Category: Enviroment

A load of hot air?

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | A load of hot air?

Well this post has certainly produced the most heat of any of the almost 250 posts here. Be sure to read the 2nd comment from desmogblog which takes up the challange to rebut the sceptics.

How much has the planet warmed up over the past century? Most people reckon between two and three degrees. They are not even close. The real figure, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is 0.6C. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess the "risk of human-induced climate change".

It's not surprising most people get it wrong. We are bombarded by stories warning us that global warming is out of control."Dr Cindy Carey, a frog specialist from Colorado University, warns that climate scientists have to be more sceptical of their own research.

"A bad paper that gets a lot of publicity could backfire considerably and they'll say see scientists are trying to convince people of climate change on the back of bad data."

After listing some examples this article (click onthe BBC news link at top-of-page to read) concludes wit this warning, just as the alarmist Al Gore movie (Link to movie trailer) is about to open:

All of the climate scientists we spoke to fervently believe global warming is being caused by human activity. Many agree there's also a major problem with alarmism.

A group of 60 expert Scientists just petitioned the Canadian governemet to caution them against a rush-to-judgement on the cause of Global Warming.

It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

Click on this link to a Colorado State Climate Science Blog to read up on this new research. It is also being trumpeted by this provocative site.

Los Farallones

Los Farallones
From PRBO Conservation Science on Farallon National Wildlife Refuge. An account of the trials and tribulations of conducting ecological fieldwork on a small, rocky island 28 miles west of San Francisco (37.7 N, 120 W) This is one of the premier marine wild life breeding sanctuaries in the world. Only accredited researches and scientists are allowed to visit here. Great pictures and tales. Check out the waves from thier storm video

Going Nuclear

Going Nuclear
In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

With Big Boost From Sugar Cane, Brazil Is Satisfying Its Fuel Needs

Brazil Is Satisfying Its Fuel Needs – New York Times
At the dawn of the automobile age, Henry Ford predicted that "ethyl alcohol is the fuel of the future." With petroleum about $65 a barrel, President Bush has now embraced that view, too. But Brazil is already there.

This country expects to become energy self-sufficient this year, meeting its growing demand for fuel by increasing production from petroleum and ethanol. Already the use of ethanol, derived in Brazil from sugar cane, is so widespread that some gas stations have two sets of pumps, marked A for alcohol and G for gas.

Ethanol can be made through the fermentation of many natural substances, but sugar cane offers advantages over others, like corn. For each unit of energy expended to turn cane into ethanol, 8.3 times as much energy is created, compared with a maximum of 1.3 times for corn, according to scientists at the Center for Sugarcane Technology here and other Brazilian research institutes.

Fish Jumping into Boat – Video

Fish Jumping into Boat – Google Video

This video of fish literally jumping into the boat has made the rounds on the Internet. The great debunker of Urban legends has found the source:

The video is a shortened version of a longer clip that originated on the Brazilian Pesca Rondônia web site. (“Pesca” is the Portuguese word for “fishing,” and Rondônia is a northern Brazilian state in the Amazonian region known for its great fishing rivers.) The footage was taken in the Guaporé region, on a portion of the Mequens River inside the Porto Rolins Park (a protected conservation area) where fishing is forbidden. The jumping fish shown in the video are matrinxã (Brycon cephalus), a Brazilian fresh water species.

World ‘cannot meet oil demand’

World 'cannot meet oil demand' – Markets – Times Online
These quotes are from the probable new head of France's largest oil company.

"Take Qatar. How many projects can you have at the same time? You have more than 100,000 people working on sites. It’s a big city of contractors. Now they have the problem of having to build a new power plant to supply a city of contractors.”

M De Margerie said. The world was confusing the issue of reserves with the scale of the problem in producing those reserves. He said: “The oil reserves are there, that is the good news, but what we can bring on today to meet demand is limited by factors other than what scientists see in a lab or think-tanks.”

Reasearch on Pre-Historic Climate Change

AAAS – AAAS News Release
"If you go back in time, you have to go back to the middle Pliocene before you get to see a climate that was as warm as what we are going to see in the next 50 to 100 years in our own time," Chandler said.

Ocean temperatures rose substantially during that warming episode—as much as 7 to 9 degrees Celsius (about 12 to 16 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas of the North Atlantic. But scientists are puzzled. The carbon dioxide levels at that time — inferred from geochemical data — were roughly comparable to our own time, approaching 400 parts per million.

The natural trigger for the PETM warming episode remains a subject of intense debate, but Thomas said a leading hypothesis involves the release of huge amounts of methane gas that had been trapped in ice compounds called methane hydrates. Methane produces less carbon dioxide than coal when it is burned as a fuel, and it is a powerful greenhouse gas. Most methane hydrates in the present oceans are frozen in sediments in the deep oceans, but some are associated with permafrost soils in the Arctic. Release of the methane can occur through natural processes, including underwater landslides or other seismic events, or by warming of ocean waters. Once released, the gas can induce atmospheric warming that has a positive feedback effect, releasing still more gas as ocean waters and permafrost regions begin to warm. The process can reach a tipping point where it starts to rapidly accelerate.

“The Cooling World”: From Newsweek, April 28, 1975

The cooling world – From Newsweek, April 28, 1975

Interesting historical perspective reading this 30 year-old article warning us to prepare for Global Cooling.

Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras — and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 — years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

More links to the Environment on this blog.

Discovered: missing link that solves a mystery of evolution

Guardian Unlimited | Science | Discovered: missing link that solves a mystery of evolution
Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago.

Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action – like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds.

Dr Clack said that, judging from the fossil, the first evolutionary transition from sea to land probably involved learning how to breathe air. "Tiktaalik has lost a series of bones that, in fishes, covers the gill region and helps to operate the gill-breathing mechanism," she said. "The air-breathing mechanism it had would have been elaborated and having lost the series of bones that lies between the head and the shoulder girdle means it's got a neck, it can raise its head more easily in order to gulp the air.

Click here for NY Times Coverage of this story