ApocaDocuments (13) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Sun, Jan 9, 2011
from Berlingske Tidende, via DesdemonaDespair:
Greenland's melting seems unstoppable
No matter how much we turn down the CO2-burner, Greenland will still reach a significant turning point by around 2040, writes Berlingske Tidende.... "It is a very troubling result, because it shows that the melting can go much stronger than we usually imagine," says one of the article's authors, Jens Hesselberg Christensen, Berlingske Tidende.... "Based on our model, I would almost argue that the time has already passed. Our results indicate in principle that continuous melting is inevitable," says Jens Hesselberg. ...
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Thank goodness this is from Bizarro-Earth, where "inevitable" means "never going to happen."
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Sun, Jan 9, 2011
from canada.com:
Another century of emissions will fuel 1,000 years of climate change: Study
Shawn Marshall says he's not a catastrophist. The world will still be standing in the next millennium if global carbon emissions continue at their current rate for the next 100 years, says the Canada research chair in climate change, who contributed to a study released Sunday.
"I have a feeling a lot of nature will adapt and evolve to this, it's just we'll lose some stuff on the way," he said.
"I mean, we've seen pretty clearly that coral reefs can't adapt quickly, so we'll lose some of that. We'll lose some of our favourite ski areas, a number of different cities like Venice or Manhattan."
Marshall, a geography professor at the University of Calgary, recently completed work with a team of researchers from an Environment Canada research laboratory at the University of Victoria.... They found that current carbon dioxide levels will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1,000 years, which could cause an eventual rise of at least four metres in the global sea level by the year 3000, as well as the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet -- an area the size of Canada's prairies.
"There's no way to get around that," Marshall said. "If we get that much cumulative impact on the atmosphere and the warm water gets under the ice sheet, there's no real way out." The researchers acknowledged that it's unrealistic to think society will suddenly one day stop using fossil fuels and pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. ...
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Good thing he's not a catastrophist!
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Sat, Jan 8, 2011
from ScienceDaily:
What Carbon Cycle? College Students Lack Scientific Literacy, Study Finds
Most college students in the United States do not grasp the scientific basis of the carbon cycle -- an essential skill in understanding the causes and consequences of climate change, according to research published in the January issue of BioScience.... "Improving students' understanding of these biological principles could make them better prepared to deal with important environmental issues such as global climate change," said Charles "Andy" Anderson, MSU professor of teacher education and co-investigator on the project.... Students trying to explain weight loss, for example, could not trace matter once it leaves the body; instead they used informal reasoning based on their personal experiences (such as the fat "melted away" or was "burned off"). In reality, the atoms in fat molecules leave the body (mostly through breathing) and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and water.
Most students also incorrectly believe plants obtain their mass from the soil rather than primarily from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "When you see a tree growing," Anderson said, "it's a lot easier to believe that tree is somehow coming out of the soil rather than the scientific reality that it's coming out of the air." ...
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When you've learned your science from TV ads, you've really learned a lot!!
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Fri, Jan 7, 2011
from BBC:
Dirty Business film debunks 'clean coal' myth
Dirty Business, the new documentary from the Centre for Investigative Journalism, began its nationwide screening tour last night in Berkeley, California, with the aim of debunking the myth of "clean coal" and kick-starting a debate on the future of energy in the US.
The film shows scarred mountains, abandoned family homes on remote hillsides, water courses toxic with sludge, respiratory fatalities and children whose growth has been stunted by pollution as some of the side effects of coal extraction and the power stations that burn it. And, of course, it shows the effect of coal combustion on global temperatures.... Vaclav Smil, professor at the faculty of environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, estimates that the infrastructure of networks of pipelines for CCS would have to be twice that for oil and gas.
He says: "Clearly you don't have to know anything about anything to realise that industry like that is not going to be created in five or 10 years and still it would contain only 10 percent of [emissions] we are generating today. The problem of scale is immense. It's not a technical problem, it's not a storage problem, it's just a problem scaling it up to a level where it would make a difference."
Aside from the problem of building an infrastructure of a technology not yet operating at an economic scale, the real dirty business, as the film suggests, is the murky work of lobbyists, who pay large sums of money to influence political direction. ...
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The "problem of scale" is so immense it becomes its own problem of scale.
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Fri, Jan 7, 2011
from Aquatic Research, via DesdemonaDespair:
Ocean currents changing drastically due to global warming
Examination of deep sea corals reveals that there have been drastic changes to oceanic currents in the western North Atlantic since the 1970s. The influence of the cold water Labrador Current, which is in periodic interchange with the warm Gulf Stream, has been decreasing continually since the 1970s. Occurring at the same time as Global Warming this phenomenon is unique in the past 2000 years. These results are reported by researchers from the University of Basel and Eawag in the current edition of the scientific journal PNAS.... Using new geochemical methods, an international team of researchers including the biogeochemists Prof. Moritz Lehmann (University of Basel) and Dr. Carsten Schubert (Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) were able to prove that a drastic change to a warm water mode occurred in the western North Atlantic in the early 1970s. This change, the timing of which coincides with and may be directly related to global warming, is unique in the last 2000 years.... The researchers were able to show a clear reduction in the 15N/14N ratio since 1970 which indicates that the role of the cold Labrador Current, with a higher 15N/14N ratio, is becoming less important. ...
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Churning and churning in the shifting gyre / ocean warming will not heed the falconer / shores fall apart; the currents will not hold...
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Thu, Jan 6, 2011
from New York Times:
A 'Bulge' in Atmospheric Pressure Gives Us a Super-Cold Winter Amid Global Warming
Icicle-covered oranges in Florida. The United Kingdom swamped with its coldest December in more than a century. Travelers stranded in airports surrounded by snowy fortresses.... So how does this fit with global warming models?
According to some climate scientists, the cold in places like Florida actually could be a sign of warming, rather than an argument against the phenomenon.
The ongoing disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic from elevated temperatures is a factor to changes in atmospheric pressure that control jet streams of air, explained James Overland, an oceanographer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. That is because ice-less ocean is darker and, thus, absorbs more solar heat, which in turn spews warmer air than average back into the Arctic atmosphere.
That unusually warm air can contribute to a "bulge" effect to the atmospheric pressure controlling how cold air flows, according to Overland, who works at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. Rather than moving circularly in the Arctic from west to east as typical, the bulge may prompt air to move in a U-shaped pattern down to the southern United States. ...
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Apocaiku: cold air is warming / it roils and pushes further / chaos brings new ice
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Thu, Jan 6, 2011
from Reuters:
"Dangerous" beetle found at Los Angeles airport
U.S. customs officials said on Wednesday they had found a beetle considered one of the world's most dangerous agricultural pests in a shipment of rice arriving at Los Angeles International Airport.
Agricultural specialists with U.S. Customs and Border Protection found an adult khapra beetle, eight larvae and a shed skin in a shipment of Indian rice from Saudi Arabia last week, spokesman Jaime Ruiz said.
The khapra beetle, which is native to India and not currently established in the United States, is considered one of the most destructive pests of grain products and seeds. ...
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I suppose the beetle will invoke the DREAM Act.
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Wed, Jan 5, 2011
from Scientific American:
Why dire climate warnings boost skepticism
Although scientific evidence that anthropogenic activities are behind global warming continues to mount, belief in the phenomenon has stagnated in recent years. "When I was a pollster, I was detecting that many dire messages seemed to be counterproductive, we really needed someone to determine why," says Ted Nordhaus at the Breakthrough Institute, a Californian think-tank for energy and climate issues.... Feinberg and Willer found that participants primed to have a stronger belief in a just world reported levels of skepticism that were 29 percent higher, and a willingness to reduce their carbon footprint that was 21 percent lower, than those primed to see the world as an unjust place. Their findings are reported in Psychological Science. ...
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Life ain't fair! Not at all!
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Wed, Jan 5, 2011
from Associated Press:
Reinsurer says costs from natural disasters jumped in 2010, shows evidence of climate change
A leading reinsurer said Monday that extreme natural catastrophes in 2010, including severe earthquakes, floods and heat waves, led to the sixth-highest total of insurers' losses since 1980 and showed evidence of climate change.
Munich Re AG said in its annual review that insured losses came in at $37 billion (euro27.69 billion) this year, up from $22 billion in 2009. It said total economic losses, including losses not covered by insurance, rose to $130 billion from last year's $50 billion.
"The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," the company said in a statement. ...
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Good God, man, even the insurance dudes get it!
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Wed, Jan 5, 2011
from London Independent:
Tax on carbon: The only way to save our planet?
Professor James Hansen's last formal engagement was delivering a keynote paper to the American Geophysical Union Autumn meeting. After that, he spent the holidays not enjoying wintry walks or taking advantage of the sales, but doing something altogether more industrious. "I'm writing a paper to provide the scientific basis for [law] suits against the government - just to make them do their job," he says..."I realised that if we [scientists] don't help to connect the dots from what the science says to what the implications are for policy, then those dots get connected by people who have special interests," says Hansen, explaining his decision. "I think scientists are able to be objective. Governments just don't face the facts clearly. And it's scary because as scientists we can see what the implications are for our own children and grandchildren."
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You know what's really scary? That we have to find this story about a courageous American scientist ... in a London newspaper.
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Tue, Jan 4, 2011
from CBC:
'Double whammy' warms Nunavut -- light rain in January
A lack of sea ice in parts of Canada's eastern Arctic is contributing to unusually mild temperatures in Nunavut, according to scientists.
In recent months, the weather in many parts of Nunavut has been 10 to 12 degrees above the -20 and -30 C temperatures that are normal at this time of year.
Light rain fell in Iqaluit, the territorial capital, as the daytime temperature hovered around 0 C on Monday. Environment Canada declared 2010 to be the warmest year on record there.
In a rare sight for this time of year, Frobisher Bay has not yet frozen over entirely. Likewise, there is a lack of sea ice in parts of Hudson Bay, Davis Strait and other Arctic waterways....
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, nearly half of Hudson Bay would have been frozen over by the end of November. But by Nov. 30, only 17 per cent of the bay had sea ice on it....
"You may be seeing a little bit of a hint of what the future holds in store for you," he said.
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Can you call a gut punch "a little bit of a hint"?
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Mon, Jan 3, 2011
from Associated Press:
End of Days in May? Christian group spreads word
If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here.
Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011. ...
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It would be sweet if the Rapture took all the big carbon emitters away.
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Mon, Jan 3, 2011
from Minneapolis Star Tribume:
Our new Minnesota normal: Warmer and wetter
The year 2011 will bring a change in the weather -- or at least what we think of as normal weather.
New "normal" settings for temperatures, rainfall and snow for Minnesota -- indeed, for 10,000 U.S. locations -- will be published later this year by the National Climate Data Center, which calculates them once a decade, much like the census. For the Twin Cities and much of Minnesota, normal will probably mean warmer and wetter.
The normal overall temperature for January for the Twin Cities could be 2.7 degrees warmer than the normal that's been in use for the past 10 years, based on previous calculations. That's a sizable jump in climate terms, but once people adjust to the new average, it's possible they might not be alarmed. ...
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Especially if they are in denial.
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