Unusual BREAKING NEWS on Climate Change and mass-extinction.

[real Cannabis calm]

Position paper on potential impacts of climate change on winter sports
March 19, 2019, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

For the first time, experts of European weather and climate research institutions have issued a joint paper on the impacts of climate change on winter sports. The initiators are the Stiftung Sicherheit im Skisport (SIS, Foundation for Safety of Ski Sports), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and the German Sport University Cologne (DSHS).

At the Atmospheric Environmental Research Division of the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research of KIT (IMK-IFU), KIT's Campus Alpine, scientists of KIT study potential impacts of climate change on mountain regions among others. "For Alpine regions in particular, we assume a very rapid and extensive climate change. Both observation time series of the past and our climate computations for the future reveal a higher temperature increase. The existing climate and vegetation zones will move to higher altitudes and also snow conditions will change," says the Head of IMK-IFU, Professor Hans Peter Schmid.

Use of renewable energy sources must be strengthened and energy and resource efficiency must be enhanced...
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-03-position-paper-potential-impacts-climate.html#jCp

Why are coral reefs important, and why are they dying?
New research shows more than 11 billion pieces of plastic litter corals in the Asia-Pacific.
Loes Witschge by Loes Witschge
29 Jan 2018


Dead coral is seen at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef in May 2016 [File: The Ocean Agency / XL Catlin Seaview Survey/Richard Vevers]
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/coral-reefs-important-dying-180128135520949.html
Largest Extinction event ever documented already in progress
The 'great dying': rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever, report says
Up to 96% of all marine species and more than two-thirds of terrestrial species perished 252m years ago

The new research, published in Science, found that the drop in oxygen levels was particularly deadly for marine animals living closer to the poles. Experiments that varied oxygen and temperature levels for modern marine species, including shellfish, corals and sharks, helped “bridge the gap” to what the model found, Payne said.

This (current) warming is already causing punishing heatwaves, flooding and wildfires around the world, with scientists warning that the temperature rise could reach 3C or more by the end of the century unless there are immediate, radical reductions in emissions.

At the same time, Earth’s species are undergoing what some experts have termed the “sixth great extinction” due to habitat loss, poaching, pollution and climate change.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/06/global-warming-extinction-report-the-great-dying

[lapfog_1]

1. As a long time scuba diver / instructor

I tell everyone who will listen... go visit Pennekamp Park now... go visit the GBR now... this year... because in a very few years there won't be much to see except dead coral.

I started diving in 1981... the difference between then and now at many if not all of my favorite dive spots is stark.

I don't know what will change on the planet once most of the coral is dead...but I know we are about to find out. At the very least it will be a less beautiful place to live.

[Blue_true]

2. I hope the post human being most intelligent species is smarter than us.

If we don't get on the stick bigtime we are done. And we will take most living things with us. But the Earth will repair itself once we are dead and new life will spring forward.

[Lucky Luciano]

3. Intelligence is one thing, greed is another.

Greed is killing us more than intelligence.

[DemocracyMouse]

5. And love of sports is yet another

I'm so glad DU is finally putting an environmental story in "Trendings".... Sad that it had to concern sports and that a more serious story about massive species extinction last week was ignored (even though it had double the number of recs).

We have 10 years to turn our fossil fuel addiction around. There ahould be at least one post a day that addresses what is effectively the biggest danger to our lives. Global warming is a war. A war against our own ignorance.

[Blue_true]

9. True. nt

[real Cannabis calm]

12. As a Vietnam Veteran, please allow me to REALLY introduce myself w/ a song:

w/ expletive deleted...

[Submariner]

4. While in the Navy I was fortunate to go diving at St Croix's Buck Island National Park

and St Thomas and Bermuda reefs in 1966. It was all so pristine then with beautiful unbroken Elkhorn and Staghorn corals.

Between acidification of the seawater preventing coral calcium development, and using the ocean as a heat sink to absorb our excess atmospheric heat, most of these reefs worldwide will be a warm graveyard soup of coral skeletons within a decade.

Add Cozumel to your list, it should also be wiped out in a few years.

[DemocracyMouse]

6. That is heartbreaking.

I've heard that there are now a number of test studies involving the "seeding" of new coral reefs. Prevention, however, is more effective and less expensive.

As one of the kids who launched last week's school strike against Global Warming said, we need a new economics which factors in long term costs.

[JudyM]

13. Exactly true. Companies have been allowed to externalize all the societal costs of their businesses.

Germany requires companies to take back their packaging. We need to adopt that model worldwide, and then some.

[DemocracyMouse]

15. Excellent point!

[DontBooVote]

8. Whoa! As I was reading the post and looking at the picture, I was thinking

"Damn, I need to get to Pennekamp soon or else there will be no reason to go except to break my heart."

I went to Pennekamp (snorkeling, not diving) in 1988 and was blown away. I look at vids now and think about how they don't look as vibrant as they did then. I will go back very soon, perhaps within a few weeks. I fear the damage I might see 30 years of daily stress on the reef.

[Mabel]

7. I don't know if it's too late

but as a species we need lessen the value placed on green paper and round shiny metal pieces or face extinction. As the saying goes, evolve, adapt or die...

[real Cannabis calm]

11. On a later variation of Star Trek, 7 of 9 kept offering Capt. Janeway great advice she ignored...

She should have told Captain Janeway, lost in a Universe Far, Far Away, in a Time long ago "We must adapt" and RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED! WE ARE THE BORG!

[Duppers]

10. K & R

[real Cannabis calm]

16. Wow! 4,300 readers! I believe younger readers will experience extreme weather changes,

which will become increasingly expensive and deadly. Maybe us older readers will feel an increasing Climate Change effect also.

[Duppers]

17. Yes, deadly.

They should be extremely concerned. And have the right to be angry.

[roamer65]

14. Just wait until we get to 500 ppm CO2

Mother Nature is only now just beginning to “clearing her throat”. At 7.7 billion population and growing, massive climate change is inevitable.