Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Centro brasileiro aumenta em quatro vezes a precisão da previsão do tempo (JC/O Globo)

13/06/2013UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4746, de 13 de Junho de 2013.

Novo modelo do CPTEC, que usa o supercomputador Tupã, consegue mapear com resolução de cinco quilômetros quadrados. Reportagem de O Globo

Os olhos da previsão do tempo no Brasil passaram a enxergar melhor. Com quatro vezes mais precisão, mais precisamente. O Centro de Previsão do Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC/INPE) lançou uma atualização do modelo Brams de previsão, turbinado agora pela alta capacidade de processamento do supercomputador Tupã, instalado em Cachoeira Paulista. Antes, o Brams fazia previsões de até uma semana com nitidez de 20 quilômetros quadrados. Agora, a resolução é de 5 quilômetros quadrados para os mesmos sete dias.

Com a nova versão, o nível de detalhe da previsão, que antes se limitava a uma cidade ou região, desta vez consegue diferenciar um bairro do outro. A consulta ao novo modelo meteorológico é gratuita e está disponível no site do CPTEC.

Para cobrir toda a América do Sul, o Brams dividiu o território como num grande jogo de batalha naval, com 1360 por 1480 células de área. Como é um modelo em três dimensões, há também 55 níveis verticais para cada uma destas células. No total, são 110 milhões de pontos, processados simultaneamente nos 9.600 processadores do Tupã.

Segundo o CPTEC, a versão 5.0 do Brams coloca o Brasil em posição de competitividade com os principais centros operacionais do mundo. O centro de previsão do National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), por exemplo, gera previsões a partir de um modelo similar – o National Mesoscale Model – de 4 quilômetros, 70 níveis verticais e grade de 1371 x 1100 células, que cobre toda a região continental dos Estados Unidos.

Para desenvolver esta nova versão do modelo BRAMS, também utilizado para a previsão e monitoramento da poluição do ar, são usados dados de estações meteorológicas de todo o país, de satélites, boias oceânicas e imagens de avião.

http://oglobo.globo.com/ciencia/centro-brasileiro-aumenta-em-quatro-vezes-precisao-da-previsao-do-tempo-8667823#ixzz2W6YkxWkF

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Inpe lança modelo de previsão de tempo com altíssima resolução

O novo padrão cobre toda a América do Sul

Uma nova versão do modelo regional Brams de previsão de tempo, que cobre toda a América do Sul, foi lançada pelo Centro de Previsão do Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC)do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe/MCTI). O Brams, versão 5.0, já está operacional para até sete dias.

O modelo gera previsões com resolução espacial de 5 quilômetros, enquanto o anterior fornecia previsões com resolução de 20 quilômetros. O avanço só foi possível devido À alta capacidade de processamento do novo supercomputador Cray, do Inpe, o Tupã, instalado no CPTEC, em Cachoeira Paulista (SP).

Os desenvolvimentos para tornar a nova versão do Brams operacional levaram cerca de um ano. Para cobrir toda a extensão da América do Sul, foram necessárias 1.360 x 1.480 células horizontais e 55 níveis verticais. As células de grade, num total de 110 milhões, aproximadamente, são processadas simultaneamente nos 9.600 processadores do Cray, em computação paralela.

Este esforço coordenado pelo Grupo de Modelagem Atmosférica e Interfaces (Gmai) colocou o CPTEC em posição de competitividade em relação aos principais centros operacionais do mundo. O centro de previsão do National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), por exemplo, gera previsões a partir de um modelo similar – o National Mesoscale Model – de 4 quilômetros, 70 níveis verticais e grade de 1.371 x 1.100 células, que cobre toda a região continental dos Estados Unidos.

Para desenvolver esta nova versão do modelo Brams, também utilizado para a previsão e monitoramento da poluição do ar, utilizou-se um modelo não hidrostático, que representa com maior precisão processos físicos de menor escala, como o desenvolvimento e a dissipação de nuvens e chuvas. Diversos avanços em parametrização (representações matemáticas de processos físicos) foram realizados para nuvens, radiação solar e processos e dinâmicas de superfície.

(Ascom do Inpe)

Climate Researchers Discover New Rhythm for El Niño (Science Daily)

06/06/2013UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Matemática, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

May 27, 2013 — El Niño wreaks havoc across the globe, shifting weather patterns that spawn droughts in some regions and floods in others. The impacts of this tropical Pacific climate phenomenon are well known and documented.

This is a schematic figure for the suggested generation mechanism of the combination tone: The annual cycle (Tone 1), together with the El Niño sea surface temperature anomalies (Tone 2) produce the combination tone. (Credit: Malte Stuecker)

A mystery, however, has remained despite decades of research: Why does El Niño always peak around Christmas and end quickly by February to April?

Now there is an answer: An unusual wind pattern that straddles the equatorial Pacific during strong El Niño events and swings back and forth with a period of 15 months explains El Niño’s close ties to the annual cycle. This finding is reported in the May 26, 2013, online issue of Nature Geoscience by scientists from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Meteorology Department and International Pacific Research Center.

“This atmospheric pattern peaks in February and triggers some of the well-known El Niño impacts, such as droughts in the Philippines and across Micronesia and heavy rainfall over French Polynesia,” says lead author Malte Stuecker.

When anomalous trade winds shift south they can terminate an El Niño by generating eastward propagating equatorial Kelvin waves that eventually resume upwelling of cold water in the eastern equatorial Pacific. This wind shift is part of the larger, unusual atmospheric pattern accompanying El Niño events, in which a high-pressure system hovers over the Philippines and the major rain band of the South Pacific rapidly shifts equatorward.

With the help of numerical atmospheric models, the scientists discovered that this unusual pattern originates from an interaction between El Niño and the seasonal evolution of temperatures in the western tropical Pacific warm pool.

“Not all El Niño events are accompanied by this unusual wind pattern” notes Malte Stuecker, “but once El Niño conditions reach a certain threshold amplitude during the right time of the year, it is like a jack-in-the-box whose lid pops open.”

A study of the evolution of the anomalous wind pattern in the model reveals a rhythm of about 15 months accompanying strong El Niño events, which is considerably faster than the three- to five-year timetable for El Niño events, but slower than the annual cycle.

“This type of variability is known in physics as a combination tone,” says Fei-Fei Jin, professor of Meteorology and co-author of the study. Combination tones have been known for more than three centuries. They where discovered by violin builder Tartini, who realized that our ear can create a third tone, even though only two tones are played on a violin.

“The unusual wind pattern straddling the equator during an El Niño is such a combination tone between El Niño events and the seasonal march of the sun across the equator” says co-author Axel Timmermann, climate scientist at the International Pacific Research Center and professor at the Department of Oceanography, University of Hawai’i. He adds, “It turns out that many climate models have difficulties creating the correct combination tone, which is likely to impact their ability to simulate and predict El Niño events and their global impacts.”

The scientists are convinced that a better representation of the 15-month tropical Pacific wind pattern in climate models will improve El Niño forecasts. Moreover, they say the latest climate model projections suggest that El Niño events will be accompanied more often by this combination tone wind pattern, which will also change the characteristics of future El Niño rainfall patterns.

Journal Reference:

Malte F. Stuecker, Axel Timmermann, Fei-Fei Jin, Shayne McGregor, Hong-Li Ren. A combination mode of the annual cycle and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation.Nature Geoscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1826

Global Warming Caused by CFCs, Not Carbon Dioxide, Researcher Claims in Controversial Study (Science Daily)

06/06/2013Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

May 30, 2013 — Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to a researcher from the University of Waterloo in a controversial new study published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week.

Annual global temperature over land and ocean. (Credit: Image by Q.-B. Lu)

CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now suggests that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, the researcher argues.

“Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry in Waterloo’s Faculty of Science. “In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming.”

“Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO₂ levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850. What’s striking is that since 2002, global temperatures have actually declined — matching a decline in CFCs in the atmosphere,” Professor Lu said. “My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline.”

The findings are based on in-depth statistical analyses of observed data from 1850 up to the present time, Professor Lu’s cosmic-ray-driven electron-reaction (CRE) theory of ozone depletion and his previous research into Antarctic ozone depletion and global surface temperatures.

“It was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer was depleted by the sun’s ultraviolet light-induced destruction of CFCs in the atmosphere,” he said. “But in contrast, CRE theory says cosmic rays — energy particles originating in space — play the dominant role in breaking down ozone-depleting molecules and then ozone.”

Lu’s theory has been confirmed by ongoing observations of cosmic ray, CFC, ozone and stratospheric temperature data over several 11-year solar cycles. “CRE is the only theory that provides us with an excellent reproduction of 11-year cyclic variations of both polar ozone loss and stratospheric cooling,” said Professor Lu. “After removing the natural cosmic-ray effect, my new paper shows a pronounced recovery by ~20% of the Antarctic ozone hole, consistent with the decline of CFCs in the polar stratosphere.”

By demonstrating the link between CFCs, ozone depletion and temperature changes in the Antarctic, Professor Lu was able to draw almost perfect correlation between rising global surface temperatures and CFCs in the atmosphere.

“The climate in the Antarctic stratosphere has been completely controlled by CFCs and cosmic rays, with no CO₂ impact. The change in global surface temperature after the removal of the solar effect has shown zero correlation with CO₂ but a nearly perfect linear correlation with CFCs — a correlation coefficient as high as 0.97.”

Data recorded from 1850 to 1970, before any significant CFC emissions, show that CO₂ levels increased significantly as a result of the Industrial Revolution, but the global temperature, excluding the solar effect, kept nearly constant. The conventional warming model of CO₂, suggests the temperatures should have risen by 0.6°C over the same period, similar to the period of 1970-2002.

The analyses support Lu’s CRE theory and point to the success of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

“We’ve known for some time that CFCs have a really damaging effect on our atmosphere and we’ve taken measures to reduce their emissions,” Professor Lu said. “We now know that international efforts such as the Montreal Protocol have also had a profound effect on global warming but they must be placed on firmer scientific ground.”

“This study underlines the importance of understanding the basic science underlying ozone depletion and global climate change,” said Terry McMahon, dean of the faculty of science. “This research is of particular importance not only to the research community, but to policy makers and the public alike as we look to the future of our climate.”

Professor Lu’s paper, “Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change,” also predicts that the global sea level will continue to rise for some years as the hole in the ozone recovers increasing ice melting in the polar regions.

“Only when the effect of the global temperature recovery dominates over that of the polar ozone hole recovery, will both temperature and polar ice melting drop concurrently,” says Lu.

The peer-reviewed paper published this week not only provides new fundamental understanding of the ozone hole and global climate change but has superior predictive capabilities, compared with the conventional sunlight-driven ozone-depleting and CO₂-warming models, Lu argues.

Journal Reference:

Q.-B. Lu. Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change. International Journal of Modern Physics B, 2013; 1350073 DOI: 10.1142/S0217979213500732

Subcommittee Reviews Legislation to Improve Weather Forecasting (Subcommittee on Environmen, House of Representatives, USA)

31/05/2013Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

MAY 23, 2013

Washington, D.C. – The Subcommittee on Environment today held a hearing to examine ways to improve weather forecasting at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Witnesses provided testimony on draft legislation that would prioritize weather-related research at NOAA, in accordance with its critical mission to protect lives and property through enhanced weather forecasting. The hearing was timely given the recent severe tornadoes in the mid-west and super-storms like Hurricane Sandy.

Environment Subcommittee Chairman Chris Stewart (R-Utah): “We need a world-class system of weather prediction in the United States – one, as the National Academy of Sciences recently put it, that is ‘second to none.’ We can thank the hard-working men and women at NOAA and their partners throughout the weather enterprise for the great strides that have been made in forecasting in recent decades. But we can do better. And it’s not enough to blame failures on programming or sequestration or lack of other resources. As the events in Moore, Oklahoma have demonstrated, we have to do better. But the good news is that we can.”

Experts within the weather community have raised concern that the U.S. models for weather prediction have fallen behind Europe and other parts of the world in predicting weather events.The Weather Forecasting Improvement Act, draft legislation discussed at today’s hearing, would build upon the down payment made by Congress following Hurricane Sandy and restore the U.S. as a leader in this field through expanded computing capacity and data assimilation techniques.

Rep. Stewart: “The people of Moore, Oklahoma received a tornado warning 16 minutes before the twister struck their town. Tornado forecasting is difficult but lead times for storms have become gradually better. The draft legislation would prioritize investments in technology being developed at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Oklahoma, which ‘has the potential to provide revolutionary improvements in… tornado… warning lead times and accuracy, reducing false alarms’ and could move us toward the goal of being able to ‘warn on forecast.’”

The following witnesses testified today:

Mr. Barry Myers, Chief Executive Officer, AccuWeather, Inc.

Mr. Jon Kirchner, President, GeoOptics, Inc.

Geoengineering: Can We Save the Planet by Messing with Nature? (Democracy Now!)

23/05/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Economia, Geoengenharia, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Video: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/20/geoengineering_can_we_save_the_planet

Clive Hamilton, professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia. He is the author of the new book, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering.

Overheated rhetoric on climate change doesn’t make for good policies (Washington Post)

23/05/2013UncategorizedClima, Economia, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

By Lamar Smith, Published: May 19, 2013

Lamar Smith, a Republican, represents Texas’s 21st District in the U.S. House and is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options. The rhetoric has driven some policymakers toward costly regulations and policies that will harm hardworking American families and do little to decrease global carbon emissions. The Obama administration’s decision to delay, and possibly deny, the Keystone XL pipeline is a prime example.

The State Department has found that the pipeline will have minimal impact on the surrounding environment and no significant effect on the climate. Recent expert testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology confirms this finding. In fact, even if the pipeline is approved and is used at maximum capacity, the resulting increase in carbon dioxide emissions would be a mere 12 one-thousandths of 1 percent (0.012 percent). There is scant scientific or environmental justification for refusing to approve the pipeline, a project that the State Department has also found would generate more than 40,000 U.S. jobs.

Contrary to the claims of those who want to strictly regulate carbon dioxide emissions and increase the cost of energy for all Americans, there is a great amount of uncertainty associated with climate science. These uncertainties undermine our ability to accurately determine how carbon dioxide has affected the climate in the past. They also limit our understanding of how anthropogenic emissions will affect future warming trends. Further confusing the policy debate, the models that scientists have come to rely on to make climate predictions have greatly overestimated warming. Contrary to model predictions, data released in October from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit show that global temperatures have held steady over the past 15 years, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the facts that are clear, however, are that U.S. emissions contribute very little to global concentrations of greenhouse gas, and that even substantial cuts in these emissions are likely to have no effect on temperature. Data from the Energy Information Administration show, for example, that the United States cut carbon dioxide emissions by 12 percent between 2005 and 2012 while global emissions increased by 15 percent over the same period.

Using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Science and Public Policy Institute paper published last month found that if the United States eliminated all carbon dioxide emissions, the overall impact on global temperature rise would be only 0.08 degrees Celsius by 2050.

Further confounding the debate are unscientific and often hyperbolic claims about the potential effects of a warmer world. In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama said that extreme weather events have become “more frequent and intense,” and he linked Superstorm Sandy to climate change.

But experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have told the New York Times that climate change had nothing to do with Superstorm Sandy. This is underscored by last year’s IPCC report stating that there is “high agreement” among leading experts that trends in weather disasters, floods, tornados and storms cannot be attributed to climate change. While these claims may make for good political theater, their effect on recent public policy choices hurts the economy.

Last spring the Environmental Protection Agency proposed emissions standards that virtually prohibit new coal-fired power plants. As we await implementation of these strict new rules, additional regulations that will affect existing power plants, refineries and other manufactures are sure to follow. Analyses of these measures by the American Council for Capital Formation, which studies economic and environmental policy, show that they will raise both electricity rates and gas prices — costing jobs and hurting the economy — even as the EPA admits that these choices will have an insignificant impact on global climate change (a point former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson confessed during a Senate hearing in 2009).

Instead of pursuing heavy-handed regulations that imperil U.S. jobs and send jobs (and their emissions) overseas, we should take a step back from the unfounded claims of impending catastrophe and think critically about the challenge before us. Designing an appropriate public policy response to this challenge will require that we fully assess the facts and the uncertainties surrounding this issue, and that we set aside the hyped rhetoric.

Read more from PostOpinions: Greg Sargent: Now can we talk about climate change? The Post’s View: Carbon tax is best option Congress has Matthew Stepp: The limits of renewable energy Stephen Stromberg: In State of the Union, Obama threatens Congress on climate change. And that’s a good thing.

Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds (The Guardian)

23/05/2013Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Of more than 4,000 academic papers published over 20 years, 97.1% agreed that climate change is anthropogenic

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 May 2013 00.01 BST

An iceberg melts in Greeland in 2007. Climate change. Environment. Global warming. Photograph: John McConnico/AP

‘Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary’. Photograph: John McConnico/AP

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The study described the dissent as a “vanishingly small proportion” of published research.

“Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary,” said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.

Public opinion continues to lag behind the science. Though a majority of Americans accept the climate is changing, just 42% believed human activity was the main driver, in a poll conducted by the Pew Research Centre last October.

“There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception,” Cook said in a statement.

Guardian partners Climate Desk interview John Cook on his new paper

The study blamed strenuous lobbying efforts by industry to undermine the science behind climate change for the gap in perception. The resulting confusion has blocked efforts to act on climate change.

The survey was the most ambitious effort to date to demonstrate the broad agreement on the causes of climate change, covering 20 years of academic publications from 1991-2011.

In 2004, Naomi Oreskes, an historian at the University of California, San Diego,surveyed published literature, releasing her results in the journal Science. She too came up with a similar finding that 97% of climate scientists agreed on the causes of climate change.

She wrote of the new survey in an email: “It is a nice, independent confirmation, using a somewhat different methodology than I used, that comes to the same result. It also refutes the claim, sometimes made by contrarians, that the consensus has broken down, much less ‘shattered’.”

The Cook survey was broader in its scope, deploying volunteers from theSkepticalScience.com website to review scientific abstracts. The volunteers also asked authors to rate their own views on the causes of climate change, in another departure from Oreskes’s methods.

The authors said the findings could help close the gap between scientific opinion and the public on the causes of climate change, or anthropogenic global warming, and so create favourable conditions for political action on climate.

“The public perception of a scientific consensus on AGW [anthropogenic, ie man-made, global warming] is a necessary element in public support for climate policy,” the study said.

However, Prof Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who studies the forces underlying attitudes towards climate change, disputed the idea that educating the public about the broad scientific agreement on the causes of climate change would have an effect on public opinion – or on the political conditions for climate action.

He said he was doubtful that convincing the public of a scientific consensus on climate change would help advance the prospects for political action. Having elite leaders call for climate action would be far more powerful, he said.

“I don’t think people really want to come around to grips with the fact that climate change is a highly ideological issue and it is not amenable to the information deficit model,” he said.

“The information deficit model, this idea that if you just pile on more information people will get convinced, is just completely inadequate, he said. “It strengthens the people who actually read and pay attention but it is certainly not going to change or shift the opinions of others.”

Jon Krosnick, professor in humanities and social sciences at Stanford university and an expert on public opinion on climate change, said: “I assume that sceptics would say that there is bias in the editorial process so that the papers ultimately published are not an accurate reflection of the opinions of scientists.”

“It’s happening now… The village is sinking” (The Guardian)

23/05/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Residents of Newtok, Alaska, know they must evacuate, but who will pay the $130m cost of moving them?

› Children jump over ground affected by erosion in Newtok. Natural erosion has accelerated due to climate change, with large areas of land lost to the Ninglick River each year. Photograph: Brian Adams

Suzanne Goldenberg in Newtok, Alaska, with video by Richard Sprenger

One afternoon in the waning days of winter, the most powerful man in Newtok, Alaska, hopped on a plane and flew 1,000 miles to plead for the survival of his village. Stanley Tom, Newtok’s administrator, had a clear purpose for his trip: find the money to move the village on the shores of the Bering Sea out of the way of an approaching disaster caused by climate change.

Village administrator Stanley Tom stands at Mertarvik, the site of relocated Newtok. Photograph: Brian Adams Photography

Newtok was rapidly losing ground to erosion. The land beneath the village was falling into the river. Tom needed money for bulldozers to begin preparing a new site for the village on higher ground. He needed funds for an airstrip, He came back from his meetings in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, with expressions of sympathy – but nothing in the way of the cash he desperately needed. “It’s really complicated,” he said. “There are a lot of obstacles.”

Those obstacles – financial, legal and a supremely frustrating bureaucratic process – had slowed down the move for so long that some in Newtok, which is about 400 miles south of the Bering Strait that separates the US from Russia, feared they would be stuck as the village went down around them, houses swallowed up by the river.

“It’s really alarming,” said Tom, slumped in an armchair a few hours after his return to the village. “I have a hard time sleeping, and I’m getting up early in the morning. I am worried about it every day.”

The uncertainty was tearing the village apart. It also began to turn the village against Tom.

Over the winter, a large group of villagers decided that their administrator was not up to the job. By the time he returned from this particular trip, the dissidents had voted to replace the village council and to sack Tom – a vote that he ignored.

“The way I see it, we need someone who knows how to do the work,” said Katherine Charles, one of Tom’s most vocal critics. “I feel like we are being neglected. We are still standing here and we don’t know when we are going to move. For years now we have been frustrated. I have to ask myself: why are we even still here?”

It’s been more than a decade since Tom took charge of running Newtok, and leading the village out of climate disaster to higher ground.

The ground beneath Newtok is disappearing. Natural erosion has accelerated due to climate change, with large areas of land lost to the Ninglick river each year. A study by the Army Corps of Engineers found the highest point in the village would be below water level by 2017. The proximity of the threat to Newtok means that its villages are likely to be America’s first climate refugees.

Officials in Anchorage say Tom has worked tirelessly to move the village out of the way of a rampaging river. Among the relatively small circle of bureaucrats and lawyers who concern themselves with the problems of small and remote indigenous Alaskan villages, the Newtok administrator has a stellar reputation. He has won leadership awards from Native American groups in the rest of the country.

Tom said he hoped to make a big push this summer, acquiring heavy equipment that locals could use to begin moving some of the existing houses over to the new village site at Mertarvik nine miles to the south.

“It’s really happening right now. The village is sinking and flooding and eroding,” he said. He said he was planning to move his own belongings to the new village site this summer – and that villagers should start doing the same.

But Tom, despite his lobbying missions to Juneau and strong reputation with government officials, has failed to inject federal and state officials with that same sense of urgency.

Melting permafrost, sea-level rise, erosion – these are some of the worst consequences of climate change for Alaska. But none of those elements in Newtok’s slow destruction are recognised as disasters under existing legislation.

That means there is no designated pot of money set aside for those affected communities – unlike cities or towns destroyed by floods or tornados.

We weren’t thinking of climate change when federal disaster relief legislation was passed.

Robin Bronen, a human rights lawyer in Anchorage. ‘This is completely a human rights issue’ Photograph: Richard Sprenger

“We weren’t thinking of climate change when federal disaster relief legislation was passed,” said Robin Bronen, a human rights lawyer in Anchorage who has made a dozen visits to Newtok. “Our legal system is not set up. The institutions that we have created to respond to disasters are not up to the task of responding to climate change.”

In Bronen’s view, Congress needed to rewrite existing disaster legislation to take account of climate change. Communities needed to be able to access those disaster funds — if not to rebuild in place, which is not feasible in Newtok’s case, then to move.

The authorities also had responsibility under the treaty agreements with indigenous Alaskan tribes to guarantee the safety and wellbeing of indigenous communities, she argued.

“This is completely a human rights issue,” Bronen said. “When you are talking about a people who have done the least to contribute to our climate crisis facing such dramatic consequences as a result of climate change, we have a moral and legal responsibility to respond and provide the funding needed so that these communities are not in danger.”

Until then, however, it was up to Tom to find new ways to prise funds out of an unresponsive bureaucracy. It turned out that he had a knack for it.

Government officials praised Tom for finding other sources of funds, such as development grants, and putting them to use for building the new village site. But it has been a laborious process for the remote village to find its way through the different funding agencies and a maze of competing regulations.

As Tom found out, each agency had its own set of rules. The state government would not build a school for fewer than 10 children. The federal government would not build an airstrip at a village without a post office. But the rules, from Newtok’s vantage point, appeared to have at least one point in common. They seemed to conspire against the village ever getting its move off the ground.

In 2011, Alaska’s government published a timetable for Newtok’s move, setting out dates for building an emergency centre, housing, an airstrip – all items on Tom’s list. Two years later, the plan is already behind schedule and the official who oversaw that original timetable said there was little chance of getting back on track.

Newtok is something that is probably going to play out over several decades unless it reaches a dire point where something has to be done immediately to keep the people safe

Larry Hartig, who heads Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation

“Newtok is something that is probably going to play out over several decades unless it reaches a dire point where something has to be done immediately to keep the people safe,” said Larry Hartig, who heads Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

Officially, the government of Alaska remains committed to helping Newtok and all the other indigenous Alaskan villages that are threatened by climate change.

Almost all of Alaska’s indigenous villages – more than 180 – are experiencing the effects of climate change, including severe flooding and erosion. Some may be able to hold back rivers and sea, but others will have to move. About half a dozen villages, including Newtok, face extreme risks.

A mosaic of sea ice shifts across the Bering Sea, west of Alaska on 5 February, 2008. On either side of the Bering Strait (top centre) the land is blanketed with snow. Anchorage is located in the middle right-hand side of the image, at the top of the Cook Inlet. The village of Newtok is located north of Nunivak Island (middle), close to the coast on the lowland plain of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, which mostly consists of tundra. Photograph: NASA/Aqua/MODIS

“I am not going to tell any community that they are not going to survive. If the residents want to survive, we will help them,” said Mead Treadwell, the state’s lieutenant governor.

But the cost of relocating just one village — Newtok — could run as high as $130m, according to an estimate by the Army Corps of Engineers. That’s more than $350,000 per villager. Multiply that by half a dozen, or several more times, and the cost of protecting indigenous Alaskan villages from climate change soon soars into the billions.

So far, Newtok has received a total of about $12m in state funds over the past four years, according to George Owletuck, a consultant hired by Tom to help with the move. Much of that has already gone, to build a barge landing, a few new homes, and an emergency evacuation centre – in case the village does not manage to move in time.

Officially, federal and state government agencies have spent some $27m getting Mertarvik ready, although a considerable share of that figure, some $6m, did not go directly to the relocation, said Sally Russell Cox, the state official overseeing the move. And there is still no major infrastructure completed at Mertarvik.

Would the government of Alaska commit to picking up the rest of the tab for Newtok and the other villages?

Alaska’s oil revenues have fallen off over the years. In 2012, the state slipped into second place for oil production behind North Dakota. Treadwell admitted the state government would not cover the entire cost of fortifying or moving all of the villages threatened by climate change.

“On the question of is there money to help them with one cheque? That is something there clearly is not,” he said.

Treadwell suggested some of the at-risk villages could raise funds by setting themselves up as hubs for oil companies hoping to drill in Arctic waters.

However, a number of oil companies have put their Arctic drilling plans on hold for 2013 and 2014. Treadwell admitted there was as yet no comprehensive climate change plan for Newtok and other villages. “I think it’s going to be piece by piece with each community and many different pots of money,” he said.

In the case of Newtok, Owletuck, the consultant, had big ideas for financing the move: growing fruit and vegetables hydroponically in green houses, or testing the possibilities of producing biofuels from algae.

He let it be known the village may even have found a mysterious benefactor. Owletuck said he’d had an approach from private individuals, whom he declined to name, wanting to donate $22m to the move.

None of those propositions have materialised, however. And after more than a decade of uncertainty about the future under climate change, the basic infrastructure of Newtok is coming apart.

The impact on Newtok

The rising sea due to erosion and climate change has dramatically altered Newtok Village and by 2027 is expected to cover nearly a third of the village. Historic shorelines digitized from USGS topographic maps and aerial photos. Source: Army Corps of Engineers

Snow covers up a lot of Newtok’s flaws: the open sewage pits, the broken board walk over mudflats, some of the abandoned snowmobile wrecks.

Newtok has for years been considered a “distressed village”, with average income of $16,000, well below the rest of the state. Fewer than half of adults in the village have paid work. But even within those dismal measures, conditions have sharply deteriorated in the years since the village has been planning to move.

Aside from the clinic and the school, most buildings are in a state of advanced dilapidation. The floor in the community hall sags like an old mattress. The community laundry is out of order.

In the cramped offices of the traditional council, where Tom works, the furniture dates from the 1970s or 1980s, mid-brown vinyl chairs where the casing has split open, revealing the dirty foam inside. It’s not unheard of to find families of 10 or 12 children living in houses of less than 800 sq ft – and none of those homes have flush toilets or running water.

Early mornings find the men of the household trudging out of their homes with 5 gallon buckets of waste, which get dumped at various spots on the edges of the village, including a small stream.

The diesel-powered generator was nearing the end of its life span. The water treatment plant was shut down last October after people began getting sick. Tom said there was contamination from leaking jet fuel at the airport.

For now, villagers are drawing water from the school, which had a separate system. But the school principal said he would have to cut that off in May to preserve the system for the schoolchildren.

Tom said there was nothing he could do. Government agencies would not fund improvements at the current village site, because of the plan to move. “There is no money to improve our community,” he said. “We are suspended from federal and state agencies and there is no way of improving our lives over here. The agencies do not want to work on both villages at once.”

By last October, frustration with the stalled move and conditions in the village exploded. Villagers accused their own council of failing to hold regular elections, and raised a petition to throw out the leaders and replace Tom.

Some accused him of presiding over a dictatorship in the village. Others speculated that he and the paid consultant, Oweituck, were plotting to rob the relocation funds.

One of the dissidents, a relative newcomer to the village, posted ferocious criticism of Tom on Facebook calling for rebellion.

The dissidents organised elections, voted out the old council and installed their own leaders. Tom ignored the result. “Let them cry all they want,” he said. “I don’t care. They are not going to help my community. I am way ahead of these guys.”

The upheavals in Newtok are sadly familiar to those who have worked with indigenous Alaskan villages confronting climate change. “I don’t think you would find one community that says they are happy with the pace that’s gone on,” said Patricia Cochran, director of the Alaska Native Science Commission.

“To be honest with you, I think the state and the feds have done a terrible job, not only in assessing the conditions that communities are living within but in responding to them,” she said. “Because these communities are listed as threatened and may potentially be relocated, they are not able to get any funds now for infrastructure that is being damaged right now.”

That leaves communities stuck in a limbo that can carry for years or even decades.

That’s what has become of Newtok. The effects are devastating, said Charles. Beyond all her anger she admitted was an all-enveloping fear. “Sometimes I get scared. I’m scared for my own family. How will I take care of them if the relocation doesn’t start right away?”

She had been waiting for years to see the beginnings of any new settlement in rural Alaska rising up on the rocky hill of Mertarvik: the airport, the barge landing, the school, the houses. None of it was there yet, and Charles said she was coming close to despair.

“It’s been going on for I don’t know how long, and I am beginning to lose hope.”

For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change (N.Y.Times)

23/05/2013UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Desastre, Economia, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Master Sgt. Mark Olsen/U.S. Air Force, via Associated Press. Damage in Mantoloking, N.J., after Hurricane Sandy. Natural disasters caused $35 billion in private property losses last year.

By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: May 14, 2013

If there were one American industry that would be particularly worried about climate change it would have to be insurance, right?

From Hurricane Sandy’s devastating blow to the Northeast to the protracted drought that hit the Midwest Corn Belt, natural catastrophes across the United States pounded insurers last year, generating$35 billion in privately insured property losses, $11 billion more than the average over the last decade.

And the industry expects the situation will get worse. “Numerous studies assume a rise in summer drought periods in North America in the future and an increasing probability of severe cyclones relatively far north along the U.S. East Coast in the long term,” said Peter Höppe, who heads Geo Risks Research at the reinsurance giant Munich Re. “The rise in sea level caused by climate change will further increase the risk of storm surge.” Most insurers, including the reinsurance companies that bear much of the ultimate risk in the industry, have little time for the arguments heard in some right-wing circles that climate change isn’t happening, and are quite comfortable with the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main culprit of global warming.

“Insurance is heavily dependent on scientific thought,” Frank Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America, told me last week. “It is not as amenable to politicized scientific thought.”

Yet when I asked Mr. Nutter what the American insurance industry was doing to combat global warming, his answer was surprising: nothing much. “The industry has really not been engaged in advocacy related to carbon taxes or proposals addressing carbon,” he said. While some big European reinsurers like Munich Re and Swiss Re support efforts to reduce CO₂ emissions, “in the United States the household names really have not engaged at all.” Instead, the focus of insurers’ advocacy efforts is zoning rules and disaster mitigation.

Last week, scientists announced that the concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had reached 400 parts per million — its highest level in at least three million years, before humans appeared on the scene. Back then, mastodons roamed the earth, the polar ice caps were smaller and the sea level was as much as 60 to 80 feet higher.

The milestone puts the earth nearer a point of no return, many scientists think, when vast, disruptive climate change is baked into our future. Pietr P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told my colleague Justin Gillis: “It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem.” And it raises a perplexing question: why hasn’t corporate America done more to sway its allies in the Republican Party to try to avert a disaster that would clearly be devastating to its own interests?

Mr. Nutter argues that the insurance industry’s reluctance is born of hesitation to become embroiled in controversies over energy policy. But perhaps its executives simply don’t feel so vulnerable. Like farmers, who are largely protected from the ravages of climate change by government-financed crop insurance, insurers also have less to fear than it might at first appear.

The federal government covers flood insurance, among the riskiest kind in this time of crazy weather. And insurers can raise premiums or even drop coverage to adjust to higher risks. Indeed, despite Sandy and drought, property and casualty insurance in the United States was more profitable in 2012 than in 2011, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.

But the industry’s analysis of the risks it faces is evolving. One sign of that is how some top American insurers responded to a billboard taken out by the conservative Heartland Institute, a prominent climate change denier that has received support from the insurance industry.

The billboard had a picture of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who asked: “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”

Concerned about global warming and angry to be equated with a murderous psychopath, insurance companies like Allied World, Renaissance Re, State Farm and XL Groupdropped their support for Heartland.

Even more telling, Eli Lehrer, a Heartland vice president who at the time led an insurance-financed project, left the group and helped start the R Street Institute, a standard conservative organization in all respects but one: it believes in climate change and supports a carbon tax to combat it. And it is financed largely with insurance industry money.

Mr. Lehrer points out that a carbon tax fits conservative orthodoxy. It is a broad and flat tax, whose revenue can be used to do away with the corporate income tax — a favorite target of the right. It provides a market-friendly signal, forcing polluters to bear the cost imposed on the rest of us and encouraging them to pollute less. And it is much preferable to a parade of new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We are having a debate on the right about a carbon tax for the first time in a long time,” Mr. Lehrer said.

Bob Inglis, formerly a Republican congressman from South Carolina who lost his seat in the 2010 primary to a Tea Party-supported challenger, is another member of this budding coalition. Before he left Congress, he proposed a revenue-neutral bill to create a carbon tax and cut payroll taxes.

Changing the political economy of a carbon tax remains an uphill slog especially in a stagnant economy. But Mr. Inglis notices a thaw. “The best way to do this is in the context of a grand bargain on tax reform,” he said. “It could happen in 2015 or 2016, but probably not before.”

He lists a dozen Republicans in the House and eight in the Senate who would be open to legislation to help avert climate change. He notes that Exelon, the gas and electricity giant, is sympathetic to his efforts — perhaps not least because a carbon tax would give an edge to gas over its dirtier rival, coal. Exxon, too, has also said a carbon tax would be the most effective way to reduce emissions. So why hasn’t the insurance industry come on board?

Robert Muir-Wood is the chief research officer of Risk Management Solutions, one of two main companies the insurance industry relies on to crunch data and model future risks. He argues that insurers haven’t changed their tune because — with the exception of 2004 and 2005, when a string of hurricanes from Ivan to Katrina caused damage worth more than $200 billion — they haven’t yet experienced hefty, sustained losses attributable to climate change.

“Insurers were ready to sign up to all sorts of actions against climate change,” Mr. Muir-Wood told me from his office in London. Then the weather calmed down.

Still, Mr. Muir-Wood notes that the insurance industry faces a different sort of risk: political action. “That is the biggest threat,” he said. When insurers canceled policies and raised premiums in Florida in 2006, politicians jumped on them. “Insurers in Florida,” he said, “became Public Enemy No. 1.”

And that’s the best hope for those concerned about climate change: that global warming isn’t just devastating for society, but also bad for business.

Origins of human culture linked to rapid climate change (Cardiff University)

22/05/2013UncategorizedAntropologia, Arqueologia, Clima, Cultura, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

21-May-2013

By Ian Hall

Rapid climate change during the Middle Stone Age, between 80,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age, sparked surges in cultural innovation in early modern human populations, according to new research.

The research, published this month in Nature Communications, was conducted by a team of scientists from Cardiff University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Barcelona.

The scientists studied a marine sediment core off the coast of South Africa and reconstructed terrestrial climate variability over the last 100,000 years.

Dr Martin Ziegler, Cardiff University School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, said: “We found that South Africa experienced rapid climate transitions toward wetter conditions at times when the Northern Hemisphere experienced extremely cold conditions.”

These large Northern Hemisphere cooling events have previously been linked to a change in the Atlantic Ocean circulation that led to a reduced transport of warm water to the high latitudes in the North. In response to this Northern Hemisphere cooling, large parts of the sub-Saharan Africa experienced very dry conditions.

“Our new data however, contrasts with sub-Saharan Africa and demonstrates that the South African climate responded in the opposite direction, with increasing rainfall, that can be associated with a globally occurring southward shift of the tropical monsoon belt.”

Linking climate change with human evolution

Professor Ian Hall, Cardiff University School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, said: “When the timing of these rapidly occurring wet pulses was compared with the archaeological datasets, we found remarkable coincidences.

“The occurrence of several major Middle Stone Age industries fell tightly together with the onset of periods with increased rainfall.”

“Similarly, the disappearance of the industries appears to coincide with the transition to drier climatic conditions.”

Professor Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum commented “The correspondence between climatic ameliorations and cultural innovations supports the view that population growth fuelled cultural changes, through increased human interactions.”

The South African archaeological record is so important because it shows some of the oldest evidence for modern behavior in early humans. This includes the use of symbols, which has been linked to the development of complex language, and personal adornments made of seashells.

“The quality of the southern African data allowed us to make these correlations between climate and behavioural change, but it will require comparable data from other areas before we can say whether this region was uniquely important in the development of modern human culture” added Professor Stringer.

The new study presents the most convincing evidence so far that abrupt climate change was instrumental in this development.

The research was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and is part of the international Gateways training network, funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union.

Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming ‘not as likely’ (BBC)

21/05/2013UncategorizedClima, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

19 May 2013 Last updated at 17:31 GMT

By Matt McGrath – Environment correspondent, BBC News

The impacts of rising temperature are being felt particularly keenly in the polar regions

Scientists say the recent downturn in the rate of global warming will lead to lower temperature rises in the short-term.

Since 1998, there has been an unexplained “standstill” in the heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades.

But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly.

“The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before” – Dr Alexander Otto, University of Oxford

The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now. Earlier this year, the UK Met Office lowered their five-year temperature forecast.

But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures in both the short-term and long-term.

An international team of researchers looked at how the last decade would impact long-term, equilibrium climate sensitivity and the shorter term climate response.

Transient nature

Climate sensitivity looks to see what would happen if we doubled concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and let the Earth’s oceans and ice sheets respond to it over several thousand years.

Transient climate response is much shorter term calculation again based on a doubling of CO2.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2007 that the short-term temperature rise would most likely be 1-3C (1.8-5.4F).

But in this new analysis, by only including the temperatures from the last decade, the projected range would be 0.9-2.0C.

Ice The report suggests that warming in the near term will be less than forecast

“The hottest of the models in the medium-term, they are actually looking less likely or inconsistent with the data from the last decade alone,” said Dr Alexander Otto from the University of Oxford.

“The most extreme projections are looking less likely than before.”

The authors calculate that over the coming decades global average temperatures will warm about 20% more slowly than expected.

But when it comes to the longer term picture, the authors say their work is consistent with previous estimates. The IPCC said that climate sensitivity was in the range of 2.0-4.5C.

Ocean storage

This latest research, including the decade of stalled temperature rises, produces a range of 0.9-5.0C.

“It is a bigger range of uncertainty,” said Dr Otto.

“But it still includes the old range. We would all like climate sensitivity to be lower but it isn’t.”

The researchers say the difference between the lower short-term estimate and the more consistent long-term picture can be explained by the fact that the heat from the last decade has been absorbed into and is being stored by the world’s oceans.

Not everyone agrees with this perspective.

Prof Steven Sherwood, from the University of New South Wales, says the conclusion about the oceans needs to be taken with a grain of salt for now.

“There is other research out there pointing out that this storage may be part of a natural cycle that will eventually reverse, either due to El Nino or the so-called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and therefore may not imply what the authors are suggesting,” he said.

The authors say there are ongoing uncertainties surrounding the role of aerosols in the atmosphere and around the issue of clouds.

“We would expect a single decade to jump around a bit but the overall trend is independent of it, and people should be exactly as concerned as before about what climate change is doing,” said Dr Otto.

Is there any succour in these findings for climate sceptics who say the slowdown over the past 14 years means the global warming is not real?

“None. No comfort whatsoever,” he said.

World Bank turns to hydropower to square development with climate change (Washington Post)

17/05/2013UncategorizedBanco Mundial, Capitalismo, Clima, Desastre, Economia, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Michael Reynolds/European Photopress Agency – World Bank President Jim Yong Kim attends the Fragility Forum this month in Washington. The forum discussed ways for fragile nations to improve their economies, their infrastructure and the well-being of their citizens.

By Howard Schneider, Published: May 8, 2013

The World Bank is making a major push to develop large-scale hydropower projects around the globe, something it had all but abandoned a decade ago but now sees as crucial to resolving the tension between economic development and the drive to tame carbon use.

Major hydropower projects in Congo, Zambia, Nepal and elsewhere — all of a scale dubbed “transformational” to the regions involved — are a focus of the bank’s fundraising drive among wealthy nations. Bank lending for hydropower has scaled up steadily in recent years, and officials expect the trend to continue amid a worldwide boom in water-fueled electricity.

Such projects were shunned in the 1990s, in part because they can be disruptive to communities and ecosystems. But the World Bank is opening the taps for dams, transmission lines and related infrastructure as its president, Jim Yong Kim, tries to resolve a quandary at the bank’s core: how to eliminate poverty while adding as little as possible to carbon emissions.

“Large hydro is a very big part of the solution for Africa and South Asia and Southeast Asia. . . . I fundamentally believe we have to be involved,” said Rachel Kyte, the bank’s vice president for sustainable development and an influential voice among Kim’s top staff members. The earlier move out of hydro “was the wrong message. . . . That was then. This is now. We are back.”

It is a controversial stand. The bank backed out of large-scale hydropower because of the steep trade-offs involved. Big dams produce lots of cheap, clean electricity, but they often uproot villages in dam-flooded areas and destroy the livelihoods of the people the institution is supposed to help. A 2009 World Bank review of hydropower noted the “overwhelming environmental and social risks” that had to be addressed but also concluded that Africa and Asia’s vast and largely undeveloped hydropower potential was key to providing dependable electricity to the hundreds of millions of people who remain without it.

“What’s the one issue that’s holding back development in the poorest countries? It’s energy. There’s just no question,” Kim said in an interview.

Advocacy groups remain skeptical, arguing that large projects, such as Congo’s long-debated network of dams around Inga Falls, may be of more benefit to mining companies or industries in neighboring countries than poor communities.

“It is the old idea of a silver bullet that can modernize whole economies,” said Peter Bosshard, policy director of International Rivers, a group that has organized opposition to the bank’s evolving hydro policy and argued for smaller projects designed around communities rather than mega-dams meant to export power throughout a region.

“Turning back to hydro is being anything but a progressive climate bank,” said Justin Guay, a Sierra Club spokesman on climate and energy issues. “There needs to be a clear shift from large, centralized projects.”

The major nations that support the World Bank, however, have been pushing it to identify such projects — complex undertakings that might happen only if an international organization is involved in sorting out the financing, overseeing the performance and navigating the politics.

The move toward big hydro comes amid Kim’s stark warning that global warming will leave the next generation with an “unrecognizable planet.” That dire prediction, however, has left him struggling to determine how best to respond and frustrated by some of the bank’s inherent limitations.

In his speeches, Kim talks passionately about the bank’s ability to “catalyze” and “leverage” the world to action by mobilizing money and ideas, and he says he is hunting for ideas “equal to the challenge” of curbing carbon use. He has criticized the “small bore” thinking that he says has hobbled progress on the issue.

However, the bank remains in the business of financing traditional fossil-fuel plants, including those that use the dirtiest form of coal, as well as cleaner but carbon-based natural gas infrastructures.

Among the projects likely to cross Kim’s desk in coming months, for example, is a 600-megawatt power plant in Kosovo that would be fired by lignite coal, the bottom of the barrel when it comes to carbon emissions.

The plant has strong backing from the United States, the World Bank’s major shareholder. It also meshes with one of the bank’s other long-standing imperatives: Give countries what they ask for. The institution has 188 members to keep happy and can go only so far in trying to impose its judgment over that of local officials. Kim, who in his younger days demonstrated against World Bank-enforced “orthodoxy” in economic policy, now may be hard-pressed to enforce an energy orthodoxy of his own.

Kosovo’s domestic supplies of lignite are ample enough to free the country from imported fuel. Kim said there is little question that Kosovo needs more electricity, and the new plant will allow an older, more polluting facility to be shut down.

“I would just love to never sign a coal project,” Kim said. “We understand it is much, much dirtier, but . . . we have 188 members. . . . We have to be fair in balancing the needs of poor countries . . . with this other bigger goal of tackling climate change.”

The bank is working on other ideas. Kim said he is considering how it might get involved in creating a more effective world market for carbon, allowing countries that invest in renewable energy or “climate friendly” agriculture to be paid for their carbon savings by industries that need to use fossil fuels. Existing carbon markets have been plagued with volatile pricing — Europe’s cost of carbon has basically collapsed — or rules that prevent carbon trading with developing countries.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to establish a stable price of carbon,” Kim said. “Everybody knows that.”

He has also staked hope for climate progress on developments in agriculture.

Hydropower projects, however, seem notably inside what Kim says is the bank’s sweet spot — complex, high-impact, green and requiring the sort of joint public and private financing Kim says the bank can attract.

The massive hydropower potential of the Congo River, estimated at about 40,000 megawatts, is such a target. Its development is on a list of top world infrastructure priorities prepared by the World Bank and other development agencies for the Group of 20 major economic powers.

Two smaller dams on the river have been plagued by poor performance and are being rehabilitated with World Bank assistance. A third being planned would represent a quantum jump — a 4,800-megawatt, $12 billion giant that would move an entire region off carbon-based electricity.

The African Development Bank has begun negotiations over the financing, and the World Bank is ready to step in with tens of millions of dollars in technical-planning help.

“In an ideal world, we start building in 2016. By 2020, we switch on the lights,” said Hela Cheikhrouhou, energy and environment director for the African Development Bank.

It is the sort of project that the World Bank had stayed away from for many years — not least because of instability in the country. But as the country tries to move beyond its civil war and the region intensifies its quest for the power to fuel economic growth, the bank seems ready to move. Kim will visit Congo this month for a discussion about development in fragile and war-torn states.

Kyte, the World Bank vice president, said the Inga project will be high on the agenda.

“People have been looking at the Inga dam for as long as I have been in the development business,” she said. “The question is: Did the stars align? Did you have a government in place? Did people want to do it? Are there investors interested? Do you have the ability to do the technical work? The stars are aligned now. Let’s go.”

Climate Change Will Cause Widespread Global-Scale Loss of Common Plants and Animals, Researchers Predict (Science Daily)

13/05/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Clima, Desastre, Extinção, Incerteza, Meio ambiente, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

May 12, 2013 — More than half of common plants and one third of the animals could see a dramatic decline this century due to climate change, according to research from the University of East Anglia.

Frog. Plants, reptiles and particularly amphibians are expected to be at highest risk. (Credit: © Anna Omelchenko / Fotolia)

Research published today in the journal Nature Climate Change looked at 50,000 globally widespread and common species and found that more than one half of the plants and one third of the animals will lose more than half of their climatic range by 2080 if nothing is done to reduce the amount of global warming and slow it down.

This means that geographic ranges of common plants and animals will shrink globally and biodiversity will decline almost everywhere.

Plants, reptiles and particularly amphibians are expected to be at highest risk. Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, Amazonia and Australia would lose the most species of plants and animals. And a major loss of plant species is projected for North Africa, Central Asia and South-eastern Europe.

But acting quickly to mitigate climate change could reduce losses by 60 per cent and buy an additional 40 years for species to adapt. This is because this mitigation would slow and then stop global temperatures from rising by more than two degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial times (1765). Without this mitigation, global temperatures could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100.

The study was led by Dr Rachel Warren from UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. Collaborators include Dr.Jeremy VanDerWal at James Cook University in Australia and Dr Jeff Price, also at UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences and the Tyndall Centre. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Dr Warren 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.

“This broader issue of potential range loss in widespread species is a serious concern as even small declines in these species can significantly disrupt ecosystems.

“Our research predicts that climate change will greatly reduce the diversity of even very common species found in most parts of the world. This loss of global-scale biodiversity would significantly impoverish the biosphere and the ecosystem services it provides.

“We looked at the effect of rising global temperatures, but other symptoms of climate change such as extreme weather events, pests, and diseases mean that our estimates are probably conservative. Animals in particular may decline more as our predictions will be compounded by a loss of food from plants.

“There will also be a knock-on effect for humans because these species are important for things like water and air purification, flood control, nutrient cycling, and eco-tourism.

“The good news is that our research provides crucial new evidence of how swift action to reduce CO₂ and other greenhouse gases can prevent the biodiversity loss by reducing the amount of global warming to 2 degrees Celsius rather than 4 degrees. This would also buy time — up to four decades — for plants and animals to adapt to the remaining 2 degrees of climate change.”

The research team quantified the benefits of acting now to mitigate climate change and found that up to 60 per cent of the projected climatic range loss for biodiversity can be avoided.

Dr Warren said: “Prompt and stringent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally would reduce these biodiversity losses by 60 per cent if global emissions peak in 2016, or by 40 per cent if emissions peak in 2030, showing that early action is very beneficial. This will both reduce the amount of climate change and also slow climate change down, making it easier for species and humans to adapt.”

Information on the current distributions of the species used in this research came from the datasets shared online by hundreds of volunteers, scientists and natural history collections through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

Co-author Dr Jeff Price, also from UEA’s school of Environmental Studies, said: “Without free and open access to massive amounts of data such as those made available online through GBIF, no individual researcher is able to contact every country, every museum, every scientist holding the data and pull it all together. So this research would not be possible without GBIF and its global community of researchers and volunteers who make their data freely available.”

Journal Reference:

R. Warren, J. VanDerWal, J. Price, J. A. Welbergen, I. Atkinson, et al. Quantifying the benefit of early climate change mitigation in avoiding biodiversity loss. Nature Climate Change, 2013 DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1887

European carbon market in trouble (Washington Post)

07/05/2013UncategorizedCapitalismo, Clima, Economia, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

By Anthony Faiola, Published: May 5

LONDON — As the centerpiece of Europe’s pledge to lead the global battle against climate change, the region’s market for carbon emissions effectively turned pollution into a commodity that could be traded like gold or oil. But the once-thriving pollution trade here has turned into a carbon bust.Under the system, 31 nations slapped emission limits on more than 11,000 companies and issued carbon credits that could be traded by firms to meet their new pollution caps. More efficient ones could sell excess carbon credits, while less efficient ones were compelled to buy more. By August 2008, the price for carbon emission credits had soared above $40 per ton — high enough to become an added incentive for some companies to increase their use of cleaner fuels, upgrade equipment and take other steps to reduce carbon footprints.

Europe's carbon-trading market

Europe’s carbon-trading market

That system, however, is in deep trouble. A drastic drop in industrial activity has sharply reduced the need for companies to buy emission rights, causing a gradual fall in the price of carbon allowances since the region slipped into a multi-year economic crisis in the latter half of 2008. In recent weeks, however, the price has appeared to have entirely collapsed — falling below $4 as bickering European nations failed to agree on measures to shore up the program.The collapsing price of carbon in Europe is darkening the outlook for a greener future in a part of the world that was long the bright spot in the struggle against climate change. It is also presenting new challenges for those who once saw Europe’s program as the natural anchor for what would eventually be a linked network of cap-and-trade systems worldwide.

Carbon “started as the commodity of the future, but it has now deteriorated,” said Matthew Gray, a trader at Jefferies Bache in London and one of a diminishing breed of carbon dealers in Europe. “Its future is uncertain.”

The problems plaguing Europe’s cap-and-trade system underscore the uphill battle for international cooperation in the global-warming fight. After middling progress at various summits, officials from more than 190 countries have been charged with forging a global accord by 2015 aimed at cutting carbon emissions. But critics point to the inability of even the European Union — a largely progressive region bound by open borders and a shared bureaucracy — to come together on a fix for its cap-and-trade system as evidence of how difficult consensus building on climate change has become.

Negotiations to launch a similar system across the United States collapsed in 2010, replaced with a regional approach in which California, for instance, moved forward with its own program. Aided by a boom in cheaper and cleaner shale gas as well as the spread of more renewable energies, including wind and solar, the United States has — like Europe — nevertheless seen a continuing drop in its overall emission levels.

But there are also signs that years of increasing investment in clean energies are ebbing on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2012, overall clean-energy investment in the United States fell 37 percent,to $35.6 billion, compared with a year earlier, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. European countries, including green leaders such as Germany, also saw declines, leading analysts to call the problems with the region’s cap-and-trade system that much more troubling.

“Obviously, what’s happening now is very disheartening for people who have been involved in trying to cut carbon emissions,” said Agustin Silvani, managing director of carbon finance at Conservation International in Arlington, Va. “The European system was at the center of the global fight, and the fact that it is collapsing is definitely a blow. Maybe a moral one more than anything else.”Lost incentive

The cap-and-trade program is based on a system of carbon allowances for large emitters such as utilities and manufacturers, with some bought and others awarded for free. Companies are allowed to draw on global mitigation projects — such as planting trees in tropical rain forests — to offset a small portion of their emissions. But for the most part, they must meet targets through carbon credits issued by European authorities.A number of other factors, including mandates and subsidies for renewable energy, have coaxed European companies to reduce their emissions in recent years. But in the early stages of the cap-and-trade program, “higher carbon prices were a big incentive for companies to take action,” said Marcus Ferdinand, senior market analyst for Thomson Reuters Point Carbon. “Now, they’ve lost that incentive.”

At the core of the problem is a massive oversupply of carbon allowances. Demand for carbon began to fade in the late 2000s as a recession set in and factories across Europe dramatically curbed production. But there were also built-in flaws. Unlike newer cap-and-trade programs such as the one in California, Europe’s system never established a price floor that could have prevented a market collapse. In addition, too many free allowances were given to too many companies. Some, in fact, never had to pay for allowances at all, allowing them to hoard them or even sell their carbon credits at a profit.

On April 16, the European Parliament was on the verge of temporarily tightening the supply of allowances to boost the price of carbon and shore up the ailing market. But opposition by countries led by Poland — a nation strongly dependent on heavy-emitting coal power plants — defeated the measure. The rejection sent the price of carbon plummeting to a historic low of roughly $3.60.

Shoring up prices

A bright future for cap-and-trade systems may yet exist. Promising new programs, for instance, are being rolled out in California, Australia, Quebec and a few provinces in China, with officials in some areas setting a minimum price for carbon credits to prevent the kind of market collapse seen in Europe.

But if Europe is unable to shore up the price for carbon credits here, observers say, it could complicate hopes down the line of linking various programs together. The price per ton in California, for instance, is above $10 — about two and half times the price in Europe.

Large emitters such as the steel industry, however, say the system is working just fine. With a price determined by supply and demand, industry groups say, it is only fitting for the price to be low now. Also, given the region’s weaker economic activity, they note that the European Union is still virtually assured of meeting its pledge to cut carbon emissions — a reduction of 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels — even with the cap-and-trade system faltering.

Yet critics argue that the low price of carbon has removed the incentive for European companies to reduce their carbon footprints. They point to a boom in the use of cheap imported American coal in European power plants. In addition, many fear that the lack of an incentive to make more green upgrades will create a boom in emissions if and when European economies recover.

As the regional plan falters, some countries are going it alone on domestic initiatives. This year, for instance, Britain introduced a carbon tax on emissions that British manufacturers say has put them at a competitive disadvantage with their counterparts on the continent. It suggests the potential pitfalls ahead as countries and even smaller jurisdictions such as states, provinces and cities introduce a disparate patchwork of climate-change measures.

Optimists point to hope that the European Parliament will once again vote on a measure to tighten the supply of carbon credits in the coming months, thus shoring up the price. They also note that the European Commission is studying more ambitious proposals for a bigger overhaul of the region’s cap-and-trade system.

But given the growing resistance in some European countries to anything that might drive energy costs up further, others wonder whether Europe’s leaders still have the political will to take aggressive action.

“We’re risking the credibility of European politicians by not fixing this system,” said Johannes Teyssen, chief executive of German energy giant E.ON. “How can they travel to world climate-change conferences claiming others should do more when our own system is on its deathbed and they do nothing?”

Eliza Mackintosh contributed to this report.

* * *

In Europe, Paid Permits for Pollution Are Fizzling (N.Y.Times)

Andrew Testa for The International Herald Tribune. The trading floor at CF Partners in West London. The market for carbon permits is more volatile than its founders envisioned.

By STANLEY REED and MARK SCOTT

Published: April 21, 2013

LONDON — On a showery afternoon last week in West London, a ripple of enthusiasm went through the trading floor of CF Partners, a privately owned financial company. The price of carbon allowances, shown in green lights on a board hanging from the ceiling, was creeping up toward three euros.

*The Emissions Trading System began with a test phase that ended in 2007. Note: Data are for the futures contract expiring in mid-December each year. Phase 2 price was initially for the December 2008 futures contract.

That is pretty small change — $3.90, or only about 10 percent of what the price was in 2008. But to the traders it came as a relief after the market had gone into free fall to record lows two days earlier, after the European Parliament spurned an effort to shore up prices by shrinking the number of allowances.

“The market still stands,” said Thomas Rassmuson, a native of Sweden who founded the company with Jonathan Navon, a Briton, in 2006.

Still, Europe’s carbon market, a pioneering effort to use markets to regulate greenhouse gases, is having a hard time staying upright. This year has been stomach-churning for the people who make their living in the arcane world of trading emissions permits. The most recent volatility comes on top of years of uncertainty during which prices have fluctuated from $40 to nearly zero for the right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide.

More important, though, than lost jobs and diminished payouts for traders and bankers, the penny ante price of carbon credits means the market is not doing its job: pushing polluters to reduce carbon emissions, which most climate scientists believe contribute to global warming.

The market for these credits, officially called European Union Allowances, or E.U.A.’s, has been both unstable and under sharp downward pressure this year because of a huge oversupply and a stream of bad political and economic news. On April 16, for instance, after the European Parliament voted down the proposed reduction in the number of credits, prices dropped about 50 percent, to 2.63 euros from nearly 5, in 10 minutes.

“No one was going to buy” on the way down, said Fred Payne, a trader with CF Partners.

Europe’s troubled experience with carbon trading has also discouraged efforts to establish large-scale carbon trading systems in other countries, including the United States, although California and a group of Northeastern states have set up smaller regional markets.

Traders do not mind big price swings in any market — in fact, they can make a lot of money if they play them right.

But over time, the declining prices for the credits have sapped the European market of value, legitimacy and liquidity — the ease with which the allowances can be traded — making it less attractive for financial professionals.

A few years ago, analysts thought world carbon markets were heading for the $2 trillion mark by the end of this decade.

Today, the reality looks much more modest. Total trading last year was 62 billion euros, down from 96 billion in 2011, according to Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, a market research firm based in Oslo. Close to 90 percent of that activity was in Europe, while North American trading represented less than 1 percent of worldwide market value.

Financial institutions that had rushed to increase staff have shrunk their carbon desks. Companies have also laid off other professionals who helped set up greenhouse gas reduction projects in developing countries like China and India.

When the emissions trading system was started in 2005, the goal was to create a global model for raising the costs of emitting greenhouse gases and for prodding industrial polluters to switch from burning fossil fuels to using clean-energy alternatives like wind and solar.

When carbon prices hit their highs of more than 30 euros in 2008 and companies spent billions to invest in renewables, policy makers hailed the market as a success. But then prices began to fall. And at current levels, they are far too low to change companies’ behaviors, analysts say. Emitting a ton of carbon dioxide costs about the same as a hamburger.

“At the moment, the carbon price does not give any signal for investment,” said Hans Bünting, chief executive of RWE, one of the largest utilities in Germany and Europe.

This cap-and-trade system in Europe places a ceiling on emissions. At the end of each year, companies like electric utilities or steel manufacturers must hand over to the national authorities the permits equivalent to the amount gases emitted.

Until the end of 2012, these credits were given to companies free according to their estimated output of greenhouse gases. Policy makers wanted to jump-start the trading market and avoid higher costs for consumers.

Beginning this year, energy companies must buy an increasing proportion of their credits in national auctions. Industrial companies like steel plants will follow later this decade.

Companies and other financial players like banks and hedge funds can also acquire and trade the allowances on exchanges like the IntercontinentalExchange, based in Atlanta. Over time the number of credits is meant to fall gradually, theoretically raising prices and cutting pollution.

The reality has been far different because of serious flaws in the design of the system. To win over companies and skeptical countries like Poland, which burn a lot of coal, far too many credits have been handed out.

At the same time, Europe’s debilitating economic slowdown has sharply curtailed industrial activity and reduced the Continent’s overall carbon emissions.

Steel making in Europe, for instance, has fallen about 30 percent since 2007, while new car registrations were at their lowest level last year since 1995.

Big investments in renewable energy sources like wind and solar also reduced carbon emissions, which have fallen about 10 percent in Europe since 2007.

As a result, there is a vast surplus of permits — about 800 million tons’ worth, according to Point Carbon. That has caused prices to plunge.

The cost of carbon is far too low to force electric utilities in Europe to switch from burning coal, a major polluter, to much cleaner natural gas. Just the opposite: Britain increased coal burning for electricity more than 30 percent last year, while cutting back gas use a similar amount, and other West European nations increased their coal use as well.

“The European energy scene is not a good one,” said Andrew Brown, head of exploration and production at Royal Dutch Shell. “They haven’t got the right balance in terms of promoting gas.”

Fearing that prices might go to zero because of the huge oversupply, the European authorities proposed a short-term solution known as backloading, which would have delayed the scheduled auctioning of a large portion of the credits that were supposed to be sold over the next three years. But the European Parliament in Strasbourg voted the measure down on April 16.

Lawmakers were worried about tampering with the market as well as doing anything that might increase energy costs in the struggling economy.

“It was the worst possible moment to try to implement something like that,” said Francesco Starace, chief executive of Enel Green Power, one of the largest European green-energy companies, which is based in Rome.

The European authorities, led by Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner for climate change, have not given up on fixing the system. But analysts like Stig Scholset, at Point Carbon, say that there is not much the authorities can do in the short term and that prices may slump for months, if not years.

That means more tough times for financial institutions. Particularly troubled is the business of investing in greenhouse gas abatement projects like wind farms orhydroelectric dams in developing countries like China. JPMorgan Chase paid more than $200 million for one of the largest investors in these projects, EcoSecurities, in 2009.

Financiers say these projects used to be gold mines, generating credits that industrial companies could use to offset their emissions elsewhere. But so many credits have been produced by these projects — on top of the existing oversupply of credits in Europe — that they are trading at about a third of a euro.

Market participants say they see many rivals pulling back from world carbon markets. Deutsche Bank, the largest bank in Germany, has cut back its carbon trading. Smaller outfits like Mabanaft, based in Rotterdam, have also left the business.

Anthony Hobley, a lawyer in London and president of the Climate Market and Investors Association, an industry group, estimates that among the traders, analysts and bankers who flocked to the carbon markets in the early days, half may now be gone.

But carbon trading is unlikely to fade completely.

For one thing, European utilities and other companies now must buy the credits to comply with the rules. And they can buy credits to save for later use, when their emissions increase and the price of credits rises.

Despite Europe’s sputters, carbon trading is beginning to gain traction in places like China, Australia and New Zealand.

In London, Mr. Rassmuson concedes that the business has turned out to be more up-and-down than he anticipated when he and his partner set up their firm in a tiny two-man office in 2006.

But he said his firm was benefiting from others’ dropping out. He is also branching out into trading electric power and natural gas.

Like many in the carbon markets, he says what he is doing is not just about money.

“Trying to make the world more sustainable is important to us,” he said. “It is a good business opportunity that makes us proud.”

A version of this article appeared in print on April 22, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Europe, Paid Permits For Pollution Are Fizzling.

Mainstream green is still too white (Color Lines)

29/04/2013Uncategorizedambientalismo, Clima, Desastre, Discriminação, discurso ambiental, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Racismorenzotaddei

By Brentin Mock; Cross-posted from ColorLines

We missing anything here?Last year was the hottest on record for the continental United States, and it wasn’t an outlier. The last 12 years have been the warmest years since 1880, the year the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began tracking this information. And climate scientists predict that the devastating blizzards, droughts, hurricanes, and wildfires we’ve been experiencing lately will worsen due to climate change.

In many ways these punishing weather events feel like Mother Nature seeking revenge for our failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global warming. Despite abundant evidence, the U.S. government has yet to pass a law that would force a reduction in these emissions.

During his first term, President Obama did make climate change a priority, both in his campaign and in office. The American Clean Energy and Security Act that Congress produced passed through the House in June 2009 by a narrow margin. Yet the bill never reached a vote in the Senate, and it died quietly.

Environmentalists have been flummoxed ever since. One prominent cause-of-death theory says that large mainstream (and predominantly white) environmental groups failed to mobilize grassroots support and ignored those who bear a disproportionate burden of climate change, namely poor people of color.

With Obama in for a second term and reaffirmed in his environmental commitments, climate legislation has another chance at life. Now, observers are wondering if mainstream environmentalists learned the right lessons from the first climate bill failure and how they’ll work with people of color this time around.

Anatomy of a conflict

To hear some environmental leaders tell it, their defeat wasn’t due to a lack of investment in black and brown people living in poor and working class communities, but to an over-investment in Obama. For example, Dan Lashof, climate and clean air director for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), has blamed the president for having the audacity to push healthcare reform and he’s pointed the finger at green groups for being too patient with Obama.

Asked what environmental advocates who led the first climate bill effort could have done differently in 2009, Bill McKibben, founder of the online grassroots organizing campaign 350.org, says their game plan was too insular. “There was no chance last time because all the action was in the closed rooms, not in the streets,” he tells Colorlines.com.

Yet that “action” took place behind closed doors for a reason: Major mainstream green groups including the Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy teamed up with oil companies and some of the biggest polluters and emitters in the nation to form the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP). This ad hoc alliance was the driving force behind the failed 2009 bill and there were no environmental justice, civil rights, or people-of-color groups at the USCAP table.

Obama can’t be blamed for the blind spots of major groups. As recent Washington Post and Politico articles have pointed out, their leadership and membership simply don’t reflect the race or socieconomic class of people most vulnerable to climate change’s wrath.

Sarah Hansen, former executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association, argued recently that the mainstream has been stingy with funding and resources and inept at engaging environmental justice communities. In a National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) study, “Cultivating the Grassroots: A Winning Approach for Environmental and Climate Funders,” Hansen reported that philanthropies awarded most of their environmental dollars to large, predominantly white groups but received little return in terms of law and policy. Meanwhile, wrote Hansen, too few dollars have been invested in community- and environmental justice-based organizations.

According to the NCRP report, environmental organizations with $5 million-plus budgets made up only 2 percent of green groups in general but in 2009 received half of all grants in the field. The NCRP also found that 15 percent of all green dollars benefited marginalized populations between 2007 and 2009. Only 11 percent went to social justice causes.

In January, Harvard professor Theda Skocpol released a study of the first climate bill campaign’s failure and faulted green groups involved for choosing direct congressional lobbying over grassroots organizing. Some of the major organizations did spend money on field organizers, wrote Skocpol, but only to push public messaging like billboards and advertisements.

“The messaging campaigns would not make it their business to actually shape legislation — or even talk about details with ordinary citizens or grassroots groups,” Skocpol wrote in the report. The public “is seen as a kind of background chorus that, hopefully, will sing on key.”

Take one for the team?

That the environmental movement thought billboards and ads could replace educating and organizing actual people was their biggest flaw, a position shared by Hansen and Skocpol. In comparison, health reform advocates took a lobbying and grassroots approach while the climate-change bill made the rounds and got a law passed.

“If you want to gain the trust of the emerging non-white majority, it’s not just a messaging thing,” explains Ryan Young, legal counsel for the California-based Greenlining Institute, a policy research nonprofit focused on economic, environmental, and racial justice. “It’s a values thing. You must understand the values of these communities and craft policy around that.”

Why does this matter?

Consider how the website of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) recently featured an article on city bird sanctuaries from the group’s print magazine titled “Urban Renewal.”

Having people of color on staff might have helped NWF understand that for some, “urban renewal” signifies a historical legacy of black and Latino neighborhoods being effectively erased by development projects such as sports stadiums. Cultural snafus like this have led to white environmental groups being clowned in influential outlets including The Daily Show.

In an interview about the unintended message of “Urban Renewal,” Jim Lyon, NWF’s vice president for conservation policy, told Colorlines.com that the group doesn’t “always get everything right” and that “he’d take it back to his staff.” (Ironically, one of the harshest critiques of urban renewal came from Jane Jacobs, a white conservationist.) On the topic of staff diversity, Lyon said the organization isn’t where they want it to be, but that they’ve made “good progress.” He would not release staff demographics, but said NWF achieves diversity through partnerships with other groups and programs like Eco-Schools USA, which he says “engages more than 1 million children of color” daily.

Beverly Wright, who heads the New Orleans-based Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, says racial oversights of traditionally white groups are the main reason black and Latino environmentalists have formed their own organizations. The culturally divided camps sometimes use the same words, but they’re often speaking different languages.

Take “cap-and-trade,” a scheme that would commodify greenhouse gas emissions for market-trading as a way to reduce those emissions. The first climate bill centered on cap-and-trade because most major environmental groups supported it. But cap-and-trade was anathema to environmental justice because it did nothing to curb local co-pollutants such as smog and soot, direct threats to communities of color. That’s not to mention that cap-and-trade was the brainchild of C. Boyden Gray, a conservative member of the Federalist Society and leader of FreedomWorks, today a major Tea Party funder.

Wright says major green groups tried to coax environmental justice organizations into supporting cap-and-trade by claiming it was for the “greater good.”

“But that meant white people get all the greater goods and we get the rest,” says Wright. “Until they want to have real discussions around racism, they won’t have our support. That’s what happened last time with the climate bill. It did not move, because they did not have diversity in their voices.”

“Diversity” doesn’t just mean hiring more people of color. As the 30-year-old Center for Health, Environment and Justice stated in March, the diversity conversation “really needs to be about resources and assistance to the front line communities rather than head counting.”

What’s next?

So in the new round of climate bill talks, will large environmental groups meaningfully engage community-based environmental justice groups?

The prognosis is mixed. Look at MomentUs, a mammoth collaborative started in January to ramp up support for new climate legislation. While MomentUs claims to be a game-changer, the strategy behind it seems very similar to that of USCAP’s — the one that failed to deliver a climate-change law the first time around. On its website, MomentUs describes its board of directors as “cultural, environmental, business, and marketing leaders who offer the diversity of viewpoints and keen insight vital to advancing MomentUs’s mission.” At press time, all of the directors are white. So is the staff, except for one office administrator.

Looking at MomentUs partners, it appears that the same traditionally white environmental organizations who teamed up for USCAP are now working with corporations including ALEC funder Duke Energy, predatory subprime mortgage king Wells Fargo, perennial labor union target Sodexho, and Disney. At press time there are no environmental justice or civil rights groups involved.

On the other side of the spectrum, The Sierra Club — one of the nation’s largest and whitest green groups — has had an expansive role in environmental justice and advocacy, particularly in the Gulf Coast. In January it joined the NAACP and labor unions in launching the Democracy Initiative, which will tackle voting rights, environmental justice, and other civil rights concerns.

To be sure, it’s way too early to make a conclusion about MomentUs or the Democracy Initiative, but the latter appears to be a step in the right direction in terms of highlighting the intersection between poor environmental outcomes and racism.

McKibben, the 350.org founder, has helped cultivate a multicultural fight against the Keystone XL pipeline project, but he admits that the overall environmental movement has “tons of work to do” on racial equity and inclusion.

“The sooner [mainstream environmentalists] absorb the message and are led by members of the environmental justice movement, the better,” he says.

In that case, the question is a matter of timing and power, of who decides when and which environmental justice activists get to lead.

Stay tuned.

Brentin Mock is a New Orleans-based journalist who serves as ColorLines’s reporting fellow on voting rights.

Indigenous rights are the best defence against Canada’s resource rush (Guardian)

28/04/2013UncategorizedÍndios, Clima, Incerteza, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Políticarenzotaddei

First Nations people – and the decision of Canadians to stand alongside them – will determine the fate of the planet

By Martin Lukacs

Friday 26 April 2013 16.12 BST – guardian.co.uk

Canada blog about Aboriginal rights : First Nations protesters in Idle No More demonstration Toronto

First Nations protesters are silhouetted against a flag as the take in a Idle No More demonstration in Toronto, January 16, 2013. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

In a boardroom in a soaring high-rise on Wall Street, Indigenous activist Arthur Manuel is sitting across from one of the most powerful financial agents in North America.

It’s 2004, and Manuel is on a typical mission. Part of a line of distinguished Indigenous leaders from western Canada, Manuel is what you might call an economic hit-man for the right cause. A brilliant thinker trained in law, he has devoted himself to fighting Canada’s policies toward Indigenous peoples by assailing the government where it hurts most – in its pocketbook.

Which is why he secured a meeting in New York with a top-ranking official at Standard & Poor’s, the influential credit agency that issues Canada’s top-notch AAA rating. That’s what assures investors that the country has its debts covered, that it is a safe and profitable place to do business.

This coveted credit rating is Manuel’s target. His line of attack is to try to lift the veil on Canada’s dirty business secret: that contrary to the myth that Indigenous peoples leech off the state, resources taken from their lands have in fact been subsidizing the Canadian economy. In their haste to get at that wealth, the government has been flouting their own laws, ignoring Supreme Court decisions calling for the respect of Indigenous and treaty rights over large territories. Canada has become very rich, and Indigenous peoples very poor.

In other words, Canada owes big. Some have even begun calculating how much. According to economist Fred Lazar, First Nations in northern Ontario alone are owed $32 billion for the last century of unfulfilled treaty promises to share revenue from resources. Manuel’s argument is that this unpaid debt – a massive liability of trillions of dollars carried by the Canadian state, which it has deliberately failed to report – should be recognized as a risk to the country’s credit rating.

How did the official who could pull the rug under Canada’s economy respond? Unlike Canadian politicians and media who regularly dismiss the significance of Indigenous rights, he took Manuel seriously. It was evident he knew all the jurisprudence. He followed the political developments. He didn’t contradict any of Manuel’s facts.

He no doubt understood what Manuel was remarkably driving at: under threat of a dented credit rating, Canada might finally feel pressure to deal fairly with Indigenous peoples. But here was the hitch: Standard & Poor’s wouldn’t acknowledge the debt, because the official didn’t think Manuel and First Nations could ever collect it. Why? As author Naomi Klein, who accompanied Manuel at the meeting, remembers, his answer amounted to a realpolitik shoulder shrug.

“Who will able to enforce the debt? You and what army?”

This was his brutal but illuminating admission: Indigenous peoples may have the law on their side, but they don’t have the power. Indeed, while Indigenous peoples’ protests have achieved important environmental victories – mining operations stopped here, forest conservation areas set up there – these have remained sporadic and isolated. Canada’s country-wide policies of ignoring Indigenous land rights have rarely been challenged, and never fundamentally.

Until now. If it’s only a social movement that can change the power equation upholding the official’s stance, then the Idle No More uprisingmay be it. Triggered initially in late 2012 by opposition to the Conservative government’s roll-back of decades of environmental protection, this Indigenous movement quickly tapped into long-simmering indignation. Through the chilly winter months, Canada witnessed unprecedented mobilizations, with blockades and round-dances springing up in every corner of the country, demanding a basic resetting of the relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples.

Money is not the main form this justice will take. First Nations desperately need more funding to close the gap that exists between them and Canadians. But if Indigenous peoples hold a key to the Canadian economy, the point is to use this leverage to steer the country in a different direction. “Draw that power back to the people on the land, the grassroots people fighting pipelines and industrial projects,” Manuel says. “That will determine what governments can or cannot do on the land.”

The stakes could not be greater. The movement confronts a Conservative Canadian government aggressively pursuing $600 billion of resource development on or near Indigenous lands. That means the unbridled exploitation of huge hydrocarbon reserves, including the three-fold expansion of one of the world’s most carbon-intensive projects, the Alberta tar sands. Living closest to these lands, Indigenous peoples are the best and last defence against this fossil fuel scramble. In its place, they may yet host the energy alternatives – of wind, water, or solar.

No surprise, then, about the government’s basic approach toward First Nations: “removing obstacles to major economic development.” Hence the movement’s next stage – a call for defiance branded Sovereignty Summer – is to put more obstacles up. The assertion of constitutionally-protected Indigenous and treaty rights – backed up by direct action, legal challenges and massive support from Canadians – is exactly what can create chronic uncertainty for this corporate and government agenda. For those betting on more than a half-trillion in resource investments, that’s a very big warning sign.

Industry has taken notice. A recent report on mining dropped Canada out of the top spot for miners: “while Canadian jurisdictions remain competitive globally, uncertainties with Indigenous consultation and disputed land claims are growing concerns for some.” And if the uncertainty is eventually tagged with a monetary sum, then Canada will, as Manuel warned Standard & Poor’s, face a large and serious credit risk. Trying to ward off such a threat, the government is hoping to lock mainstream Indigenous leaders into endless negotiations, or sway them with promises of a bigger piece of the resource action.

But this bleak outlook intent on a final ransacking of the earth doesn’t stand up to the vision the movement offers Canadians. Implementing Indigenous rights on the ground, starting with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, could tilt the balance of stewardship over a vast geography: giving Indigenous peoples much more control, and corporations much less. Which means that finally honouring Indigenous rights is not simply about paying off Canada’s enormous legal debt to First Nations: it is also our best chance to save entire territories from endless extraction and destruction. In no small way, the actions of Indigenous peoples – and the decision of Canadians to stand alongside them – will determine the fate of the planet.

This new understanding is dawning on more Canadians. Thousands are signing onto educational campaigns to become allies to First Nations. Direct action trainings for young people are in full swing. As Chief Allan Adam from the First Nation in the heart of the Alberta oil patch has suggested, it might be “a long, hot summer.”

Sustained action that puts real clout behind Indigenous claims is what will force a reckoning with the true nature of Canada’s economy – and the possibility of a transformed country. That is the promise of a growing mass protest movement, an army of untold power and numbers.

Ecology Buys Time for Evolution: Climate Change Disrupts Songbird’s Timing Without Impacting Population Size (Yet) (Science Daily)

27/04/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Ecologia, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

Apr. 25, 2013 — Songbird populations can handle far more disrupting climate change than expected. Density-dependent processes are buying them time for their battle. But without (slow) evolutionary rescue it will not save them in the end, says an international team of scientists led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in Science this week.

Parus major. Songbird populations can handle far more disrupting climate change than expected. Density-dependent processes are buying them time for their battle. But without (slow) evolutionary rescue it will not save them in the end. (Credit: © hfox / Fotolia)

Yes, spring started late this year in North-western Europe. But the general trend of the four last decades is still a rapidly advancing spring. The seasonal timing of trees and insects advance too, but songbirds like Parus major, or the great tit, lag behind. Yet without an accompanying decline in population numbers, it seems, as the international research team shows for the great tit population in the Dutch National Park the Hoge Veluwe.

“It’s a real paradox,” explain Dr Tom Reed and Prof Marcel Visser of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. “Due to the changing climate of the past decades the egg laying dates of Parus major have become increasingly mismatched with the timing of the main food source for its chicks: caterpillars. The seasonal timing of the food peak has advanced over twice as fast as that of the birds and the reproductive output is reduced. Still, the population numbers do not go down.” On the short term, that is, as Reed, Visser and colleagues from Norway, the USA, and France have now calculated using almost 40 years of data from this songbird.

The solution to the paradox is that although fewer offspring now fledge due to food shortage, each of these chicks has a higher chance of survival until the next breeding season. “We call this relaxed competition, as there are fewer fledglings to compete with,” first author Reed points out. Out of 10 eggs laid, 9 chicks are born, 7 fledge and on average only one chick survives winter. That last number increases with less competitors around.

This is the first time that density dependence — a widespread phenomenon in nature — and ecological mismatch are linked, and it is a real eye-opener. Reed: “It all seems so obvious once you’ve calculated this, but people were almost sure that mistiming would lead to a direct population decline.”

The great tits that lay eggs earlier in spring are more successful nowadays than late birds, which produce relatively few surviving offspring. This leads to increasing selection for birds to reproduce early. But the total number of birds in the new generation stays the same. “That is the second paradox,” the researchers state. “Why are population numbers hardly affected, despite the stronger selection on timing caused by the mismatch? The answer is that for selection it matters which birds survive, while for population size it only matters how many survive. Visser: “The mortality in one group can be compensated for by the success in another. But this stretching, this flexibility, is not unlimited.”

The mismatch between egg laying period and caterpillar peak in the woods will keep growing, and so will the impact following the temporary rescue, as long as spring temperatures continue to increase. “The density dependence is only buying the birds time, hopefully for evolutionary adaptation to dig in before population numbers are substantially affected,” according to Visser. The new findings can help to predict the impact of future environmental change on other wild populations and to identify relevant measures to take. Even rubber bands stretch only so far before they break.

Journal Reference:

T. E. Reed, V. Grotan, S. Jenouvrier, B.-E. Saether, M. E. Visser. Population Growth in a Wild Bird Is Buffered Against Phenological Mismatch. Science, 2013; 340 (6131): 488 DOI: 10.1126/science.1232870

Earth’s Current Warmth Not Seen in the Last 1,400 Years or More, Says Study (Science Daily)

23/04/2013UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Apr. 21, 2013 — Fueled by industrial greenhouse gas emissions, Earth’s climate warmed more between 1971 and 2000 than during any other three-decade interval in the last 1,400 years, according to new regional temperature reconstructions covering all seven continents. This period of humanmade global warming, which continues today, reversed a natural cooling trend that lasted several hundred years, according to results published in the journalNature Geoscience by more than 80 scientists from 24 nations analyzing climate data from tree rings, pollen, cave formations, ice cores, lake and ocean sediments, and historical records from around the world.

During Europe’s 2003 heat wave, July temperatures in France were as much as 18 degrees F hotter than in 2001. (Credit: NASA)

“This paper tells us what we already knew, except in a better, more comprehensive fashion,” said study co-author Edward Cook, a tree-ring scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who led the Asia reconstruction.

The study also found that Europe’s 2003 heat wave and drought, which killed an estimated 70,000 people, happened during Europe’s hottest summer of the last 2,000 years. “Summer temperatures were intense that year and accompanied by a lack of rain and very dry soil conditions over much of Europe,” said study co-author Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist at Lamont-Doherty and one of the lead contributors to the Europe reconstruction. Though summer 2003 set a record for Europe, global warming was only one of the factors that contributed to the temperature conditions that summer, he said.

The study is the latest to show that the Medieval Warm Period, from about 950 to 1250, may not have been global, and may not have happened at the same time in places that did grow warmer. While parts of Europe and North America were fairly warm between 950 and 1250, South America stayed relatively cold, the study says. Some people have argued that the natural warming that occurred during the medieval ages is happening today, and that humans are not responsible for modern day global warming. Scientists are nearly unanimous in their disagreement “If we went into another Medieval Warm Period again that extra warmth would be added on top of warming from greenhouse gases,” said Cook.

Temperatures varied less between continents in the same hemisphere than between hemispheres. “Distinctive periods, such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age stand out, but do not show a globally uniform pattern,” said co-author Heinz Wanner, a scientist at the University of Bern. By 1500, temperatures dropped below the long-term average everywhere, though colder temperatures emerged several decades earlier in the Arctic, Europe and Asia.

The most consistent trend across all regions in the last 2,000 years was a long-term cooling, likely caused by a rise in volcanic activity, decrease in solar irradiance, changes in land-surface vegetation, and slow variations in Earth’s orbit. With the exception of Antarctica, cooling tapered off at the end of the 19th century, with the onset of industrialization. Cooler 30-year periods between 830 and 1910 were particularly pronounced during weak solar activity and strong tropical volcanic eruptions. Both phenomena often occurred simultaneously and led to a drop in the average temperature during five distinct 30- to 90-year intervals between 1251 and 1820. Warming in the 20th century was on average twice as large in the northern continents as it was in the Southern Hemisphere. During the past 2000 years, some regions experienced warmer 30-year intervals than during the late 20th century. For example, in Europe the years between 21 and 80 AD were likely warmer than the period 1971-2000.

SunEdison e Petrobras firmam acordo para planta de energia solar no Brasil (Yahoo! Notícias)

22/04/2013UncategorizedEnergia solar, Enquadramento, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Petrobrásrenzotaddei

Reuters – qui, 18 de abr de 2013

18 Abr (Reuters) – A SunEdison, provedora global de serviços de energia solar e subsidiária da MEMC Electronic Materials assinou um acordo com a Petrobras para construir uma das maiores plantas de energia solar no Brasil, informou a empresa norte-americana em um comunicado nesta quinta-feira.

A planta, que será localizada em Alto do Rodrigues, no Rio Grande do Norte, terá uma capacidade instalada de 1,1 megawatt.

Leia o comunicado original, em inglês, em: http://pdf.reuters.com/pdfnews/pdfnews.asp?i=43059c3bf0e37541&u=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20130418:nPnNY97027

(Por Laiz de Souza)

Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – report (The Guardian)

22/04/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Mídia, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Sensacionalismorenzotaddei

Trillions of dollars at risk as stock markets inflate value of fossil fuels that may have to remain buried forever, experts warn

Damian Carrington – The Guardian, Friday 19 April 2013

Carbon bubble : carbon dioxide polluting power plant : coal-fired Bruce Mansfield Power Plant

Global stock markets are betting on countries failing to adhere to legally binding carbon emission targets. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock marketsinflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists.

“The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was “very big indeed” and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.

The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil,coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change.

The stark report is by Stern and the thinktank Carbon Tracker. Their warning is supported by organisations including HSBC, Citi, Standard and Poor’s and the International Energy Agency. The Bank of England has also recognised that a collapse in the value of oil, gas and coal assets as nations tackle global warming is a potential systemic risk to the economy, with London being particularly at risk owing to its huge listings of coal.

Stern said that far from reducing efforts to develop fossil fuels, the top 200 companies spent $674bn (£441bn) in 2012 to find and exploit even more new resources, a sum equivalent to 1% of global GDP, which could end up as “stranded” or valueless assets. Stern’s landmark 2006 reporton the economic impact of climate change – commissioned by the then chancellor, Gordon Brown – concluded that spending 1% of GDP would pay for a transition to a clean and sustainable economy.

The world’s governments have agreed to restrict the global temperature rise to 2C, beyond which the impacts become severe and unpredictable. But Stern said the investors clearly did not believe action to curb climate change was going to be taken. “They can’t believe that and also believe that the markets are sensibly valued now.”

“They only believe environmental regulation when they see it,” said James Leaton, from Carbon Tracker and a former PwC consultant. He said short-termism in financial markets was the other major reason for the carbon bubble. “Analysts say you should ride the train until just before it goes off the cliff. Each thinks they are smart enough to get off in time, but not everyone can get out of the door at the same time. That is why you get bubbles and crashes.”

Paul Spedding, an oil and gas analyst at HSBC, said: “The scale of ‘listed’ unburnable carbon revealed in this report is astonishing. This report makes it clear that ‘business as usual’ is not a viable option for the fossil fuel industry in the long term. [The market] is assuming it will get early warning, but my worry is that things often happen suddenly in the oil and gas sector.”

HSBC warned that 40-60% of the market capitalisation of oil and gas companies was at risk from the carbon bubble, with the top 200 fossil fuel companies alone having a current value of $4tn, along with $1.5tn debt.

Lord McFall, who chaired the Commons Treasury select committee for a decade, said: “Despite its devastating scale, the banking crisis was at its heart an avoidable crisis: the threat of significant carbon writedown has the unmistakable characteristics of the same endemic problems.”

The report calculates that the world’s currently indicated fossil fuel reserves equate to 2,860bn tonnes of carbon dioxide, but that just 31% could be burned for an 80% chance of keeping below a 2C temperature rise. For a 50% chance of 2C or less, just 38% could be burned.

Carbon capture and storage technology, which buries emissions underground, can play a role in the future, but even an optimistic scenario which sees 3,800 commercial projects worldwide would allow only an extra 4% of fossil fuel reserves to be burned. There are currently no commercial projects up and running. The normally conservativeInternational Energy Agency has also concluded that a major part of fossil fuel reserves is unburnable.

Citi bank warned investors in Australia’s vast coal industry that little could be done to avoid the future loss of value in the face of action on climate change. “If the unburnable carbon scenario does occur, it is difficult to see how the value of fossil fuel reserves can be maintained, so we see few options for risk mitigation.”

Ratings agencies have expressed concerns, with Standard and Poor’s concluding that the risk could lead to the downgrading of the credit ratings of oil companies within a few years.

Steven Oman, senior vice-president at Moody’s, said: “It behoves us as investors and as a society to know the true cost of something so that intelligent and constructive policy and investment decisions can be made. Too often the true costs are treated as unquantifiable or even ignored.”

Jens Peers, who manages €4bn (£3bn) for Mirova, part of €300bn asset managers Natixis, said: “It is shocking to see the report’s numbers, as they are worse than people realise. The risk is massive, but a lot of asset managers think they have a lot of time. I think they are wrong.” He said a key moment will come in 2015, the date when the world’s governments have pledged to strike a global deal to limit carbon emissions. But he said that fund managers need to move now. If they wait till 2015, “it will be too late for them to take action.”

Pension funds are also concerned. “Every pension fund manager needs to ask themselves have we incorporated climate change and carbon risk into our investment strategy? If the answer is no, they need to start to now,” said Howard Pearce, head of pension fund management at the Environment Agency, which holds £2bn in assets.

Stern and Leaton both point to China as evidence that carbon cuts are likely to be delivered. China’s leaders have said its coal use will peak in the next five years, said Leaton, but this has not been priced in. “I don’t know why the market does not believe China,” he said. “When it says it is going to do something, it usually does.” He said the US and Australia were banking on selling coal to China but that this “doesn’t add up”.

Jeremy Grantham, a billionaire fund manager who oversees $106bn of assets, said his company was on the verge of pulling out of all coal and unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil from tar sands. “The probability of them running into trouble is too high for me to take that risk as an investor.” He said: “If we mean to burn all the coal and any appreciable percentage of the tar sands, or other unconventional oil and gas then we’re cooked. [There are] terrible consequences that we will lay at the door of our grandchildren.”

Ocean’s Future Not So Bleak? Resilience Found in Shelled Plants Exposed to Ocean Acidification (Science Daily)

16/04/2013UncategorizedEcologia, Ecologia marinha, Ecologia Política, Incerteza, Meio ambiente, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Apr. 12, 2013 — Marine scientists have long understood the detrimental effect of fossil fuel emissions on marine ecosystems. But a group led by a UC Santa Barbara professor has found a point of resilience in a microscopic shelled plant with a massive environmental impact, which suggests the future of ocean life may not be so bleak.

This shows cells of the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi strain NZEH under present-day, left, and future high, right, carbon dioxide conditions. (Credit: UCSB)

As fossil fuel emissions increase, so does the amount of carbon dioxide oceans absorb and dissolve, lowering their pH levels. “As pH declines, there is this concern that marine species that have shells may start dissolving or may have more difficulty making calcium carbonate, the chalky substance that they use to build shells,” said Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, a professor in UCSB’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology.

Iglesias-Rodriguez and postdoctoral researcher Bethan Jones, who is now at Rutgers University, led a large-scale study on the effects of ocean acidification on these tiny plants that can only be seen under the microscope. Their research, funded by the European Project on Ocean Acidification, is published in the journal PLoS ONE and breaks with traditional notions about the vitality of calcifiers, or creatures that make shells, in future ocean conditions.

“The story years ago was that ocean acidification was going to be bad, really bad for calcifiers,” said Iglesias-Rodriguez, whose team discovered that one species of the tiny single celled marine coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, actually had bigger shells in high carbon dioxide seawater conditions. While the team acknowledges that calcification tends to decline with acidification, “we now know that there are variable responses in sea corals, in sea urchins, in all shelled organisms that we find in the sea.”

These E. huxleyi are a large army of ocean-regulating shell producers that create oxygen as they process carbon by photosynthesis and fortify the ocean food chain. As one of Earth’s main vaults for environmentally harmful carbon emissions, their survival affects organisms inside and outside the marine system. However, as increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide causes seawater to slide down the pH scale toward acidic levels, this environment could become less hospitable.

The UCSB study incorporated an approach known as shotgun proteomics to uncover how E. huxleyi‘s biochemistry could change in future high carbon dioxide conditions, which were set at four times the current levels for the study. This approach casts a wider investigative net that looks at all changes and influences in the environment as opposed to looking at individual processes like photosynthesis.

Shotgun proteomics examines the type, abundance, and alterations in proteins to understand how a cell’s machinery is conditioned by ocean acidification. “There is no perfect approach,” said Iglesias-Rodriguez. “They all have their caveats, but we think that this is a way of extracting a lot of information from this system.”

To mirror natural ocean conditions, the team used over half a ton of seawater to grow the E. huxleyi and bubbled in carbon dioxide to recreate both present day and high future carbon levels. It took more than six months for the team to grow enough plants to accumulate and analyze sufficient proteins.

The team found that E. huxleyi cells exposed to higher carbon dioxide conditions were larger and contained more shell than those grown in current conditions. However, they also found that these larger cells grow slower than those under current carbon dioxide conditions. Aside from slower growth, the higher carbon dioxide levels did not seem to affect the cells even at the biochemical level, as measured by the shotgun proteomic approach.

“The E. huxleyi increased the amount of calcite they had because they kept calcifying but slowed down division rates,” said Iglesias-Rodriguez. “You get fewer cells but they look as healthy as those under current ocean conditions, so the shells are not simply dissolving away.”

The team stresses that while representatives of this species seem to have biochemical mechanisms to tolerate even very high levels of carbon dioxide, slower growth could become problematic. If other species grow faster, E. huxleyi could be outnumbered in some areas.

“The cells in this experiment seemed to tolerate future ocean conditions,” said Jones. “However, what will happen to this species in the future is still an open question. Perhaps the grow-slow outcome may end up being their downfall as other species could simply outgrow and replace them.”

Journal Reference:

Bethan M. Jones, M. Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, Paul J. Skipp, Richard J. Edwards, Mervyn J. Greaves, Jeremy R. Young, Henry Elderfield, C. David O’Connor. Responses of the Emiliania huxleyi Proteome to Ocean Acidification. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (4): e61868 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0061868

Carbon Dioxide Removal Can Lower Costs of Climate Protection (Science Daily)

13/04/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Economia, Enquadramento, Geoengenharia, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Apr. 12, 2013 — Directly removing CO₂ from the air has the potential to alter the costs of climate change mitigation. It could allow prolonging greenhouse-gas emissions from sectors like transport that are difficult, thus expensive, to turn away from using fossil fuels. And it may help to constrain the financial burden on future generations, a study now published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) shows. It focuses on the use of biomass for energy generation, combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS). According to the analysis, carbon dioxide removal could be used under certain requirements to alleviate the most costly components of mitigation, but it would not replace the bulk of actual emissions reductions.

Directly removing CO2 from the air has the potential to alter the costs of climate change mitigation. It could allow prolonging greenhouse-gas emissions from sectors like transport that are difficult, thus expensive, to turn away from using fossil fuels. And it may help to constrain the financial burden on future generations, a new study shows. It focuses on the use of biomass for energy generation, combined with carbon capture and storage. (Credit: © Jürgen Fälchle / Fotolia)

“Carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere allows to separate emissions control from the time and location of the actual emissions. This flexibility can be important for climate protection,” says lead-author Elmar Kriegler. “You don’t have to prevent emissions in every factory or truck, but could for instance plant grasses that suck CO₂ out of the air to grow — and later get processed in bioenergy plants where the CO₂ gets stored underground.”

In economic terms, this flexibility allows to lower costs by compensating for emissions which would be most costly to eliminate. “This means that a phase-out of global emissions by the end of the century — that we would need to hold the 2 degree line adopted by the international community — does not necessarily require to eliminate each and every source of emissions,” says Kriegler. “Decisions whether and how to protect future generations from the risks of climate change have to be made today, but the burden of achieving these targets will increase over time. The costs for future generations can be substantially reduced if carbon dioxide removal technologies become available in the long run.”

Balancing the financial burden across generations

The study now published is the first to quantify this. If bioenergy plus CCS is available, aggregate mitigation costs over the 21st century might be halved. In the absence of such a carbon dioxide removal strategy, costs for future generations rise significantly, up to a quadrupling of mitigation costs in the period of 2070 to 2090. The calculation was carried out using a computer simulation of the economic system, energy markets, and climate, covering a range of scenarios.

Options for carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere include afforestation and chemical approaches like direct air capture of CO₂ from the atmosphere or reactions of CO₂ with minerals to form carbonates. But the use of biomass for energy generation combined with carbon capture and storage is less costly than chemical options, as long as sufficient biomass feedstock is available, the scientists point out.

Serious concerns about large-scale biomass use combined with CCS

“Of course, there are serious concerns about the sustainability of large-scale biomass use for energy,” says co-author Ottmar Edenhofer, chief-economist of PIK. “We therefore considered the bioenergy with CCS option only as an example of the role that carbon dioxide removal could play for climate change mitigation.” The exploitation of bioenergy can conflict with land-use for food production or ecosystem protection. To account for sustainability concerns, the study restricts the bioenergy production to a medium level, that may be realized mostly on abandoned agricultural land.

Still, global population growth and changing dietary habits, associated with an increased demand for land, as well as improvements of agricultural productivity, associated with a decreased demand for land, are important uncertainties here. Furthermore, CCS technology is not yet available for industrial-scale use and, due to environmental concerns, is controversial in countries like Germany. Yet in this study it is assumed that it will become available in the near future.

“CO₂ removal from the atmosphere could enable humankind to keep the window of opportunity open for low-stabilization targets despite of a likely delay in international cooperation, but only under certain requirements,” says Edenhofer. “The risks of scaling up bioenergy use need to be better understood, and safety concerns about CCS have to be thoroughly investigated. Still, carbon dioxide removal technologies are no science fiction and need to be further explored.” In no way should they be seen as a pretext to neglect emissions reductions now, notes Edenhofer. “By far the biggest share of climate change mitigation has to come from a large effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions globally.”

Journal Reference:

Elmar Kriegler, Ottmar Edenhofer, Lena Reuster, Gunnar Luderer, David Klein. Is atmospheric carbon dioxide removal a game changer for climate change mitigation? Climatic Change, 2013; DOI: 10.1007/s10584-012-0681-4

Environmental Change Triggers Rapid Evolution (Science Daily)

13/04/2013UncategorizedEcologia, Evolução, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

Apr. 8, 2013 — Environmental change can drive hard-wired evolutionary changes in animal species in a matter of generations. A University of Leeds-led study, published in the journal Ecology Letters, overturns the common assumption that evolution only occurs gradually over hundreds or thousands of years.

Female soil mite. (Credit: Umeå universitet.)

Instead, researchers found significant genetically transmitted changes in laboratory populations of soil mites in just 15 generations, leading to a doubling of the age at which the mites reached adulthood and large changes in population size. The results have important implications in areas such as disease and pest control, conservation and fisheries management because they demonstrate that evolution can be a game-changer even in the short-term.

Professor Tim Benton, of the University of Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Sciences, said: “This demonstrates that short-term ecological change and evolution are completely intertwined and cannot reasonably be considered separate. We found that populations evolve rapidly in response to environmental change and population management. This can have major consequences such as reducing harvesting yields or saving a population heading for extinction.”

Although previous research has implied a link between short-term changes in animal species’ physical characteristics and evolution, the Leeds-led study is the first to prove a causal relationship between rapid genetic evolution and animal population dynamics in a controlled experimental setting.

The researchers worked with soil mites that were collected from the wild and then raised in 18 glass tubes. Forty percent of adult mites were removed every week from six of the glass tubes. A similar proportion of juveniles were removed each week in a further six tubes, while no “harvesting” was conducted in the remaining third of the tubes.

Lead author Dr Tom Cameron, a postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Biological Sciences at Leeds at the time of the research and now based in Umeå University, Sweden, said: “We saw significant evolutionary changes relatively quickly. The age of maturity of the mites in the tubes doubled over about 15 generations, because they were competing in a different way than they would in the wild. Removing the adults caused them to remain as juveniles even longer because the genetics were responding to the high chance that they were going to die as soon as they matured. When they did eventually mature, they were so enormous they could lay all of their eggs very quickly.”

The initial change in the mites’ environment — from the wild into the laboratory — had a disastrous effect on the population, putting the mites on an extinction trajectory. However, in every population, including those subjected to the removal of adults or juveniles, the trajectory switched after only five generations of evolution and the population sizes began to increase.

The researchers found that the laboratory environment was selecting for those mites that grew more slowly. Under the competitive conditions in the tubes, the slow growing mites were more fertile when they matured, meaning they could have more babies.

Dr Cameron said: “The genetic evolution that resulted in an investment in egg production at the expense of individual growth rates led to population growth, rescuing the populations from extinction. This is evolutionary rescue in action and suggests that rapid evolution can help populations respond to rapid environmental change.”

Short-term ecological responses to the environment — for instance, a reduction in the size of adults because of a lack of food — and hard-wired evolutionary changes were separated by placing mites from different treatments into a similar environment for several generations and seeing whether differences persisted.

Professor Benton said: “The traditional idea would be that if you put animals in a new environment they stay basically the same but the way they grow changes because of variables like the amount of food. However, our study proves that the evolutionary effect — the change in the underlying biology in response to the environment — can happen at the same time as the ecological response. Ecology and evolution are intertwined,” he said.

Unpicking evolutionary change from ecological responses is particularly important in areas such as the management of fisheries, where human decisions can result in major changes to an entire population’s environment and life histories. The size at which cod in the North Sea mature is about half that of 50 years ago and this change has been linked to a collapse in the cod population because adult fish today are less fertile than their ancestors.

“The big debate has been over whether this is an evolutionary response to the way they are fished or whether this is, for instance, just the amount of food in the sea having a short-term ecological effect. Our study underlined that evolution can happen on a short timescale and even small 1 to 2 per cent evolutionary changes in the underlying biology caused by your harvesting strategy can have major consequences on population growth and yields. You can’t just try to bring the environment back to what it was before and expect everything to return to normal,” Professor Benton said.

The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and involved researchers from the University of Leeds and Professor Stuart Piertney of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Biological Sciences.

Journal Reference:

Tom C. Cameron, Daniel O’Sullivan, Alan Reynolds, Stuart B. Piertney, Tim G. Benton. Eco-evolutionary dynamics in response to selection on life-history. Ecology Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/ele.12107

Segue o Seco (Rolling Stone)

07/04/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Economia, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Nordeste, Opinião pública, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, Secarenzotaddei

Edição 77 – Fevereiro de 2013

Enquanto a Bahia sofre com “a pior seca dos últimos 50 anos”, os habitantes do sertão se desdobram para superar os percalços. A esperança persiste, mas é minguada como a água da chuva

Foto: Flavio Forner

Por MAÍRA KUBÍK MANO

“Para o carro! para o carro! olha ali, em cima das pedras! Tá vendo?” Não, eu não via nada. A paisagem parecia exatamente a mesma da última meia hora. Toda cor de terra, com uma ou outra catingueira no horizonte e os mandacarus, sempre em maior número, acompanhando o traçado da estrada de chão. “Lembra da cena em que o Fabiano vai tentar pegar um preá? Olha ali!”, o interlocutor insiste, apontando. Vidro abaixado, olhos a postos. Dois bichos pequenos, amarronzados e amendoados, de focinho pontudo, se mexem e se fazem notar. Pronto, lá estão os preás. Júlio César Santos fica satisfeito. Afinal, ele fora parar no sertão justamente depois de ler Vidas Secas.

“Eu sou da Zona da Mata, mas quando li Graciliano Ramos quis vir para cá”, conta Santos, um engenheiro agrônomo que se encantou pela caatinga quando ainda era estudante da Universidade Federal do Recôncavo Baiano (UFRB). Hoje, é chefe do escritório da EBDA (Empresa Baiana de Desenvolvimento Agrícola) em Ipirá, um dos 258 municípios da Bahia em situação de emergência por causa da seca. Junto com outros 17 órgãos e secretarias do governo de Jaques Wagner (PT), a EDBA faz parte do Comitê Estadual de Ações de Convivência com a Seca.

Estamos a caminho da cidade vizinha, Pintadas, onde a estiagem é ainda mais crítica. No percurso, cruzamos quatro rios. Três deles, secos. O céu nublado ao longe parece o prenúncio da mudança. Um chuvisco havia caído naquela madrugada, algo que não acontecia há muito tempo. As marcas ainda estavam na terra, em alguns sulcos rasos que provavelmente abrigaram fios de água corrente. Santos parece aliviado. “Agora precisa chover mais”, diz.

Em uma curva à esquerda surge a casa de Messias e Ginalva Jesus Pereira. A plantação de palmas logo se destaca da monocromia – é verde-escura, com nenhum tom de marrom. Na seca, o vegetal tem sido fonte de alimento imprescindível para garantir a sobrevivência dos animais, que já não têm mais pasto. “O povo vem, visita, admira. Outros ficam com usura”, fala Ginalva, sobrancelhas levantadas, há cerca de 20 anos vivendo naquele roçado.

Como era de se esperar, a conversa envereda para o clima e as gotas que caíram à noite. “Choveu em Ipirá, foi? Ah, aqui foi só uma neblina”, rebate o pequeno Matheus, filho do meio de Ginalva. “Aqui não chove mesmo há três anos. Perdemos dois bezerros e dois umbuzeiros para a seca. Painho está pedindo a Deus para esse resto de palma pegar”, diz, referindo-se a uma área mais distante da casa, plantada há pouco, onde o verde já está quase desbotando.

O cálculo de Matheus não é exagerado. Geralmente, chove na caatinga entre janeiro e maio, justamente a época do plantio. Em 2012, porém, a água não caiu e um período de estiagem emendou no outro, fazendo desta a maior seca dos últimos 50 anos, segundo a Coordenação de Defesa Civil da Bahia (Cordec). A previsão é que ela se estenda por mais um ou dois anos. “Agora, com a chuva, vai ser outra coisa. Vai mudar tudo”, avalia uma experiente Ginalva. Assim como o protagonista Fabiano da obra de Graciliano Ramos, ela sabe que a caatinga ressuscita.

Na casa dela, canos estrategicamente posicionados aguardam a próxima precipitação para recolher a água em cisternas. Enquanto isso não ocorre, Ginalva mantém, por meio de irrigação artificial, a produção – que inclui também feijão de corda, cebolinha, coentro, mamão, batata-doce e quiabo, além da criação de ovinos, caprinos e bovinos. O poço, recém-construído, foi financiado via Pronaf (Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar) Emergencial.

Assim como Ginalva, outros 6 mil agricultores da região apresentaram projetos para acessar o Programa. Segundo o Banco do Nordeste do Brasil (BNB), foram liberados R$ 10 milhões do Pronaf Emergencial até janeiro de 2013 para os 17 municípios do entorno de Feira de Santana, entre eles Pintadas e Ipirá. “São pequenos agricultores que você vê aqui, solicitando financiamento para plantar palmas ou fazer aguada para recuperar o pasto”, diz José Wilson Junqueira Queiroz, gerente de negócios do BNB. Em todo o Brasil, entre maio e dezembro de 2012, o governo federal autorizou R$ 656,2 milhões em linhas de crédito emergenciais para atender os atingidos pela seca.

“São essas políticas públicas que estão segurando as famílias no campo”, avalia Jeane de Almeida Santiago. Agrônoma que trabalha em uma ONG chamada Fundação Apaeba, ela presta assistência técnica para os produtores de Pintadas, Ipirá, Riachão do Jacuípe, Pé de Serra, Baixa Grande e Nova Fátima, todas na Bahia. “Antes, tinha muito mais gente que ia para São Paulo e outros estados para fazer migração.”

O relato é de alguém que conhece de perto a situação. Jeane nasceu em Pintadas. Estudou na escola agrícola e saiu para fazer curso técnico em Juazeiro e faculdade no Recôncavo Baiano. Voltou quando se formou, querendo transmitir os conhecimentos aprendidos. Olhos vivos e atentos, ela muda o tom e reavalia sua afirmação: “É, mas este ano muitos jovens estão indo. Com a seca, a rentabilidade das propriedades está zero. E as pessoas não vão ficar aqui sem ter dinheiro. Infelizmente, são obrigadas a sair, de coração partido, para São Paulo em busca de trabalho, ver se conseguem mandar dinheiro para a família que ficou aqui manter o rebanho vivo”.

De fato, o ponto de ônibus de Pintadas estava cheio naquela manhã. A cidade ainda não tem rodoviária e o asfalto que a conecta com o resto do mundo foi inaugurado há apenas um ano, como avisam as placas do governo do estado logo na entrada. Todos aguardavam na calçada o próximo transporte para a capital paulista, malas e parentes em pé, sol a pino. Há cerca de três semanas, Ginalva se despedia ali mesmo do filho mais velho, de 18 anos, que decidiu tentar a vida fora dali. “Me ligou ontem dizendo que já arrumou um emprego numa fábrica. É temporário, mas é um emprego”, ela conta. É a famosa ponte aérea Pintadas-São Paulo.

“O pior é que não temos previsão boa para este ano”, lamenta Jeane. Ela conta que até a palma e o mandacaru, também usados para alimentar o rebanho, começaram a desaparecer, e que a maioria das terras da região está na mão de pequenos agricultores de subsistência ou pecuaristas. “Já faz mais de um ano que o município está dando ração aos animais porque não tem mais pasto. Mas agora a ração esgotou. Você procura e não acha. Quando acha, é um valor que não dá para colocar no orçamento.”

Jeane preocupa-se: “Tem produtores que estão pagando três ou quatro projetos. Vai chegar uma hora que ninguém vai conseguir pegar mais [crédito], de tanto que devem. E aí, não sei como vai ser. Porque a propriedade não está tendo rentabilidade para pagar os empréstimos que já deve. Sem crédito, eu acredito que na zona rural fica impossível.”

“A causa desta seca é a destruição do meio ambiente”, ela sentencia, citando uma pesquisa recente que constata que 90% da mata nativa da região havia desaparecido. “A natureza está respondendo. O território está descoberto. E a partir daí vêm as queimadas. Muitos solos já se perderam ou estão enfraquecidos. O pessoal não tem a cultura de adubar e vão explorando e explorando. Os rios que tínhamos morreram. As nascentes estão desmatadas.”

Em Ipirá, logo ao lado, a realidade é semelhante. No lugar da caatinga, estão os bois. A cena mais comum é ver o gado ou os cavalos amontoados embaixo das poucas árvores que restam para escapar do sol escaldante – cabeça na sombra, lombo de fora. “Ipirá era um município cheio de minifúndios”, explica Orlando Cintra, gerente de Agricultura e Cooperativismo da Prefeitura. “Os grandes criadores começaram a chegar nos anos 1960. Este pessoal comprou a terra barata e empurrou o homem que produzia a batata, a mandioca e a mamona para a periferia daqui ou para São Paulo, Mato Grosso e Paraná.” Outros tantos foram trabalhar no corte da cana-de-açúcar. “Aqui não tinha boi e os pequenos produtores não desmatavam”, continua. “O que criávamos mais era o bode. Foi com a chegada dos grandes fazendeiros que o clima em Ipirá começou a mudar mais rapidamente. Desmataram para plantar capim.”

“A caatinga não é uma área para agropecuária. É para criação de caprinos, ovinos, animais de médio porte. Trouxeram a cultura do Sul, de pecuarista, e todo mundo quis ter fazenda de boi aqui”, completa Meire Oliveira, assessora da Secretaria de Agricultura e Meio Ambiente de Ipirá.

Meire passou a infância na zona rural do município e ainda se lembra do cheiro dessa mata. Conta que, quando criança, fazia burros a partir de umbus: enfiava quatro pedaços de galhinhos na fruta, representando as quatro patas. “Pena que, muitas vezes, quando eu digo para não desmatar, nem meu pai me ouve”, lamenta. Ela parece conhecer todas as plantas da caatinga. Quando encontra um cacto coroa-de-frade, mostra que é possível comer seu fruto, pequenino e vermelho. Caminhando pelas propriedades da região, cruza as cercas de arame farpado com desenvoltura. Pega um punhado de maxixe ainda verde e explica como cozinhá-lo. “Igualzinho a quiabo, sabe?” No sertão, tudo pode ser aproveitado. “A caatinga tem um poder de regeneração incrível”, explica. “A solução seria deixá-la descansar. Algumas áreas no entorno do Rio do Peixe já estão em processo de desertificação.”

Um exemplo de preservação ambiental é o assentamento D. Mathias, que completou sete anos de existência. Ali, a caatinga aos poucos renasce entre bodes, cabras e ovelhas. As árvores são podadas apenas o suficiente para não machucarem os animais, que circulam livremente pelas aroeiras, xique-xiques e umbuzeiros. Organizado pelo Movimento Luta Camponesa (MLC), o símbolo do assentamento é uma família de retirantes desenhada em preto e vermelho. A fila é puxada por uma mulher com uma foice nas mãos. Em seguida vem um homem, com uma enxada nos ombros. Dois filhos, um menino e uma menina seguem-nos de mãos dadas. Por último, um cachorro que, quiçá, se chama Baleia.

Júlio César Santos, dirigente da EBDA, presta assistência aos assentados e explica que os camponeses estão muito atentos às políticas públicas e linhas de crédito oferecidas pelos governos estadual e federal. Com isso, já conseguiram construir casas, comprar uma resfriadeira de leite e ampliar a criação de ovelhas. Entre as últimas iniciativas no local está a plantação adensada de palmas, mais rentável do que a tradicional. Em um primeiro momento, os agricultores não confiaram na técnica e continuaram plantando os cactos distantes uns dos outros, como sempre fizeram. Para contornar as dificuldades, Santos utilizou o “método de Paulo Freire”. Plantou dois roçados: de um lado, as palmas, adensadas; de outro, as tradicionais. Agora, as duas estão crescendo e ele espera, em breve, provar sua teoria. “Tomara que a falta de chuva não queime elas”, diz.

O sucesso do assentamento motivou, há 11 meses, um acampamento no latifúndio vizinho. Leidinaura Souza Santana, ou simplesmente Leila, é uma das moradoras do acampamento Elenaldo Teixeira. “O problema maior aqui é a água para beber e cozinhar. Ficamos quase 15 dias sem água. O caminhão-pipa chegou só ontem”, reclama. “A Embasa [Empresa Baiana de Águas e Saneamento] suspendeu o pipa por causa do rio, que já estava muito baixo, e também porque deu um problema na bomba”, explica Meire, que acompanha a visita. “Tivemos que tomar uma água que não é boa para beber”, murmura Leila.

Leila nasceu em Coração de Maria, ao norte de Feira de Santana. O marido trabalhava como vaqueiro em Malhador, povoado no município de Ipirá, quando souberam dos boatos da ocupação. Vieram logo participar. “Estamos esperando chegar a hora para entrar dentro da fazenda e acabar com o sofrimento. A área já foi atestada como improdutiva. O assentamento aqui do lado é uma maravilha. Me animei de ver que esse pessoal era acampado como a gente. Não desisto, não”, afirma. Meire aproveita para dar uma injeção de ânimo: “Eu acompanhei o outro acampamento desde o começo e era igualzinho. Acho que era até mais quente que este. Este é mais fresco. E olha como estão hoje”.

A conversa acontece na escola do acampamento, onde jovens e adultos são alfabetizados. A pequena construção de palha e madeira da escola fica no início daquela que foi batizada de “Avenida Brasil”, uma sequência bem aprumada de cerca de 15 barracos de lona. Leila acabou de passar para a 4a série do ensino fundamental e soletra o nome para mim. “L-E-I-D-I-N-A-U-R-A.” “Não é com ‘l’, não?”, pergunta Meire. “Não, é com ‘u’ mesmo”, Leila responde.

Em Tamanduá, povoado do entorno de Ipirá, motos e jegues passam com gente e baldes na garupa. Tudo lembra a estiagem. Egecivaldo Oliveira Nunes está à beira da estrada, ao volante do caminhão-pipa estacionado em frente à casa azul e branca. “Só trabalho particular, não trabalho com Exército nem Prefeitura. Pegamos água das barragens porque os açudes estavam secos”, ele conta, afirmando que nos piores dias da seca não “acha tempo” para as entregas solicitadas. O pagamento é por distância, e a cada quilômetro rodado muda o valor: 5 quilômetros são equivalentes a 9 mil litros e custam R$ 80. Quem não puder pagar (como os acampados) pode esperar pela Defesa Civil estadual – que afirma ter investido R$ 4 milhões em caminhões-pipa – ou pelo Exército, que mensalmente abastece de água 137 municípios.

“A cada ano, a seca vem mais intensa e a tendência é sempre durar mais”, lamenta Orlando Cintra, gerente de Agricultura e Cooperativismo de Ipirá. “A perspectiva é a de que em cinco ou seis anos ninguém vá produzir mais nada aqui, na área da agricultura. O clima vem se transformando. A cada ano piora.”

“Já tivemos tantas previsões, e nada”, diz Jeane Santiago. “Passa a previsão de chuva no jornal e as pessoas dizem: ‘Não tenho mais fé, só acredito se eu vir’. O pessoal da zona rural tem simpatias, como ‘se a flor do mandacaru desabrochar é sinal de que vai chover’. Mas todas deram errado até agora. A fé está acabando.” Os mandacarus já florearam. O vermelho-forte chama atenção. Agora é esperar.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da tag: Mudanças climáticas

Centro brasileiro aumenta em quatro vezes a precisão da previsão do tempo (JC/O Globo)

Inpe lança modelo de previsão de tempo com altíssima resolução

Climate Researchers Discover New Rhythm for El Niño (Science Daily)

Global Warming Caused by CFCs, Not Carbon Dioxide, Researcher Claims in Controversial Study (Science Daily)

Subcommittee Reviews Legislation to Improve Weather Forecasting (Subcommittee on Environmen, House of Representatives, USA)

Geoengineering: Can We Save the Planet by Messing with Nature? (Democracy Now!)

Overheated rhetoric on climate change doesn’t make for good policies (Washington Post)

Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds (The Guardian)

“It’s happening now… The village is sinking” (The Guardian)

Residents of Newtok, Alaska, know they must evacuate, but who will pay the $130m cost of moving them?

The impact on Newtok

For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change (N.Y.Times)

Origins of human culture linked to rapid climate change (Cardiff University)

Climate slowdown means extreme rates of warming ‘not as likely’ (BBC)

World Bank turns to hydropower to square development with climate change (Washington Post)

Climate Change Will Cause Widespread Global-Scale Loss of Common Plants and Animals, Researchers Predict (Science Daily)

European carbon market in trouble (Washington Post)

In Europe, Paid Permits for Pollution Are Fizzling (N.Y.Times)

Mainstream green is still too white (Color Lines)

Indigenous rights are the best defence against Canada’s resource rush (Guardian)

Ecology Buys Time for Evolution: Climate Change Disrupts Songbird’s Timing Without Impacting Population Size (Yet) (Science Daily)

Earth’s Current Warmth Not Seen in the Last 1,400 Years or More, Says Study (Science Daily)

SunEdison e Petrobras firmam acordo para planta de energia solar no Brasil (Yahoo! Notícias)

Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – report (The Guardian)

Ocean’s Future Not So Bleak? Resilience Found in Shelled Plants Exposed to Ocean Acidification (Science Daily)

Carbon Dioxide Removal Can Lower Costs of Climate Protection (Science Daily)

Environmental Change Triggers Rapid Evolution (Science Daily)

Segue o Seco (Rolling Stone)