Nature News
World climate experts meet to agree synthesis report
Nov 12, 2007, 12:03 GMT
Valencia - World climate experts and delegates from 130 countries were meeting Monday in the Spanish city of Valencia to approve a summary of the UN's three-volume report on climate change.
The six-day conference of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set to approve a concise synthesis report of core findings targeted at policymakers.
The opening session Monday was due to be addressed by, among others, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled to participate in a press conference to launch the synthesis report on Saturday, the last day of the conference.
The full report on climate change has been carried out by hundreds of scientists since 1988, the year the IPCC was set up.
The IPCC was jointly awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize along with former US vice-president and environmental campaigner Al Gore.
Talks are taking place in Bali next month on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
Probably as a comic turn for entertainment after dinner
...they don't forget to invite a scientist...
why they call you fool on the hill.
The fool on the hill sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning 'round.
Here are a few unacknowledged observations:
www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html
web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2002/pluto.html
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/120259.stm
www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060504_red_jr.html
Clearly, it is not just the Earth that is warming up. It is the entire solar system. The only way this can happen is if the sun has grown brighter. Let's face it. The Sun is NOT an engineered reactor. We have NO guaranties that it will behave the same from one year to the next, let alone from one decade to the next.
This raises a large number of questions and issues that are NOT being considered because we are suffering from this silly and quite possibly fatal fascination with minuscule changes in carbon dioxide concentrations.
There is a long list of things we should be considering and doing. We are doing none of them because climatologists have chosen to play politics instead of practicing science.
Most studies suggest that before the industrial age, there was a good correlation between natural “forcings' – solar fluctuations and other factors such as the dust ejected by volcanoes – and average global temperatures. Solar forcing may have been largely responsible for warming in the late 19th and early 20th century, levelling off during the mid-century cooling (see Global temperatures fell between 1940 and 1980).
The 2007 IPCC report halved the maximum likely influence of solar forcing on warming over the past 250 years from 40% to 20%. This was based on a reanalysis of the likely changes in solar forcing since the 17th century.
But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny.
Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, BUT NO UPWARD OR DOWNWARD TREND.
Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity.
This claim defies logic, Ed. If the IPCC analysis is correct, why are the planets warming up from here out to Pluto?
The logic is impeccable - see below -
From New Scientist, May 2007 -
There have been claims that warming on Mars and Pluto are proof that the recent warming on Earth is caused by an increase in solar activity, and not by greenhouses gases. But we can say with certainty that, even if Mars, Pluto or any other planets have warmed in recent years, it is not due to changes in solar activity.
The Sun's energy output has not increased since direct measurements began in 1978 If increased solar output really was responsible, we should be seeing warming on all the planets and their moons, not just Mars and Pluto.
Our solar system has eight planets, three dwarf planets and quite a few moons with at least a rudimentary atmosphere, and thus a climate of sorts. Their climates will be affected by local factors such as orbital variations, changes in reflectance (albedo) and even volcanic eruptions, so it would not be surprising if several planets and moons turn out to be warming at any one time.
However, given that a year on Mars is nearly two Earth years long, and that a year on Pluto lasts for 248 Earth years, it is rather early to start drawing conclusions about long-term climate trends on the outer bodies of the Solar System.
What do we know? Images of Mars suggest that between 1999 and 2005, some of the frozen carbon dioxide that covers the south polar region turned into gas (sublimated). This may be the result of the whole planet warming
One theory is that winds have recently swept some areas of Mars clean of dust, darkening the surface, warming the Red Planet and leading to further increases in windiness – a positive feedback effect.
There is a great deal of uncertainty, though. The warming could be a regional effect. And recent results from the thermal imaging system on the Mars Odyssey probe suggest that the polar cap is not shrinking at all, but varies greatly from one Martian year to the next, although the details have yet to be published.
Observations of the thickness of Pluto's atmosphere in 2002 suggested the dwarf planet was warming even as its orbit took it further from the Sun. The finding baffled astronomers at the time, and the cause has yet to be determined.
It has since been suggested that this is due to a greenhouse effect: as it gets closer to the sun Pluto may warm enough for some of the methane ice on its surface to turn into a gas. This would cause further warming, which would continue for a while even after Pluto's orbit starts to take it away from the Sun.
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Fool on the hillNov 12th, 2007 - 13:29:34
Have they invited SP4?
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