Author Topic: "Climate Change"  (Read 11699 times)

Offline Editor

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"Climate Change"
« on: February 04, 2007, 10:25:16 AM »
Latest story:  The heat is on

Likely scenarios show much of the state's shoreline and the Meadowlands either submerged or far more vulnerable to flooding. Rivers, such as the Hudson, Passaic and Hackensack, would rise.

Elevation in Hackensack is from 3ft to 120 ft above sea level.  A new report projects a rise in sea levels of between 7 and 23 inches in the 21st century -- and said bigger gains could not be ruled out if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland thaw.  That's a little too close for comfort.



Offline Editor

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2007, 10:15:02 PM »
Latest story:  Think the weather's weird? You're absolutely right

At the local level, researchers from Montclair State University's Passaic River Institute have confirmed the popular belief that flooding is getting more extreme in the Hackensack and Passaic river basins.


Scientists offer grim outlook on New Jersey's climate

By 2100, the state would have no more snow. The ocean would rise 10 to 24 inches, wiping out 127 miles of shoreline -- and with it, 70 percent of the state's $30 billion tourism industry.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2007, 10:22:15 PM by Editor »

Offline Editor

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Re: Climate Change
« Reply #2 on: November 19, 2008, 11:58:34 AM »
From today's Record:

Warming will raise sea levels, recede coast
Monday, November 17, 2008
BY JENNIFER H. CUNNINGHAMSTAFF WRITER, HERALD NEWS
http://www.northjersey.com/environment/Redrawing_NJs_map.html
   
New Jersey's densely populated coastline is in danger of becoming vastly altered because sea levels are rising — triggered by the world's glaciers melting at the fastest rate ever recorded, a leading glaciologist has concluded.

Rising global temperatures, caused in part by greenhouse gas emissions, are precipitating the glacial melt, which will add 3 feet to the world's sea levels by 2100 if remedial action isn't taken now, said Lonnie G. Thompson, a world-renowned expert on glaciers and professor at Ohio State University.

At state and federal levels, officials are working to stem the glacial melt through legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to cut America's greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 using methods including a cap and trade program in which businesses are given a pollution allowance and must buy credits from other businesses to be permitted to discharge more pollutants.

Global warming, or the rise in the world's temperature, has the potential to dramatically alter New Jersey's landscape and environment. Besides the projected sea level rise, global warming is expected to cause more deaths from heat and smog in cities, make the state more susceptible to storm surges and floods, and cause an influx of non-native animals and plants.

By the end of the 21st century, Thompson predicts, the global temperature will rise by 3 degrees Celsius, triggering a glacial melt that will envelop sections of North Jersey, including Edgewater, Hoboken, Jersey City, Liberty State Park, Bayonne, the Meadowlands, Newark, Newark Liberty International Airport, Carteret and Roselle.

Passaic County would not be as seriously affected by the sea level rise, but increased flooding of the Passaic River is likely.

Across the Hudson River in New York City, chunks of both lower and upper Manhattan would disappear underwater, along with portions of eastern Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and Queens, according to Thompson.

The rise in sea levels would make the New Jersey coastline more susceptible to storm surges from floods and hurricanes. During most of the 20th century, sea levels rose by about 2 millimeters, Thompson said.

The last time the world's temperature was 3 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today was 3 million years ago, when sea levels were between 65 and 98 feet higher, Thompson said.

During the last 100 years, the world's temperature rose 0.74 degrees Celsius, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international group of government officials and scientists who are working to understand and mitigate climate change. The 20th century was the warmest in the last millennium, Thompson said.

"What we're really concerned about is where we're projected to be in a business-as-usual model, Thompson said last month at the McCormick Conference on Climate Change at Ohio State University in Columbus. "That would change the geography of our planet as we know it. Where we end up ... depends on the future energy policies of this nation and the world."

Thompson has spent the past 32 years studying glaciers around the world, drilling and analyzing glacial ice cores. He used a computer model to predict how New Jersey's coastline would appear if sea levels rose.

Thompson is not alone in his glacial melt contention. In a report released last year, the IPCC predicted glacial melts caused by rising temperatures were likely contributing to the rise in sea levels. By 2099, the IPCC predicted, sea levels would rise between 7 inches and 23 inches.

On Thursday, the U.N. Environmental Program reported that clouds of soot, chemicals and particles, known as atmospheric brown clouds, had blanketed parts of Asia and Africa and were contributing to the melting of glaciers as well.

Global warming caused Arctic Sea ice to decline by 9 percent every year from 1979 to 2006, and then by another 24 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The glaciers have been melting so rapidly, Thompson said, within the next 30 years, there will be no glaciers left in Montana's Glacier National Park.

"In the big scheme of things," Thompson said, "the Earth is warming and the glaciers are retreating."

In Greenland, glacial retreats are accelerated by summer melts that create lakes in the glaciers, Thompson said. Water seeps down into the glacier's foundation, further destabilizing the glacier.

All of the world's tropical glaciers, found in mountainous countries like Peru, Tibet and Tanzania, are melting, Thompson said.

"Glaciers, especially tropical glaciers, are canaries in the coal mine for our global climate system," he said.

Glaciers are important not only because they store large amounts of the world's fresh water, but also because glacial ice cores record climate changes and preserve ancient plant and animal remains.

"These glaciers provide a history of the past planet," Thompson said. "The history is written in the ice."

Obama has said he is in favor of investing in renewable energy sources and creating a "Global Energy Forum" with the world's largest greenhouse gas producers. The forum would work to solve global energy and environmental issues, according to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

New Jersey has launched its own plan to combat climate change. In 2007, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed the Global Warming Response Act, which mandates a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction below 2006 levels by 2050. Last month, Corzine introduced the state's energy master plan, which calls for the use of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, to account for 30 percent of New Jersey's needs in 12 years.

It sets the goal of reducing energy consumption by 20 percent by 2020 through stringent building codes that promote energy efficiency and possibly charging more for electricity use during peak hours.

The state also is investigating the feasibility of carbon sequestration — storing carbon dioxide underground — as a method to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Last month, at the Rutgers Energy Institute's Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference, university scientists, along with officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection, announced they will assess how well carbon sequestration would work in the Garden State.

"To get to the more aggressive goals of 2050, this [carbon sequestration] needs to be possible," said Karl Muessig, a geologist from the state Geological Survey. "We need to take the carbon dioxide we generate and take it out of the system."

But even once plans to stem greenhouse gas emissions are enacted, the world's glaciers will keep on melting because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for decades after it is released and will continue to affect the world's temperature, the experts say.

"Glaciers [are] our most visible evidence of global warming," Thompson said. "This is a very clear and present danger. It's happening right now."

Reach Jennifer H. Cunningham at 973-569-7162 or cunningham@northjersey.com.

« Last Edit: November 19, 2008, 12:00:54 PM by Editor »

Offline just watching

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2008, 10:18:39 AM »
Let's get real folks. 

The Hackensack River is at sea level, the tides rise and fall every day. People aren't going to sit around and let the Hackensack River and Overpeck Creek rise 3 feet or more.  3 feet would threaten the Amtrack line, Teterboro Airport, and thousands of homes and businesses. Plus storms will cause the water to rise ON TOP OF THAT 3 FEET.

When all that is needed is to DIKE the river between Jersey City and Kearny.  And if the seas rise 30 feet, the dike rises 30 feet.  We'll be like Holland, pumping rainwater and riverwater over the dike.  It doesn't matter how much the dike will cost, it will be built.  That's the future of Bergen County.  Anybody who thinks we'll be flooded out simply doesn't have a grasp on the workings of public policy.

Offline GardenStatePatriot

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2008, 08:02:39 PM »
It never ceases to amaze me how people buy into this global warming hooey. Temperatures haven't warmed in 10 years. They've actually gone down this year believe it or not. All this global warming hysteria is built upon faulty computer modeling.

Face it. The Earth has never been stagnant. It always changes and always will. That's the way God made it.


Offline just watching

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #5 on: December 18, 2008, 09:18:50 AM »
If you have any doubts about global warming, just ask Newt Gingrich.  Nobody doubts his ultra-conservative credentials, and it is well-known that he originally considered global warming to be some sort of "hooey".

Regardless of whether or not we agree with his politics, Newt Gingrich is extremely intelligent.  The difference between you and Gingrich is that he was open-minded enough to take a good hard look at global warming and Al Gore's work.  Gingrich has come out and endorsed the Global Warming Theory.  I suggest you rent the video, "An Inconvenient Truth", and watch it.  Gore talks about the normal variation in the sun's temperature and the earth's temperature, but what has happened over the past 50 years far exceeds any change in the last million years, or something like that. 

What the movie doesn't mention is that some areas of the world have coastlines that are rising or subsiding due to geological forces. Right now, Canada is rising, and the mid-Atlantic Coast of the USA subsiding.  This is in response to the melting of the 2-mile thick continental glacier that was very heavy, and it depressed the bedrock in Canada, pushing it down by hundreds of feet. That forced the Mid-Atlantic coast to rise by dozens of feet. Now that the ice has melted, the land is slowly restoring to "normal" conditions.  Labrador is still rising 2 feet per century, and NJ is still sinking about 6 inches per century. The same thing is happening in Scandanavia, which is still rising like Labrador. Coastline changes are well-documented in Sweden and Finland as the Baltic Sea shrinks.  Scientists say the process is nearly complete and NJ will only sink another 10 feet over the next 2000 years or so. So even if you choose to bury your head in the sand and ignore global warming, the ocean is still rising in NJ due to ANOTHER reason.

God gave us this earth and gave us dominion over all the creatures on it, now let's respect his craftsmanship and let's not destroy his work. And as a student of science, the more I study and learn about evolution, the more I respect the brilliance of the Lord God, for being able to create a system that can perpetuate itself and grow.  Any God can snap his fingers and create a new species, creating a biological system that changes and evolves is much more worthy of respect.  I normally don't post my religious views on line, usually keep them to myself.

Offline prospectgirl

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2008, 06:07:48 AM »
Editor...Thank you for your nicely articulated point of view on climate change. Yay,for you and your opinions! I am pleased to see a student of science who is not afraid to voice his spiritual view as well. Keep your strong voice going; people like me need a little prompting to keep on top of this subject as it does not always feel so immediate. With all the glaring politics of corruption these days and our economy completely tanked, we can barely do the intellectual shuffle it requires to maintain our vigilance to our blessed planet.
Do you have any current data on Florida's threats in this regard... Sometimes I get the feeling that we do not address this subject more readily because it is just too big to get our thoughts around the whole picture and how we can make our own difference.

PS: This site is one of the few truly decent places I have encountered on the web. :) :) :)  Great Job ....

Offline Editor

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2008, 09:11:37 AM »
I think you're confusing me with justwatching. I don't have many opinions when it comes to climate.  I just dress accordingly.

Offline prospectgirl

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2008, 09:38:24 AM »
oops... guess I don't know my way around yet, hmm. Hopefully JustWatching will notice it's meant for him...sorry for the mix-up; thought I hit the correct reply.

Offline just watching

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2008, 11:16:16 AM »
thanks, and Merry Christmas. 

Let's hope the next President will do something about climate change.  I give him a few points for NOT knowing how to "field dress" Dancer and Prancer.

Offline prospectgirl

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Re: "Climate Change"
« Reply #10 on: December 26, 2008, 09:34:16 PM »
   
     Good point....hehehe !  :laugh:

     If he doesn't address climate change, there won't be any moose left for any purpose, or delight...