Environmental Conservation News - 2006
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Study acquits sun of climate change
OSLO,
Norway (Reuters) -- The sun's energy output has barely varied over the past
1,000 years, raising chances that global warming has human rather than
celestial causes, a study showed on Wednesday.
Researchers from Germany, Switzerland and the United States found that the
sun's brightness varied by only 0.07 percent over 11-year sunspot cycles,
far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial
Revolution.
"Our results imply that over the past century climate change due to human
influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the sun's
brightness," said Tom Wigley of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric
Research.
Most experts say emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil
fuels in power plants, factories and cars, are the main cause of a 0.6
Celsius (1.1 Fahrenheit) rise in temperatures over the past century.
A dwindling group of scientists says that the dominant cause of warming is a
natural variation in the climate system, or a gradual rise in the sun's
energy output.
"The solar contribution to warming over the past 30 years is negligible,"
the researchers wrote in the journal Nature of evidence about the sun from
satellite observations since 1978.
They also found little sign of solar warming or cooling when they checked
telescope observations of sunspots against temperature records going back to
the 17th century.
They then checked more ancient evidence of rare isotopes and temperatures
trapped in sea sediments and Greenland and Antarctic ice and also found no
dramatic shifts in solar energy output for at least the past millennium.
"This basically rules out the sun as the cause of global warming," Henk
Spruit, a co-author of the report from the Max Planck Institute in Germany,
told Reuters.
Many scientists say greenhouse gases might push up world temperatures by
perhaps another 3 Celsius by 2100, causing more droughts, floods, disease
and rising global sea levels.
Spruit said a "Little Ice Age" around the 17th century, when London's Thames
River froze, seemed limited mainly to western Europe and so was not a
planet-wide cooling that might have implied a dimmer sun.
And global Ice Ages, like the last one which ended about 10,000 years ago,
seem linked to cyclical shifts in the earth's orbit around the sun rather
than to changes in solar output.
"Overall, we can find no evidence for solar luminosity variations of
sufficient amplitude to drive significant climate variations on centennial,
millennial or even million-year timescales," the report said.
Solar activity is now around a low on the 11-year cycle after a 2000 peak,
when bright spots called faculae emit more heat and outweigh the
heat-plugging effect of dark sunspots. Both faculae and dark sunspots are
most common at the peaks.
Still, the report also said there could be other, more subtle solar effects
on the climate, such as from cosmic rays or ultraviolet radiation. It said
they would be hard to detect.
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Posted: CNN, Friday, September 15, 2006; Posted: 11:39 a.m. EDT
Japan fleet set to kill 260 whales:
Dead whales are studied, then their meat is sold
TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A fleet of four ships was set Tuesday to depart
on a four-month expedition to hunt whales for Japan's controversial research
whaling program.
The expedition plans to catch 260 whales from Pacific Ocean waters northeast
of Japan before returning in mid-September, the Institute of Cetacean
Research said in a statement.
The institute conducts Japan's whale research program under authorization
from the government's Fisheries Agency.
The expedition's purpose is to learn more about the roles different whale
species play in their environments, and study the impact of water pollution
on marine ecology, it said.
Under Japan's research whaling program, hundreds of whales are hunted and
killed each year in the waters of Antarctica and the northwestern Pacific
Ocean.
The dead whales are studied and afterwards their meat is sold to help fund
the program.
The International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in 1986 to
protect the endangered mammals, but allows limited hunts for research
purposes. Opponents, however, have called Japan's research hunts merely a
way for it to dodge the ban.
Japan maintains that whaling is a national tradition and a vital part of its
food culture. It says whale stocks have sufficiently recovered since 1986 to
allow the resumption of limited hunts of certain species.
The government also says research hunts are needed to establish reliable
information on whale populations and habits. Opponents say non-lethal means
could be used to achieve the same goal.
Posted: CNN, Tuesday, May 23, 2006; Posted: 12:51 a.m. EDT (04:51 GMT)
Polar bears may get endangered status
ANCHORAGE,
Alaska (AP) -- Amid concerns that global warming is melting away the icy
habitats where polar bears live, the federal government is reviewing whether
they should be considered a threatened species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday that protection may be warranted under the Endangered Species Act, and began a review process to consider if the bears should be listed.
The agency will seek information about population distribution, habitat, effects of climate change on the bears and their prey, potential threats from development, contaminants and poaching during the next 60 days.
The decision comes after the Center for Biological Diversity of Joshua Tree, California, filed a petition last year that said polar bears could become extinct by the end of the century because their sea ice habitat is melting away.
The group, joined by the environmental groups Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, also filed a federal lawsuit in December to seek federal protections for the polar bear.
"I think it's a very important acknowledgment that global warming is transforming the Arctic and threatening polar bears with extinction," said Kassie Siegel, lead author of the center's petition.
Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Bruce Woods said the petition "contains sufficient information to convince us that we need to do a more thorough analysis of the polar bear population worldwide."
Polar bears under U.S. jurisdiction are found only in Alaska. They spend most of their lives on sea ice, but the center said if current rates of decline in sea ice continue, the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free well before the end of the century.
There is some disagreement about whether polar bears are actually being threatened.
Federal wildlife officials report healthy populations of polar bears, and are working on a hard population count. However, the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center, NASA and the University of Washington said last fall that there was a "stunning reduction in Arctic sea ice at the end of the northern summer."
If the polar bear were listed as a threatened species, federal regulatory agencies would be required to consider how their decisions affect polar bears.
A listing could affect industries seeking permission to release greenhouse gases or decisions such as setting fuel economy standards for vehicles, Siegel said.
Posted: CNN, Wednesday, February 8, 2006; Posted: 9:49 a.m. EST (14:49 GMT)
Global warming boosting Greenland glacier flow
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Two major glaciers in Greenland
have recently begun to flow and break up more quickly under the
onslaught of global warming, a new study said on Friday, raising the
specter of millions drowning from rising sea levels.
The report from the University of Swansea's School of the Environment and Society said the Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim glaciers had doubled their rate of flow to the ocean over the past two years after steady movement during the 1990s.
This spurt meant that current environmental models of the rate of retreat of Greenland's giant ice sheet -- which could add seven meters to the height of the world's oceans if it disappears -- had underestimated the problem.
"It seems likely that other Greenland outlets will undergo similar changes, which would impact the mass balance of the ice sheet more rapidly than predicted," the study said.
It said the fact that the two major outflow glaciers had shown the same sudden acceleration despite being more than 300 km apart suggested the cause was not local but more likely climatic or oceanic in origin.
"In both of these glaciers the acceleration and retreat has been sudden, despite the progressive nature of warming and thinning over some years," the report said.
"The longevity of this flux increase is unknown but could be substantial," it added.
The report followed a warning earlier this week from Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research -- a branch of the Meteorological Office -- that the Greenland ice sheet could be disappearing faster than previously thought.
The ice sheet contains one-tenth of the world's freshwater reserves.
Scientists predict that global average temperatures will rise by between one and six degrees Celsius this century unless urgent action is taken now to cap and reduce carbon emissions.
Even a rise of three degrees could result in cataclysmic species loss, melting polar icecaps raising sea levels by many meters and wholesale famine and disease.
Greenland is only part of the picture, and there is also evidence of local warming and melting on the giant Western Antarctic ice sheet.
Scientists said on Monday the world had to halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiraling towards destruction.
The first phase of the global Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions runs until 2012, and negotiations have only just started on finding a way of taking it beyond that.
The United States, the world's biggest polluter, has rejected both the protocol in its current form and any suggestion of expanding or extending it.
Posted: CNN, Friday, February 3, 2006; Posted: 3:44 p.m. EST (20:44 GMT)
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