Climate Change News From Work
Got a Forest Service email regarding climate change and what are the ways we can do about it as an agency? Well, it was a rather depressing article, but it's nothing new to me. In fact, it made me rather angry. Some choice bits about our future:
- Projections of future climate change anticipate an additional warming of 2.0 to 11.5 degrees F (1.1 to 6.4 degrees C) over the 21st Century, on top of the 1.4 degrees F already observed over the past 100 years.
- Water availability will decrease in many areas that are already drought-prone and in areas where rivers are fed by glaciers or snowpack.
- A higher fraction of rainfall will fall in the form of heavy precipitation, increasing the risk of flooding and, in some regions, the spread of water-borne illness.
- People and ecosystems in coastal zones will be exposed to higher storm surges, intrusion of salt water into freshwater aquifers, and other risks as sea levels rise.
- Coral reefs will experience widespread bleaching as a result of increasing temperatures, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification.
And this:
- Human-caused climate changes and impacts will continue for many decades and in some cases for many centuries. The magnitude of climate change and the severity of its impacts will depend on the actions that human societies take to respond to these risks.
~ From The National Academy of Sciences
As for our Forest, we are already seeing the impacts of climate change: recent droughts over the years are causing yet another onslaught of bark beetle infestation on the lodgepoles. At the rate its going, we will lose just about our whole Forest in a few years!
Wow. Like we didn't see this coming? Or, more probably, we didn't want to see it come. We're too busy sucking up all the fossil fuels (and yes, I am guilty of that too, because I drive). BUT, I don't populate, and to me, that's the elephant in the room nobody wants to acknowledge, the fact that there's JUST TOO MANY OF US here on Earth. Don't believe me? Consider this:
Current population--
World: 6,824,025,261 and counting...
US: 309,310,632 and counting...
Remember, human impacts; "... strong evidence also indicates that recent warming is largely caused by human activities, especially the release of greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels" (NAS, 2010).
With more and more people occupying the planet, more burning of fossil fuels, more forests stripped down, more landfills created... etc., etc.
I would not want to be a small child growing up right now. At the rate we're going now, they'll be able to witness the sixth mass extinction on this earth in their lifetime. Isn't that just GRAND? *cough*