Researchers study vast carbon residue of ocean life

Published on October 21, 2016

Written by www.spacedaily.com

The oceans hold a vast reservoir – 700 billion tons – of carbon, dissolved in seawater as organic matter, often surviving for thousands of years after being produced by ocean life. Yet, little is known about how it is produced, or how it’s being impacted by the many changes happening in the ocean.

Think of dissolved organic carbon, or DOC, in the ocean as tree leaves and other dead organic matter falling to the forest ground – a portion of this natural carbon sustains life while the remainder remains hidden in the soils, being sequestered for many years. As is true in the forests, this vital, residual carbon reservoir is necessary to sustain life in the ocean, and to sequester vast amounts of carbon in its great depths. graphs

To better understand this important pool of ocean carbon, researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science used data collected over the past 15 years on several international scientific cruises to map the distribution of this material in the Atlantic Ocean. From the analysis, they found that this major basin contributes one third of the global ocean net production of dissolved organic carbon.

“Carbon is involved in all aspects of our life,” said Dennis Hansell, UM Rosenstiel School professor of ocean sciences and coauthor of the study.

“We need to understand the carbon cycle on Earth especially as we add more from the burning of fossil fuels.”

Dissolved organic carbon is the primary food source at the base of the marine food chain. It is produced by phytoplankton during photosynthesis, and it is mostly consumed by microbial life. The remainder that is not consumed by microbes accumulates in the ocean.

The researchers discovered that the production of dissolved organic carbon at the ocean’s surface could be accurately predicted by measuring the amount of nutrients arriving into the euphotic, or sunlit, zone.

The nutrients arrive there mostly by winter mixing and upwelling, and in turn support the growth of ocean plant life. From the arrival of nutrients to the surface ocean, they estimated the resulting plant growth and the production of residue, the DOC, from that growth. From those estimates, they built a map of DOC at the surface of the entire Atlantic Ocean.

“In our work, we found that the production of dissolved organic carbon depends on the quantity of nutrients that reach the euphotic zone from deeper layers,” said Cristina Romera-Castillo, a former postdoctoral researcher at the UM Rosenstiel School and lead author of the study. “In future scenarios, how climate change will affect the nutrient arrival to the surface ocean will determine the inventory of dissolved organic carbon in the ocean.”

This inventory in turn affects the cycling of carbon on Earth, which has important roles in climate.

Research paper: “New nutrients exert fundamental control on dissolved organic carbon accumulation in the surface Atlantic Ocean”

Alarmist Scientists Hide Good News! Planet is Greener!

Published on October 21, 2016

Written by James Delingpole

Alarmist scientists are trying to cover up the good news that rising CO2 levels are making the planet turn greener. And that even includes one of the scientists who made the discovery in the first place.

The discovery was first announced in 2012 in a lecture by Professor Ryanga Myneni of the University of Boston.

Rising CO2 levels are causing the planet to get greener, Myneni revealed. In the last 30 years, he estimated, the planet’s greenery has increased by 14 per cent. About half of this, he calculated, was a direct result of increased carbon dioxide levels, rather than of other factors like warmth, irrigation or fertilisers. And the area covered is vast: as Myneni’s co-author Zaichun Zhu, of Beijing University, puts it, it’s equivalent to adding a green continent twice the size of mainland USA.

“Ice Age within 15 Years!” Say Russian Scientists

Published on October 21, 2016

Written by Sean Martin

Earth is heading towards another ice age as solar magnetic activity is set to drop by up to 60 per cent in the next 15 years.

Experts say that solar activity as low as it currently is has not been seen since the mini-ice age that took place between 1645 and 1715 – a period known as the Maunder Minimum where the entire Thames froze over.

A new model has allowed experts to predict solar activity with more accuracy than ever before and it suggests that magnetic activity will fall by 60 per cent between 2030 and 2040.

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The model looks at the Sun’s ’11-year heartbeat’ – the period it takes for magnetic activity to fluctuate. This cycle was first discovered some 173 years ago.

The Battle for the Truth about Climate Change

Published on October 20, 2016

Written by Anthony Bright-Paul

Anybody who declares that we must fight changes of climate thereby also declares that they are scientifically illiterate. Anyone who declares that we must fight climate change is also linguistically illiterate.

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Now Matt Ridley has done a great service to humanity by showing graphically that the increase of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide has led to a worldwide greening (see graph above).

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Current Solar Cycle Fades: “Weakest in 200 Years … Likely Foretells Global Cooling”

Published on October 19, 2016

Written by Frank Bosse and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt (Translated and edited by P Gosselin)

Also last month the sun was relatively inactive. The observed sunspot number (SSN) was 44.7, which was just 64% of what is the average for the previously observed 23 cycles.

The average cycle has a duration of 11 years. The current cycle number 24 is depicted by the red curve in the following chart:

Figure 1: The current solar cycle 24 is shown in red. The mean of the previous 23 cycles is shown by the blue curve. The black curve depicts solar cycle 5, which had a similar behavior as the current cycle 25.

What stands out is that the last 18 months of activity of the current cycle has been consistently weaker than during the same period of solar cycle 5, which ushered in the Dalton-Minimum in 1795.

So what can we say about the upcoming solar cycle 25, which is expected to begin around 2020? Next month we will take another look at the solar polar field because its strength is a leading indicator for what the sun has in store for us. Up to now everything looks like the situation we saw in the early 19th century.

Dear Science: How did the planets get their names?

Published on October 19, 2016

Written by Rachel Feltman and Sarah Kaplan

Dear Science,

Where did the names of the planets come from, and who gets to christen new ones? Any chance I might one day get to choose the name for something in space?

Here’s what science has to say:

For as long as there have been lights in the night sky, humans have been coming up with names for them. Sumerian astronomers named the sun, moon and five visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) after their great gods. In ancient China, planetary nomenclature was based on things in nature — water, fire, wood. The English names for planets mostly come from the Romans, who borrowed their designations from gods and goddesses: Mercury was named for the messenger god because it appears to move so swiftly across the sky, Jupiter shares a title with the king of the gods because it’s the solar system’s giant, and so on. planets

Arctic crossing planned for British ‘Boaty’ sub

Published on October 18, 2016

Written by Jonathan Amos

The UK’s favourite new yellow submarine, Boaty McBoatface, is in training for a grand challenge.

Scientists plan to send the long-range autonomous vehicle under the sea-ice of the Arctic – from one side of the ocean basin to the other. It is a journey of at least 2,500km – and while nuclear subs might routinely do it, the prospect is a daunting one for a battery-operated research vehicle. The trip could happen in 2018 or 2019.

“It represents one of the last great transects on Earth for an autonomous sub,” said Prof Russell Wynn, from the National Oceanography Centre, Boaty’s UK base.

“Previously, such subs have gone perhaps 150km under the ice and then come back out out again. Boaty will have the endurance to go all the way across the Arctic.”

Such a mission would give scientists rare insight into conditions that hold sway under the ice floes’ more persistent regions.

Dr. Tim Ball: Politicians “ignore evidence, act as green dictators”

Published on October 17, 2016

Written by Dr Tim Ball

The crocodile of human-induced global warming has devoured every politician who appeased it, and that is almost all of them.

As usual, the people pay the price as green agendas, carbon taxes, a multitude of unnecessary regulations, endless lost business and job opportunities amount to approximately $3 trillion to date.

In his October 2010 letter of resignation from the American Physical Society (APS) because it supported global warming without consulting the members, Emeritus Professor of Physics Harold Lewis said in part:

“The global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”

When are any of these so-called leaders going to look at the so-called evidence and understand the deception? Politicians go along with this socialist agenda because they agree with it, or don’t do their homework and want to appear green. Besides, it is easier to make their citizens pay the price.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created and pre-determined to “prove” that human CO2 was causing warming. This false science became the basis of the Kyoto Protocol. It was designed to punish the 23 “developed” nations by making them pay for their “damage.”That money was to go to a fund to pay the “victims,” the “developing” nations. It was a vast socialist transfer of wealth.

Politicians fell into three camps: those who wanted to pay, those who didn’t want to pay and those who wanted to receive the money. The second group were silenced by the eco-bullies while the first and third used the emotional lever of saving the planet to make the second group pay.

Since then, the false science of the IPCC was exposed through emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and two of the major “developing” nations, India and China, became major economic powers.

A majority of US senators recognized the problems when the Kyoto Protocol came before the US Senate for ratification. They knew it would cost jobs and hurt the economy. This was such a strong argument that avid proponents urged caution.

In Kyoto, a leading Democratic member of the observer delegation agreed that the treaty was not acceptable to the Senate in its current form. “What we have here is not ratifiable in the Senate in my judgment,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said. According to aides in Washington, Kerry wanted Clinton to sign the deal but hold off submission of it until follow-on conferences scheduled for Bonn in June and Buenos Aires in November.

The compromise, called the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, simply agreed to delay the vote on the actual treaty. It passed 95-0.

Gore tried to save the deal. He went off to Kyoto at the 11th hour to beg for some kind of fig leaf he could take back to the Senate, but was sent packing with no concession at all.

(The Chinese, I am told by permanent State Department staff who were in the room, were especially blunt, asking Gore: “We don’t understand you Americans. Do you expect us to be poor forever?”)

Politicians claim they listen to the people, but that is increasingly untrue as current elections and referenda indicate. Polls show global warming and climate change are of minimal concern for most people. A UN poll of some 7 million people listed 14 public concerns. Climate change was last (Figure 1).

(Figure 1)

Figure 2 shows the US public priority trends measured by the Pew Center over the last four years. “Dealing with climate change” was second from bottom of the list until they added “Dealing with gun policy” this year.

(Figure 2)

The percentage has increased slightly since 2013 due to active propaganda from Obama, including the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21). There they approved the Green Climate Fund (GCF) designed to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The final Paris agreement was a farce because it is not binding. The same conflicts and limitations that plagued Kyoto were now amplified and better understood. Typical of politicians” they all agreed to the GCF in Paris to appear green, but with very different intentions regarding actions.

Countries are supposed to contribute $100 billion annually by 2020. Friends of the Earth complained in May 2015:

“The US $4 billion represents only 42 per cent of the amount that was committed during the Fund’s initial pledging conference in 2014, while at least 50 percent of the funds, or US $4.7 billion, should have been legally committed in order for the GCF to be effective.”

Good, it is a total waste of money anyway. Countries like Canada, with politicians who exploit the environment, global warming, and promote green agendas give away taxpayers money, while putting their industries, and businesses at competitive disadvantages. Harper gave $300 million, and Trudeau has given $2.65 billion so far.

Any country or region that chooses to restrict CO2 production will suffer economic decline. Ontario is a sad example. Even if Canada reduces production by half, it is completely offset by China’s actions.

In the developing world, China and India give lip service to emission reductions policies but their actions, namely building more coal plants, speak louder than rhetoric. China, for example, issued permits for 155 new coal-fired plants in the first nine months of 2015— one every two days.

It is another of those issues that show we cannot afford most politicians anymore. They all distort reality, ignore the evidence, and act as green dictators. The $3 billion Canadian contribution to the GCF is better spent helping First Nations prepare for the harsher realities of the pending global cooling.

Study: Natural Gas Could Provide $50 Billion in Health Benefits

Published on October 21, 2016

Written by Jack Anderson

A cross-disciplinary team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently released a peer-reviewed study finding significant health and climate benefits as a result of the increased use natural gas for electricity generation.

In fact, the Carnegie Mellon team estimates that continuing to increase natural gas usage could provide as much as $20 to $50 billion in healthcare cost savings:

“The human health benefits of such a switch are substantial: SO₂ emissions are reduced from the baseline (MATS (Mercury and Air Toxics Standard) retrofits by 2016) by more than 90%, and NO_X emissions by more than 60%, reducing total national annual health damages by $20 to $50 billion annually.”

Improving public health should be a priority, because “health effects, if valued at $6 million per statistical life, constitute 94%” of the economic costs of air pollution associated with energy generation in the US, according to the researchers.

As the below chart shows, most of the public health savings would occur in the Ohio River Valley and southeastern US, where there are dense populations of Americans living downwind of higher-emission, non-natural gas power plants.

According to Carnegie Mellon’s data, power plants using natural gas produce less sulfur dioxide(SO₂) and nitrous oxides (NO_x) into the atmosphere when burned. SO₂ can contribute to acid rain and smog, the clouds that obscure metropolitan areas under clouds of pollutants. Sulfur dioxide is also known to be particularly harmful and potentially life-threatening. Nitrous oxide compounds are known to increase risks of respiratory illnesses and can cause acid rain. Natural gas also produces far less particulate matter, which can lead to health problems if inhaled.

That’s not the only good news in the report. The researchers also expect that a widespread transition towards natural gas electricity generation would reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically.

The researchers found that natural gas power plants produce 50-67 percent less CO₂ and noted that natural gas usage has the potential to decrease overall methane (CH₄) emissions, “Assuming 3% fugitive CH₄ emissions, switching… would reduce the power sector’s contribution to warming by 20% in 2040.” As EID has noted many times, study after study has shown that fugitive methane emission from natural gas production are around 1.2 to 1.6 percent – which is well below the 3 percent threshold for natural gas to have significant climate benefits.

Altogether, the potential decreases in greenhouse gases and air pollution make it impossible to deny the benefits of natural gas production. It is the responsible choice from an environmental perspective and offers significant public health benefits for all Americans.

New Study: Human Air Pollution: Up in Asia, Africa; Down Europe, US

Published on October 21, 2016

Written by Zbigniew Klimont, Kaarle Kupiainen et al.

Abstract. This paper presents the first comprehensive assessment of historical (1990–2010) global anthropogenic particulate matter (PM) emissions including consistent and harmonized calculation of mass-based size distribution (PM₁, PM_2.5, PM₁₀) as well as primary carbonaceous aerosols including black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC).

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The estimates were developed with the integrated assessment model GAINS, where source- and region-specific technology characteristics are explicitly included. This assessment includes a number of previously unaccounted or often misallocated emission sources, i.e., kerosene lamps, gas flaring, diesel generators, trash burning; some of them were reported in the past for selected regions or in the context of a particular pollutant or sector but not included as part of a total estimate.

According to Scientists: the World in 2045

Published on October 21, 2016

Written by Paul Szoldra

The world will be a very different place in 2045. Predicting the future is fraught with challenges, but when it comes to technological advances and forward thinking, experts working at the Pentagon’s research agency may be the best people to ask.

Launched in 1958, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is behind some of the biggest innovations in the military — many of which have crossed over to the civilian technology market. These include things like advanced robotics, global-positioning systems, and the internet. tech

So what’s going to happen in 2045?

Climate Conspiracy: “UN blacklisting our journalists!”

Published on October 19, 2016

Written by Ezra Levant

The United Nations has refused to accredit three of our journalists, blacklisting us from covering the upcoming global warming conference in Marrakech, Morocco.

The three banned journalists are full-time professionals: Sheila Gunn Reid, our Alberta bureau chief and best-selling author; and Meaghan MacSween, a producer, formerly with Global News and Sun News Network; and Alex Jones, our cameraman and editor, also formerly of Sun News Network.

These are total pros, with years of journalistic experience amongst them.

Here’s the UN’s one-line excuse: we are “advocacy journalists”, a term they do not define and has not to our knowledge been used by the UN before. They don’t even have the courage to sign their mealy-mouthed rejection letter.

Perhaps the UN means “opinion journalists”. But opinion journalism is a legitimate type of journalism, and comprised a large proportion of the 3,000 journalists who covered last year’s UN global warming conference in France, and will cover this year’s in Morocco.

We’re not being kept out because we have an opinion. We’re being kept out because they think we have the wrong opinion.

They’ve just made up the excuse. Because if we were indeed being blacklisted because we hold a point of view, how can the UN approve journalists who are literally paid propagandists for authoritarian regimes, like China’s Xinhua and CCTV, and even Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Russia’s RT?

Many independent western media have an explicit advocacy orientation too, especially on the subject of global warming, including online outlets like Vice, Huffington Post and Buzzfeed.

The UN even welcomes global warming lobby groups, including “community organizers” posing as journalists. Greenpeace-style blogs, like Canada’s own DeSmog Blog attend in full advocacy mode, as well as other small websites like The Tyee and the Vancouver Observer, both supported by Tides.

And that’s all fine – the United Nations’ own Declaration of Human Rights says “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The UN is breaking its own rules by denying us those same rights. That’s pretty much how they roll over there — after all, it’s an organization where Russia and China have a veto at the security council, and where dictatorships like Saudi Arabia sit on the human rights council. So they’re treating us like they’d treat journalists in Iran or Cuba.

This has happened before. Earlier this year, when Sheila went to a press conference in Edmonton with Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley, she was met by an armed sheriff blocking her from the Alberta Legislature. It was a scandal, and Notley backed down only in the face of national condemnation.

But Notley, although she’s a bully, still has to operate in a democracy. But the UN bureaucrats who have blacklisted us are anonymous. And they don’t have to worry about stuffy things like democratic accountability. The UN has not even replied to our lawyer’s polite requests for an explanation. Three non-partisan journalism NGOs – PEN Canada, The Canadian Association of Journalists and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression – have each written letters to the UN in support of our application. They have been ignored as well.

SIGN THE PETITION NOW

We need your help. Please sign our petition to pressure the UN into reconsidering.

But we’re going to send our journalists to Marrakech no matter what. Even if we have to stand outside and shout questions at the elites as they arrive in their fossil-fuel-burning limousines. If you’re in a position to help defray our travel costs, please click here to chip in. Unlike the state broadcasters the UN prefers, we’re 100% independent.

Thanks for your support. And please post our website address, www.LetUsReport.com as your Facebook status, to help spread the word!

Bjorn Lomborg: Those (non) Disappearing Pacific Islands – ‘actually grown’

Published on October 19, 2016

Written by Bjorn Lomborg/Marc Morano

Once a year or so, journalists from major news outlets travel to the Marshall Islands, a remote chain of volcanic islands and coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean, to report in panicked tones that the island nation is vanishing because of climate change. Their dispatches are often filled with raw emotion and suggest that residents are fleeing atolls swiftly sinking into the sea. Yet new research shows this is not the entire – or even an accurate – picture. island

Read the full story by Lomborg at www.wsj.com

Marc Morano, at Climate Depot, notes:

Hype and exaggeration serve no one. Their peer-reviewed study, published in the September 2015 issue of Anthropocene, revealed that since the middle of the 20th century the total land area of the islands has actually grown.

Yet Another Missing Mars Mission Probe Prompts Conspiracy Theorists

Published on October 19, 2016

Written by Sarah Kaplan

Mars’s “Great Galactic Ghoul” may have claimed another victim: Scientists at the European and Russian space agencies were unable to make contact with their ExoMars Schiaparelli lander in the hours after it was slated to touch down on the Red Planet Wednesday.

The lander would have been the first operable spacecraft from either the European Space Agency or the Russian Federal Space Agency to successfully land on Mars. It is part of the ExoMars astrobiology mission, which also put a satellite into orbit around the Red Planet Wednesday.

How Mathematics Can Get you Locked Up in America

Published on October 18, 2016

Written by Simon Maybin

a prisoner stands in an isolation cell in the Dane County Jail in Madison, Wis.

Criminals in the US can be given computer-generated “risk scores” that may affect their sentences. But are the secret algorithms behind them really making justice fairer?

If you’ve seen the hit Netflix documentary series Making A Murderer, you’ll know the US state of Wisconsin has had its problems delivering fair justice.

Now there’s another Wisconsin case that’s raised questions about how the US justice system works.

In the early hours of Monday 11 February 2013, two shots were fired at a house in La Crosse, a small city in the state.

A witness said the shots came from a car, which police tracked down and chased through the streets of La Crosse until it ended up in a snow bank. The two people inside ran off on foot, but were found and arrested.

18 New Papers Link High Solar Activity to Warm Eras, Low Solar Activity to Cooling Periods

Published on October 17, 2016

Written by Kenneth Richard

“It is generally accepted that the climate warms during periods of strong solar activity (e.g., the Medieval Warm Period) and cools during periods of low solar activity (e.g., the Little Ice Age).” —Lyu et al., 2016

Within the last 1,000 years, global-scale surface temperatures underwent a warm period during Medieval times, centennial-scale cooling during the 14th to 19th centuries, and another warm period since the early 20th century. According to scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature within the last several months (2016), these long-term thermal changes are well correlated with long-term variations in solar activity, namely the Medieval Solar Maximum (Medieval Warm Period), Spörer, Maunder and Dalton Minimums (Little Ice Age), andModern Grand Maximum (20th Century). Scientists Zharkova and colleagues (2015) provide a cogent summary with a user-friendly graphic denoting the solar changes and their correspondence with warming and cooling trends.

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