The latest meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December featured hundreds of talks about Earth science, some of those relating to Alaska (and some of those comprehensible to a non-scientist).
Here are a few items from the notebook I carried around the Moscone Center:
An Aleutian Island morphs at high speed: Chris Waythomas of the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage spoke of how Kasatochi Island in the Aleutians has changed in diameter since its explosive 2008 eruption.
"Erosion by wave action has eaten away the coast at about (1,000 feet) per year. This may be a world record," he said. That's about three feet of shoreline disappearing every day.
Waythomas also noted that the northern part of the island has lost about 70 percent of the ash and mud deposited by the eruption four years ago, but that the ocean deposited much of it to the south end of the island. "It should be three or four more years until Kasatochi gets to its original size."
Canada ice on the wane: Glaciologist Garry Clarke of the University of British Columbia said that the portion of the St. Elias Range in Canada will lose half its volume of ice by the year 2100, and almost all the ice in the north and central Rocky Mountains in Canada will be gone by then. "We're going to be witness during the next century to the disappearance of glaciers in western North America," Clarke said.
Double the midges on northern river: A second generation of midges hatched last summer along a stretch of the Kuparik River. Normally, only one generation per summer of the small flies emerges from that water, said Michael Kendrick of the University of Alabama. He said scientists once added nutrients to that section of river during a study, but he's not sure if that, a longer ice-free season, or both made the midges spawn twice as many generations as before.
Atigun squirrels get a jump on summer: Brian Barnes of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Institute of Arctic Biology reported on two groups of ground squirrels that he and his colleagues have been studying for years on Alaska's North Slope. Because of high winds in Atigun Gorge, a group of ground squirrels there has early access to leaves, berries and mushrooms that squirrels at snow-covered Toolik Lake do not have. "They don't wait for greenup," Barnes said of the Atigun squirrels, which emerge from hibernation two weeks earlier than Toolik squirrels. "Two weeks is a long time in the Arctic."
We are still emitting too much carbon dioxide: James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, shared a message about carbon dioxide at a press conference. He said our releases of the greenhouse gas are "overwhelming."
"The C02 we're putting in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning will stay in the atmosphere a long time before it can be put back into carbonate at the sea floor," he said. "That tells us we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels (that remain to be extracted from the Earth). If we burn all the fossil fuels, we would send our planet back into the ice-free state . . . If we're hoping to maintain a planet that looks like the one humanity has known, we're out of time. We¹ve got to turn (carbon dioxide emissions) around."
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
Professor Ned knows whereof he speaks, and the word "overwhelming" is accurate when describing greenhouse gases including methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone, as well as CO2. Their measurements are accurate and all you have to do is run them out, like they're doing in computer simulations to find out that planet Earth is staring a great extinction of life directly in the face.
But you do support the extraction and use of the resource that brings you these fine things and pays your wages. Don't you? If not then perhaps you should give up the fleece and gore-tex and the plastic kayak. (never mind your wages)
Let’s start with the headline, “if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again” part. Rose, not at all incuriously given the pattern of his past writing, fails to name names or provide references that may be checked, sources “Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona” for solar input and them offers the conclusion that the Tames River will freeze his own. A search turns up a 2006 NASA (and quite a few others that predict Solar Cycle 25, the next one with a peak a bit more than 11 years from now, will be weak and that there is a chance that the sun may be entering a period of reduced energy radiation. That is the gist Rose’s op-ed.
He dismissively quotes Peter Stott of the UK Met Office, but not anyone from NASA or the U of Arizona, who quantifies the affect of a Dalton Minimum type period last through the end of the century as reducing the global average temperature by 0.08º C based on solar observation. Then he’s off to the races with Henrik Svensmark, Nicola Scafetta, Judith Curry, Pal Brekke, and Benny Peiser.
Curiously, this group hypothesizes quite different causes for the planet’s warming. Svensmark and Scafetta propose changes in the sun output but Svensmark champions a mechanism that requires reduced solar radiation while Scafetta, a statistician, touts one that requires increased radiation, though the sun output has been quite accurately measured for nearly 60 years as being quite constant in radiation (the 11 year solar cycles average out). Brekke is a solar physicist but is with Curry in seeing oscillations in heat released from the oceans as the main cause. Peiser academic background is social anthropolog, specializing in the environmental and socio-economic impact of physical activity on health. He is the director of a “think tank” set-up with secret funding of ~£500,000 in Great Britain.
But, this on topic and very interesting paper was just published in Geophysical Research Letters:
It would make more sense if the solution for concern about warming is more UAF research funding:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
Well, given that there's quite a number of qualified earth scientists employed at UAF who are dedicated to the northern regions and love this state, that's not a bad idea at all.
As for your links, I mean it would be nice of the press to let the cranks play once in a while if they had the gall to label outright lies as such. If the American school system was up to par with other developed nations people would know that without carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases our earth surface would be a whole lot colder, and that increasing the concentration of those gases by 20-50% (depending on when you start counting - the high number is starting before the industrial revolution) is likely to, well, intensify this effect. For those who prefer the appeal of authority to using their own brain, I see your 16 ragtag scientists and raise you the leaders of 18 scientific societies (http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/ssi/climate-change-statement-from.pdf) . And for those who are interested in reading about where the current areas of uncertainty in climate science really lie, there's this very nicely written 2 year old feature : http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100120/pdf/463284a.pdf ).
The money goes straight from the energy industry, such as the billionaire Koch brothers who own the Flint Hills refinery in North Pole, and from other polluting tax dodgers such as Exxon, to their stooges, denialist front groups such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
All the b.s. from the propaganda factories, all the slurs on the reputation of the vast consensus of climate scientists won't succeed in changing the fact that we need to change our own energy production and consumption ways our the world will be substantially changed for the worse.
Follow the money backing the junk "science" most often used to refute climate change and you end up in a pool of oil.
This argument is similar to the one that previously swirled around the links between cigarette smoking and cancer. When one followed the money that supported the claims that there was no link between smoking and cancer, one ended up in a cloud of smoke.
One the one hand: If you go into climate science, one thing you can be sure about is that you'd be earning more as a junior project manager, IT person or developer for a technology company.
On the other hand: Take a look at the list of most valuable publicly traded companies (http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottdecarlo/2011/08/11/the-worlds-25-most-valuable-companies-apple-is-now-on-top/) and count how many are in the business of extracting non-renewable fossil fuels.
All of the most valuable companies have good paying jobs for the well-educated that are percieved to have something to contribute including oil and mining companies, retailers, pharmas and banks.
Most of the money spend of global warming is simply crony capitalism for greenies (and often opportunists that aren't even green).
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