Gus I have a disconcerting feeling that you are quite sane indeed.

Gus, you are saying lots of things I have been pushing in my barrow for the last year or two. Deforestation is one of the greatest factors in CO2 increase which is the major factor in global warming the other of course is burning of coal worldwide to generate electricity which we now can't do without. There was an interesting interview or should I say horrifying interview between ABC's Tony Jones and James Lovelock the Gaia man. I can send you a copy if you didn't see it last year 18/10/04. In it Lovelock predicts the possibility of the Atlantic Drift becoming a real flowing Gulf Stream precipitating weather crises in Europe.

Could we be now seeing the start of such an event? Media reports that Greenland is melting. Glaciers are peeling off at an unprecedented rate and we know that the same is taking place in Antarctica. Lovelock notes that from the last iceage 12000 years ago, the temperature change to now was 3.5 deg.C. The sea level was 120 m lower than it is now and there were glaciers down as far as London.

We are now starting to experience a fairly major melt. Islands could vanish in the Pacific and we could be in a lot of trouble. If we had a truly democratic government, the problem would be acknowledged and a bipartisan non party action with a fair bit of clout would be up and running. Instead of that we have a government that won't even be party to the Kyoto protocol which in itself is only thin end of the wedge stuff. And whilst the polar bears are running out of habitat and the glaciers are melting we have Hazelwood power station in Victoria, an outdated system at best, applying for permission to dig up another 20 years brown coal. And I'll bet they get it. And the Tasmanians still tearing down pristine forest for bloody woodchips. Same thing happening in Victoria. There is a train passing through Sale daily from Bairnsdale with around 24 flat tops loaded to the gunwhales with hardwood going direct to Geelong to a woodchip plant. What hope is there?

By the way, I believe that West Papua was the next largest area of pure forest to the Amazon and the Indonesian TNI who have been named the "Timber Mafia" in West Papua are causing boatloads of this precious stuff to head for China where it is milled. I believe it finds its way into Australia as 'merbau'.

Cheers Gus.

Hey guys, have either of you caught up with the Global Dimming theory? It was on 4 Corners I think a few weeks ago. I understood it at the time but it's not my area and it is rather confusing as I suspect no one actually knows anything at this stage.

It seems this global dimming may accelerate any global warming in time if either concept is fact.

Best.

In my earlier post on Global Warming I did mention Global dimming as one of the mitigating factors. A lot more can be said on this subject alone (checks and balancing over the Global warming) and it can be expanded a lot more. Global dimming (due to pollution etc) is a double-edged sword. It reduces the sunlight hitting the earth in area affected by pollution (reduces heat reach the ground) but it also can "trap" the heat that is there. The whole system can then get out of balance due to the unevenness of pollution spread. Plenty more can be said.

From the Guardian... Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting Ian Sample, science correspondent Thursday August 11, 2005 The Guardian (see previous blog above)

From the ABC

Top scientist predicts 3 degree temperature rise
The British Government's chief scientist said the world must immediately put into place measures to address global warming, even if they take decades to produce results.

Professor David King says global temperatures are likely to rise by at least three degrees Celsius.

Officially the Government shares the European Union's policy of not allowing temperatures to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius.

But Professor King says British Prime Minister Tony Blair is unlikely to gain global agreement to limit emissions at anything less than three degrees.

Professor King admits that science suggests that a three degree rise could endanger the water supplies of between one and three billion people.

It could wreck half the world's wildlife reserves and make it impossible for many major forest systems to survive.

He said in Britain, the main threat will be flooding and "coastal attack" as a result of rising sea levels.

He lashed out at politicians who feel the answer lies in new technologies which produce cleaner fuels, saying they ought to start listening to scientists instead.

"There is a difference between optimism and (putting one's) head in the sand," he said.

"Quite clearly what we have to do as we move forward with these discussions is see that this consensus position of the scientific community is brought right into the table where the discussions are taking place."

read more at the ABC and the BBC

See also cartoon and blog, "US Global warming solution" and "Not-the-Kyoto-Protocol", and take note of dates

From the Independent
3 degrees: Chief scientist warns bigger rise in world's temperature will put 400 million at risk
By Andrew Grice, Political Editor
Published: 15 April 2006
The world's temperature is on course to rise by more than three degrees Centigrade despite efforts to combat global warming, Britain's chief scientist has warned.

Sir David King issued a stark wake-up call that climate change could cause devastating consequences such as famine and drought for hundreds of millions of people unless the world's politicians take more urgent action.

Britain and the rest of the European Union have signed up to a goal of limiting the temperature rise to two degrees. In his strongest warning yet on the issue, Sir David suggested the EU limit will be exceeded.

According to computer-modelled predictions for the Government, a three-degree rise in temperatures could put 400 million more people at risk of hunger; leave between one and three billion more people at risk of water stress; cause cereal crop yields to fall by between 20 and 400 million tons; and destroy half the world's nature reserves.
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Gus invites you to read lots more at the independent and through out this site for more bits on this most important problem... Although the figures of the chief scientist in the UK are slightly more pessimistic than Gus' own conservative average estimates in time-span (calculated on the amount of petroleum products burnt every year over one hundred years, as well as the deforestation and other incidentals such as dimming and volumetric expansion of water), they are in line with what we can and should expect. Presently since the beginning of the year, the temperatures in Sydney have been on record highs and underestimated by Gus at 2 degrees+ above average (which itself is already higher now than at the beginning of last century. These temperature also often are up to 8 degrees above average for long periods). I urge you start making a fuss about this incoming freight train that is impossible to stop but we should slow it down, peacefully of course... because if nothing is massively done instantly then the rise wont be 3 degrees... it will be 6 degrees and then 9 degrees as stated in one of my blogs. We are faced with an accelerated temperature change that plateaus a few times until the resultant is a very thin band of land is only useable and the sky is only a mass of warm water vapor... We are lucky that most of the planet surface is water... and water is slow to heat up...

A 6 degree temperature rise would be catastrophic for at least 5 billion people and uncomfortable for the rest... at nine degrees, a few millions of us would barely survive...
think about it... Imagine a New Year's day in Sydney with a 53 degree in the shade... and tropical weather in Tassie...

We need to use the solar energy that touches the earth (concentrate it for our own energy needs), that would process it without adding any back to the equation...

From the independent

Attenborough: Climate change is the major challenge facing the world
By David Attenborough
Published: 24 May 2006
I was sceptical about climate change. I was cautious about crying wolf. I am always cautious about crying wolf. I think conservationists have to be careful in saying things are catastrophic when, in fact, they are less than catastrophic.

I have seen my job at the BBC as a presenter to produce programmes about natural history, just as the Natural History Museum would be interested in showing a range of birds of paradise - that's the sort of thing I've been doing. And in almost every big series I've made, the most recent one being Planet Earth, I've ended up by talking about the future, and possible dangers. But, with climate change, I was sceptical. That is true.

Also, I'm not a chemist or a climatologist or a meteorologist; it isn't for me to suddenly stand up and say I have decided the climate is changing. That's not my expertise. The television gives you an unfair and unjustified prominence but just because your face is on the telly doesn't mean you're an expert on meteorology.

But I'm no longer sceptical. Now I do not have any doubt at all. I think climate change is the major challenge facing the world.

read more at the Independent

From Nature via the NYT

Subtropical Arctic Ocean temperatures during the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum

Appy Sluijs1,10, Stefan Schouten2,10, Mark Pagani3, Martijn Woltering2, Henk Brinkhuis1, Jaap S. Sinninghe Damsté2,4, Gerald R. Dickens5, Matthew Huber6, Gert-Jan Reichart4, Ruediger Stein7, Jens Matthiessen7, Lucas J. Lourens4, Nikolai Pedentchouk3, Jan Backman8, Kathryn Moran9 and the Expedition 302 Scientists33

Top of page
The Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum, 55 million years ago, was a brief period of widespread, extreme climatic warming1, 2, 3, that was associated with massive atmospheric greenhouse gas input4. Although aspects of the resulting environmental changes are well documented at low latitudes, no data were available to quantify simultaneous changes in the Arctic region. Here we identify the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum in a marine sedimentary sequence obtained during the Arctic Coring Expedition5. We show that sea surface temperatures near the North Pole increased from 18 °C to over 23 °C during this event. Such warm values imply the absence of ice and thus exclude the influence of ice-albedo feedbacks on this Arctic warming. At the same time, sea level rose while anoxic and euxinic conditions developed in the ocean's bottom waters and photic zone, respectively. Increasing temperature and sea level match expectations based on palaeoclimate model simulations6, but the absolute polar temperatures that we derive before, during and after the event are more than 10 °C warmer than those model-predicted. This suggests that higher-than-modern greenhouse gas concentrations must have operated in conjunction with other feedback mechanisms—perhaps polar stratospheric clouds7 or hurricane-induced ocean mixing8—to amplify early Palaeogene polar temperatures.
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Gus urges:
PLEASE read all the blogs from this line of blogs... Climatic change can be very fast...
And as an aside, let it be known Gus humbly sees himself as a Jack of all trade and master of most... although I still make mistakes but I try to be as careful as possible to minimise them.

But I have worked on many projects ranging from cleaning dunnies, mixing concrete for brikies, to research in the nuclear energy, and I have invested a lot of time in many other fields of knowledge and activities, including analysis and synthesis paleogeography of the planet with scientists. This has included climatic changes associated with continental movements.

Anyone with a brain cannot claim that a continent like Australia is "stable" and many furphies abound in regard to its age... In fact, as a continent Australia is very very young — about 45 million years as it was attached to Antarctica till that time. As a surface, it has been more or less weathering away to reveal its older rocks, has had less upheaval than most other plates but most types of older rocks can be found in other continents if we dig far enough.

As far as being a stable plate, Continent-Australia has been hitting the edge of another plate quite recently in geological terms and this is leading to seismic activity along the north of Australia... we have seen the recent results. New Guinea, Indonesia are most likely to be the result of "our" continent pushing north at a fair speed of 7 centimetres per year. Since 1900, Australia has moved north by a whopping 7.42 metres.

If we go by the same phenomenon that has propelled India sub-contiment northwards from its earlier position next to Antarctica (If my memory is correct this split happened about 90 million years ago) it is possible to suggest that New Guinea could rise very quickly like the Himalayas did when "Contimental"-India hit the Eurasian plate.

The "stability" of Australia (or any other continents) can be compromised very quickly. In another blog I have expressed concerns that people can think of burying radio active waste that will decay to a half life of 250,000 years because the inside of the continent is "stable"... when, who knows, the continent may split up within 5,000 years or so with major upheaval. (Read my other blog that mentions the two major lines of earthquakes meeting in the Banda Sea...)

Think clearly... in 5,000 years, this continent will have moved north by a whopping 350 metres... Major upheaval are ahead of us. In 50,000 years — which only represents a fifth of the half-life decay of uranium — this continent will have moved north by 3.5 kilometres. This would lead to the creation of major mountains, adding up to 2 kilometres on the height of New Guinea... in 250,000 years, New Guinea can be as high as the Himalayas and our nuclear waste will still be half as radio-toxic as when we buried it... and would have spilled its guts in the Uluru Sea a long time before that...

Why do continents and bits of the earth move like this? The enormous currents of the molten core of the earth are very powerful. Since the Earth was created, continents have shifted by enormous amounts... We owe the planet and the life it carries not to fiddle with its own fragile balances, especially in this day and age of enlightenment about nature. We have damaged this planet more than any other factor since the disappearance of the dinosaurs... We need to come to term with that — and reduce our foot print for our own sake and the sake of other species who are suffering because of us...

Please oh please spread these facts as much as you can... You know why.

From the ABC

Average daily temperatures continuing to increase: scientist
An Australian scientist who contributes to the world's foremost authority on climate change says the scientific consensus is that average daily temperatures will increase by as much as 5.8 degrees over the next century.

The CSIRO's Dr Penny Whetton says the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due to be finalised by early next year.

While she will not comment on what the panel's findings are likely to be, she says not much has changed since 2001 when the panel made its last assessment.

"The science, as it stands now, is really much the same in that if we factor in those range of future emission scenarios and the uncertainty we have in how fast the warming will occur for a given level of greenhouse gasses - then we're still looking at a possibility of warmings as high as 5.8 degrees," she said.

Erwin Jackson from the Australian Conservation Foundation says the assessment will add to the case for a reduction in greenhouse pollution.

"We've seen the scientific community become increasingly strident over the last few years, calling on governments to take more serious action," he said.

"Because if we don't take action, we're looking at Australia with no Great Barrier Reef, with no Kakadu, with our major cities and our major rivers being hammered by increasingly severe droughts.

"We really need to get on with the job now and reduce emissions."

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Gus: quite interestingly in one of my earlier blogs buried somewhere on this site I mentioned my own calculations that came to an increase of 6 degrees by the end of the century, with a bracket of 5.8 to 6.2 or in that vicinity in accuracy...

From our ABC

Rann slams Macfarlane's criticism of Gore
South Australian Premier Mike Rann has accused the Federal Resources Minister, Ian MacFarlane, of lunacy over his criticism of the former US vice president.

Al Gore is in Australia to promote his new climate change documentary, and criticised Australia for not signing the Kyoto protocol.

Mr MacFarlane responded by saying Mr Gore's views were driven by commercial interests.

Mr Rann says Mr MacFarlane's comments will cause embarrassment for Australia around the world.

"It is just lunacy for the Howard Government to describe warnings about global warming as just entertainment," he said.

"I mean last year all of the G8 leaders met; George Bush, Tony Blair, the president of France and others and essentially agreed about the threat of climate change and what needed to happen to combat it."

From our ABC

Polar bears drown, islands appear in Arctic thaw
Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic thaw that is being blamed on global warming.

Signs of huge changes are appearing around the Arctic region due to unusual warmth.

Rune Bergstrom, the environmental adviser to the Governor of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole, says islands as large as 300 metres by 100 metres have been revealed.

"We know about three new islands this year that have been uncovered because the glaciers have retreated," he said.

The head of England's Scott Polar Research Institute, Julian Dowdeswell, says that during a trip this northern summer he saw polar bears that had apparently been stranded at sea by melting ice.

"We saw a couple of polar bears in the sea east of Svalbard - one of them looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted," he said.

The bears generally live around the fringes of the ice, where they find it easiest to hunt seals.

NASA projected this week that Arctic sea ice is likely to recede in 2006 to a point close to a low recorded in 2005, as part of a melting trend in recent decades.

Global warming
World Wildlife Fund Arctic program director Samantha Smith says this year's unusual Arctic conditions extend from Svalbard to Alaska.

She says the shrinking ice should be a wake-up call for governments to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from power plants, factories and cars, which most scientists say are causing global warming.

read more at ABC

From our beloved ABC

Opposition attacks Govt over climate change
The Federal Opposition is stepping up its attack on the Government over climate change in the wake of the Sir Nicholas Stern report.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the world needs to invest heavily in fighting climate change if it is to avoid a future economic catastrophe.

The British Government has released a comprehensive report on climate change and the global economy.

Mr Blair says the Stern report is the most important report on the future that he has ever received as Prime Minister.

"It has demolished the last remaining argument for inaction. Urgent action will prevent a catastrophe and investment will pay us back many times in the future," he said.

Undertaken by the former World Bank chief economist, the report says 1 per cent of the world economy should be spent tackling climate change. It also recommends a global emissions trading scheme.

Later this year, Sir Nicholas will go to the US, alongside former vice president Al Gore, to promote a unified global approach.

'Frozen in time'
Opposition environment spokesman Anthony Albanese has accused the Government of dodging the issue.

"On this - the most important issue facing the global community - you can't fudge," he said.

"You can't say on the one hand - Kyoto Protocol, if we ratified it would ruin the economy, and then in the next breath say, we'll meet the target. It doesn't make sense."

Mr Albanese says the Stern report on climate change is being ignored by the Government.

"We are so far behind the rest of the world on climate change that it is an embarrassment," he said.

"The Howard Government is frozen in time while the globe warms around it."

Labor says the report highlights the need for an emissions trading system and for Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

The Government says it would support a new global emissions trading system, provided all major countries sign up.

Parliamentary secretary for the environment Greg Hunt says the Government is already acting.

"I say there is a better way and that is what we are doing which is investing directly on the supply side of emissions control," Mr Hunt said.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has defended Australia, saying the nation is taking action on climate change. She says the US has also changed its attitude on the issue.

"It isn't the case that nothing is happening in Australia. Australia has more cause than many other countries in the world to understand the force of these arguments," she said.

'Kyoto flawed'
Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane wants a completely new approach.

"Sir Nicholas Stern said we need a global carbon trading arrangement - Kyoto is not a global trading arrangement," he said.

"It is around about or even less than 45 per cent of the global emitters."

Mr Hunt also says the entire Kyoto protocol is flawed.

"What is happening as a result of this great moral measure that they talk about is a movement of emissions from one position to another and that's why because there is a fundamental flaw and they don't want to acknowledge it," he said.

The Federal Government points to its $2 billion low emissions technology fund as an example of its action against climate change.

The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) in Australia has welcomed the Stern report on the economics of dealing with climate change.

BCSE executive director Rick Brazzale says the Federal Government must accept the urgency of Australia curbing greenhouse emission from the energy sector.

"It's not really going to cost a lot of money and it's not really going to adversely impact on our economic growth," he said.

"It might just slow our economic growth a little bit over the course of the next 20 years, but it's not a significant cost at all.

"Certainly compared to the costs of more severe drought, more severe bushfires and the water challenges that we have at present."

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Mr MacFarlane is a bit dishonest here... "Why is the Kyoto Protocol around about or even less than 45 per cent of the global emitters?" Gus asks, then answers promptly: " Because the US that represent about 27 per cent of the emitters does not want to join " for economic reasons", and from that, Australia is taking its cue... China and India will join if the US joins. Then about 99 per cent of the emitters would be in the protocol.

And let me add here, that these target reductions are far from being enough. As mentioned on this site at least a year ago, we should have stopped all emissions of CO2 in 1996 (I calculated that point back in 1994), the year which was the point of "no return" until the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are back to what they were in something like 1700. This means we have to stop emitting anything AND clean up the skies by having more trees (not grass or crops) that process and slowly reduce the PRESENT CO2... under these extreme condition it would still take about 100 years to bring CO2 levels to those of 1990 (pre turning point). In the meantime, a lot of "damage" would have occurred anyway (ice melting and so-forth). At the rate we are going my calculated estimate of 12 degrees (hard to be more precise) — put forth in the blog at the head of this line of blogs — is not out of the question.

The increasing effects of the warming are somewhat delayed by several things including dimming and these two major factors below. This delay gives us a false sense of "security" when the urgency is full-on...

1) While a certain amount of the polar ice is melting, "it will cool our whisky and soda"... That means the temperature does not rise very much in the temperate regions, and in some places can cool. A slight southerly shift in the position of the weather patterns is to be expected nonetheless in the southern hemisphere. In the Northern hemisphere, more erratic patterns are to be seen.
2) as the average sea temperature (present average of 3.5 degrees) is below that of its minimum volume, the sea will not rise much.

But as soon as:
1) the ice melt reach a critical point at which it's not cooling our "whisky and soda" anymore and
2) the sea temperature passes that of its minimum volume (4 degrees for freshwater), the sea will rise faster than expected.

Then the full frontal effect of Climate Warming will be felt and increasing. At the rate of melts experienced since the 1930s and its increasing speed now, I conservatively give between 10 to 20 years for a full-blown hit. No gradual or gentle stuff then. On paper I actually have estimated 5 years from now, if not next year ...

I had lost my link to this, although I have a text copy on file on my computer... Here it is [http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/884|Global warming warning...]

From the ABC

MPs told not to be mesmerised by Stern report
The Prime Minister has told Coalition MPs not to get mesmerised by the Stern report on the implications of climate change.

The report, commissioned by the British Government, says if countries do not act now the world will face a depression worse than that of the 1930s.

The report also puts the worldwide cost of global warming and its effects at $A9 trillion.

John Howard has told his party room that science shows the globe is getting warmer and the issue has escalated in the public consciousness.

But he says they should not be mesmerised by one report.

______________________

Gus: Ah Johnnee, the truth is hard to take ... but since the process is quite slow, very very slow compared to a nuclear bomb exploding, you have the luxury to dither for a while... as the problem becomes more entrenched... Please do the future a favour and go away to let people with true visions and knowledge take over your position, a position that you make more and more ridiculous by the day. Go away... little Johnnee, go away...

From our ABCDEF

Aust pushes for new Kyoto deal at UN climate talks

Australia will seek support for what [http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200611/s1786756.htm|it is calling] a 'new Kyoto' deal when ministerial talks begin at the United Nations climate change conference in Nairobi today.
Environment Minister Ian Campbell leaves Australia today for the next round of UN talks on climate change.
The main focus of the meeting in Nairobi will be negotiating new commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions beyond 2012.
Australia has previously refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because big polluters like India and China are not involved.
Senator Campbell says there is growing support to set up a 'new Kyoto deal'.
"There's been countries like Canada and the UK I have good discussions with over recent weeks - they're keen to find something that works," he said.
"Even the existing Kyoto signatories know it's not working and we need a better agreement."
But Greens Senator Christine Milne, who is in Nairobi, says the idea is not helpful.
"It's just seen as a joke," she said.
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Gus: A sad joke indeed... Costello, now "promoted" as the chairman of the G20 is also perceived as the also-ran whatever amongst many conservatives in this country... Johnnee appears not to sure what to do with him... while Pretty-face is waiting in the wings... But in regard to the Kyoto protocol — even the French with 76 per cent of their electricity coming from nuclear energy and an exorbitant petrol price find it hard to meet their targeted reductions... While Australia, under the leadership of the "Punch and Judy" duet, twaddle the fiddle and burns whatever as if carbon dioxide was its primary industry... A lot of hot air coming out of Canberra makes sure we're keeping with the American Joneses while appearing to do somethin'. So How does Mr Costello proposes to do better than Kyoto — a minimalist agreement, still too hard to manage in full... — is not even worth a guess since we all know his new blah blah blah is for show... And we really need to do a hundred times better... But take the plunge, Mr Costello, and sign Kyoto, then you will have earned the right to suggest a bit better if possible...

If venturing outdoors without a jacket is not enough evidence, there are two new studies — one that says the Alps are the warmest they have been in 1,250 years and another that predicts that an increase of a few more degrees would leave most Alpine resorts with too little snow to survive.

Scientists challenge UN climate panel on rising oceans A group of scientists say sea levels are rising faster than predicted amid global warming, in a challenge to the UN's climate panel, which is set to issue a report toning down the threat of rising oceans. The researchers, from Australia, the United States, Germany, France and Britain, wrote in the journal Science that seas have been edging up more rapidly since 1990 than at any time in more than a century, outpacing computer projections. Dr John Church is a member of an international six-person team of climate scientists and works for the CSIRO in Tasmania.

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Gus: Unfortunately my blog on "global warming is baloney" on top of this line of blog — in which I was discussing the fact that we're facing global HOTTING — has lost most of its pertinent dissertation... will try to locate in my old files...

Climate report fails to highlight extent of global warming, Flannery says

The Australian of the Year, scientist Tim Flannery, says a new report on climate change grossly underestimates the speed at which global warming is affecting the planet.

The report from the United Nations Climate Panel will officially be released in Paris tonight and is expected to find that it is very likely humans are responsible for climate change.

But Professor Tim Flannery says the report's findings are conservative and the real impact of global warming will be felt much sooner.

"The actual trajectory we've seen in the arctic over the last two years if you follow that, that implies that the arctic ice cap will be gone in the next five to 15 years," he said.

"This is an ice cap that's been around for 3 million years."

It is expected to forecast catastrophic consequences from the increase in global temperatures this century.

Professor Flannery says the consequences could last for 1,000 years.

"There's a 10 per cent chance of truly catastrophic rises in temperatures, so we're looking there at 6 degrees (Celsius) or so, that would be a disaster for all life on earth," he said.

"We will lose somewhere between two out of every 10 and six out of every 10 species living on the planet, at that level of warming."

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Gus: Sure, here at YD we all all know that... but Mr Flannery should not go promoting nuclear power as this industry is likely to shorten the odds of a different catastrophic event(s)

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Models 'key to climate forecasts'

By Dr Vicky Pope
UK Met Office's Hadley Centre

The state of the Earth's atmosphere is influenced by many factors

The only way to predict the day-to-day weather and changes to the climate over longer timescales is to use computer models.

These models solve complex mathematical equations that are based on well established physical laws that define the behaviour of the weather and climate.

However, it is not possible to represent all the detail in the real world in a computer model, so approximations have to be made. The models are tried and tested in a number of ways:

* They are used to reproduce the climate of the recent past, both in terms of the average and variations in space and time
* They are used to reproduce what we know about ancient climates (which are more limited)
* The Met Office Hadley Centre model is unique among climate models in that it is used with more regional detail to produce the weather forecasts every day

Two critical factors have helped us to improve these models over the years. First, our knowledge of the real world has improved, which allows us to improve the models.

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Gus: I would dispute the fact that Global warming can only be predicted is by using computer models. My "simple" mathematics formulas of 1994 already predicted the greater acceleration of change as is being measured now... if my chart seems to be fierce, it's because by my own "estimates" climate change is running at about 3 to 4 times faster than predicted... But then I could be off the planet, couldn't I? What is throwing a lot of models out is the lag time between the big melt and its resultant which mask the torrid increases in temperatures...

Yes Gus, whilst our politicians fiddle & fumble, the usual suspects lurk behind the scenes, busily weaving their usual evil schemes, intent on consigning the bulk of mankind to oblivion.

We now know that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded “think-tank” with close links to the bushit administration, has offered payments to scientists & economists of up to US$10,000 each to write articles debunking the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses & additional payments were also offered.

The AEI has received more than US$1.6m from ExxonMobil & more than 20 of its staff have worked as “consultants” to the bushit administration. Indeed, Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AeI’s board of trustees.

A row between the fast food giant Burger King and one of its major franchise owners has erupted over roadside signs proclaiming "global warming is baloney".

The franchisee, a Memphis-based company called the Mirabile Investment Corporation (MIC) that owns more than 40 Burger Kings across Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, has described Burger King as acting "kinda like cockroaches" over the controversy. MIC says it does not believe Burger King has the authority to make it take the signs down.

The dispute began to sizzle last week, when a local newspaper reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, noticed the signs outside two restaurants in the city and contacted the corporation to establish if the message represented its official viewpoint. Burger King's headquarters in Miami said it did not, adding that it had ordered MIC to take the signs down.

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Gus was the creator — and is the intellectual property owner of — this concept "global warming is baloney" as early as at 23 May 2005 - 7:42am... May be I should sue the pants of anyone using it... pity, my long analysis of global warming vanished when this site moved providers... Baloney it was... warming is was not, hotting it is...

see at top...

A frozen lake on a remote island off Canada's northern coast has yielded remarkable insights into how the Arctic climate has changed dramatically over 50 years.

Muddy sediment from the bottom of the lake, some of it 200,000 years old, shows that Baffin Island, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, has undergone an unprecedented warming over the past half-century. Scientists believe the temperature rise is probably due to human-induced warming. It has more than offset a natural cooling trend which began 8,000 years ago.

Instead of cooling at a rate of minus 0.2C every 1,000 years – a trend that was expected to continue for another 4,000 years because of well-known changes to the Earth's solar orbit – Baffin Island, like the rest of the Arctic, has begun to get warmer, especially since 1950. The Arctic is now about 1.2C warmer than it was in 1900, confirming that the region is warming faster than most other parts of the world.

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Gus's getting blue in the face trying to explain that despite what we can or cannot "feel" by sticking a licked finger in the air,  global warming is on at a hundred miles an hour... See you in 2015.

 

 

As the polar ice cap shrivelled at unforeseen speed, Professor Steffen said he had changed his mind about the Arctic tipping point in past weeks. Existing predictions of an ice-free North Pole by 2050 were looking hopelessly wrong. ''I would say that, certainly, it is looking like 2050 would be an outlier now - I'm pretty certain that we have now passed the tipping point for Arctic sea ice,'' he said.
Sea ice reached a minimum size of 3.41 million square kilometres, down from an average of 7.4 million in the 1980s, 6.8 million in the 1990s and 5.7 million last decade. Professor Steffen believes ''the most radical projection is about 2016, and probably the most conservative projection is about 2030, for when it will be ice free''.
The speed of events is why scientists are so worried. The only known way to stop these thresholds being crossed is to cut greenhouse emissions triggering these changes, and there are few signs of that occurring.
''This is absolutely the critical decade for action,'' climate expert Tim Flannery said this week.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sea-ice-reduction-at-tipping-point-20120922-26dm6.html#ixzz27Ht6Hgey

 

 

The article at top got truncated somewhat when this site changed provider... I will try to find the rest... 

 

The sensitivity of the Earth system to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide may be twice as great as scientists had thought, new climate records from the distant past suggest, reports Alex Kirby from the Climate News Network.

YOU MAY THINK the prospect of climate change is alarming, a call to action to slow down our emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

You're almost certainly right.

But some scientists are now suggesting you should be much more concerned than you are, because they think we may be seriously underestimating the problem.

The Geological Society of London (GSL) says the sensitivity of the Earth’s climate to CO2 could be double earlier estimates.

The Society has published an addendum to a report by a GSL working party in 2010, which was entitled Climate change: Evidence from the Geological Record.

The addition says many climate models typically look at short term, rapid factors when calculating the Earth’s climate sensitivity, which is defined as the average global temperature increase brought about by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Scientists agree that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels could result in temperature increases of between 1.5 and 4.5°C, caused by rapid changes such as snow and ice melt, and the behaviour of clouds and water vapour.

But what the GSL now says is that geological evidence from palaeoclimatology (studies of past climate change) suggests that if longer-term factors are taken into account, such as the decay of large ice sheets, the Earth's sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 could itself be double that predicted by most climate models.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/earth-may-be-doubly-sensitive-to-carbon-dioxide,5981

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So far I have not been able to find the rest of the article at top... Still looking, but the sentiment expressed by the Geological Society of London is in line with the gist of what was expressed...

 

Max Boykoff: Significant decline in coverage since 2009

Max Boykoff founded the Media Climate Change Observatory a decade ago.

"We monitor 50 sources around the world across 25 countries on six continents. We seek to put our fingers on the pulse of the ebbs and flows of coverage of climate change over time, month to month.

Max Boykoff's project has tracked the decline in climate change coverage since 2009

"It's not an exhaustive reading of all media accounts everywhere around the globe across all platforms, but rather is a way to get us talking productively.

"In 2004 there were relatively low levels of coverage. Around 2006, into 2007 there was an uptick. There was a high water mark in 2009 [at the time of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen].

"From that high water mark to 2014, coverage has dropped: 36% globally; 26% in the US; and as much as 55% in the UK.

"Within the last year here in the United States, National Public Radio reduced its environment reporting team from three to one reporter.

"We see examples of this unfolding quite regularly. There's certainly newsroom pressures. There's shrinking time to deadline, there's reduced resources to cover complex issues such as climate change that require a certain level of investigation, a certain level of familiarity with the contours and the nuances of the topics".

read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32131142

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Gus: I posted the article at top about ten years ago following years of investigation on the subject... Unfortunately it got truncated by the vagaries of the internet and I have not been able to source the original on my computer so far...

 

But fear not, or fear more, because our larger media (MMMM variety) and our politicians are in bed together to massage our brains into believing crap and feel comfortable about the "car accident" that's going to mutilate you....

See also: the boiling frog...

 

Republicans have a long history of denying climate science, but a new study shows that a plurality of Republican voters in all 50 states believe that global warming is occurring—but they are not convinced that human beings have anything to do with it. 

Environmental and political science researchers from University of California- Santa Barbara, Yale University, and Utah State University wanted to study the differences between the way Republicans and Democrats viewed global warming and climate change. Between 2008 and 2016, they collected answers to questions about energy and climate policies from nearly 5,700 Republican voters and more than 6,000 Democratic voters. In their analysis published today in the journal Climatic Change, they found that Republicans living in Democratic-held congressional districts “tend to be somewhat more concerned with climate change.” In blue enclaves like New York City, Miami, San Francisco, and their surrounding areas, the number can soar to 66 percent. 

The overwhelming majority of scientists say that global warming is mainly caused by human activity, but this is where Republicans part company with Democrats. Nationwide, only 31 percent of Republicans believe that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, while 46 percent believe that climate change is caused naturally. This idea is particularly pronounced in Montana’s lone district, where only 24 percent of Republicans believe that humans are to blame for the warming planet. In contrast, 66 percent of Democrats believe that humans are driving climate change. In the map below, darker shades of blue indicate higher percentages of Republicans who reject climate science.

Read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/11/this-map-shows-exactly-ho...

 

This also means that there is 34 per cent of "Democrats" who live in the dark... Between them and the Republicans, sciences have to fight with all might, including storming Congress...

 

Note posting at top in May 2005... with a supplementary note.

 

The authors of the study examined 10 feedback processes, some of which could cause "the uncontrollable release" of carbon back into the atmosphere, after it had been stored in the earth.

Some of the processes also included permafrost thaw, Amazon rainforest dieback, a reduction of northern hemisphere snow cover, a loss of Arctic summer sea ice, and a reduction of Antarctic sea ice and polar ice sheets.

The study did not lay down a timeframe for when such events would begin to occur, but theorised — if the threshold was crossed — it could be within a century or two.

"The impacts of a hothouse earth pathway on human societies would likely be massive, sometimes abrupt, and undoubtedly disruptive," the study said.

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-07/climate-heading-for-tipping-point-...

 

Read from top.

 

Read also:

engineering the future...

We've been "awake" to the problem of global warming on this site since 2005, and since 1979 in major scientific publications, for Gus. By year 1994, Gus postulated a few annoying "gustimates": 1996 would be a turning point — when we should have limited our CO2 emissions to ZERO to minimise temperature rise to one degree by 2100.

 

As well, in a flippant manner, Gus recalculated the next MAJOR turning point, when world climates would become surprisingly unruly — at year 2032. Some scientists place this event by year 2045.

 

In between these two points, temperatures would continue to increase in "shark teeth" increments until the "flip" of 2032. In between, my predictions (posted on this site) was that 2019 would be a horrid year, and it did not disappoint, unfortunately.

 

2021 is the next horror year, though 2020 could be as bad as well. From 2021 onwards, the sun-spot cycle is going to go bonkers, but the increase in anthropogenic CO2, methane and NOx is going to lead the charge on warming. 2032 is on track. Read from top.

 

So it is with mixed feelings that one notes newcomers to the "cause" — a cause that has been scientifically proven for a while now, to five statistical certainty. The uncertainty is only on the level of damage that the warming is going to do — and on various cosmic interferences such a massive meteorite hitting the planet. One newcomer as such is Brigid Delaney, to whom we raise a glass of her favourite vino...

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/19/2019-wasnt-just-protests-and-fleabag-it-was-the-year-a-climate-truth-bomb-dropped

 

 

When I think about 2019, there is one scene that springs to mind, something that sums up the milieu so perfectly that it almost seems art-directed.

There we were two weeks ago at Rose Bay on the water’s edge, waiting for a private boat to take us to a harbourside mansion for a wine tasting. It was one of those days when Sydney’s air quality was among the worst in the world. The boat emerged from the pea soup gloom with the words “VIP” on the side.

We were all in our party dresses and chunky trainers, phones fully charged to maximise the Instagrammable location, only coughing a little bit although peoples’ eyes were red and I noticed some fellow guests pulling on Ventolin inhalers.

At the mansion there was a DJ, sommeliers and a chef, who explained in great detail the origin of the scallops on the canapes and a recent, inspirational trip to Oaxaca. Later there was a wine tasting where we gathered around to swirl and spit. Every varietal had notes of bushfire.

Various people wandered up to us and said “great day for it!” and “beautiful weather” without irony.

How could they say that? The sun was (there was only one word for it) demonic, a burning red eye in a thick smoky sky. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House were out there … somewhere, obscured in a brown haze.

We stood near the pool, eating tiny food, drinking wine from large balloon glasses while ash flew from the sky, some of it landing in my drink.

The DJ played on but the tunes – Tones and I, Mark Ronson – were nervy, jangly and strangely discordant. The smell of the smoke had an almost chemical taint, and in between trying the pinot and moving on to the tempranillo, I wondered about the alchemy at work in this commingling of the elements: the ancient forests and its animals turned to columns of ash, collapsed and drifting through the air, settling on the water and soil; and later in and on my body after swimming in the dirty sea that morning and now swallowing particles of ash floating in my wine at the party on the harbour’s edge. (“At the end of the world,” my friend and I nervously joked.)

More wine was poured and more people commented on the great weather (except for a sommelier who confessed sotto voce that he felt afraid), and influencers posed in the gloom on the jetty and by the swimming pool, seeing but refusing to see what was all around them: this red-raw sun, that dirty brown sky.

The cognitive dissonance would have been funny had I not been so scared. It brought to mind F Scott Fitzgerald, a writer who understood more than most that decadent parties prefigure societal collapse. Had his novel The Great Gatsby been written now, the scene that day in Point Piper would not be out of place.

Returning to shore in the haze, we could have been excused for thinking we were crossing the Styx – the mystical Greek crossing into the Underworld – and in this heightened state the day seemed more than the sum of its parts. Instead it served as both an elegy for the lost world that had disappeared beyond the haze and a portent of the world to come.

Yet some still live in a land of cognitive dissonance: the lump of coal brought to parliament; the haze over the city obscuring the flashing Christmas lights; dead bats falling from the sky because their sophisticated and highly evolved sonar systems are overheating and confused; beekeepers being traumatised and needing counselling after hearing the sounds of animals screaming as they burn to death; new types of megafires devouring entire ecosystems; the NSW premier opening a new zoo during these megafires with a commitment to “protecting wildlife”; and the prime minister disappearing without a word about the climate catastrophe – last seen boarding a business-class Jetstar flight bound for Hawaii; the Instagrammers posing on the jetty under the eye of Sauron, hoping that with the right filters, we can pretend the sky is blue.

Cognitive dissonance is natural – it can make you feel safer, like the world is a more orderly, stable place than the reality, which is chaos.

The end of this year makes me wonder how much during the years prior we have been engaged in unintentional acts of disassociation and dissonance. Maybe we had to, to survive the barrage of nonstop news – the dozen major scandals that emerge each week from Trump’s White House, the way that Brexit is important, boring and confusing all at once. It’s all too much so we just disassociate.

It’s no wonder the hot illegal drug of 2019 – ketamine – is an anaesthetic, numbing your body and making you feel separate from your environment.

People disappear, aptly, into the k-hole, the chemical equivalent of our political situation. “Like you’re watching your own life happen instead of living it,” said New York magazine, calling it “the party drug for the end of the world”.

But 2019 was in many ways, for many of us, Year Zero. It was the year many of us stopped disassociating, woke up and realised the party is over.

 

 

Yes the party is over... Hound the PM until he disappears in shame....

 

Read also: 

not a f#@$%^g miracle... in how good is that?...

hot, getting hotter... in mr scumsmug's holidays....

 

etc...

2019 may go down in history as Year Zero of the climate apocalypse. The tsunami of extreme events has been so relentless that each is quickly forgotten in favour of its successor.

So before the year ends we should pause, remember just how extraordinary it was, and reflect on what this might mean for our future.

The year started with a record-breaking heatwave in southern Australia with temperatures in the mid-40s, in some areas for 40 days in a row. Then followed the immolation of vast areas of moist Tasmanian forests, forests that date back to the last ice age. Approximately 3% of the state burned as a long-term trend of less rainfall and more evaporation was capped off by the driest January on record. On the mainland, who could forget those horrifying images of the Menindee fish kills?

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/20/2019-has-been-a-ye...

 

 

Read from top.