• Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster This Year
  
• Emissions Down in 2003, EPA Reports
  
• U.S. Park Police Struggle to Do More With Less
  
• Park Service Retirees Issue Blueprint for Change
  
• Quinault Indians Agree to Protect Marbled Murrelet
  
• Endangered Dragonfly Will Get Critical Habitat Protection
  
• Central U.S. May Face Less Global Warming
  
• Parks Management Company Pledges Carbon Dioxide Cuts
  

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster This Year

The recent events are a predicted consequence of climate change and underscore the potential for sea level rise as a result of climate warming over the Earth's polar caps.

The new study, led by the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) and a related study by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was published online Wednesday - it will be published in the September 28 issue of "Geophysical Research Letters."

University of Colorado at Boulder researcher Ted Scambos said Landsat 7 satellite images taken before, during and after the breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf in March 2002 show that several of the glaciers are now moving at up to five times their previous speed.

Other satellite data show that the glaciers also have thinned since the disintegration of the Larsen B, he said.

"The Larsen area can be looked at as a miniature experiment, showing how warming can dramatically change the ice sheets, and how fast it can happen," he said. "At every step in the process, things have occurred more rapidly than we expected."

The study also included elevation measurements from NASA's Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat.

A similar study is being simultaneously published in "Geophysical Research Letters." by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

That study used radar images and airborne measurements to profile ice thickness in the same region of the Antarctic and showed further glacier acceleration in late 2003 and early 2004, with some glaciers reaching eight times their original speeds.

Glaciers showed an almost immediate response after the ice shelf collapse, with some nearly tripling in speed within a matter of months, according to the CU-Boulder study.

The Hektoria and Green glaciers, which sped up the most, are currently moving about a mile per year - most glaciers move much more slowly, from a few inches to several hundred yards annually.

The satellite images used in the CU-Boulder study also showed the lower parts of the glaciers fracturing and disintegrating in response to the loss of the ice shelf. Glaciers where the Larsen B ice shelf remains intact have shown little change, Scambos said.

The area, located at the far northern tip of the Antarctic just south of Chile and Argentina, has seen a rise in mean annual temperatures of up to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 60 years - faster than almost any region in the world. In the past 30 years, ice shelves in the region have decreased by more than 5,200 square miles.

"This study shows very clearly that glaciers which flow into ice shelves are partially controlled by the presence of the shelf, which acts as a kind of braking system," Scambos said. "Removing the shelf makes them speed up."

The CU study highlights the sensitivity of the poles to climate change, Scambos added.

"As temperatures crossed the threshold of melting in the summer months, ice shelves in the area rapidly disintegrated," he said. "Not only do the ice shelves collapse rapidly, but the subsequent effects on the glaciers are immediate."

In three cases since 1995, large areas in the Antarctic have collapsed suddenly. They include the 618 square mile Larsen A Ice Shelf in 1995, the 425 square mile Wilkins Ice Shelf in 1998 and the 1,235 square mile Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002.

According to Scambos, the recent warming trend in the area has led to greater amounts of melt "ponding" on the ice shelves, weakening and then destroying them.

"Meltwater at the surface acts to increase the extent of fracturing in the ice," he said. The weight of the water essentially forces the cracks open, so a relatively small amount of climate warming can destroy large, centuries-old ice shelves.

"While the consequences of this area are small compared to other parts of the Antarctic, it is a harbinger of what will happen when the large ice sheets begin to warm," Scambos said. "The much larger ice shelves in other parts of Antarctica could have much greater effects on the rate of sea level rise."

The Ross ice shelf, for example, is the main outlet for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which harbors several large glaciers that contain the equivalent of about 16 feet of global sea level rise.

While researchers once thought summertime temperatures in the Ross ice-shelf area were far below freezing and therefore stable, they appear to be just a few degrees below the threshold for surface ponding, Scambos said.

Emissions Down in 2003, EPA Reports

Administration officials said the finding indicates that the nation's air is the cleanest in three decades.

The new report finds that since 1970, the aggregate total emissions for the six pollutants have been cut from 301.5 million tons per year to 147.8 million tons per year, a decrease of 51 percent.

The six pollutants are carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, volatile organic compounds and lead.

The EPA said total 2003 emissions were down 12 million tons since 2000, a 7.8 percent reduction.

"Thanks to this progress, today's air is the cleanest most Americans have ever breathed," said Administrator Mike Leavitt. "Now, EPA is taking up the challenge to accelerate the pace of that progress into the future."

Despite the progress, there is ample evidence that air pollution remains a problem for many Americans.

According to the EPA, some 99 million people live in counties that violate the new health-based standards for particulate matter and more than 100 million live in areas that have unhealthy levels of smog.

The report "should be read with a skeptical eye," said Nat Mund, air quality expert with the Sierra Club, who noted that sulfur dioxide emissions actually rose four percent in 2003.

"The biggest reductions from 2002-2003 came from reductions in carbon monoxide, a pollutant that the Clean Air Act has successfully reduced in the past," Mund said. "Other pollutants have stayed fairly constant."

Leavitt said the Bush administration was committed to futher progress, and touted a new rule to cut diesel pollution from nonroad engines by 90 percent and a proposal to cut power plant pollution by some 70 percent.

The diesel rule has drawn widespread praise from environmentalists and public health officials, but the power plant proposal - and the bulk of the Bush administration clean air policy - has been the subject of constant and vocal criticism from public interest groups, state clean air officials and many Northeast states.

The power plant proposal is less stringent than the existing Clean Air Act, and Mund says the new report "hides the fact that the Bush administration has weakened the clean air laws that are responsible for the progress to date."

Chief among the complaints is the administration's changes to the Clean Air Act New Source Review (NSR) program, which is designed to ensure the nation's dirtiest power plants do not expand operations without installing new pollution control technology.

Rule changes finalized in August 2003 exempted many facilities from the law's permit and pollution control requirements.

More than a dozen states filed suit to block the rules, which have been stayed by a federal court.

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, said, "Environmentalist views on air quality trends are colored by their interpretation of the new source review provision of the Clean Air Act. However, when NSR litigation is used to restrict maintenance activities, the environment suffers."

"As experts from Harvard University and Resources for the Future have noted, discouraging efficiency projects with litigation actually increases power plant emissions as efficiency declines," said Segal. "It also hampers the ability to maintain workplace safety, as numerous major labor unions have argued."

U.S. Park Police Struggle to Do More With Less

The report can be found here.

Park Service Retirees Issue Blueprint for Change

Key steps outlined in the plan include an immediate $600 million annual infusion of additional funds to get national parks back on track and the creation of the National Parks Restoration and Conservation Corps (NPRCC), a large public works project patterned on the Great Depression's Civilian Conservation Corps.

The $600 million would plug the well documented annual shortfall in park funding and the NPRCC would focus on erasing the national park's chronic maintenance backlog crisis now estimated at more $6 billion.

"Our commitment is to address long-standing problems through honesty and candor with the American public so that they have a better understanding of the deplorable state of their national park system and the impossible task the National Park Service faces in managing our nation's national parks," said former NPS Regional Director Rob Arnberger.

Additional financial support is vital, Arnberger said, and it is time to rework "the system of governance of these places to limit polarizing and divisive partisan political manipulation of our most important national heritage resources."

The report, put forth by the Coalition of Concerned National Park Service Retirees, is based on a several-month review of the issues that have confronted the national park system in the recent decades.

The nonpartisan group has been sharply critical of the Bush administration's stewardship of the national park system, alleging that political officials are engaged in "smoke and mirror tactics" to hide the fact that America's national parks are in bad shape and are getting worse.

The Park Service retirees contend the administration has also undermined the mission of the agency by weakening air pollution regulations, ignoring science and public opinion in decision-making involving the parks and attempting to privatize a slew of jobs within the Park Service.

The report calls for the creation of a nonpartisan National Parks Blue Ribbon Commission to examine the most effective organizational model for the governance of the national park system and the Park Service.

The commission would report to Congress, the President and the American public on its findings and recommendations.

The blueprint also recommend the creation of a non-partisan National Parks Technical Panel to help the commission determine the true budget and personnel needs of the agency, evaluating what governmental processes stand in the way of success and what is required to overcome them.

"Our focus is on what steps need to be taken to fix what ails America's national parks," Arnberger said. "The Coalition believes that the implementation of these actions would restore much of the bipartisan cooperation that formerly existed in relation to the nation's national park system."

The Coalition's plan can be found here.

Quinault Indians Agree to Protect Marbled Murrelet

The settlement ends four years of negotiation stemming from a lawsuit brought by the Quinault and gives the tribe $32.2 million in conservation easements to protect two parcels of land on its reservation in Washington state.

The tribe sued the federal government in 2001 after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service blocked a proposed timber sale because it would jeopardize marbled murrelet habitat.

The Pacific Northwest population of the seabird, which is found in the coastal old growth forests of California, Oregon and Washington, was listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act in 1992.

The listing was in response to the loss of nesting habitat from logging and urbanization, as well as mortality associated with gillnet fisheries and air pollution.

The Quinault said the Fish and Wildlife Service violated its treaty rights by blocking the timber sale. The suit was dismissed as a condition of the settlement.

"Everyone benefits," said Interior Secretary Gale Norton. "The public gets conservation of sensitive forest habitat for an threatened species; the Quinault retain sovereignty over the land and gain support for their economic development; and Interior fulfills its responsibilities for tribal development and conservation of threatened species."

The money for the settlement includes $1 million already paid, $10 million from fiscal year 2004 Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) appropriations and a planned $10 million in each fiscal years 2005 and 2006 LCWF appropriations.

The Trust for Public Land, a national conservation group that is a partner in the settlement, will contribute $1.2 million.

"This is the epitome of what we in this administration want to see," Norton said. "I can think of no better example of what cooperative conservation can lead to than this settlement."

The settlement comes on the heels of a controversial move by the Bush administration with regards to the imperiled seabird.

Earlier this month, administration officials announced that the Pacific Northwest population of the marbled murrelet is not distinct from populations in Canada.

The ruling opened the door to removing the species from the federal endangered species list and refuted opinions by regional officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service and independent scientists.

Endangered Dragonfly Will Get Critical Habitat Protection

The decision is the result of a legal settlement finalized last week between the agency and a coalition of environmental groups who filed suit to force the critical habitat designation.

The groups argued that without habitat protection the wetland dependent species faces a bleak future.

The Hine's emerald dragonfly has already been lost in Ohio, Indiana and Alabama - its current range is restricted to small parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri.

Its habitat has been destroyed by urban sprawl, agricultural development, toxic pollution, logging, water diversions, off-road vehicles, vacation home development and road and pipeline construction.

The Endangered Species Act calls on the federal government to designate critical habitat when it lists a species and then develop a recovery plan.

But federal agencies have more often than not failed to carry out this mandate - of the more than 1,300 species listed under the Endangered Species Act, about one-third have designated critical habitat and only 25 percent have recovery plans.

For the Hine's emerald dragonfly, the failure to identify critical habitat has allowed hundreds of habitat destroying projects to go forward without federal review or mitigation requirements.

"Having grown up in the Chicago area, I have personally witnessed the destruction of habitat for the beautiful Hine's Emerald dragonfly over the years," said Dr. David Zaber, a resource ecologist with Habitat Education Center, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. "We are pleased that our agreement will move the Fish and Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat for the Hine's emerald dragonfly, and hopefully for other imperiled species in our rapidly developing region."

The Fish and Wildlife Service says it will finalize critical habitat for the species by the May 2007.

The Bush administration has not designated critical habitat for any listed species bar a court order and contends the procedure does little to help endangered and threatened species.

Environmentalists refute that notion citing a number of peer-reviewed scientific studies - and the Fish and Wildlife Service - that finds species with critical habitat are less likely to decline and twice as likely to recover as those without.

"The Bush administration makes false statements about habitat protection to advance the political agenda of speculators and developers," said Brent Plater, a Michigan native and Center for Biological Diversity attorney. "This agreement will force the Bush administration to put the developers' interests aside and rely on science, protecting our region's precious natural heritage."

The order also marks a significant shift in the Fish and Wildlife Service's compliance with habitat protections in the Great Lakes Region. The agency has only designated critical habitat for four of the almost 80 species listed as threatened or endangered in the region.

Of those four, two were forced by citizen lawsuits or petition - the other two occurred in the late 1970s.

The agency has not designated critical habitat on its own initiative, as the law requires, for any species within the region in nearly a quarter century.

Central U.S. May Face Less Global Warming

The researchers say computer models show summertime daily maximum temperatures will not climb as high in a Midwestern region - centered on the Missouri/Kansas border - as anywhere else in the United States.

The hole stretches for hundreds of miles and includes Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma.

The findings are published in the current issue of "Geophysical Research Letters."

The researchers say the findings underscore the need to consider the impact of global warming on a region-by-region basis.

"The modeling showed that warming in the United States will be stronger in winter than summer and stronger at night than during the day," said Dr. Zaitao Pan, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at St. Louis University. "But we found what looked to us like a 'hole' in the daytime warming in summer, which was a surprise."

After discovering the 'hole' in climate projections for the 2040s, the researchers examined the observed maximum daily temperatures from 1975 to 2000 in a region that centers in eastern Kansas and touches parts of Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Iowa.

"We found that, in fact, this hole already has started to develop," Pan said.

Ray Arritt, agronomy professor at ISU, said the existence of this "hole" in the warming makes sense.

"Our model tells us the future climate will have more rainfall and wetter soil, so more of the Sun's energy goes into evaporating water than heating the air," he said. "Rainfall in the northern Great Plains already has increased by about 10 percent over the past few decades, which is consistent with our predictions."

Team members caution that independent evaluations are needed to confirm this finding and to determine whether the 'hole' might be a temporary phenomenon that will disappear as global warming becomes more severe in the latter half of the 21st century.

Parks Management Company Pledges Carbon Dioxide Cuts

This target represents an approximate reduction of 9,308 tons of CO2 by 2015.

Xanterra is the becomes the first U.S. hospitality company to commit to an absolute CO2 reduction target and the eighth business to join the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Climate Savers initiative.

The company operates lodges, restaurants and other concessions at national parks and state parks and resorts, including including Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Everglades and Zion National Parks.

"As a company working in some of the most beautiful places on Earth - national and state parks - Xanterra knows it has a primary responsibility to help protect these natural treasures from global warming while continuing to provide high quality services to guests," said Chris Lane, senior director of environmental affairs, Xanterra Parks & Resorts.

"Businesses must integrate economic, human, and ecologic systems," he said, "and for us that means making tangible and measurable changes in how we do business."

The company will work with WWF and the Center for Energy & Climate Solutions to cut its emissions through an array of efforts, such as cutting its consumption of electricity and increasing its use of renewable energy.

As part of the Climate Savers agreement, WWF and Xanterra will also work together to educate the public about available solutions to climate change, including on-site education of Xanterra's customers in national parks.

"World Wildlife Fund is excited that approximately 17 million people who visit the parks and resorts where Xanterra's lodges, restaurants and retail operations are located will be able to see and hear about the solutions to global warming," said Katherine Silverthorne, director, U.S. Climate Change Program, WWF.

"Ultimately, the survival of many of our national parks depends on such solutions. It is fitting that Xanterra, as the nation's largest park management company, lead the way in helping to slow global warming and protect wildlife and wild spaces."

Other companies that have signed on to the Climate Savers initiative include Sagawa Express, The Collins Companies, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Polaroid, Nike, and Lafarge.