Global sea levels could rise two to three times higher over the next century than previously estimated, according to a study released Friday by the US National Research Council.
A committee of experts evaluated that latest UN estimates and updated them with new data on polar ice-cap melting that is believed to be speeding up sea level rise around the world.
By 2100, the NRC estimates that global sea levels will rise between 20-55 inches (50 and 140 centimeters).
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s projection in 2007 had predicted a fraction of that, at seven to 23 inches (18-59 centimeters) worldwide.
Researchers said the wide range within each estimate is due to increasing uncertainty about sea level projections as they attempt to assess what may happen further and further into the future.
In the near term, the NRC predicted a global sea level rise of three to nine inches (eight to 23 centimeters) by 2030 (over the 2000 level) and seven to 19 inches (18 to 48 centimeters) by 2050.
The committee was convened by an executive order from the state of California to assess sea level rise in order to inform preparations for coastal impact, and to make the first detailed predictions for the US West Coast.
The NRC found that the sea level was projected to rise faster than global estimates in much of southern California due to land erosion and subsiding coastline.
But the northern part of the state as well as the coasts of Oregon and Washington could see less of an impact than the rest of the world because of shifts in the Earth that are causing the coasts there to rise, it said.
“The lower sea levels projected for northern California, Washington and Oregon coasts are because the land is rising largely due to plate tectonics,” said the report.
“In this region, the ocean plate is descending below the continental plate at the Cascadia Subduction Zone, pushing up the coast.”
More severe weather events are expected to accompany higher sea levels, and a major earthquake in northern California could cause a sudden sea level rise of one meter (yard) or more, the report said.
Robert Dalrymple, committee chair and professor of civil engineering at Johns Hopkins University, noted that “as the average sea level rises, the number and duration of extreme storm surges and high waves are expected to escalate, and this increases the risk of flooding, coastal erosion and wetland loss.”
The NRC study was jointly sponsored by the states of California, Washington and Oregon, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Geological Survey.
Threatened by the construction of a huge hydroelectric dam in the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous Peoples of the Xingu River Basin fight together to prevent by any means what they consider to the makings of a terrible catastrophe with global consequences.
Belo Monte, An Announcement Of War is an independent, crowd-funded, feature-length documentary about the largest ongoing construction project in Brazil and the permanent struggle to stop it. The entire film has been uploaded to the internet for anyone who wishes to view it.
Over five hundred Indigenous Peoples from Brazil and throughout the world gathered at Kari-Oca II, an encampment seated at the foot of a mountain near Rio Centro, to sign a declaration demanding respect for Indigenous Peoples’ role in maintaining a stable world environment, and condemning the dominant economic approach toward ecology, development, human rights and the rights of Mother Earth.
“We see the goals of UNCSD Rio+20, the “Green Economy”, and its premise that the world can only ‘save’ nature by commodifying its life-giving and life-sustaining capacities as a continuation of the colonialism that Indigenous Peoples and our Mother Earth have faced and resisted for 520 years”, the declaration states.
Hundreds of Indigenous representatives plan to march from Kari-Oca on Wednesday, June 20, to deliver the declaration to world leaders at the opening of the Rio+20 Summit.
“This document is a wind that will enter the doors of Rio+20 to open the minds of the politicians, to show them that we are not merely the Indigenous Peoples that live in their countries, we are sons and daughters of the Mother Earth”, said Marcos Terrena, an indigenous leader from Brazil, and one of the founders of Kari Oca.
“We are not ‘interested parties,’ we are essential parties”, said Terrena. “We are committed to the life of the earth and future generations. This declaration sends a message to the politicians that the economy has to change, to embrace social, cultural and spiritual values, not just economic value.”
The Kari Oca II encampment, a cultural and spiritual center located in a ramshackle neighborhood not far from the site of the UN negotitations, is a historic follow-up to the Kari Oca I, which gathered at the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The Kari-Oca conference, and the mobilization of Indigenous Peoples around the first UN Earth Summit, marked a significant step forward for an international movement for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and the important role that Indigenous Peoples play in conservation and sustainable development.
But, according to leaders at Kari-Oca II, the agreements made twenty years ago have been largely ignored by world leaders, to the world’s peril.
“The Kari-Oca II declaration is not just a paper. It is a sacred document that encompasses our struggles worldwide. It makes clear that we will walk the path of our ancestors,” said Windel Bolinget, of the Igorot people in the Philippines.
The signing ceremony took place in the early evening outdoors amidst smoke, drums, and dancing, with hundreds of celebrants in ritual dress, and in a spirit both solemn and jubilant. The document was blessed in ceremony by spiritual elders before signing.
Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, from North America said, “Goose bumps ran up my body as I observed hundreds of brothers and sisters from around the world standing in silence acknowledging the spiritual significance of this historical moment.”
“This is far more than a political declaration,” Goldtooth said.
“We are happy tonight because our sacred word is written and agreed to by peoples from all over the world,” said Mario Santi of Ecuador.
“The importance of this declaration is in the sacred recognition that we cannot sell the rights of our Mother Earth, and we cannot accept false solutions that manipulate nature for profit,” said Berenice Sanchez, Nahua from Mexico.
Carbon dioxide emissions have risen by even more than previously thought, according to new data analysed by the Guardian, casting doubt on whether the world can avoid dangerous climate change.
The data has emerged as governments met in Rio de Janeiro to finalise the outcome of the Rio+20 conference, aimed at ensuring that economic growth does not come at the expense of irreparable environmental degradation, but which activists say has not achieved enough to stave off severe environmental problems.
Global carbon emissions from energy are up 48% on 1992, when the original Earth summit took place in Rio – a historic summit at which governments agreed to limit emissions in order to prevent dangerous climate change.
In 2010, the latest year for which figures have been compiled, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said the world emitted 31.8bn tonnes of carbon from energy consumption. That represents a climb of 6.7% on the year before and is significantly higher than the previous best estimate, made by the International Energy Agency last year, that in 2010 a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide were released from burning fossil fuel.
Increases in fossil fuel use of this magnitude are likely to carry the world far beyond the temperature rise of 2C by 2050 that scientists have estimated is the limit of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.
According to the new EIA data, carbon dioxide emissions from the US have resumed their rise, after a brief blip caused by the financial crisis and recession in 2008. That increase came despite the much-vaunted switch from coal to shale gas – with its lower emissions than coal when burned for energy – that has dominated the US’s energy economy in recent years.
China, which in 2006 took over the US’s historical position as the world’s biggest emitter, raced ahead in 2010, emitting 8.3bn tonnes – up 15.5% on the previous year, and a 240% increase since 1992. That makes China alone responsible for about one-quarter of global carbon emissions from energy, emitting about 48% more than the US.
This data also backs up recent evidence that China may be emitting more carbon dioxide than had previously been thought.
At this year’s Rio+20 conference, according to observers, China has not played a leading role in forcing countries to raise their ambitions on reducing environmental impact.
The UK’s emissions in 2010 fell by 8% from 1992 and the first Rio conference, which laid the foundation for the Kyoto protocol of 1997 – still the only comprehensive global treaty demanding cuts in emissions from governments. That puts the UK in 10th place in overall emissions from energy consumption, down from 7th place in 1992. Gibraltar, the UK dependency, has the doubtful distinction of the highest per capita emissions in the world, at 135.5 tonnes per year, compared with 8.5 tonnes per person in the UK and 6.3 tonnes in China.
To borrow a popular hockey term, Canada has scored a hat trick of the worst kind: Three major oil spills in just over one month.
The culprit this time around is Enbridge, the Calgary, Alberta-based operator of the world’s longest crude oil and liquids pipeline system, situated in Canada and the U.S. On June 19 the company confirmed that about 1,450 barrels (230,000 litres) of crude oil spilled from a pumping station onto farmland near Elk Point, Alberta, according to The Globe and Mail. Fortunately, this spill managed to occur in an area devoid of waterways.
Others haven’t been so lucky.
On June 7, Albertans living downstream from the Red Deer River suffered a scare when a pipeline owned by Plains Midstream Canada ruptured, spewing around 3,000 barrels of oil and posing a severe risk to the drinking water supply of 100,000 people, according to CBC News—Calgary. This spill began beneath Jackson Creek, a tributary of the Red Deer River, ending in Gleniffer Lake and reservoir where the majority of clean-up efforts and monitoring continue to take place.
According to Canada.com, the “province is still advising people not to draw water directly from the river or lake, and it’s telling people not to swim or fish in the lake, either.”
Topping them all is Pace Oil and Gas Ltd., which spilled an estimated 22,000 barrels of oil mixed with water near Rainbow Lake, in the northwestern corner of Alberta, according to Bloomberg.
Because of its remote location, the Pace Oil and Gas spill managed to stay relatively quiet despite being one of the largest and most calamitous oil spills in North America in recent years. The spill released more oil into the environment than the much higher profile Kalamazoo River spill almost two years ago in Michigan, compliments of—yet again—Enbridge, that pumped around 19,500 barrels into the Kalamazoo and surrounding marshes.
The latest Enbridge oil spill near Elk Point is one more to a tally exceeding 800 spills since 1999, and this is the corporation lobbying to build the massive Northern Gateway Pipeline stretching from Bruderheim, Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia—crossing the Northern Rocky Mountains and innumerable streams, marshes and vital wildlife habitat.
Will we ever learn from this ongoing train wreck? If history is any indication—and it always is—the answer is probably not. Here in the U.S., we still suffer the relentless indignities of elected officials and company men assuring us that projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline pose no risk to the millions who depend upon the Ogallala aquifer for drinking water.
Perhaps a trip north to Gleniffer Lake might put things in perspective, or a trip to our own southern shores along the Gulf of Mexico. But clearly, this debate isn’t about logic or learning from our mistakes at all.
