5 Signs Global Warming is Here
Sea squirts, poison ivy and other evidence that climate change is altering Connecticut's environment
Comments (5)Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Sea squirts are smothering Connecticut's shellfish industry.In the film The Day After Tomorrow, global warming looks like hell on Earth.
Polar ice caps melt, causing sea levels to rise and swallow Manhattan in a single tidal surge. Hail stones as big as footballs pummel Tokyo. Twisters rip through Los Angeles, destroying skyscrapers and shredding the Hollywood sign. Then comes a deep freeze, and the world is consumed in a second Ice Age.
In real life, global warming looks like a harmless yellow sea sponge. Non-native sea squirts, also known as Tunicate or sea pork, are proliferating in Long Island Sound and elsewhere as water temperatures rise. Marine scientists at the University of Connecticut found that warmer winters are causing the invasive invertebrates to explode in population. Sea squirts reproduce rapidly and compete with shellfish for food and space, threatening Connecticut's shellfish industry.
Like sea squirts, the early signs of global warming mostly fall into the non-life-threatening category: fast-spreading poison ivy and clinging kudzu vines. But that's just a preview of what's to come.
"What's happening today is a mild annoyance. This is nothing compared to what's around the corner," says Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. House just passed, and the Senate will debate, the most sweeping climate change bill in a generation, one that would cap carbon emissions — a huge step toward curbing greenhouse gases.
Should smokestacks belch on unabated, Ekwurzel predicts, Connecticut's own day after tomorrow will feature fire ants, blood-sucking insects and suffocating summers as hot and humid as Georgia's.
Ekwurzel was a staff hydrologist at the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection in the late 1980s (she lived in New Haven) and says signs of global warming are subtle, but there.
Conclusively linking these events to man-made climate change is tricky (see sidebar), but leading climatologists say they are consistent with what they'd expect a warming planet to do. Here are five clues that global warming has arrived in Connecticut. Senators, take note:
It's the Heat, Stupid
Temperatures in the northeast (Pennsylvania to Maine, including Connecticut) have risen sharply in the last 40 years, according to a 2007 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Overall, the mercury's up 1.5 degrees on average since 1970, with the winter average being 4 degrees higher. The amount of ground covered by snow for longer than 30 days has decreased significantly, threatening cross-country skiing, snowball fights — and sugar maples. Warmer weather will push the trees north into Canada, scientists fear, decimating New England's maple sugar industry.
The Fish Switch
So long lobster, hello blue crab! The fish species inhabiting Long Island Sound are undergoing something of a sea change, says Peter Auster, a marine sciences professor at UConn.
Cold-water species like winter flounder, windowpane flounder and Atlantic herring are declining in number. Fish that like warmer climes, like weakfish, are on the rise, he says.
The die-offs that decimated Sound lobsters in 1999 and before can't be linked concretely to global warming, but it's hardly unthinkable, Auster says. In their place, blue crabs, which like warmer water, are reproducing like mad. "Between increased temperatures and stress on lobsters — warming certainly contributed to that."
| An Inconvenient Truthteller |
|---|
| Sandra Shumway believes in global warming. She also believes it's become a catchphrase scientists use for any number of unexplained biological and ecological phenomena. And something they throw around to attract research dollars. "It makes it more relevant to granting agencies," says Shumway, a marine sciences professor at UConn. Shumway, whose expertise is shellfish biology and the impacts of harmful algae on shellfish aquaculture, says linking ecological changes to climate change is a "leap of faith" some scientists make too easily. "There are any number of factors that can alter environment and biological activities, temperature certainly being among them. It's not the only thing," she says. "That is not to say global warming isn't an issue of tremendous proportions and should be of concern to all." |
One variable that complicates the theory: fishing. "The problem with working on fish is there's something called fishing going on," Auster says. "What's climate change and what's fishing is hard to say."
Attack of the Vines!
They call it "the vine that ate the south," but it must still be hungry. Once relegated to the south, kudzu vines have stretched into northern states too, including Connecticut. These invasives from Asia can grow up to a foot a day and strangle everything in their path.
Don't be fooled by the pretty flower they shoot up: kudzu kills other plants by smothering them and can get so heavy it uproots trees by the force of its weight. Kudzu now infects 2.5 million acres of farmland, fields and forests in the American south.
Scientists blame warmer, wetter weather for its arrival in the Nutmeg State. "It's a very voracious vine, so it can outcompete other vegetation," says Ekwurzel.
Ivy League
Poison ivy's going gangbusters as the globe heats up. Scientists at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven say poison ivy is spreading in the state, and some researchers think global warming is the culprit. A widely quoted 2006 study by Jacqueline E. Mohan of Duke University suggests that higher CO2 levels are causing poison ivy to spread and become more toxic. In her experiment, ivy exposed to higher CO2 levels averaged 149 percent faster growth than control plants.
See the Sea Squirts
In 2002, UConn scientists studied whether climate change was to blame for the growth of invasive sea squirts in Long Island Sound. The harmless-looking invertebrates outcompete economically vital shellfish like clams, mussels and oysters and smother other organisms. Left unchecked, they could have a devastating impact on shellfishing in the Sound.
And the warmer the water, the worse they get.
Scientists studied native species against invasive ones from 1991 to 2002 at Avery Point near Groton. They found that in the year after the warmest winter (1991), invasive growth was twice that of native squirts. By contrast, after the coldest winter (1994), the native ones outgrew the invasive sea squirts 5-to-1.
Global warming has been solved. Al Gore got another Nobel Prize, the ice caps are growing, the temps are cooling, sea levels have slowed or stopped and hurricanes are calming down.
If you don't believe me just go to http://www.climatedepot.com
MrC
Global warming is caused by the Sun. Mars and all the other planets we observe experienced the same, I don't think it was their SUVs.
Human “fingerprints” also have been identified in many other aspects of the climate system, including changes in ocean heat content, precipitation, atmospheric moisture, plant and animal health and location, and Arctic sea ice.
Sea level has risen along most of the U.S. coast over the last 50 years, and will rise more in the future. Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly and this is very likely to continue. Global temperatures are projected to continue to rise over this century.
Whether by 2-3 degrees F or more than 11 degrees depends on a number of factors, including the amount of heat-trapping gas emissions humans continue to allow and how sensitive the climate is to those emissions. Lower emissions of heat-trapping gases will delay the appearance of climate change impacts and lessen their magnitude.
Unless the rate of emissions is substantially reduced, impacts are expected to become increasingly severe for more people and places.
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The True Reasons For Global Warming
Earth’s Orbit Around The Sun Is Decaying
July-1983
My purpose is to gain support for this report. Global warming can be reversed, If not reversed the sun’s heat will dominate this planet’s weather, and generate unusual weather patterns, to the point where the only thing to eat will be other people. The real reason for global warming is the earth’s orbit around the sun is decaying, in other words the earth is moving closer to the sun.
The earth is a planet that functions like a machine. Like cars, trucks, aircrafts, or rockets. The earth has a fuel system, an engine system, and exhaust system. A car’s engine system generates torque, an aircraft’s engine systems generates thrust, and the earth’s engine system generates a powerful magnetic field, and the earth’s magnetic field protects all life on the surface of this planet, and beneath the oceans.
The earth’s magnetic field keeps the earth at a safe distance from the sun, and the core is the earth’s engine. The earth’s fuel system is referred to as oil wells/ crude oil reservoirs. They are actually self pressurizing fuel cells. Like any machine, if you were to shut off fuel to the engine, the engine will stop operating. The oil company’s crude oil extraction process compromises the earth’s fuel system, and shut off fuel to the earth’s engine (the core), by releasing pressure out of the earth’s fuel system (oil wells). Normally the pressure in a crude oil well/ reservoir is tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pounds per square inch.
Under normal circumstance the core (the engine) stays at a constant 5000 to 7000 degrees celsius, and that’s hot enough to melt steel, and the pressure in the core is tens of thousands to hundreds of pounds per square inch. The oil is ignited long before it reaches the core, and enters the core as flames, and/ or heat. Crude oil, and its components are hydrocarbons, and are capable of generating the temperatures, and pressures found in the core, and mantle. Hydrocarbons are used to melt, and manufacture steel. The higher the temperature in the core, and the stronger the earth’s magnetic field. The cooler the core, the weaker the earth’s magnetic field. The earth’s engine is being fuel starved, and it is slowly cooling. As the core cools the earth’s magnetic field weakens, and the earth is being pulled closer to the sun.
Global Warming has nothing to do with green house gases, holes in the ozone, CFC, R-12 refrigerant, the sun going nova, aerosol propellant, and methane gases, etc. Hydrocarbons such as coal are safe to use. The only way to reverse global warming is for the oil companies to re-pressurize the earth’s fuel systems. One way this can be accomplished, by igniting the methane gas in the fuel cell (oil/ gas well). The ignited gas will expand, and create the pressure need to force the remaining crude oil (fuel) into the core. This is the real cause for global warming, and the only way it can be reversed.
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Volcanoes, the earth’s exhaust system are designed to rid the core (the earth’s engine) of spent fuel, debris, and they regulate the /pressure in the core, which is generated by the combustion, and/ or ignition of crude oil / methane gas. The pressure that’s release from volcanoes are provided by carbon dioxide, nitrogen, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and the facts are these are all hydrocarbon by-product, including the pressure.
These gases, and the pressure proves beyond a shadow of doubt, hydrocarbons are being burned in the core of this planet, and lots of it. I believe it crude oil, and/ or methane gases are this planet’s fuel source. Volcanic eruptions in the pass are stronger, than present day eruptions. This is due to the core of this planet cooling. The more hydrocarbons that are burned in the core, the higher the core’s temperature, and the stronger volcanic eruptions will occur. Green house gases are not responsible for global warming, it goes beyond green house gases. Something is going wrong with the earth itself, and its obit around the sun is changing, and not for the better.
The earth has shifted on it’s axis by 26 degrees, and is wobbling on it’s axis. The earth is moving away from the moon at 4 centimeters each year. A total of 24 leap seconds have been added to the atomic clock over the decades, because the earth rotation has slowed down. 12 noon use to be the hottest part of the day, now it 3 o’clock in the after noon.
Scientists are saying the day will increase from 24 to 25 hours in a day. The winters are getting sunny, and warmer from the equator (latitude- zero) to (latitude 29-N, and S) in winter. Both polar ice caps are being melted, one at a time, and the oceans are rising. Floods, and tornadoes are developing in winter, from (latitude 35.0 –N) to (latitude 42- and there shouldn’t be enough sun rays, and heat for the green house gas theory to be applicable. The same weather is occurring in the southern hemisphere from (latitude- zero to 42-S) in winter. Nasa scientists say the earth’s magnetic field has developed a breach. It’s getting noticeably hotter every 15 to 20 years. Look at the facts, and due diligence! Most of what I’ve written in the last two paragraph, was written by scientist, geophysicists, geologists, astrophysicists, and can be found on the internet. I warn you global warming, and the apocalypse are one in the same. The decay, and global warming are in the beginning stages, the worse has yet to come.
Written by: Willie McDonald
cdnld30@gmail.com:
www.globalwarmingreversal.blogspot.com
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