Have a few articles piling up in my inbox so I thought I’d drop them all in one post. First this:
In this article, McKibben lays out 3 fundamental climate numbers: to stay below (1) 2°C of warming (the limit the world’s scientists have said might help us avoid the worst of climate change), we can only burn (2) 565 more gigatons (a billion tons) of carbon dioxide, which will force a battle with the fossil fuel industry since it has (3) 2,795 gigatons in reserve. These are important numbers to wrap your head around, but what do they really mean for countries and companies? How fast do we have to change?
To answer these tough questions, we can turn to two of the world’s best number crunchers, McKinsey and PwC (full disclosure: I have a consulting partnership arrangement with PwC US). Last week PwC released its Low Carbon Economy Index 2012 report, which calculated one simple, powerful number: In order to meet the 2°C warming target, we will need to reduce the global carbon intensity (how much carbon it takes to produce every unit of energy or GDP) by 5.1% every year until 2050. For perspective, in 2011 carbon intensity improved just 0.8%.
Of course the “World’s Scientists” are all the scientists not branded as “Heretics” by mentioning the conspiracy to “Hide the Decline”
The first direct evidence that marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift have occurred over the last 20 years, in response to changing winds, is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. Scientists from NERC’s British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena California explain why, unlike the dramatic losses reported in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change….Lead author, Dr Paul Holland of BAS says: “Until now these changes in ice drift were only speculated upon, using computer models of Antarctic winds. This study of direct satellite observations shows the complexity of climate change. The total Antarctic sea-ice cover is increasing slowly, but individual regions are actually experiencing much larger gains and losses that are almost offsetting each other overall. We now know that these regional changes are caused by changes in the winds, which in turn affect the ice cover through changes in both ice drift and air temperature. The changes in ice drift also suggest large changes in the ocean surrounding Antarctica, which is very sensitive to the cold and salty water produced by sea-ice growth.”
“Sea ice is constantly on the move; around Antarctica the ice is blown away from the continent by strong northward winds. Since 1992 this ice drift has changed. In some areas the export of ice away from Antarctica has doubled, while in others it has decreased significantly.”
During the last few million years, global ice-volume variability has been one of the main feedback mechanisms in climate change, because of the strong reflective properties of large ice sheets. Ice volume changes in ancient times can be reconstructed from sea-level records. However, detailed assessment of the role of ice volume in climate change is hindered by inadequacies in sea-level records and/or their timescales.
Now, for the first time, scientists are able to accurately date continuous sea-level records, to allow detailed comparisons of the ice-volume variability with independently dated ice-core records from Antarctica and Greenland.
Previous studies of the timing of past ice-volume changes relied on the ‘Red Sea relative sea-level (RSL) record’ for reconstruction of highly resolved and continuous records of sea-level variability over the past 500,000 years. The drawback of the RSL method, however, is that it did not have independent age control. This inhibited detailed comparison with other well-dated climate parameters, such as temperature or CO2 records from ice cores.
Again, the Earth’s climate has never been static, but NOW when its changing its OUR FAULT! Also “Global Warming” has gotten so bad its actually getting COLDER! Tithe and REPENT sinners!
h/t Mrs. Weer’d