Warming's impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto
Lookout
More FACTS: to deny global warming at this point is pure stupidity
WASHINGTON � Since the 1997 international accord to fight global
warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated � beyond some of
the grimmest of warnings made back then.
As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new
ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the
Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of
tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and
Africa are shrinking faster than before.
And it's not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the
heat in the dozen years leading up to next month's climate summit in
Copenhagen:
_The world's oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.
_Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the
U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.
_Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just
the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming,
but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of
North American pine forests.
_Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than
the dozen years leading up to 1997.
Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn't forecast
results quite this bad so fast.
"The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we
thought," said Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon.
And here's why: Since an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas pollution
was signed in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, the level of carbon
dioxide in the air has increased 6.5 percent. Officials from across
the world will convene in Copenhagen next month to seek a follow-up
pact, one that President Barack Obama says "has immediate operational
effect ... an important step forward in the effort to rally the world
around a solution."
The last effort didn't quite get the anticipated results.
From 1997 to 2008, world carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of
fossil fuels have increased 31 percent; U.S. emissions of this
greenhouse gas rose 3.7 percent. Emissions from China, now the biggest
producer of this pollution, have more than doubled in that time
period. When the U.S. Senate balked at the accord and President George
W. Bush withdrew from it, that meant that the top three carbon
polluters � the U.S., China and India � were not part of the pact's
emission reductions. Developing countries were not covered by the
Kyoto Protocol and that is a major issue in Copenhagen.
And the effects of greenhouse gases are more powerful and happening
sooner than predicted, scientists said.
"Back in 1997, the impacts (of climate change) were underestimated;
the rate of change has been faster," said Virginia Burkett, chief
scientist for global change research at the U.S. Geological Survey.
That last part alarms former Vice President Al Gore, who helped broker
a last-minute deal in Kyoto.
"By far the most serious differences that we've had is an acceleration
of the crisis itself," Gore said in an interview this month with The
Associated Press.
In 1997, global warming was an issue for climate scientists,
environmentalists and policy wonks. Now biologists, lawyers,
economists, engineers, insurance analysts, risk managers, disaster
professionals, commodity traders, nutritionists, ethicists and even
psychologists are working on global warming.
"We've come from a time in 1997 where this was some abstract problem
working its way around scientific circles to now when the problem is
in everyone's face," said Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria
climate scientist.
The changes in the last 12 years that have the scientists most alarmed
are happening in the Arctic with melting summer sea ice and around the
world with the loss of key land-based ice masses. It's all happening
far faster than predicted.
Back in 1997 "nobody in their wildest expectations," would have
forecast the dramatic sudden loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic that
started about five years ago, Weaver said. From 1993 to 1997, sea ice
would shrink on average in the summer to about 2.7 million square
miles. The average for the last five years is less than 2 million
square miles. What's been lost is the size of Alaska.
Antarctica had a slight increase in sea ice, mostly because of the
cooling effect of the ozone hole, according to the British Antarctic
Survey. At the same time, large chunks of ice shelves � adding up to
the size of Delaware � came off the Antarctic peninsula.
While melting Arctic ocean ice doesn't raise sea levels, the melting
of giant land-based ice sheets and glaciers that drain into the seas
do. Those are shrinking dramatically at both poles.
Measurements show that since 2000, Greenland has lost more than 1.5
trillion tons of ice, while Antarctica has lost about 1 trillion tons
since 2002, according to two scientific studies published this fall.
In multiple reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
reports, scientists didn't anticipate ice sheet loss in Antarctica,
Weaver said. And the rate of those losses is accelerating, so that
Greenland's ice sheets are melting twice as fast now as they were just
seven years ago, increasing sea level rise.
Worldwide glaciers are shrinking three times faster than in the 1970s
and the average glacier has lost 25 feet of ice since 1997, said
Michael Zemp, a researcher at World Glacier Monitoring Service at the
University of Zurich.
"Glaciers are a good climate indicator," Zemp said. "What we see is an
accelerated loss of ice."
Also, permafrost � the frozen northern ground that oil pipelines are
built upon and which traps the potent greenhouse gas methane � is
thawing at an alarming rate, Burkett said.
Another new post-1997 impact of global warming has scientists very
concerned. The oceans are getting more acidic because more of the
carbon dioxide in the air is being absorbed into the water. That
causes acidification, an issue that didn't even merit a name until the
past few years.
More acidic water harms coral, oysters and plankton and ultimately
threatens the ocean food chain, biologists say.
In 1997, "there was no interest in plants and animals" and how they
are hampered by climate change, said Stanford University biologist
Terry Root. Now scientists are talking about which species can be
saved from extinction and which are goners. The polar bear became the
first species put on the federal list of threatened species and the
small rabbit-like American pika may be joining it.
More than 37 million acres of Canadian and U.S. pine forests have been
damaged by beetles that don't die in warmer winters. And in the U.S.
West, the average number of acres burned per fire has more than
doubled.
The Colorado River reservoirs, major water suppliers for the U.S.
West, were nearly full in 1999, but by 2007 half the water was gone
after the region endured the worst multiyear drought in 100 years of
record-keeping.
Insurance losses and blackouts have soared and experts say global
warming is partly to blame. The number of major U.S. weather-related
blackouts from 2004-2008 were more than seven times higher than from
1993-1997, said Evan Mills, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley
National Lab.
"The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in
1997 and it's all negative," said Eileen Claussen, president of the
Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the
models predicted."
Jim Alder
news:tf1kg5tnd573ut8bi...@4ax.com:
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_09_post_kyoto
>
> More FACTS: to deny global warming at this point is pure stupidity
>
> WASHINGTON � Since the 1997 international accord to fight global
> warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated � beyond some of
> the grimmest of warnings made back then.
I have noticed several times in the past when the accolytes of "gullible
warming" take a hit - such as a large group of scientists claiming there is
nothing to the theories of doom - that a day or two after, they announce that
things are worse than expected. Now it's happening again. Some hackers broke
into the computer of one of the biggest supporters and researchers of
"gullible warming" and found it was all a dog and pony show!
--
So, how's that whole "hopey - changey"
thing working out for you so far?
Fred B. Brown
Channel too much. They are all fake. The Northern polar ice caps melted
and the ocean rose 7 inches. New York didn't drown under huge floods,
Washington DC didn't get flooded out. Al Gore is going to lose money
trying to sell beach front property at the base of the Appalachian
Mountains.
It's all fake Pumpkin, so you can take your water wings off.
"Lookout" <mrLo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:tf1kg5tnd573ut8bi...@4ax.com...
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_09_post_kyoto
>
> More FACTS: to deny global warming at this point is pure stupidity
>
> WASHINGTON - Since the 1997 international accord to fight global
> warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated - beyond some of
> polluters - the U.S., China and India - were not part of the pact's
> Survey. At the same time, large chunks of ice shelves - adding up to
> the size of Delaware - came off the Antarctic peninsula.
>
> While melting Arctic ocean ice doesn't raise sea levels, the melting
> of giant land-based ice sheets and glaciers that drain into the seas
> do. Those are shrinking dramatically at both poles.
>
> Measurements show that since 2000, Greenland has lost more than 1.5
> trillion tons of ice, while Antarctica has lost about 1 trillion tons
> since 2002, according to two scientific studies published this fall.
> In multiple reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
> reports, scientists didn't anticipate ice sheet loss in Antarctica,
> Weaver said. And the rate of those losses is accelerating, so that
> Greenland's ice sheets are melting twice as fast now as they were just
> seven years ago, increasing sea level rise.
>
> Worldwide glaciers are shrinking three times faster than in the 1970s
> and the average glacier has lost 25 feet of ice since 1997, said
> Michael Zemp, a researcher at World Glacier Monitoring Service at the
> University of Zurich.
>
> "Glaciers are a good climate indicator," Zemp said. "What we see is an
> accelerated loss of ice."
>
> Also, permafrost - the frozen northern ground that oil pipelines are
> built upon and which traps the potent greenhouse gas methane - is
Fred B. Brown
"Jim Alder" <jima...@ssnet.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9CCC7999A2CFj...@216.196.97.142...
> Lookout <mrLo...@yahoo.com> wrote in
> news:tf1kg5tnd573ut8bi...@4ax.com:
>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_09_post_kyoto
>>
>> More FACTS: to deny global warming at this point is pure stupidity
>>
>> warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated - beyond some of
>> the grimmest of warnings made back then.
>
> I have noticed several times in the past when the accolytes of
> "gullible
> warming" take a hit - such as a large group of scientists claiming there
> is
> nothing to the theories of doom - that a day or two after, they announce
> that
> things are worse than expected. Now it's happening again. Some hackers
> broke
> into the computer of one of the biggest supporters and researchers of
> "gullible warming" and found it was all a dog and pony show!
>
> http://www.climatedepot.com/
>
Scientists have to publish new "discoveries" or lose their funding and
perish.
So they invent The Big Bang and all kinds of global warming nonsense.
tankfixer
mrLo...@yahoo.com says...
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_09_post_kyoto
>
> More FACTS: to deny global warming at this point is pure stupidity
"One of the emails under scrutiny, written by Phil Jones, the centre's
director, in 1999, reads: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the
science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for
the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to
hide the decline."
/begin quote
"From: Phil Jones
To: ?Michael E. Mann?
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008
Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He?s not in at the moment ? minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don?t have his new
email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature
paper!!
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
/end quote
Propaganda discarded to save Co2
Lookout
wrote:
>In article <tf1kg5tnd573ut8bi...@4ax.com>,
>mrLo...@yahoo.com says...
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091122/ap_on_sc/sci_climate_09_post_kyoto
>>
>> More FACTS: to deny global warming at this point is pure stupidity
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091123/ts_afp/australianzealandantarcticaclimateiceberg
He said they were the remains of a massive ice floe which split from
the Antarctic as sea and air temperatures rise due to global warming.