Other stories below: Countries Must Plan for Climate Refugees; Rivals Hammer Romney for Global Warming Uncertainty
Global Warming: Middle East’s Vital Wet Winters are Disappearing
Winter droughts have become increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, particularly over the past 20 years, and a new study finds that global warming has driven at least half of the change.
Drought conditions in this politically explosive region are expected to grow more severe over the course of the century unless countries begin to significantly reduce their emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, many researchers say.
Those emissions come from burning fossil fuels, as well as from land-use changes.
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Winter storms historically have delivered most of the annual rain and snowfall to the already arid Mediterranean region. Yet precipitation measurements from the region and modeling studies point to a relatively rapid shift in the winter rain and snowfall trends that began in the 1970s, according to the study.
That change could signal that the region “has moved into a new climate regime,” says Martin Hoerling, a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., and the study’s lead author.
For more background, see “Human-Caused Climate Change Already a Major Factor in More Frequent Mediterranean Droughts.”
Countries must plan for climate refugees – report
The world’s governments and relief agencies need to plan now to resettle millions of people expected to be displaced by climate change, an international panel of experts says.
Resettlement is already occurring at the rate of some 10 million people a year, said the report’s lead author, Alex de Sherbinin. Climate-related resettlement projects are under way in Vietnam, Mozambique, on the Alaskan coast, the Chinese territory of Inner Mongolia and in the South Pacific.
If global temperatures rise, as predicted, by as much as 7.2 degrees F (4 degrees C) this century, “resettlement would become virtually unavoidable in some regions of the world,” the scientists wrote in the journal Science late last week.
Warming of this magnitude would have a dramatic impact on water availability, agricultural productivity, ecosystems and sea level — all of which in turn affect where and how humans can live.
Planning for millions of refugees will be challenging, but it is vastly better than the alternative, de Sherbinin said by telephone from The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.
U.K. Government Proposes 55% Cut in Solar Energy Feed-in Tariff
The U.K. government proposed a reduction of as much as 55 percent for the price paid for solar power, part of an effort to keep a lid on electricity costs and reflect lower costs for panels.
Feed-in tariffs granting above-market rates would be scaled back at least 51.5 percent for solar projects installed starting Dec. 12, the Department of Energy and Climate Change said in an e-mailed statement today. The new rates come into effect in April. Existing plants and those built before the date will get current rates for 25 years.
“Urgent action is needed to put the solar industry on a steadier, clearer and sustainable growth path, avoid boom and bust and protect the feed-in tariff scheme,” Energy Minister Greg Barker said today in the statement. “The plummeting costs of solar means we’ve got no option but to act so we stay within budget and not threaten the whole viability of the scheme.”
Rivals Hammer Romney for Espousing Global Warming Uncertainty
By sounding a note of skepticism about climate science, Mitt Romney has prompted a fresh wave of attacks from opponents who branded the change in tone as the latest in a long string of policy shifts by the former Massachusetts governor.
On Friday, the liberal website ThinkProgress posted footage of Romney at a campaign event during which the former Massachusetts governor hedged his prior position that mankind has contributed to global warming. “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet, and the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us,” Romney said, in response to a questioner in Pittsburgh on Thursday.
He argued that reducing carbon emissions through legislation such as cap-and-trade would throttle job growth and stifle the economic recovery. ”The idea of America spending massive amounts, trillions of dollars to somehow stop global warming is not a great idea,” Romney said. “It loses jobs for Americans and ultimately it won’t be successful, because industries that are energy intensive will just get up and go somewhere else. So it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Beijing air pollution ‘hazardous’: US embassy
Air pollution in Beijing reached “hazardous” levels on Monday, the US embassy said, as thick smog blanketed the city for the third day running, forcing the closure of highways and cancellation of flights.The Chinese capital is one of the most polluted cities in the world, mainly due to its growing energy consumption — much of which is still fuelled by coal-fired power stations — and the high number of cars on the road.
A “hazardous” rating by the US embassy, whose evaluation of the city’s air quality often differs markedly from the official Chinese rating, is the worst on a six-point scale and indicates the whole population is likely to be affected.
The embassy has rated Beijing’s air quality as hazardous on several occasions this month. On October 9, the reading was listed as “beyond index”, meaning it went above measurable levels.
By contrast, China’s environment ministry said Beijing’s air was just “slightly polluted” on Sunday — the most recent data available — sparking a debate in China’s state-run media and on the Internet.
Even the usually nationalist Global Times newspaper on Monday demanded an explanation for the disparity, urging the government to “be cooperative in avoiding confusing information” about air pollution.
“Figures by some local governments show the air pollution index is dropping in some cities, such as Beijing… But some Beijing citizens complain the figures do not match their experience,” it said in an editorial.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
China International Forum on Climate Change
BEIJING– The 2011 China International Forum on Climate Change opened in Beijing on Sunday to discuss ways to balance economic and environmental priorities, develop green industry and construct low-carbon cities.
The forum was attended by more than 200 officials, scholars and entrepreneurs from China and European countries, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, co-organizer of the event.
Delegates are expected to suggest new ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions and develop carbon-trading markets in the hope of providing insights for next month’s climate talks in Durban, South Africa.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/business/2011-10/31/content_14010049.htm
a-crisis-unprecdedented-in-thai-history
http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/a-crisis-unprecdedented-in-thai-history/19122
a-crisis-unprecdedented-in-thai-history
http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/a-crisis-unprecdedented-in-thai-history/19122
http://climatecrocks.com/2011/10/31/thailand-flooding-aerial-footage/
India’s food price index rose 11.43 percent in the year to Oct. 15, while China’s food prices climbed 13.4 percent in September from a year earlier. Bangladesh food inflation jumped to 13.75 percent in September from 12.70 percent in August.
http://www.claimsjournal.com/news/international/2011/10/28/194086.htm
Rainfall about 42 percent more than average this year filled upstream dams to capacity, prompting authorities to release large amounts of water earlier this month. Government efforts to reinforce dikes protecting the estates proved futile against a wall of water as high as 3 meters (9.8 feet).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-30/thai-credibility-at-stake-as-factories-soak-in-flood-plain.html
Note date … 2007!
How Will Climate Change Affect India’s Monsoon Season?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070308121808.htm8 Mar 2007 – Scientists at the University of Liverpool are investigating the anticipated effects of climate change on India’s monsoon season and the impact …
“Thai Reinsurance Pcl (THRE) and Muang Thai Insurance Pcl, both Bangkok-based insurance providers, fell more than 20 percent in that time. ”
I dont think the insurance industry is going to survive the next .5C rise in GW….
Climate Portals shared a link.
Thailand’s Water Crisis Is Bad Omen: The Ticker
http://www.bloomberg.com
As the streets of Bangkok fill with water, much of the world’s attention is on Yingluck Shinawatra. The Thai prime minister’s unsteady handling of the mounting crisis is inviting unkind comparisons with U.S. President George W. Bush’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and rightfully so.
Thailand is a perfect example of the dangerous convergence of high population density and extreme and erratic weather patterns that scientists link with increased carbon emissions. For generations, Thailand’s placement along the Mekong River and the fertile land it created was considered a blessing. Severe floods are changing this basic calculus.
Developed nations are equally as vulnerable as developing nations to GW. In fact the changes about to happen will be more dramatic and striking for them as extreme weather impacts ramp up….
“It’s entirely unclear what can be done about all this. Urbanization will continue — in Asia, the cities are where the jobs are. And governments are foundering in efforts to reduce their carbon footprints. What is clear is that leaders should get as used to water in the streets as they are protesters.”
Honda, the third-biggest Japanese car maker by volume after Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co., said it is cutting its U.S. and Canadian production by 50% for at least eight days beginning Wednesday due to parts shortages caused by Thailand factories that have been closed by flooding.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204528204577009044170787650.html
a-crisis-unprecdedented-in-thai-history
http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/a-crisis-unprecdedented-in-thai-history/19122
http://climatecrocks.com/2011/10/31/thailand-flooding-aerial-footage/
greenman3610 slow roasts Watts.
Bad, Badder, BEST
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tciQts-8Cxo&feature=colike
One other item in the mix this weekend , I am struck just how much green was still in the trees leaves in Conn.
Same over here Bob, in southern England at least. Now we often get a blast of strong winds as October bows out, if that happens this year then with so much ‘sail on’ it will be problematic and we could lose some sticks.
Another reason the trees came down from the snow loads in the North East, the ground was still very wet :
Posted by: JeffMasters, 3:40 PM GMT on August 30, 2011
Record flooding continues in the Northeast from Irene’s torrential rains. Hardest hit was Vermont, where heavy rains in the weeks prior to Irene’s arrival had left soils in the top 20% for moisture, historically. Irene dumped 5 – 8 inches of rain over large sections of Vermont, with a peak of 11.23″ at Mendo. The reading from Mendo was the greatest single-day rainfall in Vermont’s history, according to wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt, beating the 9.92″ that fell at Mt. Mansfield on 9/17/1999 during the passage of Tropical Storm Floyd. The 13.30″ that fell on East Durham, NY during Irene was just shy of New York State’s all-time 1-day rainfall record: 13.70″ at Brewster on 9/16/1999, from Tropical Storm Floyd.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1909
A glimpse in to the future… or maybe the present….
Modern society is not going to survive the next .5C GW rise!
Snow Storm 2011: A Different Type Of Halloween
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/snow-storm-2011-power-outages-_n_1067025.html
My wife, two sons and our two dogs settled in Sunday to a day in front of the fire. Even with the roaring blaze going, the temperature inside my house hovered at around 55 degrees. My bundled-up boys plinked on their mobile devices and computers until they ran out of battery power. Then we went completely off the grid. No Internet. No music. No TV. No NFL. We would soon learn school was canceled Monday, and so was the train into work in New York.
We all had no choice but to sit in front of the fireplace, chat and read books. My wife heated up some soup and hot chocolate on our still-working gas stove. The dogs curled at our feet. I thought it was one of the nicest Sundays I’ve spent with my family in years.
“See kids, this is what life was like before television and the Internet,” I said.
Without missing a beat, my 12-year-old son Edward looked up from his book and said, “I am sooooo bored.”
Edward the Confessor.
OR EVEN COUNTING THEM
“..there is no structural capacity in the international system to provide for environmental migrants. Climate migrants are not recognized as a problem in any binding international treaty nor is there an international body charged with providing for climate migrants, or even counting them.”
Migration and Climate Change No.31, International Organization for Migration,(2008) p.37
http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2008/migration_climate.pdf
Let’s hope the conference on climate refugees will generate practical recommendations, beginning with acknowledging how many climate refugees and climate migrants already exist, now.
Climate Portals shared a link.
Climate change could trap hundreds of millions in disaster areas, report claims
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Report says refugees forced to leave homes by weather caused by global warming may end up in even worse afflicted areas
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/27/uk-eu-tar-sands-regulation
UK accused of stalling EU tar sands regulation
EurActiv:UK delaying attempts to ban tar sands imports under the EU fuel quality directive, environmentalists say
Cameron promises “greenest government ever”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/5
You beat me to it, pro. Cameron is a PR hack, so a string of Big Lies to get himself elected would have been child’s play. The same here in Oz. The Rightwing regimes elected in New South Wales and Victoria, while feigning environmental benevolence when seeking votes, have, since election, been quite crazed in rolling back what little progress has painfully been achieved in recent decades. And they don’t bother to disguise how much they enjoy sticking it up the despised ‘Greenies’.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_triumph_of_king_coal_hardening_our_coal_addiction/2458/
“The Triumph of King Coal: Hardening Our Coal Addiction”
The author, Fred Pearce (I know, I know…), gets a lot of the (very grim) coal stats and overall picture right, but about mid-way through he breaks contact with reality:
“Cynics who said tougher carbon controls in rich nations might increase global emissions by outsourcing energy-intensive industries to poorer nations with laxer standards are, for now at least, being proved right. While many Western economies stall, many developing economies are growing fast. And the continuing heavy dependence of many of them on coal is pushing up the global economy’s reliance on the dirtiest fuel.”
Tougher carbon controls drove high-energy industries (e.g. manufacturing) to “poorer nations”? Really? So all those “Made in China” stickers on products in US stores were caused by our “tough[er] carbon controls”? What carbon controls???
Fred Pearce sold out in trumps some time ago, just like ‘The Guardian’. I wouldn’t waste precious minutes reading anything he has to say.
U.K. Government Proposes 55% Cut in Solar Energy Feed-in Tariff…
“Cameron: I want coalition to be the ‘greenest government ever’”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/14/cameron-wants-greenest-government-ever
Just curious about something in the first link. It says the Middle East and while I assume that Iran would be considered part of the Middle East, what I’m curious about is Central Asia and if any study has been made there? Especially the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_sea
Oh see, Joe, now you’re going to get in trouble again with Kloor and Stoat for using that Aral Sea photo to stand for Middle East drying. :)
(Best to just ignore that sort of sniping entirely.)
Like most people, I don’t generally read them. Sometimes people send me stuff.
This was another picture picked out by my colleague for his post. Absent a caption, it’s tough to get very upset about unless you really, really have a chip on your shoulder. Climate science says the Mediterranean is drying out. Get used to it.
Actually it is a photo of Oroumieh Lake in Iran which as far as I’m concerned is in the Middle East. I was just asking about if any study had been made of the Aral Sea which as been through a lot since the 1960s and has lost a lot more since the 90s.
The Aral dried up because of water diversion, or so we were told, in yet another grim tale of ‘Carmnist’ perfidy. I wonder, now, what role climate change might have had in exacerbating the problem.
Me too this makes me wonder about how higher temps could pretty well mean they will have to abandon trying to restore even a small bit of the Aral Sea. Plus this is a concern if we start to see more lakes, swamps, and deltas evaporate globally due to higher temps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aralkum
The sands of the Aralkum are made up of a salt-marsh consisting of finely-dispersed sea depositions and remnants of mineral deposits, washed away from irrigated fields. The dusts which originate from it contain pollutants. The desert’s location on a powerful east-west airstream has resulted in pesticides in the dust being found in the blood of penguins in Antarctica. Aral dust has also been found in the glaciers of Greenland, the forests of Norway, and the fields of Russia.
The Climate Data Guide
Filed under: Climate Science Instrumental Record Scientific practice
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has, in the last few months, developed an interesting and potentially very useful website The Climate Data Guide devoted to the ins and outs of obtaining and analyzing the various existing climatic data sets. The site describes itself as “…a focal point for expert-user guidance, commentary, and questions on the strengths and limitations of selected observational data sets and their applicability to model evaluations.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/the-climate-data-guide/
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/
Check out
CLIMATE.GOV
http://www.climate.gov they make currently a survey and ask about feedback.
According to the webmaster they plan to release widgets for the climate data, to include in your blog/website/company website
Nobody seems to comment on this, but ten years ago we traveled to Beijing and were appalled by the dirty air.
While in the capital we never saw the sun, only a grey-brown sky. Chinese shrugged and said, “Its always that way.” They had grown to accept it.
But it was miserable and depressing and we will not be going back.
James Fallows has the must-read account today of Beijing’s air emergency.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/air-emergency-beijing/247642/