Re: HAS A RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE EFFECT BEGUN?

From: peeps (msgsource_at_paranoid.com)
Date: 11/19/04 

Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 23:36:22 GMT

run for your lives Chicken littles..

run to canada... run run!!

"Dr. Jai Maharaj" <usenet@mantra.com> wrote in message
news:8Z22dS080@k9RBKHv1...
> HAS A RUNAWAY GREENHOUSE EFFECT BEGUN?
>
> Forwarded message from moderator@portside.org
> http://www.portside.org
>
> [ Subject: Has a runaway greenhouse effect begun?
> [ From: moderator@portside.org
> [ Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004
>
> Has a 'runaway' greenhouse effect begun?
>
> Norm Dixon
> Green Left Weekly
> November 3, 2004
>
> In recent weeks, scientists have released two separate
> findings that indicate the consequences of global
> warming due to the emission of "greenhouse gases" --
> primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) from the industrial
> burning of fossil fuels -- may be far greater than
> previously estimated.
>
> The new findings underscore the need for governments
> around the world, in particular the industrialised
> First World countries that are responsible for more
> than 80% of past emissions and 75% currently, to take
> urgent action to massively reduce the world's
> industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80%.
>
> Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the United Nations'
> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which
> pools the expertise of more than 2000 of the world's
> climate scientists, warned on October 25 that the
> greenhouse gas emission reduction targets established
> in the 1997 Kyoto agreement do not go far enough and
> far more radical solutions must be found.
>
> Pachauri welcomed the Russian parliament's October 22
> ratification of the Kyoto agreement, which will allow
> the treaty to come into legal force despite the refusal
> by the world's major polluter, the United States, to
> sign. However, "this mustn't lull us into thinking that
> the problem is solved", Pachauri told Reuters. "Kyoto
> is not enough. We have to look at the problem afresh."
> The Kyoto treaty aims for a reduction in greenhouse gas
> emissions of around 5% of 1990 levels, far short of the
> 60-80% over the next 50 years necessary to arrest
> global warming.
>
> The new evidence on the pace of global warming suggests
> that world governments may have even less time to act
> than previously estimated. The October 11 British
> Guardian reported that CO2 in the atmosphere is at
> record levels and increasing at an accelerating rate,
> while the September 23 edition of Science revealed that
> glaciers in western Antarctica flowing into sea are
> speeding up, indicating an increased level of melting.
>
> The scientists who make up the IPCC estimate that
> unless levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are
> stabilised by mid-century, Earth's average temperature
> will rise by up to 5.8°C by 2100. According to the IPCC
> figures, if unchecked, CO2 levels in the air will be
> between 650 and 970 parts per million (ppm). However,
> these estimates may be too conservative.
>
> According to the October 11 Guardian, measurements of
> average atmospheric CO2 levels in 2002 and 2003 may
> confirm that the rate of CO2 accumulation is now
> increasing at an alarming rate. Scientists at Hawaii's
> Mauna Loa Observatory reported that average CO2 levels
> increased by 2.08 ppm in 2002, to 373.1 ppm, and by
> 2.54 ppm in 2003, to an average of 375.64 ppm. This is
> the first recorded example of the average CO2 level
> jumping more than 2 ppm in two consecutive years. The
> average increase in the CO2 level over the last few
> decades, reports the Guardian, has been 1.5 ppm. The
> current level of CO2 is the highest in at least 420,000
> years!
>
> Associated Press reported earlier this year, on March
> 20, that scientists at Mauna Loa Observatory had
> recorded the CO2 level in the atmosphere peaking at a
> record of 379 ppm, compared to 376 ppm a year earlier
> and 373 ppm in 2002.
>
> The increase has raised the spectre of a "runaway"
> greenhouse effect already underway. Previous increases
> of CO2 levels of above 2 ppm -- 1973, 1988, 1994 and
> 1998 -- have coincided with the El Nino weather pattern
> in the Pacific. However, this cannot explain the latest
> rises.
>
> Weather scientist Charles Keeling, who began measuring
> atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa in 1958, told the Guardian
> that "it is possible that this is merely a reflection
> of natural events like previous peaks in the rate, but
> it is also possible that it is the beginning of a
> natural process unprecedented in the record ... [The
> rise] could be a weakening of the Earth's carbon sinks,
> associated with world warming, as part of a climate
> change feedback mechanism. It is cause for concern."
>
> Piers Forster, senior research fellow at the University
> of Reading's department of meteorology, added that "if
> this is a rate change ... it will be of enormous
> concern, because it will imply that all our global
> warming predictions for the hundred years or so will
> have to be redone".
>
> Friends of the Earth's Scotland head Duncan McLaren,
> speaking to Agence France Presse on October 11,
> demanded action to achieve the 60-80% reductions in
> industrial greenhouse gas emissions required within 30
> years: "Instead of just keeping our fingers crossed,
> these findings should send an urgent reminder to
> governments everywhere of the urgent need to tackle the
> growing threat of climate change."
>
> Predictions about the rate of CO2 accumulating in the
> atmosphere might not be the only estimates that have to
> be revised. Based on the IPCC's present forecasts,
> global warming triggered by unchecked greenhouse gas
> emissions will cause a sea level rise of between 20
> centimetres and almost 1 metre by the end of the
> century. However, the IPCC's prediction is based on an
> assumption that the polar ice caps will not melt
> significantly.
>
> However, according the September 23 journal Science,
> NASA researchers have found that six vast glaciers in
> the west Antarctic are flowing into the Amundsen Sea at
> a rate up to 25% faster than in the 1970s. The Pine
> Island Glacier is entering the ocean at a rate of six
> metres a day and as more enters the sea, the remainder
> speeds up further. Glaciologists told Science that
> within five years, 700 square kilometres of the thick
> Pine Island Glacier alone will be floating (and
> melting) in the ocean.
>
> According to Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA's Jet
> Propulsion Laboratory, should the six glaciers
> completely melt, they alone will cause the world's sea
> level to rise by more than a metre. Researchers using
> ice-penetrating radar also found that the glaciers are
> on average 430 metres thicker than previously thought,
> meaning they are dumping considerably more fresh water
> into the ocean.
>
> One reason why Antarctic glaciers are entering the sea
> at a much faster rate is because floating 500-metre ice
> shelves, which significantly slow the entry of the
> glaciers into the sea, have begun to collapse and melt.
> Antarctica has warmed by an average 2.5°C since the
> 1940s, and winter temperatures have jumped by almost
> 5°C.
>
> The Larsen A ice shelf suddenly collapsed in 1995. The
> Wilkins Ice Shelf is shrinking. In 2002, the 3400-
> square kilometre Larsen B shelf -- at least 12,000
> years old and up to 70 storeys thick -- disintegrated
> into the Weddell Sea in the space of a few months
> (satellites images of the collapse are available at <
> http://nsidc.org/iceshelves/larsenb2002/animation.html
> >).
>
> The calving of monster icebergs is now common. Ted
> Scambos, an expert from the University of Colorado's
> National Snow and Ice Centre, found that after Larsen
> B's collapse, nearby glaciers began entering the sea up
> to eight times faster than previously.
>
> According to NASA's Robert Thomas, the ice shelves are
> melting rapidly and have been thinning at the rate of
> 10 to 15 metres a year since the 1990s. The rate of
> thinning today is double that in the 1990s, he added.
>
> The Larsen and Wilkins ice shelves are relatively
> insignificant in Antarctic terms, but their demise may
> indicate that similar processes may be underway on the
> massive Ross and the Filchner-Ronne ice shelves. "Ice-
> shelf thinning could be happening elsewhere in the
> Antarctic, but we just don't know", Scambos told
> Science.
>
> The Ross and the Filchner-Ronne ice shelves prevent the
> gigantic land-based Western Antarctic Ice *** from
> rapidly entering the ocean and melting. The Western
> Antarctic Ice ***, the smaller of Antarctica's two
> vast ice sheets, contains a mind-boggling 3.2 million
> cubic kilometres of ice, about 10% of the world's total
> ice -- enough to raise the sea level six metres. (If
> the more secure Eastern Antarctic Ice *** melted, the
> sea would rise more than 60 metres!)
>
> Within the western *** are five ice streams --
> enormous glaciers more than 50 kilometres wide and one
> kilometre thick. The Ross Ice Shelf -- floating ice
> nearly the size of New South Wales -- and the similarly
> sized Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf prevent them sliding
> into the sea where they would rapidly melt.
>
> The West Antarctic Ice *** may have melted at least
> once before, between 110,000 and 130,000 years ago,
> causing the sea level to rise about five metres higher
> than today's level. An article in the August 1995
> Scientific American pointed out that the five-metre
> rise was followed by a 10-metre decrease -- all in the
> space of 100 or so years!
>
> The May 2002 edition of Science reported that
> researchers from the Oregon State University, the
> University of Toronto and the University of Durham in
> Britain had found that a massive and unusually abrupt
> 23-metre rise in the sea level about 14,200 years ago
> was caused by the partial collapse of both major ice
> sheets in Antarctica. The sea level took just 500 years
> to reach that height.
>
> http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/605/605p13.htm
>
> End of forwarded message from moderator@portside.org
> http://www.portside.org
>
> Jai Maharaj
> http://www.mantra.com/jai
> Om Shanti
>
> Hindu Holocaust Museum
> http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
>
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>
> The truth about Islam and Muslims
> http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
>
> The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
>
> "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
> peace, but a sword.
> "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
> daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
> law.
> "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
> - Matthew 10:34-36.
>
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