This is a short summary of the global warming news I have been hearing on various radio programs that I listen to on my ipod (I will soon put up an extensive podcast list for those interested). Most of the info though is from Michio Kaku’s Explorations radio program on 9/13/06. You can get it here.
Florida State University did some testing and determined that warmer ocean water, which strengthens hurricanes is heated by the atmosphere (not the other way around or any other way - sounds logical but guess what - there was controversy).
The reason we had a relatively calm hurricane season this year and maybe milder weather? The melting ice sheets are cooling our oceans temporarily.
But not only the ice sheets are melting at a faster rate each year, the tundra is also thawing at a faster and faster rate. This releases CO2 and Methane (CH4). Methane, a gas produced “naturally” (and by for example the huge amount of cows we need to fill fast food hamburgers) is being released 5 times as much as usual from the frozen tundra around the world because of global warming. The methane had been stored there since the last ice age 40,000 years ago says Michio Kaku on wbai’s Explorations (9/13/06). Methane traps heat in its molecules 23 times more effectively than CO2, though it’s half life is “only” a decade versus a century for CO2, so it is a very powerful global warming agent. All these facts mean that rapid heating could happen pretty soon - causing - more heating (positive feedback), and more heating and so on… This might lead to a lot more CO2 being released than previously estimated, since the tundra holds about the amount of CO2 we would produce in a hundred years. Imagine the tundra thawing out releasing this huge amount of CO2. Some now say our worst case scenarios of 4 to 10 F degree warming in our century was rather conservative because the feedbacks causing more and more warming were underestimated. Perhaps 8 to 20F degrees should be considered a fair worst case scenario.
One study proclaims CO2 levels 27% higher than in the last 650,000 years and Methane 130% higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years.
I am now not laughing anymore at the suggestion of some scientist to eject lots of particles in the stratosphere to reflect some of the sunlight back into space and artificially cool the planet while we clean up our act and curb emissions. This idea used to be discussed at the bar after scientific conferences now it’s the subject of scientific conferences, paraphrasing the radio host of the NPR environment radio show (9/14/06).
