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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Why geoengineering has immediate appeal to China:
The political dilemma over geoengineering – deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system designed to counter global warming or offset some of its effects – will perhaps be most acute in China.
In December, the country listed geoengineering among its Earth science research priorities, in a marked shift in the international climate change landscape noticed by China specialists Kingsley Edney and Jonathan Symons.
On the one hand, China’s rapid economic growth has seen a huge escalation in its greenhouse gas emissions, which on an annual basis overtook those of the United States five years ago. Sustained GDP growth provides China’s Communist party with its only claim to legitimacy, its “mandate of heaven”. China’s efforts to constrain the growth of its emissions have been substantial, and certainly put to shame those of many developed nations.
Yet neither China’s efforts nor those of other countries over the next two or three decades are likely to do much to slow the warming of the globe, nor halt the climate disruption that will follow. Global emissions have not been declining or even slowing. In fact, global emissions are accelerating. Even the World Bank, which for years has been criticized for promoting carbon-intensive development, now warns that we are on track for 4C of warming, which would change everything.
China is highly vulnerable to water shortages in the north, with declining crop yields and food price rises expected, and storms and flooding in the east and south. Climate-related disasters in China are already a major source of social unrest so there is a well-founded fear in Beijing that the impacts of climate change in the provinces could topple the government in the capital. Natural disasters jeopardise its mandate.
So what can the Chinese government do? Continued growth in greenhouse gas emissions is a condition for its hold on power, but climate disruption in response to emissions growth threatens to destabilise it.
Geoengineering has immediate appeal as a way out of this catch-22. While a variety of technologies to take carbon out of the air or to regulate sunlight are being researched, at present by far the most likely intervention would involve blanketing the Earth with a layer of sulphate particles to block some incoming solar radiation.
Spraying sulphate aerosols could mask warming and cool the planet within weeks, although it would not solve the core problem of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans.
Scientists and policy-makers in China have been watching the debate over geoengineering unfold in the US and Europe where there has been a boom in discussion and research since the taboo was lifted in 2006, following an intervention by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen calling for investigation of “plan B”.
In the US, there have been several high-level reports arguing for more research into geoengineering — the National Research Council, the House of Representatives’ committee on science and technology and the Government Accountability Office. Influential Beltway thinktanks, like the Bipartisan Policy Center, have joined the fray. Plan B is being discussed in the White House, and the military is keeping a watching brief, and maybe doing more.
China’s decision to initiate a research programme could be motivated by no more than a desire to develop a national capacity to keep abreast of what is happening in the rest of the world. Certainly, there is a good deal of scepticism about geoengineering within China’s scientific community.
Yet as the world remains paralysed by the scale of the warming crisis, and watches while it becomes locked-in, the capacity to implement an emergency response will become ever-more attractive. And in a global emergency — a crippling drought, the Amazon ablaze, Greenland collapsing — the gaze becomes focused on the urgent to the exclusion of all else, including the interests of other, less-powerful nations whose plight may be worsened if a major power decided to regulate the Earth’s climate system.
While western nations are not ruled by one-party states determined to maintain power at all costs, in truth the tyranny of the economic system is no less absolute. The 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath demonstrated that the structures of power that underpin the system — the banks, the markets, the major corporations and their ties to the political system — are extremely resilient, perhaps every bit as resistant to change as China’s Communist party.
After all, when it comes to responding to climate disruption every report and recommendation — from the Stern report to the IPCC — assumes that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must accommodate the first imperative, maintaining the rate of economic growth, even though it is GDP growth that escalates greenhouse gas emissions.
So here is a plausible scenario for 2035. Facing a revolt from a population under extreme climate stress, the Chinese government seeks the US government’s consent to cool the planet by spraying sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere. Popular protests prevent Washington endorsing the plan but it tacitly agrees not to shoot down China’s planes. That would be enough, and from that point there would be no going back.
abluegirl
Black Carbon is No. 2 Man-Made Global Warming Culprit
Black carbon is the second largest man-made contributor to climate change and its influence on the environment has been greatly underestimated, according to the first quantitative and comprehensive analysis of this issue.
Key findings of a new study include:
Black carbon has a much greater (twice the direct) climate impact than reported in previous assessments.
Black carbon ranks “as the second most important individual climate-warming agent after carbon dioxide.”
Cleaning up diesel engines and some wood and coal combustion could slow the warming immediately.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/black-carbon-no-2-man-made-global-warming-culprit
ikenbotGlobal warming has caused monthly records for heat to increase fivefold in frequency, according to a study by scientists in Germany and Spain, published on Monday.
In parts of Europe, Africa and southern Asia, the frequency of months with record-breaking heat has surged tenfold, it said.
The evidence comes from an analysis of 131 years of monthly temperature data, monitored at 12,000 points around the world, which are stored in a NASA database.
If man-made warming is stripped out of the equation, 80 percent of the records for hottest-ever months would not have occurred, it said.
“The last decade brought unprecedented heatwaves, for instance in the US in 2012, in Russia in 2010, in Australia in 2009 and in Europe in 2003,” said Dim Coumou of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research near Berlin.
On current trends for global warming, the number of new monthly heat records will be 12 times higher in 30 years than today, the researchers said.
“This doesn’t mean there will be 12 times more hot summers in Europe than today—it actually is worse,” Coumou said in a press release issued by PIK.
“To count as new records, they actually have to beat heat records set in the 2020s and 2030s, which will already be hotter than anything we have experienced to date.”
The study, which was co-authored by scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid, appears in the journal Climatic Change.
(c) 2013 AFP
(via shychemist)
Kids are talking about global warming — and here’s what they’re saying.
Harvard Scientist Proposes a Way to Refreeze the Arctic to Combat Possible Global Warming Disaster
The amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean shrunk to an all time low in September, with the area covered now only half of what it was in the 1980s. This alarming development along with the global community’s inability to come to a consensus about cutting CO2 emissions has led Harvard professor of applied physics David Keith to look at a technological solution to reversing the warming of the Arctic. In a paper published in Nature Climate Change and an affiliated study in the Environmental Research Letters, Keith proposes a way to refreeze the Arctic through geoengineering.
Injecting reflective particles into the high atmosphere could reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, counteracting the greenhouse gas effect. High CO2 levels would continue to trap heat in the atmosphere, but with less energy coming in, temperatures on the surface would go down. Keith suggests using the method for a regional correction to restore the ice cover in the Arctic. In his paper, he claims that “with an average solar reduction of only 0.5%, it is possible to recover pre-industrial sea ice extent.” A separate paper shows that this could all be done with a few modified Gulfstream jets and is estimated to cost around $8 billion, which is about the price of a installing a major oil pipeline.
But large-scale geoengineering like what Keith is suggesting is banned by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity because it could result in disastrous unintended consequences. Even Keith acknowledges that manually refreezing the arctic is not the right way to solve the larger problem of global warming. He thinks that this level of geoengineering would only be appropriate to consider in states of emergency such as a sudden collapse of ice sheets or a killing drought. But first, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions and he warns that “if we do this and we do not cut emissions, we just walk further and further off the cliff, like Wile E. Coyote.”
(via ikenbot)
Mars Curiosity & James Cameron: Largest Earth Science Meeting Set to Begin
Thousands of Earth scientists are descending on San Francisco this week for the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest geosciences meeting of the year, where new findings on topics ranging from Mars to volcanoes to global warming will be presented.
Advance press releases for the 2012 AGU meeting, held at the Moscone Center, have touted findings in numerous areas, including climate change and Martian geology, and include briefings from some big-name scientists like Mars rover principal investigator, Steve Squyres, and Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Another big name that will be present at the meeting is James Cameron, who will be talking about his deep-sea dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot on Earth, last year, and what he saw while he was down there.A briefing on the latest results from the Mars Curiosity rover mission that will be conducted at the meeting has been the subject of rampant speculation in the press, and NASA has tried to manage expectations, saying that the findings aren’t earth shattering.
Scientists will be presenting findings in hundreds of talks and posters throughing the duration of the meeting, which runs from Monday, Dec. 3, through Friday, Dec. 7. Press conferences from the meeting will be webcast live — you can see a full schedule and watch them here. You can also follow along with news from the meeting by checking out the hashtag #AGU12.
Some Himalayan Glaciers Doomed to Shrink
There’s bad news for glaciers at the eastern end of the Himalayas: Even if temperatures in the region remain steady for decades, the glaciers of the nation of Bhutan will continue to melt, new research suggests.
Image: The impressive Bhutan Himalayas are permanently capped with snow, which extends down valleys in long glacier tongues. Credit: NASA image courtesy the NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
All told, Bhutan’s glaciers will shrink by about 10 percent and lose about 30 percent of their meltwater even if current temperatures hold over the next few decades, the study found. And if regional temperatures rise just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius), the glaciers’ area could decrease by 25 percent and meltwater could drop off by 65 percent.
The reason is the lag time between changes in the climate and a glacier’s response to them, the study researchers say.
As nearly 200 countries meet in oil-and-gas-rich Qatar for annual talks starting Monday on slowing global warming, one of the main challenges will be raising climate aid for poor countries at a time when budgets are strained by financial turmoil.
Borrowing a buzzword from the U.S. budget debate, Tim Gore of the British charity Oxfam said developing countries, including island nations for whom rising sea levels pose a threat to their existence, stand before a “climate fiscal cliff.”
“So what we need for those countries in the next two weeks are firm commitments from rich countries to keep giving money to help them to adapt to climate change,” he told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Creating a structure for climate financing has so far been one of the few tangible outcomes of the two-decade-old U.N. climate talks, which have failed in their main purpose: reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases that scientists say are warming the planet, melting ice caps, glaciers and permafrost, shifting weather patterns and raising sea levels.
The only binding treaty to limit such emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, expires this year, so agreeing on an extension is seen as the most urgent task by environment ministers and climate officials meeting in the Qatari capital.
(via ikenbot)
Stuffed after the Thanksgiving weekend?
I hope you still have room to chew on this.
(via ikenbot)
This is how we ALL need to be thinking, not just leaving this on the scientists who tirelessly provide us irrefutable data that shows how we alter the conditions of the planet. (via wespeakfortheearth)
(via wespeakfortheearth)
Sea Level Rise Accelerating For US East Coast
This summer the North Carolina Senate passed a bill banning researchers from reporting predicted increases in the rate of sea level rise. But the ocean, unbound by legislation, is rising anyway — and in North Carolina this rise is accelerating, researchers reported here yesterday (Nov. 6) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
On the coast of North Carolina and at other so-called “hotspots” along the U.S. East Coast, sea levels are rising about three times more quickly on average than they are globally, researchers reported during a session devoted to sea level rise.
That’s the fastest rise in the world.
The accelerating rise
And this rise is accelerating, said Tal Ezer, a researcher at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.
His colleague, Larry Atkinson, said computer models suggest that if this acceleration continues at the same pace, the rise along the East Coast — from North Carolina to Massachusetts — could be 5.3 feet (1.6 meters) by 2100.
Sea levels on this stretch of land have climbed as much as 1.5 inches (3.7 centimeters) per decade since 1980, while globally they’ve risen up to 0.4 inches (1.0 cm) per decade, according to a study by Sallenger published in June.
Why is the rise accelerating? Researchers said it’s due in part to the sinking of land in the mid-Atlantic, a process called subsidence. Also, warming oceans have decreased the flow rate of the Gulf Stream, a current that ferries warm water from the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico northeast across the Atlantic. With a less intense Gulf Stream, water is backed up toward the shore, causing sea level rise. Differences in coastal geography, temperature and salinity (salt content) cause different rates of rise along the East Coast, Atkinson said.
Sea levels worldwide are rising due to melting of glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, as well as expansion of water caused by heating, researchers said.
Pandas’ Bamboo Food May Be Lost to Climate Change
Though they are one of the most beloved animal species on Earth, pandas aren’t safe from the devastating effects of climate change.
According to a new study, projected temperature increases in China over the next century will likely seriously hinder bamboo, almost the sole source of food for endangered pandas. Only if bamboo can move to new habitats at higher elevations will pandas stand a chance, the researchers said.
However, if conservation programs wait too long, human inhabitants and activities could claim all of the new habitats capable of supporting bamboo in a warming world.
“It is tough, but I think there’s still hope, if we take action now,” said research team member Jianguo Liu, a sustainability scientist at Michigan State University. “If we wait, then we could be too late.”
The researchers used various climate-change models to project the future for three bamboo species relied on by pandas in the Qinling Mountain region of China, which represents about a quarter of the total remaining panda habitat. These models varied in their specific predictions, but each forecasted some level of temperature rise within the coming century.
The results suggest that if the bamboo is restricted to its current distribution area, between 80 and 100 percent of it will disappear by the end of the 21st century, because it won’t be able to grow under the increased temperatures.
It’s Global Warming, Stupid
An interesting piece on how the uncertainty inherent in studying probabilistic phenomena can and often is used as evidence against the validity of the research findings. I loved this quote (as I do all baseball analogies):“Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”
(via ikenbot)
This year’s peak Arctic ice melt was the greatest since records have been kept, and is thought to be the greatest in a million years. The animation above shows January through September of 2012. The dark area represents the historic daily average. The final frame displays this year’s minimum of 4 million square kilometers as compared with the average of 7 million.
