Warming hits 'tipping point'
Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting
That's pretty much what was shown on an episode of
"The Nature of Things" last year (David Suzuki's show
on CBC up here).
A group of scientists from several nations traveled around
the Canadian Arctic doing research and talking to Inuit
in coastal communities, and the general conclusion was
that the permafrost is melting over huge expanses of the
Arctic. When it melts, it gives off methane like crazy.
Not good at all.
Just a couple of days ago, I read a report posted by someone
who has been doing bird research up along Hudson Bay.
They said that the water is unusually warm along the coast
and the birds aren't in any great hurry to start south.
That jives with what I'm hearing of reports from migration
routes where people aren't seeing the usual numbers of
certain birds that would normally be passing through by now.
From my own observations, numbers of species of many
kinds of insects seem down very much this year, especially
bumblebees, but just about everything else EXCEPT mosquitoes
which are more numerous and still hanging in although it
is late summer (they really our now warmer summers and
that the water isn't cooling down at night as it should
be by this time of year).
Yesterday, I noticed that the Argiope aurantia spiders in
my garden -- a species I have been photographing for
several years, seem "bleached out" (black parts are brown).
I have to do more observation to compare their colours with
last year and also hope to find more in some other locations
to make sure these aren't just some oddly pigmented strain.
However, I greatly suspect that the truth is that they are
simply getting bleached out from hanging in their
webs out in direct sunlight as it's been so damned intense
here this year.
I may not know lots about lots of things in this world,
but one thing i do know, is that, what you see in Nature
is pretty much what you get. Stuff doesn't just change
without a reason. When stuff starts to happen, there's
usually a damned good reason.
~croc |
