Nature 451, 286-288 (17 January 2008)
Climate models predict that the ocean's circulation will weaken in response to global warming, but the warming at the end of the last ice age suggests a different outcome.
There is an old truism in climate circles that the cold climate at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), which occurred 21,000 years ago, had stronger winds. This idea fits with the common observation that it is windier in the winter than in the summer because there is greater thermal contrast within the atmosphere in the winter hemisphere. Temperature reconstructions from the LGM show that Equator-to-pole gradients in sea surface temperature were indeed larger — that is, the polar oceans were colder than the tropical ocean at the LGM in comparison with the temperature differences today.
It is now becoming clear that the winds in the atmosphere drive most of the circulation in the ocean.
Former President Bill Clinton was in Denver, Colorado, stumping for his wife yesterday.
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
Coal prices are set to rise by more than 50 percent this year as demand for power to fuel growth in China and other emerging economies helps make it a recession-proof commodity, a top analyst said on Wednesday.
In China alone, power generating capacity is expected to rise to 950 gigawatts in 2010, up from current capacity of 713 gigawatts. Coal supplies 80 percent of current capacity, and will contribute even more to the expansion.
RWE AG is halting investments in new German power plants over concerns that rising costs of processing carbon dioxide emissions will lower profitability, Ulrich Jobs, head of RWE's power unit, told Financial Times Deutschland.
Differences between the United States and other parties might hinder the on-going Major Economies Meeting on Energy Safety and Climate Change from reaching long-term goals, a U.S. representative hinted here Wednesday.
"We're not trying to pick a number (of issues) for long-term goals but just to accelerate the process" in efforts to combat climate change, said Boyden Gray, U.S. special envoy to the EU.
The results obtained by this procedure are depicted in the figure below, where it can be seen, in the words of its creator, that "the mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values."
European power is a great business. Like producers everywhere, Europe's utilities are shielded from international competition by the need to produce electricity near their customers. Many get extra protection from authorities' foot-dragging on structural reform. And, since 2005, most have enjoyed an additional fillip. Under the European Emissions Trading Scheme, customers have paid for the permits the utilities require to produce carbon, despite the fact that, so far, the companies have received them for free.
The head of Britain's business lobby said yesterday that there was no chance of Britain or Europe meeting the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by the deadline set by Brussels last week.
Western intermediaries and speculators have already ploughed millions into the Russian market — five times more than Russian investors, say economy ministry officials — in anticipation of a potential 3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) market.
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