September 2005 Archives

Every week brings a new climate change impact symptom revealing of a global emergency. How much longer must the global ecosystem that is the giver of all life be mauled? When will you take responsibility? When will governments and industries committing atrocious acts of omission and ecological vandalism be deposed?

Fears over climate as Arctic ice melts at record level

Global warming in the Arctic could be soaring out of control, scientists warned yesterday as new figures revealed that melting of sea ice in the region has accelerated to record levels.

No less than the New York Times editorialized today upon the highly likely and significant link between global warming and strengthened hurricanes. The main point is that the preponderance of evidence that climate change is causing more extreme weather events, and other demonstrable impacts of global warming, makes acting now a matter of prudence and sound judgment. Around the nation there is a groundswell of questioning President Bush's leadership and judgment. If Bushism is discredited, his oil oligarchy run out of town in the next election, and climate change addressed, some good may yet come from Hurricane Katrina.

"Hurricanes derive their strength from warm ocean waters. Ocean temperatures have been rising over the last 100 years, along with atmospheric temperatures. Hurricanes have therefore become bigger and more destructive and are likely to grow even more violent in the future."

Here is a fantastic must read article entitle "Energy policy should be Bush’s top priority" by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, where he calls upon the President to undertake energy independence as the hallmark issue for the rest of his time in office. He argues this would save the administration while addressing a whole range of problems ranging from national security to climate change to economic opportunity. This is an important opinion piece that clearly identifies the most pressing issue of our time as well as the solution. Here are excerpts:

"If Bush wants to make anything of his second term, he’ll have to do his own Nixon-to-China turnaround, reframe the debate and recast the priorities of his presidency... And what should be the centerpiece of a policy of American renewal is blindingly obvious: making a quest for energy independence the moon shot of our generation... The president should have done that on the morning of Sept. 12, 2001. The country was ready. But the president whiffed. Katrina — nature’s Sept. 11 — has given him a rare do-over. Imagine — I know it is a stretch — that the president announced tomorrow that he wanted an immediate 50-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax — the “American Renewal Tax,” to be used to rebuild New Orleans, pay down the deficit, fund tax breaks for Americans to convert their cars to hybrid technology or biofuels, fund a Manhattan Project to develop alternatives for energy independence, and subsidize mass-transit systems for our major cities."

A new "Science" journal article by a group of meteorologists reports a striking 80% increase worldwide in the abundance of the most powerful hurricanes during the past 35 years (also known as cyclones and monsoons). Because the results were similar across the globe, the scientists discounted natural variability as the cause. Entitled "Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment", the scientific study is the second in six weeks to connect climate change's warming of oceans and intensified hurricanes. Global warming and hurricanes are naturally linked by the storms’ feeding upon ocean heat. Tropical storms draw their energy upward from warm ocean water to drive their winds.

The Carbon Disclosure Project, supported by a coalition of institutional investors with more than $21,000bn in assets, wrote to the world’s largest companies asking for information on their output of greenhouse gases. More than 70 percent of the FTSE 500 companies responded by disclosing the amount of carbon dioxide they produce, answering whether they considered climate change a commercial risk or an opportunity, and outlining the risks faced by their company as a result of climate change. It was found that most of the world's biggest companies are failing to cut their carbon emissions even though the long-term cost of complying with tougher rules to tackle global warming could have a devastating impact on their profitability. There can be no stabilizing of climate change without industry leadership, which unfortunately was found to be dreadfully lacking.

From Down Under of all places comes a government report with some of the most sensible policy suggestions ever on how to move forward as a society towards environmental sustainability. The Australian government is reknowned for regressive environmental policy. This is what made the report's calls for automobile taxes, credits for green homes, and monitoring of energy and water all the more pleasantly surprising. Australia is a beautiful country full of wonderful people, that unfortunately are fatally flawed by their gluttonous consumption. Perhaps they can change and become great, by leading in rallying all the human family to live with the Earth.

Why is it that other nations see the link between climate change being a cause of coastal destruction of the type which devastated New Orleans and not the United States? In the most recent case, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has criticised the United States' record on combating global warming in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Warming oceans, rising sea level and sinking coastlines from the pumping of petroleum are all indicative of fossil fuels intensifying hurricanes.

The best explanation of the science behind the conclusion that global warming may have increased the intensity of Hurricane Katrina, and certainly will in the future, can be found on Real Climate - a blog by leading climate researchers. More fundamentally, the scale of the human endeavour is simply overwhelming the ability of natural ecosystems to continue functioning and providing our every need.

Indeed, the New York Times asks what about the next storm - echoing many observations made recently here. One would wonder how many ecologically augmented natural disasters it will take for the United States to realize their way of living is deadly, and by that time it may well be too late. Americans have proven themselves unwilling to think critically of their lifestyles if it means even minimal reductions in their material consumption. By and large Americans are a greedy, selfish bunch - so far detached from nature that they do not recognize it when it bites them on their ample butts.

Indications are that there are a number of positive feedback loops which are increasing the pace of global warming - this piece is about the release of carbon from warming soils. Another recent study highlights climate change's impacts upon the ability of oceans to sequester carbon. As for soils, as warming occurs extra carbon dioxide is being released naturally from the ground as a result of climate change. This is turn causes further global warming. This vicious circle is one indication that the human family is approaching the climate change tipping point, beyond which relatively stable, functional and predictable climate patterns (such as seasons and rainfall patterns) may not be possible.

Climate change is so damn serious (along with over-population and natural ecosystem loss), yet is relegated to the back pages behind some starlet's latest gaffe. What a screwed up world. What misplaced priorities. In the next decade the human family's fate is being cemented, and with the oil industry neanderthals in power, chances of achieving global ecological sustainability are becoming ever more slim.

The mainstream media is finally picking up on the ecological elements of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy. Here is a very well done Time Magazine article that highlights many of the issues I raised - including global warming and lost wetlands contribution to this and future "natural disasters". Clearly there are large parts of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans that should not be rebuilt, but rather should be restored to natural ecosystems.

In an era of increasingly pricey gasoline, car-sharing may be an idea whose time has arrived. In the post-oil world, it is not going to be reasonable that every individual family has several cars. Instead we will share, having access to transport when we need it.

The chickens are coming home to roost on President Bush's imprudent war. There are inadequate troops - particularly in depleted National Guards - to respond to this emergency. And both 911 and now Hurricane Katrina were directly caused and/or exacerbated by America's unquenchable thirst for oil. Let there be no doubt that humankind must share the blame for the New Orleans disaster - through our carbon emissions, coastal habitat destruction and wetland loss.

The movement to demand action on climate change is particularly well advanced in the UK. Their eighteen groups have launched a coalition with millions of members under the banner of "Stop Climate Chaos". The coalition is calling upon the Blair government to slash UK's greenhouse gas emissions. The campaign was launched by a large protest on London's South Bank. This campaign is an inspiration to the rest of the world to organize and take to the streets to stop climate chaos.