Climate Change and Walden Pond

Henry David Thoreau was many things, including a fantastic naturalist. One of the treasures he has passed down to our generation is a collection of documents about the flora around Walden pond. By looking at his data and comparing it to what we can check with current field studies, it is clear that all is not well in Walden.

Comparing data meticulously gathered by Henry David Thoreau more than a century and a half ago with more recent observations, Harvard biologists report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that more than a quarter of Walden's plant species have already been lost. And an additional 36 percent are in imminent danger, including lilacs, roses and buttercups.

"It had been thought that climate change would result in uniform shifts across plant species, but our work shows that plant species do not respond to climate change uniformly or randomly," said co-author Charles Davis, a biologist at Harvard, in a release.

The Walden study shows that even small changes in temperature can have outsized impacts on plants that are evolutionarily adapted to fulfill ecological niches. Together with changes seen in other locations, like the unprecedented pine beetle damage in the West, the new work suggests that finely tuned biological systems are having a difficult time keeping up with the rapid pace of human-induced climate change.

Yet, Sarah Palin claims that this is either not happening or not very important. What an ignorant person she is.


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Climate Change, Palin

Cheney Meddled On Climate

I hope no one is surprised.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases

Typical Republican behavior, when the facts become a nuisance, hide them or lie about them.

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Climate Change, Cheney, Republicans

A Scary Science Saturday

The potential for this first time ever in recorded history event makes it clear just how advanced global climate change may be. There is a real chance that the North Pole may briefly have no ice this summer.

The chances for a total meltdown at the pole are higher than ever because the layer of ice coating the sea is thinner than ever, he said.

"A large area at the North Pole and surrounding the North Pole is first-year ice," Serreze said. "That's the stuff that tends to melt out in the summer because it's thin."

Preliminary February and March data from a NASA satellite shows that the circle of ice surrounding the North Pole is "considerably thinner" than scientists have seen during the five years the satellite has been taking pictures, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said Friday. He thinks there is slightly less than a 50-50 chance the North Pole will be ice-free.

Since the Reagan administration, scientists have advised us that the climate was acting in unusual ways. They have pointed out that temperatures were going up and this had implications to all of humanity. They have also stressed that these changes are caused by, or made much more dangerous by, the carbon consumption of human beings.

Since the first warnings, there has been a large portion of our society and our political landscape who contested this statement. This group, composed mostly of right wing politicians, followers and corporate stooges, at first denied that it was happening. As more evidence piled up they have worked hard to both confuse the issue and move the goal posts on the proof they demand. Even now, with all the evidence being produced they try to argue that we still don't know enough about the root cause to do anything.

This group is trading the future of our society for thier own short term gain. They don't want to have to face the hard choices that this issue could demand. The politicians don't want to tell their constituents that Hummers and 2 hour commutes are no longer viable lifestyles and the company executives want another quarter of record profits.

And it's easy to sell this inaction to the American public. The narrative created by those that deny the science fits right into the preprogramed thinking of the American right. They hate tree huggers. They don't really understand, and to some extent fear, science. Anything that is made to sound like it is coming from tree hugging scientist is easy to slander.

Even when the slander is a lie.

So here we sit, 25 or so years since the early warnings, watching the North Pole melt, while our Republican politicians and their corporate money driven echo machines keep telling us that there is no real evidence of climate change.



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Climate Change, Republicans, Science

In The Climate Change Discussion

The B.B.C. has supplied some wonderful facts to counter the denialist.

Warming is unequivocal. Weather stations, ocean measurements, decreases in snow cover, reductions in Arctic sea ice, longer growing seasons, balloon measurements, boreholes and satellites all show results consistent with the surface record of warming.

They make 10 strong point to refute those who try to distort the truth on this issue.