Desdemona Despair

SAN FRANCISCO, California, November 19, 2009 (ENS) - National Park Service officials in California are about to decide how to kill non-native trout to save critically endangered native yellow-legged frogs. How to eradicate the trout has generated a controversy among environmental groups.

The nonprofit organization Save The Frogs, based in Virginia, is urging the National Park Service to quickly remove the introduced trout from the naturally fishless lakes of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

The high mountain lakes in these parks, located in west central California, are some of the last remaining strongholds of the yellow-legged frogs.

These were once the most abundant frogs in California, but they have since disappeared from over 90 percent of their former ponds, due to the introduction of non-native trout, which eat the tadpoles, says Dr. Kerry Kriger, an ecologist who serves as executive director of Save The Frogs.

"The Park Service is currently accepting public comments on whether to remove the trout, so this is an excellent opportunity for average citizens to step up and help protect a critically endangered species," says Kriger.

Save The Frogs is calling on all citizens to send letters to the National Park Service by November 21 urging the agency to remove the trout from Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park. The group has created a website at www.savethefrogs.com/trout where viewers can quickly send their comments to the superintendent. …

Trout May Be Killed to Save California Yellow-Legged Frogs

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - There are signs Asian carp may have breached barriers designed to keep the prolific fish out of the Great Lakes, which could spell ecological disaster for the vital source of fresh water, authorities said on Friday.

Concentrations of DNA discovered by Notre Dame University researchers may indicate the presence of bighead and silver carp upstream from two electrical barriers designed to bottle up the invasive fish.

Environmentalists say that if the fish reach the Great Lakes, about 20 miles from the barriers, they would quickly destroy the lakes' $4.5 billion fishery by consuming other fish and their food sources. Only Lake Superior among the five lakes may be too cold for the carp, which can reproduce rapidly and reach 100 pounds (45 kg).

The Great Lakes are the world's largest body of surface fresh water and are relied on by 30 million people in the United States and Canada for drinking water and recreation.

"This is devastating news," Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation said of the discovery of carp DNA in the Cal-Sag channel 8 miles from Lake Michigan.

"We have to hope that there aren't enough population of fish to reproduce and create an epidemic of Asian carp in the lakes," he said. …

Feared Asian carp may be near U.S. Great Lakes

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 31 million people currently unemployed – that’s including those involuntarily working part-time and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting. The above interactive map serves as a vivid representation of just how much. Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 – approximately one year before the start of the recession – to the most recent unemployment data available today.

The Decline: The Geography of a Recession

"Future firefighters have their work cut out for them.," says Janet Larsen, Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "Inferno on Earth: Wildfires Spreading as Temperatures Rise".

Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009 a persistent drought, high winds, and record high temperatures set the stage for the worst wildfire in the country's history."

On 9 February 2009, now known as "Black Saturday," the mercury in Melbourne topped 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46.4 degrees Celsius) as fires burned over 1 million acres in the state of Victoria—destroying more than 2,000 homes and killing more than 170 people, tens of thousands of cattle and sheep, and 1 million native animals.

Even as more people move into fire-prone wildlands around the world, the intense droughts and higher temperatures that come with global warming are likely to make fires more frequent and severe in many areas. (See table of regional observations and predictions) For southeastern Australia, home to much of the country's population, climate change could triple the number of extreme fire risk days by 2050. …

Inferno on Earth: Wildfires Spreading as Temperatures Rise

By Staff Writers
Barcelona, Spain (AFP) Nov 5, 2009

A "conspiracy of silence" is stifling debate over the future of people who become displaced through climate change, a top UN official for refugees says.

In an interview with AFP at the UN climate talks in Barcelona, Jean-Francois Durieux, in charge of climate change at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the question "remains taboo."

Under 1951 UN statutes, the term "refugee" applies specifically to a victim of violence or persecution, who is then entitled to help and asylum in other countries.

But no such status exists for people who are forced from their home by drought, flood, storms and rising sea levels unleashed by man-made global warming.

"There's a conspiracy of silence at the moment," Durieux said.

"The countries of origin (of displaced people) and host countries are not eager, and are even hostile, about opening up the question," he said.

"The reason is because there is no reliable way of estimating how many people could be affected."

The Stern Review, a 2006 assessment on the economics of climate change authored by British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, quoted estimates of as many as 150-200 million "permanently displaced" environmental refugees by mid-century.

An estimate put forward by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) suggests 200 to 250 million by the same date. …

'Conspiracy of silence' over climate migrants: UN official

By Staff Writers
Jarfjord, Norway (AFP) Nov 13, 2009

On Norway's border with Russia, the consequences of climate change are affecting the reindeer population as rising temperatures hit food stocks and industry growth eats into vital grazing land.

"Over the past three years, I've had to give some hay to my 800 reindeer during the coldest months. It's more expensive and it gives me more work," said Jan Egil Trasti, a reindeer herder from the native Sami people.

The reason: the lichen his animals graze on has become tougher to find as winter temperatures rise. The snow thaws, and along with rain, then freezes anew -- covering the ground in layers impervious to all but the most tenacious reindeer.

Grazing land is also disappearing under the weight of industry as buildings, pipelines, roads and other infrastructure increasingly dot old pastures. …

Jonathan Colman, specialist in "reindeer ecology" at the University of Oslo, explained that sometimes "there's wet ice in the lichen."

"It gets into their stomachs and they can't digest the food." …

Global warming a growing threat to Arctic reindeer

By CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON / KALOTUM Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009

When one enters the northern Kenyan village of Kalotum, the overwhelming impression is one of things missing. There are a dozen conical thatched huts and a clutch of spindly thorn trees. But there are no crops, animals or water. A quick look around reveals no men, either. "They all left," says villager Mary Atabo. She says just three of her family's 100 goats have survived a decade-long drought. With no animals to look after, the men have migrated to cities to look for work or sell what remaining possessions they have. "The weather comes and goes now," Atabo says. "We are left with nothing."

If the world's leaders need more inspiration before heading to the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, they need look no further than East Africa. Here climate change is no longer a future threat — it is displacing and killing people today. In 2006, the United Nations said it expected Africa to be the continent most affected by climate change, not because it produces a large amount of greenhouse gases — quite the opposite — but because, as the world's poorest and most badly governed continent, it is the least equipped to cope with change. Around 90 million Africans were "at risk," it said, and that's not counting those impacted by wars and tribal conflicts, many of which are linked to extreme weather phenomena such as droughts and floods.

The U.N.'s predictions are already coming true. This year, around 23 million people in seven East African countries are being fed by aid agencies after a decade of poor rains have decimated crops. One of the worst-affected areas is the Turkana region in northern Kenya where Kalotum is located. In some communities here, up to 35% of the population is suffering from malnutrition, more than double the World Food Program's crisis threshold of 15%. …

The locals have already noticed this happening. "The grass used to come up to my chest. There were wet and dry seasons. Now the weather has turned extreme and unpredictable," says Peter Aceh, 27, a tourist guide in the Turkana capital of Lodwar. Aid agencies warn that tens of thousands of people in Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya could end up displaced by the floods of the last few weeks. There have also been outbreaks of cholera in several countries.

Worse may be still to come. Eris Lothike, who works for the Oxfam relief agency in northern Kenya, says that if the rains swept away seedlings with the top soil and overstretched aid groups can't feed everybody, outright famine "is a looming possibility." …

Floods and Droughts: How Climate Change is Impacting Africa via Apocadocs

TARUNA JAYA, Indonesia - Across a patch of pineapples shrouded in smoke, Idris Hadrianyani battled a menace that has left his family sleepless and sick -- and has wrought as much damage on the planet as has exhaust from all the cars and trucks in the United States. Against the advancing flames, he waved a hose with a handmade nozzle confected from a plastic soda bottle.

The lopsided struggle is part of a battle against one of the biggest, and most overlooked, causes of global climate change: a vast and often smoldering layer of coal-black peat that has made Indonesia the world's third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States.

Unlike the noxious gases pumped into the atmosphere by gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles in the United States and smoke-belching factories in China, danger here in the heart of Borneo rises from the ground itself.

Peat, formed over thousands of years from decomposed trees, grass and scrub, contains gigantic quantities of carbon dioxide, which used to stay locked in the ground. It is now drying and disintegrating, as once-soggy swamps are shorn of trees and drained by canals, and when it burns, carbon dioxide gushes into the atmosphere. …

Less than a quarter of a century ago, 75 percent of Kalimantan -- which comprises three Indonesian regions on the island of Borneo -- was covered in thick forests. Gnawed away since by loggers, oil palm plantations and grandiose state projects, the forests have since shrunk by about half. Each year, Indonesia loses forest area roughly the size of Connecticut. …

The deforestation of Kalimantan began with loggers. Then, in 1995, Indonesia's authoritarian ruler, Suharto, launched a plan to turn nearly 2.5 million acres of peatland -- about twice the size of Delaware -- into a rice farm. Thousands of workers were shipped in to dig canals and drain swamps. …

On warming, peat is the ‘elephant in the room’ via The Oil Drum

The net relative sea level trend in mm/year after subtracting the effects of the vertical movement of the platform and the inverse barometric pressure effect utilising all the data collected since the start of the project up to the end of June 2009.

Australia National Tidal Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, The Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project Annual Sea Level Data Summary Report, July 2008 – June 2009 [pdf]

By DEBORAH SMITH SCIENCE EDITOR
November 20, 2009

FIVE major fires are burning in NSW as the state swelters in a heatwave that has seen decades-old records fall.

The state has experienced both its hottest November day and hottest November night since observations began.

The mercury soared to 46.4 degrees at Tibooburra in the north-west of the state on Wednesday, breaking the previous November maximum of 46.1 degrees, set in Coonamble in 1944.

The Bureau of Meteorology's Julie Evans said the state's hottest overnight minimum record was also broken at White Cliffs on Wednesday night. The 33.3 degree temperature was more than a degree above the previous record of 31.7 degrees in Cobar, also set in 1944.

Broken Hill, which is in one of the five state regions issued with a catastrophic fire danger rating, has had 11 consecutive days exceeding 35 degrees, whereas previously its longest run was only days.

The heatwave will continue today as a high pressure system in the Tasman Seas continues to bring hot north to north-westerly winds from the centre of the continent into the state. …

Feel the heat: temperature records fall and fires burn

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com, November 18, 2009

Fish doesn't just feed humans. Millions of tons of fish are fed every year to chickens, pigs, and even farmed fish even in the midst of rising concerns over fish stocks collapses around the world. Finding an alternative to fish as livestock feed would go a long way toward preventing the collapse of fish populations worldwide according to a new paper in Oryx.

"Thirty million tons – or 36 per cent – of the world's total fisheries catch each year is currently ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs," world-renowned fishery researcher and co-author, Daniel Pauly, told the University of British Colombia (UBC).

The majority is fed to farmed fish: in 2002 it was estimated that 46 percent of the fishmeal and oil was used to feed aquaculture. Poultry and pigs each received over 20 percent of the fishmeal and oil. The fishmeal and oil fed to livestock is usually taken from fish low on the food chain, described as 'forage fish', such as anchovies. The practice is not only impacting fish populations, but local food security.

"Twenty-five per cent of infants in Peru—which produces half of the world's fishmeal using anchovies—are malnourished," says Pauly. …

Using fish as livestock feed threatens global fisheries

Physicians for Social Responsibility has released a groundbreaking medical report, “Coal’s Assault on Human Health,” which takes a new look at the devastating impacts of coal on the human body. Coal combustion releases mercury, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and dozens of other substances known to be hazardous to human health. This report looks at the cumulative harm inflicted by those pollutants on three major body organ systems: the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, and the nervous system. The report also considers coal’s contribution to global warming, and the health implications of global warming.

Executive Summary: Coal pollutants affect all major body organ systems and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal lifecycle—mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of postcombustion wastes—impacts human health. Coal combustion in articular contributes to diseases affecting large portions of the U.S. population, including asthma, lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke, compounding the major public health challenges of our time. It interferes with lung development, increases the risk of heart attacks, and compromises intellectual capacity.

Oxidative stress and inflammation are indicated as possible mechanisms in the exacerbation and development of many of the diseases under review. In addition, the report addresses another, less widely recognized health threat from coal: the contribution of coal combustion to global warming, and the current and predicted health effects of global warming. …

Coal's Assault on Human Health [pdf]

By Fiona Walker

Thailand's coast is best known to many Scots for its beaches and backpackers.

But just round the corner from the sunbathers is a world where the rising sea level has taken their homes.

Not just once - some families have had to move 11 times to escape the encroaching water and the increasingly ferocious storms. Now they've run out of space and the original village is under the sea.

A guide to what lies beneath the surface is a line of telegraph poles marching out to sea - they mark the route of the road now a few metres under water.

This is what climate change can look like according to the researchers trying to work out what can be done to prevent further erosion and rising water.

They've already lost 1km of land and scientists say the monsoon waves are now two to three times higher. It's too late to save the village here so they want other countries - including Scotland - to learn from their experience. …

When the sea started to threaten the Buddhist temple, the monks refused to move so they have built a walkway so villagers can come for prayer.

The monks chant each morning as the water laps at the door then they get to work repairing the temple from the last storm's destruction.

"The temple is no longer on the official map," said Abbot Somnuek Athipomyo. …

Thailand's rising tide of problems

By Fiona Walker

When you talk to people in South Uist about climate change, many already know what may be in store for them.

They really live the weather, noting down its changes and understanding its impact upon their lives.

Where Seumas MacDonald grew up he says people used to plough land that's now under water.

He said: "We probably lost about 20 to 30 yards along the coast. I was born and brought up here and I'd like to see it remaining. I'm really worried about it because this is all that's holding back the Atlantic."

In 2005 a storm took the lives of five members of the same family. The tragedy is one of the first things local people mention when you bring up climate change.

He said: "I was up to my knees in water at the boat-shed, the trees were whipping about like a field of barley with the most incredible screeching sound from the trees. We've never seen anything like it and we don't want to see it again."

But wetter winters are on their way and scientists say the sea level is rising.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has calculated the projected sea level rise around South Uist for BBC Scotland. It reports that by 2080 it's likely to have risen by 37cm. However, it could be as much 61cm.

Dr Dave Reay, from Edinburgh University, says that is a conservative estimate. …

Island braced for winds of change

Chemicals in plastics alter the brains of baby boys making them "more feminine" and uninterested in rough games, say researchers.

Males exposed to high doses in the womb went on to be less likely to play with boys' toys like cars or to join in rough and tumble games, they found.

The University of Rochester team's latest work adds to concerns about the safety of phthalates, found in vinyl flooring and PVC shower curtains.

The findings are reported in the International Journal of Andrology.

Phthalates have the ability to disrupt hormones, and have been banned in toys in the EU for some years. …

Dr Shanna Swan and her team tested urine samples from mothers over midway through pregnancy for traces of phthalates.

The women, who gave birth to 74 boys and 71 girls, were followed up when their children were aged four to seven and asked about the toys the youngsters played with and the games they enjoyed.

They found that two phthalates DEHP and DBP can affect play behaviour.

Boys exposed to high levels of these in the womb were less likely than other boys to play with cars, trains and guns or engage in "rougher" games like playfighting. …

Plastic chemicals 'feminise boys'

November 19, 2009 - 11:00AM (AAP) -- South Australia faces a second day of catastrophic bushfire danger today.

Temperatures are expected to soar into the 40s across the state, with Adelaide also forecast to have a top of 43 degrees.

With low humidity, strong winds and the possibility of dry thunderstorms, the conditions prompted authorities to declare catastrophic conditions - the highest fire danger rating - for the west coast and eastern Eyre Peninsula.

In such conditions, the Country Fire Service (CFS) said, any fire was highly likely to be fast moving and uncontrollable, with residents' safest option being to leave their properties early.

The declaration follows catastrophic conditions in the north-west and Flinders Ranges yesterday, with 11 schools closed in an exercise that education officials hailed a success. …

"Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day in the west and northern parts of the state," CFS chief officer Euan Ferguson told reporters.

"These catastrophic conditions are horrible conditions. The wind is extremely strong and we would only need the smallest spark to develop into a conflagration very quickly. We remain gravely concerned in those areas where we have severe, extreme and catastrophic fire danger forecast. The forecast of lightning adds to that concern." …

SA braces for another catastrophic bushfire day

Tourism, tea and energy industries threatened after a quarter of huge Mau forest destroyed in 20 years

By Xan Rice in Nairobi, www.guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 November 2009 22.48 GMT

Several thousand people who had settled illegally in Kenya's most important forest have left their homes at the beginning of an eviction plan designed to end rampant environmental degradation in the Rift valley.

Security officers this week entered the Mau forest, the country's largest water catchment basin, in the first stage of a government operation that will eventually see up to 30,000 families leave. More than a quarter of the 400,000-hectare forest has been lost because of human activity over the past 20 years, threatening Kenya's crucial tourism, tea and energy sectors and the livelihoods of millions of people reliant on the Mau ecosystem.

"We have no time to waste here," said Christian Lambrechts, a United Nations environment programme expert seconded to the government's Mau Secretariat. "The ecological services must be restored."

The dozen or so rivers that originate in the montane forest complex feed the Masai Mara Reserve and Lake Victoria, as well as the lush tea fields of Kericho. But in recent years the river flows have decreased or stopped during the dry season. At Lake Nakuru, Kenya's most visited national park, wildlife officials were forced to pump in water to supply the animals this summer when all the feeder rivers dried up.

A serious drought that has led to water and power shortages across the country was a contributing factor. But human destruction of the once-thick Mau Forest, which has caused its aquifer levels to fall significantly and seen soil erosion increase, played a major part. …

Amid warnings that the entire ecosystem in the Rift valley and western Kenya was in danger due to the rapid deforestation, Kenya's government has made saving the Mau its number one environmental priority. A task force formed by the prime minister, Raila Odinga, last year recommended that all settlers in the forest be removed and that cleared areas be rehabilitated through mass tree planting. Only genuine titleholders – many of the titles in circulation are fictitious – are to be considered for compensation. …

Kenya evicts thousands of forest squatters in attempt to save Rift valley

By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009; 3:14 PM

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

Taken together, the findings provide the latest glimpse into the toll that the weak economy has taken on the well-being of the nation's residents. The findings are from a snapshot of food in America that the U.S. Agriculture Department has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents both Americans who are scrounging for adequate food -- people living with some amount of "food insecurity" in the lexicon of experts -- and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry.

"These numbers are a wake-up call . . . for us to get very serious about food security and hunger, about nutrition and food safety in this country," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a briefing of reporters. ...

Vilsack attributed the marked worsening in Americans' access to food primarily to the rise in unemployment, which now exceeds 10 percent, and in people who are underemployed. "It's no secret. Poverty, unemployment, these are all factors," he said. Vilsack acknowledged that "there could be additional increases" in the 2009 figures, due out a year from now, although he said it is not yet clear how much the problem might be eased by the measures the administration and Congress have taken this year to stimulate the economy.

The report's main author at USDA, Mark Nord, noted that other recent research by the agency has found that most families in which food is scarce contain at least one adult with a full-time job, suggesting that the problem lies at least partly in wages, not just an absence of work. …

 Report: More Americans going hungry

Sea levels could rise by up to six metres if the world fails to get pollution under control according to the latest study in the Antarctic.  

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 1:56PM GMT 18 Nov 2009

The British Antarctic Survey found that during past periods of high carbon dioxide, temperatures in Antarctica were up to 6C above current levels. This could cause a sea level rise of up six metres, threatening coastal cities like London, New York and San Francisco. …

Louise Sime, lead of the British Antarctic Survey study, looked at ice cores to see how temperatures changed during periods of high carbon dioxide

She found that during the last period of high CO2, 125,000 years ago, temperatures were up to 6C higher than present day levels.

Such a hike in temperature could lead to a rise in sea levels of between 4 to 6 metres over hundreds of years as the ice sheets melt.

"We didn't expect to see such warm temperatures, and we don't yet know in detail what caused them. But they indicate that Antarctica's climate may have undergone rapid shifts during past periods of high CO2." …

Rising CO2 will cause catastrophic sea level rise finds Antarctic study

By Myles Burke
Published: 7:27AM GMT 11 Nov 2009

During 2009 California wildfires have burned more than 336,020 acres of land since the beginning of July, destroying hundreds of buildings and causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

The Station Fire, north of Los Angeles, was the largest and deadliest of these wildfires this year, having laid waste to 160,577 acres, since it began in late August.

Two firefighters battling the fire were killed after their vehicle was overrun by flames. The fire itself was only was declared contained weeks ago.

Sporadic fires are normal throughout the state during the summer caused by a combination of high temperatures and low humidity which dries the plants making them ripe for wildfires.

However three years of drought amplified these effects. Thom Porter, staff chief at Cal Fire believes climate change is in a large part responsible for the increase in fires. “As a firefighter I’m a student of the weather and I’ve noticed that there is a change that has occurred over the last several years.

“These patterns are not what I’ve grown up with. They are also not what I’ve seen in the historical record. We are starting to see more monsoonal style weather which is causing more dry lightning which ignite fires” …

Californian firefighter warns of increase wildfires due to climate change via Climate Progress

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2009) — A shocking decline in the Russian Federation's wild tiger population highlights the importance of eliminating trade in and demand for tiger parts, the International Tiger Coalition (ITC) recently said. The alliance of 40 organizations worldwide issued the statement upon news that Siberian tigers may have suffered a serious drop in numbers over the past four years.

New census figures indicate that tiger populations in the Russian Far East, which in 2005 numbered nearly 500, have declined significantly due to poaching of tigers for their skins, bones and meat as well as poaching of tiger prey and habitat degradation. The seriousness of the news was underscored the day before, when a young male tiger was found dead in the region with two bullets in its head.

"Russia's tigers have been a stand-out success story," said Judy Mills, the ITC's moderator. "This apparent sudden, marked decline should act as a reminder of why regional efforts must be strengthened in response to increasingly sophisticated criminal networks." …

Without urgent action, the ITC warns, there may not be wild tigers when the Year of the Tiger comes around again in 12 years.

Decline in Russian tigers renews calls to end all trade in tiger parts

By JOHN McFARLAND,  Associated Press Writer

FORT WORTH, Texas — With the Texas population expected to nearly double over the next 50 years, lawmakers and water experts gathered Monday to convey an important message: We're running out of water.

There is no shortage of alarming statistics to make that point. Texas' population of about 24.3 million is expected to hit about 45.5 million by 2060, and the water supply can't come close to keeping pace.

If the state were to experience major drought conditions with that many more people, officials estimate almost every Texan would be without sufficient water and there would be more than $90 billion in economic losses.

"We're going to have 18 percent less water than we do now if we don't do anything," said state Sen. Kip Averitt, chairman of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources. "Now what happens in a severe drought? Eighty-five percent of our citizens don't have enough water to maintain a healthy lifestyle." …

People did get a recent reminder of how significant water is in the two years of severe drought that parched south-central Texas starting in September 2007.

The drought cost about $3.6 billion in agriculture losses, prompted hundreds of water districts across the state to restrict water usage and dried up lakes and streams. People were comparing it to the drought of record in Texas in the 1950s. …

Texas officials: We're running out of water

Fast-rising carbon emissions mean that worst-case predictions for climate change are coming true

By Steve Connor and Michael McCarthy, Wednesday, 18 November 2009

The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. Such a rise – which would be much higher nearer the poles – would have cataclysmic and irreversible consequences for the Earth, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable and threatening the basis of human civilisation.

We are headed for it, the scientists said, because the carbon dioxide emissions from industry, transport and deforestation which are responsible for warming the atmosphere have increased dramatically since 2002, in a way which no one anticipated, and are now running at treble the annual rate of the 1990s.

This means that the most extreme scenario envisaged in the last report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 2007, is now the one for which society is set, according to the 31 researchers from seven countries involved in the Global Carbon Project.

Although the 6C rise and its potential disastrous effects have been speculated upon before, this is the first time that scientists have said that society is now on a path to meet it. …

The 6C rise now being anticipated is in stark contrast to the 2C rise at which all international climate policy, including that of Britain and the EU, hopes to stabilise the warming – two degrees being seen as the threshold of climate change which is dangerous for society and the natural world.

The study by Professor Le Quéré and her team, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, envisages a far higher figure. "We're at the top end of the IPCC scenario," she said. …

World on course for catastrophic 6° rise, reveal scientists

November 17, 2009 (NTVKenya) - Hundreds of squatters have continued to stream into makeshift camps claiming they have no alternative shelter. Earlier in the day a rift emerged between rift valley politicians over whom to blame for the current confusion.

Hundreds of Mau squatters stream out of forest

By Dmitry Orlov and Keith Farnish

Are you still talking about Cyclone Nargis? Have you ever heard of Cyclone Nargis? Here’s a reminder: on 1 May 2008 a weakening low-pressure system suddenly picked up energy as it approached Burma from the Bay of Bengal. By the second day of this rapid strengthening, Cyclone Nargis was blowing in excess of 135MPH and made landfall on the low-lying southern coast of Burma armed with vast reserves of cyclonic energy, a storm surge beneath, and constant heavy rain from above. The Irrawaddy Delta was devastated, causing at least 140,000 human deaths. Most of us have forgotten about it.

One reason you may have heard of Cyclone Nargis at the time, is that for a short while it was the cause of a major diplomatic incident, with the Burmese Junta refusing to accept aid and assistance from the West, while continuing with a meaningless referendum. Another reason you may have heard of Cyclone Nargis is because you live near to Burma; and there’s the rub – proximity is the single most important factor in deciding whether a story is newsworthy in the mainstream media, and until Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005, devastating coastal flooding was just something that happened to “other people” as far as the vast majority of Americans were concerned. …

The oceans are coming, part 2

Temperature in the equatorial Pacific Ocean (above). El Niño is characterized by warm temperatures (red), and La Niña is characterized by are cooler temperatures (blue) in the Eastern Pacific. Anomalies (below) are the variation above or below average values.

NOAA's El Niño Page

9 February 2009: The worst fires in the country's history have killed more than 130 people and destroyed towns in the state of Victoria.

Australia hit by deadly bushfires

…I attended a Pan-African climate hearing in Cape Town last month where I heard stories from all over Africa about how climate change is already affecting and threatening lives. The stories I heard there were first hand accounts from people who are struggling to survive because climate change is making life so much harder for them. …

A pastoralist in northern Kenya, Omar Hussein, travelled from Wajir to share his story. He owns 20 cows. He used to have 200 cows, camels and goats. But in 2007 there was a huge storm and most of his animals drowned. Since then, there has been a crippling drought. “Imagine this – no money, no food for the animals, no food for your children,” explained Omar.

Caroline Malema, a Malawian farmer and mother of six, told the Pan-African climate change and poverty hearings of the flooding in her region in March 2007. “In the night we just heard a big noise coming from the river and people were crying, ‘Water, water!’ In the morning when we went to the river we saw that everything had been swept away and the cattle had been killed,” she said.

The villagers tried to replant but drought destroyed their harvest and, with no options for income or sustenance, many women resorted to prostitution. Now, says Malema, HIV infection is rife in the region and there are many AIDS orphans.

These are not one-off experiences but they represent what communities all over Africa are facing. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu attended the Pan- African Climate Hearing event in Cape Town and called for the world to help these people, and his words are still echoing in my head: “World leaders must not turn their backs on the people from across Africa and around the world who are struggling to cope with a changing climate. They must deliver the emissions reductions and the financial support that is needed now to prevent a human catastrophe.” …

Victims of climate change tell the world how it’s destroying their lives via The Oil Drum

Cambridge, UK, 10 November 2009—The illicit trade in ivory, which has been increasing in volume since 2004, moved sharply upward in 2009, according to the latest analysis of seizure data in the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS).

ETIS, one of the two monitoring systems for elephants under CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) but managed by TRAFFIC, comprises the world’s largest collection of elephant product seizure records.

The analysis, undertaken in advance of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP15) to CITES, was based upon 14,364 elephant product seizure records from 85 countries or territories since 1989, nearly 2,000 more records than the previous analysis, in 2007.

The remarkable surge in 2009 reflects a series of large-scale ivory seizure events that suggest an increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end-use markets. The ETIS data indicate that such syndicates have become stronger and more active over the last decade.

There continues to be a highly significant correlation between large-scale domestic ivory markets in Asia and Africa and poor law enforcement, suggesting that illicit ivory trade flows typically follow a path to destinations where law enforcement is weak and markets function with little regulatory impediment. …

Illegal ivory trade rising

A severe drought believed to have been caused by the El Niño phenomenon has threatened water supplies in Bolivia, and has depleted the water level in Lake Titicaca.

Lake Titicaca is very close to reaching its lowest level ever recorded since 2003.

[Felix Trujillo, Employee, National Meteorology and Hydrology Service]: "…The lowest level in history was in 1943 and today we are 43 centimeters (17 inches) from that level."

Farmers in the affected areas are struggling to save their crops and feed their livestock as they wait for long overdue rain.

[Benita Nacho, Farmer]: "Lake Titicaca is drying up and we don't have water. The reeds which the animals feed on are dry…We suffer a lot here and there isn't any water, everything is dry. We don't even have water in our homes. We didn't drink water for two days. At two in the morning, they finally gave us a bit of water and I was able to store some. This is how we live here."

[Ronald Cory, Farmer]: "Three months ago the water was up to the reeds. When we started to plant, the water was next to the crops. In the last three or four months the water level has dropped way too much." …

Lake Titicaca drying up because of warming

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com, November 15, 2009

The International Commissions for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) ignored the advice of its scientists to end fishing of the Atlantic bluefin tuna. Instead ICAAT set a quota of 13,500 tons of fish, which is only a ten percent reduction from last year's quota of 15,000 tons. This is not the first time ICCAT has flouted its own researchers' advice: it has repeatedly set quotas well-above its researchers' recommendations.

Estimating that the Atlantic bluefin tuna's biomass is less than 15 percent of its original stock before industrial fishing, ICCAT scientists recommended in late October that the organization ban all fishing of the species, which is classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.

"Since its inception, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas has been driven by short-term commercial fishing interests, not the conservation ethic implied by its name," said Susan Lieberman, Director of International Policy for the Pew Environment Group. "Only a zero catch limit could have maximized the chances that Atlantic bluefin tuna could recover to the point where the fishery could exist in the future."

It's not just the quota for legal fishing that is threatening the bluefin tuna. Quotas are often exceeded and illegal fishing for bluefin tuna takes another huge chunk out of the species' population every year. In the past actual catch rates have been estimated to be double the quotas set.

"When you adjust the new catch limit to account for over-fishing and rampant illegal fishing by some countries and add in ICCAT’s poor enforcement and compliance record, the prospects for the recovery of the once-abundant Atlantic bluefin tuna are dismal," added Lieberman.  …

ICCAT fails to protect critically endangered tuna—again

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Man-made ponds and rice fields irrigated using groundwater may be responsible for arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh, a study has found.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring chemical poisonous to humans and is known to cause skin lesions and cancers of the bladder, kidney, lung and skin.

While it is known that organic carbon triggers the release of arsenic from sediments into groundwater, the source of this carbon has been unclear.

In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, researchers said they used chemical tests and models to examine the flow of groundwater in a typical agricultural area in Bangladesh and found that man-made ponds were a key source of organic carbon.

"The chemical signature of high-arsenic groundwater points toward ponds as the source of the contaminated water," wrote the scientists, led by Charles Harvey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

They warned against the building of artificial ponds above existing tube wells. …

Hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh suffer from skin lesions and experts have warned for years that Bangladesh can expect more cases of cancer if its people continue drinking arsenic-contaminated water from millions of small tube wells spread across the countryside. …

According to the World Health Organization, arsenic contaminated water directly affects the health of 35 million people in Bangladesh, which has a total population of 130 million. …

Man-made ponds linked to arsenic in Bangladesh water

The bushfires that swept through Victoria In February 2009 killed almost 200 people as record temperatures turned the bush into a tinderbox. The events, described as Australia's worst peacetime disaster, have left thousands homeless, destroyed entire communities and transformed forests into ash.

After the bushfires: Australia counts the cost

Distribution of 2003–2008 mass changes across the ice sheet. The period (2003–2008) was chosen to coincide with the GRACE and IceSAT epochs. Numbers indicate basin-integrated mass loss rates due to SMB and D (in Gt year^–1). Numbers in the lower right corner represent the values for the whole ice sheet, indicating the dominant surface contribution to GrIS mass loss during 2003–2008. Colors represent the rate of surface mass change.

To mimic the spatial distribution of GrIS mass loss during the GRACE and ICESat (Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite) operational period, we performed a linear regression on 2003–2008 cumulative anomalies of D and SMB components, integrated over five major drainage basins (north, northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest; fig. S2). The contributions from D and SMB to the basin-integrated mass change are given as numbers in Fig. 3, whereas the contributions from individual SMB components are listed in table S1. …

Michiel van den Broeke, et al., Partitioning Recent Greenland Mass Loss, Science 13 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5955, pp. 984 – 986, DOI: 10.1126/science.1178176

By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer

KOKONOGI, Japan – A blood-orange blob the size of a small refrigerator emerged from the dark waters, its venomous tentacles trapped in a fishing net. Within minutes, hundreds more were being hauled up, a pulsating mass crowding out the catch of mackerel and sea bass.

The fishermen leaned into the nets, grunting and grumbling as they tossed the translucent jellyfish back into the bay, giants weighing up to 200 kilograms (450 pounds), marine invaders that are putting the men's livelihoods at risk.

The venom of the Nomura, the world's largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day's catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan's Wakasa Bay.

"Some fishermen have just stopped fishing," said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. "When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed."

This year's jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.

Scientists believe climate change — the warming of oceans — has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes. …

Jellyfish swarm northward in warming world

November 15, 2009 (AAP) - A total fire ban has been declared for much of NSW as the state prepares itself for temperatures of up to 40C on Monday.

Temperatures of 39C have been forecast for western Sydney, while Broken Hill in the state's far west will endure a blistering 41C day. …

The ban has been declared the same day that NSW Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan unveiled the first of the state's new bushfire warning signs at Bangor in southern Sydney.

The 470 signs, which include a new national danger rating levels of "severe", "extreme" and "catastrophic", will be set up across NSW over the next few weeks.

"They clearly and simply alert people living in or travelling through bushfire-prone areas to the level of danger," Mr Whan told reporters.

"If people know the level of danger they are potentially facing, they can take appropriate action to 'Prepare. Act. Survive' including deciding whether they will stay to defend their property or leave early. …

Total fire ban declared for much of state

Cumulative SMB-D anomaly (2003–2008) and comparison with GRACE data (18). Short horizontal lines indicate GRACE uncertainty, dashed lines the linear trends. GRACE values are not absolute numbers, and the curve has been vertically shifted for clarity. The scatter plot in the inset shows a direct linear regression between the monthly GRACE values as a function of the cumulative SMB-D anomaly, together with the linear regression coefficients.

Figure 1 compares the time series of the cumulative SMB-D anomaly with GRACE data (18) in the epoch during which both are available (2003–2008). The high correlation (r = 0.99) between the two fully independent time series and the similarity in trends support the consistency of the mass balance reconstruction. A linear regression on the SMB-D time series yields a 2003–2008 GrIS mass loss rate of –237 ± 20 Gt year^–1.

Michiel van den Broeke, et al., Partitioning Recent Greenland Mass Loss, Science 13 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5955, pp. 984 – 986, DOI: 10.1126/science.1178176

November 14, 2009 (AAP) -- Fire crews are on standby across Victoria as a severe fire danger rating comes into effect in the north-west of the state.

The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) and the Country Fire Authority (CFA) have warned that high and very high fire danger ratings will be in place in other regions of Victoria.

Temperatures in the Mallee region are predicted to hit 41C on Saturday and Sunday and 37C on Monday.

DSE state duty officer Dennis Ward said that at this time of year fire crews and incident control centres were on standby across Victoria. …

‘‘People need to be aware that we’ve had a long, hot, dry period and it’s going to continue for bit,’’ he said. …

Fire crews on alert as temperatures soar

By JOHN ELDER
November 15, 2009

THOUSANDS of muttonbirds - upon arriving in Australia to breed - have been found dead along the Victorian and NSW coasts in the past two weeks.

The birds, properly known as short-tailed shearwaters, probably died from exhaustion and malnutrition following their migratory flight to Australia from the Arctic Pacific.

The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment said about 1000 shearwaters were found washed up between Portland and Apollo Bay.

A Government spokesman said the DSE had ''taken samples and performed autopsies on some of the birds''.

A Warrnambool-based DSE officer has reportedly suggested a shortage of fish caused the birds to starve.

The situation along the Great Ocean Road has been complicated by a red algal bloom that is being blamed for the deaths of a variety of bird species, including cormorants. Dead fish have also been reported by concerned members of the public. …

Speculation rife as birds wash ashore

Via reader Gail:

Unusually early snow storms in north-central China have claimed 40 lives, caused thousands of buildings to collapse and destroyed almost 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) of winter crops, the Civil Affairs Ministry said Friday.

Nineteen of the deaths resulted from traffic accidents related to the storms that began Nov. 9, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

The snowfall is the heaviest in the northern and central provinces of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shandong and Henan since record keeping began after the establishment of the Communist state in 1949, the ministry said without giving detailed figures. It estimated economic losses from the storm at 4.5 billion yuan (US$659 million).

Chinese state media say some of the snow was induced through cloud seeding, although the precise amount of snowfall in all areas was not reported and it wasn't clear what the previous records were.

Hebei's provincial capital, Shijiazhuang, received the heaviest snowfall. In the three days ending Thursday morning, the snow accumulation there reached 1.8 feet (55 centimeters), the heaviest since 1955, the China Meteorological Administration said Saturday.

More than 7.5 million people have been stranded or otherwise affected by the storms, which caused the collapse of more than 9,000 buildings, damaged 470,000 acres (190,000 hectares) of crops, and forced the evacuation of 158,000 people, the ministry said.

Heavy snow storms in northern China kill 40

By Matthew McDermott, New York, NY  on 11.12.09

A couple weeks ago we learned that at present poaching rates Africa's elephants will all be extinct in just fifteen years. Well, here's so more on that: The wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC brings word that the illegal ivory trade has increased markedly in the latest analysis, and that organized crime networks linking Africa to Asia are behind it.

According to the 2009 data from the Elephant Trade Information System [PDF] between 1989 and 2007 there were 12,364 recorded elephant product seizure records, but in the past two years that number has increased by 2,000 seizures.

The ETIS data shows that the surge in 2009 is the result of, "increased involvement of organized crime syndicates in the trade, connecting African source countries with Asian end-use markets." Over the past decade these crime syndicates have only grown stronger. …

Illegal Ivory Trade on the Rise as Organized Crime Syndicates in Africa, Asia Grow in Strength

By Ralph Vartabedian, November 13, 2009

Reporting from Yucca Flat, Nev. - A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada.

Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and, in some cases, directly into aquifers.

When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation.

During the era of weapons testing, Nevada embraced its role almost like a patriotic duty. There seemed to be no better use for an empty desert. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and a population boom, state officials are taking a new measure of the damage.

They have successfully pressured federal officials for a fresh environmental assessment of the 1,375-square-mile test site, a step toward a potential demand for monetary compensation, replacement of the lost water or a massive cleanup.

"It is one of the largest resource losses in the country," said Thomas S. Buqo, a Nevada hydrogeologist. "Nobody thought to say, 'You are destroying a natural resource.' " …

Nuclear scars: Tainted water runs beneath Nevada desert

By RUFFIN PREVOST Gazette Wyoming Bureau | Posted: Thursday, November 12, 2009 5:20 pm

CODY — Dozens of popular camping spots on public land around Yellowstone National Park could be closed next summer as the U.S. Forest Service focuses regional spending priorities on the effects of widespread bark beetle infestations in Colorado and southern Wyoming.

The problem has drawn the attention of Wyoming’s congressional delegation, although additional funding from Washington, D.C., is unlikely to provide a short-term solution to what planners say will be an ongoing budget drain.

"There is no easy fix to this problem, but we simply must find ways to empower our land managers to turn the tide in this fight," said Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.

"These are not ordinary times. There are 600,000 acres of dead or dying trees, probably one-third of the forest’s timber," said Becky Aus, supervisor for the Shoshone National Forest.

Beetles, other insects and diseases have also struck trees across 500,000 acres in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. …

"Our regional forests have been dealing with this for the last three to five years. It’s to the point where it’s basically an emergency based on community infrastructure at risk," Aus said. …

Shoshone Forest faces beetle budget bust

By GEORGE SAYAGIE and JOHN NGIRACHU

Posted Friday, November 13 2009 at 22:00

One moment you are in, the next, you are out.

For some of the people moving out of the south western part of the Mau Forest Complex, this has come to be a familiar pattern of their lives.

It is not the first time they have been evicted from the forest and somehow found their way back, only to be ejected again.

But with the government’s new-found determination to conserve the country’s key water tower, signs are that they are leaving for good, there will be no going back again.

Scores of the illegal settlers started streaming out of the forest that borders the expansive Kiptagich Tea Estate the moment the government sent security forces there.

The mere presence of officers from the Kenya Forest Service, the Kenya Widlife Service and regular and administration police was enough to send them packing. …

 Evictions in Mau a constant cycle

The nation is taking on record levels of debt to keep its economy humming. Some say that can't last.

By Bill Powell, contributor
Last Updated: November 11, 2009: 12:21 PM ET

(Fortune Magazine) -- In a world still awash in economic worry, China has stood apart as the one country that has come through the global slump with only the briefest of hiccups.

Last quarter the nation grew at a brisk 8.9% rate, and many economists expect it to expand even faster over the remainder of the year. Profits at large, state-owned companies that have benefited from Beijing's aggressive stimulus program are up sharply.

Li Xiaochao, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, summed up the zeitgeist in China these days: "The overall situation of the economy is good."

A lot of global CEOs, of course, are on the thank-God-for-China bandwagon, and it might seem a little churlish to question one of the world's few good-news economic stories. Yet a growing number of observers believe that China is creating its own bubble economy. And they have a case to make.

The U.S. fueled its housing and consumption bubbles by providing easy credit. China seems headed in the same direction, although the victims would be different this time.

In the first nine months of the year, Beijing has shoveled $1.27 trillion in new loans into the economy, up 136% from the same period last year. That money has gone to three main areas: infrastructure, manufacturing, and real estate. …

China's record debt has economists worried

By the end of July 2009, California was well into its third dry year in a row. On average, the state’s reservoirs were running low. In particular, the San Luis reservoir had reached only 18 percent of its capacity by July 28, said the Drought Operations Center for the State of California. The San Luis Reservoir stores water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta to be distributed through the southern Central Valley. As water levels at the reservoir and elsewhere dropped, many water districts faced restrictions. The impact of those water restrictions on farms in the Westlands and Tulare Lake Districts is illustrated in this vegetation anomaly image.

The image was made from data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite between July 12 and July 27, 2009. The sensor records the amount of light that photosynthesizing plants absorb and reflect as they grow. The image shows how vegetation fared in 2009 compared to the average conditions from 2000 and 2008. In places where plants were growing more than average, the land is green. Cream shows areas of average growth, and brown points to less plant growth than average. In this image, dark squares of brown are scattered across much of the Westlands and Tulare Lake water districts. These brown squares are fields that would ordinarily support irrigated crops, but in 2009 the crops were not growing well or the fields lay fallow. …

Drought in California's Central Valley

Via reader Gail:

By Adam Sacks

James Inhofe.
Marc Morano.
Richard Lindzen.
Bjørn Lomborg.
George W. Bush.

Names of shame, ignominy, criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself.  Agents of the lethal delays in our response to escalating, accelerating, catastrophic global warming.

Yet, as deniers of climate change, they’re amateurs compared to us.  Us activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen politicians.

Even though we’re believers, not skeptics, our denial is far more insidious and subtle.  So subtle, in fact, that we’ve managed to convince ourselves that we’re not in denial at all.  Quite the opposite.  Why, the thought is too absurd even to contemplate.

But it’s true.

We’re deniers every time we say “80 percent by 2050,” or even “80 percent by 2020”; every time we refer to tipping points in the future tense; every time we advocate substituting “clean” energy for “dirty” energy; every time we buy a squiggly light bulb or a hybrid vehicle; every time we advocate for cap-and-trade, or even a carbon tax; every time we countenance the mention of loopy geoengineering schemes; every time we invoke the future of our children and grandchildren and ignore the widespread suffering from global climate disruption today.

Every time we say these things and more, we’re promoting denial of dire climate reality, the reality that’s spinning out of our grasp so fast that we conduct our frenetic climate “solutions” efforts in a kind of stupor, obsessing with parts-per-million statistics, keeping desperately busy to ward off our own utter collapse borne of despair.

The reality we’re denying?  We’re denying that we’ve put so much carbon into the atmosphere already that positive feedback loops are well on their way to amplification hell.^[1] We’re denying that time lags between carbon emissions and their effects are frighteningly relevant, and that the disastrous effects we’re seeing now are from emissions of 30 years ago.  We’re denying that non-linear responses of physical systems cannot be calculated and therefore are perilously ignored. We’re denying that our consumption and waste have far exceeded planetary capacity, possibly irreparably so.^[2] …

We have met the deniers, and they are us

By Rodrigo Orihuela

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Wheat output in Argentina’s biggest producing region will plunge 70 percent in the current harvest because of dry weather and locust swarms, an analyst at a local cereals exchange said.

The south of Buenos Aires province, which produced about 30 percent of the country’s wheat in past years, will supply less than 10 percent of the grain in the current harvest, Beatriz Allan, an analyst at the Bahia Blanca Cereals Exchange said.

Argentine farmers pared wheat sowing this year to 2.8 million hectares (6.9 million acres), the smallest crop on record, after the outlook for drought and government export curbs discouraged planting. The Buenos Aires government on Nov. 12 released an alert for wheat farmers to prepare to fight off locust attacks as the insect thrives in dry weather.

“We didn’t expect weather to be this dry,” Allan said. “The water shortage is killing the plants at a key time before the harvest.” …

Argentina Wheat Harvest to Plunge on Drought, Locust

From reader Gail:

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 12 (IPS) - The persistent drought affecting some 90 percent of Argentine territory has slain cattle in the hundreds of thousands and caused forest fires, drastic restrictions on water use and local disputes over water.

The area around Tostado, a town in the northeastern province of Santa Fe, is one of the worst hit. Over the last two years, heat and drought have silently killed off cattle and bankrupted farmers on small and medium sized ranches.

"This area normally gets between 800 and 900 mm of rainfall a year, but in 2008 it got 344 mm, and this year it has had less than 340," veterinarian Felipe Brizuela, the head of the Regional Economic Council of Tostado, told IPS.

"We had 974,000 head of cattle in the 9 de Julio district alone, and now we have less than 500,000. We have an inadequate reservoir and our water supply comes from the Salado river," but the adjacent province of Santiago del Estero, which controls the river flow, "virtually cut off supply, and in 10 days we will have none," he predicted. …

Tostado Mayor Enrique Fedele said the situation is critical. Two-thirds of the cattle have died, and unemployment has climbed to 50 percent. The municipal government this month declared a "social emergency." As well as a lack of water, the area is suffering unbearably high temperatures of up to 45 degrees Celsius.

"It's really terrible. I used to have 100 horses and now I have only 15. They took my cows and goats," Armando Bustos, a farmer in the Toledo area, told IPS. "I don't plan to kill myself because I love life, but four farmers around here have committed suicide because they had so few animals left," he said. …

AGRICULTURE-ARGENTINA: Desperately Dry

Via reader rpauli:

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Written and produced by Joby Talbot

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that
grow around you

So long, so long and thanks
for all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve

Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your
pregnant women

So long so long, so long so long, so long
So long so long, so long so long, so long
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

If I had just one last wish
I would like a tasty fish
If we could just change one thing
We would all have learnt to sing

Come one and all
Man and mammal
Side by side in life's great gene pool

So long so long, so long so long, so long
So long so long, so long so long, so long
So long so long and thanks for all the fish

When Zeus filled Pandora’s jar with the evils of the world, he saved Delusional Hope for last – to prevent humans from committing mass suicide as they were overcome by the other evils.

A year of blogging Desdemona has helped me to overcome the curse of delusional hope. Hope prevents us from seeing things as they are; hope immobilizes us. It is vital that we, as a species, abandon all hope for the world that birthed us. We have destroyed the Holocene biosphere, and it can never be rebuilt. We have inadvertently terra-formed Earth into a different planet. This act cannot be undone; it is thermodynamically irreversible. Desdemona’s message: Deal with it.

What have we learned in the last year? Here are some highlights:

• Microbe-dominated dead zones and lifeless deserts are spreading rapidly throughout the oceans.
• Desertification is converting most productive land to wasteland.
• The transition from forest to desert happens rapidly, by mega-fires.
• Most charismatic megafauna species will be extinct in the next decade or two.
• The “methane bomb” has already detonated.
• The Arctic permafrost is already melting.
• Large areas of Earth are likely to become uninhabitable to mammals and plants.
• Sea level will continue to rise for centuries. 
• God will not intervene.

Because “God” will not spontaneously remove a trillion tons of excess carbon from the atmosphere and oceans, there are only three strategies that humanity can pursue: (1) gain control of the global carbon cycle; (2) learn how to colonize the much more desolate Earth, or (3) choose extinction.

The first option requires controlling diffuse carbon fluxes on the scale of many gigatons per year. I would like to believe that human ingenuity is up to it, but the immensity of the task is overwhelming: we need to pull 1 teraton of carbon from the atmosphere-ocean system to return to the geochemistry in which humans evolved, while simultaneously preventing the emission of another 1 teraton of carbon from melting  permafrost and who knows how many gigatons of methane from undersea clathrates. There are no technologies on the drawing board that begin to achieve that scale.

Choosing extinction is the default option, which humans are embracing with gusto. Because there is no reason to think Homo sapiens sapiens is exempt from the accelerating Holocene megafaunal extinction event, it’s entirely likely that humans will follow elephants, rhinos, whales, and most of the other Cenozoic species into oblivion. In some tens of millions of years, other organisms will evolve to fill the empty niches.

Finally, if humanity doesn’t have the wherewithal to develop planetary climate-control technology, we may undertake a desperate effort to colonize the Wasteland Earth. This will be a much less hospitable biosphere than the one in which humans evolved, characterized by extremely limited freshwater, H₂S-poisoned atmosphere and oceans, severe ozone depletion, and droughts lasting centuries that are punctuated by destructive flooding events.

Desdemona counsels that we weigh everything against these realities. Most human concerns pale to invisibility against this looming background of doom. Grieve for the world, certainly. But then move on to acceptance. Desdemona has helped me to understand the truth of Woody Allen’s immortal words: “I felt much better after I gave up hope.”

Mt. Kenya's ice cap was so stunning that some began revering it as God's home. But most of the shining glacier has now disappeared, robbing communities of water and leading to a crisis of faith.

By Edmund Sanders, November 10, 2009

Reporting from Muranga, Kenya - From a tree-shaded plateau facing Mt. Kenya, the worshipers gaze anxiously at its melting ice cap and wonder: Is God dead?

For 7 million Kenyans who rely on the runoff of Africa's second-highest peak to survive, evaporating springs and dry riverbeds are making life harder. In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, reduced melts have contributed to rolling blackouts when rivers fed by the mountain are unable to run hydroelectric plants.

But for those Kenyans who still practice tribal religions and revere Mt. Kenya as the home of God, the environmental alterations mean more than a threat to their livelihood. For them, the melting ice and other changes on their mountain have triggered a crisis of faith.

"This is where our God lives and it is being destroyed," said Mwangi Njorge, 95, one of those mostly older Kenyans who continue to make sacrifices to the deity they believe resides on Mt. Kenya. He worries that the disappearing ice is a sign of God's fury. "God is very angry, and if things don't change, I fear he might abandon us forever." …

Global warming is widely believed to be contributing to Mt. Kenya's melting ice. But part of the mountain's environmental transformation is brought on by local activities, experts say.

Lush green forests have been chopped down. Development has taken a toll, from marijuana farms and cattle-grazing to tourism. …

Though how much of Mt. Kenya's forest cover was lost is unclear, a 1999 Kenya Wildlife Service survey observed nearly 20,000 acres of freshly logged terrain. Today around the base of Mt. Kenya, stumps are nearly as common as trees. …

Glorious vision in Kenya's sky melts away

Satellite observations and a state-of-the art regional atmospheric model have independently confirmed that the Greenland ice sheet is loosing mass at an accelerating rate, reports a new study in Science.

This mass loss is equally distributed between increased iceberg production, driven by acceleration of Greenland's fast-flowing outlet glaciers, and increased meltwater production at the ice sheet surface. Recent warm summers further accelerated the mass loss to 273 Gt per year (1 Gt is the mass of 1 cubic kilometre of water), in the period 2006-2008, which represents 0.75 mm of global sea level rise per year.

Professor Jonathan Bamber from the University of Bristol and an author on the paper said: "It is clear from these results that mass loss from Greenland has been accelerating since the late 1990s and the underlying causes suggest this trend is likely to continue in the near future. We have produced agreement between two totally independent estimates, giving us a lot of confidence in the numbers and our inferences about the processes". …

Greenland ice cap melting faster than ever

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In another sign of a warming planet, there were twice as many record-high temperatures in the United States as record lows over the last decade, climate scientists reported on Thursday.

This does not mean there are no record lows, just that there are fewer of them, said Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

A parallel study of temperatures in Australia showed about the same results over the same period, Meehl said in a telephone interview.

"In a climate where the average temperatures are warming, you'd expect that there would be more record highs," Meehl said. "There have also been decreases in frost days, when the nighttime temperature goes below freezing -- there are fewer of those documented for many areas of the world, including the United States."

However, he said, even at the end of the 20th century when some of the highest U.S. temperatures ever were recorded, there still was enough variability that record cold days occurred.

The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase in the coming decades if emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases continue to increase, the scientists said in a statement.

"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States," Meehl said. "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting." …

Record-high U.S. temps outpace record lows: study

By Mike Parker  

PEMBROKE, Ill. (CBS) ― Imagine a community so deep in the hole, the government has fired the police force and closed two of three elementary schools. It's happened in Pembroke, a little town of some 3,000 in eastern Kankakee County near the Indiana border.

It's a town where these days, many folks don't rebuild after a fire. The charred remains just sit there.

Mayor Sam Payton puts it this way: "I'd say we're the forgotten community."

Payton says the unemployment rate is 46 percent and the median income is just half the statewide figure. Payton says his goal right now is to create jobs in a place where businesses don't seem to want to come, and the young people mostly want to leave.

"When they get out of high school, they're leaving because there's nowhere for them to work," Payton said. …

Poorest Town In Illinois Suffers In Recession via The Oil Drum