JWhiting.com

Terrible news out of B.C. yesterday as the CBC reports that yet another ‘positive’ climate change feedback loop has been activated, accelerating the Earth’s rush towards full-blown climate crisis.

Warmer weather has allowed pine beetle populations to spread far and wide across British Columbia’s Central Interior region, turning a once effective forest-based carbon sink into a carbon smokestack. The article quotes estimates that the beetle will wipe out 80% of the pine forest in the next five years. And what does that mean?…

Canadian Forest Service scientist Werner Kurz estimates the beetle’s devastation will release almost a billion megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2020. That’s equivalent to about five years of emissions from Canada’s transportation sector, said Kurz.

What’s it going to take to start moving information like this from the science page to the front page? (More info here.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 11:28 am and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.