Scientists Find Organic Farms Have Higher Quality Fruit, Better Soil, Lower Environmental Impact
Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.
“Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the sustainability benefits of organic farming systems,” said John Reganold, Washington State University Regents professor of soil science and lead author of a paper published today in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE. “We also show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an arsenal of pesticides.”
The study is among the most comprehensive of its kind, analyzing 31 chemical and biological soil properties, soil DNA, and the taste, nutrition and quality of three strawberry varieties on more than two dozen commercial fields—13 conventional and 13 organic.
“There is no paper in the literature that comprehensively and quantitatively compares so many indices of both food and soil quality at multiple sampling times on so many commercial farms,” said Reganold. Previous Reganold studies of “sustainability indicators” on farms in the Pacific Northwest, California, British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand have appeared in the journals Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (more…)
Goodbye to Cold Nights
Farm in Candelario, Spain (G.Chris Clark)
Given the impact of climatic extremes on agriculture and health in Spain, researchers at the University of Salamanca (USAL) have analysed the two factors most representative of these thermal extremes between 1950 and 2006 – warm days and cold nights. The results for mainland Spain show an increase in the number of warm days greater than that for the rest of the planet and a reduction in the number of cold nights.
Few studies to date have focused on climatic extremes and the changes occurring in maximum and minimum temperatures and in warm day and cold night variables. Until now, most research studies had analysed average temperature changes on a global scale. These results indicated an increase “most probably” caused by human factors.
The new study, published in the journal Climatic Change, has made it possible to analyse the causes of the variations in climatic extremes from a physical point of view, in other words “which changes are taking place in the air masses reaching the Iberian Peninsula, as well as sea temperature”, as Concepción Rodríguez, lead author of the study and a researcher at the General and Atmospheric Physics Department at the USAL, tells SINC. (more…)
Dramatic Climate Change is Unpredictable
This is a schematic picture of the climate represented by the red ball. The climate can be located in two different states, the two valleys on each side of a hill. In the first scenario the climate is like a seesaw. If the outside influences increase or, for example, increased CO2 makes the weight heavier on the other side, the seesaw will tip forcing the climate over into the other state. The climate change would be predictable. In the second scenario, the hill is fixed and a series of small chaotic kicks from wind and weather could cause it to roll over into the other state. This climate change is unpredictable. Mathematically speaking, the first scenario is a "bifurcation" and the second scenario "noise-induced transition". (Credit: Peter Ditlevsen)
The fear that global temperature can change very quickly and cause dramatic climate changes that may have a disastrous impact on many countries and populations is great around the world. But what causes climate change and is it possible to predict future climate change? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen shows that it may be due to an accumulation of different chaotic influences and as a result would be difficult to predict. The results have just been published in Geophysical Research Letters.
For millions of years the Earth’s climate has alternated between about 100,000 years of ice age and approximately 10-15,000 years of a warm climate like we have today. The climate change is controlled by the Earth’s orbit in space, that is to say the Earth’s tilt and distance from the sun. But there are also other climatic shifts in the Earth’s history and what caused those?
Dramatic climate change of the past
By analysing the ice cores that are drilled through the more than three kilometer thick ice sheet in Greenland, scientists can obtain information about the temperature and climate going back around 140,000 years. (more…)
Powering Australia with Waves
Coledale Beach south of Sydney, New South Wales
Wave energy is surging ahead as a viable source of renewable energy to generate electricity — with Australia’s southern margin identified by the World Energy Council as one of the world’s most promising sites for wave-energy generation.
One problem for wave-energy developers, however, is that previous estimates of wave-energy potential are based on information in deep ocean water, while “wave-energy generation systems are typically positioned near to shore,” says physical oceanographer Mark Hemer of Australia’s CSIRO Wealth for Oceans National research flagship.
In a paper in the AIP’s Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Hemer and colleague David Griffin provide new estimates of the wave-energy potential of Australia’s near-shore regions. They also calculate how much of Australia’s energy needs could be obtained from wave energy alone. Australia’s present-day electricity consumption is 130,000 gigawatt-hours/year. Hemer and Griffin show that if 10 percent of the near-shore wave energy available along Australia’s Southern coastline could be converted into electricity, half of the country’s present-day electricity consumption would be met. (more…)
Signs of Reversal of Arctic Cooling in Some Areas
Yuri Kononov of the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Michael Friedrich of the Institute of Botany, University of Hohenheim are collecting tree samples of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) in the Khibiny Low Mountains (central Kola Peninsula in Arctic Russia). (Credit: Photo: Michael Friedrich /Institute of Botany, University of Hohenheim)
Parts of the Arctic have cooled clearly over the past century, but temperatures have been rising steeply since 1990 also there. This is the finding of a summer temperature reconstruction for the past 400 years produced on the base of tree rings from regions beyond the Arctic Circle. German and Russian researchers analysed tree growth using ring width of pine from Russia’s Kola Peninsula and compared their findings with similar studies from other parts of the Arctic. For the past 400 years since AD 1600, the reconstructed summer temperature on Kola in the months of July and August has varied between 10.4°C (1709) and 14.7°C (1957), with a mean of 12.2°C. Afterwards, after a cooling phase, a ongoing warming can be observed from 1990 onwards. Researchers from the Institute of Geography in Moscow, Hohenheim University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) report in journal Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research: “The data indicate that solar activity may have been one of the major driving factors of summer temperatures, but this has been overlaid by other factors since 1990″.
The researchers used for this study wood samples from a total of 69 Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) from the Khibiny Mountains on the Kola Peninsula, situated between the Arctic Circle and the ocean port of Murmansk, not far from the Finnish border. The investigated region is a transition zone between Scandinavia, which is strongly affected by the gulf stream resp. North Atlantic Current, and the continental regions Eurasia. This makes the region particularly interesting for climatological studies. (more…)
When Climate Change Becomes a Health Issue, Are People More Likely To Listen?
Edward Maibach
Framing climate change as a public health problem seems to make the issue more relevant, significant and understandable to members of the public—even some who don’t generally believe climate change is happening, according to preliminary research by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication (4C).
The center recently conducted an exploratory study in the United States of people’s reactions to a public health-framed short essay on climate change. They found that on the whole, people who read the essay reacted positively to the information.
Previous research conducted by Mason investigators and others, using people’s beliefs, behaviors and policy preferences about global warming as assessed in a national survey, identified six distinct segments of Americans, termed Global Warming’s Six Americas.
In the current research, 4C director Edward Maibach interviewed approximately one dozen people in each of the Six Americas after they read the brief essay on the human health implications of global warming. As expected, he found that members of the audience segments who already believe strongly that climate change is happening had a strong positive response to the new information, while people who are less sure if climate change is happening also found value in the information. Nearly half of the comments made by members of the “Disengaged” segment, for example, indicated that the essay reflected their personal point of view, was informative or thought-provoking or offered valuable prescriptive information on how to take action relative to climate change. Moreover, about 40 percent of those people in the “Doubtful” segment had similar positive reactions to the essay. (more…)
Global Model Confirms: Cool Roofs Can Offset Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Mitigate Global Warming
Can light-colored rooftops and roads really curb carbon emissions and combat global climate change? The idea has been around for years, but now, a new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that is the first to use a global model to study the question has found that implementing cool roofs and cool pavements in cities around the world can not only help cities stay cooler, they can also cool the world, with the potential of canceling the heating effect of up to two years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.
Because white roofs reflect far more of the sun’s heat than black ones, buildings with white roofs will stay cooler. If the building is air conditioned, less air conditioning will be required, thus saving energy. Even if there is no air conditioning, the heat absorbed by a black roof both heats the space below, making the space less comfortable, and is also carried into the city air by wind—raising the ambient temperature in what is known as the urban heat island effect. Additionally, there’s a third, less familiar way in which a black roof heats the world: it radiates energy directly into the atmosphere, which is then absorbed by the nearest clouds and ends up trapped by the greenhouse effect, contributing to global warming.
Cool roof in Solano
Today, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a series of initiatives at the Department of Energy to more broadly implement cool roof technologies on DOE facilities and buildings across the federal government. As part of the effort to make the federal government more energy efficient, Chu has directed all DOE offices to install cool roofs, whenever cost effective over the lifetime of the roof, when constructing new roofs or replacing old ones at DOE facilities. Additionally, the Secretary has also issued a letter to the heads of other federal agencies, encouraging them to take similar steps at their facilities. (more…)
New Research Shows Why Some Communities Embrace Environmental Conservation and Others Don’t
Continued support for off-shore oil drilling by Gulf Coast residents who are dealing with one of the most devastating environmental disasters in U.S. history might seem surprising, but new research from the University of New Hampshire shows that local factors such as unemployment and population growth influence views about the value of environmental conservation and regulation.
The research is presented in the most recent issue of the journal Rural Sociology in the article “Place Effects on Environmental Views.”
“Our research shows that people who live in rural areas with high unemployment rates are less likely to support environmental regulations. Economic pressures help to understand why, in spite of the devastation caused by the BP oil spill, many residents of the Gulf Coast oppose a moratorium on off-shore drilling,” said Larry Hamilton, professor of sociology, senior fellow at the Carsey Institute at UNH, and lead author of the study. The study is co-authored by Chris Colocousis, assistant professor at James Madison University, and Mil Duncan, director of the Carsey Institute at UNH. (more…)
Iowa State Students Take Their Professor’s Advice and Start a Bioenergy Company
Three recent Iowa State University graduates, left to right, Cody Ellens, Anthony Pollard and Jared Brown, are working with Dennis Banasiak, a former energy and agchemical executive, to launch Avello Bioenergy Inc. The new company is based at Iowa State's BioCentury Research Farm. (Photo by Bob Elbert/Iowa State University)
Iowa State University’s Robert C. Brown pulled a few of his graduate students aside a couple years back and offered up an extracurricular challenge.
“You are all experts on pyrolysis,” he remembers telling them. “Why don’t you start a company specifically to commercialize bio-oil recovery?”
The result is Avello Bioenergy Inc. based at Iowa State University’s BioCentury Research Farm just west of Ames.
Brown – an Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Engineering, the Gary and Donna Hoover Chair in Mechanical Engineering and Iowa Farm Bureau director of Iowa State’s Bioeconomy Institute – had worked with the students to research and develop fast pyrolysis technology. Fast pyrolysis quickly heats biomass (such as corn stalks and leaves) in the absence of oxygen to produce a liquid product known as bio-oil that can be used to manufacture fuels and chemicals and a solid product called biochar that can be used to enrich soil and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. (more…)
Temporary Climate Change Fix Could Impact Rainfall Patterns
Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.
One proposed emergency fix to halt global warming is to seed clouds over the ocean to make them more reflective, reducing the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth. But the scheme could also change global rainfall patterns, raising concerns of water shortages on land. A new study by the Carnegie Institution, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science, suggests that altered atmospheric circulation under the scheme in fact could increase monsoonal rains and cause the continents to become wetter, not drier, on average.
Whitening clouds over the ocean to reflect sunlight is one of several geoengineering schemes proposed to counter global warming. The whitening would be accomplished by reducing the size of the water droplets making up the clouds. “Rain clouds, which have big droplets, tend to be grey and absorb sunlight, whereas clouds with smaller droplets tend to be white and fluffy and reflect more sunlight to space,” says co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. “In practice this could be done by shooting a fine spray of seawater high into the air, where the tiny salt particles would create condensation nucleii to form small cloud droplets.”
To test the climate consequences of doing this, Caldeira and his coauthors* used a computer simulation of the global climate system in which atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were set at approximately twice that of present day. Cloud droplets over the oceans in the model were reduced in size to make the clouds more reflective. Clouds over land were unaltered. As expected, the whitened clouds reflected more solar radiation and offset the warming effect of the high carbon dioxide levels. (more…)
The Vanishing Face of Gaia - Dr. James Lovelock Video
Corporate Knights presents Dr. James Lovelock, originator of The Gaia Hypothesis (also known as Gaia Theory), discussing the need for human adaptation and survival in a coming era of massive environmental change due to global heating based on his latest book, “The Vanishing Face of Gaia”.
Biography:
(Excerpted from Wikipedia)
A lifelong inventor, Lovelock has created and developed many scientific instruments, some of which were designed for NASA in its program of planetary exploration. It was while working as a consultant for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis, for which he is most widely known.
In early 1961, Lovelock was engaged by NASA to develop sensitive instruments for the analysis of extraterrestrial atmospheres and planetary surfaces. The Viking program, that visited Mars in the late 1970s, was motivated in part to determine whether Mars supported life, and many of the sensors and experiments that were ultimately deployed aimed to resolve this issue. During work on a precursor of this program, Lovelock became interested in the composition of the Martian atmosphere, reasoning that many life forms on Mars would be obliged to make use of it (and, thus, alter it). However, the atmosphere was found to be in a stable condition close to its chemical equilibrium, with very little oxygen, methane, or hydrogen, but with an overwhelming abundance of carbon dioxide. To Lovelock, the stark contrast between the Martian atmosphere and chemically dynamic mixture of that of our Earth’s biosphere was strongly indicative of the absence of life on the planet.[ However, when they were finally launched to Mars, the Viking probes still searched (unsuccessfully) for extant life there.
Lovelock invented the electron capture detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion. After studying the operation of the Earth’s sulfur cycle, Lovelock and his colleagues developed the CLAW hypothesis as a possible example of biological control of the Earth’s climate.
After the development of his electron capture detector, in the late 1960s, Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. He found a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland and, in a partially self-funded research expedition in 1972, went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 from the northern hemisphere to the Antarctic aboard the research vessel RRS Shackleton. He found the gas in each of the 50 air samples that he collected but, not realising that the breakdown of CFCs in the stratosphere would release chlorine that posed a threat to the ozone layer, concluded that the level of CFCs constituted “no conceivable hazard”. He has since stated that he meant “no conceivable toxic hazard”.
However, the experiment did provide the first useful data on the ubiquitous presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. The damage caused to the ozone layer by the photolysis of CFCs was later discovered by Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina. After hearing a lecture on the subject of Lovelock’s results, they embarked on research that resulted in the first published paper that suggested a link between stratospheric CFCs and ozone depletion in 1974, and later shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work.
Gaia hypothesis
First formulated by Lovelock during the 1960s as a result of work for NASA concerned with detecting life on Mars, the Gaia hypothesis proposes that living and non-living parts of the earth form a complex interacting system that can be thought of as a single organism. Named after the Greek goddess Gaia at the suggestion of novelist William Golding, the hypothesis postulates that the biosphere has a regulatory effect on the Earth’s environment that acts to sustain life.
While the Gaia hypothesis was readily accepted by many in the environmentalist community, it has not been widely accepted within the scientific community. Among its more famous critics are the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins, Ford Doolittle, and Stephen Jay Gould — notable, given the diversity of this trio’s views on other scientific matters. These (and other) critics have questioned how natural selection operating on individual organisms can lead to the evolution of planetary-scale homeostasis.
Lovelock has responded to these criticisms with models such as Daisyworld, that illustrate how individual-level effects can translate to planetary homeostasis, under the right circumstances.
Nuclear power
Lovelock has become concerned about the threat of global warming from the greenhouse effect. In 2004 he caused a media sensation when he broke with many fellow environmentalists by pronouncing that “only nuclear power can now halt global warming”. In his view, nuclear energy is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels that has the capacity to both fulfill the large scale energy needs of humankind while also reducing greenhouse emissions. He is an open member of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy.
In 2005, against the backdrop of renewed UK government interest in nuclear power, Lovelock again publicly announced his support for nuclear energy, stating, “I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy”. Although these interventions in the public debate on nuclear power are recent, his views on it are longstanding. In his 1988 book The Ages of Gaia he states:
“I have never regarded nuclear radiation or nuclear power as anything other than a normal and inevitable part of the environment. Our prokaryotic forebears evolved on a planet-sized lump of fallout from a star-sized nuclear explosion, a supernova that synthesised the elements that go to make our planet and ourselves.”
James Lovelock in conversation with science editor Tim Radford.
Retooling the Ocean Conveyor Belt
Long-time collaborators Amy Bower (left) of WHOI and Susan Lozier (right) of Duke University aboard the research vessel Oceanus in July 2003 during a cruise to deploy the sound beacons and launch the first set of floats for their study on the North Atlantic circulation. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
For decades, oceanographers have embraced the idea that Earth’s ocean currents operate like a giant conveyor belt, overturning to continuously transport deep, cold polar waters toward the equator and warm equatorial surface waters back toward the poles along narrow boundary currents. The model held that the conveyor belt was driven by changes in the temperature and salinity of the surface waters at high latitudes.
In a paper in the June 18 issue of Science, a Duke University oceanographer reviews the growing body of evidence that suggests it’s time to rethink the conveyor belt model.
“The old model is no longer valid for the ocean’s overturning, not because it’s a gross simplification, but because it ignores crucial elements such as eddies and the wind field. The concept of a conveyor belt for the overturning was developed decades ago, before oceanographers had measured the eddy field of the ocean and before they understood how energy from the wind impacts the overturning,” says Susan Lozier, professor of physical oceanography and chair of the Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
“It is important to understand that there is clear and convincing evidence that the ocean waters overturn and that this overturning impact’s the Earth’s climate,” she says. “Recent studies, however, have cast doubt on our ability to describe this overturning as a conveyor belt. From these studies we now understand that the overturning waters are not restricted to narrow boundary currents, that the overturning may vary from one ocean basin to the next and that the winds may create variability in the amount of water that overturns and in the pathways for the upper and lower limbs of the overturning.” (more…)
Human Impacts Significantly Altering Ocean Chemistry
WHOI chemist Scott Doney.(Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Numerous studies are documenting the growing effects of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world’s oceans. But most of those have studied single, isolated sources of pollution and other influences.
Now, a marine geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has published a report in the latest issue of the journal Science that evaluates the total impact of such factors on the ocean and considers what the future might hold.
“What we do on land—agriculture, fossil fuel combustion and pollution—can have a profound impact on the chemistry of the sea,” says Scott C. Doney, a senior scientist at WHOI and author of the Science report. “A whole range of these factors have been studied in isolation but have not been put in a single venue.”
Doney’s paper represents a meticulous compilation of the work of others as well as his own research in this area, which includes ocean acidification, climate change, and the global carbon cycle.
He concludes that climate change, rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, excess nutrient inputs, and the many forms of pollution are “altering fundamentally the…ocean, often on a global scale and, in some cases, at rates greatly exceeding those in the historical and recent geological record.” (more…)
Changing Chesapeake Bay Acidity Impacting Oyster Shell Growth
New research shows that the shell growth of Crassostrea virginica from Chesapeake Bay could be compromised by current levels of acidity in some Bay waters. (Chris Kelly, UMCES Horn Point Laboratory)
Acidity is increasing in some regions of the Chesapeake Bay even faster than is occurring in the open ocean, where it is now recognized that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolve in the seawater thereby making it more acidic. These more acidic conditions in key parts of Chesapeake Bay reduce rates of juvenile oyster shell formation, according to new research published in the journal Estuaries and Coasts. The study, conducted at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, examined 23 years of water quality data and concluded that significant trends in acidity will have mixed impacts on juvenile oyster growth, with some areas becoming more acidic and others more alkaline.
“The regional changes in acidity revealed in our analysis are greater than what could be caused by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide alone,” said lead author Dr. George Waldbusser of Oregon State University. “We are seeing a complex pattern of increasing acidity in the more saline regions of the Bay, but the opposite trend of decreasing acidity in the less saline waters of the Bay.” (more…)
Large Majority of Americans Still Believe in Global Warming, Stanford Poll Finds
Woods Institute Senior Fellow Jon Krosnick, a professor of communication and of political science at Stanford.
Three out of four Americans believe that the Earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it, according to a new survey by researchers at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
The survey was conducted by Woods Institute Senior Fellow Jon Krosnick, a professor of communication and of political science at Stanford, with funding from the National Science Foundation. The results are based on telephone interviews conducted from June 1-7 with 1,000 randomly selected American adults.
“Several national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people,” Krosnick said. “But our new survey shows just the opposite.”
For example, when respondents in the June 2010 survey were asked if the Earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74 percent said yes. And 75 percent said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred. Krosnick has asked similar questions in previous Woods Institute polls since 2006.
“Our surveys reveal a small decline in the proportion of people who believe global warming has been happening, from 84 percent in 2007 to 74 percent today,” Krosnick said. “Statistical analysis of our data revealed that this decline is attributable to perceptions of recent weather changes by the minority of Americans who have been skeptical about climate scientists.” (more…)
Amount of Dust, Pollen Matters for Precipitation in Clouds & Climate Change
Paul DeMott, research scientist in Atmospheric Chemistry
A lot of large particles of dust and pollen in the atmosphere may make your nose twitch, but they can lead directly to greater precipitation in clouds, Colorado State University atmospheric scientists have discovered for the first time.
The amount of ice crystals necessary to form precipitation in clouds is linked to the abundance of larger aerosol particles in the atmosphere, according to a study by Paul DeMott and Anthony Prenni, research scientists in the Atmospheric Science department at Colorado State. Their findings appear in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Using these new findings, a global climate model predicted that clouds have a stronger cooling effect on the globe than previously estimated. However, future increases in these ice nuclei for cold clouds would reduce the cooling impact on climate and vice versa, the scientists found.
Special particles called aerosols – resulting from desert dust, some biological processes and possibly from pollution – are needed as catalysts to form ice in clouds, which can influence precipitation and cloud dynamics. These particles can serve as the center, or nuclei, for cloud droplets that combine to form raindrops.
“The catalysts for most ice nuclei are primary emissions – from pollution or sea spray or dust,” DeMott said. “The bigger the particles, the better it is for ice nuclei.”
At the same time, pinpointing a number of particles at a specific temperature is too simple for climate models to accurately represent what’s occurring in nature, DeMott said. (more…)
Lemurs of Madagascar Offer Clues to Global-Warming Rainforest Impact
Global warming may present a threat to animal and plant life even in biodiversity hot spots once thought less likely to suffer from climate change, according to a new study from Rice University.
Research by Amy Dunham, a Rice assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, detailed for the first time a direct correlation between the frequency of El Niño and a threat to life in Madagascar, a tropical island that acts as a refuge for many unique species that exist nowhere else in the world. In this case, the lemur plays the role of the canary in the coal mine.
The study in the journal Global Change Biology is currently available online and will be included in an upcoming print issue.
Dunham said most studies of global warming focus on temperate zones. “We all know about the polar bears and their melting sea ice,” she said. “But tropical regions are often thought of as refuges during past climate events, so they haven’t been given as much attention until recently.
“We’re starting to realize that not only are these hot spots of biodiversity facing habitat degradation and other anthropogenic effects, but they’re also being affected by the same changes we feel in the temperate zones.”
Dunham’s interest in lemurs, which began as an undergraduate student at Connecticut College, resulted in a groundbreaking study last year that provided new insight into a long-standing mystery: Why male and female lemurs are the same size. (more…)
Ocean Currents Likely to Carry Oil Along Atlantic Coast
This still image is from an animation showing one scenario of how oil released at the location of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico may move in the upper 65 feet of the ocean. This is not a forecast, but rather, it illustrates a likely dispersal pathway of the oil for roughly four months following the spill. (Visualization by Tim Scheitlin and Rick Brownrigg, NCAR; based on model simulations)
A detailed computer modeling study released today indicates that oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer. The modeling results are captured in a series of dramatic animations produced by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and collaborators.
The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor. The results were reviewed by scientists at NCAR and elsewhere, although not yet submitted for peer-review publication.
“I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Will the oil reach Florida?’” says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock, who worked on the study. “Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood.”
The computer simulations indicate that, once the oil in the uppermost ocean has become entrained in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast-moving Loop Current, it is likely to reach Florida’s Atlantic coast within weeks. It can then move north as far as about Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with the Gulf Stream, before turning east. Whether the oil will be a thin film on the surface or mostly subsurface due to mixing in the uppermost region of the ocean is not known. (more…)
Reforestation May Lower the Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Forests
Scientists at the University of Oklahoma and the Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have found that reforestation and afforestation — the creation of new forests — may lower the potential of forests for climate change lessening.
Yiqi Luo, professor of ecology in the OU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Botany and Microbiology, and Changzhang Liao, Bo Li and Changming Fang, professors of ecology in the Fudon University Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, examined whether plantations have the same ecosystem carbon stock as natural forests.
By synthesizing 86 experimental studies between plantations and their natural forest counterparts, Luo and colleagues found plantations substantially reduce carbon stock in ecosystems in comparison with natural forests.
“That decrease in ecosystem carbon stock should be accounted for, together with other forest products such as the harvested wood, when the total mitigation of reforestation is evaluated,” said Luo. (more…)
Research Examines Effects of Scientific Claims on Oil
A University of Alberta researcher says people generally do not act on information about the effects fossil fuel-based products are having on the environment. And the reason, says English and film studies researcher Imre Szeman, is because of the way discussions on environmental issues are structured.
In a recently published study, Szeman says the main assumption among scientists—that with knowledge comes behavioural change—is proving to be an ineffective premise in dealing with environmental problems resulting from oil production and use.
In “System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster,” Szeman says there are three social narratives that prevent people from acting on the knowledge they have concerning the effects of oil on the environment: strategic realism, the notion that oil production is good because it supports economic security; eco-apocalypse, which Szeman explains as our incapacity to act on knowledge we have; and technological utopianism, the belief that technology will solve environmental problems resulting from oil and its usage. (more…)
Beyond Polar Bears? Experts Look For a New Vision of Climate Change to Combat Skepticism
Climate change is about more than just polar bears. That is the message from Dr Kate Manzo whose research into climate change communication has been published in Meteorological Applications. The research, which reviews the efforts of journalists, campaigners and politicians to engage the British public with climate change, explores how new ‘visual strategies’ can communicate climate change messages against a backdrop of increased climate scepticism.
“There have been various efforts to put a face on the climate change issue,” said Dr Manzo, from Newcastle University. “Communicators need to move away from the traditional images of polar bears or fear-laden imagery to find new, inspirational motifs to engage people with climate change. My research has uncovered a variety of possibilities – such as windmills as icons of renewable energy – as well as alternatives to documentary photography as the dominant form of climate change communication. Artists and cartoonists are among the producers of inspirational alternatives.”
“A recent study of American public perception showed that fewer people are convinced of the reality of climate change, and of those that are only 36% attribute it to human activity. This shows the variance of levels of climate change knowledge and understanding, which effects how people behave in response. It also highlights the need for strategies to boost the cognitive and behavioural elements of climate change engagement without resorting to methods such as fear appeals that are, at best, a double edged sword.” (more…)
Temperature and Salt Levels of the Western Mediterranean Are On the Increase
Temperatures and salt levels of the Western Mediterranean are on the increase. (Manuel Vargas-Yáñez)
Spanish scientists have analysed the temperature and salt levels of the Western Mediterranean Sea between 1943 and 2000 to study the evolution of each variable. Their research shows that, since at least the 1940s, the deep water has become progressively hotter and saltier, and that, since the 1990s, this process has speeded up.
Each year the temperature of the deep layer of the Western Mediterranean increases by 0.002ºC, and its salt levels increase by 0.001 units of salinity. These changes, although minimal from year to year, have been continuously and constantly occurring at a faster pace since the 1990s.
The results are consistent, “but to confirm this accelerating trend, we need to monitor it over the years to come”, Manuel Vargas-Yáñez, main author of the study and researcher at the Oceanic Centre of Malaga of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), assures SINC.
In their study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the researchers analysed the temperature and salt levels of the three layers of the Mediterranean Sea: the upper layer (from the surface to 150-200 metres deep with water that enters from the Atlantic), the middle layer (from 200 to 600 metres deep with water from the eastern Mediterranean that enters the western basin via the Strait of Sicily), and the deep layer (from 600 metres to the sea bed with water from the western Mediterranean). (more…)
New Climate Change Reports Underscore Need for Action
William Kearney, Deputy Executive Director and Director of Media Relations begins the press briefing. Robert W. Fri, Pamela A. Matson, and Thomas J. Wilbanks are seated at the panelists' table.
As part of its most comprehensive study of climate change to date, the National Research Council today issued three reports emphasizing why the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change. The reports by the Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering, are part of a congressionally requested suite of five studies known as AMERICA’S CLIMATE CHOICES.
“These reports show that the state of climate change science is strong,” said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “But the nation also needs the scientific community to expand upon its understanding of why climate change is happening, and focus also on when and where the most severe impacts will occur and what we can do to respond.”
‘Poses Significant Risks’
The compelling case that climate change is occurring and is caused in large part by human activities is based on a strong, credible body of evidence, says ADVANCING THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, one of the new reports. While noting that there is always more to learn and that the scientific process is never “closed,” the report emphasizes that multiple lines of evidence support scientific understanding of climate change. The core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. (more…)
Strategies for Increasing Carbon Stored in Forests and Wood
Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon
While the U.S. and other world leaders consider options for offsetting carbon emissions, it is important to take into account the role forests play in the global carbon cycle, say scientists in a paper published in the spring edition of Issues in Ecology. Currently, the carbon stored in forests and harvested wood products offsets 12-19 percent of U.S. fossil fuel emissions—growth primarily the result of recovery from the large scale harvesting that occurred around 100 years ago. These high offsets are not permanent but have the potential to increase; however, not without tradeoffs.
“Several strategies for offsetting carbon emissions have been proposed or are currently being implemented in the U.S.,” says Mike Ryan from the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and lead author of the paper. “Some of the important tradeoffs are worth mentioning because many people have viewed forests as a simple and uncomplicated partial solution to reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, and they are not.”
Mike Ryan and colleagues discuss eight strategies being used or proposed in the U.S., and the risks, uncertainties and tradeoffs of each. These include avoiding deforestation, afforestation (planting or replanting forests), decreasing harvests, increasing the growth rate of existing forests, using biomass energy from forests to reduce carbon emissions, using wood products in place of concrete or steel for building materials, implementing urban forestry and using fuel management to reduce fire threats. (more…)
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