Tuesday 7 April 2015

ak in the news and how the heck

So Ive been nibbling away at a story on Syun Akasofu and his well-received efforts to get people to chill over climate change. His public presentation is remarkably simple. He basically claims that climate modelers have figured out the relative effect of greenhouse gases by dividing the observed temperature change by the known increase in gases -- that a certain jump in ppm of CO2 has led to an increase of about 1 degree in 100 years. He argues they ignore what Earth was doing without the greenhouse gases, and concludes most of the warming came from those natural causes, based on simply extending the trajectory of natural warming leading into the industrial age.
Naturally, it made me wonder how modelers know how much a certain increase in CO2 will increase the temperature. The Christian Science Monitor had a story recently that at least gives an overview. One thing they dont mention is that the details of the warming also suggest anthropogenic causes rather than natural ones (thats my understanding, anyway). For example, its warming faster in the winter than the summer, and faster at night than during the day.
The Anchorage Daily News had stories on Anchorages efforts to go green, and Alyeska (the ski resort, not the pipeline company) buying green tags for its tram. (Theres mention of offsetting 100 kw hours with wind power for 2 bucks, which would mean 2 cents a kw hour difference in price between coal or gas and wind -- sounds fishy to me, unless wind is getting cheap. I guess its not from Alaska, but thats OK, its global warming.)
Doug OHarra describes how the lack of sea ice proved a boon for the owner of the Red Dog Mine by Kotzebue, which has to ship all its ore during the ice-free season.
And Alaska makes the grade when it comes to beautiful pics of species reportedly threatened by climate change, joining Australia and Bangladesh. Alaska, where new species are still being discovered...
Oh, and theres this story from the Washington Post, which also features Alaska. Reading it is a bit like opening a full closet and having all kinds of stuff fall out. The story is part of a bigger series.
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