Scientists say united on global warming, at odds with public view

2013-5-16 – 4:29 pm

(Reuters) – Ninety-seven percent of scientists say global warming is mainly man-made but a wide public belief that experts are divided is making it harder to gain support for policies to curb climate change, an international study showed on Thursday.

The report found an overwhelming view among scientists that human activity, led by the use of fossil fuels, was the main cause of rising temperatures in recent decades.

“There is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary,” said John Cook of the University of Queensland in Australia, who led the study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

“There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception,” he said in a statement. “When people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they’re more likely to support policies that take action on it.”

Global average surface temperatures have risen by 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4F) since the Industrial Revolution.

Experts in Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada studied 4,000 summaries of peer-reviewed papers in journals giving a view about climate change since the early 1990s and found that 97 percent said it was mainly caused by humans.

They also asked authors for their views and found a 97 percent conviction from replies covering 2,000 papers. The data will be released at (www.skepticalscience.com).

The report said it was the biggest review so far of scientific opinion on climate change.

“If people disagree with what we’ve found we want to know,” said Mark Richardson of the University of Reading in England, one of the authors of the study that looked at English-language studies by authors in more than 90 nations.

Another co-author, Dana Nuccitelli of Skeptical Science, said she was encouraging scientists to stress the consensus “at every opportunity, particularly in media interviews”.

Opinion polls in some countries show widespread belief that scientists disagree about whether climate change is caused by human activities or is part of natural swings such as in the sun’s output.

A survey by the U.S. Pew Research Center published in October last year found 45 percent of Americans said “Yes” when asked: “Do scientists agree Earth is getting warmer because of human activity?” Forty-three percent said “No”.

Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, hit 400 parts per million in the atmosphere last week, the highest in perhaps 3 million years.

Governments have agreed to work out, by the end of 2015, a deal to slow climate change that a U.N. panel of experts says will cause more floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, conflict, knowledge, world | Tagged | Comments (0)

You Are Here

2013-5-11 – 6:01 pm

11 MAY 2013

As reported in the NYTimes and numerous other sources yesterday, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, reached an average daily level of 400 parts per million (ppm).

“The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

” …. Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies. China is now the biggest emitter, but Americans have been consuming fossil fuels for far longer, and experts say the United States is more responsible than any other nation for the high level.

” The new measurement came from analyzers atop Mauna Loa, the volcano on the big island of Hawaii that has been ground zero for monitoring the worldwide trend on carbon dioxide. Devices there sample clean, crisp air that has blown thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, producing a record of rising carbon dioxide levels that has been closely tracked for half a century.

” …. From studying air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists know that going back 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level oscillated in a tight band, from about 180 ppm in the depths of the ice ages to about 280 ppm during the warm periods between. The evidence shows that global temperature and CO2 levels are tightly linked.

“For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was roughly stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far greater changes in the future.

“Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geologic research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.”

Here is an interactive map on which you can choose location and sea level rise, then observe the effect.

The Times report is conservative in implying that reaching the 400 ppm threshold is a moment of sudden illumination. In fact, we have been steadily approaching that threshold for decades, and since at least the early 1980s climate scientists have issued warnings about the rising global temperatures, melting glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels, and unpredictable severe weather events which we are already witnessing.

Further, other sources report that according to research reported in the journal Science, “Unchecked burning of fossil fuels has driven carbon dioxide to levels [at which] temperatures were 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today, lush forests covered the tundra, and sea levels were up to 40 meters [131 feet] higher than today.”

It is a regrettable trait of our species (and of American culture in particular) to react to crisis, rather than thinking ahead or behaving proactively. A prime example ~ the United States failure to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which set binding obligations on industrialized nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. 191 nations and the European Union are members of the protocol. Had we done so, American industries would have had a head start in developing the technology needed to operate cleanly. Further, we have lagged behind other nations in deploying alternative, renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal), and in reducing or eliminating our heavy reliance on polluting fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas).

So what is to be done, now that we face the monster we’ve created? A climate research website called Climate Nexus published a timely graph which portrays four alternatives ~

1. No action

Catastrophic and unpredictable impacts on entire human population.
Emissions continue indefinitely. Temperatures rise more than 6 degrees Celsius (more than 16 degrees Fahrenheit).

2. Delayed action

Mass migrations from areas that are now uninhabitable.
Very worst heat waves now widespread.
Mass extinctions.
Carbon dioxide concentrations rise past 700 ppm, with a warming impact of 4.5 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit). Global emissions do not peak until 2080.

3. Some action

Extreme heat waves and high summer temperatures become much more common.
Oceans acidify, harming corals and shellfish.
More extreme weather, with damages costing much more than mitigation.
Carbon dioxide concentration stabilizes at 550 ppm, with a warming impact of 3.6 degrees Celsius (10 degrees Fahrenheit). Global emissions peak in 2040. This could happen if all country pledges are met.

4. Decisive action

Extreme weather events increase in frequency and intensity.
Sea level rise threatens some coastal cities.
Carbon dioxide concentration eventually stabilizes around 350 ppm (considered a safe level by many) and temperature rises less than 2 degrees Celsius (3-4 degrees Fahrenheit). Global emissions peak in 2020. This would require most new energy investments to go to clean energy, and fossil fuels to be phased out.

So. Here we are, at 400 ppm carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Should we continue merrily in denial, playing Russian roulette with the planet and all its life forms? Or should we get serious in our role as stewards of the planet, and take decisive action? I’m for the latter. If you are too, it’s time to become a militant activist. Start by using this link to contact your elected state and federal officials, explain the urgency of the problem (the Climate Nexus graph makes a good reference), and demand that addressing climate change be placed at the top of every legislative and executive priority list.

If you wish to engage in civil protest to call attention to the damage being done by existing and proposed coal, oil, and natural gas projects, that is your right.

POSTED BY RYS AT 5/11/2013 03:22:00 PM

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, investigation, safety, world | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Siberian permafrost thaw warning

2013-2-23 – 2:53 pm

Siberian permafrost thaw warning sparked by cave data

The caves record changing conditions over hundreds of thousands of years

Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5C could see permafrost thaw over a large area of Siberia.

A study shows that more than a trillion tonnes of the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane could be released into the atmosphere as a result.

An international team has published details in the journal Science.

The evidence comes from analysis of stalactites and stalagmites in caves along the “permafrost frontier”.

This is where ground begins to be permanently frozen in layers that can be tens to hundreds of metres thick.

Stalactites and stalagmites only grow when liquid rainwater and snow melt drip into the caves.

So these formations record 500,000 years of changing permafrost conditions – including warmer periods similar to the climate of today.

Thawing of permafrost would have huge implications for ecosystems, says the team
The records from a particularly warm period called Marine Isotopic Stage 11, which occurred around 400,000 years ago, suggest that warming of 1.5C compared to the present is enough to cause substantial thawing of permafrost – even in areas far north from its present-day southern limit.

“The stalactites and stalagmites from these caves are a way of looking back in time to see how warm periods similar to our modern climate affect how far permafrost extends across Siberia,” said Dr Anton Vaks from the University of Oxford.

“As permafrost covers 24% of the land surface of the Northern Hemisphere, significant thawing could affect vast areas and release (billions of tonnes) of carbon.”

He added: “‘This has huge implications for ecosystems in the region, and for aspects of the human environment.

“For instance, natural gas facilities in the region, as well as power lines, roads, railways and buildings are all built on permafrost and are vulnerable to thawing. Such a thaw could damage this infrastructure with obvious economic implications.”

And the BBC warns that Siberia’s rapid thaw already is occurring.

The world’s largest frozen peat bog is melting, which could speed the rate of global warming, New Scientist reports.

The huge expanse of western Siberia is thawing for the first time since its formation, 11,000 years ago.

The area, which is the size of France and Germany combined, could release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

This could potentially act as a tipping point, causing global warming to snowball, scientists fear.

The situation is an “ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming,” researcher Sergei Kirpotin, of Tomsk State University, Russia, told New Scientist magazine.

The whole western Siberian sub-Arctic region has started to thaw, he added, and this “has all happened in the last three or four years”.

Warming fast

Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere on the planet, with average temperatures increasing by about 3C in the last 40 years.

The warming is believed to be due to a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical atmospheric phenomenon known as the Arctic oscillation and feedbacks caused by melting ice.

“ When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it’s unstoppable ” David Viner, climate scientist.

The 11,000-year-old bogs contain billions of tonnes of methane, most of which has been trapped in permafrost and deeper ice-like structures called clathrates.
But if the bogs melt, there is a big risk their hefty methane load could be dumped into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming.

Scientists have reacted with alarm at the finding, warning that future global temperature predictions may have to be revised.

“When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it’s unstoppable,” David Viner, of the University of East Anglia, UK, told the Guardian newspaper. “There are no brakes you can apply.

“This is a big deal because you can’t put the permafrost back once it’s gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing.”

The intergovernmental panel on climate change speculated in 2001 that global temperatures would rise between 1.4C and 5.8C between 1990 and 2100.

However these estimates only considered global warming sparked by known greenhouse gas emissions.

“These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren’t known about then,” Dr Viner said. “They had no idea how much they would add to global warming.”

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, disasters, ecology, economics | Tagged | Comments Off

How Climate Change is destroying Life on the Planet as We know It.

2013-2-22 – 10:17 am

Climate-Change
Thank-you learnstuff.com for your informative images. I wish I could share your optimism that it isn’t too late.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate | Tagged | Comments Off

Predator and Reaper

2013-2-16 – 2:34 pm

Phil Mershon writes about the use of drones by the United States.

All of this is significant because it appears that the face of war, or at least the mode of preferred combat, is no combat at all, merely strikes that go unanswered, or at least answered in ways that do not involve the adversary being able to directly respond. According to Peter Singer of the Brookings Institute’s 21st Century Defense Initiative, “Many [in the military] have pushed for [drones] to play a greater role as the strikes slowly morphed from isolated, covert events into a regularized air war.”
Since the Obama Presidency began in 2009, there have been 260 attacks of Predator or Reaper drones in Pakistan alone. Because the CIA is responsible for these attacks, the resulting casualty counts have not been forthcoming.

Predator drone

A group calling itself The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that it has found that since Obama took office, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. They go on to say that a three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. (The expert reporter at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is a fellow named Chris Woods. The Bureau says its four pillars of investigation are human rights, corporate corruption, health and open society.)
While I am not an apologist for the Obama Administration, I would guess that if pressed they would argue that the use of drones is preferable to traditional combat, both in the precision of its effectiveness and in the low incidence of fatalities of American troops. To this I can only say, “Well, yeah, sure.” The problems, however, begin with the presumed virtues, something that is endemic to most air attacks: The person launching the attack is removed from the horrors of his or her behavior, thereby lessening the impact of any moral compunctions against committing the attack. (On the other hand, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, most unmanned aircraft flown by the U.S. military require not just a ground-based “pilot,” but also a platoon of surveillance analysts (approximately 19 per drone), sensor operators, and a maintenance crew. Some 168 people are required to keep a Predator drone aloft — and 180 for its larger cousin, the Reaper — compared with roughly 100 people for an F-16 fighter jet. To keep up with the demand, the Air Force has trained more drone operators than pilots for the past two years. The upside is that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, drones “are usually less expensive than manned aircraft”–$15 million for a Global Hawk versus about $55 million for a new F-16– though costly sensors and excessive crashes can negate the difference.) Furthermore, since we only have the CIA’s word for the effectiveness as well as the precision, we really have no credible way of determining how many, if any, civilian casualties are happening. The very nature of covert activity is the necessity of lying, so perhaps I may be forgiven for questioning the veracity of the Agency. The final problem, of course, lies in the discretion over who to kill and that is where the memo referenced above comes in handy. When dealing in such curious and imprecise terms as “imminent,” “activities,” “combatant” and “high ranking U.S. official,” the possibility arises that drones could very well be used against “the usual suspects,” as well as against domestic enemies within U.S. borders.

By jcwinnie | Posted in attack, cybernetics, human rights, military, politics, violence, war | Tagged , , | Comments Off

Preference for a carbon tax to cutting spending for deficit reduction

2013-2-4 – 6:59 pm

Jeff Spross reports for Climate Change that “a recent poll found Americans would prefer a carbon tax to cutting spending for deficit reduction by a huge margin.”

Carbon Tax rally

Commissioned by Friends of the Earth and conducted by the Mellman Group in December, the poll is the latest evidence that actions on climate change — and efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions specifically — are not the inevitable political losers assumed by beltway pundits. Another recent study by The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication determined that bipartisan majorities of voters felt action on global warming should be a priority, would consider a politicians’ views on the matter when voting, and support regulating carbon as a pollutant.

Among other things, the Friends of the Earth poll found that on the carbon tax:

Voters overwhelmingly prefer it to cutting spending. When presented with two options for reducing the deficit — a carbon tax on “big polluters such as oil, gas, and other companies,” versus spending cuts for “programs like education, Social Security, Medicare and environmental protection” — 67 percent favored the carbon tax. 59 percent favored it “strongly.”

Voters support it regardless of how it’s used. If revenue from the carbon tax is used to close the budget deficit, 70 percent favored a carbon tax, with 51 percent favoring it “strongly.” If revenue was to both shore up the budget and invest in clean energy jobs and programs to fight climate change, 72 percent favored the tax, with 54 percent in the “strongly” camp.

Voters support it even after hearing the counter-arguments. After being presented with suggestions that “this is the wrong time to pass a new tax on every business and consumer in America,” that consumers will pay higher prices for gas and groceries, and that it might even fail to reduce emissions, over two-thirds of voters still favored the carbon tax — and once again, most who favored it did so “strongly.”

Voters support it even when they’re Republican. Not surprisingly, 93 percent of Democrats favored a carbon tax. What was surprising was that 66 percent of Republicans did.
Another poll in December 2012, sponsored by the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund and conducted by YouGov, uncovered very similar numbers: When presented with various options for reducing $900 billion from the deficit by 2022, 56 percent favored a carbon tax that would bring in $159 billion in revenue over that time period — and favored it even with the knowledge it would raise the average cost of living by about $600 a year. The carbon tax option as favored over cutting Medicare benefits (34 percent) or cutting Social Security benefits (27 percent), and even favored over repealing ObamaCare (52 percent).

These results really should not be that surprising. While voters often support “cutting spending” or “shrinking government” in the abstract, multiple polls over the last few years have found that as soon as voters are asked about specific programs that meet concrete and particular needs, the enthusiasm for spending cuts vanishes entirely. Context matters enormously, and in the real world policies are always considered and passed in lieu of alternatives. So simply asking voters their opinion on a policy in a vacuum does not provide a useful picture of their preferences. As Slate pointed out when discussing the YouGov poll, “People may hate the idea of a carbon tax in the abstract, but when faced with the alternatives for raising revenue, more than half of them support it.”

Meanwhile, the same shift is occurring internationally as well: In Britain, the number of voters there who see themselves as worse off under a carbon tax dropped in mid-2012 to a new low of 38 percent.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, economics, patterns, policy, politics | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Last Ape Standing

2013-2-1 – 8:47 am

Popular Science writes: “The big question now is, can we survive long enough to become the next humans?” This article was an excerpt with permission from Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived written by Chip Walter. He writes:

“Given evolution’s trajectory, short of another asteroid collision or global cataclysm, we will almost certainly become augmented versions of our current selves. That has been the trend for seven million years. Apes increasingly endowed with more intelligence, and more tools, becoming simultaneously wiser and more lethal. The question now is, can we survive… ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human?”

Blowing that CO2 as fast as we can

Well, it makes for gentle science fiction to drop the occurence of a global cataclysm. To be sure, climate change is cataclysmic, it just will occur on more than human span of time. And, it certainly is easier to write about it in the future than to explore the recent past when we humans wrote off the possibility of saving life on the planet as we know it.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, danger, geology, history | Tagged | Comments Off

A Litany of 2012 Weather Records

2013-1-22 – 3:37 pm

Think 2012 across the contiguous U.S. was hellishly hot and, all in all, a hellacious weather year?

The data, compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NOAA/NCDC) bear you out.

Put it down as “a historic year for extreme weather” involving most everything other than tornado activity, and, from the temperature standpoint, the “the warmest year on record” for the 48 mainland states. Average temperatures across the country didn’t just exceed the 20th Century average or the previous warmest year of 1998: they shattered them, besting (or is it “worsting”?) the 20th Century average by 3.2 degrees F and coming in at an average temperature of 55.3 degrees F. Compared with the previous warmest year of 1998, 2012 was a full 1 degree F warmer.

For good measure, data junkies can throw in that the average precipitation total of 26.57 inches for the contiguous U.S. — 2.57 inches below average — made for the 15th driest year on record for the nation. With more than three-fifths of the nation in drought in July, wildfires in the West charred 9.2 million acres, the third highest on record. The “Breadbasket” region of the Mountain West, Great Plains, and Midwest took the hardest hit from the prolonged, widespread and — and this is important even if it’s slipped off the nation’s newspaper front pages — continuing drought.

The numbers say it all:

  • All 48 contiguous states had above-average annual temperatures in 2012, and 19 set their own statewide records while another 26 placed in the top 10.
  • It was the fourth warmest winter — December 2011-February 2012 — on record, with “many locations experiencing near-record low snowfall totals.” Pity the would-be skiers yearning to schuss in the Central and Southern Rockies: their snow pack totaled less than half of normal.
  • The warmest March on record, followed by the fourth warmest April and the second warmest May, led to the warmest spring on record — 2 degrees F warmer than the previous record spring. The resulting early growing season was dealt a setback by the increased loss of water from soils resulting from lower snow packs and dryness carrying forward from 2011.
  • With July average temperatures of 76.9 degrees F across the contiguous states, the month became the hottest month ever observed, 3.6 degrees F above the average for the 48 states. On the heels of June’s being the eighth warmest, the 73.8 degrees F made for the second hottest summer on record. Some 99 million people sweltered in 10 or more days of summer temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
  • Things let up somewhat in fall and December, with warmth in the western U.S. offsetting cooler temperatures in the eastern half of the country. Even with the somewhat more normal warmth in the last four months of 2012, the year as a whole across the 48 states made 2012 “the record warmest year by a wide margin.”
  • Above-average wildfire activity during 2012 burned about 9.2 million acres, the third most in the 13 years such activity has been tracked. The Waldo Canyon fire near Colorado Springs destroyed some 350 homes, making it the most destructive fire on record for Colorado. New Mexico’s Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire burned 300,000 acres, making it the largest on record for that state.

Alaska’s 2012 was cooler and slightly wetter than normal for the state, ending up about 2.3 degrees F cooler than average, and with annual precipitation 9.2 percent above average.

For Hawaii, 2012 was basically a year of continued drought. About 47.4 percent of the Aloha State had moderate-to-exceptional drought early in the year, and by the end of 2012, those drought levels had expanded to 63.3 percent of the state.

And now for a little good news: 2012 tornado activity was below the average of about 1,200 for the years 1991 to 2010. The total of fewer than 1,000 tornadoes is likely to give 2012 the fewest since 2002. A little something to be thankful for in thinking back to the 2012 weather year that was.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate | Tagged | Comments Off

Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services

2013-1-5 – 6:54 pm

Scientists Report Climate Impact on Animals, Ecosystems is a report on a wide-ranging study — Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Ecosystem Services.

ok

“Climate changes may disrupt the delicate balance in the web of life that binds the species of individual ecosystems,” states the authors. Since they are paid in American dollars they can say “may”.

OTOH (On The Other Hand) Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist at the National Wildlife Federation and a lead author on the report, states “The sorts of climate impacts that the report details for the United States absolutely are affecting species and ecosystems around the world.” Of course, she does this in an email response to an inquiry rather than in the report. After all, the American scientists want to continue with their research and it is quite early in the Anthropocene.

So, M.I.T. climate scientist Kerry Emanuel can still sell an updated edition of “What We Know About Climate Change,” which he first wrote in 2007 to “explain” the science of global warming.

By jcwinnie | Posted in climate, ecology, journalism, knowledge | Tagged | Comments (3)

Extreme Drought in September corresponds with Political Loss in November

2012-11-10 – 1:23 pm

It is interesting, Cynthia, to compare the states that encountered extreme drought in September with the states that went for Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Specifically, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska in the center of the United States went for Mitt. Georgia also experienced extreme drought in the Southern most part of the state and surprisingly went for Mitt.

My Republican neighbors had said hello on the Monday before the election. The man, Jim, speaking, noted that he already had figured my spouse would vote for Obama. I had a chance to counteract her voting. I screamed.

My cry was one of frustration; I considered it “adulting”, i.e., sending a serious message in a joking way. The serious message was that I was very much terrified by the possibility that Romney / Ryan would win. And, I said something to that effect after my scream stopped.

While I had made no reservations, I had given more than a passing thought to leaving the country, if the outcome had been different. Not that Obama’s win is all that significant. To me, Obamas’s win means that the fascists will have to continue being more covert and not so overt about corporate takeover of the country.

A good friend visited over the weekend and I tried to explain my position. I said that some people see my position as socialist, that I am against profit-making. I said to him that I was in favor of people profiting from their efforts, and I opposed such when it became superlative, that is, when making more and more money supersedes stopping the destruction of life on the Planet as we know it.

I don’t know whether he agreed with me. He obviously disagreed with my No Coal stance (Facebook Badge). Still it felt good expressing my opinions.

By jcwinnie | Posted in analysis, conflict, ecology, environment, politics, safety, world | Tagged , , , | Comments Off
Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE