Light-Up a Smoke

Filed Under Cloud gazing | Leave a Comment

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

Filed Under Cloud gazing, Scratching Sounds | Leave a Comment

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.

Crude Bubblin’ Bust

Filed Under Energy, Environment, Finance, Politics | Leave a Comment

A few short years ago, anyone who discussed subjects like “peak oil” were considered a crank (not to be confused with, for instance, ‘Will my car crank without fuel?’) or a nutcase or just a plain worry-wart-conspiratorial fruitcake (not to be confused with a Dick Cheney), but nowadays there’s enough evidence from authentic sources to ignite water.

The latest report outlines a “significant risk” of oil running out in a decade, another from Germany’s Deutsche Bank which spell the end of the oil era and from San Francisco, “the end of the world as we know it.”

(Illustration found here).

Peak oil, of course, is manacled hand-and-foot with global warming/climate change, though, it’s hard to tell which will seriously erupt first — coal and oil fueled the engine for an industrial society (advanced civilization) that seems about to eat itself.
A classic creation-destroying-the-creator scenario.
Peak oil is also tied to economics — when there’s no money, consumption drops and there’s less demand.
Some even ponder $6-a-gallon gas as making life better.
Catastrophic results of peak oil appear further on down the time-line, although who’s to really say about a future so entangled with so many varying variables.

This week, a gaggle of peak oil “theorists” will gather in Denver, also the HQ of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas-USA (ASPO), to swap figures, statistics and hopefully seek solutions on how best to handle the inevitable.
According to denverpost.com:

“Up until now, technology has delivered dazzling results to America and the world economy, in delivering oil from all around the world despite increasingly challenging environments,” said Dave Bowden, ASPO’s executive director.
“The harsh reality is, despite the best efforts of amazing technology, they’re not finding as many of these big fields anymore.”

ASPO and others of its ilk push wind, solar and ocean-wave power, along with hybrid cars and use of better technologies to extract more oil — a bandage on an gut shot.
Last May, the US Energy Information Administration released its International Energy Outlook 2009 and a large oil-gulping sound could be heard: World marketed energy consumption is projected to increase by 44 percent from 2006 to 2030. Total energy demand in the non-OECD countries increases by 73 percent, compared with an increase of 15 percent in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries.

And in Alaska, peak oil and climate change collide.
From MSNBC:

Oil companies scouring the coastline of Alaska’s North Slope for new production sites are converging on the same territory as hungry polar bears trying to escape shrinking and thinning sea ice.
Polar bears have not attacked any workers recently, but oil companies are reporting four times as many sightings as they did last decade.
…
“What this appears to be is bears looking for another option because their traditional habitat is not as healthy as it used to be,” said Steve Amstrup of the U.S. Geological Survey. This summer, Arctic sea ice shrank to its third-lowest area on record.

(h/t The Oil Drum)

Mad Max, a damn dog and polar bears.