Ecoscraps

Want to argue about the causes of global warming? OK… but as you do so, keep in mind this slideshow by a group of high school students in Kwigillingok, Alaska. The effects of climate change aren’t matters of theory for these kids and their families: they’re seeing them first-hand.

via Twilight Earth

Love Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth? It’s about to get a sequel, which will give readers an update on the climate crisis.

From Reuters:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore will publish a follow-up to his global warming awareness bestseller “An Inconvenient Truth” on November 3. The book will be called “Our Choice” and will describe solutions to global warming, the environmental crusader and U.S. publisher Rodale Inc. said in a statement

All of the proceeds will be donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

Image via Kjetil Bjørnsrud.

According to reports, the floods destroying Queensland and other parts of Australia are now causing an even bigger problem - crocodiles in the streets.

One 5′3″ crocodile was hit by a car earlier this week, and there are reports of more of the large reptiles washing into the area. From Yahoo! News:

The army has been called in to help with rescue and recovery efforts, while three reports of large crocodiles washed up from flooded rivers have come in from homes in the Gulf of Carpentaria region.

The floods are coming on the tail of a record-setting heatwave that killed 35 people, and more storms could be on the way in the coming week, since conditions are favorable for another tropical system to move through the region. Meteorologists warn that climate change is to blame for the recent weather disasters, and that things will only get worse in coming years.

The Aral Sea is landlocked between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and it was once the world’s fourth largest inland sea.

Due to Soviet irrigation projects, the Aral sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s.  In 2007, the sea had shrunk to 10% of its original size, and what remains is heavily polluted from weapons testing, industrial projects, pesticides and fertilizer.

The shrinking Aral Sea has also caused local climate change effects, such as hotter, drier summers and colder, longer winters.  Kazakhstan is trying to save the remaining the northern part of the Aral Sea.

Image:  Wikipedia

All timber harvest plans (THP) in California must comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); however, logging companies and the state have largely ignored the enormous increase in global warming emissions caused by clear-cut logging practices.

CEQA requires greenhouse gas emissions resulting from a project to be quantified, as well as, THPs must identify ways to avoid or mitigate the emissions. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the conservation group calling for the greenhouse gas requirements of CEQA to be followed:

Requests to clear-cut thousands of acres of California’s forests are currently before the state Department of Forestry . For example, the Swamped Timber Harvest Plan would alone clear-cut 424 acres. None of the requests address carbon emissions, however, as required by CEQA. This is an especially serious problem given that the published science shows that clear-cutting can remove more carbon from the forest than any other disturbance, including fire.

Contrary to popular opinion that global warming began with the Industrial Revolution, a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists has found that global warming began 5,000 to 8,000 years ago with large-scale agriculture production in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe.

The introduction of rice cultivation and tree removal caused increases in methane and carbon dioxide according to the research conducted with supercomputers and climate models.  Steve Vavrus, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin, explains the study’s conclusion, “I think that the take-home message is that this hypothesis shows that climates are extremely sensitive to small variations in greenhouse gases.”

Via:  JS Online

Image:  Praziquantel on Flickr under a Creative Commons License

Flood waters Venice, Italy reached a depth of 1.56 meters (5 ft, 1 in.) on Monday. This is the deepest flood in 22 years, and it is the fourth highest flood level in recent history.  Is climate change affecting the frequency and depth of flooding in Venice?

Via: Boston.com

Images:  ANDREA PATTARO/AFP PHOTO/AFP/Getty Images

HSBC Bank, in an effort to raise awareness of global warming, has inserted an aerial image of a cityscape at the bottom of a swimming pool. The global warming swimming pool certainly would give swimmers a different perspective on the problem, although I doubt we will be leisurely swimming above submerged cities if it comes to that.

Via:  Neatorama

According to the the UN, the newest threat to the global environment is pollution affecting our food supply.   Atmospheric brown clouds caused by pollution contribute to glacial melting and reduce sunlight that negatively impacts agricultural production.  Extreme weather caused by global warming is also of concern for farmers. From Beijing to Cairo, dark clouds have darkened 13 cities from the Persian Gulf to Asia decreasing the amount of sunlight by as much as 25 percent.

Via: Truthout

Image:  charlotte.marillet on Flickr under a Creative Commons License

Climate change might be putting Australia in the throes of a long and devastating (and probably permanent) drought, but the “d” word is making farm families feel bad, government officials have decided. Their recommendation: use the word “dryness” instead.

That’s right: it’s the word “drought” that’s so disturbing and not, say, oh, the acre upon acre of dust-covered wheatfields, mile upon mile of dry riverbeds and ever-dwindling farm income levels.

Doesn’t that remind you of the old Saturday Night Live sketch, “The Pepsi Syndrome,” in which Richard Benjamin uttered this line about a Three-Mile-Island-like accident: “Sometime yesterday afternoon we experienced what we like to call a ’surprise.’ “?