Sunday, September 6, 2015

Reasons Why Obama’s Trip to the Arctic Matters No Matter Where You Live

It is a given fact that climate change is here and we are experiencing it. As a scientist, the polar cap is disappearing, which is why winters are getting colder and summers are getting hotter. As an example, if you take a mirror and refract the sun, you can actually move the sun's rays to cause a heating effect, or even a fire. It is the same principal with the polar cap. Because it is disappearing, the sun cannot heat or cool the planet. Please take heed, and sign the petition within the body of this article, forcing the world leaders to take action.

Changing climate and oil drilling in the far north are disrupting life far south of the Arctic Circle.

President Barack Obama boarded Air Force One on Monday, bound for three days in Alaska. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

AUG 31, 2015

Emily J. Gertz is TakePart's associate editor for environment and wildlife.

When Barack Obama visits the coastal native village of Kotzebue, Alaska—population 3,200—on Wednesday, he will become the first sitting U.S. president to visit American territory above the Arctic Circle.

Advance word is that the president will use the visit to highlight the urgency of action on climate change. But some conservation groups have decried the message as hypocritical, because it comes just weeks after the Department of the Interior gave Shell Oil the final permit it needed to start drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska’s northwestern coast.

The juxtaposition puts the climate contradictions of the Obama administration in sharp relief. This White House has taken action on fossil fuel use that may result in deep cuts to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—from restrictions on coal-fired power plants and improved automotive fuel efficiency standards to billions of dollars spent on clean energy technologies.

The administration, however, has also promoted an “all of the above” energy policy that includes opening the Arctic Ocean and parts of the Atlantic seaboard to oil and gas extraction.

Whether the president’s climate focus on this trip is impressive or ironic, he couldn’t have picked a better place in the United States to deliver the message, given that climate disruption in Alaska is well under way and already having a global impact.

Here are six reasons why what happens in the Arctic matters to billions of people worldwide.

1. Oil Drilling

Burning oil and gas extracted from beneath the Arctic Ocean may lead to climate catastrophe. Scientists say that if we have a chance of averting the worst impacts of global warming, most of the world’s remaining untapped fossil fuel must remain underground, including all of what’s buried below the Arctic seafloor.

2. Wildfires

More wildfires in the Arctic and sub-Arctic mean more soot in the air and more heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere rather than stored in trees or permafrost.

3. Frigid Winters

Less Arctic sea ice in summer is causing extreme winter weather at lower latitudes because it is forcing the jet stream into a different path.

4. Flooding

Melting glaciers are raising the sea level along coastlines worldwide, amplifying the destructiveness of storm surge and leading to more flooding.

5. The Atlantic Current

Melting Arctic ice is altering the Atlantic Ocean current that keeps the Northeastern U.S. and Northern Europe warm.

6. Whales

Endangered whales swim, give birth, and feed near Arctic oil drilling sites. The disruptions caused by drilling fleets, as well as underwater seismic testing for petroleum or gas deposits, could harm bowhead, beluga, and other whales, as well as Pacific walruses, ice seals, and Arctic fish.

090615 SNP Edition, Life at Boomer Lake

http://www.stwnewspress.com/community/local_columnists/life-at-boomer-lake-the-young-always-grow-and-leave/article_40d04adc-5423-11e5-a638-bb624cb7c146.html

Saturday, September 5, 2015

The Secret of the Wood

Juvenile Green Herons
"Faceoff"

Marsh Wren

Carolina Chickadee

Ditto

0719-1003 hrs./73-85 degrees F/partly cloudy/light and variable winds

Summer is coming to a close, and yet that smell of fall tries its best to permeate for good, but it
isn't quite there. The stars of the season rear their heads for a preview and you will see new things
this year that have remained secretive in the past years. This isn't always a good thing for seasons to
change so dramatically, and here's to hoping that the natural elements will right things after a
temporary seasonal adjustment.

In the meantime, walk with me, and see through my eyes, hear with my ears, and welcome to my world.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

In the Heat of the Moment

Green Heron Chicks, Clutch 2
"Symmetry"

Yellow Warbler(Fall Colors)

Great Blue Heron

Great Blue Heron in Tree

Ditto

Great Egret

Ditto

Mallard Grouping
"Inbound"

Green Heron Chick, Clutch 2

08-31-15
0717-1120 hrs./72-87 degrees F/partly cloudy/light and variable winds

One must take what one is given when it comes to wildlife. You cannot pose them, for they won't
allow that. Therefore, rest assured that all these are natural shots in their domain. For this, I am
thankful and happy that I was given another day to record nature at its best. Enjoy!

Northeast-- Winter 2015/2016 Will Be Even Worse

Since the polar cap is dwindling, the ice has to go somewhere when it breaks apart. Now that the sun cannot refract from the cap like it used to warm the earth, it will become even colder. Mean water temperatures are rising, so pelagic birds and their food are moving north in order to compensate. Birds go where their food is, so that stands to reason. Will we have another Ice Age? Not in our lifetimes...

Here’s Why the Northeast’s Next Winter Is Going to Be Freakishly Cold

New research shows that vanishing Arctic summer sea ice—a consequence of global warming—may drive extreme winters in lower latitudes for decades to come.

The eastern U.S. may see winter extremes—such as these human-size icebergs on Massachusetts' Cape Cod National Seashore in 2015—for the next few decades. (Photo: Dapixara/Twitter)

AUG 31, 2015

Emily J. Gertz is TakePart's associate editor for environment and wildlife.

When it comes to the global climate, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. The latest proof comes in new research connecting the unusually brutal winter of 2014–15 along the East Coast of North America to rapidly vanishing summer sea ice on the western side of the Arctic Ocean.

The new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, advances a growing body of science demonstrating that these record-breaking extremes have not been a pause in the advance of human-driven climate change but a result of it.

The findings suggest that as the Arctic continues to thaw, the mercury will crash over many winters to come.

Temperatures reached record lows across the Northeastern United States last winter, with towns and cities in states from Maine to Maryland registering their coldest temperature averages from January to March.

Among the region’s weather extremes, parts of Buffalo in upstate New York disappeared under more than 100 inches of snow in November, before winter had even formally commenced. Snow fell for 23 straight days during February in Syracuse, another upstate New York city.

Boston’s total of 108.6 inches of snow for the season broke a 17-year record and crippled the city. To the south, ocean waves along the Cape Cod, Massachusetts, shoreline grew so cold and thick with icy slush that they froze in place for weeks.

RELATED: 10 Beautiful, Sometimes Troubling Photos of the Arctic and Antarctica

The newly published study, led by Jong-Seong Kug of South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology, used climate and weather observations as well as climate change modeling to investigate potential connections between these and other extreme cold winter weather systems over North America and South Asia last winter and historically low levels of summer sea ice in areas of the Arctic Ocean.

Kug and his colleagues determined that the reduced extent of summer sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas during the summer of 2014 led to a bulge of warmer temperatures in the lower atmosphere.

Those warm-temperature areas are “an indication that the jet stream is taking a big northward swing, creating what we call a very strong ridge,” said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University who studies Arctic ice and its effects on weather patterns in lower latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

“Downstream of that ridge, the effect is like taking a jump rope and giving it a big whip: It creates a big wave further downstream, a southward dip in the jet stream,” Francis said. “That means that cold air is able to plunge down into that area from the Arctic, and that’s been contributing to these very cold winters in eastern North America.”

The same conditions also formed high above the Barents and Kara seas, on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean, and drove severe cold weather in South Asia during the winter.

Kug’s work has advanced understanding of the mechanisms that link Arctic warming to changes in weather in lower latitudes, Francis said, adding that the knowledge could help residents and governments in these regions better prepare for severe winters to come. However, once the Arctic Ocean becomes completely ice-free in summer, which scientists expect to happen in the next 25 to 35 years, weather patterns are likely to shift again in ways that are impossible to anticipate.

The extent of summer sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas has been tracking below 2010, 2013, and 2014 levels since mid-August—three years that each went on to see significantly colder, snowy winters in the Northeast—according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

On Aug. 16, the NSIDC reported, ice covered 2.24 million square miles on the two seas—521,200 square miles below the 1981–2010 average and 451,700 square miles above the level on the same date in 2012, which holds the record for the lowest recorded summer sea ice extent.

Arctic sea ice will continue to melt until early to mid-September.

“There is so much disturbing evidence coming out these days about the impacts of increasing fossil fuel burning and other human-caused climate change,” said Francis. “It’s hard to imagine that anyone can just snub their noses at it and say ‘Things are fine—we don’t have to do anything.’ ”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEB HIRT

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Sunday, September 6, 2015