global warming

[bystander]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic ... from_sugar

ScienceNews
A 'novel' chemistry to make fuel from sugar
By Patrick Barry
Web edition : Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Nano-sized metal particles help convert plant sugar into conventional fuels, such as gasoline

It’s not alchemy, but it might sound like it: a new way to transform sugars from plants into gasoline, diesel or even jet fuel by passing the sugars over exotic materials.

[BMAONE23]

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic ... from_sugar

ScienceNews
A 'novel' chemistry to make fuel from sugar
By Patrick Barry
Web edition : Thursday, September 18th, 2008

Nano-sized metal particles help convert plant sugar into conventional fuels, such as gasoline

It’s not alchemy, but it might sound like it: a new way to transform sugars from plants into gasoline, diesel or even jet fuel by passing the sugars over exotic materials.

Saw something similar to this a while ago. They were talking about getting sugar from Mexico at 2 1/2 cents per pound and converting it into ethanol. it takes about 10-15 lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol, a very useable fuel for internal combustion.

[bystander]

Saw something similar to this a while ago. They were talking about getting sugar from Mexico at 2 1/2 cents per pound and converting it into ethanol. it takes about 10-15 lbs of sugar to produce 1 gallon of ethanol, a very useable fuel for internal combustion.

It's not ethanol to which the article is referring. It's talking about converting sugars into conventional fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel). Even the majority of the waste energy is usable (ethane, propane). Ethanol is too corrosive for conventional engine design.

[harry]

G'day from the land of ozzzzzzzz

I heard that in parts of USA deserts they are growing algae in large lakes that is able to duplicate every 20 to 30 minutes. Producing oil and what ever.

I must look it up.

[harry]

G'day from the land of ozzzzzzzzz

Notes on Climate Change
2. The Recovery from the Little Ice Age (A Possible Cause of Global Warming) and The Recent Halting of the Warming (The Multi-decadal Oscillation)

http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/little_ice_age.php
Revised September 25, 2008 under a new title

This is over 50 Mbites its a big file.
I wil see if I can get the abstract.

[harry]

G'day from the land of ozzzzz

NASA Sept. 23, 2008
Ulysses Reveals Global Solar Wind Plasma Output At 50-Year Low

WASHINGTON -- Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun's current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system.

"The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy," said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Ulysses data indicate the solar wind's global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age."

Although the Sun's cycle may effect our climate and global warming.

Man's import by pollution does little to effect the global warming compared to the Sun's input. This does not alter the fact that, pollution of our Air and water by MAN is at a critical stage.

[aalundexy]

Is Global warming a man made Phenomenon or is it a cyclical pattern the world goes through? I've heard so many sides of the story and I can witness it first hand that Global warming is real. But there is a huge debate in the scientific community on whether it's a man made phenomenon or it's just the planet going through another phase before another ice age.

[geckzilla]

There's actually not a huge debate about whether it's caused by humans or not. It is. The debate is about what effect it will have in the near and long term future and whether or not we should change ourselves. There was one thread already on this topic you may want to read through.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16778

[Ann]

It is a known fact that the Earth undergoes many climate cycles. It is also a known fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It is a known fact that humanity releases large and steadily increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We can, of course, tell ourselves that we are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with impunity, and that it doesn't matter what we are doing in the long run, or even in the short run. However, logic says that if we increase the amounts of a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere of the Earth, we will also affect the Earth's climate. We could listen to logic in this matter, or we could try to think of reasons why logic isn't applicable here. I prefer the first alternative.

Ann

[neufer]

There was one thread already on this topic you may want to read through.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16778

The undisputed primary effect of man made global warming, thus far,
has been the opening of the Northwest & Northeast Passages

The primary effect of man made global warming, thus far, on the rest of the world
has probably been the instability of the Northern Jet Stream due to Arctic warming:

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 73#p137973
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 29#p129443
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 43#p129443

---

<<The Northwest Passage is a sea route through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways amidst the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and the Canadian mainland by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages or Northwestern Passages. There has been speculation that with the advent of climate change the passage may become clear enough of ice to again permit safe commercial shipping for at least part of the year. On August 21, 2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker.

Before the Little Ice Age, Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups who already inhabited the region. Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe dispatched explorers in an attempt to discover a commercial sea route north and west around North America.

England called the hypothetical northern route the "Northwest Passage". The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America. When it became apparent that there was no route through the heart of the continent, attention turned to the possibility of a passage through northern waters. This was driven in some part by scientific naiveté, namely an early belief that seawater was incapable of freezing (as late as the mid-18th century, Captain James Cook had reported, for example, that Antarctic icebergs had yielded fresh water, seemingly confirming the hypothesis), and that a route close to the North Pole must therefore exist. The belief that a route lay to the far north persisted for several centuries and led to numerous expeditions into the Arctic, including the attempt by Sir John Franklin in 1845. In 1906, Roald Amundsen first successfully completed a path from Greenland to Alaska in the sloop Gjøa. Since that date, several fortified ships have made the journey.

Thawing ocean or melting ice simultaneously opened up the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route (Northeast Passage), making it possible to sail around the Arctic ice cap. Compared to 1979, the Daily Mail published "Blocked: The Arctic ice, showing as a pink mass in the 1979 picture, links up with northern Canada and Russia." Awaited by shipping companies, this 'historic event' will cut thousands of miles off their routes. Warning, however, that the NASA satellite images indicated the Arctic may have entered a "death spiral" caused by climate change, Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), USA, said: "The passages are open. It's a historic event. We are going to see this more and more as the years go by." Due to Arctic shrinkage, the Beluga group of Bremen, Germany, sent the first Western commercial vessels through the Northern Sea Route (Northeast Passage) in 2009.>>

<<The Northern Sea Route (Russian: Се́верный морско́й путь) is a shipping lane officially defined by Russian legislation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean specifically running along the Russian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the Barents Sea, along Siberia, to the Bering Strait and Far East. The entire route lies in Arctic waters and parts are free of ice for only two months per year. Before the beginning of the 20th century it was known as the Northeast Passage, and is still sometimes referred to by that name.

The motivation to navigate the North East Passage was initially economic. In Russia the idea of a possible seaway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific was first put forward by the diplomat Gerasimov in 1525. However, Russian settlers and traders on the coast of the White Sea, the Pomors, had been exploring parts of the route as early as the 11th century.

During a voyage across the Barents Sea in search of the North East Passage in 1553, English explorer Hugh Willoughby thought he saw islands to the north, and islands called Willoughby's Land were shown on maps published by Plancius and Mercator in the 1590s and they continued to appear on maps by Jan Janssonius and Willem Blaeu into the 1640s.

By the 17th century, traders had established a continuous sea route from Arkhangelsk to the Yamal Peninsula, where they portaged to the Gulf of Ob. This route, known as the "Mangazeya seaway", after its eastern terminus, the trade depot of Mangazeya, was an early precursor to the Northern Sea Route. East of the Yamal, the route north of the Taimyr Peninsula proved impossible or impractical. East of the Taimyr, from the 1630s, Russians began to sail the Arctic coast from the mouth of the Lena River to a point beyond the mouth of the Kolyma River. Both Vitus Bering (in 1728) and James Cook (n 1778) entered the Bering Strait from the south and sailed some distance northwest, but from 1648 (Semyon Dezhnev) to 1879 (Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld) no one is recorded as having sailed eastward between the Kolyma and Bering Strait.

The western parts of the passage were explored by northern European countries such as England, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway, looking for an alternative seaway to China and India. Although these expeditions failed, new coasts and islands were discovered. The most notable was the 1596 expedition led by Dutch navigator Willem Barentsz, who discovered Spitsbergen and Bear Island and rounded the north of Novaya Zemlya.

Fearing English and Dutch penetration into Siberia, Russia closed the Mangazeya seaway in 1619. Pomor activity in Northern Asia declined and the bulk of exploration in the 17th century was carried out by Siberian Cossacks, sailing from one river mouth to another in their Arctic-worthy kochs. In 1648 the most famous of these expeditions, led by Fedot Alekseev and Semyon Dezhnev, sailed east from the mouth of the Kolyma to the Pacific and rounded the Chukchi Peninsula, thus proving that no land connection between Asia and North America exists.

Eighty years after Dezhnev, in 1728, another Russian explorer, Danish-born Vitus Bering on Svyatoy Gavriil (Saint Gabriel) made a similar voyage in reverse, starting in Kamchatka and going north to the passage that now bears his name (Bering Strait). It was Bering who gave their current names to Diomede Islands, vaguely mentioned by Dezhnev. Bering's explorations of 1725–30 were part of a larger scheme initially devised by Peter the Great and known as the "Great Northern Expedition".

The "Second Kamchatka Expedition" took place in 1735–42. This time there were two ships, Svyatoy Pyotr and Svyatoy Pavel, the latter commanded by Bering's deputy in the first expedition, Captain Aleksey Chirikov. During the Second Expedition Bering became the first Westerner to sight the coast of north-western North America, and Chirikov the first to land there. (A storm had separated the two ships earlier.) On his way back Bering discovered the Aleutian Islands but fell ill, and Svyatoy Pyotr had to take shelter on an island off Kamchatka, where Bering died (Bering Island). Independent of Bering and Chirikov, other Russian Imperial Navy parties took part in the Second Great Northern Expedition. One of these, led by Semyon Chelyuskin, in May 1742 reached Cape Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of both the North East Passage and the Eurasian continent.

Later expeditions to explore the North East Passage took place in the 1760s (Vasiliy Chichagov), 1785–95 (Joseph Billings and Gavril Sarychev), the 1820s and 1830s (Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel, Pyotr Fyodorovich Anjou, Count Fyodor Litke and others). The possibility of navigation of the whole length of the passage was proved by the mid-19th century. However, it was only in 1878 that Finnish-Swedish explorer Nordenskiöld made the first complete passage of the North East Passage from west to east, in the Vega expedition. The ship's captain on this expedition was Lieutenant Louis Palander of the Swedish Royal Navy. One year before Nordenskiöld's voyage, commercial exploitation of a section of the route started with the so-called Kara expeditions, exporting Siberian agricultural produce via the Kara Sea. Of 122 convoys between 1877 and 1919 only 75 succeeded, transporting as little as 55 tons of cargo. From 1911 the "Kolyma steamboats" ran from Vladivostok to the Kolyma once a year.

In 1912 two Russian expeditions set out; Captain Georgy Brusilov and the Brusilov Expedition in the Santa Anna, and Captain Alexander Kuchin with Vladimir Rusanov in the Gerkules; each with a woman on board. Both expeditions were hastily arranged, and both disappeared. In 1915 a Russian expedition led by Boris Vilkitskiy made the passage from east to west with the icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach. Nordenskiöld, Nansen, Amundsen, DeLong, Makarov and others also led expeditions; mainly for scientific and cartographic purposes.

The introduction of radio, steamboats and icebreakers made running the Northern Sea Route viable. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union was isolated from the western powers, which made it imperative to use this route. Besides being the shortest seaway between the western and far eastern USSR, it was the only one which lay inside Soviet internal waters and did not impinge upon those which belonged to nearby opposing countries. In 1932 a Soviet expedition led by Professor Otto Yulievich Schmidt was the first to sail all the way from Arkhangelsk to the Bering Strait in the same summer without wintering en route. After a couple more trial runs, in 1933 and 1934, the "Northern Sea Route" was officially defined and open and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The next year, part of the Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where armed conflict with Japan was looming.

During the early part of World War II, the Soviets allowed the German auxiliary cruiser Komet to use the Northern Sea Route in the summer of 1940 to evade the British Royal Navy and break out into the Pacific Ocean. Komet was escorted by Soviet icebreakers during her journey. After the start of the Soviet-German War the Soviets transferred several destroyers from the Pacific Fleet to the Northern Fleet via the Arctic. The Soviets also used the Northern Sea Route to transfer materials from the Soviet Far East to European Russia and the Germans launched Operation Wunderland in order to interdict this traffic.

Several seaports along the route are ice-free all year round. They are, west to east, Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula, and on Russia's Pacific seaboard Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka, Vanino, Nakhodka, and Vladivostok. Arctic ports are generally usable July to October, or, such as Dudinka, are served by nuclear powered icebreakers. Nuclear icebreaker NS 50 Let Pobedy escorting the Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight through the Northern Sea Route in the summer of 2009.

The Northern Sea Route was opened by receding ice in 2005 but was closed by 2007. The amount of polar ice had receded to 2005 levels in August 2008. In late August 2008, it was reported that images from the NASA Aqua satellite had revealed that the last ice blockage of the Northern Sea Route in the Laptev Sea had melted. This would have been the first time since satellite records began that both the Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route had been open simultaneously.

French sailor Eric Brossier made the first passage by sailboat in only one season in the summer of 2002. He returned to Europe the following summer by the Northwest Passage. In September 2010, two yachts completed circumnavigation of the Arctic: Børge Ousland's team aboard "The Northern Passage" , and Sergei Murzayev's team in the "Peter I". These were the first recorded instances of the circumnavigation of the Arctic by sailing yachts in one season.

The Bremen-based Beluga Group claimed in 2009 to be the first Western company to attempt to cross the Northern Sea Route for shipping without assistance from icebreakers, cutting 4000 nautical miles off the journey between Ulsan, Korea and Rotterdam. In 2011, 18 ships have made the now mostly ice-free crossing.>>

[Chris Peterson]

Is Global warming a man made Phenomenon or is it a cyclical pattern the world goes through? I've heard so many sides of the story and I can witness it first hand that Global warming is real. But there is a huge debate in the scientific community on whether it's a man made phenomenon or it's just the planet going through another phase before another ice age.

Actually, there is virtually no debate at all in the scientific community that the current rapid global warming trend is substantially driven by human activity. The consensus amongst experts in that respect is similar to the consensus for evolution, the Big Bang cosmology, and other scientific knowledge systems that approach being "facts". You would be hard pressed to find a climate scientist who thinks otherwise.

While there are many natural factors that drive climate change, what distinguishes the current change from those observed in the past (via proxy) is its rate (and it is the high rate that is causing us problems, not the absolute shift in temperature), and the fact that the change can largely be correlated to specific human activity.

[bystander]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

---

Five-Year Global Temperature Anomalies from 1880 to 2012
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP)

NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) | 2013 Jan 15

NASA Finds Long-Term Climate Warming Trend
NASA Science News | Science@NASA | 2013 Jan 15

Long-Term Global Warming Trend Continues
NASA Earth Observatory | 2013 Jan 16

It's Official ... Last Year Was One of the Warmest on Record
Science Shot | Sid Perkins | 2013 Jan 15

Soot Is Warming the World, A Lot
Science NOW | Richard A Kerr | 2013 Jan 15

Record-breaking temperatures are now the norm
New Scientist | Environment | Peter Aldhous | 2013 Jan 15

Debunking the Denial: “16 Years of No Global Warming”
Slate Blogs | Bad Astronomy | 2013 Jan 14

Global Temperatures Continue to Rise
Universe Today | Nancy Atkinson | 2013 Jan 17

Study Finds Severe Climate Jeopardizing Amazon Forest
NASA JPL-Caltech | 2013 Jan 17

NASA Ozone Study May Benefit Air Standards, Climate
NASA JPL-Caltech | 2013 Jan 16

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate
NASA Science News | Science@NASA | 2013 Jan 08

[Beyond]

All i can say about the climate from where I'm at -N/E Connecticut-, is that the winters aren't so cold, and the summers aren't so hot, and bad storms, includeing thunderstorms, are rarer.

[Chris Peterson]

All i can say about the climate from where I'm at -N/E Connecticut-, is that the winters aren't so cold, and the summers aren't so hot, and bad storms, includeing thunderstorms, are rarer.

The key factor with global warming- that is, the net increase in heat stored in the atmosphere, land surface, and oceans- is that it results in regional climate patterns that have changed over the last few decades.

[rstevenson]

There are certainly changes here in Dartmouth, NS. Back before electrical refrigeration was common -- in the era of iceboxes -- Dartmouth was a large supplier of ice blocks to the north-eastern US. They were cut mainly from Lake Banook, just a short walk down the hill from where I live. But in recent years it's been difficult to get thick enough ice in the lake to be safe for skating.

One of the indicators of global warming is not just a gentle warming everywhere; rather it's that there will be, in many places, more extreme weather. Case in point: just last week the entire province, and a good portion of New Brunswick and PEI too, broke very long standing high temperature records -- and not just by a little bit. Some places broke those old records by double-digit differences. The heat was accompanied by record high winds as well.

Warm ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Rob

[owlice]

Now I have a hankering for Cracker Jack.

[rstevenson]

Now I have a hankering for Cracker Jack.

Makes my mouth water to think of it. I better go make supper.

Rob

[bystander]

How Climate Change is Destroying the Earth
LearnStuff | Climate Change | Infographic | 2013 Feb 14

http://www.learnstuff.com/assets/climate-change.jpg

[Beyond]

How Climate Change is Destroying the Earth
LearnStuff | Climate Change | Infographic | 2013 Feb 14

http://www.learnstuff.com/assets/climate-change.jpg

Not to worry. Man is getting ready to blow himself up atomically. Then things will return to 'normal'.

[Moonlady]

Humanity should quit eating beans!

[Beyond]

Global Warming That's a little hard to believe after seeing this...

[Ann]

Well... there is actually a Norwegian town with that name.

Back when every town had its own train station, there was a story about an American tourist in Norway who looked out the window of the train he was in and saw the sign, Gods Station. (It's a misspelling - it should be godsstation.) The sign says that you are supposed to load and unload goods onto and from freight trains at this station, but the poor American read it as God's Station. You can imagine his shock as he looked out the window on the other side of the train and saw a sign with the name that you just showed us in the spoiler of your post, Beyond!

Ann

[geckzilla]

Oh, so that's why they are worried about it.

"The good news is that according to the latest IPCC report, if we enact aggressive emissions limits now, we could hold the warming to 2°C. That's only HALF an ice age unit, which is probably no big deal."

[Chris Peterson]

"The good news is that according to the latest IPCC report, if we enact aggressive emissions limits now, we could hold the warming to 2°C. That's only HALF an ice age unit, which is probably no big deal."

As long as you don't live within a few miles of a coastline. So it's no big deal to something like 20% of humans.

[geckzilla]

Hey, all those buildings will be cute little habitats for the fishes. In any case, it's still easier than the palm trees will have it at the poles with near total darkness a few months out of the year. Not sure that crosses the minds of some people when they imagine a tropical paradise at the poles. Ok, maybe it will be warm but the plants still won't grow in the dark.

Edit: That is, not to say that Randall thinks this. I mean, in general, people seem to think it. Randall's cartoon reflects this.