Scientists reveal that bears have stopped hibernating....Warming.

[Bigmack]

Climate Change vs Mother Nature: Scientists reveal that bears have stopped hibernating
Published: 21 December 2006
Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.

In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the forests of Spain's Cantabrian mountains, when normally they would already be in their long, annual sleep.

Bears are supposed to slumber throughout the winter, slowing their body rhythms to a minimum and drawing on stored resources, because frozen weather makes food too scarce to find. The barely breathing creatures can lose up to 40 per cent of their body weight before warmer springtime weather rouses them back to life.

But many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern cordillera - which have a slightly different genetic identity from bear populations elsewhere in the world - have remained active throughout recent winters, naturalists from Spain's Brown Bear Foundation (La Fundación Oso Pardo - FOP) said yesterday.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2091875.ece

[kenny blankenship]

1. This will not be good news on the Colbert Report

Expect to see Stephen Colbert perched on his desk, screaming for the troops to come home from Iraq to deal with this problem in the harshest possible way.

[leftchick]

2. Other Seasonal Freaks....

<snip>

* Evergreen ivy and ox-eye daisies are still blooming and some oak trees, which are usually bare by November, were still in leaf on Christmas Day last year.

* The buff-tailed bumblebee is usually first seen in spring. Worker bees die out by the first frost, while fertilised queen bees survive underground between March and September. This December, bees have been seen in Nottingham and York.

* Primroses and daffodils are already flowering at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, in Carmarthenshire. 'Early Sensation' daffodils usually flower from January until February. Horticulturalists put it down to the warm weather.

* Scientists in the Netherlands reported more than 240 wild plants flowering in the first 15 days of December, along with more than 200 cultivated species. Examples included cow parsley and sweet violets. Just two per cent of these plants normally flower in winter, while 27 per cent end their main flowering period in autumn and 56 per cent before October.

:cry:

[mtnester]

4. We had honey bees out on Sunday - Central Ohio

and there is NOTHING for them to gather. No blooming things anyway.

I pray the hives do not starve this warm winter (winter #3 in a row warm)

Hell, even my soil notices how warm the winters have been, it is nearly dead in the beds the past several years...I am actively feeding the soil with as much organic stuff as I can, but it does not seem to be enough anymore.

I still have sage that is fresh and good going strong in UNPROTECTED spots. Simply unheard of on the first day of winter in Central Ohio (Hardiness zones 6a and 5b...my home is right on the line)

We are being flicked on the head with a finger about global warming, but those who need to notice the most seem to have thicker skulls and do not seem to be able to notice. I supposed it will take a smack in the face to get the higher ups who can DO SOMETHING about this to take ANY kind of notice.....wait...maybe not even then.

Sigh

[Eurobabe]

9. Germany is no different, I've had roses through December and

one bush in the backyard that came into bloom for a second time this year. The poor plants and trees don't know WTF is up! Thankfully, it has been cold enough that I think things are now frozen, but I wonder if we will have an early spring?

It's all so bizarre.

[LiberalHeart]

30. I'm in northwestern Ohio -- temps in the 50s this month

I saw something on the news a couple days ago that said we're running about 16 degrees warmer than usual. I recall the December of '78 being a lot like this one -- and then all hell broke loose in Jan. '79. Record blizzard.

My mom asked me to drop some grape tomatoes into her garden today, underground. She worried that I'd have trouble breaking through the dirt, but all it completely soft and moved easily with just the probing of a twig.

[LiberalHeart]

34. correction: blizzard was in '78; weird Dec. in '77

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1649

[hatrack]

5. Here in the great Midwest, I killed a housefly last night

The tulip trees are leafing out, along with buds on most of the sycamores in the house behind us, the rutabagas planted in July are still hanging on (barely) and there's all kinds of action in the garlic patch.

Oh, yeah, and winter officially starts tonight.

[buddysmellgood]

29. Before long, we're going to have to explain to kids what Bing is singing about in White Christmas.

[Delphinus]

3. This is so, so sad.

:cry: :cry: :cry:

[Uncle Joe]

6. This sucks, nature's equilibrium is becoming thrown off balance,

I fear the ultimate consequences will be devastating if not catastrophic, and our "leaders" are either drunk with greed and power or asleep at the wheel!:grr:

[shanti]

10. exactly

one change begets another, and another, and another.....:(

[kimmerspixelated]

17. Except for our real Prez-Gore!

[Uncle Joe]

19. You got that right FitzmasAgain!

I just wish he were in the White House where he belongs, particularly at this critical time, we desperately need an adult in charge.

[Freddie Stubbs]

7. Time to hide the picnic baskets

[ramapo]

8. It is balmy all over

Here in the northeast, it is just ridiculous. Upper 50's to low 60's nearly everyday. From what I read, Europe and Russia are the same. We have always had isolated warm spells during the "cold" months but this seems unprecedented.

[WindRavenX]

11. In Boston, the brumation of box turtles has been fucked up and...

...I have seen many species of song birds build nests and copulate on the campus of Boston College . In December. Many of my bio professors have never seen this.

Granted this is an El Nino year, but I don't think anyone can say this is within the range of a normal outlier year with El Nino.

[Taoschick]

12. When the cycle

Reverses, the bears will return to normal hibernation patterns. We've had a good year for bears in NM. Plenty of rain this summer, a good food supply and an excellent start to a nice cold winter.

[jus_the_facts]

14. ALL IS NORMAL....MOVE ALONG...NOTHING TO SEE HERE....

:eyes:

[Taoschick]

15. Actually,

Cyclical patterns in weather are completely normal and have been documented extensively.

[fleabert]

18. have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? nt

[timetoleave]

20. I don't think non-hibernating bears..

are cyclical.

[brentspeak]

22. No, they are definitely not.

It's extremely worrisome that these bears are not in hibernation.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

26. unprecedented CO2 levels

as in not in the last 650,000 years has it been this high.

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1124-climate.html

Carbon dioxide levels are now 27 percent higher than at any point in the last 650,000 years, according to research into Antarctic ice cores published on Thursday in Science.

Analysis of carbon dioxide in the ancient Antarctic ice showed that at no point in the past 650,000 years did levels approach today's carbon dioxide concentrations of around 380 parts per million (ppm). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could reach 450-550 ppm by 2050, possibly resulting in higher temperatures and rising sea levels (see "Ocean levels rising twice as fast"). There is fear that climate change could create a class of environmental refugees displaced from their homes by rising oceans, increasingly catastrophic weather, and expanding deserts.


There goes your "normal cycle" theory.

[lateo]

31. Yes indeedy but...

The pace of the change is what we are talking about. Never in recorded history has the climate cycle changed so rapidly. What once took thousands of years is now down to 100.

[Vinca]

13. First day of winter, southern New Hampshire, and . . .

I've got volunteer Bachelor Button seedlings sprouting all over my garden and the daylilies are showing signs of coming to life. Very, very weird.

[Rex]

16. Why sleep, when food is still easy pickens?

I wonder what longterm effect it will have on the bears if they don't hibernate annually? Will they become more aggressive?

[Lone_Star_Dem]

27. I was also wondering about the long term effect on the bears

Could they now overeat their food supply? It would seem possible with the added feedings.

[brentspeak]

21. Are there any ways to reverse global warming?

I know that sounds like a really stupid question, and it probably is, like asking "Can the weather be changed?" Still, if humans can accelerate global warming, maybe it's not out of the realm of fantasy that human can finds ways of decelerating global warming, too.

[kenny blankenship]

23. "Nuclear Winter" has been proposed

which sounds pleasant enough.

[hatrack]

24. Maybe, but it's highly unlikely - there are natural positive feedback loops in place

Example - As the polar caps, particularly in the Arctic shrink, more of the ocean (as opposed to ice) becomes exposed to the sun. Since dark matter like seawater absorbs far more infrared radiation than a light reflective surface like snow and ice, the region absorbs still more solar inputs, melting even more ice, and exposing even more seawater, and so on.

Example - Permafrost and frozen bog soils across Canada, Siberia and Alaska are melting down. These soils contain large amounts of organic matter which have been out of the carbon cycle for thousands and thousands of years. Now, as the soils warm, bacterial action starts back up again, releasing more carbon dioxide from previously frozen soil. Also, the same process releases large quantities of methane, another greenhouse gas with about 25X CO2's capacity to trap infrared radiation. The West Siberian peat bog alone contains about 70 billion tons of methane, which is the equivalent of about 2 trillion tons of CO2. Not all of it will necessarily be released, but the more that is released, the more that will be released.

Example - methane ices (a.k.a. clathrates) - this is a form of methane trapped in ice crystals and buried in ocean sediments around the world. It's estimated that there are about 10,000 billion tons of the stuff. No one knows under just what circumstances a methane ice release might take place, but it would likely involve a rapid warming which destabilized the water ice in which it is trapped. Now, a new report indicates that methane ices are much closer to the surface than previously thought - as shallow as 60 to 100 meters beneath the sea floor, which would make a temperature-related destabilization perhaps somewhat more likely than thought.

And in each of these cases, the physical scale is so huge that it makes human intervention unlikely to have any substantive effect.

So, "roll back" climate breakdown? Probably not. Slow the warming? Certainly!

From New Scientist on Methane Release:

THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. An area stretching for a million square kilometres across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the region.

The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University, Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.

Kirpotin describes an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and this "has all happened in the last three or four years".

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725124.500

From BBC on methane ices:

Scientists drilling ocean sediments off Canada have discovered methane ices at much shallower depths than expected. The finding has important implications for climate studies, they believe. The melting of hydrates, as they are known, is a suspected contributor to past and present increases in atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas.

If shallow ices are destabilised in a warming world, it could have a positive feedback effect and drive temperatures even higher, the researchers warned.

"The rate of increase in the Earth's atmosphere for methane is much faster than that for carbon dioxide," said Timothy Collett, the co-chief scientist of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).

"Methane is 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. The source of this methane is uncertain, but there are a number of scientists who have looked at gas hydrates as contributing to this recent change."

EDIT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6166011.stm

[brentspeak]

25. Thanks for that info, hatrack

[hatrack]

28. Hey, no sweat!

Drop by the Environment/Energy Board - lots of interesting stuff over there.
:hi:

[crikkett]

32. right, positive feedback, but what about the gulf stream

and how its supposed to disappear and turn all of n america and europe into a big tundra?

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. We haven't had a hard freeze in No FL in about 4 years

after Christmas I'm going to have to go out in the yard and cut all my perennials back to ground just to try to keep them healthy. My Angel Trumpets are over 20 feet tall at this point but are getting all scraggly.

[lovuian]

35. The Earth is changing

and we are getting all the warning signs

[Manifestor_of_Light]

36. Snowed 3 times in Jan and Feb of '73 in San Antonio and Houston

I remember it well, I was a freshman in college in San Antonio.
It stayed on the ground too. We even had snowball fights for the only time in my life.

[BrokenBeyondRepair]

37. they don't shit in the woods anymore either...