Another bit of excellent research from the ANU (Australian National University) with Professor Brendan Mackey’s team looking at 132 forests around the world.  They found that Australia’s Victorian eucalyptus gum forests hold 1,900t CO2/hectare 4x more than tropical forests

Brendan Mackey ANU | ABC news http://bit.ly/13yA4v

This style of vertical garden art was started by French scientist Patrick Blanc http://bit.ly/10ei7v

Urban gardens go up the wall – OregonLive.com.

RESOURCES

• The Chicago Botanic Garden sells a “Vertical Gardening” (Issue #4) fact sheet with directions for $3.

• Smith & Hawken sells mini vertical gardens in the form of polypropylene trays that stack up to nine high or mount on a wall. $59 for a set of three stackable trays; each tray has three planting pockets.

SEE PICTURES and purchase kits at eltlivingwalls.com and g-sky.com. Or check out Pat Lando’s newly installed vertical garden at the Hawthorne Hostel, 3031 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.

SUGGESTED PLANTS FOR SHADE: Japanese forest grass, impatiens, ivy, spider plants, bugleweed (Ajuga), begonia, ferns, miniature hostas, wild ginger, black mondo grass

SUGGESTED PLANTS FOR SUN: Sedum, geraniums (Pelargonium), strawberries, leaf lettuce, radicchio, calendula, nasturtium, thyme, pansies, parsley, spurge (Euphorbia)

]]> http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/oregon-gardens-climb-the-walls/feed/ 0 ideasofthegardener http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/grist-responses-to-myths-of-the-climate-change-denial-industry/ http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/grist-responses-to-myths-of-the-climate-change-denial-industry/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:23:31 +0000 ideasofthegardener http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/?p=122 ]]>

enviro journalism @ it's best

Despite 140+years of climate change science, tens of thousands of peer reviewed articles on every aspect of the natural world tree rings, corals, beetle, ice coverage, thickness & melting rates, atmospheric gas greenhouse forcings, etc covering the past, current & future, the denial industry in the blogsphere and rural & regional Australia is alive & kicking.

I’ve found climate change deniers on the whole to have low scientific literacy or levels of understanding & trust of the scientific approach to the world; often have a religious orientation as professional skeptic or fundamentalist christian,

covering your ears to the screams of the Earth takes effort

and are looking for a world that does not change outside the way they have defined it. ….. and mostly do not want to listen or view anything that shoots their delusions down.

If you get someone reasonable who’s on the ideological tipping point, here are some good answers to the “denial industry” crap.
http://bit.ly/nLmO4

This looks like useful for designers and systems thinking creatives.  It’s another way of thinking about the design process, and although couched in web design terms has the potential for all other design applications as well, where the  designer needs thinking tools for getting close to what the  clients need.

ChangeThis :: The Design Funnel: A Manifesto for Meaningful Design.

The human face of the existing impact of Climate Change is now being quantified. Climate Change is a human crisis where the poor of the world are already suffering significant illness, loss of life and livelihood.

Report projects that by 2030, worldwide deaths will reach almost 500,000 per year; people affected by climate change annually expected to rise to over 600 million and the total annual economic cost increase to around $300 billion.

Global Humanitarian Forum – Climate Change responsible for 300,000 deaths a year.

]]> http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/global-humanitarian-forum-climate-change-responsible-for-300000-deaths-a-year/feed/ 0 ideasofthegardener The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/californias-water-woes-threaten-the-entire-countrys-food-supply-water-alternet/ http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/californias-water-woes-threaten-the-entire-countrys-food-supply-water-alternet/#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:39:51 +0000 ideasofthegardener http://ideasofthegardener.wordpress.com/?p=107 ]]>

US Secretary of Energy, Dr Stephen Chu  is telling it like it is. Described as a “Cassandra on a mission of truth” and  “a dystopian breath of fresh air” in this posting from  AlterNet. | Water| the issues of California’s retreating water supply get a good airing.  Scott Thill states

“Simply put, global warming, human-induced and otherwise, has significantly broadened the range of the tropical belt by a rate of 70 kilometers per decade. Southern California, like the Sahara Desert and Sahel savanna, is already subtropical in the summer. But with climate crisis expanding its reach, that subtropical heat could claim not just Northern California’s snowpack, but even part of Washington’s and Utah’s bounties.”

Nearly a third of the country’s food supply comes from California, but drought there may be a catastrophe for farmers ….. See full article  http://bit.ly/3nDGyE

As any intelligent and eco-literate person will be aware. we are, to use an Australianism, “up sh*t creek in a barb wire canoe with a gum leaf paddle”.  The enormity of the personal and social challenges we are facing in order to even acknowledge the environmental issues, let alone dealing with them adequately are enormous.

This talk by Clay Shirky at the Web 2.0 SF 2008 is an insight into the social participation opportunities that arise our collective participation in Web 2.0 and gives us all the opportunities and possibilities to change the world faster than ever thought before

Wikipedia = 100 million hrs of thought and effort….. versus….
Watching TV in the USA = 2000 Wikipedia tasks per year

http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/855937/

This was a discussion at the Australian Sustainability Group on LinkedIn staarted by Erin O’Donnell, of DSE Victoria, who asked:

International water ‘barons’ are starting to emerge – is this a good or bad thing for water resource management? Liquidity for farmers versus market dominance by non-water-users? The Weekly Times -Water Barons

My answer:

I think it is a really bad idea for communities. While in the short term, it may solve a few farmers financial woes and get them a retirement bonus, on the longer term I see nothing but difficulties.

The economics I like and have observed as effective and people sized is that of EF Schumacher, “Small is Beautiful: economics as if people mattered”

Corporatism (the big version of what used to be called Capitalism) is after a milk cow of guaranteed income, it wants modern day serfs and peasants dependent on their GM Seed or communities buying their toxic bottled water. The amoral ideology coming out of right-wing thinking (an oxymoron?) university economics departments and spun by PR firms who sold their souls eaons ago, is to privatise the utilities, based on the mythologies that only the private sector can be efficient, and that is not the business of government to ….. do whatever suits their agenda.

But what is not a mythology is that pushing profit margins by big corporations without any moral restraints and strong regulation, backed by unmovable politicians (another oxymoron), leads to a break down of regulation through the lobbying and corruption of the democratic political process, increasing risk-taking and non-accountability, corruption of the regulators and the company, and a potential breakdown of the reliable provision of what used to be an essential service. Then with changing weather patterns, food shortages, and a growing global population, there is the other unspoken matter of what happens when an increasingly scarce resource like water is owned by corporations.

I had a good view from the inside when I was a technician with Telstra while it was “corporatizing” before it went private. I left, before the slide in standards & service was too bad, but heard from my former technical colleagues unfortunate enough to be working in an organisation that told its employees to lie and fudge figures going to the minister or the market. We saw technical standards fall and backup systems removed for reasons of economic efficiency. The new profit culture was the antithesis of the good engineering standards for the provision of service, where lives were dependent on the phone system infrastructure. Just the same as when Telstra consolidated Triple 0 in two places in Australia, to save dollars, all the technical staff knew that such decisions would eventually cost lives, and we were right.

Water barons have no connection to the country, no loyalty to community structures and groups, and are not grounded in a meaningful engagement with soil or people.

Jefferson said that “merchants had no loyalty to the soil” and nothing has changed. So unless we are talking about the new Corporation Version 2.0 ready to run for the Green Economy where people and planet count, where they practice and believe in codes of ethical conduct and do their Corporate Sustainability Reports and mean it, then the water Barons will be the old unreformed corporations whose “raison d’etre”, reason for being, is maximised profit, anywhere, at any price.

If we sell the water to the “barons” the short term gain for a few, will be at the long term pain of the many. We need a third way that looks after people and ecosystems.

A good example of significant environmental damage from overstretching natural resources is the decline of the Aral Sea.

Thanks to George who sent me this link to UNEP and Google Earth views of the decline and partial recovery of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, once the fourth largest inland sea.

A history of really bad management with water diverted for agriculture combined with accelerating climate change impacts, means a very high probability that the Aral Sea has already passed critical survival tipping points to be ever restored to a single Inland Sea. It is now also highly likely that the now separate Southern Aral Sea will disappear entirely in coming decades.

To me this youtube clip and the sad story of the Aral Sea is a wake up call to action on restoring the extensive environmental damage we have done to this planet while we still have a choice.

Here’s a good description from the Green Economy Institute http://ping.fm/dN1TX

This is such a simple narrative, a YouTube video with a powerful message which is at the same time a very effective graphical metaphor.

Send it on to the people you know that will appreciate it or need it, and thanks to Roland who passed the KarmaTube link to Lost Generation onto me.

The latest New Scientist has a report by Fred Pearce that everybody should read, Arctic Meltdown is a threat to humanity.  Any long term student of the trends of climate change may be dismayed at the confirmation of acceleration in the warming of the Arctic, but certainly not be surprised.  What is scary for me as someone who has been reading and teaching about climate change since for over twenty years is the increasing number of positive or amplifying feedback loops and how these are approaching tipping points.  For instance this article points out that the increased bacterial activity resulting from a melting of the permafrost, will itself have a heating effect and therefore another positive feedback loop.

Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity.

“The rapid warming in the Arctic means that a global temperature rise of 3 °C, likely this century, could translate into a 10 °C warming in the far north. Permafrost hundreds of metres deep will be at risk of thawing out.

This is where things go global. The Arctic is not just a reflective mirror that is cracking up. It is also a massive store of carbon and methane, locked into the frozen soils and buried in icy structures beneath the ocean bed.”

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127011.500-arctic-meltdown-is-a-threat-to-humanity.html?page=1

Aquatic animals and fish that use produce electricity have been known about in some cases for thousands of years in the case of the electric ray family. We now know that the use of electricity is far more widespread for instance, for sensing of their environment (sharks), detection of  food (platypus) or as defensive  and hunting weapons (electric eels)

Electrogenic bacteria (see electrogenisis) have been known for over 10 years opening up all  sorts of new possibilities for the biological production of electricity in a range of applications, including  biomedical, powering equipment in remote locations and producing power while cleaning up wastewater or intensive livestock wastes. See the range of articles at New Scientist on Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs).

MFCs are in fact just one biological strategy in what are more generally called bio-electrochemical systems (BESs) see www.microbialfuelcell.org/

Here’s how Boston University describe MFCs.

“A microbial fuel cell resembles any other electrochemical fuel cell, except the conversion of the fuel source into electricity is transacted by one of several common species of bacteria. Feed a microbial fuel cell anything the bacteria can grow on, and the bacteria will split it into electrons and protons. As the protons flow through the cell on one side and recombine with oxygen on the other, an electric current will flow across the device and power whatever is attached to it. Such bacteria are called electrogens.”

Functioning of a Microbial Fuel Cell, image from IntAct Labs

This clip from from Forbes BreakOut is an exciting development in the commercialisation of this biotechnology with IntAct Labs of Massachusetts.

As the Advanced Water Management Centre at the University of Queensland states the significance of MFCs from their perspective

“Biological wastewater treatment is, despite its high efficiency and stability, still unsustainable because of the energy requirements and the chemicals needed in case the wastewater composition is suboptimal. Microbial fuel cells (MFC) have promise to generate electricity while treating the wastewater.” MFCs evolve to comprehensive wastewater treatment systems.

Its still a little known technology, as of today YouTube only has 21 clips on Microbial Fuel Cells and some of those are less than useful in explaining the processes.  This one titled “Emefcy develops innovative wastewater treatment systems” on YouTube gives one of the best explanations at the level of big picture commercial applications.

Anyone that has been following the science of climate change will not be surprised at this latest from CSIRO Climate Scientists at the current Copenhagen Climate Change preparatory conference  leading up to the main conference with national leaders and ministers in December. See http://en.cop15.dk/

“Forests, grasslands and oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere faster than ever but they are not keeping pace with rapidly rising emissions,”  says CSIRO scientist and co-Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Dr Mike Raupach.

http://www.csiro.au/news/Copenhagen-climate-change-conference.html

CSIRO Fast Facts

• The stabilising influence that land and ocean carbon sinks have on rising carbon emissions is gradually weakening, say scientists attending this week’s international Copenhagen Climate Change Conference
• Forests, grasslands and oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere faster than ever but they are not keeping pace with rapidly rising emissions
• While these natural CO₂ sinks are a huge buffer against climate change, which would occur about twice as fast without them, they cannot be taken for granted

“Forests, grasslands and oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere faster than ever but they are not keeping pace with rapidly rising emissions,” says CSIRO scientist and co-Chair of the Global Carbon Project, Dr Mike Raupach.

“While these natural CO₂ sinks are a huge buffer against climate change, which would occur about twice as fast without them, they cannot be taken for granted.”

Dr Raupach and Swiss scientist, Dr Nicolas Gruber, co-Chaired one of 43 sessions at the conference – Climate Change, Vulnerability of Carbon Sinks.

Dr Raupach says concern about the vulnerability of carbon sinks is based on identifying several mechanisms that could cause the present stabilising role of oceans and land to be weakened or even reversed.

“Such a change would have drastic consequences for the predicted magnitude or speed of climate change occurring and scientists will meet in Copenhagen to review and question the latest research from which advice can ultimately be provided to decision-makers.”

Discussions will focus on:

• Changes in the carbon sink on land through shifts in atmospheric composition, temperature and rainfall changes, deforestation, fire frequency and insect attacks, all of which can slow or reverse sinks or initiate sources of CO₂ to the atmosphere.
• Release of carbon presently locked in frozen soil, as both CO₂ and methane (a more potent greenhouse gas than CO₂).
• Shifts in large-scale agricultural production of food and fibre, potentially speeding up land clearing and tropical deforestation. This process currently contributes 15-20 per cent of anthropogenic carbon emissions.
• Findings on the exchange of heat and CO₂ between the atmosphere and deep ocean, which suggest that climate change is effectively irreversible in less than 1000 years.

Australian science is represented at the conference in sessions on; sea ice, sea level rise, ocean circulation, atmosphere and ocean tipping points, carbon sequestration, carbon capture and storage, changing the way we live and adapting future agricultural production.

http://www.csiro.au/news/Copenhagen-climate-change-conference.html

Download image at: Carbon sinks losing the battle with rising emissions.

System Thinking Guru turns 90.

Russell Ackoff, systems thinking legend is still going strong at 90. This Ackoff Centre blog contains some great links, videos, articles and commentary.

I love the way Ackoff looks at problems and solutions in our dominant linear thinking world. Where solving a problem creates another problem and solving that causes another…. until you have a system of messes, for which there is no adequate word in English.

Russell L. Ackoff is the Anheuser Busch Professor Emeritus of management science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

“Problems are to reality what atoms are to tables. We experience tables, not atoms. Problems are abstracted from experience by analysis. We do not experience individual problems but complex systems of those that are strongly interacting. I call them messes. Because messes are systems of problems, they lose their essential properties when they are taken apart. Therefore, if a mess is disassembled, it loses its essential properties. Furthermore, as in any new system, if each part taken separately is treated as well as possible, the whole is not treated as well as possible.”

Ackoff, R. (1999). Ackoff’s best: His classic writings on management. New York: John Wiley & Sons. p.117

Here is a link to a PhD thesis Themes and Images that Transcend Cultural Differences that has some interesting connections in Knowledge Area Module 3 into Social Systems covering Ackoff and Peter Senge’s theories.

Back to this neglected blog !   Picking up the comments from Sanjay on the 22 tipping points in the global climate system, I first heard this in a lecture at the Australian Academy of Science Shine Dome covering more on climate feedback loops.  So many of our computer modelling of the indicators of change have been underestimating the increasing speed of events.

Here are just a few of the tipping points that are going exponential, ocean acidity, Arctic sea ice losses, another Antarctic Ice Shelf, the Wilkins starts fracturing, very high levels of methane bubbling from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, and more evidence of the melting of the permafrostFrom a story in  The Independent by the Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean, the latest research is that the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 is considerably diminished for geological time
Greenhouse gases will heat up the planet ‘for ever’ -

Global warming is for ever, some of the world’s top climate scientists have concluded. Their research shows that carbon dioxide emitted from today’s homes, cars and factories will continue to heat up the planet for hundreds of thousands of years……

It comes as a shock because most governments, and even many scientists, have assumed that carbon dioxide emissions would work their way out of the atmosphere in about a century, enabling it to clean itself fairly rapidly once the world switched to clean sources of energy.

But one of the main researchers – Professor David Archer of Chicago University – warns that “the climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, far longer than the age of human civilisation so far. Ultimate recovery takes place on timescales of hundreds of thousands of years, a geologic longevity typically associated in public perceptions with nuclear waste.”

Carbon dioxide mainly leaves the atmosphere by being soaked up by the oceans, but Professor Archer says that “the pervasive notion in the climate science community and in the public at large” that this happens relatively quickly is no longer valid. He and other leading scientists spell out why in a paper to be published in the journal Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

“The ocean is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2,” he says. The surface waters, about 100 metres deep, which used to sop up the gas quite fast, are now getting saturated with it – turning acid in the process – and so decreasing their uptake. They need to be replaced with fresh water from deep down, but this overturning circulation “takes centuries or a millennium”. And global warming is expected to slow this down: the hotter the surface layer becomes, the longer the replenishment takes.

Rapid melting of the Arctic ice cap is getting climate scientists very very concerned Climate change gathers steam, say scientists,

“What has us puzzled is that the changes are even faster than we would have thought possible,”  said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

In 2008 there was an “exponential growth” in atmospheric methane, most likely from the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions where temperature is rising rapidly.

Moving to the Himalays, tropical glaciologist, Professor Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University featured in this story at the ABC Science (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)  Tibetan glaciers rapidly melting

“At the highest elevations, we’re seeing something like an average of 0.3°C warming per decade,” says Thompson. “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects 3°C of warming by 2100. But that’s at the surface; up at the elevations where these glaciers are there could be almost twice as much, almost 6°C.”

“I have not seen much as compelling as this to demonstrate how some glaciers are just being decapitated,” says Associate Professor Shawn Marshall of the University of Calgary.

Marshall, who studies glaciers in North America, says it’s striking how much worse glaciers near the equator are than those in the Canadian Rocky and Cascade mountain ranges.

Water supply

The finding has ominous implications for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the waters of the Naimona’nyi and other glaciers for their livelihoods. Across the region, no one know just how much water the Himalayas have left, but Thompson says it’s dwindling fast.

“You can think of glaciers kind of like water towers,” he says. “They collect water from the monsoon in the wet season, and release it in the dry season. But how effective they are depends on how much water is in the towers.”

While looking down at Antarctica, the European Space Agency announced that scientists have identified new rifts are showing in the Wilkins Ice Shelf which will contribute to it’s break up.

Finally The Guardian carried a story in the last week about Unexpected rise in carbon-fuelled ocen acidity threatens shellfish, say scientists

Oceans absorb about a third of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activities. When the gas dissolves in water, it forms carbonic acid, which alters the ocean’s delicate chemical balance.

Timothy Wootton, a biologist at the University of Chicago, led a team of researchers who analysed the acidity, salinity and temperature of water around Tatoosh Island off the northwestern coast of Washington state.

Over eight years, the pH level of the water fell by 0.36 to about 8.1, more than 23 times more than the predicted fall of just 0.015 points. Water is neutral if its pH is seven, and becomes more acidic as the pH falls below that.

Writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists raise concerns at how rapidly the process is happening and the impact it could have. “Acidification may be a more urgent issue than previously predicted, at least in some areas of the ocean,” the authors write.

Last month, researchers warned that a new global deal on climate change would come too late to save many of the world’s corals. A report from the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California found that carbon dioxide emissions are likely to acidify seawater enough to cause widespread damage to major reefs, including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Even stringent cuts designed to stabilise greenhouse gas levels still put more than 90% of the world’s reefs in jeopardy.

“Declines in seawater pH were expected to happen very slowly, so we’ve been lax in dealing with the problem, but our study shows ocean acidification may be happening much quicker,” said Wootton.

The Talloires Declaration* (pronounced Tal whar) was drafted in 1990 in Talloires, France, and starts

We, the presidents, rectors, and vice chancellors of universities from all regions of the world are deeply concerned about the unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation, and the depletion of natural resources.

Local, regional, and global air and water pollution; accumulation and distribution of toxic wastes; destruction and depletion of forests, soil, and water; depletion of the ozone layer and emission of “green house” gases threaten the survival of humans and thousands of other living species, the integrity of the earth and its biodiversity, the security of nations, and the heritage of future generations. These environmental changes are caused by inequitable and unsustainable production and consumption patterns that aggravate poverty in many regions of the world.

We believe that urgent actions are needed to address these fundamental problems and reverse the trends. Stabilization of human population, adoption of environmentally sound industrial and agricultural technologies, reforestation, and ecological restoration are crucial elements in creating an equitable and sustainable future for all humankind in harmony with nature.

Now if you took that at face value, and all the scientific output from the world’s universities already predicting problems with climate change, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and species extinctions, food security………… etc people outside the university sector, might think ‘Wow, we’ve got serious problems, I’m so glad the universities of the world are doing something about it.’.. Well, there’s a slight problem, many universities, if not the majority, may have done the easy bits, replacing the odd lightbulb and installing water saving measures, but have yet to tackle greening their entire curriculum.

The Australian National University put off signing The Declaration, until this side of the Millennium, on that very point, but having signed it, have yet to green their curriculum. The University of Canberra, like many avoided signing The Declaration, and when the University Council passed a resolution to adopt The Declaration as policy in 1998, did not sign it for until mid 1999, and when they did, did not pay their dues for a further 18months, and then not even more than a passing token effort for a further 8 years. (written but not posted in 2007)

But wait for it, Step 39 of the Strategic Plan approved in December 2007 now incorporates the Talloires Declaration, and as of 2008 we now have a Sustainability minor and major available to all undergraduate students.  We have some support all the way to the Vice Chancellor, but still no real champion, no paid Project Officer full-time or even part-time.  I think the Uni is just busy surviving, and our leaders, like the majority of leaders in government and the tertiary sector do not have global catastropic climate change on their agenda.

As for Greening the entire curriculum or campus, we’ve got a long long way to go.

It’s like a victimless crime, no one person to blame, but we all bear responsibility for a collective failure to act with the urgency required.

See Dr James Hansen’s paper on Scientific reticence and sea level rise
Abstract. I suggest that a `scientific reticence’ is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise. Delay is dangerous because of system inertias that could create a situation with future sea level changes out of our control.

Footnote
* Composed in 1990 at an international conference in Talloires, France, this is the first official statement made by university administrators of a commitment to environmental sustainability in higher education. The Talloires Declaration (TD) is a ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities. It has been signed by over 350 university presidents and chancellors in over 40 countries.

http://www.ulsf.org/programs_talloires_td.html

After too long a gap, I am getting back to this blog ! Lecturing and tutoring at Uni, marking assignments and successfully getting sustainability into the new strategic plan at the University of Canberra, taking on a new class teaching Soils at CIT and getting my business, Sacred Earth Works going  has taken a phenomenal amount of time and effort, but worth it.

This scenario will be horribly familiar to anyone with a long term view of the challenges of 21C, readers of Malthus, Erhlich’s Population Bomb (1968) or good Permaculture training.

But even then it can be a bit of shock when your worst concerns of years, in my case 30+, are being echoed by conservative political and industry leaders as very late warnings.

So two ABC News stories this week caught my attention
Global crop shortage to affect food prices – AUSVEG and then

Global grain shock to follow drought: Anderson

John Anderson is a successful farmer, former Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the country-based National Party. So for the remaining disbelievers amongst my readers he is not some wacko greeny gay whale Chardonnay drinker from Balmain .

Global grain shock to follow drought: Anderson

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/26/2043791.htm

Posted Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:28pm AEST

…….John Anderson says Australia’s severe drought could cause a food shock across the globe…………...and that the country’s worst drought on record comes at a time of extremely low grain stocks worldwide.

“It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that we’ll see a food shock in the next few years,”

“We talk about oil shocks but we’ve gone on assuming that the supermarket shelves will always be loaded. This will affect everyone from the farmer right through to the those people who are dependent on countries like Australia to feed them.”

Global crop shortage to affect food prices

The price of fruit and vegetables is expected to fluctuate more dramatically
(file photo) (AAP: Tony Phillips)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/25/2042554.htm
By Lexi Metherell

Posted Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:24am AEST
Updated Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:48am AEST

Audio: AUSVEG Chairman Michael Badcock on 774 ABC Melbourne (ABC News) Audio: Federal Agriculture Minister, Peter McGuaran on 774 ABC Melbourne (ABC News)

An Australian agricultural industry group AUSVEG is warning that fruit and vegetable prices are now likely to fluctuate more dramatically when there are crop shortages.

Chairman Michael Badcock says there are food shortages across the world

He says that means there’s a lot of pressure on prices.

ABC News Tags: business-economics-and-finance, industry, food-and-beverage, disasters-and-accidents, drought, lifestyle-and-leisure, food-and-cooking, australia, vic

a few on my Sustainable Communities or Team email lists or their relatives have had major problems understanding, that while there is a lot of bullshit and argument about how severe climate change is, there is almost no significant uncertainty whatsoever on the amount of ice in the world, and how much ice, and how high the seas would rise as it melts at ever increasing rates.

While I understand some people have difficulty with the idea of the seas rising ~70metres, this is largely due to either not doing geography at school or not paying attention to geography at school.

Greenland is a pretty big island with the Ice Sheet on Greenland ~2,400km long, 1,100km at its widest point with an average of 300-400kms wide and an average of 2.4 kilometres thick. The Wikipedia articles on Greenland and climate change generally appear pretty accurate, especially now you can track who is altering the entries, even the fossil fools aren’t fiddling with them – so for more detail see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_Ice_Sheet_Project and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Greenland_Ice_Core_Project

and as you can see from the figures quoted in the IPCC report below, the Antarctic Ice Sheet is significantly bigger than that of Greenland.

Although the scientific consensus that almost ALL governments on Earth subscribe to through the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
is that the melting of all the ice would equal just under 70 metres rise in sea level, this does not take into account the parallel process of the thermal expansion of the oceans as they too warm, that could add another 10 metres.

Concern is developing at the warming of the oceans to significant depths, as this indicating that climate change is having more impact than we thought, and in turn will have significant effects on ocean currents, fish stocks and ecosystems, storms and hurricanes and also hasten the demise of the tropical coral ecosystems and speed up the collapse of the sea ice in the Arctic as is currently happening and the Antarctic.

Although I don’t have recent figures at the moment, I’ll dig some up – the last figures I remember were from an Australian mob who were plumbing the depths of the Indian Ocean and consistently finding a 1deg C rise at 1 kilometre down on measurements taken in the 1950s.

Now for those physicists out there you can work it out, but for the rest of us, it takes a hell of a lot of energy to warm that much water!

now from the figures below

The total ice ~28.92 million cubic kilometres. Now that is a significant amount of ice!

(The table does not translate well onto this page, so follow this link

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/412.htm#tab113

Data sources: Meier and Bahr (1996),
Warrick et al. (1996), Reeh et al. (1999), Huybrechts et al. (2000), Tables
11.5 and 11.6. ^a Including glaciers and ice caps on the margins of Greenland
and the Antarctic Peninsula, which have a total area of 0.14 x 10⁶
km² (Weideck and Morris, 1996). The total area of glaciers and
ice-caps outside Greenland and Antarctica is 0.54 x 10⁶ km²
(Dyurgerov and Meier, 1997a). The glaciers and ice caps of Greenland and
Antarctica are included again in the next two columns.^b Grounded ice only, including glaciers and small ice
caps.
^c For the ice sheets, sea level rise equivalent is calculated
with allowance for isostatic rebound and sea water replacing grounded ice,
and this therefore is less than the sea level equivalent of the ice volume.
^d Assuming an oceanic area of 3.62 x 10⁸ km².