Home/Posts Tagged ‘warming’
Posts Tagged ‘warming’
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Apr 30th, 2012,
I read the news today, oh boy. Wind farms are causing global warming? No, but maybe a bit of local warming. A new study of wind turbines in Texas shows that rotating blades force warm air downwards at night, causing ground temperatures to rise by up to 0.72C (1.3F). And so the headlines read that wind farms warm the night, or as Reuters states ‘Wind Farms Might Have Warming Effect’. But they also cool ground temperatures during the day according to previous research. Isn’t this piece of information equally significant? The Guardian doesn’t include it in their article, while Discovery…
Tags: temperatures, Texas, warming, wind farm, wind turbines
Climate Change, Pollution, Feb 24th, 2011,
A new UN report concentrates on the warming effects of black carbon (soot) and ground-level ozone like methane. Both are considered “short-lived climate forcers”, which have more immediate effects on temperatures than CO2. Therefore limiting their production would also have a more immediate impact on the climate. In the past this strategy has been largely ignored in favor of plans to limit CO2 emissions, which have so far proved ineffective and lack the immediacy of results that can be so problematic in terms of politics and public opinion. The Guardian reports: Soot is a particular problem because when it falls…
Tags: black carbon, co2, emissions, ground-level ozone, Health, methane, UN, warming
Climate Change, Politics, Sep 21st, 2010,
Is environmental writer/Guardian columnist George Monbiot getting all doom and gloom Dark Mountain on us? Well, maybe not quite, but he’s taken a decisive step in that direction. In his recent piece for the Guardian, entitled ‘Climate change enlightenment was fun while it lasted. But now it’s dead’, Monbiot laments the undeniable failure of legislation, global cooperation and civil society to tackle the problem of climate change. One of the loudest voices for British environmentalism has given up on the political machine he has tried for years to influence. Because it isn’t working. Anywhere. In fact things are just getting…
Tags: Climate change, Dark Mountain, failure, global, legislation, Monbiot, warming
Climate Change, Nature, Pollution, Aug 29th, 2010,
Although the Mediterranean sea covers only one per cent of the world’s marine areas, it contains some six per cent of its marine species. Some of the world’s most endangered species, can be found in the Mediterranean. Fish stocks are down to 20 per cent of natural levels in some areas and the Mediterranean is now a net importer of fish. Today, 82 million people live in coastal cities; by 2025 there will be an estimated 150-170 million. The southern countries account for 32 per cent of the region’s population; by 2025 that is expected to have reached 60 per…
Tags: Climate change, coastal, ecosystems, environmental, EU, Europe, Mediterranean, sea, warming, Wildlife & Flora
Climate Change, Nature, Aug 15th, 2010,
The massive 160 square mile (414 sq km) ice island that broke off from Greenland’s Petermann glacier earlier this month is ‘certainly a manifestation of warming’ according to Dr. Richard Bates of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Andrews, a geophysicist, is part of a British-led expedition in Greenland, which is measuring glaciers including the Petermann. From an article in the Telegraph: Dr Richard Bates, who is monitoring the ice alongside researchers from America, said the expedition had expected to find evidence of melting this year after “abnormally high” temperatures in the area. Climate change experts say that globally it…
Tags: Bates, change, climate, glacier, greenland, ice, island, melt, Petermann, Richard, temperatures, warming
Climate Change, Nature, Aug 13th, 2010,
While individual events like heat waves, cold snaps, floods and droughts cannot be attributed to man made climate change on an individual basis, scientists at the World Meteorological Association (WMO) say global warming exacerbates the intensity of recent extreme weather. The floods in China, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the heat wave and resultant wild fires in Russia and the intense rain in central Europe all point to the fact that extreme weather events have tripled since 1980. From an article by Reuters: Recent extremes include mudslides in China and heat records from Finland to Kuwait — adding to evidence of a changing…
Tags: change, China, climate, events, extreme, fires, flooding, floods, global, heat, Pakistan, Russia, scientists, warming, wave, weather
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Jul 30th, 2010,
A new Met Office report, compiled of several recent studies, documents what scientists consider undeniable evidence of a changing climate and warming planet. 10 indicators of global warming were incorporated in the report, including rising land and sea-surface temperatures, ocean heat, sea levels and humidity; and a reduction in Arctic sea ice, glaciers and springtime snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. From an article in the Wall Street Journal: The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew…
Tags: change, climate, evidence, global, hottest, indicators, Met Office, record, report, scientists, temperatures, warming
Climate Change, Politics, Jun 23rd, 2010,
Back in 1989 UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called on the UN for action against man-made global warming. Maggie warned that rapid increases in the use of fossil fuels, the rise of industrial agriculture and population growth were ‘a massive experiment’ on the planet. James Delingpole quotes Thatcher in a recent piece for the Telegraph: Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We…
Tags: Bob Ward, climate, Climate change, global, Left, Maggie, Margaret, Right, skeptic, Thatcher, warming, wing
Climate Change, Politics, May 30th, 2010,
Belief in global warming plummeted amongst the British public after the climate change conference in Copenhagen last December, according to a BBC poll early this year. A similar poll commissioned by the London Times also showed increased skepticism regarding climate amongst those surveyed. Belief in climate change amongst scientists has not changed, but in the war of the press, the climate skeptics – often called climate deniers – did gain significant ground in Copenhagen’s wake. From a May 24th article in the New York Times: Two independent reviews later found no evidence that the East Anglia researchers had actively distorted…
Tags: climate, Climate change, copenhagen, environment, global, Guardian, Independent, poll, press, skepticism, skeptics, Telegraph, Times, UK, war, warming
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Apr 30th, 2010,
Arctic temperatures have risen twice as fast in recent decades as temps in the rest of the world. Melting sea ice – considered part of a positive feedback loop – as well as wind, cloud and ocean current changes have been suspected of driving this rapid warming, known as Arctic amplification. A positive feedback loop is a system where the cause and effect perpetuate one another, like a vicious circle. A new study shows that Arctic warming from melting sea ice may be driving a positive feedback loop between rising temperatures and disappearing ice. From an article in the Guardian:…
Tags: Antarctica, arctic, feedback, floating, Guardian, ice, loop, melt, ozone, positive, sea, temperatures, warming
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Mar 29th, 2010,
A NASA physical oceanographer has found no slow down in the giant ocean currents that bring warm water from the tropical Pacific to the North Atlantic. These currents, which function like a ‘conveyor belt’ driven by ocean salinity, make much of Europe far more habitable than it would be without the constant influx of warm water. The observation that these currents are not slowing and probably have not slowed since the early 90s is good news for warm-current dependent regions like the UK. These latest findings, which draw on data from drifting sensors and satellites, support other recent evidence downplaying…
Tags: climate, conveyor, current, currents, Europe, ice, NASA, ocean, warming
Climate Change, Green living, Health, Politics, Mar 8th, 2010,
The main opposition to legislation connected to climate change seems to stem from a public and corporate outcry against paying higher taxes. This could in many instances be interpreted as a selfish reason to oppose any government-backed climate or environmental action. A more sympathetic take on the opposition to regulating global emissions could focus on the belief that such regulations might hinder economic growth in developing countries, thereby keeping them in poverty. However, a recent article from BBC News explores an astonishingly seldom-discussed facet of climate change – whether man-made or not: the immense toll on human health and human…
Tags: Climate change, countries, developing, disease, global, Health, human, warming
Climate Change, Wildlife & Flora, Mar 3rd, 2010,
A census on marine life in the Antarctic called The British Antarctic Survey seeks to shed some light on how the wide variety of animals that live on the Antarctic sea floor might react to climate change. According to the survey, which began in 2005, ‘the Polar Regions are amongst the fastest warming places on Earth’. Changes in winter sea ice levels, ocean acidification and rising temperatures are already reducing the population of krill, an important food source for Arctic penguins, seals and whales. Changes also favor an increase in the amount of jellyfish in the area. From a BAS…
Tags: Antarctic, BBC, British, change, climate, ecosystem, glacier, global, iceberg, life, marine, Mertz, ocean, polar, research, scientist, sea, survey, warming
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Feb 19th, 2010,
A new article in The Ecologist shines a light on methane, the often-ignored greenhouse gas that is produced from both natural and human sources. Methane’s contribution to the greenhouse effect is estimated to be about 18% compared to CO2′s 63%. Yet it is also 20-30 times more potent than CO2 and has only one tenth the atmospheric life span. This means that methane emission reduction could have a significantly more immediate effect on curbing climate change than cutting CO2, which hasn’t happened yet on a global level anyway. Man made methane emissions can be reduced in among the following ways:…
Tags: acid rain, arctic, capture, carbon, Climate change, co2, emissions, gas, global, greenhouse, livestock, methane, permafrost, warming, wetlands
Climate Change, Science & Technology, Jan 30th, 2010,
Water vapor, a potent heat-trapping gas, absorbs sunlight and re-emits heat into Earth’s atmosphere. Its concentrations in the stratosphere, the second of three layers in the atmosphere, appear to have decreased in the last 10 years, according to the study. –New York Times I read two articles discussing the relationship between water vapor and global warming on Friday: one in the Guardian and another in the New York Times. The Guardian piece reports that a recent study suggests that a third of global warming during the 1990s was caused by water vapor in the upper atmosphere and not by man…
Tags: global warming, Guardian, New York Times, science, warming, water vapor, water vapour
