UAE, Australia, USA and Canada top list of polluters

Most Unethical Countries Worst Polluters

UAE, Australia, USA, Canada, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia are the worst CO₂ polluters: Report

The United Arab Emirates, Australia, the United States and Canada have the worst overall records for emitting carbon, based on their  current and historic emissions, says a report.

A new study, which rates 183 countries on their CO₂ emissions from energy use, has identified United Arab Emirates (UAE), Australia, USA, Canada, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia as the world’s six worst polluters in relation to CO₂ pollution.

UAE (1), Australia (2), USA (3), Canada (4), Netherlands (5) and Saudi Arabia (6) are the only countries rated by the report as ‘extreme risk’ because of their high CO₂ emissions from energy consumption.

“The poor performance of UAE and Saudi Arabia is reflective of a near 100% reliance on fossil fuels and their use of energy intensive desalination plants to produce drinking water. Saudi Arabia was the 11th highest global emitter in 2008 with 466 MtCO2. However, the desalination process that produces 70% of the country’s drinking water accounts for 50% of CO₂ emissions. UAE dropped 15 places from last year to take the bottom spot due to a huge 25% jump in its overall carbon output between 2006 and 2008 and a 20% rise in per capita emissions.  Maplecroft recognises that desalination is a positive way to address water security but high emissions underline the need to find more energy efficient innovations.” The report said. See full report.

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• CO2e

NCAR Report: Thou Shalt NOT Bullshit the Citizens

Submitted by a member

Half the Energy Entering Earth System is Missing [sic]

What Happened to Basic Physics: A Bullshit Report by National Center for Atmospheric Research

Really? Could you permanently trap heat, as if by black magic? Is this trick cumulative too?

If this is good science, there is just one thing  left for the National Center for Atmospheric Research to do! Only one guess allowed.

This satellite map shows the amount of solar radiation (watts per square meter) reflected during September 2008. Along the equator, clouds reflected a large proportion of sunlight, while the pale sands of the Sahara caused the high reflectiveness in North Africa. Neither pole is receiving much incoming sunlight at this time of year, so they reflect little energy even though both are ice-covered. (NASA map by Robert Simmon, based on CERES data.)

How much is the sum total of the missing energy?

“The gap between what’s entering the climate system and what’s leaving is about 37 times the heat energy produced by all human activities, from driving cars and running power plants to burning wood,” Reuters reported the report co-author  John Fasullo of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research as saying.

Absorbed sunlight is balanced by heat radiated from Earth’s surface and atmosphere. This satellite map shows the distribution of thermal infrared radiation emitted by Earth in September 2008. Most heat escaped from areas just north and south of the equator, where the surface was warm, but there were few clouds. Along the equator, persistent clouds prevented heat from escaping. Likewise, the cold poles radiated little heat. (NASA map by Robert Simmon, based on CERES data.)

Energy lurking deep in the ocean?

Are the oceans evaporating? Is the air temperature rising by 20 degrees Celsius each month? Are there any signs that the heat is taking time off at a popular holiday resort in the Caribbeans? So, where’s the heck is this missing energy? Is this a spoof?

“It might lurk in deep ocean waters in areas sensors don’t reach. Some of it could be the result of imprecise measurement or processing of satellite or sensor data. But the greenhouse-caused heat gap is definitely there,” Reuters reported the authors as saying.

Half of the energy gap is unaccounted for, Fasullo and his co-author Kevin Trenberth said. “It hasn’t left the climate system but it hasn’t been detected with satellites, ocean sensors or other technology,” Reuters reported them as saying.

Try recalibrating your instruments instead of playing “silly buggers” with fundamental physics!

The surface absorbs about 48% of incoming sunlight. Three processes remove an equivalent amount of energy from the Earth’s surface: evaporation (25%), convection (5%), and thermal infrared radiation, or heat (net 17%). (NASA illustration by Robert Simmon. Photograph ©2006 Cyron.)

How much energy are we taking about?

Well, things started getting out of hand around late 1970s to early 1980s. So the authors are probably talking about a 30-year period where half of the energy arriving, stayed behind. Here’s some basic calculation:

• Total rate of solar energy received by the planet: ~ 180 prtawatts, PW [one PW is 10^15]
• [NOTE: about half of that energy, 90PW, reaches the Earth’s surface]
• 180 ÷ 2 = 90 PW retained by Earth system [according to the report authors]
• 90PW x 25 years x 31,556,926 seconds=  7.1 Exp10 PJ [71 yottajoules, or 71Exp24]  is the total rate of energy lurking in the oceans  [according to the report authors]
• Volume of water on earth:  1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water [1.3Exp21 liter]
• Definition of Mean Calorie [4.19J]:  The amount of energy required to warm one gram of air-free water by 1°C under standard atmospheric pressure.
• Energy required to raise the temperature of 1kg [~1 liter] of ocean water by one degree: ~ 4.2 kJ.
• The average rise in the ocean temperatures, if what the authors are saying were remotely plausible: ~ 13 degrees°C

On average, 340 watts per square meter of solar energy arrives at the top of the atmosphere. Earth returns an equal amount of energy back to space by reflecting some incoming light and by radiating heat (thermal infrared energy). Most solar energy is absorbed at the surface, while most heat is radiated back to space by the atmosphere. Earth’s average surface temperature is maintained by two large, opposing energy fluxes between the atmosphere and the ground (right)—the greenhouse effect. NASA illustration by Robert Simmon, adapted from Trenberth et al. 2009, using CERES flux estimates provided by Norman Loeb.)

How do we removed the last vestiges of credibility from the impact of GHG on Earth

Blame the ghost energy on the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Then come up with dumb statement like “half of the energy coming into Earth’s climate system  is missing, but it could eventually reappear as another sign of climate change.”

The net effect of the above would work magic on rubbishing everything associated with GHG cause of climate change.

“The heat will come back to haunt us [like a ghost] sooner or later [as all nasty ghosts do,]” Trenberth said. “It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.”

Related Links:

• Earth’s Climate: A Solar Powered System
• Super-destructive events may strike anytime

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Arctic Warmest in 2000 Years

You Like it Hot ?

“Recent Warming Reverses Long-Term Arctic Cooling”

New research shows that the Arctic reversed a long-term cooling trend and began warming rapidly in recent decades. The blue line shows estimates of Arctic temperatures over the last 2,000 years, based on proxy records from lake sediments, ice cores and tree rings. The green line shows the long-term cooling trend. The red line shows the recent warming based on actual observations. A 2000-year transient climate simulation with NCAR’s Community Climate System Model shows the same overall temperature decrease as does the proxy temperature reconstruction, which gives scientists confidence that their estimates are accurate. (Courtesy Science, modified by UCAR.) Caption UCAR.

Human activity forced the 1990s Arctic temperatures to warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, a new research finds. “The study, which incorporates geologic records and computer simulations, provides new evidence that the Arctic would be cooling if not for greenhouse gas emissions that are overpowering natural climate patterns.” Researches led by Northern Arizona University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The scientists reconstructed summer temperatures across the Arctic over the last 2,000 years by decade, extending a view of climate far beyond the 400 years of Arctic-wide records previously available at that level of detail. They found that thousands of years of gradual Arctic cooling, related to natural changes in Earth’s orbit, would continue today if not for emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

“This result is particularly important because the Arctic, perhaps more than any other region on Earth, is facing dramatic impacts from climate change,” says NCAR scientist David Schneider, one of the co-authors. “This study provides us with a long-term record that reveals how greenhouse gases from human activities are overwhelming the Arctic’s natural climate system.”

Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University, the lead author and head of the synthesis project, says the results indicate that recent warming is more anomalous than previously documented.

“Scientists have known for a while that the current period of warming was preceded by a long-term cooling trend,” says Kaufman. “But our reconstruction quantifies the cooling with greater certainty than before.”

How Greenhouse gases overtook  a natural cycle

The new study is the first to quantify a pervasive cooling across the Arctic on a decade-by-decade basis that is related to an approximately 21,000-year cyclical wobble in Earth’s tilt relative to the Sun. Over the last 7,000 years, the timing of Earth’s closest pass by the Sun has shifted from September to January. This has gradually reduced the intensity of sunlight reaching the Arctic in summertime, when Earth is farther from the Sun.

Researchers discovered that  summer temperatures in the Arctic cooled at an average rate of about 0.2 degrees Celsius (0 .36 degrees Fahrenheit) per thousand years because of the reduced energy from the Sun. “The temperatures eventually bottomed out during the “Little Ice Age,” a period of widespread cooling that lasted roughly from the 16th to the mid-19th centuries.”

Even though the orbital cycle that produced the cooling continued, it was overwhelmed in the 20th century by human-induced warming. The result was summer temperatures in the Arctic by the year 2000 that were about 1.4 degrees C (2.5 degrees F) higher than would have been expected from the continued cyclical cooling alone.

“If it hadn’t been for the increase in human-produced greenhouse gases, summer temperatures in the Arctic should have cooled gradually over the last century,” says Bette Otto-Bliesner, an NCAR scientist who participated in the study.

Natural archives of Arctic climate

Researches reconstructed Arctic temperatures over the last 2,000 years using three types of natural evidence. Each of the three “field-based data” was indicative of the response, which ” different component of the Arctic’s climate system to changes in temperature.”

These data included temperature reconstructions published by the study team earlier this year. The reconstructions were based on evidence provided by sediments from Arctic lakes, which yielded two kinds of clues: changes in the abundance of silica remnants left behind by algae, which reflect the length of the growing season, and the thickness of annually deposited sediment layers, which increases during warmer summers as deposits from glacial meltwater increase.

Research also incorporated readings from previously published studies including glacial ice and tree rings that had been calibrated against the temperature records.

The scientists compared the temperatures inferred from the field-based data with simulations run with the Community Climate System Model, a computer model of global climate based at NCAR. The model’s estimate of the reduction of seasonal sunlight in the Arctic and the resulting cooling was consistent with the analysis of the lake sediments and other natural archives. These results give scientists more confidence in computer projections of future Arctic temperatures.

“This study provides a clear example of how increased greenhouse gases are now changing our climate, ending at least 2,000 years of Arctic cooling,” says NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann, a co-author.

The new study follows previous work showing that temperatures over the last century warmed almost three times faster in the Arctic than elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere. This phenomenon, called Arctic amplification, occurs as highly reflective Arctic ice and snow melt away, allowing dark land and exposed ocean to absorb more sunlight.

“Because we know that the processes responsible for past Arctic amplification are still operating, we can anticipate that it will continue into the next century,” says Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado at Boulder, a member of the study team. “Consequently, Arctic warming will continue to exceed temperature increases in the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in accelerated loss of land ice and an increased rate of sea level rise, with global consequences.”

The Study will be published in the September 4 edition of Science

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• Arctic Tundra 4ºC Hotter Since 1970
• US Gov Releases Intelligence Images of Arctic Ice
• Arctic sea ice has thinned dramatically
• Strong Quake Strikes Baffin Bay
• The Deadly Dozen, the Dirty Dozen, the Dozen Dozen

• Who is afraid of melting ice sheets?
• Eco-Terrorists on Thin Ice
• Emerging Patterns of Vanishing Ice Shelves
• Global warming worse than predicted: Surprised?
• Climate Change Finals – CO2: 392 Human Chances: 0

• Warmer temperatures destroy forests faster
• Earth’s Climate: A Solar Powered System
• Ice Melt in Alaska, Antarctica, Greenland Accelerating
• Guess what, the Arctic temps are 5 ºC warmer!
• Arctic Sea Ice: Likely Record-Low Volume

• Environmental issues, Big Oil, politics, CORRUPTION, Sarah Palin, even the moose, beluga whale and polar bear …

• Carbon Footprint of Your Dollar
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

EPA Plays Piggy In the Middle

Submitted by a Member

EPA Joins the Supreme Court and Congress to Play Piggy In the Middle

Note: Piggy in the Middle, also called Monkey in the Middle, Pickle in a Dish, Pickle in the Middle, or Keep Away is a children’s game played primarily in North American politics. Three or more players pass the responsibility for keeping the air clean and saving lives to one another, while the player in the middle (called it, the monkey, the piggy , the pickle, or simply we the people,) attempts to pinpoint the accountability.

Piggies on the run. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn (UNITED STATES). Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice

US Supreme Court: Carbon dioxide is an air pollutant, and the existing Clean Air Act gives EPA the authority to regulate it.

EPA Administrator Stephen [disgrace] Johnson: “If the nation is serious about regulating greenhouse gases the Clean Air Act is the wrong tool for the job and it’s really at the feet of Congress to come up with good legislation that cuts through what will likely be decades of regulation and litigation.”

The US Congress: Didn’t the Supreme Court clarify the position on this in 2007 in MASSACHUSETTS ET AL. v. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ET AL.? [Argued November 29, 2006—Decided April 2, 2007]

They said: “Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of “greenhouse gases,” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA“shall by regulation prescribe . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class . . . of new motor vehicles . . . which in [the EPA Administrator’s] judgment cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution . . . reasonably . . . anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” 42 U. S. C. §7521(a)(1). The Act defines “air pollutant” to include “any air pollution agent . . . , including any physical, chemical . . . substance . . . emitted into . . . the ambient air.” §7602(g). EPA ultimately denied the petition, reasoning that (1) the Act does not authorize it to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change, and (2) even if it had the authority to set greenhouse gas emission standards, it would have been unwise to do so at that time because a causal link between greenhouse gases and the increase in global surface air temperatures was not unequivocally established. The agency further characterized any EPA regulation of motor-vehicle emissions as a piecemeal approach to climate change that would conflict with the President’s comprehensive approach involving additional support for technological innovation,the creation of non regulatory programs to encourage voluntary private-sector reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and further re-search on climate change, and might hamper the President’s ability to persuade key developing nations to reduce emissions. Petitioners, now joined by intervenor Massachusetts and other state and local governments, sought review in the D. C. Circuit. Al-though each of the three judges on the panel wrote separately, two of them agreed that the EPA Administrator properly exercised his discretion in denying the rule making petition. One judge concluded that the Administrator’s exercise of “judgment” as to whether a pollutant could “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” §7521(a)(1), could be based on scientific uncertainty as well as other factors, including the concern that unilateral U. S. regulation of motor-vehicle emissions could weaken efforts to reduce other countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The second judge opined that petitioners had failed to demonstrate the particularized injury to them that is necessary to establish standing under Article III, but accepted the contrary view as the law of the case and joined the judgment on the merits as the closest to that which he preferred. The court there-fore denied review. …”

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Top Ten Facts About Your Hungry Building

Did you know?
It took our entire nuclear fleet to illuminate America in 2001!

The Three Mile Island nuclear generating station, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1979. The reactors are in the smaller domes with rounded tops (the large smokestacks are the cooling towers).

Ten Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Your Building:

1. In 2001, lighting consumed 756 Billion kWh – America’s 104 nuclear generating units produced 769 billion kWh, while operating at a capacity factor of 89 percent. It took our entire nuclear fleet to illuminate America.

2. Buildings now use 72 percent of all electricity and account for 80 percent of all electric expenditures.

3. “Internal gains” account for as much as 27 percent of a home’s cooling load.

4. There are now 113 million households in the US.

5. One-third of all households rent their homes.

6. The average new single-family home has increased in size by about 700 square feet since 1980.

7. In 2006, 50 percent of all new homes completed were completed in the South. Cooling load management emerges as a priority.

8. U.S. buildings carbon dioxide emissions (630 million metric tons of carbon) approximately equal the combined emissions of Japan, France, and the United Kingdom.

9. Lighting uses more energy than cooling in the residential sector. This underscores the importance of breakthrough lighting technologies.

10. Buildings account for 39% of all US carbon emissions and 9% of global emissions [2005 US Building emissions = 630.3 MMTCE. 2005 US emissions = 1,623 MMTCE. 2004 Global emissions = 7,348 MMTCE]

[MMCTE: Million Metric Tons of Carbon Equivalent]

Source: Hungry Buildings

Related Links:

• Energy
  
• Failing Ecosystems

• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities

• Future Scenarios
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix

• The Economy
• Future in the Making: A Shrinking World