Climate Letter #733

New report on toxic algae blooms.  The most alarming part, along with the rising frequency and density of blooms, is the rise in toxicity.  “Twenty micrograms per liter would be worrisome. Current readings are as high as 150,000 micrograms per liter.”  The problem is escalating, and the warming of waters because of climate change is at least an essential amplifier.  As one of the consequences of climate change it can now be ranked as much more than just a nuisance.

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A new call to give official recognition to the Anthropocene.  A recommendation has been made to the International Geophysical Congress, based on arguments presented in this post.  Has the human impact on the planet, large as it is, been large and lasting enough to merit the claim, and when did it begin?
Check out the argument made by Steve Vavrus in the opening video of this post, which I think is persuasive.  Later on there is a video interview with Bill Ruddiman, one of the most highly respected scientists in the field, and still later a quite humorous skit featuring George Carlin, who explains why humans were put here in the first place.
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Extra comment:  My own thought is that we also need to delete the whole era known as the Holocene Interglacial, which is an illogical concept if there is no new glacial development to be realized at the end of it.  Rather, it seems pretty clear that the epoch known as the Pleistocene, which began 2.6 million years ago, featuring a constantly rolling series of one ice age after another, came to a screeching halt about 10,000 years ago.  That is also the time when the bare beginning of agriculture was taking shape, leading step by step to the Industrial Era not too long after.  During the Pleistocene the sun was always in control over the major cyclical turning points, allowing feedbacks like greenhouse gases and ice sheet albedo to do most of the work in between.  That has changed because humans have made active changes in the role of greenhouse gas while almost completely stopping the albedo influence.  We may well have removed the possibility of a Pleistocene recovery for perhaps a million years or more.  Why not just say that when the Pleistocene ended the Anthropocene immediately began, as a new and equal subset of the Cenozoic Era, aka the Age of Mammals, which has taken a whole new twist in a number of ways.
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An imbalance of nutrients threatens the biodiversity of plant life on grasslands.  New research points out an unwanted effect of the way humans are influencing the nutritional content of entire ecosystems, adding a pathway to extinction which is strong enough to deserve serious attention.

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Animals can migrate as the planet warms.  This post contains several dramatic maps showing different routes that are available to various animals seeking milder conditions.  There are programs in place to help open or improve more routes.
Carl

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