Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer ()
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Source: Times Online ()
Ten
predictions about climate change that have come true | An
experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Climate change may lead to lush growth rather than catastrophic tree loss in
the Amazonian forests, researchers from the US and Brazil have found. A
study, in the journal Science, found that reduced rainfall had led to
greener forests, possibly because sunlight levels are higher when there are
fewer rainclouds.
But scientists cautioned that while the finding raises hopes for the survival
of the forests, there are still serious threats. Climate models have
suggested that the forests will suffer as the region becomes drier and will
release huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Climate models have suggested in the past that the Amazon will suffer enormous
die-backs as the region becomes drier and will release huge quantities of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Deforestation is calculated to be one of the main contributors to the rising
carbon dioxide levels that are widely held by the scientific community to be
causing global warming. The loss of the Amazon would cause enormous
quantities of carbon dioxide stored in the vegetation to be released back
into the atmosphere, intensifying the warming effect.
Researchers identified the greener regions of the Amazon after analysing
satelite images and comparing them to rainfall records. The 2005 drought
provided them with “a unique opportunity to compare actual forest drought
response to expectation”.
They said: “Large-scale numerical models that simulate the interactions
between changing global climate and terrestrial vegetation predict
substantial carbon loss from tropical ecosystems including the
drought-induced collapse of the Amazon forest and conversion to savanna.
“If drought were to have the negative effect on canopy
photosynthesis, it should have been especially observable during this
period.
“The …
Source: Houston Chronicle ()
If the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season ended tomorrow, we would still call it extraordinary. The year’s first two hurricanes, Dean and Felix, both reached Category 5 classification. That’s a record, one among many that these two storms helped establish.
To begin with, in the archives (which go back to 1851, with varying degrees of completeness) only three other seasons — 1960, 1961 and 2005 — had more than one of these monster storms. And no season can rival this additional feat: Both Dean and Felix struck land at full Category 5 strength. There hadn’t been a Category 5 landfall in what hurricane experts call the Atlantic basin (the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic north of the equator) since 1992’s Hurricane Andrew ravaged southern Florida. Now we’ve seen two in two weeks.
The scariest factoid, however, is this: We’ve now witnessed eight Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin in the past five years (Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean and Felix). You have to go back to the 1960s, with six recorded Category 5s, to find another decade that even approaches the current one in this regard. (And if you look beyond the Atlantic? In June, Cyclone Gonu was a Category 5 and the strongest storm ever observed in the Arabian Sea.)
In the face of all this, it’s inevitable that global warming comes up. While each individual storm’s immediate environment — water temperature, atmospheric patterns — will always determine its maximum strength, many scientists expect hurricanes to become more intense on average as global warming adds more heat to the tropical oceans. The question now — or more precisely, the argument — turns on whether that has already happened: Are the changes detectable? And, if they are (or aren’t), what do we do about it?
For several years, experts have been hotly debating the nuances of the hurricane-climate relationship.
An apparent trend toward stronger hurricanes seems most indisputable in the Atlantic …
Source: NewsBusters ()
In one of the most hilarious cases of being tripped up by dubious scientific hype, British yachtsman Adrian Flanagan attempted to be the first to sail across the arctic north of Russia. He based his hope on the fact that he believed in the Global Warming propaganda that the arctic is rapidly losing its ice thus making his trip possible. One little problem. Cold cruel reality has crushed the Global Warming hype and now Flanagan’s boat is trapped by ice in the arctic. To add to the irony, Flanagan who seems to be destined to go down in history as Wrong Way Flanagan, is now pleading with Russian authorities to provide him with the services of a nuclear powered icebreaker to get him out of his embarrassing situation.
As recently as August 18, Wrong Way Flanagan’s hopes were still high that he could sail across the arctic north of Russia. Moscow News announced his trip in an article ironically titled, Global Warming is Here.
Flash forward to today and we can see the sticky situation that Wrong Way Flanagan put himself into by placing his faith in Global Warming to clear his path in the arctic as chronicled by Australia’s Herald Sun in an article with the sobering title of Ice blocks British solo sailor:
Besides the arctic ice, Wrong Way Flanagan now appears to have another problem. Remember those polar bears that Global Warming activists were warning us were endangered? Well, it now seems that the tables have been turned and those endangered polar bears are now endangering Flanagan:
So as Wrong Way Flanagan, who has turned himself into a Global Laughingstock on the altar of Global Warming, remains trapped in the arctic perhaps someone would be kind enough send him a copy of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth for him to pass the time while waiting for the ice to melt and for the endangered polar bears to go away.
UPDATE: Charles Henrickson, who is a Lutheran pastor in the St. Louis area as well as a master of song parody, has written The …
Source: Toronto Star ()
The title of the article in Harper’s Magazine was unusually sprightly for that rather staid journal. First, in bold letters, COLD RUSH, and below the subtitle, The Coming Fight for the Melting North.
The Economist magazine was less inventive. Its article was titled “Drawing Lines in Melting Ice,'’ with a teaser below about "the ungainly scramble for a slice of the Arctic’s tantalizing riches."
Most times the Arctic commands attention because of its beauty, its solitariness, the inventiveness of its native Inuit, its fragility.
Suddenly, the reasons for its appeal, demonstrated by these simultaneous articles in major American and British magazines, have become practical and opportunistic. The stakes are now those of politics and national pride, and of economics and finance. In Harper’s, journalist McKenzie Funk puts it bluntly: The U.S.’s interest in the north "was to see how much money it could make."
The motives of the other nations involved are much the same: Russia, predictably, but also the “good guys'’ – Denmark and Norway, and by no means least, Canada.
The immediate source of our own new interest in the Arctic is that of sovereignty. We own the Arctic islands beyond any question. Under the rules of the Law of the Sea Treaty’s 200-mile limit, we also almost certainly own all the waters in between them.
On the sound principle of "use it or lose it," Prime Minister Stephen Harper this summer flew north to announce a new army base would be established at Resolute Bay and an unused port at Nanisivik would be refurbished for the new fleet of six ice-breaking patrol boats.
There are two soft spots to our claim. One, insisted upon by the U.S., is that a "free passage" for the ships of all nations exists in between these islands, like it does between Gibraltar and North Africa.
The other, espoused most strongly by Russia, is that, under the Law of the Sea rules, the sub-sea …