CLIMATE-CHANGE HAVING BIG EFFECT ON OCEANS

Climate-change caused by greenhouse-gas emissions is rapidly changing the world's oceans by increasing their temperature and acidity, altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation, and having profound effects on ocean life, say scientists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ScienceDaily has a full report.

NASA GETS NUMBERS ON GREENLAND'S MELT

A new NASA study using precise measurements from multiple satellites, reported in ScienceDaily, confirms that the surface temperature of Greenland's massive ice-sheet is rising, stoked by rising air temperatures, and fuelling the loss of the island's ice at the surface and throughout the mass underneath.

SOLAR CELLS CUT POLLUTION 90 PERCENT

This article in Scientific American tells it straight. Even allowing for all the energy needed to make them, and even if that came from burning black stuff, they would still reduce pollution by 90% during their life-cycle if they replaced fossil fuels.

So why, why, why are we not putting production of them on a war-footing, globally, with massive injections of public money?

ZERO CO2 OR TOO HOT FOR 500 YEARS

A peer-reviewed study reported in ScienceDaily
shows that we have to cut our carbon-dioxide emissions to zero to save the planet, and that things have gone so far that even if we did that now, global temperatures would remain high for at least 500 years.

CAN ZIFS CAPTURE ALL THAT CO2?

Does this
Science Daily article on a new family of compounds called ZIFs herald the beginning of a new future, with the threat of global-warming removed, or is it something that only works in the lab or on a small scale? Can we make enough tonnage of ZIFs to capture enough carbon-dioxide to make a difference to the planet?

SPEED OF TIPPING-POINTS ESTIMATED

It has long been known that various climate systems can be tipped suddenly by climate-change from their present state to a very different one. Now a British team has put numbers on some of them. Three hundred years sounds safe for those alive now, assuming that it doesn't come down to within a lifetime as models are refined and more data comes in. But one year, or ten, or fifty? Not fine.

Lowlights in the list that shows how long it would take for them to make a major transition, once tipped:

Dieback of the Amazon rainforest: about 50 years.
Dieback of the Boreal Forest: about 50 years.
Greening of the Sahara/Sahel and disruption of the West African monsoon: about 10 years.
Melting of Arctic sea-ice: about 10 years.
Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon: about 1 year.

The full report is on the BBC. An even fuller report is at Science Daily.