Vegetation Type, Not Rising Temperatures Key to Wildfire Occurrence

Rising temperatures do not mean there will be a higher risk for wildfires in a particular area. Instead, it more depends on the type of vegetation, according to research from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Montana State University, University of Washington and the University of Illinois-Urbana.

The massive 1988 Yellowstone N.P. fire approaching the Old Faithful tourist area.

This particular research looked at historical fire occurrence going back 17,000 years, by studying sediments found in the bottom of lakes in the state of Alaska.

Researchers concluded that historical changes fire frequencies coincided with changes in the type of vegetation in the area, more so than to rising temperatures alone.

An look at the 1988 Yellowstone fire from the air.

Although changing temperatures and moisture content set the stage for changes in wildfire frequency, they can often be trumped by changes in the distribution and abundance of plants, according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory press release.

There is much more detail in regards to this story from the press release.

What You Need To Know About The Economic Impact Of Global Warming

Many people do not really see the economic impact of global warming. For most people, global warming is just changes in the weather and melting of the polar ice caps. However, the impact of global warming does not just affect the physical world, it also affect the people, the way they live, eat and use their resources. To understand better the economic impact of global warming in our daily lives, let us look at the following points.

Higher Energy Consumption

The economic impact of global warming is far reaching and it affects our day to day activities. For instance, in many parts of the world, summers can be excruciatingly hot. Although there are many people who can stand the heat without fainting or having heat strokes, many people are not that lucky. To dispel the heat and to make their homes more comfortable, people turn up their air conditioners and leave them on for most parts of the day and night. Since these air conditioning units run on electricity, people end up paying more money for their electric bills. Higher energy bills can erode the family budget to some degree. This is but a simple illustration of how the economic impact of global warming can affect ordinary citizens like you and me.

If you take a look at the larger picture of things, you may notice how the increase in the demand for energy can affect the environment and erode the economy. Studies show that as the earth heats up, we may have to use up more energy to live comfortably. Many experts agree that the economic impact of global warming can be catastrophic if left uncheck.

Lower Farm Production

The economic impact of global warming can be seen in many farms around the world. We must understand that global warming does not just affect human beings, it affects all living things. In fact, studies show that the impact of global warming on animals can be more severe than its impact among humans. Wild animals are especially vulnerable to severe climate changes. Since these animals are left to fend for their own, they are often exposed to great danger.

On the other hand, farm animals as well as their owners also suffer much from changes in the weather. Physical growth of farm animals is often affected by severe weather changes and when this happens, farmers lose money. If this cycle continues, some farmers may end up closing their farms and move on to another business.

Predicting New Global Temperature Record within Two Years

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is under the authority of NASA has released their December 2008 temperature data and also the full 2008 annual data.

First, here is their December global anomaly map....

I did not see any of the specific numbers for the month, but I will continue to look..

The year 2008.

The base period from 1951-1980 was used to determine the global temperature anomalies.

--2008 was the coolest year since 2000, which is supported by other methods. (+0.44).

--2008 was the 9th warmest year since records were kept back to 1880. When considering the
margin of uncertainty, GISS is confident that 2008 was somewhere between the 7th and 10th warmest year on record.

--The ten warmest years all occurred from 1997-2008.

GISS states that comparing the 2008 chart below left with the mean 2001-2007 anomalies clearly shows why 2008 was the coolest since 2000. The main differences between the two charts is in the Pacific. Note: the cooling in the Pacific during 2008 and also over North America.

GISS also responds to questions about their prediction from last year which stated that a new global temperature record was likely within the next 2-3 years (now, the next 1-2 years).

According to GISS, there are several factors to consider when making this prediction......

1. El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). History says that a prolonged La Nina is unlikely for 2009/2010 despite the trends over the past few months. The subsurface of the Pacific in their opinion appears recharged for the next El Nino and there is a good chance for an El Nino in 2009 or 2010. Note; There is usually a 3-6 month lag in global temperature response to a change in ENSo conditions.

2. Solar Irradiance. Most solar physicists expect the irradiance to begin to pick up in the next several months after a longer than normal period of low solar output. Even if the irradiance does pick up, the 1-2 year lag in any surface temperature response to the cycle means that solar irradiance will continue to provide a negative anomaly for the next 2-3 years.

3. Volcanic aerosols.

4. Greenhouse gases (GHG's). The latest GHG forcing trend translates into a mean warming rate of ~0.15 Celsius per decade.

Updated prediction from GISS.......It still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.

Thanks to global-warming.accuweather

Global warming may leave half of world's population without food by 2100

Washington, Jan 9 : Global warming is likely to give rise to severe food shortage by the end of this century, according to researchers, who claim that the rapidly warming climate may alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics.

And the worst hit will be the regions where the poorest people already live that is the tropics and subtropics.

According to the researchers, there is greater than a 90 percent probability that by 2100 the lowest growing-season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than any temperatures recorded there to date.

"The stresses on global food production

from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn't take into account

water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures," said David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor.

"This is a compelling reason for us to invest

in adaptation, because it is clear that this is the direction we are going in terms of temperature and it will take decades to develop new food crop varieties that can better withstand a warmer climate.

"We are taking the worst of what we've seen historically and saying that in the future it is going to be a lot worse unless there is some kind of adaptation," he added.

During the study, the researchers combined direct observations with 23 global climate models that contributed to Nobel prize-winning research in 2007 and used the data as a filter to view historic instances of severe food insecurity,

They concluded that such instances are likely to become more commonplace.

Those include severe episodes in France in 2003 and the Ukraine in 1972. In the case of the Ukraine, a near-record heat wave reduced wheat yields and contributed to disruptions in the global cereal market that lasted two years.

The serious climate issues will not be limited to the tropics, the scientists conclude.

As an example, they cite record temperatures that struck Western Europe in June, July and August of 2003, killing an estimated 52,000 people.

The summer-long heat wave in France and Italy cut wheat yields and fodder production by one-third. In France alone, temperatures were nearly 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term mean, and the scientists say such temperatures could be normal for France by 2100.

In the tropics, the higher temperatures can be expected to cut yields of the primary food crops, maize and rice, by 20 to 40 percent, the researchers said. But rising temperatures also are likely to play havoc with soil moisture, cutting yields even further.

"We have to be rethinking agriculture systems as a whole, not only thinking about new varieties but also recognizing that many people will just move out of agriculture, and even move from the lands where they live now," Naylor said.

Temperature increases from climate change are expected to be less in equatorial regions than at higher latitudes, but because average temperatures in the tropics today are much higher than at midlatitudes, rising temperature will have a greater impact on crop yields in the tropics.

The research appears in journal Science.

Global warming will be a killer for agriculture, UW scientists say

Forget ice melting and sea-level rise. Global warming's most pressing threat may be heat that wilts crops across much of the globe, says a UW scientist.

When searing heat waves blasted Western Europe in 2003, more than 50,000 people perished and harvests of corn, wheat and fruit fell by up to a third.

Imagine those temperatures being the norm over much of the world, and you'll have an idea of what the future is likely to hold for agriculture — and humanity, says a new report from scientists at the University of Washington and Stanford University.

"I'm not worried about Greenland sliding into the sea. I'm not worried about sea levels going up," said UW atmospheric-sciences professor David Battisti. Those changes will take several hundred years to unfold, he said, but the effects on agriculture will begin showing up within the next several decades.

"This is probably the most compelling reason why we need to deal with global warming."

If the buildup of greenhouse-gas emissions isn't halted or slowed, the odds are higher than 90 percent that average growing-season temperatures will be higher than in recorded history across a big swath of the planet by the end of the century, says the analysis published today in the journal Science. The hardest-hit areas will be the tropics and subtropics, which encompass about half the world's population and include Africa, the southern United States, and much of India, China and South America.

"We are headed for a completely out-of-bounds situation for growing food crops in the future," said report co-author Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment.

There is time to adapt to the rising temperatures through development of heat-resistant crops, the scientists say.

High temperatures cause plants like rice, corn and wheat to grow faster but reduce plant fertility and grain production. With average growing-season temperatures expected to rise more than 6 degrees F in many places, crop yields will fall 20 to 40 percent, the report estimates. The effects will be aggravated by increased evaporation and loss of soil moisture.

Even in the United States, where warming caused by greenhouse-gas emissions is projected to increase some crop yields through the middle of this century, harvests will most likely fall by 2100 as the heat intensifies.

But worldwide, the impacts will be felt most keenly by subsistence farmers and the poor, Battisti pointed out.

"You're talking about hundreds of millions of additional people looking for food because they won't be able to find it where they find it now."

France and Italy were able to turn to other nations to fill their food gaps in 2003, but a 1972 drought in the former Soviet Union showed how easily worldwide grain supplies can be disrupted, the report says. After the Soviets secretly began buying vast amounts of wheat, global prices more than tripled.

In a warmer future, there will be fewer places to turn for help when the cupboards are bare, Battisti said. "In a sense, there will be no place to hide from this."

The scientists reached their conclusions by combining climate data with projections from 23 global climate models used by the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Michael Glantz, a political scientist who studies the social impacts of climate and climate change, said the study raises some good points, but that the developing world faces so many immediate problems it's difficult to worry about what will happen in five decades or more.

"When I think about 2100 and climate-change impact on food security, I just glaze over," said Glantz, who directs the Consortium for Capacity Building at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

But Cary Fowler, director of the Rome-based Global Crop Diversity Trust, says the report is a wake-up call for the need to develop new heat-resistant crop strains.

"This research shows we're about to enter a whole new game," said Fowler, whose group receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and operates the "doomsday" seed vault on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.

It can take two decades or more to breed a new crop strain, but investments in agricultural research have been stagnant for the past several decades, Naylor pointed out.

The Gates Foundation is helping fund an effort in Africa to develop hardier crop strains. That work hasn't focused specifically on heat tolerance, said Gary Toenniessen, of the Rockefeller Foundation, a partner in the project. But it is helping developing agricultural-research capacity where it will be needed most in the future.

Spurred partly by Battisti's work, the Global Crop Diversity Trust has launched a program to screen existing seed collections for traits like heat and drought resistance, Fowler said. It's also developing a computerized database to share the information.

"Plants can be adapted to a range of temperatures," Fowler said. "This really is a problem that we can solve."

Global Warming Versus Climate Change: We Used to Have Winter

Editor’s note: This post is part of the Green Moms Carnival, which is hosted on our very own MC Milker’s blog The Not Quite Crunchy Parent. This month’s topic is global warming.

I recently assisted in a historical slide show of our small mountain community, and when this slide came up of the US Forest Service ranger station in 1931, a senior citizen who had lived in our valley since she was a young girl said, “We used to have winter.” This statement sent butterflies to my stomach, and it made me reflect on what my own grandparents used to tell me about winter. Their stories of trudging to school in several feet of snow always felt like old exaggerated tall tales, but were they? What will we tell our grandchildren about winter?

When talking to children about what is happening to our seasons, I feel it is important to use correct terminology.

We really aren’t experiencing just global warming, but we are experiencing climate change. The term “climate change” includes changes in weather systems as part of its definition, rather than simple “global warming”, which refers to the overall warming of average temperatures.

These terms are not interchangeable, and I believe that climate change more accurately portrays the long term crisis we are potentially facing. This issue in semantics may not seem important in the big picture, but I believe in equipping children with the proper terminology. The Grinning Planet describes the difference between climate change and global warming:

Climate change is about much more than how warm or cool our temperatures are. Whereas “global warming” refers to increasing global temperatures, “climate change” refers to regional conditions…


Even though the main threat right now is warming planetary temperatures, climate change can also mean global cooling…


It’s worth remembering that global warming is based on an increasing average global temperature. Some parts of the planet (such as the Arctic) are getting warmer much faster than other areas. It’s even possible that some regions could actually experience regional cooling at the same time the planet as a whole is experiencing global warming.

Climate change more accurately describes what is happening and what could happen if we don’t fix this problem now. Global warming is more of a mainstream term, and yes, I sometimes err and use the terms interchangeably, but we owe it to our children to try to teach them accurate terminology for a problem they will be addressing in throughout their entire lifetimes. Let’s hope they don’t have to tell their grandchildren, “We used to have summers where we could go outside.”

Volcanoes Cool The Tropics, But Global Warming May Have Helped Override Some Recent Eruptions

Climate researchers have shown that big volcanic eruptions over the past 450 years have temporarily cooled weather in the tropics—but suggest that such effects may have been masked in the 20th century by rising global temperatures. Their paper, which shows that higher latitudes can be even more sensitive to volcanism, appears in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.

Scientists already agree that large eruptions have lowered temperatures at higher latitudes in recent centuries, because volcanic particles reflect sunlight back into space. For instance, 1816, the year following the massive Tambora eruption in Indonesia, became known as "The Year Without a Summer," after low temperatures caused crop failures in northern Europe and eastern North America. More extensive evidence comes in part from tree rings, which tend to grow thinner in years when temperatures go down.

This is Mount Bromo, an active volcano in East Java, Indonesia. (Credit: Paul Krusic, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)

This is one of the first such studies to show how the tropics have responded, said lead author Rosanne D'Arrigo, a scientist at the Tree Ring Lab at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "This is significant because it gives us more information about how tropical climate responds to forces that alter the effects solar radiation," said D'Arrigo. The other authors were Rob Wilson of Lamont and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and Alexander Tudhope of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Along with tree rings, the researchers analyzed ice cores from alpine glaciers, and corals, taken from a wide area of the tropics. When things cool, not only do trees tend to grow less, but isotopes of oxygen in corals and glacial ice may shift. All showed that low-latitude temperatures declined for several years after major tropical eruptions. The samples, spanning 1546 to 1998, were taken from Nepal down through Indonesia and across the Indian and Pacific oceans; the ice cores came from the Peruvian Andes. The researchers used materials they collected themselves, as well as samples from the archives of other scientists.

The data show that the most sustained cooling followed two events: an 1809 eruption that probably took place in the tropics, but whose exact location remains unknown; and the 1815 Tambora eruption, one of the most powerful recorded in human history. Following Tambora, between 1815 and 1818, tropical temperatures dropped as much as 0.84 degrees C (1.5 degrees F) below the mean. A slightly bigger one-year drop came in 1731--0.90 degrees C (1.6 degrees F). The researchers say this may be connected to eruptions at the Canary Islands' Lanzarote volcano, and Ecuador's Sangay around this time.

D'Arrigo says that the study shows also that higher latitudes may generally be even more sensitive than the tropics. Some corresponding drops in northern regions following volcanism were up to three times greater. D'Arrigo said higher latitudes' greater sensitivity appears to come from complex feedback mechanisms that make them vulnerable to temperature shifts. This goes along with growing evidence from other researchers that, as the globe warms, the most dramatic effects are being seen with rapid melting of glaciers, sea ice and tundra at high latitudes. The authors say that, overall, eruptions in the 20th century have exerted fewer obvious effects in the tropics. They said this could be because there were fewer major events in that century--but they noted it could also be "because of the damping effect of large-scale 20th-century warming."

"Particularly warm decades may have partially overridden the cooling effect of some volcanic events," said D'Arrigo. Noting that few reliable instrumental records exist from before this time, she said, "This study provides some of the first comprehensive information about how the tropical climate system responded to volcanism prior to the instrumental period."

Beebe: Global warming not a 'hoax'

Ark. Gov. Beebe: Global warming not a 'hoax,' can't be solved through state-by-state approach

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe said Friday he doesn't believe that global warming is a "hoax" ,but said he doesn't think it can be solved through state-by-state approaches.

"I've read some pundits lately who say, 'oh, this is just a hoax, global warming's not really a serious threat.' I don't subscribe to that theory," Beebe said on his monthly call-in radio show. "I think it is a threat, and I think global warming is occurring."

Beebe, however, said he doesn't think the problem can be solved through individual state actions and said that measures such as a so-called "carbon tax" must be looked on from a national level.

"If there's going to be a carbon tax, if there's anything on fuel-efficient or lack of fuel-efficient cars, it's going to have to be on a national basis," Beebe said. "A state-by-state approach with it is not going to solve the problem."

In October, Beebe's commission on global warming released a set of 54 recommendations that it said would help reduce global warming in the state. The group suggested a "carbon tax" that would set a fee for the release of carbon to the atmosphere.

The group said that the state should promote a national carbon tax that would not put the state at a competitive disadvantage with other states.

Beebe said he thinks the state can address global warming by promoting alternative fuels and energy and noted the four wind energy-related companies that Arkansas has landed in recent years as an example.

"Alternative fuels is also important to us from a national security standpoint," he said. "We don't need to be held hostage by people across the world, many of whom don't like us very much and put us in harm's way."

The state has also seen a number of biodiesel operations start up. The refineries use soybean oil and, sometimes, other substances, such as animal fat, to create a fuel that can be burned in diesel engines.

Bush may be giving Obama breathing room to fight global warming

Recent moves by lame-duck officials, though frustrating to environmentalists, offer the president-elect time and political cover to deliberately craft rules on emissions, energy lobbyists say.

Reporting from Washington -- President Bush could be forcing President-elect Barack Obama to act almost immediately to curb global warming, after years of the Bush administration fighting attempts to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Or, depending on which interpretation prevails, Bush could be giving his successor much-needed breathing room on a volatile issue. In its final weeks, his administration has moved to close what it calls "back doors" to regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson issued a memo in late December that excludes carbon dioxide from the list of pollutants the government must regulate under the Clean Air Act when approving construction projects.

It barred the Environmental Protection Agency from considering the effects of global warming on protected species. And, more broadly, it excluded carbon dioxide from a list of pollutants that the EPA regulates under the Clean Air Act.

Environmentalists view the moves as a last-minute attempt to block speedy, executive action by the president-elect on climate change, an issue that Obama repeatedly has called a top concern. And they say those moves could backfire -- by prompting lawsuits and fueling fights over coal-fired power plants that the new administration would need to resolve quickly.

Obama "now has to clean up a mess," said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, which has challenged the EPA over the Clean Air Act decision and plans to sue to block it. "They're forcing him to act sooner than he otherwise might have."

Yet energy lobbyists predict the challenges will fail. They say the Bush administration's actions give Obama time and political cover to take a more deliberative approach to emissions regulation and avoid overly broad, overly swift rules that could slow construction projects for schools and businesses, not just power plants.

"I'm quite confident that the Obama administration will have no interest in coming in and immediately reversing" the decisions, said Jeffrey Holmstead, a former EPA clean air administrator who now represents energy industry clients at the lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Washington.

Underlying the debate is the issue of how the federal government should reduce emissions of the gases that scientists blame for global warming, including carbon dioxide. Congress has long debated, but never approved, a so-called cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions.

Frustrated, environmental groups have looked for other ways to fight global warming. They have pressed to list the polar bear, which has seen its habitat dwindle as arctic ice caps melt, as a threatened species. The Interior Department consented this summer but later declared that any protection for the bears under the Endangered Species Act didn't extend to regulating greenhouse gases.

Environmental groups also sued to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court ruled the EPA had the power, but Bush officials have declined to exercise it.

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson issued a memo in late December -- as part of a review for a proposed coal-fired power plant expansion in Utah -- that excludes carbon dioxide from the list of pollutants the government must regulate under the Clean Air Act when approving construction projects.

Environmentalists call the memo a gift to the coal industry and utilities.

"This is a desperate attempt to interfere with the Obama administration's ability to deal with greenhouse gases from power plants," said John Walke, a former EPA attorney who is now clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Industry lobbyists say the memo leaves the door open for Obama to regulate carbon dioxide eventually through the EPA -- and that it gives him time to solve a broader problem. A broad rule, they say, risks lumping school expansions, office construction and even some home building into the same regulatory process that a power plant would face.

The memo gives Obama's team time to solve those issues, Holmstead maintains, so "they don't sweep in hundreds of thousands of small building projects around the country."

Obama vows to push aggressively for a cap-and-trade bill as president. Under this method of trading, overall air quality goals are set by the government, and individual polluters such as power plants are given allowances for what they can emit. Facilities that pollute less than they are permitted can trade a share of their allowance to others that pollute more.

And the president-elect's top energy advisor, Jason Grumet, promised during the presidential campaign that Obama would move to regulate carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act within 18 months of taking office.

Now, environmentalists say, Bush has put pressure on Obama to act sooner -- or risk watching states approve new power plants without regard to carbon emissions. Energy companies have taken quick notice of the EPA memo: Duke Energy Corp., headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., recently cited the document in a court filing supporting its bid to build a new coal-fired plant in Indiana.

Global warming affecting migratory birds, says Indian ornithologist

Pune, Dec 31 : Indian ornithologist has said that global warming and the rising temperatures have brought about an imbalance in the timing of the winter arrival of migratory birds and the food stock available to them.

World over experts have been saying that rising temperatures could wipe out more than half of the earth's species in the next few centuries, linking climate change to past mass extinctions.

Unchecked climate change could force up to 72 per cent of bird species in some areas into extinction, but the world still has a chance to limit the losses, conservation group WWF said in a report.

From migratory insect-eaters to tropical honeycreepers and cold-water penguins, birds are highly sensitive to changing weather conditions and many are already being adversely affected by global warming, the new study said.

Many migratory birds are now missing out on vital foods as trees are bearing fruit earlier than the scheduled time due to global warming widely blamed by scientists on emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Echoing a fear over the diminishing numbers of birds due to this imbalance, Indian ornithologist Satish Pandey said, an imbalance was creeping in the cycle of arrival of migratory birds and availability of food to them.

"Due to global warming, when the birds arrive, the trees have already borne fruit and there is a shortage of food for the birds then. As result of lack of food, the birds become undernourished which in turn affect their reproductive ability. It has been noted that the birds which were earlier laying three to four eggs were now laying only one to two eggs, as result of which their population is declining," said Pandey.

These fears have been confirmed by the WWF report, which said the birds now indicated that global warming had set in motion a powerful chain of effects in ecosystems worldwide and added "Robust evidence demonstrates that climate change is affecting birds' behaviour -- with some migratory birds even failing to migrate at all."

Rising temperatures were also seen having disastrous impacts on non-migratory species, as their habitat ranges shifted.

No Matter What Happens, Someone Will Blame Global Warming

Global warming was blamed for everything from beasts gone wild to anorexic whales to the complete breakdown of human society this year -- showing that no matter what it is and where it happens, scientists, explorers, politicians and those who track the Loch Ness Monster are comfortable scapegoating the weather.

FOXNews.com takes a look back at 10 things that global warming allegedly caused — or will no doubt soon be responsible for — as reported in the news around the world in 2008.

1. Cannibalism

In April, media mogul Ted Turner told PBS's Charlie Rose that global warming would make the world 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years. "Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable," he said.

Turner blamed global warming on overpopulation, saying "too many people are using too much stuff."

Crops won't grow and "most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals," Turner said.

2. The Death of the Loch Ness Monster

In February, Scotland's Daily Mirror reported that 85-year-old American Robert Rines would be giving up his quest for Scotland's most famous underwater denizen.

A World War II veteran, Rines has spent 37 years hunting for Nessie with sonar equipment. In 2008, "despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming."

3. Beer Gets More Expensive

In April, the Associated Press reported that global warming was going to hit beer drinkers in the wallet because the cost of barley would increase, driving up the price of a pint.

Jim Salinger, a climate scientist at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said Australia would be particularly hard hit as droughts caused a decline in malting barley production in parts of New Zealand and Australia. "It will mean either there will be pubs without beer or the cost of beer will go up," Salinger said at a beer brewer's convention, the AP reported.

4. Pythons Take Over America

Giant Burmese pythons – big enough to eat alligators and deer in a single mouthful – will be capable of living in one-third of continental U.S. as global warming makes more of the country hospitable to the cold-blooded predators, according to an April report from USAToday.com.

The U.S. Geological Survey and the Fish and Wildlife Service investigated the spread of "invasive snakes," like the pythons, brought to the U.S. as pets. The Burmese pythons' potential American habitat would expand by 2100, according to global warming models, the paper reported.

"We were surprised by the map. It was bigger than we thought it was going to be," says Gordon Rodda, zoologist and lead project researcher, told USAToday.com. "They are moving northward, there's no question."

5. Kidney Stones

A University of Texas study said global warming will cause an increase in kidney stones over the next 30 years, the Globe and Mail reported in July.

Scientists predict that higher temperatures will lead to more dehydration and therefore to more kidney stones. "This will come and get you in your home," said Dr. Tom Brikowski, lead researcher and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "It will make life just uncomfortable enough that maybe people will slow down and think what they're doing to the climate."

6. Skinny Whales

Japanese scientists, who have claimed that the country's controversial whaling program is all in the name of science, said in August that if they hadn't been going around killing whales, they never would have discovered that the creatures were significantly skinnier than whales killed in the late 1980s, the Guardian reported in August.

The researchers said the study was the first evidence that global warming was harming whales by restricting their food supplies. As water warmed around the Antarctic Peninsula, the krill population shrank by 80 percent as sea ice declined, eliminating much of the preferred food of the minke whale.

The whales studied had lost the same amount of blubber as they would have by starving for 36 days, but the global warming connection couldn't be proven because no krill measurements are taken in different regions.

7. Shark Attacks

A surge in fatal shark attacks was the handiwork of global warming, according to a report in the Guardian in May.

George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert that maintains an attack database, told the Guardian that shark attacks were caused by human activity. "As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites," he said.

Shark attacks could also be the result of global warming and rising sea temperatures, the Guardian said. "You'll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn't in the past with some regularity," Burgess said.

8. Black Hawk Down

Although it happened in 1993, the crash of a U.S. military helicopter in Mogadishu that became the film "Black Hawk Down" was blamed on global warming by a Massachusetts congressman in 2008.

"In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine,” Rep. Edward Markey told a group of students who had come to the Capitol to discuss global warming, according to CNSNews.com. "That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down."

9. Frozen Penguin Babies

Penguin babies, whose water-repellant feathers had not grown in yet, froze to death after torrential rains, National Geographic reported in July.

"Many, many, many of them—thousands of them—were dying," explorer Jon Bowermaster told National Geographic. Witnessing the mass penguin death "painted a clear and grim picture" of global warming.

"It's not just melting ice," Bowermaster said. "It's actually killing these cute little birds that are so popular in the movies."

10. Killer Stingray Invasion

Global warming is going to drive killer stingrays, like the one that killed Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, to the shores of Britain after a 5-foot -long marbled stingray was captured by fishermen, the Daily Mail reported in June.

A single touch can zap a man with enough electricity to kill, the Mail said, and global warming is bringing the Mediterranean killers north.

"Rising sea temperatures may well have brought an influx of warm water visitors," sea life curator Alex Gerrard told the Mail. "Where there's one electric ray, it's quite likely that there are more."

Did Early Global Warming Divert A New Glacial Age?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 18, 2008) — The common wisdom is that the invention of the steam engine and the advent of the coal-fueled industrial age marked the beginning of human influence on global climate.

But gathering physical evidence, backed by powerful simulations on the world's most advanced computer climate models, is reshaping that view and lending strong support to the radical idea that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe.

Glacier and mountain peaks in East Greenland. Using three different climate models and removing the amount of greenhouse gases humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 to 8,000 years, scientists observed more permanent snow and ice cover in regions of Canada, Siberia, Greenland and the Rocky Mountains, all known to be seed regions for glaciers from previous ice ages. (Credit: iStockphoto/Rob Broek)

What's more, according to the same computer simulations, the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human influence on climate is preventing the world from entering a new glacial age, altering a clockwork rhythm of periodic cooling of the planet that extends back more than a million years.

"This challenges the paradigm that things began changing with the Industrial Revolution," says Stephen Vavrus, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Climatic Research and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. "If you think about even a small rate of increase over a long period of time, it becomes important."

Addressing scientists on Dec 17 at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Vavrus and colleagues John Kutzbach and Gwenaëlle Philippon provided detailed evidence in support of a controversial idea first put forward by climatologist William F. Ruddiman of the University of Virginia. That idea, debated for the past several years by climate scientists, holds that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases — methane from terraced rice paddies and carbon dioxide from burning forests — into the atmosphere. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming.

That one-two punch, say Kutzbach and Vavrus, was enough to set human-induced climate change in motion.

"No one disputes the large rate of increase in greenhouse gases with the Industrial Revolution," Kutzbach notes. "The large-scale burning of coal for industry has swamped everything else" in the record.

But looking farther back in time, using climatic archives such as 850,000-year-old ice core records from Antarctica, scientists are teasing out evidence of past greenhouse gases in the form of fossil air trapped in the ice. That ancient air, say Vavrus and Kutzbach, contains the unmistakable signature of increased levels of atmospheric methane and carbon dioxide beginning thousands of years before the industrial age.

"Between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago, both methane and carbon dioxide started an upward trend, unlike during previous interglacial periods," explains Kutzbach. Indeed, Ruddiman has shown that during the latter stages of six previous interglacials, greenhouse gases trended downward, not upward. Thus, the accumulation of greenhouse gases over the past few thousands of years, the Wisconsin-Virginia team argue, is very likely forestalling the onset of a new glacial cycle, such as have occurred at regular 100,000-year intervals during the last million years. Each glacial period has been paced by regular and predictable changes in the orbit of the Earth known as Milankovitch cycles, a mechanism thought to kick start glacial cycles.

"We're at a very favorable state right now for increased glaciation," says Kutzbach. "Nature is favoring it at this time in orbital cycles, and if humans weren't in the picture it would probably be happening today."

Importantly, the new research underscores the key role of greenhouse gases in influencing Earth's climate. Whereas decreasing greenhouse gases in the past helped initiate glaciations, the early agricultural and recent industrial increases in greenhouse gases may be forestalling them, say Kutzbach and Vavrus.

Using three different climate models and removing the amount of greenhouse gases humans have injected into the atmosphere during the past 5,000 to 8,000 years, Vavrus and Kutzbach observed more permanent snow and ice cover in regions of Canada, Siberia, Greenland and the Rocky Mountains, all known to be seed regions for glaciers from previous ice ages. Vavrus notes: "With every feedback we've included, it seems to support the hypothesis (of a forestalled ice age) even more. We keep getting the same answer."

Snow in Vegas??

Praise Al Gore!!!

I'm so happy that most of the world has listened to him because we now see the end of global warming. All of Al Gore's hard work has paid off. Why, things have gotten so good that global warming has completely reversed itself and it is now snowing in Las Vegas.

And just so you don't think it is only Sin City that has been wonderfully blessed by Al Gore's pious efforts, it has snowed in Houston, New Orleans, and Mississippi. (OK, technically it was only sleet in Mississippi).

The world has been told for the last few years that we are all going to be drowning under the antarctic ice melt, but this year is the coldest year in the last decade. Of course a look at the graph shows a scary comparison between the last 2 decades and the 1800's. Well, there was this little thing called the "little ice age" that ended in the 1800's, which caused lower than average temperatures.


But there is even more urgent news. Al Gore needs to save the Universe, not just our measly little planet.

Recent reports show that Mars is experiencing global warming. The polar ice caps on Mars have been retreating. A treasure like Al Gore is just too valuable for us to keep all to ourselves, we need to immediately launch him on a rocket to Mars to save that planet. Do you think those little rovers that have been running around Mars were made from SUV parts? Maybe by launching industrial products to the surface of Mars, we have inadvertently caused the whole planet to go into a tailspin.

But wait, the problem is not just limited to Earth and Mars, we need Al Gore on Jupiter and Pluto. Those planets have also been seeing a warming period. Please, oh please, is there some way to clone Al Gore? We need Al to wade into the liquid nitrogen pools on Neptune's moon, Triton.

Or, perhaps a better idea would be to realize that all of this talk of global warming is really just hogwash and that global warming is really quite more attributable to solar activity and cycles than it is about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A recent article that was widely spread by the Associated Press exclaimed that Barack Obama had precious little time to save the planet. Well, as you guessed, it was all just hysteria.

More than ever, we need to make sure that decisions are based on fact and science, not just feel good hysteria promoted by a washed up politician like Al Gore. The Obama cabinet that will have the most influence on energy and environmental policy is a who's who for the global warming movement. The last thing that we need is to send the economy further into a tailspin by throwing billions and billions of dollars to try and save a planet that does not need saving or forcing the American automobile companies to start producing little green cars that so far, few have wanted to buy.

UPDATE:I knew that our Savior Al Gore would not let his dear friends in Hollywood down and only help Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas. It is now snowing in Malibu. Do they make a parka for "Malibu Barbie"? All hail our savior Al Gore!!! Maybe they will do a movie on Al's accomplishments. I'm sure Brad Pitt would be willing to play the lead role. Could they convince Angelina Jolie to play Tipper?

'Airport Malaria' Risk Rising With Global Warming

Global warming is raising the risk for infection with so-called "airport malaria" in malaria-free zones of the United States and Europe, researchers warn.

Here's how it happens, as the scientists explain it : Mosquitoes make their way on to planes in tropical regions, and at the end of a flight can escape into the increasingly warmer climates of developed countries, where they now have a better chance of surviving and proliferating.

"The real problem with malaria is that it is not rare," said study author Dr. James H. Diaz, program director of environmental and occupational health at Louisiana State University in New Orleans. "It's the most common cause of infections in the world. It kills over 12 million people per year, and they're probably 300 to 500 million cases in the world every year. And the malaria-endemic areas of the world are themselves growing as the world warms."

"And we also know that an infected patient can get on a plane and get anywhere in 24 hours," added Diaz. "And an infected mosquito can get on a plane, as well. And in a warming world where mosquitoes live longer, have more breeding areas, and longer egg-laying seasons, this is a way the disease can be reintroduced into areas where it is now uncommon, such as the U.S."

Diaz and his colleagues presented their findings Monday at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting, in New Orleans.

Diaz explained that in the more developed areas of the world where malaria is not widespread, the most common type of malaria is "imported malaria."

As distinguished from "airport malaria," this form of disease transmission simply involves the travel of a patient who had previously been infected with the illness in a region where malaria is common to regions where the disease is not common, such as the U.S. and Europe.

Diaz noted that the second most common means of transmitting malaria in regions where malaria is rare involves mosquitoes local to the region biting a traveler previously infected in a malaria-prone location. The mosquito then goes on to infect people living in the non-endemic region.

In the third instance, "airport malaria" is considered to be the least likely transmission scenario in malaria-free locales. In this case, a malaria-infected mosquito actually makes it way onto a plane traveling into a non-endemic zone. It then leaves the plane upon landing and bites somebody within a mile or so of the airport.

The authors point out that in 1999, the West Nile virus probably arrived in the United States by air via an infected traveler or an infected mosquito, eventually leading to the infection of local wild birds that in turn flew across the United States The result : 4,000 human infections that caused the death of 263 patients.

To highlight the serious potential for malaria to track the same route into currently non-infected regions, the researchers observe that a 1983 analysis of international planes coming from tropical regions to Gatwick Airport in London found that 12 of 67 planes were carrying mosquitoes.

To date, two cases of "airport malaria" were identified at Gatwick in 1983, and another six cases were uncovered at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris in 1994.

"It's very rare," admitted Diaz. "But it will happen here in the U.S., if it hasn't happened already."

Meanwhile, Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University Medical Center, suggested that plane fumigation is one potential solution to the problem.

"In an article I wrote about a year or two ago, I stressed the need to fumigate airlines as the passengers disembark, especially if they originate from areas that have endemic malaria," he said. "But airlines don't want to do it, because some people may have an adverse reaction to the fumigate, and it takes time and money, and it's not part of the current turnaround procedure. But I think it should be mandated by the World Health Organization."

Tierno said that, in the absence of such preventative steps, the threat is significant.

"I can say that airport malaria has occurred in the past and will occur in the future unless something is done about it," he said. "I don't think it would be a situation that would give rise to large numbers of individuals getting ill, judging on the past experience we have over decades of flying. But I do think it can get worse if air travel increases, which it might. So, I think the more significant thing is, you don't want any number of individuals coming down with airport malaria if you can help it."

Chilean glaciers retreating due to global warming

SANTIAGO (AFP) – Chile's glaciers are on the retreat, a sign of global warming but also a threat to fresh water reserves at the southern end of South America, a report has found.

In a November report, the Chilean water utility -- Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) -- said the Echaurren ice fields, which supply the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, are receding up to 12 meters (39.37 feet) per year.

Twenty of the glaciers studied receded between 1986 and 2007 in Campos de Hielo Sur, the third largest ice reserve in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. At the current rate of decline, Echaurren and other small glaciers close to Santiago could vanish over the next half century.


"The results indicate that the Campos de Hielo Sur glaciers generally tend to recede, which could be due to climate change in the region," the study said.

"The glaciers have receded up to 580 meters (1,900 feet) due to reduced rainfall recorded by weather stations in Patagonia and temperatures rising by about one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the region over the last century."

The Chilean glaciers, located mostly in the remote flatlands of Patagonia, have receded by about 67 meters per year between 1986 and 2001 and by about 45 meters between 2001 and 2007, according to DGA.

The Jorge Montt receded the most of all glaciers studied, by 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) in 21 years, a loss of 40 square kilometers (25 square miles). The San Rafael glacier in southern Chile lost 12 kilometers (7.45 miles) over 136 years.

"The fact that the glaciers are receding is one of the most dramatic consequences of global warming, because that's where climate change is most obvious," glaciologist Andres Rivera of the Valdivia scientific studies institute (CECS) told AFP.

The melting or collapse of the ice wall formed at a glacier's extremity is not due solely to global warming, according to the scientists who wrote the DGA study. The depth of the lakes or fjords into which they fall also causes the glaciers to crumble.

Loss of glaciers along Chile's Andes mountain range, home to 76 percent of South America's glaciers over a surface of 20,000 square kilometers (12,400 square miles), is threatening the water supply for people and agriculture.

"The glaciers will continue to provide fresh water for at least a hundred years. The cities and crops will expand and a time will come where the glaciers will be the population's water source," the study warned.

But two glaciers bucked the trend. Pie XI, the biggest glacier in Hielo Sur, is also the only one that continues to expand in Chile. Perito Moreno in neighboring Argentina is its only glacier that is still spreading.

"These two examples are anomalies, exceptions in this region where the glaciers are receding and losing mass."

Tree's rapid decline sounds alarm on global warming

WASHINGTON — The whitebark pine, a tree found in the high elevations of the western U.S. and Canada, is being killed as a consequence of global warming and should be protected as an endangered species, an environmental group formally told the Interior Department Tuesday.

If the federal government accepts the scientific arguments in a petition by the Natural Resources Defense Council, it would be the first time a wide-ranging tree has been added to the list. The NRDC also sees an endangered designation as a warning about worsening climate change.

The listing would require the government to look at a variety of options that scientists have suggested might help preserve the tree, choose what might work and spend enough money to put those ideas into practice.

Mature whitebark pines are often gnarled and twisted because they grow slowly in the tough terrain of the high mountains of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Nevada, and in British Columbia and Alberta. It's typically found at the treeline or at somewhat lower elevations mixed with other conifers.

The whitebark pine has declined dramatically due to a triple threat — a disease called the white pine blister rust; the mountain pine beetle, which thrives in the warmer high-altitude conditions produced by the burning of fossil fuels, and forest management practices that have allowed other trees to crowd it out, the NRDC's petition said.

Warming also will limit the range of the whitebark pine, the petition said. Many live more than 500 years.

"It's kind of a wakeup call about the scope of the problems we're going to be facing," said NRDC scientist Sylvia Fallon, an ecologist who was one of the authors of the petition. "All of the pieces of the ecosystem it holds together will also be affected by its loss."

The whitebark pine stabilizes the soil and shades the snow, providing water over longer periods for other plants. Grizzly bears, smaller mammals and birds eat its seeds, and elk, grouse and other mountain animals find shelter beneath it.

The tree has been declining in numbers for 50 years. In recent years, climate change has started to make the threats worse, due to shorter periods of cold that kill the beetle and extended periods in which the trees are exposed to spores from the blister rust, Fallon said.

Different forms of fire management might help the tree. The whitebark pine thrives in areas opened up by fires, but firefighting in the West has created more mature forests over larger areas. And while natural fires can be good for the tree, fire also can be an unnatural threat with changes in climate leaving drier forests, Fallon said.

The petition argued that the current extent of the losses of whitebark pines and the future threat of continued global warming put the tree at risk. Under the law, a species is considered endangered if it is in danger of extinction in all or a significant portion of its range.

Fallon said that early studies show that a small percentage of the trees might have some defense to the beetle. If scientists can find a way to control the beetle, planting resistant trees might make sense, she said.

The Interior Department secretary and the department's Fish and Wildlife Service have 90 days after receiving the petition to determine whether the tree is threatened or endangered. The period spans the presidential transition. The whole process would take two years.

Fallon said the timing of the petition had nothing to do with change at the White House. NRDC's Montana office had been studying the threats for a long time, she said.

The Effects of Global Warming in Africa

Africa is the continent that will suffer most under climate change. Temperature rise will trigger "sharp declines in crop yield in tropical regions", estimated at 5 to 10 % in Africa with an associated increase in undernourishment, malnutrition, malaria and related deaths.

50 % of all malnutrition-related deaths (4 million annually worldwide) occur in Africa, while a 2�C rise in temperature will increase the people affected by hunger, potentially by 30 to 200 million worldwide.

Globally, Africa and Western Asia will suffer the largest crop losses, while these regions are highly dependent on agriculture and have the largest limits in purchasing power. Conflict and violence triggered by scarce resources and famine will likely bring West Africa to socio-political instability. Even prosperous regions like the Cape will be touched, as millions of people will be displaced by drought and water shortages in the poorer areas.

World Bank specialists estimated that approximately 7 million people migrated - driven by food scarcity - out of the 80 million semi-starving in sub-Saharan Africa due to environmental
factors, and this is only to be aggravated in the future due to global warming.

South Africa, one of the more stable African economies, will likely see a significant rise of the emigrant number from other African countries. A 2�C temperature rise will drop 20 to 30 % water availability in southern Africa. The South African soft fruit industry has suffered a 1�C temperature rise in the last 30 years.

In 2004, many South African farmers reported that rising temperatures impeded trees from sufficient winter resting, while fruit was becoming sunburned during ripening season. The shifting areal of the tree aloe (or kokerboom) to the south supports the observation that the Karoo desert is pushing south into the Cape.

The westerly storm bringing winter rainfall in the Cape region is expected to move south, missing the continent and losing their water out to sea. Drought has impacted Cape's wheat production in the last years, and this trend has just begun. Future water scarcity - paradoxically - will increase water demand for human consumption, further cutting water amounts for an increasingly necessitated agriculture.

Higher temperatures and drought will cause more powerful wildfires in Africa, during the summer on Cape and during the winter on savanna zones. A new study made on the Kenyan Tsavo National Park showed that "large infrequent disturbances" like a severe drought on Maasai territory at the end of the 19th century (1883-1902) led to the most devastating effects. "Severe disturbance events and rapid environmental change tend to occur infrequently, but can have a lasting effect on both environment and society" says Dr Lindsey Gillson.

This period was characterized by epidemics of bovine pleuropneumonia, rinderpest and small pox and in 1897 and 1898 the rains failed completely. The Austrian explorer Dr Oscar Baumann noted in 1891: "There were women wasted to skeletons from whose eyes the madness of starvation glared ... warriors scarcely able to crawl on all fours, and apathetic, languishing elders. Swarms of vultures followed them from high, awaiting their certain victims."

"It is important to use long-term historical and palaeoecological data to try to understand the frequency and effects of extreme events, and the way societies and ecosystems respond to them" Lindsey Gillson explains.

Her work involved analyzing sediments from the famous Tsavo National Park. Gillson analyzed sediments from Tsavo for age, pollen and charcoal fragments to make a picture of environmental changes that confirmed the sad episode from Maasai history. Great Savings on Dr Jon Lovett, who has been researching the impacts of climate change on Africa, says that we must learn from history and be prepared. "Events like this are going to become more common in the future, and we need to be ready for them" said Dr Jon Lovett.

As the greenhouse effect acts within a lag system, the sun's energy stored today will take 20 to 30 years to redistribute throughout the system, thus what we see today is due to atmosphere contamination before we were born. At the current level of contamination, the global average temperatures will likely rise by as much as 5�C. This will affect by 5 to 20 % global living standards, thus developed nations will also be impacted, not only Africa's poor countries.

Global warming killing some species

Up to 200 species, including penguins and polar bears, are in big trouble

The hit documentary "March of the Penguins" showed the world the hard lives of Antarctica's emperor penguins. Studies have documented a sharp drop in populations on the Antarctic Peninsula, possibly due to global warming.

WASHINGTON - Animal and plant species have begun dying off or changing sooner than predicted because of global warming, a review of hundreds of research studies contends.

These fast-moving adaptations come as a surprise even to biologists and ecologists because they are occurring so rapidly.

At least 70 species of frogs, mostly mountain-dwellers that had nowhere to go to escape the creeping heat, have gone extinct because of climate change, the analysis says. It also reports that between 100 and 200 other cold-dependent animal species, such as penguins and polar bears are in deep trouble.

“We are finally seeing species going extinct,” said University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, author of the study. “Now we’ve got the evidence. It’s here. It’s real. This is not just biologists’ intuition. It’s what’s happening.”

Her review of 866 scientific studies is summed up in the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.

Parmesan reports seeing trends of animal populations moving northward if they can, of species adapting slightly because of climate change, of plants blooming earlier, and of an increase in pests and parasites.

‘A very different and frightening world’

Parmesan and others have been predicting such changes for years, but even she was surprised to find evidence that it’s already happening; she figured it would be another decade away.

Just five years ago biologists, though not complacent, figured the harmful biological effects of global warming were much farther down the road, said Douglas Futuyma, professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.

“I feel as though we are staring crisis in the face,” Futuyma said. “It’s not just down the road somewhere. It is just hurtling toward us. Anyone who is 10 years old right now is going to be facing a very different and frightening world by the time that they are 50 or 60.”

While over the past several years studies have shown problems with certain species, animal populations or geographic areas, Parmesan’s is the first comprehensive analysis showing the big picture of global-warming induced changes, said Chris Thomas, a professor of conservation biology at the University of York in England.

While it’s impossible to prove conclusively that the changes are the result of global warming, the evidence is so strong and other supportable explanations are lacking, Thomas said, so it is “statistically virtually impossible that these are just chance observations.”

‘A lot of evolution’

The most noticeable changes in plants and animals have to do with earlier springs, Parmesan said. The best example can be seen in earlier cherry blossoms and grape harvests and in 65 British bird species that in general are laying their first eggs nearly nine days earlier than 35 years ago.

Parmesan said she worries most about the cold-adapted species, such as emperor penguins that have dropped from 300 breeding pairs to just nine in the western Antarctic Peninsula, or polar bears, which are dropping in numbers and weight in the Arctic.

A polar bear plays on the tundra near Churchill, Canada.

The cold-dependent species on mountaintops have nowhere to go, which is why two-thirds of a certain grouping of frog species have already gone extinct, Parmesan said.

Populations of animals that adapt better to warmth or can move and live farther north are adapting better than other populations in the same species, Parmesan said.

“We are seeing a lot of evolution now,” Parmesan said. However, no new gene mutations have shown themselves, not surprising because that could take millions of years, she said.

The Impact of Global Warming on Coffee Plants and Beans

If you’ve taken notice to the sporadic ranges in coffee prices, it’s not because of greed amongst the growers. Read about the effects of global warming and how it is substantially impacting coffee crops around the world.

The effects of global warming are widespread, impacting not only our daily atmospheric breathing-related abilities and quality of life in general, but also a great majority of agricultural industries including coffee bean crops. Erratic forces of nature, e.g. too much rainfall, then extreme dry spells as a direct consequence of deforestation and pollution, can very often produce a severe impact of global warming on coffee plants and beans. And based on these ever-changing, sometimes extreme climate and temperature changes, many of the major tropical coffee crop regions of the world which include Central America, Brazil, Africa and India are experiencing irretrievable losses.

The Logistics of it All

A flourishing growth, hence triumphant harvesting of a coffee crop, depends greatly on not just rainfall in itself but more importantly, the timing and amount of it all. During the spring months of April and May, the plants need considerable rainfall to assist with the development of their flowering phase. But when the heavy rains come instead during the months prior to that stage, the coffee crop’s growth is stunted, thereby causing havoc on its entire developmental process. As the summer months of June and July approach, the plants need and thirst for yet further moisture. Then, as the seasons shift into the early autumn months of late August and September, coffee plants necessitate dryness so that the beans can harden and ripen. So a drought during this time frame is most beneficial. But when global warming steps in and the weather works in backward succession with the crop’s crucial necessities, creating heavy downpours when aridity is essential and vice versa, all that the farmers can do is stand by and watch as the fruits of their labor are destroyed.

Dollars and Cents

A Business Daily article published in November, 2007, states that coffee crop losses will not only create a necessity for increased pricing, but are also defeating the efforts of coffee farmers world-wide. Successes gained by sustaining their crops through strategic laboring and maneuvering within the constant greenhouse effects on their plants, are proving futile as nature consumes substantial percentages of their yield. And as a result, the monetary aspect trickles negatively into not only their livelihood, but that of the global consumer as well, because as is commonly known, when supply decreases, market prices rise.

Possible Solutions in Sight

In a tactical approach toward uncovering new methods and means as an attempt to elude the challenging weather patterns, agricultural experts in conjunction with coffee farmers are working toward developing new, stronger plants that will be able to combat the effects of global warming by utilization of their own resiliency. But only time will tell if this is effective as the world continues to strive toward creating a cleaner, safer environment for all life, including but not limited to, vegetation.

Global Warming: How Much, How Soon, How Dangerous

GLOBALWARMING: HOW MUCH, HOW SOON, HOW DANGEROUS?

In his speech this week to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate C hange, George. Bush ad- dressed the issue of "global warming." This is the term used to describe the phenomenon that a number of experts fear will result from the carbon dioxide that is pumped into the atmosphere by industry and other human activities. Such warming, it is said, will cause -disastrous droughts and will flood coastal regions as the polar ice caps melt. If this will happen, the United States govern- ment and public should be very concerned and should search for rational policies and methods to prevent it.

Bush rightly told the Intergovernmental Panel: "The stakes here are very high; the con- sequences, very significant." The trouble is, the scientific community is still very uncertain about the extent of global warming - how much the earth's climate will warm (if it will at all), how soon this will happen, and how much damage this could cause. Until scientists accumulate more data and draw sounder conclusions, officials and lawmakers should proceed slowly before-setting policies designed to combat global warming. Bush thus correctly cautioned this week's meeting: "Some may be tempted to exploit legitimate concerns for political positioning.

Our responsibility is to maintain the quality of our approach, our commitment to sound science, and an open mind to policy options." i Studied Approach. By his statement, Bush so far is rejecting a crash program to deal with the alleged problem of global warming. Instead, he prudently supports increased research into the possible effects of man-made emissions into the atmosphere. He insists, meanwhile, that his responsibilities as President include taking into account the effects on the economy, industry, and American jobs of any federal global warming policy. Bush's studied approach so far merits the support of policy makers and Americans concerned about the environm ent.. The current heightened concern over damaging climate change began with the 1988 testimony of James Hansen, a physicist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies before a Senate committee.

There Hansen maintained that he was "99 percent confident" that the average worldwide temperature was rising as a result of burning fuels such as oil and coal for energy. He predicted that by the middle of the next century this would cause increased droughts, rising sea levels, and a global environmental catastrophe. In the two years since Hansen's testimony, however, scientists investigating the matter have found new evidence indicating that levels of global warming are much lower than Hansen said. Even this new evidence should be viewed with great caution. Almost all findings on global warming use complicated computer models to predict the weather or future climates. These models so far are crude approximations of reality.

Predictably, their results have varied enormously. Example: Over the past two years, calculations of the degree of future global warming have been reduced from an average of 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the next century to 3 or 4 degrees. Example: Estimates of potential sea level rise have been reduced from an average of three feet down to one foot. And these estimates undoubtedly will be adjusted in the coming years. One way of checking a computer model is to feed it data and ask it to predict a result that already is known. This has been done with the models that are used to predict future warming. The result: When fed information corresponding to the conditions existing in the late 19th century, the computer models "predict" that today's climate should be far hotter than it actually is. The lesson here is that these computer models are not yet ready to be a guide for making policies or passing laws. There is even evidence indicating that the atmosphere is cooling.

A study by University of Virginia Professor of Environmental Science Patrick Michaels, for instance, finds that from 1918 to 1958 there were only five winters during which outbreaks of arctic air swept as far as the Southeastern United States. Since 1958, however, this has happened in 21 of the 31 winters. Because of a general global cooling trend from the 1940s through the 1960s, many scientists even were predicting the advent of another ice age. Records of temperature trends in the U.S., moreover, give no indication of a warming trend. Meteorologist Thomas Karl of the National Climatic Data Center headed a 1988 study that finds 61no, statistically significant evidence of an overall increase in annual temperature or change in annual precipitation for the contiguous U.S. [between] 1895-1987." Marshalling the Facts. In light of the uncertainty concerning the degree of global warming and the inaccuracy of predictions made only two years ago, it is very premature to propose policies that would restrict severely the burning of fossil fuels.

Such policies, after all, would impose huge costs on all Americans and on American living standards and competitiveness. They would shut many American factories, throw great numbers out of work, and raise the cost of production and of fuel for every factory and household. Rather than rush into such policies, the U.S. must give scientists more time to marshall the facts, conduct more accurate studies, and make more accurate projections.

If policy makers had acted on the inaccurate predictions of two years ago, economically costly policies would be in place dealing with a crisis that is now known to be only half as serious as originally thought. Beyond waiting for better data, policy makers must begin discussing how to establish priorities among competing needs of society. Even if a problem exists, policy makers owe it to the public to prescribe solutions that do the least damage to employment and living standards. Bush in his recent speech spoke of the need to match policy commitments to emerging scientific knowledge and to reconcile environmental protection with economic development, This is a wise and prudent approach, cool-headed advice for the global warming debate. Kent Jeffreys Policy Analyst