Climate Change

A walrus female and pup on an ice floe in the Chukchi Sea, June 2010. Photo: Sarah Sonsthagen/USGS
 
Oceanographers Sylvia Earl and Paul Dayton think it’s a bad idea, as do more than 500 other scientists and numerous environmental groups: energy development in the remote, often ice-choked waters off northern Alaska.
 
It’s a sentiment Audubon shares, and the organization has made it super easy for you to make your voice heard: Click here to tell the Interior Department the Arctic Ocean should be off-limits to drilling. Hurry—the deadline is 11 a.m. Eastern tomorrow, February 8.

Photo: Tim Ross

It was a season of surprises for Operation Migration, a group working to reestablish whooping cranes on the East coast. Yesterday this year’s class of birds have arrived at their final—if not originally intended—destination.

What it would take to grow enough food to meet human needs in 2050, while reducing agriculture’s environmental impact? What about supplying the world with clean energy? How do we solve climate change? Experts weigh in on these and many more critical questions.

California's Cleveland National Forest, at 460,000 acres, accounts for just 0.2 % of the National Forest System's 193-million acres that will be affected by new rules. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)

Today, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced the department’s intent to issue new planning rules for the nation’s 193-million-acre National Forest System through the release of a Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the National Forest System Land Management Planning Rule.

In other news, the U.S. Interior Department proposed a plan as well – this time to save the earth’s creatures and ecosystems from the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Last week, the department posted the first draft of their strategy, “National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Plan,” for public review and comment until March 5.

President rides a ferry from Dauphin Island, Ala., to Fort Morgan, Ala., past a natural gas rig in 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Just days after the President tackled natural gas, oil, and the environment in his State of the Union address, the Obama administration today laid out his “Blueprint to Make The Most of America’s Energy Resources."

The President will travel west to promote the plan, starting the day at a UPS facility in Las Vegas, a White House press release states, to discuss the importance of America’s workforce in increasing the country’s homemade energy. The President will then travel to Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, to further discuss his administration’s plans to promote energy security.

The 2012 State of the Union address. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama spent almost seven minutes of his hour-plus State of the Union last night—about 9% of the speech—discussing energy and the environment, more specifically oil and natural gas and clean energy.

“Over the last three years,” he said, “we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” Pause for applause. “Right now—right now,” he continued, “American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right, eight years. Not only that, last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past 16 years.” Pause for more applause.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory map by Robert Simmon, based on multiple data sets compiled and analyzed by the Woods Hole Research Center.

A map of the 48 contiguous states offers a high-res and detailed look at our nation’s trees. The data is more than just a forest census, however. Trees may hold up to 45 percent of the planet's carbon, making this map of this country's organic carbon banks as well.

A wandering albatross in flight over a rough sea. Photo: Paul Tixier
 
One species is actually benefitting from climate change, at least for now. Faster wind speeds in the Southern Ocean are allowing the wandering albatross—one of the world’s largest birds, with an impressive 11-foot wingspan—to fly faster between its breeding grounds on the Crozet Islands and foraging grounds at sea. That’s resulted in better breeding success, and bigger birds: they weigh 2.2 pounds more on average now than 20 years ago.

Talks held in Durban, South Africa to negotiate a global accord on climate regulations ended last Sunday, nearly two days after they were scheduled to conclude, resulting in an agreement—surprisingly—between developed and developing countries.

The “icicle of death” sounds like something out of a horror flick: A growing column of frozen water extends toward bustling life below, freezing solid in a web of ice everything on the ground that it touches. These so-called “brinicles” really do exist, forming beneath sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. For the first time ever, the remarkable phenomenon has been filmed in action under the ice at Little Razorback Island, near Antarctica's Ross Archipelago