Is Climate Change the “Defining Challenge of Our Age”? Part 1 of 3

28 04 2009

Part I: Ranking global warming among present-day risks to public health.

challenges_of_civilization

Guest essay by Indur M. Goklany

There seems to be no limit to the hyperbole surrounding climate change – and that’s no hyperbole. Numerous politicians have informed us over the years that climate change is one of the most important problems facing mankind.  In fact, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called it the defining challenge of our age.”

But is it?

I answer this question in a paper just published in the refereed section of Energy & Environment.

A 2005 review article in Nature on the health impacts of climate change estimated that 166,000 deaths were “attributable” to climate change in 2000. This estimate was derived from a World Health Organization (WHO) sponsored study that even the study’s authors acknowledge may not “accord with the canons of empirical science” (see here). But I will accept this flawed estimate as gospel for the sake of argument.

In the year 2000, however, there were a total of 56 million deaths worldwide. Thus, climate change may be responsible for less than 0.3% of all deaths globally (based on data for the year 2000). This places climate change no higher than 13th among mortality risk factors related to food, nutrition and environment, as shown in the following table. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 127 Comments »

Categories : climate_change, economy-health

Inconvenient Eisdicken – “surprising results” from the Arctic

28 04 2009

This is a news story from Germany outlining another Arctic ice measurement expedition. This one was conducted by flying the scientists across the north polar ice cap using the WWII era workhorse Douglas DC-3 airplane equipped with skis, and towing an airborne sounder twenty meters above the ice surface. It makes the Catlin Arctic Ice Survey look rather pointless, but then we knew that.  BTW “Eisdicken” translates to “ice thickness”. – Anthony

From Radio Bremen. Translated from German by Google web page translator:  Original | Translated

Surprising Results

At the North Pole ice sheet is thicker than expected

Das Forschungsflugzeug "Polar 5" in Bremerhaven [Quelle: AWI]

The “Polar 5″ in Bremerhaven

The research aircraft Polar 5 “ended today in Canada’s recent Arctic expedition.  During the flight, researchers have measured the current Eisstärke measured at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before been overflown. Result: The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than the researchers had suspected. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 163 Comments »

Categories : Arctic, sea ice

Britain’s only wind turbine plant to close

28 04 2009

Who would have thunk? Maybe it had something to do with this video of a Vestas wind turbine:

I wonder if it used “Lucas” electronic parts? I owned an Austin Healy Sprite and a Triumph TR6 at one time, and the failure above looks familiar.

Excerpts from an article in the Guardian:

Vestas is to shut down its Isle of Wight factory in the face of collapsing demand from a wind-farming industry hobbled by the recession and red tape. Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 222 Comments »

Categories : Technology, energy

Catlin Crew Out Of Time

28 04 2009

Guest post by Steve Goddard
http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/arctic-islands/icons-03/03-08-blizzard.jpg
An Arctic Blizzard

As reported here two weeks ago, April 30 is the last safe date to recover explorers from the Arctic.  The people who rescued Pen Hadow from the Arctic in May, 2003 said this :

“People are at risk – the ice breaks and it shouldn’t really happen. No one should expect to be picked up from there later than 30 April … Going to the Pole this time of the year is a bit stupid and you put a lot of people’s lives at risk.”

In today’s Catlin update they say: Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 138 Comments »

Categories : Arctic, Uncategorized

Misunderstandings about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

28 04 2009

Misunderstandings about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation

Guest post by Bob Tisdale

INITIAL NOTE

The first version of this post (The Common Misunderstanding About The PDO dated June 26, 2008) incorrectly described the method for calculating the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. I originally intended to do a quick correction in agreement with my post The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation – Correcting My Mistake, but then I decided to expand this post.

INTRODUCTION

Many climate change bloggers often note that global temperatures rise when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is positive and drop when the PDO is negative. They then make the assumption that it’s the PDO that causes global temperature to vary. To dispel this, let’s first examine what the PDO is.

THE PACIFIC DECADAL OSCILLATION

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), Figure 1, is “derived as the leading PC of monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean, poleward of 20N. The monthly mean global average SST anomalies are removed to separate this pattern of variability from any ‘global warming’ signal that may be present in the data.” The quote is from the JISAO website: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/PDO.latest
The main JISAO PDO webpage is here:
http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

http://i41.tinypic.com/vrq7uq.jpg
Figure 1
Read the rest of this entry »


Comments : 115 Comments »

Categories : ENSO, PDO, oceans