Global Warming News n Views

In addition to not being real, global warming is a problem so huge that we might as well just give up and?invest in?oceanfront property in Kansas.? Seriously, there is no way we could ever afford to do what needs to be done:

On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, a new report from Oil Change International, entitled A Climate of War(pdf) quantifies both the greenhouse gas emissions of the Iraq War and the opportunity costs involved in fighting war rather than climate change. Here are some facts on the war and warming:

1. Projected total US spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the global investments in renewable power generation that are needed between now and 2030 in order to halt current warming trends.

Yeah, well, Al Gore farted methane, so there. ?Via.? People, listen: reducing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?? Obtaining all the energy we need directly from sunlight?? These are the kinds of insurmountable engineering challenges overcome every day by plants.? Plants.?

Some 220 square miles of ice has collapsed in Antarctica and an ice shelf about seven times the size of Manhattan is “hanging by a thread,” the British Antarctic Survey said Tuesday, blaming global warming.

Scientists say the rest of the ice shelf is hanging on by a thin beam of ice and is also in danger of collapsing.

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“We are in for a lot more events like this,” said professor Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Scambos alerted the British Antarctic Survey after he noticed part of the Wilkins ice shelf disintegrating on February 28, when he was looking at NASA satellite images.

Late February marks the end of summer at the South Pole and is the time when such events are most likely, he said. Watch aerial footage of the area ?

“The amazing thing was, we saw it within hours of it beginning, in between the morning and the afternoon pictures of that day,”

New satellite images reveal what scientists call the “runaway” collapse of an enormous ice shelf in Antarctica as the result of global warming.

The chunk of coastal ice was some 160 square miles (415 square kilometers) in area—about seven times the size of Manhattan.

The shelf’s rapid collapse began on February 28 (see image sequence at top right), sending a giant swath of broken ice into the sea (detail at bottom).

“[It’s] an event we don’t get to see very often,” Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said in a press statement.

“The collapse underscores that the [Wilkins Ice Shelf] region has experienced an intense melt season. Regional sea ice has all but vanished, leaving the ice shelf exposed to the action of waves.”

Oil Change International has released an startling report today quantifying both the greenhouse gas emissions of the Iraq War and the opportunity costs involved in fighting war rather than climate change.

Here’s a few the interesting (and disturbing) facts found in the report:

• Total US spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the global investments in renewable power generation that are needed between now and 2030 in order to halt current warming trends.

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• Just the $600 billion that Congress has allocated for military operations in Iraq to date could have built over 9000 wind farms (at 50 MW capacity each), with the overall capacity to meet a quarter of the country’s current electricity demand.

An EU report says climate change will have a growing impact on global security, multiplying existing threats such as shortages of food and water.

It warns that climate change could cause millions of people to migrate towards Europe as other parts of the world suffer environmental degradation.

States that are “already fragile and conflict prone” could be over-burdened, the report says.

EU proposals to tackle climate change will be discussed by leaders this week.

It may lead to… more forced migration, and even possibly radicalisation and state failure EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner

The stark warning from the report - drawn up by the EU’s foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and the European Commission - is that climate change is not just a threat in itself - it is “a threat multiplier”.

It says shortages of food and water - even radicalisation and state failure - are likely to get worse if no action is taken.

Jeff Masters has a great article on this, and I highly recommend reading through it for all of the details.? There have been a number of talking heads appearing on tv and claiming that, since the winter of 2008 was so cold, global warming is clearly not happening.? There have even been some people claiming that we are undergoing global cooling.? The United States had it’s 54th coolest winter out of the past 113, so it was about an average year temperature wise for us.? Globally, however, this winter was in the top 13% of warmest winters ever.

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

A complete analysis is available online.