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Sore Throat
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 Tue Dec 09, 2003 3:34 am
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1,300 glaciers have lost between 25 per cent and 75 per cent of their mass since 1850.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cpress/20031203/ca_pr_on_na/envir onment_water_2
Shrinking glaciers, lower lake levels may be linked to climate change: report
Wed Dec 3, 6:52 PM ET
DENNIS BUECKERT
OTTAWA (CP) - Shrinking glaciers in the Rockies and sinking water levels in the Great Lakes could be early effects of climate change, says the author of a major Statistics Canada report.
Fluctuating water levels are normal in the Great Lakes but the past decade has brought six warmer-than-average years and a decline in ice cover and precipitation, says the report.
Francois Soulard, senior research officer at the federal agency, said the decline in water levels goes beyond what can be explained by natural weather variability.
"It is probably an indicator of climate change," he said. "The water level at Montreal, which is sort of an indicator for what's going on in the Great Lakes, has been dropping steadily since the last century."
Increased consumption in the Great Lakes area could also be a factor, he added.
The study, entitled Fresh Water Resources in Canada, notes that low water levels have threatened the navigability of the St. Lawrence Seaway in recent years. Low water levels can also threaten recreational activities, water purification, power generation and aquatic life.
Soulard also warned that the rapid disappearance of mountain glaciers is bad news for some of the most important rivers on the Prairies.
"The North and South Saskatchewan rivers are fed by these glaciers and these glaciers are the source of water for later in the summer when it's so important for agricultural activities.
"Once the snow melt in the mountains has gone away and the rainy season is over then what you have is the base flow which is mostly in the prairies due to glacial melt."
The study notes that 1,300 glaciers have lost between 25 per cent and 75 per cent of their mass since 1850. Total glacial cover along the eastern slope of the Rockies is now close to its lowest level in 10,000 years.
Water squabbles are already growing on the Prairies. Environment Minister Lorne Taylor recently called on Albertans to cut their water consumption to avert a crisis.
Soulard said natural balance between evaporation and precipitation in the Rockies is changing over time.
"It's a bit like a bank account where the capital is being drawn upon. Interest is not covering the ecosystem uses downstream."
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 12-08-2003] |
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Sore Throat
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Tue Dec 09, 2003 3:43 am
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031206/sc_afp/india_environment_031206152929
Global warming could submerge three of India's largest cities: scientist
MADRAS (AFP) - Global warming (news - web sites) could submerge three of India's biggest cities beneath the sea by 2020 unless the crisis was brought under control, an Indian scientist warned.
"If the warming continues, there will be about half to one metre increase in sea level by 2020 and cities like Bombay, Calcutta and Madras will be completely submerged," said Rajiv Nigam, a scientist with the Geological Oceanography Division, in the western Indian state of Goa.
He said that a one-metre rise in sea level could cause five trillion rupees (108 billion dollars) worth of damage to property in Goa alone.
"If this is the quantum of damage in a small state like Goa that has only two districts, imagine the extent of property loss in metros like Bombay," he added Saturday at a workshop in the National College in Dirudhy, Tamil Nadu state.
He also predicted that global warming could also cause frequent cyclones along the coastal areas and affect the annual monsoon rains, which is crucial for India's farm-dependent economy.
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Sore Throat
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Tue Dec 09, 2003 3:55 am
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031207/ap_on_sc/un_climate_change_2
Experts: Global Warming May Cool Europe
By EMILY BACKUS, Associated Press Writer
MILAN, Italy - Western Europe might actually get colder as a result of global warming (news - web sites), because the melting Arctic ice cap is cooling off the warm ocean current that is largely responsible for Europe's mild weather, scientists and environmentalists said.
If the ice cap in Greenland and the Arctic continues to melt at its current rate, Europe's temperatures would take a sharp dip after five or more decades of increasingly warm weather. That turnaround could spell trouble for regions that by then will have adapted to more tropical conditions, the experts told reporters Friday at a U.N. climate change conference here.
"To mitigate the advancement, the increase, the acceleration of that warming, we would need to take really radical steps, far more extreme than the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) on global warming is proposing," Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol said.
Bamber said increased influxes of water from the Artic could trigger a slowdown or diversion of the Gulf Stream, the current that sweeps warm water from the Gulf of Mexico up to the North Atlantic, warming the waters and climate of Western Europe.
Bamber also said that in the next five years, Europe could expect increasingly hazardous conditions in the Alps. Last summer was the first ever that the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc were closed for fear of rocks loosened by melted ice and snow.
And during Europe's record heat wave this summer, 10 percent of the "permanent" ice in the Italian Alps melted away, said Damiano Di Simine, president of the Italian chapter of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps.
He told reporters that 53 billion cubic feet of fresh water had been lost, a resource critical to northern Italy's water-intensive crops, like rice.
"But every year we lose large quotas of water, between 5 and 10 percent of the Alpine ice, so within about 20 or 30 years, well lose it all," he said.
Earlier this week, the United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Program issued a report saying that global warming was threatening the world's ski resorts, with melting snow at lower altitudes forcing the sport to move higher and higher up mountains, and threatening to make downhill skiing disappear altogether at some resorts.
Despite grim the prognosis, panelist Bill Hare, Climate Policy Director of Greenpeace International, cited European efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions as significant progress toward implementing policies and technologies that can slow climate change.
The Kyoto treaty calls for countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming. The U.N. conference is grappling with the possibility that the pact might never come into force because the United States has rejected it and Russia hasn't ratified it.
"The hardest and most fundamental problem to be overcome is the U.S. at present," Hare said. "And unless and until the U.S. starts to move, everyone else will be that much slower."
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Sore Throat
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Tue Dec 09, 2003 11:40 pm
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/oneworld/20031209/wl_oneworld/4591748011070969313
Global Warming Threatens Lake Bursts in Nepal
Sanjaya Dhakal, OneWorld South Asia
KATHMANDU, Dec 9 (OneWorld) - Although Nepal's share in the global emission of greenhouse gases is almost nil, the consequences of global warming (news - web sites) and climate change - receding snowlines, lake bursts and flash floods - threaten to wash away vast areas of the country, including the region that's home to Mount Everest (news - web sites).
The meltdown has sent a chill across the Himalayan nation. Over the last couple of years, it has recorded a hazy winter, hotter summer months and frequent landslides, which experts attribute to climatic change.
Weathermen believe this could be the harbinger of even more miserable weather to come. "The average temperature in Nepal is rising by 0.5 degrees Celsius per decade," points out a senior official in the climate change section in the Ministry of Population and Environment, Purushottam Kunwar.
As Nepal is home to the mighty Himalayas, global warming has increased the pace of snow melting, which, in turn, has made glacial lakes swell.
The United Nations (news - web sites) Environment Program (UNEP) had warned five years ago that 20 big glacial lakes in the country are at risk of floods from glacial lake bursts, which could trigger huge loss of life and property.
Different reports suggest the frequency of such bursts has increased in the recent past. "Five glacial lake bursts occurred in Nepal from 1977 to 1998 according to records and satellite imagery," says a climate change officer at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF-Nepal Program), Sandeep Chamling Rai.
WWF-Nepal acts as a member secretary organization of the Climate Change Network Nepal, which includes a number of domestic and international environmental bodies keeping a watch on global warming and its impact on Nepal.
One of the most startling results of climate change can be seen in the spectacular Tsho Rolpa glacial lake situated in the Rolwaling valley, north of the capital Kathmandu.
"The lake had an area of 0.23 sq kilometers in 1950. It has since swollen to 1.7 sq kilometers," says the director general of the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Madan Lal Shrestha.
UNEP had in the past issued apocalyptic warnings about the likelihood of the lake bursting, triggering flash floods in rivers downstream. It was reported that if it burst, the Tsho Rolpa could affect life and property as far away as 100 kilometers downstream.
Immediately after the UNEP warning, the department started the Tsho Rolpa Risk Reduction Project, with the help of a Dutch agency.
The project has siphoned a huge quantity of water and has brought down the water level by 3 meters. According to UNEP, the water level needs to be brought down by at least 20 meters to ensure safety.
As recently as August 2003, the Kawari glacier lake, situated in the foothills of the Annapurna II mountain, burst, destroying property worth US $100,000. Five people were killed and dozens rendered homeless.
Glacial lake bursts on a smaller scale have been frequently reported in the past few decades. On September 3, 1998, the Sabai Tsho lake-burst killed two persons and washed away fields and trekking trails of Solukhumbu district, which is home to Mount Everest.
Likewise, in September 1997, the Dudh Koshi burst destroyed a mini hydro plant there. On July 1991, the Chilbung lake burst, damaging houses in Beding village in Rolwaling valley.
"These are only few examples. Glacial lake bursts occurred in the past as well, but their frequency has increased of late because of rising pace of snow melting thanks to the rise in temperature," asserts Shrestha.
According to Rai, an inventory carried out by ICIMOD (International Center for Integrated Mountain Development) and UNEP has shown that there are 26 potential dangerous glacial lakes in Nepal.
Rapid melting of snow has also led to the receding of the snowline and glacial rivers. "The Rikhasambha glacier river, located in the north-western Dhaulagiri valley, has receded 100 meters between 1974 and 1994. Such recession of glacial rivers is also seen elsewhere," points out Shrestha.
Which is why, he says, Nepal is witnessing a disturbance in mountain climate, flash floods, cloudbursts, erratic weather patterns and so on.
Every year, the number of people dying in floods and landslides increases. In the year 2003, more than 300 people died of floods and landslides across the country.
Greenhouse gases could indeed create a climatic calamity, say climatologists. The spatial variability of the monsoon conditions causes floods and landslides in some regions while severe drought conditions occur in other parts.
"In Nepal's context, the rise in temperature results in enlargement of existing glacial lakes, causing frequent landslides and floods, which destroy vast acres of crops due to hot air flow," says Rai.
Kunwar points out that climate change is responsible for erratic weather patterns such as the thick haze that shrouds Nepal's Terai (southern plains) area in winter.
"The haze destroys cash crops of this region, which is the breadbasket of the country. And due to delay in regular snowfall, people living in the western Himalayan region are suffering from outbreaks of viral influenza and other diseases," he maintains.
Global warming is also raising temperatures at home. Says environmental journalist Bhairab Risal, "It is very disappointing that while Nepal does not emit many greenhouse gases, it has to face the consequences of actions of other developed countries. Due to their actions, our white gold (mountains) may be under threat."
WWF-Nepal will soon be making a detailed study on the impact of climate change in Nepal. "At present we don't have a comprehensive report. But we fear that even bio-diversity may have been affected by the change in climate," he says.
This could be particularly true in a country like Nepal where different species are found at different altitudes and climatic conditions.
According to Kunwar, Nepal is already a party to the international convention on climate change and is working to ratify the Kyoto protocol (news - web sites).
But despite its deep concern, Nepal might not be able to cope with the challenge thrown open by global warming on its own, say government officials.
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Sore Throat
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Tue Dec 09, 2003 11:45 pm
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http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,60640,00.html
Global Warming Deaths on the Rise
Reuters
MOSCOW -- About 160,000 people die every year from side effects of global warming ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020, a group of scientists said Tuesday.
The study, by scientists at the World Health Organization and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said children in developing nations seemed most vulnerable.
"We estimate that climate change may already be causing in the region of 160,000 deaths ... a year," Professor Andrew Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told a climate change conference in Moscow.
"The disease burden caused by climate change could almost double by 2020," he added, even taking account of factors like improvements in health care. He said the estimates had not been previously published.
Most deaths would be in developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, which would be hardest hit by the spread of malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria in the wake of warmer temperatures, floods and droughts.
"These diseases mainly affect younger age groups, so that the total burden of disease due to climate change appears to be borne mainly by children in developing countries," Haines said.
Milder winters, however, might mean that people would live longer on average in Europe or North America despite risks from heat waves this summer in which about 15,000 people died in France alone.
Haines said the study suggested climate change could "bring some health benefits, such as lower cold-related mortality and greater crop yields in temperate zones, but (that) these will be greatly outweighed by increased rates of other diseases."
Russia is hosting a World Climate Change Conference this week to discuss how to rein in emissions of gases like carbon dioxide from factories and cars that scientists blame for blanketing the planet and nudging up temperatures.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who opened the conference on Monday, suggested in jest that global warming could benefit countries like Russia as people "would spend less money on fur coats and other warm things."
But Putin also backed away from Russia's earlier pledge to swiftly ratify the key Kyoto pact on curbing global warming, a plan that will collapse without Moscow's backing.
He told 940 delegates to the conference Russia was closely studying the issue of Kyoto. "A decision will be taken when this work is finished," he said, giving no timetable.
Haines said small shifts in temperatures, for instance, could extend the range of mosquitoes that spread malaria. Water supplies could be contaminated by floods, for instance, which could also wash away crops.
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Sore Throat
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Tue Dec 09, 2003 11:49 pm
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Sore Throat
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Wed Dec 10, 2003 5:44 pm
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http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=471135
The four degrees: How Europe's hottest summer shows global warming is transforming our world
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt.
We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way.
Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the average temperature for the summer months was 3.78C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records.
That excess might not seem a lot until you are aware of the context - but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere.
It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done before - that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions. Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are "consistent with predictions" of climate change.
For the great block of the map - that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E - the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781.
Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or "anomalies", over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the variability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature - the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years - approaching, or even exceeding, 2C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degrees.
"This is quite remarkable," Professor Jones told The Independent. "It's very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution you wouldn't get this number. The return period [how often it could be expected to recur] would be something like one in a thousand years.
"If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because we've seen than in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human action."
The summer of 2003 has, in a sense, been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much more hot. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would die out in Europe's lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did.
Over a large swath of the western part of the European continent, records were broken in all three months, not just monthly averages, but for daily extremes and the lengths of spells above thresholds. New national records were set in at least four countries. Britain experienced its record high on 10 August when the mercury registered 38.5 C(101.3F) at Faversham in Kent - the first time the British Isles had recorded a three-figure Fahrenheit temperature.
Germany had a new record of 40.8C (105.4), Switzerland one of 41.5C (106.7F) - Swiss data show the summer as the hottest since at least 1500 - and Portugal a quite astonishing 47.3C (117.1F).
Although France did not see a new national record - that still stands at the 44C (111.2F) registered at Toulouse on 8 August 1923 - the country suffered severely from La Canicule, the heat wave, which was headline news for most of the late summer. In southern and eastern France, according to Professor Jones, 29 sites recorded temperatures exceeding 40C (104F) during August, with the record being 42.6C (108.7F) at Orange in the Rhône valley.
One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23C (73.4F) at all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5C (77.9F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.6C (80.6F) on 13 August, and similar record-breaking night-time temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy.
The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The numbers gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2000 per day on the night of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94.
For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite the high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself - defined as the June, July and August period - still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat.
At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor Jones said. The 10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European summer of 2003. "The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record," he said. "It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional."
His colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are now planning a special study of it. "It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat," said the centre's executive director, Professor Mike Hulme.
"There were impacts on health in France, on hydroelectricity in Spain, on agriculture in southern Germany and on transportation in Italy.
"It will certainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods here revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK.
"The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe."
A taste of things to come
How the land suffered: first the fields dried and turned yellow, then the forests burst into flames. The rivers disappeared; the glaciers melted; the old died.
Although in Britain we dream of hot weather, across Europe the heatwave of last June, July and August was too much for most people.
The heatwave was record-breaking in its extremity, with temperatures exceeding 100F (37.78C) across a vast area of Europe, and the prolonged period of drought made it worse. Parts of eastern France had been without rain since February, the longest spell in a century. There was no feed for livestock; nothing was green any more.
In Feurs, in the Loire département, a 34-year-old man was arrested for killing his horse in public, cutting it in four pieces and putting in his freezer. He said the drought had shrivelled all the grazing and he had no more grass or feed to keep the animal alive.
In France's south, the tinder-dry brush went up in flames at the hint of a spark and by the third week of July, 40,000 acres were burning between Toulon and Saint Tropez; the Massif des Maures, the chain of hills that form a noble backdrop the Riviera, was burnt to a cinder.
Two Britons, Margaret Timson, 63, and her granddaughter,15-year-old Kirsty Egerton, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, were killed when they tried to escape from the fires, close to La Garde-Freinet, near Frejus, by car. Other tourists from the Netherlands and Poland also lost their lives.
Rivers dried across the continent; in Spain and in Italy there were electricity shortages as hydroelectric power stations ceased to function when the flow dropped.
The Po, Italy's greatest river, was reduced to a trickle. As the rivers began to vanish, so did the Alpine glaciers. Many Swiss glaciers showed dramatic retreats, melting at a rate 10 times that of a normal summer. Italians scientists estimate that their own country's glaciers are now 20 per cent smaller than they were in 1987.
And the old and the infirm, at the heatwave's height in early August, simply keeled over. The French estimate an extra 15,000 deaths during the summer period across the country, but with the largest numbers in Paris.
In Britain, we celebrated; we ate outdoors, we wolfed down ices. But continental Europe in summer 2003 had a taste of what global warming will really be like: unpleasant and dangerous.
10 December 2003 08:56
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Sore Throat
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Wed Dec 10, 2003 10:09 pm
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031210/ap_on_sc/prehistoric_pollution_2
Scientists Measure Human Impact on Climate
By ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - Measurements of ancient air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice offered evidence that humans have been changing the global climate since thousands of years before the industrial revolution.
Beginning 8,000 years ago, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide began to rise as humans started clearing forests, planting crops and raising livestock, a scientist said Tuesday. Methane levels started increasing 3,000 years later.
The combined increases of the two greenhouse gases implicated in global warming (news - web sites) were slow but steady and staved off what should have been a period of significant natural cooling, said Bill Ruddiman, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia.
The changes also disrupted regular patterns that dominated the 400,000 years of atmospheric history that scientists have teased from samples of ancient ice.
"You have 395,000 years of history, which sets some rules, and 5,000 years that break those rules," Ruddiman said.
Ruddiman briefed reporters on his theory Tuesday at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Further details appear in the December issue of the journal Climatic Change.
Previously, scientists widely assumed it was only with the onset of the factory age that human activity had any significant effect on the global climate. The prehistoric changes in carbon dioxide and methane levels have been noted before but were attributed to natural causes, Ruddiman said.
"It's a great new idea we need to talk about and evaluate," said Bette Otto-Bliesner, a paleoclimate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not connected with the research.
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane naturally fluctuate, in part because of changes in the orbit of the Earth and the resulting variations in the amounts of sunlight.
But human activity apparently thwarted expected decreases in the atmospheric concentrations of both gases. Leading the change was the revolutionary adoption, across both Europe and Asia, of agriculture and animal husbandry, Ruddiman said.
Analysis of air trapped in ice cores drilled from the Antarctic ice sheet show anomalous increases in carbon dioxide levels beginning 8,000 years ago — just as crop lands began to replace previously forested regions across Asia and Europe.
About 5,000 years ago, the ice cores reflect a similarly anomalous rise in methane levels, this time tied to increased emissions from flooded rice fields, as well as burgeoning numbers of livestock, Ruddiman said.
The prehistoric practices apparently overrode a buildup of ice that models predict should have occurred beginning 5,000 years ago.
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Sore Throat
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Thu Dec 11, 2003 5:38 pm
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For ShowMeTruth, from my previous post:
"Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the world's leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records."
"For the great block of the map - that stretching between 35-50N and 0-20E - the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781."
As far as aircraft contrails contributing to global warming, this is an indisputable fact:
Original image can be found at:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/9999/99992926F1.JPG
It is unfortunate for all that SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra chooses to work at a screen resolution of 800 x 600. This in turn forces a rescaling of linked graphics, which display fine at 1024 x 768.
Forcing people to the lowest common denominator is actually nothing new for him.
You'll also note that he has no comment on the impact of aircraft contrails on climate change...a rather important aspect of this forum.
[Edited 5 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 12-13-2003] |
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Sore Throat
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Thu Dec 11, 2003 5:52 pm
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http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/11/1071086173251.html
Climate change has started: UN
Leaders at a UN conference on climate change, backed by fresh data from the insurance industry, said global warming was already kicking in, years ahead of most scientific predictions.
But the vehicle designed to combat the threat, the Kyoto Protocol, remained deep in the mire, awaiting a clear sign from Russia that it would transform the draft deal into an international treaty to cut greenhouse-gas pollution.
The meeting of environment ministers, gathered under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), heard many delegates say the flurry of droughts, storms and floods of the past few years pointed to a planetary weather system that was already being disrupted.
"Climate change is already having an impact on mankind, especially in developing countries," said chief Chinese delegate Liu Jiang, whose country was hit by catastrophic flooding this year.
"The effects of climate change are already evident," said Environment Minister Altero Matteoli of Italy, current chairman of the EU, which in 2003 suffered its hottest summer on record.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in an address read to the meeting, also suggested the first impacts of global warming could be felt today.
"The heightened frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and associated natural disasters that we have seen in recent years -- such as the serious droughts this summer in India and Europe, and the storms that devastated parts of North America -- is consistent with this conclusion," said Annan.
"There is growing concern that this trend is likely to continue."
According to details from an annual estimate compiled by reinsurance giant Munich Re, natural disasters, most of them caused by extreme weather, cost the world more than $US60 billion ($A81.1 billion) in 2003, up from $US55 billion ($A74.34 billion) in 2002.
Europe's heatwave was the biggest single item, at $US10 billion ($A13.52 billion) in agricultural losses alone, while flooding on China's Huai and Yangtze rivers cost $US8 billion ($A10.81 billion).
The biggest single insured loss was in the United States, where tornado damage in the Midwest cost the insurers $US3 billion ($A4.06 billion), according to the figures, released by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
"Climate change is not a prognosis, it is a reality that is and will increasingly bring human suffering and economic hardship," said UNEP chief Klaus Toepfer.
Evidence that the uncontrolled burning of fossil fuels is trapping solar heat, creating a "greenhouse" effect, has progressively strengthened over the past decade.
But when, where and how bad the impact would be on the planet's fragile climate system were unknowns, according to the usual scientific consensus.
Most projections suggested the first could be felt perhaps a decade or more from now.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 12-11-2003] |
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Sore Throat
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Thu Dec 11, 2003 10:03 pm
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031211/hl_afp/un_climate _health_031211115432
Disease threat will worsen as global warming bites: WHO
MILAN (AFP) - Diarrhoea, malaria and dengue fever will surge and swathes of southern Asia are likely to be hit by malnutrition as a result of global warming (news - web sites), the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned at the UN's climate-change conference.
Higher temperatures will change rainfall patterns and the length of seasons, and this will have a resounding impact on agriculture and water-borne and insect-borne diseases, it said Thursday.
"There is growing evidence that changes in the global climate will have profound effects on the health and wellbeing of citizens in countries throughout the world," Kerstin Leitner, the agency's assistant director-general for sustainable development and healthy environments.
A study launched in Milan by the WHO with the help of three other agencies, garnering the best available scientific data, said that if global temperatures increase by two or three C (3.6-5.4 F), several hundred million more people a year will be exposed to malaria.
"Further, the seasonal duration of malaria would increase in many currently endemic areas," it added.
In 2030, the estimated risk of diarrhoea will be up to 10 percent higher if emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases that trap the Sun's heat continue to grow unbraked, it said.
As for malnutrition, the study warned of a "significant increase" in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Vietnam, which are heavily dependent on having a predictable monsoon for rice growing, but there would be a "small decrease" in China and the other nations of Southeast Asia.
But there are also other, currently unquantifiable risks to health, according to the report.
These include include deaths from heatwaves, of the kind that ravaged Western Europe this summer, the region's hottest on record, and mortality from floods, storms and droughts.
Worsening air pollution and allergens, the emergence of new diseases or old diseases that take a new transmission path, and the advent of novel pests that could blight food crops are other potential factors.
The agencies that worked with the WHO on the study, "Climate Change and Human Health - Risks and Responses," are the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) (EPA).
The data basis for it includes the landmark 2001 report by the UN's top scientific body on global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC believes the Earth's average surface temperature increased by about 0.6 C (1.08 F) during the 20th century, of which two-thirds has occurred since 1975, when the effects of the age of oil began to kick in.
It projects a rise of between 1.4 and 5.8 C (2.5-10.4 F) from 1990-2100, with the variation depending on how much action is taken to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.
At the top end of the IPCC's estimates, sea levels could rise by 88 centimetres (55 inches), drowning many small island states and delta regions.
The report was unveiled on the final day of a two-meeting of world environment ministers, attending the December 1-12 gathering of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
A summary of the document can be downloaded at the WHO website at (http://www.who.int/globalchange).
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 12-11-2003] |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
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Fri Dec 12, 2003 1:29 am
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More data that SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra will undoubtedly attempt to refute. Remember, he says he has data that indicates 65% of the world's glaciers are advancing.
And if you believe that...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/ice_maps
Satellite Makes 3-D Maps of Ice Sheets
By ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - After less than a year of work, an Earth-orbiting satellite has churned out the most detailed, three-dimensional maps ever of the ice sheets blanketing Greenland and Antarctica.
The baseline measurements collected by the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or Icesat, should allow scientists to track the growth and shrinkage of the ice sheets, and to gauge the effect that might have on global sea levels.
The satellite, launched in January, took less than two months to produce the first topographic maps, said Jay Zwally, project scientist of the nearly $300 million mission at NASA (news - web sites)'s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
On Tuesday, scientists attending the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union updated reporters on the mission's progress.
The satellite can measure the elevation of any one spot on the ice sheets twice each year, allowing scientists to watch for even minute changes in the vast frigid expanses over the projected two- to three-year life of the mission, Zwally said.
Eventually, the spacecraft should be able to detect changes in ice levels as small as 0.4 of an inch a year over large swaths of Antarctica and Greenland, scientists said.
"It's unprecedented the accuracy we're getting," said Bob Schutz, of the University of Texas at Austin.
Icesat bounces a laser beam off the Earth's surface 40 times a second as it passes 360 miles overhead at 16,000 mph to make its measurements.
The satellite's laser also can be bounced off the clouds to provide unprecedented views of their heights and structure. So far it's successfully tracked the movement of pollutants in the atmosphere as well, including the large plumes of smoke produced in the destructive wildfires that struck Southern California this fall.
"It allows us to see the atmosphere in ways we haven't before," said James Spinhirne, of NASA's Goddard.
***************************************
See:
http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/
[Edited 4 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 12-11-2003] |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
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Fri Dec 12, 2003 2:42 am
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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=472049
It is one of mankind's final frontiers, a place of extreme cold and extraordinary beauty. But the North Pole's icecap is thawing fast. And many of us will live to see it disappear altogether
By Steve Connor
11 December 2003
The frozen north is under threat. The land of ice and snow, of the Aurora borealis light shows and a jovial white-haired chap in a red outfit with white trim, is melting so fast that scientists predict a completely ice-free North Pole by the end of this century. That hasn't happened since the warm "interglacial' period before the last Ice Age - 30,000 years ago.
The dramatic change is already being felt by the region's dwindling population of 22,000 polar bears, whose springtime hunting grounds are literally melting away. They and the seals on which they feed can no longer rely on the vast frozen landscape that is crucial for their survival.
Then there are the indigenous Arctic peoples, loosely and incorrectly called Eskimo (the name means "raw-meat eater" and is considered pejorative by many native Inuit), whose way of life is also becoming untenable - groups such as the Saami, Aleut, Athabascan, Eyak and Metis, each with their own culture and traditions honed by generations of ancestors who learnt to exist in a climate so cold that it can instantly freeze human breath.
Five years ago, the native people in Alaska began to voice their concerns about changes to their Arctic homeland. In a Greenpeace report called Answers from the Ice Edge, they gave worrying personal testimonies about the retreat of the sea ice. "For some odd reason the ugruks [bearded seals] that we hunt are further out there," said Gibson Moto, an Inupiat from the Alaskan village of Deering.
Benjamin Neakok, who lives in the northern Alaskan outpost of Point Lay, had his own concerns. "It makes it hard to hunt in fall time when the ice starts forming," he said. "It's kind of dangerous to be out. It's not really sturdy. And after it freezes there's always some open spots. Sometimes it doesn't freeze up until January."
These comments illustrate what the Arctic really is. The land of ice and snow is in fact a huge basin of floating sea-ice bordered by Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia. Sea ice exists all year round, but it thickens during the intensely cold Arctic winters, and melts away again during the long summer days of 24-hour sunlight.
But a warmer climate means that the summer melting period is getting longer - by about an extra five days every decade. As a result, the amount of sea ice left at the end of each summer has fallen significantly over the past 50 years. Using computer models, scientists at the Met Office predict the appearance of a totally ice-free North Pole by as soon as the summer of 2080, the fastest period of Arctic melting on record.
The polar bears and seals are not the only wildlife facing extinction. The Arctic is home to a unique range of marine animals, such as the narwhal with its long, unicorn-like tooth, the whiskered walrus and the white beluga whale. More than 150 species of fish are known to live in the Arctic Ocean, as do many rare birds such as auks and ivory gulls. Nobody can predict what an ice-free sea will do to them.
Signs that something was happening to the North Pole appeared in the late 1980s. The huge, nuclear-powered Russian ice-breaker, the Arctika, became the first surface ship to reach the geographic North Pole during a voyage in the summer of 1987. Now, it is common for tourists to sail to the North Pole through the thin summer ice.
Once, the Arctic was almost the sole preserve of the military. Its strategic position, straddling the top of the world between the two nuclear superpowers, meant that the region was a playground in which the cold warriors acted out their war games. The American nuclear-powered submarine USS Nautilus made the first under-ice journey to the North Pole in 1958. Russia, too, made secret forays, and Britain followed suit in 1971 with a voyage by HMS Dreadnought, the country's first nuclear-powered sub.
Unlike the old diesel-powered subs, which had to surface regularly to recharge their batteries, nuclear-powered vessels can stay underwater for much longer periods, making it possible to travel many thousands of miles beneath the thick sea ice. Occasionally, when the ice was thin enough, these submarines would surface, as Dreadnought did in 1971 near the geographic pole. Such stopovers boosted the morale of the crew, who could walk around or play football on top of the icecap.
The thickness of the polar ice was a critically important piece of information for the submarine captains. The Americans handed the task of calculating it to an "ice pilot", a naval officer with a knowledge of how to interpret the data from the submarine's upward-pointing sonar instruments. On British submarines, the task was carried out by a civilian scientist from the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. Peter Wadhams of the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory in Oban, who is also professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, has probably carried out more Arctic submarine trips than any civilian scientist.
Wadhams, who grew up near the docks in Tilbury, Essex, had always yearned to go to sea. After graduation, he signed up for a scientific expedition that took him around the entire coastline of North and South America - the first ever circumnavigation of the Americas. The subject of his doctorate was the Arctic sea ice, a relatively unknown subject in the 1970s. Thirty years ago, the talk was not of global warming, but global cooling. "There was a somewhat irrational fear that the world was heading for another Ice Age," Wadhams recalls. Another Ice Age is indeed on the cards, but probably not for another 10,000 years or so.
This concern meant that sea ice came into vogue in the late 1960s. Iceland had experienced three consecutive years of being ice-bound. It feared that its ports would become as paralysed in winter as those used by Russia's Northern Fleet, based in the high Arctic port of Murmansk. Such was the fear of a new Ice Age that Iceland held an international conference on sea ice in 1971 - the last year, as it turned out, that its ports were to freeze up.
Wadhams had chosen his specialism wisely. There was still much to learn about the nature of the Arctic's sea ice, the precise physics of its formation and the role it played in the wider climate of the region, and indeed the world. But what began to emerge from the submarine data was to overshadow other scientific findings. By the 1990s, it was apparent that the Arctic ice was getting thinner. Two teams of scientists had come to almost identical conclusions about the state of the polar icecap.
The Americans analysed data from submarine trips made between 1958-76 and 1993-1997, and found that the sea ice had thinned by 42 per cent. The British found a similar degree of thinning - 43 per cent - when they compared sonar data gathered in 1976 and 1996. The latest estimates suggest that the Arctic sea-ice has reduced from an average thickness of four metres to about 2.7 metres over the past 30 years. Satellite pictures of the surface area of the ice confirmed an overall shrinking of ice cover of about 4 per cent per decade.
What's most worrying about the data gathered over the past few decades is that the process appears to be entirely one-way. The Arctic is now warming up at a rate eight times faster than at any time over the past century, according to Mark Serreze, a satellite analyst at the University of Colorado. Summer this year was as bad as that of 2002, which itself set a record for high temperatures. Summers are not only longer; they are warmer, with temperatures rising by about 1.2C each decade. "In other words, we have not seen a recovery; what we are seeing reinforces that general trend," says Serreze.
What does all this mean for the North Pole, the indigenous people of the Arctic and its wildlife? Wadhams says there will be winners and losers. Among the benefits will be the opening of the northern sea route to all-year shipping, shortening the shipping distance between Japan and Europe by thousands of miles and providing a huge boost to the economy of Russia, which will control the sea lanes.
Another possible benefit is the melting of the ice in the Barents Sea, probably the coolest, purest and richest sea in the world. With little or no all-year ice cover, marine life will benefit from an increase in sunlight and phytoplankton, triggering the growth of even richer fishing grounds for cod and other commercial species.
But Wadhams points to a darker side. He says that about 7 per cent of the Earth's surface is covered by sea ice, much of it in the Arctic. Without sea ice, the planet would be a very different place. "The ice-covered seas represent the cold end of the enormous heat engine that enables the Earth to have temperatures suitable for human life over most of its surface," he explains.
The greatest fear is that the melting of the Arctic could disturb the ocean currents that flow like conveyor belts carrying heat from one part of the globe to another. For Britain, the most important current is the Gulf Stream, which brings heat from the Caribbean and ensures relatively mild winters. Without this, Britain would suffer the same bitterly cold winters as Newfoundland, which is at the same latitude but does not benefit from the Gulf Stream.
What worries scientists is that the engine driving the global conveyor belt might shut down. For instance, when sea ice forms it rejects salt, causing salinity in the surrounding water to rise. This cold, dense water sinks to the seabed, allowing warmer, less salty water to move in at the surface, driving the overall movement of the conveyor belt. If sea ice fails to form the process could end - and indeed it is already showing signs of slowing down.
Wadhams says he has recorded the disappearance of one important geographical feature that has played a critical role in this process. The Odden ice tongue was a huge spit of ice that formed off eastern Greenland each winter. The ice produced by the annual growth of the tongue was important to the ocean's circulation - yet it has disappeared. "There probably won't ever be a recovery of the Odden ice tongue in the Greenland Sea. It was last seen in 1997," Wadhams says.
So the Arctic has changed in a single generation, and will continue to change for the foreseeable future. One day this century the ice at the North Pole in summer will disappear entirely - and its disappearance could mark the beginning of a far more serious change for the rest of the world.
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:31 am
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Hello from Curitiba, Brazil!
People on the forum on Global warming, I am enjoying a most rewarding experience among Brazilian university students. I gave three lectures in the last days, and I found that the reception given to my opinions on the subject of environmentalism was received with warmth and enthusiasm. Brazilian people resent very much the efforts from the WWF and its cohorts (Greenpeace, etc) to render their sovereignty over the Amazon region to a United Nations cartel of ecological whacos. Of course, they will never allow this to happen.
They did not know about most of the information I provided them, and some groups presented at beginning some resistance to the new information, but a short walk to the university's computers and a long surf in the web, dissipated all they doubts. We also went into this global warming discussionin Chemtrails forum, and students downloaded the pages to study them, contrast the information from both sides with the real world (they study sciences, so that's the right way to go), and they came later with their impressions. I won't tell you what their opinion on Sore Throat's posts is, because I don't want to hurt feelings.
Anyway, the students said I should quit and stop arguing. Science cannot beat religious beliefs, they say. They also said that the IPCC, the GISS, NASA, etc, are not doing science with the global warming and ozone hole issues, but merely using technological advances and equipment to push a political agenda. Smart people! The big press conferences – they say – and the whole media coverage is not science at all, but it merely show how good marketing is done. They are selling a product. An expensive one.
About Sore T. long tirade (he overdone himself this time – Playing in the woods, while the wolf is not here, Sore?) In spite of what I said, insisting that press releases (or science by the mainstream media) is the only argument Sore T. has, and the only personal remarks he makes are his permanent sarcasm and despise for my person, calling me hypocrite at any chance he has, he keeps making the same mistake. And it's not me who is going to stop him from making mistakes. All right, I have listen to his insults, now I would like to listen to his personal arguments. Alas, they seem to be out to lunch.
Putting the cherry on top of his catastrophic and terrifying account of press releases, he gave us the good painting by Edvard Munch, the great Norwegian painter. Not one of my favorites, though, I am more on Impressionists. I don't enjoy Munch because he reflects the same gloomy and pessimistic spirit of environmentalism. Perhaps this is caused by the early death of Munch's parents, and kins, which probably explains the gloominess and pessimism of his work.
Sore T. finds that science does not support his gloomy view of the future, and found it neither do religious beliefs, so he resorts now to emotion. It may work with less informed people, but I think this board knows better than that, and won't fall into Sore T's clumsy trap.
quote:
Global Warming Deaths on the Rise
Reuters
MOSCOW -- About 160,000 people die every year from side effects of global warming ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020, a group of scientists said Tuesday. "We estimate that climate change may already be causing in the region of 160,000 deaths ... a year," … "The disease burden caused by climate change could almost double by 2020," … “Most deaths would be in developing nations in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, which would be hardest hit by the spread of malnutrition, diarrhea and malaria in the wake of warmer temperatures, floods and droughts.
As usual, ALL these press releases and new briefs use the potential and conditional tense as a rule. They NEVER say “it is sure”, “has been proved”, etc. They might frequently talk about scientific consensus, but consensus is not science. It is just prejudice. Consensus is claimed when the science behind the theory is not sufficiently good. So with the consensus excuse they try to avoid scientific discussion and troublesome questions. If it is hard science, it is not consensus. And if it is consensus, it is not science. It is marketing.
They also refer to not yet published studies, or quite recent studies, where other scientists did not have the time to study them, and come up with objections, as it has always happened in the global warming issue. They rely on “peer-reviewed” (by whom? Who are the peers? Paid by the magazine, of course, and Science and Nature have not shown to be reliable sources – when it comes to warming or ozone, or even DDT, of course.)
Malaria and malnutrition are not caused by global, regional or local warming. They are caused by politics, corrupt governments, and criminal environmental policies, as the DDT ban. As for warming increasing our problems here, in South America, we'll have to wait, because it is not happening. Not only it has not warmed, but it has cooled, as you will see in my next post, giving some quite recent news (TODAY) from Argentina.
By the way, Sore Throat, you blew away the page margins again! Please go and edit you "planes making contrails" image, and insert that "width=550" in the html image tag. Yes?
Can you see how I modify the width of my posts (making more readble for other people in this board) by putting a "TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=550 border=0" followed by "TBODY", "TR", and "TD"?
Don't forget to close the tags on the bottom with the appropriate closing tags "/TD, /TR, /TBODY, /TABLE"
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[Edited 3 times, lastly by Edufer on 12-11-2003] |
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:24 am
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quote:
The four degrees: How Europe's hottest summer shows global warming is transforming our world
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
It was the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt.
We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienced its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear.
The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way.
And they also were the coolest in Russia (where it snowed in the first week of June), Alaska, and South America. So where is the warming? In their imagination. Satellite records of lower troposphere temperatures tell another quite different story.
quote:
It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRU's director, is prepared to say openly - in a way few scientists have done before - that the 2003 extreme may be directly attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions. Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are "consistent with predictions" of climate change.
Poor Sore Throat seems to enjoy long posts with long press releases, so I think he wouldn't mind if I humbly copy his style, but not with a press release, but with my own work. This might give you another quite different reason for the heat Wave in Europe. It is an article by myself, that was (and still is) making waves in the internet. It is posted in different websites along the world, in different languages, because they think has something to think about. See it in my next post.
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[Edited 3 times, lastly by Edufer on 12-12-2003] |
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