Defense Experts Want More Explicit Climate Models

SAN DIEGO June 24th 2010 -- Tell us what you don't know.

That's the message military and national security experts gathered here want to send to climate scientists.

While political leaders on Capitol Hill seek definitive answers about how quickly the world's climate will change, military and national security experts say they're used to making decisions with limited information.

But as they turn their attention to the geopolitical implications of climate change, they're pressing scientists to help them understand the risk and uncertainty inherent in forecasts of future environmental shifts. More >>>

What would a hurricane do to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

Hurricane season is upon us next week, and the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still spewing a geyser of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. With this year's hurricane season likely to be a severe one, with much above average numbers of hurricanes and intense hurricanes, we have the unwholesome prospect of a hurricane churning through the largest accidental oil spill in history. 


A hurricane has never passed over a sizable oil spill before, so there are a lot of unknowns about what might happen. The closest call came in 1979, after the greatest accidental oil spill in history, the massive Ixtoc I blowout. That disaster dumped 3 million barrels (126 million gallons) of oil into the Southern Gulf of Mexico between June 1979 and March 1980. Category 1Hurricane Henri passed just north of the main portion of the oil spill on September 16 and 17, generating 15 foot seas and southwest winds of 15 - 25 knots over the spill region on the 16th. Interestingly, the NOAA/AOML report on the spill found that the winds did not blow long enough or strongly enough to control the direction of oil flow, as evidenced by the fact that the wind direction was often 180° to the direction of plume flow. The main impact of the wind was to dilute the oil and weather it, converting it to a thick "mousse. More >>>

Facing cold, hard truths about global warming

Bill McKibben, probably the nation’s leading environmentalist, argues in “Eaarth’’ that we have already so thoroughly altered the physical features of the planet (to an extent that he has renamed it  with an extra “a’’) that we must start preparing for a radically simplified lifestyle.

Important strands of environmental thought merge in McKibben’s new book, making for some truly scary reading and prompting urgent questions about the nature of the environmental catastrophe at hand. More >>>

CLIMATE CHANGE: Latin America, EU Set Sights on Cancún Summit - IPS ipsnews.net

CLIMATE CHANGE: Latin America, EU Set Sights on Cancún Summit - IPS ipsnews.net

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Not just oil: US hit peak water in 1970 and nobody noticed

The concept of peak oil, where the inaccessibility of remaining deposits ensures that extraction rates start an irreversible decline, has been the subject of regular debate for decades.

Although that argument still hasn't been settled—estimates range from the peak already having passed us to its arrival being 30 years in the future—having a better sense of when we're likely to hit it could prove invaluable when it comes to planning our energy economy. The general concept of peaking has also been valuable, as it applies to just about any finite resource. A new analysis suggests that it may be valuable to consider applying it to a renewable resource as well: the planet's water supply. More >>>

World's water steadily warming up

LONDON (Reuters) - Thu May 20,  The top layer of the world's ocean has warmed steadily since 1993, a strong sign of global warming and a key driver of sea level rise, according to a study by an international team of  scientists.

"The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system, so as the planet warms, we're finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean," said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Scientists from NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Britain's Met Office, the University of Hamburg in Germany and the Meteorological Research Institute in Japan analyzed different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008 to assess the size and certainty of growing heat storage in the ocean. More >>>

Speak out, for our planet is at stake!

I think a parephrase of Martin Niemöller 1946 statement is appropriate today in light of the ecological disaster taking place in the Gulf of Mexico.

"THEY FIRST destroyed the oceans,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an environmentalist,

THEN THEY poisoned the atmosphere,
and I didn't speak up because I did not understand the danger involved

THEN THEY decimated the forests,
and I didn't speak up because they were far away and out of sight

THEN we  started dying, the lack of food, water and  and diseases caused by pollution.
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Nick Robson Editor