the dharma blog

Sorry. It’s Friday, but there’s not going to be any fiction on here today. There’s going to be a brief report on the frightening acceleration of global warming. I am normally not a gloom-and-doomer, but even without hardly looking, I have come across far too many frightening reports in the past couple weeks.

The effects of global warming have become unignorable. (Is that a word? I don’t care.) From Minnesota all the way around the globe. From the Arctic to the Antarctic.

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster - StudyWASHINGTON - Glaciers once held up by a floating ice shelf off Antarctica are now sliding off into the sea — and they are going fast, scientists said on Tuesday.

Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA show the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf…

Climate change catches up with Canada’s forestsQUESNEL, B.C. - Millions of acres of Canada’s lush green forests are turning red in spasms of death. A voracious beetle, whose population has exploded with the warming climate, is killing more trees than wildfires or logging.

The mountain pine beetle has devastated swaths of lodgepole pines, reshaping the future of the forest and the communities in it.

“It’s pretty gut-wrenching,” said Allan Carroll, a research scientist at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, B.C., whose studies tracked a lock step between warmer winters and the spread of the beetle. “People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about. No. It’s now.”

KARE 11’s Series on Climate Change in Minnesota…Minnesota has two herds: the northeast and the northwest. The northwest herd is in serious trouble. “It used to be probably the largest, most productive herd in the state,” Schrage said. But the population just “crashed.”

There were four-thousand moose here in the late eighties. Today there are 250. The rate of pregnancy here is low - half of what’s normal. And moose are dying here - faster - than normal.

Scientists tell us it’s not that “heat” is the direct cause of these deaths. But increased temperatures do cause a lot of extra stress on the animal.

Specifically, these moose are dying from parasites: brain worms and liver flukes. Mark Lenarz with the State Department of Natural Resources says it appeared the parasites “caused those individual moose to starve to death.”

Isle Royale’s moose numbers crashingThe number of moose on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale dropped to 450 this winter, the lowest level since scientists began tracking the animals nearly a half-century ago.

The moose population is down from 540 last year and is a fraction of the all-time high moose population of 2,442 in 1995. There is a concern that the dwindling numbers also could hurt the island’s three wolf packs.

…

The number of moose has been declining for years because of unusually warm summers on the Lake Superior island and extremely high winter tick infestations. The hungry wolves also are having an impact.

When it’s warm, moose eat less and are less able to survive winter. And tick infestations — which cause moose to lose their hair — appear to be worse during winters with shorter snow seasons…

Sorry for the depressing post. I once thought that I would enjoy the woods unencumbered my whole life. That I would pass that enjoyment on to my kids. That they would do likewise. That maybe my great-grandkids would notice some difference in the world as a result of global warming. That wasn’t acceptable to me, but at least I thought I’d be able to go fishing in the BWCA with my children and see some moose, that they would learn to cross-country ski like any good Minnesota kid. That, in this era of history, I’d feel pretty fortunate just to have that.