Understanding lightning

by Daniel G. Gavin (Author), Linda B. Brubaker (Author)

This study brings together decades of research on the modern natural environment of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, reviews past research on paleoenvironmental change since the Late Pleistocene, and finally presents paleoecological records of changing forest composition and fire over the last 14,000 years. The focus of this study is on the authors’ studies of five pollen records from the Olympic Peninsula. Maps and other data graphics are used extensively. Paleoecology can effectively address some of these challenges we face in understanding the biotic response to climate change and other agents of change in ecosystems. First, species responses to climate change are mediated by changing disturbance regimes. Second, biotic hotspots today suggest a long-term maintenance of diversity in an area, and researchers approach the maintenance of diversity from a wide range and angles (CITE). Mountain regions may maintain biodiversity through significant climate change in ‘refugia’: locations where components of diversity retreat to and expand from during periods of unfavorable climate (Keppel et al., 2012). Paleoecological studies can describe the context for which biodiversity persisted through time climate refugia. Third, the paleoecological approach is especially suited for long-lived organisms. For example, a tree species that may typically reach reproductive sizes only after 50 years and remain fertile for 300 years, will experience only 30 to 200 generations since colonizing a location after Holocene warming about 11,000 years ago. Thus, by summarizing community change through multiple generations and natural disturbance events, paleoecological studies can examine the resilience of ecosystems to disturbances in the past, showing how many ecosystems recover quickly while others may not (Willis et al., 2010)

by Stephen Schneider (Author)

"How important is a degree of temperature change' A degree or two temperature change is not a trivial number in global terms and it usually takes nature hundreds of thousands of years to bring it about on her own. We may be doing that in decades ... Humans are putting pollutants into the atmosphere at such a rate that we could be changing the climate on a sustained basis some ten to a hundred times faster than nature has since the height of the last ice age." Stephen H. Schneider This essential book examines the causes of world-wide climatic change - the 'greenhouse effect' - that may raise world temperatures by five degrees Celsius in less than a century. Author Stephen H. Schneider describes the likely consequences - from agricultural changes and rises in sea level to public health issues and social upheaval - and addresses the most important and urgent question that anyone concerned with the fate of our planet must confront: 'What can or should be done about the greenhouse effect'' Global Warming offers a prophetic look at a year in the greenhouse century, one of slowly increasing global temperatures (a century that may have already begun). The immediate scenarios are grave: population pressures combined with devastating floods and hurricanes drive millions of 'environmental refugees from South East Asia to find homes in Australia; California smothers under heat, smog, water shortages, and raging forest fires; and New York experiences summer heat waves so intense that hospital emergency rooms are jammed with victims. The outlook for Britain could be equally serious: the UN predicts that global warming may cause severe winter storms, the flooding of coastal defences, and even malaria in Southern England. Dr Schneider provides and authoritative and entertaining look at the science, personalities and politics behind the problem of global warming. He explains in clear, non-technical language what is scientifically well known, what is speculative, and where the major uncertainties lie. He presents an overview of sixty million years of global climate history, explaining the mechanisms that regulate climate, demonstrates how a few degrees variation can precipitate dramatic evens such as the Ice Age, and discusses how predictions are made by computer modelling to anticipate climatic changes into the next century. Global Warming provides a revealing inside look at the problems scientists encounter in dealing with other scientists, politicians and the media. Although statesmen have called for a giant international effort to tackle the issue, few concrete measures have been taken so far. Global Warming outlines the ways individuals, governments and businesses can work together to slow down the damage our impact has inflicted on the planet, and help make global development more environmentally sustainable.