Beardy Guy Musings

Not at all surprising for those of us paying attention, the situation “might be worse than earlier thought.” In a story by Michael Byrnes, Planet Ark reports that Sea Level Rise Could Accelerate:

Data from satellites is showing that sea-level rises and polar ice-melting might be worse than earlier thought, a leading oceanographer said on Monday.

Sea levels, rising at 1 millimetre a year before the industrial revolution, are now rising by 3 millimetres a year because of a combination of global warming, polar ice-melting and long natural cycles of sea level change.

“All indications are that it’s going to get faster,” said Eric Lindstrom, head of oceanography at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), told Reuters on the sidelines of a global oceans conference in Hobart.

Rapid advances in science in the past five years on polar ice-sheet dynamics had yet to filter through into scientific models, Lindstrom said.

He also pointed to huge splits in Antarctic ice shelves in 2002, then seen as once-in-100-year events that created icebergs bigger than some small countries.

The mega icebergs were first thought not to affect global sea levels because the ice broke off from shelves already floating on the surface of the ocean.

But the disintegration of ice shelves that had blocked the flow of ice from the Antarctic continent could allow sudden flows by glaciers into the ocean, raising sea-levels.

“What we’re learning is that ice isn’t slow. Things can happen fast,” Lindstrom said.

“If the (polar) ice sheets really get involved, then we’re talking tens of metres of sea level – that could really start to swamp low-lying countries,” he said.

A report by the UN climate panel released last month cited six models with core projections of sea level rises ranging from 28 to 43 cms (11.0-16.9 inches) by 2100.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also said temperatures were likely to rise by 2-4.5 Celsius (3.6-8.1 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels if carbon dioxide concentrations are kept at 550 parts per million in the atmosphere, against about 380 now. The “best estimate” for the rise is about 3C (5.4F).

Technorati Tags: Antarctica, Climate Change, Glaciers, Global Warming, Ice, Ice Shelf, Polar Ice, Sea level rise

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Alan Zarembo reports that the Arctic could have iceless summers by 2100:

Climate models show a complete melting down to open ocean in warmer weather, maybe as early as 2040.

A review of existing computer climate models suggests that global warming could transform the North Pole into an ice-free expanse of ocean at the end of each summer by 2100, scientists reported today.

The researchers said that out of the 15 models they looked at, about half forecast that the sea-ice cover — a continent-sized expanse that shrinks and grows with the seasons — would seasonally vanish by the turn of the century.

“That may be conservative,” said lead author Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.

One model predicted the Arctic would be ice-free each September as early as 2040, according to the article in the journal Science.

The remaining models showed the presence of some ice beyond 2100, although they agreed there would be significant ice loss if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow at the current rate.

The computer models were included in a landmark United Nations report last month that blamed human activities for the “runaway train” of global warming.

The disappearance of the ice would lead to a dramatic reshaping of the Arctic that would accelerate warming of the oceans and potentially change precipitation patterns worldwide.

The Arctic’s end-of-summer ice expanses already have been declining by about 9% each decade since the 1970s.

It is possible to see the difference from an airplane heading north from Alaska. “You have to fly a lot longer to get to the ice edge than you used to,” said Josefino Comiso, a satellite imaging expert at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who was not connected to the report.

He and other experts believe the melting will accelerate as more ice disappears and exposes the open ocean, which absorbs heat and melts more ice from below.

“With less and less ice, you have more and more heat,” eventually contributing to further warming around the globe, Comiso said.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Climate Change, Ecology, Global Warming, Ice

Ah yes, my first vegetable garden since moving back to Missouri! I planted a couple tomatoes and lots of basil last year but they were in pots. It was a bit of an experiment to see if the the deer would let them survive. This year I dug a small bed and have planted cold crops: broccoli, beets, radishes, lettuce, carrots, spinach, and swiss chard. Inside I've started tomatoes and peppers. If all goes well perhaps I'll expand the bed a bit next year. I've also got lots of native perennials so I may try interplanting a few veggies and herbs as an experiment.


My sister and her family have also put in a garden for a second year in a row so that's exciting.

Technorati Tags: Food, Food Production, Gardening, Natural, Natural Resources, Sustainable Development

Heard outside my window tonight, the Northern Spring Peeper! From the Missouri Department of Conservation, Missouri’s Toads and Frogs:

Northern Spring Peeper (Hyla crucifer crucifer)

A small, pinkish, gray or light tan treefrog with a dark x-mark on the back. This species has reduces adhesive toe pads, and spends most of the time on the forest floor or in low shrubbery. Spring peepers average from 3/4 to 1 1/4 inches (19 to 32 mm) in body length. This is a woodland species, living near ponds, streams or swamps where there is thick undergrowth. Spring peepers are active from early spring to late fall, but breed early. Their voices are a true announcement of spring. Small, fishless woodland ponds are required by this amphibian. Their high-pitched, peeping call can be heard on warm spring nights and also during the day in early summer and fall.

It’s too dark to take a photo so I recorded the cute bird-like chirp: Listen

Technorati Tags: Ecology, Frogs, Spring Peeper

I wrote a couple weeks ago about getting a new camera. Since then I've had lots of fun with it. I'm mostly interested in various forms of nature photography: landscape, wildlife, macro so I'll be much happier once spring arrives. Thats not to say that there aren't things to photograph in the winter, just that it is much more of a challenge. I've gotten a few good bird shots (we have a feeder just outside our office window) and I've just purchased a macro lens so I'm ready for the flowers and insects! Spent a few hours today trying it out, here's one of a tree bud. I've never actually had a dedicated macro lens even though that's probably my main interest.

My most recent 200 photos are on my Flickr page. For the older stuff I used Apple's iWeb to set up a more complete photo archive.

Technorati Tags: Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Photography, Trees

Last July I noticed that there were far fewer butterflies in my garden than in previous years. If there is indeed a drop in the butterfly population it won’t be to surprising that other insects might also be having problems. Whether it is climate change, the increasing use of genetically modified crops, toxics in the environment or a combination of causes, it seems obvious that these massive drops of insect populations is not good. Not good for them and if we want to continue eating food, not good for us. I think most people forget that food production requires large, healthy insect populations. We take so many things for granted, we assume so much and that’s a mistake. Back to the bees, The New York Times reports on the vanishing honeybees:

VISALIA, Calif., Feb. 23 — David Bradshaw has endured countless stings during his life as a beekeeper, but he got the shock of his career when he opened his boxes last month and found half of his 100 million bees missing.

In 24 states throughout the country, beekeepers have gone through similar shocks as their bees have been disappearing inexplicably at an alarming rate, threatening not only their livelihoods but also the production of numerous crops, including California almonds, one of the nation’s most profitable.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Mr. Bradshaw, 50, said from an almond orchard here beginning to bloom. “Box after box after box are just empty. There’s nobody home.”

The sudden mysterious losses are highlighting the critical link that honeybees play in the long chain that gets fruit and vegetables to supermarkets and dinner tables across the country.

Beekeepers have fought regional bee crises before, but this is the first national affliction.

Now, in a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. And nobody knows why. Researchers say the bees are presumably dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.

Technorati Tags: Agriculture, Bees, Butterflies, Ecology, Natural, Natural Resources, Insects

This is frightenenig: Massive fish dieoffs.

Tens of thousands of fish have been found in California, Oregon, Washington State, Pennsylvania, and the Potomac etc. Looking further, I found that this is happening world wide, from Romania to China! Combine these massive die-offs with thousands of dead whales, sea turtles, porpoises, birds, honey bees, and butterflies.well, it’s not hard to reason that the planet is dying. These massive deaths appear to be reported only locally and never making it to the national scene or an all out alarm by the EPA or environmental (corporate sponsored) groups?

Technorati Tags: Ecology, Natural, Natural Resources, Fish

With the exception of a handful of catfish I’ve been a vegetarian since 1989 but it’s never been a focus of my activism. I think factory farming is a terrible thing for animals and the environment. I also think a meat centered diet is not healthy for humans. That’s my reasoning and it still stands. However, in the future I think I’m likely to be a bit more vocal about the climate change/energy conservation benefits of a vegetarian diet or at least a diet free of feed-farmed cows, pigs, and chickens. Of course most meat eaters I know act as though meat is an absolute requirement for their continued survival and would throw themselves on on the floor crying at the thought of giving up meat. It’s not a survival thing, it’s a desire thing. They simply want to eat meat because it tastes good to them which is to say, it is a luxury not a need. I’ll post this anyway but generally these kinds of people just don’t care regardless of what information is placed in front of them. What they want is what is most important. The folks at Celsias have an excellent post regarding the meat industry and the environmental consequences:

This might hurt a little, but it’s for your own good. Put something between your teeth, bite hard, and watch (please, not for children - parental discretion advised):

What the Meat Industry Doesn’t Want you to See

Okay, still with me? Sorry to do that to you - but, hey, you’d rather know wouldn’t you?

Why am I sharing this? Aside from the horrific acts of cruelty, we need to realise the environment just can’t take this abuse any more (either). If you didn’t catch the recent release of the United Nation’s ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ report on the effect of our diet on the environment, please take a look. This information is, as mentioned, coming from the United Nations - not an animal rights lobby, or a sandal-wearing band of hippies.

A few concise facts from GoVeg.com:

Would you ever open your refrigerator, pull out 16 plates of pasta and toss them in the trash, and then eat just one plate of food? How about leveling 55 square feet of rain forest for a single meal or dumping 2,500 gallons of water down the drain? Of course you wouldn’t. But if you’re eating chicken, fish, turkey, pork, or beef, that’s what you’re doing—wasting resources and destroying our environment.

Animals raised for food expend the vast majority of the calories that they are fed simply existing, just as we do. We feed more than 70 percent of the grains and cereals we grow to farmed animals, and almost all of those calories go into simply keeping the animals alive, not making them grow. Only a small fraction of the calories consumed by farmed animals are actually converted into the meat that people eat.

Growing all the crops to feed farmed animals requires massive amounts of water and land—in fact, nearly half of the water and 80 percent of the agricultural land in the United States are used to raise animals for food. Our taste for meat is also taking a toll on our supply of fuel and other nonrenewable resources—about one-third of the raw materials used in America each year is consumed by the farmed animal industry.

Farmed animals produce about 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the United States, and since factory farms don’t have sewage treatment systems as our cities and towns do, this concentrated slop ends up polluting our water, destroying our topsoil, and contaminating our air. And meat-eaters are responsible for the production of 100 percent of this waste—about 86,000 pounds per second! Give up animal products, and you’ll be responsible for none of it.

Many leading environmental organizations, including the National Audubon Society, the WorldWatch Institute, the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have recognized that raising animals for food damages the environment more than just about anything else that we do. Whether it’s the overuse of resources, unchecked water or air pollution, or soil erosion, raising animals for food is wreaking havoc on the Earth. The most important step you can take to save the planet is to go vegetarian. - GoVeg.com

Technorati Tags: Agriculture, Climate Change, Ecology, Energy, Energy Conservation, Energy Crisis, Food, Food Production, Fossil Fuels, Global Warming, Oil, Peak Oil

Jim Kunstler of Clusterfuck Nation has written a great post on what needs to be done to move us in a sustainable direction. I could not agree more with his list which can be summed up as decentralization of everything. Social Ecologists and green anarchists have been saying this very thing for over three decades. We’re going to need more deCleyre Co-ops in our cities and towns as we learn to live more simply and relearn new skills of self reliance. We’re going to need to redevelop real communities that are inhabited by connected neighbors that produce and share the goods of everyday survival. The Agenda Restated:

Insofar as I just returned from a college lecture road trip, and heard the same carping all over again, I conclude that it’s necessary for me to spell it all out a’fresh. I think of this not so much as a roster of “solutions” but as a set of reasonable responses to a new set of circumstances. (Not everything we try to do will succeed, that is, be a “solution.") So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here it is.

Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed “greens” and political “progressives” are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.
We have to produce food differently. The ADM / Monsanto / Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming – e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils – will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America’s young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Co-op Housing, Community, Community Development, Cooperative Living, Cooperatives, deCleyre Co-op, Direct Action, Ecology, Energy, Energy Conservation, Energy Crisis, Food, Food Production, Fossil Fuels, Gardening, Global Warming, Living Simply, Memphis, Native Plants, Natural Resources, Oil, Peak Oil, Self Reliance, Suburbia, Sustainable Development

Take a look at all of the climate change reporting of the past two years and you will see two things. First, you will see that the words “worse than scientists previously thought” over and over. Another pattern you will see that the timeframe mentioned is always 100 years. Folks, this has to change. The sad truth is that when the problem of climate change is constantly framed within a 100 year context it leaves far too much wiggle room and thus, inaction. It allows the adults of today to delay the development of the appropriate level of concern and needed action. I see it over and over in the people I interact with, even those who are relatively young and just starting out with their own children. 100 years is too far away to cause the level of concern that results in the kind of serious action that needs to be taken.

I strongly suggest that we begin thinking and talking about the effects that will be felt in 50 years or 25 years. We don’t have to lose sight of the effects that will be felt in 100 years but we need to shift our focus to a shorter time frame. The reality of climate change is right now, in our lifetimes.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Global Warming

Alan Zarembo of the Los Angeles Times has written the most sobering and in my opinion, honest assessment of the global warming scenario. There’s no sugar coating when he asks: Game over on global warming? This is exactly what I’ve been thinking and writing. It’s not pretty and the danger with this kind of truth is that people will just give up if they feel there is no hope. I’ve said before that I think Al Gore is purposefully overly optimistic for this very reason. Frankly, I think that we have to face the truth, however harsh it may be, so that our actions reflect the seriousness of the problem. What this means is that we should be taking very radical and extreme action. It’s not going to be pretty either way and there is no doubt our lives from here on out will be VERY different.

Action would have to be radical – but climate change can be slowed.

Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles.

The Chinese could close all their factories.

Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern.

But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.

A landmark report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released Friday, warns that there is so much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that even if concentrations held at current levels, the effects of global warming would continue for centuries.

There is still hope. The report notes that a concerted world effort could stave off the direst consequences of global warming, such as widespread flooding, drought and extreme weather.

Ultimately eliminating the global warming threat, however, would require radical action.

To stabilize atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide — the primary contributor to global warming — CO2 emissions would have to drop 70% to 80%, said Richard Somerville, a theoretical meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Such a reduction would bring emissions into equilibrium with the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide. The last time the planet was in balance was more than 150 years ago, before the widespread use of coal and steam engines.

What would it take to bring that kind of reduction?

“All truck, all trains, all airplanes, cars, motorcycles and boats in the United States — that’s 7.3% of global emissions,” said Gregg Marland, a fossil fuel pollution expert at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Closing all fossil-fuel-powered electricity plants worldwide and replacing them with windmills, solar panels and nuclear power plants would make a serious dent — a 39% reduction globally, Marland said.

His calculation doesn’t include all the fossil fuels that would have to be burned to build the greener facilities, though.

Trees could be planted to absorb more carbon dioxide. But even if every available space in the United States were turned into woodland, Marland said, it would not come close to offsetting U.S. emissions.

“There is not enough land area,” he said.

The United States accounts for nearly a quarter of the carbon dioxide released each year, according to government statistics. China, in second at about 15%, is gaining fast.

If the rest of the world returned to the Stone Age, carbon concentrations would still rise.

Carbon does not dissipate rapidly. Some is eventually absorbed by oceans and plants, but about half stays in the atmosphere. And there is no easy way to get it out.

Technorati Tags: Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Carbon, Climate Change, Global Warming, Oil, Peak Oil, Fossil Fuels, Sea level rise, Transportation

Now that they have it they refuse to take responsibility for it. Mithras of Fables of the Reconstruction takes a look at one particular conservative mouthpiece:

Charles Krauthammer:

Iraq is their country. We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.

“We midwifed”? No. You, you asshole. Your fault. You and your friends who thought it would be cool to try out your experiments in New American Muscularity on the darkies. Shut the fuck up about freedom. We know you weren’t interested in freeing anyone - you were interested in kicking raghead ass after 9/11, and fulfilling some fucked-up post-Cold War vision of American hegemony. How surprised you are that those “freed” to serve your agenda don’t want to stick to the script. What a fucking shock - your boy George announces we’re on a “crusade” to overturn the political order in the region, and goddammit, that political order just won’t lay down and die. Instead, Iran can raise the price we are paying to stay in Iraq faster than we can raise the price Iran must pay to oppose us.

Among all these religious prejudices, ancient wounds, social resentments and tribal antagonisms, who gets the blame for the rivers of blood?

You, you vicious little troll. You knew going in that Iraqi society was such a tinderbox, but proceeded anyway? Or you didn’t inform yourself first? Recklessness or gross negligence, which is it? It’s like performing elective surgery with no medical training and then blaming the patient for choosing to die. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was a foreseeable trainwreck. Everyone who supported it at any time deserves a share of the blame, but above all it must be laid at the feet of those, like Krauthammer, who insist to this very day that it was the right thing to do.

And of course now they are lying us into another war and it seems like the media is going along again. W.T.F.

Note to CNN: I hate you.
Note to Wolf Blitzer: You also are a despicable, vicious little troll.

Technorati Tags: Empire, George Bush, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, US Terrorism, War, War Crimes

Not that it’s ever good news or different news but I cannot keep up. I suppose I could post every day. As I said in the previous post it’s pretty obvious that from here on out the weather (and many side effects) will continue to intensify as the earth’s climate continues the radical shift. Wildfires, tornadoes, and extremely high wind storms like those in Europe this past week will become the norm rather than the exception. From the Guardian, via Common Dreams that the surge in carbon levels is causing runaway warming:

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere much faster than scientists expected, raising fears that humankind may have less time to tackle climate change than previously thought.

New figures from dozens of measuring stations across the world reveal that concentrations of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, rose at record levels during 2006 - the fourth year in the last five to show a sharp increase. Experts are puzzled because the spike, which follows decades of more modest annual rises, does not appear to match the pattern of steady increases in human emissions.

At its most far reaching, the finding could indicate that global temperatures are making forests, soils and oceans less able to absorb carbon dioxide - a shift that would make it harder to tackle global warming. Such a shift would worsen even the gloomy predictions of the Stern Review which warned that we had little over a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

David Hofmann of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), which published the figures, said: “Over this last decade the growth rates in carbon dioxide have been higher. I don’t think we can plausibly say what’s causing it. It’s something we’re going to look at."

Peter Cox, a climate change expert at Exeter University, said: " The concern is that climate change itself will affect the ability of the land to absorb our emissions.” At the moment around half of human carbon emissions are reabsorbed by nature but the fear among scientists is that increasing temperatures will work to reduce this effect.

Professor Cox added: “It means our emissions would have a progressively bigger impact on climate change because more of them will remain in the air. It accelerates the rate of change, so we get it sooner and we get it harder."

Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million (ppm). From 1970 to 2000 that concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, as human activities sent more of the gas into the atmosphere. But according to the latest figures, last year saw a rise of 2.6ppm. And 2006 was not alone. A series of similar jumps in recent years means the carbon dioxide level has risen by an average 2.2ppm each year since 2001.

Above-average annual rises in carbon dioxide levels have been explained by natural events such as the El Niño weather pattern, centred on the Pacific Ocean. But the last El Niño was in 1998, when it resulted in a record annual increase in carbon dioxide of 2.9ppm. If the current trend continues, this year’s predicted El Niño could see the annual rise in carbon dioxide pass the 3ppm level for the first time.

Prof Cox said that an increase in forest fires, heatwaves across Europe and the Amazon drought of 2005 could have helped to drive up carbon dioxide levels. Such events are predicted to become more frequent with rising global temperatures. He admitted “the jury is still out” on whether the recent spike is evidence of a significant change, although some computer models predict that the Earth will start to absorb less carbon dioxide some time this decade.

“Over the past few years carbon dioxide has been going up faster than we would expect, based on the rate that emissions are increasing,” Prof Cox said.

The BBC reports Arctic sea ice ‘faces rapid melt’:

A new model forecasts largely ice-free summers by 2040

The Arctic may be close to a tipping point that sees all-year-round ice disappear very rapidly in the next few decades, US scientists have warned.

The latest data presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting suggests the ice is no longer showing a robust recovery from the summer melt.

Last month, the sea that was frozen covered an area that was two million sq km less than the historical average.

“That’s an area the size of Alaska,” said leading ice expert Mark Serreze.

“We’re no longer recovering well in autumn anymore. The ice pack may now be starting to get preconditioned, perhaps to show very rapid losses in the near future,” the University of Colorado researcher added.

The sea ice reached its minimum extent this year on 14 September, making 2006 the fourth lowest on record in 29 years of satellite record-keeping and just shy of the all time minimum of 2005.

‘Feedback loop’

Dr Serreze’s concern was underlined by new computer modelling which concludes that the Arctic may be free of all summer ice by as early as 2040.

The new study, by a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the University of Washington, and McGill University, found that the ice system could be being weakened to such a degree by global warming that it soon accelerates its own decline.

“As the ice retreats, the ocean transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and leading to the loss of more ice,” explained Dr Marika Holland.

“This is a positive feedback loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic region."

Eventually, she said, the system would be “kicked over the edge”, probably not even by a dramatic event but by one year slighter warmer than normal. Very rapid retreat would then follow.

Sooner or later

In one of the model’s simulations, the September ice was seen to shrink from about 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles) to 1.9 million sq km (770,000 square miles) in just a 10-year period.

By 2040, only a small amount of perennial sea ice remained along the north coasts of Greenland and Canada, while most of the Arctic basin was ice-free in September.

“We don’t think that state has existed for hundreds of thousands of years; this is a dramatic change to the Arctic climate system,” Dr Holland told the BBC.

Dr Serreze, who is not a modeller and deals with observational data, feels the tipping point could be very close.

“My gut feeling is that it might be around the year 2030 that we really see a rapid decline of that ice. Now could it occur sooner? It might well. Could it occur later? It might well.

“It depends on the aspects of natural variability in the system. We have to remember under greenhouse warming, natural variability has always been part of the picture and it always will be part of the picture."

The average sea ice extent for the entire month of September this year was 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq miles). Including 2006, the September rate of sea ice decline is now approximately -8.59% per decade, or 60,421 sq km (23,328 sq miles) per year.

At that rate, without the acceleration seen in the new modelling, the Arctic Ocean would have no ice in September by the year 2060.

Gaia Scientist Lovelock Predicts Planetary Wipeout:

The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet and then alienated environmentalists by backing nuclear power, said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it’s 6 billion people.

“We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don’t see the species dying out,” he told a news conference. “A hot earth couldn’t support much over 500 million."

“Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback … and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world,” he added.

Scientists say that global warming due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport could boost average temperatures by up to 6C by the end of the century causing floods, famines and violent storms.

But they also say that tough action now to cut carbon emissions could stop atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hitting 450 parts per million – equivalent to a temperature rise of 2C from pre-industrial levels – and save the planet.

Lovelock said temperature rises of up to 8C were already built in and while efforts to curb it were morally commendable, they were wasted.

“It is a bit like if your kidneys fail you can go on dialysis – and who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative. We should think of it in that context,” he said.

“But remember that all they are doing is buying us time, no more. The problems go on,” he added.

REFUGE

Lovelock adopted the name Gaia, the Greek mother earth goddess, in the 1960s to apply to his then revolutionary theory that the earth functions as a single, self-sustaining organism. His theory is now widely accepted.

In London to give a lecture on the environment to the Institution of Chemical Engineers, he said the planet had survived dramatic climate change at least seven times.

“In the change from the last Ice Age to now we lost land equivalent to the continent of Africa beneath the sea,” he said. “We are facing things just as bad or worse than that during this century."

“There are refuges, plenty of them. 55 million years ago … life moved up to the Arctic, stayed there during the course of it and then moved back again as things improved. I fear that this is what we may have to do,” he added.

Lovelock said the United States, which has rejected the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon emissions, wrongly believed there was a technological solution, while booming economies China and India were out of control.

China is building a coal-fired power station a week to feed rampant demand, and India’s economy is likewise surging.

If either suddenly decided to stop their carbon-fuelled development to lift their billions of people out of poverty they would face a revolution, yet if they continued, rising CO2 and temperatures would kill off plants and produce famine, he said.

“If climate change goes on course … I can’t see China being able to produce enough food by the middle of the century to support its people. They will have to move somewhere and Siberia is empty and it will be warmer then,” he said.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Climate Change, Global Warming, Sea level rise

Climate change brings more frequent and more intense forest fires. One of those many side effects that seems likely to increase along with more intense storms and more frequent tornadoes. Seems obvious that as the climate shifts on so many levels we’re likely to see level of climate-related disruptions never experienced by humans. Our planet is beginning to convulse.

An unstoppable force Drought, climate change, high temperatures and strong winds have created a new type of fire front that is unstoppable and wreaks permanent damage, writes Asa Wahlquist

IT goes off like an atomic bomb. “You are talking about megawatts of energy,” explains Rod Incoll, a fire risk management consultant. “It is a nuclear release of energy out of these so-called mega-fires. It is a title that leads oneto exaggerate, but it is probably a fairdescription."
Mega-fire is a US expression, coined in 2003 to describe the series of extraordinary fires that have burned in the US since 2000. The worst, the Biscuit fire in Oregon in 2002, cost more than $US150 million to suppress.

Mega-fires are typically formed from several fires, covering a huge area. They exhibit complex behaviour, create their own weather and are well beyond the most sophisticated attempts to control them.

They occur most frequently on the bush-urban interface, leaving in their wake total destruction of plant and animal life. These fires can pollute water supplies with ash and in subsequent years fill waterways with soil and gravel. Regenerating trees suck up rainfall, reducing water supplies for up to 50 years. Mega-fires also have the capacity to wreak permanent damage.

O’Loughlin says drought and climate change have exacerbated the risk of bushfire this summer. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, most of Victoria received less than half its usual spring rainfall, with the upper northeast experiencing its driest spring on record.

“The drought means we have this huge build-up of fuel and the fuel is extremely dry,” O’Loughlin says.

The BoM reports the nation’s annual mean temperature for 2005 was 1.09C above the standard 1961-90 average. This year has recorded consistently above-average maximum temperatures. O’Loughlin says although it may seem a small shift, it means more extreme weather days.

“The old hands would say we used to get bad fire seasons every five, seven, nine years,” he says.

“But we appear now to be getting these really bad seasons more frequently. It would appear the seasons we have been experiencing in recent years are consistent with the projections about climate change."

Extreme weather days are not just an Australian phenomenon.

O’Loughlin says that “2003 was a fairly extraordinary year. We had the fires in Canberra. In August there were extremely bad fires in Portugal, bad fires in Spain and France, then in Canada. In October, they had the Californian fires with about 3000 homes lost and some 25 lives. So on three continents in the one year you have record areas burned, and extraordinary fire behaviour, mega-fire-type behaviour.

Technorati Tags: Australia, Climate Change, Forest Fires, Global Warming

The New York Times reports on The Warming of Greenland:

Now, where the maps showed only ice, a band of fast-flowing seawater ran between a newly exposed shoreline and the aquamarine-blue walls of a retreating ice shelf. The water was littered with dozens of icebergs, some as large as half an acre; every hour or so, several more tons of ice fractured off the shelf with a thunderous crack and an earth-shaking rumble.

All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks — “lonely mountains” in Inuit — that were encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.

“We are already in a new era of geography,” said the Arctic explorer Will Steger. “This phenomenon — of an island all of a sudden appearing out of nowhere and the ice melting around it — is a real common phenomenon now.”

In August, Mr. Steger discovered his own new island in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, high in the polar basin. Glaciers that had surrounded it when his ship passed through only two years earlier were gone this year, leaving only a small island alone in the open ocean.

“We saw it ourselves up there, just how fast the ice is going,” he said.

With 27,555 miles of coastline and thousands of fjords, inlets, bays and straits, Greenland has always been hard to map. Now its geography is becoming obsolete almost as soon as new maps are created.

Hans Jepsen is a cartographer at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, which produces topographical maps for mining and oil companies. (Greenland is a largely self-governing region of Denmark.) Last summer, he spotted several new islands in an area where a massive ice shelf had broken up. Mr. Jepsen was unaware of Mr. Schmitt’s discovery, and an old aerial photograph in his files showed the peninsula intact.

“Clearly, the new island was detached from the mainland when the connecting glacier-bridge retreated southward,” Mr. Jepsen said, adding that future maps would take note of the change.

The sudden appearance of the islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going into retreat, scientists say. Greenland is covered by 630,000 cubic miles of ice, enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet.

Carl Egede Boggild, a professor of snow-and-ice physics at the University Center of Svalbard, said Greenland could be losing more than 80 cubic miles of ice per year.

“That corresponds to three times the volume of all the glaciers in the Alps,” Dr. Boggild said. “If you lose that much volume you’d definitely see new islands appear.”

…
The abrupt acceleration of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientists by surprise. Tidewater glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as they break up in the process called calving, have doubled and tripled in speed all over Greenland. Ice shelves are breaking up, and summertime “glacial earthquakes” have been detected within the ice sheet.

“The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don’t react very quickly to climate,” said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “But that thinking is changing right now, because we’re seeing things that people have thought are impossible.”

A study in The Journal of Climate last June observed that Greenland had become the single largest contributor to global sea-level rise.

Until recently, the consensus of climate scientists was that the impact of melting polar ice sheets would be negligible over the next 100 years. Ice sheets were thought to be extremely slow in reacting to atmospheric warming. The 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, widely considered to be an authoritative scientific statement on the potential impacts of global warming, based its conclusions about sea-level rise on a computer model that predicted a slow onset of melting in Greenland

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Climate Change, Glaciers, Global Warming, Greenland, Sea level rise

The Union of Concerned Scientists have issued a new report: Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air. According to the report, ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics and even some of the same organizations to muddy the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action. Not at all surprising to anyone that’s been paying attention.

A link to a pdf of the report can be found here.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, ExxonMobil, Global Warming, Union of Concerned Scientists

Jim Kunstler of Clusterfuck Nation discusses The Warming:

While it seems morally upright to inveigh against global warming Al Gore style, personally I don’t believe there is anything we will do about it, or can do about now. The feedback loops are in motion. Something ominous is underway far greater than our measly powers can correct. Even if we started it with about two hundred years of our fossil fuel fires, there is no evidence that can just stop burning coal, oil, and methane gas on the grand scale, or that the warming would stop if we did.

The response of our political leaders is laughable. The most “progressive” among them will demand rapid conversion of the US automobile fleet to hybrid engines. I am confident that this would do absolutely nothing to put the brakes on global warming.

As usual, I am much more interested in how events are likely to turn out than in how we wish them to turn out. My guess is that the weird weather we are getting will increasingly affect crop yields. With populations growing, and weather anomalies increasing, grain surpluses worldwide are now at their lowest point in decades. All the major grain-growing regions have suffered either significant drought (US, Australia, Ukraine, China, Argentina) or flooding (East Africa, India) in recent years. (See this report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.)

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Food, Food Production, Global Warming