Friday 3rd of May 2024
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global warming versus the lord...

bonn

The latest round of international climate change talks finished on Friday in discord and disappointment, with some participants concerned that important progress made last year was being unpicked.

At the talks, countries were supposed to set out a workplan on negotiations that should result in a new global climate treaty, to be drafted by the end of 2015 and to come into force in 2020. But participants told the Guardian they were downbeat, disappointed and frustrated that the decision to work on a new treaty – reached after marathon late-running talks last December in Durban – was being questioned.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/25/bonn-climate-talks-end-disappointment

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For those of us who pay attention to details and specifics, there is some big pseudo-scientific traps set up by denialists of global warming... For example, this caper from an outfit that calls itself the "Science and Public Policy Institute":

WASHINGTON (7-15-08) - Mathematical proof that there is no “climate crisis” appears today in a major, peer-reviewed paper in Physics and Society, a learned journal of the 46,000-strong American Physical Society, SPPI reports.
Christopher Monckton, who once advised Margaret Thatcher, demonstrates via 30 equations that computer models used by
the UN’s climate panel (IPCC) were pre-programmed with overstated values for the three variables whose product is
“climate sensitivity” (temperature increase in response to greenhouse-gas increase), resulting in a 500-2000% overstatement of CO2’s effect on temperature in the IPCC’s latest climate assessment report, published in 2007.

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But if one reads about the American Physical Society (APS), one soon discovers that it's not at all the case, and the publication "there" (I can't find it, nor can I find the names of the "peers" who reviewed it) by Lord Monckton was a bit suspect.... The APS is a respected organisation that:

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In 2007, APS adopted an official statement on global warming:[9]

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

In November 2009, 80 current and past members of the American Physical Society presented a letter to the society specifically objecting to the society's position.[10] A few days later, it was rejected.[11] On April 18, 2010, the APS modified the policy statement significantly toning down the rhetoric.[9]

The following individuals resigned their memberships over disagreement with the society's official statement on global warming:

  • Ivar Giaever, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973, resigned 13 September 2011.[12]
  • Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics and former department chairman at the University of California, Santa Barbara, resigned 6 October 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Physical_Society

 

2 resignations out of 46,000 is small potatoes, even if one of them is a Nobel prize winner... Nobel prize winners can be wrong, should they decide to be so and ignorant of the facts in fields in which they have no expertise in. As well, physics plays a part in the CHEMISTRY of the atmosphere, but the ignorance of the chemistry — or that of mixture of gases in an environment — is far more a bigger problem. Lord Monckton went for broke and presented some mighty bullshit with great confidence when in his paper, he said:

The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
“Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years..

Of course all the points above can be disproved in a jiffy by serious analysis, considering that surface temperatures ARE STILL warming up...

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After achieving record annual temperatures on Friday, much of Britain is expected to bask in the warm afterglow of summer temperatures and enjoy a "barbecue weekend".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/25/uk-heatwave-last-all-weekend

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SCOTLAND enjoyed a burst of summer sunshine yesterday, after temperatures came close to beating the all-time May record.

Altnaharra in the Highlands was the hottest place in the Scotland, with 27.3C yesterday lunchtime, closely followed by the ski resort of Aviemore, where it reached 26.9C.

In Glasgow, which basked in temperatures of 23.1C, sun-worshippers were seen splashing in the Victorian Stewart Memorial Fountain in Kelvingrove Park, joined by a couple of dogs trying to cool down. At Blair Drumomnd Safari Park near Stirling, keepers gave the elephants a cooling spray bath with hoses.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/top-stories/scotland-s-weather-even-elephants-can-t-take-heat-as-the-mercury-soars-1-2313643

Of course there are more denialist scientists around and I will mention and will refute them in the next comments.

 

the other side of the coin...

The benign climate that has allowed the human race to multiply, develop and prosper has remained more or less unchanged for 10,000 years. Its stability accounts for the entire span of civilised human history.


Since the 1780s the average global temperature has risen 0.78oC from a one-third increase in atmospheric CO2. To this should be added methane and other gasses, and the additional impact of water vapour.


For the following reasons a 2oC rise is now inevitable:
Were we to stop all emissions immediately, temperature would continue to rise without any more input from us from latent heat and aerosol dimming.
Latent heat commits the planet to about 0.45oC more; Aerosols shield us from a further 20%.


Together these are holding back the full impact of the CO2 in the atmosphere by twenty or thirty years. The increase so far reflects only what has been emitted up to the later 1970s.


The calculation is simple: Were we to instantly stop all emissions, stop everything today, average global temperature would continue to rise as follows: Current temp + latent heat + dimming = 0.78 + 0.45 + 20% = 1.5oC. This is double the increase of the past two centuries.


It is therefore inevitable, from what we have already emitted, that food production will decline, droughts will spread and species will become extinct. There will be more hunger, less available fresh water, the seas will rise and vast numbers of refugees will be on the move. These conclusions are supported in the May 2007 Bangkok IPCC report.


In addition, it leaves a margin of only 0.5oC before we reach the critical threshold.

Above 2oC it is believed that global heat would start to trigger the release of the greenhouse gases now stored in the oceans, in trees and in the soil.

Once started the process is unstoppable and could further increase average global temperature by 6oC or more.

http://www.planetextinction.com/Newsletter/footprints_11_Jun07.htm

mercury rising...

 

Scientists have documented many ways in which the declining sea ice has a cascading impact on the rest of the Arctic environment, from loss of marine mammal habitat to amplifying warming. Now they have demonstrated another: more springtime ozone-depletion events, and probably more mercury contamination.

The sea ice and mercury changes are linked chemically through bromine. Sea ice controls the way bromine escapes from seawater into the air. Roaming the atmosphere, bromine can do two things. It can chemically scrub out ozone—normally not a bad thing in the Arctic, where a portion of ground-level ozone is a result of air pollution from the mid-latitudes—and it can transform an unreactive form of mercury into a reactive form.

http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/article/2012/a-sea-change-in-the-arctic-atmosphere

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See also:

http://www.climate.gov/#climateWatch and play with all the features of the diagram...

Note that the NOAA studies are often SELECTIVELY quoted by the denialists of climate change — including skeptic scientists — using short segments of data removed from trends. Yet the NOAA studies all point to GLOBAL WARMING.

 

pop up forest...

Researchers in Britain and Finland studied an area of 38,600 sq. mi (100,000 sq. km) in what’s known as the northwestern Eurasian tundra, which stretches from western Siberia to Finland. Surveys of vegetation in the region using both satellite data and local observations from reindeer herders showed that in 8 to 15% of the territory willow and alder shrubs had grown into trees over 6.5 ft. (2 m) tall over the past 30 to 40 years. That’s a period of time when temperatures in the Arctic have increased significantly, even faster than other parts of the planet.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/06/04/how-climate-change-is-growing-forests-in-the-arctic/#ixzz1wpQwykoi

moral and political madness...

World leaders have spent 20 years bracing themselves to express 'deep concern' about the world's environmental crises, but not to do anything about them

...

"Aristotle knew of insatiability only as a personal vice; he had no inkling of the collective, politically orchestrated insatiability that we call economic growth. The civilization of "always more" would have struck him as moral and political madness. And, beyond a certain point, it is also economic madness. This is not just or mainly because we will soon enough run up against the natural limits to growth. It is because we cannot go on for much longer economising on labour faster than we can find new uses for it."

 

 

Several of the more outrageous deletions proposed by the United States – such as any mention of rights or equity or of common but differentiated responsibilities – have been rebuffed. In other respects the Obama government's purge has succeeded, striking out such concepts as "unsustainable consumption and production patterns" and the proposed decoupling of economic growth from the use of natural resources.

 

At least the states due to sign this document haven't ripped up the declarations from the last Earth summit, 20 years ago. But in terms of progress since then, that's as far as it goes. Reaffirming the Rio 1992 commitments is perhaps the most radical principle in the entire declaration.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jun/22/rio-20-earth-summit-brazil

See toon at top...

 

suicidal...

Expectations were extremely modest for the Rio+20 Earth Summit that ended last week—and the best thing that might be said about the conference is that it managed to clear that very low bar. Despite the presence of more than 50,000 people and about 100 heads of state and government—though not, notably, U.S.


President Barack Obama—the summit produced very little of note. The final statement that was negotiated at Rio—titled "The Future We Want"—was 253 paragraphs of affirmations and entreaties that added up to little more than a plea for something better. The Chinese diplomat Sha Zukang, who headed Rio+20 for the U.N., called the statement "an outcome that makes nobody happy," while environmental NGOs were blunter: "A failure of epic proportions" said Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace International, adding that the statement itself was "the longest suicide note in history."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2118058,00.html#ixzz1yywea6O5