19/02/2018

Disturbing Before-And-After Images Show What Major US Cities Could Look Like In The Year 2100

Business Insider - Melia Robinson

Washington, DC.
Google Earth/Climate Central LARGE IMAGE
The world’s oceans levels are rising at faster and faster rates as waters warm and ice sheets melt.
Researchers, led by University of Colorado-Boulder professor Steve Nerem, looked at satellite data dating back to 1993 to track the rise of sea levels.
Their findings, published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that sea levels aren’t just rising – that rise has been accelerating over the last 25 years.
Even small increases can have devastating consequences, according to climate experts. If the worst climate-change predictions come true, coastal cities in the US will be devastated by flooding and greater exposure to storm surges by the year 2100.
Research group Climate Central has created a plug-in for Google Earth that illustrates how catastrophic an “extreme” sea-level rise scenario would be if the flooding happened today, based on projections in a 2017 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.
You can install the plug-in (directions here) and see what might become of major US cities.
In a worst case scenario, flooding caused by polar melting and ice-sheet collapses could cause a sea level rise of 10 to 12 feet by 2100, NOAA reported in January 2017.
The Glacial Ice Sheet, Greenland. Photo: Joe Raedle/ Getty Images  LARGE IMAGE
Here’s Washington, DC today. The famed Potomac River runs through it.
Google Earth/Climate Central LARGE IMAGE
And here’s what Washington, DC, might look like in the year 2100 — as seen on Climate Central’s plug-in for Google Earth. Ocean water causes the river to overflow.
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The National Mall drew “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration,” at Trump’s swearing-in, according to Press Secretary Sean Spicer. It sits at the foot of the US Capitol.
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Future inaugurations wouldn’t quite be the same.
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In 2017, President Trump stood in the Rose Garden at the White House and announced his intentions to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a deal between 195 countries intended to mitigate global warming.
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In 2100, the Rose Garden could have an oceanfront view.
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New York City is situated on one of the world’s largest natural harbours.
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The Hudson River could flood the city’s perimeters and low-lying areas like the West Village.
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The Financial District encompasses the offices of many major financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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Extreme sea level rise could devastate Wall Street. Battery Park would be a water park.
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San Francisco has a huge concentration of wealth and power in the technology world.
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It’s also a peninsula that’s prone to flooding.
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San Francisco International Airport serves over 53 million travellers every year.
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In 2100, flyers might have better luck flying into Las Vegas.
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Charleston, South Carolina, already has a flooding problem. The Southern city is flat and at low elevation, which makes it vulnerable to extreme flooding and storm surges.
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In 2100, you might need a boat to reach the city’s center.
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Shopping at the Charleston City Market is a must-do for tourists visiting the area.
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But the long row of red-roofed buildings could be submerged under water by 2100.
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Los Angeles, which has the third highest elevation of all major US cities, might fare better.
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The projections show the Pacific Ocean climbing up the boardwalk, but that’s about it.
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New Orleans is no stranger to the problems that come along with sea level rise.
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By 2100, The Big Easy could disappear under water. An estimated 500,000 people will have to leave the area in the next century in order to stay above ground.
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After flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina destroyed 80% of homes in the New Orleans area, tens of thousands of people sought refuge at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
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But the arena used as a “shelter of last resort” might not survive extreme sea level rise.
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Boston is the only state capital in the continental US that borders an ocean. Extreme sea level rise could cause the Charles River to overflow and spill onto city streets.
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Here’s what Boston might look like in the year 2100. Massachusetts General Hospital would have to be abandoned, while Boston Public Garden would be soaked through.
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Many of the country’s top universities sit along Boston’s Charles River.
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The education world could say goodbye to the Harvard Business School, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Northeastern University, among others.
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President Trump has spent a decent part of his presidency in Palm Beach, Florida.
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He owns the Mar-a-Lago luxury resort and club, better known as the “Winter White House.”
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If sea levels rose by as much as 12 feet, the Mar-a-Lago estate would not fare well.
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But Trump will be out of office by the time anything like that happens.
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How Colour Changing Animals Are Rebelling Against Climate Change

National Geographic -  Liz Langley

A new study finds hot spots where animals that turn white for the winter could thrive in a less snowy world.
An Arctic fox stalks the coast of Churchill, Manitoba. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIAS BREITER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
It's a fashion fact that the colder your environment the more winter accessories you need.
Even some animals have two coats: one for summer to match the bare ground and a winter white to match the snow.
But what if there is no snow and you can’t take off your coat?
In a new study in Science, scientists examined 21 species in 60 countries that shed brown coats and turn white to match the snow. As global climate change leads to less snowfall, many of these animals are turning white when there is no snow—making them more vulnerable.
But the study found some possible refuges for these creatures: Geographic regions that are home to colour-changing species with both winter colour types (picture a forest full of snowshoe hares, some brown, some white).
By protecting such areas, humans could give the species to spread their darker-coat genes and outsmart climate change.

Winter Coats
Some species sporting seasonal camouflage are the snowshoe hare, Arctic fox, and ptarmigan.
Their colour-changing ability is "a trait that evolution has shaped to carry these animals through climate change over deep time," says study leader L. Scott Mills, a wildlife biologist at the University of Montana.
Snowshoe hares, for instance, once ranged as far south as North Carolina, but now only extend to West Virginia due to lessening snow—a pattern researchers have found in other colour-changing species, says co-author Jennifer Feltner, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Montana.
The amount of sunlight in a day triggers the hares to change their coat, regardless of whether there is snow or not. Conspicuous without their white camo, these hares are easily killed off by predators.
"Mismatch kills," Mills says—and hares have a lot of predators. Indeed, Feltner says her lab mates have dubbed them “the cheeseburgers of the forest,” because they’re on everyone’s menu, from owls to mountain lions.
A snowshoe hare leaps through the snowy landscape in its winter coat. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBBIE GEORGE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
The hares also don't know they don’t blend in and don’t alter their behaviour even after losing their camouflage, Mills says, likely a trait of most of these colour-morphing species.
Ptarmigans are another story. Because the birds rely on colour to attract mates, Mills says, male ptarmigans that turn white will stay that way, snow or not, until they mate.
After that “they find a mud hole or even feces and roll around and turn themselves brown,” regaining their camouflage after using their conspicuous colour to attract females, Mills says.

Fostering Evolution
Mills proposes that, because climate change is happening so quickly, "the same selective forces that led to winter brown and white morphs could be a tool for conservation."
For instance, the hot spots the team identified—including many parts of northern North America and Eurasia, such as the Pacific Northwest—are prime candidates for protection, and thus a chance for colour-changing species a chance to recover.
Rock ptarmigans sport their winter plumage in Sweden's Sarek National Park. PHOTOGRAPH BY ERLEND HAARBERG, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
"Evolution happens fastest when populations are large and when they are connected," Mills says.
Keeping populations of winter-white and winter-brown animals connected would allow them "to disperse the more protective, darker coat genes to the nearby winter white populations to aid their adaptation as snow cover becomes less frequent."
Fostering large population sizes and natural connectivity across these landscapes “should be our first and biggest effort," Mills adds.

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To Stop Climate Change, Educate Girls And Give Them Birth Control

Wired - 

When women are empowered to make their own family planning decisions, the effects can lead to lower carbon emissions. Getty Images/Wired
Climate change is a ubiquitous hydra, a many-headed beast that affects everyone and everything in some form. Solutions to climate change range from the effective and the practical to the potentially catastrophically dangerous—but, in this somewhat heated debate, a potent weapon in our arsenal is falling by the wayside: the empowerment of women.
Last year a coalition of scientists, economists, policymakers, researchers, and business people published Project Drawdown, a compendium of ways to prevent carbon dioxide from escaping skywards. Drawing from a plethora of peer-reviewed research, the document ranks 80 practical, mitigating measures—along with 20 near-future concepts—that could push back the oncoming storm.
Ranked in order of carbon emissions locked down by 2050, the usual suspects made the list. A moderate expansion of solar farms (number 8), onshore wind turbines (number 2), and nuclear power (number 20) would all save tens of billions of tons of equivalent carbon dioxide emissions. Increasing the number of people on plant-rich diets (number 4) and using electric vehicles (number 26) are effective carbon-cutting measures often proposed by climate hawks, and rightly so. The top spot went to managing refrigerants like HFCs, which are incredibly effective at trapping heat within our atmosphere.
But two lesser-known solutions also made this most practical of lists: the education of girls (number 6) and family planning (number 7). This is a stunning revelation, one that couldn’t be more pertinent, and yet, for the most part, discussions of mitigation and de-carbonization focus heavily on other matters, from the perceived perils and bona fide benefits of nuclear power, to just how quickly solar power is proliferating.
The link between the education of girls and a smaller carbon footprint isn’t as intuitively obvious as, say, phasing out fossil fuels. But dig a little deeper, and the evidence is overwhelming. It’s clear that getting more girls into school, and giving them a quality education, has a series of profound, cascading effects: reduced incidence of disease, higher life expectancies, more economic prosperity, fewer forced marriages, and fewer children. Better educational access and attainment not only equips women with the skills to deal with the antagonizing effects of climate change, but it gives them influence over how their communities militate against it.
Although the education of girls in a small number of countries is at, or approaching, parity with boys, for most of the planet, this remains distressingly elusive. Poverty, along with community traditions, tends to hold back girls as boys are prioritized.
Then there's family planning, something that’s indivisible from the education of girls. The planet is overpopulated, and the demands of its citizens greatly exceed the natural resources provided by our environment.
Contraception and prenatal care is denied to women across the world, from those in the United States, to communities in low-income nations. It’s either not available, not affordable, or social and/or religious motives ensure that it’s banned or heavily restricted. As a consequence, the world’s population will rise rapidly, consume ever more resources, and power its ambitions using fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.
The education of girls and family planning can be considered as a single issue involving the empowerment of women in communities across the world. Drawdown calculated that, by taking steps toward universal education and investing in family planning in developing nations, the world could nix 120 billion tons of emissions by 2050. That’s roughly 10 years’ worth of China’s annual emissions as of 2014, and it’s all because the world's population won't rise quite so rapidly.
It's farcical that this isn’t forming a major part of the debate over climate change mitigation. It’s not entirely clear why this is the case, but I’d suspect that regressive societal attitudes, along with the tendency of commentators to focus on the battle between different energy sectors, play suppressive roles in this regard.
Project Drawdown isn't the only group that has recently tied population growth to climate change. A study published last summer also found that having just one fewer child is a far more effective way for individuals in the developed world to shrink their carbon footprint than, say, recycling or eating less meat. For women in wealthy countries, these decisions are often freely made, and fertility rates in those countries are already fairly low. In low-income countries, such individual agency—not to mention contraception—is frequently absent, and fertility rates remain high.
Just as policymakers, climate advocates, and science communicators should pay attention to Drawdown’s findings, individuals should also do what they can to make sure such a solution comes to pass. Non-government organizations, like Hand In Hand International, Girls Not Brides, and the Malala Fund aren’t just uplifting women, but they’re helping to save the planet too, and they deserve support.
It's a grim assessment of civilization that, in 2018, humans are still grappling with gender equality. The world would clearly benefit if women were on par with men in every sector of society. We shouldn’t need any more convincing, but the fact that the social ascension of women would deal a severe blow to anthropogenic warming should be shouted from the rooftops.
Incidentally, the solutions in Drawdown also had associated economic benefits or costs associated with them. If 10 percent of the world's electricity was generated using solar farms, then it’d save $5 trillion by 2050, for example. No such value could be put to educating girls and family planning—two human rights with incalculable benefits.

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