NASA took the wraps off a new website on Monday dedicated to tracking global changes in the sea level. It’s packed full of free online resources that will..
Sourced through Scoop.it from: techcrunch.com
See on Scoop.it – GarryRogers Biosphere News
Sub-Saharan Africa has the most World Heritage sites at risk, but even developed countries like the United States and Canada are harming some of their sites with development. From: thinkprogress.org
GR: Similar reports are coming in from around the world. Toxic pesticides are an important contributor to the decline in many other areas.
“Climate change and nitrogen pollution may be behind the “dramatic drop” in the number of butterfly species in Germany over the past 200 years, according to new research.
“Of the 117 butterfly species recorded in 1840 in the survey site, a protected habitat in the south-German state of Bavaria, just 71 are still found today, said the authors of the study recently published in journal “Conservation Biology.”
“Species requiring a specific type of habitat or food source, such as the “elegant white and ochre-spotted” hermit butterfly, are threatened with extinction in Germany. The hermit, for instance, lives in dry grasslands and will be hit even harder by changes in land use and global warming in the future, say the authors.” From: www.dw.com
We are living in the Anthropocene age, in which human influence on the planet is so profound – and terrifying – it will leave its legacy for millennia. Politicians and scientists have had their say, but how are writers and artists responding to this crisis?
From: www.theguardian.com
From: campaign.r20.constantcontact.com
“There are species going extinct today that have never been described,” Plotnick said. “Others are going extinct that are known only because someone wrote it down.” All such species would thus be unknown in the far future, he said, if the written historical record is lost — as it might well be.
The fossil record, Plotnick points out, is much more durable than any human record.
“As humanity has evolved, our methods of recording information have become ever more ephemeral,” he said. “Clay tablets last longer than books. And who today can read an 8-inch floppy?” he shrugged. “If we put everything on electronic media, will those records exist in a million years? The fossils will.”
Other authors on the study, published earlier this month in Ecology Letters, are Felisa A. Smith of the University of New Mexico and S. Kathleen Lyons of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
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From: news.uic.edu
Avoiding societal collapse means building bridges between science and the rest of the world. From: ensia.com
Good expansion on the issue.
Continued high fossil fuel emissions this century are predicted to yield … nonlinearly growing sea level rise, reaching several meters over a timescale of 50–150 years. — Statement from a new scientific study led by Dr James Hansen entitled Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms.
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This week, Dr James Hansen and colleagues published one hell of a groundbreaking bit of scientific research. It’s a multi-disciplinary study incorporating the work of 19 top climate scientists, glaciologists, paleoclimatologists, and other Earth Systems researchers. Scientists from NASA, GEOMAR, JPL, and other top research agencies including recognized names like Dr Eric Rignot and Dr Makiko Sato all appear on the contributors list.
(Rates of sea level rise since 1900 and associated with a 1.1 C jump in global temperatures have already shown a non-linear progression. Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms attempts to pin down just how fast glacial melt…
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Homogenic climate change is already too rapid for Earth’s ecosystems. And now our experts are warning us that truly abrupt changes may be coming. How can we not act when unconscionable devastation of habitats and wildlife is already occurring?
The bombshell paper that James Hansen first released pre-publication last summer has now made it thru review to publication, in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.(free online here)
The paper is significant for readers of this blog, because a year ago, I produced a video describing observations in the North Atlantic that are consistent with one of the main premises of the paper, a slowdown of Atlantic Overturning circulation – with scientists Stefan Rahmstorf, Michael Mann, and Jason Box. I’ve posted that video at the bottom.
Dr. Mann is quoted in the Washingon Post, (below) expressing some reservations about the new study, so room for a follow up there.
Above, in my December interview, Hansen gives a quick thumbnail. Below, his new video has a more detailed, illustrated description.
The world’s oceans could rise catastrophically as soon as 50 years from now, according to a new paper
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GarryRogers Nature Conservation 