Category Archives: Global warming

Mysterious global warming "hiatus" blamed on sudden ocean cooling

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Photo: Steve Ryan/Flickr CC

Scientists don’t want us to get bogged down in the details — the ups-and-downs of global temperatures. The mercury is still rising, they say…

That is, except in large parts of the globe, and during certain decades:

“The suddenness of the drop in Northern Hemisphere ocean temperatures relative to the Southern Hemisphere is difficult to reconcile with the relatively slow buildup of tropospheric aerosols,” Thompson said.“We don’t know why the Northern Hemisphere ocean areas cooled so rapidly around 1970. But the cooling appears to be largest in a climatically important region of the ocean,” Wallace said.

via Sudden Ocean Cooling Likely Aided Mid-20th Century Global Warming Hiatus in Northern Hemisphere.

Striking while the iron's hot: Heat waves common in coming decades, scientists announce

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Photo: Lucy Boynton/Flickr CC

The body forgets pain easily. Perhaps that’s why Stanford scientists are taking this opportunity to do a little imprinting.

The Stanford scientists — one of whom is now working for a US DOE lab — insist that heat waves “and other hot events” might be commonplace by 2039.

The researchers also determined that the hottest daily temperatures of the year from 1980 to 1999 are likely to occur at least twice as often across much of the U.S. during the decade of the 2030s.

“By the decade of the 2030s, we see persistent, drier conditions over most of the U.S.,” Diffenbaugh said. “Not only will the atmosphere heat up from more greenhouse gases, but we also expect changes in the precipitation and soil moisture that are very similar to what we see in hot, dry periods historically. In our results for the U.S., these conditions amplify the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”

via Heat waves could be commonplace in the US by 2039, Stanford study finds.

Childfree movement gets its greenwash

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Part of the problem. Photo: Alan Turkus

I am  sure that some in the childfree movement feel so self-conscious about their choice not to raise kids that they need, occasionally, to create a smug, in-your-face manifesto.

The latest missive from the childfree movement, which has been around since the 1960s, comes in awash in green.

Lisa Hymas, in an essay at Grist*, claims that humans who choose not nurture other humans are making an admirable choice for the planet, and their pocketbooks.

Hymas, a disciple of Al Gore and Stephanie Mills of the Post Carbon Institute (think about that one, for a moment), writes that being childfree is a “luxurious indulgence that just so happens to cost a lot less for me and weigh a lot less on the carbon-bloated atmosphere.”

Hymas does not avoids mentioning adoption, abortion or infanticide, issues that would have introduced some ethical complexity to the piece.

The green solution, according to a Grist editor and blogger.

Hymas also uses a hackneyed rhetorical technique — the false premise — to get her point across.

She suggests, without any supporting evidence, that people with kids typically look down on those who have none.

A link to HuffPo’s coverage of Hymas’ manifesto, is below.

via Ultimate Way to Go Green? Don’t Have Kids, Writer Lisa Hymas Says – AOL News.

*Note: I have written for Grist myself, about environmental issues.

In future, GMO foods will be impossible to avoid

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Hope its OK. Photo: CC/Daniel Beaman

Hope it's OK. Photo: CC/Daniel Beaman

It’s hard to say exactly which foods we will be forced to eat, in Earth’s CO2- and O3-stuffed atmosphere.

But it is likely those foods will be genetically modified to counter the toxic effects of these atmospheric gases, and to maintain their nutritional value.

Global food security in a changing climate depends on the nutritional value and yield of staple food crops. Researchers at Monash University in Victoria, Australia have found an increase in toxic compounds, a decrease in protein content and a decreased yield in plants grown under high CO2 and drought conditions.

via New crops needed for new climate | h+ Magazine.

Cockamamy cow feed supplement: fish oil

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Photo: CC/James Jordan

Photo: CC/James Jordan

Dublin scientists say adding fish oil to cattle feed will make them fart less, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, farmers could also feed their cows grass, instead of corn, which is what they get on those godforsaken feedlots.

In fact, the way it works now, Smithfield and others stuff their feedlot cows with antacids, because the corn feed makes them so sick.

April 6, 2009 Omega 3 fatty acids in fish oils have many documented benefits to humans including the reduction of cholesterol, but what of the benefits to animals and the environment in general? While assisting the heart and circulatory system in animals and improving the meat quality in cattle, it is also, according to researchers at the University College in Dublin, beneficial in reducing methane levels from flatulence when added to the diet of cattle.

via Fish oils fed to flatulent cows could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Country living will kill you

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University of South Carolina

Image: University of South Carolina

Hurricanes and other “superstorms,” reputedly caused by man-made global warming, are not the big killers you might think they are.

Rather, seasonal heat and cold are the biggest natural hazards, according to a new, U.S. “death map” created by University of South Carolina geographers.

The highest mortality levels are in rural areas, the study found.

I can see the wheels turning over at Agenda 21 Central: This map helps make the case that people need to be packed closer together…

From the abstract:

Chronic everyday hazards such as severe weather (summer and winter) and heat account for the majority of natural hazard fatalities. The regions most prone to deaths from natural hazards are the South and intermountain west, but sub-regional county-level mortality patterns show more variability. There is a distinct urban/rural component to the county patterns as well as a coastal trend. Significant clusters of high mortality are in the lower Mississippi Valley, upper Great Plains, and Mountain West, with additional areas in west Texas, and the panhandle of Florida, Significant clusters of low mortality are in the Midwest and urbanized Northeast.

via Abstract | Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States.

Live long and prosper? We might do neither

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Biotech body snatchers. A genetically “inferior” underclass. Increased terrorist attacks. Futurists will “make it so.“

(Marketing buzzword alert: “Futuring,” a verb, is the act of exploring of the future, according to those who do it. Photo: Futurist Thornton A. May flashes the three-finger “Sustainability Symbol.” More about this strange hand signal shortly. Credit: Dragonpreneur, under a Creative Commons license.)

from Mark:

A new book by a futurist and adviser to three U.S. presidents portrays a horrific near future scenario filled with body snatchers, a booming “neuromarket” for false memory implants, and a self-aware internet that rebels against humanity.

The author of “The Extreme Future,” James Canton, Ph.D. (below), was a student of Alvin Toffler, according to Publisher’s Weekly. He will be speaking at the U.S. Army War College this fall, at a conference aimed not at predicting, but shaping, the future.

“The goal of futuring (exploring the future) is not to predict the future but to improve it,” reads a quote from futurist Edward Cornish, on the U.S. Army War College’s website.

For more about how futurists plan our futures, see these blurbs and broadcasts by Alan Watt.

Bloggers from the military and intel communities are talking about the book. Here is an excerpt from one dot-mil blog:

(Dr.) Canton…includes “Top Ten” lists detailing everything from Energy Trends to Robo-Futures.

In THE EXTREME FUTURE, Dr. James Canton predicts that:

• The high cost of oil will force the West to invent new alternatives to oil and lead to depressed OPEC economies, leading to more terrorism against the West

• Radical life extension will create a two-class global society of those who live over 150 years and of those who cannot afford to

• The Internet will develop an awareness of itself and its own personality and rebel against human controls

• Human cloning will become the ultimate in identity theft

• A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India is more likely then not

• Copy-cat products from Asia—from drugs to auto parts—will perform better then the original branded products they’re based on

• Radical life extension will reshape entire markets and society

• The new global Innovation Economy will deliver widespread prosperity and wealth

A dark New England day, 228 years ago

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Mizzou tree ring experts blame Canadian wildfires

from Mark:

George Washington’s diary notes a “dark day” on May 29, 1780, in the midst of the Revolutionary War. He wasn’t referring to a lost battle, or some other bad turn in the struggle against tyranny.

Rather, Washington was describing a mysterious midday darkening of the sky.

Colonists then, and one modern ebook author, saw the event as a terrifying sign from God:

A correspondent of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal (of May 29, 1780) reported observations made at Ipswich Hamlet, Mass., “by several gentlemen of liberal education:”

“About eleven o’clock the darkness was such as to demand our attention, and put us upon making observations. At half past eleven, in a room with three windows, twenty-four panes each, all open toward the southeast and south, large print could not be read by persons of good eyes.

“About twelve o’clock, the windows being still open, a candle cast a shade so well defined on the wall, as that profiles were taken with as much ease as they could have been in the night.

May 19, 1780 and some people in New England thought judgment day was at hand. Accounts of that day, which became known as ‘New England’s Dark Day,’

Scientists at the Missouri Tree-Ring Laboratory (I reckon they do a lot of counting there) now say it was wildfires in Canada that darkening the skies that day:

Mystery Of Infamous ‘New England Dark Day’ Solved By Three Rings
Limited ability for long-distance communication prevented colonists from knowing the cause of the darkness. It was dark in Maine and along the southern coast of New England with the greatest intensity occurring in northeast Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire and southwest Maine. In the midst of the Revolutionary War, Gen. George Washington noted the dark day in his diary while he was in New Jersey.

Zealots haunt environmentalist religion

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Global warming now a core “belief” among environmentalists, says Freeman Dyson

(Love your mother.)

from Mark:

Environmentalism is a secular religion that we can all get behind, physicist Freeman Dyson writes in the Times.

There is just one problem: The movement, Dyson argues, is run largely by non-scientists, and many of those believe that “global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet.” (See excerpt, below.)

Now any global warming skeptic is being labeled in popular culture as “an enemy of the environment.”

One transhumanist (or H+, short for human-plus) complains that many of his fellows have already bought into the global warming “dogma.” Follow the link, below, to see the comments to this blog post, at Sentient Developments:

Sentient Developments: Freeman Dyson on the ‘religion of environmentalism’ There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

"Kirk" calls for depopulation

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If Man won’t do it, Nature will, William Shatner says.

(In the Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk meets a wicked Spock in a parallel universe. He dissuades his first officer from eradicating an uncooperative humanoid race. Image: StarTrek.com)

from Mark:

Star Trek star William Shatner said last week that the earth is striking back against humans with natural disasters.

“They [people] are pressed together, defecating into the ocean,” said Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek. “The earth can’t take it.”

At one point in a long conversation with talk show host Glenn Beck, Shatner decried humankind’s penchant for reproduction. (See clip, and an excerpt from the transcript, below). It is a position he shares with his fellow transhumanist, Max More.

In a strange blurring of real and virtual reality, both Shatner and his Star Trek character are heroes to the transhumanists, who view the human body as limited, imperfect, and in need of artificial augmentation.

The transhumanists also want to bring about “a social order where responsible decisions can be implemented.”

Shatner, a vigorous 74-year-old (he also appears to have been “under the knife”), was on Beck’s show to flog his new autobiography, Up Till Now.

Note: I was a contributing editor to one issue of Glenn Beck’s magazine, Fusion. — mb

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA2xn35NpdA]

Glenn Beck – Interviews – Shatner v. Glenn
Well, nature, nature eventually will take care of that problem like they did, like nature does with animals. We’re overgrazing. So when deer multiply, when the natural order of things is disturbed and predators are taken away, for example, the deer, they overpopulate, they eat too much of the food and they starve. And we’re going to — if we don’t curb — how do we stop the overpopulation? I guess it’s by education and saying you’ve got to have less children, you can’t have all the children you want anymore. There’s a difference in the world now. Or nature will take care of it.