Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[erik]

Beekeepers protest over hive deaths

More money for research demanded as disease, mites and weather wipe out insects

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Wednesday, 5 November 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/beekeepers-protest-over-hive-deaths-992276.html

In top-to-toe white outfits with distinctive veiled hoods, they do not look like the usual kind of protesters to march on Downing Street.

But today Britain's beekeepers will stride down Whitehall to demand government action to halt the alarming decline in honey bee numbers seen over the last year.

Two billion bees – one in three of Britain's honey bee colonies – have been lost over the past 12 months, in the worst losses ever seen in the UK. Yet the causes are unclear, and the apiarists fear there is nothing to prevent a similar devastation this winter – but the Government, they say, is letting it happen.

Hundreds of members of the British Beekeepers' Association (BBKA) from all over the country will deliver a petition to No 10 signed by more than 140,000 members of the public, calling for an immediate increase in research funding – from what the BBKA terms the "paltry" £200,000 currently spent annually on bee health research, to £1.6m annually for the next five years.

The association claims that pollination by bees would be worth £825m to the agricultural economy over the same period, and says they are asking for less than 1 per cent of that. But the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says that it cannot afford it.

"The increased funding we are asking for is a drop in the ocean compared to the billions of pounds the government has found for bank bailouts," said Tim Lovett, the BBKA president. "Bees are probably one of the most economically useful creatures on earth, pollinating a third of all we eat. They provide more than 50 per cent of pollination of wild plants on which birds and mammals depend. We must identify what is killing them, and that means research."

Paul Temple, vice-president of the National Farmers' Union, said honey bees were an underpinning component of the British countryside – "whether it's heather moorland, a hedgerow, an orchard or a field of beans."

He said: "Our bee farmers and beekeepers are the custodians of every single honey bee in our countryside, and they are facing devastating bee health problems. To solve these problems we need comprehensive and co-ordinated research to be undertaken urgently. And one thing is clear, current levels of government funding are nowhere near enough to support such research."

Rowse Honey, the UK's leading honey company, warns that English beekeepers' honey will run out in the supermarkets by Christmas, and has committed £100,000 to support research into bee health at Sussex University.

Other industry groups are expected to help, but the BBKA says this does not relieve the Government of its responsibility to provide research funding.

The cause of the enormous losses of the last year is thought to be a combination of disease, linked to a particularly virulent hive pest, the varroa mite, and the appalling weather of the last two summers, which has also hit other insects hard. But the exact nature of the disease varies between hives, and the beekeepers feel that research to understand the processes by which colonies are lost is urgent and essential.

"Without beekeepers to look after them there would be no honey bees in the UK," Mr Lovett said. "Despite the best efforts of our members, bees are suffering as the varroa mites who weaken colonies and spread viruses are becoming resistant to treatments. This is all on top of the bad weather, especially the wet summers, over which we have no control. There is currently no 'magic bullet' for controlling varroa. We must have more research."

In the UK there are about 44,000 beekeepers who manage about 274,000 hives, which produce 6,000 tonnes of honey a year. The varroa mite reached the UK in 1992 and now infests 95 per cent of hives. Untreated colonies die in three to four years.

The apiarist: 'You expect losses, but nothing like this'

Robin Dartington has kept bees for 45 years and is used to losses in the winter but not on the scale he has experienced over the past year. He has lost nine of his 20 colonies in Hitchin, Hertfordshire (a colony is the swarm of bees in a hive). "You might expect losses of perhaps 10 per cent, but nothing like this," he said. "It's very depressing." The National Bee Unit found his bees had died from a combination of a virus associated with the varroa mite and a stomach disorder. "We need more research into what the diseases are, which are becoming endemic and in what combinations."

[TIOTIT]

For myself, I would love to see a cooling, as the current trend is alarming to say the least. I can only rely on the experts in the field, and they are 99% backing the warming version.

It's hard to know who the experts are these days....


A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
    
Snow in London
A sudden cold snap brought snow to London in October
# Read more from Christopher Booker

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.


The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought

[Michael]

That doesn't give me any cause for reassurance on Global Cooling, as that article was written by Christopher Booker who is under a bit of a cloud himself:

The patron saint of charlatans is again spreading dangerous misinformation

Plus some of the things mentioned I have also seen in Andrew Bolt's article recently, who also is a climate change sceptic and of poor credibility.

But we shall see. This is an event that is marching forward weekly, so such matters will resolve soon.

[erik]

Well, they might argue about the temperatures of the last month or even the last year, but that's merely a folly. One ought to look at the long-term trends. One month might be a bit warmer, a bit cooler, but it has only a minor or negligible effect on the developments of decades or centuries.

Besides, one can look at many more parameters of change. The paper below uses the introduction of fresh water to world seas to measure warming - more rain, melting of ice, etc.

Current warming sharpest climate change in 5,000 years: study
WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (AFP) Nov 07, 2008

http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/081107015509.jyzwrbrq.html

Research on Arctic and North Atlantic ecosystems shows the recent warming trend counts as the most dramatic climate change since the onset of human civilization 5,000 years ago, according to studies published Thursday.

Researchers from Cornell University studied the increased introduction of fresh water from glacial melt, oceanic circulation, and the change in geographic range migration of oceanic plant and animal species.

The team, led by oceanographer Charles Greene, described "major ecosystem reorganization" -- or "regime shift" -- in the North Atlantic, a consequence of global warming on the largest scale in five millennia.

"The rate of warming we are seeing (now) is unprecedented in human history," said Greene, whose research appears in the November 2008 issue of the journal Ecology.

In order to forecast the path of climate change, Greene and colleagues have been reconstructing major episodes of warming and cooling in the Arctic over the past 65 million years.

They have found in the paleoclimate record periods of rapid cooling, with average temperatures plunging by 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees F) within just decades or even years.

But the rise in temperatures over the past five decades is unmatched since the onset of human civilization, Greene said.

The paleoclimate data gives the scientists more insight into the impact of melting Arctic ice sheets and glaciers on the North Atlantic oceanic system.

They have found "extensive" shifts in the geographic range of numerous plant and animal species.

For instance, the massive Arctic fresh-water melt in the past 10 years has helped one species of microscopic algae move from the Pacific ocean to the North Atlantic.

The last time that algae appeared in the North Atlantic was 800,000 years ago, the Cornell research found.

The increase of fresh water can have a huge impact on the ecosystems of the Atlantic continental shelf, for instance extending the growing seasons of phytoplankton and microscopic drifting animals fundamental to the food chain.

"Such climate-driven changes can alter the structure of shelf ecosystems from the bottom of the food chain upwards," according to Greene.

In another example, the collapse in the last century of cod populations in the north Atlantic is partially due to overfishing, but also partly due to Arctic glacial melt adding more fresh and colder water to the ocean, which stifles cod reproduction.

At the same time, the research noted, less cod and colder water benefited shrimp and snow crab populations.

"As climate changes, there are going to be winners and losers, both in terms of biological species and different groups of people," said Greene.

The Cornell studies also focused on the way the introduction of more freshwater in the north Atlantic can disrupt circulation patterns further south.

"When Arctic climate changes, waters in the Arctic can go from storing large quantities of fresh water to exporting that fresh water to the North Atlantic in large pulses, referred to as great salinity anomalies," Greene explains.

By modeling the current changes, the Cornell researchers posited that the highly saline water of the deep North Atlantic will likely not be heavily affected by the "pulses" of fresh water during the 21st century.

"Continued exposure to such freshwater forcing, however, could disrupt global ocean circulation during the next century and lead to very abrupt changes in climate, similar to those that occurred at the onset of the last ice age," the studies said.

"If the Earth's deep ocean circulation were to be shut down, many of the atmospheric, glacial and oceanic processes that have been stable in recent times would change, and the change would likely be abrupt," said Greene.

[erik]

An example of a very telling long-term trend:

Even though August ice extent [in Arctic] was above that of August 2007, the downward trend for August ice loss has now gone from -8.4% per decade to -8.7% per decade.


Monthly temperatures jump up and down, but the long-term trend in ice cover does not lie.

He [Lorien] explains that to live forever means to give up everything else--love, companionship, friendship--since those will come and go. Only races with a much shorter life span can truly appreciate these things and experience them for all they are worth.

We, with our short lifespans cling to momentary things hoping they represent the eternity and that the momentary change or fluctuation is a major change. But it is not.

"You should embrace that remarkable illusion," he [Lorien] tells her. "It may be the greatest gift your race has ever received."

...and a lot of fluff will follow.

[erik]

Meanwhile, above-mentioned Dr Hansen has come up in Open Atmospheric Science Journal with a pretty drastic suggestion: it is likely that the CO2 concentration has already been reached where the catastrophic climate change has become an inevitability. Thus, now we might talk about mitigation of disaster and not averting it.

Here's the abstract of the paper

Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

pp.217-231 (15) Authors: James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, David Beerling, Robert Berner, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Pagani, Maureen Raymo, Dana L. Royer, James C. Zachos

Abstract
     

Paleoclimate data show that climate sensitivity is ∼3°C for doubled CO2, including only fast feedback processes. Equilibrium sensitivity, including slower surface albedo feedbacks, is ∼6°C for doubled CO2 for the range of climate states between glacial conditions and ice-free Antarctica. Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, the planet being nearly ice-free until CO2 fell to 450 ± 100 ppm; barring prompt policy changes, that critical level will be passed, in the opposite direction, within decades. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that. The largest uncertainty in the target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings. An initial 350 ppm CO2 target may be achievable by phasing out coal use except where CO2 is captured and adopting agricultural and forestry practices that sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2 is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

Some graphs from the paper:

[Michael]

Very interesting these recent posts - notice something about Christopher Booker article:

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

I read about the activist's case, and was in admiration of the jury's realisation of the situation - this marks a change when the populace is finally waking up.

What is interesting about how these people work - notice the veiled and not so veiled imputed ridicule of the man who is trying to get the world to wake up to the catastrophe - implying that if he is suspect, then the whole case of global warming is suspect. Even besmirching him by associating him with that far left radical Al Gore, and we all know how he lied about his facts.... etc.

So when we then hear:

Meanwhile, above-mentioned Dr Hansen has come up in Open Atmospheric Science Journal with a pretty drastic suggestion

We immediately think, Oh that's that guy again - now we may have intellectually dismissed the criticisms, but emotionally we retain a sense of devaluation of whatever he is now saying.

Also notice that I and others do the same thing with the sceptics - once I have identified who is an outspoken critic of those who raise warning bells against the establishment, I then devalue all their subsequent comments - who knows, they may now have struck a truth, but the damage is done.

Such is the way of human nature, and we need to watch that very closely, because we are too easily led by emotive words to dismiss things which are in truth of great value. George Carlin uses the same techniques - again just because he uses witty and humorous scorn, does not mean what he says is right.

Always we have to look carefully at what is presented, strip back the emotive coverings, and look with a sober mind at what someone is trying to sell us. Presentation is no guarantee of truth - but unfortunately a life time diet of entertainment on TV has created the conditions for the snake-oil salesman to do with us what they like.

This is the big argument scientists are putting against those new supped up science-entertainment Discovery channels. They don't like their science turned into Hollywood as it decapitates the critical faculty.

We have to be awake, not asleep in the hands of spinners.

[erik]

Yes, independent critical thinking is the key. One must do the effort.

Booker puts forward a simple argument - global warming means that the temperature must rise. Hence, we must be able to detect it, but measurements of single months and years jump around like frogs on a hot pan. Thus, the claim of warming is unsubstantiated. He totally skips the long-term perspective (where these single measurements have much less importance) and other indicators of warming.

Meanwhile Hansen argues his case using CO2 concentration (leading to a gradual average temperature rise) and fast and slow feedback mechanisms. Other chaps add other strong arguments supporting warming and the big picture is so clear as to leave only a concrete timeline and finer aspects of change undetermined.

In sum, Booker's case becomes utterly hollow - it loses its substance like a melting snow.

I'd say paying a continuous interest to the dispute on warming yields threefold interesting information:

1. It shows quite a bit of human nature and the ongoing processes in humanity
2. It might provide an idea of WHEN things will go out of balance
3. It might provide an idea of WHAT and HOW is likely to happen in the vicinity of readers of this thread.

I omit any hope or chance of reversing or avoiding the massive change.

[Jahn]

Meanwhile Hansen argues his case using CO2 concentration (leading to a gradual average temperature rise) and fast and slow feedback mechanisms. Other chaps add other strong arguments supporting warming and the big picture is so clear as to leave only a concrete timeline and finer aspects of change undetermined.

The new measurement is Carbon dioxide equivalent (CDE) and Equivalent carbon dioxide (or CO2e)  used so they can add the pollution of a range of gases that add to the warming as methane for example*. Methane will be released in greater extent from both the tundra and the oceans.

There is a big fixation on "warming" and increased temperatures while I say that in the short term the increase of "extreme weather situations" will create more direct harm and will be a greater problem. Flooding in Europe, Dry periods, dry where it should be rain and rain where it should be dry. Snow in Spain and Greece but green winters in the North, the increase of hurricanes and so on.


*Carbon dioxide equivalency is a quantity that describes, for a given mixture and amount of greenhouse gas, the amount of CO2 that would have the same global warming potential (GWP), when measured over a specified timescale (generally, 100 years). Carbon dioxide equivalency thus reflects the time-integrated radiative forcing, rather than the instantaneous value described by CO2e.

[Jahn]

"If the Earth's deep ocean circulation were to be shut down, many of the atmospheric, glacial and oceanic processes that have been stable in recent times would change, and the change would likely be abrupt," said Greene.

Unfortunately the deep ocean circulation start with the ice in the Arctic. A full cycle takes 5000 years and this cycle include the creation of the Monsun period in India and other repeated weather phenoma that we take for granted.

No ice ---> no streams. no streams, or different streams ---->  more chaos in the weather system.

[erik]

Yes, precisely, chaos and unusual events are the imminent concern as the weather system is shifting toward a new equilibrium.

[Michael]

I'm depressed... it's summer here... or it's supposed to be... it frigging freezing.

Just looked at the SOI - seems to be following exactly the pattern of last summer, which for us means wet and cold.

So much for global warming... I'm going to bed - best thing for a freezing afternoon. 

[erik]

I'm depressed... it's summer here... or it's supposed to be... it frigging freezing.

Just looked at the SOI - seems to be following exactly the pattern of last summer, which for us means wet and cold.

So much for global warming... I'm going to bed - best thing for a freezing afternoon. 

We have a massive snowstorm here - right behind the window. They say nothing ever goes according to our expectations. Have a nice visit to dreamland! 

[Muffin]

I'm depressed... it's summer here... or it's supposed to be... it frigging freezing.

Just looked at the SOI - seems to be following exactly the pattern of last summer, which for us means wet and cold.

So much for global warming... I'm going to bed - best thing for a freezing afternoon. 

The process of global warming affects the globe as a whole. In the begining the dynamics of this process involve the shifting of the seasons - where there are seasons. Then there will be no seasons at all.
As the ice caps melt on the poles the cold water moves down/up cooling down the tropical zones, thanks to the laws of the thermodynamics. This process makes the seasons to shift or change, generally they get messed up.
But don't worry, once there's nothing more to melt, things will get stable - with or without seasons.
The question I ask myself is: will the humanity (and civilization) be still here?

In my place (Romania) I've seen winter becoming like autumn in about 5 years. Every year we had less snow, and the last winter I was there there was no snow at all. So much for global cooling.

[TIOTIT]

Today 23-11-08 they had the heaviest snowfall all season...the season ended some weeks ago
Snowy Mountians  N.S.W.  Australia....that's why it's cold at Michaels...it's almost summer....hang in.

Gale force winds and snow hit NSW

 

November 23, 2008 - 10:28AM
Advertisement

Weather conditions across Australia's south-east appear to be easing after the region was battered over the weekend by gale force winds, flooding and snow.

State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers have been busy in NSW, Victoria and Queensland's south-east helping people after several days of ferocious storms brought down trees on cars, buildings and roads.

A severe weather warning and blizzard conditions in Alpine areas persisted in NSW on Sunday, but a low pressure system was expected to move east late on Sunday.

In NSW, gale force winds were most severe in Sydney's western suburbs with the SES responding to 380 calls for help.

At least 10cm of snow fell around the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, and a small number of roads were closed, including between Bathurst and Oberon.

SES Central West Region Controller, Craig Ronan, said the weather conditions were particularly unseasonable.

"It's very unusual the week before summer to have such weather conditions," Mr Ronan said.

An SES spokesman told AAP there had been no significant damage.

The flood threat has eased in Victoria's south-east and the SES says it is not predicting major flooding.

"We are keeping a watching brief on Gippsland but are only expecting minor to moderate flooding and don't predict major flooding at this stage," SES spokesman Allan Briggs said.

The SES received 387 calls for help in Victoria over the weekend, including 262 in Melbourne, mostly involving fallen trees damaging property.

Catchments received a good soaking with 60mm of rain falling across Melbourne's water storages, Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) senior forecaster Scott Williams said.

Snow fell in Victorian Alpine areas and forced road closures. Falls Creek resort spokesman Ian Talbot told AAP more than 20cm of snow had "blanketed the resort" Sunday morning.

"It was very cold overnight, it got down to minus six degrees celsius and residents said it looked like the middle of winter," he said.

"It's very rare to get enough for road closures at this time of year."

A 12-day adventure race involving an 800km trek over NSW and Victorian high country has been stalled due to the bad weather, with 120 people involved now holed up in the tiny Victorian Alpine town of Tintaldra.

In Queensland, a severe weather warning for the state's south-east corner was cancelled on Saturday evening after the latest storm in a week of wild weather passed.

Three women were hurt in separate accidents - one of whom was in a serious condition after being hit by a tree - as a result of ferocious winds battering the region on Saturday afternoon.