“To illustrate, the picture above, taken by
Charles Sturt University’s Professor of Farming
Systems David Kemp, shows a Mongolian “grassland”.
A generation ago the graziers were complaining they
couldn’t find their cattle because the grass was
too high. Now, they say, they can see the mice. This
is happening in dry lands around the world as farmers
desperately try to scrape a living amid falling returns
by running more stock or planting more crops. The price
signal to do this goes straight from the affluent consumer,
often completely oblivious of where their food comes
from or how agricultural markets work, to the world’s
1.8 billion farmers.”
global warming: greenland and california - deniers are advised
not to read this news item
I’m so glad and thankful that
there is no global warming.
“Driven by the loss of ice, Arctic temperatures
are warming more quickly than other parts of the world:
last autumn air temperatures in the Arctic stood at
a record 5C above normal. For centuries, the ice sheets
maintained an equilibrium: glaciers calved off icebergs
and sent melt water into the oceans every summer; in
winter, the ice sheet was then replenished with more
frozen snow. Scientists believe the world's great ice
sheets will not completely disappear for many more centuries,
but the Greenland ice sheet is now shedding more ice
than it is accumulating.
“The melting has been recorded since 1979; scientists
put the annual net loss of ice and water from the ice
sheet at 300-400 gigatonnes, which could hasten a sea
level rise of catastrophic proportions.
“As Hamilton has found, Greenland's glaciers
have increased the speed at which they shift ice from
the sheet into the ocean. Helheim, an enormous tower
of ice that calves into Sermilik Fjord, used to move
at 7km (4.4 miles) a year. In 2005, in less than a year,
it speeded up to nearly 12km a year. Kangerdlugssuaq,
another glacier that Hamilton measured, tripled its
speed between 1988 and 2005. Its movement – an
inch every minute – could be seen with the naked
eye.”
—
“Earlier in the expedition, the crew believe,
they became the first boat to travel through the Nares
Strait west of Greenland to the Arctic Ocean in June,
once impassable because of sea ice at that time of year.
The predicted year when summers in the Arctic would
be free of sea ice has fallen from 2100 to 2050 to 2030
in a couple of years.
“Jay Zwally, a Nasa scientist, recently suggested
it could be virtually ice-free by late summer 2012.
Between 2004 and 2008 the area of "multiyear"
Arctic sea ice (ice that has formed over more than one
winter and survived the summer melt) shrank by 595,000
sq miles, an area larger than France, Germany and the
United Kingdom combined.” [Quoted from guardian.co.uk]
Some global models are predicting a
long-term drying for the USA south-west.
“The fire is now more than 492 square-kilometers
in size and two firefighters were killed in the line
of duty on Sunday, after their vehicle rolled off a
mountain road.”
—
“ Brush in the area had not burned for a century,
fire officials said. Trees among the San Bernardino
Mountains were going up like candles while another 300-acre
wildfire that erupted on the edge of Yucaipa has forced
the evacuation of 200 homes.” [Quoted from ctv.ca]
“Wildfire Threatens Historic California Observatory
“The Mt. Wilson Observatory, a century-old astronomical
compound located on a 5,700-foot-high peak in southern
California, has contributed much to our knowledge of
stellar evolution and cosmology, providing the first
observational evidence backing the Big Bang theory.
The aging observatory has survived much adversity, but
now faces a new challenge--it is menaced by a wildfire
dubbed the "Station Fire," which has scorched
over 85,000 acres in the mountains north of Los Angeles
and claimed the lives of two firefighters. Despite the
fire's rapid approach to the mountain, there is hope
that this historic observatory may weather this latest
threat.” [Quoted from gearlog.com]
“The team first confirmed a theory that the
slight increase in solar energy during the peak production
of sunspots is absorbed by stratospheric ozone. The
energy warms the air in the stratosphere over the tropics,
where sunlight is most intense, while also stimulating
the production of additional ozone there that absorbs
even more solar energy. Since the stratosphere warms
unevenly, with the most pronounced warming occurring
at lower latitudes, stratospheric winds are altered
and, through a chain of interconnected processes, end
up strengthening tropical precipitation.
“At the same time, the increased sunlight at
solar maximum causes a slight warming of ocean surface
waters across the subtropical Pacific, where Sun-blocking
clouds are normally scarce. That small amount of extra
heat leads to more evaporation, producing additional
water vapor. In turn, the moisture is carried by trade
winds to the normally rainy areas of the western tropical
Pacific, fueling heavier rains and reinforcing the effects
of the stratospheric mechanism.
“The top-down influence of the stratosphere and
the bottom-up influence of the ocean work together to
intensify this loop and strengthen the trade winds.
As more sunshine hits drier areas, these changes reinforce
each other, leading to less clouds in the subtropics,
allowing even more sunlight to reach the surface, and
producing a positive feedback loop that further magnifies
the climate response.
“These stratospheric and ocean responses during
solar maximum keep the equatorial eastern Pacific even
cooler and drier than usual, producing conditions similar
to a La Nina event. However, the cooling of about 1-2
degrees Fahrenheit is focused farther east than in a
typical La Nina, is only about half as strong, and is
associated with different wind patterns in the stratosphere.”
[Quoted from reason.com]
“One of the mysteries regarding Earth's climate
system response to variations in solar output is how
the relatively small fluctuations of the 11-year solar
cycle can produce the magnitude of the observed climate
signals in the tropical Pacific associated with such
solar variability. Two mechanisms, the top-down stratospheric
response of ozone to fluctuations of shortwave solar
forcing and the bottom-up coupled ocean-atmosphere surface
response, are included in versions of three global climate
models, with either mechanism acting alone or both acting
together. We show that the two mechanisms act together
to enhance the climatological off-equatorial tropical
precipitation maxima in the Pacific, lower the eastern
equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures during peaks
in the 11-year solar cycle, and reduce low-latitude
clouds to amplify the solar forcing at the surface.”
[Quoted from sciencemag.org]
“This passage captures what is wrong with much
of econophysics, systems biology, sociophysics, and
almost any field that been tackled by heavily computational
complex systems approaches. Many of these researchers
don't understand what it means to test a theory. They
build these complex models, which involves making important
assumptions that could easily be wrong, and then if
their models fit existing data, they think the model
is right.” [Quoted from scientificblogging.com]
“Pakistan is offering one million acres of farmland,
protected by a special security force, for lease or
sale to countries seeking to secure their food supplies,
an official from the ministry of finance said on Monday.
“Gulf Arab countries, mainly reliant on food
imports, have been seeking farmland in developing nations
to secure supplies and have expressed interest in Pakistan's
offer.”
“Since the 1890s, surface
temperatures have risen faster in the Arctic than in other
regions of the world.
In part, these rapid changes could be due to changes in
aerosol levels. Clean air regulations passed in
the 1970s, for example, have likely accelerated warming
by diminishing the cooling effect of sulfates.”
“A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell
of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New
York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate
how sensitive different regional climates are to changes
in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.
“The researchers found that the mid and high
latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the
level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols
likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming
that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three
decades. The results were published in the April issue
of Nature Geoscience.”
—
“The regions of Earth that showed the strongest
responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions
that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature
increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its
surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since
the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, where aerosols play
less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased
about 0.35 C (0.6 F).
“That makes sense, Shindell explained, because
of the Arctic's proximity to North America and Europe.
The two highly industrialized regions have produced
most of the world's aerosol emissions over the last
century, and some of those aerosols drift northward
and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally
flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there,
so the particles remain in the air longer and have a
stronger impact than in other parts of the world.
Compacted mobile mini house pulled by a Mini. Image:Yanko
Design
“You will find a bathroom, living room, bedroom,
kitchen and an office in the 252° Living Area: Mobile
Mini House.
“The entire setup of the trailer is based on
the rooms fanning out to a 252° radius. The mobile
walls and floor of each unit run on rails and can be
slid open easily. Just like you open one of those Japanese
fans, open up this trailer from under its protective
shell and set up your mobile house.”
The trailer gradually opening out. Image:Yanko
Design
