Nathan Myhrvold's Anti Global Warming Scheme

From Associated Content:

Nathan Myhrvold is a former technology officer for Microsoft who has found his own company, Intellectual Ventures, which is involved in a number of technology development programs, including new forms of energy generation.

Nathan Myhrvold also thinks that he has found a cheap and reliable way to solve global warming, which does not involve upending and perhaps destroying the world's economy. The global warming solution proposed by Nathan Myhvold involves Nathan Myhrvold's Anti Global Warming Scheme running a hose up to the stratosphere with balloons and using that hose to pump out enough sulfur particles to dim the sun's heat just enough to counteract the effects of global warming. The estimated cost would be about two hundred and fifty million dollars.

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"Very Likely" The Warmest Decade On Record

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From CBS:

At Copenhagen Climate Summit, U.N. Weather Agency also says 2009 Probably Warmest Year in Some Areas.

(CBS/AP) This decade has very likely been the warmest in the historical record, and 2009 will probably end up as one of the warmest years, the U.N. weather agency announced Tuesday at the second day of the 192-nation climate conference in Copenhagen.

In some areas - parts of Africa, central Asia - this will probably be the warmest year, but overall 2009 "is likely to be about the fifth-warmest year on record," said Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

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Copenhagen Climate Conference: World Risks 4C Rise Even If There Is A Deal

The rise in temperature will mean melting of the glaciers, sea level rise,
mass droughts and flooding Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

The world could suffer catastrophic climate change even if there is a deal at Copenhagen, scientists have warned.

The UN summit in the Danish capital is likely to end in a global deal to limit greenhouse gases in order to control global warming.

But writing in the journal Nature, a group of leading academics, have warned that unless countries meet their most ambitious targets temperature rises will go above 3.6F (2C).

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Is The Once-Stable Part Of Antarctica Starting To Melt?

From Discover Magazine:

Climate change doesn’t affect all places equally, and while Greenland and West Antarctica’s glaciers have started slipping into the sea at an alarming rate, East Antarctica was actually gaining ice. But now that could be changing, as a Nature Geoscience study done with data from NASA’s gravity-measuring satellites called GRACE suggests that the area could now be losing mass.

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Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out

DPA

From Spiegel Online:

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

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Antarctic Temperature Spike Surprises Climate Researchers

Photo: Is Antarctica more sensitive to global warming that we thought? Getty

From Nature:

Polar region was unexpectedly warm between ice ages.

During the warm periods between recent ice ages, temperatures in Antarctica reached substantially higher levels than scientists had previously thought. This conclusion, based on ice-core studies, implies that East Antarctica is more sensitive than it seemed to global warming.

Previous estimates suggested that peak temperatures during the warmest interglacial periods — which occurred at around 125,000, 240,000 and 340,000 years ago — were about three degrees higher than they are today. But a team led by Louise Sime of the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK, concludes that Antarctica was actually around six degrees warmer.

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Glacial Melting May Release Pollutants Into The Environment

Glacier-fed Lake Oberaar in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland.
(Credit: iStockphoto/Roland Zihlmann)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Oct. 21, 2009) — Those pristine-looking Alpine glaciers now melting as global warming sets in may explain the mysterious increase in persistent organic pollutants in sediment from certain lakes since the 1990s, despite decreased use of those compounds in pesticides, electric equipment, paints and other products.

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Whatever Happened To Global Warming? How Freezing Temperatures Are Starting To Shatter Climate Change Theory

Sun or sea? The importance of the ocean's cooling and warming cycles are now under serious consideration as a key factor in global temperatures

From The Daily Mail:

In the freezing foothills of Montana, a distinctly bitter blast of revolution hangs in the air.

And while the residents of the icy city of Missoula can stave off the -10C chill with thermals and fires, there may be no easy remedy for the wintry snap's repercussions.

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Marine Plant Life Holds The Secret To Preventing Global Warming

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds, above, cover less than 1 per cent of the world's seabed, but lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor

From Times Online:

Life in the ocean has the potential to help to prevent global warming, according to a report published today.

Marine plant life sucks 2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, but most of the plankton responsible never reaches the seabed to become a permanent carbon store.

Mangrove forests, salt marshes and seagrass beds are a different matter. Although together they cover less than 1 per cent of the world’s seabed, they lock away well over half of all carbon to be buried in the ocean floor. They are estimated to store 1,650 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year — nearly half of global transport emissions — making them one of the most intense carbon sinks on Earth.

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Biggest News You’ve Never Heard: Earth Isn’t Warming

From Christian Science Monitor:

How do you reconcile the early snow in Minneapolis, ski resorts already opening in Nevada, and that August chill in North Dakota with expert warnings about a warming climate?

You don’t. Why? The Earth isn’t warming right now, is why. It may even be cooling down somewhat.

Five major climate centers around the world agree that average global temperatures have not risen in the past 11 years, according to the BBC. In fact, in eight of those years, global average temperatures dipped a tad.

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What Happened To Global Warming?

From The BBC:

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

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Green Roofs Curb Global Warming, Study Finds

Chicago's City Hall got a green roof in 2001. The project was designed to test various concepts and methods and to test the benefits. Credit: Wikipedia Commons

From Live Science:

Rooftops covered with plants — logically dubbed “green roofs” — could help fight global warming, scientists now suggest.

Green roofs are growing more popular in cities, with the number of green roofs increasing by more than 35 percent from 2007 to 2008 in the United States, representing more than 3.1 million square feet installed last year. In Germany, widely considered the leader in green roofing, some 12 percent of all flat roofs are green, with the German green roof industry growing 10 to 15 percent annually.

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U.S. Media Ignoring About Face by Leading Global Warming Proponent

From News Busters:

Imagine if the Pope suddenly announced that the Catholic Church had been wrong for centuries about prohibiting priests from marrying. Would that be considered big news?

Of course.

And yet something like that has happened in the field of global warming in which a major scientist has announced that the world, in contrast to his previous belief, is actually cooling.

This was the analogy made by columnist Lorne Gunter in the Calgary Herald:

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Warming Arctic 'Halts Migration'

From The BBC:

Milder winters in the Arctic region have led to fewer Pacific brants, a species of sea goose, migrating southwards, say researchers.

A study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) found that as many as 30% of the birds were overwintering in Alaska rather than migrating to Mexico.

Until recently, more than 90% of the species were estimated to head south.

Writing in the journal Arctic, the team said the shift coincides with warming in the North Pacific and Bering Sea.

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Pause In Arctic's Melting Trend

Photo: Walrus have been seen on Alaska's north coast in unusual numbers

From The BBC:

This summer's melt of Arctic sea ice has not been as profound as in the last two years, scientists said as the ice began its annual Autumn recovery.

At its smallest extent this summer, on 12 September, the ice covered 5.10 million sq km (1.97 million sq miles).

This was larger than the minima seen in the last two years, and leaves 2007's record low of 4.1 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles) intact.

But scientists note the long-term trend is still downwards.

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The Climate's Warm Future Is Now in the Arctic

CARIBOU CRISIS: Thanks to shifting seasons as a result of climate change, fewer caribou calves are surviving. Courtesy of Eric Post

From Scientific America:

A new survey reveals just how far and how fast global warming is altering the Arctic.

When the summer sea ice goes, the Arctic will lose the ivory gull, Pacific walrus, ringed seal, hooded seal, narwhal and polar bear—all animals that rely on the ice for foraging, reproduction or as refuge from predators. And the sea ice is going, faster and faster: In the past 30 years, minimum sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean has declined by 45,000 square kilometers annually*—an area twice the size of New Jersey is lost each year.

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Global Warming Could Forestall Ice Age

Researchers use a floating platform to take sediment cores from Sunday Lake in southwestern Alaska. Darrell Kaufman/Northern Arizona University

From The New York Times:

The human-driven buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere appears to have ended a millenniums-long slide toward cooler summer temperatures in the Arctic, the authors of a new study report.

Scientists familiar with the work, to be published Friday in the journal Science, said it provides fresh evidence that human activity is not only warming the globe, particularly the Arctic, but could even fend off what had been presumed to be an inevitable descent into a new ice age over the next several dozen millenniums.

The reversal of the slow cooling trend in the Arctic, recorded in samples of layered lakebed mud, glacial ice and tree rings from Alaska to Siberia, has been swift and pronounced, the team writes.

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More Climate Change News

Arctic reverses trend, is warmest in two millennia -- AP
Arctic now warmest in 2000 years, researchers say -- Reuters
Human Activity Blamed in Reversal of Cooling in Arctic -- Washington Post
Next Ice Age Delayed by Global Warming, Study Says -- National Geographic
Arctic Temperatures Are Warmest in 2,000 Years -- Live Science
Recent Arctic warming follows centuries of natural cooling -- CBC
Arctic ice reveals last decade was hottest in 2,000 years -- Daily Mail

In Hot Water: World Sets Ocean Temperature Record

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – Steve Kramer spent an hour and a half swimming in the ocean Sunday — in Maine. The water temperature was 72 degrees — more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City's water temp hit 88 degrees this week, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.

Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he's ever swam so long in Maine's coastal waters. "Usually, you're in five minutes and you're out," he said.

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Drop In World Temperatures Fuels Global Warming Debate

From McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON — Has Earth's fever broken?

Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.

That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.

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Antarctic Meltdown: Glacier Larger Than Scotland Shrinking FOUR Times Faster Than Last Decade

In decline: The Pine Island Glacier drains an enormous volume of ice from

the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the sea

From The Daily Mail:

An Antarctic glacier twice the size of Scotland is melting much faster than scientists had bargained for.

The Pine Island Glacier in west Antarctica is losing ice four times quicker than a decade ago, researchers warned today.
If the thinning continues to accelerate at this speed, the main section of the glacier will be gone within the next 100 years - six times faster than was previously estimated.

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