Global warming may increase dispersal of flora in Northern forests

new research has indicated that an increase in temperature of only a couple of degrees may increase the dispersal of plants in Northern forests and the spread of plant species into forest clearings after felling or forest fires.The research, in the impact of global warming on seed and pollen dispersal, was led by University of Helsinki researcher Anna Kuparinen. The goal was to learn whether global warming would accelerate the dispersal of plant populations in forests. The research group utilized the micrometeorological data gathered over a decade at the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station. Seed and pollen dispersal profoundly affects the dynamics and genetic variation of plant populations. Spreading into more favourable areas will help them survive in the warming climate. Wind conditions play a key role, as turbulent vertical streams, in particular, spread seeds very efficiently, even over long distances. The researchers also discovered that a temperature that is only three degrees Celsius warmer increased the dispersal of seeds and the speed at which populations spread throughout the growth season. Particularly for those plants that have light seeds, the annual spreading speed increased dramatically, by approximately 30 meters. On the basis of these results, it seems that global warming accelerates the spread of plants, but it will not alone be sufficient to help plant populations to relocate to new vegetation zones. However, on a more local level, global warming may have a significant impact, as original and newly introduced species spread faster from one place to another and take over new patches of habitat.

Air travel and driving costs to soar under Labour plan to curb global warming

The cost of air travel and driving is set to soar to pay for the government’s plans to curb global warming due to be unveiled this week.
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband warned of rising fuel prices as he outlined Labour’s bid to move Britain on to a low carbon economy.
He said people will have to enact ‘big changes’ in their lifestyle.
Labour is also planning to turn the screws on those who refuse to cooperate with the green push
Householders who refuse to take part in energy saving schemes could face higher council tax rates or the threat of higher stamp duty when they sell up.
Mr Miliband will unveil plans to boost renewable energy on Wednesday, which will see householders offered green mortgages to install solar panels and other energy saving devices.
Ministers will also make it easier for those with energy generating devices at home to sell electricity back to the national grid.
Mr Miliband disputed claims that rising fuel costs will add £230 a year to the average household fuel bills.
But he warned voters to prepare for a painful transition from polluting energy sources like coal fired power stations as Britain tried to hit legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020 and by 80 per cent by 2050.
‘I think there are upward pressures on energy prices whatever route we go down,’ he said. ‘I think that the price of flying will go up over time,’ he said.
Government estimates of the cost to consumers will be published on Wednesday.
Mr Miliband said the government would bring in more renewables like wind power, new nuclear power stations and clean fossil fuel energy through carbon capture and storage.


The government will spend £100 billion on renewable sources by 2020, including 7,000 wind turbines.
‘It does mean big changes in people's lives,’ he said. ‘That does mean some costs for transition. My job is to counter those effects as much as I possibly can, helping people with energy efficiency and having tough regulation.’
He insisted that failure to act would be even more costly as climate change produced more extreme weather conditions - from floods to heat waves.
‘We will have a lot more of those extremes of weather and that has got big human costs in Britain,’ he said. ‘It has also got massive financial costs as well, far outweighing any costs of making the transition.’
The green mortgage scheme will enable householders to take out low-interest loans to pay for double-glazing, loft insulation and heat pumps to extract energy from underground.
And under controversial plans, ministers may also relax planning rules, which could see wind turbines on roofs sprouting even in conservation areas and on listed buildings.
Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Greg Clark accused Mr Miliband of stealing ideas from the Tories.
He said: ‘Most of these announcements are taken directly from Conservative proposals launched by David Cameron in the past year.
‘Last year we set out plans for carbon capture projects, and our Low Carbon Economy green paper contained plans for a smart grid and an ambitious home energy efficiency scheme – all things it is speculated the Government is about to announce.
‘With Britain facing an energy crunch in the next ten years and having the third lowest contribution from renewable energy sources it is clear that the last decade has been a scandalously wasted opportunity.'

G8 agrees to limit global warming; China, India resist

The G8 agreed on Wednesday to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius and cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent,

With only five months until a new UN climate pact is due to be agreed in Copenhagen, climate change organisations said the G8 had left much work to be done and ducked key issues. China and India resisted signing up for a global goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Developing economies demanded rich nations commit to steeper short term reductions. And while the 2 Celsius goal was adopted for the first time by the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada, it had already been agreed in 1996 by the European Union and its G8 members Germany, Britain, France and Italy. The G8 statement also failed to pinpoint a base year for the 80 percent reduction -- saying it should be "compared to 1990 or more recent years" -- meaning the target was open to interpretation. "The world will recognise that today in Italy we have laid the foundations for a Copenhagen deal that is ambitious, fair and effective," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the 2 Celsius (3.6 Farenheit) target, since pre-industrial times, was "clear progress" for the G8. The G8 backed the creation of a global carbon trading market and a fund financed by rich nations to pay for technological change, but it fell short of the $100 billion a year advocated by Britain's Brown and non-governmental groups. "While agreeing to keep temperature rise to below 2 degrees rise Celsius, without a clear plan, money and targets on how to do this the G8 leaders will not have helped to break the deadlock in the UN climate negotiations," said Tobias Muenchmeyer, Greenpeace International political adviser. China's absence key Temperatures have already risen by about 0.7 Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution ushered in widespread burning of fossil fuels, the main cause of warming according to the UN Climate Panel. Many developing nations also view two degrees as the threshold beyond which climate change will reach danger levels, with rising seas and more heatwaves, floods and droughts. The temperature target was due to be included in a statement from the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF), which groups the G8 plus major developing economies, which will meet on Thursday. Last minute talks to convince MEF members to sign up to the goal of cutting world greenhouse gases by at least 50 percent by 2050 -- adopted by the G8 last year -- unravelled on Tuesday. Delegates said the absence of Chinese leader Hu Jintao, who flew home to deal with an outbreak of ethnic violence in western China, dashed hopes of an eleventh hour breakthrough. "China's not here so they cannot move anywhere: there will be no agreement tomorrow in the MEF text on 50 percent. We will take this up again at the G20 when China is present," said a senior European G8 source involved in the talks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said emerging countries appeared willing to sign up to long-term emissions goals if rich nations would agree to tough targets by 2020. The G8 statement called for "robust" medium-target cutbacks, but gave no details.

Global warming no myth

John Peterson on July 4 (Letters) argued that global warming was a hoax. The counter-evidence is convincing.
Google lists about 37.6 million articles on global warming, including articles both pro and con. Obviously not all articles are credible. The purpose of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environmental Programme, is to evaluate the state of climate science primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature. The IPCC publishes its report only about every five years, as it responds to comments from over 50,000 scientists worldwide, so the process is tedious.
The conservative IPCC reports have gradually gone from being tentative on global warming to being positive. Peer review is the process of giving credibility to scientific reports by requiring experts in the area of the report to critically evaluate, in writing, the candidate report.
Prior to publication, such a report must satisfy the reviewers or it is not published. At last count, 928 global warming reports agreed that global warming is real: Zero peer-reviewed published reports stated that mankind was not causing global warming.
Julian Powers

Global warming no myth

John Peterson on July 4 (Letters) argued that global warming was a hoax. The counter-evidence is convincing.
Google lists about 37.6 million articles on global warming, including articles both pro and con. Obviously not all articles are credible. The purpose of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environmental Programme, is to evaluate the state of climate science primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature. The IPCC publishes its report only about every five years, as it responds to comments from over 50,000 scientists worldwide, so the process is tedious.
The conservative IPCC reports have gradually gone from being tentative on global warming to being positive. Peer review is the process of giving credibility to scientific reports by requiring experts in the area of the report to critically evaluate, in writing, the candidate report.
Prior to publication, such a report must satisfy the reviewers or it is not published. At last count, 928 global warming reports agreed that global warming is real: Zero peer-reviewed published reports stated that mankind was not causing global warming.

HOT-AIR 'CONSENSUS'

Memo to the cap-and-taxers on Capitol Hill, who want the United States to cripple its economy by "leading the way" on curbing carbon-gas emissions to halt global warming, or climate change, or whatever the term du jour is:
That's the message that came out of the latest G-8 summit in Italy, where President Obama hoped to reach a comprehensive international agreement on capping heat-trapping gases by mid-century.
Seems developing nations like China, Mexico, Brazil and India -- which are responsible for an increasingly greater share of global carbon emissions -- refused to endorse a proposal that would have them cut such emissions in half by 2050, with industrialized countries cutting theirs by 80%.
China, India, et al. understand that placing severe restrictions on their industrial output would bring their rise out of poverty to a shuddering halt -- and they have no intention of committing economic suicide.
No reasonable person would expect otherwise.
Still, without their support, any comprehensive climate deal would effectively be worthless.
Which is what the US Senate understood back during the Clinton administration when it unanimously rejected the Kyoto Protocol -- which placed binding emission-reduction targets only on developed countries like the United States.
True, the developing nations signed on to a statement recognizing that average global temperatures should not rise more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit -- but without committing themselves to reducing emissions to pursue that outcome.
As far as President Obama is concerned, that's a historic, actionable consensus on global warming.
But the Senate needs to read the fine print before signing on to a program that threatens to bankrupt our economy -- especially since so much of the rest of the world is unwilling to go along.

Leading brain researcher explains how Transcendental Meditation supports success in life

'Whatever you want to do and be you can do and be.' This was the message of Dr Fred Travis*, one of the world's leading researchers into the connection of brain functioning and higher states of consciousness, when he spoke to top educators and business people during his recent highly successful tour of Great Britain. Please also see Part I and Part II of this series. In his presentations, Dr Travis described with great clarity how the Transcendental Meditation Programme benefits brain functioning and every area of life. Dr Travis explained that in order to increase 'the power output of any system, you need to increase the connection between the elements of the system. In terms of the brain it's the frontal lobes—the frontal lobes actually connect all other parts of the brain. 'When the frontal lobes are more connected, the brain works as one. That means the brain can be more creative, it can be more successful, performance can be higher. 'When you solve a problem by creative insight, you find that the frontal lobes are more active. When you have to make a decision with incomplete information—which is what all businesses need to do—frontal areas are more activated. 'The good news is you can actually increase the integration of the frontal areas of your brain. Transcendental Meditation practice does this. What you see is increased activation of the frontal areas while the mind is completely quiet. And with regular practice this deep silence and heightened alertness during meditation practice is seen afterwards in activity. 'Your brain changes throughout your life. Your brain is not a rock; it's a river. Every time you see or hear something it creates a wave of electrical activity that goes to the left, to the right, to the back, to the front, and it leaves its impressions in the brain in terms of greater connections between specific circuits. 'That means every time you do something today, you're strengthening circuits so you can do it better tomorrow. So the reality of life is we create our own destiny in a very physical way. If we want to be good at tennis, we just need to put in the hours and we'll be great at tennis. Whatever you want to do or be you can do and be. 'Transcendental Meditation leads to a new experience, an experience where your alert attentional circuits are more active, the frontal areas are more integrated, at the same time you're more quiet—''restful alertness''. And this state of restful alertness has its own associated brain circuits with it. 'What you see is that the brain patterns during meditation begin to be seen during activity. That means that when you're in a very turbulent, trying time, you've added something new to your experience—inner stability, inner rest, inner expansion. 'This is the value of adding Transcendental Meditation to your life. You begin to change those brain circuits so you can have fullness and alertness, inner stability, happiness in whatever situation you're in,' Dr Travis concluded. *Dr Fred Travis is the Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, USA