Earth on Fire: The Overheating Planet

Earth on Fire: The Overheating Planet

NOTE ON POPULAR POSTS

The reason some popular posts are tagged ‘no title’ is not because they have no title—they all do—but because the old Blogger embedded the title at the top of text, and the new software does not see that. You can see the titles in capitals at the start of each snippet. (It would be nice if Blogger introduced an upgrade program that could fix this little problem.)

Popular Posts

Saturday 22 September 2007

ARCTIC SEA-ICE ON A DEATH-SPIRAL?

Some think so, after it shrank to the smallest area on record this year. The US National Snow & Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) says the minimum extent of 4.13 million square kilometres was well under the previous record low of 5.32 million square kilometres set in 2005. See the BBC report.

But that is hardly surprising, given the temperatures shown at this Website for this August. Look at the hotspot at the top of the world in the ENSO SST Analysis graphic, and look at how far it is above the baseline average. At this rate NOAA-NCDC will have to add a new colour to the right of the scale underneath. Funereal black?

Friday 21 September 2007

CO2 WILL MAKE OCEANS ILLEGAL BY 2050

If carbon-dioxide emissions are not cut drastically, they will have so altered the chemistry of the oceans by the middle of the century that the water-quality criteria set by the US Environmental Protection Agency will have been violated. Not to mention creating a serious risk for what lives in them. Click here for the Science Daily article.

Thursday 20 September 2007

MORE NASTY SNIPPETS FROM GOH RESEARCH

Global-overheating research and news items keep delivering more and more nasty stuff. Here are some more snippets.

Because we are making the planet warmer, the amount of moisture in the atmosphere has increased by 0.41 kilograms per cubic metre per decade since 1988. Details in this report from
Science Daily. A report three weeks later on the BBC's site on an article in Nature underlined the point.

A British-led study has offered the first evidence that climate-change has weakened the Southern Ocean carbon-sink . Click here for details

Then there's this report in
Science Daily to cheer you up, which says that the mortality of plants could increase 40% if land temperatures increase by up to 4 degrees Celsius, which modelling predicts for this century--unless you take the less conservative models which predict far higher rises.

Ex-president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, rightly worries about the world's water-supply. Creatures that are 80% water should. You would think.

Then there's the methane from bogs, which will obviously worsen the feedback-loop.

Meanwhile, over the US of A, a judge washes his hands in front of the world. It's political, not legal, he tells the State of California, dismissing its case against carmakers--see the BBC report. There are none so blind...

Tuesday 18 September 2007

BUSH AIDE SAYS NO SAFE TEMPERATURE RISE

Professor John Marburger, the US chief scientist and an advisor to President Bush, said
in this BBC interview that global-overheating is man-made and that there is no safe temperature increase.

Monday 10 September 2007

GREENLAND ICECAP TREMBLING WITH APPREHENSION

Mini-earthquakes and the acceleration of glaciers on the Greenland icecap are signs that global-overheating is speeding up, reports
Science Daily.

Estimates of the consequent rise in sea-levels by 2100 now range up to 2 metres, far more than the 20-60cm in IPCC's prognosis.

As if that were not bad enough, the Arctic sea-ice is getting thinner and thinner, as this report, also in Science Daily, makes alarmingly clear. Down to a metre, a 50% drop from what it was in 2001.