How Global Warming Can Chill the Planet

Scientists hope new evidence of an ancient rise in sea level from a fresh water flood will tell them how global warming can lead to global cooling.

A global cooling event was caused by global warming? Sounds strange. But that is exactly what scientists say happened.

The Earth was emerging from an ice age 8,200 years ago. Seas were warming and life was heating up. Then quite abruptly and for a relatively short period of time -- about 100 years -- the entire globe chilled down again, by almost 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 Centigrade).

One widely held theory for the chill was the sudden release of a substantial amount of fresh water into the northern Atlantic.

A lake twice the size of the Caspian Sea broke through an ice sheet that contained it over current day Minnesota and Canada, the evidence shows. It poured its fresh water into the salty Atlantic and changed the density of the ocean water.

The oceans work on a sort of conveyor belt method to circulate cold and warm waters, thereby helping control cold, moderate, and warm areas of the globe. (Earth's climate is only partly affected by land temperatures and sunlight. Oceans, which store vast amounts of energy and are slow to warm up and cool down, contribute greatly to climate.)

But what happens if that conveyor belt stops or slows down?

Cold, fresh water sinks, and warm salty water rises. The influx of fresh water into the Hudson Bay from Lake Agassiz provided a barrier against the warm, salty water struggling to move north on the conveyor belt. This effectively shut down the circulation of warm water in the Northern Atlantic.

With warm waters unable to move as far north the world became cooler. The amount of water Lake Agassiz dumped into the ocean is equivalent to how much the seas rose. Knowing these amounts will tell scientists how much fresh water could create this type of climate change nowadays, were a bunch of it to suddenly find its way into the ocean.

The oceans were able to find their balance relatively quickly in that ancient event, and the effects wore off in about a century, but a century of that kind of change today would create widespread havoc.

"There is nothing like Lake Agassiz today, but there are things that could have a comparable effect," said Torbjorn E. Tornqvist, an geologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Places like the Greenland ice sheet are very sensitive to warming and a lot of fresh water could enter the northern oceans and mess up circulation."

https://www.livescience.com/3751-global-warming-chill-planet.html

UN says 2017 set to be among top three hottest years, as Bonn climate talks seek action despite US stance

This year will be among the three hottest on record, the United Nations says, as almost 200 countries begin talks in Germany to bolster a global climate accord that the United States plans to quit.

Temperatures this year will be slightly less than during a record-breaking 2016 and roughly level with 2015, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said, part of a long-term warming trend driven by greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"We have witnessed extraordinary weather," WMO head Petteri Talaas said, pointing to extreme events including a spate of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean, monsoon floods in Asia and drought in East Africa.

The WMO attributed the small dip from last year to the fading effects of a natural El Nino event that released extra heat from the Pacific Ocean in 2016.

In terms of economic costs, 2017 will be the most costly hurricane season on record after Harvey, Irma and Maria, it added.

In Australia, the mercury in Sydney and Melbourne will be climbing above 50 degrees sooner than previously thought, according to recent research.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-07/un-warns-of-heat-as-climate-talks-seek-action-despite-trump/9124854

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said...

 

Oh that is so messed up!

When (or should I say IF) future generations look back at this time and scream "WHY DIDN'T YOU DO ANYTHING?!!!" We can point to morons like Trump.

Cheers,

Jenifer

 

. . . and say thank you for not bankrupting this country on a hoax. But hey, the rest of the world can do what they wish.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daOH-pTd_nk

The deranged words of a lunatic.

You still haven't told me who is perpetrating the elaborate worldwide hoax and what their nefarious agenda is.

Cheers,

Jenifer

New Delhi: Off-the-scale pollution prompts public health emergency, school closures

Toxic concentrations in New Delhi's air have reached levels 42 times above what is considered safe, reigniting questions about how the rapidly-developing city can tackle its persistent air pollution crisis.

Yesterday, New Delhi's Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal branded the city a "gas chamber" as the thick haze left eyes watering and throats burning.

US embassy monitoring equipment recorded the concentration of PM2.5 — the smallest, most harmful particles — at 762 about midday on Tuesday (local time).

The figure is quite literally off the scale — well above the 300 to 500 levels that the US Environmental Protection Agency considers hazardous and a respiratory risk to the general population.

Indian Medical Authority's President Dr Krishnan Kumar Aggarwal declared Delhi "a public health emergency state".

Another doctor, Dr Arvind Kumar, compared the air to smoking 50 cigarettes a day.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-08/new-delhi-pollution-prompts-emergency-school-closures/9128592

Paris accord: Syria plans to join climate agreement, leaving US only country opposed

Syria has announced it intends to join the 2015 Paris agreement for slowing climate change, leaving the United States as the only country in the world opposed to the pact.

Syria, wracked by civil war, and Nicaragua were the only two nations outside the 195-nation pact when it was agreed in 2015.

Nicaragua's left-wing Government, which originally denounced the plan as too weak, signed up last month.

"I would like to affirm the Syrian Arab Republic's commitment to the Paris climate change accord," deputy Environment Minister Wadah Katmawi told a meeting of almost 200 countries at the November 6-17 climate talks in Bonn, Germany.

Membership for Syria under President Bashar al-Assad would isolate the United States, the world's biggest economy and second largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China, as the only nation opposed to the accord.

US President Donald Trump, who has expressed doubts that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the prime cause of global warming, announced in June the intended to pull out and instead promote US coal and oil industries.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-08/syria-plans-to-join-paris-climate-agreement-isolating-us/9128586

.

You remember how Star Trek always alluded to the fact that the Federation was a US led thing?  That all the solutions to the world's problems started there?

Science fiction really is fantasy...

Make America Obsolete!

Oh wait, that spells MAO.

Syria will become the new United Nations Headquarters.

Hmmm...

Assad or Twitler...

Choking on democracy: Why Delhi's air worsens as Beijing's improves

It's difficult to convey how oppressive Delhi's air pollution is.

Morning visibility is a couple of hundred metres. Through the eerie filtered light, figures emerge from and disappear into the gloom.

Some wear masks or handkerchiefs, most blithely dismiss the apocalyptic atmosphere, shrugging it off as "just fog".

Except it isn't.

Last Wednesday, central New Delhi's count of harmful PM2.5 particles exceeded a staggering 1,000 on the US EPA's air quality index. To put that in perspective, the highest rating, "hazardous to human health — do not go outside", is reserved for readings between 300 and 500.

Delhi was off the scale, twice.

Following angry protests several years ago, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared "war" on pollution, fearing worsening air could spark wider community unrest.

He ordered crackdowns on factories and power plants flouting rarely-enforced regulations.

According to Greenpeace, it's working.

Last year, the environmental group examined a decade of satellite particulate matter measurements, concluding "China's systematic efforts to combat air pollution have achieved an impressive improvement in average air quality".

India generally dislikes comparisons to rival China, and Greenpeace's findings didn't make for happy reading in Delhi.

"From 2011 to 2015, China has made big strides while in India, pollution levels have kept rising," the report noted.

Why? Because Delhiites' seasonal outrage rarely outlasts their social media posts, and the country's politicians know it.

Meanwhile in states surrounding Delhi, illega

Climate scientists warn time is running out to prevent global environmental collapse

Time is running out to prevent a global environmental collapse — that's the stark warning 15,364 of the world's leading climate scientists have sent out.

Scientists from 180 countries, many in the developing world, put their names to the journal article published today in Bioscience, which also predicted temperature rises and unpredictable weather patterns that would cause widespread misery.

But the paper also noted it was not too late for governments to do something about it.

The number is believed to be the largest group of scientists to have ever put their names to a research paper focused on climate change.

One of the key authors of the paper, Bill Laurance, a research professor at James Cook University in Queensland, said this was the first time he had ever seen such a letter get sent out.

The paper focused on a number of issues, including the depletion of oceans, deforestation, endangered species and extinct species numbers, fresh water pollution and urban liveability.

It found the amount of fresh water available per capita has reduced by a quarter and almost 300 million acres of forests have been lost since 1960, while the human population has risen by a third.

"All kinds of instances of liveability of the planet," he said.

"It's far more than just climate change, although that's certainly a critical part."

The paper has depicted a bleak future world ravaged by climate change, a world characterised by human misery.

It called for population growth to be limited and for governments to stop focusing solely on economic growth.