One out of three counties across the contiguous U.S., says a recent study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council, should brace for water shortages by mid-century as a result of human induced climate change. (Media credit/Comstock)

Climate change promises to have a very big impact on water supplies in the United States as well as around the world. A recent study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group, and carried out by the consulting firm Tetra Tech found that one out of three counties across the contiguous U.S. should brace for water shortages by mid-century as a result of human induced climate change. The group found that 400 of these 1,100 or so counties will face “extremely high risks of water shortages.”

According to Tetra Tech’s analysis, parts of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas will be hardest hit by warming-related water shortages. The agriculturally focused Great Plains and arid Southwest are at highest risk of increasing water demand outstripping fast dwindling supplies.

While the mechanisms behind this predicted dwindling of water supplies is complex, key factors include: rising sea levels and encroaching ocean water absorbing lower elevation freshwater sources; rising surface temperatures causing faster evaporation of existing reservoirs; and increasing wildfires stripping terrestrial landscapes of their ability to retain water in soils.

Researchers have already begun to notice dwindling water supplies across the American West in recent years, given less accumulation of snow in the region’s mountains as temperatures rise. According to a 2008 study out of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography and published in the journal Science, Western snowpack has been melting earlier than it did in the past thanks to global warming, leading to markedly longer dry periods through the late spring and summer months in states already suffering from extended droughts. Given that the length and strength of these changes over the last 50 years cannot be explained by natural variations, researchers believe human induced climate change is the culprit.

The upshot of these changes is that Americans of every stripe need to curtail their water usage—from farmers irrigating their crops to homeowners watering their lawns to you and I taking shorter showers and turning off the tap while brushing our teeth. Even more important, water and resource policy managers need to conceive of new paradigms for the management of freshwater reserves to make the most of what we do have. And all of us need to work together to cut down on the emissions of greenhouse gases that have led to global warming in the first place.

Analysts also worry that warming-related water shortages could erupt into conflict, especially in parts of the world where one country or group controls water resources needed by others across national borders, such as the Middle East where already five percent of the world’s population relies on just one percent of the world’s fresh water. Parts of Africa, India and Asia are also at risk for water-related conflicts. American policymakers hope that the situation won’t get that dire in the U.S., but only time will tell.

CONTACTS: NRDC, www.nrdc.org; Tetra Tech, www.tetratech.com; Scripps Institute for Oceanography, www.sio.ucds.edu.

It can hardly be called a new development or a scientific breakthrough; in fact, it’s been around for millennia. Nearly 2000 years ago, farmers in the Amazon basin used it to create terra preta, once regaled by explorers as the most fertile and beautiful of foamy, luscious soil.

Yes, it’s what we now call biochar and it’s been gaining popularity in the scientific community for years. Recently, it was brought back into international spotlight as Britain’s government commissioned a study on biochar’s potential, and the US released a study saying that widespread use of the additive could result in a 12 per cent drop in global greenhouse emissions.

The product is quite simple. It’s a charcoal-like soil additive that consists of cooked biowastes, like wood chips and animal manure. When it’s added to soil, the carbon dioxide released from plants is locked up for thousands of years, instead of being released into our environment. The soil is pitch black as a result of the high concentration of carbon, and is much more fertile.

According to an article in a 2006 issue of Nature, "terra preta contrasts strongly with normal soil and in colour and produces much more vigorous crops."

If further studies come back with positive results, the only thing left to determine would be whether creating terra preta would release more emissions than would be saved by its use. Many scientists argue that exact point, outlined in a letter sent last year by environmental groups to various policy makers. Of course, that would make biochar more of a problem than a solution.

However, according to the same 2006 Nature article, "a hectare of metre-deep terra preta can contain 250 tonnes of carbon, as opposed to 100 tonnes in unimproved soils…The extra carbon is not just in the char — it’s also in the organic carbon and enhanced bacterial biomass that the char sustains." The scientist who conducted these trials, Bruno Glaser, as well as his colleagues in the industry, feel that carbon-friendly ways of production can and should be discovered, so the world can reap biochar’s potential.

Many scientists remain skeptical, but if the products ends up being all it’s expected to be, it will decrease the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and help produce crops in soils that were previously polluted and lacking proper nutrients.

If biochar’s use can somehow be implemented in farms in our world’s more under-developed areas, it could prove to be a literal live saver. In the same Nature article, the author cites the remarkable results of a biochar vs. regular soil trial.

"Bruno Glaser…estimates that productivity of crops in terra preta is twice that of crops grown in nearby soils."

Further studies will determine whether biochar can be produced in low-emission methods. If it can, the result would be a simple, natural product that can potentially reduce emissions and increase food production in the forgotten and ignored corners of our world.

Two of today’s biggest social, moral and political issues — global warming and hunger — could be partially reversed because of innovations by Amazon tribes thousands of years ago.

For more information, go to http://biocharfund.org/

This article was also published at http://hunger-undernutrition.org.

VENICE –Venice and its lagoon have just experienced an unusually different Christmas and New Year’s that can’t be ignored.

The city of doges and its islands, as well as nearby Chioggia, have for some time coexisted with a sea that periodically submerges the lower lying areas. Now however, even the most philosophical Venetians seem concerned.

Due to its planning peculiarity and its inestimable artistic heritage, Venice is universally considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world and listed among the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Climate change is now placing the city’s future at risk.

For tourists splashing around in the flooded alleys and squares, and filling their digital cameras with unusual images, is a childish and unrepeatable amusement. For those who live there, it is easy to put on rubber boots and waterproof clothing to walk in single file on the walkways. However, when the tides rise excessively one needs boots up to one’s knees, and if the water rises more, the boots must cover the thighs. Shopkeepers, warned by sirens, move their goods to higher shelves, but when the level rises more damage is unavoidable. Recently this has happened far too often even for the very patient Venetians.

Even during the days of the Copenhagen summit, Venice was underwater, but no one even mentioned it. During those days, and later, a series of exceptionally high tides, not seen for many years, flooded the city on the lagoon.

It is not only the repetition of these exceptional events that alarms a usually very prudent personality such as the Director of the Tide Centre for the Municipality of Venice, Paolo Canestrelli, probably one of the world’s greatest experts on this subject, it is the extreme frequency of these high tides that worries him in addition to the phenomenon of rising sea levels.

According to his data, in 2009 the number of tides measuring about 80 cm (about 31.5 inches) reached a record number. To make things clearer, Piazza San Marco has already been flooded 125 times (80 cm of water are sufficient to cover most of the square while 85 cm cover it completely). In 2002, another record year, the square was flooded 111 times, in 1966 it was underwater 66 times. Furthermore, the average level of the Adriatic Sea has risen by 3 CM in the course of the last decade, which in Venice, in the Northern Adriatic, means three times as much. 2009 was a record year for 90 CM tides (58 times), 100 CM (32 times), 110 CM (16 times), 120 CM (6 times), 130 cm (4 times), and 140 cm. (twice).

If until ten years ago the Venetian situation could still be considered as a particular and different case. Today it has become obvious that the Venice emergency is a sensationally tangible symptom of dramatic global climate change.

The city and the lagoon will in future years be protected by the system of mobile dams built in the lagoon’s three mouths, the so-called EEM (Experimental Electromechanical Module). Sixty percent of building is now complete. When it starts operating there is the risk that this increase in high tides will oblige the EMS to closed often and possibly even permanently. Should that occur, additional hydraulic work will be needed to allow the water in the lagoon to be changed, to avoid it becoming an unhealthy swamp.

I’m as realistic as any other fair-minded person, especially on the topic of climate change, and unlike some I did not believe Copenhagen would be the backdrop upon which a herculean climate change document would be drafted. Change comes in small steps and since Kyoto failed with a bang, I knew Copenhagen would act as just the first stage in our ultimate goal to reduce emissions worldwide.

I live in Canada so I’m so very disappointed in what our Prime Minister is doing there. In short, he’s done everything by something. And that’s a travesty because we really suck when it comes to climate change. He opted to not deliver an address at the plenary session and has repeatedly suggested that developing countries hammer out a pact to reduce emissions before Canada.

That’s unfair. The developed world went through its industrial revolution with little regard for the environment, as it was not seen as a factor in those days. Now, as countries like India and China revolutionize, developed countries like Canada are demanding that they take action first? While of course those two powerhouses must act to reduce their emissions in some way, they cannot be expected to take the lead or draft a binding agreement now, just as the world is taking notice of their strides and unloading a great deal of respect on their leaders (see: White House Inaugural State Dinner). In the end, climate change is a political game.

Leaders must lead and as leaders of the world the developed nations must draft a BINDING agreement first. Copenhagen produced a non-binding agreement to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Farenheit. While neither the United States, South Africa, India, Brazil or China, all signatories of the pact, stated how this goal would be acheived, it is a goal set and one that the UN has taken “note” of but not approved. It even includes developing nations.

Of course this non-binding pact is hardly better than a verbal agreement, and is far from “unprecedented” as President Obama stated. However, while it isn’t groundbreaking, it is a start, and Obama was correct in stating that it’s a big deal that major economies (the U.S., India and China) have agreed that climate change needs to be addressed.

Other developing countries have lambasted the deal, which does include a clause to commit $100 billion by 2020 to developing nations affected by global warming. The major downfall of the agreement is its lack of specific pollution reductions, which is one of the main ways to keep temperature rise to a minimum. A 3.6 degree cap on temperature rise won’t be honored if pollution reductions aren’t drafted and agreed upon in a BINDING agreement.

However in that agreement, the United States or some other developed country, will have to take the lead, unlike Harper suggests. And that is step two.

The 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy was a massive letdown. Personally, I didn’t expect much more. The G8 operates under the guise of real leadership, when really the summit has become nothing more than a glorified vacation for the world’s most powerful leaders. But as we’ve seen in the past and present, power does not equal intelligence.

Empty threats were issued toward political powers in Iran. The very foundation of democracy is threatened in the divided country, but the world’s “saviors” offered nothing.

The strong foundation of the worldwide economic recession shook not one bit; no economic plans were laid out. In the worst economic crisis in about 80 years, the richest offered no solutions.

In perhaps the largest disappointment of the summit the leaders made such a wavering, uncommitted “commitment” to climate change, simply declaring that the eight superpowers had agreed to “substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.” Weak. Those who have been lambasted and forced to be environmentally-friendly were flipped off by their own leaders.

The plan drafted in L’Aquila, according to the LA Times, specifies no real interim targets either, just that global emissions reduction progress will be reviewed every so often.

Sadly enough, the recession will hinder climate control progress as well as the ability of developing countries to adapt to changes that have already occurred. Some groups predict that as much as $150 billion is needed every year to aid regions in developing countries that have already been affected by climate change. No one has that money, and may not any time soon since no solid economic revisions were drafted.

Other countries have demanded the G8 dramatically reduce their emissions by as much as 40 per cent. From these eight leaders however, there was no urgency. No commitment. No sense.

In 2010, the leaders meet in Muskoka, Ontario. By then, even more criticism will be launched their way. Hopefully it knocks some sense into them.

Dear EarthTalk: Don’t some scientists point to sunspots and solar wind as having more impact on climate change than human industrial activity? — David Noss, California, MD

Sunspots are storms on the sun’s surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun’s corona. Scientists believe that the number of spots on the sun cycles over time, reaching a peak”"the so-called Solar Maximum”"every 11 years or so. Some studies indicate that sunspot activity overall has doubled in the last century. The apparent result down here on Earth is that the sun glows brighter by about 0.1 percent now than it did 100 years ago.

Solar wind, according to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, consists of magnetized plasma flares and in some cases is linked to sunspots. It emanates from the sun and influences galactic rays that may in turn affect atmospheric phenomena on Earth, such as cloud cover. But scientists are the first to admit that they have a lot to learn about phenomena like sunspots and solar wind, some of which is visible to humans on Earth in the form of Aurora Borealis and other far flung interplanetary light shows.

Some skeptics of human-induced climate change blame global warming on natural variations in the sun’s output due to sunspots and/or solar wind. They say it’s no coincidence that an increase in sunspot activity and a run-up of global temperatures on Earth are happening concurrently, and view regulation of carbon emissions as folly with negative ramifications for our economy and tried-and-true energy infrastructure.

“[V]ariations in solar energy output have far more effect on Earth’s climate than soccer moms driving SUVs” Southwestern Law School professor Joerg Knipprath, writes in his “ËœToken Conservative’ blog. “A rational thinker would understand that, especially if he or she has some understanding of the limits of human influence. But the global warming boosters have this unbounded hubris that it is humans who control nature, and that human activity can terminally despoil the planet as well as cause its salvation.”

Many climate scientists agree that sunspots and solar wind could be playing a role in climate change, but the vast majority view it as very minimal and attribute Earth’s warming primarily to emissions from industrial activity”"and they have thousands of peer-reviewed studies available to back up that claim.

Peter Foukal of the Massachusetts-based firm Heliophysics, Inc., who has tracked sunspot intensities from different spots around the globe dating back four centuries, also concludes that such solar disturbances have little or no impact on global warming. Nevertheless, he adds, most up-to-date climate models”"including those used by the United Nations’ prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)”"incorporate the effects of the sun’s variable degree of brightness in their overall calculations.

Ironically, the only way to really find out if phenomena like sunspots and solar wind are playing a larger role in climate change than most scientists now believe would be to significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Only in the absence of that potential driver will researchers be able to tell for sure how much impact natural influences have on the Earth’s climate.

CONTACTS:‚  NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, www.solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov; Token Conservative Blog, www.tokenconservative.com; IPCC, www.ipcc.ch.

Dear EarthTalk: Are the United States’ vast oil shale resources a potential source of energy?

– Larry LeDoux, Honolulu, HI

Oil shale is a fine-grained sedimentary rock that contains significant amounts of kerogen, a solid mixture of organic chemical compounds that can be converted into synthetic liquid fuel similar to oil, or into shale gas similar to petroleum-derived natural gas. Geologists believe there is more oil shale out there in the rocks of the world”"three‚ trillion barrels worth of fuel”"than there is oil in existing reserves globally.

Oil shale has been mined extensively in Brazil, China, Estonia, Germany, Israel and Russia, but up to two-thirds of the world’s supply lies in the Green River basin of the western United States, including parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. To date, these American oil shale resources remain virtually untapped, but an 11th hour executive order by the Bush administration in 2008 put two million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land across Wyoming, Utah and Colorado up for lease to oil shale extractors.

Other nations with oil shale reserves have been mining them for decades for power generation and other uses, but American enthusiasm has run hot and cold, depending on oil prices. The U.S. was bullish on oil shale during the 1970′s oil shocks, but when gas prices fell again, so did the enthusiasm for oil shale.

American companies didn’t look into mining domestic oil shale again until 2003″"again, thanks to spiking oil prices. George W. Bush’s Energy Policy Act of 2005 officially opened federal lands to oil shale extraction. But then once again lowered oil prices, along with environmental concerns and growing enthusiasm for renewable energy sources left oil shale’s future in the U.S. again uncertain.

For their part, environmental groups are unequivocally against oil shale extraction. For one, extracting operations destroy affected landscapes, forcing plants and animals out, with regeneration unlikely for decades. Another big issue with oil shale extraction is water usage. The process requires as much as five barrels of water”"for dust control, cooling and other purposes”"for every barrel of shale oil produced.

Oil shale extraction is also very energy-intensive, and as such is no solution to our global warming woes. Researchers have found that a gallon of shale oil can emit as much as 50 percent more carbon dioxide than a gallon of conventional oil would over its given lifecycle from extraction to tailpipe.

Due to these concerns and others, 13 environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society, Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, teamed up in January 2009 to file suit against the federal government for opening up all that western U.S. land to oil shale development. The suit contends that the BLM failed to properly consider air quality and endangered species impacts in the region. The groups also contend that the development would require the construction of 10 new coal-fired power plants in order to get at and process the oil shale, significantly upping the carbon footprint of the entire region.

Green groups hope that the Obama administration will overturn Bush’s decision to lease development rights on the land, which is near three national parks in one of the least developed parts of the U.S.

CONTACTS: Bureau of Land Management, www.blm.gov; Wilderness Society, www.wilderness.org; Sierra Club, www.sierraclub.org; Natural Resources Defense Council, www.nrdc.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.