4,024,776,626,758,050

Total Atmospheric CO2e: 4,024.78 Gt

CO₂ at Mauna Loa (weekly average)

Week of May 22, 2011: 394.97 ppm

• Weekly value from 1 year ago:   393.06 ppm
• Weekly value from 10 years ago:   373.93 ppm

Based on the above data, total atmospheric CO2 TODAY:

3,081,994,507,051.11 Mt [3,082Gt]

Combined impact of Nitrous Oxide (N2O), Methane (CH4) and CFC 12 ( CCl2F2) calculated at their full global warming potential: 30.59% of the CO2 Impact, or the CO2 equivalent of

942,782,119,706.94 Mt CO2e [942 Gt CO2e]

Effective Total: 4,024.78 GtCO2e

[MT: Metric Tons;  Gt: Gigatons; CO2e: Carbon Dioxide Equivalent; ppm: parts per million by volume]

Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (ESRL)

The graph, updated weekly, shows as individual points daily mean CO₂ up to and including the week (Sunday through Saturday) previous to today. The daily means are based on hours during which CO₂ was likely representative of “background” conditions, defined as times when the measurement is representative of air at mid-altitudes over the Pacific Ocean. That air has had several days time or more to mix, smoothing out most of the CO₂ variability encountered elsewhere, making the measurements representative of CO₂ over hundreds of km or more. The selection process is designed to filter out any influence of nearby emissions, or removals, of CO₂ such as caused by the vegetation on the island of Hawaii, and likewise emissions from the volcanic crater of Mauna Loa. For details, see ”How we measure background CO2 levels at Mauna Loa”. The same measurement principles also apply elsewhere. The weekly mean (red bar) is simply the average of all days in the week for which a background value could be defined. The average standard deviation of day to day variability, calculated as the difference from the appropriate weekly mean, equals 0.38 ppm for the entire record. As a visual aid, the blue lines present monthly means of background data as they are presented under Recent Monthly CO₂ at Mauna Loa. These data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. Image and Caption: ESRL.  Click images to enlarge.

This figure shows the atmospheric increase of CO₂ over 280 ppm in weekly averages of CO₂ observed at Mauna Loa. The value of 280 ppm is chosen as representative of pre-industrial air because it is close to the average of CO₂ measured and dated with high time resolution between the years 1000 and 1800 in an ice core from Law Dome, Antarctica. [Etheridge et al., 1996]. Although the time resolution of old air locked in ice cores is not enough to preserve seasonal cycles, there is no doubt that the seasonal cycle, which is mostly caused by photosynthesis and respiration of ecosystems on land, was similar to what we observe today. Therefore, for the comparison with pre-industrial times the Mauna Loa weekly data have been first deseasonalized by subtracting the observed average seasonal cycle, and then subtracting 280 ppm. The enhancement of the CO₂ mole fraction in the atmosphere over pre-industrial is expressed both as ppm and as a percentage change since the year 1800. Data are reported as a dry air mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of all molecules in air, including CO₂ itself, after water vapor has been removed. The mole fraction is expressed as parts per million (ppm). Example: 0.000400 is expressed as 400 ppm.  Image and Caption: ESRL 

CO2 emissions reach a record high in 2010

Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 broke all previous records, according to the latest estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Recent Mauna Loa CO₂

The graph shows recent monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii.

The last four complete years of the Mauna Loa CO₂ record plus the current year are shown. Data are reported as a dry air mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of all molecules in air, including CO₂ itself, after water vapor has been removed. The mole fraction is expressed as parts per million (ppm). Example: 0.000400 is expressed as 400 ppm.

In the above figure, the dashed red line with diamond symbols represents the monthly mean values, centered on the middle of each month. The black line with the square symbols represents the same, after correction for the average seasonal cycle. The latter is determined as a moving average of SEVEN adjacent seasonal cycles centered on the month to be corrected, except for the first and last THREE and one-half years of the record, where the seasonal cycle has been averaged over the first and last SEVEN years, respectively.

The last year of data are still preliminary, pending recalibrations of reference gases and other quality control checks. The Mauna Loa data are being obtained at an altitude of 3400 m in the northern subtropics, and may not be the same as the globally averaged CO₂ concentration at the surface.   Image and Caption: ESRL

Full Mauna Loa CO₂ record

Monthly mean atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii – The carbon dioxide data (red curve), measured as the mole fraction in dry air, on Mauna Loa constitute the longest record of direct measurements of CO₂ in the atmosphere. They were started by C. David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in March of 1958 at a facility of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [Keeling, 1976]. NOAA started its own CO₂ measurements in May of 1974, and they have run in parallel with those made by Scripps since then [Thoning, 1989]. The black curve represents the seasonally corrected data.

Data are reported as a dry mole fraction defined as the number of molecules of carbon dioxide divided by the number of molecules of dry air multiplied by one million (ppm).  Image and Caption: ESRL    -Data Set Available HERE

Related Links

• New York Cognitive Dissonance

China determined to go all the way!

Polluting the earth day in day out, and expecting ‘miracles’

Business as usual in the world’s top GHG polluter, despite the evident consequences

Image of the Day:

Thought Hainan Was an Island!!

Original Caption: A woman walks in a water-flooded residence community after heavy rainfall in Haikou, capital of south China’s Hainan Province, Oct. 8, 2010. Haikou witnessed successive heavy rainfall for eight days and the rainfall flooded many roads and streets here. Local meteorological department forecasted that the rain won’t stop until Oct. 11. (Xinhua/Fu Yongtao). Image may be subject to copyright. More images…

Related Links

• Congratulating India!
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change Despite Dinosaurs
• How Big is Your CO2 Dome?
• 133,000,000 Wise Monkeys
• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar

Congratulating India!

Kyoto Protocol Scratch Your ****

India Now Third Highest GHG Emitter

India has beaten Russia to become the world’s third largest GHG emitter.

The Pollution Horses of Apocalypse

Though the bronze medalist lags behind the top two worse emitters by a furlong.

1. The Gold Medalist: CHINA [with more than 23% of global emissions]
2. The Silver Medalist: USA [more than 22%]
3. The Bronze Medalist: INDIA [more than 5%]
4. Fourth Place: Russia [about 5%]

Related Links:

• CO2 forcing deadly changes in the oceans

• May Global Temperature Warmest on Record
• Ocean Accumulated Significant Heat Content Since 1993
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change (Part II)
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change Despite Dinosaurs

• Ocean Deserts Source of GHG
• North Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch
• Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”
• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂
• Ocean Accumulated Significant Heat Content Since 1993
• How Big is Your CO2 Dome?
• 133,000,000 Wise Monkeys

• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar

• Tourism: A Major Destructive Force Killing Oceans:Thousands of marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and others, are choked or poisoned each year by eating trash discarded in the ocean…

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part V : Hundreds of thousands of tons of surplus chemical weapons including large quantities of arsenic, cyanide, mustard gas, sarin gas and VX nerve gas are dumped off the US Atlantic coast as well as off other countries. [And a number of nuclear weapons are lying down there, too!]

• Terrible Ocean Headlines : About one third of the world’s annual emissions of CO2 is absorbed by the surface of the oceans forming carbonic acid (ancient name acid of air or aerial acid), H₂CO_3, which is increasing the acidity of the oceans to as much as 7.7 pH in some areas off the California coast. [Pre-industrial (1700s) ocean pH: 8.179]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV : Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.

• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’

• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.

• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.

• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

• Dead Zones : Eutrophication—the overenrichment of water by nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus—has emerged as a leading water quality problem. This report identifies over 415 areas worldwide that are experiencing eutrophication symptoms, and there are significant information gaps in many regions. (Source: WRI)

How Big is Your CO2 Dome?

Urban CO2 domes increase deaths

Public release: Stanford University

Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem. Now a Stanford study has shown it is also a local problem, hurting city dwellers’ health much more than rural residents’, because of the carbon dioxide “domes” that develop over urban areas. That finding, said researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, exposes a serious oversight in current cap-and-trade proposals for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases, which make no distinction based on a pollutant’s point of origin. The finding also provides the first scientific basis for controlling local carbon dioxide emissions based on their local health impacts.

“Not all carbon dioxide emissions are equal,” said Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering. “As in real estate, location matters.”

His results also support the case that California presented to the Environmental Protection Agency in March, 2009, asking that the state be allowed to establish its own CO₂ emission standards for vehicles.

Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, testified on behalf of California’s waiver application in March, 2009. The waiver had previously been denied, but was reconsidered and granted subsequently. The waiver is currently being challenged in court by industry interests seeking to overturn it.

Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations – discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago – cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.

In modeling the health impacts for the contiguous 48 states, for California and for the Los Angeles area, he determined an increase in the death rate from air pollution for all three regions compared to what the rate would be if no local carbon dioxide were being emitted.

The results of Jacobson’s study are presented in a paper published online by Environmental Science and Technology.

The cap-and-trade proposal passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in June 2009 puts a limit on the amount of greenhouse gases that each type of utility, manufacturer or other emitter is allowed to produce. It also puts a price tag on each ton of emissions, which emitters will have to pay to the federal government.

If the bill passes the Senate intact, it will allow emitters to freely trade or sell their allowances among themselves, regardless of where the pollution is emitted.

With that logic, the proposal prices a ton of CO₂ emitted in the middle of the sparsely populated Great Plains, for example, the same as a ton emitted in Los Angeles, where the population is dense and the air quality already poor.

“The cap-and-trade proposal assumes there is no difference in the impact of carbon dioxide, regardless of where it originates,” Jacobson said. “This study contradicts that assumption.”

“It doesn’t mean you can never do something like cap and trade,” he added. “It just means that you need to consider where the CO₂ emissions are occurring.”

Jacobson’s study is the first to look at the health impacts of carbon dioxide domes over cities and his results are relevant to future air pollution regulations. Current regulations do not address the local impacts of local carbon dioxide emissions. For example, no regulation considers the local air pollution effects of CO₂ that would be emitted by a new natural gas power plant. But those effects should be considered, he said.

“There has been no control of carbon dioxide because it has always been thought that CO₂ is a global problem, that it is only its global impacts that might feed back to air pollution,” Jacobson said.

In addition to the changes he observed in local air pollutants, Jacobson found that there was increased stability of the air column over a city, which slowed the dispersal of pollutants, further adding to the increased pollutant concentrations.

Jacobson estimated an increase in premature mortality of 50 to 100 deaths per year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the contiguous 48 states.

“This study establishes a basis for controlling CO₂ based on local health impacts,” he said.

Current estimates of the annual air pollution-related death toll in the U.S. is 50-100,000.

Related Links:

• 133,000,000 Wise Monkeys
• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar

IF Nature Had a List of Extreme Dislikes

Submitted by a reader with additional information added by FEWW

AND She Probably Does …

Don’t Pollute the Sea, Your Life Depends on Water

Cars, Air Travel, Power Plants, Oil Rigs, Coalmines, War, Military Hardware, Large-Scale Human Movement, Tourism, Trade Shows, Global Tournaments, Oil Spills, Plastic Garbage, GHG  …  and Cruise Ships Would Probably Top Her List of Loathsome Activities by Humans

Louis Majesty is a Maltese-flagged, Greek Cypriot-owned cruise ship. Image via AFP. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice.

Three giant 8.5-meter (26ft) high waves bashed against a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, as if trying to rip it apart, killing two people and injuring  six others.

The Cypriot-owned Louis Majesty was sailing off the north-east coast of Spain when the “abnormally high” waves attacked, breaking ship windows,  shipowners were reported as saying.

“A wave broke the glass in the area of the saloon and water was taken on board,” a spokesman for the Spanish coast guard confirmed.

The dead weer identified as a German and an Italian male, both in their fifties.  There were 1,350 passengers and 580 crew onboard.

The Louis Majesty was on a 12-day Mediterranean cruise headed toward Genoa, Italy, but has since returned to Barcelona, Spain.

“Louis Cruises extends its sincere condolences to the families of the two victims and its full support to the injured passengers while expressing its deep sorrow for the incident,” a company spokesman said.

Winds of more than 100km per hour (60 mph) in the area may have been responsible for the incident a French Navy official was reported as saying.

Do you feel as if nature has put you on notice?

Related Links:

• 2010: Year One of Human-Enhanced Disasters
• Major Blackout Plunges Brazil into Darkness
• Murphy’s law has no time vector!
• Floods Kill 32 on Portuguese Island of Madeira
• Earthquake, Heavy Rain, Mudslides Strike Peru

• ConocoPhillips Alaska Head Killed in Avalanche
• U.S. power plant explosion kills 50*
• Australian Coal and the Planet
• Australian fires toll may exceed 200
• The Australian Clean Energy Ruse

• A Living Hell Heated by Australian Coal
• 10 Facts on Climate Change
• Our Oceans Are Dying
• How many are up there polluting our skies?

Who is afraid of melting ice sheets?

Based on its outdated “one-dimensional” model, the U.N. Climate Panel has reported that seas could rise by 18-59 cm  (7-24 inches) by 2100. The model also excludes the threat from highly probable scenarios in which ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could melt at exponential rates.

Ian Allison, head of  the Australian Antarctic Division’s Ice, Ocean, Atmosphere and Climate program was asked by Reuters the following question: How great is the threat from melting ice sheets?

Allison who is a researcher within the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Center, and who has been involved in Antarctic science for more than 4 decades, responded as follows.

HOW GREAT IS THE THREAT FROM ICE SHEETS MELTING?

I think it is now unequivocal that warming of the world is occurring and I think the last IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conclusively showed that a major cause of warming is greenhouse gas emissions from mankind.

We now know that the ice sheets are contributing to sea level rise and for the Arctic, at least, this is because the warming of this region is much greater than in other places on Earth.

We also know that glaciers in mountain areas are undergoing a very rapid retreat and they’re a major contributor of sea level rise, too.

WHICH IS OF MORE CONCERN? GREENLAND OR WEST ANTARCTICA?

Greenland is of more concern because of the warming of the Arctic. Greenland is at lower latitude than much of Antarctica and we’ve seen the direct effect of the melting.

We still don’t understand many things about the dynamic response of the ice sheets but we do see direct melt exceeding snowfall in Greenland.

This might not mean a runaway effect but it does mean Greenland is contributing to sea level rise and will continue to add to sea levels at the present temperatures for many hundreds of years.”

EXPLAIN THE THREAT FROM WEST ANTARCTICA

Ice shelves and floating ice tongues can buttress the flow of grounded ice from the interior of the ice sheets. We’ve seen examples in both Greenland and Antarctica of floating ice disappearing, and the ice that sits on the land then flowing more quickly into the ocean.

“In addition, the West Antarctic may be inherently unstable. The West Antarctic forms what is called the marine ice shelf. The ice is resting on bedrock but that bedrock is below sea level. It’s like if you load too many ice cubes in your gin and tonic, the bottom one touches the bottom of the glass even though it’s well below the water level.

Where the bedrock under a marine ice sheet slopes down toward the interior, such as under parts of West Antarctica, the ice sheet may be unstable. If it thins, it will start to float at the edges, becoming an ice shelf.

For a bedrock that slopes backwards and becomes deeper further in, continued retreat of the grounded ice sheet may proceed very rapidly. A small retreat could in theory destabilize the entire West Antarctica ice sheet, leading to rapid disintegration.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN GAPS IN OUR KNOWLEDGE?

There two areas. One, we need to improve our mathematical models of ice streams, ice sheets and ice shelves to be able to better project future changes. We also need more detailed measurements of how deep the bedrock is under the ice sheets to use in the models.

The other major gap in our understanding is what is happening at the bed of the ice sheets; how they react with liquid water at the base, what role water may have in sliding processes and the role of gravels and slurry at the base.

We now know there is a lot of liquid water under the ice sheets. But we don’t really know how changes in this may affect the ice flow. Knowing what’s under the ice sheets we really need to measure that with radar systems.

WHAT ARE YOUR MAIN MESSAGES TO POLICY MAKERS?

The main thing is monitoring what’s actually happening with sea level rise and the ice sheets. We’ve now got tools that can do that, we can improve those and make sure they keep going, particularly satellite-based systems.

We need better predictive tools to know just what is likely in the next 100 years. I don’t think we should be rushing into building up coastal defenses until we know what we could be defending against. So our biggest requirement is to be able to refine our projections for what may happen in the future. (Edited by David fox).

Related Links:

• World CO2 Emissions
• Climate Change Finals – CO2: 392 Human Chances: 0
• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar
• CO2 Emissions Must Be Criminalized!
• UNEP Issues Some CO2 Reduction Snakeoil!

• UN Hypocrisy: Kick the CO2 Habit!
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV
• Stern Report: “a great toxic dump of doublespeak in truly Orwellian fashion”
• The Shrinking Window of Opportunity
• The myth of keeping CO2 under 450ppm

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III
• Repeat After Me!

Image of the Day: F*** OFF Coal Pushers

Direct action seems to be the only way to tackle soaring carbon emissions —Climate Scientist

Climate activists protest at this month’s Guardian Climate Change Summit in London over plans for a coal-fired power station in Kingsnorth, Kent. Photograph: Alex Sturrock/AFP. Image may be subject to copyright.

“The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

“The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I’m not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we’re running out of time.” James Hansen, NASA climatologist, said.

Corporate lobbying is undermining democratic attempts to reduce CO2 pollution. “The democratic process doesn’t quite seem to be working,” he said.

4.5 times more NF3 in atmosphere than thought

Scripps News Release
Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Potent Greenhouse Gas More Prevalent in Atmosphere than Previously Thought

NF3, a greenhouse gas used in manufacture of computer displays, flat panel televisions, microcircuits, solar panels is 17,000 times more powerful at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide

Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UC San Diego

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), a powerful greenhouse gas, is about 4.5 times more prevalent in the atmosphere than previously thought, say researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

[A 3-d Space-filling model of nitrogen trifluoride. ]

Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), a potent greenhouse gas used in the plasma etching of silicon wafers, has a global warming potential (GWP) 17,000 times greater than CO2 over a 100 year period, and with an estimated atmospheric lifetime of about 750 years.

Atmospheric measurements of nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) were made using new analytical techniques by a team at Scripps shows that the amount of the gas in the atmosphere in 2008 was about 5,400 metric tons, 4.5 times higher than previously thought,  and was increasing at about 11 percent per year.

Geochemistry professor Ray Weiss who lead the research team said: “Accurately measuring small amounts of NF3 in air has proven to be a very difficult experimental problem, and we are very pleased to have succeeded in this effort.”

The research will be published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) on October 31.

Previously, emissions of NF3 were considered too low to be a significant contributor to global warming and were therefore omitted from the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions signed by 182 countries in 1997.

Environmental Impact of NF3 Gas at Current levels

• NF3 is about 17,000 times more effective a global warming agent than an equivalent mass of CO2.
• Persists five times longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
• [Fortunately] Contributes only about 0.04 percent [at its current application levels] to the overall global warming caused by the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Nitrogen trifluoride has been the industries’ preferred alternative to perfluorocarbons, also potent greenhouse gases, as it was thought industrial applications broke down about 98 percent of the NF3 and only about 2 percent of the gas escaped into the atmosphere.  (Source)

Related Links:

• A forecast of the most used “scientific” phrase in 2009 : “We were completely surprised!”

“We thought that it was Jesus who had come back”

Folks, it ain’t Jesus; it’s Human-induced climate change. Ask your local teacher to tell you about the effects of GHG Emissions!

The ferocious storm in Busara, about 260 km northwest of the capital, Nairobi, turned parts of central Kenya white with a massive hailstorm.

Villagers play with snow after heavy hailstorms hit a deforested hillside in Gikingi Village in Nyahururu town, some 220km from Nairobi, September 3, 2008. REUTERS/Antony Njuguna. Image may be subject to copyright.

“We thought a big white sheet had been spread, so we decided to come and see for ourselves. We thought that it was Jesus who had come back,” a villager said.

“The hailstones falling on the ground joined together to form expansive sheets of ice or snow flakes occupying a large area, 30 acres,” meteorologists said. the storm was caused “the convergence of cold air currents from the Indian Ocean and warm air currents from the Congo.”

“In fact this thing is very sweet, we have never seen anything like this. We like the ice so much because with the sun being hot, you take it and you feel satisfied,” another villager said.

Kenya straddles the equator. “The only snow to be seen in normally sunny Kenya is on top of the country’s highest mountain, 5,199-meter (17,057 ft) Mount Kenya.” Reuters said.

Related Links:

• Blind scientists examining the economic elephant
• Stop Burning the earth

• Energy
  
• Failing Ecosystems

• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• The Economy

• A 2009 Forecast
• World CO2 Emissions

• How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?
• The Billionaires’ contribution to CO2 pollution

Look me straight in the eye & tell me you can’t

Image of the Day: Lifestyle

Look me straight in the eye & tell me you can’t run my world on 8% of the energy!

Image: Roy Lichtenstein. Original caption:In the Car. Date: 1963. Image may be subject to copyright.

Related Links:

• Stop Burning Earth
• Protect Economy from Climate??!

• Energy
  
• Failing Ecosystems

• World Problems:The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends

• World CO2 Emissions
• How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make?

Thought for the Day: A 2009 Forecast

The most widely used phrase by “scientists” in 2009

“We were completely surprised!”

Surprised! (source: bp1.blogger.com). Image may be subject to copyright.

Out of the sinking pan, into the fire!

Global Warming Tolls the Death Knell for Tuvalu

Massive tides, high winds and rising sea levels are causing erosion to the four reef islands and five true atolls that comprise the tiny country of Tuvalu.

Map of Tuvalu

Formerly known as the Ellice Islands, the low-lying Polynesian islands are located in the Pacific Ocean midway between Hawaii and Australia. The nine-island cluster contains 600 sq km of ocean, but only a total of 25 sq km of land.

Tuvaluans reaching end of the road. (AP Yonhap). Image may be subject to copyright!

“The residents of Tepuka Savilivili, an island 10 kilometers away from Funafuti, also sense the crisis. One day in 1997, an uninhabited island simply vanished. The residents explained that gale winds blew and covered the island during the night. The next day, the coconut trees had vanished.” Wrote Nam Jong-yeong.

Drinking water is mixing with salty ocean water; the coconut trees are vanishing; during high tides seawater covers most parts of the islands.

Thousands of Tuvaluans have already left the shrinking islands, most of them arriving in what they believe to be a safe destination: New Zealand.

Their new home, however, could breakup and sink in the south-western Pacific Ocean as a result of massive earthquakes. It’s rather like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire!

Related Links:

• Will one or both of New Zealand islands break up and sink …

Stop Polluting Our Air!

Direct action protesters try to stop UK coal-fired power plant for a day

About a 1,000 climate protesters, who aimed to stop the output at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station for a day, demonstrated outside the plant in southeast England on Saturday.

Nearly 2,000 police and civilian security personnel surrounded the protesters. Police in riot gears brandishing batons charged at the protesters and arrested about 50 people.

“We just want to try and send a message to people that we don’t want any more new coal … it’s something that’s not going to help our future at all,” said Helen Atkinson, 26, a medical photographer from Cumbria, northwest England. (Source)

Kingsnorth power station is a 1,985-megawatt dual-fired coal or oil power station in Medway, Kent, England, on the Hoo Peninsula. Licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. Credit: Clem Rutter; via Wikimedia Commons.

E.ON the German owned company that operates Kingsnorth is planning to construct two new “cleaner coal” units on the Kingsnorth site, which it claims will be 20 percent less polluting than conventional power stations. They would be the first coal-fired power stations to be built in Britain for 24 years. AFP reported.

Police surround protesters during a sitdown protest at the gates of Kingsnorth Power Station near Rochester in Kent, southeast England August 9, 2008. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor. Image may be subject to copyright.

Police and private mercenary agents confront protesters in front of of Kingsnorth Power Station near Rochester in Kent, southeast England August 9, 2008. UK Indymedia. Image may be subject to copyright.

In police heavy-handedness we trust! UK Indymedia. Image may be subject to copyright.

I need clean air! Why are you arresting me? (Photo AFP). Image may be subject to copyright.

[I'll give you clean air, you basta*d!] Police restrain a protester in front of the gates of Kingsnorth Power Station near Rochester in Kent, southeast England August 9, 2008. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor. Image may be subject to copyright.

Fair Use Notice!

No Fertile Land, No Food!

Accelerated land degradation threatens food security of a quarter of the world’s population: FAO

Main entry: Land degradation threatens 1.5 billion people

A dried up river filled with sand winds its way across the desert in eastern Chad, June 5, 2008. REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice!

Related Links:

• Topsoil

• Failing Ecosystems
• The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• California ‘Mojavefied’ by 2011?
• Schwarzenegger Proclaims Water Emergency in Nine Counties
• 2008: Year of the Fire

• Drought Index

• State of the World
• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• Tipping Point
• Drying Aquifers, Sinking Cities

• The Economy
• Energy
• Food Security
• Future in the Making: A Shrinking World

Southern Ocean Carbon Sink

From NASA’s Earth Observatory:

If you drove to work or school this morning or used electricity to power the computer on which you’re looking at this image, chances are you released carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, people released about 7.8 billion tons (7.8 gigatons) of carbon into the atmosphere in 2005 by burning fossil fuels and making cement, and that number grows every year. What happens to all of the carbon dioxide that people release into the atmosphere? About half stays in the atmosphere, where it warms Earth, and the other half is absorbed by growing plants on land and by the ocean.

As people have put more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the ocean has responded by soaking up more carbon dioxide—a trend scientists expected to continue for many years. But in 2007, a team of scientists reported in the journal Science that between 1981 and 2004 carbon dioxide concentrations in the Southern Ocean didn’t change at all, even though global atmospheric levels continued to rise. This graph shows the changes scientists expected to see (blue line) compared to their estimate of actual carbon dioxide absorption (red line). The results suggested that the Southern Ocean was no longer keeping pace with human carbon dioxide emissions.

Why has the Southern Ocean started to lag behind human emissions? The answer, believes Corinne Le Quéré, is in the wind. An ocean scientist at the University of East Anglia, Le Quéré led the study that discovered the Southern Ocean’s change of pace. Le Quéré modeled the mechanisms that influence how the ocean takes up carbon and found that winds increased between 1981 and 2004. Winds stirred the ocean and enhanced the upwelling of deep, carbon-rich water. The ocean releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in areas where deep water comes to the surface, so increased upwelling allowed the ocean to vent more carbon dioxide. This increased venting made it look like the Southern Ocean was no longer taking up carbon dioxide as quickly as people were pumping it into the atmosphere.

Full article and references are available at: Southern Ocean Carbon Sink

Related Links:

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV :  Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.

• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’

• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.

• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.

• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!