Climate change to blame for early cherry blossom season in Japan
Like most of the rest of the world, Japan has been slowly warming for the last century or so. So that could have some effect on cherry blossoming. Pretending that global warming is the only infulence or even the major influence is however slipshod.
The obvious influence is urbanization. Urban centres are warmer and that is even more so as society becomes ever more energy intensive. The more people use air-conditioners in summer and heaters in winter the greater will be the heat output into the urban environment. Much warmer cities rather than the trivial increase in global warming would be the major influence on cherry blossoming
About 63 million people in a normal year flock to Japan to see its most famous flower in full bloom.
Cherry blossoms, or sakura, hit their peak bloom in April, when they paint the country’s parks and gardens with shades of pink and white and fuel a multimillion spring tourism boom.
But this year, in the ancient capital city of Kyoto, the cherry blossoms hit peak bloom too early, on March 26 – the earliest since the Japan Meteorological Agency began collecting data on the flowers 70 years ago.
Others say the bloom is even earlier than what’s been noted in diaries and poetry from Kyoto that date back hundreds of years, AP reported.
According to the 2021 data in Kyoto, the cherry blossoms reached peak bloom 10 days ahead of the 30-year average, and it was a similar story in other cities across Japan.
Scientists fear climate change is to blame.
“We can say it’s most likely because of the impact of the global warming,” Shunji Anbe from the Japan Meteorological Agency told AP, adding the trees were sensitive to temperature changes.
The average March temperature in Kyoto, a key destination for cherry blossoms, rose to 10.6C in 2020, up from 8.6C in 1953. This March, the average temperature was even higher, at 12.4C.
Of the 58 benchmark trees across Japan that are tracked by the agency, 40 reached their peak bloom before the start of April, with 14 blooming in record time, according to AP.
It normally takes about two weeks for the first bud to appear and all the blossoms to fall from the tree.
Benjamin Cook, a research scientist at Columbia University, told The Washington Post the cherry blossom peak bloom date had been relatively stable for about 1000 years, from the years 812 to 1800, before a sharp shift to earlier in spring.
“Since the 1800s, warming has led to a steady trend toward earlier flowering that continues to the present day,” he said.
“Some of this warming is due to climate change, but some is also likely from an enhanced heat island effect due to increased urbanisation of the environment over the last couple of centuries.”
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Carbon War Pits Politics Against Reality
President Joe Biden is taking “aggressive action,” the White House recently announced, to ensure that the United States achieves a “carbon pollution-free power sector” by 2035 and a “net-zero economy” just 15 years later.
On the other side of the pond, Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, has pledged that the United Kingdom will reduce its carbon emissions by 68% in the next nine years, while the European Parliament has voted to reduce emissions by 60%.
In an ideal world, this would be great news. In the real world—one in which renewable energy is still way too inefficient and dependent on subsidies from governments already drowning in debt—such objectives are unrealistic.
Global debt was expected to reach an estimated $277 trillion, or some 365% of the globe’s entire gross domestic product (GDP), by the end of last year, the World Economic Forum has estimated. The U.S. fisc is equally out of whack. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that U.S. debt has exceeded annual GDP every year since 2015, long before the multi-trillion-dollar COVID-19 “relief” packages were passed. From a financial perspective alone, therefore, the administration’s objectives invite skepticism.
They also invite skepticism from an energy perspective. Take the International Energy Agency (IEA), whose World Energy Outlook sets the objective of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 60% in 20 years.
To achieve that goal, the IEA aims for a 25% drop in energy demand. But according to a recent analysis by Goehring & Rozencwajg, an investment firm specializing in commodities, this is unlikely to happen. While energy demand has dropped by 10% over the last 20 years in wealthy, developed countries, the analysis found, it has increased by 65% in developing countries, which have been driving world economic growth in recent years.
The IEA also assumes that the concentration of CO2 per unit of energy will decline by half. This is also unlikely, since the developed countries that have been attempting to reduce emissions have achieved only about a 10% reduction. Even Germany, which gets nearly 40% of its electricity from renewables, has been unable to come close to this goal, achieving little better than the United States, where wind and solar account for less than 9% of generated power.
To achieve President Biden’s goal of carbon-free electricity by 2035, the United States would need to build a staggering number of new nuclear plants (a much cleaner source of fuel than hydrocarbons) or even greater numbers of new solar and wind power installations.
Without such increases, Reason magazine science correspondent Ronald Bailey has calculated that it would take some 50 years for renewables to replace existing fossil-fuel based sources of electric power—at a cost of additional trillions of dollars in federal spending.
The lesson here is not that we need to opt for pollution or renounce our clean-energy ideals, but that we also need to consider current financial realities, the added costs such a shift would entail and the very real technological constraints.
Human kind cannot bear very much reality, wrote T.S. Eliot in his “Four Quartets.” He might have been thinking of politicians and climate change.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13488&omhide=true
*******************************************Prosperity frees people to protect the environment
True Environmentalists Should Prioritize Economic Prosperity
The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying lockdowns reduced global CO2 emissions by 7 percent last year. Some environmentalists, such as the University College London professor Mariana Mazzucato, have thus wondered about the feasibility of future “climate lockdowns … to tackle a climate emergency.” Yet even if we ignore the negative consequences of the lockdowns on broader health outcomes and human psychology, Mazzucato appears to fail to account for the well-known correlation between economic prosperity and environmental quality.
Lockdowns have contributed to around 100 million people, most of them living in the developing world, sliding back into extreme poverty. While they may have lowered the CO2 emissions in the short term, by increasing absolute poverty, the lockdowns may cause massive environmental destruction in the long term. Simply put, people can afford to care about the environment only when they have enough income to cover their basic needs. If their survival depends on killing an endangered animal or cutting down a rare tree, then so be it.
The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis posits that environmental damage increases in tandem with economic growth, but only until a certain level of income is reached. Once people are wealthy enough not to have to worry about day-to-day survival, environmental degradation stops, and ecosystems begin to recover. The environmental scientist Jesse H. Ausubel, for example, suggests that once a nation achieves a GDP per capita of $6,200 (in 2021 dollars), deforestation stops or afforestation occurs.
In fact, forest coverage is growing in China, Russia, India, and Vietnam – all emerging economies that reached the $6,200-mark. The curve is even clearer in wealthy regions like North America and Europe – both of which have more trees today than they did a century ago. The UK, for example, has more than doubled its forest area in the last 100 years. Conversely, deforestation continues in poor African and Latin American countries. Scientists have found that the EKC holds true in all manner of environmental domains, including water pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, nitrogen, sulphur, and biodiversity.
While it is too early to gauge the impact of the lockdowns on forest coverage, the lockdowns have already wreaked havoc on endangered species and protected habitats in the developing world. In Kenya, the killing of giraffes has skyrocketed. Given that a tonne of giraffe meat is worth about $1,000 (i.e., almost seven months of the average Kenyan salary), it is unsurprising that desperate locals have resorted to slaughtering the endangered animal. Kenya’s Mara Elephant Project also recorded that illegal logging in the region peaked in the months following the first lockdown. In Botswana, government workers had to evacuate dozens of critically endangered black rhinos from the Okavango Delta after six of the animals were found dead after the lockdowns were implemented.
In Colombia, the poaching of endangered pumas and jaguars has also rapidly increased. In India, tiger numbers were steady, as incomes have increased, for the last two decades. But, since the lockdowns were imposed, various reports have highlighted an upsurge in tiger poaching and illegal hunting. Similarly, in India’s Western Bengal region, where over a million jobs have been lost due to the lockdowns, the local authorities have reported the first-ever instance of illegal ivory poaching in the region. The problem of illegal poaching is exacerbated by the fact that park rangers in some countries have been left without work and income. The animals, in other words, have lost their human protectors.
The World Economic Forum recently acknowledged that the significant increase in bushmeat harvesting and wildlife trafficking in Africa “is directly linked to COVID-19-related lockdowns.” Similarly, the UK-based wildlife charity called People’s Trust for Endangered Species has warned that “unintended consequences” of lockdowns could undo “decades of work” devoted to animal protection.
Fortunately for mother nature, as economies begin to recover from the government-mandated lockdowns, the number of people who rely on illegal activities will decrease, and biodiversity will slowly recover. However, the EKC and the wretched impact of lockdowns on poverty and biodiversity teaches us an important lesson – true environmentalists should seek to prioritize economic growth, not lower it. Poverty-reducing policies, such as strong property rights, freedom to trade, lower regulation, and few burdensome taxes, as shown annually in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World Report, remain some of the most reliable ways of raising economic prosperity for all.
In conclusion, poor people depend on mother nature to survive. Rich people, in contrast, can decouple themselves from the environment, protect wildlife for future generations, and return vast swathes of land to nature. Now, what environmentalist wouldn’t want that?
https://www.humanprogress.org/true-environmentalists-should-prioritize-economic-prosperity/
*******************************************Another stupid prophecy about the reef
What the future temperature will be nobody knows. But the report below assumes a large rise. Even if that came to pass, it would not mean the end of the reef. Corals grow in wildly different temperatures -- from Iceland to the Persian gulf. So we might expect some turnover of species but that is all
It's boring to have to point this out again but Australian corals have the greatest diversity in the Torres Strait, where the temperature is always HIGH. Corals THRIVE in high temperatures. Some species may not but there are plenty that do
A damning new report has painted a grim picture of Australia’s future, with one of the nation’s most renowned natural wonders set to suffer.
Up to 90 per cent of the world’s coral reefs are expected to vanish, even at low levels of warming, and there are grave fears for one of Australia’s most famous natural wonders. The outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is considered “very poor”, according to a new report by the Australian Academy of Science.
And climate change is a major driver.
At 1.5 degrees of warming, the world will lose between 70 and 90 per cent of coral reefs.
“Substantial losses in ocean productivity, ongoing ocean acidification, and the increasing deterioration of coastal systems such as mangroves and seagrasses are projected to occur if global warming exceeds 2C,” the harrowing report states.
Scientists said the target set by the Paris Climate Agreement of keeping global warming to 1.5C was “virtually impossible” as they painted a grim picture for Australia’s ecosystems.
It is more likely that global temperatures will soar by up to 3C. "Critical thresholds in many natural systems are likely to be exceeded as global warming of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels continues,” the report said.
“These impacts will increase as global warming reaches 2C and beyond, with iconic ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park being severely affected.
“At 3C of global warming, many of Australia’s ecological systems would be unrecognisable.”
A leading figure within the European Union has even sounded the alarm on the Great Barrier Reef.
The EU’s commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, told Guardian Australia he feared for the natural wonder. “As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve,” he said.
Global warming has already triggered mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef that have destroyed at least half of the world’s largest reef system. It has also contributed to droughts and bushfires.
Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who chairs the expert panel that developed the report, said a rapid transition to net zero greenhouse gas emissions was required if the international community was to limit warming to well below 2C.
“Current international commitments to greenhouse gas emission reduction, if unchanged, would result in average global surface temperatures that are 3C above the pre-industrial period in the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren,” he said.
“The evidence presented in this risk-assessment report, which is based on peer-reviewed scientific literature, indicates that this would have serious consequences for Australia and the world.”
But scientists said it was possible for Australia to meet its climate goals.
Australian Academy of Science president John Shine said the new report suggested while the planet was warning, science had its solutions.
“Australia is well positioned to meet the climate change challenge by combining our scientific knowledge with economic opportunities associated with moves to net zero greenhouse gas emissions,” Professor Shine said.
The report makes 10 recommendations, including scaling up the development and implementation of next-generation zero greenhouse gas technologies and exploring how food production and supply systems can prepare for climate change.
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC) Saturdays only
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS -- daily)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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