| | Datum: | 13.07.05 | | Titel: | CCNet 93/2005 - 13 July 2005: KYOTO FLOUNDERING IN THE WAKE OF G8 SUMMIT | | Link: | | | Details1: | CCNet 93/2005 - 13 July 2005
KYOTO FLOUNDERING IN THE WAKE OF G8 SUMMIT
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As the G8 Gleneagles summit proved, there is no consensus on how to
combat global warming today or tomorrow but the bell now tolls on a
decade of illusion. The Kyoto protocol, with its system of caps,
targets and timetables, is being buried with a discretion that
conceals one of the great public policy failures in recent decades.
Hoax is probably a better word.
The demise of Kyoto is a symbol of the transfer of global power from
Europe to the Asia-Pacific region where China and the US are located.
The idea that the Kyoto system, sanctified by Europe's leaders,
sustained by the public's idealism and driven by the greens, would work
on a global basis was always flawed. The rearguard action to salvage
Kyoto will be waged by some European nations, the green lobby and
sections of the scientific community but their cause seems forlorn.
--The Australian, 13 July 2005
At the heart of the problem is the misuse of science, its degeneration
into a peculiar quasi-religious blend of new-age nature worship, science,
left-wing political activism, and anti-profit economics. Science, by
becoming advocacy, has made itself and its practitioners part of the
problem. As a result, it has greatly weakened its power to provide
real solutions for real problems.
--Walter Starck, Newsweekly, 18 June 2005
If they had broadcast that meeting live to people in Europe, there
would have been riots. Here were the bomb guys from Livermore
talking about stuff that strikes most greens as being completely
wrong and off-the-wall.
--David Keith, University of Calgary, Popular Science, August 2005
(1) KYOTO FLOUNDERING IN THE WAKE OF G8 SUMMIT
The Australian, 13 July 2005
(2) GEO-ENGENEERING: HOW EARTH-SCALE ENGENEERING CAN SAVE THE PLANET
Michael Behar, Popular Science, August 2005
(3) DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
Pat Byrne, Newsweekly, 18 June 2005
(4) MILLENNIAL-SCALE OSCILLATIONS OF NORWEGIAN GLACIER
CO2 Science Magazine, 13 July 2005
(5) SPECIES RANGE RESPONSES TO CO2-INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING
CO2 Science Magazine, 13 July 2005
(6) IMPACT CLUSTERS, FLOOD BASALTS AND MASS EXTINCTIONS
Andrew Glikson, Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Article in Press
(7) DARWIN AND DESIGN: THE EVOLUTION OF A FLAWED DEBATE
Frederick Turner, Tech Central Station, 14 July 2005
(8) DEEP IMPACT: FIRST REACTIONS
Max Wallis
(9) SHOEMAKER DAY
Andy Smith
(10) AND FINALLY: WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?
John McLean
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(1) KYOTO FLOUNDERING IN THE WAKE OF G8 SUMMIT
The Australian, Editorial, 13 July 2005
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15910888%5E12250,00.html
AS the G8 Gleneagles summit proved, there is no consensus on how to combat global warming today or tomorrow but the bell now tolls on a decade of illusion.
The Kyoto protocol, with its system of caps, targets and timetables, is being buried with a discretion that conceals one of the great public policy failures in recent decades. Hoax is probably a better word.
Kyoto is collapsing before reality. The politics of global warming is being transformed by two simultaneous events: a recognition that climate change is real and serious and a recognition that the Kyoto methodology has failed as a solution.
This is the significance of the G8 statement on climate change. It is ironic that one of Kyoto's champions, Tony Blair, has broken the news but Blair is a realist and the Gleneagles declaration is the dawn of a new realism.
At his press conference Blair said he wanted leaders to agree that climate change was a problem, that human activity led to greenhouse gas emissions and that emissions had to be stabilised and then reduced. All leaders, including George W. Bush, agreed.
But Blair then declared that regardless of how many targets the EU reached, that "if we don't have America, China, India taking the action necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then we won't solve climate change". Referring to the "fundamental disagreement" over Kyoto, Blair said he hoped the G8 meeting had "put in place a pathway to a new dialogue when Kyoto expires in 2012".
The story is the new dialogue. Neither Blair nor the Gleneagles statement affirmed an extension of Kyoto's targets as the post-2012 solution and the anger from sections of the green lobby is palpable. Everyone knows why Kyoto is fading -- the US, India and, to a lesser extent, China, the three economies that will dominate the coming century, won't wear the legally binding Kyoto system.
The demise of Kyoto is a symbol of the transfer of global power from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region where China and the US are located. The idea that the Kyoto system, sanctified by Europe's leaders, sustained by the public's idealism and driven by the greens, would work on a global basis was always flawed.
The European world view is in decline and Kyoto is a monument to Europe's magnificent cleverness, its use of soft power and its blind faith in regulation and controls.
Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell, in a matter-of-fact tone, told me: "I think there is a pretty clear international recognition now that any chance of going ahead with the Kyoto system of caps, targets and timetables is destined to failure.
"I don't think there is much doubt, frankly, about the science of global warming. The great challenge is to reduce emissions by probably about 50 per cent sometime this century. The only system that will have international support to achieve this after 2012 will be one that does not include country-specific targets and timetables.
"The Kyoto targets and timetables are not effective. In Australia we allowed the debate to polarise around Kyoto. But the real debate now is about post-Kyoto and how to get a comprehensive and practical system that limits greenhouse gas emissions. What's actually happening is that Tony Blair and other nations have moved closer to the US position that the answer must be found in technology and this is reflected in the G8 climate statement."
Campbell says the global challenge is how to have both "economic expansion and lower greenhouse emissions".
During the past nine months there have been two meetings that signalled the new direction. The first was the UN annual climate change meeting in Argentina in December 2004 and the second was the ministerial meeting convened by Blair earlier this year as a prelude to the G8.
The EU's relentless push for tougher emission targets after the 2008-12 Kyoto period has run into insuperable opposition from the US and the developing world. It is agreed that the post-2012 system must be global and not just confined to the rich nations. That gives the big energy users such as the US, China and India great leverage over the methodology.
Developing nations pledged to high levels of economic growth to destroy poverty and improve incomes reject the campaign by rich EU nations to impose legally binding emission caps that involve a surrender of sovereignty at considerable economic cost.
The media orthodoxy that the US and Australia are isolated in refusing to embrace Kyoto is now obsolete. Whether it was ever accurate is debatable. There was only one reason for Australia to sign and that was to boost its clout for the post-2012 negotiations and this argument may no longer apply.
The rearguard action to salvage Kyoto will be waged by some European nations, the green lobby and sections of the scientific community but their cause seems forlorn.
It is known that the 2008-12 Kyoto system won't deliver. Global emissions are likely to rise about 30 per cent in this period. Even if all the Kyoto nations meet their targets the increase would still be 28-29 per cent. In fact, not all nations will meet these targets. Canada, having made foolish pledges, is in trouble. But the EU should meet its overall target.
Blair's G8 meeting has begun to identity the new common ground. The US is accepting the reality of global warming and China is accepting the reality that developing nations must be part of the solution.
The future solution will be different from Kyoto. It will be universal. It will involve less "top-down" prescription and more "bottom-up" practical applications. There will be a greater emphasis on innovation, cleaner technologies and lower emitting energy sources. There may well be timetables but they are going to be voluntary, not binding and yes, the new global consensus is a long way off.
Copyright 2005, The Australian
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(2) GEO-ENGENEERING: HOW EARTH-SCALE ENGENEERING CAN SAVE THE PLANET
Popular Science, August 2005
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,20967,1075786,00.html
Maybe we can have our fossil fuels and burn 'em too. These scientists have come up with a plan to end global warming. One idea: A 600,000-square-mile space mirror
By Michael Behar
David Keith never expected to get a summons from the White House. But in September 2001, officials with the President's Climate Change Technology Program invited him and more than two dozen other scientists to participate in a roundtable discussion called "Response Options to Rapid or Severe Climate Change." While administration officials were insisting in public that there was no firm proof that the planet was warming, they were quietly exploring potential ways to turn down the heat.
Most of the world's industrialized nations had already vowed to combat global warming by reining in their emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief "greenhouse gas" blamed for trapping heat in Earth's atmosphere. But in March 2001 President George W. Bush had withdrawn U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty mandating limits on CO2 emissions, and asked his administration to begin studying other options.
Keith, a physicist and economist in the chemical and petroleum engineering department at the University of Calgary, had for more than a decade been investigating strategies to curtail global warming. He and the other scientists at the meeting-including physicists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who had spent a chunk of their careers designing nuclear weapons-had come up with some ideas for "geoengineering" Earth's climate. What they proposed was tinkering on a global scale. "We already are inadvertently changing the climate, so why not advertently try to counterbalance it?" asks retired Lawrence Livermore physicist Michael MacCracken, a former senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program who helped organize the meeting.
"If they had broadcast that meeting live to people in Europe, there would have been riots," Keith says. "Here were the bomb guys from Livermore talking about stuff that strikes most greens as being completely wrong and off-the-wall." But today, a growing number of physicists, oceanographers and climatologists around the world are seriously considering technologies for the deliberate manipulation of Earth's climate. Some advocate planetary air-conditioning devices such as orbiting space mirrors that deflect sunlight away from Earth, or ships that intensify cloud cover to block the sun's rays. Others are suggesting that we capture carbon dioxide-from the air, from cars and power plants-and stash it underground or react it with chemicals that turn it to stone.
Carbon dioxide wasn't always public enemy number one. For the past 400,000 years, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has fluctuated between about 180 and 280 ppm (parts per million, the number of CO2 molecules per million molecules of air). But in the late 1800s, when humans set about burning fossil fuels in earnest, atmospheric CO2 began to increase with alarming speed-from about 280 ppm to the current level of almost 380 ppm, in a scant 100 years. Experts predict that CO2 could climb as high as 500 ppm by 2050 and possibly twice that by the end of the century. As CO2 levels continue to rise, the planet will get hotter. "The question now," says Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore and one of the world's leading authorities on climate change, "is what can we actually do about it?" Here are some of the geoengineering schemes under consideration.
1. Store CO2 Underground
Feasibility: 10
Cost: $$
RISK: 4
In the southeastern corner of Saskatchewan, just outside the town of Weyburn-the "Opportunity City"-a steel pipeline descends 4,000 feet below the prairie at the edge of a 70-square-mile oil field. Into this subterranean cavern, petroleum engineers are pumping 5,000 tons of pressurized, liquefied carbon dioxide every day. The aim is twofold: Use high-pressure CO2 to drive oil from the porous rock in the reservoir to the surface, and trap the carbon dioxide underground.
Welcome to the world's largest carbon-sequestering operation. Dubbed the Weyburn Project, it began in July 2000 as a partnership between EnCana, a Canadian oil and gas company, and Canada's Petroleum Technology Research Centre. With $13 million in funding from more than a dozen sponsors, including the U.S. Department of Energy, engineers have already socked away six million tons of carbon dioxide, roughly the amount produced by burning half a billion gallons of gasoline.
The Timeline
Unlike other geoengineering schemes, this one is already happening, with more than half a dozen major projects under way. The problem, says Howard Herzog, a principal research engineer at MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, is that concentrated CO2 is in short supply. There's too much of the gas floating around in the air, but actually capturing, compressing, and transporting it costs money. In the U.S. and most other nations, there are no laws requiring fossil-fuel-burning power plants-the primary source of CO2 emissions-to capture a single molecule of the gas.
The Promise
By 2033, the Weyburn Project will store 25 million tons of carbon dioxide. "That's like taking 6.8 million cars off the road for one year," says project manager Mike Monea, "and this is just a pilot test in a small oil reservoir." Saline aquifers, giant pools of saltwater that have been trapped underground for millions of years, could hold even more CO2. Humans dump about 28 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Geologists estimate that underground reservoirs and saline aquifers could store as much as 200,000 gigatons.
The Perils
Before CO2 is injected into the ground, it's compressed into what's called a supercritical state-it's extremely dense and viscous, and behaves more like a liquid than a gas. In this form, CO2 should remain trapped underground for thousands of years, if not indefinitely. The danger is if engineers accidentally "depressurize" an aquifer while probing for oil or natural gas. There's also a risk that carbon dioxide could escape slowly through natural fissures in subterranean rock and pool up in basements or cellars. "If you walked down into a basement [full of CO2]," Keith says, "you wouldn't smell it or see it, but it would kill you."
2. Filter CO2 from the air
Feasibility: 4
Cost: $$$
RISK: 4
Klaus Lackner is accustomed to skeptics. They've doubted him since he first presented his idea for extracting carbon dioxide from ambient air in March 1999, at an international symposium on coal and fuel technology. "The reaction from everyone there was utter disbelief," recalls Lackner, a physicist with the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University.
He called for the construction of giant filters that would act like flypaper, trapping CO2 molecules as they drifted past in the wind. Sodium hydroxide or calcium hydroxide-chemicals that bind with carbon dioxide-would be pumped through the porous filters much the way antifreeze is circulated through a car's radiator. A secondary process would strip the CO2 from the binding chemical. The chemical would recirculate through the filter, while the CO2 would be set aside for disposal.
The Timeline
Lackner is collaborating with engineer Allen Wright, who founded Global Research Technologies in Tucson, Arizona. Wright is developing a wind-scrubber prototype but remains tight-lipped about the project. He estimates that a completed system is at least two years away.
The Promise
Wind scrubbers can be placed wherever it's convenient to capture carbon dioxide, so there's no need to transport it. Lackner calculates that a wind scrubber designed to retain 25 tons of CO2 per year-the average amount each American adds to the atmosphere annually-would require a device about the size of a large plasma-screen television. A single industrial-size wind scrubber about 200 feet high and 165 feet wide would snag about 90,000 tons of CO2 a year.
The Perils
Some experts are dubious about the ease of separating carbon dioxide from the binding chemical, a process that in itself would require energy from fossil fuels. "CO2 is so dilute in the air that to try to scrub from it, you have to pay too much for energy use," Herzog says. And to capture all the carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere by humans, you'd need to blanket an area at least the size of Arizona with scrubber towers.
3.Fertilize the ocean
Feasibility: 10
Cost: $
RISK: 9
On January 5, 2002, Revelle, a research vessel operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, left New Zealand for the Southern Ocean-a belt of frigid, stormy seas that separates Antarctica from the rest of the world. There the scientists dumped almost 6,000 pounds of iron powder overboard and unleashed an armada of instruments to gauge the results.
The intent was to test a hypothesis put forth by oceanographer John Martin. At a lecture more than a decade ago, Martin declared: "Give me a half-tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age." He was alluding to the fact that the Southern Ocean is packed with minerals and nutrients but strangely devoid of sea life. Martin had concluded that the ocean was anemic-containing very little iron, an essential nutrient for plankton growth. Adding iron, Martin believed, would cool the planet by triggering blooms of CO2-consuming plankton.
Oceanographer Kenneth Coale, who directs the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories near Monterey, California, was a chief scientist on the Southern Ocean cruise. He says the project was a success, proving that relatively small quantities of iron could spawn colossal blooms of plankton.
The Timeline
Scientists are wary, saying that too little is known about the deep-ocean environment to endorse further large-scale experiments. In October, Coale and other scientists will gather in New Zealand for a weeklong meeting sponsored by the National Science Foundation, New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmosphere, and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme to decide how to proceed.
The Promise
Iron fertilization is by far the cheapest and easiest way to mitigate carbon dioxide. Coale estimates that just one pound of iron could conceivably hatch enough plankton to sequester 100,000 pounds of CO2. "Even if the process is only 1 percent efficient, you just sequestered half a ton of carbon for a dime."
The Perils
"What is still a mystery," Coale says, "is the ripple effect on the rest of the ocean and the food chain." One fear is that huge plankton blooms, in addition to gorging on CO2, will devour other nutrients. Deep currents carry nutrient-rich water from the Southern Ocean northward to regions where fish rely on the nutrients to survive. Says Coale, "A fertilization event to take care of atmospheric CO2 could have the unintended consequence of turning the oceans sterile. Oops."
4. Turn CO2 to Stone
Feasibility: 7
Cost: $$
RISK: 3
The Grand Canyon is one of the largest carbon dioxide repositories on Earth. Hundreds of millions of years ago, a vast sea covered the land there. The water, rich in carbon dioxide, slowly reacted with other chemicals to create calcium carbonate, or limestone-the pinkish bands striping the canyon walls today.
Nature's method for turning CO2 to stone is achingly slow, but researchers at the Goldwater Materials Science Laboratory at Arizona State University are working on a way to speed up the process. Michael McKelvy and Andrew Chizmeshya use serpentine or olivine, widely available and inexpensive minerals, as feedstock to fuel a chemical reaction that transforms CO2 into magnesium carbonate, a cousin of limestone. To initiate the reaction-known as "mineral carbonation"-the CO2 is compressed, heated, and mixed with feedstock and a catalyst, such as sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).
The Timeline
Scaling up the process to handle millions of tons of CO2 would require huge quantities of serpentine or olivine. A single mineral-carbonation plant would carve out a mountain, but, McKelvy says, "You could carbonate [the CO2] and put it right back where the feedstock came from."
The Promise
Mineral carbonation is simply an accelerated version of a benign natural process. The limestone in the Grand Canyon is 500 feet thick, McKelvy says, "and it has been sitting there not bothering anybody for millennia."
The Perils
It costs roughly $70 to eliminate one ton of CO2, a price that McKelvy says is too high. Also, the feedstock and CO2 must be heated to high temperatures. "You wind up having to burn fossil fuels in order to provide the energy to activate the mineral to put away the CO2," he says.
5. Enhance Clouds to Reflect Sunlight
Feasibility: 6
Cost: $$
RISK: 7
Some proposed solutions to global warming don't involve capturing carbon dioxide. Instead they focus on turning down the heat by deflecting or filtering incoming sunlight.
On any given day, marine stratocumulus clouds blanket about one third of the world's oceans, mostly around the tropics. Clouds form when water vapor clings to dust or other particles, creating droplets. Seeding clouds with tiny salt particles would enable more droplets to form-making the clouds whiter and therefore more reflective. According to physicist John Latham, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, boosting reflectivity, or albedo, in just 3 percent of marine stratocumulus clouds would reflect enough sunlight to curb global warming. "It would be like a mirror for incoming solar radiation," Latham explains.
Latham is collaborating with Stephen Salter, an emeritus professor of engineering design at the University of Edinburgh, who is making sketches for GPS-steered wind- powered boats that would cruise the tropical latitudes, churning up salt spray. "I am planning a flotilla of unmanned yachts sailing backward and forward across the wind," Salter says. "They would drag propellers through the water to generate electricity, which we'd use to make the spray."
Salter wants to outfit each boat with four 60-foot-tall Flettner rotors, which look like smokestacks but act like sails. An electric motor starts each rotor spinning, which, along with the wind, creates a pressure differential (less pressure in front of the rotor, more in back), generating forward thrust. From the top of the rotor, an impeller would blast a fine saltwater mist into the air.
Until the concept is tested, Salter isn't sure exactly how many ships would be needed to mitigate global warming. "Maybe between 5,000 and 30,000," he says. That may sound like a lot, but Salter notes that for World War II, the U.S. built nearly 100,000 aircraft in 1944 alone.
The Timeline
Latham initially raised the notion in a 1990 paper. "The article went down like a lead balloon," he says. But early last year in England, at a geoengineering conference hosted by MIT and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, he presented the concept again. "The consensus was that a number of ideas originally thought to be outlandish were deemed sufficiently plausible to be supported further. Our work fell into that category." Latham needs a few million dollars to test his idea. "On the scale of the damage that will be caused by global warming, that is utterly peanuts."
The Promise
What's nice about this idea is that it can easily be fine-tuned. "If we tried it and there was some deleterious effect, we could switch it off, and within four or five days all evidence would have disappeared," Latham says.
The Perils
One worry is that although the tiny salt particles released by evaporating sea mist are perfect for marine stratocumulus-cloud formation, they are too small to create rain clouds. "You might make it harder for rain to form," Salter says. "Therefore, you would not want to do this upwind of a place where there is a bad drought."
6. Deflect Sunlight With A Mirror
Feasibility: 1
Cost: $$$$
RISK: 5
One of the most ambitious schemes is a giant space "mirror" positioned between the Earth and sun to intercept sunlight. To build the mirror, physicist Lowell Wood, a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore, proposes using a mesh of aluminum threads that are only a millionth of an inch in diameter and a thousandth of an inch apart. "It would be like a window screen made of exceedingly fine metal wire," he explains. The screen wouldn't actually block the light but would simply filter it so that some of the incoming infrared radiation wouldn't reach Earth's atmosphere.
The Timeline
Wood, who has been researching the mirror idea for more than a decade, says it should be considered only as a safety net if all other means of reversing global warming "fail or fall grossly short over the next few decades."
The Promise
Once in place, the mirror would cost almost nothing to operate. From Earth, it would look like a tiny black spot on the sun. "People really wouldn't see it," says Michael MacCracken. And plant photosynthesis isn't expected to be affected by the slight reduction in sunlight.
The Perils
Wood calculates that deflecting 1 percent of incoming solar radiation would stabilize the climate, but doing so would require a mirror spanning roughly 600,000 square miles-or several smaller ones. Putting something that size in orbit would be a massive challenge, not to mention exorbitantly expensive.
Copyright 2005, Popular Science
EDITOR'S NOTE: Before wasting trillions of dollars on highly speculative technological
'fixes', I believe it would make more sense to wait a couple of generations in order to
see whether there is any problem that needs fixing. It would apper that it might be much
wiser to strengthen our societal capabilities to adapt to climate extremes (such as
hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, floods, etc) that always have been and will be happening
in any case. For such a rational approach to climate change, see Tom Yulsman's common-sensical
perspective at http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_2847229. BJP
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(3) DEBUNKING MYTHS ABOUT THE GREAT BARRIER REEF
Newsweekly, 18 June 2005
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2005jun18_e.html
by Pat Byrne
Claims of human-induced threats to the Great Barrier Reef have been grossly exaggerated, argues Prof. Walter Starck, one of the world's pioneering investigators of coral reefs.
For over 50 years, Professor Walter Starck has done extensive research world-wide on over-fished reefs, sustainably-fished reefs and unfished reefs. His work has involved the discovery of much of what scientists now know about reef biology.
In a recent Institute of Public Affairs Backgrounder, 'Threats' to the Great Barrier Reef (May 2005)*, Prof. Starck says:
"Over the years, we have been told that coral-eating starfish, oil pollution, over fishing, fertiliser run-off, silt, agri-chemicals, sewerage, anchor damage, people walking on the reef, ship groundings and global warming were each imminent threats to the reef.
"None of these prophecies of doom, however, have become real and the GBR continues to be a vast and essentially pristine natural region where measurable human effects remain rare or trivial."
But because the reef is underwater, remote and inaccessible to the public, scientific prophets of doom capture the media's attention.
"Almost all of the so-called experts given credence by the media are office-workers with academic credentials but very limited direct experience of reefs. Their claims often amount to hypothetical explanations for very limited observations that, more often than not, describe entirely natural conditions, or are based on computer models that predict imaginary futures," says Prof. Starck.
Since the 1960s, Crown-of-Thorn starfish has been described as a major threat to the reef. Early blame for destructive outbreaks was laid on collectors taking Triton's trumpet shell, a natural predator of the starfish.
However, this theory collapsed when it was realised that there were never enough trumpet shells to combat large outbreaks of Crown-of-Thorns.
Eventually, it was realised that large Crown-of-Thorns outbreaks were a natural phenomenon, the product of millions of eggs from each spawning female, favourable temperature, currents and other oceanic conditions.
Coral regeneration
In fact, large outbreaks can be beneficial. When coral regenerates after a tropical cyclone destroys a reef, fast-growing branching and plate-like corals crowd out other slower-growing corals. An outbreak of Crown-of-Thorns thins out the fast-growing corals, which they prefer, allowing the slower-growing corals to compete.
Prof. Starck says concern for oil spills damaging the reef was "conjured up to oppose oil exploration in GBR waters." He points out: "Oil floats, coral doesn't and oil has never caused extensive damage to reefs anywhere."
The worst oil spill in history was during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein released 6-8 million tons of oil into the Persian Gulf, contaminating numerous local reefs. Comprehensive surveys were done, but there was no clean-up operation. Within four months most of the oil had naturally degraded, and within four years the affected reefs were "largely to fully recovered".
Oil is not very toxic to reefs and it has been repeatedly found that the "clean-up efforts are not only ineffectual but actually result in worse damage than where nothing is done." The threat of oil pollution to the GBR is remote.
Then there is the claim of over-fishing. There have been hundreds of surveys of the most fished species on the GBR, coral trout. These involved actual counts of the number of fish, not estimates or figures from mathematical models. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) won't publish these studies.
Says Prof. Starck: "These studies show that coral trout are abundant everywhere, and that there is little to no difference between the most frequently fished reefs near population centres and remote rarely visited ones, nor between reefs which are open to fishing and those closed to it.
"The figures clearly indicate that our most heavily fished species is, in fact, being only lightly harvested. They also strongly imply that no environmental benefits whatever should be expected to accrue from the recently increased restrictions on fishing ...
"Most disturbing of all, the existence of this exceptional body of knowledge and its total disregard by GBRMPA raises serious questions about the factual basis, scientific quality, and, indeed, even the integrity with which GBRMPA's management of the reef is being conducted" - i.e., the steady closure of more and more reef area to commercial and recreational fishing.
Prof. Starck says that, with 346,000 square kilometres of reef and lagoon area, the total catch from the GBR is just 17 kg per square kilometre annually. Elsewhere over other Pacific reefs, the annual harvest averages over 7,700 kg per square kilometre. Fisheries experts say that this is a sustainable level of harvesting. This means these Pacific reefs are fished at a rate that allows fish stocks to replenish.
The Queensland Department of Primary Industries has figures from globally-used measures for sustainable fish-harvesting that show, for fishing on the GBR: "On an area basis, it is less than one per cent of what reefs elsewhere commonly yield on a sustainable basis."
Prof. Starck concludes that "the statistics leave the claims of over-fishing without a shred of credibility ... Where is the evidence? ... There isn't any." The claim of unsustainability, he says, "is beyond ridiculous. It is incompetent. It amounts to claiming that the GBR is the most unproductive reef area in the world with less than one per cent of the productivity of other reefs."
Another claimed threat to the reef is land runoff containing fertiliser, silt and agri-chemicals, together with sewage from island resorts and boats.
Several years ago, the GBRMPA funded an extensive study that involved pumping various concentrations of nutrients onto a reef. Even when the nutrient levels reached many time natural levels, there were no algal blooms or damage to the reef. While plans for the experiment received a lot of publicity, the good outcome, that nutrients were not damaging the reef, received only scant notice in the national press.
Nutrient levels
Recently, it has been realised that there are frequent surges of nutrients over the outer face of the reef from the deep ocean, raising nutrient levels to many times that being washed off the Queensland coastal region. "Far from being damaging to the reefs, it is now thought to enrich them," Prof. Starck says.
Despite this evidence, he says that young marine biologists are still being brainwashed into telling visitors to the reef not to urinate in the seawater for fear of raising nutrient levels, without seeming "to notice that swarming sea-bird colonies on nearby reef islets can be excreting as much urea as a thousand humans do every day with no noticeable ill effect."
Prof. Starck says that overall estimates of human-attributed nutrient to the GBR are, at most, only a few per cent, which would not be harmful to the reef. It would be beneficial to reef health.
As an example of extreme "ecological correctness", he recounted how GBRMPA officials decided to ban tourists on Green Island from feeding their food scraps to a large resident fish population that gathered for a daily feed of tourist leftovers.
Officials decided that this procedure was "unnatural". Instead, the scraps were taken back to be disposed of at the Cairns dump, once a mangrove area, that has been flattened and filled in.
The scraps contribute to breeding clouds of flies, and "in the wet season, putrefying water regularly overflows into the adjacent inlet, resulting in fish kills. An elegant solution has been replaced by an idiotic one."
What about the claim that farmers cropping and grazing, and land-clearing for houses, have caused siltation that can kill inner reefs?
Prof. Starck says that pre-European aboriginal burning of large coastal areas was a source of erosion, and natural hill-slope erosion in rain-forests is quite high because of the lack of forest ground-cover. In contrast, pasture and sugar-cane can actually reduce erosion, as can introduced weeds, as these provide better ground-cover than sparse native vegetation.
He says that inner reefs needed turbid water to protect them from sunlight. They exist "at the extremes of coral tolerance" and have always been subject to sediment buildup. "Adding a few extra millimeters of silt to the several meters-thick layer that already blankets the inshore sea floor has no discernable effect whatever."
As for farm chemicals contaminating the environment, the best indicator of contamination of the food chain is chemical residue build up in marine mammals. Prof. Starck says that a recent study of tissue samples from 53 dugong showed levels of organo-chlorines at levels similar to what were measured 20 years ago. "These were low in comparison to concentrations found in marine mammals elsewhere in the world."
As for town sewage disposal, none is emptied into GBR waters. The miniscule effluent from small pleasure vessels is harmless.
"In short," he says, "no water quality problems are detectable."
What about physical damage from tourists and tourist boats? He says that, of the 2,900 reefs in the GBR complex, only a fraction of one per cent are visited regularly, and only a tiny fraction of reef area is actually used. Tourist boats don't drop anchor on reefs but in the sandy lagoons.
Media circus
In contrast, tropical cyclones cross the reef every year demolishing thousands of hectares of reef in their wake, without any media circus.
Will global warming threaten the reef? Prof. Starck says that, while many biologists issue doomsday warnings, geologists see in the earth's geological record that warming trends are not unprecedented or unusual. Any warming now may simply be the current phase of a millennial-scale cycle, such as was seen in the Medieval warm period and the Roman warm period a thousand years earlier.
Recent coral bleachings, attributed to global warning by biologists, are not unprecedented. He suggests that if global warming does become significant, the most likely effect will be "to expand the area of ocean suitable to them [coral reefs] while at the same time causing weaker El Niño patterns with fewer associated bleaching events."
Prof. Starck is particularly critical of GBRMPA for proclaiming success and dreaming up an endless litany of threats to justify its ever-expanding budget, which is now around $35 million annually.
He says, "GBRMPA has become a sheltered workshop for bureaucrats who enjoy almost complete absence of realistic oversight, assessment or accountability."
While there are a handful of academics and administrators who do have the credentials and experience to know that claims of threats to the reef are "almost entirely fabricated and alarmist", they are not prepared to speak out because they will be denigrated and ostracised.
Pressure to conform
The peer-review process used for allocating research grants and for assessing studies submitted for publication, imposes strong pressures on scientists to conform to prevailing views.
The prevailing views have led to the winding down of the Queensland reef fishing industry, and the substitution of an easily sustainable fishing industry with imported seafood from already over-exploited marine resources, particularly in developing countries.
Finally, Professor Starck says that at the heart of the problem is the misuse of science, its degeneration "into a peculiar quasi-religious blend of new-age nature worship, science, left-wing political activism, and anti-profit economics ...
"Science, by becoming advocacy, has made itself and its practitioners part of the problem. As a result, it has greatly weakened its power to provide real solutions for real problems."
* Prof. Walter Starck's paper, 'Threats' to the Great Barrier Reef (May 2005), is available as a PDF from the Institute of Public Affairs at: www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=414
===========
(4) MILLENNIAL-SCALE OSCILLATIONS OF NORWEGIAN GLACIER
CO2 Science Magazine, 13 July 2005
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/MainPage.jsp?Page=BrowseCatalogEnlarged&sProductCode=v8n28c2
Reference
Bakke, J., Lie, Ø, Nesje, A., Dahl, S.O. and Paasche, Ø. 2005. Utilizing physical sediment variability in glacier-fed lakes for continuous glacier reconstructions during the Holocene, northern Folgefonna, western Norway. The Holocene 15: 161-176.
What was done
Physical parameters of glaciolacustrine sediments retrieved from two glacier-fed lakes and a peat bog north of the ice cap of northern Folgefonna, the seventh largest glacier in Norway, were used to derive a long-term history of glacier equilibrium-line altitude (ELA).
What was learned
The authors note that their ELA reconstruction reveals both century- and millennial-scale glacier expansions along with some less extensive decadal-scale fluctuations over the past 2300 years. Most notable is: (1) the ELA minimum of the first Subatlantic glacial event that preceded the Roman Warm Period (RWP), (2) the dramatic rise of the ELA at the start of the RWP, which peaked between 2000 and 1800 years before present (yr BP), (3) the subsequent steep but jagged ELA decline throughout the Dark Ages Cold Period (DACP) that extended from approximately 1800 to 1200 yr BP, (4) the rapid rise of the ELA at the commencement of the Medieval Warm Period, which prevailed from 1200 to 500 yr BP, (5) the return of the ELA to DACP levels during the Little Ice Age, which prevailed from 500 to 100 yr BP, and (6) the development of the Modern Warm Period over the final century of the record. Also of interest is the fact that although the current ELA of the glacier is higher than the ELA that prevailed during the Medieval Warm Period, it is lower than the ELA that prevailed during the Roman Warm Period, indicative of the fact that the region's current temperature has not yet risen to the level of warmth that prevailed in that part of the world two millennia ago.
What it means
Independent of whatever the atmosphere's CO2 concentration may be doing, earth's climate oscillates on a millennial time scale that brings recurrent alternating multi-century cold and warm spells to all parts of the planet, as illustrated in this study for a portion of western Norway.
Copyright 2005, CO2 Science Magazine
=============
(5) SPECIES RANGE RESPONSES TO CO2-INDUCED GLOBAL WARMING
CO2 Science Magazine, 13 July 2005
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/MainPage.jsp?Page=BrowseCatalogEnlarged&sProductCode=v8n28b2
Reference
Hampe, A. and Petit, R.J. 2005. Conserving biodiversity under climate change: the rear edge matters. Ecology Letters 8: 461-467.
What was done
The authors searched the ISI Web of Science bibliographic database over the period 1945 to October 2004 to see what research has been published about peripheral populations, focusing on rear-edge populations that reside at the current low-latitude and -altitude margins of their ranges.
What was learned
The literature search yielded a total of 382 studies dealing with range margins, the vast majority of which were conducted in either Europe or North America and dealt with front-edge populations that reside at the current high-latitude and -altitude margins of their ranges. Only 63 studies dealt with some aspect of rear-edge populations. The authors characterized this fact as unfortunate, because the rear edge, in their words, is often "disproportionately important for the survival and evolution of biota." As a result, they call for a renewed focus of interdisciplinary research with long-term experimental studies capable of distinguishing climate effects from other factors, such as habitat fragmentation, genetic load in small populations or biotic interactions.
A second important conclusion of Hampe and Petit relates to model studies of species responses to climate change, which often predict complete disappearance of populations at the rear edges of their ranges. Such predictions, they assert, are "hazardous," because they make "a number of unrealistic assumptions" and leave "little long-term prospects for rear edge populations, despite observations of the importance and historical continuity of many rear edge populations."
What it means
It is clear from Hampe and Petit's review that the climate-alarmist vision of vast and manifold species extinctions as a result of CO2-induced global warming is unsupported by the existing scientific literature and unlikely to ever occur, especially when one considers the rear edge of their ranges, which is where species would be most negatively affected in a warming world. In our own review of the subject posted two years ago on our website - The Specter of Species Extinction: Will Global Warming Decimate Earth's Biosphere? - we came to the same conclusion, based on the fact that under CO2-enriched conditions, plants generally prefer warmer temperatures.
Copyright 2005, CO2 Science Magazine
============
(6) IMPACT CLUSTERS, FLOOD BASALTS AND MASS EXTINCTIONS
Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Article in Press, Corrected Proof
http://tinyurl.com/clqr6
Discussion
Asteroid/comet impact clusters, flood basalts and mass extinctions: Significance of isotopic age overlaps
Andrew Glikson,
Department of Earth and Marine Sciences, Australian National University Canberra, A.C.T. 0200, Australia
Abstract
Morgan et al. [J. Phipps Morgan, T.J. Reston, C.R. Ranero. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 217 (2004) 263-284.], referring to an overlap between the isotopic ages of volcanic events and four epoch/stage extinction boundaries, suggest a dominant role of Continental Flood Basalts (CFB) and of explosive CO2-rich volcanic pipes ("Verneshots") as mass extinction triggers. Here I point out that Morgan et al. overlook 3 overlaps between the ages of extraterrestrial impacts, volcanic and mass extinction events, and 3 overlaps between the ages of extraterrestrial impact and volcanic events. These overlaps suggest that both extraterrestrial impacts and volcanism served as extinction triggers separately or in combination. A protracted impact cluster overlaps extinctions at the end-Devonian (374-359 Ma) and impact-extinction age overlaps occur in the end-Jurassic (145-142 Ma), Aptian (125-112 Ma); Cenomanian-Turonian (95-94 Ma); K-T boundary (65.5 Ma) and mid-Miocene (16 Ma) (Table 1). Morgan et al. appear to question the uniqueness of shock metamorphic and geochemical criteria used to identify asteroid/comet impacts. However, shock pressures at 8-35 GPa, indicated by intra-crystalline planar deformation features (PDF), exceed lithospheric and volcanic explosion pressures by an order of magnitude and are not known to be associated with explosive volcanic diatremes, kimberlites or lamproites. These authors make reference to apparent iridium anomalies of volcanic origin. However, platinum group element (PGE) abundance levels, volatile/refractory PGE ratios, and Cr and Os isotopes of meteoritic materials are clearly distinct from those of terrestrial volcanics. Given a Phanerozoic time-integrated oceanic/continent crustal ratio > 2.5 and the difficulty in identifying oceanic impacts, I suggest the effects of large impacts on thin thermally active oceanic crust-capable of triggering regional to global mafic volcanic events and ensuing environmental effects-provide an essential clue for understanding the relationships between impacts and volcanic events which, separately or in combination, result in deleterious environmental effects, in some instances leading to mass extinctions.
FULL PAPER at http://tinyurl.com/clqr6
doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2005.05.007
Copyright © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
===========
(7) DARWIN AND DESIGN: THE EVOLUTION OF A FLAWED DEBATE
Tech Central Station, 14 July 2005
http://www.techcentralstation.com/071305B.html
By Frederick Turner
Does the theory of evolution make God unnecessary to the very existence of the world? If there is no God, what authority, if any, guarantees the moral law of humankind? These questions are crucial in the current controversies that are dividing the nation. For just as our laws must be not for religious believers alone, they must also be not for unbelievers alone either. Here, though, I would like to deal not with the answers, which would require a much larger work than a brief essay, but with some aspects of the controversy over evolution itself.
The battle between the evolutionists and the creationists is a peculiarly tragic one, because it is amplifying the worst tendencies of both sides, and making it more and more difficult for most people to find a resolution.
On the polemical creationist side, the sin is intellectual dishonesty. It begins innocently as a wise recognition that faith must precede reason, even if the faith is only in reason itself (as Gödel showed, reason cannot prove its own validity). But under pressure from a contemptuous academic elite the appeal to faith rapidly becomes anti-intellectualism and what Socrates identified as a great sin, "misologic" or treason against the Logos, against reason itself -- in religious terms, a sin against the Holy Spirit. Under further pressure it resorts to rhetorical dishonesty and hypocrisy, to an attempt to appropriate the garments of science and reason, and so we get "creation science", the misuse of the term "intelligent design", the whole grotesque solemn sham of pseudoscientific periodicals and conferences on creation science, and a lame parade of scientific titles and degrees. A lie repeated often enough convinces the liar, and many creationists may now have forgotten that they are lying at all.
The polemical evolutionists are right about the truth of evolution. But the rightness of their cause has been deeply compromised by their own version of the creationists' sin. The evolutionists' sin, as I see it, is even greater, because it is three sins rolled into one.
The first is a profound failure of the imagination, which comes from a certain laziness and complacency. Somehow people, who should, because of their studies in biology, have been brought to a state of profound wonder and awe at the astonishing beauty and intricacy and generosity of nature, can think of nothing better to say than to gloomily pronounce it all meaningless and valueless. Even if one is an atheist, nature surely has a meaning, that is, an abstract and volitional and mental implication: the human world and its ideas and arts and loves, including our appreciation for the beauty of nature itself.
The second sin is a profound moral failure -- the failure of gratitude. If one found out that one had a billion dollars free and clear in one's bank account, whose source was unknown, one should want to find out who put it there, or if the donor were not a person but a thing or a system, what it was that has so benefited us. And one would want to thank whoever or whatever put it in our account. Our lives and experiences are surely worth more than a billion dollars to us, and yet we did not earn them and we owe it to someone or something to give thanks. And to despise and ridicule those who rightly or wrongly do want to give thanks and identify their benefactor as "God" is to compound the sin.
The third sin is again dishonesty. In many cases it is clear that the beautiful and hard-won theory of evolution, now proved beyond reasonable doubt, is being cynically used by some -- who do not much care about it as such -- to support an ulterior purpose: a program of atheist indoctrination, and an assault on the moral and spiritual goals of religion. A truth used for unworthy purposes is quite as bad as a lie used for ends believed to be worthy. If religion can be undermined in the hearts and minds of the people, then the only authority left will be the state, and, not coincidentally, the state's well-paid academic, legal, therapeutic and caring professions. If creationists cannot be trusted to give a fair hearing to evidence and logic because of their prior commitment to religious doctrine, some evolutionary partisans cannot be trusted because they would use a general social acceptance of the truth of evolution as a way to set in place a system of helpless moral license in the population and an intellectual elite to take care of them.
The controversy over intelligent design and evolution is, like many current quarrels, largely artificial, a proxy fight between atheists and biblical literalists over the existence and nature of a divine authority and the desirability of state authority as a replacement for it. Many people not warped in attitude by the exacerbations of the conflict see no contradiction between the idea that the universe, life, and human beings evolved according to natural processes, and the idea that a divine being or beings can be credited with the existence of everything, having set those natural processes going in the first place. The big question is whether nature can give us a moral law that is robust enough to serve a modern democratic free enterprise society -- if it can, that moral law would be acceptable both to believers, who would see it as God's natural revelation, and to unbelievers, who could trust its metaphysical impartiality.
Copyright 2005, TCS
======== LETTERS =========
(8) DEEP IMPACT: FIRST REACTIONS
Max Wallis
Benny:
You report in CCNet 92/2005 of 12 July 2005 NASA's PI as saying that
comet Tempel 1 is "definitely not what most people think of when they
think of comets -- an ice cube."
But who in the scientific community was responsible for that
misconception, when Halley's temperature taken in 1986 was ~100
degrees C ? And when high temperatures were confirmed for comet
Borrelly in 2001 ?
Of course the comet's dust is "extremely fine, more like talcum
powder than beach sand." The far superior analytic instruments flown
on the Giotto probe of comet Halley actually determined the size
spectrum. The PIA analysers found submicron particles are the most
numerous, while our DIDSY instrument (McDonnell et al. Astron
Astrophys 187, 719, 1987) found particles in the 1-100 micron range
and very few larger ones. Light scattering was dominated by
particles around 100 microns, far finer than sand.
Was it possible that sand-sized particles accumulate on the comet
surface, too heavy to be blown off by cometary gases? The pictures
of Borrelly and more recently Wild-2 showed no signs of such
accumulations - or of the expected zoning due to cometary rotational
forces being significant relative to gravity.
So it shouldn't have needed Deep Impact to explode both the ice and
the sand grain elements in the icy-conglomerate paradigm (see
www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk).
-----------------------------------------------------------
Max Wallis wallismk@cf.ac.uk
Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology tel. 029 2087 6436
2 North Road fax 029 2087 6424
Cardiff University CF10 2DY
===========
(9) SHOEMAKER DAY
Andy Smith
Hello Benny and CCNet,
We are preparing to celebrate the contributions made
by Gene Shoemaker, and his devoted family and friends,
to the our increased global awareness of the NEO
dangers and to our increasing level of preparedness to
prevent NEO emergencies, if we can, and to minimize
our losses, if we must.
We always do this on the 16th of July and this will be
the 11th anniversary of the start of the celebrated
Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts on Jupiter. We will toast
global progress toward our preparedness goals,
meditate and play the First Beethoven Symphony....and
we invite all who share our hopes and prayers to
join-in.
This is a special year, for us, because of the
increased level of interest in the NEO programs, by
the U.S. Congress, and because of the new programs
being initiated by our friends in many countries.
Gene was such a proponent of global cooperation, in
NEO impact emergency prevention and preparedness. We
especially remember him and the special spirit of
global teamwork that was evident at the Livermore
Planetary Defense Workshop, in 1995.
We want to see the World annual NEO discovery rate
reach the 4-digit level, soon, and we are encouraging
all of the global NEO search programs to maximize the
effectiveness of their search efforts. We are also
hoping that Pan STARRS can be fully developed and
operational, as soon as possible...so that we can
increase our effectiveness in finding the
sub-kilometer NEO.
It seems highly desirable for such groups as the
International Astronomical Union (IAU) to help to
organize a truly global search program and to find
ways to expedite the needed equipment upgrades. While
there are several contries with NEO telescopes and
teams, we miss seeing their contributions to the NEO
hunt in the MPC reports. This is especially disturbing
in the light of the proud NEO discovery traditions at
the Purple Mountain, Heidelberg, etc.
Perhaps the reasons are political. Perhaps there are
other explanations. We hope it will be possible, soon,
to realize a truly global team effort. We feel every
new NEO discovery is extremely important and we hope
the IAU and others can help to improve things.
Cheers
Andy Smith
International Planetary Protection Alliance (IPPA)
astrosafe22000@yahoo.com
===============
(10) AND FINALLY: WHAT GLOBAL WARMING?
John McLean
Dear Benny,
Is the Earth warming? You would think so from all the media comments in
the last few months and especially last week but it's a claim that's far
from certain.
Data from the UK's CRU shows that temperatures peaked in 1998 (due to a
very strong El Nino according to general consensus), dropped sharply in
1999, dropped further in 2000, climbed in 2001, peaked again in early 2002,
albeit lower than 1998, and since then the monthly global average
temperature anomalies have not exceeded those of the first three months of
2002.
Sure there have been the usual fluctuations but no consistently warm period
has come close to the temperature levels just over 3 years ago.
A graph of those monthly temperature anomalies, at
http://mclean.ch/climate/recent_temps.htm, is open to interpretation as to
whether the trend is flat or decreasing, but there is no way that the trend
over the last 39 months of the graph can be regarded as increasing.
This lack of recent warming and the temperature decreases in 1999 and 2000
raise another important question. If the temperature is not increasing
while the level of carbon dioxide increases annually, then what effect does
atmospheric CO2 really have on temperature? No influence at all or only a
negligible influence? Either way it doesn't matter much because both raise
very serious questions about the merit of the Kyoto Agreement and, for that
matter, any other steps to limit the emission of carbon dioxide.
kind regards
John McLean
------
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