THE WRITING IS ON THE WALL FOR CARMAKERS
Once upon a time computing was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs--IBM and the seven other mainframe makers, because in those days computers were van-sized mainframes, which only big companies could afford to make and support.
Then in 1967 Victor Poor, Harry Pyle and Jonathan Schmidt designed the first computer on a chip, and got a company called Intel to make it (after first trying Texas Instruments, which decided to pass up the opportunity). In 1971 the company that Poor was part of (Datapoint Corporation) produced the first desktop computer using that chip.
Later, as microprocessors multiplied, many bods saw that they could make computers out of them, and the microcomputer was born. A slew of companies started up, including Apple, Commodore, Atari, Acorn, etc., and grew at speed. Apple was soon the fastest-growing company in history.
The inevitable happened. The mainframe ceased to dominate computing, and apart from antediluvian diehards who have yet to discover the power of the LAN (local area network), it has been relegated to history. The microcomputer, now called the personal computer (very PC), reighs supreme. Even the fastest computer on the planet, IBM's Deep Blue, is a vast collection of microprocessors. So is Google's hardware engine.
Now we see the big carmakers having problems. The biggest, GM is sick unto death, which is appropriate, because they and the other Big Iron prats have made the planet sick ditto with the 900 million vehicles they have infected it with, and to which they add another 60 million a year (latest vehicle statistics from Mercedes-Benz's director of diesel engines, Dr Joachim Schommers). But at the same time small companies are starting up to make electric cars. Why? Because they can, and because people want planet-friendly cars. They can, because making an electric car is far easier than making a mechanical one (and the EStarCar has a dispersed-manufacturing model which underlines the point in neon red). With that staring them in the face, no wonder the answer to the question 'Who Killed the Electric Car' is that it was the desperate lust for survival by GM et alia, an attempt to be King Canute and hold back the inevitable, to keep the mechanical status quo in which only they, the carmaker heavyweights, the Big Iron, could make cars to a price--just as only those dinosaur mainframe-makers could make and support mainframes.
The small electric companies are like the beginnings of the shift to PCs, or the inevitable rise of the brainier, nimbler mammals which followed the demise of the dinosaurs. The problems at GM, Ford and other Big Iron carmakers are the first mortal groans of dinosaurs expiring in the misanthropic swamps of perverted history. Or, for a galactic analogy, they are beginning the whirling move down the Black Plughole from which their is no escape. Good riddance! Sooner or later they will no longer be able to put their wallets ahead of the planet we must all live on.
The latest pathetic attempt of the Big-Iron-&-Black-Stuff boys to cling to their monopoly is to spawn a mule, the horrid 'hybrid,' in which there is no future. Like the flesh-and-blood mule (which the Oxford Dictionary defines as a cross between a he-ass and a mare) it can't have kids. No progeny are possible. It can't start a family. A one-shot generation. And it still burns black stuff...
Meanwhile, the latest preliminary official data comming off the satellites shows that 2006 experienced the second-highest global average temperature for June for the land, and for the land and ocean combined (since 1860); and for the northern hemisphere it was for land the hottest June average on record (since 1860). The earth has a higher, and rising, temperature, but no one is calling the doctor; just keep stuffing more poison down its gullet and hope for the best.
Wednesday, 19 July 2006
Thursday, 13 July 2006
ARE YOU PEOPLE-HATING POLITICIANS LISTENING?
When an international survey of 19,500 people shows that 80% are very concerned about how energy is produced and consumed, and the same percentage thinks there should be tax-incentives to encourage wind and solar energy, you could hope that one or two of the hordes of people-hating, self-loving politicians might spare a nanosecond to shut their puffery and get themselves into action for the health of the planet and its inhabitants. Click here for the BBC World Service story.
When an international survey of 19,500 people shows that 80% are very concerned about how energy is produced and consumed, and the same percentage thinks there should be tax-incentives to encourage wind and solar energy, you could hope that one or two of the hordes of people-hating, self-loving politicians might spare a nanosecond to shut their puffery and get themselves into action for the health of the planet and its inhabitants. Click here for the BBC World Service story.
Friday, 7 July 2006
ONLY BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS AND SWEAT
Rarely do we get a government leader who will promise us nothing but hard times. Politicians never would, even if that was all there was to promise, because they are only in the business of pretending that things will get better. 'If you vote for us, only if you vote for us, everything will be wunnerful. Read my lips.' It is only statesmen, such as Winston Churchill, the pre-eminent statesman of the twentieth century, who are brave enough to face an unpalatable truth and can inspire us to join them and face it together.
That is what we need now. Instead we have contemptible, brain-damaged politicians (who are nothing more than bureaucrats that make speeches), who will never face up to the mess the planet is in from the universal addiction to smoking fossil fuels. That requires draconian action; that requires getting off our deluded chuffs and getting rid of bad technologies; that requires dumping and outlawing fossil-fuel vehicles ASAP; that requires dumping and outlawing inefficient lighting systems; that requires outlawing companies that make planet-destroying products and sending their principals to jail. All that has to be done at high speed, so we should declare the next five years the period in which we will fix this mess as much as it can be fixed, and put the world on a war footing to achieve it.
But that won't happen. Because we are too stupid to give up burning the black stuff, and we underline that by being so inordinately stupid as to keep voting for people who have been genetically modified with the genes of a brick. They will never lift a finger while the planet goes to hell in a hand-basket.
(That was very unfair to bricks, because that GM process degraded their IQ and visionary capacity several orders of magnitude. The process was also a waste of time, because it had no measurable effect on politicians; for even though the brick genes doubled their IQs they still remained below the level of epsilon semi-morons.)
Only blood, toil, tears and sweat would avert the worst of the global catastrophe that is heading our way. We cannot live the life of Riley and fix a colossal mess at the same time.
Post-posting Footnote: After this blog was written the BBC World Service published this, and this, which are the views of James Lovelock and what came out of a recent BBC panel discussion by other scientists on his latest book.
Rarely do we get a government leader who will promise us nothing but hard times. Politicians never would, even if that was all there was to promise, because they are only in the business of pretending that things will get better. 'If you vote for us, only if you vote for us, everything will be wunnerful. Read my lips.' It is only statesmen, such as Winston Churchill, the pre-eminent statesman of the twentieth century, who are brave enough to face an unpalatable truth and can inspire us to join them and face it together.
That is what we need now. Instead we have contemptible, brain-damaged politicians (who are nothing more than bureaucrats that make speeches), who will never face up to the mess the planet is in from the universal addiction to smoking fossil fuels. That requires draconian action; that requires getting off our deluded chuffs and getting rid of bad technologies; that requires dumping and outlawing fossil-fuel vehicles ASAP; that requires dumping and outlawing inefficient lighting systems; that requires outlawing companies that make planet-destroying products and sending their principals to jail. All that has to be done at high speed, so we should declare the next five years the period in which we will fix this mess as much as it can be fixed, and put the world on a war footing to achieve it.
But that won't happen. Because we are too stupid to give up burning the black stuff, and we underline that by being so inordinately stupid as to keep voting for people who have been genetically modified with the genes of a brick. They will never lift a finger while the planet goes to hell in a hand-basket.
(That was very unfair to bricks, because that GM process degraded their IQ and visionary capacity several orders of magnitude. The process was also a waste of time, because it had no measurable effect on politicians; for even though the brick genes doubled their IQs they still remained below the level of epsilon semi-morons.)
Only blood, toil, tears and sweat would avert the worst of the global catastrophe that is heading our way. We cannot live the life of Riley and fix a colossal mess at the same time.
Post-posting Footnote: After this blog was written the BBC World Service published this, and this, which are the views of James Lovelock and what came out of a recent BBC panel discussion by other scientists on his latest book.
Friday, 16 June 2006
45MM MORE OCEAN SINCE 1992
Buried in this article on BBC News is an astounding figure from the latest satellite data. The world's oceans are 45mm higher than they were in 1992 (1.77 inches for those who are metrically challenged), a gain of 3.2mm per year. That is a colossal amount of water. And the rate of increase is known to be increasing. Yet they still want to rebuild New Orleans...
Buried in this article on BBC News is an astounding figure from the latest satellite data. The world's oceans are 45mm higher than they were in 1992 (1.77 inches for those who are metrically challenged), a gain of 3.2mm per year. That is a colossal amount of water. And the rate of increase is known to be increasing. Yet they still want to rebuild New Orleans...
Monday, 29 May 2006
GLOBAL-OVERHEATING DATA FAR WORSE
This blog has predicted at times that higher predictions for global-overheating would be coming at us, and that they would be much higher than the official nonsense coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and various 'scientific' head-in-the-sand optimists.
And come they have, this time not from computer models, but studies by different teams of different sets of historical data. The results, summarised in this BBC News page show that we can expect a rise of at very least 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, probably at least 7.7 degrees, or much more. That means the worst scenarios predicted by the distributed-computer modelling, which have also been referred to before in this blog, are most likely to hit us (see NewScientist, or here, copied from the Independent), which show temperature rises of up to 14 degrees in the Amazon, perhaps 20 degrees in the UK, and a global average rise of up to 11.5 degrees. The climate on this planet is going to go pear-shaped in the nastiest way, and still no one wants to DO ANYTHING.
In the same group of news pages the BBC also reports a study showing that the populations of migratory birds are plummeting, and have been for thirty years. But no one noticed till now. Are these more 'canaries' going down the world's coal-mines? Are these birds yet another vanguard suffering the consequences of the chronic insanity of burning black stuff?
Whatever the truth of that, and if it is just coincidence the odds against it must be high (and we can certainly blame human activity of some sort), the fact remains that global overheating predictions are inching towards the worst-case scenario predicted by the extreme computer modelling such as that cited above--which is no surprise because it fits the way the actual readings are tracking.
For New Zealand, which now has an annual mean temperature of 13.1 degrees Celsius, that would mean a virtual doubling of temperatures. A balmy 20-degrees in the shade would on simple arithmetic become a torrid 40 degrees. A hot 30 would become--who knows--60 degrees? It does not bear thinking about. If so, it would exceed the world record temperature of 57.8 in the shade set at Al Aziziyah, Libya in September 1922. An average in the mid twenties for New Zealand would not be nearly as bad as the world's present worst annual mean of 34.4 degrees in Dalol, Ethiopia, but it would be plenty hot enough. In some ways it would be worse, because it would be a more humid heat in a country surrounded by oceans.
There would be no snow on New Zealand mountains, so precipitation would fall as rain, causing horrendous floods in winter; and there would be no snow-melt in spring and summer, causing dire droughts.
This blog has predicted at times that higher predictions for global-overheating would be coming at us, and that they would be much higher than the official nonsense coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and various 'scientific' head-in-the-sand optimists.
And come they have, this time not from computer models, but studies by different teams of different sets of historical data. The results, summarised in this BBC News page show that we can expect a rise of at very least 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100, probably at least 7.7 degrees, or much more. That means the worst scenarios predicted by the distributed-computer modelling, which have also been referred to before in this blog, are most likely to hit us (see NewScientist, or here, copied from the Independent), which show temperature rises of up to 14 degrees in the Amazon, perhaps 20 degrees in the UK, and a global average rise of up to 11.5 degrees. The climate on this planet is going to go pear-shaped in the nastiest way, and still no one wants to DO ANYTHING.
In the same group of news pages the BBC also reports a study showing that the populations of migratory birds are plummeting, and have been for thirty years. But no one noticed till now. Are these more 'canaries' going down the world's coal-mines? Are these birds yet another vanguard suffering the consequences of the chronic insanity of burning black stuff?
Whatever the truth of that, and if it is just coincidence the odds against it must be high (and we can certainly blame human activity of some sort), the fact remains that global overheating predictions are inching towards the worst-case scenario predicted by the extreme computer modelling such as that cited above--which is no surprise because it fits the way the actual readings are tracking.
For New Zealand, which now has an annual mean temperature of 13.1 degrees Celsius, that would mean a virtual doubling of temperatures. A balmy 20-degrees in the shade would on simple arithmetic become a torrid 40 degrees. A hot 30 would become--who knows--60 degrees? It does not bear thinking about. If so, it would exceed the world record temperature of 57.8 in the shade set at Al Aziziyah, Libya in September 1922. An average in the mid twenties for New Zealand would not be nearly as bad as the world's present worst annual mean of 34.4 degrees in Dalol, Ethiopia, but it would be plenty hot enough. In some ways it would be worse, because it would be a more humid heat in a country surrounded by oceans.
There would be no snow on New Zealand mountains, so precipitation would fall as rain, causing horrendous floods in winter; and there would be no snow-melt in spring and summer, causing dire droughts.
Monday, 22 May 2006
WHY CHOOSE POLITICIANS THIS WAY?
When selecting managers, well-run organisations sort the competent from the incompetent with the help of psychological tests. But members of parliament are chosen by political committees, who seem to care little for quality, so we end up with a steady stream of political lickeys, hubristic dimwits, bureaucratic thugs, sideshow clowns, borderline criminals, dysfunctional weirdoes, hyberbolic control-freaks and other sad samples of the internally mangled and decayed. When such people are just citizens amongst New Zealand‘s four million they can be tolerated as nothing but a few twisted threads in the great Kiwi tapestry. But when they are a hefty part of the gang of 120 that decides how the rest of us shall live it matters very, very much--especially if the Prime Minister is a prime example of the mangled and decayed, and thus promotes and perpetuates her own kind.
Selection committees should, by law, be let loose only after hopefuls have been filtered through deep-delving psychological tests. Then we would have some chance of getting quality managers for the country, instead of finding ourselves forced into moulds beamed down from the fringes of the universe, even to the extent of having our un-PC bits sawn off bloodily by orchestrated social-engineering.
In particular, people with low self-esteem should be blocked not only from becoming MPs but also from being their advisors and staff, because it is a well-established scientific fact that such people tend to act out in ways that are not in their best interests or the best interests of society. That is precisely the kind we should not allow in any corridors of power. Otherwise we drift into La La Land.
The problem, of course, that the present degraded New Zealand Parliament would never pass such a law, because it would create a bar that many or most or all of them could not clear.
But what point is there in living in the most scientific age there has ever been if we do not use good science to help select the best people for our rulers and their advisors?
No wonder all we have for governments, in New Zealand and elsewhere, are the creeping tentacles of The House of Circumlocution. All run-around and no good doings. Particularly on that small but important matter of the only planet that we can live on in the entire universe...
When selecting managers, well-run organisations sort the competent from the incompetent with the help of psychological tests. But members of parliament are chosen by political committees, who seem to care little for quality, so we end up with a steady stream of political lickeys, hubristic dimwits, bureaucratic thugs, sideshow clowns, borderline criminals, dysfunctional weirdoes, hyberbolic control-freaks and other sad samples of the internally mangled and decayed. When such people are just citizens amongst New Zealand‘s four million they can be tolerated as nothing but a few twisted threads in the great Kiwi tapestry. But when they are a hefty part of the gang of 120 that decides how the rest of us shall live it matters very, very much--especially if the Prime Minister is a prime example of the mangled and decayed, and thus promotes and perpetuates her own kind.
Selection committees should, by law, be let loose only after hopefuls have been filtered through deep-delving psychological tests. Then we would have some chance of getting quality managers for the country, instead of finding ourselves forced into moulds beamed down from the fringes of the universe, even to the extent of having our un-PC bits sawn off bloodily by orchestrated social-engineering.
In particular, people with low self-esteem should be blocked not only from becoming MPs but also from being their advisors and staff, because it is a well-established scientific fact that such people tend to act out in ways that are not in their best interests or the best interests of society. That is precisely the kind we should not allow in any corridors of power. Otherwise we drift into La La Land.
The problem, of course, that the present degraded New Zealand Parliament would never pass such a law, because it would create a bar that many or most or all of them could not clear.
But what point is there in living in the most scientific age there has ever been if we do not use good science to help select the best people for our rulers and their advisors?
No wonder all we have for governments, in New Zealand and elsewhere, are the creeping tentacles of The House of Circumlocution. All run-around and no good doings. Particularly on that small but important matter of the only planet that we can live on in the entire universe...
Tuesday, 16 May 2006
CORAL COOKED TO DEATH BY GLOBAL-OVERHEATING
Over 90% of the coral round the Seychelles has been wiped out by global-overheating, leaving nothing but kilometres of slimy rubble a recent study reports. See the newspaper article, or the BBC News item on the same study. The latter ends with a chilling statistic: coral supports 25% of all the marine species known.
Over 90% of the coral round the Seychelles has been wiped out by global-overheating, leaving nothing but kilometres of slimy rubble a recent study reports. See the newspaper article, or the BBC News item on the same study. The latter ends with a chilling statistic: coral supports 25% of all the marine species known.
Friday, 5 May 2006
CLIMATE-CHANGE DATA 'OVERWHELMING'
An article based on leaked copy of a draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report not meant to be published till next year (good grief!--why on earth wait?), says there is now overwhelming evidence that the earth's climate is undergoing dramatic transformation because of human activity.
It predicts an increase in the average global temperature of 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius this century as a result of the doubling of carbon-dioxide level caused by man-made emissions. But it says those temperatures could increase by a further 1.5 degrees as a result of the positive feedback from the melting of sea-ice, the thawing of permafrost and the acidification of the oceans. So we could easily get 6 degrees. That is catastrophic.
In short the situation is far worse than has been officially admitted till now, because the real figures are higher than had been previously admitted. But watch that space. The figures will get worse and the official reports will get worse, because the ghastly real truth, the real increase, has yet to emerge. That is partly because in this, the biggest unplanned uncontrolled experiment ever done on earth no one knows exactly how bad the result will be, and partly because no one in power wants to admit just how much they have let things get fouled things up--just how much everyone addicted to black stuff has fouled things up. But remember, some computer models have predicted an increase of 10 to 14 degrees.
Why no one wants to do anything drastic about this drastic situation is a mystery. Some indication of why is in the newspaper linked to in the first paragraph above. Did it lead with this catastrophic story? No, it led with a story about some piffling Cabinet paper that was leaked to Telecom NZ informing it, before Cabinet had signed it off, that telecommunications were going to be restructured and it would lose its monopoly over the local loop. Big deal! Telecom NZ, better called Telecom Rex, or T Rex for short, has had it coming for years. Its fate does not matter a jot. The planet's matters terribly.
An article based on leaked copy of a draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report not meant to be published till next year (good grief!--why on earth wait?), says there is now overwhelming evidence that the earth's climate is undergoing dramatic transformation because of human activity.
It predicts an increase in the average global temperature of 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius this century as a result of the doubling of carbon-dioxide level caused by man-made emissions. But it says those temperatures could increase by a further 1.5 degrees as a result of the positive feedback from the melting of sea-ice, the thawing of permafrost and the acidification of the oceans. So we could easily get 6 degrees. That is catastrophic.
In short the situation is far worse than has been officially admitted till now, because the real figures are higher than had been previously admitted. But watch that space. The figures will get worse and the official reports will get worse, because the ghastly real truth, the real increase, has yet to emerge. That is partly because in this, the biggest unplanned uncontrolled experiment ever done on earth no one knows exactly how bad the result will be, and partly because no one in power wants to admit just how much they have let things get fouled things up--just how much everyone addicted to black stuff has fouled things up. But remember, some computer models have predicted an increase of 10 to 14 degrees.
Why no one wants to do anything drastic about this drastic situation is a mystery. Some indication of why is in the newspaper linked to in the first paragraph above. Did it lead with this catastrophic story? No, it led with a story about some piffling Cabinet paper that was leaked to Telecom NZ informing it, before Cabinet had signed it off, that telecommunications were going to be restructured and it would lose its monopoly over the local loop. Big deal! Telecom NZ, better called Telecom Rex, or T Rex for short, has had it coming for years. Its fate does not matter a jot. The planet's matters terribly.
Wednesday, 26 April 2006
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PUBLISHES MAP TO GLOBAL RUIN
A graph on page 62 of the April issue of the National Geographic magazine shows global carbon-dioxide emissions from the production of electricity from 1971 to the present, and projects them to 2030. In 1971 the emissions were 4 billion tonnes. Now they are 9.9 billion. In 2030 they are expected to be 16.8 billion. Coal, the worst offender, is expected to carry on being the biggest source of generation energy--in spite of its ruinous effect on the planet. Every kWh generated from the burning of coal puts another 265-360 grams of carbon-dioxide into the only atmosphere we can live in in the entire universe. Natural gas, which is second to coal in electricity generation, puts out 125-180g per kWh. Oil puts 220-250g.
We never learn. We never, ever learn. We never, ever learn.
In Tilden Town, when the stars fell down,
The folk did not remark.
They went their round with eyes aground,
Though nights were twice as dark.
Meanwhile, as the price of oil soars, the 775 million car-owners, who obviously care nothing for the fact that they are all participating in the trashing of the planet, are worried only about how much it will cost them at the pumps to do it...
And Monica, a Category 5 tropical cyclone (a hurricane/typhoon by another name) north of Australia, packed winds of up to 350kph (217mph) at what the Australian Met Office called its 'VERY DESTRUCTIVE core' (its capitalisation). The Daily Telegraph headlined it as perhaps the biggest storm ever recorded. Hardly surprising. The power of tropical storms comes from the temperature and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, and the hotter it gets, the more water vapour there is. Monica is just another playing of the overture to a long-running opera that will bring us scenes of terrifying power.
A graph on page 62 of the April issue of the National Geographic magazine shows global carbon-dioxide emissions from the production of electricity from 1971 to the present, and projects them to 2030. In 1971 the emissions were 4 billion tonnes. Now they are 9.9 billion. In 2030 they are expected to be 16.8 billion. Coal, the worst offender, is expected to carry on being the biggest source of generation energy--in spite of its ruinous effect on the planet. Every kWh generated from the burning of coal puts another 265-360 grams of carbon-dioxide into the only atmosphere we can live in in the entire universe. Natural gas, which is second to coal in electricity generation, puts out 125-180g per kWh. Oil puts 220-250g.
We never learn. We never, ever learn. We never, ever learn.
In Tilden Town, when the stars fell down,
The folk did not remark.
They went their round with eyes aground,
Though nights were twice as dark.
Meanwhile, as the price of oil soars, the 775 million car-owners, who obviously care nothing for the fact that they are all participating in the trashing of the planet, are worried only about how much it will cost them at the pumps to do it...
And Monica, a Category 5 tropical cyclone (a hurricane/typhoon by another name) north of Australia, packed winds of up to 350kph (217mph) at what the Australian Met Office called its 'VERY DESTRUCTIVE core' (its capitalisation). The Daily Telegraph headlined it as perhaps the biggest storm ever recorded. Hardly surprising. The power of tropical storms comes from the temperature and the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, and the hotter it gets, the more water vapour there is. Monica is just another playing of the overture to a long-running opera that will bring us scenes of terrifying power.
Saturday, 22 April 2006
ADDICTED TO OIL? NO, TO THE BRRRM-BRRRM
The most important part of the brain is the emotional centre, because that is where decision-making begins. Thus forming emotional attachments to inappropriate things is at best unwise and at worst dangerous, because the brain alters the neural wiring that relates to those things; then we become incapable of making good, rational decisions about them. We can no longer make decisions in our own best interests or in the best interests of the society we live in.
That is how things are with cars powered by fossil fuels. People are addicted to them--in particular to the sound they make. They are addicted to that brrrm-brrrm. They love the feeling of power when they flick the foot and a roar erupts from under the bonnet. They love to make that racket. They do not feel complete without it. Their addiction has modified their brains, literally damaged them, so they have become incapable of making rational decisions about cars, decisions in their own best interests or the best interests of society. They blithely carry on living in a way that guarantees them and their children a degraded, even fatal, future. They are like heavy-metal headbangers, who cannot give up their rowdy insanity because it has become necessary to their distorted being.
So kiss goodbye to the best we shall ever see of planet Earth. It went down the black brrrm-brrrm tubes of 775 million car-exhausts, carelessly flicked down by 775 million roar-addicted feet.
The most important part of the brain is the emotional centre, because that is where decision-making begins. Thus forming emotional attachments to inappropriate things is at best unwise and at worst dangerous, because the brain alters the neural wiring that relates to those things; then we become incapable of making good, rational decisions about them. We can no longer make decisions in our own best interests or in the best interests of the society we live in.
That is how things are with cars powered by fossil fuels. People are addicted to them--in particular to the sound they make. They are addicted to that brrrm-brrrm. They love the feeling of power when they flick the foot and a roar erupts from under the bonnet. They love to make that racket. They do not feel complete without it. Their addiction has modified their brains, literally damaged them, so they have become incapable of making rational decisions about cars, decisions in their own best interests or the best interests of society. They blithely carry on living in a way that guarantees them and their children a degraded, even fatal, future. They are like heavy-metal headbangers, who cannot give up their rowdy insanity because it has become necessary to their distorted being.
So kiss goodbye to the best we shall ever see of planet Earth. It went down the black brrrm-brrrm tubes of 775 million car-exhausts, carelessly flicked down by 775 million roar-addicted feet.
Monday, 17 April 2006
ANTARCTIC HEATING MUCH FASTER THAN PREDICTED
An item on BBC Newsis yet more evidence that we are for it--that the consequences of global overheating will be far worse than suggested by the reassuring offical noises coming from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The air over the Antarctic has risen a massive 2.5 degrees Celsius in the last fifty years, a rise that the computer modelling did not foresee because it uses a simplified model of the Antarctic's complexities. But it has long been plain that the predictions based on computer modelling are conservative. Indeed, those who do the modelling say that they take the middle line through the results. What they publish is not the worst scenario predicted, nor the best. The middle. But the actual readings are tracking along the top.
Now this latest study, using real readings from all over the Antarctic, underlines the point. And the matter is serious. If we lost all the ice in the Antarctic the oceans would be 60 metres higher.
But it should be no surprise that the Antarctic is heating up much faster than most of the rest of the planet. At the other end of the earth the Arctic is doing likewise, and it is agreed that that is due to human activity--burning the black stuff. So to suggest that the Antarctic's rise could be a natural phenomenon is just sticking the scientific head into the Arabian sands, the Canadian tar sands, the nearest coal mine...
Another recent item on BBC News quoted Britain's Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King, as saying that we are in for a rise of at least 3 degrees Celsius this century, and that that would put 400 million people at risk of starvation, up to 3 billion at risk of running out of water, and threaten forests all over the place. Curiously, before this blog could react with a posting, the page was revamped and all that bad news, except for the 3 degrees, was deleted. Very curious. But, as the old saying has it, truth will out. The full horror will come, ultimately, from official mouths. When, of course, it is many decades too late to do even a blind bit about it.
Sir David's expectation that we will reach 500 parts per million of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere should be enough to scare everyone. That is twice the 280ppm we had before we started burning solid black stuff (coal) in 1795, and way above the 380ppm we have got to now by adding liquid black stuff (oil). And at that level, said a high-powered scientific convention in London at the start of 2005, there was no safe increase. 380ppm is already monumentally insane: unadulterated, unstoppable global vandalism. So what do you call 120ppm past the point of no safe increase. What word is there for beyond insanity?
To say that 500ppm will bring an increase of only 3 degrees Celsius on average over the whole planet is beyond optimism. As this blog has already pointed out, the paleoclimatologists say that last time we had 380ppm the temperature was 6 degrees higher. The masking effect of solar-dimming and hysteresis have kept that to 0.6 degrees, so the worst scenarios of computer modelling--of 10 degrees of more--look a serious prospect. That means the meltdown of polar and glacial ice will be much faster than the optimists like to think.
An item on BBC Newsis yet more evidence that we are for it--that the consequences of global overheating will be far worse than suggested by the reassuring offical noises coming from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The air over the Antarctic has risen a massive 2.5 degrees Celsius in the last fifty years, a rise that the computer modelling did not foresee because it uses a simplified model of the Antarctic's complexities. But it has long been plain that the predictions based on computer modelling are conservative. Indeed, those who do the modelling say that they take the middle line through the results. What they publish is not the worst scenario predicted, nor the best. The middle. But the actual readings are tracking along the top.
Now this latest study, using real readings from all over the Antarctic, underlines the point. And the matter is serious. If we lost all the ice in the Antarctic the oceans would be 60 metres higher.
But it should be no surprise that the Antarctic is heating up much faster than most of the rest of the planet. At the other end of the earth the Arctic is doing likewise, and it is agreed that that is due to human activity--burning the black stuff. So to suggest that the Antarctic's rise could be a natural phenomenon is just sticking the scientific head into the Arabian sands, the Canadian tar sands, the nearest coal mine...
Another recent item on BBC News quoted Britain's Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King, as saying that we are in for a rise of at least 3 degrees Celsius this century, and that that would put 400 million people at risk of starvation, up to 3 billion at risk of running out of water, and threaten forests all over the place. Curiously, before this blog could react with a posting, the page was revamped and all that bad news, except for the 3 degrees, was deleted. Very curious. But, as the old saying has it, truth will out. The full horror will come, ultimately, from official mouths. When, of course, it is many decades too late to do even a blind bit about it.
Sir David's expectation that we will reach 500 parts per million of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere should be enough to scare everyone. That is twice the 280ppm we had before we started burning solid black stuff (coal) in 1795, and way above the 380ppm we have got to now by adding liquid black stuff (oil). And at that level, said a high-powered scientific convention in London at the start of 2005, there was no safe increase. 380ppm is already monumentally insane: unadulterated, unstoppable global vandalism. So what do you call 120ppm past the point of no safe increase. What word is there for beyond insanity?
To say that 500ppm will bring an increase of only 3 degrees Celsius on average over the whole planet is beyond optimism. As this blog has already pointed out, the paleoclimatologists say that last time we had 380ppm the temperature was 6 degrees higher. The masking effect of solar-dimming and hysteresis have kept that to 0.6 degrees, so the worst scenarios of computer modelling--of 10 degrees of more--look a serious prospect. That means the meltdown of polar and glacial ice will be much faster than the optimists like to think.
Monday, 10 April 2006
NOW THE TRUTH ABOUT GLOBAL-OVERHEATING IS COMING OUT
At last! The true horror of global overheating is starting to come into the general media. This item in BBC News underlines the fact that we are well past the point of no return, and that things are far worse than officialdom (officialdumb?) and governments and the UN are admitting or willing to take into account.
That has been obvious for a long time, ever since, for example, paleoclimatologists said they could not understand why there was only a rise of 0.6 degrees Celsius in the average global temperature in the twentieth century, because the last time there was the same amount of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere it was 6 degrees hotter. Now we know the reason (apart from the normal inertia inherent in change): solar dimming, which slowed the overheating. But if we leave the filth we suffer or die from pollution, then suffer or die from climate-change; if we clean it up we suffer or die from climate-change a bit sooner. A two-edged sword. One we forged. Well done us!
Now all our vultures are coming home to roost.
At last! The true horror of global overheating is starting to come into the general media. This item in BBC News underlines the fact that we are well past the point of no return, and that things are far worse than officialdom (officialdumb?) and governments and the UN are admitting or willing to take into account.
That has been obvious for a long time, ever since, for example, paleoclimatologists said they could not understand why there was only a rise of 0.6 degrees Celsius in the average global temperature in the twentieth century, because the last time there was the same amount of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere it was 6 degrees hotter. Now we know the reason (apart from the normal inertia inherent in change): solar dimming, which slowed the overheating. But if we leave the filth we suffer or die from pollution, then suffer or die from climate-change; if we clean it up we suffer or die from climate-change a bit sooner. A two-edged sword. One we forged. Well done us!
Now all our vultures are coming home to roost.
Thursday, 30 March 2006
THE REAL CAUSE OF GLOBAL OVERHEATING
Under the heading of global overheating, as in so many things, governments are a bunch of do-nothing prats, fiddling while the planet goes to hell in a hand-basket. Why? For the answer, go look in the mirror, go look in the street. You and people like you vote the damn fools in.
Goverments do nothing because they know that the people who voted for them do not want anything done. If they ever think of doing anything they quickly pass on to another thought, because what really needs to be done is to ban the use of fossil fuels and all the devices and machines that run on them, arrest the CEOs of the companies that peddle all that stuff and lock them up for committing massive crimes against humanity. But the majority of people do not want that. They want to keep living as they have always lived--the global-overheating way. So the governments they vote for act accordingly.
Today, in one of those interesting discussions that can arise in bus-stops on this island, an elderly woman came out with a brilliantly simple idea. She said she had often thought that voting papers in democracies should have an extra box for people who want to exercise their right and duty to vote but want to express their dissatisfaction with everything on offer--for all the people who want to say 'I do not agree with what is being done or proposed, I do not want what is being done or proposed.' The election result, if that option got a majority, would be a revolution. Revolution by ballot. No bloodshed, no guns, no guillotine. Democratic revolution.
The politicians, of course, would never allow such a simple, wonderful system. They have no wish to find out that we loathe their guts, that we only vote for them because they seem marginally less likely than the other lot to do us harm, and that we are therefore not voting for them, just against what seems an even greater evil.
Footnote: Aha! Thailand already has an abstention/protest box on the ballot papers. And it seems that if that box gets the majority in any electorate no one wins that seat. And the Thai constitution says that all the seats in parliament must be filled before a government can be formed. so the protest vote has enormous power. What a wonderful system! May the whole world adopt it! Real democracy :-))
Under the heading of global overheating, as in so many things, governments are a bunch of do-nothing prats, fiddling while the planet goes to hell in a hand-basket. Why? For the answer, go look in the mirror, go look in the street. You and people like you vote the damn fools in.
Goverments do nothing because they know that the people who voted for them do not want anything done. If they ever think of doing anything they quickly pass on to another thought, because what really needs to be done is to ban the use of fossil fuels and all the devices and machines that run on them, arrest the CEOs of the companies that peddle all that stuff and lock them up for committing massive crimes against humanity. But the majority of people do not want that. They want to keep living as they have always lived--the global-overheating way. So the governments they vote for act accordingly.
Today, in one of those interesting discussions that can arise in bus-stops on this island, an elderly woman came out with a brilliantly simple idea. She said she had often thought that voting papers in democracies should have an extra box for people who want to exercise their right and duty to vote but want to express their dissatisfaction with everything on offer--for all the people who want to say 'I do not agree with what is being done or proposed, I do not want what is being done or proposed.' The election result, if that option got a majority, would be a revolution. Revolution by ballot. No bloodshed, no guns, no guillotine. Democratic revolution.
The politicians, of course, would never allow such a simple, wonderful system. They have no wish to find out that we loathe their guts, that we only vote for them because they seem marginally less likely than the other lot to do us harm, and that we are therefore not voting for them, just against what seems an even greater evil.
Footnote: Aha! Thailand already has an abstention/protest box on the ballot papers. And it seems that if that box gets the majority in any electorate no one wins that seat. And the Thai constitution says that all the seats in parliament must be filled before a government can be formed. so the protest vote has enormous power. What a wonderful system! May the whole world adopt it! Real democracy :-))
Friday, 24 March 2006
GLUG GLUG -- THE GLOBAL TIDE IS RISING UNSTOPPABLY
A report on BBC News underlines what this blog has been saying all along. We are for it. We have trashed the normality on which we have predicated our decisions public and private for 10,000 years. The sea is rising. We cannot stop it. We have gone past the point of no return.
The figures given in that article are based on a rise of 1 degree Celsius 130,000 years ago. But we are headed for at least 3-4 degrees by 2100, perhaps 10-14. Factor that into your foreshore thinking. Every centimetre of reclaimed land, thousands of airports, port facilities everywhere, coastal roads all over the place, etc., etc., will be drowned.
Expect over a metre and a half of increase in the level of the world's oceans by the end of the century.
And note the point about earthquakes, which is what this blog warned about long ago.
A report on BBC News underlines what this blog has been saying all along. We are for it. We have trashed the normality on which we have predicated our decisions public and private for 10,000 years. The sea is rising. We cannot stop it. We have gone past the point of no return.
The figures given in that article are based on a rise of 1 degree Celsius 130,000 years ago. But we are headed for at least 3-4 degrees by 2100, perhaps 10-14. Factor that into your foreshore thinking. Every centimetre of reclaimed land, thousands of airports, port facilities everywhere, coastal roads all over the place, etc., etc., will be drowned.
Expect over a metre and a half of increase in the level of the world's oceans by the end of the century.
And note the point about earthquakes, which is what this blog warned about long ago.
Thursday, 16 March 2006
COOLEST STRATOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE
Oh dear! The temperatures for the stratosphere for February 2006 and the period December 2005 to February 2006 were both the coolest on record, as you can see on NOAA/NCDC's site.
The hotter the troposphere gets (the lower atmosphere, the bit we live in), the cooler the stratosphere gets. And the cooler the stratosphere gets, the closer we get to that terrible tipping-point, the one at which the ice-clouds form that accelerate the destruction of ozone (the temperature we don't want to reach is -78 Celsius).
Oh dear! The temperatures for the stratosphere for February 2006 and the period December 2005 to February 2006 were both the coolest on record, as you can see on NOAA/NCDC's site.
The hotter the troposphere gets (the lower atmosphere, the bit we live in), the cooler the stratosphere gets. And the cooler the stratosphere gets, the closer we get to that terrible tipping-point, the one at which the ice-clouds form that accelerate the destruction of ozone (the temperature we don't want to reach is -78 Celsius).
Tuesday, 14 March 2006
GLOBAL CO2 LEVEL ACCELERATING UPWARD
This report, from the BBC says it all. Anyone with half any eye can see that we have really mucked it up. Global overheating has got away from us. And no one is doing a blind thing worth a ducat. A 2.6ppm rise in a single year, and it hardly rates. The headline is about the death of Milosevic...!
But there may be a small hope. A pig flew recently, as this report in the New Zealand Herald proves. One pig isn't much. But it's a start... ;-))
This report, from the BBC says it all. Anyone with half any eye can see that we have really mucked it up. Global overheating has got away from us. And no one is doing a blind thing worth a ducat. A 2.6ppm rise in a single year, and it hardly rates. The headline is about the death of Milosevic...!
But there may be a small hope. A pig flew recently, as this report in the New Zealand Herald proves. One pig isn't much. But it's a start... ;-))
Saturday, 4 March 2006
ANTARCTIC IS MELTING DOWN--DO SOMETHING USA!
In the same month that the National Geographic magazine showed America raping its own landscape rotten ('America, the beautiful....huh!?), and spewing a quarter of the world's planet-overheating carbon-dioxide out of its power-station chimneys, comes a report from NASA (reported on the BBC and in the Washington Post) that the Antarctic is losing a net of 152 cubic kilometres of ice per year (36 cubic miles for the metrically challenged). That alone causes the global oceans to rise 0.4mm per year, added to the 1.8mm we have so far from thermal expansion, and to the melting of the Greenland icecap (224 cubic kilometres a year--0.9mm a year) and glaciers all over the world.
If we lose all Greenland's ice, and all West Antarctic's, the oceans will rise about fourteen metres. And not in the few centuries' time that the optimists and the wilfully blind like to believe. A significant amount of it this century. The IPCC has just admitted that its previous predictions of only a 1-2 degree rise this century have to be revised up a tad, perhaps as high as 5.8 degrees Celsius. Computer models show even that to be optimistic. How long will it be before everyone realises that we are long past the point of no return,--that the normality on which we have predicated our decisions for 10,000 years has gone, because we have destroyed it. In the most scientific age that has ever been we have got the basic science of life on earth so hopelessly wrong that billions of people are going to die and vast tracts of the earth are going to be made uninhabitable.
America, please stop trashing the only planet humans can live on in the entire universe (even if there is another habitable one it would be such a vast distance away as to be unreachable). This is it. The only one. And you are trashing it. Look at that gas-guzzler at the head of that Washington Post page. Someone just does not get it.
Get a decent, planet-friendly car, and get it soon. You won't get that from GM, or Ford, or any of the other fossil-fuel dinosaurs that are bent on wrecking the planet. Dump them. They are in the way of human life. Get a workaround and get a life. ASAP.
In the same month that the National Geographic magazine showed America raping its own landscape rotten ('America, the beautiful....huh!?), and spewing a quarter of the world's planet-overheating carbon-dioxide out of its power-station chimneys, comes a report from NASA (reported on the BBC and in the Washington Post) that the Antarctic is losing a net of 152 cubic kilometres of ice per year (36 cubic miles for the metrically challenged). That alone causes the global oceans to rise 0.4mm per year, added to the 1.8mm we have so far from thermal expansion, and to the melting of the Greenland icecap (224 cubic kilometres a year--0.9mm a year) and glaciers all over the world.
If we lose all Greenland's ice, and all West Antarctic's, the oceans will rise about fourteen metres. And not in the few centuries' time that the optimists and the wilfully blind like to believe. A significant amount of it this century. The IPCC has just admitted that its previous predictions of only a 1-2 degree rise this century have to be revised up a tad, perhaps as high as 5.8 degrees Celsius. Computer models show even that to be optimistic. How long will it be before everyone realises that we are long past the point of no return,--that the normality on which we have predicated our decisions for 10,000 years has gone, because we have destroyed it. In the most scientific age that has ever been we have got the basic science of life on earth so hopelessly wrong that billions of people are going to die and vast tracts of the earth are going to be made uninhabitable.
America, please stop trashing the only planet humans can live on in the entire universe (even if there is another habitable one it would be such a vast distance away as to be unreachable). This is it. The only one. And you are trashing it. Look at that gas-guzzler at the head of that Washington Post page. Someone just does not get it.
Get a decent, planet-friendly car, and get it soon. You won't get that from GM, or Ford, or any of the other fossil-fuel dinosaurs that are bent on wrecking the planet. Dump them. They are in the way of human life. Get a workaround and get a life. ASAP.
Thursday, 23 February 2006
LONG-TERM SHAKEUP WILL FOLLOW GLOBAL MELTDOWN
An effect of global overheating that has yet to be widely realised, and hit the media--a huge increase in the number of earthquakes all over the planet as heavy ice melts off the earth's crust--has just been underlined by an article in Science Daily on the huge earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 in the central US, which began with a roaring rocker under New Madrid, Montana, on December the 16th 1811.
Tens of thousands of years ago a massive icesheet covered Canada and much of the US. When it melted the removal of that colossal weight caused a release in pressure on crustal layers underneath, and those hundreds of kilometres away--a release that is still going on, as the citizens of New Madrid found to their terror when they were jerked from their sleep by a violent rocking and roaring.
That event is empirical proof that as global overheating melts ice all over the planet there will also be earthquakes here there and everywhere, earthquakes where they have never before been experienced. Think, for instance, of the effect of melting the 3.5 kilometres of ice that covers the middle of Greenland. That is so colossally heavy that it has depressed the middle of the island to well below sea-level. Take that huge pressure off and there will be massive readjustments in the surrounding area for a long time--many thousands of years.
Think on that every time you drive your fossil-fuel car. Your profligate addiction to a way of life that is inimical to the only planet we can live on is having a small, long-term effect on its crust as well as its atmosphere and biosphere. This planet's human-friendly normality, the normality on which we have predicated our behaviour and built our civilisations for 10,000 years, has gone. Because you have destroyed it with your insane addiction to the Black Stuff (coal and oil).
Your children, and their children, and their children, and so on and so on, cannot have as good a life as you had, because they will not have as good a planet. Because you have trashed it.
An effect of global overheating that has yet to be widely realised, and hit the media--a huge increase in the number of earthquakes all over the planet as heavy ice melts off the earth's crust--has just been underlined by an article in Science Daily on the huge earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 in the central US, which began with a roaring rocker under New Madrid, Montana, on December the 16th 1811.
Tens of thousands of years ago a massive icesheet covered Canada and much of the US. When it melted the removal of that colossal weight caused a release in pressure on crustal layers underneath, and those hundreds of kilometres away--a release that is still going on, as the citizens of New Madrid found to their terror when they were jerked from their sleep by a violent rocking and roaring.
That event is empirical proof that as global overheating melts ice all over the planet there will also be earthquakes here there and everywhere, earthquakes where they have never before been experienced. Think, for instance, of the effect of melting the 3.5 kilometres of ice that covers the middle of Greenland. That is so colossally heavy that it has depressed the middle of the island to well below sea-level. Take that huge pressure off and there will be massive readjustments in the surrounding area for a long time--many thousands of years.
Think on that every time you drive your fossil-fuel car. Your profligate addiction to a way of life that is inimical to the only planet we can live on is having a small, long-term effect on its crust as well as its atmosphere and biosphere. This planet's human-friendly normality, the normality on which we have predicated our behaviour and built our civilisations for 10,000 years, has gone. Because you have destroyed it with your insane addiction to the Black Stuff (coal and oil).
Your children, and their children, and their children, and so on and so on, cannot have as good a life as you had, because they will not have as good a planet. Because you have trashed it.
Monday, 20 February 2006
FAST TRACK TO AN OVERHEATED EARTH
An article on BBC News implies an interesting question. A study has shown that at the present rate we will have pumped as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in 300 years as was pumped over 10,000 years 55 million years ago. At that time a 5-degree (Celsius) rise in global temperature was the result. But that is about the rise predicted by optimistic modelling for this century alone. Which suggests that we must take into account not only the amount of greenhouse gas going into the atmosphere but also the speed at which it goes. In other word, the rate of addition has an accelerating effect of its own. A slow addition can be accommodated in a way that a fast one cannot.
In short, we are for it. The worst scenario is what we are going to get.
An article on BBC News implies an interesting question. A study has shown that at the present rate we will have pumped as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in 300 years as was pumped over 10,000 years 55 million years ago. At that time a 5-degree (Celsius) rise in global temperature was the result. But that is about the rise predicted by optimistic modelling for this century alone. Which suggests that we must take into account not only the amount of greenhouse gas going into the atmosphere but also the speed at which it goes. In other word, the rate of addition has an accelerating effect of its own. A slow addition can be accommodated in a way that a fast one cannot.
In short, we are for it. The worst scenario is what we are going to get.
Friday, 17 February 2006
GREENLAND IN MELTDOWN & KILIMANJARO'S WHITECAP VANISHING
Reports in the UK's Telegraph newspaper and BBC News make alarming, but unsurprising, reading. A NASA-led team has found that Greenland's glaciers are melting 150% faster than they were ten years ago, which led them to say that official estimates of a 100-900mm rise in the level of the earth's oceans by 2100 might be too low. Might! Look at the image of the glacier in the BBC article, a glacier that alone drains 4% of the Greenland icecap.
Those official estimates for 2100 are based on very conservative readings of the computer modelling, readings that have failed to take into account the fact that the actual readings of global temperature are tracking along the high end of the modelling--not the middle. So the models are conservative, which has been shown by the far wider range of runs done in the Climate Prediction Project, which divided up the task amongst thousands of PCs, in contrast to the expensive, and thus limited, number of runs done on official supercomputers. So of course things are going to be far worse than the optimists want to believe.
An avid betting man offered odds-on that most of the Greenland icecap will be gone by 2100 would, if shown the scientific evidence from myriad sources, take the bet eagerly. He would turn down flat the notion that it will take 1000 years. When that ice is gone the world's oceans will be 7 metres higher. If we lose most of the world's ice they will be 50m higher. Florida's highest point is 50m. If you think that such talk is doomsaying nonsense see the BBC's outline of studies of global ice.
The woe predicted from melting in Greenland comes hard on the heels of research, published on Science Daily, into the famous snows of Kilimanjaro, the mountain in equatorial Africa, which shows that they are, as predicted, vanishing.
Today Kilimanjaro, tomorrow Greenland, the next day the whole world.
Other numbers continue to get worse. For example, the latest figures for the stratosphere show that in January it was the coldest ever measured--see NOAA-NCDC site.
As the troposphere warms (the lower atmosphere, the layer we live in), the stratosphere cools (the stratosphere is the next layer, 15-23km up). If that gets too cool the hole in the ozone layer will spread and spread and spread, because the CFCs that are destroying the ozone do it much more efficiently when the fine ice-clouds form in the stratosphere, which happens at -78 degrees Celsius.
Reports in the UK's Telegraph newspaper and BBC News make alarming, but unsurprising, reading. A NASA-led team has found that Greenland's glaciers are melting 150% faster than they were ten years ago, which led them to say that official estimates of a 100-900mm rise in the level of the earth's oceans by 2100 might be too low. Might! Look at the image of the glacier in the BBC article, a glacier that alone drains 4% of the Greenland icecap.
Those official estimates for 2100 are based on very conservative readings of the computer modelling, readings that have failed to take into account the fact that the actual readings of global temperature are tracking along the high end of the modelling--not the middle. So the models are conservative, which has been shown by the far wider range of runs done in the Climate Prediction Project, which divided up the task amongst thousands of PCs, in contrast to the expensive, and thus limited, number of runs done on official supercomputers. So of course things are going to be far worse than the optimists want to believe.
An avid betting man offered odds-on that most of the Greenland icecap will be gone by 2100 would, if shown the scientific evidence from myriad sources, take the bet eagerly. He would turn down flat the notion that it will take 1000 years. When that ice is gone the world's oceans will be 7 metres higher. If we lose most of the world's ice they will be 50m higher. Florida's highest point is 50m. If you think that such talk is doomsaying nonsense see the BBC's outline of studies of global ice.
The woe predicted from melting in Greenland comes hard on the heels of research, published on Science Daily, into the famous snows of Kilimanjaro, the mountain in equatorial Africa, which shows that they are, as predicted, vanishing.
Today Kilimanjaro, tomorrow Greenland, the next day the whole world.
Other numbers continue to get worse. For example, the latest figures for the stratosphere show that in January it was the coldest ever measured--see NOAA-NCDC site.
As the troposphere warms (the lower atmosphere, the layer we live in), the stratosphere cools (the stratosphere is the next layer, 15-23km up). If that gets too cool the hole in the ozone layer will spread and spread and spread, because the CFCs that are destroying the ozone do it much more efficiently when the fine ice-clouds form in the stratosphere, which happens at -78 degrees Celsius.
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