Preparing to brave an uncertain climate

VIC LEIPZIG AND LOU MURRAY

As we say goodbye to yet another year, we wonder what environmental

assaults and accomplishments the new year will bring. Last year, our

column topics touched on many topics including snakes in the grass

and flights of dragonflies overhead. We wrote about red tides taking

oxygen from the ocean, ticks sucking the lifeblood from baby bunnies

and forest fires damaging our lungs with smoke.

Many people enjoyed our tales of travel as we ventured into the

local mountains, but what drew the most comments in the past year was

our tale of woe about the exploding can of Mandarin oranges in our

kitchen cupboard and our failure to clean it up immediately. OK, so

it sat there and festered for several years. We were busy. Turns out

that what you like best is laughing at us.

There is never a shortage of oddities of nature, exciting outdoor

adventures or environmental troubles to discuss. We expect the new

year to provide problems aplenty, especially since it is obvious that

we are now well into a period of dramatic global climate change. Our

story a few weeks ago about the plight of the northern fulmars dying

off our shore pointed out how changes in the Arctic can cause

problems here in Huntington Beach. We fear that this is only a

harbinger of what is to come.

Last year was the third-hottest year since reliable temperature

records have been kept. The first and second years were 1998 and

2002, respectively. The period of 1991 to 2000 was the hottest decade

on record, but we’re steering away from calling this global warming

as we learn more about the phenomenon.

Global climate change is a more accurate term. The temperature in

the tropics has hardly changed at all, but the Antarctic has warmed

up by 10 degrees. Oddly, this has resulted in more, not less snow. As

the ice shelves break off and melt, more open water is exposed. This

results in more evaporation, which causes more snow. This has gravely

affected nesting of Adelie penguins because they require open ground

on which to nest. Now when they lay their eggs, the ground is still

covered with snow, which rots the eggs.

Another major change is the time at which buds open, flowers bloom

and insects progress through their life cycles. Many plants and

invertebrates, which are more affected by temperature than

warm-blooded creatures, have altered their life cycles.

During the 1990s, a study of 385 plant species in the U.S. showed

that they flowered an average of 4 1/2 days earlier. Unfortunately,

the changes in different species are not in sync. Some species have

sped up their life cycle, some have remained on their historical

course, and some are even delaying their life cycle.

For example, a species of caterpillar that feeds on oak buds is

hatching only to find that the buds they depend upon for food had

opened days earlier. As the oak buds mature, they develop substances

toxic to the caterpillars, rendering them unsuitable for food. Who

knows how far this tiny ripple may spread through that particular

ecosystem.

In another example of interaction that is out of sync, some

neotropical bird species are migrating and nesting at the same time

as always, only to find that the particular caterpillars that they

need to feed their young have advanced their life cycles. In at least

some ecosystems, the peak number of caterpillars now occurs weeks

before bird nestlings hatch, so the birds have less of their

preferred food available. Plant-animal and predator-prey interactions

that have evolved and stabilized over the past 12,000 years are now

being disrupted all over the planet.

This is one of the outcomes of the most dramatic global climate

change since the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. At that

time, ecosystems changed dramatically and most of the large animals

of the Pleistocene went extinct. Mankind probably even contributed to

extinctions by relentlessly hunting large animals such as mammoths

and ancient bison. We have learned that when a root species falls,

the entire ecosystem around it collapses.

After 10,000 years of climate stability that has allowed modern

civilization to flourish, we now are witness to one of the most

frightening global climate changes in modern history. Scientists are

predicting mass extinctions in the years to come, changes that many

of us will see in our lifetimes. We have the technology to at least

study and document these changes, but we may be unable to alter the

outcome.

We will try to find local relevance to what is happening globally

and will continue to write about the strange critters that swim in

the sea, fly in the air and walk the land around us. And if another

can explodes in our kitchen, we’ll write about that too, just to give

you something to laugh about in these troubled times.

We are grateful to the Independent for allowing our environmental

voice to be heard in the community. Our words are the product of our

beliefs. We hope you will keep reading them. Happy New Year.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].