Hotter, weirder: How climate change has changed Earth

December 2, 2014, 8:37 AM

Smoke rises from trees burnt overnight by the King Fire in Fresh Pond northeast of Sacramento, California September 18, 2014. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the more than two decades since world leaders first got together to try to solve global warming, life on Earth has changed, not just the climate. It’s gotten hotter, more polluted with heat-trapping gases, more crowded and just downright wilder.

The numbers are stark. Carbon dioxide emissions: up 60 percent. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches. U.S. extreme weather: up 30 percent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice.

“Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences,” says Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.

Diplomats from more than 190 nations opened talks Monday at a United Nations global warming conference in Lima, Peru, to pave the way for an international treaty they hope to forge next year.

To see how much the globe has changed since the first such international conference – the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – The Associated Press scoured databases from around the world. The analysis, which looked at data since 1983, concentrated on 10-year intervals ending in 1992 and 2013. This is because scientists say single years can be misleading and longer trends are more telling.

Our changing world by the numbers:

WILD WEATHER

Since 1992, there have been more than 6,600 major climate, weather and water disasters worldwide, causing more than $1.6 trillion in damage and killing more than 600,000 people, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Belgium, which tracks the world’s catastrophes.

While climate-related, not all can be blamed on man-made warming or climate change. Still, extreme weather has noticeably increased over the years, says Debby Sapir, who runs the center and its database. From 1983 to 1992 the world averaged 147 climate, water and weather disasters each year. Over the past 10 years, that number has jumped to an average 306 a year.

In the United States, an index of climate extremes – hot and cold, wet and dry – kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has jumped 30 percent from 1992 to 2013, not counting hurricanes, based on 10-year averages.

NOAA also keeps track of U.S. weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion, when adjusted for inflation. Since 1992, there have been 136 such billion-dollar events.

Worldwide, the 10-year average for weather-related losses adjusted for inflation was $30 billion a year from 1983-92, according to insurance giant Swiss Re. From 2004 to 2013, the cost was more than three times that on average, or $131 billion a year.

Sapir and others say it would be wrong to pin all, or even most, of these increases on climate change alone. Population and poverty are major factors, too. But they note a trend of growing extremes and more disasters, and that fits with what scientists have long said about global warming.

It’s this increase that’s “far scarier” than the simple rise in temperatures, University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Wuebbles says.

TEMPERATURE

It’s almost a sure thing that 2014 will go down as the hottest year in 135 years of record keeping, meteorologists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center say. If so, this will be the sixth time since 1992 that the world set or tied a new annual record for the warmest year.

The globe has broken six monthly heat records in 2014 and 47 since 1992. The last monthly cold record set was in 1916.

So the average annual temperature for 2014 is on track to be about 58.2 degrees (14.6 degrees Celsius), compared with 57.4 degrees (14.1 degrees Celsius) in 1992. The past 10 years have averaged a shade below 58.1 degrees (nearly 14.5 degrees Celsius) – six-tenths of a degree warmer than the average between 1983 and 1992.

THE OCEANS

The world’s oceans have risen by about 3 inches since 1992 and gotten a tad more acidic – by about half a percent – thanks to chemical reactions caused by the absorption of carbon dioxide, scientists at NOAA and the University of Colorado say.

Every year sea ice cover shrinks to a yearly minimum size in the Arctic in September – a measurement that is considered a key climate change indicator. From 1983 to 1992, the lowest it got on average was 2.62 million square miles. Now the 10-year average is down to 1.83 million square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That loss – an average 790,000 square miles since 1992 – overshadows the slight gain in sea ice in Antarctica, which has seen an average gain of 110,000 square miles of sea ice over the past 22 years.

ON LAND

The world’s population in 1992 was 5.46 billion. Today, it’s nearly a third higher, at 7.18 billion. That means more carbon pollution and more people who could be vulnerable to global warming.

14 Photos

Wildfires in California

The effects of climate change can be seen in harsher fire seasons. Wildfires in the western United States burned an average of 2.7 million acres each year between 1983 and 1992; now that’s up to 7.3 million acres from 1994 to 2013, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

And some of the biggest climate change effects on land are near the poles, where people don’t often see them. From 1992 to 2011, Greenland’s ice sheet lost 3.35 trillion tons of ice, according to calculations made by scientists using measurements from NASA’s GRACE satellite. Antarctica lost 1.56 trillion tons of ice over the same period.

THE AIR

Scientists simply point to greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide, that form a heat-trapping blanket in our air.

There’s no need to average the yearly amount of carbon dioxide pollution: It has increased steadily, by 60 percent, from 1992 to 2013. In 1992, the world spewed 24.9 billion tons of carbon dioxide; now it is 39.8 billion, according to the Global Carbon Project, an international consortium.

China has tripled its emissions from 3 billion tons to 11 billion tons a year. The emissions from the U.S. have gone up more slowly, about 6 percent, from 5.4 billion tons to 5.8 billion tons. India also has tripled its emissions, from 860 million tons to 2.6 billion tons. Only European countries have seen their emissions go down, from 4.5 billion tons to 3.8 billion tons.

WHAT SCIENTISTS SAY

“Overall, what really strikes me is the missed opportunity,” Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said in an email.

“We knew by the early 1990s that global warming was coming, yet we have done essentially nothing to head off the risk. I think that future generations may be justifiably angry about this.”

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State. “Greenhouse gases are rising steadily and the cause is fossil fuel burning and other human activities. The globe is warming, ice is melting and our climate is changing as a result.”

© 2014 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Climate change accelerating death of Western forests

(Photo: Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY)

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DENVER — The iconic pine and aspen forests of the Rocky Mountains are dying off at an alarming rate thanks to conditions exacerbated by climate change — drought, insect infestations and wildfires — a new report says.

Colorado alone could lose 45% of its aspen stands over the next 45 years, says the report released Thursday by the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. Pine bark beetles alone have killed 46 million acres of trees across the west, an area nearly the size of Colorado.

“The wildfires, infestations and heat and drought stress are the symptoms; climate change is the underlying disease,” Jason Funk, the report’s co-author and a senior climate scientist at Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.

Projections by the U.S. Forest Service that were included in the report, predict that if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue increasing at recent rates, by 2060 the area climatically suitable in the Rocky Mountains for lodgepole pine could decline by about 90%, for ponderosa pine by about 80%, for Engelmann spruce by about 66% and for Douglas fir by about 58%.

National forests and parks play a key role in the economies of Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. National parks in those states, including Yellowstone and Glacier, host about 11 million visitors annually, generating $1 billion in tourist spending, the report, Rocky Mountain Forests at Risk, said. If the landscapes significantly change, tourists may no longer visit those areas, it said.

The trees grow in different areas, depending on how cold the winters get and how warm the summers are. If climate change alters those levels, the trees won’t grow there anymore.

“So far, we have had relatively modest climate changes, but they have already jolted our forests,” said Stephen Saunders, report co-author and president of Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. “If we continue changing the climate, we may bring about much more fundamental disruption of these treasured national landscapes.”

Climate change, overfishing degrading ocean health faster than predicted

Hazel Bender October 3, 2013 Tech & Science

International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) has warned against the deteriorating condition of the world’s ocean citing that the water bodies are facing multiple threats.

 A latest review report conducted by the IPSO suggests that the health of the oceans is degrading even faster than had previously been thought.Among the reasons responsible for the great disaster is the climate change. Scientists say, the water bodies are being heated by global warming, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing carbon dioxide and suffering from overfishing and pollution.The report reads, “The conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past. We have been taking the ocean for granted. It has been shielding us from the worst effects of accelerating climate change by absorbing excess CO2 from the atmosphere.

The reports highlights, “Whilst terrestrial temperature increases may be experiencing a pause, the ocean continues to warm regardless. For the most part, however, the public and policymakers are failing to recognise – or choosing to ignore – the severity of the situation.”

Coral reefs, that are regarded as the beauty of the oceans, are suffering from the higher temperatures and the effects of acidification whilst also being weakened by bad fishing practices, pollution, siltation and toxic algal blooms.

The IPSO wants to drawn the attention of the world leaders, urging much more focused fisheries management, and a priority list for tackling the key groups of chemicals that cause most harm. IPSO stresses upon a new agreement for the sustainable fishing in the high oceans to be policed by a new global high seas enforcement agency.

The IUCN’s Prof Dan Laffoley said: “What these latest reports make absolutely clear is that deferring action will increase costs in the future and lead to even greater, perhaps irreversible, losses. The UN climate report confirmed that the ocean is bearing the brunt of human-induced changes to our planet. These findings give us more cause for alarm – but also a roadmap for action. We must use it.”

 

 

Global food waste creates more carbon than any country, except the US and China

September 12, 2013

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A new report called “The Food Wastage Footprint [pdf]” produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has found that globally about a third of the food produced for humans is wasted and this is creating a huge increase in carbon emissions, as well as a major waste of water.

Reuters reports:

Every year about a third of all food for human consumption, around 1.3 billion tons, is wasted, along with all the energy, water and chemicals needed to produce it and dispose of it.

Almost 30 percent of the world’s farmland, and a volume of water equivalent to the annual discharge of the River Volga, are in effect being used in vain.

This report also concludes that this waste creates 3.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases.

This means that in addition to just being a colossal waste of money on the individual scale, food waste is also contributing to the global warming that is going to make food production even more challenging in the future. That is a dangerous cycle we need to break.

Kate Valentine at Think Progress points out that tackling food waste could help alleviate strain on the environment:

Reducing this food waste isn’t just necessary to help the climate — it’s important if the planet wants to avoid future spikes in food insecurity. By 2050, the report notes, food production will need to increase by 60 percent in order to meet the Earth’s growing population’s demand. Reducing food waste would lessen this need to increase production and would help alleviate further strain on natural resources.

The Fate Of Our Farms

 

The federal farm bill runs out in September, and so far, there is no compromise in Washington to extend it. To understand what lawmakers should do, you first must know all the bad the current policy does. (AprilMuse/flickr)

“Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

–William Jennings Bryan, 1896

Presidential candidate Bryan was biased — he hailed from Nebraska and the nation’s breadbasket — but he had a point. Even today, when fewer than 2 percent of Americans live on farms, agriculture might fairly be called our economy’s linchpin; we all have to eat. To its everlasting credit, our industrial farm system has created something our ancestors craved: a cheap, guaranteed food supply. But by any other quality measure, 21st century agriculture flunks. With the current federal farm bill expiring Sept. 30, Congress is poised, surprise surprise, to screw up its rewrite.

To understand what lawmakers should do, you first must know all the bad the current policy does.

To understand what lawmakers should do, you first must know all the bad the current policy does. It squanders taxpayers’ money, subsidizing the production primarily of five commodities (soybeans, cotton, corn, wheat and rice) grown largely by corporate and well-off farmers. Those five include essential ingredients in the junk foods making us fat. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates we’d avoid up to 127,000 heart disease deaths annually if Americans ate the USDA’s recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables — and those juicy strawberries, tangy blueberries, and succulent tomatoes you’ve savored this summer generally aren’t subsidized.

Current ag policy also poisons the environment. (Two examples: “The world’s largest ocean dead zone — an area the size of New Jersey devoid of aquatic life” — is a Gulf of Mexico stretch killed by agricultural runoff, a Yale magazine reports. And industrial livestock farming vomits greenhouse gases.) Between pesticides and the antibiotics used on livestock so promiscuously that diseases are becoming resistant to them, we may be poisoning ourselves. Congressional climate change deniers, meanwhile, are blocking action to address a potential “Coming Food Crisis” due to broiling temperatures. Finally, factory-farmed animals endure what can fairly be called torture.

Against this backdrop, Congress is pondering “reform” ideas that could fertilize all of Texas. House Republicans and Senate Democrats propose varying cuts to SNAP (food stamps). SNAP comprises the bulk of farm bill spending but helps the needy and is less fraud-riddled than farm supports. Another legislative legerdemain would delete direct crop subsidies, then funnel much of the savings to the same undeserving growers by boosting subsidies for their premiums under the government-supported crop insurance program.

Given the farm lobby’s clout, any good reform doubtless will be gradual. (Bill Clinton signed a phase-out of farm subsidies in 1996, only to sit back as a craven Congress did an end-run.) Economies of scale have been promoting Big Agriculture over idyllic family farms since the Gilded Age. Reform, it should be noted, doesn’t mean kamikaze attempt to produce everything locally, but rather shifting support to regionally produced food that’s healthier, environmentally benign, humane, and doesn’t pad rich people’s wallets.

A good farm bill would begin with a process farmers know well: pruning. We’d phase out direct subsidies, and trim insurance subsidies to wealthy farms and insurance companies (yes, you’re bankrolling them, too). The tens of billions saved would not only dwarf the proposed SNAP cuts, according to New York Times food guru Mark Bittman; they would be more than enough money for better uses.

Heat wave challenges mushroom growers

08/16/2013    Tom Burfield

Growers have been experiencing challenges due to a heat wave in the Northeast as well as an increase in demand.Mushroom sales have been strong lately, and grower-shippers hope they’ll stay that way despite a spate of hot weather in Pennsylvania.

“We’re going through a heat wave here like crazy,” Fred Recchiuti, general manager at Basciani Mushroom Farms, Avondale, Pa., said in mid-July.

Temperatures ranged from 90 degrees to 96 degrees every day from July 14 through July 20.

Without sufficient air conditioning, mushrooms face reduced yields and lower quality. In some cases they can be subjected to “thermal runaway,” which can result in total crop loss, Recchiuti said.

Basciani Mushroom Farms has the ability to add air conditioning capacity but that can dramatically increase the cost per pound.

Paul Frederic, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Avondale-based To-Jo Mushrooms, said the hot weather did not affect crops, but 95-degree days could have an impact on compost that is prepared outdoors.

“It makes everything a little bit more challenging,” he said.

A heat wave is more likely to affect production than quality, he added.

Reduction in yields could result because high outdoor temperatures and dry conditions can affect the process to produce the substrate to be used in the coming weeks or months to grow mushrooms, said Laura Phelps, president of the American Mushroom Institute, Washington, D.C.