Carbon Dioxide already at end of century levels

Over the last few weeks I have heard some really disturbing data regarding Climate Change. The first was a news story that was set to emerge regarding the break up of the sea ice at the northern latitudes. I was contacted by one of my readers who works in the Canadian government, as this person thought I might want to use it if and when the Polar Bear was put on the US endangered species list. While I could have used it then, and got a lead on the mainstream media, I wanted to see what this meant in relation to the climate models.

This caused me to be given a heads up about some important data that has been critical to the climate modelling that was just plain wrong. Following the second world war, the recorded sea temperature in the Atlantic dipped. As this apparent dip had a significant effect upon the the rate that the climate models showed an effect upon the projected temperature gradient and the rate that it will effect the Sea Ice and the land based glaciers an error here is very serious.

This was later confirmed when in either the science Journal Nature or Science, I cant remember, there was an article that explained how this error was made. As most of these readings were done by the Royal Navy and The US Navy, it was when the US Navy returned to America that this apparent dip in the sea temperature occurred. It turns out that it was just that both navies were using different methods and recording the temperature in a different way. Iron out those differences and the out puts of the climate models changes. Now the models indicate the sea ice gone in ten years. Suddenly the computer models are matching what is really happening in the Arctic.

However, there is a third factor, and this is real breaking news. In a report not yet published, it will show that CO2 levels have already reached to point that they were expected to be at by the end of this century.

I think that we are in the upper reaches of a very polluted river without any means of propulsion.

A Link to the story regarding the break up of the Sea Ice

Image Copyright CSA 2008

Greenland Ice Sheet

In Sciences magazine and via National Public Radio (All Things Considered, part of the NPR Environment Podcast), from America, reports of the effects of Climate change on the Greenland ice sheet. However the content of the reports were very in much downplaying the alarming content.

In August last year, two scientists one from the Woods hall Oceanographic Institute, and the other from the University of Washington had set up instruments to measure the effects of climate change on the glacier. With increased temperatures the two mile thick ice sheet is melting from the top. This melt water forms lakes that then flows, through the ice, to the base of the glacier. With these instruments are they were able to measure the effect of one single lake, that was two miles long and 40 ft deep. That lake drained in 90 minutes with a flow greater than that of the Niagara falls. Using seismic data and satellite telemetry, the effect of this melting water draining to the base the glacier lifted the glacier three feet and send it hurtling towards the coast. Once that water drained the glacier resumed its sedentary pace.

The way this was being reported, made it sound as though we had nothing to worry about from this. However, this was just one lake of over one thousand that are now forming in the summer months. While not all will drain to the base of the glaciers and provide the lubrication for glacier movements. These sudden flows of the ice, and this increase speed as measured in this instance, facilitates the break-up of the glaciers into blocks. That will more readily flow into the sea.

As my regular reader will know, and to the derision of many, I am predicting that the Greenland Ice sheet will rapidly diminish following the loss of summer sea ice. That will occur in four to five years, by 2012-2013. I predict this not because I am some kind of doom munger but because this is what the science is saying.

However, and this is the real point of this posting, there really seems to be a concerted effort by the media and by governments not to give the people the real facts behind climate change. In fact anybody that tries to alert people to the real danger that we are facing, seems to be gagged. Or worse still derided as a profit of doom.

This all has the effect of creating the impression that climate change is not as serious as it really is. Until governments and the media start taking this issue seriously how can the general public? At the moment there are far too many vested interests influencing government and policy. Further as government seem to assume that this is a problem for the future, they fail to tackle the issue today. While there are many individuals who are making the effort to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we all need guidance as well as policies from government.

We're already seeing the effects of climate change, this is not something for the future this is something that is happening now. The Human Animal is releasing carbon dioxide is their atmosphere at a rate of 14,000 times more than has ever occurred in our planet's history. In some ways it is remarkable that the planets of thermostat has been made to cope thus far. But with the ocean saturated with carbon, to the extent that it is killing off life in the oceans, it will only be a matter of years before we see the full extent of that damage to the planet.

When half of the living Nobel prize winners signed a document telling the worlds governments that we were ten years away from irreversible change, the media and governments ignored this. We are now reaping the harvest of that ignorance.

Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses

While there was a time when people dismissed Climate Change as some unproven theory, at least now we have an awareness of the reality of this serious problem. The most serious humanity has ever faced. Yet it is the unwillingness to take the situation seriously that causes me to feel despair.

In part it is that people are still viewing this as a problem for the future, something that will happen. Yet the effects of a changing climate is real and immediate. In the UK we are seeing early signs of spring coming four to five weeks earlier, while the weather is still predominantly that of winter. All of this adding to the decline of a number of species.

Yet the real effects of Climate Change that are being noticed are not to do with weather but with cost of food. While part of the reason for this is an increased demand out striping supply, the effects of a Changing Climate are inhibiting the growing of food crops. This removes our ability to increase production to accommodate this new reality. Thus climate change is hitting us in our pockets first.

The reality is that the majority of people are unwilling to change the way they live for the benefit of themselves or the future. We continue to consume vast amounts of the earth's resources on trivial items that we don't need. We are to lazy to walk to the shops, we prefer to drive. We are so inactive that its a effort to get out of a chair to change the television channel or even turn the TV off.

Well what has this all got to do with another lump of Sea Ice breaking away from the Antarctic? It in its self doesn't raise sea levels, but it removes the barriers that prevent the land based Ice from sliding into the Sea.

Well to all you who don't believe this can happen, in Russia that's exactly what did happen in the Caucasus Mountains. A glacial slid down the mountain at one hundred miles per hour, as a direct result of global warming. Its already known that the melt water on glacial is percolating down to the base, lubricating their flow...

Therefore in a few years, three or four, we will see a sudden and dramatic rise in sea levels.

A link to the News Story

I wish I had been Wrong - Part One Melting Ice Caps

I know that I have been ridiculed for my predictions of an ecological disaster regarding climate change, and I have stuck my neck out and said that it will be happening in the next four to five years. Even amongst friends and acquaintances, people have said in veiled terms, that I must be mentally ill, paranoid and delusional. But while I hate to say it, I told you so!

The latest projections from scientists are that by the summer of 2013 we will loose the sea Ice in the Artic. This will devastate the species that rely upon this habitat like ring seals and polar bears and we are likely to see them become extinct in the wild in the next ten years.

Even the IPCC in their latest report say that it its too late and climate feedback systems are now operating expanding the effect of global warming. In the case of the Artic that means the darker seawater is absorbing more of the suns energy, warming the liquid water and speeding the melting of the Ice.

That is not the only feedback system that is operating in the Artic, as the loss of the sea ice is also warming the air temperatures and this is melting the glaciers on the Greenland Ice shelf.

While scientists may not want to be alarmist and don’t want to make predictions of a massive sea rise, I will. As when these glaciers do slip into the sea, I do say when and not if, there will be a rise is sea levels of about seven meters.

While at grass roots level there are people who care and understand the dangers, our political leaders are still hoping that a technical quick fix can be found. The difficulty is that our whole economic system is flawed. Therefore while this sudden upward swelling of sea levels will be a disaster for many millions of people, it will also be the wake up call that the world needs. This rise is inevitable as even if we stop burning all fossil fuels today, the melting of the sea ice and the glaciers will still happen.

It will only be via a disaster like this can we get all the worlds governments to stop worrying about all the trivial matters in the world and start to really develop an economic and energy system that is fair to all the peoples on the planet.

For example if half the money that were spent on military expenditure were put in to developing, manufacturing and installing Solar Photo Voltaic around the planet many of the problems that cause the instability and insecurity would be solved. This would also help developing countries provide their peoples with energy and essential services. Clean water is often not available to many peoples because there is no electricity to pump the water. The health of peoples in developing countries can often be vastly improved by providing electricity to health clinics and hospitals. None of this is rocket science either.

We could go further and in parts of the deserts like the Sahara, we could install banks of Photo Voltaic panels, enough to provide enough energy for all the counties in north Africa and provide them with an industry that will earn their economies the revenue they need to develop as well as providing Europe with some of its electricity with a minimal carbon impact. While this would cost large sums of money, if the money wasted on the building of the International Space station had been used for this project, we could have done this three times over.

While there will be some that will think that this will damage the desert ecology, not so, as climate change will render extinct ninety-nine percent of the species in the Sahara. Additional, with careful engineering, the solar panels can have a duel purpose as they can help capture the small amounts of water vapour in the air, condensing it on the panels, thus providing some of the water needs for people in these arid regions.

Equally, we could use geo-thermal energy. Iceland has developed the technology and all around the Pacific Rim we could help those countries to build plants and power stations using this low carbon energy. Again it would help developing countries without causing them to go down the route of heavily polluting coal or oil. Further, this would help these peoples to stop relying on cutting down their forests as the only real way of earning export income.

With this type of energy generation, it is not just the developing world that would benefit, as countries like Japan could provide fifty percent of its energy needs via Geo-thermal electricity production. All around the world we could generate from ten percent to twenty-five percent of the global energy needs from geo-thermal. Incidentally, if industries like aluminium smelting were relocated to these geo-thermal power plants, then as aluminium smelting is responsible for three percent of all the Carbon dioxide released globally, we would save over two billion tonnes of CO2 pollution.

These are all solutions that could be enacted today if there were the will. The trouble is while businesses are taking climate change seriously, most of the effort is going into developing ways of making money from the situation. What we need is to share skills and technology as by helping the developing world we also help save our own environments.

Further Information on the Melting Ice Cap

I wish I had been Wrong - Part Two Saturated Oceans

While in the previous section of this post I have shown that predictions of devastating climate change is now inevitable. I have also shown that there are potential solutions if we can find the will to act.

While the attention has been focused on the atmosphere as climate change has been allowed to creep on, it is in the oceans that drive the climate where real damage has been allowed to become so polluted that we have created the situation where we cannot stop climate change.

The seas are now saturated with CO2 that it cannot absorb much more. If we don’t start to take real action today the effects that are already going to occur will only be the devastating beginning of the extinction of the human race.

Further Information on the Seas failing to absorb CO2

Is there hope for Polar Bears in a Fossil?

It used to be that the scientific community would couch their arguments on climate change with comments that “It appears…” or “the models indicate…” or other such caveats so that they didn’t appear alarmist. There is a new sense of urgency in the scientific community as the predictions of the climate models are coming to fruition thirty and forty years ahead of what the models expected. This is even more pronounced in the Artic and Antarctic. Even some of the most sceptical sat up and took notice when the Larson B ice shelf disintegrated in only a few months.

When this area of sea ice, the area of Cornwall, broke away from the Antarctic, suddenly climate change switched from being something that could or would occur in the future, but became something that’s happening now.

While many people have been trying to raise awareness of the very real threat of this, our voices have been drowned out by the noise of the hot air of they nay Sayers.

The new scientific reports on climate change are having to revise forward the dates when certain events are expected to occur. The most noticeable is the loss of the summer sea ice at the artic. This year the volume and area of Sea Ice, matched what was predicted in climate models it to be by the year 2050.

While I could tell you of the implications of this for our climate, it is the effect upon two important species that rely upon the Sea Ice that is really alarming. With a reduction in the size of the habitat, the ring seal population will eventually fall to about thirty-five to forty percent of existing numbers. This will impact even more on the numbers of Polar Bears.

While the discovery of this part of a jawbone of an ancient Polar bear shows that they could have survived a previous inter-glacial period, the fact remains that polar bears will loose ninety-five percent of their territory when the sea ice disappears. Further, while some may be lucky and find themselves stranded on some of the islands dotted around the Artic, unless they have a food source, i.e. Ring Seals, they will still die off.

While I would love this discovery to be a source of hope, I don’t see it as much of one.

The News Story Here.



My thanks to WWF for the image

The Truth is Inconvenient

As I haven’t seen the Al Gore film the inconvenient truth, I cannot say if the film is party political or not. But Climate Change is political, if only because so many people are trying to keep their heads in the sand over it. I am glad that British school children will be getting the chance to see this film, as hopefully it will help capture the hearts and minds of the coming generation.

Even today the news that the old energy inefficient incandescent light bulbs are to be phased out is bitter news as it will not be until 2012 this happens. When it could have happened by the end of this year. That will mean at least twenty-five extra tonnes of CO2 will be released into our biosphere before the ban occurs. It’s all far too little, lets hope that it’s not too late.

After all the important line in the IPCC report that everyone seems to have missed says; “If Climate Change is not reversed, we will face temperature increases that will make life on this planet unsustainable”

I shouldn’t need to translate that but that means WE BECOME EXTINCT.

Already this year there is less sea ice in the Artic, and even conservative predictions are saying it will disappear by 2030, that’s only twenty-three years away. And once we have lost a critical mass of that sea ice, we then have thermal induction and convection from the sea, accelerating the rise in air temperatures. In reality if we lose the Sea Ice we lose the fight and the domination of Homo sapiens ends.

Therefore I hope this misguided parent looses his legal challenge to the film being shown to our children so that even if we fail to act, they will.


The original story on the BBC Web Site

The Extinction of the Polar Bear

While my primary concern is the fate and protection of the wildlife and habitats in my local wood and its surrounding countryside, I am still deeply concerned about the fate of the Flora and Fauna of the entire globe.

Global climate change is predicted to cause the loss of up to forty percent of species on our planet. The extinction of the Polar Bear is rapidly becoming an Icon of our collective failure to take seriously the crisis that is the pollution of greenhouse gasses.

Over the last decade we have witnessed the acceleration of loss of sea ice in the artic. It is happening faster then any of the respected climate models would have predicted. This is one of the problems, very few scientists wanted to put their head on the block and say that the situation really is a crisis. Even now, the predictions are cautious and they are saying that in fifty years we will have lost forty percent of the sea ice habitat used by the Polar Bear.

This caution is what is really holding back the politicians from making the bold moves that are really needed. If the rate of acceleration stays the same the sea ice will be gone in five years not fifty. That will mean the extinction of the Polar Bear, as they need the Sea ice to hunt from.

As well as losing this Icon to Climate change, the loss of the sea ice will cause the accelerated melting of the land Ice, particularly from the Greenland Ice shelf. That will cause a seven-meter rise in sea levels and such a dramatic change to climate and weather that we will be shown once and for all the true effect of climate change.