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Environmental officials warned 30 years ago the Maldives could be completely covered by water due to global warming-induced sea level rise. That didn’t happen. The Indian Ocean did not swallow the Maldives island chain as predicted by government officials in the 1980s. In September 1988, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported a “gradual rise in average sea level is threatening to completely cover this Indian Ocean nation of 1196 small islands within the next 30 years,” based on predictions made by government officials. Then-Environmental Affairs Director Hussein Shihab told AFP “an estimated rise of 20 to 30 centimetres in the next...

Rising global sea levels may actually be beneficial to the long-term future of coral reef islands, such as the Maldives, according to new research published in Geophysical Research Letters. Low-lying coral reef islands are typically less than three metres above sea level, making them highly vulnerable to rising sea levels associated with climate change. However, research has found new evidence that the Maldives - the world's lowest country - formed when sea levels were higher than they are today... They found that large waves caused by distant storms off the coast of South Africa led to the formation of the...

Back in 1998, when we had the super El Niño, some of the warm water pooled east and west of Australia (seen in the 1998 image below) and damaged coral reefs there, setting off a cottage industry for noisy alarmy/worry types like Ove Hoegh-Guldberg that have turned the “save the coral reefs” issue into a career.1998 Super El ñino – Image: NOAA/NESDIS – click to enlarge Now it seems that mother nature has simply ignored his concerns and does what she does best – adapt and fill the void, and saved the reefs on her own. This must be...

The exploration vessel Nautilus, with a team of experts of the University of Haifa’s Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences, headed by Prof. Zvi Ben Avraham, discovered for the first time an area of reefs with deep-sea corals in the Mediterranean, offshore of Israel. This area apparently stretches over a few kilometers, 700 meters under the surface and some 30-40 km off the coast of Tel Aviv. According to the researchers, this southeastern region of the Mediterranean has only sparse sea life and therefore the discovery is in fact parallel to discovering an oasis in the middle of an...

Climate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years. The reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a period of dramatic swings in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). "As humans continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the climate is once again on the threshold of a new regime, with dire consequences for reef ecosystems unless we get control of climate change," said coauthor Richard Aronson,...

Guest post by David ArchibaldWillis Eschenbach’s post on lab work on coral response to elevated carbon dioxide levels, and The Reef Abides, leads to a large scale, natural experiment in Papua New Guinea. There are several places at the eastern end of that country where carbon dioxide is continuously bubbling up through healthy looking coral reef, with fish swimming around and all that that implies.Coral Reef at Dobu Island with carbon dioxide bubbling through it (photo: Bob Halstead)What that implies is that ocean acidification is no threat at all. If the most delicate, fragile, iconic ecosystem of them all can...

Creating the super-strong material out of something harmful could kill two birds with one stone. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is at its highest levels in hundreds of thousands of years and as matters get worse, it's more crucial than ever to find a way to reverse it. A study released earlier this month presents a novel idea with what to do with the gas humanity can't seem to stop making: Turn it into something useful. Specifically, high-quality carbon nanotubes. The main cause of global warming, carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas that is released through using fossil...

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 2.7 percent from 2016 levels, according to the EPA. Emissions on a per-capita basis hit a 67-year low last year, federal data shows, and supporters are touting EPA’s data as proof Trump’s agenda is working. EPA’s new data comes on news that, globally, greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise to historic highs by the end of the year, despite nearly 200 countries signing the Paris climate accord.

Over the past decade, both the United States and Europe have made major strides in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at home. That trend is often held up as a sign of progress in the fight against climate change. But those efforts look a lot less impressive once you take trade into account. Many wealthy countries have effectively “outsourced” a big chunk of their carbon pollution overseas, by importing more steel, cement and other goods from factories in China and other places, rather than producing it domestically. Britain, for instance, slashed domestic emissions within its own borders by one-third between...

Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston. Project leader, Professor Ian Power (Trent University, Ontario, Canada) said: "Our work shows two things. Firstly, we have explained how and how fast magnesite forms naturally. This is a process which takes hundreds to thousands of years in nature at Earth's surface. The second...

“We think we may have found the answer. Increased circulation in the Southern Ocean allowed carbon dioxide to leak into the atmosphere, working to warm the planet,” said Princeton University’s Professor Daniel Sigman, co-author of the study. For years, researchers have known that growth and sinking of phytoplankton pumps carbon dioxide deep into the ocean, a process often referred to as the ‘biological pump.’ “The biological pump is driven mostly by the low latitude ocean but is undone closer to the poles, where carbon dioxide is vented back to the atmosphere by the rapid exposure of deep waters to the...

July 28, 2018Earth, Environment Scientists Predict Mass Extinction Could Be Triggered By 2100 by Ben Renner BOSTON — Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) predict that by 2100, the earth’s oceans will contain so much carbon that a sixth mass extinction will begin. “This is not saying that disaster occurs the next day,” explains Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, about his recent study in a media release. “It’s saying that, if left unchecked, the carbon cycle would move into a realm which would be no longer stable,...

Once more, science provides bad news for global warming alarmists. U.S. CO2 levels again declined during 2017, despite overall global output again rising. Credit U.S. fracking and the natural gas boom. But don't worry: the hysteria won't end. The new report, based on U.S. data, shows clearly the U.S. continuing downward trend. "The U.S. emitted 15.6 metric tons of CO2 per person in 1950," wrote the Daily Caller. "After rising for decades, it's declined in recent years to 15.8 metric tons per person in 2017, the lowest measured levels in 67 years." That's right. 67 years. Green groups and leftist...

Europe is the midst of a severe CO2 (carbon dioxide) shortage. One result is a shortage of dry ice, which impacts an airlines’ ability to offer ice cream onboard. Now, airlines like United have been forced to suspend ice cream sundae service on flights out of London. Without getting too technical or boring you to death, most CO2 used for food-processing is created in ammonia plants in Europe. These plants are predominantly in the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands and France. The biggest use for CO2 is in fertilizers, with demand peaking during the cooler months. Consequently, many plants shut...

LONDON (AP) — No beer at this time of year? A British trade group says there’s a shortage of carbon dioxide in Northern Europe, sparking fears that drinks may lack fizz just as thirsty soccer fans fill pubs for the World Cup. Gavin Partington, director-general of the British Soft Drinks Association, says the shortage is due to the closure of several production sites for various reasons, including seasonal maintenance. But industry publication Gasworld says the situation is worse this year because normal maintenance has coincided with technical issues at chemical plants that also produce carbon dioxide.

Even if global warming is curbed and the increase in global temperature is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, scientists warn rising CO2 concentrations could still trigger a dangerous increase in extreme weather. Broadly speaking, more CO2 translates to higher temperatures, but the relationship between atmosphere and climate is complex, and scientists say there are scenarios in which warming could be limited to 1.5 degrees, despite a sizable increase in atmospheric CO2. New climate models developed by researchers at the University of Bristol and the University of Oxford suggest CO2 levels, not global temperatures, are a better predictor of the most...

Scientists Prove Limestone Can Form Quickly BY TIM CLAREY, PH.D. * | THURSDAY, JUNE 07, 2018 Many environmentalists are concerned with the anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. Research projects are being funded across the globe to find ways to sequester the “extra” CO2 produced by these processes in an effort to save our planet. These results show that the primary minerals that compose limestone can rapidly form—easily within the timeframe of the global Flood in Genesis. One of these projects was discussed recently in an article by Valeria Perasso of the BBC News Service.1 She...

Front-line negotiators from more than 190 nations gathering for climate talks in Bonn on Monday face a daunting task: bring the 2015 Paris Agreement to life. The world's only climate treaty pledges to cap global warming at "well under" two degrees Celsius and prevent manmade CO2 from leeching into the atmosphere by century's end. But it left a mountain of critical rules and procedures to be worked out. "This may sound like a technical exercise, but it matters," Todd Stern, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and the top climate diplomat under Barack Obama, said in...

President Trump's pick to be the new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is not a fan of the Paris climate agreement, the treaty that claims it will slow global warning by reducing the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Politicians from most of the world's nations signed the deal, and President Obama said "we may see this as the moment that we finally decided to save our planet." That's dubious. Trump wisely said he will pull America out of the deal. He called it a "massive redistribution of United States wealth to other countries." I'll bet Al Gore and most of the...

The White House plans to withdraw Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination to head the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House official confirmed to CNN Saturday. Hartnett White, who would have overseen environmental and energy policies across the government, had described the belief in "global warming" as a "kind of paganism" for "secular elites" during a September 2016 interview on "The Right Perspective," an online conservative radio show. She has also said the goal of climate activists and the United Nations was an all-powerful, one-world government and "planetary management," KFile reported. President Donald Trump announced Hartnett White's nomination in October and...