Earth's natural defences against climate change 'beginning to fail'

[PaulaFarrell]

Source: Independent (UK)

The earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback," new research reveals today.

Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide - the Southern Ocean around Antarctica - a new study has found.

As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilising the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it.

The news may give added urgency to the meeting in three weeks' time between the G8 group of rich nations and the leading developing countries led by China, at Heiligendamm in Germany, when an attempt will be made to put together the framework of a new world climate treaty to succeed the current Kyoto protocol.



Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2556466.ece

[november3rd]

1. Think About It

How did we ever assume that burning fossil fuels on the scale we have been burning them for the length of time we have been burning them wouldn't incinerate us and everything else, too? It's only reasonable to assume that in a closed ecosystem, equilibrium will be unbalanced by the injection of new conditions into the system.

[tanyev]

2. Soon George will be able to declare Mission Accomplished.

From the top of a melting iceberg.

[tex-wyo-dem]

3. K & R (n/t)

[Pharaoh]

4. Fire The Grid!

What we can do to help, and I will post a new thread on this, it might seem a bit new age , but read the brief story, it is compelling.....

www.firethegrid.com

[glitch]

5. I don't call it Climate Change anymore. I call it Climate Collapse.

Climate Change just doesn't do the expected extinction levels, some we are already seeing, justice.

[Pharaoh]

6. Yes Climate collapse is more accurate

I have called it a major eco-system collapse for some time, and it is causing a domino effect on other parts of the system.

[Bigmack]

7. It's a Hoax! Haven't you listened to...

rightwingnut radio at all! :sarcasm:

I catch myself half-hoping Warming will come sooner than expected so that Rush the Gasbag Junkie will have to eat his words.

I used to show edited clips from James Burke's "After the Warming" to my high school senior students in the early 1990's thru retirement in 1998. Burke took the perspective of the year 2050, looking back to the 1990's for actions that might have mitigated warming. I even found a critique of "After the Warming" in "Energy Advocate" http://www.energyadvocate.com/burkonly.htm for the kids to look at.

Granted, my kids were from an upper-middle class district, but they were very interested in Warming, and did some research. Most of them concluded Warming is real.

[StarryNite]

9. How can some people be so silly

as to believe in global warming. The changes are all perfectly normal. It's the way god planned it. God so loved man that He gave him this entire planet to screw up.


:sarcasm: :banghead:

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Some of The Wingie Dingies I've Argued With Say

Some of the right wingie-dingies I've argued with say that the evidence for global warming has been manipulated by Government (Always a capital "G") to bring about more taxes, regulation and (GASP!) socialism. What's incredible is that the fool lives in Florida--one of the places with the most to lose if climate changes and sea levels rise.


The more I look at right-wingnuts and their attitude toward global climate change, the more I'm reminded in a not-so-flattering way about those Lakota who bought into the mythos of the Ghost Dance, that if they only danced hard enough and prayed hard enough, they'd have bullet-proof shirts (This was at least seventy five years before Kevlar), the White Man would disappear, and the buffalo would return to their ancient numbers. My impression is that the wingie-dingies believe that if the "libruls" would only shut up and go away and if there were daily Bah-bul readings in class and mandatory school prayer, pollution would clear itself up, coastal fishing stocks would recoup the numbers they had back in 1776, and everybody could drive their SUVs and be happy forever.

[alfredo]

8. K&R