Matt Ridley has joined the real climate debate

A trenchant response by Myles Allen to his study, now being cited by gung-ho denialists everywhere. From the Environment blog in the Guardian (UK): It isn't often, as a climate scientist, that you find your research being enthusiastically endorsed by climate sceptic Matt Ridley in the Times. We published a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday giving a new best estimate of 1.3C for the warming expected at the time in the future when carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reaches double the level it did before the industrial revolution (known as Transient Climate Response, or TCR).

Ridley is excited about this, because he feels it means that until his teenage children reach retirement age, they won't have to worry about global warming. And he is worried that government policies are misguided because they place their faith in climate models, like one of the Met Office models that puts the warming instead at 2.5C, almost twice our estimate.

But no one places their faith in any single climate model, and no one has done so for 20 years. Climate scienitsts are all well aware the Met's model (HadGEM2) is at the top end of the current range. The Met Office's advice to government is based on the range of results from current climate models, not just their own.

The relevant comparison is not with the 2.5C response of one model, but with the average of climate models used by the UN's climate science panel in its upcoming major report, which is 1.8C. Now 1.3C is 30% less than 1.8C, but this is hardly a game changer: at face value, our new findings mean that the changes we had previously expected between now and 2050 might take until 2065 to materialise instead. Then again, they might not: 1.8C is within our range of uncertainty; and natural variability will affect what happens in the 2050s anyway.

Despite this, our study seems to be being enthusiastically cited by Ridley and climate sceptics the world over as final endorsement of their position. If this means their position is that the most likely response is 30% lower than the average of our current models, then perhaps the debate on global temperature is indeed over: 30% is well within the range of uncertainty anyway. But that doesn't mean all debate about climate is over.

Is Ridley right that there is no actual evidence of harm as long as droughts, floods and storms are within historic variability? Try explaining to a casino bouncer that it doesn't matter you are using loaded dice because a triple-six is within historic variability – but that is a different story.

Where Ridley may well be right is that if you are confident that citizens of 2065 will be rich enough and smart enough to cope with whatever we bequeath to them; or if you really don't care about unborn generations anyway (what have unborn generations ever done for me?); or if, like Bjorn Lomborg, you discount future damages to give very little weight to anything that happens after 2065; or if you firmly believe that the "second coming" will occur before 2065 anyway – then there probably isn't much point in trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. These are perfectly coherent ethical positions: they don't happen to be positions that I subscribe to, but if that is what Ridley thinks, so be it....

Iceberg west of Ilulissat inlet, Greenland, shot by Uta Wollf, Rodebay, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Oklahoma tornado spread destruction like a 'two-mile-wide lawnmower blade'

Gary Tuchman and Holly Yan in CNN: Even for a city toughened by disaster, Moore has never seen this kind of devastation. A massive, howling tornado pulverized a vast swath of the Oklahoma City suburbs Monday, chewing up homes and businesses, and severely damaging a hospital and two elementary schools.

The storm carved a trail through the area as much as two miles wide and 22 miles long, officials said. The storm killed dozens, but amid the confusion of search and rescue efforts, a precise death toll was hard to come by. Hundreds of people were injured.

Firefighters, police, National Guard members and volunteers worked by flashlight overnight and into Tuesday morning, crawling across piles of debris in a determined search for survivors and victims. Air National Guard members brought in thermal imaging equipment to aid in the work.

Complicating their efforts: downed power lines, hissing natural gas pipes and so much debris blocking roads it was difficult to bring in heavy equipment to help.

Still, more than 100 people had been pulled from the rubble alive since Monday afternoon, the state Highway Patrol said. Early Tuesday, authorities asked news crews to move satellite trucks from the scene because the idling engines were making it difficult for rescuers to listen for the faint sounds of survivors beneath the rubble....

The Moore, Oklahoma tornado on May 20, 2013, shot by Ks0stm, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Could radio help mitigate climate change in the Congo Basin?

Babatope Akinwande of CIFOR in Thomson Reuters Foundation: Climate change is hitting the Congo Basin region hard and while communities there and in other parts of Africa struggle to adapt to rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, scientists are trying to help — using radio to spread the word.

For those living in urban areas, getting information is easy. But for forest dwellers, who are the most likely to be affected, it is more difficult because they are isolated by poor road infrastructure and a lack of such basic amenities as electricity, telephones and Internet access, said Anne-Marie Tiani, a senior scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research and coordinator of the COBAM project (Climate Change and Forests in the Congo Basin: Synergies between adaptation and mitigation).

“Radio remains the most dominant, affordable and accessible mass medium in Africa,” added her colleague, Denis Sonwa, explaining why the team decided it needed to find new ways to share research findings, rather than relying on text. “We wanted as wide an audience as possible,” he said. “And in the Congo Basin region, radio is still the most effective way to reach local communities.”

The radio program builds on CIFOR’s previous research activities on livelihoods and governance. The COBAM project covers Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo, aiming to provide policymakers and local communities with information to help implement policies and projects for adaptation to climate change and reduction of carbon emissions in the forests.

It covers livelihood activities, local institutions and trends in forest degradation and deforestation. It also analyzes with local communities the impacts of potential REDD activities on livelihoods and associated risks, opportunities and needed institutional changes....

NASA image of the Congo Basin

Bird flu costs China industry $6.5 billion, according to state media

AFP: China's human H7N9 bird flu outbreak has cost the country's poultry industry more than 40 billion yuan ($6.5 billion) as consumers shun chicken, government officials said, according to state media.

The sector has been losing an average of one billion yuan a day since the end of March, the Beijing Times said on Monday, citing Li Xirong, head of the National Animal Husbandry Service.

H7N9 avian influenza has infected 130 people in China, killing 35, since it was found in humans for the first time, according to latest official data.

Poultry sales have tumbled and prices plunged, Li said, causing major financial problems and job losses as a result.

Another agriculture ministry official, Wang Zongli, said government agencies should set a good example for the public by treating "poultry products in a correct way", the report added....

Hydropower frenzy threatens Carpathian mountains

Space Daily via AFP: The frenzy to build hydropower stations across the Carpathian mountains poses an "imminent" threat to biodiversity in Eastern Europe, conservationist group WWF warned Monday.

"The planned construction of thousands of hydropower stations across the Carpathian mountains presents an imminent threat to hundreds of streams and rivers", the WWF said in a press release, ten years after seven Eastern European countries signed a convention to protect the unique mountain range. Romania and Ukraine are particularly at risk from planned small-scale hydropower stations", Konstantin Ivanov, the head of communication for the Danube-Carpathian program, told AFP.

Small-scale hydro generally does not involve the construction of a dam. Instead, part of the flow is diverted through a pipe to a downstream turbine which generates the electricity.

In theory, this should not have a big impact on the environment. But in many cases pipes have been installed in the bed of the stream and diverted water amounts to as much as 80 percent of the flow, posing lasting threats to biodiversity, environmentalists say....

A brook in the Carpathian mountains of the Czech Republic, shot by Jan.Kamenicek, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Heatwave deaths in New York city could rise by up to 22%, study shows

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): New York city could experience up to 22% more deaths from extreme summertime heat in the coming decade under global warming, according to a study of the impact of climate trends. The higher deaths will be partially offset by a reduction in deaths due to the milder winters predicted in Manhattan.

Overall, however, the net effect of the new temperature norms under climate change would be to increase weather-related deaths in New York city by up to 6.2% a year by the 2020s, according to the scientists.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, predicted oppressive summer temperatures would exact an increasingly heavy toll on people living in metropolitan areas such as Manhattan in the coming decades. The numbers would not be significantly offset by milder winters, the study found, and deaths due to extreme temperatures would rise more dramatically in the later decades of this century.

Without bold action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, heatwave deaths in New York city could rise by as much as 91% on 1980s levels by the 2080s, according to the study's projections. The net loss of life would be as much as 31% on 1980s levels, the study said.

"This is the first real study of the seasonal trade-off of climate change," Patrick Kinney, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University and one of the authors of the study, said. Kinney added: "What our study suggests is that the heat effects of climate change dominate the winter warming benefits that might also come: climate change will cause more deaths through heat than it will prevent during winter."...

East Houston Street in Manhattan, shot by David Shankbone, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Research into carbon storage in arctic tundra reveals unexpected insight into ecosystem resiliency

Science Daily: When UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Seeta Sistla and her adviser, environmental studies professor Josh Schimel, went north not long ago to study how long-term warming in the Arctic affects carbon storage, they had made certain assumptions.

"We expected that because of the long-term warming, we would have lost carbon stored in the soil to the atmosphere," said Schimel. The gradual warming, he explained, would accelerate decomposition on the upper layers of what would have previously been frozen or near-frozen earth, releasing the greenhouse gas into the air. Because high latitudes contain nearly half of all global soil carbon in their ancient permafrost -- permanently frozen soil -- even a few degrees' rise in temperature could be enough to release massive quantities, turning a carbon repository into a carbon emitter.

"The Arctic is the most rapidly warming biome on Earth, so understanding how permafrost soils are reacting to this change is of major concern globally," Sistla said.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers visited the longest-running climate warming study in the tundra, the U.S. Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research site at Toolik Lake in northern Alaska. This ecosystem-warming greenhouse experiment was started in 1989 to observe the effects of sustained warming on the Arctic environment.

What they initially found was typical of Arctic warming: low-lying, shallow-rooted vegetation giving way to taller plants with deeper roots; greater wood shrub dominance; and increased thaw depth. What they weren't expecting was that two decades of slow and steady warming had not changed the amounts of carbon in the soil, despite changes in vegetation and even the soil food web.

The answer to that mystery, according to Sistla, might be found in the finer workings of the ecosystem: Increased plant growth appears to have facilitated stabilizing feedbacks to soil carbon loss. Their research is published in the recent edition of the journal Nature.

"We hypothesize that net soil carbon hasn't changed after 20 years because warming-accelerated decomposition has been offset by increased carbon inputs to the soil due to a combination of increased plant growth and changing soil conditions," Sistla said....

Alaskan tundra, shot by Maisotti, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Bold action, big money needed to curb Asia floods

Space Daily via AFP: Asia's flood-prone megacities should fund major drainage, water recycling and waste reduction projects to stem deluges and secure clean supply for their booming populations, experts said Sunday.

Rapid urbanisation has heaped pressure on water resources and drainage systems across Asia, leaving low-lying areas exposed to massive floods such as those that paralysed Jakarta and Manila last year and central Thailand in 2011.

"The lust for land -- driven by urbanisation -- is narrowing drainage across most Asian cities so even small amounts of rainfall can cause massive problems," Kulwant Singh of the UN-HABITAT said at a water security forum in Thailand.

Citing the estimated $45 billion cost of the kingdom's catastrophic floods in late 2011, Singh said "there should be no question" of governments paying for big infrastructure projects to protect cities. "If ten years of wealth is suddenly wiped out, it makes sense to spend a fraction of that on long-term prevention," he added, urging consideration for ambitious prevention schemes.

Flood management has been in focus in Thailand since the 2011 floods, which inundated swathes of the country for months, deluged parts of the capital and tool a heavy toll on its lucrative manufacturing base....

Thailand flooding in October, 2011, photo by Voice of America

After Cyclone Mahasen, Myanmar camps face monsoon threat

The Times of India via AFP: Myanmar's victims of sectarian strife were spared the full force of Cyclone Mahasen, but many are now returning to flimsy tents in flood-prone camps with the monsoon just weeks away.

Myanmar's Rakhine state is pockmarked with makeshift settlements for up to 140,000 people -- mainly Rohingya Muslims -- displaced by sectarian unrest last year that claimed about 200 lives and saw whole villages razed.

Many were evacuated last week ahead of Cyclone Mahasen, which later veered into neighbouring Bangladesh. But most have now returned, according to Kirsten Mildren of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"They are actually no better off than where they were last week before the storm," she said, adding the cyclone was simply a "dress rehearsal" for the rainy season -- set to hit in a few weeks.

Many of the camps consist of little more than ramshackle bivouacs of bamboo and tarpaulin flung up in soggy paddy fields.  Sanitation is a key concern. Rain last week left standing water in many of the camps and Mildren said water-born diseases such as cholera were a particular fear...

Cyclone Mahasen on May 13, 2013

Carbon Based at the beach!

Somewhat fatigued with the strain of nonstop adaptation, Carbon Based took a break over the past few days.

Of course, we didn't call it that. Ostensibly we were inspecting coastal infrastructure on Cape Cod, taking careful note of eroding dunes, crumbling seawalls, and other cheery mainstays of this blog.  On both the bay side and the ocean side, we visited sites of interest, including Ballston Beach in Truro, Masssachussetts, where the sea broke through a dune in March and rushed inland, imperiling the town itself.  A protective dune has since been rebuilt.

But really, we were being lazy. Taking pictures of some birds, then having a little nap.  Nibbling at some fried clams, followed by another walk on the beach. 

Scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change stands

Science Daily: A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.

The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming -- 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing human-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)

Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.

The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that Earth is warming because of human activity.

John Cook said: "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary. There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it."

Caspar David Friedrich, Das Eismeer

Methane emissions higher than thought across much of US

University of California-Santa Barbara news release: After taking a rented camper outfitted with special equipment to measure methane on a cross-continent drive, a UC Santa Barbara scientist has found that methane emissions across large parts of the U.S. are higher than currently known, confirming what other more local studies have found. Their research is published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, stronger than carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though on a century timescale, carbon dioxide is far stronger. "This research suggests significant benefits to slowing climate change could result from reducing industrial methane emissions in parallel with efforts on carbon dioxide," said Ira Leifer, a researcher with UCSB's Marine Science Institute.

Leifer was joined by two UCSB undergraduate students on the road trip from Los Angeles to Florida, taking a primarily southern route through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and along the Gulf of Mexico. They used specialized instrumentation, a gas chromatograph, to measure methane. The device was mounted in the RV, with an air ram on the roof that collected air samples from in front of the vehicle.

"We tried to pass through urban areas during nighttime hours, to avoid being stuck in traffic and sampling mostly exhaust fumes," Leifer said. "Someone was always monitoring the chromatograph, and when we would see a strong signal, we would look to see what potential sources were in the area, and modify the survey to investigate and, if possible, circumnavigate potential sources."

...Previous methane studies have focused primarily on large-scale airborne data, which were challenging to separate from local sources, according to Leifer. In fact, clear identification of individual sources often could not be conducted, requiring computer models and other surface measurements....

Cross-country data superimposed over satellite data from SCIAMACHY and from GOSAT. Satellite data shows positive methane anomalies for the southern U.S. are centered on eastern Texas. From the UC-Santa Barbara website

Measure on Amazon sugar cultivation gains in Brazil Congress

Seed Daily via AFP: A bill that would allow increased sugar cultivation in the Amazon region has passed a key senate committee, in what activists decried as a major environmental setback. The measure, which still needs approval in the lower chamber of Brazil's Congress, authorizes sugar cultivation in deforested and savannah areas but not in untouched parts of the rainforest.

Marina Silva, an environmental activist, former cabinet minister and 2010 presidential candidate, called the bill's passage on Tuesday "a grave environmental setback" that "authorizes further deforestation to plant sugar cane."

Brazil is the world's leading producer of coffee, sugar cane, beef and orange juice, and is tied with the United States as the world's leading soy bean producer.

Senators supporting the bill say the country needs to increase sugar cane production to meet to future demand for both sugar and sugar-cane based ethanol. This would also boost the impoverished Amazon region's economy, they argue.

Environmentalists have long clashed with the agricultural lobby in the ongoing war over expanding Brazil's agricultural frontier....

Smoke from a Brazilian sugar cane factory, shot by Ramonbicudo, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

India develops cheap rotavirus vaccine

T.V. Padma in SciDev.net: An Indian vaccine against rotavirus — the leading cause of diarrhoea-related deaths in most developing countries — promises cheap home-grown protection while adding to the global basket of rotavirus vaccines, an international team announced.

Severe diarrhoea caused by rotavirus claims the lives of 453,000 under-five children worldwide each year. India tops the list, contributing to 22 per cent of the deaths or an estimated 100,000-163,000 each year. Half of India’s rotavirus-related diarrhoeal deaths are of less-than-a-year old infants.

The two internationally licensed oral rotavirus vaccines, GlaxoSmith Kline (GSK)’s Rotatrix and Merck’s Rotatec, are priced at US$ 40 per dose, but provided at US$ 2 per dose in poor countries under an arrangement with the Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative (GAVI).

This week (14 May), scientists announced in New Delhi the results of third phase of clinical trials — involving 6,799 infants in three Indian states — of Rotavac, an oral vaccine based on a strain circulating in India and developed under an Indo-US partnership.

Rotavac reduced severe rotavirus-related diarrhoea cases by 56 per cent in infants under-one year, with protection continuing into the second year, K Vijayargahavan, secretary, Department of Biotechnology, told an international symposium....

Computer reconstruction of a rotavirus particle, by Dr Graham Beards, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Illegal logging poses greater threat to liberia's forest

AllAfrica.com via Heritage (Monrovia): A fresh report released by the environmental watchdog Global Witness indicates that illegal logging in Liberia is posing greater threat to the country's forest.

The Global Witness' report, which states that illegal logging is robbing several people in Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo, substantiates the group's earlier report stating that last year in Liberia, "private use permits" were issued on a massive scale, allowing logging companies to claim more than 40 percent of the country's forests during a two-year period.

However, Global Witness' team leader for forest sector transparency, David Young, says, although the proportional scale of the problem was biggest in Liberia, the permits also pose a grave threat to Ghana, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Said Young: "The area involved proportionately in Liberia is much greater than in the other countries, so it was a much greater threat to Liberia's forests. But the systemic nature of them in the other countries, if not controlled, could lead to similar destruction."

Howbeit, the Global Witness' team leader for forest sector transparency added: "The good news in Liberia is that the president issued an executive decree in early 2013 to completely close down the private use permits, and she has promised criminal investigations and prosecutions where necessary. But that was back in January. We're now in May and we haven't seen much progress in that investigation and those prosecutions."...

A logging road in Liberia, shot by John Atherton, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

AccuWeather predicts busy Atlantic hurricane season

Doyle Rice in USA Today: Private weather firm AccuWeather has joined the parade of forecasting teams predicting a busy hurricane season in the Atlantic. In a forecast released this morning, AccuWeather expects that 16 named tropical storms will form, of which eight will be hurricanes.

A typical year, based on records that go back to 1950, has 12 tropical storms, of which seven are hurricanes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year, 19 named tropical storms developed. A tropical storm has sustained winds of 39 mph; it becomes a hurricane when its winds reach 74 mph.

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins June 1 and includes all tropical systems that form in the Atlantic, Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico.

Unusually warm water across the Atlantic and Caribbean, along with less frequent wind shear, should result in an above-normal number of storms.

AccuWeather says three of the storms are predicted to make landfall in the USA. Florida is long overdue for a direct hurricane hit, according to AccuWeather meteorologist Dan Kottlowski. Though the state has been hit by named tropical storms in the past couple of years, he says, a direct hit by a hurricane has not occurred since Hurricane Charley in 2004...

August 30, 2012, had four storm systems brewing: Hurricanes Isaac, Ileana, and Kirk, with Tropical Depression 12 tagging along. From NASA

Floods could overwhelm London as sea levels rise - unless Thames Barrier is upgraded

Steve Connor in the Independent (UK): There is significant risk of London being hit by a devastating storm surge in the Thames estuary by 2100 that could breach existing flood defences and cause immense damage to the capital, a study of global sea-level rise has found.

Melting of polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers could increase sea levels significantly over the coming decades leading to a 1 in 20 risk that the existing Thames Barrier would be unable to cope with an extreme storm surge, the study concluded.

Extreme storm surges that can breach the barrier would in the past have occurred with a frequency of about 1 in 1,000 years, but in a warmer world they could occur as frequently as 1 in every 10 years, scientists said.

The increased threat posed by rising sea levels is one of the reasons why flood defences around the Thames estuary and the barrier itself will be strengthened.

An international panel of glaciologists and climate scientists said there is still huge uncertainty about how sea levels will change in the coming century as a result of climate change and its effect on polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers....

The Thames Barrier at night, shot by John Sparshatt, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Diplomatic cables reveal aggressive lobbying for genetically modified plants by US officials

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): American diplomats lobbied aggressively overseas to promote genetically modified (GM) food crops such as soy beans, an analysis of official cable traffic revealed on Tuesday.

The review of more than 900 diplomatic cables by the campaign group Food and Water Watch showed a carefully crafted campaign to break down resistance to GM products in Europe and other countries, and so help promote the bottom line of big American agricultural businesses.

The cables, which first surfaced with the Wikileaks disclosures two years ago, described a series of separate public relations strategies, unrolled at dozens of press junkets and biotech conferences, aimed at convincing scientists, media, industry, farmers, elected officials and others of the safety and benefits of GM products.

The report offers a further glimpse of the power of the agricultural and biotech industries in America, after the supreme court came down on the side of Monsanto in its effort to enforce its patented GM soybeans....

Saudi Arabia sees more SARS-like virus cases

Al-Jazeerah.com: Saudi Arabia has confirmed four new cases of the SARS-like coronavirus in its Eastern Province, state media has reported, citing the health ministry.

The health ministry said that one of the four new cases had been treated and the patient had been released from hospital, while the three other new cases were still being treated, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Monday. 

On Sunday, Saudi Arabia said it had a total of 24 confirmed cases since the disease was identified last year, of whom 15 had died.

World Health Organisation officials visiting Saudi Arabia to consult with the authorities on the outbreak said on Sunday it seemed likely the new virus could be passed between humans, but only after prolonged, close contact....

The Gulf of Suez from orbit, via NASA

Urbanization and surface warming in eastern China

Space Daily via SPX: A recent study indicated that the urbanization in eastern China has significant impact on the observed surface warming and the temporal-spatial variations of urbanization effect have been comprehensively detected.

This work was led by YANG XiuQun, professor of meteorology in the Institute for Climate and Global Change Research, School of Atmospheric Sciences at Nanjing University. The article entitled "Urbanization and heterogeneous surface warming in eastern China" was published in Chinese Science Bulletin, 2013, No. 12.

Urbanization, as one of the most significant processes in land use/cover change, can not only alter surface vegetation distribution, but also affect surface energy and water balance.

Some previous studies indicated that urbanization has little impact on surface warming. However, recent investigations have suggested that urbanization plays an essential role in regional climate change.

China has been experiencing intensive urbanization since the 1980s. Due to close ties in social and economic aspects, single cities have expanded to form distinctive city clusters in eastern China, such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) city clusters...

This shows moving spatial anomalies of seasonal mean surface air temperature trends for three types of filtering window sizes (?: 8 + 8 , ?: 12 + 12 , ?: 16 + 16 ) for (a) summer and (b) winter (Unit: C per decade). Credit: Science China Press.

Scientists find extensive glacial retreat in Mount Everest region

A press release from the American Geophysical Union: Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world’s tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest region has been warming while snowfall has been declining since the early 1990s.

Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico – a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.

Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet), according to Sudeep Thakuri, who is leading the research as part of his PhD graduate studies at the University of Milan in Italy.

Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer are disappearing the fastest and have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area since the 1960s. Because the glaciers are melting faster than they are replenished by ice and snow, they are revealing rocks and debris that were previously hidden deep under the ice.  These debris-covered sections of the glaciers have increased by about 17 percent since the 1960s, according to Thakuri. The ends of the glaciers have also retreated by an average of 400 meters since 1962, his team found.

The researchers suspect that the decline of snow and ice in the Everest region is from human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate. However, they have not yet established a firm connection between the mountains’ changes and climate change, Thakuri said.

...“The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season,” said Thakuri. “Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production.”...

The north face of Everest, shot by Luca Galuzzi (Lucag), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Feds prepare for tough US fire season

Laurel Morales in KPBS: Federal officials told reporters Monday they are preparing for the worst this fire season. Severe drought conditions and beetle ravaged trees throughout the west combined with reduced firefighting budgets do not bode well for the coming weeks.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the Forest Service will have 500 fewer firefighters this season. That’s five percent less manpower. Vilsack says 45 million acres across the country need to be thinned or treated. But he says his agency is managing on a billion dollars less than it had five years ago due to across the board budget cuts.

"There’s no question there will be fewer acres treated," Vilsack said. "There will obviously be fewer firefighters. There will be fewer engines. Hopefully we’ll be able to manage this situation and make sure that people are protected and properties protected. I mean that’s the ultimate goal."

Even though the eastern states have had a mild fire season, fire experts said it will be a different story for the west. "As we transition out of the what is typically the eastern southeastern fire season and into the western fire season. We’re confident we’re going to see above normal fire potential in those areas," said Jeremy Sullens, wildfire analyst for the National Interagency Fire Center. Out west there's been severe drought conditions in place for quite some time. Very little precipitation has occurred since the beginning of 2013...

A 1936 fire in the Pacific Northwest

Peru spares Amazon rainforest from oil and gas push

David Hill in the Andes to Amazon blog in the Guardian (UK): Peru has announced a bidding round for new oil and gas concessions but, contrary to what was initially expected, none of them are in the Amazon rainforest. Nine concessions are to be auctioned, energy company Perupetro declared recently, but all of them are offshore along Peru's Pacific Ocean coast.

This constitutes a significant change of plan by Perupetro which last September issued a statement that before the end of 2012 36 new concessions would be established. According to a presentation made to the World Heavy Oil Congress in Aberdeen in Scotland the same month, 27 of these concessions – totaling millions of hectares – would be in the Amazon.

...Perupetro's new chairman, Luis Ortiga Cuneo, who took over from Ortiz in December, told Peruvian press the reason for the postponement was a 'prior consultation law' approved by Congress in 2011. The law's stated aim is to give "indigenous or native peoples" the right to be previously consulted about development projects or "administrative or legislative" measures affecting their collective rights to their "quality of life, cultural identity or physical existence."

...Amazon Watch's Andrew Miller, currently in Peru, says the "sustained campaigns of local indigenous communities, their federations and international allies appear to have changed the government's calculus. Whereas in the past they promoted the oil rounds to international companies without advising communities, now they have to comply with the consultation law."

But others remain extremely skeptical. "The government has been granting concessions without doing consultations for 40 years and it'll be difficult to change now," says Jesus Castro Suarez, from Lima-based NGO Eco-Dess. "I suspect they'll find some legal device to avoid consulting people. This can't or shouldn't be described as a civil society victory."...

Amazon Rainforest, seen from the Alto Madre de Dios river, in Peru, shot by Martin St-Amant (S23678), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

African Development Bank renews support of climate change resilience with additional resources from Least Developed Countries Fund

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: The African Development Bank, renewed its support for climate change resilience in Madagascar, Benin and Angola in accessing US $17.8 million of adaptation finance in the form of grants from the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) during the second quarter of 2013. It follows the approval last March of US $18.6 million for three water and sanitation projects.

Madagascar will receive US $6.2 million to promote climate change adaptation by ensuring (a) that agricultural water infrastructure planned with African Development Fund support is modified so as to be resilient in the face of climate change; (b) that the vulnerability of the agriculture catchment to cyclones and flooding is reduced, and (c) that local agricultural livelihoods are adapted to climate change through water management and health interventions.

Benin will receive US $7.2 million to allow flood control and climate resilience of agriculture infrastructures in Oueme Valley. Under this project, flooding risk mapping and climate resilient agriculture infrastructures like dykes will be promoted along with flood resistant grain storage systems.

Angola will receive US $4.4 million to increase the scope of the four pilot demonstration centres to climate change technology for sustainable development.

The Council of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), hosted under the Global Environment Facility (GEF), has approved financing totaling US $17.8 million for three agriculture and natural resource management projects. These projects aim at increasing the adaptation capacities of three African countries....

Global warming trends contribute to the spread of West Nile Virus to new regions in Europe

Newswise via the University of Haifa: Global warming trends have a significant influence on the spread of West Nile Virus to new regions in Europe and neighboring countries, where the disease wasn’t present before, according to a new study by the University of Haifa. The study was commissioned by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, which belongs to the European Union. The study found that rising temperatures have a more considerable contribution than humidity, to the spread of the disease, while the effect of rain was inconclusive.

“These results are an additional testament that global warming contributes to the outbreak of mosquito-borne and other temperature-sensitive vector-borne diseases. The indications to this are piling up in different parts around the globe”, says Dr. Shlomit Paz, who led this research. These findings were recently published in the online scientific journal, “Plos One”.

West Nile Virus is spread by mosquitoes that repeatedly bite infected birds. The potential threat the infection poses to man is the possibility of causing irreversible brain damage or even death through encephalitis or meningitis. The elderly and people with weak immune systems are most susceptible.

...The current study examined the link between daily temperature, humidity and precipitation data and West Nile incidence in Europe and neighboring countries. “We used statistical tools and found that as a result of heat waves, a dramatic increase in the number of cases resulted from increased activity of the virus and a growth of the mosquito population”, claims Paz. According to her, these results were seen in various countries....

A CDC electron micrograph of the West Nile virus

Ice-free arctic may be in our future

UMassAmherst Office of News & Media Relations: Analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic, recently completed by an international team led by Julie Brigham-Grette of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, provide “absolutely new knowledge” of Arctic climate from 2.2 to 3.6 million years ago and show that with estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) similar to today’s levels, the Arctic was very warm, with no ice sheets.

“While existing geologic records from the Arctic contain important hints about this time period, what we are presenting is the most continuous archive of information about past climate change from the entire Arctic borderlands. As if reading a detective novel, we can go back in time and reconstruct how the Arctic evolved with only a few pages missing here and there,” says Brigham-Grette.

Results of analyses that provide “an exceptional window into environmental dynamics” never before possible were published this week in Science and have “major implications for understanding the pacing and context of how the Arctic transitioned from a forested landscape without ice sheets to the ice- and snow-covered land we know today,” she adds.

Their data come from analyzing sediment cores collected in the winter of 2009 from under ice-covered Lake El’gygytgyn, the oldest deep lake in the northeast Russian Arctic. “Lake E” was formed 3.6 million years ago when a huge meteorite hit the Earth and blasted out an 11-mile (18 km) wide crater. It has been collecting sediment layers ever since. Luckily for geoscientists, it lies in one of the few Arctic areas not eroded by continental glaciers, so a thick, continuous sediment record was left remarkably undisturbed. Cores from Lake E reach back in geologic time nearly 30 times farther than Greenland ice cores that cover the past 140,000 years.

“One of our major findings is that the Arctic was very warm in the Pliocene [~ 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago] when others have suggestedatmospheric CO2 was very much like levels we see today. This could tell us where we are going in the near future. In other words, the Earth system response to small changes in carbon dioxide is bigger than suggested by earlier models,” the authors state....

NASA image showing the location of Lake El'gygytgyn

KFC China sales crash 36% in April on bird flu fears

Seed Daily via AFP: Sales of fast food giant KFC in China slumped an estimated 36 percent last month, according to parent Yum! Brands, as consumers shunned chicken due to the H7N9 bird flu outbreak in humans.

For Yum overall, which includes other restaurant chains such as Pizza Hut, Chinese same-store sales -- a measure of turnover in established outlets -- fell an estimated 29 percent in April, according to an exchange filing on Friday.

An outbreak of H7N9 avian influenza, found in humans for the first time, has killed 33 people in China since the government began reporting figures in late March, according to the official news agency Xinhua. Chinese cities have shut live poultry markets in response.

"Beginning the first week of April, publicity surrounding avian flu in China has had a significant, negative impact on KFC sales," Yum said. China is a key market for Yum, which has more than 4,200 KFC restaurants in the country...

Image shot by 陳炬燵, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

One-third of animal species will be hit by climate change, scientists warn

The Guardian (UK): One-third of common land animals could see dramatic losses this century because of climate change, scientists predict. More than half of plants could be hit the same way as habitats become unsuitable for numerous species. The collapse of ecosystems would have major economic impacts on agriculture, air quality, clean water access, and tourism.

Global temperatures are set to rise 4C above preindustrial levels by 2100 if nothing is done to stem greenhouse gas emissions. This could have a hugely destructive effect on thousands of common as well as rare and endangered species around the world, according to the researchers.

An estimated 57% of plants and 34% of animals were likely to lose half or more of their habitat range. But the damage would be greatly reduced if emissions were scaled down in time, the study shows. Losses are reduced by 60% if global warming is cut to 2% above preindustrial levels, with emissions peaking in 2016 and then being reduced by 5% a year. If emissions peak in 2030, losses are reduced by 40%.

Lead scientist Dr Rachel Warren, from the University of East Anglia's school of environmental science, said: "While there has been much research on the effect of climate change on rare and endangered species, little has been known about how an increase in global temperature will affect more common species....

A tree frog in Portland, Oregon, shot by CopyrightFreePhotos.HQ101.com, who has generously released the image into the public domain

Canadian oil company threatens the survival of Peru’s ‘Jaguar people’

Sarah Gilbertz in the Ecologist: The Yaquerana River in the Amazon rainforest marks the border between Peru and Brazil, but to the Matsés tribe, who live on both sides of it, this international border is meaningless. To them the streams, floodplains, and white-sand forests make up an ancestral territory that is shared by the entire tribe.

Today they are at risk of losing their land to a Canadian oil company which plans to cut hundreds of miles of seismic testing lines through their forest home and to drill exploratory wells.

There are around 2,200 Matsés living on the Peru-Brazil frontier in the Amazon rainforest. They hunt, fish and grow crops in their gardens; little is imported into their communities and most of what they need for survival comes from the rainforest. These communities live close to the riverbank, and every morning before the children go to school, they will join their parents and to catch the day’s fish.

....In 2012, the Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales began to explore for oil on part of the Matsés’ ancestral land. The $36 million project will see hundreds of seismic lines cut through 700 sq km of forest, and wells drilled in search of oil, affecting the headwaters of three major rivers that are essential to the Matsés’ livelihoods.

The Matsés are worried about the future of their forest and their own survival. In a rare interview with Survival International, Antonina Duni Goya Nesho, a Matsés woman, said “Oil will destroy the place where our rivers are born.  What will happen to the fish?  What will the animals drink?”...

International Finance Corporation and Deutsche Bank bankrolling Vietnamese land grabs in Cambodia and Laos

Global Witness: The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Deutsche Bank are financing Vietnamese rubber companies driving a wave of land and forest "grabs" in Cambodia and Laos, according to a new report and film by Global Witness.

The report, “Rubber Barons”, reveals how a pervasive culture of secrecy around plantation investments in the region has allowed two of Vietnam’s largest companies, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and the state-owned Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG), to acquire more than 200,000 hectares of land through a series of deals with the Lao and Cambodian governments that lack transparency.

It details how these rubber giants, with close links to the region’s notoriously corrupt political elites, operate with complete impunity, devastating local livelihoods and the environment in the process. Deutsche Bank has significant holdings in both companies, while the IFC invests in HAGL.

“We’ve known for some time that corrupt politicians in Cambodia and Laos are orchestrating the land grabbing crisis that is doing so much damage in the region. This report completes the picture by exposing the pivotal role of Vietnam’s rubber barons and their financiers, Deutsche Bank and the IFC,” said Megan MacInnes, Head of the Land Team at Global Witness. “Both companies are having severe impacts on the human rights of ordinary Lao and Cambodian citizens.  Often, the first time people learn of a plantation is when the company bulldozers arrive to clear their farms.”...

Red River cities focus on permanent flood protection

Dan Gunderson and Nathaniel Minor in Minnesota Public Radio: Residents of Fargo-Moorhead are cleaning up sandbags and removing temporary levees after the Red River's crest last week. As it turned out, most of that emergency preparation wasn't needed for this flood. Both cities are now turning their attention back to building permanent levees and flood walls.

Since the record flood in 2009, Moorhead has spent nearly $90 million buying homes along the Red River, replacing entire neighborhoods with five- to six-foot tall berms that serve as permanent levees. That work paid off this year, Moorhead City Manager Michael Redlinger said. "When we were planning for those stages of 39 and 40 feet, it was just a really different flood fight for us this year compared with 2009," Redlinger said.

In 2009, Moorhead used 2.5 million sandbags and eight miles of temporary earthen levees to hold back a 40.8-foot river level, protecting about 300 homes. The same level this year would have required about 300,000 sandbags and a few hundred feet of clay levee to protect about three dozen homes. Flood preparation in 2009 cost $5 million in Moorhead. This year, even if the flood had reached the same level as 2009, city officials estimate the cost would have been about $1 million.

When predictions of a record flood evaporated this year, it meant Moorhead could wait until closer to the river crest to react.

The city has purchased 215 flood-prone homes since 2009 and would like to purchase another 15 to 20 homes...

The Red River of the North rises above its banks and threatens to flood Fargo, ND, in April 2013. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed a temporary emergency levee along 2nd Street in Fargo, ND on Apr. 29, 2013. The Corps completed the temporary levee near the city hall to support the city’s efforts in fighting the flooding of the Red River of the North. This is the fourth time in the past five years that the Corps has assisted the city. Photo credit USACE. Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Carbon dioxide at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory reaches new milestone: Tops 400 ppm

NOAA: On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Independent measurements made by both NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been approaching this level during the past week. It marks an important milestone because Mauna Loa, as the oldest continuous carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement station in the world, is the primary global benchmark site for monitoring the increase of this potent heat-trapping gas.

Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities is the most significant greenhouse gas (GHG) contributing to climate change. Its concentration has increased every year since scientists started making measurements on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano more than five decades ago. The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.

“That increase is not a surprise to scientists,” said NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans, with the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is driving the acceleration.”

It was researcher Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, who began measuring carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa in 1958, initiating now what is known as the “Keeling Curve.” His son, Ralph Keeling, also a geochemist at Scripps, has continued the Scripps measurement record since his father’s death in 2005.

“There’s no stopping CO2 from reaching 400 ppm,” said Ralph Keeling. “That’s now a done deal. But what happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy.”...

Photo of the Mauna Loa Observatory by NOAA

Can nature help us withstand climate impacts?

PhysOrg: Flooding, landslides, crop failure, water shortages. Across the globe, the frequency with which humans are suffering the ill effects of climatic variability and extreme weather events is on the increase. Can natural environments be used effectively to help people adapt to the effects of climate change? The first systematic review of this question – facilitated by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) Collaborative Fund for Conservation – finds much evidence of their effectiveness.

...One adaptation option is to invest in costly, large-scale structures such as sea walls, irrigation systems and dams. But while their short-term impact is clear, these solutions lead to ever-increasing maintenance costs and often have negative impacts on local ecosystems and biodiversity. "International policy makers are having to think about the different approaches they could take, but the problem is that they don't have enough information to make informed decisions," said Munroe.

"Hard-engineered sea walls have a limited life span, and we know that they change wave and tidal currents, often to the detriment of saltmarshes or mangroves that act as a natural buffer to storm surges and coastal erosion. Do we really want to lose these buffers and face increasing costs of sea wall maintenance?" asked Dr Iris Möller, Deputy Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit in the Department of Geography.

"There's anecdotal evidence from events like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that villages surrounded by mangroves were significantly less affected by the tsunami than more exposed areas," she added. The mangroves may have saved thousands of lives and properties by absorbing a large proportion of the energy in the waves.

But local anecdotal evidence is not enough to provide a reliable measurement of the effectiveness of an approach. Now a review has been completed of the effectiveness of natural approaches to buffering the effects of climate change. Termed Ecosystem-based approaches for Adaptation (EbA), this relatively new concept incorporates approaches that have been used for a long time to address climatic variability, but not necessarily in the context of adaptation to climate change....

The Ganges Delta viewed from a NASA satellite

ESA's next Earth Explorer satellite will map the tropics

Space Daily via ESA: ESA's Earth Observation Programme Board has selected 'Biomass' to become the seventh Earth Explorer mission. The innovative satellite aims to map and monitor one of Earth's most precious resources. Following the review of three candidate concepts at the Board's meeting, the Biomass mission concept is set to become the next in a series of satellites developed to further our understanding of Earth.

The satellite will be designed to provide, for the first time from space, P-band radar measurements that are optimised to determine the amount of biomass and carbon stored in the world's forests with greater accuracy than ever before.

This information, which is poorly known in the tropics, is essential to our understanding of the role of forests in Earth's carbon cycle and in climate change. Reliable knowledge of tropical forest biomass also underpins the implementation of the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative - an international effort to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and land degradation in developing countries.

In addition, the measurements made by Biomass offer the opportunity to map the elevation of Earth's terrain under dense vegetation, yielding information on subsurface geology and allowing the estimation of glacier and ice-sheet velocities, critical to our understanding of ice-sheet mass loss in a warming Earth....

Dirty water is the major cause of Ugandan children's illness and death

Watuwa Timbiti in AllAfrica.com via New Vision (Uganda): At a communal water spring in Kinawataka, a low-end squalid suburb of Kampala, children with all sorts of repulsively dirty containers are not only collecting water, but equally littering the water point with rubbish.

Visibly, the stagnant water down the collection point is such a distasteful sight. At a short distance away, some ladies are drawn in washing clothes, some of which contain child excreta, used water runs off to the water point, thus contaminating it.

Such gross hygiene abuse is not limited to the Kinawataka spring, it is a replica of what happens at most community springs or water sources such as taps, in other poorly planned and densely populated areas of Kampala and Uganda as a whole. Many areas in the country have no access to safe water and improved sanitation.

Consequently, lack of access to safe water and absence of sanitation integrity due to contamination of most water sources has over time spurred repercussions, both of an economic and health nature, especially water-related diseases such as diarrhoea.

According to the minister of state for primary health care, as cited by the New Vision of February 25, over 400 people die daily of various infections, including diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, typhoid, ebola and marburg fever....

A girl at a well in Uganda, outside Kampala, shot by Barefootvet, public domain

South American climate change think tank launched

Daniela Hirschfeld in SciDev.net: South America has got its first think-tank aimed at providing climate change knowledge to decision-makers to help them design tools tailored to local needs. The Regional Centre for Climate Change and Decision-Making was launched earlier this year (19 March) in Montevideo, Uruguay, where it will have its headquarters and where it is organising its first training event for policymakers.

The centre is a joint initiative by the Panama-based Avina Foundation, which promotes sustainable development in Latin America, and UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Its programmes will be implemented through an interagency partnership of ten universities and academic foundations from five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

During the first two years of the four-year initiative, UNESCO will provide a total of US$150,000 and the Avina Foundation a further US$80,000 for the centre's operation, Ramiro Fernández, energy and climate change director for Latin America at the foundation tells SciDev.Net.

The first training event to take place in Uruguay — chosen to run the initiative because of the interest shown by its government in tackling climate change and the progress in its climate-change adaptation plans — will consist of a symposium and workshop in October with senior representatives and decision-makers....

The Uruguayan legislatiure building in Montevideo, shot by http://www.flickr.com/photos/libertinus/, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Colorado wildfires: Crews prepare for worst, expect average season

Jordan Steffen in the Denver Post: Spring rains and snow have made it unlikely there will be a repeat of last year's wildfire season — during which six people died and about 650 homes were destroyed — but fire crews in Colorado are prepared for the worst. Crews are stationed across the state, and fire management officers are looking for ways to mobilize equipment and firefighters to wildland blazes within hours instead of days.

Still, Coloradans must remain vigilant during what is predicted to be an average, and yet challenging, fire season in most areas of the state, Gov. John Hickenlooper said Thursday morning during his annual fire briefing. "It's important to recognize that it's not fighting fires, but preparing to fight fires," he said. "Coupled with that preparedness is prevention."

By this time last year, the Lower North Fork wildfire had already scorched thousands of acres in Jefferson County after embers from a state prescribed burn sparked the blaze. Local emergency-response agencies struggled to assess the speed of the fire and waited to order evacuations as the fire burned toward homes. Three people were killed in the fire, and almost two dozen homes were destroyed.

After that fire, Hickenlooper moved the firefighting and controlled-burn responsibilities of the Colorado Forest Service and the state Division of Emergency Management under the command of the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Under the new structure, and using lessons from multiple massive, devastating wildfires last year, state fire management officers spent the fall and winter months working with local responders to develop plans to mobilize and organize emergency resources faster, said Paul Cooke, director of the Division of Fire Prevention and Control at the Colorado Department of Public Safety...

Nebraska National Guard crewmembers of Company C 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Battalion dump water from a Bambi bucket onto flames of the High Park fire, in Larimer County, Colo., approximately 15 miles west of Fort Collins, June 18, 2012. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Tate Petersen, Company C, 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Support), Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flood insurance fears in the UK drive rise in calls for advice

Lisa Bachelor in the Guardian (UK): Householders [in the UK] whose homes have previously been flooded are seeking advice in record numbers over fears they will not be able to buy insurance from July onwards. The National Flood Forum (NFF) charity said the number of calls to its helpline trebled in the past year, with some callers reporting huge rises in the cost of their cover, and others saying they were unable to sell their properties.

The calls are increasing as the end of an agreement between the government and insurers approaches. This agreement, known as the "statement of principles", obliges insurers to offer flood insurance as part of standard household policies at reasonable rates, providing the government invests in flood defences. So far ministers and the industry have been unable to reach an agreement about what happens next.

The NFF said it has seen growing numbers of households getting in touch because they are struggling to sell their properties while it remains uncertain whether or not a new buyer would be able to get buildings insurance.

"I am sure everyone agrees that it is not government's business to support house prices, but you cannot ignore the likelihood of a significant markdown in value for perhaps 200,000 properties across the country," NFF chief executive Paul Cobbing said.

"Others are contacting us because their insurance premiums have been jacked up by ridiculous amounts, while a third group is telling us that insurers are now asking them for lots of extra information before they will renew their cover. This is despite the fact that under the 'statement of principles' an insurer has to continue to offer cover on renewal."...

The River Stour in flood, shot by Justin Rowe, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Air pollution increases risk of insulin resistance in children

EurekAlert via Diabetologica: New research shows that growing up in areas where air pollution is increased raises the risk of insulin resistance (the prescursor to diabetes) in children. The research is published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), and is by Elisabeth Thiering and Joachim Heinrich, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Neuherberg, Germany, and colleagues.

Previous studies have identified links between air pollution and other chronic conditions such as atherosclerosis and heart disease. However to date, epidemiological studies that have examined associations between long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and type 2 diabetes in adults are inconsistent, and studies on insulin resistance in children are scarce. Thus this new study sought to explore the possible association between air pollution and insulin resistance in children.

"Although toxicity differs between air pollutants, they are all considered potent oxidisers that act either directly on lipids and proteins or indirectly through the activation of intracellular oxidant pathways," says Heinrich.

"Oxidative stress caused by exposure to air pollutants may therefore play a role in the development of insulin resistance. In addition, some studies have reported that short-term and long-term increases in particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure lead to elevated inflammatory biomarkers, another potential mechanism for insulin resistance."...

Ahmedabad scores a 'heat action' first

Sujit Chakraborty in Thomson Reuters Foundation news: As summer high temperatures rise as a result of climate shifts, the western Indian city of Ahmedabad has put together a pioneering “heat action plan” to protect residents. In 2010, a heat wave in the city in Gujarat state killed 300 people in a single day, with temperatures hitting a high of 48.6 degrees Celsius.  The new plan aims to help vulnerable people take steps to reduce their exposure to extreme heat, as well improve the readiness of municipal agencies and medical services during summers, so that loss of life is minimised.

According to Anjali Jaiswal, director of the India Initiative of the US-based National Resources Defence Council (NRDC), which helped to formulate the plan, Ahmedabad is the first city in South Asia to take such a step.

“There are a handful of developed countries that have such plans,” said Dr Dileep Mavalankar, head of the Indian Institute of Public Health (IIPH) in Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat. “Such plans are now in place in cities in Australia (and) the U.S. state of California, and the NHS (National Health Service) in Britain has put this in place as well.”

Ahmedabad’s plan aims to use pamphlets and other mass communication tools such as billboards to raise awareness of the dangers of extreme heat among children, people who work outdoors and other vulnerable population groups, especially people who live in the slums. Slumdwellers make up about a quarter of Ahmedabad’s seven million residents, according to Jaiswal...

Evening of a hot day in Ahmedabad, shot by Abhishek Joshi, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Red Cross urges Kenya to declare Tana River a disaster zone

Alphonce Gari in AllAfrica.com via the Star (Kenya): The Kenya Red Cross Society wants the county and national government to declare Tana River as a disaster zone. Secretary General Abbas Gullet said the area was faced with many tragedies including the recent bloody clashes that left about 200 people dead and displaced over 40,000 people. The recent floods have also caused havoc and displaced thousands of residents.

Addressing journalists at Gamba area after touring the Internal Displaced victims for floods in Garsen Gullet said it's time the government allocated enough resources to the region so as to help the residents.

He spoke a time when over 3,507 victims of floods from 24 villages in Tanadelta are yet to be reached after their homes were marooned.The road networks were cut off and the only means to reach them is by boat or helicopter in order to evacuate and or help them with non food items and relief food.

The Garsen, Ijara Masalani road was completely cut off and residents have to use canoes to cross over to safety zones. "This is a double tragedy, the county and central government should declare this area as a disaster zone and help the locals to recover and set up proper shelters so as to resume with their normal lives," he said....

A Tana River bridge wrecked by a 1998 flood, US Marine Corps photo

Herd immunities -- a Carbon Based original

    Climate scientists suffer through repeated abuse by fossil fuel shills and other denialists.  But climate scientists are not the only pariahs. Denial crops up almost everywhere a country tries to base its policies on sound scientific theories.  Vaccination is an infuriating example.

    Vaccinate enough people against a contagious disease and the whole population enjoys immunity, even those who shunned the needle.  A herd thus protected contains fewer potential paths to contagion and the disease cannot spread as easily. 

    A large goal in public health is to strengthen herd immunity. A population can withstand a disease far better when the numbers of the unvaccinated are low.  Thus for decades various childhood diseases have faded into medical history.

    Until recently. 

    Anti-vaccinationists blame the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine for a supposed surge in autism.  They say that the cost of protecting against the childhood diseases is too high, that its dangers are downplayed so that pharmaceutical companies and others can flourish at the expense of their victims. The theory is that the mercury in the thimerosol-based vaccine has neurotoxicity.   Only it doesn't.  At great expense, the theory has been persistently refuted by large epidemiological studies.  Andrew Wakefield, the leading proponent of this theory, has been exposed and debunked many times, but is still a leading figure among the anti-vaxxers.

    Much as with climate change denial, the patient explanation of the facts about vaccines does little to change the minds of the zealots.   Like climate change denialists, the antivaccinationists cultivate the appearance of scientific reasoning while bypassing the content.   They refuse to accept any evidence of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. For example, elbow wagging explainers among the anti-vax crowd are at some pains to deny the existence of herd immunity.

    If thousands of people believe in astrology, it's unfortunate and laughable, but the harm is small. At least, I hope it is!  Not so with public health. Thanks to the work of celebrity anti-vaccinationists, an entirely avoidable public health emergency is at hand.  Measles, for example, has returned in Wales, in India, in Michigan, along with more cases of Down Syndrome.  

    A long-won battle is in danger of being lost because a large number of people don't believe in science.  Similar reality distortion goes on in discussions of climate change, when scientists tell people what they don't want to hear, and a surge of denial follows.

    Some herd immunities protect against disease.  Others protect against ignorance.  When ignorance is the risk, education is the vaccine.  That's the optimistic version, because ignorance can yield to knowledge at least some of the time.

    Like a disease, ignorance can kill or injure, wreaking long-lasting damage in many fields.  But the damage dwindles if ignorant people are mixed among a population of the better informed.  If enough people behave responsibly, the benighted can shun the vaccine and the public health damage won't be too great.  But this willfully ignorant group is always too large.  This is especially true of climate change.

    In matters of climate change policy, herd immunity requires widespread public knowledge of science.  If enough people pay enough attention to scientific matters, they improve their chances of making sound policy decisions. The protection is not perfect, and their scientific understanding may be flawed or full of holes.   But if they've taken steps to overcome their ignorance, then there's a better chance of enacting sound policies, and changing course when mistakes appear.

    The climate change debate, similar to the vaccination debate, hinges on the true cost of externalities -- not just the upfront economic cost of producing the energy, but the long-range ecological and risk costs as well.   The irony in the climate change debate is that the market mechanisms that could start to price in these long-range costs is exactly what the denialists abhor.  Their free market faith leads them to reject market mechanisms that might actually work.  They give capitalism a bad name.

    Of course, more than ignorance blocks acceptance of climate change action. There are the large minority of people who profit from greenhouse gas emissions, and their short-term interests trump everything. They may be well enough informed scientifically, but ideology and self-interest trump the science.  Ignorance and self-interest are overwhelming allies. 

    In climate change, a third of Americans reject any attempt to rein in free markets, which so far has been enough to stymie meaningful global action on climate.  The free market ideology, lovingly stoked for decades by a rightwing press, has resulted in toxic policy debate in which measures that are known to work can never be mentioned.

    The costs will be crushing.  Climate economist Nicholas Stern has estimate that climate change will cost about 5 percent of global GDP each year from here on out.

    So science education matters, but it's not a sufficient condition for progress.  Every high school in America could teach a sound course on climate change, and public opinion would not budge, I fear. We have a terrible example of what can happen with the teaching of evolution.  Once the deinal is mobilized, it's almost impossible to eradicate.   

    Some herds appear determined to hurt themselves.  They expose everyone to risks, whether out of ignorance or short-term self interest.  We keep coming back to the sour cosmic observation that Albert Einstein made: "Stupidity is stronger than genius because there is so much more of it."

Photo by Brian Thomas, public domain