global warming

The photograph taken in 1928, above, shows how the Upsala Glacier, part of the South American Andes in Argentina, used to look. The ice on the Upsala Glacier today, shown in 2004 below, is retreating at least 180 ft. per year

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you’ve heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry–a Category 4 storm with wind bursts that reached 125 m.p.h.–exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast–when the emergency becomes commonplace–something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

The image of Earth as organism–famously dubbed Gaia by environmentalist James Lovelock– has probably been overworked, but that’s not to say the planet can’t behave like a living thing, and these days, it’s a living thing fighting a fever. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Scientists have been calling this shot for decades. This is precisely what they have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows in from the sun and raising global temperatures.

Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. If there was any consolation, it was that the glacial pace of nature would give us decades or even centuries to sort out the problem.

But glaciers, it turns out, can move with surprising speed, and so can nature. What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam. Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you’re not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers. By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft. Nature, it seems, has finally got a bellyful of us.

Source:

http://www.time.com

ScienceDaily (Aug. 28, 2008) — Conservation zones are in the wrong place to protect vulnerable coral reefs from the effects of global warming, an international team of scientists warn.

Seychelles Islands. (Credit: iStockphoto/Alain Couillaud)

Now the team – led jointly by Newcastle University and the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York – say that urgent action is needed to prevent the collapse of this important marine ecosystem.

The research, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the largest study of its kind to have been carried out, covering 66 sites across seven countries and spanning over a decade in the Indian Ocean.

Current protection zones – or ‘No-take areas’ (NTAs) – were set up to protect fish in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before climate change was a major issue.

The team – which comprises of experts from the UK, Australia, the US, Sweden and France – found the small-scale zones were not working to protect coral reefs against the effects of climate change.

They conclude that while the existing zones should not be removed, new areas are needed in the right place to protect corals against the effects of rising temperatures.

And they say that managing the system as a whole is crucial if coral reef communities are to have any hope of surviving the effects of global warming.

Lead researcher Nick Graham, of Newcastle University’s School of Marine Science and Technology, said: “We need a whole new approach – and we need to act now.

“Our research shows that many of the world’s existing no-take areas are in the wrong place.

“New protected zones are needed that focus on areas identified as escaping or recovering well from climate change impacts. But a major focus needs to be shifted towards increasing the resilience of the system as a whole – that means reducing as many other locally derived threats as possible.

“Coral dies when it is put under stress so what we need to be doing is reducing the direct human impact – such as over-fishing, pollution and sedimentation – across the whole area.

“By removing all these other stresses we are giving the coral the best chance of surviving and recovering from any changes in temperature that may occur as a result of global warming.”

Previous work by the team focused on the long-term impact of the 1998 event where global warming caused Indian Ocean surface temperatures to increase to unprecedented and sustained levels, killing off (or ‘bleaching’) more than 90 per cent of the inner Seychelles coral.

Although many areas are showing signs of long-term degradation, Mr Graham said it was positive to see that some locations either escaped the impact or have recovered.

“This provides the key to conserving coral reefs in the face of climate change,” he says. “We are not suggesting that we scrap the existing NTAs – in terms of protecting fish stocks they have been quite successful.

“But they are not effective against global warming and in order to ensure the long-term survival of this rich marine community that is what we need to address.”

The team comprised researchers from Newcastle University; the Wildlife Conservation Society; National Research Council, Florida; James Cook University, Australia; the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft; the University of East Anglia; the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement, New Caledonia; Laboratoire d’Ecologie marine, France; Natural England; The Nature Conservancy; the Universite de la Mediterranee, France; Universite de Perpignan, France; Stockholm University, Sweden; University of Warwick.

Logistical support was received from the Seychelles Centre of Marine Research and Technology-Marine Park Authority, Seychelles Fishing Authority, Nature Seychelles, Mauritius Institute of Oceanography, University of Dar es Salaam, and Kenya Wildlife Service.

This research was funded through grants from the Leverhulme Trust, Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association, World Bank Targeted Research Group on Coral Bleaching, the Fisheries Society of the British Isles, the Eppley and Tiffany Foundations, the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the British Overseas Development Administration (now DFID) and the British Foreign and Comsmonwealth Office.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases

ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2008) — Cane toads weren’t allowed to compete in the Olympics, but scientists have raced cane toads in the laboratory and calculated that they would not be able to invade Melbourne, Adelaide or Hobart and are unlikely to do well in Perth or Sydney, even with climate change

Cane toad, after a long journey. Scientists have calculated that cane toads would not be able to invade Melbourne, Adelaide or Hobart and are unlikely to do well in Perth or Sydney, even with climate change. (Credit: iStockphoto)

According to research by Dr Michael Kearney, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Melbourne, and collaborators from Australia and the USA, the cane toad’s march will grind to a halt once it is physically too cold for the toads to hop.

“The cane toads cannot survive in much of Southern Australia because they would be too cold to move about and forage or spawn” said Dr Kearney.

Their study is unique in that it is based on an understanding of the capabilities of the toad itself whereas many other studies – some predicting that Melbourne would be invaded by the toads – are based on correlations between climate and the places the toads are living at now, which can lead to errors.

Since their introduction to Australia in the 1930s, cane toads have been steadily advancing across Australia and have already invaded Brisbane and Darwin. Once used as pest control, the toads are now a devastating pest themselves so an accurate prediction of their final range and rate of movement is essential.

If there were a cane toad Olympics, all eyes would be on the weather: because they are cold-blooded, the toad’s ability to move depends on its body temperature which fluctuates with its environment.

Dr Kearney and his colleagues, including Dr. Ben Phillips from the University of Sydney and Dr. Chris Tracy from Charles Darwin University, set up a 2m sprint event for toads at a range of different temperatures to see what temperatures would slow toads down the most.

The team used field-collected toads from four populations across the invasion front.

“We found that cane toads can barely hop once they get below about 15 degrees Celsius”, said Dr. Tracy. “Their range would also be constrained by the limited availability of water for their tadpoles in some parts of Australia”.

After racing their toads, Kearney and his colleagues used sophisticated computer models developed by Dr Warren Porter at the University of Wisconsin, Madison USA, to predict how cold toads would get at different times of the year across Australia.

They found that it is so warm and wet around Darwin that toads there can hop more than 50 kms per year. However, the cooler, drier conditions around Sydney or Perth mean that toads can barely manage 1 km per year. And they couldn’t move at all under typical weather conditions in Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart.

They found that toads have particular difficulties in parts of southern Australia with what are known as Mediterranean climates – places with cold wet winters and warm dry summers.

“These are perfect conditions for growing wine, but you are unlikely to meet a toad at a winery” said Dr Kearney. In many of these places the air temperature at night – the active period for toads - is often above 15 degrees Celsius, but this only happens during summer, and evaporation in the dry summer air cools them down too much.

“Our study is particularly helpful in predicting where cane toads could live under climate change because we have identified a cause-and-effect way that climate limits the toads”. Dr. Kearney said.

“In one way it is obvious why dry conditions are bad for frogs – they lose too much water” explained Dr. Kearney. “But having wet skin also provides frogs with a thermal challenge because the evaporating water takes heat away from their bodies and often makes them colder than the air.”

They found that a moderate global warming could allow toads to move 100 km further south than their present limit by 2050. This would make conditions in Sydney slightly better for toads, and the only other city at risk of toad invasion under this scenario would be Perth.

The work is published in this month’s Ecography journal.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2008) — For just one late-summer night each year, the shallow waters off the coast of Puerto Rico fill with the pale-pink spawn of elkhorn corals — the tiny, round packets of the adult corals’ eggs and sperm.

Scientists capture coral spawn using a special net. (Credit: Ramon Villaverde, Columbus Zoo)

This year, Iliana Baums, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, is there to collect the coral spawn as part of a research and education project to grow the newborn juvenile corals for distribution to aquaria and to the wild. “It looks like it’s snowing,” she said, “except that the egg and sperm packets rise underwater to the surface rather than fall to the ground.”

Baums’s reason for collecting the spawn is twofold: she hopes to acquire important information about how corals will respond to global warming, and she also is teaching a group of 28 aquarium professionals, as part of an international workshop, how they can participate in the protection of corals. Baums will hunt for and collect coral spawn on the nights of 21 and 22 August. For seven days thereafter, she will remain at the site, working to grow the newborn juvenile corals for distribution to aquaria and to the wild.

According to Baums, corals are extremely sensitive to changes in water temperature. “An increase in water temperature of just a couple degrees Celsius results in visible damage to adult corals and their offspring,” she said. Referring to a paper published in a July 2008 issue of the journal Science in which the authors report that one-third of all reef-building corals face an elevated risk of extinction from climate change and other factors, Baums said it is imperative that scientists and marine-resource managers begin to think about how to rescue these important animals.

That’s why Baums is searching for particular populations of coral that produce offspring that are better able to withstand high water temperatures. Because most coral species are triggered by moonlight to release their egg-sperm packets, Baums will begin her experiment with a nighttime trip to a designated reef off the coast of Puerto Rico. There, she will collect spawn from elkhorn corals, which are protected as a threatened species by the United States Endangered Species Act. In small rearing chambers, she will place eggs from certain populations with sperm from certain other populations.

Over the next seven days, she will raise the newly formed juvenile corals in saltwater tanks on land. She then will ship half of them to several aquaria around the world and will return the other half to the reef. “Corals are most vulnerable when they are very small, and our protected nursery will help them to get through the first critical days,” said Baums.

Next, the juvenile corals in captivity will be subjected to a variety of higher-than-normal and lower-than-normal water temperatures in order to pinpoint those offspring whose parents can tolerate abnormal water conditions. Once Baums identifies these individuals, she will search their genomes for variants of genes that are responsible for resistance to abnormal water temperatures. With this knowledge, she then can develop genetic markers that will enable her to identify wild elkhorn-coral populations throughout the Caribbean that contain such gene variants.

Water from the ocean is pumped into tubs where juvenile corals will be raised for a period of seven days after scientists harvest them from the wild.

In collaboration with SECORE (SExual COral REproduction), an international organization of professional aquarists and scientists that is concerned about coral conservation, Baums will hold a workshop during the annual coral-spawning event in Puerto Rico. Through the workshop, she and other researchers will teach a group of 28 aquarium professionals from around the world how to collect coral spawn, do fertilization experiments, raise larvae, and care for larvae once they are shipped back to the participants’ home institutions. The workshop, which is now in its third year, already has been given to over 60 aquarium professionals. Baums and other members of SECORE plan to continue to the workshop in future years to reach as many aquarium professionals as possible.

“Poachers often collect wild corals to satisfy the demand for aquariums, but aquarium professionals are looking for alternative, less destructive sources of these animals. SECORE’s goal is to develop methods to eventually breed corals in captivity, thereby reducing some of the pressure to collect corals from the wild,” she said. “We are starting by raising juveniles from wild-caught eggs and sperm, which enables us to provide aquariums with the corals they desire without damaging wild adult colonies.

In return, the aquarium operators help us to perform the experiments and give us tips on how to raise adult corals in captivity, which is something they are very good at.” Baums added that the establishment of good aquarium populations is a safeguard against the extinction of elkhorn corals.

The corals that Baums ships to aquaria will undergo one of two treatments: half of them will be exposed to species of the zooxanthellae — algae that live inside the cells of corals and provide them with necessary nutrients and energy — that naturally occur with elkhorn corals, and half of them will be exposed to zooxanthellae from other regions of the world, where elkhorn corals are not present.

In past years, elkhorn corals in captivity readily took up foreign zooxanthellae and coped better than those that took up only native species of zooxanthellae. These observations will be tested in a controlled experiment as part of this year’s workshop. While Baums said she would not release foreign strains of zooxanthellae into the wild, she does think such measures could be beneficial to corals that are maintained in aquaria.

Baums is partnering with Margaret Miller, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who will do the same experiment using corals from Florida, where annual minimum water temperatures are lower. The team will compare corals in the two locations to learn if there are any differences in their abilities to withstand high and low water temperatures. A goal of the research is to find out if current temperature differences between Florida and Puerto Rico will influence the abilities of corals to tolerate future warm-water conditions associated with global warming.

This research and the workshop are funded by the NOAA and the National Science Foundation.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn’t exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don’t pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. “It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species,” wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970’s global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990’s temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I’ll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn’t occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, “State of Fear” he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen’s. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don’t understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: “the consensus was reached before the research had even begun.” Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky’s book “Yes, but is it true?” The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky’s findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky’s students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.

Source:

http://www.canadafreepress.com

By Timothy Ball

 By Attorney General’s office

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced a multi-state lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to regulate harmful pollution from oil refineries.

The lawsuit — filed by a coalition of 12 states, the District of Columbia and the City of New York — alleges that the EPA is in violation of the Clean Air Act for failing to adopt standards requiring that new or renovated oil refineries install technologies to control global warming pollution.

The Clean Air Act specifically requires the EPA to adopt standards, known as New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), for oil refineries — as well as power plants and other major pollution sources — if the EPA determines they emit air pollution that poses a danger to public health and welfare.

“Enhancing its distinction of environmental disregard, the Bush Administration has again ignored its responsibility by failing to adopt meaningful pollution controls for oil refineries,” Blumenthal said. “The EPA has defied the Clean Air Act and the Supreme Court by repeatedly ignoring a ruling that global warming emissions are pollutants. EPA’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases through state-of-the-art technologies is an abrogation of its responsibilities. Our coalition of states and cities will fight hard — as we have repeatedly — to force the EPA to follow the law.”

Oil refineries account for over 3 percent of the total energy consumption in the United States. Due to their large energy consumption, oil refineries are major sources of carbon dioxide, accounting for almost 15 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted from industrial processes nationally. These refineries also emit large amounts of methane, an especially potent global warming pollutant.

Today’s challenge was filed in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The coalition includes California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia and the City of New York. The suit seeks to vacate the EPA’s decision not to control oil refinery emissions of global warming pollution and to order the EPA to adopt proper NSPS.
© Copyright by StamfordPlus.com. Some articles and pictures posted on our website, as indicated by their bylines, were submitted as press releases and do not necessarily reflect the position and opinion of StamfordPlus.com, Stamford Plus magazine, Canaiden LLC or any of its associated entities. Articles may have been edited for brevity and grammar.

Source:

http://www.norwalkplus.com/nwk/information/nwsnwk

Posted by: ThosPayne

So long as Senate Republicans continue to hold out for non-budget related items the ability to protect our environment is in jeopardy.

Most notably, if the Tom McClintock radical wing of the Republican Party gets it’s way, California’s ability to comply with the state’s landmark global warming bill, AB 32, will be crippled.

The San Jose Mercury reports that “Republicans in the California Senate continue their outrageous demand for major rollbacks to California’s bedrock environmental law as the price of their support for a state budget. Their demand to weaken the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — behind closed doors — as a condition of approving the state’s budget is an unprecedented level of extortion. The radical Republicans want to prevent CEQA from being used to address increases in greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting impacts on global warming.

The demands from McClintock’s band of anti-environmentalists seems to be the main obstacle to completing the budget.

Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) is dramatically out-of-step with most Californians on the issue of the environment.

A July 2008 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California (http://www.ppic.org) found that an overwhelming majority of Californians (92% of Democrats, 82% of Independents, and 60% of Republicans) believe that steps must be taken right away to address global warming.

While support for last year’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32 – Nunez) is nearly 80%, half of Californians believe the state is still not doing enough to protect the environment.

McClintock is choosing to answer to his Southern California developers and big oil polluter friends while we pay the price. He defies the Republican governor who defeated him, and who says this issue should not be used to hold up the budget.

McClintock should be ashamed of himself for hanging up the budget. He should also get in step with the 21st century on the issue of Global Warming.

Source:

http://www.edhtelegraph.com/detail/91508.html

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Aug. 25, 2008 — Locked away in the frozen soils of the Arctic tundra, there lies a ticking time bomb.

Nothing more than accumulated leaves, roots and other plant matter, the unassuming detritus is rich in carbon, giving it the power to dramatically enhance the effects of global warming should it ever get into the atmosphere. But for now it mostly lies dormant, in cold storage in the permafrosts of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada.

That’s starting to change, according to some scientists. The planet has already begun to warm as a result of humans pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. The permafrost is starting to melt, and that pent-up carbon is already leaking into the air in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, powerful greenhouse gases.

Even worse, there may be more of the stuff than anyone ever thought.

Chien-Liu Ping and a team of researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks spent the last 13 years meticulously sampling tundra soils across North America. In a study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, they estimate there may be almost 100 billion tons of carbon in the first meter of soil alone.

That’s equivalent to about a quarter of the amount currently in Earth’s atmosphere, or 10 years’ worth of global emissions from human activity.

It also nearly doubles previous estimates of carbon content in Arctic soil. Despite decades of work, such approximations are rough at best, because land in the far North is vast, remote, and inhospitably cold. Even in the height of summer, soil scientists can rarely dig deeper than 50 centimeters before they hit rock-solid permafrost.

But worst-case scenario climate projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest Arctic temperatures could climb as much as 6 degrees centigrade by the end of the century.

If that happens, the Arctic region, which has already shown signs of thawing, will change dramatically. Already scientists have begun seeing areas where permafrost tundra has melted into muddy bogs called ‘thermokarsts.’ In other places, steep hillsides, no longer supported by rigid ice crystals, are giving way in landslides.

As the land melts bacteria intrude, decomposing the plant matter that has built up over thousands of years. They release methane and carbon dioxide into the air as byproducts, gases that warm the planet by trapping heat energy from the sun.

“Permafrost temperatures in Alaska have gone up about 1 degree Centigrade over the last 50 years,” Ping said, pushing soils to within a fraction of a degree of freezing temperature. “In Russia, they’ve been monitoring permafrost for over a century. It has warmed 2 degrees Centigrade, so almost 5 degrees Fahrenheit.”

It’s not all bad news though. The warmer temperatures should allow plants to grow vigorously, and they can suck up huge amounts of carbon out from the atmosphere through photosynthesis — perhaps even enough to cancel out greenhouse gas emissions from the soil.

In fact, many scientists say the jury is still out on whether or not the thawing Arctic could quicken the pace of global warming.

Source:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news

WASHINGTON, DC, August 26, 2008 (ENS) - “The big picture is that global warming is putting hurricanes on steroids,” declared climate scientist Dr. Amanda Staudt of the National Wildlife Federation, one of the country’s largest conservation groups. Windspeeds could increase 13 percent and rainfall could increase 31 percent, Staudt warned at the launch of her new report last week.

“As so many grapple with Tropical Storm Fay’s landfall in the United States, our thoughts and prayers are with those in harm’s way,” she said.

Now weakened from a Tropical Storm to a Tropical Depression, Fay will be pouring down rain in Alabama, the Florida Panhandle, eastern Tennessee, Georgia and parts of the Carolinas most of Tuesday and Wednesday, say National Weather Service forecasters. Fay has been in Florida and the Deep South since August 18.

While weary Florida and Gulf Coast residents endure yet another round of flooding, destruction and power outages, the latest science connecting hurricanes and global warming suggests more of the same is yet to come, said Dr. Staudt.

“Although no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, it’s critical to understand that a warming climate is supplying the very conditions that fuel the strongest storms,” she said, predicting higher wind speeds, more precipitation, and bigger storm surges in the coming decades.

The destructive potential of tropical storms in the North Atlantic has increased by about 50 percent since the 1970s, Staudt states in the report.

Deltona, Florida Fire Department Search and Rescue members, Randy Siebert, left, and Tony Jacinto deliver food and medications to stranded residents of this Volusia County community. August 24, 2008. Six days after the first landfall of Tropical Storm Fay, communities are still stranded. (Photo by Barry Bahler courtesy FEMA)

And the heights of big waves along the eastern United States have increased by 20 percent during hurricane season since the late 1970s, augmenting the overall risk to coastal communities and wildlife habitats.

Staudt says the increase reflects longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. She correlates it with an increase of 0.9 to 1.3°Fahrenheit in sea surface temperatures in the main development area for storms in the North Atlantic.

The report is entitled “Increasing Vulnerability to Hurricanes: Global Warming’s Wake-Up Call for the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coasts,” reflecting Dr. Straudt’s concern that hurricanes are getting stronger as the oceans warm.

Straudt points out that the increasing coastal population and development in Florida and along the Gulf Coast puts more people as well as wildlife at risk of hurricanes.

For protection, she says, we could use the natural function of coastal wetlands and barrier islands to absorb the destructive force of the stronger hurricanes of the future.

But wetland loss has been a persistent problem along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and will only be made worse by increasing sea level, she notes in the report.

“We must account for increasing storm activity and rising sea level when managing our coasts, especially by restoring and protecting coastal wetlands, lowlands, and barrier islands that provide crucial natural levees,” Dr. Staudt advises.

Wetlands can reduce the size of storm surges by inhibiting the formation and propagation of waves. Scientists have estimated that every mile of wetlands can trim three to nine inches off of a storm surge.

Linking stronger storms with global warming, Staudt says if greenhouse gas emissions continue at today’s levels over the next century, tropical sea surface temperatures could rise another 3° F, or three times the warming increase to date.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

Source:

http://www.ens-newswire.com

By PAUL DAVIDSON
USA TODAY

A mammoth shovel scrapes about 70 tons of coal shards off a 60-foot-high black wall like ice cream from a long, deep vat.

An aerial overview of the Peabody Energy Black Mesa Coal Mine on the Hopi Reservation where the coal…

An aerial overview of the Peabody Energy Black Mesa Coal Mine on the Hopi Reservation where the coal mining giant pumps water from an ancient aquifer beneath Hopi & Navajo lands for a slurry pipeline which the locals charge is sapping their water supply and contributing to a drought.

(William F. Campbell/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images))
More Photos

The power shovel’s boom pirouettes and dumps its load into a truck bed with a resounding thud, kicking up a haze of black dust. Four scoops later, the outsized truck — think 12-foot-tall tires — brimming with a fresh dark mound, rolls off. Without missing a beat, the shovel dives back into the bounty, releasing its next load just as another truck backs in.

The scene — repeated around the clock here at the world’s largest coal mine, Peabody Energy’s North Antelope Rochelle Mine in the Powder River Basin — underscores both the abundance and the grimy nature of the USA’s most plentiful energy resource.

As oil and natural-gas prices remain high and lawmakers agonize over whether to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas, coal looms as an antidote — still relatively cheap despite recent price surges because of a boom in exports.

While coal-fired power plants generate half of U.S. electricity, coal is the biggest carbon dioxide producer, accounting for 40% of worldwide emissions. CO2 is the chief culprit in global warming. To environmentalists, coal is public enemy No. 1.

Peabody, the world’s largest coal company, sits squarely at the vortex of these countervailing forces.

Source:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story