Category: Environment & Weather

The state of Florida is pursuing a blockbuster buyout of the biggest chunk of Big Sugar, the powerful agricultural industry whose pollution of the Everglades has made it a target of environmentalists for decades.

Gov. Charlie Crist has scheduled a press conference Tuesday in Palm Beach County, where he’s expected to outline a state proposal to purchase the U.S. Sugar Corp.’s vast holdings between Lake Okeechobee and the marshes of the Everglades — as much as 187,000 acres, including refineries, railroads and rock mines.

The opening bid could be near $1.7 billion, though the figures could change during what promise to be lengthy and complex negotiations.

Miami Herald

Should the seas rise about 8 or 10 feet this century, the purchase is going to be one of the stupidest moves of all time — well, not for U.S. Sugar.

And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled. Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Why do you think for thousands of years most (if not all) people thought the sun revolved around the earth?

The solstice is today, Friday, June 20th, at 5:59 PM Mountain daylight time (23:59 UTC).

Leaving aside the merits of more off-shore drilling — and the government’s own experts say the impact wouldn’t be for 20 or more years¹ — which means that $4 gasoline is just being used to leverage the issue.

But leaving that aside, is there no real appreciation or understanding that burning carbon is threatening the health of the planet?

Even if there is unlimited oil, natural gas and coal, don’t we have to begin to cutback on its use?

¹ “The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017.” (Energy Information Administration)

A Remarkable Photo From Tornado Country

Thanks to Bob Ormond for the link.

On Wednesday night, June 18th, step outside at sunset and look around. You’ll see a giant form rising in the east. At first glance it looks like the full Moon. It has craters and seas and the face of a man, but this “moon” is strangely inflated. It’s huge!

You’ve just experienced the Moon Illusion.

Click here to learn more from NASA.

Moonrise Wednesday in Albuquerque is 8:52 PM MDT.

More Alaskan salmon caught here end up in the dog pot these days, their orange-pink flesh fouled by disease that scientists have correlated with warmer water in the Yukon River.

The sorting of winners and losers at Moore’s riverbank fish camp illustrates what scientists have been predicting will accompany global warming: Cold-temperature barriers are giving way, allowing parasites, bacteria and other disease-spreading organisms to move toward higher latitudes.

“Climate change isn’t going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape,” said marine ecologist Kevin D. Lafferty, who studies parasites for the U.S. Geological Survey. “And some of these surprises are not going to be pretty.”

Los Angeles Times

“[S]ome of the best photographs of Earth’s skies, taken from above – way above (over 200 miles to be more exact)”

Boston.com

Cool.

Click image for larger version and to learn more. Once at APOD, be sure to move cursor over photo.

“The overall policy question for the Board is whether it is good policy for Seattle Parks to continue public beach fires when the carbon … emissions produced by thousands of beach fires per year contributes to global warming.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoting Seattle parks department staff report.

Another event from early 1992, still reverberating today: On January 10, a container holding almost 29,000 plastic bath toys spills off a cargo ship into the middle of the Pacific Ocean and breaks open. The unsinkable toys, which were en route from Hong Kong to Tacoma (Washington), include a lot of iconic yellow rubber ducks that have since been caught up in the world’s ocean currents and continue turning up on the most improbable shores. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer, saw from the beginning how valuable the rubber duckies could be in tracing ocean currents, and correctly predicted their trip through the Northwest Passage.

Strange Maps has more.

“That is exactly what you think it is: Phoenix descending to the Martian surface underneath its parachute. This incredible shot was taken by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. You can easily see the ‘chute, the lander (still in its shell) and even the tether lines!”

Go see the Best. Image. Ever.

It’s the idea that such an image is possible, not the picture itself that is so amazing.

Map excerpted from USGS by The Lede – New York Times Blog. Click image for larger version.

Tom linked to this but it’s pretty interesting anyway.

From the Bad Astronomy Blog, Ten things you don’t know about the Milky Way Galaxy.