Yes, many people have said global warming is fake, or that global warming is not for real or that it's not a threat or that the jury is still out on global warming.
Don't wait for the jury, connies.
Look at the facts and use your heads.
We need to cut down on the oil and coal now. We need to drive less, period.
Time to grow up folks. The gasses we're creating in the air are playing havoc with the environment we live in and are (believe it or not) a part of.
And no, we can't blame plants for global warming, as [http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060111/sc_nm/environment_methane_dc|one article I found] seems to suggest by existing at all. The really funny thing is that sure, plants are the source of the number 2 cause of GW, methane, we humans produce plenty of the #1 cause, carbon dioxide, simply by breathing in and out. Of course, if we got rid of all humans on Earth, not only would global warming cease, but we'd be solving a lot of Earth's other problems, too. ;)
From a January 15, 2006 article at http://news.independent.co.uk :
Global warming to speed up as carbon levels show sharp rise
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 15 January 2006
Global warming is set to accelerate alarmingly because of a sharp jump in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Preliminary figures, exclusively obtained by The Independent on Sunday, show that levels of the gas - the main cause of climate change - have risen abruptly in the past four years. Scientists fear that warming is entering a new phase, and may accelerate further.
But a summit of the most polluting countries, convened by the Bush administration, last week refused to set targets for reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. Set up in competition to the Kyoto Protocol, the summit, held in Sydney and attended by Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea as well as the United States, instead pledged to develop cleaner technologies - which some experts believe will not arrive in time.
The climb in carbon dioxide content showed up in readings from the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken at the summit of Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The measurements have been taken regularly since 1958 in the 11,400ft peak's pristine conditions, 2,000 miles from the nearest landmass and protected by unusual climatic conditions from the pollution of Hawaii, two miles below.
Through most of the past half-century, levels of the gas rose by an average of 1.3 parts per million a year; in the late 1990s, this figure rose to 1.6 ppm, and again to 2ppm in 2002 and 2003. But unpublished figures for the first 10 months of this year show a rise of 2.2ppm.
Scientists believe this may be the first evidence that climate change is starting to produce itself, as rising temperatures so alter natural systems that the Earth itself releases more gas, driving the thermometer ever higher.
©2006 Independent News and Media Limited
From a January 11, 2006 article at IPSNews.net:
CHALLENGES 2005-2006: More "Unnatural Disasters" on the Horizon
Stephen Leahy
BROOKLIN, Canada, Jan 11 (IPS) - As the new year begins, extreme weather continues to plague the United States, and experts warn this may be the "new normal" under climate change.
Wildfires have consumed hundreds of thousands of aces in drought-stricken Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico since Christmas, while floods and swollen rivers beset Northern California and Nevada. Weather records were broken throughout 2005 -- a July heat wave was the warmest ever, October rainfall was the heaviest ever in the Northeast, and the Gulf region endured the worst hurricane season ever.
And on the last day of 2005, tropical storm Zeta, a record-shattering 27th named storm, raged in the mid-Atlantic. The average is 11 named storms a year.
Four major hurricanes -- storms with winds greater than 111 mph -- struck the U.S. last year, resulting in an estimated 160 billion to 300 billion dollars in economic losses. The cost of rebuilding the city of New Orleans alone could be 200 billion dollars, according to government estimates.
And 2006 could be as bad, warn forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Centre.
"We can expect ongoing high levels of hurricane landfalls for the next decade or perhaps longer," said Gerry Bell, lead meteorologist at NOAA.
Although the U.S. generates about 25 percent of the global emissions of greenhouse gases, the George W. Bush administration has been defiant in its unwillingness to adhere to treaties that would fight global warming, like the Kyoto Protocol.
Amy Lynd Luers, a climate impacts scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a U.S.-based alliance of scientists and citizens, notes that, "These are not natural disasters, they are environmental disasters."
"Global warming is contributing to disastrous weather events like hurricanes and making them worse," Luers said in an interview. An earthquake is a true natural disaster in her view.
Although many NOAA scientists refuse to link the hyperactive hurricane season of 2005 to global warming, a number of research studies have established that hurricane and cyclone intensity have increased as global average temperatures have risen.
Moreover, in the late 1990s, a series of studies on the possible impacts of climate change by the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change predicted heavier rainfall in the northeast, and a long-term drought in the southwest and plains region.
Climate science has proven that as emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels have risen, more of the sun's heat is trapped in the atmosphere. That extra solar heat has raised the average global temperature about 0.7C in the past 150 years. Since heat is a form of energy, the additional heat has made the world's climatic system more energetic.
With global warming, weather-related disasters -- floods, fires wind damage -- are expected to be more intense, says Luers, who works with the State of California to anticipate the local impacts of climate change. Those impacts are dire enough for California to act and set strong emission standards.
"California realises that reducing emissions will not damage their economy," she said.
Equally important, the state believes it can be a leader and profit from finding ways to move toward a low-carbon emission economy, she added.
The National Assessment should have issued new outlooks on global warming for the nine regions of the country by now. But that important work is no longer being done. The Bush administration redirected the National Assessment away from regional impact studies, says Leurs.
"There is considerable concern among scientists about the need for these," she noted.
Some states, like California, now foot the bill for preparing their own. And so do some U.S. corporations. At the vanguard are insurance companies.
The U.S. -- and other parts of the world -- could be about 10 years into a 20- to 40-year cycle of increased hurricane activity, with the worst years yet to come, Andrew Castaldi, head of catastrophe and perils for Swiss Re Americas, has been reported as saying.
Castaldi sees 2006 as "another bad year" for hurricanes, with Swiss Re predicting 2.3 major storms hitting the U.S.
Hurricane Katrina was the worst U.S. natural or environmental disaster ever, and a new analysis of the storm by NOAA's National Hurricane Centre released in late December reveals some chilling, overlooked details. Perhaps most stunning of those is that more than 4,000 people are still missing nearly four months after Katrina's landfall in late August. The official death toll is 1,336 people.
But the most worrisome is that Katrina was not a particularly powerful storm on landfall. While it was of Category 5 strength briefly while out in the Gulf of Mexico, new data reveals that its winds were in the Category 1 or 2 class when it struck New Orleans.
What Katrina did generate was an enormous storm surge topping 27 feet, sweeping inland some six miles in places. Katrina's "tsunami" is what resulted in the flooding of 80 percent of New Orleans, and massive destruction along the Gulf Coast.
Such storm surges are bound to worsen with rising sea levels.
Giant ice sheets like those in Greenland are melting faster than ever, says Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State.
"If we burn all the fossil fuels there are, the Greenland ice sheet will melt, raising sea levels 23 feet or so around the world," Alley said in an interview.
That won't happen in decades -- it would be more like hundreds of years, he explains.
However, this year's emissions of greenhouse gases guarantee even higher sea levels in the next decade or two. While that may seem a long way off to those worried about this year's environmental disasters, it will take decades to develop new technologies to wean the world off of fossil fuels, says Alley.
"And that's if we start now. We have to be in this for the long haul," he said. (END/2006)
Copyright © 2006 IPS-Inter Press Service
From a December 7, 2005 article at http://www.timesonline.co.uk :
How do you tackle an invasion of giant jellyfish? Try making sushi
By Richard Lloyd Parry in Tokyo
THEY are called echizen kurage and they sound like monsters from the trashier reaches of Japanese science fiction.
They are 6ft wide and weigh 450lb (200kg), with countless poisonous tentacles, they have drifted across the void to terrorise the people of Japan. Vast armadas of the slimy horrors have cut off the country’s food supply. As soon as one is killed more appear to take its place.
Finally, the quarrelsome governments of the region are banding together to unite against the enemy.
Echizen kurage is not an extraterrestrial invader, but a giant jellyfish that is devastating the livelihoods of fishermen in the Sea of Japan. Nomura’s jellyfish, as it is known in English, is the biggest creature of its kind off Japan and for reasons that remain mysterious its numbers have surged in the past few months.
The problem has become so serious that fishery officials from Japan, China and South Korea are to meet this month for a “jellyfish summit†to discuss strategies for dealing with the invasion. Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has formed a jellyfish countermeasures committee and fishermen are at work on technology to keep the marauders out of their nets.
The problem first became obvious in the late summer when fishermen chasing anchovies, salmon and yellowtail began finding huge numbers of the jellyfish in their nets.
Often the weight of the echizen kurage broke the nets or crushed the fish to death; those that survived were poisoned and beslimed by their tentacles.
Fishermen on the northern tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island, were forced to suspend work at the height of the lucrative salmon season.
In Akita prefecture some communities saw their incomes fall by 80 per cent. The gizzard shad fishers of South Korea have also been plagued by the Nomura’s.
In some places jellyfish density is reported to be a hundred times higher than normal. Worst of all, no one yet understands why. One theory is that global warming is heating up the seawater and encouraging jellyfish breeding.
Some observers blame heavy rains in China over the summer, which flowed out from rivers and propelled abnormal numbers of jellyfish towards Japan. Nutrients in its river water may have given them extra zip — or overfishing has allowed the growth of the populations of plankton on which the jellyfish feed.
Screens and meshes have been designed that allow fish through but keep out anything bigger, and a web of metal wires can be placed inside a net to chop the jellyfish to pieces.
In the meantime locals are making the best of it — rather than just complaining about jellyfish they are eating them.
Jellyfish are an unusual ingredient of Japanese cuisine but are much more prized in China. Coastal communities are doing their best to promote jellyfish as a novelty food, sold dried and salted.
Students in Obama have managed to turn them into tofu, and jellyfish collagen is reported to be beneficial to the skin.
SEA MONSTERS
# The most poisonous jellyfish is the Australian sea wasp, or box jellyfish, with enough venom to kill 60 people. Wearing tights is an effective defence
# The largest jellyfish ever found was a lion’s mane, with a bell 2m (7ft) across, and tentacles extending more than 35m
# The notorious Portuguese man o’war is not a jellyfish at all but a collection of different organisms including stinging tentacles
# Jellyfish have both male and female characteristics. A group releases sperm and eggs which mix in the water
# A collection of jellyfish is known as a smack
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
From a January 15, 2006 artilce at Time.com:
Why Are These Frogs Croaking?
Massive die-offs in the American tropics are an early warning of the effects of global warming
By JEFFREY KLUGER
Posted Sunday, Jan. 15, 2006
Hardy and plentiful as they seem, frogs are actually very frail things, with a semipermeable skin that leaves them vulnerable to even the slightest hiccup in their environment. So when entire species of brightly colored harlequin frogs started dying off in the cloud forests of Central and South America about 25 years ago, scientists suspected that something in the amphibians' ecosystems--they weren't sure what--had gone awry.
Now an international team of scientists think they've solved the mystery. Comparing changes in annual temperatures with the number of frog species spotted, they've documented for the first time a direct correlation between global warming and the extinction of about two-thirds of the 110 known species of harlequin frog.
The critters in question are favorites of scientists studying climate change. Quick and polychromatic, the frogs spend their days near stream banks, where their constant motion and vibrant hues make it easy for researchers to count them. Previous studies have shown that it's not heat alone that kills harlequins but also a pathogen--the chytrid fungus--that attacks their skin. The chytrid is actually a cool-weather organism, doing best at temperatures from 63°F to 77°F. Paradoxically, an effect of global warming is to increase cloud cover in the tropical forests, lowering daytime temperatures and making the frogs more vulnerable to fungal assault.
The most persuasive piece of evidence in the new study, led by J. Alan Pounds of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica and published in Nature, is a graph that shows both annual changes in average temperature and the number of frog extinctions per year on the same grid: the jagged lines track each other with eerie precision. Species die-offs follow warm years 80% of the time. With tropical air temperatures from 1975 to 2000 rising three times as fast as the 20th century average, things should only get worse.
Frogs are what scientists call an indicator species: particularly sensitive animals that are the first to go when the climate starts to change. Their extinction may increase pressure on government and industry to dial back greenhouse gases. The harlequins, after all, are only the beginning.
With reporting by With reporting by Cristina Scalet/New York
From the Jan. 23, 2006 issue of TIME magazine
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc
From a January 11, 2006 article from Reuters.com available at News.Yahoo.com :
New source of global warming gas found: plants
Wed Jan 11, 1:06 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change.
The culprits are plants.
They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.
The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.
"Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed ... in the laboratory and in the field," Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.
Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.
Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.
The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
It could also have implications for the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for developed countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.
"Keppler and colleagues' finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests," he said in a commentary on the research.
But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked and how plants produced it.
"There will be a lively scramble among researchers for the answers to these and other questions," Lowe added.
Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited
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