Overall, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels increased 29% between 2000 and 2008 and 41% from 1990-2008, and the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is now at its highest in at least 2 million years, according to a new study in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The new report published this week by an international team of researchers who are part of the “Global Carbon Project” shows emissions trends through 2008 (including changes in emissions causes and in the amount of emissions remaining in the atmosphere) and brings up some major questions for the future as well.

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San Francisco’s zany Bay to Breakers race brings out not only world class runners but crazy costumes as well. Some companies took advantage of the crazy and healthy atmosphere to promote various items (energy drinks, anti pain patches) but we had to question the Foster Farms “Say No to Plumping” race team.

Sure, everyone seemed to enjoy having their photo taken with the plump Foster Farms chickens but the brightly colored 16-person Foster Farms race team seemed bent on raising awareness of a little-known food fact: “plumped” or saltwater-injected chicken that costs consumers their health and money.

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Nasa scientists have told government’s that a simple cut in worldwide emissions of soot could lead to a dramatic reduction in the effects of global warming, as well as preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths from air pollution.

Soot contains black carbon, thought to be the second largest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide. Whilst airborne, it it spread around the globe by wind, heating the atmosphere by absorbing and releasing warmth from the sun’s rays. When it falls to the surface it also darkens snow and ice in polar regions or high mountain ranges, further reducing the Earth’s ability to reflect solar radiation.

Cutting soot emissions has a virtually instantaneous effect since it disappears rapidly from the earth’s atmosphere, unlike CO2, which can linger for hundreds of years.

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A team of UK scientists have discovered a natural process that could delay, or even end, the threat of global warming.

The researchers, aboard the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance, have found that melting icebergs off the coast of Antarctica are releasing millions of tiny particles of iron into the southern Ocean, helping to create huge ‘blooms’ of algae that absorb carbon emissions. The algae then sinks to the icy depths, effectively removing CO2 from the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

According to lead researcher, Prof. Rob Raiswell of Leeds University, “The Earth itself seems to want to save us.”

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This is one of the most succinct illustrations of the story of Earth’s recent life, as endured with a case of Humans. It even leaves the door open for sequels, as we all wait to see where humans go next — Mars? — and what they do there. Oh, the suspense.

Scientists at Columbia University have discovered that a rock found in the Middle East can be used to soak up carbon dioxide at a rate high enough to significantly slow global warming.

The team found that when the rock, known as Peridotite, comes into contact with carbon dioxide it converts the gas into harmless minerals such as calcite. They have also worked out a way to ’supercharge’ the naturally occurring process to a million times its normal speed to grow enough of the mineral to permanently store 2 billion or more tons of carbon dioxide annually. This equates to an astonishing 7 per cent of the total global carbon emissions from human activity each year.

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A chemical equator - an atmospheric line - discovered by scientists suggests the existence of a 50 kilometer-wide boundary between polluted air of the Northern Hemisphere and the largely uncontaminated atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere.

In a model, the red that represents high levels of carbon monoxide present in the air in the Northern Hemisphere gives way to blue that reflects clean air of the South; in between, a white-colored ‘chemical equator’ separates them.

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Researchers at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US, found that Earth’s atmosphere contained very little light-blocking volcanic dust. During the eclipse, Earth blocks sunlight from reaching the moon – hence why the moon is obscured in darkness for a time. Naturally, some light will make it through, refracted through the Earth’s atmosphere.

However the amount that refracts through is normally tempered by how much volcanic dust is in the atmosphere to block it. “All the big dimmings of the Moon during eclipses can be attributed to specific volcanoes,” says Richard Keen of UC Boulder.

Keen and his fellow researchers at UC Boulder have been charting the brightness of lunar eclipses back to 1960, as well as adding a few years either side of the 1883 eruption of Indonesia’s Krakatoa volcano to the mix. From this data, they have been tracking the changes in opacity of Earth’s atmosphere.

This obviously has implications for our climate in that, the less dust there is reflecting light away from the planet’s surface the more there is reaching it.

Keen and his colleagues calculate that, because more sunlight is reaching the surface, Earth should be 0.1 to 0.2° Celsius warmer in recent years than it was back in the late 60s.

This increase in temperature is a hitherto unforeseen addition to the .06° Celsius rise that our planet has encountered of late. The IPCC has pinned the majority of that warming on greenhouse gas. They add that other factors including fluctuating patterns in ocean circulation and slight changes in the Sun’s brightness could also have influenced the climate.

“All of these have been contributing to a warming, adding on top of each other,” Keen told New Scientist. “The difficulty is, of course, what are the relative magnitudes [of these effects],” he says.

Susan Solomon of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, a member of the Nobel-prize-winning team that put together the 2007 IPCC report said however that volcanic haze fluctuations were introduced in to the models used for their report. She disputes Keen’s concerns; “There’s no evidence for a significant warming trend over the last several decades [due to a decline in volcanic haze],” she told New Scientist. “In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.”

Solomon notes that over the past 40 years – compared to the 20 years prior – the amount of haze in the stratosphere has been higher. Thus, over the past 60 years, there would have – if anything – been a slight cooling trend if volcanic haze were the only influence on the climate.

And while Keen acknowledges this, he argues that the relatively long period since 1995 with a relatively haze-free atmosphere could be having a considerably larger than anticipated impact on our climate. He points also to theories of long term effects through the current-day heating of our oceans, as an impact the added sunshine could be having.

Keen is now compiling more precise estimates of the brightness of our most recent lunar eclipse, occurring on the 20-21 of last February, so that the amount of haze in the atmosphere can be calculated more efficiently.

New Scientist - Lunar eclipse may shed light on climate change

Image Courtesy of NASA

That isn’t to say that scientific debate is not necessary or needed; only, that it seems that the obvious seems to bypass people as simply another annoying fact against their chosen belief.

In addition, there are those who feel that they have an ace up their sleeves when they talk to me. They feel that knowledge of increasingly colder temperatures and unexpected snow storms is evidence not of global warming, but of global cooling. They put the card down on the table with a grin. They seem to exude complete confidence in me not having a full house of cards that were actually dealt to me.

In other words, how come people look at the recent weird weather anomalies which most climate change advocates will themselves use as proof of a changing planet, but fail to look at years of steadily climbing temperatures?

All of that is simply by way of pointing to new research showing that greenhouse gas emissions will have to be entirely eliminated in order for our climate to stabilize and to prevent our temperatures from rising.

In response to that I say two things; a) well duh and b) why, for the love of Pete, did it take a scientific study to bring this to peoples attention?

Damon Matthews from Concordia University in Canada and Ken Caldeira from Carnegie Institute for Science, Stanford, in the US, are the men behind this research. They show that our current efforts to simply stabilize our emissions – rather than eradicating our emissions – are simply not enough.

“Even if we eliminated carbon dioxide today we are still committed to a global temperature rise of around 0.8 ºC lasting at least 500 years,” says Caldeira. As to why carbon dioxide persists so long, Caldeira points to the slow response time of our many oceans. “It takes a lot of energy to heat them up and then a long time for them to cool back down,” he adds.

Their study used a global climate model that, instead of only looking at what happens when the emissions have stabilized, looked at how greenhouse emissions need to change in order to stabilize the global temperature.

Matthews and Caldeira created four models, each of which began with a single pulse of carbon dioxide in to a pre-industrial atmosphere (to mimic but simplify the steady increase of carbon dioxide emissions over the past hundred years or so). Pulse sizes of 50, 200, 500 and 2000 billion tons of carbon made up the four models.

At the end of a 500 year period in which the model calculated global temperatures and atmospheric and ocean carbon dioxide levels, the pair found that between 20% and 35% of the initial pulse had remained in the simulated atmosphere. This was true for even the smallest emission pulse. The remainder of the carbon had been absorbed by land and ocean carbon sinks.

The existence of original carbon dioxide at the end of the 500 year period signifies that global warming took place over the entire period of time. For the four simulations, respectively, global temperatures stabilized at 0.09, 0.34, 0.88 and 3.6 ºC above pre-industrial levels.

This research has received academic support from those such as Roger Pielke, a climate policy expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “This research makes the case that simply stabilising concentrations is insufficient to stabilise temperatures. Their argument, if widely accepted, raises the bar on what it means to mitigate climate change,” he says.

Matthews and Caldeira warned in their report, though unrealistically (and probably knowingly so), that the current emission targets for 2050 were simply insufficient. “It is technologically challenging, but not impossible. The biggest challenge will be to get political consensus,” says Caldeira.

Now, to be fair, a zero emissions future is not out of the realm of scientific possibility. In my opinion, it’s out of the realm of political possibility, but let’s all just revolt and do away with that issue. Costa Rica is already aiming towards zero emissions, and with new tools such as renewable energy, electric cars and carbon capture there are experts who believe this is a feasible goal.

Dave Reay, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh, is one who believes this, “If used on a large enough scale then new technologies like carbon capture could get us to zero emissions.”

Either way, it is good to at least see the evidence in the scientific world for those who hadn’t been in a position to see the obvious. As the photo suggests, the future is in our own hands!

Check out Shirley Siluk Gregory’s previous brief on this issue here.

Turner, arguably the greatest artist Britain has ever known, painted the scene above. A steam tug tows a wind-powered warship to its grave. The sun sets. It’s not optimistic. Maybe not pessimistic either, yet the artist knows something has changed. Wind power is no longer an option. It’s 1838.

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