More Data Confirms Climate Change

“Climate change” is a phrase that’s increasingly being used along with the phrase “global warming” because the concept of climate includes a lot more than just temperature. Climate is also measured according to other meteorological factors such as moisture and wind, as well as the way that life adapts to deal with these factors. Biologists talk about climates according to the plants and animals that live in a particular place as much as they talk about the underlying factors in the weather and terrain that make those life forms suited to the location.

So, among the data that scientists are using to measure climate change is information about the changing ranges of plants and animals. This week, yet more data of this sort has been made available, and it supports the hypothesis that significant changes in climate are taking place.

One article published in by the National Academy of Sciences reports that 48 out of 53 surveyed bird species in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the Western United States have undergone marked shifts in range over the last century, indicating changes in the distribution of climatological conditions to which those birds are suited. The birds that did not undergo a shift in range were those with a generalist strategy for survival, better able than other species to adapt to change. The research was conducted in coordination with California Audubon.

Another new study, conducted by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, describes shifts of fish populations along the northeastern coast of the United States, away from ranges that have been typical since historical records began. The researchers conclude that these shifts have coincided with fundamental changes in marine ecosystems in the area.

Climate change is happening, and the animals have been adapting to it for some time now. Isn’t it time that human beings joined them?

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Global warming affects beer, eggs, corn, pork

Australia No. 1 Polluter in the World

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Cause of Global Warming: From Mining Coal to Raising Cattle

Global warming affects beer, eggs, corn, pork

Rafa has pointed out that Nude Socialist as well as lots of other media have reported that global warming makes beer suck: some Czech researchers think that the concentration of (bitter) alpha acids in hops was recently dropping by a whopping 0.06 percent per year (...) which they attribute to global warming (...).



That's a true catastrophe (...) which finally proves that we are all doomed. Click the sentence below to read more.

While the existence of such a paper sounds pretty impossible, the main author's name is actually Dr Martin Possible (Martin Možný) which seems to be a real although not excessively likable person in the Hydrometeorological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences: publication record.

The Czech climatologists have finally joined the Western world! ;-) The Reference Frame is always ahead of the rest. So let me show you our research that shows the impact of global warming on eggs, corn, and pork. Can you see the difference? That should finally settle all the questions if the pirates and swimming suits failed to do so. ;-)

Shift/click the pictures below to zoom in.







Well, while the reports about the "research" of Dr Martin Possible appears in the media of all nations (including Poland and Hungary), it hasn't yet appeared in the Czech media. Thankfully, the Czech media stopped writing about the global warming idiocy in the early 1990s because they have understood that no one was interested in this crap.

Approximately 11% of the Czechs think that global warming is a man-made problem that the mankind should wrestle with but I think that most of these 11% wouldn't care about 0.06% of alpha acids in the Saaz hops. What seems to be much more important is that the new South African owner of Pilsner Urquell, SABMiller, has reduced the time given to Gambrinus brewing (I think that domestically, this brand named after a king of Flanders and a patron of beer is still the most successful Czech beer) by 85% almost overnight.

Some people think that Gambrinus is now worse than it used to be. But frankly speaking, I can't tell. However, I am not big enough a Pilsner patriot to prefer our beer over different brands. And in fact, whenever I am just slightly pushed, yeast beers and/or black beers are given a priority over the Pilsner lager.

source:
http://motls.blogspot.com/

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Why It Is Important To Know The Main Cause Of Global Warming

Australia No. 1 Polluter in the World

Captain kRudd excitedly took the accolades for agreeing to sign the Kyoto Protocol and while the lyrics of his song ‘its better die on your feet than live on your knees’ played in the background, the environmental stalwart Peter Garrett grinned like the fool he takes the Australian public for.

We were No 1 in Rugby Union, Rugby League and Cricket; however its unlikely most Australians want to be No 1 as the biggest polluters in the world, but thanks to corporate government, that’s where we are and all the bullshit spin the government puts of clean coal and geo-sequestration and throws billions of $ on insulation etc, this is but a drop in the bucket as to the hundreds of billions of $ successive governments have handed to coal, gas and oil companies; aka ‘the green mafia’.

America, once the pin-up boy of per capita worst carbon dioxide polluters in the world had China running a close second, but in a Steven Bradbury, we Australians have taken the world’s worst highest accolade.

As the Australian government is not refuting this report complied by a British company (Maplecroft) and based U.S. Energy Department data, it must be so.

The report calculated that Australia’s per capita output of carbon dioxide is about 18.66 metric tons a year which is four percent higher than the United States.

That means that yearly, we Australians pump 392,000,000 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into our skies every year; while China remains the world’s biggest overall greenhouse gas polluter (with a population of some 1.2 billion people) followed closely by the United States (with just over 300 million people), being No 1 with a population of just over 21 million people, we have to ask ourselves, is this right ?

Of course global warming sceptics claim that burning all the coal, gas and oil has nothing to do with global warming, and Australian politicians claim ‘good management’ makes Australia strong, but why don’t we have energy efficient housing as mandatory, rather than retro-fitting houses; why do companies that manufacture highly polluting building materials continue to pollute and not have to upgrade ?

In Australia, we receive from the Sun over 100,000 times the energy we use daily, yet we hold the title as the worst per capita emitter of carbon dioxide, because rather than solar power, we have a heavy reliance on coal energy, which puts the money into a few corporations rather than spreading the load. The claim is about 80 % percent of the country’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power stations, but this doesn’t mean the rest is solar or wind power; much it comes from hydro electricity and even burning off native forests to generate energy and mockingly, these companies market that energy as ‘green’ and ‘renewable’ but if it were renewable, they would be burning forest plantations rather than old growth forests.

Canberra has committed to cutting greenhouse gas pollution by up to 25 percent by 2020 compared to 2000 levels, but has no real or workable plans to achieve this; political grandstanding and spin-doctoring are all any of the parties are good at.

I’m currently researching and writing a story about how poor planning by the federal government has resulted in the Insulation Industry Pulls Wool Over Our Eyes.

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Recent Post:

The Maldives Will Disappear In 10 Years

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Why Cutting Carbon Emissions is not Enough

Why It Is Important To Know The Main Cause Of Global Warming

When it comes to protecting our planet, there is no subject that is more important then that of the main cause of global warming. Although there is still a lot of work and research to be done in the science community it is important to know that a lot of people feel that the main cause of global warming is people. What we, the human race that depends on the planet, are doing to the planet is truly upsetting. Our actions and the chemicals that we use on a daily basis is said to be a big factor in everything warming up.Unlike a natural cause of global warming, we are able to control ourselves in enough of a way that could potentially protect our planet from being hurt any further. The main cause of global warming is certainly something that we should all be ashamed of and therefore doing as much as possible to make sure that this is not the case for the future generations. We have to educate ourselves and then educate our children so that the situation does not continue to get worse over time.

Teaching Our Young People

By taking a few extra moments out of your week you could truly impact the way your child understands the main cause of global warming. If you start asking questions you may be surprised to find that they may not even truly understand what global warming even means. As shocking as that may be it is time to start looking towards the future and make sure that our young people know as much as possible in order to make the right decisions as they age in order to protect our planet, to protect their futures and the futures of their children.

If your school is not activity talking about global warming then that may be something that you would want to discuss with the teacher or the principal. There is no reason why there could not be small lessons every once in a while in order to truly teach the children about the main cause of global warming. In the end, even if just a few children are really reached with the message about the major problems with global warming then it was all worth it. Take your time and dedicated yourself to making sure that our young people know what they need to know in order to help the situation.

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Methane in the Arctic

Why Cutting Carbon Emissions is not Enough

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General
and UN Environment Program Executive Director.

Twenty years ago, governments adopted the Montreal Protocol, a treaty to protect the Earth’s ozone layer from emissions of destructive chemicals. Few could have foreseen how far-reaching that decision would prove to be.

The Protocol explicitly aimed at phasing-out substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – found in products such as refrigerators, foams, and hairsprays – in order to repair the thin gassy-shield that filters out the sun’s harmful, ultra-violet rays. By 2010, close to 100 ozone-depleting substances, including CFCs, will have been phased-out globally.

Without the decisions taken 20 years ago, atmospheric levels of ozone-depleting substances would have increased ten-fold by 2050. This could have led to up to 20 million additional cases of skin cancer and 130 million more cases of eye cataracts, not to speak of damage to human immune systems, wildlife, and agriculture.

But this is only part of the story that we celebrate on the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer (September 16). Over the past two years, it has been established that the Montreal Protocol has also spared humanity a significant level of climate change, because the gases that it prohibits also contribute to global warming.

Indeed, a study in 2007 calculated the climate mitigation benefits of the ozone treaty as totalling the equivalent of 135 billion tons of CO ₂ since 1990, or a delay in global warming of 7-12 years.

So the lessons learned from the Montreal Protocol may have wider significance. Scientists now estimate that somewhere close to 50% of climate change is being caused by gases and pollutants other than CO _2, including nitrogen compounds, low-level ozone formed by pollution, and black carbon. Of course, a degree of scientific uncertainty about some of these pollutants’ precise contribution to warming remains. But they certainly play a significant role.

Meanwhile, many of these gases need to be curbed because of their wider environmental impact on public health, agriculture, and the planet’s multi-trillion dollar ecosystems, including forests.

Consider black carbon, a component of the soot emissions from diesel engines and the inefficient burning of biomass cooking stoves that is linked to 1.6 million to 1.8 million premature deaths annually as a result of indoor exposure and 800,000 as a result of outdoor exposure. Black carbon, which absorbs heat from the sun, also accounts for anywhere from 10% to more than 45% of the contribution to global warming, and is also linked to accelerated losses of glaciers in Asia, because the soot deposits darken, ice making it more vulnerable to melting.

One study estimates that 26% of black carbon emissions are from stoves for heating and cooking, with more than 40% of this amount from wood burning, roughly 20% from coal, 19% from crop residues, and 10% from dung.

Some companies have developed stoves that use passive air flows, better insulation, and 60% less wood to reduce black carbon emissions by around 70%. Mass introduction of such stoves could deliver multiple green-economy benefits.

While CO ₂ can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, other pollutants, including black carbon and ozone, remain for relatively periods – days, weeks, months, or years – so that reducing or ending emissions promises almost immediate climate benefits.

The international community’s over-arching concern must be to seal a serious and significant deal at the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December to curtail C0 ₂ emissions and assist vulnerable countries to adapt. If the world also is to deploy all available means to combat climate change, emissions of all substances that contribute to it must be scientifically evaluated and urgently addressed.

Achim Steiner is UN Under-Secretary General and UN Environment Program Executive Director.

The above commentary was published as part of an exclusive series of commentaries called " From Kyoto to Copenhagen ", published by Project Syndicate, with cooperation from the Danish government.

Is global warming a cyclical event?

While most agree that global warming is occurring, they do not agree on the root cause. Some say global warming is caused by man, mainly by CO2 emissions, while others say it is part of a larger picture of cyclical global warming and cooling events that have occurred throughout history. Unfortunately, the debate is mostly one-sided, with man-made global warming proponents getting most of the media coverage, and the cyclical global warming proponents ostracized and denigrated as false scientists.

A new salvo was launched recently against the man-made global warming side, with the publication of an article by Danish professor Henrik Svensmark, entitled “While the Sun Sleeps”. As the title alludes, Mr. Svensmark believes the sun shows reduced magnetic activity and is about to go into a period of hibernation, which means a period of global cooling will likely begin soon. The full translation of the article from Danish to English is available on Anthony Watts’ blog, and I encourage you to read it. Here’s a quote:

“When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. High solar activity means fewer clouds and and a warmer world. Low solar activity and poorer shielding against cosmic rays result in increased cloud cover and hence a cooling. As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then.

That also explains why most climate scientists try to ignore this possibility. It does not favour their idea that the 20th century temperature rise was mainly due to human emissions of CO2. If the Sun provoked a significant part of warming in the 20th Century, then the contribution by CO2 must necessarily be smaller.”

As for me, I’m still on the fence about this, but I’m leaning toward what Svensmark says. It makes more sense to me. While there’s little doubt that the Earth has been warming for the past few decades, that weather patterns are screwed up, and that pollution and emissions are running rampant and must be reduced drastically or eliminated where possible, I’m still not sure we’re behind the global warming phenomenon.

What tilts the balance of my opinion further away from man-made global warming is the face being used for the campaign — that of Al Gore. Try as I might, I can’t stomach the guy. When I think about his claim to inventing the internets, and his electricity-chugging lifestyle (which goes in stark contrast to what he’s saying when he speaks publicly), and his face, which just isn’t the face of a man that should be trusted — I’m sorry, I just have to look for more proof before I believe what he’s got to say. I’m also still in shock that the man got a Nobel Prize for the stuff he talks about — after all, he’s little more than a pusher of carbon credits, which are dangerously close to a green, global Ponzi scheme in my book.

Who knows, I might be wrong about Al Gore — he may be genuine for all I know — and in that case, I hope the agenda he and his supporters are pushing goes through, but right now, I believe global warming is cyclical, and only time will tell for sure who’s right.

More importantly, I believe global pollution must be addressed regardless of who’s right and wrong on global warming. Our environment is on the verge of collapse due to all the crap we’ve been pouring into it since the 1800s. Pollution is a real threat to our survival, as countless studies have shown. Let’s do something about that, right away.

Global warming 'a useless theory describing a nonexistent phenomenon'

For decades, the supporters of CO₂ driven global warming have discounted changes in solar irradiance as far too small to cause significant climate change. Though the Sun's output varies by less than a tenth of a percent in magnitude during its 11-year sunspot cycle, that small variation produces changes in sea surface temperatures two or three times as large as it should. A new study in Science demonstrates how two previously known mechanisms acting together amplify the Sun's impact in an unsuspected way. Not surprisingly, the new discovery is getting a cool reception from the CO₂ climate change clique.

Scientists have long suspected that changes in solar output may have triggered the Little Ice Age that gripped Europe several centuries ago, as well as droughts that brought down Chinese dynasties. Now, in a report in the August 28 issue of the journal Science entitled “Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing,” Gerald A. Meehl et al. have demonstrated a possible mechanism that could explain how seemingly small changes in solar output can have a big impact on Earth's climate. The researchers claim that two different parts of the atmosphere act in concert to amplify the effects of even minuscule solar fluctuations.

Solar irradiance variation during 11-year cycles.

Global sea surface temperature (SST) has been observed to vary by about 0.1°C over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. This should require a change in solar irradiance by more than 0.5 W m^–2, but the globally averaged amplitude change from solar maximum to solar minimum is only about 0.2 W m^–2. There has long been a question regarding how this small solar signal could be amplified to produce a measurable response. In fact, the lack of a plausible mechanism has been used to discount the Sun's effect on climate by those who support carbon dioxide as the primary driver of global warming.
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Davao gets P20.5 M vs global warming

DAVAO CITY – Davao Region is set to receive some P20.5 million as funding for the protection of natural resources as the region’s contribution in the fight against global warming brought about by climate change.

It was learned that this funding will come from the Countryside Development Assistance Fund (CDAF) of Rep. Anton Lagdameo (Davao del Norte) and Rep. Mark Douglas Cagas (1st District, Davao del Sur).

Lagdameo allotted P5.5 million, while Cagas made a commitment of some P15 million.

Part of the fund will be used for the rehabilitation of forests, mangroves and watersheds in the 2nd District of Davao del Norte.

This amount will develop some 100 hectares of agro-forestry project of premium fruit trees as well as rubber and forest trees in Sto. Tomas, Davao del Norte.

It will also cover the maintenance of another 100 hectares of forest, rubber and fruit tree plantations established in 2008 in the area and the maintenance of the 30-hectare Pilot Project on Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR).

Two hectares of mangrove plantation will likewise be established in the municipality of Carmen. Some upland and coastal families are expected to directly benefit from the projects.

On the other hand, the Cagas’ fund, though still have to be released, will bolster the development and rehabilitation activities of the Mt. Apo Natural Park.

Included in the rehabilitation effort is the reforestation of Mt. Apo to increase its forest cover and thereby increasing its ability to sequester carbon dioxide which is one of the greenhouse gas effects that causes global warming.

The rehabilitation and development efforts for Mt. Apo will ensure sustainable supply of domestic, industrial and potable water needs within Magpet, Kidapawan City, and Makilala in North Cotabato; Bansalan, Sta. Cruz, Digos City, in Davao del Sur; and Davao City.

IPY Follow-Up Requires Year-Round Research On Arctic, Global Warming

Arctic and Antarctic research teams pulled back to warmer climates when the International Polar Year wrapped last March. But the call has gone out for a return to the poles for a more focused investigation into the effects of global warming. Leading the charge back to the Canadian Arctic is David Hik, a University of Alberta biology professor and a lead researcher with IPY.

"IPY gave us a great snapshot of the state of the planet's polar regions," said Hik. "But in the Arctic we made many observations that need a more thorough look, especially in the very early spring and the dead of winter."

Hik says university calendars dictate when most northern research can be done. The only time professors and graduate students have for distant fieldwork is spring and summer

"We have to be there as the snow begins to melt and we have to be there in the dark of winter to witness and document the effects of reduced snow cover," said Hik.

Hik says having researcher's boots on the ground throughout the year in the Arctic could focus intense research into areas touched upon during IPY. Those observations of the effects of a shorter winter and reduced snow cover on Arctic ecosystems include:

* Encroachment by the southern tree line and shrubs on Arctic tundra used by caribou.

* Arctic plants that are growing earlier in the spring and are past their energy yielding prime before calving caribou cows and other animals can use them.

* Reduced snow cover and its insulating qualities, which impacts hibernating species.

To follow through with observations made during IPY, Hik is helping organize a follow up conference of Arctic and Antarctic research teams for next June in Norway. Hik is co author of a paper summarizing recent IPY findings and the call for more focused research. It will be published in Science on Sept. 11.

Five elephants will trek 250 km in Thailand to urge US President Obama to take action against global warming

A caravan of five elephants has began a 250-km trek in a public-awareness campaign over global warming, which is expected to be discussed at a world summit in Copenhagen in December.

Executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia Von Hernandez said the Chang(e) Caravan has been organised especially to arouse US President Barack Obama to take concrete action to tackle global warming. He was speaking yesterday at the opening ceremony of an elephant-nursing centre in Nakhon Ratchasima to flag off the caravan.

Forests, animals in danger

The rain forests in Southeast Asia and its inhabitants the wild elephants are one of the areas and animals most at risk of global warming. They and around 20 per cent of other animals are endangered because of the phenomenon and man-made problems, he said.

The Chang(e) Caravan project is aimed particularly at urging Obama to bring up the issue of a worsening global-warming at the Copenhagen summit. "He is expected to take a leadership role over the issue and act on it seriously," Hernandez added.

Alongkot Chukaew, the manager of the caravan, said all five domesticated elephants were well trained - they can associate closely with humans and crowds.

14-day walk

The 250-km route, which will be covered in 14 days, will snake past Khao Yai National Park and along the Bang Pakong River basin through Saraburi, Nakhon Nayok, Prachin Buri and Chachoeng-sao. The finish line is in Samut Prakan province.

There are 15 rest points along the route. All elephants will walk no more than 10 km each day, and will be transported in specially designed trucks in crowded areas or communities, he said.

Water, food and medical care will be sufficiently provided at each rest point.

The elephants will participate in various "non-abusive" activites in selected communities along the route to raise awareness among local residents on global warming, he added.

Elephants are a crucial indicitor signifying the health - and wealth - of our ecological system. "Successful prevention to protect wild elephants means successfull prevenion of the entire ecological system, which humans are a part of," Alongkot pointed out.

There are now 2,000 wild and 3,000 domesticated elephants in Thailand.

A Skeptical Take on Global Warming

By Matt Rogers, Washington Post

This Capital Weather Gang blog entry is written with considerable trepidation given the politically-charged atmosphere surrounding human-induced global warming.

I am a meteorologist with a life-long weather fascination. As I'm sure you know, meteorology is an inexact science due to the large number of variables involved in predicting and understanding the weather. I frequently say that weather forecasting is a humbling endeavor, and I have learned to respect its challenges. From this perspective, you might be able to better understand why I wince when hearing pronouncements such as "the science is settled", "the debate is over", or even the "the temperature in the 2050s is projected to be..." I realize that forecasting climate and weather are different, but both involve a large number of moving parts.

There are numerous reasons why I question the consensus view on human-induced climate change covered extensively on this blog by Andrew Freedman. But for this entry, I scaled them down to ten:

(10) Hurricanes: One of the strongest value propositions presented for fighting global warming is to slow tropical cyclone intensity increases. Katrina was cited as a prime example. But the storm only made landfall as a category three (five being strongest) and affected a city built below sea level. Stronger storms have hit North America before, but the Katrina route and the weak levees made this situation much worse. I follow global hurricane activity closely and earlier this summer, we reached a record low. Florida State has a site that tracks global hurricane activity here. Since the 1990s, this activity has been decreasing, which goes against what we were told to expect on a warming planet.

(9) Ice Caps: In 2007, the Northern Hemisphere reached a record low in ice coverage and the Northwest Passage was opened. At that point, we were told melting was occurring faster than expected, and we needed to accelerate our efforts. What you were not told was that the data that triggered this record is only available back to the late 1970s. Prior to that, we did not have the satellite technology to measure areal ice extent. We know the Northwest Passage had been open before. In Antarctica, we had been told that a cooling of the continent was consistent with global climate models until a recent study announced the opposite was true. The lack of information and the inconsistencies do not offer confidence.

(8) El Niño: This feature in the Tropical Pacific Ocean occurs when water temperatures are abnormally warm. Some climate change researchers predicted that global warming would create more and stronger El Niño events like the powerhouse of 1997-98. Indeed in 2006, esteemed climate scientist James Hansen, predicted this. But we are now about to complete an entire decade without a strong El Niño event (three occurred in the 1980s-1990s). So the more recent 2007 IPCC report backtracked from Hansen's prediction, noting that there were too many uncertainties to understand how El Niño will behave with climate change. Recent research speaks to how important El Niño is to climate. In the past two decades, these warm El Niño and opposite cold La Niña events have accentuated the global temperature peaks and valleys highlighting the importance of natural variability and the limitations of the science.

(7) Climate Models: To be blunt, the computer models that policy-makers are using to make key decisions failed to collectively inform us of the flat global land-sea temperatures seen in the 2000s (see more on this in item 5 below). The UN IPCC did offer fair warning of model inadequacies in their 2007 assessment. They mentioned a number of challenges, which is wholly reasonable since countless factors contribute to our global climate system--many of them not fully understood. My belief is that they are over-estimating anthropogenic (human) forcing influences and under-estimating natural variability (like the current cold-phase Pacific Decadal Oscillation and solar cycles). The chaos theory describes why it is far more difficult to project the future than climate scientists may realize (I give them a break here since climate modeling is in its relative infancy). We poor hapless meteorologists learned the chaos theory lesson long ago.

(6) CO2 (Carbon Dioxide): The argument that the air we currently exhale is a bona fide pollutant due to potential impacts on climate change flummoxes me. CO2 is also plant food. Plants release oxygen for us, and we release CO2 for them. Over the summer, CO2 reached almost .04% of our total atmosphere as reported here. Because CO2 is but a sliver of our atmosphere, it is known as a "trace gas." We all agree that it is increasing, but is there a chance that our estimate of its influence on the Greenhouse Effect is overblown given its small atmospheric ratio?

(5) Global Temperatures: As a meteorologist, verification is very important for guiding my work and improving future forecasts. The verification for global warming is struggling. Three of four major datasets that track global estimates show 1998 as the warmest year on record with temperatures flat or falling since then. Even climate change researchers now admit that global temperature has been flat since that peak. As shown above, the CO2 chart continues upwards unabated. If the relationship is as solid as we are told, then why isn't global temperature responding? I'm told by climate change researchers that the current situation is within the bounds of model expectations. However, when I look at the IPCC 2007 AR4 WG1 report, I can see that without major warming in the next 1-2 years, we will fall outside those bounds. This is why I believe James Hansen is predicting a global temperature record in the next two years.

(4) Solar Issue: Look for this issue to get bigger. Our sun is currently becoming very quiet. Not only is the number of sunspots falling dramatically, but the intensity of the sunspots is weakening. The coincident timing of major solar minimums with cooler global temperatures (such as during the Little Ice Age) suggests that maybe the sun is underestimated as a component for influencing climate. The second half of the twentieth century (when we saw lots of warming) was during a major solar maximum period- which is now ending. Total solar irradiance has been steady or sinking similar to our global temperatures over much of this past decade. Indeed, recent research has suggested the solar factor is underestimated (here and here). Perhaps one day, we'll have a different version of James Carville's famous political quote...something like "It's the sun, stupid!"

(3) But what about...? Ultimately after I explain my viewpoint on climate change, I get this question: "But what about all this crazy weather we've been having lately?" As a student of meteorology, we learned about amazing weather events in the past that have not been rivaled in the present. Whether it was the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, the 1889 Johnstown Flood, or even the worst tornado outbreak in history (1974), we have and will continue to see crazy weather. Very few statistics are available that correctly show an increase in these "crazy" events.

(2) Silencing Dissent: I believe the climate is always changing. But what percentage of that change is human-induced? Like most, I believe that a more balanced energy supply benefits us politically due to the reduced reliance on foreign sources and benefits us locally due to improved air quality. But several times during debates individuals have told me I should not question the "settled science" due to the moral imperative of "saving the planet". As with a religious debate, I'm told that my disagreement means I do not "care enough" and even if correct, I should not question the science. This frightens me.

(1) Pullback: Does climate change hysteria represent another bubble waiting to burst? From the perspective of the alarmism and the saturation of the message, the answer could be yes. I believe that when our science or economic experts tend to be incorrect, it usually involves predictions that have underperformed expectations (Y2K, SARS, oil supply, etc). Can we think of any other expert-given, consensus-based, long-term predictions that have verified correctly? Not one comes to mind. I believe that predictions of human-caused climate change will continue to be overdone, and we'll discover that natural factors are equally and sometimes even more important.

Japan Promises Big Greenhouse Gas Cuts

Japan's Prime Minister-elect has announced that by 2020, his nation will slash greenhouse gas pollution by 25% of 1990 levels.

It's a significantly higher target than the one set by outgoing Prime Minister Taro Aso, whose administration had said it would try to cut emissions by around 8% by 2020. , The nation has not yet met its targeted cuts under the current international climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol.

Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama could be positioning the world's fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter as an important force in December's international climate treaty talks. Japan has the world's second-largest economy.

He may also be underlining the enormity of the political transition underway in Japan after his Democratic Party's recent landslide victory.

Planes ‘to reset climate targets’

The UK may have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 90% by 2050 to make space for emissions from planes.

That is the warning from the government’s official climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

It would mean even bigger emissions cuts than already planned for households and industry in Britain.

But the committee also says global aviation emissions should be capped during the forthcoming Copenhagen climate talks.

The committee was asked by government to advise on what should be done about emissions from aviation.

In a letter to the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis and the Climate Secretary Ed Miliband, the committee says the aviation industry will have to cut emissions from planes back to their 2005 level by 2050.

That is much more permissive than the overall UK target of cutting emissions 80% on 1990 levels by 2050.

The failure of aviation to play its full part could mean that the rest of the economy has to reduce its emissions by 90% instead of 80%.

This 90% target is so ambitious that it might be easier for some sectors to make the leap to zero carbon emissions rather than trying to whittle down pollution decade by decade.

And some analysts think this might be an easier and cheaper approach than reaching a 90% cut in stages.

The options

The committee members see alternatives.

Planes, they say, might use biofuels or aviation might cut emissions below 2005 levels through new technology.

Plane operators might also be able to buy emissions permits in international emissions trading.

But all of these options carry difficulties of their own. Biofuels compete with crops for land and are already in demand for fuelling cars.

And it looks to be a huge task for aviation to restrict emissions to 2005 levels, even without trying to go further.

"It is vital that an agreement capping global aviation emissions is part of a Copenhagen deal"

David Kennedy,
CCC chief executive

And the emissions trading system in which rich countries pay poor ones to clean up their pollution may prove to be a stop-gap solution which could be defunct by 2050.

The CCC’s recommendations are designed to reduce aviation emissions in line with a global reduction in emissions of all greenhouse gases of 50% by 2050.

It says that, if left unchecked, global aviation could account for 15-20% of all the manmade CO2 produced in 2050.

The committee advises that:

• All CO2 emissions from aviation should be capped, either through a global aviation deal or by including international aviation emissions in national emission reduction targets;
• Any international agreement to reduce emissions should be no less than the EU’s target of a 5% reduction in net emissions from 2013-2020;
• Emissions allowances for aviation in the EU emissions trading scheme, says the CCC, should be fully auctioned to prevent windfall profits for airlines;
• Funds should be found for radical innovation in engine, airframe and fuel technology;
• Additional non-CO2 gases from aviation are contributing to global warming. The effects of these should be addressed within a global deal on aviation.

The CCC’s Chief Executive David Kennedy said: "It is vital that an agreement capping global aviation emissions is part of a Copenhagen deal.

"We are calling for a cap that would not require people to fly less than today, but would constrain aviation emissions growth going forward."

The right-leaning think-tank Policy Exchange recently proposed that world production of sustainable biofuels should be diverted from cars to planes in order to overcome the lack of current breakthrough technologies in aviation.

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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Dangers of Global Warming

Climate change is an extremely dangerous event that effects everyone and everywhere on Earth. In recent decades, global warming is an apparent phenomenon that brings about floods, droughts, and hurricanes. This phenomenon is caused by the abundant release of carbon dioxide into the biosphere. If this amount of carbon dioxide continues to grow and reach a six degrees increase on average around the globe, then Earth will be a harsh place to inhabit for people.

At the current moment, Earth is on the brink of reaching two degrees increase in climate change. Two degrees increase is a turning point, where ice from the Arctic will begin to melt. Droughts and fires will occur in the Amazon rain forest, a valuable asset of our planet that produces twenty percent of Earth’s oxygen. As the climate increases to three and four degrees, glacier from the Himalayas Mountain will recede, deadly hurricanes will occur more often, and rivers will dry up. When the increase reaches five and six degree, we are approaching doom day. At this point, cities will be flooded and our social systems will collapse. Signs of global warming are noticeable all over the world; the decaying of the coral reef in Australia is a vivid example of global warming.

Global warming is an effect that we are responsible for creating. In order to protect the future of our planet we should take part in controlling and resolving this issue. Governments and civilians should collaborate to reduce the number of power plants and devise more efficient energy sources. Although, we are working on creative idea such taking advantage of energy fusion, but the most practical solution is to be aware of the amount energy that we waste and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that we release.

Arctic Record Proves Global Warming is Caused by Man

The Arctic’s geological record provides all the evidence we need that global warming is man’s doing, experts say. A closer look at the sediment timeline has shown that increased ice melt falls right in line with the birth of the Industrial Age, when those billowing clouds of greenhouse gases first started to flow from factory smokestacks.

From the LA Times:

For more than 2,000 years, a natural wobble in Earth’s axis has caused the Arctic region to move farther away from the sun during the region’s summer, reducing the amount of solar radiation it receives. The Arctic is now 600,000 miles farther from the sun than it was in AD 1, and temperatures there should have fallen a little more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since then.

Instead, the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1900 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums, according to a team headed by climatologist Darrell S. Kaufman of Northern Arizona University.

Not only was the last half-century the warmest of the last 2,000 years, “but it reversed the long-term, millennial-scale trend toward cooler temperatures,” Kaufman said.

The results seem to negate the primary argument of those who say the current warming of Earth is simply a natural variation, he said.

It’s not too difficult to understand the argument that people have against anthropomorphic global warming – that we, as humans, are simply too small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things to cause such changes in the earth and its natural balance. After all, nature is quite an amazing force.

But, to believe that we aren’t capable of causing global warming is to ignore the massive destruction we have unleashed upon this planet as we rose to the top of the food chain and began industrializing. We have changed the atmosphere. We have destroyed ecosystems and decimated much of the rainforest that would otherwise be helping to balance the greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the air.

It’s real, it’s happening, and we did it. Now we have to find a way to make up for it.

Link [LA Times]

Photo credit: Flickr user A6U571N

Woods Hole embraces the Medieval Warm Period – contradict Mann’s proxy data

“The more interesting and potentially controversial result is that our data indicate surface water temperatures during a part of the Medieval Warm Period that are similar to today’s…”

“Although there are significant uncertainties with our own reconstruction, our work raises the idea that perhaps even the Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions need to be looked at more closely.”

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: News Release : New Temperature Reconstruction from Indo-Pacific Warm Pool

The First Word in an Unfolding Story

August 27, 2009
Media Relations Office
93 Water Street MS #16
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A map of the Indo-Pacific region indicates the locations of sediment cores used for the study. Station BJ8 marks the cores taken by Oppo and her colleagues. MD60 marks the site of published data. (Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

A new 2,000 year long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today.

The IPWP is the largest body of warm water in the world, and, as a result, it is the largest source of heat and moisture to the global atmosphere, and an important component of the planet’s climate. Climate models suggest that global mean temperatures are particularly sensitive to sea surface temperatures in the IPWP. Understanding the past history of the region is of great importance for placing current warming trends in a global context.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

In a joint project with the Indonesian Ministry of Science and Technology (BPPT), the study’s authors, Delia Oppo, a paleo–oceanographer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and her colleagues Yair Rosenthal of Rutgers State University and Braddock K. Linsley of the University at Albany-State University of New York, collected sediment cores along the continental margin of the Indonesian Seas and used chemical analyses to estimate water past temperatures and date the sediment. The cruise included 13 US and 14 Indonesian scientists.

“This is the first record from the region that has really modern sediments and a record of the last two millennia, allowing us to place recent trends in a larger framework,” notes Oppo.

Global temperature records are predominantly reconstructed from tree rings and ice cores. Very little ocean data are used to generate temperature reconstructions, and very little data from the tropics. “As palaeoclimatologists, we work to generate information from multiple sources to improve confidence in the global temperature reconstructions, and our study contributes to scientists’ efforts towards that goal,” adds Oppo.

Temperature reconstructions suggest that the Northern Hemisphere may have been slightly cooler (by about 0.5 degrees Celsius) during the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (~AD 800-1300) than during the late-20th century. However, these temperature reconstructions are based on, in large part, data compiled from high latitude or high altitude terrestrial proxy records, such as tree rings and ice cores, from the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Little pre-historical temperature data from tropical regions like the IPWP has been incorporated into these analyses, and the global extent of warm temperatures during this interval is unclear. As a result, conclusions regarding past global temperatures still have some uncertainties.

Sea surface temperature reconstructions from the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool. Different colored symbols indicate data from different cores used in the reconstruction. A northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction from Mann et al. (2008) is shown in the black curve. The previously published data is from Newton et al. (2006). Colored lines are the average of the data points. Triangles at the bottom of the figure show where age control exists. The horizontal black line labeled 1997-2007 Mean Annual SST shows the value of the annual average sea surface temperature for the same time period. The Little Ice Age, which occurred around A.D. 1700, was a cool period, but its magnitude was only about 0.5 to 1˚C cooler than modern winter temperatures. Water temperature during the late Medieval Warm Period, between about A.D. 1000 to 1250, was within error of modern annual sea surface temperatures. (Oppo, Rosenthal, Linsley; 2009)

Oppo comments, “Although there are significant uncertainties with our own reconstruction, our work raises the idea that perhaps even the Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstructions need to be looked at more closely.”

Comparisons

The marine-based IPWP temperature reconstruction is in many ways similar to land temperature reconstructions from the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Major trends observed in NH temperature reconstructions, including the cooling during the Little Ice Age (~1500-1850 AD) and the marked warming during the late twentieth century, are also observed in the IPWP.

“The more interesting and potentially controversial result is that our data indicate surface water temperatures during a part of the Medieval Warm Period that are similar to today’s,” says Oppo. NH temperature reconstructions also suggest that temperatures warmed during this time period between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1250, but they were not as warm as modern temperatures. Oppo emphasizes, “Our results for this time period are really in stark contrast to the Northern Hemisphere reconstructions.”

Reconstructing Historical Temperatures

Records of water temperature from instruments like thermometers are only available back to the 1850s. In order to reconstruct temperatures over the last 2,000 years, Oppo and her colleagues used a proxy for temperature collected from the skeletons of marine plankton in sediments in the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The ratio of magnesium to calcium in the hard outer shells of the planktonic foraminifera Globigerinoides ruber varies depending on the surface temperature of the water in which it grows. When the phytoplankton dies, it falls to the bottom of the ocean and accumulates in sediments, recording the sea surface temperature in which it lived.

“Marine sediments accumulate slowly in general — approximately 3 cm/yr — which makes it hard to overlap sediment record with instrumental record and compare that record to modern temperature records,” says Oppo. “That’s what is different about this study. The sediment accumulates fast enough in this region to give us enough material to sample and date to modern times.”

The team generated a composite 2000-year record by combining published data from a piston core in the area with the data they collected using a gravity corer and a multi-corer. Tubes on the bottom of the multi-corer collected the most recently deposited sediment, therefore enabling the comparison of sea surface temperature information recorded in the plankton shells to direct measurements from thermometers.

Oppo cautions that the reconstruction contains some uncertainties. Information from three different cores was compiled in order to reconstruct a 2,000-year-long record. In addition sediment data have an inherent uncertainty associated with accurately dating samples. The SST variations they have reconstructed are very small, near the limit of the Mg/Ca dating method. Even in light of these issues, the results from the reconstruction are of fundamental importance to the scientific community.

More Questions to Answer

The overall similarity in trend between the Northern Hemisphere and the IPWP reconstructions suggests that that Indonesian SST is well correlated to global SST and air temperature. On the other hand, the finding that IPWP SSTs seem to have been approximately the same as today in the past, at a time when average Northern Hemisphere temperature appear to have been cooler than today, suggests changes in the coupling between IPWP and Northern Hemisphere or global temperatures have occurred in the past, for reasons that are not yet understood. “This work points in the direction of questions that we have to ask,” Oppo says. “This is only the first word, not the last word.”

The US National Science Foundation and the WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute provided funding for this work.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent organization in Falmouth, Mass., dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930 on a recommendation from the National Academy of Sciences, its primary mission is to understand the oceans and their interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate a basic understanding of the oceans’ role in the changing global environment.

Wobbling Earth and Climate Change Link

Global warming episodes that were interspersed between prehistoric ice ages were caused by regular wobbles in the earth's tilt, according to new evidence from the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

The research team, led by Russel Drysdale, suggest that the Earth emerges from ice ages due in large part to changes in the tilt of the planet in relation to the sun, otherwise known as its obliquity. This affects the total amount of sunlight each hemisphere receives in its respective summer, rather than the peak intensity of the solar radiation during the northern summer, according to the Discovery News.

The team studied sediment on the sea floor and compared the changes in the sea floor to similar material on the surface that can be accurately dated through samples taken from cave stalagmites.

The result is that the new date for the end of the second last ice age is thousands of years too early to be related to any increase in the intensity of the northern hemisphere summer as predicted by the Milankovitch Theory.

Instead, the researchers found that, in the past million years global warming events have occurred every second or third cycle of the Earth's changing obliquity, which occurs every 41,000 years.

Global Warming on Trial?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is the nation's largest business lobby wants to put the science of global warming on trial, according to an LA Times article.

Trying to fend off potentially sweeping federal emissions regulations, the Chamber of Commerce is pushing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold a public hearing on the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.

According to the LA Times, the hearing would have witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge, who would rule whether humans are dangerously warming the planet.

The EPA says that a hearing would be a waste of time and that Global warming is a danger to public health "on the soundest peer-reviewed science available, which overwhelmingly indicates that climate change presents a threat to human health and welfare."

The chamber will tell the EPA in a filing Tuesday that a trial-style public hearing, which is allowed under the law but nearly unprecedented on this scale, is the only way to "make a fully informed, transparent decision with scientific integrity based on the actual record of the science."

New Study, Recent Atlantic Hurricane Activity might have been Highest in 1,000 Years

New research on the history of tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic has found that the Atlantic tropical cyclone activity, in terms of frequency and strength over recent decades, may have been greater than any period going back a thousand years.

Reply: No doubt, the 1990s and a good chunk of this decade have been active, but the most active in 1,000 years? For instance, is the author overlooking the active period from the 1930s through the 1950s?

The link below (Thanks Mark B.) to this graph says he is not, but is it an accurate representation?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7257/fig_tab/nature08219_F3.html#figure-title

Evidence from sediment samples from landfalling hurricanes going back 1,500 years indicated that there was a period of enhanced Atlantic tropical cyclone activity between AD 900 and 1100 followed by a lull. That medieval period of enhancement was perhaps even more active than what we have seen over the past couple of decades.

"We are at levels now that are about as high as anything we have seen in the past 1,000 years," said Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University and the lead author of the paper.

"Hurricane activity since the mid-1990s is the highest in the historical record, but that only goes back a little more than a century and is most accurate since the advent of air travel and satellites in recent decades," said Mann. "It is therefore difficult to assess if the recent increase in hurricane activity is in fact unusual."

According to the EurekAlert release, the study also adds validity to the theory that two factors fuel higher hurricane activity, namely the La Nina effect and high surface temperatures over the ocean. If climate change continues to warm ocean waters, Mann said, it could lead to more active hurricane seasons.

You can read a more detailed look at the study right here.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) also interviewed Dr. Mann about the results of this study. You can watch that video here.

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Our own Hurricane expert Joe Bastardi disagrees with Mann on this...........

What is it with Dr. Michael Mann? His latest "findings" on hurricanes , that we are at some mythical high is nonsense. And if he understood how the energy budget actually worked, he should be making the argument that the low we are in is more of support of his argument of warming... fake as it is, as it would mean a distortion of the energy budget of the earth because of warming in coldest places. Again using the absolute temp of the earth is not the way to look at this, its to look at the measure of energy of the earth, and understanding that a 1 degree drop where the wet bulb is 80 is equal in energy consideration to a 32 degree rise where its -30 degrees.

So Dr Mann, you should be using the record LOW ACTIVITY for your argument, except that of course would run into the true argument as to what cyclones represent..energy, in which case it falls apart.

http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace2.jpg

(From his Accuweather.com Professional column)

-------------------------
Chris Landsea via the Houston Chronicle......

"The paper comes to very erroneous conclusions because of using improper data and illogical techniques," said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Hurricane Center.

In his criticism, Landsea notes that the paper begins by saying that Atlantic tropical activity has "reached anomalous levels over the past decade."

This ignores recent work by Landsea and a number of other hurricane scientists who found that storm counts in the early 1900's -- in an era without satellites and fewer seaborne observers -- likely missed three or four storms a year. The addition of these storms to the historical record, he said, causes the long-term trend over the last century to disappear.

"This isn't a small quibble,"he said. "It's the difference between a massive trend with doubling in the last 100 years, versus no trend."

New Ice Core Project in Greenland looks at Eemian period

International Greenland ice coring effort sets new drilling record in 2009

Ancient ice cores expected to help scientists assess risks of abrupt climate change in future

A new international research effort on the Greenland ice sheet with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution set a record for single-season deep ice-core drilling this summer, recovering more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future.

IMAGE: Atmospheric gases trapped in ancient ice recovered during the international North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, or NEEM, project are expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate…Click here for more information.

The project, known as the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, or NEEM, is being undertaken by 14 nations and is led by the University of Copenhagen. The goal is to retrieve ice from the last interglacial episode known as the Eemian Period that ended about 120,000 years ago. The period was warmer than today, with less ice in Greenland and 15-foot higher sea levels than present — conditions similar to those Earth faces as it warms in the coming century and beyond, said CU-Boulder Professor Jim White, who is leading the U.S. research contingent.

While three previous Greenland ice cores drilled in the past 20 years covered the last ice age and the period of warming to the present, the deeper ice layers representing the warm Eemian and the period of transition to the ice age were compressed and folded, making them difficult to interpret, said White. Radar measurements taken through the ice sheet from above the NEEM site indicate the Eemian ice layers below are thicker, more intact and likely contain more accurate, specific information, he said.

“Every time we drill a new ice core, we learn a lot more about how Earth’s climate functions,” said White, “The Eemian period is the best analog we have for future warming on Earth.”

Annual ice layers formed over millennia in Greenland by compressed snow reveal information on past temperatures and precipitation levels and the contents of ancient atmospheres, said White, who directs CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. Ice cores exhumed during previous drilling efforts revealed abrupt temperature spikes of more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit in just 50 years in the Northern Hemisphere.

The NEEM team reached a depth of 5,767 feet in early August, where ice layers date to 38,500 years ago during a cold glacial period preceding the present interglacial, or warm period. The team hopes to hit bedrock at 8,350 feet at the end of next summer, reaching ice deposited during the warm Eemian period that lasted from roughly 130,000 to 120,000 years ago before the planet began to cool and ice up once again.

The NEEM project began in 2008 with the construction of a state-of-the-art facility, including a large dome, the drilling rig for extracting 3-inch-diameter ice cores, drilling trenches, laboratories and living quarters. The official drilling started in June of this year. The United States is leading the laboratory analysis of atmospheric gases trapped in bubbles within the NEEM ice cores, including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, said White.

The NEEM project is led by the University of Copenhagen’s Centre of Ice and Climate directed by Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen. The United States and Denmark are the two leading partners in the project. The U.S. effort is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.

“Evidence from ancient ice cores tell us that when greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere, the climate warms,” said White. “And when the climate warms, ice sheets melt and sea levels rise. If we see comparable rises in sea level in the future like we have seen in the ice-core record, we can pretty much say good-bye to American coastal cities like Miami, Houston, Norfolk, New Orleans and Oakland.”

Increased warming on Earth also has a host of other potentially deleterious effects, including changes in ecosystems, wildlife extinctions, the growing spread of disease, potentially catastrophic heat waves and increases in severe weather events, according to scientists.

While ice cores pinpoint abrupt climate change events as Earth has passed in and out of glacial periods, the warming trend during the present interglacial period is caused primarily by human activities like fossil fuel burning, White said. “What makes this warming trend fundamentally different from past warming events is that this one is driven by human activity and involves human responsibility, morals and ethics.”

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Other nations involved in the project include the United States, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Other CU-Boulder participants in the NEEM effort include INSTAAR postdoctoral researcher Vasilii Petrenko and Environmental Studies Program doctoral student Tyler Jones. Other U.S. institutions collaborating in the international NEEM effort include Oregon State University, Penn State, the University of California, San Diego and Dartmouth College.

For more information on the NEEM project, including images and video, visit http://www.neem.ku.dk.