Teachers learn climate lessons at Wild Center insitute
By Sara Ruberg
“The most important scientific fact about climate change is that it’s a timed test. If we don’t get it right quickly, then we will never get it right.”
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By Sara Ruberg
“The most important scientific fact about climate change is that it’s a timed test. If we don’t get it right quickly, then we will never get it right.”
This winter, when the National Weather Service reported that Champlain finally froze all the way across to Vermont on March 8, it was like hearing that a steamboat had crossed the lake: typical in the 19th century, improbable in the 21st. The lake ice officially “closed” in almost every year of the 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, but has done so only 11 times since 1990.
Conservationists complain of a federal government now more welcoming of pollutants, including carbon dioxide, as the Adirondack region’s forests and snowy winters are changing with a warmer climate.
For the past five years, biologist Lee Ann Sporn and a team of Paul Smith’s College students and Adirondack Watershed Institute stewards have monitored the rapid spread of tick-borne diseases—especially those rarely found this far north or at these elevations—throughout the region.
Winter is shortening and getting less predictable, with yearlong consequences that will intensify as the century moves along, according to the authors of the regional chapter of the National Climate Assessment.
Some parts of the world, including much of North America, outpace the global average in large part because much of the planet is covered by water and it takes more energy to warm oceans than land. That explains how the Adirondacks can be so far ahead of global change.
North Country Climate Reality plans to help Adirondack Park residents and local officials envision ways of adapting with a one-day conference in Silver Bay on Lake George next month.
By Mike Lynch
The state, local towns, and individuals are taking steps to adapt to life in a warming world. By MIKE LYNCH The Adirondack Park is already experiencing the impacts of climate change. Lakes and ponds are covered with ice for fewer days than they were a century ago; spring is starting earlier in the lower elevations; and storms are becoming more intense and frequent.…
By Mike Lynch
Climate change is expected to bring heavy rains, more floods, and more damage to communities. By Mike Lynch A few years ago, Paul Smith’s College scientist Curt Stager came across a rare find that he says helps tell the story of climate change in the Adirondacks: the journal of Bob Simon, a retired engineer and…
By Mike Lynch
Warmer climate bodes ill for Adirondack businesses that rely on winter tourism. By Mike Lynch The most profitable months for the tourism-based businesses in the Adirondacks are without question July and August. This is when families take their summer vacations, the weather is warm, and the bugs are tolerable. But while summer is crucial for small businesses,…