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Earth’s temperature nears million-year high
Reuters, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years, especially in the part of the Pacific Ocean where potentially violent El Nino weather patterns are born.
James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, says this does not necessarily mean there will be more frequent El Ninos, which can disrupt normal weather around the world.
But he says it could well mean that these wild patterns will be stronger when they occur.
The El Nino phenomenon is an important factor in monitoring global warming, according to a paper by Mr Hansen and colleagues published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
El Ninos can push temperatures higher than they might ordinarily be.
This happened in 1998 when a so-called “super El Nino” helped heat the Earth to a record high.
What is significant, the scientists wrote, is that 2005 was in the same temperature range as 1998, and probably was the warmest year ever, with no sign of the warm surface water in the eastern equatorial Pacific typical of an El Nino.
(26 Sep 2006)
Oil giant hits at ‘unfair’ attack by scientists
Terry Macalister, The Guardian
ExxonMobil has escalated a row with the Royal Society by accusing it of “inaccurately and unfairly” depicting the world’s largest oil company as a climate change sceptic.
However, Exxon admits it is reviewing the funding of various outside groups which were accused by the Royal Society of undermining the scientific consensus on global warming.
An unprecedented letter from the UK’s premier scientific academy to Exxon was quoted in the Guardian this week, criticising it for making “inaccurate and misleading” statements on climate change.
(22 Sep 2006)
Related: We are not climate-change deniers by Nick Thomas, director of corporate affairs for ExxonMobil.
Australia: We’re drying up fast
Danny Butler and Sarah Wotherspoon, Herald Sun (Australia)
VICTORIA’S water crisis could worsen dramatically with Australia drying out faster than most predictions, experts say.
Eminent water scientist Peter Cullen said the CSIRO’s worst-case scenario for 2050 may be already happening.
The CSIRO predictions include widespread drought, shrinking ski fields and crop failure. A member of the Federal Government’s National Water Commission, Prof Cullen said urgent action was needed to sustain water supplies.
“It appears to be happening much quicker than the climate change models predicted. “All the models we have been working on suggested the sort of dryness we are seeing now wouldn’t be here until about 2050, so it appears to be happening much quicker.” ..
CSIRO climate change impact and risk group leader Dr Penny Whetton said climate change would affect the whole of Victoria.
“Almost all of the evidence points towards a decrease in rainfall, particularly in the winter part of the year,” she said.
“There’s also a likelihood of heavy downpours which will be more intense and will lead to more erosion.”
(26 Sept 2006)
See also Greenies, farmers on the same side.
And Drought predicted to worsen.
Australia continues to panic about water, while the federal Howard ‘coal-ition’ government still won’t put water, climate change, and CO2 in the same sentence. –LJ
Changed climate will cook elderly people
Kate Mannix, Online Opinion
When the great heatwave of 2003 struck Paris, it left 14,802 people dead; 30,000 people died throughout the rest of Europe. It was, according to Britain’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, the worst natural disaster on record.
Sixty per cent of those deaths occurred in nursing homes, retirement homes and hospitals.
In 2003, the French hospital authorities were caught out by climate change and their failure to plan, let alone adapt to the long predicted changed weather conditions. The majority of deaths in Europe in 2003 were of people over 65 – those who are most at risk of heat extremes.
(27 Sep 2006)
