Please Support Earth hour : A humble appeal to all DFItes

JAYRAM

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Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters

AP Mar 29, 2012, 12.16PM IST



WASHINGTON: Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists says in a report issued Wednesday.

The greatest danger from extreme weather is in highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe _ from Mumbai to Miami _ is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.

The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.

In the past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which recently have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.

"We mostly experience weather and climate through the extreme,'' said one of the report's top editors, Chris Field, an ecologist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "That's where we have the losses. That's where we have the insurance payments. That's where things have the potential to fall apart.

The report specifically points to New Orleans during 2005's Hurricane Katrina, noting that "developed countries also suffer severe disasters because of social vulnerability and inadequate disaster protection.''

"There are lots of places that are already marginal for one reason or another,'' Field said. But it's not just poor areas: "There is disaster risk almost everywhere.''

The scientists say that some places, particularly parts of Mumbai in India, could become uninhabitable from floods, storms and rising seas. In 2005, over 24 hours nearly 3 feet (1 meter) of rain fell on the city, killing more than 1,000 people and causing massive damage. Roughly 2.7 million people live in areas at risk of flooding.

Other cities at lesser risk include Miami, Shanghai, Bangkok, China's Guangzhou, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Myanmar's Yangon (formerly known as Rangoon) and India's Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta). The people of small island nations, such as the Maldives, may also need to abandon their homes because of rising seas and fierce storms.

`"The decision about whether or not to move is achingly difficult and I think it's one that the world community will have to face with increasing frequency in the future,'' Field said in a telephone news conference Wednesday.

This report, the summary of which was issued in November, is unique because it emphasizes managing risks and how taking precautions can work, Field said. In fact, the panel's report uses the word "risk'' 4,387 times.

Field pointed to storm-and-flood-prone Bangladesh, an impoverished country that has learned from its past disasters. In 1970, a Category 3 tropical cyclone named Bhola killed more than 300,000 people. In 2007, a stronger cyclone killed only 4,200 people. Despite the loss of life, the country is considered a success story because it was better prepared and invested in warning and disaster prevention, Field said.

A country that was not as prepared, Myanmar, was hit with a similar sized storm in 2008, which killed 138,000 people.

The study says forecasts that some tropical cyclones, which includes hurricanes in the United States, will be stronger because of global warming, but the number of storms should not increase and may drop slightly.

Some other specific changes in severe weather that the scientists said they had the most confidence in predicting include more heat waves and record hot temperatures worldwide, increased downpours in Alaska, Canada, northern and central Europe, East Africa and north Asia,

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri told The Associated Press that while all countries are getting hurt by increased climate extremes, the overwhelming majority of deaths are happening in poorer less developed places. That, combined with the fact that richer countries are generating more greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, makes the issue of weather extremes one of fairness.

However, extremes aren't always deadly. Sometimes, they are just strange.

Study co-author David Easterling of the National Climatic Data Center says this month's heat wave, while not deadly, fits the pattern of worsening extremes. The U.S. has set nearly 6,800 high temperature records in March. Last year, the United States set a record for billion-dollar weather disasters, though many were tornadoes, which can't be linked to global warming.

"When you start putting all these events together, the insurance claims, it's just amazing,'' Easterling said. "It's pretty hard to deny the fact that there's got to be some climate signal.''

Northeastern University engineering and environment professor Auroop Ganguly, who didn't take part in writing the IPCC report, praised it and said the extreme weather it highlights "is one of the major and important types of what we would call `global weirding.''' It's a phrase that some experts have been starting to use more to describe climate extremes.



http://articles.timesofindia.indiat..._disaster-risk-extreme-weather-climate-change
 
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JAYRAM

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Global warming close to becoming irreversible-scientists

LONDON | Mon Mar 26, 2012 2:30pm EDT

(Reuters) - The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.

Scientific estimates differ but the world's temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably.

As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.

"This is the critical decade. If we don't get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines," said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.

Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world's biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020.

"We are on the cusp of some big changes," said Steffen. "We can ... cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state."

TIPPING POINTS

For ice sheets - huge refrigerators that slow down the warming of the planet - the tipping point has probably already been passed, Steffen said. The West Antarctic ice sheet has shrunk over the last decade and the Greenland ice sheet has lost around 200 cubic km (48 cubic miles) a year since the 1990s.

Most climate estimates agree the Amazon rainforest will get drier as the planet warms. Mass tree deaths caused by drought have raised fears it is on the verge of a tipping point, when it will stop absorbing emissions and add to them instead.

Around 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon were lost in 2005 from the rainforest and 2.2 billion tonnes in 2010, which has undone about 10 years of carbon sink activity, Steffen said.

One of the most worrying and unknown thresholds is the Siberian permafrost, which stores frozen carbon in the soil away from the atmosphere.

"There is about 1,600 billion tonnes of carbon there - about twice the amount in the atmosphere today - and the northern high latitudes are experiencing the most severe temperature change of any part of the planet," he said.

In a worst case scenario, 30 to 63 billion tonnes of carbon a year could be released by 2040, rising to 232 to 380 billion tonnes by 2100. This compares to around 10 billion tonnes of CO2 released by fossil fuel use each year.

Increased CO2 in the atmosphere has also turned oceans more acidic as they absorb it. In the past 200 years, ocean acidification has happened at a speed not seen for around 60 million years, said Carol Turley at Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

This threatens coral reef development and could lead to the extinction of some species within decades, as well as to an increase in the number of predators.

As leading scientists, policy-makers and environment groups gathered at the "Planet Under Pressure" conference in London, opinions differed on what action to take this decade.

London School of Economics professor Anthony Giddens favours focusing on the fossil fuel industry, seeing as renewables only make up 1 percent of the global energy mix.

"We have enormous inertia within the world economy and should make much more effort to close down coal-fired power stations," he said.

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell favours working on technologies leading to negative emissions in the long run, like carbon capture on biomass and in land use, said Jeremy Bentham, the firm's vice president of global business environment.

The conference runs through Thursday.

Global warming close to becoming irreversible-scientists | Reuters
 

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Lights Out At 8:30-9:30 p.m.

By MADEL R. SABATER
March 31, 2012, 4:25am

Manila, Philippines - Millions of Filipinos are expected to participate in Earth Hour, the event that encourages the simultaneous switching off of lights and other electrical appliances to raise global awareness on climate change, at 8:30-9:30 p.m. today in the Philippines.

Malacañang joined the call yesterday for the public to actively participate in the simultaneous "lights off" event initiated by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to be a global movement uniting people to protect the planet.

"Certainly, we encourage everyone to participate in Earth Hour, to be part of the global awareness on the use of energy and in our environment," Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said.

The Philippines will be participating in the Earth Hour by turning off the lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., with three simultaneous switch-off ceremonies to be held in the cities of Makati in Luzon, Cebu in Visayas, and Davao in Mindanao.

Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa, Jr. urged government agencies, including government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) and local government units (LGUs), to participate in the Earth Hour, adding that government agencies should also organize their own Earth Hour.

"Everybody benefits from the vast resources that our planet gives us and so it is only appropriate that everybody takes responsibility and do our share, even in our own little ways, to help preserve Mother

Earth. And this Earth Hour event is one of the many significant opportunities for us to show our appreciation and care for our environment," Ochoa said.

"The government agencies and LGUs play an important role in the environmental conservation campaign since it has the resources to help expand the reach of the campaign and step up the battle against global

warming and other forms of environmental degradation to ensure that effective actions are being undertaken towards a sustainable future for the next generations," he added.

DILG Secretary Jesse M. Robredo already issued a directive to local chief executives, telling them to join the rest of the world in switching off lights and other electrical appliances during the designated Earth Hour.

"Let us show our commitment to protect and preserve the environment and be counted in this campaign to save Mother Earth," said Robredo.

Moreover, the DILG chief called on local executives to organize forums discussing the benefits of the activity and the threats of global warming.

He said others may come up with tree-planting activities to complement the Earth Hour initiative.

In Makati City, the ceremonial switch off program will start at 6 p.m. at Ayala Tower One on Ayala Avenue with the theme "I Will, If You Will."

At 8:29 p.m., Makati Mayor Jejomar Erwin S. Binay will lead the countdown to the one hour switch-off with WWF- Philippines Ambassador Rovilson Fernandez as the program host.

"We are very much honored with the continuing trust shown by WWF in our city as its partner in this noble endeavor," Binay said as his city becomes the focal venue of the largest global call for action on climate change.

Joining the Makati switch-off are Earth Hour Founder Andy Ridley, WWF Vice Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Tan, Department of Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras, Makati Commercial Estate Association (MACEA) President David Balangue, city officials, private sectors and representatives from WWF.

Consultant Estela Lomat said that as the parade head marshals approach the intersection of Paseo de Roxas, westbound lanes of Ayala Avenue from Makati Avenue to Paseo de Roxas will be closed to traffic until the tail end gets inside the TOEP driveway.

Following are the alternate routes for motorists on March 31, Saturday: Vehicles along Ayala Avenue from EDSA going towards the direction of Gil Puyat Avenue shall turn right at Makati Avenue, left at Paseo de Roxas and right at Ayala Avenue to destination, while vehicles along Paseo de Roxas from Legaspi Village going towards the direction of Gil Puyat Avenue are advised to turn right at Ayala Avenue, left at Makati Avenue to destination.

The environmental consciousness campaign that encourages governments, communities and businesses to switch off their lights for an hour and adopt a low-carbon lifestyle to help address the threats of global warming was started in Australia in 2007.

By 2008, 35 countries including the Philippines began to join the event held every last Saturday of March.

In 2011, a total of 1,661 cities and municipalities all over the country participated in Earth Hour.

Key cities in Mindanao, a region currently faced with an energy crisis, are spicing up the country's 5th year of participation in the global event with various activities aimed at promoting conservation and clean energy sources.

Officials and residents in the key cities of Butuan, Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Zamboanga, Davao, General Santos and Surigao are set to make history in Mindanao by staging various activities during the hour-long electricity shutdown in homes, business establishments and industrial plants.

In Southern Mindanao, Davao folks will send off 10,000 biodegradable lanterns to the sky in time for the switch-off.

A Davao Dance Craze together with black-light and fire dancing will also mark the hour-long celebration of human cooperation in the dark.

Other schools, both government and private will also participate in the parade and street party during the Earth Hour 2012.

Meanwhile, the 33-strong member of the Association of Mindanao Rural Electric Cooperatives (AMRECO) led by its president Sergio Dagooc said they will all shut-off their respective power lines during Earth Hour.

Meanwhile, Taguig City Mayor Lani Cayetano expressed full support behind the celebration even as she rallied her constituents to participate in the "lights out" activity.

Cayetano said that participating in the activity signifies one's support for environmental protection, as well as the campaign to solve or at least mitigate the ill effects of climate change to the environment.

She proudly pointed to the fact that the Philippines holds the record for the best participation among nations that joined last year's Earth Hour, when over 15 million Filipinos scattered in 1,076 municipalities and cities simultaneously turned off their lights at home.

Sen. Loren Legarda, Senate Climate Change Committee chairperson, urged Filipinos to participate in the celebration.

"Participating in the Earth Hour is one way to crystallize norms of conduct to ensure our positive impact on the environment. We, as a nation blessed with abundant natural resources yet threatened by the impacts of climate change, should lead the world in this process," she said.

And since the country is set to commemorate the Lenten season next week, Legarda said Filipinos should "carbon-fast" during Holy Week and look for innovative ways to reduce carbon emissions.

"Lent is a period of reflection and fasting. We must try to look for ways to reduce our individual carbon emissions," she said.

"The kind of food we eat, the mode of transportation we take, the generation and our use of energy, our waste management practices, our housing design and materials, and our water consumption, all contribute to carbon dioxide emission," she added. (With reports from Anna Liza T. Villas, Mike U. Crismundo, Czarina Nicole O. Ong, Francis T. Wakefield, Hannah L. Torregoza, and MB Research)


Lights Out At 8:30-9:30 p.m. | The Manila Bulletin Newspaper Online
 

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UN sends global warming alert

Updated: 08:42, Friday March 30, 2012



Climate change experts say a new UN report shows deadly extreme weather events will increase unless nations tackle global warming.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released overnight states that global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heatwaves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of dangerous and costly weather disasters.

In the past, the IPCC, founded in 1988 by the UN, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming.

The latest report is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes which recently have cost on average about $77 billion a year in damage.

Government climate commissioner Will Steffen says it's one of the most important papers released in the past decade.

'It's showing us, for the first time, that we can see the fingerprints of the human-driven warming in some of the extreme events that we've seen,' Professor Steffen told reporters via a phone hook-up from London where he is attending a sustainability conference.

'This is an early warning sign that if we don't get this underlying warming trend under control there's going to be a lot more heatwaves, droughts and intense rainfall events.'

Prof Steffen, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, says Australia is one of the most vulnerable continents when it comes to extreme weather events.

The IPCC report suggests that in Australia there will almost certainly be an increase in days over 35 or 40 degrees Celsius. Heatwaves are likely to become more frequent and last longer.

Dry spells also are likely to last longer in southern Australia, and when it does rain there'll be more extreme precipitation.

The strength of cyclones will probably increase and they may come further south, even if there are fewer of them.

'The rather modest changes in average temperature and average rainfall that we've seen so far really manifest themselves in terms of things that matter for people in terms of these extreme events,' Prof Steffen said.

Examples include killer heatwaves in central Europe in 2003 and southern Australia in 2009 'that led to more deaths in Melbourne than the Black Saturday bushfires'.

There was also 'little doubt' that recent flooding in southeastern Australia was made worse by sea temperature warming and higher evaporation rates.

The 594-page IPCC report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.

Prof Steffen is one of six members of Labor's climate commission that was established in early 2011 to provide information and expert advice to the government and the Australian public.

Earlier in March, the commission warned Australians not to fooled into thinking the world wasn't warming just because much of the country experienced a relatively wet and cool summer.

A commission report stated it was wrong to be blinded to the long-term trend by year-to-year variability and suggested recent heavy rainfall and flooding could have been caused by climate change.

Sky News: UN sends global warming alert
 

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World set to 'switch off' for Earth Hour today

Posted on Mar 31, 2012 at 02:00pm IST

New Delhi: People across the world are expected to observe Earth Hour by switching off lights on Saturday. Earth Hour is an initiative by the international wildlife and environmental body WWF where citizens and organisations around the globe show their support for action on climate change by turning off lights for one hour from 8:30 pm.

In Delhi, science awareness organisation SPACE (Science Popularization Association of Communicators and Educators) will set up telescopes at India Gate between 7:30 pm and 9:30 p. for people to observe how the sky looks in the absence of light pollution. Stargazers in the capital will get a chance to observe celestial bodies in a sky free from light pollution.

In a first of its kind initiative by any hotel chain in India, the Park Hotels said it would switch off lights at all their properties across India to observe Earth Hour.



Earth Hour would also be observed in the other properties owned by the Kolkata-based Apeejay Surrendra group which runs the luxury hotel chain like the Oxford Bookstores, real estate properties, two schools and 50,000 acres of tea plantations area in Assam.

A company spokesperson said that all the 12 Park Hotels located in various cities will participate in the Earth Hour and will switch off non-essential lights and internally will switch to minimal lighting.

Special lights and smoke-free candles will be placed in the rooms to be used in emergency situation.

Candlelight dinners are being organised in the restaurants and 'Earth cocktail' served at bars to create a buzz and to excite the guests towards the cause.

Meanwhile, the UN will also observe Earth Hour by turning off the lights for one hour at its facilities around the world. The world body, headquartered in New York, will join scores of other landmarks around the globe that are participating in the Earth Hour event.

Last year, Earth Hour reached out to over a billion people with a little over 6 million Indians participating in this global show of support.

Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar has been appointed as the national brand ambassador of the cause.

'Kolaveri Di' fame Dhanush also urged people to switch off the lights for an hour on March 31.

(With additional information from PTI and IANS)

World set to 'switch off' for Earth Hour today - World News - IBNLive
 

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Global warming: Doctors foresee major health impacts


Posted on March 18, 2012 by Bob Berwyn

Asthma, allergies and infectious disease could surge in warming world



A NASA graphic showing February 2012 temperature anomalies.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Infants, children and the elderly will be the first to experience serious climate change-related health problems, a panel of lung and respiratory specialists said in a recent position paper aimed at helping members respond to an expected surge in asthma, allergies, infectious and cardiovascular disease.

The increase is expected as a result of rising temperatures, worsening ozone levels in urban areas, the spread of desertification, and expansions of the ranges of communicable diseases. Specific examples include mold spores that previously only were seen in Central America now being found as far north as Vancouver, British Columbia, promoting increases in allergy and asthma, with climate-change conditions implicated. Infectious diseases common in the Mediterranean region now are being seen as far north as Scandinavia, as that area grows warmer.

The paper recommended adoption of public health policies aimed at supporting vulnerable populations during specific climate-change related events, such as heat waves or severe air pollution episodes and other extreme weather events (e.g., extreme rainfall and floods) or rising sea levels and storm surges that challenge or threaten community infrastructure.

"In these proceedings, we address such questions as how climate change may impact the distribution of respiratory disease worldwide, the impact of heat stress and adaptation, and how extreme heat affects the individual and the community," said Kent Pinkerton, professor of pediatrics at the UC Davis School of Medicine and director of the UC Davis Center for Health and the Environment.

The paper is published online and in print in the Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society. While based in the United States the 15,000-member Thoracic Society has members around the globe. The position paper was written by a 10-member committee that included representatives from Europe, Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa.

"Since my research focuses on environmental air pollution and its impact on the respiratory system, my biggest concern has been with issues of air quality," said Pinkerton, a co-author of the paper and the organizer of the workshop upon which the paper is based. "These include more smoke and particulate matter from more wildfires, which are known to increase in frequency as the climate warms, and the presence of airborne particles from dust storms caused by desertification."

"There are certain vector-borne diseases caused by certain types of parasites or organisms whose range has expanded and that has been associated with increases in temperature," Pinkerton said.

Pinkerton said that some of the prospective respiratory health impacts from global climate change will be direct, such as more asthma due to increases in particulate matter in the atmosphere because of desertification, or increases in pollen because of more and extended plant blooms.

"There are individuals who will be much more susceptible to the effects of global climate change than will the members of the general population," Pinkerton said. "In particular, we know that infants and young children, people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and those who are elderly or who have compromised immune systems will have more difficulties when air quality is poorer."

The position paper placed heat-related disease resulting from increased frequency and severity of heat waves as the most serious and direct health risk of climate change. Higher surface temperatures, especially in developed urban areas, will promote the formation of greater amounts of ground-level ozone, which has been linked with asthma, lung cancer and acute lower-respiratory infections.

http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/03/18/global-warming-doctors-foresee-major-health-impacts/
 

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