The Rate Debate Slowing
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Ice Age - Impact CalcIce age makes every impact scenario inevitable Stipp (Staff writer for CNN) 04 (David Stipp. Staff writer. “The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues.” February 9. 2004 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/02/09/360120/index.htm) For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill-its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020: At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation, allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's. Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south. Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America. Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean islands, waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses. Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe. Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its location. The conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to cope. Its government is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources. China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding changes. As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible. History shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia, which is weakened by a population that is already in decline, for access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting over fishing rights, fisheries are disrupted around the world as water temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats. Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.) Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb. Ice Age - Checks WarmingMelting Icebergs dump iron into the ocean - solves catastrophic effects of warming Williams 9 — Andrew Williams, writer for clean technical a website dedicated to environmental news, JANUARY 4, 2009, Clean technical, Green Algae Bloom Process Could Stop Global Warming, http://cleantechnica.com/2009/01/04/green-algae-bloom-process-could-stop-global-warming/ The researchers, aboard the Royal Navy’s HMS Endurance, have found that melting icebergs off the coast of Antarctica are releasing millions of tiny particles of iron into the southern Ocean, helping to create huge ‘blooms’ of algae that absorb carbon emissions. The algae then sinks to the icy depths, effectively removing CO2 from the atmosphere for hundreds of years. According to lead researcher, Prof. Rob Raiswell of Leeds University, “The Earth itself seems to want to save us.” Scientists have known for some time that artificially created algal blooms could be used to absorb greenhouse gases, but the technique has been banned for fear of causing unforeseen side effects in fragile ecosystems. However, based on the UK team’s evidence that the process has been occurring naturally for millions of years, and on a wide scale, the UN has given the green light for a ground-breaking experiment later this month. The team will seek to create a massive algae bloom by releasing several tons of iron sulphate into the sea off the coast of the British island of South Georgia. The patch will apparently be large enough to be visible from space. If successful, the technique could be rolled out across vast swathes of the Great Southern Ocean. Scientists calculate that if the whole 20 million square miles was treated, it could remove up to three and a half Gigatons of C02, equivalent to one eighth of all global annual emissions from fossil fuels. It would be a huge irony if melting icebergs, until now a powerful symbol of the damage caused by global warming, reveal a process that may enable scientists to take steps that might drastically reduce, and potentially even halt, the threat of environmental catasrophe Increased oceanic iron levels solve CO2 emissions Nature 12 — Quirin Schiermeier, 18 July 2012, Dumping iron at sea does sink carbon, http://www.nature.com/news/dumping-iron-at-sea-does-sink-carbon-1.11028 In the search for methods to limit global warming, it seems that stimulating the growth of algae in the oceans might be an efficient way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after all. Despite other studies suggesting that this approach was ineffective, a recent analysis of an ocean-fertilization experiment eight years ago in the Southern Ocean indicates that encouraging algal blooms to grow can soak up carbon that is then deposited in the deep ocean as the algae die. In February 2004, researchers involved in the European Iron Fertilization Experiment (EIFEX) fertilized 167 square kilometres of the Southern Ocean with several tonnes of iron sulphate. For 37 days, the team on board the German research vessel Polarstern monitored the bloom and demise of single-cell algae (phytoplankton) in the iron-limited but otherwise nutrient-rich ocean region Each atom of added iron pulled at least 13,000 atoms of carbon out of the atmosphere by encouraging algal growth which, through photosynthesis, captures carbon. In a paper in Nature today, the team reports that much of the captured carbon was transported to the deep ocean, where it will remain sequestered for centuries1 — a 'carbon sink'. “At least half of the bloom was exported to depths greater than 1,000 metres,” says Victor Smetacek, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the study. The team used a turbidity meter — a device that measures the degree to which water becomes less transparent owing to the presence of suspended particles — to establish the amount of biomass, such as dead algae, that rained down the water column towards the sea floor. Samples collected outside the experimental area showed substantially less carbon being deposited in the deep ocean. Iron findings The EIFEX results back up a hypothesis by the late oceanographer John Martin, who first reported in 1988 that iron deficiency limits phytoplankton growth in parts of the subarctic Pacific Ocean2. Martin later proposed that vast quantities of iron-rich dust from dry and sparsely vegetated continental regions may have led to enhanced ocean productivity in the past, thus contributing to the drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide during glacial climates3 — an idea given more weight by the EIFEX findings. Some advocates of geoengineering think that this cooling mechanism might help to mitigate present-day climate change. However, the idea of deliberately stimulating plankton growth on a large scale is highly controversial. After noting that there were gaps in the scientific knowledge about this approach, the parties to the London Convention — the international treaty governing ocean dumping — agreed in 2007 that ‘commercial’ ocean fertilization is not justified (see 'Convention discourages ocean fertilization'). The finding that ocean fertilization does work, although promising, is not enough to soothe concerns over potentially harmful side effects on ocean chemistry and marine ecosystems, says Smetacek. Some scientists fear that massive ocean fertilization might produce toxic algal blooms or deplete oxygen levels in the middle of the water column. Given the controversy over another similar experiment (see 'Ocean fertilization experiment draws fire'), which critics said should not have been approved in the first place, the Alfred Wegener Institute will not conduct any further artificial ocean-fertilization studies, according to Smetacek. “We just don’t know what might happen to species composition and so forth if you were to continuously add iron to the sea,” says Smetacek. “These issues can only be addressed by more experiments including longer-term studies of natural blooms that occur around some Antarctic islands.” But some experts argue that artificial ocean-fertilization studies should not be abandoned altogether. “We are nowhere near the point of recommending ocean fertilization as a geoengineering tool,” says Ken Buesseler, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “But just because we don't know all the answers, we shouldn't say no to further research.” Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. 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