"Really
new trails are rarely blazed in the great academies. The confining walls of conformist dogma are
too dominating. To think originally, you
must go forth into the wilderness."
S. Warren Carey (Australian geologist)
***********************
THIS WEEK
Well, we’ve communicated our critical
Comments to EPA; Craig Idso’s come to 830 pages (see below). You recall that in July 2008 EPA issued an
ANPR (Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking), detailing how they would control
CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
We and many others have submitted Comments; the NIPCC report is now part
of the official EPA docket. We look
forward to the next act in this drama. I
predict that Rep Henry Waxman, having ousted John Dingell as chairman of the
House Committee on Energy and Commerce will try to pre-empt the EPA by
legislation: Yet another Cap&Trade
bill – how tiresome. It won’t go far
–esp. in the Senate. By next year – or
more likely, by 2010 – we may witness the failure of the EU’s C&T
experiment and see two more years of no warming. And that’s not counting the recession. It’s really too bad that so many still
believe in IPCC and a significant AGW (anthropogenic global warming). We promise to work harder.
Meanwhile oil prices are continuing to
fall. Now would be the right time to
slap on a stiff and rising tax on motor fuels: Enforce oil conservation,
stimulate demand for hybrid/plug-in cars – and forget about GW fears, C&T,
CAFE, and all that jazz. With $200-250
billion a year we can fix bridges that keep falling down and have money left
over.
With reduced oil imports, we’d be more
secure – while Middle East oil producers would have less to spend on
terrorism. And talking of terrorism, the
atrocities of Mumbai are backfiring.
India and the US, two ‘big-coal’ countries, are now closer than ever.
********** ************
SEPP Science
Editorial #14 (12/6/08)
The heat content of the deep ocean, not surprisingly, has increased in
the past century. In a paper in Science (2005),
James Hansen cites this as the “smoking gun” for AGW. All bunk!
More recent ocean data are still in a state of flux, being corrected by
authors. We will have to wait a little
longer for answers.
****************************************************************
1.
‘Economic suicide' for US based on 'self-deluding lies' of global
warming
2. Obama’s problems from the
radical left
3. Carbon trading benefits Russia
4. The true costs of EPA global warming
regulation
5. Green-on-Green violence
6. Green Bridge To Nowhere
-- Review
7. ‘Noble Savage’ myth
covers up truth – basis for current environmentalism
8. CO2Science.org has filed an 830-page document
with EPA for their Advance Notice of Rule-Making for regulating CO2 under the
Clean Air Act. We show an abbreviated
TOC of the extensive document. http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/epa/CO2ScienceEPAComments_Full.pdf
***************************************
NEWS YOU CAN USE
”For Detroit,
Chapter 11 Would Be the Final Chapter” By SPENCER ABRAHAM, NYTimes,
Nov 24, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/opinion/24abraham.html?_r=1&hp
SEPP comment: He makes a good point. But how about a “virtual” bankruptcy – with a
retired bankruptcy judge serving as an Arbitrator and all parties bound by his
decisions?
*******************************
No public support for GW action -- surveys
show. Investor's Business Daily,
2 Dec 2008
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=313113306868172
A better interpretation of the results would be
that a world that has been hammered incessantly by a global warming fear
campaign, but which has yet to see any actual warming, has developed a healthy
skepticism.
That same world has also had a good look at the reality of current economic
difficulties and found them more pressing than speculative disasters.
***************************
“Obama Urged to Adopt a 'Global Carbon Tax': The
cap-and-trade approach won't stop global warming.”
By Ralph Nader And Toby Heaps, Wall Street Journal, DECEMBER 3, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826696217574539.html
SEPP comment: Forget about GW and
global. A stiff gasoline tax will solve
many problems. Carpe Diem!
********************************************************
UK climate change targets will push up fuel
bills, warns Government advisor. The
Government's global warming advisor has predicted sharp rises in energy prices
as he called for cuts of at least 34 per cent in Britain's carbon emissions by
2020. The Committee on Climate Change,
chaired by Lord Turner, also said emissions should be cut by even more if an
international deal on reducing greenhouse gases is agreed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/3538546/ Poor misguided Britain
***********************
CEI’s Chris Horner, author of the NY Times best-selling Politically
Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism), has a new book
out, Red Hot Lies (How
Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You
Misinformed), an expos of the hypocrisy, deceit, and outright lies
of the global warming alarmists and the compliant media that support them. Red Hot Lies, published by Regnery,
explodes as many myths as Al Gore promotes.
**************************************
In case Al Gore causes you sleepless nights, try
this remedy:
”Are the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets in Danger of Collapse?” by Cliff
Ollier
http://ff.org/images/stories/sciencecenter/greenland_and_antarctic_in_danger_of_collapse.pdf
********************************
UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE
Alarming
news from the UN (duly reported by Nature, 3
Dec 2008): Greenhouse gases hit modern-day highs: Atmospheric
concentrations of greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2007, according to the
most recent analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
SEPP comment: Natch! With yearly additions, you‘ll get a
new high every year
********************
What
About the Other Seasons? "Climate History May Explain Empires'
Fall"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 4
###################################
1.
OBAMA PROPOSES 'ECONOMIC SUICIDE' FOR US BASED ON 'SELF-DELUDING LIES'
OF GLOBAL WARMING
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/30/do3010.xml
By Christopher Booker. The London Daily Telegraph 29/11/2008
President-elect Barack Obama proposes economic
suicide for US. If the holder of the
most powerful office in the world proposed a policy guaranteed to inflict
untold damage on his own country and many others, on the basis of claims so
demonstrably fallacious that they amount to a string of self-deluding lies, we
might well be concerned. The relevance of this is not to President Bush, as
some might imagine, but to a recent policy statement by President-elect Obama.
Tomorrow, delegates from 190 countries will meet
in Poznan, Poland, to pave the way for next year's UN conference in Copenhagen
at which the world will agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate
change. They will see a video of Mr Obama, in only his second major policy
commitment, pledging that America is now about to play the leading role in the
fight to "save the planet" from global warming.
Mr Obama begins by saying that "the science
is beyond dispute and the facts are clear". "Sea levels," he
claims, "are rising, coastlines are shrinking, we've seen record drought,
spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing
hurricane season." Far from the
science being "beyond dispute", we can only deduce from this that Mr
Obama has believed all he was told by Al Gore's wondrously batty film An
Inconvenient Truth without bothering to check the facts.
Each of these four statements is so wildly at
odds with the truth that on this score alone we should be seriously
worried. It is true that average sea
levels are modestly rising, but no faster than they have been doing for three
centuries. Gore's film may predict a
rise this century of 20 feet, but even the UN's International Panel on Climate
Change only predicts a rise of between four and 17 inches.
The main focus of alarm here has been the fate
of low-lying coral islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu. Around each of these tiny countries,
according to the international Commission on Sea Level Changes and other
studies, sea levels in recent decades have actually fallen. The Indian Ocean was higher between 1900 and
1970 than it has been since. Satellite
measurements show that since 1993 the sea level around Tuvalu has gone down by
four inches.
Coastlines are not "shrinking" except
where land is subsiding, as on the east coast of England, where it has been doing
so for thousands of years. Gore became
particularly muddled by this, pointing to how many times the Thames Barrier has
had to be closed in recent years, unaware that this was more often to keep
river water in during droughts than to stop the sea coming in.
Far from global warming having increased the
number of droughts, the very opposite is the case. The most comprehensive study (Narisma et al,
2007) showed that, of the 20th century's 30 major drought episodes, 22 were in
the first six decades, with only five between 1961 and 1980. The most recent two decades produced just
three.
Mr Obama has again been taken in over
hurricanes. Despite a recent press
release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that
2008's North Atlantic hurricane season "set records", even its own
release later admits that it only tied as "the fifth most active"
since 1944. NOAA's own graphs show
hurricane activity higher in the 1950s than recently. A recent Florida State University study of
tropical cyclone activity across the world shows a steady reduction over the
past four years.
Alarming though it may be that the next US
President should have fallen for all this claptrap, much more worrying is what
he proposes to do on the basis of such grotesque misinformation. For a start he plans to introduce a
"federal cap and trade system", a massive "carbon tax",
designed to reduce America's CO2 emissions "to their 1990 levels by 2020
and reduce them an additional 80 per cent by 2050". Such a target, which would put America ahead
of any other country in the world, could only be achieved by closing down a
large part of the US economy.
Mr Obama floats off still further from reality
when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage "clean
energy" sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so
hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has,
representing "18 gigawatts of installed capacity", only generate
4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power
station.
He talks blithely of allowing only
"clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" -
burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of
electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed. He then babbles on about "generating
five million new green jobs". This
will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by
running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired
power stations, which currently supply the US with half its electricity.
If this sounds like an elaborate economic
suicide note, for what is still the earth's richest nation, it is still not
enough for many environmentalists.
Positively foaming at the mouth in The Guardian last week, George
Monbiot claimed that the plight of the planet is now so grave that even
"sensible programmes of the kind Obama proposes are now
irrelevant". The only way to avert
the "collapse of human civilisation", according to the Great Moonbat,
would be "the complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after
2050".
For 300 years science helped to turn Western
civilisation into the richest and most comfortable the world has ever
seen. Now it seems we have suddenly been
plunged into a new age of superstition, where scientific evidence no longer
counts for anything. The fact that
America will soon be ruled by a man wholly under the spell of this
post-scientific hysteria may leave us in wondering despair.
*****************************
2.
OBAMA’S PROBLEMS FROM THE RADICAL LEFT
Mr.
Obama may face many more problems from his left than he ever dreamed of. What could hurt a hurting economy more than
an environmental extremist as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce
Committee? Meet Rep. Henry Waxman of
Beverly Hills.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=312077804618599
It was a slim
margin of 137-122 on Thursday when Democrats voted to buck seniority for next
year's session and strip the longest-serving member of the House of
Representatives, Michigan's John Dingell, of the chairmanship of the Committee
on Energy and Commerce.
Dingell is liberal,
but he at least fought against excessive emission standards and other
Greenpeace wish list items — simply to protect domestic carmakers. Replacing
him is a notorious ideological witch hunter who will bully businesses that
resist radical environmentalist groups' demands. The naming of Henry Waxman
left green groups beside themselves with joy.
"Ding-dong the
Dingell is gone," cheered the climate blog for the Center for American
Progress, the think tank of Obama transition chief and former Clinton White
House chief of staff John Podesta.
Waxman's election
"shows that a majority of the House Democrats are ready to work with the
incoming Obama Administration on effective global warming legislation,"
according to Clean Air Watch — an organization that seems to want NASCAR racing
banned because its exhaust fumes are "putting millions of spectators and
nearby residents at unnecessary risk of suffering serious health effects."
As Competitive
Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner quipped, "Funny how Dems
elected a guy to chair Energy and Commerce who opposes both."
**********************************************
3. CARBON TRADING BENEFITS RUSSIA
One of the unintended consequences of the carbon
trading system is a potentially huge and massively destabilising transfer or of
money and influence from the industrialised West to Russia. This is because when the Kremlin signed up to
the Kyoto treaty, it was given an annual emissions limit based on the horrors
pumped out by filthy old Soviet industries back in 1990.
Since then Russia’s industrial base has
contracted so drastically that it uses only a fraction of its allowances. One recent analyst’s report found that Russia
has accumulated emissions permits worth about four billion tonnes of CO2. The report warned: “Russia must be singled
out as a potential threat to the ability of the market to produce a meaningful
carbon price.”
There is of course another huge incongruity in
Russia, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of coal, gas and oil, also in
effect having control of the system for reducing emissions from these fossil
fuels. It means that the West could end
up paying the Russians for fuel and then paying them again for the right to
burn it.
FULL STORY at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5257602.ece
******************************
4. THE TRUE COSTS OF EPA GLOBAL WARMING
REGULATION
Legislation designed
to address global warming failed in Congress this year, largely due to concerns
about its high costs and adverse impact on an already weakening economy. The congressional debate will likely resume
in 2009, as legislators try again to balance the environmental and economic
considerations on this complex issue. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), pursuant to a 2007 Supreme Court decision, has initiated steps
toward bypassing the legislative process and regulating greenhouse gas
emissions under the Clean Air Act, says Ben Lieberman, a senior policy analyst with
the Heritage Foundation.
The Environmental
Protection Agency's (EPA) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) is
nothing less than the most costly, complicated, and unworkable regulatory
scheme ever proposed, says Lieberman:
o Under ANPR, nearly every product, business,
and building that uses fossil fuels could face requirements that border on the
impossible.
o The overall cost of this agenda would likely
reach well into the trillions of dollars while destroying millions of jobs in
the manufacturing sector.
The ANPR is clearly
not in the best interests of Americans, and the EPA should not proceed to a
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and final rule based upon it, explains
Lieberman. Furthermore, the impact of
ANPR on the overall economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), would
be substantial:
o The cumulative GDP losses for 2010 to 2029
approach $7 trillion.
o Single-year losses exceed $600 billion in
2029, more than $5,000 per household.
o Job losses are expected to exceed 800,000 in
some years, and exceed at least 500,000 from 2015 through 2026 (note that these
are net job losses, after any jobs created by compliance with the
regulations--so-called green jobs--are taken into account.)
o Hardest-hit are manufacturing jobs, with
losses approaching 3 million.
o Particularly vulnerable are jobs in durable
manufacturing (28 percent job losses), machinery manufacturing (57 percent),
textiles (27.6 percent), electrical equipment and appliances (22 percent),
paper (36 percent), and plastics and rubber products (54 percent).
Also:
o Since the EPA rule is unilateral and few
other nations are likely to follow the U.S. lead, many of these manufacturing
jobs will be outsourced overseas.
o The job losses or shifts to lower paying
jobs are substantial, leading to declines in disposable income of $145 billion
by 2015 -- more than $1,000 per household.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The True Costs
of EPA Global Warming Regulation," Heritage Foundation, Nov 24, 2008 http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2213.cfm [Courtesy NCPA]
**************************
By Steven Milloy, Dec 4, 2008
The activist group Environmental Defense got a taste
of what it used to dish out this week when its Washington, D.C., offices were
invaded by another green group, the Global Justice Ecology Project.
The Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP)
essentially accused Environmental Defense (ED) of collaborating with the enemy
-- big businesses that want cap-and-trade global warming legislation. Noting
that her father was one of ED’s founders, GJEP head Rachel Smolker said she was
now “ashamed” of ED because it advocated cap-and-trade.
Smolker said that the European version of
cap-and-trade, the Kyoto Protocol, had “utterly failed” to reduce emissions and
served “only to provide huge profits for the world’s most polluting
industries.”
“Instead of protecting the environment, ED now seems
primarily concerned with protecting corporate bottom lines. I can hear my
father rolling over in his grave,” Smolker said.
The GJEP activists who took over ED’s offices
rearranged the furniture to illustrate how cap-and-trade is “like rearranging
the deck chairs on the Titanic," and sported signs that read “Keep the
cap, ditch the trade” and “Carbon trading is an environmental offense.”
**********************************************
6.
GREEN BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
Jonathan
H. Adler, The New Atlantis, Fall 2008
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/green-bridge-to-nowhere
James Gustave “Gus” Speth is the consummate
environmental insider. For over thirty years he has played a key role in the
development of environmentalist organizations and agendas. He was present at
the founding of the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1970 and later
launched the World Resources Institute, a $27 million enterprise that may be
the most influential environmental think tank in the world. He served on, and
eventually chaired, President Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality, where
he oversaw production of the apocalyptic Global 2000 report. During the 1990s
he worked on President Clinton’s transition team and headed up the United
Nations Development Program, and he is now dean of the Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies.
His prominence within the environmental
establishment means that when Gus Speth speaks, environmentalists listen. He is
not only an academic dean but, in many respects, the dean of contemporary
environmental thinkers. Like others, he advocates ambitious and far-reaching
environmental programs; unlike many, he has held positions in which to make
such things happen. Few with his green bona fides have his currency in the
halls of power or connections with global leaders. Yet like so many celebrated
environmental thinkers, he lacks a clear or compelling vision of how to
reconcile contemporary civilization with the need for environmental protection.
In The Bridge at the Edge of the World,
Speth argues that all the environmental progress of the past thirty to forty
years may be for naught, as an environmental crisis of global proportions is
still with us. The resource shortfalls and ecological ruin predicted by the
Global 2000 report may not have come to pass on schedule, but they are imminent
nonetheless. Thus, he seeks radical change to our economic, political, and
social systems. “The end of the world as we have known it” is inevitable; the
only question is whether we will suffer planetary ruin or a radically
transformed civilization. Speth’s hope is to point the way to the latter
course.
Speth’s eco-pessimism is not particularly new or
original, but his critique of the modern environmental movement could be. In
his view, the modern environmental establishment has proven itself impotent. It
has accomplished much, but not nearly enough. Working within the system failed,
he maintains, because it did not seek sufficiently radical change. Saving human
civilization from collapse requires more than minor adjustments, he warns, as
environmental degradation is but a symptom of broader social problems, and is
“linked powerfully with other social realities, including growing social
inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular
control.” Reversing course will require a “transformative change in the system
itself,” including an “assault on the citadel of consumption” and the remaking
of corporations. “Our duty,” Speth proclaims, is “to struggle against the
contempocentrism and anthropocentrism that dominate modern life.” A “bridge” to
a sustainable society requires revisiting democratic capitalism, remaking
industrial civilization, and reorienting human consciousness; “we must return to
fundamentals and seek to understand both the underlying forces driving such
destructive trends and the economic and political system that gives these
forces free rein.” Nothing less will do.
***********************************************
7. NOBLE SAVAGE MYTH COVERS UP TRUTH
David Deming, The Edmond Sun, Nov 28, 2008
— The late Joseph Campbell maintained that
civilizations are not based on science, but on myth. “Aspiration,” Campbell
explained, “is the motivator, builder and transformer of civilization.” Our
technological society has been built on Francis Bacon’s myth of the New
Atlantis. Competing with Bacon’s vision of a scientific society based on
intelligence, knowledge and innovation, is an older, more persistent fable: the
Noble Savage.
The Noble
Savage is not a person, but an idea. It is cultural primitivism, the belief of
people living in complex and evolved societies that the simple and primitive
life is better. The Noble Savage is the myth that man can live in harmony with
nature, that technology is destructive and that we would all be happier in a
more primitive state.
Before Christ lived, the Noble Savage was known
to the Hebrews as the Garden of Eden. The Greeks called it the lost Golden Age.
In all the ages of the world, otherwise intelligent and learned persons have
fallen swoon to the strange appeal of cultural primitivism. In the 16th
century, French writer Michel de Montaigne described Americans Indians as so
morally pure they had no words in their languages for lying, treachery, avarice
and envy. And Montaigne portrayed the primitive life as so idyllic that
American Indians did not have to work, but could spend the whole day dancing.
In 1755, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that what
appeared to be human progress was in fact decay. The best condition for human
beings to live in, according to Rousseau, was the “pure state of nature” in
which savages existed. When men lived as hunters and gatherers, they were
“free, healthy, honest and happy.”
The downfall of man occurred when people started
to live in cities, acquire private property and practice agriculture and
metallurgy. The acquisition of private property resulted in inequality, aroused
the vice of envy and led to perpetual conflict and unceasing warfare. According
to Rousseau, civilization itself was the scourge of humanity. Rousseau went so
far as to make the astonishing claim that the source of all human misery was
what he termed our “faculty of improvement,” or the use of our minds to improve
the human condition.
Since Rousseau wrote, more than 250 years of
archeological and ethnographic research have shown that most of the imaginative
conceptions associated with the Noble Savage are simply wrong. Archeologist
Steven A. Leblanc wrote that “warfare in the past was pervasive and deadly.”
Conflict between bands of hunter-gatherers was universal and intense, and the
practices of cannibalism and infanticide were common. Before the Industrial
Revolution, disease and poverty were endemic, even in civilized societies. In
18th century Europe half of all children died before their 10th birthday, and
life expectancy at birth was only 25 years.
Neither did pre-industrial civilizations live in
a state of ecological harmony with their environment. Their exploitation of
nature was often destructive. The Mediterranean islands colonized by the
ancient Greeks were transformed into barren rock by overgrazing and
deforestation. The Bay of Troy, described in Homer’s Iliad, has been filled in
by sediment eroded from surrounding hillsides destabilized by unsustainable
agricultural practices.
All of this would be of academic interest only,
were it not the case that the modern environmental movement and many of our
public policies are based implicitly on the myth of the Noble Savage. The
fountainhead of modern environmentalism is Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.” The
first sentence in “Silent Spring” invoked the Noble Savage by claiming “there
was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in
harmony with its surroundings.” But the town Carson described did not exist,
and her polemic, “Silent Spring,” introduced us to environmental alarmism based
on junk science.
As the years passed, Carson was elevated to
sainthood and the template laid for endless spasms of hysterical
fear-mongering, from the population bomb, to nuclear winter, the Alar scare and
global warming. The truth is that human beings have not, cannot, and never will
live in harmony with nature. Our prosperity and health depend on technology
driven by energy. We exercise our intelligence to command nature, and were
admonished by Francis Bacon to exercise our dominion with “sound reason and
true religion.”
When we are told that our primary energy source,
oil, is “making us sick,” or that we are “addicted” to oil, these are only the
latest examples of otherwise rational persons descending into gibberish after
swooning to the lure of the Noble Savage. This ignorant exultation of the
primitive can only lead us back to the ages when human lives were “nasty,
brutish and short.”
DAVID DEMING is a geologist and associate
professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.
**********************************************
8.
COMMENT TO EPA-ANPR (from CO2Science.org)
By Craig
D. Idso, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
P.O. Box 25697 Tempe, AZ
85285-5697, 24 November 2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary
................................................................................................................... 1
Comments on the Key Findings in the TSD Executive Summary
.............................................. 2
1. Climate Model Inadequacies
................................................................................................. 11
1.1. Radiation
........................................................................................................................... 11
1.2. Clouds
............................................................................................................................... 17
1.3. Precipitation
...................................................................................................................... 27
2. Feedback Factors
................................................................................................................... 35
2.1. Clouds ................................................................................................................................ 35
2.2. Carbonyl Sulfide
................................................................................................................. 38
2.3. Diffuse Light
....................................................................................................................... 40
2.4. Iodocompounds
................................................................................................................. 46
2.5. Nitrous Oxide
..................................................................................................................... 48
2.6. Methane ............................................................................................................................ 51
2.7. Dimethyl Sulfide
................................................................................................................. 59
3. Aerosols ................................................................................................................................ 64
3.1. Biological (Aquatic)
............................................................................................................ 68
3.2. Biological (Terrestrial)
........................................................................................................ 70
3.3. Non-Biological (Anthropogenic)
......................................................................................... 81
3.4. Non-Biological (Natural)
..................................................................................................... 85
4. Climate Observations
............................................................................................................ 89
4.1. Glaciers
.............................................................................................................................. 89
4.2. Sea Ice ................................................................................................................................ 119
4.3. Precipitation Trends
.......................................................................................................... 135
4.4. Streamflow ........................................................................................................................ 159
4.5. Greenland
.......................................................................................................................... 174
4.5.1. Temperature History
................................................................................................ 174
4.5.2. Contribution to Sea Level
......................................................................................... 184
4.6. Antarctica
.......................................................................................................................... 194
4.6.1. Temperature
............................................................................................................ 194
4.6.2. Contribution to Sea Level
......................................................................................... 199
4.6.3. West Antarctic Ice Sheet
.......................................................................................... 201
4.6.3.1. Collapse and Disintegration
............................................................................ 202
4.6.3.2. Dynamics
......................................................................................................... 204
4.6.3.3. Mass Balance
................................................................................................... 210
4.6.3.4. Sea Level
.......................................................................................................... 219
4.7. Sea Level Rise
..................................................................................................................... 224
4.8. Medieval Warm Period
...................................................................................................... 230
4.8.1. Overview
................................................................................................................... 230
4.8.1.1. Was There a Global MWP?
.............................................................................. 230
4.8.1.2. When Did The MWP Occur & Was It
Warmer Than the CWP? ........................ 232
4.9. Atmospheric Methane
....................................................................................................... 274
5. Extreme Weather
.................................................................................................................. 281
5.1. Drought
.............................................................................................................................. 281
5.2. Floods ................................................................................................................................ 317
5.2.1. Asia
........................................................................................................................... 317
5.2.2. Europe
...................................................................................................................... 320
5.2.3. North America .......................................................................................................... 325
5.3. Tropical Cyclones
............................................................................................................... 330
5.4. ENSO ................................................................................................................................ 365
5.5. Precipitation Variability
..................................................................................................... 375
5.6. Storms ................................................................................................................................ 382
5.7. Snow ................................................................................................................................ 393
5.8. Storm Surges
...................................................................................................................... 398
5.9. Temperature Variability
..................................................................................................... 401
5.10. Fires ................................................................................................................................ 406
6. Biological Effects of CO2 ........................................................................................................ 414
6.1. Plant Productivity Responses
............................................................................................ 414
6.1.1. Herbaceous Plants ................................................................................................... 414
6.1.2. Woody Plants
........................................................................................................... 445
6.1.3. Aquatic Plants ........................................................................................................... 479
6.2. Water Use Efficiency
......................................................................................................... 490
6.3. Amelioration of Environmental Stresses
........................................................................... 498
6.3.1. Disease
..................................................................................................................... 498
6.3.2. Herbivory
................................................................................................................. 506
6.3.3. Insects
...................................................................................................................... 519
6.3.4. Interaction of CO2 and Light on
Plant Growth .......................................................... 532
6.3.5. Interaction of CO2 and O3
on Plant Growth .............................................................. 534
6.3.6. Low Temperature Tolerance
.................................................................................... 549
6.3.7. Nitrogen
................................................................................................................... 553
6.3.8. Salinity Effects
......................................................................................................... 570
6.3.9. Temperature
............................................................................................................ 571
6.3.10. UVB Radiation
........................................................................................................ 579
6.3.11. Water Stress
........................................................................................................... 585
6.4. Acclimation
........................................................................................................................ 594
6.5. Competition
....................................................................................................................... 606
6.6. Respiration
......................................................................................................................... 612
6.7. Other Benefits .................................................................................................................... 622
6.8. Greening of the Earth
......................................................................................................... 676
7. Carbon Sequestration ............................................................................................................ 712
7.1. Decomposition
................................................................................................................... 712
7.2. Agriculture
......................................................................................................................... 722
7.3. Forests ................................................................................................................................ 726
7.4. Peatlands
............................................................................................................................ 740
8. Species Extinctions
................................................................................................................ 748
8.1. Terrestrial Plants
................................................................................................................ 748
8.2. Terrestrial Animals ............................................................................................................. 751
8.3. Coral Reefs
......................................................................................................................... 754
8.4. Other Calcifying Sea Life
.................................................................................................... 761
8.5. Rapid Evolutionary Change
................................................................................................ 762
8.6. Conclusion
.......................................................................................................................... 765
9. Human Health
....................................................................................................................... 767
9.1. Temperature Induced Mortality
........................................................................................ 767
9.2. Non-Climatic Health Effects of Elevated CO2
.................................................................... 786
9.3. A Brief History of Human Longevity
.................................................................................. 808
9.4. Conclusions
........................................................................................................................ 814
10. Additional Considerations
................................................................................................... 815
10.1. Feeding Humanity and Saving Nature
............................................................................. 815
10.2. Biofuels: A Solution or a Problem?
.................................................................................. 819
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