Entire Antarctic Shelf splitting away from Continent.

[BridgeTroll]

Your stance NotNow very closely follows mine.  Kyoto is a farce and both Clinton and Bush knew it.  Research needs to continue.  Dismissing skeptics as neocons or some such nonsense does nothing to help their cause.  I wholly agree with...

we should encourage the use of alternatives that work right now at both slowing the exhaust of what those on your side call "greenhouse gases" and also support the national interests by lowering our dependence on oil.

[BridgeTroll]

This is pretty good...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126921.500-one-last-chance-to-save-mankind.html?full=true&print=true

With his 90th birthday in July, a trip into space scheduled for later in the year and a new book out next month, 2009 promises to be an exciting time for James Lovelock. But the originator of the Gaia theory, which describes Earth as a self-regulating planet, has a stark view of the future of humanity. He tells Gaia Vince we have one last chance to save ourselves - and it has nothing to do with nuclear power

Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?

Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside.

What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?

That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.

Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?

It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.

So are we doomed?

There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.

Would it make enough of a difference?

Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it.

Do you think we will survive?

I'm an optimistic pessimist. I think it's wrong to assume we'll survive 2 °C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4 °C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It's happening again.

I don't think humans react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up. Kyoto was 11 years ago. Virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings.

I don't think we can react fast enough or are clever enough to handle what's coming up
It's a depressing outlook.

Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas. It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary welfare.

How much biodiversity will be left after this climatic apocalypse?

We have the example of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event 55 million years ago. About the same amount of CO2 was put into the atmosphere as we are putting in and temperatures rocketed by about 5 °C over about 20,000 years. The world became largely desert. The polar regions were tropical and most life on the planet had the time to move north and survive. When the planet cooled they moved back again. So there doesn't have to be a massive extinction. It's already moving: if you live in the countryside as I do you can see the changes, even in the UK.

If you were younger, would you be fearful?

No, I have been through this kind of emotional thing before. It reminds me of when I was 19 and the second world war broke out. We were very frightened but almost everyone was so much happier. We're much better equipped to deal with that kind of thing than long periods of peace. It's not all bad when things get rough. I'll be 90 in July, I'm a lot closer to death than you, but I'm not worried. I'm looking forward to being 100.

Are you looking forward to your trip into space this year?

Very much. I've got my camera ready!

Do you have to do any special training?

I have to go in the centrifuge to see if I can stand the g-forces. I don't anticipate a problem because I spent a lot of my scientific life on ships out on rough oceans and I have never been even slightly seasick so I don't think I'm likely to be space sick. They gave me an expensive thorium-201 heart test and then put me on a bicycle. My heart was performing like an average 20 year old, they said.

I bet your wife is nervous.

No, she's cheering me on. And it's not because I'm heavily insured, because I'm not.

Profile
James Lovelock is a British chemist, inventor and environmentalist. He is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. Later this year he will travel to space as Richard Branson's guest aboard Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. His latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, is published by Basic Books in February.

[RiversideGator]

A cute little game Stephen, but I am afraid that you are missing the point of my posts.  While we all want to preserve and enjoy our planet, the UN and Kyoto are not the answer but government encouraged plans could accomplish a lot of our ecological goals and help with our imported oil problem.  Spare me the interrogation.  Spare me your psuedo-intellectual internet education.  Spare me the holier than thou attitude.

[gatorback]

Well, our satellite got off...

1st Greenhouse Monitoring Satellite Launched     
Written by KGMB9 News - news@kgmb9.com   
January 22, 2009 06:16 PM

Japan's space agency has launched a domestically-made rocket carrying the world's first greenhouse-gas monitoring satellite. The H2A rocket took off Friday from the space center on Tanegashima, a remote island in southern Japan. The launch - the 15th for an H2A - had been delayed for several days because of bad weather.

Japan has long been one of the leading space-faring nations and launched its first satellite in 1970. But it has been struggling to get out from under China's shadow in recent years and gain a niche in the global rocket-launching business, which is dominated by Russia, the U.S. and Europe's Arianespace.

[NotNow]

Stephen,  We can trade wikipedia results and scientist names back and forth for pages on this post.  This has been done ad nauseum already.  I believe that most reasonable people think that the entire GW debate has become highly politizied and that the "science" is muddled by that fact.  Surely you see the political bent of the Kyoto treaty.  If not, then we are not speaking the same language.

[NotNow]

I believe that I stated part of my problem with the treaty in an earlier post.  Am I "uninformed" when I state that China and India are not subject to the same "non-compliance" penalties that the US is subject to under this treaty?  What country would pay the lions share of the "adaptation fund" that will be provided to "developing countries"?  And politics?  Are you kidding me?!?!?!  Have you any idea what a cesspool the UN is?  Have you any personal experience with the UN?  The United States is the target of this wealth tranfer scheme.

[gatorback]

Kudos to Japan for launching ibuki!  Why didn't the US have a part of this? I guess Big Oil is totally against this research.

The satellite _ named "Ibuki," which means "breath" _ was sent into orbit along with seven other piggyback probes on a Japanese H2A rocket. Japan's space agency, JAXA, said the launch was a success, and officials said they were monitoring the satellites to ensure they entered orbit properly.

Ibuki, which will circle the globe every 100 minutes, is equipped with optical sensors that measure reflected light from the Earth to determine the density of the two gases.

Carbon dioxide, the biggest contributor to global warming, is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, motor vehicles and other sources. Methane has a variety of sources, including livestock manure and rice cultivation.

International science agencies report that carbon dioxide emissions rose 3 percent worldwide from 2006 to 2007. If emissions are not reined in, a U.N. scientific panel says, average global temperatures will increase by 4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit (2.4 to 6.3 degrees Celsius) by the year 2100, causing damaging disruptions to the climate.

"Global warming is one of the most pressing issues facing the international community, and Japan is fully committed to reducing CO2," said Yasushi Tadami, an official working on the project for Japan's Environment Ministry. "The advantage of Ibuki is that it can monitor the density of CO2 and methane gas anywhere in the world."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/23/japan-launches-satellite-_n_160413.html

[Ocklawaha]

Watch your manners here or daddy will have to spank you (how's that for a sick perverted threat?).

So what the hell, the whole world is click-clacking off the final miles into that great terminal in the Esmerald City. The ice caps are melting and I'm planning to spend my "golden years" in a condo in sunny Antarctica. Then along come the boogie men from the UN to spread the poverty evenly and socialize the world with my money... Sucks to be us I guess, but hey.

I came upon mother goose -- so I turned her loose --
She was screaming.
And a foreign student said to me --
Was it really true there are elephants and lions too
In piccadilly circus?
Walked down by the bathing pond
To try and catch some sun.
Saw at least a hundred schoolgirls sobbing
Into hankerchiefs as one.
I dont believe they knew
I was a schoolboy.

And a bearded lady said to me --
If you start your raving and your misbehaving --
Youll be sorry.
Then the chicken-fancier came to play --
With his long red beard (and his sisters weird:
She drives a lorry).

Laughed down by the putting green --
I popped `em in their holes.
Four and twenty labourers were labouring --
Digging up their gold.
I dont believe they knew
That I was long john silver.

With unusual care and concern for my fellow humans...

OCKLAWAHA

[gatorback]

Here's one ship, of many, that does research in the Arctic.



We've been going to the arctic for hundreds of years. 

To answer the question, multi-year ice is blue which is a different color from new ice.  The ice is blue because the salt is leached out.  We can tell blue from white even from space. 

[tufsu1]

and contrary to the rantings of the global cooling folks...

Study Finds New Evidence of Warming in Antarctica

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?_r=1

[tufsu1]

now I am confused...can someone please explain this to me?

Study Finds New Evidence of Warming in Antarctica

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/science/earth/22climate.html?_r=1

[gatorback]

I don't think River is going to like that article.

[gatorback]

Oh that's right. Stalin had such a policy.  I think the Chinese still do.

[gatorback]

I guess it's a good thing that Obama is reversing Bush's environmental policies huh?

[samiam]

In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin.
Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.
His passion was cartography. His high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople.
The Turkish admiral admits in a series of notes on the map that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to the fourth century BC or earlier.

The Controversy

The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how Piri Reis managed to draw such an accurate map of the Antarctic region 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the coastline under the ice. Geological evidence confirms that the latest date Queen Maud Land could have been charted in an ice-free state is 4000 BC.