This is not very encouraging. I hope that the books are not being cooked to
get action by governmental agencies. Sometimes the authors leave out a very
important part of the data if it does not support their political plans. An
example is the talk of a large portion of the ice melting on Greenland this
year as compared to normal. They fail to reveal the fact that the melting is
only skin deep relative to the mass of ice. If you ask experts, I am sure they
will concede that it would take many, many years for the ice to melt if the
present conditions persist.
We need unbiased science in this field. There are far too many people
incapable of looking at the situation without extreme emotional responses. It
is easy to see why both sides of the argument feel that way since time to act
appears important. But the lives of poor peoples are important as well and
their quality of life should be considered before energy is made scarce. Our
interest in LENR appears to be the solution to most of the ills, so lets kick
some butt and get it into production.
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Axil Axil <janap...@gmail.com>
To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Tue, Jul 31, 2012 2:46 am
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Koch founded climate skeptic changes sides
Warming hits 'tipping point'
Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany
combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time
since the ice age, it is melting
The Guardian,
Thursday 11 August 2005
07.36 EDT
A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could
dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.
Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of
permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and
Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed
11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the
world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will
release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent
than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying
"tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's
temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers
a far greater increase in global temperatures.
The discovery was made by Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University in western
Siberia and Judith Marquand at Oxford University and is reported in New
Scientist today.
The researchers found that what was until recently a barren expanse of frozen
peat is turning into a broken landscape of mud and lakes, some more than a
kilometre across.
Dr Kirpotin told the magazine the situation was an "ecological landslide that
is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He
added that the thaw had probably begun in the past three or four years.
Climate scientists yesterday reacted with alarm to the finding, and warned that
predictions of future global temperatures would have to be revised upwards.
"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in
situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said
David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University
of East Anglia.
"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone.
The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more
than our emissions are doing."
In its last major report in 2001, the intergovernmental panel on climate change
predicted a rise in global temperatures of 1.4C-5.8C between 1990 and 2100, but
the estimate only takes account of global warming driven by known greenhouse
gas emissions.
"These positive feedbacks with landmasses weren't known about then. They had no
idea how much they would add to global warming," said Dr Viner.
Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having
experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. Scientists are particularly
concerned about the permafrost, because as it thaws, it reveals bare ground
which warms up more quickly than ice and snow, and so accelerates the rate at
which the permafrost thaws.
Siberia's peat bogs have been producing methane since they formed at the end of
the last ice age, but most of the gas had been trapped in the permafrost.
According to Larry Smith, a hydrologist at the University of California, Los
Angeles, the west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70bn tonnes of methane, a
quarter of all of the methane stored in the ground around the world.
The permafrost is likely to take many decades at least to thaw, so the methane
locked within it will not be released into the atmosphere in one burst, said
Stephen Sitch, a climate scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter.
But calculations by Dr Sitch and his colleagues show that even if methane
seeped from the permafrost over the next 100 years, it would add around 700m
tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, roughly the same amount that is
released annually from the world's wetlands and agriculture.
It would effectively double atmospheric levels of the gas, leading to a 10% to
25% increase in global warming, he said.
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said the finding was a stark
message to politicians to take concerted action on climate change. "We knew at
some point we'd get these feedbacks happening that exacerbate global warming,
but this could lead to a massive injection of greenhouse gases.
"If we don't take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming
that will be beyond our control and it will lead to social, economic and
environmental devastation worldwide," he said. "There's still time to take
action, but not much.
"The assumption has been that we wouldn't see these kinds of changes until the
world is a little warmer, but this suggests we're running out of time."
In May this year, another group of researchers reported signs that global
warming was damaging the permafrost. Katey Walter of the University of Alaska,
Fairbanks, told a meeting of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that her
team had found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia. At the hotspots, methane
was bubbling to the surface of the permafrost so quickly that it was preventing
the surface from freezing over.
Last month, some of the world's worst air polluters, including the US and
Australia, announced a partnership to cut greenhouse gas emissions through the
use of new technologies.
The deal came after Tony Blair struggled at the G8 summit to get the US
president, George Bush, to commit to any concerted action on climate change and
has been heavily criticised for setting no targets for reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions.
Its aready too late...
Axil
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 11:03 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think Axil is just having fun. I suspect he is a grad student in physics
somewhere trying to see how many people he can rope into his hypotheticals.
Eric
Le Jul 30, 2012 à 2:14 PM, David Roberson <dlrober...@aol.com> a écrit :
Axil,
You speak of ice receding as though it is inevitable. My major worry is that
the present heating will trigger an ice event. I guess we could use the old
ice core data to determine the typical length of time between heating and the
following ice age which would be a far worse catastrophe.
Dave
