Does an Ancient Climate Change Predict Our Future?

Work by a group of scientists led by Mark Pagani of Yale University suggests that climate is more sensitive than hoped to a sustained increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Their research, published in the December 8, 2006, issue of Science magazine, suggests that a global warming event 55 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)was caused by a massive release of carbon.

The geologic record shows that the ensuing greenhouse effect heated the planet by about 9° F (5° C), on average, in less than 10,000 years. The temperature increase lasted 170,000 years and caused profound changes to the world’s rainfall patterns, made the oceans acidic, and affected oceanic and terrestrial plant and animal life, including spawning the rise of our modern primate ancestors. But understanding just how much carbon was responsible for the temperature increase and where it came from remains elusive.

Read the rest of the article in HuliQ.
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2006: Beginning of the Big Heat Wave?

We will likely remember 2006 as the year scientists discovered that the earth's climate is heating up faster than expected. Check out this excerpt from an article in The Scotsman:

ITS collapse was so violent that it was picked up by earthquake monitors 150 miles away - a thundering warning to the world that the Arctic was heating up faster than scientists had imagined.
A giant ice shelf, covering 41 square miles, had broken off from the Canadian mainland and floated off into the sea.
Yet for 16 months, experts were unaware that the Ayles ice shelf - just one of six remaining in the Canadian Arctic - had drifted off until a scientist began examining old satellite images.
Yesterday, scientists said the dramatic discovery capped a year of new studies, which have revealed that the world is heating up faster than had been thought.
From the slowing Gulf Stream, to the warmest British summer on record, to unusually warm water in the Caribbean, researchers have mapped our rapidly changing climate.
Scientists were yesterday still coming to terms with the im-portance of the Ayles ice shelf collapse.
"This is a dramatic and disturbing event," said Dr Warwick Vincent, an Arctic ice expert at Laval University in Quebec.

Cash for Climate Research

Goldman Sachs has provided $2.3 million for 3 research grants to find market-based solutions to climate change. Read about it at Earth and Sky.

Australia's Big Dry

Australia is in the midst of one of its worst droughts ever, and environmentalists are trying to convince the general public that it is a result of climate change. The drought has lasted for over five years, and some worry that it could continue for decades.

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Climate Change Throwdown

Climate Change Skeptics, you've been served! According to the UK publication The Guardian,

"Britain's leading climate scientist has challenged those who question the impact of the human population on global warming to defend their claims that car and factory emissions of carbon dioxide are not heating up the planet.

Alan Thorpe, chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, said yesterday he planned to defeat so-called 'deniers', first on-line and later at a public debate."

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Jurassic Revenge

Last year, New Republic Editor Michael Crowley blasted novelist Michael Crichton for popularizing junk science among policymakers through State of Fear, his novel that takes a skeptical view of climate change. Crichton's apparent response? To name a child-molesting character in his new novel "Mick Crowley." Read about it on Media Channel.

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How to Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic

You may have seen a list like this before, but lost track of it. Here is a chance to bookmark this collection of articles by Coby Beck in the blog Gristmill.

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Climate Change Doubles Russian Natural Disasters

The rate of natural disasters in Russia has doubled in the past decade due to global warming, according to Russia's Minister of Emergency Situtations. Most alarmingly, in Russia's northern regions the permafrost is melting.
"Over the last 30 years the average depth of melting in the permafrost zone increased by 20 centimeters and keeps progressing. If the melting continues, the foundations of homes, communication lines and gas pipelines could begin sinking," the minister said.
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Do bears sleep in the woods?

Not in Spain, not this winter, anyway, in what scientists there are calling one of the strongest signs of how climate change affects the natural world. Read about it in The Independent.

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Eating the Planet like a Bag of Doritos?

"Expanding Markets and Dying Oceans: Eating the Planet Like a Bag of Doritos for Jesus" is the title of an anti-corporate editorial (rant is such an ugly word) in the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel.

Phill Rockstroh says, "We're devouring the life-sustaining resources of the earth as if it were a bag of Doritos. Our empty appetites, engendered by global corporatism and its reliance on fossil fuels, is leveling an effect upon our world tantamount to a slow-motion collision with a comet. "

Rockstroh may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.

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UN Foundation-Club of Madrid Tackle Climate Change

The UN Foundation and the Club of Madrid are joining forces to tackle Climate Change through the formation of an independent high-level task force, according to a post on earthtimes.org excerpted here. The Club of Madrid is composed of 66 democratic former Heads of State and Government from 50 countries around the world. It offers a neutral advice on major global issues affecting sustainable democratic development.

The Task Force will offer recommendations to the Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development, launched at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July 2005. The Dialogue involves 20 countries -- the G8 plus Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, South Africa, and South Korea, as well as the European Commission. The Dialogue will report back to the G8 in 2008.

The Task Force will be chaired by Ricardo Lagos, President of the Club of Madrid, and Timothy E. Wirth, President of the UN Foundation. "We are fast approaching a tipping point on global warming, and it is time for more concerted action to avoid dangerous impacts on our economic and environmental systems," said Wirth, who led the U.S. climate team as Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs under President Clinton. "The basic building blocks of an international agreement are readily identifiable -- but political will and consensus have been elusive. Together with the Club of Madrid, we are creating this task force to harness the wisdom of former world leaders and demonstrate that a political consensus is possible -- before it is too late."
"We know that a sustainable energy future is possible and the costs are not out of reach, but increased political will and greater collaboration between developed and developing countries are missing," said Lagos, who served as President of Chile from 2000 to 2006. "We hope that by using this forum of high-level dialogues, we'll be able to make clear, concise recommendations on the next steps to mitigate climate change and empower our leaders to move quickly and forcefully on this important issue."

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New Zealand's DIY Climate Change Fix

According to Stuff, New Zealand's United Future party has released its policy on climate change, which focuses on what individuals should do. They are encouraging homeowners to insulate their homes, taking out loans of around $5K if necessary. It also encourages people to purchase more fuel-efficient cars. United Future leader Peter Dunne said that"we are at a point in the life of our planet where significant change needs to be made if we are to survive". That change could not be made cheaply or easily, he said.

Australian Scientists Use Butterflies to Gauge Climate Change

In an Article in Australia's The Age, Australia's Monash University lead researcher Paul Sunnucks said studying butterflies is a good way to measure climate change. "They are cold-blooded, so that makes them very responsive to temperatures," he said. "A couple of degrees can make the difference between life and death."

Starting next month, researchers from Monash, Melbourne and La Trobe universities will visit 28 areas to study the brown butterfly, which is common along the eastern seaboard.
Dr Sunnucks said international research had found that butterflies were dying out in warmer places. "They are moving away from the equator … trying to get to where it's cooler."

Britain's Stern report on climate change, published in October, predicted that up to one quarter of Australia's butterflies would be threatened by a 2 degree global temperature rise.

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US Ratification of Kyoto Unlikely

So said Stuart Eizenstat, lead negotiator for former U.S. President Bill Clinton on the Kyoto Protocol for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. While concern about Climate Change is increasing in the US Government, President Bush refuses to back the Kyoto Protocol and even though the balance of power has changed in Congress, the numbers simply do not add up because a two-thirds majority is required to override a presidential veto-- and that looks unlikely given most Republicans' ideological hatred of Kyoto.
"With the changeover in Congress we really do have the potential for greater interest but not really legislation. It hasn't changed the dynamic," Eizenstat said.

Read the full article in Reuters.
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Evangelical Science-Faith Think Tank Calls Solving Climate Change "Complex"

"To suggest that we can stop global warming by simply cutting back on fossil fuel combustion and altering our industrial processes is naïve at best. If we ignore one or more of certain mechanisms that contribute to either global warming or cooling, our attempted solutions could actually make matters worse. Scientifically speaking this intricate balance, designed specifically for humanity’s benefit, is no accident. The amazing fine tuning observed in all these complex processes gives us a clear picture of a Creator who exquisitely prepared a place for humans to live in and to launch—at least for awhile—a global high-tech civilization.” So says astronomer Hugh Ross, founder and president of the Evangelical Christian-oriented science-faith think tank Reasons To Believe (www.reasons.org).

Read more about Ross's take on Climate change at Standard News Wire.

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Gore Urges People to Act on Climate Change

Here is an excerpt from the article on All Headline News:

More than 20,000 people in close to 2,000 living rooms throughout the country watched Gore's documentary on global warming Saturday night.
The event, hosted by Gore and Move On, a Political Action Committee with more than 3.3 million members, featured the film "Inconvenient Truth."
Gore, from his Nashville, Tenn. home, spent 30 minutes on a conference call and answered questions from those who were tuned in via computers and telephones.

"All we are missing (to stop this) is political will, and that is a renewable resource," Gore said.

Gore asked the more than 20,000 to help him and organize a mass movement around global warming.
"The American political system is seemingly paralyzed by this issue," Gore said. "And when that becomes the case, then this is when the grassroots movement has to get mobilized."
Gore said the U.S. is responsible for contributing to more than 30 percent of the climate crisis.
"It's not a political issue as much as a moral one," Gore said. "And to allow this to happen is unethical."

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Alpine Ski Resorts Wake Up and Smell the Climate Change

As reported previously in this very blog, the European Alps are experiencing their warmest winter in hundreds of years. In layperson's terms, that means the skiing, what little of it there is, stinks. Snow machines churn out fake white stuff every morning, but by midmorning, rising temps require resorts to turn off the equipment because the psuedo-snow will no longer stick.

According to a story in the New York Times, Climatologists...say the warming trend will become dramatic by 2020. The new studies are alarming, suggesting that the Alps are warming twice as fast as the average in the rest of the world. In 1980, 75 percent of Alpine glaciers were advancing; now, 90 percent are retreating.

China's River Dolphins Missing, Presumed Extinct

A story in Sunday's New York Times marks the sad passing of China's baiji, a white, nearly blind dolphin whose only habitat was the Yangtze River in China. The baiji, a species said to be around 20 million years old, met its demise as economic expansion devastated its natural environment. The baiji are not known to survive in captivity. A recent 6-week-long survey found no baiji, though it could take decades for the species to be declared officially extinct.

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Read the story in The New York Times.

150,000 Homemade Smog Producers

According to estimates by scientists, the number of outdoor home wood boilers has doubled in the US. A total of 150,000 US homes now utilize the boilers to cut their energy bills.

Here is an excerpt from an article in the New York Times,

A report last year by the New York attorney general’s office found that they produce as much particle pollution in an hour as 45 cars or 2 heavy-duty diesel trucks.

While boilers can save money for owners with access to cheap wood, they are far more expensive to operate in suburban areas like Long Island, where a cord of wood can cost $170. A boiler can require more than a dozen cords for the winter. That cost, says Jack Eddington, a Suffolk County legislator who introduced the law restricting the boilers, leads people to resort to burning garbage, old furniture and even Christmas trees — resulting in larger, smellier and potentially more toxic smoke.

Mr. Eddington said he knew of people who collected trash solely for their boilers. “Sometimes that would make the smell worse than the smoke,” he said. “It’s not a cost-saving measure if you follow the manufacturer’s instructions and use only seasoned wood — meaning no sap or anything that could give out a bad toxic emission. The only way you can save money with these things is if you burn anything and everything.”

Use of the boilers is strictly regulated in Connecticut and a few other states and municipalities.

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Fuel Tax on Airlines to Fight Climate Change?

The European Commission is considering a fuel tax on airlines to prevent emissions from skyrocketing. Unless something is done, aviation emission levels will rise 150% about 1990 levels by 2012. Read the story and watch the news report at EUX.TV.

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