Former climate contrarian Professor Richard Muller has released the draft of his teams Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST). The study, funded largely by multibillionaire petroleum magnates Charles and David Koch, known for donating 55 million dollars to climate denial front groups, “confirm[s] the reality of global warming and support in all essential respects the historical temperature analyses of the NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU.” Muller confirmed at a public talk, “We are seeing substantial global warming” and “none of the effects raised by the [sceptics] is going to have anything more than a marginal effect on the amount of global warming.” He told MSNBC’s Morning Joe today that “we’re getting very steep warming” and that because “we are dumping enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we’re working in a dangerous realm, a realm where I think, we may really have trouble in the next coming decades.”
The teams “independent” analysis of all of the temperature stations found a rate of warming since the 1950s as high NOAA and NASA and faster than the (much maligned) UK Hadley/CRU data. Muller found et al: … we find that the global land mean temperature has increased by 0.911 ± 0.042 C since the 1950s…. our analysis suggests a degree of global land-surface warming during the anthropogenic era that is consistent with prior work (e.g. NOAA) but on the high end of the existing range of reconstruction.
This study is unlikely to change the minds of vested interests and those with ideological biases. Since global warming is now undeniable, subtle contrarians will cherry pick low CO2 sensitivity studies while ignoring the more thorough and numerous studies indicating medium, high, and extremely high climate sensitivity.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/11/1 ... r-warming/
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/03/2 ... l-warming/
http://berkeleyearth.org
Arctic Meltdown Continues Unabated, 2011
The meltdown of Arctic sea ice continues. Minimum area has not broken the 2007 record but thinning of the ice has set a new record low volume. Multiyear ice has decreased in proportion to single year ice. Trend line indicates an ice free Arctic in summer before 2020. IPCC reports suggest that this won’t happen before 2050. The IPCC has been criticized for its lowest-common-denominator consensus style reporting and failure to adequately highlight the shortcomings of its models and process. William Freudenberg, a researcher at University of California, reports that new scientific findings are more than 20 times as likely to show that global disruption is “worse than expected” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.”
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/1 ... e-impacts/
Arctic Sea Ice Area, September Minimum.
Arctic Sea Ice Volume, Annual Minimum
Multiyear vs Single Year Ice, 2010
http://earthsky.org/earth/2011-arctic-s ... ite-record
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/11/06/d ... te-trends/
Significance of Arctic Meltdown
Arctic sea ice reflects 80% of sunlight back to space, whereas blue ocean only reflects 20%. With the ice gone, the Arctic basin will absorb an extra 80 watts per square metre, averaged globally 1 watt per square metre, equivalent to 70% of all the carbon dioxide pollution now present. It takes 81 times more energy to phase change ice to liquid than it does to raise that water 1 degree C. Like an iced highball, the drink will remain cool while there’s ice, but warm rapidly when the ice is gone. The extra warmth will delay winter ice reformation and increase methane mobilization from the Arctic sea floor and land based permafrost. Methane has 105 times more warming potential than CO2 over a 20 year period and large emissions deplete hydroxyl, increasing methanes half-life. Emissions of nitrous oxide GHGs will increase from tundra. The Arctic permafrost holds over 1500 billion tonnes of frozen carbon – twice as much as contained in the atmosphere. The extra warming will raise the water vapor (another GHG) content of the global atmosphere. Heat waves will be wetter, making it more difficult to lose heat through sweating.
Loss of the sea ice may slow the thermohaline conveyor, reducing ocean algae populations and slowing the ocean carbon pump. Britain may cool initially. The high latitudes of Canada and Russia will become green and habitable, while the subtropical deserts will expand polewards turning parts of the mid-latitudes and continental plains into deserts. The US southwest will continue to dry. The atmospheric 3-cell pattern should remain. Parts of the equator will get wetter while parts of the Amazon will burn away. The increased heat will bake soil dry, releasing carbon. Trees require a leaf temperature of 21 degree C for photosynthesis - more water will be needed for evaporative cooling in a warmer clime or heatwave. Fires will increase, releasing more carbon and destroying carbon sinks. The warmer high latitudes will decay peat which will burn underground. The increasing water vapour content will create stronger downpours that will wash away dead plants and topsoil, increasing erosion and silting up rivers and inlets with dead organic matter - leading to inlet anoxia and methane emissions. The warming ocean will be less able to dissolve as much CO2.
The above process likely constitutes runaway warming, in which no amount of emissions reductions by humans will stop (but perhaps slow) the process. According to Hans Schellnhuber, director for Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and world expert on tipping elements, runaway warming will lead to 6+ degrees C of warming by 2100, continuing to rise through 2200. Industrialized countries must be almost-completely decarbonized (near zero) by 2030 in order to avoid 2 degree C of warming and dangerous tipping points (German Advisory Council on Global Change)*. Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheet present the greatest near-term tipping threats (Schellnhuber)*. According to numerous scientists (Oxford 4 degree Conference) and present IPCC data, we must begin adaptation for a hotter world since dangerous warming is now inevitable.
Paleoclimate data demonstrates that abrupt climate change is the norm, not the exception. The disappearance of Arctic ice will almost certainly shuffle the prevailing climatic patterns of the past century and lead to unpredicted phenomena and feedbacks. Present models cannot replicate previous episodes of abrupt climatic transitions in the paleo-climatic record, but only project smooth comforting lines, as if there earth were an inert ball of rock hanging in a sphere of gas. As we approach zero-ice we will get a better idea of the positive feedbacks coming into play.
* http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20561.full
* http://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786.full
According to scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semilitov, the permafrost cap of the ESAS is now perforated and releasing 8 million tonnes of methane annually gradually. In a 2010 symposium for the Department of Defence Environmental Research Program, Semilitov and Shakhova indicate that measurements were up to 3 magnitudes higher than estimated, and that 3.5 billion tonnes of methane may be escaping the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (1300 billion tonnes carbon load). Because of its light mass, methane will ascend into the middle troposphere before exiting the Arctic clockwise. Additionally, the tundra is predicted to release 1.5 billion tons of carbon per annum before 2030. It is worth noting that no climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released from tundra/ocean floor.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/04/2 ... -feedback/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/PPW-Car ... backs.html
Some 200 polar researchers have released a new report called Impacts of Climate Change on Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic. They presented results from this report at a climate conference in Copenhagen on May 4, 2011….Researchers say feedback mechanisms are now at work in the Arctic to increase warming. In other words, the Arctic is now reinforcing its own warming… The future does not look brighter, the researchers say. They point to climate models showing that temperatures will rise by a further 3 to 7 degrees… They suggest there will be “grave consequences for the ecosystems, existing infrastructure and human living conditions.”
http://earthsky.org/earth/sober-new-rep ... wn-warming
The first results of methane discharge research conducted by the expedition to the Eastern Arctic, which concluded its work on Monday, will be ready in about six months, Dr. Igor Semiletov, expedition leader and head of the Arctic Research Laboratory at the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti. The expedition of 27 Russian and U.S. scientists left Vladivostok on September 2 at short notice to study massive methane discharges from underwater gas hydrates in the Eastern Arctic. This year’s Arctic expedition was funded mainly by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research and endorsed by the U.S National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
http://arctic.ru/news/2011/10/data-arct ... six-months
Geoengineering Field Testing Commences in the UK
In the days after 9/11, the cleared airspace caused a rapid temperature rise in New York - so we know water vapour contrails provide cooling. We also know sulphur dioxide from coal burning provides cooling and cloud nucleation. Scientists will be pumping water up a tethered hose-balloon as part of ongoing climate engineering research.
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2011/22-spice.asp
http://geo-engineering.blogspot.com/201 ... sting.html
Social Consequences for North America
-2 pages deleted by author- corporate totalitarianism/militarism
Russia to Build Nuclear Space-Station City 1000 Miles from North Pole
Because the Arctic contains 1/3rd of the world’s fossil fuel and mineral resources, corporations have elected to capitalize on the rapidly melting Arctic, and in fact this may have provided incentive for denying global warming. For corporations, the catastrophic life-destroying effects of runaway warming don’t matter when there’s money to be made. An abrupt collapse of civilization may be preferable as it preserves infrastructure and limits human migration. If runaway warming becomes intolerable the super-rich can always buy self contained biodomes.
Russia is to build an ultra-modern city on a frozen island deep inside the Arctic Circle - in the Kremlin's latest move to back its claim to vast oil and gas reserves under the polar ice cap. The city will cost up to £4 billion and be built on the remote island of Kotelniy, in the Novosibirsk archipelago, some 1,000 miles from the North Pole.
The Umka designs are based on the International Space Station but in comparison is much larger - one mile long and 800 yards wide. Sources say it is likely to house soldiers, border guards and secret service officers, as well as scientists and explorers, as Moscow gets serious about claiming Arctic mineral riches.
All will enjoy a luxury lifestyle in the cocoon with its own specially regulated temperate climate - including many facilities to make inhabitants of other cities envious.
'We aim to have scientific laboratories, houses, but also parks with attractions, an Aqua complex, hotels and a cathedral. Naturally there will be schools, kindergartens, recreation zones, a hospital, and sport facilities are planned, too,' said Rzhevskiy. 'So far it's the only project in the world with an artificial climate and integral life support - just like on the space station. Not only is it a new word in architecture, but in human living too. We have used aero and space technologies while creating it.
Electricity will be supplied by a floating nuclear power station. Food wise, it will be totally self-sufficient with fish and poultry farms, greenhouses, a wheat processing factory and bakeries. 'This project is designed to work on any surface, even on the Moon if needed,' said Rzhevskiy, one of Russia's top architects
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1elP6P1Ve
Sea levels are rising so fast that the tiny Pacific state of Kiribati is seriously considering moving its 100,000 people on to artificial islands. In a speech to the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum this week, President Anote Tong said radical action may be needed and that he had been looking at a $2bn plan that involved "structures resembling oil rigs":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/b ... sea-levels
Our Species has to take conscious actions about the future of our planet to survive. That action is not a return to, and reliance on, natural ecosystems, but rather some kind of technological engineering/terraforming to overcome the natural tendency of our sphere’s life to drive all species, including us, into extinction. Mother Earth is, like Medea, the murderer of her own children, Gaia Theory is a fairy-tail reading of a very grim history, and we rely on “nature” to bail us out at our peril. – William Dietrich, 2006
America – where the corporate powers control what you see and hear. Episode 7 of Frozen Planet documenting climate change? Not allowed in America! Corporations – keeping Americans ignorant.
I probably won't be monitoring responses. Apparently I can't handle criticism. Cheers.
