The ice on Italy's famous Matterhorn peak is melting leading to instability of trails leading to the peak. The blame is being placed on global warming by scientists.
More about the Southern California heat wave.
"climate experts say such temperature spikes may be happening more frequently and more fiercely because of the many decades we've spent burning fossil fuels" [SignOnSanDiego]
Heat wave raises concerns about global warming » [SignOnSanDiego.com]
The big question that can never be truely answered with certainty is whether you can attribute the recently intense Southern California heat to global warming. Or is it simply another blip on the radar of natural temperature variation?
The likely answer is both. The mistake I feel people make in debates like these is to try and separate natural climate change from man-made climate change. It's just something that cannot be done, they both play a role.
Cimatologist Daniel Cayan had this to say:
"There may be some exacerbating climate change ingredient," Cayan said. "In fact, it is almost certain."
Parts of the US, Europe, and Asia have been getting baked by a persistent heat wave. Again I'm cautious to blame this latest episode on global warming, I will say this.
We had better get used to it.
When scientists talk about global warming and global average temperatures, they talk in terms of 1 – 3 degree increases which doesn't sound too bad. The keyword though is average. If you think of the Earth as whole, an extra 1 – 3 degrees globally is a huge increase of energy. Just imagine how much energy it would take to heat the entire freaking planet 1 degree! Now all you need to do is realize that that heat will not necessarily be distrubuted evenly across the globe. So imagine now that all that atmospheric thermal energy just happens to blow over your continent. It's not going to raise temperatures by 1 degree… it may be 20 or 30 or more degrees warmer. The bottom line is, the more energy in the system the more violent the thermal variations can be. This is the basis of the global warming = extreme weather argument.
The folks at Treehugger have some info on what it takes to drive that diesel car of yours on veggy oil. A good read if you're considering the purchase of a new diesel for this purpose.
Converting Diesel Engines to Run on Vegetable Oil » [Treehugger.com]
In thier 2006 budget, NASA deleted a sentence from their mission statement that is rather unfortunate. The language that was cut?
"To understand and protect our home planet"
The reasoning behind the change is that they wanted to align their statement with Bush's goals for space exploration. I think it's obvious that the goals of Bush's administration don't include consideration for anything relating to climate change or the environment. So I can't blame NASA for catering to the administration's twisted priorities. Perhaps they simply recognize that Bush has been a little touchy about the subject of global warming ever since Al Gore made that movie.
I just hope that this doesn't signify a permanent shift in mindset for the organization as some NASA scientists fear. Afterall if we can't 'understand and protect our home planet', well, all we've got are a few tin cans floating in space which tend not to work very well for long periods of time.
NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet » [New York Times]
This is something that we have eluded to in the past, the benefits of Ethanol fuel are real, but not very impressive when compared with other fuels such as biodiesel or hydrogen. According to the article, biodiesel is 90% more energy efficient than ethanol, making it the better choice of the two. Although most people don't have cars that can run off of biodiesel so ethanol is really the only available option.
The real problem with both these fuels is that they are created from food. Corn in the case of ethanol and soybeans in the case of biodiesel. The truth is America could never replace the current supplies of gasoline with ethanol and biodiesel because there simply isn't enough available farmland. Suddenly, Americans would be competing for food against their own cars… which for obvious reasons is not a realistic scenario.
These fuels should really be thought of as tools to aid with the transition to more sustainable technologies, such as electric and hydrogen powered vehicles.
Here's another potential benefit of global warming to cross off the list. Hey! CEI and Exxon, are you listening?
Well, to be fair this study is by no means definitive, but it warrants a closer look for sure. The debate stems around two natural processes. Plants love CO2 like we love Oxygen, so the more CO2 the healthier the plant. This has been found to be true in lab. The other natural process is that increased CO2 leads to higher temperatures and drier soil due to increased evaporation which stunts plant growth. As usual the world is kept in balance by two opposing forces.
This study did something other studies didn't, they took their lab outdoors and noticed that the positive benefits of increased CO2 concentrations were only half as powerful as they expected. This translates to a 20% reduction in soybean crop yields, which needless to say is not good for our food supply or our future availability of alternative fuels such as biodiesel.
"…they point out that extra CO-2 also hurts plants. They say plant growth is slowed by higher temperatures and lower soil moisture caused by faster evaporation." [VOA News]
Invasive species of grass have already taken root in Antarctica and global warming is to blame. Scientists are predicting that if CO2 levels increase according to current projections, Antarctica will transform into a grassland with scattered trees. Perhaps Antarctica will be the future new world… I wonder how the international community will sort out who has claim over it.
It's official… biodiesel is now a word, according to the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary at least. Ok… now get back to work.
‘Biodiesel’ finds way into dictionary » [The Peninsula On-line]
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