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Lloyd’s of London’s 360 Reports on Climate Change and Risk Reports. Lloyd’s reports that the insurance industry should start planning and modeling now for a higher level of losses across the world by the middle of the century as both the severity and frequency of weather events increase. The alternative - waiting until definitive scientific pronouncements on impact at a regional level or likelihood of catastrophic change are available – seems like an increasingly risky strategy.

Excerpt from the Lloyd’s 360 Rapid Climate Change Report:

“Until now, we have tended to think of climate change as a gradual phenomenon which will take place slowly over a long period of hundreds – or perhaps thousands – of years. In turn, this thinking is likely to influence how we forecast and prepare for climate related loss, with the impact expected to be felt evenly over time, and any increase in loss taking place incrementally. In fact, the latest science presented in this report suggests that climate change is likely to bring increasingly dramatic, and possibly rapid, effects at a local level, which differ in their intensity and even in their outcome. In addition, a growing number of potential feedback mechanisms within the climate have the capacity to cause tipping points in the system and speed change further. While we cannot yet determine what the exact impact of climate change will be, the evidence is increasing to suggest we will see tangible change within our lifetime, and insurers and business should begin to consider and prepare for the range of outcomes now.”

With a wealth of new research becoming available recently, the global insurance sector and the wider business community should factor the latest science into its business planning.

• Global warming is not only changing the average climate, but will also make it more erratic which should be of particular concern to the insurance industry.
• As climate change takes hold, insurers and businesses should therefore keep a close watch on future developments, and be prepared to revise their longer term strategies regularly.
• While not all of the increased risks may result in huge losses which significantly damage the capital of the insurance industry, increased unexpected attritional losses could certainly impact financial performance on a regular basis.

Lloyd’s of London’s 360 Rapid Climate Change Report

Lloyd’s of London’s FINAL 360 Climate Change Report

Oct 4 2007 - Shrinking ice ‘locked into spiral of decline’ by Darren Devine, Western Mail

DRAMATIC new evidence showing that ice cover on the Arctic Ocean has fallen to its lowest level recorded proves the area is “locked into a spiral of decline”, a Welsh scientist said last night.

Bangor University Oceanographer Dr Tom Rippeth, who has a team doing research in Arctic, says the polar ice cap has shrunk by almost a third compared with its size this time last year.

Research from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) reveals that at 4.2m sq km the cap has shrunk by an area about seven times larger than the UK.

When compared to the typical September ice coverage for the 1960s and 70s the change is even greater, as the cap has shrunk to about half the size it was then.

Over the past 10 years the polar ice cap has never been observed to shrink by more than 0.2m square km, but this year has fallen by more than 1m square km.

Dr Rippeth insists the magnitude of the fall is clear evidence of how global warming is changing the planet.

He said, “The magnitude of the decline in arctic ice cover has taken everyone by surprise. It’s far too big to be a result of natural variability and tends to suggest that we are actually locked into a spiral of decline.”

link

“Night-shining” clouds are bringing a mystery that NASA has now made a mission to study- these hauntingly beautiful noctilucent clouds were previously restricted to the poles but are now being seen over Colorado. This photograph here was taken over the Juneau, Alaska, ice field in 1998.

‘Night-shining’ clouds, also known as ‘noctilucent’ clouds were discovered 120 years ago - the strangely luminescent clouds have been moving slowly toward the equator and also appear to be getting brighter and more numerous, too, said David Rusch, a University of Colorado atmospheric scientist.

NASA launched a $110 million AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) mission to measure noctilucent clouds and the circumstances in which they form - which may be linked to climate change. The AIM satellite will measure air temperature and pressure, moisture content and cloud dimensions.

Noctilucent clouds appear only at night at an altitude of 50 miles up in the atmosphere; a position which lets them catch sunlight no longer visible from Earth’s surface. Normal clouds are less than 10 miles up in the atmosphere. James Russell, an atmospheric scientist at Hampton University in Virginia, the NASA mission’s principal investigator reported that:

“They’re very beautiful, they look very mysterious, but aside from all that, these clouds are changing in ways we don’t understand … Observed increases in water vapor in the atmosphere - a consequence of warming - may also make it easier for the clouds to form”

Scott Bailey, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia said:

“Methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, may also be involved … Methane’s presence can increase the amount of water in the upper atmosphere, through a complicated chemical dance”

Researchers have many ideas about why noctilucent clouds are going through these changes and developments and most of them are related to global warming. NASA hopes to get answers with the AIM mission.

The Great Barrier Reef could be dead in 20 years unless there is a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, a marine biology expert in Australia said in early April.

Rising sea temperatures were bleaching the coral and causing it to die, said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

At the same time, increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were turning the world’s oceans more acidic and preventing corals from forming their limestone skeletons, he said. Prof Hoegh-Guldberg and Professor Terry Hughes provided expert advice to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report was delayed due to objections from China, the US and Saudi Arabia.

Read other reports:

• Barrier Reef ‘Dead in 20 Years’ by Perth Now
• Cyber Diver New Network: Great Barrier Reef or Great Diminishing Reef?
• Reef ‘Gone in 20 Years’ by Earth Dive

Toxic ocean algae swamping sections of California’s coastline has sickened hundreds of birds, sea lions and dolphins, in late April. The animals are being sickened by domoic acid, a naturally-occurring microscopic algae. Birds and sea mammals ingest the toxin by consuming fish and shellfish which consume the algae.Although algae blooms appear every year, environmentalists say this year’s crop is unusually thick and appears to be carrying higher concentrations of the acid, making it deadlier than normal. Animal protection agencies have reported a sharp increase in fatalities and illnesses amongst wildlife because of the thick blooms of algae that have appeared in the state’s coastal waters.

The International Bird Rescue Research Centre in San Pedro compared the environmental impact of the algae to an oil spill, saying several species of animals had been affected.

“I have been doing this work for 35 years and I have never seen anything like this as far as the number of species affected, other than an oil spill,’’ IBRRC director Jay Holcomb said.

“We have very serious concerns about what is happening to seabirds, and how it may affect populations.’’

More here…

A monster colossal squid thought to weigh 450 kilograms (990 pounds) has been landed in Timaru by the Sanford deep sea fishing vessel San Aspiring. New Zealand fishermen have caught the squid as it swam for food in Antarctic waters. It took the fishermen two hours to catch.

The colossal squid, scientific name “Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltoni”, is the largest living invertebrate and may be the first mature male specimen to have ever been found. Its eyes are the largest ever on a living creature, the size of dinner plates. The colossal squid has two rows of rotating sharp hooks, as well as a large beak - said to be a lethal combination.
Large numbers of sperm whales have been found with scars on their backs, thought to have been caused by the hooks of colossal squid. But the sperm whale is one creature that is larger and more fearsome. The majority of partial colossal squid specimens, along with a sizeable number of beaks, have been found inside sperm whales’ stomachs.

Professor Paul Rodhouse, head of biological sciences at the British Antarctic Survey, says whalers also noted deep scars and circular marks around the heads of their quarry. But, he thinks that the stories about squid being a threat to men or fishing vessels are being exaggerated.

Professor Rodhouse is worried about the recent influx of fishing vessels into Antarctic waters that target Patagonian toothfish, the fish that the colossal squid was eating when it was caught. He says the fish is a major prey species for colossal squid. “The fish can grow to over 2 meters (6 feet) but it’s being overfished in many parts of the southern ocean,” he said. “Toothfish and these squid form part of a deep water ecosystem that we know virtually nothing about—yet were are already exploiting it with commercial fisheries.”

Encounters between these two gigantic Sperm Whale and the Colossal Squid are believed to result in battles of epic proportions. Alleged encounters with humans include:

• A giant squid and a French naval vessel encounter was the basis for Jules Verne’s “squid of colossal dimensions” which was featured in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
• Sailors attacked by a giant squid after their ship sunk during the Second World War. At least one sailor was supposedly eaten.
• French yachtsmen taking part in the appropriately named Jules Verne Trophy reported that a 26-foot-long (8-meter) squid clamped itself to their boat - this year.

LINKS:

1. Super Squid Surfaces in Antarctic
2. Colossal Catch caught of Antarctica - National Geographic
   
3. Wikipedia - Colossal Squid
4. “Colossal Squid” Revives Legends of Sea Monsters - National Geographic

More than 1,600 sea bird carcasses had washed onto Unalaska shores over two days in September 2006 in a mysterious die-off that scientists are scrambling to understand.

In a collision with a boat, several hundred black, gull-like shearwaters died after flying into a crabbing boat that steamed through the early morning darkness in Unalaska Bay on a Wednesday morning, said Forrest Bowers, a fisheries biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game in Unalaska. The captain of the boat walked into Bowers’ office that day to report that a hail of shearwaters struck his boat for up to 30 minutes, Bowers said. The crew pitched the dead and dying birds overboard, the captain said, according to Bowers.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said they expect the total number of dead birds is much larger than the 1,600 carcasses that have been found and had coordinated a carcass retrieval to get birds delivered to laboratories for testing which is the real way to determine the cause of the dieoff they said. On Thursday August 31st 2006, they were also trying to contact people along the Aleutian Islands and out in the Pribilof Islands to see if they had spotted unusual numbers of dead shearwaters washing ashore — an event that would likely coincide with a natural die-off.

Seabird specialist Art Sowls at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge in Homer said he had neither heard nor read of massive numbers of shearwaters dying in a collision with a ship or ships.

“It’s not unusual to have birds dying,” he said, but to have hundreds or thousands of them die-off is unusual. He stated further that “Typically, you find a fairly small percentage of the ones that die,” Sowls said.

SEE THE REPORT HERE

Though this topic of bird deaths seems to be little known by most people except those that are directly affected; there have been some very interesting comments across blogs and other news sites which allow reader comments on the apparent mass die-out of birds.

Some are saying that together with the foul scent that pervaded New York around the time of the mass die out of birds in Austin, Texas and which has gone unexplained, that a possible explanation is the sudden emission of Methane gases by the melting permafrost. It was also noted that there have been reports of methane detectors going off at sea on board cargo ships. An interesting theory indeed. Others insist that there is something afoot, not necessarily a conspiracy theory, but something larger on the plate of earth’s natural evolution.

The latter would perhaps be welcomed by the Society for Conservation Biology which holds an annual meeting that was last held in Hawaii, August 2006. The despair was almost palpable amongst the scientists gathered there.

“I’m just glad I’m retiring soon and won’t be around to see everything disappear,” said P. Dee Boersma, former president of the society, during the opening night’s dinner. Other veteran field biologists around the table had murmured in sullen agreement.

At the next morning’s keynote address, Robert M. May, a University of Oxford zoologist who presides over the Royal Society and until last year served as chief scientific adviser to the British government, did his best to disabuse any remaining optimists of their rosy outlook.

According to May’s latest rough estimate, the extinction rate - the pace at which species vanish - accelerated during the past 100 years to roughly 1,000 times what it was before humans showed up. Various lines of argument, he explained, “suggest a speeding up by a further factor of 10 over the next century or so…. And that puts us squarely on the breaking edge of the sixth great wave of extinction in the history of life on Earth.”

Their ‘Termination of the Species Report’ is now available at the Scientific American for $5.00 USD HERE.

We were recently reading (and, to be quite honest, laughing) articles touting weather modification, a topic discussed very often by conspiracy theorists. The technology of weather modification has been pushed by many of these theorists as ‘secret’ above-board projects of the largest governments, particularly that of the United States.

They say ‘Curiosity Kills the Cat’ and curiosity seems to be making our Cheshire cat a bit grim. We decided to research weather modification on the internet and we hope that our readers do the very same with subjects of very important and/or sensitive nature. It is also valuable to read various sources of information on one particular topic - this ensures a fairly clear picture of any event reported and serves to extract the ‘half truths, lies and innuendos’ which sometimes seem to deliberately permeate the media. Those who practice certain beliefs also seem to be particular clever in fooling the masses as well as themselves.

It is a fact that the human psyche, once highly interested in any subject whilst believing strongly in it or having an inclination to do so, will in fact interpret information in such a manner as to lend proof that their theories are sound. This further serves to solder their opinions and beliefs. We believe that it is only through the practice of constant discussion and exchange of information with others of differing opinions that humankind can become less ‘addictive’ to their own beliefs and opinions.

Our methods of researching a subject includes reading into various multi-lingual reports which is essential to a fuller understanding of any topic. This is so important that we almost wish that we were versed in various other languages as the inability to do so makes a huge amount of other information less accessible. The understanding of language and languages is also vital to a fair opinion on any topic - especially those covered on a worldwide basis and which deal with the subject of politics. For those who wish to search for topics that they are highly interested in and who would like to search for articles, new reports or essays on the subjects are advised to use the online translation services of the Google search engine as well as others such as Babelfish from AltaVista.

To stop this preamble and get to the point, it is assumed that Weather Modification, sometimes known as ‘Artificial Weather’, is not practiced today but is only a theory - most people are not even aware of the subject matter. In fact, it is practiced by many countries, and has existed since as early as 1917 whilst having seemingly died down or taken a back seat in the 1970’s. But in researching the topic, we found that the practice has been very alive and well. What may explain its ‘absence’ from the current limelight may be the fact that world governments, the US in particular, are party to agreements with other countries that forbids any participant country to further research and develop this kind of science or any particular science which may prove harmful to society. This is specifically for environmental, safety and security reasons of course.

Firstly, let us prove that artificial weather exists today and list our discoveries of its practices:.

1. Weather Modification Inc – Their site introduction: Weather modification is also commonly known as cloud seeding, cloud modification, atmospheric resource management, and precipitation management. Weather Modification, Inc. specializes and excels in all aspects of this water management technology. Specifically, we offer a complete range of services from turn-key operational programs for rainfall increase (rain enhancement), snow pack augmentation, hail damage mitigation (hail suppression), and fog clearing (fog dissipation), to technical assistance and/or technology transfer for all of these. In addition, we can provide complete weather radar services, including interfaces with TITAN full-sky radar data archival software, a complete line of proven and FAA-approved seeding equipment, seeding aircraft, atmospheric research instrumentation, and aircraft modification for these purposes. Also see their atmospheric research page
2. CNN - Project Storm Fury
3. Wikipedia - Project Stormfury
4. India Daily - Methods of Artificial Weather Manipulation(AWM) help agriculture, devastate the enemy and control the world economy
5. Business Week - Rainmaking Has Its True Believers — And Skeptics - Weather modification isn’t just about giant storm systems. Rainmaking and hail prevention are considered established arts in some.
6. Business Week - Herding Hurricanes
7. Scientific American – Taming Hurricanes
8. Scientific American – Controlling Hurricanes
9. Weather modification program attempts to prevent all HAIL from breaking LOOSE - LAKIN - For more than 30 years, a single-minded and dedicated group of individuals has concentrated their efforts from April through September on controlling the weather in western Kansas. A new study indicates that work, done under the auspices of the Western Kansas Weather Modification Program, has made inroads in suppressing hailstorms, an ever-present threat for farmers and their crops.

Countries that practice weather modification and cloud seeding:

1. USA – Though funding has been halted by the government for the advancement of weather modification, private companies are free to sell business based on the technology - dozens of state, local, and private operations continue in 10 states, including California, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. Vail Mountain in Colorado and many other ski resorts pay for cloud seeding, and Vail estimates that teasing more precipitation from clouds boosts its snow pack by 15%.
2. China – China has 35,000 people engaged in weather management, and it spends $40 million a year on alleviating droughts or stemming hail that would damage crops.
3. Russia - Russian officials claim to order up clear skies for Moscow’s May Day parade. It’s done by saturating clouds with dry ice, producing so many tiny droplets that drops can’t grow big enough to fall as rain — at least for a while.
4. Australia - Parliament of Australia Committee Activities (Background Paper “Harvesting the Skies”);

Altered Oceans Report by the Los Angeles Times - By Kenneth R. Weiss, Usha Lee McFarling - Dec 27, 2006

This report makes the extent of damage to fishing, sea life and even humans very clear. The appearance of the Red Tide Algae has already cost the lives of scores of sea animals and affect the health of humans that walk along what are now deadly shores.

This and other algae, including the rapid growth of Lyngbya (an ancient, pre-historic algae) are known to cause memory loss in humans, respiratory complications such as Asthma and severe skin problems and almost certain death to sea-life. Animals which eat sea-food if left untreated, die in most cases. Survivors seem to suffer permanent neurological damage. Advanced sea-life, which are most like humans, seem to be the most severely affected and threatened.

These new algae phenomenon have been met with official lifeguard warnings and visitors are advised to stay away from shores or wear breathing masks if they must go in the vicinity of the sea.

“Altered Oceans” is a troubling five-part-series on the present growing crisis in the world seas which now contain 38 ‘dead’ spots instead of only 3 as decades ago. These numbers are expected to double every decade, which means that in 5 years, the minimum quantity of ‘dead spots’ in the earth’s oceans are expected to number at least 57. Key phrases in the 5-part Series on the Crisis in the Seas by the Los Angeles Times are as follows:

1. Part 1 - Crucial Habitats are Falling Victims to the Changing Chemistry of the Oceans
2. Part 2 - Toxic Algae and bacteria are poisoning marine mammals and other sea life
3. Part 3 - Red Tides multiply and worsen carrying their toxics ashore
4. Part 4 - Seaborne plastic debris poses a lethal hazard to wildlife
5. Part 5 - Seawater is turning acidic threatening fish, coral and other marine life

Visit the LA Times website to view the Crisis in the Seas.