Chapter 21.
Geoadaptation
http://www.nccarf.edu.au/conference2010/
Australia Hosts First Climate Change Adaptation Conference (from Green Car Congress)
28 June 2010
The first international conference held in Australia to discuss the science and options for adapting to climate change begins in the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Center, Queensland, on 29 June. Almost 1,000 delegates from around the world are registered for the three-day Climate Adaptation Futures 2010 Conference, hosted by the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) and CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship.
Conference chairs NCCARF Director Professor Jean Palutikof and CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship Director Dr Andrew Ash said the conference was the first to focus solely on practical ‘adaptation’ measures.
The science tells us that climate change is happening faster than we thought and that the ‘window’ for us to adapt and prepare is smaller than we thought. Australia is already experiencing the effects of climate change and is likely to be one of the most severely affected amongst developed countries. Regardless of what mitigation actions we take now as a nation or globally to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it is too late to ‘mitigate our way out of the problem’—we will need a mixture of adaptation and mitigation measures.
—Professor Palutikof
The conference topics span the economic costs of adapting; options for health, emergency and community services to cope with the added strain climate change will place on them; and adapting agriculture to cope with changing weather patterns to ensure long-term food security.
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Study Finds Oil-Eating
Bacteria Consumed Most Oil From BP Spill.
The Washington Post (8/25/10, Brown)
reports the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem "was ready and waiting for something like
the Deepwater Horizon blowout and seems to have made the most of it, a new
scientific study suggests." The "petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for
eons on oil seeping naturally through the seafloor - proliferated in the cloud
of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not
only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal
metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible." The result
"was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing that reduced the amount of
oil amounts in the undersea 'plume' by half about every three days, according to
research published online Tuesday by the journal Science."
The Wall Street Journal (8/25, Hotz)
notes that the results announced by the researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory have not yet been duplicated by other scientists.