Wacky Weater is Deadly Global Heating

Sometimes someone comes along and puts something so succinctly that there's not mure more to add and no better way to say it. Those are my exact feelings concerning this article by Dr. Glen Barry, published on Climateark.org:

Thursday 11 January 2007

As of 2007, the Earth System has already undergone profound global change, of which global heating is the most immediately evident profound impact. It is getting hot, and it is happening fast. Many leading scientists tell us we have 10 years at most given current trends before climate change becomes irreversible and dangerous, beyond the generally accepted rise of 2 degrees Celsius considered adaptable (we are about 1/3 the way there).

Yet the chortling television weather people tell us the unprecedented wave of global mild weather - really a lack of winter in many parts - is not climate change. We are encouraged to take advantage of our good fortune and get out there and play golf. At what point will abrupt climate change and deterioration of the Earth System's life giving biosphere be recognized as a global ecological emergency, and responded to as such? And will it then be too late to limit damages, or even to survive?

Global warming is not a slow, gentle, pleasant rise in temperatures to be savored. It is an abrupt fundamental breakdown in the Earth System's climate sub-system that threatens the Earth's, humanity's and your family's ability to live. It is not enough to blame the weather on El Ninño, which itself can be and is exacerbated by climate change. As climate change continues, unabated by systematic policy responses, and "wacky weather" becomes more prevalent, we can expect immediately budding trees to die from later frosts, agriculture to struggle to define growing seasons, pest insects to multiply, and ecosystems to deteriorate and die.

The ability of individuals, communities and nations to deny the obvious is amazing. People do not like hearing that their consumptive, wasteful lifestyle is destroying God's creation. For most, our addiction to lethargic comfort is so great, our ignorance of ecology and our total dependence upon a healthy biosphere so complete - and our psychological inability to grasp that humanity has overrun the biosphere, becoming the dominant force in nature so absolute - that we do nothing, as the greatest avertable disaster to ever face civilizations looms, increasingly recognized but not nearly sufficiently addressed.

Humanity is deeply within the Anthropocene Era, whereby our presence is the greatest force shaping the biosphere. We are witnessing the jarring collapse of the Earth's most recent climate equilibrium, and depending upon how much climate forcing occurs from continued emissions, there are no guarantees what the next climate will look like or if it will even be regularized within a decent time period. And the longer-term results will be calamitous - extreme weather including super storms, floods and droughts, massive crop failures, vegetation die-back over whole regions, a proliferation of tropical diseases, rising seas destroying cities, a massive refugee crisis, and a general breakdown of anything resembling dependable climatic patterns.

Don't believe me? Walk outside right now - see or feel anything different? Are the trees blooming in the middle of winter as they are in Washington, DC, and New York? Is there a lack of snow as in Minnesota and Europe, while other areas like Colorado get dumped upon? Are the rains failing as with Australia's "Big Dry?" So much of the global ecological system's processes and patterns that provide the life-giving context for human civilization have been lost and changed, and it continues to intensify. Essentially, no natural processes are assured as a very different Planet emerges: climate patterns, water supplies, ocean fisheries, soil fertility, terrestrial ecosystem energy and nutrient cycling are all in doubt.

Many rightly do what they can individually, but are discouraged by the fact that many necessary changes like widespread public transportation, caps on emissions, and universal adoption of a low-carbon energy economy require societal changes beyond an individual's immediate grasp. Goddamn it, snap out of it! I want to shake every climate denier and ambivalent Earth slayer, slapping them in the face to awake them from their slumberous death march. We are witnessing a human-caused disintegration of ancient climatic cycles, with anthropogenic emissions forcing the global climate beyond what has always been a high level of variability.

We must get past the ingrained illusion that humanity has not become a planetary ecological force. And that the changes we are witnessing in a single lifetime are good. As the ecologically ignorant chortle, pleased to be outside in winter in short sleeves, perhaps they should consider how global heating will impact their water, food and shelter requirements for life - to say nothing of the economy and their prospects for employment.

How deeply and sadly we are in denial regarding the consequences of the abrupt climate changes we are witnessing. The life-giving biosphere is in tatters and near collapse because of you and me and everyone. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of deforesting 80 percent of the world's natural ecosystems while working on the rest, breeding and increasing in numbers recklessly, using fossil fuel energy wastefully, and believing our lifestyles and consumption are independent of the Earth.

Massively reducing emissions must become this next greatest-generation's central call to duty. Dramatically and rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions must become the central organizing principle of governments, business and individuals. Contracting rich nations' carbon emissions, while allowing materially poor nations to converge with the rich's level of emissions, is the only way forward that is both equitable and likely to be successful. We need contests, and publicity for best practices, and technology sharing, and a rejection of coal, and emission caps, and global carbon trading, population control, huge renewable energy subsidies and so much more.

Only massive public and political pressure - now - can save the Earth and all her species. The recent vote in the US was a repudiation of oil industry governance. Now it is up to Democrats to stop pandering on gas prices and propose a progressive, workable carbon tax; ratify Kyoto and meaningfully rejoin international climate talks; launch an "Apollo project" supporting renewable energy; and generally, for the US to get on the ball and rejoin the league of civilized nations that are working on climate solutions.

I exhort all who read this to break the denial that the current "wacky weather" is natural; it is more, much more; the start of a systematic collapse of being as we know it. And I ask that you help other non-ecologically attuned people grasp what their way of life is doing to creation - risking ridicule as an acolyte of ecological truth. Take responsibility personally, and become involved in the great climate change/ecological sustainability movements that are set to rock this world - bringing forth the necessary societal changes. Time is short, but solutions exist. Save the climate, save the Earth, save yourself and your posterity. Get active, organize, agitate, protest and above all else reduce your carbon!

Thirsty Australia in grip of worst drought on record

Down Under, lake beds are dry and just flushing a toilet can feel vaguely scandalous, the Tribune's Laurie Goering reports:

By Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent recently on assignment in Australia
Published January 16, 2007

WOY WOY, Australia -- The name of this little seacoast town means "much water" in the language of its former aboriginal residents. But water--at least fresh water--is in short supply these days in Woy Woy, a resort village an hour and a half north of Sydney.

With a nearly countrywide drought now in its fifth year, reservoirs along Australia's central eastern coast are down to 14 percent of capacity, and restrictions on water use are getting tough.

Summer vacationers have arrived to find beachside showers turned off, and the lawns of rental houses are crispy brown because of a ban on watering . Local authorities have handed out four-minute shower timers and low-flow shower heads to every household, and most people now shower with an array of buckets underfoot to catch the precious "gray" water, the only thing that can be used to wet gardens or wash cars.

Just flushing a toilet these days feels vaguely scandalous.

"WATER RESTRICTIONS APPLY," warns a full-page ad in the local newspaper, urging visitors to brush their teeth with the water off and wipe rather than rinse the sand off their feet and their surfboards after visits to the beach.

Australia has long been the driest continent, and droughts are anything but unusual. But the one under way is the worst in the country's short 114-year history of record-keeping and, some authorities believe, the worst in a thousand years.

In parts of rural Australia, emaciated cattle and sheep have been turned out to forage on what's left of dried-up crops. As supplies of irrigation water dry up and legions of farmers haul their animals off to the slaughterhouse, prices for mutton have fallen by 50 percent and harvests of key crops like wheat, barley and canola are expected to fall 60 percent this year, according to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Debt-strapped farmers are committing suicide at the rate of four a day in the nation, according to Beyond Blue, an Australian organization that deals with depression issues.

In parched Melbourne, where the once verdant hills are now a consistent baked yellow, officials started this month issuing on-the-spot fines of up to $335 to flagrant car washers, swimming-pool fillers or anyone else showing "obvious disregard" for water restrictions. The worst offenders see their water pressure temporarily cut from 10 gallons a minute down to a trickling half-gallon a minute.

The past resurfaces

In South Australia province, the ground is so dry that the soil is contracting and sucking moisture out of homes enough to crack nearly half of those surveyed by an architectural service. And across southern Australia, drying lakes and ponds are slowly revealing a wealth of long submerged relics, from houses once drowned by man-made dams to rusty guns tossed away by fleeing criminals. Police are dutifully collecting the weapons and taking a new look at old crime files.

Water levels in Lake Corangamite, in southeast Australia, have dropped so much that authorities were astonished last year to spot a missing World War II plane in the lake bed.

Whether Australia's big dry is a result of climate change is a matter of debate. Barrie Hunt, a researcher with the government's science agency, insists that over the past 10,000 years, Australia has seen at least eight long droughts like this one. And El Nino, a cyclical change of Pacific currents now going on near South America, regularly brings Australia dry spells.

But the scale of the current drought has pushed Australians to begin making plans for what many believe is a permanently drier future. In Sydney, the government is offering rebates of up to $700 to homeowners who install rainwater-catching tanks and plans to build a $1 billion desalination plant to turn seawater into drinking water if dam levels continue to drop. In perpetually parched southeast Queensland, voters will decide in March whether to begin allowing their purified sewage to be added back into the drinking water supply.

Even the politicians in Canberra, Australia's capital, are feeling the pressure. For the first time, the heated pool at Parliament was shut for a month over the holidays and lawmakers are slowly agreeing to cut off sprinklers that have kept Capitol lawns lush while the rest of Canberra bakes.

1 green spot left

The only green spot may soon be the foreign embassy lawns. Afraid of provoking what the government water spokesman calls a "diplomatic incident," the foreigners, so far, haven't been asked to roll up their hoses.

White Substance Covering Ground

I watched the nine o'clock news last night (remember those old days when you only got news twice a day on TV?). One of the segments was a reporter and cameraman roaming the streets of our capital Oslo, reporting on a thin layer of some white substance that was covering the ground. It turned out to be what we used to call snow. "Hurry out if you want to see it", the reporter said.

It didn't last long. A few hours, and it was gone again. Only the joke remains.

This is Norway. We're supposed to be covered in white from South to North, East to West at this time of year. But all we get is rain, rain, rain without end. The low pressure systems are queued up from here to Newfoundland, as they have been all fall and winter so far.

The statistics from the meterological office tells us that in December, all weather stations throughout our country reported temperatures above or well above the normal. Lindesnes got a new record for the monthly middle temperature, 8.2 C. That is 5.3 above normal. It is also a new record for Norway, the former being 7.0 C and set in 1924.

More importantly, 2006 is the warmest year on record for Norway, 1.8 C above normal. However, as predicted by global climate models, the Northern parts are warming much faster. The new record for the island of Svalbard is nothing short of spectacular: At -1.7 C, the mean temperature is a whopping 5 C above normal. The previous record was -3 C, set as recently as 2005.

These are only dry numbers, of course. But what we are seeing now is that a relatively small difference makes a huge difference - for instance in the white substance that should have been covering the ground, but isn't.

The Polar Bear

The US government is considering putting the polar bear on the list of endangered animals. While that is a fine measure, the really interesting thing is the reason behind it, which is loss of habitat due to global warming.

Up until now, the Bush administration has offered only denial and stonewalling whenever global warming has been adressed. Thus, any admission that there is in fact a problem is a step forward. Moreover, the case of the polar bear is of special interest because its habitat encompasses large areas that are promising, but yet largely unexplored by the oil industry. Listing the polar bear as endangered would rule out such exploration inside its habitats.

If this does indeed happen - the process is said to take approximately year of "careful consideration" - it would be an interesting step forward for the world's largest polluter. While it would be much too late to redeem the Bush administration on its miserable track record on environmental issues, it would be a welcome sign none the less that maybe the reality of global warming is even starting to sink in with US conservatives.

Arctic Meltdown. Here. Now.

I remember hearing in the early 90s that in a couple of hundred years, the North pole could be ice-free during the summer. It didn't worry me a bit.

A few years later, it could happen in a century. Not much difference, I thought. I'll still be dead, and I'm not planning any trips up there anyways. (I didn't have any children back then, you see. Kind of changes...everything.)

Then it seems that just after I heard mention of 50 years, we're down to a measly 34. Right-o, all the ice gone in 34 short summers. I'm counting on still hanging around long enough to see all those polar bears drowned, all those seals with no place to breed. That whole huge Northern refrigerator gone, and in its place open, dark, heat-absorbing water. You don't need to be a climate scientist to understand that this will have some major consequences, and that few of them will be good. If you need a tipping point illustrated, all of the arctic ice gone should do the trick nicely.

Al Gore, speaking at a climate conference with 15.000 scientists earlier this month and urging them to speak out more publicly, said: "If we allow it to go, it won't come back on any time scale relevant to the human species."

What, me worry? Oh yes. Very much so.

The Future Revisited

It just does not stop.

In a way remarkably like the movie "Groundhog Day", every day is just the same. It rains, it pours, it drizzles. What it does not do, is stop. I cannot remember the last day it did not rain. It must have been weeks and weeks ago.

This is not a tropic zone in the middle of the rainy season. It's the West coast of Norway. Normally, we should have seen some snow by now, even down here by the sea. There should have been clear, frosty nights, stars peering down from a clear, black sky. But the gulf stream waters coming up from the Caribbean are reported to be 2-3 degrees Celsius above normal this year, and this apparently has some rather comprehensive implications for our local climate. Mostly, it means an unusually warm autumn and winter - approximately 6 C above the normal daily average so far in December - and a rate of precipitation way above the norm.

Tonight is even worse than what we've seen lately. A huge low has drifted in from Iceland and is causing stormy weather (also literally) along a large portion of the Norwegian coast. Rainfall over the next 24 hours is forecast to exceed 100 mm in places. That is enough, even here, to cause local flooding, earthslides and traffic accidents.

This too shall pass. It will dry up eventually. What gives me pause for thought is that these are exactly the kind of conditions that are forecast for our part of the world in the near future, 20/50/100 years from now. Sure, the summers will get warmer and just a little wetter, but the winters will get warmer still and a lot wetter. And let me tell you: That is a very, very depressing thought.

Still, we are the lucky ones. The forecast changes are comparatively minor here to many other areas, which are or will soon become prone to flooding, drought (or both, which is not uncommon), heatwaves, hurricanes, etc. Plus, we are even in position to consider moving pretty much anywhere, given the necessary amount of commitment, motivation and planning.

Yet, where would we go? We are facing a global problem (or challenge, if you prefer), and it is abundantly clear that no place on our little blue dot in space is immune.

Skiing Season Postponed

Being a Norwegian, I'm born with skis on my feet. That may be a slight exaggeration, but like most of my countrymen and -women, I started skiing at a very early age. And though I've never won a medal and am certainly never going to, I do know my way downhill - as well as the more exotic art of cross country skiing.

Problem is, there's no snow. Not here in the Stavanger area, but being on the west coast, warmed by the gulf current coming up from the Caribbean, that is only slightly unusual. However, there's no snow up the mountains either, where there most definitely should be by now. Nor in the eastern part of the country, where all the ski lifts are standing idle long past the start of season. Even up in the northern part of the country, where foreigners visitors often expect to see the polar bears roam the streets (a common misconception!), the ground is still bare. That is pretty much unheard of.

Then again, there's no snow in the alps either. Looking up our favourite ski resort of St. Anton, high in the Austrian alps, the story is the same. The season has been postponed. Currently until Dec 8, but with temperatures forecast between 10 and 6 C beyond that date, I'm gessing that will not hold either. [Dec 11 update: It did not. The opening is now postponed indefinitely, with the zero degree C altitude necessary for snow expected to move beyond 3200 meters by midweek. St. Anton is at 1300 meters and the highest point in the area, Valluga, at 2811.)

There are vast sums invested in modern ski resorts, and they no longer have to rely on precipitation for snow: They can make their own. But not at these temperatures. So every day the warm weather keeps on, the tourist industry in St. Anton and countless other places will suffer a substantial financial loss. A side effect: Ski events and competitions (very popular with us Europeans and the regular soccer replacement on TV during the winter) are cancelled and/or moved to other locations - pretty much anywhere with a snow cover, however minimal.

The snow will arrive eventually, of course. The ski resorts will recoup some of their losses. But the long awaited start of this season has been a dire warning of things to come.