In The News

[knocker]

ISGS-led consortium begins injection of CO₂ for storage

at the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project

First U.S. large demonstration-scale injection of CO₂ from a biofuel production facility begins

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC) has begun injecting carbon dioxide (CO₂) for the first million-tonne demonstration of carbon sequestration in the U.S. The CO₂ will be stored permanently in the Mt. Simon Sandstone more than a mile beneath the Illinois surface at Decatur. The MGSC is led by the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS), part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.

http://www.sequestration.org/

[knocker]

Desertification.

The classic view of desertification is of wind-battered landscapes, denuded and rubbed raw by sand, with towns and villages transformed into dustbowls. And it's easy to find this face of desertification in the Sahel, the transition zone in Africa between the Sahara in the north and the savannahs of the south.

For decades, the creeping sands have edged southwards, changing the ecological balances and installing in this part of Africa a seemingly inexorable process of desertification. Cities such as N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, appear to have shrivelled to a dry husk over the past 20 years, thanks to a combination of human activity and rainfall shortages.

It's an extraordinary phenomenon that appears to call for an extraordinary response. And we appear to have one: the Great Green Wall, a project developed by the African Union to plant a belt of trees 15 kilometres wide stretching almost 8,000 kilometres across the width of Africa from Djibouti in the east to Senegal in the west. Using native trees such as figs, acacias and gum bdellium, the wall will slow down wind erosion, improve river infiltration, create habitats for wildlife and provide energy resources and foodstuffs, say its proponents.

http://news.national...ara-desert.html

This map provides a startling illustration of the extent to which the remaining inhabitable land on Earth is threatened with desertification. Large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia appear to be on the verge of becoming desert, while the majority of those areas in Australia that aren't classified as desert face at least a moderate risk. Note, too, the virtually continuous band of red that stretches across Africa from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east -the planned location of the Great Green Wall. The biggest surprise might be the level of risk faced in the western USA.

SOURCE: US Department of Agriculture

[knocker]

WMO Hosts Workshop on Extreme Seas

WMO is hosting a workshop with representatives of the International Maritime Organization, classification societies, shipyards, marine designers and ship operators on Extreme Seas: Improving Wave Observations, Maritime Safety and Ship Design.

The aim is to enhance safety of the merchant fleet in extreme seas and meet future challenges – especially given that the anticipated shrinking of the Arctic ice will lead to an increase in shipping and oil and gas exploration in unpredictable northern waters which were previously closed to navigation.

http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/news/waves_en.html

[knocker]

Sigh.

Warm global temperatures continue in 2011

29 November 2011 — This year is set to be the 11th warmest in a record spanning more than 150 years, according to climate scientists from the Met Office and the University of East Anglia.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2011/2011-global-temperature

[knocker]

Abrupt permafrost thaw increases climate threat

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

30 November 2011

FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates, according to survey results from 41 international scientists published in the Nov. 30 issue of the journal Nature.

Permafrost thaw will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation, say the authors, but the effect on climate will be 2.5 times bigger because emissions include methane, which has a greater effect on warming than carbon dioxide.

http://www.iab.uaf.edu/news/index.php?newsrel=97

[Gray-Wolf]

We are still awaiting the news release from that 'hastily assembled' team that went out to check methane leaks from the shelf seas off Siberia yet too? With the latest reports of Methane plumes erupting off Svalbard (hydrate weeping due to warmer sea waters at depth) things are starting to look pretty dynamic in the Arctic right now.

None of this can be turned off (like a tap), we just need figure what impacts it brings.

[BornFromTheVoid]

Have you a link to those hydrate destabilising near Svalbard Gray-Wolf?

[Gray-Wolf]

Will have a look where I've been BFTV! I think it was over on Nevens?

Edit; This article has an image of releases of Svalbard;

http://nauka.in.ua/e...cle_detail/5518

and a snippet here from a paywall paper;

http://www.agu.org/p...1JC007189.shtml

EDIT;EDIT: This doesn't sound too good for the siberian shelf deposits?

http://arctictranspo...ange/#comment-5

EDIT;EDIT;EDIT: Also try the Dr. Natalia Shakhova presentation from here;

http://symposium2010.serdp-estcp.org/Technical-Sessions/1A

Edited December 1, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[PeteB]

Interesting article from The BBC this morning about Katia which is possibly on the verge of a major eruption!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15995845

Pete

[Coast]

Three-quarters of climate change is man-made

Independent study quantifies human influence on global warming.

Natural climate variability is extremely unlikely to have contributed more than about one-quarter of the temperature rise observed in the past 60 years, reports a pair of Swiss climate modellers in a paper published online today. Most of the observed warming — at least 74 % — is almost certainly due to human activity, they write in Nature Geoscience.

Since 1950, the average global surface air temperature has increased by more than 0.5 °C. To separate human and natural causes of warming, the researchers analysed changes in the balance of heat energy entering and leaving Earth — a new ‘attribution' method for understanding the physical causes of climate change.

Their findings, which are strikingly similar to results produced by other attribution methods, provide an alternative line of evidence that greenhouse gases, and in particular carbon dioxide, are by far the main culprit of recent global warming. The massive increase of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since pre-industrial times would, in fact, have caused substantially more surface warming were it not for the cooling effects of atmospheric aerosols such as black carbon, they report. Previous attempts to disentangle anthropogenic and natural warming used a statistically complex technique called optimal fingerprinting to compare observed patterns of surface air temperature over time with the modelled climate response to greenhouse gases, solar radiation and aerosols from volcanoes and other sources.

“Optimal fingerprinting is a powerful technique, but to most people it’s a black box,†says Reto Knutti, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, one of the authors of the report.

A balanced view

Knutti and his co-author Markus Huber, also at ETH Zurich, took a different approach. They utilized a much simpler model of Earth’s total energy budget and ran the model many thousands of times, using different combinations of a few crucial parameters that contribute to the energy budget. These included global values for incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun, solar energy leaving Earth, heat absorbed by the oceans and climate-feedback effects (such as reduced snow cover, which amplifies warming by exposing darker surfaces that absorb more heat).

By using the combinations that best matched the observed surface warming and ocean heat uptake, the authors then ran the so-constrained model with each energy parameter individually. This enabled them to estimate the contribution of CO2 and other climate-change agents to the observed temperature change. Their study was greatly assisted by a 2009 analysis2 of observed changes since 1950 in Earth’s energy balance, says Knutti.

Knutti and Huber found that greenhouse gases contributed 0.6–1.1 °C to the warming observed since the mid-twentieth century, with the most statistically likely value being a contribution of about 0.85 °C. Around half of that contribution from greenhouse gases — 0.45 °C — was offset by the cooling effects of aerosols. These directly influence Earth's climate by scattering light; they also have indirect climate effects through their interactions with clouds.

The authors calculated a net warming value of around 0.5 °C since the 1950s, which is very close to the actual temperature rise of 0.55 °C observed over that period. Changes in solar radiation — a hypothesis for global warming proffered by many climate sceptics — contributed no more than around 0.07 °C to the recent warming, the study finds.

To test whether recent warming might just be down to a random swing in Earth’s unstable climate — another theory favoured by sceptics — Knutti and Huber conducted a series of control runs of different climate models without including the effects of the energy-budget parameters. But even if climate variability were three times greater than that estimated by state-of-the-art models, it is extremely unlikely to have produced a warming trend as pronounced as that observed in the real world, they found.

“This tightens estimates of past responses,†says Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, “And it should also lead to predictions of future climate change that are grounded in the kind of changes already being observed.â€

http://www.nature.co...man-made-1.9538

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

I'm starting to think I'm not some crazy doomsayer after all? Very odd, must take my meds now..........

[Village]

In the news?

Who now feels as I do that the recent series with David Attenborough at the poles was another attempt at pulling the wool over everyones eyes and selling the same old global warming story?

Can you believe that all that wonderful photography selling us a story of endangered polar bears desperately chiseling out a life on ever decreasing ice was filmed in a zoo and superimposed? What else was a smoke screen? and what was the purpose of this at the end of the day? Climate change propaganda?

[knocker]

In the news?

Who now feels as I do that the recent series with David Attenborough at the poles was another attempt at pulling the wool over everyones eyes and selling the same old global warming story?

Can you believe that all that wonderful photography selling us a story of endangered polar bears desperately chiseling out a life on ever decreasing ice was filmed in a zoo and superimposed? What else was a smoke screen? and what was the purpose of this at the end of the day? Climate change propaganda?

Well according to Attenborough if they had lowered the camera into a real life situation the bear would have probably killed the camera man. Just a minor detail really.

Edited December 14, 2011 by weather ship

[BornFromTheVoid]

In the news?

Who now feels as I do that the recent series with David Attenborough at the poles was another attempt at pulling the wool over everyones eyes and selling the same old global warming story?

Can you believe that all that wonderful photography selling us a story of endangered polar bears desperately chiseling out a life on ever decreasing ice was filmed in a zoo and superimposed? What else was a smoke screen? and what was the purpose of this at the end of the day? Climate change propaganda?

The purpose was to film a documentary of the Earth's polar regions, showing us views, landscapes and the animals which inhabit these areas at a level of detail not generally possible before. Which I thought they did fantastically. There was a lot more to the show than that small part with the bear cubs.

But I guess Attenborough, the photographers, camera men/women, pilots, divers, producers, directors, scientists and the whoever else were involved may have just been there to hoodwink everyone as part of a big global warming scam...

[pottyprof]

It's a shame that the series is being put down just because of a health and safety issue. It was a fantastic piece of art and one that must have tested the crews to their limit. That said, they should have been honest about the polar bear piece and any other simulated environment. They have been open before about the trickery they used to create scenes, so why not now? The final episode isn't part of the distribution of the programme and is only available in the UK unless any other TV company requests it. That doesn't make sense to me either.

I wouldn't say it was a scam though. I think it is exactly what it is and that is yet another fantastic piece of work from the BBC. It shows what is observed in the real world environment. It shows the effect of climate change. It doesn't matter if it is natural or man made, it is an observation about climate change.

[Gray-Wolf]

ABSTRACT FINAL ID: GC41B-0794

TITLE: Ebullition-driven fluxes of methane from shallow hot spots suggest significant under-estimation of annual emission from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf

SESSION TYPE: Poster

SESSION TITLE: GC41B. Permafrost and Methane: Monitoring and Modeling Fluxes of Water and Methane Associated With Arctic Changing Permafrost and Coastal Regiona I Posters

AUTHORS (FIRST NAME, LAST NAME): Natalia E Shakhova1, 2, Igor Peter Semiletov1, 2, Anatoly Salyuk2, Chris Stubbs3, Denis Kosmach2, Orjan Gustafsson4

INSTITUTIONS (ALL): 1. IARC, Univerrsity Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, United States.

2. Laboratory of Arctic Research, Pacific Oceanological Institute FEBRAS, Vladivostok, Russian Federation.

3. University of California, Marine Science Institute, Santa Barbara, CA, United States.

4. Institute of Applied Environmental Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Title of Team:

ABSTRACT BODY: The high-latitude, shallow ESAS has been alternately subaerial and inundated with seawater during glacial and interglacial periods respectively. Subaerial conditions foster the formation of permafrost and associated hydrate deposits whereas inundation with relatively warm seawater destabilizes the permafrost and hydrates. Our measurements of CH4 in 1994-2000 and 2003-2010 over ESAS demonstrate the system to be in a destabilization period. First estimates of ESAS methane emissions indicated the current atmospheric budget, which arises from gradual diffusion and ebullition, was on par with estimates of methane emissions from the entire World Ocean (≈8 Tg-CH4). Large transient emissions remained to be assessed; yet initial data suggested that component could increase significantly annual emissions. New data obtained in 2008-2010 show that contribution of ebullition-driven CH4 fluxes from shallow hot spots alone could multiply previously reported annual emission from the entire ESAS.

This is the abstract from the talk (at the AGU) that spawned the Independants news report of 3 days ago.

Please note that these are on last years figures and so do not include this years reports of 'oceans bubbling as though Boiling' from ship Capt.s plying the Northern sea route this autumn.

[Village]

It was great right up to the last program when the BBC yet again couldnt contain themselves and sold us the same old bias claptrap about man made climate change. Nothing new...no new evidence, nothing conclusive, just the same old hypothetical hunch from Attenborough who completely contradicts his lifetime's message about species by making the statement.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Village

[songster]

Can you believe that all that wonderful photography selling us a story of endangered polar bears desperately chiseling out a life on ever decreasing ice was filmed in a zoo and superimposed?

Er, no? Because it wasn't? The only non-authentic footage is about 2 minutes' worth showing a pair of newborn polar bear cubs in the den with their mother. There was no superimposition at any point. As to why they didn't go and dig up a wild mother bear in the couple of hours immediately after giving birth... well I nominate every idiot with their knickers in a twist over this to be the ones to go and get authentic footage.

It's a shame that the series is being put down just because of a health and safety issue. It was a fantastic piece of art and one that must have tested the crews to their limit. That said, they should have been honest about the polar bear piece and any other simulated environment. They have been open before about the trickery they used to create scenes, so why not now?

They had a "making of" segment on the BBC website that explained how they got the footage - if they were trying to hide it, would they have bothered to put that up? Possibly that specific segment should have been incorporated into the main 15-minute "making of" mini-programme that went on air immediately after each episode.

[Gray-Wolf]

Seeing as telly of cubs is more fascinating than real news and climate shift one of the lead authors of the above says;

Dr Semelitov says methane from ESAS is currently entering the atmosphere at a “fantastic rateâ€, much greater than previous observations. While reported findings from their latest mission to the Arctic won’t be available until Spring 2012, what is to be reported clearly dwarf previous results reported in 2010 [7].

So , 'Dwarf' when last years figures need to be 'multiplied' to account for the hot spots alone???? Tipping point and abrupt climate change anyone????

Edited December 14, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[Gowon]

It was great right up to the last program when the BBC yet again couldnt contain themselves and sold us the same old bias claptrap about man made climate change. Nothing new...no new evidence, nothing conclusive, just the same old hypothetical hunch from Attenborough who completely contradicts his lifetime's message about species by making the statement.

I have to agree, I felt the same way when I watched the programe, and like you I was enjoying it until then. Oh well what else did I expect from a propaganda machine.

[pottyprof]

Possibly that specific segment should have been incorporated into the main 15-minute "making of" mini-programme that went on air immediately after each episode.

Which is how it has been done before. Not everyone uses the internet to find out the extras.

Seeing as telly of cubs is more fascinating than real news and climate shift one of the lead authors of the above says;

Sorry GW but I find polar bear cubs so influential when discussing climate change. You can blame the media people who abused this cute furry fluffball of an animal's image. It diverts my attention from the real details......

[Village]

I dont think Attenborough realises what a mess he has put himself in to be honest. He now needs to explain what message regarding species he is sending. When I said that he has contradicted his lifetime of work I meant it.

Attenborough for decades has preached the same message: His story has always been how wonderfully diverse life is on this planet of ours and he attributes this to the constant upheaval all species face from their tough and ever changing environment. He has explained from all corners of our planet that its this constant challenging of the species which strengthens life and offers up diversity the likes we are only just beginning to understand.

So why is it now after a lifetime of work that he recommends Mankind do everything to stop climate changing because it suits us not to have our towns and cities flooded and our agriculture secure?

Surely if we have believed everything that Attenborough has preached all these years then we should want the climate to continue to alter and challenge life. If we work to control its variability wont we be weekening all life on the planet by denying all species natural hardship? Isnt that what we have done too ourselves? Is it not the antibiotics, the antiseptic environments and central heating which has now made our species more vulnerable ?

Edited December 15, 2011 by Village

[Gray-Wolf]

Put quite simply Village, nature cannot adapt as fast as we have driven climate changes in areas of the planet. We hear tales of being on the brink of the 4th great extinction event. This is not nature 'adapting' this is nature failing to adapt and loosing many species by this 'failure'.

The 'diversity' of the Planet is Attenboroughs delight, it is this Diversity that is now threatened esp. if we face 'Abrupt Climate Change' ,due to the submerged permafrost deposits loosing it CH4, then this process will accelerate this loss of diversity.

Edited December 15, 2011 by Gray-Wolf

[pottyprof]

nature cannot adapt as fast as we have driven climate changes in areas of the planet.

But nature changes climate just as quickly, if not faster, as we are allegedly changing the climate. Being the 4th extinction event gives us a clue you know.....

[BornFromTheVoid]

But nature changes climate just as quickly, if not faster, as we are allegedly changing the climate. Being the 4th extinction event gives us a clue you know.....

Yep, often wiping out over 95% of all species. I'm sure many will see humanity as just another force of nature, but to me, that in no way should be seen as justification if our actions do bring about another major extinction event.