Clipmarks | amgumen's 'envionment' clips

Compact Florescent Lights: Casting a Shadow

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:34:40 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: If our incandescent bulbs are banned we won't have a choice. What really is behind this push to create more mercury hazards after so many years of trying to eliminate the mercury hazards?

Clip Source: www.pacificspirit.org

woman in Ellsworth, Maine that dropped a Compact Florescent Light bulb (CFL)

she call poison control who referred her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection which directed her to call an environmental clean up crew that gave her a $2,000.00+ estimate to clean up the mercury mess.

So how much mercury does one of these bulbs contain? So much that the broken CFL left 6 times the safe level of mercury in the Bridges' bedroom.

Each CFL contains 5 milligrams of mercury, at the Maine "safety" standard of 300 nanograms per cubic meter, it would take 16,667 cubic meters of soil to "safely" contain all the mercury in a single CFL.

Given the fact that we already know that mercury is dangerous and highly toxic, that it can cause brain damage and leaning disabilities, what is creating this Herculean push to install literally 10's of billions of these bulbs across the globe?

Tags: optional. separate by commas., envionment

Sea level rise and the beginning of the Neolithic

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:12:48 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: dienekes.blogspot.com

The collapse of the Laurentidenext term Ice Sheet and release of freshwater 8740–8160 years ago abruptly raised global sea levels by up to 1.4 m. The effect on human populations is largely unknown. Here we constrain the time of the main sea level rise and investigate its effect on the onset of the Neolithic across Europe. An analysis of radiocarbon ages and palaeoshoreline reconstruction supports the hypothesis that flooding of coastal areas led to the sudden loss of land favoured by early farmers and initiated an abrupt expansion of activity across Europe, driven by migrating Neolithic peoples.

nearly 73,000 square km of land was lost to the sea over a period of 34 years. Based on our knowledge of historical population levels, this could have led to the displacement of 145,000 people.

Tags: optional. separate by commas., envionment, climate, science, nature, ocean

Changes in the Sun’s Surface to Bring Next Climate Change

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:55:46 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: Unfortunately, because of the intensity of coverage of the UN IPCC and man made global warming during 2007, the full story about climate change is very slow in getting told. These changes in the sun have begun. They are unstoppable. With the word finally starting to get out about the next climate change, hopefully we will have time to prepare. Right now, the newly organized SSRC is the leading independent research center in the US and possibly worldwide, that is focused on the next climate change

Clip Source: www.spaceandscience.net

The sun’s surface flows have slowed dramatically as NASA has indicated. This process of surface movement, what NASA calls the “conveyor belt” essentially sweeps up old sunspots and deposits new ones

NASA’s studies have found that when the surface movement slows down, sunspot counts drop significantly. All records of sunspot counts and other proxies of solar activity going back 6,000 years clearly validates our own findings that when we have sunspot counts lower then 50 it means only one thing - an intense cold climate, globally.

With this next solar minimum predicted by NASA, what I call a “solar hibernation,” the SSRC forecasts a much colder Earth just as it has transpired before for thousands of years.

we have only a few years to prepare before 20-30 years of lasting and possibly dangerous cold arrive

The last time this particular cycle regenerated was over 200 years ago

he so-called Dalton Minimum

With that cold came massive crops losses, food riots, famine and disease

Tags: sun, climate, envionment, science

Hurricanes and climate change

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:56:32 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: sciencepolicy.colorado.edu

there are good reasons to expect that any conclusive connection between global warming and hurricanes or their impacts will not be made in the near term

A consensus of 125 of the world’s leading tropical cyclone researchers and forecasters says that no firm link can yet be drawn between human-induced climate change and variations in the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones.

And then in 2007 by the IPCC. IPCC lead author Neville Nicholls characterized the report's conclusions on hurricanes and climate change as follows:

We concluded that the question of whether there was a greenhouse-cyclone link was pretty much a toss of a coin at the present state of the science, with just a slight leaning towards the likelihood of such a link.

the IPCC ignored our review

The lead author for the relevant chapter (Chapter 3 of WG 1), Kevin Trenberth, said

I think he should withdraw this article. This is a shameful article

we weren't really surprised to see our paper go uncited by the IPCC chapter

Tags: envionment, climate, science

Recipe to head off the worst effects of global warming

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 00:18:23 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: sciencepolicy.colorado.edu

Here's a recipe to head off the worst effects of global warming:

1. Start with 30 new nuclear power plants around the world.

2. Add 17,0000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, two hydroelectric dams the size of China's Three Gorges Dam, and 42 coal or natural gas power plants equipped with still-experimental systems to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground.

3. Build everything in 2013. Repeat every year until 2030.

As delegates from 190 countries gather here on the Indonesian island of Bali to negotiate a "road map" for the successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, some experts are wondering whether the meeting has lost touch with the reality of tackling climate change.

But while the debate continues, the most fundamental question of what it will take to achieve meaningful reductions has gone largely forgotten.

Tags: envionment, climate, science

Lowering Sea Level Rise

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:25:49 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.worldclimatereport.com

A key question is not whether sea level is rising, but rather, has there been any acceleration in the rise

Determining GSLR rates is complicated by non-tidal, year-to-year variability in local mean sea level that is one to two orders of magnitude greater than the long-term trend, potentially masking changes in the rate of rise. The cause of this variability is largely unknown, although it has been linked to storms, winds and floods, wind driven Rossby waves, shifts in major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, volcanically induced ocean heat content variations, and in the Pacific Ocean, the El Nino Southern Oscillation

meteorological processes drive coastal sea-level variability by redistributing water, heat, and the response of the ocean to atmospheric pressure across the ocean basin

The corrected data are in red and while the regression outputs of this data are in black

their research yields a global sea level rise near 1.1 mm per year which is well below IPCC and other estimates

Tags: envionment, climate, science

Contaminated Temperature Data

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:35:42 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.worldclimatereport.com

The problem remains one of determining what part of a given temperature trend is climatically real and what part the result of observational difficulties and of artificial modification of the local environment

data inhomogeneities (such as station moves and closure, record discontinuities, equipment change and changes to the time of observation) are known to have affected records of mean temperature. Modification of the land surface, including urbanization and other economic activity, has been shown to affect local, regional and possibly global meteorology

examined the gridded temperature dataset used by the IPCC

Differences between observed and adjusted trends around the world

Distributions of temperature trends 1979–2002. (top) IPCC surface data. (middle) Satellite
(MSU) tropospheric data. (bottom) Adjusted surface data

our analysis does suggest that nonclimatic effects

add up to a net warming bias at the global level that may explain as much as half the observed land-based warming trend

Tags: optional. separate by commas., envionment, climate, science

Temperature history of Nunavut, Canadian Arctic

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:16:08 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.worldclimatereport.com

Nunavut is the home of the Inuit people who are indigenous to the Arctic

There are 169,000 websites for “Inuit” and “Global Warming.”

The researchers collected pollen spores from sediment cores taken from a lake

Temperature reconstruction of Lake

Middle line represents the average of the maximum and minimum temperatures for each sample. Solid thick line represents the 5-point running mean

So, summers in Nunavut warmed from 7,000 BP to 4,000 BP to conditions warmer than present, then around 3,000 BP, a long cooling began culminating in near-present conditions being among the coolest of the past 7,000 years. We have the greatest respect for the Inuit people of today and their ancestors of the Arctic who survived (and even flourished) during times in the past that were warmer than modern conditions. We also congratulate the ecosystem of Nunavut that also survived (and probably even flourished) during the warmer years of the mid-Holocene

Tags: optional. separate by commas., envionment, climate, science

A Question for RealClimate

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:43:43 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: sciencepolicy.colorado.edu

What behavior of the climate system could hypothetically be observed over the next 1, 5, 10 years that would be inconsistent with the current consensus on climate change? My focus is on extreme events like floods and hurricanes, so please consider those, but consider any other climate metric or phenomena you think important as well for answering this question. Ideally, a response would focus on more than just sea level rise and global average temperature, but if these are the only metrics that are relevant here that too would be very interesting to know.

it seems to me that give the incredible number of model studies any observed behavior of the climate system is “consistent with” some model study that has been published somewhere by somebody.

I have often seen claims about “consistency” but never a discussion of what observed behavior of the climate system would be "inconsistent with" current expectations.

Tags: optional. separate by commas., climate, envionment, science

European Forests Absorbing More Carbon Dioxide

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:24:53 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

European forests are expanding and taking up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than scientists expected as they regain ground, a new study shows. Such natural carbon storage systems could be key to helping the European Union meet its goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions

examined changes in forest cover in Europe and calculated how much carbon those forests store. Their study, detailed in the journal Energy Policy, found that over the last 15 years, forests have grown in 22 of the world's 50 most forested countries

Between 1990 and 2005, the expanding forests have absorbed an amount of carbon equal to about 11 percent of the region's emissions.

Every year, the expanding European forests remove a surprisingly large amount of carbon from the atmosphere,"

According to rough estimates, their impact in reducing atmospheric carbon may well be twice that achieved by the use of renewable energy in Europe today."

Tags: optional. separate by commas., climate, envionment, interesting, science, nature

Amazing Antarctica

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 23:22:05 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.frogview.com

Tags: optional. separate by commas., envionment, interesting, nature

Global Warming 'A Big Cash Grab'

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:24:34 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: Update: Gore to launch $100 million a year multimedia global warming fear campaign. Gore alone will now be spending $90 million more per year than he alleges the entire fossil fuel industry spends, according to an August 26, 2007 article in Advertising Age.

Clip Source: epw.senate.gov

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one," Carter wrote on June 18, 2007

The U.S. alone has spent $30 billion on federal programs directly or indirectly related to global warming in just the last six years, according to one estimate. (LINK) ($5.79 billion in 2006 alone) Adding to this total is funding from the UN, foundations, universities, foreign governments, etc. Huge sums of money continue to flow toward addressing climate fears. In August, a State Treasurer in California "proposed a $5 billion bond measure to combat global warming

Even if you factor in former Vice President Al Gore's unsubstantiated August 7, 2007 assertion that $10 million dollars a year from the fossil fuel industry flows into skeptical organizations, any funding comparison between skeptics and warming proponents utterly fails.(LINK

Tags: optional. separate by commas., interesting, climate, science, envionment

Global warming melting Arctic Ice: Manipulation of public perceptions

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:14:15 GMT

clipped by: amgumen
clipper's remarks: the second was the Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1200 AD, and most recently the warm period of the 1930s and 1940s, which we now know were warmer than the 1990s in North America despite what Al Gore says. As Marie Curie, a worthy winner of two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” Full story in the: Canada Free Press

Clip Source: www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com

Notice how much ice has already formed this winter, a more rapid growth than previously in the record. It was claimed the summer ice was the smallest on record

While the media raised alarms over Arctic ice melt, they did not report that Antarctic winter sea ice extent was the greatest on record

A similar pattern of annual freeze and melt occurs in the ocean around the continent but it changes from a summer minimum of about 2 million square kilometers to a winter maximum of about 15 million square kilometers, an annual change of some 13 million square kilometers. Of course, all this ice is in the water, so when it melts sea level doesn’t change. So the ice is not disappearing. Annual melt and refreeze is large, and current situations are well within normal numbers.

the polar bears

survived much warmer periods when the ice was reduced significantly. The longest since the last Ice Age was the Holocene Optimum from 9000 to 5000 years ago

Tags: optional. separate by commas., envionment, climate, science, nature, geology

Biofuel Vehicles to Put Our Health at Risk

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 03:35:45 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.infoniac.com

The latest scientific research reveals that biofuels used in vehicles may be more harmful for human health than the petrol used today. By 2020, 10% of all transport means should run on biofuels as agreed by the EU.

ozone level in some regions would grow if bioethanol was used for all cars. It would cause more ailments and asthma attacks.

As showed by the study, the smog level increase meant 200 deaths more every year in the US, with only Los Angeles at risk of 120 deaths. Even if to take into account that ozone increase in some US regions would be partially compensated by its decrease in other regions, in general there would be over 700 extra complaints to accident and emergency and almost 1000 extra hospitalizations of people suffering from asthma and other respiratory ailments.

The scientists determined that the use of ethanol reduces levels of two carcinogens found in atmosphere, while increases levels of other carcinogens.

Tags: interesting, science, envionment

Precipitation Systems: Nature's Air Conditioner

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:44:49 GMT

clipped by: amgumen

Clip Source: www.weatherquestions.com

FACTOID: Al Gore likes to say that mankind puts 70 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every day. What he probably doesn't know is that mother nature puts 24,000 times that amount of our main greenhouse gas -- water vapor -- into the atmosphere every day