Replies to post #250780 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[StephanieVanbryce]

The Climate-Change Precipice

By David Ignatius
Friday, March 2, 2007; A13



The scientific debate about whether there is a global warming problem is pretty much over. A leading international group of climate scientists reported last month that the evidence for global warming is "unequivocal" and that the likelihood it is caused by humans is more than 90 percent. Skeptical researchers will continue to question the data, but this isn't a "call both sides for comment" issue anymore. For mainstream science, it's settled.

The question now is what to do about global warming. This is a political problem more than a scientific one. The solutions (if we can agree on any) will require political will and imagination -- and also pain. That was my only reservation about the Oscar night celebration of Al Gore's leadership on this issue. The gowns and black ties and the celebrity back-slapping made it look like dealing with global warming will be fun, a walk down the red carpet. But it's more likely to be about catastrophe and how to share the pain.

These issues come into focus in a startling new report by futurist Peter Schwartz. He turns the usual discussions upside down: Rather than starting with detailed estimates of climate change (how much temperatures will increase; how much sea levels will rise; what new diseases will be spawned), he looks instead at systems that already are vulnerable to such stresses.

What Schwartz discovers with his stress-testing makes climate change even scarier: The world already is precarious; the networks that maintain political and social order already are fragile, especially in urban areas; the dividing line between civilized life and anarchy is frighteningly easy to breach, as the daily news from Iraq reminds us. We look at the behaviors of butterflies and migratory birds as harbingers of climate change. But what about early effects on human beings? "The steady escalation of climate pressure will stretch the resiliency of natural and human systems," writes Schwartz. "In short, climate change pushes systems everywhere toward their tipping point."

Schwartz's report, "Impacts of Climate Change," was prepared by his consulting group, Global Business Network, for a U.S. government intelligence agency he doesn't identify. The text of the report is available at the online discussion forum PostGlobal ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/postglobal). Here's a brief trek through the ravaged landscape Schwartz describes.

A first set of disasters waiting to happen involves stressed ecosystems. Human actions -- deforestation, overfarming, rapid urbanization -- have created special vulnerabilities to catastrophic natural events that are likely as the climate changes globally. In an interview, Schwartz cited the example of Haiti, which because of deforestation and loss of topsoil is "an ecosystem at the edge." A prolonged drought or a devastating hurricane could tip Haiti over that threshold -- and produce a refugee crisis of tens of thousands of boat people fleeing a devastated country.

Or take the problem of rising sea levels: Climate scientists are uncertain how fast the icecaps will melt and the seas will rise. But in Bangladesh, where millions of people live at or near sea level, even a small increase could produce a catastrophe. In a severe monsoon, 60 million to 100 million people could be forced to flee inundated areas, Schwartz warns, producing "the single greatest humanitarian crisis we have ever seen."

Lack of water may be as big a problem as flooding. Schwartz notes that more than 700 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas. Climate change could tip this balance, too, producing severe water shortages and even "water wars." Tens of millions of people may become water migrants. The world's feeble political systems can't cope with existing migration patterns, let alone this human tide.

And finally, there is the problem of maintaining social order in a stressed world. You don't have to go to Baghdad to see how quickly the social fabric can be shredded; just look at New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The stresses come in part from rapid urbanization. Schwartz notes that in 1900, one in 20 people lived in cities; today it's about half, and the percentage is rising fast. Without strong and supple governments, this could become a world of vigilantes and militias, desperate to control scarce resources.

The big problems in life aren't the ones that hit you by surprise but the ones you can see coming. That's surely the case with climate change: We can measure it, we can imagine its catastrophic effects. But can we do anything to stop it? If we let ourselves visualize how bad it could get, as Schwartz does in this report, will we make changes that might reduce the disaster? That's the real stress test: It's coming at us. What are we doing about it?

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address [e-mail].



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030101293.html?nav=rss_opinion...

[StephanieVanbryce]

Impacts of Climate Change

... tons of embedded links ...

A System Vulnerability Approach to Consider the Potential Impacts to 2050 of a Mid-Upper Greenhouse Gas Emissions Scenario
Nils Gilman, Peter Schwartz, Doug Randall
March 2007


Climate change is a real and growing problem for the United States and for the world. As urgency around the issue continues to grow, so too does the scientific consensus that changes to Earth’s climate will enormously affect the planet’s future and the futures of all who inhabit it. Anthropogenic climate change is now widely considered to have the potential not just to cause perturbations in the weather, but also to create major discontinuities in many complex natural and human systems, including ecosystems, economies, human settlements, and even political institutions.

Over the past two decades, and especially in the last few years, climate change has become one of the most heavily researched subjects in science. Yet climate change impact studies remain at the low end of usefulness for policymakers and others; they are not predictive enough to be actionable because the exact nature of the events that will jar the planet in the near- and long-term future—the wheres, whens, and hows of climate change—remains both unknown and unknowable. This paper offers policymakers an alternative approach to thinking about climate change and its impacts. Instead of starting with climate change and working out toward impacts, we focus on systems that are already generally vulnerable first, and then consider what the geophysics of climate change may do to them. This approach has two benefits. First, it limits the number of logical steps necessary for thinking about the impacts of climate change, enabling more confident insights and conclusions. Second, it cuts across analytic stovepipes and gives regional specialists a framework for thinking about what climate change will mean for their particular areas, based on expertise they already have.


To read the white paper, click on the attached PDF.

Related GBN work on climate change and its impacts:


Scenarios

The Future of Energy webcast with Peter Schwartz, May 2006
"An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security," scenarios for the Department of Defense, February 2004
Electric Power Industry Scenarios, with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), February 2006
"U.S. Energy Scenarios for the 21st Century," with the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, April 2003
Articles

"Environmental Heresies," Stewart Brand, Technology Review, February 2006
"Nuclear Now," Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss, Wired, February 2005
"How Hydrogen Can Save America," Peter Schwartz, Wired, April 2003


Upcoming Event

In early June, GBN will be facilitating a one-day strategic conversation on the uncertainties, risks, and opportunities of climate change. The session is targeted to corporate decision-makers from a wide range of industries who want to explore the implications of climate change for resources, markets, and competition, and other business imperatives. Participants will include GBN chairman Peter Schwartz, cofounder Stewart Brand, and CEO Eamonn Kelly. Space is limited. For further information, please contact Nancy Murphy at [e-mail] or 415-932-5400.



Impacts of Climate Change (PDF: 461 KB)


http://www.gbn.com/climatechange/index.html?aid=39932

[StephanieVanbryce]

Losing Their Buzz

By MAY R. BERENBAUM
Urbana, Ill.

WHEN Hollywood filmmakers want to heighten the tension of an insect fear film, they just arrange for millions of killer bees to appear out of nowhere to threaten a vulnerable group of people — over the years, these have included children in a school bus, celebrants at a Mardi Gras parade and people living near a nuclear power plant.

But people from all demographic groups across the country are facing a much more frightening real-life situation: the disappearance of millions of bees. This winter, in more than 20 states, beekeepers have noticed that their honeybees have mysteriously vanished, leaving behind no clues as to their whereabouts. There are no tell-tale dead bodies either inside colonies or out in front of hives, where bees typically deposit corpses of dead nestmates.

What’s more, the afflicted colonies tend to be full of honey, pollen and larvae, as if all of the workers in the nest precipitously decamped on some prearranged signal. Beekeepers are up in arms — last month, leaders in the business met with research scientists and government officials in Florida to figure out why the bees are disappearing and how to stop the losses. Nobody had any answers.

That beekeepers are alarmed over this situation is understandable, but, just as in the movies, the public may not recognize the magnitude of the threat that these mysterious events present.

A decline in the numbers of Apis melllifera, the world’s most widely distributed semi-domesticated insect, doesn’t just mean a shortage of honey for toast and tea. In fact, the economic value of honey, wax and other bee products is trivial in comparison with the honeybee’s services as a pollinator. More than 90 crops in North America rely on honeybees to transport pollen from flower to flower, effecting fertilization and allowing production of fruit and seed. The amazing versatility of the species is worth an estimated $14 billion a year to the United States economy.

Approximately one-third of the typical American’s diet (primarily the healthiest part) is directly or indirectly the result of honey bee pollination. Production of almonds in California, a $2 billion enterprise, is almost entirely dependent on honey bees. Every year beekeepers transport millions of bees around the country to meet the ever-growing need for pollination services for almonds, apples, blueberries, peaches and other crops. This year it is possible that there won’t be enough bees to meet the demand for pollinators.

Theories abound as to potential causes of what is being called colony collapse disorder. As a social species living in close quarters at high densities — the average hive contains upwards of 30,000 insects — honeybees are prone to a staggering diversity of fungal, bacterial and viral diseases. In the 1980s, honeybee numbers plummeted when two species of parasitic mites appeared, wiping out most populations of wild bees and placing more pressure on managed colonies. This latest drop in numbers may be the consequence of a new infection, or of several diseases simultaneously, leading to a fatally compromised immune system.

It is also possible that severe stress brought on by crowding, inadequate nutrition or even the combined effects of prophylactic antibiotics and miticides sprayed by beekeepers to ward off infections may be a factor. Another, particularly sad, possibility is that accidental exposure to a new pesticide may cause non-lethal behavioral changes that interfere with the ability of honeybees to orient and navigate; brain-damaged foraging bees may simply get lost on their way home and starve to death away from the hive.

Irrespective of its causes, however, this drop comes at a critical time, with demand for pollination services rocketing upward. Even in a high-tech age when the human capacity to improve upon nature seems limitless, there is no satisfactory substitute for the honeybee. Thus it’s astonishing that beekeeping remains largely unimproved by technological advances relative to just about every other form of animal husbandry. The basic design of honey bee housing is essentially unchanged since L. L. Langstroth patented his movable frame hive in 1852; artificial insemination of queens, the last significant technological advance in beekeeping, was introduced early in the 20th century. The 21st century holds great promise for innovation.

Last October, an international consortium of scientists announced the publication of the sequence of the entire honey bee genome. Among the benefits of knowing the full gene inventory is that it has allowed the construction of a whole-genome microarray — essentially a microscope slide dotted with genetic material — here at the University of Illinois.

Microarray analysis is a powerful tool for examining differences among a very large number of genes rapidly and efficiently; it’s the basis for new diagnostic tools, for example, for clinical evaluation of many forms of cancer. For bees, microarray analysis of differences between healthy and afflicted bees may reveal the causes and provide insights for developing a cure.

The real key to dealing with colony collapse disorder, however, is understanding the extent of the problem, which may prove to be more of a challenge than figuring out its origins. Although Americans are in general good at counting things of value, we’ve done an absolutely appalling job at counting our bees and other pollinators.

In October, I served as chair of a committee for the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, on the status of pollinators in North America. Among the clearest conclusions of our report was that Americans do not keep track of pollinators, even the one on which much of our agriculture depends.

For example, the Department of Agriculture’s statistics service has kept records of honeybee colonies managed by beekeepers since 1947, but the annual survey monitors only colonies used in honey production. Colonies used exclusively for pollination are not included, nor do surveys take into account the fact that some honey-producing colonies travel. The Agriculture Department also doesn’t track bees kept by small-scale beekeepers with fewer than five colonies.

No current survey monitors colony health or variability in bee numbers over the season, a critical variable for assessing population dynamics as well as economic effects of fluctuations. Although the Agriculture Department surveys beekeeping operations every five years using criteria that address some of these issues, five years between surveys provides ample time for irreparable damage to occur before a problem can be recognized.

Conspicuous among the recommendations from the National Research Council committee was a call for the department to make annual bee assessments, with winter losses monitored, general health assessed and pollination services quantified.

Moreover, no system is in place to monitor feral bees — those that escape from managed colonies yet contribute critical pollination services to both wild plants and farms. We need long-term monitoring of feral honeybees along with other pollinators if we are to understand the true magnitude of pollination services essential for a healthy agricultural economy.

We count our pigs, our cows and our chickens (even before they hatch). The Agriculture Department, amid concerns about infectious disease and agro-terrorism, has even proposed establishing a national animal identification system, under which it could trace the origin of any animal in the food chain within 48 hours.

Yet honeybees, which contribute to our food chain in many more ways than any other animal species (and whose pollination makes available the alfalfa and clover processed into hay to feed beef and dairy cattle), are disappearing without a trace at a rate we can’t even measure accurately. Such obliviousness with respect to a precious resource in crisis might play well in a bad science fiction movie, but it’s truly alarming to see it in real life.

May R. Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois, is the author of “Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs and Rock ’n’ Roll.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/opinion/02berenbaum.html?ex=1330491600&en=82d103436133479d&...

[StephanieVanbryce]

Climate Change Impact More Extensive than Thought
By Volker Mrasek

Global climate change is happening faster than previously believed and its impact is worse than expected, information from an as-yet unpublished draft of the long-awaited second part of a United Nations report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE reveals. No region of the planet will be spared and some will be hit especially hard.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,469608,00.html

[StephanieVanbryce]

Refrigeration System for the Earth's Oceans Threatens to Break Down

By Stefan Schmitt

A surprising discovery in the Antarctic has scientists alarmed. According to an analysis of core samples, the southern ice shelf reacts far more sensitively to warming temperatures than scientists had previously believed. The message: sea levels may rise even further than feared.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,469495,00.html