Sydney wants green to be the dominant colour in its massive New Year’s Eve fireworks and festivities to herald in 2009. Read more here.
Global Warming is Over: Don Easterbrook
IN 2001 geologist Don Easterbook predicted the beginning of a period of global cooling. At a recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco he again predicted a period of cooling based in part on correlation between past glacial fluctuations, his area of expertise, with periods of low solar irradiance and changes in the Pacific Ocean:
“GLOBAL, cyclic, decadal, climate patterns can be traced over the past millennium in glacier fluctuations, oxygen isotope ratios in ice cores, sea surface temperatures, and historic observations. The recurring climate cycles clearly show that natural climatic warming and cooling have occurred many times, long before increases in anthropogenic atmospheric CO2 levels. The Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age are well known examples of such climate changes, but in addition, at least 23 periods of climatic warming and cooling have occurred in the past 500 years. Each period of warming or cooling lasted about 25-30 years (average 27 years). Two cycles of global warming and two of global cooling have occurred during the past century, and the global cooling that has occurred since 1998 is exactly in phase with the long term pattern. Global cooling occurred from 1880 to ~1915; global warming occurred from ~1915 to ~1945; global cooling occurred from ~1945-1977;, global warming occurred from 1977 to 1998; and global cooling has occurred since 1998. All of these global climate changes show exceptionally good correlation with solar variation since the Little Ice Age 400 years ago.
Shortage of Christmas Trees
Total production of Nordmann firs in Europe is about 30 million trees per year while the demand is 33 million to 35 million. Read more here.
Insight into Life in the Arctic
Funny video about Polar Bears. Click here to watch (caution course language).
Top Issues November – Not Climate Change
According to polling in Australia by Graham Young: climate change has dropped significantly in importance as an issue along with other environmental issues including “water”. Read more here.
Store Carbon as Biochar
One solution to “carbon pollution” is biochar, but according to the Australian government’s policy on emissions trading, the science of biochar is not fully developed – so it can’t be included in any emissions trading scheme.
According to Environmental Scientist, Professor Syd Shea:
Biochar is a fine-grained, highly porous charcoal that helps soils retain nutrients and water. The carbon in biochar resists degradation and sequesters carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years, providing a potentially powerful tool for mitigating anthropogenic climate change. When the biochar is made from agricultural and plantation wastes that would otherwise decompose within a few years, emissions of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere are avoided and that carbon is permanently stored in the biochar.
The Rainbow Bee Eater team, named after a beautiful bird that lives in the regions where they work, has been working on biochar for several years. They are planning to implement a pilot scale operational biochar trial on a 23 thousand hectare wheat belt farm in Western Australia in 2009.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.