Richard Black - Arctic melt releasing ancient methane

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere.

The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change.

Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability.

There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites and farm animals.

Tracking methane to these various sources is not easy.

But the researchers on the new Arctic project, led by Katey Walter Anthony from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), were able to identify long-stored gas by the ratio of different isotopes of carbon in the methane molecules.

Read More:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18120093

Pam Frost Gorder - Statistical Analysis Projects Future Temperatures In North America

For the first time, researchers have been able to combine different climate models using spatial statistics - to project future seasonal temperature changes in regions across North America. They performed advanced statistical analysis on two different North American regional climate models and were able to estimate projections of temperature changes for the years 2041 to 2070, as well as the certainty of those projections.

The analysis, developed by statisticians at Ohio State University, examines groups of regional climate models, finds the commonalities between them, and determines how much weight each individual climate projection should get in a consensus climate estimate.

Through maps on the statisticians' website, people can see how their own region's temperature will likely change by 2070 - overall, and for individual seasons of the year.

Given the complexity and variety of climate models produced by different research groups around the world, there is a need for a tool that can analyze groups of them together, explained Noel Cressie, professor of statistics and director of Ohio State's Program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Statistics.

Read More:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Statistical_Analysis_Projects_Future_Temperatures_In_North_America_999.html

Brian Moench - Climate Crisis: The Silence is Deafening

Those of us who have been waiting impatiently for Obama to shed his apparent cocoon of compromise, caution and cowardice finally got a hint last week that a real leader may yet emerge and spread his wings at the White House.

But, there are public policy issues more important than gay marriage, issues where there is no margin for error and no time to waste, issues where the clock is not only ticking but nearing the end of its prelude to catastrophe.  The survival of mankind is just such an issue.  I'm talking of course about "the climate crisis"--what the coniving Republican strategist Frank Luntz convinced the media to start calling "climate change" in 2003 because polling showed that it sounded less ominous than "global warming."

With the President having shown some mettle on gay rights,  we must now convince him that he must bring that courage to bear on the greatest threat that mankind has ever faced.  Pragmatists, please don't respond with:  "The public doesn't want to hear it." "It's not in the top ten of voters' concerns."  "He can't win the election talking about it." Molding oneself for the sole purpose of electability is not leadership, it's pandering, something for which his opponent, Mr. Romney, is widely regarded as breaking the world record, whose only core political belief is that he deserves to be President.  There has never been a more noble opportunity for a President  to contrast himself from, and elevate himself above a soulless pandering opponent than President Obama has now.  

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-5

Fred Pearce - Could A Changing Climate Set Off Volcanoes And Quakes?

Geological disasters might influence climate, for instance when volcanic debris blots out the sun. But climate cannot disrupt geology. Right? Well, actually no, says a British geologist Bill McGuire, in a troubling new book, Waking The Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis and Volcanoes.

There is, McGuire argues, growing evidence to incriminate changing climate in the planet’s most destructive geological events. Melting ice sheets and changes in sea level can, he maintains, set off the largest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Indeed, thanks to climate change, a human hand may already be at work. Potentially, McGuire’s argument adds a whole new dimension to why we should be worried about climate change.

The most solid evidence for climatic influence on geology comes from the end of the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago, says McGuire, who is a volcanologist and professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London. Analysis of volcanic deposits, published in the past decade by several authors, has found that this period of rapid climate change, when ice sheets retreated from much of the planet, coincided with a sudden outburst of geological activity. The incidence of volcanic eruptions in Iceland increased around 50-fold for about 1,500 years, before settling back to previous levels.

Read More:

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/could_a_changing_climate_set_off_volcanoes_and_quakes/2525/

Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere's mammals unlikely to outrun climate change

A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change. For the past decade scientists have outlined new areas suitable for mammals likely to be displaced as climate change first makes their current habitat inhospitable, then unlivable. For the first time a new study considers whether mammals will actually be able to move to those new areas before they are overrun by climate change. Carrie Schloss, University of Washington research analyst in environmental and forest sciences, is lead author of the paper out online the week of May 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We underestimate the vulnerability of mammals to climate change when we look at projections of areas with suitable climate but we don't also include the ability of mammals to move, or disperse, to the new areas," Schloss said.

Indeed, more than half of the species scientists have in the past projected could expand their ranges in the face of climate change will, instead, see their ranges contract because the animals won't be able to expand into new areas fast enough, said co-author Josh Lawler, UW associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/uow-noo051412.php

James Hansen - Game Over for the Climate

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/10-2

Biodiversity loss ranks with climate change and pollution in terms of impacts to environment

A recent study published by an international research team working at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) has found that loss of biodiversity impacts the environment as significantly as climate change and pollution. The study, titled, "A global synthesis reveals biodiversity loss as a major driver of ecosystem change," was published May 2 in the journal Nature.

"For the past 15 years, ecologists have built a rich understanding of the consequences of humans driving species extinct. What we didn't know before this paper is whether those impacts of species loss rank up there with those from the major drivers of environmental change," said Jarrett Byrnes, a postdoctoral fellow with NCEAS.

Led by Western Washington University biologist David Hooper, the scientists, including those from institutions in the U.S., Canada, and Sweden, examined the effects of various environmental stressors on plant growth and decomposition, two crucial processes in any ecosystem. With data synthesized from almost 200 published studies, they measured the rate of species loss in different ecosystems, and found that the greater the plant species loss, the higher the negative impact on plant growth. The effects of biodiversity loss on biomass were similar to the effects from other environmental stressors, including global warming and pollution.

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/uoc--blr050912.php

Researchers determine that although glaciers continue to increase in velocity, the rate at which they can dump ice into the ocean is limited

Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland's contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century could be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible.

The finding comes from a paper funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA and published in today's journal Science.

While the study indicates that a melting Greenland's contributions to rising sea levels could be less than expected, researchers concede that more work needs to be done before any definitive trend can be identified.

Studies like this one are designed to examine more closely and in greater detail what is actually happening with the ice sheets, often using newer and more precise tools and thereby better defining the parameters that scientists use to make predictions, such as the upper limits of sea-level rise.

Read More:

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=124102&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

Harvey Wasserman - The Nuclear Industry Has Melted in Japan and France

Listen to Harvey show, "Green Power and The Wellness Hour" weekly at 2pm on Tuesday's.

There are zero commercial reactors operating in Japan today.  On March 10, 2011, there were 54 licensed to operate, well over 10% percent of the global fleet.

But for the first time in 42 years, a country at the core of global reactor electricity is producing none of its own.

Worldwide, there are fewer than 400 operating reactors for the first time since Chernobyl, a quarter-century ago.

And France has replaced a vehemently pro-nuclear premier with the Socialist Francois Hollande, who will almost certainly build no new reactors.  For decades France has been the “poster child” of atomic power.  But Hollande is likely to follow the major shift in French national opinion away from nuclear power and toward the kind of green-powered transition now redefining German energy supply.

In the United States, a national grassroots movement to stop federal loan guarantees could end new nuclear construction altogether.

( http://nukefree.org/please-do-sign-petition-stop-new-nuke-loan-guarantees ) New official cost estimates of $9.5 to $12 billion per reactor put the technology off-scale for any meaningful competition with renewables and efficiency.

Read More:

http://nukefree.org/editorsblog/nuclear-power-industry-has-melted-japan-and-france

Joe Romm - Study: ‘Virtually’ Certain Impact of Manmade ‘Climate Change is Observable in Arctic Sea Ice Already Today’

The ongoing rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is often interpreted as the canary in the mine for anthropogenic climate change. In a new study, scientists have now systematically examined the validity of this claim. They find that neither natural fluctuations nor self-acceleration can explain the observed Arctic sea-ice retreat. Instead, the recent evolution of Arctic sea ice shows a strong, physically plausible correlation with the increasing greenhouse gas concentration. For Antarctic sea ice, no such link is found – for a good reason.

When scientists try to attribute some observed climatic change to a specific forcing, they usually use complex climate models. The scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), however, decided on a different strategy as they set out to identify the main driver for the observed sea-ice loss in the Arctic. Dirk Notz, lead author of the study that was now published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters [1], explains why: “Sea ice is so thin that it reacts very sensitive to the large natural fluctuations of weather and climate that prevail in the Arctic. Because these fluctuations are inherently chaotic, their specific timing cannot be reproduced by standard climate models. Such models therefore aren’t necessarily the best tool to examine if natural fluctuations did cause the observed sea-ice loss.”

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/study-virtually-certain-impact-manmade-climate-change-observable-arctic-sea-ice-already-today-133631