PHOTO OF THE TUVALU ISLANDS (DESTINATED TO DISAPPEAR IF THE NATIONS WILL NOT REDUCE THE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS)

sabato 5 giugno 2010

A REPLY THAT YOU CAN NOT READ ON TIMES ONLINE

The Times Online published an article with the title “Rebel scientists force Royal Society to accept climate change scepticism”. Sir Alan Rudge is one of the leaders of the rebellion who gathered signatures on a petition sent to Lord Rees, the society president. The society has been accused by 43 (a very small number respect to the 1300 society Fellows) of its Fellows of refusing to accept different views on climate change. Sir Rudge, an electrical engineer, is a society Fellow and currently is a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic organisation.
Let discuss about this issue with an open mind. The Sir Rudge remarks are methodological. He said “.. there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements.”. Indeed, the science is always open to accept demonstrations and evidences that the current theories are wrong: Popper called that “the falsification of the science”. Nevertheless, no scientists would negate the Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity because the atomic clock measurements in the space have some measurement errors and therefore, in the future, the theory can be proven wrong. The position of Sir Rudge is equivalent to negate the Theory of Special Relativity because “there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements”. That position is a scientific non-sense. However, this discussion can not be restricted to the science philosophy, since the climate changes affect the life and the economy of entire populations while the regulation of the greenhouse gas (in particular CO2) emissions can affect the profits of some big corporations. Therefore, I would like to know who provides funds to the he Global Warming Policy Foundation, the foundation where Sir Rudge is an advisor. USA associations negating climate changes were discovered, by the Union of Concerned Scientists, to get funds from oil corporations, that are large emitters of CO2 (see here ). The conflict of interests, in that case, was evident.
IPCC, 33 Academies and more than 20 Professional Associations stated that the climate changes are due to the greenhouse emissions from human activities. There is a large scientific consensus on that issue. What does scientific consensus mean? The true experts of climate science totally agree on that (see [1] and [2]). The evidence of global warming and related effects are unequivocal. For example:
1. the global temperature is increasing ( see here)
2. the sea ice is decreasing (see here)
3. The glaciers are disappearing (see here)
4. The sea level is increasing(see here ), and entire islands are at risk to disappear in the future

All the evidences are based on measurements, not opinions. It would be nice to know the scientific point of view of the people signed that request, as Dr. Ward correctly pointed out. Otherwise, the entire story would be quite bizarre.
I posted, few days ago, a comment to the original article of Times Online,with the same contents of this post. They have not published it.


[1] Oreskes, N., 2004, Beyond the ivory tower: The scientific consensus on climate
change, Science, December.
[2] Doran P, Kendall Zimmermann M, Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, EOS, Volume 90 Number 3, 20 January 2009

lunedì 26 aprile 2010

THE ITALIAN GROUP OF THE CLIMATE SUMMIT

Stuart Scott, the executive director of the Climate Summit, requested to me to be the National Coordinator for Italy of The Climate Summit. Of course, I accepted and I promptly created a group on facebook. The group is grown and, after one week, has 60 people. If you have some italian friend that is interested to the environmental problems, please, tell him to come here.

sabato 10 aprile 2010

LET'S PARTICIPATE TO THE ON-LINE CLIMATE SUMMIT

An important event will occur on Friday ,April 16: the first on-line climate summit where will be possible to participate interactively from home!!! Rajendra Pachaur, Chair of the IPCC, the organisation received the Nobel Price for the Peace, will be there. Let's participate all of us!! To know more, go here

domenica 24 gennaio 2010

CLIMATE CHANGE - PART 1: THE ALBEDO

This is the first of posts dedicated to describe the main factors driving the warming and climate changes of the Earth. I wull start with the most intuitive of all: the albedo. The Earth and its atmosphere intercept the solar electromagnetic radiation (this radiation “transports” heat and the visible light is only a part of it) and reflect a fraction, called albedo, in the outer space. The Earth becomes colder if the albedo increases, since the quantity of absorbed radiation decreases. Viceversa, the Earth become warming if the albedo decreases: indeed, the absorbed solar radiation increases. In summary: the Earth become cooler if the albedo increases while the Earth become warmer if the albedo decreases. Let’s analyse some natural causes and after let see how the man actions can change the albedo, with consequences on the terrestial temperature and clime.
The snow reflects almost all the solar radiation. Therefore, when the snow melt the albedo decreases and, as a consequence, the temperature increases (remember that when the albedo decreases the temperature increases). The increase of temperature causes the melting of other snow, with further temperature increases. This phenomenon continues until termodynamic equilibrium is reached, but the consequence is an overall increase of the temperature and a further glacier melting. On the contrary, the clouds reflect the solar radiation, contributing to globally increase the albed and to cool the Earth. The aerosols (the particles in the atmposhere caused by natural events, like the volcan eruptions and the sandstorms, or by the man caused pollution) reflect the solar radation, increasing the albedo, also if the reflective power changes as function of it composition.
The antropogenic (i.e. due to the mankind) activities of disforest and agricolture can decrease the albed and, therefore, increase the global temperature. For instance, the trees of the tropical forests are cut and replaced by more black soil for cultivation purposes. In this case, the absorbed solar radiation increases (the darkest colors absorb it while the white reflect the solar radiation) and the temperature increases. The bad management and disforest of lands can contribute to the terrestrial temperature increases. Some satellite images show the city areas with dark building colour are hotter than city areas with gardes and trees, as for the dark soil of the forest. Therefore, the urbanistic policy and the architectural choices can influence the Earth warming. In the next post, I will discuss of this topic: the Urban Islands of Heat.