Ecology If you care about our children's future

[phil]

This is what lays ahead in the years to come.
How bad it will be depends on what we do NOW !!

KILLER STORMS

Warmer sea water means there is more energy to power hurricanes, and the computer-predicted increase in such "extreme events" with global warming seems to be coming true. Hurricane Epsilon, currently raging in the Atlantic, is the 26th named storm, and the 14th named hurricane of a record season in the US. These storms are getting more violent. An even more sobering glimpse of the future was given by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 which killed 11,000 people and left three million homeless in Honduras.

RAMPANT DISEASE

Although many of the effects of global warming will be felt by developing nations, rich countries will not escape. Acute heat episodes will become frequent and kill many. In the heatwave of August 2003 in western Europe - confidently attributed by scientists to climate change - 35,000 old people died, more than 18,000 in France.

Heat will not be the only problem. The World Health Organisation fears that global warming, with its heavier rainfall, could lead to a major increase in insect-borne diseases in Britain and Europe such as malaria, Lyme disease and encephalitis, and has called for urgent government action to prevent it.

RISING SEA LEVELS

In the coming century, global sea levels are predicted to rise by up to three feet, threatening regions at or below sea level, such as Pacific islands, much of Bangladesh, the Nile delta in Egypt, the Netherlands, and even East Anglia and the Thames estuary in Britain.

Storm surges - like that which drowned more than 300 people in eastern England and 1,800 people in the Netherlands in January 1953 - are likely to be much more frequent and catastrophic. The population of Bangladesh will double as its land surface halves.

DEVASTATED WILDLIFE

Polar bears may be the first spectacular casualties as the ice of the Arctic Ocean, on which they depend to hunt seals, is rapidly melting and will probably all be gone by mid-century.

But Britain itself is already feeling the problem: we are losing to rising temperatures not only the cod in the seas around our coasts, but also the small fish such as sandeels on which seabirds depend to feed their young. Last year in the Northern Isles, Orkney and Shetland, hundreds of thousands of birds such as guillemots and arctic terns failed to breed for lack of food.

WATER SHORTAGES

Drought will be much more common. In the drylands, rain will be even less frequent, while some parts of the world that are temperate will become arid: central Spain may be desert-like by the mid-century. And it is not only rain that will fail.

Glaciers are shrinking. Lima, with seven million people, depends for half the year on water from the Sullcon glacier in the Andes, which has retreated by 30 per cent. Himalayan glaciers which feed the river Indus, the source of much of Pakistan's water, are also shrinking.

AGRICULTURAL TURMOIL

The hundreds of millions of people living in the world's marginal agricultural lands, such as the countries of the Sahel region, already face a desperate daily struggle to grow food.

All their energies are consumed in the effort to produce a harvest of a staple crop such as millet. As global temperatures rise, this struggle is likely to become impossible as more frequent and longer droughts make crop-growing unviable.

In poor tropical regions, the increased storms predicted from climate change will be an added threat. The terrifying images of African famine are as nothing to what will come.

THE 'X' FACTOR?

What's predicted is terrible enough. But it is what's not even on the radar that some scientists fear most of all - the possibility that global warming might bring about some sudden, extreme and devastating climatic phenomenon that we cannot yet even imagine.

The climate is a complex system, and we know that complex systems, when subject to stress, can collapse - it happens on your office desk when your computer crashes - and the global climate is now being subjected to stresses that have never been put on it before.

Last year's global warming disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow tried to show this with the northern hemisphere freezing solid in a matter of weeks. Most people dismissed it as far-fetched, but something just as catastrophic may be out there, not far in the future.

[phil]

Ten things we all can do right now ...

TURN OFF ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES NOT IN USE

TVs, videos and computers left on standby can use up to 85 per cent of the energy they would if fully on. The power wasted releases an extra one million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere every year, contributing to global warming.

LEAVE THE CAR IN THE DRIVE

Use public transport to get to work whenever possible. Motorists who drive 100 miles a week generate 1,872kg of CO2 a year. Train or bus commuters travelling the same distance create just 520kg.

SHOWER, DON'T BATH

Filling a tub needs 75 litres of water, whereas a five-minute shower uses 30 litres. Buy a water-saving showerhead (£15) to end drips. Cuts the average bill by £125 a year.

CONSERVE HOT WATER

Turn down the temperature by two degrees celsius, cutting the average heating bill by £40 a year and emissions by up to 270kg. Set your washing machine to as cool a wash as possible; followed twice a week, emissions will be cut by 225kg a year. Fit an insulating jacket around a hot water tank, cutting emissions by 80kg a year.

BUY LOCAL

Fill your shopping basket with local produce, eating fruit and vegetables that are in season. Food imported by air contributes many times its own weight in CO2 emissions by the time it reaches the UK.

MINIMISE TUMBLE DRYER USE

Just one fewer load a week reduces CO2 emissions by 91kg a year. Avoid putting very damp clothes in by wringing out first.

INSULATE LOFTS, WALLS AND WINDOWS

More than 40 per cent of heat lost from the home escapes through walls and lofts. Insulating lofts to a depth of 250mm can slash heating bills by a quarter. Insulating cavity walls, which costs about £550, can cut heating bills by a third and emissions by 900kg a year. Fit insulating film over windows. At £1 a pane it can reduce a household's emissions by 450kg a year.

HOLIDAY IN THE UK

Giving up on foreign trips will help cut down aviation emissions. A flight to Athens emits 2,336kg of CO2 per passenger.

COMPOST AND RECYCLE

If each home recycled 50 per cent of its output, the UK's annual CO2 emissions would drop by six million tonnes. The energy saved by recycling a single drinks can is enough to run a TV set for three hours.

USE ENERGY SAVING LIGHTBULBS

Energy-saving lightbulbs use less than a quarter of the electricity, last 12 times longer than standard light bulbs and produce 50kg less CO2 during their lifetime. They cost £4.

[phil]

75% of Switzerland's glaciers gone by 2050, Europe heats up
European Environment Agency release
November 30, 2005

Snow disappearing in Scotland, fewer bees in Italy, crop losses in Spain, forests on the decline in Germany and sea levels rising off the coast of England are dangerous signs of climate change in Europe.


The four hottest years on record were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Ten percent of Alpine glaciers disappeared during the summer of 2003 alone. At current rates, three quarters of Switzerland's glaciers will have melted by 2050. Europe has not seen climate changes on this scale for 5 000 years, says a new report by the European Environment Agency (EEA), based in Copenhagen.


'The European environment - State and outlook 2005', a five year assessment across 31 countries, provides an overview of Europe's environment and points to challenges of which climate change is just one. Other areas of concern include biodiversity, marine ecosystems, land and water resources, air pollution and health.

The report says Europe's average temperature rose by 0.95 °C during the 20th century. This is 35 % higher than the global average increase of 0.7 °C and temperatures will continue to rise. The EU has recognised this and set a target limiting the global temperature increase to 2 °C above pre industrial levels.

'Without effective action over several decades, global warming will see ice sheets melting in the north and the spread of deserts from the south. The continent's population could effectively become concentrated in the centre. Even if we constrain global warming to the EU target of a 2 °C increase, we will be living in atmospheric conditions that human beings have never experienced. Deeper cuts in emissions are needed', says Jacqueline McGlade, Executive director of the EEA.

Past EU legislation on environment has worked, says the report. We have cleaned up our water and our air, phased out some ozone depleting substances and have doubled rates of waste recycling. We also have cars that pollute less; without the dramatic improvements made by catalytic converters over the past twenty years, certain emissions would have been ten times the level they are now. Yet, it has taken ten to twenty years for these actions to show results, the report says.


These environmental success stories are now being overtaken by changes in personal consumption patterns. Europeans are living longer and more of us live alone putting greater demands on living space. Between 1990 and 2000, more than 800 000 hectares, of Europe's land was built on. That is an area three times the size of Luxembourg. If this trend continues, our urban area will double in just over a century. Managing urban sprawl is essential if we are to protect our natural resources, says the report.

[phil]

This is from the Goddar Institute For Space Studies ...

data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/

The highest global surface temperature in more than a century of instrumental data was recorded in the 2005 calendar year in the GISS annual analysis. However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year.

...

Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2°C above the trend line by the strongest El Niño of the past century.

Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that "most global warming occurred before 1940". More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.

Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. Climate models show that the rate of warming is consistent with expectations (5). The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions (6).


The other hottest years on record are ...

2002 - 2003 - 2004 ... !!


This is the kind of news Junior doesn't want to hear !!

[Dr. Drum]

All you have to do is experience the lack of a real Canadian winter this year – from one end of the country to the other, I might add – to know that something’s not quite right.

[shin]

Who cares, as long as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is still on, I'm happy.

[Thorngrub]

haha. Yeah Doc - - we here in Utah can distinctly feel the disheartening mildness of this winter. Phil: excellent thread . . . thank you for taking the trouble to put it up. Not that its self evident truths will register in the heads of all those who read it - - but you at least gave it a try. And that I heartily endorse.

[Rit]

very goodt.

[maarts]

There's a pretty good series of articles about global warming in this months' Rolling Stone. Worth checking out by itself.

And only tonight I read this article. Just a little bit of good news.

Science team finds 'lost world'

An international team of scientists says it has found a "lost world" in the Indonesian jungle that is home to dozens of new animal and plant species.

"It's as close to the Garden of Eden as you're going to find on Earth," said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the group.

The team recorded new butterflies, frogs, and a series of remarkable plants that included five new palms and a giant rhododendron flower.

The survey also found a honeyeater bird that was previously unknown to science.

It's beautiful, untouched, unpopulated forest; there's no evidence of human impact or presence

The research group - from the US, Indonesia and Australia - trekked through an area in the mist-shrouded Foja Mountains, located just north of the vast Mamberamo Basin of north-western (Indonesian) New Guinea. The researchers spent nearly a month in the locality, detailing the wildlife and plant life from the lower hills to near the summit of the Foja range, which reaches more than 2,000m in elevation.

"It's beautiful, untouched, unpopulated forest; there's no evidence of human impact or presence up in these mountains," Dr Beehler told the BBC News website, "We were dropped in by helicopter. There's not a trail anywhere; it was really hard to get around."

He said that even two local indigenous groups, the Kwerba and Papasena people, customary landowners of the forest who accompanied the scientists, were astonished at the area's isolation. "The men from the local villages came with us and they made it clear that no one they knew had been anywhere near this area - not even their ancestors," Mr Beehler said.

Unafraid of humans

One of the team's most remarkable discoveries was a honeyeater bird with a bright orange patch on its face - the first new bird species to be sighted on the island of New Guinea in more than 60 years.

The researchers also solved a major ornithological mystery - the location of the homeland of Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise. First described in the late 19th Century through specimens collected by indigenous hunters from an unknown location on New Guinea, the species had been the focus of several subsequent expeditions that failed to find it. On only the second day of the team's expedition, the amazed scientists watched as a male Berlepsch's bird of paradise performed a mating dance for an attending female in the field camp. It was the first time a live male of the species had been observed by Western scientists, and proved that the Foja Mountains was the species' true home.

"This bird had been filed away and forgotten; it had been lost. To rediscover it was, for me, in some ways, more exciting than finding the honeyeater. I spent 20 years working on birds of paradise; they're pretty darn sexy beasts," Dr Beehler enthused.

The team also recorded a golden-mantled tree kangaroo, which was previously thought to have been hunted to near-extinction.

Mr Beehler said some of the creatures the team came into contact with were remarkably unafraid of humans. Two long-beaked echidnas, primitive egg-laying mammals, even allowed scientists to pick them up and bring them back to their camp to be studied, he added.

The December 2005 expedition was organised by the US-based organisation Conservation International, together with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences.

The team says it did not have nearly enough time during its expedition to survey the area completely and intends to return later in the year.

The locality lies within a protected zone and Dr Beehler believes its future is secure in the short term.

"The key investment is the local communities. Their knowledge, appreciation and oral traditions are so important. They are the forest stewards who will look after these assets," Dr Beehler told the BBC.

A summary of the team's main discoveries:

* A new species of honeyeater, the first new bird species discovered on the island of New Guinea since 1939
* The formerly unknown breeding grounds of a "lost" bird of paradise - the six-wired bird of paradise (Parotia berlepschi)
* First photographs of the golden-fronted bowerbird displaying at its bower.
* A new large mammal for Indonesia, the golden-mantled tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus pulcherrimus)
* More than 20 new species of frogs, including a tiny microhylid frog less than 14mm long
* A series of previously undescribed plant species, including five new species of palms
* A remarkable white-flowered rhododendron with flower about 15cm across
* Four new butterfly species.

[phil]

Evangelicals call for action on global warming


The pastor of a Longwood megachurch joins 85 other leaders in the national fight.

Mark I. Pinsky
Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted February 9 2006


More than 80 national evangelical leaders launched a campaign Wednesday to help curb global warming, an initiative that features the pastor of a Central Florida megachurch in a television ad.

"We're going to be facing some real challenges environmentally," said the Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church in Longwood, who is in a national TV commercial endorsing the initiative.

The group's declaration, unveiled at a Washington news conference, was signed by 86 leaders and asks Christians to "present a distinctively biblical and moral perspective" in combating global warming.

However, other major figures in the evangelical movement have refused to sign the document.

Recommended measures in "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action" include limiting carbon-dioxide emissions "through cost-effective, market-based mechanisms."

They are similar to legislative proposals offered in the U.S. Senate last summer by Republican Pete Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman, both of New Mexico. Those proposals include allowing industries to "trade" pollution limits, or credits, among themselves.

Hunter, whose church has a weekend attendance of about 8,000, said his commitment to the issue comes from the Bible, which instructs humans to be good stewards of the Earth.

"We feel it's our responsibility, since we see the Bible as the authority in our lives, to follow that instruction about what we're supposed to do with Earth," Hunter said in an interview. "We're to cultivate it, but also to protect it."

Warming an issue in poll

More than 70 percent of evangelicals think that global warming will pose a threat to future generations, according to a poll conducted by Ellison Research and released at the news conference.

More than 60 percent think that the issue should be addressed immediately, and 51 percent said they would take steps to remedy global warming, even if there is a high economic cost to the U.S., the survey of 1,000 born-again or evangelical Protestants found.

Along with Hunter, those who signed the declaration included Rick Warren, megachurch pastor and author of The Purpose-Driven Life; W. Todd Bassett, national commander of the Salvation Army; Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.; and the Rev. Jack Hayford, a leading Pentecostal pastor and author.

One of the main organizers was the Rev. Jim Ball, director of the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Ball generated headlines with a series of newspaper ads that opposed low-mileage sport utility vehicles, using the headline, "What Would Jesus Drive?"

Since the 1980s, some evangelicals have seen the environment "as a pro-life issue," said Jo Anne Lyon, executive director of World Hope International, a relief organization.

Not everyone agrees

But some prominent names from the more conservative wing of the evangelical movement were missing from the list, including James Dobson of the evangelical group Focus on the Family, and televangelists Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy.

Kennedy is pastor of the 10,000-member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale.

The Rev. Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said he was not asked to sign, and would not have anyway.

"Among Southern Baptists, there is no consensus on this issue," Land said, "and absolutely no consensus on the remedies."

Although Land said that he personally agreed with much of the declaration, "you have to take into account economic and business concerns."

Northland's Hunter said that by engaging in practical, grass-roots efforts, congregation members will "lend their voice and their vote" to the initiative against global warming.

"We need to recycle, consider the environment when we buy cars -- the basic things that would be on anyone's list," he said.

[luke]

youtube.com/w/Will-Ferrell-as-George-Dubya-Bush---Global-Warming?v=bAfZGUIDcJs&search=will%20ferrell%20global%20warming

[rockkid]

Show me some global warming.
Sitting at -39 with a -44 wind chill right now.
It’s broad daylight & not a creature is stirring out there.

[Dr. Drum]

9° and sunny here.

[rockkid]

Jerk

[Dr. Drum]

Some hopeful news for a change:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4694152.stm