posted May 01, 2005 11:26 PM              

Associated Press
Friday, April 29, 2005; Page A13

NEW YORK, April 28 -- Climate scientists armed with new data from the ocean depths and from space satellites have found that Earth is absorbing much more heat than it is giving off, which they say validates computer projections of global warming.

Lead scientist James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist, described the findings on the out-of-balance energy exchange as a "smoking gun" that should dispel doubts about forecasts of climate change.

Hansen's team, reporting Thursday in the journal Science, said they also determined that global temperatures will rise 1 degree Fahrenheit this century even if greenhouse gases are capped tomorrow.

If carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions instead continue to grow, as expected, things could spin "out of our control," especially as ocean levels rise from melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the researchers said. International experts predict a 10-degree leap in such a worst-case scenario.

The NASA-led researchers were able to measure Earth's energy imbalance because of more precise ocean readings collected by 1,800 technology-packed floats deployed in seas worldwide beginning in 2000, in an international monitoring effort called Argo. Their measurements are supplemented by better satellite gauging of ocean levels, which rise both from meltwater and as the sea warms and expands.

With this data, the scientists calculated the oceans' heat content and the global energy imbalance. They found that for every square meter of surface area, the planet is absorbing almost one watt more of the sun's energy than it is radiating back to space as heat -- a historically large imbalance. Such absorbed energy will steadily warm the atmosphere.

The 0.85-watt figure corresponds well with the energy imbalance predicted by the researchers' supercomputer simulations of climate change, the report said.

Those computer models factor in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, methane and other gases -- produced by automobiles and more esoteric sources, such as pig farms. Those gases keep heat from escaping into space. Significantly, greenhouse emissions have increased at a rate consistent with the detected energy imbalance, the researchers said.

"There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming," said Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University's Earth Institute. "This energy imbalance is the 'smoking gun' that we have been looking for."

Fourteen other specialists from NASA, Columbia and the Energy Department co-authored the study.

posted May 02, 2005 08:28 PM              

*******

Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil.

By Chris Mooney

May/June 2005 Issue

THIRTY YEARS AGO, the notion that corporations ought to sponsor think tanks that directly support their own political goals—rather than merely fund disinterested research—was far more controversial. But then, in 1977, an associate of the AEI (which was founded as a business association in 1943) came to industry’s rescue. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal, the influential neoconservative Irving Kristol memorably counseled that “corporate philanthropy should not be, and cannot be, disinterested,” but should serve as a means “to shape or reshape the climate of public opinion.”

Generally eschewing peer-reviewed journals, these groups make their challenges in far less stringent arenas, such as the media and public forums.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are causing global average temperatures to rise. Conservative think tanks are trying to undermine this conclusion with a disinformation campaign employing “reports” designed to look like a counterbalance to peer-reviewed studies, skeptic propaganda masquerading as journalism, and events like the AEI luncheon that Crichton addressed.

Mother Jones has tallied some 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change or have maintained affiliations with a small group of “skeptic” scientists who continue to do so. Beyond think tanks, the count also includes quasi-journalistic outlets like Tech CentralStation.com (a website providing “news, analysis, research, and commentary” that received $95,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003), a FoxNews.com columnist, and even religious and civil rights groups. In total, these organizations received more than $8 million between 2000 and 2003 (the last year for which records are available; all figures below are for that range unless otherwise noted). ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Lee Raymond serves as vice chairman of the board of trustees for the AEI, which received $960,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. The AEI-Brookings Institution Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, which officially hosted Crichton, received another $55,000.

EXXONMOBIL’S FUNDING OF THINK TANKS hardly compares with its lobbying expenditures—$55 million over the past six years, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And neither figure takes much of a bite out of the company’s net earnings—$25.3 billion last year. Nevertheless, “ideas lobbying” can have a powerful public policy effect.

Industry defenders shelled the study, and, with a dearth of science to marshal to their side, used opinion pieces and press releases instead.

posted May 03, 2005 11:19 PM            

If the Earth is truly warming and it's caused by hydrocarbon fuel use....all those evil SUV drivers, the Chicken Littles among us have yet to tell us why...starting about 25000 years ago, the Earth suddenly started to warm up again. For that matter, they haven't yet told us why the last ice age started to begin with. No doubt, those primitive humans decided to stop spewing CO2 into the atmosphere and destroyed all their SUV's. At the same time, they figured out a way to stop their yaks from farting. Bad move, the Ice Age cameth.

Now, these are temperature charts, the hottest and coldest months for St Petersburg, Florida and New York, New York...a hot climate and a much colder one. Notice the record high and low temperature dispersal's. Notice also that though we are now into the 21st Century, there are no high or low records for any date in this century. Notice the cluster of records in the 1950's for St Petersburg. Good thing the Chicken Littles were not around then or they would have been declaring a world catastrophe then.

All this caterwauling about a projected 1 degree change in the 21st Century.

Edit**Well, the actual charts didn't post but you can hopefully use the links and view the charts.
http://www.weather.com/weather/climatology/USFL0438?climoMonth=1

http://www.weather.com/weather/climatology/USFL0438?climoMonth=7

http://www.weather.com/weather/climatology/USNY0996?climoMonth=1

posted November 25, 2005 04:03 PM              

************

Old bubbles back global warming theory

November 25, 2005

BY LAURAN NEERGAARD

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The drill head and ice core, drilled Nov. 30, 2002, at a research station in Antarctica. The core let scientists study greenhouse gases dating back 650,000 years. (Science magazine via Associated Press)

WASHINGTON -- There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than at any point during the last 650,000 years, says a new study that let scientists peer back in time at greenhouse gases that can help fuel global warming.

By analyzing tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia, a team of European researchers shows how people are dramatically influencing the buildup of these gases.

The research promises to spur "dramatically improved understanding" of climate change, said geosciences specialist Edward Brook of Oregon State University.

The study, by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, will be published today in the journal Science.

Scientists now directly measure levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which accumulate in the atmosphere as a result of fuel-burning and other processes. Those gases help trap solar heat, like the greenhouses for which they are named, resulting in a gradual warming of the planet.

Those measurements are disturbing:

# The levels of carbon dioxide have climbed from 280 parts per million two centuries ago to 380 p.p.m. today.

# The Earth's average temperature, meanwhile, increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit in recent decades, a relatively rapid rise.

Many climate specialists warn that continued warming could have severe impacts, such as rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns.

Skeptics sometimes dismiss the rise in greenhouse gases as part of a naturally fluctuating cycle. The new study provides ever-more definitive evidence countering that view.

Deep Antarctic ice encases tiny air bubbles formed when snowflakes fell over hundreds of thousands of years.

Extracting the air allows a direct measurement of the atmosphere at past points in time, to find the naturally fluctuating range.

A previous ice-core sample had traced greenhouse gases back about 440,000 years. This new sample, from East Antarctica, goes 210,000 years further back in time.

Today's still rising level of carbon dioxide already is 27% higher than its peak during all those millennia, said lead researcher Thomas Stocker of the University of Bern in Switzerland."We are out of that natural range today," he said.

Moreover, that rise is occurring at a speed that "is over a factor of a hundred faster than anything we are seeing in the natural cycles," Stocker added. "It puts the present changes in context."

The team found similar results for methane, another greenhouse gas.

Researchers also compared the gas levels with the Antarctic temperature over that time period, covering eight cycles of alternating glacial or ice ages and warm periods.

They found a stable pattern: Lower levels of gases during cold periods and higher levels during warm periods.

The bottom line: "There's no natural condition that we know about in a really long time where the greenhouse gas levels were anywhere near what they are now. And these studies tell us that there's a strong relationship between temperature and greenhouse gases," said Oregon State's Brook.

[URL=http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051125/NEWS07/511250505/1009/NEWS07]http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051125/NEWS07/511250505/1009/NEWS07[/UR L]

posted December 16, 2005 07:47 PM              

U.K. scientists say 2005 hottest ever

LONDON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- British scientists have calculated 2005 was the warmest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere, at least since records began being kept in the 1860s.

The United Kingdom's Met Office and the University of East Anglia say the data indicate more evidence of human-induced global warming, the BBC reported Friday.

The average temperature during 2005 in the Northern Hemisphere was 0.65 C above the average for 1961-90 -- the baseline against which scientists compare temperatures. The Northern Hemisphere Atlantic Ocean has also been the hottest on record.

"The data also show that the sea surface temperature in the northern hemisphere Atlantic is the highest since 1880," said David Viner, from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

Viner says no measurements of average temperature can be completely accurate and the team's calculations are subject to an error of about 0.1 C, however, the long-term trend is clearly upwards.

"It's simple physics; more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, emissions growing on a global basis and consequently increasing temperatures," Viner told the BBC.

posted December 16, 2005 11:12 PM            

If human activity is responsible for global warming, then what were those animal skin covered early humans doing during the last Ice Age which caused the earth to suddenly start warming, ending the last Ice Age?

Conversely, what caused the last Ice Age to begin in the first place?

Want to take a shot at these questions Petron?

Globaloney & Poppycock
Philip V. Brennan
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
I called it Globaloney, which I thought was a creative way to describe the mass hysteria known as global warming, now commonly referred to as "climate change."

Now Comes Professor David Bellamy (see credentials below) with what I think is a much better and more down-to-earth description that says it all in one simple word: "poppycock"!
Story Continues Below

Writing in Britain's Daily Mail July 9, Dr. Bellamy charges that "the world's politicians and policy makers ... have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement. Humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up.
"They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is their view that prevails.

"As a result of their ignorance, the world's economy may be about to divert billions, nay trillions of pounds, dollars and rubles into solving a problem that actually doesn't exist. The waste of economic resources is incalculable and tragic."

The global warming theory prevails principally because it gives the promoters of this classic example of junk science an opportunity to impose all sorts of restrictions on human activity that will help them accomplish their real goal: a global socialist government.

Think I'm exaggerating? Stop for a moment and take a hard look at those politicians behind the global warming fiction. Begin with the grandfather of the movement, Mikhail Gorbachev, an unrepentant socialist who never gave up on the idea of a world socialist order after socialism wrecked the Soviet Union. Communism having failed, global warming is his new mechanism for achieving his goal.

Among the world leaders lusting after adoption of the Kyoto Treaty - a dandy little mechanism for wrecking free enterprise economies such as our own - are:

France's Jacques Chirac - Socialist

Germany's Gerhard Schroeder - Socialist

Britain's Tony Blair - Socialist

Spain's Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero - Socialist

Etc., etc.

Needless to say, the socialist-minded U.S. media does everything in their power to promote global warming, frequently portraying any soul hardy enough to dispute the theory as an uninformed red state yahoo.

Get the picture?

Once you accept the notions that global warming is real and threatens to barbecue all of us; is a result of the increase in atmospheric levels of CO2; is largely due to us evil old humans burning fossil fuels and cooking on backyard barbecues, you can be convinced that our global big brothers can prevent a catastrophe by imposing all sorts of coercive global rules and regulations.

Needless to say, if mankind is going to take such harsh measures bound to cripple the economies of such outlaw nations as the United States - allegedly the world's worst polluter and burner of fossil fuels and serial practitioner of backyard barbecuing - somebody has to be in charge. And that somebody would in effect have to be equipped with dictatorial powers that would enable him (or her) to impose a lot of laws that would in the end reduce us all to the status of subjects of the new absolute global authority - a status none of us really wants to endure.

So, what's the real deal with global warming?

Wrote Dr. Bellamy: "Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we've had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere - and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist - will blame the weather on global warming.

"But they will be 100 per cent wrong. Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not."

Noting that "a recent scientific paper, rather unenticingly titled 'Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Over the Last Glacial Termination,' ... showed that increases in temperature are responsible for increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around" and he cited a petition "produced by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which has been signed by over 18,000 scientists who are totally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the world's leading industrial nations to cut their production of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels.

"They say: 'Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to experimental knowledge.'"

Note that the study Dr. Bellamy quoted stated that "increases in temperature are responsible for increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around." This is the key to the whole thing.

In a column last February (The Myth of Greenhouse Gases) I cited the book "Not by Fire but by Ice," by Robert W. Felix, who, I wrote, argued persuasively that it is not global warming but ocean warming that is pushing CO2 levels through the roof. Moreover, those skyrocketing levels of CO2 are bringing on a new ice age, which is sitting at our front door right now.

Here's how he puts it: "If today's rising carbon dioxide levels are caused by humans, then what caused the dramatic rise in CO2 levels at the dinosaur extinction?

"Research shows that there was 'a sudden and dramatic rise' in carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere at the dinosaur extinction of 65 million years ago. ... [T]today's rise in CO2 levels can be attributed to our warming oceans. After all, the oceans are known as a carbon dioxide 'sink,' especially when the water is cold.

"But as the water warms up, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere. This happens in much the same way that a warm bottle of home-brewed root beer will release CO2. And if you give that CO2 no way to escape, the bottle will explode. We've got it backwards. We've got cause and effect in reverse. The CO2 is not causing global warming. Instead, our warming oceans are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. It's not global warming, it's ocean warming, and it's leading us into an ice age."

According to Felix, the oceans are warming as the result of widespread underwater volcanic activity, which he thoroughly documents. He adds that "We've forgotten that this isn't the first time our seas have warmed. Sea temperatures also shot upward 10º to 18ºF just prior to the last ice age. As the oceans warmed, evaporation increased. The excess moisture then fell to the ground as giant blizzards, giant storms and floods (Noah's Deluge type floods), and a new ice age began."

And he warns, "The same thing is happening today. Underwater volcanic activity in the Arctic Ocean far stronger than anyone ever imagined!"

In that column I wrote that "the rise of CO2, now about 370 parts per million and rapidly climbing, was being blamed on us evil humans for using fossil fuels, driving SUVs and barbecuing frankfurters on our backyard grills. [The global warming fanatics] ignore the proven fact that over millions of years, every time CO2 levels have risen above 200 parts per million, an ice age has occurred.

"And in past ice ages, we weren't around to cause the levels to rise. Mother Nature did it all on her own, and she doesn't drive an SUV."

Felix has demonstrated convincingly that rising levels of CO2 are the result of ocean warming, not because of human activities, and that high levels of CO2 cause vastly increased precipitation, which results in vastly increased snowfall in moderate temperature zones and in the polar regions, which in turn brings on ice ages.

In short, he has told us the reason why CO2 levels have gone through the roof, what caused those levels to increase and what the result will be.

Wrote Dr. Bellamy, "It has been estimated that the cost of cutting fossil fuel emissions in line with the Kyoto Protocol would be £76 trillion [$1.3 trillion]. Little wonder, then, that world leaders are worried. So should we all be.

"If we signed up to these scaremongers, we could be about to waste a gargantuan amount of money on a problem that doesn't exist - money that could be used in umpteen better ways: fighting world hunger, providing clean water, developing alternative energy sources, improving our environment, creating jobs.

"The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth. It is time the world's leaders, their scientific advisers and many environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact."

Amen.

*Professor David Bellamy OBE, Oxford

posted December 17, 2005 06:30 PM              

these latest findings keep confirming it....

NEVER in recordable geologic history has there been the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere as there is now, nor has there EVER been such a quick spike as in the last couple hundred years..... this is the simple fact you've never disputed..... only the logically impaired person can say thats just a coincidence....

********

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.

Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons). Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the quivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 tonnes/year)!
http://www.sciencemaster.com/jump/earth/gases.php

*****

and yes, its part of the whole theory that this quick rise could trigger a premature ice age.....but thats still a result of artificially induced global warming!!

posted December 17, 2005 07:10 PM              

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 11, 2005; Page A01

MONTREAL, Dec. 10 -- Despite the Bush administration's adamant resistance, nearly every industrialized nation agreed early Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect beginning in 2012.

European delegates said they felt they could go forward on the climate change negotiations because so many Americans, including former President Bill Clinton, ventured to Montreal and urged new binding talks.
(By Ryan Remiorz -- Associated Press)

The outcome of Saturday's negotiations -- which nearly collapsed at the eleventh hour after Russia and the United States raised separate objections -- underscored the promise and limits of international talks aimed at confronting one of the world's most far-reaching problems.

Join The Washington Post's or washingtonpost.com's political staff daily at 11 a.m. ET to talk about the latest political news. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/10/AR2005121001405.html

********

see also...
http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum16/HTML/001592.html

posted December 17, 2005 07:48 PM              

that article you keep posting is based on the July 9, 2004 article by David Bellamy..... the studies ive been posting were released after that.....

the article can be found here....
*****
Global Warming? What a load of poppycock!
GW_David_Bellamy.JPG_1.jpeg (412474 bytes) by Professor David Bellamy
Daily Mail, July 9, 2004
http://www.junkscience.com/july04/Daily_Mail-Bellamy.htm
******

yes thats junkscience.com, the site refered to earlier in this thread...

quote:

---

“Polar Bear Scare on Thin Ice,” blared FoxNews.com columnist Steven Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute ($75,000 from ExxonMobil) who also publishes the website JunkScience.com. Two days later the conservative Washington Times published the same column. Neither outlet disclosed that Milloy, who debunks global warming concerns regularly, runs two organizations that receive money from ExxonMobil. Between 2000 and 2003, the company gave $40,000 to the Advancement of Sound Science Center, which is registered to Milloy’s home address in Potomac, Maryland, according to IRS documents. ExxonMobil gave another $50,000 to the Free Enterprise Action Institute—also registered to Milloy’s residence. Under the auspices of the intriguingly like-named Free Enterprise Education Institute, Milloy publishes CSRWatch.com, a site that attacks the corporate social responsibility movement.

---

posted December 18, 2005 01:54 AM              

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent Sat Dec 17, 5:40 PM ET

NEW YORK - In the high Arctic, deep in the Atlantic, on Africa's sunbaked plains, climate scientists are seeing change unfold before their eyes. In the global councils of power, however, change in climate policy is coming only slowly.
ADVERTISEMENT

In Geneva on Thursday, the
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that 2005 thus far is the second warmest year on record, extending a trend climatologists attribute at least partly to heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" accumulating in the atmosphere.

In New York,
NASA's Goddard Institute projected that 2005 will surpass 1998 to end as the hottest year globally in the 125 years since reliable records have been kept. It said warming has accelerated and is now boosting the mercury every decade by more than 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The observed rapid warming thus gives urgency to discussions about how to slow greenhouse gas emissions," the NASA researchers said.

Five days earlier in Montreal, however, the annual 189-nation U.N. climate conference ended two weeks of such discussions by failing once again to win U.S. commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions — as almost all other industrialized nations are committed to do by 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol.

The Montreal delegates did adopt technical rules for that 1997 agreement, leading Canadian conference president Stephane Dion to declare, "The Kyoto Protocol has been switched on." And the 157 Kyoto Protocol nations agreed to negotiate further emissions reductions for the post-2012 period.

But Kyoto's first-phase, country-by-country targets are modest and may not all be met; there's no guarantee the second-phase negotiations will produce deeper cuts, and the United States, the biggest greenhouse emitter, remains an outsider.

Carbon dioxide, most important of six greenhouse gases covered by Kyoto, is a byproduct of automobile engines, power plants and other fossil fuel-burning industries.

The atmosphere now holds more than one-third more carbon dioxide than it did before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, European scientists reported last month that analysis of ice cores from Antarctica shows that today's level is 27 percent higher than any previous peak looking back 650,000 years.

A U.N.-organized network of scientists warns of shifting climate zones, ocean levels rising via heat expansion and glacial melting, and more extreme weather events if emissions are not reined in and average temperatures continue to rise.

Among fresh reports of warming's impact:

_The WMO said Thursday that in the Arctic Sea, where average winter temperatures have risen as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit over 50 years, the ice cap this summer was 20 percent smaller than the 1979-2004 average.

_British oceanographers reported this month that Atlantic currents carrying warm water toward northern Europe have slowed. Freshwater from melting northern ice caps and glaciers is believed interfering with saltwater currents. Ultimately such a change could cool the European climate.

_In southern Africa, beset by four years of drought, average temperatures during the 12-month period ending last July were the warmest on record, British scientists said. The mercury stood more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above a recent 40-year average.

_In Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific, rising seas are forcing hundreds of islanders to abandon vulnerable coastal homes for higher ground, according to U.N. and news reports.

A small, vocal minority of climate skeptics, who long theorized manmade emissions weren't influencing the climate, has grown quieter as evidence of global warming and its effects has mounted.

"In a sense, the burden of proof has shifted from the people who are saying there's a risk, to the skeptics now," Michel Jarraud, WMO secretary-general, said in an interview.

In Montreal, Bush administration envoys, who once cited scientific uncertainty in rejecting the Kyoto pact, focused instead on the argument that emissions controls would damage the U.S. economy.

Largely isolated, the Americans agreed only to joining a nonbinding, exploratory global "dialogue" on future steps to combat warming.

Those who ratified Kyoto, meanwhile, decided a working group should develop proposals for emissions reductions by 35 industrialized nations after the current pact expires in 2012. They didn't agree on a deadline for that work, however, and made little headway on how to draw China, India and other newly industrializing countries into the emissions-control regime.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Associated Press Special Correspondent Charles Hanley has been writing about climate change for a decade. He covered the U.N. climate conference in Montreal last week.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051217/ap_on_sc/warming_impact

posted December 18, 2005 01:58 AM              

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

posted December 18, 2005 02:06 AM              

quote:

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The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience
http://www.grist.org/pdf/AbruptClimateChange2003.pdf
.

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posted December 18, 2005 10:17 AM              

and of course flooding, so, yes all coasts are vulnerable to whatever nature will bring.

posted December 18, 2005 12:07 PM              

Society feels no remorse for ensuring the world's youth are left to clean up our mess

Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 January, 2005, 19:14 GMT
Alarm at new climate warning
By Richard Black
BBC environment correspondent

Temperatures around the world could rise by as much as 11C, according to one of the largest climate prediction projects ever run.

This figure is twice the level that previous studies have suggested.

Scientists behind the project, called climateprediction.net, say it shows that a "safe" upper limit for carbon dioxide is impossible to define.

The results of the study, which used PCs around the world to produce data, are published in the journal Nature.

Climateprediction.net is run from Oxford University, and is a distributed computing project; rather than using a supercomputer to run climate models, people can download software to their own PCs, which run the programs during downtime.

More than 95,000 people have registered, from more than 150 countries; their PCs have between them run more than 60,000 simulations of future climate.

Each PC runs a slightly different computer simulation examining what happens to the global climate if levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere double from pre-industrial levels - which may happen by the middle of the century.

The factors that vary most between the simulations are the precise nature of physical processes, such as the extent of convection within tropical clouds - a process which drives the transport of heat around the world.

Lowest rise

So no two simulations will produce exactly the same results. Overall, the project produces a picture of the possible range of outcomes given the present state of scientific knowledge.

The lowest rise which climateprediction.net finds possible is 2C, ranging up to 11C.

Send us your comments
The timescale would depend on how quickly the doubling of CO2 was reached, but large rises would be on a scale of a century at least from now.

"I think these results suggest that our need to do something about climate change is perhaps even more urgent," the climateprediction.net chief scientist David Stainforth told BBC News.

"However, with our current state of knowledge, we can't yet define a safe level in the atmosphere."

On Monday, the International Climate Change Taskforce, co-chaired by the British MP Stephen Byers, claimed it had shown that a carbon dioxide concentration of over 400 ppm (parts per million) would be "dangerous".

The current concentration is around 378 ppm, rising at roughly 2 ppm per year.

Dangerous warming

Next week, the UK Meteorological Office hosts an international conference, Stabilisation 2005, announced by Tony Blair late last year.

Its aim is to discuss what the term "dangerous" global warming really means, and to look at ways to stabilise greenhouse gas levels.

Myles Allen, the principal investigator of climateprediction.net, said the focus on stabilisation might not be appropriate.

"Stabilisation as an exclusive target may not be adequate," he told BBC News. "Stephen Byers claims to know that 400 ppm is the maximum 'safe' level; what we show is that it may be impossible to pin down a safe level, and therefore we should not focus exclusively on stabilisation."

Distributed computing has been used before, notably by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence or Seti, where several million people have downloaded software enabling them to analyse data from observations of distant stars for signs of alien life.

The scientists behind climateprediction.net believe their project, because it is distributed to individual PCs, can help inform people about climate change - and that, in turn, could bring political change.

"It's very difficult to get politicians to collaborate, not only across the globe but also over sustained lengths of time," Bob Spicer from the Earth Sciences Department at the Open University, told BBC News.

"The people who can hold politicians to account are the public; and with this project we are bringing cutting-edge science to the stakeholders, the public."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4210629.stm