Global Warming in South Africa
South Africa: In the Dark About Global Warming - 2/21/08
It is understandable that we have been kept in the dark, because even in the midst of the worst national energy crisis in South Africa's living memory, the simple act of questioning who abuses our coal-burning power generators is off the agenda.
Instead, to get a meagre conservation reduction of 40 megawatts, energy minister Buyelwa Sonjica tells us: "Switch off all lights in the home when not in use and go to sleep early so that you can grow."
Critics rightly call this a trivialising blame-the-victim game, whose broader aim appears to be distracting attention from those who are most to blame: the government and crony corporations like BHP Billiton.
South African households pay more than double the industrial rate; with BHP Billiton trying to take over Rio Tinto, which is taking over Alcan, Eskom's smelter incentive at Coega will offer even cheaper power, less than $0.02 per kWh.
So it is not surprising - though something of a secret from the public - that measured by carbon dioxide emissions per unit of per-person economic output, South Africa emits 20 times more carbon dioxide than that Great Climate Satan, the US.
Global Warming Could Worsen Malaria in South Africa - 5/5/05
More provinces in South Africa including prosperous Gauteng where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located could become malaria zones by 2050 due to global warming, the environment minister said quoting a new report.
Plants and animal species are also at risk of being wiped out in South Africa due to climate change, the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) said in a report on the impact of climate change on South Africa.
"The research presented today by SANBI shows, for example, that climate change could lead to provinces like Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West, KwaZulu-Natal and even Gauteng becoming malaria zones by 2050," said Environmental and Tourism Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk.
Malaria is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected female anopheles mosquito and kills more than one million people worldwide annually, most of them children.
Plant biodiversity is key to South Africa's flower-based export markets and eco-tourism in the Western and Northern Cape.
South African Desert Becomes Global Warming Lab - 8/4/03
About 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) northwest of Cape Town, South Africa, lies the Succulent Karoo, one of the world's most plentiful, and most threatened, desert ecosystems.
The Washington-based Conservation International has designated the 45,000-square-mile (116,000-square-kilometer) Karoo as one of the world's 25 biodiversity "hot spots." The stark, arid landscape has a so-called Mediterranean climate that fosters an astonishing diversity of some 5,000 plants-40 percent of which are found nowhere else.
Many of the plants are succulents, which store water in their stems and leaves, giving them their plump, fleshy appearance.
"The greatest challenge to these plants may be a rapidly warming climate," says Guy Midgley, a plant physiologist at the National Botanical Institute (NBI) in Cape Town and lead scientist of a group that is investigating the effects of rising temperatures on the Karoo flora. The research is primarily funded by Conservation International.
The Karoo has become a laboratory for the study of climate's impact on ecosystems. Midgley had seen 50-year climate models for South Africa that predicted a 25 percent drop in winter rainfall and a two-degree rise in temperatures.
