Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Global Warming is No Threat
Global Warming is No Threat
In a letter to The Wall Street Journal (opinions), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read, a group of 16 eminent scientists, including former professors and chiefs of world leading atmospheric research institutes, has stated boldly that Global warming is no cause for panic, since the mean temperature of the Earth has not changed for more than a decade.
In 1896 the Swedish professor and founder of modern physical chemistry, Svante Arrhenius, completed a complex number-crunching exercise, according to which if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere were reduced by a half, the temperature in Europe might decline by 4-5°C, in correspondence with an ice age. As an explanation for the conundrum of the ice ages, this notion could only hold water if a mechanism for such large changes in atmospheric composition might be found in the real world. A colleague of Arrenhius, Arvid Högbom, had investigated the cycling of carbon dioxide in nature, through geochemical processes, including emissions from volcanoes and uptake by the oceans, but in his reckoning he also included the emissions of CO2 from factories and other industrial processes, such as cement manufacture. Stacking up the numbers, he realised that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere in a quantity and rate equivalent to all natural processes of absorption or emission of the gas. As it was put, a decade later, we were "evaporating our coal mines into the air.
This succinctly expresses my understanding of the situation: that human (anthropogenic) emissions of CO2 are causing the global temperature to rise, and the consequences of this are likely to be catastrophic. There are complexities, however, and for example, some parts of the world appear to be warming and others cooling. Some regions are getting wetter and others drier. Substantial parts of the Antarctic (peninsular and western sheet) are melting, as has been the case for 7,000 years, but other parts in the East are actually getting thicker. I would suggest that these phenomena may be explained in part by changes in the way the heat energy from the sun is being redistributed around the globe. Undoubtedly, there are complex and holistic phenomena at work.
In some parts of the world sea-level is rising in others it seems to be falling. This could be partly due to faulty measurements. There was a play "The Heretic", which challenged the politics of climate change, performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London, and which I wrote about on Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2011/04/07/the-heretic-electric-cars-should-be-called-coal-cars/
Within the plot of the play at least, in one case, the land appeared to be falling rather than the sea-level rising, and in another, both land and sea were rising together, thus disguising the reality of sea-level rise, but within the plot, a university department would lose a lucrative grant if they told the truth.
I have no doubt that an elevated level of CO2 should increase the temperature of a solid massive object such as the Earth, with an atmospheric mix of gases including CO2, in accord with some calculations I have made made in collaboration with a German Engineer, Alexander Koewius: http://www.koewius.de/Website/Climate_Change.html.
However, the Earth system is complex, and for example, rather than the planet "frying", another scenario is that the melting of ice in the Arctic will switch-off the Atlantic Conveyor (of which the Gulf Stream is a part) so that Northern Europe experiences an effective ice-age. http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~kcobb/abrupt/alley07.pdf
Irrespective of the reality of anthropogenic global warming is the far more immediately pressing issue of a imminently failing supply of cheap liquid fuels for transportation. If it is true that we may expect a decline in the availability of cheap crude oil, and hence diesel and petrol fuels, upon which essentially all world transportation, manufacture and the production and transportation of food, and thus global growth depend, the news on the CO2 emission front must be good. If we have less cheap oil and fuel to burn, our carbon emissions will necessarily fall. This however is the least of our worries. If we cant find alternative fuels or the means to live at a lower energy consuming lifestyle then our civilization is condemned. We will have no choice but to curb our carbon emissions, and to do so by design rather than by default is the most pressing issue for humanity.
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Sunday, February 12, 2017
Global Warming is Nonsense According to the Daily Mail
Global Warming is Nonsense According to the Daily Mail
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Thursday, February 9, 2017
Global Warming will end Some Species
Global Warming will end Some Species
From the micro to the macro, from plankton in the oceans to polar bears in the far north and seals in the far south, global warming has begun changing life on Earth, international scientists will report next Friday.
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"Hundreds of species have already changed their ranges, and ecosystems are being disrupted," said University of Michigan ecologist Rosina Bierbaum, former head of the U.S. IPCC delegation. "It is clear that a number of species are going to be lost." The IPCC draft estimates that if temperatures rise approximately 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit more, one-third of species will be lost from their current range, either moved elsewhere or vanished.
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The frogs went silent in the night
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Back in the Puerto Rican rain forest for the first time in five years, biologist Rafael Joglar sensed something was wrong. He wasnt hearing the frogs whose nocturnal calls he had long recorded in the misty highlands.
It was as if a small orchestra had lost key players, he recalled.
After that discovery in 1981, Joglar and wife Patricia Burrowes, a fellow University of Puerto Rico amphibian specialist, found that other populations of frogs in the genus Eleutherodactylus — known locally as coquis for the distinctive co-kee sound made by two species — were also mysteriously absent. Similar reports trickled in from frog specialists worldwide, particularly in Central and South America.
Working their way through such suspected culprits as pollution and habitat loss, researchers here eventually zeroed in on climate change. The average minimum temperature had risen from 1970 to 2000 by 2 degrees Fahrenheit, a significant rise for climate-sensitive amphibians.
Scientists believe higher temperatures lead to more dry periods and a chain reaction, at higher elevations, that leaves the frogs vulnerable to a devastating fungus, Burrowes said.
In Puerto Rico and nearby islands, experts believe three of 17 known Eleutherodactylus species are extinct and seven or eight are declining. Loss of the frogs, scientists warn, could have disastrous consequences, depriving birds and other predators of a food source, eliminating a consumer of insects and disrupting the ecosystem in ways impossible to guess.
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Fragile, sensitive coral sounds the alarm
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — The rainbow world of the Great Barrier Reef may fade away.
Scientists say rising sea temperatures worldwide are causing more coral bleaching — the draining of color when the fragile animals that form reefs become stressed and spew out the algae that give coral its color and energy to build massive reef structures. Oceans are also absorbing more carbon dioxide, increasing their acidity and eroding corals ability to build reef skeletons.
"Weve got about 20 years to turn (greenhouse gas emissions) around or its going to cost the world a lot environmentally but also economically," said Terry Hughes, a leading Australian coral specialist. The 1,250-mile-long Great Barrier Reef, off Australias northeast coast, produces $4 billion a year in tourism revenues. Forecasts vary, but many experts say ocean temperature rises projected for the next 50 years could strip this natural wonder of most of its color. The changes will affect countless millions of fish and other marine organisms that depend on the reef. Many reefs worldwide will fare worse, since they dont have the protection against pollution and overfishing provided by the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.
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Ticks move north, carrying diseases with them
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — A bloodthirsty parasite is popping up in parts of Sweden where deep winter chills used to make survival difficult, if not impossible.
Ticks are spreading north along the Scandinavian countrys shorelines, pestering pets and spreading infectious diseases to humans.
"It probably has to do with the greenhouse effect," said Thomas Jaenson, professor in medical entomology at Uppsala University. "The fact that weve seen ticks in January indicates that there has been a major change."
Swedish studies have shown that ticks have multiplied countrywide in recent decades, spreading north from traditional breeding grounds in the Stockholm archipelago. The pinhead-sized arachnids have even turned up near the Arctic Circle.
"There are more of them now. And they show up earlier in the year," said Marja Lodin, 69, who has a summer house near the northern city of Umea. Two years ago she was infected with Lyme disease, which causes fever, headache, fatigue and skin rash, from a tick lodged in her navel.
Swedens disease control agency doesnt keep records on Lyme disease, but said the potentially deadly tick-borne encephalitis virus, known as TBE, is on the rise. Reported annual cases more than doubled from 60 in the late 1990s to 131 in the 2001-2005 period. In 2006, there were 155 cases, two of which turned fatal. "It is possible that these people would be alive if we had had a more stable climate," Jaenson said.
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White giants face future of too much water, too little ice
TORONTO (AP) — Inuit hunters in Canadas Arctic say they have seen polar bears moving farther north as the polar ice cap recedes, or farther south in search of new sources of food.
The northern people who have hunted these majestic marine mammals for thousands of years say they havent seen a dramatic decline yet in their numbers. But scientists worry that the polar bear will be pushed steadily toward extinction by 2050, to be found only in zoos, as Arctic waters grow warmer. The bears depend on sea ice for survival. They have their pups and they hunt seal and walrus on ice floes. But the summer ice cap is about 20 percent smaller today than in 1978, the U.N. climate panel reported in February. And as sea ice shrinks, bears are forced to hunt and to fast for longer periods.
Biologists believe 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears roam the frozen Arctic, about 60 percent in Canada. The research group Polar Bears International says one polar bear population, in Canadas western Hudson Bay, has dropped 22 percent since the 1980s, about the time Inuit hunters started noticing dramatic changes in wind and weather patterns. The trends are so troubling that the U.S. government has proposed listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
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Changing climate, vanishing plankton threaten cod
LONDON (AP) — Overfishing has cut deeply into the North Seas cod population in recent decades, and scientists now say this important food fish faces a second challenge — climate change. North Sea water temperatures have climbed 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, and that has shifted currents, carrying a major food source, plankton, away from the cod, said scientist Chris Reid of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans in Plymouth, England.
Because the European Unions 2003 cod recovery plan isnt working, scientists and fishing industry representatives met March 9-10 to discuss new ways to counter the threats and help the cod.
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The dimbs demise tells of African climate change
The once-prevalent tree with its meaty fruit has disappeared from all but one village in an area the size of Connecticut, as shifting rainfall patterns have made northern Senegal drier and hotter, research has found.
Fig and firewood species also are dying, forcing women gatherers to range farther and spend more time hunting firewood. "Once you dont have that, people start burning cow dung. And thats when environmentally the area is in great trouble," Gonzalez said.
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By The Associated Press Sat Mar 31, 6:34 PM ET
This report was written by AP correspondents Charles J. Hanley, New York; Ben Fox, San Juan; Rohan Sullivan, Sydney; Karl Ritter, Stockholm; Beth Duff-Brown, Toronto; Courtney French, London; and Heidi Vogt, Dakar.
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