Arctic Temperatures Break Record Highs

October 24, 2008 Albuquerque, New Mexico - In October, scientists reported that the fall temperatures in the Arctic broke all record highs – averaging 5 degrees Celsius above normal, which is 9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal!
All that Arctic warming has caused the highest sea level rise on record. It doesn’t seem like a big number – only .254 centimeters a year – but it still means Arctic waters are rising as more and more ice melts from the warmer and warmer Arctic temperatures.
All the Arctic sea ice melt in 2008 was the second greatest since satellite measurements began in 1979. The volume of Arctic ice melt might be even more than 2007, which holds the number one spot for area of ice melt. That makes two years in a row of record-breaking Arctic ice melt.
The consequences so far are:
a) the decline of reindeer herds;
b) green shrubs are now moving into Arctic areas that used to be permafrost;
c) and the saltiness of the Arctic Ocean and North Atlantic is being diluted by all the fresh ice water runoff. Less salt in the North Atlantic water means less density. Less density could slow down – or even stop – the North Atlantic Oscillation that brings warm equatorial waters to the North Atlantic. It’s that oscillation of warm water from the equator to the British Isles that helps keep the U. K. and Europe warmer. The reason the oscillation might stop is that less salty water is lighter and won’t sink as deeply and rapidly.
If the North Atlantic Oscillation stopped, the warmer waters would not reach the North Atlantic. So, in one of the great ironies of global warming, the faster the warming North Pole melts, the more likely temperatures will drop in the U. K. and Europe.

The Six Principles of Green Living

Living by “green” principles can be extremely satisfying, but how do you do it? Surely, it’s not by purchasing more “green” products, because buying and using more “things” is all part of the problem. This Lifehack article has got a great point, though, that a better guide to Green Living might well be David Allen’s Getting Things Done, since the principles of Green Living are not all that different from the principles used to be more productive.
1. Strive for Simplicity: More stuff means more complexity; more upkeep, more keeping track, more things to do. In global terms, it means more wasted resources.2. Fairness: Much of our consumption-driven market is based on unfairness. If everyone along the chain, from a Bolivian granny making hand-woven grocery bags to the Wal-Mart worker, actually were paid what you’d expect, that hand-woven grocery bag would be out of most people’s price range.3. Community: If you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending a local farmer’s market, you’ve experienced something few of us do these days: an encounter with a part of your community, an actual living and breathing person, who made that which you’re about to buy.4. Sustainability: A system is sustainable when the negative outputs of that system are accommodated and turned into positive outputs. However, most of our global production is not sustainable. 5. Planning: Planning means looking ahead toward a desired outcome. It also means thinking a little bit about the community that isn’t here yet and dealing fairly with them. The decisions we make now will create the conditions our grandchildren and their grandchildren will have to deal with.6. Transparency: Planning, community, fairness, and ultimately sustainability require transparency, but most decisions these days are made behind closed doors. To take Green Living a bit closer to home, I also encourage you to look into the principles of Bau-Biologie. Bau-Biologie is the holistic study of the man-made environment, human health and ecology, and you can use many of their principles to create a healthier indoor environment for yourself and your family.
Sources:
Lifehack.org

Global Warming and the Loggerhead Turtles

Global warming is something that seems to be in the news on a regular basis. Despite the mounting evidence there are still many companies, people and even countries that are not convinced this threat to nature and wildlife exists at all. Here is yet another story that tells the struggle of the Loggerhead turtle one of the largest sea turtles with a normal life span of almost a hundred years.

Loggerhead sea turtles in US Atlantic waters face extinction from commercial fishing and global warming and should be designated an endangered species, two environmental groups said.
The ocean conservation group Oceana and the Center for Biological Diversity are petitioning the US government to win better protection for loggerhead habitats and nesting beaches along the US Eastern Seaboard.
The petition to be filed with the US Commerce Department and the Department of the Interior serves as a warning that the groups could sue the US government if it fails to act to protect the species.
Loggerhead nest counts in Florida have dropped nearly 50 percent in the last decade, according to Florida's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
At the Archie Carr wildlife refuge, one of the key Florida loggerhead nesting areas, nest counts dropped from 15,645 in 2001 to 10,828 in 2006, and appear to be down again this year.
Under US law, an endangered species is "in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range," while a threatened species is "likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future."
Of the six sea turtle species in US waters, the hawksbill, leatherback, Kemp's Ridley and green are listed as endangered and the Olive Ridley and loggerhead are threatened.
A recent five-year study by the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that the designation "threatened" should be maintained for the loggerhead.
Tens of thousands of loggerheads are killed yearly in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico by commercial fishermen, who snare turtles incidentally while going after other species, Oceana said.
"With 90 percent of the US nesting occurring in Florida and a 50 percent decline in nesting over the last decade, it's quite possible these populations will become extinct," said Elizabeth Griffin, a marine scientist at Oceana.
The loggerhead, which can live a century or more, is among the largest of the sea turtle species. They can grow to about 3 1/2 feet (1.07 metres) and weigh up to 400 pounds (181 kg).
Although loggerhead populations are being decimated by commercial fishing, scientists believe global warming is a greater ongoing threat to loggerheads, said Miyoko Sakashita of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Rising sea levels could destroy Florida nesting beaches, and rising temperatures could dramatically tilt the balance of male and female turtles, endangering the species' reproductive abilities.
"Turtles' gender is determined by temperature. In warmer weather there are fewer males born," she said. "The gender could be skewed toward females. With just a few extra degrees of temperature you get almost all females born." (Editing by Michael Christie and Eric Walsh)
Story by Jim Loney
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
Lets all do what we can to give something back to our Mother Earth! Ion Exchange Inc

Is Iron a Tonic For Climate - Saving Plankton

I ran across this news article as I was reading my weekly email from Plant Ark. Not so surprisingly we were just having a similar discussion at Ion Exchange. While it is a good thing to plant native plants and seeds one must be careful to plant with discretion. Sometimes in trying to do a good thing we inadvertently create another problem. For instance about 40 years ago our country gifted the then ruling Japanese Prince with two fish. At the time the Japanese leaders were concerned about getting enough protein in the diets of their people. The Japanese Prince turned the fish over to a research facility to see if this species of fish would meet the demand for a higher protein diet. Well to make a long story short some of these fish bred in captivity made their way into the rivers and streams. This gifted fish has since killed off most of one species of fish native to Japan and is endangering another species of native fish.
With all the problems that are going on with our planet we must be cautious in our haste to help that we do not create an even bigger problem to mother earth.
Having said that here is the news article to ponder over.
Iron Is a Tonic For Climate-Saving Plankton
MIAMI - From the deck of the research ship Weatherbird II, a California company hopes to prove a controversial theory that putting iron dust in the ocean can produce enough plankton to help save the Earth.
The mission of the company behind the ship, Planktos Corp. is to research whether "iron seeding," or "iron enrichment" -- dumping tons of pulverized iron ore into the ocean -- can catalyze the growth of microscopic algae that will then suck carbon out of the atmosphere.
If the research goes well, Planktos aims to make money by fertilizing the ocean, measuring the carbon its plankton forests sequester and selling carbon credits for cash on emerging world carbon markets.
Weatherbird left Florida this month on a mission that has caused consternation among scientists and environmentalists, many of whom do not think the theory has been sufficiently tested to try out on such a large scale.
Oceanographers, who unlike scientific colleagues in fields like pharmaceuticals have not been heavily exposed to business motivations, also appear uneasy about Planktos' aim of making money while fighting climate change.
But the company says it is interested in the potential greater good of iron-enrichment -- taking tons of carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, out of the Earth's atmosphere, in the same way a rainforest on land works for the health of the planet.
"We might actually be able to save the planet from the ravages of fossil fuels," Planktos chief executive Russ George told Reuters.
DUST AS A VITAMIN
The theory of iron enrichment was proposed 25 years ago. Iron acts as a vitamin, oceanographers say, enabling plants to take up nutrients.
The theory was greeted as a joke. But it has gained traction since, and adherents.
The emergence of carbon markets, especially in Europe, in which polluters can offset emissions by buying carbon credits from countries or companies that plant forests, has given the proposal commercial allure.
In addition to Planktos, Silicon Valley-based company Climos intends to pursue iron enrichment.
Planktos' plans to seed a patch of ocean, 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 km) in diameter, with 50 to 100 metric tonnes of raw iron ore in an area 200 miles (320 km) west of the Galapagos Islands, one of the world's most unique ecosystems.
Weatherbird's mission, delayed for months by the late arrival of high-tech equipment, is steeped in secrecy. In a recent phone interview, George said he could not reveal details because of what he said were threats from "radical environmental groups" to halt the mission.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which patrols the Galapagos Islands to protect them from ecological threats, has pledged to stop Planktos.
George said the area near Ecuador's volcanic islands, which lie 625 miles (1,000 km) west of the coast, is a perfect place for a test because iron from the islands feed a vast, natural plankton bloom that can serve as a biological control for the experiment.
Environmentalists fear that the test could go awry and threaten the islands, which served as the inspiration for British naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
But George said the natural Galapagos bloom drifts west, and so would the one that Planktos hopes to generate.
The iron ore to be used in the test is the same as dust blown naturally by the wind into the ocean, George added.
"Hundreds of millions of tons of dust are landing in the ocean every year. How can anyone suggest that our 50 tonnes of rock dust will provoke some cataclysmic result?"
NOT ENOUGH PROOF?
Oceanographers critical of Planktos say scientists have simply not yet done the work needed to prove that phytoplankton blooms can sequester carbon safely and for the long term.
They also say that while surface water moves westward near the Galapagos, deeper currents go east, toward rich fishing grounds off South America.
"Many scientists think we should try to establish the facts and the downstream consequences of iron enrichment and there are a few non-scientists who think if it can make money we should do it now," said Kenneth Coale, a researcher at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in California who has conducted leading work on the subject.
Few of the researchers who consider themselves experts in iron-enrichment appear to know who the scientists are that Planktos intends to take on its experiment.
"It seems more an effort to impress shareholders," Coale said.
There are also questions about whether decaying blooms might produce other, more powerful greenhouse gases.
INTERNATIONAL LAWS?
The legal situation on the high seas is unclear.
Scientists advising signatory nations of the 1972 London Convention on Dumping recently issued a statement of concern, and the members of the convention are expected to try to draw up regulations for iron enrichment.
The US Environmental Protection Agency shares the concerns but was told by Planktos that it would not use a US flagged vessel, an EPA spokeswoman said.
"At this stage to have companies out there already wanting to press ahead with commercialization is deeply unhelpful," said David Santillo, a scientist at the Greenpeace Research Laboratories in Britain. "I think that from the last 15 years of science we know enough to say, 'don't do it.'"
Despite the controversy, even the skeptics agree that something must be done to counter global warming, and that cutting pollution levels is no longer enough.
"The overarching thing is that there is definitely a panic about climate. If someone could come up with a quick band aid fix to this problem they would be a hero to humanity," said Greenpeace research director Kert Davies. (Editing by Eddie Evans)
Story by Jim Loney and Michael Christie
Story Date: 20/11/2007
Tell us what you think. Click on the comment link below this article and add your two cents. Till next time. Kay at Ion Exchange