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Pushing the Scary Side of Global Warming
Richard A. Kerr, Science
Greenhouse warming might be more disastrous than the recent international assessment managed to convey, scientists are realizing. But how can they get the word out without seeming alarmist?
(8 June 2007)
Original behind a paywall. Text is posted at Marxmail.
Les Schaffer writes:
Interesting article in today’s issue of Science covering climate change and the recent IPCC report, and a look behind the scenes. Interesting issues: how IPCC reliance on modeling tends to reduce the projected risks projected to the public, how many people actually contribute and comment on the report, in addition to stuff on the problems predicting the rate of sea level rise, collective assessment of uncertain processes, and how scientists with different tolerances for uncertainty in models relate to each other.
A drought for the ages
Patrick O’Driscoll, USA TODAY
Drought, a fixture in much of the West for nearly a decade, now covers more than one-third of the continental USA. And it’s spreading.
As summer starts, half the nation is either abnormally dry or in outright drought from prolonged lack of rain that could lead to water shortages, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly index of conditions. Welcome rainfall last weekend from Tropical Storm Barry brought short-term relief to parts of the fire-scorched Southeast. But up to 50 inches of rain is needed to end the drought there, and this is the driest spring in the Southeast since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
California and Nevada just recorded their driest June-to-May period since 1924, and a lack of rain in the West could make this an especially risky summer for wildfires.
(8 June 2007)
Hong Kong winters may vanish in 50 years: weather expert
Reuters
Hong Kong’s winters could vanish within 50 years, with the number of cold days declining virtually to zero due to global warming and urbanization, the head of the city’s weather observatory warned on Friday.
“According to our projections, toward the end of this century … there will be less than one cold day each winter, so winter practically will have disappeared,” said Lam Chiu-ying, director of the Hong Kong observatory.
(8 June 2007)
Global Dimming, Global Warming & Peak Oil
Richard Embleton, Oil, be Seeing You
Okay. Hands up all of those who have even heard of Global Dimming. You’d be forgiven if you hadn’t. After all, it hasn’t exactly been the bread and butter of the morning newspaper or the evening TV newscast. The majority of those, in fact, in the Peak Oil movement and a good share of those in the Global Warming movement haven’t yet heard of it either. If you are not yet aware of it I suspect it will distress you to hear that it may be more important and more serious and more complicated than either Peak Oil or Global Warming, and is intricately bound to both.
…Briefly, Global Dimming is the reduction of sunlight striking the planet’s surface from a combination of factors such as particulate matter suspended in the atmosphere from pollution such as soot, ash, sulfur emissions, volcanic eruptions, CFCs, chemtrails, contrails, and from increased cloud formation and cloud density, also at least partially a result of atmospheric pollution.
…Scientists now understand that this has had two effects on global warming, one predictable and one quite surprising.
(17 May 2007)
A clear explanation.
Another recent post from Richard: Global Dimming: The Unintended Consequences of Addressing Global Atmospheric Pollution
-BA
