NASA's Climate Time Machine shows how much the Arctic ice cap has diminished over the past three decades. (Courtesy NASA)
Roundup: a climate time machine, vertical farms, and a kinda boring toy
By Eoin O'Carroll | 07.16.08
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a nifty interactive “Climate Time Machine” that lets you see the effects of burning fossil fuels. By dragging a slider, you can see how the Arctic ice cap has melted over the past three decades, what rising sea levels would do to selected cities, the rise in CO2 emissions, and the rise in global temperatures. The only thing I could have done without is the creepy music.
The Alaska Wilderness League, a nonprofit that seeks to protect Alaska’s public lands, has released a report [PDF] describing some of the donors of Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” campaign, which, in addition to making copyeditors’ lives difficult, urges Congress to approve of offshore drilling. The League’s startling conclusion: some of Gingrich’s donors come from the oil industry.
Bina Venkataraman, a reporter for The New York Times (and a former Monitor scribe), writes about the possibility of “vertical farms” built into self-sustaining skyscrapers, thereby allowing urbanites to dine on super-local produce. “Obviously we don’t have vast amounts of vacant land,” said Dickson Despommier, the Columbia University professor who is pioneering the concept. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan.”
The Canadian Press reports on a study by Canada’s government that shows that levels of toxic chemicals in Artic game are finally starting to drop. This is good news for the Arctic’s indigenous people, for whom beluga, narwhal, walrus, and ringed seal constitute a major part of their diet, and who have been found to have elevated levels of toxic chemicals in their bloodstreams and even in their breast milk. The bad news is that mercury contamination – which comes largely from coal-fired power plants – hasn’t declined at all.
The Brothers Brick, a Lego blog, reports that the Danish toymaker will be releasing a wind turbine set, which of course is not really wind-powered, but motorized. Batteries not included.
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2. Mike Higgins | 07.16.08
Readers may also be interested in the following:
It’s well known that cities and airports create a heat island effect. This is where city and runway heat is trapped in the lower atmosphere causing a very localized heat increase. If you haven’t been to SurfaceStations.org to examine their gallery of official climate stations it is a must see. You’ll find tons of photos of NOAA USHCN climate stations showing how local conditions have skewed their measurements. Everything from putting the station in the middle of a blacktop parking lot, to putting it directly under an air conditioner exhaust. Even funnier (or sadder) photos of the climate station directly beside a burn barrel and barbecue pit. The photos are real and have not been altered. In fact you can go to the locations and see them for yourself.
Harris-Mann Climatology did a comprehensive climatological study of over 600 cities both in North America and around the world for the period 1941 to 2001. What they found was warming that at first glance is very similar to the UN IPCC data, the earth had warmed approximately .7 of one degree Fahrenheit over this time period (according to the IPCC there was approximately .7 Fahrenheit additional warming before 1941). But when Harris-Mann removed the “15 largest cities the “concrete and asphalt jungles”, from the study, Mother Earth would have actually COOLED OFF about .4 of one degree Fahrenheit in the last six decades”. That’s correct, the Earth actually cooled .4 degrees in the last 60 years, it did not get warmer.
You can read the complete report here:
http://www.longrangeweather.com/ArticleArchives/GlobalWarming.htm
3. Hans Nordstrom | 07.18.08
This is a great roundup. In reference to the sea ice changes in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, the site Mike points out in his first response, above, actually shows and average Arctic loss (well, by the least squares linear approximation) of 3.4% (+/-0.7%) per decade, while the Antarctic region is gaining 0.9% (+/- 1.3%). Given the mean volumes of each region differ by less than 10%, it’s highly unlikely that the more volatile change in the Antarctic is offsetting the change in the Arctic region.
I’d be equally careful about pointing out that `… when Harris-Mann removed the “15 largest cities the “concrete and asphalt jungles”, from the study, Mother Earth would have actually COOLED OFF about .4 of one degree Fahrenheit in the last six decades”.’ The removal of data points does not show `[t]hat’s correct, the Earth actually cooled .4 degrees in the last 60 years, it did not get warmer.’ It shows that the effect of large-cities (human creations) have a profound effect on overall global warming. It shows that the earth might have cooled had not these cities existed. But they do exist and clearly contribute to an overall trend of global warming.
Finally, it does seem odd at first glance to have a weather station next to and AC unit, etc. But from a statistical standpoint, it would actually invalidate the study to collect data from a non-random selection of points on the earth. It would be terribly easy (and horribly unscientific) to put all the weather stations away from human habitation and find that humans had little effect on the weather.
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1. Mike Higgins | 07.16.08
Regarding JPL’s “Climate Time Machine,” I wonder why they did not include sea ice extent in Antarctica. In fact, although the average trend in the Arctic since 1979 is a 0.7% loss of sea ice per year, the trend in the Antarctic is a 1.3% increase of sea ice, effectively canceling the arctic’s loss and resulting in a net world increase of sea ice of 0.6% per year. This would theoretically translate into a lowering of sea levels, not an increase.
See National Snow and Data Center graph at http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/.