Carbon Footprints

The BBC is reporting Warming boosts strongest storms

The strongest tropical storms are becoming even stronger as the world’s oceans warm, scientists have confirmed.

Analysis of satellite data shows that in the last 25 years, strong cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons have become more frequent in most of the tropics.

Every day the science hardens, putting paid to the ranting of the climate change sceptics. The article concludes that:

Globally, a rise of 1°C in sea surface temperature would increase the occurrence of strong storms by about one third, the researchers calculate.

Note the report is not out yet but will be published in the Sept. 4 edition of the journal Nature according to the press release from Florida State University. — DS
[update] James Elsner has a blog where he explains this in some detail.

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, cyclone, Florida State University, FSU, global warming, hurricane, Nature, sea temperature, storms, tropical storms, typhoon, weather

Severn Suzuki gave this speech to the UN in 1992, aged 12. It’s so impassioned, so adult in its delivery, yet emphasises over and over that she is “just a child.” To think that so many years have passed and so little done to fix the problems she so clearly identified back then. Still, be inspired, and make positive change please. — DS

Technorati Tags: 1992, child, Earth Summit, inspirational, kids, Rio, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, Severn Suzuki, speech, Suzuki, UN, youth

Reuters is running a story Massive Arctic ice shelf breaks away, saying

A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada’s northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a “massive and disturbing” rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

They said the Markham Ice Shelf, one of just five remaining ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic, split away from Ellesmere Island in early August. They also said two large chunks totaling 47 square miles had broken off the nearby Serson Ice Shelf, reducing it in size by 60 percent.

“The changes … were massive and disturbing,” said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

It’s also being discussed in the Google Earth community.

Professor Barry Brook from Adelaide University warns in his blog that

The Polar ice sheets react sensitively to solar orbital forcing (a function of the Earth’s position and axis tilt relative to the sun) through feedback loops which include ice albedo loss, absorption of infrared radiation by exposed water and water-ice interaction.

and continues, explaining

Plans for climate “stabilization” at 450 ppm CO₂-e may lead the Earth to conditions preceding the formation of the polar ice sheets, whereas plans for “stabilization” at 650 ppm may track toward conditions at the 55 Ma greenhouse event and associated extinction. IPCC climate projections and government plans for emission caps restricting temperature rises to ~2°C or ~3°C degrees take little account of the non-linear nature of ice-ocean-atmosphere-biosphere feedback effects.

Earth’s climate is moving into uncharted territory…

It is interesting to note that the rate at which we people are emitting GHGs into the atmosphere is slightly more than the amount of GHGs emitted during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum Prof Brooks refers to, aka the 55 Ma greenhouse event. The arctic is melting, chunk by chunk, so much so that now it’s become entirely separated from the mainlands for the first time in human history. It beggars belief that there are people out there who still deny the connection between greenhouse gases and global warming. — DS

Technorati Tags: arctic, Canada, climate porn, ice, Markham Ice Shelf, melt, melt down

Recently the US Republican’s used Paris Hilton in an ad campaign to imply that Democratic candidate Barack Obama was unfit to lead. Ms Hilton has filmed her own response where she espouses her own energy policy. She’s in favour of limited offshore drilling if it’s monitored closely by environmental groups and also in favour of incentives for the car industry to shift to electric and hybrid vehicles. She then declares that she will run for president. And you know, I think she’d do okay. This is possibly the first video Paris has released that made me smile while watching it. — DS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, energy policy, hybrid cars, offshore drilling, Paris Hilton, Paris Hilton video, politics, USA

Diagram by Martin Sharman and used with permission.

People have plenty of reasons for refusing to act when it comes to climate change. For many it’s just easier to blame China than to look to their own actions; their own use of products, made in China, powered by Australian coal. But this is moral cowardice and intellectual laziness combined. The planet is melting, and the solutions are so damn simple. It just takes the will to accept we have a problem and to then do something about it. Go on be the change; I dare you. — DS

Technorati Tags: China, Climate Change, denial, doubt, fear, global warming

Click To Play

Boston based MIT has announced ‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution.

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

While the devil is, as usual, in the details, this is a most promising advance and brings us ever closer to the true goal of the carbon economy; separating energy production from dangerous pollution. — DS

Technorati Tags: baseload, bio-mimicary, biomimicary, Climate Change, global warming, green power, hydrogen, MIT, science, solar, solar power, tech

I was invited to give a speech on carbon emissions auditing at this year’s Climate Change Accounting, Taxation and Reporting Summit in Sydney, Australia. The above video was shot on a tiny little digital still camera so the quality is not perfect, but you get the idea. I’ll be giving pretty much the same speech at another conference in Sydney on Thursday. Enjoy. — DS

Technorati Tags: carbon accounting, carbon audit, carbon footprint, emissions audit, GHG Protocol, greenhouse gas audit, ISO 14064-1, NGER

Melbourne newspaper The Age is running a story by climate denialista Bob Carter called Wong’s climate paper clouded with mistakes in which he cherry picks words, disputes consensus opinions on climate science and rounds up his same old tired rhetoric to have a go at Climate Change Minister Wong’s recently released ‘Green Paper’ on Carbon Polution Reduction.

The first sentence of the opening section of her paper, entitled “Why we need to act”, contains seven scientific errors — almost one error for every two words.

Here is the sentence: “Carbon pollution is causing climate change, resulting in higher temperatures, more droughts, rising sea levels and more extreme weather.”

And here are the errors.

First, the debate is not about carbon, but human carbon dioxide emissions and their potential effect on climate.

It makes no more sense for Wong to talk about carbon in the atmosphere than it would for her to talk about hydrogen comprising most of Sydney’s water supply.

Use of the term carbon in this way is, of course, a deliberate political gambit, derived from the green ecosalvationist vocabulary and intended to convey a subliminal message about “dirty” coal.

Next, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere.

Bob is sort of right here, naturally occuring CO₂ is not a polutant in and of itself. But the term ‘Carbon Pollution’ is a specific reference to the 40 billion or so tonnes of extra CO₂ being pumped into the air by human activity. As the website ExxonSecrets makes plain, Mr Carter has been champing on this bit for years, frustrated I imagine that the only people who pay him any attention are irresponsible publishers, the coal industry and a handful of cranks. My rule of thumb is simple. When I see the story is written by someone like Bob, with a history of coal-industry toadying and climate-change misinformation, I usually just skip the whole story.

In my personal opinion the man is a despicable attention seeker who manipulates facts to suit his, and his pay-masters’ message. It truly seems that people like Carter are deliberately seeking to set back a movement whose only goal is to avert the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced. Is this not treason? — DS

Technorati Tags: Bob Carter, bogus science, climate change denier, denialista, hack, lackey, sceptic, shill, skeptic

The small business section of the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting Be alert, SMEs told on emissions.

Small and medium businesses will be “seriously disadvantaged” if they expect to avoid the impact of the Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme.

The Australian Institute of Management issued the warning after the release of the Government’s green paper on its carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The institute said many small and medium enterprises had been misled by the green paper, which says the scheme will cover only 1000 of Australia’s 7.6 million registered businesses.

AIM Victoria/Tasmania chief executive Susan Heron said many large organisations had plans to ensure SMEs right along the supply chain had certain carbon standards in place as a requirement of doing business.

This is what we call ‘virtual compliance’. Companies at the top of the emissions food-chain will inevitably force emissions reduction down their supply chains through changes to their procurement policies that emerge as a direct result of their own emissions reduction planning. — DS

Technorati Tags: carbon credits, carbon trading, Climate Change, CO2, emissions reduction, emissions trading, greenhouse, The Carbon Economy, virtual compliance

I admire Arnie’s straightforward approach to these problems. — DS

Technorati Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, Climate Change, global warming, greenhouse gases, politics, Schwarzenegger, USA