Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
Climate science and its relevance
Recently we saw the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 5th report on climate change ( http://www.ipcc.ch/ ). While some agree with it - most scientists do (1) - others - like the industry lobby- completely rubbishes it like this one:
http://www.naturalnews.com/042304_UN_climate_change_report_selectiv...
Some scientists - supported by the industrial lobby too don't agree with it. They say: The UN-promoted theory about the missing warming being hidden somewhere in the ocean is really an admission that its climate models do not accurately simulate natural internal variability in the system.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/16643-top-scien... ( this report is definitely written by the Industry lobby and the Republican lobby).
It is known that 'dark money' supports climate change denial effort. A Drexel University study finds that a large slice of donations to organizations that deny global warming are funneled through third-party pass-through organizations that conceal the original funder.
( http://drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-money-funds-c... )
An interesting blog by a science communicator says scientists have been framed and global warming hasn't been slowed down like the skeptics and deniers say! Read it here: http://talkingscience.weebly.com/1/post/2013/12/you-have-been-frame...!
The author of this blog made some very good points.
And this blog on SA
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-risks-as-conclusi...
says:
Climate Risks as Conclusive as Link between Smoking and Lung Cancer
Climate Deniers Intimidate Journal into Retracting Paper that Finds They Believe Conspiracy Theories
The paper was sound but a libel threat apparently exerted pressure on management at Frontiers in Psychology, suggesting a blow to academic freedomHowever, this topic really is all confusing to a layman with so much of contradictory news making the rounds.
Well, who should we believe when so many reports and articles flooding the media with contradictory arguments?
The studies are still going on and nobody knows for sure the real causes for the climate change at the global level. But still local changes can effect you!
I will try to help you in coming to your own conclusion
Okay, imagine these two situations:
(1)You are on a holiday and go to a forest. You feel happy and relieved for getting out of the smoke you are inhaling in your city. You can breathe easily now, feel relaxed and more energetic. Your young son and old mother get relief from their asthmatic conditions. You can see the pollution markers - lichens- growing everywhere. You don't see them in your city! You see several unknown birds singing and chirping in a forest. The water tastes so different and sweet. This is a fact. I myself faced this situation and most of you must have been too. Now want to know the reason why? Because you get clean and fresh natural air in this place. You get pure water in the forest. The Nature is untouched by human beings here. Well, almost!
(2) Now you return back from your holiday tour. You are in your home city. You definitely feel the heat difference, the air quality, and the resultant mood difference. You don't see several birds here. You will notice the smog, the thick black water flowing down the road after a spell of rain different as compared to the brown or transparent water you saw in the forest or a water fall you loved there. You feel breathless and you again start hearing the wheezing sound while your mother tries to breathe. Your water tastes rancid! Why? Because we are interfering with Nature and polluting it in the city! You can smell some chemicals in the air while rain starts coming down slowly? Acid rain? Exactly!
So?! Do you think I am lying when I say climate science is relevant or scientists are lying when they say climate change is happening?
Climate change is not only happening at the global level, but also at the local level, effecting each and every living being on this planet.
It is happening alright and the proof is before you! Forget about the IPCC report or what others say contradicting it. Feel the difference for yourself and come to your conclusions. And then help save the planet.
"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."
- Cree proverb
What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions, if in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true? - Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland ( On climate science predictions) - just because the models are not very accurate?--
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on
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Scientists meet in Japan after grim climate forecast
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/... -
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http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=121217&type=mem...
When I was young the air we breathed was pure. Now we can smell the toxic gases every time we inhale! My mother has developed severe asthma because of this.
Her suffering is enough for me to get alarmed.
I can smell the chemicals each time it rains here (acid rain)
and my skin burns if I go out in the rain without a cover!
Enough for me to raise an alarm.
I don't need further proof! It is all around me.
If you are still a skeptic, come and see this yourself! -
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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/03/26/china-ind...
China-India Smog Rivalry a Sign of Global Menace -
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pollution-sours-pacific-o...
Pollution Sours Pacific Ocean More than Expected
The world's largest ocean is absorbing carbon dioxide, and turning more acidic as a result, faster than expected -
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Salamander Shrinkage Linked to Climate Change
Hottier, drier weather is thought to be causing the amphibians to burn energy faster
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/salamander-shrinkage-link... -
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Big Climate Danger Could Arrive as Soon as 2036
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2014/03/27/big-cli... -
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Slime Molds Should Serve as Model for Climate Negotiations
Ecologist Simon Levin discusses his work, including the study of how cooperation is achieved in slime molds, bacterial films and small societies in nature
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/slime-molds-should-serve-... -
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http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/climate-scient...
Climate scientists want your computer -
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Every six or so years, the IPCC produces a three-part encyclopedia of the climate. This report is the second tranche of its latest effort. The first, on the science of climate change, came out last September. It argued that the process is accelerating even though the world’s surface temperatures are currently flatlining (a phenomenon most climate scientists regard as merely a pause in an upward trend). This, second, volume asks how the climate is affecting ecosystems, the economy and people’s livelihoods.
Profoundly, is the headline answer. It argues that climate change is having an impact on every ecosystem from the equator to the poles. It suggests that although there are some benefits to a warmer climate, most effects are negative and will get worse. It talks of “extreme weather events leading to breakdown of…critical services such as electricity, water supply and health and emergency services” and it sounds the alarm about “the breakdown of food systems, linked to warming”.The report describes three different sorts of problem. The first are those in which climate is the dominant influence, so that no human action other than stopping it changing will have an effect. The second are those in which the climate’s influence is modest and where the news is not entirely bad. The third are the ways a changing climate alters which species (both natural and agricultural) thrive where—which from a human perspective can be both good and bad.
Rising sea levels are an example of the first sort of problem. Thermal expansion of the water in the oceans means that, at current rates, the average sea level could go up half a metre (20 inches) by the end of the century. That would be pure bad news for people living in coastal cities. They now number 271m, a figure which may increase to 345m by 2050, according to the report.
Another example of a problem of the first sort is ocean acidification. This is caused by the absorption of carbon dioxide into seawater. The report calls this “a fundamental challenge to marine organisms and ecosystems”.
The second sort of problem, in which the climate’s influence is more modest and manageable, includes its effects on health. In a warmer world some diseases, such as malaria, are expected to spread. And heat itself can kill. More summer heatwaves will mean more premature deaths. But cold is also a killer, and the number of cold-related deaths will fall. By and large, the report says, the bad impacts will outweigh the good, but in neither case is climate the dominant influence on mortality or morbidity. Public health and nutrition matter more. Malaria cannot spread if it has been exterminated.
The third category, the way a changing climate alters species’ ranges, is in some ways the most intriguing. To the surprise of a lot of conservationists, for example, global warming does not seem to have caused many extinctions. The only ones laid at its door so far are of frogs in Central America.
That does not mean change is not happening. In the oceans both animals and plants are migrating from the tropics to temperate latitudes in pursuit of cooler waters. Benthic algae—seaweeds, to the layman—are shifting their ranges polewards at 10km (6 miles) a decade. Their single-celled planktonic cousins are moving much faster: 400km a decade.
Since algae are the beginning of marine food chains, everything else changes with them. The result, says the report, is that by 2055 fish yields in temperate latitudes could be 30-70% higher than they were in 2005 (see map). Tropical yields, by contrast, could fall by 40-60%. The yields in question are potential ones, and assume that overfishing has not denuded the oceans by then, but that matter is beyond the IPCC’s remit.
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