from the editor's desk : global warming

Humorous item on the global warming front

Lee_Teschler — Wed, 27 May 2009 11:08:00 GMT

This from a publication called UU World

News item: UUs participate in global warming conference, rally

"..........Organizers called the March 2 blockage the largest mass action ever held in the U.S. against global warming. Protestors had to brave a snowstorm, frigid temperatures, and bitter winds for the march........."

The real climate threat: global cooling

Lee_Teschler — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:42:00 GMT

Interesting piece in Daily Tech about the lack of sunspot activity. The last time this happened, the earth experienced a mini ice age.

http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History+First+Spotless+Month+in+a+Century/article12823.htm

American Physical Society: many members don't believe in human-induced global warming

Lee_Teschler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:51:00 GMT

Who says the issue of man-made global warming has been settled? The journal Physics & Society just published a debate on the subject because, according to the editor,

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion.

You can see the rest of the editor's comments here:

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/editor.cfm

One of the conclusions found in the Journal paper called "Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered" is particularly interesting:

In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001.

That paper can be found here: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

Another interesting tidbit from the article: In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune ’s largest moon, and Pluto all warmed at the same time as Earth.

Headline: Ethanol exacerbates global warming. Whoops.

Lee_Teschler — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:35:00 GMT

If you are interested in ethanol's impact on the environment, you might want to get a copy of the latest Science magazine. I haven't seen it yet. Our local library doesn't seem to get copies until about a week after it's published. But the Wall Street Journal apparently has already received its copy. Here is part of what they said about some research just published there about the environmental consequences of increased biofuel consumption.

....ecologists at Princeton and the Woods Hole Research Center.......break new ground by exposing a kind of mega-accounting error: Prior studies had never credited the carbon-dioxide emissions that arise when virgin forests, grasslands and the like are cleared to grow biofuel feedstocks. About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared (often by burning) and the soil is tilled. Compounding problems is the loss of "carbon sinks" that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain. Previous projections had also ignored the second-order effects of transferring normal farm land to biofuels, which exerts world-wide pressure on land use.

So, incredibly, when the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol "pays back" the carbon released by land-use change. As they say, it's not easy being green.

The second study comes out of the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy and explores what the authors call the "carbon debt" when native ecosystems are converted to biofuel stock. Until the debt is repaid, biofuels from those fields will be greater net emitters than the fossil fuels they replace. The authors find that the debt for corn ethanol in the U.S. is between 48 and 93 years. In Indonesia and Malaysia, which have a 1.5% annual rate of deforestation to produce palm oil for Western European biodiesel, the debt is as high as 423 years. Yep, that's four centuries. Even Fidel Castro won't last that long.........................

The WSJ piece goes on to suggest these findings will be ignored by legislators bent on enacting ethanol legislation perceived to be 'green.' I suspect they are right.

sun spots and the next mini ice age

Lee_Teschler — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:20:00 GMT

Here is an interesting article in the Investor's Business Daily about solar cycles. Sounds like we should be rooting for more sun spots to appear in order to ward off another mini ice age.

http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175

The negligible impact of CO2 reductions on temperature

Lee_Teschler — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:02:00 GMT

John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama and a participant in the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal (11-1-07) that made some interesting observations about efforts underway to reduce CO2 emissions. I'll just quote him here:

"California and some Northeastern states have decided to force their residents to buy cars that average 43 miles-per-gallon within the next decade. Even if you applied this law to the entire world, the net effect would reduce projected warming by about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, an amount so minuscule as to be undetectable. Global temperatures vary more than that from day to day.

Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10% of the world's energy sources with non-CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 -- roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per century. "

He goes on to say that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit global warming and, that, "Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me."