Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2013

Planet Likely to Warm by 4C by 2100, Scientists Warn

Temperature rises resulting from unchecked climate change will be at the severe end of those projected, according to a new scientific study.

The scientist leading the research said that unless emissions of greenhouse gases were cut, the planet would heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100, twice the level the world's governments deem dangerous.

The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further still.  The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change.

Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, who led the new work, said: "This study breaks new ground twice:  first, by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and second, by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favour of the higher and more damaging estimates."

"4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous," Sherwood told the Guardian.  "For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet", with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.

The research is a "big advance" that halves the uncertainty about how much warming is caused by rises in carbon emissions, according to scientists commenting on the study, published in the journal Nature.  Hideo Shiogama and Tomoo Ogura, at Japan's National Institute for Environmental Studies, said the explanation of how fewer clouds form as the world warms was "convincing", and agreed this indicated future climate would be greater than expected.

Planet Likely to Warm by 4C by 2100, Scientists Warn

West Texas Wind Soon Will Light Up the Region

A 3,000-mile network of transmission lines designed to bring wind-generated power from West Texas to homes and businesses from Dallas to San Antonio should be fully operational by Tuesday, year’s end.

“There is a vast amount of wind energy that will suddenly be accessible to cities across Texas,” said Jeff Clark, executive director of the Wind Coalition, a nonprofit association focused on wind resources throughout the state and the Midwest.

Grid operators are on track to have switched on the last of the power lines developed as part of the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones initiative, a $6.8 billion effort that began in 2008.

These lines eventually will provide pathways for up to 18,500 megawatts of electricity to travel from thousands of turbines — each as tall as a football field is long — on the windswept plains around San Angelo, Abilene and Amarillo, the Texas Public Utility Commission reports.

Texas already leads the nation in wind power with 7,960 turbines, each one with blades of 150 feet or more, capable of generating between 1 and 4 megawatts of electricity.  One megawatt is enough to power 500 homes under normal conditions.

The state has capacity, under optimal conditions, to generate 12,000 megawatts, more than twice that of No. 2 producer California.  The new transmission network expands the power grid enough to allow a 50 percent increase in capacity.

West Texas Wind Soon Will Light Up the Region

Congress Is Screwing Public Transit Users—and We’ll All Pay the Price

The tax credit for public transit is set to fall by more than 45% next year while the subsidy for parking goes up.  Why that's bad news for everyone.

There’s an enormous public benefit to supporting public transit.  The overall effects of having buses and subways available saves an estimated 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually, and reduces carbon emissions by 37 million metric tons a year.

Congress Is Screwing Public Transit Users—and We’ll All Pay the Price

The Weather: Be Prepared

In a disaster, preparedness is everything.  Haiyan killed more than 6,000 people – another 1,800 are still unaccounted for – and blasted more than a million homes.  Cyclone Phailin, an almost equally ferocious windstorm, hit the coast of India at Odisha in October and took only 21 lives.  The devastation was real but, in an exercise that now looks like a model of forethought and good government, almost a million people were evacuated in time.  The story of the two tropical windstorms is a practical illustration of the argument that there is no such thing as a "natural" disaster: the hazards are real, but the loss of life and property follows because people were not warned, or were warned but took no action, or were housed in dangerous structures.

Another reason for taking seriously the damage of relatively small-scale sporadic flooding and wind damage:  it exacts an enduring economic cost.  The UN office for disaster risk reduction recently counted up the toll of small disasters.  These are events in which more than 10 people die, that affect more than 1,000 people, or are followed by a national request for international assistance.  They can be slow, almost imperceptible events, such as droughts that turn into famine, or a sudden landslip on a hillside crowded with makeshift homes.

The Weather:  Be Prepared

Eagle Ford Shale: Breathe at Your Own Risk

Fracking is in full swing in the Eagle Ford Shale region of southern Texas, home to the most productive oil field in the United States.

Earthworks took air samples and used an infrared camera, which makes the release of methane and other volatile organic compounds visible.  They concluded:

"Evidence from TCEQ and Earthworks/ShaleTest investigations indicate that air pollution from oil and gas development in the Eagle Ford Shale definitely threatens, and likely harms, the health of Karnes County Texas residents including the Cerny family.  Despite these findings, no action has been taken by regulators to rein in the irresponsible operations, or otherwise protect area residents."

The Eagle Ford Shale region has transitioned rapidly from pastoral to industrial over the last two years with few regulatory roadblocks.

Karnes Country now has frack ponds, drill sites, tank battery and saltwater treatment facilities and wastewater injection wells for disposing contaminated water.  There are short-term housing units, called "man camps," for the workers and a steady flow of 18-wheelers on the local two-lane highways.

Eagle Ford Shale: Breathe at Your Own Risk

Monday, Dec. 30, 2013

Natural Defenses Can Best Protect Coasts Says Study

It isn’t just the catastrophic storms and tropical cyclones that threaten disaster for the world’s coastal cities.  Simple, insidious things like sea level rise, coastal subsidence and the loss of wetlands could bring the sea water coursing through city streets in the decades to come.

Jonathan Woodruff of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the U.S. and colleagues report in Nature that shorelines are increasingly at risk, and humans must adapt and learn to live with increasing hazard.

Many of the world’s great cities are on low-lying coastal plains, or on river estuaries, and are therefore anyway at risk as sea levels rise because of global warming.

But human action too – by damming rivers, by extracting ground water and by building massive structures on sedimentary soils – has accelerated coastal subsidence. Add to this the possibility of more intense tropical cyclones as sea surface temperatures rise, and coastal cities face a stormy future.

On October 29, 2012 Superstorm Sandy brought a surge of sea water into the streets, subway tunnels and basements of New York City and caused $65 billion worth of damage along the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S.  It was an unprecedented event.  But it may happen again.

Natural Defenses Can Best Protect Coasts Says Study

Sea Ice Volume Is Not Recovering

Andy Lee Robinson has updated his indispensable animation of sea ice volume – which makes the point yet again how dramatically northern sea ice is declining – despite the inevitable efforts of distorters and deniers.

Also worth remembering that for total area of ice, we are at a low that is historic over not just the satellite era, but at least 1450 years into the past.  Look at the figure on the right, derived in 2011 from temperature proxies which were then compared to ocean sediments – (different critters live in iced-over ocean vs open water) and consider that the so-called “recovery” of sea ice is just a tiny squiggle at the bottom end of a 150 year long slide.

Sea Ice Volume Is Not Recovering

Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013

The Climate Champions of 2013

In a year that saw carbon pollution levels hit the milestone of 400 parts per million in the atmosphere and brought record-breaking drought, fires, typhoons, and air pollution, it can be easy to forget there are climate champions out there, pushing back on those climate grinches.  Here are a few of the climate heroes that made progress, inspired, or otherwise made an impact in 2013.

The Climate Champions of 2013

New Energy Struggles on Its Way to Markets

To stave off climate change, sources of electricity that do not emit carbon will have to replace the ones that do.  But at the moment, two of those largest sources, nuclear and wind power, are trying to kill each other off.

In the electricity market, both are squeezed by pressure from natural gas, which provides some carbon reductions compared with coal but will not bring the country anywhere near its goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Natural gas has a carbon footprint that is at least three times as large as that goal.

New Energy Struggles on Its Way to Markets

The Nation: The Coming ‘Instant Planetary Emergency’

I discovered a set of perfectly serious scientists—not the majority of all climate scientists by any means, but thoughtful outliers—who suggest that it isn’t just really, really bad; it’s catastrophic.

“We as a species have never experienced 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources, and ecology at the University of Arizona and a climate change expert of twenty-five years, told me.  “We’ve never been on a planet with no Arctic ice, and we will hit the average of 400 ppm…within the next couple of years.  At that time, we’ll also see the loss of Arctic ice in the summers.… This planet has not experienced an ice-free Arctic for at least the last three million years.”

For the uninitiated, in the simplest terms, here’s what an ice-free Arctic would mean when it comes to heating the planet:  minus the reflective ice cover on Arctic waters, solar radiation would be absorbed, not reflected, by the Arctic Ocean.  That would heat those waters, and hence the planet, further.  This effect has the potential to change global weather patterns, vary the flow of winds, and even someday possibly alter the position of the jet stream.  Polar jet streams are fast flowing rivers of wind positioned high in the earth’s atmosphere that push cold and warm air masses around, playing a critical role in determining the weather of our planet.

The Nation:  The Coming ‘Instant Planetary Emergency’

Saturday, Dec. 28, 2013

In the Midst of Record Oil Boom, Obama Administration Seeks More Oil Production

Despite the oil boom already well underway, the Associated Press reported this week that the Obama administration was seeking to 'clean up' coal by capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and using it to force more oil out of the ground.

"Obama has spent more than $1 billion on carbon-capture projects tied to oil fields and has pledged billions more for clean coal," according to the AP report.  While the administration has touted the environmental benefits of carbon-capture, some are skeptical of a plan that seeks to reduce carbon emissions by increasing the production of another fossil fuel -- which will only emit more CO2 when burned.

Fueling the criticism, AP notes that "the administration also did not evaluate the global warming emissions associated with the oil production when it proposed requiring power plants to capture carbon."

And the report cites a 2009 peer-reviewed paper which "found that for every ton of carbon dioxide injected underground into an oil field, four times more carbon dioxide is released when the oil produced is burned."

In the Midst of Record Oil Boom, Obama Administration Seeks More Oil Production

2013: The Best Energy Stories of the Year

Clean energy technology made progress in 2013, but low-carbon energy isn’t growing fast enough to meet goals for limiting climate change.  That would require switching energy sources as fast as France did when it converted almost all of its electricity generation from fossil fuels to nuclear power in just 30 years.  While solar panels and wind turbines are being installed quickly, worldwide fossil fuel consumption is rising even faster, causing greenhouse gas emission rates to go up.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is drawing up carbon dioxide rules that will shut down coal plants, but they will do little to reduce emissions more than low natural gas prices already have by prompting a shift away from coal.  Meanwhile, coal consumption is increasing around the world.

The fact that fossil fuels are likely here to stay for many decades heightens the need to capture and store the carbon dioxide they emit.  Progress on demonstrating such technology at a large scale has slowed, but researchers are continuing to develop innovative technologies that could make storing carbon far cheaper, including the prospect of using advanced fuel cells to capture greenhouse gases.

2013: The Best Energy Stories of the Year

With National Treasures at Risk, D.C. Fights Against Flooding

The nation's capital is not exactly a beach town.  But the cherry-tree-lined Tidal Basin, fed by the Potomac River, laps at the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. And, especially since Superstorm Sandy, officials in Washington have a clear idea of what would happen in a worst-case storm scenario.

"The water would go across the World War II memorial, come up 17th Street," says Tony Vidal of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  "And there are actually three spots where the water would come up where we don't have ... a closure structure right now."

Vidal is standing at one of those spots: the corner of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue, not far above sea level.  It's just a few blocks from the White House, though Vidal says that's protected by a slight rise in the land.  The U.S. Capitol is likewise protected — it is called Capitol Hill, after all.

But new flood maps in 2010 declared that the area between those two places, known as the Federal Triangle, is a flood zone.  It includes key government buildings like the Departments of Justice and Commerce, and the Internal Revenue Service.

Officials have long known the area was vulnerable and have been using sandbags for years.  But after 2005's Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps deemed that approach no longer acceptable.  So it's been building a $10 million flood barrier at this corner.

With National Treasures at Risk, D.C. Fights Against Flooding

Global Warming Will Intensify Drought, Says New Study

A very recent study by Trenberth et al., "Global warming and changes in drought" published in Natural Climate Change has investigated the way droughts are measured. They discuss various drought metrics such as the Standardized Precipitation Index which is based entirely on precipitation, the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index which includes ET effects, and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) which balances precipitation, evaporation, runoff, and includes local soil moisture and vegetation.

This most sophisticated metric has led different teams of researchers to very different conclusions about drought trends.  One study reports "little change in drought over the past 60 years" while another, "increasing drought under global warming in observations and models". How could researchers come to such different conclusions?  It turns out that various versions of the PDSI have differing algorithms for calculating ET which partially explains the differences.

First, quantifying evapotranspiration is very challenging; the observational spread is large as are regional uncertainties.  Second, the choice of baseline period is crucial.  The first study mentioned above used a 1950-2008 baseline which includes human impacts while the second study baseline is limited to 1950-1979 which, while having less human influence turned out to be a wetter than normal period.

Global Warming Will Intensify Drought, Says New Study

Friday, Dec. 27, 2013

Reducing Sunlight by Geoengineering Will Not Cool Earth

Two German scientists have just confirmed that you can’t balance the Earth’s rising temperatures by simply toning down the sunlight.  It may do something disconcerting to the patterns of global rainfall.

Earlier this year a U.S.-led group of scientists ran sophisticated climate models of a geoengineered world and proposed the same thing.  Now Axel Kleidon and Maik Renner of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, have used a different theoretical approach to confirm the conclusion, and explain why it would be a bad idea.

Reducing Sunlight by Geoengineering Will Not Cool Earth

California Gripped by Driest Year Ever — with No Relief in Sight

As California enters its third consecutive dry winter, with no sign of moisture on the horizon, fears are growing over increased wildfire activity, agricultural losses, and additional stress placed on already strained water supplies.

The city of Los Angeles has received only 3.6 inches of rain this year — far below its average of 14.91 inches, USA Today reported.  And San Francisco is experiencing its driest year since recordkeeping began in 1849.  As of November, the city had only received 3.95 inches of rain since the year began.

California Gripped by Driest Year Ever — with No Relief in Sight

Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013

Former BP Geologist: Peak Oil Is Here and It Will 'Break Economies'

A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of "continuous recession" and increased risk of conflict and hunger.

At a lecture on 'Geohazards' earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.

Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that "peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves."  Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year.

Former BP Geologist: Peak Oil Is Here and It Will 'Break Economies'

Solar Activity Not a Key Cause of Climate Change, Study Shows

Climate change has not been strongly influenced by variations in heat from the sun, a new scientific study shows.

The findings overturn a widely held scientific view that lengthy periods of warm and cold weather in the past might have been caused by periodic fluctuations in solar activity.

Solar Activity Not a Key Cause of Climate Change, Study Shows

Giant ‘Battery’ Can Store Renewable Energy

A northern European offshore power grid is being developed to link wind farms and carry the electricity to population centers where it is needed in Sweden, Denmark and Germany.  But the key problem remains how to maintain a regular supply of energy.

If the existing Norwegian hydropower schemes were refurbished and updated and connected to the same grid, they could act as a giant “blue-green battery” for the system and provide all the necessary backup power, according to SINTEF, the largest independent Scandinavian research organization.

The potential for wind power in northern Europe is huge.  There are already 3.8 gigawatts of installed wind power, replacing four coal-fired power plants.  According to the European Union, this is expected to rise to 150 gigawatts between 2030 and 2050, the equivalent of 150 medium-sized coal-fired power stations.

Giant ‘Battery’ Can Store Renewable Energy

Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013

Fracking for Gas Uses Less Water than Coal Plants, Study Finds

It's well known that it takes 4 million to 5 million gallons of water to hydraulically fracture a well to extract natural gas.  Use that gas to fire up a power plant, and you need more water for steam.

But a new University of Texas study suggests that the steam turbines on coal plants consume 25 to 50 times more water than is used in both gas extraction, or fracking, and the natural gas-powered generation.

The study took a closer look at the 2011 drought in particular, finding that for every gallon of water consumed for fracking natural gas, 33 gallons were saved by not using coal plants.

Fracking for Gas Uses Less Water than Coal Plants, Study Finds

Coal in Their Stockings

Coal-fired power plants are shutting their doors at a record pace — and for the most part, nobody’s building new ones.

The latest round in the war on coal?  Not exactly.  The reality is that Americans’ lights will stay on just fine even as coal plants continue to close, thanks to a quiet revolution in energy efficiency and a boom time for cheap natural gas.  Throw in some stricter rules for older plants, and the result is a sharp drop in the economic viability of coal-fired power.

Since 2008, coal has dropped from nearly half the U.S. power market to about 37 percent. In the next several years, industry analysts say, hundreds of older coal-fired units will power down for good.

Coal in Their Stockings

Paying for Solar Power Isn't What It Used to Be

Many consumers still can’t afford the steep sticker price of home solar, even if it offers the promise of low-cost, clean renewable energy in the long term.  But innovative third-party financing is changing how solar panels are bought and sold.

Paying for Solar Power Isn't What It Used to Be

A Business Case for Building Climate Resilience

“The business case for adaptation is improving.”  These were the promising words from Daniel Dowling of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, shared during a breakout session at a recent conference called Climate Finance and Private Sector: Investing in New Opportunities.  The conference was part of a week-long climate finance event held in conjunction with the opening of Green Climate Fund secretariat in Songdo, South-Korea.

The breakout session focused on three main questions:

• How can we scale up private sector involvement in building climate resilience?
• What is holding the private sector back in investing more in building resilience? and
• Can these barriers be overcome?

A Business Case for Building Climate Resilience

Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2013

Cape Wind Inks Deal with Siemens for Turbines

The developers of a project off the Massachusetts coast that aims to be the nation’s first offshore wind farm announced a deal Monday with Siemens Energy Inc. to make, install and maintain the project’s turbines.

Under the agreement, Siemens will build turbines for the project, as well as an offshore electric service platform.

Siemens is also providing Cape Wind with a 15-year turbine maintenance program that will hire locally to fill the majority of its operations and maintenance positions at service headquarters in Falmouth.

“This is a significant milestone for this project and we’re excited about it,” Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement.  “Massachusetts will be a pioneer in the emerging offshore wind industry, which brings with it both clean energy and good jobs.”

Cape Wind Inks Deal with Siemens for Turbines

Transatlantic Trade Agreement Threatens Environment and Health in U.S. and Europe

Friends of the Earth U.S. and Friends of the Earth Europe are deeply concerned that the negotiating objectives for an agreement have little to do with free trade and everything to do with corporate power.  TTIP risks being a partnership of those who seek to prevent and roll back democratically agreed safeguards in areas such as food and chemical safety, agriculture and energy.

We believe there is much for American and European citizens to be concerned about in these trade talks -- not least the investor-state dispute settlement provision.  Also at stake are regulations on genetically engineered products, food safety, toxic chemicals, highly polluting fuels, and many others.  The EU's fuel quality directive, which disadvantages tar sands oil and other fuels with a high carbon footprint, is on U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman's hit list. 

Friends of the Earth in Europe and the United States are determined to alert policymakers and the people about the deception and danger in the current course of the TTIP negotiations.  We are calling for an end to the secrecy.  People, not corporations, should determine the future of the transatlantic economy, including what kind of future we want for our children.

Transatlantic Trade Agreement Threatens Environment and Health in U.S. and Europe

Flood Grant Program to Let Communities Consider Rising Seas Due to Climate Change

State and local leaders can now consider expected sea level rise due to climate change when applying for grants to help prevent property damage along coastlines, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said Monday.

FEMA's deputy associate administrator for mitigation, Roy Wright, said in a memo to regional directors obtained by The Huffington Post that the agency will "fund cost effective hazard mitigation projects that include sea level rise estimates."  The guidance pertains to FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Assistance program, one of the few proactive programs for reducing risks along the coastal United States.  The program allows communities to apply for grants to do things like raise homes and businesses above the flood plain.

Flood Grant Program to Let Communities Consider Rising Seas Due to Climate Change

Enbridge Dilbit Spill Still Not Cleaned Up as 2013 Closes, Irritating the EPA

Little evidence remains of the chaotic scramble to stop the massive oil spill that fouled Michigan's Kalamazoo River in the summer of 2010, yet the full effects of the calamitous accident will likely remain unknown for years.

State environmental officials says it could be 2018 before they are ready to issue a final verdict on the damage done to the Kalamazoo after more than a million gallons of heavy crude oil poured into the river from a pipeline owned by Enbridge Inc.

At the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is showing increasing irritation with Enbridge over its delay in meeting deadlines in the ongoing cleanup.

Enbridge Dilbit Spill Still Not Cleaned Up as 2013 Closes, Irritating the EPA

Monday, Dec. 23, 2013

Energy Use of Cable, Satellite and Telephone Set-Top Boxes to Be Slashed, Saving Consumers $1 Billion Annually

A voluntary agreement announced today by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other energy-efficiency advocates,  the U.S. Department of Energy, the pay-TV industry; and equipment manufacturers will reduce  the national electricity use of new set-top boxes by $1 billion a year.  Once in full effect, the agreement will save three power plants’ worth of electricity and prevent the emission of 5 million tons of carbon pollution each year. 

Under the voluntary agreement, the leading cable, satellite and telephone companies commit to buy more energy efficient set-top boxes, and -- for the first time – make publicly available the energy use of their new set-top boxes installed in almost 90 million U.S. homes.

The agreement caps a yearlong negotiation that followed NRDC’s groundbreaking report that found set-top box devices consumed approximately $3 billion worth of electricity annually; much of it when the box is turned “off” and the user is neither watching nor recording a show.

Energy Use of Cable, Satellite and Telephone Set-Top Boxes to Be Slashed, Saving Consumers $1 Billion Annually

Conservative Donors Pump $1 Billion a Year into Climate Denying Groups, Study Finds

Organizations that actively block efforts to address climate change are funded by a large network of conservative donors to the tune of nearly $1 billion a year, according to the first in-depth study into the dark money that fuels the denial effort.

The study, published Friday in the journal Climatic Change, analyzed the income of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups, and industry associations, funded by 140 different foundations, that work to oppose action on climate change.  The study's author, Robert Brulle, refers to these organizations as the climate change counter-movement, and concludes that their outsized influence "has not only played a major role in confounding public understanding of climate science, but also successfully delayed meaningful government policy actions to address the issue."

"It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this," Brulle told the Guardian.  "This is a large-scale political effort."

Conservative Donors Pump $1 Billion a Year into Climate Denying Groups, Study Finds

Some Plants May Not Adapt Quickly to Future Climate Change

Using the largest dated evolutionary tree of flowering plants ever assembled, a new study suggests how plants developed traits to withstand low temperatures, with implications that human-induced climate change may pose a bigger threat than initially thought to plants and global agriculture.

"Some plant lineages, including many crops, will not have the underlying genetic attributes that will allow for rapid responses to climate change."

Some Plants May Not Adapt Quickly to Future Climate Change

Sunday, Dec. 22, 2013

SeaChange: Food for Millions at Risk

A remote Indonesian village highlights the threats facing millions of people who depend on marine creatures susceptible to souring seas and ocean warming.

“I can’t tell you how many people will be affected,” said Sarah Cooley, at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who studies links between acidification and food security.  “But it’s going to be a very big number.”

Said Andreas Andersson, an acidification and coral-reef expert with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego:  “These people are literally going to be fighting for their lives.”

SeaChange: Food for Millions at Risk