Developed countries are “outsourcing” more than a third of their carbon emissions associated with products and services to other countries, according to a new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science. To be meaningful, regional climate policy thus needs to take into account emissions embodied in trade, not just domestic emissions.
This map shows the flow of carbon emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Net exporting countries are in blue and net importers in red. China is by far the largest exporter of carbon dioxide emissions. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatonnes. (Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science)
The study finds that, per person, about 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide are consumed in the U.S. but produced somewhere else. The United States is both a major importer and a major exporter of emissions embodied in trade. The net result is that the U.S. outsources about 11% of total consumption-based emissions, primarily to the developing world.
Says co-author Ken Caldeira, a researcher in the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology:
Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume.
Caldeira and lead author Steven Davis, also at Carnegie, used published trade data from 2004 to create a global model of the flow of products across 57 industry sectors and 113 countries or regions. By allocating carbon emissions to particular products and sources, the researchers were able to calculate the net emissions “imported” or “exported” by specific countries.
For Europeans, the figure can exceed four tons per person. In Switzerland and several other small countries, outsourced emissions exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within national borders. Most of these emissions are outsourced to developing countries, especially China.
Davis explains:
Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China. On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported.
Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system. Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.
The report is published online in the March 8, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
CO2 emissions from fossil fuels fell by an estimated 6.3 percent in 2009. Emissions from coal led the drop in 2009 CO2 emissions, falling by nearly 11 percent. Declines in energy consumption in the industrial sector (a result of the weak economy) and changes in electricity generation sources are the primary reasons for the decline in CO2 emissions (U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Growth Chart). Looking forward, projected improvements in the economy contribute to an expected 1.5-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2010. Increased use of coal in the electric-power sector, and continued economic growth, combined with the expansion of travel-related petroleum consumption, lead to a 1.3-percent increase in CO2 emissions in 2011. However, even with increases in 2010 and 2011, projected CO2 emissions in 2011 are lower than annual emissions from 1999 through 2008.
The drop in emissions in 2009 was the biggest since data collection began in 1949. The Great Recession was primarily responsible, as U.S. real gross domestic product dropped 2.4% in 2009, in the biggest decline since 1946. Emissions dropped 5.8% in 2008.
It’s hard enough to imagine the U.S. and other developed nations voluntarily sacrificing economic growth, much less embracing voluntary frugality. Can you even conceive that China and India would voluntarily give up their ambitions to join the developed world? The entire world has joined in a suicide pact.
It’s beginning to look like the only thing that will save humans and other living things from the ravages of global warming is global economic collapse.
All the work that’s been done over the past century to preserve some wild ecosystems in national parks etc, is going to be mostly subverted. The park may still be there, but what grows in it will, in most cases, be nothing like the thing that we were originally trying to save.
As the impacts of global warming manifest themselves over the coming century, warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will result in just about every landscape in the country changing radically.
Staniford’s piece exposes the flaw in the approach environmentalists took in the 70s, the approach (taken by Oregon’s statewide planning Goal 5 , for example): identify a “significant” resource, draw a line around it, and protect it from conflicting uses. Protecting a living resource requires much more than drawing a line around it. Rather, you have to maintain the health of the ecosystem within which it is embedded.
Within a global climate system wildly disrupted by human greenhouse gas emissions, how could we possibly expect that more local ecosystems could remain unaffected?
Dr. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, gave a talk in Davos, Switzerland in September 2009 at the World Resources Forum. Gail Tverberg at The Oil Drum has posted an “approximate” transcript.
Here’s the takeaway thought. Climate change and energy scarcity – the two greatest challenges of our time, perhaps in human history – are symptoms. The problem is physical growth, continued population expansion, continued increase in material standards of living, in a world that has finite limits.
Meadows points out the probability of the problem of physical growth being addressed is 100%. What cannot be known is whether it will be addressed voluntarily or involuntarily. Collapse – meaning that material standards of living, peace, trust in the government, and other things fall, out of control – is a possibility:
The same thing with collapse. I know that the current growth in population and in material use cannot continue–absolutely, with 100% probability, that it is going to stop. When? How? How seriously? We have no scientific way to make predictions.
The longer we wait to do social measures, like birth control, or voluntary simplicity, the more likely it will be that physical measures will cause this decline.
Dr. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of Limits to Growth, gave a talk in Davos, Switzerland in September 2009 at the World Resources Forum. Gail Tverberg at The Oil Drum has posted an “approximate” transcript.
Here’s the takeaway thought. Climate change and energy scarcity – the two greatest challenges of our time, perhaps in human history – are symptoms. The problem is physical growth, continued population expansion, continued increase in material standards of living, in a world that has finite limits.
Meadows points out the probability of the problem of physical growth being addressed is 100%. What cannot be known is whether it will be addressed voluntarily or involuntarily. Collapse – meaning that material standards of living, peace, trust in the government, and other things fall, out of control – is a possibility:
The same thing with collapse. I know that the current growth in population and in material use cannot continue–absolutely, with 100% probability, that it is going to stop. When? How? How seriously? We have no scientific way to make predictions.
The longer we wait to do social measures, like birth control, or voluntary simplicity, the more likely it will be that physical measures will cause this decline.
The Oregon Senate has approved a bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
SB 1059, which implements recommendations from 2009 Metropolitan Planning Organization Greenhouse Gas Emissions Task Force, does more than just set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in metro areas. It also directs state agencies to:
Develop a statewide transportation strategy on greenhouse gases.
Craft a toolkit to assist local governments and metro areas in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.
Develop guidelines for scenario planning – used by communities across the country to consider alternative choices of land use patterns and transportation options to reduce emissions.
Work with the Oregon University System to educate the public about the costs and benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Report back to the 2011 Legislature with an estimate of how much it will cost local governments to prepare and select a land use and transportation scenario that reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and potential sources of funding.
Report back to the 2013 Legislative Assembly with an assessment of how the agencies are doing on these tasks.
The bill passed out of the Senate despite unanimous opposition from Republicans, 17-13 (Sen. Rick Metsger, D-Mount Hood joining the Rs in voting “no”). The bill now goes to the House, where it will most likely come up for a vote Wednesday.
Mary Kyle McCurdy, 1000 Friends of Oregon Policy Director, stated in a press release:
This victory will help create healthier, sustainable communities across Oregon. And it’s a major step for giving Oregonians better transportation choices.
The press release also quotes Chris Hagerbaumer, Deputy Director of the Oregon Environmental Council:
SB 1059 is a win-win for cities and towns across Oregon. The bill will help create the tools and resources local governments need to make cost effective decisions on planning future growth while also improving air quality and reducing harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Cities and towns of all sizes will be able to use the tools that the agencies develop.
The Task Force identified a number of additional benefits that would accrue from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including: saving families money by reducing their transportation costs; lower public infrastructure costs; healthier lifestyles due to more opportunities to walk and bike; and greater energy security by reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
UPDATE 2/25/2010: SB 1059, which would initiate steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions in transportation, is headed to the governor’s office after passing out of the House 32 to 26 Wednesday. The Rs voted against the bill as a solid block. Two Ds, Terry Beyer of Springfield and Arnie Roblan of Coos Bay, joined the Rs in opposition.
At the Royal Society in London, scientists at a conference on greenhouse gases report that levels of methane in the atmosphere, after a decade of near-zero growth, began rising in 2007 when an unprecedented heat wave in the Arctic caused a record shrinking of the sea ice and have continued to rise significantly through 2008 and 2009.
An article in the U.K. Independent includes a quotation from the presentation, titled Global atmospheric methane in 2010: budget, changes and dangers:
[G]lobally averaged atmospheric methane increased by [approximately] 7ppb (parts per billion) per year during 2007 and 2008. . . . During the first half of 2009, globally averaged atmospheric CH4 was [approximately] 7ppb greater than it was in 2008, suggesting that the increase will continue in 2009. There is the potential for increased CH4 emissions from strong positive climate feedbacks in the Arctic where there are unstable stores of carbon in permafrost . . . so the causes of these recent increases must be understood.
Global atmospheric levels of the gas now stand at about 1,790 parts per billion. They began to be measured in 1984, when they stood at about 1,630ppb.
The Independent also quotes Euan Nisbet, one of the study’s authors:
“It may just be a couple of years of high growth, and it may drop back to what it was. But there is a concern that things are beginning to change towards renewed growth from feedbacks.
Over a relatively short period, such as 20 years, methane (CH4) has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2, although it decays more quickly.
Many climate scientists fear that frozen Arctic tundra, like this at Sermermiut in Greenland, could be a ticking time bomb. Over thousands of years the methane has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes all around the world. But as temperatures rise and the permafrost begins to melt, that methane could be released – with potentially catastrophic results.
Motor vehicles give off only minimal amounts of sulfates and nitrates, both pollutants that cool climate, though they produce significant amounts of pollutants that warm climate such as carbon dioxide, black carbon, and ozone.
In a paper published online on Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nadine Unger of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and colleagues described how they used a climate model to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100.
In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it.
Keep in mind that those cooling aerosols from electric power generation and industry (mostly from burning coal) and biomass burning (otherwise known as deforestation) fall out of the atmosphere quickly, leaving the greenhouse gases behind in the atmosphere to do their warming work for centuries to come. Says Unger:
The differences are because the impacts of greenhouse gases accumulate and intensify over time, and because they persist in the atmosphere for such long periods. In contrast, aerosols rain out after a few days and can only have a short-term impact.
Credit: NASA GISS/Unger
Unger’s model finds that in 2020 (left), transportation, household biofuels and animal husbandry will have the greatest warming impact on the climate, while the shipping, biomass burning, and industrial sectors will have a cooling impact. By 2100 (right), the model finds that the power and industrial sector will begin to contribute strongly to warming as carbon dioxide accumulates.
Here’s a simple idea that would go a long way towards saving the planet:
Smaller, lighter vehicles = less materials consumption
Instant surge in demand for high-speed rail and other public transportation
Large drop in tire-related particulate pollution
Plunging traffic fatality rates + reduced health industry expenses
Constriction of suburbs & exurbs, relieving pressure on farm lands and other rural lands
Shipping diverted from truck to rail & ship
Demise of the “big box” model, reinvigoration of local economies and communities
End of our road and bridge building mania
As if that’s likely to happen.
Still, the passion may be fading from our love affair with the automobile. The Federal Highway Administration reports that vehicle miles driven in December were unchanged from December 2008:
Travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.0% (-0.1 billion vehicle miles) for December 2009 as compared with December 2008. . . . Cumulative Travel for 2009 changed by +0.2% (6.6 billion vehicle miles).
Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The research team, led by Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that subtropical waters are reaching Greenland’s glaciers, driving melting and likely triggering an acceleration of ice loss. Melting ice also means more fresh water in the ocean, which could flood into the North Atlantic and disrupt a global system of currents, known as the Ocean Conveyor.
Science Daily quotes Straneo:
This is the first time we’ve seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland. The subtropical waters are flowing through the fjord very quickly, so they can transport heat and drive melting at the end of the glacier.
The Greenland ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise over the last decade has doubled due to increased melting and especially to the widespread acceleration of outlet glaciers.
The research teamconducted two extensive surveys during July and September of 2008 in Sermilik Fjord, a 100-kilometer long glacial fjord in East Greenland connecting Helheim Glacier with the Irminger Sea. In 2003 alone, Helheim Glacier retreated several kilometers and almost doubled its flow speed. Deep inside the fjord, researchers found subtropical water as warm as 39 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius). The team also reconstructed seasonal temperatures on the shelf using data collected by 19 hooded seals tagged with satellite-linked temperature depth-recorders. The data revealed that the shelf waters warm from July to December, and that subtropical waters are present on the shelf year round.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS ) is considering listing corals as endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. From the Federal Register:
[W]e initiate status reviews of 82 species of corals to determine if listing under the ESA is warranted.
In October 2009 NMFS received a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to list 83 species of coral as threatened or endangered under the ESA. The petition asserts that synergistic threats of ocean warming, ocean acidification, and other impacts affect these species and that these global habitat threats are exacerbated by local habitat threats posed by ship traffic, dredging, coastal development, pollution, and agricultural and land use practices that increase sedimentation and nutrient loading. The petition states that immediate action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to levels that do not jeopardize these species and requests that critical habitat be designated for these corals concurrent with listing under the ESA.
A species or subspecies is ‘‘endangered’’ if it is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range, and ‘‘threatened’’ if it is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.
NMFS will have to “assess conservation measures to determine whether they ameliorate a species’ extinction risk” and, once critical habitat is designated, ensure that Federal agencies do not fund, authorize or carry out any actions that are likely to destroy or adversely modify that habitat.
Any area may be excluded from a critical habitat designation if the benefits of exclusion outweigh the benefits of designation, unless excluding that area “will result” in extinction of the species. So economic and national security considerations could trump the science.
So much for the “immediate action” that is needed to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations.
It’s nothing but Kabuki theater – highly stylized ritual rather than meaningful action or even honest discussion. action.
A study published in Nature Geoscience finds that submarine melting is causing Greenland’s glaciers to melt from underneath and calve off. As the glaciers thin and become unpinned from their moorings on the sea bed, they then flow more rapidly into the sea.
Rates of submarine melting are two orders of magnitude (100 times) larger than surface melt rates. The rate of submarine melting is comparable to rates of iceberg discharge.
Here’s the abstract:
Widespread glacier acceleration has been observed in Greenland in the past few years1, associated with the thinning of the lower reaches of the glaciers as they terminate in the ocean. These glaciers thin both at the surface, from warm air temperatures, and along their submerged faces in contact with warm ocean waters8. Little is known about the rates of submarine melting and how they may affect glacier dynamics. Here we present measurements of ocean currents, temperature and salinity near the calving fronts of the Eqip Sermia, Kangilerngata Sermia, Sermeq Kujatdleq and Sermeq Avangnardleq glaciers in central West Greenland, as well as ice-front bathymetry and geographical positions. We calculate water-mass and heat budgets that reveal summer submarine melt rates ranging from 0.7±0.2 to 3.9±0.8?m?d?1. These rates of submarine melting are two orders of magnitude larger than surface melt rates, but comparable to rates of iceberg discharge. We conclude that ocean waters melt a considerable, but highly variable, fraction of the calving fronts of glaciers before they disintegrate into icebergs, and suggest that submarine melting must have a profound influence on grounding-line stability and ice-flow dynamics.
The Western Climate Initiative is made up of seven Western states — Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington — and four Canadian provinces. Its modest goal is to achieve a 15% reduction from 2005 emissions levels by 2020. The regional cap-and-trade program was to begin in 2012, but California is the only state on schedule.
The New York Times quotes Benjamin Grumbles, the head of the state’s environmental agency:
Green and grow is our approach now.
Fearful that cutting emissions plan will slow the state’s economic recovery, Arizona will focus less on regulations and instead support initiatives to expand the use of solar power, nuclear power and other renewable energy sources. Arizona will look at “growth policies that limit pollution” and “steps to adapt to the changing climate.”
Arizona is also reconsidering the stricter vehicle-emissions rules set to take effect in 2012.
Recent warming in the Southwest has been among the most rapid in the nation. This is driving declines in spring snowpack and Colorado River flow. Projections of future climate change indicate continued strong warming in the region, with much larger increases under higher emissions scenarios compared to lower. Projected summertime temperature increases are greater than the annual average increases in parts of the region and are likely to be exacerbated by expanding urban heat island effects. Further water cycle changes are projected, which, combined with increasing temperatures, signal a serious water supply challenge in the decades and centuries ahead. The prospect of future droughts becoming more severe due to warming is a significant concern, especially because the Southwest continues to lead the nation in population growth.
The report identifies several key issues for the Southwest as climate rapidly changes:
Water supplies will become increasingly scarce, calling for tradeoffs among competing uses, and potentially leading to conflict.
Increasing temperature, drought, wildfire, and invasive species will accelerate transformation of the landscape.
Increased frequency and altered timing of flooding will increase risks to people, ecosystems, and infrastructure.
Unique tourism and recreation opportunities are likely to suffer.
Cities and agriculture face increasing risks from a changing climate.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports that Arctic sea ice extent continues to track way below normal, despite cool temperatures over most of the Arctic Ocean in January.
It’s not that the ice keeps melting, it’s just not growing very fast.
We’ve grown back ice in the winter, but that ice tends to be thin and that’s the problem. You set yourself up for a world of hurt in summer. The ice that is there is also thinner than it was before and thinner ice simply takes less energy to melt out the next summer.
With thinner, more fragile ice and less cover,
You’ve got a double whammy going on.
If Arctic ice fails to build up sufficiently during the dark, cold winter months, it is likely to melt faster and earlier when spring comes.
A Canadian research project has found that climate change is happening much faster than the most pessimistic models expected. Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030. Losing sea ice has impacts on everything else that goes on in the Earth’s systems.
By the end of January, ice extent had dropped below the extent observed in January 2007. This winter continues the recent trend of slower Arctic ice growth.
The summer Arctic sea ice melt season now lasts nearly a month longer than it did in the 1980s. A later start of freeze-up and an earlier start to the melt season both contribute to the change. A recent paper by Thorsten Markus at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center suggests that the later freeze-up is the dominant factor lengthening the melt season. The analysis shows that, on average, autumn freeze-up starts nearly four days later each decade. Extensive open water at the end of the summer melt season, combined with warmer autumns, delay the autumn freeze-up. The larger expanses of open water absorb more solar energy, and before ice can form again, that heat must be released back to the atmosphere. This trend is most pronounced in the Beaufort, Chukchi and Laptev seas.
Sergio Gabrielli, CEO of Petrobras (a Brazilian multinational energy company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro), says global oil production (including biofuels) will peak in 2010 due to oil capacity additions from new projects being unable to offset world oil decline rates.
Gabrielli points out in his presentation that the world will need to produce oil from new sources equivalent to one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates – which he sees at about 5% per year.
Finding and bring to production the needed magnitudes of new oil simply not going to happen. Even managing to maintain historically observes decline rates may prove to be a challenge. Take Nigeria, for example. As the world teeters at the edge of economic and political collapse, Nigeria seems to be going over the edge. Nigeria, which in 2008 produced over two million barrels of sweet crude a day and today provides 9% of U.S. oil imports, could vanish as an oil exporter, virtually overnight. Despite its enormous reserves, Venezuela is looking none to stable as a producer and exporter, either.
[W]hen oil prices rise again, the pain will be far greater for the U.S. than it is for our top suppliers. Next time, the spear of declining oil exports will puncture a lung.
If the gap between demand and supply shown in the chart above cannot be filled with new supply, the only alternative is for prices to increase to reduce demand to equal supply: “demand destruction.” That means economic shrinkage rather than growth, and a consequent financial crisis of epic proportions. consequence we are going to find it harder to extract other energy and mineral resources. As George Mobus points out in a post at The Oil Drum, our net energy is already in decline and that is at the root of the global economic problems we are seeing. You cannot have a growing economy when the basis of all economic wealth production is in decline.
The economic tremblings we’ve seen over the last couple of years may prove to be mere foreshocks. No matter how many trillions we throw at the problem, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Rather than try to save the irretrievably lost, we’ll have to accommodate ourselves to the new reality:
We can only start simplifying our societies and giving up the many discretionary expenditures of energy that we currently enjoy without much thought. We can learn to once again live on real-time solar influx via our food raising systems. And even then we are talking about an ability to support only a small fraction of the current population. Ironically the simplification of society involves the increasing complexity of individual lives. What this means in practice is that each individual must start to become more of a generalist in terms of the functions that support life. Everyone will have to become a food grower! Believe it or not that isn’t simple! Knowing how to grow your own nutrients is actually quite complicated and will demand a whole new set of cognitive skills.
For the environment, peak oil and economic collapse offers a glimmer of hope. For example, oil accounts for 43% of our CO2 emissions from energy use. Consequent economic collapse will mean that a lot of coal plants in the works will never get built, and maybe even we’ll see existing plants begin to wither away.
Solastalgia: the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault; a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home’; symptoms include anxiety, despair, numbness, a sense of being overwhelmed or powerless, grief.
Solastalgia is a neologism coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003. It describes a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change, such as mining or climate change. Solastalgia is a global condition, felt to a greater or lesser degree by different people in different locations but felt increasingly, given the ongoing degradation of the environment
As opposed to nostalgia – the melancholia or homesickness experienced by individuals when separated from a loved home – “solastalgia” is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment. A paper published by Albrecht and collaborators focused on two contexts where collaborative research teams found solastalgia to be evident: the experiences of persistent drought in rural New South Wales (NSW) and the impact of large-scale open-cut coal mining on individuals in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW. In both cases, people exposed to environmental change experienced negative affect that is exacerbated by a sense of powerlessness or lack of control over the unfolding change process.
There’s a scholar who talks about ‘heart’s ease.’ People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.
Albrecht has found that this “place pathology” isn’t limited to natives or to the displaced. People can be despairing and depressed without being forced from their homeland. The land changing around them can bring about the same sense of mournful disorientation.
The researchers could have found evidence of solastagia by looking at me in Sacramento, California in the ’70s, as the paradise I was born and grew up in was devastated by rampant and uncontrolled “development.” It got so bad I fled in a desperate attempt to maintain some semblance of sanity. The Seattle area in Washington proved little better. When at last I found a real home again here in Oregon, that traumatic experience provided the impetus to do everything in my power to prevent a repeat of the California and Washington experience.
In California, things have gone from bad to worse; it is now what Sasha Abramsky in an article in The Nation calls the “west coast wasteland.” California’s population has exploded from a little over 10 million in 1950 to about 37 million today. But as many have warned (including Eben Fodor in his landmark 1998 study “The Cost of Growth in Oregon“), growth costs a lot and doesn’t pay for itself. After 60 years of growth, the bills have come due.
As Abramsky observes, what was a gorgeous state with a terrific infrastructure built up over the past century now has no money or political will to keep the place running properly. Paradise is broken and in a perennial state of fiscal crisis as California threatens to become a failed state. And California is not alone.
My heart still aches for what once was and is now irretrievably lost. I still can’t bear to cross the border. Unfortunately, as the symptom of climate change shows, the disease of growth doesn’t respect borders. Growth now threatens to devastate the entirety of the globe.
Earth is the only home we have, there’s nowhere left to flee. As it succumbs to the ravishes of growth, are we not destined to see solastalgia spread and become a global contagion?
This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions – whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take. Speaking about climate change is not a matter of intellectual luxury - the phenomenon is an actual fact.
Bin Laden gives European nations a bit of credit for signing the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing “to curb the emission of harmful gases” but puts the finger on Bush and global corporations:
George Bush junior, preceded by [the US] congress, dismissed the agreement to placate giant corporations. And they are themselves standing behind speculation, monopoly and soaring living costs. They are also behind ‘globalisation and its tragic implications’. And whenever the perpetrators are found guilty, the heads of state rush to rescue them using public money.
Bin Laden calls for targeting the U.S. economy in retribution by boycotting American products and ending dollar hegemony:
They are the true terrorists and therefore we should refrain from dealing in the US dollar and should try to get rid of this currency as early as possible. I am certain that such actions will have grave repercussions and huge impact.
It’s hard to argue with the facts. Here’s a chart of cumulative emissions from 1900 through 2002.
The fact that Chinese emissions are growing fast and have now overtaken U.S. emissions on an annual basis doesn’t do much to relieve the U.S. of its overall responsibility.
The research team discovered that the melt season lengthened the most – more than 10 days per decade – in Hudson Bay, the East Greenland Sea, the Laptev and East Siberian Seas, and the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.
Earlier melt means more heat can be absorbed by the open water, promoting more melting and later freeze-up dates — more than eight days per decade later in some areas.
Thorsten Markus of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. explains how the feedback loop works:
This feedback process has always been present, yet with more extensive open water this feedback becomes even stronger and further boosts ice loss. Melt is starting earlier, but the trend towards a later freeze-up is even stronger because of this feedback effect.
Scientists have upped their estimates of the waves that a “100 year event” might produce along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Their finding heighten concerns for flooding, coastal erosion and structural damage.
Waves crawl up against the lower level of a structure in Neskowin, Oregon, during a storm in January, 2008. (Photo by Armand Thibault, Neskowin)
As recently as 1996, the maximum in ocean wave heights was estimated to be 33 feet. In a study just published online in the journal Coastal Engineering, scientists from Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries conclude that the highest waves may be as much as 46 feet and the 100-year wave height could actually exceed 55 feet. Impacts of the bigger waves would dwarf impacts expected from sea level rise in coming decades.
Over the last few decades, increasing wave heights have had 2 – 3 times the impact of sea level rise in terms of erosion, flooding and damage. The largest wave height increases have occurred off the Washington and northern Oregon coasts, with less increase in southern Oregon and nothing of significance south of central California.
Possible causes cited are changes in storm tracks, higher winds, more intense winter storms, or other factors probably related to global warming but also possibly related to periodic climate fluctuations such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. What is clear is that waves are getting bigger.
The significant rise in sea level expected over future decades and centuries will only add to the damage already being done by higher waves.
Temperature changes for the last decade—January 2000 to December 2009—relative to the 1951-1980 mean. Warmer areas are in red, cooler areas in blue. The largest temperature increases occurred in the Arctic and a portion of Antarctica. Credit: NASA
2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a fraction of a degree behind 2005. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.
Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880. Rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the key factors causing the rise in temperatures since 1880.
Other factors, including changes in the sun’s irradiance, oscillations of sea surface temperature in the tropics, and changes in aerosol levels, can also cause slight increases or decreases in the planet’s temperature. Aerosols produced by burning fossil fuels have probably counteracted about half of the warming produced by man-made greenhouse gases. In 2009, even the deepest solar minimum in the period of satellite data wasn’t enough to offset global warming.
Scientists from the University of South Florida College of Marine Science measured CO2 levels in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. By comparing pH readings from 1991 and from 2006, they found the first direct evidence of acidification across an entire ocean basin, leaving no doubt that growing CO2 levels in the atmosphere are exerting major impacts on the world’s oceans.
If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, by the end of the century surface water pH would drop approximately 0.4 pH units and the carbonate ion concentration would decrease almost 50%. This surface ocean pH would be lower than it has been for more than 20 million years. Even if substantial reductions in emissions are made, ocean acidification will continue for hundreds of years to come, which means we are already committed to many centuries of ugly consequences.
This map shows the flow of carbon emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Net exporting countries are in blue and net importers in red. China is by far the largest exporter of carbon dioxide emissions. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatonnes. (Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science)
Credit: Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The fact that Chinese emissions are growing fast and have now overtaken U.S. emissions on an annual basis doesn’t do much to relieve the U.S. of its overall responsibility.
Waves crawl up against the lower level of a structure in Neskowin, Oregon, during a storm in January, 2008. (Photo by Armand Thibault, Neskowin)
Temperature changes for the last decade—January 2000 to December 2009—relative to the 1951-1980 mean. Warmer areas are in red, cooler areas in blue. The largest temperature increases occurred in the Arctic and a portion of Antarctica. Credit: NASA