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Experts Link N.M. Tree Die-Offs to Warming
Associated Press via Yahoo!News
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Researchers believe the massive die-offs of New Mexico’s state tree during 2002 and 2003 could be a harbinger of life in a warming world.
High elevation pinon forests that had survived previous droughts endured as much as 90 percent mortality, according to a team of researchers led by University of Arizona ecologist Dave Breshears.
“Across a whole landscape, this system got whacked,” said Breshears, whose findings were reported this week in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. His team has been doing long-term studies of the Jemez Mountain ecosystem.
Drought weakened the trees enough for bark beetles to kill them, but warmer temperatures — only 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long-term average — appear to have contributed, the scientists found.
(11 October 2005)
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The connection between me and a receding glacier
Leah Kasinsky, Globe and Mail
I have recently returned from a youth expedition in the Arctic aimed at investigating climate change and its environmental and societal impacts….
Our team of 106 members travelled from Iceland to Greenland, and ended at Baffin Island.
I stood atop the Snaefellsness glacier in Iceland. Having battled seasickness the night before, we climbed upward wondering when and if we would reach glacial territory. And suddenly, as if summoned by our doubt, the clouds parted to reveal us halfway into the glacier, surrounded only by blue sky and a white blanket of clouds below us. If you stopped to listen, you could hear the wind hit the snow. Or the sound of a glacier melting and receding under the impact of the sun and the warming atmosphere.
Four days into our Arctic journey I tied two loose ends together and climate change and mass global pollution morphed from an intangible set of statistics, or a worrisome article in the newspaper, to the reality of a glacier receding under my feet.
It happened while we were racing through the milky teal waters of an uncharted fjord in Greenland, toward one of the fastest receding glaciers in the world, and watching icebergs cave off it into the water bellow.
It also happened while listening to Shelia Watt-Cloutier, the global Inuit spokesperson and head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, speak about the dramatic change she has witnessed in her lifetime.
She talked about how the Inuit are changing from a semi-nomadic people living off the land to a sedentary village people, whose elders’ knowledge of their environment is losing relevance due to the unpredictability of the ice with our warming climate.
Leah Kasinsky, 18, lives in Victoria.
(11 October 2005)
Business leaders, scientists warn about global warming in Oregon
Bryan Brumley, Associated Press
Business leaders joined scientists Tuesday to warn that global warming will harm the Oregon economy, hitting agriculture, skiing and tourism especially hard. They urged immediate action to reduce the damage.
“Nothing will hurt our children or grandchildren more than out-of-control climate change,” said Al Jubitz, the former owner of Jubitz Truck Stops. He retired in 2001 and has since devoted himself to charitable causes.
At a news conference, Jubitz and others addressed an open letter to Gov. Ted Kulongoski and other state leaders.
They said they will be meeting in coming months with business and political leaders to ask them to: reduce emissions that scientists say contribute to global warming; prepare for higher temperatures and sea levels; and invest in economic activities that can mitigate the harm and take advantage of cleaner new technologies.
“The effects of global warming – higher temperatures, reduced snowpack, declining stream flows – are already hurting bottom line of farmers and business people in other industries,” said Eban Goodstein, a professor of economics at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.
(11 October 2005)
Also posted at the Salem Statesman Journal.
Amazon Rainforest Suffers Worst Drought in Decades
Terry Wade, Reuters
MANAQUIRI, Brazil — The worst drought in more than 40 years is damaging the world’s biggest rainforest, plaguing the Amazon basin with wildfires, sickening river dwellers with tainted drinking water, and killing fish by the millions as streams dry up.
“What’s awful for us is that all these fish have died and when the water returns there will be barely any more,” Donisvaldo Mendonca da Silva, a 33-year-old fisherman, said. Nearby, scores of piranhas shook in spasms in two inches of water — what was left of the once flowing Parana de Manaquiri river, an Amazon tributary. Thousands of rotting fish lined the its dry banks.
The governor of Amazonas, a state the size of Alaska, has declared 16 municipalities in crisis as the two-month-long drought strands river dwellers who cannot find food or sell crops. Some scientists blame higher ocean temperatures stemming from global warming, which have also been linked to a recent string of unusually deadly hurricanes in the United States and Central America. …
“We closed 40 schools and canceled the school year because there’s a lack of food, transport and potable water,” said Gilberto Barbosa, secretary of public administration in Manaquiri. People whose wells have dried up risk drinking river water contaminated by sewage and dead animals. Sinking water levels have severed connections in the lattice of creeks, lakes and rivers that make up the Amazons motorboat transportation network. Many people in Manaquiri’s 25 riverine communities are now forced to walk kilometers to buy rice or medicines. …
(11 October, 2005)
More energy security vs. hazy views in US parks
Mark Clayton, The Christian Science Monitor
Development of gas wells in Wyoming could impair air quality and visibility in pristine areas, studies show.
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While out hiking last month, in foothills of the Wind River Mountains, where some say you can see 100 miles on a clear day, Judy Walker of Pinedale, Wy., became overwhelmed at what she saw.
“It was this kind of light brown haze a lot like what I see when I’m in Denver that fuzzed up the mountains,” she says. “I just felt at that moment this tremendous sense of loss, like someone had bombed my church.”
At once primordial and almost overpowering to some, the pristine air quality and mountain views from Pinedale – a town of 1,500 that sits on Highway 191, a key gateway to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks – have long been among the finest in the nation.
But now not only Pinedale’s air quality and views are at risk – but so are those in three nearby wilderness areas just east of the town and, to a serious but lesser degree, in the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
That’s because there’s a plan to add 3,100 new gas wells on nearby public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – a giant gas field dubbed “Jonah” just 30 miles or so south of Pinedale.
It is pitting environmentalists against the government in the age-old argument of development – in this case with profits estimated at already some $4 billion per year from the currently active 6,000 wells – versus preservation of national resources.
(11 October 2005)
Study Shows Wyoming Gas Projects Harming Mule Deer
Becky Bohrer, Associated Press via ENN
BILLINGS, Mont. — A new study suggests natural gas development in western Wyoming is forcing mule deer into less suitable winter range and affecting the animals’ movements in an area known as the Pinedale Anticline.
The number of mule deer on the Mesa winter range dropped a “disconcerting” 46 percent from 2002 to 2005, according to the report from Western EcoSystems Technology Inc. Models and maps indicated that, through at least three winters, deer tended to favor areas further away from well pads.
Such behavior suggests that seasonal drilling restrictions may not be achieving what land managers had intended, the researchers sa
(10 October 2005)
