World-News

Forests in the interior of British Columbia are changing color, turning from green to red as they become infected by the pine bark beetle, and then from red to gray once they are dead. In the words of retired US Forest Service scientist Jesse Logan, "There is a continental-scale event waiting to happen."

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/082306EC.shtml

BBC News

August 22, 20065

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5271502.stm

Climatic changes could lead to more outbreaks of bubonic plague among human populations, a study suggests.

Researchers found that the bacterium that caused the deadly disease became more widespread following warmer springs and wetter summers.

The disease occurs naturally in many parts of the world, and the team hopes its findings will help officials limit the risk of future outbreaks.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The bacterium Yersinia pestis is believed to have triggered the Black Death that killed more than 20 million people in the Middle Ages.

Rodent hosts

The international team of scientists, who focused their research on Kazakhstan, said the disease was widespread among rodent populations.

Writing in the paper, co-author Nils Stenseth from the University of Oslo said: "The desert regions of Central Asia are known to contain natural foci of plague where the great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus) is the primary host.

"Plague spread requires both a high abundance of hosts and a sufficient number of active fleas as vectors transmitting plague bacteria between hosts," the Norwegian scientist added.

Fleas became active when the temperature exceeded 10C (50F), so a warm, frost-free spring led to an early start to breeding.

The flea population continued to grow when the spring was followed by a wet, humid summer, the researcher wrote.

The combination of the two seasons' climatic conditions led to an increase in the number of the insects feeding off the great gerbils, resulting in a greater transmission of plague.

The study showed that just a 1C (1.8F) rise in the springtime temperature led to a 59% increase in the prevalence of the disease.

The greater prevalence of plague in the region's wildlife increased the risk of local people becoming infected.

Each year, up to 3,000 cases of humans contracting bubonic plague are reported in Asia, parts of Africa, the US and South America.

The researchers studied data on infected gerbils, flea counts and climate patterns from 1949 to 1995.

Professor Stenseth added that their findings also helped shed light on two of the world's worst plague outbreaks: the medieval Black Death and the Asian pandemic in the 19th Century, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people.

"Analyses of tree-ring proxy climate data shows that conditions during the period of the Black Death (1280-1350) were both warmer and increasingly wet.

"The same was true during the origin of the Third Pandemic (1855-1870) when the climate was wetter and underwent an increasingly warm trend," he added.

The researchers hope their findings will help health officials put measures in place to limit the impact of future outbreaks.

But Professor Stenseth warned that recent changes to the region's climate suggested that warmer springs were becoming more frequent, increasing the risk of human infections.


Informant: NHNE

"First, their fathers noticed the palm trees that seemed to be inching toward the water's edge.... Later, researchers came, scribbled measurements, and offered a grim diagnosis: the sea is coming. There is not a power line or factory or air conditioner within a day's walk of this village of 400 people in the southwest Pacific, but these subsistence fishermen are no strangers to the power of industrialization and climate change," writes Evan Osnos.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/082106EA.shtml

Dürren und Hungersnöte, Fluten und Flüchtlingsströme. Die Zeichen mehren sich, dass es bald zu Umweltkatastrophen biblischen Ausmaßes kommen könnte. In Afrika, sagt Klaus Töpfer, irren zurzeit 15 Millionen Umweltflüchtlinge umher auf der Suche nach der nächsten Wasserstelle.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=18&article:oid=a5876



Sibirien taut auf und erwärmt den Planeten

Die globale Erwärmung könnte weit verheerendere Auswirkungen haben als selbst Pessimisten bisher vermutet haben. Denn: Der Dauerfrostboden Sibiriens taut auf und gibt Methan frei mit katastrophalen Folgen für das Weltklima.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=17&article:oid=a5820



Stephen Hawking "Wie werden wir die nächsten hundert Jahre überleben?"

20.08.2006

Terror, Kriege, Viren: Der Physiker Stephen Hawking fragt, ob die Menschheit dabei ist, sich selbst zu zerstören. Zehn deutsche Wissenschaftler antworten in der "Zeit".

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n5891

Crossposting

Just read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1844789,00.html and then the below. As someone who lives near forest and has seen many fires in our valley I found it interesting and sad.


August 7, 2006

Where there’s fire, there’s global warming

by Matt Jenkins

"I think there was a tendency to think that the overwhelming factor
(driving forest fires) was short-term weather. There’s this idea that drought matters, and it does. But it’s taking time and a lot of research to show that climate plays a big role as well." -- Anthony Westerling

Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony Westerling began obsessively poring over the meticulously detailed invoices that U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service land managers use to itemize firefighting expenses.

"These things will have 170-plus fields," says Westerling — including information on when a fire was first reported, when firefighters finally controlled it, and how many acres were burned. Westerling, who works at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (which also studies climate and earth sciences) in La Jolla, Calif., didn’t aspire to be an accountant, nor was he searching for fraud in government spending. He was hoping to answer a question that had not been seriously asked before: How do rising global temperatures affect wildfire behavior?

Along with fellow researchers in La Jolla and at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Westerling wove the information in the invoices together with data from streamflow gauges, soil moisture measures, and temperature and precipitation records to form a comprehensive picture of the driving forces behind the West’s fires.

The group will present its findings in the journal Science next month; a preliminary article appeared in the July 6 issue of Science Express. The basic conclusion may not startle: Large forest fires increased beginning in the mid-1980s — particularly in the Northern Rockies, the Sierra Nevada and the southern Cascades — and the changes closely correlated with an increase in spring and summer temperatures during the same time period.

But some of the nuances are surprising. Westerling and his colleagues found that a delicate "tipping point" exists, particularly in forests in the Northern Rockies and Northern California. When snowpack melts earlier in the spring — even just a few days sooner — the severity of the fire season intensifies greatly. "It didn’t take a very big temperature increase (to) switch from very few fires to a lot of fires," says Westerling. As spring and summer temperatures gradually increased, "You were getting closer and closer to this tipping point, so that the (climate) variability from year to year just pushes you over it easily."

Westerling grew up in Los Angeles but vacationed at a family cabin on the east side of the Sierra, and later lived abroad in places like Saudi Arabia, China and Brazil. He returned to California to get his Ph.D., and in 2000, he went to work at Scripps. That year proved to be a banner one for fire, and that’s when Westerling began looking more closely at the relationship between climate and fire.

Because of the wide variability in fire regimes throughout the West — from ponderosa forests in the Southwest to chaparral in Southern California to lodgepole pine and spruce-fir forests in the Northern Rockies — long-term trends can be hard to pick out from the year-to-year "noise."

That was precisely the value of Westerling’s research: Zooming out to look at the entire region helped bring the phenomenon into relief.

Usually, blame for the bigger and more frequent fires of the past 20 years is ascribed to the federal government’s aggressive firefighting policies, which have left a lot of dead and small-diameter trees in Western forests ready to burn. Westerling’s research suggests that rising temperatures, not land-management practices, may play a greater role in driving forest fires.

But, he writes, if warming is the main driver of increased fire activity, "ecological restoration and fuels management alone will not be sufficient to reverse current wildfire trends." Scientists and planners must also plug global climate change into their equations.


Informant: Charlie's Angel

More than half of the world's major forests will be lost if global temperatures rise by an average of 3C or more by the end of the century. The prediction comes from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the potential effects of human-made global warming.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081606D.shtml

By Bruce Lieberman San Diego Union-Tribune August 12, 2006

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20060812-9999-7m12warm.html

Increasing temperatures will transform California, threatening some of its most valuable resources in coming decades.

That's the primary message of a new state publication that summarizes 17 scientific studies examining how global warming is expected to play out in California.

³The potential impacts of global warming are unmistakable, adding more days of deadly heat, more intense and frequent wildfires, shorter supplies of drinking water and serious public-health risks,² Linda Adams, the state's secretary for environmental protection, said yesterday during a news conference at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

By publishing the report, titled ³Our Changing Climate: Assessing the Risks to California http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/biennial_reports/2006report/ , state officials hope to engage citizens who haven't followed the steady stream of reports ordered last year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he called for statewide reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases.

Worldwide, scientists agree that Earth's atmosphere and oceans are warming and that human use of fossil fuels for energy is driving the trend. Levels of carbon dioxide -- a byproduct of burning gas, oil and coal -- are now higher than they've been for at least 650,000 years, scientists have reported.

One global change that will affect California's coastline is rising sea levels. Over the 20th century, sea levels rose about 7 inches due to warming. Depending on how much more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere during the next several decades, sea levels could rise as much as 28 inches more.

Sea levels that high could devastate San Diego County's coastline, particularly during high tides and El Niño storms.

Warming in California also is melting mountain snow -- the state's primary source of drinking water -- earlier in the spring. That means less snow melt will be available later in the year, during the state's hot, dry summer and fall seasons.

Other results of global warming could be more frequent and intense heat waves, as well as bigger and longer-lasting wildfires.

³Climate change is an issue we all need to be educated about,² said Mike Chrisman, California's secretary for resources. ³We've got to do a better job of educating. It's a long-term effort, (and) we've got to get people talking about it.²

Dan Cayan, a climate scientist at Scripps, said the general public is beginning to recognize the specter of rising temperatures.

Last month's heat wave across the nation, Europe's deadly heat wave of 2003, melting glaciers in Greenland and other events have contributed to a growing realization that a warming climate is changing the globe.

³I think people have, in a sense, a mental scoreboard, and they're seeing these factors accumulate,² Cayan said. ³I really believe that this is becoming an issue that is starting to get taken more seriously.²

The Scripps news conference followed one held in Riverside, where state officials highlighted the connection between warming temperatures and the risk of wildfires in California.

More meetings around the state are planned.

To see the report online, go to
http://www.climatechange.ca.gov


Informant: NHNE

The oxygen-starved "dead zone" along the Pacific Coast that is causing massive crab and fish die-offs is worse than initially thought. Weather, not pollution, appears to be the culprit, scientists said, and no relief is in sight. Strong upwelling winds have pushed a low-oxygen pool of deep water toward shore, suffocating marine life.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081206C.shtml

10.08.2006

Hitzesommer und Landwirtschaft http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n5821