Monthly Archive for October, 2010

UNEP launches ’30 Ways in 30 Days’ to inspire action on climate change

Published on October 31, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

climate-imageFrom a United Nations Environment Programme press release:

Nairobi, Kenya, 1 November 2010 – What do solar loans, sustainable tourism, tea plantations, forests in Panama and African financiers have in common?

The answer is quite simple: all are part of the global solution to climate change, and part of the United Nation’s Environment Programme’s “30 ways in 30 Days” initiative, launched today.

From today, a month out from the start of the UN Climate Convention meeting in Cancun, Mexico, UNEP will release online case studies to show that solutions to climate change are available and can be copied and scaled up around the world. The examples are just the tip of the iceberg and highlights in terms of existing successful climate initiatives and programmes.

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The Arctic Shifts to a New Climate Pattern in Which ‘Normal’ Becomes Obsolete

Published on October 22, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

greenland-iceFrom the New York Times:

Warming continues to shrink the snow and ice cover that defines the Arctic, signaling the region’s shift to a new climate pattern, scientists said yesterday.

The area covered by sea ice hovered near its historic low this summer. In Greenland, record-high temperatures this year have helped accelerate the melting of the country’s massive ice sheet. Throughout the Arctic, permafrost is warming and the blanket of snow is shrinking.

Those changes appear to be long-lasting, said an international team of climate experts who wrote the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report.

Its blunt headline? “Return to previous Arctic conditions is unlikely.”

“The Arctic is a system, and the system is changing,” said Don Perovich, a sea ice expert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who worked on the report. “It’s not just that sea ice is being reduced. There’s changes in Greenland, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, and these changes are affecting human activity.”

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Climate Change Journal, Volume 2, Number 2

Published on October 20, 2010 in Journal and Newsletter. 0 Comments

climate_front

The second issue of  Volume 2 The International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses has now been published.

Volume 2, Number 2 contains:

Continue reading ‘Climate Change Journal, Volume 2, Number 2′

Conservation Ecology: Home, Home Outside the Range?

Published on October 1, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

329_1592_f11From Richard Stone in Science:

Conservationists and ecologists are at odds over the wisdom of moving species threatened by climate change to new homes.

HUAPING, CHINA—The stem of the ground-hugging orchid is bowed at the top, weighted down by five violet-tipped buds on the verge of blossoming. The swan’s-neck shape gives the flower a demure look. Or perhaps it’s just resigned to its fate: This is one of the last Geodorum eulophioides left on the planet.

The species is confined to a single hill behind a farmer’s home in southwest China’s Guangxi Province. Villagers “didn’t know they had something so precious here,” says Hong Liu, a conservation biologist at Florida International University and Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami. But Guangxi is one of the world’s nine orchid hot spots, and this patch of land where G. eulophioides resides is now part of Yachang Orchid Nature Reserve, a 220-square-kilometer territory with more than 130 orchid species. Liu and colleagues persuaded reserve managers in Huaping to give G. eulophioides some breathing space by fencing off the hill.

That action may also give scientists time to learn more about the rare orchid’s biology. But it’s unclear how long the species can hold out in the wild. Across China, climate change is nudging temperatures higher, disrupting rainfall patterns, and reducing the frequency of foggy days. Like the rest of northwestern Guangxi, Yachang suffered a serious drought last winter that forced rangers for the first time to pipe water into the heart of the reserve. And for the G. eulophioides on the reserve’s edge, the human threat hovers, like a sword of Damocles, just outside the hill’s chainlink fence.

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