Global Warming and Taiwan: Impacts

Happiness. It's what he offers.

As humans are busy boiling the earth to death, I thought I'd collect a few papers... This nifty paper has some public surveys and some thumbnail explanations of Taiwan's failure to do anything about its carbon-intensive industries in the face of global warming.

However, the EPA was enforced to adjust its position on environmental protection. It is because the Executive Yuan is lack of a adequate decision-making structure. Mitigating GHG emissions involves many sectors, but climate issue is oversimplified as a pure environmental issue by political leader in Taiwan. How to response global warming becomes environmental affairs. In these political circumstance, the EPA, one of the smallest ministries in the Executive Yuan, is appointed to manage formulation and implementation national climate policy and the legislative process of the GHGRA. In the end, the EPA can not embrace its pro- environmental position, and it is enforced to take the pro-development position, which is similar to the EPA and those EIIs.

In the level of the Legislative Yuan and the Executive Yuan. Among political leaders, climate change lends itself to gestural politics. Most political leaders claims they are willing to support for the GHGRA, and encourage the Legislative Yuan to pass this act. On the one hand, mitigating GHG emissions become a slogan of political correctness. Seldom of them doubt the necessity of reducing GHG emissions or the scientific certainty of global warming. On the other hand, the draft GHGRA has set aside from 2005 to now.

Most leader are unwilling to pass the GHGRA with legally binding targets, because reducing GHG emissions involve two controversial political issues. The first issue is to adjust domestic industrial structure through changing the long-term low-energy-price policy. Taiwan highly relies on imported energy, as Table 14 shows, but Taiwan’s government, as a typical case of the developmental state, formulated the low-energy-price policy to promote industrial development and economic growth. However, low-energy-price policy leads in the development of these carbon intensive industries. At the same time, most people in Taiwan take using low-price energy for granted. Most political leaders understand that changing low-price energy policy is necessity to meet GHG emission reduction target. However, they perceive that increasing energy price is harmful to their reelections.

And the effect on agricultural pests:

For some insect pests, such as smaller brown planthopper, rice leaf beetle, rice water weevil, Taiwan is considered the south most distribution area. Higher temperature in the summer may cause them to disappear or become the minor pests. Contrarily, for those insect pests that Taiwan is considered their northernmost distribution limit, such as the green rice leafhopper...temperature may help the insect to become more abundant (Cheng 1998).

And from this government report in Taiwan:

Continuous instrumental measurement of climate parameters in Taiwan began in 1896. This century-long record, with almost no missing data, is available from six meteorological stations (Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Hengchun, Taitung, and Hualien) (Figure 12) maintained by the Central Weather Bureau....

....Taiwan shows a significant warming trend. The rise in annual mean temperatures over the last 30, 50, and 100 years all reflects this tendency (Figure 13). Of the six weather stations over the three periods, Taipei shows the most warming and Hengchun the least. In the last 30 years, stations along the west coast show faster warming than those along the east coast. Over the last century, warming has been most prominent in autumn. However, winter has warmed fastest in the last 30 years.

....average annual rain days in Taiwan have decreased significantly. Numbers of rain day have decreased by 4 days per decade in the last 100 years and 6 days per decade.

...Extremely hot days between 2000 and 2009 increased by more than 10 days when compared to the period from 1911 to 1920.

...Cold surge events at all six stations decreased consistently after 1985, which never occurred before 1985...

...Extreme dry spells in Hengchun and Hualien occurred more frequently in the last 30 years than in any other period...

The entire report is beautiful, filled with charts and graphs. Very useful. Finally, global warming and the plant distribution. In addition to upward migration of plants to higher altitudes to escape the heat, that one also predicts rainfall will decrease in the west and increase in the east.
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Daily Links:

• NEWS: Two Taiwanese among the roommates killed by California mass murderer. 
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• Global Warming and Taiwan: Precipitation
  "Significant increases of heavy precipitation and decreases of light precipitation have been reported over widespread regions of the globe. We examine data from 15 Taiwan Central Weather Bureau stations in the period 1961-2011, as well as global data from the GPCP (Global Precipitation Climatology Project, V1.0, 1979-2007), to show that global warming rather than aerosol effects is the primary cause of the changes in the precipitation extremes. Significant increases of annual total dry days and >=7 consecutive dry days in Taiwan during 1961-2011 are shown to be a result of the decrease in light precipitation and increase in heavy precipitation, thereby establishing a causal link among global warming, changes in precipitation extremes, and higher risk of floods and droughts. Similar links are expected over widespread regions of the globe."

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!

Paddy Fields in a Globalized World 2: Methane

Methane. A powerful greenhouse gas; human activities pump it out like crazy. By now educated readers are aware of the problem of methane from production of cattle and other ruminants, which worldwide accounts for 28% of methane production (EPA). Last year, I wrote a post on paddy fields in a globalized world and learned that rice paddy fields, 90% of which are in Asia, account for roughly 20% of global methane production according to most sources, though there is much variability in the estimates. They are also known to be major producers of another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide.

The connection between human activities and a warming world, robustly-established in the climate sciences, is important because by 2050 the world will be feeding 9 billion people, meaning that rice production and its associated methane production will likely have to increase.

In Taiwan rice is generally planted twice a year. The vast majority of methane emissions take place during the second planting (here, here). Because in every country cropping practices are different, local factors affect methane output from rice farming. This paper on the methane emissions in all 15 of Taiwan's irrigation districts observes:

The amount of methane emitted in the second crop season was 7– 16 times that emitted during the first crop season. If the reduction in planted acreage proposed (12%) is during the second crop season, this will reduce the amount of methane emitted by 21% annually.

Additionally, the rice straw following the first crop harvest is ground into the soil before the rice is planted in the second crop season. The addition of ground rice straw to the soil significantly increases the rate of emission of methane in the hot and humid summer. Removing the rice straw from the soil greatly reduces the rate of emission of methane.

The authors recommend that rice straw be removed from fields prior to the second planting to reduce methane emissions. The paper dates from 2003, when Taiwan had just entered the WTO and the government had taken thousands of hectares of rice fields out of production to comply with agreements to import rice. This ironically reduced methane emissions. The paper observes that in Taiwan temperature is the major determinant of rice field methane output; it is highest in Pingtung fields and lowest in Nantou.

Another factor in rice field methane output is water and water depth. In China methane emissions fell 40% when water-saving practices were implemented that drained fields of their water three times annually instead of keeping them continually flooded. In Taiwan the effects are similar though not so dramatic. This is because when the fields are flooded, soil bacteria shift to anaerobic fermentation of organic material in the field, which creates methane. Upland rice fields, which are not flooded, produce negligible amounts of methane. Recall, however, that as my post on paddy fields noted, flooding rice fields recharges underground water sources.

Another methane reducer in Asia was the shift to artificial fertilizer and away from animal and organic waste. Differences in fertilizer type also affect methane production. Nitrogen-rich fertilizers result in much higher methane emissions, in one 2003 study in Taiwan large reductions were found if non-nitrogen fertilizers were used (another study of methane and nitrous oxides emissions from Taiwan).

Because every region has its own special methods and practices for producing rice, there is no global fix for the problem of methane production from rice fields. But it is surely something humanity will have to consider in the coming decades.

REF: Want to reduce weeds, snails and methane in rice paddies? Try ducks!
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Daily Links:

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• Five day boycott by DPP blocks vote on ractobeef. The KMT has been calling for an executive order. Note that the Ma Administration could have ended this impasse by executive order. That Ma has not suggests that he wants to use the legislature as a fig leaf for permitting ractobeef into Taiwan ("Look, the legislature decided to let beef in, my hands are tied") or as an excuse for not letting it into Taiwan. Either way, the Administration shifts the blame for the decision onto someone else. The really terrifying thing is that Taiwan's voters will return this legislature in the next election even if it votes to let in beef laced with cyanide.

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[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums! Delenda est, baby.