"Do we really want to embark on a planetary experiment with an unknown outcome? Do we want to simply allow climate change to happen and then calmly observe the storms to see whether or not they're actually getting worse?"
Der Spiegel 17 Aug 2010The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma — and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people.In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming
The summer’s heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record.
Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.
The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably ...
NYT 15 Aug 2010 Eating the Future
Flooding rated as worst climate change threat facing UK
The first comprehensive climate change risk assessment for the UK identifies hundreds of ways rising global temperatures will have an impact if no action is taken.
They include the financial damage caused by flooding, which would increase to £2bn-£10bn a year by 2080, more deaths in heatwaves, and large-scale water shortages by mid-century ...
Scientists and other experts, led by Defra, identified 700 impacts of climate change in the UK, including the possibility of refugees arriving from wars over dwindling water and food ...
Gdn 26 Jan 2012 Eating the Future Log Is the Coalition eco-friendly?
Climate Change The End of Growth
A Tempestuous Year
Is there a connection between last year’s extreme weather events and global warming?
The answers might be a lot clearer if the Republicans in Congress were less hostile to climate change research.
A typical year in the United States features three or four weather disasters costing more than $1 billion.
In 2009 there were nine.
Last year brought a dozen, at a cost of $52 billion, making it the most extreme year for weather since accurate record keeping began in the 19th century.
There was drought in the Southwest while Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee destroyed homes and rerouted rivers in the Northeast.
The most severe tornado ever recorded, and the most tornadoes recorded in a single month, flailed the Southeast. Floods drowned the Midwest.
Climate researchers have been cautious about linking individual events to rising global temperatures.
Yet the evidence tells us the earth is warming, largely as a result of the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity.
And many of last year’s extreme weather events were consistent with the effects of climate change.
A warming atmosphere will hold more water, supplying the fuel for storms; steadily rising temperatures are likely to promote droughts.
Climate is a complex subject, and definitive answers will require more study.
But as Justin Gillis recently noted in The Times, the political climate for that is not favorable.
House Republicans, many of whom reject the scientific consensus about the human causes of global warming, took aim at almost every program that had to do with global warming.
Senate negotiators managed to protect most in the 2012 budget, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the hub of much of the government’s research into the effects of climate change on weather — took a big hit.
NYT 01 Jan 2012Newt Gingrich Kills Climate Science Chapter ...
Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed ...
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.
One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change ...
Ind 13 Dec 2011Russia oil rig capsizes off Sakhalin
Melting ice is Earth's warning signal
Glaciers
Polar Regions
Climate fund talks in disarray as US refuses to sign deal
Emergency talks are continuing this morning in a bid to rescue a proposed climate fund which is central to securing meaningful resolutions from the UN's climate change conference in Durban.
There is still significant disagreement over how to run the Green Climate Fund, intended to channel billions of pounds to help poorer countries take on climate change, with the US and Saudi Arabia said to be standing in the way ...
Yesterday, Lord Prescott, the Rapporteur on Climate Change for the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe, called for the Kyoto Protocol to be put on hold to ensure delegates had time to decide on new measures ...
Launching the Council of Europe's report: "Stop the Clock, Save our Planet," Lord Prescott called Canada, which failed to meet its targets, a "disgrace" ...
"It seems the US and Canada are still slaves to big oil and their own vested interests, preserving their status quo while obstructing the efforts of others ...
Ind 03 Dec 2011 Durban COP17 Eating the Future Last Nation Standing
Offsite Links
Deadlock looms over CO2 cuts as Durban summit begins
It will involve 10,000 officials from 194 countries in a massive, complex negotiation.
But pessimism is in the air as the world community comes together again on Monday to try to negotiate a new deal on climate change ...
The looming deadlock is all the more critical because the latest figures on CO2 show emissions soaring above what anyone contemplated four years ago, when the last report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was produced.
Global CO2 emissions in 2010 reached 33.51 billion tonnes, up from 31.63 billion in 2009 – an increase of nearly 6 per cent, believed to be the highest-ever percentage increase year on year ...
Ind 26 Nov 2011 Durban COP17 Eating the FutureRecord rise in greenhouse gases
Thai flood leaves unemployment crisis in its wake
C4 balanced their report on the disaster by acknowledging the hazards which the flooded IT factories were putting into the environment. The Daily Mail's report concentrated solely on the plight of the tourists, however. That such extreme weather events are increasing is off the corporate radar.
Flood damaged blue chip companies consider quitting Thailand threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs ...
Environmental groups say the water now being pumped out of industrial parks is contaminated.
Locals will suffer they say - although the government says it is safe.
We were taken to a local encampment, perched above the deluge, and no one was happy.
The water was black and smelly said one woman - like something was rotting.
An elder walked us to round the back of the high tech estate - and showed us bags marked Hazardous Waste - cast adrift in the grounds of a metal factory ...
C4 News 20 Nov 2011alixirEating the Future
25 October 2011 1:10PM
What no more hard disk production because of devastating flooding?!
In the meantime, a friend in Bankok says that supermarkets are empty and distribution is at a stand-still.
The following household products have all been rationed: water, toilet paper, sand, bricks, inflatable dinghies, buckets, pumps, candles, torches, lamps, batteries, blankets, waterproofing materials, toothbrushes and toothpaste.
The US has sent ships ready to assist but the two main Thai government parties can't agree what to do ... Gdn 25 Oct 2011
Trashing Democracy, Society, EnvironmentTourists left stranded as severe flooding strikes Thailand
Extreme weather will strike as climate change takes hold
Flooding and droughts leave companies with losses – but many unprepared
Natural disasters and extreme weather
'Hide the decline' revisited
Did the world suddenly get 2C colder in April 2010, and then return to its previous balmy state in May?
Of course not. And when you go into the Berkeley dataset, you see that the last two readings it gives for 2010 - April and May - come with huge uncertainties attached, nearly 3C in fact, way bigger than anything else in their records.
I suspected - and when I spoke to Prof Muller on Monday, he confirmed it - that this was down to a dearth of readings.
Blogger Nick Stokes delved more deeply than I did, and found out that the only data for those two months came from 47 weather stations in Antarctica.
Simply put, at the time Berkeley did their analysis, they had not taken delivery of anywhere enough data to say anything meaningful about those two months.
GWPF and the Mail neither mention the huge uncertainties, nor put them on their graph ...
BBC NEWS 02 Nov 2011 Eating the Future Log
The AnthropoceneGWPF is wrong, warming has not stopped
Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth
Global warming 'confirmed' by independent study
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
China 'won't follow US' on carbon emissions
China will not allow its carbon dioxide emissions per person to reach levels seen in the US, according to the minister in charge of climate policy.
Xie Zhenhua, vice chair of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that to let emissions rise that high would be a "disaster for the world" ...
... the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) put China's annual emissions at 6.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person, compared to the US figure of 16.9 tonnes ...
But the Chinese number has tripled since 1990, says the JRC - and could rise to US levels within six years.
However, Mr Xie ... said China would not "follow the path of the US" and allow per-capita emissions to rise that high ...
BBC NEWS 25 Oct 2011Emission pathways consistent with a 2°C global temperature limit
We find that in the set of scenarios with a ‘likely’ (greater than 66%) chance of staying below 2°C, emissions peak between 2010 and 2020 and fall to a median level of 44Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2020 (compared with estimated median emissions across the scenario set of 48Gt of CO2 equivalent in 2010).
Our analysis confirms that if the mechanisms needed to enable an early peak in global emissions followed by steep reductions are not put in place, there is a significant risk that the 2°C target will not be achieved.
Nature Climate Change 23 October 2011Global CO2 emissions soar despite efforts by industrialised countries
Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 45 % between 1990 and 2010, reaching an all-time high of 33 billion tonnes in 2010 ...
Continued growth in the developing countries and emerging economies, and economic recovery by the industrialised countries are the main reasons for a record breaking 5.8% increase in global CO2 emissions between 2009 and 2010 ...
EC Joint Research Centre 21 Sept 2011 China Eating the Future Log
The AnthropceneA Cooler Climate
35 Critical Facts About . . . Global Warming
The Global Warming Pages
Global warming 'confirmed' by independent study
The Berkeley group does depart from the "orthodox" picture of climate science in its depiction of short-term variability in the global temperature.
The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is generally thought to be the main reason for inter-annual warming or cooling.
But by the Berkeley team's analysis, the global temperature correlates more closely with the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index - a measure of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic.
There are theories suggesting that the AMO index is in turn driven by fluctuations in the north Atlantic current commonly called the Gulf Stream.
The team suggests it is worth investigating whether the long-term AMO cycles, which are thought to last 65-70 years, may play a part in the temperature rise, fall and rise again seen during the 20th Century.
But they emphasise that anthropogenic global warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions is very much in their picture.
"Had we found no global warming, then that would have ruled out AGW," said Prof Muller.
"Had we found half as much, it would have suggested that prior estimates [of AGW] were too large; if we had found more warming, it would have raised the question of whether prior estimates were too low.
"But we didn't; we found that the prior rise was confirmed. That means that we do not directly affect prior estimates." ...
BBC NEWS 21 Oct 2011 Eating the Future Log
The AnthropceneA New Assessment of Global Warming
Climate change 'grave threat' to security and health
The imperative to 'localise now' is underscored
Scientific studies suggest that the most severe climate impacts will fall on the relatively poor countries of the tropics.
UK military experts pointed out that much of the world's trade moves through such regions, with North America, Western Europe and China among the societies heavily dependent on oil and other imports.
Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti, climate and energy security envoy for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), said that conflict in such areas could make it more difficult and expensive to obtain goods on which countries such as Britain rely.
"If there are risks to the trade routes and other areas, then it's food, it's energy," he told BBC News.
"The price of energy will go up - for us, it's [the price of] petrol at the pumps - and goods made in southeast Asia, a lot of which we import."
BBC NEWS 17 Oct 2011Climate change migration warning
Fossil fuel energy bills to soar
According to the [Friends of the Earth] report, electricity bills rose by 30 per cent between 2000 and 2010, while gas bills rose 78 per cent.
The rises were largely due to increased costs of coal, which rose by 71 per cent, and natural gas, which rose 90 per cent, in the decade ...
Ind 17 Oct 2011 A free market train wreck Eating the Future Log Energy Policy
The Coalition's Energy BillGlobal carbon emissions reach record
Peak Coal
Climate sceptics are winning the battle
... the problem, [James Hansen of NASA] said, was that the climate sceptic lobby employed communications professionals, whereas "scientists are just barely competent at communicating with the public and don't have the wherewithal to do it."
The result was, he said, that in recent years "a gap has opened between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community, and what's known by the people who need to know – and that's the public.
"However there's nothing that has happened to reduce our scientific conclusion that we are pushing the system into very dangerous territory, in fact that conclusion has become stronger over that same time period."
Asked if anything might re-alert the public to the dangers of climate change, Dr Hansen said: "Mother Nature."
Significant climatic "extreme events" were now occurring over 10 to 15 per cent of the planet annually, whereas between 1950 to 1980 they occurred over less than 1 per cent ...
Ind 11 Oct 2011
Arctic ice at 2nd lowest level since 1979
"The last five years (2007 to 2011) have been the five lowest extents in the continuous satellite record, which extends back to 1979," the NSIDC said.
"While the record low year of 2007 was marked by a combination of weather conditions that favored ice loss... this year has shown more typical weather patterns but continued warmth over the Arctic," it said.
Using a different set of data, German researchers said last week that the area covered by Arctic Sea ice had reached its lowest point since the start of satellite observations in 1972, calling it a "new historic minimum."
Arctic ice cover plays a critical role in regulating Earth's climate by reflecting sunlight and keeping the polar region cool ...
Ind 17 Sept 2011 Eating the Future Trashing the Arctic in Search of Growth
A Moral Climate Trashing democracy, society, environmentTimes Atlas 'wrong' on Greenland ice
UK 'set to miss' climate targets
Cameron: Labour's carbon targets amount to a cop-out
The changing face of Andean glaciers
The statistics for glacier retreat in the Cordillera Blanca – or White Range, as this stretch of the Andes is known – are well documented: The average annual figure per glacier was seven meters in the 1970s, 20 meters in the 1980s, 24 meters in the 1990s and 25 meters in the 2000s ...
... the dangers of the Cordillera Blanca’s shifting landscape potentially affect far more than the climbing community.
As they melt, glaciers lose their traction with the mountainside, increasing the risk of massive, unnatural avalanches.
Meanwhile, the increasing run-off is forming vast alpine lakes in danger of catastrophically bursting their banks high above towns and villages along the valley floor ...
Ind 02 Sept 2011Why Are Glaciers Melting?
Glaciers and Glacial Warming
Glaciers
Climate change drives animals to high ground
This process is described in great detail in Foster and Kreitzman's book "Seasons of Life"
A major review of the distribution of animals and plants, published in the journal Science, found wide variations between individual species but taken as a group there appears to be unequivocal evidence that climate change is the cause of the mass movement, said Professor Chris Thomas of the University of York.
The 'synchronising of life cycles to the environment' is thrown out of kilter, leading to further threats of species extinctions.
This trend is part of the sixth extinction process which has been under way for several thousand years.
There's no guarantee that it will not, eventually, catch up with the species which now acts as though it's no longer part of the eco-system.
"Species of animals and plants have been moving their distributions away from the equator and towards the poles much faster than previously realised.
In fact species are moving northward in the northern hemisphere and southward in the southern hemisphere on average at a rate of about 16km or 17km per decade," Professor Thomas said.
"These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20cm per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year.
"This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of the century," he said.
"It's just a phenomenal rate of movement of the whole of biological life away from the equator towards the poles. How do we know it's related to climate change?
"Well partly because there is no other reasonable explanation for why everything should be moving to higher elevations and to higher latitudes, but also because we find the rate of movement is greater in the regions that have experienced the most warming," Professor Thomas explained ...
Ind 19 Aug 2011 Biodiversity Eating the Future'The Seasons of Life'
Hopes of 30% cut in greenhouse emissions dashed
Günther Oettinger, the EU's energy commissioner, dealt a heavy blow to the hopes of several member states that have been pressing for a target of slashing emissions by 30% by 2020, against the current 20%.
He said the tougher target would force industries to move to Asia.
"If we go alone to 30%, you will only have a faster process of de-industrialisation in Europe," he said, citing the steel industry as one of the likely casualties. "I think we need industry in Europe, we need industry in the UK, and industry means CO2 emissions."
Europe could only adopt a tougher target if other major economies were also willing to do so, he said.
"We are willing to go to 30 % if big global partners will follow us, but if not we won't." ...
The CBI ... along with its Europe-wide counterparts, said it would jeopardise jobs and growth.
Several EU member states including Italy and Poland also oppose the plan.
The fall in emissions resulting from the recession did not make the 30% target easier to reach, Oettinger argued last night.
"[It shows] the best thing for CO2 emissions is a crisis, so do we need longer and deeper crises?" he asked.
"Look at our deficit – we need growth, and we need more industry."
Guardian 10 Feb 2011Flood-defence plans are submerged by Whitehall cutbacks
Tax on carbon: The only way to save our planet?
He first warned about climate change 30 years ago. Now James Hansen wants us to get serious about a tax on carbon ...
At the UN talks, the rich countries still had high expectations that markets in carbon dioxide would play a central role in the final deal agreed in Durban, South Africa at the end of 2011.
Carbon markets ... provide access to "offsets" for rich countries which allow them to buy in carbon reductions from developing countries instead of reducing emissions within their national borders.
However a 2008 Stanford University study found these supposed carbon cuts to be largely illusory.
For some time Hansen has been on record slamming this approach.
He says that in talks with officials in the UK, the US, Norway, Sweden, Australia, Japan and Netherlands, government representatives all say they will bring down emissions by using carbon markets.
"You can prove that this is horseshit because they're building more coal plants. The fossil-fuel industry wants to continue with something close to business as usual and that is what they get with cap and trade and with offsets ... " ...
Hansen's solution is a framework built around the introduction of a carbon tax ...
"It's as certain that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, we will just keep burning them. So we have to put a tax on carbon which rises over time ... "
Independent Carbon TradingAre humans definitely causing global warming?
Carbon Tax and Dividend
Carbon and energy taxes in Europe
David Cameron Calls for Carbon Tax on Electricity Generated from Coal and Gas
Global warming and the case for a coal tax
... we face the indisputable fact that levels of carbon dioxide, a gas known to warm the atmosphere, is rising relentlessly as we burn the concentrated organic carbon deposited as coal, gas and oil several hundred millions years ago.After a wasted year, climate change must once again be our priority
In burning this fossil legacy:
"Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future," said US scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess in 1957 ...frflyerObserver 26 Dec 2010
26 December 2010 7:54AM Maybe you think you are getting the straight dope on climate change at Fox News.
Okay lets find out.
* Well, there's Myron Ebell, the non-scientist right-wing lobbyist who Faux News et al always turn to as an 'authority' on global warming.
* And there is Monckton of course, who I've already explained is a complete charlatan and wacko.
* And there is Steve Milloy. He's not a scientist, but a professional PR man, and a registered and paid lobbyist for fossil fuel interests. Has Fox ever disclosed this to viewers? I doubt it.
Milloy's foundation has been involved in both the campaign to deny that tobacco is a health risk, and the global warming denial PR campaign. He runs the denier website Junk Science, which is very aptly named.
* Sterling Burnett, who FOX News calls a "leading authority" on climate -- claimed that global warming is a hoax because it was cold in Minnesota that winter (2008).
Will someone please tell Mr. Burnett that what he is referring to is called weather, not climate, and it isn't global. It's Minnesota.
And let him know that the numbers are in for 2008, which was cooled by the La Nina ocean phenomenon. It was the 9th warmest since 1880 at the time. Globally that is.
* For someone who claims to be a climate expert, he doesn't sound very bright, if he's using beginner skeptic arguments that everyone knows are bogus.
But it actually doesn't matter to some of these guys.
They know the public doesn't follow the subject close enough to know the difference, or to know who funds the message.
* Burnett is the same guy who on Fox tv compared Al Gore's movie to Nazi war time propaganda.
Burnett is financially linked with Exxon/Mobile and the Heartland Institute, another "think tank" whose principal mission seems to be opposing all environmental regulations.
* And of course they love good old Fred Singer at Fox news. He can always be counted on to give scientific testimony for industry, when it comes to any environmental issue.
He helped delay action on acid rain.
He helped the tobacco companies stall action for decades, by denying the science and sowing doubt about it.
He helped the chemical companies that made CFCs that were damaging the ozone layer that protects us and other life, from too much UV rays.
And now he helps the fossil fuel industry deny global warming. Too bad, he actually was a bright scientist.
* So keep getting your info from Fox Noise and stay misinformed, its your future. What the heck do those scientists know, right.
We'll trust Glen Beck, Rush, Hannity, Sarah,....They know whats happening.
Who cares if every national academy of science in the world says you're wrong. Sure. That's the ticket. ..
frflyer
26 December 2010 7:56AM
The greenhouse effect has been accepted science for a century.
* Fourier calculates colder earth without an atmosphere (1824)
* Tyndall discovers relationship between CO2 and long-wave radiation (1859)
* Arrhenius calculates global warming from anthropogenic CO2 (1896)
* Chamberlin models global carbon exchange including feedbacks (1897)
* Callendar predicts global warming increase catalysed by CO2 emissions (1938)
* Revelle predicts inability of oceans to sequester anthropogenic CO2 (1958) "
* from "The Discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer Weart
* the greenhouse gas effect was first proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824, proven to exist by John Tyndall in 1858, and quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896.
* But for Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans and tea baggers and deniers in general, Global Warming is just an agenda cooked up by Al Gore and other liberals.Are humans definitely causing global warming?
The great coal rush of 2010 comes against the backdrop of rising demand from China and India, both of which are burning copious amounts of the black stuff to power their economies.Around the world, miners scramble for coal
China, for example, imported 34 million tons of coking coal – a key ingredient in the production of steel – in 2009, up almost fivefold on the year before.
In India, total coal imports stood at more than 73 million tonnes this year, compated to less than 60 million tonnes in 2009.
Overall, Asia currently accounts for 66 per cent of global coal consumption, according to figures from Standard Chartered, whose analysts are eyeing a "massive" mismatch between supply and demand in years ahead.
The global deficit, they say, could be as large as 30 million tonnes by 2018.
Demand is such and the auguries so good that the bank expects the global coal market to nearly double to 12.8 billion tonnes by 2030 ...
The vast majority of China's energy needs are serviced by thermal coal plants, while more than half of India's electricity plants depend on coal.
Beyond that, sector watchers point to the scope for expansion in the wider world as cash-strapped governments seek cheaper alternatives to atomic energy ...
Independent 07 Dec 2010 Energy Policy Peak Coal 2025?Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis
Peak Coal in 2025?
Peak Coal Theory
Peak Coal - Wikipedia
Peak Coal - Sourcewatch
Peak Coal - Coming Soon?
Shipping to steer cleaner carbon course
Ships could be charged different fees to dock depending on how much carbon they emit, according to ideas being discussed at the UN climate summit.
The government of Papua New Guinea is considering the plan, and is hoping other nations may become involved.
The Carbon War Room, co-founded by Sir Richard Branson, has launched an online tool grading 60,000 commercial vessels according to their emissions.
Shipping contributes about 1Gt of CO2 each year, more than the entire UK.
Currently shipping fuels are exempt from national carbon accounts ...
BBC NEWS 06 Dec 2010
Claire Anterea, 32Voices from the frontline of global warming
Kiribati, Pacific Ocean
"Living in Kiribati, we understand the impacts of climate change as we already experience them – increased coastal erosion with many houses having had to relocate inland.
Many sea walls have been built by people themselves, and by the government in public places.
How long will these sea walls last? No one knows.
I was in North Tarawa, where the main source of fresh water – well water – is becoming contaminated with salt water.
They now import from neighbouring villages, but they can't afford to do this for very long." ...
... and a dozen reasons to be cheerful ...
The anaconda A 200m rubber tube capable of producing one megawatt of power from wave power. A cluster of 50 coastal anacondas could generate enough power for 50,000 homes. Professor Rod Rainey, who devised the tube, and his colleagues are looking for investors to back commercial production.
Rice Millions will escape hunger and poverty within 25 years by developing new varieties of "climate-ready" rice able to survive in the face of climate change. The new research programme, by the Global Rice Science Partnership (Grisp), aims to lift 150 million people out of poverty by 2035 and prevent the emission of greenhouse gases by an amount equivalent to more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently fought off attempts by climate sceptics and lobby groups to derail new state legislation to curb carbon emissions and promote clean energy. A defiant Schwarzenegger said: "The environment is not for sale."
Solar power in the desert In 2006 German scientists Dr Gerhard Knies and Dr Franz Trieb calculated that covering 0.5 per cent of the world's deserts with concentrated solar power technology could provide the world with all its electricity needs.
Carbon capture At a cement plant in Texas, construction is under way on a $115m Capitol-SkyMine project billed as the world's first for-profit carbon capture plant, which converts CO2 into baking soda. The plant, due to be finished in 2012, is expected to capture 75,000 tons of CO2 and mineralise the CO2 emissions as baking soda.
david_ftaIndependent 28 Nov 2010
Up until the 1970's, earth scientists expected reversion to another glaciation ("Ice Age", in the popular parlance), because they knew that inter-glacial periods such as that in which civilisation developed last around 10-20 thousand years.
The so-called "Little Ice Age" (16th-19th centuries) was thought to be the early warning of the next big glacial period that was expected.
So, what changed?
1. Humans have cut down much of the carbon-sequestering forest that was propelling the earth toward a new "snowball earth" (Lacis et al, "Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature", Science, v 330, p356).
2. Humans have been recycling geosequestered fossil fuels to the atmosphere;
50% of all fossil fuel ever burnt has been burnt SINCE 1970.
In this century, we can expect
1) Sea level rise due to thermal expansion (~0.5? m).
2) Arctic Ocean (North Pole) to be ice-free every summer from ~2050. This won't change sea level itself, but it will allow greatly accelerated ice mass loss from Greenland, which will elevate sea levels (~1? m). The next IPCC assessment should have some information on that - note that the last assessment (AR4; 2007) did not consider polar icecap mass loss at all.
3) Antarctic ice mass loss, especially from the Antarctic Peninsula (West Antarctica). Accelerated mass loss from Pine Island Glacier alone will raise sea level by ~0.4 m by end century).
ie by 2100, expect sea level rise ~2 m.
Cancun: Where's green Dave now?
Sea-level rise has been a particularly contentious element in the debate over global warming. One published estimate suggested the threat was so dire that sea level could rise as much as 15 feet in this century.As Glaciers Melt, Scientists Seek New Data on Rising Seas
Some of the recent work that produced the three-foot projection was carried out specifically to counter more extreme calculations.
Global warming skeptics, on the other hand, contend that any changes occurring in the ice sheets are probably due to natural climate variability, not to greenhouse gases released by humans ...
While the United States is among the countries at greatest risk, neither it nor any other wealthy country has made tracking and understanding the changes in the ice a strategic national priority.
The consequence is that researchers lack elementary information.
They have been unable even to measure the water temperature near some of the most important ice on the planet, much less to figure out if that water is warming over time.
Vital satellites have not been replaced in a timely way, so that American scientists are losing some of their capability to watch the ice from space.
The missing information makes it impossible for scientists to be sure how serious the situation is ...
After a decade of budget cuts and shifting space priorities in Washington, several satellites vital to monitoring the ice sheets and other aspects of the environment are on their last legs, with no replacements at hand.
A replacement for ICESat will not be launched until 2015 at the earliest.
“We are slowly going blind in space,” said Robert Bindschadler, a polar researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who spent 30 years with NASA studying ice ...
In the meantime, NASA is spending about $15 million a year to fly airplanes over ice sheets and glaciers to gather some information it can no longer get by satellite, and projects are under way in various agencies to plug some of the other information gaps ...
NYT 13 Nov 2010Sea Level Could Rise in South, Fall in North
UN report warns of threat to human progress from climate change
In its annual flagship report on the state of the world, the UN said unsustainable patterns of consumption and production posed the biggest challenge to the anti-poverty drive.
"For human development to become truly sustainable, the close link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions needs to be severed," the UN said in its annual human development report ...
"The divide between developed and developing countries persists: a small subset of countries has remained at the top of the world income distribution, and only a handful of countries that started out poor have joined that high-income group", the report said.
"The gap in human development across the world, while narrowing, remains huge."
Championing the role of governments in human development, the report said that markets were generally "very bad at ensuring the provision of public goods, such as security, stability, health and education.
"For example, firms that produce cheap labour-intensive goods or that exploit natural resources may not want a more educated workforce and may care little about their workers' health if there is an abundant pool of labour.
"Without complementary societal and state action, markets can be weak on environmental sustainability, creating the conditions for environmental degradation, even for such disasters as mud flows in Java and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico."
Guardian 04 Nov 2010 Eating the future Is capitalism the only game in town?
Heathrow enjoys busiest September ever
• Owner BAA says 6.2m people flew from Heathrow last month, a rise of 7.6% on September 2009
• Cargo exceeding pre-recession levels, with 123,680 tonnes shipped from airport last month ...
"Heathrow's record September figures underline that transport links are vital to our economy," said Colin Matthews, BAA chief executive.
"The growth reflects an improved outlook for our airline customers and an increase in business confidence, as shown by cargo figures which continue to outperform the pre-recession peak."
BAA welcomed comments from foreign secretary William Hague last week, who pledged support for "giving our country the myriad of connections which will allow 21st century Britons to prosper and succeed".
Across all of BAA's UK airports – which include Edinburgh, Southampton, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Stansted – 9,988,178 passengers travelled during September, up 3.3% on last year.
Guardian 11 Oct 2010 Peak Oil
Tony Blair: 'Heavy price' for climate inaction
World leaders may pay a heavy price in history if they fail to tackle global warming, Tony Blair has warned.
He said politicians did not have to wait for chaotic climate change in order for them to act.
The risks of not cutting emissions, given the potentially massive consequences, was enough to justify action, he told BBC Radio 4 ...
BBC NEWS 06 Sept 2010 Tony Blair_Climate Ditherfest
CBI to host climate change 'clash of the titans' debate
Former government chief scientist Sir David King, in the green corner, to take on arch-sceptic Lord Lawson in public showdown ...
Lawson also claims the impacts on humans have been exaggerated and is critical of current policies to tackle the problem by cutting carbon emissions, writing that the international political pledge to limit warming to 2C above the average before the industrial revolution is "devoid of either scientific basis or the slightest operational significance", and advocating mass spending on adapting to the changes instead.
King said that with 2010 projected to be the hottest year on record, it was a good time publicly to counter the claim that temperatures are not rising: although most years since 1998 had been cooler than that record hot year, they were still among the hottest years on record and above the long-term average ...
Guardian 31 Aug 2010Bjørn Lomborg
Why failure of climate summit would herald global catastrophe
Three degrees is at least one too many
Adaptation, Not Decarbonisation
Top scientist attacks US over global warming
Climate change
Climate change scepticism
Soaring commodity prices and natural disasters in Russia and Pakistan have combined to put African nations and conflict-ridden countries such as Afghanistan most at risk from food shortages, according to a report released today ...Afghanistan and African nations at greatest risk from world food shortages
Sharp price rises for wheat and other grains will hit the world's neediest countries hardest, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, as they grapple with their own poor harvests and failing transport networks, according to a food security index by risk management consultancy Maplecroft.
It also says conflict is a key factor behind food insecurity and Afghanistan tops the index of threatened countries.
The other nine nations categorised as "extreme risk" are all in Africa, led by Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia.
African nations make up 36 of the 50 countries most at risk in the index ...
Guardian 19 Aug 2010 Autonomous Individualism Haber Bosch Food CrunchCommodity prices soar as spectre of food inflation is back
Coal-fired power stations win reprieve
Exclusive: Government's decision to put pollution standards 'on hold' raises possibility of dirtiest coal plants going ahead ...
The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead ...
The introduction of an EPS was personally championed by David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg when in opposition; their opposition to Kingsnorth became something of a cause célèbre – and even features in the coalition agreement – but was opposed by energy companies and Tory backbenchers.
The chief executive at one coal-plant operating company warned that the UK's renewable energy technology – which would be used to help new plants meet the target – was too undeveloped to make the EPS feasible ...
Guardian 15 Aug 2010 Carbon Capture Is the coalition eco friendly?More opencast mine bids 'likely on greenfield sites'
Corus scopes out plans to build coal mine in south Wales
Glenda Jackson: EPS
Miliband must end coal emissions
AS RUSSIA burns to a crisp, thousands of kilometres to the south-west torrential storms visit unprecedented flooding on Pakistan. Both events can be attributed to the same large-scale pattern of atmospheric circulation. They are also both the sort of thing climate scientists expect more of in a warming world.Fires and Floods
The upper atmosphere (the part through which the jet streams run) is gently rocked by what are known as Rossby waves—movements of air towards and away from the poles. These waves usually travel east or west, depending on various conditions. But they can also stand still, trapping the weather beneath them.
According to Brian Hoskins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, this year’s anticyclones in the Atlantic have produced just such a gridlock in the world of the Rossby waves, with persistent troughs of low pressure over western and central Europe, a ridge of high pressure over Russia, and lows again farther east. The air itself doesn’t necessarily sit still, but the pressure patterns which dominate the weather persist. The troughs have seen rain—producing serious floods in central and eastern Europe and catastrophic ones in Pakistan. The pronounced and persistent high over Russia has seen record temperature after record temperature.
Like many atmospheric processes, heatwaves have a tendency to feed upon themselves. High pressure makes it hard for clouds to form, and thus for rain to fall. Under cloudless skies, the surface gives up its moisture, making the ground level hotter and drier while not increasing the chances of rain. As things get drier, fires start and spread. The still air keeps the smoke close to the surface, exacerbating its effects on health. The soot heats the air further. This is what has been happening in Russia for the past two months.
According to Geert Jan van Oldenborgh of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, a straightforward comparison of the temperatures seen in European Russia this summer with those of the past 60 years suggests that a lot of the country is experiencing temperatures which might be expected only once every 400 years or so. For parts of the patch, it is hotter than might be expected over several millennia.
If you take into account the warming trend of the past half century, however, the extraordinary heatwave starts to look less improbable: a once-in-a-century event, perhaps. As the warming trend continues in future, the chances of such events being repeated yet more frequently will become higher still.
Peter Stott, the head of climate monitoring at Britain’s Met Office, says that a change in the jet stream, which is part of the bigger pattern of gridlock in the upper atmosphere, has allowed more warm, moist monsoonal air to flow north to Pakistan. At the same time, says Professor Hoskins, cold air has been entering the region in the upper parts of the atmosphere, flowing south from Siberia as part of the same persistent pattern that is keeping Russia hot. The influx of cold air on top of warm, moist air favours the sort of deep convection that creates powerful storms, turning moisture in the air into water on the ground very efficiently.
How might the complex relationship between jet streams and Rossby waves change in a warmer world? At the moment, no one is sure. Climate change will shift the patterns of circulation in some ways, but there is no strong reason to believe that it will lead them to seize up more often. Yet the effects of these persistent patterns may get more unpleasant because the world will be warmer and have a more vigorous hydrological cycle.
Both heatwaves and heavy precipitation are more common everywhere than they were 50 years ago. Reflecting the latter trend, the Indian monsoon has been seeing more of its rainfall in extreme events than it did in the past. No single one of those events can be directly attributed to climate change; nor can Russia’s heatwave. The pattern of increases, though, fits expectations—and those expectations see things getting worse.
The Economist 12 Aug 2010Is climate change burning Russia?
Will the Pakistan floods strike again?
Seasons of Life
Helen Brown is amazed by Seasons of Life: the Biological Rhythms that Living Things Need to Thrive and Survive ...Seasons of Life by Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman: review
What does come through is that climate change is wreaking havoc with the Earth’s chronobiology.
Humans have not just messed up the world’s spatial markers, we’ve muddled its temporal triggers too.
For example, the eggs of winter moths of Arnhem, Holland must hatch within a 25-day window for sufficient edible oak foliage to ensure its survival.
And the great tit must time the hatching of its eggs to coincide with an abundance of winter moth caterpillars.
But the oak buds now burst 10 days earlier than they did 20 years ago. The caterpillars have overcompensated, hatching 15 days earlier.
And the great tits may not synchronise.
Russell and Kreitzman call for more research to help develop new agricultural practices and to preserve biodiversity.
But they conclude that “much of the awe and wonder that is the diversity of life on earth that we know at present will be lost”.
This is a fact far more oppressing than any slant of winter light.
Telegraph 13 July 2009Seasons of Life by Russell G Foster and Leon Kreitzman
PD Smith is fascinated by an exploration of nature's inbuilt timing mechanisms ...
Foster and Kreitzman's first book, Rhythms of Life (2004), explored the science of the circadian clock (circa, about; dies, day).
Cells and "clock" genes form a molecular metronome inside us that synchronises body-time with world-time across 24 hours ...
Scientists now believe that, as well as a 24-hour clock, we have a circannual clock with a periodicity of a year; this is the focus of Foster and Kreitzman's latest book.
How it works is still unclear, but they offer fascinating insights into an evolving science and the calendrical clockwork inside every living thing ...
Chronobiology is a relatively new field.
But as climate change increasingly disrupts the "delicate temporal web" created by natural selection over millennia, its insights into how organisms use circadian and cirannual rhythms to mesh with the seasons and environment are proving invaluable.
In Europe, spring is advancing 2.5 days per decade. Lilac and honeysuckle bloom a week earlier than 50 years ago.
At times, Seasons of Life is a technical - not to say dense - read, but the central theme is compelling.
Beneath the litany of statistics and scientific evidence there is a profound awe for the subtle rhythms and invisible mechanisms of the natural world, knowledge that may prove vital in the coming years.
Guardian 08 Aug 2009
China to debate 2030 emission cuts deadline
Chinese legislators will debate a new resolution on climate change next week, the state media reported today as a high-powered research institute called for the country to reduce carbon emissions by 2030.
The moves indicate possible flexibility in the negotiating stance of the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases ahead of climate change talks in Copenhagen at the end of this year, but, even if adopted, are far from sufficient to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.
A new climate change resolution and amendment to the renewable energy law are on the agenda of the next bimonthly session of the standing committee of the National People's Congress, according to the Xinhua news agency.
It revealed few details, but hopes for a set of more ambitious targets were raised by state media reports that a high-powered thinktank has called for emissions to fall by 2030.
China has refused to set a cap on emissions because it wants to expand its economy to catch up with richer nations that historically pumped more carbon into the atmosphere during the process of development ...Nete75The study forecasts China to account for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, by which time its economy will be bigger than that of the United States.
18 Aug 09, 10:02pm
China has the largest installed solar hot water capacity (which is usually either gas or electric heated otherwise, hence considerable CO2 savings).
It also has some of the largest green energy projects in the world.
Meanwhile some sod on the Isle of Wight, which actually has a windmill production plant is against the installation of 6 (and I mean six measly miserable insignificant) windmills for renewable energy.
The UK is not in any way a shining star on the green firmament. China does considerably more on the green front, however it is a huge nation and necessarily as living standards rise and they aspire to even some of the comforts Europeans and Americans take for granted CO2 emissions are going to rise.
The offset to chinese emissions has to come from those who have the highest CO2 output per capita (europeans and North americans).
Compulsory solar water heating systems for all UK housing old and new seems like an excellent place to start. Tripling petrol taxes, should do something to get people on their bikes and out of the cars, and while we are at it: Make a minimum number of windmills compulsory in any region of the UK having a reasonable level of wind.
Screw local opinion, after all this is an emergency.
Amid mounting international approbrium, China has signalled that it may be willing to adopt carbon intensity targets relative to economic growth and to make a huge investment in "new energy", including nuclear, solar and more efficient coal plants.
China's top climate envoy, Yu Qingtai, said last month that Beijing would like to see a peak in carbon emissions as soon as possible, but suggested no timetable for when this might happen.
Guardian 18 August 2009China’s Incinerators Loom as a Global Hazard
Environment fears halt China dams
China launches green power revolution
Twin Meltdowns
"The Global financial meltdown and melting of the polar ice caps both emphatically teach the same lesson:
if there is one thing we cannot afford, it is unbrildled profiteering."
A.C.GraylingPaul Mason warns that the growth model is over; and George Monbiot also warns of the scale of the climate problem: GDN.
Kick-starting the 'green' economy is part of what's needed - 'Green New Deal' - but Michael S. Northcott digs deeper, exposing the 'mechanistic modelling of human behaviour' which is the bedrock of the current neoliberal dystopia. [AMC]
The dilemma posed to those who participated in the Copenhagen summit - and any future such negotiations on climate change - is alluded to in Nicholas Stern's paper in New Scientist calling for a 'green industrial revolution'.
No argument with that, but he pins his hopes on carbon trading, a corporate con which keeps the world firmly within the neoliberal growth model.
Worse, it does so in a context of first world countries 'delegating' emissions reductions to poorer nations.Is the global economy a Ponzi scheme? Part 1
'CO2 reduction treaties useless'
Carbon emissions 'hidden' in imported goods
Melting ice on Arctic islands
The greatest emergency of all is being ignored
Glaciers in Chile ...
Polar ice loss quickens
EU backs away from 30% emissions target
EU could meet carbon targets more cheaply with gas
Hopes of 30% cut in CO2 emissions dashed
Amazon region set to outstrip US as CO2 emitter
Fairtrade coffee ... challenge of climate change
Traders condemn EU's carbon market