Climate Change Could Spell Disaster for National Parks

In a strategic plan released this month, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis calls climate change “the greatest threat to the integrity of our national parks that we have ever experienced.”

“We are unafraid to discuss the role of slavery in the Civil War or the imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese ethnicity during WWII,” he said. “We should not be afraid to talk about climate change. … How will we choose, as the sea rises, which cultural sites we save? How do we decide that the next site for the giant sequoias is hundreds of miles north?”
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The Park Service plan requires managers to draw up different scenarios for confronting the uncertainties ahead. In a trial run in 2007, scientists came up with a “summer soaker” scenario for Joshua Tree in which warmer temperatures and summer monsoons would likely wipe out the trees and bighorn sheep. Under a “dune” scenario, they said, drought and wildfire would destroy all the park’s vegetation.

For the Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park on Hawaii’s Big Island, scientists drew up a “sink or swim” scenario in which the park’s fishponds would be flooded, and a “water world” scenario in which everything, including the park’s petroglyphs and ancient burials, would be under water. In that case, they said, the park could become an “oceanic and climate change research learning center” to study the effects of sea level rise.

Rutgers University professor Alan Robock lectures Fidel Castro on nuclear peril

Alan Robock never expected a trip quite like the one he returned from Thursday.

The Wall resident and Rutgers University meteorology professor has spent his academic career researching nuclear winter — the global chilling effect that could be brought on by fires from nuclear explosions — and last week, he found himself presenting his findings to former Cuban president Fidel Castro in Havana.

House GOP’s ‘Pledge’ vows opposition to climate legislation - The Hill's E2-Wire

Republicans seeking to win back the House are vowing to block climate change legislation in the next Congress while expanding domestic energy development.

That’s part of the message in the broadly worded policy blueprint – called “A Pledge to America” – that House GOP leaders unveiled Thursday.
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EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson acknowledged Thursday that broad climate legislation is not currently in the cards, and said the Obama administration is weighing next steps.

“[W]e have sort of lost the opportunity, at least for right now, on comprehensive legislation,” she said in an interview with The Hill.