Nature Features
Australians crave a rainy day
By Sid Astbury Apr 20, 2007, 12:14 GMT
Life has already changed for those in the cities and towns. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide are already on restrictions that are reflected in dirty cars, withered gardens and public parks and playing fields rock-hard for want of watering. EPA/Frank Rumpenhorst
Sydney - When a water pipe burst in Melbourne in January householders in Australia's second biggest city ran into the street with buckets and pans to scoop up the precious liquid and carry it home.
It was a parable that Prime Minister John Howard could use as he primes the nation for the drastic measures that Australians need to take to deal with the worst-ever drought on the world's driest continent.
Life has already changed for those in the cities and towns. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide are already on restrictions that are reflected in dirty cars, withered gardens and public parks and playing fields rock-hard for want of watering.
In January Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said his east coast state was in an 'Armageddon situation' and that residents should limit showers to the three-minute length of the average pop song. But Queensland Water Commissioner Elizabeth Nosworthy now says even three minutes is too long. 'If you're a shower singer, just sing the chorus, not the whole song,' she said.
In Ballarat, which hosted the rowing when Melbourne staged the 1956 Olympics, there's barely enough water in Lake Wendouree for the ducks. In Goulburn, a town of 22,500 people near Sydney, the empty reservoir has been turned over to motorcycle enthusiasts for dirt-bike tracks.
'It's a grim situation and there's no point in pretending to the Australian public otherwise,' Howard said. 'We must all hope and pray there is rain.'
In what he described as an 'unprecedentedly dangerous situation' the prime minister said the 55,000 farmers in the Murray-Darling basin food-bowl in Australia's south-east corner would not get an allocation of water this year unless heavy rain fell in the next six weeks.
The region accounts for one-third of agricultural production and three-quarters of irrigated acreage like vineyards and orchards.
With 60 per cent of agricultural output exported, turning off irrigation in the basin will reduced world food supplies as well as doubling or trebling prices for fruit, vegetables and dairy products in local shops.
Ben Fargher, chief executive of the National Farmers Federation, said the restrictions were bound to force more farmers off the land and further reduce production.
Last season's cotton harvest halved, the grape harvest was down by one-third and the rice harvest was just one-tenth of the 2005 figure.
'Thousands of farmers will be seriously impacted but we're not saying today that thousands of producers will necessarily be leaving their properties,' Fargher said.
Already 16,000 farming families are receiving financial help that is costing the taxpayer 2 million Australian dollars (1.6 million US dollars) a day.
Phil O'Neill, who runs a Murray-Darling dairy farm, doubts he can get by without syphoned water from the Murray River. 'Without water, we are basically living in a desert here,' O'Neill said.
Last year his irrigation water allocations were way down and to be told that this year there might be none at all if the catchments don't fill is a big blow.
Meteorologist Graeme Pearman welcomes Howard's prayer for rain but urges on the prime minister an admission that the current drought is an expression of climate change. He notes that on the west coast of the continent rainfall is down 30 per cent on 1970 levels and that a similar phenomenon is building on the east coast.
'We spent 30 years waiting for east-coast rainfall to go back to 1970s levels but it didn't and we make that mistake again with the east coast,' Pearman said.
Howard is still loath to link six years of below-average rainfall to climate change. 'We've had very severe droughts before but we had smaller populations and we had lesser demand,' Howard said.
But Wendy Craik, the economist who heads the Murray-Darling Commission that warned of zero allocations, is open about inflow into the system being at its lowest in the 115 years that records have been kept.
'This drought has the fingerprints of climate change all over it,' she said.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Make it a very short prayer, Mister Howard. You need to get started with your desalinization units. You will not be able to build enough of them quickly enough as it is.
Fortune favors the prepared and the gods help those who help themselves.
Hey George - since there were lots of natural disasters (volcanoes, floods, asteroids etc) before mankind appeared on the scene, who was doing the sinning then ?
Its raining a lot in Scotland - guess we must be free from sin ?
Too many Muslims in Australia. They must be causing the country to turn into a desert ? But they may strike oil soon I suppose.
This has been coming for decades. Governments, the world over, are the same. In my home state, they ignored run-down bridges and now we are forced to do most of them at the same time.
Good move, huh?
Head in the sand - just like the Dinosaurs !
so what - some glaciers adavnce - meanwhile huge chunks are fall ing off antarctica, and dozens of glaciers elsewhere are retreatinh. No snow in the aAlps for sskiining, Southern england 10 degrees above normal
The sun is brighter, Glacier. The Martian Poles have been shrinking at about the same time we have been witnessing the widespread melting of permanent ice here on Earth. Spring and Summer have both gotten longer here in Texas. I don't think there is a sound argument about whether or not we are experiencing a warming in global climate.
The remaining arguments are about whether or not this warming trend has an anthropogenic cause or not and precisely what should we do about the warming.
I happen to believe that we are seeing increased heat from the sun and believe we need to start preparing to deal with the consequences. What strikes me as odd is that so many who believe that the problem arises solely from human activity and also argue against doing anything to prepare for what is about to occur. They want us to reduce GHG emissions and suffer through the problems we are about to have.
This is just about as profound a madness as what we see in Muslim Fanatics.
Melting glacier 'false alarm.' Aug 22, 2002. News Telegraph. Pictures claiming to show how man-made global warming has caused Arctic glaciers to retreat are at best misleading, says leading glaciologist.
The pictures, which compared the size of a glacier on Svalbard in 1918 with its size in 2002, included the warning that global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gases was causing Arctic glaciers to melt.
Those assertions are misleading at best, says Professor Ole Humlum, a leading Norwegian glaciologist. 'That glacier had already disappeared in the early 1920s,' says Humlum. '[It disappeared] as a result of a perfectly natural rise in temperature that had nothing to do with man-made global warming.
Will compasses point south?” No, this headline doesn’t come from some supermarket tabloid, it comes from the New York Times and it backs up what I’ve been saying for years – that we are headed for a geomagnetic reversal.
Magnetic field strength has waned 10 to 15 percent over the past 150 years, the article says, and the deterioration has accelerated. “The fact that it (magnetic field strength) is dropping so rapidly gives you pause,” says Dr. John A. Tarduno, professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester. The odds of a reversal are “more likely than not,” says Tarduno. (New York Times, July 13, 2004, by William J. Broad)
The article goes on to say that the last magnetic reversal occurred some 780,000 years ago, and that there is no correlation between magnetic reversals and extinctions.
I disagree with both of those contentions. I have evidence that there have been at least eleven magnetic reversals in the past 780,000 years - probably many more. I also have evidence that extinctions and reversals do in fact go hand-in-hand. And I have evidence (from Steens Mountain in Oregon) that magnetic reversals can take place in a mere 30 days.
Link between ice ages and magnetic reversals
That there is a link between magnetic reversals and ice ages is undeniable.
At least twelve magnetic reversals can be linked to glaciation during the last three million years alone.
A magnetic reversal about three million years ago marked the onset of glaciation. A magnetic reversal about two million years ago marked the onset of glaciation. And yet another reversal about one million years ago marked the onset of glaciation.
The Jaramillo magnetic reversal maked the onset of glaciation, as did the Brunhes magnetic reversal.
The Biwa I, Biwa II, Biwa III, and Blake (at the end Eemian) magnetic reversals coincided with glaciation, and so did the Lake Mungo, Mono Lake, and Gothenburg magnetic reversals (or excursions).
Many of those catastrophic cooling episodes, says Michael Rampino of NASA, may have actually been triggered by the magnetic reversal (or excursion).
Why should this concern us?
Several reasons:
One: We appear to be headed for another magnetic reversal right now. During the past 2000 years, magnetic field strength has fallen some 50 to 65 percent. Unfortunately, the rate of decline is picking up. Five percent of the decline has occurred during the last 100 years alone. This decline, say geophysicists, may be a precursor to a new reversal attempt.
Two: When ice ages begin, they begin incredibly fast. At the end Eemian, for example, the climate descended from a period of warmth such as today's - such as today's - into full-blown glacial severity in less than twenty years.
Three: I think we're headed into such a twenty-year period right now.
Four: The North Magnetic Pole is moving! 'The magnetic pole, which has steadily drifted for decades, has picked up its pace in recent years and could exit Canadian territory as soon as 2004,' said Larry Newitt of the Geological Survey of Canada. 'It's speed has increased considerably during the past 25 years,' the geophysicist said. See: CNN.com - North Magnetic Pole - March 20, 2002.
Five: According to John Tarduno, professor of geophysics at the Univerity of Rochester (NY), the next magnetic reversal could occur within a matter of centuries.
Tarduno based his findings on detailed studies of the Earth's magnetic field made during four trips above the Arctic Circle. (Published in the Proc. of the National Academy of Sciences, 16 Oct 2002.) _______________________________
Ice ages also correlate with magnetic activity on the Sun.
According to Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, the Sun displays a 100,000-year cycle of magnetic activity that corresponds to the Earth's ice age history.
Sharma's calculations suggest that when the Sun is magnetically more active, the Earth experiences a warmer climate, and vice versa, when the Sun is magnetically less active, there is a glacial period. Right now, the Earth is in an interglacial period (between ice ages). This is also a time of high solar activity.
This cycle appears to match the 100,000-year ice-age cycle first theorized by Milutin Milankovitch, which suggests that ice ages correspond to the cyclical varations in the Earth's orbit around the Sun. (Earth & Planetary Science Ltrs, Vol. 199, issues 3-4, June 10, 2002)
(One of the methods Sharma used to determine historic magnetic activity on the Sun was through the study of berillium 10, which I thoroughly agree with.
Earth’s magnetic field fading. December 12, 2003. The strength of the
Earth’s magnetic field has declined ten percent 10% during the past 150 years, says
Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University. This could be the prelude to a geomagnetic
reversal.
If there is a link between magnetic reversal and ice ages, how does one know which is dependent upon the other ? Geological evidence cannot be refined sufficiently to show the order of events so close together in time. Its the chicken and egg problem - it is very similar to the hypothesis put forward in the 'Great Global Warming Swindle' programme (now largely discredited because the producers admitted errors) - which said the rise in CO2 was a result of global warming rather than causing it
- Don't believe the Gore Neocons - it doesn't make your arguments very persuasive if you can only quote data from 2002. Try and keep up
In general, it is reasonable to question the link between man made CO2 and the advance of global warming because there are many areas of the relationshiop between them where the data is not absolute, but is 'reasonable conjecture'
However, to question the advance of glabal warming itself is the height of self deluding fantasy.
So, some glaciers are advancing - there are myriad explanations for this, some of which actually involve global warming where for instance weather patterns change, more precipitation takes place at the head of the glacier and it consequently moves faster and further. In contrast there are countless pieces of data which show the earth is warming - not the least of which is measurement of temperature. Perhaps, if you're not a scientist you haven't yet woken up to the fact that higher temperature = warmer ?
20 years of global ice . You quote ' ..the North magnetic Pole may exit Canadian territory as soon as 2004' ... ' haven't you noticed we've now moved past 2004 ! Did the pole exit or not ?
It should be possible to cover vast quantities of the Australian interior with solar panels which would generate enough electricity to power desalination plants for the production of fresh water from sea water in the coastal cities.
Australia can afford the technology and other nations would gladly invest in Australian expertise gained from the project in the near future. This is one area where Australia can genuinely lead the world - and it's something which MUST be done in any case. No reason why Australia couldn't turn this aspect of climate change to her economic advantage.
Largest manu of solar panels, you guessed it - bp.
So what's the problem - any business in a declining market will try to diversify into other markets. Its called 'trying to keep people employed' - not favoured by the lefties I know, as they expect to be employed by the government, shuffling paper or inventing new restrictions on hard working families, and be given inflated salaries paid out of taxes
The North Magnetic Pole is slowly drifting across the Canadian Arctic. The Geological Survey of Canada keeps track of this motion by periodically carrying out magnetic surveys to redetermine the Pole's location. The most recent survey, completed in May, 2001, determined an updated position for the Pole and established that it is moving approximately northwest at 40 km per year.
so the answer to my question is ?
11. Are computer simulations of the earth’s climate accurate?
No.
As researchers have come to a better understanding of the workings of climate, the projections have changed substantially. For example, the middle-range estimates of global temperature increase over the next 100 years from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have dropped significantly, from 3.3°C in 1990 to 2°C in the 1995 report.18
To understand why there are such huge uncertainties in the computer simulations, consider that the additional energy added to the climate system by the doubling of atmospheric CO2 is about 4 watts per square meter (W/m2) – a small amount of energy compared to the amount of the sun’s radiation (342 W/m2) at the top of the atmosphere. But 4 W/m2 is also small compared to the uncertainties in the climate change calculations. For example, knowledge of the amount of energy flowing from equator to poles is uncertain by an amount equivalent to 25–30 W/m2. The amount of sunlight absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected by the surface is also uncertain by as much as 25 W/m2. Some computer models include adjustments to the energy flows of as much as 100 W/m2. Imprecise treatment of clouds may introduce another 25 W/m2 of uncertainty into the basic computations.19
These uncertainties in modeling climate processes are many times larger than the 4 W/m2 input of energy resulting from a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. It is difficult to see how the climate impact of the 4 W/m2 can be accurately calculated in the face of such huge uncertainties. As a consequence, forecasts based on the computer simulations of climate may not even be meaningful at this time. A comparison of nearly all the most sophisticated climate models with actual measurements of current climate conditions found the models in error by about 100% in cloud cover, 50% in precipitation, and 30% in temperature change. In addition, even the best models give temperature change results differing from each other by a factor of two or more.20
According to the computer simulations, the temperature of the earth should have increased by at least 1°C since the beginning of the century because of increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases. In fact, the temperature actually increased by only 0.5°C, and, as noted above, much of that increase occurred prior to 1940, before some 80% of the CO2 had entered the atmosphere. Only a few tenths of a degree at most could have been caused by increases in atmospheric CO2. That is 3–4 times less than the computer models predicted. If the predictions exaggerated the warming to date by a factor of 3–4, they are unreliable for projecting the future climate change.
If the model projections for the last two decades are compared to the temperature trends of the lower atmosphere as measured by satellites and balloons, then the model projections must be lowered by an even larger factor.
The observed surface and lower-atmosphere temperatures do not support predictions of dramatically rising temperatures from increased atmospheric greenhouse gases.
18 See IPCC 1995, p. 6.
19 R. D. Cess et al., Absorption of solar radiation by clouds: Observations versus models, Science 267, 496 (1995); T. P. Charlock and T. L. Alberta, The CERES/ARM/GEWEX Experiment (CAGEX) for the retrieval of radiative fluxes with satellite data, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 77, 2673 (1996); R. S. Lindzen, Can increasing carbon dioxide cause climate change? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 94, 8335 (1997).
20 T. P. Barnett, Comparison of near-surface air temperature variability in 11 coupled global climate models, Journal of Climate 12, 511 (1999); W. L. Gates et al., An overview of the results of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP I), Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 80, 29 (1999).
Martin, I think your right we are heading to a ice age. Good work Mate!
...er not quite - the rate of growth in temperature may be less than predicted, but an actual fall in temperature doesn't follow, given the uncertainty of the data
IPCC reports in 1990 and 1995 have been quoted for projected temperature rise figures, but what are the latest reports saying ?
Another point - the effect of CO2 at 4 watts per square metre is compared with the incoming radiation from the sun, but this misleading. We need to know what the net amount of retained radiation from the sun is (i.e. after reflection effects and re-radiation as heat have been deducted) and compare the 4 watts for CO2 with this as additional retained heat.
And some more: The assertion that the temperature rise was mainly before 1940 is totally incorrect - it has been a steadily upward trend from 1900 to 2006, but there was a spike in temperature around 1940 when it rose more quickly and dropped again for a few years, but that is not significant over the 100 year period. It was the use of these fluctuations around 1940 - 1950 in the programme The Great Global Warming Swindle to try and disprove Global Warming which led to the producers accepting that they had misinterpreted the figures and had used misleading graphs
Whatever the objectors to global warming and/or the various projections and models may show, there is clear evidence that warming of some sort is happening. We may not be able to define the scale of it precisely, but you only have to look around to see the changes it is causing.
In England the dates at which various natural events occur - plants coming in to bloom, trees budding, wildlife breeding - has moved about 10 days earlier within 2 decades. Many birds no longer migrate South because it is acceptably warm for them throughout the winter. Snow, which used to be a regular occurence in the South of England winters is now rarely seen. Last week, the temperature in London over several days was 10 degrees centigrade warmer than the long term average of around 15 for this time of year - that is not an ' an acceptable variation on the average', it is completely off the scale of expectation
In the Alps, skiing is only possible in some areas with the heavy use of snow machines. Glaciers have retreated hundreds of metres. All around the world there is clear evidence of rising temperature with droughts, forest fires, dried up rivers
Global Warming detractors can, of course, point to areas where glaciers are growing - but not many as this is probably due to local changes in weather patterns.
Such changes in pattern are also happening in the UK with much drier conditions in the South and much more rain in the North, these are clearly linked to rising temperatures - there is no acceptable way falling temperatures could have this effect
Global Warming is happening - whether CO2 is a large or small contributor is still open to debate. The most likely scenario is that the sun is brightening and there are additional effect from CO2 (and Methane) and to some extent cleaning up the atmosphere of dust and similar pollution which results in more radiation getting through.
Here are some valid criticisms of the IPCC report and Al Gore's 'documentary'.
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6031514559084805348&q=global+warming&h l=en
Yes, there are all sorts of videos on both sides of the argument, but to see an anti-warming spokesman wriggling his way out of saying anything based on fact (after all he is paid by the oil companies) go to video.google and search under Paxman Ebell. Jeremy Paxman ask real questions as opposed to the mamby pamby style of american interviews, and Myron Ebell looks very guilty at peddling his half truths
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.
A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change 'of remarkable amplitude' in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.
Similar events in pre-history are known to have caused sudden 'flips' of the climate, bringing ice ages to northern Europe within a few decades. The development - described as 'the largest and most dramatic oceanic change ever measured in the era of modern instruments', by the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, which led the research - threatens to turn off the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe's weather mild.
If that happens, Britain and northern Europe are expected to switch abruptly to the climate of Labrador - which is on the same latitude - bringing a nightmare scenario where farmland turns to tundra and winter temperatures drop below -20C. The much-heralded cold snap predicted for the coming week would seem balmy by comparison.
A report by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Sweden - launched by Nobel prize-winner Professor Paul Crutzen and other top scientists - warned last week that pollution threatened to 'trigger changes with catastrophic consequences' like these.
Scientists have long expected that global warming could, paradoxically, cause a devastating cooling in Europe by disrupting the Gulf Stream, which brings as much heat to Britain in winter as the sun does: the US National Academy of Sciences has even described such abrupt, dramatic changes as 'likely'. But until now it has been thought that this would be at least a century away.
The new research, by scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science at Lowestoft and Canada's Bedford Institute of Oceanography, as well as Woods Hole, indicates that this may already be beginning to happen.
Dr Ruth Curry, the study's lead scientist, says: 'This has the potential to change the circulation of the ocean significantly in our lifetime. Northern Europe will likely experience a significant cooling.'
Robert Gagosian, the director of Woods Hole, considered one of the world's leading oceanographic institutes, said: 'We may be approaching a threshold that would shut down [the Gulf Stream] and cause abrupt climate changes.
'Even as the earth as a whole continues to warm gradually, large regions may experience a precipitous and disruptive shift into colder climates.' The scientists, who studied the composition of the waters of the Atlantic from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego, found that they have become 'very much' saltier in the tropics and subtropics and 'very much' fresher towards the poles over the past 50 years.
This is alarming because the Gulf Stream is driven by cold, very salty water sinking in the North Atlantic. This pulls warm surface waters northwards, forming the current.
The change is described as the 'fingerprint' of global warming. As the world heats up, more water evaporates from the tropics and falls as rain in temperate and polar regions, making the warm waters saltier and the cold ones fresher. Melting polar ice adds more fresh water.
Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred. Many studies have shown that similar changes in the waters of the North Atlantic in geological time have often plunged Europe into an ice age, sometimes bringing the change in as little as a decade.
The National Academy of Sciences says that the jump occurs in the same way as 'the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light'. Once the switch has occurred the new, hostile climate, lasts for decades at least, and possibly centuries.
When the Gulf Stream abruptly turned off about 12,700 years ago, it brought about a 1,300-year cold period, known as the Younger Dryas. This froze Britain in continuous permafrost, drove summer temperatures down to 10C and winter ones to -20C, and brought icebergs as far south as Portugal. Europe could not sustain anything like its present population. Droughts struck across the globe, including in Asia, Africa and the American west, as the disruption of the Gulf Stream affected currents worldwide.
Some scientists say that this is the 'worst-case scenario' and that the cooling may be less dramatic, with the world's climate 'flickering' between colder and warmer states for several decades. But they add that, in practice, this would be almost as catastrophic for agriculture and civilisation.
This isn't new - I saw a TV programme about it 2 or 3 years ago. The main supplier of the fresh water, (which will cause the heavier saline Gulf Stream to dip earlier than now in its circulation around the Atlantic), is the melting Greenland icefields
- 20 Oct 2005 - Greenland 's ice-cap has thickened slightly in recent
years despite wide predictions of a thaw, scientists said today. Satellite
measurements show that more snowfall is thickening the ice-cap,
especially at high altitudes, according to the report in the journal Science.
'The overall ice thickness changes are ... approximately plus 5 cms
(1.9 inches) a year or 54 cms (21.26 inches) over 11 years,' according
to the experts at Norwegian, Russian and U.S. institutes led by Ola
Johannessen at the Mohn Sverdrup center for Global Ocean Studies
and Operational Oceanography in Norway.
Most articles make it sound as if all of Antarctica is melting. As far as I’m
concerned, these reports are misleading, because it's mainly only the ice on
the Antarctic Peninsula that's melting..
Here’s a map of Antarctica. At 5,500,000 square miles, this continent is
almost twice the size of the contiguous forty-eight United States (about
3,500,000 square miles).
Do you see that small piece of land jutting into the ocean toward the top left corner of Antarctica? That’s the part of Antarctica where the ice is melting - the Antarctic Peninsula .
Saying that all of Antarctica is melting is like looking at the climate of Oregon and implying that this applies to the entire United States.
Satellites show overall increases in Antarctic Sea Ice Cover Around Antarctica
Claire Parkinson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center found that sea ice seasons have lengthened by at least one day per year over an area of 2.16 million square miles (about 3/4 of the size of the continental United States). This is roughly twice as large as the area where sea ice seasons have shortened by at least one day per year.
Sea ice now covers the area for three weeks longer per year than it did 21 years ago. Annals of Glaciology, Aug 22, 2002
The Greenland ice cap is perhaps getting thicker (although the report quoted is 2005) but this is through higher precipitation rates, which is one of the consequences forecast for Northern latitudes from Global Warming
What is more worrying is the recent discovery that the higher Summer melt rates on the glaciers are allowing more water to seep down through the ice to bedrock, where it forms a lubricating layer. This allows the glaciers to move faster than before and could even lead to quite rapid slippage.
The increased speed of movement may well outweigh the higher precipitation and ice thickness higher up the glacier, so the net effect is faster overall melting
Why do people keep quoting old data - i.e. sea ice in 2002. Doesn't anyone have up to date information - or are the anti-Glabal Warming fraternity trying to hide it ?
Some up to date information -
In 1996, 50 cu kms of ice was deposited in the sea from Greenland. In 2005, figure was 150 cu kms
Air temperature up 3 degrees centigrade in 20 years, extra melt water as lubricant has increased flow rate of glaciers by 3 times against 1990 rate
'Ice-quakes' showing sudden rapid movement of glaciers has increased from 6- 15 over the 1993 - 2000 period, to 20 in 2003, 24 in 2004, 32 in first 10 months of 2005
A complete new island several miles long has been revealed by the retreating ice.
If Greenland ice melts completely sea level rise will be 27 ft (7.2 metres). If you're living in low lying Florida or the Southern states - check you insurance !
Does anybody who predicts the slowing down of the Gulf stream ever consider the prevailing winds ?
Here in the UK we get most of our wind from the SW and that is also the direction of the Gulf Stream . What can bring in warm air can also bring in warm water .
Its not so much a slowing down of the Gulf Stream, as the effect of far greater quantities of Artic melt water, which being non-saline, is lighter than the water in the Gulf Stream. When the saline Gulf Stream meets the melt water, it therefore sinks to a lower level on its circulatory route around the North Atlantic and reduces the warming effect on the shores of the UK and Europe.
However, with Global Warming the Gulf Water will be a little hotter than previously and will have a tendency to rise (in the very cold melt water) - this may partially or wholly offset the sinking effect from saline water in melt water
The Gulf Stream is much more salty than the meltwater and therefore heavier , will it not still sink ?
That's why in my last sentence I said 'partially or wholly' - depends on the relative buoyancy effects of saline/fresh water and warm/cold water, and the equation also gets affected by how much mixing of the gulf/melt water takes place. More mixing would make the gulf water cooler so less benefit to UK but also less relative buoyancy but also make it less saline so more relative buoyancy. Its a difficult equation to predict !
No matter how you put it we are heading to a ice age, they come on suddenly and last thousands of years, happens every time and we are due one, so forget about sea levels rising. I think global warming is usually very beneficial to mankind but unfortunately it does not last.
And your evidence for this is ?
Evidence is millions of years of history. Continous cycles of warming and ice ages, big difference is ice ages begin sudddenly and last longer than warming.
You've simply stated effect - I was looking for evidence of cause. We all know fluctuations in temperature happen, what is relevent to today's problems is the rate of change and the link to causes
Look at the total picture of what is going on. Examine past ice ages and mini ice ages and become informed. The Hollywood crowd jumps on global warming as the latest new way to sell something. These people are not very knowledgeable they are all about selling something to the uninformed public. Start challenging anything that is now marketed as green? What is going to sell better a ice age or global warming, Ikea has been on this green marketingting for years now we got gore and crow and u2, who's next. What, 17000 scientist were against kyoto agreement? Its unbelievable that these conservatives and bush believers are pushing this global warming thing so hard. When is that asteroid gonna hit?
Cosmic rays are also associated with increased cloud cover, which could cool the planet by blocking out more of the Sun’s rays. They also interact with molecules in the atmosphere to create nitrogen oxide, a gas that eats away at our planet’s ozone layer, which protects us from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays.
Richard Muller, one of the UC Berkeley physicists who co-discovered the cycle, said Melott and his colleagues have come up with a plausible galactic explanation for the biodiversity cycle. Muller and Robert Rohde also speculated that our solar system’s movement through the galactic plane was behind the cycle, but the pair could not conceive of any reason why conditions on the north and south side of the galactic plane should differ.
“That’s where they succeeded,” Muller said in a telephone interview. “They came up with something we didn’t think of, which puts an asymmetry in. I’m delighted they did that and I congratulate them.”
OK - I've looked at the total picture and it appears you haven't. Stop trying to make political points about Gore or whatever and look at the things happening around you. Explain the melting ice, the retreating glaciers, the rising temperatures all around the world. Explain the droughts, the animal and plant life changing their growing and breeding patterns. Explain hundreds of over signs of warming.
You can argue about whether CO2 is a cause of this or not, but irrespective of that, global warming is happening. The reasons may well be difficult to explain and all sorts of theories, some more credible than others, can be suggested, but the one irrefutable fact is that the warming trend is happening. You can stick you head in the sand and say an ice age is coming - it may well be, but by then you and most of mankind will be extinct
There are 67000 glaciers on this planet. We have studied about a 100 of them. 20 of them are melting, now how does that turn into all glaciers are melting?In 2005 we had a strong hurricane season, yep all news reports were that global warming is the reason, then in 06 basically nothing, so what do you know now a report that yes this is global warming will reduce hurricanes. Oh yeah and Iraq had WMD's ,How gullible are people?
Well, what planet do you live on ? Only 100 glaciers studied ! - I can only assume you can't count above that number.
Apart from satellite studies of almost all glaciers, the following are the results of recent studies -
Switzerland - 110 glaciers, 103 retreating
China - 612 glaciers, 95% retreating
Austria 99 glaciers, 95 retreating
Italy - 69 glaciers, all retreating
France - 6 glaciers, all retreating
Glacier National Park, US, only 27% of ground covered compared with 100 years ago
Antarctica coastal area 244 glaciers, 87% retreating
These are just a few picked at random, and dozens of other locations around the world have glaciers under study.
I expect you can nit-pick about what is a 'study' - but its quite easy in the Alps - you look out of your window and find the glacier isn't there anymore !
So simple - seems like a very apt description of you. The above has covered you dubious assertion about glaciers. But I would add that Glaciers in Greenland - hundreds under intensive study - are now moving seawards at three time the rate of previous, because they are riding a lubricating film of water from extra melting. The quanity of ice going into the sea has risen from 50 cu kms to 150 cu kms. Anti global warming boneheads say the glaciers are getting thicker - of course they are - the snow fall is higher from more water evaporating into the atmosphere from higher temperatures. But, that extra thickness at the top is partially fueling the faster movement and melting lower down
On the hurricane question - part of the global warming modelling has revealed the existence of wind shear, which can affect the formation of hurricanes. This may be the reason for last year's low total. However, even if it is not, one of the predictions of weather resulting from global warming is that it will become increasingly variable. So, you may get a lot of hurricanes one year, a few the next. Similarly, the current heavy snow in the rockies is not proof of a new ice age. In England the temperature one year ago was zero centigrade (32 if you're on the out of date Farenheir system). This year it reached 25C (around 78 F) which is 15C above the long term average - thats such a wide variation that its off the scale - but is likely to be matched, or more, as global warming progresses.
I think you should re-consider your use of the word gullible about others - it seems far more applicable to you
Since you have a lot of propaganda about glaciers could you list the ones expanding.Thanks Also England was warmer in 1984 than this month. Bottom line all global warming leads to global cooling/ice age.The two largest glacier in New Zealand are Fox and Franz Josef. And they are expanding at a rate of between 30 cm and 80 cm per day. Those two glaciers aren’t alone. The National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research studies 50 glaciers in New Zealand. They say that between 1998 and 2002 glaciers lost some ground but in recent years it gained it all back. “Since 1977 overall for the Southern Alps there has been little change in size of the glaciers.Mount Shasta has seven glaciers. Two scientists there started measuring it year after using and to their “amazement... found that Shasta’s glaciers are growing. The Whitney Glacier, for example, is galloping forward at the rate of four inches per day. Aerial images indicate Whitney has expand by about 30 percent in the last 50 years” And while we are told that global warming is causing everything now frozen to melt the scientists studying glaciers on Mount Shasta say “they’re growing because of global warming.Unless, of course, by everything you don’t include the massive Baffin Bay region of Greenland, the bulk of Antarctica, thousands of glaciers in India and Pakistan, the annual ice formations of Hudson Bay, 50 glaciers in New Zealand including the two largest, a slew of glaciers in California, the massive Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina, glaciers in Norway, Alaska, Washington state, and Colorado. And if I keep reading on glaciers I would, no doubt, have found many more “exceptions” and “only” expanding glaciers.
Hubbard Glacier is defying the global paradigm of valley or mountain glacier shrinkage and retreat in response to global climate warming. Hubbard Glacier is the largest of eight calving glaciers in Alaska that are currently increasing in total mass and advancing. All of these glaciers calve into the sea, are at the heads of long fiords, have undergone retreats during the last 1,000 years, calve over relatively shallow submarine moraines, and have unusually small ablation areas compared to their accumulation areas.For example, Hubbard Glacier retreated about 38 miles between 1130 A.D. and late in the 19th century.Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who have recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.
A new study of the Karakoram, Hindu Kush, and Western Himalaya mountain ranges by researchers at England's Newcastle University shows consistent recent growth among the region's glaciers.
Researchers found cooler summers are failing to melt winter snows, which are themselves becoming more frequent, resulting in advancing ice sheets.
The study was published in the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.
As a non-scientist I am puzzled - I understood that during the ice ages the seas were much lower because all the water was locked up in the glaciers.
We now - so it is said - have glaciers expanding apace, yet the seas are also rising. So where is the water for the growing glaciers coming from ?
Surely this indicates there must be a lot of water coming from land based sources = drought = warming ?
Als, I understand glaciers are moving faster - surely this means they can expand their length before melting, if the rate of movement is faster that the rate of melting. They would only be 'growing' if their total bulk increases. Is this true in all cases of expending glaciers ?
You can also make a list of places where sea levels are falling. Soon that will also be global warming.
How can you have sea levels falling in one place and rising in another - water finds its own level until in equilibrium ?
In the early 1990s, scientists forecast that the coral atoll of nine islands - which is only 12ft above sea level at its highest point - would vanish within decades because the sea was rising by up to 1.5in a year. However, a new study has found that sea levels have since fallen by nearly 2.5in and experts at Tuvalu's Meteorological Service in Funafuti, the islands' administrative centre, said this meant they would survive for another 100 years.
They said similar sea level falls had been recorded in Nauru and the Solomon Islands, which were also considered to be under threat. The release of the data from Tuvalu, formerly part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, will renew scientific debate about climate change and its impact on ocean levels. The island's scientists admitted they were surprised and 'a little embarrassed' by the change, which they blame on unusual weather conditions caused by El Nino in 1997.
Yes, a new study using Europe's Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite has determined that over the last ten years, sea level in the Arctic ocean has been falling at an average rate of around 2mm/year. This is very new and very interesting news, though it is preliminary and not published in any peer reviewed journals yet. But it is not evidence that globally sea levels are not rising, they are falling.Contrary to popular belief in climatic stability during recent times, the Earth's
climate of the past 1000 years has changed significantly.
The Medieval climatic optimum (AD 700-1200) was a time of extremely
favorable climate in northern Europe. Harvests were good, fishing was abundant,
sea ice remained far to the north, vineyards flourished 300 miles north of their
present limits, and famine was rare. This was the period of great Viking expansion
from Scandinavia. Viking settlements were based on cereal grains (wheat and
barley) and dairy herds (goats, sheep, and cattle).
Iceland began settling in AD 874 and soon became an independent republic.
Greenland was colonized in AD 985 by Erik the Red. By the 12th century,
two sizeable communities existed in southwestern Greenland.
During the Medieval climatic optimum, sea level stood at least a half meter
higher in southern Florida than today from the first through tenth centuries.
In other words, sea levels in the Atlantic have fallen at least
19 inches in the last 1,000 years.
Climatic deterioration began in the 1200s; glaciers expanded in Iceland and in
the Alps. Vineyards began declining in Germany and by the 1300s had completely
disappeared in England. Fishing replaced cereal grains as the main source of food
in Iceland, and sea ice expanded southward between Greenland and Iceland.
Around 1340-50 the more northerly of the two Greenland communities was
abandoned to the Inuits. By 1510, only Inuits remained. Cold climate reduced
dairy production, and extensive sea ice hampered essential trade with Europe.
Across the Pacific Islands, during the period AD 1270-1475, sea level fell
by more than a meter and temperatures declined an average 1½EC. El Niño
increased in frequency, and precipitation increased.
Sea levels fell by more than three feet in a thousand years!
And we’re worried about a rise of .03 millimeters (supposedly)
per year?
Please note that 'El Niño increased in frequency, and
precipitation increased.'
Fred - even as a non scientist, I know that the sea bed in the Pacific has been rising in places (up to several metres in one area, prior to a recent earthquake) so talking about whether some coral is now higher or lower than the surface of the sea is irrelevant in terms of whether the sea level is rising or falling
Fred - regarding Arctic sea level - the whole of Scotland has risen considerably over the centuries as the removal of the ice coverage in the last Ice Age was removed and the land rises because of less weight on it. (The South of England is falling as a linked event, because the whole of the British Isles are slowly tipping - North, Souith down)
Such changes in underlying ground level can obviously lead to spurious conclusions about rising or falling sea levels, but it is the true change that matters. I suspect that a similar rise to that of Scotland could be happening in the Artic as the Ice Cover diminishes. Was this taken into account in your quoted figures ?
Fred - all the stuff about the climate not being stable, the warm period in the past and cultivation in Iceland, Greenland etc is very well known and is not disputed. I know about vineyards flourishing in England - I live there and new ones are currently appearing all over the place ! (The converse of course, is that while nice conditions were appearing in the North, drought was probably increasing in the South)
While all this past evidence may give comfort, what matters today is the RATE of change, and that is where current worries begin - if we flip too rapidly in and out of warming (and maybe cold) periods due to acceleration of the rate of change through human pollution we may not be able to cope and even more importantly, other life forms won't adapt. For instance Dolphins are now appearing in the Northern waters of Canada because the Southern waters are too warm - this is so unusual that the local Innuit people don't even have a word for the creature in their language. If the waters warm further where do the dolphins go next ? Birds are not migrating South from Europe because they are quite warm enough staying through the winter - but when they also start breeding earlier in Spring, the supporting food chains of insects, plants and so on, have not necessarily changed their habits at the same rate, so the young birds are starving populations are falling rapidly
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George GaclarkApr 20th, 2007 - 17:35:18
Australia isn't going to get any rain unless they (all) and when I say all I mean all the people repent of their sins! All these natural disasters happen because of the huge increse in sins!
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