Signs From Earth

Desert Power for Europe?

 

Center for Global Development chart shows  "direct normal radiance (DNI)" or amount of sunlight hitting the ground in watts per square meter across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. CGD is exploring the potential of capturing the ample solar energy in North Africa to power Europe.

 

A new kind of "cold war" has unfolded between Europe and Russia this winter. 

Europe was chilled in January over lost supplies of Russian natural gas because of a price dispute between Russia and Ukraine. 

Europe imports a quarter of its natural gas from Russia, and four-fifths of that supply flows through Ukraine, a former Soviet state. Ukraine has been protesting proposed Russian price increases, and in retaliation Russia shut Ukraine's supplies. The dispute has been settled, for now.

Center for Global Development analysts Kevin Ummel and David Wheeler have been pondering the economic potential of capturing and moving solar energy from North Africa as a way to reduce Europe's energy vulnerability and to lower greenhouse gas emissions. They explore the potential of using solar thermal or concentrating solar power (CSP) arrays to boil water and turn steam electric turbines.

Of course front-end construction subsidies would be required, but their research indicates the potential of meeting energy needs of 35 million people by 2020 at a price potentially comparable with coal- and gas-based power production in Europe. 

Besides a decline in planet warming greenhouse gas emissions, a move towards solar can improve European energy security. Gas supplies are not forever, and as long as Europe depends on Russia for natural gas it will have to bend to Russia's will, caprice, or need to use its own gas supplies.

Center For Global Development: Europe is Left in the Cold to Ponder North Africa's Solar Energy Potential

Center for Global Development: Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity for Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East

Time Magazine: Out of Africa: Saharan Solar Energy

Business Week: Lessons from the Russian Gas Dispute

Congressional Research Service: Russian Natural Gas: Regional Dependence

Disappearing Florida House Insurance

Houses in Florida increasingly vulnerable to storms, coastal erosion, and sea level rise are even more vulnerable to loss after the second largest insurer of home properties has decided to pull out of the state. Photo by Old Shoe Woman/flickr.

Sometimes the signs of change come not from the observed world, but from what happens to the money. 

State Farm Insurance has announced it will no longer issue homeowner insurance policies in the state of Florida. The reason given, in a January 28 article in the Wall Street Journal, is that the state government would not allow State Farm to raise rates an average of 47 percent. 

In response, the insurer said it would drop all homeowner policies, totaling more than 700,000, a process that will take about two years. (List of Policy Types Affected)

Company officials said it had to raise rates this much to avoid a further weakening of the company's "financial position." According to an article in the St. Petersburg Times, State Farm paid out more than $4.4 billion to settle claims after the state was hit by multiple hurricanes in 2004 and 2005.

Since then insurance companies have been dropping homeowner coverage in the state. The state of Florida via Citizens Property Insurance Corporation has become the leading insurer of home properties. 

At the time of the announcement State Farm was the second-largest insurer of residential properties in the state.

Wall Street Journal: State Farm Won't Cover Properties in Florida

St. Petersburg Times: State Farm to Florida Homeowners: No Thanks

Report: "Food Crunch," With Rising Prices

From The Financial Times: Warning of "food crunch" with prices poised to rise.

Javier Blas: "The world faces "the real risk of a food crunch" if governments do not take immediate action to address the agricultural impact of climate change and water scarcity, according to an authoritative report out today. 

"Chatham House, the London-based think-tank, suggests the recent fall in food prices is only temporary and that they are set to resume an upward trend once the world emerges from the current downturn. 

"There is therefore a real risk of a 'food crunch' at some point in the future, which would fall particularly hard on import-dependent countries and on poor people everywhere," the report states. "Food prices are poised to rise again..."

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Chatham House Report: The Feeding of Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century

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PR: Food Prices Are Set to Rise Again

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Earlier Report: Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Indications for Development

A Thousand Years of Warming Ahead

Extended and deep droughts will become commonplace, according to a paper published in PNAS. This scene is from Australia, already affected by deep drought. Photo by Raiden256/flickr.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy indicates that we are in for a hot 1,000 years from the effects of planet heating caused by our love affair with hydrocarbon fossil fuels.

Susan Solomon, a lead author for the IPCC 4th Assessment in 2007, co-authored a paper looking at the long-term temperature effects of accumulating carbon dioxide entitled "Irreversible Climate Change Because of Carbon Dioxide Emissions." 

A key point is that the oceans have been soaking up excess heat and CO2 from the atmosphere and masking the atmospheric warming effects. This also has been causing the oceans to warm up and expand as they soak up heat from the atmosphere.

Because the oceans are so good at storing heat, even if we were to stop burning all fossil fuels tomorrow the effects from the heat-trapping atmospheric greenhouse gases will continue for at least a thousand years as the accumulated heat in the oceans slowly dissipates into the atmosphere.

Further, the paper says there will be significant long-term droughts on a scale with historic "dust bowls," and sea level rise will be significant as warm sea water expands and continental glaciers and ice shelves melt.

None of this is new, really, it's just that the 1,000-year timeline for long-term heating effects from our present activities presents a rather dire picture for those who will inherit this situation from us. And there doesn't appear to be any way out as long as we keep burning coal, oil, and gas at such rapid rates.

PNAS Paper Abstract: "The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the ‘‘dust bowl’’ era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4 –1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6 –1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding 1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer."

NOAA Press Release: New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible

PNAS Early Edition: Irreversible climate Change Because of Carbon Dioxide Emissions

A recent book by David Archer, a climatologist at the University of Chicago, discusses the long-term effects of atmospheric CO2: The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Climate.

Andrew Revkin, Dot.Earth: The Greenhouse Effect and the Bathtub Effect

New York Times: Emissions Cut Won't Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say

Washington Post: Long Droughts, Rising Seas Predicted Despite CO2 Curbs

NPR: Global Warming is Irreversible, Study Says

Hot Planet: Our Path Ahead

Chilean Volcano Resumes Eruption

Chile's Chaiten Volcano, silent for 9,000 years, in late January resumed eruptions that began in 2008. This false-color image from NASA's Earth Observatory shows a plume of ash and steam flowing north from a January 19 volcanic dome collapse. The town of Chaiten, heavily damaged from mudflows in the May 2008 eruptions, is on the eastern shore of a small bay below the volcano.

This image from the May 2008 eruption became one of the most popular science images of 2008 according to a viewer poll at MSNBC.

New York Times Slideshow on Chaiten's Latent Threat

New York Times: Fear Lurks in Chile Volcano's Shadow

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program: Chaiten

Volcanism Blog: Chaiten Update Jan. 21, 2009

Heat, Drought, Bugs Kill Western Forests

A study published in the journal Science details loss of forests across western North America from rising temperatures, declining precipitation, and increased damage resulting from infestations of pine bark beetles. 

The study showed that tree life spans are shortening all across the region as trees succumb to heat, drought, and bugs, and new trees aren't replacing old. This image above from NASA Earth Observatory posted in December shows vast areas of forest in British Columbia now severely damaged or dead from pine beetle infestations. 

As the trend towards heat and dryness continues, forests will become more susceptible to fire, and as more people build homes adjacent to forest land, this increases risk for significant financial and human toll. 

The Daily Climate: Climate Change Has Doubled Forest Mortality

Photo at Right: Beetle kill near Ashcroft, B.C. 

October 2008. By Richard Vignola/flickr

Washington Post: Study Ties Tree Deaths to Changing Climate

New York Times: Environment Blamed in Western Tree Deaths

Los Angeles Times: West's Trees Dying Faster as Temperatures Rise

NASA Earth Observatory: Insect Damage in British Columbia Forests

NASA Earth Observatory: Pine Beetle Infestation in British Columbia

National Geographic News: U.S. Old-Growth Forests Withering With Warming

Toles: Morning in America, Part II

Tom Toles in the Washington Post, January 19, 2009.

"Morning in America, Part II. Getting it Right This Time. Before it Gets Us."

Mount St. Helens from Space

A recently released image from the International Space Station Crew shows Mount St. Helens in the Washington State Cascades in October 2008. When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, the top and northwest face of the peak disintegrated. About 230 square miles of nearby forest were blown down or buried under volcanic deposits. 

The mountain and surrounding areas are now a national monument. Mount St. Helens Volcano Cams

Satellite Image Archive Now Free

USGS Landsat Missions Image: Attu Island, Western Aleutian Islands

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From Society of Environmental Journalists: If you need information on land use changes over time, or on current land uses and character, you may want to check out decades-worth of globe-spanning satellite images that USGS made freely available to the public on Dec. 30, 2008. 

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The Landsat images (via instruments on board Landsat 1-5) were taken from 1972 to the present. On Oct. 1, 2008, USGS took a similar step with Landsat 7 images taken from 1999 to the present. 

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The various instruments capture different kinds of information about the earth. For questions, contact Jon Campbell, 703-648-4180, <joncampbell@usgs.gov>.

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US Geological Survey Landsat images: 

Group on Earth Observations 

Landsat Missions 

Global Visualization Viewer

Earth Explorer

Western Water Worries Intensify

Map for period Jan. through April 2009 (click to enlarge): From National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center - United States Season Drought Outlook

On January 12 at an infrastructure forum hosted by the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C., discussions focused on how revitalization of the nation's roads, highways, bridges, sewers and the like will help a national economic recovery. 

Panelist Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, warned that while improving infrastructure is benefical, the bigger concern for the Western United States  is understanding the effects of changing climate on water supplies. Little research has been done so far on how the region will adapt.

Mulroy's comments from the event transcript: ...”We have not spent any time in this country investing in the science of climate change in any kind of a concerted fashion.  

“We need to understand where the floods are going to occur, we need to understand  where the drought conditions are going to become protracted.  

“And before we start making long term investments in future major infrastructure, after  we have paid that which we’ve neglected for so long, we need to look at it through a 21st century lens, in a very different climate, and not take a 19th century climate and assume that that is going to be the norm.

 

“These issues have the possibility of shutting down whole economies in the United States, cutting off food supplies for this country. The time to begin to look at this country’s water resources in a more global fashion and begin to talk about outrageous solutions or things we’ve never  ventured or had the courage to talk about before, that time is rapidly  approaching...” 

Ebb and Flow of Bangladesh Coast

Of all countries, Bangladesh leads as one place on earth most likely to lose out as seas rise from increasing temperatures. It's not only rising seas that affect this low-lying nation. Freshwater shortages and vulnerability to severe storms also plague. 

Mason Inman of Nature Reports: Climate Change investigates changes facing this impoverished south Asian nation:

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Where warming hits hard

"Threatened with encroaching seas, dwindling water supplies and fiercer storms, Bangladesh is already suffering the ill effects of rising global greenhouse gas emissions..."

Erosion and accretion along the Bangladeshi coastline from 1973 to 2005. Courtesy of Nature Reports: Climate Change Maminul Haques Sarker and CEGIS.

Stephan Faris of GlobalPost discusses how Bangladesh symbolizes the climate challenge: Poor nations severely affected by the carbon excesses of rich nations.

For Which it Stands: Environment

..."Bangladesh may be the place in the world most threatened by climate change.

 

A desperately poor population — half the size of the United States’ —  crams into an area a little smaller than Louisiana. With most of its territory within six yards of sea level, the country is uniquely vulnerable to rising seas and stronger storm surges...."

The Whole Earth is Now Online

The Whole Earth Catalog and its spawn CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review were among my favorite reads and inspirations in the decades when they were in print.

Long gone from the dead tree publishing landscape, my fading collection of several Catalogs and an almost complete set of Co-Evolution Quarterly/Whole Earth Review still graces my shelves.

The Whole Earth Catalog is now online. 

Transformed from paper to electrons, this wonderous archive marks a period in our recent history when the contemporary environmental movement was beginning to take shape.

Carrying motto "Access to Tools," Whole Earth was handbook and manual for those seeking instructions and tools to create a better world and self-sufficient life with their own initative, passion, and energy.

Edited by Stewart Brand and a host of smart people like Kevin Kelly, Whole Earth is where I first saw the work of agrarian poet and essayist Wendell Berry and ecological agriculturalist Wes Jackson, who started The Land Institute in Kansas.

Whole Earth led me to Berry's influential book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, and to Jackson's New Roots for Agriculture.

I discovered the work of Donella Meadows here, a MacArthur Fellow and one of the authors of the 1970's book The Limits to Growth.

Meadows' essay Places to Intervene in a System is significant, along with her sequel essay Dancing With Systems.

"Places" is mandatory guide to understanding any type of system: an organization, economy, living body, ecosystem, or a city, and explains why a small shift in one thing can create a big shift in most everything. She explains why most change is misguided, misapplied, and mistimed because of a failure to recognize "leverage points."

The Catalog's influence was documented in a 2007 book by Andrew Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism.

The Whole Earth family of publications was the internet before there was an internet, blogs before blogs. The arrival of a new edition or issue was an event, everything else was set aside until a full perusal of the copy that had just shown up in the mailbox.

--DD

Links:

Worldwatch Book Offers Climate Solutions

Chris Flavin and associates at Worldwatch Institute released this week their annual State of the World book on global environmental issues, challenges, and opportunities.

This year's edition focuses on meeting the challenge of climate change. Called Into a Warming World, this year's volume provides the most accessible and readable resource available today on understanding climate change and what to do about it.

The book's chapters and other resources are available online.

Started more than a quarter century ago by Lester Brown, Worldwatch Institute has been publishing State of the World for 26 years. This is the series' first single-topic issue, focusing on solutions to this pressing challenge.

Dr. R.K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote the book's foreword, available online:

“This edition of State of the World brings out clearly the difference between inaction based on a business-as-usual approach and action to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

...”State of the World 2009 has framed the challenge appropriately by emphasizing the importance of not only new technologies but also a very different approach in terms of human behavior and choices. An important element of future solutions is a different form of global governance-one that would create a high level of seriousness in the implementation of global agreements.”

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Press Release: Heat and Hope: Time Running Out for Steep Emissions Cuts

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BBC Report: World needs "radical cuts" in CO2

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Worldwatch also has available for free download a roadmap to low-carbon energy that shows how we could create a global economy based energy sources other than fossil fuels.

Written by Flavin, the report surveys the technologies that could build a low-carbon global economy in years ahead. 

Report: Hot Summers, Crop Losses Coming

Figure: Likelihood (in percent) that future summer average temperatures will exceed the highest  summer temperature observed on record (A) for 2050 and (B) for 2090. For example, for places  shown in red there is greater than a 90% chance that the summer-averaged temperature will exceed the highest temperature on record (1900–2006). Courtesy of Science/AAAS.

Hot summers and declining crop yields will become common by mid-century in some regions according to research published in the journal Science. Yield reductions globally will likely become the norm later in the century, this while populations in the most vulnerable regions double by 2100.

The researchers, David Battisti of the University of Washington and Rosamond Naylor of Stanford, projected future temperatures by applying 23 global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to estimate end of century temperatures.

The summer of 2003 in Europe was about 3.6 degrees (C) higher than normal and crop losses were about 25 percent. The researchers said that this will seem cool compared to summers at the end of the century.

This bodes ill for future crop yields and the ability to produce enough food unless heat- and drought-tolerant crops are developed, and water supplies are sustained. Hot temperatures cause plants to grow too fast and reduce yields. Rising temperatures can affect rainfall patterns.

Three billion people, almost half the world's population, live in tropical and subtropical regions potentially most affected by these projected temperatures rises. With incomes of less than $2 a day, most of the people here depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and live in regions where population is expected to double by century's end.

The world will need to grow even more food under temperature conditions that will make it nearly impossible just to maintain current harvest levels. 

Links:

Hot Planet: Our Path Ahead

Farm Bill: Taking the Long View

Wes Jackson of The Land Institute and Kentucky essayist Wendell Berry propose a different approach to farm bills that transcends the commodity, lobbyist, and subsidy driven approach we have now. 

They propose an approach that addresses the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

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New York Times Op-Ed: A 50-Year Farm Bill

"The extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall — by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.

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"Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute — and no powerful friends in the halls of government...

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