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	<title>Tragic Planet</title>
	<link>http://tragicplanet.org</link>
	<description>Reporting on what we are doing to our only planet...</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:52:43 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Colorado River: Running Near Empty by : Yale Environment 360</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; &#160; &#160; &#160; A beautifully photographed short film, a shocking, tragic and important story. &#160; &#160; &#160; &#160; &#160; Colorado River: Running Near Empty by : Yale Environment 360. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/09/24/colorado-river-running-near-empty-by-yale-environment-360/</link>
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		<title>Generational Amnesia</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Why do so many people dismiss or underestimate environmental damage? Of course, there is the simple idea that Earth is so much larger than us we have a hard time understanding how we can damage it. This overlooks the fact that there are now a staggering 7 billions of us (that&#8217;s 7,000 millions!) Contrast that with the &#8220;only&#8221; 1.6B of us there were in 1900 and then add that we now have advanced technology that multiplies our destructive power by several orders of magnitude. But even those amongst us who do understand the facts above often have a hard time grasping the extent of our damage to the environment. This is I think because of so-called &#8220;Generational Amnesia&#8220;. This is a very simple and yet very real and powerful meme. Basically it means that your kid&#8217;s view of what is &#8220;normal&#8221; for the environment is what they first experienced in their childhood. They will generally dismiss what you tell them about your own &#8220;normal&#8221; as mere fishermen&#8217;s tales. In turn you do the same, where your &#8220;normal&#8221; was set in your own childhood and you mostly dismiss your parent&#8217;s &#8220;normal&#8221; and so on through the generations. As a result of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/09/24/generational-amnesia/</link>
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		<title>Humanity falls deeper into ecological debt: study</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Earth&#8217;s seven billion denizens &#8212; nine billion by mid-century &#8212; are using more water, cutting down more forests and eating more fish than Nature can replace, it said. via Humanity falls deeper into ecological debt: study. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/09/24/humanity-falls-deeper-into-ecological-debt-study/</link>
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		<title>Relocating Alaska Natives: The Climate is Changing Faster Than Disaster Management and Adaptation Policies &#124; ThinkProgress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; &#160; In 2008, I took a tiny cargo plane to the Inupiaq village of Kivalina, in the northwest of Alaska above the Arctic Circle. I had heard the village would be lost to climate change from erosion, which I imagined to be a slow, gradual, and predictable process. Touring the island and speaking to residents and government workers, I soon realized the erosion is actually often sudden, severe, and erratic, brought on by increasingly strong storms that threaten the peoples’ safety. Kivalina needs to be relocated. The problem is there is no policy or structure in place to relocate them. While the continental U.S. shifts between weather extremes - from strong storms fueled by increased precipitation to prolonged droughts aggravated by heat – the changes in the Arctic have been much less ambiguous: steady warming. Annual mean temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as the global average. The warming is melting glaciers, allowing for the absorption of more heat, with recent studies suggesting the possibility of a completely ice-free summer by 2040or even 2030. Entire ecosystems are transforming, as rising seas pour into freshwater systems, making deltas and lakes more saline and inhospitable for some species, while attracting whole new species. Continue [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/07/22/relocating-alaska-natives-the-climate-is-changing-faster-than-disaster-management-and-adaptation-policies-thinkprogress/</link>
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		<title>Arctic Death Spiral: Second Lowest June Sea Ice Extent, Lowest June Volume &#124; ThinkProgress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[… the 2010 September ice volume anomaly did in fact exceed the previous 2007 minimum by a large enough margin to establish a statistically significant new record. via Arctic Death Spiral: Second Lowest June Sea Ice Extent, Lowest June Volume &#124; ThinkProgress. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/07/08/arctic-death-spiral-second-lowest-june-sea-ice-extent-lowest-june-volume-thinkprogress/</link>
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		<title>Great Barrier Reef Part 2: Climate Change Impacts</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; Coral reefs like the Great Barrier Reef depend on a narrow set of environmental conditions within which they prosper.  At the heart of their biology, is a symbiosis that they form with tiny plant-like organisms known as dinoflagellates (commonly called zooxanthellae).  This symbiosis is critical to the survival of corals and coral reefs, making possible the efficient trapping of sunlight by reef-building corals.  This allows them a cheap source of energy with which to grow in the sunlit waters along tropical coastlines, and where they often deposit of vast quantities of calcium carbonate (a limestone-like substance), creating the three-dimensional structures that we know of as coral reefs.  These magnificent structures build up over time, attracting over one million species which are known to live in and around coral reefs (Reaka-Kudla 1997).  This mega-diversity is unrivalled anywhere else in the ocean, and supports industries like tourism and fisheries, and provides food for at least 100 million people worldwide (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999). Continue reading on Great Barrier Reef Part 2: Climate Change Impacts. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/07/07/great-barrier-reef-part-2-climate-change-impacts/</link>
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		<title>Phosphate: A Critical Resource Misused and Now Running Low by Fred Pearce: Yale Environment 360</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; Phosphate has been essential to feeding the world since the Green Revolution, but its excessive use as a fertilizer has led to widespread pollution and eutrophication. Now, many of the world’s remaining reserves are starting to be depleted. by fred pearce Phosphate: A Critical Resource Misused and Now Running Low by Fred Pearce: Yale Environment 360. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/07/07/phosphate-a-critical-resource-misused-and-now-running-low-by-fred-pearce-yale-environment-360/</link>
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		<title>Great Barrier Reef Part 1: Current Conditions and Human Impacts</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What&#8217;s the current state of the GBR (i.e. is it really &#8220;in fine fettle&#8221;)? Despite being one of the best managed marine ecosystems worldwide, there is evidence that the ecological &#8216;health&#8217; of the Great Barrier Reef has declined since the arrival of European settlers into the Queensland region. This evidence comes from a number of key sources. This area is not without its controversy, which is discussed elsewhere at Skeptical Science by Professor John Bruno (University of North Carolina) and others. Continue reading via Great Barrier Reef Part 1: Current Conditions and Human Impacts. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/07/03/great-barrier-reef-part-1-current-conditions-and-human-impacts/</link>
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		<title>Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions: study &#124; Reuters</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; (Reuters) &#8211; Life in the oceans is at imminent risk of the worst spate of extinctions in millions of years due to threats such as climate change and over-fishing, a study showed on Tuesday. &#160; Continue reading via Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions: study &#124; Reuters. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/06/21/ocean-life-on-the-brink-of-mass-extinctions-study-reuters-2/</link>
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		<title>Yale Environment 360: Snowpack Decline in Rockies Has Rapidly Accelerated, Study Shows</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Yale Environment 360: Snowpack Decline in Rockies Has Rapidly Accelerated, Study Shows 10 JUN 2011: SNOWPACK DECLINE IN ROCKIES HAS RAPIDLY ACCELERATED, STUDY SHOWS A new study says snowpack decline in the northern Rocky Mountains over the last 30 years has been more severe than at any other time in nearly 1,000 years. In an analysis of 66 tree-ring records, researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that the average spring snowpack in the northern Rockies in recent decades has been even lower — and experienced a more prolonged decline — than two other low-snowpack periods, one in the early 14th century and another in the 16th century. The report, published in the journal Science, says the increasing role of warming on snowpack variability may foreshadow “fundamental impacts on streamflow and water supplies across the western United States.” Snowmelt from the Rockies drains into the Colorado, Columbia, and Missouri river basins, which together provide 60 to 80 percent of the water for 70 million people. Meteorological data show that snowpack in the last 30 years has been the lowest since record-keeping began a century ago, but the USGS study demonstrates that the recent decline is unusual over a 1,000-year time scale. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/06/11/yale-environment-360-snowpack-decline-in-rockies-has-rapidly-accelerated-study-shows/</link>
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		<title>James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts” &#124; ThinkProgress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts” &#124; ThinkProgress. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/06/07/james-hansen-slams-keystone-xl-canada-u-s-pipeline-%e2%80%9cexploitation-of-tar-sands-would-make-it-implausible-to-stabilize-climate-and-avoid-disastrous-global-climate-impacts%e2%80%9d-thinkprogr/</link>
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		<title>Arctic sea ice volume: The death spiral continues « Climate Progress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Arctic sea ice volume: The death spiral continues « Climate Progress In November, Rear Admiral David Titley, the Oceanographer of the Navy, testified that  “the volume of ice as of last September has never been lower…in the last several thousand years.”Titley, who is also the Director of Navy’s Task Force Climate Change, said he has told the Chief of Naval Operations that “we expect to see four weeks of basically ice free conditions in the mid to late 2030s.” Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School has “projected a (virtually) ice-free fall by 2016 (+/- 3 yrs).” Contrary to some reporting, that projection has been unchanged for years, though Maslowski is in the process of creating a more sophisticated model that he expects “will improve prediction of sea ice melt,” as he explained to me recently. Until then, we have some new observational data of Canadian sea ice thickness (below) and this remarkable figure from Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice Blog, based on data from the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center [click to enlarge]: Arctic sea ice volume by month in km3 with simple quadratic trend lines (detailshere) Continue reading on Climate Progress&#8230; &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/05/19/arctic-sea-ice-volume-the-death-spiral-continues-%c2%ab-climate-progress/</link>
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		<title>NASA: April tied for 4th hottest on record globally « Climate Progress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[NASA: April tied for 4th hottest on record globally « Climate Progress. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has released its monthly global temperature data.  It reveals that there is no April in the temperature record before 2005 that was warmer than April 2011. And that’s in spite of the fact that we are still in the tail end of a major La Niña and just coming out of “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.”  April 2011 is surpassed in warmth only by 2005, 2007, and 2010.  It tied with 2002 and just beat 1998. The Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology foresees a transition to an El Niño this summer.  NOAA only foresees “ENSO-neutral conditions.”  NASA’s Hansen had predicted back in October that “It is likely that 2012 will reach a record high global temperature.”  An El Niño would make that an extreme likelihood. We have, as reported, seen almost unbelievable extreme weather in this country (see Hell and High Water: Weather Channel labels Texas drought and Mississippi floods truly “exceptional”; Masters: This is “only” a “1-in-100 to 1-in-300 year flood).” We have also been seeing record-smashing extreme weather around the globe, from England to Canada, from Colombia to China — but the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/05/16/nasa-april-tied-for-4th-hottest-on-record-globally-%c2%ab-climate-progress/</link>
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		<title>Extreme warming forces climate scientists to add hot pink to temperature map « Climate Progress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; &#160; Extreme warming forces climate scientists to add hot pink to temperature map « Climate Progress. &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/04/12/extreme-warming-forces-climate-scientists-to-add-hot-pink-to-temperature-map-%c2%ab-climate-progress/</link>
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		<title>The Climate Show #7: The Cryosphere Special</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been watching the Climate Show since episode one and it just keeps getting better. This show is produced in New Zealand and they usually have a guest climatologist on the show. This week it&#8217;s Professor Jason Box, a prominent Greenland expert. Well worth watching: http://hot-topic.co.nz/the-climate-show-7-box-and-boxsters-the-cryosphere-special/ &#160;]]></description>
		<link>http://tragicplanet.org/2011/02/18/climate-show-7-cryosphere-special/</link>
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