tagged w/ Anthropogenic Climate Change
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Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an unprecedented rate, scientists have discovered. Research carried out in the archipelago of Svalbard has shown in many regions around the north pole seawater is likely to reach corrosive levels within 10 years. The water will then start to dissolve the shells of mussels and other shellfish and cause major disruption to the food chain. By the end of the century, the entire Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic.
"This is extremely worrying," Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, told an international oceanography conference last week. "We knew that the seas were getting more acidic and this would disrupt the ability of shellfish – like mussels – to grow their shells. But now we realise the situation is much worse. The water will become so acidic it will actually dissolve the shells of living shellfish."
Just as an acid descaler breaks apart limescale inside a kettle, so the shells that protect molluscs and other creatures will be dissolved. "This will affect the whole food chain, including the North Atlantic salmon, which feeds on molluscs," said Gattuso, speaking at a European commission conference, Oceans of Tomorrow, in Barcelona last week. The oceanographer told delegates that the problem of ocean acidification was worse in high latitudes, in the Arctic and around Antarctica, than it was nearer the equator.
"More carbon dioxide can dissolve in cold water than warm," he said. "Hence the problem of acidification is worse in the Arctic than in the tropics, though we have only recently got round to studying the problem in detail."
About a quarter of the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by factories, power stations and cars now ends up being absorbed by the oceans. That represents more than six million tonnes of carbon a day.
This carbon dioxide dissolves and is turned into carbonic acid, causing the oceans to become more acidic. "We knew the Arctic would be particularly badly affected when we started our studies but I did not anticipate the extent of the problem," said Gattuso.
His research suggests that 10% of the Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic by 2018; 50% by 2050; and 100% ocean by 2100. "Over the whole planet, there will be a threefold increase in the average acidity of the oceans, which is unprecedented during the past 20 million years. That level of acidification will cause immense damage to the ecosystem and the food chain, particularly in the Arctic," he added.
The tiny mollusc Limacina helicina, which is found in Arctic waters, will be particularly vulnerable, he said. The little shellfish is eaten by baleen whales, salmon, herring and various seabirds. Its disappearance would therefore have a major impact on the entire marine food chain. The deep-water coral Lophelia pertusa would also be extremely vulnerable to rising acidity. Reefs in high latitudes are constructed by only one or two types of coral – unlike tropical coral reefs which are built by a large variety of species. The loss of Lophelia pertusa would therefore devastate reefs off Norway and the coast of Scotland, removing underwater shelters that are exploited by dozens of species of fish and other creatures.
"Scientists have proposed all sorts of geo-engineering solutions to global warming," said Gattuso. "For instance, they have proposed spraying the upper atmosphere with aerosol particles that would reduce sunlight reaching the Earth, mitigating the warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide.
"But these ideas miss the point. They will still allow carbon dioxide emissions to continue to increase – and thus the oceans to become more and more acidic. There is only one way to stop the devastation the oceans are now facing and that is to limit carbon-dioxide emissions as a matter of urgency."Carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Ocean into acid at an... more
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Those contributing the least to climate change doing the most to adapt to it. Quite a lesson about moral will there. We could learn much from the indigenous peoples of this world about many things regarding our Earth.
Excerpt;
Caught between rising seas and land melting beneath their mukluk-shod feet, the villagers of Tuktoyaktuk are doing what anyone would do on this windy Arctic coastline. They're building windmills.
That's wind-power turbines, to be exact — a token first try at "getting rid of this fossil fuel we're using," said Mayor Merven Gruben.
It's a token of irony, too: People little to blame, but feeling it most, are doing more to stop global warming than many of "you people in the south," as Gruben calls the rest of us who fill the skies with greenhouse gases.
They're feeling climate change not only in this lonely corner of northwest Canada, but in a wide circle at the top of the world, stretching from Alaska through the Siberian tundra, into northern Scandinavia and Greenland, and on to Canada's eastern Arctic islands, a circle of more than 300,000 indigenous people, including Gruben and the 800 other Inuvialuit, or Inuit, of the village they know as "Tuk."
Since 1970, temperatures have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) in much of the Arctic, much faster than the global average. People in Tuk say winters are less numbing, with briefer spells of minus-40 C (minus-40 F) temperatures. They sense it in other ways, too, small and large.
"The mosquitoes got bigger," the mayor's aunt, Tootsie Lugt, 48, told a visitor to her children-filled house overlooking Tuk harbor.
Her father, one-time fur trapper Eddie Gruben, spoke of more outsized interlopers from the south.
"Them killer whales, first time people seen them here in the harbor, three or four of them this summer," said the 89-year-old patriarch of Tuk's biggest family and biggest business, a contracting firm.
Plants and animals are a tip-off everywhere. In northeast Canada, the Nunatsiaq News advised readers the red-breasted birds they spotted this spring were American robins.
But the change runs deeper as well, undermining ways of life.
The later fall freeze-up, earlier spring break-up and general weakening of sea ice make snowmobile travel more perilous. A trip to the next island can end in a fatal plunge through thin ice.
The unpredictable ice and weather combine with a changing animal world to make hunting and fishing more challenging, and to crimp the traditional diet of "niqituinnaq," "real food" — of caribou, seal and other meat staples.
The resilient Inuit — Eskimos — of the past simply moved on to better places. But since the mid-20th century these ex-nomads have been tied to settlements, with all the buildings, utilities, roads and trouble that represents in a warming world.Those contributing the least to climate change doing the most to adapt to it. Quite a... more
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New research appearing in the online issue of the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and a group of international researchers found that climate model quality does not affect the ability to identify human effects on atmospheric water vapor. Since atmospheric water vapor is an important driver of temperatures and rainfall, the results of this study will help convince skeptics that man's impacts are causing at least part of the problem.
The physics that drive changes in water vapor are very simple and are reasonably well portrayed in all climate models, bad or good.
More water vapor - which is itself a greenhouse gas - amplifies the warming effect of increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
Previous LLNL research had shown that human-induced warming of the planet has a pronounced effect on the atmosphere's total moisture content. In that study, the researchers had used 22 different computer models to identify a human "fingerprint" pattern in satellite measurements of water vapor changes. Each model contributed equally in the fingerprint analysis. "It was a true model democracy," Santer said. "One model, one vote."
But in the recent study, the scientists first took each model and tested it individually, calculating 70 different measures of model performance. These "metrics" provided insights into how well the models simulated today's average climate and its seasonal changes, as well as on the size and geographical patterns of climate variability.
This information was used to divide the original 22 models into various sets of "top ten" and "bottom ten" models. "When we tried to come up with a David Letterman type 'top ten' list of models," Santer said, "we found that it's extremely difficult to do this in practice, because each model has its own individual strengths and weaknesses."
Then the group repeated their fingerprint analysis, but now using only "top ten" or "bottom ten" models rather than the full 22 models. They did this more than 100 times, grading and ranking the models in many different ways. In every case, a water vapor fingerprint arising from human influences could be clearly identified in the satellite data.
"One criticism of our first study was that we were only able to find a human fingerprint because we included inferior models in our analysis," said Karl Taylor, another LLNL co-author. "We've now shown that whether we use the best or the worst models, they don't have much impact on our ability to identify a human effect on water vapor."
Photo shows total amount of atmospheric water vapor over the oceans on July 4, 2009. These results are from operational weather forecasts of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting.
For more information:
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2009/NR-09-08-01.htmlNew research appearing in the online issue of the Proceedings of the U.S. National... more
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From the streets of New York City to the rivers in India to the glaciers in South America, humans are warming the planet by emitting more and more greenhouse gasses. In a study published in Nature last year, scientists for the first time linked the effects of climate change specifically to human activity.
"We're beginning to get the picture that climate change, influenced by humans, is beginning to influence ecosystems," says Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS), the study's lead author.
For astrobiologists, learning how the Earth responds to climate variations could be useful in better understanding planetary habitability. A planet's potential to develop and sustain life, as outlined by NASA's astrobiology program, depends on three primary factors.
The planet must have a reliable energy source, liquid water and appropriate conditions for the formation of complex organic molecules. Many of these characteristics are affected by the planet's atmosphere, which plays an important role by heating up or cooling down a planet.
Venus, for instance, might be habitable if not for its punishing greenhouse atmosphere. By linking climate change with human activity, the Nature study provides astrobiologists with clues about how life on a planet can affect habitability.
"Climate change in some ways is an analogy to different environments in space," says Rosenzweig. "It's really quite amazing. We've only had 0.74 degrees [Celsius change in global surface temperature during the past century], and so many systems are changing. So, while it really does speak to the potential for biological life in very different environments, it also shows how creeping shifts can have dramatic consequences."
With carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere from the daily burning of fossil fuels, temperatures on Earth are now rising, and this rise in temperature is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems around the world. Glaciers and permafrost are melting, lakes and rivers are warming, flowers are blooming earlier, birds are migrating sooner, and both plant and animal species are searching for higher ground.
Changes in the natural ecosystems are also starting to impact humans directly, says the study's co-author David Karoly, professor of the School of Earth Science at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
For example, the early melting of snow packs in the western United States has a direct impact on summer time water resources. Earlier blooming affects the relationship between insects and flowering plants, and that can directly impact agricultural production.
The study not only verifies that climate change is occurring, it also clearly identifies the impacts of that warming and attributes them to human activity. In order to make the case, GISS researchers along with scientists from 10 other institutions developed a database of approximately 80 peer-reviewed papers of climate change research.
All studies had two things in common. They were long-term investigations that had data for at least 20 years between 1970 and 2004, and their findings showed a "statistically significant trend" in temperature-related changes.
Through these studies, the research team analyzed more than 29,000 data series of physical and biological systems. They identified the changes that were consistent with warming and, through statistical analyses, compared those changes to temperature trends around the world.
They found that human-induced increases in temperature account for 95 percent of observed changes in physical systems, such as glaciers, spring river runoff and warming of water bodies, and 90 percent of changes among plants and animals.From the streets of New York City to the rivers in India to the glaciers in South... more
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The latest research expedition to the Southern Patagonia Ice Field revealed that alpine glaciers in the Chilean and Argentine Andes are disappearing at much faster rates than previously anticipated by the scientific community.
A preliminary analysis by a team of scientists from NASA and Chile’s Valdivia-based Center of Scientific Studies (CECS), which commenced an expedition to the Ice Field in October 2008, sheds light on the alarming speed at which the glaciers are depleting.
The scientists discovered that the masses of ice in the Patagonia are melting in larger proportions and in much higher alpine zones than in any other part of the world, including Alaska and the Himalayas. Glacier ice accounts for around 75 percent of the world’s fresh water.
“The loss of ice mass in the higher zones is the really new phenomenon,” said Gino Casassa, a CECS glaciologist. “At least this is what we are seeing with the preliminary results which we have just received.”
Until recently, it was believed that glacial loss occurred from lower areas, and that snowfall on the higher sections of glaciers would compensate for loss of ice at lower altitudes.
“One hypothesis we put forward was that there could be a positive balance of ice in the high zones because of higher rates of snowfall in these areas,” said Casassa.
But with ice thinning high up and down low, too, loss in glacial mass in Patagonia is likely to be much greater than what has previously been calculated by scientists.
The new findings are also curious because they contradict some former studies.
For example, a previous study found that the Chilean glaciers Trinidad and Pio XI (the biggest glacier in the southern hemisphere outside of Antarctica) had advanced instead of receded, while the Perito Moreno glacier in the Los Glaciares National Park in southern Argentina had maintained a volume balance.
Between 1944 and 1986 glacial ice in the Southern Patagonia Ice Field was recorded as retreating at an average of 57 meters per year.
end of excerptThe latest research expedition to the Southern Patagonia Ice Field revealed that... more
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It's a little-known natural wonder along Baffin Island's rugged east coast, a spectacular, 110-km-long channel lined by towering cliffs that — despite its extreme remoteness — is a mecca for base-jumping enthusiasts from around the world.
But U.S. scientists who have reconstructed a cataclysmic glacial meltdown in prehistoric Canada say Nunavut's Sam Ford Fiord is also a sentinel of danger in the age of climate change, showing just how quickly the planet's massive coastal glaciers could disappear and send global sea levels surging.
Their study, published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, says the rapid melting of the fiord's colossal, kilometre-deep glacier about 9,500 years ago is proof that similar features found today in Greenland, Canada and Antarctica could be lost "in a geologic instant."
That's several decades or even a few centuries in ordinary time — but fast enough that the scientists, led by State University of New York geologist Jason Briner, are sounding an alarm about the present-day implications.
"A lot of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are characteristic of the one we studied in the Canadian Arctic," Buffalo-based Briner states in a summary of the study, which presents evidence the Baffin Island glacier retreated at rates of up to 58 metres a year near the close of the last ice age.
"If modern glaciers do this for several decades, this would rapidly raise global sea level, intercepting coastal populations and requiring vast re-engineering of levees and other mitigation systems."
Many of the fiords with the world's largest coastal glaciers today are "strikingly analogous" to Sam Ford at the time of its "rapid deglaciation," Briner and two co-authors state in their Nature Geoscience article. "Thus tens to hundreds of kilometres of retreat of present outlet glaciers is possible in the coming centuries."
Researchers around the world are closely monitoring the conditions of ice shelves, glaciers and sea ice in the Earth's southern and northern polar regions.
Rising global temperatures, widely believed to have been fuelled by industrial-age carbon emissions, are generally blamed for accelerating glacial melts and opening long-frozen polar sea routes.
Last summer alone, Canadian scientists recorded the collapse of about one-quarter of the ancient, glacier-fed ice shelves along the north coast of Ellesmere Island.
end of excerpt.
How many warnings do we need?It's a little-known natural wonder along Baffin Island's rugged east coast, a... more
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Layers of frozen seawater, known simply as sea ice, cap the Arctic Ocean. Ice grows dramatically each winter, usually reaching its maximum in March. The ice melts just as dramatically each summer, generally reaching its minimum in September. These image pairs show Arctic sea ice concentration for the month of September (left) and the following March (right) for a time series beginning in September 1999 and ending in March 2009.
The yellow outline on each image shows the median sea ice extent observed by satellite sensors in September and March from 1979 through 2000. Extent is the total area in which ice concentration is at least 15 percent. The median is the middle value. Half of the extents over the time period were larger than the line, and half were smaller.
Since 1978, satellites have monitored sea ice growth and retreat, and they have detected an overall decline in Arctic sea ice. The rate of decline steepened after the turn of the twenty-first century. In September 2002, the summer minimum ice extent was the lowest it had been since 1979. Although the September 2002 low was only slightly below previous lows (from the 1990s), it was the beginning of a series of record or near-record lows in the Arctic.
This series of record lows, combined with poor wintertime recoveries starting in the winter of 2004-2005, marked a sharpening in the rate of decline in Arctic sea ice. Sea ice did not return to anything approaching the long-term average (1979-2000) after 2002.
end of excerpt.Layers of frozen seawater, known simply as sea ice, cap the Arctic Ocean. Ice grows... more
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I didn't let them dupe me.
enjoy the article.
find errors in it.
just try.
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plusaf
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added this
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7 months ago
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According to this scientific report, CO2 has been increasing by 2.3 % yearly doubling every 30 years since its first recording in 1958 (it actually increased 3% between 2006/2007.) Pre-industrial levels were at 280 PPM. Now, we are at 385 PPM inching ever closer to 450 PPM. At the current rate of CO2 emissions should they continue unabated (which I don't even know if that includes rates of deforestation) by 2050 the planet will likely surpass 500 PPM. And this is according to actual scientists who know what they are talking about and take these readings.
There are those scientists (James Hanson for example) who claim that to surpass 450 PPM will lead us into territory we do not want to visit. And while some scientists are hesitant to now use the term "tipping point" as they fear it will generate a lack of apathy towards action (which I can understand on one level,) should we not be trying to make people understand what is truly at stake here and that we still have time to head this off if we do what is necessary?
This is why when I read articles stating that governments including our own are still touting the 80% emissions cut by 2050 line I now have to shake my head. This is the same goal that was mentioned five years or more ago... and still we are waiting for action. With such an exponential rise in CO2 emissions as has been recorded and predicted taking into account deforestation, ocean CO2 saturation, and yes, natural cycle forcings, I do not see how continuing to tout that same goal is going to get us anywhere.
This is a moral crisis that now challenges the human species to answer this question: Just how much do you really care for this planet and your future on it? What are you prepared to do to not see these tipping points be reached? Reaching a higher level of consciousness about this is indeed necessary. I think about Carl Sagan and his wisdom in understanding the pale blue dot we live on and that it is the only home we have to sustain us. Does that really not matter? Have we become so blinded by politics, apathy, distractions, and lets face it, hatred for others that it blinds us to the issue at hand?According to this scientific report, CO2 has been increasing by 2.3 % yearly doubling... more
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Part of Alaska's coast is drifting into the sea at twice the rate it has in the past, reshaping the Arctic shoreline, a new study says.
The trend could seriously threaten the area's caribou and other wildlife, as well as local landmarks that document human settlements.
Some stretches of the state's northern shore along the Beaufort Sea receded by more than 80 feet (25 meters) in summer 2007 alone, when Arctic sea ice was at a record low.
In the past, spurts of erosion had often been linked to storms, but there were no major storms in 2007. That suggests "a shift in the forces driving erosion," said lead author Benjamin Jones, a research geographer at the U.S. Geological Survey.
One major force now is global warming, according to the research.
The study of the 40-mile (64-kilometer) stretch of coast was published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Out to Sea
Warming air and sea temperatures are melting the ice in the region's permafrost, or perpetually frozen earth. The meltwater then streams over the land and melts more permafrost, carrying sediment into the sea as it goes.
From 2002 to 2007, the melting ice caused the coast to disappear at a rate of about 45 feet (14 meters) a year. That's up from an annual average of 30 feet (9 meters) between 1979 and 2002 and 20 feet (6 meters) between 1955 and 1979.
Remains of the ghost town of Esook, a hundred-year-old trading post, have been buried underwater as a result of the erosion, Jones said.
And near the town of Lonely, Jones took a picture of a whaling boat that a few months later was swallowed by the sea after nearly a century on shore.
The erosion also threatens oil wells. At least one has already been lost since 2002, and another will soon be gone, if the melting continues at these rates.Part of Alaska's coast is drifting into the sea at twice the rate it has in the past,... more
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Of course, there will always be those who laugh in the face of truth and hide behind their political grudges or ideologies while hypocritically telling others to think for themselves. Regarding what is happening in the Arctic, it is plain to the naked eye willing to look at it that climate change/global warning is having an effect. The question now is, do we allow those laughing in the face of that truth to continue to set the tone of this debate, or do we push them aside and get down to business? I personally vote for the latter. It is bad enough that we spew 70 million plus tons of GHG into the atmosphere everyday we continue to talk about needing action. And to add insult to injury, we are also compounding the amount of GHGs being released from the thawing tundra. How long will it take before people realize this is not a joke?Of course, there will always be those who laugh in the face of truth and hide behind... more
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We are currently at 385PPM. At 450PPM, we enter a world where the tipping points begin to come one by one. It won't take long to get there now, and scientists are relatively sure we will reach even 600PPM by mid century. My child and his children will still be here. Heck, I may even be here still if I somehow live into my nineties. So why aren't more people truly concerned about this even with all we know and with all scientists are saying?
Well, I think the reason is obvious. It is because it is the human species that is entrusted with doing the right thing. Right there I believe there could be evidence to dispute the presence of a higher power. How could any such higher power think to place humans as stewards of anything? We seem to only destroy all we touch. I have stated many times that I have faith in humans and that we will do the right thing to save ourselves. I don't feel that way today.
I think about the future a lot. I think about the world our children will live in... and then I cry. I sign petitions, I speak out, I blog, I post, I scream, I support environmental organizations, I speak out to politicians, and I live my life in a way that I walk as lightly on this planet as I possibly can. Is it to be all for naught because of the selfish, apathetic, ignorant ones who think this is just some political game?
We must cap CO 2 emissions NOW. Not in five years, or ten years, or by 2050. NOW. So considering that scenario along with the fact that we are dealing with a system built on greed that blinds man to all that is important, I think it is safe to say we are screwed. Our procrastination for the last thirty years has brought us to this point, and STILL politicians play footsy with the sustainability of this planet as if we have time to sit and waste another thirty years. And people are still arguing over whether humans even cause it. All over the voices of the scientists speaking the truth to us and saying, you are failing morally in your duty to preserve this planet for your existence.
Shame on us all for still not paying attention.We are currently at 385PPM. At 450PPM, we enter a world where the tipping points begin... more
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So, when is this country going to get serious about capping GHG emissions? Now that we have a new president, just how far up on the priority list is it, and will it be enough?So, when is this country going to get serious about capping GHG emissions? Now that we... more
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We are talking about climate trends here and the other variables that are factored into those trends over years.This is not just about one colder winter. We need to drastically reduce the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases (especially in light of methane emissions increasing caused by melting permafrost which is caused by Co2 emissions) if we are to preserve the climate balance of this planet before seeing a tipping point.
We may well have reached a tipping point in glacier melt in the Arctic and are close to it in other parts of the world (namely the Himalayas) and will reach one regarding our oceans if we do not act aggressively now to reign in manmade greenhouse gas emissions. That is not a partisan political argument, it is a fact.We are talking about climate trends here and the other variables that are factored... more
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The UN launched a programme that it hopes could be the foundation for a system in which rich countries would pay poor ones to slow climate change by protecting and planting forests.
The new programme, called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Program, or UN-REDD, will assist nine developing countries, including Bolivia, Indonesia and Zambia, in establishing systems to monitor, assess and report forest cover.
"Forests are worth more alive than dead... and their ecosystem services and benefits are worth billions if not trillions of dollars if only we capture these in economic models," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme.
Clearing forests for timber and farmland in developing nations emits nearly 20 per cent of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, according to the UN's climate science panel. Trees store heat-trapping carbon dioxide as they grow and release it when they rot or are burned.
Tropical countries are pushing to include UN-REDD in the successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Delegates representing countries around the globe are scheduled to meet in Copenhagen at the end of next year in hopes of hammering out a successor to the pact, which expires in 2012.
Under such a plan, the tropical countries would generate tradable carbon credits by saving and planting trees. Indonesia, for example, has the potential to be compensated €682 million a year if its deforestation rate was reduced to one million hectares annually, the UN estimated.
Presumably, rich countries would buy the credits to meet their own emission limits, like the way EU countries have invested in credits representing emissions cuts generated by clean energy projects in poor countries.
Not everyone agrees such a programme would be a good idea. Barry Gardiner, British Prime Minister special envoy for forests, said in an interview earlier this month that the model of avoided deforestation is flawed and risks alienating voters in rich countries.
Mr Gardiner proposed instead that rich countries should simply make payments to tropical nations based on the size of existing forests. If countries continued to log or burn they could be expelled from the scheme.
The UN launched a programme that it hopes could be the foundation for a system in... more
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Global warming is already leading to widespread disruptions of the Earth's natural systems, according to a study published in the journal Nature and conducted by some of the climate scientists who were involved in the influential 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
"[This] is the first [study] to formally link observed global changes in physical and biological systems to human-induced climate change, predominantly from increasing greenhouse gases," said study reviewers Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada and Gabriele Hegerl of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The scientists catalogued more than 29,500 reports of changes to the Earth's natural systems. Some of these changes were physical, such as the melting of Patagonia's ice fields of Arctic permafrost, or the earlier break-up of Mongolian river ice and unprecedented coastal erosion. Others were behavioral, such as the earlier arrival of migratory birds to Australia, and others dealt with changes in populations, such as the decline of Antarctic krill stocks and overall productivity of Lake Tanganyika. Even genetic changes, such as those in North America's pitcher plant mosquitoes, were included.
The researchers found that more than 90 percent of the documented changes were to be expected from a scenario of rising regional temperatures. Global warming, rather than other human causes such as deforestation or pollution, seemed to be the major force behind the changes.
more at the link.
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This must now become more than just a political wedge issue. This must be the end of governments and groups placating flatearthers and special interests who are using their $$$$$ to control the conversation. This must be the end of governments and organizations like the World Bank using this crisis as an impetus to benefit themselves and to foment war. They are all leading us over the cliff. Global warming/climate change is doing damage to the many ecosystems that support the life of humans and other species.
There are currently six degrees of climate change that represent the effects this planet will suffer from due to global warming/climate change. Currently, we are at the third degree... we are already HALFWAY THERE. As the last quote in this article states, we have to get our act together. And it is not overly dramatic to state that we are running out of time regarding the future sustainability of this planet. This is not something that is just occurring through natural means nor has it been ordained by God. This is not just some fluke of nature that will reverse itself. This is not a myth or an illusion. This is real, it is happening, and we are contributing to it not only by our behavior but by our retiscence in taking the action necessary to mitigate it.
How many 'meetings' are world leaders going to have before they realize that they have run out the clock? How many political candidates will continue to spew the same 80% by 2050 line? I recently wrote to my Senator about the need for 100% renewable energy in 10 years... know the response I got? The same form letter with that same 80% by 2050 line! Where is the political will? Where is the urgency? And people dare to criticize those who scale coal plants to unfurl a dire warning as to the truth of the state of the only planet that can sustain us to wake people up?
Just what is it going to take?Global warming is already leading to widespread disruptions of the Earth's natural... more
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Kivalina's precarious situation has been worsened by a changing climate. Historically, the Chukchi Sea had turned solid by early winter, with slush forming along the shore in the fall, creating a kind of bumper cushion that protected the island from autumn storms. Over the past half century, however, the average annual temperature here has risen more than three degrees Fahrenheit, to 23.5, with a wintertime increase of almost seven. Last year it rained in January for the first time in memory, and in summer 2007 the thermometer approached 80 degrees. As a result, sea ice forms later in the year, while storms occur earlier: a literal double whammy.
Kivalinans know they have to move. In the 1990s, even before global warming was widely recognized, they targeted a pair of potential relocation sites to the east and south, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found geological problems with both. Now the village is fast running out of time. "Before, leaving was optional," Swan says. "Now it's an emergency situation."
After another storm forced an evacuation of the island in the fall of 2007, you might say that Kivalina reached the end of its rope. Which is why, on February 26, 2008, this community of 400 Native Americans filed suit in federal court against 24 oil, electricity, and coal companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, British Petroleum, Chevron, and Shell. Demanding up to $400 million in damages-the estimated cost of moving the village out of reach of the rising sea-the lawsuit accuses the companies of contributing to global warming and creating a public nuisance that has harmed property in the town.
It's an audacious move-after all, even snowmobile-using Kivalinans bear some responsibility for climate change. But the lawsuit goes further, charging that some of the corporations "conspired to create a false scientific debate about global warming in order to deceive the public."
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Hmm, and I wonder, just what is the Governor of Alaska doing about this? Oh yes, I forgot, she is too much into being tutored to play the Washington political game now to care about her own state. And she thinks climate change is not manmade? And she thinks thst Alaska should actually pump out more oil in order to continue to precipitate the crisis? I for one am pleased that Kivalina is suing oil companies for their part in climate change because they have been part of an all out deceptive PR campaign as tobacco companies were to make people believe climate change is not as serious as it really is in order to protect their profits. So, Governor Palin claims to be tough on oil companies? Sorry, that claim doesn't fly when you look at the Kivalinas of this world. And it is said that she stood up to them as far as taxing them? Then where did all that money go since the native people of Kivalina in her state don't even have enough money to move their village due to the effects of climate change? Kivalina is indeed the canary in the coal mine for climate change. Too bad their leader is too busy being a media star to care. Kivalina's precarious situation has been worsened by a changing climate. Historically,... more
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Could our coastlines disappear underwater much sooner than we think? The controversial view that sea levels could rise at a rate of more than 1 metre per century has found support from a new study of a long-melted ice sheet.
In reconstructing the events at the end of the last ice age, Anders Carlson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found that the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered most of North America between 95,000 and 7000 years ago, rapidly disintegrated.
The researchers began by studying beryllium isotopes in rocks to determine how the outer edges of the two final chunks of the Laurentide ice sheet retreated. They found that the ice retreated rapidly between 9000 and 8500 years ago, stabilised, and then made its final rapid retreat between 7600 and 6800 years ago.
The team calculated the volume of water that would have been released in each of these melting stages, and the rate at which it must have raised sea levels. They concluded that levels would have climbed 1.3 metres per century in the earlier period, and 0.7 metres per century in the final melt.
Carlson then used a sophisticated computer model – one that is used to forecast future climate change – to check the results. The model predicted an average sea level rise of 1.3 metres per century.
Different times
"The forces that led to the demise of the Laurentide ice sheet in a very rapid way are comparable to the forces the same computer models predict we will experience this century if we do not rapidly curb greenhouse gas emissions," says Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who collaborated with Carlson on the study.
For Mark Siddall of the University of Bristol, UK, and Michael Kaplan of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, however, there remain many differences between what happened nearly 10,000 years ago and the climate change Earth is currently experiencing.
"To what extent this dynamic response of the Laurentide ice sheet to past temperature change can be considered analogous to present and future reduction of the Greenland ice sheet remains unresolved," they say in an associated commentary. "But their work suggests that future reductions of the Greenland ice sheet on the order of one metre per century are not out of the question."
If Carlson's estimates are correct, they show that 2007 predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a sea-level rise of between 18 centimetres and 59 cm by 2100 – are very conservative, as the IPCC acknowledged at the time.
Millions at risk
Sea-level rises of at least a metre per century were also predicted by the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen. Hansen believes that our climate will soon hit tipping points – points of no return – beyond which the ice sheets will rapidly disintegrate.
Carlson says his team's findings are proof that large ice sheets can disintegrate very rapidly. What's more, he says the forces that caused the Laurentide ice sheet to disintegrate are equivalent to the ones that threaten the Greenland ice sheet today.
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Will the US and other industrialized nations then step up to the plate in Copenhagen next year? Will the US Congress do so as well? The way I feel today I would say it would have to take Greenland falling into the ocean before that happens. How irresponsible of them to not be making this the priority issue it must be.Could our coastlines disappear underwater much sooner than we think? The controversial... more
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THE world's reefs, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef, will be dead within 30 years unless human activity changes quickly, a leading researcher says.
Addressing the 11th international River symposium in Brisbane, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said it was crunch time for the world's reefs.
Let's say we delay another 10 years on having stern actions on emissions at a global level, we will not have coral reefs in about 30 to 50 years, he said.
Professor Hoegh-Guldberg, from the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, said rising CO2 levels and melting ice caps meant the ocean was becoming uninhabitable for reefs.
This worldwide change in climatic conditions was in addition to land-based pollution spilling from Queensland's coastal river systems, a symposium session into the impacts of river systems on the reef was told.
We're rapidly rising to (CO2) levels which will be unsustainable for reefs in the very near future, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
If you ask the question, `Will we have coral reefs in 30 years' time?', I would say at the current rate of change and what we're doing to them, we won't. But it's all up to us right now.
We're at the fork in the road. If we take one road - the one we're on right now - we won't have coral reefs.
If we make some very, very, very aggressive actions, if we reform how we do things, both at the global and local level, we'll have a really good chance of bringing coral reefs through in some shape or form, which will still provide the basis for the 100 million people that they support.
He said ice core samples showed CO2 levels were the highest for at least a million years, possibly 20 million years.
That changes the circumstances under which corals form their skeletons, so they become less vibrant, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.
Then if you keep hitting them with things like bleaching events, they just don't bounce back as much.
So we're changing essentially the rules under which biology is trying to operate, and that's the problem.
He also warned that an increasing incidence of coral bleaching was a growing threat.
If we have them (bleaching events) now every four to five years, we're getting to a point where reefs no longer have time to recover.
The impact on Queensland's $6 billion-a-year earnings from reef-based tourism would be enormous, he said.
So we might have an industry that's half the size, but it certainly won't have the pull that it does today, he said.
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This is not natural.THE world's reefs, including Australia's Great Barrier Reef, will be dead within 30... more
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The bears were spotted in open ocean off the northwest coast of Alaska, miles from their normal hunting area by US government oil survey scientists flying over the Chukchi sea.
Although land was initially only 60 miles away from the bears' former home, they were driven north by their homing instinct towards the edge of the Arctic ice shelf.
Polar bears are renowned as strong swimmers but the 'lost' bears now face an epic 400-mile swim back to shore.
According to WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature, one group of bears is known to have swum 100 miles but they arrived exhausted and several drowned on the way.
In May, the US Department of the Interior listed polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the Arctic ice they hunt on is melting so quickly.
"The Arctic is a vast ocean and to find nine bears swimming in one area is extremely worrying because it means that dozens more are probably in the same predicament," said Margaret Williams, Director of WWF's Alaska office.
Dr Williams said animal groups were considering asking the US government to send a Coast Guard ship, like a modern Noah's ark, to rescue some of the bears.
Arctic scientists said they feared the annual ice-melt had passed its 'tipping point' where not enough freezes each winter to make up for what melted the previous summer.
As less ice freezes, the winter sea remains warmer, and becomes hotter the following summer causing even more ice to melt. Senior scientist Dr Mark Serreze said: "The summer melting used to slow down by the beginning of September.
"We thought it was slowing this year, but it's suddenly sped up instead.'
The Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast is home to one of two populations of Alaska polar bears. Professor Richard Steiner, of the University of Alaska's Marine Advisory Programme, said: 'The bottom line here is that polar bears need sea ice, sea ice is decaying, and the bears are in very serious trouble.'
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Yet, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska does not believe man is contributing to global warming. She thinks the excelerated and unprecedented melting we are seeing worldwide is a "natural" variance. Yet, she sites no evidence for this. She is simply another person whose family makes money off of oil, so of course, what would she think even with the evidence staring her in the face. How totally ignorant and irresponsible on her part. Perhaps Sarah Palin like all those who believe they shouldn't have to be responsible for others on this planet should actually look beyond their own selfish needs and greed to actually reading a scientific report. Or does she like most flatearthers believe that science is a myth as well? She may be Vice Presidential material to John McCain (well actually, I don't really think she is to him, she was just the convenient choice based on circumstances) but she is certainly not qualified by putting her own needs before those of her state and this planet. There is absolutely no way this could just be a "natural" variance, Ms. Palin and it has been proven. I think you need to do a bit of research on this topic rather than parrotting the political ideology of those who only see the scales tipped with gold bars, because you like them are accomplices in the slow suicide of the human species and those other species powerless to speak out for themselves. Shame on you.The bears were spotted in open ocean off the northwest coast of Alaska, miles from... more
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