In 2006 I finished the book Wild Weather the Truth Behind Global Warming.
As a field biologist with a quarter century of experience I felt anxious about how nature and people would cope with the times ahead.
So far this year, globally, the weather patterns, insects, wild fires, melting glaciers, sea ice and the oceans all appear to be on performance-enhancing drugs eclipsing, in some cases, thousand year events.
The first half of 2010 shattered many weather records since the inception of continuous record keeping in 1879. Of immediate concern is the lightning speed of 34,000 square miles, each day in June, that Arctic sea ice melted; it was more than 50 percent greater than the average rate of 20,000 square miles a day set in 2006.
Ice, be it on polar seas or land, is crucial for reflecting incoming solar radiation and keeping Earth cool, particularly at night.
Let me remind you that we are using four times more energy than our forbearers did 100 years ago. Our consumptive use of fossil fuels is 16 fold over the same time period. And fossil fuels release CO2 which traps heat and raises Earth's temperature.
Last week a chunk of ice four times the size of Manhattan Island broke off the Petermann Glacier on Greenland, the third chunk since 2001; it will contribute to raising sea levels and likely cause havoc in shipping lanes off Newfoundland.
Whenever Earth warms up a few degrees the Arctic appears to multiply that factor by about three. Polar bears will not only perish due to missing sea ice but also from exposure to melting ice releasing persistent organic pollutants including flame-retardants and bisphenol A (BPA) used to harden plastics. The latter is a horrid chemical which disrupts all animals (including humans) endocrine system and it's a synthetic estrogen which lowers sperm counts in males. Globally, we manufacture six billion pounds of BPA a year.
It stores in fat cells of seals, which are the main food source of polar bears. These contaminants are bio-accumulated and bio-magnified up the food chain. So the higher you are, the higher the contaminants.
As Arctic soils -- which were permanently frozen -- thaw, about 1.5 billion tons of CO2 is being released. In comparison, cars and light truck in the U.S. emit about 300 million tons of CO2 per year.
In April in the Andes a chunk of ice measuring 1,640 feet by 665 feet broke off from the Hualcan glacier crashing into a lake creating a 75-foot tsunami-like wave that swept away at least three people and destroyed the water processing plant serving 60,000 people in Carhuaz, Peru.
Indonesia's high elevation Papuan glacier has been decimated by 80 percent of its ice since 1936, two-thirds of that melted since it was last measured in 1972. One square mile that is 32 yards deep is all that remains. Inside glaciers are flecks of dust and trapped miniature air bubbles; they hold all the answers to ancient weather shifts. Globally, glaciers are disappearing faster than scientists can decipher them.
Even more distressing news recently revealed that 40 percent of the world's phytoplankton is missing. The culprit is the warming surface oceans' that are preventing nutrients from mixing effectively in the upper layers and denying natural fertilizer to green life. Phytoplankton, incidentally, is responsible for removing one third of the rising CO2 from our stratosphere.
Two weeks ago the State of Climate report was released by 300 scientists from 48 countries and they unequivocally; that is, 100 percent of them agree: Human-induced global warming is undeniable.
As ocean temperatures rise coral reefs are mass bleached. In other words, the corals that hold a symbiotic relationship with algae, expels them -- they both die and the coral turn white. So far this year sever bleaching has occurred in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and scientists are waiting with baited breath to see the outcome on Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Hawaii. Some of the most potent pain and cancer medicines ever discovered (and awaiting discovery) reside in coral reefs around the globe.
Almost three million acres of forestland have burned in Russia including 20,000 dried-up peat bogs as it's experiencing what their top weatherman is now calling a one in one thousand year heat wave. Moscow reached 100 degrees for the first time in recorded history.
This spring and summer, forest fires have charred six million acres in northern Canada and now NASA's Aqua Satellite has recorded enormous plumes of carbon monoxide from the fires forming a ring around the planet and as it moves northward.
Billions of native bark beetles have laid waste to 81 million acres of forests in Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, Colorado and Wyoming in the largest feeding frenzy in modern times. As temperatures rise, forests dry out and trees are unable to manufacture gooey pitch, there only means of protection against the beetles.
Those forests are of paramount importance for holding winter snowpacks, which have been diminishing over the past 50 years, releasing moisture slowly in the springtime and providing fresh water to about 55 million people across the West. And Lake Mead the enormous reservoir of the Colorado River that feeds Arizona, Nevada, California and Northern Mexico is the lowest it's been since first being filled in 1930.
Droughts in Russia have caused one third of the grain crops to fail and the price on the world markets has spiked wheat by 70 percent and barley by 50 percent.
In April Australia experienced a biblical plague of crop-destroying locusts encompassing 190,000 square miles or the size of Spain. Another swarm is now amassing and $1.8 billion worth of pastures, cereal and forage crops are at risk.
Torrential monsoonal rainfall has affected 14 million people (6 million children) in Pakistan. Over 700,000 people have been evacuated to 450 relief camps.
Interestingly, there is a link between the torrential rains in Pakistan and inferno heat in Russia. As air was pumped into the upper stratosphere by monsoonal Asian winds it created a high pressure condition thousands of miles away conducive to heat waves now blanketing Russia.
Energy efficiency in America is a necessity.
The law-makers in Washington, DC must retro-fit all government buildings, colleges and military facilities across our nation. About five million people on Main Street need jobs. Moreover, by painting rooftops white, air conditioning costs on government buildings will be reduced by $750 million dollars a year, which can help offset workers salaries. In addition, white roofs will mimic millions of square miles of missing sea ice, helping to cool the Earth's temperature.
Texas oil giants Valero Energy and Tesoro Corp have mounted a fear campaign to thwart AB 32, California's Global Warming Law this November. Californians have always valued the environment first and foremost. It's time to take a stand, once and for all, and allow innovation to deliver a made-in-America green technologies energy solution.
Dr Reese Halter is a Science Communicator: Voice for Ecology, and a conservation biologist at Cal Lutheran University. Contact him through www.DrReese.com
Follow Dr. Reese Halter on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrReeseHalter
A recent story shows that a German City (and bear in mind that NO city in Germany has higher solar insolation than anywhere in the US other than AK) produces 4 times the power they use, just by building efficiently and using rooftop solar:
http://inhabitat.com/2010/08/16/sonnenschiff-solar-city-produces-4x-the-energy-it-needs/
There is a mythology being propagated by Big Energy (and the painfully ignorant Big Enviros) that local point of use solutions cannot seriously reduce GHG emissions, and all the greenwashers are actually leading us to a steep SPIKE in emissions, while our built environment bakes and sprawls. It's just a total lie.
So, with respect, rather than paint roofs white, lets get a feed in tariff rocking (like Germany's) and get solar panels on all those sunny roofs (which will also shade the roof and reduce urban heat island effects). Lets get them shading every parking lot and covering every brownfield and STOP KILLING OUR WILDERNESS FOR GREENWASHED POWER!
www.sciencenews.org/index/feature/activity/view/id/61141/title/The_incredible_shrinking_solar_cell
www.nanosolar.com/sites/default/files/Nanosolar_Utility_Panel_Data_Sheet_r2.0.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-cost_photovoltaic_cell#cite_note-25
It's not there yet, but it looks like utility scale and point-of-use solar photovoltaics have a decent shot at becoming THE cheapest major source of truly sustainable energy in sunny climates, perhaps even within this decade.
And the debate's unresolved, but it's also arguable, with costs steadily dropping, that current photovoltaics are already cheaper in some geographic regions than the expected cost of developing and implementing advanced nuclear plants, aka IFRs and LFTRs.
However, the new government has not put the implimentation of that law on hold, as they have figured out that it won't work, and will be too expensive for the public. From the Guardian:
"The coalition is watering down a commitment to tough new environmental emissions standards, raising the possibility of dirty coal-fired power stations such as Kingsnorth going ahead.
Green groups are aghast that a flagship policy called for in opposition by both Lib Dems and Tories, and which they last year tried to force on the Labour government, will now not be implemented in the coalition’s first energy bill to be published this year."
The British government has figured out that an AB32 type law will cause serious problems.
California needs to figure this out too. A "yes" vote on the proposition to repeal AB32 will be consistent with the new position of the British government.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/the-bigger-shame-the-rich_b_162485.html
And pretending global warming isn't happening also means continued dependence on increasingly scarce, therefore increasingly expensive resources, yet another example of favoritism toward the over-privileged.
So what caused them to occur then?
What now causes them to occur **more frequently** is the topic. Try to stay on topic.
... Measurements made from 1965 to 1998 in Barbados trade winds show large interannual changes that are highly anticorrelated with rainfall in the Soudano-Sahel, a region that has suffered varying degrees of drought since 1970. Regression estimates based on long-term rainfall data suggest that dust concentrations were sharply lower during much of the 20th century before 1970, when rainfall was more normal. Because of the great sensitivity of dust emissions to climate, future changes in climate could result in large changes in emissions from African and other arid regions that, in turn, could lead to impacts on climate over large areas.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;302/5647/1024
The role of increasing temperature variability in European summer heatwaves
Instrumental observations and reconstructions of global and hemispheric temperature evolution reveal a pronounced warming during the past 150 years. One expression of this warming is the observed increase in the occurrence of heatwaves... We propose that a regime with an increased variability of temperatures (in addition to increases in mean temperature) may be able to account for summer 2003.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v427/n6972/abs/nature02300.html
As always, the HuffPo 'blogger reports undisputed scientific consensus on a climate science topic and the deniars lie to sow false uncertainty and doubt about the state of the science. So predictable.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=climate+change+drought+increasing
a) nearly 1,500 total HuffPo posts, 99+% of them basically denying global climate change and all its impacts.
b) slyly, carefully evades a/o finesses his way around all questions regarding aimed at determining whether he's a PAID SHILL.
Thus, you may arguably be the last person in the world to be extolling the virtues of an independent point of view. I.e., you look like you've been bought, from the git go.
NOBODY like paid shills, not even the people who agree with them.
It's important to point out that action on climate change has no downsides. Even if the imminent collapse of large parts of our global life support system was not an issue, there is very little reason to fear increased efficiency in energy use, and new technologies for energy generation. For an economy that has been slowly slipping backwards, you would think that the US would embrace the new technologies and return to the golden ages of industrial dominance in auto manufacture, and later on in computer technology.
The corporate sponsored disinformation campaign seeks to continue making record profits at the potential cost of our (and their shareholders and children's) capacity to survive in anything like a modern society.
"Given the growing list of recent climate calamities, even the denial sphere has dropped a few decibels in volume."
Whatever their next exploit, don't believe a word of it, for a nanosecond. The theft of data from East Anglia University (so-called "climategate") seemed to catch the good guys by surprise, and flat-footed. Given that they have NO facts on their side, we can all rest assured that the deniars next gambit WILL be more crime. It's all they've got. The next time, and the time after that and so on, we mustn't wait for the truth to trickle out. We mustn't hesitate to speculate that they're making it ALL up just like they ALWAYS have before.
If the Californian Global Warming law does drive up the cost of burning fossil fuels, then you can expect California to be at the forefront of the development of new energy technologies that will take over from the primitive fossil fuel based ones. A new Silicon valley - perhaps Green Valley - will arise in California, and once again California will be at the forefront of American innovation, jobs and wealth.
Dr Roy Spencer August 6th, 2010
"One of the claims of greenhouse and global warming theory that many people find hard to grasp is that there is a large flow of infrared radiation downward from the sky which keeps the surface warmer than it would otherwise be.
Particularly difficult to grasp is the concept of adding a greenhouse gas to a COLD atmosphere, and that causing a temperature increase at the surface of the Earth, which is already WARM. This, of course, is what is expected to happen from adding more carbon dioixde to the atmosphere: “global warming”.
Well, it is one of the marvels of our electronic age that you can buy a very sensitive handheld IR thermometer for only $50 and observe the effect for yourself."
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
This experiment is a whole lot simpler:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8394168.stm
and that's where the ball gets dropped..
in a court of law CO2 would get off easy!
If you can't read well enough to educate yourself then give up and quit talking about it. Let the adults handle it.
Round-Up is implicated in the die-off of the amphibs --- frogs, salamanders, and other creatures that eat mosquito larvae, among other things.
It's gonna be like the plagues visited up on Egypt. Along with West Nile, Malaria, and other tropical diseases placing an unwelcome visit to the good ole' US of A.
Global warning? Meh! More like the horsemen of the apocalypse!
Although we have since moved away, there was just a story in the news today that this may be the first summer in over a decade that Houston does not have a single high temp over 100 degrees, all summer long.
Al Gore told us in his powerpoint presentation that we should expect more frequent and more powerful hurricanes, even bringing up Hurricane Katrina as an example of what was in store for us. And now in the last 5 years, total hurricane energy has plummeted to lows that have not been seen in more than 30 years.
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
It's really getting more and more evident that the hype is misplaced. I know that "Global Warming" is now passe, dropped in favor of "Climate Change" or even "Global Weirding" due to the 'inconvenient' way that temperatures have flat-lined over the last decade, and so many other wild predictions are so wildly incorrect.
But if temperatures aren't rising, why regulate Carbon? When and how has CO2 ever been linked to "weird" weather without rising temps, for instance?
Read and educate yourself.
In fact the leaked memo's had no impact on the strength of the scientific case, and merely showed the kind of panic that can occur when individuals are attacked by a political propaganda campaign of misinformation.
It really is depressing seeing people boldly proclaiming their ignorance as they march towards that cliff. Unfortunately no amount of belief is going to be enough to change the objective reality that is the coming catestrophic climate change.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Even increased levels of snow is an indication of more evaporation resulting from increased thermal energy over bodies of water.....
Weather is Local and Temporary ... Climate is trends of long periods of Time.