An Appeal To Reason
John Tamny, 11.17.08, 12:00 AM EST
Has Al Gore read Nigel Lawson's book?
Nigel Lawson, chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher, and author of three books--including his essential account of the Thatcher years, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical--had trouble finding a publisher for his most recent book, An Appeal to Reason, which casts a skeptical eye on global warming.
As he notes in the foreword, one rejection letter suggested that "it would be very difficult to find a wide market" for a book that "flies so much in the face of the prevailing orthodoxy." So while Lawson acknowledges that his contribution to the discussion won't "shake the faith" of global warming's true believers, he's written what is a very informative book for those not yet convinced that Armageddon is our future, absent massive worldwide government action.
Lawson acknowledges up front that while he is not a scientist, neither "are the vast majority of those who pronounce on the matter" of global warming "with far greater certainty." And throughout, he deliberately uses the term "global warming" rather than the "attractively alliterative weasel words, 'climate change,'" and he does so "because the climate changes all the time."
In discussing global warming, Lawson happily takes the road less traveled in making the basic point about the science of global warming being "far from settled," not to mention that scientific truth "is not established by counting heads," as so many advocates of all manner of popular causes would likely prefer. So while Lawson doesn't hide from the fact that the 20th century ended slightly warmer than it began, he reminds readers that there has been no further evidence of global warming since the turn of the century.
Furthermore, news accounts would have us believe that calculating temperature is a foolproof process. But in reality, these calculations include data taken from the former Soviet Union, along with records from less-developed parts of the world. When Lawson checked U.S. temperature records, records thought to be most reliable, he found that only three of the last 12 years are among the warmest on record; 1934 being the warmest year of all. And though the level of carbon dioxide did increase 30% during the 20th century amid a slight warming trend, it's also boomed this century amid a slight cooling.
When we consider the slight warming that materialized during the 20th century, Lawson notes that it's not certain that the majority of it has to do with human activity. In truth, clouds/water vapor are the biggest contributors to the much vaunted "greenhouse effect," but the science of clouds is "one of the least understood aspects of climate science." Importantly, the earth's climate has always been subject to variations unrelated to human industrial activity, the "medieval warm period" of 1,000 years ago having occurred well before industrialization.
Regarding actions we might take, Lawson reminds readers that we need to avoid the kind of panic that could lead to disastrous policies. Indeed, he makes plain that there "is something inherently absurd about the conceit that we can have any useful idea of what the world will look like in a hundred years time," not to mention the other projected calamities expected to occur over 1,000 years from now. If this is doubted, ask yourself how many times weather forecasts meant to predict the next day have proven to be massively incorrect.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Brown Haze.......
Mysterious brown haze covering world
A massive mile-thick brown pollution haze has settled over vast areas of the planet, changing weather patterns and threatening health and crops, according to the UN.
Vast areas of Asia, the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, are affected by the smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds".
Video: Himalayas could soon disappear
Natural wonders to see before they disappear
The earth's seven biggest mysteries
When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme.
"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the UNEP.
Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted in the report as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known.
Perhaps most widely recognised as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions.
"All these have led to negative effects on water resources and crop yields," the report says.
Health problems associated with particulate pollution, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, are linked to nearly 350,000 premature deaths in China and India every year, said Henning Rohde, a University of Stockholm scientist who worked on the study.
Soot levels in the air were reported to have risen alarmingly in 13 megacities: Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran.
Brown clouds were also cited as dimming the light by as much as 25% in some places including Karachi, New Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing. The phenomenon complicates the climate change scenario, because the brown clouds also help cool the earth's surface and mask the impact of global warming by an average of 40%, according to the report.
Further reading
Photos: animals now extinct
Video: Himalayas could soon disappear
The earth's seven biggest mysteries
Natural wonders to see before they disappear
Would you dare visit these wild places?
A massive mile-thick brown pollution haze has settled over vast areas of the planet, changing weather patterns and threatening health and crops, according to the UN.
Vast areas of Asia, the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, are affected by the smog-like plumes, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and firewood, are known as "atmospheric brown clouds".
Video: Himalayas could soon disappear
Natural wonders to see before they disappear
The earth's seven biggest mysteries
When mixed with emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the earth's atmosphere like a greenhouse, they are the newest threat to the global environment, according to a report commissioned by the UN Environment Programme.
"All of this points to an even greater and urgent need to look at emissions across the planet," said Achim Steiner, head of the UNEP.
Brown clouds are caused by an unhealthy mix of particles, ozone and other chemicals that come from cars, coal-fired power plants, burning fields and wood-burning stoves. First identified by the report's lead researcher in 1990, the clouds were depicted in the report as being more widespread and causing more environmental damage than previously known.
Perhaps most widely recognised as the haze this past summer over Beijing's Olympics, the clouds have been found to be more than a mile thick around glaciers in the Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. They hide the sun and absorb radiation, leading to new worries not only about global climate change but also about extreme weather conditions.
"All these have led to negative effects on water resources and crop yields," the report says.
Health problems associated with particulate pollution, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, are linked to nearly 350,000 premature deaths in China and India every year, said Henning Rohde, a University of Stockholm scientist who worked on the study.
Soot levels in the air were reported to have risen alarmingly in 13 megacities: Bangkok, Beijing, Cairo, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Lagos, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tehran.
Brown clouds were also cited as dimming the light by as much as 25% in some places including Karachi, New Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing. The phenomenon complicates the climate change scenario, because the brown clouds also help cool the earth's surface and mask the impact of global warming by an average of 40%, according to the report.
Further reading
Photos: animals now extinct
Video: Himalayas could soon disappear
The earth's seven biggest mysteries
Natural wonders to see before they disappear
Would you dare visit these wild places?
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Blimey ~ The Irish do weather!
Freak weather is becoming the norm
Ireland as a whole is likely to warm by 3-4 degrees by the end of this century, writes John Gibbons
FIRST, SOME good news: despite the atrocious weather of the last week or so, overall Ireland is in fact rated as one of the countries in the world least vulnerable in the medium term to the effects of climate change. That will probably be cold comfort for the motorists battling through flooded roads, farmers unable to harvest their crops or householders mopping out their ruined homes. Ireland has long enjoyed a Goldilocks climate - not too hot, not too cold. While poor summers are not unusual, we have largely been spared the weather extremes endured by many other countries.
Last Saturday's deluge, the most intense in nearly half a century, battered many parts of Dublin and Kildare.
What had been viewed as freak weather events are now rapidly becoming the new climate norms. Computer models for Ireland in the decades ahead show greater seasonal extremes, with autumns and winters becoming as much as 25 per cent wetter with drier, drought-prone summers. Where then do August deluges fit into this model? "Overall summer rainfall is declining; we're getting less rain, but it comes in severe bursts, and that seems to be consistent with what we're seeing here," says Peter Lynch, professor of meteorology at UCD.
These short, sharp episodes of intense rainfall are both difficult to predict and extremely destructive, as they quickly overwhelm drainage systems. "With so much recent building in flood plains, this is causing more instances of severe flooding," says Lynch. Adaptation through improvements in engineering and planning is now essential, he said.
Prof John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth (who also does work for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) pointed out that much of the widescale house-building over the last decade had taken place in low-lying regions. Rivers' natural flood plains are being converted into housing estates and covered in concrete, leading to a loss of land into which flood waters can drain.
However, the Department of the Environment has still not moved to prevent local authorities from allowing houses and infrastructure to be built on flood plains.
The oceans act, in effect, like a giant sponge absorbing the bulk of the extra heating global warming has injected into our system. "The climate system has inertia," says Dr James Hansen of the Nasa Goddard Institute. "But that inertia is not our friend." The great bulk of this tightly coiled climatic spring now resides in elevated ocean temperatures.
It takes an immense amount of energy to warm an entire ocean. Surface temperatures of the Atlantic waters around Ireland are now increasing by around 0.4 degrees per decade, but the Irish Sea has undergone even more dramatic and unprecedented heating, of up to 0.7 degrees a decade.
As the water warms, its energy increases and the hydrological cycle intensifies. According to Prof Sweeney, ocean water temperatures in the region south of Newfoundland where our recent weather systems are forming have increased by an astonishing 5-6 degrees.
Wetter, wilder winters and summers of droughts and downpours are among the medium-term predictions for Ireland in a world of increasingly chaotic climate. Dublin city consumes 550 million litres of water a day. This is set to increase to 880 million litres by 2031 as the city continues to expand. At the same time, water levels in the river Liffey, which supplies 80 per cent of the capital's needs, could be halved by mid-century as a result of global warming.
The capital is facing a 20 per cent drop in its water supply within the next 12 years. The most likely solution will be to extract additional supplies from the Shannon at Lough Ree to make up the deficit.
Ireland as a whole is likely to warm by 3-4 degrees by the end of this century, with the most intense heating in the south and east. Extreme weather will be our constant companion in the decades ahead. Rising sea levels will exacerbate a process which may render many of Ireland's low-lying coastal areas uninhabitable this century.
"Let's just say I wouldn't be buying a seafront property any time soon," Prof Lynch said to me.
In this unfolding century of ever-deepening climate disruption, Ireland, one of the world's most globalised societies, can hardly expect to stand as an island apart, somehow insulated from the unfolding chaos lapping ever more urgently against our own shores.
• John Gibbons is founder of Climatechange.ie. info@climatechange.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
Ireland as a whole is likely to warm by 3-4 degrees by the end of this century, writes John Gibbons
FIRST, SOME good news: despite the atrocious weather of the last week or so, overall Ireland is in fact rated as one of the countries in the world least vulnerable in the medium term to the effects of climate change. That will probably be cold comfort for the motorists battling through flooded roads, farmers unable to harvest their crops or householders mopping out their ruined homes. Ireland has long enjoyed a Goldilocks climate - not too hot, not too cold. While poor summers are not unusual, we have largely been spared the weather extremes endured by many other countries.
Last Saturday's deluge, the most intense in nearly half a century, battered many parts of Dublin and Kildare.
What had been viewed as freak weather events are now rapidly becoming the new climate norms. Computer models for Ireland in the decades ahead show greater seasonal extremes, with autumns and winters becoming as much as 25 per cent wetter with drier, drought-prone summers. Where then do August deluges fit into this model? "Overall summer rainfall is declining; we're getting less rain, but it comes in severe bursts, and that seems to be consistent with what we're seeing here," says Peter Lynch, professor of meteorology at UCD.
These short, sharp episodes of intense rainfall are both difficult to predict and extremely destructive, as they quickly overwhelm drainage systems. "With so much recent building in flood plains, this is causing more instances of severe flooding," says Lynch. Adaptation through improvements in engineering and planning is now essential, he said.
Prof John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth (who also does work for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) pointed out that much of the widescale house-building over the last decade had taken place in low-lying regions. Rivers' natural flood plains are being converted into housing estates and covered in concrete, leading to a loss of land into which flood waters can drain.
However, the Department of the Environment has still not moved to prevent local authorities from allowing houses and infrastructure to be built on flood plains.
The oceans act, in effect, like a giant sponge absorbing the bulk of the extra heating global warming has injected into our system. "The climate system has inertia," says Dr James Hansen of the Nasa Goddard Institute. "But that inertia is not our friend." The great bulk of this tightly coiled climatic spring now resides in elevated ocean temperatures.
It takes an immense amount of energy to warm an entire ocean. Surface temperatures of the Atlantic waters around Ireland are now increasing by around 0.4 degrees per decade, but the Irish Sea has undergone even more dramatic and unprecedented heating, of up to 0.7 degrees a decade.
As the water warms, its energy increases and the hydrological cycle intensifies. According to Prof Sweeney, ocean water temperatures in the region south of Newfoundland where our recent weather systems are forming have increased by an astonishing 5-6 degrees.
Wetter, wilder winters and summers of droughts and downpours are among the medium-term predictions for Ireland in a world of increasingly chaotic climate. Dublin city consumes 550 million litres of water a day. This is set to increase to 880 million litres by 2031 as the city continues to expand. At the same time, water levels in the river Liffey, which supplies 80 per cent of the capital's needs, could be halved by mid-century as a result of global warming.
The capital is facing a 20 per cent drop in its water supply within the next 12 years. The most likely solution will be to extract additional supplies from the Shannon at Lough Ree to make up the deficit.
Ireland as a whole is likely to warm by 3-4 degrees by the end of this century, with the most intense heating in the south and east. Extreme weather will be our constant companion in the decades ahead. Rising sea levels will exacerbate a process which may render many of Ireland's low-lying coastal areas uninhabitable this century.
"Let's just say I wouldn't be buying a seafront property any time soon," Prof Lynch said to me.
In this unfolding century of ever-deepening climate disruption, Ireland, one of the world's most globalised societies, can hardly expect to stand as an island apart, somehow insulated from the unfolding chaos lapping ever more urgently against our own shores.
• John Gibbons is founder of Climatechange.ie. info@climatechange.ie
© 2008 The Irish Times
Friday, August 15, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Oil & our survival
Reducing oil use 'our survival challenge'
Expert on oil supply tells receptive Sebastopol audience quick, decisive action needed
By MIKE McCOYTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 6:03 a.m. Last Modified: Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 8:52 a.m.
It was easy to tell oil supply expert Richard Heinberg was preaching to the choir Saturday.
Parked around the Sebastopol Veterans Memorial building where 250 people crowded in to hear Heinberg foretell the gloomy future of oil and the global economy, one of every five cars was a gas-sipping hybrid.
But unfortunately, Heinberg said, enough of the rest of the world has not caught up yet with what it faces.
The ability of the world to wean itself from the ever-declining production of oil “is our survival challenge for the 21st century,” he said.
Heinberg, 57, a senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute based in Sebastopol, is considered among the leading voices on the issue of peak oil supply, the time when the world’s supply of oil drops below the amount needed to fuel the worldwide economy.
The impact of that, particularly on individuals, can already be seen in the rising cost of food and the end of cheap travel, he noted.
Foodstuffs are trucked an average of 1,500 miles “from farm to plate” these days, Heinberg said, noting the need to conserve fuel demands that food be grown closer to home.
Airline travel is the same since the cost of fuel for large passenger planes will drive the industry into the red, he said.
Heinberg’s lecture, titled “Kiss Your Gas Goodbye,” was largely an update, a sort of “I told you so” of a lecture he gave at the same site three years ago that predicted a decline in global oil production and intensifying competition and chaos by nations to get it.
Heinberg said things have changed since then. “Most of what we talked about then is now history,” he told the audience.
Three years ago, when he made his prediction and warned that alternatives to oil had to be found, a gallon of gas in Sonoma County cost $2.19.
Today it hovers around $4.30 as the demand for oil increases worldwide while the available supply continues to slip.
Heinberg, who predicts oil exports throughout the world will drop by 50 percent over the next decade, urged that decisive action must be undertaken quickly.
“We’re talking about a civilization-ending crisis,” he said.
Fellow speaker Julian Darley, president of the Post Carbon Institute, however, presented the beginning of a 10-point plan he is developing to soften the blow of the doom-and-gloom Heinberg fears is coming.
“We must begin to live within the means of our planet,” he said.
To do that, he said, individuals must reduce their use of oil and the waste of raw materials; use car-pools; diversify into other sources of energy, including wind, solar and geothermal; and find high-tech ways to store energy.
You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or mike.mccoy@pressdemocrat.com.
Expert on oil supply tells receptive Sebastopol audience quick, decisive action needed
By MIKE McCOYTHE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 6:03 a.m. Last Modified: Sunday, August 3, 2008 at 8:52 a.m.
It was easy to tell oil supply expert Richard Heinberg was preaching to the choir Saturday.
Parked around the Sebastopol Veterans Memorial building where 250 people crowded in to hear Heinberg foretell the gloomy future of oil and the global economy, one of every five cars was a gas-sipping hybrid.
But unfortunately, Heinberg said, enough of the rest of the world has not caught up yet with what it faces.
The ability of the world to wean itself from the ever-declining production of oil “is our survival challenge for the 21st century,” he said.
Heinberg, 57, a senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute based in Sebastopol, is considered among the leading voices on the issue of peak oil supply, the time when the world’s supply of oil drops below the amount needed to fuel the worldwide economy.
The impact of that, particularly on individuals, can already be seen in the rising cost of food and the end of cheap travel, he noted.
Foodstuffs are trucked an average of 1,500 miles “from farm to plate” these days, Heinberg said, noting the need to conserve fuel demands that food be grown closer to home.
Airline travel is the same since the cost of fuel for large passenger planes will drive the industry into the red, he said.
Heinberg’s lecture, titled “Kiss Your Gas Goodbye,” was largely an update, a sort of “I told you so” of a lecture he gave at the same site three years ago that predicted a decline in global oil production and intensifying competition and chaos by nations to get it.
Heinberg said things have changed since then. “Most of what we talked about then is now history,” he told the audience.
Three years ago, when he made his prediction and warned that alternatives to oil had to be found, a gallon of gas in Sonoma County cost $2.19.
Today it hovers around $4.30 as the demand for oil increases worldwide while the available supply continues to slip.
Heinberg, who predicts oil exports throughout the world will drop by 50 percent over the next decade, urged that decisive action must be undertaken quickly.
“We’re talking about a civilization-ending crisis,” he said.
Fellow speaker Julian Darley, president of the Post Carbon Institute, however, presented the beginning of a 10-point plan he is developing to soften the blow of the doom-and-gloom Heinberg fears is coming.
“We must begin to live within the means of our planet,” he said.
To do that, he said, individuals must reduce their use of oil and the waste of raw materials; use car-pools; diversify into other sources of energy, including wind, solar and geothermal; and find high-tech ways to store energy.
You can reach Staff Writer Mike McCoy at 521-5276 or mike.mccoy@pressdemocrat.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)