NEWS

Will "Weeds" Solve Climate Crisis, or Wipe Out Native Biodiversity?
If you can, get ahold of the New York Times Magazine for Sunday, June 28, 2008, and read "Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis?"

The article summarizes research by Lewis Ziska, a government scientist, who has been testing the effects of elevated CO2 on common "weeds," by means of test plots in rural, suburban, and urban areas. His results are very disturbing, both to him and to us.

Normal succession in the northeastern U.S. should lead ultimately to native woodland. But what Ziska observed in his urban plots (where the CO2 level is already much higher than the current global average of 385 ppm) was "ecology on amphetamines, a nearly completed succession to trees by the end of five years, with a domination by invasive weed trees of the most troublesome sort: ailanthus, Norway maples and mulberries. Five years after the creation of the plots, the biggest ailanthus in the rural test site measured about five feet tall. The city site boasted a 20-footer. The suburban plot was following the city's lead, though it lagged a couple of years behind." He also predicts that kudzu [an invasive plant species devastating the southeastern U.S.] will reach Michigan's upper penininsula by 2015.

Without going into detail about Ziska's research and the research of other scientists reported in the article, suffice it to say that their results are ominous for the future of food crops, ecosystem restoration, and native biodiversity in general. The conclusions Ziska draws about the future are, however, not quite the same as ours. We conclude that carefully planned and maintained natural landscaping on relatively small urban, suburban, and rural properties may offer the BEST HOPE FOR PRESERVATION OF BIODIVERSITY IN THIS TIME OF CLIMATE CRISIS AND INCREASINGLY VIOLENT DISRUPTION OF NATURAL SUCCESSION.

If you have access to the New York Times Sunday edition of June 28, 2008, either in hard copy or on line, please read the article. You should get to the article by pasting in this address: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29weeds-t.html?scp=1&sq=Can%20Weeds%20Help%20Solve%20Climate%20Crisis&st=cse.

If you want us to send you a copy we down-loaded, let us know and we will do so. If you have some thoughts to share, please share them with us at yard2prairy@aol.com

CLIMATE CHANGE INCREASES THREAT TO DIVERSITY OF
PLANTS, INSECTS, & OTHER LIFE - GIVING "LITTLE THINGS"
The most recent "red list" of "threatened species" compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, offers some sobering statistics. Most of us, when we think about loss and extinction of species, lament what's happening to the polar bears, or tigers, or mountain gorillas, or elephants - the large, "charismatic" vertebrates. Grievous as their loss would be, it would not be the disaster that loss of the little - noticed, perhaps even despised and consciously "exterminated" invertebrates would be.

So the "red list" should raise an alarm. Of mammals, our nearest cousins, only 23% of species are "threatened" with extinction. Of birds, only 12%. But of insects, essential to the maintenance of life on earth, a staggering 52% are threatened. Of crustaceans, basic to life in the ocean, 85% are threatened. Of plants, indispensable for their ability to convert solar energy into food for creatures ranging from caterpillars to human beings, 70% are threatened.

The threats are multiple, of course: loss of habitat to agriculture and development, pollution, deforestation, invasive exotic species that crowd out native biodiversity, and climate change. Such massive loss of what E. O. Wilson calls "the life - sustaining matrix" of plants and insects would lead to collapse of ecosystems and the human societies that depend on them.

Rajendra Pachauri, in his acceptance speech for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, offered a very bleak assessment of the prospects for peace and justice in our time and the foreseeable future unless the nations of the world act decisively on climate change within the next two to four years. He also projects that without such action there could be a 40 to 70% extinction of species, which would be catastrophic. "These changes, if they were to occur would have serious effects on the sustainability of several ecosystems and the services they provide to human society." Pachauri's emphasis in his speech was on the connection between climate change, war, and peace: "Changes in climate have historically determined periods of peace as well as conflict."

So what then are we to do? Of course, everything that we CAN do! But what IS that? So far, there's lots of evidence that so - called solutions - such as biofuels - are part of the problem not part of the solution, as well as overwhelming evidence that, globally and nationally, we are not yet taking the problem seriously.

Greenland's two - mile - thick ice sheet is melting at a rate unforeseen to scientists and climate models. Chunks of ice breaking off are so huge that they're triggering earthquakes as far away as Alaska; the glaciers are adding some 58 trillion gallons of water annually to the oceans, more than twice as much as they were 10 years ago.

In total, Greenland's ice holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet. The melting may also disrupt weather patterns on the west coast of the U.S., making much of California drier and bringing more precipitation to the Northwest
.
"You don't need to melt much of Greenland to have a pretty big effect," says glacier specialist Christina Hulbe. "The fact that it's already happening faster than people thought possible - - that's reason to be concerned."

This news was not very widely reported in the U.S. Our sources: The Guardian (UK), The Independent (UK). See also www.grist.org: Greenland ice melting faster than predicted