, - University of Southhampton (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is more on the rising ocean temperature trend, this time establishing the connection between ice volume and polar temperature.
A new study has revealed a rapid response between global temperature and ice volume/sea-level, which could lead to sea-levels rising by over one metre.
During the last few million years, global ice-volume variability has been one of the main feedback mechanisms in climate change, because of the strong reflective properties of large ice sheets. Ice volume changes in ancient times can be reconstructed from sea-level records. However, detailed assessment of the role of ice volume in climate change is hindered by inadequacies in sea-level records and/or their timescales.
Now, for the first time, scientists are able to accurately date continuous sea-level records, to allow detailed comparisons of the ice-volume variability with independently dated ice-core records from Antarctica and Greenland.
Previous studies of the timing of past ice-volume changes relied on the ‘Red Sea relative sea-level (RSL) record’ for reconstruction of highly resolved and continuous records of sea-level variability over the past 500,000 years. The drawback of the RSL method, however, is that it did not have independent age control. This inhibited detailed comparison with other well-dated climate parameters, such as temperature or CO2 records from ice cores.
An international team of scientists, led by Eelco Rohling, Professor of Ocean and Climate Change at the […]
No Comments
MICHAEL DRUCKER, - Independent View
Stephan: I very strongly support this Act. It is achievable and it meets my standard of being compassionate and life affirming. Here are three links to petitions you should sign
http://anticorruptionact.org/
http://letsfreecongress.org/
http://represent.us/
Get involved with this, this is a game changer.
The Citizen United v FEC decision created many different attempts to reverse it. Here is another attempt that will start to work its way to Congress.
The American Anti-Corruption Act was crafted by former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter in consultation with strategists, democracy reform leaders, and constitutional attorneys from across the political spectrum.
The act could transform how elections are financed, how lobbyists influence politics, and how political money is disclosed. It’s a proposal that would reshape the rules of American politics, and hopefully restore ordinary Americans as the most important stakeholders instead of major donors. The Act enjoys support from progressives and conservatives alike.
The act would:
1. Stop politicians from taking bribes
Prohibit members of Congress from soliciting and receiving contributions from any industry or entity they regulate, including those industries’ lobbyists. Prohibit all fundraising during Congressional working hours. Members of Congress who sit on powerful committees get extraordinary amounts of money from special interests regulated by those committees.
Politicians routinely host fundraisers, and invite lobbyists to contribute to their campaigns. The result is a Congress made up of politicians dependent on those special interests to raise the money necessary to win reelection. Politicians are forced to create laws that are favorable […]
No Comments
PETER MELCHETT, Policy Director of the Soil Association - Politics.co.uk
Stephan: While America embraces GM foods, Europe is moving in the other direction. Even when, as in the U.K., the government is pro GM, the customers are not, and won't buy it. Here is a very good assessment of what is going on in Europe.
The call to relax the rules on GM crops from Sir Mark Walport, government chief scientist, comes as no surprise. A strong belief in GM seems to have become a basic qualification for the chief scientist job in recent years.
The problem for successive pro-GM UK governments, starting with Tony Blair’s evangelical support for GM, is that consumers and the market, not politicians or their advisors, have decided what actually happens. So despite Blair’s strong support for GM, in 1999 supermarkets took GM ingredients out of 70% of UK food in response to their customers’ wishes, and have kept it out of all UK food ever since.
A recent survey shows more than 80% of customers are either unsure or negative in their attitude to the use of GM technology in food – and that will determine the future of GM food – not the chief scientist’s opinion. Indeed, many scientists would argue that recent research results tend to suggest that the public are right to be sceptical, both in terms of risks to human health, and increasing problems for farmers growing GM crops.
The use of GM in animal feed has, however, continued in the UK, with the exception of […]
No Comments
PAUL KRUGMAN, Nobel Laureate - Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Trickledown austerity economics, so beloved by the Right has now been definitively shown to be bogus, if national wellness is the goal. And with its fall the entire Republican economic policy is shown to be provably false. This doesn't happen very often in such a public and irrefutable way. The question will be whether the Republicans will now abandon their positions in the face of these new facts. Paul Krugman's essay spells them out.
Economic debates rarely end with a T.K.O. But the great policy debate of recent years between Keynesians, who advocate sustaining and, indeed, increasing government spending in a depression, and austerians, who demand immediate spending cuts, comes close - at least in the world of ideas. At this point, the austerian position has imploded; not only have its predictions about the real world failed completely, but the academic research invoked to support that position has turned out to be riddled with errors, omissions and dubious statistics.
Yet two big questions remain. First, how did austerity doctrine become so influential in the first place? Second, will policy change at all now that crucial austerian claims have become fodder for late-night comics?
On the first question: the dominance of austerians in influential circles should disturb anyone who likes to believe that policy is based on, or even strongly influenced by, actual evidence. After all, the two main studies providing the alleged intellectual justification for austerity - Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna on ‘expansionary austerity
No Comments
Saturday, April 27th, 2013
Stephan: The effects of climate change just continue to pile up, while we do nothing. These changes, as you can see in this report, produce major effects on the entire ecosystem. We are quite literally travellers on a space ship who are slowly tearing apart the systems upon which their very existence depends.
Sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem during 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years, according to the latest Ecosystem Advisory issued by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). These high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are the latest in a trend of above average temperature seen during the spring and summer seasons, and part of a pattern of elevated temperatures occurring in the Northwest Atlantic, but not seen elsewhere in the ocean basin over the past century.
The advisory reports on conditions in the second half of 2012.
Sea surface temperature for the Northeast Shelf Ecosystem reached a record high of 14 degrees Celsius (57.2°F) in 2012, exceeding the previous record high in 1951. Average SST has typically been lower than 12.4 C (54.3 F) over the past three decades.
Sea surface temperature in the region is based on both contemporary satellite remote-sensing data and long-term ship-board measurements, with historical SST conditions based on ship-board measurements dating back to 1854. The temperature increase in 2012 was the highest jump in temperature seen in the time series and one of only five times temperature has changed by more than 1 C (1.8 F).
The Northeast Shelf’s warm water thermal habitat was […]
No Comments
