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Acidic oceans threaten marine food chain
Ian Sample, Guardian
Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is threatening to make oceans too corrosive for marine organisms to grow protective shells, according to researchers.
If emissions continue unabated, the entire Southern Ocean, which stretches north from the Antarctic coastline, and subarctic regions of the Pacific Ocean will soon become so acidic that the shells of marine creatures will soften and dissolve making them easy targets for predators. Others will not be able to grow sufficient shells to survive.
The loss of shelled creatures at the lower end of the food chain could have disastrous consequences for larger marine animals. North pacific salmon, mackerel, herring, cod and baleen whales all feed on pteropods or sea butterflies, one of the species under imminent threat.
“These are extremely important in the food chain and what happens if they start to disappear is a great unknown,” said Jim Orr, lead scientist on the study at the Laboratory for Science of the Climate and Environment in Gif-sur-Yvette, near Paris.
Previous studies have suggested it would take centuries for emissions to acidify the oceans to such an extent, but the latest report, published today in the journal Nature, claims entire ecosystems will be threatened much sooner.
(29 September 2005)
Fears Over Climate as Arctic Ice Melts at Record Level
David Adam, Guardian via Common Dreams
Coverage is 20% below average for time of year ; Destructive cycle could affect Earth’s weather
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Global warming in the Arctic could be soaring out of control, scientists warned yesterday as new figures revealed that melting of sea ice in the region has accelerated to record levels.
Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the Colorado centre, said melting sea ice accelerates warming because dark-coloured water absorbs heat from the sun that was previously reflected back into space by white ice. “Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold. We could see changes in Arctic ice happening much sooner than we thought and that is important because without the ice cover over the Arctic Ocean we have to expect big changes in Earth’s weather.”
(29 September 2005)
The NY Times has a related article: In a Melting Trend, Less Arctic Ice to Go Around, as does the Globe and Mail: Melting Arctic ice cap sounds alarm bells.
Novel take on global warming
Jamie Wilson, Guardian
Michael Crichton’s latest novel, State of Fear, is an action-packed thriller in which the hero is a scientist who discovers that climate change is all a fraud. The novel has sold well, but it was still something of a shock yesterday to find its author as an expert witness testifying on global warming in front of the United States Senate.
Crichton had been summoned to give evidence by Senator James Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, who recently called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”.
Some scientists speculated that Crichton might be the best witness Senator Inhofe could find. A 2004 survey of 900 peer-reviewed and published scientific papers on climate change failed to find a single one who went against the belief that man-made change is happening and is dangerous.
But it was hard to imagine a more star-struck audience than the line-up of Republican senators who rushed to shake the author by the hand yesterday as he arrived in the oak-panelled committee room on Capitol Hill. “I’ve never seen this before,” said one old hand of the Washington press corps. “Usually, they barely give the witnesses a second glance.”
(29 September 2005)
State of Fear
Big Gav, Peak Energy (Australia)
News round-up and commentary on Global Warming and media concentration in Australia.
(29 September 2005)
Global Storm Warning
Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation
…Katrina … may mark a turning point for the media as well as the public.
“The reaction has been more positive than any time in the sixteen years that I’ve been trying to make noise about global warming,” says Bill McKibben, author of the 1989 classic The End of Nature. The day after Katrina hit, McKibben wrote an article for TomDispatch.com arguing that the devastation of New Orleans was, alas, only the first of many global warming disasters destined to strike in the twenty-first century. When McKibben appeared on radio shows to discuss the article, he says, “Everyone, and I mean everyone, who called in said, Thank heaven someone is saying this stuff, because it’s what I’m thinking about all the time now.”
“Had I said this stuff two years ago, the reactions would have ranged from skeptical to hostile, except for the liberal outlets,” says Ross Gelbspan, whose Op-Ed article in the Boston Globe arguing that Katrina’s “real name was global warming” led to forty-five media appearances. Gelbspan, who exposed industry funding of global warming skeptics in his book The Heat Is On, adds, “Even a couple of hostile, initially antagonistic right-wing talk-show hosts were drawn into the discussion–and their remarks turned from provocative to curious to sympathetic.”
(29 September 2005)
Trust Us, We’re Experts
Chris Mooney, TomPaine.com
There has been much talk, of late, about how the Bush administration has reached a new low when it comes to the misuse of science to appease its political base. That base, of course, centrally comprises two key interest groups—industry and the Christian right—that want the science to go their way on issues ranging from global warming (of keen interest to fossil fuel companies) to evolution (of keen interest to religious conservatives). Under the current administration, these groups are clearly getting what they want. But does this alone explain why so many political fights over science are erupting right now?
The answer is, not quite. There’s another crucial factor: The two constituencies have themselves changed, over the last several decades, in ways that have made them more inclined to misuse and abuse science than before. One key enabling factor is that both of these phalanxes of the right have been involved in generating their own sources of alternative (and sympathetic) expertise—often set up in opposition to more traditional university-based sources. In a pinch, political actors in the White House, the administration or Congress can then draw upon these founts of sympathetic “knowledge,” distorting science in the process.
Creating such expertise has been a very conscious effort on the right, one that can be traced at least back to the 1970s, when conservative thinkers like Irving Kristol explicitly counseled corporations to fund their own think tanks and other outlets that would reflect a pro-business philosophy….
Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and author of the newly released book, The Republican War on Science (www.waronscience.com).
(28 September 2005)
Mooney’s analysis of manipulation of science doesn’t cover peak oil, but it provides clues as to how energy corporations manipulate public discussion of public issues like peak oil.
Grist Magazine recently ran an interview with author Chris Mooney.
