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Living within a living, loving planet
Global Warming Updates
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The Destructive Forces of Climate Change Have Arrived
“Given this technological and economic context, the United States has perhaps never been better positioned to tackle the urgent threat of climate change. Though it is often discussed as a future problem, climate change caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is happening now. The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased from 317 parts per million in 1960 to more than 400 parts per million in 2016 (NOAA 2016), while the global average temperature has risen 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9° Celsius) above its 1960 level.
These changes are already impacting our everyday lives. Record-breaking temperatures, melting ice caps and more frequent coastal flooding, prolonged droughts, and damaging storms are just some of the intensifying risks we face as our planet continues to warm (IPCC 2007a). Despite these risks, the prices U.S. consumers pay for fossil fuels rarely reflect their costs, skewing consumption and investment choices away from cleaner fuels and discouraging the kinds of technological advancements that would allow the nation to make more efficient use of its energy resources.”
Brookings, Mar 27, 2017
Even the startlingly bad news above leaves out the most dangerous aspect of climate Change!
What is that?
Not only is the CO2 increasing, but the rate of increase is increasing. This condition is often called runaway positive feedback. In the context of climate change, the term feedback is not the same as the definition of feedback in an electronic device. Traditional feedback circuits take a portion of the output and wire it (feed it) back into the input through a variable current limiting device. In climate change terminology, positive feedback is named from the situation where the the “effect” reinforces the “cause”, which will increase the “effect”, which will reinforces the “cause”… According to https://www.skepticalscience.com/positive-feedback-runaway-warming.htm, runaway positive feedback is a myth. However, one must take into account that there are many positive feedback causes. Most fairly minor and some very powerful thus dangerous. There are also several “effects” that result in multiple effects. Take the melting of polar icecaps, for instance. Water absorbs more of the sun’s energy than ice so less ice, more warming. Warmer ocean water absorbs less CO2 and releases some of what was stored at the lower temperature. Warmer Arctic water causes the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. One last example, warmer oceans tend to warm the air currents that then warm the continents which simply add to the Greenhouse effect and cause an increase of CO2 from the soil. Interactions among feedbacks produce non-linear results. From here, these multiple and additive positive forces produce an extremely complex variety of aiding and opposing forces that put our scientists in new territory. We’ve started a fire and don’t know what size or how many extinguishers will be needed to put it out. For an extremely detailed report on climate change and positive feedbacks, check this link where you will find no less than 69 positive feedbacks. https://guymcpherson.com/climate-chaos/climate-change-summary-and-update/
James Lovelock realised that the Earth must have found a way to counter the 30% increase of the sun’s power since its birth 4.5 billion years ago. He and the late Lynn Margulis published first a hypothesis they named the Gaia Hypothesis (now a theory) to account for this. Unfortunately, the feedback mechanisms are multiple, both positive and negative and at various strengths. These are not fully understood.
The following link points to a more detailed explanation of the cyclical nature of atmospheric average temperature and CO2 and what happened in the former instances of the interglacial part of the temperature swing cycle.
http://www.earthenspirituality.com/glogal-warming/
|
Decade |
Atmospheric CO2
Growth Rate |
| 2005 – 2014 | 2.11 ppm per year |
| 1995 – 2004 | 1.87 ppm per year |
| 1985 – 1994 | 1.42 ppm per year |
| 1975 – 1984 | 1.44 ppm per year |
| 1965 – 1974 | 1.06 ppm per year |
| 1959 – 1964 (6 years only) |
0.73 ppm per year |
https://www.co2.earth/co2-acceleration
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“You wear seatbelts in your car not because you’re certain that you’re going to have a crash but because there’s a possibility. You build houses likely to withstand an earthquake not because you’re certain that there will be an earthquake but because there might be one. These examples involve probabilities that are much smaller than the probabilities that climate change will have very serious impacts. So it’s totally unacceptable for society not to act.”
Scientific American on Climate Change
“It’s Totally Unacceptable for Society Not to Act”
A Q&A with Nobel laureate Mario Molina on climate change
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/it-s-totally-unacceptable-for-society-not-to-act/
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How the world’s economic growth is actually un-economic
Posted on 9 December 2014 by Guest Author
By Robert Costanza, Australian National University
http://www.skepticalscience.com/how-worlds-economic-growth-is-uneconomic.html
“Perhaps the most compelling conflict is how we talk about and deal with climate disruption. Climate is one of our key natural assets. Yet investing in and maintaining a stable climate is seen as a hindrance to economic growth. It should be regarded as protecting an asset that underlies the operation of the entire human enterprise.
Climate disruption needs to be included as a cost to GDP growth that is at least as important as the loss of factories, roads and houses.
Likewise, the depletion of social capital caused by rising inequality needs to be counted against any gains in GDP.”
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CO2 Takes Just 10 Years to Reach Planet’s Peak Heat
- Published: December 3rd, 2014
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/co2-emissions-peak-heat-18394
“In a study that could have important ramifications on estimating the impacts, costs and benefits of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, new research shows that CO2 brings peak heat within a decade of being emitted, with the effects then lingering 100 years or more into the future.
By revealing that CO2 has such a rapid warming effect on the planet, the study said that “people alive today are very likely to benefit from emissions avoided today.” Ricke said that provides a clearer incentive for policymakers and politicians — and the people who vote for them — to consider actions for reducing emissions.”
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Social Cost of Carbon Greatly Underestimated: Report
- Published: March 13th, 2014
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/social-cost-of-carbon-is-greatly-underestimated-report-17170
“Currently, there are key components of the climate system that are not included in calculating the social cost of carbon. They include ocean acidification, rapid sea level rise, wildfires and changes in heat and precipitation extremes. Changes to those will impact innumerable things including energy, water, transportation, public health, and labor productivity, to name just a few.
But those calculations are poorly understood or nonexistent in the economic models, which implicitly sets their cost to zero. Gernot Wagner, a senior economist at EDF who didn’t contribute to the report, said that is artificially deflating the social cost of carbon because it’s highly unlikely there are no costs associated with them.”
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Giving Climate Pact Legal Teeth Could Make It Toothless
- Published: December 3rd, 2014
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-pact-with-legal-teeth-could-be-toothless-18396
Reference: “The 20th session of the Conference of the Parties and the 10th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol is taking place from 1 to 12 December. COP 20/CMP 10 is being hosted by the Government of Peru, in Lima, Peru.”
“There is no chance, there is zero possibility that the U.S. congress will ratify a binding commitment,” Yale University professor Daniel Esty, who has appointments in the university’s environment and law schools, said.
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West Antarctic melt rate has tripled
NEWS | December 2, 2014
By Carol Rasmussen,
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2197/
“A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade.
The glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice faster than any other part of Antarctica and are the most significant Antarctic contributors to sea level rise. This study by scientists at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and NASA is the first to evaluate and reconcile observations from four different measurement techniques to produce an authoritative estimate of the amount and the rate of loss over the last two decades.”
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Waiting for Godot?
“The overall rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the last deglaciation was thought to have been triggered by the release of CO2 from the deep ocean – especially the Southern Ocean. However, the researchers say that no obvious ocean mechanism is known that would trigger rises of 10-15 ppm over a time span as short as one to two centuries.”
“The oceans are simply not thought to respond that fast,” Brook said.
http://phys.org/news/2014-10-abrupt-pulse-carbon-dioxide-deglaciation.html
I read daily updates on climate change science and suspected results of the certain rapid increase in CO2 and methane levels in both the atmosphere and oceans. In the oceans it increases acidification to the detriment of crustaceans and other hard shelled animals. In addition I read about climate change deniers and detractors; many of which are paid to create cherry picking and inaccuracies that result in doubt in public opinion.
I find constant revisions and updated findings. The uncertainty fuels deniers who demand scientific “proof.”
Science does not and never has supplied “truth.” The primary cause of the subject of uncertainty is a misunderstanding of the nature of Earth. Earth is a living being and not a machine. Earth events are often unpredictable and constantly break the “laws of Nature” that we persist in holding onto. Earth rhythms and cycles never exactly repeat. Variation resides in the very core of what it is to be planet Earth.
Take our medical Doctor visits. We learn to accept the “uncertainty” of our health and our illness treatments. We think nothing of following medical advice. For instance, the exact cause of an illness often cannot be determined accurately. We are sometimes told to take this medicine and come back in awhile to see if it worked. If not then other medicine is prescribed.
Governments and other power structures have habituated the “do nothing until we have absolute proof,” and “not enough data has been collected” excuses. They fiddle while Rome burns. It is time to stop searching for who started the fire and concentrate on putting out the fire.
We don’t need to know the exact extent of anthropogenic causes to become aware that humans, within the present cultural and global economic system, contribute a significant and irrefutable amount of greenhouse gases. These gasses are undeniably present and increasing. Weather in most regions of Earth is becoming more severe, sea levels are rising, glaciers and polar icepacks are melting faster than predicted, and oceans are warming while life-forms that make up our food chain are dying. Desertification is increasing whilst global air currents carry little or no moisture from the rainforests to sustain vegetation.
Surely it is obvious to all rational beings that we can wait no longer for certainty, for “scientific proof.”
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Evidence and arguments
6 May, 2014
Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/brandis-confuses-right-to-be-heard-taken-seriously.html
“In a recent interview,[ http://www.spiked-online.com/freespeechnow/fsn_article/the-state-should-never-be-the-arbiter-of-what-people-can-think#.U2m-2PldXp1] federal attorney-general [of Australia] George Brandis laments that deniers of climate science are being “excluded” from the debate. On the surface this seems a justifiable complaint, but the point hangs on what he means by ‘excluded’”.
“The rules of rational engagement demand evidence and argument, not repetitive appeals for a fair hearing. If the evidence in support of a view is not forthcoming, or if the arguments in its favour are weak, its public profile should diminish.”
“The fact is that deniers of climate science are as free as anyone else to make their case. That the case is not being made is not a function of suppression, it is result of lack of evidence.”
“It’s bad enough that the right to be heard is misunderstood or misrepresented as the right to be taken seriously, but this is happening in the domain of public policy.
“There is a difference between public expression of an idea and urging public support for that idea. The former is a statement of opinion; the latter is a call for government action (or inaction). Brandis seems to want climate science denial front and centre in debates of public policy, in the same manner that a false balance has been delivered through media representation of the issue.”
This is a re-post from The Conversation by Peter Ellerton
[http://theconversation.com/profiles/peter-ellerton-8574/profile_bio]
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EU Aircraft Industry will at Least Double Greenhouse emissions by 2050
10 March 2014, 6.03am GMT
Morphing is one way to make aircrafts more efficient
“The transport sector as a whole is increasing CO2 emissions at such a rate that it has cancelled out two decades’ worth of green gains made across the manufacturing, power generation, district heating, residential, services and agriculture sectors combined. This devastating disparity is forecast to grow.”
“…the annual growth rate of the number of flights within Europe has remained consistent at 3.9%. The rise of Asia and cheap flight carriers, like Ryanair, making weekend trips away affordable to the masses have pushed the rate up. This is expected to level out at 5.3%.”
“The goal set by the EU to reduce aircraft CO2 emissions by 75% by 2050 is totally unrealistic. Even if Europe were to meet these goals, its aircraft industry will at the very least double its greenhouse emissions by 2050. The bleak reality is that we will probably see a quadrupling in the aircraft industry CO2 emissions by then – unless it totally reinvents the concept of the commercial aircraft.”
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Engaging Diverse Audiences with Climate Change
“We are pleased to provide you with an adapted version of our chapter from the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (2014), edited by Anders Hansen and Robbie Cox.”
“In this chapter, we describe Global Warming’s Six Americas – six unique audience segments that view and respond to the issue in distinct ways. We describe the beliefs and characteristics of each group and discuss methods of effectively communicating with them in light of: (1) the pro- or counter-attitudinal nature of messages on the issue for each group; (2) their willingness to exert the cognitive effort necessary to process information on the issue; (3) their propensity for counter-arguing, motivated reasoning and message distortion; and (4) the communication content they say they most desire and, hence, would be most likely to process and accept.”
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Woodman, spare that tree!
http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/01/woodman-spare-that-tree/
By Tim Radford
It may seem unlikely, but an international team of researchers has found that most large trees keep absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide even in old age.
LONDON, 26 January – Giant trees could play a giant role in fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This counter-intuitive discovery – surely, young faster-growing trees would be more efficient at soaking up carbon? – emerges from a study of more than 403 species by a consortium of 38 scientists in 16 countries who report in Nature.
Nathan Stephenson of the US Geological Survey and his 37 colleagues between them studied data collected from more than 650,000 individual trees on six continents over a span of 80 years to show that the world’s oldest trees actually grow more quickly, and also accumulate carbon more rapidly than younger, smaller trees.
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Extreme El Nino events set to double as Earth warms
Monday, Jan 20, 2014, 10:34 IST | Agency: ANI
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-extreme-el-nino-events-set-to-double-as-earth-warms-1953979
“Researchers have revealed that extreme weather events fuelled by unusually strong El Ninos are likely to double in number as Earth warms.
Co-author, Dr Agus Santoso of ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (CoECSS), said that Earth currently experiences an unusually strong El Nino event every 20 years, however, their research shows this will double to one event every 10 years.”
See more here: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story.html
And at the end of the day, who pays for the damages? Certainly not the multinationals who persist in unlimited economic growth on the back of fossil fuels. One guess is enough, Us. Us through higher insurance costs and curtailment of hard earned social benefits and a host of other costs paid for with public money.
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Parts of Europe ‘5C warmer’ by 2100
http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/01/parts-of-europe-5c-warmer-by-2100/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
By Alex Kirby
”Severe temperature rises in parts of Europe by the end of the century will be accompanied by much more frequent droughts, scientists say.
LONDON, 11 January – With exquisite timing, as parts of Europe endure the worst storms for decades, researchers have issued a highly topical warning.
By the end of this century, they say, summer temperatures in parts of southern Europe are expected to be up to 5°C higher than they were from 1961 to 1990, with droughts inevitably becoming more frequent and intense, because of both climate change and increased water use.”
By the end of this century the meridional overturning circulation, (MOC) better known as the Atlantic Current, will most likely slow down or even stop altogether. The pumping effect which powers the current depends on the cold waters of the north to make the salt laden surface waters sink and drive the current. With the northern waters heating up so fast, certainly, this cannot endure. It is just a matter of time. The northern waters are warming so much faster than predicted and with the greenhouse effect constantly building this will happen sooner rather than later. Let us not bury our heads in the sand. This is science not fantasy and superstition.
Sky
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It is fallacious to assume that weather conditions that have occurred in the past have a good chance of repeating. This might be reasonable if most climate forcing and other conditions such as vegetation [millions of cattle wrecked the grasslands in the West and Southwest] and the Amazon rainforest [will be all but wiped out very soon] were still present. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Although three periods of drought have been recorded in that region over the last thousand years or so, the land recovered. There is very little evidence that the necessary conditions are present or predicted which would bring back enough moisture to prevent the extreme desertification that the area is now headed for. There is a saying –“What hath God wrought?” We have no one to blame but ourselves. We have squandered the gifts and assets of the very being we emerged from. Surely we know not what we do.
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Worrisome Arctic Ocean Methane Leaks
10/12/2013
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00049&segmentID=1
“New research based in the East Siberian continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean finds the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the seabed into the atmosphere twice as fast as scientists previously thought, threatening runaway global warming. University of Alaska professor Natalia Shakhova talks with host Steve Curwood about the research.”
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25/11/2013
Some scientists suggested earlier this year that a massive release of methane from the shelf, referred to as a “methane bomb,” could cause abrupt climate change and cost the global economy $60 trillion. That claim has been met with much skepticism, in part because the amount of methane the shelf is currently releasing and the conditions it’s stored under aren’t fully understood. The remoteness, logistics and inclement weather have impeded scientists’ research access to the region until fairly recently and data has been sparse.
That, however, is beginning to change.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/storms-warming-mean-more-arctic-methane-being-released-16775
I think the IPCC has put this in the too hard box in the past,. It needs the light of day.
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Study to focus on Arctic after Greenland Sea found to have warmed 10 times faster than global ocean
By Phoebe McDonald
Updated Sat 2 Nov 2013, 4:57pm AEDT
“Scientists have revealed plans to examine temperature changes in the Arctic Ocean after a long-term study found the Greenland Sea is warming 10 times faster than the global ocean.”
Sky: There are some troublesome by the by statements here that deserve special attention. Some 10 years or so ago, there was a report that the flow of the Atlantic Current at its northern edge was decreasing: Let me see if I can find the reference. Here we are:
Ref: 05/204
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2005/nov/05_204.shtml
01 December 2005
“The Atlantic Ocean overturning current that maintains Europe’s moderate climate has slowed by 30 per cent according to scientists from the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton in research published today in Nature (Thursday, 1 December 2005).”
Then there was a retraction that not enough data had been collected. Then there was an article about how many monitors had been strung along a horizontal line across the Atlantic to measure the flow. Then nothing. No reports. Nothing. Now, in this article I read:
“Until the early 1980s, the central Greenland Sea has been mixed from the top to the bottom by winter cooling at the surface making waters dense enough to reach to sea floor,” she said.
“This transfer of cold water from the top to the bottom has not occurred in the last 30 years.
“After the ’80s it seems that winter heat losses – how much heat is lost from the ocean to the atmosphere – has decreased.
“The waters at the surface are lighter during the wintertime than before. They don’t reach the necessary density to reach the bottom of the Greenland Sea.”
In the past, the Thermohaline Circulation Conveyor [Atlantic Current] was driven by the sinking of the cooled down, saltier [heavier] water having been mixed with the cooler water from the higher latitudes. This drove the circulation current as we all know keeping winter temperatures several degrees warmer in Europe, especially the British Isles. It has always seemed common sense to me that as the arctic ice melts, a greater and greater volume of cold water will push this overturning further and further south.
“She says if current trends continue the density, temperature and salinity levels of deep water in the Greenland Sea will reach the same levels of those in the Arctic Ocean.
“The Greenland Sea is getting lighter … It will reach the same density of the waters that are coming in,” she said.
“When they reach the same density we don’t know what will happen.”
Well, I think she has a good idea. This means the end of the conveyor effect at that latitude. Remember, It is only in recent times that the vast accumulation of ice of the Arctic Ocean has melted. Before that time, there was not nearly the volume of colder water mixing with southern currents at that latitude.
I would like to see a report from all the meters strung out to measure current flow across the northern Atlantic. If the Greenland see continues to warm and the warm saltier waters from the south are not cooled sufficiently to make them sink, then the conveyor will end. Period. How fast is unknown.
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A stark choice extreme heat or dirty fuels
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2013-SkS-Weekly-News-Roundup_33B.html
Two reports released Wednesday reveal the dangerous gap between science and politics. New climate research shows that extreme events such as the severe heat wave in the U.S. last year will double in 2020, increase 400 percent by 2040, and then get far worse without significant carbon reductions.
A Stark Choice: Extreme Heat or Dirty Fuels by Stephen Leahy. Inter Press Service (IPS), Aug 15, 2013
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/a-stark-choice-extreme-heat-or-dirty-fuels/
Abstract
Climatic warming of about 0.5 ° C in the global mean since the 1970s has strongly increased the occurrence-probability of heat extremes on monthly to seasonal time scales. For the 21st century, climate models predict more substantial warming. Here we show that the multi-model mean of the CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models accurately reproduces the evolution over time and spatial patterns of the historically observed increase in monthly heat extremes. For the near-term (i.e., by 2040), the models predict a robust, several-fold increase in the frequency of such heat extremes, irrespective of the emission scenario. However, mitigation can strongly reduce the number of heat extremes by the second half of the 21st century. Unmitigated climate change causes most (>50%) continental regions to move to a new climatic regime with the coldest summer months by the end of the century substantially hotter than the hottest experienced today. We show that the land fraction experiencing extreme heat as a function of global mean temperature follows a simple cumulative distribution function, which depends only on natural variability and the level.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/3/034018/articleof spatial heterogeneity in the warming.
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Skeptical Science flattens deniers: 97% of peer-reviewed papers say humans causing climate change
This article is fully supported with links to the supporting data. Hopefully, John Cook has helped us all to utterly dismiss the misconstrued and sometimes utterly false claims of those anthropogenic climate change deniers. I for one am sick of hearing the drivel. I felt it necessary to read it in association with genetically modified food only to find that there were a few “scientists” who were paid to falsify and construe what they could find as detractions. I am aware that some of those same people are now employed to do the same shameless job with climate change. Much of the blame for the false impressions on this subject has to be placed with some of the “media” who give equal time to detractors as if there was an equal chance that they may be right. Most of us have learned that “the media” by and large are only interested in sales and care less about fairness, truth and the art of conveying news.
Unfortunately, so many people make up their minds based on false information and then proceed forever with a close mind on the issue. That’s why character assignation is accomplished with a lie that gets published and then an apology printed on page 16 in small print. People tend to remember the lie and either never see the retraction or apology or will not read further. They “know” because they read it in the newspaper or some magazine. A good friend of mine taught me that whenever reading something controversial, stop and look into just who is doing the assertions. Find out who finances them – who do they serve. Find out who tends to gain from their point of view. People with set opinions look for someone to agree with them and then crystalize on their false knowledge like a nut that must never be cracked to see if the kernel is edible.
Their lives are crammed with precious nuts that cannot feed them when the kernels are needed. By then it is too late and they have invested their vital energy in that which does not serve them. Surely it is normal that we change as we age, as we experience the new and different, as we suffer and recover from tragedy and disappointments. We learn to regularly examine our truth nuts, crack open a few to see if they are still serviceable. The most difficult student is one who already knows.
When you give people the impression that you are not completely sure about something then you get their take which, surprisingly, often reveals something you overlooked or misunderstood. Actually, most people feel positively stroked when they get an opportunity to explain their opinions. It is a win-win because they feel good about informing you and you might just learn something.
Hopefully, anthropogenic climate change deniers now lack an audience.
Daily KOS
THU MAY 16, 2013
Skeptical Science flattens deniers: 97% of peer-reviewed papers say humans causing climate change
By Meteor Blades
Nowadays, television news shows and newspaper and magazine articles that mention global warming rarely resort to outright lies like this grotesque piece of propaganda from Forbes.
“In fact, not all scientists do agree that humans are causing global warming. As researchers under the guidance of John Cook at Skeptical Science discovered in a “citizen science” survey of 11,944 peer-reviewed articles, 1.6 percent of the authors expressing an opinion on the subject rejected or were uncertain about the consensus that the earth is undergoing anthropogenic (human-generated) global warming (AGW). And 97.1 percent of the nearly 4,000 articles in which the author(s) took a position endorsed the AGW consensus. (The survey was published May 15 in Environmental Research Letters as an open access article)”
A video
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Sea levels set for a ‘continuing rise’ for generations
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/07/sea-level-generations
“Some recent research has suggested that the future rate of sea-level rise may not be as fast as scientists had expected. But a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.pnas.org/ paints a different picture.
Slow to respond
Today’s greenhouse gas emissions will cause sea levels to rise for centuries to come. “CO2, once emitted by burning fossil fuels, stays an awful long time in the atmosphere,” said Anders Levermann, lead author of the study and research domain co-chair at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “Consequently, the warming it causes also persists.”
The oceans and ice sheets are slow to respond to warming, simply because of their enormous mass, which is why observed sea-level rise is now measured in millimeters per year. But once they start responding, they are unrelenting.
The problem, Levermann added, is that once the Earth’s climate is heated out of balance, the impacts simply don’t stop. “We’re confident that our estimate is robust because of the combination of physics and data that we use.”
The study is the first to combine evidence from the Earth’s early climate history with comprehensive computer simulations using physical models of all four major contributors to long-term global sea-level rise.”
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Most Comprehensive Paleoclimate Reconstruction Confirms Hockey Stick
by ADMIN on JULY 9, 2013
Stefan Rahmstorf is Co-Chair of Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
By Stefan Rahmstorf via Scilogs
The past 2000 years of climate change have now been reconstructed in more detail than ever before by the PAGES 2k project. The results reveal interesting regional differences between the different continents, but also important common trends. The global average of the new reconstruction looks like a twin of the original “hockey stick”, the first such reconstruction published fifteen years ago.
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Methane leaks could negate climate benefits of US natural gas boom: report
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 June 2013 16.38 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/04/methane-leaks-negate-climate-benefits-gas
Reduction in carbon emissions triggered by America’s shift from coal to gas is being offset by a sharp rise in methane
“Some 29% of America’s electricity came from natural gas last year – compared to just 14% a decade ago, the report said. But it comes at a high cost to the local environment, because of the risks to air and water quality posed by hydraulic fracturing.
There is also a growing body of evidence that the release of methane gas from well sites and pipelines is far higher than previously thought.
Methane is a far more powerful gas than carbon dioxide, even though it does not persist in the atmosphere for a shorter period.”
Sky: Most media articles emphasize that methane does not persist very long in the atmosphere. But what they don’t follow up with is the fact that methane breaks down in to components that contain CO2. Please note the references and quotes below. Although methane only persists in the troposphere around 8.5 years and in the atmosphere around 12 years, it is 20 to 25 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2. As I have mentioned above, methane breaks down both in the troposphere and in the atmosphere into CO2 and water vapour; these are the two major greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, the hydroxyl radical that facilitates the breakdown is depleted gradually. As it depletes, then obviously, methane will gradually become more prominent as a greenhouse gas yet still breakdown into CO2 and water vapour. This is what may be seen as a “double whammy” in the greenhouse effect on global warming. To be more precise one must include that although water vapour is a positive factor for warming, if it increases cloud cover, then the greenhouse gas effect is diminished because clouds serve as a reflective component and thus consist of a negative factor.
“There is a bit of hope in all of this information. An equal amount of methane as compared to an equal amount of CO2 has an effect on global warming of 20 times greater than CO2. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) will stay in our atmosphere for around 100 years. With a half life of 7 years Methane last around 10 years in our atmosphere. It is estimated that 60% of global methane emissions are related to human activities. Some scientists believe that these green house gases are as significant as or greater than CO2 emissions from cars.” http://www.dulabab.com/climate-change/methane/
The atmospheric concentration of methane is thought to have increased by a factor of 2.5 since
pre-industrial times, reaching 1745 ppb in 1998.1 This rate of increase far exceeds that of carbon
dioxide, concentrations of which are only 30% higher than in pre-industrial times. In fact,
information is sufficient for the IPCC to assert that the current methane concentration has not
been exceeded in the last 420,000 years.1 http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/methaneuk/chapter02.pdf
“The most effective sink of atmospheric methane is the hydroxyl radical in the troposphere, or the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere. As methane rises into the air, it reacts with the hydroxyl radical to create water vapor and carbon dioxide. The lifespan of methane in the atmosphere was estimated at 9.6 years as of 2001; however, increasing emissions of methane over time reduce the concentration of the hydroxyl radical in the atmosphere. With less OH˚ to react with, the lifespan of methane could also increase, resulting in greater concentrations of atmospheric methane.
Even if it is not destroyed in the troposphere, methane can usually only last 12 years before it is eventually destroyed in Earth’s next atmospheric layer: the stratosphere. Destruction in the stratosphere occurs the same way that it does in the troposphere: methane is oxidized to produce carbon dioxide and water vapor.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane
“The duration period for carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere is somewhere between 100 and 500 years. Obviously, not all carbon dioxide molecules will stay in the atmosphere that long, but on average the duration may be around 200-300 years. Some scientists believe that it could be longer than that, others believe that the duration is shorter. Presently, there is some uncertainty in those figures.” http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00296.htm
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This poster makes the wrong point. It is not so much that we are having higher temperatures than normal. What defines normal? We are in an interglacial period which has in the past brought global warming. This is a cyclical event – one every 150k/years or so. There is no telling just exactly how warm it will get during this particular interglacial cycle. The important question is not so much why it is getting warmer, but why it is not getting cooler like it has in the past as the cycle turns back into a warm decline leading in centuries back to the, long glacial stage of the cycle? You might say “Oh well, maybe the downturn is just late and will occur in a few hundred years or so.” Observing the climb of CO2 is not surprising really because records show that the graph for average air temperature and the graph for CO2 are nearly synchronous. Which one leads and which one lags is controversial, but that they are nearly synchronous is not controversial.
Now here is the frightening news. The scientific research and media attention is focused on the causes of global warming. The warming event happened over 8,000 years ago.
We need to pay attention to the factors that we think brought down the CO2 and the temperature in the past 3 or 4 interglacial periods. One fact is the temperature dropped quickly, nearly as quickly as it rose. The maximum temperature period has always been short-lived. He present one has gone on longer than most if not all the previous ones. So be it. The two primary differences in the global conditions we face this time as compared to the past both are due to the presence of Homo Sapiens. We have caused extreme desertification coupled with a shortage of ground water and humidity and we have destroyed millions of trees and extensive grasslands. What sucks in carbon dioxide and expels oxygen and water vapour? We all know; vegetation, especially trees and the immense grasslands. I suggest it is almost certain that vegetation is the only possible reason for the steep fall in CO2 that can be observed in the graphs mentioned above.
The Milankovitch cycles and their interaction seem to me to reveal that the orbital forcing combination of eccentricity, obliquity and precession that favours cooling changed a couple of thousand years ago and it looks very much like we have missed a tipping point. Thus it may be centuries before the conditions again favour cooling. By then, our average global temperature may be so high that the tipping point cannot be reached. The following paper was written by two of the most distinguished researchers in the field of Earth Sciences.
An Exceptionally Long Interglacial Ahead? A. Berger and M. F. Loutre see: berger_loutre02.sci.pdf
“Most CO2 scenarios(15) led to an exceptionally long interglacial from 5000 years before the present to 50,000 years from now (see the bottom panel of the figure), with the next glacial maximum in 100,000 years. Only for CO2 concentrations less than 220 ppmv was an early entrance into glaciation simulated (15).”
(15). M. F. Loutre, A. Berger, Clim. Change 46, 61 (2000).
[We are at 400ppm of CO2, climbing at an increasing rate with very little hope of stopping anytime soon.]
The penny has been dropped many times but economic greed coupled with the backing of the 1% trumps common sense. I can’t recommend a workable solution.
I know this is a short explanation but I don’t wish to dig any deeper in this message. See:
| The Seasons and the Earth’s Orbit – Milankovitch Cycles |
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/seasons_orbit.html
Or if you like my plain talk, see:
http://www.earthenspirituality.com/glogal-warming/
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Global Warming: Not Reversible, But Stoppable
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-not-reversible-but-stoppable.html
Posted on 19 April 2013 by Andy Skuce
Let’s start with two skill-testing questions:
1. If we stop greenhouse gas emissions, won’t the climate naturally go back to the way it was before?
2. Isn’t there “warming in the pipeline” that will continue to heat up the planet no matter what we do?
The correct answer to both questions is “no”.
Global warming is not reversible but it is stoppable.
The explanation follows here
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February 28, 2013
Study of Ice Age Bolsters Carbon and Warming Link
By JUSTIN GILLIS
“A meticulous new analysis of Antarctic ice suggests that the sharp warming that ended the last ice age occurred in lock step with increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the latest of many indications that the gas is a powerful influence on the earth’s climate.
Previous research suggested that as the world began to emerge from the depths of the ice age about 20,000 years ago, warming in Antarctica preceded changes in the global carbon dioxide level by something like 800 years.
That relatively long gap led some climate-change contrarians to assert that rising carbon dioxide levels were essentially irrelevant to the earth’s temperature — a side effect of planetary warming, perhaps, but not the cause.
Mainstream climate scientists rejected that view and argued that carbon dioxide, while it certainly did not initiate the end of the ice age, played a vital role in the feedback loops that caused a substantial warming. Still, a long gap between initial increases of temperature and of carbon dioxide was somewhat difficult for the scientists to explain.
A wave of new research in the last few years has raised the likelihood that there was actually a small gap, if any.”
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Melting Permafrost
“The subject of methane hydrates has yet again been featured in the BBC news. The BBC news has featured stories about the possible deleterious effects of the melting permafrost since at least 2005. *see below. Research has been in progress on the subject for many years *see below, yet the 4th Assessment of the IPCC does not mention methane hydrates or methane clathrates. The nearest they get is to mention that the permafrost is melting:
“Snow cover is projected to contract. Widespread increases in thaw depth are projected over most
permafrost regions.” {10.3, 10.6} pg.12
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis
Summary for Policymakers
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
See the link below.
http://www.earthenspirituality.com/2013/02/23/melting-permafrost/
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Analysis of Greenland Ice Cores May Provide Glimpse intoClimate’s Future
Posted on 16 February 2013 by John Hartz
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Analysis-of-Greenland-Ice-Cores_NSF.html
This article is a reprint of a news release posted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on Jan 24, 2013.
The International North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project results indicate that melting of Antarctic ice sheet may have contributed more to sea level rise than melting of the Greeland ice sheet some 100,000 years ago.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=126670&preview=false
“The research published this week shows that during the Eemian interglacial, the climate in North Greenland was about 8 degrees Celsius warmer than at present. Despite this strong warming signal during the Eemian–a period when the seas were roughly four to eight meters higher than they are today–the surface in the vicinity of NEEM was only a few hundred meters lower than its present level, which indicates that the Greenland ice sheet may have contributed less than half of the total sea rise at the time.
“The new findings reveal higher temperatures in Northern Greenland during the Eemian than paleo-climate models have estimated,” said Dahl-Jensen.”
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No alternative to atmospheric CO2 draw-down
Posted on 14 February 2013 by Andrew Glikson
http://www.skepticalscience.com/No-alternative-atmospheric-CO2-draw-down.html
“This article suggests that the current atmospheric CO2 level is already triggering amplifying feedbacks from the Earth system and therefore, in themselves, efforts at reduction in atmospheric CO2-emission are no longer sufficient to prevent further global warming. For this reason, along with sharp reductions in carbon emissions, efforts need to be undertaken in an attempt to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels from their current level of near-400 ppm to well below 350 ppm. NASA-applied outer space-shade technology may buy time for such planetary defense effort…….Good planets are hard to come by.”
This article reveals the facts of where we are now with CO2 and suggested methods of sequestration with a critique. A very informative article.
Climate change skeptics
Misleading Daily Mail Article Pre-Bunked by Nuccitelli et al. (2012)
Posted on 17 October 2012 by dana1981
http://www.skepticalscience.com/misleading-daily-mail-prebunked-nuccitelli-et-al-2012.html
It is always best to offer specific examples when talking about climate change skeptics and their misleading statements. This article is a good start. There are lots of comments from quite well informed readers. They are well worth reading. See the link above.
Summary
“To sum up, Rose and Curry were simply incorrect in virtually every assertion made in thisDaily Mail article.
- Global surface temperatures have most likely increased since 1997.
- Focusing on short-term temperature changes confuses short-term noise and long-term signal.
- Most global warming goes into heating the oceans, and as Nuccitelli et al. (2012) showed, global warming has not slowed.
- Natural variability is much smaller than the long-term global warming signal, and smaller even than the global warming signal over the past two decades.
- The slowed rate of global surface warming over the past decade is consistent with individual model runs, which show that these ‘hiatus decades’ are entirely expected.
- Over the long-term, the Earth has warmed as much as expected.
- Carbon pricing will result in a net benefit the economy as compared to doing nothing and trying to adapt to the consequences.”
“Comments
YubeDude at 12:43 PM on 16 October, 2012
This article isn’t about science as it only skims the data, albeit incorrectly, this article is just another salvo in the war for the minds of the masses who are either to busy to notice of lack the sophistication to discern the high degree of sophistry being applied. This is about using a dishonesty of words to manipulate emotions in the reader who lacks the intellect to see the obvious propaganda. Maybe the motivation is pure business, trying to appeal to the readerships demographic. Regardless of the reasons for this article, the substance is appallingly misleading noise.”
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Satellites reveal sudden Greenland ice melt
25 July 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18978483
The first image shows Greenland’s ice sheet on 8 July, the second
reveals the thawed area just four days later
Greenland’s massive ice sheet has
melted this month over an usually large area, Nasa has said.
Scientists said the
“unprecedented” melting took place over a larger area that ever
detected in three decades of satellite observation.
Melting even occurred at Greenland’s
coldest and highest place, Summit station.
The thawed ice area jumped from 40%
of the ice sheet to 97% in just four days from 8 July.
Although about half of Greenland’s
ice sheet normally melts over the summer months, the speed and scale of this
year’s melting surprised scientists, who described the phenomenon as
“extraordinary”.
Nasa said that nearly the entire ice
cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal edges to its centre, which
is 3km (two miles) thick, experienced some degree of melting at its surface.
“When we see melt in places that
we haven’t seen before, at least in a long period of time, it makes you sit up
and ask what’s happening?” Nasa chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said.
“It’s a big signal, the meaning
of which we’re going to sort out for years to come.”
He said that because this
Greenland-wide melting has happened before they are not yet able to determine
whether this is a natural but rare event, or if it has been sparked by man-made
global warming.
Scientists said they believed that
much of Greenland’s ice was already freezing again.
Until now, the most extensive melting
seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55% of the area.
Ice last melted at Summit station in
1889, ice core records show.
The news comes just days after Nasa
satellite imagery revealed that a massive iceberg, twice the size of Manhattan,
had broken off a glacier in Greenland.
“This event, combined with other
natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann
Glacier, are part of a complex story,” said Nasa’s Tom Wagner.
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The GLOBAL global warming
signal
Posted on 4 July 2012 by
Kevin C
Conclusions
“Coverage bias signficantly impacts recent temperature trends. The
methods used here to estimate and correct for that bias are rudimentary, but
present a coherent picture of continued warming. It is striking that three
different approaches, when applied to either the HadCRUT3 or NCDC data, yield a
record which is very similar to GISTEMP. The same approaches applied to the
HadCRUT4 data lead to a greater warming trend owing to the inclusion of the HadSST3
bias corrections.
Taking into account the effect of the El Nino cycle on recent trends,
the warming rate of the largest cluster of datasets is consistent with longer
term trends. If the HadSST3 adjustments are also correct, the underlying
warming rate probably exceeds 0.2°C/decade. There are still known cool biases
in each of these time series.
We have not taken any account the impact of a possible
increase in aerosol cooling. This raises the worrying possibility that the
underlying warming rate has been accelerating, and has been masked by aerosol
emissions and the biases in the temperature series. Further developements on
SST adjustments and aerosol impacts will hopefully clarify the situation.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/the_global_global_warming_signal.html#
It just keeps on keeping on as we watch and know that very little, and nothing effective,
is being done about it. Ecocide is a good word for it.
Another ice age will never occur
“Another ice age will never occur, unless humans go extinct. A single chlorofluorocarbon factory can produce gases with a climate forcing that exceeds the forcing due to Earth orbital perturbations.” James Hansen and several co-authors 5 May, 2011 http://fromjameshansen.blogspot.com/
I imagine many readers will think, yeah, that’s good, who needs all that ice anyway? However, to me, it is the worst case scenario, scary and very sad.
Why, [1] I believe the Earth is an intelligent being and that we are the Earth like leaves are the tree. [2] There is a direct correlation between the age of the Earth and the age of the sun. 65 million years ago there was 10 times more co2 in the atmosphere and the sun was cooler. Over the last million or so years, there has been a rest state of glaciers “ice age” for a little over 90% of a 120,000yr cycle and a short, very quickly rising and falling blip where the temperature shoots up around 6 degrees C. We are in one of those now. If the Earth has decided that this is necessary and desirable, then when we prevent that knowingly, we are not only committing ecocide but in a way risking long term suicide. We cannot possibly know nor can we make a mathematical model that will tell us what impact say a hundred and fifty thousand years without an ice age will have on the Earth’s ability to sustain life as we know it. It is not hard to guess that ALL of the ice and snow will melt over Spring, Summer and fall. The ocean water level MUST rise due to all the tons of longstanding ice that will melt. Meanwhile the sun’s heat continues to rise. Will Earth become like Mars because of Homo sapiens sapiens?
Just because we don’t actually know how and what the earth is thinking or what the Earth knows about being a planet doesn’t mean that we cannot use our intelligence to notice the direction the Earth is going and fit in the best we can. Certainly we would not be intelligent if we worked in opposition, would we?
The World Meterological Organisation
The World Meterological Organisation reports their preliminary results for 2011. It should be regarded as shocking that although we were in a very strong La Niña state which usually results in .10 to .15C cooler temperatures than preceeding years, 2011 was warmer than most recent moderate to strong La Niña years. It seems obvious to me that we will now have an even hotter El Niño period.
“The 10-year average for the period 2002-11, at 0.46°C above the long-term average, equals 2001-10 as the warmest 10-year period on record.”
Artic Sea ice
Arctic sea ice extent was again well below normal in 2011. “Sea ice volume was even further below average and was estimated at a new record low of 4200 cubic kilometres, surpassing the record of 4580 cubic kilometres set in 2010.”
Droughts and floods
There was severe drought in the North American southwest, record-breaking inTexas, with the highest ever recorded temperature for any American state. “The January-October period was the wettest on record for several north-eastern states and for the north-east region as a whole, with precipitation totals widely 30-50% above normal.”
Hurricane Irene in August and Tropical Storm Lee in September brought extreme flooding. “Parts of the Mississippi River experienced the worst floods since 1933, and there was also major flooding in the Missouri River and several Canadian rivers.”
As if this wasn’t enough, “it was also one of the most active tornado seasons on record, with numerous major outbreaks, particularly in April and May. A tornado caused 157 deaths in Joplin,Missouri in May, the deadliest single tornado in the United States since 1947. 2011 (to date) has had the third-greatest number of tornadoes since 1950, after 2004 and 2008, and the fourth-greatest number of deaths (537) on record. There were also a number of major snowstorms, including the most significant October snowstorm on record in the north-eastern states.”
These were Global events
“For the second year in succession,Pakistan experienced severe flooding in 2011. The floods were more localised than in 2010, being largely confined to the southern part of the country. It was the wettest monsoon season on record for the province of Sindh (247% above normal).”
18 December, 2011
I’ve just discovered a great website. Have a look at a personally funded, vastly informative collection of climate change facts. HERE
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BBC News
A Point of View: Climate change and craving a cause
18 December, 2011
The novels of Umberto Eco suggest that if people want to believe something badly enough, they will only hear what they want to hear. This is particularly true in the current debate about global warming, writes Lisa Jardine.
“If you want to believe something badly enough, Eco’s novels suggest, then by selective listening – by editing out the contrary evidence – you will hear what you want to hear. Nowhere is this more true currently than in the debate about global warming.”
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Arctic settles into new phase – warmer, greener, and less ice
Posted on 19 December 2011 by John Hartz
The following is a reprint of a news release posted by the US national Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Dec 1, 2011.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2011-Arctic-Report-Card_NOAA.html
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19 December, 2011
“When faced with climate change, plant species often must “migrate” over multiple generations, as they can only survive, compete and reproduce within the range of climates to which they are evolutionarily and physiologically adapted. While Earth’s plants and animals have evolved to migrate in response to seasonal environmental changes and to even larger transitions, such as the end of the last ice age, they often are not equipped to keep up with the rapidity of modern climate changes that are currently taking place. Human activities, such as agriculture and urbanization, are increasingly destroying Earth’s natural habitats, and frequently block plants and animals from successfully migrating.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Big-Ecosystem-Changes_NASA.html
So it is the rapidity of climate changes. Makes sense, doesn’t it? This makes me wonder if perhaps our species is having trouble adapting to the rapidity of our changes in technology, injections of nanobots, and our moving toward a cyborg existence. Not to mention our survival sans clean, wholesome food and perhaps suffering from the chemicals and Genetically Engineered additives in the stuff we pick off the supermarket shelves.
Are those of us who sense more and more trauma from our capitalistic, materialistic global economy the crazies or is it the other way around?
The United States is lagging behind China and Europe in the clean energy race!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-owens/newt-gingrich-global-warming_b_1229310.html
The U.S.is the only developed nation where believing in climate science is a political issue. Meanwhile, the rest of the world agrees that climate change is real; and has focused on finding innovative, profitable solutions to mitigate its effects.
When it comes to global investment in clean energy, the U.S. now ranks third, behind China and Germany (respectively). But those numbers understate the issue. In fact, China has actually invested three times more than us. This statistic is even more alarming when combined with the Pew Center study that predicts that the global market for clean energy will reach $2.3 trillion by 2030. Since reviving the sluggish economy and restoring our nation’s competitive edge remain key election issues, why are none of the candidates talking about these alarming statistics?
Gingrich’s View on the Environment
In 2007, Mr. Gingrich authored a book titled, A Contract with Our Earth, which called for “bipartisan environmentalism” to save the planet. In 2008, he starred in a commercial alongside Nancy Pelosi, for Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, in which he acknowledged that despite obvious political differences, “we do agree our country must take action to address climate change.”
For the past year, revelations like these about Gingrich have been used by his rivals to label him a moderate. Unfortunately, in an effort to appeal to conservative voters, Gingrich has pulled an about-face. According to a recent survey by The Pew Research Center, only 31 percent of Republicans believe in global warming (compared with 77 percent of Democrats).
This capitulation was never more evident than when Gingrich cut the chapter on climate change from his soon to be released book.
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4 April 2012
CO2 ‘drove end to last ice age’
By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17611404
“Our global temperature looks a lot like the pattern of rising CO2 at the end of the ice age, but the interesting part in particular is that unlike with these Antarctic ice core records, the temperature lags a bit behind the CO2,” said Dr Shakun, who conducted much of the research at Oregon State University but who is now affiliated to Harvard and Columbia universities.
“You put these two points together – the correlation of global temperature and CO2, and the fact that temperature lags behind the CO2 – and it really leaves you thinking that CO2 was the big driver of global warming at the end of the ice age,” he told BBC News.
Sky: I suggest that we look very carefully at this article. The findings are anything but conclusive. The charts showing CO2 and temperature have always shown that they are very closely interwoven. I am suspicious reading the contents of the quote below. “CO2 was the big driver of global warming at the end of the ice age” As Don J. Easterbrook, PhD Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University. Retired, reminded readers recently,[ http://wattsupwiththat.com/] correlation does not prove cause. When two phenomena move together they are often simply driven by the same phenomenon. We must ask, what drove the driver? What made the CO2 shift? Obviously we ask, What made the temperature shift? There is very little doubt that when in the midst of an ice age, a warming trend strong enough to melt glaciers almost obviously comes from an increase of heat retention from the sun. When the sun’s orbit is more circular and the Earth’s tilt allows the sun’s rays to strike the Earth in the North and South more directly and precession favours warmer summers, [not so effective when the Earth’s orbit is nearly circular] then ice in polar areas will melt. It just so happens that CO2 and temperatures are low during an ice age. It is probable that as insolation increases oceans become warmer and thus expel some of the accumulated CO2 into the air. If the high insolation persists, then you get the combination of insolation and the greenhouse effect working together as positive feedbacks. From the graphs, it appears that these positive feedbacks gain momentum and cause an interglacial period in a couple of thousand years or so. There doesn,t appear to be any other factor than a temperature increase that would cause a rise in CO2. Ice core data may not be precise enough to prove which one occurred first.
“Right off the bat, a most surprising conclusion in this paper is that the authors claim that correlation proves cause. Simply showing that CO2 correlates with anything surely doesn’t prove that CO2 was the cause. It’s the same kind of mindset involved with the oft-heard claim that if we have had global warming while CO2 was rising that proves the cause was the rise in CO2.” Don J. Easterbrook, Phd
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
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Large-scale bioenergy from additional harvest of forest biomass is neither sustainable nor greenhouse gas neutral
New research from last week 14/2012
Posted on 11 April 2012 by Ari Jokimäki
http://www.skepticalscience.com/new_research_14_2012.html
Large-scale bioenergy from additional harvest of forest biomass is neither sustainable nor greenhouse gas neutral – Schulze et al. (2012)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1757-1707.2012.01169.x/abstract
Abstract: “Owing to the peculiarities of forest net primary production humans would appropriate ca. 60% of the global increment of woody biomass if forest biomass were to produce 20% of current global primary energy supply. We argue that such an increase in biomass harvest would result in younger forests, lower biomass pools, depleted soil nutrient stocks and a loss of other ecosystem functions.
The proposed strategy is likely to miss its main objective, i.e. to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, because it would result in a reduction of biomass pools that may take decades to centuries to be paid back by fossil fuel substitution, if paid back at all.
Eventually, depleted soil fertility will make the production unsustainable and require fertilization, which in turn increases GHG emissions due to N2O emissions.
Hence, large-scale production of bioenergy from forest biomass is neither sustainable nor GHG neutral.”
Citation: Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Christian Körner, Beverly E. Law, Helmut Haberl, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, GCB Bioenergy, DOI: 10.1111/j.1757-1707.2012.01169.x.
This carbon neutral claim has always sounded suspect. Chopping forest causes a loss of water distribution that limits the ability to sustain new growth. The result points to more desertification. Climate change deniers like to reference millions of years ago when the planet sustained far more CO2 in the air.
We must not forget the climatic conditions which preceded this situation. We cannot expect an increase of CO2 now to develop into anything like what happened millions of years ago. Anyway, unless our thinking changes, water supplies left available will be used to sustain humans and not trees.
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2012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality
Posted on 14 January 2013 by dana1981
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2012-us-temp-record-fox-denial.html#89622
Comment by StBarnabas
“Big oil will loose trillions of dollars in unusable reserves if climate change is accepted, so it’s not surprising they will use any weapon to discredit AGM.”
I had not considered oil reserves and their value.
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Update of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Loss: Exponential?
26 December 2012
James Hansen and Makiko Sato
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121226_GreenlandIceSheetUpdate.pdf
In this paper, Hansen and Sato point out that the IPCC rise in sea level projections need updating. As I understand it, the models used in the past did not take into consideration the possible – Hansen and Sato suggest that it is probable- non-linear increase in ice sheet loss due to human contributions to the rising global temperature due the greenhouse effect. Sea level rises will most probably be far greater than the 1 meter mentioned by the IPCC. Sadly, it will be too late to do anything about it when enough data is collected to convince reluctant sceptics. I suggest that powers that refuse to change the status quo understand this and will at that time just shrug their shoulders and say, in effect, “Too late to do anything now, so let’s just keep on keeping on the way we have been and enjoy what we have while we have it.” Of course, only the 1%ers will be enjoying their lives whilst the rest of us waste away in cold and hunger. You don’t think this can happen?
Of course, what has not been mentioned is the question: How will Gaia maintain stable, life enabling global temperature without glaciers and ice sheets? The Gaia Theory plainly points out that the earth should be a lot warmer due to the expanding heat from an expanding sun over the last 5 billion years. We need to work hard to understand how Gaia operates and cooperate rather than destroy her enabling structures and global health measures.
“A crucial question is how rapidly the Greenland (or Antarctic) ice sheet can disintegrate in response to global warming. Earth’s history makes it clear that burning all fossil fuels would cause eventual sea level rise of tens of meters, thus practically wiping out thousands of cities located on global coast lines. However, there seems to be little political or public interest in what happens next century and beyond, so reports of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) focus on sea level change by 2100, i.e., during the next 87 years.”
“…future sea level rise of greatest concern is that from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which has the potential to reach many meters. Hansen (2005) argues that, if business-as-usual increase of greenhouse gases continue throughout this century, the climate forcing will be so large that non-linear ice sheet disintegration should be expected and multi-meter sea level rise not only possible but likely.”
“Perceived authority2 in the case of ice sheets stems from ice sheet models used to simulate paleoclimate sea level change. However, paleoclimate ice sheet changes were initiated by weak climate forcings changing slowly over thousands of years, not by a forcing as large or rapid as human-made forcing this century.”
“The increasing Greenland mass loss in Fig. 1 can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 and 5 meters by 2090. The dates are 2045 and 2057 for 5-year doubling time and 2055 and 2071 for a 7-year doubling time.”
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5 January 2013
Climate change: Soot’s role underestimated, says study
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Half a degree
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21033078
The research – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50171/abstract
“This new study concludes the dark particles are having a warming effect approximately two thirds that of carbon dioxide, and greater than methane.
‘The large conclusion is that forcing due to black carbon in the atmosphere is larger,’ lead author Sarah Doherty told BBC News.
The value the IPCC gave in their 4th assessment report in 2007 is half of what we are presenting in this report – it’s a little bit shocking,”
This is just one of many instances where the IPCC predictions have been challenged as being far too conservative. One could be quite within the realm of reasonable doubt in concluding that global warming is a far greater threat than governments want their citizens to realize. Polar ice, ocean warming, sea level rises, affect of melting permafrost on methane levels and on and on are just a few examples of instances where the IPCC underestimated.
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