Global Climate

Posted by Peter Kuria on February 24th, 2009

MIT Group Increases Global Warming Projections

Report: High odds of warming over 5°C (9°F) if no action

Warming possibilities for “no policy” and policy scenarios between 1990 and 2100. Size of pie slice indicates the likelihood of a given amount of warming under the different scenarios. Graphics courtesy MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

New research from MIT scientists shows that in the absence of stringent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, 21st century climate change may be far more significant than some previous climate assessments had indicated.

The new findings, released this month by MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, showed significantly increased odds that by the end of the century warming would be on the high end of the scale for a so-called “no policy scenario” as compared with similar studies completed just six years ago. The main culprits: the cycling of heat and carbon dioxide in the climate system are now better understood and projections of future greenhouse gas emissions have increased.

8 Comments

At 2009.02.27 09:15, Editor said:

Scientist Tells Congress: Earth in ‘CO2 Famine’

‘The increase of CO2 is not a cause for alarm and will be good for mankind’

‘Children should not be force-fed propaganda, masquerading as science’

Washington, DC — Award-winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer declared man-made global warming fears “mistaken” and noted that the Earth was currently in a “CO2 famine now.” Happer, who has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, made his remarks during today’s Environment and Public Works Full Committee Hearing entitled “Update on the Latest Global Warming Science.”

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=af8f5b20-802a-23ad-49fb-8a2d53f00437

This is creating a high level of confusion. It is quite bizzare that for the sake of creating a name, one is able to stand and repudiate all evidence that points to the observed changes. It is a however expected. The cigarette industry was in denial and kept the world smoking despite the known facts about the impacts of smoking. Well, when you smoke today, the message is clear, .. in the future, expect the same about climate and carbon in the air!

[Reply]
At 2009.02.27 09:22, Editor said:

Minister Says Global Warming Just A Tax Scam

by Alan Harten
February 27, 2009
Money

Sammy Wilson, Northern Ireland’s Minister for the Environment, believes that the Labour Government is increasing taxes and introducing stringent requirements, while using global warming to justify the measures.

Mr. Wilson said he is against the view that global warming is caused by the actions of mankind.

He also rebutted critics during his appearance at the Stormont Environment Committee yesterday.

Mr. Wilson denied blocking government adverts, which encourage people to work to cut carbon emissions, saying it is not his job to do that.

A vote of no confidence in the Minister succeeded recently.

The adverts were prepared by Westminster, Mr. Wilson said, without consultation with the devolved assemblies. http://www.fairhome.co.uk/2009/02/27/minister-says-global-warming-just-a-tax-scam/

Yet another twist in the tail!! Or is it tale!

[Reply]
At 2009.02.27 11:42, Editor said:

US urged to lead China into carbon emission cuts

By K.T. Arasu

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) – The United States should take the lead in reducing carbon emissions to be able to enlist China in the global campaign to curb global warming, an expert told an annual USDA conference on Friday.

The United States and China, the world’s top two emitters of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels stoking global warming, have often been icy rivals over trade and security.

“China is unlikely to make any reductions until the United States takes action,” Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University told the USDA annual Agricultural Outlook Forum here.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUKN27339827

[Reply]
At 2009.03.01 17:31, Editor said:

Global warming could delay, weaken monsoons: study

16 hours ago

CHICAGO (AFP) — Global warming could delay the start of the summer monsoon by five to 15 days within the next century and significantly reduce rainfall in much of South Asia, a recent study has found.

Rising global temperatures will likely lead to an eastward shift in monsoon circulation which could result in more rainfall over the Indian Ocean, Myanmar and Bangladesh but less over Pakistan, India and Nepal, the study found.

It could also result in longer delays between rainy seasons and intensify the risk of deadly floods by leading to a significant increase in average rainfalls in some coastal areas of western India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

That could have a major impact on agriculture, human health and the economies of the region, warned study author Noah Diffenbaugh.

“Almost half of the world’s population lives in areas affected by these monsoons, and even slight deviations from the normal monsoon pattern can have great impact,” said Diffenbaugh, interim director of Purdue University’s Climate Change Research Center. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jlEsxGrBmhmZZKiKaJF7GQ34jb6Q

[Reply]
At 2009.03.22 06:29, MaxT said:

here is what we all and they can do, and it seems we all should be doing: Terra Preta -type mixtures to make new soils. Very low technology, apparently very effective. Very powerful method to utilize for decreasing climate change, to add to other tools, like decreasing our wasteful behaviours and methods and adapting to more sustainable ones. Not to mention the great potential social equalizing effects and empowerment to local peoples and communities with increased amounts of self-made and self-sustained fertile soils for farming:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wLaSQGyuIA

We all, small people, small individual homes and villages, large provinces and large institutions alike can do this.
As biomass we can use plant materials that are produced in farms now as “waste” (straws, peels, husks, and such… all sorts of plant parts that are now thrown to compost)that is either burned and sooting the atmosphere and glaciers with soot particles, or let to rot in compost piles each year, releasing methane, a powerful climate change gas, to atmosphere. We can, Ourselves, collect all this energy, all these nutrients, and prevent these now occurring emissions. We can also use overgrowth that grows and rots in all the overnutrified waters (waters soiled with too much fertilizing on nearby areas that has leaked to them). All this plant material is called Biomass.

Biomass can be gathered, by pitchfork and hand if need be, or by machines and vehicles is that is energy sane at area.

Biomass can then be divided to two portions.

First Biomass portion—> solar drying (leaving to dry in bright sunlight, as rice is dried)—-> clean self-made charcoaling, low technology, burns the smoke away, prevents the methane emissions into air from that biomass(that today happens to all this biomass as it rots away). Gives energy and charcoal powder. Removes also overnutrients from chocked waters, when plants from overgrowth filled waters is dried and charcoaled thus.

This is instructions for how charcoal is self made cleanly, and the energy is used cleanly at same time:
http://holon.se/folke/carbon/simplechar/simplechar.shtml
(I would do this only outdoors for safety reasons, any unburned gas that might leak from leaky charcoaling pot, can be dangerous for people and living things to accidentally breathe. Safe enough outdoors, as any small flame).

Second Biomass portion—> Biodigestors (airless space for that mass to rot without any oxygen. It usually will start to rot and ferement into flammable gas that gan be burned, called “Biogas” It consists mostly of all that Methane that is now let to escape to air from composting piles)—-> biogas/Methane —-> burn biogas/methane for energy (like cooking and heating with it’s flame) and prevent it from getting to atmosphere as it now does. This behaviour Removes overnutrients from chocked waters. Gives self made gas energy and self made Nutrient slurry.

This is how (just few examples) biodigestors can be done:
http://www.arti-india.org/content/view/46/43/

Mix Charcoal powder and Nutrient slurry —-> Terra Preta -type mixture—-> spread on depleted soils and desertified areas. This is Low-technology and can also be done with such tools as shovels and wheelbarrows). This behaviour apparently gives living soils for living things, like soil microbes, roots, worms… In other words: self made soil for gardening or farming… or even just for wild plants and animals to grow and live with.

For example: This wild floating plant is very common: Water Hyacinth.
Apparently it is very good plant for rotting into biogas, and very widespread, familiar plant to many peoples from freshwaters around them that have been soiled to undrinkable. By collecting and using these self-growing virulent plants as described above, and making them into Terra Preta -type mixtures to make new living fertile soils with, we also clean up those soiling excess nutrients away from those ponds, wells, rivers and lakes where this plant happily grows in abundance.

Instead of only discussing massive financing plans, needed tax tools, and investments in scarcely available and not self-doable high technology researches and projects with rare materials and dependency in massive industrial infrastructures (generally dependent on *large scale* mining and fossil energy) and similar global transportation infrastructures… why not all of us get our hands dirty with charcoal, biomass, making new soils where we are… and globally sending instructions of how to do it from local materials, so that anyone can do the same where they are ?

MaxT

[Reply]
At 2009.03.25 23:28, Editor said:

Natural factors

James Hansen, a climate scientist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, said during an appearance in Milwaukee on Wednesday that he agreed that natural factors play a role in the climate.

But they are dwarfed by the impact of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

Natural variations linked to sun spots and volcano eruptions can create short-term cooling factors, but these are not significant enough to counter the long-term trend of higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Hansen, the featured speaker at the Renewable Energy Summit.

“I’ll bet 10 dollars to a doughnut, with a very high degree of confidence, that decade by decade it’s going to be warmer – not that each decade is going to be warmer by the same amount,” Hansen said.

Last year was the coldest year in this decade. Global warming skeptics have used a chilly 2008 as evidence that the climate crisis has been overstated.

But NASA research shows that 2008 was the ninth-warmest year since 1880. Hansen said the cooling witnessed last year is linked to a La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which is now receding and shifting into a period of a warmer El Niño weather pattern.

Hansen was asked if he would engage in a debate with another scientist about climate science.

A debate would provide grist for television viewers, but would not lead to greater understanding of the issue, he said. To do that, President Barack Obama should call on the National Academy of Sciences to report about the state of global warming science.

President George W. Bush, who opposed regulation of greenhouse gases, asked for a similar study in 2001.

“Temperatures are, in fact, rising,” the report found. “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.”

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/41870692.html

[Reply]
At 2009.03.27 08:11, Editor said:

Major cap and trade climate legislation unveiled this week might be better described as a cap on trade.

The House measure includes potentially far-reaching measures to subsidize domestic industry and impose tariffs on foreign goods.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., would cut U.S. carbon emissions by requiring companies to have permits that let them release greenhouse gases.

Many U.S. manufacturers fear such costs would give a big edge to foreign rivals from countries with little or no emission controls.

The bill seeks to address those concerns by giving “rebates” to companies, mostly industrial ones using lots of raw materials like metal and glass, for cap and trade costs.

If the White House decides those rebates aren’t enough, the legislation would let the president create a “border adjustment program.”

This would force foreign manufacturers and importers “to pay for and hold special allowances to ‘cover’ the carbon contained in U.S.-bound products,” according to a bill summary provided by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Backdoor Protectionism

In essence, experts say, the U.S. would use cap and trade as an excuse to subsidize domestic firms and slap tariffs on goods from countries deemed not to have strong emission controls.

Bill Kovacs, vice president for environmental policy for the Chamber of Commerce, said this will “invite retaliation.” Other nations are not going to stand idly by, he warns.

“Any time you get into a position where you want to block international markets, you really risk starting trade wars,” Kovacs said.

Trade experts said it pushes U.S. policy into uncharted waters.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20090402/bs_ibd_ibd/20090402general;_ylt=AhGUQlrAW09tuIa5yCR69Kdpl88F

The relationship between the human species and the ecosystem has been radically changed in the past 100 years, Gore said, noting the Earth’s population has quadrupled in that period of time. But he said the population is starting to stabilize because of public health, the education of girls, empowerment of women, the availability of culturally acceptable methods of fertilization control, and higher child survival rates.

Gore also said the science and technology revolution has had a dramatic impact on the Earth’s climate.

“As a consequence, technologically enhanced power in hands of the average person on Earth has now been magnified a millionfold.”

The use of chemicals and the burning of oil-based fuels has led to high emissions of carbon dioxide, which Gore said is the largest contributor to the climate crisis because it traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9012740

[Reply]
At 2009.04.03 03:25, Editor said:

Major cap and trade climate legislation unveiled this week might be better described as a cap on trade.

The House measure includes potentially far-reaching measures to subsidize domestic industry and impose tariffs on foreign goods.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., would cut U.S. carbon emissions by requiring companies to have permits that let them release greenhouse gases.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20090402/bs_ibd_ibd/20090402general;_ylt=AhGUQlrAW09tuIa5yCR69Kdpl88F

Many U.S. manufacturers fear such costs would give a big edge to foreign rivals from countries with little or no emission controls.

The bill seeks to address those concerns by giving “rebates” to companies, mostly industrial ones using lots of raw materials like metal and glass, for cap and trade costs.

If the White House decides those rebates aren’t enough, the legislation would let the president create a “border adjustment program.”

This would force foreign manufacturers and importers “to pay for and hold special allowances to ‘cover’ the carbon contained in U.S.-bound products,” according to a bill summary provided by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Backdoor Protectionism

In essence, experts say, the U.S. would use cap and trade as an excuse to subsidize domestic firms and slap tariffs on goods from countries deemed not to have strong emission controls.

Bill Kovacs, vice president for environmental policy for the Chamber of Commerce, said this will “invite retaliation.” Other nations are not going to stand idly by, he warns.

“Any time you get into a position where you want to block international markets, you really risk starting trade wars,” Kovacs said.

Trade experts said it pushes U.S. policy into uncharted waters.

[Reply]