Posts from — August 2008

In January 2008, three gentlemen at the Met office Hadley Centre published a paper named: “Human contribution to rapidly increasing frequency of very warm Northern Hemisphere summers”. Those three were Gareth S. Jones, Peter A. Stott and Nikolaos Christidis.

In the abstract we can read the following:

The European summer of 2003 was exceptionally warm, and there is evidence that human influence has at least doubled the risk of such a hot summer. It is possible that by the 2040s, summers over southern Europe will be as warm or warmer 50% of the time. (…) We detect the dominant influence of anthropogenic factors on observed warming in almost every region, which has led to a rapidly increasing risk of hot summers. We show that hot summers which were infrequent 20–40 years ago are now much more common and that our projections indicate that the current sharp rise in incidence of hot summers is likely to continue.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to read the entire paper yet, but a few questions arise immediately. How were these scientists able to prove that human influence has doubled the risk of heat waves? How can they know that Southern European summers will be as warm as 2003 or warmer half of the time? And what are the signs of human influence on the observed warming?

Is it just me who smells a rat in here?

According to Australian scientists, kangaroos could be the answer to global warming, reports Medindia.com. Kangaroo farts contain virtually no methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent that CO2. Obviously, bacteria in kangaroos’ stomachs makes the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save millions of dollars in feed costs for farmers. If we can transfer the kangaroo bacteria to cattle and sheep, it may be the answer to global warming.

“Fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia is from enteric methane from cattle and sheep,” said Athol Klieve, a senior research scientist with the Queensland state government.

“Not only would they (cattle and sheep) not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 percent more energy out of the feed they are eating.”

This is great news. I only hope it also works for human flatulence.

You have probably heard of Mark Lynas, 35 years of age, alarmist writer and environmental activist focused on climate change. In today’s Guardian he serves us a scary dish - forget about the 2 degree C global warming. It’s going to be much, much worse.

According to Lynas, the former chairman of the IPCC, Bob Watson, warns us to prepare for 4C global warming. To avoid that, we must make drastic CO2 cuts now. Bob was kicked out of the IPCC by the Bush administration for being speaking too loudly about the global warming threat, Lynas says. Nevertheless, he has continued his quest for a carbon-free world. After leaving the IPCC, he chaired the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, a UN study looking at the sad future of our planet’s natrual systems. So he, if anybody, should know.

Lynas and Watson are very skeptic about the future of humanity.

“Yes, we should certainly prepare for the worst as far as possible – with flood defences, drought-resistant crops and strategies to ameliorate the loss of wildlife, at the very least – but a look at the likely impact of a four-degrees temperature rise suggests that such a dramatic change would probably stretch society’s capacity for adaptation to the limit, not to mention having a disastrous effect on the natural ecosystems that support humanity as a whole.

(…) The planet would be in the throes of a mass extinction of natural life approaching in magnitude that at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65m years ago, when more than half of global biodiversity was wiped out.”

Rivers will run dry, rainforests will collapse and burn, ferocious heatwaves will kill millions. We are heading for a total meltdown of life as we know it. The solution? STOP BURNING ALL FOSSIL FUELS NOW! Sure, there are no viable alternatives but Mark Lynas would rather see the world return to medieval living conditions than allow for the mercury to rise.

Do not miss to read the comments. Some of them are quite funny.

If you love chili peppers then you definitely should try the new “Global Warming Salsa”. Developed by Dan and Cheri Houston it promises to set the world on fire one tongue at a time, according to The Detroit News. You can also join the Salsa of the Month Club at www.globalwarmingsalsa.com. Who said global warming is bad for you?

Wednesday’s Seattle Times article, ”UW Study Examines Decline of Snowpack” begins as follows,

“Maybe the snow in the Cascade Mountains isn’t in such immediate peril from global warming after all.

Despite previous studies suggesting a warmer climate is already taking a bite out of Washington’s snowpack, there’s no clear evidence that human-induced climate change has caused a drop in 20th century snow levels, according to a new study by University of Washington scientists.”

The study findings (note: the study has not yet been peer-reviewed) have already become part of a scientific debate with an unusually political tone. A leading scientist on the other side of the debate (presumably an AGW-supporter) said the latest analysis speculates about the future and offers little new about the past. Well, almost the same is applicable to IPCC’s reports. Aren’t they just loose speculations about the future with no empirical evidence whatsoever?

We’ve been warned that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer. But according to the latest ICESat thickness estimates, it appears that the first-year sea ice in the Arctic Ocean so far this season is comparable in thickness to what it was in 2006 and 2007. Why is that?

The NSIDC says that sparse snow cover over the Arctic Ocean last winter resulted in less insulation from the bitterly cold air, resulting in faster, first-year ice growth. Snow was unable to accumulate last autumn since much of the Arctic Ocean was still ice-free, causing the snow to just melt into the open waters. Once the ice formed later in the fall, it accumulated more quickly than normal as there was very little barrier (snow) between the ice and the cold air just above the surface.

And how about that global warming anyway? The recent years’ fall in global temperatures has led to increasing speculation that global warming is over. The AGW-supporters explain that even if global temperatures rise and fall year-on-year this does not mean that global warming has stopped; only that the continuing rise in temperatures due to man made emissions of greenhouse gases is being temporarily masked.

So the first important question we should ask is:

Is the Earth warming?

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has confirmed that an impending phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years.

What if the planet is actually entered a cooling phase while the world’s governments do their best to restrain the use of fossil fuels with no viable alternative at hand?

Regardless of the answer to the first question (“yes” or “no”), there are further uncertainties. Question number two is therefore:

If the world indeed is warming, what is the main cause of this warming and can we do anything to control climate change? And should the world be cooling, can we do anything to stop that?

If climate change is something beyond our control, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to adapt instead of putting our money on useless mitigation measures?

IPCC indicates that the consequences of a global warming will be dire, with floods, droughts, famine and overall misery devastating the lives of all people.

But what if warming actually turns out beneficial? What is it is cooling we should worry about?

That is the third question we need to ask.

The papers are full of reports on shrinking glaciers, collapsing ice-sheets and worried polar bears. But the most important questions, those above, questions that still remain unanswered, have eluded us. So let’s get back to the basics of climate discussion instead of losing ourselves among thousands of fairly vague implications of what might or might not happen.

According to a recent British poll, more than one third of the Brits believe the 9/11 to be staged by the US government. Almost as many think that Apollo’s moon landing was shot right here on Earth. Obviously, we all prone to conspiracy thinking.

Today, the term “conspiration” has been widely adopted in the climate debate. The proponents of the AGW-theory claim that climate skepticism is directed and produced by conservative think tanks in cooperation with the oil business. Climate skeptics, on the other hand, argue that AGW may very well be the biggest scam ever pulled on the human race.

Who is right, if anybody? Who conspires against whom and for what purpose? Which side has the most to gain?

How come global warming has become so overexposed in media? Why is climate change to blame for almost everything? Is CO2 the perfect means to curtail technical and economic development? Is climate change just one of many scares presented to us humans over the past hundred years? Or is it a real threat, stubbornly denied by some shadowy interest groups?

What do you think?