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Headlines : Sci-TechGlobal warming: passing the 'tipping point'
It appears that the tides will be rising, perhaps just after the dollar falls. Is it feasible that an economic contraction could result in the decrease in air contamination that then instigates a drastic atmospheric backlash on industrial society? The evidence is mounting.
[Posted By manyhues]Republished from Independent Online Edition
A crucial global warming “tipping point” for the Earth, highlighted only last week by the British Government, has already been passed, with devastating consequences.
Research commissioned by The Independent reveals that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has now crossed a threshold, set down by scientists from around the world at a conference in Britain last year, beyond which really dangerous climate change is likely to be unstoppable.
The implication is that some of global warming’s worst predicted effects, from destruction of ecosystems to increased hunger and water shortages for billions of people, cannot now be avoided, whatever we do. It gives considerable force to the contention by the green guru Professor James Lovelock, put forward last month in The Independent, that climate change is now past the point of no return.
The danger point we are now firmly on course for is a rise in global mean temperatures to 2 degrees above the level before the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.
At the moment, global mean temperatures have risen to about 0.6 degrees above the pre-industrial era – and worrying signs of climate change, such as the rapid melting of the Arctic ice in summer, are already increasingly evident.
Posted by manyhues
I believe I found GNN and started reading from these pages during the 2000 election fiasco, but I started this manyhues blog on September 11, 2005, while working on pulp and wood products industry issues in Southern Chile. I posted another series of blogs...
RELATED ITEMS
- Past the Point of No Return
Posted by manyhues on Tuesday, January 17th 2006
shit.
shit.
Ye-up.
The agricultural question is a key one. This is not just a case of agricultural belts moving “north”. The high northern latitudes have different seasonal patterns of lighting than most crops are adapted for. Many northern areas do not have appropriate soils, accumulated over thousands of years or more. In North America, as one example, the northern latitudes are also behind a much larger rain shield from the cascades, and so presumably would be much drier than former agricultural areas like the midwest.
Snarki Poo won’t believe me claimng the Sun turning blue has anything do with Global Warming
The last 100 years is more striking than either the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice AgeTimothy Osborn, UEA
In the late 20th Century, the northern hemisphere experienced its most widespread warmth for 1,200 years, according to the journal Science.
The findings support evidence pointing to unprecedented recent warming of the climate linked to greenhouse emissions.
University of East Anglia researchers measured changes in fossil shells, tree rings, ice cores and other past temperature records or “proxies”.
They also looked at people’s diaries from the last 750 years.
Timothy Osborn and Keith Briffa of UEA analysed instrument measurements of temperature from 1856 onwards to establish the geographic extent of recent warming.
Then they compared this data with evidence dating back as far as AD 800.
The analysis confirmed periods of significant warmth in the Northern Hemisphere from AD 890 – 1170 (the so-called “Medieval Warm Period”) and for much colder periods from 1580 – 1850 (the “Little Ice Age”).
Climate ‘warmest for millennium’
Natural records
The UEA team showed that the present warm period is the most widespread temperature anomaly of any kind since the ninth century.
“The last 100 years is more striking than either [the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age]. It is a period of widespread warmth affecting nearly all the records that we analysed from the same time,” co-author Timothy Osborn told the BBC.
Osborn and Briffa used 14 sets of temperature records from different locations across the Northern Hemisphere.
The records included long life evergreen trees growing in Scandinavia, Siberia and the Rockies which had been cored to reveal the patterns of wide and narrow tree rings over time. Wider rings related to warmer temperatures.
The chemical composition of ice from cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheets revealed which years were warmer than others.
Dear diary
The researchers used proxy data developed from the diaries of people living in the Netherlands and Belgium during the past 750 years that revealed, for example, the years when the canals froze.
“These records extend over many centuries and even thousands of years. We simply counted how many of those records indicated that, in any one year, temperatures were warmer than average for the region they came from,” said Dr Osborn.
Professor John Waterhouse, director of the Environmental Sciences Research Centre Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge commented: “Although we’re getting increasingly accurate measurements of present-day temperature, we’ve got nothing like that from the past to compare those with.
“There’s much uncertainty in past reconstructions. You’ve got to look at the reconstructed data in the past in light of the likely errors that those data have.”
But he added: “As we get more and more evidence in, it is looking as if the current period is the warmest for over 1,000 years.”
In November, Science published a paper showing atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.
Funny cuz scientist in San petersbourgh just anounced that we are about to enter a new Ice Age…
And others claim the O-Zone is repairing itself.
Plants Exhale Methane, Contribute to Warming, Study Says
Foresters downplay methane report
Cattle Contribute to Global Warming
No shit. Bring on the HUGE hurricanes and global war. Whooosshh. At least we all get to see the end of human life in our lifetime. Joy.
Just a report from the sierras – last year it dumped beyond belief. This year is pathetic. Late winter, early spring. a few small storms here and there. Spring skiing in February. Drove down to sac today, river levels were incredibly low. Im thinking this will cause a particlularly bad problem for farming in the valley, because they rely on floods from the snow melts for their fields. If we dont have the natural resivoir of the snowpack, they wont get shit…and there really isnt too much snow left as of right now…
Thesleepingking-maybe we can adapt, im sure millions will, especially those green anarchists that are making use of their survival skills
the sooner we get rid of those pesky arctic glaciers the better!!!
My question is where is Snark going to do his “extreme environment” research? haha
I remember ten years ago when I was a canvasser for Greenpeace my boss said he thought global warming was the most important environmental issue. At that time putting it at the top of the list was news to me and of course Germany shut down all the Greenpeace canvass offices because Germany uses volunteers for environmental activism.
So my boss went to work for Menards — much more important.
haha. drew hempel, M.A.
Yep for all those assholes out there shittin out hazardous waste, all of them are contributing to Global warming….......and to Snarkie’s Poo study on who’s, who in the spoon.
Poo is Poo.
Maybe the Poo handler guy should be given a title of honor or something.
Poo Man on Politics
My question is where is Snark going to do his “extreme environment” research?
Well, shit, at this rate Peoria might qualify in a few years.
Poo Man on Politics
Eeeeexcellent.