Bush, EPA Mercury Loophole Struck Down by DC Court

by Glynn Wilson

QUINTON, Ala., Feb. 9 - A mentally retarded boy stood in the middle of the country road, in front of a ramshackled house trailer and a burned down shack, as I came around the last bend and saw Alabama Power’s mammoth coal-fired Miller Steam Plant rising out of the strip mines and clear cuts in what used to be piney woods.

As I pulled alongside him on the edge of Jefferson and Walker counties northwest of Birmingham and rolled down the van window and was about to ask him what it was like to live in the shadow of one of the most foul, polluting power plants in the country, before I could say anything he started signing me, letting me know he could not hear, or speak.

The experts say mercury from power plants, a potent neurotoxin, causes brain damage and other serious health problems in at least 630,000 babies born each year, just in the United States. Their blood is contaminated when their pregnant mothers eat mercury-laden fish, most of it caught in water from polluted power plants.

With this information well established and widely known, however, mercury advisories are in place on about one-third of America’s lakes and one-fourth of its rivers. Experts say a single gram of mercury, or just 1/70th of a teaspoon, is enough to contaminate a 25-acre lake so that fish caught there are totally unsafe to eat.

Yet under the administration of President George W. Bush, the Environmental Protection Agency changed course from the years when the Clinton EPA wanted every one of the 1,100 power plants in the country to take concrete steps to reduce mercury emissions.

Under Bush, the EPA opted instead for a so-called “free market solution.”

The agency passed rules it claimed were legal under the Clean Air Act to allow a “cap and trade” system of pollution credits designed to lower the overall level of mercury pollution nationally, while allowing some power companies to continue dumping massive amounts of mercury and other pollutants into the air and water in places where management doesn’t want to spend the money to clean up its plants. Coal and power operations scar the American South landscape and devastate its people. Many of those places are mostly populated by poor people and minorities.

The Bush EPA market system would have allowed some companies, such as Southern Company’s Alabama Power, to purchase so-called “pollution credits.” In other words, they would have allowed them to send payments to other, cleaner plants, while spending nothing to clean up their own dirty plants.

According to scientists, health experts and environmentalists, this would have created “hot spots” of contamination in some places, such as the air over the city of Birmingham - and the water in the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River around the Miller Steam Plant, which discharges more than 1,500 pounds of mercury each year - the fourth-worst in the country.

Unwilling to live with that situation, however, a number of health and environmental organizations, including the Waterkeeper Alliance with a chapter here called the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, sued in federal court two years ago to stop the rules from going into effect.

And this past Friday, they won a major victory for all of us when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rebuked the Bush EPA and ruled the regulatory loophole illegal under the clear language of the law passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970.
The Clean Air Act listed mercury as one of the pollutants to be regulated. The Bush EPA wanted to remove it from the list - without going to Congress to ask for a change in the law.

Sound familiar? The Bush administration doesn’t much like the law, whether it applies to torture, spying on Americans - or cleaning up the environment.

“These rules represented what was perhaps the biggest sellout to industry in the history of EPA,” said Waterkeeper Alliance legal director Scott Edwards, interviewed Saturday in New York. “It’s a real tragedy that we’ve had to spend two years getting this industry-scripted scheme struck down while energy companies continue to poison our children with mercury.”

Fourteen states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin, challenged the EPA’s rules in 2005, along with dozens of Native American tribes, public health and environmental groups and organizations representing nurses and doctors.
Notice Alabama is not on the list. Attempts to reach the Riley administration in Montgomery and Alabama Power for comments on the ruling failed over the weekend.

Southern Company’s Alabama Power is one of the worst polluters in the world and is known for manipulating politicians and the corporate press with its monopoly money, using its economic power to keep politicians on a leash, like wining and dining the state’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Troy King, in an Atlanta Braves sky box. It also uses “green washing” advertising campaigns - NOT to reach out for new customers, but to keep chain press outlets such as the Birmingham News and local TV news stations from covering its pollution critically.

Anyone in Alabama should be familiar with the blue bird ad campaign that has been running in newspapers and on TV stations for years, featuring two blue birds on a power line in ostensibly funny conversations. But critics of the program are beginning to ask why the power company needs a rate increase every year when it has a virtual lock on the power business with no real competition and it spends so much money on advertising. And it spends next to nothing on pollution reduction, a few paltry million each year while it racks up billions in profits, some say the highest guaranteed profit margin of any power company in the nation.

The Spin

Power industry groups are already hard at work trying to spin the story to blame the environmentalists, lawyers and the “liberal” courts for preventing the Bush EPA from implementing it’s plan to “clean up” the mercury pollution by getting the overall amount down nationally.

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a power industry trade group, issued this statement late Friday afternoon.

“Today, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the so-called Clean Air Mercury Rule … the first ever national rule to address mercury air emissions. Ironically, with their aggressive litigation posture, the environmental community and their state allies have again caused uncertainty and delay in regulating mercury,” he said. “The Environmental Protection Agency essentially must return to the drawing board in developing a new mercury rule.”

Does that statement remind you of a movie called “Thank You For Smoking?” It should.

The Facts

Coal-fired power plants like the Miller Steam Plant are by far the largest source of airborne mercury in the U.S., releasing more than 50 tons of deadly mercury into the air each year. Gravity pulls much of it down to the earth, where it ends up in our waterways.

Delayed developmental milestones, reduced neurological test scores and cardiovascular disease also result from mercury exposure, and it has been linked to serious physical and central nervous system disorders such as various sexual dysfunctions and, according to numerous scientific studies, mental retardation.

Even the Bush EPA recently raised the estimate on the number of women whose mercury concentrations in umbilical cord blood is significantly higher than the mother’s blood concentration to 1 in 6 women nationwide.

Yet the most industry-friendly administration in the history of corporate capitalism spent a billion dollars of your hard-earned tax dollars to try and pass the illegal rules anyway.

More Reaction

Here are some other reactions to the DC court ruling.

Vickie Patton, an attorney with Environmental Defense, which along with Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation was represented by Earth Justice in the lawsuit, said: “The federal court agrees with the American Medical Association that EPA’s flawed mercury program for coal plants is hazardous to our health. This decision is a victory for the health of all Americans, but especially for our children who can suffer permanent brain damage from toxic mercury pollution.”

Alice McKeown, a coal analyst for the Sierra Club, said: “Coal company claims of ‘clean coal’ will now be put to the test. These mercury pollution reductions will be an important trial run to see if coal is still viable in a cleaner energy future.”

Ann Weeks, an attorney for Clean Air Task Force who represented U.S. PIRG, Ohio Environmental Council, Natural Resources Council of Maine, and Conservation Law Foundation in the case said: “The court has now told EPA in no uncertain terms to follow the law as it is written. We are looking forward to working on rules that reflect the most stringent controls achievable for this industry, as the Clean Air Act requires. That’s what is needed now, if we are ever to alleviate the problem of mercury contamination in fish and wildlife.”

John Suttles, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who represented Physicians for Social Responsibility, American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics in the lawsuit, said: “With today’s decision, EPA will now have to get back to the business of protecting people’s health rather than higher profits for electric utilities.”

“The Bush administration cannot ignore its responsibilities to bring power plants’ mercury pollution under control,” Earth Justice attorney James Pew said. “We hope the administration will gain some new respect for the law in its last year and start working to protect Americans from pollution and stop working to shield polluters from their lawful cleanup obligations.”

John Walke, attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the court’s ruling “should show power plant companies and the EPA once and for all that they may cheat and delay required clean-up obligations, but the law will catch up to them. Electric power plants are America’s worst polluters of mercury, smog, soot and global warming pollution, and their days of reckoning are long overdue.”

“This is a very positive ruling, but we should not forget that no matter how much this industry reduces mercury emissions, coal will never be clean,” added Waterkeeper Alliance President Steve Fleischli. “From mining to burning to toxic ash, ‘clean coal’ is a sham, a dangerous diversion at a time when we must move our national energy strategy to sustainable, renewable energy sources.”

The Ruling

A copy of the DC court decision is available in pdf format here.

Car-Free, Solar City in Gulf Could Set a New Standard for Green Design

In an ever more crowded world facing environmental limits, the push is on to create entire communities with reduced needs for energy, water, land and other resources.

The latest effort comes not in some green hub like Portland, Ore., but in the Persian Gulf, fueled as much by oil wealth — and the need to find postpetroleum business models — as environmental zeal.

Groundbreaking is scheduled for Saturday for Masdar City, a nearly self-contained mini-municipality designed for up to 50,000 people rising from the desert next to Abu Dhabi’s international airport and intended as a hub for academic and corporate research on nonpolluting energy technologies.

The 2.3-square-mile community, set behind walls to divert hot desert winds and airport noise, will be car free, according to the design by Foster + Partners, the London firm that has become a leading practitioner of energy-saving architecture.

The community, slightly smaller than the historic district of Venice, will have similar narrow pedestrian streets, but shaded by canopies made of photovoltaic panels. It will produce all of its own energy from sunlight.

Water will flow from a solar-powered seawater-desalinization plant. Produce will come from nearby greenhouses, and all waste will be composted or otherwise recycled, said Khaled Awad, property manager for the project.

The first phase, to be completed over the next two years, will be construction of the Masdar Institute, a graduate-level academic research center associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Readers can see a simulated video tour of the city and post comments on the Dot Earth blog.
Attempts at such green communities have had mixed results. Arcosanti, the ecotopian town in the Arizona desert, was started three decades ago. Still a work in progress, it is now being encroached on by Phoenix’s suburban expansion.

China, with help from American partners, has embarked on building instant rural communities and cities designed to limit environmental impacts, but recent reports have disclosed many problems.

Still, environmental campaigners appear enthusiastic about Masdar City, which is part of a planned $15 billion investment in new energy technologies by Abu Dhabi.

At an international energy conference in that city last month, Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud, director of the One Planet Living initiative of the environmental group WWF International (known in North America as the World Wildlife Fund), said independent monitoring would help ensure that the project lived up to its billing.

the source

Farm bill would allow continued subsidies for millionaires

The House and Senate farm bills would allow millionaire landowners to continue to cash big government subsidy checks despite language in the proposals intended to cut off crop subsidies for the wealthy, according to a new analysis of tax data by GOP Senate aides.

Finance Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) yesterday released the analysis, which is based on data from the Internal Revenue Service and Congressional Budget Office. It estimates that under the proposed new farm bills, hundreds of millions of dollars in crop subsidies would continue to go out to landowners whose overall adjusted gross income for the year exceeds $1 million.

“The House and Senate farm bills left loopholes that a 9630 John Deere tractor could drive through. It was reform in name only. Now I hope we can move to legislation that includes real reform,” Grassley said.

Grassley is a member of the conference committee charged with hammering out an agreement on the House and Senate farm bills. The Senate’s version of the farm bill, approved in December, would stop payments to non-farmers who make more than $750,000 a year but has no income caps for farmers. The House bill would cut off farm payments for millionaire farmers or non-farmers who make more than $500,000.

The Bush administration is pushing for a much lower cap of $200,000 in adjusted gross income. White House officials have threatened to veto the bill if it does not include more reform.

Other members of the conference committee said yesterday that income limits will be a major topic of negotiation for the farm bill, but the panel is unlikely to go as far as Grassley or the administration has suggested.

“The White House is insisting on it so the prospects of additional reform are probably pretty good in the conference,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “But it is not going to be what the administration is calling for.”

Conrad said the $200,000 income cap is “not in synch” with the high costs of farming, as fertilizer and other prices have almost doubled.

Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said the income limits are the “big sticking point right now” that members “have to work out.”

Harkin said the proposal from Grassley and Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) — which would have placed a hard cap on how much any farmer can receive in federal subsidies rather than basing the limits on income — has already had its chance in the Senate and is unlikely to be included in the conference. The Grassley-Dorgan amendment failed in a 56-43 vote during the farm bill debate. It needed 60 votes for passage.

In 2006, the Agriculture Department paid more than $230 million to landlords and farm operators who exceeded the House income cap and $137 million to those exceeding the Senate cut-off. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that 83 percent of those funds would continue to go out under the House bill, and 95 percent would continue to be paid under the Senate bill.

Grassley said the continued payouts would be possible because landowners could switch the way they collect rent from the people farming their land, so their tenants could continue to receive the commodity payments. High-income farmers could also buy more land to bring their adjusted gross income level down or divide the payments among other family members.

Grassley based the analysis on data he requested from IRS on how many recipients of farm payments have an income above the cap and whether or not they were landlords.

A coalition of environmental, religious, sustainable farming and taxpayer groups have advocated for lowering the income level or including the payment cap in the new farm bill. They say the current payments unfairly favor large industrialized agriculture. The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition suggested applying the lower income cap to the land, rather than the landlord or producer.

“No one on the farm bill conference committee should suffer under any illusions that taking action on an AGI limit is, by itself, doing anything very significant for payment reform,” Sustainable Agriculture Coalition director Ferd Hoefner said yesterday of the analysis.

the source

Global Climate Change Response Can Spur $7 Trillion in Clean Energy Investment by 2030

Global Climate Change Response Can Spur $7 Trillion in Clean Energy Investment by 2030

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb 05, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Increasing public concerns about climate change -- and its potential economic and political security consequences -- are driving public policy and private investment to bring clean energy technologies from the fringes of the global energy industry to the center of activities as quickly as possible, a new analysis by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) has concluded.

The result of this rising public and private momentum is an increase in worldwide clean energy investment that could surpass US$7 trillion by 2030 in cumulative real 2007 dollars, according to the CERA report Crossing the Divide: The Future of Clean Energy.

"We are seeing a major shift in public opinion, reinforced by the expectation that carbon policies could fundamentally change the competitive landscape of the global energy business," said Daniel Yergin, CERA Chairman and IHS Executive Vice President. "This is providing a vital impetus that is moving clean technology across the great divide of cost, proven results, scale and maturity that has separated it from markets served by mainstream technologies and processes."

Key Insights

"The rapidly advancing new paradigms of climate change, energy security, and policy implementation and cooperation among the United States, the European Union, China and others will produce a broad range of opportunities, risks and pitfalls as the modern energy industry increasingly moves to adopt clean technologies that will be part of the alternative, low-carbon pathway to the energy future," said Robert LaCount, head of CERA's Climate Change and Clean Energy Group.

"All participants in the global energy business, from traditional incumbents such as electrical power companies and major oil and gas companies to new entrants such as venture capital firms," he added, "will play a role in shaping this alternative energy future. CERA's Crossing the Divide analysis offers a number of key insights about potentially significant clean energy opportunities for almost every energy sector participant:

-- There is already a "bubbling" of clean energy clusters - Some places are becoming concentrations of political, technical, institutional and financial clean energy specialization and experience. Examples include Brazil in biofuels, Germany in photovoltaic (PV) technology, Spain in wind technologies.

-- Renewable power technologies are poised for substantial growth - Wind will make the largest gains, followed by solar power and biomass -- despite near-term bottlenecks in wind turbine manufacturing, supply shortages in silicon, and competitive pressures from escalating component costs.

-- Government policy remains a key driver for clean energy advancement - Putting a price on CO2 emissions, setting mandates, and providing subsidies all work to kick-start clean energy technologies by overcoming the economic advantage of conventional technologies. The challenge in the years ahead is to provide subsidies in a way that ensures that these technologies get off the drawing board and are able to wean themselves from support - allowing for a phase-out rather than an increase in subsidies - as they become commercially viable on their own.

-- Conventional emission-free technologies - Nuclear and hydroelectric generation will account for most of the clean energy impact for the next decade, and almost half the gross clean power additions by 2030.

-- Disruptive technology potential - Clean energy technology could have disruptive rather than incremental impact. Modular and distributed PV could disrupt traditional central-station models of electricity production and distribution. Breakthroughs in cellulosic ethanol can disrupt the traditional vehicle fuel system if scale, logistics, and costs prove manageable. Conventional biofuel feedstocks, such as grains and oilseeds, may also produce serious unintended consequences such as disruption in global agricultural prices as well as land and water use patterns, as well as a policy backlash.

-- Asia demand and manufacturing - Rapid economic growth may push Asian energy needs from 30 percent of current global demand to 40 percent by 2030; combined with its manufacturing cost-competitiveness, this could make Asia a nexus for clean energy technology research, development and equipment production.

Clean Technology Drivers

Across the entire range of potential scenarios, Crossing the Divide identified the primary drivers that affect the pace of clean energy technological development and its commercial success:

-- Oil & natural gas prices - Directly affect the economics of clean energy technologies, energy security concerns, biofuels development, renewable power and conventional clean energy.

-- Government policy - Central to development of all clean energy technologies, with sustained government support ensuring ongoing research, seed money and confidence for investors; the sustainability of support policies shapes the timing and ultimate success of new technologies, particularly to the degree to which it encourages private investment.

-- Pace of technology innovation - Movement of technologies from the fringe to the center of the energy business is heavily dependent on policy support and private investment, which, in turn, is strongly affected by fossil fuel price cycles, carbon pricing, and expectations.

-- Economic growth - Affects energy demand and carbon emissions as well as the political and financial support for research and development of new clean energy technologies.

-- The Big Three: "The Big Three" in terms of energy consumption - the United States, the European Union and China - will have a major impact on development of "clean energy," along with certain other countries, particularly Japan and Brazil.

Scenarios Findings

CERA's analysis used a scenarios framework to assess the winners and losers among various clean energy technologies and help define key risks and opportunities as companies seek to place their technology bets. The analysis addressed new and conventional energy technologies that can provide energy with a minimal carbon footprint and facilitate greater energy security. These technologies include biofuels, renewable power technologies, carbon capture and storage, nuclear and hydropower. While CERA's scenarios provide widely different outcomes, advances occur in at least some clean energy technologies across all three scenarios.

In the Launch Pad scenario, strong energy prices, growing public pressure to control CO2 emissions, and a stable investment environment coalesce to drive the development and adoption of a wide range of clean energy technologies. Renewable power capacity grows from three to 16 percent of global capacity and biofuels grow from less than two percent to 16 percent of the total road transportation fuels market.

In contrast to Launch Pad's broad-based advancement of clean energy, the Global Fissures scenario highlights how weaker global economic growth coupled with increasing global tensions and political insecurity could lead to an uneven outlook for clean energy technologies. In the Global Fissures scenario, renewable power capacity grows to seven percent of the global power mix, but nuclear power experiences little growth and carbon capture and storage technology fails to develop commercially by 2030.

The Asian Phoenix scenario describes a world where the global balance of geopolitical and economic power shifts to Asia, expanding Asia's role as both consumer and exporter of clean energy technologies. Although concerns over climate change influence political agendas, a global patchwork of uncoordinated policies result in inconsistent government support programs leading to periods of fits and starts for private investment flows, and limiting technological and commercial breakthroughs. Renewable power grows to 10 percent of global capacity and biofuels capture seven percent of the market for road transportation fuels.

"Crossing the Divide and the CERA scenarios highlight that the future of clean energy can take several paths," said Lawrence Makovich, CERA vice president and senior advisor. "This demonstrates how important not only technology, but also well-crafted energy policy are to shaping the energy future."

The Crossing the Divide analysis combined the collective input of study participants with CERA's broad research capabilities and deep expertise in a range of energy segments and geographic regions to help gauge the expectations for clean energy and align them with reality. Highlights of each technology include the following:

-- Biofuels. Development of biofuels is rapidly growing around the world, driven by rising global oil prices and transportation demand. Support for biofuels is also driven by interest in promoting domestic agricultural sectors. Based on the state of current technologies, however, biofuels promise to displace a relatively small fraction of petroleum, owing to twin constraints:

competition for land with food crops and relatively high production costs. More petroleum could be displaced if next generation technology is developed that converts more plentiful nonfood biomass into fuel and expands the useable crop base, but significant cost and technology hurdles must first be overcome. Biotechnology may surprise and shine a light on the appropriate solutions.

-- Wind. Given its relatively low cost compared with other renewable power alternatives, wind is the leading renewable technology in power generation worldwide in terms of installed capacity. As favorable onshore resources are harnessed, the key to maintaining wind capacity growth will be movement to low-speed onshore sites and offshore wind development. The majority of all new wind capacity (approximately 80 percent) is expected to come online in Asia and Europe, with almost all of the remainder in North America.

-- Biomass. Europe continues to lead the way in biomass power growth for electric generation through its bioenergy policy initiatives. Cost-effective, dedicated biomass crops would create a breakthrough for this technology.

-- Geothermal power. Current trends indicate that new geothermal power projects should increase installed capacity by 50 percent or more in the next five years as the number of countries with geothermal power operations roughly doubles to over 40. Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), commonly known as "hot rocks," may hold the greatest potential for expanding the role of geothermal energy. EGS takes advantage of the heat locked in impermeable rock layers deep below the earth's surface through artificially created geothermal reservoirs. Although EGS technology shows great promise, it is still in a formative stage of development and must overcome a number of challenges before becoming a viable energy source.

-- Solar PV. Solar enjoys fast growth globally, with installations increasing from just over three GW in 1996 to 6.5 GW in 2006. Solar PV is primarily a decentralized source of power generation that produces electricity directly from sunlight without moving parts or the need for significant balance-of-plant equipment. It is versatile in terms of applications, ranging from integration in lighting products and building materials to modular power installations that provide power to the grid. Its versatility and falling manufacturing costs make solar PV attractive to the investment community looking for clean energy technologies with near-term market potential. Still, solar PV-generated electricity costs significantly more than conventional power generation and requires subsidies to compensate.

-- Concentrating solar power (CSP: 11.25, +0.07, +0.62%). CSP is a large-scale, centralized power production technology that concentrates sunlight to generate heat that is used to produce steam-generated electricity. Although solar PV is more widely known, CSP technologies are actually much less expensive and more appropriately sized for utility-scale generation. However, they still require subsidies in order to compete in the marketplace. Emerging CSP technologies can be equipped with thermal storage systems that reduce the impact of solar energy's intermittence.

-- Ocean. The enormous energy potential of ocean resources is unlikely to provide a significant contribution to world electricity supplies for the next few decades owing to the early-stage nature of the technology. Successful demonstration projects, cost reductions and policy development on standards for resource use will be required to advance the growth of ocean energy. However, successful projects could have an impact on a local level, and within the next half century a tidal power plant with a capacity as big as or bigger than the Hoover Dam or the Yangtze River Dam is possible.

-- Carbon capture and storage (CCS: 23.09, +0.14, +0.61%). Carbon capture and storage is a combination of technologies that holds promise of bringing fossil fuel combustion into the clean energy portfolio. If done on a large enough scale, capturing and effectively storing CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere could fundamentally alter the carbon footprint of conventional fossil fuels. Even in the best case, CCS is at least two decades away from large scale deployment. Carbon capture technology is likely to advance well ahead of storage technology. Technical hurdles to carbon capture will be addressed in technology trials over the next decade while the associated political, regulatory and legal issues are worked out.

-- Nuclear. Nuclear power is an important part of the world's current electricity mix, providing 15 percent of global power generation. Future prospects for new nuclear construction, buoyed by growing concerns over climate change and energy security, could support new nuclear build of up to 700 GW of installed capacity by 2030. However, many challenges lie ahead with regard to policy, capital costs, waste management -- and public opinion. There is always the risk of a major safety incident or a successful terrorist attack which could seriously impede the progress of nuclear power.

-- Hydropower. Many developing economies and power systems are following the path set by the developed economies and maximizing their domestic hydroelectric potential to support economic development. Like nuclear, hydropower currently provides a significant portion of global power generation (16 percent) and is also poised for growth over the next few decades. Particularly in developing economies in Asia and Latin America, up to 600 GW of new capacity could be added through 2030. Hydropower engenders controversy, however, based on the social displacement and environmental impacts associated with large-scale dams and reservoirs.

About CERA (www.cera.com)

Elements that point to a tipping climate system

Anthropogenic forcing could push the Earth’s climate system past critical thresholds, so that important components may “tip” into qualitatively different modes of operation. In the magazine “Proceedings of the National Academy of sciences” an international team of researchers describes, where small changes can have large long-term consequences on human and ecological systems.

“Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change,“ the researchers around Timothy Lenton from the British University of East Anglia in Norwich and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research report. Global change may appear to be a slow and gradual process on human scales. However, in some regions anthropogenic forcing on the climate system could kick start abrupt and potentially irreversible changes. For these sub-systems of the Earth system the researchers introduce the term “tipping element”.

Drawing on a workshop of 36 leading climate scientists in October 2005 at the British Embassy, Berlin, Germany, a further elicitation of 52 experts in the field, and a review of the pertinent literature, the authors compiled a short-list of nine potential tipping elements. These tipping elements are ranked as the most policy-relevant and require consideration in international climate politics.

Arctic sea-ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet are regarded as the most sensitive tipping elements with the smallest uncertainty. Scientists expect ice cover to dwindle due to global warming. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is probably less sensitive as a tipping element, but projections of its future behavior have large uncertainty. This also applies to the Amazon rainforest and Boreal forests, the El Niño phenomenon, and the West African monsoon. “These tipping elements are candidates for surprising society by exhibiting a nearby tipping point,” the authors state in the article that is published in PNAS Online Early Edition. The archetypal example of a tipping element, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, could undergo a large abrupt transition with up to ten percent probability within this century, according to the UN climate report from 2007.

Given the scale of potentially dramatic impacts from tipping elements the researchers anticipate stronger mitigation. Concepts for adaptation that go beyond current incremental approaches are also necessary. In addition, “a rigorous study of potential tipping elements in human socio-economic systems would also be welcome,” the researchers write. Some models suggest there are tipping points to be passed for the transition to a low carbon society.

Highly sensitive tipping elements, smallest uncertainty:

Greenland Ice Sheet - Warming over the ice sheet accelerates ice loss from outlet glaciers and lowers ice altitude at the periphery, which further increases surface temperature and ablation. The exact tipping point for disintegration of the ice sheet is unknown, since current models cannot capture the observed dynamic deglaciation processes accurately. But in a worst case scenario local warming of more than three degrees Celsius could cause the ice sheet to disappear within 300 years. This would result in a rise of sea level of up to seven meters.

Arctic sea-ice - As sea-ice melts, it exposes a much darker ocean surface, which absorbs more radiation than white sea-ice so that the warming is amplified. This causes more rapid melting in summer and decreases ice formation in winter. Over the last 16 years ice cover during summer declined markedly. The critical threshold global mean warming may be between 0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, but could already have been passed. One model shows a nonlinear transition to a potential new stable state with no arctic sea-ice during summer within a few decades.

Intermediately sensitive tipping elements, large uncertainty:

West Antarctic Ice Sheet - Recent gravity measurements suggest that the ice sheet is losing mass. Since most of the ice sheet is grounded below sea level the intrusion of ocean water could destabilize it. The tipping point could be reached with a local warming of five to eight degrees Celsius in summer. A worst case scenario shows the ice sheet could collapse within 300 years, possibly raising sea level by as much as five meters.

Boreal forest - The northern forests exhibit a complex interplay between tree physiology, permafrost and fire. A global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could lead to large-scale dieback of the boreal forests within 50 years. Under climate change the trees would be exposed to increasing water stress and peak summer heat and would be more vulnerable to diseases. Temperate tree species will remain excluded due to frost damage in still very cold winters.

Amazon rainforest - Global warming and deforestation will probably reduce rainfall in the region by up to 30 percent. Lengthening of the dry season, and increases in summer temperatures would make it difficult for the forest to re-establish. Models project dieback of the Amazon rainforest to occur under three to four degrees Celsius global warming within fifty years. Even land-use change alone could potentially bring forest cover to a critical threshold.

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – The variability of this ocean-atmosphere mode is controlled by the layering of water of different temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the temperature gradient across the equator. During the globally three degrees Celsius warmer early Pliocene ENSO may have been suppressed in favor of persistent El Niño or La Niña conditions. In response to a warmer stabilized climate, the most realistic models simulate increased El Niño amplitude with no clear change in frequency.

Sahara/Sahel- and West African monsoon - The amount of rainfall is closely related to vegetation climate feedback and sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean. Greenhouse gas forcing is expected to increase Sahel rainfall. But a global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could cause a collapse of the West African monsoon. This could lead either to drying of the Sahel or to wetting due to increased inflow from the West. A third scenario shows a possible doubling of anomalously dry years by the end of the century.

Indian summer monsoon - The monsoon circulation is driven by a land-to-ocean pressure gradient. Greenhouse warming tends to strengthen the monsoon since warmer air can carry more water. Air pollution and land-use that increases the reflection of sunlight tend to weaken it. The Indian summer monsoon could become erratic and in the worst case start to chaotically change between an active and a weak phase within a few years.

Lowly sensitive tipping elements, intermediate uncertainty:

Atlantic thermohaline circulation - The circulation of sea currents in the Atlantic Ocean is driven by seawater that flows to the North Atlantic, cools and sinks at high latitudes. If the inflow of freshwater increases, e.g. from rivers or melting glaciers, or the seawater is warmed, its density would decrease. A global mean warming of three to five degrees Celsius could push the element past the tipping point so that deep water formation stops. Under these conditions the North Atlantic current would be disrupted, sea level in the North Atlantic region would rise and the tropical rain belt would be shifted.

###

Source - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

The sixth mass extinction to affect life on Earth.

All the creatures we share the Earth with are important in some way, however unprepossessing or insignificant they may appear. They and we are all part of the web of life.

From the dawn of time, extinction has usually progressed at what scientists call a natural or background rate. Today the tempo is far faster.

Many scientists believe this is the sixth great wave - the sixth mass extinction to affect life on Earth.

We were not here for any of the previous mass extinctions, but this time our sheer preponderance is driving the slide to oblivion.

We have more than doubled our numbers in half a century, and that is the most obvious reason why there is less room for any other species.

We are taking their living room to grow our food, their food to feed ourselves. We are exploiting them, trading in them, squeezing them to the margins of existence - and beyond.

Often the choice is hard: conserve a species or feed a community, tourists' dollars or turtles' nests.

In 2003 the World Conservation Union's Red List said more than 12,000 species (out of 40,000 assessed) faced some extinction risk, including:

• one bird in eight
• 13% of the world's flowering plants
• a quarter of all mammals.

That gives you a ballpark figure. Science has described 1.75 million species, some experts estimate that there may be 13 or 14 million in the world in total - but until they are catalogued, nobody knows.

Our pillage of the natural world has been likened to burning down the medieval libraries of Europe, before we had even bothered to catalogue their contents.

Many species keep us alive, purifying water, fixing nitrogen, recycling nutrients and waste, and pollinating crops.

Plants and bacteria carry out photosynthesis, which produces the oxygen we breathe. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas given off by human activities.

Pandas and microbes

Some years ago, when the global annual gross product was about $18 trillion, US researchers calculated the value of the goods and services provided by the Earth to the world economy: $33 trillion.

Tropical cone snails contain toxins which show promise for treating some forms of cancer and heart irregularities. One toxin may be a thousand times more potent than morphine for pain relief.

But millions of cone snails are now killed annually for their shells, and their habitats are under pressure.

That is the argument for utility. But the creatures we can see, and those we can use directly, are just the start of the story.

Lord May, president of the Royal Society (the UK's national academy of sciences), has said: "Most conservation effort goes into birds and mammals - creatures like the panda, a dim, dead-end animal that was probably on the way out anyway.

"Yet arguably it's the little things that run the world, things like soil microbes. They're the least-known species of all."

Complex network

And we continue to tug at the loose threads of the web of life, thinking we can split it into its separate parts.

Brazil nuts are a lucrative harvest in the Amazon. But an experiment to produce them in plantations failed, because the trees bear a good crop in the forest, but are barren in isolation.

We are not removing individual species from the Amazon: we are destroying the entire forest.

US researchers estimate that by 2020 less than 5% of it will remain in pristine condition.

Within 15 years, about a fifth of central Africa's forests will have gone, by one estimate. And the forests of Indonesia are in headlong retreat.

Some species are bucking the trend towards extinction. In 1953 there were about 2.5bn people: today there are 6bn.

Ensuring other species keep their living space is not sentimental. It is the only way we shall survive.

Extinction, whatever Steven Spielberg says, really is for ever.

The web is unravelling...

Planet Under Pressure -- BBC News

World fells trees at ‘alarming’ rate, experts say

Scientists say global deforestation will feed global warming

ABO EBAM, Nigeria - In the gloomy shade deep in Africa's rain forest, the noontime silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw. It was the sound of destruction, echoed from wood to wood, continent to continent, in the tropical belt that circles the globe.

From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests.

The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists — and was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.

Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful feedback link of trees and climate.

Global warming is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed global warming.

"If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change," declared more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others in an appeal for action at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.

The burning or rotting of trees that comes with deforestation — at the hands of ranchers, farmers, timbermen — sends more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world's planes, trains, trucks and automobiles. Forest destruction accounts for about 20 percent of manmade emissions, second only to burning of fossil fuels for electricity and heat. Conversely, healthy forests absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon.

"The stakes are so dire that if we don't start turning this around in the next 10 years, the extinction crisis and the climate crisis will begin to spiral out of control," said Roman Paul Czebiniak, a forest expert with Greenpeace International. "It's a very big deal."

The December U.N. session in Bali may have been a turning point, endorsing negotiations in which nations may fashion the first global financial plan for compensating developing countries for preserving their forests.

The latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) helped spur delegates to action.

"Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of about 13 million hectares (32 million acres) a year," the U.N. body said in its latest "State of the World's Forests" report.

Because northern forests remain essentially stable, that means 50,000 square miles of tropical forest are being cleared every 12 months _ equivalent to one Mississippi or more than half a Britain. The lumber and fuelwood removed in the tropics alone would fill more than 1,000 Empire State Buildings, FAO figures show.

Although South America loses slightly more acreage than Africa, the rate of loss is higher here _ almost 1 percent of African forests gone each year. In 2000-2005, the continent lost 10 million acres a year, including big chunks of forest in Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania, up from 9 million a decade earlier, the FAO reports.

Across the tropics the causes can be starkly different.

The Amazon and other South American forests are usually burned for cattle grazing or industrial-scale soybean farming. In Indonesia and elsewhere in southeast Asia, island forests are being cut or burned to make way for giant plantations of palm, whose oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.

In Africa, by contrast, it's individuals hacking out plots for small-scale farming.

Here in Nigeria's southeastern Cross Rivers State, home to one of the largest remaining tropical forests in Africa, people from surrounding villages of huts and cement-block homes go to the forest each day to work their pineapple and cocoa farms. They see no other way of earning money to feed their families.

"The developed countries want us to keep the forests, since the air we breathe is for all of us, rich countries and poor countries," said Ogar Assam Effa, 54, a tree plantation director and member of the state conservation board.

"But we breathe the air, and our bellies are empty. Can air give you protein? Can air give you carbohydrates?" he asked. "It would be easy to convince people to stop clearing the forest if there was an alternative."

The state, which long ago banned industrial logging, is trying to offer alternatives.

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