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2013-09-28. U.N. Climate Panel Endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions.
Excerpt: STOCKHOLM — The world’s top climate scientists on Friday
formally embraced an upper limit on greenhouse gases for the first time,
establishing a target level at which humanity must stop spewing them
into the atmosphere or face irreversible climatic changes. They warned
that the target is likely to be exceeded in a matter of decades unless
steps are taken soon to reduce emissions. ...the panel endorsed a
“carbon budget” for humanity — a limit on the amount of the primary
greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, that can be produced by industrial
activities and the clearing of forests. No more than one trillion metric
tons of carbon could be burned and the resulting gases released into
the atmosphere, the panel found, if planetary warming is to be kept
below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the level of
preindustrial times. ...Just over a half-trillion tons have already been
burned since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and at the
rate energy consumption is growing, the trillionth ton will be burned
sometime around 2040, according to calculations by Myles R. Allen, a
scientist at the University of Oxford and one of the authors of the new
report.... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/science/global-climate-change-report.html.
Justin Gillis, New York Times. 2013-09-27. Newly released climate change report reinforces need for action. Excerpt: BERKELEY — The release today (Friday, Sept. 27) of Assessment Report 5, a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), bolsters the conclusions of its 2007 report that humans are responsible for global warming, and it highlights the need for immediate action to reduce carbon emissions. [The report is at http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1] ...said Inez Fung, professor of earth and planetary science and a coauthor of the 2007 report “Now CO2 is nearly 400 parts per million, and temperatures have been increasing steadily, decade by decade, and cannot be explained by natural fluctuations of the climate system. We now have definitive evidence that the upper 700 meters of the ocean have been warming, and that the oceans have become more acidic because of the invasion of anthropogenic CO2. ...Two other reports on mitigation and adaptation are expected to be released next year. The IPCC was formed in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to assess the evidence for climate change and predict the consequences.... http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/09/27/newly-released-climate-change-report-reinforces-need-for-action/. Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News Center. 2013-07-23. Jim Hansen Presses the Climate Case for Nuclear Energy. Revkin: ...To me, ...Hansen’s far too confident about the scale at which nuclear power, particularly the new technologies that he prefers, could be deployed by the middle of this century. But his statements pose a particularly tough challenge for those who embrace his take on the dangers attending an unabated greenhouse-gas buildup but see a fast transition to solar, wind and other renewable energy sources as the solution. .... http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/?src=recpb. Andrew Revkin, New York Times. 2013-02-26. Infographic: Warming U.S. Winters | Susan E. Matthews, OnEarth--Natural Resources Defense Council. Excerpt: ...average yearly temperatures in the contiguous U.S. states have been rising in recent decades -- with 2012 being the hottest ever. ...our coldest states have been heating up the most, ... winters have been warming at faster rates than our summers. ...The infographic ... shows how Old Man Winter has been faring in every state since the '70s.... See full article at http://www.onearth.org/blog/infographic-warming-winters.
2013-01-15. NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend | NASA RELEASE : 13-021. Excerpt: …NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record. …on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade. "One more year of numbers isn't in itself significant," GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt said. "What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it's warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." …. Read the full article: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/jan/HQ_13-021_Global_Temperature.html
2013-01-08. It's So Hot in Australia That They Added New Colors to the Weather Map | Alexander Abad-Santos, The Atlantic Wire. Excerpt: …See that deep purple in the middle of this acne-red weather report from Down Under? That right there represents 129.2° F or 54 °C — it's a brand-new shade that the Australian bureau of meteorology was forced to add to its heat index because their country is, you know, kind of on fire. "The scale has just been increased today …because the forecast coming from the bureau's model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees," David Jones, head of the bureau's climate monitoring and prediction unit, told The Sydney Morning Herald, which notes that the previous record high was 50.7°C (123°F), recorded in 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport in the southern part of Australia — right around where the new shades of hot are showing up today. …it's just past midnight there right now ... and it's 95°F in Sydney. …giant fire risks that come with the heat …Australian officials are ...labeling the warning "catastrophic." …. Read the full article: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/01/its-so-hot-australia-they-added-new-colors-weather-map/60701/. See also animation in Dot Earth, The New York Times from Andrew Revkin: Australian Forecasters Add New Colors to Temperature Charts to Capture Record Heat .
2012-09-10. 2012 Record-Breaking Heat | by Climate Central. Excerpt: The summer of 2012 has been one for the record books in the lower 48 states. …2012 to-date has been the hottest year for the U.S. since instrument records began in 1895, and the summer was the third warmest summer on record. [See Interactive map of US with data on numbers of records broken.] Read the full article: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/2012-record-temperatures-which-states-led-the-nation-14951
2012 July 28. The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic. By Richard Muller, NY Times. Excerpt: Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause. My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project…Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.... Note: Author of the "opinion" piece is Richard Muller, UC Berkeley professor. Among his accomplishments are having started The Berkeley Real Time Supernova Search (with Carl Pennypacker, co-founder of HOU) which then became The Berkeley Automated Supernova Search, which then became the Supernova Cosmology Project, which discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe, for which Muller's graduate student, Saul Perlmutter, shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.
2012 July 30. 250 Years of Global Warming: Berkeley Earth Releases New Analysis | ScienceDaily. Excerpt: According to a new Berkeley Earth study released July 29, 2012, the average temperature of Earth's land has risen by 1.5 °C over the past 250 years. The good match between the new temperature record and historical carbon dioxide records suggests that the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions. Together with their most recent results and papers, Berkeley Earth also released their raw data and analysis programs. They will be available online at BerkeleyEarth.org on July 30.
The new analysis from Berkeley Earth goes all the way back to 1753, about 100 years earlier than previous groups' analyses…. Read the full article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120730142509.htm
2012 July 16. Alaskan Salmon Evolve Along With the Climate. By Nicholas Bakalar, The NY Times. Excerpt: Alaskan salmon are apparently evolving to adapt to climate change. Researchers have suspected that temperature-driven changes in migration and reproduction behaviors — which have happened in many species — may be evidence of natural selection at work. Now there is genetic evidence to confirm the hypothesis…In the 1980s, the genetically marked late migrators made up about a third of the population. But as streams started warming earlier in the year, the proportion began to decrease rapidly — to just 5 percent by 2011 — even though overall abundance did not change….
2012 Jun 25. Seeking a Profitable Place to Put Captured Carbon. By Matthew L. Wald, The NY Times. Excerpt: Two major oil companies joined by a chemical company and an investment group have invested $9 million in a commercial carbon capture project in Texas that will treat the flue gases from a coal-fired cement kiln and turn them into marketable chemicals. Joe David Jones, the chief executive of Skyonic, emphasized that the plant would be different because it was “non-pump-it-in-the-ground carbon capture.” Most efforts so far have focused on carbon capture and sequestration, which turns the gas into a liquid that is pumped deep underground at a significant energy cost. This process will also cost energy, but he said it would be commercially viable. Commercial recovery of carbon dioxide is rare but not unheard of…But even if the market for sodium bicarbonate, the main product, is small, Mr. Lashof said it was encouraging to see a company try to make money from an activity that could help slow the buildup of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere. The biggest market for captured carbon dioxide is likely to be pumping it into old oil wells to stimulate greater production, which could be on the order of 40 million tons per year, he said....
2012 Apr 25. Warm Ocean Currents Cause Majority of Ice Loss from Antarctica | by NASA, Release 12-126. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- Warm ocean currents attacking the underside of ice shelves are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, a new study using measurements from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) revealed. …researchers concluded that 20 of the 54 ice shelves studied are being melted by warm ocean currents. …"We can lose an awful lot of ice to the sea without ever having summers warm enough to make the snow on top of the glaciers melt," said the study's lead author Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, United Kingdom. "The oceans can do all the work from below. …"Studies have shown Antarctic winds have changed because of changes in climate," Pritchard said. "This has affected the strength and direction of ocean currents. As a result warm water is funnelled beneath the floating ice. These studies and our new results suggest Antarctica's glaciers are responding rapidly to a changing climate." A different picture is seen on the Antarctic Peninsula, the long stretch of land pointing towards South America. The study found thinning of the largest ice shelf on the peninsula can be explained by warm summer winds directly melting the snow on the ice shelf surfaces….
2011 October 17. Warming Revives Dream of Sea Route in Russian Arctic. By Andrew E. Kramer, The NY Times. Excerpt: …Environmental scientists say there is now no doubt that global warming is shrinking the Arctic ice pack, opening new sea lanes and making the few previously navigable routes near shore accessible more months of the year. And whatever the grim environmental repercussions of greenhouse gas, companies in Russia and other countries around the Arctic Ocean are mining that dark cloud’s silver lining by finding new opportunities for commerce and trade….
Oil companies might be the most likely beneficiaries, as the receding polar ice cap opens more of the sea floor to exploration. The oil giant Exxon Mobil recently signed a sweeping deal to drill in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. But shipping, mining and fishing ventures are also looking farther north than ever before….
2011 February 27. Can a group of scientists in California end the war on climate change? By Ian Sample, The Guardian. Excerpt:
…[UC Berkeley physicist Richard] Muller calls his latest obsession the
Berkeley Earth project. The aim is so simple that the complexity and
magnitude of the undertaking is easy to miss. Starting from scratch,
with new computer tools and more data than has ever been used, they
will arrive at an independent assessment of global warming. The team
will also make every piece of data it uses – 1.6bn data points – freely
available on a website. It will post its workings alongside, including
full information on how more than 100 years of data from thousands of
instruments around the world are stitched together to give a historic
record of the planet's temperature….
…"I've told the team I don't
know if global warming is more or less than we hear, but I do believe
we can get a more precise number, and we can do it in a way that will
cool the arguments over climate change, if nothing else," says
Muller....
2009 October 16. Arctic
To Be Ice-Free In Summer In 20
Years. By
Peter Griffiths, Planet Ark. Excerpt:
LONDON - Global warming will leave
the Arctic Ocean ice-free during
the summer within 20 years, raising
sea levels and harming wildlife
such as seals and polar bears,
a leading British polar scientist
said on Thursday.
Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean
physics at the University of Cambridge,
said much of the melting will take
place within a decade, although
the winter ice will stay for hundreds
of years.
The changes will mean the top of
the Earth will appear blue rather
than white when photographed from
space and ships will have a new
sea route north of Russia.
Scientists say evidence of melting
Arctic ice is one of the clearest
signs of global warming and it
should send a warning to world
leaders meeting in Copenhagen in
December for U.N. talks on a new
climate treaty....
Dr Martin Sommerkorn, from the
environmental charity WWF's Arctic
program, which worked on the survey,
said the predicted loss of ice
could have wide-reaching affects
around the world.
"The Arctic Sea ice holds
a central position in our Earth's
climate system. Take it out of
the equation and we are left with
a dramatically warmer world," he
said.
"This could lead to flooding
affecting one-quarter of the world's
population, substantial increases
in greenhouse gas emissions ....
and extreme global weather changes."...
2009 June 29. The
Catastrophist—NASA’s
Climate Expert Delivers the News
No One Wants to Hear. By
Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker. [subscription
required] Excerpt: A few months
ago, James Hansen, the director
of NASA’s Goddard Institute
for Space Studies (GISS), in
Manhattan, joined a protest outside
the Capitol Power Plant, in Washington,
D.C. Thirty years ago, Hansen,
who is sixty-eight, created one
of the world’s first climate
models, nicknamed Model Zero,
which he used to predict most
of what has happened in the climate
since. Hansen has now concluded,
partly on the basis of his latest
modeling efforts and partly on
the basis of observations made
by other scientists, that the
threat of global warming is far
greater than even he had suspected.
Unless immediate action is taken—including
the shutdown of all the world’s
coal plants within the next two
decades—the planet will
be committed to climate change
on a scale society won’t
be able to cope with....
2009 May 4. Climate
Change: Halving Carbon Dioxide
Emissions By 2050 Could Stabilize
Global Warming. ScienceDaily.
Excerpt: If CO2 emissions are halved
by 2050 compared to 1990, global
warming can be stabilised below
two degrees. This is shown by two
studies by a co-operation of German,
Swiss and British researchers in
the journal Nature.
To contain global warming, and
its risks and consequences, warming
compared to pre-industrial times
(pre 1900) should not exceed two
degrees Celsius. Although, according
to the reports of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
there is no specific temperature
threshold for dangerous climate
changes, and the negative effects
are gradually increasing, over
one hundred countries have adopted
this “2°C target”.
Scientists have used a new probability
model to calculate how much CO2
our atmosphere tolerates under
these target specifications. ...From
2000 to 2050, a maximum of 1000
billion tonnes of CO2 may be emitted
into the atmosphere. Roughly speaking,
today, around one third of this
wad has already been shot.
“The behaviour of CO2 in
the atmosphere is best described
as a full bathtub,” says
Reo Knutti, professor at the Institute
for Atmosphere and Climate at ETH
Zurich, and co-author of one of
the two studies. The inflow of
the bathtub is large, but the drainage
is small. The CO2 emissions are
increasing every year, but the
CO2 is only removed from the atmosphere
very slowly. To not let the bathtub
overflow, the inflow must thus
be stopped early enough. “It
is wrong to believe that the temperature
will remain constant with constant
emissions,” says Knutti....
2008 May 1. In
a New Climate Model, Short-Term
Cooling in a Warmer World. By ANDREW C. REVKIN, NY
Times. Excerpt: After decades of
research that sought, and found,
evidence of a human influence on
the earth's climate, climatologists
are beginning to shift to a new
and similarly daunting enterprise:
creating decade-long forecasts
for climate, just as meteorologists
routinely generate weeklong forecasts
for weather.
One of the first attempts to look
ahead a decade, using computer
simulations and measurements of
ocean temperatures, predicts a
slight cooling of Europe and North
America, probably related to shifting
currents and patterns in the oceans.
The team ... from two German ocean
and climate research centers, acknowledged
that it was a preliminary effort.
But in a short paper ... in the
May 1 issue of ... Nature, they
said their modeling method was
able to reasonably replicate climate
patterns in those regions in recent
decades, providing some confidence
in their prediction for the next
one.
The authors stressed that the pause
in warming represented only a temporary
blunting of the centuries of rising
temperatures that scientists have
projected if carbon dioxide and
other heat-trapping gases continue
accumulating in the atmosphere.
"We're learning that internal
climate variability is important
and can mask the effects of human-induced
global change," said the paper's
lead author, Noel Keenlyside of
the Leibniz Institute of Marine
Sciences in Kiel, Germany. "In
the end this gives more confidence
in the long-term projections."
...Other researchers, including
NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
reported ... that a slowly fluctuating
oscillation in Pacific Ocean temperatures
had shifted into its cool phase,
a condition that is also thought
to exert an overall temporary cooling
of the climate.
These natural variations can also
amplify warming, and that is likely
to happen in future decades on
and off as well, experts say. ...It
should also help the public and
policy makers understand that a
cool phase does not mean the overall
theory of human-driven warming
is flawed, Dr. Trenberth said.
"Too many think global warming
means monotonic relentless warming
everywhere year after year," Dr.
Trenberth said. "It does not
happen that way."
2008 March 16. You ask, I provide. November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt. By Anthony Watts, Watts Up With That? Excerpt:
…"A Washington, D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at
the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing headline in the
Nov. 2, 1922, edition of The Washington Post: 'Arctic Ocean Getting
Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.'
The article mentions 'great
masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones,'
and 'at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared….'"
[See also a related post on Snopes.com and the original story at the Washington Times.]
2007 October 1. NASA
EXAMINES ARCTIC SEA ICE CHANGES
LEADING TO RECORD LOW IN 2007. Excerpt:
A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent
loss in the extent of the Arctic's
thick, year-round sea ice cover
during the past two winters. ...A
team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., studied trends in Arctic
perennial ice cover by combining
data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer
(QuikScat) satellite with a computing
model based on observations of
sea ice drift from the International
Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat
can identify and map different
classes of sea ice, including older,
thicker perennial ice and younger,
thinner seasonal ice. Between winter
2005 and winter 2007, the perennial
ice shrunk by an area the size
of Texas and California combined.
...Nghiem said the rapid decline
in winter perennial ice the past
two years was caused by unusual
winds. "Unusual atmospheric
conditions set up wind patterns
that compressed the sea ice, loaded
it into the Transpolar Drift Stream
and then sped its flow out of the
Arctic," he said. When that
sea ice reached lower latitudes,
it rapidly melted in the warmer
waters.
"The winds causing this trend
in ice reduction were set up by
an unusual pattern of atmospheric
pressure that began at the beginning
of this century," Nghiem said.
...For more information, visit:
http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/quikscat/index.cfm
2007 May 17. Polar
ocean 'soaking up less CO2'.
By Paul Rincon Science reporter,
BBC News. Excerpt:
The Southern Ocean is an important
natural carbon sink.... One of
Earth's most important absorbers
of carbon dioxide (CO2) is failing
to soak up as much of the greenhouse
gas as it was expected to, scientists
say. The decline of Antarctica's
Southern Ocean carbon "sink" -
or reservoir - means that atmospheric
CO2 levels may be higher in future
than predicted....There are two
major natural carbon sinks: the
oceans and the land "biosphere".
They are equivalent in size, each
absorbing a quarter of all CO2
emissions. The Southern Ocean is
thought to account for about 15%
of all carbon sinks....Lead researcher
Corinne Le Quere [University of
East Anglia] and colleagues collected
atmospheric CO2 data from 11 stations
in the Southern Ocean and 40 stations
across the globe. ..."Ever
since observations started in 1981,
we see that the sinks have not
increased [in their absorption
of CO2]," Corinne LeQuere
told the BBC's Science in Action
programme. "They have remained
the same as they were 24 years
ago even though the emissions have
risen by 40%." The cause of
the decline in the Southern Ocean
sink, the researchers explain,
is a rise in windiness since 1958.
...Oceans store much of their CO2
in deep waters. But, explained
Dr Le Quere, "as
the winds increase, the water in
the ocean mixes more". The
British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
scientist added: "The CO2
that would normally be in the deep
ocean and would just stay there
instead gets brought up to the
surface and outgasses to the atmosphere." The
ocean surface becomes saturated
with CO2 and cannot take up any
more from the atmosphere.....
2007 April 9. Foundation
to Offer $100 Million to Deal
With Global Warming. By STEVE
LOHR. NY Times. Excerpt:
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
is creating a $100 million program
to support research intended
to encourage policies aimed at
reducing the threat of global warming.
The foundation's climate change
project, which is being announced
today, comes amid an increasing
political push for legislation
to curb emissions of carbon dioxide
from burning fossil fuels like
coal, natural gas and gasoline.
Several bills that would set
mandatory restrictions on emissions
of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse
gas, have been introduced in
Congress. Other clean-energy
bills under consideration are
intended to increase the use
of renewable energy and promote
energy efficiency. Most of the
presidential hopefuls for 2008
have proposals to deal with climate
change. ...Homes, offices and
power plants, Mr. Bowman noted,
often last for 50 or 60 years. "We
have to do everything we can to
make sure we deploy the most efficient
technologies that we can over the
next five and ten years to prevent
having an economy that is locked
in to a really inefficient infrastructure," he
said....
2007 March 19. NASA
FINDS SUN-CLIMATE CONNECTION
IN OLD NILE RECORDS.
Earth Observatory. Long-term
climate records are a key to understanding
how Earth's climate changed in
the past and how it may change
in the future. Direct measurements
of light energy emitted by the
sun, taken by satellites and other
modern scientific techniques, suggest
variations in the sun's activity
influence Earth's long-term climate.
However, there were no measured
climate records of this type until
the relatively recent scientific
past. ...a group of NASA and university
scientists has found a convincing
link between long-term solar and
climate variability in a unique
and unexpected source: directly
measured ancient water level records
of the Nile, Earth's longest river.
Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman
of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
... together with Dr. Yuk Yung
of the California Institute of
Technology, ... have analyzed Egyptian
records of annual Nile water levels
collected between 622 and 1470
A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo.
These records were then compared
to another well-documented human
record from the same time period:
observations of the number of auroras
reported per decade in the Northern
Hemisphere. ...They are an excellent
means of tracking variations in
the sun's activity. Feynman said
... "Since the time of the
pharaohs, the water levels of the
Nile were accurately measured,
since they were critically important
for agriculture and the preservation
of temples in Egypt," ...The
researchers found some clear links
between the sun's activity and
climate variations. The Nile water
levels and aurora records had two
somewhat regularly occurring variations
in common - one with a period of
about 88 years and the second with
a period of about 200 years. ...
what causes these cyclical links
between solar variability and the
Nile? The authors suggest that
variations in the sun's ultraviolet
energy cause adjustments in a climate
pattern called the Northern Annular
Mode, which affects climate in
the atmosphere of the Northern
Hemisphere during the winter. At
sea level, this mode becomes the
North Atlantic Oscillation, a large-scale
seesaw in atmospheric mass that
affects how air circulates over
the Atlantic Ocean.
2007 March. The
Discovery of Global Warming.
By Spencer Weart. Extensive
web pages on history of the discovery
of global warming based on book
published in June 2006. Hosted
at American Institute of Physics
website: http://www.aip.org/.
2006 September. Global
Warming - Vanishing Glaciers.
AAA Via Magazine. Climate
change is starting to make its
mark on some popular travel spots.
The ice fields of the West are
especially feeling the heat. By
Deborah Franklin. ... visitors
to Alaska have begun to notice
... An estimated 95 percent of
the state's glaciers, like most
around the world, are receding.
Where a few decades ago there were
blankets of ice, now hundreds of
feet or even miles of bare rock
are exposed. ...For nonscientists,
the most compelling part of Dan
Fagre's research in Glacier National
Park may be his album of photographs
taken by tourists, a graphic record
of glaciers melting across a century.
Even before famed conservationist
and ornithologist George Bird Grinnell
proclaimed the northern Rockies
the "crown of the continent" and
urged Congress to establish the
park in the early 1900s, the Great
Northern Railway was delivering
awestruck Easterners to the region's
doorstep. ...By comparing the photographs
those early hikers took with recent
pictures taken at the same spots
today, Fagre and his colleagues
now have an amazingly rich record
of climate change throughout the
park. The transformation the images
reveal is astounding: Sperry, Grinnell,
Jackson, and other glaciers, now
well on their way to becoming slushy
snowfields and lakes, were once
powerful symbols of might, as stirring
as any Alaskan wall of ice today.
2006 September. Global
Warming - Rising Tides.
AAA Via Magazine, By Thomas Swick.
...
Donald Flinn... was vice president
of operations for Klondike Star
Mineral Corporation in Whitehorse,
Yukon Territory. "In
winter it always used to go below
minus 40. Now it rarely does. The
glaciers are melting. There's the
loss of the permafrost." ...Rarotonga
is the largest of the 15 tiny land
masses known as the Cook Islands,
a self-governing nation in free
association with New Zealand. ...Coral
bleaching has been extensive, the
result of stress caused by several
factors: pollution (sewage and
sediment run into the lagoons),
natural predators (such as the
crown- of-thorns starfish), cyclones
(which damage the ocean side of
the reefs), and rising sea temperatures.
These warmer temperatures also
cause water to expand, which inevitably
leads to rising sea levels. This,
coupled with additional runoff
from the melting ice caps, is a
volatile one-two punch for coastal
areas. Some uninhabited islands
in the nations of Tuvalu and Kiribati
have already vanished. Even people
on islands safe from submersion
may find it difficult to live on
them. In some places, salt water
has intruded into groundwater supplies
and residents have fled to higher
ground....
2006 July 17. The
Messenger. Technology Review.
Excerpt:
...Jim Hansen may be the most
respected climate scientist in
the world. He's been director
of NASA's premier climate research
center, the Goddard Institute
for Space Studies (GISS), for
25 years and a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) for 10. And he more or
less single-handedly turned global
warming into an international
issue one sweltering June day in
1988, when he told a group of reporters
in a hearing room, just after testifying
to a Senate committee, "It's
time to stop waffling so much and
say that the greenhouse effect
is here and is affecting our climate
now."
...An
attempt by the Bush administration
to silence him early this year
also helped turn global warming
into one of the biggest news stories
of 2006. It began on December 6,
2005, when Hansen declared in a
talk at the American Geophysical
Union in San Francisco that if
our rate of fossil fuel burning
continues to grow, we will eventually
transform Earth into "a different
planet." He presented an analysis
showing that existing technologies
can significantly cut greenhouse
emissions, and suggested that a
global solution requires leadership
by the United States.n On December
15, he and three colleagues posted
a routine monthly analysis on the
GISS website, summarizing data
from thousands of weather stations
around the globe. It showed that
2005 was coming in as the warmest
year since the mid-1800s. He was
interviewed about this by ABC News.
...He says he's been muzzled before
-- during the Reagan and first
Bush administrations -- but that
in more than three decades as a
government employee, he has seen
nothing to equal the recent clampdown.
He is angry, but he expresses his
anger calmly.
...More
than 20 years ago, Hansen also
explained why global warming
has lagged the greenhouse buildup.
In 1985, he suggested that it should
take between 50 and 100 years for
the excess energy reaching the
planetary surface to have its full
effect on temperature, because
the energy will first go to heating
the oceans; only when they begin
to warm will the atmosphere follow
suit. Just last year, when studies
demonstrating a global rise in
ocean temperatures confirmed his
thinking, Hansen began referring
to the heating of the oceans as
the "smoking gun" of
global warming.
... In 1990,
Hansen and Lacis showed that traditional
air pollution has produced a mighty
parasol effect. We send dust and
aerosols into the air from tailpipes
and smokestacks, by burning the
wood and dung that provide heat
and light to hundreds of millions
of the world's very poor, and through
slash-and-burn agriculture and
other land use practices that have
exposed vast tracts of dried-out,
eroded soil to the blowing wind.
The dimming of incident sunlight
caused by reflection from these
airborne particles now offsets
about half the warming of the industrial
age. To continue offsetting our
growing greenhouse emissions, we
would have to maintain the rapid
growth of traditional, noxious
air pollution. But the United States
and Europe have begun controlling
it, and the dismal air quality
in Beijing and Mumbai is convincing
the Chinese and Indians that they
must, too.
...Hansen
continues to believe we can forestall
disaster. ...Though he warned that
carbon dioxide emissions must be
stabilized over the next few decades,
he also suggested that significant
progress could be made by reducing
the emissions of other greenhouse
gases, particularly methane and
ozone.... ...growing emissions
from coal-burning power plants
and transportation posed the greatest
threats. ... Hansen says that if
we continue to increase greenhouse-gas
emissions, temperatures will rise
between 2 and 3 ¼C
this century, making Earth as warm
as it was three million years ago,
when seas were between 15 and 35
meters higher than they are today....
2006 June 23. The
World Is Hot. By Thomas
L. Friedman, The NY
Times.
Excerpt:
In a developing country like
Peru, where many people live
on the land and close to the
edge, climate change is neither
a hobby nor a question for debate.
...It's a daily reality, particularly
for the residents in the spectacular
Urubamba River Valley, the birthplace
of Incan civilization. Watching
the sun rise from atop the Incan
ruins at Machu Picchu, you can
look around 360 degrees and see
Andean mountains everywhere. The
highest of them were always described
in the guidebooks as "snow
capped." Today, they're more "snow
frosted." They still have
snow, but there is a lot of rock
now showing through on many of
them. If these trends continue,
in a few years they'll just be
described as "steely gray." The
great Andean glaciers are melting,
receding at about 100 meters a
decade. ...Nearby, in the Sacred
Valley of the Incas, Jose Ignacio
Lambarri, who owns a 60-acre farm,
is also feeling the heat. He grows
giant white corn, with kernels
that used to be as big as a quarter.
This corn, which is exported to
Spain and Japan, grows in this
valley because of a unique combination
of water, temperature, soil and
sun. But four years ago, Mr. Lambarri
told me, he started to notice something: "The
water level is going down, and
the temperature is going up." As
a result, the giant corn kernels
are not growing quite as large
as they used to, new pests have
started appearing, and there is
no longer enough water to plant
the terraces in the valley that
date from Incan times. He also
noticed that the snow line he had
grown up looking at for 44 years
was starting to recede, which was
making relations with his fellow
farmers more difficult. Every year
they decide by committee how to
divide up the water. Now, "every
year the meetings get more heated,
because there is less water to
distribute and the same amount
of land that needs it," he
said. "I tell my wife the
day that mountain loses its snow,
we will have to move out of the
valley."....
2006 March. Understanding
and Responding to Climate Change -
Highlights of National Academies
Reports
2006 January
24. 2005
Was the Warmest Year in a Century. The
year 2005 may have been the
warmest year in a century,
according to NASA scientists
studying temperature data from
around the world.
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[This was chapter 2 in previous edition.]
Archives
of Past Articles for Chapter
4
AAAS Resources
on Climate Change Bathtub Models of Climate Change:
•Climate Bathtub Animation
•Bathtub Dynamics & Climate
•The Big Idea (National Geographic)
Climate Central - U.S. Temperature Trends (The Heat Is On) - http://www.climatecentral.org/news/the-heat-is-on/
Exploratorium's climate site
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) -- Global
Warming Site
Skepticism about effects of global
warming
Global Warming - Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? - The
Why Files, a WWW site that explains the science behind
the news, recently posted this feature article that
gives an overview of current research and findings
related to global warming.
Global
Warming: Early Warning Signs - an
interactive map of the world that
gives examples of effects of global
warming on certain locales.
Climate
Change Education.org
Recent papers
by
James
Hansen and
Tim
Barnett
The Greenhouse Effect. Interactive Simulation from University of Colorado.
World View of Global WarmingPhotographic documentation of climate change
Everything you need to know about climate change: interactive at the Guardian website.
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