‘Dangerous Degrees’: Climate change risks prosperity, security and health

ORIGINAL: TCKTCKTCK
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August 8, 2013

Dry lake bed caused by prolonged drought in Australia, Creative Commons: Denis Fox, 2006

Today, three Australian leaders, each from different backgrounds, came together in hard hats and fluoro vests to launch a new report by The Climate Institute warning of the ways in which climate change risks the health, prosperity and security of the world.

Entitled “Dangerous Degrees: Risking Australians’ prosperity, security, and health,” the report was released by Dr. John Hewson, former Liberal Party leader; Professor Tony McMichael, Australia National University’s Climate Change Institute; and John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute on August 8th at a scientific symposium.

The three had a grave warning for their audience at the report launch:

Carbon pollution in the atmosphere has risen by 40% since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It’s now at levels greater than at any time for least 800,000, possibly millions, of years. We are stumbling blindly into utterly uncharted territory where a few degrees make a world of difference.

The report’s conclusions, supported by a number of other recent studies, show that failure to take prompt action to contain emissions risks the future prosperity, security and health of Australians and the rest of the world. According to research in Nature last month, climate change is projected to cost the world economy $60 trillion. Earlier this week, a report by the Australian Senate said that extreme weather in Australia will intensify, and has already cost the national economy between $900 million and $4 billion annually.

Of important note in “Dangerous Degrees” is the conclusion that Australia is more exposed to climate risks than any other developed nation. If the world remains on track to reach a 3°C of warming by 2050 and 4°C by 2100, Australia could become a net importer of food by 2050 and lose 90% of its irrigated agriculture in the Murray–Darling Basin by 2100. Around 2,000 more temperature-related deaths are expected by mid-century, and around 10,000 more by 2100.

Professor Tony McMichael said:
The symptoms we already see in people beleaguered by bushfire, storms, floods, and drought are the early warming signs. The risks to physical and mental health, as well as community morale, mount with every year we fail to act decisively. Yet, there is still time to avoid much additional human suffering, to realise the health benefits of action, and to restore hope.

While the risks become clearer by the day, the Climate Institute says the political framework for climate action and adaptation remains insufficient to address the challenges ahead — a conclusion reinforced by the Australian Senate report, which says Australia is underprepared for the impacts of just a few degrees of warming. While closing the gap between danger and relative safety is still within reach, it is only possible if action begins now.

Delay in ambitious climate action means higher social, environmental, and economic costs, as well as fewer options. While Australia can count itself among the growing number of nations moving to cut emissions, the political statements made in the run-up to the nearing Australian election aim to water down several important climate policies.

Check out the global climate impacts infographic released with “Dangerous Degrees.”

Credit: The Climate Institute, 2013. Click to see the full size infographic via The Climate Institute.

Alberta floods a wake up call to dangers of extreme weather: experts

ORIGINAL: Ottawa Citizen

By Elizabeth Payne, OTTAWA CITIZEN
 June 28, 2013

‘Water the new fire’ as a danger to property

Planners should learn from the Calgary floods and prepare better for devastating weather-related events, experts say. Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD , THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — The Alberta floods are Canada’s Hurricane Sandy moment, and should be a catalyst for badly needed changes to limit future damage from extreme weather, say experts on climate change adaptation.

“In many cases, the standards for where and how we build are completely out of date with a climatically changed future,” said Ian Mauro, Canada Research Chair in human dimension and environmental change at Mount Allison University. The Alberta floods, he said, should be a wake-up call that “we need to seriously rethink how we build structures, where we build structures and how we manage in emergency situations.”

Not only do cities and towns need to stop building in flood-prone areas, but infrastructure such as bridges need to be reassessed with extreme weather events in mind. The failing railway bridge over Calgary’s Bow River underlined the catastrophic potential of doing nothing, said Mauro.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “this isn’t fearmongering, this is a call to action to inspire people to build resilient communities to be able to deal with impending superstorms of the future.”

Water, is considered the new fire — it now accounts for more property damage every year in Canada than from fire. But, while many building and zoning regulations were historically developed to lessen the risk of fire, the response to water damage has been inconsistent and weak.

Many Canadian cities and towns, for example, don’t even have up-to-date floodplain maps, basic information they need to understand flood risks, says the chair of the Climate Change Adaptation Project Canada.

Blair Feltmate, an associate professor of environment and business at the University of Waterloo, said there is an urgent need for new floodplain maps across Canada as a starting point.

“We are having more extreme weather than we’ve had historically and we have to know what will be the manifestation in terms of flooding and where the water will go. We need to know where we should build and where we should not build and we should not be building in areas where there is a high probability of flooding.”

The dangers of building in flood prone areas also need to be taken more seriously, he said. They are either poorly understood or cavalierly ignored in many parts of the country. “Municipalities have put more homes in places where there should not be homes. We can’t continue to do that.”

In some cases, he said, construction is allowed in flood prone areas because property owners and officials don’t believe there is any real danger. “We have management by disaster. In the absence of disaster, we assume disaster will not occur.”

Not only have many municipalities, including Calgary, allowed building in flood prone areas, but it is often premium property because of its proximity to water.

There are examples of municipalities that have bought buildings and changed zoning rules to keep infrastructure away from water, but those are rare.

Bruce Reid of the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority said a federal-provincial program to update flood plane maps has not been funded for years. The authority has managed to update many of its flood estimates, he said, even though some of the maps are out of date.


Some of the push to update infrastructure and policies to adapt to a changing climate is coming from the insurance industry. Impact Financial, which funds the University of Waterloo-based Climate Change Action Project, is paying for the construction of bioswales — landscaped storm water drains — in cities across Canada as demonstration projects in the hopes that governments will build more if they work.


© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Europe floods: Hungary Danube set for record high

ORIGINAL: BBC

7 June 2013

The Danube is set to hit a record high in Budapest in the next few days

In pictures: Floods hit Hungary
Counting cost of German floods
In pictures: Central Europe floods

Hungarians have been warned to prepare for their country's worst floods ever as the Danube is set to reach record levels this weekend.

"We are facing the worst floods of all time," said PM Viktor Orban.

Europe's second longest river is set to hit unprecedented levels in the capital Budapest in the next few days.

A state of emergency has been declared, and thousands of volunteers worked overnight to reinforce the banks of the swelling river.

Water levels are set to reach reach 8.85m (29ft), some 25cm (10in) higher than the Danube's previous record high in 2006.

Emergency workers have set up camps along the river as residents packed sandbags around their homes amid an atmosphere of concerned expectation, says the BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest.

Kristalina Georgieva, the EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, tweeted: "Hungary well prepared for highest ever measured water levels on Danube. We are monitoring & ready to assist."

Mass evacuations Mr Orban, who spent the night at a military barracks in the flooded western city of Gyor, said recent dry weather in Austria and Germany, as well as a hot forecast for Hungary over the weekend, gave reason to hope that Europe's worst river floods for more than a decade could soon be over.

The Danube peaked on Thursday in the Slovak capital Bratislava, where the main flood defences held firm.

In northern Germany, workers piled sandbags along the banks of the River Elbe as waters rose, after widespread flooding further south.

As flood waters receded to the south and east, defence work continued apace near Lueneburg in Lower Saxony.

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from at-risk areas in Germany, where the flooding is worse than that recorded in 2002.

On Thursday the Elbe flooded parts of Dresden as it peaked nearly 7m (22 feet) above its normal level, but the city's historic centre remained unscathed.

Upstream along the Elbe in the Czech Republic, emergency workers used boats to shuttle supplies to stranded people as large areas remained under water.

Widespread flooding in central Europe has inundated swathes of Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, killing at least 15 people.

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Aerial view of flooded Czech village Kresice, north of Prague, on 4 June 2013

• Rising river waters caused by days of torrential rain continue to cause havoc to bankside cities and towns across central Europe.
• Cities in the south and east of Germany - such as here in Pirna - are on high alert as rivers, including the Elbe, continue to swell.
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel toured the affected area on Tuesday and pledged 100m euros (£78m; $130m) in emergency aid.
• Flood waters in the Bavarian town of Passau on Monday reached levels not seen since the 16th Century.
• The waters in Passau have now begun to recede - offering a glimpse of the major clean-up operation ahead for all the affected areas.
• A nationwide state of alert remains in place in the Czech Republic. Towns and cities close to Germany are still at great risk as floodwaters move north.
• Falling river levels in the Czech capital Prague may have reduced the threat to the city's historic buildings, but not everywhere has been so lucky. The zoo, seen here, was flooded and its animals had to be moved to higher ground.
• People in Austria are also watching anxiously - hoping their mobile flood defences will hold back the swell of the River Danube.

Rising river waters caused by days of torrential rain continue to cause havoc to bankside cities and towns across central Europe.

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Silt Lake City: Floating 'Hydropolis' Could Ride the Tide of the Nile River in Egypt

ORIGINAL: Inhabitat´

by Bridgette Meinhold, 01/21/13

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In ancient times the Nile valley was subject to periods of flooding that provided people with the irrigation and fertile soil needed to grow crops. Modern dams have radically altered that natural system, but a new proposal by architecture students in Nantes sees a different way of providing flood control while sustaining the environment. Silt Lake City is a "hydropolis" - a series of modular floating structures that take advantage of the rise and fall of the waters. Agriculture, residences, businesses and energy generators all float on the water and rise and fall with the tides.

Silt Lake City is a student architecture project by Margaux Leycuras, Marion Ottmann and Anne-Hina Mallette that won a prize in a competition organized by the Foundation Jacques Rougerie. Before the construction of the Aswan dam, the Nile valley was subject to a natural cycle of flooding, which provided water for irrigation and nutrients in the form of silt. However the floods could be devastating and the dam was built to help regulate the Nile. Unfortunately, the dam radically changed the ecosystem with silt accumulating behind the dam and salt water from the sea causing erosion.

To solve this problem, the team proposed a solution that combines some flood control with a series of modular cities along the river. The project would divide Lake Nasser into city-modules set within a 200-meter-deep reservoir lake. These floating cities would be protected by an enveloping sea wall that acts as a barrier while providing connections to the shore. During the wet months, the dam is opened and the river floods the land as it used to, providing water and nutrients. Then the dam is closed to maintain water level during non flood times. The result is a more natural system that protects the region from devastating flooding, but still allows the river to provide life.

+ Silt Lake City

Via ArchDaily

Read more: Silt Lake City: Floating 'Hydropolis' Could Ride the Tide of the Nile River in Egypt | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

For Years, Warnings That It Could Happen Here

ORIGINAL: NYTimes

By DAVID W. CHEN and MIREYA NAVARRO

Published: October 30, 2012

The flooded entrance to the tunnel leading to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in Lower Manhattan after the storm on Tuesday. Damon Winter/The New York Times

The warnings came, again and again.

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For nearly a decade, scientists have told city and state officials that New York faces certain peril: rising sea levels, more frequent flooding and extreme weather patterns. The alarm bells grew louder after Tropical Storm Irene last year, when the city shut down its subway system and water rushed into the Rockaways and Lower Manhattan.

On Tuesday, as New Yorkers woke up to submerged neighborhoods and water-soaked electrical equipment, officials took their first tentative steps toward considering major infrastructure changes that could protect the city’s fragile shores and eight million residents from repeated disastrous damage.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the state should consider a levee system or storm surge barriers and face up to the inadequacy of the existing protections.

“The construction of this city did not anticipate these kinds of situations. We are only a few feet above sea level,” Mr. Cuomo said during a radio interview. “As soon as you breach the sides of Manhattan, you now have a whole infrastructure under the city that fills — the subway system, the foundations for buildings,” and the World Trade Center site.

The Cuomo administration plans talks with city and federal officials about how to proceed. The task could be daunting, given fiscal realities: storm surge barriers, the huge sea gates that some scientists say would be the best protection against floods, could cost as much as $10 billion.

But many experts say, given what happened with the latest storm, that inertia could be more expensive.

After rising roughly an inch per decade in the last century, coastal waters in New York are expected to climb as fast as six inches per decade, or two feet by mid century, according to a city-appointed scientific panel. That much more water means the city’s flood risk zones could expand in size.

"Look, the city is extremely vulnerable to damaging storm surges just for its geography, and climate change is increasing that risk," said Ben Strauss, director of the sea level rise program at the research group Climate Central in Princeton, N.J. “Three of the top 10 highest floods at the Battery since 1900 happened in the last two and a half years. If that’s not a wake-up call to take this seriously, I don’t know what is."

With an almost eerie foreshadowing, the dangers laid out by scientists as they tried to press public officials for change in recent years describes what happened this week: Subway tunnels filled with water, just as they warned. Tens of thousands of people in Manhattan lost power. The city shut down.

What scientists, who have devoted years of research to the subject, now fear most is that, as soon as the cleanup from this storm is over, the public will move on.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is known worldwide for his broad environmental vision. But one former official said it had been difficult to move from theoretical planning to concrete actions, and it was hoped that the storm this week would change that.

“A fair question to ask is, have we been as focused as we need to be for emergency preparations,” said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize ties to the administration. "We’ve just been lucky. We need hardening for the risk we’ve always faced. Until things happen, people aren’t willing to pay for it."

A state report on rising sea levels, issued on the last day of Gov. David A. Paterson’s administration in 2010, suggested that erecting structural barriers to restrain floodwaters could be part of a broader approach, along with relocating buildings and people farther from the coasts.

Mr. Bloomberg, during a briefing Tuesday, said he was consumed now with the urgent task of getting the city going again, and it was too soon to determine what steps should be taken.

Storm surge barriers represent the most dramatic potential change. They have been installed in Europe and some American cities and are designed to close during a storm to block surging waters from reaching shore.

Under a proposal put forth by the Storm Surge Research Group at Stony Brook University in 2004, large portions of the city could be protected by three movable barriers installed at the upper end of the East River near the Throgs Neck Bridge, under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and at the mouth of the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey.

Still, some experts consider the barriers a last resort, and urge more modest changes, including subway floodgates. Task forces convened by the city and state have pushed to make the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Consolidated Edison systems more resistant to storm damage. Some of that work is under way: After a deluge paralyzed the subways for several hours in 2007, the transit agency spent $34 million on some flood protections. No additional state money has been forthcoming for an overhaul.

Robert Puentes of the Brookings Institution said that the city, to its credit, had developed a coastal storm plan that treated seriously the city’s susceptibility, given its 520-mile coastline. But he said that “most of that focuses on mapping a response to the disaster after it already occurs.”

Related

After the Devastation, a Daunting Recovery (October 31, 2012)

Flooded Tunnels May Keep City’s Subway Network Closed for Several Days (October 31, 2012)

Wind-Driven Flames Reduce Scores of Homes to Embers in Queens Enclave (October 31, 2012)

In Storm Deaths, Mystery, Fate and Bad Timing (October 31, 2012)

Food may cause almost a third of greenhouse emissions -study

ORIGINAL: Reuters

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

Oct 30, 2012

• Food output makes up 19-29 pct of man-made greenhouse gas
• Cuts needed, from fertilisers to transport -CGIAR study
• Climate change may force shifts to alternative crops

OSLO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Food production accounts for up to 29 percent of man-made greenhouse gases, twice the amount the United Nations has estimated comes from farming, a study published on Wednesday said.

Existing policies do not sufficiently encourage sustainable approaches to agriculture, or prepare the global agriculture sector for climate change. Photo: N. Palmer (CIAT)

Looking at emissions across the food system - including

• forest clearance, 
• fertiliser production and 
• transport 

- rather than just farming itself - agriculture research organisation CGIAR said much more work was needed to cut climate change emissions from food.

Its report, "Climate Change and Food Systems", estimated food production was responsible for between 19 and 29 percent of mankind's total greenhouse emissions, far above U.N. estimates of 14 percent based on a narrower definition of farming.

"From a food point of view (the U.N. approach) doesn't make sense," said Bruce Campbell, who heads the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security.

Many countries could make big cost savings by cutting emissions, he said. "There are good economic reasons to improve efficiency in agriculture, not just to cut greenhouse gas emissions."

China, for instance, could sharply reduce emissions with more efficient manufacture of fertilisers. Britain could cut emissions by consuming lamb transported from more efficient farms in New Zealand rather than raising its own sheep.

Global changes in diet, shifting towards vegetarianism from meat, would also help. Growing crops to feed to cows, pigs or sheep takes up far more land and emits more greenhouse gases than producing crops for human consumption.

MAIZE, WHEAT, RICE

A separate report by the CGIAR climate programme indicated that climate change is likely to reduce yields of the three biggest crops judged by calorie production - maize, wheat and rice - in developing nations in coming decades.

That could force some farmers to make radical shifts to growing more heat-, flood- or drought-tolerant crops, according to the report, "Recalibrating Food Production in the Developing World".

More resilient crops including yam, barley, cowpea, millet, lentils, cassava and bananas could fill in the gaps caused by declining harvests of more sensitive crops, it said.

"The world's agricultural systems face an uphill struggle in feeding a projected nine to ten billion people by 2050. Climate change introduces a significant hurdle in this struggle," it said. The world population is now just above seven billion.

The study also said that global warming, blamed by a U.N. panel of climate experts mainly on the burning of fossil fuels, meant risks to food production far beyond fields.

"Every step of the food chain - from the seed to the farm to the cooking pot - is at risk," it said. Higher temperatures or floods could make it harder to store and transport food, for instance, meaning more outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. (Reporting By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)