Blenheim biochar gets global attention

carbonscape.jpgCarbonscape, the New Zealand company working on making charcoal from a microwaving process discussed here and here on Hot Topic, has just announced that they are one of only five companies to make the shortlist in a global competition, the Financial Times’ Climate Change Challenge.

The competition seeks the most innovative solution to the effects of climate change. The winner, to be chosen by Financial Times readers and a panel of judges will receive a US$75,000 prize, sponsored by Hewlett Packard, to help bring their service to market. I notice Richard Branson, IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri and Jonathon Porritt among the eight judges.

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This is hardcore

WarmWAIS.jpg The last time that atmospheric CO2 levels were as high as today, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) regularly retreated or collapsed, causing sea level rises of up to 7 metres according to the first analysis of the first ANDRILL core, published in Nature today. The ANDRILL (Antarctic Geological Drilling) programme, a joint effort by scientists from New Zealand, Italy, the USA and Germany, drilled a 1,280 metre core from the seabed under the Ross Ice Shelf. It’s the longest and most complete drill core recovered from Antarctica, and was made possible by drilling technology developed by a team at the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington led by Alex Pyne.

Andrill.jpg

The two Nature papers [1. Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations, Naish et al, Nature, 19 March 2009 doi:10.1038/nature07867, and Modelling West Antarctic ice sheet growth and collapse through the past five million years, Pollard and DeConto, doi:10.1038/nature07809] focus on the “warm Pliocene” between two and five million years ago when CO2 levels were around 400 ppm. This is considered a good analogue for where our climate is headed, and the consequence, according to Professor Tim Naish of VUW, joint science head of ANDRILL, is that if we reach 550 ppm CO2 and a resulting 3ºC increase in global temperature, then large parts of the WAIS could melt on timescales of the order of centuries, and be completely gone within a thousand years.

The ANDRILL core documents 38 advances and retreats of the ice sheet, and suggests that during the warm Pliocene the key driver could have been the “obliquity” cycle in the earth’s orbit around the sun — a 40,000 year tilt in the Earth’s axis towards and away from the sun that affects the length of summers at the poles. New modelling of the ice sheet[2. Pollard & DeConto] confirms the link with the obliquity cycle, and suggests that the primary mechanism is melting of the base of the ice sheet by warm oceanic waters — a process that has already started.

In other WAIS news, a British team reports on the success of their robot submarine, Autosub, which made voyages of up to 110km under the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, recording temperature and salinity, and providing valuable data about melting at the glacier grounding line.

More coverage: Nature commentary by Phillipe Huybrechts, Science Daily, the Telegraph, AP and Reuters.

[Pulp]

Thank you world

Cheatin Heartland Muriel Newman, former ACT MP and doyenne of the libertarian right in NZ, has finally returned from New York where her NZ CPR was one of the “sponsors” of the Heartland crank fest. In the middle of her detailed report on the event, she quotes approvingly from the conference opening speech [PDF] by Czech president Vaclav Kraus:

To date, the only European Union leader prepared to take a principled stand on the global warming controversy has been the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. […] In his keynote address to the conference […] President Klaus, who is also the current President of the European Union, explained how the United Nations IPCC is a massive bureaucracy that is generously funded by those green businesses that have a great deal to gain from maintaining high levels of public fear over global warming alarmism. He also expressed his disappointment that no other leader was prepared to stand up against the propaganda: “A few weeks ago, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I spent three hours at a closed session of about sixty people – heads of states and governments with several IPCC officials and ‘experts’ like Al Gore, Tony Blair and Kofi Annan. […] It was a discouraging experience. You looked around in vain to find at least one person who would share your views. There was no one. All the participants of the meeting took man-made global warming for granted, were convinced of its dangerous consequences and more or less competed in one special discipline – whether to suggest a 20, 30, 50 or 80% CO2 emissions cut as an agreed-upon, world-wide project. It was difficult to say anything meaningful and constructive.” (my emphasis).

That rather nicely illustrates my contention that the real world is getting on with dealing with the issue, while the cranks — even Presidential cranks — find themselves marginalised.

Thanks for drawing that to my attention Muriel. And thank you, world.

[World Party]

Visionary road maps

Here’s a way to map the climate change “debate” that goes a million miles beyond the simplistic for and against view beloved of sceptics and Climate Debate Daily. Click in the Flash animation above and you can access a Debategraph view of the issues around climate change (the buttons below allow you to access various map tools — the green button opens underlying information in a pop-up window). It’s a sort of cross between a mind map and a wiki, allowing you to add and develop ideas and viewpoints. Produced by Debategraph in collaboration with the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, the IQ2 Green Festival on Climate Change and The Independent the idea is to build the map as a public, international resource in the run up to the crucial Copenhagen meeting in December. Click on the central “climate change” circle, and then the details viewer (green button) to read more). David Price, co-founder of Debategraph, explained in an email:

The goal is develop the map iteratively to a point at which it represents genuinely rich and comprehensive public resource; so any recommendations of people on the science and/or policy side who you think might be interested in the visualization approach and in contributing to the map will be very welcome.

I think this is a fascinating way to look at the issues around climate change — to map the arguments in a manner that conveys the complexity of the issue, and avoids the constant need to restate the obvious. Changes you make here at Hot Topic will be reflected at all other sites embedding the map. Have a play, explore, and let me know what you think in the comments. If there’s enough interest, I’ll embed the map in its own page so that it’s only one click away from the front page. Could be a fantastic tool, especially for PolSci students… 😉

[Stereolab]

Nutted by reality

homer.jpgGerrit van der Lingen, a local crank, NZ CSC member and self-styled “climate change consultant” who comprehensively lost a magazine “debate” with a local scientist last year, was mightily exercised by a recent article in my local paper, The Press (one of New Zealand’s big four dailies), covering Lovelock’s latest ruminations. So incensed, in fact, that he was moved to regurgitate a few crank tropes for an op-ed in the paper last Wednesday. It’s not available on the web, sadly, so I’ll just confine myself to pointing out where he gets his facts wrong.

Continue reading “Nutted by reality”