The BBC web site, on the 28th of August 2008, had an article about the shrinking Arctic ice cape, and how it is now at the “tipping point” of disaster. It says,
Arctic sea ice has shrunk to the second smallest extent since satellite records began, US scientists have revealed.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says that the ice-covered area has fallen below its 2005 level, which was the second lowest on record.
Melting has occurred earlier in the year than usual, meaning that the iced area could become even smaller than last September, the lowest recorded.
Researchers say the Arctic is now at a climatic "tipping point".
"We could very well be in that quick slide downwards in terms of passing a tipping point," said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the Colorado-based NSIDC.
"It's tipping now. We're seeing it happen now," he told the Associated Press news agency.
A few years ago, scientists were predicting ice-free Arctic summers by about 2080.
Then computer models started projecting earlier dates, around 2030 to 2050; and some researchers now believe it could happen within five years.
Then they say something very interesting indeed.
Last September, the ice covered just 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles), the smallest extent seen since satellite imaging began 30 years ago.
They have only been looking at the Arctic ice for 30 years. What they are seeing could all be down to long term cycles where the ice shrinks and grows over time. 30 years is small fraction of time in the life of natural global climate changes.
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Is a Mega-Katrina "Hypercane" Possible?
The Daily Galaxy website, on the 25th of August 2008, had an article about a report from MIT scientists saying super strong mega hurricanes were possible. It says,
MIT's Kerry Emanuel describes the worst nightmare hurricane that could ever happen –a "hypercane" with winds raging around its center at 500 miles an hour. Water vapor; sea spray and storm debris are spewed into the atmosphere, punching a hole in the stratosphere 20 miles above the Earth's surface; at landfall, its super-gale-force winds would flatten forests and toss boulders with a 60-foot tsunami-like storm surge flooding nearby shores. The water vapor and debris could remain suspended high in the atmosphere for years, disrupting the climate and the ozone layer.
Could this happen? Possibly. But this hypercane scenario is one of Emanuels' computer models. A professor at MIT's atmosphere, oceans and climate program, Emanuel studies the physics of hurricanes, deconstructing their behavior, and digs into their geological past -- all to understand what makes these monster storms tick.
No one knows for sure how hurricanes get started. The ingredients for cooking one up still remain a mystery.
To create such a monster storm, parts of the ocean would have to warm up to at least 100 degrees, and only the impact of a large asteroid hitting the tropical ocean or a massive undersea volcano could generate such intense heating. Emanuel and his colleagues theorize that asteroid-triggered hypercanes may have contributed to massive global extinctions millions of years ago.
MIT's Kerry Emanuel describes the worst nightmare hurricane that could ever happen –a "hypercane" with winds raging around its center at 500 miles an hour. Water vapor; sea spray and storm debris are spewed into the atmosphere, punching a hole in the stratosphere 20 miles above the Earth's surface; at landfall, its super-gale-force winds would flatten forests and toss boulders with a 60-foot tsunami-like storm surge flooding nearby shores. The water vapor and debris could remain suspended high in the atmosphere for years, disrupting the climate and the ozone layer.
Could this happen? Possibly. But this hypercane scenario is one of Emanuels' computer models. A professor at MIT's atmosphere, oceans and climate program, Emanuel studies the physics of hurricanes, deconstructing their behavior, and digs into their geological past -- all to understand what makes these monster storms tick.
No one knows for sure how hurricanes get started. The ingredients for cooking one up still remain a mystery.
To create such a monster storm, parts of the ocean would have to warm up to at least 100 degrees, and only the impact of a large asteroid hitting the tropical ocean or a massive undersea volcano could generate such intense heating. Emanuel and his colleagues theorize that asteroid-triggered hypercanes may have contributed to massive global extinctions millions of years ago.
Thursday, 14 August 2008
The oxygen crisis
The Guardian website, on the 13th of August 2008, has an article about the constant decline of the oxygen levels in our atmosphere and how it could threaten human survival. It says,
Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.
Around 10,000 years ago, the planet's forest cover was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests are now emitting only half the amount of oxygen.
Desertification and deforestation are rapidly accelerating this long-term loss of oxygen sources.
The story at sea is much the same. Nasa reports that in the north Pacific ocean oxygen-producing phytoplankton concentrations are 30% lower today, compared to the 1980s. This is a huge drop in just three decades.
The pace of oxygen loss is likely to have speeded up massively in the last three decades, with the industrialisation of China, India, South Korea and other countries, and as a consequence of the massive worldwide increase in the burning of fossil fuels.
There will be a tax on breathing next to help cut our oxygen usage.
Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.
Around 10,000 years ago, the planet's forest cover was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests are now emitting only half the amount of oxygen.
Desertification and deforestation are rapidly accelerating this long-term loss of oxygen sources.
The story at sea is much the same. Nasa reports that in the north Pacific ocean oxygen-producing phytoplankton concentrations are 30% lower today, compared to the 1980s. This is a huge drop in just three decades.
The pace of oxygen loss is likely to have speeded up massively in the last three decades, with the industrialisation of China, India, South Korea and other countries, and as a consequence of the massive worldwide increase in the burning of fossil fuels.
There will be a tax on breathing next to help cut our oxygen usage.
Wednesday, 13 August 2008
GM farming will end in ecological disaster
The Guardian website, on 13th August 2008, reports on what Prince Charles had said about genetic modification farming and how it could lead to disaster. It says,
Prince Charles has warned that the adoption of genetic modification in farming has set the world on course for "the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time".
In an outspoken assault on GM crops, the prince accused unnamed "gigantic corporations" of "conducting a gigantic experiment with nature, and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong".
"We [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness," the prince said.
"What we should be talking about is food security, not food production - that is what matters, and that is what people will not understand.
"And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then count me out because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
This is not the first time Prince Charles has gone a little overboard in scaring us about some future threat or impending disaster. He was in the headlines some years ago talking about nanotechnology and gray goo.
Prince Charles has warned that the adoption of genetic modification in farming has set the world on course for "the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time".
In an outspoken assault on GM crops, the prince accused unnamed "gigantic corporations" of "conducting a gigantic experiment with nature, and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong".
"We [will] end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness," the prince said.
"What we should be talking about is food security, not food production - that is what matters, and that is what people will not understand.
"And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then count me out because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
This is not the first time Prince Charles has gone a little overboard in scaring us about some future threat or impending disaster. He was in the headlines some years ago talking about nanotechnology and gray goo.
World in 'Mass Extinction Spasm'
The NBC website, on 12th August 2008, has an article about how the earth is going through a new mass extinction. Its says,
Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just the deaths of frogs and salamanders, University of California, Berkeley scientists said Tuesday.
Researchers said substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal
species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet, the scientists said in an online article this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"There's no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm right now," said David Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. "Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn't. The fact that they're cutting out now should be a lesson for us."
New species arise and old species die off all the time, but sometimes the extinction numbers far outweigh the emergence of new species, scientists said.
Extreme cases of this are called mass extinction events. There have been only five in our planet's history, until now, scientists said.
The sixth mass extinction event, which Wake and others argue is happening currently, is different from the past events.
"My feeling is that behind all this lies the heavy hand of Homo sapiens," Wake said.
Devastating declines of amphibian species around the world are a sign of a biodiversity disaster larger than just the deaths of frogs and salamanders, University of California, Berkeley scientists said Tuesday.
Researchers said substantial die-offs of amphibians and other plant and animal
species add up to a new mass extinction facing the planet, the scientists said in an online article this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"There's no question that we are in a mass extinction spasm right now," said David Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. "Amphibians have been around for about 250 million years. They made it through when the dinosaurs didn't. The fact that they're cutting out now should be a lesson for us."
New species arise and old species die off all the time, but sometimes the extinction numbers far outweigh the emergence of new species, scientists said.
Extreme cases of this are called mass extinction events. There have been only five in our planet's history, until now, scientists said.
The sixth mass extinction event, which Wake and others argue is happening currently, is different from the past events.
"My feeling is that behind all this lies the heavy hand of Homo sapiens," Wake said.
New bird flu threat could be H9N2
Reuters has a report, on the 12th August 2008, about a new strain of bird flu, H9N2. It says,
Countries around the world may be preparing for a possible H5N1 bird flu pandemic, but another strain called H9N2 also poses a threat to humanity, researchers reported on Tuesday.
Tests on the H9N2 strain of the virus show it is capable of infecting and spreading with very few changes, a team from the University of Maryland, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and elsewhere reported.
"Our results suggest that the establishment and prevalence of H9N2 viruses in poultry pose a significant threat for humans," the researchers wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
Most influenza experts agree that a pandemic -- a deadly global epidemic -- of some kind of flu is inevitable.
Just a few mutations could turn it into a virus that people catch and transmit easily. But flu experts caution H5N1 is not the only virus with this potential.
There are hundreds of strains of avian influenza viruses, but only four -- H5N1, H7N3, H7N7, and H9N2 -- are known to have caused human infections, according to the World Health Organization.
So far Bird Flu has infected 385 people and killed 243 since 2003 and 300 million birds have been slaughtered.
Countries around the world may be preparing for a possible H5N1 bird flu pandemic, but another strain called H9N2 also poses a threat to humanity, researchers reported on Tuesday.
Tests on the H9N2 strain of the virus show it is capable of infecting and spreading with very few changes, a team from the University of Maryland, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and elsewhere reported.
"Our results suggest that the establishment and prevalence of H9N2 viruses in poultry pose a significant threat for humans," the researchers wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.
Most influenza experts agree that a pandemic -- a deadly global epidemic -- of some kind of flu is inevitable.
Just a few mutations could turn it into a virus that people catch and transmit easily. But flu experts caution H5N1 is not the only virus with this potential.
There are hundreds of strains of avian influenza viruses, but only four -- H5N1, H7N3, H7N7, and H9N2 -- are known to have caused human infections, according to the World Health Organization.
So far Bird Flu has infected 385 people and killed 243 since 2003 and 300 million birds have been slaughtered.
Friday, 8 August 2008
The truth is, we're fighting for survival
In the Guardian news paper, on the 8th of August 2008, is an article about the report of now we should handle living with a 4C increase in global temperatures. It says,
Up to 4 billion people left without water. Up to 5 billion at risk of flooding. Half a billion left hungry as agricultural yields decline by 15-35% in Africa with entire swaths of the world ceasing food production altogether. More than 80 million exposed to malaria in Africa. The Amazon collapses and 50% of species go extinct. It's basically the end of the world.
There is such a gaping chasm between the matter-of-fact reporting of this nightmarish 4C scenario that government scientists now say we should be planning for, and the total failure of apparently rational people to understand what is happening...
Reports from Kingsnorth, the site of this year's climate camp, completely fail to scrutinise the pinstriped criminals who are pushing the planet towards the brink.
With climate change, in order to be "serious" you need to acknowledge that the end of the world is an interesting detail in the broader pattern of economic "progress", but never succumb to the incredible naivety of the protesters, who fail to realise that the survival of life on earth is a bourgeois luxury which we can ill afford in these times of economic constraint.
They go on as if we are all going to die next week. As if we are sleep walking into a fire or we are like a frog in a pan of water slowly heating up and being cooked.
Up to 4 billion people left without water. Up to 5 billion at risk of flooding. Half a billion left hungry as agricultural yields decline by 15-35% in Africa with entire swaths of the world ceasing food production altogether. More than 80 million exposed to malaria in Africa. The Amazon collapses and 50% of species go extinct. It's basically the end of the world.
There is such a gaping chasm between the matter-of-fact reporting of this nightmarish 4C scenario that government scientists now say we should be planning for, and the total failure of apparently rational people to understand what is happening...
Reports from Kingsnorth, the site of this year's climate camp, completely fail to scrutinise the pinstriped criminals who are pushing the planet towards the brink.
With climate change, in order to be "serious" you need to acknowledge that the end of the world is an interesting detail in the broader pattern of economic "progress", but never succumb to the incredible naivety of the protesters, who fail to realise that the survival of life on earth is a bourgeois luxury which we can ill afford in these times of economic constraint.
They go on as if we are all going to die next week. As if we are sleep walking into a fire or we are like a frog in a pan of water slowly heating up and being cooked.
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