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becker
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Location: In my beautiful condo
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Oregon
Department of
Energy
Global Warming Report
Ensure Oregon has an adequate supply of reliable and affordable energy, and is safe from nuclear contamination, by helping Oregonians save energy, develop clean energy resources, promote renewable energy and clean up nuclear waste.
Notice of Public Meetings
on the
Draft Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reductions
Governor Kulongoski has committed to carry out the West Coast Governors? Global Warming Initiative. As part of that commitment, the Governor?s Advisory Group on Global Warming was formed earlier this year.
The Advisory Group has just completed a draft Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reductions (HTML), which is available for public review and comment. The draft report outlines actions Oregon can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recommended actions cover energy efficiency, transportation, renewable energy, electric generation and other areas. The complete PDF version of this report is in the blue column to the right, as well as the individual sections of the report.
This draft report is also available from the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) by calling ODOE at (800) 221-8035 or by e-mail at energyweb.incoming@state.or.us
On behalf of the Advisory Group on Global Warming, ODOE will hold three public meetings to receive comments on and answer questions about the draft report.
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11-06-2004 09:24 PM
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Flutterbywingz
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| quote: |
becker said this in post #32 :
Oregon
Department of
Energy
Global Warming Report
Ensure Oregon has an adequate supply of reliable and affordable energy, and is safe from nuclear contamination, by helping Oregonians save energy, develop clean energy resources, promote renewable energy and clean up nuclear waste.
Notice of Public Meetings
on the
Draft Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reductions
Governor Kulongoski has committed to carry out the West Coast Governors? Global Warming Initiative. As part of that commitment, the Governor?s Advisory Group on Global Warming was formed earlier this year.
The Advisory Group has just completed a draft Oregon Strategy for Greenhouse Gas Reductions (HTML), which is available for public review and comment. The draft report outlines actions Oregon can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recommended actions cover energy efficiency, transportation, renewable energy, electric generation and other areas. The complete PDF version of this report is in the blue column to the right, as well as the individual sections of the report.
This draft report is also available from the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) by calling ODOE at (800) 221-8035 or by e-mail at energyweb.incoming@state.or.us
On behalf of the Advisory Group on Global Warming, ODOE will hold three public meetings to receive comments on and answer questions about the draft report. |
Becker,
Thank you.
You seem to have access to the reports, but I'm not entirely sure what you think the solution should be. You have stated that every concern and pro-active solution mentioned in this thread is unrealistic. So what, in your opinion, would be a more realistic approach?
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11-07-2004 08:53 AM
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Flutterbywingz
Taking Flight
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Urban Ecology Study Witnessing The Birth Of A 'Designer Ecosystem'
When Arizona State University's Central Arizona-Phoenix Long Term Ecological Research Project was funded by the National Science Foundation in 1997, more than 50 scientists signed on to do the multidisciplinary research knowing that they were embarking on something unusual ? the first ever long-term ecological study of "a human-dominated ecosystem," aka, a city.
Seven years later, the first phase of the research has been completed and NSF has renewed the project with a second grant of $4.9 million for six more years of study, indicating the agency's satisfaction with the research's accomplishments. The long-term study has made more than just a good start, however -- the project has produced results that may transform the study of ecology.
After seven years, the project scientists are increasingly convinced that they are looking at a new kind of ecosystem ? an ecosystem that is radically different from the native desert that surrounds it and driven in part by forces unlike those usually studied by ecologists.
"It's not what people generally think ? they think there's either nature or there are cities," said Charles Redman, director of ASU's Center for Environmental Studies, and one of the project's principal investigators. "That's what this is all about ? there is nature in the city. The city is part of nature."
Along with their partner LTER in Baltimore, the development of urban LTERs was considered a major leap forward in the field of ecology both because they included human culture as a "driver" of ? and "responder" to -- the ecosystem being studied, and also because the research would include studies far outside traditional ecology or even the biosciences, climatology and earth sciences: sociology, anthropology, engineering, and economics.
Phoenix as chosen as one of the two urban LTER sites because it is a fast growing desert city, like many of the world's emerging cities, with an archeological record for the area going back more than 2,000 years. The city has gone from a small farming center to a major metropolitan area in little more than a century, with the major growth occurring after World War II.
"It's an ideal situation, because the development of the city has literally been happening as we watch," said ASU Life Sciences Professor Nancy Grimm, CAP LTER's other principal investigator. "We've made an assault on understanding the structure and function of the urban ecosystem on numerous fronts. From air quality to birds and bugs and plants to water quality and usage, to landscaping choices, climate, economics, zoning, pets? we are considering everything that is part of the ecosystem."
One of the most interesting things that has been revealed is the special nature of the urban biota, which has a distinctive mixture of native and exotic plants and animals, but differs even further in the dynamics of how these organisms interact.
"We have been defining the Phoenix urban ecosystem, which, it turns out, functions very much like an ecosystem with bugs and birds and plants -- but in different sets of relationships, with much different abundances," said Redman. "The abundance of organisms is higher overall. If you just measure it, it is richer in town than in the desert."
The scientists note that the urban environment differs from the surrounding desert in that it has an ample, year-round supply of basic life resources such as water, that in the native environment is seasonal or highly localized. This leads to a larger and more consistent supply of growing plants, which are the base of the food chain, and ultimately to a greater number of animals, such as birds.
"If you know anything about abundances of birds in desert environments, you know that birds are concentrated along river corridors and riparian zones and that diversity also is concentrated there," said Grimm. "What Phoenicians have done is to take this river, which was one localized area, and capture the water and distribute it over a very, very large area. If you fly in you can see this ? you can see that we have a lot more plant biomass, a lot more trees. There are little lakes scattered all over the place. Scottsdale since 1940 has gone from zero to 167 little lakes."
However, the larger populations of birds that thrive in the city's oasis are not the same as those in the desert, but are less diverse in species, with "generalist" native and non-native species (such as mourning doves, grackles and English sparrows) being favored over many of the more highly specialized birds found in the natural desert.
"What we've found is that some species are missing, while others, in fact, are enriched," said Redman. "What you have, in fact, is the creation of an urban ecosystem which is quite distinct but not necessarily impoverished."
One study in the project, for example, found that Abert's Towhee, a mid-sized bird that is relatively uncommon in the desert, thrives in Phoenix because the city is crisscrossed with canals, which mimic the riverbanks the species normally frequents, and giving the birds ready access to lawns and golf courses which are ideal for its ground-feeding habits. There are also populations of birds not normally found in the low desert at all, including Ravens and Peach-Faced Lovebirds.
While any birder can see that the diversity and abundances of birds are different, to the researchers, a more important detail is something that is practically invisible -- a major shift in the environment's food web ? what ecologists call the "trophic structure" ? making the city's biology systematically different from the desert's.
"We've been monitoring and assessing the nature of trophic structure of Phoenix's wildlife ? the big animals, the smaller animals that they eat and the plants that they eat," Redman said. "You're spreading water all over the environment, and this is one of the prime reasons for the greater abundances of birds. This also has consequences for many, many other things. A fun thing is that this high abundance of birds, in turn means that a variety of insects are kept at very low abundance."
Through experiments, the group found that insects, whose populations are controlled in the native desert mainly by seasonal scarcity of vegetation, instead are kept in check in the city by a larger population of birds. Bird populations are large because of ample water and the absence of their natural predators -- especially hawks (though they are partially replaced by cats). In turn, the lack of predation leads the city birds, most of whom are mainly seed-eating species, to spend more time hunting nutrient-rich insects, a behavior that would be risky around predators.
Other behavioral and trophic shifts also appear to follow. Particularly intriguing is the further implication that populations and trophic structures vary somewhat within the city depending on the economic status of the neighborhood. Economic issues appear to be a controlling factor for the urban ecosystem, much like climate and the abundance or absence of resources is in the surrounding desert environment.
"The urban ecosystem is driven very largely by the local economy," said Grimm. "The populations are systematically altered by the decisions that we make and the relationships of the animals have been shuffled."
"There's also a relationship our researchers are seeing between the spatial distribution of where the water is, where all the plants are and where the wealth is," she noted. "This is something that we still don't know the mechanisms of, but one of the most interesting findings is that the diversity of plants in the Phoenix area is related strongly to family income -- higher family income, higher plant diversity; lower family income, lower plant diversity. We don't know the mechanisms, but it's an interesting phenomenon."
Grimm and Redman note that the findings also point out that human choices are also modifying the physical environment, from its soil chemistry to the urban heat island and microclimates, and that the implication is that the urban ecosystem, while complicated, could potentially be manipulated and controlled.
"There are things that humans can deliberately manipulate, like the water system. But then there are a lot of by-products of our activities -- big changes in our ecosystem that we don't necessarily recognize or try to control," Grimm said. "The good example of one of these is a big increase in nitrogen input, which comes about because of the burning of fossil fuels in cars. Driving around fertilizes the ecosystem.
"Is fertilizing a good thing? One of the things that we are going to do in the next phase is to investigate the consequences," she said.
While the team's interest is in doing fundamental ecology research, there are also some important applied science issues behind the project. "What we really want to know is whether we can have a sustainable urban ecosystem in this kind of environment and setting. What are the elements of it that are warning signs of vulnerability, of some kind of event that could cause collapse? How do our institutions and the systems we have set up stand up against various kinds of stress? Is the urban ecosystem resilient?" Grimm asked.
"People in ecology are beginning to talk about designer ecosystems ? systems that have been heavily influenced by humans. What we're doing is pioneering this," Grimm said.
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01-17-2005 06:34 PM
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Flutterbywingz
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So, because of human activity and overpopulation, we have now reached a point where we must adapt (intellectually) to the concept of the world actually benefiting from a "designer" ecosystem. I know there are people out there who will embrace this study as a means to justify not doing anything at all to preserve the ecosystems that have been thriving naturally for many a millennia, but all it really is is a bunch of environmentalists admitting defeat, perhaps for no other reason than to try and justify human greed and presumptuous arrogance, to feed into the notion that humans are the absolute most important form of life on earth.
The article mentions that with "designer urban" ecosystems, smaller species of birds and animals (wild) dwelling in urban settings will adapt to insect derived diets. They may adapt over time to these new diets (by evolving into a new mutation of the same species), but some birds, like other animals, are herbivorous seed eaters. Their crops and gizzards are not designed to store and digest anything but the diets they have been thriving on in their natural settings since the last time they adapted, which incidentally, in most recorded and speculated cases, is what leads to the extinction of an entire (non-mutated and mutated) species.
When hawks are forced into obscure locations (as mentioned in the article), because of human abundance in urban settings (which was once the hawk's vast 'hunting' grounds ), I fear the only thing that seems clear from this study, is that the extinction of most wild animals, is sadly impending.
As I stated in a previous post; because of human activity, earth is running out of natural life-sustaining resources for animals in the wild. How long will it be before earth can no longer sustain human life?
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01-17-2005 06:38 PM
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Flutterbywingz
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Climate Change Transforming Alaska's Landscape -- Ancient Lakes And Wetlands Being Replaced By Forest
Ottawa, September 28, 2005 -- Lakes and wetlands in the Kenai Peninsula of south-central Alaska are drying at a significant rate. The shift seems to be driven by climate change, and could endanger waterfowl habitats and hasten the spread of wildfires.
In a paper published in the August 2005 issue of the NRC Research Press' Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Eric Klein and his colleagues document a significant landscape shift from wetlands to woodland and forest in the Kenai Peninsula Lowlands.
The trend fits within a global picture of drying wetlands in northern latitudes, with similar changes already appearing in lower latitudes. Klein, a biologist who did his graduate research with Alaska Pacific University, says the transformation of Alaska's landscape corresponds with an increase in temperatures over the past 100 years. "When you look at the climatologic data, it shows a warming trend. This is just one of the physical manifestations of that trend that is hard to refute."
The researchers compared aerial photos of the Kenai Peninsula taken in 1950 and 1996. Combined with extensive field study and analysis of vegetation, the research confirms that the Kenai Peninsula is becoming woodier and dryer. In the areas studied, wooded areas increased from 57 percent to 73 percent from 1950 to 1996, while wetland areas decreased from 5 percent to 1 percent.
The results confirm what the researchers could see for themselves. "It's very clear when you fly over closed basin lakes, many of which are the kettle ponds left after the glaciers receded," says Klein. "They have a kind of apron, or area between the water and mature forest, and you can see it getting larger as the water goes down."
Global temperatures have increased by about 0.6?C over the past 100 years. The rate of temperature increase from 1976 to the present has been double that from 1910 to 1945 -- greater than at any other time during the last 1,000 years.
Over the past 30 years, temperatures in the Kenai Peninsula have increased 0.7?C. In the last 15 to 25 years, species such as dwarf birch, blueberries and black spruce have grown up in areas where wetlands had existed for 8,000 to 12,000 years. "These areas used to be soggy bogs with sphagnum peat moss, and no shrubs or trees," says Dr. Ed Berg, an ecologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "The evidence for this is that when you dig down into the peat, you don't see any stems or shrubs. Had they grown there in the past, they would have been preserved because peat preserves things very well."
Wetlands are hotspots for biodiversity. The shift to woodland and forest means loss of many types of wetland vegetation and fewer habitats for migratory birds. The greater forest cover also creates a continuous swath of vegetation that helps wildfires to spread more quickly.
Similar drying is happening outside the Kenai Peninsula. "It's certainly happening in Alaska on a very broad scale," says Dr. Berg. "Much of the interior is showing the same kind of drying pattern."
If the warming trend continues, Alaska's lakes and wetlands will continue to disappear, creating a dryer landscape in the long term.
Klein says that Alaska's transformation is another piece of evidence in the climate change puzzle. "The bottom line is that a change is happening," he says. "There is an overall environment shift occurring in Alaska, and especially in the northern hemisphere. I think it's a bioindicator of climate change and what is happening to the planet as a whole."
From Science Daily
A bear roams the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. (Photo Credit: Dave Menke/USFWS)
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10-11-2005 01:25 AM
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Flutterbywingz
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Source: National Aeronautics And Space Administration
May 27, 2006
Earth's Ozone Layer Appears To Be On The Road To Recovery.
Think of the ozone layer as Earth's sunglasses, protecting life on the surface from the harmful glare of the sun's strongest ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer and other maladies.
People were understandably alarmed, then, in the 1980s when scientists noticed that manmade chemicals in the atmosphere were destroying this layer. Governments quickly enacted an international treaty, called the Montreal Protocol, to ban ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs then found in aerosol cans and air conditioners.
Today, almost 20 years later, reports continue of large ozone holes opening over Antarctica, allowing dangerous UV rays through to Earth's surface. Indeed, the 2005 ozone hole was one of the biggest ever, spanning 24 million sq km in area, nearly the size of North America.
Listening to this news, you might suppose that little progress has been made. You'd be wrong.
While the ozone hole over Antarctica continues to open wide, the ozone layer around the rest of the planet seems to be on the mend. For the last 9 years, worldwide ozone has remained roughly constant, halting the decline first noticed in the 1980s.
The question is why? Is the Montreal Protocol responsible? Or is some other process at work?
It's a complicated question. CFCs are not the only things that can influence the ozone layer; sunspots, volcanoes and weather also play a role. Ultraviolet rays from sunspots boost the ozone layer, while sulfurous gases emitted by some volcanoes can weaken it. Cold air in the stratosphere can either weaken or boost the ozone layer, depending on altitude and latitude. These processes and others are laid out in a review just published in the May 4th issue of Nature: "The search for signs of recovery of the ozone layer" by Elizabeth Westhead and Signe Andersen.
Sorting out cause and effect is difficult, but a group of NASA and university researchers may have made some headway. Their new study, entitled "Attribution of recovery in lower-stratospheric ozone," was just accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. It concludes that about half of the recent trend is due to CFC reductions.
Lead author Eun-Su Yang of the Georgia Institute of Technology explains: "We measured ozone concentrations at different altitudes using satellites, balloons and instruments on the ground. Then we compared our measurements with computer predictions of ozone recovery, [calculated from real, measured reductions in CFCs]." Their calculations took into account the known behavior of the sunspot cycle (which peaked in 2001), seasonal changes in the ozone layer, and Quasi-Biennial Oscillations, a type of stratospheric wind pattern known to affect ozone.
What they found is both good news and a puzzle.
The good news: In the upper stratosphere (above roughly 18 km), ozone recovery can be explained almost entirely by CFC reductions. "Up there, the Montreal Protocol seems to be working," says co-author Mike Newchurch of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The puzzle: In the lower stratosphere (between 10 and 18 km) ozone has recovered even better than changes in CFCs alone would predict. Something else must be affecting the trend at these lower altitudes.
The "something else" could be atmospheric wind patterns. "Winds carry ozone from the equator where it is made to higher latitudes where it is destroyed. Changing wind patterns affect the balance of ozone and could be boosting the recovery below 18 km," says Newchurch. This explanation seems to offer the best fit to the computer model of Yang et al. The jury is still out, however; other sources of natural or manmade variability may yet prove to be the cause of the lower-stratosphere's bonus ozone.
Whatever the explanation, if the trend continues, the global ozone layer should be restored to 1980 levels sometime between 2030 and 2070. By then even the Antarctic ozone hole might close--for good.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...60527093645.htm
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05-29-2006 03:18 PM
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Flutterbywingz
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By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 1 hour, 15 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Scientists have found what might have been the ideal ancient vacation hotspot with a 74-degree Fahrenheit average temperature, alligator ancestors and palm trees. It's smack in the middle of the Arctic.
First-of-its-kind core samples dug up from deep beneath the Arctic Ocean floor show that 55 million years ago an area near the North Pole was practically a subtropical paradise, three new studies show.
The scientists say their findings are a glimpse backward into a much warmer-than-thought polar region heated by run-amok greenhouse gases that came about naturally.
Skeptics of man-made causes of global warming have nothing to rejoice over, however. The researchers say their studies appearing in Thursday's issue of Nature also offer a peak at just how bad conditions can get.
"It probably was (a tropical paradise) but the mosquitoes were probably the size of your head," said Yale geology professor Mark Pagani, a study co-author.
And what a watery, swampy world it must have been.
"Imagine a world where there are dense sequoia trees and cypress trees like in Florida that ring the Arctic Ocean," said Pagani, a member of the multinational Arctic Coring Expedition that conducted the research.
Millions of years ago the Earth experienced an extended period of natural global warming. But around 55 million years ago there was a sudden supercharged spike of carbon dioxide that accelerated the greenhouse effect.
Scientists already knew this "thermal event" happened but are not sure what caused it. Perhaps massive releases of methane from the ocean, the continent-sized burning of trees, lots of volcanic eruptions.
Many experts figured that while the rest of the world got really hot, the polar regions were still comfortably cooler, maybe about 52 degrees Fahrenheit.
But the new research found the polar average was closer to 74 degrees. So instead of Boston-like weather year-round, the Arctic was more like Miami North. Way north.
"It's the first time we've looked at the Arctic, and man, it was a big surprise to us," said study co-author Kathryn Moran, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island. "It's a new look to how the Earth can respond to these peaks in carbon dioxide."
It's enough to make Santa Claus break into a sweat.
The 74-degree temperature, based on core samples which act as a climatic time capsule, was probably the year-round average, but because data is so limited it might also be just the summertime average, researchers said.
What's troubling is that this hints that future projections for warming, several degrees over the next century, may be on the low end, said study lead author Appy Sluijs of the Institute of Environmental Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Also it shows that what happened 55 million years ago was proof that too much carbon dioxide ? more than four times current levels ? can cause global warming, said another co-author Henk Brinkhuis at Utrecht University.
Purdue University atmospheric sciences professor Gabriel Bowen, who was not part of the team, praised the work and said it showed that "there are tipping points in our (climate) system that can throw us to these conditions."
And the new research also gave scientists the idea that a simple fern may have helped pull Earth from a hothouse to an icehouse by sucking up massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, this natural solution to global warming was not exactly quick: It took about a million years.
With all that heat and massive freshwater lakes forming in the Arctic, a fern called Azolla started growing and growing. Azolla, still found in warm regions today, grew so deep, so wide that eventually it started sucking up carbon dioxide, Brinkhuis theorized. And that helped put the cool back in the Arctic.
Bowen said he has a hard time accepting that part of the research, but Brinkhuis said the studies show tons upon tons of thick mats of Azolla covered the Arctic and moved south.
"This could actually contribute to push the world to a cooling mode," Brinkhuis said, but only after it got hotter first and then it would take at least 800,000 years to cool back down. It's not something to look forward to, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060531/ap_on_sc/hot_arctic
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05-31-2006 07:13 PM
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nikiTa
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Ah yes, I too am an avid environmentalist.
In fact I use compost in my beautiful vegetable and perennial garden: strawberries (my first edible strawberry is ripe on the vine), cucumbers, tomatos (4th of July and Roma versions), watermelons, Oriental poppy, and hen and chicks.
And beyond that regarding the arctic having been a tropical landscape.
I don't necessarily follow an old earth philosophy (although I wasn't there at the beginning of the creation of earth and it may well be possible.)
In that vein, I am certain that the entire planet at one time before Noah's flood was tropical. During the time when there was a canopy on the earth, all the the earth was tropical and I do believe that at one time the body of earth was one massive land formation.
There is evidence, fossil remnants of dolphins having lived in the state of Colorado and also other evidence like massive palm trees found in Colorado, for instance.
More than anything, I do believe I am called to be a good steward of God's creation....I am forever hoping that the evolution of mankind will include those who are also good stewards of the earth and all of its inhabitants, be they include stewards of vegetable, organic, inorganic, human or animal compounds.
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06-02-2006 08:44 PM
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