indicators, scientists have made a great effort in recent years to document the early impacts of global warming on other continents. Our map update reflects this emerging knowledge from all parts of the world.
Although factors other than climate may have intensified the severity of some of the events on the map, scientists predict such problems will increase if emissions of heat-trapping gases are not brought under control.
You can purchase a copy of the map as a 3 feet by 2 feet display poster. Please note that the hard-copy versions of the map do not contain the recently added map points (points 90 - 156).-->
The following organizations produced GLOBAL WARMING: Early Warning Signs:
Environmental DefenseNatural Resources Defense CouncilSierra ClubUnion of Concerned Scientists
U.S. Public Interest Research GroupWorld Resources InstituteWorld Wildlife Fund
Scientists: Global warming has already changed oceans
In Washington state, oysters in some areas haven't reproduced for four years, and preliminary evidence suggests that the increasing acidity of the ocean could be the cause. In the Gulf of Mexico, falling oxygen levels in the water have forced shrimp to migrate elsewhere. Though two marine-derived drugs, one for treating cancer and the other for pain control, are on the market and 25 others are under development, the fungus growing on seaweed, bacteria in deep sea mud and sea fans...
Global warming: Want to see Northwest impacts? Just look around
Living in a corner of America powered, irrigated and inspired by water, we ought to treat Tuesday's report released by the White House, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, as a wake-up call and cold shower.
"We are the alpha and the omega of global warming," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who helped write a flawed -- but needed -- bill to change national energy policy. It's pending in the House.
Want to know how climate change is changing America? Read the report. Want its bottom line: "Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced." Changes "are expected to increase."
Want to see impacts on the Northwest? Just look around, something that global-warming skeptics resolutely refuse to do.
Global warming is shrinking the winter snowpack. A smaller snowpack means reduction in the runoff that sustains our river flows, makes the desert bloom, allows salmon to reach and return from the ocean, and powers the world's greatest hydroelectric system.
The consequences don't end when our rivers reach salt water.
"Climate change and ocean acidification are already having major impacts on Washington: Our $100 million shellfish industry is in crisis after four years of oyster reproductive failure from ocean acidification," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
If oyster beds are in peril, so are salmon-spawning streams. One third of current habitat for Northwest salmon and other cold-water fish will be lost in this century, or so finds the report.
What critters will most likely be conflicted? Us. Just look at the legal and political battles that have broken out in years of low stream flow on the Columbia, Snake and Klamath rivers.
Irrigators in the Klamath Basin cried one season that they lacked water to grow crops. A year later, the Bush administration tipped scales in irrigators' favor, and caused a massive salmon kill in a warm, low-flowing Klamath River.
Climate change is going to require a lot of hard thinking, which better begin right now.
"The worst response for all the user/sectors is, given the certainty of intensified conflict, to hunker down to defend 'my slice of the shrinking pie,'" opined Pat Ford of Save Our Wild Salmon.
"Global warming's accumulated impacts on our waters are best viewed as a vise, steadily tightening on all water users regardless of past ideology, who's right, and past power relations. A shift is needed, away from old Western 'water is for fighting' lens, to a shared solutions, shared sacrifice, shared shortage lens."
The Northwest shares climate impacts with its neighbors in the West.
Alaska has warmed at more than twice the rate of the rest of the country, its annual average temperature up 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit: Winters have warmed 6.3 degrees.One result is the largest outbreak of tree-killing spruce beetles in the world. In the report's words, rising temperatures "allowed the beetle to survive the winter and to complete its life cycle in half the usual time."
The same has happened with the pine bark beetle in Canada. It has killed forests over a Sweden-sized area of British Columbia, has crossed the Continental Divide and threatens to munch its way across the Great White North.
In our inland West, more than 50 percent of whitebark pine forests in the Northern Rockies has been lost since 1970 -- largely due to beetle infestations. The whitebark pine anchors the soil at high elevations. Its fatty cones are a key pre-hibernation food for grizzly bears.
Hiking in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming last summer, retired Forest Service scientist Dr. Jesse Logan showed us tiny holes bored by beetles.
"These trees are dead," he said. "They don't know it yet, though. I guess they are zombie trees."
A few hours earlier, down in a park at Dubois, oil industry workers told us that global warming was a "hoax." But the hoax is killing the forests above them and melting glaciers that sustain flow of the Wind River.
The global-warming report, and its White House release, is welcome on one front: As science struggles to keep up with impacts of global warming, politics is at last trying to keep up with science.
"Finally, the U.S. government is leveling with the American people about the threat we all face," said Dr. Jeffrey Short, a former government scientist who now works for Oceana.
The U.S. House of Representatives will soon vote on what's known as the Waxman-Markey Bill. It makes concessions to polluters. It sets what Denis Hayes of The Bullitt Foundation calls "a wimpy 17 percent reduction in carbon emissions" as a goal for 2020.
Yet, Hayes is urging lawmakers to hold their noses and vote for the bill -- to give the Obama administration credibility and needed momentum in the global effort to curb global warming.
"Climate legislation has to pass a Senate in which the oil, coal and electric utility industries wield fearsome power," Hayes said.
Some will deny this. Such is their right. It's dangerous, however, to stick your head in the sand when sea levels are rising.
"We are the alpha and the omega of global warming," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who helped write a flawed -- but needed -- bill to change national energy policy. It's pending in the House.
Want to know how climate change is changing America? Read the report. Want its bottom line: "Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced." Changes "are expected to increase."
Want to see impacts on the Northwest? Just look around, something that global-warming skeptics resolutely refuse to do.
Global warming is shrinking the winter snowpack. A smaller snowpack means reduction in the runoff that sustains our river flows, makes the desert bloom, allows salmon to reach and return from the ocean, and powers the world's greatest hydroelectric system.
The consequences don't end when our rivers reach salt water.
"Climate change and ocean acidification are already having major impacts on Washington: Our $100 million shellfish industry is in crisis after four years of oyster reproductive failure from ocean acidification," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
If oyster beds are in peril, so are salmon-spawning streams. One third of current habitat for Northwest salmon and other cold-water fish will be lost in this century, or so finds the report.
What critters will most likely be conflicted? Us. Just look at the legal and political battles that have broken out in years of low stream flow on the Columbia, Snake and Klamath rivers.
Irrigators in the Klamath Basin cried one season that they lacked water to grow crops. A year later, the Bush administration tipped scales in irrigators' favor, and caused a massive salmon kill in a warm, low-flowing Klamath River.
Climate change is going to require a lot of hard thinking, which better begin right now.
"The worst response for all the user/sectors is, given the certainty of intensified conflict, to hunker down to defend 'my slice of the shrinking pie,'" opined Pat Ford of Save Our Wild Salmon.
"Global warming's accumulated impacts on our waters are best viewed as a vise, steadily tightening on all water users regardless of past ideology, who's right, and past power relations. A shift is needed, away from old Western 'water is for fighting' lens, to a shared solutions, shared sacrifice, shared shortage lens."
The Northwest shares climate impacts with its neighbors in the West.
Alaska has warmed at more than twice the rate of the rest of the country, its annual average temperature up 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit: Winters have warmed 6.3 degrees.One result is the largest outbreak of tree-killing spruce beetles in the world. In the report's words, rising temperatures "allowed the beetle to survive the winter and to complete its life cycle in half the usual time."
The same has happened with the pine bark beetle in Canada. It has killed forests over a Sweden-sized area of British Columbia, has crossed the Continental Divide and threatens to munch its way across the Great White North.
In our inland West, more than 50 percent of whitebark pine forests in the Northern Rockies has been lost since 1970 -- largely due to beetle infestations. The whitebark pine anchors the soil at high elevations. Its fatty cones are a key pre-hibernation food for grizzly bears.
Hiking in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming last summer, retired Forest Service scientist Dr. Jesse Logan showed us tiny holes bored by beetles.
"These trees are dead," he said. "They don't know it yet, though. I guess they are zombie trees."
A few hours earlier, down in a park at Dubois, oil industry workers told us that global warming was a "hoax." But the hoax is killing the forests above them and melting glaciers that sustain flow of the Wind River.
The global-warming report, and its White House release, is welcome on one front: As science struggles to keep up with impacts of global warming, politics is at last trying to keep up with science.
"Finally, the U.S. government is leveling with the American people about the threat we all face," said Dr. Jeffrey Short, a former government scientist who now works for Oceana.
The U.S. House of Representatives will soon vote on what's known as the Waxman-Markey Bill. It makes concessions to polluters. It sets what Denis Hayes of The Bullitt Foundation calls "a wimpy 17 percent reduction in carbon emissions" as a goal for 2020.
Yet, Hayes is urging lawmakers to hold their noses and vote for the bill -- to give the Obama administration credibility and needed momentum in the global effort to curb global warming.
"Climate legislation has to pass a Senate in which the oil, coal and electric utility industries wield fearsome power," Hayes said.
Some will deny this. Such is their right. It's dangerous, however, to stick your head in the sand when sea levels are rising.
Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal
The 1000-year climatic and environmental history of the Earth contained in various proxy records is examined. As indicators, the proxies duly represent or record aspects of local climate. Questions on the relevance and validity of the locality paradigm for climatological research become sharper as studies of climatic changes on timescales of 50–100 years or longer are pursued. This is because thermal and dynamical constraints imposed by local geography become increasingly important as the air-sea-land interaction and coupling timescales increase. Because the nature of the various proxy climate indicators are so different, the results cannot be combined into a simple hemispheric or global quantitative composite. However, considered as an ensemble of individual observations, an assemblage of the local representations of climate establishes the reality of both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period as climatic anomalies with world-wide imprints, extending earlier results by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965), and numerous other research efforts. Furthermore, these individual proxies are used to determine whether the 20th century is the warmest century of the 2nd Millennium at a variety of globally dispersed locations. Many records reveal that the 20th century is likely not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium, although it is clear that human activity has significantly impacted some local environments.
1. INTRODUCTION
Are the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period widespread climatic anomalies? Nearly four decades ago, H. H. Lamb (1965, pp. 14–15) wrote,
“[M]ultifarious evidence of a meteorological nature from historical records, as well as archaeological, botanical and glaciological evidence in various parts of the world from the Arctic to New Zealand… has been found to suggest a warmer epoch lasting several centuries between about A.D. 900 or 1000 and about 1200 or 1300… Both the “Little Optimum” in the early Middle Ages and the cold epochs [i.e., “Little Ice Age”], now known to have reached its culminating stages between 1550 and 1700, can today be substantiated by enough data to repay meteorological investigation… It is high time therefore to marshal the climatic evidence and attempt a quantitative evidence.” …
Thirty-three years later, however, Jones et al. (1998) tentatively concluded that,
“[w]hile the ‘Little Ice Age’ cooling (with the seventeenth century being more severe over Eurasia and the nineteenth century more severe over North America) is clearly evident … we can only concur… that there is little evidence for the ‘Medieval Warm Period’… although the fact that we have only four series before 1400 and the timescale limitations described earlier [i.e., not resolving timescales of multidecades to century with tree ring proxies used in their study] caution against dismissing the feature.” …
These results are but a few of the many that have become available since Lamb’s pioneering analysis. Given advancements in retrieval of information from climate proxies, as well as their extensive surface coverage, we review the accumulated evidence on climatic anomalies over the last 1000 years. ..What are the regional and global patterns of climatic change over the last 1000 years? Accurate answers to these questions are important, both as benchmarks for the 20th century global average warming exhibited by surface thermometer records and as physical constraints for theories or mechanisms of climate change on timescales of decades to centuries.
To make progress towards this understanding, we address three questions of many individual climate proxies that differ too widely to be quantitatively averaged or compared:
(1) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring during the Little Ice Age, defined as 1300–1900 A.D.? This broad period in our definition derives from historical sea-ice, glaciological and geomorphological studies synthesized in Grove (2001a, 2001b) and Ogilvie and Jónsson (2001).
(2) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring during the Medieval Warm Period, defined as 800–1300 A.D.? This definition is motivated by Pfister et al. (1998) and Broecker (2001) and is slightly modified from Lamb’s original study (1965).
(3) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring within the 20th century that may validly be considered the most extreme (i.e., the warmest) period in the record? An important consideration in answering this question is to distinguish the case in which the 20th century warming began early in the century versus after the 1970s, as recorded by surface thermometers. This criterion is necessary in order to judge the influence of 20th century warming by anthropogenic forcing inputs such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide content.
Anomaly, in our context, is simply defined as a period of 50 or more years of sustained warmth, wetness, or dryness within the Medieval Warm Period, or a 50-year or longer period of cold, dryness, or wetness during the Little Ice Age. …
4. RESULTS
… For questions 1 and 2, we find the answer to be ‘Yes’ when the proxy record shows a period of 50 years or longer of cooling, dryness or wetness during the Little Ice Age and a period of 50 years or longer of warming, wetness or dryness during the Medieval Warm Period. …
… most of the proxy records do not suggest the 20th century to be the warmest or the most extreme in its local representations, which seems surprising until one realizes the more limited and contrary view was drawn primarily from familiar instrumental thermometer records that yield no information on centennial-scale climate variability. … Another interesting feature of the result is that the warmest or most extreme climatic anomalies in the proxy indicators often occurred in the early-to-mid 20th century, rather than throughout the century.
4.1. Glaciers – Worldwide
Broadly, glaciers retreated all over the world during the Medieval Warm Period, with a notable but minor re-advance between 1050 and 1150 A.D. (Grove and Switsur 1994). Large portions of the world’s glaciers, both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, advanced during the 1300–1900 A.D. period (Grove 2001b; see also Winkler 2000). The world’s small glaciers and tropical glaciers have simultaneously retreated since the 19th century, but some glaciers have advanced (Kaser 1999; Dyurgerov and Meier 2000; D. Evans 2000). …
Additional proxy records used here reveal that the climatic anomaly patterns known as the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800–1300 A.D.) and the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 A.D.) occurred across the world. …
4.2.2. North Atlantic and other oceans
The colonization of Greenland’s coastal area by the Vikings starting in 986 A.D. is well documented; and the generally mild and benign climatic conditions from about 800–1200 A.D. that helped to sustain the settlement are also well supported by ice core and borehole proxy information (Dansgaard et al. 1975; Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998). The Norsemen’s ‘Western Settlement’ (around the Godthab district) was mysteriously abandoned sometime between 1341 and 1362 A.D., while the ‘Eastern Settlement’ (actually near the southernmost tip of west Greenland, around the Narssaq and Julianehab districts) died out between 1450 and 1500 A.D. (Grove 1996; Ogilvie et al. 2000). The timing of the abandonment of the settlements coincided with a general cooling over Greenland, as established by both ice-core isotopic and borehole thermometry (Dansgaard et al. 1975; Stuiver et al. 1995; Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998). …
Over the equatorial Central Pacific, around the NINO3.4 (5N–5ºS; 160ºE–150ºW) region, Evans et al. (2000), in their skillful reconstruction of the ENSO-like decadal variability of the NINO3.4 sea surface temperature (SST), found an apparent sustained cool phase of the proxy NINO3.4 SST variability from about 1550 A.D. to approximately 1895 A.D., thereby extending the geographical area covered by the Little Ice Age Climate Anomaly. …
4.2.3. Asia and Eastern Europe
From 49 radiocarbon-dated subfossil wood samples, Hiller et al. (2001) determined that the alpine tree-limit on the Khibiny low mountains of the Kola Peninsula was located at least 100–140 meters above the current tree-limit elevation during the relatively warmer time between 1000 A.D. and 1300 A.D. The summer temperatures corresponding to the tree-line shift during this warm time are estimated to have been at least 0.8ºC warmer than today. …
Middle Russia (around 50–60ºN and 30–50ºE) seems to have experienced its coolest winters around 1620–1680 A.D., its coolest summers and springs around 1860–1900 A.D., and distinctively warm conditions during the first half of the 16th century, similar to conditions for western Europe described above. …
Based on less precise climate proxies like cherry-blossom-viewing dates, lake freezing dates and historical documentation of climate hazards and unusual weather, Tagami (1993, 1996) found that a warm period prevailed between the 10th and 14th centuries, and a cold period between the late 15th and 19th centuries, over large parts of southern Japan. …
4.2.4. North America
From an extensive collection of multiproxy evidence, Stine (1998) concluded that during the Medieval Warm Period prolonged intervals of extreme drought affected California, the northwestern Great Basin, and the northern Rocky Mountains/Great Plains, while markedly wetter regimes persisted over the Upper Midwest/sub-arctic Canada and Southern Alaska/British Columbia regions. …
Graumlich’s (1993) reconstruction of summer temperature and winter precipitation from trees in the Sierra Nevada confirmed the overall warm and dry conditions for California during Medieval times, when two of the warmest and driest 50-year intervals occurred – at 1118–1167, 1245–1294 A.D. and 1250–1299, 1315–1364 A.D., respectively. …
Hu et al. (2001), based on their high-resolution (multidecadal) geochemical analysis of sediments from Farewell Lake by the northwestern foothills of the Alaska Range, also found pronounced signatures of the Medieval Warm Period around 850–1200 A.D. During the Little Ice Age, the surface water temperature of Farewell Lake fell to a low in 1700 A.D. that was estimated to be about 1.75ºC cooler than at present. …
4.3. Southern Hemisphere
4.3.1. New Zealand
In New Zealand, the O-18 concentration in a stalagmite record from a cave in northwest Nelson shows the coldest times during the Little Ice Age to be around 1600–1700 A.D., while exceptionally warm temperatures occurred around 1200–1400 A.D., in association with the general phenomenology of the Medieval Warm Period (Wilson et al. 1979). …
4.3.4. Antarctica
The last important source of geographical information for conditions during the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in the Southern Hemisphere is obtained from glaciers, ice cores and sea sediments on and around Antarctica. …
For the Little Ice Age, advances of glaciers on South Georgia Island (which is half-covered by glaciers) began after the late 13th century, with a peak advancement around the 18th–20th centuries (Clapperton et al. 1989). Glacier retreats occurred after about 1000 A.D., which corresponds to the timing for the Medieval Warm Period. Baroni and Orombelli (1994) noted a similar scenario for glacier advances and retreats during the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period for the Edmonson Point glacier at the Terra Nova Bay area of Victoria Land on the Antarctic continent (East Antarctica). The Edmonson Point glacier retreated in two distinct phases, around 920–1020 A.D. and 1270–1400 A.D., and then advanced at least 150 meters after the 15th century. …
5. DISCUSSION
The widespread, but not truly global, geographical evidence assembled here argues for the reality of both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, and should serve as a useful validation target for any reconstruction of global climate history over the last 1000 years. …
Another significant problem is the indication that an anthropogenic influence may have already left its fingerprint on the recent growth of trees across the Northern Hemisphere. If this anthropogenic effect were present in tree ring data, then the calibration and verification procedure designed for extended paleoclimatic reconstructions would be significantly corrupted by further uncertainties (Idso 1989). …
Karlén (2001), for example, notes that according to the Vostok ice core record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the present concentration of atmospheric CO2 is about 100 ppmv higher than it was during any previous interglacial during the last 400,000 years. Thus, if climate were to respond sensitively to carbon dioxide, global temperatures, or at least Vostok temperature, today ought to be considerably higher than previous interglacials. Yet evidence exists to suggest that the “present interglacial [at least for conditions around Vostok] has been about 2ºC cooler than the previous one and the climate is now, in spite of the recent warming, cooler than it was at the beginning of this interglacial” (Karlén 2001). …
6. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a survey of site-specific paleoclimatic reconstructions, then considers whether they indicate that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were observed on broad area of the globe. We conclude that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are widespread climatic anomalies, although we emphasize the complex nature of translating the proxy changes into convenient measures like temperature and precipitation as well as confirming their spatio-temporal representation and resolution. …
The picture emerges from many localities that both the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period are widespread and perhaps not precisely timed or synchronous phenomena, easily within the margin of viewpoints conceived by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965) and numerous other researchers like J. Grove (1996, 2001a, 2001b). Our many local answers confirm that both the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and the Little Ice Age Climatic Anomaly are worthy of their respective labels. Furthermore, thermometer warming of the 20th century across the world seems neither unusual nor unprecedented within the more extended view of the last 1000 years. Overall, the 20th century does not contain the warmest or most extreme anomaly of the past millennium in most of the proxy records. …
However, it is also clear that human activity has shaped almost every aspect of past environmental and climatic changes on local and regional spatial scales …
It might seem surprising or frustrating that paleoclimatic reconstruction research has not yet provided confident and applicable answers to the role of anthropogenic forcing on climate change. This point is particularly sharp when considering the fact that even though some proxy records (e.g., those from Overpeck et al. 1997) show unprecedented 20th century warmth with most of the increase occurring in the early to mid-decades of the 20th century, when the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the air was less than 20–30% of the total amount there now. Unless there are serious flaws in the timing of the early-to-middle 20th century surface thermometer warming, or unknown anthropogenic mechanisms that caused a large amplification of surface temperature of the then-small increase in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, then the early part of the 20th century warming must be largely dissociated from anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Other anthropogenic factors still need to be studied on a case by case basis. …
1. INTRODUCTION
Are the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period widespread climatic anomalies? Nearly four decades ago, H. H. Lamb (1965, pp. 14–15) wrote,
“[M]ultifarious evidence of a meteorological nature from historical records, as well as archaeological, botanical and glaciological evidence in various parts of the world from the Arctic to New Zealand… has been found to suggest a warmer epoch lasting several centuries between about A.D. 900 or 1000 and about 1200 or 1300… Both the “Little Optimum” in the early Middle Ages and the cold epochs [i.e., “Little Ice Age”], now known to have reached its culminating stages between 1550 and 1700, can today be substantiated by enough data to repay meteorological investigation… It is high time therefore to marshal the climatic evidence and attempt a quantitative evidence.” …
Thirty-three years later, however, Jones et al. (1998) tentatively concluded that,
“[w]hile the ‘Little Ice Age’ cooling (with the seventeenth century being more severe over Eurasia and the nineteenth century more severe over North America) is clearly evident … we can only concur… that there is little evidence for the ‘Medieval Warm Period’… although the fact that we have only four series before 1400 and the timescale limitations described earlier [i.e., not resolving timescales of multidecades to century with tree ring proxies used in their study] caution against dismissing the feature.” …
These results are but a few of the many that have become available since Lamb’s pioneering analysis. Given advancements in retrieval of information from climate proxies, as well as their extensive surface coverage, we review the accumulated evidence on climatic anomalies over the last 1000 years. ..What are the regional and global patterns of climatic change over the last 1000 years? Accurate answers to these questions are important, both as benchmarks for the 20th century global average warming exhibited by surface thermometer records and as physical constraints for theories or mechanisms of climate change on timescales of decades to centuries.
To make progress towards this understanding, we address three questions of many individual climate proxies that differ too widely to be quantitatively averaged or compared:
(1) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring during the Little Ice Age, defined as 1300–1900 A.D.? This broad period in our definition derives from historical sea-ice, glaciological and geomorphological studies synthesized in Grove (2001a, 2001b) and Ogilvie and Jónsson (2001).
(2) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring during the Medieval Warm Period, defined as 800–1300 A.D.? This definition is motivated by Pfister et al. (1998) and Broecker (2001) and is slightly modified from Lamb’s original study (1965).
(3) Is there an objectively discernible climatic anomaly occurring within the 20th century that may validly be considered the most extreme (i.e., the warmest) period in the record? An important consideration in answering this question is to distinguish the case in which the 20th century warming began early in the century versus after the 1970s, as recorded by surface thermometers. This criterion is necessary in order to judge the influence of 20th century warming by anthropogenic forcing inputs such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide content.
Anomaly, in our context, is simply defined as a period of 50 or more years of sustained warmth, wetness, or dryness within the Medieval Warm Period, or a 50-year or longer period of cold, dryness, or wetness during the Little Ice Age. …
4. RESULTS
… For questions 1 and 2, we find the answer to be ‘Yes’ when the proxy record shows a period of 50 years or longer of cooling, dryness or wetness during the Little Ice Age and a period of 50 years or longer of warming, wetness or dryness during the Medieval Warm Period. …
… most of the proxy records do not suggest the 20th century to be the warmest or the most extreme in its local representations, which seems surprising until one realizes the more limited and contrary view was drawn primarily from familiar instrumental thermometer records that yield no information on centennial-scale climate variability. … Another interesting feature of the result is that the warmest or most extreme climatic anomalies in the proxy indicators often occurred in the early-to-mid 20th century, rather than throughout the century.
4.1. Glaciers – Worldwide
Broadly, glaciers retreated all over the world during the Medieval Warm Period, with a notable but minor re-advance between 1050 and 1150 A.D. (Grove and Switsur 1994). Large portions of the world’s glaciers, both in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, advanced during the 1300–1900 A.D. period (Grove 2001b; see also Winkler 2000). The world’s small glaciers and tropical glaciers have simultaneously retreated since the 19th century, but some glaciers have advanced (Kaser 1999; Dyurgerov and Meier 2000; D. Evans 2000). …
Additional proxy records used here reveal that the climatic anomaly patterns known as the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800–1300 A.D.) and the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 A.D.) occurred across the world. …
4.2.2. North Atlantic and other oceans
The colonization of Greenland’s coastal area by the Vikings starting in 986 A.D. is well documented; and the generally mild and benign climatic conditions from about 800–1200 A.D. that helped to sustain the settlement are also well supported by ice core and borehole proxy information (Dansgaard et al. 1975; Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998). The Norsemen’s ‘Western Settlement’ (around the Godthab district) was mysteriously abandoned sometime between 1341 and 1362 A.D., while the ‘Eastern Settlement’ (actually near the southernmost tip of west Greenland, around the Narssaq and Julianehab districts) died out between 1450 and 1500 A.D. (Grove 1996; Ogilvie et al. 2000). The timing of the abandonment of the settlements coincided with a general cooling over Greenland, as established by both ice-core isotopic and borehole thermometry (Dansgaard et al. 1975; Stuiver et al. 1995; Dahl-Jensen et al. 1998). …
Over the equatorial Central Pacific, around the NINO3.4 (5N–5ºS; 160ºE–150ºW) region, Evans et al. (2000), in their skillful reconstruction of the ENSO-like decadal variability of the NINO3.4 sea surface temperature (SST), found an apparent sustained cool phase of the proxy NINO3.4 SST variability from about 1550 A.D. to approximately 1895 A.D., thereby extending the geographical area covered by the Little Ice Age Climate Anomaly. …
4.2.3. Asia and Eastern Europe
From 49 radiocarbon-dated subfossil wood samples, Hiller et al. (2001) determined that the alpine tree-limit on the Khibiny low mountains of the Kola Peninsula was located at least 100–140 meters above the current tree-limit elevation during the relatively warmer time between 1000 A.D. and 1300 A.D. The summer temperatures corresponding to the tree-line shift during this warm time are estimated to have been at least 0.8ºC warmer than today. …
Middle Russia (around 50–60ºN and 30–50ºE) seems to have experienced its coolest winters around 1620–1680 A.D., its coolest summers and springs around 1860–1900 A.D., and distinctively warm conditions during the first half of the 16th century, similar to conditions for western Europe described above. …
Based on less precise climate proxies like cherry-blossom-viewing dates, lake freezing dates and historical documentation of climate hazards and unusual weather, Tagami (1993, 1996) found that a warm period prevailed between the 10th and 14th centuries, and a cold period between the late 15th and 19th centuries, over large parts of southern Japan. …
4.2.4. North America
From an extensive collection of multiproxy evidence, Stine (1998) concluded that during the Medieval Warm Period prolonged intervals of extreme drought affected California, the northwestern Great Basin, and the northern Rocky Mountains/Great Plains, while markedly wetter regimes persisted over the Upper Midwest/sub-arctic Canada and Southern Alaska/British Columbia regions. …
Graumlich’s (1993) reconstruction of summer temperature and winter precipitation from trees in the Sierra Nevada confirmed the overall warm and dry conditions for California during Medieval times, when two of the warmest and driest 50-year intervals occurred – at 1118–1167, 1245–1294 A.D. and 1250–1299, 1315–1364 A.D., respectively. …
Hu et al. (2001), based on their high-resolution (multidecadal) geochemical analysis of sediments from Farewell Lake by the northwestern foothills of the Alaska Range, also found pronounced signatures of the Medieval Warm Period around 850–1200 A.D. During the Little Ice Age, the surface water temperature of Farewell Lake fell to a low in 1700 A.D. that was estimated to be about 1.75ºC cooler than at present. …
4.3. Southern Hemisphere
4.3.1. New Zealand
In New Zealand, the O-18 concentration in a stalagmite record from a cave in northwest Nelson shows the coldest times during the Little Ice Age to be around 1600–1700 A.D., while exceptionally warm temperatures occurred around 1200–1400 A.D., in association with the general phenomenology of the Medieval Warm Period (Wilson et al. 1979). …
4.3.4. Antarctica
The last important source of geographical information for conditions during the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in the Southern Hemisphere is obtained from glaciers, ice cores and sea sediments on and around Antarctica. …
For the Little Ice Age, advances of glaciers on South Georgia Island (which is half-covered by glaciers) began after the late 13th century, with a peak advancement around the 18th–20th centuries (Clapperton et al. 1989). Glacier retreats occurred after about 1000 A.D., which corresponds to the timing for the Medieval Warm Period. Baroni and Orombelli (1994) noted a similar scenario for glacier advances and retreats during the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period for the Edmonson Point glacier at the Terra Nova Bay area of Victoria Land on the Antarctic continent (East Antarctica). The Edmonson Point glacier retreated in two distinct phases, around 920–1020 A.D. and 1270–1400 A.D., and then advanced at least 150 meters after the 15th century. …
5. DISCUSSION
The widespread, but not truly global, geographical evidence assembled here argues for the reality of both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, and should serve as a useful validation target for any reconstruction of global climate history over the last 1000 years. …
Another significant problem is the indication that an anthropogenic influence may have already left its fingerprint on the recent growth of trees across the Northern Hemisphere. If this anthropogenic effect were present in tree ring data, then the calibration and verification procedure designed for extended paleoclimatic reconstructions would be significantly corrupted by further uncertainties (Idso 1989). …
Karlén (2001), for example, notes that according to the Vostok ice core record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the present concentration of atmospheric CO2 is about 100 ppmv higher than it was during any previous interglacial during the last 400,000 years. Thus, if climate were to respond sensitively to carbon dioxide, global temperatures, or at least Vostok temperature, today ought to be considerably higher than previous interglacials. Yet evidence exists to suggest that the “present interglacial [at least for conditions around Vostok] has been about 2ºC cooler than the previous one and the climate is now, in spite of the recent warming, cooler than it was at the beginning of this interglacial” (Karlén 2001). …
6. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a survey of site-specific paleoclimatic reconstructions, then considers whether they indicate that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age were observed on broad area of the globe. We conclude that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are widespread climatic anomalies, although we emphasize the complex nature of translating the proxy changes into convenient measures like temperature and precipitation as well as confirming their spatio-temporal representation and resolution. …
The picture emerges from many localities that both the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period are widespread and perhaps not precisely timed or synchronous phenomena, easily within the margin of viewpoints conceived by Bryson et al. (1963), Lamb (1965) and numerous other researchers like J. Grove (1996, 2001a, 2001b). Our many local answers confirm that both the Medieval Climatic Anomaly and the Little Ice Age Climatic Anomaly are worthy of their respective labels. Furthermore, thermometer warming of the 20th century across the world seems neither unusual nor unprecedented within the more extended view of the last 1000 years. Overall, the 20th century does not contain the warmest or most extreme anomaly of the past millennium in most of the proxy records. …
However, it is also clear that human activity has shaped almost every aspect of past environmental and climatic changes on local and regional spatial scales …
It might seem surprising or frustrating that paleoclimatic reconstruction research has not yet provided confident and applicable answers to the role of anthropogenic forcing on climate change. This point is particularly sharp when considering the fact that even though some proxy records (e.g., those from Overpeck et al. 1997) show unprecedented 20th century warmth with most of the increase occurring in the early to mid-decades of the 20th century, when the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the air was less than 20–30% of the total amount there now. Unless there are serious flaws in the timing of the early-to-middle 20th century surface thermometer warming, or unknown anthropogenic mechanisms that caused a large amplification of surface temperature of the then-small increase in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, then the early part of the 20th century warming must be largely dissociated from anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Other anthropogenic factors still need to be studied on a case by case basis. …
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