We all know by now about the melting ice and the droughts and the changes in rainfall.
But how do all of these things affect plant life ? And how do those changes feed back into further Climate Change ?
Part of the answer has come from Leeds and Bristol Universities in the last month :-
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/210/earths_increased_sensitivity_to_carbon_dioxide
The Pliocene, the era in Earth History formerly known as the Pleiocene, is being treated as a potential “analogue” for our Globally Warmed world.
Several strands of Climate Change Science research have been undertaken in recent months, and they are all coming up with dismal results.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) is the latest to unleash data on us :-
https://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2372&from=rss_home
“Arctic Could Face Warmer and Ice-Free Conditions : There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future. Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago). This period is characterized by warm temperatures similar to those projected for the end of this century, and is used as an analog to understand future conditions…“In looking back 3 million years, we see a very different pattern of heat distribution than today with much warmer waters in the high latitudes,” said USGS scientist Marci Robinson. “The lack of summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene suggests that the record-setting melting of Arctic sea ice over the past few years could be an early warning of more significant changes to come.”…”
Feeling strangely perturbed ? That would be your internal paradigms spinning.
Considering the serious risk that Global Warming poses, I trust that Professor Mark Pagani will forgive my cut and paste from his recent research paper :-
https://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n1/abs/ngeo724.html
“High Earth-system climate sensitivity determined from Pliocene carbon dioxide concentrations”
Mark Pagani et al. 2009
“Data and modelling for the middle Pliocene (approximately 3 – 3.3 [Million years ago] Myr) indicate that the global mean temperature was 2.4 – 2.9 degrees C warmer than preindustrial conditions, and approximately 4 degrees C warmer during the early Pliocene (approximately 4 – 4.2 Myr). If changes in carbon dioxide and associated feedbacks were the primary agents forcing climate over these timescales, and estimates of global temperatures are correct, then our results imply a very high Earth-system climate sensitivity for the middle (3.3 Myr) to early (4.2 Myr) Pliocene ranging between 7.1 plus or minus 1.0 degrees C and 8.7 plus or minus 1.3 degrees C per CO2 doubling, and 9.6 plus or minus 1.4 degrees C per CO2 doubling, respectively. If only the minimum estimates are considered, Earth-system sensitivity is still substantially higher than the range of probable ‘fast-feedback’ climate sensitivity often discussed, and implies that the impact of global warming acts to promote other feedbacks that substantially magnify warming over longer timescales.”
You know, back in 1988, James Hansen had some fairly basic FORTRAN computing code and an embarrassingly uncomplex model of the World Ocean, and yet he still came up with shockingly accurate projections of Global Warming.
The data is in. The models were right (more or less).
Yet another vindication for Michael Mann’s work on the legendary “Hockey Stick” comes from an analysis of global warming by decade from the World Meteorological Organisation.
Alongside this, some of the research from sea floor sediment drilling has now been published, and it should make you sit up and pay attention.
Silent night; balmy night.
If you listen carefully in the warm dark, with your ear tilted down towards the well-drained raised vegetable patch, you can hear the November crop seeds cracking, and the creaking of the fat seed leaves as they start to unfurl and lift their points skywards, pushing out of the mud.
The December blossom has covered the fruit trees, just in time for Christspring, and on Boxing Day, we will take the sleepy hybrid honey bees from their hives to fertilise the rose and cream tree flowers so that we can be guaranteed of apples, pears and plums in June.
The constant, gentle rain has kept the ground heavy with water for almost two months, and at sunset the russet and gold rays reflect in countless seasonal ponds.
It is a wonder to watch flocks of small birds eating the clouds of insects that rise from the sodden fields. We will need to net and eat many of the fattened little fowl in February or March to make sure we we will have some fruit left to gather.
The fierce, destructive storms of August and October are long past, and it is now possible to tend ground with good drainage in anticipation of a magnificent Harvest in May before the yearly heatwaves send us all to the underground shelters.
Birdsong wakes us in this beautiful, calm world, where all motorised transport has all fallen silent, sunk under the urban lakes, along with the roads that carried them.
We used to live in architectural homes of brick and stone, far further South, but that time is gone, and now we live in homes we built with our own hands from waste wood, boulders and clay and straw.
We have had to adapt, learn to live with new waves of strangers escaping the unbearable Southern heat.
We have had to grow new forests as well as new social order.
We have had to lose so much, but we live in a still beautiful Earth, and each day gives more peace as we learn how the new Climate works.
I wish you all a Happy and Hopeful Christspring, season of new life and rich promise.
George Monbiot starts to bid a fond, outraged farewell to various parts of the Biosphere and Humanity in his despairing and critical review of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference :-
“Copenhagen negotiators bicker and filibuster while the biosphere burns : George Monbiot despairs at the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous climate summit : Friday 18 December 2009 : …We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other. Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.”
As the world leaders start to slip away back to the airport, some commentators are hailing a “meaningful agreement” has been reached at the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change talks. Others say that no deal of any significant kind has been struck.
Reaction from the Developing countries is general dismay. The Non-Governmental Organisations, “civil society”, feel they have been blocked from taking part. It’s been a complete shambles.
The time has come to start spelling out the future in graphic, technical detail – not just about the damages that Climate Change will bring – but about the only real solutions.
Real solutions do not include Carbon Trading, nor Carbon Taxation. They don’t include technofixes and technofudges like Carbon Capture and Storage and New Nuclear Power. They certainly don’t include partial commitment on Avoided Deforestation.
We have to say it and say it again : whether the leaders and corporations agree or not, the future is Carbon Emissions Reductions. The Consumer Economy is being eroded by the minute. Peak Oil, Coal, Natural Gas and Uranium are just around the corner.
Al Gore speak at the December 2009 Climate Talks in Copenhagen this week, and you would not believe how he got mauled by the Media and the Denier-Sceptics. Watch and listen to the links below and consider if you can detect the part that stuck in the throat of those who resist putting a halt to Global Warming.
Phone your leader :
Sign the Greenpeace Petition :
Sign the Avaaz Petition :
There’s one thing we know : the Earth does not compromise. Politicians might think that they can compromise with the Science; and worse still, the Climate Change Deniers might think that they can compromise the public mind, but in the end the Data will have the final say.
One day, the fringe, radical opinion will be called upon by those at the centre of the debate. Not a debate about whether the climate is changing or not, but the negotiations about who will do what.
Some currently argue that the West was won (and the North) by the immoral earnings from the deep South (and the far East) : the industrialised countries have accrued their wealth on the basis of historical and continuing exploitation of the systems of trade and finance, to garner to their store all the material resource riches of the whole world.
This historical inequality, this chute of nature, taking food, minerals, fuels sliding Northwards and Westwards : for this the rich should pay : Carbon rights should not be “grandfathered” : the rich should not assume they have the free right to continue polluting as they have in the past. The rich should pay up on their historical debt.
George Monbiot goes head to head with Professor Ian Plimer, but fails to get a straight answer out of the Australian mining geologist.
Just when is November hotter than July ?
Well, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, you would expect November to be warmer than July.
But, globally ?
This week’s NASA GISS update of global temperature “anomalies”, the difference between now and pre-industrial figures, shows that, worldwide, November 2009 has been the hottest November ever in the instrumental record.
What can I say ? It’s warming up, folks ! And you’d better believe it. And we do know why, whatever the newspapers say to sell editions.
What is it with Global Warming denial arguments ? Just when you think they’ve finally bitten the dust, up they pop again to stagger and stomp menacingly towards you in rather unconvincing make up, spattered in stage paint blood.
Today it’s the zombie return of the “urban heat island” bogeyman, courtesy of that top science boffin, James Delingpole :-
“…you need first to be aware of one of the most contentious points about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) – the reliability of weather station records and the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI)… Put very simply, there is great concern among sceptics that the data records used to support the IPCC’s claims about “unprecedented” and catastrophic late 20th century global warming are untrustworthy… these records rely on a dwindling number of weather surface stations whose readings have been skewed either by relocation or by the warming effects of the cities which have grown around them over the years…”
The idea behind “clean development” is simple : promoting the clean development of developing countries so that they don’t make the same dirty development mistakes that the developed countries did when they were developing.
So, let the developing countries develop, but avoid the dirty part. Instead of burning Coal to make electricity, let them burn Natural Gas, or BioMethane (poo power); or let them make wind turbines, and hydropower dams and efficient biomass stoves.
There was to be a fund to finance Clean Development Mechanism projects, and it was supposed to be aimed at developing countries.
However, the negotiations around the CDM have taken more than one twist. Today, discussions were held about whether to permit Carbon Capture and Storage technologies to be included as “clean development”.
The Daily Express newspaper (ably echoed by its cousin The Daily Telegraph) issued an outright Global Warming denial on its front page today :-
https://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146139/100-reasons-why-global-warming-is-natural
“100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL : ‘No proof that human activity is to blame’ : Tuesday December 15,2009 : By Martyn Brown : CAMPAIGNERS yesterday attempted to pour scorn on “tenuous” global warming theories by issuing a dossier detailing 100 reasons why climate change is natural and not man-made. The list includes the controversial claim that there is “no scientific proof” that rising levels of greenhouse gases are caused by human activity…”
Intrigued, I actually went to the trouble of purchasing the print edition of the newspaper, so I could gen up. On page 5, the headline “‘There’s little we can do about global warming'”. Oh, so tens of thousands of people in Copenhagen, Denmark, negotiating about the need to reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions, are all wasting their time ? I think not.
Some news organisations try really hard to bring you crack-up-to-date, snazzy, intriguing, hot-off-the-press narrative on the unfolding chaos of Climate Change.
Other news organisations think that writing about “Climategate”, as if it were a genuine challenge to Climate Change Science, is a serious piece of journalism.
But they’re wrong; so, so wrong.
The real story is Climate Change. It’s here, and it’s happening now. And it’s frightening.
Just recently you may have overheard conversations like “the Earth has heated up by around 0.7 or 0.75 or 0.8 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution”. “No it hasn’t, it’s only warmed by 0.2 or 0.4 degrees Celsius !”
So who’s right ? And how can you tell ? It all depends on where you choose your baseline, the year you count from. And it also depends on the reach or spread of the data in the data set you are looking at.
If you believe that the 1800s were colder than normal, then you will think that the Earth has not warmed up so much, because you will discount everything before about 1940 because it was, to you colder than “average”.
Some of the data available on global temperatures “interpolates” for areas where measurements may be missing in certain geographical regions of the world. This can give the appearance that the data sets are different, when actually, they’re not.
Clive James has openly admitted that he knows nothing about Climate Change :-
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8322513.stm
“In praise of scepticism”, 23 October 2009
and yet he still continues to pass judgement on the way the Science is conducted, and accepts the validity of the arguments of the Climate Change deniers :-
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8408386.stm
“Climate change – a story too often told the same way”, 11 December 2009
I ask you this : since he knows nothing about Climate Change Science, how can he possibly justify accepting the views of the Climate Change deniers ?
Dr David Whitehouse has had his personal views on Climate Change Science aired in the Daily Mail this week; yet the newspaper did not seek to offer an article responding to his position, which is somewhat at odds with the general conclusions of mainstream science :-
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1235126/What-told-Global-Warming–missing-facts.html
So, in the absence of the Daily Mail permitting a questioning or critiquing of David Whitehouse’s personal views, I shall here attempt to unpack how close he comes to inaccuracy.
Dr Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at the University of Oxford’s Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department is confused. “It is odd that we still don’t take climate change seriously”, he writes in The Guardian online, discussing the fact that a good proportion of the British public don’t believe in Global Warming :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/11/science-climate-change-phil-jones
He might need to wake up to the fact that the British Press are being misled, and in turn, misleading the country.
The UK Labour Party Member of Parliament for Hayes and Harlington chews down on the Climate Change Committee’s report that effectively allows the expansion of Heathrow Airport, where a Third Runway is planned.
He projects mass revolt.
NEW WEBSITE ! MUST SEE ! The Comeback Real Fightback Truth about Climategate ! :-
https://swifthack.com/
ASTONISHING ! REVELATION ! Climate Scientists happily share data ! :-
https://www.desmogblog.com/stolen-emails-show-scientists-willing-share-data
INCREDIBLE ! EXPLOSIVE ! The “noughties” have been the hottest decade on record ! :-
https://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/00s-hottest-decade-or-record.php
SCANDAL OF THE WEEK ! Sarah Palin gets press coverage for her views on Global Warming ! :-
https://www.freep.com/article/20091208/BLOG36/91208015/1039/ENT04/Palin-calls-global-warming-bogus
Enough of the alerts. Now on to the chewy substance of this posting. If you’re not an American, the term “swiftboating” will probably mean zilch (zero) to you, so you might want to ask the Internet before we continue with our discussion.
Image Credit : Anja Niedringhaus
It doesn’t matter which way up Michel Jarraud (Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization) holds the temperature chart. The only way the trend can be understood is upwards. The temperatures are going up.
That’s Global Warming, folks !
Looking at the temperature data from any of the major data sets around the world, it doesn’t take a second to accept that the Earth is warming :-
NOAA have posted the USA National Data analysis of the Climate for November 2009 :-
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2009&month=11&submitted=Get+Report
Nationally in the United States, November 2009 was the third warmest November ever, based on preliminary data and there “was not a single state that averaged below normal temperatures for the month.”
Professor Mike Hulme has been the science chap the BBC nearly always call, of late, when they want to inject an alternate view into a piece on Climate Change.
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6115644.stm
“Chaotic world of climate truth” Viewpoint by Mike Hulme, 4 November 2006
The author of the book “Why We Disagree About Climate Change” has been bravely trying to reframe Climate Change, not as a problem of science, but a problem of society. To some extent, I regard his work as useful. On the other hand, I find some of his work a mind trap.
