An international team of researchers including Dr. Bertrand Boeken of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev suggest in a new study that plant biodiversity preservation is crucial to buffer negative effects of climate change and desertification in drylands.

The study was published in the prestigious journal Science and is the outcome of a five-year research effort involving more than 50 researchers from 30 institutions in 15 different countries.

The results of this study indicate that the ability of ecosystems in drylands worldwide to maintain multiple functions, such as carbon storage and buildup of nutrient pools (multi-functionality) is enhanced by the number of perennial plant species, mainly shrubs and dwarf-shrubs, whereas increased average annual temperature reduces this ability.

While small-scale controlled experiments have provided evidence of the positive relationship between biodiversity and multi-functionality over the years, this study is the first in explicitly evaluating such relationship among real ecosystems at a global scale.

Drylands constitute some of the largest terrestrial biomes, collectively covering 41 percent of earth’s land surface and supporting over 38 percent of the global human population.

They are of paramount importance for biodiversity, host many endemic plant and animal species, and include about 20 percent of the major centers of global plant diversity and over 30 percent of the designated endemic bird areas.

However, dryland ecosystems are also highly vulnerable to global environmental change and desertification.

“This study provides empirical evidence on the importance of biodiversity to maintain and improve ecosystem multi-functionality in drylands, Dr. Boeken says: “Our results also suggest that the increase in average annual temperature predicted by climate change models will reduce the ability of dryland ecosystems to perform multiple functions, which are crucial to support life on earth.

“Plant biodiversity enhances this ability, therefore, maintaining and restoring it can contribute to mitigating the negative consequences of global warming and to promoting the resistance of natural ecosystems to desertification.”

Image via koyart66

The sea coasts of Oman and the Arabian Gulf  are those where fishermen still practice their trade in wooden sailing dhows and rare species of whales play offshore from the rugged Oman seacoasts.

Wooden dhows still ply these waters as they did in ancient times.

Geoscientists say that these same coasts, said to be the home of Sinbad the Sailor, are now sinking and shrinking due to rising sea levels as well as erosion from real estate building projects.

Global warming and climate change are being blamed for a lot of problems in coastal areas.

This not only affects countries like Oman that face oceans, but also more enclosed bodies of water like the Mediterranean Sea.

Oman’s Bandar al Jissah is sinking and shrinking due to rising sea levels

Ancient archaeological sites like those on Libyan, Egyptian, and Israeli seacoasts are also in trouble, one of which, the ancient Roman city of Caesarea, is being eroded due to a serious lack of sand to hold back the ravages of the sea. The situation in Caesarea has become so dire that a storm in mid December, 2010 caused severe damage to an ancient sea port and other nearby structures.

Sinbad seeks a safe haven

Real estate development along Oman’s Arabian seacoast, on which an ancient site called Bandar Jissah is being promoted as a heritage site and “safe haven” for vacationers and property investors, is itself in danger of eroding away due to rising sea levels.

Whether or not a character named Sinbad actually hailed from Bandar Jissah, the uniqueness of this site may soon be lost forever unless measures are taken to protect it. If area sea levels keep rising, human protection measures may simply not be enough to save Saraya or the rest of the Oman coastline.

Top image via wikipedia. All others via Lonely Planet

More about Oman and other area ecological issues:
Geoscientists Say Oman is Sinking and Shrinking
New Arabian Humpbacked Whale Species Discovered in Oman
Baharain Fishermen Plea for Help With Their Catch

Half the world’s households prepare their meals over open fires or with jerry-rigged cookers fueled by scrap wood, coal, combustible waste and dung. Fatal burns are common and foraged fuel dangerously degrades indoor air quality. The World Health Organization reports that toxic smoke from inefficient stoves is the fifth biggest health risk in the developing world, killing 2 million people annually. This shocking statistic puts unsafe cooking nose to nose with HIV/AIDS on the global killing field, with women and children most vulnerable. Who knew?

For decades, aid advocates insisted that more efficient stoves using cleaner fuels could eradicate the problem in underdeveloped communities where electricity was unreliable and fuel supplies scarce.  Now safe-stove news is popping up relative to refugee camps and “Occupy Wall Street” outposts. In the ‘90s, American inventor Peter Scott helped design low-cost portable “rocket stoves” which run on electric, gas or solar power and include powerful filters to limit harmful smoke. The New Yorker christened Scott the movement’s Thomas Edison, adding, “The average cooking fire produces as much carbon dioxide as a car, and a great deal more soot. Cleaning up these emissions may be the fastest, cheapest way to cool the planet.” But why isn’t this idea selling?

Could be that home cooking just ain’t sexy. Or maybe the market’s too fragmented to profitably produce and distribute the stoves.

Perhaps the project – like any new A-list eatery worth its salt – just needed some high-caliber patrons and a dishy face to front it.

Enter US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2010, she introduced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private coalition aimed at getting 100 million cookstoves out to the developing world by 2020. Next Julia Roberts stepped up as the Alliance’s global ambassador.  The Alliance stresses that clean stove roll-out can significantly reduce childhood death from pneumonia,  and Roberts notes the broader benefits, “The impact goes beyond people’s health. Burning these fuels produces carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon, which contribute to climate change. Cutting down trees for fuel causes natural habitats to dry up, forests to disappear and soil to erode.”

Smartly linking the initiative to climate change opens the possibility of using carbon tax as a means of financing investment. Global aid agencies could also promote the use of efficient cookstoves by direct-delivering units alongside  humanitarian food aid. USAID already supports the project, pledging $50 million over the next five years.

Radha Muthiah, executive director of the Alliance, predicts that the emergence of middle-income countries such as the Next Eleven (N-11) will invigorate this sustainability movement. The N-11, which includes Egypt, Iran and Turkey, was identified in 2005 by Goldman Sachs as having a high potential of becoming the world’s largest economies in the 21st century.

To read more about the program, and to get directly involved in igniting this critical change, visit The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves website.

Top image via ethiovision

Within the next 100 years, global sea levels are expected to rise by at least 1 meter and swallow up coastal towns and cities – a reality from which the Middle East is not exempt. Already geoscientists from the German University of Technology have noted that in certain parts of the Gulf country Oman – the landmass is sinking and shrinking, Gulf News reports.

LiDAR

Using LiDAR (light detection and ranging instruments) technology in a collaborative study with RWTH Aachen University, the scientists found that land losses of a few millimeters occur each year – particularly between Muscat and the beachfront resort Sifah.

They also warned that this discovery should influence coastal development policy, but according to the paper, ocean front housing units are currently under construction and an integrated tourism project that will initiate even further construction along the Gulf.

Hotel owners astride the Dead Sea in Israel learned the hard way that higher water levels are a formidable foe that can only be defeated by setting buildings further away from the sea shore.

Other cities affected by rising sea levels

Oman is not alone. Other coastal cities throughout the Middle East are also vulnerable to rising sea levels. Further up the Gulf, Dubai’s shoreline is cluttered with hundreds of skyscrapers and other costly development projects and in Alexandria saline water is already interfering with the city’s freshwater supply.

It was also noted that Oman could be hit with a tsunami. According to historical records presented by Gulf News, in 1945 then Sultan Saeed Al Saeed wrote that five days after a small earthquake, a tsunami swept ashore, leaving behind molluscs and other sea species in a nearby lagoon.

If we learn nothing else from last year’s tsunami in Japan, at least we should learn this: it’s folly to think that we can control mother nature. We might not be able to stem the tide of higher sea levels, but at least we can permanently disband any seaside construction projects that we know will not survive the next 100 years.

:: Gulf News

More on Rising Sea Levels in the Middle East:

Egypt Moving to Shore up Delta Cities Against Rising Sea Levels

Underwater City Alternative to Floating Islands?

Coastal Erosion Threatens Evolutionary Hotspots in Gulf Region

Climate change is causing sea levels to rise, so much that the president of the Maldives wants to locate his island nation. Some parts of the world are preparing themselves for this new reality, while urban planners look for new solutions to deal with rising waters. The Dutch, masters of the dyke concept know the threats of encraoching sea water. Moshe Zwart, a Dutch architect has dreamed up another solution: underwater cities! Illustration of Zwart’s under city parking and leisure complex

The Dutch are well aware of the need to protect themselves against the encroaches of the sea as the Netherlands has had to deal with this problem for centuries.

But the time my come, however, when even building numerous dikes, and artificial land areas will not be enough when sea levels simply rise too high. The possibility of this occurring has resulting in an even more novel idea being put forward by the sea beleaguered Dutchmen: underwater cities.

The idea of underwater cities has been a fantasy and science fiction idea that has been around for years. Putting mere dreams into a plausible reality is something else. But now the idea of underwater cities is a step closer to reality. A Dutch architect, Professor Moshe Zwarts, who actually proposed this idea in 2008 with his concept of building an underground (and water) parking and entertainment complex under the city of Amsterdam to help solve that city’s chronic lack of usable space. The plan, when proposed in February 2008, was estimated to cost around US $ 14.4 billion to complete.

Zwart’s idea was to drain some the city’s many canals and build a multi level parking, shopping and entertainment complex underneath that when completed would  not interfere with what is occurring at street level, including refilling the canals themselves. As stated by Professor Zwart:

“Amsterdam sits on a 30-metre layer of waterproof clay which will be used together with concrete and sand to make new walls. Once we have resealed the canal floor, we will be able to carry on working underneath while pouring water back into the canals. It’s an easy technique and it doesn’t create issues with drilling noises on the streets.”

Environmentalists now believe that Zwart’s ideas are not ecologically and economically sustainable; with one of big issues dealing with ridding the underground complex from build-ups of carbon dioxide (CO2) which are sure to occur, especially with cars being parked there. This concept is currently more feasible than some type of domed “Atlantis” type of city as has often been mentioned in science fiction stories.

As for this type of  concept being feasible for the Nile Delta or other Middle East locations that could be threatened by rising sea waters, the floating islands concept may hold water better.

::World Architecture News

Recent discoveries have confirmed scientists’ longstanding fears that global warming would catalyze the release of millions of tons of potential greenhouse gas emissions locked up in ice and permafrost in the great white north.

Layer after layer of plant debris that has not yet decomposed lies trapped in arctic and subarctic permafrost. As global temperatures rise and this perennial ice begins to melt, previously frozen organic matter will thaw out and decompose, releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gases into our already saturated atmosphere.

This may not seem like such an earth-shattering phenomenon, but scientists are deeply troubled since there’s a strong chance that methane (CH4) will be released – as it does in anaerobic wetland conditions – which does not bode well for planetary warming since it is 21 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2).

Nearly 1/4 of the northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost that contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere, wrote The New York Times. This amounts to nearly 2 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, 88 percent of which is “locked in permafrost,” according to Canadian scientist Charles Tarnocai and colleagues.

The New York Times reports:

For now, scientists have many more questions than answers. Preliminary computer analyses, made only recently, suggest that the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions could eventually become an annual source of carbon equal to 15 percent or so of today’s yearly emissions from human activities.

But those calculations were deliberately cautious. A recent survey drew on the expertise of 41 permafrost scientists to offer more informal projections. They estimated that if human fossil-fuel burning remained high and the planet warmed sharply, the gases from permafrost could eventually equal 35 percent of today’s annual human emissions.

Meanwhile, Yahoo news reports that Russian scientists have discovered “hundreds of plumes of methane gas, some 1,000 meters in diameter, bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean.” Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences told the UK Independent that thousands more of these giant gurgling methane pots could be lurking in the ice between the Russian mainland and the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.

Having more heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our atmosphere will exacerbate many of the climate change problems we are already beginning to face, include rising temperatures, biodiversity loss, drought and famine, water scarcity, and an upsurge in the expense and intensity of certain natural disasters.

But here’s the good news: if we can scale back human-caused carbon emissions and therefore reduce the rate at which the planet is heating up, most researchers believe we can slow down the rate at which this methane will be released into the atmosphere.

:: New York Times, Yahoo News

At the ongoing Eye on Earth summit in Abu Dhabi, there has been a lot of talk about sharing environmental data. But we question whether knowledge is enough.

As early as 1930, a British engineer named Guy Calendar warned that increased carbon emissions as a result of industrialization was beginning to raise the global surface temperature of the earth. The following year, a man named E.O. Hulbert wrote in the Physical Review that if atmosphere CO2 concentrations doubled or tripled, then the earth’s surface temperature would increase by 4 and 7 degrees Celsius.

Now — nearly a century later — climate change is well underway. This is what a handful of high profile luminaries are currently addressing at the Eye on Earth Summit in Abu Dhabi, and The National reports a focus on knowledge. Sharing environmental data, experts say, will bring us closer to mitigating climate change. Will it?

Sharing environmental data

That the most developed countries need to share their accumulated climate change knowledge has been a common view at the summit being held at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center.

According to The National, Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak - the secretary general of the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) – told conference attendees in an opening address that it is “particularly important” for the UAE to have access to environmental information. This sentiment was echoed by Catherine Armour, the programme manager of the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative.

Geo-mapping specialist Jack Dangermond from the Environmental Systems Research Institute argued that a platform should be developed complete with maps and charts and the most comprehensive environmental data available, all of which should be shared internationally.

But is knowledge enough?

He said “this will change the world,” and an online Environmental Atlas of Abu Dhabi Emirate, which will be an e-learning tool available to the public, is soon to be launched.

While this is a welcome development and we agree that knowledge should be shared widely, is there really any indication that this knowledge will save us from ourselves?

If knowledge is enough, why did it take us nearly a century to get serious about climate change?

If knowledge is enough, why have the COP meetings in Copenhagen, Cancun, and now Durban failed to produce the kind of sweeping change that has to happen if we plan to keep temperatures down?

And if knowledge is enough, why are we even considering perpetuating any kind of new technology that will increase the amount of carbon emissions in our atmosphere?

Knowledge is good and should be shared, but we need more. We need Ecocide laws, and better environmental regulation in general.

:: The National

image via Morguefile

On the face of things, the COP 17 conference in Durban was more successful than Copenhagen or Cancun, but the truth is, nothing has changed. Even though the Kyoto Protocol was extended with a plan to roll out a new protocol by 2015 and put it into effect by 2020, The Economist points out that these protocols will remain useless until such time that meaningful disincentives are put in place to keep big polluters from breaking their carbon-mitigation promises. 

One size fits all

Meanwhile, America’s biggest grievance – that no distinction should be made between developed and developing countries – was put to rest: climate change will be considered a one-size-fits-all problem when the new protocol is developed. This means that developing and developed countries will be expected to take equal responsibility for keeping carbon emissions down — or not.

The Economist reports that although this new distinction has ended a bitter battle, “It has also rendered [the Kyoto Protocol] ineffective, given that the so-called developing countries given a free pass under Kyoto, including South Korea and Saudi Arabia as well as China and India, are now responsible for 58% of global emissions.”

A penniless climate fund

The long-awaited design of a Green Climate Fund that is supposed to dole out $100 billion to poorer countries by 2020 so that they will be able to protect themselves against climate change and reduce their emissions is another quasi COP 17 success story. Although its design signifies some kind of move forward, it lacks substance since no one has been able to agree where the money will be sourced to float this fund.

These half-hearted measures simply won’t do enough to prevent temperatures from rising beyond the 2°C deemed tolerable by climate science experts. More likely, we are looking at a 4°C rise by 2060 according to most estimates.

What a 4 degree Celsius temperature rise looks like

A 2009 study prepared for the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change by scientists at the Met Office outlined some of the ramifications of a 4 degree rise in average global temperature. Here are just a few of them, taken from The Guardian.

• The water supply of half the world’s population will be threatened
• Up to half of all animal and plant species will be wiped out
• Low coasts will be swamped
• Both South and West Africa and the Arctic can expect a 10°C rise in temperature

One thing is for certain, our failure to create radical changes will ensure that most people alive to today will experience the most catastrophic effects of a much hotter world.

:: The Economist

image via Morguefile

It is not just the Occupy Wall St protesters who are angry at the behavior of banks. At the Durban Climate Talks this week, NGOs attending the Durban Climate Talks named the three worst banks in the world who have funded the most coal projects since the Kyoto Accord was signed. Funding coal projects is about the worst thing banks can do for the climate. The top three banks in the world for coal project funding are… JP Morgan Chase, Citibank and Bank of America. (All, you might note, US banks).

Yet one of the these three global pariahs (in my opinion) – Bank of America –  has just revived the military SolarStrong project, 120,000 solar installations on military housing rooftops that will more than double the total residential solar installations in the US, and be the largest residential solar project in US history.

Confused? Wait, it gets even more strange…

SolarStrong was an ambitious five-year plan by Solar City, a solar leasing company that installs, owns and operates rooftop solar installations, mostly for homeowners, and provides the homeowners with solar electricity at a lower cost than utility power.

They were just about to be approved in September by the US Department of Energy for financial backing to build more than $1 billion in solar power projects for privatized US military housing communities across the country.

The five-year project plan would comprise a combined 300 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity, distributed across 120,000 installations on military housing rooftops. The Obama administration requires all the Federal Agencies to cut their greenhouse gases 28% by 2020. The military, one of the few US agencies that is adequately funded, has been meeting the requirement with alacrity. They needed additional funding to begin, though, which the DOE was on track to provide.

But then one of the other solar companies that the DOE had guaranteed a loan for went bankrupt and Republicans in the US – who work for the 1%  and against renewable energy – lept at the opportunity to gin-up a fake scandal over solar funding by the Obama administration. 

As Andrew Burger at Cleantechnica puts it:

With the media buzzing about the Solyndra “scandal,” House Republicans launched a campaign to cut and claw back federal funding and financial assistance for clean energy. Caught up in the furor, an anticipated partial DOE Section 1705 loan guarantee fell by the wayside as the DOE notified SolarCity that it would not be able to process the application in time to meet a stipulated program deadline.

The DOE could not meet the deadline because congressional Republicans had added vast quantities of new red tape at the last minute, as Secretary Chu pointed out in an uncharacteristically peevish email to Solar City at the time. So the great project was killed. In the meantime, the Occupy Wall Street movement erupted, spontaneously, worldwide, with its message to banks that the 99% are bigger than you, the 1%.

Bank of America had loaned $4.3 billion for coal projects in just the last year. But that was before the Occupy movement.

With this swift assistance to SolarCity in providing the needed capital for it to invest in the $1 billion 120,000 solar rooftop arrays to revive SolarStrong, BofA is almost a quarter of the way to parity in funding for renewable power for the year. With this surprise move, Bank of America almost appears to be turning its back on the interests of the 1%.

Is there redemption? Perhaps…but this is something that foreigners watching America’s solar business should think about.

Read more on the Occupy Movement:

How Israel’s Tent Cities Influenced Occupy Wall Street
Islamic Banking & Why It’s (Theoretically) Good For The …

Image: Mat McDermott

]]> http://www.greenprophet.com/2011/12/worlds-worst-coal-funding-bank-just-saved-the-biggest-us-rooftop-solar-project-ever/feed/ 0 http://www.greenprophet.com/2011/11/israelis-invent-more-land-for-a-climate-changed-world/ http://www.greenprophet.com/2011/11/israelis-invent-more-land-for-a-climate-changed-world/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:02:03 +0000 Susan Kraemer http://www.greenprophet.com/?p=57584 Ocean bricks are underwater infrastructure for wind turbines and more futuristic ideas.

Here’s a business that might do really well in the future. Israeli inventors Yoram Alkon and Dr. Eli Kent have come up with a giant “ocean brick” concept that would have many uses in the strange new world that we are inadvertently creating – a world of rising sea levels, sinking aquifers, flooding wetlands and melting permafrost.

Their invention is simple. A scalable, modular building block with a largely hollow base that can be used to meet many needs for support upon which to build a kind of artificial land, wherever needed, on both land and sea.

As municipalities have to invest in protection from rising sea levels in a future climate-changed world, units can be put in place over time as bases upon which to erect new quay walls, breakwaters and sea walls. As seas rise higher, more can be always be added later on top, because it is modular.

Since the top surface is walkable, it can form bases upon which to construct artificial islands.

For lowlands susceptible to flooding, such as New Orleans and the Netherlands, the mostly hollow structure can be used to stabilize soils. In a world in which we deplete our aquifers, and sinkholes develop, as in the Dead Sea, and parts of the Ogalla aquifer throughout the US, it can be used to provide a firm footing on soft soils. On land becoming destabilized as permafrost melts, as in Alaska and Siberia, it can serve the same need for stability.

It is strong enough to be drivable, so it also can be used to create a giant base to harness  energy from further and further out to sea. For the energy industries, it can be easily towed out to sea and sunk, and piled up to build an oil platforms for off-shore oil and gas drilling (and Israel just uncovered the mother of all gas fields off its shoreline) and it could also be used in the same way to build the base to support off-shore wind platforms, or used underwater for housing tidal generators embedded in the round holes. Each hole is 6 meters – or about 18 feet across.

The base is formed of hollow concrete precast modules, with a built-in solid section of a truss in the form of a tetra-hedron: a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces. This makes it very strong, with the minimum of material used, so it is lighter weight. The modules can be piled up like cubes, and then can be interconnected to create a buoyant, stiff, light and strong superstructure.

The tetra-hedron design cuts out 92% of the filling material normally needed, and in marine environments it can serve the sea fauna as habitat/sanctuary, manmade reef and fish enhancer, making it an environmentally friendly concept, both in material use, and in fish-friendliness. Because it is largely hollow spaces, it is very friendly to marine life; barnacles and shellfish actually love these kinds of “hole-y” structures to build homes on. It is one reason that a Swedish study found that off-shore wind power actually increased marine life around its bases.

These modular mega-structures are very versatile, with a myriad of uses in a world of increasing carbon constraints and changing climates.

::Ocean Bricks

Related stories:

Israel’s First Tidal Power Plant Completed In Jaffa | Green Prophet

The Ocean: the “Saudi Arabia” Of Renewable Energy

SDE Energy and India Make Waves With Tidal Power 

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