This week's news on Climate Change.
-
Expect the Unexpected to happen with Climate Change
15 MayEnvironmental News Network
An increasingly common fallback position once climate change "skeptics" accept that the planet is warming and humans are the dominant cause is the myth that climate change won't be bad. In fact, this particular myth comes in at #3 on our list of most used climate myths. It's an ideal fallback position because it allows those who reject the body of scientific evidence to believe that if they are wrong on the science, it's okay, because the consequences won't be dire anyway. One of my colleagues, Molly Henderson recently completed a Masters Degree program class on scientific research which focused on climate change, which she aced (way to go, Molly!). For her final research paper, she examined the consequences of climate change on the prevalence of water-borne diseases in the US Great Lakes region. -
Arctic seabirds adapt to climate change
15 MayScienceDaily: Latest Science News
The planet is warming up, especially at the poles. How do organisms react to this rise in temperatures? Biologists have now shown that little auks, the most common seabirds in the Arctic, are adapting their fishing behavior to warming surface waters in the Greenland Sea. So far, their reproductive and survival rates have not been affected. However, further warming could threaten the species. -
Arctic seabirds adapt to climate change
15 MayPhysOrg.com
The planet is warming up, especially at the poles. How do organisms react to this rise in temperatures? An international team led by a CNRS researcher from the Center for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology has shown that little auks, the most common seabirds in the Arctic, are adapting their fishing behavior to warming surface waters in the Greenland Sea. So far, their reproductive and survival rates have not been affected. However, further warming could threaten the species. This research, supported in particular by the French Polar Institute (IPEV) and a US-Norwegian program, is published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series dated May 21, 2012. -
Climate change will challenge mammals
15 MayiStockAnalyst.com - News
SEATTLE, May 14 (UPI) -- Nearly 10 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals won't be able to move swiftly enough to outpace climate change and reach safe havens, researchers say. In certain regions that figure could go as high as 40 percent, scientists at the University of Washington reported Monday. Researchers have identified areas suitable for mammals likely to be displaced as climate change makes their current habitats inhospitable, then unlivable, but a new study considers whether mammals wi[More...] -
Sunscreen in the Sky to Curb Climate Change?
14 MayDiscovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel
A British scientist offers an improbable-seeming scheme to reduce global warming. -
Two columns on climate change
14 MayThe Atlantic - Clive Crook
In a new column for the FT I argue that whatever else you might say about the Climategate emailers and their apologists, you could never accuse them of understanding public relations.
In a new piece for National Journal I argue that (supposedly) binding quantity caps for GHG emissions are not the most productive way to co-operate on climate change. Converging on a gradually rising carbon price would get better results.It is not enough for climate scientists and environment ministers to go to Copenhagen and tell each other how right they are. They also need to convince the public. National politics - the democratic process - is awfully inconvenient sometimes, but cannot be waved away.
The climate-science establishment - scientists subscribing to the global warming consensus and most governments, judging by words not deeds - understands this. This is why the Copenhagen meeting has a theatrical aspect; it is as much about public relations as about serious efforts to confront global warming.
The experts are intent on stirring up - they would say "educating" - public opinion. From their own point of view, however, they are making a hash of it.
We need a form of cooperation that economizes on momentous international treaties and cross-border obligations -- which are difficult to frame in the first place and impossible to enforce once they exist. Instead, we need policies that can be sold to voters country by country, and that conform to a broad international effort, instead of seeming to be dictated by multinational (i.e., other people's) goals.
Curbing global warming does need to be an international effort -- because it is the stock of global gases that drives the process. There is no point in one country cutting its emissions if others do not. But this does not mean that a Kyoto-type approach -- a global treaty specifying exact binding limits on emissions, regardless of the consequences -- is the way to go. The difficulties in that method are obvious and have been amply demonstrated.
For one thing, achieving equity across countries is difficult. In setting hard targets, allowance has to be made for the fact that poor countries such as India and China emit less per capita than the United States. But how? Putting the political focus on questions like that, and trying to answer them once and for all at events like the Copenhagen conference -- then holding the entire process hostage to the answers -- is not the way to get things done.
-
New climate change ambassador
13 MayThe Sydney Morning Herald
A new climate change ambassador has been appointed to continue the push for further global action on the issue on Australia's behalf. -
Climate change and the corporate scramble for the Arctic
11 Mayrabble.cas
This is the second of a two-part feature examining the impact of climate change on the Arctic. Part I examined the uses of the colonial imagination of the Arctic.
Many of the winter months of 2012 were among the warmest on record. The warming of our winters is an unsettling trend.
-
Support for climate change action drops
11 MayTerra Daily
Stanford CA (SPX) May 11, 2012
Americans' support for government action on global warming remains high but has dropped during the past two years, according to a new survey by Stanford researchers in collaboration with Ipsos Public Affairs. Political rhetoric and cooler-than-average weather appear to have influenced the shift, but economics doesn't appear to have played a role. The survey directed by Jon Krosnick, a seni -
"Game over for climate change"
11 MayAMERICAblog
A chilling op ed in the NYT from the head of NASA Goddard. If [tar sands] Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil,...
