Global warming threatens civilization says top six scientists

See first source for the full article.

Present knowledge does not permit accurate specification of the dangerous level of human-made GHGs. However, it is much lower than has commonly been assumed. If we have not already passed the dangerous level, the energy infrastructure in place ensures that we will pass it within several decades.

We conclude that a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting GHGs from the air. Development of CO2 capture at power plants, with below-ground CO2 sequestration, may be a critical element. Injection of the CO2 well beneath the ocean floor assures its stability (House et al. 2006). If the power plant fuel is derived from biomass, such as cellulosic fibres grown without excessive fertilization that produces N2O or other offsetting GHG emissions, it will provide continuing drawdown of atmospheric CO2.

clipped from www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk Climate change and trace gases Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A James Hansen1, *, Makiko Sato1, Pushker Kharecha1, Gary Russell1, David W. Lea2 & Mark Siddall3 Published online 18 May 2007 clipped from environment.independent.co.uk Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilisation itself is threatened by global warming. They also implicitly criticise the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets. The researchers were led by James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was the first scientist to warn the US Congress about global warming.

¹NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA jhansen@giss.nasa.gov
²Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
³Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, USA

*Author for correspondence jhansen@giss.nasa.gov

US to sink G8 Summit climate change deal, not CO2

What to make of the Luddite-like obstructionism the US is deploying into the proposed G8 Summit climate change deal mooted for next month in Germany? The deal is wanted by G7 of the other G8 countries, and being pushed very hard by the hosts. :::[Suburban Guerilla]

The US has rejected any prospect of a deal on climate change at the G8 summit in Germany next month, according to a leaked document.

Despite Tony Blair’s declaration on Thursday that Washington would sign up to “at least the beginnings” of action to cut carbon emissions, a note attached to a draft document circulated by Germany says the US is “fundamentally opposed” to the proposals.

The note, written in red ink, says the deal “runs counter to our overall position and crosses multiple ‘red lines’ in terms of what we simply cannot agree to”. …

The tone is blunt, with whole pages of the draft crossed out and even the mildest statements about confirming previous agreements rejected. “The proposals within the sections titled ‘Fighting Climate Change’ and ‘Carbon Markets’ are fundamentally incompatible with the President’s approach to climate change,” says another red-ink comment.

It's medieval in vision. I hope for Bush's legacy, and everyone else's future, that he has something better than a backrub for Angela Merkel, this time. There is two weeks for him to change his mind. Every thinking, acting American should email their senator and congressman, and the Whitehouse, and their media editors, and make it known that they strongly disagree with the concept of polluting the climate in order to maintain dependence on ever-diminishing, cheap-for-now, finite and foreign reserves of energy. It's not right for our kids to pick up the tab just to maintain a very narrowly-served dependence on festy fossil fuel.

:::[Online petition - America, join the G8 Climate Deal]

Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Washington wishes world would fry

Still panting after undermining the Kyoto Agreement, the American Government is now attacking the draft agreement of next month's G8 summit, watering down clauses agreeing to keep temperature rises under 2C this century.

As anyone who has been following global warming knows, when the world average temperature tips over 2 degrees Celsius from what it is today, we engage runaway climate change. Ciao to this benign climate that as seen the exponential growth of humans since the last ice age - it sure has been fun, especially inventing the Internet.

Something has to happen. We have to save the Internet.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk The US is trying to block sections of a draft agreement on climate change prepared for next month's G8 summit, according to documents seen by the BBC. Washington objects to the draft's targets to keep the global temperature rise below 2C this century and halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. A clause saying "climate change is speeding up and will seriously damage our common natural environment and severely weaken (the) global economy... resolute action is urgently needed in order to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions" is struck out. They are trying to lay landmines under a post-Kyoto agreement after they leave office Philip Clapp So are a statement that "we are deeply concerned about the latest findings confirmed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)", and a commitment to send a "clear message" on international efforts to combat global warming at the next round of UN climate talks in December. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Climate tipping out faster than forecast

Like the failing kidneys of an alcoholic , global warming may be reducing the capacity to plants and soils to absorb carbon dioxide. This is an anticipated tipping point, the next stage is runaway climate change, and we have a predicted ten years to stop it.

clipped from www.smh.com.au CLIMATE change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted and it being harder to tackle global warming, research suggests. Scientists at Bristol University say a previously unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent years is due to more greenhouse gas escaping from trees, plants and soils. Global warming was making vegetation less able to absorb the carbon pollution pumped out by human activity. Such a shift would worsen the gloomy predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned last week that there is less than a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Wolfgang Knorr, a climate researcher at Bristol, said: "We could be seeing the carbon cycle feedback kicking in, which is good news for scientists because it shows our models are correct. But it's bad news for everybody else." Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Good and bad global warming tipping points

A Fred Pearce Guardian article published in the SMH today is the first MSM article to point out that climate skeptics are ominously right about one thing:

All this suggests that the climate sceptics are right in one sense. They say the future is much less certain than the climate models predict. They have a point. We know less than we think. But the sceptics are wrong in concluding the models have been exaggerating the threat. Far from it. Evidence emerging in the past five years or so suggests the presence of many previously unknown tipping points that could trigger dangerous climate change.

The article, about how we have not thought through how fast Greenland can melt, is timely in this recent period of hightened awareness of global warming. It is coalescing from tectonic shifts in the public discussion caused by Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" world tour, the release of the Stern Report, the admission from John Howard about AGW, and not least, uncle Rupert Murdoch's conversion. Proof plenty of this are the estimated 10,000 to 12,000 people who 'Walked against Warming' in Sydney's CBD today, despite the wet and rain. Thank goodness, because now we badly need to talk about tipping points:

That is what is so worrying about the British Met Office's warning that the Amazon rainforest could die by mid-century, releasing its stored carbon from trees and soils into the air. And why we should take serious note when Peter Cox, professor of climate systems at Exeter University, warns that the world's soils - soaking up carbon for centuries - may be close to a tipping beyond which they will release it all again.

Other threats lurk on the horizon. We know that there are trillions of tonnes of methane, a virulent greenhouse gas, trapped in permafrost and in sediments beneath the ocean bed. There are fears this methane may start leaking out as temperatures rise. It seems this happened 55 million years ago, when gradual warming of the atmosphere penetrated to the ocean depths and unlocked the methane, which caused a much greater warming that resulted in the extinction of millions of species.

The only good tipping point is the one going on right now in the public conversation. Gore is right, the the impetus for a global warming policy that deals with the problem, rather than pander to Big Fossil or Radiological Fuel, is only going to come from voters.

Other blogs on: global warming climate change tipping points