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Air Pollution Killing Millions

Posted on 2016/05/202016/05/20 by admin

by Daniel Brouse

It is estimated by the World Health Organization that 7 million people per year die as a result of air pollution. “According to the latest urban air quality database, 98% of cities in low- and middle income countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants do not meet WHO air quality guidelines. Over 80% of those living in urbanized regions with air-quality monitoring breathe air featuring pollution levels that exceed World Health Organization safety limits.”

“Air pollution is a major cause of disease and death. It is good news that more cities are stepping up to monitor air quality, so when they take actions to improve it they have a benchmark,” says Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant-Director General, Family, Women and Children’s Health. “When dirty air blankets our cities the most vulnerable urban populations—the youngest, oldest and poorest—are the most impacted.”

“Urban air pollution continues to rise at an alarming rate, wreaking havoc on human health,” says Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.

“It is crucial for city and national governments to make urban air quality a health and development priority,” says WHO’s Dr Carlos Dora. “When air quality improves, health costs from air pollution-related diseases shrink, worker productivity expands and life expectancy grows. Reducing air pollution also brings an added climate bonus, which can become a part of countries’ commitments to the climate treaty.”

The problem was thought to be mostly a problem in cities; however, new research show that parts of the world with the most farming are a big problem, too. In the study by by scientists at NASA and several universities, it was found that emissions from farms are greater than all other industrial sources of particulate air pollution in the United States, Europe, Russia and China.

“What we found surprising is simply the large amount that is attributed to farming that leads to near-surface air pollution,” said Susanne Bauer, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The largest U.S. impact is on the Northeastern United States “where nitrogen emissions from fertilizer and ammonia from animal waste combine with sulfates and nitrogen oxides from industries and automobiles.”

The article “Significant atmospheric aerosol pollution caused by world food cultivation” was published by Susan Bauer, Kostas Tsigaridis and Ron Miller:

Particulate matter is a major concern for public health, causing cancer and cardiopulmonary mortality. Therefore, governments in most industrialized countries monitor and set limits for particulate matter. To assist policy makers, it is important to connect the chemical composition and severity of particulate pollution to its sources. Here we show how agricultural practices, livestock production, and the use of nitrogen fertilizers impact near-surface air quality. In many densely populated areas, aerosols formed from gases that are released by fertilizer application and animal husbandry dominate over the combined contributions from all other anthropogenic pollution. Here we test reduction scenarios of combustion-based and agricultural emissions that could lower air pollution. For a future scenario, we find opposite trends, decreasing nitrate aerosol formation near the surface while total tropospheric loads increase. This suggests that food production could be increased to match the growing global population without sacrificing air quality if combustion emission is decreased.

More of the Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

Antarctica: Melting Glacier Could See Sea Levels to Rise by 6 Feet

Posted on 2016/05/19 by admin

In a new study by Imperial College of London, “current rates of climate change could trigger instability in a major Antarctic glacier, ultimately leading to more than 2m of sea-level rise.”

“The evidence coming together is painting a picture of East Antarctica being much more vulnerable to a warming environment than we thought,” said Professor Martin Siegert, Co-Director of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “This is something we should worry about. Totten Glacier is losing ice now, and the warm ocean water that is causing this loss has the potential to also push the glacier back to an unstable place.”

“Totten Glacier is only one outlet for the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, but it could have a huge impact. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is by far the largest mass of ice on Earth, so any small changes have a big influence globally.”

Billion People Face Global Flooding

Posted on 2016/05/16 by admin

The BBC reports, a British aid charity is warning that by 2060 more than a billion people worldwide will live in cities at risk of catastrophic flooding as a result of climate change. A study by Christian Aid says the US, China and India are among the countries most threatened. It says the Indian cities of Kolkata and Mumbai will be most at risk.

The eight most vulnerable cities on the list are all in Asia, followed by Miami in the US. The report urges governments to take action to reduce global warming and invest in disaster reduction programs.

Dr Alison Doig, the report’s author, told the BBC World Service that people living in large coastal cities were particularly at risk.

“I think it’s cities like Kolkata, Dakar, the big mega-cities of the south and the emerging economies where the people are most vulnerable to exposure to sea-level rises and to higher rain events,” she said.

“Flooding in these cities can cause massive damage, but can also threaten life.”

“The whole of Florida is totally vulnerable,” she said.

“It is so low-lying, it is virtually swampland reclaimed. So significant climate change… raising water half to a full metre this century, will take out an awful lot of Florida and a significant amount of Miami.”

The study says that the priority should be to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and limit temperature increase by switching from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy.

It says vulnerable communities must be helped by better protecting homes and livelihoods.

The study also calls for international systems to help communities recover from devastating storms and floods.

Dr Doig warned that Florida was likely to suffer extensive flooding.

Alaska Continues to Break Records

Posted on 2016/05/162016/05/16 by admin

NOAA reports:
During the first third of the year, January–April, the average temperature for the contiguous United States was 4.0 degrees F above the 20th-century average, making this period the second warmest on record. Alaska continues to break records for the warmest year to date on record, while 34 states across the West, Great Plains, Midwest and Northeast were much warmer than average. The year-to-date average precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 0.45 inch above the 20th-century average.

The BBC reports:
April was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records, NASA figures show.

Last month smashed the previous record for April by the largest margin ever, the data show.

That makes it three months in a row that the monthly record was broken by the largest margin ever.

But in terms of its departure from the 1951-1980 temperature average used by Nasa, April was equal with January 2016.

“All of these record breaking temperatures and attendant implications that we have had, such as record breaking fires for example, and droughts in India are all reminders that we cannot afford to do anything except to accelerate the solution agenda – we absolutely have no other option but to accelerate.”

Kid Discovers Lost Mayan City

Posted on 2016/05/112016/05/11 by admin

A teenager from Canada has discovered a Mayan City. William Gadoury, a 15-year-old from Saint-Jean-de-Matha in Canada, used images from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency to connect the position of the stars in constellations to the position of Mayan cities.

“Geometric shapes, such as squares or rectangles, appeared on these images, forms that can hardly be attributed to natural phenomena,” says remote sensing specialist at the University of New Brunswick, Dr. Armand LaRocque.

“When Dr. LaRocque told me in January, we distinguish a pyramid and thirty structures, it was extraordinary,” said young Gadoury. William has named the lost city K’ÀAK ‘CHI’ or ‘fire mouth’ in French. “I did not understand why the Maya built their cities away from rivers, on marginal lands and in the mountains, said William. “They had to have another reason, and as they worshiped the stars, the idea came to me to verify my hypothesis. I was really surprised and excited when I realized that the most brilliant stars of the constellations matched the largest Maya cities.”

Sea Level Rise Submerges Five Islands

Posted on 2016/05/10 by admin

The Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean area disappearing due to climate change and the rising sea level. Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are the most devastating impacts of human induced global warming.

In Environmental Research Letters published by IOP Science, scientists have studied the effects of sea-level rise and waves:
Low-lying reef islands in the Solomon Islands provide a valuable window into the future impacts of global sea-level rise. Sea-level rise has been predicted to cause widespread erosion and inundation of low-lying atolls in the central Pacific. However, the limited research on reef islands in the western Pacific indicates the majority of shoreline changes and inundation to date result from extreme events, seawalls and inappropriate development rather than sea-level rise alone. Here, we present the first analysis of coastal dynamics from a sea-level rise hotspot in the Solomon Islands. Using time series aerial and satellite imagery from 1947 to 2014 of 33 islands, along with historical insight from local knowledge, we have identified five vegetated reef islands that have vanished over this time period and a further six islands experiencing severe shoreline recession. Shoreline recession at two sites has destroyed villages that have existed since at least 1935, leading to community relocations. Rates of shoreline recession are substantially higher in areas exposed to high wave energy, indicating a synergistic interaction between sea-level rise and waves. Understanding these local factors that increase the susceptibility of islands to coastal erosion is critical to guide adaptation responses for these remote Pacific communities. ( Simon Albert, Javier X Leon, Alistair R Grinham, John A Church, Badin R Gibbes and Colin D Woodroffe)

Hope Versus Climate Change

Posted on 2016/05/062016/05/06 by admin

Global warming is a huge problem; however, we can make it much worse if we keep burning fossil carbon and killing ecosystems.

The hopeful bit is that:

Coal is dead. The US energy information administration confirms coal production is declining across the country. Greenpeace reports that globally “coal is in terminal decline.”
Solar and battery cost and efficiencies already make sense, so much so that utilities must embrace them or die.
Electric cars are coming faster than we imagine.
Nearly 200 countries have signed-on to the Paris Agreement. The aim of the agreement is:
“Countries furthermore aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.”
If we do all this and more, we might save East Antarctica (which is another 150-200 feet of sea level rise over Greenland and West Antarctica melt of 30 feet SLR or so. Many species that are probably crucial to our survival could be saved.)

As for hope, it was said in another war, “It is not necessary to hope, in order to persevere.”

By Sidd Mukherjee and Daniel Brouse 2016

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

Canada Wildfires

Posted on 2016/05/05 by admin

FORT MCMURRAY, CANADA — More than 80,000 people needed to be evacuated from the city of Fort McMurray in Canada’s Northern Alberta. The mandatory evacuation covered all of Fort McMurray and is the largest evacuation on record in Canada.

The fire has already destroyed over 1,600 buildings, including a new school. Resident Neil Scott told the BBC: “It was something you’d see in a movie probably. I was stuck between a concrete barrier and the fire and I thought ‘You know what? I might not make it out.’ There’s whole neighbourhoods that are gone. A hotel burned down, a gas station exploded. One lady that I met she actually was sheltered behind like an electrical box when it actually exploded and she felt a shockwave.”

Dan McLane Lewinsky of The Harmonica Lewinskies

Posted on 2016/05/042016/05/04 by admin

by Daniel Brouse

“The Harmonica Lewinskies are heartbroken and crushed by the passing of our own “Jesus” Dan McLane Lewinsky on April 28th, 2016. Words are hard to come by at a time like this. He was our rock. He rocked. Our love for him and his family is overflowing,” stated the post on the The Harmonica Lewinskies Facebook page.

Dan McLane was a guitarist and vocalist for the “Funk, Soul, Dad Rock” band out of New York, New York. “He was my best mate, and we are just trying to honor him the only way we know how, with the music. He was a real ambassador for this musical community in which he lived,” says Zebedee Row bassist and vocalist for The Harmonica Lewinskies.

Their website describes the band as, “The Harmonica Lewinskies are the type of band you’d bring home to your momma and in two months time, your momma would be dating them. Over the past five years, they have amassed a dirty cornucopia of influences ranging from Delta Blues, to molten Rock and Roll, to the art of seduction. Listen responsibly.”

The Harmonica Lewinskies at the Raise The Vibration Festival, Philadelphia, 2012

Trees: Sudden Oak Death “Unstoppable”

Posted on 2016/05/03 by admin

A new report out of Cambridge University has determined that the sudden oak death epidemic in California is unstoppable.

“Sudden oak death – caused by Phytophthora ramorum, a fungus-like pathogen related to potato blight – has killed millions of trees over hundreds of square kilometres of forest in California. First detected near San Francisco in 1995, it spread north through coastal California, devastating the region’s iconic oak and tanoak forests.”

“Our study is the first major retrospective analysis of how the sudden oak death epidemic in California could have been managed, and also the first to show how to deal with a forest epidemic of this magnitude,” explains Cunniffe.

“Even if huge amounts of money were to be invested to stop the epidemic starting today, the results of our model show this cannot lead to successful control for any plausible management budget. We therefore wanted to know whether it could have been contained if a carefully-optimised strategy had been introduced sooner. Our model showed that, with a very high level of investment starting in 2002, the disease could not have been eradicated, but its spread could have been slowed and the area affected greatly reduced.”

The model also indicates how policymakers might better plan and deploy control when future epidemics emerge.

“It is a tool by which we can make a better job next time, because it is inevitable that there will be a next time,” says Professor Chris Gilligan, senior author and also from the Department of Plant Sciences. “With this sort of epidemic there will always be more sites to treat than can be afforded. Our model shows when and where control is most effective at different stages throughout a developing epidemic so that resources can be better targeted.”

“It can be tempting for authorities to start cutting down trees at the core of the infected area, but for this epidemic our research shows that this could be the worst thing to do, because susceptible vegetation will simply grow back and become infected again,” explains Cunniffe.

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