Scientific evidences of climate change finally fall apart, we wish

Short term weather is unpredictable due to chaotic small scale fluctuation. On the other hand climate change is mainly controlled by  overall energy balance between the incoming Solar radiation and the outgoing radiation which is more stable and predictable. When so much CO2 molecules are pumped from fossil fuels, basically ancient metamorphed dead organisms, into the atmosphere for so short period, there is a limit that Earth can sustain the climate within in a human-habitable range for all people. We should seek alternative technologies to avoid the future mess and havoc for kids yet to come, and not doing so will cause unbearable pains and suffering in near future. This might be an optimistic scenario: the current generations may have to live up to the mess we made pretty soon.

Environmental terrorism might not be a far fetched option for these people who believes that their life is destroyed by others: when their habitat is destroyed, then what do they have to lose? This option will not make any sense for them in the end since doing so will end in writing themselves off from the Earth. This type of scenario is already discussed by CIA and the Pentagon and not new. Conservatives who hate governmental interventions will have to see much larger interventions in future if they do not accept science now.

Eight great figures summarizing the evidence for a “human fingerprint” on recent climate change

Physicist John Cook, who runs the must-read website Skeptical Science, has published “The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism.”

Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream, thus producing a cold European anomaly in the trans-Atlantic seesaw.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/12/nasa-explains-how-europe-can-be-so-cold-amidst-the-hottest-november-and-hottest-year-on-record/#more-38611

“Back to the cold air in Europe: is it possible that reduced Arctic sea ice is affecting weather patterns? Because Hudson Bay (and Baffin Bay, west of Greenland) are at significantly lower latitudes than most of the Arctic Ocean, global warming may cause them to remain ice free into early winter after the Arctic Ocean has become frozen insulating the atmosphere from the ocean. The fixed location of the Hudson-Baffin heat source could plausibly affect weather patterns, in a deterministic way — Europe being half a Rossby wavelength downstream, thus producing a cold European anomaly in the trans-Atlantic seesaw. Several ideas about possible effects of the loss of Arctic sea ice on weather patterns are discussed in papers referenced by Overland, Wang and Walsh.”

Rossby wave is a part of  jet streams circulating the earth. This wave  as well as local fluctuations  play dominant roles in the global and local weather. I worked on it in my undergraduate project. That is one of the reason I do not care about some criticisms on my blog which takes climate change seriously, besides that low carbon economy is good for future generations years to come.

Confused mind

An incompetent idiot: 池田信夫 (Ikeda Nobuo)

He is the chief of a conservative Japanese blog forum that often complains about liberal minds. Ikeda, who is a professor of a small private Japanese university, does not understand even microns of science and logic of climate change. http://newsweekjapan.jp/column/ikeda/2009/09/25.php Climate change is not measured by year by year variation, it must be measured by the longer term trend, but not so long enough that Earth spin axis starts fluctuating. No wonder he thinks university is useless since people like him are teaching. Top class scientists would strongly disagree. If he thinks university is useless, that is reflecting his qualification as professor: he is a useless prof, just staying the position for the sake of money and prestige.

“It’s about you.” Climate change

Business can save money and go green. Unlike the perception of the US in the media, the US younger generations are not stupid who just passively looking their future diminished by the people who are too old to see the results of their catastrophic irresponsible behaviors. The business consultant gave very optimistic and realistic perspective.

In some sense China may never officially commit to any climate related treaties for long time, for they already know it is important and are already fully committed in the R&D on this issue. If many other countries delay their commitments because of China then China will benefit, not because they are ignorant nor cheating but they can just go ahead and develop new technologies by themselves while other governments complaining about China’s inaction at international political stages: we like it or not they have a strong government with full of competent people who can implement their strategy. Many other nations unfortunately do not have a very strong government,  an unintended cost of democracy at the moment.

China Pulls Ahead in Building a Clean-Energy Workforce

What Good Is Wall Street? by John Cassidy

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_cassidy?currentPage=all

Finally, dissidents like Paul Woolley are questioning this narrative. “There was a presumption that financial innovation is socially valuable,” Woolley said to me. “The first thing I discovered was that it wasn’t backed by any empirical evidence. There’s almost none.” 

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_cassidy#ixzz16VmUhYXt

How to live with climate change

http://www.economist.com/node/17575027?story_id=17575027

“None of this will make climate change all right. It remains the craziest experiment mankind has ever conducted. Maybe in the long run it will be brought under control. For the foreseeable future, though, the mercury will continue to rise, and the human race must live with the problem as best it can.”

Idiotic comments dominate there and I wonder why these nut heads have so much time to  manifest their idiocy so vigorously.

Martian ground water possible

“Extrapolations of their results to the present Martian conditions imply that groundwater may currently exist underneath thermally insulating fine-grained sedimentary deposits approximately 120 meters in thickness. Thus, despite large differences in hydrogeologic histories, average surface temperatures, and internal heat flows of Earth and Mars, some areas of Mars might be similar to typical permafrost on Earth, where shallow aquifers are confined by thin layers of icy permafrost.”

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-shallow-groundwater-reservoirs-common-mars.html

Fear of fallowing: The specter of a no-growth world

Fear of fallowing: The specter of a no-growth world
The question that comes to my mind whenever I catch a glimpse of aggregate consumption is always the same: How can it last?

>Oil is not simply implicated in everything we call growth. There has never been growth without it.

>The limiting factor, in other words, is no longer tools but natural capital.

>“Leave it alone. Let it grow in order to slow or reduce the exploitation. This conforms perfectly to the economic definition of investment—a reduction in present consumption in order to increase a future capacity to consume.”

>As McKibben writes, “Growth is no longer making people wealthier, but instead generating inequality and insecurity.”

>China and India now demand an increasing share of the energy and resources that the United States and Europe once claimed for themselves, triggering unprecedented oil prices that reverberate throughout the global economy.

Questioning economic growth

Questioning economic growth

Our global economy must operate within planetary limits to promote stability, resilience and wellbeing, not rising GDP, argues Peter Victor.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7322/full/468370a.html

First, there is mounting evidence that this growth is largely unrelated to measures of happiness. Second, in recent decades, increasing inequality has accompanied
much of this growth, leading to problems ranging from poor public health to social unrest. Third, the prospects for real improvement in the developing world are likely to be diminished if developed countries continue to encroach on more ecological space.

Living Planet Report

How we are living this planet. Carbon footprint indicates the current life style cannot be sustainable.

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report/webcast.cfm

• Health of Our Planet
• Demands on Our Planet
• Me and My Planet
• Solutions for Our Planet
• What You Can Do
• 2010 Report
• Use & Share
• Previous Reports

Peak oil is not just here — it’s behind us already.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/is-peak-oil-behind-us/

According to a projection in the agency’s latest annual report, released last week, production of conventional crude oil — the black liquid stuff that rigs pump out of the ground — probably topped out for good in 2006, at about 70 million barrels per day. Production from currently producing oil fields will drop sharply in coming decades, the report suggests.

Some experts found the report’s projections troubling.

“It’s a perfect storm headed our way — a steady rise in global demand for oil crashing up against an increasingly limited supply of economically recoverable oil,” William Chameides, professor of environmental science at Duke University, wrote on his blog.

Prepare for the risk: Real conservatives ignoring their own principles

Prepare for the risk: Real conservatives ignoring their own principles

A terrific op-ed in  WashPost from CAP’s Bracken Hendricks: I stopped reading the WP long time ago but from time to time it surprises me in a good way. Hope more people wake up and listen to him. Japan should do more on alternative energy stuffs.

The best science available suggests that without taking action to fundamentally change how we produce and use energy, we could see temperatures rise 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States by 2090. These estimates have sometimes been called high-end predictions, but the corresponding low-end forecasts assume we will rally as a country to shift course. That hasn’t happened, so the worst case must become our best guess….

Today’s conservatives would do well to start thinking more like military planners, reexamining the risks inherent in their strategy. If, instead, newly elected Republicans do nothing, they will doom us all to bigger government interventions and a large dose of suffering – a reckless choice that’s anything but conservative.
Few causes unite the conservatives of the newly elected 112th Congress as unanimously as their opposition to government action on climate change. In September, the Center for American Progress Action Fund surveyed Republican candidates in congressional and gubernatorial races and found that nearly all disputed the scientific consensus on global warming, and none supported measures to mitigate it. For example, Robert Hurt, who won Tom Perriello’s House seat in Virginia, says clean-energy legislation would fail to “do anything except harm people.” The tea party’s “Contract From America” calls proposed climate policies “costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.” Even conservatives who once argued for action on climate change, such as as Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Rep. Mark Kirk (Ill.), have run for cover. But it’s conservatives who should fear climate change the most. To put it simply, if you hate big government, try global warming on for size. Many conservatives say they oppose clean-energy policies because they want to keep government off our backs. But they have it exactly backward. Doing nothing will set our country on a course toward narrower choices for businesses and individuals, along with an expanded role for government. When catastrophe strikes – and yes, the science is quite solid that it will – it will be the feds who are left conducting triage. My economic views are progressive, and I think government has an important role in tackling big problems. But I admire many cherished conservative values, from personal responsibility to thrift to accountability, and I worry that conservatives’ lock-step posture on climate change is seriously out of step with their professed priorities. A strong defense of our national interests, rigorous cost-benefit analysis, fiscal discipline and the ability to avoid unnecessary intrusions into personal liberty will all be seriously compromised in a world marked by climate change. In fact, far from being conservative, the Republican stance on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk. When faced with uncertainty and the possibility of costly outcomes, smart businessmen buy insurance, reduce their downside exposure and protect their assets. When confronted with a disease outbreak of unknown proportions, front-line public health workers get busy producing vaccines, pre-positioning supplies and tracking pathogens. And when military planners assess an enemy, they get ready for a worst-case encounter. When it comes to climate change, conservatives are doing none of this. Instead, they are recklessly betting the farm on a single, best-case scenario: That the scientific consensus about global warming will turn out to be wrong. This is bad risk management and an irresponsible way to run anything, whether a business, an economy or a planet.