Atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira first became known for his groundbreaking work on ocean acidification, a phrase originally coined as a headline for one of his papers. Of late, however, Caldeira's research has led him into the controversial area of geoengineering - the large-scale, deliberate manipulation of the Earth's climate system.

Many scientists have shied away from the subject because they feel it is a wrongheaded and dangerous path to pursue. But Caldeira - who heads a research lab at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University - has not been so dismissive, in part

Ken Caldeirabecause his climate modeling has demonstrated that some geoengineering schemes may indeed help reduce the risk of climate change. In fact, few scientists have thought harder about the moral, political, and environmental implications of geoengineering.

“Major developed and developing countries have signed up to tackle the problem and to limit global warming to two degrees. As countries enter their emissions cuts in the formal register by January 31st, they can and should make good on this.” That was Ed Miliband’s comment on the Copenhagen conference. So it is surprising to learn that Britain’s own plans for tackling climate change are based on an approach which is expected to result in an increase in global warming of at least two degrees.

The government’s plans are derived from the report Building a low-carbon economy – the UK’s contribution to tackling climate change, published by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) in December 2008. In the CCC’s favoured scenario, global emissions of greenhouse gases peak by 2016.

Dan Miller's presentation focuses on why the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports are actually best case scenarios. For example, IPCC climate models do not include the effect of melting permafrost releasing greenhouse gases, even though the permafrost is melting now and it holds more greenhouse gases than all that mankind has ever released.Another example is that IPCC predictions of sea level rise only take into account thermal expansion of the oceans and melting of glaciers; the largest factor, disintegration of glaciers, was not included because it is hard to model. The result is that sea level rise will likely be substantially higher this century than the IPCC predicts.Miller discusses several other potential catastrophes that are not included in IPCC predictions and also discusses tipping points that could put climate change solutions out of our reach in years or decades, the psychology of climate change, and why it is difficult for people to respond to the threat posed by a warming earth.His talk concludes with a discussion of ways to address climate change and the risks and opportunities that companies face due to the climate crisis.

Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.

Methane released from gas hydrate in submarine sediments has been identified in the past as an agent of climate change. The likelihood of methane being released in this way has been widely predicted.

The data were collected from the royal research ship RRS James Clark Ross, as part of the Natural Environment Research Council's International Polar Year Initiative. The bubble plumes were detected using sonar and then sampled with a water-bottle sampling system over a range of depths.

Dear leaders,

I call upon you, not as representatives of your countries, but as leaders of the world, to personally attend the United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December.

Decisions which will be made at this meeting will impact the lives of everyone alive today, and determine the shape of humanity’s future.

This is the world’s best chance to avoid runaway climate change.

You owe it to the world to attend, to set aside your national interests, to safeguard our future, and to do what you were elected to do: lead.

My request is simple: promise now to personally attend.

Click on the image below to sign the petition at Greenpeace

Video of how atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane change with the seasons.
This video shows the Methane levels.

The Nitrogen Paradox

Nitrogen is one of the five major chemical elements that are necessary for life. While nitrogen is the most abundant of these, more than 99 percent of it occurs as molecular nitrogen, or N₂, which cannot be used by most organisms.  This is because breaking the triple bond holding the two nitrogen atoms together requires a large amount of energy, which can be mustered only through high-temperature processes or by a small number of nitrogen-fixing microbes.

Most living organisms can only make use of reactive nitrogen, which includes inorganic forms of nitrogen like ammonia, ammonium, nitrogen oxide, nitric acid, nitrous oxide, and nitrate, and organic compounds like urea, amines, proteins, and nucleic acids. It includes any nitrogen compound that is radiatively, chemically or biological active.

What is Normal?  A Critique of Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming Theory

Other parts of the video can be found HERE

 nuke power bailout must NOT be part of the hundreds of billions of federal dollars about to pour out of Washington to revive our Bush-whacked economy.

If the huge Obama stimulus package we all know is coming includes money to build new reactors, the whole venture could turn to radioactive dust.

This is the last gasp both for American prosperity and atomic energy. Nuke promoters are lobbying frantically to get some of that cash for a dying business in which Wall Street would not invest even before the last crash.

In 2007 a national grassroots campaign, led in part by Nukefree.org, helped get a proposed $50 billion loan guarantee boondoggle removed from the Energy Bill. In 2008 a blank check was on its way just as Wall Street tanked.

The Independent (London), May 24, 2008 Saturday - Barcelona is a dry city. It is dry in a way that two days of showers can do nothing to alleviate. The Catalan capital's weather can change from one day to the next, but its climate, like that of the whole Mediterranean region, is inexorably warming up and drying out. And in the process this most modern of cities is living through a crisis that offers a disturbing glimpse of metropolitan futures everywhere.

ORLANDO, FL, May 20, 2008 – Rising global temperatures could lead to an increase in kidney stones, according to research presented today at the 103rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA). Dehydration has been linked to stone disease, particularly in warmer climates, and global warming will exacerbate this effect. As a result, the prevalence of stone disease may increase, along with the costs of treating the condition. Researchers presented data to reporters in a special press conference on May 20, 2008 at 8:00 a.m.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - On days when there is a lot of dust and other large-particle pollutants in the air, slightly more elderly people go to hospital emergency rooms with heart problems, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

There was also an increase in hospital visits by elderly patients complaining of respiratory illnesses when "coarse," or large, particle pollution was plentiful, although the rise was not significant, the researchers said.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Arctic ice is melting fast and the area covered by ice sheets in ocean could shrink this summer to the smallest since 1978 when satellite observation first started, Japanese scientists warned in a report.

Ice sheets in the Arctic Ocean shrank to the smallest area on record in late summer in 2007, researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said in a report on the website

Read Full article here : http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/36132