Light-Up a Smoke
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Copenhagen: Tempers flared Monday at the United Nations climate summit as poor nations staged a walkout to protest what they called inadequate aid offers from rich countries, and the U.S. and China jockeyed for position.
The talks have become what one observer called a “farce,” as guidelines agreed on two years ago are not even obtainable because these clowns can’t even agree now on the basics — and it’s still about the money.
Developed countries vs those undeveloped — the rich are stalling the not-so-rich: “The disaster has already begun because we have not closed the gap an inch. We have not moved,” a senior Asian negotiator said. “We are just trying to paste over it with political rhetoric.”
(Illustration found here).
While delegates to the conference are playing grab-ass with a planet’s future, the need for some kind of killer agreement to curb/stop greenhouse gases or the days ahead will be a killer time.
Sadly, and mighty depressing is the actual reality — what needs to be done in time to stop/mitigate the horror coming just near-literally around the corner.
Environmental activist Bill McKibben posted a sobering view today at environment360 on the challenge of what’s at stake.
Some snippets:
But here’s the thing: The words don’t count.
None of them. If you want to understand what’s going on here, you need to shut out the words, the drama, the craziness, and just focus on numbers — and really just a few.
Outside the window, right now, the atmosphere contains 390 parts per million (ppm) of CO2.
That’s too much — as a result, sea ice is melting, glaciers retreating, deserts spreading.
Science has told us where we need to go: 350 ppm.
There’s really not much pushback against that number — the UN’s chief climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri has made it clear that it’s a necessary target.
…
So here’s the number at the moment.
Take every plan — the meager American one, the more aggressive European targets, the Chinese promises to use less carbon per yuan of output, the Brazilian pledges about forests, the Maldives hope of going carbon neutral inside a decade. Push the button.
In the year 2100, the atmosphere will contain 770 parts per million CO2.
And even with all this serious science shit, there are still some real-mean-ass, dumb-ass people, like a for instance, Sen. Jim Inhofe, a delusional-type A character who will reportedly travel to Copenhagen to show his US ass-ignorance, even demanding an investigation into “climate-gate” as global warming is a massive, way-complicated fraud: “They’re cooking the science,” Inhofe said. “The same things that came out on these e-mails is what I said four years ago.”
And to this comes a snap-back from US Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee: “Well, my good friend Sen. Inhofe is entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts.”
Words not numbers — a match waiting…
Anoxic Anxiety
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Nearly in a near-panic.
Wikipedia: Oceanic anoxic events or anoxic events occur when the Earth’s oceans become completely depleted of oxygen (O2) below the surface levels.
Although anoxic events have not happened for millions of years, the geological record shows that they happened many times in the past.
Anoxic events may have caused mass extinctions.
These mass extinctions were so characteristic they include some of those which geobiologists employ to serve as a time marker in biostratigraphic dating.
It is believed oceanic anoxic events are strongly linked to lapses in key oceanic current circulations, to climate warming and greenhouse gases.
(Illustration: ‘Manatee In The Sea Grass‘ by Joann Shular found here).
Meanwhile, in Copenhagen: The Associated Press reports that the protests — which attracted 40,000 to 100,000 people, depending on the source — were “mostly peaceful.”
Peoples from 194 nations are meeting under the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change and despite all the hub-bub outside on the streets, early reports indicate not much has been accomplished other than the rich are still being assholes.
Also reportedly this week the climate talks will become dramatic as more activists and a shitload of world leaders (President Obama is scheduled for Friday — closing day), US congress-people, journalists and all kinds of other types will be trying to take up space at the conference.
And drama kicked-off today — climate science is serious as a heart-attack.
From DeSmogBlog:
During a live primetime climate-debate broadcasted on Danish national TV one of the participators, climate-skeptic scientist Henrik Svensmark, had a heart attack.
Bjorn Lomborg was by his side in the tv-studio when the scientist mid-sentence fell ill.
THe 41 year old Henrik Svensmark made an awkward spasm/shudder and burst out a strange noise, sounding like a cough.
The other participants in the debate looked baffled and he mumbled:
“It’s my heart,” and fell to the ground and the pacemaker kicked in once more and you could hear him scream. Bjrøn Lomborg yelled “call an ambulance, call an ambulance” and the host and the other participants came over to help the man.
Svensmark is supposedly one of the “sunspots and cosmic rays, not humans, cause global warming” kind of guys — a point reportedly refuted by the science.
And along with global warming, the “evil twin of climate change” – ocean acidification — is apparently getting worse as a report released to the conference implied, although the CO2-related phenomenon doesn’t get much press.
The study from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) paints another bleak picture for the earth’s environment.
From the UK’s The Guardian on the report:
Ocean acidification — the facts says that acidity in the seas has increased 30% since the start of the industrial revolution.
Many of the effects of this acidification are already irreversible and are expected to accelerate, according to the scientists.
…
Although oceans have acidified naturally in the past, the current rate of acidification is so fast that it is becoming extremely difficult for species and habitats to adapt.
“We’re counting it in decades, and that’s the real take-home message,” said Dr John Baxter a senior scientist with Scottish Natural Heritage, and the report’s co-author. “This is happening fast.”
The report, published by the EU-funded European Project on Ocean Acidification, a consortium of 27 research institutes and environment agencies, states that the survival of a number of marine species is affected or threatened, in ways not recognised and understood until now.
And also from the UK and today’s timesonline:
Ocean acidification has been quite scandalously left out of the reckoning in the past few weeks.
I am not for a moment belittling the science behind man-made global warming. This still seems to me solid, despite the shenanigans at the University of East Anglia (“climategate”).
That levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are rising is not disputed. We have known since the 19th century that carbon dioxide was a crucial greenhouse gas. Venus has a lot of it and is hot as hell. Mars has almost none and is cold as ice.
…
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution in about 1750, sea water acidity has increased by 30%.
The speed and degree of this change are faster than anything that had happened for 55m years.
The changes being observed are beginning to disrupt the ability of any organism to make shells out of calcium carbonate.
Organisms that do this include corals, crabs, lobsters, small creatures vital to the diet of fish and plankton of the kind that die and form chalk deposits such as the white cliffs of Dover.
Projections show that by 2060, given the current rate of fossil-fuel emissions, sea water acidity could have increased by 120%.
…
Such an effect could trigger a chain of reactions through entire ecosystems, from whales to fish and shellfish, with huge implications for economies and wildlife.
It could even stop the sea absorbing as much carbon dioxide as it does now, accelerating global warming.
It is pretty scary stuff.
Yes.
In a hearing Dec. 2, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), testified before the Senate Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming about seawater acidity and it’s consequences, which is also pretty scary stuff.
Read a comprehensive look at the current state of ocean acidification here.
Time to do something appears to have been yesterday.
Quick Punch
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(Illustration found here).
A new satellite-based study published Sunday in Nature Geoscience indicates the supposedly more-stable East Antarctic ice sheet has as been losing 57 billion tons of ice bulk a year since 2006.
From the BBC on the report:
“We felt surprised to see this change in East Antarctica,” study leader Jianli Chen from the Centre for Space Research at the University of Texas in Austin told BBC News.
The loss still looks small by contrast with West Antarctica, which is losing 132Gt (tons) per year, and with Greenland, where a recent analysis combining Grace data with other measurements indicated an annual figure of 273Gt.
(h/t Climate Progress).
Another brick in the wall of weird.
Also published Sunday in the Energy Bulletin:
The trouble with apocalypse is that most people have already seen it at the movie theater, watched it on television, read it in a book, or heard all about it from the pulpit.
So inundated with the language of crisis are we that we have become immune to it.
From the perspective of the historian our age has been chock full of “great transformations.”
And, it is, after all, the historian’s business to write about great change even if he or she has to invent some.
…
What apocalyptic narratives do is elevate the importance of the trajectory of every person’s life regardless of his or her station in society.
If we’re all in this together, then we can share in a great destiny no matter who we are.
But destiny sounds like fate.
What can one do if one is headed toward a great apocalypse? Pray, perhaps. Repent, maybe.
But responding to such a gargantuan event calls more for attaining the right relationship with one’s god than engaging in constructive social and political action.
Punch line: Don’t mothball the tuxedo!
Slow-Melt Irony
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One of the great turds of the US political system, Sen. James Inhofe, yes, that silly-assed Republican from Oklahoma, displayed a most-marvelous bit of horror-irony this week as he tweaked the future and all those to come after us.
Inhofe is a major big-mouth-crybaby global-warming denier — appears a fairly ignorant man.
And with the Copenhagen climate talks coming up in a couple of weeks, the pecker-head, dim-witted Inhofe claims the world is safe as nothing good comes out of Denmark.
Via HuffPost:
And Inhofe had a message specifically for Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) — “We won, you lost, get a life.”
Something terrifyingly-paradoxical there.
(Illustration found here).
Whether one wants to hear it or not, or even, whether you believe/know it or not, the near-future of the planet is way-grounded in the word, change.
There’s so much afoot nowadays aimed at a really-clouded and anxious tomorrow — weather, energy, food (all the basics) — that despite all of stinky-Jim Inhofe’s blubberings will affect/effect everyone in such a profound way it’s unfathomable here writing this morning.
Read the basics on weather/climate here.
And on energy here; the basic problem on food here.
Inhofe’s mouth-off last week was in response to news the full Senate won’t get around to a climate bill until this coming spring, months after the Denmark meeting.
Last summer, the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), which called for cutting US greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, 83 percent by 2050.
The Senate’s slightly more ambitious bill calls for a 20-percent cut by 2020.
And from the clown who blubbered years ago climate change was “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Inhofe continues to bluster hysterical about the hysteria behind global warming alarmism:
I also said in Milan that the science is not settled.
That was an unpopular view back then.
But today, since Al Gore’s science fiction movie, more and more scientists, reporters, and politicians are questioning global warming alarmism.
I proudly declare 2009 as the “Year of the Skeptic” — the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.
…
Of course, from the most memorable tidbit from my two-hour global warming speech in July of 2003 were my comments about the science behind global warming.
Now, six years later, and as I head to the next UN global warming conference, I am pleased by the vast and growing number of scientists, politicians, and reporters all over the world who are publicly rejecting climate alarmism.
When I made those comments on the Senate Floor, few people were there to stand with me.
Today, I have been vindicated and I am proud to share the stage with all those who now dare question Al Gore, Hollywood elites, and the United Nations.
Inhofe feels “vindicated” from what?
Barbara Boxer is head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — the EPW passed global warming legislation a couple of weeks ago by bypassing bowl-obstructed GOP members, thus eliminating their participation — the guys were being asshole-jerks, they’d boycotted the bill by stubbornly seeking more EPA analysis at an estimated (and additional) $140,000 cost.
Inhofe whined about it anyway: “In the history of this, we’ve not been able to find a time when a bill has been marked up without minority participation…”
However, he does seem to get the ever-changing last laugh –spine-lacking Harry Reid’s assertion of no Senate debate on climate-warming until the snow melts.
Read a view of the Senate version of the climate bill at Climate Progress.
And adding fuel to the skeptic/denier crowd were e-mails hacked this week from the UK’s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and posted online — actually a bit to do about nothing, unless you’re scamming.
From Wired:
Global warming skeptics are seizing on portions of the messages as evidence that scientists are colluding and warping data to fit the theory of global warming, but researchers say the e-mails are being taken out of context and just show scientists engaged in frank discussion.
And one such e-mail from Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado:
But Trenberth, who acknowledged the e-mail is genuine, says bloggers are missing the point he’s making in the e-mail by not reading the article cited in it.
That article – An Imperative for Climate Change Planning (pdf) — actually says that global warming is continuing, despite random temperature variations that would seem to suggest otherwise.
“It says we don’t have an observing system adequate to track it, but there are all other kinds of signs aside from global mean temperatures — including melting of Arctic sea ice and rising sea levels and a lot of other indicators — that global warming is continuing,” he says.
…
“If you read all of these e-mails, you will be surprised at the integrity of these scientists,” he (Trenberth) says. “The unfortunate thing about this is that people can cherry pick and take things out of context.”
A good semi-insider response can be found at RealClimate.
Global warming and all its outlying complications are all too real — even a total mainstream source like National Geographic has a good interactive site on climate change — and Time magazine posed on Friday the consequences of a lame or near-non-existent agreement coming out of Copenhagen:
But there’s no getting around the fact that as the science of climate change grows more dire, the global political system seems increasingly unable to deal with that reality.
“We don’t want a global suicide pact,” said Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a low-lying Indian Ocean nation that could be swamped by global warming-caused flooding. “We want a global survival pact.”
But the world’s most influential leaders still aren’t ready for that.
Ready for what? An event way down the road, a maybe-problem for some future generation?
Not so fast…
From the executive summary of a new study (pdf) commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund International (h/t Climate Progress):
This report models the ability of low-carbon industries to grow and transform within a market economy.
It finds that runaway climate change is almost inevitable without specific action to implement low-carbon re-industrialisation over the next five years.
The point of no return is estimated to be 2014.
Re-invent modern industry in five years?
You gotta be shittin’ me!
Just follow Jumping-Jim Inhofe’s advice: ‘Get a life.’
Another Upgrade on the Downgrade
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Climate-change study and an ultimate understanding of future global weather appears fickle at best, and way off the mark at worst — in the last two years the big global-warming news is negative factors “have been significantly underestimated…”
In this particular case it’s methane gas, which is not only produced by landfill sites, fossil fuel energy and agriculture, particularly rice and livestock farming, but has been found to be ‘burping’ up from ‘methane chimneys’ due to thawing of the perma-frost in the Arctic.
(Illustration found here).
This morning from the UK’s timesonline:
Methane’s impact on global temperatures is about a third higher than generally thought because previous estimates have not accounted for its interaction with airborne particles called aerosols, NASA scientists found.
When this indirect effect of the potent greenhouse gas is included one tonne of methane has about 33 times as much effect on the climate over 100 years as a tonne of carbon dioxide, rather than 25 times as in standard estimates.
…
As methane breaks down much more quickly than carbon dioxide, the impact of cuts on climate would also be faster.
“For long-term climate change there’s no way around dealing with CO2 — it’s the biggest thing and it lasts hundreds of years,” Dr Shindell told The Times.
“But if we were to have a concerted effort to deal with non-CO2 we could have a very large impact on the near term.
“Substantial reductions in methane, carbon monoxide and black carbon: that’s the way to make a big difference. I think it should be more of a priority [for Copenhagen].”
In a few weeks — Dec. 7-18 to be exact — will be the UN’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in which the world will attempt once again to reach some kind of consensus on one of the most-crucial events facing mankind most-likely in all of history.
Previews of the gathering ain’t too optimistic.
Even from Connie Hedegaard, Danish Minister for Climate and Energy and president of this year’s conference, the Copenhagen meeting is the last stand for climate change reversal.
She says, in part:
“If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate.
Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility.
It’s not an option.”
The US, however, might be right now too preoccupied with the ‘public option’ of the health-care debate.
Economic considerations are also front and center in hampering the US from passing a decent climate-change bill along with millions and millions of lobbying dollars spent by coal pushers and others in attempt to hijack any kind of decent work on global warming.
The noxious smoke screen appears to be working.
A shitload of US peoples — 35 percent vs 44 percent just 18 months ago — believe global warming is not as serious as been shown, and humans are responsible — 36 percent, down from 47 percent last year.
According to McClatchy:
The legislation before the Senate, like a bill that passed the House of Representatives in June, would cap emissions and provide funding for climate assistance.
It would set a limit on emissions that ratchets down each year until it reaches an 83 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2050.
It also would require power plants and other large sources of emissions to buy pollution permits. Most of the money would go to subsidize consumers and industries for increased fuel costs, and to encourage the development of clean energy. Some also would go to help poor nations adapt to climate change.
…
U.S. negotiator Todd Stern, speaking to members of Congress in September, urged the Senate to act, saying, “Nothing the United States can do is more important for the international negotiation process than passing robust, comprehensive clean-energy legislation as soon as possible.”
However, it appears unlikely that the full Senate will vote on the measure this year because lawmakers want to finish overhauling health care first.
The Bush administration opposed mandatory cuts in emissions.
Joseph Romm, who was an acting assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said the Obama administration couldn’t turn everything around in less than a year.
“Given the last eight years, anybody thinking there was going to be a deal in Copenhagen wasn’t paying attention,” Romm said.
Romm runs the most-excellent site, Climate Progress, and he should know.