Climate change is on the march, double time

Climate change is inherently loaded with challenges, some to which we can adapt and others that are either impossible or border on that.

The latest warning from America’s Stanford University suggests the unfolding changes are happening so quickly that adaptation for much of life on earth is in fact impossible.

Scientific American says in a story headed: “Today’s climate change proves much faster than changes in the past 65 million years”, that earth’s eco systems will find it hard to adjust.

Quoting a Stanford University study, the Scientific American story said that if global temperatures rise 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next century, that increase will be 10 times faster than anything seen before.

A day when we should all make a decision

What does the June 5 “World Environment Day” mean to Beneath the Wisteria supporters?

Trees are the "lungs or the earth"
 and yet we treat them with
alarming disrespect.

Those of us who gather Beneath the Wisteria on the last Saturday of each month consider our response to climate change, but integral to our discussions are a broader concern about our environment.

Considering that, World Environment Day should be one of the pinnacles of our year or at least a time when we should be thinking about how our various addictions, whatever they might be, are impacting on the world’s eco systems.

The phase “World Environment Day” rolls off one’s lips very easily and so mostly passes without having any lasting impact.

Maybe it is a time when each of us can make a decision to think somewhat more deeply about what it really means and what we can do as individuals to ensure that the environment that was, until recently, ideal for the human species, continues or at least is maintained.

Many things need to be done, but probably the most challenging, and undoubtedly the most confrontational and within that the most disruptive and divisive, is to discuss honestly how we should address our exploding population.

Predictions point to a world of nine billion people by 2050 and with seven billion today the world has already exhausted many of its resources and our environment is truly suffering and so on June 5 it would be appropriate for each of us to think about what role we can play, as individuals, in helping promote a greater understanding of the need for population control.

Climafe change alerting the life of our plants and with that, ours too

Reuters reports that scientists are finding that plants are flowering much earlier because of climate change.

That change, Reuters reports in a story headed: “Plant study flags dangers of warming world” will have a “knock-on” effect for food chains and eco systems.

Global warming is having a significant impact on hundreds of plant and animal species around the world, changing some breeding, migration and feeding patterns, scientists say.

Increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels can affect how plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and variable rainfall patterns can change their behaviour.

"Predicting species' response to climate change is a major challenge in ecology," said researchers at the University of California San Diego and several other U.S. institutions, according to Reuters.