postMigrator

Climate Change Could Force 1 Billion From Their Homes by 2050

By postMigrator May 1, 2008 May 1, 2008 RT Newswire

Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 by The Independent/UK
Climate Change Could Force 1 Billion From Their Homes by 2050
by Nigel Morris

As many as one billion people could lose their homes by 2050 because of the devastating impact of global warming, scientists and political leaders will be warned today.

They will hear that the steady rise in temperatures across the planet could trigger mass migration on unprecedented levels.

Hundreds of millions could be forced to go on the move because of water shortages and crop failures in most of Africa, as well as in central and southern Asia and South America, the conference in London will be told. There could also be an effect on levels of starvation and on food prices as agriculture struggles to cope with growing demand in increasingly arid conditions.

Next Decade “May See No Warming”

By postMigrator May 1, 2008 May 1, 2008 RT Newswire

Next decade ‘may see no warming’
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

La Nina conditions have brought unseasonably cold weather to Europe

The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.

A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.

However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.

Scientists: World’s Largest Lake Warming Rapidly

By postMigrator May 1, 2008 May 1, 2008 Uncategorized

World’s largest lake warming rapidly: scientists
Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:46pm EDT By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Siberia’s Lake Baikal has warmed faster than global air temperatures over the past 60 years, which could put animals unique to the world’s largest lake in jeopardy, U.S. and Russian scientists said.

The lake has warmed 1.21 degrees Celsius (2.18 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1946 due to climate change, almost three times faster than global air temperatures, according to a paper by the scientists to be published next month in the journal “Global Change Biology.”

Energy Transmission in Biological Systems

By postMigrator May 1, 2008 May 1, 2008 Uncategorized

Excerpts from George M. Woodwell’s “The Energy Cycle of the
Biosphere,” Scientific American, September 1970.

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“It is solar energy that moves the rabbit, the deer, the whale, the
boy on the bicycle outside my window, my pencil as I write these
words.”

“Only about a tenth of 1 percent of the energy received from the sun
by the earth is fixed by photosynthesis …. about the equivalent to
the annual production of between 150 and 200 billion tons of dry
organic matter and includes both food for man and the energy that
runs the life support systems of the biosphere, namely the earth’s
major ecosystems : the forests, grasslands, oceans, marshes,
estuaries, lakes, rivers, tundras, and deserts.