Global warming overblown?

A very sound, but politically unlikely means of disposing of nuclear waste is to package them in suitably designed containers and drop them on the ocean floor in known deep subduction zones, in places where there is a high sedimentation rate. The materials will quickly be covered by a thick blanket of sediment and will slowly be driven into the magma below. The geological period for their recyclng would be many times the period required for their complete radiological decay.

Surprise CO2 rise may speed up global warming
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
11 October 2004

The rate at which global warming gases are accumulating in the atmosphere has taken a sharp leap upwards, leading to fears that the devastating effects of climate change may hit the world even sooner than has been predicted.

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the principal greenhouse gas, have made a sudden jump that cannot be explained by any corresponding jump in terrestrial emissions of CO2 from power stations and motor vehicles - because there has been none.

Some scientists think instead that the abrupt speed-up may be evidence of the long-feared climate change "feedback" mechanism, by which global warming causes alterations to the earth's natural systems and then, in turn, causes the warming to increase even more rapidly than before.

Such a development would mean the worldwide droughts, agricultural failure, sea-level rise, increased weather turbulence and flooding all predicted as consequences of climate change would arrive on much shorter time-scales than present scenarios suggest, and the world would have much less time to co-ordinate its response.

Only last month, Tony Blair expressed anxiety that global warming's dire effects would arrive not just in his children's lifetime, but in his own, and would "radically alter human existence".

The feedback phenomenon has already been predicted in the supercomputer models of the global climate on which the current forecasts of warming are based. A key aspect is the weakening, caused by the warming itself, of the earth's ability to remove huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere by absorbing it annually in its forests and oceans, in the so-called carbon cycle. (The forests and oceans are referred to as carbon "sinks".)

Hitherto, however, that weakening has been put decades into the future.

The possibility that it may be occurring now is suggested in the long run of atmospheric CO2 measurements that have been made since 1958 at the observatory on the top of Mauna Loa, an 11,000ft volcano in Hawaii, by the American physicist Charles Keeling, from the University of California at San Diego.

When he began, Dr Keeling, who is still in charge of the project and who might be said to be the Grand Old Man of CO2 , found the amount of the gas present in the atmosphere to be 315 parts per million by volume (ppm); today, after the remorseless increase in emissions from power stations and motor vehicles over the past four and a half decades, the figure stands at 376ppm.

This growth is what most scientists believe is causing the earth's atmosphere to warm up, as the increasing CO2 retains more and more of the sun's heat in the atmosphere, like the panes of a greenhouse.

But the worry now is not merely the swelling volume of CO2 but the sudden leap in its increase rate. Across all 46 years of Dr Keeling's measurements, the average annual CO2 rise has been 1.3ppm, although in recent decades it has gone up to about 1.6ppm.

There have been several peaks, all associated with El Niño, the disruption of the atmosphere-ocean system in the tropical Pacific Ocean that causes changes to global weather patterns. In 1988, for example, the annual increase was 2.45ppm; in 1998, 2.74ppm; both were El Niño years.

Throughout the series those peaks have been followed by troughs, and there has been no annual increase in CO2 above 2ppm that has been sustained for more than a year. Until now.

From 2001 to 2002, the increase was 2.08ppm (from 371.02 to 373.10); and from 2002 to 2003 the increase was 2.54ppm (from 373.10 to 375.64). Neither of these were El Niño years, and there has been no sudden leap in emissions.

The greater-than-two rise is also visible in two separate sets of CO2 measurements made by America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at Mauna Loa and other stations around the world.

At the weekend, Dr Keeling told The Independent the rise was real and worrying as it might indeed represent the beginnings of a feedback.

He said it might be associated with the Southern Oscillation, a pattern of high and low atmospheric pressure previously always associated with El Niños, or it might be something new.

"The rise in the annual rate of CO2 increase to above two parts per million for two consecutive years is a real phenomenon," Dr Keeling said.

"It is possible this is merely a reflection of the Southern Oscillation, like previous peaks in the rate, but it is possible it is the beginning of a natural process unprecedented in records.

"This could be a decoupling of the Southern Oscillation from El Niño events, which itself could be caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere; or it could be a weakening of the earth's carbon sinks. It is a cause for concern."

Leading British scientists and environmentalists agree. "If this is a rate change [in the CO2 rise], of course it will be very significant," said Dr Piers Forster of the meteorology department of the University of Reading. "It will be of enormous concern, because it will imply that all our global warming predictions for the next 100 years or so will have to be redone. If the higher rate of increase continues, things will get very much worse. It will makes our predicament even more catastrophic."

Tom Burke, a former government adviser on green issues who is now an academic and environmental adviser to business, said: "This series of CO2 measurements is the world's climate clock, and it looks as if it may be ticking faster,"

"That means we are running out of time to stabilise the climate. Governments and business will both have to invest dramatically more if we are to avoid the global warming catastrophe that Tony Blair has warned against."

Can anybody explain how we are supposed to 'stablize' what is presented as a natural environmental phenomenon?

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the principal greenhouse gas, have made a sudden jump that cannot be explained by any corresponding jump in terrestrial emissions of CO2 from power stations and motor vehicles - because there has been none.

Greenhouse gas jump spurs warming fears
Mon 11 October, 2004 18:04

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - An unexplained jump in greenhouse gases since 2002 might herald a catastrophic acceleration of global warming if it becomes a trend, scientists say.

But they said on Monday the two-year leap might be an anomaly linked, for instance, to forest fires in Siberia or a freak hot summer in Europe in 2003 rather than a portent of runaway climate change linked to human disruption of the climate system.

"There have been two years where the rise of carbon dioxide (CO2) has been faster than average," said Richard Betts, Manager for Ecosystems and Climate Impacts at Britain's Hadley Centre.

"We shouldn't get alarmist about this ... If it lasted for more than about five years you'd start to get worried," he said.

Carbon dioxide levels, the main gas blamed for blanketing the planet and pushing up temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, have risen by more than two parts per million (ppm) in the past two years against a recent rate of about 1.5 ppm.

Scientists said the figures were confirmed at sites including Mauna Loa, Hawaii, west Ireland or the Norwegian Arctic island of Svalbard, about 1,300 km (800 miles) miles from the North Pole. The rise was less in the southern hemisphere.

"CO2 levels are up about two ppm in the past two years -- but it would be pushing it to say that it could be the start of runaway global warming," said Kim Holmen, senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU).

The rise in the past two years is quicker than mapped out in U.N. projections to the year 2100 based on increased human use of fossil fuels like coal, oil or gas. Higher temperatures could trigger everything from desertification to rising sea levels.

PLANTS ABSORB CO2

On Svalbard, CO2 levels have varied in 2004 from 365-385 ppm, Holmen said. The level is lowest in summer, when plants absorb CO2 as they grow. Organisms from plants to animals emit CO2 when they breathe and the oceans and soil also trap CO2.

A background fear is that extra human emissions, by cars, factories and power plants, may be blunting the planet's ability to absorb CO2. In the worst case, that could lead to a runaway warming.

"These results are deeply worrying, and indicate that the battle against global climate change could be even more pressing than was previously thought," echoed Cathrine Pearce, Friends of the Earth International's climate campaigner.

"It's a worrying sign," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy director at environmental group Greenpeace.

U.N. scientists project that average temperatures will rise by 1.4 to 5.8 C (3 to 11 F) by 2100 because of human impact on the climate. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8C since the Industrial Revolution in tandem with a 30 percent rise in CO2 levels.

The U.N.'s Kyoto protocol, likely to come into force in coming months with Russian help after a U.S. pullout in 2001, obliges developed nations to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

More Trees Now!
by Fred Pearce
Hanover - September 29 1999 - Rising levels of greenhouse gases have led to faster tree growth in arid regions. The discovery boosts the case for planting forests in dry areas to combat the effects of global warming.

Plants combine water with carbon dioxide to create complex chemicals. Xiahong Feng of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has shown that the rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past 200 years has made this process more efficient.

More to this article here:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/greenhouse-99c.html

Question - I have been told that there are more trees today in the
United States of America than there were when the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth Rock. Is this true? If so, why?

Rather, the forests have been recovering from clearing after the arrival of
Europeans.
http://realm.umd.edu/chesapeake.shtml

Anthony R. Brach, Ph.D., [email protected]
http://www.herbaria.harvard.edu/~brach/
Flora of China http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/
Harvard University Herbaria, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-2094 USA

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I don't know how this could be determined, since there is no real way of
knowing exactly what forests looked like at any given time that far back in
history. Its likely that there are more trees in some places, like on the
great plains, where they have been widely planted around towns and home
sites; on the other hand much of what was forested land in the eastern U.S.
has been converted to agriculture and urban. Certainly there are more trees
now than in 1900, at the end of the great timber baron era of deforestation,
and especially since the 1930's depression years much marginal farmland has
been turned back to forest - but much of that was probably forested
originally anyway so its hard to say whether there has been any net gain.
And what exactly is meant by "more trees?" If you really mean the total
number of individual trees then this is probably a true statement since
virgin forests had relatively few large trees per acre, and have been
replaced by young forests with more but smaller trees per acre. But if you
mean total forested land I think it is a very debatable proposition.
J. Elliott
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bot00/bot00090.htm

My question however is whether the increase in greenhouse gasses are significantly produced by human activity or are they more probably an increase in seismic activity, volcanic emissions, etc. that we have also seen in the last 50 years?

John McCain's 'Global Warming' Hearings Blasted by Climatologist
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
November 19, 2004

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Recent U.S. Senate hearings into alleged global warming, chaired by Arizona Republican John McCain, were among the "most biased" that a noted climatologist has ever seen - "much less balanced than anything I saw in the Clinton administration," he said.
http://www.cnsnews.com/Nation/Archive/200411/NAT20041119a.html

Meteorologist Likens Fear of Global Warming to 'Religious Belief'
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 02, 2004

Washington (CNSNews.com) - An MIT meteorologist Wednesday dismissed alarmist fears about human induced global warming as nothing more than 'religious beliefs.'

"Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?" said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech to about 100 people at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

"Essentially if whatever you are told is alleged to be supported by 'all scientists,' you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief," Lindzen said. His speech was titled, "Climate Alarmism: The Misuse of 'Science'" and was sponsored by the free market George C. Marshall Institute. Lindzen is a professor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.

Once a person becomes a believer of global warming, "you never have to defend this belief except to claim that you are supported by all scientists -- except for a handful of corrupted heretics," Lindzen added.

According to Lindzen, climate "alarmists" have been trying to push the idea that there is scientific consensus on dire climate change.

"With respect to science, the assumption behind the [alarmist] consensus is science is the source of authority and that authority increases with the number of scientists [who agree.] But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign," Lindzen said.

I went hunting for some other sources reporting on that AGU meeting and every scientific editor seems to be using Milloy's press release. At least my search engine couldn't find any other articles.