Global Warming Knowledge Test

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Test your knowledge about facts of global warming...

The Global Warming Test

Not really sure about who has sponsored it.

Got 7/10 right myself.

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May explain why Mars is also warming...

Sun, Not Man, Main Cause of Climate Change, Study Says
December 11, 2007 - In a new study on global warming, climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate-change models based on human influence do not match observed warming.

That is contrary to the views held by former Vice President Al Gore, who accepted the Nobel Prize on Monday along with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who thinks that climate change is largely caused by human action.

Gore wants nations to tax carbon dioxide emissions and not build any new coal plants, among other steps. "It is time to make peace with the planet," Gore said in his Nobel speech, as reported by the Associated Press. "We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war."

The new report, which challenges the claims of Gore and the IPCC, was published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society. The report was written by David Douglass at the University of Rochester, John Christy at the University of Alabama, and Benjamin Pearson and S. Fred Singer at the University of Virginia.

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Big Al soundin' the alarm at Bali...
Al Gore stuns audience with climate change speech
Thursday 13th December, 2007 - Former U.S Vice President Al Gore has called upon the UN climate conference in Bali to reach an agreement without, if necessary, his country's support.

In a speech likely to go down in history as an oratorical milestone in the fight against global warming, Mr Gore electrified the UN conference. He exhorted the nearly 11,000 delegates from 187 countries to bypass members of the U.S government delegation who are threatening to derail the negotiations to fight global warming. He said the U.S in particular was the principle reason why negotiations at the conference were proceeding so slowly.

In saying that climate change was already here and was already affecting the current generation, Gore pointed out the population had grown from 2 billion to 6.5 billion in a little over a hundred years and would soon become nine billion, all relying on 'technology so powerful that it overwhelms the earth'. In repeated and strong criticism of the Bush administration, he said the global coalition of scientists that have now proved beyond doubt the seriousness of the climate change challenge.

Drawing repeated applause from his audience, Gore assured the delegates that the U.S would move forward once the next government was in power. Mr Gore said a stronger target for reduction in emission of greenhouse gases should be set and wanted the new treaty to come into force from 2010, not 2012 as the delegates have been planning.

Warning delegates about the price of failure at the conference, Gore said: 'Our children will ask us - what were you thinking? Didn't you hear the warnings? Didn't you see the glaciers and the north polar ice cap melt? Didn't you see the many more droughts and storms and floods? Didn't you see the sea level rise? Didn't you care?

Al Gore stuns audience with climate change speech

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Northeast winters warmer...

Study: Northeast winters warming fast
Sat Jan 12, 2008 - Earlier blooms. Less snow to shovel. Unseasonable warm spells.

Signs that winters in the Northeast are losing their bite have been abundant in recent years and now researchers have nailed down numbers to show just how big the changes have been. A study of weather station data from across the Northeast from 1965 through 2005 found December-March temperatures increased by 2.5 degrees. Snowfall totals dropped by an average of 8.8 inches across the region over the same period, and the number of days with at least 1 inch of snow on the ground decreased by nine days on average.

"Winter is warming greater than any other season," said Elizabeth Burakowski, who analyzed data from dozens of stations for her master's thesis in collaboration with Cameron Wake, a professor at the University of New Hampshire's Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space. Burakowski, who graduated from UNH in December, found that the biggest snowfall decreases were in December and February. Stations in New England showed the strongest decreases in winter snowfall, about 3 inches a decade.

There were wide disparities in snowfall over the eight-state region, with average totals ranging from 13.5 inches at Cape May, N.J., to 137.6 inches at Oswego, N.Y. Some stations on the Great Lakes, where lake-effect storms are common, showed an increase. The reduction in days with at least an inch of snow on the ground was the most pronounced at stations between 42 and 44 degrees latitude — a band that includes most of Massachusetts, a thick slice of upstate New York and southern sections of Vermont and New Hampshire.

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Glaciers in Europe melting faster...

'Glaciers disappearing at record rate'
March 16, 2008 - A THAW of the world's glaciers has accelerated to a new record with some of the biggest losses within Europe, in a worrying sign of climate change, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said today.

"Meltdown in the mountains," UNEP said in a statement, saying that a retreat of glaciers from the Andes to the Arctic should add urgency to UN negotiations on working out a new treaty by the end of 2009 to combat global warming. "Data from close to 30 reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges indicate that between the years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled," it said.

Some of the biggest losses were in Europe -- in the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Nordic region -- according to the UNEP-backed World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. "The latest figures are part of what appears to be an accelerating trend with no apparent end in sight," WGMS director Wilfried Haeberli said. The estimates, based on measuring the thickness of glacier ice, indicated an average loss of about 1.5 metres in 2006, up from just over half a metre in 2005. UNEP said that the thinning was the fastest since monitoring began.

Since 1980, glaciers have thinned by about 11.5 metres in a retreat blamed by the UN Climate Panel mainly on human use of fossil fuels. The thaw could disrupt everything from farming -- millions of people in Asia depend on seasonal melt water from the Himalayas -- and power generation to winter sports. The thaw could also raise world sea levels. UNEP said glaciers were among the clearest indicators of global warming. "There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise," said Achim Steiner, head of UNEP. The WGMS monitors about 100 glaciers in total.

Mr Steiner said that governments had agreed to work out by the end of 2009 a new pact to succeed the UN's Kyoto Protocol, which binds developed nations except the United States to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. "Otherwise, and like the glaciers, our room for manoeuvre and the opportunity to act may simply melt away," he said. A first set of UN negotiations on a new climate treaty will be held in Bangkok from March 31-April 4.

'Glaciers disappearing at record rate' | NEWS.com.au

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Glaciers suffer record shrinkage
Sunday, 16 March 2008, The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, new data says.

The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, data from the United Nations Environment Programme has shown. Average glacial shrinkage has risen from 30 centimetres per year between 1980 and 1999, to 1.5 metres in 2006.

Some of the biggest losses have occurred in the Alps and Pyrenees mountain ranges in Europe. Experts have called for "immediate action" to reverse the trend, which is seen as a key climate change indicator. Estimates for 2006 indicate shrinkage of 1.4 metres of 'water equivalent' compared to half a metre in 2005.

Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary General of the UN and executive director of its environment programme (UNEP), said: "Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year. "There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice.

Litmus test

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Where's the heat?...

The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years.

That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming." In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.

That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.

More The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat : NPR

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Gore to address skeptics on 60 Minutes...

Gore's Message To Climate Change Skeptics
March 27, 2008 - Tells 60 Minutes That Doubting Global Warming Is Man-Made Is Akin To Believing Earth Is Flat

Self-avowed "P.R. agent for the planet" Al Gore says those who still doubt that global warming is caused by man - among them, Vice President **** Cheney - are acting like the fringe groups who think the 1969 moon landing never really happened, or who once believed the world is flat. The former vice president and former presidential candidate talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in an interview to be broadcast this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Confronted by Stahl with the fact some prominent people, including the nation’s vice president, are not convinced that global warming is man-made, Gore responds: "You're talking about **** Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat,” says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl.

Gore’s campaign to make the world more aware of man’s role in global warming won him the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He donated the $750,000 prize money to The Alliance for Climate Protection, the non-profit he started to help him on his quest. He and his wife, Tipper, tell Stahl they not only matched the Nobel money with their own, but they are also donating to the organization the significant profits from his book and Oscar-winning documentary film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." The funds will help The Alliance for Climate Protection execute a new $300 million ad campaign on global warming set to start next week.

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Report: U.S. West warming fastest
March 27, 2008 -- The U.S. West is warming faster than any other region of the country and faster than Earth in general, researchers say.

In an analysis of 50 scientific studies, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel concluded that Western states experienced greater warming than the rest of the world from 2003-07, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

During the five-year period studied, the world was on average 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than its 20th century average, the researchers said. During the same period, 11 Western states were, on average, 1.7 degrees warmer. The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization is a coalition of local governments, businesses and non-profit organizations.

The report, released Thursday, reflects a "growing consensus among scientists who study the West that climate change is no longer an abstraction," said Brad Udall, director of Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado.

Udall told the Times that data suggest the West will warm about 1 1/2 times faster than the global average because it features large, arid areas some distance away from slow-warming oceans.

Source

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EPA Sued Over Inaction on Global Warming...

17 States Sue to Force EPA to Respond to Supreme Court Ruling on Global Warming
April 2, 2008 The agency has yet make a decision on how to regulate greenhouse gases.

A group of state attorneys general is taking the EPA back to court to try to force it to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that rebuked the Bush administration for inaction on global warming. The high court decided a year ago that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take action.

But 17 states and others said in a court filing Wednesday that the EPA has not issued a decision on regulation. Their court filing seeks to compel the EPA to act within 60 days. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said the EPA is failing to deal with the dangers of global warming. An EPA spokesman did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

The plaintiffs in Wednesday's court action include Coakley and attorneys general from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, plus the city of New York, and the mayor and city council of Baltimore.

ABC News: EPA Sued Over Inaction on Global Warming

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'No Sun link' to climate change
Thursday, 3 April 2008 - The idea that the Earth's climate is determined by cosmic rays and the Sun's activity is discredited by UK scientists.

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity. The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature. The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years. Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none. "The IPCC has got it right, so we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions" - Terry Sloan

This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure. Dr Svensmark's idea formed a centrepiece of the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

Wrong path BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | 'No Sun link' to climate change

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Global temperatures dropping...

Global temperatures 'to decrease'
Friday, 4 April 2008 - La Nina caused some of the coldest temperatures in memory in China

Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said. The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases. The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.

While Nasa, the US space agency, cites 2005 as the warmest year, the UK's Hadley Centre lists it as second to 1998. Researchers say the uncertainty in the observed value for any particular year is larger than these small temperature differences. What matters, they say, is the long-term upward trend.

Rises 'stalled'

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How You Can Fight Global Warming...

'Citizen Scientists' Watch for Signs of Climate Change
April 13, 2008 - Special programs allow amateur scientists to contribute to climate studies.

Kite-flying Benjamin Franklin was one. So was President Thomas Jefferson, who did important work in archaeology at an Indian burial ground. British chemist Michael Faraday, who had only a grammar school education but discovered the principles of electromagnetism, is a prime example. So is Jack Horner, the world-renowned discoverer of dinosaur behavior and adviser to "Jurassic Park," who never finished college. All of them are among amateur or "citizen" scientists who made important contributions to their fields without advanced degrees or university appointments.

Science educators today are eager to show people of all ages that they, too, can do the work of scientists. Whether it's counting birds, fish, or stars, or checking in on the lives of frogs or butterflies, ordinary Americans are joining in the excitement and rewards of scientific research. Can people without formal training really do valuable work? "I believe they can," says Sandra Henderson, national coordinator for Project BudBurst (Project BudBurst). This spring, Project BudBurst is inviting anyone across the United States to observe and report when trees, shrubs, flowers, or other plants growing near them bud or put out leaves.

"These observations can be very valuable to scientists," says Dr. Henderson, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "[Professional] scientists can't be everywhere, and we're asking volunteers to be these extra eyes on the landscape." Whether BudBurst volunteers know it or not, they're engaged in phenology, the science of measuring the cyclic events of nature. Over several years, the project will build a database that will, among other things, help professional scientists study how global warming is affecting plant life around the country. In BudBurst's first full year, thousands of people have signed up, Henderson says. They range from retirees to fifth-grade classrooms, 4-H groups to gardening clubs.

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Melting Glacier Drains Lake In Chile
April 11, 2008 - Global Warming To Blame For Bizarre River "Tsunami"

Melting ice in southern Chile caused a glacial lake to swell and then empty suddenly, sending a “tsunami” rolling through a river, a scientist said Thursday. No one was injured in the remote region. Glacier scientist Gino Casassa said the melting of the Colonia glacier, which he blamed on rising world temperatures, filled the Cachet Lake and increased pressure on the ice sheet. The water bored a 5-mile tunnel through the glacier and finally emptied into the Baker River on April 6.

“The remarkable thing is that the mass of water moved against the current of the river,” Casassa told The Associated Press by telephone from the Center for Scientific Studies in the southern city of Valdivia. “It was a real river tsunami.” The lake was nearly full again by late Wednesday, he said. Casassa said temperatures were unusually high during the recent Southern Hemisphere summer.

“This is a phenomenon that occurs periodically during the summer season, caused by the melting of large masses of ice that swell some lakes,” he said. “The basic cause is global warming.” The Tempano lake in Chile's Bernardo O'Higgins National Park abruptly disappeared last year, and has since recovered just some of its former volume.

Melting Glacier Drains Lake In Chile, Global Warming To Blame For Bizarre River "Tsunami" - CBS News