Signs From Earth

Planet Patterns: Patagonia Phytoplankton Bloom (via @NASA_EO)

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=48244

NASA Earth Observatory: "...Off the coast of Argentina, two strong ocean currents recently stirred up a colorful brew of floating nutrients and microscopic plant life just in time for the summer solstice...."

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Energy Charts: The Oil Drum's Charts of 2010 (via @theoildrum)

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7282

The Oil Drum is inviting readers to post their favorite charts that make significant points about the global energy situation in 2010.

The chart above indicates that by 2028-2030 the world will need 43 million barrels a day of oil from sources not yet identified.

Chart source: US Energy Information Administration, Department of Energy

http://www.eia.doe.gov/conference/2009/session3/Sweetnam.pdf

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The wild weather of 2010 (via @PRI Living on Earth)

Snowbound car after blizzard, Brooklyn, New York. Dec. 28, 2010. Photo from Creative Commons by Marius Watz/flickr

http://www.pri.org/science/environment/the-wild-weather-of-2010.html

"...Twenty-ten is bidding to go in the record books as one of the warmest; but it's the craziness of the weather, rather than just the heat that has scientists concerned. Twenty-ten, they say, stands out for the number and intensity of extreme weather events. It appears climate change is tilting the odds in favor of more of the kind of heat, floods and even snows that 2010 brought us. ..."

http://www.pri.org/living-on-earth.html

Record rainfall, Los Angeles, California. Dec. 22, 2010. Photo from Creative Commons by dL-Chang/flickr

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Population 7 Billion: How Your World Will Change (via @ngmag @natgeoscoop)

My colleagues at National Geographic Digital have produced in a lively, information-packed short video summarizing the issues as global population reaches 7 billion people in 2011. A little less than three minutes long, this video quickly lays out the reasons global population has become the key environmental story of our time.

The video is based on an article by Robert Kunzig in the January 2011 issue of National Geographic, which launches a year-long magazine series on global population, our impact, and prospects as we grow towards nine billion people by mid-century. The first article can be found online at the link below. Future articles will follow in March, April, May, and through the rest of 2011. The Pulitzer on Crisis Reporting and PBS NewsHour are joining us in reporting on population in 2011.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text

Robert Kunzig: "...Before the 20th century, no human had lived through a doubling of the human population, but there are people alive today who have seen it triple. Sometime in late 2011, according to the UN Population Division, there will be seven billion of us.

"And the explosion, though it is slowing, is far from over. Not only are people living longer, but so many women across the world are now in their childbearing years--1.8 billion--that the global population will keep growing for another few decades at least, even though each woman is having fewer children than she would have had a generation ago....

"With the population still growing by about 80 million each year, it's hard not to be alarmed. Right now on Earth, water tables are falling, soil is eroding, glaciers are melting, and fish stocks are vanishing. Close to a billion people go hungry each day. Decades from now, there will likely be two billion more mouths to feed, mostly in poor countries. There will be billions more people wanting and deserving to boost themselves out of poverty. If they follow the path blazed by wealthy countries--clearing forests, burning coal and oil, freely scattering fertilizers and pesticides--they too will be stepping hard on the planet's natural resources. How exactly is this going to work?..."

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"Behavior Frontiers: Can Social Science Combat Climate Change?" (via @sciam @lisa_palmer)

Switching off. Photo from Creative Commons by boskizzi/flickr

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-social-science-help-combat-climate-change

Scientific American, Lisa Palmer: "Roughly 44 percent of Californians smoked tobacco in 1965. By 2010, 9.3 percent did--a shift that might have seemed impossible before it happened. Understanding exactly how such a social transformation occurred in the past may prove key to understanding how individuals might alter their behavior to help combat climate change in the future.

"By studying past instances of social transformation, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) hope to predict future change in response to global warming as part of California's Carbon Challenge--a study commissioned by the California Energy Commission to help the state cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels. LBNL energy technology scientist Jeffery Greenblatt and his colleagues are analyzing  technology options as well as data records from 10 historical behavior changes--smoking cessation, seat belt use, vegetarianism, drunk driving, recycling and yoga, among others...."

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also see: Saving Energy For the Sake of Saving Energy

http://ddimick.posterous.com/saving-energy-for-the-sake-of-saving-energy-v

also see: Survey shows many Americans miss the mark on saving energy effectively

http://ddimick.posterous.com/survey-shows-many-americans-miss-the-mark-on

also see: Using California's psychology of influence to slash energy use

http://ddimick.posterous.com/using-californias-psychology-of-influence-to

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Global Temperatures: First 11 months of 2010 warmest Jan-Nov period in 131 year record (via @usnoaagov)

Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events November 2010, from material provided in this map compiled from NOAA's NCDC State of the Climate Reports. 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2010/11

"...For the 2010 year-to-date (January-November), the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.64*C (1.15*F) above the 20th century average--the warmest such period since records began in 1880...."

"..... The combined land and ocean surface temperature through November in the Northern Hemisphere was also the warmest on record, while the combined land and ocean surface temperature in the Southern Hemisphere tied with 2005 as the fifth warmest such period on record. The globally averaged land temperature was 1.02*C (1.84*F) above average, which was the warmest January-November in the period of record...."

Temperature Anomalies in Degrees C. Jan-Nov 2010 (with respect to a 1971-2000 base period) NCDC/NESDIS/NOAA

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Optimism, Pessimism, Stationarity

Roulette wheel. Photo from Creative Commons by John Wardell/flickr

"Economic Optimism? Yes, I’ll Take That Bet" (via @nytimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/science/28tierney.html

John Tierney in his Dec. 28 New York Times column celebrates a betting victory with Matt Simmons that energy prices would not rise over five years as much as Simmons thought they would. Tierney's economic optimism won over Simmons' pessimism. Simmons, a leader in the peak oil movement, died this year, but his estate said indeed Tierney won the $5,000 at stake.

This a day after Paul Krugman in the same newspaper lays out in his column "The Finite World" the supply and demand fundamentals behind recent rapid price rises in commodities and raw materials:

http://ddimick.posterous.com/paul-krugman-the-finite-world-via-nytimesopin

"...What the commodity markets are telling us is that we're living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. ..."

How does Tierney's economic optimism square with Krugman's assessment? I am reminded of a 2008 paper in the journal Science, "Stationarity is Dead: Whither Water Management?," that argues the past is no longer a sufficient guide to the future.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5863/573.full

Stationarity, relating to things like historic stream flows and flood frequency and intensity in river basins, has until now served as a sufficient guide to future watershed behavior. Regional and city planners have used stationarity -- a record of a river's past as a guide to what to expect -- as they build water storage and delivery systems, floodplain maps, and storm water drainage.

The Science paper's authors argue that "stationarity is dead," that under climate change, the past is insufficient guide to the future, that streamflows, floods and droughts of our recorded past are insufficient guides to what we can expect in a world of ever-rising carbon emissions, temperatures, and changing weather. Just this year unprecedented rainfall and damaging floods in Nashville, Milwaukee, Arkansas, and this month in southern California serve as costly examples. Record Russian drought and heat waves devastated wheat crops there.

Taking the stationarity idea to resource supplies -- not just water, but food and other raw materials like oil and coal -- one wonders if the past five years is a sufficient guide to trends ahead. Rising population and the expanding resource consumption that comes with rising aspirations pushes against Earth's ability to provide for our growing numbers, needs, and wants.

Tierney optimistically writes, "...you can always make news with doomsday predictions but you can usually make money betting against them."

Bets?

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also see: Living with Limits: Gail the Actuary on the meaning of limits in oil production (via @theoildrum)

http://ddimick.posterous.com/living-with-limits-gail-the-actuary-on-the-me

also see: Sustainability and the Work-Spend Treadmill: How Much Stuff is Enough? (via @nytimes @revkin @storyofstuff)

http://ddimick.posterous.com/sustainability-and-the-work-spend-treadmill-h

also see: Dmitry Orlov on Collapse (via @johnrobb et al)

http://ddimick.posterous.com/dmitry-orlov-on-collapse-via-johnrobb-et-al

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Grand Sweep: Continental Shape of Christmas Blizzard's Clouds (via @NASAGoddard)

NASA GOES image, Dec. 27, 2010. Snowstorm's clouds reflects the shape of the coastline along the eastern United States.

"NASA - GOES-13 Satellite Captures Powerful Snowmaker Leaving New England"

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/features/2010/goes13-snow.html

NASA Goddard: "On Monday, December 27 at 1731 UTC (12:31 p.m. EST) the GOES-13 satellite captured this visible image of the powerful low pressure system that brought snows from Georgia to Maine along the U.S. east coast. Some of the snowfall can be seen over South and North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and southeastern New York. The clouds of the low obscure New England in the image. Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project"

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Paul Krugman: "The Finite World" (via @nytimesopinion)

Gasoline prices above $3/gallon. New York state, Nov. 2010. Photo from Creative Commons by ossguy/flickr

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1&hp

Paul Krugman: ""Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months.

"So what's the meaning of this surge?...

"...What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story..."

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Ethical Analysis of Cancun Climate Negotiations (via @rockethicsPSU)

"Message in a Bottle: Save Lives in Cancun" on Cancun beach, Dec. 2010. Photo from Creative Commons by Ainhoa Goma/oxfam/flickr

http://rockblogs.psu.edu/climate/2010/12/an-ethical-analysis-of-the-cancun-climate-negotiations-outcome.html

Climate Ethics: Donald A. Brown: "Two dramatically conflicting headlines about the outcome of the recently concluded Cancun United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change's 16th Conference of the Parties are initially defensible. 

"One might be: Some Developed Nations Tragically Fail to Make Meaningful Commitments on Climate Change for the Twentieth Year In A Row As Scientists Tell The World That We are Running Out Of Time to Prevent Dangerous Climate Change. Another might be: Cancun Surprises Many By Keeping Hope Alive for A Global Climate Change Deal.

"This post looks at these conflicting conclusions about Cancun through an ethical lens...

"...For some, the modest progress in Cancun to a global approach to climate change has been seen as a positive step forward. (BBC, 2010). This is so because many thought that the UNFCCC architecture for a global solution to climate change was in jeopardy of completely unraveling before Cancun...

"To others, Cancun was another tragic lost opportunity of the international community to prevent dangerous climate change as well as a the most recent in a series of moral failures of those most responsible for climate change to commit to steps necessary to protect those who are most vulnerable to climate change's harshest impacts...."

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Off-Grid Solar: "In Kenya, Huts Far Off the Grid Harness the Sun" (via @nytimes)

Tigithi Secondary School, Nanyuki Kenya. Photo from Creative Commons by teachandlearn/flickr

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/25/science/earth/25fossil.html

Elisabeth Rosenthal: "...As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role...."

Also, a research project  in Benin shows that solar-powered irrigation can improve the lives of people. The project was a collaboration between the Solar Electric Light Fund and Stanford University:

also see: PNAS study: Solar powered irrigation improves diet and income in rural and sub-Saharan Africa

http://ddimick.posterous.com/pnas-study-solar-powered-irrigation-improves

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Food Security: Mexico buys corn futures as hedge against rising prices (via @FT)

Corn tortillas. Mexican tortilla makers have threatened to raise prices 50 percent. Photo from Creative Commons by CIMMYT/flickr

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7fc26d7c-0e02-11e0-86e9-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18tyUkUsN

Javier Blas, Financial Times, Dec. 22, 2010: "Mexico has taken the unusual step of insuring itself against the effect of rising corn prices on tortilla, a food staple for millions in the country, in the latest sign of growing concern about food inflation in emerging countries...

"...The move by Mexico, disclosed by its economic minister, came as the quoted price of corn in Chicago hit a two-year high on the back of a smaller-than-expected harvest in the US, which accounts for more than half of the world's exports...

"...Richard Feltes, grain analyst at brokerage R.J. O'Brien, said it was the first time he could recall a country had disclosed it was buying futures..."

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Food Security: Agro-Imperialism: African Farmers Lose Land to Investors (via @nytimes)

Plowing soil in Mali. Photo from Creative Commons by Ray Witlon/World Bank/flickr

One trend underlying tightening of global food supplies is the rush by some nations -- rich in money and oil but poor in land and water -- to buy or lease fertile lands in poor nations to grow the food they cannot grow at home. Besides "land grab," this emerging trend has been variously labeled "agro-colonialism" and "agro-imperialism."  

In a world of emerging resource peaks -- oil and water come to mind -- this is a sign we may be entering the era of peak land too. Further, as global population keeps rising and we see more extreme weather in food growing regions -- recent Russian drought and Pakistan floods as examples -- tensions will only increase in the global quest for reliable food supplies.

A Dec. 22 New York Times article cites the case of Mali farmers being pushed off their land by the government so oil-rich Libyan investors can take over. One wonders whether the newly landless and hungry will just stand idly by watching as harvests are carried away.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/world/africa/22mali.html?_r=1&hp

Neil MacFarquhar: "...Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come...."

Other resources and several previous articles on this trend:

A recent report on the need to fill the coming "food gap; a new book on the emerging food crisis, "The Coming Famine," by Julian Cribb.

http://ddimick.posterous.com/food-security-we-face-a-gap-major-agricultura

World Bank: Report: Rising Global Interest in Farmland

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/ESW_Sept7_final_final.pdf

GRAIN: Advocacy Group for small farmers and local land control

http://www.grain.org/front/

GRAIN: Food Crisis and the global land grab

http://farmlandgrab.org/

also see: Rising Trend: Agro-Colonialism: Poor Nations Lease Farm Land to Rich Ones

http://ddimick.posterous.com/rising-trend-agro-colonialism-poor-nations-le

also see: Rich Nations Buy Farms in Poor Ones: "Is there Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?"

http://ddimick.posterous.com/rich-nations-buy-farms-in-poor-ones-is-there

"Fearing food shortages, investors from wealthy countries are snapping up land in poor countries to grow food there. Is this development or exploitation?" from @NYTimesMagazine, Nov. 16, 2009

also see: "Land Grabs" for rice production due to supply threats

http://ddimick.posterous.com/irri-and-others-on-increasing-land-grabs-for

also see: Land Grab: Water Scarcity, Food Security Concerns Prompt Global Land Grab

http://ddimick.posterous.com/water-scarcity-food-security-concerns-prompt

also see: Foreign Ownership of Farms: Book: "Land Grab? The Race for the World's Farmland"

http://ddimick.posterous.com/foreign-ownership-of-farms-book-land-grab-the

Also see: National Geographic, June 2009: Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text

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Does the Keeling Curve Still Need a Keeling? (via@nytimes)

Charles David Keeling and son Ralph. From UC San Diego, link below.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/does-the-keeling-curve-still-need-a...

"At some point, the Keelings need to no longer be associated with the Keeling Curve," -- Ralph Keeling

also see: Charles David Keeling: A Scientist, His Work, and a Climate Reckoning

 http://ddimick.posterous.com/a-scientist-his-work-and-a-climate-reckoning

Ralph Keeling (son of David Keeling)

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/personnel/ralph_keeling.html

Scripps Institution: CO2

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/

UC San Diego 2008 annual Report (photo of Keelings)

http://www.annualreport.ucsd.edu/2008/admin.html

 

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Charles David Keeling: "A Scientist, His Work and a Climate Reckoning" (via@nytimes)

The Keeling Curve. CO2 levels 1958-2009 at Mauna Loa. Data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/science/earth/22carbon.html

Justin Gillis: "...(Charles David Keeling's) resulting discovery, of the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, transformed the scientific understanding of humanity's relationship with the earth. A graph of his findings is inscribed on a wall in Washington as one of the great achievements of modern science.

Yet, five years after Dr. Keeling's death, his discovery is a focus not of celebration but of conflict. It has become the touchstone of a worldwide political debate over global warming...."

also see: @nytimes: Does the Keeling Curve Still Need a Keeling?

http://ddimick.posterous.com/does-the-keeling-curve-still-need-a-keeling-v

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