ScienceDaily - Tropical Sea Temperatures Influence Melting in Antarctica

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111206095649.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2011) — Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research.

Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

"This part of Antarctica is affected by what's happening on the rest of the planet, in particular the tropical Pacific," he said.

The research involves the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, two of the five largest glaciers in Antarctica. Those two glaciers are important because they drain a large portion of the ice sheet. As they melt from below, they also gain speed, draining the ice sheet faster and contributing to sea level rise. Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years, Steig said.

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Leo Hickman - Could the desert sun power the world?

Green electricity generated by Sahara solar panels is being hailed as a solution to the climate change crisis

Leo Hickman

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 December 2011 15.30 EST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/11/sahara-solar-panels-green-electricity?intcmp=122

During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.

"The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism," wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.

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Isaiah Esipisu - Saving the Forests with Indigenous Knowledge

By Isaiah Esipisu*

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106156

DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 9, 2011 (IPS) - For the Laibon community, a sub-tribe of Kenya’s Maasai ethnic group, the 33,000-hectare Loita Forest in the country’s Rift Valley Province is more than just a forest. It is a shrine.

"It is our shrine. Our Gods live there. We gather herbs from the place. We use it for bee- keeping. It therefore forms part of our livelihood," said Olonana Ole Pulei, who is in Durban, South Africa, to represent his community at the ongoing 17th Conference of Partiesunder the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

According to Nigel Crawhall, the Director of Secretariat for the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), different African communities have incredible indigenous knowledge that they use in the conservation of forests and biodiversity in general, and this should be recognised during the negotiations in Durban. 

"Different communities have different practices that they use in forestry conservation," he said. 

Crawhall gave an example of how the Bambuti and Batwa pygmy communities, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, conserved the forest using traditional methods. Both communities depend on the biodiversity of animal life in the equatorial forests in order to survive. 

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Stephen Leahy - Draft Climate Deal Dubbed a "Death Sentence for Africa"

Published on Saturday, December 10, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/10-0

by Stephen Leahy

DURBAN, South Africa - No one is happy late Friday at the very contentious U.N. climate talks that went into extra time on Saturday. As the lights flicker on a rainy night here, the partial power failure echoes the failure of the multilateral process, according to civil society and some countries.

"If countries agree to the text as it stands, they will be passing a death sentence on Africa," said Nnnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International and a Nigerian activist.

And yet African countries and other vulnerable countries might go along because they will be bullied or bribed, said Bassey.

When Bolivia stood up to the United States at the Copenhagen climate meet in December 2009, Washington pulled its development aid the next year.

"Delegates must show that they care about the devastation across the continent and small island states .... or are they going to yield to arm twisting because a few dollars are being hoisted about," Bassey said.

So far African countries are not blocking an agreement, he told IPS.

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Kumi Naidoo - U.S. Obstructionism Is Hurting Climate Talks

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by The Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kumi-naidoo/obama-get-your-climate-th_b_1131456.html

by Kumi Naidoo

We hope, we wish and we pray that the U.S. team at the UN Climate talks in Durban would set aside its obstructive, destructive behavior. But sadly, listening to U.S. negotiators Pershing and Stern, that is not going to happen. For that reason Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam and the International Trades Union Congress have adopted a joint position demanding that the U.S. stand aside and let those who are willing to move ahead in saving lives, habitats and economies -- in agreeing to a climate saving deal.

Here in Durban, the U.S. is once again trying to kill off the global climate talks by eviscerating the mid-summit draft agreement. On Saturday, the U.S. axed a whole section of the draft agreement that would have offered real protection to those who are being hardest and fastest hit by global warming.

During the talks the U.S. is fond of insisting that they want to be involved, but at the same time makes derailing demands and announces commitments that barely survive the plane trip home.

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Common Dreams - US College Student Shames US Climate Delegation in Durban

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/08-5

Abigail Borah, a Middlebury College student and climate activist from the United States, was ejected from a plenary session at the COP17 climate summit this morning after interrupting introductory remarks by US chief negotiator, Todd Stern.

Her statement, which was met with wide applause from the crowd, read as follows:

"I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot.  The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair ambitious and legally binding treaty. 

You must take responsibility to act now, or you will threaten the lives of youth and the world's most vulnerable. 

You must set aside partisan politics and let science dictate decisions. You must pledge ambitious targets to lower emissions not expectations.  Citizens across the world are being held hostage by stillborn negotiations.

We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive. 2020 is too late to wait."

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Steve Connor - Father of Climate Change: 2C Limit is Not Enough

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by The Independent/UK

by Steve Connor

SAN FRANCISCO - Talks to limit global temperature rises to 2C will not prevent the possibility of dangerous climate change, warns the scientist who first raised the alarm over global warming.

James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said there was a widespread misconception among international climate negotiators meeting in Durban, South Africa, that the 2C "safe" target would stop extreme changes. James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said there was a widespread misconception among international climate negotiators meeting in Durban, South Africa, that the 2C "safe" target would stop extreme changes.

He believes carbon dioxide concentrations – now at nearly 389 parts per million (ppm) – should be no higher than 350ppm to stop catastrophic events such as the melting of ice sheets, dramatic sea level rises and methane being released from beneath the permafrost.

Dr Hansen, the "father of global warming", first raised the issue at US Senate hearings in 1988.

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Mara Lee - Toll from Weather Disasters in US This Year Hits $52 Billion

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by Hartford Courant

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/toll-from-weather-disasters-in-u-s-this-year-hits/article_7f03b9cf-30ce-5d4c-9df1-5b86de274a02.html

by Mara Lee

HARTFORD, Conn. - The United States had a dozen weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage this year, the greatest frequency of severe weather that caused costly losses in more than 30 years of federal government tracking.

In this Feb. 2, 2011 file photo, hundreds of cars are seen stranded on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago after a winter blizzard of historic proportions wobbled an otherwise snow-tough Chicago. America's wild weather year has hit yet another new high. (AP) However, even with the number of events, the total losses this year from these storms, flooding and droughts is $52 billion, not even close to the most expensive year on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina alone cost $145 billion in today's dollars. It was the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, and, with more than 1,800 deaths, the highest toll in lives since the 1928 hurricane in south Florida.

The Joplin, Mo., tornado was the deadliest single tornado in 61 years, with 160 deaths, and the tornado there, along with 179 others across 15 states in late May cost $9.1 billion, with $6.5 billion in insured losses.

The disasters this year caused more than 600 deaths, NOAA said. In addition to the Groundhog Day Blizzard, Hurricane Irene and many tornadoes, drought-fueled wildfires in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona crossed the $1 billion threshold.

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The Washington Independent - U.S. called ‘immoral’ at United Nations climate conference

The Washington Independent 

Wednesday, December 07, 201

As the United Nations climate talks in Durban progress, they are becoming increasingly combative, offering a soft preview of the kind of political atmosphere destined to prevail in a world where agriculture in vulnerable regions of the planet begins to succumb to catastrophic drought and flooding. The United States and Canada have drawn intense criticism here during the first two days of the conference.

Participants lamented Canada’s new status as a “laggard country” when that nation’s conservative government announced its plan to quit the Kyoto Protocol, which it called a thing of the past. And, to almost no one’s surprise, people inside the conference halls and out on the streets joined together in labeling the United States “enemy number one” for the way it is wielding its vast global influence in the service of intransigence, backpedaling and obfuscation. A top South African religious leader Tuesday called the high-profile climate-change skepticism of many U.S. leaders “immoral.”

At a well-attended briefing Tuesday morning held by NGO umbrella organization Climate Action Network, Bishop Geoff Davies, executive director of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, highlighted what he saw as the contradiction inherent in the fact that the people of the United States are deeply religious but also alienated from the responsibility faith demands to address suffering tied to climate-altering pollution.

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Noam Chomsky - Marching Off the Cliff

Tuesday 6 December 2011

by: Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Op-Ed

http://www.truth-out.org/marching-cliff/1323195281

A task of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, now under way in Durban, South Africa, is to extend earlier policy decisions that were limited in scope and only partially implemented.

These decisions trace back to the U.N. Convention of 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which the U.S. refused to join. The Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends in 2012. A fairly general pre-conference mood was captured by a New York Times headline: “Urgent Issues but Low Expectations.”

As the delegates meet in Durban, a report on newly updated digests of polls by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals that “publics around the world and in the United States say their government should give global warming a higher priority and strongly support multilateral action to address it.”

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TERRA DAILY - Abrupt permafrost thaw increases climate threat

by Staff Writers, TERRA DAILY.com
Fairbanks, AK (SPX) Dec 07, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Abrupt_permafrost_thaw_increases_climate_threat_999.html

As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature.

Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.

The survey, led by University of Florida researcher Edward Schuur and University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student Benjamin Abbott, asked climate experts what percentage of the surface permafrost is likely to thaw, how much carbon will be released and how much of that carbon will be methane.

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Stephen Leahy - Kyoto Protocol on Life Support

Published on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/06-0

by Stephen Leahy

DURBAN, South Africa - The United States has become the major stumbling block to progress at the mid point of negotiations over a new international climate regime say civil society and many of the 193 nations attending the United Nations climate change conference here in Durban.

"The U.S. position leads us to three or four degrees Celsius of warming, which will be devastating for the poor of the world," said Celine Charveriat of Oxfam International.

"They are proposing a 10-year time out with no new targets to lower emissions until after 2020," Charveriat said.

At COP 15 in Copenhagen the U.S. committed to reducing its emissions 17 percent from 2005 by 2020. This is far short of what is widely agreed as necessary: cuts in fossil fuel emissions 25 to 40 percent below those in 1990 by U.S. and all developed nations.

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eurekalert.org - Global carbon emissions reach record 10 billion tons -- threatening 2 degree target

Public release date: 4-Dec-2011
University of East Anglia

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/uoea-gce120111.php

Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades, according to the latest figures by an international team, including researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia (UEA).

Published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, the new analysis by the Global Carbon Project shows fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 – the reference year for the Kyoto protocol.

On average, fossil fuel emissions have risen by 3.1 per cent each year between 2000 and 2010 – three times the rate of increase during the 1990s. They are projected to continue to increase by 3.1 per cent in 2011.

Total emissions - which combine fossil fuel combustion, cement production, deforestation and other land use emissions - reached 10 billion tonnes of carbon1 in 2010 for the first time. Half of the emissions remained in the atmosphere, where CO2 concentration reached 389.6 parts per million. The remaining emissions were taken up by the ocean and land reservoirs, in approximately equal proportions.

Rebounding from the global financial crisis of 2008-09 when emissions temporarily decreased, last year's high growth was caused by both emerging and developed economies. Rich countries continued to outsource part of their emissions to emerging economies through international trade.

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International Center for Integrated Mountain Development - New reports identify impacts of climate change on world's highest mountains

Public release date: 4-Dec-2011

International Center for Integrated Mountain Development

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/bc-nri120211.php

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA -- Findings from the most comprehensive assessment to date on climate change, snow and glacier melt in Asia's mountainous Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region -- site of Mount Everest and many of the world's tallest peaks -- highlight the region's extreme vulnerability to climate change, as rising temperatures disturb the balance of snow, ice and water, threatening millions of mountain people and 1.3 billion people living downstream in Asia's major river basins.

The findings, published in three reports by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), were released today during Mountain Day, a convening of mountain experts, policy makers, and climate change negotiators on the sidelines of UN climate talks.

The three reports published by ICIMOD provide the most up-to-date compilation of information on the current status of climate change in the HKH region and the first authoritative data on the number and extent of glaciers and the patterns of snowfall in the world's most mountainous region.

"The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region is like a gentle giant. While physically imposing, it is one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in the world," said David Molden, director general of ICIMOD. "We must meet the intensity of climate change in these mountains with an equal intensity of will to mitigate and to adapt to the impacts."

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Kanya D'Almeida - US Inaction on Climate is "Criminal", Activists Say

Sunday, December 4, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106086

by Kanya D'Almeida

WASHINGTON - The United States' delegation at the 17th annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCC) in Durban, South Africa has come under heavy fire from civil society leaders and activists around the globe for standing in the way of real solutions to climate change.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 farmers, unionists, teachers, peasants, students, garbage pickers, transport workers and other indignant citizens gathered outside the U.N. consultation chambers in Durban on Saturday calling for "system change, not climate change".

Many of these protestors marched to the U.S. embassy, demanding that the "world's biggest polluter" start supporting climate solutions that benefit the 99 percent.

In solidarity with their African counterparts, citizens in 20 cities across the U.S. rallied against the eco-destructive actions of the "one percent" as part of the Dec. 3 global day of action to save the planet and "occupy the climate".

Spearheaded by the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJA), a national network of grassroots organizations, along with the North American chapter of the 200 million member international farmers' movement, La Via Campesina, Saturday's events were an attempt to draw together disparate climate-related struggles under one banner.

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Mary Robinson & Desmond Tutu - Climate Justice

http://www.nationofchange.org/climate-justice-1322760404

By Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson

Before the Copenhagen climate-change summit two years ago, the two of us sat together in Cape Town to listen to five African farmers from different countries, four of whom were women, tell us how climate change was undermining their livelihoods. Each explained how floods and drought, and the lack of regular seasons to sow and reap, were outside their normal experience. Their fears are shared by subsistence farmers and indigenous people worldwide – the people bearing the brunt of climate shocks, though they played no part in causing them.

Now, two years later, we are in Durban, where South Africa is hosting this year’s climate-change conference, COP17, and the situation for poor people in Africa and elsewhere has deteriorated even further. In its latest report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that it is virtually certain that, in global terms, hot days have become hotter and occur more often; indeed, they have increased in frequency by a factor of 10 in most regions of the world.

Moreover, the brutal paradox of climate change is that heavy precipitation is occurring more often as well, increasing the risk of flooding. Since 2003, East Africa has had the eight warmest years on record, which is no doubt contributing to the severe famine that now afflicts 13 million people in the Horn of Africa.

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Jon Herskovitz - Drinking the Radioactive Kool-Aid: Countries Switching From Coal to Nuclear

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/

by Jon Herskovitz

DURBAN - South Africa, the host of U.N. global climate talks, is faced with a conundrum -- it wants to wean itself off of coal-powered plants seen as primate culprits of greenhouse gas emissions and find a cleaner energy source.

It is turning to nuclear power, despite the catastrophic environmental degradation the world witnessed after Japan's Fukushima plant disaster this year.

The global climate talks that opened earlier this week in Durban are seeing a widening division on nuclear power, with many advanced economies moving away from it after Fukushima and emerging states heavily reliant on fossil fuels embracing it as a cleaner way to power their development.

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Rainforest Action Network - Bankrolling Climate Change: New Study Ranks Top 20 Climate Killer Banks

November 30, 2011

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) http://www.ran.org/bankrolling-climate-change-new-study-ranks-top-20-climate-killer-banks

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA - November 30 - Today, as world leaders gather in Durban to discuss solutions to global climate change, an international coalition of civil society and environmental organizations released a new study, “Bankrolling Climate Change,” highlighting the top 20 banks that finance the coal industry. The study examines commercial banks’ lending for the coal industry and provides the first comprehensive climate ranking for financial institutions. The study finds JPMorgan Chase, Citi and Bank of America to be the top three banks in the world financing climate change.

A full copy of the study with a ranking of all the researched banks can be downloaded at www.banktrack.org.

The report comes from German environment organization urgewald, the South African social and environmental justice organizations groundWork and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and the international network BankTrack.

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TERRA DAILY - Pakistan most affected by climate change

by Staff Writers, TERRA DAILY
Durban, South Africa (UPI) Dec 1, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Pakistan_most_affected_by_climate_change_999.html

Pakistan topped the list in a ranking of countries that suffered the most from the effects of climate change, a new report says.

Released on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, the "Global Climate Risk Index 2012" by Germanwatch, a European non-governmental organization, looked at the effects of extreme weather events from 1991-2010, based on data from insurance giant Munich Re.

"[The index] recognizes the now indisputable fact that Pakistan faces climate impacts which are not only happening in real time but in a widely diverse pattern -- ranging from extreme events such as cyclones, glacial melting and floods as well as indirect impacts such as droughts, shifting cropping patterns and climate-induced migrants," said Pakistan's former environment minister, Malik Amin Aslam, Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper reports.

Just from the floods of 2010, which affected some 8 million people, Pakistan incurred an economic loss worth an estimated $9.6 billion, said Farrukh Iqbal Khan, a member of Pakistan's delegation to Durban.

"We have had floods again this year and we are not really prepared for extreme events of the scale we saw in 2010," Khan said. "The rising financial costs for coping with climate disasters, highlighted in the report, are also in line with our internal analysis which forecasts these climate finance needs to be in the range of $6 billion-14 billion per annum for Pakistan."

While Pakistan was ranked No. 1 on the list of countries that suffered the most from climate change in 2010, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Honduras topped the long-term index.

Sven Harmeling, author of the index and team leader of International Climate Policy at Germanwatch, said the climate summit will be decisive for necessary commitments made by governments to reverse the global emissions trend.

"The current inadequate promises of the world's governments to fight climate change will push our limits of preparing for disasters and adaptation," he said.

But the Pakistani government isn't confident it will have the opportunity to present its viewpoint in Durban, The News International reports, noting that a large number of developing countries are unlikely to have any say during the proceedings of the 10-day conference which opened Monday.

"We (the developing countries) are not able to even raise (our) voice for our rights as the developed countries enjoy strong influence over the agenda and even (the) output of these kinds of conferences," said Qamaruz Zaman Chaudhry, former director general of the Meteorological Department of Pakistan.

SETH BORENSTEIN - Federal report: Arctic much worse since 2006

By SETH BORENSTEIN | AP

http://news.yahoo.com/federal-report-arctic-much-worse-since-2006-182055700.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials say the Arctic region has changed dramatically in the past five years — for the worse.

It's melting at a near record pace, and it's darkening and absorbing too much of the sun's heat.

A new report card from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rates the polar region with blazing red stop lights on three of five categories and yellow cautions for the other two. Overall, these are not good grades, but it doesn't mean the Arctic is doomed and it still will freeze in the winter, said report co-editor Jackie Richter-Menge.

The Arctic acts as Earth's refrigerator, cooling the planet. What's happening, scientists said, is like someone pushing the fridge's thermostat much too high.

"It's not cooling as well as it used to," Richter-Menge said.

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