Thinning Ice Is Changing Ecosystem

Thinning Ice Is Changing Ecosystem - In the Arctic Ocean, algae is manna from heaven. Clumps of the aquatic life drop from the sea ice to the ocean floor below, occasionally feeding otherworldly creatures that live there, like sea cucumbers and brittle stars.

During 2012's record ice melt in the Arctic, when the ice cover over the ocean shrank to the lowest levels ever seen, researchers explored the region's seas with remotely operated vehicles. They discovered the thinning ice was speeding up algal growth.

Research icebreaker Polarstern in the central Arctic in summer 2012.

Not only was more algae clinging to the underside of the thinning ice, but chunks of algae up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) in size littered the seafloor, covering 10 percent of the muddy bottom.

"We had cameras showing that, partially, the seafloor was green with ice algae deposits," Antje Boetius, a biological oceanographer at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany and lead author of the study, said in an email interview.

The vigorous algae growth could change the amount of carbon stored in the Arctic because the clumps trap carbon after falling to the seafloor. The additional food for sea creatures this algae provides could also shift the Arctic's biodiversity in unknown ways, the researchers said.

"The Arctic deep sea is normally very nutrient-limited," Boetius told OurAmazingPlanet. "We believe that we have observed a new phenomenon, which is connected to the sea ice decline, and which may change the way the Arctic ecosystem functions."

Trolling the floor

The scientists sailed through the thinning ice in late summer 2012 aboard the research icebreaker RV Polarstern. They towed cameras and sensors along the seafloor, sent remotely operated vehicles beneath the ice, and collected water, ice and sediments for additional studies.

Clinging to the ice like vines, the 3-foot-long (1 meter) algae strands share a similarity in color and shape with "Star Wars" character Chewbacca's dreadlocks. While many kinds of algae grow under the Arctic ice, the clumps of Melosira arctica are particularly heavy compared to its brethren, and so fall to the seafloor instead of wafting in the waves to be consumed by near-surface dwellers.

The rapid growth of algae beneath the ice in 2012, quickly followed by a massive deluge of sea scum onto the ocean floor, has never been seen before, Boetius said.

"It was already known that ice algae could grow in the ice and form gigantic accumulations under the ice. But it was believed that this takes very long and that these biomasses will remain in the ice or sink out only at the warming coasts, not in the middle of the basins," she said.

The researchers think the algae clumps grew better and faster in 2012 because the Arctic's thinning ice made more sunlight available underneath the ice floes.

Signs of recent change

Once it arrives at the seafloor, up to 14,700 feet (4,500 m) below the ocean's surface, the algae gets chewed up by bottom feeders, and bacteria feed on what's left.

By calculating how much carbon and nutrients were cycled by the algae and its predators, the research team confirmed the rapid growth in 2012 was a new phenomenon.

"We have seen how this was re-mineralized by seafloor bacteria. Had this occurred many times before, the seafloor would look very different," Boetius said.

The expedition's zoologist also analyzed the stomach contents of sea cucumbers from the deep Arctic sea: Algae extracted from their guts could still photosynthesize upon returning to the ship's laboratory, evidence that the algae clumps were relatively young. The animals also had highly developed gonads, another sign of recent access to a massive food supply.

"I think we have probably seen a glimpse of the new Arctic," Boetius said. ( LiveScience.com )

Blog : Paying The Highest

Post : The 'New Arctic': Thinning Ice Is Changing Ecosystem

READ MORE - Thinning Ice Is Changing Ecosystem

Sea Otters May Be Global Warming Warriors

Sea Otters May Be Global Warming Warriors - Sea otters might be on the frontlines of the fight against global warming, according to a new study showing the fur-coated swimmers keep sea urchin populations in check, which in turn allows carbon dioxide-sucking kelp forests to prosper.

Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, looked at 40 years of data on otters and kelp blooms from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. They said they found that sea otters have a positive indirect effect on kelp biomass by preying on sea urchins.

Sea otters convene in a kelp bed near Kodiak Island, Alaska.

Sea urchins greedily graze on kelp when otters are not around, but in the presence of the predators, urchins hide in crevices and eat just the plant scraps. More otters mean more kelp and since the plant is particularly good at capturing carbon through photosynthesis, this also could mean less CO2 in the atmosphere. (During photosynthesis, plants like kelp absorb carbon dioxide, which along with water and energy from the sun, they use to convert it to organic matter.

The study, published Friday (Sept. 7) in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, found kelp forests can absorb 12 times more carbon dioxide with otters around than if the plant were subject to sea urchins.

The authors acknowledge that otters probably aren't the answer to rising CO2 levels, a major contributing factor to global warming, but the researchers say their study illustrates the impact animals can have on the atmosphere.

"Right now, all the climate change models and proposed methods of sequestering carbon ignore animals. But animals the world over, working in different ways to influence the carbon cycle, might actually have a large impact," UC Santa Cruz professor Chris Wilmers, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. "If ecologists can get a better handle on what these impacts are, there might be opportunities for win-win conservation scenarios, whereby animal species are protected or enhanced, and carbon gets sequestered."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ( LiveScience.com )


Blog : Paying The Highest
Post : Sea Otters May Be Global Warming Warriors

READ MORE - Sea Otters May Be Global Warming Warriors

Following the Ice, Is this Global Warming?

Following the Ice: Is this Global Warming? - From the mess tent, we can hear huge boulders crashing through rapids half a kilometer away. The boulders sometimes sound like approaching footsteps, and as we re all just a tiny bit nervous about an unlikely polar bear visit, conversations trail off and we listen.

In the four years our camp has existed on this glacial river, more meltwater is spilling out from beneath Leverett Glacier than we ve ever seen. What s more, the river has spilled over its banks and is now eroding a glacial moraine near our camp that was likely pushed there in the 1700 s during the Little Ice Age. It s only June and the river is still rising.

Ben Linhoff sampling the stream formed by glacial melt early in the season.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is the most impressive thing I ve ever seen. Looking out over its seemingly endless expanse of white, grey, and black textures of crevasses and rolling hills of ice, one feels close to infinity. On my last trail run, I ran to the top of a small mountain surrounded on three sides by the ice sheet. I was wearing running shorts and a tee shirt; the sun was bright and a steady wind coming off the ice kept the mosquitoes away. I sat down on a slab of granitic gneiss and leaned against a warm boulder. The wind was surprisingly balmy and humid, despite having just crossed the Greenland Ice Sheet. I closed my eyes and soaked in the heat and sun. Later that day I reformatted my air temperature graphs from last year s season to fit the data collected this June. The y-axis had to be expanded by 10 degrees.

Can we say this year s warm weather is because of global warming? It’s not for certain, and it’s important not to ascribe one especially warm season or year to global warming. It s probably more important not to write off global warming as a hoax when it snows in Washington, D.C. This is particularly true in the high latitudes (the Arctic and Antarctic) where temperature variability between years is higher than anywhere else. In the tropics, there is very little variation between years (or even seasons) compared to the much larger variations nearer the poles. However, while average temperatures have climbed in both the tropics and the high latitudes, the arctic and Antarctic have warmed significantly more. In general, the closer to the poles, the greater the increase in average temperature but also the greater the variation between years. Last year we had snow in the middle of June and only a handful of days with bad mosquitoes. This year in early June, it was often unbearably hot in our tents by 5:00 a.m. while outside, millions of mosquitoes swarmed around our tent doors, waiting for us to give into the heat and step outside.

Global warming refers to increases in average temperature over the entire globe over a period of decades, not in one location or over one year. I don t think this point can be made often enough. While we cannot say one warm season is the result of global warming, I think the fact that our ice-melt-fed river is spilling out of its banks and eroding things that have clearly been there for centuries seems worth noting.

Finally, although scientists have been trying to beat the public over the head with this concept for at least two decades, it s probably worth pointing out again: There is widespread, broad consensus among scientists, not just about global warming, but also about what s causing it: burning fossil fuels.

I wouldn t be surprised if someone reading this decides to disagree in the comments. There is a very vocal and surprisingly incensed group of people who think the climate is not changing or that it s all just natural variation. All I can say is that the so-called climate change deniers have views completely at odds with what the mainstream scientific community agrees on. Rest assured, the global warming controversy exists outside of the scientific community.

When I m not collecting samples and keeping equipment running in camp, I m cramming for my qualifying exams for my chemical oceanography Ph.D. in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. Much of our exam focuses on the carbon cycle and CO2. Because the ocean is the largest sink for CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels (on time scales that affect people), a large part of my exams are focused on tracking fluxes of CO2 in the ocean and then determining its fate (What happens to CO2 once in the ocean and how long will it stay there?). For many years the faculty at MIT and Woods Hole have written qualifying exams that focus on making sure we understand (in excruciating detail I might add) the central role the carbon cycle plays in marine chemistry and Earth’s climate. Because most of us who come out of the program will spend our careers as scientists, the exam is at least partly designed to ensure we are prepared to research and understand the profound way people are changing our planet by adding CO2.

Climate Change Feedback Loops

Doing some “back of the envelope calculations,” we ve estimated that the river discharging from the glacier is carrying about 400,000 metric tons of sediment per day to the ocean (Ten grams of sediment/liter with a discharge rate of 470 cubic meters/second: feel free to stop reading and try the math!).

The high latitudes (including Greenland) are warming much faster than the rest of the planet.

That’s a lot, but what s really interesting about glacial meltwater is that this sediment load is composed of extremely fine-grained, freshly broken rock material that is primed to consume CO2 through chemical weathering reactions. Although rock weathering is thought to ultimately control Earth s CO2 budget on time scales of millions of years, photosynthesis something probably much more familiar to everyone is the most important sink for CO2 on year-to-year time scales.

Surprisingly, glaciers may also play an important role in driving photosynthesis in the world s oceans. Glacial meltwater, icebergs, and wind-blown dust from glaciated landscapes can all carry essential nutrients (especially iron) to nutrient-starved regions of the ocean (Raiswell et al., 2006). These glacial nutrient sources can fertilize the ocean, stimulate photosynthesis and ultimately cause the consumption of atmospheric CO2. If you are scratching your head thinking, So more glaciers can lead to more CO2 taken out of the atmosphere which would cool the planet, grow glaciers cause more icebergs, more CO2 consumed, more cooling, then you re on the right track and have identified something called a feedback loop.

Scientists are wondering if, during the ice ages, glacial-fed phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean (the ocean surrounding Antarctica) helped keep CO2 levels at a minimum, which helped keep the world in a freezer. Basically, the glaciers themselves may have stimulated photosynthesis and kept global CO2 levels low, which then grew more glaciers and so on, until some external force threw off the balance. This external force would ve been episodic changes in the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface (called the Milankovitch Cycles). Once the timing and intensity of the sun s heat changes (or humans release too much heat trapping CO2), another feedback loop can take over.

Consider permafrost. Permafrost is a thick layer of subsurface soil in polar regions that remains frozen year-round. While you may have heard of permafrost you may not have realized that permafrost contains vast quantities of carbon that was frozen in place thousands of years ago. As the planet warms, and permafrost melts, this ancient carbon becomes food for microbes that transform that carbon into CO2 gas and methane (CH4), which warms the planet, melts more permafrost, producing more CO2 and CH4 (see Frey and Smith, 2005). Ice cores taken from the Antarctic Ice Sheet give us a datable record of the atmospheric CO2 concentrations through time. These records tell us that ice ages are often ended by sharp, fast upswings in CO2. This upswing could very well be the release of CO2 from melting permafrost.

For many scientists, the questions are more immediate. How are glaciers affecting climate today? Will the world s shrinking glaciers produce more or less icebergs, meltwater, and windblown dust and will this help or hinder photosynthesis in the ocean? One interesting hypothesis is that as Antarctica s ice sheet collapses, a temporary increase in icebergs in the Southern Ocean could help fertilize marine phytoplankton and slow global warming as the blooms consume CO2 through photosynthesis. Or not. For now, I think the jury is still out regarding the role the world s ice will play in the changing climate.

There are many of CO2 feedback loops, and glaciers and permafrost are just part of a few of them. Serious accounting skills are required to understand the delicate balance between all of the world s CO2 feedback loops, as well as all the sources and sinks for CO2. All we know for sure is that much like the natural variations in the sun s intensity, burning fossil fuels is heating the planet and could set off a CO2 feedback loop with unforeseen consequences.

For what it s worth, over the last four years in our camp in Greenland, all the nearby ponds have rapidly shrunk and we suspect melting permafrost beneath the water is causing them to drain (think of their bottoms falling out). Meanwhile, as noted in the above post, we may be on our way to a record-breaking melt year that may be part of a larger trend. ( Scientific American )


Blog : Paying The Highest
Post : Following the Ice, Is this Global Warming?

READ MORE - Following the Ice, Is this Global Warming?

Climate change will boost number of West's wildfires

Climate change will boost number of West's wildfires - Climate change will make wildfires in the West, like those now raging in parts of Colorado and New Mexico, more frequent over the next 30 years, researchers reported on Tuesday.

More broadly, almost all of North America and most of Europe will see an increase in wildfires by the year 2100, the scientists wrote in the journal Ecosphere, a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

The U.S. Southwest - Arizona, New Mexico and Texas - is the fastest-warming region of the United States, and this warming trend will worsen droughts, alter growing seasons and increase wildfire risk, the non-profit research organization Climate Central reported.

Trees are engulfed in flames in Colorado's High Park Fire, about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Fort Collins June 11, 2012. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

On Tuesday, 20 large wildfires were burning in eight Western states, from Idaho and Wyoming to California and Arizona, according to the U.S. Forest Service. A map of active fires is online at http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/ .

Using satellite-based fire records and 16 different climate-change models, an international team of researchers found that while wildfires will increase in many temperate zones due to rising temperatures, fire risk may actually decrease around the equator, especially in tropical rainforests, because of increased rainfall.

"In the long run, we found what most fear - increasing fire activity across large areas of the planet," said lead author Max Moritz of the University of California-Berkeley.

"But the speed and extent to which some of these changes may happen is surprising. These abrupt changes in fire patterns not only affects people's livelihoods, but also they add stress to native plants and animals that are already struggling to adapt to habitat loss," Moritz said in a statement.

Co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University said this study gives a unique global perspective on recent fire patterns and their relationship to climate.

Climate scientists, including those affiliated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have projected that more frequent wildfires would be likely in a warming world. Other effects of global warming include more severe storms, floods and droughts, these scientists have said.

CONTROLLED FIRES

In a separate study, researchers approved of the intentional setting of controlled fires, a wildfire-fighting technique that has sometimes raised questions about its impact on wildlife.

Writing in the June issue of the journal BioScience, researchers at the University of California-Berkeley reviewed two decades of research on the ecological impact of cutting forest wildfire risk, especially in the southern Sierra Mountains, where precipitation was at half of normal levels.

The idea behind so-called controlled burns is to reduce the amount of fuel that would feed a wildfire. The new study found that these fuel-reducing fires do not cause substantial harm.

"The few effects we did see were usually transient," Berkeley's Scott Stephens said in a statement. "Based upon what we've found, forest managers can increase the scale and pace of necessary fuels treatments without worrying about unintended ecological consequences."

A warming climate makes the carbon dioxide stored in forest soils decompose faster, sending more climate-warming carbon into the atmosphere, researchers at the University of California-Irvine and elsewhere reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Reuters)

Blog : Paying The Highest
Post : Climate change will boost number of West's wildfires

READ MORE - Climate change will boost number of West's wildfires

Global warming activists seek to purge ‘deniers’ among local weathermen

Global warming activists seek to purge ‘deniers’ among local weathermen - Concerned that too many “deniers” are in the meteorology business, global warming activists this month launched a campaign to recruit local weathermen to hop aboard the alarmism bandwagon and expose those who are not fully convinced that the world is facing man-made doom.

The Forecast the Facts campaign — led by 350.org, the League of Conservation Voters and the Citizen Engagement Lab — is pushing for more of a focus on global warming in weather forecasts, and is highlighting the many meteorologists who do not share their beliefs.

“Our goal is nothing short of changing how the entire profession of meteorology tackles the issue of climate change,” the group explains on their website. “We’ll empower everyday people to make sure meteorologists understand that their viewers are counting on them to get this story right, and that those who continue to shirk their professional responsibility will be held accountable.”

According to the Washington Post, the reason for the campaign can be found in a 2010 George Mason University surveys, which found that 63% of television weathermen think that global warming is a product of natural causes, while 31% believe it is from human activity.

So far, the campaign has identified 55 “deniers” in the meteorologist community and are looking for more. They define “deniers” as “anyone who expressly refutes the overwhelming scientific consensus about climate change: that it is real, largely caused by humans, and already having profound impacts on our world.”

“We track the views of meteorologists through their on-air statements, blog posts, social media activity, public appearances, interviews, and interactions with viewers,” the campaign explains.

The Houston Chronicle noted that meteorologists mostly track short periods of weather, not long-term climate trends.

“You wouldn’t ask your dentist about your gallbladder and you shouldn’t ask your local TV weatherman about climate change,” Houston’s KTRK Channel 13 chief meteorologist, Tim Heller, told The Chronicle.

“Operational meteorologists and forecasters are not climatologists. The background education is somewhat similar, but our area of expertise is different,” he added. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop some TV weather forecasters from spouting off on the subject.”

While some meteorologists question and push back against the campaign, ThinkProgress said that the “deniers” are not doing their audience any favors.

“These climate denier meteorologists are betraying the public’s trust and distorting America’s airwaves with ideological science denial,” the liberal publication reported, listing the names of a majority of the campaign’s identified “deniers.”

Forecast the Facts is currently pushing for signatures to their petition, which calls on the American Meteorological Society (AMS) to pass a new official statement on climate change.

“I urge the AMS Council to immediately pass a new information statement that reflects the widespread scientific consensus that climate change is increasingly impacting our planet, and then vigorously promote that statement to AMS members,” the letter reads. ( The Daily Caller )

READ MORE - Global warming activists seek to purge ‘deniers’ among local weathermen

Beijing releases pollution data; US figures higher

Beijing releases pollution data; US figures higher — Caving to public pressure, Beijing environmental authorities started releasing more detailed air quality data Saturday that may better reflect how bad the Chinese capital's air pollution is. But one expert says measurements from the first day were low compared with data U.S. officials have been collecting for years.

The initial measurements were low on a day where you could see blue sky. After a week of smothering smog, the skies over the city were being cleared by a north wind.

The readings of PM2.5 — particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size or about 1/30th the average width of a human hair — were being posted on Beijing's environmental monitoring center's website. Such small particulates can penetrate deep into the lungs, so measuring them is considered a more accurate reflection of air quality than other methods.

It is the first time Beijing has publicly revealed PM2.5 data and follows a clamor of calls by citizens on social networking sites tired of breathing in gray and yellow air. The U.S. Embassy measures PM2.5 from a device on its rooftop and releases the results, and some residents have even tested the air around their neighborhoods and posted the results online.

FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012 file photo, a man rides an electric bike crossing a street shrouded by haze in Beijing, China. Caving to public pressure, Beijing environmental authorities started releasing more detailed air quality data Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, that may better reflect how bad the Chinese capital's air pollution is. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

Beijing is releasing hourly readings of PM2.5 that are taken from one monitoring site about 4 miles (7 kilometers) west of Tiananmen Square, the monitoring center's website said Saturday. It said the data was for research purposes and the public should only use it as a reference.

The reading at noon Saturday was 0.015 milligrams per cubic meter, which would be classed as "good" for a 24-hour exposure at that level, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards. The U.S. Embassy reading taken from its site on the eastern edge of downtown Beijing said its noon reading was "moderate." Its readings are posted on Twitter.

Steven Andrews, an environmental consultant who has studied Beijing's pollution data since 2006, said he was "already a bit suspicious" of Beijing's PM2.5 data. Within the 24-hour period to noon Saturday, Beijing reported seven hourly figures "at the very low level" of 0.003 milligrams per cubic meter.

"In all of 2010 and 2011, the U.S. Embassy reported values at or below that level only 18 times out of over 15,000 hourly values or about 0.1 percent of the time," said Andrews. "PM2.5 concentrations vary by area so a direct comparison between sites isn't possible, but the numbers being reported during some hours seem surpisingly low."

The Beijing center had promised to release PM2.5 data by the start of the Chinese Lunar New Year on Monday. It has six sites that can test for PM2.5 and 27 that can test for the larger, coarser PM10 particles that are considered less hazardous. The center is expected to buy equipment and build more monitoring sites to enable PM2.5 testing.

Beijing wasn't expected to include PM2.5 in its daily roundups of the air quality anytime soon. Those disclosures, for example "light" or "serious," are based on the amount of PM10, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide in the air.

Beijing interprets air quality using less stringent standards than the U.S. Embassy, so often when the government says pollution is "light," the embassy terms it "hazardous."

"There has been tremendous amounts of attention in the Chinese media — whichever newspaper you pick up, whichever radio station you listen to, channel you watch — they are all talking about PM2.5 and how levels are so high," said Andrews.

"What has been so powerful is that people are skeptical, and I think rightly skeptical," about the government's descriptions of data, he said. ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - Beijing releases pollution data; US figures higher

Is healthy food always better for the environment?

Good for You, Good for the Planet? - Is healthy food always better for the environment? — While pondering the many choices I have to make when buying tomatoes—How important is it to buy local? Is it worth it to buy organic? Should I even considered canned?—I started to wonder whether the interests of my body and the environment coincide. Is eating healthy better for the environment, too?

You raise a critical point. Too often, environmentalists slip half-knowingly between human health and environmental health. Ask a stranger in the grocery store why he buys organic, and he’ll almost certainly conflate the two issues. We’re all one, after all. Gaia or whatever.

Unfortunately, there’s no natural law saying that planet health and human health are unitary. Consider the potato. According to a 20-year study involving more than 120,000 people, potatoes correlate more closely with obesity than any other food (including soda). And yet, potatoes aren’t exactly giving Mother Earth diabetes, so to speak.

It takes 466 kilocalories of energy to produce a pound of potatoes, according to research by David Pimentel of Cornell University. That’s an unremarkable cost for produce. Spinach—a certified superfood packed with phytochemicals—requires 1,139 kilocalories per pound. Other health foods like Brussels sprouts and snap beans also take significantly more fossil fuel energy to produce than the maligned potato. A heaping bowl of steamed greens might be good for you, but the planet would prefer that you ate a plateful of microwaved potatoes.

Is a salad better for the environment than a bag of French fries?

The situation becomes even more complicated when you think about fresh, frozen, and canned foods. Michelle Obama has made fresh food a centerpiece of her campaign for health (even though not everyone agrees that fresher is healthier). And yet, there are many circumstances in which limp, salty, canned food is better for the environment.

Environmental research firm Scientific Certification Systems compared the embedded energy in fresh, frozen, and canned foods in a 2005 study. They found that it takes 1,136 kilocalories of energy to produce 1 pound of canned, prepared foods like soups and stews. Fresh foods came in at 1,151 kilocalories of energy per pound, a statistical dead heat with the canned meals. Canned, unprepared foods, like green beans and corn, were scored at 1,606 kilocalories per pound, and frozen foods rated between 2,250 and 2,405 kilocalories, depending on packaging.

Before you committed environmentalists go on a potato-and-soup diet, a few caveats are in order. First, although the study was conducted by a respected company and subjected to peer review, it was funded by the canning industry. Second, the research is based on a specific set of assumptions that might not apply to you.

Start with transportation. Canned foods are energy-intensive on the front end—between 40 and 50 percent of their embedded energy comes from heating the ingredients and sticking them into a can. Because canned food is cooked down and efficiently packed, however, you can fit more of it on a truck. Only 7 percent of the embedded energy in canned food goes toward transport, according to the study, compared with between 21 and 27 percent for fresh foods.

The SCS analysts assumed that all foods traveled about 1,500 miles by truck from farm to table. That’s reasonable, because a lot of food goes from California to the East Coast. But if you cut back on food miles by buying local, then canned foods wouldn't look quite so good. If you assumed a 300-mile trip instead of a 1,500-mile one, fresh food would be significantly more efficient than canned prepared meals overall, rather than slightly less so. (Frozen food would still be way behind. Frozen food is bad for the environment. Sorry, Green Giant.)

Same goes for storage. Keeping fresh green beans refrigerated at the store and in your home accounts for 18 percent of their embedded energy, compared with zero storage kilocalories for their shelf-stable canned counterparts. Go to the farmers’ market for your green beans—excuse me, haricots vert—and eat them the same day, and that difference disappears.

This discussion wouldn’t be complete without a mention of farming methods. Organic farming generates a lot of intense debate. Despite a few studies suggesting that conventional agriculture might be more energy efficient for certain foods, the Lantern believes that organic really is better for the environment. In a decades-long study of staple crops grown on adjacent fields by the Rodale Institute, organic methods required 30 percent less energy to produce corn and drew about even on soybeans. By the end of the experiment, the nutrients in the organic soil had substantially increased, while the conventional fields had stayed the same or had been depleted. Conventional fields also lack organic matter to prevent water from running off. That means leaching of pesticides into groundwater, as well as soil erosion. You should take soil erosion seriously. The stuff in which we grow our food is disappearing between 10 and 40 times faster than it’s being renewed, and we’re losing 37,000 square miles of crop land every year to the problem.
Of course, the jury is still out on whether organic food is any healthier than conventionally grown products. That’s just one more place where planet health and human health might not match up. ( slate.com )

READ MORE - Is healthy food always better for the environment?

Animals Shrink as Earth Warms

Animals Shrink as Earth Warms - As global temperatures rise this century, the result of human-caused climate change, many living things will shrink, thanks to a host of changes in the environment, as well as the direct effects of warming, two researchers write.

If everything were to shrink at the same rate, this wouldn't be a problem. Smaller plants would feed smaller fish that would feed smaller sharks, for example. However, it appears that organisms don't all react at the same rate, so change is likely to throw ecosystems out of whack, putting some species at risk of extinction, according to Jennifer Sheridan and David Bickford of the National University of Singapore.

This isn't a new phenomenon; during past periods of natural global warming, beetles, bees, spiders, algae called diatoms, pocket gophers and woodrats have shrunk, according to fossil evidence. For example, the burrows dug by invertebrates, including beetles, bees and spiders, during a warm spell about 56 million years ago, show the creatures shrank by 50 to 75 percent, the researchers write in a study published on Oct. 16 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.

Vik, a small Icelandic town of just 300 people, where residents still recall stories from their relatives of Katla volcano's last eruption in 1918, sits under a blanket of cloud in this Sept. 27, 2011 photo. If Iceland's air-traffic paralyzing volcanic eruption in 2011 seemed catastrophic, just wait for the sequel. That's what many experts are saying as they nervously watch rumblings beneath a much more powerful Icelandic volcano - Katla - which could spew an ash cloud dwarfing eruption that cost airlines $2 billion and drove home how vulnerable modern society is to the whims of nature.(AP Photo/Paisley Dodds)

Some modern shrinkage is expected to come about indirectly. For example, an increasing acidity in the ocean — caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — interferes with some organisms' ability to build their calcium carbonate shells or skeletons (such as corals, scallops and oysters). Acidification also decreases growth rates among phytoplankton, the tiny plants that float in the ocean, and this has implications for the food chains that depend on them.

Plants were expected to thrive on the excess carbon dioxide humans have expelled into the atmosphere, because they use it to create sugars by photosynthesis. However, things have not played out this way over the past century. Plant growth is highly dependent on water, and while climate models predict that some areas will get wetter and others drier over the coming decades, many places are expected to experience higher variability in rainfall. This means longer dry periods even in wetter regions, which will ultimately reduce growth, according to the authors.

Cold-blooded animals — most of the animals on Earth — are directly affected by changes in temperature, which increase their metabolic rates. This means they need more food to maintain their body sizes, or shrink. Temperature also affects cold-blooded creatures by amping up their development rates, so the animals reach maturity at smaller sizes. Other research has explored how this plays out in copepods, tiny crustaceans that play an important role in marine food chains.

It is established that among warm-blooded animals, a colder climate means a larger body size, because larger animals are better able to conserve their body heat, and there is evidence that size decreases in warmer regions. For humans, changes in organism size could have a direct effect on our food supply, for instance, through crops and fisheries.

There are exceptions: Climate change is expected to increase the growing and feeding season in high-latitude places, and hence allow organisms to get bigger. (An exception to the exception: Polar bears are shrinking along with the Arctic sea ice upon which they live.) Also, animals with broad diets may be able to compensate for shrinking meals by shifting their diets.

"Continued global warming is likely to favor smaller individuals, and we predict that organism size will continue to decrease over the century," Sheridan and Bickford write. ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - Animals Shrink as Earth Warms

The American 'allergy' to global warming

The American 'allergy' to global warming — Tucked between treatises on algae and prehistoric turquoise beads, the study on page 460 of a long-ago issue of the U.S. journal Science drew little attention.

"I don't think there were any newspaper articles about it or anything like that," the author recalls.

But the headline on the 1975 report was bold: "Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" And this article that coined the term may have marked the last time a mention of "global warming" didn't set off an instant outcry of angry denial.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Climate change has already provoked debate in a U.S. presidential campaign barely begun. An Associated Press journalist draws on decades of climate reporting to offer a retrospective and analysis on global warming and the undying urge to deny.

In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct. Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.

What's going on?

"The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.

He and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democratic gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.

From his big-windowed office overlooking the wooded campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., Broecker has observed this deepening of the desire to disbelieve.

"The opposition by the Republicans has gotten stronger and stronger," the 79-year-old "grandfather of climate science" said in an interview. "But, of course, the push by the Democrats has become stronger and stronger, and as it has become a more important issue, it has become more polarized."

The solution: "Eventually it'll become damned clear that the Earth is warming and the warming is beyond anything we have experienced in millions of years, and people will have to admit..." He stopped and laughed.

"Well, I suppose they could say God is burning us up."

The basic physics of anthropogenic — manmade — global warming has been clear for more than a century, since researchers proved that carbon dioxide traps heat. Others later showed CO2 was building up in the atmosphere from the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. Weather stations then filled in the rest: Temperatures were rising.

"As a physicist, putting CO2 into the air is good enough for me. It's the physics that convinces me," said veteran Cambridge University researcher Liz Morris. But she said work must go on to refine climate data and computer climate models, "to convince the deeply reluctant organizers of this world."

The reluctance to rein in carbon emissions revealed itself early on.

In the 1980s, as scientists studied Greenland's buried ice for clues to past climate, upgraded their computer models peering into the future, and improved global temperature analyses, the fossil-fuel industries were mobilizing for a campaign to question the science.

By 1988, NASA climatologist James Hansen could appear before a U.S. Senate committee and warn that global warming had begun, a dramatic announcement later confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a new, U.N.-sponsored network of hundreds of international scientists.

But when Hansen was called back to testify in 1989, the White House of President George H.W. Bush edited this government scientist's remarks to water down his conclusions, and Hansen declined to appear.

That was the year U.S. oil and coal interests formed the Global Climate Coalition to combat efforts to shift economies away from their products. Britain's Royal Society and other researchers later determined that oil giant Exxon disbursed millions of dollars annually to think tanks and a handful of supposed experts to sow doubt about the facts.

In 1997, two years after the IPCC declared the "balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate," the world's nations gathered in Kyoto, Japan, to try to do something about it. The naysayers were there as well.

"The statement that we'll have continued warming with an increase in CO2 is opinion, not fact," oil executive William F. O'Keefe of the Global Climate Coalition insisted to reporters in Kyoto.

The late Bert Bolin, then IPCC chief, despaired.

"I'm not really surprised at the political reaction," the Swedish climatologist told The Associated Press. "I am surprised at the way some of the scientific findings have been rejected in an unscientific manner."

In fact, a document emerged years later showing that the industry coalition's own scientific team had quietly advised it that the basic science of global warming was indisputable.

Kyoto's final agreement called for limited rollbacks in greenhouse emissions. The United States didn't even join in that. And by 2000, the CO2 built up in the atmosphere to 369 parts per million — just 4 ppm less than Broecker predicted — compared with 280 ppm before the industrial revolution.

Global temperatures rose as well, by 0.6 degrees C (1.1 degrees F) in the 20th century. And the mercury just kept rising. The decade 2000-2009 was the warmest on record, and 2010 and 2005 were the warmest years on record.

Satellite and other monitoring, meanwhile, found nights were warming faster than days, and winters more than summers, and the upper atmosphere was cooling while the lower atmosphere warmed — all clear signals greenhouse warming was at work, not some other factor.

The impact has been widespread.

An authoritative study this August reported that hundreds of species are retreating toward the poles, egrets showing up in southern England, American robins in Eskimo villages. Some, such as polar bears, have nowhere to go. Eventual large-scale extinctions are feared.

The heat is cutting into wheat yields, nurturing beetles that are destroying northern forests, attracting malarial mosquitoes to higher altitudes.

From the Rockies to the Himalayas, glaciers are shrinking, sending ever more water into the world's seas. Because of accelerated melt in Greenland and elsewhere, the eight-nation Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program projects ocean levels will rise 90 to 160 centimeters (35 to 63 inches) by 2100, threatening coastlines everywhere.

"We are scared, really and truly," diplomat Laurence Edwards, from the Pacific's Marshall Islands, told the AP before the 1997 Kyoto meeting.

Today in his low-lying home islands, rising seas have washed away shoreline graveyards, saltwater has invaded wells, and islanders desperately seek aid to build a seawall to shield their capital.

The oceans are turning more acidic, too, from absorbing excess carbon dioxide. Acidifying seas will harm plankton, shellfish and other marine life up the food chain. Biologists fear the world's coral reefs, home to much ocean life and already damaged from warmer waters, will largely disappear in this century.

The greatest fears may focus on "feedbacks" in the Arctic, warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.

The Arctic Ocean's summer ice cap has shrunk by half and is expected to essentially vanish by 2030 or 2040, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Sept. 15. Ashore, meanwhile, the Arctic tundra's permafrost is thawing and releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

These changes will feed on themselves: Released methane leads to warmer skies, which will release more methane. Ice-free Arctic waters absorb more of the sun's heat than do reflective ice and snow, and so melt will beget melt. The frozen Arctic is a controller of Northern Hemisphere climate; an unfrozen one could upend age-old weather patterns across continents.

In the face of years of scientific findings and growing impacts, the doubters persist. They ignore long-term trends and seize on insignificant year-to-year blips in data to claim all is well. They focus on minor mistakes in thousands of pages of peer-reviewed studies to claim all is wrong. And they carom from one explanation to another for today's warming Earth: jet contrails, sunspots, cosmic rays, natural cycles.

"Ninety-eight percent of the world's climate scientists say it's for real, and yet you still have deniers," observed former U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican who chaired the House's science committee.

Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican head of the U.N.'s post-Kyoto climate negotiations, finds it "very, very perplexing, this apparent allergy that there is in the United States. Why?"

The Australian scholar Hamilton sought to explain why in his 2010 book, "Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change."

In an interview, he said he found a "transformation" from the 1990s and its industry-financed campaign, to an America where climate denial "has now become a marker of cultural identity in the 'angry' parts of the United States."

"Climate denial has been incorporated in the broader movement of right-wing populism," he said, a movement that has "a visceral loathing of environmentalism."

An in-depth study of a decade of Gallup polling finds statistical backing for that analysis.

On the question of whether they believed the effects of global warming were already happening, the percentage of self-identified Republicans or conservatives answering "yes" plummeted from almost 50 percent in 2007-2008 to 30 percent or less in 2010, while liberals and Democrats remained at 70 percent or more, according to the study in this spring's Sociological Quarterly.

A Pew Research Center poll last October found a similar left-right gap.

The drop-off coincided with the election of Democrat Barack Obama as president and the Democratic effort in Congress, ultimately futile, to impose government caps on industrial greenhouse emissions.

Boehlert, the veteran Republican congressman, noted that "high-profile people with an 'R' after their name, like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, are saying it's all fiction. Pooh-poohing the science of climate change feeds into their basic narrative that all government is bad."

The quarterly study's authors, Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State University and Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State, suggested climate had joined abortion and other explosive, intractable issues as a mainstay of America's hardening left-right gap.

"The culture wars have thus taken on a new dimension," they wrote.

Al Gore, for one, remains upbeat. The former vice president and Nobel Prize-winning climate campaigner says "ferocity" in defense of false beliefs often increases "as the evidence proving them false builds."

In an AP interview, he pointed to tipping points in recent history — the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the dismantling of U.S. racial segregation — when the potential for change built slowly in the background, until a critical mass was reached.

"This is building toward a point where the falsehoods of climate denial will be unacceptable as a basis for policy much longer," Gore said. "As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'How long? Not long.'"

Even Wally Broecker's jest — that deniers could blame God — may not be an option for long.

Last May the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, arm of an institution that once persecuted Galileo for his scientific findings, pronounced on manmade global warming: It's happening.

Said the pope's scientific advisers, "We must protect the habitat that sustains us."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Climate change has already provoked debate in a U.S. presidential campaign barely begun. An Associated Press journalist draws on decades of climate reporting to offer a retrospective and analysis on global warming and the undying urge to deny ( Associated Press )

READ MORE - The American 'allergy' to global warming

Will global warming make the planet more humid, too?

Will global warming make the planet more humid, too? - Hot, muggy weather created dangerous conditions for residents of the South and Midwest on Tuesday, and there were reports of heat-related deaths. We all know that it's impossible to link any particular heat wave to the phenomenon of global warming, but those of us suffering in humid areas have to be wondering—is the Earth getting wetter, too?

Most climatologists think so. The planet's total humidity seems likely to rise in the coming years. But there's a difference between that figure—which represents the mass of all the water vapor in the air—and the planet's relative humidity, which describes how close the air is, on average, to its saturation point at a given temperature. Total humidity is the more important metric for the planet, because water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas. Relative humidity, on the other hand, is more closely associated with human comfort, because it affects your ability to cool off by sweating. Few scientists profess to know with certainty what's going to happen to either measure over the next few decades or centuries. There's very little global data on the issue, and those that do exist are in dispute. The majority view appears to be that relative humidity will remain more or less stable,and most climate change models are based on this assumption. If relative humidity holds constant while the temperature rises, there will be an increase in absolute humidity.

Will global warming make it more humid?

In recent years, a few well-known scientists have rejected the assumption of stable relative humidity, however, and we're now in the middle of a dust-up in the field. On one side, there is evidence that relative humidity can change significantly over time, particularly at higher altitudes. There's even some indication that it has declined over the last half-century. On the other, scientists point to data that absolute humidity at ground level rose by about 2.2 percent overall between 1973 and 2003. The increases were particularly significant in the tropics and the northern hemisphere. (Some parts of the globe dried out over that period, too.)

MORE

• Sea ice melting as Arctic temperature rises
• Iceland turns to jokes -- and soul-searching
• Ancient animals escaped warming in Antarctica

It's possible for both sides to be correct. If relative humidity declines modestly, significant increases in temperature would still lead to a rise in absolute humidity.

This isn't just a dispute over how sweaty your grandchildren are going to be. Absolute humidity levels have a powerful effect on temperature projections. If scientists are wrong about humidity, they could have the temperature projections wrong as well. Water vapor can create a feedback loop that accelerates the effects of other greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. As the climate warms, the air soaks up more moisture. The moisture then prevents heat from radiating through the atmosphere and into space, which warms the air further, enabling it to hold still more water. Most climate change models take this cycle into account. ( slate.com )

READ MORE - Will global warming make the planet more humid, too?

'Bad news' on warming should spur UN talks: climate chief

'Bad news' on warming should spur UN talks: climate chief - The UN's climate chief urged negotiators gathering on Monday for new talks to heed a double dose of "bad news" that global warming could bust a threshold that is widely considered safe.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), urged nations at the 12-day talks in Bonn to carry out their pledge to peg warming to 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

"Now, more than ever, it is critical that all efforts are mobilised towards living up to this commitment," she said in a webcast press conference.

Figueres pointed to "bad news" in the form of reports on carbon emissions released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The Paris-based IEA said last month that carbon from energy use reached a record high in 2010 while the NOAA said that world atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in May had scaled a new peak.

Greenpeace activists burn a symbol of carbon dioxide as they demonstrate in 2008 in Berlin. The UN's climate chief urged negotiators gathering on Monday for new talks to heed a double dose of "bad news" that global warming could bust a threshold that is widely considered safe

The 12-day session in Bonn is meant to lay the groundwork for the next round of high-level negotiations in December in Durban, South Africa.

Some wealthy nations led by the United States favour restricting the scope of the Durban round to consolidating progress made in Cancun, Mexico, last December.

These include the creation of a "green fund" for developing countries that could reach 100 billion dollars a year, a system for monitoring national schemes to reduce emissions, and programmes to boost clean technologies and the ability of poor nations to absorb climate change impacts.

"If we take these steps and start to build the new institutions needed for a pragmatic international regime, COP 17 in Durban will be a solid success," said Jonathan Pershing, the top US negotiator in Bonn.

Developing nations, led by China and other major emerging economies, have embraced these goals, but major disagreements remain on how they should take shape.

Another big area of discord is over the future of the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol, the sole treaty that sets down legally binding emissions curbs. ( AFP )

READ MORE - 'Bad news' on warming should spur UN talks: climate chief

'Kill a camel' to cut pollution concept in Australia

'Kill a camel' to cut pollution concept in Australia - Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change.

The suggestion is included in Canberra's "Carbon Farming Initiative", a consultation paper by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, seen Thursday.

Adelaide-based Northwest Carbon, a commercial company, proposed culling some 1.2 million wild camels that roam the Outback, the legacy of herds introduced to help early settlers in the 19th century.

Considered a pest due to the damage they do to vegetation, a camel produces, on average, a methane equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide a year, making them collectively one of Australia's major emitters of greenhouse gases.

This file photo shows a feral camel searching for food near the dry Ross River, west of Alice Springs. Considered a pest due to the damage they do to vegetation, a camel produces, on average, a methane equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide a year, making them collectively one of Australia's major emitters of greenhouse gases

In its plan, Northwest said it would shoot them from helicopters or muster them and send them to an abattoir for either human or pet consumption.

"We're a nation of innovators and we find innovative solutions to our challenges -- this is just a classic example," Northwest Carbon managing director Tim Moore told Australian Associated Press.

The idea was among those accepted for discussion by the government, which is seeking to "provide new economic opportunities for farmers, forest growers and landholders" if they come up with ways to cut emissions, according to the document.

Heavily reliant on coal-fired power and mining exports, Australia is one of the world's worst per capita polluters and the government is looking at ways to clean up its act.

Legislation for the "Carbon Farming Initiative" is set to go before parliament next week. ( AFP)

READ MORE - 'Kill a camel' to cut pollution concept in Australia

Biggest Source of Gas Emission in Jakarta

Biggest Source of Gas Emission in Jakarta -- Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emission in Jakarta.

"Around 47 percent of greenhouse gas emission in Jakarta is contributed by transportation and 40 percent by industry," Minister Gusti Muhammad said when visiting expo stands at the Indonesian Environment Week 2011 here Wednesday.

Based on the Indonesian environment index 2010 on the environmental condition in 2009, Jakarta was at the lowest rank because of its poor water and air quality and lack of green areas. Among solutions offered to address the problems are a cut in the number of motor vehicles and development of mass transportation means.

"But it’s not easy and it must be carried out in stages," the environment minister said.

The Jakarta government plans to build more busway special lines and for that purpose, around 1,500 trees will be cut. The environment minister said any development will have positive and negative impacts, but the negative impact should be minimized.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has annoucned that this year’s theme of the World Environment Day 2011 is "Forests: Nature at Your Service", to celebrate the multitude of services - providing clean air, housing rich biodiversity, supplying water - performed by the world’s forests.

The World Environment Day 2011 will be hosted for the first time in India to highlight all about positive action for the environment. Beyond supporting the natural habitat, forests sustain economic growth. In 2004 trade in forest products was estimated at $327 billion.

Continued and uncontrolled deforestation therefore not only has devastating consequences for the environment, the wildlife and communities, but for economies around the world.

Rather shockingly, 36 million acres of natural forest are lost each year. World Environment Day (WED) chose this year's theme, "Forests: Nature at Your Service", to encourage forest conservation and sustainable consumption for green growth, and in support of the UN International Year of Forests initiative.( antara )

READ MORE - Biggest Source of Gas Emission in Jakarta

Are Tornadoes Environmental Disasters? Not compared to hurricanes.

Are Tornadoes Environmental Disasters? - Not compared to hurricanes - The 2011 tornado season has been particularly intense, killing more than 450 people and destroying untold millions of dollars worth of property. The tornado that ripped through Joplin, Mo., on Sunday, killed at least 89 people and left a six-mile wide swath of destruction. But are tornadoes also environmental disasters?

Not really. Tornadoes showcase nature's raw power, and they make great television. But in the grand scheme of environmental threats—global warming, say, or agricultural runoff and algal blooms—they barely register.

Consider their size. The average tornado is a mere 200 feet to 500 feet in diameter, and runs its course in just 1,500 feet. The biggest storms can leave tracks a mile wide, and travel more than 30 miles on the ground. (There's rarely noticeable damage more than a mile outside a tornado's direct path.) Compare that to hurricanes, which average 300 miles across , for a total directly hit area of more than 70,000 square miles at a given moment. America's largest forest fires have incinerated more than 4,000 square miles of land. The 2011 tsunami flooded 181 square miles in Japan. Earthquakes have damaged buildings across 50,000 square miles.

Tornado damage

Tornadoes are also relative weaklings. A tornado usually unleashes around 10,000 kilowatt-hours of energy—equivalent to 9 tons of TNT. A hurricane weighs in at around 10 billion kilowatt-hours. A magnitude 9 earthquake releases more than 550 billion kilowatt-hours of energy—the equivalent of 475 million tons of TNT or 25,000 nuclear bombs.

While tornadoes carry relatively little total power, their energy is concentrated in a very small area. As a result, if a tornado struck a particularly sensitive region, it could deal some serious environmental damage. Fortunately, "tornado alley" in the United States, where one-quarter of the country's largest tornadoes strike, isn't exactly a coral reef. It includes parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas. Sure, there are 16 endangered species living in those states—such as the adorably named robust cottontail rabbit—but the area is considered a low priority by conservationists. In fact, Conservation International has identified only one "biodiversity hotspot" in the entire United States, the California Floristic Province along the West Coast. Only two moderately strong tornadoes have occurred in California since 1950, causing zero human deaths. (Tornado distribution isn't set in stone: A 2008 study suggested that global climate change might increase the frequency of tornado-friendly conditions in certain parts of the world, including the southeastern United States)

Hurricanes pose a far greater threat to biodiversity than twisters do. Much of the Caribbean has been declared an environmentally sensitive area; 50 percent of its plants and 46 percent of its mammals exist nowhere else on Earth. Hurricanes can threaten entire ecosystems by temporarily raising the sea level, eroding large parts of the fragile coastline, and contaminating delicate marshlands with seawater.

Tornadoes' biggest threats to the environment stem from human activities. A twister could, conceivably, damage a waste storage or treatment facility, polluting surrounding areas. Or it could breach a chemical plant, unleashing toxic materials into the groundwater. While such incidents have almost certainly occurred on a small scale, the Lantern couldn't find any record of a tornado triggering a toxic release on a scale that would permanently endanger a local ecosystem.

Twisters have a documented history of spreading radioactive material. Dust devils—ground-level whirlwinds—have lofted radioactive materials from nuclear test sites half a mile into the air, enabling them to spread into surrounding areas. The worst-case scenario might involve one of the handful of nuclear reactors in Tornado Alley. An EF2 tornado—a lowish-strength tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale—struck an Ohio nuclear reactor in 1998. The storm knocked out power to the plant, forcing the facility to use backup power and channel it to the highest-priority systems. The temperature of the fuel storage pond rose from 110 degrees to 137 degrees in the course of one day. Power was restored before any serious environmental damage occurred, but it troubled many observers that a comparatively meek tornado could cause as much trouble as it did. It's possible, at least in theory, that a massive tornado carrying heavy projectiles could cause a catastrophic release of radioactivity. ( slate.com )

READ MORE - Are Tornadoes Environmental Disasters? Not compared to hurricanes.

When Doomsday Isn't, Believers Struggle to Cope

When Doomsday Isn't, Believers Struggle to Cope - If you're reading this, Harold Camping's predictions that the end of the world would start Saturday (May 21) failed to pan out.

That's good news for most of us, but Camping and his followers were looking forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were likely to be among the 200 million souls sent to live in paradise forever. So how do believers cope when their doomsday predictions fail?

It depends, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal who studies the history of doomsday predictions.

"If you have a strong leader, the group survives," DiTommaso told LiveScience. "Sometimes the group falls apart. Most often, the answer given by the group is that the prophecy is true, but the interpretation was wrong."

In 1994, Camping predicted a September doomsday, but hedged his bets with a question mark. On his website (familyradio.com), Camping wrote that he had misunderstood a key biblical passage, but since that time, biblical evidence for a 2011 end had "greatly solidified."

Doomsdays without doom

The classic study of "doomsdays gone bad" took place in 1954. A Chicago woman named Dorothy Martin predicted a cataclysmic flood from which a few true believers would be saved by aliens. Martin and her cult, The Seekers, gathered the night before the expected flood to await the flying saucer. Unbeknown to them, however, their group had been infiltrated by psychologist Leon Festinger, who hoped to find out what happens when the rug of people's beliefs is pulled out from under them.

Festinger's study, which became the basis of the book "When Prophecy Fails" (Harper-Torchbooks 1956), revealed that as the appointed time passed with no alien visitors, the group sat stunned. But a few hours before dawn, Martin suddenly received a new prophecy, stating that The Seekers had been so devout that God had called off the apocalypse. At that, the group rejoiced — and started calling newspapers to boast of what they'd done. Eventually, the group fell apart. Martin later changed her name to "Sister Thedra" and continued her prophecies.

Other failed doomsday prophets have struggled to keep their followers in line. One self-proclaimed prophet, Mariana Andrada (later known as Mariana La Loca), preached to a gang of followers in the 1880s in the San Joaquin Valley of California, predicting doomsday by 1886. But Andrada was not consistent with her predictions, and believers began to defect. Trying to keep one family from leaving, Andrada told them one of them would die on the journey. Sure enough, the family's young son soon fell violently ill and passed away. The family accused Andrada of poisoning him. She was arrested and found not guilty, but never returned to preach to her followers.

Searching for explanations

How Camping's followers will cope with a failed doomsday prediction depends on the structure of the group, said Steve Hassan, a counseling psychologist and cult expert who runs the online Freedom of Mind Resource Center.

"The more people have connections outside of the group, the more likely it is that they're going to stop looking to [Camping] as the mouth of God on Earth," Hassan told LiveScience. "Information control is one of the most important features of mind control."

In his experience, Hassan said, about a third of believers become disillusioned after a failed prediction, while another third find reason to believe more strongly. The remaining group members fall somewhere in between, he said.

Doomsday groups in history have run a gamut of responses after failed predictions, said Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies new and alternative religions. On occasion, a leader will admit he or she was wrong; other groups will come up with a face-saving explanation. Some groups may blame themselves, rationalizing that their lack of faith caused the failure, Kent told LiveScience. Other groups blame outside forces and redouble their efforts.

"One of the options is for the group to say, 'Society wasn't ready, Jesus felt there weren't enough people worthy of rapturing. Hence, we've got to go out and convert more people,'" Kent said.

After the apocalypse

Often, a failed prediction leads to splinter groups and re-entrenchment. After Baptist preacher William Miller predicted the end of the world on Oct. 22, 1844 — a date thereafter known as "The Great Disappointment" when nothing happened — his followers struggled to explain their mistake. One subset decided that on that date, Jesus had shifted his location in heaven in preparation to return to Earth. This group later became the Seventh-Day Adventist church.

Sociologists and doomsday experts agree that Camping is likely convinced of doomsday rather than perpetuating a hoax or running a scam. A con artist, Hassan said, would never set himself up for failure by giving a firm date.

A belief in doomsday gives followers a clear sense of the world and their place in it, Kent said. Those comforting beliefs are difficult to maintain after the world fails to end.

"This could be a fairly sad day for these people," Kent said. "There will be some greatly disheartened people who may be terribly confused about what didn't happen." ( LiveScience.com )

READ MORE - When Doomsday Isn't, Believers Struggle to Cope

The best stories, headlines and takes about the May 21 Judgment Day

The best stories, headlines and takes about the May 21 Judgment Day - It seems the end — as prophesied by Harold Camping and his posse of unique Christian followers — was not very nigh at all.

May 21 came and past without the world coming to an end. Nonetheless, there was plenty of entertaining coverage leading up to and following the completely nonjudgmental occurrence. Much of it was snarky and prideful, but there were a few earnest and heartfelt takes.

As the world takes a deep sigh of relief, let’s go back a review some of the Internet’s best takes on the subject.

‘If World Ends, So Does Alternate-Side Parking’

At the very least, the excitement over the weekend afforded cynical journalists and headline writers a chance to be giddy and cheeky. Even the mayor of modern day Gomorrah, Michael Bloomberg, joked on Friday that New York City would suspend some rules if the apocalypse was indeed at hand.

Bloomberg said it was official “Doomsday policy” to suspend the much-derided alternate-side parking regulations, not to mention a few other materialistic concerns, according to the New York Times:

If the end of the world comes to pass, Mr. Bloomberg said, city residents will also not have to worry about returning library books or paying parking tickets. He noted that it would help ease the city’s traffic problems.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

The Family Radio leader, Harold Camping, has declined to give any interviews since “The End” has come and gone. ABC did learn that the 89-year-old prophet is “mystified” and “a little bewildered.” Family Radio International media representative and board member Tom Evans told ABC that:

… the public is owed an apology and he wants the board — and Camping — to meet on Tuesday to figure out what to say and do next.

Some followers of the prophecy were very much available. Robert Fitzpatrick who had made a name for himself as NYC’s Doomsayer was at Time Square at the appointed time. Lest heathens think Fitzpatrick hasn’t suffered for his sins, the slings and arrows of disappointment were great for him, according to the New York Post:

“I don’t understand why nothing is happening,” said Fitzpatrick, flipping through his Bible for clues to why Rapture failed to show up on time.

“It’s not a mistake. I did what I had to do. I did what the Bible said,” he said, looking increasingly disheveled and confused as he stood in Times Square before mocking crowds.

Religion reporter Jaweed Kaleem also followed up on several individuals who were convinced the world would end on May 21. Their reactions were a “mixed bag” of quiet disappointment. They also acknowledge that on May 23, facing reality means searching for new jobs and perhaps re-enrolling in school.

One consolation for believers of the May 21 prophecy – there actually was an earthquake in New Zealand, as Camping had predicated.

The Rapture™

Even if the first wave of the apocalypse did begin on Saturday, America’s marketing savvy would probably still move full-steam ahead with businesses popping up all over the place advertising for Judgment Day oven mitts (“You may burn in eternal flames but don’t let your finger get singed cleaning up fire and brimstone from your front lawn!”)

Already in business before the latest round of End of the World news, Eternal Earth-Bound Pets got another publicity boost when the New York Daily News featured them late last week:

The post-doomsday pet rescue service, comprised of sworn atheists, already has 259 clients who have paid $135 for the first pet and $20 for each additional pet at the same address…

“Being an atheist does not mean we lack morals or ethics. It just means we don’t believe in God or gods. All of our representatives are normal folks who love and live for their family, are gainfully employed, and have friends of varying beliefs. Some of us are married to believers,” it reads on the site’s FAQ.

The news doesn’t end, even if the world is about to

Over at Raw Story, Megan Carpentier went through some serious trials and tribulations when she live-blogged the earth’s final hours.

From 5 a.m. on Saturday until 9 p.m. that night — when it became clear that not a single time zone was experiencing any kind of judgment — Carpentier kept readers updated with Rapture news, Rapture Help Desk on Twitter”), flowcharts and more.

It’s a great source of Rapture material for anyone wanting to get a head start on the 2012 prophecies.

Plagues, pestilence and Hipsters

This story had to have appeared somewhere. But once a Hipster takes up the idea, you know Judgment Day is so over!

Post-Hipster publication, The Observer, had its own color piece late last week titled “Rapture for Radicals: Hipster Prophet Leads May 21st Proselytizers to Ninth Avenue Food Festival.”

It’s a fun read, although sadly, much too hipster for its own good — superficially earnest, annoyingly self-aware, and obsessed with past cultural icons. Nonetheless, it is potentially entertaining if you happen to “get” NYC and its quirky inhabitants. But the Second Coming of Tom Wolfe it is not.

Revelations isn’t just a book in the Bible

Over at The Awl, Maud Newton has an enjoyably personal take on the end of times. Newton, who celebrated her 40th birthday the same day of the would-be apocalypse, is intimately familiar with Rapture culture.

Apart from the wisdom gleaned after so many years on earth, Newton’s unique take comes from the fact that her mother “still believes the Second Coming is nigh.” Newton also comes from a long line of “misfits” with “a need to pursue our weird interests and passions whenever, wherever, and however we want.” This includes her ninth great-grandmother who “beat witchcraft charges—twice—in Northampton, Massachusetts.”

Like many others who woke up on May 22, Newton’s “colossal hangover [with] all the wrinkles on my face cast into full relief by dehydration,” serves as reminder that there’s still a few more days left to make right with the world. ( dailycaller.com )

READ MORE - The best stories, headlines and takes about the May 21 Judgment Day