Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for February 18, 2006

Greenland Melting Faster Than, When it was Cooling?

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I reckon it is nearly impossible to keep up with the climate change literature particularly the latest climate change scare story. Working out whether a particular piece of information is invented, real, real but exaggerated, etcetera, certainly takes effort.

Brisbane’s newspaper, The Courier-Mail, has a story on page 19 of this weekend’s edition titled ‘Greenland ice sheets double melt rate’.

It begins:

“Global warming is melting Greenland’s glaciers much faster than previously believed, raising fears that sea levels will rise rapidly during the next century”

This is how it works according to a latest issue of Science magazine:

“The Greenland Ice Sheet gains mass through snowfall and loses it by surface melting and runoff to the sea, together with the production of icebergs and melting at the base of its floating ice tongues. The difference between these gains and losses is the mass balance; a negative balance contributes to global sea-level rise and vice versa. About half of the discharge from the ice sheet is through 12 fast-flowing outlet glaciers, most no more than 10 to 20 km across at their seaward margin, and each fed from a large interior basin of about 50,000 to 100,000 km2. As a result, the mass balance of the ice sheet depends quite sensitively on the behavior of these outlet glaciers.

Two changes to these glaciers have been observed recently. First, the floating tongues or ice shelves of several outlet glaciers, each several hundred meters thick and extending up to tens of kilometers beyond the grounded glaciers, have broken up in the past few years. Second, measurements of ice velocity made with satellite radar interferometric methods have demonstrated that flow rates of these glaciers have approximately doubled over the past 5 years or so.”

This article in Science (Vol. 31, pg 963-964) goes on to explain that 2002 and 2005 are records for “melt extent over the 27 years of observation” – which I assume refers to the last 27 years.

Contrast this information with an article titled “Recent cooling in coastal southern greenland and relation with the north atlantic oscillation” published in 2003 by Edward Hanna and John Cappelen (Geophysical research letters, VoL. 30, NO. 3, 1132).

This research paper which covers the period up until 2002 (the year there was record melting according to the new article in Science magazine)states:

“Analysis of new data for eight stations in coastal southern Greenland, 1958-2001, shows a significant cooling (trend-line change -1.29C for the 44 years), as do sea-surface temperatures in the adjacent part of the Labrador Sea, in contrast to global warming (+0.53C over the same period). The land and sea temperature series follow similar patterns and are strongly correlated but with no obvious lead/lag either way. This cooling is significantly inversely correlated with an increased phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) over the past few decades (r = -0.76), and will probably have significantly affected the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

This 2003 paper only refers to coastal southern Greenland, while the new Science paper refers to “several large glaciers” and the last 5 years or so.

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Thanks to Phil Done for alerting me to the new paper in Science and Benny Peiser for the link to 2003 paper.

More on Methane & Forests

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A paper published in Nature (Frank Keppler et.al., Vol 439, pgs. 187-191) some weeks ago indicating that tree emit methane, generated lots of media for a couple of days, and then nothing.

I wrote my last two columns for The Land on the issue, click here and here.

I received the following email in response:

Hello Jennifer,

It was with interest that I read your recent article on the effect of trees on the atmosphere. In my youth I worked in the timber industry as a faller and later as a dozer operator, here in this higher rainfall area the amount of termite activity in mature and maturing trees is amazing, almost every tree you would fall would have a nest in the butt and almost all stressed trees with a bit of dead wood in them will be ant infested, this does include quite small trees at times.

I noticed that the CSIRO tested methane in a young pinus radiata plantation I think they should be challenged to do their trials in a mature eucalypt forest, an old growth forest would be ideal, I’m sure the result would be a damn site different there.

Regards
Bruce Campbell

Thanks Bruce. I would also like to see some figures for mature tropical forests in Australia. And I was fascinated to read that termites emit 20 million tonnes of methane per year (Nature, Vol 439, pg. 148).

Politics, Religon and Those Cartoons

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Growing up, I aspired at different times, to be a florist, a marine biologist, an archaeologist and a botanist. I worked for many years as an entomologist. I never thought I would become a writer.

Now I am a writer I am very aware of the importance of ideas, evidence, and freedom of expression in particular as a counter to the power of propaganda. I have written about the five basic rules of propaganda as defined by Norman Davies in a blog post titled ‘Interest versus Propaganda’.

Propaganda is perhaps easier to define than ‘free speech’ and usually much more subtle.

Free speech can be very offensive.

Explaining why e-journal Online Opinion did not publish the cartoons mocking Islam, but defending the right of others to publish the cartoons, Graham Young has written,

“If free speech defends only the right to be nice to others, then it is not worth defending itself. Free speech exists to protect the objectionable and the unreasonable, or it means virtually nothing.”

Today I read at Reporters without Borders that as a consequence of publishing those offending cartoons,

“At least eleven journalists are being prosecuted in five countries and six have been jailed. Some face long prison sentences if convicted. Two editors in Jordan have been charged with provocation and encouraging disorder. Four journalists have been jailed in Yemen and charged under article 103 of the press law, which bans publication of anything that “harms Islam, denigrates monotheistic religion or a humanitarian belief.”

I support the call from Reports without Borders for the imprisoned journalists to be released.

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The cartoons can be seen by linking to Tim Blair’s blog.

The last paragraphs of this blog post was changed and updated, following comment and advice from readers of this weblog including those offended by the cartoons, on the morning of 20th February and the cartoons and direct link removed.

Sun Bears (Part 1)

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I have previously written that more effort should be put into “saving sun bears”, click here for that blog post.

The international organisation that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, lists sun bear as threatened with extinction and notes that there is a trade in sun bear ‘body parts’ including for traditional medicines.

Several readers have commented they would like to know more about sun bears. I have no expertise and I don’t know anyone with expertise, but here goes …

An adult male Malayan sun bear grows to about 1.2 m tall when standing on its hind legs and can weigh up to 65 kg making them the smallest bear species.

They live in the forests of south-east Asian and eat a varied diet of fruit, vegetables, meat and honey.

A study of the ecology of the bears in Sabah, Borneo, by S.T. Wong from 1999 to 2001 concluded that the low density of bears in lowland rainforests was a consequence of food shortages during “non-mass fruiting years”.

sunbear.jpg

The picture of this sun bear is from Indonesianfauna.com. There is some general information on the ecology of sun bears at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology website, click here.

Many conservation groups claim that the greatest threat to the long term survival of sun bears in the wild is poaching of bears for the traditional Asian medicine trade which prescribes sun bear fat, gall, meat, paws, spinal cord, blood, and bones for complaints ranging from baldness to rheumatism.

Bears are also caught for food, with sun bear paw soup considered a delicacy in Taiwan.

According to the Bagheera website:

“The Chinese have developed a way to extract bile from the gallbladders of live bears. An estimated 5,000 bears are now farmed for their bile. Descended from wild-caught individuals, the farm bears are now captive-bred. This effort is driven more by economics than concern for the animals. More than 100 times the bile can be obtained by milking a live bear than by killing one. Government officials claim that farming has slowed the killing of wild bears, but critics contend it actually promotes the use of bear products and makes them available to more people.”

A 2004 CITES report indicated that some bladders traded [I assume illegally] as sun bear gall bladders were actually from pigs.

The same report noted that some laboratories can distinguish between bile from wild sun bears and bile from captive-bred bears. I assume trade in the wild sun bear bile is illegal while trade in bile from captive-bred bears is legal?

The report included the following snippets of information on trade in sun bears and conservation efforts:

“Indonesia reported that its wildlife law enforcement staff had established good working relations with the country’s Drugs and Food Administration Authority and that they organize joint inspections of relevant shops. The Secretariat has previously reported that working with such agencies seems highly effective.

Malaysia reported undertaking enforcement campaigns that specifically targeted trade in bear specimens. This had resulted in early 2003 in the seizure of 43 alleged bear gall bladders from shops. Six cases involving illicit trade in Malayan sun bear specimens had been prosecuted in 2003. Five of the cases involved bear parts, whilst the sixth involved a live bear.

The Republic of Korea confirmed that the use of a sniffer dog to detect illicit trade at border control points was highly successful, with such a dog in their country detecting 85 cases in just over two years. The Secretariat notes that a survey conducted by TRAFFIC, published in July 2003, found that the use of tiger, rhinoceros and bear specimens in traditional medicine in the Republic of Korea was decreasing, although further work remained to be done on this issue.

Singapore reported that it had produced a leaflet in Chinese, explaining CITES and the use of specimens of endangered species (including bears) in medicine, which it was using to build on work it has done with traditional medicine associations in Singapore.

Viet Nam reported that it is working with non-governmental organizations and captivebreeders of bears to address the issue of bear farms. It has found this issue to be complicated by the fact that bear farms have been established with animals taken from the wild prior to Viet Nam introducing legislation protecting the species. It recognizes that this has adversely affected wild populations.”

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Some information on CITES:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, is an international treaty designed to control and regulate international trade in certain animal and plant species that are now or potentially may become threatened with extinction.

Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction that are or may be affected by trade. Appendix II includes species that, although not necessarily now threatened with extinction, may become so unless trade in them is strictly controlled. Appendix III includes species that any Party country identifies as being subject to regulation within its jurisdiction for purposes of preventing or restricting exploitation and for which it needs the cooperation of other Parties to control trade.