Water Stress?

Posted on August 27, 2013 by climatechangefork

As it wages a civil war to determine whose lifestyle will dominate the country, Egypt has become the focus of global concern. Rampant intolerance has led to mass killings. The cause of the conflict, however, contradicts former President Anwar Sadat’s 1979 prediction that, “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.”

His opinion was one shared by another famous Egyptian:

In 1988 then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later became the United Nations’ Secretary-General, predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be fought over the waters of the Nile, not politics. Rather than accept these frightening predictions, we must examine them within the context of the Nile River basin and the relationships forged among the states that share its waters.

They were obviously both wrong in this instance. Water is not the point of contention in the present upheaval in Egypt. However, according to Thomas Friedman from the New York Times, it is the cause of the situation in neighboring Yemen:

I am in the Yemen International Hospital in Taiz, the Yemeni city in the central highlands that is suffering from such an acute water shortage that people get to run their taps for only 36 hours every 30 days or so, they have to fill up as much as they can and they rely on water trucks that come through neighborhoods and sell water like a precious commodity. I am visiting Mohamed Qaid, a 25-year-old laborer from the nearby village of Qaradh who was struck the night before in the hand and chest by three bullets fired by a sniper from Marzouh, the village next door. The two villages have been fighting over the rapidly dwindling water supply from their shared mountain springs. Six people have been killed and many more wounded in clashes since 2000 that have heated up of late. One was killed a night ago. Qaid is in pain, but he wanted to tell people about what is happening here. I have one question: “where you really shot in the fight over water?” He winced out his answer: “it wasn’t about politics. It wasn’t about the Muslim Brotherhood. It was about water.”

It seems almost ironic that people must deal with water shortage and water stress, given that 70% of Earth’s surface is comprised of oceans, some of which reach depths of more than six km (close to 4 miles).

When speaking of global water availability, we must take into account the Water Cycle: through various processes such as evaporation and precipitation, water rotates between oceans, land, various reservoirs, and the atmosphere. This means that water is conserved within the cycle, not “lost” entirely. Water stress doesn’t come from a shortage of water in general, but rather, refers to the shortage of fresh water suitable for direct human consumption and the irrigation of crops needed for food production. To increase our allotment of fresh water and distribute it to where we need it takes energy, and therefore costs money. One of the toughest problems is figuring out who will pay for this, and what kind of energy we can use to do this most efficiently. This is a very complicated issue but is a central component of managing humankind’s sustainability.

Not surprisingly, the impact of climate change on water stress occupied a dominating role at the Mauritius conference attended recently (See the July 2 blog for the program). The range was broad:  it spanned from computer projections of global water scarcities, given a predicted 2.50C temperature rise, to current effects of water scarcity on food supply and agricultural employment in Africa.

Once I came back, I was immediately confronted with the many aspects, both local and global, of the interrelations between energy use, climate change and water scarcity, as well as the need for comprehensive solutions that acknowledge all three. I will try to address this issue in the coming blogs.

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One Big Family

Posted on August 20, 2013 by climatechangefork

My original intention was to use today’s blog to explore water as the central issue in climate change: both with regards to projected impacts, and to adaptation efforts. My focus on water came about largely as a result of the Mauritius conference, where much of the discussion revolved around the impact of climate change on water supply, agricultural productivity and food supply.

As often happens, however, major events have the power to disrupt our best intentions. Even in a blog such as this, I cannot ignore the intense global upheaval that is currently taking place in Egypt, where disparate factions of society are fighting for the power to monopolize Egyptian life. The concept of “live and let live” is sort of disappearing from the lexicon, as hundreds of people are being killed.

The second event that drew my attention had nothing to do with the first, and was, instead, a pleasant event. One of my relatives that lives in Germany, with whom I had lost contact with for more than 40 years, came with his wife to visit us in New York. To make full use of the occasion, I decided to try to update my family tree to incorporate his branch, about which I knew very little. While doing that, something interesting started to emerge. Family trees need constant updating – adding marriages, births, deaths, divorces, etc… More than that, even if we are satisfied with what we have documented, the family tree is never complete. Every marriage adds a potential link to a new tree, and more often than not, that new tree is itself undergoing constant revision. The only “complete” tree set is the global population – all of us.

My desire to construct my family tree stemmed in large part from my Holocaust history, which resulted in the murder of most of my family, with survivors setting down roots in a wide geographic spread that spans the globe. My objective was not to try to trace my ancestry to Adam and Eve but rather, to try to establish the family connections to all of the living members of my family. I was fortunate; both in that the computer technology that facilitates the gathering of such information has developed, and that some members of an older generation are still alive, and able to share some of the crucial links.

It is not unreasonable to assume that the same motivation could potentially expand to include all of humanity. The software is not there yet, but we can identify the requirements. This is not exactly the “Six Degrees of Separation”  concept, but it is closely related. Once accomplished, everyone would know in detail how he or she is connected to everybody else. I am fully aware that access to elementary education is not yet universal, and that most people have more immediate concerns in their lives, but I find the possible consequences fascinating.

If, for one reason or another, we wanted to kill somebody, we would know in great detail that we were killing a relative. This knowledge would obviously not eliminate murder from society.  The Wall Street Journal compiled murder statistics in the US in the decade of 2000 – 2010. The relation between victims and killers are given below.

Murder RelationshipsOne can set the parameters at will of what constitutes family, but a very significant fraction of these individual murders can be characterized as in-family. Additional familiarity with the family connections between victims and killers, therefore, would probably have little to no effect here.

On the other hand, awareness of family connections might have a major effect on mass killings and genocides. In the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 the Hutus depicted the Tutsis as “cockroaches,” and the ensuing massacre was portrayed as a mass disinfection. The revelation that many of the Hutus and Tutsis had family connections might have brought some new light to the situation, since if one group consisted of “cockroaches,” then so did the other. Similarly, in the case of the Nazis’ call to exterminate the Jews and Gypsies, realization of family connections might have made a significant change in the political landscape.

Moving away from the discussion of mass killings to instead address today’s environmental issues, the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon is a major obstacle that prevents us from taking action to mitigate causes of environmental destruction. I have discussed this throughout my blogs (go to the search box and type NIMBY for the full list). It is defined as a belief that, while certain actions are necessary for the common good, others should have to implement them (elsewhere), so that the group in question would not have to get involved. One of the best examples of this has been the reaction to wind turbines, which generate electricity by utilizing the wind energy (and indirectly, solar energy). The general response has been “build them somewhere else, so that they’re somebody else’s problem.” It is easy to shunt off such a necessary burden onto a group of strangers; less easy when it comes to family and acquaintances. If the distinction between “them” and “us” were to disappear, the NIMBY motivation might go away as well, leaving all of us better equipped to collectively take care of our common assets.

It is a dream that will not come true within my lifetime, but it is a dream worth dreaming.

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The Many Faces of Sovereign Islands

Posted on August 13, 2013 by climatechangefork

My July 30th blog described Mauritius as a country concerned with climate change, as evidenced by its hosting our conference on the topic, and the creation of its own task force, “Maurice Ile Durable” (MID) to examine all aspects of government in terms of preparations for climate change, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. The influx of large, violent storms is partially associated with climate change, especially when regarding their frequency and intensity, both of which are expected to increase. But in spite of one such catastrophic storm the country recently experienced, the general feeling appears to be that Mauritius is not in immediate danger of being swept under a rising sea in the near future.

This attitude is different from that taken by other sovereign islands. Cases in point: the Maldives, whose president, Mohammed Nasheed, has taken a leadership role in trying to wake up the world to the dangers of climate change, recently going so far as to hold a cabinet meeting underwater, and the Kiribati government, which is pursuing a “migrating with dignity” policy, by  encouraging its people to adapt by moving to safer grounds in Australia. One of the main reasons for the different attitudes is the difference in topography. Most of the populations of Kiribati and the Maldives live in a flood zone, with no place to move. As the March flood showed, most of Mauritius’ population also lives in a flood zone, however the middle of the country is endowed with mountains more than 2000 ft high.

The outlook on flooding vs. moving is not the only one with disparity among island nations.  Another difference in attitude became evident to us before we arrived in Mauritius, during our visit to Madagascar, where we went to see the lemurs, for which the island is so widely known. Madagascar is a very poor country, whose historically unstable government recently gained notoriety when an army-led group ousted the elected president.

The conversation with our driver quickly turned to the present political situation. I posed a question about the prospects of finding off-shore oil and gas along the very long shore line. He responded that, according to many, this was one of the main reasons for the coup d’état. Everybody wanted a piece of the profit. It is starting become clear that while the nature of islands leaves them vulnerable to flooding and other adverse impacts of climate change, it also means that they inherently have a perimeter of shoreline; something which gives them plentiful off-shore exploration rights for oil and gas. As the technologies of off-shore exploration and drilling have improved, so too have the chances of findings. I decided to compile list of the haves and have nots, using a list of sovereign islands from Wikipedia and a compilation of data for the latest oil and gas production of these island from the US Energy Information Administration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we can see from the table, the three islands that I have mentioned are listed as lacking any oil or gas production capabilities. However, databases on this issue are becoming obsolete very quickly. Meanwhile, although I cannot speak to any current oil or gas exploration in Kiribati or Mauritius, Madagascar is reported to sit on a potential of 17 billion barrels of oil, with 3 billion recoverable reserves.

New findings of oil and gas, in countries formerly without them, can create mixed voices in terms of mitigating climate change; ones that sound very similar to those that we hear in the rest of the world.

Stay tuned.

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Citizen of the World?

Posted on August 6, 2013 by climatechangefork

On my way back from Mauritius (see July 3 blog) we passed through Israel to attend a family wedding and meet up with some old friends. During a pleasant dinner with some of these good friends, I was asked if I was planning on returning to live in Israel.

I arrived in Israel in 1945 with my mother (three years before the creation of the state) as a Holocaust refugee. I grew up there, I was educated there, I fought in some of the wars there, my son was born there, and even though I have lived in the United States since 1969, I still feel Israeli. My wife is American born and my whole family, all of which lives in the United States now, is proud and happy to be American. I hold both Israeli and American citizenships, and I share their pride.

Unavoidably, any conversation about Israel has to address the political climate. My friends, my wife and I all believe that a political agreement with the Palestinians to create a Palestinian state side by side with Israel is absolutely necessary and the conditions to facilitate such a solution must be created in the near future.

My answer to my friends’ question was that I am happy where I am and that I cannot see myself returning to Israel to retire. They were not surprised by my answer, having decided that I have become a “true” American. I responded with a “declaration” that I actually think of myself neither as an American, nor an Israeli, but rather as a “Citizen of the World.” I explained that I dearly love both Israel and the United States, but I have come to realize that the planet that we live in is in peril and this affects all of us.

I left the dinner with a bad taste in my mouth. “Citizen of the World???” What was I thinking? It sounds bombastic and meaningless. I was absolutely convinced that everyone around the table felt the same way.

I came back home, and as I was going through the New York Times, one of the first things that popped up was an obituary and front page article on Garry Davis (NYT-July 29) by Margaut Fox: “Garry Davis, Man of No Nation Who Saw One World of No War, Dies at 91.” Before reading it, I was completely ignorant about his existence and the movement that he was promoting.

According to the article, Garry Davis renounced his American citizenship on May 25, 1948. He remained stateless until his death. This self-inflicted status gave him some difficulties in traveling, but he managed to work around them. His theory was that most wars are caused by sovereign states, so, if we were to eliminate sovereign states, we would ensure peace. Renouncing his citizenship was the first step in that direction. He was regarded as the Dean of the “One World” movement that, according to the article, can count approximately one million members. He referred to himself not as a person without a country, but instead, as one without a nationality. According to the article, adherents to the One World movement have included some very prominent people, among them, Albert Schweitzer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein and E. B. White.

I was not aware of any of this at the time of my short dinner chat in Israel. However, learning of it didn’t make me feel better; I am not inclined now to join the “One World” movement and renounce my two citizenships. My concern during the discussion was not for world peace; instead, I looked to our ability to take care of the planet, focusing on climate change. If the planet starts to become uninhabitable, things all around us will get ugly, both physically and politically.

At present, world governance is based on sovereign states. Only sovereign states can enforce rules and regulations, including those agreed upon in international treaties.

Abolishing sovereign states would not eliminate wars. Some of the most destructive wars in recent history didn’t take place between sovereign states, but were instead civil wars or wars focused on international terrorism. Renouncing nationalities would only make such wars worse. Abolishing states and relying on “World Government” would remove any form of control from the hands of the constituents and make governing impossible.

During my recent travels in Southern Africa, I observed how much of a difference the presence or absence of effective government made in how people were doing. Four countries that we visited during our recent trip will serve to illustrate the importance of functioning government to the well being of the people and the environment: Botswana, Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Madagascar. Botswana and Zimbabwe are land locked states, while Madagascar and Mauritius are islands in the Indian Ocean. All four countries got their independence from the colonial powers after 1960, starting out as very poor nations with little infrastructure. Botswana and Mauritius are now flourishing, middle income, fast growing countries, with stable governments. Zimbabwe and Madagascar, meanwhile, are failed states (this is a commonly accepted term there), whose income/capita is not much different from the corresponding data from when they first got their independence. (One can get more data about the economic performance of all four countries at the World Bank website).

In the coming blogs, I will focus on environmental impacts in some of these countries and the mitigation and adaptation steps that are being taken. The performance of the local governments will play a central role. There is no question that the present state of world governance can be improved, mainly through the establishment of fair enforcement mechanisms to preserve the physical characteristics (both regional and planetary) that are essential to our collective survival. Abolishing national government would have the reverse effect.

Comment on a potentially game changing Op-Ed in Thursday’s (August 1, 2013) New York Times.

It is rare for me to post a comment about a current event after having already written my blog. It is even more uncommon for me to agree with every word of an Op-Ed written by four prominent Republicans. Thursday’s Op-Ed in the New York Times, “A Republican Case for Climate Action” by William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly and Christine Todd Whitman,  marked just such an occasion.

Republicans have occupied the White House for 20 of the 31 years since the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. The four writers of the Op-Ed collectively held the office of the Administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency for 12 of these years. Anne Burford, the first administrator of the EPA under President Reagan, died in 2004. As they and a growing percentage of the population concede, the numbers with regards to climate change speak for themselves. The acknowledged need for domestic and international action to mitigate climate change is no longer divided neatly between our two major political parties. Hopefully this will lead to progress on more than just a dogmatic note.

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Back From Mauritius

Posted on July 30, 2013 by climatechangefork

I am back from the climate change conference in Mauritius (See my July 2 blog for the full program). I was away for almost a month in total – a long time on the road. I visited a few countries in southern Africa on my way to Mauritius, and on the way back, I made a detour through Israel, where I visited friends and attended to some family business. In the next few blogs I will detail some of my observations, starting here, with a short description of what I learned during the conference.

I have attended several conferences in the past. This one focused on adaptation to climate change in African countries. The most unique aspect of this conference was the relatively large participation of African researchers, including quite a few from Mauritius, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. This was further emphasized by additional contributions from researchers in developed countries, who also focused their work on African countries.

A map of Mauritius is shown above. It is a small, beautiful island that serves as home to about 1.3 million people.

In Mauritius, the people are obviously aware of the dangers of Climate Change. But unlike other small islands such as the Maldives, where President Mohammed Nasheed held an underwater cabinet meeting to emphasize the existential danger, Mauritius didn’t view the danger as immediately threatening to its existence until recently. One of the reasons is the topography of the island that is shown on the map above. The Maldives, the planet’s lowest country, with the lowest natural highest point, faces an impending risk of total submersion. In contrast, the center of Mauritius consists of high mountains (the highest mountain, Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire, is 2700 ft high). The capital, Port-Louis (population – 138,000), is also surrounded by beautiful mountains. The photograph below was taken from the window of my hotel where the conference was held.

On March 30, 2013, however, the view was very different. The city experienced torrential flooding, with water coming from the surrounding mountains, and rendering the city almost invisible. Photographs of the flood are all over the internet.

The intensification of extreme weather events, that climate change is causing, didn’t escape the government’s attention; the impact was not much different from that which hurricane Sandy had made on the United States a few months earlier.

Up to that point, Mauritius’ attitude towards climate change was similar to that of most other countries. On September 4, 2009, the Prime Minister’s Office set up a Steering Committee, which was made up of representatives from various Ministries and Departments, members of the Academia and international development partners. The committee’s objectives were:

  1. to coordinate the “Maurice Ile Durable” (MID) (Mauritius Sustainable Island) project from a more holistic perspective
  2. to harmonize efforts in the MID endeavor, and
  3. to look into all aspects of sustainability.

The full report can be seen at the MID webpage.
On July 15, 2011, the Steering Committee was converted into the Commission on Maurice Ile Durable which operates under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s Office in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and other stakeholders. The responsibility of the MID Commission is to ensure the finalization of the Action Plan on Maurice Ile Durable and its timely implementation. While the flooding has not ultimately made a direct change to policy initiatives, its effects have been visible in guiding conversations about the present and future of the country.

The Chair of the commission was one of the plenary speakers at the meeting. He recounted some of the steps that the MID has taken over the past few years, and summarized the report I mentioned above.

Other presentations focused on specific sections of the economy: mainly as it related to tourism and agriculture. Concerns for climate change’s predicted impact on tourism, for example, centered mostly on the changes to bio diversity, as well as on the quality of the beautiful beaches. The concern was that these changes, coupled with the vast array of competing tourist’s attractions all over the world, would discourage tourists from coming. The projected impact on agriculture through climate change’s impacts on weather patterns is a concern common to most countries; I will discuss it in a separate blog.

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Vacation Notice

Posted on July 23, 2013 by climatechangefork

The conference in Mauritius just finished up, and I’m on vacation for the next week so unfortunately, there will be no new post today.

Please do come back next Tuesday, when I promise to tell you all about my recent travels and adventures, as well as what they mean about the global response to climate change.

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Unburnable Fuels: Removing Reserves From The Balance Sheet.

Posted on July 17, 2013 by climatechangefork

The New York Times recently reported (June 20, 2013) that shortly, President Obama would announce a new set of initiatives to combat climate change, and that he will make it a major focus to fight climate change during his second term. Since this blog will be posted while I am in Africa, it is very likely that this initiative will be announced before the blog is posted. The president is now well aware that he cannot pass a major climate change initiative through the present congress. So the thinking is that the initiative will strongly rely on executive power — mainly through the regulatory powers of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). I am proposing a timely change in accounting that, while it does not immediately seem directly related to any executive attempt to limit greenhouse emissions, could potentially make for a big change in the political terrain of this issue.

Recently a new term has popped up in the debate on climate change: “unburnable fuels.”

The term probably got its start in a research article in Nature (Nature 458, 1158-1162 (30 April 2009)), titled, “Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C.” It starts with the following paragraph:

More than 100 countries have adopted a global warming limit of 2°C or below (relative to preindustrial levels) as a guiding principle for mitigation efforts to reduce climate change risks, impacts and damages 1, 2. However, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions corresponding to a specified maximum warming are poorly known owing to uncertainties in the carbon cycle and the climate response. Here we provide a comprehensive probabilistic analysis aimed at quantifying GHG emission budgets for the 2000–50 period that would limit warming throughout the twenty-first century to below 2°C, based on a combination of published distributions of climate system properties and observational constraints.

The authors summarized the quantitative conclusion to this challenge:

For our illustrative distribution of climate system properties, we find that the probability of exceeding 2°C can be limited to below 25% (50%) by keeping 2000–49 cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil sources and land use change to below 1,000 (1,440) Gt CO2 (Fig. 3a and Table 1). If we resample model parameters to reproduce 18 published climate sensitivity distributions, we find a 10–42% probability of exceeding 2°C for such a budget of 1,000Gt CO2. If the acceptable exceedance probability were only 20%, this would require an emission budget of 890 Gt CO2 or lower (illustrative default). Given that around 234 Gt CO2 were emitted between 2000 and 2006 and assuming constant rates of 36.3 Gt CO2 yr-1 (ref. 3) thereafter, we would exhaust the CO2 emission budget by 2024, 2027 or 2039, depending on the probability accepted for exceeding 2°C (respectively 20%, 25% or 50%).

The issue was dormant for a few years, until very recently the number 1,000Gt (1GT = 1 billion tons) of carbon dioxide started to attract attention in print, lecture circuits and the blogosphere.

The Economist published (May 4th 2013 issue) a short article, “Either governments are not serious about climate change or fossil-fuel firms are overvalued.” The article starts with the following paragraph:

Markets can misprice risk, as investors in subprime mortgages discovered in 2008. Several recent reports suggest that markets are now overlooking the risk of “unburnable carbon”. The share prices of oil, gas and coal companies depend in part on their reserves. The more fossil fuels a firm has underground, the more valuable its shares. But what if some of those reserves can never be dug up and burned?

It summarizes the present situation this way:

If governments were determined to implement their climate policies, a lot of that carbon would have to be left in the ground, says Carbon Tracker, a non-profit organization, and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, part of the London School of Economics. Their analysis starts by estimating the amount of carbon dioxide that could be put into the atmosphere if global temperatures are not to rise by more than 2°C, the most that climate scientists deem prudent. The maximum, says the report, is about 1,000 gigatons (GTCO2)between now and 2050. The report calls this the world’s “carbon budget”.

Existing fossil-fuel reserves already contain far more carbon than that. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA),in its “World Energy Outlook”, total proven international reserves contain 2,860GTCO2—almost three times the carbon budget.The report refers to the excess as “unburnable carbon”. Most of the reserves are owned by governments or state energy firms; they could be left in the ground by public-policy choice (ie, if governments took the 2°C target seriously). But the reserves of listed oil companies are different. These are assets developed using money raised from investors who expect are turn. Proven reserves of listed firms contain 762GTCO2—most of what can prudently be burned before 2050. Listed potential reserves have 1,541GTCO2 embedded in them.

The conclusion is that to satisfy the estimated below 2°C target, much of the “proven” reserves will have to stay forever in the ground as untapped, unburnable fuel.

The distribution of this unburnable fuel among the oil company was given by the Economist and is shown below:

How the oil and gas reserves became part of market capitalization is a complex issue, so here are some of the relevant paragraphs of the Wikipedia summary to get you up to speed:

Proven reserves are those reserves claimed to have a reasonable certainty (normally at least 90% confidence) of being recoverable under existing economic and political conditions, with existing technology. Industry specialists refer to this as P90 (i.e., having a 90% certainty of being produced). Proven reserves are also known in the industry as 1P. [8][9]

Proven reserves are further subdivided into “proven developed” (PD) and “proven undeveloped”(PUD).[9][10] PD reserves are reserves that can be produced with existing wells and perforations, or from additional reservoirs where minimal additional investment (operating expense) is required.[10]PUD reserves require additional capital investment (e.g., drilling new wells) to bring the oil to the surface .[8][10]

Until December 2009 “1P” proven reserves were the only type the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allowed oil companies to report to investors. Companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges must substantiate their claims, but many governments and national oil companies do not disclose verifying data to support their claims. Since January 2010 the SEC now allows companies to also provide additional optional information declaring “2P” (both proven and probable) and “3P” (proven +probable + possible) provided the evaluation is verified by qualified third party consultants, though many companies choose to use 2P and 3P estimates only for internal purposes.

Much of the political opposition (at least in the US) to mitigation efforts to counter human contributions to climate change, comes from the “Heartland Institute” and its supporters. There is a short description on Wikipedia that focuses on the financing behind the institute. The relevant part to the present issue is as follows:

Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[43 ] Greenpeace reported that Heartland received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[20] In 2008, ExxonMobil said that they would stop funding to groups skeptical of climate warming, including Heartland.[43][44][45] Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, argued that ExxonMobil was simply distancing itself from Heartland out of concern for its public image.[43]

The last series of blogs have focused, among other things, on the quote from ExxonMobil CEO, Rex Tillerson, who reputedly said, “What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?” – equating inherent “suffering” with a more limited use of fossil fuels. What he actually means by this is that setting a “cap” of usage at below the total quantity of “proven reserves” that still lay untapped would mean a major reduction in the capitalization rates of ExxonMobil and other oil companies (which would, in turn, require realignment of the stock prices). So from this perspective, the introduction of a “cap” would mean major confiscation of capital from the stock holders – an action that is viewed by many as un-American.

The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) made an administrative decision to categorize untapped oil reserves as part of the capital value of a company, for accounting purposes; this decision can be reversed through an administrative order. In reality, these reserves are no more capital than would be the “good ideas” of the company’s staff scientists. They contribute to the capitalization process through good name, track records, etc., but do not add to the explicit pricing or marketability of the good idea. If the accounting rules were changed, so as to remove those reserves from the capitalization appraisal, the company would still retain the ownership and exploration rights of the real-estate in which the reserves are buried, but the reserves would only factor into the capitalization when they were ready to be marketed. The assessment of the value of this real estate would, instead, follow the same objective procedures that other commercial real estate properties enjoy.  Once we put a “cap” on extraction, if the market were to exceed this “cap,” the price of the real estate would rise, thus benefiting the company, and rendering moot the need to use its resources to oppose the “cap.” This is an example of a situation where a change in the status quo could potentially benefit almost all parties.

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Welcome, Skeptical Science Readers!

Posted on July 13, 2013 by climatechangefork

To those of you who just heard about my blog from Skeptical Science: welcome! I hope that you will read some of my more recent posts as well. Please, subscribe to my RSS feed, and leave me comments- I welcome feedback of all kinds.

To my current readers who might be feeling confused now: my post, Climate Change and the Nature of Science: The Carbon “Tipping Point” is Coming, was just featured as a guest post on Skeptical Science. This is one of my all time favorite sites, so if you haven’t visited it yet, I strongly encourage you to do so.

Just as a reminder, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my posts (and not just you newcomers).  Additionally, I’m always curious to know how you heard about my blog.

You can also follow me on twitter @MichaTomkiewicz or friend me on Facebook: Micha Tomkiewicz.

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Climate Change, Hiroshima and Nuclear Winter.

Posted on July 9, 2013 by climatechangefork

The power of analogy can just as easily be used productively or be abused. I was accused of the latter when I compared the general populace’s inactivity in the 1930s to prevent the Nazis’ early efforts at ethnic cleansing (which later led to the Holocaust), with our present unwillingness to prevent the deaths of millions or billions that could result from anthropogenic climate change (May 14, 2012). I was attacked, both by people that believe in climate change, who claimed that I was cheapening the Holocaust, and by people that do not believe in climate change, who saw this as a cheap way to raise the temperature of the debate (see comments on that blog post). The only way that I could respond to such criticism was to go to the dictionary definition of Genocide and to correlate it with the details and uncertainties of trying to predict the impact of climate change in a business as usual scenario.

An issue of similar controversy is now moving through the lecture circuits and the blogosphere. It compares the impact of climate change to that of dropping of tens of thousands of Hiroshima bombs per day – in other words, it compares the impact of climate change in a business as usual scenario to global nuclear genocide (See for example, James Hansen’s TED Talk)

Again, in an attempt to uncover the truth or falsehood of such an analogy we must go to the numbers and to basic science on both ends of this comparison – that of climate change and that of the bomb at Hiroshima.

A detailed, credible description of the Hiroshima bomb (“Little Boy”) can be found (as usual) on Wikipedia. The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 by the United States Army Air Force. It was the first of the two consecutive bombs. The explosive power of the bomb came from the nuclear fission of uranium 235. The bomb weighed 9,700lb (4,400 kg), of which approximately 1g was converted into energy. The explosive power of this energy amounted to 67TJ (equivalent to 16 thousand tons of TNT). An estimated 90,000 – 166,000 people were killed during its explosion.

What has this got to do with climate change? To look at the analogy simply in terms of loss of life on such a massive scale is both too general and completely confusing. In actuality, the analogy is based on the amount of released energy that can be calculated for both climate change and the bomb. To be clear, this does not factor in the other aspects of the bomb- namely the immediate destruction, radiation, and all around horror that it caused; here we are focusing only on the energy released.

(Warning: the next section contains SCIENCE- but I promise it’s worth it!)

The information about the energy that was released by the bomb is given in two forms: the 1g of bomb material that was converted to energy and the 67TJ of energy it produced. The two forms are connected through Einstein’s famous E = MC2 formula, where E is the energy (given in the energy unit of Joules), M is the mass (given in kg) and C is the speed of light, a constant equal to 300 million (3×108) meters/second (671 million miles/hour).

So 1g of energy converted is:

E(Joules) = (0.001kg)x(3×108)2 = 90×1012 Joules = 90TJ (Where T stands for Tera, which is equivalent to trillion). The difference between the 67TJ that is given in the Wikipedia and the 90 TJ that we have estimated here is because our 1g conversion is a rounded number. This amounts to a 30% difference, which does not play a very significant part in our analysis. The Joule is a common unit of energy that is related to BTU (British thermal unit) by 1 BTU = 1055 Joules. The Joule is more familiar to many of us through the use of another unit – the Watt (100W light bulb). The Watt, however, is not a unit of energy but a unit of power. 1Watt = 1 Joule/second.

The only possible valid analogy between climate change and the Hiroshima bomb comes if we use bomb as a unit of energy that approximately amounts to 100TJ.

We are now ready to try to calculate the other end of this analogy – the energy that is being released through climate change. This is done through a parameter called “Radiative Forcing.”

Radiative Forcing is defined as “the difference between radiant energy received by the earth and energy radiated back to space.” A positive forcing is defined as more radiation coming in than going out, thus warming the surface; negative forcing describes the opposite and its cooling of the surface. The IPCC was able to assemble the data for many greenhouse gases. The corresponding values are given below:

Diagram showing Radiative Forcing of Climate between 1750 and 2005

The measurements are taken at the top of the lowest level of the atmosphere – the troposphere. The commonly used reference year is 1750, which is seen as the (somewhat arbitrary) starting point of human industrial activities and our heavy reliance on fossil fuels. The units are in watt/m2. One can see that the net total radiative forcing that is associated with human activities is about 1.6watt/m2, with carbon dioxide as the dominant contributor. To convert the radiative forcing to the net heat that is added to the Earth, we have to multiply this number by the surface area of the lower atmosphere and by the time since 1750. Using this full number in our calculations would be an exaggeration, because in the earlier years of that spectrum, the net radiative forcing that was caused by human activity was much smaller. To give an order of magnitude, we can assume that the significant increase in human activity started in 1950 (the transistor was invented in 1948) and since most of the increase took place recently, we will instead take this time and divide it by two, assuming that the increase is linear. The resulting time comes out to be 8.7×108 seconds.

The radius of the Earth is 6,382km. When we add to that the thickness of the lowest atmosphere, approximately 11km, convert the sum to meters and apply the formula 4×π×R2 where R is the radius + the thickness of the lowest atmosphere, we get a surface area of 5.14×1014m2.

We will now multiply these two large numbers by the radiative forcing to get the total energy that was absorbed because of the energy imbalance that was created by human activity.  After doing the math, we are left with the astounding number of 7×1023Joules. To express that number using the unit of the Hiroshima bomb, we will divide this number by 1014, which gives us 7×109 or 7 billion equivalents of Hiroshima bombs falling on the Earth at a “constant” rate 5 bombs every second or around 18,000 bombs a day since about 1950. That is the approximate number, give or take a factor of 2 bombs per day (which can result from using different sets of assumptions), that is currently floating around on the lecture circuits and the blogosphere. If you want to argue with any specific assumption that was made here, you are more than welcome to try your own hand at this exercise.

One last comment on this issue: 5 Hiroshima bombs per second over 55 years unquestionably qualifies under the definition of nuclear holocaust. Even without doing much research on the topic, if we associate the climatic consequences of a nuclear holocaust of a much smaller size, with the concept of “Nuclear Winter,” (which I associate with the American Astrophysicist Carl Sagan) the results are rather frightening.  Wikipedia provides a rather extensive description of the background of the concept. They define Nuclear Winter as:

Nuclear winter (also known as atomic winter) is a hypothetical climatic effect of countervalue nuclear war. Models suggest that detonating nuclear weapons could have a profound and severe effect on the climate causing cold weather and reduced sunlight for a period of months or even years if the nuclear weapon strikes are on cities, comparable to Hiroshima, where it is modelled that large amounts of smoke and soot would be ejected into the Earth‘s stratosphere.[1]

Similar climatic effects can be caused by comets or an asteroid impact,[2][3] also sometimes termed an impact winter, or by a supervolcano eruption, known as a volcanic winter.[4]

That is for one bomb; if we then multiply that concept to reflect our scope of billions, we can understand the potential impact worldwide. Taking that into account– the analogy seems not to be restricted to a choice of energy units but actually converges into catastrophic climatic consequences that will leave nothing unaffected. Maybe using the bomb at Hiroshima will help us to visualize the significance of the outcome of climate change. It’s alright that the image is controversial– we need people to pay attention.

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July in Southern Africa – Mauritius

Posted on July 2, 2013 by climatechangefork

In July, I am going to attend the Fifth International Conference on Climate: Impacts and Responses, to be held in the island of Mauritius. This is the same meeting that was held last year in Seattle Washington, which I described in my July 16, 2012 blog. My wife and I have decided to use the meeting as a pretext for an extended tour of Southern Africa. We will be back in the beginning of August.

I have pre-written a few blogs (including this one) to be published during my absence. In the weeks after my return I will try (provided outside events do not supersede my plans – we remember that the future is ever uncertain) to focus on the forecasts of climate change impact on Southern Africa. I will put particular emphasis on islands such as Mauritius and Madagascar, as viewed through the “official” eyes of the IPCC and the conference participants.

The scheduled program of the conference is copied below. I will be presenting a talk, Bottom-up Mitigation of Global Climate Change: Fuel Selection and Classroom Exposure, along with my partner, Prof. Lori Scarlatos, from StonyBrook University, where we will give updates of our progress in the online/offline game/simulation that we presented last year. The focus is to quantitatively compare a world based on student choices with the real world parameters.

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
CLIMATE CHANGE: IMPACTS AND RESPONSES
PORT-LOUIS, MAURITIUS
18-19 JULY 2013
www.on-climate.com

Arrival of Chief Guest
Hon Devanand Virahsawmy, Minister of Environment & Sustainable Development, Republic of Mauritius

Welcome Address
Dr G. Raj Chintaram
Chairperson ANPRAS/ Conference Co-Chair; Izabel Szary, Common Ground

Welcome Address
Hon Devanand Virahsawmy, Minister of Environment & Sustainable Development

Minister & Common Ground Declare Conference Open

Plenary Session
Dr Richard Munang, Climate Change Adaptation & Development Programme for Africa, United Nations

Plenary Room

Date of Snowmelt in the Arctic and Variations with Climate Patterns and Oscillations
Dr. James Foster, NASA, United States — Dr. Judah Cohen, Verisk Analytics, United States
Snowmelt changes observed since the late 1980s have been step-like in nature rather than continuous. It appears in some instances these changes are related to a climate regime shift.

Effects of CO2-driven pH Decline on the Early Developmental Stages of Sea Urchins from across the World
Emily Joy Frost, University of Otago, New Zealand
The impact of ocean acidification on the ion-regulation physiology, general physiology and ion-regulation genetics on an Antarctic (Sterechinusneumayeri), tropical and temperate (Evechinuschloroticus) sea urchin species

Mitigation Strategies
Room 1

Adaptation to Climate Change: Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean
Prof. Mordechai Shechter, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel
This paper assembles the existing scientific research regarding adaptation to climate change, identifies research gaps, and defines the risks and consequences of climate change in various sectors.

Bottom-up Mitigation of Global Climate Change: Fuel Selection and Classroom Exposure
Micha Tomkiewicz, Brooklyn College of CUNY, United States — Prof. Lori Scarlatos, Stony Brook University, United States The talk will present progress in the online/offline game/simulation that was previously presented here. The focus is to quantitatively compare world based on student choices with the real world parameters.

Climate Change, Mitigation, and Nationally Appropriate Action: The Road to Nationally Appropriate Definitions
Cecilia Therese T. Guiao, -, Philippines
A Philippine perspective on mitigation targets and NAMAs, the current state of Philippine policies, and important factors to be considered by public and private sectors in line with sustainable development. 

Climate Change Challenges
Room 2

Carbon Neutral Mine Site Villages: Calculation and Offset Mechanism
Mr David Goodfield, Murdoch University, Australia — Dr. Martin Anda, Murdoch University, Australia — Prof. Goen Ho, Murdoch University, Australia
Calculation of the carbon footprint of minesite villages is a complex process. A sustainable solution to offset the total carbon is equally hard to determine and justify to the stakeholders. 

Designing an Education and Training Framework to Build Local Capacity in Climate Change Adaptation and Low Carbon Livelihoods
Dr Shireen Fahey, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Geoff Dews, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr. Noel Meyers, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Graham Ashford, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
An education and training framework to build local capacity in climate change adaptation and low carbon livelihoods in the Indian Ocean region

Fictional Depictions of Climate Change: An Analysis of Themes from Contemporary Climate Change Literature
Dr. Danielle Clode, Flinders University, Australia — Monika Stasiak, Flinders University, Australia
This paper explores emerging themes in contemporary climate change literature as a reflection of, and influence on, broader community perceptions about the world of the future.

Imagining Sustainable Futures for the Chagos Archipelago: Environmental Conservation versus Livelihood and Development?
Dr Laura Jeffery, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Conflicting projections do not demonstrate conclusively whether proposed economic activities and infrastructural development in the Chagos MPA could make human habitation feasible while simultaneously enabling effective environmental conservation.

Humankind and the Environment Attitude towards Small Hotel Greening Initiative: Perspective from Tourists and Hoteliers of the Eastern Coast of Mauritius
Vanessa GB Gowreesunkar, University of Technology Mauritius, Mauritius — Dandini Thondrayen, ANPRAS, Mauritius — Sarita Nuckcheddee, ANPRAS, Mauritius — Kirti Rukmani Devi Tohul, ANPRAS, Mauritius — Jayveer Kumar Lobin, ANPRAS, Mauritius
This study investigates the attitude of tourists and small hotel managers towards green hotel initiative and attempts to make the case for its application within small hotels found in Mauritius.

Impacts of Climate Change-induced Conflict on Pastoralism and Human Security in Northwestern Kenya: Impacts of Water and Pasture Scarcity on Livelihoods
Moses Hillary Akuno, United Nations University Institute for Sustainability and Peace, Japan
Recent prolonged droughts and unpredictable weather changes have had a direct impact on conflict, turning it to a more frequent and destructive affair.l

Prospects of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) in the Feng Shui Forest in Peri- urban Hong Kong: A Policy Instrument for Climate Change Discourse
Prof. Lawal Mohammed Marafa, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China — K.C. Sunil, The Chines University of Hong Kong, China
Feng Shui forests are part of Hong Kong’s peri-urban ecosystem, which provides environmental services. This paper examines the services and discusses prospects for policy instruments in delivering ecosystem services.

New Climate Change Information Framework for Behavior Change: Sharing the Framework to Facilitate Dialogue and Action on Climate change
Dr Candice Howarth, Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom
A climate information framework is presented based on UK research to encourage action and sustainable behaviour change. It hopes to generate dialogue on its application to different case study scenarios

Response of Coral Reef Fish to Simulated Ocean Acidification
Prof., Dr. Saleem Mustafa, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia — ShigeharuSenoo, Universiti Malaysia sabah, Malaysia — Marianne Luin, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia
Ocean acidification driven by climate change is accelerating and impact on marine life is imminent. This paper examines how coral reef fish, groupers, are directly affected by acidification.

Coastal Communities: Special Topics
Room 1

Characteristics of Respondents in a Climate Change-affected Coastal Area in Bangladesh
Russell Kabir, Middlesex University, United Kingdom
This study explores the characteristics of coastal people of Bangladesh related to socio-economic, environmental, and demographic issues, water and toilet facilities, natural resources and access to mass media.

Exploratory Study about the Impacts of Islets Tourism in the ‘MTVC’ Region in Eastern Mauritius
Dr. Gowtam Raj Chintaram, ANPRAS, Mauritius — WardaMohungoo, ANPRAS, Mauritius — YogshresthSabandy, ANPRAS, Mauritius — Louis Clarel Salomon, ANPRAS, Mauritius
The small nature and uniqueness of islets have made such destinations increasingly popular. The appeal for micro destinations have popularized offshore islets tourism but also created serious environmental threats.

Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change: Settlement Patterns of the Past to Future Resilience
Phillip Roos, Deakin University, Australia
Aboriginal settlement patterns of the past provide adaptation solutions for a proposed design-based adaptation model for settlements along the Australian coast impacted by climate change and sea level rise.

Using Integrated Models for Adaptation Planning: Evaluating Adaptation Investments for the Tourism Sector in the Coastal Zone of Mauritius
Graham Ashford, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr. Noel Meyers, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
— Geoff Dews, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr Shireen Fahey, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia Mauritius’ coastal pilot study to evaluate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies using economic cost-benefit analysis in combination with sustainable development criteria as part of a multi-criteria decision making process

Large Scale Implications

Analysis of Tropical Cyclones Dynamics and Its Impacts
Yee Leung, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
The paper presents the dynamics of tropical cyclone recurvatures, landfalls and intensities under climate anomalies, particularly in ENSO years. It also introduces a powerful system for analysis, prediction and decision-making.

Assessing Hydrological Impacts of Climate Change Using Monthly Water Balance Models
Dr. Yongqin Chen, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China
This paper presents a study that analyzes and compares the performance and underlying mechanism of six monthly water balance models in a climate change assessment of hydrological impacts. 

Climate Model Intercomparison at the Dynamics Level
Prof. Anastasios Tsonis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, United States — Dr. Karsten Steinhaeuser, University of Minnesota, United States
A systematic comparison of CMIP3 forced and unforced runs for the purpose of evaluating the robostness of climate simulations and projections 

Water and Climate Change: An Integrated Approach to Address Adaptation Challenges
Dr. Udaya Sekhar Nagothu, The Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research, Bioforsk, Norway
The study addresses how improved integrated water management practices could increase agricultural production and food security, protect natural systems and be a “game changer” for national food security.

Climate Change Challenges

F1 Progeny of White Fulani and New Jersey Cows: A Panacea to Climate Change Effect on Dairy Cow Productivity in North Central Nigeria
Prof. Abiodun Adeloye, University of Ilorin, Ilorin , Nigeria, Nigeria
The growth performance and suitability of the F1 progeny of indigenous White Fulani and exotic New Jersey cattle is studied in the North Central region of Nigeria.

Lost Polar Bear in London: Visualising Climate Change and U.K. National Press Coverage of the Rio+20 Summit
Prof. Alison Anderson, University of Plymouth, UK, United Kingdom
This paper examines the role that celebrity advocacy played in the reporting of the 2012 Rio Earth Summit in the British newspaper press. 

Modern Bioenergy Technologies for Universalizing Energy Access in India: Solving the Conflicting Challenges of Climate Change and Development
Dr. Balachandra Patil, Indian Institute of Science, India
This paper details an innovative approach to India’s energy challenges: limited access to modern energy services, the need to expand energy systems to achieve economic growth, and climate change threats. 

Date of Snowmelt in the Arctic and Variations with Climate Patterns and Oscillations
Dr. James Foster, NASA, United States — Dr. Judah Cohen, Verisk Analytics, United States
Snowmelt changes observed since the late 1980s have been step-like in nature rather than continuous. It appears in some instances these changes are related to a climate regime shift.

Effects of CO2-driven pH Decline on the Early Developmental Stages of Sea Urchins from across the World Emily Joy Frost, University of Otago, New Zealand
The impact of ocean acidification on the ion-regulation physiology, general physiology and ion-regulation genetics on an Antarctic (Sterechinusneumayeri), tropical and temperate (Evechinuschloroticus) sea urchin species

Agriculture and the Impacts of Change

Impacts of Climate Change on Supply Response for Maize in Kenya: Evidence from Cointegration Analysis
Dr. RakhalSarker, University of Guelph, Canada — Dr. Jonathan Nzuma, University of Nairobi, Kenya — Shashini Ratnasena, University of Guelph, Canada
Maize is the most important staple in Kenya. This paper attempts to determine the impacts of climate change on maize production in Kenya.

Priority Assessment of Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process Modelling
Prof. Nazrul Islam, University of the Sunshine Coast/Sustainability Research Centre, Australia — Dr Nasir Uddin, Sunshine Coast University, Australia — Dr. Angela Wardell-Johnson, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr. Tanmoy Nath, Australia
This study assesses priority rankings of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and provide important information to food industry stakeholders for strategic interventions in regional food security in Australia.

Strategic Interventions to Manage Climate Change for Food Security: Modelling for Best Fit Using Evidence of Horticulture and Dairy in Australia
Dr Nasir Uddin, Sunshine Coast University, Australia — Dr. Angela Wardell-Johnson, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
— Prof. Nazrul Islam, University of the Sunshine Coast/Sustainability Research Centre, Australia — Dr. Tanmoy Nath, Australia This study used a number of scenarios to provide evidence of the links between CC risks, adaptive capacities, and adaptation/mitigation strategies for strategic interventions in the food security of Australia.

Gas Emissions: Implications

Carbon Budget Method Based on GIS
Anand Sookun, Mauritius
A geostatistical method adapted to GIS has been developed to account for the terrestrial carbon budget which involve carbon emissions net of carbon uptakes by plants and soil.

Energy Labeling and Residential House Prices: Some Evidence from the United Kingdom
Prof. Pat McAllister, University College London, United Kingdom — Dr. Anupam Nanda, University of Reading, United Kingdom
— Prof. Peter Wyatt, University of Reading, United Kingdom — Dr. Franz Fuerst, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
This paper outlines the results of the first large-scale empirical analysis of the effects of certificates on energy performance on residential property prices in England and Wales.

Ocean Acidification: A Major Threat?
Diyashvir Kreetee Rajiv Babajee, African Network for Policy Research & Advocacy for Sustainability, Mauritius, Mauritius — Dr. Gowtam Raj Chintaram, ANPRAS, Mauritius
We use a global CO2 model to make predictions of the pH of oceans in 2100 for 5 cases based on possible measures to reduce CO2 emissions. 

Policies and Programs: Climate Change

Bargaining for Nature in China’s Urban Planning Practice: Insights from the Tianjin Eco- City Project
Assoc. Prof. Jiang Xu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
This presentation uses Tianjin Eco-City Planning as an example to illustrate how Chinese urban planners bargain for ecological value of spaces under the great pressure to commodify urban spaces. 

Capital and Climate Change: Evaluating Capacity for Strategic Intervention
Dr. Angela Wardell-Johnson, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr Nasir Uddin, Sunshine Coast University, Australia
— Prof. Nazrul Islam, University of the Sunshine Coast/Sustainability Research Centre, Australia — Dr. TanmoyNath, Australia
— Brian Richard Stockwell, Department of State Development Infrastructure and Planning, Australia
This research used a framework of seven capitals represented Triple Bottom Line values to test capacity to implement climate change intervention strategies through identified risk scenarios.

Domestic Policy Commitments to International Climate and Sustainability Agreements: The Role of Employer Organisations and Trade Unions
Peter J. Glynn, Bond University, Australia — Prof. RosTaplin, University of New South Wales, Australia
While domestic policy overtly reflects international climate agreements, the economic and social elements of the agreements are less obvious but are nevertheless embedded in the policy framework.

Managing for Ecological Resilience: Case Studies from Developing Countries
Geoff Dews, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Graham Ashford, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr. Noel Meyers, The University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia — Dr Shireen Fahey, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
We use selected cases studies to demonstrate that implementing existing environmental management along with traditional management approaches can produce resilient ecosystems that promote ecosystem-based adaptation strategies. 

Societal Impacts of Climate Change

Analysis of Climate Dependent Infectious Diseases: A Case Study of Chennai
Divya Subash Kumar, Anna University, India — Dr. Ramachandran Andimuthu, Faculty/ ANNA UNIVERSITY, India
The data on some of the climate sensitive infectious diseases have been assessed to understand the conducive ranges of temperature and relative humidity for each of these diseases. 

Exploring the Health Effects of a Subtly Changing Climate: Risk and Vulnerability to Ross River Virus in Tasmania, Australia
Dr Anna Lyth, University of Tasmania and University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Australia — Assoc. Prof. Neil Holbrook, University of Tasmania, Australia
This paper discusses a regional investigation of vulnerability to the mosquito-borne disease Ross River virus in Tasmania, Australia, where climate change effects are likely to be relatively subtle.

Thermal-induced Pavement Buckling in Heatwaves
Prof. Mark Bradford, The University of New South Wales, Australia
This study presents results of scientific modelling of upheaval buckling of concrete pavements subjected to elevated temperatures, as occurs in heatwaves. Buckling compromises safe travel and is being reported increasingly.

Scientific Evidence

Spatio-temporal Trends in Rainfall Variability and the El Niño Southern Oscillation in Mauritius
Caroline G. Staub, University of Florida, USA — Peter R. Waylen, University of Florida, USA
Annual precipitation totals in Mauritius are used to characterize the spatial and temporal variability of annual precipitation patterns and their response to underlying regional and global forcings from 1915-2009.

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