Category: RT Newswire

Prince Charles on deforestation & climate change:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/prince_charles.php

Go figure!

American Institute of Physics www.aip.org

Physics Today
August 2003, page 30
http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-56/iss-8/p30.html

The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change

Only within the past decade have researchers warmed to the possibility of abrupt shifts in Earth’s climate. Sometimes, it takes a while to see what one is not prepared to look for.

Spencer Weart

How fast can our planet’s climate change? Too slowly for humans to notice, according to the firm belief of most scientists through much of the 20th century. Any shift of weather patterns, even the Dust Bowl droughts that devastated the Great Plains in the 1930s, was seen as a temporary local excursion. To be sure, the entire world climate could change radically: The ice ages proved that. But common sense held that such transformations could only creep in over tens of thousands of years.

In the 1950s, a few scientists found evidence that some of the great climate shifts in the past had taken only a few thousand years. During the 1960s and 1970s, other lines of research made it plausible that the global climate could shift radically within a few hundred years. In the 1980s and 1990s, further studies reduced the scale to the span of a single century. Today, there is evidence that severe change can take less than a decade. A committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has called this reorientation in the thinking of scientists a veritable “paradigm shift.” The new paradigm of abrupt global climate change, the committee reported in 2002, “has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policymakers.”1

End of excerpts. For the full article,
http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-56/iss-8/p30.html
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“If the Forest Service wants to retool regional wildlife rules, it
must initiate a formal environmental and public review process,” said
McKinnon. “The law simply doesn’t allow the agency to make unilateral
changes.”
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For Immediate Release, November 27, 2007

Contact: Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (928) 310-6713

Forest Service Weakens Wildlife Rules Behind Closed Doors;
Rare Goshawk, Millions of Acres in Arizona and New Mexico Forests Threatened

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.- Records obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity confirm that the U.S. Forest Service excluded wildlife agencies from the development of controversial new wildlife rules and ignored feedback from non-Forest Service biologists.

“The Forest Service actively ignored criticisms from state biologists and unilaterally changed the rules behind closed doors,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It failed to disclose those criticisms in Freedom of Information Act requests.”

Responding to two Freedom of Information Act requests by the Center, the Forest Service claims that it neither offered nor received feedback on draft copies of the rule from state and federal wildlife agencies. But records obtained through requests to Arizona’s Game and Fish Department contradict Forest Service claims. Those records show that state biologists repeatedly expressed concerns to the Forest Service over the new rules’ impact on wildlife.

The new rules substantially change a 1996 rule governing forest management in all Arizona and New Mexico national forests – a rule that protects northern goshawks and their prey from logging. The previous rules, known as the Goshawk Guidelines, were developed in response to Center litigation and affect the vast majority of ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forest in the Southwest.

The new guidelines would reduce the overall amount of forest cover retained and would increase the amount of large trees and mature forest that can be logged. The new guidelines can reduce forest-cover requirements to as little as 10 percent when measured according to the previous rules’ methods.

“We have grave concerns about the consequences of the new rules for forest wildlife on a regional scale,” said McKinnon.

Pointing to the 1996 rule, which resulted from an extensive public and environmental review, conservationists assert that the Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act when it modified the old rules without a similar analysis.

“If the Forest Service wants to retool regional wildlife rules, it must initiate a formal environmental and public review process,” said McKinnon. “The law simply doesn’t allow the agency to make unilateral changes.”

The Forest Service’s dictatorial approach marks a sharp departure in regional forest politics, where collaboration and cooperation have replaced animosity and stalemate in efforts to restore the region’s degraded forests – as evidenced by broad participation in, and support for, the White Mountains Stewardship Contract, New Mexico’s Collaborative Forest Restoration Program, the Arizona Forest Restoration Strategy, and New Mexico’s Watershed Restoration Plan.

“By altering the entire forest management framework in Arizona and New Mexico behind closed doors, the Forest Service threatens the delicate agreement that has emerged for restoring the region’s degraded ponderosa pine forests,” said McKinnon. “The new rules deliver a big hit to that spirit of cooperation.”

“Careful efforts that thin small trees and safely restore natural fire in ponderosa forests will continue to enjoy active support from the conservation community,” said McKinnon, “but increasing large-tree logging at the cost of wildlife, as the new guidelines do, will meet with staunch opposition.”

Following their finalization, the Forest Service unveiled the new rules to the public and sister agencies at a workshop in June.

Last week the Center for Biological Diversity won several objection counts against the Southwest’s first forest-management project to explicitly implement the new guidelines, the Jack Smith/Schultz project northeast of Flagstaff. See that press release here.

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” … they showed that when grain prices reached
a certain level, wars erupted.”
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Georgia Institute of Technology Research News
Public release date: 21-Nov-2007

Contact: Abby Vogel
avogel@gatech.edu
404-385-3364

New research shows climate change triggers wars and population decline
Reduced agricultural productivity seems to initiate conflict

Climate change may be one of the most significant threats facing humankind. A new study shows that long-term climate change may ultimately lead to wars and population decline.

The study, published November 19 in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), revealed that as temperatures decreased centuries ago during a period called the Little Ice Age, the number of wars increased, famine occurred and the population declined.

Data on past climates may help accurately predict and design strategies for future large and persistent climate changes, but acknowledging the historic social impact of these severe events is an important step toward that goal, according to the study’s authors.

“Even though temperatures are increasing now, the same resulting conflicts may occur since we still greatly depend on the land as our food source,” said Peter Brecke, associate professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and co-author of the study.

This new study expands previous work by David Zhang of the University of Hong Kong and lead author of the study.

“My previous research just focused on Eastern China. This current study covers a much larger spatial area and the conclusions from the current research could be considered general principles,” said Zhang.

Brecke, Zhang and colleagues in Hong Kong, China and the United Kingdom perceived a possible connection between temperature change and wars because changes in climate affect water supplies, growing seasons and land fertility, prompting food shortages. These shortages could lead to conflict – local uprisings, government destabilization and invasions from neighboring regions – and population decline due to bloodshed during the wars and starvation.

To study whether changes in temperature affected the number of wars, the researchers examined the time period between 1400 and 1900. This period recorded the lowest average global temperatures around 1450, 1650 and 1820, each separated by slight warming intervals.

The researchers collected war data from multiple sources, including a database of 4,500 wars worldwide that Brecke began developing in 1995 with funding from the U.S. Institute of Peace. They also used climate change records that paleoclimatologists reconstructed by consulting historical documents and examining indicators of temperature change like tree rings, as well as oxygen isotopes in ice cores and coral skeletons.

Results showed a cyclic pattern of turbulent periods when temperatures were low followed by tranquil ones when temperatures were higher. The number of wars per year worldwide during cold centuries was almost twice that of the mild 18th century.

The study also showed population declines following each high war peak, according to population data Brecke assembled. The population growth rate of the Northern Hemisphere was elevated from 1400-1600, despite a short cooling period beginning in the middle of the 15th century. However, during the colder 17th century, Europe and Asia experienced more wars of great magnitude and population declines.

In China, the population plummeted 43 percent between 1620 and 1650. Then, a dramatic increase in population occurred from 1650 until a cooling period beginning in 1800 caused a worldwide demographic shock.

The researchers examined whether these average temperature differences of less than one degree Celsius were enough to cause food shortages. By assuming that agricultural production decreases triggered price increases, they showed that when grain prices reached a certain level, wars erupted. The ecological stress on agricultural production triggered by climate change did in fact induce population shrinkages, according to Brecke.

Global temperatures are expected to rise in the future and the world’s growing population may be unable to adequately adapt to the ecological changes, according to Brecke.

“The warmer temperatures are probably good for a while, but beyond some level plants will be stressed,” explained Brecke. “With more droughts and a rapidly growing population, it is going to get harder and harder to provide food for everyone and thus we should not be surprised to see more instances of starvation and probably more cases of hungry people clashing over scarce food and water.”

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