Global Warming – Page 39 – artdiamondblog.com

Kilimanjaro Snow Has “Come and Gone Over Centuries”

“Mount Kilimanjaro’s top, shown in June, has lost 26 percent of its ice since 2000, a study says.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) The ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has continued to retreat rapidly, declining 26 percent since 2000, scientists say in a new report.

Yet the authors of the study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity’s role in warming the global climate.
Eighty-five percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, the scientists said.
To measure the recent pace of the retreat, researchers relied on data from aerial photographs taken of Kilimanjaro over time and from stakes and instruments installed on the mountaintop in 2000, said Douglas R. Hardy, a geologist at the University of Massachusetts and one of the study’s authors.
. . .
. . . Georg Kaser, a glaciologist at the Institute for Geography of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said that the ice measured was only a few hundred years old and that it had come and gone over centuries.
What is more, he suggested that the recent melting had more to do with a decline in moisture levels than with a warming atmosphere.
“Our understanding is that it is due to the slow drying out of ice,” Dr. Kaser said. “It’s about moisture fluctuation.”

For the full story, see:
SINDYA N. BHANOO. “Mt. Kilimanjaro’s Ice Cap Continues Its Rapid Retreat, but the Cause Is Debated.” The New York Times (Tues., November 3, 2009): A6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated November 2, 2009 and has the title “Mt. Kilimanjaro Ice Cap Continues Rapid Retreat.”)

Russia Boldly Seeks Oil in Arctic

“The Prirazlomnaya oil platform was brought to the Arctic seaport of Murmansk, 906 miles north of Moscow, to be adjusted.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) MOSCOW — The Arctic Ocean is a forbidding place for oil drillers. But that is not stopping Russia from jumping in — or Western oil companies from eagerly following.

Russia, where onshore oil reserves are slowly dwindling, last month signed an Arctic exploration deal with the British petroleum giant BP, whose offshore drilling prospects in the United States were dimmed by the Gulf of Mexico disaster last year. Other Western oil companies, recognizing Moscow’s openness to new ocean drilling, are now having similar discussions with Russia.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW E. KRAMER and CLIFFORD KRAUSS. “Russia Embraces Arctic Drilling.” The New York Times (Weds., February 16, 2011): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the article was dated February 15, 2011 and had the title “Russia Embraces Offshore Arctic Drilling.”)

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Polar Bears Can Survive Global Warming

(p. 3A) ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — . . .

A study report published Wednesday rejects the often used concept of a “tipping point,” or point of no return, when it comes to sea ice and the big bear that has become the symbol of climate change woes. . . .
Another research group projects that even if global warming doesn’t slow, a thin, icy refuge for the bears would still remain between Greenland and Canada.
. . .
A . . . study was to be presented Thursday at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. That research considers a future in which global warming continues at the same pace.
And it shows that a belt from the northern archipelago of Canada to the northern tip of Greenland will likely still have ice because of various winds and currents.
The sea ice forms off Siberia in an area that’s called “the ice factory” and is blown to this belt, which is like an “ice cube tray,” said Robert Newton of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
That “sea ice refuge” will be good for polar bears and should continue for decades to come, maybe even into the next century, he said.

For the full story, see:
AP. “Scientists: It’s Not Too Late for Polar Bears After All.” Omaha World-Herald (Thurs., December 16, 2010): 3A.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The first article mentioned is:
Amstrup, Steven C., Eric T. DeWeaver, David C. Douglas, Bruce G. Marcot, George M. Durner, Cecilia M. Bitz, and David A. Bailey. “Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Can Reduce Sea-Ice Loss and Increase Polar Bear Persistence.” Nature 468, no. 7326 (December 16, 2010): 955-58.

A poster on an earlier version of the second paper can be found at:
Pfirman, Stephanie, Bruno Tremblay, Charles Fowler, and Robert Newton. “The Arctic Sea Ice Refuge.” March 2010.

The reference to the second paper is:
Pfirman, Stephanie, Robert Newton, Bruno Tremblay, and Brenden P. Kelly. “The Last Arctic Sea-Ice Refuge?” In Presented at meetings of American Geophysical Union, December 2010.

“A Novel Way to Extract CO2 from the Atmosphere”

(p. 96) UNDERSTANDING how the oceans absorb carbon dioxide is crucial to understanding the role of that gas in the climate. It is rather worrying, then, that something profound may be missing from that understanding. But if Jiao Nianzhi of Xiamen University in China is right, it is. For he suggests there is a lot of carbon floating in the oceans that has not previously been noticed. It is in the form of what is known as refractory dissolved organic matter and it has been put there by a hitherto little-regarded group of creatures called aerobic anoxygenic photoheterotrophic bacteria (AAPB). If Dr Jiao is right, a whole new “sink” for carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has been discovered.

. . .
. . . , Dr Jiao and his (p. 97) colleagues propose that AAPB, and possibly other, similar microbes, have a predominant role in pumping carbon into a pool of compounds that cannot be turned back into carbon dioxide by living creatures, thereby building up a large reservoir that keeps carbon out of the atmosphere. If that idea is confirmed, it will need to be incorporated into the computer models used to understand the Earth’s carbon cycle and its effect on the climate. But it also raises a more radical thought. The newly discovered microbial carbon pump could provide a novel way to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, should that ever be deemed necessary to combat climate change.

For the full story, see:
“Bacteria and climate change; Invisible carbon pumps; A group of oceanic micro-organisms just might prove a surprising ally in the fight against climate change.” The Economist (September 11, 2010): 96-97.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated September 9, 2010.)

More than a Quarter of Weathercasters Believe “Global Warming is a Scam”

(p. A1) Joe Bastardi, . . . , a senior forecaster and meteorologist with AccuWeather, maintains that it is more likely that the planet is cooling, and he distrusts the data put forward by climate scientists as evidence for rising global temperatures.

“There is a great deal of consternation among a lot of us over the readjustment of data that is going on and some of the portrayals that we are seeing,” Mr. Bastardi said in a video segment posted recently on AccuWeather’s Web site.
Such skepticism appears to be widespread among TV forecasters, about half of whom have a degree in meteorology. A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was “caused mostly by human activities.”
More than a quarter of the weathercasters in the survey agreed with the statement “Global warming is a scam,” the researchers found.

For the full story, see:
LESLIE KAUFMAN. “Scientists and Weathercasters at Odds over Climate Change.” The New York Times (Tues., March 30, 2010): A1 & A16.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated March 29, 2010 and had the title “Among Weathercasters, Doubt on Warming.”)

Carbon Dioxide Increased After the Globe Warmed, Not Before

The passages quoted below are from an opinion piece by retired physicist Jack Kasher who was a colleague of mine at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

I was pleased to see that the Millard school district pulled Laurie David’s book, “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” due to “a major factual error” in a chart that shows rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels dating back 650,000 years. The chart claims to show that global warming is caused by increases in carbon dioxide levels, but the facts show that this is not the case.

In May, I attended an international conference on global warming in Chicago, with 73 speakers from 23 countries. The book and its erroneous chart were discussed there. (Go online to http://www.heartland.org/events/2010Chicago/index.html and click on “proceedings” to see most of the talks and PowerPoint presentations.)
When the error is corrected, the chart will show that in every single case over this time span the Earth warmed up first, followed by a later increase in carbon dioxide. This is clear proof that in the past global warming was not caused by an increase in CO2. If anything, it is the other way around. In each instance, something other than CO2 caused the temperature increase, which then might have made the CO2 rise. This chart shows that past history actually contradicts David’s main assumption in her book — namely that man-made carbon dioxide is causing global warming.

For the full commentary, see:

Dr. Jack Kasher. “Midlands Voices: Let’s include uncertainties in global-warming lessons.” Omaha World-Herald (Wednesday June 30, 2010): ??.

Expert Says Australian Cow Burps Add to Global Warming

“Athol Klieve, an expert on cattle stomachs, with steers used for research on reducing methane emissions from belching cattle.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A14) GATTON, Australia — To hear Athol Klieve tell it, a key to reducing Australia’s enormous carbon emissions is to make a cow more like this country’s iconic animal — the kangaroo.
. . .
Australia contributes more greenhouse gases per capita than just about any other country, with its coal-fired power plants leading the way. But more than 10 percent of those gases come from what bureaucrats call livestock emissions — animals’ burping.
At any given point, after munching and regurgitating grass, tens of millions of Australian cattle, as well as sheep, are belching methane gases nonstop into the air. With methane considered 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere, the burping has given ammunition to environmentalists, vegetarians and other critics of beef while initially putting the large meat industry on the defensive.
. . .
Ruminants release methane because of the peculiar way they digest their food. Inside a cow’s foregut, which can contain more than 200 pounds of grass at any given time, fermentation of the food leads to the release of hydrogen, a byproduct that would slow down the fermentation. Microbes known as methanogens help the ruminants get rid of the excess hydrogen by producing methane gases that the animals release into the atmosphere.
In other animals known as hindgut fermenters, including humans — in which food is fermented after going through their stomachs — methane is sometimes released through flatulence, a fact that, Mr. Klieve said, has led to misunderstanding about his work
“We’ve had to put up with that all the time,” Mr. Klieve said. “It comes from the front end! In the cow, it comes from the front end. But if you’re a hindgut fermenter, it goes the other way.”
. . .
Like cattle, kangaroos are also foregut fermenters. But instead of relying on methanogens to get rid of the unwanted hydrogen, kangaroos use different microbes that reduce hydrogen by producing not methane, but harmless acetic acids, the basis of vinegar.
. . .
“It’s going to be very difficult to meet the current production needs, particularly for the current global population, with kangaroo,” Ms. Henry said. “You need something like 10 kangaroos to produce the same amount of meat as one steer. You can’t herd them or fence them in.”
Undaunted, a few kangaroo meat entrepreneurs are pressing ahead, seeing methane emissions as a business opportunity.

For the full story, see:
NORIMITSU ONISHI. “Gatton Journal; Trying to Stop Cattle Burps From Heating Up Planet.” The New York Times (Weds., July 14, 2010): A14.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 13, 2010.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

More on How Federal Regulations Delay Oil Cleanup

(p. A15) First, the Environmental Protection Agency can relax restrictions on the amount of oil in discharged water, currently limited to 15 parts per million. In normal times, this rule sensibly controls the amount of pollution that can be added to relatively clean ocean water. But this is not a normal time.

Various skimmers and tankers (some of them very large) are available that could eliminate most of the oil from seawater, discharging the mostly clean water while storing the oil onboard. While this would clean vast amounts of water efficiently, the EPA is unwilling to grant a temporary waiver of its regulations.
Next, the Obama administration can waive the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from operating in U.S. coastal waters. Many foreign countries (such as the Netherlands and Belgium) have ships and technologies that would greatly advance the cleanup. So far, the U.S. has refused to waive the restrictions of this law and allow these ships to participate in the effort.
The combination of these two regulations is delaying and may even prevent the world’s largest skimmer, the Taiwanese owned “A Whale,” from deploying. This 10-story high ship can remove almost as much oil in a day as has been removed in total–roughly 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. The tanker is steaming towards the Gulf, hoping it will receive Coast Guard and EPA approval before it arrives.

For the full story, see:

PAUL H. RUBIN. “Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow? There are obvious actions to speed things up, but the government oddly resists taking them..” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., July 2, 2010): A15.

Defenders of Climategate Benefit from Global Warming Fears

(p. A15) Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called “a nice, tidy story” of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, “nothing to see here.”
. . .
One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)–the source of the Climategate emails–was established in Mr. Boulton’s school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.”
This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others–one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community.”
Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.
It’s impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren’t looking.

For the full commentary, see
PATRICK J. MICHAELS. “The Climategate Whitewash Continues; Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year’s data manipulation scandal. Don’t believe the ‘independent’ reviews..” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., JULY 12, 2010): A15.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated JULY 10, 2010.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Global Warming Would Benefit British Sparkling Wine Growers

“Mike Roberts, at Ridgeview in 2007, says making wine is easier now.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) DITCHLING, England–The English invented sparkling wine in the 17th century, but failed to profit from it because their cold, dank summers yielded crummy grapes. Three decades later, a French monk named Dom Pérignon adapted the idea and devised a winning tipple, Champagne.

The Brits are starting to claw back some ground. In January, a little-known bubbly from the U.K’s Nyetimber Estate was crowned “world’s best sparkling wine” at a prestigious taste-off in Italy, defeating a dozen Champagnes, including Roederer, Bollinger and Pommery. Last year, when Britain hosted the G-20 meeting, another effervescent Nyetimber was served to President Barack Obama, Germany’s Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
English bubbly is on the rise partly due to better winemaking techniques. But some vintners say they’re being helped by another, unexpected factor: a warming climate.
Official data indicate that the past 10 years were the warmest on record globally. In England, this led to plumper and riper grapes most seasons, especially for sparkling wines. The number of vineyards in the U.K. jumped to 416 in 2008 from 363 in 2000, according the trade group English Wine Producers
“Just 20 years ago, it was really difficult to make good wine in cooler climate areas,” says Gregory Jones, who studies the effect of climate change on the (p. A18) global wine industry at Southern Oregon University. “Now it’s not such a challenge.”
With the help of warmer summers, “some of the risk of making sparkling wine here is gone,” says Mike Roberts, founder and chief winemaker of the Ridgeview estate here, 45 miles south of London. “We have everything going for us to out-Champagne Champagne.”
Last year, the fifth-hottest on record, Ridgeview’s grapes ripened two weeks earlier than usual, allowing for the harvest to be brought in before the onset of wet October weather. Mr. Roberts and other English winemakers say 2009 was one of the best growing seasons they’ve seen.

For the full story, see:
GAUTAM NAIK. “‘Warmer Climate Gives Cheer to Makers of British Bubbly; Thanks to Milder Summers, England Takes Some Air Out of France’s Famous Tipple.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., May 11, 2010): A1 & A18.

Ridgeview Estate’s wine “to out-Champagne Champagne.”

Source of photo: http://www.goodfoodpages.co.uk/images/listings/1580/large/ridgeview.jpg Source of quote: Mike Roberts above.

“Climate Change Was One of the Forces that Led to the Triumph of Homo Sapiens”

“The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in Washington includes this 30,000-year-old handprint from France.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C32) The exhibition’s theme is “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” And the new image of the human it creates is different from the one from a century ago. It isn’t that nature has suddenly become a pastoral paradise. Some of the most unusual objects here are fossilized human bones bearing scars of animal attacks: a 3-year-old’s skull from about 2.3 million years ago is marked by eagle talons in the eye sockets; an early human’s foot shows the bite marks of a crocodile. In one of the exhibition’s interactive video stations, in which you are cleverly shown how excavated remains are interpreted, you learn that the teeth of a leopard’s lower jaw found in a cave at the Swartkrans site in South Africa match the puncture marks in a nearby early-human skull: evidence of a 1.8 million-year-old killing.

. . .
During the brief 200,000-year life of Homo sapiens, at least three other human species also existed. And while this might seem to diminish any remnants of pride left to the human animal in the wake of Darwin’s theory, the exhibition actually does the opposite. It puts the human at the center, tracing how through these varied species, central characteristics developed, and we became the sole survivors. The show humanizes evolution. It is, in part, a story of human triumph.
. . .
. . . at recent excavations in China, at Majuangou, stone tools were found in four layers of rock dating from 1.66 million to 1.32 million years ago; fossil pollen proved that each of these four time periods was also associated with a different habitat. “The toolmaker, Homo erectus,” we read, “was able to survive in all of these habitats.”
That ability was crucial. The hall emphasizes that enormous changes in the planet’s climate accompanied hominin development, suggesting that the ability to adapt to such differing circumstances was the human’s strength. Climate change was one of the forces that led to the triumph of Homo sapiens.

For the full review, see:
EDWARD ROTHSTEIN. “Exhibition Review; Hall of Human Origins; Searching the Bones of Our Shared Past.” The New York Times (Fri., March 19, 2010): C25 & C32.
(Note: italics in original; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review is dated March 18, 2010.)