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Assessment of CO2 Levels Hansen

admin /28 May, 2009

This table shows that several critical systems pass their tipping points somewhere between 300 and 350 ppm CO2 and in the case of North Pole Summer Ice, between 300 and 325 ppm CO2.

Hansen makes reference to the resorting summer Arctic ice the his recent draft paper:

“Stabilization of Arctic sea ice cover requires, to first approximation, restoration of planetary energy balance. Climate models driven by known forcings yield a present planetary energy imbalance of +0.5-1 W/m2 (5), a result supported by observed increasing ocean heat content (48). CO2 amount must be reduced to 325-355 ppm to increase outgoing flux 0.5-1 W/m2, if other forcings are unchanged. A further reduced flux, by ~0.5 W/m2, and thus CO2 ~300-325 ppm, may be needed to restore sea ice to its area of 25 years ago.” (1)

What James Hansen really said to Barack and Michelle

admin /28 May, 2009

What James Hansen really said to Barack and Michelle

By Stephen Keim – posted Wednesday, 4 February 2009

When the climate change whistleblower of more than two decades standing, James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote his letter (PDF 83KB) to the new President and his wife, Michelle, Australian newspapers reported in some detail the criticisms made of Australia’s recently adopted policies to reduce the growth in carbon emissions.

The letter has much of interest in its detail. It is as challenging for positions held by the conservation movement as it is for the fossil fuel industry. It is particularly challenging for any policy maker who has any real interest in doing something effective to restrict changes to the climate which will be devastating for both the natural world and human society.

The letter makes three policy recommendations. The first is that there should be a moratorium and phase out of coal fired power stations that fail to capture and store the carbon dioxide that they produce.

Methane Hydrates

admin /28 May, 2009

Methane Hydrates

Buried deep within the permafrosts of western Siberia, safe from harm, lies something in the order of 70 billion tonnes of methane.

This methane is stored, like other vast reservoirs in the ancient frozen peat bogs, and far under the oceans, in odd structures known as Clathrates. The type of clathrates that store methane, usually known as methane hydrates, consist of molecules of solidified water inside which methane molecules are contained. Due to the high pressures under which they exist – beneath hundreds of metres of frozen peat or oceanic sediment and water – methane hydrates can contain many times more methane than could exist in the same volume of air.

Stimulus went to 16.000 dead people

admin /28 May, 2009

Stimulus went to 16,000 dead people

AAP May 28, 2009, 6:03 am

As many as 16,000 dead people and 27,000 expatriate Australians have received a total of $40 million worth of federal government stimulus payments.

The Australian Tax Office says the cost of the payments made to the dead is likely to exceed $14 million.

The payments of $900 each were made to deceased estates and are unlikely to be spent as part of the government’s $42 billion stimulus package, the Daily Telegraph reports

The office revealed that 15,934 payments have so far been made to deceased estates and that figure could rise sharply with 47,111 deceased estates lodging a tax return for the eligible period.

Cape York row threatens Rudd’s $60m UN bid

admin /28 May, 2009

Cape York row threatens Rudd’s $60m UN bid

By News Online’s Nic MacBean

At stake: a lily grows in the Watson River lagoon on Queensland’s Cape York. (Supplied: Tim O’Reilly)

The Federal Government is pressing ahead with its bid for a seat on the UN Security Council, despite warnings it could be derailed by a row over Indigenous rights and the World Heritage proposal on Cape York.

Professor Ken Wiltshire says the UN bid will be doomed if the Federal and Queensland governments continue to stumble over their handling of Indigenous concerns about the proposed gazettal.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett are entering two very different political challenges which are linked by the common thread of human rights.

Mr Rudd, who has spent a significant period of his first term in office building his foreign policy credentials, is committed to bidding for a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.

In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly )

admin /27 May, 2009

In Hot Pursuit of Fusion (or Folly)

Jacqueline McBride

RAYS OF HOPE The National Ignition Facility in California, to be dedicated this week.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: May 25, 2009

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Here in a dry California valley, outside a small town, a cathedral of light is to be dedicated on Friday. Like the cathedrals of antiquity, it is built on an unrivaled scale with unmatched technology, and it embodies a scientific doctrine that, if confirmed, might lift civilization to new heights.

“Bringing Star Power to Earth” reads a giant banner that was recently unfurled across a building the size of a football stadium.

The $3.5 billion site is known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. For more than half a century, physicists have dreamed of creating tiny stars that would inaugurate an era of bold science and cheap energy, and NIF is meant to kindle that blaze.

In theory, the facility’s 192 lasers — made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers — will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a star, the hydrogen atoms will fuse into helium, releasing bursts of thermonuclear energy.

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