Australia coastal living at risk

BBC News

About 80% of Australians live in coastal areas

Australia may have to force people to evacuate coastal areas as rising sea levels threaten thousands of homes, an official report has warned.

The National Sea Change Taskforce said urgent action was needed to protect Australia's coast from seas expected to rise more than 80cm (31 inches).

It said the government should introduce laws to ban further coastal living and development.

The parliamentary report noted that 80% of Australians live in coastal areas.

Coastal identity

The report urges authorities to consider "the possibility of a government instrument that prohibits continued occupation of the land or future building development on the property due to sea hazard".

There were almost 50 recommendations in the report, ranging from a national coastline plan and greater co-operation between different authorities to a revised building code to cope with storm surges and soil erosion.

It does not say the government should force people to move inland but proposes an independent group look into whether the government could - and should - do that.

Australia's major cities are all in coastal areas, as well as the homes of some six million people outside the main population centres, according to the report, which was issued late on Monday after 18 months of study.

"The committee agrees that this is an issue of national importance and that the time to act is now," the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts wrote.

Alan Stokes, the task force's executive director, said banning development in certain areas is necessary if the government wants to prevent a major loss of life in the event of natural disasters such as tsunamis.

"There's no doubt Australia will remain and continue to be a coastal community," he said.

"But we may have to be a bit more considerate about which parts of the coast we develop further and which ones we don't," he added.

Last week the government reintroduced carbon trading legislation which was rejected in August and is among a package of bills aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25% by 2020.

'Freezer plan' bid to save coral

BBC News, By Matt McGrath, BBC News, Copenhagen

Coral reefs are a key source of food, income and coastal protection

The prospects of saving the world's coral reefs now appear so bleak that plans are being made to freeze samples to preserve them for the future.

A meeting in Denmark took evidence from researchers that most coral reefs will not survive even if tough regulations on greenhouse gases are put in place.

Scientists proposed storing samples of coral species in liquid nitrogen.

That will allow them to be reintroduced to the seas in the future if global temperatures can be stabilised.

Legislators from 16 major economies have been meeting in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, to try to agree the way forward on climate change.

The meeting has been organised by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe).

Losing the fight

One of the issues they have been considering is what to do with coral reefs, which make up less than a quarter of 1% of the ocean's floor.

Yet the reefs are a key source of food, income and coastal protection for around 500 million people worldwide.

At this meeting, politicians and scientists acknowledged that global emissions of carbon dioxide are rising so fast that we are losing the fight to save coral and the world must develop an alternative plan.

Freezing samples for the future may be a necessary option.

''Well it's the last ditch effort to save biodiversity from the reefs which are extremely diverse systems," said Simon Harding from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

"It would take other work to try and reconstruct the reef so that you can start the process of building up a reef again," he said.

"That is something that needs to be looked at in detail, but we can definitely store the species and save them in that way."

According to recent research, one of the world's most important concentrations of coral - the so-called Coral Triangle in South East Asia - could be destroyed by climate change before the end of this century with significant impacts on food security and livelihoods.

Maldives cabinet makes a splash

BBC News, 05:48 GMT, Saturday, 17 October 2009 06:48

The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting about five metres (16ft) underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.

The cabinet were joined by instructors and military escorts

President Mohamed Nasheed and his cabinet signed a document calling for global cuts in carbon emissions.

Ministers spent half an hour on the sea bed and communicated with white boards and hand signals.

Officials from the low-lying island nation say the dive is "a bit of fun", intended to send a serious message.

The Maldives stand an average of 2.1 metres (7ft) above sea level, and the government says they face being wiped out if oceans rise.

Military minders

Three of the 14 cabinet ministers missed the underwater meeting because two were not given medical permission and another was abroad, officials said.

President Nasheed and other cabinet members taking part had been practising their slow breathing to get into the right mental frame for the meeting, a government source said.

On Friday, ministers carried out practice dives off the island of Girifushi, about 20 minutes by boat from the capital, Male.

About 5m underwater, in a blue-green lagoon on a small island used for military training, they were observed by a clutch of snorkelling journalists.

Each minister was accompanied by a diving instructor and a military minder.

While underwater, they signed a document ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, calling on all nations to cut their carbon emissions.

World leaders at the summit aim to create a new agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

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Green spaces 'improve health'

BBC News

The best health benefits come from living
less than a kilometre (0.62miles) from a green space

There is more evidence that living near a 'green space' has health benefits.

Research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health says the impact is particularly noticeable in reducing rates of mental ill health.

The annual rates of 15 out of 24 major physical diseases were also significantly lower among those living closer to green spaces.

One environmental expert said the study confirmed that green spaces create 'oases' of improved health around them.

The researchers from the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam looked at the health records of 350,000 people registered with 195 family doctors across the Netherlands.

Only people who had been registered with their GP for longer than 12 months were included because the study assumed this was the minimum amount of time people would have to live in an environment before any effect of it would be noticeable.

Health impact

The percentages of green space within a one and three kilometre (0.62 and 1.86 miles) radius of their home were calculated using their postcode.

On average, green space accounted for 42% of the residential area within one kilometre (0.62 miles) radius and almost 61% within a three kilometre (1.86 miles) radius of people's homes.

DISEASES THAT BENEFIT MOST FROM GREEN SPACES

• Coronary heart disease
• Neck, shoulder, back, wrist and hand complaints
• Depression and anxiety
• Diabetes
• Respiratory infections and asthma
• Migraine and vertigo
• Stomach bugs and urinary tract infections
• Unexplained physical symptoms

And the annual rates for 24 diseases in 7 different categories were calculated.

The health benefits for most of the diseases were only seen when the greenery was within a one kilometre ( 0.62 miles ) radius of the home.

The exceptions to this were anxiety disorders, infectious diseases of the digestive system and medically unexplained physical symptoms which were seen to benefit even when the green spaces were within three kilometres of the home.

The biggest impact was on anxiety disorders and depression.

Anxiety disorders

The annual prevalence of anxiety disorders for those living in a residential area containing 10% of green space within a one kilometre (0.62 miles) radius of their home was 26 per 1000 whereas for those living in an area containing 90% of green space it was 18 per 1000.

For depression the rates were 32 per 1000 for the people in the more built up areas and 24 per 1000 for those in the greener areas.

The researchers also showed that this relation was strongest for children younger than 12.

They were 21% less likely to suffer from depression in the greener areas.

Two unexpected findings were that the greener spaces did not show benefits for high blood pressure and that the relation appeared stronger for people aged 46 to 65 than for the elderly.

The researchers think the green spaces help recovery from stress and offer greater opportunities for social contacts.

They say the free physical exercise and better air quality could also contribute.

Dr Jolanda Maas of the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, said: "It clearly shows that green spaces are not just a luxury but they relate directly to diseases and the way people feel in their living environments."

"Most of the diseases which are related to green spaces are diseases which are highly prevalent and costly to treat so policy makers need to realise that this is something they may be able to diminish with green spaces."

Professor Barbara Maher of the Lancaster Environment Centre said the study confirmed that green spaces create oases of improved health around them especially for children.

She said: "At least part of this 'oasis' effect probably reflects changes in air quality.

"Anything that reduces our exposure to the modern-day 'cocktail' of atmospheric pollutants has got to be a good thing."

What happened to global warming?

BBC News, by Paul Hudson, Climate correspondent

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

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Report: Climate change 'greatest threat ever' to national parks

USA TODAY, by Doyle Rice

Human disruption of the climate is the greatest threat ever to the USA’s national parks, according to a new report released Thursday by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.

The report - National Parks in Peril: The Threats of Climate Disruption - outlined hazards due to rising temperatures in 25 of the country’s 351 national parks. The top risks to the parks include loss of snow and water, rising sea levels, more extreme weather, loss of plants and wildlife, and additional air pollution.

According to the report, the risks of a changed climate dwarf all previous threats to our national parks: “If we continue with high emissions of heat-trapping gases, our nation could be 7 to 11 degrees hotter by the end of the century — and our parks would be drastically changed.”

Endangered parks include some of the nation’s most popular, including Great Smoky Mountain, Yellowstone and Yosemite.

The science behind the report was based on the U.S. government’s Global Change Research Program report “Global Climate Impacts in the United States,” released earlier this year, and on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2007.

“We could lose entire national parks for the first time, as Everglades, Ellis Island and other parks could be submerged by rising seas,” said Stephen Saunders, president of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the report’s lead author.

Climate change just isn’t a future threat for the parks: “Glaciers are already melting in all national parks that have them, including Denali, Mount Rainier, and Yosemite national parks,” the report said. “All glaciers in Glacier National Park could be gone in 12 or 13 years.”

“To preserve our parks, we need to reduce the heat-trapping gases that are threatening them, and begin managing the parks to protect resources at risk,” said Saunders.

Authors say the timing of the report release -- the same week as Ken Burns’ PBS documentary on the parks -- was just a fortunate coincidence.

Photo: A plume of dust shoots up after a rock slide at Yosemite National Park (National Park Service/AP)

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