Global Warming

[Ryoki]

But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

...and melting polar caps directly influence both the amount of salt in the oceans and the water temperature. Sounds to me like he's pointing at a symptom and declaring it the cause. But hey, what do i know.

Hope he's right when he sais it will all balance out, i'll believe it when i see it.

[Nightshade]

I was only posting a counter-argument, I don't necessarily believe his statements. I'm not a climatologist, but I can recognize both how complex the system is and the fact that there are definitely changes occurring.
Dr. Gray's attitude strikes me as a bit too 'there's no elephant in the living room, everything will be just fine' for my tastes.

I feel it's always better to err on the side of caution, and the argument I use against the non-technical types is: "Even if we're not causing global warming, why should we continue to burn through all of our finite resources at a ruinous pace, destroying the environment in the process?"

That usually shuts them up.

[R00k]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ions/print

Carbon output rising faster than forecast, says study

· Global warming 'will come sooner and be stronger'
· Chinese growth and loss of natural 'sinks' highlighted

o David Adam, environment correspondent
o The Guardian
o Tuesday October 23 2007

Changing landscape - an iceberg off Ammassalik island, Greenland. Native people are being forced to retrain as their traditional livelihood disappears along with the ice. Photograph: John McConnico/AP

Scientists warned last night that global warming will be "stronger than expected and sooner than expected", after a new analysis showed carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than predicted.

Experts said that the rise was down to soaring economic development in China, and a reduction in the amount of carbon pollution soaked up by the world's land and oceans. It also means human emissions will have to be cut more sharply than predicted to avoid the likely effects.

Corinne Le Quere, a climate expert at the University of East Anglia and British Antarctic Survey, who helped conduct the study, said: "It's bad news because the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has accelerated since 2000 in a way we did not expect. My biggest worry is people are discouraged by this and do nothing. I hope political leaders will act on this, because we need to do something fast."

The study worsens even the gloomy predictions of this year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC, which shared the Nobel peace prize this month with Al Gore, said there were only eight years left to prevent the worst effects of global warming, by acting to curb emissions.

Dr Le Quere said: "We are emitting far more than anticipated when the IPCC scenarios were drawn up in the late 1990s." Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning has risen by an average 2.9% each year since 2000. During the 1990s the annual rise was 0.7%.

The new study explains abnormally high carbon dioxide measurements highlighted by the Guardian in January. At the time, scientists were puzzled why dozens of measuring stations across the world were showing a CO2 spike for 2006, the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase in the greenhouse gas.

Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million (ppm); from 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year; since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 1.9ppm.

The new study, published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says three processes have contributed to this increase: growth in the world economy, heavy use of coal in China, and a weakening of natural "sinks" - forests, seas and soils that absorb carbon.

Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project, which carried out the research, said: "In addition to the growth of global population and wealth, we now know that significant contributions to the growth of atmospheric CO2 arise from the slowdown of natural sinks and the halt to improvements in the carbon intensity of wealth production."

The overall growth of the economy is the only one of the three factors accounted for in scientists' forecasts of climate change, which means the growth in atmospheric CO2 is about 35% larger than they expected. About half of this is down to the Chinese reliance on coal, which has forced up the carbon intensity of the overall world economy since 2000, reversing a trend of increasing energy efficiency since the 1970s. The rest of the rise is explained by the weakening of the natural carbon sinks.

Scientists assume about half of human carbon emissions are reabsorbed into the environment, but computer models predictincreased temperatures will reduce this effect. The PNAS report is the most convincing evidence so far that the global sinks have weakened over the last 50 years, though the large natural variations in carbon exchange between the earth and the atmosphere mean the team can be only 89% certain they have found an effect, short of the usual 95% confidence required to publish scientific findings.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Warmer seas spark extinction worries

Oct 24, 2007 07:02 AM
Seth Borenstein
Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Whenever the world's tropical seas warm several degrees, Earth has experienced mass extinctions over millions of years, according to a first-of-its-kind statistical study of fossil records.

And scientists fear it may be about to happen again – but in a matter of several decades, not tens of millions of years.

Four of the five major extinctions over 520 million years of Earth history have been linked to warmer tropical seas, something that indicates a warmer world overall, according to the new study published Wednesday.

"We found that over the fossil record as a whole, the higher the temperatures have been, the higher the extinctions have been,'' said University of York ecologist Peter Mayhew, the co-author of the peer-reviewed research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal.

Earth is on track to hit that same level of extinction-connected warming in about 100 years, unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, according to top scientists.

A second study, to be presented at a scientific convention Sunday, links high carbon dioxide levels, the chief man-made gas responsible for global warming, to past extinctions.

In the British study, Mayhew and his colleagues looked at temperatures in 10 million-year chunks because fossil records aren't that precise in time measurements. They then compared those to the number of species, the number of species families, and overall biodiversity. They found more biodiversity with lower temperatures and more species dying with higher temperatures.

The researchers examined tropical sea temperatures – the only ones that can be determined from fossil records and go back hundreds of millions of years. They indicate a natural 60 million-year climate cycle that moves from a warmer "greenhouse'' to a cooler "icehouse." The Earth is warming from its current colder period.

Every time the tropical sea temperatures were about 7 degrees warmer than they are now and stayed that way for millions of enough years, there was a die-off. How fast extinctions happen varies in length.

The study linked mass extinctions with higher temperatures, but did not try to establish a cause-and-effect. For example, the most recent mass extinction, the one 65 million years ago that included the die-off of dinosaurs, probably was caused by an asteroid collision as scientists theorize and Mayhew agrees.

But extinctions were likely happening anyway as temperatures were increasing, Mayhew said. Massive volcanic activity, which releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, have also been blamed for the dinosaur extinction.

The author of the second study, which focuses on carbon dioxide, said he does see a cause-and-effect between warmer seas and extinctions.

Peter Ward, a University of Washington biology and paleontology professor, said natural increases in carbon dioxide warmed the air and ocean. The warmer water had less oxygen and spawned more microbes, which in turn spewed toxic hydrogen sulfide into the air and water, killing species.

Ward examined 13 major and minor extinctions in the past and found a common link: rising carbon dioxide levels in the air and falling oxygen levels. Ward's study will be presented Sunday at the Geological Society of America's annual convention in Denver.

Mayhew also found increasing carbon dioxide levels in the air coinciding with die-offs, but concluded that temperatures better predicted biodiversity.

Those higher temperatures that coincided with mass extinctions are about the same level forecast for a century from now if the world continues its growing emissions of greenhouse gases, according to the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In April, the same climate panel of thousands of scientists warned that "20 to 30 per cent of animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction" if temperatures increase by about 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Since we're already seeing threshold changes in ecosystems with the relatively small amount of climate change already taking place, one could expect there's going to be severe transformations," said biologist Thomas Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington.

University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan, who studies how existing species are changing with global warming but wasn't part of either team, said she was "blown away" by the Mayhew study and called it "very convincing.''

"This will give scant comfort to anyone who says that the world has often been warmer than recently so we're just going back to a better world," Pennsylvania State University geological sciences professor Richard Alley said.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Climate woes threaten human survival: UN

UN report says some progress, but not enough in climate change, extinction or destruction of oceans
Oct 25, 2007 08:47 AM
Peter Gorrie
Environment Reporter
Earth’s environment has tumbled downhill to the point where “humanity’s very survival” is at stake, a branch of the United Nations said today.

In the 20 years since the first major report urging sustainable development, progress has been achieved on a few “straightforward” problems such as air and water pollution, according to the latest “Global Outlook” from the United Nations Environment Program.

Despite many conferences and negotiations, “there are no major issues raised (in the 1987 document) for which the foreseeable trends are favourable,” the report warns, citing failures in areas such as climate change, extinction of species and destruction of ocean fish stocks.

Today’s 540-page report is the fourth issued by the UNEP since a commission headed by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland published the groundbreaking call to action, “Our Common Future,” two decades ago.

Brundtland’s commission recommended that, since they are so closely linked, the environment, economic and social issues must be integrated into any decisions about development, so it occurs in a way that protects the environment.

That hasn’t happened. The result, states the new Outlook, is not only that “in too many countries, environmental policy remains secondary to economic growth,” but also that environmental degradation is undermining economic development and “threatens all aspects of human well-being.”

The report’s authors state that their aim “is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for action.” But because the main environmental concerns are complex and there’s little appetite for anything that upsets the status quo, solutions will be hard to come by they say: “The scale of the challenge is huge.”

Among changes since 1987 that have impacted the environment:

Earth’s human population has grown by 34 per cent, from 5 billion to 6.7 billion. That has led to destruction or depletion of water, soil, forests, species and almost every one of the planet’s resources.

International trade has tripled. Its benefits are offset by its contribution to the spread of invasive species in the Great Lakes and almost every other water body.

The world’s average per capita income has risen by 40 per cent, but the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.

Air quality has improved in some places, most noticeably in the rich developed countries, but often because polluting industries have moved to poor nations. Although measures to control ozone-depleting substances are considered a success, the ozone hole continues to grow. And bad indoor or outdoor air is estimated to kill 2 million people each year.

Greenhouse gas emissions have risen by a third, leading to much higher concentrations in the atmosphere and the threat of catastrophic climate change.

The yield from an average hectare of cropland has increased to 2.5 tonnes, from 1.8 tonnes in 1987, but “unsustainable land use is causing degradation, a threat as serious as climate change.”

Intensive ocean fishing is devastating some species very quickly and, increasingly further down the food chain. Worse, the demand for fish is expected to increase by about 1.5 per cent a year.

By 2025, nearly 2 billion people will live in countries faced with absolute shortages of water.

A major obstacle to progress is the resistance to change by governments and large polluting industries, the report states.

Negotiations on environmental agreements frequently fail because of disputes over who is responsible for problems and who should pay for solutions.

That, the report states, is part of one of the major environmental issues: justice.

“The question of justice is perhaps the greatest moral question emerging in relation to environmental change and sustainable development,” the report states.

“Growing evidence indicates that the burden of environmental change is falling far from the greatest consumers of environmental resources, who experience the benefits of development.”

Meanwhile, “people living in poverty in the developing world, suffer the negative effects of environmental degradation.” And, “costs of environmental degradation will be experienced by.....future generations.

“Profound ethical questions are raised when benefits are extracted from the environment by those who do not bear the burden.”

The report is not as certain about solutions as it is about problems.

“We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental problems is increasing faster than our policy responses,” it states. “To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences in the future, we need new policy approaches.”

The basic aim must be to move environmental concerns from the edge to the centre of decision-making. As well, instead of trying to cope with the impacts of environmental damage, the focus should be on reducing the causes, including economic and population growth, resource consumption and social values.

That can be done through measures such as “green” taxes and economic measures that take into account the value of Earth’s resources and the cost of pollution and other damage.

“Determined action now is cheaper than waiting for better solutions to emerge,” the report states.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Commonwealth abandons climate plan
Nov 24, 2007 10:17 AM
Richard Brennan
OTTAWA BUREAU
KAMPALA - The Commonwealth has backed down from imposing binding climate change targets because of push back from member countries, including Canada.

Outgoing secretary general Donald McKinnon said some of the 52 members could not binding target for industrialized polluters.

Instead the Lake Victoria Commonwealth Climate Change Plan points out the seriousness of the earth warming but recommends no targets or timelines for tackling greenhouse gas reduction.

The watered down plan is seen as a victory for Canada which is opposed to setting standards for industrialized polluting countries and not all polluters such as India and China.


Thank you Stephen Harper and Canada.
How utterly retarded.

[Massive Quasars]

Seems no absolute reduction in carbon output across economies will reverse this cycle because of feedback mechanisms that seem to be taking over, it appears to be a necessary but insufficient condition in and of itself. For that reason, I expect geoengineering projects to get a serious hearing in the coming years.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Canada assailed from all sides at climate talks

Dec 10, 2007 03:22 PM
Alexander Panetta
THE CANADIAN PRESS

BALI, Indonesia – Canada was pounded with criticism from every quarter at the UN climate talks today as the summit host and Canadian provincial ministers joined environmentalists, foreign negotiators and scientists in a chorus of condemnation.

They attacked the Canadian government's determination to reject any future climate treaty unless it sets emissions targets for all major polluters.

Environment Minister John Baird held firm to his view that any successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol must set binding conditions on countries like the United States, China and India.

With none of those countries agreeing to accept targets, environmentalists and opposition parties have been accusing Canada's federal Conservatives of poisoning the talks in Bali.

Their legion of critics grew louder Monday.

The UN climate chief all but accused Canada of being an environmental hypocrite.

Yvo de Boer wondered how a rich country like Canada could abandon its own targets under Kyoto, then demand that developing countries like China and India adopt specific obligations.

"I personally find it interesting," the summit host told a news conference.

"To hear Canada just a little while ago indicating it would not meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, and now calling on developing countries to take binding reduction targets ... I wonder how that's going to be received."

Criticisms also came from the Canadian delegation's own backyard.

Environment ministers from Canada's two biggest provinces held a joint news conference in Bali repudiating the position of their national government.

Quebec's Line Beauchamp and Ontario's John Gerretsen made it clear that Ottawa does not speak for their provinces, which together account for almost two-thirds of the national population.

They urged Ottawa to set an example for others.

"If the U.S. is not willing to sign on, does that mean nobody should sign on?" Gerretsen asked rhetorically, with Beauchamp by his side.

"We don't like this attitude."

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty chimed in from Toronto.

"What Canadians want their government to do is lead on this score, and we're not leading – we're following," McGuinty said. ``Worse than that, we're hindering."

Beauchamp summed up her response whenever other countries' delegates ask what Canada is doing.

"People are trying to understand Canada's position," she said. ``But honestly, we're not here to either explain it or defend it."

She said she tells other countries Canada is a federal state in which provinces have some responsibility for environmental policy and are working hard to reduce greenhouse gases.

Ottawa insists it works with the provinces, having already handed them hundreds of millions for green initiatives and introduced mandatory targets for industry.

Baird struck a conciliatory tone when told of de Boer's comments. He agreed with the UN climate chief that Canada's record is nothing to crow about.

Emissions have skyrocketed as successive Canadian governments have, since 1988, set grand targets for reducing them without providing a realistic plan to make it happen. Factors like steady population growth, a booming economy, oil development and a frigid energy-hungry climate have hampered those efforts.

"I agree with (de Boer)," Baird said.

"Canada's talked the talk, but it hasn't walked the walk ... I can appreciate when people look at the statistics, the huge increase that we've seen, they're natural to be skeptical."

"We're not satisfied with what Canada's done over the last 10 years. We're not going to play politics with the past. We're going to focus on what we will do in the future."

Canadian officials said Baird met with de Boer and explained that Canada is not holding out for a deal that would impose identical binding targets on everyone.

They said Canada doesn't expect all countries to be held to the same targets as rich ones. Canada agrees that the burgeoning economies of countries like China and India will require more flexibility and longer-term targets.

But the Tories also point to statistics that say greenhouse gases would continue surging unless those fast-growing countries move to reduce them.

Federal officials also spoke about strategies for negotiations.

Why, they asked, would Canada promise from the outset of negotiations – ones which could take years – to sign onto any deal put forward?

One official described that approach as the kiss of death for any leverage Canada could hope to wield as in talks for a post-2012 deal to succeed Kyoto.

The Conservatives say they want to avoid the trap the previous Liberal government fell into in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.

Many countries played hardball back then and got considerably softer targets. Australia, for instance, was allowed to increase greenhouse gas emissions under Kyoto. Brazil, China, and India faced no targets.

In contrast, Canadian negotiators went to Kyoto with simple instructions from then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien: get a deal and make sure that Canada outdoes the Americans.

But the Canadians were left slack-jawed when the U.S. delegation, led by then-Vice-President Al Gore, suddenly agreed to a seven-per-cent reduction from 1990 emission levels.

Canada settled for a six-per-cent target, which it has never come close to reaching. In a final twist, U.S. President George W. Bush pulled his country out of the treaty after taking office in 2001.

On Monday, Gore received a Nobel Prize for his work on climate change. One of his fellow recipients is blasting Canada.

The head of the UN's Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, called Canada's Conservatives a government of climate-change skeptics.

The head of the German delegation said the Canadian position is not constructive.

A senior Chinese diplomat has declared the Canadians and Japanese the most uncooperative of all countries.

And a hall of shame at the conference site – where environmental groups hand out a so-called fossil award for each day's three worst performers – is sprinkled with maple leaves.

The word "Canada" and the national flag are plastered across the board of infamy in the main conference hall. Canada took the first, second and third-place fossil mention on the same day last weekend.

One European journalist who spotted a group of Canadian colleagues quipped: "How does it feel to be the bad guy?"

Someone appears determined to make mischief for the Canadian government at Bali.

The government plans to make a feel-good funding announcement every day of the summit, but the entire schedule has been leaked to the opposition Liberals.

An aide to Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion displayed a list of planned announcements on his Blackberry.

The government has already delivered on $7.5 million in aid for poor countries and $89.5 million for Canadian communities struggling to adapt to climate-related problems.

The Liberals are confident that the Conservatives will next announce a $1.5 million payment to the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, and $15 million for green technology.

The Dion aide pointed out that the $89.5 million announcement comes after the Conservatives killed a similar adaptation program upon taking office.

"It's a perfect announcement for an environmental summit," he said. "They're recycling."

[seremtan]

and that arctic drilling is going to make it worse

gg canucks

[TheChibi]

apparently all global warming is caused by the hot air scared? is always blowing around

[Dark Metal]

I give that a 5/10

[TheChibi]

harsh

[Dark Metal]

There was much truth in your statement, however it's distinct lack of funny mired it to mediocrity.

[TheChibi]

waiting for better.

[seremtan]

yeah me too

[Ryoki]

Shell, BP move away from renewable energy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/11/oil.bp

[seremtan]

renewable schenewable

read this: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php? ... icle/4173/

[AmIdYfReAk]

i wonder if this will change the Buy-back that wind energy has..

A few local people as well as meny more people around the world baught fill size Windmill's to power there house's, and they are selling the Energy back to the power company.

[Fender]

"baught fill size Windmill's to power there house's"
Normally I don't give you grief Amidy... but come on man.

[R00k]

It seems to me that heat and solar power should be the prime contenders for alternative energy.

The crisis we are facing is that too much heat from the sun is being trapped in our atmosphere.

We have too much heat from the sun..... We need energy that isn't carbon-based...... I'm sure I'm oversimplifying, but isn't the avenue we should be taking staring us in the face here?

[shadd_]

fields of magnifying glasses focused on a single point to power steam turbines?

[seremtan]

isn't the avenue we should be taking staring us in the face here?

yes, it is:

[R00k]

All I see is the word "Image."

edit: I've been seeing that a lot here lately. I can hit quote, grab the path and go straight to the pic to see it though.

Does the forum just put that there as a placeholder when images can't be hot-linked or something?

[MKJ]

rofl.no

[Ryoki]

renewable schenewable

read this: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php? ... icle/4173/

Point well taken. To be honest i have very little faith in the effectiveness of any of the 'renewable' energy proposals out there. From biofuel to solar energy to hydrogen, it's all either ineffective or it would take many years of research and developement for it to implement. Which is time we don't have.

Uranium is not in short supply – contrary to rumour. There is as much uranium in the ground as there is tin. There has been little new uranium exploration for 20 years, but already enough uranium has been discovered to last at least until the end of the century at current levels of use.

All issues of safety and nuclear waste aside, from what i've read a massive switch from fossile fuels to nuclear power can't be the solution to the looming energy crisis because there's simply not enough uranium to keep the world supplied for more than a few decades, even if demand would not rise (which it is, rapidly). It would also take many years to build the number of reactors we'd need to keep the world supplied with enough power, by which time it may already be too late and we'll have a full blown energy crisis going on (which means you can forget about building high tech structures).

Wonder if our africa-based canadian uranium finder friend can shed some light on how rare uranium is, exactly. Perhaps the stuff i read on how rare it is isn't correct...