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Can Climate Shift the Biology of Ecosystems?
Michael D. Lemonick, Time Magazine
Scientists have made lots of projections over the past few years about how warming temperatures and a changing climate will affect the planet. Real-world measurements have confirmed at least some of them: sea level is clearly rising, for instance, and the ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is shrinking and thinning — in the latter case, faster than anyone had expected just a few years ago.
Other measurements are a lot more difficult, though. It’s reasonable to expect, for example, that ecosystems will change as plants and animals respond to a rising thermometer — but how do you measure the change of an ecosystem that may consist of hundreds or even thousands of species?
The answer, evident in a paper just published in the journal Global Change Biology, is that it isn’t easy — but it’s possible nevertheless. A team of scientists led by Stephen Thackeray, an expert on lake ecology at the United Kingdom’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has combed through observations of more than 700 species of fish, birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, plankton and a wide variety of plants across the U.K. taken between 1976 and 2005, and found a consistent trend: more than 80% of “biological events” — including flowering of plants, ovulation among mammals and migration of birds — are coming earlier today than they were in the 1970s.
On average, these events are occurring about 11 days earlier, and the pace of change has been accelerating with every decade. “The pattern is very similar,” says Thackeray, “whether you look at marine or freshwater or terrestrial organisms.”
But differences in the pattern emerged when scientists looked at species at different levels of the food chain. As part of the analysis, says Thackeray, “we grouped these trends according to organisms’ positions.” What they found was that the changes in biological events were greater toward the bottom of the food chain than they were at the top…
(14 Feb 2010)
Arctic sea ice vanishing faster than ‘our most pessimistic models’: researcher
Bruce Owen, Winnipeg Free Press via Vancouver Sun
Sea ice in Canada’s fragile Arctic is melting faster than anyone expected, the lead investigator in Canada’s largest climate-change study yet said Friday — raising the possibility that the Arctic could, in a worst-case scenario, be ice-free in about three years.
University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, said the rapid decay of thick Arctic Sea ice highlights the rapid pace of climate change in the North and foreshadows what will come in the South.
“We’re seeing it happen more quickly than what our models thought would happen,” Barber said at a student symposium on climate change in Winnipeg. “It’s happening much faster than our most pessimistic models suggested.”
Barber and more than 300 scientists from around the globe spent last winter on the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen in the Arctic, studying the impact of climate change. It was the first time a research vessel remained mobile in open water during the winter season. The Canadian government provided $156 million in funding for the study.
Barber said the melting sea ice can be compared to disappearing rain forests…
(6 Feb 2010)
Snowmaggedon Backs All Climate Change Views
Emily Badger, Miller-McCuneYe
Federal government offices in Washington, D.C., closed for the third straight day today as back-to-back winter storms pushed the region toward the heaviest single season of snowfall on record. The U.S. House of Representatives has bailed on the entire week of legislating. The Postal Service has given up delivering the mail. And in the streets, officials have started rationing salt.
Amid the chaos — “Snowmaggedon,” residents are calling it — opposing camps of the climate debate have finally found something they can agree on: Here it is, the evidence we’ve been talking about!
Never mind that they’re talking about evidence for two conflicting theories.
Environmentalists and scientists say the record-breaking snowfall — and coming as it is across the Southern state of Virginia — is just the kind of extreme weather anomaly we’re in for if we keep disrupting Mother Nature’s natural rhythms. For the skeptics, the storm is sweet irony: How can we debate global warming when there’s a blizzard outside? In Washington, of all places!…
(10 Feb 2010)
Time to think small on climate change
Sir David King, BBCnews Viewpoint
Copenhagen’s failure to deliver a legally binding deal has created an opportunity for individuals to fill the void left by politicians, says Sir David King. In this week’s Green Room, he explains how small-scale projects can move the world towards a low carbon future.
Copenhagen didn’t get us the legally binding global carbon emission reduction agreement we so wanted.
To many it was a disappointment, a vindication of their fears that world leaders would fail to seize the moment and rise above national self-interest to secure an historic climate treaty.
But I see it more as an opportunity for others to step in and fill the leadership void left by politicians; a chance for businesses, local communities and individuals to drive forward the low carbon agenda despite the lack of international political consensus.
…Many innovative companies are already changing the way they work, judging that if not now, legislation will eventually drive them to reduce carbon, so they might as well stay ahead of the game.
Others are being forced by regulations, such as the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme to cut emissions.
However, the truly exciting possibilities for transformative change lie within communities.
Small, locally-owned initiatives replicated by groups across countries and nations can deliver substantial emissions reductions. At the same time, they can drive the mass shift in attitude and behaviour that is needed to tackle climate change.
The key is to use incentives to engage people to become a part of both the economic and practical solutions that are needed.
Small scale, low-tech solutions like these already exist throughout the world, not least in developing countries that are often seen as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
CRERAL is a co-operative in south Brazil that supplies electricity via the grid to 6,300 mainly rural customers in the area.
To increase the capacity and improve the reliability of its supply, it has built two river-based, low-tech, low-cost mini-hydro plants (0.72 and 1.0 MW capacity) that produce about 5.5 GWh of electricity a year, or 25% of overall demand.
In northern Tanzania, the Mwanza Rural Housing Programme (MRHP) trains villagers to set up enterprises making high-quality bricks from local clay, fired with agricultural residues rather than wood.
Not only has this reduced deforestation, the bricks have been used in more than 100,000 homes in 70 villages, providing improved comfort and durability…
(9 Feb 2010)
More examples of the kind of thinking I mentioned in the Peaking Resources post. -KS
U.N. climate panel needs overhaul, top scientists argue in ‘Nature’
AFP (via Grist)
PARIS—The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-winning U.N. panel that serves as the scientific bedrock for global climate negotiations, needs a serious makeover, five of its most senior members said Wednesday.
Writing in the journal Nature, they offer recommendations that include scrapping the panel, which is run by volunteers, and replacing it by a full-time staff, or establishing a “Wikipedia-style” forum for swapping information and ideas on climate change.
Of the five researchers who wrote in the journal, most agreed the panel’s process was too laborious and some suggested its review of climate change be removed from government oversight to avoid any political interference.
(10 February 2010)
