Jennifer Marohasy: April 2008 Archives

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April 30, 2008

Antarctic Snowfall and Temperature Trends in Global Climate Models

”We compare new observationally-based data sets of Antarctic near-surface air temperature and snowfall accumulation with 20th century simulations from global climate models (GCMs) that support the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Annual Antarctic snowfall accumulation trends in the GCMs agree with observations during 1960–1999, and the sensitivity of snowfall accumulation to near-surface air temperature fluctuations is approximately the same as observed, about 5% K−1. Thus if Antarctic temperatures rise as projected, snowfall increases may partially offset ice sheet mass loss by mitigating an additional 1 mm y−1of global sea level rise by 2100. However, 20th century (1880–1999) annual Antarctic near-surface air temperature trends in the GCMs are about 2.5-to-5 times larger-than-observed, possibly due to the radiative impact of unrealistic increases in water vapor. Resolving the relative contributions of dynamic and radiative forcing on Antarctic temperature variability in GCMs will lead to more robust 21st century projections.”

The above is the abstract from:

Monaghan, A. J., D. H. Bromwich, and D. P. Schneider (2008), Twentieth century Antarctic air temperature and snowfall simulations by IPCC climate models, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L07502, doi:10.1029/2007GL032630.

Roger Pielke Sr comments:

"This paper provides further evidence that the multi-decadal global climate models are significantly overstating the water vapor input into the atmosphere, and thus are not providing quantitatively realistic estimates of how the climate system responds to the increase in atmospheric well mixed greenhouse gases in terms of the water vapor feedback. This water vapor feedback is required in order to achieve the amount of warming from radiative forcing projected in the 2007 IPCC report."

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Changing Habitat - A Note from Gavin

A former resident of Canberra complained today on talkback radio about how the city had become “tatty” during her brief absence. Apparently her family now lives somewhere up the north coast and have green lawns. The difference I reckoned was that the ACT region has missed out again in late autumn with our miserable share of La Nina.

Out on the western fringe of suburbia a few local residents have been watching two strange visitors for a week or so. Opposite my place is another dead tree, a large Eucalyptus nicholii that was planted as a street tree back in the early 1970’s. A few bird droppings on parked cars was the first clue. My neighbor pointed up to some high branches and eventually I recognized the shapes, a pair (?) of tawny frogmouths perched motionless in the higher branches.

This messy old tree would normally have been condemned as a neighborhood hazard and removed on schedule with many others, however overnight it became “habitat” for what I believe after glimpsing another big wary gray bird on the outer limb late yesterday, two young owls left day by day by their parents.

Despite prying eyes, noisy cars, trucks and machinery underneath these beautifully camouflaged individuals remained seemingly motionless for days. Unfortunately I think a gang of currawongs has finally driven them off.

Note the clear blue sky in my latest photo.

Gavin

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Earth's CO2 Balance

Using evidence from an Antarctic ice core, Zebee and Caldiera calculated that over a period of 610,000 years the long-term change in atmospheric CO2 concentration was just 22 parts per million volume (ppmv), although there were larger fluctuations associated with the transitions between glacial and interglacial conditions.

By comparison, two centuries of human industry have raised levels by about 100 ppmv.

BBC News website: Nature's carbon balance confirmed

Nature Geoscience: Close mass balance of long-term carbon fluxes from ice-core CO2 and ocean chemistry records

Richard E. Zeebe & Ken Caldeira

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Natural Gas to Replace Oil in Australia?

The recent prediction by the head of Caltex Australia that the price of oil may very well double the already record highs for crude, have only heightened concerns about the security of Australia's future fuel supplies. The Federal Government, for instance, has launched a national energy security assessment.

As oil production in Australian fields declines, the Government has also sought and won approval under the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea, to expand its search for oil offshore by an area equivalent to five times the size of France.

But Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson agrees that unless there is soon a "eureka oil strike", Australia must find a new fuel alternative with sufficient reserves to power a vast and vital national car and transport fleet.

But there are those who say there's an obvious solution to the fuel crisis right under our collective nose, a solution that could cut fuel bills by up to 60 per cent: natural gas.

ABC - The 7.30 Report: Natural gas: the future of fuel?

Mercedes is offering the new Sprinter transporter with natural-gas drive, with operating costs 30 per cent lower than comparable diesel-engined versions.

Drive.com.au: Mercedes van with natural-gas drive

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April 29, 2008

Biofuel Production Criminal: Jean Ziegler

The United States and the European Union have taken a "criminal path" by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.

At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

Ziegler was speaking before a meeting in Bern, Switzerland between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of key United Nations agencies.

Ziegler said that last year the United States used a third of its corn crop to create biofuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 percent of its petrol supplied by biofuels.

The Special Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium on the production of biofuels.

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Satellite Tagged Seals Collect Data from Ocean Around Antarctica

The latest research from scientists in Antarctica reveals the deep ocean around the frozen continent is becoming less salty and that this could play a major role in changing ocean currents and the climate. New details about changes to salinity are coming from deep beneath the sea ice, courtesy of satellite tagged seals. This unique tracking program involving Australian scientists is part of a major international research program shedding new light on how the world's oceans are changing.

ABC 7.30 Report Transcript: Satellite tagged seals shed light on climate change

On-line video report also available.

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April 28, 2008

Oh, what a golden web she weaves (part III)

Funny, the things that you see in nature, like this humanoid face on the cephalothorax of a golden orb-weaver, Nephila pilipes.

I have previously described aspects of this spectacular species of spider, here and here. With this instalment, the adult female in the image below descended from her web on the 19th April to build her egg-sac on the ceramic-tiled floor of our living room.

At the outset, her abdomen was rotund, perhaps twice the diameter of the largest aspect within the image captured at the conclusion of the construction.

On a foundation bed of the same orange silk that can be seen, a white disk was established and then encased in more of the orange material. Five weeks later, the orange casing had lifted. The white disc had been abandoned, but its character was surprisingly hard; rather like coral in its chalky-porousness. I can only imagine that it was produced in much the same way as a mantid’s ootheca - soft upon release but hardened under external exposure.

It had been my understanding that egg-laying was the final phase in the three-month life-cycle of this species, but this individual struggled back to the ceiling and over a succession of days manged to rebuild a small web. Aided by the sympathies of my children, a number of march flies allowed for a fuller recovery and the re-establishment of a master-web. She lived another month and then presumably underwent a second and final reproductive cycle.

Posted by neil at 09:35 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Fred Singer Does Not Believe in Martians: Lawrence Solomon

Fred Singer, one of the world’s renowned scientists, believes in Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. “Do you really believe in Martians?” I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington event. The answer was “No.”

Wikipedia’s error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer’s biography is designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by painting him as a political partisan and someone who “is best known as president and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific views of climate change, ozone depletion, and second-hand smoke and is science advisor to the conservative journal NewsMax.”

Innocent Wikipedia readers would be surprised to learn that Dr. Singer is no conservative kook but the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Center; the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a commendation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for research on particle clouds; and the recipient of a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for the development and management of weather satellites.

He is, in short, a scientist of the highest calibre, with a long list of major scientific achievements, including the first measurements, with V-2 and Aerobee rockets, of primary cosmic radiation in space, the design of the first instruments for measuring ozone, and the authorship of the first publications predicting the existence of trapped radiation in the earth’s magnetic field to explain the magnetic-storm ring current.

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The Real Climate Martians, by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, April 26, 2008

Posted by jennifer at 09:04 AM | Comments (43) | TrackBack

100 per cent 'Green' Tax Increase, Less Than 1 per cent Decrease in CO2 Emissions

In case anyone didn't notice, the UK Treasury is the epicentre of climate related reports and also benefits from the resultant so called 'green taxes.' Nicholas Stern was a member of the Treasury at the time of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which was based on extreme computer modelled scenarios. The Stern Review spawned the equally absurd Garnaut Review.

The most recent review instigated by the UK Treasury was the King Review of Low Carbon Cars, which looked at the potential for alternative fuel cars, such as ethanol, hydrogen, or battery powered electric vehicles My suggestion for considering methanol as an alternative, as proposed by Nobel Prize for Chemistry winner George Olah, was ignored. Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend Professor Julia King's inaugural lecture as Vice Chancellor of Aston University, which was based on the King Review. I talked to her afterwards and it became clear that isn't a fan of personal motorised transport and is 'government friendly.' Hardly a recipe for objectivity, yet government reports and reviews are always described as 'independent.'

March saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer's 'Budget.' This included changes to the current road tax system for cars, which is based on CO2 emissions. As a result, the vast majority of drivers will pay more, drivers of family-sized vehicles being the hardest hit. Last week, as reported in The Telegraph, shadow Treasury minister Justine Greening obtained Treasury projections which disclose that while the amount raised from car tax will more than double - from £1.9 billion to £4.4 billion by 2010 - carbon dioxide emissions from motoring are expected to drop by less than one per cent.

I'll leave the last words to Greening, who said, "This is a massive tax hike which will have virtually no impact on the environment. Despite their claims, the Government don't expect this move to change behaviour at all - it is just another eco-stealth tax of the worst kind."

Posted by Paul at 05:19 AM | Comments (32) | TrackBack

April 27, 2008

Who the Hell is Robyn Williams? Request for Information from Graham Young

This morning's Ockham's Razor broadcast was by Don Aitkin on global warming. Presenter Robyn Williams introduced him in these terms:

"It is one of the disappointments of my life as a broadcaster that I've never managed to interview Nigella Lawson. How would she fit into a science program you may wonder, but that's mere detail.

I have, on the other hand, had her father Nigel Lawson on the Science Show, talking about innovation or some such, with his usual flair and penetrating intelligence. Not a science-trained man, but economics is near enough, isn't it, and he was Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer (or Treasurer).

Now Lord Lawson has brought out a book on climate called An Appeal to Reason. Here's the first paragraph of a review in this week's Spectator magazine:

'When there is so much data suggesting the world's climate is heating up', goes the review, 'some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography?'

Well the same could apply to Professor Don Aitkin, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, a political scientist and like Lawson, a journalist. Professor Aitkin gave a lecture on climate to the Planning Institute of Australia, A Cool Look at Global Warming. That was a couple of weeks ago, and I thought you might like to hear some of his thoughts, recast for Ockham's Razor. Though 9 out of 10 Australians are said to be alarmed at climate change, 10% think differently, and Professor Aitkin is one of them."

There are a number of issues of impartiality that arise from this introduction, but in this post I am interested in the main slight which is that because Aitkin is a "journalist" (I actually think he would be more correctly described as a social scientist) he cannot be taken seriously on the issue of climate change.

So, I'm interested in what qualifications Robyn Williams has. Afterall, while argument from authority has no role to play in establishing the truth of a proposition, turned back on its proponent it can often be the best demonstration of just how hollow their argument is.

Here is what I think I know about Williams. Happy to be corrected, or to have the list extended.

He has an honours degree in biology. He does not have qualifications in physics, climatology or earth-sciences
He has some honorary PhDs, but he does not have an actual PhD
He is a visiting professor at UNSW, but is not actually on staff
He is an adjunct professor at UQ, but is not actually on staff
He has in the past, and perhaps to the present, been a supporter of communist politics.

If I am correct in all of this it leads to the conclusion that his only standing on this issue is as a journalist, with a particular political bent, who is no better qualified than Don Aitkin. Which in his own terms must make it quite improper to make the introduction that he did. Afterall, with those qualifications, what would he know?

Graham Young
Ambit Gambit

This is a cross post from http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/002974.html

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Robyn Williams Might Apologize to Don Aitkin and Nigel Lawson

A fellow called Robyn Williams has a monopoly on the reporting of science on Australia's publicly funded national radio, the ABC. He runs several programs including Ockam's Razor broadcast on Sunday morning.

He is usually quick to promote the latest scare and perhaps not surprisingly has become a great supporter of alarmist global warming claims. It is not difficult to find credible scientists to interview who support the consensus on global warming. Unfortunately, however, anybody holding a skeptical view risks ridicule when they speak out, including from Robyn Williams.

Here is a disgraceful introduction from Robyn Williams to the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, Professor Don Aitkin. No doubt if Professor Aitkin were not a skeptic he would have been given a suitably adoring, or at least a gracious, introduction.

Also, in the following introduction Mr Williams suggested Nigel Lawson is a trained economist, he is not. He is a journalist by training. But was a very able Chancellor of the Exchequer in Margaret Thatcher's government.

Here goes:

Robyn Williams: It is one of the disappointments of my life as a broadcaster that I've never managed to interview Nigella Lawson. How would she fit into a science program you may wonder, but that's mere detail.

Now Lord Lawson has brought out a book on climate called An Appeal to Reason. Here's the first paragraph of a review in this week's Spectator magazine:

'When there is so much data suggesting the world's climate is heating up', goes the review, 'some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography?'

Now read/listen to 'A challenge to global warming orthodoxies - part one' by Don Aitkins here:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2008/2226464.htm

Posted by jennifer at 09:41 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

Whale Birds - A Note from Ann Novek

Whale birds are a group of birds called this because,

1) They used to follow whaling ships and feed on the blubber and floating oil. (Any of several species of large Antarctic petrels).

2) Prions are a small group of Petrels which once were known as whale birds, because they feed on the same plankton baleen whale feed and were thus likely to be good indicators where the whales may be.

3) The Sooty tern (see photo) is as well called a whale bird.

Photo courtesy BirdLife International/Simon Stirrup

“ We frequently observe humpback whales and birds feeding on the same patches , so it’s not surprising that occasionally birds might be engulfed by feeding humpback whales “.

“We observed three partially digested birds coated with whale feces floating in the water near adult whales”.

RESULTS OF HUMPBACK WHALE POPULATION MONITORING IN GLACIER BAY AND ADJACENT WATERS: 2005

Cheers,
Ann
Sweden

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April 26, 2008

A Cool Idea to Warm To, By Christopher Pearson

ABOUT the beginning of 2007, maintaining a sceptical stance on human-induced global warming became a lonely, uphill battle in Australia.

The notion that the science was settled had gathered broad popular support and was making inroads in unexpected quarters. Industrialists and financiers with no science qualifications to speak of began to pose as prophets. Otherwise quite rational people decided there were so many true believers that somehow they must be right. Even Paddy McGuinness conceded, in a Quadrant editorial, that on balance the anthropogenic greenhouse gas hypothesis seemed likelier than not.

What a difference the intervening 15 months has made. In recent weeks, articles by NASA's Roy Spencer and Bjorn Lomborg and an interview with the Institute of Public Affairs' Jennifer Marohasy have undermined that confident Anglosphere consensus. On Amazon.com's bestseller list this week, the three top books on climate are by sceptics: Spencer, Lomborg and Fred Singer.

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from The Australian, by Christopher Pearson, 'A Cool Idea to Warm To', April 26, 2008.

Posted by jennifer at 07:45 PM | Comments (74) | TrackBack

April 25, 2008

Flannery - The Wrong Weather Maker

RAIN sure is falling this week on the parade of our global warming alarmists.

Wettest of all is Tim Flannery, who was made Australian of the Year last year for wailing the world was doomed.

"I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century's first ghost metropolis," he groaned. But buy his The Weather Makers before you flee.

Reporters solemnly reported even this: "He (Flannery) also predicts that the ongoing drought could leave Sydney's dams dry in just two years."

And when did he say that? Oh, three years ago? Yet what do I read in my papers yesterday but this: "Sydney's run of rainy days in a row - 11 - is the most in April for 77 years."

And Sydney's dams? Above 65 per cent capacity now, and rising.

.....it was probably no surprise Flannery didn't turn up at the Rudd Government's ideas summit last weekend to talk more about how warming was dooming Sydney, despite being issued a gold-edged invitation.

He flew to Canada instead to tell their yokels to cut gases like the ones he just blew out the back of his jet, and talked warming with British Columbia's Premier and businessmen.

But once again Flannery picked the wrong time and place to preach his warming gospel. A local paper reports: "In some regions of usually balmy British Columbia, many were caught by surprise by a storm that moved in late Friday and set snowfall records in Nanaimo, Victoria and Vancouver."

How the weather mocks Flannery. He's flooded in Sydney, where he predicted drought, and snowed in in Canada when he predicted heat.

Read the entire article in The Herald Sun: Prophecy all washed up

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Population, sustainability, climate change, water & the future of our cities

Australia faces an unprecedented challenge from climate change. We risk losing our natural heritage, our rivers, landscapes and biodiversity. We have a brief opportunity to act now to safeguard and shape our future prosperity. - AUSTRALIA 2020 SUMMIT - INITIAL SUMMIT REPORT

One of the 100 privileged participants within the POPULATION, SUSTAINABILITY, CLIMATE CHANGE, WATER & FUTURE OF OUR CITIES topic area, proposed,

“A zero species loss by 2020 goal, and one of the ways that this could be achieved is through a comprehensive series of protected areas.”

Not one of the 100 participants argued in support of protecting the integrity of the evolutionary process.

Another participant stated,

“My understanding, from my work in natural resource management, biodiversity and so forth, we could stop any further degradation by 2020; that’s a feasible goal; most of it is government, not money…”

Again, no argument from participant expertise, along the lines of the 24-million feral pigs in Australia, as but one example.

The summit proposed that environmental considerations will be fully integrated into economic decision making in Australia, at the household, business and government levels, but there was no contention that legislation enacted in 1994 already required the integration of environmental and economic considerations in decision making and for balancing the interests of current and future generations.

I would have hoped that the more important recital would have recognized the historical lack of compliance as the preeminent issue and that future refinements would preclude non-compliance.

Indeed, the 1992 Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment expresses a significant achievement of environmental policy design and rather than reinventing the regulatory wheel, as-it-were, it could have formed the foundation for refinement towards the forum's stated aims.

The delegation proposed the adoption of a National Sustainability, Population and Climate Change Agenda and the development of robust institutions to support it. As a part of this agenda, an audit function to report on governments’ performance against these climate change and sustainability objectives, would be included.

Again, the pre-existence of the National Environment Protection Council Act 1994, with its annual auditing and reporting functions, was conspicuous in its absence from the debate.

Interestingly, the Initial Summit Report indicated how strikingly and often concern arose that Australia has not been sufficiently clever in using the skills and ingenuity of its people.

This is despite Principle 22 of the 1992 RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT, which states:

Indigenous people and their communities and other local communities have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognise and duly support their identity, culture and interests and enable their effective participation in the achievement of sustainable development.

The Initial Summit Report did stipulate, however, the involvement of indigenous people, insofar as:

• A new dialogue will have been established with our indigenous peoples on our response to climate change, water and sustainability challenges;

• Stakeholder engagement, including with regional Australians, capacity building and education are needed to support the significant behavioural change required to implement these policies. Indigenous people must also be involved in policy development and implementation; and

• That a National Indigenous Knowledge Centre be established and maintained with indigenous people. This centre would examine multidisciplinary research and program delivery pertaining to climate change, sustainability and water.

However, the essence of environmental interdependence (in my opinion), binding individuals and families together in common possession, through the building block of both communities and nationhood, was largely overlooked. So too was the excellent practice of so many individuals, families and communities through existing commitments. There was rather the stale and familiar stench of enriching the bureaucratic stake in an illusion of environmental concern.

I would have preferred that Australia was rather re-defined by its people and their relationship with their natural environment. Surely it would have been better if Australia had been required to be supportive of its unique communities, bound in triumphant territorial respect for the aspirations, life and memory of their constituents. I would have thought it much more encouraging, if it was exposed to discomfort of its historically abhorrent dislocation of communities from their natural environment and in the same unequivocal terms that bind Australians to Australia.

I also believe that Australia’s adaptive strategy must be accommodated by the national strength of unity. The federal Government needs the solidarity of its people to act upon this global conviction and to bring the divisiveness of yesterday’s enviro-corruption to an unequivocal end. All Australians must annihilate the perverse belief that we condone the removal of people and communities as a condition of caring for the natural environment. We must rather stand united and restore dignity to our disenfranchised communities and revitalise their children’s futures.

Posted by neil at 07:29 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Ozone Hole Recovery Could Modify Southern Hemisphere Climate

A full recovery of the stratospheric ozone hole could modify climate change in the Southern Hemisphere and even amplify Antarctic warming, according to scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

ScienceDaily.com: 'Ozone Hole Recovery May Reshape Southern Hemisphere Climate Change And Amplify Antarctic Warming'

Posted by Paul at 05:38 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Humans Nearly Wiped Out 70,000 Years Ago?

Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.

The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

CNN: 'Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says'

BBC News website: Human line 'nearly split in two'

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Norwegian Fishermen’s Union: NGOs a Threat to the World’s Food Resources - A Note From Ann Novek

“This due to their campaigns against whaling and sealing. Their campaigns are against a reasonable and sustainable harvesting of marine resources," states the Head of the Norwegian Fishermen’s Union, Reidar Nilsen, yesterday in paper, Fiskeribladet Fiskaren.

His reply was a response to WWF Norway that had made statements that the fishermen overfished the marine resources and thus were a threat to the world’s food resources, but Nilsen said the NGOs are a bigger threat to the world’s food resources through their anti whaling and anti sealing actions. According to Nilsen, it was in the fishermen’s own interest to conserve and harvest marine resources in a responsible way.

It seems as well that Mr. Nilsen’s statement has not as much to do with eating whale and seal meat but again as an “whales eat too much fish” argument. Nilson states that the whales are consuming 4 or 5 times as much fish than the fishermen are harvesting.

According to Norwegian animal welfare organisation, Dyrebeskyttelsen, It’s wrong to make scapegoats of the whales. They state, “The whales belong in the eco system, and that the fish the whales are eating are brought back to the eco system. Humans on the contrary are removing both fish and marine mammals from the system."

We have also heard that the Norwegian IWC Commissioner, Mr. Klepsvik , has stated that the Norwegians are managing their marine resources in a holistic approach, meaning if they take out fish from the seas, they must also harvest whales.

Cheers,
Ann
Sweden

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Signals for a Coming Ice Age: A Note from Peter Harris

When paleoclimatologists met in 1972 to discuss how and when the present warm climate would end, termination seemed imminent and it was expected that rapid cooling would lead to the coming ice age.

These ideas were based on the 1M year analogue for climate transitions first proposed by M Milankovitch over 60 years ago which has been demonstrated to show the correlation of glacial and interglacial climate with solar insolation as it is modulated by our changing distance from the sun.

These data may be used to serve as a signal for the coming ice age.

Orbital geometry was approaching similar conditions to those of the previous transitions to ice.

But soon it was observed that global temperature was increasing and at about this time Global Climate Modeling (GCM) received more attention and the Milankovitch analogue was forgotten. There has been little further discussion about the coming ice age.

Perhaps underwriting the idea that our consumption of carbon and production of CO2 was contributing to climate warming was the work of Loutre and Berger and a paper by Loutre in 2000 claimed that the Holocene (the current warm period) would extend for at least another 30,000 (KY) years because of the effect of CO2 concentration as a greenhouse gas.

It was acknowledged in this paper that the orbital geometry 400KY which featured muted amplitude, was the “best and closest analogue to our near future climate”, but inexplicably the Global Climate Model LLN2-D NH was “tuned” to replicate the past 200KY climate transitions when insolation amplitude was at it’s highest level over the 400KY cycle and quite unlike present conditions. Using different values for CO2 it was found that “best agreement with SPECMAP is obtained near 210 ppmv CO2 ”.

Then using a modeled Holocene they projected climate using a range of CO2 forcing, and they reported that there was no transition to ice for at least 30KY into the future.

The algorithm for this process is not disclosed but the authors rightly list the limitations of the model in which CO2 is considered as an external forcing i.e. the carbon cycle is not simulated by the model. Clouds and the hydrological cycle are simplified and so is the heat transport to middle and deep ocean. In addition regional changes such as the North Atlantic and over Europe are not simulated “and might depart from the global trend”.

It is unfortunate that these limitations appear to have been ignored and the AGW hypothesis was born and has occupied science and the media ever since.

The Milankovich analogue has been forgotten.

But the reality is that CO2 is not driving temperature up , in fact the data below suggests that global temperature may be cooling since 1998 and CO2 continues to climb.

TEMPERATURE TREND 2007.jpg
Remote Sensing Systems Advanced Microwave Sounding Units. Satellite Temperature data analysis here: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/feb-2008-rss-global-temperature-anomaly-near-zero-and-in-good-agreement-with-uah/

There is further detailed material in a paper by Dr Willie Soon which shows that there is no evidence to support global warming by CO2.

The concentration of CO2 varies according to the temperature of the ocean and CO2 follows temperature. If the present decline in temperature continues we can expect to see a decline in the rate of CO2 as more is dissolved in a cooler sea.

The climate trends during the Holocene, and also the regular sudden climate transitions between the ice ages and the interglacial climate over the past 1M years are better explained by reference to the great external driver, the Sun.

There is abundant archeological evidence to show that global temperature is closely correlated with solar activity.
The following chart shows how solar activity has correlated with climate during the Holocene. The data is based on analysis of Carbon 14 which varies in concentration according to the level of solar activity.

SOLAR ACTIVITY VS CLIMATE.jpg

Solar activity over the past 70 years has been greatest for 8000 years and is the most likely cause of the recent temperature trend through 1998 that has been wrongly attributed to CO2 warming.

The evidence for the solar insolation signal for the ice ages is contained in the Milankovitch analogue which has been overlooked for many years.

The following data was compiled by the mathematicians Quinn and Levine (Quinn et al 1991, A 3 Million year Integration of Earths Orbit, The Astronomical Journal Vol 101 pp 2287-2305). Insolation values due to Precession, Obliquity and Eccentricity as well as total insolation or Solar Forcing are charted on the same time scale as Stages of Glaciation representing climate. This climate data was provided by Lisieckie and Raymo and is based on sediment proxies. The climate data shows close agreement with Ice core data based on a different proxy.
This chart confirms the correlation of climate transitions with insolation which is modulated by earth's position in orbit and was first proposed by Milutin Milankovitch over 60 years ago.

CORRELATION CLIMATE MILANKOVITCH.jpg
Milankovich Analogue Data, from Quinn et al. 1991

The signal for each transition to ice can be found by careful inspection of the data and projections.

In studying the analogue there is no use of a GCM (general circulation model) which is subject to limitations and interpretation. Use of the analogue is based on simple observation of clear empirical data and the archeological record of temperature. The data and the correlation are sound.

The interglacial stages are shaded grey by the authors, and the glacial stages are clear.

By reference to this chart we can make the following observations:

* Every interglacial (shaded grey) survives for a single half cycle maximum in Solar Forcing or total insolation, (yellow) and expires when insolation is in rapid decline and we are near that position now. The interglacials at 200 and 600KY are split because Precession (red) and Obliquity (green) combine in opposite phase to defeat Eccentricity and the interglacial temporarily returns to ice. Conversely total insolation at 400KY is forced into a second half cycle and the interglacial is extended to 28,000 years. Because muted Eccentricity at 400KY is considered a precedent for present conditions, the 28KY interglacial has been widely misreported as evidence for an extended Holocene. From the data we can see we have no such additional insolation half cycle. Insolation now is in rapid decline from a single peak.

* Each of the “Ice Ages” over the past 1M years corresponds with the minimum half cycle of Eccentricity (blue) which is the predominant orbital factor. We are close to the eccentricity half cycle minimum now.

* Counter intuitively every transition occurs from peak global T ;We may have a decline in T since a peak in 1998 .

* It follows that every transition occurs when polar ice melt has peaked. We have ice rebuilding in some regions now.

* Last transition to ice occurred about 120KY ago when T was 5 degC hotter than now and polar ice melt was greater than now. The average cycle is 100KY and the coming transition is overdue.

* By inspection we can see that all of the transitions have occurred when Solar Forcing ie total Insolation was very close to the present level.

* In addititon to the above which relates to the Milankovitch cycles we have a coincident decline in solar activity.
Solar activity is dormant now and cycle 24 is delayed.

The variations in Insolation seen in the data are not sufficient alone to explain the sudden climate transitions from interglacial to ice and reverse. The data provides a template for timing the changes based on the extended correlation but there must be an internal mechanism to explain the rapid process.

At the tipping point for each transition, global T has peaked. This follows from the fact that Earth has been receiving peak insolation throughout the interglacial for about 10,000 years. Polar ice melt has peaked and the polar seas are freshened which may affect circulation of the MOC and interrupt heat exchange with the equator leading to sudden NH cooling.

In addition it has been proposed by William Kininmonth, meteorologist and former head of Australia’s National Climate centre, that atmospheric heat and humidity transport to the NH would offer a larger contribution to variations in heat budget if it could be shown to respond to the 100KY cycle.

I think that this factor which is driven by equatorial SST will indeed have a 100KY signature because the transitions correspond to T max. which follows the 100KY cycle. SST will also peak near T max in accordance with the 100KY cycle.

This proposal offers the further advantage that it would provide a faster response which helps to explain the rapid climate change observed in the transitions.

It is significant to note that at this tipping point, energy transport to the northern hemisphere is at a peak and there is abundant humidity transported to the NH at a critical time when insolation is in rapid decline.

These are the conditions which favour maximum precipitation in the northern hemisphere winter.

These are the conditions now.

I think that the rapid decline to ice conditions will occur by the following process:
As temprature declines the precipitation will increasingly be snow and as albedo increases more heat will be reflected. Initially cloud cover will insulate the snow from summer insolation. Insolation continues to decline.
As temperature further declines water vapour in the northern hemisphere will be reduced and at T zero deg C it will practically disappear leading to a sudden elimination of water vapour GHG .

Then positive feedback due to this process will lead to a rapidly widening region of sub zero T and glaciation will begin to expand.

There will be a decrease in cloud cover allowing more heat to escape in winter.

In this way the sudden transition to ice has commenced.

The geological record shows that the transitions are sudden, long term and extreme.

All of the Milankovitch parameters for a transition are satisfied by the present orbital position. We have already seen extreme northern hemisphere winter conditions and temperature appears to be declining in the short term. The decline will continue under rapidly declining insolation and the coincident effect of reduced solar activity which has also been correlated with temperature in the past.

It is possible that we may have already entered the sudden stage of the transition.

I would challenge: is there a good reason why the analogue will not apply now?

It is overdue time for engineers and scientists to reconsider the Milankovitch analogue and to plan for the contingency of an imminent transition to ice.

I think that the AGW hypothesis has proven to be a costly diversion of resources .

Peter Harris
Retired Engineer

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April 24, 2008

Carbon dioxide and Methane Levels rise in 2007

THE amount of two key greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere rose sharply in 2007, and carbon dioxide levels this year are literally off the chart, the US government reported today.

In its annual index of greenhouse gas emissions, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found atmospheric carbon dioxide rose by 0.6 per cent, or 19 billion tonnes last year.

The amount of methane increased by 0.5 per cent, or 27 million tonnes, after nearly a decade of little or no change, according preliminary figures to scientists at the government's Earth System Research Laboratory in Colorado.

News.com.au:Carbon dioxide levels 'off the chart'

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Adelaide Professor: Scientists Must Confront Climate Sceptics

AN Adelaide professor says scientists must do more to stand up to "anti-intellectual" climate change deniers, by explaining the difference between good science and spin.

University of Adelaide Professor Barry Brook, director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, said in climate science and policy there were still a few apparently well-educated people who continued to deny the vast body of scientific knowledge and analysis.

The original Australasian Science article is here:

Make a Stand for Good Science

The Adelaide Now article is here.

Professor Brook feels the need to quote alarmist blogger Joe Romm who has recently made science policy expert Roger Pielke Jr the focus of repeated attacks, calling him a 'delayer.'

Of 'deniers' he said, "They are hard to pin down because they don't want a serious scientific debate."

That's odd - I thought the debate was over. He also stoops to the tired old tobacco and oil smears.

I think I'd sum up Professor Brook's article as lacking substance and a severe case of 'pot calling the kettle black.'

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Wildlife Accidents Part 2 - A Note From Ann Novek

1) In Sweden there’s an old pagan custom with big bonfires on April 30, called the Walpurgis Night.

Unfortunately, many hedgehogs have been hiding out in the stacks /piles of old trees and branches that will be lit during the night and many fatal accidents happen with hedgehogs.

Here’s a picture of a hedgehog that was badly burnt, but saved by a person from the fire. Wounds healed well, but new spikes didn’t grow up. The animal was released into a protected enclosure as it now didn’t have a complete defence from badgers and dogs.

2) Picture number 2, the balloon hedgehog. No reasons have been found for this condition but possibly damage to the respiratory system has allowed inspired air to escape and fill the subcutaneous cavity. Relief is provided by using a needle and syringe to release air and using antibiotics.

This is a quite common disease among hedgehogs. The animal in the picture was rehabilitated successfully and released.

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April 23, 2008

EU Renewables Plan to Cost £160 per Household

EU plans call for the UK to increase its use of renewables in the energy mix from the current 5% to 15% by 2020. An independent British government commissioned report for BERR, the Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, shows that these plans will cost between EURO 5 and 6 billion annually. On a per household basis, this could increase the average energy bill for every household in Britain by £160 a year -- and that's on top of increases driven by mainstream energy prices, says East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer.

Protesting against the proposals, Helmer argues that in any case many of the renewables initiatives are set to do more harm than good. There is increasing evidence that biofuels save little CO2, but they are driving up world food prices, and putting huge new pressure on rainforests and natural habitats, threatening species with extinction. Wind farms provide limited benefit, especially when placed in peaty heath-land environments. Many of Britain's new wind-farm development proposals, especially in Scotland, are on soils of this type, where the disturbance of ancient peat deposits for foundations, roads and other infrastructure can release more CO2 than the turbines would save in their lifetimes.

Commenting on the developments, Helmer said "There is no point in agonising over fuel poverty, then agreeing plans which will hugely add to energy costs -- especially when those plans will fail to deliver the CO2 reductions envisaged. This is a typical example of EU integration allowing bureaucrats to make mistakes on an heroic scale".

PRESS RELEASE ENDS

Notes to editors

POYRY REPORT: Poyry is a well-reputed energy research and consultancy company, commissioned by the British government (BERR) to do the cost analysis, which despite their insistence on confidentiality has somehow emerged on the BERR website at http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file45238.pdf

ROGER HELMER MEP
www.rogerhelmer.com

"While the US Constitution is chiefly about the rights of the individual, the EU Constitution is chiefly about the power of the state."

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Australia's Emissions Trading System to Cost Business $22 Billion

THE Rudd Government's planned carbon trading system will cost business between $14billion and $22billion a year and will have to be considered in a review of the taxation system.

Taxation Institute director Michael Dirkis yesterday said that the money generated by the emissions trading system would be equivalent to more than 40 per cent of company tax revenue.

"You cannot design a system that impacts on business and brings in that level of government revenue without dealing with tax," he said.

The Australian: Carbon plan 'to cost business $22bn'

Of course, the effect on climate will be a big fat zero.

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First Australian NASA Astronaut: An Ice Age Cometh

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

Excerpt: The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon. The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots. That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850. There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases. […] All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead. It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

The Australian: Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

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April 22, 2008

Antarctic Deep Sea Gets Colder

The Antarctic deep sea gets colder, which might stimulate the circulation of the oceanic water masses. This is the first result of the Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile. At the same time satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the largest sea-ice extent on record. In the coming years autonomous measuring buoys will be used to find out whether the cold Antarctic summer induces a new trend or was only a "slip".

The Polarstern expedition ANT-XXIV/3 was dedicated to examining the oceanic circulation and the oceanic cycles of materials that depend on it. Core themes were the projects CASO (Climate of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean) and GEOTRACES, two of the main projects in the Antarctic in the International Polar Year 2007/08.

Under the direction of Dr Eberhard Fahrbach, Oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, 58 scientists from ten countries were on board the research vessel Polarstern in the Southern Ocean from 6 February until 16 April, 2008. They studied ocean currents as well as the distribution of temperature, salt content and trace substances in Antarctic sea water. "We want to investigate the role of the Southern Ocean for past, present and future climate," chief scientist Fahrbach said. The sinking water masses in the Southern Ocean are part of the overturning in this region and thus play a major role in global climate. "While the last Arctic summer was the warmest on record, we had a cold summer with a sea-ice maximum in the Antarctic. The expedition shall form the basis for understanding the opposing developments in the Arctic and in the Antarctic," Fahrbach said.

In the frame of the GEOTRACES project the scientists found the smallest iron concentrations ever measured in the ocean. As iron is an essential trace element for algal growth, and algae assimilate CO2 from the air, the concentration of iron is an important parameter against the background of the discussion to what extent the oceans may act as a carbon sink.

As the oceanic changes only become visible after several years and also differ spatially, the data achieved during the Polarstern expeditions are not sufficient to discern long-term developments. The data gap can only be closed with the aid of autonomous observing systems, moored at the seafloor or drifting freely, that provide oceanic data for several years. "As a contribution to the Southern Ocean Observation System we deployed, in international cooperation, 18 moored observing stations, and we recovered 20. With a total of 65 floating systems that can also collect data under the sea ice and are active for up to five years we constructed a unique and extensive measuring network," Fahrbach said.

In order to get the public, and especially the young generation, interested in science and research and to sensitise them for environmental processes, two teachers were on board Polarstern. Both took an active part in research work and communicated their experiences to pupils, colleagues and the media via internet and telephone. "We will bring home many impressions from this expedition, and we will be able to provide a lively picture of the polar regions and their impact on the whole earth to the pupils," Charlotte Lohse, teacher at the Heisenberg-Gymnasium in Hamburg, and Stefan Theisen from the Free Waldorf School in Kiel said.

AWI Press Release: The Antarctic deep sea gets colder

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Melanie Reid on Eco-Fundamentalists

Long before we are extinguished by global food shortages or raised sea levels, I predict, we are fated to die of boredom, struck down in our prime by the devastating virus 0157eco-smugness. Doctors will be powerless to stop as the bug invades our minds, causing nervous paralysis leading to eventual seizure. We are doomed, for sure, to terminal ennui brought on by environmental righteousness.

This is the terrible paradox of the environmental movement. The paradox that, if society proceeds down the true path of eco-purity, we may well save the planet; but will simultaneously discover that life is too dull to be worth living on it any more. Women in particular, I fear, will find themselves returned to the Dark Ages.

How can it be otherwise? No skiing, no cars, no travel, no exotic foods, no extravagance, no Hollywood, no wasteful labour-saving devices, no clothes made of anything but recycled plastics and hemp. No more Luxx magazine filled with beautifully engineered, sleek, accessory porn. In their place we will chant a litany of carbon offset, recycling and composting, the buttresses of a new religion that makes radical Islam resemble Methodism.

Continue reading Melanie Reid's Times article: A world of hemp lingerie? No thanks

Women will be returned to the Dark Ages if the eco-fundamentalists end up having their way

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April 21, 2008

Massive Wind Farm Plan Blown Away

Plans to construct one of Europe's largest onshore wind farms has been refused by the Scottish Government.

It said Lewis Wind Power's (LWP) 181-turbines for Lewis on the Western Isles did not comply with European law protecting sensitive environments.

The scheme had the backing of the local authority and business, but attracted almost 11,000 objections.

BBC News website: Massive wind energy plan refused

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Water Purchased for Bird Breeding at Narran Lakes

"Four weeks into a six-week Murray-Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) watering at the Narran Lakes system has already resulted in a huge boost to the environmental health of the system's plants and animals, particularly its birdlife.

"The MDBC bought 11,000 megalitres of water over the Easter weekend to supplement the natural watering occurring at the internationally important Ramsar wetland site in north central New South Wales.

"MDBC chief executive, Dr Wendy Craik, said today that expert ground surveys were showing that about 75pc of the 30,000 pairs of straw-necked ibis attracted to the lakes since January were now expected to successfully produce healthy, full-fledged offspring...

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Bob Carter's NZ TV 'Nzone Tonight' Interview on You Tube

Watch Bob Carter's Friday night interview by Alan Lee on New Zealand television's "Nzone Tonight" on You Tube via Noel Sheppard's blog on NewsBusters.

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April 20, 2008

Solar Cycle and Sea Level Changes - A Correlation?

I am reminded of a February 2007 post over at Climate Audit on a Simon Holgate sea level changes paper published in GRL, and a related poster presentation. Holgate claimed that sea levels rose more in the first half of the 20th century, than in the second half. The same could be said for solar activity.

Plotting the sun spot data on to Holgate's graph of sea level changes produces an interesting result:

Sea Level Solar combined.JPG
Holgate 2007 Figure 2. Comparison of the global mean decadal rates of sea level change based on the nine records with the rates from the 177 stations used in HW04. All rates are corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment and inverse barometer effects. The shaded region indicates standard error. The sun spot numbers are from here.

The coincidence is good except for the last sunspot cycle. Note also that the sea level series are decade mid-point, so the sunspot series should be read as displaced 5 years to the left. Does this mean that the correlation is real, but the effect of CO2 or something else has become apparent during the last solar cycle? Who knows!?

Whilst on the subject of sea level rise, there is this graph below from NASA-GISS: Sea Level Rise, After the Ice Melted and Today

sea level changes.jpg

MWP = meltwater pulse. MWP-1A0, c. 19,000 years ago, MWP-1A, 14,600 to 13,500 years ago, MWP-1B, 11,500-11,000 years ago, MWP-1C, ~8,200-7,600 years ago.

I think the above graph puts modern sea level rise into perspective.

References:

Woodworth, P.L. A world-wide search for the 11-year solar cycle in mean sea-level records. Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 80(3) pp743-755, 1985.

S. J. Holgate, On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. GRL, 2007.

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European Commission Cut from Reality? PR from Bellamy and Duchamp

Three cheers ! At last the peddlers of doom have seen the light : bio-fuels do displace food crops and rain forests !
Starving the poor and destroying biodiversity to give us good conscience as we pour cereal-based ethanol into our tanks is not a smart thing to do. Even Greenpeace admitted it, while avoiding to mention they had much to do with that fiasco.

But Eurocrats are not as smart : "there is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for bio-fuels," said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas (1).
- In other words, they'd rather cause starvation, and destroy rain forests, than admit they goofed.

Their rationale boggles the mind : "you can't change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives," which could see the EU climate change and energy package disintegrate, an EU official said (1).
- It is all very clear : allowing a debate on public policy is what the European Commission fears most ; more than starvation in poor countries, more than widespread destruction of biodiversity, and more than economic havoc caused by their cherished "climate change" policy.

Will we, Europeans, tolerate this neo-stalinist behaviour ? It is not just a matter of bureaucratic arrogance : this time it has become obvious that we are dealing with dangerous lunatics.

The Eurocrats have everything to lose if they stick to their smoking guns any longer. A debate is dearly needed on everything they've been doing wrong, from bio-fuels to carbon trading, and from climate change hysteria to the destruction of peat and designated areas by expensive and redundant windfarms.

(1) http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080414/sc_afp/euunfarmpovertyenergypoliticsbiofuel_080414143918

European Commission cut from reality ?

Co-signed on April 20th 2008 by :

Professor David Bellamy
and Mark Duchamp

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Scottish Skiing Enjoys Best Spring Snow in Living Memory

Rumours of the demise of Scottish skiing are beginning to look greatly exaggerated.

While many Alpine resorts have closed for the season, thousands of skiers are still enjoying perfect conditions in the Highlands.

Scotland's five resorts have struggled for more than 15 years with the effects of global warming, and several have diversified into summer tourism. The perfect snow cover at CairnGorm this weekend follows the worst season on record last year.

There is even talk of skiing on midsummer's day, as visitors make the most of the best spring snow conditions anyone can remember.

The Daily Telegraph: 'Late snow gives Scots resorts a ski lift '

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April 18, 2008

Energetic Particles Help Explain Polar Variations

In amongst an article that contains yet another straw-man attack on cosmic rays via the BBC, there is something more interesting reported from the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting.

In periods of relatively intense particle activity, some areas of the Earth's surface in both the Arctic and Antarctic are warmer while others become colder, showing differences of up to 2C or 3C compared to the long-term averages.

In periods of unusually low particle activity, the patterns are reversed.

The mechanism appears to be redistributing heat across the polar regions; there is no evidence for any overall warming or cooling, Dr Seppala added, nor that the scale of the effect has changed over time.

"The results were amazing, and I think it's something significant that we have to take into account," commented Katje Matthes from the Free University of Berlin, who chaired the EGU session which saw the new data presented.

"I think it's rather a local effect," she added, "and I don't think it has a big impact on global temperatures."

A Round Up of Climate Studies from This Week's Science Magazine: Greenland, Corals, and Phytoplankton

There are several interesting climate related studies in this week's Science magazine.

Greenland Ice Slipping Away but Not All That Quickly

Almost 6 years ago, a paper in Science warned of an unheralded environmental peril. Melted snow and ice seemed to be reaching the base of the great Greenland ice sheet, lubricating it and accelerating the sheet’s slide toward oblivion in the sea, where it was raising sea level worldwide (12 July 2002, p. 218).

A new study has confirmed that meltwater reaches the ice sheet’s base and does indeed speed the ice’s seaward flow. The good news is that the process is more leisurely than many climate scientists had feared. Glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in State College says, "It matters, but it’s not huge.” The finding should ease concerns that Greenland ice could raise sea level a disastrous meter or more by the end of the century.

Coral Adaptation in the Face of Climate Change

IN THEIR REVIEW, “CORAL REEFS UNDER RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE and ocean acidification” (14 December 2007, p. 1737), O. Hoegh- Guldberg et al. present future reef scenarios that range from coral-dominated communities to rapidly eroding rubble banks. Notably, none of their scenarios considers the capacity for corals to adapt. The authors dismiss adaptation because “[r]eef-building corals have relatively long generation times and low genetic diversity, making or slow rates of adaptation [relative to rates of change].” We think the possibility of adaptation deserves a second look.

In the absence of longterm demographic studies to detect temporal trends in life history traits, predicting rates of adaptation, and whether they will be exceeded by rates of environmental change, is pure speculation. Indeed, where such data are available for terrestrial organisms they demonstrate that contemporary evolution in response to climate change is possible (7).

There's another coral story in The Herald Sun: Scientists find corals flourishing on Bikini Atoll

Phytoplankton Calcification in a High-CO2 World

Ocean acidification in response to rising atmospheric CO2 partial pressures is widely expected to reduce calcification by marine organisms. From the mid-Mesozoic, coccolithophores have been major calcium carbonate producers in the world’s oceans, today accounting for about a third of the total marine CaCO3 production. Here, we present laboratory evidence that calcification and net primary production in the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi are significantly increased by high CO2 partial pressures. Field evidence from the deep ocean is consistent with these laboratory conclusions, indicating that over the past 220 years there has been a 40% increase in average coccolith mass. Our findings show that coccolithophores are already responding and will probably continue to respond to rising atmospheric CO2 partial pressures, which has important implications for biogeochemical modeling of future oceans and climate.

Read more at Dot Earth: Some Plankton Thrive With More CO2

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Republicans Ask for Investigation Into Carbon Offset Programs

WASHINGTON – Two top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee today asked committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to open an investigation into carbon offset programs.

U.S. Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and John Shimkus, R-Ill., ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, asked Dingell and Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, to investigate various aspects of the programs, focusing on the lack of oversight in offset marketing schemes.

Recent reporting in The Wall Street Journal indicates that the fast-growing market for carbon offset programs may be producing little real gain in greenhouse gas reduction.

“A key concern is carbon ‘offsets’ that would have happened anyway are being sold as additional reductions, undercutting the whole point of the program,” Barton and Shimkus wrote. “If this is the case, the only additional greening taking place may be in the bank accounts of the people selling the offsets.”

A copy of the letter to Dingell and Stupak can be found here: http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/File/News/041708_Carbon_Offset_Investigation.pdf

LInk and press release via Marc Morano. Thanks.

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UN IPCC AR5 Due in 2014

According to Nature, the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will be out by 2014, IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri announced last week in Budapest. The report from the first working group will come out in 2013, however, so that its findings can be incorporated more fully into the reports from the second and third working groups.

Of course, by 2014 we will have passed the Hansen/Blair tipping points and there will be no summer sea ice in the Arctic, according to Al Gore.

The IPCC also released the TECHNICAL PAPER ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER in Budapest, 9th - 10th April.

We can also look forward to a special report on renewable energy by 2010.

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April 17, 2008

The World's Oldest Living Tree Found in Sweden

For 9550 years a Spruce has survived in the mountains on the Swedish landscape, Dalarna, bordering Norway. This means that this tree is the oldest known tree in the world.

About 20 Spruces have been found in the mountain area that are over 8000 years old. They have survived climate changes due to their ability to shrink to bushes in cold weather and standing / growing erect in warmer weather.

Evidence indicates that the Spruce will be THE species that will give us the most information about climate change, said Professor Leif Kullman from Sweden.

Check out the story (if you speak Swedish) and the photo of the old tree.

Let's hope Michael Mann doesn't turn it into a Hockey Stick!

Thanks to Ann Novek of Sweden for this very interesting story.

UPDATE

The Daily Telegraph: World's oldest tree discovered in Sweden

The tree has rewritten the history of the climate in the region, revealing that it was much warmer at that time and the ice had disappeared earlier than thought.

It had been thought that this region was still in the grip of the ice age but the tree shows it was much warmer, even than today.

The summers 9,500 years ago were warmer than today, though there has been a rapid recent rise as a result of climate change that means modern climate is rapidly catching up.

Posted by Paul at 10:49 PM |