2°C: Beyond the limit : Extreme climate change has arrived in America

LAKE HOPATCONG, N.J. — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course. 

New Jersey closed Lake Hopatcong after the state
Department of Environmental Protection detected a t
oxic bacteria caused in part by one of the warmest
springs in the past century. 

In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond. 

"These winters do not exist anymore," says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation. 

That’s because a century of climbing temperatures has changed the character of the Garden State. The massive ice industry and skate sailing association are but black-and-white photographs at the local museum. And even the hardy souls who still try to take part in ice fishing contests here have had to cancel 11 of the past dozen competitions for fear of straying onto perilously thin ice and tumbling into the frigid water. 

Read the story from The Washington Post - “2°C: Beyond the limit : Extreme climate change has arrived in America.”

Champion of science warned of climate change risk

The late Ralph J. Cicerone - a warning
about the grave potential  risks
of climate change.

Ralph J. Cicerone, who as a researcher and the president of the National Academy of Sciences issued an early warning about the grave potential risks of climate change, has died at his home in New Jersey. He was 73.

In 2001, while he was the chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, Cicerone headed a panel commissioned by President George W. Bush that concluded unequivocally that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise".

The 11 leading scientists who composed the panel, including some who had been climate-change sceptics, were unanimous in reaffirming the mainstream scientific view on global warming just as Bush was preparing to join talks with European leaders who were outraged that he had recently rejected the global warming pact known as the Kyoto Protocol

Read Ralph Cicerone’s obituary in today’s Melbourne Age - “Champion of science warned of climate change risk.”