Polar Bears

Credit where credit is due:

On the eve of a court deadline, the U.S. Interior Department is adding the polar bear to the list threatened species. This comes after evidence that rising temperatures are causing Arctic Sea ice -- the bears' habitat -- to vanish.

Via First Draft. Why the eff did it take so long? Nothing like a drowning Polar Bear to show Bu$hCo's compassion. My emphasis.

More On Corn

Here's a follow-up on a previous post on using corn to produce ethanol. Thanks to The Kid over at The Twins' place.

Recent research out of Princeton University and other reputable institutions show that switching from dinosaur gas to corn ethanol could almost double CO2 emissions.

But we thought corn could save us! Although ethanol burns cleaner, a host of other petro-intensive costs belie its true benefit. In order to produce enough ethanol – and once again, the Bush administration is complicit in the problem, requiring a six-fold increase by 2022 – valuable crop and forest land would be replaced in the rush to make as much commodity as possible. For agriculture, this means monoculture in the form of either corn or switchgrass.

Duped & Complicit

Here is the headline in a farmer's publication.

Doubts Raised About Recent Global Warming Studies

Yet, the short article only references the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory & the director of the National Ag-Based Lubricants Center in Iowa. The piece also quotes a former member of the Advisory Committee for Biomass to the Departments of Energy and Agriculture. Talk about loading up on government lackeys. The worst part of this piece, however, is the title. The studies in question actually assessed the role of corn based ethanol production in terms of the land usage issues, i.e., whether the production of corn is affecting global climate change. It's too bad that the farmers are being duped by this periodical. What's even worse is that the writer depends strictly on government employees for testimony. I suppose I ought to be clear that this is the agricultural corporate press speaking, but historically farmers have never known who their true friends are, a reason why so many of them are now out or going-out-of-business. Relying strictly on corn for ethanol production is a really bad policy. Bu$hCo's urging the use of switchgrass might actually be the highlight of his completely failed presidency.

& Then What?

More on global warming.

Global warming is setting the stage for an invasion of predators on the sea floor around Antarctica, the likes of which have not been there for more than 40 million years.

40 million years? A drop in the bucket.

Weird

& up here in the far north of Wisco, we have, well, not much snow. Madison is close to a record. Go figure.

No Surprise Here

Just more of the same old, same old. I know it's the xmas season & all, but I really hate Dick "Dick" Cheney. & the auto companies as well. I was thinking about buying another Dodge diesel in a couple of years, but maybe I'll just sell the horses & get a Honda. Or maybe just ride the horses to town. That will really slow down my life, or something.

Finally

The spineless Democrats can't make Bu$hCo back down, but the small country of Papua New Guinea did. Note to Democrats, that's how it's done, now do it for fuck's sake.

''We seek your leadership,'' Kevin Conrad told the Americans. ''But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.''

The U.N. climate conference exploded with applause, the U.S. delegation backed down,....
....
India sought to amend the document to strengthen requirements for richer nations to help poorer with technology to limit emissions and adapt to climate change's impacts.

Dobriansky objected. ''We are not prepared to accept this formulation,'' she said, setting off loud, long boos in the hall.

Next, delegate after delegate took aim at the United States. Dobriansky's intervention was ''most unwelcome and without any basis,'' the South African said. ''We would like to beg them'' to relent, the Ugandan said. Then Conrad delivered his sharp rebuke of U.S. ''leadership.''

America's isolation was complete. No one spoke in support. And Dobriansky capitulated, withdrawing the U.S. objection, to general applause.

My emphasis. Feeling safer?

Holiday Ice?

Moulin Rouge? Or just really good plumbing? Seriously, when will Bu$hCo understand just how bad this is? But, of course, we don't want to hurt our juggernaut of an economy.

"The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile (800 meters) deep covering Washington DC," said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

No Problem, Right?

I am the walrus, coo coo ca choo.

Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.

Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

Walrus feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform over water beyond their 630-foot diving range or gathering spots on shore, thousands of walrus picked Alaska's rocky beaches.

"It looks to me like animals are shifting their distribution to find prey," said Tim Ragen, executive director of the federal Marine Mammal Commission. "The big question is whether they will be able to find sufficient prey in areas where they are looking."

Bad Thinking/Worse Politics

The right-wing nutjobs over at Free-Market News Network, the name says all you'll need to know, dug up some goofball Russian scientist, Habibullo Abdussamatov, who claims that Mars is also experiencing a climate warming & we can blame it all on radiation from the sun. What the free-marketeers fail to mention is that the aforementioned Russian has been isolated by the majority of the scientific community. Media Matters For America has the goods.

After explaining Abdussamatov's theory, the article reported that the theory has "not been well received by other climate scientists." The article first quoted "Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University" saying that Abdussamatov's "views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion" and that they "contradict the extensive evidence presented in the most recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report." The article added that "[t]he conventional theory is that climate changes on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes in the sun" and that "most scientists think it is pure coincidence that both planets are between ice ages right now."

Finally, the article reported that "the biggest stumbling block in Abdussamatov's theory is his dismissal of the greenhouse effect," and quoted Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who said that "without the greenhouse effect there would be very little, if any, life on Earth, since our planet would pretty much be a big ball of ice."

Emphasis added.

Plumped

This link is of concern to me because I'm interested in hawkmoths & global warming, but my brain was piqued by the use of the word plumped. & that is my concern, OK?

Good Thing To Do

Australia bans incandescent light bulbs.

This Is What Happens

When ReThuglicans rule. Global warming is exacerbated by policies from a once progressive state. & that asshole J.B. Van Hollen just pulled us out of a suit against the EPA.

Wisconsin generates greenhouse gases linked to global warming at a rate that is about one-third faster than the national average, a Journal Sentinel analysis found.

This trend will only escalate because the state's utilities are on the leading edge of a national building boom of coal-burning power plants, fueled by an ever-increasing appetite for electricity.

Power plants under construction in Oak Creek and Wausau will cost utility customers almost $3 billion, representing the most such construction activity in any state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Once the plants fire up, Wisconsin's coal plants will pump 10% more carbon dioxide into the air by 2012, state energy planning figures show.

And those emissions will increase. Last week, Alliant Energy Corp. of Madison announced plans to build a 300-megawatt coal plant on the Mississippi River in Grant County at a cost of nearly $800 million.

Good

& about time.

MADISON, Wis. - Gov. Jim Doyle plans to appoint a global warming task force and create an energy independence office to coordinate an effort to dramatically expand the state's use of renewable energy by 2025.

& an almost immediate UPDATE: News from the Winter Carnival in MN.

(WCCO) St. Paul During Day Two of the St. Paul Winter Carnival, a home-grown Minnesotan and world-renown Arctic explorer used the "coolest celebration on earth" to raise awareness of global warming.

Will Steger and a self-proclaimed team of explorers/educators plan to embark on a four-month, 1,200-mile dogsled expedition of Baffin Island in the northern most Canadian territory of Nunavut.

During Saturday's appearance at the carnival, he stressed the need to increase awareness of global warming -- it's real and it's happening.

"I never thought in my lifetime I would see these great changes in the Arctic," he said -- commenting on rising temperatures at the polar ice cap, rising sea levels and changes in migratory patterns among indigenous animals. "I really have to show these changes in the arctic to everyday people to show this is real."

Finally

The work last November is beginning to pay off.

Just Great

This tick-tock has nothing to do with waiting to have babies.

The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday -- symbolizing the annihilation of civilization and adding the perils of global warming for the first time.

Here We Are

& it's not a good place.

A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists said Thursday, citing climate change as a ''major'' reason for the event. The Ayles Ice Shelf -- all 41 square miles of it -- broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.

Scientists discovered the event by using satellite imagery. Within one hour of breaking free, the shelf had formed as a new ice island, leaving a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw.

''This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years,'' Vincent said. ''We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead.''

More here.

An ancient ice shelf has cracked off northern Ellesmere Island, creating an enormous, 66-square-kilometre ice island and leaving a trail of icy blocks in its wake.

''It really is incredible,'' says Warwick Vincent of Laval University, one of the few people to have laid eyes on the scene. ''It's like a cruise missile has come down and hit the ice shelf.''

The breakup was so powerful, earthquake monitors 250 kilometres away picked up the tremors as the 3,000 to 4,500 year-old shelf tore away from its fjord on Ellesmere.

Way Late

& not in a pregnant sort of way.

No Sleep For You

Well, Bu$hCo will demand more study in this situation. Seems straightforward to me.

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.
....
But many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern cordillera - which have a slightly different genetic identity from bear populations elsewhere in the world - have remained active throughout recent winters, naturalists from Spain's Brown Bear Foundation (La Fundación Oso Pardo - FOP) said yesterday.

The change is affecting female bears with young cubs, which now find there are enough nuts, acorns, chestnuts and berries on the bleak mountainsides to make winter food-gathering sorties "energetically worthwhile", scientists at the foundation, based in Santander, the Cantabrian capital, told El Pais newspaper.

Butterflies Are Free

Via The SideKick we get this story on global warming. While Bu$hco cuts brush, the world burns.

As the Bush administration debates much of the world about what to do about global warming, butterflies and ski-lift operators, polar bears and hydroelectric planners are on the move.

In their separate ways, wild creatures, business executives and regional planners are responding to climate changes that are rapidly recalibrating their chances for survival, for profit and for effective delivery of public services.

Butterflies are voting with their wings, abandoning southern Europe and flying north to the more amenable climes of Finland. Ski-lift operators in the West are lobbying for leases on federal land higher up in the Rockies, trying to outclimb snowlines that creep steadily upward.

Polar bears along Hudson Bay are losing weight and declining in number as the ice shelf melts and their feeding season shrinks. Power planners in the Pacific Northwest, which gets three-quarters of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, are meeting in brainstorming sessions and making contingency plans for early snow melts, increased wintertime rainfall, lower summertime river flows and electricity shortfalls during hotter, drier summers.

With the issue of a warming planet shifting rapidly from scientific projection to on-the-ground reality, animals and plants are being compelled, along with businesses and bureaucracies, to take action aimed at self-preservation. They are doing so even as the Bush administration eschews regulations, laws or international treaties that would require limits on carbon dioxide emissions, which scientists say are the main cause of global warming.

A newly published synthesis of 866 peer-reviewed studies of the effect of climate change on wild plants and animals has found what its author, Camille Parmesan, an assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, describes as a "clear, globally coherent conclusion."