Climate Articles
Climate Change Imperils the State of the Planet--Will the World Act?
NEW YORK CITY—More than 100 countries have signed on to the Copenhagen Accord—the nonbinding agreement to combat climate change hastily agreed to this past December at a summit of world leaders. As signatories, the countries agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions to keep global average temperatures from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius. The countries that have signed up to date represent more than 80 percent of the global emissions of such heat-trapping gases.
"Climate change is one of the most important challenges humanity faces today," said Mexico President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa via videoconference from Mexico City at the State of the Planet gathering at Columbia University hosted by its Earth Institute on March 25. "This is urgent, we need to act now as countries and as governments."
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'100 Percent Confident'
One of the conclusions of his famous statistical analysis of the world's climate is that the average temperature on Earth rose by 0.166 degrees Celsius per decade between 1975 and 1998. This, according to Phil Jones, was the clear result of his research and that of many other scientists.
"I am 100 percent confident that the climate has warmed," Jones says imploringly. "I did not manipulate or fabricate any data."
His problem is that the public doesn't trust him anymore. Since unknown hackers secretly copied 1,073 private emails between members of his research team and published them on the Internet, his credibility has been destroyed -- and so has that of an entire profession that had based much of its work on his research until now.
Those who have always viewed global warming as a global conspiracy now feel a sense of satisfaction. The so-called climate skeptics feel vindicated, because Jones, in his written correspondence with colleagues, all of them leading members of the climate research community, does not come across as an objective scientist, but rather as an activist or missionary who views "his" data as his personal shrine and is intent on protecting it from the critical eyes of his detractors.
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Upcoming NASA Study Disproves Global Cooling
Early results released this month from a study by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies conclude that temperatures have continued to rise since the 1970's, despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with El Nino-La Nina cycles. The study, titled "Current GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis," analyzed temperature data from sea-surface records and meteorological stations. It also took into account ocean records, urban warming and tropical and Arctic oscillations.
According to the Goddard scientists, "There has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15 (to) 0.20oC (per) decade that began in the late 1970s." The study predicts that 2010 will be the hottest year on record, despite the unusually cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
One of the purposes of the study is to disprove the belief that the earth is cooling. In particular, it directly challenges a popular study released by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which states that global surface temperature trends have been "nearly ?at since the 1990's."The NASA study is tentatively schedule to be submitted to a journal "within a month or so."
When the forces of humans and nature collide
IN THE 1993 film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a gruff television weatherman trapped in a time loop, forced to live the same day, over and over again. Those compiling weather reports around Australia might have sympathised on Monday, when reports of golf-ball-sized hailstones, fierce storms and severe damage to properties filtered in from across the Nullarbor.
Just 16 days after Melbourne was assaulted by a "supercell" storm, Perth was hit by a remarkably similar tempest, which is already the most expensive natural disaster in West Australian history.
Hard as it may be for Melburnians to believe, the Perth reports have put Melbourne's recent storm damage in the shade.
Perth's storm sparked a large landslide which forced apartment towers to be evacuated moments before they filled with sand. Hospitals scaled back to only emergency surgery, 12 schools were closed, and a group of people attending an outdoor funeral during the blitz suffered injuries including broken noses.
The insurance bill has already topped $203 million and is expected to climb.
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Droughts bring severe damage to some Asian countries
HONG KONG: Severe droughts are hitting some east and southeast Asian countries, causing damages to crops, drop of water level of rivers and reservoirs and economic losses.
Places such as Southwest China including Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality, has been experiencing the worst drought in 60 years since autumn last year, as it has received only half its annual average rainfall and water stores are depleted.
Citing a statement of China's State Commission of Disaster Relief, Xinhua news agency said that 51 million Chinese are affected by the drought, causing more than 16 million people and 11 million livestock with drinking water shortages.
About 4.348 million hectares of farmland were affected and 940, 200 hectares would yield no harvest.
The direct economic losses are estimated at 19 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion).
In the Philippines, 23 provinces were reportedly affected by the dry spell this year, which was described by some people as the worst they could remember since another El Nino-induced drought in 1998.
A report prepared by the Philippine Department of Agriculture's Central Action Center (DACAC) placed total damages at 11.2 billion pesos (US$244.4 million), with the damage in paddy rice production already nearing 300,000 metric tonnes.
The drought also reduced the water levels in hydropower plants, spurring power crisis in the southern region of Mindanao, the country's food basket.
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Pachauri: Don't hound the climate scientists
"As inhabitants of planet Earth, our lives depend on a stable climate, and it is our responsibility to ensure that future generations do not suffer the consequences of climate change"
To dismiss the implications of climate change based on an error about the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are melting is an act of astonishing intellectual legerdemain. Yet this is what some doubters of climate change are claiming. But the reality is that our understanding of climate change is based on a vast and remarkably sound body of science – and is something we distort and trivialise at our peril.
So writes IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri in a blunt article published by the Guardian Friday.
Given how much the IPCC and climate scientists have been attacked, much of it based on falsehoods and half-truths from the anti-science disinformers, I think it only fair to reprint his entire comments:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has published four comprehensive assessments of climate change and several important special reports since its founding in 1988. The last such document, the fourth assessment report (AR4) from 2007, mobilised 450 scientists from all over the world to write the report. An additional 800 contributing authors gave specialised inputs and about 2,500 expert reviewers provided 90,000 comments.
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SW China Drought Caused by Climate Change: Experts
Meteorologists have attributed the once-in-a-century drought parching southwest China to climate change.
The drought has left more than 18 million residents and 11.7 million head of livestock suffering drinking-water shortages over a region encompassing the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the municipality of Chongqing, data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed.
"The direct reason for the drought is light rain and high temperatures," Ren Fuming, a leading expert at China's National Climate Center, told the latest edition of Outlook Weekly, a well-known magazine in China.
Ren's opinion was echoed by Zhang Peiqun, also a meteorologist with the center.
Zhang said the rainfall in worst-hit Yunnan since September last year is the lowest in about 50 years while the average temperature since the beginning of winter is the highest.
"The decreased rainfall during the rainy season led to less water in store and high temperatures resulted in greater evaporation, directly causing the severe drought," Zhang said.
Zhang said the reasons underlying it were the complicated ocean currents and anomalous atmospheric circulation.
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Cheap and Green: Spin-Off to Revolutionize Sustainable Energy
ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2010) — Zero-carbon, renewable energy which is cost-competitive with fossil fuel generated sources is surely the Holy Grail of the engineering world.
Now, a new spin-off company from The University of Nottingham is aiming to prove that far from being just a pipe dream, one new form of green energy could be in widespread use within 15 years and at a fraction of the cost of its nearest competitor.
NIMROD Energy Ltd is being launched by Professor Seamus Garvey, based on the Integrated Compressed Air Renewable Energy Systems (ICARES) research which he has been developing since early in 2006.
The technology is centered on a simple premise -- using giant wind turbines to compress and pump air into huge undersea Energy Bags™ anchored to the seabed -- or geological formations where deep water is not available. The high pressure air would be expanded in special turbo-generator sets to provide electricity as required -- not just when the wind is blowing. It would see vast floating offshore 'energy farms' created off the coastline around the UK.
Professor Garvey said: "The UK has abundant offshore renewable energy resource -- enough to supply all of our energy several times over. We also have a strong internal energy market -- worth well over £60 billion per year. We have an economy desperately in need of rebooting its manufacturing base and an engineering capability which is the finest in the world.
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Seabirds struggle in warmer North
Warmer, wetter weather in Canada's North could have a devastating impact on nesting seabirds, says a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Iqaluit.
Mark Mallory says he and his colleagues have examined research data on seabirds collected over the past 33 years and have tracked the unusual ways they die. They predict a warming climate, including more frequent and severe storms, will have serious implications.
"It's not really a surprise," says Mallory. "If a bird is adapted to cold conditions and you make things warmer, predictably they'll find things harder."
The birds he and his colleagues studied died most often as a result of violent storms, crashing into each other or into cliffs during heavy fog.
They also died after being slammed into the ocean by strong winds or from a combination of heat stress and blood loss due to mosquito attacks.
The scientists' research was published earlier this month in the peer-reviewed journal, Arctic. Their study is based on the observation of six species of birds in 11 seabird colonies in the Eastern Arctic from northern Hudson Bay to Devon Island.
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Polluted rivers 'are a CO2 ticking time bomb'
Nine of Indonesia's main rivers are contaminated with dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) due to the dumping of industrial chemicals and agriculture and domestic waste, a four-year study shows.
There is a far higher percentage of CO2 in the nine rivers than in the atmosphere, the survey shows.
"The rivers are far more polluted than the atmosphere," said Elvin Alrian, director of the climate change and air quality unit at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency, during an international workshop on climate change Monday.
The survey, conducted from 2005 to 2009, studied nine rivers: Cisadane in Tangerang; Citanduy and Serayu in Cilacap; Bengawan Solo in Gresik; Cimanuk in Indramayu; Citarum in Bekasi; Brantas in Surabaya; Ciujung in Cibinong and Musi in Palembang.
The study reveals that carbon emission levels in the river Brantas stand at about 9,000 parts per million (ppm) and emissions are at 7,500 ppm in the river Musi. Carbon levels in the atmosphere are estimated at 387 ppm, the study says.
Elvin said it was possible the rivers would not be able to hold higher levels of carbon, meaning they would begin to emit CO2 into the atmosphere.
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NASA's Grace Sees Rapid Spread in Greenland Ice Loss
A new international study finds that ice losses from Greenland's ice sheet, which have been increasing over the past decade in its southern region, are now spreading rapidly up its northwest coast.
The researchers, including Isabella Velicogna, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, compared data from the JPL-built and managed Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission with continuous GPS measurements made from long-term sites on bedrock on the ice sheet's edges. The Grace and GPS data gave the researchers monthly averages of crustal uplift caused by ice mass loss. They found that the acceleration in ice loss began moving up the northwest coast of Greenland in late 2005. The authors speculate the dramatic ice mass losses on Greenland's northwest coast are caused by some of the big glaciers in the region sliding downhill faster and dumping more ice into the sea.
"These changes on the Greenland ice sheet are happening fast, and we are definitely losing more mass than we had anticipated," says Velicogna. "We also are seeing this trend in Antarctica, a sign that warming temperatures really are having an effect on ice in Earth's cold regions."
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Is Antarctica Melting?
There has been lots of talk lately about Antarctica and whether or not the continent's giant ice sheet is melting. One new paper 1, which states there's less surface melting recently than in past years, has been cited as "proof" that there's no global warming. Other evidence that the amount of sea ice around Antarctica seems to be increasing slightly 2-4 is being used in the same way. But both of these data points are misleading. Gravity data collected from space using NASA's Grace satellite show that Antarctica has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002. The latest data reveal that Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate, too. How is it possible for surface melting to decrease, but for the continent to lose mass anyway? The answer boils down to the fact that ice can flow without melting.
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New Report Provides Update on Recent Climate Changes
A new global scientific synthesis report prepared by 26 of the world's top climate scientists, including JPL research scientist Eric Rignot and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center researcher Robert Bindschadler, concludes that several important aspects of climate change are occurring at the high end of, or even beyond the expectations of just a few years ago. The report, "The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science," documents key findings in climate change science since December 2005. That was the cutoff for scientific inputs used to prepare the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007.
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Melting Greenland Ice Sheets May Threaten Northeast United States, Canada
BOULDER—Melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and Canada, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The study, which is being published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters, finds that if Greenland's ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 may shift and cause sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches (about 30 to 50 centimeters) more than in other coastal areas. The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed.
"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise," says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise."
A study in Nature Geoscience in March warned that warmer water temperatures could shift ocean currents in a way that would raise sea levels off the Northeast by about 8 inches (20 cm) more than the average global sea level rise. But it did not include the additional impact of Greenland's ice, which at moderate to high melt rates would further accelerate changes in ocean circulation and drive an additional 4 to 12 inches (about 10 to 30 cm) of water toward heavily populated areas of northeastern North America on top of average global sea level rise. More remote areas in extreme northeastern Canada and Greenland could see even higher sea level rise.
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Temperature Anomalies, Winter 2009-2010
When climate scientists calculate Earth's average temperature each year, they reduce a year's worth of seasonal highs and lows for hundreds of millions of square kilometers of land and ocean into a single number. This big picture perspective is essential for understanding long-term climate change, but it largely smoothes away the "interesting" parts—the weather variability that has such a big influence on people's daily lives.
This series of maps of land surface temperature anomalies for Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-2010 is a case in point. Based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite, the maps show how temperatures in December 2009 and January and February 2010 compared to the 2000-2008 averages for each month. Places where temperatures were up to 12 degrees Celsius colder than the average are blue, places that were near average are white, and places that were up to 12 degrees warmer than the 2000–2008 average are red.
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Just 5 Questions: Fingerprinting the Climate
Dave Young is the Project Scientist for NASA's CLimate Absolute Radiance and REfractivity Observatory (CLARREO). CLARREO is a climate-focused mission set to launch in the latter part of this decade. The goal of the mission is to measure tiny, incremental changes in the amount of energy entering and leaving Earth's atmosphere -- with such accuracy that even minor global warming trends over the course of a decade will be detected with confidence. These climate change measurements will carry the "fingerprints" of what caused them, including those caused by human activity.
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US NOAA warns of major floods after fierce winter
* NOAA warns of "potentially historic" flooding
* Red River Valley in Minnesota, Iowa at risk of floods
* U.S. Eastern seaboard, south could flood too
* El Nino sparks wet winter, huge snowpack
NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - A huge snowpack from a harsh winter will cause extensive flooding this spring in the upper Midwest and in the major corn-growing state of Iowa, the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said on Tuesday.
"We are looking at potentially historic flooding in some parts of the country this spring," NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco told reporters in a briefing while presenting the government's spring flood risk outlook.
The snowpack in the Midwest is "more extensive than in 2009," with precipitation in December up to four times above average, NOAA said.
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Can Local 'Domes' of Carbon Dioxide Affect Human Health?
New research shows that local spikes in atmospheric CO2 concentrations could contribute to premature death by increasing ozone concentrations
A running mantra through the climate debate is that global warming is global indeed. Now, however, a scientist has found that localized "CO2 domes" could increase urban smog and other air pollution problems.
In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson estimated that the effect could cause the premature deaths of 50 to 100 people a year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the continental United States. By comparison, anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people a year die in air pollution-related deaths.
The finding, he says, could justify a regional or local approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
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More Greenland Ice Melting Faster
Sensitive Global Positioning System and other satellite-borne sensors have detected the accelerating northwestern migration of ice loss the length of coastal Greenland since 2005.
Scientists have known for some time that the great ice sheet was losing mass over southeastern portions of Greenland, but a new analysis describes "an on-going northward migration of increasing mass loss" along the western coast from the southern tip to the far north.
The Greenland ice sheet is a vast reservoir, two miles deep in places, containing enough water to fill the Gulf of Mexico -- and to raise sea level 21 feet if it were all to melt.
Greenland ice loss averaged rate in centimeters per year since 2003. The new analysis, by an international team led by Shfaqat Abbas Khan of the National Space Institute of Denmark, is published this week in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters. The image, courtesy of AGU, shows the averaged rate of mass loss, measured in centimeters of ice thickness, between February 2003 and June 2009.
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Is Earth past the tipping point?
Biodiversity loss. Land use. Freshwater use. Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Stratospheric ozone. Ocean acidification. Climate change. Chemical Pollution. Aerosol loading in the atmosphere.
A team of 30 scientists across the globe have determined that the nine environmental processes named above must remain within specific limits, otherwise the "safe operating space" within which humankind can exist on Earth will be threatened. Amid some controversy, the group has set numeric limits for seven of the nine so far (chemical pollution and aerosol loading are still being pinned down). And the researchers have determined that the world has already crossed the boundary in three cases: biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and climate change.
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Study: High Arctic's biodiversity down 26 percent since 1970
Mammals, birds and fish living in the High Arctic experienced an average 26 percent drop in their populations between 1970 and 2004 due to the loss of sea ice, according to a new report from The Arctic Species Trend Index, "Tracking Trends in Arctic Wildlife."
The 2010 report, commissioned and coordinated by the Whitehorse, Yukon–based Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program (CBMP), was presented Wednesday at the State of the Arctic Conference in Miami. It covers 965 populations of 365 species, representing 35 percent of all known vertebrate species found in the Arctic.
The Arctic region is broken into three floristic zones (High, Low and Sub Arctic), referring to the amount of plant life that exists within the regions' boundaries.
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Competing Catastrophes: What's the Bigger Menace, an Asteroid Impact or Climate Change?
If you ask the average person whether in the long run it is climate change or an asteroid/comet impact that's expected to kill more people annually, you'll undoubtedly get some confused replies. Those asteroid movies are scary, but there are no verified instances of an asteroid strike killing any humans, are there? Meanwhile, the science of climate change is currently being overshadowed by a media-driven public debate, mainly in the U.S.
In fact, the expected annual fatality rate due to climate change is estimated to be far higher than that due to an asteroid or comet impact—150,000 versus 91, per the World Health Organization (WHO) and Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute, respectively. You won't, however, see that 150,000 figure in the main body of the Washington, D.C.–based National Research Council report on near-Earth object (NEO) surveys and mitigation strategies. (The report was written by a total of 42 scientists.)
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Putting a Price Tag on the Melting Ice Caps
Reports about the melting ice caps are distressing, but for the most part climate change remains abstract. The poor polar bear has been trotted out as the tangible face of global warming so often that we're beginning to see "polar bear fatigue." How about bringing the effects of Arctic melt close to home, as in what it will cost? A new study does just that, and the results are alarming, not just for Arctic dwellers but for all of us. According to lead author Eban Goodstein, Ph.D., over the next 40 years Arctic ice melt will take an economic toll of between $2.4 trillion and $24 trillion. Unless we change course — and fast.
Why is the melting Arctic so expensive? "The Arctic acts as the planet's air conditioner, and that function is already breaking down," says Goodstein, an economist and Director of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy. The high price reflects anticipated losses in agriculture and real estate plus the cost of disease outbreaks and natural disasters associated with rising sea levels. The melt, he says, is already adding extra heat at an annual rate of 3 billion tons of CO2 — the equivalent of 500 coal-powered plants, or more than 40% of all U.S. fossil fuel emissions — and this is expected to more than double by the end of the century.
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Most Oregon greenhouse gas not what you might think
An inventory conducted by Metro concludes that driving our cars and heating our homes aren't the region's biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
It's how we make, move and toss away all the stuff we consume.
According to the inventory, manufacturing products and food, moving freight and managing waste produce an estimated 14.9 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually, or 48 percent of the emissions produced in the tri-county Portland area.
Natural gas and fossil fuels account for 27 percent, and emissions from transit, cars and light trucks accounts make up 25 percent of the total.
"Consumption matters as much as energy and transportation," the report concludes.
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Record drought turns southern China into arid plain
It is hard to imagine a less fitting environment for a mollusc than the arid plain of Damoguzhen in south-west China.
There is not a drop of water in sight. The baked and fissured earth resembles an ancient desert. Yet shellfish are scattered here in their thousands; all so recently perished that shriveled, blackened bodies are still visible inside cracked, opened shells.
Far out of water, the aquatic animals are not the advance guard of evolutionary progress; but the victims of a drought that has devastated their habitat and now threatens the livelihoods of millions of people in surrounding regions. The Chinese government is so worried about the drought that it has embarked on a massive rain-making operation, involving firing thousands of shells and rockets into the sky to seed clouds.
Until last summer, Damoguzhen was home to a lake that stretched across a mile-wide expanse of water in Yunnan, a southern Chinese province famed for its mighty rivers, moist climate and beautiful views.
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Research expands to 'sister' issue of global warming
Rising temperatures and sea levels, melting glaciers and extreme weather dominate the discussion on global warming, but a parallel issue with potentially tremendous impact on Alaska's coastal waters is finally gaining attention.
Increased research into ocean acidification caused by the saturation of water with carbon dioxide is the focus of Jeremy Mathis of University of Alaska Fairbanks, who stepped onto the national stage for the first time recently in a briefing to a mix of Congressmen, Senators and staffers in Washington, D.C.
"I was very surprised, especially from the staff standpoint," Mathis said. "They asked very penetrating, thoughtful questions. They had done a lot of homework before the briefing. I was very impressed with the level of sophistication. It was what I would expect from my colleagues. It was very encouraging."
A positive response from holders of the purse strings is essential to making up research ground on ocean acidification, which Mathis calls a "sister" or co-equal problem to global warming. Studies of its potential effects on the food chain are few and the lack of baseline data on ocean pH levels is a stark contrast to decades of temperature monitoring from stations positioned around the globe.
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EARTH DAY'S 40th ANNIVERSARY - Sunday, April 25th,
Celebration Hatched by Former US Senator
WASHINGTON D.C., April 2, 2010-- In 1993 American Heritage magazine called Earth Day "one of the most remarkable happenings in the
history of democracy." Twenty million people participated. And as we approach this anniversary (Thursday, April 22), we thought you might
want to find out exactly how Earth Day was born.
The person who hatched the idea was Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. At the time, he was a U.S. Senator. Here's his account, from a 1998 speech:
It had been troubling to me that the critical matter of the state of our environment was simply a non-issue politically The challenge was
to think up some dramatic event that would focus national attention on this subject.
In 1962, I suggested that President Kennedy go on a nationwide conservation tour, spelling out in dramatic language the
deteriorating condition of our environment, and proposing an agenda to begin addressing the problem. The president began his tour in the
fall of 1963. Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Joe Clark, and I accompanied him on the first leg of the trip. For many reasons,
including a breaking story on a nuclear missile treaty, the tour failed to make the environment a national political issue.
Six years would pass before the idea for Earth Day occurred to me. It was the summer of 1969, and I was on a conservation speaking tour
out West. [One stop was in Santa Barbara, where Nelson was stunned by the damage done by the offshore blowout that became the largest oil
spill up to that time. It lasted 11 days and blackened beaches.
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Navy is celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day
Navy is celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, 2010, with Navy and Marine Corps commands worldwide participating in activities on and around that date to celebrate environmental stewardship.
The Navy's theme for Earth Day 2010, "Partnering for a Greener Future," emphasizes the Navy's partnerships with other military services, federal and state agencies, non-government organizations, industry, and civilians. The Navy relies on partnerships to achieve the shared goals of protecting the environment and providing energy security for the nation and its allies. Examples of these efforts are as follows:
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Pests, poison ivy, kudzu will thrive in TN as Earth heats up
Sure, some species benefit from a warming planet, but they can be the annoying ones that sting, bite, or make you itch.
Tennessee is among areas that are expected to see fire ants and other ills spread as the climate changes, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
Others on the list of critters that would boom around the nation are deer ticks, along with the striped Asian tiger mosquito, which has a powerful bite. And poison ivy will grow more virulent.
Some say it's all hype intended to scare people.
But Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the wildlife federation, said residents should prepare for more itching and pests if action isn't taken to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and to protect native natural resources.
"As the climate gets warmer, it becomes more hospitable to fire ants," he said.
"The projections for Tennessee indicate that the fire ant will expand its territory, probably across much of the state.
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Ice plumbing is protecting Greenland from warm summers
IF SOME of the spectacular calving of ice shelves in Antarctica is down to global warming, then why did we not see break-ups on the same scale in Greenland, which is much warmer? It turns out that, counter-intuitively, it's because Greenland is warmer.
When the ice sheets that blanket Antarctica and Greenland eventually meet the sea, they don't immediately calve off and create icebergs. Instead, they extend out to sea as floating ice shelves while remaining joined to the ice sheets on land.
In 2002, a gigantic section of the Larsen B ice shelf in the Antarctic Peninsula suddenly broke off. It had been an unusually warm summer, with temperatures rising to a balmy 4 °C. As the ice melted, huge pools of meltwater formed on the surface of the ice, and as this water poured down crevasses it forced apart sections of the shelf. "It fell apart in a whole lot of little slivers," says Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.
In contrast, while Greenland has experienced summer temperatures of up to 11 °C over the past half century, many of the ice shelves had held firm, despite some surface melting. "Greenland ice shelves are surviving," says Alley.
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Northern sea ice growth a fluke, not end of climate change: researcher
Arctic sea ice is nearly back to average global levels for the first time in at least a decade after years of spectacular declines.
The surprise growth at a time of year when ice is normally melting has triggered a blizzard of I-told-you-sos among online climate change skeptics.
But the man whose data is behind the furor says a few weeks of cold weather in one part of the Arctic - not the end of climate change - has skewed the numbers.
"It is not the end of global warming," said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which publishes monthly sea-ice updates on its website.
On Wednesday, the center posted a new graph showing that the extent of ice-covered Arctic Ocean has nearly returned to the 1979-2000 average.
The graph was a significant surprise.
Data from the last eight years shows that September sea ice was 22 per cent below that 20-year average. And until the beginning of March, this year's sea ice was on pace to match 2007's record low.
What happened?
It's called freaky Arctic weather.
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Accelerated Ice Loss from Greenland
After little net change in the 1990s, Greenland is now melting and shedding billions of tons of ice, according to NASA satellite observations. This trend especially concerns scientists because meltwater and ice emptying into the ocean raise global sea level. Currently, sea level is increasing at about 1.25 inches per decade, and researchers estimate Greenland is contributing about 15% of this rate. Greenland holds a great deal of ice; if all of it returned to the ocean, sea level would rise about 23 feet. (Such a loss would take many centuries to play out, even with substantially more warming than today.)
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The Future of Freezing
That's the message from a new interactive map of high-resolution climate projections produced by Climate Central. The map shows freezing March temperatures retreating northward this century like a routed army. The retreat would be about half the speed under a low carbon pollution scenario.
Of course, the idea of thawing temperatures seems pretty nice at the end of a long, snowy winter like the one we just had in the US (most other places were warmer than usual). And the trend does promise earlier starts for golfers, gardeners and farmers in the future.
On the other hand, warmer Marches would also mean earlier snowmelt. Across the American West, early snowmelt years have already been linked to drier rivers and forests later in the summer, and very much higher wildfire activity (see this video on the situation in Washington State). Scientists project these problems will get only worse with further warming. Other challenges expected include water shortages for farm irrigation and trouble for trout and other cold-water stream life (explored more in this video about Montana).
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Farmers Deceived About Sewage Sludge Safety
Citizens for Sludge-Free Land sent a letter to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and US EPA
Region 3 that information provided to Virginia landowners about using sewage sludges as fertilizer is deceptive. Land application permits are being granted in several Virginia counties without informing farmers of the serious risks associated with this practice. The VA code specifies, that to be valid, these permits can only be granted with the informed consent of the landowner.
The Federal Clean Water Act defines sewage sludge as a pollutant. Most of the pollutants that sewage treatment plants remove from wastewater concentrate in the resulting sludge. Exempt from hazardous and solid waste laws, sludge is being spread on agricultural land, despite mounting scientific evidence and field reports that using this contaminated waste as a cheap fertilizer is neither safe, beneficial, nor sustainable.
The Virginia Cooperative Extension Service as well as Nutri-Blend Inc., the company that needs permits to spread sludge, are failing to provide landowners with the necessary facts, so they can make an informed decision whether or not to treat their land with sludge. The widely distributed Extension Service biosolids fact sheets-- although deceptively dated May 9, 2009-- provide out-dated, inaccurate, incomplete, and in some cases, misleading information. They overstate the alleged benefits and totally ignore the known risks and recent documented evidence of adverse health and environmental impacts linked to sludge use. The fact sheets and brochures give the illusion that land applying sewage sludge, a complex and variable mixture of human waste and thousands of industrial chemicals, many of which are toxic and persistent, is a safe and normal agricultural practice.
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