Climate watch

By Douglas Hunter

A team of U.S. and U.K. scientists has warned that climate change could place unique Antarctic marine life in jeopardy because of predacious invaders. “Sharks are going to arrive in Antarctica as long as the warming trend continues, a bit more slowly than crabs. Crabs are going to get there first,” Professor Cheryl Wilga of the University of Rhode Island told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “But once they do get there, they are capable of eating the organisms that live there.” John P. Holdren, director of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Harvard University, told the same meeting he was tired of the term “global warming,” arguing that “we’ve been almost anesthetized by this term.”

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A study Hydro Quebec commissioned has concluded that the southern part of the province will be 2 C warmer in 2040 than it was in 1970. In British Columbia, the provincial government followed Quebec’s 2007 initiative by introducing a carbon tax on fossil fuels, effective July 1, 2008. The tax is meant to discourage fuel consumption, but the government avows that it will be “revenue neutral” because of general tax credits.

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The U.S. Department of Commerce and the University of New Hampshire released the results of a sonar survey of the Arctic Ocean floor off Alaska. The dramatic decline in summer sea ice coverage in 2007 made the survey possible. The survey could stake a U.S. claim to territory beyond the standard 320-kilometre limit and usher in deepocean drilling for oil and natural gas.