Sep 18 2009

Climate Changes

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

"The world's ocean surface temperature was the warmest for any August on record," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "and the warmest on record averaged for any June-August (Northern Hemisphere summer/Southern Hemisphere winter) season." In addition, NOAA reported, "the global land surface temperature . . . was 1.33 degrees F above the 20th century average . . . and ranked as the fourth warmest August on record."

A sweeping new economic report from the World Bank says the world must overcome its inertia and commit to spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year by 2030 to promote clean energy and deal with natural disasters caused by global warming. "We are particularly good at acting on threats that can be linked to a human face, that present themselves as unexpected, dramatic or and immediate," the report states. "The slow pace of climate change as well as the delayed, intangible and statistical natures of its risks simply do not move us." 

A leading British economist and author of the British government's report on climate change, Lord Stern, says rich nations may need to think about foregoing future growth as the price of preventing runaway global warming. To give everyone in the world the same carbon footprint by 2050 would require cuts in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent, he said.

A dollar spent on family planning reduces carbon emissions more than four times as effectively as a dollar spent on low-carbon technologies, according to report from the London School of Economics. Giving access to contraception to all women who want it would reduce the world's population by half a billion people by 2050, saving 34 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions, the study estimated.

Beer drinkers have a special reason to care about climate change: Higher global temperatures are damaging the quality of Saaz hops used in pilsner lager, according to a climatologist at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. The heat reduces the production of alpha acids that give the hops their prized taste.

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