Bluescope Steel Chairman speaks out against the Carbon Tax

It is encouraging to see leading people from Australian industry speaking out – but we can only hope that the millions of workers that will be adversely affected by the Carbon Tax will not vote for it in 2012.

NASA: [Our current salinity measurements are not good, and we don't understand what's going on, but we think something big is happening, and we think it's bad, and we think it's caused by carbon dioxide]

When NASA's Aquarius mission launches, its radiometer instruments will take a "skin" reading of the oceans' salt content at the surface. From these data of salinity in the top 0.4 inch (1 centimeter) of the ocean surface, Aquarius will create weekly and monthly maps of ocean surface salinity all over the globe for at least three years.
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"Salinity has never been measured to the level of detail that SPURS is planning," Chao said.

The questions Chao, Schmitt and others hope to begin to answer with SPURS range from the smallest to the largest scale. For one, what are the physical processes that determine the location and magnitude of the high-salinity region in the Atlantic being studied? What is the salinity balance on monthly and seasonal time scales, plus regional and larger spatial scales?

Larger questions include how the ocean will respond to temperature and freshwater changes likely to come with a warming climate. How will the meridional overturning circulation -- the "global ocean conveyor belt," which has such a dominant effect on the planet's climate -- change?

"We can see in the patterns of salinity change that something big is going on with the water cycle," Schmitt said. "Eighty percent of the water cycle happens over the ocean. We need to document and understand how the ocean is responding."