My house in the woods- Yengo / Wallabadah

I once had a shack in the woods, about 3 hours from Sydney, it was the only property I ever ‘owned’.     It burnt down.   In the middle of a the states largest national park, regular bushfire clearance was needed, and I failed to do that.    A slidesow might be seen here Press F11 to see it best.   Its out west of Wollombi somewhere.

CO2 emission reductions won’t cool atmosphere for centuries – warming “irreversible”

It is often thought that we can overheat the atmosphere in coming decades, then cut CO2 emissions to  cool it down, but this is not an option -  the earth’s temperature will not fall significantly for hundreds of years after we completely stop  CO2 emissions.  So says  a Feb 2009 paper, Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions.  Although  Co2 concentrations  would slowly fall,  trapping less heat so tending to cool  the atmosphere,  the warmer oceans would loose a lot of  their ability to cool the air:

Following cessation of CO2 emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years.

Abstract for Solomon et el paper is below,  or see the Full Text (PDF)

Climate will not cool when we stop CO2 emissions

Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions

1. Susan Solomon^a,¹,
2. Gian-Kasper Plattner^b,
3. Reto Knutti^c and
4. Pierre Friedlingstein^d

+Author Affiliations

1. 
   
   ^aChemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO 80305;
2. 
   
   ^bInstitute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics and
3. 
   
   ^cInstitute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland; and
4. 
   
   ^dInstitut Pierre Simon Laplace/Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Unité Mixte de Recherche 1572 Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique–Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique–Université Versailles Saint-Quentin, Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique-Saclay, l’Orme des Merisiers, 91191 Gif sur Yvette, France

1. Contributed by Susan Solomon, December 16, 2008 (received for review November 12, 2008)

Abstract

The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that takes place due to increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the “dust bowl” era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4–1.0 m if 21st century CO₂ concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6–1.9 m for peak CO₂ concentrations exceeding ≈1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer.

.

Hot dry air now lands on Victoria – Hadley Cell moves 250 to 400 km further south because of climate change

A 2007  paper on  Observed Poleward Expansion of the Hadley Circulation since 1979 explains why southern Australia is so dry and hot now. The  Hadley Cell is delivering its hot dry air 2.5 to 4 degrees further towards the poles  than it was in 1979, which is 275km to 440km further south.

Hadley cell- Wikipedia link.

Basically, global warming increases heat at the equator and makes more moist  air rise higher, faster than before (the water condenses as the air rises and you get lots of rain in the tropics).  The air then moves southward  toward the poles, and cools, so it falls back to ground level, recompressing as it falls – thus heating up – and delivering hot dry air to the ground. Melbourne is about 37 deg south, Sydney is about 33 degrees.

JFK finally gets climate change

Sometimes the Old Firm does something right….

Darfur: the dangers of celebrity imperialism Sending Blackwater to Sudan? The eccentric war-hungry activists of the Save Darfur lobby have taken leave of their senses.

Review of books on Darfur indicating the situation is much more complicated than the good versus evil situation activists in the US describe.   Actress Mia Farrow is apparently trying to raise a private mercenary army to peacekeep the ‘genocide’    http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5902/

Don’t believe in global warming… sing along

A little worried about global warming?

Click here for a reassuring cartoon

Currawinya

Click for photos (and press F11) of  a great week I spent with some fab people camped by a billabong, under the shade of a coolabah tree in Currawinya national park – which is some dry lakes out in the desert that flood and fill once in a decade or so,   out in the arid west of Queensland.  They say fish eggs wait for years in the desert, and hatch when it rains, to grow into fish.  This has been going on for thousands of years, and again It flooded recently and Lou made us go out to look at fifty thousand freeloading pelicans currently nesting and feasting there, in a semi-desert 1000 km from the sea.   Opals grew there some 200 million years ago. This dry, dry country was flooded a few months ago and although  most sensible people wanted to dam the water to grow cotton and grow the economy, the bloody Greenies won -  and as a result the cotton crop is smaller than it could be and  the birds have moved in, big time;  of no benefit to taxpayers or shareholders – it is a disgrace if you ask me. Some pictures are here, there may be more later .

Go save the climate, Tony?

I surprise myself by thinking well of Tony Blair’s effort to save the world’s climate. Over Iraq, I hold him to be a fool and a war criminal. Over many other issues, I’ve despised him. On his latest incarnation as a peacemaker in the Middle East – where he, more than anyone else, holds responsibility for adding 2 million refugees, millions of displaced, over 600,000 dead and horrendous child malnutrition – I am flabbergasted.

Similarly Blair-hating friends have scoffed at me about this latest move of his, to push climate action at the highest level. But I disagree, for various Realpolitik reasons: I think he is scared by the science; he has huge clout in the US; and he could work with China and India.

Firstly, Blair grasped the horror of the climate science a while back and took some serious measures, even in the constraints of government: he got Stern to put out a gilt-plated climate-change business case, and committed to ambitious 60%-reduction- by-2050 targets well ahead of most other governments. I believe he is scared and informed. He’s saying we have less than five years to stop a catastrophe… that is what the science says. But that also sounds like what the hairy eco-nutters have been saying for years, so it is bold for a major politician to concur.

Secondly, the US is the biggest problem; someone HAS to go there and kick their heads in on this issue. Blair, through his earlier sins in Kosovo and Iraq, has got a lot of Special Relationship brownie points to reclaim on Capitol Hill, where they all want to be him. The US public love his accent and rhetoric, and that is much more important; all the presidential candidates understand the urgency of changing policy on climate, they sort of agree with Al Gore, but the man in the street doesn’t, so Obama and McCain never mention it, and the US media never asks … I read that a survey last week showed US citizens put climate change as 26^th on their list of priorities. Those people love Blair’s accent - so if he made an intervention there before the election, it could seriously raise the commitment , the mandate, for action by the next administration, of whichever flavour.

Thirdly, we ‘know’ that China and India are also crucial. As a cluey guy, Blair would probably be repelled by the facile and emasculating ‘stop China first’ arguments that have recently been such effective antidote to western action on climate. I believe China is ready to play, and is already doing much; they read the science too. As an over-polite, smiling Brit, Blair is well placed to understand and accommodate Asian concerns about saving face in any future negotiation. With his huge profile, he would also carry a lot of clout.

So there are three good reasons to think well of such an initiative from Blair. Also, frankly, I think that the climate situation is desperate; clearly, it is time to call “all hands to the pumps” and clearly this guy with the despicable past has, nonetheless, a lot of weight to throw around. So much as I want him on trial for Iraq and don’t want to see him shine up his image with such work, I reluctantly think he might help.

But he is a war criminal snake in the grass, so I I could be wrong. I don’t know if he wants to bypass the UN post-Kyoto framework – such details are vital.

And anyway, it would be a better use of his time than his current fools mission: he is now some sort of Envoy of Peace poncing, ignorantly and impotently, around the Middle East where most people hate him -  a region he stupidly helped set on fire.

As a sinful, serious Christian looking to redeem his serious sins, or as a politician with a dirty legacy that needs improving, I can see why this would be a good move for him. I don’t wish him either of those outcomes, but he might just help on a vital job.

Snapper rocks: God’s Cappuccino from big storm, small cyclone

There has been an intense storm here for about two weeks. Unusual – too far south to make climate sceptics happy. Mud filled rivers made the Tasman Sea dirty, mad and foamy. Although the foam must have been laced with agricultural wastes and chemicals, there were still Big Ocean Waves; so people went swimming, in cream. Click for the snaps of Snapper Rocks (Point Danger)

Rockall 1997 – No new oil

Rockall is the tip of a volcano, a micro-continent far out in the North Atlantic, a rock 20 metres high in an ocean that sometimes has waves that big.

In 1997 we lived there for 42 days in a climate protest; watch the slideshow, it’s worth two minutes, and/or read on for more.  Almost nobody understood climate protest then.