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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Hotter nights may cause rice yields to fall
A 35-year climate trending shows higher night temperatures may lower rice yields
Rising night temperature has crossed critical threshold of 23 degrees Celsius
Rice varieties tolerant to high temperatures and drought need to be developed
http://www.scidev.net/global/farming/news/rice-yields-farming-agric... -
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Wildfires worse due to global warming, studies say
The devastating wildfires scorching Southern California offer a glimpse of a warmer and more fiery future, according to scientists and federal and international reports.In the past three months, at least three different studies and reports have warned that wildfires are getting bigger, that man-made climate change is to blame, and it's only going to get worse with more fires starting earlier in the year. While scientists are reluctant to blame global warming for any specific fire, they have been warning for years about how it will lead to more fires and earlier fire seasons.
"The fires in California and here in Arizona are a clear example of what happens as the Earth warms, particularly as the West warms, and the warming caused by humans is making fire season longer and longer with each decade," said University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan Overpeck. "It's certainly an example of what we'll see more of in the future."
Since 1984, the area burned by the West's largest wildfires — those of more than 1,000 acres (400 hectares) — have increased by about 87,700 acres (35,500 hectares) a year, according to an April study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. And the areas where fire has been increasing the most are areas where drought has been worsening and "that certainly points to climate being a major contributor," the study's main author Philip Dennison of the University of Utah said Friday.
The top five years with the most acres burned have all happened in the last decade, according to federal records. From 2010-2013, about 6.4 million acres (2.6 million hectares) a year burned on average; in the 1980s it was 2.9 million acres (1.17 million hectares) a year.
"We are going to see increased fire activity all across the West as the climate warms," Dennison said.
That was one of a dozen "key messages" in the 841-page National Climate Assessment released by the federal government earlier this month. It mentioned wildfires 200 times.
"Increased warming, drought and insect outbreaks, all caused by or linked to climate change have increased wildfires and impacts to people and ecosystems in the Southwest," the federal report said. "Fire models project more wildfire and increased risks to communities across extensive areas."
Likewise, the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted in March that wildfires are on the rise in the western US, have killed 103 Americans in 30 years, and will likely get worse.
The immediate cause of the fires can be anything from lightning to arson; the first of the San Diego area fires, which destroyed at least eight houses, an 18-unit condominium complex and two businesses, seemed to start from sparks from faulty construction equipment working on a graded field, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Lynne Tolmachoff.
But the California fires are fueled by three major ingredients: drought, heat and winds. California and Arizona have had their hottest first four months of the year on record, according to National Weather Service records. Parts of Southern California broke records Thursday, racing past 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees celsius). For the past two weeks the entire state of California has been in a severe or worse drought, up from 46 per cent a year ago, according to the US drought monitor.
"With the drought this year, we're certainly going to see increased frequency of this type of event," Dennison said. "Because of the drought the fuels (dry plants and trees) are very susceptible to burning."
Another study last month in Geophysical Research Letters linked the ongoing drought to man-made climate change. Other scientists say that is not yet proven.
Scientists will have to do a lot of time-consuming computer simulations before they can officially link the drought to climate change. But Overpeck said what is clear is that it's not just a drought, but "a hot drought," which is more connected to man-made warming.
The other factor is the unusual early season Santa Ana winds, whose strength is a key factor in whipping the flames. So far, scientists haven't connected early Santa Ana to climate change, Dennison said
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A precipitation shift from snow towards rain leads to a decrease in streamflow
A new study finds that if temperatures rise and more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, it will reduce the total amount of water in rivers.It is a surprising observation. One might expect the timing of water flow to change but not the overall volume.
But this is precisely what scientists discovered when they examined the histories of 420 catchment basins in the US spanning the period 1948-2001.
The researchers report their work in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The team is now working through a number of possible explanations.One idea is that the ground is also changing in response to temperature.
Colder conditions will lead to frozen ground, meaning when the snows do melt the water can run direct into streams and rivers.
In contrast, with warmer conditions, more water can be held in the ground for longer, to be later evaporated or transpired by plants. Less of the overall volume of water would then make it to streams and rivers.
"This issue is important because quite a lot of the snow at the moment is in the places we call the 'water towers' - the places that provide water to the great bulk of society," said Dr Woods.
"If the amount of water in the river on average goes down then those people find themselves under more pressure. Irrigation systems or hydropower systems or municipal water supply systems - the total amount of water available to those systems would be less.
"Those communities or systems would need then to adapt to that - to find a way to get by with less water, or else find alternative water sources."
Of course, under a generally warming climate, the overall patterns of precipitation are likely to change as well, with some locations receiving perhaps significantly more or less precipitation, irrespective of the fraction that is falling as snow or as rain.
The effect observed in this study may not therefore have too much relevance in some locations if their total water balance is rising. But in other, currently snowy places where overall precipitation is declining as well, the effect could compound problems.
The team hopes in future work to tease out the mechanisms involved.
Lead author Wouter Berghuijs said: "Hydrologists can take a large number of measurements at an individual site where they can determine for example what part of the flow in the river is due to a recent precipitation event and what part is due to ground water, by taking isotopic measurements of the stream.
"So, by going into great detail at individual places, it would be possible to understand the small-scale processes that underlie the behaviour that we observe," the researcher from Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2...
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"Impossible" Electric Airplane Takes Flight
The Berlin Air Show witnessed a silent, clean test flight by Airbus's E-Fan two-seater aircraft, which is entirely propelled by electricity
New Solar Impulse challenge on the horizon
Several commercial air carriers, including Lufthansa, Alaska Air and United Airlines, are also reducing their carbon footprints by developing and testing their planes on biofuels. To help increase fuel availability, British Airways announced a partnership earlier this year to create a new jet fuel from municipal waste (ClimateWire, April 25).
Continuing to adopt energy efficient and renewable energy technology in aerospace and other sectors is essential if humanity is to succeed in combating climate change, according to Bertrand Piccard, Swiss doctor, explorer and pilot of the zero-emissions airplane Solar Impulse.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/impossible-electric-airpl... -
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Carbon in deeper soil threatening our climate
Deep soils can contain long-buried stocks of organic carbon which could, through erosion, agriculture, deforestation, mining and other human activities, contribute to global climate change."There is a lot of carbon at depths where nobody is measuring," said Erika Marin-Spiotta, assistant professor of geography at University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US.
It was assumed that there was little carbon in deeper soils and so most studies so far focused only the top 30 centimetres.
"Our study is showing that we are potentially grossly underestimating carbon in soils," Marin-Spiotta added.
The soil studied by Marin-Spiotta and her colleagues, known as the Brady soil, formed between 15,000 and 13,500 years ago in what is now Nebraska, Kansas and other parts of the Great Plains.
It lies up to six-and-a-half metres below the present-day surface and was buried by a vast accumulation of windborne dust known as loess beginning about 10,000 years ago, when the glaciers that covered much of North America began to retreat.
The study appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience.
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A Climate Plan with Teeth
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-obama-a-climate-pl... -
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Crops and climate change:
Plant quality declines as CO2 levels rise
AbstractThere is concern that crop plants are becoming less nutritious as the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increase.
http://elifesciences.org/content/3/e03233 -
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Climate Engineering Can’t Erase Climate Change
reducing emissions, through some combination of switching away from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and changing human behaviour, is still the most effective way of confronting climate change
climate engineering strategies are less appealing, such as fertilizing the ocean with iron to absorb carbon dioxide or reducing global warming by injecting particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight.- Frontiers in Ecology and Environment
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Delhi residents favour environment over development: Survey
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/developmental-i...Wow! Just after debating the problem with climate science deniers, what a relief to hear this! Indians understand the problem much better than most of the Americans. We are definitely more science -friendly than developed countries!
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How Earth avoided global warming, last time around
Geochemists have calculated a huge rise in atmospheric CO2 was only avoided by the formation of a vast mountain range in the middle of the ancient supercontinent, Pangea. This work is being presented to the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Sacramento, California. Around 300 million years ago, plate tectonics caused the continents to aggregate into a giant supercontinent, known as "Pangea." The sheer size of the continent meant that much of the land surface was far from the sea, and so the continent became increasingly arid due to lack of humidity. This aridity meant that rock weathering was reduced; normally, a reduction in rock weathering means that CO2 levels rise, yet in spite of this CO2 levels -- which had been falling prior to the mountain formation- continued to drop, eventually undergoing the most significant drop in atmospheric CO2 of the last 500 million years.
http://www.eag.eu.com/
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/06/12/how.earth.avoided.globa... -
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''Obama says climate change deniers ignoring science''
President Barack Obama said denying climate change is like arguing the moon is made of cheese, as he issued a call to action on global warming to Saturday's graduates of the University of California, Irvine.Obama issued the call to the tens of thousands gathered at Angel Stadium even though he said Congress "is full of folks who stubbornly and automatically reject the scientific evidence" and say climate change is a hoax or fad.
Obama said others duck the question.
"They say, 'Hey, look, I'm not a scientist.' And I'll translate that for you: what that really means is, 'I know that manmade climate change really is happening but if I admit it, I'll be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot,'" he said.
"There's going to be a stubborn status quo and people determined to stymie your efforts to bring about change. There are going to be people who say you can't do something. There are going to be people who say you shouldn't bother trying. I've got some experience with this myself," Obama said."It's pretty rare that you'll encounter somebody who says the problem you're trying to solve simply doesn't exist. When President Kennedy set us on a course to the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it wouldn't be worth it," he continued.
"But nobody ignored the science. I don't remember anybody saying the moon wasn't there or that it was made of cheese," Obama said.
The president said today's young dreamers are fed a steady diet of cynicism but argued they have a right to be optimistic.
http://www.wkrn.com/story/25776344/obama-says-climate-change-denier... -
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