Greenlands Glaciers Under Threat From Climate Change

I do not believe this is make believe. What really blows me away is that we as a species seem to be in some kind of denial about its potential impact.

Matt

by Slim Allagui Slim Allagui –

ILUSSAT, Greenland (AFP) – One of the world’s largest glaciers, on the west coast of Greenland, is shrinking at an alarming rate as a result of global warming — with potentially dire consequences.

Ilulissat, a UNESCO-listed glacier, is shedding ice into the sea faster than ever before, according to one of Denmark’s top experts on glaciology.

Andreas Peter Ahlstroem, a researcher with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland institute, told AFP that the glacier has receded by more than 15 kilometres (10 miles) since 2001.

“Its calving rate (breaking off of ice) has never been so rapid,” he said.

The Ilulissat glacier and icefjord have been on UNESCO’s world heritage list since 2004 and is the most visited site in Greenland, its ice and pools of emerald-blue water admired by tourists and studied by scientists and politicians around the world.

The Danish government chose Ilulissat as the venue for recent talks with some 30 countries to discuss ways to slow global warming — a place that Shfaqat Abbas Khan, a glacier expert from the Danish Space Centre, describes as the “most visible and striking example of climate change.”

The glacier is the most active in the northern hemisphere, producing 85 million tonnes of icebergs per day, according to Khan.

He has been studying Ilulissat using satellites, GPS or through his own visits to the area and says December’s UN climate change conference in the Danish capital of Copenhagen may come too late to save the glacier.

“A lot of glaciers in Greenland are melting at more or less the same pace and even with an ambitious agreement at the summit … it will be impossible to stop this,” Khan said.

The melting ice is both a consequence and a cause of global warming: ice reflects heat, as opposed to water which absorbs it and warms up the climate, thus causing more glaciers and snow to melt.

Khan explained that Ilulissat is losing more than 30 cubic kilometres (seven cubic miles) of ice a year, compared to 10 cubic kilometres in 2000 and just five in 1992.

“We should aim to at least reduce CO2 emissions and limit the damage done,” he said.

A panel of UN scientists estimates that if the polar ice caps continue to melt at their current rate, sea levels could rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres (seven and 24 inches) by 2100,

But Khan says these calculations do not take into account the melting of Greenland’s glaciers.

“In fact, if this thawing that we see … was to spread across the whole island, the sea level would rise between one metre and 1.5 metres by the end of the century,” he told AFP.

Greenland’s glacial ice cap, which spans 1.7 million square kilometres, is not as stable as the panel suggests, he said.

“It sheds much more ice in summer than it gets from the winter snow,” Khan said.

His fellow glacier expert, Ahlstroem from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, warned that the Ilulissat glacier could recede even further and faster.

“The question is: what would happen if the warmer waters of the fjord were to filter through the glacier and further speed up the thawing process?” he asked.

More On Pine Bark Beetles in the Western Forest

My sense is that beetle damage to western forest wildlife will be huge and it will happen. I definitely see the human fingerprint, but at this stage we have reached a tipping point and it does not matter now how we got there accept we need to arrest the use of fossil fuels in humankind or we will go the way of the bear.

Brown bears will be around for awhile  in places like the Yellowstone. Pine bark beetle impacts will be a contributer to many things that will happen to brown bears in Yellowstone as a result of climate change. Here are some examples:

The absence of white bark pine will be felt by Yellowstone grizzlies as one of the bear’s major food groups will disappear. This will increase the competition with wolves and bears for carrion and the wolf, over time,  will outcompete the bear for carrion. This would make a neat graduate study.

More bears will end up in hunter camps and be shot.

Whitebarks will not be a food for the brown bear of Yellowstone in close timing with global climate change and pesticide controlled army cutworm moths, another major food for Yellowstone grizzly bears.

Brown Bears will be around for awhile, because in the wild they can live to be 34 years old, so they can be called “ambling dead.”

When whitebark nuts and high elevation cutworm moths are no longer food sources for grizzly bears mothers with cubs will end up in places like West Yellowstone, Montana  or Cody, Wyoming where they and cubs will be shot or killed or removed from the Yellowstone Ecosystem for management reasons or more bears will end up in hunter camps where hunters and outfitters will shoot grizzly bears in fear of losing life and limb .

More hunters will be confronted by pre-denning bears at the hunter kills or along trails used by hunters and bears alike. Bear Spray will mitigate some of this but not all of this.

Bottom line is that white bark pine is going and I think we are the main reason the pine is going and the pine will be gone for good. Blister rust and beetles will kill any regeneration of white bark pine

 This will happen and it will negatively impact grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem over time.

Matt

Beetles Will Do Great Damage To Wildlife In Places Like Montana

I read today an article on pine bark beetles and their raveges on western forests as a part of a natural cycle we need to be tolerant of this “natural” cycle.

My first thought was that this cycle would not be here if we as humans were not addicted to oil. I think Bush called us oil “addicts”.

I also think that these beetles will negativly impact white bark pine and limber pine, both important wildlife species that will not regenerate like lodgepole pine will or did Dr. Six forget about those pines.

You know when I first went to wildlife school at the University of Montana the wildlife school was in the forestry school where the Dr. Sixes of the world spouted their wrong headed things on a regular basis so I am not suprised.

Matt

Ruminations Part 2

Behind me is the news about Palin going. BYE…… I can only think she might run for the US presidency in 2012, but lets cross that bridge when we get their.

OK lets come back to earth on Jackson, he might get a larger funeral than Reagan or John Kennedy did. He made some very bad choices rscently, and in many respects he was a very sad, wealthy human and he could dance in a way that was groundbreaking, but PLEASE, lets turn the page…he would,  I think.

It was hot in Bozeman, Montana today. Now the thunder roars in the background. We do not get the rain that they do in South Florida but we certainly get violent lightning that is comparable to any in South Florida. You know that was a major point of discussion beteen my wife and myself.

Max Baucus is up to his elbows  with crocodiles on healthcare. Back in Montana I would consider excessive health care costs as a primary issue in Montana for most of us. I only hope Baucus does not leave us, his constituency, in crocodile infested waters.

Which brings me to global climate change, which I see our mitigations to that change, as by far, the largest issue we as a species face. What we do to mitigate this issue will decide our fate, and the fate of many species. We control much of our fate on this issue now but I have yet to see us move like we need to move on this issue. If we pass Cap and Trade legislation in the halls of the US senate this year and we agree with China, for sure, to eliminate greenhouse gases by 2050 with global and binding agreements next year in Coppenhagen, where most of the world will meet on global climate change we may get through this change with our hair on. How we come out on these issues will determine a lot about how this change will impact us as a species……….

Matt

Europeans seek G8 pledge to halve greenhouse gas

More about the global politics of global climate change.

Matt

(Reuters) – Italy, France and Britain called on Monday for major developing economies like China and India to sign up for a goal of halving the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at this week’s expanded G8 summit in Italy.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the “extremely ambitious” goal would be the focus of the second day of the summit on Thursday, when U.S. President Barack Obama will chair a meeting of the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF).

The MEF, which groups rich and poor countries accounting for about 80 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, hopes to make progress toward a new U.N. climate change pact, due to be signed by 190 nations gathering in Copenhagen in December.

“The slogan is minus 50 in 2050: if we agree this with China, India, (South) Korea and the African and Latin American countries, it will be an extremely ambitious goal,” Frattini said in an interview published in the Il Messaggero newspaper.

The call was echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meeting for a bilateral summit in the lakeside town of Evian in the French Alps.

In a tough joint statement, the two countries said the G8 meeting planned at L’Aquila in central Italy would “test our determination to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address the challenge of global warming.”

France and Britain called on developing countries to sign up to the target of cutting global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, from 1990 levels. The base year for carbon cuts is a moot point, with some rich nations like Japan and the United States seeking a more recent base year which would make cuts less onerous.

France and Britain, however, called on industrial countries to go even further and target an 80 percent reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“The time is short, the need for us to work together on that is very clear,” Brown said during a joint news conference.

LAST MINUTE TALKS

The MEF has convened a last-minute ministerial talks in Rome on Tuesday to try to narrow the gap on long-term environment goals ahead of Thursday’s heads of state meeting, amid differences over the scale of cuts and the base year.

Last year, the Group of Eight industrialized nations — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada, Italy and Russia — agreed at a Japan summit to a vision of halving global greenhouse gases by 2050 to help avert ever more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

But developing countries including China, India and Brazil did not sign up for that, saying rich nations should first agree to ambitious short-term targets. They want developed states to cut emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Washington, which has promised a New Green Deal since Obama took office this year, has resisted such steep cuts but France and Britain on Monday left the door open.

“Our two countries also ask for the adoption of an ambitious, credible intermediate target for 2020, in line with what science is telling us, i.e. a 25-40 percent reduction compared to 1990,” it said.

Frattini also said the summit would produce some commitment on limiting the increase in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels to no more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), in line with U.N. experts’ recommendations.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Monday he would press the United States and other countries to accept the two degree target — favored by European nations — as the threshold beyond which climate change reaches danger levels.

Washington has resisted endorsing such a goal, but a European official said last week that Obama, whose climate bill has made progress in Congress, might now be on board for it.

(Additional reporting by Estelle Shirbon in Evian, France and Darren Ennis in Brussels; Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Ruminations

Ruminate or whine, they both seem so unproductive to me but I find great theraputic value in ruminating and this is one in millions of blogs and this blog belongs to me…so here are some of my ruminations…and I feel weird ruminating!!!

-Sarah Palin-in spite of the pundits she wants to go…I think…let her, may she go find peace, and may her date to leave come quickly…I have no intention of buying her book!!!!!!!!!!

-This is more like a whine but since I last blogged about it there have been two incidents of dogs crapping right in the middle of sidewalks here. Are those dogowners just trying hard to get a rize out of people because I know I am not alone in my anger on this.

-My favorite coffee shop was actually open this morning and I walked inside to hold up a wall that I really enjoy holding up. Aside from the “pop” and “bangs” I hear everywhere. My town begrudingly (city employees who have to secure streets)  had two parades…Gay Loggers for Jesus and Teabaggers. I missed both parades. This is the first time in 40  plus years I did not have a 4th plan. Thus my ruminations.

-I read a global warming article in Science Digest magazine entitled: Do Wind Turbines Harm Wildlife. “Both birds and bats have been killed by this alternative energy, but bats actually suffer the greatest risk from wind turbines.” Bats are not often killed by wind turbine blades but are killed by lung hemorrhaging caused by “batotramau” caused by drops in air pressure caused by spinning wind turbines

One of the highlites of my life was observing millions of Mexican Free-tailed bats fly out of the Frio Bat Cave in southern Texas. As the bat’s flew out of the cave they were grabbed (one at a time as thousands of bats flew by) by Swainsons Hawks, Red-tailed Hawks and Great-horned Owls (It was almost dark).

This wind turbine phenomina could kill thousands of bats at a time because of “bat trauma” as a result of misplaced (a common problem) wind turbines. If this was a scenario for Frio bats after 5 years Frio’s bats could be endangered. What happens to Frio’s bats as they disperse into the night?

-On another topic I am blown away by how disconnected the media is with an average American in global warming and financial matters. This is a gross generalisation but I hear this disconnection each day, even from some smart media persons.

-Enough on Michael Jackson. Some of the things the press talks about on the detached superstar are hugely mundane. May his tortured soul rest in peace, but there would go some of the story that had nothing to do with the pop legends singing and dancing and later some of his public theatrics that really put an exclamation point on him as a person.

Matt

Perma-frost Melting A Continuous Threat

This might happen and it does not bode well for the earth and this may happen before large icefilds of the world melt.

Matt

Climate Change

Large areas of northern Russia, Canada, Nordic countries and the U.S. state of Alaska have deep layers of frozen soil near the surface called permafrost.

Global warming has already triggered rapid melting of the permafrost in some areas, releasing powerful greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.

As the world gets warmer, more of these gases are predicted to be released and could trigger a tipping point in which huge amounts of the gases flood the atmosphere, rapidly driving up temperatures, scientists say.

“Massive amounts of carbon stored in frozen soils at high latitudes are increasingly vulnerable to exposure to the atmosphere,” said Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project at Australia’s state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

“The research shows that the amount of carbon stored in soils surrounding the North Pole has been hugely underestimated.”

The study is published in the latest issue of Global Biogeochemical Cycle.

Canadell said a four-year study of the latest research on permafrost, data from new drilling projects as well as the release of previously unpublished data from the Russian Academy of Sciences had led to a rethink of carbon levels.

“Projections show that almost all near-surface permafrost will disappear by the end of this century exposing large carbon stores to decomposition and release of greenhouse gases,” he said in a statement.

He said if only 10 per cent of the permafrost melted, this could lead to the release of an additional 80 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. This would equate to about 0.7 degrees Celsius of global warming.

According to the U.N. Climate Panel, average temperatures have already risen by about 0.7 deg C since the late nineteenth century and are forecast to rise another 1.8 to 4 deg C by 2100, Scientists say a rapidly warming planet will trigger more intense storms and droughts, rising seas and melting ice caps.

Canadell said that on a recent trip to northern China, the permafrost at its southern limit had all but disappeared over the past 20 years.

Locals had told him the permafrost was once 20 cm below the surface and now it was several meters down, he told Reuters from Canberra, Australia.

In the statement, he said computer models showed global warming could trigger an irreversible process of thawing.

For example, heat generated from increased microbial activity in the soil could lead to sustained and long-term emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.

In addition, lakes formed as permafrost thaws would draw heat to deeper layers and bring methane trapped in pockets below to the surface.

(Reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Jerry Norton)

US Senate May Pass US Cap and Trade Legislation and Fail to Approve Global Treaty That Commits Nations to Cap and Trade

OK: Figure out the convuluted politics on this one. I just shook my head after reading this article.

Matt

Bloomberg.com

Jim Efstathiou Jr. and Daniel Whitten Jim Efstathiou Jr. And Daniel Whitten – Thu Jul 2, 12:00 am ET

July 2 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Senate may pass legislation to slow climate change and then fail to approve a global treaty that commits nations to do so, Senator John Kerry said.

Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, will be a leader in Senate efforts to place the first domestic curbs on greenhouse gases, after the House approved a measure last week. Even if a Senate bill passes, there may not be enough support to ratify an international accord incorporating the U.S. commitments, the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview.

A possible Senate rejection poses a threat to the 192- nation effort to forge an agreement, which scientists say can help slow warming that’s raising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns globally.

“We are definitely going to make more progress if there is a strong international agreement that the U.S. is a party to,â€

Senate ratification of a treaty would require 67 votes, compared with 60 for legislation.

“Sixty-seven votes is a big target here,” Kerry said last week, before Congress left for a one-week break. “We may be able to pass something that puts America on track to accomplish our set of goals. But we may pass it with 60 votes, or 61 or whatever, and that’s not 67.”

House Measure

The House approved climate-change legislation last week on a 219-212 vote. The measure would create a cap-and-trade system to curb emissions, establish a market for trading pollution allowances, and fund investments in new energy sources. It aims to cut fossil-fuel emissions from power plants, factories, oil refineries and vehicles 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Senate leaders say they hope to complete their version before talks on a global climate treaty in December in Copenhagen. Twenty senators led by Kerry and Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, have been meeting to prepare for the debate in their chamber.

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on Boxer’s committee, has vowed to stop the bill, calling it “the largest tax increase in American history” and saying the “razor-thin vote in the House spells doom in the Senate.”

China, India, Brazil

Lawmakers in both chambers have said they won’t support climate change restrictions that boost costs and put U.S. businesses and farmers at a competitive disadvantage with nations such as China, India and Brazil that may not take comparable steps.

“They gotta be put in the same category as we are; they can’t be listed as a developing country,” Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, said in an interview. Iowa farmers produce corn-based ethanol, in competition with Brazil, which uses sugar cane to make the alternative fuel.

President Barack Obama will have a better chance of gaining commitments on emissions cuts from developing countries if he has votes for legislation from both chambers of Congress in hand in Copenhagen, said Elliot Diringer, vice president for international strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change based in Arlington, Virginia.

Copenhagen Talks

The Copenhagen talks are an effort to negotiate a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, an international climate agreement negotiated in part by Democratic Vice President Al Gore, which expires in 2012.

President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto accord after it didn’t require developing countries to curb emissions. The Senate had passed a resolution 95-0 saying that members wouldn’t approve any treaty that lacked limits on India and China.

Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change and Obama’s chief negotiator, has said developing nations must be part of a new accord. Under a U.S. proposal, those countries may agree to add renewable energy production or improve energy efficiency without taking on the specific emissions targets required of developed nations.

It’s too soon to worry about ratification of an international treaty, Boxer said in an interview.

“For me to speculate on how you get 67 votes for a treaty we haven’t yet seen, I just couldn’t do that,” Boxer said. “The most important thing now is for us to continue to act in the Congress so we give the president some wind at his back before Copenhagen.”

At the very least, Kerry said Obama will be able to go to Copenhagen with the House-passed measure and a draft of Senate legislation as a road map.

‘Tough Sledding’

Kerry’s doubts about lining up 67 Senate votes for a treaty were echoed by Harkin and Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.

“That’s pretty tough sledding,” said Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

“My major interest is manufacturing and how we preserve manufacturing,” Brown said in an interview. He said he wants a trade deal that protects U.S. companies in iron and steel, aluminum, cement, glass, pulp and paper, and chemicals.

“There’s a fine line here between what the rest of the world is expecting the U.S. to do and what may be politically possible in the Senate,” said Duncan Marsh, director of international climate policy for the Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Virginia-based environmental group.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Whitten in Washington at dwhitten2@bloomberg.net ; Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at

Global warming tactic cools climate but won’t help corals, say Stanford researchers

BY CHRISTINE BLACKMAN

Ken Caldeira

David Victor

I found this of great interest and thought you might.

Matt

“Geoengineering” experiments proposed to reduce global warming by blocking sunlight with atmosphere-injected particles may cool the world but still leave carbon dioxide levels dangerously high, Stanford scientists say.

Sunlight-blocking particles would fail to solve the problems of ocean acidification and dying corals, two significant repercussions of climate change, according to a study by Ken Caldeira of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution, Damon Matthews of Concordia University, and Long Cao of the Carnegie Institution. Atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in ocean water, making it more acidic and difficult for animals to build their shells or skeletons, especially corals.

Proponents of geoengineering have called for injecting small, reflective particles into the atmosphere to partially block sunlight and cool the earth, just as ash from an erupting volcano does. The resulting carbon-dioxide-rich climate would cause land plants to grow more vigorously, hold onto more carbon and release less to the ocean. But the difference would not be enough to fundamentally alter the plight of coral reefs, Caldeira said.

The researchers used computer models of the Earth’s climate system and biosphere to simulate the effect of sunlight-reflecting particles on climate and ocean chemistry. Such geoengineering methods “might be able to address some of the climate effects of carbon dioxide but they don’t fundamentally address the chemical effects posed by carbon dioxide,” Caldeira said.

“Instead of taking till 2050 until there’s no place left in the ocean where corals can survive, it might be 2053. The carbon cycle effects of the geoengineering might delay that outcome in the ocean by a few years but wouldn’t prevent those outcomes from occurring,” he said. The scientists’ work was published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Despite the limitations, Caldeira and many other scientists support geoengineering research. David Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford, presents a case for studying and testing such tactics as emergency measures.

“Geoengineering could provide a useful defense for the planet—an emergency shield that could be deployed if surprisingly nasty climatic shifts put vital ecosystems and billions of people at risk,” Victor wrote in Foreign Affairs with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Maryland.

The paper, entitled The Geoengineering Option, presents methods for increasing the earth’s reflectivity, such as injecting particles in the atmosphere, as “the most promising method for rapidly cooling the planet.” The authors contend that injecting reflective materials into the atmosphere would be easy and cost-effective and could crudely offset warming.

Although these methods potentially interfere with weather patterns and fail to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations and ocean acidification, Victor and colleagues call for a broad and solid foundation of geoengineering research. “The scientific academies in the leading industrialized and emerging countries—which often control the purse strings for major research grants—must orchestrate a serious and transparent international research effort funded by their governments,” Victor and his colleagues wrote in the paper.

More On Climate Change and Grizzly Bears

The Waxman-Markey Bill Barely made it from the US House to the US Senate I posted on this last week.

I have been told by two credeble sources and I have heard reported twice, that Cap and Trade legislation (like Waxman-Markey), is to be debated in the US Senate after healthcare reform hopefully passes. Cap and Trade legislation will have a harder time with Democrats from coal producing states like Montana and West Virginia (regions and economies as opposed to moderate versus liberal Democrats). This will be a huge fight and states like mine, Montana, will be in the throws of this huge battle. After years of the Bushies this will be the good fight and activists must show amasing amounts of energy on this one.

In other news a Grizzly Bear  came 5o miles way out on the plains, along the Missouri river near Fort Benton, Montana and like wandering male bears in the high artic this happens about every ten years in places like Montana where grizzlies want to go where they regularly went about 200 years ago when the “buffalo did roam”.

Matt