No. 380, January 20, 2007

WELCOME NEW RINGTONE MEMBERS

   

POLAR BEAR PROTECTION CAUSES MEDIA TIDAL WAVE

   

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT WORKS #11: ROUND-LEAF BIRCH

   
NATURAL GAS WELL STOPPED IN NEW MEXICO
   
OLD-GROWTH TIMBER SALE STOPPED IN NEW MEXICO
   

2006 WAS FIFTH-HOTTEST YEAR GLOBALLY

   

2006 WAS HOTTEST YEAR IN U.S. HISTORY

   

2006 ARCTIC SEA ICE AT NEAR RECORD LOW

   

MASSIVE CANADIAN ICE SHEET BREAKS FREE

 

 

 


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WELCOME NEW RINGTONE MEMBERS

Welcome to the 15,000 people who have joined this weekly Endangered Earth newsletter by downloading the Center for Biological Diversity's free endangered species ringtones! I try to keep the news short, though unfortunately it's not always sweet. You can unsubscribe by following the instructions at the bottom of this email. But we hope that your love of wildlife and your interest in saving it will keep you around. Our newsletter is an easy way to keep informed and get involved.

Kieran Suckling, Policy Director
Center for Biological Diversity


POLAR BEAR PROTECTION CAUSES MEDIA TIDAL WAVE

In response to a 2001 petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a formal proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened species on December 27, 2006. The decision was a stunning reversal by the Bush administration, which to date has denied or downplayed the reality of global warming. The petition forced the administration to reveal that summer sea ice in the Arctic is melting so rapidly that it may be completely gone in 30 to 40 years.

It was the biggest environmental news event of 2006, spawning more than a thousand news stories and 200 editorials and columns calling on the administration to get serious about global warming. Among those editorializing were the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Des Moines Register, Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald, San Franciso Chronicle, Seattle Post, Kansas City Star, Salt Lake Tribune, and Houston Chronicle.

And of course the Wall Street Journal could be counted on to whine about too much environmental protection, too many polar bears, and the dastardly Center for Biological Diversity behind it all. If I had an ice cube for every time the Journal has attacked the Center, I could stop the Arctic from melting.

The Center's Kassie Siegel and Kieran Suckling published their own opinion pieces in the San Diego Union-Tribune and Baltimore Sun.


ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT WORKS #11: ROUND-LEAF BIRCH

The Virginia round-leaf birch occurs only in Virginia's Cressy Creek watershed, where it declined to just 26 plants by 1976. It was listed as endangered in 1978. Cultivation, reintroduction and habitat restoration created 19 new populations, with a total of 1,400 trees by 1994. It has been downlisted to threatened status and is expected to be fully recovered by 2015.

To learn about hundreds of species that are recovering because of the Endangered Species Act, go to www.esasuccess.org.


NATURAL GAS WELL STOPPED IN NEW MEXICO

In response to an appeal by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Carson National Forest has withdrawn its decision to drill a new natural gas well called the Carracas Project. The Forest has been piecemealing the construction of 700 new gas wells on the Jicarilla Ranger District with no analysis of how the program as a whole will affect wildlife, recreation, and water. When added to an already-high number of wells, the program will blanket the district in roads and drilling noise. Recreationists—and elk—expect our National Forests not to look like an industrial oil field.


OLD-GROWTH TIMBER SALE STOPPED IN NEW MEXICO

In response to an appeal by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Santa Fe National Forest has withdrawn the Deer Lakes Timber Sale. The sale would have logged old-growth forests on a landscape where a hundred years of logging has already eliminated most of the large trees. The Center was especially concerned about impacts to the northern goshawk, a declining raptor that requires old-growth forests to nest and hunt.


2006 WAS FIFTH-HOTTEST YEAR GLOBALLY

The National Climate Data Center reports that 2006 was the fifth-hottest year since recordkeeping began in 1890. The global average temperature has risen 0.7 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century, with the majority of the increase occurring since 1976. 

2006 was the hottest year in the United Kingdom since 1659, in the Netherlands since 1706, and in Denmark since 1768. Russia experienced the warmest winter day since 1957 and one of the warmest winter periods since the 1870s. Bears in the Moscow Zoo and Bulgaria are not hibernating. Australia is in the midst of the worst drought in about 1,000 years.


2006 WAS HOTTEST YEAR IN U.S. HISTORY

Global temperature trends mask the fact that the northern hemisphere is getting hotter faster than the southern hemisphere. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that 2006 was the hottest year in the contiguous U.S. since recordkeeping began in 1895. Five states had their warmest December on record (Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire). Even in Denver, which was wracked by record snowfall, the temperature for the month was 1.4 degrees warmer than the 1971-2000 average.

The rate of increase since the mid-1970s is three times faster than the 100-year trend. Each of the past nine years has been among the hottest 25 years on record, "a streak," according to NOAA, "which is unprecedented in the historical record."

In NOAA's first admission that global warming is caused by greenhouse gases, the agency stated that "A contributing factor to the unusually warm temperatures throughout 2006 also is the long-term warming trend, which has been linked to increases in greenhouse gases. This has made warmer-than-average conditions more common in the U.S. and other parts of the world."


2006 ARCTIC SEA ICE AT NEAR RECORD LOW

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that 2006 was the fifth consecutive year in which the extent of Arctic sea ice was below average. 2006 was the second-lowest on record; 2005 was the lowest. September sea ice has been declining at almost 8.6% per decade, or 60,421 km² per year. It is projected to completely disappear in 40 years.

In what, for the Bush administration, is a shockingly close brush with reality, the agency concluded: "Increasing surface temperatures in high latitudes have contributed to progressively more summer melt and less ice growth in the fall and winter...[and] may not be solely related to natural variability." Hmm. What might it be related to?


MASSIVE CANADIAN ICE SHEET BREAKS FREE

The summer of 2005 was hot in the Arctic, with less sea ice being recorded than in any previous year. The impact on Canada's Ellesmere Island, 500 miles from the North Pole, was spectacular. For the last 3,000 to 4,500 years, the 25-square-mile Ayles Ice Sheet has been moored to the island. But scientists reported in December that the massive ice sheet disintegrated in 2005. "It's like a cruise missile came down and hit the ice shelf," said Warwick Vincent of Quebec's Laval University. "It no longer exists."

Ice shelves are floating tongues of glaciers that fill bays in the Arctic and Antarctic. They are protected from ocean waves and movement by a barrier of sea ice. As summer sea ice increasingly melts away, ice shelves already weakened by melting are pounded by the ocean and break away. In the past hundred years, Canada's ice shelves have shrunk by 90%.


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