Echo

Foggy future of Great Lakes climate puts pressure on Michigan cherry growers

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By Andrew McGlashen
The Daily Climate

In the glacier-carved hillsides of northwest Michigan where half of America’s tart cherries grow, climate change is already in full bloom. The state is two degrees warmer on average than it was 30 years ago, and it’s generally wetter, said Michigan State University geographer Jeffrey Andresen, the state climatologist. There’s less ice on the Great Lakes, allowing for more evaporation and more lake-effect snow in cherry country. Farther north, Lake Superior has warmed five degrees since 1979. More importantly for growers, cherry blossoms now appear seven to ten days earlier than they did three decades ago, leaving them susceptible to potentially devastating spring frosts.

Echo

Most Americans believe global warming harm not yet here; Great Lakes residents less concerned than national average

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 17, 2009

Although a new federal report says global warming is already causing harm, many Americans believe it is tomorrow’s problem – that it won’t hurt people for another 10 years. And those surveyed in five Great Lakes states are less worried than the national average, according to a recent study by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The study found six levels of concern about warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. These “six Americas” were defined as alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful and dismissive. “Basically, we believe you can find the six groups in any community – just different proportions,” Anthony Leiserowitz, study co-author and a research scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies wrote in an e-mail.

Echo

VIDEO: Minnesota polar explorer finds evidence of climate change in the Arctic

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By Allison Bush, bushalli@msu.edu
Great Lakes Echo
June 16, 2009

Minnesota native and nationally renowned polar explorer Will Steger has watched ice melt practically under his feet in the coldest regions of the world. “About 15 years ago, scientists predicted that changes in global warming would first be seen in polar regions,” Steger said recently. “So unfortunately, most of the changes people have not seen yet.”

But Steger, who has traversed both Antarctica and the Arctic, and has spent more than 40 years leading and participating in polar expeditions, says that he has seen the changes first-hand. Along with five other explorers, he crossed more than 3,700 miles of Antarctica in 1989 and 1990. Temperatures were at average 80 degrees below zero, and the team spent six months at an altitude above 7,000 feet.

Climate

The Perfect, the Good, the Planet

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(NY) The New York Times – If we’re going to get real action on climate change any time soon, it will be via some version of legislation proposed by Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. Their bill would limit greenhouse gases by requiring polluters to receive or buy emission permits, with the number of available permits – the “cap” in “cap and trade” – gradually falling over time. It goes without saying that the usual suspects on the right have denounced Waxman-Markey: global warming isn’t real, emission limits will destroy the economy, yada yada. But the bill also faces opposition from some environmentalists, who are balking at the compromises the sponsors made to gain political support. More

Wildlife

Climate Change Forces Michigan Mammals Northward

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(MI) Environmental News Service – Some of Michigan’s forest mammals are expanding their ranges to the north, likely in response to climate change, a new study shows.  

The finding that historically southern species now are replacing the declining northern species by scientists at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Ohio’s Miami University, appears in the June issue of the journal “Global Change Biology.” “This study documents things that are happening right now, here at home,” lead author Philip Myers said today. More