Global Warming News n Views

When Sarah Palin was asked by Katie Couric about whether climate change is caused by human activity, she responded, “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.” I immediately reaction was that she had committed a syntacical error reflective of her generally poor performance, since the meaning of her sentence is that she doesn’t blame changes in climate with affecting human activity. I was sure she meant to say that she doesn’t credit human activity with causing global warming.

But she used the same syntax in the VP debate tonight. (I’ll post a link once a transcript becomes available, or when I get around to it.) A mistake like that is uncharacteristic of her losing but strong, composed performance.

Imagine you go to a conference on major bioethical questions — controversial issues like abortion, embryonic stem cells, assisted reproduction and euthanasia — and a keynote speaker uses all his allotted time warning about global warming. Is this the wrong issue to discuss — or the only one worth talking about?

The question arose at the annual conference of the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) that ended at the weekend in Prague. Dr. Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, told the assembled bioethicists they had to look beyond their usual issues to consider the far larger ecological threat he said could soon end up destroying mankind.

Today, however, such clich?s have an edge to them, because we know that humans play a role in determining the course of climate. When we hear about Arctic tundra melting or a devastating hurricane, we’re now forced to consider the fingerprints of humanity - and that’s going well beyond small talk. Indeed, climate change is as much a divider as weather has traditonally been a unifier. Weather has always seemd to transcend politics, but human-induced climate change is wedded to politics: it’s an outgrowth of countless decisions made by local, regional and national governments, as well as individuals and corporations. Sadly, it’s also become - particularly in the US - a polarised subject, linked to other issues so frequently that it often serves as shorthand for one’s entire world view.

The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented.

Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’.

Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against.

During the series, Dr Iain Stewart, a geologist, interviewed leading climate change sceptics, including Lord Monckton. But the peer complained to Ofcom that the broadcast had been unfairly edited.

One thing about tough times is that they tend to help focus the mind. Have you noticed that amid genuine financial crisis how little attention is given to faux global warming?

“Despite all the undoubted political and economic gloom, the delightful thing about today’s Sunday newspapers is the virtual absence of the phrase ‘global warming’. ‘Global warming’ has been effectively buried, by collapsing banks and plunging markets, by rising energy costs, by internal battling within the Labour Party, by pitbulls and the American election, by real threats, like knife crime and terrorism in Islamabad, and by the fact that, on nearly every bit of current evidence, the world is likely to enter a cooling phase . . .”

Crucial Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level on record, continuing an alarming trend, scientists said Tuesday.

The ice covered 1.74 million square miles on Friday, marking a low point for this summer, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. Last summer, the sea ice covered only 1.59 million square miles, the lowest since record-keeping began in 1979.

Arctic sea ice, which floats on the ocean, expands in winter and retreats in summer. In recent years it hasn’t been as thick in winter.

Sea ice is crucial to worldwide weather patterns, both serving as a kind of refrigerator and reflecting the sun’s heat. Given recent trends, triggered by man-made global warming, scientists warn that within five to 10 years the Arctic could be free of sea ice in the summer.

Even though the sea ice didn’t retreat this year as much as last summer, “there was no real sign of recovery,” said Walt Meier of the snow and ice data center.

An increase in global sea level of more than 2 meters (6.6 feet) by the year 2100 is implausible, according to scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The team, led by Professor Tad Pfeffer, estimated the volume of ice that all glaciers and ice sheets across the globe could lose through ice melt and the release of icebergs into the ocean, according to the short Nature Reports article.

In order for a greater than 2 meter (6.6 feet) by 2100 the discharge of icebergs into the ocean would need to increase more rapidly than ever observed at rates that are probably not feasible.