Glaciers being allegedly lost to Asian Brown Cloud pollution

Complete and utter nonsense. Glaciers in the Western half of the Himalayas are actually GAINING mass. See also this post about the Siachen glacier. See also what Indian glaciologists say about their glaciers in general

The haze of pollution that blankets southern Asia is accelerating the loss of Himalayan glaciers, bequeathing an incalculable bill to China, India and other countries whose rivers flow from this source. In a study released by the British journal Nature, the investigators say the so-called Asian Brown Cloud is as much to blame as greenhouse gases for the warming observed in the Himalayas over the past half century. Rapid melting among the 46,000 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, the third-largest ice mass on the planet, is already causing downstream flooding. But long-term worries focus more on the danger of drought, as the glaciers shrink.

The report triggered an appeal from UN Environment Program chief Achim Steiner, who urged the international community "to ever greater action" on tackling climate change. Researchers led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, used an innovative technique to explore the Asian Brown Cloud. The plume sprawls across South Asia, parts of Southeast Asia and the northern Indian Ocean. It spews from tailpipes, factory chimneys and power plants, forests or fields that are being burned for agriculture, and wood and dung which are burned for fuel.

Emissions of carbon gases are known to be the big drivers of global warming, but the role of particulate pollution, such as brown clouds, is unclear. Particulates, also called aerosols, cool the land or sea beneath them because they filter out sunlight, a process known as global dimming. But what they do to the air around them has been poorly researched. Some aerosols absorb sunlight and thus warm the atmosphere locally, while others reflect and scatter the light.

Professor Ramanathan's team used three unmanned aircraft fitted with 15 instruments to monitor temperature, clouds, humidity and aerosols. The remote-controlled craft carried out 18 missions in March 2006, flying in a vertical stack over the Indian Ocean. The planes flew simultaneously through the Brown Cloud at heights of 500m, 1500m and 3000m. They discovered that the cloud boosted the effect of solar heating on the air around it by nearly 50 per cent because its particles are soot, which is black and thus absorbs sunlight. The researchers crunched data from greenhouse gases and from the brown clouds in a computer model of climate change. The simulation estimated that, since 1950, South Asia's atmosphere has warmed by 0.25C per decade at altitudes ranging from 2000m to 5000m above sea level - the height where thousands of Himalayan glaciers are located.

As much as half of this warming could be attributed to the effects of brown clouds, Professor Ramanathan said. "It is frightening, but I also look at the positive side, because it shows a way out of the conundrum," he said. Roughly 60 per cent of the soot in South Asia comes from biofuel cooking and biomass burning, which could be eased by helping the rural poor get bottled gas or solar cookers, he said. Professor Ramanathan's data has been validated with measurements taken on the ground and in space by NASA.

Source




Torres Strait islands "at risk from global warming"

Groan! Islands -- including Pacific islands -- are rising and falling all the time. It is nothing to do with sea levels. Regard for the facts is a very low priority for the Green/Left. Reality does creep through, however. That the islands are sinking rather than the sea rising is mentioned a couple of times below

Authorities have ordered evacuation and relocation plans for more than 2000 people who face losing their land and livelihood from the invading sea. "These islands are sinking," Torres Shire Mayor Pedro Stephen said yesterday. "People are looking at options of building on stilts or even floating pontoons because of the rising sea levels. "And this is the heartbreaking thing, this generation or the next may have to leave behind all they have ever known, all because of global warming."

Scientists predict warmer sea temperatures (thermal expansion) and the meting of the ice caps will contribute to a sea-level rise of between 9cm and 88cm in the next 50 years. Some parts of the most vulnerable islands - Masig (Yorke), Poruma (Coconut), Warraber, Yam, Saibai and Boigu - are today less than 1m above sea level.

Mother-of-two Helen Mosby, 21, of Yorke Island, yesterday showed Brisbane's The Courier-Mail newspaper the dramatic impact of global warming on her island home. "You can see where the ocean has eaten up the road," said Ms Mosby walking with son Josiah, 5. "It is a big change, and it seems to be getting worse in the past two years or so." [During which time there has been NO global warming. There has been no rise in terrestrial temperature since 1998]

James Cook University's Dr Kevin Parnell, a coastal geomorphologist studying the sinking islands, said they would probably not disappear within a generation, but the threat was "not trivial". "There is the possibility of more frequent extreme events, like storm surge and high tides, causing the water to come up higher on to the land," he said.

The Yorke Island church - more than 50m inland from the high-tide mark -was last year inundated while more than 60m of land on Coconut Island has been consumed since 2000.

Source




A New Global Warming Hurricane

Post lifted from Riehl World. See the original for links

Looks like another headline grabbing opportunity for the Global Warming crowd: Altantic hurricanes 'doubling' as world warms up

A STUDY has found about twice as many Atlantic hurricanes form each year on average than a century ago, largely as a result of greenhouse warming.

Yes, according to the National Center For Atmospheric Research, which has good reason to trump up Global Warming fears. What better way to drive more public funding for climate research given it's need for same and roots in and ties to the liberal academy. Now this below is from page 13 of a pdf from NOAA on the history of hurricanes.

Table 6, which lists hurricanes by decades since 1851, shows that during the forty year period 1961-2000 both the number and intensity of landfalling U.S. hurricanes decreased sharply. Based on 1901-1960 statistics, the expected number of hurricanes and major hurricanes during the period 1961-2000 was 75 and 28, respectively. But, in fact, only 55 (or 74%) of the expected number of hurricanes struck the U.S. with only 19 major hurricanes or 68% of that expected number. However, landfall activity during the 2000's has picked up significantly, and is now near the frequency seen in the very active 1940's. These increased landfalls are very different than the late 1990's, which showed average landfall frequencies despite having generally active seasons.

For an even clearer picture, go to page 16 of the pdf and you'll see that, as regards the Atlantic Basin, the peak numbers in hurricanes are spread throughout the last 150 or so years. There's no real trend for an increase as this new study suggests, unless you only look at certain decades and ignore other variables. Here's a screencap below.

Fortunately some scientists are already challenging this new study:

Not everyone agrees with its findings.

Many scientists say a natural cycle of warm waters in the Atlantic accounts for the surge in hurricanes since 1995.

One argument against global warming fuelling more hurricanes is that prior to 1970, many storms were undetected, meaning the level of tropical activity could have been just as intense in previous decades.

That is because 1970 was the first year satellites were used to monitor the globe.

Even more hurricanes were probably missed prior to 1944, when hurricane-hunter aircraft were first dispatched to investigate storms.

But Dr Holland and co-author Peter Webster, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, dispute that incomplete data records alone explain the sharp increase in tropical activity during the three time periods they studied since 1900.

They say tropical storm activity has increased by about 50 per cent from period to period, which they claim negates the natural cycle theory.

"These numbers are a strong indication that climate change is a major factor in the increasing number of Atlantic hurricanes," Dr Holland said.

Sorry, but I have to fly - and I'm a Greenie

I HAVE had a somewhat strained conversation with a family relation about plane travel. I was working for Greenpeace Australia and said there were people who resisted flying because of its implications for global warming. My relation looked at me is if I were some kind of neanderthal dark-green fanatic trying to drag civilisation back to the dark ages. You've got to be kidding me, he said.

Now, I'm siding with the airline industry. After flying halfway around the world to escape the Australian winter, I wish to speak on behalf of those who care deeply about the environment, but refuse to stop flying. Here in Europe, the anti-flying lobby harasses people at airports and thrusts leaflets into your face. Several London travel agents have been attacked by protesters shouting that the travel industry is to blame for global warming. A week of action is planned at Heathrow airport with a day of action aimed at disrupting flights. There are even anti-flying websites, but in this highly emotional debate, it is important to consider the facts.

Sir Nicholas Stern, the British economist who wrote the Stern Report on global warming, says flying accounts for only 1.7 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is a tiny amount compared with the damage caused by deforestation (24 per cent) and shipping, road and train transport (18 per cent). That means if none of us ever sets foot inside a plane after tomorrow we would not stop global warming, although it might help.

And there is another side to all this. The Third World's dependence on tourism dollars is so great the economies of these countries face collapse if we stop flying there. Some of these countries also depend on Western health professionals routinely flying into their communities. For them it is a matter of life and death. Julia Francombe, the founder of a Kenyan clinic that flies in doctors from the UK to restore the eyesight of locals, says if the doctors "stop coming it will kill us".

The airline industry is rolling out fuel efficient aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that cuts fuel use by 70 per cent over its old 727. Flying is an integral part of modern life and one wonders if the efforts of the environment lobby would not be better focused on forestry emissions and generally lowering industry and domestic consumption levels, rather than those who fly occasionally. It is simply wrong to suggest that flying is one of the key engines of global warming and unfair to point the finger at those who fly as being guilty of heinous crimes against the planet. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.

Source

***************************************

The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film but it is in fact an absolute gift to climate atheists. What the paper says was of course all well-known already but the concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years really is invaluable. And the one fact that the paper documents so well -- that solar output is on the downturn -- is also hilarious, given its source. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even be the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************