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GLOBAL WARMING WATCH |
GREENER LAND MAY BE A RESULT OF WARMING
Two decades of evidence gathered by satellites show that major parts of the Northern Hemisphere have grown greener – perhaps a result of climate warming.
In a report published in the journal Geophysical Research, scientists at Boston University and several research centers announced that vegetation north of the 40th parallel is measurably greener since 1980. The extra greeness is seen in territories that lie north of New York; Madrid, Spain; Ankara, Turkey, and Beijing. Although the total area of vegetation has not changed, the vegetation has apparently increased in density.
At the same time, the observations show that the growing season in central Eurasia is now about 18 days longer than it was 20 years ago.
"What’s interesting is that for the first time we have some indication that this elongation of the growing season – this increase in the amount of green stuff on the planet – is related to temperature," said Robert Kaufmann, an atmospheric scientist at Boston University. Climate warming could readily influence the timing of plant growth.
The two decades of green observations were made by instruments aboard polar-orbiting satellites, and the changes were correlated with temperature readings from ground-based stations.
(The Philadelphia Inquirer, 9/16/01)
PANEL SAYS GLOBAL WARMING POSES REAL RISKS
A panel of scientists commissioned by President Bush reported that global warming was real, man-made, and a threat to mankind.
"Human-induced warming and associated sea-level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century," the report stated. "National policy decisions made now and in the longer-term future will influence the extent of any damage suffered by vulnerable human populations and ecosystems later in this century."
The temperature could rise 2.5 to 10.4 degrees by 2100, the U.S. panel and an influential U.N. committee agreed.
When Bush created the panel in March, he said he was unsure that global warming was a real phenomenon. The President will sketch his general approach to the problem shortly. The administration is still hasning out its plan after a series of cabinet-level meetings.
The main issue is whether to call for voluntary or mandatory reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fossil fuels and the main contributor to a green house effect power plants. In March, Bush dropped a campaign promise to restrict such emissions from older power plants that produce the most pollution, citing an extraordinary need for more electricity production.
Despite voluntary targets, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions increased 13.1 percent between 1990 and 1999, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and arm of the Energy Department. The United States produces about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases.
Bush’s panel of experts consisted of 11 top climate scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences and one Nobel Prize winner. The panel was appointed by the National Research Council, a nonprofit institution that advises government on science issues.
If Bush opts for voluntary cuts in greenhouse gases, "it’s just an excuse for inaction," said Jeremy Symmons, climate-change program manager for the National Wildlife Federation, a moderate environmental group in Reston, Va.
Business leaders who oppose mandatory cutbacks believe that administration agrees with them, said Bill Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for environment and energy policy. Mandatory cuts hurt the economy, he said. The Chamber of Commerce prefers voluntary cuts and the use of new technology.
(Philadelphia Inquirer, 6/7/01)
MID-ATLANTIC GROWTH MOVES FARTHER AWAY FROM CITIES
Call them suburbs or exurbs or hinterburbs, but that’s what the hottest counties in the mid-Atlantic are - and where growth will be in the coming years.
New Census 2000 numbers show that the kings of the mid-Atlantic are places such as Pike County, PA.,: Somerset County in North Jersey,: and Cecil County, MD. - areas in the fringes of metropolitan areas or even just beyond the suburban fringe.
Commuting distances are getting longer and longer, "expanding our definitions of what metro areas really are," said Steve Cochrane, director of regional services for Economy.com a West Chester, PA., economic analysis company. People are willing to drive an hour or more to the end of a train line and hop a commuter rail into Washington or New York City or Philadelphia, he said.
"What we are seeing is just enormous decentralization of population," said Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institute’s Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy.
Katz said there’s less justification for the sprawl in the mid-Atlantic and in the Midwest. In the South and West, populations are growing so rapidly that growth in outlying counties is inevitable and is usually accompanied by growth in the cities. For example, Denver grew 18.6 percent; Las Vegas nearly doubled its population.
But in the mid-Atlantic, cities continue to empty out or remain stagnant.
The mid-Atlantic states - Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland - saw their population grow by a weak 6.8 percent in the past decade, from 25 million to 26.8 million, according to the 2000 census. The national population grew nearly twice as fast, 13.2 percent in the same period.
But to say regional growth was uneven would be an understatement. While Delaware boomed with a 17.6 percent growth rate, Pennsylvania barely grew at all.
Because the New York City-to-Washington megalopolis is well-developed, the new growth areas are two or three counties beyond the big cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, which continue to lose population.
Other big gainers were resort countries, drawing retirees to their mountains or beaches, such as Delaware’s Sussex County and Maryland’s Worcester County.
One reason Pennsylvania’s Pocono areas, such as Pike and Monroe counties, grew so fast is that They are attracting new sub-urbanites and retirees moving into what had been their vacation homes.
Proclamations of urban revivals notwithstanding, the cities continue to rot and lose the good jobs and families to the far flung hinterburbs. While population losses in Philadelphia weren’t as bad as predicted, the fact remains that people are leaving the city in droves.
Many counties are not able to provide the schools, sewers, water or roads that newcomers demand, Katz said. New residents often gobble up more in services than they pay in taxes.
"All taxpayers pay the price for sprawl," said Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, who unveiled an anti-sprawl initiative in late March.
Continued sprawl is not inevitable, Katz said. States, counties and municipalities have to weed out their hidden subsidies for sprawl and control their own destiny.
At least one county, a prime candidate for rapid growth, managed to avert the rapid population growth that other mid-Atlantic counties saw. Salem County is along the Interstate 95 corridor, full of undeveloped land, and far enough from Philadelphia or Wilmington to give residents a sense of space.
But the county shrank in the 1990s - by design.
We are the anti-growth country," said Patricia Knobloch, director of economic development for the South Jersey country along the Delaware River.
Salem County residents have embraced the idea of a rural county staying rural, she said.
"You can only do a housing project if you have a willing seller. You don’t find a lot of willing sellers," she said. "We don’t want to be a bedroom community for anyone."
(Courier Post - 3/25/01)
BACK TO TOP
GLOBAL WARMING PUZZLE SOLVED
Scientists have come up with powerful new evidence that points to the hand of man in global warming.
Two new studies appearing in the journal Science - one based on extensive work at Princeton University - report that man-made gases have caused the world’s oceans to heat up significantly over the last 50 years. The researchers have tied the ocean heating directly to global warming caused by human activity.
"I believe our results represent the strongest evidence to date that the Earth’s climate system is responding to human-induced effects," said Sydney Levitus of the National Oceanographic Data Center.
Climate scientists expect the average global temperature of the Earth to increase by about 2 degrees in the next 50 years. Already, researchers are attributing the melting of glaciers, the shrinkage of polar ice caps, and the increase in violent storms to global warming.
By compiling millions of deep ocean temperature measurements from 1948 though 1995, Levitkus and his colleagues determined an average last year for how much the oceans had warmed. But it wasn’t clear whether this heat - a global average measuring about a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit - came from global warming or just a natural swing in the climate cycle.
To investigate, two teams of researchers decided to compare the data with the predictions of computer models simulating the world’s climate. One model was developed by researchers at the Princeton Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Plainsboro, the other at the Scripts Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
Both models ultimately predicted an amount of warming quite similar to what scientists have measured.
To be sure their results weren’t just a fluke, the scientists created a model that did not include the extra levels of greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols produced by human activity. Without mankind’s "fingerprint," the simulated ocean of the computer model failed to warm up.
The world’s oceans, covering 72 percent of its land surface, are often called the "memory" of the Earth’s climate system.
Earlier climate models didn’t include an ocean component, and therefore frequently predicted that modern air temperatures would increase more than they actually have.
(Star Ledger - 4/13/01)
PANEL OF WORLD SCIENTISTS SOUNDS ALARM ON WARMING
In the most forceful warning yet on the threat of global warming, an international panel of hundred of scientists issued a report predicting severe droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century because air pollution is causing surface temperatures to rise faster than anticipated.
The report, approved unanimously at a U.N. conference in Shanghai, was described as the most comprehensive study on the subject to date. Earth’s average temperature, it said, could rise by as much as 10.4 degrees over the next 100 years-the most rapid change in 10,000 years and more than 60 percent higher than the same group predicted less than six years ago.
If the prediction is accurate, ice caps will melt and raise sea levels by as much as 34 inches, causing floods that could displace tens of millions of people in low-lying areas such as China’s Pearl River Delta, much of Bangladesh, and the most densely populated area of Egypt. Droughts will aggravate world hunger. Storms triggered by such climatic extremes as El Nino will become more frequent. Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever will spread. The panel declared flatly for the first time that mankind, not changes brought by natural factors, is responsible for global warming.
(The Philadelphia Inquirer-1/28/01)