Russian meteor explosion vs climate change
This video starts with a view of the explosion trail high in the atmosphere. But the real action starts after about 30 seconds when the shock wave and sonic booms reach the ground.
A 50 foot wide meteor travelling at 40,000 miles an hour slammed into the atmosphere above Russia on Friday. Over a thousand people were reported injured as the shock wave blew out windows and collapsed roofs.
It was the largest known meteor to hit the earth in over a century. The energy given off was equal to more than 20 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. Big, spectacular, impressive.
Meanwhile the invisible greenhouse gases that humans release, mostly from burning oil, coal and natural gas, are increasing the amount of energy in our atmosphere by that much more every five seconds -- non-stop.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen says the current increase in global warming is:
"...equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. That’s how much extra energy Earth is gaining each day."
Maybe that explains why the Arctic ice cap is in a "death spiral", forests are collapsing, freak storms are rewriting the record books, extreme rainfall is off the charts and epic heat waves and droughts are threatening our global food supply.
Two years ago Russia had another freak event: an epic heat wave that killed thousands of people, spawned record wildfires and so damaged their wheat crop that they banned exports for a year driving up global food prices.
Hansen published research showing this heat wave was fuelled by global warming. It would not have occurred if our fossil fuel emissions didn't happen to trap another 20 atomic bombs worth of extra energy every five seconds.
That Russian heat wave was so extreme it caused Russia’s notoriously climate-skeptical leadership to say things like:
“…what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past. This means that we need to change the way we work, change the methods that we used in the past… what is going on with the world’s climate at the moment should incite us all to make a more strenuous effort to fight global climate change.”
Since then, global emissions of greenhouse gases have accelerated to record levels.
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(4) Comments
That's why we should be spending billions to stop a potential temperature increase of .5 degrees over the next 500 years, and spend almost nothing searching for incoming 'angel of death' meteors. It's just common sense.
Why can't lefties think outside the herd?
That's why we should be spending billions
Billions? Unless by "we" you just mean Vancouverites, and by "spending" you mean spending annually. Doubtful any of the supporters would ever mention this, but complying with Kyoto would've cost every man woman and child in Canada just over 2000/yr. And of course complying with Kyoto was an 6% reduction not the 80% reduction we "need". With current technology, the cost of making an 80% reduction is greater than our GDP. Oh, and of course they'll never bring up the fact that even if we outlawed GHG emissions completely (which is impossible), Canada still couldn't reach the 80% reduction target simply because of changing land use. Should I even bring up the fact that China increased it's GHG emissions by an amount greater than Canada was supposed to reduce it's emissions according to Kyoto on a monthly basis every month for the past decade?
Canada could easily have hit its Kyoto targets. All everyone had to do was be forced to become carbon traders on Al Gores Chicago Climate Exchange and his Montreal Climate Exchange. Every Candaian was going to be issued a carbon credit card and the trading could begin immediately. Just imagine the day when your children recieve their first carbon credit card and could end up in carbon debt, what a day of glory for the proletariat.
Think I'm kidding about the carbon credit card? It was all ready to go in the UK, but was scrapped. But it's waiting in the wings in every western country.
Read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/dec/11/uk.greenpolitics
We owe it to ourselves and our children to educate ourselves on the known science of climate and to strive to learn as much as possible about this incredibly complex topic. Here's an excellent summary with readable explanations of what is known todate. It's a long read but not impossible to understand if you have some science education. Unlike many writers discussing this topic the author doesn't talk down and ridicule those who don't agree with him, instead carefully and thoroughly goes into the science as presently understood. The hysterical alarmists will howl about it but those with a curiosity about this topic will learn a lot.
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/Climate_Change_Science.html