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Outlook is Grim for Mammals and Birds as Human Population Grows

By Guest PostJuly 16, 2013Environment, Naturebirds, birth rate, climate change, congo, data, death rate, democratic republic, ecosystem, erica chambers, extinction, grim, human population, human population footprint, jeffrey mckee, julia guseman, mammals, outlook, population density, prediction, projection, united states

Average Growing Nation Can Expect 10.8 Percent More Threatened Species by 2050

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The ongoing global growth in the human population will inevitably crowd out mammals and birds and has the potential to threaten hundreds of species with extinction within 40 years, new research shows.

Scientists at The Ohio State University have determined that the average growing nation should expect at least 3.3 percent more threatened species in the next decade and an increase of 10.8 percent species threatened with extinction by 2050.

The United States ranks sixth in the world in the number of new species expected to be threatened by 2050, the research showed. (more…)

New Approach to Measuring Coral Growth Offers Valuable Tool for Reef Managers

By Guest PostJuly 13, 2013Environmentbiscayne national park, calcification, calcium carbonate, climate change, coral growth, coral health, dry tortugas, ecosystem, environmental information, florida keys, fowey rocks, growth pattern, ilsa kuffner, level of precision, marathon, marine organisms, massive starlet coral, miami, national park, ocean water, ph, reef managers, scuba diver working, shell, siderastrea siderea, skeleton, suzette kimball, U.S. Geological Survey, us virgin islands, usgs scientist, water quality

Finds surprising growth patterns in the Florida Keys

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A new more sensitive weight-based approach for monitoring coral growth in the wild has been developed by U.S. Geological Survey researchers leading to more definitive answers about the status of coral reefs.

Corals and other marine organisms build their skeletons and shells through calcification, the biological process of secreting calcium carbonate obtained from ocean water. This new approach to measuring corals can provide finer-scale resolution than traditional linear measurements of coral growth. (more…)

Changing Minds about Climate Policy Can Be Done – Sometimes

By Guest PostJuly 7, 2013Environmentchanging minds, climate change, climate policy, economic status, erik nisbet, george mason university, government intervention, lifestyle, mitigate the problem, morgan ellithorpe, nation, ohio state, open mindedness, ps hart, psychological test, status quo, teresa myers

Simply communicating the benefits is not enough

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Some open-minded people can be swayed to support government intervention on climate change – but only if they are presented with both the benefits and the costs, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that those who were open-minded didn’t change their view if they heard arguments for only one side of the issue.

People who are relatively more closed-minded did not change their mind regardless of the messages they received, or what their original views were. There was also no evidence of open-minded people becoming less supportive of government intervention, no matter if they heard both sides of the argument or only one. (more…)

UCLA life scientists present new insights on climate change and species interactions

By Guest PostJune 11, 2013Environmentanthony dell, biotraits database, climate change, cold blooded animals, consumer, coral reefs, ecology, ecosystems, feeding event, feeding relationship, flowering in plants, fluctuation, Germany, global increase, global warming, immobile prey, interactions, juvenile possum, knowledge, life scientists, massive dataset, mean temperature, metabolic rate, mobile prey, moving prey, natural ecosystems, policymakers, predator, prey, python, rainforests, rate, resource, rising temperatures, samraat pawar, species, species interactions, timing, ucla, university of chicago, university of gottingen, van savage, variability in temperature

UCLA life scientists provide important new details on how climate change will affect interactions between species in research published online May 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This knowledge, they say, is critical to making accurate predictions and informing policymakers of how species are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures.

“There is a growing recognition among biologists that climate change is affecting how species interact with one another, and that this is going to have very important consequences for the stability and functioning of ecosystems,” said the senior author of the research, Van Savage, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of biomathematics at UCLA. “However, there is still a very limited understanding of exactly what these changes will be. Our paper makes progress on this very important question.” (more…)

The politics of climate change

By Guest PostMay 18, 2013Environment, Politicsaaron m. mccright, american university, chenyang xiao, climate change, curb emissions, democrat, denial machine, global warming, government action, government regulations, influence, lyman briggs college, michigan state university, oklahoma state university, political orientation, Politics, reduce emissions, republican, riley dunlap, scientific consensus, scientific reality, sociologist

U.S. residents who believe in the scientific consensus on global warming are more likely to support government action to curb emissions, regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat, according to a study led by a Michigan State University sociologist.

However, a political divide remains on the existence of climate change despite the fact that the vast majority of scientists believe it is real, said Aaron M. McCright, associate professor in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Sociology. (more…)

Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the ‘upper bound’ of normal

By Guest PostMay 15, 2013Environmentantarctic glaciers, antarctic peninsula, antarctic warming, Antarctica, climate change, dark layer, eric steig, glaciers, global warming, human caused warming, ice core, ice sheet divide, icy continent, isotope oxygen 18, oxygen 16, qinghua ding, rapid ice loss, sea-level rise, south america, temperature, tropical pacific ocean, university of washington, upper bound, volcanic ash, west antarctic

In the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise.

New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences. (more…)

Where Does Charcoal, or Black Carbon, in Soils Go?

By Guest PostMay 2, 2013Environmentbiochar technology, black carbon, bonanza creek, carbon cycle, carbon sequestration, charcoal, climate change, ecology, environmental factors, environmental fate, everglades, fate of charcoal, florida international university, georgia coastal ecosystems, german, Germany, global carbon budget, global scale, hubbard brook, konza prairie, marine geochemistry, max planck society, national science foundation, organic carbon, rudolf jaffe, saran twombly, soils, thorsten dittmar, university oldenburg, yan ding

Scientists find surprising new answers in wetlands such as the Everglades

Scientists have uncovered one of nature’s long-kept secrets–the true fate of charcoal in the world’s soils.

The ability to determine the fate of charcoal is critical to knowledge of the global carbon budget, which in turn can help understand and mitigate climate change.

However, until now, researchers only had scientific guesses about what happens to charcoal once it’s incorporated into soil. They believed it stayed there.

Surprisingly, most of these researchers were wrong. (more…)

‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

By Guest PostApril 30, 2013Environment21st century, Antarctica, basins, behavior, christopher little, climate change, climate change policy, coastal planning, computer algorithms, continental ice sheets, geosciences, greenland, ice sheet dynamics, ipcc, massive ice sheets, methodology, michael oppenheimer, monte carlo simulations, nathan urban, Nature, polar ice sheets, princeton university, projection, risk tolerance, sea level, sea level change, sparse data, upper bounds

More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers.

In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach provides a consistent means to integrate the potential contribution of both continental ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — into sea-level rise projections. (more…)

Tag Archives: climate change