"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Two Under-reported Climate Stories

Rob Jacob at Climate Spin spots a result from Santer at al. indicating observed increases in atmospheric water vapor are caused by anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, and provides an explanation of its significance.

And, via In It reader cieldumort's livespace thing (which I don't entirely understand, but never mind that) an article in the Scotsman referring to observational work by Andrew Watson indicating that the ocean's uptake of CO2 is becoming dramatically less effective.

Update 10/22: Maybe the ocean story (which is an easier one to spin for the media and probably a bigger deal) will get some attention. There is a NASA press release today. If you have the media's ear, bang a drum about this.

Update 10/23: Eli has come across more bad news in this vein.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"livespace thing" ;)

It has its benefits, I'll have to admit. Via a number of communities I belong to on (livejournal) and the dozens and dozens of outstanding climate/weather/environmental feeds I have streaming through there, I am seldom shorted a fantastic assortment of opinion, news, updates, studies, etc.

Of course, the declining uptake of C02 is a double-edge sword for the oceans. On the one side, you have the virtually inevitable increase in the rate of global warming. On the other hand, the oceans are becoming fatally acidic at a somewhat slower pace.

In the end, I guess I can just think of a few other "sinks" I would much rather see a few hundred gigatons of carbon dropped on.

Anonymous said...

How about this for an underreported climate story:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/uoy-frs102207.php