Naughty lemmings skew climate calculus | Sci-tech | DAWN.COM

“We really need to be careful attributing the greening of the Arctic to global warming alone,” said the lead investigator, David Johnson.

“We have shown that lemmings can promote similar greening, through the increase of grasses and sedges, as warming does in Arctic regions where lemmings are present and go through dramatic population cycles.”

Global warming is still the big suspect, as greening is happening in areas where lemmings do not occur in large numbers.

Higher temperatures open up habitat that plants previously found too chilly.
Even so, lemmings and other herbivores could play a bigger role than is thought.

Indeed, the lemmings may also be helping to fight climate change.

Vegetation is a “carbon sink,” because it stores carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, through photosynthesis.
“It is plausible that herbivores, in some situations, may provide a mechanism for higher plant growth, maintaining these ecosystems as carbon sinks,” said Johnson.

African Sun Prepares to Power Europe - IPS ipsnews.net

The report by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) says solar thermal power plants
can play a central role in moving the European power grid to renewable energy sources by 2040.

Climate Change to Affect New York State in Many Ways, Study Says - NYTimes.com

If carbon emissions continue to increase at their current pace, for example, temperatures are expected to rise across the state by 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s and by as much as 9 degrees by the 2080s. That would have profound effects on agriculture across the state, the report found. For example, none of the varieties of apples currently grown in New York orchards would be viable. Dairy farms would be less productive as cows faced heat stress. And the state’s forests would be transformed; spruce-fir forests and alpine tundra would disappear as invasive species like kudzu, an aggressive weed, gained more ground.

...The report found that the effects of climate change would fall disproportionately on the poor and the disabled.