Category: Climate science

What have I Dunne to deserve this?

dunne.jpgPeter Dunne has been appointed chairman of the select committee being established to review climate policy, the Herald reports. Dunne, in an interview with Carbon News, indicated that he saw no reason to reconsider the science:

“The science is pretty clearly established,” Dunne said. “It’s somewhat ludicrous and arrogant to expect a New Zealand parliamentary committee to review the science which the IPCC, Stern (UK economist Lord Stern) and every notable committee in the world has adjudicated on.”

Today’s Parliamentary order paper lists the membership of the committee and the terms of reference [PDF]. Apart from Dunne, the 11 member committee consists of Craig Foss, Nicky Wagner, Dr Paul Hutchison, Hekia Parata, Rodney Hide, David Parker, Moana Mackey, Charles Chauvel, Jeanette Fitzsimons, and one member of the Māori Party. The full terms of reference are unchanged from ACT’s draft, with the exception of the science review — which has been dropped — and the terms set no time limit for the committee’s deliberations — though there have been indications that the report is expected by March.

Parker, Chauvel and Fitzsimons know this stuff inside out. It remains to be seen how the others perform. Nicky Wagner held an environment position under Don Brash, and flirted with scepticism at that time, but is now (she told me last year) happy to accept we need to act. It will be interesting to see how Rodney takes to being chaired by Dunne. Reaction from Don’t Be A Rodney here, while No Right Turn is resolutely sceptical, in the true sense of the word.

[Update 10/12: The order paper linked above omitted one particularly interesting new item in the terms of reference (see Government press release here):

– identify the central/benchmark projections which are being used as the motivation for international agreements to combat climate change; and consider the uncertainties and risks surrounding those projections

Rodney Hide seems hell bent on interpreting this as meaning he can have his crank fest. One hopes the rest of the committee will disagree. Meanwhile, a more rational interpretation of this item could lead to a very interesting discussion about targets – because the way I read it, “uncertainties and risks” could suggest the need for more stringent limits on emissions… 😉 ]

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Going, going, gone (by 2015)

One for the furry blogger with sharp teeth: the Winnipeg Free Press reports that University of Manitoba geoscientist David Barber is predicting that the Arctic will be ice free in summer in the next seven years.

“We’ll always have ice in the winter time in the Arctic, but it will always be first-year ice,” Barber said on Friday. He said he estimates the Arctic sea should see its first ice-free summer around 2015. “That has got industry very interested in the Arctic,” he said. “That will put more pressure there. The change is happening so quickly.”

Barber, who will be officially presenting his preliminary findings at the International Arctic Change 2008 conference in Quebec City next week, was the scientist in charge of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study (CFL), a $40-million Arctic research project.

A newcomer to the form book, Barber’s track record is yet to be established. But he’s clearly a runner. And that sounds like a conference to watch…

(See also Spiegel Online – h/t S Bloom Esq)

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The cracks are showing #2 (polar notes)

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Summer’s arriving on the Wilkins ice shelf, and its disintegration continues. New cracks are threatening to destroy the ice “bridge” that’s been holding the ice shelf pinned between Charcot Island (top left) and the Antarctic peninsula. This picture, captured by the European Space Agency’s ENVISAT satellite on November 26, shows the new cracks (coloured lines) and the dates they first appeared (NASA version here). If the chunk of ice under “21 July” breaks away, the long thin bridge will lose support and follow suit, the ESA analysts say.

Meanwhile, a team lead by Richard Alley at Penn State has worked out that ice shelf calving – where icebergs break away at the edge of an ice shelf – is critically influenced by the rate at which the ice shelf is spreading out. The PSU release notes:

For iceberg calving, the important variable — the one that accounts for the largest portion of when the iceberg breaks — is the rate at which ice shelves spread, the team reports in the Nov. 28 issue of Science. When ice shelves spread, they crack because of the stresses of spreading. If they spread slowly, those cracks do not propagate through the entire shelf and the shelf remains intact. If the shelf spreads rapidly, the cracks propagate through the shelf and pieces break off.

When ice shelves break up, the glaciers that feed them can speed up noticeably, dumping more ice into the ocean. Over recent years, the role of water as a lubricant for glacier flow has been receiving a lot of attention (rubber ducks were recruited as under ice research tools in Greenland this year), and the BBC reports that a sub-glacial “flood” under the Byrd Glacier which feeds ice at the rate of about 20 billion tonnes a year into the Ross ice shelf caused that to increase to 22 billion tonnes over 2006. It has since returned to normal.

Up north, the NSIDC reports (Dec 3) that it continues to be warmer than average, even though the sea ice is now covering the whole Arctic ocean.

The tracks of my tears

EarthApollo8.jpg NASA was 50 years old last July, and the Earth Observatory has been celebrating by reviewing some of the classic images they’ve captured over the years. The image of the Earth at left was captured by Apollo 8 astronauts on December 22nd 1968 – one of the first “blue marble” pictures. Forty years on, it’s sobering to realise that only 24 people have seen the planet from this perspective – from the moon. But the picture that really caught my attention this week was part of a feature where NASA asked earth scientists what “unique insights” spaceflight had given us about the planet.

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On page three, you’ll find this stunning image of “ship tracks” – the maritime equivalent of the contrails left by high flying aircraft – over the Bay of Biscay. If you ever doubted man’s influence on the atmosphere, here’s a dramatic confirmation of the large scale impacts brought about by our modern way of life. There are also satellite maps of ENSO sea level changes, Arctic sea ice decline, La Niña-related sea level changes, and many more pretty pictures. Educational eye candy.

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There she goes, my beautiful world

IanMcEwansmall.jpg Ian McEwan is one of my favourite writers. By chance, whilst reading George Monbiot’s latest offering in the Guardian this morning, I stumbled on a link to an essay by McEwan welcoming Barack Obama, outlining the considerable climate policy challenge he (and we) face. The world’s last chance is a superb summary of the current situation, and a masterful piece of writing. Any article that starts like this deserves a read:

‘I refute it thus!” was Samuel Johnson’s famous, beefy riposte one morning after church in 1763. As he spoke, according to his friend James Boswell, he kicked “with mighty force” a large stone “till he rebounded from it”. The good doctor was contesting Bishop Berkeley’s philosophical idealism, the view that the external, physical world does not exist and is the product of the mind. It was never much of a disproof, but we can sympathise with its sturdy common sense and physical display of Anglo-Saxon, if not Anglican, pragmatism.

Still, we may have proved Berkeley partially correct; in an age of electronic media, where rumour, opinion and fact are tightly interleaved, and where politicians must sing to compete for our love, public affairs have the quality of a waking dream, a collective solipsism whose precise connection to the world of kickable stones is obscure, though we are certain that it exists.

His take on the state of play echoes mine (and Monbiot’s), but he puts it much better than I (or Monbiot) ever will:

Within the climate science community there is a faction darkly murmuring that it is already too late. The more widely held view is hardly more reassuring: we have less than eight years to start making a significant impact on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, eight years to move from Berkeley’s solipsism to Johnson’s pragmatism. Thereafter, as tipping points are reached, as feedback loops strengthen, the emissions curve will rise too quickly for us to restrain it. In the words of John Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s leading climate scientists and chief scientific adviser to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, “what is required is an industrial revolution for sustainability, starting now”.

If you read nothing else today, read this. And the Monbiot’s worth a look too, as is the Nick Cave title reference…

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