Sea Turtles
As many as 85 percent of loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings living on beaches in the southern United States are now female, a sex ratio caused by a warming habitat that threatens this endangered species. A lack of males may cause the species to become extinct Lazaroff, 2002 . These turtles have very small gonads at this age and are difficult to identify, said Jeanette Wyneken, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Florida Atlantic University, who is an expert on sea turtle anatomy and...
Palm Trees And Banana Plants In English Gardens
Traditional English gardens have been changing as the climate warms, as described in an Associated Press dispatch carried in Canada's Financial Post. The fabled English garden with its velvety green lawn and vivid daffodils, delphiniums and bluebells is under threat from global warming, leading conservation groups said late in 2002. Within the next 50 to 80 years, palm trees, figs and oranges may find themselves more at home in Britain's hotter, drier summers, the National Trust and the Royal...
Is The Kyoto Protocol A Bandaid Or A Dead Letter
Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising and evidences of a warming planet are developing much more quickly than world diplomacy has been able to address them. The snail's pace nature of international diplomacy combines with the fact that we feel the results of fossil fuel effluvia perhaps 50 years after the actual emissions through a complex set of natural feedbacks involving thermal inertia. Thus, nature provides direct evidence of heat long after the actions that cause it, requiring our...
Bird Extinctions Baltimore Without Orioles
Maryland's Baltimore orioles, which have been declining due to habitat loss for many years, could vanish altogether late in the twenty-first century due to changes in migration patterns strongly influenced by a warming climate. A study by the National Wildlife Federation and the American Bird Conservancy suggests that the effects of global warming may be robbing Maryland and a half-dozen other states of an important piece of their heritage by hastening the departure of their state birds Pianin,...
Polar Bears Under Pressure
Steady melting of Arctic ice threatens the survival of polar bears, which hunt seals on ice floes. A few years ago, the demise of Arctic sea ice and a majority of polar bears was projected at the end of the century, but ice has melted so quickly that both may vanish within a few decades. The offshore ice-based ecosystem is sustained by upwelling nutrients that feed plankton, shrimp, and other small organisms, which feed the fish. These, in turn, feed the seals, which feed the bears. The Native...
Coral Reefs On The Edge Of Disaster
Aside from the obvious ravages of fishermen who blast the reefs and pour cyanide on them, the reefs are also threatened by rising ocean temperatures that many marine biologists attribute to global warming and short-term climate events such as El Nino episodes in the Pacific Ocean. Most corals live very close to the upper limits of their heat tolerance. Temperature rises of only a few degrees over a sustained period cause death of living organisms within coral reefs. The scope of corals'...
Frogs Threatened Worldwide
In 2004, the firstworldwide survey of 5,743 amphibians species frogs, toads, and salamanders indicated that one in every three species was in danger of extinction, many of them likely victims of an infectious fungus possibly caused by drought or global warming Stokstad, 2004, 391 . Findings combined efforts by more than 500 researchers from more than 60 countries. The fact that one-third of amphibians are in a precipitous decline tells us that we are rapidly moving toward a potentially epidemic...
Specific Issues in Global Warming Science
How might global warming issues affect our everyday lives Will recent heat waves such as the one in Europe that killed 35,000 people in 2003 become more common Increasing temperatures also cause storms to become more violent, and spells of dry weather more intense, in drought-and-deluge cycles. In some ways, these effects on the hydro-logical cycle the way that nature handles water have already begun, as temperatures rise. This chapter provides a number of specific examples, such as a one-day...
Antarctic Warming And The Ocean Food Web
Numbers of krill, a small shrimplike animal at the base of the Antarctic ocean food chain, have fallen by 80 percent since the 1970s, creating food shortages that are endangering larger animals and birds, such as whales, seals, penguins, and albatrosses, especially in the vicinity of the Antarctic Peninsula. Angus Atkinson of the British Antarctic Survey, who led the research, said, This is the first time that we have understood the full scale of this decline. Krill feed on the algae found...
Drunken Forests
Some Alaskan forests have been drowning and turning gray as thawing ground sinks under them. Trees and roadside utility poles, losing their footings in the thawing earth, lean at crazy angles. The warming has contributed a new phrase to the English language, the drunken forest Johansen, 2001, 20 . In Barrow, home of Pepe's, the world's northernmost Mexican restaurant, mosquitoes, another southern import, have become a problem for the first time. Barrow has also now experienced its first...
Sea Level Rise Local Examples
Since 1900 sealevels have risen 12.3inches in NewYorkCity 8.3 inches in Baltimore 9.9 inches in Philadelphia 7.3 inches in Key West, Florida 22.6 inches in Galveston, Texas and 6 inches in San Francisco Boyd, 2001, A-3 . The rate of sea level rise has been accelerating over time. At the port of Baltimore, at the head of Chesapeake Bay, for example, the water level crept up at only about one-tenth of an inch per year for much of the twentieth century. After 1989, however, the level rose by half...
Spruce Beetle Outbreaks On The Kenai Peninsula
On Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a forest nearly twice the size of Yellowstone National Park has been dying. Century-old spruce trees stand silvered and cinnamon-colored as they bleed sap, from spruce bark beetle infestations spurred by rising temperatures, wrote reporter Tim Egan of The New York Times June 16, 2002, A-1, June 25, 2002, F-1 . During 15 years 1988-2003 , 40 million spruce trees on the Kenai Peninsula have died Whitfield, 2003, 338 . The beetle infestations have reached Anchorage,...
REFERENCES Eqz
Asner, Gregory P., David E. Knapp, Eben N. Broadbent, Paulo J. C. Oliveira, Michaael Keller, and Jose N. Silva. Selective Logging in the Brazilian Amazon. Science 310 October 21, 2005 480-481. Benton, Michael J. When Life Nearly Died The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. London Thames and Hudson, 2003. Collins, Simon. Birds Starve in Warmer Seas. New Zealand Herald, November 14, 2002 in LEXIS . Comment Period Extended on Polar Bear Extinction Threat. Environment News Service, October 2,...
Andes Glaciers Retreat
Hundreds of Andean glaciers are retreating, and scientists say that their erosion is a direct result of rising temperatures. During three decades 1970-2000 , Peru's glaciers lost almost a quarter of their 1,225-square-mile surface Wilson, 2001, A-1 . The 18,700-foot-high Quelccaya ice cap in the Andes of southeastern Peru has been steadily shrinking at an accelerating rate and lost 10 to 12 feet a year between 1978 and 1990, up to 90 feet a year between 1990 and 1995, and 150 feet a year...
Series Foreword
What should you know about science Because science is so central to life in the 21st century, science educators believe that it is essential that everyone understand the basic foundations of the most vital and far-reaching scientific disciplines. Global Warming 101 helps you reach that goal this series provides readers of all abilities with an accessible summary of the ideas, people, and impacts of major fields of scientific research. The volumes in the series provide readers whether students...
Greenwood Press
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johansen, Bruce E. Bruce Elliott , 1950-Global warming 101 Bruce E. Johansen. p. cm. Science 101, ISSN 1931-3950 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-313-34690-3 alk. paper 1. Global warming. 2. Greenhouse gases. I. Title. QC981.8.G56J639 2008 363.738'74 dc22 2008000052 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright 2008 by Bruce E. Johansen All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be...
Creation Care Biblical Stewardship Of The Earth
The Bible's content is diverse enough to be quoted in almost any context. The same Good Book that commands us to multiply and subdue the Earth also may be quoted to commend stewardship of the natural world. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops 2001 has done as much in its new plea for dialogue, prudence, and the common good, its consensus statement on global climate change. The statement continued, How are we to fulfill God's call to be stewards of creation in an age when we may have the...
Warming And The Decline Of Oregons Western Toad
Global warming could be playing a role in the decline of the western toad in Oregon, according to a report that was among the first to link climatic change with amphibian die-offs in North America Pounds, 2001, 639 . The wave of toad population declines could be a warning of ecological chain reactions that may be triggered by warming. J. Alan Pounds, who has researched the decline of the golden toad in Costa Rica from his post with the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve and Tropical Science...
Outline Of The Book
This book has been prepared for high school students, but it can also be read by anyone who wants a compact, plain-spoken guide to the science of global warming. We begin here with a brief introduction to the issue and continue with an examination of basic issues, followed by important controversies in the body of the science. The book then develops scientific issues related to melting ice, rising seas, and effects on plants and animals. Global Warming 101 concludes with consideration of some...
Species Moving Toward The Poles
Other scientific studies indicate that species are generally moving toward the poles northward in the northern hemisphere and with a smaller number of examples southward below the equator. Two studies involving several thousand plant and animal species throughout the world, from plankton to polar bears, provide ample evidence that climate change is reshaping animal and plant habitats at an increasing rate. During the fall of 2007, after the Arctic lost almost one-fourth of its ice cap in one...
Increasing Levels Of Greenhouse Gases In The Atmosphere
For the past two centuries, and at a faster rate in recent years, the basic composition of the Earth's atmosphere has been changed by the burning of fossil fuels. Human-induced warming of Earth's climate infrared forcing to scientists is emerging as one of the major scientific, social, and economic issues of the twenty-first century, as the effects of climate change become evident in everyday life in locations as varied as the small island nations of the Pacific Ocean and the shores of the...
The Use Of Energy From Fossil Fuels Continues To Increase
According to British Petroleum's Statistical Review of World Energy 2006 , global use of energy has doubled since the 1970s, from about 5 million metric tons of oil equivalent to 10.5 million, more than 90 percent of it from fossil fuels. In the United States in 2004, the average person used 7.9 metric tons of oil equivalent, 3.8 in the United Kingdom, 1.0 in China, and 0.11 in Bangladesh Hillman and Fawcett, 2007, 38-40 . Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are built into...