2006 : Hottest Year Ever

possum not worried - Granny bought him some waterwings

Antarctic ice sheet thinning - scientists
March 29, 2007 - A PIECE of the Antarctic ice sheet the size of Texas is thinning, possibly due to global warming, and could cause the world's oceans to rise significantly, polar ice experts say.

They said "surprisingly rapid changes" were occurring in Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment, which faces the southern Pacific Ocean, but that more study was needed to know how fast it was melting and how much it could cause the sea level to rise. The warning came in a joint statement issued at the end of a conference of US and European polar ice experts at the University of Texas in Austin.

The scientists blamed the melting ice on changing winds around Antarctica that they said were causing warmer waters to flow beneath ice shelves. The wind change appeared to be the result of several factors, including global warming, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and natural variability.

The thinning in the 3.2km- thick ice shelf was being observed mostly from satellites, but it was not known how much ice had been lost because data was difficult to obtain on the remote ice shelves, they said. Study was focusing on the Amundsen Sea Embayment because it had been melting quickly and held enough water to raise world sea levels 6m, the scientists said.

MORE

Global warming increasing seafood poisoning...

Seafood poisoning increases as oceans become warmer, more polluted
Apr. 1, 2007 — Nearly 500,000 people worldwide contract ciguatera poisoning each year from eating any of the dozens of large fish species that graze on contaminated reefs such as grouper, barricuda and mackerel.

Bowls of piping hot barracuda soup were the much-anticipated treat when the Roa family gathered for a casual and relaxing Sunday meal. Within hours, all six fell deathly ill. So did two dozen others from the same neighborhood. Some complained of body-wide numbness. Others had weakness in their legs. Several couldn't speak or even open their mouths.

"I was scared. I really thought I was going to die," said Dabby Roa, 21, a student who suffered numbness in his head, tingling in his hands and had trouble breathing. What Roa and the others suffered that night last August was ciguatera poisoning, a rarely fatal but growing menace from eating exotic fish. All had bought portions of the same barracuda from a local vendor.

Experts estimate that up to 50,000 people worldwide suffer ciguatera poisoning each year, with more than 90% of cases unreported. Scientists say the risks are getting worse, because of damage that pollution and global warming are inflicting on the coral reefs where many fish species feed. Dozens of popular fish types, including grouper and barracuda, live near reefs. They accumulate the toxic chemical in their bodies from eating smaller fish that graze on the poisonous algae. When oceans are warmed by the greenhouse effect and fouled by toxic runoff, coral reefs are damaged and poison algae thrives, scientists say.

MORE

See also:

Climate change destruction 'to accelerate'
Mon 2 Apr 2007 - THE next 50 years will see increasing poverty, a lack of drinking water, melting glaciers and a host of vanishing species unless action is taken to tackle climate change, a UN panel of scientists will claim this week.

The warning will be part of the latest report, to be released on Friday, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of more than 2,000 international scientists assessing global warming. The report will also address what it terms as a "climate divide", with wealthy nations far from the equator experiencing fewer effects of climate change.

The report states that, for the rest of the world, destructive patterns seen in the last decade will accelerate in the next 40 years. The scientists claim the warnings are clear; storms and floods have become more severe, coastlines have eroded and deserts have expanded. Meanwhile, diseases common in the Tropics have spread.

In the northern hemisphere, spring is coming earlier, disrupting bird migrations and causing flowers and trees to bloom too early. Within 25 years, hunger and death from diarrhoea will threaten poor countries.

More http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=506652007

Supreme Court weighs in on global warming...

High Court Rebukes Bush on Car Pollution
Apr 2, 2007 -- The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration Monday for its inaction on global warming in a decision that could lead to more fuel-efficient cars as early as next year.

The court, in a 5-4 ruling in its first case on climate change, declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate those emissions from new cars and trucks under the landmark environment law, and the "laundry list" of reasons it has given for declining to do so are insufficient, the court said.

"A reduction in domestic emissions would slow the pace of global emissions increases, no matter what happens elsewhere," Justice John Paul Stevens said in the majority opinion. "EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change." The politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first case on the subject, with many Republicans as well as Democrats now pressing for action. However, the administration has argued for a voluntary approach rather than new regulation.

The reasoning in the court's ruling also appears to apply to EPA's decision not to impose controls on global warming pollution from power plants, a decision that has been challenged separately in court, several environmental lawyers said. In the short term, the decision boosts California's and 11 other states' prospects for gaining EPA approval of their own program to limit tailpipe emissions, beginning with the 2009 model year. Those cars begin appearing in showrooms next year. Emission limits would become stricter each year until 2016.

MORE

See also:

Ruling Called 'Victory for the Bad Guys'
April 02, 2007 - Global warming skeptics reacted strongly Monday to a Supreme Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars, calling the decision "bad news" for the country and predicting that the economic fallout will be "vast."

In the first case of its kind to reach the high court, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gases and that the agency has "no reasoned explanation" for not doing so. "Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act's capacious definition of 'air pollutant' we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles," the court said.

"While we are still reviewing the case for its regulatory implications, having the authority to regulate C02 as a pollutant and justifying that authority are two different things," said Marc Morano, spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "CO2 is not an air pollutant and should not be treated as one," Morano added.

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the court's decision has broad implications ranging from the judicial standing of environmental plaintiffs to America's economic future. "The decision implies that Congress ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1977 when it enacted the Clean Air Act's Section 202 regulating auto emissions, but somehow forgot to tell anybody," said CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis. The Kyoto Protocol, drawn up in 1997, requires industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by specified amounts. The U.S. did not ratify the treaty.

MORE

If humans are causing global warming here, then are Martians causing global warming on Mars??...

Study: Red planet heating up
April 4, 2007 -- Mars has warmed by around 1 degree Fahrenheit from the 1970s to the 1990s, according to scientists.

Earth's dusty neighbor Mars is grappling with its own form of climate change as fluctuating solar radiation is kicking up dust and winds that may be melting the planet's southern polar ice cap, scientists said Wednesday. Researchers have been watching the changing face of Mars for years, studying slight differences in the brightness and darkness of its surface. These changes in brightness have been generally attributed to the presence of dust, but until now their effect on wind circulation and climate has not been clear.

NASA scientist Lori Fenton and colleagues, reporting this week in the journal Nature, now believe variations in radiation from the surface of Mars are fueling strong winds that stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet's temperature. By studying changes in light reflected from the surface of Mars -- a measure known as an object's albedo -- they predict the red planet has warmed by around 1 degree Fahrenheit from the 1970s to the 1990s, which may in part have caused the recent retreat of the southern polar ice cap.

On Earth, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation which can affect global climate. This a phenomenon is known as the greenhouse effect. Fossil fuel emissions add to the problem. On Mars, it's the red-tinged dust. Fenton's team compared thermal maps gathered from NASA's Viking mission in the 1970s with maps gathered more than two decades later by the Global Surveyor. They saw that large swaths of the surface have darkened or brightened over the past three decades.

MORE

See also:

Key report to say world already feeling effects of global warming
Thursday 5th April, 2007: There is evidence that the world is already feeling the effects of climate change and has been for the past decade, according to a researcher involved in last minute discussions taking place on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in Brussels, Belgium.

He claims hundreds of UN-backed scientists and politicians will say this on Friday, April 6 at the IPCC meeting in Brussels. He said this would also be the first report to be based on observations of recent changes in weather, rather than computer-model-based forecasts of future climate.

According to him, climatologists have long held the view that blaming human greenhouse-gas emissions for any single weather is difficult, or even impossible. The closest researchers can come to doing this is calculating the probability that an event - a hurricane, for instance, or a heat wave - which would have happened if industrial activities had not been pumping the gases into the atmosphere since the late 1800s, New Scientist quoted him as saying.

According to the magazine, one such retrospective analysis, published in December 2004 volume of Nature has already demonstrated that human greenhouse gas emissions has at least doubled the risk of a severe heat wave in Europe during the summer of 2003. The heat wave in question had led to the deaths of about 14,000 people. The researcher said the upcoming IPCC report would argue that the accumulation of extreme heat waves, droughts, floods, storms and melting glaciers from all over the world provided a strong case for climate change happening now.

More http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=239430

The return of the Depression Dustbowl?

Southwestern U.S. Becoming a Dust Bowl
Apr 5, 2007: The severe seven-year drought in the Southwestern United States is just the beginning of a new and even drier climate for the region due to climate change, scientists say.

The infamous "dust bowl" conditions of the 1930s will be the norm, with the possibility that the aridity will be unlike anything in the past, according to research published Thursday in Science -- one day before the release of another key report by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, which also warns that drought-prone areas are likely to become even drier due to global warming. According to Ming Fang Ting, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and co-author of the Science study, the current drought in the U.S. Southwest is not part of the natural variability in climactic conditions. "The causes of drought now, and in the future, are different with climate change," Ting told IPS.

Using 19 computer climate models, researchers determined that the U.S. Southwest and parts of Northern Mexico are expected to become much drier. Unlike previous historical droughts that were caused by changes in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, the models reveal that climate change will dramatically increase the size of the sub-tropical dry zone around the planet. These expanding dry zones will be unlike anything seen in the past 150 years and future droughts will be far worse than any since medieval times, the report says. The big difference compared to the past is that many more people are living in these areas, notes Ting.

Despite its water shortages, the Southwest region includes Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, which are among the fastest growing states in the U.S. Millions live in large cities such as Phoenix and Denver that are nowhere near rivers and exist only because of enormous water projects that dam rivers or pump deep aquifers and route water through canals and pipelines. The city of Las Vegas, Nevada sits in a valley in the Mojave Desert. Its population has surged to upwards of 2.4 million, when only 25,000 people lived there 50 years ago. In the past five years alone, 330,000 people moved to the city, which has a huge legal gambling industry.

More http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37239

See also:

Creeping dunes threaten African nation
Thursday, April 5, 2007 · Throughout Mauritania, a desolate, dune-enveloped country twice the size of France, men and women wage a daily battle against the sand.

=snip=

With less rain falling now than in years past, the dunes have become dry and unstable. Global climate change bears part of the blame, as does the uprooting of the scraggly trees that once dotted the landscape to use as camel feed, firewood or for insulation, leaving nothing to bind the sand. When the winds whip the land, the dunes advance like fingers, overtaking walls, forcing their way into courtyards and creeping under doors. Whole houses are swallowed. Entire cities have been abandoned.

=snip=

Europe and North America have hurricanes, floods and snowstorms; the nations lying across the Sahara - Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the southern edges of Libya, Algeria and Egypt - have sand, and a warming planet is making it less predictable. Surface temperatures have risen by a little over 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last century, said Patrick Gonzalez, a climate scientist on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The rise in the temperature of the Earth, as well as of the Atlantic Ocean bordering Mauritania, has had an impact on rainfall: It's down a fifth from the 1950s.

Without moisture to keep the sand in clumps, it moves freely, dissipating in a yellow mist. "It's a vicious cycle, brought on by the changes in our climate and worsened by the actions of mankind," said Moustapha Ould Mohamed, who heads the National Research Center on Desertification in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital.

FULL

Future looking bleak...

UN Warns Of 'Alarming' Effects Of Climate Change
April 10, 2007 -- According to a new UN environmental report by the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC), climate change may lead to severe food and water shortages for an extra 130 million people across Asia by 2050 unless urgent action is taken.

A summary of the full IPCC report -- written and reviewed by almost 450 of the world's top scientists -- was released on April 6. Further details were unveiled today in a series of regional press conferences around the world.

The IPCC report suggests a 2-degree Celsius increase in air temperatures could decrease rice yields by 5 percent to 12 percent in China. In Bangladesh, it predicts rice production may fall by 10 percent and wheat production by 30 percent by 2050, while water shortages will become more common in India as the Himalayan glaciers decline.

The report says Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but is not acting fast enough to stem the dire economic and environmental damage of greenhouse-gas emissions. It predicts that wheat may disappear on the African continent by the 2080s.

source

See also:

Lake Okeechobee approaching historic low
10 Apr. 2007 - Lake Okeechobee, the source of water for the Florida Everglades, is at its lowest April level since measurements have been made.

If the drought in South Florida continues, water managers expect the lake level to drop below 8.97 feet, the all-time low recorded in May 2001, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. On Monday, the lake was at 10.09 feet, the Army Corps of Engineers said.

Okeechobee gathers the waters from the Kissimmee River Basin in central Florida and spills them into the River of Grass, the wide, shallow, slow-moving stream that used to flow unimpeded to Florida Bay. The lake is so low that gravity is no longer spilling water into the irrigation canals in the agricultural area south of Okeechobee.

Jesus Rodriguez, a spokesman for the South Florida Water Management District, said that the area cannot depend on Okeechobee for drinking water at its current level. In March, watering in the Everglades water management area was restricted to three times a week. More stringent limits on water use could be imposed this week.

Source

Related:

Data indicate warming far worse than thought
Summer ice could disappear as soon as 2020, leading scientist reports
April 10, 2007

New measurements indicate that the effects of global warming are much worse than previously suspected and could lead to a complete melting of Arctic summer ice in as little as 13 years, a leading climate scientist says. The finding follows a U.N. report that accelerated warming would have catastrophic implications for humans and wildlife, leading to food and water shortages across the planet.

The sea ice data were salvaged from a British Royal Navy submarine, the HMS Tireless, which was conducting exercises under the Arctic last month until an onboard explosion. Two Royal Navy sailors died in the blast, the effects of which, perhaps ironically, were dampened by the polar ice, said Peter Wadhams, an oceanographer at Cambridge University who has made numerous submarine expeditions to measure the thickness of the Arctic ice for more than 40 years.

Wadhams and a colleague, Nick Hughes, survived the explosion and managed to preserve their data, which suggest that sea ice in the summer could soon disappear altogether, Britain’s ITN Television reported Tuesday. Scientists had previously predicted that the summer sea ice would disappear from the Arctic by 2040. But Wadhams’ measurements indicate that the thinning was already approaching 50 percent and that the ice could disappear by 2020.

More http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18039460/

Generals voicing concern about global warming...

US generals urge climate action
Sunday, 15 April 2007, Former US military leaders call on the Bush administration to make major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

In a report, they say global warming poses a serious threat to national security, as the US could be drawn into wars over water and other conflicts. They appear to criticise President George W Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut emissions.

Among the 11 authors are ex-Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan and Mr Bush's ex-Mid-East peace envoy Anthony Zinni. The report says the US "must become a more constructive partner" with other nations to fight global warming and deal with its consequences.

It warns that over the next 30 to 40 years, there will be conflicts over water resources, as well as increased instability resulting from rising sea levels and global warming-related refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts.

'Pay now - or later'

See also:

Sandstorm from northern China to hit Taiwan today
Monday, April 16, 2007 - Dust particles blown across the Taiwan Strait from a sandstorm that arose in China's Inner Mongolia region on Saturday will begin to undermine Taiwan's air quality today, environmental officials said yesterday.

It will be the third sandstorm to hit Taiwan so far this year, and the effect will be more evident than before, officials with the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said. When the floating dust hits northern Taiwan today, EPA officials said, the micro particle pollution density may range between 150 and 250 microgram/cu m, surpassing the normal level by 100 to 200 microgram/cu m.

The floating dust is not expected to dissipate until Tuesday afternoon, the officials said, adding that the air quality in central and southern Taiwan will also be affected as dust particles move southward along with a rainy front that hit Taiwan late Saturday. Worse still, the officials said, North Pacific high pressure systems have been gaining strength in recent days, and may bring more dust particles. As most parts of the island will become sunny again on Monday due mainly to the rainy front going away, there should be no rain to "purify" the sandstorm.

With unusually high levels of dust pollution looming, EPA officials advised people with asthma and other respiratory diseases, as well as the elderly and children, to be on guard and to refrain from going outdoors or engaging in heavy outdoor exercise on Monday and Tuesday, particularly those residing in northern, northeastern, and central mountain regions. Such people were also advised to wear mouth masks if they have to go outdoors. Local people can access the EPA Web site at www.epa.gov.tw to learn more about the air quality, according to EPA officials.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news/arc...416/107213.htm

Florida and New Orleans would be under water...

Study: Sudden sea level surges threaten 1 billion
April 20, 2007 • New mapping techniques show potential impact of rapidly rising sea levels

More than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas where a sudden surge in sea level could prove as disastrous as the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to new research presented on Thursday. New mapping techniques show how much land would be lost and how many people affected by rapid sea level rises that are often triggered by storms and earthquakes, a U.S. Geological Survey-led team determined. E. Lynn Usery, who led the team, said nearly one-quarter of the world's population lives below 100 feet above sea level -- the size of the biggest surge during the 2004 tsunami that pulverized villages along the Indian Ocean and killed 230,000 people.

"What we are suggesting is what kind of areas are at risk (in) a catastrophic event," Usery told a meeting of the Association of American Geographers. "The fact that there are that many people living at that sea level means there are probably a lot of people potentially in harm's way." The team also found that a 100-foot rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide.

A rise of just 16 feet would affect 669 million people and 2 million square miles of land would be lost. Sea levels are currently rising about 0.04 to 0.08 inches each year, making it unlikely such a scenario would suddenly occur across the globe, Usery said. But he said 10,000 years ago sea levels rose 20 meters in 500 years -- a relatively short span -- after the collapse of the continental ice sheets.

MORE

Looks like Calif. is feeling the aftereffects of the 2006 warming...

Snowpack at 19-year low
Some Bay Area water districts call for immediate conservation -- no shortages expected this year because reservoirs are nearly full
Thursday, April 26, 2007

The water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack is at its lowest level in nearly 20 years -- less than 40 percent of usual for this time of year, state water officials say. The size of the snowpack -- the source for most of the state's drinking water -- has already prompted calls for immediate conservation. And orders to curtail use of water could become mandatory this summer or next year if 2008 is also dry.

Usually the biggest accumulation of snow occurs around April 1. But this year the snowpack didn't grow after the first week in March. Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist at the California Department of Water Resources, called the 2007 snowfall "pretty dismal.''

"It was a very dry March, the sixth driest on record. There was a lot less snow falling and a lot more snow melting,'' she said. But the state water agency isn't expecting shortages this summer because the reservoirs are relatively full after three years of wet weather.

MORE

About to get dry n' thirsty in Fla. too...

South Florida heading for serious drought
April 29, 2007 -- Despite heavy rains during the past month, scientists say South Florida is on its way to a serious drought.

The drought is partly a result of a 17-month dry spell that meteorologists worry could extend into the region's rainy season, The Miami Herald reported.

"Droughts are slow-simmering water emergencies, not sudden flares like floods or hurricanes," said Carol Ann Wehle, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District. "But they can be just as dangerous, because they impact our drinking-water supplies, the environment and our regional economy."

Some restrictions have already been put into place, such as restrictions on lawn watering. Besides dry conditions, a number of factors -- including smoke from wildfires drying out marshes and a steady decrease in lake water levels -- have officials concerned. Another fear is that ocean water will work its way into coastal well fields, forcing area residents to buy bottled water.

Source