Posts tagged global warming
Ultimate Petition: One Billion for Climate Action
There are lots of petitions flying around the Internet these days, but none quite so ambitious as that of Ranga B. Myneni. His petition has a single sentence that he hopes will be endorsed by a billion humans by the time Earth Day rolls around in 2014. Yeah, that’s no typo: One Billion people. Here’s what the petition says:
“Dear Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon,
We, the People of the Earth, request You to act judiciously and expeditiously to protect the Earth from anthropogenic climate change.
Respectfully,
People of the Earth”
Skating Rinks Monitor Climate Change
After Canadian scientists predicted that global warming will eventually be the demise of backyard skating rinks, a group of geographers at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo created RinkWatch. In just 20 days, 630 volunteers signed up to keep tabs on the condition of their home rinks.
It turns out that your Christmas tree could be a super-greenhouse gas crusader! Who knew?!
Xmas Trees Absorb ‘Super’ Greenhouse Gas: Your Christmas tree and its brethren are absorbing methane, a super greenhouse gas that they were previously suspected of emitting. In fact, previous studies put the global methane output by plants at between 62 and 236 teragrams each year. That’s not small potatoes (if you will pardon the vegetable pun), but 10 to 30 percent of all methane entering the atmosphere.
Humans Changing Saltiness of the Seas: When you hear about climate change it’s most often about melting glaciers and sea ice, increasing frequency of heatwaves and powerful storms. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll hear about the acidification of the oceans too. What you don’t hear about is the saltiness of the seas. But that’s changing too, according to a new piece of research just published in Geophysical Research Letters
DON’T PANIC! Christmas isn’t threatened by the warming Arctic and uptick in ice loss… Santa has relocated his base of operations to Greenland:
“The North Pole location is officially a myth,” said Ilbereth, Kringle’s head spokeself. “We are now located in northern Greenland, on solid ground.” The new facility has been named North Pole Station in order to avoid confusing children or give Hollywood producers an excuse to remake all of the classic holiday movies. “And not to slight the people of Greenland, to whom we are eternally grateful, but Greenland doesn’t carry quite the same holiday cachet as the North Pole,” explained Ilbereth.
Interesting side note:
As far back as 10 years ago Discovery News provided exclusive reports on the growing struggles Santa Claus’ helpers were facing due to ice losses at the North Pole.
Greenland Loses 200 Million Tons of Ice Per Year:
“Just how much is 200 million tons of ice? Roughly, it’s the amount needed to fill enough railroad coal cars to encircle the Earth.”
World Bank Fears Devastating 4.0 Degree Warming: “A four-degree warmer world can and must be avoided. We need to hold warming below two degrees,” said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. “Lack of ambitious action on climate change threatens to put prosperity out of reach of millions and roll back decades of development.”
…and as deadly Hurricane Sandy proved, after rampaging through the Caribbean and US, weather extremes are only going to get worse… Read more
Wild Drill Monkeys Unable to Deal With Warming Climate
Monkeys called wild drills, already an overhunted species, may see a dramatic population decline if their forest home dries out and vegetation becomes sparser amid warming temperatures, researchers report.
Photo: A rare and endangered monkey in an African equatorial rainforest, the wild drill. Credit: Corbis
Elephant Seals Swimming Deeper As Waters Warm
Elephant seals are in it deep due to climate change…deep in the ocean that is. Elephant seals from Marion Island in the southwest Indian Ocean are swimming further beneath the surface as their prey also moves into cooler, deeper waters.
“This prey is moving down to greater depths presumably due to the increasing water temperatures and this is forcing the seals to follow them,” explained Horst Bornemann from the Alfred Wegener Institute.
photo: an elephant seal with a sensor, Joachim Ploetz, Alfred Wegener Institute
Massive Chunk of Ice May Break Off Glacier
A massive part of a glacier the size of 12 football fields in the Swiss Alps could break off, local authorities warned, after the discovery of an enormous crevasse in the glacier.
Swiss authorities have formed a crisis team to monitor the situation and blocked all hiking trails close to the Giesen glacier located at an altitude of 2,800 meters, below the north face of the Jungfrau peak in the Bernese alps.
As Temps Rise, Amphibians Will Vanish
A variety of frogs and other amphibians will have a hard time finding escape routes from warming environments.
Amphibians are perfect subjects for studies on climate change, Early said, because they are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature. Because frogs and related creatures are so small, they are also limited in how far they can move at a time. So they can’t easily escape from conditions that become inhospitable to them.
