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Klamath Basin water wars heat up as drought threatens Now, one of the nation's fiercest water wars is on the verge of erupting again. New water rights have given a group of Oregon Indian tribes an upper hand just as the region plunges into a severe drought. Farmers and wildlife refuges could be soon cut off by the Klamath Tribes, which in March were granted the Upper Klamath Basin's oldest water rights to the lake and tributaries that feed the mighty river flowing from arid southern Oregon to the foggy redwoods of the Northern California coast. Within weeks, the 3,700 members of the tribes are poised to make use
of their new rights to maintain water levels for endangered Lost River
and Shortnose suckers, fish they traditionally harvested for food. Under
the "first in time, first in right" water doctrine that governs the
West, the Klamath Tribes can cut off other water users when the river
runs low.
More Pacific to suffer worst climate change impacts The bank's vice president for Sustainable Development, Rachel Kyte, says Pacific nations will suffer higher sea level rise than other parts of the world. She says the impact of climate change will threaten the very existence of some countries in the Pacific. Ms Kyte also warns Australia will see some of the most extreme droughts, with summer temperatures of over 40 degrees becoming commonplace. She has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat a lack of action on climate
change is undermining efforts by the World Bank to address global poverty.
"Imagine we've laid the table, ready for the economic and social solutions
to ending poverty and building prosperity," she said.
More Cut world population and redistribute resources, expert urges Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed. The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian. "How many you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with 1.5 to
2 billion because you can have big active cities and wilderness. If
you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and
food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support
in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7
billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population
shrinkage."
More UK's coldest spring since 1963 claims 5,000 This month is on track to be the coldest March for 50 years – and as the bitter Arctic conditions caused blackouts and traffic chaos yesterday, experts warned of an 'horrendous' death toll among the elderly. About 2,000 extra deaths were registered in just the first two weeks of March compared with the average for the same period over the past five years. And for February, 3,057 extra deaths were registered in England and Wales compared with the five-year average for the month. “Earthworms play an essential part in determining the greenhouse-gas
balance of soils worldwide, and their influence is expected to grow
over the next decades,’ reads the abstract. “They are thought to stimulate
carbon sequestration in soil aggregates, but also to increase emissions
of the main greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.” More
As Earthworms Are Blamed For “Global Warming”, Ecologists Suggest Killing Polar Bears As the Daily Caller reported on in February of this year, a new foe has been appointed to “accelerate” global warming: earthworms.Yes, you’ve heard it right. Earthworms. Besides the fact that there is no global warming, and therefore the very premise is faulty, earthworms are now joining the growing list of evildoers who get the blame for global warming. The report states: “Earthworms play an essential part in determining the greenhouse-gas
balance of soils worldwide, and their influence is expected to grow
over the next decades,’ reads the abstract. “They are thought to stimulate
carbon sequestration in soil aggregates, but also to increase emissions
of the main greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.” More
'Rapid' heat spike unlike anything in 11,000 years Research released Thursday in the journal Science uses fossils of tiny marine organisms to reconstruct global temperatures back to the end of the last ice age. It shows how the globe for several thousands of years was cooling until an unprecedented reversal in the 20th century. Scientists say it is further evidence that modern-day global warming isn't natural, but the result of rising carbon dioxide emissions that have rapidly grown since the Industrial Revolution began roughly 250 years ago. The decade of 1900 to 1910 was one of the coolest in the past 11,300
years — cooler than 95 per cent of the other years, the marine fossil
data suggest. Yet 100 years later, the decade of 2000 to 2010 was one
of the warmest, said study lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State
University. Global thermometer records only go back to 1880, and those
show the last decade was the hottest for this more recent time period.
More
After studying Russian meteor blast, experts get set for the next asteroid Lindley Johnson, the executive for the Near Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said that the Feb. 15 impact is certain to become "by far the best-documented meteor and meteorite in history" — but at the time, he and his colleagues could hardly believe it was happening. "Our first reaction was, 'This can't be. ... This must be some test
of a missile that's gone awry,'" Johnson told NBC News. More
High-flying bacteria spark interest in possible climate effects In one of the first attempts to explore atmospheric microbiology at high altitude, researchers analysed air samples from a six-week hurricane-research mission by NASA in 2010. A total of 314 different types of bacteria were collected in air masses around 10 kilometres above the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the continental United States. Although the scientists trapped only a small amount of material, bacteria accounted for around 20% of all particles — biological and non-biological — a higher proportion than in the near-Earth atmosphere. “I’m really, really surprised at the high bacterial density at these
high altitudes,” says Ulrich Karlson, an environmental microbiologist
at Aarhus University in Denmark, who was not involved in the study.
“This is clearly a harsh environment.” More
Bucket Falls Midair From Military Aircraft, Damages Vehicles An RV and several vehicles were impacted by the pieces of the ceiling and bucket that shattered when the bucket fell through. The RV sustained the bulk of the damage. The bucket accidentally fell from an MCAS-based MV2 Osprey at about 7:20 p.m. Wednesday, said Lt. Tyler Balzer with MCAS Miramar. Balzer said the bucket was strapped down, but at some point it came loose and fell through the auto repair shop. The bucket broke apart upon impact, spilling the cleaning solution.
The bucket contained "non-toxic environmentally friendly" material,
said San Diego Fire Department Battalion Chief Glen Holder. A HazMat
team was called to the scene Thursday afternoon as a protocol measure.
They have not yet determined if the material is toxic or not. More
Wall of sand hits Western Australia coast The stunning images of the wild dust storm were captured by tugboat works and aeroplane passengers near the town of Onslow in north-western Australia. Local reports say the huge swathes of red sand and dust had been picked up by strong winds in the Indian Ocean before being dropped near the town. The tsunami-like wave of sand could be seen travelling for miles and dwarfed ships out at sea. Alto Biobio, a community about 60 kilometers (37 miles) east of Copahue,
is under the heightened alert. The governor and emergency officials
in Biobio province met Sunday afternoon to discuss possible scenarios,
including establishing a plan in case a mass evacuation is deemed necessary.
More Red alert issued for volcano on Chile-Argentina border In a statement, Chile's Geological and Mining Service stressed that no mandatory evacuations have been ordered around the remote volcano, which lies about 280 kilometers southeast (175 miles) of Concepcion, though the closest roads to it are in Argentina. Even though the seismic activity suggests a minor eruption, the agency decided to raise the alert level because it could not rule out a major eruption. The service warned specifically about potentially dangerous mudslides within a 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) radius of the crater. Alto Biobio, a community about 60 kilometers (37 miles) east of Copahue,
is under the heightened alert. The governor and emergency officials
in Biobio province met Sunday afternoon to discuss possible scenarios,
including establishing a plan in case a mass evacuation is deemed necessary.
More Growing food in the desert: is this the solution to the world's food crisis? Which makes it all the more remarkable that a group of young brains
from Europe, Asia and north America, led by a 33-year-old German former
Goldman Sachs banker but inspired by a London theatre lighting engineer
of 62, have bought a sizeable lump of this unpromising outback territory
and built on it an experimental greenhouse which holds the seemingly
realistic promise of solving the world's food problems.
More Canadian government 'knew of plans to dump iron into the Pacific' The news combined, with Canadian obstructionism in negotiations over geoengineering at a United Nations biodiversity meeting in Hyderabad, India, has angered international civil society groups, who have announced they are singling out Canada for a recognition of shame at the summit – the Dodo award for actions that harm biodiversity. They are criticising Canada for being one of "four horsemen of geoengineering",
joining Britain, Australia and New Zealand in opposing southern countries'
efforts to beef up the existing moratorium on technological fixes for
global warming.
More Fukushima Reactor 2 radiation too high for access Exposure to 73 sieverts for a minute would cause nausea and seven minutes would cause death within a month, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The experts said the high radiation level is due to the shallow level of coolant water — 60 cm — in the containment vessel, which Tepco said in January was believed to be 4 meters deep. Tepco has only peeked inside the reactor 2 containment vessel. It has few clues as to the status of reactors 1 and 3, which also suffered meltdowns, because there is no access to their insides. The utility said the radiation level in the reactor 2 containment
vessel is too high for robots, endoscopes and other devices to function
properly. Spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said it will be necessary to develop
devices resistant to high radiation.
More Tropical Collapse in Early Triassic Caused by Lethal Heat: Extreme Temperatures Blamed for 'Dead Zone' The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred around 250 million years ago in the pre-dinosaur era, wiped out nearly all the world's species. Typically, a mass extinction is followed by a 'dead zone' during which new species are not seen for tens of thousands of years. In this case, the dead zone, during the Early Triassic period which followed, lasted for a perplexingly long period: five million years. A study jointly led by the University of Leeds and China University
of Geosciences (Wuhan), in collaboration with the University of Erlangen-Nurnburg
(Germany), shows the cause of this lengthy devastation was a temperature
rise to lethal levels in the tropics: around 50-60°C on land, and 40°C
at the sea-surface.
More Giant Louisiana sinkhole grows to 4 acres Texas Brine, the company that owns a failed salt cavern blamed for the sinkhole says it will comply with new orders. Texas Brine continues clean up Monday, but is limited to skimming as boats will not be allowed in the sinkhole due to the activity of removing hydrocarbons from the cavern. This is for the safety of workers as the removal of the hydrocarbons may cause pressure changes that could affect the sinkhole. The current size of the sinkhole is just under four acres. State officials are ordering further testing along with monitoring and removal of natural gas trapped underground. Residents are still evacuated; they left their homes in early August.
More
New toxin showing up in Whatcom County shellfish Responsible for diarrhetic shellfish poisoning, or DSP, the toxin can cause flu-like symptoms and sicken people who eat tainted shellfish, and is an emerging health threat. All Whatcom County beaches have been closed since early July to recreational shellfish harvesting, initially because of high levels of another toxin that is responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning. But as those toxins began to level off, DSP appeared and then increased - causing the ongoing closure. "This is a toxin that is pretty new to Washington state," said Tom Kunesh, environmental health supervisor for Whatcom County Health Department. "It's a toxin that's common, I guess, in Europe." Shellfish in stores and restaurants are tested for marine toxins before
going to market.
More How to survive mass extinction First off, the elephant in the room: luck. Often overlooked, this
can play a major role. Zoos aside, all lemurs live in Madagascar, if
the island was struck by a meteor tomorrow they'd all be gone instantly
regardless of how well equipped they might normally be to survive such
a catastrophe. It's easy enough to think of similar examples and certainly
at least some groups would be doomed from such an event simply because
of where they were. And on the flipside of this, some theoretically
very vulnerable creatures could survive such an event by being lucky
enough to live in a place untouched by it.
More Scientists Race to Save World's Rice Bowl From Climate Change The conference was about "bringing all these players together to look at how the research agenda needs to change in the agricultural research world in relation to climate change," said Bruce Campbell of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which helped organize the two-day workshop. In addition, scientists at the meeting discussed potential ways to use agriculture to mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions such as methane. Agriculture, forestry, and changes in land use account for a third of greenhouse gas emissions, said Campbell, who is the program director of CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). "That's a significant portion," Campbell said, "but we can reduce
it." More
Geoengineering Could Backfire, Make Climate Change Worse Through a variety of computer simulations used for reporting to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the team investigated a scenario where an increase in the world’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels was balanced by a “dimming” of the sun. Across all four models tested, the team showed that geoengineering
could lead to adverse effects on the Earth’s climate, including a reduction
in global rainfall. They therefore concluded that geoengineering could
not be a substitute for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. More
Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level According to a NASA press release, about half of Greenland's surface ice sheet naturally melts during an average summer. But the data from three independent satellites this July, analyzed by NASA and university scientists, showed that in less than a week, the amount of thawed ice sheet surface skyrocketed from 40 percent to 97 percent. In over 30 years of observations, satellites have never measured this amount of melting, which reaches nearly all of Greenland's surface ice cover. When Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory observed the recent melting phenomenon, he said in the NASA press release, "This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: Was this real or was it due to a data error?" Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, University of Georgia-Athens
and City University of New York all confirmed the remarkable ice melt.
More
Study points to causes of high dolphin deaths in Gulf of Mexico, post-BP oil spill A team of biologists from several Gulf of Mexico institutions and the University of Central Florida in Orlando published their findings in the journal PLoS ONE. For the past two years, scientists have been trying to figure out why there were a high number of dolphin deaths, part of what's called an "unusual mortality event" along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Most troubling to scientists was the exceptionally high number of
young dolphins that made up close to half of the 186 dolphins that washed
ashore from Louisiana to western Florida from January to April 2010.
The number of "perinatal" (near birth) dolphins stranded during this
four-month period was six times higher than the average number of perinatal
strandings in the region since 2003 and nearly double the historical
percentage of all strandings. More
Geoengineering Could Turn Skies White
Scientists have long suspected that one oft-discussed geoengineering technique -- shooting tiny sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere to deflect sunlight -- could turn the blue sky white. Nature has already provided a basic proof of concept. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, spewing tons of sulfate particles in the atmosphere, it temporarily whitened the sky. Now a new study by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science
attempts to determine just how big the effect from man-made geoengineering
would be. Adding enough sulfate to the stratosphere to block 2 percent
of the sun's light would make the sky three to five times brighter,
they report in a paper that will be published in the journal Geophysical
Research Letters.
More Tree-rings prove climate was WARMER in Roman and Medieval times than it is now A study suggests the Britain of 2,000 years ago experienced a lengthy period of hotter summers than today. German researchers used data from tree rings – a key indicator of past climate – to claim the world has been on a ‘long-term cooling trend’ for two millennia until the global warming of the twentieth century. This cooling was punctuated by a couple of warm spells. These are the Medieval Warm Period, which is well known, but also a period during the toga-wearing Roman times when temperatures were apparently 1 deg C warmer than now. They say the very warm period during the years 21 to 50AD has been
underestimated by climate scientists. Lead author Professor Dr Jan Esper
of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz said: ‘We found that previous
estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle
Ages were too low. More
Low extinction rate disguises pending Amazon catastrophe No animal species have been confirmed extinct in the Brazilian Amazon during the last 40 years, despite high rates of deforestation in the region, but the authors of the new study say this masks the critical condition of many species, many of whom don't have enough remaining habitat to survive long term. The scientists from Imperial College London say the difference between
the number of species that models predict should be extinct and the
number in reality, a figure termed extinction debt, is set to increase
in line with global extinctions to the year 2050 and beyond if deforestation
continues at present levels. More
Solar flare could wreak havoc on Earth "It's one of the biggest natural disaster threats to the developed world," said John Kappenman, an electrical engineer who specializes in solar storms and the impact they would have on the Earth. "We've been doing nothing in regards to understanding the true severity of these storms, in fact, we are just building bigger and bigger antennae that makes us more closely coupled with severe space weather events." Space weather emanating from the Sun affects humans all of the time, we just don't notice it unless it disrupts our smartphones or puts on a pretty northern lights show. Experts warn though that at some point in the future an eruption of
radiation and energy from the sun will be so massive, when hits the
Earth it could send modern civilization into a long and deadly electrical
blackout by frying all of the interconnected power grids. More
Nude surfer Marama Kake makes waves on Sunshine Coast with environmental message Word of the bold and mysterious visitor has spread quickly from the beach to businesses and barbecues. Long-time surfer Ian Borland said he almost fell off his board when the "curvy" young woman paddled out "starkers" at Noosa. "I've been surfing for almost 50 years and I have never seen anything like it. There must have been 100 guys out there and out she paddled bold as brass," he said. "The reaction was shock at first and then everyone thought it was quite funny. We were all intrigued." Marama Kake is a New Zealander who calls the world her home and there's
much more to the 32-year-old than meets the eye. She rides "green boards",
including a timber alaia designed for her by master craftsman Tom Wegener
and another from the eco-friendly D'Arcy factory on the Gold Coast,
and wants to spread a message of sustainable surfing. More
Scientists warn geoengineering may disrupt rainfall Proponents say they could be a rapid response to rising global temperatures but environmentalists argue they are a distraction from the need to reduce man-made carbon emissions. Critics also point to a lack of solid research into unintended consequences and the absence of any international governance structure for such projects, whose effects could transcend national borders. A small geoengineering experiment in the UK was recently abandoned
due to a dispute over attempts by some of the team involved to patent
the technology. More
Peru dolphin death mystery deepens A final report from the Peruvian government's Ocean Institute, which manages one of the world's richest marine ecosystems, said the dolphins did not die from a lack of food, hunting by fishermen, poison from pesticides, heavy metal contamination, an infection or a virus. It also said there was no conclusive evidence that linked seismic offshore exploration by oil companies to the deaths of the long-beaked common dolphins along the Andean country's northern coast. But it did leave open the possibility that abnormally warm surface
water temperatures and high levels of algae may have played a role,
saying further analysis would be needed to determine if any red and
brown plankton species in the sea were toxic. "The dolphins were killed
by natural causes and not due to any human activity - that is what you
might say is the major conclusion," said Minister of Production Gladys
Triveno, who oversees the government's Ocean Institute. More
The Voice judge Will.i.am turns up to climate change debate... in a huge gas-guzzling helicopter But when Will.i.am arrived at a climate change debate recently, he showed a shocking lack of judgement. The 37-year-old Black Eyed Peas star arrived for the talk at Oxford University in his private helicopter. Seemingly oblivious to the furore that it might cause, the pop star even tweeted pictures of the 'hip.hop.copter' when he landed. According to the Daily Star, he then spent about an hour with Myles Allen - a leading climate expert - before heading off to carry the Olympic torch in Taunton. His trip from London was a total of 286 miles and used 71.5 gallons
of fuel, ploughing three-quarters of a tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere,
which is the same as the average UK person produces in an entire month.
More
Ocean Garbage 'Vastly Underestimated' Researchers typically sample the top 10 inches (25 centimeters) of ocean water to extrapolate the total trash levels. However, wind may force much of that trash below the surface water and skew the results, researchers concluded. "That really puts a lot of error into the compilation of the data set," Giora Proskurowski, study coauthor and oceanography researcher at the University of Washington, said in a statement "By factoring in the wind, which is fundamentally important to the physical behavior, you're increasing the rigor of the science and doing something that has a major impact on the data." The amount of trash in the ocean may be as much as 2.5 times higher than sampled amounts, a team of researchers estimated. In high winds, surface samples could provide estimates that are 27 times less than samples would suggest. "The scope of the problem is not just at the very surface but goes
down to [65 feet (20 meters)] or so, and that plastic is distributed
throughout this layer," Proskurowski said. More
Study Predicts Grim Ecological Effects for Proposed Amazon Dams
The study by researchers at the environmental advocacy group Save America’s Forests, the Center for International Environmental Law, and North Carolina State University found that 47 percent of dams planned for Amazon tributaries in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru would have a high environmental impact, suggesting the need for additional evaluation and increased regional planning. Examples of high-impact dams, according to the study, include the Andaquí
dam in Colombia, which would cause the first major break in connectivity
for the Caqueta River and would flood a national park; and the Coca
Codo Sinclair in Ecuador, which would disrupt downstream sediment flow
for a major tributary of the Napo River and would require extensive
construction in primary forest for roads and transmission lines. More
Deadly Bat Plague Spreads to Western US
What's known as "white-nose syndrome" has now been diagnosed in three Missouri bats - the first confirmed cases west of the Mississippi, and St. Louis scientists say it won’t stop there. Since white-nose syndrome was first discovered in bats near Albany, New York, in early 2007, it has devastated bat populations in the eastern U.S.. “Unfortunately, there’s not a lot we can do to stop it,” says Tony Elliott, a scientist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, who says he knew it was only a matter of time before the disease crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri. That’s because white-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus that easily
passes from bat to bat. The disease is named for the powdery white growth
that can sometimes coat an infected bat’s muzzle and wings. The fungus
penetrates the bat’s skin, eating away at the thin, semi-translucent
membranes of its wings, tail, and ears. More
Report Warns Of San Onofre Nuclear Risk
Unit 3 of the plant south of San Clemente has been shut down since Jan. 31, when station operators detected a leak in one of its steam generator tubes. Its two steam generators are undergoing extensive testing and inspections in order to fully assess their condition and the cause of the leak. Unit 2 was taken down for planned maintenance Jan. 9. Southern California
Edison, which operates the facility, has said previously the plant would
not return to operation until tests confirm it is safe. More
Fewer Acorns And Mice Leave Humans Vulnerable To Lyme Disease
This prediction comes after 20 years of research and observations of acorn levels, mice population and lyme disease conducted by Dr. Ostfeld, Cary Institute forest ecologist Dr. Charles D. Canham, and their team. Their team has found that acorn crop levels vary from year-to-year, ranging from very high amounts to very low amounts. The fall of 2011 saw a very low acorn crop. As these crop yields fluctuate, so too does the population of white-footed mice. The mice are the preferred hosts for black-legged ticks and are very effective at transmitting the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi. Reporting his findings, Ostfeld said “We had a boom in acorns, followed by a boom in mice. And now, on the heels of one of the smallest acorn crops we’ve ever seen, the mouse population is crashing,” “This spring, there will be a lot of Borrelia burgdorferi-infected
black-legged ticks in our forests looking for a blood meal. And instead
of finding a white-footed mouse, they are going to find other mammals—like
us.” More
Climate Leapfrog? Kiribati Eyes Jump to Fiji
With the exception of one island, Kirbati comprises coral atolls that are, at most, a few meters above sea level, potentially placing them at risk from rising seas. Indeed, in 1999 it was reported that two uninhabited atolls disappeared beneath the waves. According to the country's president Anote Tong, the struggle against the encroaching Pacific is proving increasingly difficult. "The tides have reached our homes and villages," he says; as a consequence, "our people will have to move ... This is the last resort, there's no way out of this one." Mr. Tong revealed this week that he has been in contact with the government
of Fiji, with a view to purchasing nine square miles of that nation's
Vanua Levu island, to which some of the populace could relocate. More
Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization's collapse
"In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared." Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm. They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government. Preppers, though are, worried about no government. Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival
center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks,
and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently
gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency,
she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency
could come soon. More
Northern Lights Attacking Earth?
But as the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, dance in the frozen skies over Alaska, scientists' trigger fingers are poised to launch rockets. The researchers at the world's largest land-based rocket range hope to learn more about these storms and their impact on lives in the northern hemisphere. The luminous sheets of light might look spectacular, but they are also visual indicators of geomagnetic storms in space that can interfere with satellites, power grids, navigation and communication systems. They can even corrode oil pipelines. It is this disruption that the researchers are trying to help mitigate.
More
Disease-Carrying American Crayfish Invade U.K. Rivers
The disease, caused by a water mold (Aphanomyces astaci), is a pretty nasty killer. It literally eats a crayfish from the inside out, leaving nothing but an empty shell behind. Death occurs within weeks of infection. Virile crayfish were first spotted in East London’s waterways in 2004,
probably after being dumped into a pond from a home aquarium. Since
then, they have colonized 17 kilometers of the River Lee and surrounding
waterways. River Lee has no native white-clawed crayfish left—they were
all wiped out by the signal crayfish invasion in the 1980s. More
Sun Storms May Affect Radios, Cell Phones
On Monday, the sun released a coronal mass ejection (CME), which is a "massive eruption of solar plasma," according to Space.com. The blast is expected to affect the Earth through Saturday. "Coronal Mass Ejections from the last few days may cause isolated periods of G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm Activity on December 28-29," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center wrote in an update. "R1 (Minor) radio blackouts are expected until 31 December." If the storms are powerful enough, they could temporarily interrupt
radio frequencies, GPS signals and cell phone communication. More
New Icelandic volcano eruption could have global impact
"There has been a great deal of seismic activity," says Ford Cochran, the National Geographic's expert on Iceland. There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma. "And that certainly suggests an eruption may be imminent." Scientists in Iceland have been closely monitoring the area since
9 July, when there appears to have been some sort of disturbance that
may have been a small eruption. More
World has five years to avoid severe warming
On current trends, "rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change," the IEA concluded in its annual World Energy Outlook report. "The door to 2.0 C is closing," it said, referring to the 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) cap on global warming widely accepted by scientists and governments as the ceiling for averting unmanageable climate damage. Without further action, by 2017 the total CO2 emissions compatible
with the 2.0 C goal will be "locked in" by power plants, factories and
other carbon-emitting sources either built or planned, the IEA said.
Global infrastructure already accounts for more than 75 per cent of
that limit. More
Fears of Mount Paekdu eruption spreading in N. Korea
Pyongyang's new law stipulates principles for observing and forecasting natural disasters, particularly earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, in addition to how to minimize damage and undertake rescue activities, the Korean Central News Agency reported last month, without giving further details. Experts outside the secretive communist country have warned since last year that North Korea's Mount Paekdu, which borders China, may still have an active core, citing topographical signs and satellite images. The 2,744-meter Mount Paekdu last erupted in 1903. More
Toxic Toys Are Naughty, Not Nice
The report includes safety guidelines and provides examples of toys still on store shelves that may pose safety hazards whether from lead exposure, other chemicals or as a choking hazard. Investigators found two toys with lead levels in excess of 300 parts per million (ppm), above the current standard set by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. Another toy exceeded a 100 ppm standard that went into effect in August. Another four toys exceeded the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation
that toys not contain more than 40 parts per million of lead. More
Home washing machines: Source of potentially harmful ocean 'microplastic' pollution
Mark Browne and colleagues explain that the accumulation of microplastic debris in marine environments has raised health and safety concerns. The bits of plastic contain potentially harmful ingredients which go into the bodies of animals and could be transferred to people who consume fish. Ingested microplastic can transfer and persist into their cells for months. How big is the problem of microplastic contamination? Where are these materials coming from? To answer those questions, the scientists looked for microplastic contamination along 18 coasts around the world and did some detective work to track down a likely source of this contamination. They found more microplastic on shores in densely populated areas, and identified an important source — wastewater from household washing machines. They point out that more than 1,900 fibers can rinse off of a single garment during a wash cycle, and these fibers look just like the microplastic debris on shorelines. The problem, they say, is likely to intensify in the future, and the
report suggests solutions: "Designers of clothing and washing machines
should consider the need to reduce the release of fibers into wastewater
and research is needed to develop methods for removing microplastic
from sewage." More
Nestle chief warns of new food riots
“The situation is similar (to 2008). This has become the new reality,” the Swiss giant’s chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told the Salzburger Nachrichten daily in his native Austria in an interview. “We have reached a level of food prices that is substantially higher than before. It will likely settle down at this level. “If you live in a developing country and spend 80 percent of your income on food then of course you are going to feel it more than here (in Europe) where it is maybe eight percent.” In 2008, the price of cereals reached historic levels, provoking a food crisis and riots in a number of African countries, as well as in Haiti and the Philippines. In September the UN food agency’s food price index came in at 225
points, just higher than the peak it hit in June 2008. It is down from
the record 237.7 points hit in February this year. More
SDG&E asks for higher rates on customers who go solar Under its proposal, SDG&E would unbundle the charges for electricity and for transporting electricity. The change would have little effect on bills for traditional electricity customers, but customers with solar, wind or other renewable generation would find they pay an average of an extra $33 a month, said J.C. Thomas, the utility's manager for government and regulatory affairs, last week. Late Monday, SDG&E spokeswoman Stephanie Donovan revised the estimate, saying the average was closer to $11 a month. The utility said non-solar customers subsidize solar customers by
an average of $1,100 a year, though consumer advocates expressed deep
skepticism of that figure. More
Giant Chunk of Greenland Ice Set to Break Away "I don't know exactly when," Jason Box, a climatologist with Ohio State Unversity's Byrd Polar Research Center, told OurAmazingPlanet. "I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened today — or if it happened next summer." Just a year ago, in August 2010, the same glacier produced an even larger iceberg — a mass of ice four times the size of Manhattan, the largest in recorded Greenland history — yet researchers warn that the next spectacular break could have more-dire consequences. Box said it's not clear when the 62-square-mile (160 square kilometers) ice shelf, which is dangling from Greenland's Petermann Glacier, will detach from the mainland. "I think it's more likely to occur during periods of melt, and that's coming to an end, so I'm losing confidence it's going to break this year," Box said. Ice shelves are enormous plates of ice that float on polar seas but
are connected to the shoreline by the land-bound glaciers that feed
into them. More
The Age of Man: A New Geologic Epoch This new proposed epoch, the Anthropocene — so named to represent the human-dominated influence — is marked by measurable changes in the Earth's climate, geography and biological composition. These changes are akin, they say, to the great extinctions and ice ages that previously signified transitions between geologic periods or epochs now visible in layers of ancient rock. For the first time, humans are attempting to denote a new geologic epoch as they live through it, and in a new issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A many scientists contend the planet's environment has already met the criteria for a newly-designated epoch. Moreover, in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic, journalist
Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the Anthropocene and what types of human
activity are expected to have a long-lasting impact on the planet, from
a geologic perspective. More
Destructive fish spurs call to ‘re-reverse’ Chicago River The waterway had grown so putrid that it raised fears of a disease outbreak and concerns about hurting development. So in a first-of-its-kind feat, engineers reversed the river by digging a series of canals that not only carried the stinking mess away from the lake, but also created the only shipping route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Now a modern threat — a voracious fish that biologists are desperate to keep out of Lake Michigan — has spurred serious talk of undertaking another engineering feat almost as bold as the original: reversing the river again to restore its flow into the lake. The Army Corps of Engineers is studying ways to stop invasive species
from moving between two of the nation’s largest watersheds, including
a proposal to block the canals and undo the engineering marvel that
helped define Chicago. More
Increasingly Powerful Solar Storms Could Disrupt Technology on Earth The sun is essentially a ball of gas with a magnetic field at its core, and that field regularly expands and contracts in what is dubbed the "solar cycle." It is currently about a year into a strengthening phase, which is expected to peak around July 2013. As a result, the increasingly volatile magnetic field will likely cause more eruptions on the sun's surface. "The consequence of a stronger magnetic field is it becomes concentrated
in certain parts of the sun and it becomes unstable," said Joe Kunches,
a space scientist with the NOAA. "These contorted and somewhat uncomfortable
magnetic fields want to return to a more familiar state and in doing
so they give off energy." More
Australian kids are living in climate of fear On the eve of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's carbon tax package announcement, psychologists and scientists said the lessons were alarmist, created unneeded anxiety among school children and endangered their mental health. Climate change as a "Doomsday scenario" is being taught in classrooms across Australia. Resource material produced by the Gillard government for primary school teachers and students states climate change will cause "devastating disasters". "As well as their terrible impact on people, animals and ecosystems they cause billions of dollars worth of damage to homes and other buildings," the material says. Australian National University's Centre for the Public Awareness of
Science director Dr Sue Stocklmayer said climate change had been portrayed
as "Doomsday scenarios with no way out". More
Newly Found Gonorrhea Superbug Resists All Existing Antibiotics This should actually not be surprising, because for some time now, just one class of drug has been able to successfully treat the infection. Now researchers in Sweden and Japan identified a new variant of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bug that causes gonorrhea, that can survive that last remaining drug, the cephalosporin-class antibiotics. Researchers isolated the strain from the throat of a sex worker in Japan, the Los Angeles Times reports. “This is both an alarming and a predictable discovery,” said Dr. Magnus Unemo, of the Swedish Reference Laboratory for Pathogenic Neisseria, in a statement. The bacteria has been evolving to resist antibiotics since they became
the standard treatment for the infection in the 1940s, during World
War II. More
Al Gore returns with new climate campaign Gore's Climate Reality project announced it would kick off with a 24-hour live streamed event on 14 September. The day's events will include a new multimedia presentation by Gore that will "connect the dots" between extreme weather events and climate change, a statement said. The campaign represents a modest comeback for Gore who has reduced his public profile on climate action in the past few years – probably out of consideration for the political consequences to his fellow Democrat Barack Obama. It is being launched four years after Inconvenient Truth, based on
Gore's climate change slide-show, won an Oscar for best documentary.
More
Could the Net be killing the planet one web search at a time? Meanwhile, your Internet search has just helped kill the planet. Depending on how long you took and what sites you visited, your search caused the emission of one to 10 grams of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Sure, it's not a lot on its own — but add up all of the more than
one billion daily Google searches, throw in 60 million Facebook status
updates each day, 50 million daily tweets and 250 billion emails per
day, and you're making a serious dent in some Greenland glaciers. More
Toxic pesticides from GM crops found in unborn babies Traces of the toxin were found 93 per cent of the pregnant mothers and in 80 per cent of the umbilical cords. The research suggested the chemicals were entering the body through eating meat, milk and eggs from farm livestock which have been fed GM corn. The findings appear to contradict the GM industry’s long-standing claim that any potentially harmful chemicals added to crops would pass safely through the body. To date, most of the global research which has been used to demonstrate
the safety of GM crops has been funded by the industry itself. More
EPA Whistleblower Criticizes Global Warming in Peer-Reviewed Study Dr. Alan Carlin, now retired, was a career environmental economist at EPA when CEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute) broke the story of his negative report on the agency’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases in June, 2009. Dr. Carlin’s supervisor had ordered him to keep quiet about the report and to stop working on global warming issues. EPA’s attempt to silence Dr. Carlin became a highly-publicized embarrassment to the agency, given Administrator Lisa Jackson’s supposed commitment to transparency. Dr. Carlin’s new study, A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach
to the Economics of Climate Change, is published in the International
Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. It finds that fossil
fuel use has little impact on atmospheric CO2 levels. Moreover, the
claim that atmospheric CO2 has a strong positive feedback effect on
temperature is contradicted on several grounds, ranging from low atmospheric
sensitivity to volcanic eruptions, to the lack of ocean heating and
the absence of a predicted tropical “hot spot.” More
Exploding watermelons caused by chemicals, weather More than 700 mu (46.7 hectares) of watermelons have been ruined due to the problem in the city of Danyang in May, the harvest time for watermelons in southern China. At the village of Dalu, within the jurisdiction of Danyang, 67 percent of Liu Mingsuo's watermelons have burst, with watermelon pieces piled up in the field. "This is the first year that I have planted watermelons. I sprayed forchlorfenuron, a growth accelerator, and instant calcium on May 6. The next day, about 180 watermelons burst," said Liu Mingsuo. There are now 20 watermelon producers in the village, up from only
seven in 2010 since last year saw a bumper harvest. Agriculture experts
believe that the problem is caused by multiple factors such as the use
of forchlorfenuron and sudden heavy rainfall after a long period of
dry weather after checking 10 watermelons producers' land in the village.
More
Record Snowpacks Could Threaten Western States Thanks to a blizzard-filled winter and an unusually cold and wet spring, more than 90 measuring sites from Montana to New Mexico and California to Colorado have record snowpack totals on the ground for late May, according to a federal report released last week. Those giant and spectacularly beautiful snowpacks will now melt under the hotter, sunnier skies of June — mildly if weather conditions are just right, wildly and perhaps catastrophically if they are not. Fear of a sudden thaw, releasing millions of gallons of water through
river channels and narrow canyons, has disaster experts on edge. More
Ocean Noise Pollution Blowing Holes in Squids' Heads Dolphins and whales and other marine mammals aren't the only sea life vulnerable to noise pollution from human activities. Earlier indications that squid might be susceptible to noise occurred
in 2001 and again in 2003, when giant squid washed up along the shore
of Asturias, Spain. After struggling to identify the reason, biologists
eventually concluded that the deaths were most likely related to the
presence of vessels using seismic air guns for geophysical prospecting
of the seabed. More
180 Lb Giant 'Federal' Wolves Threaten Idaho Citizens Under the authority of the Endangered Species Act, in the mid-70’s Washington D.C. bureaucrats began to contemplate the introduction of wolves into parts of the so called lower 48 states. The reason that this was even a possibility was because the original settlers of the country, who had lived with wolves, decided to get rid of them. Such people will tell you that wolves are a menace, and dangerous on top of that. Over the objections of the Idaho Legislature, the governor of Idaho, and Idaho’s congressional delegation, in 1995 the federal Fish and Wildlife Service introduced 35 Canadian Gray Wolves into central Idaho. A like number of wolves were introduced into Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, just across the Idaho border. The plan was to protect this population of Gray Wolves such that their
numbers would increase to 300 and at least 30 breeding pairs across
the three state region of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The Idaho Legislature,
with a gun to its head, agreed to this scheme in a 2002 Wolf Management
Plan it ratified; while at the same time passing a resolution stating
that its real desire was to remove the wolves from Idaho all together.
The DC bureaucrats were going to introduce the wolves no matter what
the state of Idaho wanted; and the negotiated 2002 Wolf Management Plan
reflected Idaho’s effort to at least have a say in the process. More
Many Coastal Wetlands Likely to Disappear This Century U.S. Geological Survey scientists made this conclusion from an international research modeling effort published December 1 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Scientists identified conditions under which coastal wetlands could survive rising sea level. Using a rapid sea-level rise scenario, most coastal wetlands worldwide
will disappear near the end of the 21st century. In contrast, under
the slow sea-level rise projection, wetlands with low sediment availability
and low tidal ranges are vulnerable and may drown. However, in the slow
sea-level rise projection, wetlands with higher sediment availability
would be more likely to survive. More
Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction: Is It Almost Here? Each of these "Big Five" saw three-quarters or more of all animal species go extinct. In results of a study published in this week's issue of journal Nature, researchers report on an assessment of where mammals and other species stand today in terms of possible extinction compared with the past 540 million years. They find cause for hope--and alarm. "If you look only at the critically endangered mammals--those where
the risk of extinction is at least 50 percent within three of their
generations--and assume that their time will run out and they will be
extinct in 1,000 years, that puts us clearly outside any range of normal
and tells us that we are moving into the mass extinction realm," said
Anthony Barnosky, an integrative biologist at the University of California
at Berkeley, and first author of the paper. More
If an island state vanishes, is it still a nation? The rising ocean raises questions, too: What happens if the 61,000 Marshallese must abandon their low-lying atolls? Would they still be a nation? With a UN seat? With control of their old fisheries and their undersea minerals? Where would they live, and how would they make a living? Who, precisely, would they and their children become? For years global negotiations to act on climate change have dragged on, with little to show. Parties to the 193-nation UN climate treaty are meeting again in this Caribbean resort, but no one expects decisive action to roll back the industrial, agricultural and transport emissions blamed for global warming — and consequently for swelling seas. From 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers) away, the people of the Marshalls
- and of Kiribati, Tuvalu and other atoll nations beyond - can only
wonder how many more years they'll be able to cope. More
Study: If We're Not Alone, We Should Fear the Aliens These two unpalatable options are pretty much the only possibilities, according to the new study. That's because evolution is predictable, and alien biospheres should thus produce intelligent creatures much like us, with technological prowess and an ever-increasing need for resources. But the fact that we haven't run across E.T. yet argues strongly for the latter possibility — that we are alone in the universe's howling void, the study suggests. "At present, as many have observed, it is very quiet out there," study author Simon Conway Morris, of the University of Cambridge, told SPACE.com in an e-mail interview. "And given many planetary systems are billions of years older than
ours, I'd expect us to be best grilled on toast back in the Cambrian."
More
Climate action could save polar bears Polar bears need sea ice to hunt their prey, but the frozen skin that floats atop the Arctic Ocean has been thinning and shrinking in recent decades as global temperatures rise. Between 1979 and 2010, Arctic sea ice cover at the end of the summer
melt season dropped an average of 11.5 percent per decade. Many researchers
think that end-summer Arctic ice could be almost entirely gone by the
middle of this century. More
Massive Volcanism May Have Caused Biggest Extinction Ever Benjamin Black, a graduate student at MIT, and his colleagues described their theory Dec. 13 in a poster presentation at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Researchers have long struggled to explain the “Great Dying” that occurred at the end of the Permian period. Some think that the extinction was a long, drawn-out affair caused by multiple factors — perhaps gradual changes in oceanic or atmospheric chemistry (SN: 5/28/05, p. 339). Others have blamed a single catastrophic event such as a belch of methane from the seafloor or an asteroid impact (SN: 2/24/01, p. 116) like the one thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other species 65 million years ago. Volcanoes might be one of those calamities. In Siberia, around 250
million years ago, a series of massive volcanic eruptions spewed out
lava over more than 2 million square kilometers [800,000 square miles].
Some scientists have blamed these eruptions, known as the Siberian Traps,
for climatic changes that contributed to the extinction. More
Thousands of birds falling from the sky Scientists said that New Year’s Eve fireworks might have been to blame for the 3,000 blackbirds that died in a small town in Arkansas. But they were forced to order more tests last night after 500 birds plummeted to the ground 360 miles away in Louisiana on Monday and dozens more died in Kentucky. And just a 100 miles away from the Arkansas mass bird kill, at least 83,000 dead and dying fish washed ashore - possibly as many as 100,000. The Internet has been abuzz with conspiracy theories about secret
government testing and a looming Armageddon. More
Study Charts How Underground CO2 Can Leach Metals into Water In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, authors Mark Little and Robert B. Jackson studied samples of sand and rock taken from four freshwater aquifers located around the country that overlie potential carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) sites. The scientists found that tiny amounts of CO2 drove up levels of metals
including manganese, cobalt, nickel, and iron in the water tenfold or
more in some places. Some of these metals moved into the water quickly,
within one week or two. They also observed potentially dangerous uranium
and barium steadily moving into the water over the entire year-long
experiment. More
Bering Sea Was Ice-Free And Full Of Life During Last Warm Period Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will present the new findings in a talk on December 13 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. Ravelo and co-chief scientist Kozo Takahashi of Kyushu University,
Japan, led a nine-week expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program
(IODP) to the Bering Sea last summer aboard the research vessel JOIDES
Resolution. The researchers drilled down 700 meters through rock and
sludge to retrieve sediments deposited during the Pliocene Warm Period,
3.5 to 4.5 million years ago. More
Tigers Could Be Extinct In 12 Years The World Wildlife Fund and other experts say only about 3,200 tigers remain in the wild, a dramatic plunge from an estimated 100,000 a century ago. James Leape, director general of the World Wildlife Fund, told the meeting in St. Petersburg that if the proper protective measures aren't taken, tigers may disappear by 2022, the next Chinese calendar year of the tiger. Their habitat is being destroyed by forest cutting and construction,
and they are a valuable trophy for poachers who want their skins and
body parts prized in Chinese traditional medicine. More
Extreme Heat Bleaches Coral, and Threat Is Seen From Thailand to Texas, corals are reacting to the heat stress by bleaching, or shedding their color and going into survival mode. Many have already died, and more are expected to do so in coming months. Computer forecasts of water temperature suggest that corals in the Caribbean may undergo drastic bleaching in the next few weeks. "What is unfolding this year is only the second known global bleaching
of coral reefs. Scientists are holding out hope that this year will
not be as bad, over all, as 1998, the hottest year in the historical
record, when an estimated 16 percent of the world’s shallow-water reefs
died. But in some places, including Thailand, the situation is looking
worse than in 1998. More
Al Gore left car engine on during environment lecture It is alleged that Gore left his car running for almost an hour while he spoke at the School of Business, Economics and Law in Gothenburg, Sweden Wednesday, British newspaper Daily Mail said. His mistake was compounded further by the fact that he had asked his
distinguished guests to attend the event by public transport in order
to minimise carbon emissions. More
New super-bug spreading from India to Europe What is commonly described as super-bugs are bacteria that have become resistant by having been around in hospitals for a long time. Now, a new gene called NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1)
had been detected that enables bacteria to be highly resistant to almost
all antibiotics. Having emerged in India, soon spreading to Pakistan
and Bangladesh, NDM-1 has now arrived in the United Kingdom, by way
of travellers who have been treated in hospitals there during the past
year. More
Stephen Hawking says humanity is doomed unless it takes to the stars In fact, human beings may have less than 200 years to figure out how to escape our planet, Hawking said in a recent interview with video site Big Think. Otherwise our species could be at risk for extinction, he said. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred
years, let alone the next thousand or million," Hawking said. "Our only
chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet
Earth, but to spread out into space." More
Groundwater Depletion Rate Accelerating Worldwide These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life and agriculture in many regions, while also sustaining streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and resisting land subsidence and salt water intrusion into fresh water supplies. Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find. Soaring global groundwater depletion bodes a potential disaster for
an increasingly globalized agricultural system, says Marc Bierkens of
Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and leader of the new
study. More
Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish Scientists who have visited the affected rivers say the event is the biggest ecological disaster Bolivia has known, and, as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife, it is unprecedented in recorded history. "There's just a huge number of dead fish," says Michel Jégu, a researcher
from the Institute for Developmental Research in Marseilles, France,
who is currently working at the Noel Kempff Mercado Natural History
Museum in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. "In the rivers near Santa Cruz there's
about 1,000 dead fish for every 100 metres of river." More
Hoover Dam could stop generating electricity as soon as 2013, officials fear Under pressure from the region's growing population and years of drought, Lake Mead was down to 1,087 feet, a 54-year low, as of Wednesday. If the lake loses 10 feet a year, as it has recently, it will soon reach 1,050 feet, the level below which the turbines can no longer run. Those hydroelectric generators produce cheap electricity for the Metropolitan
Water District of Southern California, which is responsible for pumping
water across the Colorado River Aqueduct to hydrate much of Southern
California. More
Climate Change: Hypocrisy of the Green Bully MOST mornings he is driven to work from his £5 million home in a 1.8-litre Toyota Corolla by his personal chauffeur, as befits his status as director-general of a New Delhi research institute employing more than 700 staff. Dr Rajendra Pachauri is also a winner of a Nobel Peace prize, the holder of India’s second-highest civilian award, an officer of the French Legion of Honour and is used to being treated with respect. But for some of those who challenge the international consensus on
climate change he is public enemy number one and his travel arrangements
are fair game. That’s because he is also the chair of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body set up in 1988 to conduct
regular assessments on the state of global warming. More
Absence of sunspots make scientists wonder if they're seeing a calm before a storm of energy But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behavior we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The sun is under scrutiny as never before, thanks to an armada of space telescopes. The results they beam back are portraying our nearest star, and its influence on Earth, in a new light. Sunspots and other clues indicate that the sun's magnetic activity is diminishing and that the sun may even be shrinking. Together, the results hint that something profound is happening inside the sun. The big question is: What? More
2 billion gallons of sewage, storm water overflowed "The relief points could not get excess rain and flood water out of overburdened sewers fast enough," the district says in a report released Tuesday to the state Department of Natural Resources. Three district rain gauges on Milwaukee's north side recorded total rainfall of more than 8 inches Thursday and Friday. MMSD estimates total overflows of 2.1 billion gallons - more than
four times the total capacity of the district's deep tunnel storage
system - from regional sewers between Thursday evening and Sunday evening,
said Peter Topczewski, the district's director of water quality protection.
The volume does not include overflows from sanitary sewers in Milwaukee
and nine other communities in the metropolitan area that had acknowledged
problems last week. More
Global warming blamed for pattern of lizard deaths
In a study to be published Friday in the journal Science, an international team of biologists reports that in more than one-tenth of the places in Mexico where lizards flourished in 1975, the reptiles now cannot be found. The researchers predict that by 2080, about 40 percent of local lizard populations worldwide will have died off and 20 percent of lizard species will be extinct. The reason for the huge die-off appears to be rising temperatures. But it isn't heat that is killing the lizards directly. Instead, global warming appears to be lengthening the period of the
day when lizards must seek shelter or risk fatal overheating. In the
breeding season, that sheltering period is now so long that females
of many species are unable to eat enough food to produce eggs and offspring.
More
How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event 251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. 55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM). The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico. Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may bThose subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico. Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series
of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be
happening again-and no known technology can stop it. More
500 African penguins killed by big freeze in South Africa
An AFP report quoted a national parks agency spokesperson, Megan Taplin, who said: "The chicks, aged between a few weeks old and about two months old and covered only with down feathers, succumbed to the cold and wet weather which has hit Bird Island." The report said the penguin population was already dwindling with only 700 breeding pairs left in the area. The African Penguin (Spheniscus demersus),is also known as the Black-Footed
penguin or the Jackass penguin because of its braying call. The species
was officially renamed “African” penguin as it is the only penguin species
that breeds on the African continent. It has distinctive black and white
markings, with a black stripe and spots on the chest, which are unique
to each bird. More
Man killed by swarm of bees
The man was working outdoors with his nephew, clearing the property at about 11 a.m., when the backhoe he was driving disturbed a colony of bees, said Encinitas fire Deputy Chief Scott Henry. Firefighters arrived to find the man had taken shelter in an outhouse about 200 yards from the colony. "He was covered in bee stings and in full cardiac arrest," Henry said. The man was rushed to the hospital, where he later died. It was unclear
late Wednesday whether the man was allergic to bee stings. More
Scientist: Global Cooling is the Real Crisis
At the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change
on May 17, Professor Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University
warned that the climate is headed for a period of cooling. He told the
Chicago gathering of hundreds of scientists and policy professionals
that there are three possibilities of cooling, examples of which we’ve
seen within the last 200 years. More
As Global Temperatures Rise, World's Lizards Are Disappearing
The detailed surveys of lizard populations in Mexico, collected from
200 different sites, indicate that the temperatures in those regions
have changed too rapidly for the lizards to keep pace. It seems that
all types of lizards are far more susceptible to climate-warming extinction
than previously thought because many species are already living right
at the edge of their thermal limits, especially at low elevation and
low latitude range limits. More
Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists
They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted. In some spots off Washington state and Oregon , the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions. Areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen, have long existed in the deep ocean.
These areas — in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans —
appear to be spreading, however, covering more square miles, creeping
toward the surface and in some places, such as the Pacific Northwest
, encroaching on the continental shelf within sight of the coastline.
More
Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter
Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market. And on Thursday, chemists at a scientific conference in San Francisco will tackle the issue of chemicals and dwindling bees in response to the new study. Scientists are concerned because of the vital role bees play in our
food supply. About one-third of the human diet is from plants that require
pollination from honeybees, which means everything from apples to zucchini.
More
Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average. Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the
moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since
the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global
warming could come to a standstill this year. More
Urban 'Green' Spaces May Contribute to Global Warming
Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through
photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important
"carbon sinks." However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production,
mowing, leaf blowing and other lawnmanagement practices are four times
greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks,
a UC Irvine study shows. These emissions include nitrous oxide released
from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that's
300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the Earth's most problematic
climate warmer. More
We'd best mark apocalyptic predictions for 2012 in pencil
Computers and their networks did not crash. Satellites did not fall from the sky. Power grids did not wink out. We were not thrust into a dark, cold and medieval existence. Humanity carried on as usual after Y2K, happily reproducing, polluting and pillaging land and sea. But human beings, it seems, can't shake a deep feeling of impending doom, even in happy times. We survived Y2K. Now we've got the next curtain call for civilization
-- December 21, 2012. That's right, citizens, there are less than 1,100
shopping days until the end of days. More
Peru's mountain people fight for surviving a bitter winter
The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end. In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These
communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction
because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which
may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers. More
Western Reservoirs Could Be Dry By 2050
Roughly 30 million people — including many in Arizona and Southern California — depend on the Colorado River for drinking and irrigation water. The Colorado River system is enduring its 10th year of drought, with the reservoir system currently at 59 percent of capacity, about the same as this time last year. Previous studies have warned of the potential for water shortages
with the drier conditions in the West brought about by climate change.
The region's growing population has also put pressure on the water supplies
of the desert West. More
Record cold weather dominates large areas
Snow drifts several metres deep meant an army of rescue workers had to be sent out to free the passengers from their carriages. Heavy snow and unusually harsh winter weather snarled up transport across India, northern China and South Korea. Major roads in Beijing and Tianjin, as well as nearby provinces Hebei,
Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, were forced to close due to the heavy snow.
The snow shows no sign of stopping, however, and temperatures are expected
to drop to -16C in Beijing today, causing more problems for those attempting
to return to work after a three-day New Year holiday. More
Climate change alliance crumbling
The so-called Basic countries – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – backed the accord in a meeting with the US on Friday night, and it was also supported by almost all other nations at the talks, including all of the biggest emitters. But on Tuesday the Brazilian government labelled the accord “disappointing” and complained that the financial assistance it contained from rich to poor countries was insufficient. South Africa also raised objections: Buyelwa Sonjica, the environment minister, called the failure to produce a legally binding agreement “unacceptable”. She said her government had considered leaving the meeting. “We are not defending this, as I have indicated, for us it is
not acceptable, it is definitely not acceptable,” she said. More
Climate change 'sceptic' Ian Plimer argues CO2 is not causing global warming
He said carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, widely blamed for global warming, is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes erupting. "We cannot stop carbon emissions because most of them come from volcanoes,"
he said. "It is a normal element cycled around in the earth and my science,
which is looking back in time, is saying we have had a planet that has
been a green, warm wet planet 80 per cent of the time. We have had huge
climate change in the past and to think the very slight variations we
measure today are the result of our life - we really have to put ice
blocks in our drinks." More
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren involved in unwinding “Climategate” scandal
Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”. “The files contain so much material that it is going to take
some time t o put it all in context,” says Ball. “However,
enough is already known to underscore their explosive nature. It is
already clear the entire claims and positions of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based on falsified manipulated material
and is therefore completely compromised. More
Gropenhagen Conference: Prostitutes Offer Free Climate Summit Sex
"Dear hotel owner, we would like to urge you not to arrange contacts between hotel guests and prostitutes," the approach to hotels says. Now, Copenhagen prostitutes are up in arms, saying that the council
has no business meddling in their affairs. They have now offered free
sex to anyone who can produce one of the offending postcards and their
COP15 identity card, according to the Web site avisen.dk. More
ClimateGate - Climate center's server hacked revealing documents and emails
The electronic break in itself has been verified by the director of
the research unit, Professor Phil Jones. He told Britain’s Investigate
magazine's TGIF Edition "It was a hacker. We were aware of this about
three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken
and copied loads of data files and emails." More
Cattle be £75 for each farting cow
Member states are considering the bizarre flatulence tariff of £75 per beast in a bid to bring gas emissions in line with Brussels rules. Figures show that a single cow can emit up to four tons of methane a year by breaking wind. And the farts and burps of farm livestock are estimated to make up 18 per cent of all greenhouse gas discharges. But Scots Tory MEP Struan Stevenson last night urged ministers to
to resist the moves as farmers feel the pinch in the recession. He said:
“It would be a catastrophic mistake. The Danish government is
said to be considering a staggering £75 per cow tax. More
CO2 Levels Were This High 15 Million Years Ago
"The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland," said the paper's lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. "Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations
that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to
the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate
change throughout Earth's history," she said. More
Beetle attack will change our world
Grant Frost, a terrestrial habitat biologist for Wyoming Game and Fish, inspects a tree, looking for tell-tale signs of beetles. The tree looks alive, but it probably won't be for long. The brown cadavers of lodgepoles past stand among smaller, greener pines, testifying to the unavoidable truth: Change -- big change -- is coming. "The general feeling is this will end when the food supply runs out,"
Frost says. More
2012 isn't the end of the world, Mayans insist
Or is it? Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff." It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House. At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the "Curious? Ask an Astronomer" Web site, says people are scared. "It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are
saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother
of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow
up." More
Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away
The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast. Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its
fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic
ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and
ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the
Wilkins ice shelf generated international headlines this month. More
Vaster Regions of Antarctica Melting Into Sea
A report by thousands of scientists for the 2007-2008 International Polar Year concluded that the western part of the continent is warming up, not just the Antarctic Peninsula. Previously most of the warming was thought to occur on the narrow stretch pointing toward South America, said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and a member of International Polar Year's steering committee. But satellite data and automated weather stations indicate otherwise.
More
Sydney turns red: dust storm blankets city
Callers flooded talkback radio, others hit social networking sites and scores of emails were received from smh.com.au readers as Sydney residents expressed their amazement at this morning's conditions. "It's just red, red, red as far as you can see," one caller at the
Anzac Bridge told 2GB. More
Chemicals That Eased One Woe Worsen Another
The chemicals, called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), were introduced widely in the 1990s to replace ozone-depleting gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and insulating foam. They worked: The earth's protective shield seems to be recovering. But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change.
In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals act like "super" greenhouse
gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon
dioxide. More
Scientists predict greater longevity for planets with life
Or maybe not quite so soon, say researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who have come up with a mechanism that doubles the future lifespan of the biosphere—while also increasing the chance that advanced life will be found elsewhere in the universe. A paper describing their hypothesis was published June 1 in the early
online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(PNAS). More
Quake, tsunami potential high on U.S. west coast
Geological evidence suggests there have been earthquakes in the past that were even stronger than a magnitude 9.2 quake -- the second-biggest ever recorded -- which caused a 42-foot-high (12-meter-high) tsunami in the Gulf of Alaska in 1964, they said. "Our data indicate that two major earthquakes have struck Alaska in
the last 1,500 years and our findings show that a bigger earthquake
and a more destructive tsunami than the 1964 event are possible in the
future," Ian Shennan, a professor of geography at Britain's Durham University,
who led the study, said in a statement. More
El Nino an early warning for food security
"Typically, an El Niño has the potential to disrupt the rainy seasons and cause lower rainfall in India, Australia, Southeast Asia - Philippines and Indonesia - southern Africa and Central America," said Robert Stefanski, a WMO scientific officer who works on agriculture-related weather and climate issues. "In past El Niño events, there was lowered food production in many
of these regions." More
MIT Model Predicts Accelerating Warming Trends
The MIT model is said to be the only one that incorporates among its variables possible changes in economic growth and other human activities and draws on peer-reviewed science on the climatic effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. After running the model 400 times with slight variations in the inputs,
the new predictions are for surface temperatures to warm by 6.3 to 13.3
degrees Fahrenheit. The prediction is for a 9.4-degree increase in the
median temperature, more than double the 4.3 degrees predicted in a
2003 simulation. More
Not so windy: Research suggests winds dying down
The idea that winds may be slowing is still a speculative one, and scientists disagree whether that is happening. But a first-of-its-kind study suggests that average and peak wind speeds have been noticeably slowing since 1973, especially in the Midwest and the East. "It's a very large effect," said study co-author Eugene Takle, a professor
of atmospheric science at Iowa State University. In some places in the
Midwest, the trend shows a 10 percent drop or more over a decade. More
New Zealand could go bust over Global Warming
New Zealand’s economy is almost completely dependent on its
farm exports: lamb, dairy products, beef and high-end white wines. Half
of New Zealand’s carbon emissions come from cattle and sheep.
If New Zealand taxes its cows and sheep hundreds of dollars per animal
for methane emissions and manure handling fees, Argentina would almost
immediately displace New Zealand’s farm exports. Argentina has
more grass, more cattle, the potential for more lambs, a surging wine
industry—and no Kyoto obligations. More
The missing sunspots: Is this the big chill?
The disappearance of sunspots happens every few years, but this time
it’s gone on far longer than anyone expected – and there
is no sign of the Sun waking up. “This is the lowest we’ve
ever seen. We thought we’d be out of it by now, but we’re
not,” says Marc Hairston of the University of Texas. More
Bacteria Create Aquatic Superbugs In Waste Treatment Plants
In the first known study of its kind, Chuanwu Xi of the University of Michigan School of Public Health and his team sampled water containing the bacteria Acinetobacter at five sites in and near Ann Arbor's wastewater treatment plant. They found the so-called superbugs—bacteria resistant to multiple
antibiotics—up to 100 yards downstream from the discharge point
into the Huron River. Xi stresses that while the finding may be disturbing,
it is important to understand that much work is still needed to assess
what risk, if any, the presence of superbugs in aquatic environments
poses to humans. More
Caps, Trades and Offsets: Can Climate Plan Work?
The bill would require polluters to obtain "allowances" -- permits allowing them to emit a given amount of a greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide or methane. Today, these gases are invisible, free and floating all around us. This bill would put a price on them. That would accomplish an economist's version of a triple back flip.
It would divide a problem of the global commons into pieces and make
those who use gas or electricity pay for their share of the emissions
that result. More
Honeybee Numbers Expand Worldwide as U.S. Decline Continues
In an analysis of nearly 50 years of data on bees from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, researchers found that domesticated honeybee populations have increased about 45 percent, thanks in large part to expansion of the bees into areas such as South America, eastern Asia and Africa. The results appear in the latest issue Current Biology. The overall increase, however, is not what surprised Marcelo Aizen,
a professor at the National University of Comahue in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
and lead author of the study. Instead, he was taken aback by the sixfold
increase in the growth rate of crops that depend on domesticated bees
for pollination. More
Next Panic: Carbonated oceans
Fabry, a biological oceanographer and visiting researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, studies the effects of ocean acidification on the molluscs known as pteropods. In one experiment, only 48 hours of exposure to slightly corrosive seawater caused normally smooth shells to become frayed at the edges on their way to eventual dissolution, severely diminishing their owners' chances of survival. The acidity of the water in Fabry's lab had been ratcheted up to levels
that might not be seen until the end of the century, but she and other
scientists fear that ongoing acidification of ocean water could be causing
a slow-motion destruction of ocean ecosystems now. More
Climate change means bigger medical bills
Alistair Hunt, a researcher at the University of Bath, will be addressing
scientists this week at the international Climate Change Congress being
held in Copenhagen to present research which shows that the cost of
climate change is going to be felt much closer to home than many expect.
Alistair’s talk is one of many described in the complete online
abstract book of the congress, published in the IOP Conference Series:
Earth and Environmental Science. More
Blue Sky Research: Increase in Global Air Pollution
Using this new database, the researchers show that clear sky visibility over land has decreased globally over the past 30 years, indicative of increases in aerosols, or airborne pollution. “Creation of this database is a big step forward for researching
long-term changes in air pollution and correlating these with climate
change,” said Kaicun Wang, assistant research scientist in the
University of Maryland’s department of geography and lead author
of the paper. More
Global Warming: On Hold?
But climate is known to be variable -- a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades. Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year
trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite
rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should
have cranked up the planetary thermostat. More
Mr Whipple: An Eco-terrorist?
The national obsession with soft paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra — which in 2008 alone increased its sales by 40 percent in some markets, according to Information Resources, Inc., a marketing research firm. But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North
America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of
trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue
can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber
taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most
large manufacturers rely on them. More
Ecosystems Push South in Antarctica
Krill, the shrimp-like critters that Adelies like to eat, feed on
phytoplankton. But as global temperatures rise, phytoplankton are declining
in the north while increasing further south. The poleward shift is taking
place on the Western Antarctic Peninsula, a finger of land stretching
toward South America, one of the fastest warming places on Earth. For
decades, penguins and other Antarctic predators have been observed further
south on the peninsula, where temperatures are colder and sea ice more
plentiful. Previous research shows that Adélie penguins have decreased
70 to 80 percent over their northern range. More
Climate Fears Are Driving 'Ecomigration' Across Globe
Halfway around the world, the president of Kiribati, a Pacific nation
of low-lying islands, said last week that his country is exploring ways
to move all its 100,000 citizens to a new homeland because of fears
that a steadily rising ocean will make the islands uninhabitable. The
two men are at contrasting poles of a phenomenon that threatens to reshape
economies, politics and cultures across the planet. By choice or necessity,
millions of "ecomigrants" -- most of them poor and desperate -- are
on the move in search of more habitable living space. More
'Unprecedented' fires 'caused by climate change'
"The records were broken by a large amount and you cannot explain
that just by natural variability," he said. "What we are seeing now
is that the chances of these sorts of extreme fire weather situations
are occurring much more rapidly in the last ten years due to climate
change." More
Tree deaths soar in Western U.S.
Droughts and pests brought on by warmer temperatures have killed firs, hemlocks, pines and other large trees in particular over the past 30 years without allowing replacements to sprout, the study published in the journal Science finds. "Very likely the mortality rate will continue to rise," says lead
author Phillip van Mantgem of the U.S. Geologic Survey. More
Antarctica Warming More Than Previously Thought
But new research shows that for the last 50 years, much of Antarctica
has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world. In fact,
the warming in West Antarctica is greater than the cooling in East Antarctica,
meaning that on average the continent has gotten warmer, said Eric Steig,
a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and
director of the Quaternary Research Center at the UW. More
Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age
Ice cores, ocean sediment cores, the geologic record, and studies
of ancient plant and animal populations all demonstrate a regular cyclic
pattern of Ice Age glacial maximums which each last about 100,000 years,
separated by intervening warm interglacials, each lasting about 12,000
years. More
Drought, beetles killing forests
Several scientists said the growing threat appears linked to global warming. That means tree mortality is likely to rise in places as the continent warms, potentially altering landscapes in ways that increase erosion, fan wildfires and diminish the biodiversity of Western forests. It also could prompt new approaches to forestry. Possibilities include replanting logged areas with trees that are tolerant of higher temperatures, thinning drought-stressed forests and deploying pesticides to ward off insects. But in many cases, landowners have few options to protect their trees
once insects and diseases take hold, tree experts said. More
Climate Change Wiped Out Cave Bears 13 Millennia Earlier Than Thought
The new date coincides with a period of significant climate change, known as the Last Glacial Maximum, when a marked cooling in temperature resulted in the reduction or loss of vegetation forming the main component of the cave bears' diet. In a study published in Boreas, researchers suggest it was this deterioration
in food supply that led to the extinction of the cave bear, one of a
group of 'megafauna' - including woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros,
giant deer and cave lion - to disappear during the last Ice Age. More
Sea levels set to rise faster than expected
Ahead of next week’s meeting of governments in Poznan, Poland for UN climate talks WWF analysis of the latest climate science comes to the dire conclusion that humanity is approaching the last chance to keep global warming below the danger threshold of 2°C. ”The latest science confirms that we are now seeing devastating
consequences of warming that were not expected to hit for decades,”
said Kim Carstensen, WWF Global Climate Initiative leader. More
Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment,
a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates
about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world
that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross,
a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact
of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite
environmental impact.” More
Climate change pushing lemmings over the edge
The hamster-like rodents burst forth in massive numbers from their sub-Arctic homes every three to five years in a frantic search for food. The mad dash sometimes causes them to race over clifftops and plummet into the sea, thus giving rise to the theory -- now discounted -- of mass suicide. Since 1994, these periodic population explosions have stopped, prompting
researchers to ask why. In a study published on Thursday, investigators
say the blame lies not with too many predators or a fall in food supply,
but changes in weather patterns. More
The methane time bomb
Preliminary findings suggest that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats. Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe
their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases
in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the
mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has
sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered
intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times
background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square
miles of the Siberian continental shelf. More
Climate change may drown cities
CNG produces a lower level of greenhouse gases and is an environmentally cleaner alternative to petrol. Dhaka's residents are among the most vulnerable to global warming and don't want to become "climate terrorists". The city is among more than 3,000 identified by the UN-Habitat's State
of the World's Cities 2008/09 as facing the prospect of sea level rise
and surge-induced flooding. The report warns policymakers, planners
and the world at large that few coastal cities will be spared the effects
of global warming. More
|
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. -- For decades, this rural basin has battled over
the Klamath River's most precious resource: water that sustains fish,
irrigates farms and powers the hydroelectric dams that block one of
the largest salmon runs on the West Coast.
The World Bank is urging the international community to heed the plight
of Pacific island countries and take action on climate change.
The world's most renowned population analyst has called for a massive
reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed
from the rich to the poor.
Freezing
Britain's unusually harsh winter could have cost thousands of pensioners
their lives.
The
world of global warming alarmists is increasingly resembling a madhouse,
with conservationists falling over each other trying to salvage the
last shreds of credibility. Very funny. What makes the situation hilarious,
is the fact many eco-zealots inadvertently put out increasingly panicking
publications that look more like satires than studies.
A
new study looking at 11,000 years of climate temperatures shows the
world in the middle of a dramatic U-turn, lurching from near-record
cooling to a heat spike.
The
meteor that blew up over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk 11 days ago
has provided a new focus for the effort to establish an international
asteroid warning system, one of NASA's top experts on the issue says.
Ravaged
by arid winds and ultraviolet rays, some bacteria not only survive in
the upper atmosphere but might affect weather and climate, according
to a study published on 28 January in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
A
five-gallon bucket fell from a military aircraft Wednesday night and
damaged vehicles in a Miramar auto repair shop, San Diego Fire Department
officials said. The bucket crashed through the roof of Renegade Performance
in the 6300 block of Marindustry Drive sometime between 4 p.m. Wednesday
and 10 a.m. Thursday.
An enormous wall of dust has hit part of Australia as residents brace
themselves for a tropical cyclone.
Chilean authorities on Sunday issued a red alert -- the most severe
in their warning system -- that the Copahue Volcano, high in the Andes
mountains on the border with Argentina, might be poised for a significant
eruption.
The scrubby desert outside Port Augusta, three hours from Adelaide,
is not the kind of countryside you see in Australian tourist brochures.
The backdrop to an area of coal-fired power stations, lead smelting
and mining, the coastal landscape is spiked with saltbush that can live
on a trickle of brackish seawater seeping up through the arid soil.
Poisonous king brown snakes, redback spiders, the odd kangaroo and emu
are seen occasionally, flies constantly. When the local landowners who
graze a few sheep here get a chance to sell some of this crummy real
estate they jump at it, even for bottom dollar, because the only real
natural resource in these parts is sunshine.
As controversy mounts over the Guardian's revelations that an American
businessman conducted a massive ocean fertilisation test, dumping around
100 tonnes of iron sulphate off Canada's coast, it has emerged the Canadian
government may have known about the geoengineering scheme and not stopped
it.
Radiation inside the reactor 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No.
1 nuclear plant has reached a lethal 73 sieverts per hour and any attempt
to send robots in to accurately gauge the situation will require them
to have greater resistance than currently available, experts said Wednesday.
Scientists have discovered why the 'broken world' following the worst
extinction of all time lasted so long -- it was simply too hot to survive.
BAYOU CORNE, LA - Issues continue to pile on crews working on the growing
sinkhole in Assumption Parish. 
Whatcom
County beaches remain closed to recreational shellfish harvesting as
public health officials continue to study a new marine toxin found in
higher concentrations here than anywhere else in the state.
That the last of the non-avian dinosaurs died out some 65.5 million
years ago is not controversial. That this occurred largely owing to
a dirty great asteroid smashing into the sea off of Mexico is also not
in doubt. What remains the subject of much discussion, however, is why
they went and other animals did not, or, more specifically, how do you
survive a mass extinction?
At
the Climate Smart Agriculture in Asia workshop held in Bangkok, Thailand,
last month, climatologists and agricultural researchers discussed farming
practices and technologies that could help the region cope with global
warming's effects, including rising temperatures, increased salinity,
and sporadic rainfall.
Deploying
giant space mirrors and spraying particles from stadium-sized balloons
may sound like an engineer’s wild fantasy, but climate models suggest
that the potential of geoengineering to offset rising atmospheric carbon
dioxide may be significantly overstated.
Unprecedented
melting of Greenland's ice sheet this month has stunned NASA scientists
and has highlighted broader concerns that the region is losing a remarkable
amount of ice overall.
July
18, 2012 - The largest oil spill on open water to date and other environmental
factors led to the historically high number of dolphin deaths in the
Gulf of Mexico, concludes a two-year scientific study released today.
The white haze that hangs over many major cities could become a familiar
sight everywhere if the world decides to try geoengineering to create
a cooler planet.
How
did the Romans grow grapes in northern England? Perhaps because it was
warmer than we thought.
A
discrepancy exists between the number of animal species reported extinct
and the reality of population numbers on the ground, which is disguising
a catastrophic decline in biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest, according
to new research published in the journal Science.
Survivalists
are watching the sky, wondering if doom will come from above. They aren't
just worried about an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, they are concerned
that the sun could suddenly cause the end of the world as we know it.
Although
scantily clad beachgoers are common in the tourist haven, boardriders
and walkers have been left blushing by the sight of a woman taking to
the ocean in her bare essentials.
Geoengineering
projects are controversial, even though they are largely theoretical
at this point. They range from mimicking the effects of large volcanic
eruptions by releasing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, to deploying
giant mirrors in space to deflect the sun's rays.
The
mystery surrounding the deaths of at least 877 dolphins in Peru has
deepened as the government said human activity was not to blame but
failed to pinpoint a natural cause for the massive die-off.
He
has been picked as an expert judge to help find the nation's next biggest
superstar on hit TV show The Voice.
Wind
may drive trash and other floating debris deeper into the ocean and
lead experts to underestimate oceanic pollution, according to a recent
study.
Proposals
to build more than 150 hydroelectric dams on Andean tributaries of the
Amazon River could have catastrophic ecological impacts, causing the
first major breaks between the tributaries and the Amazon and leading
to widespread forest loss, according to a study published today in the
scientific journal PLoS ONE.
A
fungal disease that has killed more than 5.5 million bats in the eastern
United States and Canada is making its way west.
SAN
DIEGO -- The troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will remain
offline until the troubles with the plant are fully diagnosed and corrected,
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered Tuesday in a letter to Southern
California Edison.
Scientists
are predicting an unusually large surge of Lyme disease this summer
in the northeastern U.S, thanks to a low acorn crop of all things. Dr.
Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem
Studies in Millbrook, NY, says that the mild winter has nothing to do
with this expected surge.
The
country of Kiribati straddles the equator and the International Date
Line, and is the only country in all four hemispheres - northern, southern,
eastern, and western. From west to east, north to south, it encompasses
a region of over 1,350,000 square miles, but its total land area is
just 313 square miles divided among a disparate group of 33 islands,
of which 21 are inhabited by a total of a little over 100,000 people.
When
Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian
Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.
The
strange, beautiful coloured lights that circle the Earth's polar regions
are a source of fascination for many.
U.S.
crayfish and their British cousins do not get along. First the U.K.
was invaded by the American signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus)
carrying the deadly crayfish plague, which has killed 95 percent of
Britain’s native white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes) over
the past 20 years. Now another invasive crayfish species—the virile
crayfish (Orconectes virilis), native to the U.S. and Canada—is starting
to spread in the rivers around East London. The species also carries
crayfish plague.
Intense
solar activity may affect Earth today, potentially disrupting radio
and cell phone transmissions.
Mighty
Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic
flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions
of gallons of water surging through Iceland's east coast and into the
Atlantic Ocean.
PARIS
- The world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario
of perilous climate change and extreme weather events, the International
Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday.
SEOUL
-- North Korea's adoption of a new rule on natural disasters last month
indicates that experts' warnings of volcanic eruptions of Mount Paekdu
have spread widely throughout the country, the South Korean government
said Wednesday.
Researchers
at the U.S. PIRG, a public interest research organization, have released
their 26th annual report on toxic toys called "Trouble in Toyland" just
in time to warn parents heading out to fill holiday wish lists.
Scientists
are reporting that household washing machines seem to be a major source
of so-called "microplastic" pollution — bits of polyester and acrylic
smaller than the head of a pin — that they now have detected on ocean
shorelines worldwide. Their report describing this potentially harmful
material appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
VIENNA
- The head of the world’s biggest food company Nestle said Friday that
rising food prices have created conditions “similar” to 2008 when hunger
riots took place in many countries.
Homeowners
with solar power may have to dig a little deeper to pay off their green
investment if regulators approve San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s request
to change the way electricity is billed.
An
ice shelf is poised to break off from a Greenland glacier and float
out to sea as an island twice the size of Manhattan, scientists say.
For
the past 250 years, humans have released billions of tons of carbon
dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, primarily by burning fossil fuels
like coal and oil. Now, scientists say the impact of all this CO2 and
other human activities on the natural world is so significant that it
constitutes a new period of geologic time in the planet's history.
CHICAGO
| The city was in a predicament. By the late 1800s the slow-moving Chicago
River had become a cesspool of sewage and factory pollution oozing into
Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for the bustling metropolis.
Power
grids, GPS systems and satellites could be among the technologies affected
by surges of energy released by the sun's swelling magnetic field, according
to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
PRIMARY
school children are being terrified by lessons claiming climate change
will bring "death, injury and destruction" to the world unless they
take action.
A
new strain of the gonorrhea bacteria can resist all available antibiotics,
doctors say. Gonorrhea is one of the world’s most common sexually transmitted
diseases, so this could portend a major threat to public health.
It should almost be called Inconvenient Truth 2.0. Five years after
Al Gore launched his original documentary project, the former vice-president
returned on Tuesday with a new campaign aimed at exposing the full scale
of the climate crisis.
It's
Saturday night, and you want to catch the latest summer blockbuster.
You do a quick Google search to find the venue and right time, and off
you go to enjoy some mindless fun.
Scientists
at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, at the University of
Sherbrooke Hospital Centre in Quebec, took dozens of samples from women.
The
scientific hypotheses underlying global warming alarmism are overwhelmingly
contradicted by real-world data, and for that reason economic studies
on the alleged benefits of controlling greenhouse gas emissions are
baseless. That’s the finding of a new peer-reviewed report by a former
EPA whistleblower.
NANJING
-- An investigation into bursting watermelons in east China's Jiangsu
Province shows that growth promoter as well as sudden rainfall may be
to blame, said experts on Tuesday.
STEAMBOAT
SPRINGS, Colo. — For all the attention on epic flooding in the Mississippi
Valley, a quiet threat has been growing here in the West where winter
snows have piled up on mountain ranges throughout the region.
Thousands
of Humboldt squid died off the coast of Oregon in 2004 and hundreds
again in 2008. The culprit was originally considered a shift in deep-sea
currents, but a new study pinpoints the physical trauma noise pollution
can inflict on cephalopods and raises new concerns over the incidents
of squid strandings.
Today
there are many issues that confront our political institutions. We are
living in interesting times. For state governments the big issues are
balancing budgets and federal government encroachment. And for the state
of Idaho, the face of federal government encroachment is that of a Canadian
Gray Wolf.
Many
coastal wetlands worldwide -- including several on the U.S. Atlantic
coast -- may be more sensitive than previously thought to climate change
and sea-level rise projections for the 21st century.
With
the steep decline in populations of many animal species, scientists
have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those
that have occurred just five times during the past 540 million years.
CANCUN
— Encroaching seas in the far Pacific are raising the salt level in
the wells of the Marshall Islands. Waves threaten to cut one sliver
of an island in two. "It's getting worse," says Kaminaga Kaminaga, the
tiny nation's climate change coordinator.
When
considering the prospect of alien life, humankind should prepare for
the worst, according to a new study: Either we're alone, or any aliens
out there are acquisitive and resource-hungry, just like us.
Cutting
greenhouse gas emissions enough over the next few decades may stabilize
the rapidly shrinking Arctic sea ice sufficiently to provide a sustainable
habitat for polar bears, a paper in the Dec. 16 Nature reports. And
if emissions do keep rising, another new study finds, the only species
that has officially been declared threatened by the U.S. government
due to global warming may still be able to hang on for a while in a
few pockets of the northern Arctic.
The
greatest extinction in the history of life may have been caused, in
part, by ozone-depleting gases spewed in a massive volcanic eruption,
a new study suggests. Geologists have found surprisingly high amounts
of the elements fluorine and chlorine in Siberian lavas dating back
250 million years — when about 90 percent of marine species and 70 percent
of terrestrial species went extinct.
The
mystery over thousands of birds raining from the sky in America deepened
today after hundreds more plunged to their deaths in different parts
of the country.
It’s
not a common for a solution to carbon emissions to also pose a contamination
danger for drinking water supplies, but new research indicates that
if CO2 stored deep underground were to leak in even small amounts, it
could cause metals to be released in shallow groundwater aquifers at
concentrations that would pose a health risk.
Deep
sediment cores retrieved from the Bering Sea floor indicate that the
region was ice-free all year and biological productivity was high during
the last major warm period in Earth's climate history.
ST.
PETERSBURG, Russia -- Wild tigers could become extinct in 12 years if
countries where they still roam fail to take quick action to protect
their habitats and step up the fight against poaching, global wildlife
experts told a "tiger summit" Sunday.
This
year’s extreme heat is putting the world’s coral reefs under such severe
stress that scientists fear widespread die-offs, endangering not only
the richest ecosystems in the ocean but also fisheries that feed millions
of people.
London,
Oct 30 (IANS) Former US vice president Al Gore, who is known for his
climate conservation campaigns, has been accused of not switching off
his car engine while he gave an hour-long lecture on environment in
Sweden, a media report said Saturday.
A
new gene, NDM-1, has emerged that allows bacteria to be highly resistant
to most available antibiotics. The UK now has 37 confirmed cases, all
people who have recently been to Pakistan or India for medical treatment
or cosmetic surgery.
If
humanity is to survive long-term, it must find a way to get off planet
Earth — and fast, according to famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.
In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry
the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more
than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment
of groundwater use.
With
high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country
of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere's recent
winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country's tropical
region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish
and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.
After
75 years of steadily cranking out electricity for California, Arizona
and Nevada, the mighty turbines of the Hoover Dam could cease turning
as soon as 2013, if water levels in the lake that feeds the dam don't
start to recover, say water and dam experts.
RAJENDRA PACHAURI has a chauffeur, lives in luxury and jets across the
world on his quest to ban Sunday roasts and cheap flights. Now he's
accused of exaggerating the climate change crisis.
Sunspots
come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers
have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge,
only to fade away after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their
efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting
about 11 years.
More
than 2 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm water spilled out
of urban sewers into local waterways after last Thursday's torrential
rain storm, but even those overflows could not adequately relieve the
sewers and prevent basement backups, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage
District says in a report to state environmental officials.
When it comes to the hazards of global warming, it may turn out that
lizards in burrows are the canaries in the coal mine.
Ominous
reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout
that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach
biblical proportions.
Nearly 500 rare African penguins have died in the past 24 hours as a
result of extremely cold weather in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.
A 54-year-old man was killed Wednesday morning by a swarm of bees in
a remote area of Encinitas, a fire official said.
Most of us have heard or seen what global warming alarmists say the
consequences will be if something isn’t done to limit the man’s impact
on the environment. Al Gore, in his movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” warns
global sea levels will rise by a whopping 20 feet, causing coastal flooding
and creating a refugee crisis. Others aren’t quite as gloomy, but that’s
not the real threat to the planet.
For many lizards, global climate change is a matter of life and death.
After decades of surveying Sceloporus lizard populations in Mexico,
an international research team has found that rising temperatures have
driven 12 percent of the country's lizard populations to extinction.
An extinction model based on this discovery also forecasts a grim future
for these ecologically important critters, predicting that a full 20
percent of all lizard species could be extinct by the year 2080.
Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United
States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental
changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.
The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening.
A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while
a new study shows honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides.
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as
to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last
10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others
explain it through ocean currents.
Dispelling the notion that urban "green" spaces help counteract greenhouse
gas emissions, new research has found -- in Southern California at least
-- that total emissions would be lower if lawns did not exist.
The world did not end as the clock ticked ominously past midnight and
into the wee hours of January 1, 2000.
For alpaca farmer Ignacio Beneto Huamani and his young family, life
in the Peruvian Andes, at almost 4,700m above sea level, has always
been a struggle against the elements. His village of Pichccahuasi, in
Peru's Huancavelica region, is little more than a collection of small
thatched shelters and herds of alpaca surrounded by beautiful, yet bleakly
inhospitable, mountain terrain.
There's a one-in-two chance that the water reservoirs of the Colorado
River will dry up by 2050 if water management practices remain unchanged
in our warming world, a new study finds.
As Britain struggles to cope with a few inches of snow, spare a thought
for the travellers who were trapped on this train in Mongolia.
Cracks emerged on Tuesday in the alliance on climate change formed at
the Copenhagen conference last week, with leading developing countries
criticising the resulting accord.
Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist from Adelaide University, argues that
a recent rise in temperature around the world is caused by solar cycles
and other "extra terrestrial" forces.
Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing
University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding
as “Climategate”.
Copenhagen's city council in conjunction with Lord Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard
sent postcards out to 160 Copenhagen hotels urging COP15 guests and
delegates to 'Be sustainable - don't buy sex'.
Britain’s Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, suffered
a data breach in recent days when a hacker apparently broke into their
system and made away with thousands of emails and documents. The stolen
data was then posted to a Russian server and has quickly made the rounds
among climate skeptics. The documents within the archive, if proven
to be authentic, would at best be embarrassing for many prominent climate
researchers and at worst, damning.
SCOTS farmers’ leaders were fuming last night over barmy EU plans to
combat climate change — with a tax on cows’ FARTS.
You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide
levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues
report in the online edition of the journal Science.
Slash piles surround the parking area on Pelton Creek Road in the Medicine
Bow National Forest, southwest of Laramie near the Colorado border.
MEXICO CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with
frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out"
on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public
belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap.
Antarctic glaciers are melting faster across a much wider area than
previously thought, scientists said Wednesday -- a development that
could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels.
Sydneysiders have woken to a red haze unlike anything seen before by
residents or weather experts, as the sun struggles to pierce a thick
blanket of dust cloaking the city this morning.
This is not the funny kind of irony: Scientists say the chemicals that
helped solve the last global environmental crisis -- the hole in the
ozone layer -- are making the current one worse.
Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from
the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear,
pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and
all living things will disappear.
WASHINGTON - Scientists have underestimated the potential for a giant
quake and tsunami that could swamp much the U.S. northwest and Canadian
west coasts, British and U.S. researchers said on Monday.
JOHANNESBURG - Rising sea surface temperatures across the central and
eastern Pacific Ocean herald El Niño, which could disrupt the rains
in major cereal producing regions, the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO) has warned.
If an unusually detailed computer simulation at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology has it right, global warming in this century is on track
to be about twice as bad as predicted six years ago.
The wind, a favorite power source of the green energy movement, seems
to be dying down across the United States. And the cause, ironically,
may be global warming - the very problem wind power seeks to address.
No country in the world would risk as much for “global warming”
as New Zealand if it goes ahead with the cap-and-trade energy taxation
installed by Helen Clarke’s now-departed Labour Government.
Could the Sun play a greater role in recent climate change than has
been believed? Climatologists had dismissed the idea and some solar
scientists have been reticent about it because of its connections with
those who those who deny climate change. But now the speculation has
grown louder because of what is happening to our Sun. No living scientist
has seen it behave this way. There are no sunspots.
For bacteria in wastewater treatment plants, the stars align perfectly
to create a hedonistic mating ground for antibiotic-resistant superbugs
eventually discharged into streams and lakes.
It sounds like alchemy, an act of bureaucratic magic. Under the climate-change
bill just approved by a House committee, the U.S. government would literally
make a commodity -- as tradable as a Pontiac or a pork belly -- out
of thin air.
Even as U.S. honeybee populations have been hit hard by colony collapse
disorder in recent years, domesticated beehives have been thriving elsewhere.
Like a sinkful of hard water deposits suddenly doused with vinegar,
the shells of tiny marine snails in Victoria Fabry's test tanks don't
stand a chance.
Climate change concerns like melting icecaps, increased desertification,
loss of coral reefs and the extinction of species like polar bears can
seem a distant concern in our everyday lives. Little attention, however,
has been paid to the likelihood of increased bills, through tax and
insurance charges, that will be incurred as the UK climate changes.
A University of Maryland-led team has compiled the first decades-long
database of aerosol measurements over land, making possible new research
into how air pollution affects climate change.
For those who have endured this winter's frigid temperatures and today's
heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may
seem, well, almost wishful.
Americans like their toilet tissue soft: exotic confections that are
silken, thick and hot-air-fluffed. 
Adelie penguins are flocking closer to the South Pole. A new study in
the leading journal Science explains why: they're following the food
supply, which is moving southward with changing climate.
Adam Fier recently sold his home, got rid of his car and pulled his
twin 6-year-old girls out of elementary school in Montgomery County.
He and his wife packed the family's belongings and moved to New Zealand
-- a place they had never visited or seen before, and where they have
no family or professional connections. Among the top reasons: global
warming. 
Climate change experts have warned that severe weather events are likely
to occur more often in Australia as global warming continues. Commenting
on the Victorian bushfires, climatologist Professor David Karoly told
the ABC's Lateline program on Monday night that hot temperatures in
Melbourne on Saturday and in many parts of southeastern Australia were
"unprecedented".
Tree deaths, spurred by global warming, have more than doubled in older
forests across Western states, federal scientists reported Thursday.
Scientists studying climate change have long believed that while most
of the rest of the globe has been getting steadily warmer, a large part
of Antarctica – the East Antarctic Ice Sheet – has actually been getting
colder.
The earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according
to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of
climate science. Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base
of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, twelve thousand
year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and
then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000
years.
Bugs and diseases are killing trees at an alarming rate across the West,
from the spruce forests of Alaska to the oak woodlands near the San
Diego-Tijuana border.
Enormous cave bears, Ursus spelaeus, that once inhabited a large swathe
of Europe, from Spain to the Urals, died out 27,800 years ago, around
13 millennia earlier than was previously believed, scientists have reported.
Geneva, Switzerland: Even warming of less than 2°C might be enough to
trigger the loss of Arctic sea ice and the meltdown of the Greenland
Ice Sheet, causing global sea levels to rise by several metres.
Performing
two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same
amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according
to new research.
Once famous for their numbers, Norwegian lemmings are disappearing,
say scientists, who point an accusing finger at global warming.
The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times
more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere
from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.
JOHANNESBURG, SA - People in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, prefer
to commute in three-wheeled autorickshaws, taxis and buses that run
on compressed natural gas (CNG), in their bid to slow down global warming.