Fairfield, ME – Volunteers with the Native Forest Network (NFN) staged a mock “Fossil Fool’s Day” awards ceremony today at the offices of the Plum Creek Timber Company to draw attention to the potential impacts of the company’s Moosehead region development proposal on the regional and global climate. If approved by the Land Use Regulation Commission, the group says, Plum Creek’s plan would increase Maine’s total carbon emissions by nearly 8%– a growth in climate-altering pollution that the state’s communities and ecosystems cannot afford.
Category: RT Newswire
USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.
American West Heating Nearly Twice as Fast as Rest of World
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 27, 2008
4:55 PM
CONTACT: NRDC
Craig Noble at 415-875-6100 (office) or 415-601-8235 (mobile)
American West Heating Nearly Twice as Fast as Rest of World, New Analysis Shows
Groups Say Western Senators Have Opportunity to Protect Region from Growing Economic Toll
SAN FRANCISCO – March 27 – The American West is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the world, according to a new analysis of the most recent federal government temperature figures. The news is especially bad for some of the nation’s fastest growing cities, which receive water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The average temperature rise in the Southwest’s largest river basin was more than double the average global increase, likely spelling even more parched conditions.
“Global warming is hitting the West hard,” said Theo Spencer of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “It is already taking an economic toll on the region’s tourism, recreation, skiing, hunting and fishing activities. The speed of warming and mounting economic damage make clear the urgent need to limit global warming pollution.”
For the report, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) analyzed new temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 11 western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007 the average temperature in the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, was 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the historical average for the 20th Century. The temperature rise was more than twice the global average increase of 1.0 degree during the same period. The average temperature increased 1.7 degrees in the entire 11-state western region.
Desert Southwest Warming Faster Than Planetary Average
Tucson Citizen
Arizona’s temperatures rising more than the planet’s average
The Arizona Republic
Published: 03.29.2008
While the rest of the world has experienced a relatively moderate increase in temperature over the past five years, the American Southwest has begun to broil.
The National Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, both environmental-action groups, analyzed federal weather data from 2003 to 2007.
Their research, released Thursday, showed that although the globe warmed by an average of 1 degree Fahrenheit during that period, the West warmed by 1.7 degrees and Arizona by 2.2 degrees.
The temperatures were compared with the historical average of the 20th century.
The report, “Hotter and Drier: The West’s Changed Climate,” did not definitively pin the warming on the actions of people but said it is “very likely that most of the warming since the middle of the 20th century is the result of human pollutants.”
The National Resources Defense Council warned that the increase has already begun to affect the region’s agricultural, recreation and tourism industries.
Tony Haffer of the National Weather Service in Phoenix said there is no doubt the region has gotten warmer in the past five years. Haffer said, however, that it is still not clear whether the higher temperatures are the product of global warming or if this is just a normal, cyclical event.
“We’re in a drought cycle. When it’s dry, it’s warmer,” he said. “There is no question it is warmer. But what it means, that’s still a question.”
This new research folds neatly, perhaps ominously, into two other significant climate-change reports released in 2007.
Last April, the journal Science published a study that said rising temperatures will fuel longer and more intense droughts across Arizona and the Southwest. It warned of conditions not seen since the 1930s Dust Bowl.
What set that report apart from others was its assertion that changes had already begun.
There was also a broader assessment of global warming by teams of international scientists. That report charted a litany of ecologic and economic threats posed by man-made greenhouse gases and concluded that, in many areas, the threats were already real.
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International Cryosphere Conference-Himalayas
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“As temperatures rise around the world, the effects on mountain
ice and snow are just as serious as those on the polar icecaps.”
” … not just people in the mountains who are at risk. 1.3 billion
people living downstream ….”
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NEPALI TIMES
Climactic change
http://www.nepalitimes.com/print.php?id=14644&issue=393
Seen and unseen dangers as global warming thaws the Himalaya
TOM OWEN-SMITH
From Issue #393 (2008-03-28 – 2008-04-03)
The snowline is moving higher, mountain streams
are rushing earlier in the year, the monsoons are
erratic and giant ropes of glaciers throughout
the Himalaya are retreating rapidly, swelling
newly-formed lakes at their snouts.
These Himalayan symptoms of global climate change
are happening within one generation. And their
impact won’t just affect countries like Nepal,
but also the wider Asian region.
Alarmed by the rapidity of warming and the lack
of reliable data on which to make predictions,
the Kathmandu-based International Centre for
Integrated Mountain Development is hosting an
international conference on the cryosphere
starting Monday.
“The cryosphere,” explained Mats Eriksson of
ICIMOD “is the part of the earth which is frozen
– icecaps, glaciers, snow cover, permafrost, and
frozen lakes and rivers.” As temperatures rise
around the world, the effects on mountain ice and
snow are just as serious as those on the polar
icecaps.
Over 50 scientists from Asia, North America and
Europe will attend the ICIMOD conference to share
information, plan future monitoring activities
among the world’s highest mountains and discuss
risk management strategies.
ICIMOD has led efforts to raise awareness of the
effects of climate change, and this month is
also sponsoring the Eco-Everest Expedition, which
aims to collect data on shrinking glaciers like
the Imja and Khumbu below Chomolungma, and
publicise the issue internationally. Political
tensions and much of the Himalaya being a war
zone make cross-border collection of snow
precipitation data and mapping difficult.
The conference will look at what will happen when
Himalayan glacial lakes burst, and other
hazards such as subsidence of land caused by
melted permafrost. ICIMOD’s Vijay Khadgi
said: “Many of these dangers are not immediately
obvious and may not manifest themselves
until there is a major earthquake, but we have to be prepared for them.”
The Himalayas are one of the world’s most
earthquake-prone regions. This fact combined
with fragile glacial lakes and destabilised
mountain slopes poses grave and growing danger of
flashfloods and landslides.
Long-term changes to the seasons, temperature and
precipitation are also making the
precarious lives of people here even more
insecure. More water falls as rain and less as
snow, and at different times of the year. In dry
areas such as Ladakh and northern Pakistan, which
depend on snowmelt for much of their water,
agriculture is already suffering from reduced
water in the growing season.
And it’s not just people in the mountains who are
at risk. 1.3 billion people living downstream in
the Indo-Gangetic plains, Burma, Southeast Asia
and China will also suffer when glacial ice on
the Tibetan Plateau is depleted.
The International Panel on Climate Change has
predicted that many Himalayan glaciers could melt
completely by as early as 2035. Meltwater-fed
rivers such as the Ganges, Indus, Huang He and
Yangtze may be reduced to trickles or stop
altogether in the dry season. This will
precipitate a food crisis not just for the
massive populations living in the river valleys,
but for the whole world which imports grain from
these regions.
Due to remoteness and lack of resources, the
processes and effects of climate change have
been researched less in the Himalaya than anywhere else in the world.
“There is a big need to understand what is
happening here,” said Eriksson. ICIMOD hopes
more coordinated research in the Himalaya can
provide the basis to prepare for the
after-effects of climate change.
Climate change is least understood in the Himalaya
Richard Armstrong is a senior research scientist
at the University of Colorado. He is in Kathmandu
this week to participate in an international
seminar by ICIMOD on ice and
snow induced disasters. Nepali Times asked him
about the dangers of climate change on our
glaciers.
Nepali Times: Is it now proven beyond doubt that
carbon emissions are causing climate change?
Richard Armstrong: We cannot prove the extent to
which the artificial carbon in the air has
contributed to climate change. However, if we
combine the temperature and carbon dioxide
records at the surface of the earth, we can easily see the correlation.
Is climate change causing Himalayan glaciers to shrink?
Glacial retreat is the most visually convincing
evidence of climate change for non-specialists.
Compare pictures from 50 years ago with today,
you don’t need complex data. But in the Himalaya
a possible secondary aspect that might have
contributed to the melting of the glaciers is the
Asian Brown Cloud, or particles that change the
reflectivity of the glaciers. But we have very
little data on that, and need more research.
How does glacial retreat here compare with other mountain regions?
Compared to other parts of the world, the pace of
glacial retreat is slowest in the Himalaya.
In the western hemisphere, the retreat rate is
very high due to their climatic pattern which
includes low precipitation and low humidity. The
glaciers of the European Alps and the
Rockymountains of North America have lost 40
percent of their area in the last hundred years.
The Himalaya is the least understood area with
regard to climate change.
Why is that?
The elevation range in the Himalayas has no
equivalent anywhere else in the world. We don’t
fully understand the climate above 6000m so at
such high elevations, we can only make
assumptions. We are fairly sure that European
glaciers will continue to shrink, but it’s
possible that global warming could even increase
the mass of some of the Himalayan
glaciers, as if the monsoon is enhanced there
will be an increase in precipitation, hence more
snow in very high areas.
How will people in the Himalayas be affected by these changes?
Water resources and human impact in terms of
water aren’t well quantified. What we need to
know is to what extent are people taking
advantage of excess water that wasn’t previously
available.
We hear you have been working with Al Gore.
Yes, two months ago Al Gore came for a half day
visit. Since he uses our data in his
presentations he had a lot of questions. He’s
doing a fabulous job in raising awareness about
global climate change, and meeting him was an
amazing experience. But it was also
depressing, because there is no doubt that
environmentally it would have been a different
world if Al Gore had been elected president.
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