Warm nights are filled with the light of thousands of stars. Along our coast, lapping wavelets mingle with the voices of otters romping in the white sands of a moonlight beach. Their soft chirping barks and chuckles mingle with the sounds of sleepy birds working the night shift.

Morning’s warming beams illuminate the bottoms of the passing clouds with a brilliant glow. A flight of long-necked egrets, with downcast bills and full of grace, sweeps inland, white bellies gleaming bright in the morning sun. From every tree and bush comes a melody of birdsong – chirping, tweeting, whistles and cooing, joyful voices full of cheer. And bobbing along a grassy roadway, a rusty-breasted robin searches for unwary earthworms that failed to come in after last night’s rain.

Dogwood and azalea blossoms put on their magic shows. Overhead, the forest’s great green canopy awakens, while a yellow blanket of pine pollen promises new life – and much work for brooms. April has taken center stage again. The News & Observer

The blue shift is not literal; rather, the color blue is used to represent rapid fluctuations in a system called “spectral color,” which ecologists use to describe environmental change. The increasing blueness of the environment may be altering species extinction risks, said study author Bernardo Garcia-Carreras, a graduate student at Imperial College London.

“From simple models, it appears that if the spectral color of the population becomes bluer, as our results seem to suggest, then extinction risk is reduced,” Garcia-Carreras told LiveScience. “It is good news in that sense.”

But there is a large caveat to the good news, Garcia-Carreras said. Environmental fluctuations are just one influence on species survival. Other factors — such as overall temperature change and habitat loss — put pressure on species that could offset any benefits from a bluer world. [Read: With Climate Change, Expect More Monster Winter Storms]

“We’ve only looked at change in spectral colors,” Garcia-Carreras said. “We’re not trying to say that climate change is great for populations.”

To assign a color to the environment, Garcia-Carreras and his colleagues used temperature data from the Climatic Research Unit and the Global Historical Climatology Network, which gave them a picture of daily weather throughout the 20th century. To gauge fluctuations in animal populations, they used the Global Population Dynamics Database, which tracks population changes for 147 species, ranging from insects to mammals, over the past 30 years.

Overall, global temperatures showed a small but significant shift from “red” (or slow fluctuations) to rapid, “blue” fluctuations in the last half of the century, Garcia-Carreras said. The change wasn’t identical for the entire world, he said. Asia saw shifts toward slower fluctuations. But on the whole, the “bluer” world also correlated with faster shifts in animal populations, Garcia-Carreras said.

The “blue”-ing of the environment may ease extinction risk because a swing toward unwelcoming conditions is usually followed by a fast return to more salutary surroundings. Understanding what these changes mean for individual species will require more work, Garcia-Carreras said.

“With this information in hand, we can try to look more specifically at what mechanisms underlie the effect the changing spectral color of the environment might be having on populations,” he said. Yahoo Daily News

“Stones play a very crucial role in the arena of landscaping. Stone art can enhance the appeal of landscaping. Moreover, landscape architecture can generate many jobs. But unfortunately, the capacity of stone art is not being utilised to its best. So this year, we are focusing on the idea of stone art, in order to create more jobs and better landscaping,” says S Jafar Naqvi, president of Indian Flowers and Ornamental Plants Welfare Association (IFLORA).

The event will be inaugurated by Mayor Mohan Singh Rajpal after which landscape enthusiasts will be able to get an insight into quite a few crucial topics at a panel discussion. Issues like environmental horticulture, creative use of plants and trees in airport landscaping, maintenance of plants in landscape gardening according to different climatic conditions, importance of horticulture in real estate sector, new products and concepts in nurseries that will fetch more revenue, use of plants in highway development, modern irrigation concept in landscaping, efficient water management for landscape and nurseries, significance of artificial grass and its impact on urban development are some of the issues that will be addressed in the discussion.

“The seminar will mostly focus on improving the quality of life of people by preserving the environment through proper planning of public places, parks and recreation centres,” adds Naqvi. This stone fiesta will bring together professionals from the sector of environment and landscaping to boost their business through interaction and productive business dealings. And it will also be a good platform for producers, exporters, importers, traders and service providers. Indian Express

A new atlas compiled by U.S. and Canadian researchers catalogues their biological value and identifies threats from expanding homes, resorts, roads and marinas. The lakes contain more than 32,000 islands, making them the world’s largest collection of islands in fresh water, according to the atlas.

“Islands have a lot of shoreline, they have a lot of rare species and habitats, and in many cases they’re in better condition than the mainland,” said Dan Kraus, co-author of the atlas and conservation science manager for the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

The isles are extremely diverse, ranging from tiny rocky shoals, to groupings that form sandy archipelagos, to larger islands, such as Isle Royale in Lake Superior, with their own thin soils and microclimates.

The recently published atlas, “Islands of Life,” identifies each island in the system, scores them on the basis of their biological diversity, and details what’s known about potential threats. The intent, its authors say, is to pool international data to prioritize key islands for increased protection or conservation.

Because of their isolation, many islands have distinct mixes of plants and wildlife, some of which do not occur on the mainland. For example, apples do not need to be sprayed on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, because there are no pests to infest them. Arctic plants grow on Isle Royale, left behind when the glaciers retreated thousands of years ago and able to survive in the island’s lake-cooled temperatures. Woodland caribou roam and swim between the Slate Islands, an archipelago at the northern tip of Lake Superior in Ontario.

The islands also provide habitat for spawning fish, nurseries in their offshore shoals, and nesting areas for tens of thousands of gulls, terns, pelicans, cormorants and herons. The isles’ perimeters may be fringed with moss-shrouded forests because of the oceanlike climate near the lake, and then change abruptly to other vegetation a mile or two inland with higher temperatures. Some islands contain dune grasslands that are found nowhere else in the world.

Francie Cuthbert, a University of Minnesota professor, has studied colonies of water birds for the past three decades, including aerial surveys of hundreds of islands and field work on about 150.

“When we get to a remote island, I tell some of my field researchers that we may be the only people who set foot here all summer long,” Cuthbert said.

Some birds are island-dependent and very vulnerable, she said, because their main defense as ground-nesting species is their isolation from raccoons, coyotes and other predators. Some of the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin are important nesting sites, she said.

Islands in all of the Great Lakes are key for migrating songbirds, she said, which can fly across a lake if weather conditions are good, but often need places to stop, rest and feed on their journey south.

Because of their isolation and ruggedness, and often-difficult weather conditions to reach them, many Great Lakes islands have been too remote to receive much attention.

That is changing, said David Ewert, director of conservation science for the Nature Conservancy’s Great Lakes program. Personal watercraft make it easier for people to reach islands. Some areas, especially in Lake Erie, have allowed extensive residential development, and new resorts, marinas and roads that cater to tourists. Other concerns include wind power development, oil and gas exploration, gravel quarries, climate change and invasive plants and animals.

Ewert, co-author of the conservation atlas, hopes that it will provide a foundation for greater understanding of island vulnerability so that potential problems can be avoided.

“Islands could have the option of not being invaded by certain plants, animals and pathogens like the West Nile virus,” if land managers and island residents take preventive action, he said. And islanders should learn from previous mistakes, such as introducing white-tailed deer or turkeys for hunting, that can drastically change an island’s entire ecosystem.

The atlas identifies 2,591 islands in Lake Superior, many on the Canadian side, with more than 1,500 miles of island coastline. Most of the islands are owned by federal, state or provincial governments, and about three-fourths of the total land is protected.

The good news, said Kraus, is that many islands in Superior and elsewhere are in fairly good shape, and because of their isolation have escaped overdevelopment, intensive farming and other mainland problems.

“In some ways it’s kind of our second chance to protect Great Lakes coastal areas if we can do a good job protecting these islands,” he said. By Tom Meersman,

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines, a nongovernment organization involved in environmental concerns, believes that it is crucial to “train a new generation of climate warriors” if the government really wants to effect lasting solutions to environmental issues.

It was for this reason that WWF and HSBC launched back in 2008 their Project EcoKids, which stands for “environmentally-conscious kids.”

Three years and 15,000 students later, Project EcoKids can be considered the country’s single most effective program in teaching children in some 50 schools nationwide about climate change causes and solutions, according to WWF.

While climate change lessons are not yet fully integrated into the public school curriculum, HSBC teamed up with WWF to implement an education drive to teach children about climate change and the simple solutions they can adopt to prepare for its effects.

“We believe in empowering the youth to become future stewards for the environment. One good way is to make them realize that climate change is not some complex concept for grown-ups. Rather, it’s something they can understand, something they themselves can act on,” explains Project EcoKids team leader Obel Resurreccion.

Project EcoKids is the latest stage in the evolution of WWF educational drives focused on increasing awareness on ecosystem and endangered species protection.

It drew on years of experience in tackling a subject long regarded as “too technical” for kids.

Project EcoKids is fully endorsed by the Department of Education, and plans are underway to fuse climate modules with the regular school curriculum.

Grade 3 pupils were identified as the best group to train as science-oriented subjects are introduced at this stage.

By starting them young, these students will hopefully form environment-friendly habits and consequently live environmentally-conscious lifestyles, WWF says.

According to WWF, Project EcoKids consists of four 60-minute modules, each delivered weekly.

Climate Change is the first topic to be discussed, which includes explanations regarding the causes and effects of global warming and how human impacts accelerate or slow down its effects.

Another module tackles Energy Conservation and Renewable Energy, which shows the various types of renewable energy sources in the Philippines and shares simple tips on how to reduce household energy consumption.

The Waste Management module, meanwhile, enlightens kids on the impact of pollution and what they can do to cushion the effects of climate change, such as reduce, reuse and recycle.

The fourth and final week integrates all lessons into a personal roadmap to minimize each child’s consumption of resources.

Children, according to WWF, are given opportunities during the four weeks to engage in role-playing, song and dance skits, arts and crafts, word games and math challenges to internalize the lessons.

“The lessons are imparted unto children, but it is their parents who will feel immediate benefits,” adds project officer Maye Padilla.

“For example, when we convince kids to lessen their electricity usage, their household bill is reduced. There’s no better teacher than experience—and positive experiences are what’s in store for our students,” she notes.

The Project Ecokids program relies solely on volunteers, which have reached almost 500 people within the three years that it has been implemented.

These volunteers are mostly HSBC employees and freelancers.

WWF hopes that the success of Project EcoKids can be replicated in more areas, particularly in schools outside Metro Manila, Resurrecion adds. By Amy R. Remo, Inquirer

A 19-page guide prepared by leading international scientists, including society fellows, is an honest account of where climate change science is clear and where it is less certain, such as the impact of energy emitted by the sun.

The ragged intersection between science and politics is the point at which much of the climate debate has been derailed. Politics demands certainty to make a convincing case for co-ordinated action. Science, on the other hand, is driven by scepticism. Each hypothesis formulated from empirical evidence needs to be challenged and tested to within an inch of its life before its veracity can be assumed. The 43 society members now believe the society’s previous position was too strident and implied a greater degree of certainty than was justified.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports should have been seen for what they were, political documents. They were designed, quite reasonably, as a basis on which to build a political solution. The mistake was to elevate them to the status of divine prophecy. When the IPCC recommended in 2007 that nations reduce global emissions by 50 to 85 per cent by 2050 to have a reasonable chance of averting warming beyond 2C and “catastrophic” consequences, it was clear to those with a sophisticated view of science that the targets were based on assumptions fed into computer models. As the debate unfolded, those who exaggerated the evidence or presented only worst-case projections did much more to set back the cause of carbon restraint than the commentators they derided as deniers. Scare tactics have not worked, and will not work.

The Royal Society sets out a strong case for pursuing the cautionary, responsible approach long advocated by The Weekend Australian. The society cites strong evidence that increases in greenhouse gases due to human activity are the dominant cause of global warming. It is all the more convincing for its honesty and avoidance of doomsday scenarios pedalled by alarmists, whose proposals would wreak economic devastation. After a long, needlessly polarised debate, the guide is a welcome new start to help restore the credibility of climate science and civility to the discussion. The Australian

Women are more likely than men to support the scientific consensus on the reality of global warming caused by humans, according to sociologist Aaron McCright, an associate professor at Michigan State University. He analyzed eight years of Gallup Poll data to perform one of the first in-depth studies on how men and women think about climate change.

This annual environmental survey contained fairly basic questions about climate change, including the timing of global warming (whether or not it has already begun), causes (natural changes in the environment or human-induced), and consensus (whether or not scientists agree global warming is happening).

His study found that women conveyed slightly greater knowledge of climate change than men – agreeing that its affects were already being seen, that it is human-caused and that scientists think it is occurring. Women were also slightly more concerned about global warming than men.

This difference could have important implications, he said.

“Does this mean women are more likely to buy energy-efficient appliances and hybrid vehicles than men?” McCright said. “Do they vote for different political candidates? Do they talk to their children differently about global warming?”

While those questions remain to be answered, the finding comes in spite of the common perception that men are more scientifically literate, McCright said.

The difference between men and women’s concerns about climate change cannot be explained by roles they perform – such as being a homemaker, a parent, or employed full-time, he said. Instead, the divide is more likely explained by characteristics people learn as part of their gender. Masculinity is associated with detachment, control and mastery, while femininity stresses attachment, empathy and care. The latter traits might make it easier to feel concern about the potentially dire consequences of global warming, McCright said.

“Women and men think about climate change differently,” he said. “And when scientists or policymakers are communicating about climate change with the general public, they should consider this rather than treating the public as one big monolithic audience.”

His work was published in the September issue of the journal Population and Environment.  By Wynne Parry, The Christian Science Monitor

But most of all, they’ve blamed conservatives — for pressuring Republican lawmakers to abandon legislation they once supported, and for closing ranks against any attempt to tax and regulate our way to a lower-carbon economy.

Cap-and-trade’s backers are correct to point the finger rightward. If their bill is dead, it was the American conservative movement that ultimately killed it. Climate legislation wasn’t like health care, with Democrats voting “yes” in lockstep. There was no way to get a bill through without some support from conservative lawmakers. And in the global warming debate, there’s a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the conservative movement and the environmentalist cause.

To understand why, it’s worth going back to the 1970s, the crucible in which modern right-wing politics was forged.

The Seventies were a great decade for apocalyptic enthusiasms, and none was more potent than the fear that human population growth had outstripped the earth’s carrying capacity. According to a chorus of credentialed alarmists, the world was entering an age of sweeping famines, crippling energy shortages, and looming civilizational collapse.

It was not lost on conservatives that this analysis led inexorably to left-wing policy prescriptions — a government-run energy sector at home, and population control for the teeming masses overseas.

Social conservatives and libertarians, the two wings of the American right, found common ground resisting these prescriptions. And time was unkind to the alarmists. The catastrophes never materialized, and global living standards soared. By the turn of the millennium, the developed world was worrying about a birth dearth.

This is the lens through which most conservatives view the global warming debate. Again, a doomsday scenario has generated a crisis atmosphere, which is being invoked to justify taxes and regulations that many left-wingers would support anyway. (Some of the players have even been recycled. John Holdren, Barack Obama’s science adviser, was a friend and ally of Paul Ehrlich, whose tract “The Population Bomb” helped kick off the overpopulation panic.)

History, however, rarely repeats itself exactly — and conservatives who treat global warming as just another scare story are almost certainly mistaken.

Rising temperatures won’t “destroy” the planet, as fearmongers and celebrities like to say. But the evidence that carbon emissions are altering the planet’s ecology is too convincing to ignore. Conservatives who dismiss climate change as a hoax are making a spectacle of their ignorance.

But this doesn’t mean that we should mourn the death of cap-and-trade. It’s possible that the best thing to do about a warming earth — for now, at least — is relatively little. This is the view advanced by famous global-warming heretics like Bjorn Lomborg and Freeman Dyson; in recent online debates, it has been championed by Jim Manzi, the American right’s most persuasive critic of climate-change legislation.

Their perspective is grounded, in part, on the assumption that a warmer world will also be a richer world — and that economic development is likely to do more for the wretched of the earth than a growth-slowing regulatory regime.

But it’s also grounded in skepticism that such a regime is possible. Any attempt to legislate our way to a cooler earth, the argument goes, will inevitably resemble the package of cap-and-trade emission restrictions that passed the House last year: a Rube Goldberg contraption whose buy-offs and giveaways swamped its original purpose.

Liberals disagree, of course. They think the skeptics underestimate the potential for catastrophe, and overestimate the costs of regulation. They, too, look to the past for lessons, but their model is the Clean Air Act and its various modifications, which reduced domestic air pollution relatively cheaply.

But the Clean Air Act didn’t require collective action on a global scale — the kind of action that last year’s Copenhagen conference placed ever further out of reach. What’s more, a crucial technology, the catalytic converter, was already on the way as the act’s provisions went into effect. Cap-and-trade is more of a leap in the dark.

Liberalism specializes in such leaps. But you can see why conservatives might lean toward the wisdom of inaction. Not every danger has a regulatory solution, and sometimes it makes sense to wait, get richer, and then try to muddle through. By Ross Douthat, The New York Times

In a quantitative assessment – the first of its kind to address this issue – the team analyzed the number of research papers published by more than 900 climate researchers and the number of times their work was cited by other scientists.

“These are standard academic metrics used when universities are making hiring or tenure decisions,” said William Anderegg, lead author of a paper published in the online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.

Expertise was evaluated by the number of papers on climate research written by each individual, with a minimum of 20 required to be included in the analysis. Climate researchers who are convinced of human-caused climate change had on average about twice as many publications as the unconvinced, said Anderegg, a doctoral candidate in biology.

Prominence was assessed by taking the four most frequently cited papers published in any field by each scientist – not just climate science publications – and tallying the number of times those papers were cited by other researchers. Papers by climate researchers convinced of human effects were cited approximately 64 percent more often than papers by the unconvinced.

The scientists whose work was analyzed included all the researchers involved in producing the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group that assessed the evidence for and against human involvement in climate change, as well as any climate researchers who signed a major public statement disagreeing with the findings of the panel’s report.

The top 100

The Stanford team also determined the top 100 climate researchers, based on the total number of climate related publications each had, which produced an even more telling result, Anderegg said.

“When you look at the leading scientists who have made any sort of statement about anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, you find 97 percent of those top 100 surveyed scientists explicitly agreeing with or endorsing the IPCC’s assessment,” he said. That result has been borne out by several other published studies that used different methodology, as well as some that are due out later this summer, he said.

“We really wanted to bring the expertise dimension into this whole discussion,” Anderegg said. “We hope to put to rest the notion that keeps being repeated in the media and by some members of the public that ‘the scientists disagree’ about whether human activity is contributing to climate change.”

“I never object to quoting opinions that are ‘way out.’ I think there is nothing wrong with that,” said Stephen Schneider, professor of biology and a coauthor of the paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “But if the media doesn’t report that something is a ‘way out’ opinion relative to the mainstream, then how is the average person going to know the relative credibility of what is being said?”

“It is sad that we even have to do this,” said Schneider. “[Too much of] the media world has just folded up and fired its reporters with expertise in science.”

The Stanford team is prepared for the doubters of anthropogenic climate change to object to their data.

“I think the most typical criticism of a paper like this – not necessarily in academic discourse, but in the broader context – is going to be that we haven’t addressed if these sorts of differences could be due to some sort of clique or, at the extreme, a conspiracy of the researchers who are convinced of climate change,” Anderegg said.

“When you stop to consider whether some sort of ‘group think’ really drives these patterns and could it really exist in science in general, the idea is really pretty laughable,” he said. “All of the incentives in science are exactly the opposite.

“If you were a young researcher and had the data to overturn any of the mainstream paradigms, or what the IPCC has done, you would become absolutely famous,” he said. “Everyone wants to be the next Darwin, everyone wants to be the next Einstein.”

Schneider said that the team took pains to avoid any sort of prejudice or skewed data in their analysis. In selecting which of the researchers who signed petitions or statements disagreeing with the findings of the IPCC to include in the study, they omitted those who had no published papers in the climate literature.

“We only picked those who had at least some credentials in climate. So we went way beyond neutral, in their direction, bending over backward,” Schneider said. “The doubters of anthropogenic climate change will claim foul anyway.

“They can say that climate researchers convinced of anthropogenic climate change are just trying to deny publication of the doubters’ opinion, but let them go out and do a study to prove it,” he said. “It is of course not true.” redOrbit

University of Illinois researchers are studying the impact of elevated carbon dioxide, elevated ozone and higher atmospheric temperatures on plant diseases that could challenge crops in these changing conditions.

“Plants growing in a high carbon dioxide environment tend to grow faster and larger, and they have denser canopies,” said Darin Eastburn, U of I associate professor of crop sciences.

“These dense plant canopies favour the development of some diseases because the low light levels and reduced air circulation allow higher relative humidity levels to develop, and this promotes the growth and sporulation of many plant pathogens.”

At the same time, plants grown in high carbon dioxide environments also close their stomata, pores in the leaves that allow the plant to take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, more often.

Because plant pathogens often enter the plant through the stomata, the more frequent closing of the stomata may help prevent some pathogens from getting into the plant.

“Elevated levels of carbon dioxide and ozone can make a plant more susceptible to some diseases, but less susceptible to others. This is exactly what we’ve observed in our climate change experiments,” Eastburn said.

“Now is the time for plant pathologists, plant breeders, agronomists and horticulturalists to adapt disease management strategies to the changing environment,” he added. DNA India