[Lore]

Glad you agree !!

Now we only need to educate 5.9999999999 billion more !!!!!!!!!!!

Gasmon[/quote]

Another fact filled weather report from GASMON that just demolishes the argument for climate change's existence.

Here... let me add to my quote above...

[meemoe_uk]

>One of the myths of the denialosphere is that during the MWP grapes were grown in Great Britain unlike today.

Where do you get this stuff from Lore? Seems to me it's another one of your homegrown myths. Are you going to link to claims of there's no grape produce or even productive open plan vineyards in the UK today? Hello?

As a 'hardcore denialist' as you might call me, I think I speak for all 'denialists' when I say there's plenty of grape produce in the UK today.

PS
Oh, yeah, and I agree with GASMON, the climate in the UK has been cold and sad. Summers have been like this since the decline of SC23 in 2006.

[dorlomin]

PS
Oh, yeah, and I agree with GASMON, the climate in the UK has been cold and sad. Summers have been like this since the decline of SC23 in 2006.

The reason has been explained above. Do you not understand what the jet stream is?

For those less convinced that they know dark secrets that science is hiding in a bid to enslave the worlds population, here is an animation of May 2007. A similar pattern held over the UK to this year, that is a southerly tracking jet stream bringing lots of low pressure systems. Run the animation and watch how the UK gets clobbered, then rerun the animation and just watch the patterns that the worlds weather operates in, especialy near the equator. This will give a real good idea of how when these bands of weather move, local weather can change so remarkable.

http://www.gerhards.net/astro/wolken_200705_en.html

And here is wikipedia primer on the jet stream.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream

[Lore]

>One of the myths of the denialosphere is that during the MWP grapes were grown in Great Britain unlike today.

Where do you get this stuff from Lore? Seems to me it's another one of your homegrown myths. Are you going to link to claims of there's no grape produce or even productive open plan vineyards in the UK today? Hello?

As a 'hardcore denialist' as you might call me, I think I speak for all 'denialists' when I say there's plenty of grape produce in the UK today.

PS
Oh, yeah, and I agree with GASMON, the climate in the UK has been cold and sad. Summers have been like this since the decline of SC23 in 2006.

You are blessed, even for a denier, of living over in Great Britain so you know the fact. Meanwhile the chuckleheads (or is that ditto heads) over here in the US, use to drinking their Bud Light, eat up this disinformation.

[kiwichick]

lore; i'm no expert on UK weather but i do know there are grapes being
grown in central otago near the bottom of the south island of new zealand

this area is famous for skiing, gold and stone fruit (apricots)

cold dry winters and hot arid summers

i think the record cold is about - 30 oCelsius following pinotubo? eruption

normal summer days 30- 40 o Celcius

last time we were there i was amazed by all the vineyards

[Cid_Yama]

Phytoplankton make their own food through the process of photosynthesis, while zooplankton feed on phytoplankton. Zooplankton are in turn eaten by larger animals. In this way these tiny organisms sustain all life in the oceans. According to the NASA, phytoplankton populations in the northern oceans have declined by as much as 30% since 1980.[4] While the cause of this decline remains uncertain, there are several theories.

One theory points to global warming as the main cause.[5] Phytoplankton require nutrients obtained from the bottom of the ocean to reproduce. At the Earth’s poles, ocean water is colder at the surface than down in the depths. Therefore water from the bottom of the ocean rises to the top, carrying with it essential nutrients from the ocean floor. However, as the water near the surface becomes warmer due to climate change, less water rises from the bottom, resulting in less nutrients for the phytoplankton. This consequently hinders their reproduction processes.

Another theory suggests that carbon dioxide emissions are causing this decline in plankton population. The ocean has always absorbed a significant amount of carbon dioxide, but in recent years its capacity for this pollutant may not have been able to keep up with the level of human output. Recent studies suggest that the carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs is turned into carbonic acid, which lowers the pH level of the ocean.[6] This acidification is highly corrosive to sea animals that form shells, including pteropods, which are a type of zooplankton. Pteropods are a food source for countless larger animals such as salmon and cod. If they are unable to survive in an acidic ocean, then the entire ocean system will be threatened.

link

[Cid_Yama]

Man-made carbon emissions "are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security," the study by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland, warns.

Their review, published in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, says that rates of physical change in the oceans are unprecedented in some cases, and change in ocean life is likely to be equally quick.

"The climate is currently warming faster than the worst case known from the fossil record, about 56 million years ago, when temperatures rose about 6 degrees over 1000 years. If emissions continue it is not unreasonable to expect … warming of 5.5 degrees by the end of this century."

Scientists expect ocean oxygen levels to decline by about six per cent for every one degree increase in temperature and areas in the sea which are low in oxygen to grow by at least 50 per cent. This has major implications for the world's most productive fishing waters in the cool temperate regions. The seas provide around one sixth of humanity's protein food - and any loss in fisheries production will have a direct impact on us.

Another risk is that warming will unlock vast reserves of frozen methane in the seabed, triggering uncontrollable, runaway global warming.

"It may already be too late to avoid major irreversible changes to many marine ecosystems. As history has shown us, these marine-based changes could have major earth-system consequences," the scientists conclude.

link

[dissident]

So, we are talking about 5.5 degrees over 100 years *without* the methane feedback. This 5.5 degrees Celsius figure comes from the current crop of climate projections and none of them have realistic CH4 emission scenarios since the permafrost thaw has not been characterized. Now that the current warming rate has been put in perspective (i.e. 6 degrees over 1000 years after which palm trees were growing in current Wyoming) it becomes apparent that we are setting ourselves up for a cataclysm. Our current sense of proportion about the environment is extremely dissonant from what is coming our way. Once the CH4 feedback kicks in, the 5.5 degree figure will look like a joke and at least 10 degrees is becoming more and more likely. Note that a temperature shock more severe than the one 56 million years ago will release more CH4 and thus increase the amplitude of the shock. This will likely result in the massive outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and massive clathrate melt so that 1000 years from now the world may be well beyond the Eocene period in terms of warming).

[Cid_Yama]

“This is a major concern because it’s possible that only a little warming can unleash this trapped methane. Unzippering the methane reservoir could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid. Such a violent, zipper-like opening of the clathrates could have triggered a catastrophic climate and biogeochemical reorganization of the ocean and atmosphere around 635 million years ago.”

When released into the ocean-atmosphere system, methane reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and can cause marine dysoxia, which kills oxygen-using animals, and has been proposed as an explanation for major oceanic extinctions.

“One way to look at the present human influence on global warming is that we are conducting a global-scale experiment with Earth’s climate system,” Kennedy said. “We are witnessing an unprecedented rate of warming, with little or no knowledge of what instabilities lurk in the climate system and how they can influence life on Earth.

link

[Cid_Yama]

Could have sworn I posted a link to the movie here, but I guess I was wrong.

Soylent Green

[Cid_Yama]

From carbon dioxide sink to acid bath

Leading journals knocked back Bradley Opdyke in the early 1990s when he tried to publish research giving some of the first hints that ocean acidification due to high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could wreak havoc on marine ecosystems.

The work by the young scientist, then based at the University of Michigan, was zeroing in on a problem that researchers now fear will hit marine life hard: aberrations in ocean chemistry caused by surges in dissolved carbon dioxide.

The implications were serious, but the world was only just starting to become conscious of the effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on the temperature of the globe. It was deaf to warnings of another looming crisis, now dubbed "the other carbon dioxide problem".

The American Journal of Science, the oldest scientific journal in the US that has been published continuously, eventually published the paper. However, it was not until Opdyke and colleagues published further research in the respected US journal Science in 1999 that the scientific community started to take notice.

Ten years after the Science paper, the scientific community is on board and scientists worldwide are stepping up their research effort on ocean acidification amid alarming projections for carbon dioxide emissions.

The oceans are a sink for carbon dioxide, taking up about 30 per cent of emissions caused by human activities. The burning of fossil fuel and deforestation could deliver marine ecosystems a double whammy: ocean warming due to the greenhouse effect and changes to ocean chemistry.

At worst, a shift in the delicate chemical balance of the oceans could cause an ecosystem crash, with the effect rippling through the food chain from plankton to whales.

Acidification causes a shift in the carbonate chemistry of the oceans. Carbonate ions, or charged particles, are in equilibrium with bicarbonate ions. As the water becomes more acidic, the balance shifts towards bicarbonate, depleting the oceans of the stuff of exoskeletons and shell.

A team of scientists led by Glenn De'ath , of the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, published research in Science earlier this year suggesting that calcification on the Great Barrier Reef had declined by 14 per cent since 1990. The scientists had studied 328 colonies of Porites, a genus of corals that forms the scaffolding of reefs. They focused on annual growth bands of coral from 69 reefs across the Great Barrier Reef in a record spanning 436 years.

The decline was unprecedented in the past 400 years, the scientists reported.

"By about 2060, at the current rate of emissions, the oceans will have a chemical composition they haven't seen for at least 800,000 years," he says.

link

[Grautr]

So, we are talking about 5.5 degrees over 100 years *without* the methane feedback. This 5.5 degrees Celsius figure comes from the current crop of climate projections and none of them have realistic CH4 emission scenarios since the permafrost thaw has not been characterized. Now that the current warming rate has been put in perspective (i.e. 6 degrees over 1000 years after which palm trees were growing in current Wyoming) it becomes apparent that we are setting ourselves up for a cataclysm. Our current sense of proportion about the environment is extremely dissonant from what is coming our way. Once the CH4 feedback kicks in, the 5.5 degree figure will look like a joke and at least 10 degrees is becoming more and more likely. Note that a temperature shock more severe than the one 56 million years ago will release more CH4 and thus increase the amplitude of the shock. This will likely result in the massive outgassing of CO2 from the warming oceans and massive clathrate melt so that 1000 years from now the world may be well beyond the Eocene period in terms of warming).

So we effectively create a man made Permian extinction event.

The theory on the Permian is that volcanic activity caused a global warming of 5 degrees over 1000 years. This then triggered the hydrates release which triggered another 5 degree warming over a 1000 years.
The 10 degree warming over 2000 years caused a more than 90% extinction rate on land and 95% in the seas.

We on the other hand will cause the initial 5 degree warming in about 100 years assuming the current scientific models are correct and would give a total of 10 degrees warming in just over 1000 years. This gives various species even less time to adapt to the changing climate making the extinctions worse than the Permian.

I wonder what the surviving humans would be eating 2 or 3000 years from now. Grass and earthworms might be staples of the diet.

[katkinkate]

It would smell like the entire planet farted! Everywhere you go, it would be like the worst, most raunchy, most disgusting fart you've ever smelled, EVERYWHERE. You wouldn't be able to escape it without a gas mask.

After the first day or so you'd stop noticing it.

[Cid_Yama]

A stretch of beach in Brittany had to be closed after a horse rider lost consciousness and a horse died as a result of the putrefying algae, the Times reported today.

Scientists say that as the seaweed - known locally as sea lettuce - decomposes, it forms an impermeable white crust under which hydrogen sulphide accumulates.

When the crust is broken, the gas is released, which smells like rotten eggs.

It attacks the nervous system and can kill a man or an animal within minutes, Alain Menesguen, director of research at the French Institute for Sea Research and Exploitation, said.

Pierre Philippe, of the Lannion hospital in Brittany, said that hydrogen sulphide was as dangerous as cyanide. He said that he had treated several cases of poisoning caused by the seaweed among local residents, including a council worker paid to clear beaches of the algae who was taken to hospital in a coma.

Some scientists believe that a build-up of hydrogen sulphide in the atmosphere wiped out the dinosaurs 300 million years ago.

link

Dinosaurs 300 million years ago? More like giant cockroaches and primitive amphibians. The period was dominated by insects.

They probably meant 180 million years ago and proto-dinosaurs during the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction event.

[Cid_Yama]

How Will Warmer Oceans Affect Sea Life?
Experiments show that microscopic ocean plants and animals--the base of the food chain--will be impacted

This June, the world's oceans reached 17 degrees Celsius, their highest average temperature since record keeping for these data began in the 19th century. And a new experiment suggests that those balmier waters might mean big changes for the marine food chain.

Theoretically, increased nutrients and warmth should fuel the growth of tiny drifting plants known as phytoplankton—as evidenced by seasonal dead zones that form at the mouths of many rivers worldwide when the tiny plants bloom, die and, while decaying, suck up all the available oxygen in the seawater. But the researchers found that increasing temperatures, although initially enhancing the growth of phytoplankton, also allowed increased grazing by zooplankton (microscopic animals) and bacteria, according to the results published today in PLoS Biology.

"As temperature rises, the zooplankton start to grow faster than the phytoplankton," O'Connor explains. "The zooplankton are more abundant and faster-growing, and are able to eat all the phytoplankton in warmer water. This creates a bottleneck in the food chain that could have large implications for the ocean's food web."

Not only does that mean that there are fewer phytoplankton around to suck up carbon dioxide(or to produce oxygen), but it could also mean less food for other grazers.

Boosting the number of zooplankton, however, means the overall mass of ocean life declines: the tiny animals metabolically burn 90 percent of the phytoplankton they consume, incorporating only 10 percent. All told, with a 6-degree Celsius rise in water temperature, total biomass in the warmest microcosm shrank by 50 percent, O'Connor reports.

"Worldwide, ocean waters are warming and will continue to warm by several degrees," O'Connor says.

link

[arkwriter]

An area of the pacific, equivalent to the area of the USA, littered with plastic waste? surely global pollution on such a scale would, very quickly, result in the poisoning and the subsequent breakdown of the very food chain we all sit so arrogantly atop of?

[hillsidedigger]

Some are saying that 2010 is the year that it becomes obvious.