Scientists have new evidence of global warming and the perils it poses to millions of people around the world.

A study released this week by International Polar Year 2007-2008 reports that glaciers in Antarctica are melting faster than expected and the thaw is occurring in a much larger area than originally believed.

The melting icecaps are contributing to rising ocean levels that threaten communities in coastal areas worldwide.

The Pine Island Glacier, the biggest in Antarctica, has moved 40 percent faster toward the sea since the 1970s and Smith Glacier is moving 83 percent quicker than 15 years ago, according to International Polar Year scientist David Hik.

“The loss of ice is pretty spectacular,” Dr. Hik, a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, told Bloomberg News. “The effects of warming are going to be global.

“What happens at the poles will influence all parts of the planet and it’s very evident that we can see rapid changes in sea level associated with changes in the Arctic and Antarctic,” Dr. Hik said.

A major study on global warming released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change two years ago predicted a rise in sea levels of 7 to 23 inches by the end of the century. But the IPY study suggests that sea levels could actually rise about 4 to 8 inches above that.

The IPY study also found pools of carbon stored as methane in the melting polar permafrost;  the release of methane into the atmosphere contributes to global warming.

The IPY study was an effort by thousands of scientists from more than 60 countries to study Arctic and Antarctic conditions over the past two years.

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We’re already used to worrying about at least one set of issues when it comes to melting caused by global warming: that water entering oceans from disintegrating arctic ice may cause sea levels to rise worldwide.

Now scientists suggest that another sort of melting could not only be caused by climate change, but could in itself accelerate it. At issue is not polar icecaps but permafrost, the frozen ground found in the far north.

There, organic matter is normally held in a state of very slow decay, with carbon kept out of the atmosphere for much longer periods than it would be otherwise. But as this ground thaws, as this University of Florida article puts it, “bacteria and fungi break down carbon contained in this organic matter much more quickly, releasing it to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide or methane, both greenhouse gases.”

The article summarizes a paper in the journal BioScience in which scientists led by Florida ecologist Ted Schurr show that factoring in carbon held deep within permafrost “more than doubles previous high-latitude [carbon] inventory estimates.”

While all of this carbon doesn’t simply enter the atmosphere at once when the ground melts, Schurr has estimated that the tonnage of carbon dioxide being released each year could eventually grow to around an eighth of the amount currently produced by burning fossil fuels. (Of course, thawing ground means more space for trees to grow, pulling CO2 from the air, but Schurr notes that a new forest on previously frozen ground couldn’t hold anywhere near the amount of carbon currently being stored by the permafrost.)

Another report this week amplifies the Florida team’s concerns, focusing on vast reserves of methane that may now be escaping after being held under ice and permafrost since the last Ice Age.

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In the race for top carbon emissions polluter, the United States is still Number One, but China is sprinting forward and could soon edge into the lead. The current Olympics host nation accounted for a “staggering 57 percent of the growth of emissions” worldwide this century, and will likely surpass the U.S. as the single biggest belcher of fossil fuel emissions sometime this year, according to the Worldwatch Institute.

The standings right now: The U.S. currently contributes 19.5 percent of global fossil fuel emissions compared with China’s 18.3 percent.

China’s pole vault onto the world stage of top polluters has been fueled by rapid industrialization and huge growth in coal plants, which provide about 70 percent of the nation’s commercial electricity, according to the Vital Signs Update released Thursday by Worldwatch, a Washington research and watchdog group.

Still, the United States can claim one title that leaves China far behind, the United States’ per capita carbon emissions eclipse that of all other nations. They exceed China’s by 4 to 1 and India’s by 13 to 1, according to the report.

The burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – accounts for the majority of CO2 emissions, which means most industrialized nations contribute to the rising cloud of greenhouse gases (which include CO2 and other gases) encircling the globe. Coal is the worst polluter, giving off more carbon gases per unit of energy generated, and it is also the cheapest.

Globally, carbon emissions grew by 20 percent from 2000 to 2007, according to the Worldwatch analysis. Industrializing India contributed 8 percent of that growth. The United States’ and Europe’s emissions accounted for 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

As the report points out, accords between industrialized and developing nations, will be key to regulating spiraling carbon emissions. This is one race best run in reverse.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

By John DeFore

Here’s a mad-scientist fantasy for those who favor controlling carbon as part of the solution to climate change: Learn to love typhoons (well, one aspect of them).

But researchers from Ohio State University have made discoveries about those storms that, as a university report puts it, “could help scientists make better estimates of how much carbon is in the atmosphere — and help them decipher its effect on global climate change.”

In a highly technical article in the June edition of Geology, the O.S.U. scientists say they’ve found that “a single typhoon in Taiwan buries as much carbon in the ocean — in the form of sediment — as all the other rains in that country all year long combined.”

Their project, which required them to venture out into two full-force storms, was the first to study the sediment carried off to sea by streams while a typhoon was underway. Any rain can sequester a certain amount of carbon if it contributes to weathering mountains — physically, by carrying organic matter into the sea, or chemically, in a process that leaves calcium carbonate scattered at the bottom of the ocean. (There, as associate professor Anne Carey puts it, it eventually becomes part of sedimentary rock, and doesn’t return to the atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years.)

The team’s findings confirm scientists’ suspicion that the violent weather of a typhoon carries away an unusually large amount of carbon; only through actual mid-typhoon sampling, though, were researchers able to analyze the sediment delivery. They warn that collecting data from further storms is necessary to confirm a long-term pattern, but in 61 million tons of sediment washed off in one river during a single typhoon, “some 500,000 tons consisted of particles of carbon created during chemical weathering” — or about 95 percent as much as that river would carry during the year’s normal rainfall.

Understanding this weathering is essential, the researchers say, to constructing an accurate “carbon budget,” or assessment of how much carbon is entering and being withdrawn from the atmosphere, a key part of any study of climate change.

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Chief Executive Officers concerned about climate change – including the chiefs of Royal Dutch Shell, Alcoa, BP, British Airways, Deutsche Bank, Tokyo Electric Power, Duke Energy, Citi, Airbus SAS, France Electric, DuPont and Nike – have issued a statement to the G-8 national leaders urging them to support a “new international climate policy framework” of steep carbon reduction targets when they meet in July.

“Nothing less than a rapid and fundamental strategy to reach a low-carbon world economy is needed,’’ says the statement on behalf of 100 global CEOs.

“It is fair that rich countries should take the lead and demonstrate strong cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but those countries who are currently developing fast will not be able to avoid their future responsibilities.”

The “Climate Policy Recommendations to G8 Leaders” calls for a minimum goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and recommends that government leaders take specific steps to ensure the success of the goal by partnering with and supporting business innovations. It asks the national leaders to:

• Rally all nations to participate in the next international agreement that will succeed the expiring Kyoto Protocol (which the United States has not signed)

• Follow an agenda of “public-private cooperation” to develop cost effective ways of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions

• Spur private financing for green development and develop “explicit public/private financing” for clean technology projects

• Support “bottom up” strategies for emissions abatement, not just top-down emission reductions

• Push for changes in consumer behavior and communicate the magnitude of the problem

The statement acknowledged that there are some “uncertainties” in addressing climate change, but concluded that a prudent “risk management perspective” calls for “all leaders of business and government to take action now.”

Rather than being a costly drain on the economy, fighting climate change could bring an economic boon, the CEOs said.

“A paradigm shift to a low-carbon economy by 2050 has the potential to drive forward the next chapter of technological innovation. It will require a third – this time a green – industrial revolution.”

The statement, 16 months in the making, was delivered to Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda last week in advance of the G8 meeting planned for Japan in July. It was shepherded by the non-partisan, Geneva-based World Economic Forum, developed in collaboration with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Pew Center of Global Climate Change after discussion with more than 500 business executives and climate experts from around the world.

The participating companies, from all regions of the world, represent many sectors of the economy, including energy, aviation, automotive, chemicals, engineering, food, retail goods, financial services, media, mining, paper and professional services.
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