Monday 23rd of December 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

shivers down the spine...

chicken or the egg...

 

Wadhams has spent many years collecting ice thickness data from submarines passing below the arctic ocean. He predicted the imminent break-up of sea ice in summer months in 2007, when the previous lowest extent of 4.17 million square kilometres was set.
This year, it has unexpectedly plunged a further 500,000 sq km to less than 3.5 million sq km.
‘‘I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer.
‘‘At first this didn’t [get] noticed; the summer ice limits slowly shrank back, at a rate which suggested that the ice would last another 50 years or so. But in the end the summer melt overtook the winter growth such that the entire ice sheet melts or breaks up during the summer months.
‘‘This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates’’.
Wadhams says the implications are ‘‘terrible’’.
‘‘The positives are increased possibility of Arctic transport, increased access to Arctic offshore oil and gas resources. The main negative is an acceleration of global warming.’’‘‘

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/arctic-summer-ice-to-disappear-within-four-years-expert-says-20120918-26324.html#ixzz26lpBA3nu
-------------------------
What is happening here is what I call the reduction-syndrome... 
In my book there are several ways to look at the reduction syndrome:  from a simple subtraction equation to a linear equation and a more complex acceleration/deceleration equation...
A) for example we have a box of 100 blueberries... Say, we use 10 blueberries per day. By the end of the first day we still have 90 blueberries. The box still "appears" full... By the end of the 9th day, there are only 10 blueberries left.... On the tenth day, they're all gone. Simple subtraction...
B) Because we want to enjoy the blueberries for say 45 days, we decide on a reduction policy: on the first day we take 10 blueberries, on the second we take 9 blueberries and so forth. On the 10th day we still have around 45 blueberries left in the box, by then we're only eating one blueberry per day. Brilliant. Then we realise that by day 30, (around 15 blueberries left in the box) some (say half) of then are going mouldy... and by a cunning coincidence we picked the biggest ones in the early days... Thus we need two small blueberries to have the same enjoyment value as one big one. and we've only got 8 left, since about 7 went mouldy... by day 31, we have 6 left and two more going mouldy... by day 33, there are none left... erratic reduction...
C) Because we still want to enjoy the blueberries for 45 days, We decide on a different tactic and only eat 2 blueberries a day... By day 20 we've still got 60 blueberries in the box but we notice that about a quarter of those left are going mouldy... We are left with say 44... We decide to eat 4 blueberries per day thus... We think that by day 30 we should have 4 left, but about half of those 44 went mouldy at a rate of three per day from day 21... thus we have none left by day 26...
D) We realise that opening the box accelerates the rate of "mouldification" of the blueberries.  An unopened box in the same place, may not go mouldy so fast... For example, as I have explained on this site before, it's the way ministers of Forestry and Sticks-in-the-mud do things: In order to be remembered as the saviour of the forests in the face of the lumberjack industry, they set aside a 90 per cent nature reserve while the timber lobby is allowed to cut the 10 per cent... One does not have to be Einstein to know what happens next... The next minister of a different party decides on the same capers. Of the 90 per cent left he wants his glorious name to be associated with having saved the forest by letting the lumberjacks have a 10 per cent only of the remaining forest... and so on... By the time the forest is 5 per cent of its original size, massive "mouldification" has happened to it, with invasion of alien species — both fauna and flora... Nature has been destroyed... Koalas fall from the last trees that we fell... The wood has been made into chips and paper recycled into loo paper... Some wood has been used to make furniture, but in the end, the original forest is no more... Though we replaced some with "plantation forest" the process is a massive degradation of the natural environment, including that of the atmosphere...
E) In the Arctic, the cold is less cold by the minute... The "mouldification" is in accelerated mode, in relation to our emissions of carbon by-products, via the extra darkening (albedo change)... In our insanity, our eager industrialists see an opportunity in the ice melt... It opens exploration to new fields of sequestered carbon — fossil fuels... the exploitation of which will of course add to the acceleration of melt and increase of temperatures... Are we nuts? Yes!!! We're nuts to let them do it!... 'The melt of the Arctic (at this year's rate) has been about 2 per cent per annum averaged over 5 year... It's thus 12 per cent more than five years ago, when the last record was set... My own calculation on this rate is more optimistic than Wadhams'... I propose that only by 2019, there won't be any summer ice left in the Arctic. This melt of course already strongly impacts on the northern hemisphere weather zones with accentuated fluctuation of extreme cold and extreme hot. This should send shivering hot fever down your spine...
F) So far this year, baring some "non-predicted" strong change, will be catalogued as the hottest on record... For a few morons like me and you, it does not mean much yet... For the denialists it means having to deny more, with more idiotic force and more ridiculous vigour... For scientists it means panic mode... and reformatting all those so far "conservative" global warming computer formats into more realistic ones at a rate of knots... Because the melt is not in surface alone but in VOLUME... The equations have to be Xcube  not Xsquared...
G) We need to consider that an increase from 180 up to 300 ppm of CO2 is definitely CORRELATED to increases of temperatures of plus 10 degrees Celsius on ALL RECORDED ice-core data over (say an average of a few thousand years period). Here, I did not say which came first — the chicken or the egg in order to make my point — but the chicken does not exist without the egg and vice versa. 
H) Considering that since the 1850s,we have increased CO2 from less than 200 ppm to near 400 ppm (Above 400 in the Arctic) at an "average" rate of about 1.3 ppm (net) per year and that presently we keep adding between 3 to 6 ppm (net) per year... This is a MASSIVE INCREASE in just around 150 years... For example the rate of the last melt (the end of the last ice age was an increase of about 6 degrees Celsius in more than 2000 year and an increase of CO2 of around 100 ppm... 
Looking at the chicken and the egg situation, we are facing a MONSTROUS CHANGE to the atmospheric conditions on this planet. At this level, one has to also note that there is a lag time between "causes" and "effects" and correlation in such an elastic system as atmospheric climate conditions... But this "elasticity" is being stretched way beyond whatever happened in the last few million years, by our release of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases.
Only moronic denialists would not see that. 
*I use the net figure as some of our CO2 emissions are reabsorbed by natural processes. The net residual in the atmosphere is the excess that cannot be processed by nature in its present format.
Gus leonisky

 

el savador needs a savior against warming...

According to El Salvador's Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARN), this country will lose somewhere between 10 per cent and 28 per cent of its coastal territories in the next century as a result of rising seas caused by climate change.

The lower figure is based on an anticipated sea level rise of 13cm and the higher figure on a rise of 110cm, the two extremes of the range predicted by some current climate modelling. Yet as both locals and the research of the United Nations' climate science task force, the IPCC, attest, the process has already started.

But the people of La Tirana, with no electricity, running water or sewerage, are far from the only vulnerable citizens of El Salvador to have their lives turned upside down. Devastating storms increasingly batter the Central American nation. Meanwhile, the ravaging of its forests has left natural drainage systems unable to cope.

After decades of indiscriminate logging, only 2 per cent of El Salvador's original forests remain. In the Western Hemisphere, only Haiti has seen a larger proportion of its forest cover destroyed. The result is that, when sudden heavy rains do occur, there are massive, sometimes catastrophic flash floods along the lower reaches El Salvador's main river, the Lempa.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/el-salvador-in-battle-against-tide-of-climate-change-8145210.html

happily going down the drain...

 

Ending Its Summer Melt, Arctic Sea Ice Sets a New Low That Leads to Warnings


By

The drastic melting of Arctic sea ice has finally ended for the year, scientists announced Wednesday, but not before demolishing the previous record — and setting off new warnings about the rapid pace of change in the region.

The apparent low point for 2012 was reached Sunday, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which said that sea ice that day covered about 1.32 million square miles, or 24 percent, of the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The previous low, set in 2007, was 29 percent.

When satellite tracking began in the late 1970s, sea ice at its lowest point in the summer typically covered about half the Arctic Ocean, but it has been declining in fits and starts over the decades.

“The Arctic is the earth’s air-conditioner,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the snow and ice center, an agency sponsored by the government. “We’re losing that. It’s not just that polar bears might go extinct, or that native communities might have to adapt, which we’re already seeing — there are larger climate effects.”

His agency waited a few days before announcing the low to be sure sea ice had started to refreeze, as it usually does at this time of year, when winter closes in rapidly in the high Arctic. A shell of ice will cover much of the Arctic Ocean in coming months, but it is likely to be thin and prone to melting when summer returns.

Scientists consider the rapid warming of the region to be a consequence of the human release of greenhouse gases, and they see the melting as an early warning of big changes to come in the rest of the world.

Some of them also think the collapse of Arctic sea ice has already started to alter atmospheric patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, contributing to greater extremes of weather in the United States and other countries, but that case is not considered proven.

rad more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/science/earth/arctic-sea-ice-stops-melting-but-new-record-low-is-set.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print       

 

 

One would be a fool not to think that humans are not changing the planet by by hooks or by crooks... But then fools are happy... Ignorance is bliss... and more crap...

 

But then some people such as Jo Nova are in favour of a Royal commission into global warming... Her column is designed to claim the ABC is biased in favour of anthropogenic global warming... Rubbish, the ABC on the whole is 50/50 (unfortunately) when 97 per cent of proper scientists know that we've got a massive problem on our hands...

Holy crap... A royal commission would take at least 40 years to hear the porkied arguments and cruise through the well crafted erroneous submission of the denialists, in such a court... We don't have 40 years to wait for these mongrels... See, they don't want to see or even look at the damage... I am prepared to go with the chicken or the egg conundrum of what came first, but no chicken can exist without the egg and no egg can exist without the chicken... It's a relationship that evolution took 3 billion years to create... 

the relationship between CO2 and temperature is also a relationship in nature... Take your pick which came first... Climate change relationship with CO2 is undeniable... Humans add 3 to 6 ppm of CO2 per year — the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more the globe is warming... End of story.

 

floods of the ten year century...

 

Spain's weather agency said that up to 245 litres (65 gallons) of water per square metre had fallen on Friday morning alone

 

At least seven people have died after heavy rains triggered flash floods in southern Spain, officials have said.

Among the dead were two children who drowned in a car in the town of Puerto Lumbreras, AP reports.

The strength of the waters overturned cars, closed roads, damaged homes and forced hundreds to leave their properties.

The hardest hit areas were the provinces of Malaga and Almeria, and Murcia region.

At least 600 people had to be evacuated from their homes in Andalucia region, which contains Malaga and Almeria, officials said.

Spain's weather agency said that up to 245 litres (65 gallons) of water per square metre had fallen on Friday morning alone

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19767627

Note "245 litres per square metres" is 245 millimetres of rain in aussie lingo...

-------------------------------

The flood waters may finally be receding across parts of Britain lashed this week by the worst autumn storm in 30 years.But as home and business owners begin the long, demoralising task of clearing up the filth left in their wake, it has emerged that increasing numbers of flood victims are completely unaware that they were ever at risk from rising water levels.

Click here to view our graphic of the Summer 2012 rainfall.

 Of the 5,000 properties damaged in the extreme weather events of this summer and autumn, more than half were hit not by overflowing rivers but by surface water.

The sheer volume of rain – sometimes up to 20mm in a single hour – has overwhelmed ageing sewage and drainage systems resulting in unprecedented levels of flooding in communities previously considered immune. With the number of properties at risk of flooding expected to quadruple in the next 20 years, according to the Committee on Climate Change, experts warned this week that no home is now without risk.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/now-climate-experts-warn-that-every-house-in-the-country-is-at-risk-of-flooding-8190500.html

---------------------------