Erik Phillips-Nania

October 5, 2010

Climate Chaos & The Ongoing Humanitarian Crisis

Over 20 million Pakistanis still need shelter, food, and emergency care—a crisis caused by the July 2010 floods. Diverting water into a densely populated district saved a U.S. military base, but flooded millions of Pakistanis.

Sources:

Ban Ki-moon, Remarks to General Assembly meeting on "Strengthening of the Coordination of Humanitarian and Disaster Relief Assistance of the United Nations, including Special Economic Assistance," UN News Centre (Aug. 19, 2010), http://www.un.org/apps/news/infocus/sgspeeches/statments_full.asp?statID=916.

Interview by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, "This Is the Worst Catastrophe to Hit Any State Since Biblical Times"–Just Back from Pakistan, Feryal Ali Gauhar Describes the Suffering from the Flood (Sept. 13, 2010), http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/13/this_is_the_worst_catastrophe_to.

Climate Chaos: Record Temperatures & Coral Destruction

August 2010 was the hottest on record for Northern Hemisphere land and ocean temperatures. Globally, this August was 1.08 degrees F (0.6 degrees C) above the 20th century average, making it the third warmest August on record, behind 1998 (warmest) and 2009 (second warmest). Corals, or the "rainforests of the ocean," are experiencing high thermal stress in the Caribbean and "bleaching-level thermal stress around a large region in the northwestern Pacific." Experts have estimated that high temperatures have already destroyed about 1/3 of the world's coral reefs.

Sources:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), State of the Climate Global Analysis: August 2010 (Sept. 24, 2010), http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=8.

NOAA Coral Reef Watch, Seasonal Coral Bleaching Thermal Stress Outlook (last visited Sept. 30, 2010), http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/bleachingoutlook/outlook_messages/bleachingoutlook_20100907_for_2010sepdec.html.

Climate Chaos: The Methane Tipping Point

The Arctic is possibly committed to a 14.4 degree F (8 degrees C) warming, and current pledges by governments to reduce emissions would result in an arctic that is 18–28.8 degrees F (10–16 degrees C) warmer. Experts believe the Earth may lose much of the permafrost in a matter of decades, abruptly releasing massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 62 times more potent than CO2 over a 20 year time period. These methane emissions are not yet factored into global climate change models, which therefore "underestimate the magnitude, speed, and extent of these abrupt changes."

Sources:

Interview by Stephen Leahy, Arctic Ice in Death Spiral, Thaws Permafrost — Risks Climate Catastrophe, Inter Press Service (Sept. 20, 2010), available at http://stephenleahy.net/2010/09/23/arctic-ice-in-death-spiral-risks-climate-catastrophe/.

James P. Kennett, et al., Methane Hydrates in Quaternary Climate Change: The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis, American Geophysical Union (2003), available at https://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/agubooks?intro=ASSP0542960&book=ASSP0542960&topic=&search=.

Protesting Coal & Climate Chaos

Climatologist Dr. James Hansen was arrested September 27th, along with over 100 others in Washington D.C., for protesting mountaintop removal, specifically the Spruce No. 1 Mine project. The previous day, 41 protestors were arrested in Newcastle, Australia, claiming that they were forced by federal government inaction to temporarily shutdown the world's largest coal export operation.

Source:

Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, Center for American Progress, Around The World, Activists Arrested For Protesting Coal's Destruction, Including NASA's James Hansen (Sept. 28, 2010), http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/28/james-hansen-arrest-coal-protes/.

An Assault on the Earth's Lungs

40% of plankton have been killed by ocean acidification since 1950. Plankton produce half of the oxygen we breathe. Furthermore, forests have been cut down at the rate of about 50,200 square miles (13m hectares, about the size of England) each year for the past decade, mostly for agriculture. The Copenhagen climate-change conference resulted in a commitment of $ 4.5 billion to the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), but "the difficulties are immense" and protection is occurring too slowly.

Source:

The Economist, The World's Lungs: There Is Hope For Forests, But Mankind Needs To Move Faster If They Are To Be Saved (Sept. 23, 2010), http://www.economist.com/node/17093495.

Stephen Leahy, Ocean Losing Its Green, Inter Press Service (July 31, 2010), http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52343.