Tag archives for global warming
Posted by 
The top 10 stories on our radar today: Scientists have created stem cells from cloned human embryos, 1.5-billion-year-old water has been found in a deep Canadian mine, and…
Explosive Agriculture and That Larger April Fireball
Posted by Dan Klotz on April 29, 2013 
Two days after the Boston Marathon bombing, a humongous explosion rocked the Texas town of West when a fire broke out at an agriculture retail facility storing ammonium nitrate. 14 people were killed, more than 200 injured, but despite leaving a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep, the incident played second fiddle in…
Geography in the News: Maple Syrup Time
Posted by Neal Lineback of Maps101.com and Maps.com on April 7, 2013 By Neal Lineback and Mandy Lineback Gritzner, Geography in the NewsTM and Maps.com SUGAR TIME IN NEW ENGLAND Sugar maple are tapped in New England and 2013 may be a better year for the maple syrup industry after several declining years. Maple syrup, that sweet sticky syrup that makes mere pancakes incredibly delicious, is threatened…
Posted by 
By Claire Schoen Media Most of the great cities, the world over, are built along the water. So are many towns, hamlets, and villages. But sea level rise and extreme weather, both fueled by climate change, threaten to reclaim coastal lands and the communities that are built on them. The destruction of New York’s shoreline,…
One spill-echoing artwork, a ceramic wall-mounted sculpture called “Eyak’s Jaw,” was made in remembrance of the 20th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Within a rich bed of intertidal life forms – sea start, kelps, and urchins, a viewer glimpses the jawbone and conical teeth of an orca. The actual jawbone of the male…
Quantum Correlations: Chasing Ice Review: Prepare for “Glacier-Less National Park”
Posted by alevine on December 15, 2012 By Alaina G. Levine Like Ice? Recognize its importance to the health of the planet and the very existence of humankind? Then prepare to be horrified and generally freaked-out by a new documentary that shows in shocking detail how fast our glaciers are retreating, melting and disappearing. It’s history in the making, says James Balog,…
Posted by 
By Elizabeth Brown and Carl Safina A few years ago, some scientists at the University of British Columbia were thinking about how climate change would affect fish. Climate change results from the collection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from our burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas), which causes the earth to warm. The…
Posted by 
For people living around the Great Lakes, water levels this past month have appeared much lower than many will remember. The upper Great Lakes reached near-record low water levels in October. This was most evident on Lakes Michigan and Huron, where lake levels dropped to less than two inches (4 cm) above record lows…
Auksalaq: An Alaskan Telematic Climate Change Opera
Posted by Michael McBride of The Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge in Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples on October 31, 2012 
Auksalaq is the Alaskan Native Inupiat word for melting snow and ice and is a state of the art electronic Telematic Opera, a living, breathing Tour de Force. This avant-garde musical production (http://auksalaq.org/) provides a vehicle for an expanding societal conversation. Auksalaq is a significant cultural event that marries science as the brain, art as…
Lake Tahoe is one of hundreds of lakes around the world in the midst of a warming trend. The effects of climate change are starting to complicate efforts to maintain the lake’s relatively pristine state, putting Tahoe’s sapphire blue water and its overall ecological health at risk. Surrounded by the Sierra Nevada Mountains and…
News reports about warming lake temperatures began to trickle into my world lakes news feed as the summer heated up this year. I read stories about warmer than normal lakes in North America and Europe, including lakes in Kansas, California, and Washington. By the end of July, the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of…
Posted by 
This year has seen the Arctic sea ice sheet melt further, and faster, than has ever been seen before in human history – a whopping 760,000 square kilometers less than ever recorded (which is 3.29 million square kilometers below the average minimum). Though images of polar bears and walrus stranded on melting ice-cubes pop…
Posted by Deforestation, especially of tropical forests, makes up 18 percent of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — more emissions than the entire global transportation sector. The 2007 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasized that reducing deforestation would be the most significant and immediate way to begin reducing global levels of…
Posted by 
Climate change is the result of not behaving in the right way, according to the isolated Trio, an indigenous people living in Suriname’s Amazon forest near its border with Brazil. “They see climate change as big problem. They say their forests are changing, deteriorating,” said Gwendolyn Smith, a project director for the non-profit organization Amazon Conservation…
Posted by 
The capital of Western Australia, Perth, is at the epicenter of global climate change. The city’s strategic response offers lessons about climate change mitigation, exacerbation and adaptation. The lessons are acutely relevant to the United States, particularly California. The grass is greener and there’s lots of it in Perth, as residents who once called…
Obama Moves Ahead with Oil Sanctions as Gas Prices Climb
Posted by Tim Profeta of Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Duke University on April 5, 2012 Before Congress headed home for spring recess, the Senate, with a rate vote of 100, approved President Obama’s new round of sanctions designed to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The president’s decision was based on an analysis of current oil supply and the likely effect of further sanctions on prices. The Senate also shot down the president’s bid to reduce subsidies to oil producers. Oil…
Many indigenous peoples are living examples of societies thriving with sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles. Successfully meeting the global climate change challenge requires that much of the world shift from high carbon-living to low. This shift is daunting. Current emissions for Australia and the United States average about 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person. In…
“REDD is the new beast in the forest,” said Patrick Anderson of the Forest Peoples Programme in Indonesia here at Climate Change Mitigation with Local Communities and Indigenous peoples workshop in Cairns, Australia. Deforestation gobbles up an area the size of Greece (13 million hectares) every year. As if that loss wasn’t bad enough, it…
Climate Change Questions From Glacier National Park
Posted by David Robinson on March 26, 2012 “Climate Connections” is a video series produced by the U.S. Geological Survey, in which scientists answer questions about climate change from across the nation. The latest episode focuses on Glacier National Park in Montana, and the repercussions of global warming on the park’s eponymous glaciers.
“Planning is not part of our culture. You just get up in the morning and do what you need to do for the day,” said Marilyn Wallace of the Kuku Nyungka ‘mob’ (aboriginal nation) in northern Queensland, Australia. “Bama,” people caring for their local territory, is an important part of aboriginal culture and identity,…
In what may be a ‘clash of worldviews,’ representatives from indigenous and local communities are holding a climate workshop with physicists, computer modellers, and other climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Cairns, Australia 26-28 March. This is a unique opportunity for Native peoples to discuss their traditional knowledge and experiences as…
Maldives President and Climate Advocate Forced at Gunpoint to Step Down
Posted by Mason Inman on February 9, 2012 Maldives leader Mohamed Nasheed, called the “world’s most environmentally outspoken president” because of his calls for drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions, was forced to resign—at gunpoint, he claimed. He had used stunts such as an underwater cabinet meeting to highlight his island nation’s vulnerability to sea-level rise. His resignation followed weeks of protests and was apparently motivated by internal politics unrelated to…
We have the knowledge that can contribute to finding solutions to the crisis of climate change. But if you’re not prepared to listen, how can we communicate this to you? — Marcos Terena, Xané leader, Brazil. The precipitous rise in the world’s human population and humankind’s ever-increasing dependence on fossil fuel-based ways of living have…
Fight Over Tar Sands Pipeline May Lead to Cancellation, “Huge” Consequences
Posted by Mason Inman on January 5, 2012 In November, the Obama administration decided to delay a decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands from Canada to the United States. But in December, Republicans attached a provision to a tax bill, which President Obama signed, that urges the administration to decide on the pipeline within 60 days,…
Indigenous People Sound the Alarm on Climate Change
Posted by Brian Clark Howard of National Geographic in Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples on October 11, 2011 
The air in the auditorium smelled faintly of burnt herbs. Josefina Lema Aguilar, a Kichwa elder from the mountains of Ecuador, lit a tiny sacred fire to bless last week’s conference on “Seeking Balance: Indigenous Knowledge, Western Science and Climate Change.” Dressed in traditional garb from the Andes, Aguilar gave the event’s opening prayer at…
