CCNet

Faculty of Science, Liverpool John Moores University Tel:- +44 (0)151 231 4338 b.j.peiser@ljmu.ac.uk

CCNet 70/06 - 3 May 2006

THE GREAT KYOTO RIP-OFF: MULTI-BILLION SHAM ROCKS EUROPE

Prices for business permits to produce carbon dioxide slid to their lowest in more than a year on Tuesday, even as the European Commission tried to damp turmoil in the fledgling market in greenhouse gas emissions. But Tuesday's news that Swedish companies had been issued with more than 10 per cent more allowances than they required sent prices even lower, to €11 per tonne of carbon dioxide.

--Fiona Harvey and Kevin Morrison, Financial Times, 3 May 2006

There is widespread criticism that EU countries allocated too many pollution credits to industry for the period 2005-2007. This, critics say, gave companies a free ride to pollute since the vast majority of allocations were given away for free by EU governments. In a recent study, WWF estimated that German power utility Vattenfall Europe received 99% of its certificates for free. It said other German utilities such as E.ON and RWE had to pay for presumably only 7% of their emission certificates. WWF calculated that German utilities were set to make windfall profits of between €31 and €64 billion until end 2012 due to the free carbon allocations.

--Euractive, 2 May 2006

Power companies in Britain could see their profits boosted by up to £850m under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, a consultancy firm said yesterday. The windfall is likely to occur because of firms factoring in the cost of carbon dioxide emissions into the wholesale electricity price, even though in many cases the emissions will cost them nothing at all, according to IPA Energy Consulting. Companies are given the permits by the Government free of charge. However, if they don't need to use all of their allowance they can sell on the remainder of it to other firms. The cost of the emissions is factored into the wholesale electricity price regardless of whether or not companies are breaching their emissions levels.

--Yorkshire Post, 2 May 2006

Climate change is having an effect on the west Hudson population of polar bears, but really, there is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present. This complexity is why so many people find the truth less entertaining than a good story. It is entirely appropriate to be concerned about climate change, but it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.

--Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist, The Toronto Star, 1 May 2006

It's getting to a point where two camps are down in their bunkers and there's a fair bit of heat about but nobody wants to give in. Some people are never going to change their opinion but I think a consensus will probably be reached. They don't want to see the Aborigines as anything except the 'noble green'.

--Richard Gillespie, The Australian, 3 May 2006

(1) THE GREAT KYOTO RIP-OFF

Euractive, 2 May 2006

(2) UK POWER FIRMS SEE BONANZA IN EMISSIONS WINDFALL

Yorkshire Post, 2 May 2006

(3) EUROPE FAILS TO HALT FALTERING CARBON TRADING SCHEME

Fiona Harvey and Kevin Morrison, Financial Times, 3 May 2006

(4) CLIMATE CHANGE MODELS OF MEGAFAUNA EXTINCTION REJECTED

Richard Gillespie and Barry W Brook. Archaeology in Oceania 41, 1-11 (2006)

(5) 'NOBLE GREENS' MAY HAVE HUNTED MEGAFAUNA TO EXTINCTION

Brendan O'Keefe, The Australian, 3 May 2006

(6) ICE AGE HORSES MAY HAVE BEEN KILLED OFF BY HUMANS, STUDY FINDS

Brian Handwerk, National Geographics, 1 May 2006

(7) WHY IT IS SILLY TO PREDICT DEMISE OF POLAR BEARS

The Toronto Star, 1 May 2006

(8) NEW REPORT RECONCILES ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE TRENDS

NOAA News, 2 May 2006

(9) FORMER MET SERVICE CHIEF EXPLAINS WHY HE BACKS CLIMATE SCIENCE COALITION

New Zealand Press Association, 1 May 2006

(10) NEW STUDY: NO EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL INCREASE IN WATER VAPOUR CONTENT

Paul Biggs <p.m.biggs@bham.ac.uk>

(11) RE: UK ENERGY COMPANIES COULD MAKE £1 BILLION WINDFALL FROM

CARBON TRADING

Gerd-Rainer Weber <Gerd-Rainer.Weber@GVST.DE>

(12) THE PROBLEM OF PLACING LM I-B IN THE ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY OF THE

BRONZE AGE

E.P. Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>

(13) AND FINALLY: INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND CREATIONISM: CREATING MILLIONS OF

NEW SPECIES

Freeman Dyson, MIT Technology Review, March 2006

(1) THE GREAT KYOTO RIP-OFF

Euractive, 2 May 2006

http://www.euractiv.com/en//crashing-carbon-prices-puts-eu-climate-policy-test/article-154873

Crashing carbon prices puts EU climate policy to the test

In Short: Reports that six EU countries had emitted far less CO2 than anticipated sent carbon prices plummeting last week. Attention now turns to the EU's next round of emission allocation plans due on 30 June.

Background: The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is the EU's flagship instrument to fight climate change and meet its Kyoto pledge to reduce emissions of global warming gases by 8% by 2012.

Under the ETS, some 12,000 energy-hungry industrial installations have been able, since 1 January 2005, to buy and sell permits to emit carbon dioxide, covering about 40% of the EU's total CO2 emissions.

A CO2 cap is set for each plant covered by the scheme in order to create a shortage and keep prices high, thereby encouraging companies to emit less than what they have been allowed. Pollution credits can be exchanged on an EU-wide carbon market, favouring greener utilities that can make a profit from selling their excess credits.

Issues: Carbon prices dropped by more than 50% last week upon reports that the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, the Netherlands and the Walloon region emitted far less CO2 last year than initially anticipated by the market.

Low carbon prices are bad news for the EU's climate change policy as the CO2 trading scheme draws its strength from the benefits companies can make from selling their potential surplus pollution allowances on the market. With falling prices, incentives for companies to cut down their emissions and free up extra credits are consequently diminished.

The reported CO2 emissions represent only about 15% of the total emitted in the EU with reports for the biggest emitters like Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK still pending. The Commission will publish full emission statistics for the entire EU on 15 May.

The news took the market by surprise because of the magnitude in the discrepancy between the caps placed on countries' emissions and the amount of CO2 actually emitted. The shortfall was as much as 25% in Estonia with other countries reporting between 8 and 15% fewer emissions than anticipated. In France, this amounted to 19 million tonnes surplus allocations, authorities said.

Positions: According to Frank Brannvoll, an analyst at Point Carbon, the news has had a snowball effect made worse because market prices were bullish up till then, reaching an all-time high of over €30 a tonne of CO2 only days before the reports came out. "Markets are anticipating that the trend will continue," Brannvoll told EurActiv.

But he indicated the drop also has positive effects, sending electricity prices down as CO2 market valuation is integrated into power prices. Electricity prices already fell by 5 to 10 euros in Europe in general on hearing the news, Brannvoll said.

"There is no doubt that the market is now monitoring what reaction the Commission and the member states will have and whether they will reduce their allocations for the second trading period," said Brannvoll.

The Commission tried to play down the significance of the price drop saying there was "no crash". "The market started at €6 and nobody then thought it would go above €10", EU environment spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told EurActiv.

2005 emissions data for the entire EU will be published on 15 May. Helfferich said this would allow the Commission and the member states to base their next round of allocations on reliable data based on "actual emissions".

In a recent study, WWF estimated that German power utility Vattenfall Europe received 99 % of its certificates for free. It said other German utilities such as E.ON and RWE had to pay for presumably only 7 % of their emission certificates. WWF calculated that German utilities were set to make windfall profits of between to €31 and €64 billion until end 2012 due to the free carbon allocations.

Latest & next steps:

15 May 2006: Commission to publish 2005 CO2 emissions data covering all EU countries on its community transaction log website

30 June 2006: deadline for member states to submit allocation plan for the 2008-2012 trading period

(2) UK POWER FIRMS SEE BONANZA IN EMISSIONS WINDFALL

Yorkshire Post, 2 May 2006

http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=1299&ArticleID=1476362

Power companies in Britain could see their profits boosted by up to £850m under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, a consultancy firm said yesterday.

The windfall is likely to occur because of firms factoring in the cost of carbon dioxide emissions into the wholesale electricity price, even though in many cases the emissions will cost them nothing at all, according to IPA Energy Consulting.

The group, which carried out a study of the Emissions Trading Scheme for the Government, said as a result of the higher electricity price, energy firms could see their profits soar by up to £850m between 2008 and 2012 when the next phase of the scheme kicks in.

Under the scheme companies are given permits allowing them to produce a certain level of carbon emissions each year, with governments setting a limit on the total level of emissions that can be emitted by heavy industry and the power sector.

Companies are given the permits by the Government free of charge. However, if they don't need to use all of their allowance they can sell on the remainder of it to other firms. Carbon emissions are traded like a commodity and currently sell for some 16 euros (£11) a tonne, after the price crashed from about 30 euros (£21) a tonnes last week.

The cost of the emissions is factored into the wholesale electricity price regardless of whether or not companies are breaching their emissions levels.

In some cases firms are making money from selling off their surplus allocations.

A director at IPA Energy Consulting, Peter Bedson, said the main winners of the system would be gas and nuclear companies as those produced the lowest levels of carbon emissions, leaving the companies free to sell-off their excess limits to firms using high carbon fuels such as coal.

Environmental groups have criticised the scheme saying it does not do enough to reduce carbon emissions. They would like to see the permits auctioned, rather than being given away as a free asset by the Government.

Conservative environment spokesman Peter Ainsworth said: "The problem will not be sorted out until the market is made to work properly by forcing firms to bid for their permits instead of being allowed to lobby Government for them free of charge."

(3) EUROPE FAILS TO HALT FALTERING CARBON TRADING SCHEME

Financial Times, 3 May 2006

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/18cad022-da41-11da-b7de-0000779e2340.html

By Fiona Harvey and Kevin Morrison in London

The Commission called on member states to withhold information on their emissions until May 15, when officials plan to publish data on how much carbon dioxide companies in each member state emitted in 2005, the first year of the EU's emissions trading scheme.

This information is crucial to the emissions trading market, because the price of permits is determined by the difference between the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the 11,500 industrial installations covered by the scheme and the number of permits issued. The early release of information last week from France, the Netherlands and Belgium, showing that companies in these states had an excess of allowances for the amount of carbon they produced last year, sent prices plummeting.

Under the EU's emissions trading scheme, companies in certain energy-intensive sectors are issued with permits to produce a certain tonnage of carbon dioxide. If they produce less than their allowance, they can sell the excess.

But Tuesday's news that Swedish companies had been issued with more than 10 per cent more allowances than they required sent prices even lower, to €11 per tonne of carbon dioxide.

Atle Christiansen, director of Point Carbon, the analysts, urged caution. He pointed out that Sweden's allocation of allowances amounted to only about 1 per cent of the 2.1bn permits issued for 2005, and that the countries that had issued information represented only about a quarter of emissions under the scheme. The states yet to report - including Germany, the UK and Italy - could have produced more carbon dioxide than was covered by their allowances, which could help to rebalance the market.

He said: "The market has seen [the information released to date] as confirmation of a more general trend but I think it is too early to pass judgment."

EU carbon dioxide futures for December 2006 delivery bounced off their low to end at €11.50, down €1.85 on the day on the European Climate Exchange. The December 2006 price has now fallen about 63 per cent from its peak reached two weeks ago.

The price plunge has been deeper for the first phase of the EU trading scheme, with prices for the second phase, from 2008 to 2012, holding at higher levels. CO2 futures for December 2008 delivery ended 25 cents lower at €18.75 a tonne, down 44 per cent from a record peak two weeks ago.

(4) CLIMATE CHANGE MODELS OF MEGAFAUNA EXTINCTION REJECTED

Richard Gillespie and Barry W Brook. Is there a Pleistocene archaeological site at Cuddie Springs? Archaeology in Oceania 41, 1-11 (2006)

Abstract

The juxtaposition of stone tools, charcoal and bones at Cuddie Springs has been used to support claims that people were butchering now-extinct animals, and grinding seeds about 30,000 BP. Statistical analysis of dates for the site shows significant sediment disturbance, and the anomalous presence of hair residues in the absence of bone collagen suggests that bones and stone tools are not the same age. We argue that the published studies on the Cuddie Springs claypan deposits do not show a stratified and undisturbed Late Pleistocene archaeological site, as proposed by the excavators, instead revealing a palimpsest of Late Holocene and European occupational debris superimposed on a much longerterm record of Quaternary landscape evolution. There is no reliable evidence that extinct Australian megafauna coexisted with people using seed-grinding technology at Cuddie Springs, nullifying the excavators’ support for climate change models of extinction and dietary choice.

Richard Gillespie e-mail: dizzy@better.net.au

(5) 'NOBLE GREENS' MAY HAVE HUNTED MEGAFAUNA TO EXTINCTION

The Australian, 3 May 2006

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19004166-30417,00.html

Hunt widens for megafauna killer

New evidence shows Aborigines may have hunted our giant beasts to extinction, writes Brendan O'Keefe

A CLAIM that disturbed sediments at an archeological site in western NSW point the finger at humans for the extinction of Australia's megafauna has reignited the debate about what killed the giant beasts.

Scientists have long argued about the fate of the animals, which included the two-tonne wombat-like Diprotodon, the two-metre-tall flightless bird Genyornis and giant kangaroos.

A team led by archeologist Judith Field of the University of Sydney, who found megafauna bones and stone tools at Cuddie Springs in western NSW in the early 1990s, say climate change - Ice Age aridity - killed the megafauna, about 30,000 years ago.

But others, such as Richard Gillespie and Barry Brook, who have made the latest claim, say that Aborigines caused the mass extinction either by hunting or by habitat destruction, about 45,000 years ago.

Gillespie, a radiocarbon dating expert and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, and Brook, a population ecologist and senior research fellow in the school of environmental research at Charles Darwin University, say the animal bones, artefacts and charcoal in the sediments at Cuddie Springs do not age with depth.

They say this suggests the sediments have been mixed.

University of Sydney archeologist Richard Fullagar, a colleague of Field's, concedes there is "some interesting discussion on radiocarbon dating statistics", but says "the explanation they put forward is fundamentally flawed. It's wrong".

"It's not like a city in the Middle East; you've got sediments where Aboriginal people have been camping for long periods of time, the artefacts are going to be scuffed around and moved around a bit," he says.

Field's people say there was a 15,000-year overlap between the time of arrival of humans and the extinction of the megafauna, suggesting long co-existence before a natural death for the animals.

Gillespie, Brook and others say the overlap is about 5000 years. "The coincidence of the time of arrival [of humans] to the megafauna extinction to us looks horribly suspicious," Gillespie says.

Gillespie and Brook, in the journal Archaeology in Oceania, say the sediments have been mixed over time, probably in floods.

They studied 20 published datings on material from the layers bearing bones, artefacts and charcoal. If the layers were undisturbed, as the excavators say, the ages should increase with depth.

But Gillespie and Brook found that all the charcoal dates were statistically the same age, about 36,000 years old. And sand in the two upper layers was much younger than charcoal from the same levels, suggesting that the sediments had been mixed, and that some of the charcoal had been redeposited.

They also studied the animal bones for traces of protein, which have been found in stone tools at the site.

"The bones from Cuddie Springs that we looked at ... there wasn't any protein there," Gillespie says. "This suggests that the bones are very old. Some of the stone tools have got hair and blood residues on them where the protein has survived ... this is anomalous if you don't find any protein in the bones in the same layer."

Gillespie says the animals were probably hunted into oblivion - "You don't have to kill every one of them for them to go extinct" - and that "people altered the landscape a bit when they turned up".

Fullagar places himself in the "multi-causal" camp but rules out hunting: "There's certainly scavenging but there's no spear points or spears stuck in bones.

"Hunting is very difficult and potentially dangerous," Fullagar says. "Hunters are not very successful and the chance of it causing extinction is very low.

"It seems a mix of things have caused it and climate is probably standing out."

The debate goes on. Gillespie says: "It's getting to a point where two camps are down in their bunkers and there's a fair bit of heat about but nobody wants to give in.

"Some people are never going to change their opinion but I think a consensus will probably be reached. It will turn up soon ... the evidence is mounting for our side.

"They don't want to see the Aborigines as anything except the 'noble green'."

(6) ICE AGE HORSES MAY HAVE BEEN KILLED OFF BY HUMANS, STUDY FINDS

National Geographics, 1 May 2006

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0501_060501_ice_age.html

Brian Handwerk

for National Geographic News

Some 12,000 years ago, North American mammoths, ancient horses, and many other large mammals vanished within the short span of perhaps 400 years.

Scientists cannot be sure what killed them, but a new study suggests that humans aren't off the hook just yet.

The large animals' disappearance at the end of the Pleistocene era (50,000 to 10,000 years ago) happened at about the same time that many large animals, or megafauna, went extinct around the globe.

Victims included species such as the saber-toothed cat and the diprotodon—a rhinolike beast that was the world's largest marsupial.

Now a new study of the fossil record fuels the debate about the cause of the creatures' fate.

In North America two major events occurred at about the same time as the megafaunal extinctions: The planet cooled, and early humans arrived from Asia to populate the continent.

For decades scientists have debated which of these factors was responsible for widespread megafaunal extinctions.

Was the climate change simply too much for the animals to withstand? Or did the ancient mammals succumb to human hunting pressure?

Many experts suggest a combination of these factors and perhaps others, such as disease.

"It's hard to see this as one of those things where a single piece of evidence will make it obvious what happened," said Scott Wing, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

"The phenomenon that people are trying to explain is not something that happened in one place at one time. It happened across the globe, at different times on different continents. I think that there are clearly multiple factors involved."

Previous research had suggested that Alaska's caballoid horse species became extinct some 500 years before the first humans arrived.

Those dates would mean that overhunting could not have contributed to the extinction of Alaska's ancient horses—though humans could have contributed to the demise of North American mammoths, which stayed on the scene for perhaps another thousand years.

But Andrew Solow, a geostatistician at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and colleagues have published a statistical evaluation of the fossil record that suggests that humans shouldn't be exonerated just yet.

Their data, to be published in tomorrow's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that horses did disappear before mammoths, though only by perhaps 200 years.

Their findings also suggest that both species may not have gone extinct until after human arrival—so human hunting may well have played a role in their demise.

"You can't just take the latest fossil remains [and assign their date] as the time of extinction," Solow said. "There's a sampling issue.

"We constructed a confidence region—that's the set of dates that you can't rule out with confidence as the extinction times."

Those dates suggested the possibility that both caballoid horses and mammoths survived well past the generally accepted arrival dates for humans.

The results don't identify the cause of the extinctions, and experts say a fossilized "smoking gun" seems unlikely.

"Even if a fossil told you that [species] survived past the arrival of humans, it's still the case that there was climate change going on as well as hunting pressure," Solow said.

"I think the notion that there was a single cause is probably not right. It's probably more complicated than that."

The Smithsonian's Wing believes that the complicated circumstances leave paleobiologists and others with their work cut out for them to determine just why so many of the world's large animals vanished.

"I think that leaves everyone with a big job to do to investigate new sites, date remains, date human occupations, and try to do the best that they can," he said.

"It may take a long time to accumulate enough evidence. But this is the kind of thing that has to happen."

(7) WHY IT IS SILLY TO PREDICT DEMISE OF POLAR BEARS

The Toronto Star, 1 May 2006

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1146433819696&call_pageid=970599119419

Tim Flannery is one of Australia's best-known scientists and authors. That doesn't mean what he says is correct or accurate. That was clearly demonstrated when he recently ventured into the subject of climate change and polar bears. Climate change is threatening to drive polar bears into extinction within 25 years, according to Flannery. That is a startling conclusion and certainly is a surprising revelation to the polar bear researchers who work here and to the people who live here. We really had no idea.

The evidence for climate change effects on polar bears described by Flannery is incorrect. He says polar bears typically gave birth to triplets, but now they usually have just one cub. That is wrong.

All research and traditional knowledge shows that triplets, though they do occur, are very infrequent and are by no means typical. Polar bears generally have two cubs — sometimes three and sometimes one. He says the bears' weaning time has risen to 18 months from 12. That is wrong. The weaning period has not changed. Polar bears worldwide have a three-year reproduction cycle, except for one part of Hudson Bay for a period in the mid-1980s when the cycle was shorter.

One polar bear population (western Hudson Bay) has declined since the 1980s and the reproductive success of females in that area seems to have decreased. We are not certain why, but it appears that ecological conditions in the mid-1980s were exceptionally good.

It is noteworthy that the neighbouring population of southern Hudson Bay does not appear to have declined, and another southern population (Davis Strait) may actually be over-abundant.

I understand that people who do not live in the north generally have difficulty grasping the concept of too many polar bears in an area. People who live here have a pretty good grasp of what that is like to have too many polar bears around.

This complexity is why so many people find the truth less entertaining than a good story. It is entirely appropriate to be concerned about climate change, but it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.

Dr. Mitchell Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist,

Department of the Environment, Government of Nunavut, Igloolik, Nunavut

(8) NEW REPORT RECONCILES ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE TRENDS

NOAA News, 2 May 2006

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2623.htm

First of 21 Reports from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Significantly Revises, Updates Conclusions from Previous Key Reports

May 2, 2006 — The U.S. Climate Change Science Program issued the first of 21 Synthesis and Assessment S&A Products today with findings that improve the understanding of climate change and human influences on temperature trends.

"Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences," also referred to as S&A Product 1.1, tackles some of the long-standing difficulties that have impeded understanding of changes in atmospheric temperatures and the basic causes of these changes.

According to the published report, there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere. This discrepancy had previously been used to challenge the validity of climate models used to detect and attribute the causes of observed climate change. This is an important revision to and update of the conclusions of earlier reports from the U.S. National Research Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

FULL STORY at http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2623.htm

(9) FORMER MET SERVICE CHIEF EXPLAINS WHY HE BACKS CLIMATE SCIENCE COALITION

New Zealand Press Association, 1 May 2006

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/04/30/1626112.htm

Augie Auer is irritated.

The former Met Service chief meteorologist is irked by the bad science that has gone into the dire predictions about the effects of man-made global warming on the planet.

Professor Auer, of Auckland, past professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming, is part of a group of leading climate scientists who have formed the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, aimed at refuting what it believes are unfounded claims about man-made global warming.

In fact, he says, if we didn't have the greenhouse effect, the planet would be 33deg C colder than it is now.

"The average temperature of the planet is about plus 15degC, it would be minus 18degC if we didn't have the effect of the greenhouse warming."

He said the whole history of global warming dated back to about the 1980s and he partly blames the media and partly scientists for the fears that have been raised.

Some journalists were "a bit scientific illiterate" and when scientists put out the results of what their computer modelling effort would suggest, it was usually worst-case scenarios that were reported.

"It was usually an envelope of figures, one which said the planet could warm 6deg in the next 100 years and the other end of the envelope was perhaps half a deg in 100 years.

"And you know which one would be quoted," said Prof Auer.

"And the scientists were, I feel, in some respects, to blame because they never came forward and said wait a minute, you took that out of context, you know there's another end to it here."

That in turn started a rather insidious triangle in which maintaining that high danger, that crisis environment, drove the research funding, he said.

"Crises are what always drives the funding."

FULL STORY at: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/04/30/1626112.htm

======== LETTERS ========

(10) NEW STUDY: NO EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL INCREASE IN WATER VAPOUR CONTENT

Paul Biggs <p.m.biggs@bham.ac.uk>

Hi,

The new paper by Smith et al, suggests that there has been no global increase in water vapour content, and undermines the IPCC foundation stone of an enhancement of the increased warming effect of CO2 via increased atmospheric water vapour:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006.../2005GL025393.shtml

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L06705, doi:10.1029/2005GL025393, 2006

Variations in annual global precipitation (1979-2004), based on the Global Precipitation Climatology Project 2.5° analysis

Thomas M. Smith et al

Abstract

The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) has produced a combined satellite and in situ global precipitation estimate, beginning 1979. The annual average GPCP estimates are here analyzed over 1979-2004 to evaluate the large-scale variability over the period. Data inhomogeneities are evaluated and found to not be responsible for the major variations, including systematic changes over the period. Most variations are associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes. There are also tropical trend-like changes over the period, correlated with interdecadal warming of the tropical SSTs and uncorrelated with ENSO. Trends have spatial variations with both positive and negative values, with a global-average near zero.

-----------

Regards,

Paul Biggs

(11) RE: UK ENERGY COMPANIES COULD MAKE £1 BILLION WINDFALL FROM CARBON TRADING

Gerd-Rainer Weber <Gerd-Rainer.Weber@GVST.DE>

Wow, it took the BBC this long to realize that? Replace the "could make" by "are making" and you're getting closer to the truth.

Gerd Weber

(12) THE PROBLEM OF PLACING LM I-B IN THE ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BRONZE AGE

E.P. Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>

Hello Benny -

As reflected in two pieces recently circulated to the Conference, there seems to be a problem with the placement of LM I-B in the absolute chronology of the Bronze Age.

In the piece on the Ebers papyrus in the latest CC, we once again see the earlier considerable confusion over the chronology of the eruption of Thera:

"The generally accepted date for the event is around 1627 BC [11], while the ash retrieved in the Nile Delta indicates a 1609-1526 BC [12] date, and the confluence of archaeological, historical, scientific and biblical data indicate a 1602-1600 BC time point [13]."

In the same CC, we see that a tree ring series has now shown that the date from the ice cores for the final eruption of Thera to be correct: 1627 BCE, and this absolute date is now beyond contest.

Any interpretation of "biblical data" (i.l. biblical traditions) has to accord with physical reality: one may mine it for clues as to how to find physical remains, or then to try to throw some light on explaining them, but the physical reality is what it is. "biblical data" should never be confused with contemporary historical documents.

In "Aspects of Armageddon: An exploration of the role of volcanic eruptions in human history and civilization", John Grattan, in the CC:

"Volcanic eruptions do generate tsunamis which can be locally devastating, the eruptions of Krakatau in 1883 (Carey et al., 2000) and the Bronze Age eruption of Santorini (McCoy and Heiken, 2000) are good examples of this but these have short-term impacts on cultures which may not be distinguished in the archaeological record. [...]"

Actually, the "Minoan" response to the eruption of Santorini is seen in the archaeological record as LMI-B culture. The physical fact of the existence of LM I-B does not invalidate Grattan's overall conclusion, but rather re-inforces it, as it validates Grattan's over-all hypothesis that "Minoan" civilization was able to survive the eruption of Santorini.

It appears that instead what finally doomed "Minoan" civilization was the destruction of its military forces by the "Joshua" impact, as I have noted many times before:

http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc012102.html

which left them open to conquest by the Mycenean Greeks. Whether the Mycenean migration was prompted by long term climatic trends or short term climate impacts or other factors is still unknown. Whateever the causative factor for their migration, it appears that it took a "triple whammy" to finally bring an end to the dominance of "Minoan" civilization in the Aegean Basin, thus setting European technological development back by some 2,000 years at least.

While in any work of vast scope it is all too easy to loose details in summarizing, (and I know this all too well from personal experience), as the saying goes, the Devil is in the details, and it is important not to abruptly glide over the conclusions of the archaeologists who so carefully worked to document the chronology of the Santorini eruption.

all the best,

Man and Impact in the Americas

http://store.adventuresunlimitedpress.com/store.lasso?sub=detail&sid=8972F9EEC2EDE&item=23254

(13) AND FINALLY: INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND CREATIONISM: CREATING MILLIONS OF NEW SPECIES

MIT Technology Review, March 2006

http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14236&ch=biotech

The Darwinian Interlude

Biotechnology will do away with species. Good: cultural evolution is better than natural selection.

By Freeman Dyson

Carl Woese published a provocative and illuminating article, "A New Biology for a New Century," in the June 2004 issue of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. His main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, and the need for a new biology based on communities and ecosystems rather than on genes and molecules. He also raises another profoundly important question: when did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin himself understood it, based on the intense competition for survival among noninterbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution did not go back to the beginning of life. In early times, the process that he calls "horizontal gene transfer," the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time. Carl Woese is the world's greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy. Whatever he writes, even in a speculative vein, is to be taken seriously.

Woese is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, during which horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species. With its superior efficiency, it continued to prosper and to evolve separately. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became another species. And so it went on, until all life was divided into species.

The basic biochemical machinery of life evolved rapidly during the few hundred million years that preceded the Darwinian era and changed very little in the following two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species, once established, evolve very little. Darwinian evolution requires species to become extinct so that new species can replace them. Three innovations helped to speed up the pace of evolution in the later stages of the Darwinian era. The first was sex, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer within species. The second innovation was multicellular organization, which opened up a whole new world of form and function. The third was brains, which opened a new world of coördinated sensation and action, culminating in the evolution of eyes and hands. All through the Darwinian era, occasional mass extinctions helped to open opportunities for new evolutionary ventures.

Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization. And now, in the last 30 years, Homo sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal.

In the post-Darwinian era, biotechnology will be domesticated. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners, who will use gene transfer to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also, biotech games for children, played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of the general public, will give us an explosion of biodiversity. Designing genomes will be a new art form, as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and diversity to our fauna and flora.

Freeman Dyson is professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. His research has focused on the internal physics of stars, subatomic-particle beams, and the origin of life.

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