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

Thursday 29 January 2009

STRATOSPHERIC SECRETS DISCOVERED DOWN A MINE

Cosmic-rays detected half a mile underground in a disused US iron-mine can be used to detect major weather events occurring 20 miles up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, a new study has revealed, reports ScienceDaily. The surprise discovery will enable accurate measurements of a part of the atmosphere that till now has been hard to get at (no ladders tall enough).

Tuesday 27 January 2009

GOH IRREVERSIBLE AND OCEAN DEAD-ZONES SOAR

The BBC reports that a team of US environmental scientists says many effects of climate change are irreversible, and that global temperatures could remain high for 1000 years even if carbon emissions can somehow be stopped right now. Their report was sponsored by the US Department of Energy; it appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ScienceDaily reported the same story.

And if global overheating is not stoppped ocean dead-zones will increase tenfold, reports ScienceDaily.

Thursday 22 January 2009

ANTARCTIC IS WARMING NOT COOLING

Sorry, all you oil-washed climate-change sceptics, but new research published on ScienceDaily shows that the Antarctic 'cooling', on which you were pinning a big chunk of your denial, is a myth. It is warming about the same amount as the rest of the planet.

If West Antarctica and Greenland melt the oceans will be 14 metres higher.

Even worse, thousands of scientists are agreed: that the planet is warming, and that it's our fault.

But geologists who work for oil companies are not convinced. They must have inside knowledge denied to ordinary mortals. ;-)))

Monday 19 January 2009

ARCTIC MELTING PREDICTS HIGH SEA-LEVELS

A new report on ScienceDaily says, once again, that the Arctic is heating up faster than other places in the Northern Hemisphere. The US Geological Survey led the new assessment, which is a synthesis of published science literature and authored by a team of climate scientists from academia and government. The US Climate Change Science Program commissioned the report, which has contributions from 37 scientists from the United States, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark.

The new report also makes several conclusions about the Arctic:

The size and speed of the summer sea-ice loss over the last few decades is highly unusual compared to events from previous millennia, especially considering that changes in Earth's orbit over this time have made sea-ice melting less, not more, likely.

The entire Greenland icesheet will vanish if there is sustained warming as little as 2 degrees Celsius above twentieth century values. That would raise sea-levels about 7 metres.

Monday 12 January 2009

OCEANS TO RISE A METRE IN 100 YEARS

After studying the records of sea-level rises in the past instead of computer models, a multinational group of researches are predicting a rise of up to 1.3 metres in 100 years, which is many times what the IPCC's official vew, reports ScienceDaily.

Other scientists have knee-capped the climate-sceptics with research showing that the chances of the rising temperatures in recent years being nothing but statistical chance are the same as their chances of flipping a coin and getting heads fourteen times in a row (ScienceDaily).