Mange mener sikkert at det nå er "kaldt" osv. Det rene vrøvl. Det er
fortsatt mildt, men mindre mildt enn det ekstreme mildværet vi har hatt i et
par måneder. Hetebølgen er svekket noe.
Så hvordan går det nå med svaneunger som er kommet til verden i desember,
blomstrende rhododendron mv.? Det skal bli "spennende" å se om vi får noe å
vite om det.
Spøk til side. "Medienes hukommelse" er et contradictio in adjecto, et
begrep uten innhold, som "nazismens barmhjertighet", "stalinismens fantasi",
"Arbeiderpartiets miljøpolitikk", "kapitalens ansvarsbevissthet" eller
"bærekraftig utvikling". Vår "verden" består nesten utelukkende av slike
nullbegreper.
Karsten Johansen
Fra Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac1601715957616&rtmo=lvlHPout&atmo=99999
999&pg=/et/00/12/15/whot15.html
Unseasonal heat wave upsets Europe's balance of nature By Thomas Harding
EUROPE'S flora and fauna have been thrown off balance by one of the warmest
winters on record.
From Russia to Germany and France people have had to adjust to the
unseasonal warmth. In Britain, the high temperatures have prompted a pair of
black swans to breed five months out of season.
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The native Australian birds, which in this country usually have offspring
between March and July, produced three grey-feathered cygnets in Barnstaple,
Devon, yesterday.
A spokesman for the Royal Society for Protection of Birds said: "This is
pretty exceptional and very unusual. It is very strange for any birds to
breed at the height of winter. It can only be the warm weather that
triggered breeding in this pair."
Elsewhere rhododendrons have flowered and roses have shown little sign of
losing their leaves. Gardeners have been advised to give their lawns a light
cut. In Berlin shirtsleeves have replaced fur coats, and blossom adorns the
hedgerows. Night and day the air is balmy and the city resounds to birds
chirruping. At lunchtime workers and tourists opt for pavement seats at the
capital's cafes and soak up the sun.
In Salzburg, Austria, strawberries are prematurely turning deep red and
everywhere flowers are coming into bloom. Skiers are in despair. In the
Alpine city of Graz a 44-ton ice Nativity scene has melted into slush. The
situation is similar across much of central and eastern Europe, where the
unseasonal mildness could lead to the hottest December on record.
In Moscow, plans to open an ice rink in Red Square over the holiday period
are under threat and chaos reigns on the streets, where piles of slush are
preventing motorists parking near the kerbs.
The German television weather man Jorg Kachelmann attributed the
temperatures not to global warming but to persistent southerly winds which
had bought warm air to Europe for far longer than usual. He said: "Many
records that have stood for 200 years have been broken as a result. What is
most extraordinary is the length of time the warm spell has lasted."
Usually temperatures in lowland parts of Germany would be 37F (3C) at this
time of year. But on Wednesday they reached 55F (13.1C) in Berlin - the
highest since records began in the capital in 1908. Ragnar Kuhne, a German
zoologist, said: "Some ducks and cormorants are getting ready to mate. That
is most unusual. And the blackbirds are singing."
But while birds and animals appear to be enjoying the heatwave shopkeepers
in Berlin have already started to advertise their winter clothing stocks
marked down to half-price.
France too, has experienced unseasonally high temperatures, with Grenoble
basking in 70F (21C) one day last week. Frederique Nathan of the
meterological office, France Meteo, said the weather was posing problems in
the Alpine ski stations.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac1601715957616&rtmo=fsfDloNs&atmo=99999
999&pg=/et/00/12/15/whot115.html
Hotter Earth is confirmed by computer By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
THE most sophisticated computer simulation of the world's climate is
published today, and concludes that recent global warming is man-made and
will continue.
For the first time, scientists have combined the most important human and
natural factors in one model to create what they claim is the most
comprehensive simulation of 20th-century climate.
The global average temperature will increase steadily so that by 2100 it
will be at least 2.5C higher than today, according to the simulation
conducted by the Met Office and the UK Universities Global Atmospheric
Modelling Programme. The result, reported by Dr Peter Stott's team today in
the journal Science, accurately mirrors the changes in global temperatures
over the last 100 years.
Importantly, there is strong evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions
are responsible for global warming over the past few decades. On the other
hand the Sun and volcanoes played a significant part in controlling
temperatures during the first half of the 20th century.
Until now, climate simulations had difficulty explaining the rapid increase
in global temperatures between 1910 and 1940.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac1601715957616&rtmo=fsfDloNs&atmo=99999
999&pg=/et/00/9/15/whot15.html
1990s was the hottest decade of millennium By Roger Highfield Science Editor
A RECORD of climate held frozen in a Himalayan glacier reveals that the last
decade was the warmest of the past millennium, scientists report today.
Ice core samples, taken more than four miles up, provide a detailed record
of the last 1,000 years of climate on the Tibetan Plateau and suggest that
human activities have had an impact.
Today, the journal Science reports that the Dasuopu Glacier samples reveal
that the last 10 years were the warmest. Prof Lonnie Thompson, the
expedition leader, of Ohio State University, said: "There is no question in
my mind that the warming is in part, if not totally, driven by human
activity."
The cores also provided details of at least eight major droughts caused by a
failure of the South Asian monsoon. The worst killed 600,000 people in India
and lasted six years from 1790.
Three cores were drilled through the glacier, a 2,000 metre-wide ice field
on the flank of Xixabangma, a 26,300ft peak on the southern rim of the
plateau. The record is from 23,500ft, about as high as instruments are
carried in a weather balloon.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac1601715957616&rtmo=r9raEtXX&atmo=99999
999&pg=/et/00/8/6/wsea06.html
Falling sea level upsets theory of global warming By Mark Chipperfield in
Tuvalu and David Harrison in London THE 11,000 inhabitants of a tiny Pacific
country that was predicted to vanish under water because of the effects of
global warming have been given a reprieve because sea levels have begun to
fall.
In the early 1990s, scientists forecast that the coral atoll of nine islands
- which is only 12ft above sea level at its highest point - would vanish
within decades because the sea was rising by up to 1.5in a year. However, a
new study has found that sea levels have since fallen by nearly 2.5in and
experts at Tuvalu's Meteorological Service in Funafuti, the islands'
administrative centre, said this meant they would survive for another 100
years.
They said similar sea level falls had been recorded in Nauru and the Solomon
Islands, which were also considered to be under threat. The release of the
data from Tuvalu, formerly part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, will
renew scientific debate about climate change and its impact on ocean levels.
The island's scientists admitted they were surprised and "a little
embarrassed" by the change, which they blame on unusual weather conditions
caused by El Niño in 1997.
Hilia Vavae, the Metereological Service's director, said: "This is certainly
a bit of a shock for us because we have been experiencing the effect of
rising oceans for a long time." Although their country has been saved from
imminent engulfment, not all islanders are happy about the change in
Tuvalu's fortunes. Residents who once worried about their homes being
flooded are now complaining that the lower tides are disrupting their
fishing expeditions, making it difficult to moor their boats and navigate
low-lying reefs.
However, scientists both on and off the island believe such concerns will be
short term because the sea level falls are coming to an end and the oceans
will soon resume their inexorable rise. The Tuvalu government, a vocal
critic of the industrialised world at environmental conferences in Tokyo and
Rio de Janeiro, has said that the result of its research is a "blip" and it
is expected to make climate change a major issue when it joins the United
Nations next month.
Low-lying coral islands such as Tuvalu and the Maldives are among the
countries most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Most of the world's leading
scientists agree that the earth is warming up, caused by carbon dioxide
emissions from petrol and the burning of coal.
Last month a study by Nasa, the US space agency, found that sea levels were
being pushed up by the addition of 50 billion tons of water a year from
Greenland's melting ice sheet. Professor Patrick Nunn, head of geography at
the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and an expert on island
formation, said last week that the figures from Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea and
the Solomons were based on inadequate research.
He said: "It is a nonsense to try to make predictions about climate change
from a data base of only seven years. You need data over a minimum period of
at least 30 years. A lot of these sea gauges have been slowly falling over
the last five years but that is a short-term trend. Island countries such as
Kiribati and Tuvalu remain incredibly vulnerable to sea change. These
low-lying islands are between 2,000 and 3,000 years old. They only formed
because sea levels fell, allowing a build up of sand and gravel. Now it
could go the other way."
Ms Vavae is also pessimistic about the future of her country, which last
year signed a £34 million deal to license its domain name - tv.com - to an
American internet company. She said: "There is no doubt about the impact of
climate change on Tuvalu. We already have difficulty planting traditional
crops. We've seen more frequent tropical cyclones, more severe droughts and
alarming sea level heights during spring tides.
"We are still facing the daunting prospect of being one of the first
countries to be submerged by sea-level rises related to climate change."
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 18 2001 - 10:59:35 MET