Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Global warming accelerates; Climategate rumbles on
A report by a group of leading scientists that global warming is accelerating and that world sea levels could rise at worst by 2 metres by 2100* is grim reading.
But sceptics are using a flood of leaked e-mails from a British University — dubbed “Climategate” – to question the findings.
You can read the Copenhagen Diagnosis here, by 26 researchers worldwide. It says a thaw of summer sea ice around the North Pole, for instance, has far outpaced projections in a report by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) two years ago. They say world emissions must peak by 2020 to avoid the worst of climate change.
They say that sea levels could rise by perhaps a metre, at worst 2 – a figure also mentioned recently by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon — and far above scenarios in 2007 by the IPCC. More than 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18 to try to agree a new pact to combat global warming.
Antarctica’s wandering ice shelf
GPS markers usually pinpoint a spot on the earth’s surface to help everything from map-making to navigation.
This one (left) spectacularly didn’t.
Russ and Kyle,Firstly, if you take 1998 as your starting point it does appear that there has not been warming over the last 10 years. But as you should know that would be cherry picking data and 1998 was also known as the time when the world’s largest el nino occurred which is why it was the warmest ever recorded. In terms of the overall trend it is still on the order of 0.19 C per decade which is consistent with predictions. In fact if you checked out some actual scientific literature instead of internet blogs you might know that. Secondly for Russ, there is no distinct evidence of falsified data. The adding in the real temperatures onto the 1960’s dataset in order to “hide the decline” is simply putting on actual temperature data in place of data which cannot be used. The reason it couldn’t be used was because after 1960 that particular tree ring set diverged from recorded temperatures so the original author advised against using post-1960 tree ring data…. that would also be something you would know if you had any clue about things before you mouthed off. So sick of people who are so quick to jump on bandwagons without actually doing the research themselves. Nowmatter what I say you are going to think you’re right… that’s the difference between actual degrees in climate science and degrees from the University of Google.
Copenhagen…DOpenHAgen…DOHA?
Some politicians are mentioning “Copenhagen” and “Doha” in the same breath — a worrying lament less than 2 months to go before a U.N. climate deal is meant to be wrapped up in the Danish capital.
So is there a risk – if negotiators are not smart — that the new U.N. accord to fight global warming will stall like the long-running Doha round on freeing world trade, launched in 2001?
India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, for instance, said on Oct. 10 that negotiators should aim for a realistic agreement in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18 that was not too ambitious. He said there was a risk of repeating the “mistake of the Doha round”, saying that “the basic problem of the Doha round was ‘all or nothing’.”
And British Finance Minister Alistair Darling said on Oct. 21 that he wanted to ensure that the climate talks do not keep dragging on like the Doha round.
global warming is a UN political agenda, with them playing doomstay scenario. Did you see UK scientists getting caught fudging climate data to prove warming when there was none.
IPCC needs to release their data sets, analysis in the open for other scientists to review.
Travel agent scraps “medieval pardons” for emissions
A travel agent is ditching an offer allowing holidaymakers to pay extra if they feel guilty about the greenhouse gases created by their flights, saying it’s like selling “medieval pardons”.
responsibletravel.com said it was dropping carbon offsets from its website, bucking an industry trend of recent years.
Ever more airlines and travel groups offer customers the option of paying a bit more to plant trees in Africa, for instance, or to help build a wind farm in India to soak up greenhouse gases equal to those emitted by their vacations.
“We believe that the travel industry’s priority must be to reduce carbon emissions, rather than to offset,” said Justin Francis, managing director of the British-based firm.
Will Nobel Prize also take Obama to Copenhagen climate talks?
The surprise award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama just nine months into his presidency on Friday may put pressure on him to visit a 190-nation meeting on a new U.N. climate treaty in Copenhagen.
The prize will be handed over in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the award’s founder Alfred Nobel, and the U.N. talks will run in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18. It takes about an hour to fly between the two Scandinavian capitals.
And the Norwegian Nobel Committee heaped praise on Obama, including his climate policies, in its citation.
“Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting,” the secretive five-member committee said.
Let me just express my opinion over the “by how much” factor when considering cutting greenhouse emissions. It might not be how much we can cut ours, or look how much every other country is cutting theirs. We need to just reduce them. Not by 80% or 46% or whatever. Not every country is built the same, and not every country can go about reducing CO2 emissions in the exact same fashion with the exact same results.
I think what is important is that we set our own goals and simply follow through on them, screw the Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Talks, lets just do it. I feel like that is how the United States came to be such a BOSS, we just did what we needed to do and owned.
Just a college perspective.
A green Nobel Peace Prize next week? Or one too many?
Will the guardians of the Nobel Peace Prize make another green award in 2009 to encourage sluggish talks on new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen?
Or is it too early after environmental prizes in both 2004 and 2007?
The five-member Nobel panel likes to make topical awards to try to influence the world – a prize announcement on Oct. 9 linked to climate change could hardly be better timed since 190 nations will meet in Copenhagen in December to agree a new pact for fighting global warming.
And the Nobel prize will be formally handed over at a ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of the death of founder Alfred Nobel – giving any winner a global loudspeaker during the the Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen.
“Wow. Anon, I am not sure how old you are, but you certainly haven’t done much reading. Do your part please and inform yourself before assuming that “fairness” role.”
If you are going to make aspersions on a person’s age, education, or knowledge that says volumes about your quality as a person.
By the way, is there a reliable climate model for future climate change yet? Or a conclusive finding on exactly what the climate will be in a decade and to what point climate change will effect it? Or a concrete finding as to whether climate change will cause our extinction as a species?
Or is this something only stupid, uneducated people ask for? And all smart scientists know better then to waste time researching?
Don’t expect a response. And learn some civility.
from Summit Notebook:
U.N. climate deal in Copenhagen, or København?
A new U.N. deal to step up the fight against climate change is to be agreed this December in the Danish capital 'Copenhagen', or should that be 'København'?
British and American English speakers often differ about whether to pronounce it "Copen'hay'gen" or "Copen'haa'gen". And interviews for the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy summit this week are bringing varieties in between.
But what do Danes reckon? I called up an expert:
"We'd normally say "Copen'hay'gen in English," said Ida Ebbensgaard," spokeswoman for Danish Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard who will host the Dec. 7-18 meeting.
Hi John, you’re right that temperatures this century have not matched 1998, the warmest year since reliable records began in the mid-19th century, according to the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
But temperatures that year were pushed up by an exceptionally strong El Nino event in the Pacific, which tends to heat the globe. The years after the 1998 spike have been less warm — but no trend of cooling year by year — and most are among the warmest 10 on record.
As I understand it from talking to scientists, the underlying problem in fingering global warming is that natural variations in the climate are far, far bigger than the warming effect of extra greenhouse gases. Average temperatures rose about 0.7 Celsius in the 20th century, or an almost unnoticeable average of 0.07 Celsius a decade — everyone knows that normal swings in the weather bring far bigger variations.
So don’t pop the champagne to celebrate the demise of global warming — the WMO says the underlying trend is still up. Or try this NASA article about “The ups and downs of Global Warming” (…yes, they’re still calling it that)
Try this link –
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/feature s/upsDownsGlobalWarming.html
Wyoming water tests raise gas-drilling concerns
The announcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration that it has found chemical contaminants in domestic well water near natural gas-drilling rigs raises more questions about the safety of a method of gas extraction called hydraulic fracturing. For a story, click here.)
The EPA’s finding, based on tests in rural Pavillion, Wyoming, marks the first time the federal agency has tested water in response to growing complaints from around the U.S. that gas drilling is polluting groundwater with toxic substances.
Canadian energy giant EnCana, which operates almost 250 gas rigs in the area, notes that the industry is just one possible source of the contamination, a point echoed by the EPA itself, which has been at pains to point out that it has reached no conclusion about the source of the chemicals.
While we all want a source of cleaner energy. But do we need to give up our supply of safe drinking water in the process?
I feel with out preserving a source of clean health drinking water our nations health is at great risk. Which will burden families with higher heath costs in the future.
We all deserve the truth about what is being pumped in to the ground so we can take action in the event that it finds it’s way in to our drinking water supplies.
Can farms and forests mix?
Forests and farms don’t mix, according to conventional wisdom.
Farmers are often portrayed as the villains, slashing and burning trees to clear land for crops and wrecking forests from the Amazon to Indonesia (…not to mention Europe, where people cleared most forests thousands of years ago).
But a report today by the World Agroforestry Centre indicates that farms aren’t such enemies of trees as usually thought - it says tree canopies cover at least 10 percent of almost half the world’s farmland. That is a gigantic area the size of China, or Canada. (For a story, click here).
Ten percent doesn’t sound much but one common definition of a “forest” by the U.N.s’ Food and Agriculture Organisation is an area where tree canopies cover at least 10 percent. It excludes farmland or urban areas (– otherwise your local supermarket car park might qualify if it’s got a few trees dotted around the tarmac).
in china and almost all east asian countries are farms and forests mixed. since more than 50% of the population from asia are still living in the village, so, the environmental problem are not that heavy.
Seas rise — vast amounts of ice melt for every 1 mm gain
It takes the equivalent of a massive chunk of ice of 390 cubic kms (150 cubic miles) to raise world sea levels by one millimetre, according to David Carlson, director of the International Programme Office of the International Polar Year.
As an example, he says that works out as a lump 39 kms long, 10 wide and 1 km thick. Or I reckon it could be a blockbuster ice cube with sides 7.3 kms long — that would smother most of a large city such as Paris (top left — you can see the Eiffel Tower in the middle).
David’s numbers give an idea of the scale of the thaw under way — seas have been rising at about 3 millimetres a year in recent years in a trend that almost all climate scientists blame on global warming caused by human activities. That’s equivalent to a rate of 30 cms a century.
And it’s also a lot faster than a rise of 1.8 mm a year from the 1960s, according to the U.N. Climate Panel. The thaw is one of the spurs to action under plans for a new U.N. treaty to fight global warming due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.
Why do you continue to refer to the term “Global Warming” when NASA and several CREDIBLE scientists have proven the earth has cooled each of at least the last nine years? This is irresponsible journalism at best and outright bias in reporting at worst. Mother Earth worshipers have changed the term to “Climate Change” because they can no longer call it “Global Warming”. But isn’t that just another word for “weather”? Oh, how the politically correct have taken over. Also, it is VERY clear science that even grade schoolers know, that melting ice does not increase water levels. Do the simple science experiment yourself with a glass or bowl of water and some ice cubes. Also, where is the mention that the ice in antartica is actually INCREASING? The only things the scientists have to “predict” the future are overly complex computer models. Who says these models are right? Them? Who funds them? The government? Al Gore? The end result is that those same models FAILED to predict the Global COOLING that has happened in the past few years. That tells me the models and flawed and therefore, the whole argument is questionable. 90% of the scientists? NO! This also is a misstatement and no fact.
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Here’s what I don’t understand: what is the point of the alleged global warming hoax? What do advocates have to gain from it? What is their motive? Why would thousands of researchers around the world devote decades to inventing data to support this claim if it’s patently untrue from the get-go? Quite simply, these accusations don’t make a shred of sense.