Greenland's Glaciers: Melting and On The Move

The glaciers in southern Greenland are melting and moving. In fact, Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier went from standing still in 1996 to flowing at a rate of 14 kilometers a year by 2005, making it one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world. According to a new study, all of Greenland's coastal glaciers are already experiencing or may soon experience such speedups, meaning that Greenland's ice will contribute even more than expected to the world's rising seas.
"It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes," notes Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Greenland is probably going to contribute more and faster to sea level rise than predicted by current models."

And hey...why not see if anyone in the Bush regime learned anything.

La Niña warms winter, bodes ill for hurricanes
By MIKE TONER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/03/06<

A new La Niña, a cooling of the ocean surface that can have global consequences — from the promise of a warmer, drier spring in Georgia to a new wild card in what forecasters already expect will be a hyperactive hurricane season — has emerged in the Pacific, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday.

Past cooling episodes in the same area of the central Pacific have been linked to increases in the number and intensity of hurricanes, but climate experts say it's too early to tell what role this La Niña will play in the 2006 hurricane season, already expected to be more active.

Quote of note:

The scientists, who work for government agencies in Britain and the United States, made the finding after adding satellite-based measurements of haze to computer models estimating the consequences of industrial emissions of aerosols, or airborne particles.

Pollution May Slow Warming; Cleaner Air May Speed It, Study Says
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

Pollution may be slowing global warming, researchers are reporting today, and a cleaner environment may soon speed it up.

Writing in the journal Nature, an international scientific team provides evidence suggesting that a reduction in haze from human causes may accelerate warming of the earth's atmosphere. The researchers said pollutants had held down the rate of global warming by absorbing and scattering sunlight.

Senate rejects drilling in Alaska wildlife refuge
Republicans fail to garner enough support to avoid threat of filibuster
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:41 p.m. ET Dec. 21, 2005

WASHINGTON - The Senate blocked oil drilling in an Alaska wildlife refuge Wednesday, rejecting a must-pass defense spending bill where supporters positioned the quarter-century-old environmental issue to garner broader support.

Drilling backers fell four votes short of getting the required 60 votes to avoid a threatened filibuster of the defense measure over the oil drilling issue. Senate leaders were expected to withdraw the legislation so it could be reworked without the refuge language. The vote was 56-44.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was among those who for procedural reasons cast a “no” vote, so that he could bring the drilling issue up for another vote.

Quote of note:

At such times, it's worth remembering the Park Service's mission statement: "The National Park Service preserves unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment, education and inspiration of this and future generations. The Park Service cooperates with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world."

Nothing in there about mining or giving whole islands over to the military.

Land grab
December 15, 2005

SUDDENLY IT'S OPEN SEASON on our national parks. Not on the animals, though the Interior Department did move last month to take the Yellowstone grizzly off the endangered species list. It's open season on the parks themselves.

U.S. Won't Join in Binding Climate Talks
Administration Agrees to Separate Dialogue
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page A01

MONTREAL, Dec. 10 -- Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.

In a separate accord, a broader coalition of nearly 200 nations -- including the United States -- agreed to a much more modest "open and nonbinding" dialogue that would not lead to any "new commitments" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions associated with climate change.

These guys MUST have another planet they're ready to relocate tp.

EPA Seeks to Cut Toxics Reporting — Move Endangers Public Health
Analysis: Nearly 1,000 Communities Across U.S. Would Lose All Toxics Information
Updated December 1, 2005

The latest: NET hosted a press briefing today on EPA's proposed TRI changes. Listen to the briefing [mp3, 4.56 megs], or see the list of participants.

Background: The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed changes to the Toxics Release Inventory reporting thresholds that will affect communities throughout the U.S. As many as 10 percent of communities that currently have a facility reporting to TRI could lose all reported data under the proposal. Read a fact sheet about TRI and the proposed changes or our press release. The proposed cuts pose a risk to communities and to first responders such as police and firefighters.

Ice Core Extends Climate Record Back 650,000 Years
 
Researchers have recovered a nearly two-mile-long cylinder of ice from eastern Antarctica that contains a record of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane--two potent and ubiquitous greenhouse gases--spanning the last two glacial periods. Analysis of this core shows that current atmospheric concentrations of CO2--380 parts per million (PPM)--are 27 percent higher than the highest levels found in the last 650,000 years.

The ice core data also shows that CO2 and methane levels have been remarkably stable in Antarctica--varying between 300 PPM and 180 PPM--over that entire period and that shifts in levels of these gases took at least 800 years, compared to the roughly 100 years in which humans have increased atmospheric CO2 levels to their present high. "We have added another piece of information showing that the timescales on which humans have changed the composition of the atmosphere are extremely short compared to the natural time cycles of the climate system," says Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern in Switzerland, who led the research.

The dispute:

Many climatologists, along with policymakers in a number of countries, believe the rapid temperature rise over the past 50 years is heavily driven by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities that have spewed carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. A vocal minority of scientists say the warming climate is the result of a natural cycle.

The evidence for climate change:

Global temperatures this year are about 1.36 degrees Fahrenheit (0.75 Celsius) above the average between 1950 and 1980, according to the Goddard analysis. Worldwide temperatures in 1998 were 1.28 degrees Fahrenheit (0.71 Celsius) above that 30-year average. The data show that Earth is warming more in the Northern Hemisphere, where the average 2005 temperature was two-tenths of a degree above the 1998 level.

Climate experts say such seemingly small shifts are significant because they involve average readings based on measurements taken at thousands of sites. To put it in perspective, the planet's temperature rose by just 1 to 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.

The evidence this 50 year increase (which is a longer time frame than any climate cycle I'm aware of) is a cyclic change:

one skeptic, state climatologist George Taylor of Oregon, said it is difficult to determine an accurate global average temperature, especially since there are not enough stations recording ocean temperatures.

"I just don't trust it," Taylor said of the new calculation, noting that Goddard's findings are "mighty preliminary."

World Temperatures Keep Rising With a Hot 2005
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 13, 2005; A01

I should have realized this long ago. 

Quote of note:

Last year, scientists found tantalizing hints of oil in seabed samples just 200 miles from the North Pole. All told, one quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources lies in the Arctic, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries.

As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, STEVEN LEE MYERS, ANDREW C. REVKIN and SIMON ROMERO

Climate change linked to cruise ship illness outbreaks
Wed Oct 5, 2005 06:24 PM ET
By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - Warming ocean waters may have tainted Alaskan oysters with a bacteria that triggered four outbreaks of illness on a cruise ship among people who ate the shellfish raw, researchers reported on Wednesday.

"The rising temperatures of ocean water seem to have contributed to one of the largest known outbreaks of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the United States," said Joseph McLaughlin of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, referring to the bacterium responsible for outbreak.

Small networks of power generators in "microgrids" could transform the electricity network in the way that the net changed distributed communication.

That is one of the conclusions of a Southampton University project scoping out the feasibility of microgrids for power generation and distribution.

Microgrids are small community networks that supply electricity and heat.

They could make substantial savings, and emissions cuts with no major changes to lifestyles, researchers say.

It really is. We finally implement a technology that can lighten our planetary footprint, which was obviously just laying around the place. Do we adopt it because it's better for our long-term prospects?

Americans will never accept them if they remain small, meek vehicles like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight, which have low top speeds and lackluster pulling power. No, if hybrids are going to appeal to red-meat drivers across the country, they'll need power and performance. "We've got to produce a car that gets a 14-year-old boy excited," Burns said, flashing a bucktoothed grin as he sweated beneath the sun in a loud Hawaiian shirt. "We got to have the smoking! The squealing! The tires popping off!"

We implement it when it becomes necessary to support our specific desires. Not a  moment before.

Anyway... 

The High-Performance Hybrids
By CLIVE THOMPSON

Quote of note:

Few people are better qualified to judge the extent of the problem. Mr Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since it was founded 35 years ago, helped to set up its hazardous waste programme. After serving as chief investigator to the EPA's ombudsman, he is now senior policy analyst in its Office of Solid Wastes and Emergency Response. He said the clean-up needed to be "the most massive public works exercise ever done", adding: "It will take 10 years to get everything up and running and safe."

Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent
Published: 11 September 2005

Quote of note:

The draft rules...contradict the position taken by federal lawyers who have prosecuted polluting facilities in the past, and parallel the industry's line of defense against those suits. 

...In court filings, the EPA estimated in 2002 that an hourly standard would allow eight plants in five states -- including Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia -- to generate legally as much as 100,000 tons a year of pollutants that would be illegal under the existing New Source Review rule. That equals about a third of their total emissions.

New Rules Could Allow Power Plants to Pollute More
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page A01

Why do you think Bolton's abrasiveness was so important? 

U.S. Wants Changes In U.N. Agreement
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 25, 2005; Page A01

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 24 -- Less than a month before world leaders arrive in New York for a world summit on poverty and U.N. reform, the Bush administration has thrown the proceedings in turmoil with a call for drastic renegotiation of a draft agreement to be signed by presidents and prime ministers attending the event.

The United States has only recently introduced more than 750 amendments that would eliminate new pledges of foreign aid to impoverished nations, scrap provisions that call for action to halt climate change and urge nuclear powers to make greater progress in dismantling their nuclear arms. At the same time, the administration is urging members of the United Nations to strengthen language in the 29-page document that would underscore the importance of taking tougher action against terrorism, promoting human rights and democracy, and halting the spread of the world's deadliest weapons.

I'm suggesting this month's issue of of Scientific American be read, cover to cover, by everyone. It's a single theme issue, titled Crossroads for Planet Earth. It's the best description of the upcoming bottleneck I've seen for informing mainstream types. Complete and detailed.

Here's the introduction to the issue. Seriously, go buy it.

The Climax of Humanity
Demographically and economically, our era is unique in human history. Depending on how we manage the next few decades, we could usher in environmental sustainability--or collapse
By George Musser

The 21st century feels like a letdown. We were promised flying cars, space colonies and 15-hour workweeks. Robots were supposed to do our chores, except when they were organizing rebellions; children were supposed to learn about disease from history books; portable fusion reactors were supposed to be on sale at the Home Depot. Even dystopian visions of the future predicted leaps of technology and social organization that leave our era in the dust.

Looking beyond the blinking lights and whirring gizmos, though, the new century is shaping up as one of the most amazing periods in human history. Three great transitions set in motion by the Industrial Revolution are reaching their culmination. After several centuries of faster-than-exponential growth, the world's population is stabilizing. Judging from current trends, it will plateau at around nine billion people toward the middle of this century. Meanwhile extreme poverty is receding both as a percentage of population and in absolute numbers. If China and India continue to follow in the economic footsteps of Japan and South Korea, by 2050 the average Chinese will be as rich as the average Swiss is today; the average Indian, as rich as today's Israeli. As humanity grows in size and wealth, however, it increasingly presses against the limits of the planet. Already we pump out carbon dioxide three times as fast as the oceans and land can absorb it; midcentury is when climatologists think global warming will really begin to bite. At the rate things are going, the world's forests and fisheries will be exhausted even sooner.

These three concurrent, intertwined transitions--demographic, economic, environmental--are what historians of the future will remember when they look back on our age. They are transforming everything from geopolitics to the structure of families. And they pose problems on a scale that humans have little experience with. As Harvard University biologist E. O. Wilson puts it, we are about to pass through "the bottleneck," a period of maximum stress on natural resources and human ingenuity.

Quote of note:

Red tide sucks oxygen out of the water, suffocating sea life, and contains poisons that impair the nerves. Eighty-one lumbering sea turtles have been killed by red tide in less than three months, a fourfold increase over the usual amount, and another eight are gravely ill. Last week, the algae bloom was blamed for a newly discovered ''dead zone'' off Tampa that extends along 2,000 square miles of ocean floor, a soupy underwater graveyard the size of Delaware filled with dead sponges, sand dollars and reefs.

Virulent algae creates red tide of death
A virulent algae bloom is laying waste to huge expanses of the Gulf. Scientists are split on why it's so severe.
BY CARA BUCKLEY

Quote of note:

Reefs nearest populated areas, such as the Florida Keys, are under increasing stress, researchers found, whereas more remote areas, including the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, are doing better.

NOAA Cites Threats to U.S., Pacific Coral Reefs
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page A11

Coral reefs in U.S. waters and the Pacific are under stress from both humans and nature, according to a national assessment released yesterday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A combination of overfishing, pollution, disease and climate change is threatening the health of coral reefs everywhere from the Florida Keys to Palau, said the report, which covers 14 areas in the United States and its territories.

Obviously someone needed something to talk about and just came up with this nonsense. We can't keep the animals we have alive.

Anyway... 

Lions and elephants on the Great Plains?
Scientists suggest relocating African species to North America

DENVER, Colorado (AP) -- If a group of prominent ecologists have their way, lions and elephants could someday be roaming the Great Plains of North America.

The idea of transplanting African wildlife to this continent is being greeted with gasps and groans from other scientists and conservationists who recall previous efforts to relocate foreign species halfway around the world, often with disastrous results.

But the proposal's supporters say it could help save some species from extinction in Africa, where protection is spotty and habitats are vanishing. They say the relocated animals could also restore the biodiversity in North America to a condition closer to what it was before humans overran the landscape more than 10,000 years ago.