|
|
| |
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has released its report describing warming as "unequivocal." Scientists from 130 countries are agreed that temperatures and sea levels will rise even if emissions are stabilized. report
|
|
| |
A broad array of natural record keepers plot climate changes -- coral reefs, layers of ice, ocean and lake sediments and the bristlecones near Pikes Peak.
Tree rings from the world's oldest trees show the patterns of warming and cooling over thousands of years, confirming the information from ice cores and ocean mud. Over-lapping cores from bristle cone pines in California cover 9000 years of climate history. A new study of North American climate also used a boring from a bristle cone pine in Colorado that has provided a 2,040 of detailed information on freezing years.
Under the microscope, the compact corduroy of rings revealed the normal alternating pattern of light bands of cells made each summer during the growing season and dark bands made at the end of the year as moisture drained from the living tissue in preparation for winter. But the cores also showed dark bands where the cells were smashed and broken like a highway pileup. These were frost rings -- scars left from years when the freezing weather came too soon and ice formed in the cells, shredding the thin walls.
An occasional frost ring isn't unusual, but the cores from near Pikes Peak held almost 200. What if the cold snaps that formed the frost rings weren't just random events? What if they were a barometer of much larger global catastrophes?
The old trees form so many frost rings because they live at about 11,400 feet -- the tree line, where the slightest temperature dip can form ice in the cells. The 182 frost rings in cores from the region makes them one of the best indicators of global climate we have.
|
|
| |
Greenland is melting faster than expected. New islands are appearing as ice shelves melt and dog sled exploration is now kayak exploration. The geography is changing faster than it can be mapped. The melting speed is faster than the computer models predicted.
|
|
| |
Exxon Changing Its Mind on Global Warming?
"Widely misunderstood" is Exxon spokesman, Mark Boudreax's description of the company's denial of climate change. "...and as a result of that, we have been clarifying and talking more about what our position is" he said.
Exxon Mobile Corp, along with representatives from about 20 other companies, is participating in talks on possible US greenhouse gas emissions regulations sponsored by Washington, DC nonprofit Resources for the Future.
|
|
| | | |
| British say |
slowing global warming is cheapest option |
Sir Nicholas Stern, the senior government economist said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about 1 percent of global GDP each year. He recommended a "low-carbon global economy" through measures including taxation, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading.
"That is manageable," he said. "We can grow and be green."
"Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," he said. |
| |
A new NASA report finds global warming is happening faster than expected.
"The most important result found by these researchers is that the warming in recent decades has brought global temperature to a level within about one degree Celsius (1.8° F) of the maximum temperature of the past million years, which they suggest is a sensible upper limit for additional global warming. “If further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today.”"
|
|
| | | |
| Ancient Hot Spell |
|
| 55 million years ago, greenhouse gases from natural sources drove earth's temperature to levels that caused massive extinctions. |
| |
Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences 5/02/06 report
A newly published report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds that measurements of global average temperature increases have fewer discrepancies than had previously been thought. "This is an important revision to and update of the conclusions of earlier reports from the U.S. National Research Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
"[R]esearch ... shows clear evidence of human influences on the climate system due to changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, and stratospheric ozone. Also, the observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effects of short-lived atmospheric constituents such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone alone."
|
|
http://zfacts.com/p/506.html | 01/18/12 07:16 GMT
Modified: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:47:22 GMT
|
|
