Category Archives: Features

Global warming or Climate Change? It depends when and where

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For years, people have argued over the best term to describe what is happening to the climate: global warming or climate change.

Market-savvy environmental groups have tried re-branding the issue entirely, producing terms like global heating, global weirding, global melting, climate crisis, climate disruption, climate chaos, springtime for CO2, climate farklempt, I’ve got some coastline in Florida to sell, etc. etc. The two originals, global warming and climate change, continue to corner the market like the Coke and Pepsi of the climate world.

A recent study by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that global warming is more “effective” from a communications standpoint than climate change. Detailed public opinion analysis showed that “global warming” instills more concern about the issue and generates more motivation to take action.

The study also points out that the American public has for years used global warming far more than climate change, at least according to Google search data. However, if you dig further into the search data, you find some changing patterns.

Here is the U.S. search volume going back to 2004:

US search volume2Global warming certainly dominated the “aughts”. Since then, its relative use has declined. If we look at the ratio of searches for global warming and climate change in the above data, you see that word preferences have been changing:

US vs. Canada ratio in searchesIn the US (blue), the ratio has declined towards the 1:1 line (black), meaning that today there is close to an equal proportion of searches for global warming and climate change. That’s a big change since the mid-2000s, when global warming vs. climate change was like the Harlem Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals.

In Canada, global warming was never nearly as dominant term north of the border. Climate change is now searched more often (52% of combined searches in 2014). This is no surprise to Canadians; the term climate change was adopted here years ago by most political parties and the media. That decision probably reflects the more moderate Canadian political climate, where people are more likely to trust authority, in this case, scientists and their preferred term. Granted, it also may reflect the actual climate; the term “global warming” may be scary if you live in Phoenix, but dreamy if you live in Winnipeg.

Narrowing the U.S. search data by region shows a huge geographic divide in the preferred term and the interest in the subject. For example, the next graph compares the search ratio for Texas and for the Bay Area. I tried using individual metropolitan areas in Texas and other conservative states, like Dallas-Ft. Worth or Houston, but none featured consistently high enough search volume for the past ten years. As it is, the Texas data had large gaps before 2007 (and one in 2008), when search volume was too low for the Google metric.

Texas vs. Bay Area ratio in searchesThe ratio is dropping in both Texas and the Bay Area. Texans, however, still prefer global warming by 2:1 or more over climate change. People in the Bay Area, however, are almost evenly split (52% global warming in 2014).

If you examine the overall data state by state, a clear pattern emerges. Republican-leaning states in the southeast and central U.S. have the highest global warming to climate change search ratio, whereas Democratic-leaning states have the lowest ratio. Texas is actually not even among the top ten in global warming preference. tableWashington DC is the only “state” where climate change is the preferred term, no doubt related at least in part to its use in government.

Harry Enten at fivethirtyeight came to a somewhat similar conclusion using data from U.S. Congress and cable news channels. Enten found that democrats prefer “climate change” and Republicans prefer “global warming”. He then argues that the Yale research would recommend the exact opposite:

If the polling is to be believed, Democrats, Republicans and the news channels they watch are actually having the opposite effect they are intending. We’ll have to see whether the Yale study makes them reverse course.

There are many unresolved questions, including whether the influence noted in the Yale Study is changing over time, and what that means for language choices. Does the choice of wording matter among people who are already motivated, like many in the Bay Area, or those whose attitudes are unlikely to change?  And would re-labeling by either party be so obvious to the public as to undermine the objective?

Regardless of the answers, one thing is clear from the search data. We are not paying nearly enough attention to ocean acidification:acidification search

Coral-eating starfish: An outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns Starfish in Kiribati

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Last year, people in Butaritari Atoll, at the northern end of Kiribati’s Gilberts Islands began noticing these large spiny starfish depicted in the video above and photo below. The exotic-looking “crown-of-thorns” starfish, known as Acanthaster planci to scientists and latin-speakers in Brooklyn, is famous for preying on reef-building corals. Outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish can lead to drops in the amount of living coral on reefs, as has happened in places as varied as the Middle East and the Great Barrier Reef.

COTs off Betio, Tarawa

Crown of Thorns Starfish off Betio, Tarawa (S. Donner)

The Kiribati outbreak spread south to the central atolls of Abaiang and Tarawa over the past year. I filmed the shaky video above while conducting a coral reef survey in a, hmm, fast-flowing channel between the open ocean and the Abaiang lagoon (the word ‘drift’ is too passive to describe this dive; it was more of a ‘raging river’, ‘don’t hit anything’ or ‘I hope the boat can find us’ dive).

In the video, you can see the crown-of-thorns damage looks a lot like coral bleaching. One key difference is the spatial pattern. With a crown-of-thorns outbreak, as in the video, you often see isolated patches of whitened corals or large white circles on otherwise healthy looking mound or table corals.

We’re not absolutely sure what initiated this particular outbreak or any other outbreak for that matter. Marine scientists generally suspect that over-exploitation of the few predators of the crown-of-thorns, like triton or ‘conch’ shells, is the most likely cause of such outbreaks. It is also possible that nutrient pollution can indirectly promote the spread of the starfish through increased survival of their larvae. I hope that, if funding allows, we can at least track the long-term effect of the outbreak on the coral reefs of the island chain.

Look up! Bull sharks and coral bleaching

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OReason #1 not to focus too heavily on studying bleached corals (lower left).

In order to collect data on the “benthic” or bottom cover of a reef, you must spend the majority of the dive swimming < 1-2 metres above the bottom and looking down. My Kiribati dive colleagues and I like to joke about what swims by when we’re not paying attention. On one dive during this recent trip, I watched a small reef shark swim wide circles – harmlessly, I should add – around my dive buddy Toaea, who was focused on taking bottom photos. On a subsequent dive, Toaea watched a barracuda – also harmless – float above oblivious me as I measured some tiny corals buried in the reef.

The photo of this bull shark was actually taken on a recreational dive in Fiji — so, at least this time, everyone saw the shark. I took advantage of the necessary layover on the way to Kiribati to test some gear and investigate a minor bleaching event. Water temperatures were elevated more than usual around most of the Fiji islands during the Southern Hemisphere summer. The temperature spike was enough to trigger bleaching warnings from the NOAA Coral Reef Watch system. A lot of corals, like the small Acropora in this photo, remained bleached in April.

 

 

Coastal rock art? Dispatch from Kiribati

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This is part of a series of posts featuring stories, photos and video from a recent field research trip to Kiribati.

What explains the amazing rock formations on coasts of Kiribati?

Fluke coral growth? Ancient rock art like the Nazca Lines? Photoshop?

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They are te ma – traditional fish traps – built from Opieces of rock or coral collected along the shoreline.

When the tide is in, fish can swim along the “shaft” or through a direct entrance into the heart- or arrowhead-shaped openings.

When the tide recedes again, fish get trapped there and are easy prey. The shaft also helps point people to the place to collect the fish.

These traps can be found at Temaiku, the SE tip of Tarawa, just south of the airstrip.

 

 

 

The rate of change

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by Meghan Beamish

While reading through the latest IPCC reports – Working Groups II and III – one word kept popping out at me: rate. Specifically when I compared this phrase:

The overall risks of climate change impacts can be reduced by limiting the rate and
magnitude of climate change.

To this:

About half of cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2010 have occurred in the last 40 years (high confidence).

With this summary of adaptation plans in North America (I added the emphasis):

In North America, governments are engaging in incremental adaptation assessment and planning, particularly at the municipal level. Some proactive adaptation is occurring to protect longer-term investments in energy and public infrastructure.

And this:

Within this century, magnitudes and rates of climate change associated with medium- to high-emission scenarios (RCP4.5, 6.0, and 8.5) pose high risk of abrupt and irreversible regional-scale change in the composition, structure, and function of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, including wetlands (medium confidence).

And finally:

Greater rates and magnitude of climate change increase the likelihood of exceeding adaptation limits (high confidence). Limits to adaptation occur when adaptive actions to avoid intolerable risks for an actor’s objectives or for the needs of a system are not possible or are not currently available. Value-based judgments of what constitutes an intolerable risk may differ. Limits to adaptation emerge from the interaction among climate change and biophysical and/or socioeconomic constraints.

So, I suppose my question is, do our rates of adaptation and mitigation match the rates of climate change?