Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Pika: The Alpine Poster Child for Climate Change | Nature | OutsideOnline.com
“Pikas are so good at finding the microclimate they need that they may avoid climate change altogether,” [Chris Ray] says.
...
Chris Ray is not a big fan of using the Endangered Species Act as a lever against climate change; like other scientists, she worries that this is a stretch of its purview and deploying it might make the Act more vulnerable to weakening by hostile members of Congress.
...An affable, white-haired man ran around the conference room distributing papers. "This is so great," he says. "Forty years ago I had nobody to talk with about pika." Andrew Smith, the senior statesman of pika, is active in conservation efforts to halt mass extermination of Tibetan pika in Asia. When it is his turn to speak he admonishes the other researchers in the room to be super-transparent and value-free when communicating their work to the public. "Another plea," he says. "There is a photograph of a pika at the California Academy of Sciences. The caption says the animal dies when the temperature reaches 78 degrees. The general public now thinks all pika die when the temperature reaches 78! But that's based on my study, as you know, and anybody who reads it knows I placed pika in cages and didn't let them move. The public does not know this!"
Appearance of explosive WWI relics underscore Alps glaciers' retreat | MinnPost
More than half of the ice-covered area of the Alps has disappeared since 1850, the end of a cold spell known as the Little Ice Age.
Spirituality holds the key to climate change, says UNEP-ROA Director
He said many COPs are attended by people who do not believe in the processes they are involved in. “many of those delegations are either attending these COPs to help save their governments from paying money or make sure that their governments do nothing about climate change and conservation.
Guest Post By Robert Pollock On Global Climate Modeling | Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr.
Most GCMs overestimate the (depressive) effect of volcanoes and thus also overestimate the forcing from greenhouse gases to reproduce the climate and ocean heat content of the 20th century.

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