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Facing global warming, are people like frogs?
Alister Doyle, Reuters
Confronted by new evidence of global warming, will people react like frogs?
According to an often-told story, a frog will try to jump out if you drop it into hot water but the hapless creature will stay, and eventually die, if you put it in a pan of cool water and slowly bring it to a boil.
A United Nations report to be released in Paris on February 2 will include the strongest warning yet that humans are stoking global warming that may cause colossal damage to nature if, like the doomed frog, they ignore rising temperatures.
…”The ‘boiled frog’…is definitely an urban myth,” said Victor Hutchison, a professor emeritus at the zoology department at the University of Oklahoma in the United States
“I have investigated the thermal tolerance in reptiles and amphibians for many years. If one places the animal in a container and slowly heats it, the animal will at some point invariably try to escape,” he told Reuters.
…Will the world’s governments hop? If the much-maligned frog is smart enough to jump when the mercury rises, there must surely be hope for humans too?
(23 Jan 2007)
US urges scientists to block out sun
David Adam and Liz Minchin, Sydney Morning Herald
THE US wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.
It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which is due out on Friday).
The US has also attempted to steer the UN report, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), away from conclusions that would support a new worldwide climate treaty based on binding targets to reduce emissions. It has demanded a draft of the report be changed to emphasise the benefits of voluntary agreements and to include criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol, which the US opposes.
The final report, written by experts from across the world, will underpin international negotiations to devise an emissions treaty to succeed Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft of the report last year and invited to comment.
The US response says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each panel report. It says: “Modifying solar radiance may be an important strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that should be considered.”
Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1 per cent of sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulfate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were “speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects”.
(29 Jan 2007)
Technofixes with unknown consequences are no replacement for integrated ‘Theory of Anyway‘ approaches. One consequence of these techniques, if any were shown to be viable, will likely be renewed growth in coal use, which will result in further acidification of the oceans, and the destruction of the already teetering basis of the ocean’s food chain:
Among the most frightening news for coral reefs is the increasing acidity of the ocean as a result of rising levels of carbon dioxide. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently estimated the ocean has absorbed 118 billion metric tons of CO2 since the onset of the Industrial Revolution—about half of the total we’ve released into the atmosphere—with 20 to 25 million more tons being added daily. This mitigation of CO2 is good for our atmosphere but bad for our ocean, since it changes the pH. Studies indicate that the shells and skeletons possessed by everything from reef-building corals to mollusks to plankton begin to dissolve within 48 hours of exposure to the acidity expected in the ocean by 2050.
Coral reefs, buffeted by so many stressors, will almost certainly disappear. But the loss of plankton is even more worrisome. Collectively, marine phytoplankton have influenced life on earth more than any other organism, since they are significant alleviators of greenhouse gases, major manufacturers of oxygen, and the primary producers of the marine food web. Yet because many phytoplankton produce minute aragonite shells, these pastures of the sea may not survive changing pH levels. Zooplankton, meanwhile, are largely composed of the larval forms of all the ocean’s other life-forms—from fish to squid to shellfish—whose calcium carbonate constructions are also unlikely to survive changed pH levels*. By facilitating radical changes in these, the immense populations of the very small, we might as well erase the world as we know it, one bone, one seashell at a time.
-AF
Welcome to the new climate
Martin Mittelstaedt, Globe & Mail
…Perfect weather, then, to welcome the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report on our warming planet, a document that will be released to much fanfare in Paris, and which by all advance accounts will lay to waste any remaining doubts that human activity is causing the globe to warm at an unprecedented rate.
And perfect timing, too, as it falls at a moment when the world, including Canada, has undergone a massive shift on climate change.
If political issues have recognized tipping points, where one day the problem doesn’t matter and the next it’s seemingly at the top of everyone’s mind, there is little doubt we’re in the midst of one now on global warming and the environment.
Here in Canada, where only a year ago the environment was a blip on the radar screens of pollsters, the issue has suddenly emerged as the most important one facing the country, according to polling conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV.
(27 Jan 2007)
Are scientists evolving into climate crusaders?
Anne McIlroy
…Many scientists don’t see themselves as advocates, said David Runnalls, president of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. They believe it is their job to warn the world about global warming, he said, just as experts in infectious diseases warn us to get ready for an avian flu pandemic, or atomic scientists warn of the dangers of nuclear holocaust.
They are getting scared by what they are seeing, Mr. Runnalls said, such as the study published last year that suggested Greenland’s massive ice sheet is melting faster than expected. “That is why a lot of them are far more outspoken than before,” he said.
Dr. McBean, 63, said a number of factors pushed him into advocacy, including the increasingly compelling evidence of the dangers of climate change. He had moved to an academic position at the University of Western Ontario, so he felt more freedom to speak his mind.
He also did it for grandchildren, Amanda, 7, and Stuart, 10. He worried about their future in a warmer world.
(29 Jan 2007)
