Big Food Must Go: Why We Need to Radically Change the Way We Eat

By Christopher D. Cook, AlterNet
Posted on February 26, 2012, Printed on February 27, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/154311/big_food_must_go%3A_why_we_need_to_radically_change_the_way_we_eat

Editor's note: Find Christopher D. Cook's book, Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis, here.
It is no longer news that a few powerful corporations have literally occupied the vast majority of human sustenance. The situation is perilous: nearly all of human food production, seeds, food processing and sales, is run by a handful of for-profit firms which, like any capitalist enterprise, function to maximize profit and gain ever-greater market share and control. The question has become: What do we do about this disastrous alignment of pure profit in something so basic and fundamental to human survival?
It is time -- now, not next year -- to de-occupy Walmart. And Archer Daniels Midland. And Tyson Foods. And Monsanto. And Cargill. And Kraft Foods. And the other large corporations that decide what ends up on our plates. Take all our money out, public and personal, from our shopping dollars to school district lunch contracts to the corporate subsidies that uphold these firms' grip on our food supply, and invest it in a new system that's economically diverse and ecologically sustainable.
These corporations' stranglehold over food has wreaked havoc on the environment, our health, farmers, workers, and our very future. It is time for an end to Big Food, and a societal shift to something radically different. We all deserve a future where what we eat feeds community and land, instead of eroding soils, polluting water and air, and tossing away small farmers and immigrant workers as if they were balance sheet losers.
"Occupying the food system" has emerged as a rallying cry as activists and movements across the country, from Willie Nelson to more than 60 Occupy groups are turning up the heat on "big food" in nationwide actions today. Across the US, online and offline, thousands will be protesting icons of corporate control over food such as Monsanto and Cargill, and literally occupying vacant lots and tilling long-ignored soils in a mass-scale rejuvenation of community-led food production. (Find out more about the day of action here.) 
"We want to ignite a robust conversation about corporate control of our food supply," says Laurel Sutherlin, communications manager for Rainforest Action Network, a lead organizer in this growing coalition of food system occupiers. "Occupy has opened a national dialogue about inequality and the dangers of surrendering our basic life-support systems over to corporate control."
The idea that food ought to be spared from the all-consuming machinery of corporate control has gained wide currency, but what does it mean to "occupy" and revamp our food system? Apart from our desire for local heirloom produce and artisanal cheeses, or to save the family farm, what's wrong with a few corporations controlling our food supply?
"Occupying the food system is about taking it back from the corporations for the communities and for the people," says Erin Middleton of the California Food and Justice Coalition. "Access to good, healthy, affordable food is a basic human right that has been interfered with in the current capitalistic food system."
Beyond any aesthetic concerns about local versus multinational, or slow food versus fast food, the well-documented reality is that Big Food has attained phenomenal and destructive power over what we eat -- our diets, our health and the planet.
Consider a few quick facts:

• Four corporations, led by Walmart, control more than half of grocery sales. Walmart alone gets more than one quarter of every grocery dollar spent in the U.S.
• Three companies -- Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta -- own 47 percent of the world's seeds. And they own 65 percent of the global proprietary maize market.
• Nearly every major commodity -- wheat, corn, soy -- is controlled by just four corporations.
• Just four corporations control more than 80 percent of all our meat supply.
• According to USDA statistics, America loses more than 17,000 farmers a year -- one every half an hour.

This corporate occupation of our food isn't just unfair and wrong; it's impractical and destructive. It's ruining farmers, the land and our future food supply.
This Big Food system produces an astounding 1.3 billion tons of animal waste every year. It sprays half a million tons of toxic pesticides on our food each year. We are literally eating oil, as author Rick Manning has put it: annually 400 gallons of fossil fuel per person, 100 billion gallons a year as a nation. Rivers and streams across America are polluted by this industrial agriculture, which is now a major contributor to climate chaos -- and we're all paying for it.
But at least these corporations feed the world, right? Wrong. Worldwide, more than 850 million people go hungry every day. In the U.S., 48 million people, including 16 million children, do not have a reliable, secure food supply. Twenty percent of families with children are food-insecure.
Why all this hunger amid a global food bounty in which UN Food and Agriculture Organization data show we have far more than enough to feed everyone? Poverty. Unemployment. Underemployment. Here in the U.S., stagnant wages have combined with rising costs for everything to make simply feeding oneself a major economic stressor. We cannot separate "food issues" from economic justice issues. And the corporations that control our food supply are directly to blame.
But at least McDonald's, Walmart, Safeway, et al. offer us "cheap" food, right? Wrong again. We pay more than $100 billion a year in medical costs due to diet-related diseases from Big Food's relentless production and marketing of junk "food" and highly processed foods. We pay countless more dollars for injured and maimed workers who risk life and limb daily on the fast-food assembly line; for environmental cleanups from factory farms' rivers of toxic waste; and we pay roughly $15 billion a year, sometimes more, to subsidize corporate agribusiness commodities like corn and soy -- our tax dollars financing unhealthy sweeteners for soda, and fast food, all those burgers and fries that seem so cheap.
Then there is the brutal sweatshop-style labor we eat. All our food today relies on terribly exploited workers, both in the U.S. and abroad. Our daily meals rest on underpaid, impoverished immigrants, tens of thousands of whom are injured each year. We cannot continue to ignore the abuse of people, land and animals by the corporations that claim to feed the world.
We cannot solve this simply by going vegetarian or vegan, or buying organic and fair trade. The very market that has created this Big Food disaster -- the market that creates monopolies and monocultures -- cannot solve these deep systemic crises. To truly "occupy the food system" we will need nothing less than a fundamental restructuring of the economics and policies that currently enable our corporate food system.
There are great things happening on the good food margins today -- local foods movements, more urban agriculture and community gardens, school gardens, small sustainable food companies, victory gardens, even some fairly radical small-scale entrepreneurialism. But we need something much bigger. We need a radical overhaul of our current food and agriculture system -- and of how our tax dollars are spent on food.
Here are a few ideas. We must pressure Congress, through education, protest and targeted campaigns, to end agribusiness subsidies and begin spending our money on sustainable healthy foods and farming. Pass a 2012 Farm Bill that not only ends subsidies for corporate agribusiness, but that reinvests public money in an economically diversified, ecologically sustainable and more locally-oriented food system. It can be done. Shift the agribusiness subsidies to fund small and mid-sized organics; subsidize smaller-scale organics, and living-wage jobs in organic farming; create public investments for local and regional sustainable agriculture, both rural and urban; stop all food industry mergers today; and ban corporate representatives from all aspects of government food policymaking-no more corporate lobbyists and advisors deciding our nation's food, farming, and nutrition policies. No more revolving door between government and agribusiness. Period.
Beyond that, we need to break up the food oligopoly. Reform anti-trust law so these companies can't control entire food and seed markets. Cargill, for instance, the world's largest privately held corporation, not only controls a huge portion of the global grain business, but it also has a near monopoly over entire regions of American grain elevators, where farmers sell their crops. For the future of the environment and local economies, we must also redistribute land from corporations and agribusiness to small sustainable farms, and reverse the long trend of huge subsidized landholders buying out the family farm.
A few more ideas: Tax fast food corporations at the point of production (not sale, where it just hurts low-income consumers) and use the money to create sustainable urban farms. Create a federal New Deal for Food that invests in a truly sustainable healthy food system that makes good food accessible to all -- reinvesting the dollars we currently throw at agribusiness, into community-driven food production and marketing.
Ultimately, we need to understand that this isn't just a few bad corporations -- this is capitalism doing what it naturally does, exploiting people and land for profit. Even Adam Smith warned of the inherent tendency of capitalism toward ceaseless growth and monopoly power. Whether you're for revolution or reform, let's be honest about the system we're dealing with. Capitalism is unraveling, undermining even its own interests with its tireless demand for more growth, more profits, endless new markets with no protections for local industry, more corporate consolidation and monopoly power over both economics and politics.
Increasingly, activists are making these deeper connections between sustenance and a larger economy. "One of the most important aspects of Occupy the Food System, especially during this time of high unemployment and economic crisis, is rebuilding local economies and creating quality jobs," Tanya Kerssen of Food First wrote in an email to me. "In many communities where unemployment is high and access to healthy food is limited or nonexistent, the food system is an obvious place to start."
Kerssen argues that community-based food production can rebuild and sustain more than just food:, "By localizing the production and consumption of food, we can generate employment along the entire value chain (from production to distribution to retail). We can also rebuild our social fabric, address our health crisis, and significantly reduce our carbon footprint."
Michele Simon, a food policy expert and author of Appetite for Profit, sees the Occupy Big Food actions as "a great opportunity to bring together a rather fragmented good food movement. I'd like to see more connections being made to the industry's massive marketing machine, especially when it comes to children and the impact on public health, which too often gets left out of the food justice critique."
But, Simon adds, "I also think we need much more long-term action. Single-day actions here and there won't cut it when powerful food industry lobbyists are roaming the halls of Congress and state legislatures all over the nation every day of the year. We need to Occupy our political system!"
Indeed, we need to occupy politics, and the economy. Capitalism's endless need for new markets, new products and new lands and people to exploit is putting our entire planet and future in peril. We must re-socialize food and other life essentials. Food is already socialized, but it's corporate socialism: the huge subsidies we all pay, directly and indirectly, to uphold agribusiness.
Reclaiming our food system, says Aaron Lehmer of Bay Localize, "must mean reclaiming control of our land, our labor, and our economy from corporate monopolies. Anything less will leave our communities enslaved by special interests, whose primary goal is extracting more and more value from the common good."
Christopher D. Cook is the author of "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (New Press). He has also written for Harper's, the Economist, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. His Web site is www.christopherdcook.com.

Climate change will shake the Earth

A changing climate isn't just about floods, droughts and heatwaves. It brings erupting volcanoes and catastrophic earthquakes

As the Earth's crust buckles, volcanic activity will increase. Photograph: Corbis

The idea that a changing climate can persuade the ground to shake, volcanoes to rumble and tsunamis to crash on to unsuspecting coastlines seems, at first, to be bordering on the insane. How can what happens in the thin envelope of gas that shrouds and protects our world possibly influence the potentially Earth-shattering processes that operate deep beneath the surface? The fact that it does reflects a failure of our imagination and a limited understanding of the manner in which the different physical components of our planet – the atmosphere, the oceans, and the solid Earth, or geosphere – intertwine and interact.

1. Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes
2. by Bill McGuire
3. 
4. Buy it from the Guardian bookshop

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If we think about climate change at all, most of us do so in a very simplistic way: so, the weather might get a bit warmer; floods and droughts may become more of a problem and sea levels will slowly creep upwards. Evidence reveals, however, that our planet is an almost unimaginably complicated beast, which reacts to a dramatically changing climate in all manner of different ways; a few – like the aforementioned – straightforward and predictable; some surprising and others downright implausible. Into the latter category fall the manifold responses of the geosphere.
The world we inhabit has an outer rind that is extraordinarily sensitive to change. While the Earth's crust may seem safe and secure, the geological calamities that happen with alarming regularity confirm that this is not the case. Here in the UK, we only have to go back a couple years to April 2010, when the word on everyone's lips was Eyjafjallajökull – the ice-covered Icelandic volcano that brought UK and European air traffic to a grinding halt. Less than a year ago, our planet's ability to shock and awe headed the news once again as the east coast of Japan was bludgeoned by a cataclysmic combination of megaquake and tsunami, resulting – at a quarter of a trillion dollars or so – in the biggest natural-catastrophe bill ever.
In the light of such events, it somehow seems appropriate to imagine the Earth beneath our feet as a slumbering giant that tosses and turns periodically in response to various pokes and prods. Mostly, these are supplied by the stresses and strains associated with the eternal dance of a dozen or so rocky tectonic plates across the face of our world; a sedate waltz that proceeds at about the speed that fingernails grow. Changes in the environment too, however, have a key role to play in waking the giant, as growing numbers of geological studies targeting our post-ice age world have disclosed.
Between about 20,000 and 5,000 years ago, our planet underwent an astonishing climatic transformation. Over the course of this period, it flipped from the frigid wasteland of deepest and darkest ice age to the – broadly speaking – balmy, temperate world upon which our civilisation has developed and thrived. During this extraordinarily dynamic episode, as the immense ice sheets melted and colossal volumes of water were decanted back into the oceans, the pressures acting on the solid Earth also underwent massive change. In response, the crust bounced and bent, rocking our planet with a resurgence in volcanic activity, a proliferation of seismic shocks and burgeoning giant landslides.
The most spectacular geological effects were reserved for high latitudes. Here, the crust across much of northern Europe and North America had been forced down by hundreds of metres and held at bay for tens of thousands of years beneath the weight of sheets of ice 20 times thicker than the height of the London Eye. As the ice dissipated in soaring temperatures, the crust popped back up like a coiled spring released, at the same time tearing open major faults and triggering great earthquakes in places where they are unheard of today. Even now, the crust underpinning those parts of Europe and North America formerly imprisoned beneath the great continental ice sheets continues to rise – albeit at a far more sedate rate.
As last year's events in Japan most ably demonstrated, when the ground shakes violently beneath the sea, a tsunami may not be far behind. These unstoppable walls of water are hardly a surprise when they happen within the so-called ring of fire that encompasses the Pacific basin but in the more tectonically benign North Atlantic their manifestation could reasonably be regarded as a bit of a shock. Nonetheless, there is plenty of good, hard evidence that this was the case during post-glacial times. Trapped within the thick layers of peat that pass for soil on Shetland – the UK's northernmost outpost – are intrusions of sand that testify to the inland penetration of three tsunamis during the last 10,000 years.
Volcanic blasts too can be added to the portfolio of postglacial geological pandemonium; the warming climate being greeted by an unprecedented fiery outburst that wracked Iceland as its frozen carapace dwindled, and against which the recent ashy ejaculation from the island's most unpronounceable volcano pales.
The huge environmental changes that accompanied the rapid post-glacial warming of our world were not confined to the top and bottom of the planet. All that meltwater had to go somewhere, and as the ice sheets dwindled, so the oceans grew. An astounding 52m cubic kilometres of water was sucked from the oceans to form the ice sheets, causing sea levels to plummet by about 130 metres – the height of the Wembley stadium arch. As the ice sheets melted so this gigantic volume of water was returned, bending the crust around the margins of the ocean basins under the enormous added weight, and provoking volcanoes in the vicinity to erupt and faults to rupture, bringing geological mayhem to regions remote from the ice's polar fastnesses.
The breathtaking response of the geosphere as the great ice sheets crumbled might be considered as providing little more than an intriguing insight into the prehistoric workings of our world, were it not for the fact that our planet is once again in the throes an extraordinary climatic transformation – this time brought about by human activities. Clearly, the Earth of the early 21st century bears little resemblance to the frozen world of 20,000 years ago. Today, there are no great continental ice sheets to dispose of, while the ocean basins are already pretty much topped up. On the other hand, climate change projections repeatedly support the thesis that global average temperatures could rise at least as rapidly in the course of the next century or so as during post-glacial times, reaching levels at high latitudes capable of driving catastrophic breakup of polar ice sheets as thick as those that once covered much of Europe and North America. Could it be then, that if we continue to allow greenhouse gas emissions to rise unchecked and fuel serious warming, our planet's crust will begin to toss and turn once again?
The signs are that this is already happening. In the detached US state of Alaska, where climate change has propelled temperatures upwards by more than 3C in the last half century, the glaciers are melting at a staggering rate, some losing up to 1km in thickness in the last 100 years. The reduction in weight on the crust beneath is allowing faults contained therein to slide more easily, promoting increased earthquake activity in recent decades. The permafrost that helps hold the state's mountain peaks together is also thawing rapidly, leading to a rise in the number of giant rock and ice avalanches. In fact, in mountainous areas around the world, landslide activity is on the up; a reaction both to a general ramping-up of global temperatures and to the increasingly frequent summer heatwaves.
Whether or not Alaska proves to be the "canary in the cage" – the geological shenanigans there heralding far worse to come – depends largely upon the degree to which we are successful in reducing the ballooning greenhouse gas burden arising from our civilisation's increasingly polluting activities, thereby keeping rising global temperatures to a couple of degrees centigrade at most. So far, it has to be said, there is little cause for optimism, emissions rocketing by almost 6% in 2010 when the world economy continued to bump along the bottom. Furthermore, the failure to make any real progress on emissions control at last December's Durban climate conference ensures that the outlook is bleak. Our response to accelerating climate change continues to be consistently asymmetric, in the sense that it is far below the level that the science says is needed if we are to have any chance of avoiding the all-pervasive devastating consequences.
So what – geologically speaking – can we look forward to if we continue to pump out greenhouse gases at the current hell-for-leather rate? With resulting global average temperatures likely to be several degrees higher by this century's end, we could almost certainly say an eventual goodbye to the Greenland ice sheet, and probably that covering West Antarctica too, committing us – ultimately – to a 10-metre or more hike in sea levels.
GPS measurements reveal that the crust beneath the Greenland ice sheet is already rebounding in response to rapid melting, providing the potential – according to researchers – for future earthquakes, as faults beneath the ice are relieved of their confining load. The possibility exists that these could trigger submarine landslides spawning tsunamis capable of threatening North Atlantic coastlines. Eastern Iceland is bouncing back too as its Vatnajökull ice cap fades away. When and if it vanishes entirely, new research predicts a lively response from the volcanoes currently residing beneath. A dramatic elevation in landslide activity would be inevitable in the Andes, Himalayas, European Alps and elsewhere, as the ice and permafrost that sustains many mountain faces melts and thaws.
Across the world, as sea levels climb remorselessly, the load-related bending of the crust around the margins of the ocean basins might – in time – act to sufficiently "unclamp" coastal faults such as California's San Andreas, allowing them to move more easily; at the same time acting to squeeze magma out of susceptible volcanoes that are primed and ready to blow.
The bottom line is that through our climate-changing activities we are loading the dice in favour of escalating geological havoc at a time when we can most do without it. Unless there is a dramatic and completely unexpected turnaround in the way in which the human race manages itself and the planet, then long-term prospects for our civilisation look increasingly grim. At a time when an additional 220,000 people are lining up at the global soup kitchen each and every night; when energy, water and food resources are coming under ever-growing pressure, and when the debilitating effects of anthropogenic climate change are insinuating themselves increasingly into every nook and cranny of our world and our lives, the last thing we need is for the dozing subterranean giant to awaken.
Bill McGuire is professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London. Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes is published by Oxford University Press.
Hear him on the Science Weekly podcast at guardian.co.uk/scienceweekly

There Will Be Fire: The 'Carbon Bomb' 'Waiting to Be Ignited'

There Will Be Fire: The 'Carbon Bomb' 'Waiting to Be Ignited'

Scientist: With climate change fires will become more frequent, more intense and harder to stop.

- Common Dreams staff

“We are going to see more fire in (the) future, that’s the bottom line.” “A warmer world’s going to see more fire.”
This eery warning comes from Mike Flannigan, a senior research scientist with Natural Resources Canada and professor at the University of Alberta, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He says that fires will become more frequent, more intense and harder to stop.photo: John McColgan of the Alaskan Type I Incident Management Team (Bureau of Land Management, Alaska Fire Service)
Flannigan's "conservative estimate" states there would be two to three times more fire activity in the northern hemisphere by the end of the century.
“If a fire is intense, aerial suppression is no longer effective, so even modern fire management agencies, like Canada, the United States and Australia — among the best in the world — will be extremely challenged,” he said.
“I would argue that the standard way of doing fire management will no longer be effective in the future. And that doesn’t even begin to address many parts of the globe where they have traditional fire-suppression approaches, which will be completely overwhelmed."
“So the risk to life and infrastructure is only going to increase under climate change.”
Flannigan added that peat fires are also expected to dramatically raise greenhouse gas emissions, Postmedia News reports:

If more wildfires were not bad enough, Flannigan said the warming climate means peat lands, which contain vast stores of carbon, are also more likely to ignite and release greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions could in turn “feed” more warming and more fire.
A 1997 fire in Indonesia ignited peat lands that smouldered for months. By the time it was over, Flannigan said the peat fire had released greenhouse gases equal to 20 to 40 per cent of the total worldwide emissions that year from fossil fuels.
Peat fires in the boreal could have the potential to release far more greenhouse gases. “Our peat reserves in Canada, Russia and Alaska dwarf anything in Indonesia,” he said in an interview.

Inter Press Service reports that one researcher referred to the northern forest as a “carbon bomb” "waiting to be ignited:"

When the increased fire from global warming was first detected in 2006, Johann Goldammer of the Global Fire Monitoring Center at Germany’s Freiburg University called the northern forest a “carbon bomb”.
“It’s sitting there waiting to be ignited, and there is already ignition going on,” Goldammer said according to media reports in 2006.

Inter Press Service continues:

About half the world’s soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils, said Merritt Turetsky, an ecologist at Canada’s University of Guelph. This carbon has been accumulating for thousands of years, but fires can release much of this into the atmosphere rapidly, Turetsky said in a release.
Over the past 10 years, fires are burning far more boreal forest than ever before. Longer snow-free seasons, melting permafrost and rising temperatures are large-scale changes underway in the north, Turetsky and colleagues have found.
Other researchers have shown that the average size of forest fires in the boreal zone of western Canada has tripled since the 1980s. Much of Canada’s vast forest region is approaching a tipping point, warned researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Germany’s largest research organisation.
This “drastic change” in normal fire pattern has occurred with a only a small increase in temperatures relative to future temperatures, the German researchers concluded in a study published in the December 2011 issue of The American Naturalist.

Civilisation faces 'perfect storm' of ecological and social problems

Abuse of the environment has created an 'absolutely unprecedented' emergency, say Blue Planet prizewinners

Smoke billows from burned trees. A collective of scientists and development thinkers have warned that civilisation faces an 'unprecedented emergency'. Photograph: CRISTINA QUICKLER/AFP/Getty Images

Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies.
In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us".
The stark assessment of the current global outlook by the group, who include Sir Bob Watson, the government's chief scientific adviser on environmental issues, US climate scientist James Hansen, Prof José Goldemberg, Brazil's secretary of environment during the Rio Earth summit in 1992, and Stanford University Prof Paul Ehrlich, is published today on the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the UN environment programme (Unep). The paper, which was commissioned by Unep, will feed into the Rio +20 earth summit conference in June.
Apart from dire warnings about biodiversity loss and climate change, the group challenges governments to think differently about economic "progress".
"The rapidly deteriorating biophysical situation is more than bad enough, but it is barely recognised by a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever and disregarding the facts that the rich in developed and developing countries get richer and the poor are left behind.
"The perpetual growth myth ... promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world's problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices", they say.
The group warns against over-reliance on markets but instead urges politicians to listen and learn from how poor communities all over the world see the problems of energy, water, food and livelihoods as interdependent and integrated as part of a living ecosystem.
"The long-term answer is not a centralised system but a demystified and decentralised system where the management, control and ownership of the technology lie in the hands of the communities themselves and not dependent on paper-qualified professionals from outside the villages," they say.
"Community-based groups in the poorer most inaccessible rural areas around the world have demonstrated the power of grassroot action to change policy at regional and national levels... There is an urgency now to bring them into mainstream thinking, convey the belief all is not lost, and the planet can still be saved."
The answer to addressing the critical issues of poverty and climate change is not primarily technical but social, say the group. "The problems of corruption, wastage of funds, poor technology choices and absent transparency or accountability are social problems for which they are innovative solutions are emerging from the grassroots."
To transition to a more sustainable future will require simultaneously redesigning the economic system, a technological revolution, and, above all, behavioural change.
"Delay is dangerous and would be a profound mistake. The ratchet effect and technological lock-in increase the risks of dangerous climate change: delay could make stabilisation of concentrations at acceptable levels very difficult. If we act strongly and science is wrong, then we will still have new technologies, greater efficiency and more forests. If fail to act and the science is right, then humanity is in deep trouble and it will be very difficult to extricate ourselves.
The paper urges governments to:
• Replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, built, human and social capital – and how they intersect.
• Eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture that create environmental and social costs, which currently go unpaid.
• Tackle overconsumption in the rich world, and address population pressure by empowering women, improving education and making contraception accessible to all.
• Transform decision-making processes to empower marginalised groups, and integrate economic, social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.
• Conserve and value biodiversity and ecosystem services, and create markets for them that can form the basis of green economies.
• Invest in knowledge through research and training.
"The current system is broken," said Watson. "It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5C warmer than our species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self."

USGS Rain Samples - Heavy Cesium 137 Over Much Of US

Friday, February 24, 2012

USGS Paper: "Wet Deposition of Fission-Product Isotopes to North America from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Incident, March 2011"

The paper by Wetherbee, Gregory A. et al was published online on February 22, 2012 ahead of the print, on Environmental Science and Technology.

Abstract, from Environmental Science and Technology (emphasis is mine):

Using the infrastructure of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP), numerous measurements of radionuclide wet deposition over North America were made for 167 NADP sites before and after the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station incident of March 12, 2011. For the period from March 8 through April 5, 2011, wet-only precipitation samples were collected by NADP and analyzed for fission-product isotopes within whole-water and filterable solid samples by the United States Geological Survey using gamma spectrometry.

Variable amounts of ¹³¹I, ¹³⁴Cs, or ¹³⁷Cs were measured at approximately 21% of sampled NADP sites distributed widely across the contiguous United States and Alaska. Calculated 1- to 2-week individual radionuclide deposition fluxes ranged from 0.47 to 5100 Becquerels per square meter during the sampling period. Wet deposition activity was small compared to measured activity already present in U.S. soil. NADP networks responded to this complex disaster, and provided scientifically valid measurements that are comparable and complementary to other networks in North America and Europe.

The map above the abstract at Environmental Science and Technology indicates cesium-137 deposition between 0.8 to 240 becquerels/square meter. But without seeing the paper I have no idea how the numbers on the map are related to the numbers in the abstract. (My guess is that the numbers in the abstract, particularly the high number, include iodine-131.)

For more about the paper, here's USGS webpage on the NADP.

USGS press release on February 22, 2012 regarding the paper is here.

Open-File Report detailing the results and methodology is here.

Here's an interesting map at USGS page on the NADP. Green dots represent the NADP sites, and "Dot size represents relative deposition amounts. Fallout amounts measured in precipitation by USGS provide a clearer picture of fission-product wet deposition across the USA."

World Bank issues SOS for oceans

According to the World Bank, 85 per cent of ocean fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted [EPA] A coalition of governments, international organisations and other groups have joined forces with the World Bank to confront threats to the health of the planet's oceans. Launching the Global Partnership for Oceans on Friday, Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank said marine life was threatened by over-fishing, loss of habitat and environmental degradation. "Send out the S-O-S: We need to Save Our Seas," said Zoellick, speaking at the World Oceans Summit in Singapore. “The world’s oceans are in danger, and the enormity of the challenge is bigger than one country or organisation. We need co-ordinated global action to restore our oceans to health. Together we’ll build on the excellent work already being done to address the threats to oceans, identify workable solutions, and scale them up.” Australia's turtle 'mercy missions' The bank hopes to raise $1.5bn in the next five years to protect oceans. Zoellick said the partnership would bring together "countries, scientific centres, NGOs, international organisations, foundations and the private sector to pool knowledge, experience, expertise, and investment around a set of agreed upon goals". About 85 per cent of ocean fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or depleted, including most of the stocks of the top 10 species, according to Zoellick. "The facts don't lie and the statistics are we are not doing enough, we are not accomplishing enough and the oceans continue to get sick and die," he said. Zoellick proposed several 10-year targets for the partnership, including rebuilding at least half of the world's fish stocks. Marine protected areas should be more than doubled, he said, noting that less than two per cent of the oceans' surface was protected, compared to about 12 per cent of land. On the economic side alone the implications were enormous if little was done, he told the gathering. In developing countries, one billion people depend on fish and seafood for their primary source of protein and over half a billion rely on fishing as a means of livelihood, Zoellick said. For developing countries, including many island and coastal nations, fish represent the single most traded food product, and for many Pacific Island states fish make up 80 percent of total exports.

North America to be hit with decades-long megadrought

North America could be hit with decades-long 'megadrought': scientist

 

 

By Emma Graney, Postmedia NewsFebruary 24, 2012 6:46 AM

 

 

 

University of Regina paleoclimatologist Jeannine-Marie St. Jacques says that tree-ring data collected from across North America indicates the continent periodically suffers decades-long droughts.

Photograph by: samuel aranda, AFP/Getty Images

When a drought hit North America in the 1930s, creating a giant dust bowl and crippling agriculture from Saskatchewan to Oklahoma, it entered history as the Dirty Thirties.
But University of Regina paleoclimatologist Jeannine-Marie St. Jacques says that decade-long drought is nowhere near as bad as it can get.
St. Jacques and her colleagues have been studying tree ring data and, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver over the weekend, she explained the reality of droughts.
"What we're seeing in the climate records is these megadroughts, and they don't last a decade—they last 20 years, 30 years, maybe 60 years, and they'll be semi-continental in expanse," she told the Regina Leader-Post by phone from Vancouver.
"So it's like what we saw in the Dirty Thirties, but imagine the Dirty Thirties going on for 30 years. That's what scares those of us who are in the community studying this data pool."
Tree rings provide the perfect historical record for researchers like St. Jacques, because trees are so sensitive to rain fall.
"If it's a good, wet year then trees have a thick growth band, but if it's a bad year, then there's only a thin band," she said. "By taking core samples we can get a record in parts of North America going back 2,000 years.
"Everyone was aware of droughts that hit very hard in their area, but it wasn't until recently when thousands of people pooled their data . . . and we all looked around at each other and said, 'Oh my God.'"
The big concern, she said, is that there's no reason a megadrought won't hit the continent again.
"When Europeans settled North America . . . we know from tree ring records that it was a very wet period, and so people's sense of what's normal is probably not correct," St. Jacques said.
"We're certainly very scared in the community, because there's no reason why these things shouldn't come back."
Two human cultures decimated by megadroughts were the Four Corner region — the area where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet — and Cahokia, in the central Mississippi Valley.
It was one of the first and certainly one of the largest centres in the area, with more than 20,000 people at its peak in 1075.
"(Cahokia) rose, flourished, it was growing and had major cultural impacts throughout the Mississippi Valley and Midwest, but then they got caught by one of these megadroughts," St. Jacques said.
"Agriculture collapsed. You just can't go on when something like this hits."
While it would be nice to predict when a megadrought is going to occur, St. Jacques says that's just not possible.
"It's certainly a very lively area of research, everyone's very curious why they happen, but we see evidence of these droughts throughout the past 2,000 years in North America and we don't see why it's going to change," she said.
"They could get worse under global warming, for all we know. And that's just it — we don't know."
St. Jacques said her research into megadroughts has hammered home the role politics plays in being prepared.
"You can't cope with these things, or prepare for them, on an individual level," she said.
"You're either going to have to get people out or get aid in, and you need a functioning political system to do that.
"The important thing is to educate people that their sense of a 10-year drought being the worst they could experience, that's false. It could well be multi-decadal, and that's why it's important to keep political and social systems functioning and taking care of everybody."

World's Environment Ministers Pledge Success of Rio+20 Summit

NAIROBI, Kenya, February 22, 2012 (ENS) - Environment ministers from around the world ended their annual meeting today by promising to make the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, a success. The ministers and representatives from nearly 150 countries were attending the 40th anniversary United Nations Environment Programme Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum, which opened Monday at UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi.

At UNEP's 40th anniversary Governing Council meeting, from left front: Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Secretary-General, Abu Dhabi Environment Agency; Izabella Teixeira, Environment Minister Brazil; back row, UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

Expressing concern over "the continued environmental degradation" happening worldwide, the delegates described the Rio+20 conference slated for June 20-22 as "a unique opportunity to address the economic, social and environmental challenges in the context of sustainable development."
The ministers said many of the environmental challenges glimpsed 20 years ago at the landmark Rio Earth Summit in 1992 are today's reality - climate change, the loss of biodiversity and fisheries, deforestation and the decline in productive and healthy soils.
Three weeks in advance of the Rio+20 conference, on June 5, Brazil will host the UN's annual World Environment Day.
This year's theme, "Green Economy: Does it include you?" invites everyone to assess where the Green Economy fits into their daily lives and evaluate whether development towards a Green Economy can deliver the kinds of social, economic and environmental outcomes needed in a world of seven billion people.
Brazil also hosted World Environment Day in 1992, on the eve of the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
"In celebrating World Environment Day in Brazil in 2012, we are returning to the roots of contemporary sustainable development in order to forge a new path that reflects the realities but also the opportunities of a new century," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

Spain's Environment Minister Federico Ramos de Armas presides over the UNEP Governing Council (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

"We are very pleased to host this global celebration for the environment. The World Environment Day will be a great opportunity in Brazil to showcase the environmental aspects of sustainable development in the warm-up to the Rio+20 conference," said Brazil's Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira at the Governing Council meeting.
During their three-day meeting, the environment ministers focused on the twin themes of Rio+20 - a Green Economy and an institutional framework for sustainable development.
President of the UNEP Governing Council Federico Ramos de Armas, who heads Spain's Environment Ministry, said the Green Economy is widely viewed by ministers as a way to achieve sustainable development, poverty eradication and decent job creation "by increasing resource efficiency, supporting the shift to sustainable consumption and production patterns and facilitating low carbon development."
In addition to the challenges of financing, capacity and access to relevant technologies for developing countries, Ramos de Armas noted concerns by some countries that a Green Economy might lead to trade protectionism.
"Many of the activities under the Green Economy approach can provide new opportunities for women to become key players in the local economy, especially in the energy, land management and water sectors," said Ramos de Armas.
There was a high level of support among the ministers for strengthening UNEP's mandate, authority and financial resources.

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki (Photo courtesy ENB)

Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki told delegates Monday that his government supports the transformation of UNEP into a specialized UN agency for the achievement of green development. He asked them to support the "African position and endorse the transformation of UNEP into a specialized organization based here in Nairobi."
Over 100 countries, including members of the African Union and the European Union, have backed the upgrading of UNEP to a specialized agency of the United Nations as one of the Rio+20 outcomes.
Delegates supported greater involvement of major groups and stakeholders in any new institutional arrangements, including local and regional authorities, women, indigenous peoples, young people and the private sector.
Some 150 representatives from all regions and the nine major groups and stakeholders of civil society at a forum in Nairobi February 18-19 underlined the need for Rio+20 outcomes to be "actionable, measurable and implementable."
Chantal-Line Carpentier of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs saidd that out of over 686 submissions received on the "zero draft" of the Rio+20 outcome document, 493 were from major groups.
She identified priority areas as: energy access, efficiency and sustainability; food security and sustainable agriculture; green jobs and social inclusion; sustainable water management; urbanization; oceans; and improved resilience and disaster preparedness.
But time to make key changes is running out, Ramos de Armas said in his closing address to the Governing Council.
"Time is not on our side," he warned. "Rio+20 must take quick and immediate action to respond to the current environmental crisis. Delegates stressed there should be a clear decision on the institutional framework for sustainable development and international environmental governance."

Current and former UNEP Executive Directors at UNEP's 40th anniversary Governing Council meeting, from left: Achim Steiner (2006-present) ; Mostafa Tolba (1975-1992); Elizabeth Dowdeswell (1992-1998) and Klaus Töpfer (1998-2006) .

Steiner said, "The world's ministers responsible for the environment have sent a clear signal to the Rio+20 summit - namely that there needs to be an urgent focus on scaling up implementation of sustainable developments and that bold, transformative decisions need to be taken in four months' time in Brazil."
"The three take-home messages from this Governing Council, the last global gathering of the world's environment ministers, are these. The scientific understanding about what is happening to the planet as a result of past and present development paths is far clearer and far more sobering than 20 years ago. And two - there is overwhelming support for a transition to a global economy along pathways proposed in UNEP's Green Economy Report in order for it to deliver positive social and environmental outcomes across all nations."
"Thirdly, said Steiner, "incremental reforms of the current architecture and management arrangements of planet Earth is leading seven billion down an unsustainable path and a very uncertain future. It is time to implement the decisions and directions of the Rio 1992 Earth Summit so that this generation of world leaders and ministers can deliver on the promises and the vision of a previous generation."

Norway's Environment Minister Erik Solheim in Nairobi (Photo courtesy ENB)

As a tangible recognition of UNEP's mandate and achievements, the government of Norway has committed NOK 200 million (US$35 million) for the period 2012-2013.
This contribution is in addition to Norway's annual support to the core funding of UNEP and its support to key programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries, REDD.
Norway has doubled its support to the UNEP-UNDP Poverty and Environment Initiative to meet the increased demand from developing countries for advice on the integration of environmental concerns into national development policies.
Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim emphasized UNEP's role within the UN system of integrating environment and development.
"Ultimately," Solheim said, "this funding is a mark of Norway's trust in UNEP. It will strengthen the organization's science-based policy work based on the GEO-report and other flagship publications and enhance UNEP's ability to support countries efforts to develop a low-carbon, resource-efficient and socially inclusive economy."
The GEO-5 Summary for Policy Makers was negotiated and endorsed at an intergovernmental consultation in South Korea in late January. It was launched Monday at the UNEP Governing Council Special Session.

The human impact of melting glaciers: A Nepal community responds

SEE URL:


http://climaterealityproject.org/2012/02/17/the-human-impact-of-melting-glaciers-a-nepal-community-responds/

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Written by Arun B. Shrestha, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. This is the second of three blog posts tracing a journey to view the impacts of climate change in a region of Nepal. You can read the first post here.
At 12:30 we reached the town of Barahbise, where we met with a group of about 40 people.
What we heard from the local people at Barahbise: Older participants shared their memories of the 1981 glacial lake outburst flood, which destroyed homes and property. It was very interesting to learn how the local people perceive their risks. They are aware of the risk of floods but are not taking measures to reduce it. Many new houses are built right next to the river in very high-risk zones. The residents’ concern, on the other hand, is that the government is not doing anything to protect their property.
“During the monsoon season, we rarely sleep at night. We constantly fear that a flood wave will sweep us away. We feel the bridge is high and safe from flooding, and some nights we spend on the bridge chatting with each other,” said Bishnu Shrestha.
“The river was much deeper when I was young, and behind our houses there was enough buffer land,” an older resident said. “Now, after several floods, the river has widened and the river bed has risen.”
We later visited the Bhote Koshi power plant, built about 10 years ago, which is also highly vulnerable to flash floods. The company has installed an early warning system (pictured at right), but its flood sensor is located not far upstream, at the China/Nepal border. Therefore, the system, although technologically advanced, can only provide five minutes’ lead warning. Furthermore, while the system can save lives by helping people to evacuate, the power plant itself remains at risk.
Next, we stopped briefly to observe the remnants of the old Phulping Bridge, which was washed away by the flood of 1981. The new bridge is constructed at a higher level to avoid the same fate. It also has an arched construction that would permit floodwaters to flow through more safely. Many kilometers of destroyed, abandoned highway could be seen even 30 years after the flood event.
We passed through Larcha village, which was engulfed by a landslide dam outburst flood in 1996; in this case, heavy rainfall caused a landslide which dammed the flowing water, and the backed-up waters then burst out. This flood killed 54 people and washed away 22 houses. We saw how people had resettled in the same place, exposing themselves to the same risk.
At around 4 p.m. we reached the final point of our journey, the friendship bridge over the Sun Koshi River at the border between China and Nepal. Here we saw the sensors of Bhote Koshi Power’s early warning system. The glaciers creating the flood risk are all located on the other side of this border – a striking reminder of the transboundary nature of the problem.
What we’re doing next: As a result of our expedition, the media have published several high-profile articlesNepali) which should be helpful in raising the government’s interest in the risk to the mountain communities and infrastructure, and on the need to take proactive measures to manage the risk. It should also help encourage risk management measures at the local level, particularly in planning settlements. It is hoped that the media reporting will provide impetus for the preparation of national land use guidelines, whose absence is greatly felt in the country as a whole; and maybe even provide a stepping stone for developing a transboundary early warning system for glacial lake outburst floods. (including many in

To find out more about the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, click here. And for more information about the issues discussed in this blog post, ICIMOD has prepared the following fact sheets:

• Hindu Kush-Himalayan Glaciers: Frequently Asked Questions
• Managing Flash Flood Risk in the Himalayas
• Glacial Lakes and Associated Floods in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas
• The Changing Himalayas: The Impact of Climate Change on Water resources and Livelihoods in the Greater Himalayas

 

China Warns on Growing Water Shortages

Chinese officials have issued a stark warning over growing water shortages, saying the situation is worsening every day and that more than two-thirds of cities have a water shortage.

The world’s second-largest economy, is struggling to deal with the costs of the immense environmental degradation that has accompanied economic growth. Worsening water shortages and water pollution pose a growing threat to economic and social development, Hu Siyi, vice-minister of water resources, told a press conference on Thursday.

“The constraints of our available water resources become more apparent day by day,” said Mr Hu. “The situation is extremely serious in many areas. With overdevelopment, water use has already surpassed what our natural resources can bear.

“If we don’t take strong and firm measures, it will be hard to reverse the severe shortages and daily exacerbation of the water situation.”

Beijing has tried to address the issue with a series of policies that limit consumption, control pollution and increase monitoring of far-flung waterways.

The government has also invested huge amounts of money in water conservation, irrigation and management systems, and plans to spend Rmb 4 trillion ($638 billion) on the sector over the next 10 years.

Ma Jun, a well known environmental activist and water expert, says the government’s policies have been moving in the right direction, but have failed to curb growing demand.

“We have built all these dams, we are drilling increasingly deeper to tap into aquifers, many cities are building water diversion projects – in some ways we are reaching our limits in terms of water supply,” said Mr Ma.

A potent heavy metal spill in the southern river of Longjiang recently highlighted the challenges the government faces, as it tries to address water pollution issues. The cadmium spill, which was initially covered up by local officials, contaminated more than 200 miles of the river and became a big news event in China.

Two-thirds of China’s cities are short of water, nearly 300 million country dwellers lack access to safe drinking water, and two-thirds of China’s lakes have chemical deficiencies caused by pollution, according to government estimates.

Environmentalists say many water policies have had a limited impact, because of the difficulty in enforcing rules on the ground, where local officials may prize GDP growth – long a consideration for official promotion – over meeting environmental guidelines.

In an unusual gesture for a Chinese official, Mr Hu acknowledged some of these failings on Thursday. “If our original weak water resource management policies and methods are continued, the pressing demands for water that is needed to improve people’s livelihoods and economic development will be difficult to meet,” he said.

Copyright 2011 The Financial Times Limited

URL: http://www.cnbc.com//id/46421015/

Global Climate Change Threatens Tropical Birds: Global Warming, Extreme Weather Aggravate Habitat Loss

Global Climate Change Threatens Tropical Birds:  Global Warming, Extreme Weather Aggravate Habitat Loss, Review Finds

 

Rainbow-billed toucans like the one shown here normally are confined to lower elevations in Costa Rica, but global warming is allowing them to colonize mountain forests, where they compete with resident birds for food and nesting holes, and prey on their eggs and nestlings. (Credit: Cagan Sekercioglu, University of Utah)

 

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2012) — Climate change spells trouble for many tropical birds -- especially those living in mountains, coastal forests and relatively small areas -- and the damage will be compounded by other threats like habitat loss, disease and competition among species.

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That is among the conclusions of a review of nearly 200 scientific studies relevant to the topic. The review was scheduled for online publication this week in the journal Biological Conservation by Çağan Şekercioğlu (pronounced Cha-awn Shay-care-gee-oh-loo), an assistant professor of biology at the University of Utah.
There are roughly 10,000 bird species worldwide. About 87 percent spend at least some time in the tropics, but if migratory birds are excluded, about 6,100 bird species live only in the tropics, Şekercioğlu says.
He points out that already, "12.5 percent of the world's 10,000 bird species are threatened with extinction" -- listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (www.redlist.org).
Şekercioğlu's research indicates about 100 to 2,500 land bird species may go extinct due to climate change, depending on the severity of global warming and habitat loss due to development, and on the ability of birds to find new homes as rising temperatures push them poleward or to higher elevations. The most likely number of land bird extinctions, without additional conservation efforts, is 600 to 900 by the year 2100, Şekercioğlu says.
"Birds are perfect canaries in the coal mine -- it's hard to avoid that metaphor -- for showing the effects of global change on the world's ecosystems and the people who depend on those ecosystems," he adds.
Şekercioğlu reviewed the scientific literature relevant to climate change and tropical birds with Richard Primack, a biologist at Boston University, and Janice Wormworth, a freelance science writer and ecological consultant in Australia.
Wormworth and Şekercioğlu coauthored the 2011 book, "Winged Sentinels: Birds and Climate Change." The new article is an updated condensation of that book and another 2011 book Şekercioğlu coauthored, "Conservation of Tropical Birds."
The review was funded by the Christensen Fund -- which finances community-based conservation projects -- the University of Utah and National Science Foundation.
Putting the Heat on Tropical Birds
Scientists expect climate change to bring not only continued warming, but larger and-or more frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves, fires, cold spells and "once-in-a-century" storms and hurricanes. Birds may withstand an increase in temperature, yet extreme weather may wreck habitats or make foraging impossible.
"The balance of evidence points to increases in the numbers of intense tropical hurricanes (though hurricane frequency could decrease overall)," Şekercioğlu and colleagues write. "This would predominantly affect tropical bird communities, especially species living in coastal and island habitats."
Şekercioğlu says it is difficult to predict how habitat loss, emerging diseases, invasive species, hunting and pollution will combine with climate change to threaten tropical birds, although "in some cases habitat loss [from agriculture and development] can increase bird extinctions caused by climate change by nearly 50 percent."
In addition, "compared to temperate species that often experience a wide range of temperature on a yearly basis, tropical species, especially those limited to tropical forests with stable climates, are less likely to keep up with rapid climate change."
The researchers say studies indicate:
-- Climate change already has caused some low-elevation birds to shift their ranges, either poleward or to higher elevations, causing problems for other species. Global warming helped rainbow-billed toucans move from Costa Rican lowlands to higher-elevation cloud forests, where they now compete for tree-cavity nest space with the resplendent quetzal. The toucans also eat quetzal eggs and nestlings.
-- Birds with slower metabolisms often live in cooler tropical environments with relatively little temperature variation. They can withstand a narrower range of temperature and are more vulnerable to climate change.
-- Climate change may spread malaria-bearing mosquitoes to higher elevations in places like Hawaii, where the malaria parasite can threaten previously unexposed birds.
-- Longer and less regular dry seasons and droughts expected during global warming may reduce populations of tropical birds that often time their breeding with wet seasons when food is abundant.
Şekercioğlu acknowledges that "not all effects of climate change are negative, and changes in temperature and precipitation regimes will benefit some species. … Nevertheless, climate change will not benefit many species."
Scenarios for Extinction
A 2008 study by Şekercioğlu and late climatologist Stephen Schneider calculated 60 scenarios of how tropical land bird extinction rates will be affected by various possible combinations of three variables: climate change, habitat loss and how easily birds can shift their range, meaning move to new habitat. Citing those estimates, the new review paper says that "depending on the amount of habitat loss, each degree of surface warming can lead to approximately 100 to 500 additional bird extinctions."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius (2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming of Earth's surface by the year 2100, which Şekercioğlu's study converted into a best case of about 100 land bird extinctions and a worst case of 2,500.
He says the most likely case now is considered to be 3.5 C (6.3 F) warming by 2100, resulting in about 600 to 900 land bird species going extinct. These estimates are conservative because they exclude water birds, which are 14 percent of all bird species.
Because they don't travel far, "sedentary" birds "are five times more likely to go extinct in the 21st century than are long-distance migratory birds," says Şekercioğlu.
The review found:
--Tropical mountain birds are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Warmer temperatures at lower elevations force them to higher elevations where there is less or no habitat, so some highland species may go extinct.
-- Climate change and accompanying sea-level rise pose problems for birds in tropical coastal and island ecosystems, "which are disappearing at a rapid rate," Şekercioğlu and colleagues write. Many such ecosystems already have been invaded by non-native species and exploited by humans.
-- Birds in extensive lowland forests with few mountains -- areas such as the Amazon and Congo basins -- may have trouble relocating far or high enough to survive.
-- Tropical birds in open habitats such as savanna, grasslands, scrub and desert face shifting and shrinkage of their habitats.
-- Rising sea levels will threaten aquatic birds such as waders, ducks and geese, yet they often are hemmed in by cities and farms with no place to go for new habitat.
-- Tropical birds in arid zones are assumed to be resilient to hot, dry conditions, yet climate change may test their resilience by drying out oases on which they depend.
More Research and Conservation Needed
To better understand and reduce the impact of climate change on tropical birds, Şekercioğlu urges more research, identification and monitoring of species at greatest risk, restoration of degraded lands, relocation of certain species, and new and expanded protected areas and corridors based on anticipated changes in a species' range.
"Nevertheless," Şekercioğlu and colleagues write, "such efforts will be temporary fixes if we fail to achieve important societal change to reduce consumption, to control the emissions of greenhouse gases and to stop climate change."
"Otherwise," they add, "we face the prospect of an out-of-control climate that will not only lead to enormous human suffering, but will also trigger the extinction of countless organisms, among which tropical birds will be but a fraction of the total."

Rise of the Machines: Mobile Devices to Outnumber Humans by 2016

Cisco says man will soon be outnumbered by his digital creations

For fans of the Terminator science fiction franchise or Ray Kurzweil's less-menacing, but equally outlandish theory of a coming "singularity" convergence of mankind and machines into a single super-being, you'll be sure to enjoy the latest juicy tidbit from Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO).

I. Rise of the Machines

Cisco unveiled a new study on Tuesday, which predicted that between 2011 and 2016 mobile device usage will grow at a compounding 78 percent annual rate, meaning that within four years mobile devices will outnumber the humanoids.

The United Nations predicts that the world population will hit 7.3 billion in 2016.  Cisco predicts boldly that the mobile device population will be 10 billion by then.  It also predicts that the devices will be sucking down an average of 10.8 exabytes of data per month (enough data to fill 33 billion DVDs or fill 813 quadrillion text messages).

The Organic Elite Surrenders To Monsanto:

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack. In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa.

The Fate of Antarctica

This is a guest post by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Recently, I left the comfort of my office at the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, to join Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project expedition to Antarctica. As the head of the UN agency which supports the global climate change negotiations, I mostly get to see meeting rooms and people in smart suits. This mission would take me to one of the roughest corners of the planet, so you can imagine my excitement and trepidation.
I packed extra layers, the warmest, fluffiest clothes in my closet, and availed myself of polar boots. But when you go to the extremes of the world, there really is nothing that prepares you for what you’re about to experience. After several days of travel on board the National Geographic Explorer, we sailed into Antarctic water and I approached one of thousands of enormous icebergs in a small zodiac craft. I was captivated by the haunting beauty of the ice, sculptured to perfection by the forces of nature. But the massive size of the icebergs with their graceful, translucent, aquamarine-blue pillars belie their vulnerability and that of the entire Antarctic ice cover.
Antarctica is not only the highest, coldest, driest and windiest continent on the planet. It is also a global bellwether of climate change, and a big influencer of the world’s climate. As we passed this iceberg, I was reminded that rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the world’s atmosphere have already led to a temperature rise of almost three degrees Celsius over the past 50 years in this part of the world. This is why the land ice is diminishing so fast, and huge chunks of ice are slipping into the sea. We have started what scientist Henry Pollack calls a “huge inadvertent experiment with the Earth’s climate.”
Animals are of course affected by this, too. I saw colonies of penguins that appeared to be thriving in the warmer climate. But I also saw other penguin species, whales and seals that are losing the possibility to feed sufficiently in what used to be nutrient-rich waters. The dwindling ice cover in some areas means less krill, and less krill means a serious weakening of the bottom of the food web in Antarctica, affecting all animals up the food chain.
The effects of warming global temperatures are not only local, and not only on animals and plants. On board the ship chartered by The Climate Reality Project were a number of people from the worlds of science, business and policy. Among the people I talked to was Hassan Mahmud, Minister of the Environment of Bangladesh. Although halfway around the world from Antarctica, his low-lying country is directly affected by the loss of ice in the Antarctic. As ice melts, sea levels rise
puts 18 million of his people at risk. The fate of people in his region goes close to my heart. I went to visit Pakistan after the flood to examine the extent of the damage, back in 2010. How quickly it has already been replaced in news photos by successive major weather disasters.
Minister Mahmud and the representatives of 193 other countries attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Durban at the end of last year. The countries meeting there agreed on a common vision that will shape the way climate change is dealt with internationally over the years to come. They agreed to keep the existing legal system under which industrialized countries promise to reduce emissions, the Kyoto Protocol. And they agreed on a pathway towards a new global system, covering the emissions of all countries. This global system is to be adopted by 2015 and to enter into force by 2020. The open question is: Will governments, supported by business and civil society, move quickly enough to protect the most vulnerable from the worst effects of climate change? And in the meantime, will our efforts to make them more climate-resilient reach those who need the support most? Can we anticipate adaptation, rather than just react?

© 2009 Flickr/UNclimatechange CC BY-NC 2.0

At the UN Climate Conference in Durban, governments reached groundbreaking agreements. But were they enough to ensure that Antarctic ice will stop melting and that the people of Bangladesh are now safe? No — the fact is that no single agreement or set of agreements can provide a definitive answer to the challenge of climate change. Whilst the world does now have a clear vision and a pathway forward, the sheer magnitude of what we are dealing with means that all of civil society and every single government must do their utmost to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Businesses can play a central role, and the public sector can team up with companies to get action going on the ground. Notably in developing countries, there are many good examples of what is possible. Heading back from Antarctica, it struck me how the world is rapidly transforming. The ice of Antarctica is in constant – and accelerating – movement. Action to combat climate change also needs to urgently increase in scale, scope and speed. I left the Climate Reality Project boat haunted by the moral challenge that was put before us: “Before you make a decision that affects the world’s climate, imagine the eyes of seven generations of children in the future looking at you, and asking … Why?”

131 Years of Global Warming in 26 Seconds

see url:


http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/131-years-of-global-warming-in-26-seconds/







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The Corporate Climate Denial Machine

Feb 15, 2012-

Documents Reveal Plans, Funders and Goals of 'Climate Denial' Machine

- Common Dreams staff

The DeSmogBlog, which has long covered the impacts global warming and fossil fuel industry-backed misinformation campaigns, on Tuesday released internal documents from the Heartland Institute -- "the heart of the climate denial machine" -- that discuss "its current plans, many of its funders, and details" confirming years of suspicion and reporting on their goals and machinations.
The Koch-funded Heartland Institute is the 'heart' of the climate denial machine. "The heart of the climate denial machine," writes Brendan Demelle at DeSmog,"Relies on huge corporate and foundation funding from U.S. businesses including Microsoft, Koch Industries, Altria (parent company of Philip Morris) RJR Tobacco and more."
The documents include:

• Confirmation that Charles G. Koch Foundation is again funding Heartland Institute’s global warming disinformation campaign. Greenpeace’s Koch reports show the last time Heartland received Koch funding was in 1999. 

The January 2012 Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy states:

“We will also pursue additional support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. They returned as a Heartland donor in 2011 with a contribution of $200,000. We expect to push up their level of support in 2012 and gain access to their network of philanthropists, if our focus continues to align with their interests. Other contributions will be pursued for this work, especially from corporations whose interests are threatened by climate policies.”

• Heartland Institute’s global warming denial machine is chiefly – and perhaps entirely – funded by one Anonymous donor:

Our climate work is attractive to funders, especially our key Anonymous Donor (whose contribution dropped from $1,664,150 in 2010 to $979,000 in 2011 - about 20% of our total 2011 revenue). He has promised an increase in 2012…”

• Confirmation of exact amounts flowing to certain key climate contrarians. 

“funding for high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist AGW message. At the moment, this funding goes primarily to Craig Idso ($11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($5,000 per month, plus expenses), Robert Carter ($1,667 per month), and a number of other individuals, but we will consider expanding it, if funding can be found.”

And:

Forbes and other business press are favored outlets for Heartland’s dissemination of climate denial messages, and the group is worried about maintaining that exclusive space. They note in particular the work of Dr. Peter Gleick:

“Efforts at places such as Forbes are especially important now that they have begun to allow high-profile climate scientists (such as Gleick) to post warmist science essays that counter our own. This influential audience has usually been reliably anti-climate and it is important to keep opposing voices out.” (emphasis added)

Note the irony here that Heartland Institute – one of the major mouthpieces behind the debunked ‘Climategate’ email theft who harped about the suppression of denier voices in peer-reviewed literature – now defending its turf in the unscientific business magazine realm.

And Suzanne Goldenberg, writing for The Guardian:The billionaire Charles Koch, a key financier of the Heartland Institute, which works to undermine the established science on climate change. (Photograph: Koch Industries)

It was not possible to immediately verify the authenticity of the documents. "There is nothing I can tell you," Jim Lakely, Heartland's communications director, said in a telephone interview. "We are investigating what we have seen on the internet and we will have more to say in the morning." Lakely made no attempt to deny the veracity of information contained in the documents.
The Heartland Institute, founded in 1984, has built a reputation over the years for providing a forum for climate change sceptics. But it is especially known for hosting a series of lavish conferences of climate science doubters at expensive hotels at New York's Time Square as well as in Washington DC.
If authentic the documents provide an intriguing glimpse at the fundraising and political priorities of one of the most powerful and vocal groups working to discredit the established science on climate change and so block any chance of policies to reduce global warming pollution.
"It's a rare glimpse behind the wall of a key climate denial organisation," Kert Davies, director of research for Greenpeace, said in a telephone interview. "It's more than just a gotcha to have these documents. It shows there is a co-ordinated effort to have an alternative reality on the climate science in order to have an impact on the policy."
The Valentine's Day exposé of Heartland is reminscent to a certain extent of the hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in 2009. Those documents helped sink the UN's climate summit later that year.
In this instance, however, the Heartland documents are policy statements – not private email correspondence. Desmogblog said they came from an insider at Heartland and were not the result of a hack.