Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

miniTAX wrote:

Steve 41oo wrote:

well I think you right again, I will read my newspaper with a more skeptical eye from now on.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/

Maybe google scholar would help, lol.
See for example phytoplankton+temperature
or phytoplankton+co2
So bad real life is more complicated than simple and definitive theories.

Just to clarify MiniTax, those non-scientists among us who value honest and accurate information are immeasurably in your debt for your contributions on this thread. Just so you know you are appreciated.

(I can't tell you how much I'm snickering at those non-scientists who are calling YOU pathetic. )

By the way, Steve I think has an incorrect or at least incomplete view of this whole thing, but he infrequently stoops to personal insults when he provides his point of view. For that reason I have also appreciated his contributions that at least require the skeptics to look for valid support for the opposite point of view. I've appreciated Hamburger and a few other pro-AGW folks who are actually engaged in debate too.

I hate when someone ... says stupid things about me, or doesm't tell the truth, or makes up a biography. or ...

But I don't hate persons.

For that reason I have also appreciated his contributions that at least require the skeptics to look for valid support for the opposite point of view. I've appreciated Hamburger and a few other pro-AGW folks who are actually engaged in debate too.

I was watching Pierre Gadonneix CEO of EDF Energy interviewed yesterday. EDF will probably get a huge contract to build new nuclear power plants in Britain. He talked a lot of sense, both on the coming "energy crunch" and the need to curb CO2 emissions. He's obviously been reading some of my posts on a2k.

What irritates me about this particular thread is that the scientific debate is settled, and the climate change deniers have lost. But they continue to nit-pick. Pointing out error is fair. But what is not is pretending that an incomplete understanding of climate change must in itself be a refutation of AGW. The problem for the deniers is that while they spend time flogging dead horses, more hard data and observations reinforce the AGW model.

What irritates me about this particular thread is that the scientific debate is settled, and the climate change deniers have lost. But they continue to nit-pick. Pointing out error is fair. But what is not is pretending that an incomplete understanding of climate change must in itself be a refutation of AGW. The problem for the deniers is that while they spend time flogging dead horses, more hard data and observations reinforce the AGW model.

The loneliest science lab in the Arctic
By David Shukman
Polar Environment Atmosphere Research Laboratory, Canada



Perched on a windswept ridge amid the fjords and mountains of Ellesmere Island stands one of the world's northernmost atmospheric research stations - a rugged outpost of frontline science with the delicate name of Pearl.
Pearl stands for Polar Environment Atmosphere Research Laboratory and the scientists braving the elements here believe that in coming years it should help reveal vital clues about our changing planet.

The lab is reached by a bumpy, icy track that climbs up from the weather station at Eureka. The view over a frozen inlet and out to distant peaks is startling.

Equipped with as many as 27 different instruments, it's designed to provide the most comprehensive view yet of the state and composition of the Arctic air from ground-level up to the edge of space.

Providing answers

According to project manager Pierre Fogal, Pearl should produce invaluable data on the key questions of our time.

"There's a danger with global warming that we think we don't need to do any more science on it - when in fact we do need a much more complete understanding of what's happening," he told me.

Originally set up in the early 90s, the lab struggled with a lack of funding and at one stage was destined to be shut down.
Now the lab is supported by a consortium of Canadian universities, with backing from the Canadian government and its work is seen as a major element of International Polar Year.

One of the leading scientists involved is Professor Jim Drummond of the University of Toronto.

On our visit, he led me up onto the roof to see the range of instruments at work in the freezing Arctic air.

"There are three key issues we can investigate here which are relevant to everyone - the state of the ozone, the quality of the air, and climate change," he says.
'Place of significance'

He shows me the device that monitors UV light reaching the surface. According to Professor Drummond, the Montreal Convention banning the use of the CFC gases which destroy the ozone layer will only work if it is properly policed - and that requires careful long-term monitoring.


The air quality is assessed by examining the concentrations of different gases including the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and the levels of aerosols, the tiny particles carried in pollution.

Exhaust fumes and chimney smoke from the cities and factories of Europe, America and Asia all make their way North and the pattern of the winds mean that most of them stay.

The Arctic may be remote and look pristine but it has become an industrial dustbin.
Most instruments have only been running for a year or so. But already one has observed a previously unknown pattern of winds in the upper atmosphere.

The aim is for most of the data to be gathered autonomously and transmitted back to the researchers further south.

As we leave we notice a small cairn a short distance away. It is what the Inuit people call an Inukshuk - a structure of stones marking a place of significance.

That's certainly the hope of the researchers operating this sentinel in the Arctic. As we descend I turn for a final look - but Pearl is hidden in a cloud.

Inuit leader: stop expansion of Stansted airport

By Cahal Milmo
Published: 30 May 2007

One of the most prominent members of the Inuit community will today plead for an end to the expansion of Stansted Airport and deliver a devastating critique of the link between Britain's cheap flights culture and the effects of climate change on his people.

Aqqaluk Lynge will present evidence of the increasing loss of Inuit villages and hunting grounds across the Arctic. His testimony will be given to the public inquiry opening today into plans to dramatically increase the number of passengers using London's third airport.

The Government and British Airports Authority (BAA), the owner of Stansted, argue that expansion of the aviation industry is vital to the UK economy. BAA is seeking to raise the number of flights leaving Stansted by 80,000 to 264,000 a year and increase the number of passengers from 25 million to 35 million a year.

But a coalition of environmentalists and residents are aiming to deal a blow to the Government's strategy by putting climate change at the heart of its argument against the rise in flights and passengers - alongside local concerns about noise, pollution damage and economic benefits.

Mr Lynge argues that the effects of flying from Stansted, where 80 per cents of flights are on no-frills carriers and eight out of 10 passengers are travelling on holiday or for leisure, are felt far beyond Britain in the vast Inuit ice fields stretching from Russia's Bering Straits to Greenland.

The Inuit politician, who is the head of Greenland's indigenous population and the former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, told The Independent: "When I was a boy in north Greenland, the sea ice formed in November. Now we don't see it for months after that. All our certainties are being changed by global warming, from the location of hunting grounds to the loss of our homes to the rising sea.

"This is caused by pollution from the South. There is now a connection between our backyard and your backyard and we would like to you to question some points of your lifestyle such as flying and creating more emissions.

"That is why Stansted is important. Getting on a plane in England for a cheap holiday is felt here on the ice today and for you tomorrow. We are not even 160,000 people but global warming is not just threatened polar bears and melting ice. It is about our right to a viable existence."

Inuit communities are already having to deal with the reality of global warming. In written evidence to the Stansted inquiry before he attends in person at the end of July, Mr Lynge, who was invited to appear by the Stop Stansted Expansion group, details how one Inuit village in Alaska has already lost 10 homes to the encroaching sea, which has moved 300ft inland since 2000. Engineers predict all 600 houses face being swallowed by 2050.

An authoritative report on climate change compiled by 250 scientists published in April found that the Arctic is disproportionately affected by global warming. The United Nations-sponsored Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, which took four years to complete, found that warming in the region would be between 4C and 7C over the next 100 years, about twice the global average.

The unusual scenario of the Inuits' plight being put before a British planning inquiry coincides with a ground-breaking conference for populations in the front line of climate change. Delegates in Belize in central America heard testimony yesterday that increasing numbers of Inuit hunters are being killed by falling through thinning ice field in pursuit of their prey. Nicodemus Illauq, an Inuit from northern Canada, told the gathering in Belize of representatives of Arctic peoples and island states: "My people have been hunting on the ice for 5,000 years but now you risk death around every turn."

The focus on global warming at the Stansted inquiry, which is due to last six months, follows a decision four years ago in the Government's aviation White Paper that environmental issues must be taken into account in airport expansion proposals. It is first time that planning inspectors will have to consider ecological issues, which include Hatfield Forest, an ancient woodland just a mile from the airport.

BAA, which is also facing a second separate planning inquiry into its proposal to build a second runway at Stansted as part of the Government's plans to cater for up to 460 million passengers at UK airports by 2020, has said the expansion is vital if aviation in the South-east is not to grind to a halt. Research has shown that congestion at Heathrow and elsewhere is already costing the economy £1.7bn a year whereas increasing capacity will boost it by £13bn.

A BAA spokesman said: "We are confident of the case that we will be presenting to the inquiry."

Campaigners claim there is a flat contradiction between airport expansion and Labour's vow to cut carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the extra flights at Stansted if the expansion is permitted will increase from five million tonnes to seven million tonnes a year - the equivalent of the emissions that would be saved if every home in the UK switched all its lightbulbs to energy saving bulbs.

Carol Barbone, campaign director at Stop Stansted Expansion, said: "If Stansted were permitted to expand to maximum use of the existing runway, the local environment would suffer, the national economy would suffer and we would have taken a giant step backwards in the battle to combat climate change."

Stansted facts

BAA is appealing against a decision by Uttlesford District Council to refuse its request to exceed the legal limit of 25 million passengers a year.

* Annual passenger numbers stand at 23.7 million. BAA estimates its "maximisation plan" will increase passengers to 35 million. Campaigners say it is more likely to be 50 million

* 78 per cent of passengers at Stansted travel for leisure; 18 per cent are on business.

* No-frills airlines Ryanair and easyJet account for 80 per cent of flights from Stansted.

* A planning application to build a second runway at Stansted, as proposed by the Government, is expected this year. The runway could be in operation by 2015.

* If the second runway is built, 68 million passengers are forecast to use Stansted by 2030.

* Flights from Stansted produce five million tonnes of CO2 a year.

* Aviation accounts for 13 per cent of UK carbon emissions.

I'm not climate change's Billy Graham
Climate change denial, I discovered at the Hay festival, shares the same characteristics as religion.
George Monbiot

May 28, 2007
I think I might have cracked it. Ever since I started giving lectures on man-made climate change, I've been troubled by the question of how to answer people who don't and won't believe it is happening.

You can tell them that almost all climate scientists believe it is taking place. But climate scientists are part of the conspiracy. You can explain that almost all peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject accept it. But how does that help if they believe the Daily Mail is the font of all wisdom? You can point out that the effort to dissuade people that climate change is real has been sponsored by fossil fuel companies. In response - and in marvellous contradiction of their professed suspicion of scientists - they then point to the handful of climatologists who have not been sponsored by the oil industry who say that it isn't happening. You can argue that they are cherry-picking their experts and their data, but unless they have an understanding of the scientific process, they don't see what's wrong with that.

At my talk last night, a man in the audience informed me that a belief in climate change is a religion, and that I am its Billy Graham. He pointed out that temperatures on Mars have risen: could that be because of all the people driving their SUVs there? Well full marks for originality: I haven't heard that one more than 100 times since the Martian data was published. But instead of trying to argue with him, this time I asked a question: what would it take to convince you that manmade climate change is taking place?

"Nothing", he said. "The climate has always changed. This is just another natural cycle."

"So even if every scientist of every kind and every persuasion agreed that manmade climate change is happening, you would still place your own opinion above theirs?"

"Yes."

This, I suspect, must now be the position of most of those who still deny that man-made climate change is happening: that there is nothing - no evidence, however compelling, no scientific consensus, however robust - that could persuade them of the opposite case. Could there be a better definition of religion?

Energy Information Administration
EIA Reports
U.S. Department of Energy
Washington, DC 20585

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAY 23, 2007

U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuels
Declined by 1.3 Percent in 2006

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels decreased
by 1.3 percent in 2006, from 5,955 million metric tons of carbon
dioxide (MMTCO2) in 2005 to 5,877 MMTCO2 in 2006, according to
preliminary estimates released today by the Energy Information
Administration (EIA).

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