Effects of Global Warming

The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole, and everywhere in between. Globally, the mercury is already up more than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius), and even more in sensitive polar regions. And the effects of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future. They’re happening right now. Signs are appearing all over, and some of them are surprising. The heat is not only melting glaciers and sea ice, it’s also shifting precipitation patterns and setting animals on the move.

Some impacts from increasing temperatures are already happening.

    Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
    Researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
    Sea level rise became faster over the last century.
    Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
    Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
    Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.

Other effects could happen later this century, if warming continues.

    Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
    Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.
    Species that depend on one another may become out of sync. For example, plants could bloom earlier than their pollinating insects become active.
    Floods and droughts will become more common. Rainfall in Ethiopia, where droughts are already common, could decline by 10 percent over the next 50 years.
    Less fresh water will be available. If the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, it will be gone by 2100, leaving thousands of people who rely on it for drinking water and electricity without a source of either.
    Some diseases will spread, such as malaria carried by mosquitoes.
    Ecosystems will change—some species will move farther north or become more successful; others won’t be able to move and could become extinct. Wildlife research scientist Martyn Obbard has found that since the mid-1980s, with less ice on which to live and fish for food, polar bears have gotten considerably skinnier.  Polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has found a similar pattern in Hudson Bay.  He fears that if sea ice disappears, the polar bears will as well.

Global warming might lead to tsunami hit Britain soon

LONDON - Some of the world’s top geologists have warned that if global temperatures continue to rise, Britain might see deadly tsunamis like those that have hit Asia, head towards it in the future.

According to a report by Sky News, geologists have warned of tsunamis in Britain to huge avalanches in the Alps and volcanic eruptions in Germany, if global warming continues to rise.

They say that evidence from the past reveals that times of dramatic climatic change are characterized by heightened geological activity.

For example, 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, melting ice and rising sea levels triggered a significant rise in volcanic activity.

Professor Bill McGuire, Director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at UCL, warned earth’s future could be explosive.

“Climate change is very doom and gloom I’m afraid and it’s one of those problems that the closer we look at it the worst it seems to get,” he told Sky News Online.

“If you want some faint glint of good news from this I suppose that if we see a big volcanic response, the gases pumped into the atmosphere will cool things down at least temporarily, but that’s not recommended,” he said.

Other experts warn that disintegrating glaciers could cause earthquakes, triggering tsunamis off Chile, New Zealand and Canada, perhaps even sending one across the Atlantic capable of reaching British shores.

“If the temperatures warm and the oceans warm then the hydrates at the sea bed will melt,” said Professor David Tappin of the British Geological Survey.

“They will melt catastrophically and in doing so, they’ll be forced into the atmosphere but also, they will create submarine landslides which could trigger a tsunami,” he added.

Dead plants encourage belief in global warming

In 2006, the Conservative party in the UK unveiled its new logo - a scribbled sketch of a healthy-looking oak tree. The image was intended in part to communicate the party's renewed dedication to environmental causes. A new study by French psychologist Nicolas Guéguen suggests that if the Conservatives want to help change people's attitudes towards the environment, they should consider adapting their logo to one of a dying tree. Why? Guéguen has shown that the presence of dead plants strengthens people's beliefs in global warming.

In the first of two studies, Guéguen had 60 participants fill out a questionnaire about current affairs, including four questions about global warming, such as: "It seems to me that the temperature is warmer now than in previous years." Crucially, half the participants filled out the questionnaire in a room in the presence of a 150cm tall ficus tree with luscious green leaves; the other participants in a room in the company of a dead ficus tree. The finding: participants in the dead tree condition expressed far stronger beliefs in global warming than the participants in the other group, whilst their answers to the remaining questions were no different.

In a follow-up study, Guéguen introduced a no-tree condition, to make sure that it's not the case that the presence of a healthy plant weakens beliefs about global warming. He also featured a condition with three dead or healthy plants - a ficus, a bonsai and a dracaena. The presence of healthy plants made no difference to global warming beliefs versus the no-plant control condition. Once again, however, the presence of a dead plant strengthened beliefs in global warming, and more dead plants meant even stronger such beliefs. No students in either study guessed the aims of the research.

Guéguen speculated that the sight of dead plants probably triggered in participants' minds concepts associated with global warming, such as heat and drought, without them being consciously aware of this effect. The new findings chime with earlier research showing how incidental circumstances influence people's belief in climate change - for example, people are more likely to say they believe in climate change on warmer days. A weakness of the study is that there's no mention of whether the female experimenter who dealt with the participants was blind to the aims of the research - might she have affected their results through her own behaviour?

Notwithstanding that issue, the study has obvious practical implications. Guéguen suggested that in public toilets, for example, the presence of plants without foliage could encourage less water consumption when washing one's hands (though that might harm hygiene initiatives!). More generally, Guéguen advised, "people who want to heighten public awareness on the topic [of global warming] could profitably use photographs or videos of dead plants, or plants without foliage, thus increasing the effectiveness of public awareness campaigns."

Want to Help Stop Global Warming

The first step is understanding what's causing the problem. Global warming results, in large part, from the accumulation of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. These include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and aerosols. One reason they're accumulating is the increased burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The other is increased deforestation. (You may remember from high school biology class that trees suck up carbon dioxide and turn it into wood.)

The US is the largest producer of GHGs. In fact, we produce 23 percent of the globe's GHG emissions, even though we make up only 5 percent of the world population. And, we produce twice as many GHGs per capita as Europeans do, despite having a similar standard of living.

A responsible national policy on global warming would include regulation of greenhouse gas production. But the Bush administration has refused to sign on to international global warming protocols and has refused, even, to acknowledge that global warming is an important problem. To counter this, California Congressman Henry Waxman has put together the Safe Climate Act, which would regulate greenhouse gas levels. Please urge your elected officials to support this very important bill. And while you're at it, ask them to support the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, sponsored jointly by Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders.

Even without acts of Congress, and a new President , there are things you can do to help stop global warming. They break down into two categories. The first involves reducing your GHG emissions. The second involves offsetting them by investing in things, such as renewable energy, that reduce the total amount of GHGs in the atmosphere.

REDUCE

Most greenhouse gases come from two sources: the internal combustion engine and the power plant.

In the area of transportation, there are lots of ways you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Hoof it! Whenever possible, walk, bike or take public transportation. (In fact, choosing to live in a city, such as New York, where you can take advantage of these low-impact forms of transportation is one of the most important environmental decisions you can make.)

Behind the Wheel: To produce the fewest GHGs and get the best mileage, drive at 45-60 miles an hour, make sure your car is tuned up and your tires are properly inflated.

Idling: When you idle, you create a lot of greenhouse gases while going nowhere. By contrast, shutting off your engine and restarting it uses only 10 seconds worth of gas. (In other words, if you're going to stand still for longer than it takes to read this sentence, shut off your engine.)

Likewise, experts say "warming up" your car on cold days is unnecessary. The best way to warm up your car, they say, is to drive it.

Buying a New or Used Car? Get the most fuel-efficient model possible. One type of vehicle to consider is a gas-electric hybrid. At slow speeds and while standing still, these cars and SUVs run on battery power that your vehicle generates in the process of driving.

As a result, many (but not all) hybrids get great mileage. High-mileage hybrids produce only one-half to two-thirds the GHGs of regular cars and SUVs. There are even tax breaks available to people who purchase new hybrids.

There are also regular (non-hybrid) cars that are easier on the environment than their peers.

Want to know which cars are greenest? Visit www.greenercars.com, the website of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Also check out the California Air Resources Board's Drive Clean website (www.driveclean.ca.gov), or the US Environmental Protection Agency's Green Vehicle Guide, www.epa.gov/greenvehicles. (Caution: The EPA site is very clunky.)

Roadside Assistance: It turns out that the American Automobile Association, better known as Triple A, is an environmentalist's nightmare. The group lobbies consistently against emissions and mileage standards and against increased funding for public transportation.

Who knew there was an environmentally friendly alternative? The Better World Club (www.betterworldclub.com; 866-238-1137) has a roadside assistance program that's as reliable as Triple A's, covers domestic partners, offers roadside assistance for bikes (!), and sponsors a greenhouse gas offset program. (More on offsets below.) They also provide links for renting hybrids and other green vehicles, have an eco-tourism business and sell car insurance.

The Friendly Skies: Unfortunately, air travel is terrible for the environment. Not only do aircraft engines produce lots of GHGs, but they do it high up in the atmosphere, where those gases cause more trouble.

So take the train instead of the shuttle. And try to schedule vacations and business meetings closer to home.

If you do fly, make it a habit to offset the GHGs your travel creates. One way of doing that is to send a tax-deductible donation to the GHG offset program of the Better World Club's Better World Foundation. They recommend $11 for a roundtrip, domestic flight and $22 for an international one. (Make the check out to The Tides Foundation and send it to The Better World Club, Attn: Donations, 20 NW 5th Avenue Suite #100, Portland, OR 97209.)

Or, better yet, book your ticket through Better World's travel division, and they'll pay the price of offsetting your travel themselves.

ELECTRICITY:

Power plants are one of the nation's largest generators of greenhouse gases. In New York and in many other parts of the country, you can choose to receive your electricity from a supplier that generates energy from non-polluting sources. (The juice still comes through the same power lines and is billed the same way.)

Big Apple-area residential, commercial, institutional and government electric customers, including those in New York City, Westchester, Orange and Rockland counties, can switch to Con Ed Solutions' Green Power (www.conedsolutions.com; 888-320-8991).

Con Ed's Green Power is 35 percent wind, 65 percent low-impact hydroelectric. The electricity costs only 4 percent more than the usual power supplied by Con Ed, plus there's a $25 rebate for new customers and a discount on the 4 percent sales tax, so you can get green power, or their new 100 percent wind power option, for not much more than you're paying now.

And, on Long Island, the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) has its own version of Green Power. LIPA doesn't generate the Green Power directly but helps customers buy it from green power suppliers. LIPA also offers a "Solar Pioneers” program that offers and explains rebates and tax credits to homeowners who install solar energy generating equipment in their homes. You can find out more about LIPA's clean-energy options by checking out its website, www.lipower.org/residential/green.html, or by calling its energy conservation hotline, toll-free, at 800-692-2626.

Want to know more about New York State's other green power options? Call, toll-free, 866-GRN-POWER (866-476-7697), or visit the state's Public Service Commission's website, www.askpsc.com. (This is, unfortunately, a clunky, poorly designed website.)

Outside of New York, green power options are also available. As in the New York City area, some of those options involve switching to the green power option offered by the local utility company. To find out whether green power is available in your area, check out the website of the Center for Resource Solutions, www.green-e.org, (888-63-GREEN) and click on "Renewable Energy For Your Home." There, you can search by state to find suppliers who can provide you with renewable energy.

In areas where there are no direct green power suppliers (and, actually, even in areas where there are), you can purchase a kind of virtual green power, through a mechanism known as green tags.

The subject of green tags is a little hard to explain. But, essentially, when you buy green tags, you help bring more renewable energy into the national energy mix, and remove some fossil-fuel-powered energy, by underwriting the slightly higher cost of producing renewable power. In essence, the money you pay for green tags—often less that $10 a month—provides funding to build more green-power-generating facilities. Buying green tags ensures that your electricity purchases don't pollute and don't contribute to global warming.

You can buy green tags directly from a green energy generator or from a third-party group that sells green tags. The www.green-e.org website will instruct you how to purchase green tags and offers a number of green tags suppliers who service both residential and commercial customers. And, some of these groups are non-profits or donate their green tags to non-profits that work against global warming, so the money you spend is tax deductible. (For tax-deductible options, check out the Bonneville Environmental Foundation [www.greentagsusa.org; 866-233-8247] and Native Energy's Windbuilders and Remooable Energy projects [www.nativeenergy.com; 800-924-6826].)

Yet another way to switch to a green power supplier is to visit www.newwindenergy.com, the website of New Wind Energy, a clean energy supplier. (You can also call them toll-free at 866-WIND-123.) On New Wind Energy's website, click on "Buy Wind Today" in the upper left hand corner of the home page and you'll be walked through some of the options available in your area. The site even allows you to switch to clean power via the web.

And, if none of that works for you, check with your local electric company or public service commission for green power options.

At Home: There are lots of ways to reduce your home electricity consumption. One is to check out the fridge. Refrigerators eat up approximately 30 percent of all household electricity. Newer models are significantly more energy efficient than older ones. So, a new refrigerator may pay for itself in energy savings alone. That goes double for air conditioners. (Refrigerators and air conditioners contain the ozone-layer-shredding coolant known as Freon. So do freezers, dehumidifiers, water coolers and other appliances. In New York City, if you want to dispose if any appliance that contains Freon, you're required by law to schedule a Freon-recovery appointment with the Department of Sanitation. You can contact them by phone at 311. Outside NYC, check with your local department of sanitation or environmental protection.)

You can make sure you're getting the most energy-efficient appliances, TVs, stereos, computers, washer-dryers and other household items by looking for the Energy Star label, which the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy award to the most energy-efficient models in each appliance category.

Also, next time you need light bulbs, try compact fluorescents. Available at many hardware stores, they're more expensive than regular lightbulbs initially, but save you a ton of money in the long run because they use significantly less energy and last a lot longer than regular light bulbs.

And, one more word about air conditioning. It's a big energy drain. In fact, fans use only one-tenth the energy that air conditioners use. So, whenever possible, open up the windows and turn on your fan.

OFFSET

Offsetting is basically taking action to compensate for the greenhouse gases we create. For instance, the Better World Foundation uses the money it gets in donations to replace antiquated, oil-burning boilers in the Portland, Oregon public schools. The newer, cleaner heating systems reduce the school system's GHG emissions.

Want to offset your GHGs? The best way to do that is to invest in projects, such as wind farms and solar power arrays, that generate renewable energy and thereby decrease the amount of fossil-fuel-powered electricity we use.

There are a number of great groups that do this. The two most highly ranked in a recent survey are Native Energy, which uses tax-deductible donations to help build clean-energy-generating wind farms and other green energy projects, and The Climate Trust, which is involved in similar endeavors. On the websites of both groups, you can use online calculators to figure out how many tons of GHGs you produce each year, and then calculate how much it will cost you in tax-deductible donations to offset them.

You can also offset your GHG emissions by investing in tree-planting. Experts consider this a less reliable method of offsetting because the trees you plant may not survive for any number of reasons—they may not grow and develop into mature trees or they may get cut down.

Still, if planting trees appeals to you, a bunch of groups can help you do that. (In fact, trees do great things: they produce oxygen, filter pollutants from air and water, reduce flooding, prevent drought, cool their surroundings, and provide habitat for wildlife, to name just a few.)

At www.americanforests.org, the online calculator helps you figure out the number of trees necessary to gooble up all the carbon dioxide you produce. (The trees cost a dollar each; the average American household can offset its annual GHG production for about 48 bucks.)

American Forests' webpage iconography is slightly confusing, so be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the webpage to find out how many trees you need to plant. Then, you can purchase those trees from the same website.

Or, take that number and visit the websites of other tree-planting organizations such as Sustainable Harvest, International (www.sustainableharvest.org), which plants trees to fight deforestation and poverty in Central America, or Kenya's Green Belt Movement (www.greenbeltmovement.org), which does similar work in Kenya. (Their founder, Wangari Maathai, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for this important work.)

And, if you own your own home, consider planting trees around or on top of it. Scientists estimate that each tree planted in a residential setting offsets 14 times the amount of carbon dioxide it consumes by naturally cooling the area around it in summer and keeping it protected against the elements in winter.

Maybe the Global Warming Cultists Have Been Eating Bath Salts

One of the reported symptoms of ingesting bath salts is that your body feels incredibly warm. Which perhaps explains the reluctance of the global warming cult to show you graphs like this.

Call it "The Climate Chart You're Not Allowed to See."

What’s wrong with this image? Well if you are part of The Team (RealClimate and friends), it goes against everything you’ve been publishing. You want the Medieval Warm Period to disappear, and you want a hockey stick at the end showing “unprcedented” warming. The shape below just doesn’t cut it when that’s what you are
researchingselling.

On the left is temperature in °C, on the X axis, years, with labels from 0AD to the year 2000.



Images like the above don’t sell. With a clear MWP and no hockey stick, there’s no alarm, and no $$ coming in for “further studies”. In the Wake of the Gergis et al retraction, Steve McIntyre notes that one of the “screened out” datasets just happens to be the one with the best resolution and the greatest duration – the Law Dome Oxygen 18 data set (from Antarctica). He writes:

An annual version for two millennia was provided to Gergis (who screened it out.) delD and O18 are closely related and presumably the unarchived del D series will look somewhat similar.

For those that don’t know what this data represents, here’s a quick primer...

In short, this (Law Dome) data series is one of the best historical models possible, as it represents a consistent temperature record over the timespan of thousands of years. And it highlights the United Nations' cover-up of the inconvenient truth, motivated by greed in the form of grant money, carbon-trading land grabs, and coverage by a subservient left-wing media.

A Climategate email shows that Phil Jones asked about the omission of the Law Dome series from the IPCC illustration in the AR4 First Draft. I asked the same question about the AR4 Second Draft. They realized that the Law Dome graphic had an elevated medieval period and thus, including it in the graphic would – to borrow a phrase from the preparation of AR3 – would “dilute the message” and perhaps provide “fodder to skeptics”.

But don't worry, folks: "President Obama plans to make climate change his top second term priority."

No, that's not from The Onion, a humor publication, but the left-leaning New Yorker. What planet does this president live on?

'Obama has an ambitious second-term agenda," wrote Ryan Lizza in this week's New Yorker. "The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change," supposedly to "improve the world."

So forget about the abysmal jobless numbers above 8% for over three years, or the $15 trillion deficit that threatens to turn the U.S. into Greece. No, amid those very real calamities, climate change is more important...

Already no president has ever spent money on "climate change" as he has. The Congressional Budget Office reports that since 1998, $99 billion has been spent among 14 agencies on "climate change." Of that, $35 billion was earmarked from the 2009 stimulus.

The top agency charged with enacting the Obama green agenda — the Department of Energy — has seen its budget soar from $24 billion in 2009 to $38 billion in 2012, the Office of Management and Budget estimates.

...The one thing that can be concluded from this policy priority is that on the environment, Obama is planning more of the same — and the voters be damned.

Enjoying these gas and electricity prices? Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

And for those unfamiliar with the genesis of the global warming scam, I created a comic book version of the entire, United Nations-sponsored grift entitled, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow."

The Effects of Global Warming in South Africa

It should be rather obvious by now that the whole world has been terribly deceived by the United Nations Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel that continues to drive the global warming (or is it climate change?) hoax. It should be obvious that the whole business is all a huge money-making scam and that the scientists and politicians involved in this rip-off are all liars-for-hire. It should also be obvious by now that, despite the number of jobs and huge salaries they've invented, the global hoax is also an attempt by the ‘Masters of Darkness’ to bring western nations to their knees.

The warning signs that we are being terribly mislead are everywhere. During the past year the international mainstream media have graduated from the term “global warming” to “climate change”, because not one of their highly paid experts really knows what the hell is really going on, and whether we’re perhaps heading for another ice age, or not.

It’s only in South Africa, it seems, where the mainstream media has not caught on to the new term now known as “climate change”. If you watch and listen carefully you’ll notice how these idiots still endlessly blabber on about the effects of “global warming”, and how guilty we should all feel about this. Although they’ve quietened down somewhat because its winter here in SA, you can be sure that when summer arrives the propaganda (their Master’s orders) will again go ahead in full swing.

And as for the vast number of sheeple out there who refuse to see the obvious, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all because they’re too lazy to read…

The effects of global warming, in pictures…

(Louis Claassen, News24 user )

Travelers trapped in the snow. Photo shared on Google+ by News24 user Rietee Roos.

Traffic from Joburg along N6 highway to Queenstown was taking a detour through Doedrech after Jamestown as the road between Queenstown and Jamestown was rendered inaccessible by heavy snow. (Hama Mtowodza, News24 User)

Has Global Warming taken a break

Last week the English paper Mail on Sunday had a story claiming that a Met Office report shows global warming had stopped 16 years ago. The article, written by David Rose, caused a storm and was contested in a piece Dana Nuccitelli had written for Skeptical Science and published by the Guardian. It is certainly no accident that these two papers aligned themselves in predictable ways. And it is no accident that corresponding blogs reacted in predictable ways.

What is the fuss about? The Mail article shows temperature data from 1997 to 2012 with no warming trend.

The lack of warming had been acknowledged by leading climate scientists for a while, as reported for example by Greenwire here:

"The question itself, while simple sounding, is loaded. By any measure, the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest in modern history. However, 1998 remains the single warmest year on record, though by some accounts last year tied its heat. Temperatures following 1998 stayed relatively flat for 10 years, with the heat in 2008 about equaling temperatures at the decade's start. The warming, as scientists say, went on "hiatus."

The hiatus was not unexpected. Variability in the climate can suppress rising temperatures temporarily, though before this decade scientists were uncertain how long such pauses could last. In any case, one decade is not long enough to say anything about human effects on climate; as one forthcoming paper lays out, 17 years is required.

Greenwire quotes Hansen, Santer, Trenberth, Solomon and others. The story appeared last October. Now another year has passed and we are coming close to the magic number 17. While the eminent climate scientists accepted the hiatus as a fact, there is no consensus on explanations. The Guardian story quoted above tries to make the stronger case, saying that there is a "most likely" positive trend.

The trend in the HadCRUT4 global surface temperature dataset since 1997 is 0.084 ± 0.152°C per decade (although we have not yet updated the HadCRUT4 data, the GISS and NCDC datasts show a similar warming trend since 1997). While the trend is not statistically significant, the central value is positive, meaning the average surface temperature has most likely warmed over this period.

I am not sure what "most likely" means in this context. But it surely demonstrates that some in the global warming debate think a non-positive trend could be a problem (for what: for AGW theory? For climate policies? For both?). Yesterday Michael E. Mann tweeted that Rose and Judith Curry  "double down w/ their denial of #globalwarming (http://bit.ly/Rfh6Vx ). Debunked by @Guardian". So for him this story is part of the denial machine, and something big is at stake.

Judith Curry is quoted in the Mail Online, saying: "Nothing in the Met Office’s statement .  .  . effectively refutes Mr Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years." And addressing climate scientists uncomfortable with the hiatus, she wisely advises:

Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.

I case you have not seen it, there is a relevant discussion on the thread Interview with Eduardo Zorita about the production of stable facts in (climate) science. I conclude from the "hiatus story" that there is no evidence either way: at present, it neither confirms nor refutes anthropogenic global warming.