OUR CURRENT CLIMATE AS SEEN FROM DEEP TIME

Sometimes it makes sense to step back and look at the big picture.  At a Wednesday Nite at the Lab lecture on the UW-Madison campus recently Todd LaMarskin of the Wisconsin Geological and Natural Survey detailed how paleoclimatology studies earth’s climate before we started keeping measurements with instruments.  That means everything before about 150 years ago.

Monument to a geologist (photo credit http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/625967

LaMaskin began by noting that most geologists are employed by the oil, gas and mining industries, and have a different perspective than academic geologists.

For example, the consensus of academic geologists is that things are happening to the temperature, sea level, distribution and length of the seasons that are not natural, and are best explained by the atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases – while  the American Association of Petroleum Geologists on April 6 came out with a statement supporting recent Congressional action to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses.  Humm.

Photo credit http://satellite.ehabich.info/

We may think waiting for a red light to change takes a long time.  Geologists look at time a little differently.  LaMaskin compared geologic time to a 24 hour clock.

The first 21 hours of life on earth are very difficult for us to know much about.  The final 3 hours is when multicellular life forms developed and when things start to get interesting to us mammals.

The single largest extinction event, in which 96% of all marine life disappeared form the planet, occurred a mere 76 minutes ago on the geologic clock (or 250 million years ago).

The famous extinction event that killed the dinosaurs was occurred with 20 minutes left to the present or only 65 million years ago.

We have an excellent fossil record during the mammal dominant period.  We can learn from the l fossil record how animals have responded to climate change in the past.  We know these temperature swings cause dramatic variations in the biota in the earth.  Major migrations of species.  Major changes in forest and amount of forest fires.  What we don’t have is any record of what happened to human civilization because there was no human culture.

When you like your ice 400,000 years old! (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/automationtx/5484499864/ )

Our oldest ice records only go back 14 seconds.  The Industrial Revolution (which started our current deadly spiral) occurred just .004 seconds ago.

Scientists use many methods to study ancient climate including the rate that minerals decay, and they have synchronized rock clocks around the world to understand earth history.  They also use precipitated calcium in cave deposits, tree rings and sediment cores from the ocean floor.

Zoom in on last 20,000 years and see that in general we have experienced a long-term warming.  13,000 years ago there was a big increase in snow accumulation.  The leading theory about why this cool period was disruption of Thermohaline Circulation.  Warm water from equator makes its way to northern Atlantic to heat and moderate the climate of Europe.  If the Thermohaline Circulation is cut off in the north, warm water will not make it’s way to Europe, plunging it back into a very cold state.  We think that happened before because of a disruption of the Thermohaline because of a sudden influx of fresh water during deglaciation of North America.  Some people see that occurring again now.

As glaciers melted from 18000 years ago, we have seen sea level rise by hundreds of meters.  It was about 120 meters lower during glaciation.

The sea level then became steady.  Now it’s rising again over the past 150 years.

And as for temperature and CO2 levels, if we look back to the year 1000, 2000 and today, the graph looks like a hockey stick with a large and abrupt increase in temperature.

We are creating a climate for ourselves that humans have never experienced before.

Here is a quote from Climate Progress.com  about what is going on in Oklahoma at the moment:

• Today marks the 29th consecutive day over 90. That is a record.
• Today is forecast to be the 10th day above 100 in June. That is a record.
• Today marks the 34th consecutive day above normal.
• June 2011 set or tied single-day record high temperatures on the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 27th. Those record temperatures were 103, 104, 101, and 103 degrees, respectively.

These statistics beat those of the dust bowl.  Texas is hoping for a hurricane that might bring rain to their parched earth.  Arizona and New Mexico have both had their biggest forest fires ever this summer.

Dust Bowl 1936 (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/24842486@N07/4375175725/

Not cool

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR THE GREAT DISRUPTION?

Do you see all the signs that climate change is coming at us like a freight train while society dawdles and denies?

If you fear for the future, and sometimes feel almost paralyzed by the magnitude of the menace, then The Great Disruption by Paul Gilding is the book for you.

Gilding has served as head of Greenpeace, has build companies and been consultant to big corporations and is now based in Cambridge University’s Programme for Sustainability Leadership, and his experience has given him hope for the future.

The subtitle of his book is Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.  That sounds positively upbeat, doesn’t it?

Gilding believes we are rapidly coming to the tipping point where growth will not be possible any longer.  The resources are running out.  He also believes it will not be too much longer before the majority of people in the world grasp that we need to mobilize our efforts to get carbon emissions down to a less damaging level in the environment.

He feels the beginnings of that new infrastructure are already starting to emerge.  It’s bigger than we think because the media is largely ignoring it.  A new non-growth way of doing things is beginning to form, and when the time comes, will go rapidly to scale.  There are many movements already gaining momentum.  And as more and more people join, the balance will tip.  (Hopefully in time)

IS WEATHER DRIVING WIND POWER?

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartyeates/93821358/

Last week at the UW-Madison Weston Lecture Series, I listened to Julie Lundquist, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at University of Colorado-Boulder, explain how meteorologists are going to help usher in the age of wind.  (More precisely, 20% Wind – there are some serious people seriously shooting at getting 20% of our energy in the U.S. from wind power by 2030. )

We all think we know what wind is.  We’ve all had it fly our kites, and perhaps experienced some of its more dramatic and destructive ramifications.  But when we set out to harness the wind, we are working with a very complex force.

CLIMATE SICKNESS AND ITS CURE

Have you ever heard of Dengue fever?  If not, you will soon.

I was reminded of it as I listened to science writer Dan Ferber talk about a book he has written with Paul R. Epstein, Associate Director of the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.  He was speaking at the Authors @ HSLC (UW-Madison Health and Science Learning Center).

Their book is Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do About It.

One of the MANY health issues that are arising out of climate change is what warming weather does to the cold-blooded insects that transfer  a number of our most feared diseases.  What difference does a couple of degrees make?  It can make all the difference if suddenly your part of the world – which was too cold for something like Anophebes gambiae (a tiny mosquito that transmits malaria) – is now open season.

3 CLIMATE CHANGE BLOGS YOU SHOULD BE READING

(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/jalalspages/711161806/ )

Where can you get the low down on climate change these days?  The media seem to drop the ball right and left.  TV coverage or your favorite newspaper can seem willfully blind.  What can we do?

Glad you asked.

OUR CARBON LEGACY AND OUR KIDS

Paul Murtaughis a professor of statistics at Oregon State University, and he has brought his number skills to bear on environmental issues with papers like, “The Statistical Evaluation of Ecological Indicators,” and “Performance of Several Variable-Selection Methods Applied to Real Ecological Data.”

..The big bulge in our carbon footprint. (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/mujitra/3274279516/ )

When he and M.G. Schlax published “Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals” in 2009, he found out what a hot button reproductive issues can be in this culture.  He was labeled anti-birth and skewered in rabid blog after rabid blog.

THEY ARE COMING! JOURNEY NORTH TRACKS MONARCHS ON THE MOVE

Do you love the first sight of snow drops or crocus or scilla?  Are you watching the grass green up and watching willow branches turn yellow green?  Have you got geese nesting on a pond near you?  Senior citizens in Miami and Phoenix aren’t the only ones who venture north as the weather warms.

photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/lelepapillon/3810772155/

There are many waves of migration heading our way right now – whooping cranes, robins, humming birds, bald eagles, common loons, barn swallows, orioles and those might little monarchs.  You can follow them on Journey North.  Journey North is a nonprofit organization aimed at helping people tune into the global study of migration and seasonal change.

photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/28122162@N04/3758395703/

I was turned on to this map by Eric, a citizen scientist in Madison who has been submitting data for more than 10 years to the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project.  He knows from experience that his yard full of various milkweed plants is going to be a Monarch Motel, and the perfect place to take a break and lay some eggs.   He likes to know that those stout-hearted little butterflies that are winging up from Mexico.

It’s a harrowing trip.  The Monarchs that make it to the Midwest have spent the winter in the mountains of Mexico.  It’s touch and go for them down there.  If the winter is too hot, they move around too much, deplete their lipid reserves and burn out before spring, or perhaps worse, they may be triggered to start north too soon only to  freeze to death once they get here.    To avoid that they flap up hill some 3,000 meters in altitude where they can more or less count on survival conditions in the high mountain forests.  It will come as no surprise that these mountain forests where they gather together in colonies are currently being logged.

In March, they start to break diapause (a kind of dormancy to survive hard conditions) and get down to the business of heading north, mating and laying eggs as they go.  A few of those eggs survive to hatch and go through larval stages.  A few of those larvae form a chrysalis, and a few hatch out as freshly colored butterflies and head further north.  They reach the northern edge of their range about June.

Eric said he can tell when he sees the few who have made the trip all the way from Mexico.  They arrive at his milkweed patch ragged and faded.  They lay their eggs and then move farther north.

It’s an amazing saga, but it’s just one chapter in the big fat book of animal migration.  Journey North is one way to get a grasp on all these incredible journeys.  I used to marvel at the Monarchs.  I would see them and think, oh look!  The Monarchs are here.  I had no idea where they had come from.  What a complex interwoven environment it takes to keep them coming.  Now that I know more, I am in awe.

..Time to migrate! photo credit http://satellite.ehabich.info/

Eric is worried.   “Of course I hear the news,” he says.  “There is usually some event happening in Mexico that isn’t good for the monarchs, and you wonder if they are going to make it.”

Whether it is the logging or the creeping climate change that may make the wintering sites unsuitable within 50 years or all the perils that lay in their path, the monarchs and other migrating species surf the air currents and search the ground for shelter, experiencing the world in ways I cannot even begin to imagine.

The lucky ones will be blowing into Wisconsin in  June.  If you want to help them on their way, a good way to start is to check out Journey North.

LIVING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

Yesterday I was listening to Erle Ellis of the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, speaking about “The Ancient Anthropogenic Landscapes and the Emergence of the Anthropocene”  as part of the Weston Roundtable Series at UW-Madison. Check out a you tube on his research here.

I’ve been learning more and more about the Anthropocene.  It is a concept to describe the most recent period of time on earth in which human activities have begun to have an impact on global ecosystems.  Traditionally, ecologists have studied biomes.  But what we are really dealing with  are what Ellis calls anthromes – biospheres reshaped by human systems.

photo credit http://ecotope.org/anthromes/

According to Ellis, it started sooner than you might think.  He says we began to change the atmosphere 5,000 years ago.  True there were not as many of us then, but because there was so much land available, people were very relaxed about practicing a kind of slash and burn agriculture that could transform a lot of ground very quickly.

Currently Wildlands only exist in places where people have decided not to use the land – usually because it is too dry or cold to use efficiently.  These areas are down to 23% of the earth’s terrestrial surface, and most of them are places where you would not really want to hang out.  40% of the world’s lands are being for agriculture and residence and.  37% are what Ellis calls Novel Ecosystems, which means little bits of natural systems embedded into human cultivation.  They exist along a spectrum of degradation/ recovery depending on their circumstances.

Erle Ellis standing in front of a little bits of natural systems embedded into human cultivation.

Ellis said most ecologists prefer to study the small preserves of “pristine” Wildlands, but he is interested in the Novel Ecosystems.  “We’ve altered the biosphere irreversibly.  We have a human system into which nature is embedded – many of them in places like China are more than 300 years old,” he said.  “They matter.”

It reminds me of what I learned last year at the Midwest Organic Farming Conference when Jeff Moyer, Director of Farm Operations at Rodale Farm talked about the importance of ecological edges.  I have heard many people come at this same concept of edges from different angles, but most of them say edges are good.  The edge between woods and grassland, the shore of a stream or pond.  These are vital places.

My own 44 acres is interlaced with interfaces between many different micro-ecosystems.  It’s not just a random mish mosh.  It’s simply one small example of what humans do, according to Ellis.  For better or worse, he says, “we create a complex anthromosaic landscape wherever we can.  We need to understand it and manage it.”

I’m on board.  Doug and I didn’t quite realize what we were taking on when we signed papers and traded money for our 44 acres.   But we are learning everything we can and trying to preserve and encourage the biodiversity that is surviving there.

One more case of Thinking Globally, and Acting Locally.

UW-EXTENSION SUSTAINABILITY TEAM: THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

Those of us who live in Wisconsin have been observing and/or participating in a major civics exercise the past few weeks.  It’s been an astonishing demonstration of what people are willing to do when they perceive their government is overreaching its authority.  My throat is raw, my arches ache and it’s going to be a while before I feel truly warm again, but I hope we are looking at the reawakening of the political consciousness that our country was founded on.

This is what democracy looks like.

...From my perspective Saturday March 12. The man raising his camera is trying to photograph the fact that State Street was packed solid with people for many blocks, all the way to the campus.

Meanwhile, on a much smaller stage without the benefit of national and international media attention, our state government has been quietly working for us in the way we have come to expect here in the Badger State.

WHAT’S UP THERE AND HOW WE KNOW

What would it feel like to be a tiny crab scuttling about at the bottom of a very shallow pond that is being filled with toxins?  We should know.  We are looking up through a very thin and increasing polluted layer of air — air that is getting rapidly hotter.

If you compare our earth to an apple, the atmosphere is no thicker than the skin.  The troposphere is the layer we live in. Almost all of our weather occurs here, and it only goes up about six miles.  That’s less than six minutes of drive time on the open road.

Next comes the stratosphere.  That ends about 30 miles up.  This is a kind of shield. It’s where the protective ozone layer is, as well as the continent-sized hole we’ve punched in it.  If you want to know what the planet would be like without our atmosphere, think about the surface of the moon.

Tracey Holloway, Director of the UW-Madison Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment,  speaking at the UW-Arboretum Winter Lecture Series, gave me some clarity on how we get our climate information and what some of it is telling us.