Posted on 07/25/2006 8:03:10 PM PDT by Libloather
Global warming puts 12 US parks at risk
report By Deborah Zabarenko
Tue Jul 25, 3:51 PM ET
Grizzly bear cubs in Yellowstone National Park. Global warming puts 12 of the most famous U.S. national parks at risk, environmentalists said on Tuesday, conjuring up visions of Glacier National Park without glaciers and Yellowstone without grizzly bears. (National Park Service/Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming puts 12 of the most famous U.S. national parks at risk, environmentalists said on Tuesday, conjuring up visions of Glacier National Park without glaciers and Yellowstone Park without grizzly bears.
All 12 parks are located in the American West, where temperatures have risen twice as fast as in the rest of the United States over the last 50 years, said Theo Spencer of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"Rising temperatures, drought, wildfires and diminished snowfalls endanger wildlife and threaten hiking, fishing and other recreational activities" in the parks, Spencer said in a telephone news conference. "Imagine Glacier Park without glaciers or Yellowstone without any grizzly bears."
Most climate scientists believe Earth's surface temperature has risen over the last century or more, spurred by human activities that produce greenhouse gases, which trap heat like the glass walls of a greenhouse. Some skeptics doubt that people affect global climate change and say temperature fluctuations have occurred throughout history.
The report released by the council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization stressed the connection between global warming and environmental damage at the parks, including the loss of specific wildlife, and called on the U.S. government to cut greenhouse gas emissions significantly in 10 years.
The report blamed global warming for threatening grizzly bears, an iconic species in Yellowstone Park.
BEETLES AND BEARS
The bears feed on whitebark pine seeds, but global warming has encouraged beetles to infest whitebark trees that grow at high altitudes where grizzlies feed; cold weather would normally kill the beetles but this has not occurred in recent years, said Janet Barwick of the council's Wild Bears Project.
This in turn forces the bears to move to lower altitudes to look for food to fatten up for the winter, making them more likely to move into areas where there are people and that leads to an increase in grizzly mortality, Barwick said.
Glaciers and ice caves have melted in North Cascades and Mt. Rainier parks, and mountaintops in Western parks could be snow-free in summer within decades, said Stephen Saunders of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. He said all glaciers in Glacier National Park could be gone within 25 years.
The report said the parks at greatest risk are:
- Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico;
- Death Valley National Park, California;
- Glacier National Park, Montana;
- Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah and Arizona;
- Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California;
- Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming;
- Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado;
- Mount Rainier National Park, Washington state;
- North Cascades National Park, Washington state;
- Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado;
- Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho;
- Yosemite National Park, California.
UM, Yellowstone sits atop the largest volcano on earth. But I guess that has nothing to do with the temperature there.
I've never visited there but how can Death Valley be at risk? I thought it was real hot there already.
Paging Holyscroller, paging holyscroller
I would love to hear her comments on this regarding Mt Rainier ... she has written 2 books on the mountain.
What total BS. A few years ago the same dire predictions were made for parks here in Colorado. Now we have had the heaviest snowfall last winter and a wet summer, so the parks are thriving.
This kind of crap is right in line with Algore's embarassing movie. Taking a few selected observations and building a crisis!
How many goofballs are there? You ask -- LOTS!
I'll take the Parks and Rec Areas in turn.
BNC, NM. Just how heat can cause a problem at these ruins is a mystery.
DV, CA. I was there a couple of weeks ago. Warm you bet.
Beautiful and awesome with or without water.
GNP,MT. The "glaciers" were very small in 1947. Ranger stated at that time: "There are receding".
GCNRA, UT/AZ. The lake is man made. Youse takes your chances!
GGNRA, CA. The area is in the middle if San Francisco!
GTNP, WY. Just south of Yellowstone NP. So what's the problem? Beautiful views.
MVNP, CO. The ruins were abandoned in 1300 or so. Reason --
drought.
MRNP & NCNP, WA. So? What's the problem?
RMNP, CO. Beautiful awesome views. There will remain for
the next 1.0 mil years.
YSNP, WY,MT,ID. As long as ground water is available in addition to the water from magma YS will remain as you now see it. No man eating grizzlies --- what a shame.
When YS blows --- It'll be really neat!
"Watermelons" are neat! But totally detached from reality!
Bush killing teddy bears bump.
Seriously, this is an obvious strategy for the drive-by media. First we heard how the polar bears are dying off. Today, while in the airport, I heard how some puppies and kittens in Beirut had to be moved from a shelter because they were afraid due to the shelling. Now this. This is that National Lampoon cover - Buy this magazine or we'll shoot this dog - all over again. Yogi was right - it's deja vu all over again.
Mt. Rainier.....????? MT. RAINIER.....?????? I just looked out the window at it. It's late July and there's still LOTS of snow on it.
OMG! The glaciers in Death Valley are melting. Oh, the humanity!
First time I ever heard the watermelon SOB's give a damn about Glen Canyon. Most of them want it drained.
I guess for now they figure it's a useful prop for helping shove a socialist agenda down our throats.
-ccm
You don't say! And here I was, thinking the Earth's average temperature has been 67.3 degrees since dinosaurs ruled. Glad to see those silly skeptics slapped down by incontrovertible scientific consensus.
-ccm
They've been melting since the Ice Age. So what! Glaciers are always getting either bigger or smaller. Right now they are getting smaller. One thing they never do is stay the same, despite what the watermelons say.
-ccm
Global warming is helping them draining it -- not enough precipitation in the Rockies is causing low water levels and exposing canyons not seen since the dam was completed. Of course, it also exposes mudflats, bathtub rings and sunken tourist trash left behind. Not exactly a pretty sight.
The following graphs show that Earth is in a brief period of global warming called an interglacial. The longer time spans, the deep troughs are glacial periods. The line that runs across the graphs is the temperature in 1950 and listed as "0" on the left axis.
As can be seen in the last graph (Figure 1-5), Earth appears ready to move toward another ice age in the cycle.
I'm more concerned with sustaining global warming to offset global cooling and the next ice age.
|
Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes |
This first graph looks bad, doesn't it -- steeper upward temperature trend. Horizontal red line is temperature at 1950.
Figure 1-1 Global warming
The second graph shows today's temperature isn't out of the norm. Horizontal blue line is temperature at 1950.
Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years
The next graph shows a downtrend in temperatures from 8,000 years ago to today. The down trend is steeper in the recent 2,000 years. From left to right the upper spikes have lower highs while the lower spikes have lower lows. (The same effect can be seen in Figure 1-2, above.)
Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years
This graph shows that agriculture and stationary societies emerged 8,000 years ago during a time frame when global temperature was much higher than normal, or average.
Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years
The next graph shows that the recent 8,000 years was one of five brief hot spikes when glaciers were at minimums. With much longer troughs when glacials (ice ages) were the norm most of the time.
Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice
The graph below is reversed. That is, the left side is present day and the right side is 3 million years ago. It shows a 3 million year down trend toward widening extremes in the temperature cycle.
Figure 1-6 Climate for the last 3 million years
Global warming puts 12 of the most famous U.S. national parks at risk, environmentalists said on Tuesday"Environmentalists" work non-stop at one basic task: keep thinking up ways to keep global warming in the news.
Thanks for all the graphs. I particularly like the second one, that clearly shows what a lot of us suspected, that the Roman use of SUVs really did drive up the world's average temperature. What I didn't realize was that cathedral construction projects also warmed the earth. Must have been all those sub-contractors making money and, again, buying SUVs.
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