Tag Archives: Climate Change

War over the Arctic? Climate skeptics distracting us

From Alaska Dispatch, Wednesday, March 3, 2010:

Skepticism about climate change is going mainstream, and that is worrying. One-third of Americans now say global warming doesn’t exist — triple the percentage of three years ago.

This defiance of science isn’t just harmful for the environment. It’s also distracting us from growing threats to US national security. Actual — not theoretical — effects of climate change are turning the Arctic into a potential military flash point.Expected melting of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean means greatly expanded access to increasingly scarce fossil fuels. It also means tensions over Arctic real estate. What the Middle East was to the second half of the 20th century, the Arctic could be to the first half of the 21st. Because America has been so slow to wake up to climate change, it’s lagging behind in protecting its Arctic interests.

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President Touts His Alternative Fuels Plan

From The New York Times, Wednesday, Februrary 3, 2010:

President Obama moved on Wednesday to bolster the nation’s production of corn-based ethanol and other alternative liquid fuels and ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal.

The president is trying to expand the portfolio of American energy sources to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, a factor in global warming, and spur advances in alternative technologies. Last week he expressed support in his State of the Union address for increased generation of nuclear power and offshore drilling for oil and gas.

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U.S. Government Plans to Reduce Its Energy Use

From The New York Times, Friday, January 29, 2010:

The federal government will take steps to cut its energy use and reduce its heat-trapping emissions by 28 percent by 2020, compared with 2008 levels, the White House announced on Friday.The government is the largest user of electricity and fuel in the country, accounting for roughly 1.5 percent of the nation’s annual energy consumption and emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming. The White House said the emissions reduction goal, if met, would save $8 billion to $11 billion in energy costs over the next decade.

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Past Decade Warmest on Record, NASA Data Shows

From The New York Times, Thursday, January 21, 2010:

The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, new surface temperature figures released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration show.

The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. The other hottest recorded years have all occurred since 1998, NASA said.

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Research into Alaska fishing, climate change links

From The Associated Press, Friday, January 15, 2010:

The Federal Subsistence Board has approved research to look for possible links between climate change and fishing patterns in three regions of Alaska.

The projects will take three to four years and cost $930,000, according to the Office of Subsistence Management.

Researchers will talk to village households about their traditional harvests, historical patterns and health of the fish and any changes they’ve noticed over time, said Larry Buklis, fisheries division chief.

The Anchorage Daily News reports studies are planned in Bering Strait villages, Northwest Alaska and along the Yukon River.

The research is part of a monitoring plan that includes 41 projects approved by the board Tuesday in Anchorage.

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Climate change costly for Inuit: study

From CBC News, Tuesday, December 15, 2009:

A new study suggests the financial burden of Arctic climate change is already falling on Inuit people and the heaviest costs are hurting those families least able to pay.

The study backs demands made by Inuit leaders for a share of global funds being proposed to help adapt to a warming planet. It says governments should shift some of their funding focus to help the Inuit meld new tools with traditional knowledge to survive in today’s North.

“Inuit can adapt to climate change,” says James Ford, a geographer at Montreal’s McGill University, whose paper will be published early in 2010. “We have a number of concerns about whether Inuit can afford to adapt.”

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Storm contiues to swirl around Climategate, as multiple investigations get under way

From The Christian Science Monitor, Thursday, December 3, 2009:

When e-mails of climate scientists hacked from a British University were published online, the reverberations were heard around the world.

Skeptics of human-caused climate change were elated: Several of the e-mails could be read to indicate that data was inaccurate or fudged, and some seemed to imply collusion about who and what was posted about global warming in peer-reviewed journals.

A couple of weeks later, the controversy continues to swirl like a tornado. Even Jon Stewart has weighed in on it.

Among the latest news, the University of East Anglia announced an independent reviewer of the e-mails and outlined exactly what he would investigate.

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UAF will collaborate on climate change study

From The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Monday, November 23, 2009:

The university said it will collaborate on a multimillion-dollar study of how climate change could be impacting lakes, rivers and streams in Alaska and Hawaii.

The multi-disciplinary environmental research project will focus partly on the influence changes in North Pacific weather systems have on freshwater resources, said Buck Sharpton, a vice chancellor of research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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Seas Grow Less Effective at Absorbing Emissions

From The New York Times, Wednesday, November 18, 2009:

The Earth’s oceans, which have absorbed carbon dioxide from fuel emissions since the dawn of the industrial era, have recently grown less efficient at sopping it up, new research suggests.

Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels began soaring in the 1950s, and oceans largely kept up, scientists say. But the growth in the intake rate has slowed since the 1980s, and markedly so since 2000, the authors of a study write in a report in Thursday’s issue of Nature.

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