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

 
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 03:02 pm
I saw a big flock of birds over Hyde, Manchester last Saturday of a type I have never seen before.
They flocked like starlings or pigeons, and were about pigeon size, but they flew a bit like lapwings.

My birdy friend, consulted on the telephone, said they might have been waxwings.

I've never seen these around here before, in thirty years.

This proves nothing of course, but I just thought I'd mention it.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 03:35 pm
McTag wrote:
I saw a big flock of birds over Hyde, Manchester last Saturday of a type I have never seen before.
They flocked like starlings or pigeons, and were about pigeon size, but they flew a bit like lapwings.

My birdy friend, consulted on the telephone, said they might have been waxwings.

I've never seen these around here before, in thirty years.

This proves nothing of course, but I just thought I'd mention it.


It could have been waxwings: the last couple of weeks, waxwings have been seen in North Germany in a never before noticed amount (nearly 20,000 were counted by ornitho.... bird friends :wink: ).
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 03:38 pm
Centuries back, btw, waxwings were seen as a bad omen in southern parts of Germany (because they rarely came southwars), and thus this bird there was called comonly 'Black Death bird'.
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Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 03:41 pm
Here's a site that had some interesting descriptions of waxwings (Passing a berry back and forth??).

http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-guide/waxwing.htm

It says the Bohemian Waxwings are particularly prevalent this winter, especially around Norwich, though usually considered scarce.

In my area we have a similar species, Cedar Waxwing, which is the favored food of the local Black Merlin. Our waxwings prefer berries and so, if you plant native berry-bearing plants, you'll encourage (in the end) Merlins.

Now, I would really, really be surprised if you had a sudden influx of hummingbirds. Wink Please keep an eye out for those.
0 Replies
 
McTag
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 04:10 pm
There was another major report on this topic in The Observer today:

How we put the heat on nature

As the world's experts meet in Britain to discuss climate change, leading scientists warn that its effects could be unstoppable. Robin McKie reports

Sunday January 30, 2005
The Observer

John Lawton's love affair with weather has lasted his professional life. But the current head of the Natural Environment Research Council, a scientist rated one of Britain's leading ecologists, has recently found his passion for climate and the environment is waning.
'My youngest grandson, Jonah, was born two years ago,' he said last week. 'He is a real delight but his future, in a world heading towards massive climatic change, I have become extremely worried about. In fact, I am terrified.'
For a senior government scientist, a man accustomed to caveats and qualifications, these are stark words. But Lawton is no solo maverick. He is only one member of a swelling band of scientists whose warnings about global warming have become more and more agitated.
The government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has described global warming as a greater threat than terrorism; the Prime Minister has claimed it is the greatest threat currently facing civilisation; and Dennis Tirpak, who will chair this week's international climate conference in Exeter, will warn the world it has seen nothing yet in terms of erratic weather patterns. The heatwaves of 2003 which killed 20,000 people, 'may be looked upon as having been relatively cool ones,' he will warn.
Such apocalyptic statements might be expected to inflame the UK public. Yet people seem largely unperturbed. Mobile phone masts and GM crops apparently cause as many sleepless nights as the prospect, endorsed by senior scientists, of our world being overcome by melting ice caps, flooded cities, scorched fields, and diverted ocean currents.
This strange, reversed state of affairs - a body of increasingly concerned scientists and an uncaring public - raises two key questions. What has caused researchers like Lawton to become so fearful, and why have these fears not been transmitted to the public?
The first question is the easier to answer and has much to do with the welter of data that has begun to pour from monitoring stations, satellites, computers and meteorological centres and which paint an ever clearer, more detailed picture of a world being pitched into unknown climatic waters.
'If you look at the data for the past half-million years you can see a distinct pattern,' said Lawton. 'We can tell from polar ice cores what world temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were like.'
Scientists have found there has been an ice age every hundred thousand years. Each ended abruptly, allowing global temperatures to soar. Then, over the next few dozen millennia, they sank back until another ice age was triggered and the cycle was repeated.
Until now, that is. 'We emerged from an ice age about 10,000 years ago and temperatures should be getting cooler,' he added. 'But the opposite is happening.'


Article at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1401717,00.html
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hamburger
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 08:25 pm
we used to get a lot of grosbeaks in the spring. they would usually stop for a few days to gorge on the highbush cranberries - often seemed to get a little drunk from the fermented juice -, but haven't seen any for a few years now. instead we get quite a few cardinals and sapsuckers now. the local birders say that the birds come if they find food they like and disappear if they find a better source somewhere else. canada geese always used to fly south for the winter; now many flocks stay behind because lake ontario and other back lakes have less ice, but also because farmers (apparently) leave more grain on the fields and also because people feed them (which makes the canada geese into something not much better than a pest - all the guano left behind should make good fertilizer). hbg
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Baldimo
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 08:33 pm
The sky is falling, the sky is falling, everybody run!!!!!!!!!!!
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sun 30 Jan, 2005 09:41 pm
I like Canada Geese. They can get pretty aggressive, however.

I used to have lunch outside near a place where they grazed. Once they realized *I* had food, there was not much for it. They'd come over to me and beg, getting closer and closer and often try to nip out of my hand. Not as scary as a big old swan.... but scary enough.
. . . .

Baldimo, surely you realize the military runs their own climate simulations and take this more seriously than you appear to be taking it.

There is nothing so foolish or vulnerable as an army that doesn't know what they might be up against.

http://www.gbn.com/PersonBioDisplayServlet.srv?pi=23910

"This public report, prepared by GBN (Global Business Network) for the Department of Defense, has been the subject of several news stories. Fortune magazine excerpted the report in its Feb. 9, 2004, issue ("The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare," by David Stipp). "

Quote:
potential implications on United States national security.

We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental ways. First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few regions, rather than globally. Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be considerably smaller.

We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately."


I'll quote a little of the report, but here it is in full, in pdf form, if you'd like to peruse it:
http://www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?aid=26231&url=%2FUploadDocumentDisplayServlet.srv%3Fid%3D28566

Quote:
Executive Summary
There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century. Because changes have been gradual so far, and are projected to be similarly gradual in the future, the effects of global warming have the potential to be manageable for most nations. Recent research, however, suggests that there is a possibility that this gradual global warming could lead to a relatively abrupt slowing of the ocean's thermohaline conveyor, which could lead to harsher winter weather conditions, sharply reduced soil moisture, and more intense winds in certain regions that currently provide a significant fraction of the world's food production. With inadequate preparation, the result could be a significant drop in the human carrying capacity of the Earth's environment.

The research suggests that once temperature rises above some threshold, adverse weather conditions could develop relatively abruptly, with persistent changes in the atmospheric circulation causing drops in some regions of 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit in a single decade. Paleoclimatic evidence suggests that altered climatic patterns could last for as much as a century, as they did when the ocean conveyor collapsed 8,200 years ago, or, at the extreme, could last as long as 1,000 years as they did during the Younger Dryas, which began about 12,700 years ago.

In this report, as an alternative to the scenarios of gradual climatic warming that are so common, we outline an abrupt climate change scenario patterned after the 100-year event that occurred about 8,200 years ago. This abrupt change scenario is characterized by the following conditions:
· Annual average temperatures drop by up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over Asia and North America and 6 degrees Fahrenheit in northern Europe
· Annual average temperatures increase by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in key areas throughout Australia, South America, and southern Africa.
· Drought persists for most of the decade in critical agricultural regions and in the water resource regions for major population centers in Europe and eastern North America.
· Winter storms and winds intensify, amplifying the impacts of the changes. Western Europe and the North Pacific experience enhanced winds.

The report explores how such an abrupt climate change scenario could potentially de-stabilize the geo-political environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints such as:
1) Food shortages due to decreases in net global agricultural production
2) Decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions due to shifted precipitation patters, causing more frequent floods and droughts
3) Disrupted access to energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminess.

Abrupt Climate Change 2
As global and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around the world, leading to two fundamental strategies: defensive and offensive. Nations with the resources to do so may build virtual fortresses around their countries, preserving resources for themselves. Less fortunate nations especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbors, may initiate in struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy. Unlikely alliances could be formed as defense priorities shift and
the goal is resources for survival rather than religion, ideology, or national honor.

This scenario poses new challenges for the United States, and suggests several steps to be taken:
· Improve predictive climate models to allow investigation of a wider range of scenarios and to anticipate how and where changes could occur
· Assemble comprehensive predictive models of the potential impacts of abrupt climate change to improve projections of how climate could influence food, water, and energy
· Create vulnerability metrics to anticipate which countries are most vulnerable to climate change and therefore, could contribute materially to an increasingly disorderly and potentially violent world.
· Identify no-regrets strategies such as enhancing capabilities for water
management
· Rehearse adaptive responses
· Explore local implications
· Explore geo-engineering options that control the climate.

There are some indications today that global warming has reached the threshold where the thermohaline circulation could start to be significantly impacted. These indications include observations documenting that the North Atlantic is increasingly being freshened by melting glaciers, increased precipitation, and fresh water runoff making it substantially less salty over the past 40 years.

This report suggests that, because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change, although uncertain and quite possibly small, should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.
_________ (End of Executive Summary)

[...] With at least eight abrupt climate change events documented in the geological record, it seems that the questions to ask are: When will this happen? What will the impacts be? And, how can we best prepare for it? Rather than: Will this really happen?



One of the interesting things I noticed while reading that report was that the two countries the authors suggested would be most likely to do well if they closed their borders and worked towards self-sufficiency are the same two which have chosen not to sign the Kyoto Accord.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 09:43 am
Squinney,

You are beating a dead horse. No one here denys the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or the warming it has caused. Extreme doubt has been expressed about some of the rather absurd "tipping point" and accelerated warming scenarios that have been offered by various zealots. There is no scientific basis for these predictions, and a large body of excel;lent reasons to reject them out of hand.

Instead the argument is about the costs and merits of doing anything about CO2 emissions. There are excellent reasons to believe the costs to humanity of fixing this problem will be several orders of magnidude greater than the benefits it will produce or the costs of doing nothing.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 10:49 am
Quote:
STUDY BOLSTERS GREENHOUSE EFFECT THEORY, SOLVES ICE AGE MYSTERY

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Critics who dismiss the importance of greenhouse gases as a cause of climate change lost one piece of ammunition this week. In a new study, scientists found further evidence of the role that greenhouse gases have played in Earth's climate.

In Thursday's issue of the journal Geology, Ohio State University scientists report that a long-ago ice age occurred 10 million years earlier than once thought. The new date clears up an inconsistency that has dogged climate change research for years.

Of three ice ages that occurred in the last half-billion years, the earliest ice age posed problems for scientists, explained Matthew Saltzman, assistant professor of geological sciences at Ohio State.

Previous studies suggested that this particular ice age happened during a time that should have been very warm, when volcanoes all over the earth's surface were spewing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

With CO2 levels as much as 20 times higher than today, the late Ordovician period (460-440 million years ago) wasn't a good time for growing ice.

Critics have pointed to the inconsistency as a flaw in scientists' theories of climate change. Scientists have argued that today's global climate change has been caused in part by buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from fossil fuel emissions.

But, critics have countered, if CO2 truly raises global temperatures, how could an ice age have occurred when a greenhouse effect much greater than today's was in full swing?

The answer: This particular ice age didn't begin when CO2 was at its peak -- it began 10 million years earlier, when CO2 levels were at a low.

"Our results are consistent with the notion that CO2 concentrations drive climate."

Saltzman and doctoral student Seth Young found that large deposits of quartz sand in Nevada and two sites in Europe -- Norway and Estonia -- formed around the same time, 440 million years ago. The scientists suspect that the sand formed when water levels fell low enough to expose quartz rock, so that wind and rain could weather the rock into sand.

The fact that the deposits were found in three different sites suggests that sea levels may have been low all over the world at that time, likely because much of the planet's water was bound in ice at the poles, Saltzman said.

Next, the scientists examined limestone sediments from the sites and determined that there was a relatively large amount of organic carbon buried in the oceans -- and, by extension, relatively little CO2 in the atmosphere -- at the same time.

Taken together, the evidence suggests that the ice began to build up some 10 million years earlier than when volcanoes began pumping the atmosphere full of the CO2 that ended the Ordovician ice age.

For Saltzman, the find solves a long-standing mystery.

Though scientists know with a great degree of certainty that atmospheric CO2 levels drive climate change, there are certain mismatches in the geologic record, such as the Ordovician ice age -- originally thought to have begun 443 million years ago -- that seem to counter that view.

"How can you have ice when CO2 levels are through the roof? That was the dilemma that we were faced with. I think that now we have good evidence that resolves this mismatch," Saltzman said.

Scientists at the three sites previously attributed these quartz deposits to local tectonic shifts. But the new study shows that the conditions that allowed the quartz sand to form were not local.

"If sea level is dropping globally at the same time, it can't be a local tectonic feature," Saltzman said. "It's got to be the result of a global ice buildup."

Saltzman wants to bolster these new results by examining sites in Russia -- where he hopes to find more evidence of sea level drop -- and in parts of South America and North Africa, which would have been covered in ice at the time.

#
Source
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Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 10:58 am
Quote:
Instead the argument is about the costs and merits of doing anything about CO2 emissions. There are excellent reasons to believe the costs to humanity of fixing this problem will be several orders of magnidude greater than the benefits it will produce or the costs of doing nothing.


Seeing as, and note I'm not trying to be alarmist or anything, that the cost of doing nothing could very well be massively damaging to our ecosystem, I can't see how it would cost society more than the lives of the billions of people who rely on the weather.

I never thought I'd meet so many people who are pro-pollution.

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 11:40 am
Cycloptichorn wrote:


Seeing as, and note I'm not trying to be alarmist or anything, that the cost of doing nothing could very well be massively damaging to our ecosystem, I can't see how it would cost society more than the lives of the billions of people who rely on the weather.

I never thought I'd meet so many people who are pro-pollution.

Cycloptichorn


Your first sentence involves a massicve contradiction. Are you aware of it?

Whether or not you can see it, the discussion is about the relative costs of doing nothing or massively restricting CO2 (and other) emissions. If you accept the "tipping point" bit or assume that "billions of people" will be seriously affected in ways they can't readily remedy, then the costs of the drastic reductions in industry, transportation, and agriculture will be truly enormous. While the economy of 1850 could sustain one billion people, it cannot sustain six billion. If warming continues at the already measured rate the costs of doing nothing will be very modest.
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HofT
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 11:43 am
443 million years ago? My SUV is innocent, Walter!

Please however recall that the main danger to humans isn't from atmospheric warming - the planet has obviously warmed and cooled many times before we showed up - but from toxic heavy metals in the oceans, especially mercury. That comes from particulates emissions generated by coal-fired plants - main 2 countries using those being India and China.

The SAME 2 countries excluded from Kyoto requirements, and the SAME 2 countries standing to collect most from that particular Ponzi scheme.
0 Replies
 
HofT
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 11:46 am
Cycl - CO2 is a gas. Mercury is a metal.

Please educate yourself before posting about "pro-pollution".
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 11:59 am
georgeob1 wrote:
Squinney,

You are beating a dead horse. No one here denys the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or the warming it has caused. Extreme doubt has been expressed about some of the rather absurd "tipping point" and accelerated warming scenarios that have been offered by various zealots. There is no scientific basis for these predictions, and a large body of excel;lent reasons to reject them out of hand.

Instead the argument is about the costs and merits of doing anything about CO2 emissions. There are excellent reasons to believe the costs to humanity of fixing this problem will be several orders of magnidude greater than the benefits it will produce or the costs of doing nothing.


I assume you are talking to me since Squinney hasn't posted all weekend. Fixing the problem and mitigating the effects are two different things. Every scientific body and commentator has said we need to continue to study this carefully, nobody thinks we have a full picture.

You say there is no scientific basis for these predictions? I think that could be argued, but it also could stem from not having the long-range simulations which this government has chosen not to fund as well as not giving credence to any outside simulations developed by other nations.

"Absurd" tipping point? Large body of reason to reject them out of hand?
George, I asked if you would point us to the place where you get your executive summaries and detailed information. Surely there is something online.


Hello, Helen.
I think that the Kyoto Agreement's exclusion of China and India from following their 1990 levels sounds unfair, but they were agreeing to follow some level of control. Maybe that should be tightened. Heavy metal concentrations are horrible but I didn't know they affected climate. I wish everyone had hydroelectric power as we do in the Pacific NW, the dams literally crush the salmon runs, but the damage is mostly done at this point. The United States still has some coal & oil-burning electrical plants which, it seems to me, ought to be able to control their emissions to 1990 levels.

Anyway, the two countries I was talking about were the United States and Australia, as featured in the Department of Defense report I mentioned and they are also the two countries who have chosen not to sign Kyoto.
0 Replies
 
Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 11:59 am
Gee, thanks for pointing that out to me, Helen.

/sarcasm

My point about 'pro-pollution' has more to do with some of the comments in this thread than the latest few.

I am well aware that true pollution comes mostly from heavy metals, and radioactives released into the environment during energy production. Hell, we're advised not to eat fish from our local lake here in Austin; scientists have found 3 times the safe mercury levels in the average Lake Travis fish (which also provides our drinking water, haha ah Sad
) , the same fish which showed less than 1/2 the legal limit just 4 years ago.

Reducing CO2 emissions isn't as important to me as reducing the levels of truly toxic agents that are released yearly. Nevertheless; it certainly can't hurt to do so when possible.

I envision, George, a gradual change; instead of mandating immediate changes, we make rules for new factories and businesses that phase the higher restrictions in over time. Advances in technology not only make this cheaper, they can make it downright profitable. I don't think the 'tipping point' has been reached, or even close, but it probably does exist; closed systems can only take so much instability before they collapse.

As I said, I'm not trying to be alarmist; just taking the long look.

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
HofT
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 12:33 pm
Cycl - then we are agreed on priorities. It's a pity that more of the Kyoto Accord cheerleaders can't be bothered with elementary science
0 Replies
 
HofT
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 12:46 pm
Piffka - I agree with you that particulates emissions containing heavy metals are a by far the greater danger than the greenhouse gases originally described by Fourier. Plants in the mid-west do have scrubbers (unlike those in India and China, which in addition use lower-grades of coal, ie generate vastly greater toxic metals emissions) but there's only one way to get rid of them altogether and that's building more nuclear power plants.
0 Replies
 
Wolf ODonnell
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 01:12 pm
China, now being a country rich enough to donate money to others in the form of foreign aid, has no excuse.

India, however, is a very poor country. I doubt they could afford the technology to be greener.

The US, however, can. It is the richest nation on the Earth. If it can't afford to be more fuel efficient, I don't know who can. Also, may I point out that there is no regulation for fuel efficiency in US cars, so manufacturers can be as lazy as they want in making SUV's fuel efficient.
0 Replies
 
HofT
 
  1  
Reply Mon 31 Jan, 2005 01:15 pm
Wolf - you are mistaken on lack of regulation for fuel efficiency in cars. It was too much regulation, not too little, that created the SUV - it wasn't subject to the same limits as cars.

The doctrine of unintended consequences at work!
0 Replies
 
 

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