Bear is not the preferred nomenclature, dude. Koalas, please.

Did I ever mention how much I enjoy charismatic megafauna? (I did.) Here in the United States, we have always been fascinated with the creatures from Australia. Especially the rare non-deadly ones. The koala (not to be confused with the koala bear, which does not exist) is the epitome of Down-Under-Cuddliness: it's got fuzzy ears, it snoozes all day in a tree, it looks like it's drunk even though it is not, and it carries its tiny furry babies around in a freakin' pouch. Nothing could be cuter, right? WRONG! Check this out.

Disgustingly adorable, right? So, here's what happened. Due to the aforementioned climate change issue, Australia has had some problems with drought. And by problems, I mean Big Problems. Already a dry country, the past seven years or so have been Australia's dryest in over a century. The majority of the country's "agriculture" comes from the Murray-Darling River basin, which covers over 400,000 square miles. Think bigger than Texas but smaller than Alaska. Eighty (80) percent of the eucalyptus trees in this area, which is basically the entire southeastern quadrant of Australia, are either dead or dying. And what do koalas eat? That's right, eucalyptus. In fact, this is all they eat. Eucalyptus is comprised mostly of indigestible material (obviously), so the koalas have to a) eat a lot of it, and b) try not to move too much, lest they waste precious ATP. I don't know about you, but that seems like less than a winning combination when your food source is rapidly disappearing. Koalas are listed as a priority species for conservation, meaning they're not quite in trouble yet, but it's only a matter of time. Actually, depending on where you look, they range from "abundant" to "locally extinct." So we'll just average it out and say perhaps they're in a little bit of trouble...and just to make things more interesting, there is a koala chlamydia epidemic! Shit!

I'm getting off topic. Anyway, koalas get 90% of their water from eucalyptus leaves. It is rumored that the word "koala" comes from an Aborigine word meaning "no water," but this is unconfirmed. As we all should know by now, water is a crucial ingredient to survival. Unfortunately, for the koala, when there's not enough food, there's not enough water. This has forced a solitary animal to stumble down from the trees and ask people (actually, their primary predator) for a drink of water. Sad. But totally cute. Here are some more pictures:

Aw

Awww

Awwwww (does chlorine get them drunk??)

Holy crap. This is so cute it hurts.

As you can see, they are just hemorrhaging cuteness. Which is why this is sad. People who actually live in Australia rarely see koalas outside of zoos. They are the shy, loner type, and are smart to stay away from us. I actually feel bad for them that they had to swallow their koala pride and stoop to interacting with humans. Just to swallow some koala water.

On a personal note, I was lucky enough to see a koala in the wild. It was far away, up in a tree, and not moving, so it was not actually as exciting as it sounds. But in theory, it was grand. I also got to hold a koala in a koala sanctuary. What I remember most about this experience was that I expected this particular koala to weigh approximately as much as a stuffed animal in the shape of a koala. It did not.

Me 'n' Sprite

So that was a Real Life example of how our changing climate affects the Real World. We're not just making it up. If you really want to help the koalas, you can. But if an animal as charismatic- and mega-a-fauna as the koala is in trouble, I can't help but wonder, what on earth will happen to the ugly ones?

Climate change: not just for crunchy liberals and nerds anymore

While the sane/intelligent/non-comatose population has been well aware of the climate change thing for years, the rest of us are finally starting to come around. It's hard (but apparently not impossible) to ignore the physical evidence that the global climate is changing. Yeah, yeah, it does that on its own....well, not like this. Sorry to have to tell you this Bush Administration, Michael Crichton, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Glenn Beck, the rest of the yahoos at Fox News, and 41% OF AMERICANS (!!!!)....but you are all craaazies.

I could rant/yell/spout statistics for days and days about how ridiculous it is that we are even arguing about this, instead of doing something about it. But I won't. I will simply point out a couple of FACTS that the crazies are going to be hardpressed to ignore/refute/conspire against.

So, basically, scientists went to Antarctica and analyzed air pockets in ice cores dating back to 800,000 years ago. They found (spoiler alert) that carbon dioxide was at significantly lower levels back then. That's statistically significant. Which is like, science. In fact, they found that the CO2 levels are higher right this very second than they ever were during any of those previous 800,000 years. "Hmm," you might think, "I wonder what was happening in that general time period." Only the emergence/expansion/explosion of a dominant group of organisms in the genus Homo. Oh wait, wait, that was us.

For a cogent/fascinating/eloquent explanation of the issues we face due to rising carbon dioxide levels, I recommend The Next One Hundred Years, by Jonathan Weiner. This guy won a Pulitzer (for a different book, but still), and does an excellent job of explaining the problem with having too much carbon floating around. In a nutshell: for a long time, the CO2 level held steady around 315 parts per million. During the mid twentieth century, it started creeping up. And by creeping, I mean skyrocketing. See:

It is currently at 389 ppm, a 25-ish percent increase. In 50 years. Holy. Crap. High levels of CO2 lead to ocean acidification, inhibition of plant growth, extreme weather events, sea level rise, species extinctions, and of course, global temperature increase. D'oh! Did I mention that this book was written in the scientific yesteryear of 1991? We've known about this for decades, and we are still arguing about whether or not it's real. Come on, crazies, we've got enough to worry about.

If you're not much of a reader, and all this carbon talk is like Greek (or Latin I guess, which is what it is), there are pictures, too! Believe it or not, there are satellite photos of this stuff. They were actually classified by the Bush Administration, and then Obama came in and was like "What? That's dumb." And he declassified them. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are satellite images taken one (1) year apart (!) of ice melt in Alaska.

See that big, ominous dark spot on the right-hand picture? Just one (1) year before that, it was full of happy/sparkly/crystally ice, as you can see in the left-hand picture. And now it's gone. Ignore that, bitches! Science 1, Crazies 0, Earth, totally screwed.