MATTINGLY GLOBAL

How aware are we of the breadth of our contribution to our environment? The rising sea levels (due to thermal expansion and the melting of mountain glaciers) are predicted to add a minimum of 10 additional inches, worldwide, by 2060. Many coastal areas in the U.S. including New York and Miami would be inundated with water and literally disappear. Right now, as we witness the underwater descent of cities like Venice and New Orleans, the melting of the Alaskan and Siberian landscapes, it is pretty real. -may 2003

So now with the knowledge of the effects of global warming, and the scientific realization that over 70% of the world's drinking water is unfit for human consumption, we are dealing with large-scale privatization of this necessary resource, in places that people may or may not be able to afford it. I have been, and continue to research, collect, and work on my own solutions to the clean-water problem, with affordable purification systems.

Yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cited the US Government's declaration that 2006 was the warmest year for the 48 contiguous states since regular temperature records began in 1895. This is the first year that a link between climate trends and human activities has been cited. Officials admitted to the NY Times that they had become accustomed to having any mention of a link omitted. Apparently, finally, there is "no way to account for the trends, be they the melting of Arctic sea ice or the warming of winters, without including an influence from heat-trapping gasses" says Jay Lawrimore, a climatologist at the National Climactic Data Center. Temperatures rose greatly above normal in places as varied as Australia and Scandinavia's Arctic islands, shattering a variety of long-standing records. Overall for the earth, 2006 has been the third hottest year ever recorded. The agency has proposed listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. That is very sad.

For at least 6000,000 years before the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of carbon dioxide rarely nudged beyond 280 parts per million. It is now 382 parts per million and rising steadily!
New studies project that the Arctic Ocean could be mostly open water in summer by 2040! Several decades earlier than previously expected)
National Geographic ran a story on Mangrove trees this month, and their ability to provide homes and nutrients for tons of sea and land life, not to mention their carbon-recycling and water purifying root facilities. It is the idea of some that to re-plant mangrove forests on the edges of estuaries (many have been destroyed to aid in speedy shrimp catching, not to mention sea-level rise and other pollutants) could provide carbon-neutral incentives if this could be somehow worked into countries' economic plans of carbon taxes/buying/selling and trading. Mangrove forests provide natural barriers against harsh weather like tsunamis and hurricanes, as well as provide ecosystems that defend against global warming. In last month's National Geographic, the cover was highlighting the immediate loss of the Amazon Rain Forest by loggers and farmers, and the resulting echo of effects. To date, about 1/5 of the Brazilian Amazon's 1.6m sq miles of natural cover has been stripped.

About 17 months ago, the Ayles Ice Shelf (an area of 41 sq. miles), broke off of Ellesmere Island (500 m. south of the North Pole in the Canadian Arctic.) This was only just discovered from satellite imagery but did register on eaqrthquake monitors 155miles away. An explorer in Greenland also recently discovered geographic change. A new chain of islands from retreating ice sheets. Aparently over the last 5 years of his studies, the ice sheets have retreated a 10km. This is happening much faster than computer modelling has predicted and amazingly enough, Greenland's 630,000 cubic miles of ice isenough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet! A university professor in Quebec City who studies Arctic conditions said, "We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead." (NY Times, Tues Jan. 16 and Saturday, Dec. 30)

August 2006: Desertification and drought leave in their wake severe economic, environmental and socio-political troubles around the world. Every year, fifteen million acres of productive land disappear and, perhaps ironically, millions of dollars in income are lost due to land degradation and declining agricultural yields.

Contrary to popular belief, droughts are not the primary cause of desertification. The main cause of the spread of deserts is long term, poor management of marginal lands. Due to a combination of bad land management and a drought that began in 1968, the desertification of the Sahel region of west Africa led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people and 12 million cattle. The Sahel is the transition zone between the Sahara and the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. Its desertification has created a large expansion of the Sahara. Desertification has been defined as a phenomenon of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and sub-humid dry areas arising from the negative effects of human activities and climate change.

Wired Magazine September 2006: Agricultural demands combined with a recent population boom have drained Arizona's subterranean aquifers, creating underground caverns that slowly work their way to the surface and threaten buildings.

Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond this Terra Firma (NYTimes 8.1.06)

When the dust settles after World War III, or World WarIX, humanity will still want to grow pineapples, rice, coffee and other crops. That is why in June on the island of Svalbard in the Norwegian Arctic, all five Scandinavian prime ministers met to break ground on a $4.8 million "doomsday vault" that will stockpile crop seeds in case of global catastrophe...

Fixing a dripping tap can save an average of 528,000 litres of water in a year - enough to fill half an Olympic swimming pool. In offices, washroom taps can be fitted with sprays that use less water, and urinals equipped with sensors so that they do not flush when no one has been using them. Putting a bag in a toilet cistern will reduce its flush at almost no cost. "Grey water" systems allow companies to take water from washroom sinks or from gutters and use it to flush toilets or water gardens. Porous pavements installed in car parks can catch water that would otherwise run off, and feed it into grey water systems. When a company considers the savings, AstraZeneca found that it could recoup Aus$29,000 ($22,000) a year by reducing water usage at a manufacturing facility in Australia by 15m litres. It is usually a no-brainer.

For much of the las year, the century-old water system that delivers 1.3 billion gallons a day to the city has been clouded by particles of clay, washed into upstate reservoirs by violent storms. To keep the tap water running clear, teh city has been dumping 16 tons of chemicals a day, on average, into the water supply as an emergency measure to meet federal water quality standards. If the city cannot find a permanent solution to the silt, it may not be able to avoid building a huge filtration plant that could cost about $8 billion. Alum, as it is called, is used in most public drinking water systems in the United States to keep water clear because it draws together small particles, causing them to clump up and settle before the water enters the distribution system.

(visit: http://www.harpers.org/GlobalWarming.html for a month-by-month timeline on global warming. Here is a sample beginning in 2000:

Events Related To Global Warming
2000 Week of Aug 1 Atmospheric scientists discovered that some 4,000 tons of a new synthetic greenhouse gas have been released into the atmosphere; the gas, which takes 1,000 years to degrade, may be a by-product of weapons production.»
Week of Sep 5 A bipartisan congressional report concluded that logging on public land contributed to the causes of the wildfires burning across the American West by removing the large trees that tend to resist fire and leaving smaller, more combustible vegetation behind.»
Week of Sep 26 A study found that replanted forests absorb much less carbon dioxide than do natural forests, which complicates plans by countries such as the United States to meet the goals of a global warming treaty by planting trees, rather than by cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions.» Week of Oct 3 British prime minister Tony Blair attended a Labor party conference; “Let's Work Together,” by Canned Heat, was the theme song.»
Week of Nov 21 Representatives of many different countries were attending talks at the Hague on the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, a global warming treaty signed by over 100 countries yet ratified by none.»)

Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of an influential, international network of grassroots groups in 70 countries. Founded in San Francisco in 1969 by David Brower, Friends of the Earth has for decades been at the forefront of high-profile efforts to create a healthier world. In March of 2005, Friends of the Earth finalized a merger with Bluewater Network. Bluewater is a dynamic organization with creative campaigns to combat global warming, air and water pollution and damage to public lands by thrill vehicles such as snowmobiles and jetskis. The merger has added to our capacity and enabled us to broaden the scope of our work in a number of areas.

Floating Atomic Plant for Russia (BBC)
Russia has long used nuclear technology to power submarines Russia is to build the world's first floating nuclear plant, designed to provide power for remote areas. Under a contract signed on Wednesday, the plant will be built at an Arctic site where atomic submarines are made. Work is expected to start next year on two nuclear reactors and the 144m (475ft) platform for them, despite environmentalists' concerns. Nuclear industry leaders said fears about the safety of the $336m (£183m) facility were unfounded. Rosenergoatom chief Sergei Obozov said the plant was the ideal solution for providing power to remote Arctic sites.

He said Russian authorities were looking at 11 other possible sites for such reactors, and that customers from abroad were already interested in the technology. Environmentalists have been highly critical of the proposals. Charles Digges, editor of the Norwegian-based Bellona website, told the Associated Press that floating nuclear plants were "absolutely unsafe - inherently so". "There are risks of the unit itself sinking, there are risks in towing the units to where they need to be," he said.

The entire article can be found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5080732.stm

"The State of Environmental Refugees" can be found at : http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=d7b88b650ae01eecad7f26f5ea762115

Many non-governmental organizations and the United Nations University estimate that the number of environmental refugees will reach between 50 and 200 million by mid-century -- due to factors such as agricultural disruption, deforestation, coastal flooding, shoreline erosion, industrial accidents and pollution. The World Bank estimates that with a 20 inch rise in sea level, two-thirds of Bangladesh (population 140 m) would be underwater. This would mean many deaths and millions of environmental refugees. This article also discussed the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma, in the Canarie Island chain off of the west coast of Africa, is unstable. How quickly it plunges into the sea will determine the size of the tsunami that, in the worst scenario, could rise to 2,000 feet and spread out and travel across the Atlantic to wipe out the eastern coast of the United States. The article touches on the instability of growing populations in China, desertification, etc.

From Time Magazine, "Be Worried, Be Very Worried"
..."The problem -- as scientists suspected but few others appreciated -- is that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. That's just what's happening now. It's at the north and south poles -- where ice cover is crumbling to slush -- that the crisis is being felt the most acutely. Late last year, for example, researchers analyzed data from Canadian and European satellites and found that the Greenland ice sheet is not only melting, but doing so faster and faster, with 53 cubic miles draining away into the sea last year alone, compared to 23 cubic miles in 1996. One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface disappears it changes the relationship of the Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90 percent of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90 percent of the light and heat it receives, meaning that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it. This is what scientists call a feedback loop, and a similar one is also melting the frozen land called permafrost, much of which has been frozen -- since the end of last ice age in fact, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of decaying organic matter, thick with carbon, which itself can transform into CO2. In places like the southern boundary of Alaska the soil is now melting and softening"...(article about ice melt, wild fires, drought and other effects of Global warming, also mentions Kyoto Protocol. The entire article can be found at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/26/coverstory/index.html)

"...Now, almost four years to the day after they were launched, Tom and Jerry have yielded a scarily significant result: Antarctica is losing ice. The rate of loss, according to researchers at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, who analyzed changes in the continent’s gravitational pull, is around thirty-six cubic miles per year. (For comparison’s sake, the city of Los Angeles uses about one-fifth of a cubic mile of water annually.) The finding, which was reported two weeks ago in the online version of Science, is particularly ominous, because climatologists had expected that even as the ice sheet lost mass at its edges, its over-all mass would increase, since rising temperatures would lead to more snowfall over the continent’s midsection. If the loss continues, it will mean that predictions for the rise in the sea level for the coming century are seriously understated. The news from Antarctica follows a string of similarly grim discoveries. In September, satellite measurements showed that the extent of the Arctic ice cap had shrunk to the smallest area ever recorded, prompting a prediction that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer “well before the end of this century.” Around the same time, a group of British scientists reported that soils in England and Wales have been losing carbon at the rate of four million metric tons a year, a loss that is at once a symptom of warming and—as much of that carbon is released into the atmosphere—a likely cause of more. In January, researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies concluded that 2005 had been the hottest year on record, and, in February, a team of scientists from NASA and the University of Kansas announced that the flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland had more than doubled over the past decade. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that the mountain pine beetle, a pest once kept in check by winter cold, has decimated huge swaths of forest in western Canada. Officials with the Canadian Forest Service say that the beetle has crossed the Rockies and they fear that it will soon start eating its way east. “People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about,” one official told the Post. “No. It’s now...."

Elizabeth Kolbert "Chilling" article in the New Yorker. The entire article can be found at: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060320ta_talk_kolbert

For some people, global warming is a hard sell. Temperatures going up by a few degrees doesn't sound all that bad, and even results like drought or increased spread of mosquitos and other pests, while certainly unpleasant, are familiar issues. Mega-problems like whiplash/abrupt climate change, where warming leads to an ice age, can sound more surreal than threatening. But this website might change their minds. It shows something that is obviously warming-related, is already starting to happen (not just a "might happen 50 years down the road" possibility), and is a clear danger to the industrialized world's economies and societies: a seven meter rise in sea levels.
Flood Maps mashes up NASA elevation data and Google Maps, and offers a visualization of the effects of a single meter increase all the way to a 14 meter rise. The default increase of seven meters -- about 23 feet for those who avoid the whole metric thing -- is the amount the world's oceans will rise once Greenland's glacial ice pack melts completely. This melting is already underway, and is happening with startling speed.
[From February:] ... researchers found that [Greenland's] glaciers were traveling faster than anyone had predicted. They also determined that even more northerly glaciers were on the move and that in just 10 years the amount of fresh water lost by all the glaciers had more than doubled from 90 cubic kilometers of ice loss a year to 224 cubic kilometers. "The amount of water Los Angeles uses over one year is about one cubic kilometer," Rignot points out. "Two hundred cubic kilometers is a lot of fresh water."
The map doesn't cover the whole world yet, but does cover most of North America and the Caribbean, as well as most of Western and Central Europe. As expected, a seven meter rise inundates locations like the Netherlands, Louisiana and Florida; perhaps surprisingly, areas like southeast England and inland regions east of San Francisco, while not often thought of as being at risk from rising seas, suffer just as much. Since the site uses Google Maps, you can view the results in both standard map and satellite format -- and seeing the projection of the oceans approaching the doors of (for example) the White House can be sobering.
The amount of sea level rise coming from melting ice sheets today is fairly low: a bit less than a millimeter every year. Another millimeter or more comes from the "thermal expansion" of warmer water. But this amount is very clearly just the pebbles before the avalanche; although it's unlikely that we'd see the full seven meter increase as an abrupt event, as the glaciers melt faster and faster, the oceans will rise more and more. A one meter rise is a distinct possibility within the next couple of decades; seven meters could come far faster than we would expect, or be able to handle.
What makes this all the more troubling is that Greenland isn't the only place that glaciers are melting; the Antarctic glaciers are, too. And there's a helluva lot more glacial ice on Antarctica than on Greenland. If all of the Antarctic ice were to melt off -- an extraordinarily unlikely event, fortunately -- sea levels would go up by 60 meters.
We live in a post-Katrina world. We have graphic evidence of what it looks like to have a city nearly destroyed by the weather. Even people safe in regions distant from the oceans now know what kind of damage losing just one major city can do to a nation; imagine what damage to every major coastal city would do.
If notions of climate refugees, spreading diseases, and higher insurance prices won't make people act, maybe the thought of seven meters will. (From worldchanging.org)

"Changing ocean In the Arctic, glaciers and ice sheets melt, raising sea levels and flooding low-lying shorelines. Shrinking sea ice disrupts wind patterns and sea conditions and destroys habitat for the polar bear, ice seals and seabirds. Alaska's average temperature has increased 4 to 5 degrees in the last 50 years, compared with about 1 degree worldwide in the last century. In winter, it sometimes rains instead of snows. The Portage Glacier, 45 minutes from Anchorage, is losing 20 feet a year. On the Kenai Peninsula, wildfires have destroyed forests weakened by bark beetles that survive the warmer winters, and salmon streams run at temperatures unsafe for spawning. "

An exerpt from: A WARMING WORLD written by Jane Kay, Chronical Environment Writer, January 16, 2006

HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD, DAVE POLLARD'S BLOG ON THE ENVIRONMENT, WRITES ABOUT THE WEARABLE HOME

A Proposed Collaboration: The Wearable Home by Dave Pollard
A 'wearable home' -- a self-contained environment that would allow the 'wearer/resident' to live comfortably 'outdoors' anywhere on Earth. The standard human solution to the problem of inhospitable climate is an extravagant invention called the 'single family home', which contains as many as a dozen different single-purpose unconfigurable 'rooms', must be abandoned in favour of another model when the occupant's lifestyle changes, and consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels to keep the entire structure at a comfortable temperature, even when the occupant is away from it. There are several more economical solutions in widespread use. The most enduring of these is the deer-and-harehide suit of the aboriginal peoples of the Arctic, which allows the hunter-gatherer tribes to travel long distances comfortably, and requires the construction of only a simple, inexpensive and temporary dwelling for the few activities that cannot be carried out comfortably out-of-doors. These natural suits are, for the Ihalmiut, the perfect house. In areas more hospitable to us naked humans (the tropics), the few gatherer-hunter peoples that have not been exterminated by Agricultural Man build only temporary structures and abandon them as their communities migrate across their hunting and gathering range. They lead the most leisurely lives of any humans on the planet, spending most of their lives 'outside' and hoarding nothing. We have all seen the wearable homes devised of necessity by the (mostly) urban homeless. Despite the lack of cultural knowledge of how to construct such portable housing, some of the examples I have seen are quite ingenious. One man I spoke to said it had taken him years to perfect the layers he uses to protect himself from cold, wind, rain and heat, yet allowed the heat from the subway grates he slept on to penetrate on cold winter nights. In that spirit, a number of designers and artists have created wearable homes suitable for homeless or transient life, or for life after the collapse of civilization. Some of these have been serious efforts, others ironic.

The photo above shows a wearable home designed by Mary Mattingly, who has even provided some specifications for it. It seems to me that, whatever you think the future will bring, with all the recent research on 'smart textiles' we now have the technology to design and create a wearable home. And the possibilities if we can do so -- doing away with the need for the single-family dwelling and all its accoutrements (lights, furnaces, air-conditioners, furniture, and the need to 'commute') would almost entirely solve the problems of the End of Oil and Global Warming -- seem too good to pass up.
Would our culture accept this innovation? We have recently invented a set of technologies that have essentially eliminated the need for offices, yet we remain anchored to an obsolete mindset that says everyone has to have their own personal office or cubicle. We are still building new office space, of which 90% is space designed for principal occupancy by one person, at a record pace. Are we just culturally unable to abandon the idea that, even though we can carry our entire 'office' under our arm and 'open' it anywhere, we still need a personal office 'space'? And if so, does this suggest that even if the personal wearable home became a reality, we would still insist on wearing it in a redundant 'family home'? And even though technology promises/threatens the end of privacy, will we still want walls and doors so that government, business, and community snoops can't always see what we're doing?

Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming, Survey Finds
October 30 — A comprehensive four-year study of warming in the Arctic shows that heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks around the world are contributing to profound environmental changes, including sharp retreats of glaciers and sea ice, thawing of permafrost and shifts in the weather, the oceans and the atmosphere. (New York Times)
Tidal Wave Threat 'Over-Hyped'
October 29 — The risk of a landslide in the Canary Islands causing a tidal wave capable of devastating America's east coast is vastly overstated, say marine geologists. (BBC)
Snapping a Hurricane's Strength
October 29 — Researchers say we may be able to weaken or direct hurricanes in the future. (Associated Press)
A Greenhouse Gas Goes Underground
October 28 — By injecting carbon dioxide into an underground oil field, Canadian researchers are not only cutting emissions of the greenhouse gas, they're also boosting oil production. (Christian Science Monitor)

Today, the NYT has acknowledged Global Warming as a factor in the increased presence of hurricances. This is a breakthrough! Now this idea has become accepted by the mainstream, and hopefully serious preventative measures will be considered. Soon, sustainable, environmentally conscious building and reform will be a necessity. Two weeks ago the NY Press ran a similar story outlining these changing weather conditions, their progress and effects, as it relates to Long Island, NY specifically.

In Europe, High-Tech Flood Control, With Nature's Help
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
"On a cold winter night in 1953, the Netherlands suffered a terrifying blow as old dikes and seawalls gave way during a violent storm. Flooding killed nearly 2,000 people and forced the evacuation of 70,000 others. Icy waters turned villages and farm districts into lakes dotted with dead cows. Ultimately, the waters destroyed more than 4,000 buildings. Afterward, the Dutch - realizing that the disaster could have been much worse, since half the country, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, lies below sea level - vowed never again. After all, as Tjalle de Haan, a Dutch public works official, put it in an interview last week, "Here, if something goes wrong, 10 million people can be threatened." So at a cost of some $8 billion over a quarter century, the nation erected a futuristic system of coastal defenses that is admired around the world today as one of the best barriers against the sea's fury - one that could withstand the kind of storm that happens only once in 10,000 years.
The Dutch case is one of many in which low-lying cities and countries with long histories of flooding have turned science, technology and raw determination into ways of forestalling disaster. London has built floodgates on the Thames River. Venice is doing the same on the Adriatic. Japan is erecting superlevees. Even Bangladesh has built concrete shelters on stilts as emergency havens for flood victims.
Experts in the United States say the foreign projects are worth studying for inspiration about how to rebuild New Orleans once the deadly waters of Hurricane Katrina recede into history.
"They have something to teach us," said George Z. Voyiadjis, head of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University. "We should capitalize on them for building the future here."
Innovations are happening in the United States as well. California is experimenting with "smart" levees wired with nervous systems of electronic sensors that sound alarms if a weakening levee threatens to open a breach, giving crews time to make emergency repairs. "It's catching on," said William F. Kane, president of Kane GeoTech Inc., a company in Stockton, Calif., that wires levees and other large structures with failure sensors. "There's a lot of potential for this kind of thing." While scientists hail the power of technology to thwart destructive forces, they note that flood control is a job for nature at least as much as for engineers. Long before anyone built levees and floodgates, barrier islands were serving to block dangerous storm surges. Of course, those islands often fall victim to coastal development.
"You'll never be able to control nature," said Rafael L. Bras, an environmental engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who consults on the Venetian project. "The best way is to understand how nature works and make it work in our favor." In humanity's long struggle against the sea, the Dutch experience in 1953 was a grim milestone. The North Sea flood produced the kind of havoc that became all too familiar on the Gulf Coast last week. When a crippled dike threatened to give way and let floodwaters spill into Rotterdam, a boat captain - like the brave little Dutch boy with the quick finger - steered his vessel into the breach, sinking his ship and saving the city. "We were all called upon to collect clothes and food for the disaster victims," recalled Jelle de Boer, a Dutch high school student at the time who is now an emeritus professor of geology at Wesleyan University. "Cows were swimming around. They'd stand when they could, shivering and dying. It was a terrible mess."
The reaction was intense and manifold. Linking offshore islands with dams, seawalls and other structures, the Dutch erected a kind of forward defensive shield, drastically reducing the amount of vulnerable coastline. Mr. de Haan, director of the water branch of the Road and Hydraulic Engineering Institute of the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, said the project had the effect of shortening the coast by more than 400 miles. For New Orleans, experts say, a similar forward defense would seal off Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf of Mexico. That step would eliminate a major conduit by which hurricanes drive storm surges to the city's edge..."

The Antarctic “Larsen-B” ice shelf that disintegrated in 35 days in 2002. Larsen-B had been around since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Let’s put the size of this ice shelf into perspective: 656 feet thick and 1,254.83 square miles—for 10,000 years. The equivalent of 1,200 square miles is 770,000 acres, which would be the White Mountains National Park in New Hampshire. Read More on Larsen-B at: http://www.sprol.com/index.php?p=233

Storm surge | Sep 15th 2005
From The Economist print edition | Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS at NASA, GSFC

The most damaging types of hurricane are getting more frequent
AMID the handwringing that has followed the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, a persistent question whispered in the background has been whether hurricanes are getting worse. A paper in this week's Science, by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, and his colleagues suggests that they are, but only in one, specific way.
Hurricanes can form only over oceans that have a surface temperature above 26°C. That is well known. What is debatable is what effect, if any, raising the temperature beyond that has. It might increase the number of storms, the length they last, their maximum strength or the proportion that are strong. Or it might have no effect. Since average ocean-surface temperatures have risen by about half a degree since 1970, this is not an idle question, and it has, indeed, been asked in the past. But it has been asked largely of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, because they are fringed by countries that can afford to do the asking. Dr Webster, by contrast, has looked at the whole planet—or, rather, the six ocean basins on its surface that act as hurricane nurseries.He and his team used satellite data to obtain consistent observations from around the world. (This was the reason they were able to go back only as far as 1970; before that, there were not enough observations.) Analysing the sea-surface temperatures in the six basins (the North Atlantic, the West Pacific, the East Pacific, the Southwest Pacific, the North Indian Ocean and the South Indian Ocean), they found statistically significant temperature rises in all but the Southwest Pacific.
Looking at the hurricanes themselves, though, they found no long-term trends in the number of storms per ocean basin or the length a storm lasts, except in the North Atlantic, where both increased. That is unfortunate news for Caribbean countries and the United States, which bear the brunt of those storms. But it suggests that whatever is increasing hurricane incidence it is not—or, at least not solely—to do with ocean warming. If it were, such increases would have shown up in other places where the sea is getting warmer.Nor was there any increase in the maximum windspeed that storms attained anywhere. What there was, however, was a doubling around the world of the proportion of storms in the most destructive categories (4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale usually employed by meteorologists). And, although the exact rise in that proportion varied from basin to basin, all of them saw a significant increase.
What caused that increase is, of course, debatable—and since the second-largest percentage increase was in the Southwest Pacific, where no significant temperature rise was observed, leaping on changes in sea-surface temperature as the sole cause might be premature. But what Dr Webster and his colleagues have shown beyond much doubt is that something rather nasty has been happening. Time, perhaps, to batten down the hatches.

The Observer Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.
An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.
Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.
A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.
One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.
Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.
Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'
Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.
'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.
'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.
Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.
Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he said. 'It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'
Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. 'We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.
'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'
So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.
The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.
Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'
Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

The Discovery of Global Warming, June 2005. This cohesive crossection of text and evidence can be read at: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

Abrupt Climate Change: evidence, mechanisms and implications
A report for the Royal Society
and the Association of British Science Writers
by Mike Holderness

"To get a general understanding of the climate, it is also important to look even further back than the few thousand years covered by varves and few hundred thousand by ice cores.
Dr Hugh Jenkyns, a geologist from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, started by describing the "Palæocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum" (PETM), a warm period some 55 million years ago. Records of this in sedimentary rocks from the Maud Rise near Antarctica show a 5°-6° rise in global average temperature over a few thousand years - which is abrupt change for geologists like Jenkyns.
This rise in temperature went hand in hand with a major disturbance of the "carbon cycle" - the exchange of the element between rocks, water, air and life-forms. The evidence for this is that the sediments from warmer periods have lower levels of the carbon isotope 13C.
His explanation invokes a mechanism for climate change that has only been widely studied in the past few years: sudden releases of methane from the ocean floor. Large amounts of methane are known to be locked up there in methane hydrates, in which each molecule of methane (CH4) is bound up in a "cage" of water molecules. This substance is not stable except at the enormous pressures of the deeps and at low temperatures.
The carbon in the methane hydrates has a much smaller proportion of the rare stable isotope 13C mixed in with the common form 12C than does the carbon now found at the Earth's surface (in which about 1 per cent is 13C). The difference is due to differential removal of the two isotopes by bacteria over millions of years. So the best explanation of the 13C levels in the sediments is the release of methane from hydrates - which would explain the rapid global warming, for methane is a greenhouse gas in its own right, and is oxidised very rapidly to CO2.
Small increases in water temperature - or perhaps earthquakes acting below the seafloor and disrupting the sediments - cause the methane hydrates to break down into gas which bubbles up to the surface to cause global warming, releasing yet more methane and producing rapid climate change (in geologists' terms)."