Monday Moaning

We are hearing all the time about meetings, conferences and the like about global warming.

There are billions pledged; the latest $9.3bn, to fight the problem.

Australia is thumbing its nose at carbon footprints, China is racing away with fossil fuels to stoke their furnaces and economy. And, they’re not the only ones.

But is anything actually being done?

Polar caps are melting, Greenland is too. The seas are getting warmer and sea levels rising. Islands like the Maldives and some Pacific nations are on the verge of disappearing.

Everybody is on the bandwagon.

Then there are the climate deniers, claiming it’s all a hoax.

Where is all this money and rhetoric taking us? It seems to me as though we’re no further ahead than we were at the beginning.

Talk, talk, talk, blah, blah!

How about someone actually doing something!

Nature Ramble

US reroutes flights around Alaska beach in attempt to avoid walrus stampede

An estimated 35,000 of the animals were spotted as summer sea ice fell to its sixth lowest in the satellite record

Walruses in the Chukchi sea this time of year are generally females and young who are at greater risk of being trampled. Photograph: Steven Kazlowski/Nature Picture Library

The plight of thousands of walruses forced to crowd on to an Alaska beach because of disappearing sea ice has set off an all-out response from the US government to avoid a catastrophic stampede.

The Federal Aviation Authority has re-routed flights, and local communities have called on bush pilots to keep their distance in an effort to avoid setting off a panic that could see scores of walruses trampled to death, federal government scientists told reporters.

Curiosity seekers and the media have also been asked to stay away.

An estimated 35,000 walruses were spotted on the barrier island in north-western Alaska on 27 September by scientists on an aerial survey flight.

The biggest immediate risk factor for the walruses now is a stampede – especially for baby walruses – but they have been facing a growing threat from climate change, the scientists said.

The extraordinary sighting – the biggest known exodus of walruses to dry land ever observed in the Arctic under US control – arrived as the summer sea ice fell to its sixth lowest in the satellite record last month.

“Those animals have essentially run out of offshore sea ice, and have no other choice but to come ashore,” said Chadwick Jay, a research ecologist in Alaska with the US Geological Survey.

Until 2007, it was unheard of for walruses to leave the sea ice for dry land for prolonged periods of time. But the retreat of sea ice has seen “drastic changes” in behaviour, Jay said. Walruses have struck out for beaches in six of the last eight years.

He said there was no doubt the migration – or “hauling out” as it is called – was caused by climate change.

“It is really a reduction in the sea ice that is causing the change in behaviour, and the reduction of sea ice is due to global warming,” Jay said.

But the immediate concern was to avoid a stampede – a leading risk factor for walruses when they crowd onto beaches and barrier islands.

The FAA is asking pilots to remain above 2,000ft and half a mile away from the walruses. Helicopters – a bigger risk to the walruses because they are noisier – have been asked to remain 3,000ft up and a mile away. News crews, which have been clamouring to film the walruses, have also been asked to stay away. “The government and local communities are respectfully asking you to leave the haul-out alone,” Joel Garlich Miller, a Walrus biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, told reporters.

Walruses are naturally skittish animals, unused to being closely packed together. They also spend 80% of their time on water. Those in the Chukchi sea this time of year are generally females and juveniles and so at greater risk of being trampled to death.

“You have all these animals that are normally distributed on a flat surface. When they lose their sea ice habitat and come ashore in places that are accessible – like flat, sandy beaches – they gather in large numbers, and it becomes like a giant pig pile,” said Margaret Williams, managing director for the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program. “When they are disturbed it can cause stampedes in large numbers.”

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Make you Fink on Friday

Coca Cola, Heinz And Other Major Food Companies Warn Climate Change Threatens Business

But as ThinkProgress noted at the time, the real story was not a guacamole shortage, but the emerging reality of doing business in a warming world. While politicians continue to bicker over whether or not climate change exists, companies now have no choice in the matter — they must acknowledge the science and the risk and disclose the reality of that risk to their investors’ pocketbooks. Whether that risk actually manifests itself is another matter, but the fact that companies are increasingly putting climate change on their threat lists speaks volumes to the severity of the problem.

Here are seven other big food companies that disclose to investors that climate change poses a threat to their products and bottom lines.

Read more on ClimateProgress

My source: Garry Rodgers Nature

Opinion:

Isn’t it nice, these big multinational companies are worried about their profits… the risk to their investor’s pocketbooks.

Bugger you and your health, this isn’t an issue for them.

I don’t care one iota about their investor’s pocketbooks, they can all go broke as far as I am concerned. These companies are pure greed at our expense.

Satireday on Eco-Crap

Make you Fink on Friday

This is a great song written by the Aussie group Men With Day Jobs. Thanks to quakerrattled for posting from Hot Topic .

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Make you Fink on Friday

Two stories today, both different, but both could lead to our extinction.

A vicious circle, climate change apparently increases violence, and traits like selfishness are not valued in evolution…

Firstly, violence.

Rise in violence ‘linked to climate change’

The researchers believe that war and personal conflicts are links to shifts in climate

Shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world, a study suggests.

US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war.

The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place.

Read more on BBC

Selfish traits not favoured by evolution, study shows

Humans and animals could not evolve in a co-operative environment by being selfish, scientists say

Evolution does not favour selfish people, according to new research.

This challenges a previous theory which suggested it was preferable to put yourself first.

Instead, it pays to be co-operative, shown in a model of “the prisoner’s dilemma”, a scenario of game theory – the study of strategic decision-making.

Published in Nature Communications, the team says their work shows that exhibiting only selfish traits would have made us become extinct.

Read more on BBC

Two seemingly linked theories, one that man is affecting climate change and that that climate change can lead to a rise in violence, two, that selfishness and that means to me meanness and violence as well, are not favoured by Mother Nature.

If this is the case, are we not the authors of our own demise?

A paradox.

Monday Moaning

We have known for 75 years, and still we do NOTHING!

Yes, we knew in 1938!

How the burning of fossil fuels was linked to a warming world in 1938

This month marks the 75th anniversary of Guy Callendar’s landmark scientific paper on anthropogenic climate change

English engineer Guy Stewart Callendar who expanded on the work Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius and developed the theory called Callendar effect that linked rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to global temperature. Photograph: University of East Anglia Archives

Seventy-five years ago this month an amateur weather-watcher from West Sussex published a landmark paper in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society directly linking the burning of fossil fuels to the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Guy Callendar was a successful steam engineer by trade, but in his spare time he was a keen meteorologist. In April 1938, his paper, “The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature”, which built on the earlier work of John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius, was published with little fanfare or impact. It was only in the proceeding decades that the true significance of his conclusions would be heralded.

To mark the anniversary, two modern-day climatologists have published a co-authored paper (pdf) in the same journal celebrating not just his legacy, but also illustrating with modern techniques and data just how accurate Callendar’s calculations proved to be.

Dr Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science, who co-authored the paper with Prof Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia, describes why Callendar is so significant to the development of climate science:

In hindsight, Callendar’s contribution was fundamental. He is still relatively unknown, but in terms of the history of climate science, his paper is a classic. He was the first scientist to discover that the planet had warmed by collating temperature measurements from around the globe, and suggested that this warming was partly related to man-made carbon dioxide emissions…People were sceptical about some of Callendar’s results, partly because the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere was not very well known and because his estimates for the warming caused by CO2 were quite simplistic by modern standards. It was only in the 1950s, when improved instruments showed more precisely how water and CO2 absorbed radiation, that we reached a better understanding of its importance. Scientists at the time also couldn’t really believe that humans could impact such a large system as the climate – a problem that climate science still encounters from some people today, despite the compelling evidence to the contrary.

Hawkins has also written a blog post about his new Callendar paper, which delves deeper into why Callendar’s findings were not immediately acted upon, or even discussed until decades later:

Doubts in the role of CO2 remained, partly because the world did not warm further – in fact land temperatures fell slightly until around 1975, before the warming resumed. This temperature plateau is very likely due to increased levels of particulates (or ‘aerosols’) in the atmosphere reflecting solar radiation back into space. Ironically, these aerosols are also the product of fossil fuel burning and strict regulations were imposed in the developed world on their emissions in the 1960s and 1970s which allowed the warming from carbon dioxide to emerge again. Aerosol emissions from the developing world may also have played a role in the temperature plateau since around 2000.

Here is the illustration produced by Hawkins and Jones to show how Callendar’s findings, published in 1938 and updated in 1961, match a modern-day temperature reconstruction (CRUTEM4) of global land temperatures for the period 1850-2010.

Comparing historical reconstructions of near-global land temperatures using CRUTEM4 (black, Jones et al. 2012) with Callendar (1938) (red) and Callendar (1961) (blue), using a reference period of 1880-1935. The CRUTEM4 estimates are for 60◦S-60◦N (to accord with Callendar’s series), with grey shading representing the 95% uncertainty. Image: Ed Hawkins and Phil D. Jones

Callendar’s original paper can be read in full online. Of particular interest – beyond his workings, of course – is the peer-review “discussion” at the end between various professors and Callendar. You really get the sense that Callendar was viewed as a naïve amateur in this field, which possibly contributed to why his conclusions weren’t fully absorbed until the 1960s.

 

 

Read more

It just goes to show that governments don’t care! Or, are completely in cahoots with corporations.

Until there is a dramatic change in political circles, nothing will change.

It is up to each and every one of you to make your votes count, get these corrupt bastards out of government.

If you vote Republican or Democrat, you are to blame for this procrastination!

 

Monday Moaning

Climate change isn’t only affecting things on the ground, but up in the air as well.

Climate change will lead to bumpier flights, say scientists

The shifting of the jet stream over Europe caused by global warming will lead to clear-air turbulence

Flights have become bumpier in the past 44 years, and are set to get worse as climate change affects the jet stream, a study has shown. Photograph: Pictorial Parade/Getty Images

Climate change will lead to bumpier flights caused by increased mid-air turbulence, according to an analysis by scientists of the impact of global warming on weather systems over the next four decades.

The increasing air turbulence results from the impact of climate change on the jet streams, the fast, mile-wide winds that whistle round the planet at the same altitude as airliners. The shifting of the jet stream over Europe has also been blamed for the UK’s wash-out summer in 2012 and frozen spring this year.

The rough ride ahead joins other unexpected impacts of climate change, which include dodgier wi-fi and mobile phone signals and even slower marathon race times for athletes.

Paul Williams, at the University of Reading who led the new research, said: “Air turbulence does more than just interrupt the service of in-flight drinks. It injures hundreds of passengers and aircrew every year. It also causes delays and damages planes, with the total cost to society being about £100m each year.”

The study, which used the same turbulence models that air traffic controllers use every day, found that the frequency of turbulence on the many flights between Europe and North America will double by 2050 and its intensity increase by 10-40%.

“Rerouting flights to avoid stronger patches of turbulence could increase fuel consumption and carbon emissions, make delays at airports more common, and ultimately push up ticket prices,” said Williams.

Read more

Opinion:

Us mere mortals simply have no idea about the extent and ramifications of climate change.

Neither do the corporations and industries, and they don’t even care.

What will happen if air travel becomes nonviable? And we can’t just flit off to Miami or Hawaii for our holidays.

No living person has experienced the changes that we are having at the moment. Our knowledge comes from fossil records and historical anecdotes.

We don’t know what to expect, at the moment, there is this attitude of “Just ignore it, it’ll go away!” It won’t, ‘just go away’, it’s here and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better; and we’d better get used to that idea.

Are we heading for a new ice-age? If so, there’s not enough fuel or electricity in the world to keep us warm, some of us are going to freeze.

Is the opposite about to happen? If the planet heats up and creates more desserts, there’s not enough food to feed us all now, let alone in the future.

Either way, we’re deep in the shit!

Be prepared people, because people are going to die! And some of those who do, are reading this now.

 

Money Can Buy Bullshit

Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks

Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science

Climate sceptic groups are mobilising against Obama’s efforts to act on climate change in his second term. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarising “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives.

Read more

Opinion:

Why are these billionaires opposing climate change ideas?

Because they have made their billions in ways that damage the climate, and they don’t want that to change.

 

 

Monday Moaning

Yes, I know its Tuesday; yes, I know I’m late. I didn’t get a chance to finish this yesterday.

We are Doomed

I am now 60+, I have lived my life in a time of plenty like most of my generation. The latter half of the 20th was good to us, however the 21st is another story. It appears that we are going to suffer the consequences of our lavish lifestyle.

The world has changed. The greedy have become greedier, technology has overtaken us in leaps and bounds and the rape of the planet has destroyed environments like never before.

Image: Salon

All this has a cost, and that cost is likely to be us, humanity as we know it.

Regardless of who is to blame, us or Mother Nature, climate changes are here. You don’t believe it, then just check the news (No! Not Fox, that’s not news, that’s placating the masses, pandering to the government); droughts, famines, floods, tornadoes where they didn’t have tornadoes before, Hurricane Katrina, and now Sandy.

If you don’t see this as ‘the writing on the wall’ then perhaps you deserve to perish, because perish we will.

London if the sea level rises

I won’t be here to see it, at best I’ve got 20 years left, but you will be. You will see things like London underwater; New York, the same, as all the coastal cities of the world where the greater part of our populations live.

The writing is on the wall, and yet we still frolic and play as though nothing is amiss, we still flock o the beaches on a hot day ignoring the fact that that very water is likely to be our demise.

Flood barriers to prevent a surging Atlantic Ocean to protect New York – image: Star Tribune

I saw a programme on TV last week about the flooding of coastal cities. The plans to erect great technological barriers to keep the sea at bay, the ideas of floating cities and houses.

Works of this magnitude would cost hundreds of billions each, trillions even. Tell me, where is this money coming from?

The world’s economy is bankrupt, all this talk of America’s fiscal cliff is not a fairy tale, neither is the collapse of the Euro, it’s fact. Contractors are not going to work if they’re not paid, or can’t see a profit. The state of the world’s economy just doesn’t begin to represent the cost of saving coastal cities around the globe.

So tell me, where are you all going to go?

I’ll be safely wrapped up in my turf blanket, but you will be fighting for survival.

The governments are too busy fighting internal battles; they don’t care. The religious are too busy fighting over who is right; they don’t care. Wall Street is too busy fighting over the last dollar; they don’t care.

Remember my analogy: If the planet were a dog, we are the fleas, and Mother Nature is having a good scratch…