Category: Climate Change

Climate Change, Uncategorized

“It’s Quite Scary”- Climate Scientists Alarmed as Europe Melts in Record Heat

Stockholm (AFP) – Researchers expressed concern Thursday about the rapid pace of climate change, after a glacier on Sweden’s Kebnekaise mountain melted so much in sweltering Arctic temperatures that it is no longer the country’s highest point.

“It’s quite scary,” Gunhild Ninis Rosqvist, a Stockholm University geography professor who has been measuring the glacier for many years as part of climate change research, told AFP.

via “It’s Quite Scary”- Climate Scientists Alarmed as Europe Melts in Record Heat

Climate Change, Climate Change denial, Climate Change Deniers, Uncategorized

Will heatwave shift thinking by climate change deniers?

 IDIOTS HERE AND ABROAD STILL SOWING DOUBT WITH MEDIA ASSISTANCE

Could the heat and extreme weather shift climate change denial?

Could the heat and extreme weather shift climate change denial?

Extreme heatwaves, droughts, raging fires. What we are observing is climate change in action. The debate is over.

  • by Nick Miller

The Global Warming Policy Forum in Britain has striven greatly to sow doubt on climate science and counted high-profile politicians in its ranks. It has hosted former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard. The former said climate change, if it existed, was “probably doing good” and the latter dismissed global warming as a “religion” and the “latest progressive cause”.

“It just doesn’t make sense any more in 2018 and, in the middle of this summer, it just isn’t good enough any more to just frame the debate ‘is climate change real?’

“If you ask an adult of 30 years or older how was it like when you were young, they can tell the difference themselves. It’s the same story all around the world.” and we can  all now observe it.

“As long as the BBC and other media give the impression that there is any significant doubt about this … then people won’t take action.”

 It’s part of a bigger trend: extremists have weaponised free speech, insisting on platforms to publicly debate the absurd, to spread conspiracy theories and clog up sane debate. Any move to ignore them is branded censorship.

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Eurotunnel chaos as Britain braces for record hottest day
Extreme weather

Eurotunnel chaos as Britain braces for record hottest day

via Will heatwave shift thinking by climate change deniers?

Climate Change

A business as usual approach to climate change – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Professor Michael Mann has stated: “Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.””

The issue with increased greenhouse gases and warm Oceans is that they do not rapidly change when mitigating strategies are employed. Greenhouse gases can take centuries to dissipate. Through a business as usual approach there is a continuing to increase in the release of greenhouse gases creating warmth in Oceans and Atmosphere. According to Frydenberg, Canavan, Joyce, Abbott, Kelly et al, these views are held by people holding an extreme left-wing ideology. But, a more rational view is that climate science is underpinned by Physics and Chemistry and other science disciplines. Climate science is independent of political ideology.

Already millions of people have been killed by fossil fuel emissions, we are now observing numerous people being killed by extreme events in Western countries caused through climate change.

via A business as usual approach to climate change – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Climate Change

As a drought takes hold, what is the best plan for Australia’s farms?

“Droughts are getting hotter because the planet is warming,” says Gergis, who spent a decade studying accounts and records of the country’s weather. “It’s not just natural variability that we are dealing with any more.”

In her book she also cites the CSIRO and the bureau’s Climate Change in Australia, that projects average temperature increases of about 4 degrees compared with the 1986-2005 baseline for much of eastern Australia by 2090 if global carbon emissions continue unabated. For Victoria, Tasmania and south-western WA, the temperate rise will be closer to 3.5 degrees.

via As a drought takes hold, what is the best plan for Australia’s farms?

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Today’s Abnormally hot Arctic Temperatures not observed since Time of Christ

The annual State of the Climate Report, compiled by more than 450 scientists from over 60 countries, describes worsening climate conditions worldwide in 2017, the same year that US President Donald Trump pulled out of the landmark Paris climate deal.

The United States is the world’s second leading polluter after China, but has rolled back environmental safeguards under Trump, who has declared climate change a “Chinese hoax” and exited the Paris deal signed by more than 190 nations as a path toward curbing harmful emissions.

The 300-page report issued by the American Meteorological Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mentioned the word “abnormal” a dozen times, referring to storms, droughts, scorching temperatures and record low ice cover in the Arctic.

Today’s Abnormally hot Arctic Temperatures not observed since Time of Christ

Climate Change

New Report Documents Corporate Media’s Widespread Failure to Cover Link Between Climate Crisis and Extreme Weather

By not providing context for heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and wildfires, the news media is contributing to climate-related complacency, report finds

via New Report Documents Corporate Media’s Widespread Failure to Cover Link Between Climate Crisis and Extreme Weather

Climate Change

Australian governments concede Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘collapse’

 

“Respected coral scientists have documented in peer-reviewed journals that most of the world’s coral reefs will not survive unless the global temperature increase is limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” it said.

However WWF-Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said Australia’s emissions reduction efforts were not even in line with limiting warming to 2°.

He cited a 2017 report by the United Nations environment program that found Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were set to far exceed its pledge under the Paris accord. This agreement aims to limit global temperature rises this century to well below 2° and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°.

via Australian governments concede Great Barrier Reef headed for ‘collapse’

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Air pollution linked to 3.2 million cases of diabetes in 2016 – study — RT World News

“Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally,” Ziyad Al-Aly, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University, said in a news release. Pollution is thought to reduce insulin production and trigger inflammation, preventing the body from converting blood glucose into energy.

Al-Aly and his colleagues estimate that pollution contributed to 3.2 million new cases of diabetes globally in 2016, representing about 14 percent of all global diabetes cases that year. They also estimate that 8.2 million years of healthy life were lost in 2016 due to pollution-linked diabetes, representing about 14 percent of all healthy years lost due to diabetes of any cause.

via Air pollution linked to 3.2 million cases of diabetes in 2016 – study — RT World News

Climate Change

Study Shows 300,000 US Homes at Risk, $1 Trillion Price Tag as Rising Seas Trigger Chronic Flooding

Damage to homes in coastal areas could set off a domino effect—eroding property values, weakening tax bases, and affecting schools and infrastructure

via Study Shows 300,000 US Homes at Risk, $1 Trillion Price Tag as Rising Seas Trigger Chronic Flooding

Climate Change, Climate Denial School

Inside the AEF, the climate denial group hosting Tony Abbott as guest speaker | Environment | The Guardian

Tony Abbott

The AEF’s YouTube channel has just 11 subscribers and has posted only one video, from December 2016.

In May 2017, the AEF lent its logo to a letter to US President Donald Trump to offer “enthusiastic support” for his commitments to withdraw from the UN Paris climate agreement. But between July 2017 and February 2018, there was virtually nothing posted on its website.

Much of that website, including the “Climate News” section, is content from former Institute of Public Affairs fellow Alan Moran and postings that variously dismiss human-caused climate change and renewable energy, in particular wind power.
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Ridd has been a director at the AEF since 2005. That’s a neat segue into the AEF’s history.

In late 2004, the Institute of Public Affairs – by then already pushing out climate science misinformation – held its “Eureka forum” to work out how to push back against “environmental fundamentalism” that, it claimed, was “denying farmers, foresters, fishermen, prospectors, miners, beekeepers, 4WD enthusiasts and others access rights, property rights, water rights”.

via Inside the AEF, the climate denial group hosting Tony Abbott as guest speaker | Environment | The Guardian

Climate Change

Antarctic ice loss triples in decade sparking fears of serious trouble

 

Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tonnes of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels half a millimetre every year, a team of 80 scientists has reported.

The rate of melting has tripled in the past decade, the study concluded. If the acceleration continues, some of scientists’ worst fears about rising oceans could be realised, leaving low-lying cities and communities with less time to prepare than they had hoped.

via Antarctic ice loss triples in decade sparking fears of serious trouble

Climate Change

Record-breaking heat continues across Europe | | Al Jazeera

A sunset in Dresden. This May was the warmest in Germany since 1889 and comes after the warmest April since records began in 1881. [Filip Singer/EPA]

Record temperatures have been recorded in many European countries. Germany, Finland, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Croatia all reported the warmest May in at least a century. The Netherlands experienced the warmest May in 300 years.

There is no sign of the weather pattern changing any time soon, with warm air expected to continue across much of central and southern Europe as well as the associated threat of thunderstorms.

via Record-breaking heat continues across Europe | | Al Jazeera

Climate Change

Climate Change hammers US Coasts as Sea Level Rise *doubles* High Tide Floodings

. Along the Southwestern Pacific Coast, flood frequencies are predicted to be about 70% higher in 2018 than in 2000 due to the predicted mild El Niño . . .

via Climate Change hammers US Coasts as Sea Level Rise *doubles* High Tide Floodings

Climate Change

Peter Ridd’s sacking pushes the limit of academic freedom | Gay Alcorn | Opinion | The Guardian

‘The massive coral bleaching in recent years was no cause for concern, because coral grew back, [Ridd] claimed.’ Bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef near Port Douglas, February 2017.

James Cook’s actions are premised on the belief that the University is greater than just the individuals within it and unlike Thatcherites Society does exist and it’s patterns of behaviour are there to deliver an outcome beneficial to everyone in the excercise and methodology of in this case Marine Science. Ridd demands a bigger space and the breakdown of the rules of discourse declaring in doing so that there is no such thing as a university as Thatcher did when she said there is no such thing as Society only individuals and the power they can enforce. He refuses to see James Cook as a Collective and bring down it’s traditions like a  card house. Here we have a conservative fighting for academic anarchy and being supported by the Murdochians of the media. However James Cook isn’t soapbox corner nor does it feel the need to be reduced to it. So they are assisting Ridd in his right to remove himself and find a soapbox to from which to continue his opinions (ODT)

I hate to say it because we know what this is really about. The cause of Ridd has been championed by those parts of the media and certain institutes – well, the Institute of Public Affairs – that have done all they humanly can to stop serious action in this country against climate change.
They have no interest in fair-minded coverage of the weight of scientific evidence, now overwhelming, that human action is causing global warming, and that urgent action is required globally to limit its dangerous impacts. Their interest is ideological, with an endearing lack of self-awareness in their charge that the “warmists” are the ideologues. They leap on the 3% or so of scientists who argue their colleagues have got it all wrong, and would risk everything on those odds.

So, it is not that these Ridd champions – Andrew Bolt, Terry McCrann, the Australian, which now reports as fact that Ridd is a “marine science whistle blower”– have any inherent concern about academic freedom.

via Peter Ridd’s sacking pushes the limit of academic freedom | Gay Alcorn | Opinion | The Guardian

Climate Change

World Temperature Rise Nears Danger Level

The researchers investigated the overlap between socio-economic development and a range of climate change risks, to try to identify the vulnerability hotspots if the global mean temperature should rise by 1.5°C, 2°C or 3°C by 2050, compared with the pre-industrial baseline.

The researchers are from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the universities of Oxford (UK) and Washington (US).

They report in the journal Environmental Research Letters that they developed 14 impact indicators in three main sectors – water, energy, and food and environment. These indicators include a water stress index, water supply seasonality, clean cooking access, heat stress events, habitat degradation, and crop yield changes.

World Temperature Rise Nears Danger Level

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Trump kills NASA program to Track Greenhouse Gases that cause Global Heating

 

A NASA program that cost $10 million per year to track carbon and methane, key greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, has been cancelled, a US space agency spokesman said Thursday.

The end of the program — called the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) — which tracked sources and sinks for carbon and made high-resolution models of the planet’s flows of carbon — was first reported by the journal Science.

“Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has quietly killed the CMS,” the report said, describing the move as the latest in a “broad attack on climate science” mounted by the White House.

via Trump kills NASA program to Track Greenhouse Gases that cause Global Heating

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Why George Pell dined with under-fire EPA’s Scott Pruitt in secret

Pell, the Vatican’s treasurer, has previously dismissed the science linking greenhouse gas emissions with climate change, calling it “hysteric and extreme claims” and “a symptom of pagan emptiness”.

His presence at the dinner is likely to raise eyebrows in the Vatican following Pope Francis’ declaration in 2015 that the science is “clear” and climate change is a “moral issue that must be addressed in order to protect the Earth”.

via Why George Pell dined with under-fire EPA’s Scott Pruitt in secret

Climate, Climate Change

The Bering Sea’s ice has never melted this early before | Grist

On Alaska’s West Coast, the feeble April sun is shining this week on a fresh spot of open water. The sea ice found there for ages every spring is gone.

Ice in the Bering Sea, the narrow body of water between Russia and Alaska, has dropped to its lowest springtime level since at least 1850. In all that time, no other year has come close. After a winter filled with unusually high temperatures, sea ice now sits at less than 10 percent of what could previously be considered “normal”.

“We’ve fallen off a cliff,” said Rick Thoman, a climatologist at the National Weather Service in Alaska, in a tweet.

via The Bering Sea’s ice has never melted this early before | Grist

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Climate change: Australia’s position is unconscionable for a wealthy country – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Recent science indicates that with leakage rates as little as 3 per cent, emissions from gas are no better than coal fired power stations.

Fugitive measurements in Australian gas fields are poorly regulated and are currently unknown.

In the US, emissions from unconventional gas mining range from 2 per cent to 17 per cent.

The NT government report acknowledges the problem and hopes piously “that the NT and Australian governments seek to ensure that there is no net increase in the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions emitted in Australia from any onshore shale gas produced in the NT”.

This hope remains unfulfilled in any Australian gas field.

The development of NT gas will inevitably cause an increase in Australia’s domestic emissions, as it did in Queensland.

France banned fracking in 2011. President Macron brings “Planet B” to Australia soon

via Climate change: Australia’s position is unconscionable for a wealthy country – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Climate Change, Uncategorized

Fulfilling ‘Feedback Loop’ Fears, New Study Shows Melting Ice Could Spell Disaster Faster Than Previously Thought

As Antarctica's ice sheets melt, a new study finds, they may be contributing to further melting of glaciers in a "feedback loop." (Photo: Ronald Woan/Flickr/cc)

When cold surface water no longer sinks into the depths, a deeper layer of warm ocean water can travel across the continental shelf and reach the bases of glaciers, retaining its heat as the cold waters remain above. This warmer water then rapidly melts the glaciers and the large floating ice shelves connected to them.

via Fulfilling ‘Feedback Loop’ Fears, New Study Shows Melting Ice Could Spell Disaster Faster Than Previously Thought

Climate Change

Climate wars have cost us the chance to lead

NEG’s new framework may raise costs, industry groups say

The climate wars between the major political parties have cost us a host of lost business and employment opportunities, even a global leadership role, and yet we drift on without an energy policy that might provide some relief to rising power costs and some strategy to meet our commitments to reduce emissions.

The government’s most recent policy, the National Electricity Guarantee (NEG), is the fourth most effective response, only being proposed after an emissions trading scheme, an emissions intensity scheme and Finkel’s clean energy target were sequentially rejected.

via Climate wars have cost us the chance to lead

Climate Change

Facing up to hardship in the Pacific

ECONOMIES BATTERED BY THE WEATHER

Tukuitonga told the gathering the South Pacific countries, through climate change alone, had been taking massive losses to annual gross domestic product (GDP) – 20-30% or more — due to the effects of extreme weather events, especially cyclones.

While they are among some of the world’s poorest in dollar terms, for a bad year like 2009-10, those countries would be losing overall some $10 billion.

More figures reeled off by Dr Tukuitonga set out the pattern of relentless bad news, against which he offered some patches of light in terms of actions being taken, or which might be taken, by governments and other interests.

via Facing up to hardship in the Pacific

Climate Change

Global Warming Is Getting Worse, Fast

 

 

1)Global surface temperatures during the three years from 2014 to 2016 – each hotter than the last – boosted the total level of global warming since 1900 by 25%, according to new research.

2)A separate study has confirmed that heat extremes, too, have outpaced the global average. Maximum temperatures during the hottest heat waves have in the last 30 years risen three times faster – especially in crowded cities that are home to more than 10 million – than average temperatures as a whole.

3)And a third study warns that unless the world’s nations start to reduce carbon emissions, then within the next 17 or 18 years, planetary temperatures will be at least 1.5°C above the world average for most of human history.

And 35 to 41 years from now, these temperatures will have climbed 2°C above the level that held before the Industrial Revolution, and the arrival of fossil fuels as a global energy source.

via Global Warming Is Getting Worse, Fast

Climate Change

A Fragmented Review of Climate Change – » The Australian Independent Media Network

1)Oceans act as a sink for warmth, it takes them a long time to warm or cool through their sheer volume. In 2017 they were the warmest ever recorded.
2)2017 was the second or third warmest year recorded, depending on which dataset was used. Of significance, 2017, was the warmest year recorded without the influence of an El Nino event.
3)The Arctic sea ice extent and volume have continued to decrease, the lowest extent in September was the eighth lowest ever recorded. Volume has changed downward by about 80% since 1979.
4)Antarctic is being investigated quite profusely at present, its sea ice has been at low levels. The huge 5,698 square kilometre Larson C ice sheet broke clear in July 2017. A number of major ice sheets are considered to be at risk as grounding lines are moving shorewards.

via A Fragmented Review of Climate Change – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Climate, Climate Change

As Arctic Sea Ice Thins, so Do Polar Bears

What the scientists found is that five of the bears lost weight and four of them lost 2.9 to 5.5 pounds (1.3 to 2.5 kilograms) per day. The average polar bear studied weighed about 386 pounds (175 kilograms). One bear lost 51 pounds (23 kilograms) in just nine days.

via As Arctic Sea Ice Thins, so Do Polar Bears

Climate Change

Trump’s call for some ‘good old global warming’ ridiculed by climate experts | US news | The Guardian

Trump’s tweet was “troll-like”, the scientist said, showing the president “delighting in sparking outrage among [his] opponents”.

via Trump’s call for some ‘good old global warming’ ridiculed by climate experts | US news | The Guardian

Climate Change

Ian Plimer follows up Tony Abbott’s climate science denialism act in London

With Tony Abbott and Ian Plimer’s global activism, Australia appears to fast becoming the home of worldwide climate science denialism. Graham Readfearn reports.

AUSTRALIANS HAVE been keeping the London-based climate science denial group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) busy in recent weeks, writes Graham Readfearn.

After former Prime Minister Tony Abbott gave the group’s annual lecture in October, it was the turn of one of Australia’s longest-serving deniers to empty another bucket of bunkum.

Professor Ian Plimer, an Australian director of multiple mining companies, is featured in a new interview with the GWPF to promote his latest subtly titled denial tome: Climate Change Delusion and the Great Energy Rip-off.

When it comes to climate change science, Plimer can be placed very firmly in the file marked “denial

Ian Plimer follows up Tony Abbott’s climate science denialism act in London

Climate Change

Scientists Issue Dire Warning on Climate Change ; Key Researcher Urges “Changes in How We Live” | Democracy Now!

s4 anderson

At COP23, the International Energy Agency predicts U.S. oil production is expected to grow an an unparalleled rate in the coming years—even as the majority of scientists worldwide are saying countries need to cut down on fossil fuel extraction, not accelerate it. Meanwhile, a group of 15,000 scientists have come together to issue a dire “second notice” to humanity, 25 years after a group of scientists issued the “first notice” warning the world about climate change.

Scientists Issue Dire Warning on Climate Change & Key Researcher Urges “Changes in How We Live” | Democracy Now!

Climate Change

Australia Has a Climate Change Lesson for the World – The New York Times

That this is the best we can do — indeed that this is a relative triumph for Mr. Turnbull — illustrates just how tangled Australia’s climate politics have become. The country has taken a long, hard look at every warning about the costs of delayed climate action and ignored them all. And, subsequently, it has paid for those costs through high energy prices and curtailed investment.

via Australia Has a Climate Change Lesson for the World – The New York Times