Titanic

Iceberg four times the size of Manhattan works its way into the Arctic Ocean shipping lane. So who cares? Well, just about every oil rig in the Arctic Ocean.

Large enough to threaten Canada's offshore platforms in the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Wohlleben said iceberg control companies can redirect smaller icebergs, by towing them or spraying them with water cannons.

"I don't think they could do with an iceberg that large," she said. "They would have to physically move the rig."

Fun stuff, huh?

Just cut it in half ...

Halving carbon dioxide emissions by half by 2050 could stabilize global warming.

To contain global warming, and its risks and consequences, warming compared to pre-industrial times (pre 1900) should not exceed two degrees Celsius. Although, according to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is no specific temperature threshold for dangerous climate changes, and the negative effects are gradually increasing, over one hundred countries have adopted this “2°C target”. Scientists have used a new probability model to calculate how much CO2 our atmosphere tolerates under these target specifications. This and another study, recently published in Nature, produced similar results: From 2000 to 2050, a maximum of 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 may be emitted into the atmosphere. Roughly speaking, today, around one third of this wad has already been shot.

One third of this wad has already been shot? WTF kind of reporting is this?

Ok, now what?

According to this CNN article, we've finally come to the consensus that global warming is real.

Human-induced global warming is real, according to a recent U.S. survey based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists.

The study was produced by the University of Illinois and according to the article asked two major quesitons.

Two questions were key: Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?

About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

A little late in the game if you ask me. We needed to be working on solutions years ago. It's also interesting to take note of who were the biggest doubters of global warming. Petroleum geologists and *drum roll* meteorologists.

Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement.

Heh. Meteorologists can't even get the short term weather correct, what makes anyone think they're reliable in the long term?

So ... now what? This really is an issue that needs to be addressed NOW. Enough with these questionnaires, and onto some solid, workable solutions.

For my part, I work on greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural waste, so attempting to understand the microbial involvement (which is rather large) and how we can curb it, will hopefully be my contribution.

First Casualty of Global Warming?

Rare breed of possum may be extinct due to global warming.

Experts fear climate change is to blame for the disappearance of the highly vulnerable strain thanks to a temperature rise of up to 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

How the animal kingdom is ...

... reacting to global warming. And before people get their panties in a wad I'm not saying, anything either way (in this blog entry at least), about whether it's man-made or not. It's just how some species have been observed behaving differently than they have in the past.

Penguins in Peril: A rapid population decline among penguins because, in addition to a warming planet, they face the triple whammy of oil pollution, depletion of fisheries and aggressive coastline development.

"Penguins are among those species that show us that we are making fundamental changes to our world," said Dee Boersma, a University of Washington biology professor who has studied the flightless birds for more than 25 years. "The fate of all species is to go extinct, but there are some species that go extinct before their time and we are facing that possibility with some penguins."

Aerosols: Friend or Foe?

Cleaner skies equals rise in temperatures.

Since 1980, average air temperatures in Europe have risen 1 °C: much more than expected from greenhouse-gas warming alone.

Why?

"The decrease in aerosols probably accounts for at least half of the warming over Europe in the last 30 years," says Rolf Philipona, a co-author of the study at MeteoSwiss, Switzerland's national weather service.

The latest climate models are built on the assumption that aerosols have their biggest influence by seeding natural clouds, which reflect sunlight. However, the team found that radiation dropped only slightly on cloudy days, suggesting that the main impact of aerosols is to block sunlight directly.