And now, thanks to researchers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Center for Space Research (CSR) in America, a new and accurate picture of Greenland’s shrinking ice cap has been formulated.

Subsequently, the researchers have found that Greenland is currently responsible for an annual increase of sea levels of up to half a millimeter.

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A new experiment, being conducted at Imperial College London’s Silwood Park campus in Berkshire, will attempt to determine how the British plant ecosystem will be affected by future changes to climate and biodiversity.

With this experiment, however, there will be no computer simulations. Instead, scientists and researchers will be conducting the experiment outside, with 168 plots of grassland ecosystem at their fingertips. This will give a clear insight into how the ecosystems will hold up under a variety of different situations.

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August saw the fastest retreat of arctic sea ice on record, according to new NASA data. During that month, sea ice melted at a rate of 32,700 square miles per day, compared with 24,400 square miles per day in 2007. The rate of decline is even more dramatic when compared with the 30-year average rate of decline, 19,700 miles per day.

The accelerated seasonal retreat of sea ice surprised NASA scientists, who expected a more moderate retreat on the tail of a la Niña year. Moreover, the data show that one cold year, when sea ice levels are able return to normal, is not enough to counter the long-term melting of the arctic.

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Ever since I first saw Ernie and almost the entire felt-cast of Sesame Street do “The Rubber Duck, Duck” dance on Sesame Street, I have had a strange fascination with rubber ducks. They aren’t the common toy here in Australia that they appear to be elsewhere. And though looking back at that video now presents me with a bit of a moral and architectural dilemma, considering just how many people are naked together in that tub, my love for the rubber duck continues.

And now, once again, the rubber duck is coming to the aid of science. US rocket scientist Alberto Behar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California has sent 90 rubber ducks into the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland in an attempt to figure out what is happening inside Greenland’s fastest moving glacier.

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The plan will add Mayor Daley to about 800 US mayors who have adopted the Kyoto global warming protocols. Chicago’s new plan will build upon measured already in place and under way in the city, in an attempt to make Chicago the most environmentally friendly city in the US.

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According to two separate research groups, new evidence supports the possibility that the disappearing Arctic ice is a good thing for the planet.

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“The water in the gyres does not mix well with the rest of the ocean, so for long periods these gyres can trap pollutants, nutrients, drifting plants and animals, and become physical barriers that divert even major ocean currents,” says Dr Gary Froyland, a UNSW mathematician.

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Radio, as a means of communication, is very personal, and can deliver messages right to the hearts of listeners.

Community radio can be very empowering to communities because it can inspire people to look at their needs, discuss their problems and look for solutions in a conversational manner.

Because of its conversational quality, community radio can make people become intimately involved with their own individual reality. Oral communication is deeply rooted in many African societies, and community radio can easily tap into this aspect of lived reality, and influence it to propagate environmentally friendly solutions.

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Well it seems that, according to Spanish researchers, this may not be Gods attempt at humor, but rather our own doing.

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And thanks to Captain Cook and Lord Nelson and the East India Trading Company, a wealth of information has been uncovered by experts from the British Meteorological Office.

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Instead of acting upon it or even printing copies to president George Bush and his handlers, they tossed it in a cyber trash bin called Spam folder as if that was the only green thing to do.

Many months after Scott McClellan quit spinning for Dubya, climate watchers are crying foul that he never ever touched the seemingly hot subject in his recently released book, What Happened. But in his famous spins, he had blamed human activity - you and me - as responsible for global warming on more than one occasion.

Spin can be clever tomfoolery sometimes but the White House stance on global warming is well known and George W. Bush has never disappointed with his public statements that smack verily of official ignorance or pretense on the subject as an inconvenient truth.

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The proliferation of voluntary carbon offset programs seems like a great way for individuals to help fight climate change. But do carbon offset programs really work? That’s the question for Bill Stanley, Science Lead for Carbon Strategies, Climate Change Team at The Nature Conservancy.

Lawrence Hamilton, of Charlotte, VT, asks:
“Are carbon offset programs and forest protection efforts providing real solutions for reducing global carbon emissions? And how do these programs help reduce pollution from mercury, arsenic and other “baddies” that often accompany carbon emissions?”

Bill Stanley, Science Lead for Carbon Strategies, Climate Change Team, replies:
To answer the first question, yes — well-designed carbon offset programs can have a meaningful impact on reducing the carbon emissions that cause climate change.

Deforestation and land-use changes contribute approximately 20 percent of global carbon emissions. Rigorously-designed, forest-based offset programs can make a real dent in that number.

To be effective, any offset program needs to meet high standards. These standards include:

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Image credit:  tiarescott at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Via:  Casper Star-Tribune

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However critics will be the first to tell us that the small picture does not necessarily reflect the big picture. Just like a jigsaw of the planet Earth, you might think that the whole planet is blue if they are the only pieces of the puzzle you saw, but look at it in total, and you’ll find a few solid bits as well!

So that is why a new study has assembled information never before gathered together in one spot. The study looked at a vast array of physical and biological systems across our planet, and looked at if and how they were being affected by global warming. The study appears in the May 15 issue of the journal Nature.

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This report adds weight to a growing number of reports and findings that are pointing to 2008’s summer as a turning point for the Arctic region; one where there could be no sea-ice at all.

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There’s so much glee and gloating in the deniers’ headlines: “Central Plank of Global Warming Alarmism Discredited” (referring to MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel’s recent finding that climate change might not result in more and stronger hurricanes), “Uncommon Cold is an Antidote to Warming Fears” (it’s been cold this winter, hasn’t it?), “Global Warming Gets the Cold Freeze” (ditto). Yup, a budget crunch for snow-removal in Chicago and cold iguanas falling from trees in Florida sure proves all those hundreds of silly IPCC scientists wrong.

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A report published in Nature by authors Roger Pielke Jr., Tom Wigley and Christopher Green, has described the IPCC’s assumptions that the bulk of the challenge of reducing future emissions will occur in the absence of climate policies as “…optimistic at best and unachievable at worst…”

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“The world has never faced such a massively predictable potential reduction in grain harvest as we are now looking at with the melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau,” said Mr. Brown. “Keep in mind, this is not based off of a climate model with somewhat theoretical projections. This analysis is based on what is already happening–on a trend that’s very well established in both India and in China.”

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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.