Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletinhomepage
Ice bridge holding Antarctic ice shelf cracks up
Alister Doyle, Reuters
An ice bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said.
“It’s amazing how the ice has ruptured. Two days ago it was intact,” David Vaughan, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, told Reuters of a satellite image of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
(4 April 2009)
California faces greater risk from global warming
Timm Herdt, Ventura County Star
State officials on Wednesday released what they called the most comprehensive and detailed report on the effects of climate change in California — a 40-volume set of scientific studies that shows the state more at risk to global warming than previously believed.
Among the projected effects: a loss of up to $3 billion in agricultural revenues by 2050 resulting from reductions in the water supply, a statewide increase in electricity demand of up to 55 percent because of extended use of air conditioning, and a heightened risk of wildfires that could cause billions of dollars in property damages annually.
The study is the second in a series of biennial reports the state’s multi-agency Climate Action Team is required to present to the governor and lawmakers.
(1 April 2009)
Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity
Fred Pearce, New Scientist
AM shocked, truly shocked,” says Katey Walter, an ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them.”
The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling out of them.
Back in 2006, in a paper in Nature, Walter warned that as the permafrost in Siberia melted, growing methane emissions could accelerate climate change. But even she was not expecting such a rapid change. “Lakes in Siberia are five times bigger than when I measured them in 2006. It’s unprecedented. This is a global event now, and the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing.”
No summer ice
The dramatic changes in the Arctic Ocean have often been in the news in the past two years. There has been a huge increase in the amount of sea ice melting each summer, and some are now predicting that as early as 2030 there will be no summer ice in the Arctic at all.
(25 March 2009)
Climate Change Changes Everything
Howard Silverman, People and Place
Climate change changes everything. Hardly am I the first to say it – yet neither can I recall seeing elsewhere the simple outline I have in mind. What follows is a discipline-by-discipline tally of assumptions altered and challenges encountered.
(6 April 2009)
