Almost half a million square kilometers is set aside in Alaska as threatened bear habitat. That is more than ten times the total area of the Netherlands (41.526 square km’s). A step in the right direction:

The US government designated “critical habitat” for polar bears who live on Alaska’s disappearing sea ice, a move that could impact new oil and gas drilling projects in the Arctic.
The Fish and Wildlife Service set aside 187,000 square miles (484,000 square kilometers) off Alaska as the threatened bears’ habitat, which means any project that could impact the animals’ way of life must undergo careful review.

Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks Tom Strickland puts it in context:

“Nevertheless, the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of its sea ice habitat caused by human-induced climate change. We will continue to work toward comprehensive strategies for the long-term survival of this iconic species.”

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gelkhinge

by luojie, china daily, china

The new class of Tea Party Republicans seems to be even less informed about science than existing members. Or is it just the money of the energy industry that leads them to willful ignorance of environmental issues?

Tom Friedman: “Your child is sick. Ninety-eight doctors say treat him this way. Two say ‘no, this other way is the way to go. I’ll go with the two. You’re taking a big risk with those kids. Because 98 of the doctors say, do this thing, two say, do the other.”

When your child is running a fever, do you look at what Rush Limbaugh says, or what the thermometer says? Here’s NASA’s thermometer. That little, tiny hook in red in the top right corner is what conservatives call global cooling.

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The Tea Party movement is increasingly attacking American innovation and 21st-century jobs on all fronts. Rightwinger Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge against the breakthrough electrical car Chevy Volt. Newly elected Republican governors are killing high-speed rail. Glenn Beck is cooking up conspiracy theories on Fox News about smart grid technology. Republican senator Alexander is trying to kill the wind industry. Shortly: the entire right-wing movement is trying to convince Americans green jobs are going to destroy the U.S. economy.
All this effort by conservative patriots is of course heavily financed by Big Oil and Big Coal.
Now the rightwing of the Republican Party is in a fight over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Do they want the moderate Fred Upton who believes it’s good to reduce carbon emissions and to be more independent of oil or do they want Joe Barton who apologised to BP for the harsh treatment (pay for polluting the Gulf of Mexico) by the U.S. government. [read on] (more…)

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A new study from the British University of Exeter finds that carbon emissions worldwide dropped 1.3 percent from 2008 to 2009, largely as a result of the economic recession. The study also “projects that if the economic recovery proceeds as expected, global fossil fuel emissions will increase by more than 3% in 2010.”

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Scientists long believed that the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would take thousands of years, with sea level possibly rising as little as seven inches in this century, about the same amount as in the 20th century.
But researchers have recently been startled to see big changes unfold in both Greenland and Antarctica.
As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100 — an increase that, should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over.
Orrin H. Pilkey of Duke University is advising coastal communities to plan for a rise of at least five feet by 2100. “I think we need immediately to begin thinking about our coastal cities — how are we going to protect them?” said John A. Church, an Australian scientist who is a leading expert on sea level. “We can’t afford to protect everything. We will have to abandon some areas.”
Melting ice is by no means the only sign that the earth is warming. Thermometers on land, in the sea and aboard satellites show warming. Heat waves, flash floods and other extreme weather events are increasing. Plants are blooming earlier, coral reefs are dying and many other changes are afoot that most climate scientists attribute to global warming. NYTimes - whole story

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Not all conservatives are anti-science and pro Big Oil. Not all Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world’s top scientific academies and scientists are wrong. That writes former Republican Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (NY) in the Washington Post op-ed. He says he finds “dogged determination” of the Republican Party to deny the actual science ‘incomprehensible’.
Some characterize global warming as the moral issue of our time. Climate change poses significant risks to the world but at the same time it’s an opportunity to adapt and re-energize the economy through clean energy technology. The National Academies of Science: “the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence a huge contingent of the newly-empowered Republican members of Congress do not believe in climate change to begin with.
[read on] (more…)

pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist jim morin

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ScienceDaily - Variations in atmosphere carbon dioxide around 40 million years ago were tightly coupled to changes in global temperature, according to new findings published in the journal Science. The study was led by scientists at Utrecht University, working with colleagues at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Southampton.
The researchers are Peter Bijl, Alexander Houben, Appy Sluijs, Henk Brinkhuis, Gert-Jan Reichart (Utrecht University), Jaap Sinninghe Damsté and Stefan Schouten (NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research) and Steven Bohaty (SOES). The research was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research Utrecht University and Statoil, and used samples and data provided by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP).

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