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Sore Throat
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Carbon dioxide continues its rise
 Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:42 pm
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4395817.stm
Carbon dioxide continues its rise
By David Shukman
BBC science correspondent, in Hawaii
The atmospheric concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide has reached a new high, say US researchers.
The figures - 378 parts per million (ppm) - were gathered by a Hawaiian lab regarded by experts as one of the most reliable in climate research.
The rise in the past year is smaller than it was in the previous two years.
But the trend remains upwards, as it has for every year since measurements began on top of the Mauna Loa volcano nearly half a century ago.
The research was carried out by the US government's Climate Monitoring Diagnostics Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
A good mix
The laboratory's director, Dr Pieter Tans, told the BBC: "The most striking thing about the data is that we've seen an increase in carbon dioxide levels every single year since 1958."
At an altitude of 3,500m (11,500ft), the research station must rank as one of the world's most spectacular and most remote scientific outposts.
Reaching it involves leaving the tropical heat and humidity of the Hawaiian coast and climbing up a narrow road that twists through barren fields of solidified lava.
The thin Pacific air is ideal for this research since it is "well-mixed", meaning that there is no obvious nearby source of pollution, such as a heavy industry, or a natural "sink", such as forest which would absorb CO2.
For that reason the data from Mauna Loa has come to be seen as the benchmark by which atmospheric data is judged.
According to Dr Tans, one significant finding is that the annual rate at which the CO2 is rising has itself increased.
The growth rate over the past decade was about twice as fast as that found in the 1960s.
He says that variations in the growth rate year by year can be explained by natural factors; for example, changes in the rate at which plants and the oceans soak up carbon dioxide.
But he and his colleagues conclude that the steady rise overall can be attributed to man-made emissions of carbon.
Dr David Hoffman, director of Noaa's Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, said: "Even though man's contribution is not increasing dramatically - in fact it's steady - it is adding up; there's a cumulative increase."
In the year that the long-awaited Kyoto treaty finally came into force, with its aim of constraining greenhouse gases, the latest evidence highlights what a challenge that will be.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4395817.stm
Published: 2005/03/31 02:20:29 GMT
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Sore Throat
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| Global warming of Atlantic could hit fish -study
Sat Apr 02, 2005 5:53 pm
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L29203873.htm
Global warming of Atlantic could hit fish -study
By Jeremy Lovell
LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - The potential shutdown due to climate warming of the key Atlantic Conveyor current that warms northern Europe could have a major impact on fish stocks in the region, a scientist said on Wednesday.
Oceanographers have predicted that the current that drags warm water from the south to the north could weaken or even come to a halt as global warming melts the Arctic polar icecap and dilutes the ocean's salinity.
"A disruption of the Atlantic meridional overturning (AMO) circulation leads to a collapse of the North Atlantic plankton stocks to less than half their initial biomass," said Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University.
Writing in the science journal Nature, Schmittner said the steep drop in the plankton population was due to it becoming separated from deep water nutrient layers as the ocean current failed.
To date much work has been done on the potential disruption of the Atlantic Conveyor as the climate warms by an estimated two degrees centigrade this century due to man-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
However, relatively little research has been published on the possible effect on the seaborne food chain which provides sustenance for millions of people.
"A massive decline of plankton stocks could have catastrophic effects on fisheries and human food supply in the affected regions," Schmittner wrote.
"Hence, emission pathways that lead to fast and large increases of future CO2 including the risk of a collapse or substantial reduction of the AMO should be avoided through early measures for emission reductions," he added.
He said there was evidence that the current had switched on and off during the ice ages, and his modelling work indicated that ocean productivity could drop by 20 percent as plankton vanished.
"These model results ... suggest that global ocean productivity is sensitive to changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation," he said.
It is not confined to the northern Atlantic but has implications across the Indian, Pacific, Arabian and southern Atlantic Oceans, he added.
Although the effect was most noticeable in the north Atlantic where even a partial weakening in the life-giving current caused a substantial drop in productivity, it also registered globally.
"The results ... have important implications for the assessment of future greenhouse gas emission scenarios," Schmittner said. |
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Sore Throat
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| Britain’s top climatologist backs global warming claims
Sat Apr 02, 2005 5:59 pm
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http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/physics_astronomy/report-42269.html
Britain’s top climatologist backs global warming claims
One of Britain’s leading climate change experts has thrown his weight behind the claim that global warming is being caused by human activity in a report published today by the Institute of Physics.
The report by Professor Alan Thorpe, who takes up his post as chief of the Natural Environmental Research Council next month, aims to tackle sceptics who doubt the models scientists use to predict future climate change.
Professor Thorpe outlines the scientific basis for climate change and explains how the climate models actually predict future change. According to Thorpe, "uncertainty" is one of the key issues in predicting climate change but is an aspect of the research which is very poorly understood by the public and policy-makers.
In the report, Professor Thorpe says: "Science in crucial in determining government and international policy on climate change but only some of the views on this issue are actually supported by the scientific models".
"There is little doubt that a lack of knowledge about how climate change is predicted and the associated uncertainties are the main reason that there is so much ill-informed comment on climate change in the media and amoung the public".
The report, ’Climate Change Prediction: a challenging scientific problem’ by Alan J. Thorpe, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Reading was published today by the Institute of Physics and is devoted to de-mystifying the prediction methodology, and focuses on the scientific basis of climate change prediction.
The Institute of Physics hopes that the paper will increase believability in climate models and persuade sceptics that human activity is likely to be causing global warming. The paper aims to convince policy-makers, the general public and the scientific community that the threats posed by global climate change are real.
A copy of the paper can be downloaded from: policy.iop.org/Policy/HE/index.html |
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Sore Throat
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| Taking on Carbon Dioxide In Defiance Of Bush
Mon Apr 04, 2005 2:28 am
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http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/environment/20050401/7/1366
Taking on Carbon Dioxide In Defiance Of Bush
Also, Tracking Detectors For Carbon Monoxide
by Sam Williams
Call it a characteristic display of Big Apple chutzpah. Last month, city and state attorneys scored a $1.1 billion legal victory against out-of-state polluter Ohio Edison for violating the federal Clean Air Act, which regulates pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. But now, the New York State Office of the Attorney General and New York City Corporation Counsel, along with half a dozen other governments in the Northeast and West Coast, are going after carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is currently unregulated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical, CO2, is a natural byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. Though benign from a chemical safety standpoint, its ability to absorb and retain heat has led many scientists and governments around the world to attribute a recent rise in global mean temperatures to unchecked industrial and automotive exhaust.
Many business groups and even a few scientists challenge this so-called "greenhouse effect" theory, but evidence of rising carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is incontrovertible. A study of atmospheric concentrations at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, the longest continuous study on record, reported an 18.8 percent increase in the mean concentration of carbon dioxide between 1958 and 2003.
With the Bush Administration currently distancing itself from the Kyoto Protocol, the recently-enacted treaty forcing developed nations to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions, state and city governments with financial and political stake in climate stability see the legal system as the best way to reduce U.S. emissions.
"I think if we want to see progressive, responsible environmental policy, it's going to have to come from the state and local governments,'" says Judith Enck, policy advisor to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "If you get the West Coast and the Northeast teaming up, sooner or later you get a national global warming policy even if the federal government won't act."
Bush's Clear Skies Act Ignores Carbon Dioxide
Last month, just about the same time Ohio Edison was agreeing to a court-mandated installation of smokestack-scrubbers at its largest coal-burning power plant, the Bush Administration's efforts to spare other power companies the same indignation were stalling out in Congress.
Dubbed the Clear Skies Act, the Bush air pollution plan would abandon a decades-old policy of forcing power companies to clean their facilities whenever they expand or upgrade production -- a policy known as "new source review" by insiders -- in favor of a market-oriented policy in which clean companies earn pollution credits which they can then sell to dirtier companies as a monetary reward for compliance, This policy is known as "cap and trade."
According to the Bush administration, this market-driven system would reduce sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and mercury emissions by as much as 70 percent over the next two decades while at the same time reducing the number of costly lawsuits. Opponents, however, see major flaws: During the first decade of the plan, or at least until 2012, the so-called Bush "cap" would actually be lenient enough to relieve power companies from the compliance duties already required under new source review. More importantly, however, the Bush plan makes no mention of carbon dioxide whatsoever. Although Bush promised to regulate during the 2000 election campaign, his administration voided the promise less than 60 days into his first term, citing recessionary concerns.
Looking At 19th Century Law To Get Around Bush In The 21st
Since then, Democratic-voting coastal states such as New York, Massachusetts and California, and even swing states such as Iowa, have been looking for alternate ways to remedy the rising cost of severe weather storms and lost wetlands. Environmental lawyers have found their remedy not in the federal case law built up since the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 but in the common law that governed most environmental disputes in the days of limited federal authority.
David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the 19th century nuisance laws that once allowed cities such as New York to ban slaughterhouses, rendering plants and other unpopular businesses and to regulate their activity across jurisdictional lines offer an opportunity to go after fixed-point carbon dioxide producers. Doniger cites, in particular, State of Georgia v. Tennessee Copper, a 1907 case that worked its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. In that case, the state of Georgia asserted its legal right to limit the tree-killing sulphur dioxide emanating from a copper smelter operating in Tennessee. In 1915, the Supreme Court sided with Georgia, setting up the modern framework for interstate environmental regulation.
"This is old, hallowed stuff," says Doniger of the 1907 case. "A lot of it was put aside or put on pause during the last few decades because most kinds of pollution are now addressed by the Clean Air Act."
Most but not all. As noted previously in this topic page, the Bush administration's undisguised antipathy to the decades-old new source review policy has already created a vacuum of leadership which many states and cities are rushing to fill. That carbon dioxide remains off the federal enforcement agenda only adds to the shifting legal momentum.
"It's ironic," observes Frank O'Donnell, president of the non-profit monitoring group Clean Air Watch. "Historically more liberal groups sought to make sure the federal government had primacy in matters of this sort. Since the Bush administration has in effect dropped the ball, however, it is now up to state attorneys general to clean up the environment."
Last summer, eight states, including New York, together with New York City and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed lawsuits in the Southern District of New York against five power companies which, added together, account for 10 percent of the country's carbon dioxide emissions. The list includes Ohio-based utilities American Electric Power and Cinergy, Atlanta-based Southern Company, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, and the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority. The since-consolidated lawsuit demands that defendants reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Pat Hemlepp, spokesman for American Electric Power, says his company is already reducing its carbon dioxide emissions voluntarily.
"We're the leader in our sector on carbon [gas reduction] efforts, which is why, frankly, we were quite surprised to be one of the companies named in the suit," says Hemlepp.
Then again, American Electric Power is also the country's largest consumer of coal and a strong supporter of the Bush administration reasoning that any national carbon dioxide standards take into account growing industrial competition from countries such as India and China, a Kyoto treaty signatory that, under the treaty terms, won't have to curb its emissions until the next decade.
An Environmental Scopes Trial?
Economic issues aside, the current case pushes the carbon dioxide debate out of Congress, where the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is currently locked in a 9-9 stalemate on the Clear Skies Act thanks to moderate Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chaffee and Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords, and into the courts. Green Car Congress, a blog that tracks environmental issues, has already likened the case to Tennessee v. John Scopes, the sensational 1925 trial in which attorneys debated the scientific validity of Darwin's theory evolution.
In a statement issued at the time of last summer's filing, Michael Cardozo, head of the New York City legal department, described the city's participation as response to global warming concerns and "part of the Bloomberg Administration's commitment to maintaining a clean and sustainable city."
Speaking after last month's court victory, Judith Enck of the Attorney General's Office sees things in even more dramatic terms. Like O'Donnell, she sees ironic payback for a Republican party that, during its own time as a minority power, sought to transfer federal authority on issues such as environmental regulation back to the states.
"When [conservatives] were designing the new federalism, they weren't banking on an aggressive attorneys general," Enck says. "The federal government can assert its power over much more territory and more jurisdictions, but an aggressive, focused attorney general can accomplish more than a lumbering federal bureaucracy."
TRACKING CITY CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR USAGE
While New York officials focus on carbon dioxide, Boris Riabov, a sophomore at the Bronx High School of Science, has been keeping tabs on its more dangerous cousin: carbon monoxide.
Based on data from a recently collected school assignment, Riabov estimates that nearly a third of Manhattan residents have yet to install -- or have their landlords install -- carbon monoxide detectors.
Riabov, 16, created the survey for a class called Science Instrumentation and Problem Solving (SIPS). As noted in a December 2003 column, carbon monoxide detector sales have historically been tragedy-driven. People read grisly stories such as the October, 2004 suffocation deaths of an Albanian family in its Staten Island home due to a blocked exhaust vent, and go out and buy detectors. A city law enacted last November seeks to break that pattern, however, mandating the purchase and installation for all rented units.
Taking inspiration from that law, Riabov created an anonymous questionnaire which he circulated at various public libraries in and around Washington Heights. The questionnaire asks people to list carbon monoxide's effects and to report the number of detectors in their apartment or house. Although 93 percent of the survey's 70 respondents knew about carbon monoxide and almost every returned questionnaire listed at least one negative effect caused by the gas, 30 percent of respondents reported no carbon monoxide detectors.
"That was most surprising to me," says Riabov. "I also found that ten percent of homes with children didn't have a detector, and one of the facts about carbon monoxide is that it affects children quicker than adults."
Less surprising was the statistic showing that 44 percent of respondents reported new detectors in their homes since November 1, 2004, a sign that the law, while not reaching everyone, has certainly affected a significant number of people. Riabov says he hopes to use this finding as a foundation for a more ambitious study, documenting code compliance later this year.
"There are a couple contests I'd like to enter," he says. "If you get approved, they give you a grant to get started. I'll have to wait and see if they give me a grant."
Riabov completed his survey just days before the latest news story involving the odorless, colorless gas firefighters and parametics call the "silent killer." On March 31, police in the Douglaston section of Queens discovered the bodies of a hearing-impaired husband and wife. The medical examiner has yet to determine the cause of death, but police officials speaking to the Associated Press believe the couple left their car running in the garage and suffocated from the fumes after failing to hear their alarm go off. |
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Sore Throat
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| Science Panel Says Human Activity Key Trigger in Global Warm
Sat Apr 09, 2005 5:18 pm
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http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2005-04-07-voa64.cfm
Science Panel Says Human Activity Key Trigger in Global Warming
By Rosanne Skirble
Washington DC
Human activity is having a measurable impact on one of the key triggers for global climate change -- the temperature of the world's oceans. That's the conclusion of a panel of U.S. researchers, presented at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Most scientists now believe that the Earth's climate is warming. "Approximately 90% of that warming has gone directly into the oceans," says marine physicist Tim Barnett. "So if you want to find out what is causing it, that's the place to look."
Mr. Barnett, a researcher with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, gathered evidence from computer models and field observations. The results of his study show rising ocean temperatures are directly related to human activity.
"Could the climate system simply do this on its own?" he asks. "The answer was clearly no. We looked at the possibility that solar changes and volcanic effects could cause the warming. Not a chance. What absolutely nailed it [confirmed it] was greenhouse warming. Two models, one from here and one from England, got the observed warming exactly (so much so that) we were stunned by the degree of similarity between the observations and the models."
Mr. Barnett says the new data paint a disturbing picture of global climate change. "The temperature driven impacts in things like regional water that these models predict in the next 20 or 30 years are severe," he says, "not only for the Western United States, but for places like China and Peru, anywhere that a temperature increase can cause a problem, anywhere that has a main water source that is fed by snow, anywhere that has a main water source fed by glacial melt as Western China does. Three hundred million people depend on that more or less for their summer water supply."
Ice melt - while occurring globally - is most apparent in the Arctic. Sea levels are rising because of it. Ruth Curry, with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, says an abundance of cold fresh water entering the northern North Atlantic could change the way the ocean transports heat from the low to the high latitudes.
"This has the potential to trigger other impacts in the climate system, beyond just the warming," she says. "As the earth warms, its water cycle is changing and in fact earth's water balance is being pushed out of kilter. These changes are happening now, and they are expected to amplify in the 21st century. And, it is a certainty that these changes will put serious strains on ecosystems and economies just about everywhere."
Rapid ice melting is already disrupting ecosystems that have evolved over long periods of time, according to Sharon Smith. She's co-director of the Oceans and Human Health Center at the University of Miami. She says a case in point is the recent die-off of hundreds of thousands of migratory birds called short-tailed shearwaters, which annually fly from Australia to the Arctic to breed. Five years of observations determined that warmer ocean conditions were to blame.
"It turned out that a very unusual plant [coccolithophore] bloomed in the Bering Sea in 1997," she says. "We all hypothesized initially that this (plant) couldn't be eaten by the lower levels of the food web that in turn supported the bird. It turned out that wasn't the case at all. The short-tailed shearwater is a visual predator, and this layer of coccolithophore on the surface of the ocean prevented the bird from seeing its prey underneath, and that is why they starved to death."
Sharon Smith, with the University of Miami's Oceans and Human Health Center, was one of a panel of scientists who presented their findings at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science here in Washington. |
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Sore Throat
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| US government 'must restrict CO2'
Sat Apr 09, 2005 5:49 pm
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4424867.stm
US government 'must restrict CO2'
By Richard Black
BBC environment correspondent
Twelve US states, three cities and several prominent environmental groups told a court on Friday that the United States government had a legal duty to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
They said the Clean Air Act mandated the government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate all emissions which damaged human welfare.
The hearing was the latest step in a battle dating back to 1999, before George W Bush came to power.
A number of other states, together with bodies representing industry, oppose the case, which would if successful force a policy U-turn from the Bush administration.
Legal action
In 1999, a coalition of 19 environmental groups petitioned the EPA, asking it to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicles, describing them as "pollutants".
Four years later, under threat of legal action, the EPA responded by denying the petition.
"Congress has not granted EPA authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases for climate change purposes", it said at the time.
That interpretation is disputed by the parties behind Friday's court hearing.
"This case is about the EPA ignoring its responsibilities," said Massachusetts Assistant Attorney-General James Milkey, who is leading the plaintiffs' legal team.
"Since September 2003, it has hidden behind this claim that it doesn't have to regulate; in fact the Clean Air Act defines 'pollution' in a way that does include greenhouse gases and includes effects on climate."
Following that EPA decision, 13 environmental groups filed a case in the US Court of Appeals asking for a review; its wording only covers vehicle emissions, but the plaintiffs say that if successful it would automatically be extended to other sources of greenhouse gases.
Those 13 initial groups have since been joined by the authorities of states, cities and US overseas territories; many have submitted written evidence to the Court of Appeals, the second-highest tier in the American judicial system, and on Friday they presented oral arguments and answered questions from the three judges hearing the case.
Climate change
Among the groups which have submitted evidence supporting the EPA's position are the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Convenience Stores and the US Chamber of Commerce, as well as 11 states including George W Bush's homeland of Texas, and the EPA itself.
The key clause in the Clean Air Act is 202(a)(1), which states "The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe... standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare."
The plaintiffs say the evidence that climate change endangers the health and welfare of American citizens is clear.
"Just as one example," says James Milkey, "the State of Massachusetts owns 200 miles of coastline which is at risk from rising sea levels; and that's directly due to the EPA's reluctance to regulate greenhouse gases."
In court on Friday, Jeffrey Clark, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's environment division, said the EPA would have no easy way to regulate carbon dioxide from motor vehicles.
"For CO2, there's no catalytic converter," he argued. "There's no catch mechanism. The only way to reduce them is through fuel economy. ...The point is it would usurp National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's authority," he was reported as saying by the Associated Press.
The argument being made was that the EPA did not have the authority to act.
After their day in court, the plaintiffs were expecting to wait several months for a judgement.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4424867.stm
Published: 2005/04/09 07:01:15 GMT |
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Sore Throat
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| Global warming: Nuclear power no solution
Tue Apr 12, 2005 1:49 am
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http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/622/622p9.htm
Global warming: Nuclear power no solution
Jim Green
Have the nuclear industry and its supporters suddenly gained an environmental consciousness? While they're not planning to close their dangerous, polluting reactors nor begin dealing responsibly with their legacy of toxic radioactive wastes, they are now professing deep concern about climate change — and argue that nuclear power is the only solution.
Even environmentalists are turning to nuclear power, we're told. It's not true — you could count them on one hand — but the nuclear boosters and the mainstream media aren't letting the facts get in the way of a good story.
Proponents of nuclear power downplay or ignore altogether the problems that would be exacerbated by an expansion of nuclear power globally or the introduction of nuclear power into Australia — including nuclear weapons proliferation, radioactive waste, and the risk of catastrophic accidents.
Nuclear weapons proliferation.
The “peaceful” nuclear power and research sectors have produced enough fissile material to build over 110,000 nuclear weapons. Australian uranium has resulted in the production of more than 60 tonnes of plutonium, sufficient to produce about 6000 nuclear weapons.
Supposedly “peaceful” nuclear facilities can be — and have been — used in various ways for weapons research and production. Of the 60 countries which have built nuclear power or research reactors, about 25 are known to have used their “peaceful” nuclear facilities for covert weapons research and/or production — a strike rate of about 40%.
Israel, India, Pakistan, South Africa and possibly North Korea have succeeded in producing nuclear weapons under cover of a “peaceful” nuclear program (details at <http://www.mapw.org.au/nuclear-reactors/02green.html>).
Claims that the international safeguards system prevents misuse of “peaceful” nuclear facilities and materials are grossly overstated. Recent statements from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and US President George Bush about the need to limit the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technology, and to establish multinational control over sensitive nuclear facilities, amount to an acknowledgement of the fundamental flaws of the international safeguards system.
Retired Australian diplomat Professor Richard Broinowski notes in his 2003 book Fact or Fission? The Truth About Australia's Nuclear Ambitions that accounting for Australian uranium exports is “tenuous, and subject to distortion or abuse”.
Radioactive waste
Not a single repository exists for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste, which is produced at an annual rate of about 10,000 tonnes in nuclear power reactors worldwide. Technologies exist to encapsulate or immobilise radionuclides to a greater or lesser degree, but encapsulated radioactive waste still represents a potential public health and environmental threat that will last for millennia.
The prospects for transmutation — using neutrons or charged particle beams to convert longer-lived radionuclides into shorter-lived radionuclides or stable isotopes — are grim for a number of reasons.
Reprocessing spent reactor fuel is polluting, and most of the uranium and plutonium arising from reprocessing is simply stockpiled with no plans for its use. Separation of plutonium from spent fuel poses a major proliferation risk — many tonnes of plutonium are stockpiled, and a typical 1000 megawatt electric (MWe) reactor produces about 300 kilograms of plutonium each year, enough to produce about 30 nuclear weapons.
Accidents
The more reactors, the more accidents. The more accidents, the more likely significant off-site releases of radioactivity. The “new generation of passively safe reactors” face various obstacles, such as not being new or passively safe! For example, so-called pebble-bed reactor technology is a variation on the theme of high temperature reactors, which have been investigated by many countries, abandoned in most, and successful in none.
In addition to the perennial problems of plant malfunction and human error, terrorism looms large as a threat to nuclear plants and everyone working and living in their vicinity.
Nuclear power proponents deny the likelihood that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster has killed thousands and will kill thousands more. They do this by hiding behind the complexities of epidemiological studies and using those complexities to obfuscate. However, using the standard risk estimates applied the world over, the likely toll from Chernobyl will be some tens of thousands of deaths.
A non-solution
The world's 440 operating power reactors, with about 364,000 MWe of total capacity, produce about 16% of the world's electricity. Coal, gas and oil account for four times that amount — about 64%. So to replace fossil fuel generated electricity with nuclear power would require a five-fold increase in the number of reactors, from 440 to about 2200. The cost of the additional 1760 reactors would be several trillion dollars.
The 2200 reactors would produce enough plutonium each year to build roughly 60,000 nuclear weapons. The annual production of high-level radioactive waste in the form of spent fuel would increase to about 50,000 tonnes — to be safely and securely stored in those repositories that don't exist.
But what of the benefits of closing all those fossil fuel fired plants? Electricity generation is responsible for only a modest percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions — as low as 9% by some accounts. In broad terms the replacement of all fossil fuel fired electricity plants with nuclear power would be unlikely to reduce global greenhouse emissions by more than 5-10% — not even close to the 60% reduction required to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
It is theoretically possible that nuclear power could be used not only for electricity production but also for other purposes such as producing hydrogen for transportation. However, that would just make the task all the more impractical and all the more alarming in terms of proliferation risks and radioactive waste production. According to John Busby, about 200 nuclear reactors would be required in Australia alone to produce both electricity and hydrogen for transportation (<http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3039>).
In Australia, building nuclear reactors would not only be irresponsible and impractical as a means of addressing climate change, it would also be illegal because the Howard government outlawed the construction of nuclear power reactors in the 1998 Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act. Interestingly, the government made nuclear power illegal with little or no prompting from environmental and anti-nuclear groups.
Even if a future government attempted to push ahead with construction of nuclear power reactors, the public opposition would be immense. The only serious proposal to build a nuclear power plant in Australia — at Jervis Bay in NSW in the late 1960s — was defeated by public and political opposition.
The Jervis Bay project was driven by then-Coalition PM John Gorton, who later admitted that the intention was not only to produce electricity but also to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Claims that nuclear power is “greenhouse free” are nonsense. Substantial greenhouse gas generation occurs across the nuclear fuel cycle. Nonetheless, fossil fuel derived electricity is considerably more greenhouse intensive — for the moment.
Emissions per unit energy from nuclear power are about one third of those from large gas-fired electricity plants. However, this comparative benefit of nuclear power is substantially eroded, and eventually negated altogether, as higher-grade uranium ores are depleted and lower-grade ores are mined. Most of the Earth's uranium is found in very poor grade ores. That trend would of course be hastened in a scenario in which nuclear power replaces large numbers of fossil fuel fired electricity plants. (For discussion on the economic and energy costs associated with declining ore grades, see the detailed study at <http://www.oprit.rug.nl/deenen>.)
Even at the current rate of consumption, low-cost uranium reserves will be exhausted in about 50 years according to John Carlson from the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, the disgraceful nuclear regulatory agency which acts more like a pro-nuclear PR agency.
At this point in the argument, nuclear boosters such as Carlson pull out their trump card — the wondrous plutonium economy in which fast breeder reactors produce more plutonium fuel than they consume — and nuclear power may yet be too cheap to meter! However, most plutonium breeder R&D programs have been abandoned because of technical, economic and safety problems. In any case, the weapons proliferation risks of a plutonium economy are totally unacceptable. Nuclear fusion also poses proliferation risks, and faces seemingly insurmountable technical and economic problems.
Renewable energy
Renewable energy sources typically generate considerably less greenhouse emissions per unit energy than nuclear power and, of course, energy efficiency is a clear winner when comparing greenhouse gas abatement costs. According to the US Critical Mass Energy Project, every dollar invested in energy efficiency is up to seven times more effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions than nuclear power.
Last year the Clean Energy Future Group — which comprises renewable energy companies and the Worldwide Fund for Nature — produced a comprehensive paper called “A Clean Energy Future for Australia” that details how major greenhouse gas emissions reductions can be achieved (<http://www.wwf.org.au/News_and_information/Features/feature10.php>).
The Clean Energy study found that Australia can meet its energy needs from various commercially proven fuels and technologies while cutting greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2040. Focussing on stationary energy sources, because of their large contribution to greenhouse emissions in Australia, the Clean Energy study envisages the following energy mix by 2040:
natural gas provides 30% (including cogeneration of electricity and heat) of Australia's electricity demand;
biomass from agriculture and plantation forestry residues provides 26%;
wind energy provides 20%;
photovoltaic and solar thermal systems provide 5%;
hydroelectricity provides 7%; and
coal (9%) and petroleum (1%) continue to play a minor role in electricity generation.
A range of other benefits would flow from the Clean Energy report's recommendations, including rural employment growth, growth in exports, reductions in household and business operating costs, and benefits to the environment and public health through the reduction not only of greenhouse gases but also other pollutants.
A report by the Australia Institute maps out a realistic plan to achieve a 60% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector (including transport) by 2050 (<http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/DP48sum.pdf>). Many similar reports have been produced overseas.
The extent to which renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels and nuclear power depends to a significant extent on investment in research and development programs. The Howard government provides fossil fuel industries with $9 billion in subsidies annually, according to a 2003 report from the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures. By contrast, the Howard government:
Closed the Energy Research and Development Corporation in 1997-98. The ERDC had invested almost $100 million in 350 energy innovation ventures since it was created in 1990. The government then reneged on a commitment to meet existing ERDC funding commitments.
Withdrew funding from the Co-operative Research Centre for Renewable Energy in December 2002.
Introduced the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target but set the target at a measly 2% (closer to 1% when non-renewable interlopers and creative accounting are factored in).
Appointed a Rio Tinto employee as the government's chief scientist.
Allowed fossil fuel companies to buy their way onto the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics panel dealing with climate change issues.
Small wonder that the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in 2004 that the proportion of Australia's overall energy consumption from renewable resources declined in the 10 years 1991-2001 from 6% to 5.7%.
Further reading on the greenhouse/nuclear debate:
WISE/NIRS, 2005, "A back door comeback: Nuclear energy as a solution for climate change?", Nuclear Monitor #621 & #622, <http://www.antenna.nl/wise>.
Mycle Schneider (WISE Paris), April 2000, “Climate Change and Nuclear Power”, published by World Wide Fund for Nature, < http://www.panda.org/downloads/climate_A HREF="mailto:change/fullnuclearreprotwwf.pdf"><change/fullnuclearreprotwwf.pdf>.)
Friends of the Earth (UK), “Nuclear power and climate change”, <http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/nuclear_power_climate.pdf>.
From Green Left Weekly, April 13, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global Warming - Administration shifts its slant but not it
Wed Apr 13, 2005 1:49 am
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http://www.freep.com/voices/editorials/ewarming12e_20050412.htm
Global Warming
Administration shifts its slant but not its policies
April 12, 2005
The Bush administration is taking a new tack on global warming, finally conceding that human activities contribute to it. But, unfortunately, it doesn't look as if any of its underlying policies are going to take a similar leap forward.
Glen Davies, principal deputy assistant secretary for European affairs at the Department of State, told editorial writers last week that "we accept that the science is clear" on human contributions to global warming -- although not on how much of the problem human activity causes or how fast climate change is occurring. The administration's focus clearly remains on alternative technologies, not mandated cutbacks, and Davies specifically cited hydrogen technology.
Davies' job makes him a point person in preparation for the G8 summit of developed nations scheduled for July in Scotland, which British Prime Minister Tony Blair will host. Blair has already announced he wants a strong agenda focus on global warming.
The United States obviously is not going to backtrack and sign onto any Kyoto-style agreements to trim atmospheric emissions. With science and research, Davies said, "we can find a way forward without throwing the economy into reverse."
The emphasis on technology may play out well here in Detroit, with some of it taking place at the federally funded Next Energy project. But serious attention also must go to nearer-term projects than hydrogen. And no one in Detroit should overlook the fact that 19 automakers -- including General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler -- signed a voluntary agreement last week in Windsor to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their Canadian vehicles by 17 percent in five years.
Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide reached a modern high in 2004, according to a report last week from Hawaii's Mauna Loa observatory. Computer simulations released last month show that even with no growth in carbon dioxide emissions, enough is already in the air to cause discernible climate and sea-level change this century.
The July G8 event would be an opportune time for the United States to do more than tweak its talking points on global warming. A bolder commitment -- to research, to alternative energy and to the right mix of incentives -- is in order. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Earth To Humankind: Back Off
Thu Apr 14, 2005 3:55 am
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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2005/04/13/notes041305.DTL&nl=fix
Earth To Humankind: Back Off
Say good-bye to your car, computer, everything. We are burning up the planet too fast to hang on
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
The Earth is going down. Way, way down. To the mat, hard and painful and with a sad moaning broken-boned crunch.
We are chewing her up, spitting her out, stomping and gobbling and burning and gouging and drilling and sucking her dry and we are carelessly replicating ourselves so goddamn fast we can't even stop much less even try to slow the hell down, and all we want is more and faster and with less consequence and pretty soon the Earth is gonna go, well, there you are, I'm finished, sorry, and boom zing groan, done.
Don't take my world for it. Just read the headlines, the latest major, soul-stabbing report.
It's one of those stories that sort of punches you in the karmic gut, about how they just completed this unprecedented, four-year, $24 million, U.N.-backed study involving 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who all pored over thousands of satellite images and countless scientific reports and reams of stats, and they all distilled their findings down to one deadly, heartbreaking summary.
And here it is: We, humankind, people, sentient carbon-based biped creatures, only us and no one else but us because it sure as hell ain't the goddamn lions or caribou or meerkats or rhododendrons, we humans have, in our shockingly short time on this wobbly sphere, used up a staggering 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmland, rivers and lakes.
That's right, 60 percent. Gone. Burned up. Used up. Much of it irreversibly. These are the basic ecosystem services that, simply put, sustain life on Earth. The glass ain't even half full, people. It's about three-fifths empty and draining fast and we are doing our damnedest to expedite the process because, well, this is just who we are.
We reproduce. We consume. We use it up and dry it all up and move on to find more and it reminds me of that line from Agent Smith in the first "Matrix" movie where he stares menacingly at Morpheus and speaks about how every mammal on Earth instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, "but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague," and then Morpheus gets all huffy and righteous and goes on to inspire Neo to prove how we are also full of beauty and fire and life and he makes it all better by saving humankind so we can go buy the mediocre soundtrack.
But it doesn't stop there. The study also reveals that our fair and gluttonous species has altered the planet more violently and rapidly in the past 50 years than in any comparable time in human history. Yay accelerated technology. Yay multinational conglomerates. Yay lack of corporate ethics and rabid unchecked capitalist consumer gluttony. Whee.
And you read this horrific story about how we are mauling the planet at an unprecedented rate and you ask yourself the obvious question: Our government is doing what about this again? Oh right: nothing. Not one thing. They are, in fact, making it all far, far worse. Worse environmental president in American history, you remind yourself. Whee.
And this heartbreaking study, it comes hot on the heels of one of the most distressing and sobering pieces of journalism I've read in ages, an excerpt from a book by James Howard Kunstler called "The Long Emergency," all about the imminent and staggering oil/natural gas crisis now looming large over the U.S. and the world, a crisis of such dire proportions that it will very soon reshape American life like nothing since the Industrial Revolution. Except in reverse.
It's about peak oil. It's coming within a year or two. It means we've essentially siphoned off all the easily attainable oil on the planet (about 50 percent of the grand total) and getting to the remaining 50 percent -- the lower-quality stuff that's buried deep in rock or in impossibly difficult locations or that lies underneath countries where the people absolutely hate us -- will be so fraught and expensive and hypercompetitive that it will mean not only, in the immediate future, much more war and strife and pain but also, in the next decade or two, a radical -- and I do mean radical -- reshaping of life as we know it.
Petroleum and gas will become incredibly scarce and everything we know about consumer culture, travel, products, Wal-Mart, easy access to all daily goods and services, will essentially vanish, and we will return to a intensely local, viciously competitive agricultural model of raw survival. Read this article now, and be amazed.
This is the incredible thing about humans. We are capable of such amazing extremes, such breathtaking beauty and such violent ugliness, astounding awareness to utter blindness, transcendental light to staggering dark. Some periods in our history, it feels like we're actually progressing, calming down, evolving, reaching new heights and new levels of psychospiritual awareness, as opposed to merely rearranging the puzzle pieces in a drunken haze of frustrating anxiety.
And at other times, like now, like the new and violent and fractured Dark Age so savagely exemplified by BushCo, it feels as though we are working toward the other extreme, working our last raw nerve, seeing how far we can go before we implode, how much of the planet we can abuse and pollute and rape before something pops so violently and unexpectedly we can only sit back and go, oh holy hell.
Maybe the nutball evangelical born-agains have it right: Maybe it's best to just burn up this whole godforsaken lump of Earth as fast as possible and then watch in giddy flesh-rended glee as Armageddon rains down and only those who've given tens of thousands of dollars to secretly gay televangelists will rise up and be saved and the rest of us will merely drive our Priuses off a collective cliff into the fiery pits of gay-marriage-friendly hell.
Ah, but we have bad news there, too, because, according to the cute Rapture Index, that adorable little Web site o' righteousness that charts the various global "signs" leading up to the impending Second Coming, the Rapture should be happening, like, right now. Or maybe last week.
In fact, the index now stands at 152, well above the "Oh sweet Jesus take me now" threshold. Which means, of course, that the Second Coming might have already come and gone, and Jesus may have swooped down and taken one look at what we've done to the place and said, you've got to be freakin' kidding me, and said, sorry but no one here deserves much of anything illuminative or enlightened right now. Can't you just hear all those gay-hatin' born-again Christians saying, what the hell?
Of course, no one said this was gonna be easy. Not Christ, not Buddha, not Allah and not Lao Tse and not Rumi and not Krishna and not the light beings right now swirling around your head and trying to get the message across that this earthly plane is one of the harshest and more difficult and bloody messy ugly lessons in the universe, which is also why it's so valuable and mandatory and why so many souls want to come here, to learn. Trial by fire, is what it is. This is what they say.
But if these scientific studies and stories are to be believed -- and there's little reason to think otherwise -- that fire is about to get one hell of a lot hotter. Stock up on duct tape. And water. And hope. |
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Jeanie
Joined: 18 Nov 2001
Posts: 1323
Location: North East U.S.A. |
| If the Shoe Fit's
Thu Apr 14, 2005 9:24 pm
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"Maybe the nutball evangelical born-agains have it right: Maybe it's best to just burn up this whole godforsaken lump of Earth as fast as possible and then watch in giddy flesh-rended glee as Armageddon rains down and only those who've given tens of thousands of dollars to secretly gay televangelists will rise up and be saved and the rest of us will merely drive our Priuses off a collective cliff into the fiery pits of gay-marriage-friendly hell. "
"By their fruits you will recognize those men. Not everyone saying to me Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will. Many will say to me in that day 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name? And yet then I will confess to them: I never knew YOU! Get away from me you workers of lawlessness." Jesus words at Matthew 6:20---23 |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Study Shows Antarctic Glaciers Shrinking
Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:01 pm
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050421/D89JUVFG0.html
Study Shows Antarctic Glaciers Shrinking
By EMMA ROSS
LONDON (AP) - The first comprehensive survey of glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula has shown that the rivers of ice are shrinking, mostly because of warming of the local climate.
It is unclear, however, whether the increased temperature causing the shrinkage is a natural regional effect or a result of human-influenced global warming, said the scientists who conducted the study, published this week in the journal Science.
Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed more than 2,000 aerial photographs dating from 1940 and over 100 satellite images from the 1960s onwards.
They calculated that 87 percent of the 244 glaciers going out to sea from the peninsula have retreated over the last 50 years and that the pace of shrinkage has accelerated over the last decade. Until now, scientists were uncertain whether the glaciers were growing or melting.
"Fifty years ago, most of the glaciers we look at were slowly growing in length but since then this pattern has reversed. In the last five years the majority were actually shrinking rapidly," said the study's leader, Alison Cook of the British Antarctic Survey. "However, 32 glaciers go against the trend and are showing minor advance. Had we not studied such a large number of glaciers we may have missed the overall pattern."
The Antarctic peninsula is a small segment of the Antarctic continent, located at the South Pole, and the behavior of the ice on the peninsula is not necessarily a reflection of what's going on elsewhere in Antarctica, said another of the investigators, David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.
Temperatures seem to be much warmer there than on the rest of the continent.
Evidence from the main Antarctic ice sheet is mixed, with some areas of the continent showing shrinkage and others showing thickening.
Ice shrinkage has also been documented in Alaska and the North Pole.
Scientists worry about the melting of the ice sheets because the extra water may increase sea levels, which in turn could mean more flooding damage to coastal areas during storms.
Sea levels have risen by 10 centimeters to 20 centimeters over the last 100 years and experts predict it could rise by a meter over the next 100 years. However, the study was not able to tell whether the shrinkage is having a meaningful impact on sea levels.
It is also unclear whether changes in the larger ice sheet in Antarctica are contributing to sea level rise, Vaughan said.
"This is another piece in the jigsaw that tells us how climate change is affecting the planet. It may not be a significant piece, but there's a million-piece jigsaw out there to be filled in ... and this is one piece in it," Vaughan said. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Retreat of Antarctic ice gathers pace
Fri Apr 22, 2005 11:52 pm
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http://news.ft.com/cms/s/692e2334-b28d-11d9-bcc6-00000e2511c8.html
Retreat of Antarctic ice gathers pace
By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent
Glaciers in the Antarctic are retreating at an increasing rate, in what scientists said on Thursday was a clear sign of climate change.
Most of the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula, near the southernmost tip of South America, have retreated over the past 50 years as temperatures have warmed, according to a study from the British Antarctic Survey and US Geological Survey. Inland glaciers appear to be accelerating their descent to the ocean, threatening to raise the sea level.
David Vaughan, one of the authors of the study, said: "The widespread retreat of the glaciers on the Antarctic peninsula over the past 50 years was largely caused by climate change. Are humans responsible? We can't say for sure but we are one step closer to answering this important question."
The survey joins a growing body of research on climate change. A study of the Arctic last year found that the ice cap was half the thickness it was 30 years ago and a tenth smaller.
An American study in February found that warming in the world's oceans could have been caused only by human activity in increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The gas, generated by burning fossil fuels, traps heat on Earth.
Nicola Saltman, a climate change policy adviser for the environmental group WWF, said: "This is another piece of evidence showing that climate change is real and happening and all governments should prioritise emissions reduction."
Of the 244 glaciers surveyed in the Antarctic, 87 per cent had retreated, by an average of 600 metres. The rate of retreat accelerated to 50m per year in the past five years, faster than at any other time in the past half century.
The survey, published on Friday in the peer-review journal Science, is the first comprehensive study of glaciers on the coast of the Antarctic peninsula. It examined more than 2,000 aerial photographs going back to the 1940s and satellite images from the past 40 years to map the ice's retreat. Temperatures have risen by about 2° Celsius in the past 50 years, a "dramatic" rise, said Alison Cook, a co- author of the report.
Climate change has become a more contentious issue since the entry into force of the Kyoto protocol in February. While most developed nations have ratified the treaty, which requires that they cut the emissions of carbon dioxide, the US and Australia have rejected it. There are also fierce tussles over whether developing nations should be required to cut emissions.
Talks on global warming among European Union and US officials this week produced "a frank exchange of views", said Lord Whitty of the UK. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Ozone layer most fragile on record
Thu Apr 28, 2005 1:35 am
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1470944,00.html
Ozone layer most fragile on record
Fears over increase in skin cancer as scientists report that climate change continues to destroy the earth's protection
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday April 27, 2005
The Guardian
The protective ozone layer over the Arctic has thinned this winter to the lowest levels since records began, alarming scientists who believed it had begun to heal.
The increased loss of ozone allows more harmful ultraviolet light to reach the earth's surface, making children and outdoor enthusiasts such as skiers more vulnerable to skin cancer - a disease which is already dramatically increasing.
Scientists yesterday reinforced the warning that people going out in the sun this summer should protect themselves with creams and hats.
Research by Cambridge University shows that it is not increased pollution but a side effect of climate change that is making ozone depletion worse. At high altitudes, 50% of the protective layer had been destroyed.
The research has dashed hopes that the ozone layer was on the mend. Since the winter of 1999-2000, when depletion was almost as bad, scientists had believed an improvement was under way as pollution was reduced. But they now believe it could be another 50 years before the problem is solved.
What appears to have caused the further loss of ozone is the increasing number of stratospheric clouds in the winter, 15 miles above the earth. These clouds, in the middle of the ozone layer, provide a platform which makes it easier for rapid chemical reactions which destroy ozone to take place. This year, for three months from the end of November, there were more clouds for longer periods than ever previously recorded.
Cambridge University scientists said yesterday that, in late March, when ozone depletion was at its worst, Arctic air masses drifted over the UK and the rest of Europe as far south as northern Italy, giving significantly higher doses of ultraviolet radiation and sunburn risk.
The results, which were announced at a Geophysical Union meeting in Vienna yesterday, are part of a European venture coordinated by Cambridge University's chemistry department, which has been studying the relationship between the ozone layer and climate change since May 2004.
Yesterday, Professor John Pyle, from the university, said: "These were were the lowest levels of ozone recorded since measurements began 40 years ago. We thought things would start to get better because of the phasing out of CFCs and other chemicals because of the Montreal protocol, but this has not happened.
"The pollution levels have levelled off but changes in the atmosphere have made it easier for the chemical reactions to take place that allow pollutants to destroy ozone. With these changes likely to continue and get worse as global warming increases, then ozone will be further depleted even if the level of pollution is going down."
The relationship between the depletion of the ozone layer and climate change is so complex that the EU is investing £11m in a five-year project to try to understand and predict what is happening. Reporting the results of the first year, the scientists told the meeting in Vienna yesterday that "the atmospheric lifetime of these [ozone depleting] compounds is extremely long and the concentrations will remain at dangerously high levels for another half century."
Increased greenhouse gases in the air trap more heat in the lower atmosphere, but the stratosphere far above the earth is getting colder. As a result, ice clouds form between 14 and 26 kilometres above the earth, exactly in the region where the protective ozone is found.
The European scientists reported the first signs of ozone loss in January. As sunlight returned to northern latitudes, the rate of ozone depletion increased and rapid destruction of ozone occurred throughout February and March. In the altitude range where the ozone layer usually reaches its maximum concentration, more than half of the ozone was lost. In the lower atmosphere losses were not so great.
"Overall, about 30% of the ozone layer was destroyed," said Dr Markus Rex, from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany, another member of the team. He said the cold conditions which created polar stratospheric clouds were four times more extensive in 2005 than in the 1960s and 70s.
Professor Pyle said overall the mixing of the air in the northern hemisphere was far more rapid than in the Antarctic so a "hole" in the ozone layer did not occur. Instead, as the air mixed in spring, there was a general thinning of the protective ozone over the whole of the northern hemisphere.
"It just means we have less natural protection than we should have and we are used to. It means that we should be careful about exposing ourselves to the sun, but that is already the case, this just makes things slightly worse," he said.
The UV danger Ecology altered as Earth burns
· The thinning of the ozone layer allows more ultraviolet light - or UV radiation - to reach the Earth's surface
· UV light stimulates the production of vitamin D in the skin, which strengthens bones, but it also burns and causes skin cancer, particularly in fair-skinned people. The UN environment programme estimates that for every 1% thinning of the ozone layer there is a 2% to 3% rise in skin cancer
· It also causes eye problems even if dark glasses are worn - mainly cataracts and snow blindness -and can suppress the immune response to the herpes virus and damage the spleen
· Excess UV radiation cuts photosynthesis in plants, reducing the size and yield of winter wheat
· Plankton which are constantly exposed suffer damaged DNA. As some species are more vulnerable than others, an increase in UV exposure has the potential to cause a shift in species composition and reduce diversity in ecosystems
· Reducing the world's populations of phytoplankton would significantly impact the world's carbon cycle, because phytoplankton store huge amounts of carbon in the ocean |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Sea, space tell warming tale
Fri Apr 29, 2005 1:34 am
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050428.warming0428/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/
Sea, space tell warming tale
Thursday, April 28, 2005 Updated at 2:25 PM EST
Associated Press
New York — Climate scientists armed with new data from the ocean depths and from space satellites have found that Earth is absorbing much more heat than it is giving off, which they say validates computer projections of global warming.
Lead scientist James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist, described the findings on the planet's out-of-balance energy exchange as a “smoking gun” that should dispel doubts about forecasts of climate change. A European climate expert called it a valuable contribution to climate research.
Mr. Hansen's team, reporting Thursday in the journal Science, said they also determined that global temperatures will rise 0.6 degrees Celsius this century even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.
If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin “out of our control,” especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the researchers said. International experts predict a five-degree leap in such a worst-case scenario.
The NASA-led researchers were able to measure Earth's energy imbalance because of more precise ocean readings collected by 1,800 technology-packed floats deployed in seas worldwide beginning in 2000, in an international monitoring effort called Argo. The robots regularly dive as much as a 1.5 kilometres under the sea to take temperature and other readings.
Their measurements are supplemented by better satellite gauging of ocean levels, which rise both from meltwater and as the sea warms and expands.
With these data, the scientists calculated the oceans' heat content and the global energy imbalance. They found that for every square metre of surface area, the planet is absorbing almost one watt more of the sun's energy than it is radiating back to space as heat – a historically large imbalance. Such absorbed energy will steadily warm the atmosphere.
The 0.85-watt figure corresponds well with the energy imbalance predicted by the researchers' supercomputer simulations of climate change, the report said.
Those computer models factor in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane and other gases – produced by everything from automobiles to pig farms. Those gases keep heat from escaping into space. Significantly, greenhouse emissions have increased at a rate consistent with the detected energy imbalance, the researchers said.
“There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming,” said Mr. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University's Earth Institute. “This energy imbalance is the ‘smoking gun' that we have been looking for.”
Fourteen other specialists from NASA, Columbia and the Department of Energy co-authored the study.
Scientists have found other possible “smoking guns” on global warming in recent years, but Klaus Hasselmann, a leading German climatologist, praised the Hansen report for its innovative work on energy imbalance.
“This is valuable additional supporting evidence” of manmade climate change, he told The Associated Press.
In February, scientists at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography said their research – not yet published – also showed a close correlation between climate models and the observed temperatures of oceans, further defusing skeptics' past criticism of uncertainties in modelling.
Average atmospheric temperatures rose about .6 degree in the 20th century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN-organized network of scientists, says computer modelling predicts temperatures rising between 1.4 degrees and 5.7 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Besides raising ocean levels, global warming is expected to intensify storms, spread disease to new areas, and shift climate zones, possibly making farmlands drier and deserts wetter. |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
| Global warming causes Arabian Sea fish stocks to collapse
Sat Apr 30, 2005 1:30 am
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http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/73/36/
Global warming causes Arabian Sea fish stocks to collapse
Melting snow cover in Asia caused by global warming leads to dwindling fish stocks in the Arabian Sea, a group of scientists have warned. A recent study led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences have discovered that an abrupt decline in winter-time snow over the Himalayan mountain range and Southwest Asia is creating conditions for more widespread blooms of phytoplankton in the Arabian Sea. Phytoplankton are tiny ocean plants that form the base of the ocean food chain.
While large phytoplankton blooms can enhance fisheries, unusually high increases could be detrimental to the ecosystem by causing oxygen depletion at depth, the scientists stated. If the present warming trend continues, the Arabian Sea could slowly become devoid of oxygen.
In recent years, fishermen off the coast of Oman have encountered several instances of massive fish mortality, according to scientists at the Dept. of Marine Sciences and Fisheries at the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman.
Over the past 7 years, the western half of the Arabian Sea has witnessed record increases in phytoplankton blooms due to a year-by-year intensification of monsoonal winds, the scientists reported.
Oxygen depleted waters provide the perfect environment for the growth of a specialized group of bacteria called the denitrifying bacteria, which convert nitrate present in seawater into less oxidized forms of nitrogen. One such form is nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas whose global warming potential is over 300 times that of carbon dioxide. Increased phytoplankton in the oxygen limited deeper waters of the Arabian Sea could therefore exacerbate the greenhouse problem.
The events Goes has studied have global implications. Monsoon seasons affect over one-third of the world’s population living in Africa and Asia. As more land is being cleared for agriculture, and more artificial nutrients are finding their way to the oceans, plankton blooms are increasing along the coasts.
“The events are like dominoes....each triggering a change that has a significant impact on the lives and livelihood of people in the coastal regions,” said Dr. Sandy Sage, Executive Director of Bigelow Laboratory. |
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