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It is still worth fighting climate change: but catastrophic change might be inevitable
Catastrophic climate change all but unavoidable; now what?, UW study finds little chance of keeping temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius, Seattle PI, By Stephen Cohen, August 3, 2017 Seattle is suffering through its worst heat wave of the year, but according to a recent University of Washington study, increasingly hotter temperatures — and their deadly outcomes — are all but unavoidable.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take steps to try and slow down the rising thermometer.
The UW study, co-authored by statistics and sociology professor Adrian Raftery and associate professor of atmospheric sciences Dargan Frierson, concluded there is a 90 percent chance the Earth’s average temperature will rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
Limiting a rise to less than 2 degrees was one of the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement due to the potentially catastrophic effects of such an increase, including heat waves, extreme storms, flooding, sea level rise, etc. But the study, published on July 31 in the journal “Nature Climate Change,” found there is a less than 5 percent chance that the goal will be met, and only a 1 percent chance the increase will be limited to 1.5 degrees.
“If we’re to keep anywhere close to the 2-degree limit, we basically need to pull out all the stops on all registers over the next 80 years,” Raftery told SeattlePI. “I don’t see any alternative.”
The study used 50 years of data on three input factors — world population, gross domestic product per person and carbon intensity — to determine a range of possible outcomes. Only one of the three (carbon intensity, or the amount of carbon needed for a constant amount of economic production) is realistically subject to policy or societal influence. Carbon intensity has been decreasing at a fairly steady rate for years, and by 2100 it may have gone down by about 90 percent, but the incremental improvement doesn’t seem to be enough.
“If we’d gotten started seriously earlier — say, back when climate change was first identified as a major issue in the 1980s — then I think we could be a bit further along than we are now,” Raftery said.
You don’t have to look too far into Washington’s past to see what even a small rise in temperature might do to the state. The winter of 2014-15 featured above-average temperatures, which led to a “temperature-driven drought,” according to Jeff Marti of the Washington Department of Ecology.
The state got a normal amount of precipitation, but warmer temperatures turned what would have been mountain snowpack into rain, which washed down rivers and out into Puget Sound instead of remaining in the mountains. When temperatures rose in the spring and summer, there was little snowpack to melt into rivers and increase the volume of water while simultaneously lowering temperatures……
One reaction would be to say, ‘Too bad, we’re going to miss the 2-degree target,’ so we kind of throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do,” Raftery said. “But I think that’s exactly the wrong message to take away from the study. The more warming it is, the worse the consequences, and that makes it even more urgent to to take urgent action to at least limit temperature increase to be as close to 2 degrees as possible.”
Seattlepi.com reporter Stephen Cohen can be reached at 206-448-8313or stephencohen@seattlepi.com. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @scohenPI. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/environment/article/UW-Catastrophic-effects-of-climate-change-all-11731706.php
Swiss Alps: global warming is revealing long-frozen bodies of lost travellers
Melting glaciers in Swiss Alps could reveal hundreds of mummified corpses, Frozen bodies of couple who vanished 75 years ago among those uncovered recently as global warming forces ice to retreat, Guardian, Philip Oltermann and Kate Connolly, 5 Aug 17, Swiss police say hundreds of bodies of mountaineers who have gone missing in the Alps in the past century could emerge in coming years as global warming forces the country’s glaciers to retreat.
Alpine authorities have registered a significant increase in the number of human remains discovered last month, with the body of a man missing for 30 years the most recent to be uncovered.
Rescue teams in Saas Valley in the Valais canton were called last Tuesday after two climbers retreating from an aborted ascent spotted a hand and two shoes protruding from the Hohlaub glacier…….
The discovery comes less than a week after the bodies of a Swiss couple, missing for 75 years, were found in the Tsanfleuron glacier in the same canton…….
Switzerland’s glaciers have been melting at an unprecedented rate, losing almost one cubic km in ice volume or about 900 bn litres of water over the past year. According to an investigation by Tagesanzeiger newspaper, eight of the 10 months in which the glaciers have lost the most in volume over the past century have been since 2008.
Since 1850, when glaciers covered 1,735 sq km (670 sq miles) of Swiss land, the total area has shrunk by a half, to about 890 sq km.
Police in Valais expect the bodies of many more missing persons to emerge because of global warming. “It’s quite clear,” a spokesman, Christian Zuber, told the Guardian.
“The glaciers are retreating, so it’s logical that we’re finding more and more bodies and body parts. In the coming years we expect that many more cases of missing persons will be resolved.”…… https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/04/melting-glaciers-swiss-alps-could-reveal-hundreds-mummified-corpses
Methods of climate geoengineering
Potential climate-engineering solutions to global warming https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/climatechange/potential-climate-engineering-solutions-to-global-warming/70002378, By Brett Anderson, AccuWeather senior meteorologist, 8/04/2017, Climate engineering is a potential means to reduce climate warming caused by the rise of greenhouse gases. just read two articles in the July 21 issue of Science, which covers two climate engineering methods that may work in reducing climate warming.
The first article discusses the idea of injecting sulfur into the stratosphere, which would cause an artificial reduction of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface by increasing the reflectivity of the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the article in Science.
This process is similar to the massive release of sulfur into the stratosphere by large volcanic eruptions. Significant, short-term global cooling has been recorded shortly following some of these eruptions.
Stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM) may be used as a last-resort option to reduce the severity of global warming. However, SAM technologies are presently not developed.
Cloud seeding
Another climate engineering method that was discussed in the Science issue is cirrus cloud seeding.
High, wispy and thin cirrus clouds typically do not reflect a lot of solar radiation back into space. Cirrus clouds emit less long wave radiation back into space than a clear sky does, which is similar to what greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide do.
Image courtesy of Science and ETH Zurich, Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science.
Levels of humid heat will kill millions, if warming is not tackled
“If given just one word to describe climate change, then ‘unfairness’ would be a good candidate. Raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are expected to cause deadly heatwaves for much of South Asia. Yet many of those living there will have contributed little to climate change.”
Climate change to cause humid heatwaves that will kill even healthy people https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/02/climate-change-to-cause-humid-heatwaves-that-will-kill-even-healthy-people
If warming is not tackled, levels of humid heat that can kill within hours will affect millions across south Asia within decades, analysis finds, Guardian, Damian Carrington, 3 Aug 17, Extreme heatwaves that kill even healthy people within hours will strike parts of the Indian subcontinent unless global carbon emissions are cut sharply and soon, according to new research.
Even outside of these hotspots, three-quarters of the 1.7bn population – particularly those farming in the Ganges and Indus valleys – will be exposed to a level of humid heat classed as posing “extreme danger” towards the end of the century.
The new analysis assesses the impact of climate change on the deadly combination of heat and humidity, measured as the “wet bulb” temperature (WBT). Once this reaches 35C, the human body cannot cool itself by sweating and even fit people sitting in the shade will die within six hours.
The revelations show the most severe impacts of global warming may strike those nations, such as India, whose carbon emissions are still rising as they lift millions of people out of poverty.
“It presents a dilemma for India between the need to grow economically at a fast pace, consuming fossil fuels, and the need to avoid such potentially lethal impacts,” said Prof Elfatih Eltahir, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US who led the new study. “To India, global climate change is no longer abstract – it is about how to save potentially vulnerable populations.”
Heatwaves are already a major risk in South Asia, with a severe episode in 2015 leading to 3,500 deaths, and India recorded its hottest ever dayin 2016 when the temperature in the city of Phalodi, Rajasthan, hit 51C. Another new study this week linked the impact of climate change to the suicides of nearly 60,000 Indian farmers.
Eltahir said poor farmers are most at risk from future humid heatwaves, but have contributed very little to the emissions that drive climate change. The eastern part of China, another populous region where emissions are rising, is also on track for extreme heatwaves and this risk is currently being examined by the scientists.
Their previous research, published in 2015, showed the Gulf in the Middle East, the heartland of the global oil industry, will also suffer heatwaves beyond the limit of human survival if climate change is unchecked, particularly Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in Iran.
The new work, published in the journal Science Advances, used carefully selected computer climate models that accurately simulate the past climate of the South Asia to conduct a high resolution analysis of the region, down to 25km.
The scientists found that under a business-as-usual scenario, where carbon emissions are not curbed, 4% of the population would suffer unsurvivable six-hour heatwaves of 35C WBT at least once between 2071-2100. The affected cities include Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Patna in Bihar, each currently home to more than two million people.
Vast areas of South Asia – covering 75% of the area’s population – would endure at least one heatwave of 31C WBT. This is already above the level deemed by the US National Weather Service to represent “extreme danger”, with its warning stating: “If you don’t take precautions immediately when conditions are extreme, you may become seriously ill or even die.”
However, if emissions are reduced roughly in line with the global Paris climate change agreement, there would be no 35C WBT heatwaves and the population affected by the 31C WBT events falls to 55%, compared to the 15% exposed today.
The analysis also showed that the dangerous 31C WBT level would be passed once every two years for 30% of the population – more than 500 million people – if climate change is unchecked, but for only 2% of the population if the Paris goals are met. “The problem is very alarming but the intensity of the heatwaves can be reduced considerably if global society takes action,” said Eltahir.
South Asia is particularly at risk from these extreme heatwaves because the annual monsoon brings hot and humid air on to the land. The widespread use of irrigation adds to the risk, because evaporation of the water increases humidity. The projected extremes are higher in the Gulf in the Middle East, but there they mostly occur over the gulf itself, rather than on land as in South Asia.
The limit of survivability, at 35C WBT, was almost reached in Bandar Mahshahr in Iran in July 2015, where 46C heat combined with 50% humidity. “This suggests the threshold may be breached sooner than projected,” said the researchers.
Prof Christoph Schär, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and who was not involved in the study, said: “This is a solid piece of work, which will likely shape our perception of future climate change. In my view, the results are of concern and alarming.”
The report demonstrates the urgency of measures to both cut emissions and help people cope better with such heatwaves, he said. There are uncertainties in the modelling – which Schär noted could underestimate or overestimate the impacts – as representing monsoon climates can be difficult and historical data is relatively scarce.
Prof Chris Huntingford, at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said: “If given just one word to describe climate change, then ‘unfairness’ would be a good candidate. Raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are expected to cause deadly heatwaves for much of South Asia. Yet many of those living there will have contributed little to climate change.”
Workers in Southern USA States now facing climate change health hazards
In Sweltering South, Climate Change Is Now a Workplace Hazard Workers laboring outdoors in southern states are wrestling with the personal and political consequences of a worsening environment, NYT, By YAMICHE ALCINDORAUG. 3, 2017, GALVESTON, Tex. — Adolfo Guerra, a landscaper in this port city on the Gulf of Mexico, remembers panicking as his co-worker vomited and convulsed after hours of mowing lawns in stifling heat. Other workers rushed to cover him with ice, and the man recovered.
But for Mr. Guerra, 24, who spends nine hours a day six days a week doing yard work, the episode was a reminder of the dangers that exist for outdoor workers as the planet warms.
“I think about the climate every day,” Mr. Guerra said, “because every day we work, and every day it feels like it’s getting hotter.”……
to Robert D. Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who some call the “father of environmental justice,” the industrial revival that Mr. Trump has promised could come with some serious downsides for an already warming planet. Professor Bullard is trying to bring that message to working-class Americans like Mr. Guerra, and to environmental organizations that have, in his mind, been more focused on struggling animals than poor humans, who have been disproportionately harmed by increasing temperatures, worsening storms and rising sea levels.
“For too long, a lot of the climate change and global warming arguments have been looking at melting ice and polar bears and not at the human suffering side of it,” Professor Bullard said. “They are still pushing out the polar bear as the icon for climate change. The icon should be a kid who is suffering from the negative impacts of climate change and increased air pollution, or a family where rising water is endangering their lives.”
The “environmental justice movement” has, in fact, caught on with major environmental groups, but it has far to go before it begins moving the dial in the nation’s politics. Professor Bullard envisions the recruits for his movement coming not only from the liberal college towns of the Northeast and Midwest, but also from the sweltering working-class communities in the Sun Belt, which he sees as the front line of the nation’s environmental wars.
Residents of working-class communities in the Sun Belt often cannot afford to move or evacuate during weather disasters. They may work outside, and they may struggle to cover their air-conditioning bills. Pollution in their communities leads to health problems that are compounded by the refusal of most Sun Belt state governments to expand Medicaid access under the Affordable Care Act…….. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/us/politics/climate-change-trump-working-poor-activists.html
Effects of heat – and climate change – on air travel
The effects on aviation may be widespread. Many airports are built near sea level, putting them at risk of more frequent flooding as oceans rise. The frequency and intensity of air turbulence may increase in some regions due to strengthening high-altitude winds. Stronger winds would force airlines and pilots to modify flight lengths and routings, potentially increasing fuel consumption.How hot weather – and climate change – affect airline flights, The Conversation, Ph.D. Student in Earth & Environmental Sciences, Columbia University, Associate Research Scientist, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, August 3, 2017 Hot weather has forced dozens of commercial flights to be canceled at airports in the Southwest this summer. This flight-disrupting heat is a warning sign. Climate change is projected to have far-reaching repercussions – including sea level rise inundating cities and shifting weather patterns causing long-term declines in agricultural yields. And there is evidence that it is beginning to affect the takeoff performance of commercial aircraft, with potential effects on airline costs.
National and global transportation systems and the economic activity they support have been optimized for the climate in which it all developed: Machines are designed to operate in common temperature ranges, logistical plans depend on historical weather patterns and coastal land development is based on known flood zones. In the aviation sector, airports and aircraft are designed for the weather conditions experienced historically. Because the climate is changing, even fundamental infrastructure elements like airports and key economic sectors like air transportation may need to be redesigned and reengineered.
As scientists focused on the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on human society and natural ecosystems around the world, our research has quantified how extreme heat associated with our warming climate may affect flights around the world. We’ve found that major airports from New York to Dubai to Bangkok will see more frequent takeoff weight restrictions in the coming decades due to increasingly common hot temperatures.
Climate changes flights
There is robust evidence that extreme events such as heat waves and coastal flooding are happening with greater frequency and intensity than just a few decades ago. And if we fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly in the next few decades, the frequency and intensity of these extremes is projected to increase dramatically.
The effects on aviation may be widespread. Many airports are built near sea level, putting them at risk of more frequent flooding as oceans rise. The frequency and intensity of air turbulence may increase in some regions due to strengthening high-altitude winds. Stronger winds would force airlines and pilots to modify flight lengths and routings, potentially increasing fuel consumption.
The July heat-related Phoenix flight cancellations happened at least in part because airlines’ operational manuals didn’t include information for temperatures above 118 degrees Fahrenheit – because that kind of heat is historically uncommon. It’s another example of how procedures may need to be updated to adapt to a warmer climate.
Flying in the heat
High air temperatures affect the physics of how aircraft fly, meaning aircraft takeoff performance can be impaired on hot days. ……. https://theconversation.com/how-hot-weather-and-climate-change-affect-airline-flights-80795
Wildfires continue in Canada: more than 1 million acres burned so far
Wildfires in western Canada on near-record pace, More than 1 million acres burned so far https://summitcountyvoice.com/2017/08/02/wildfires-in-western-canada-on-near-record-pace/ Staff Report Canada is on track for a near-record wildfire season this year. So far, there have been more than 500 fires just in British Columbia, burning across more than 1 million acres. Firefighting costs have already reached more than $172 million, and weeks of warm and dry weather will keep the fire danger high.
Most of the fires have been in three main areas, according to NASA, which has been tracking the burned areas via satellites. Most affected are the Frasier Plateau north of Vancouver, the Thomas Plateau, east of Whistler, and the region east of Kamloops.
All current fires of note can be viewed on this interactive map. According to NASA, this is the third-worst fire season on record for B.C.
Current weather forecasts project that winds will carry smoke from the fires toward the coast, perhaps persisting for a week. New research led by scientists with Georgia Tech recently showed that wildfire smoke is probably much more dangerous to human health than previously realized.
Naturally burning timber and brush from wildfires release dangerous particles into the air at a rate three times as high as levels known by the EPA. The study also found wildfires spew methanol, benzene, ozone and other noxious chemicals.
NASA’s Terra satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on July 31, 2017. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner with information from the BC Wildfire Service, and the Georgia Tech study.
Global ocean circulation appears to be slowing due to global warming
https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/08/03/global-ocean-circulation-appears-to-be-collapsing-due-to-a-warming-planet/amp/Global ocean circulation appears to be slowing
Scientists have long known about the anomalous “warming hole” in the North Atlantic Ocean, an area immune to warming of Earth’s oceans. This cool zone in the North Atlantic Ocean appears to be associated with a slowdown in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of the key drivers in global ocean circulation.
A recent study published in Nature outlines research by a team of Yale University and University of Southhampton scientists. The team found evidence that Arctic ice loss is potentially negatively impacting the planet’s largest ocean circulation system. While scientists do have some analogs as to how this may impact the world, we will be largely in uncharted territory.
AMOC is one of the largest current systems in the Atlantic Ocean and the world. Generally speaking, it transports warm and salty water northward from the tropics to South and East of Greenland. This warm water cools to ambient water temperature then sinks as it is saltier and thus denser than the relatively more fresh surrounding water. The dense mass of water sinks to the base of the North Atlantic Ocean and is pushed south along the abyss of the Atlantic Ocean.
This process whereby water is transported into the Northern Atlantic Ocean acts to distribute ocean water globally. What’s more important, and the basis for concern of many scientists is this mechanism is one of the most efficient ways Earth transports heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes. The warm water transported from the tropics to the North Atlantic releases heat to the atmosphere, playing a key role in warming of western Europe. You likely have heard of one of the more popular components of the AMOC, the Gulf Stream which brings warm tropical water to the western coasts of Europe.
Evidence is growing that the comparatively cold zone within the Northern Atlantic could be due to a slowdown of this global ocean water circulation. Hence, a slowdown in the planet’s ability to transfer heat from the tropics to the northern latitudes. The cold zone could be due to melting of ice in the Arctic and Greenland. This would cause a cold fresh water cap over the North Atlantic, inhibiting sinking of salty tropical waters. This would in effect slow down the global circulation and hinder the transport of warm tropical waters north.
Measured trend in temperature variations from 1900 to 2012.
Melting of the Arctic sea ice has rapidly increased in the recent decades. Satellite image records indicate that September Arctic sea ice is 30% less today than it was in 1979. This trend of increased sea ice melting during summer months does not appear to be slowing. Hence, indications are that we will see a continued weakening of the global ocean circulation system.
This scenario of a collapse in AMOC and global ocean circulation is the premise for the movie “The Day After Tomorrow.” As a disclaimer, the plot line in which much of New England and Western Europe gets plunged into an ice age is significantly over exaggerated and unrealistic on human time scales.
While geologists have studied events in the past similar to what appears to be happening today, scientists are largely unsure of what lies ahead.
Trevor Naceis a geologist, Forbes contributor, founder of Science Trends, and adventurer.Follow his journey@trevornace
The role of climate change in decline of one of Asia’s most critical water resources
Science daily, August 3, 2017, Kansas State University
- Summary:
- Climate variability — rather than the presence of a major dam — is most likely the primary cause for a water supply decline in East Asia’s largest floodplain lake system, according to an expert
Climate variability — rather than the presence of a major dam — is most likely the primary cause for a water supply decline in East Asia’s largest floodplain lake system, according to a Kansas State University researcher.
The fluvial lake system across China’s Yangtze River Plain, which serves nearly half a billion people and is a World Wildlife Fund ecoregion, lost about 10 percent of its water area from 2000-2011, according to Jida Wang, assistant professor of geography. Wang and colleagues published their findings for the lake system’s decline in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Water Resources Research.
“Many people’s first intuition is that the culprit must be the Three Gorges Dam because it impounds so much water in the Yangtze River, but our fingerprinting study undeniably shows that the dam is not the decline’s primary cause,” Wang said. “Climate variability is the predominant driver of this decadal dynamic.”
Wang collaborated with Yongwei Sheng, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yoshihide Wada, of Austria’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. They found that roughly 80 percent of the observed lake decline is the result of simultaneous climate variability closely related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which has caused droughts and flooding in the region…….
Wang and his colleagues also quantified the negative impacts of human water consumption from agricultural, industrial and domestic sectors across the downstream Yangtze River Basin. These impacts are surprisingly comparable to the Three Gorges Dam’s impact, Wang said. The dam and human water consumption together comprise 10-20 percent — or less — of the decline’s factors, while up to another 10 percent of the decline may be caused by a variety of other factors, possibly including other dams, sand mining, soil conservation and urbanization, he said.
“It also is important to recognize that anthropogenic impacts have strengthened in the past couple of decades,” Wang said. “Although the Three Gorges Dam already reached its maximal storage capacity in 2010, its induced Yangtze River erosion will continue. This also may come along with increasing human water consumption and trans-basin diversions. We hope our study not only provides an overdue explanation of the past decadal lake decline but also offers scientific guidance for future conservation of this critical fresh water resource.”
For their study, Wang and his colleagues used thousands of satellite images from NASA, an advanced hydrological model from the Netherlands, statistical data from the United Nations, and measurements and censuses from several Chinese organizations.
This research was funded by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat Science Team and a Kansas State University faculty start-up fund. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170803103146.htm
Unstoppable climate change may now be upon the planet
Climate change will almost certainly heat the world so much it can never recover, major study finds There’s only a 10 per cent chance we’ll avoid widespread drought, extreme weather and dangerous increases in sea level, The Independent, Andrew Griffin @_andrew_griffin 1 Aug 17, The world will almost certainly reach a tipping point and bring about unstoppable, destructive climate change, according to a new study.
There is a 90 per cent chance that the world’s temperature will rise 2C, to 4.9C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, despite measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s at that point that scientists think the world will fall into disastrous effects like widespread drought, extreme weather and dangerous increases in sea level. Experts have suggested that 2C of warming is the “tipping point” at which that change becomes unstoppable.
The world will almost certainly fail to keep warming to the 1.5C target that was set as part of the Paris climate agreement, according to the same research. There’s a 99 per cent chance that climate change will break through that limit.
Dr Dargan Frierson, from the University of Washington, said: “Countries argued for the 1.5C target because of the severe impacts on their livelihoods that would result from exceeding that threshold. Indeed, damages from heat extremes, drought, extreme weather and sea level rise will be much more severe if 2C or higher temperature rise is allowed.
Our results show that an abrupt change of course is needed to achieve these goals.”The scientists looked at 50 years of data on world population and economic activity to come up with their forecast. One factor taken into account was “carbon intensity”, the amount of carbon emitted for each dollar of economic activity.
The approach is different from that taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose most recent report included future warming rates based on four carbon emission scenarios……
The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.A separate study in the same journal found that even if all fossil fuel emissions were halted this year, global temperatures were very likely to be 1.3C higher than pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.There was a 13% chance that the Earth was already committed to 1.5C warming by 2100, said the authors led by Dr Thorsten Mauritsen, from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-global-warming-tipping-point-degree-temperature-study-a7869641.html
Many thousands of suicides in India – linked to climate change
Climate change linked to suicides of 59,000 farmers in India, finds report, Researchers find extra 67 people take their own lives for every one degree Celsius of warming,The Independent, 1 Aug 17 Tom Batchelor @_tombatchelor Scorching temperatures, drought, storms and famine triggered by climate change have led to thousands of extra suicides in India, a report has found.
During the south Asian nation’s growing season, every one degree Celsius of warming above 20°C sees an average of 67 more people take their own lives, according to the study.
Experts said the findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are particularly alarming as India’s average temperatures are expected to rise another 3°C by 2050, meaning hundreds of extra deaths.India’s farmers are already regularly hit by extreme weather events, including strong storms and heat waves, and some still rely on natural rainfall to water their crops.
Scientists have shown that those weather patterns are already increasing as the planet warms.
Tamma Carleton, who conducted the research, said nearly 60,000 suicides over the past 30 years may be linked to climate change.
Looking at suicide data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau between 1967 and 2013, along with data on agricultural crop yields and on temperature change, she estimated that “warming temperature trends over the last three decades have already been responsible for over 59,000 suicides throughout India”.
“We may not be able to stop the world from warming, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do something to address suicide,” said Vikram Patel, an Indian psychiatrist and mental health expert with Harvard Medical School in Boston, who was not involved in the study.
There are many factors that can contribute to suicide, including poor crop yields, financial problems, access to easy methods of self-harm, or a lack of community support.In India, many farmers will drink toxic pesticides as a way out of backbreaking debt.
For the past month, hundreds of farmers – some carrying human skulls they say are from farmers who committed suicide in the drought-stricken southern state of Tamil Nadu – have been staging what they say will be a 100-day protest in New Delhi to “prevent the suicide of farmers who feed the nation”.
Parts of western and north-eastern India have been hit by floods that have washed away villages and crops.
Heavy rains have caused rivers in states such as Gujarat, Assam and Rajasthan to burst their banks, killing 130 people……..http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/climate-change-india-suicide-59000-global-warming-report-farmer-deaths-a7870496.html
Thed Climate Reality Project: Al Gore’s passion to save the world
Al Gore: ‘The rich have subverted all reason’, Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr, 30 July 17
With the sequel to his blockbuster documentary An Inconvenient Truth about to be released, Al Gore tells Carole Cadwalladr how his role at the forefront of the fight against climate change consumes his life, Guardian, In the ballroom of a conference centre in Denver, Colorado, 972 people from 42 countries have come together to talk about climate change. It is March 2017, six weeks since Trump’s inauguration; eight weeks before Trump will announce to the world that he is withdrawing America from the Paris Climate Agreement.
These are the early dark days of the new America and yet, in the conference centre, the crowd is upbeat. They’ve all paid out of their own pockets to travel to Denver. They have taken time off work. And they are here, in the presence of their master, Al Gore. Because Al Gore is to climate change… well, what Donald Trump is to climate change denial……
It’s the reason why we are all here – his foundation, the Climate Reality Project, an initiative that grew out of the film, provides intensive training in talking about climate change, combating climate change denial – and the tone might be described as “activist upbeat”. This is a crisis that is solvable, we’re told. Trump is just another hitch, another hurdle to overcome. And it will be overcome. Only occasionally does a sliver of despair leak around the edges. You have to stay positive, a man called David Ellenberger tells the audience. Though sometimes, he admits: “There’s not enough Prozac to get through the day.”….
The war on the mainstream media may capture the headlines currently, but the war on climate change science has been in play for years. And it’s this that is one of the most fascinating aspects of Gore’s new film, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. Because if the US had a subtitle at the moment, it might be that, too, and the struggle to overcome fake facts and false narratives funded by corporate interests and politically motivated billionaires is one that Gore has been at the frontline of for more than a decade.
The film runs through a host of facts – that 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001 is just one. And the accompanying footage is biblical, terrifying: tornadoes, floods, “rain bombs”, exploding glaciers. We see roads falling into rivers and fish swimming through the streets of Miami.
The nightly news, Gore says, has become “a nature hike through the Book of Revelations”. But what his work has shown and continues to show is that evidence is not enough. The film opens with clips from Fox News ridiculing global warming. In recent weeks, the New York Times has started describing the Trump administration as waging a “war on science”, a full-on assault against evidence-based science that runs in parallel with his attacks on evidence-based reporting. And Gore is in something of a unique position to understand this. What becomes clear over the course of several conversations is how entwined he believes it all is – climate change denial, the interests of big capital, “dark money”, billionaire political funders, the ascendancy of Trump and what he calls (he’s written a book on it) “the assault against reason”. They are all pieces of the same puzzle; a puzzle that Gore has been tracking for years, because it turns out that climate change denial was the canary in the coal mine.
“In order to fix the climate crisis, we need to first fix the government crisis,” he says. “Big money has so much influence now.” And he says a phrase that is as dramatic as it is multilayered: “Our democracy has been hacked.”
“I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making. The Koch brothers are the largest funders of climate change denial. And ExxonMobil claims it has stopped, but it really hasn’t. It has given a quarter of a billion dollars in donations to climate denial groups. It’s clear they are trying to cripple our ability to respond to this existential threat.”
One of Trump’s first acts after his inauguration was to remove all mentions of climate change from federal websites. More overlooked is that one of Theresa May’s first actions on becoming prime minister – within 24 hours of taking office – was to close the Department for Energy and Climate Change; subsequently donations from oil and gas companies to the Conservative party continued to roll in. And what is increasingly apparent is that the same think tanks that operate in the States are also at work in Britain, and climate change denial operates as a bridgehead: uniting the right and providing an entry route for other tenets of Alt-Right belief. And, it’s this network of power that Gore has had to try to understand, in order to find a way to combat it……
what becomes clear if you Google “climate change” is how effective the right has been in owning the subject. YouTube’s results are dominated by nothing but climate change denial videos. This isn’t news for Gore. ….. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/30/al-gore-interview-our-crumbling-planet-the-rich-have-subverted-all-reason-al-gore
“Biological Annihilation” – global warming’s effect on plant and animal species
Dahr Jamail | Scientists Warn of “Biological Annihilation” as Warming Reaches Levels Unseen for 115,000 Years, July 31, 2017By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report Camp 41, Brazilian Amazon –– Less than 30 years ago, the Earth’s tropical rainforests held the carbon equivalent of half of the entire atmosphere. But as atmospheric CO2 has escalated along with the deforestation of so much of the tropics, that is no longer the case. Nevertheless, carbon stored in tropical rainforests is still significant. According to NASA, “In the early 2000s, forests in the 75 tropical countries studied contained 247 billion tons of carbon. For perspective, about 10 billion tons of carbon is released annually to the atmosphere from combined fossil fuel burning and land use changes.” This is one of the countless reasons why losing them would be catastrophic to life on Earth.
I’m writing this dispatch just having emerged from the heart of the Amazon, the most biodiverse place on the planet. I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Tom Lovejoy, known as the “Godfather of Biodiversity,” at the famous Camp 41, which is filled with researchers and scientists. Throughout our conversations, Lovejoy emphasized the staggering amount of biological diversity in the Amazon, which has thousands upon thousands of species of trees, fish, birds, plants and astronomical numbers of insect species.
“We’ve only scratched the surface, and are discovering new species of birds all the time,” said Lovejoy, who was the first person to use the term “biological diversity” in 1980 and made the first projection of global extinction rates in the “Global 2000 Report to the President” that same year……..
Lovejoy warns that as anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) progresses and temperature limits continue to be exceeded, we are losing parts of the biosphere that we don’t even know exist……..
Having long since warned that the Sixth Mass Extinction event is already well underway, in a study recently published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers said that billions of populations of animals have already disappeared from Earth, amid what they called a “biological annihilation,” and admitted that their findings revealed a situation that was worse than they’d previously thought. The study showed that more than 30 percent of all vertebrates are experiencing declining populations, and the prime drivers of the annihilation are human overpopulation and overconsumption, especially by the rich, as well as habitat destruction, pollution and of course, ACD…..
recently published research generated at Cornell University revealed that by 2100, a staggering 2 billion people, or one-fifth of the total global human population, could become ACD refugees due to rising seas alone.
“We’re going to have more people on less land and sooner than we think,” lead author Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell, said. “The future rise in global mean sea level probably won’t be gradual. Yet, few policy makers are taking stock of the significant barriers to entry that coastal climate refugees, like other refugees, will encounter when they migrate to higher ground.”…..
Water: As usual, there is ample evidence of ACD’s impacts across the watery realms…..
Air: Hot temperature records and extreme heat waves continue to be the norm, and they are intensifying…..http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41425-biological-annihilation-trillion-ton-icebergs-warming-levels-unseen-for-115-000-years
“Ghost forests” increasing now, due to climate change and rising seas
Climate change before your eyes: Seas rise and trees die https://www.guelphtoday.com/world-news/climate-change-before-your-eyes-seas-rise-and-trees-die-686109PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. — They’re called “ghost forests” — dead trees along vast swaths of coastline invaded by rising seas, something scientists call one of the most visible markers of climate change. Canadian Press 1 August 17 PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. — They’re called “ghost forests” — dead trees along vast swaths of coastline invaded by rising seas, something scientists call one of the most visible markers of climate change.
The process has happened naturally for thousands of years, but it has accelerated in recent decades as polar ice melts and raises sea levels, scientists say, pushing salt water farther inland and killing trees in what used to be thriving freshwater plains.
Efforts are underway worldwide to determine exactly how quickly the creation of ghost forests is increasing. But scientists agree the startling sight of dead trees in once-healthy areas is an easy-to-grasp example of the consequences of climate change.
“I think ghost forests are the most obvious indicator of climate change anywhere on the Eastern coast of the U.S.,” said Matthew Kirwan, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science who is studying ghost forests in his state and Maryland. “It was dry, usable land 50 years ago; now it’s marshes with dead stumps and dead trees.”
It is happening around the world, but researchers say new ghost forests are particularly apparent in North America, with hundreds of thousands of acres of salt-killed trees stretching from Canada down the East Coast, around Florida and over to Texas.
The intruding salt water changes coastal ecosystems, creating marshes where forests used to be. This has numerous effects on the environment, though many scientists caution against viewing them in terms of “good” or “bad.” What benefits one species or ecosystem might harm another one, they say.
For instance, migratory birds that rely on coastal forests have less habitat. And the death of the trees makes soil microbes release nitrogen, which adds to nitrogen already occurring from other sources, including agricultural runoff, to contribute to algae blooms and reduced oxygen that can sicken or kill fish.
But the conversion of forest into marshland produces “extremely productive” wetlands that feed and shelter fish and shellfish.
The Atlantic croaker fish, for instance, was rare 15 years ago in southern New Jersey waters but now is abundant, said Ken Able, a Rutgers University professor.
“There is a lot of change going on,” said Greg Noe, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “It’s dramatic and it’s changing faster than it has before in human history.”
Quantifying the rate of increase in ghost forests is a major focus of Able’s research. Some scientists say the increase began around the time of the Industrial Revolution, while others say the speedup began more recently than that.
In the past 100 years, Kirwan said, 100,000 acres of forest in the Chesapeake Bay has converted to marshland. Photographs show the rate of coastal forest loss is four times greater now than it was during the 1930s, he said.
Seas off the East Coast have risen by 1.3 feet over the last 100 years, said Ben Horton, a Rutgers University professor and expert on sea level rise. That is a faster pace than for the past 2,000 years combined, he said.
Some of the most dramatic anecdotal evidence of the acceleration in ghost forest creation is along the Savannah River between Georgia and South Carolina, Noe said.
When his team first got there 10 years ago, “it looked like the trees were under a little stress, but they were all alive,” he said. “But five years later, the vast majority of them were dead. That happened right in front of our eyes, much faster than we expected.”
Marcelo Ardon, a biology professor at North Carolina State University, studied one site called the Palmetto Pear Tree Preserve on Albemarle Sound in North Carolina from 2006 to 2009. When he returned in 2016, he said, “what used to look like a healthy cypress swamp, now the trees are dead and the water level is a lot higher. The place has completely changed. I’ve checked overhead satellite photos and you can see the trees dying.”
In southern New Jersey, the most affected species is the Atlantic white cedar, which was a mainstay of the shipbuilding industry because of its resistance to rot. Farther south, cypress, loblolly pines and Eastern red cedar are dying.
Large storms can drive salt water further inland and kill trees; 2012’s Superstorm Sandy is believed to have led to the deaths of some trees in southern New Jersey, Able said.
The difference, Kirwan said, is that in the past, flooded areas would dry out before salt water killed most of the trees.
“That same storm 100 years ago would also have killed trees,” he said. “But 100 years ago that same land wouldn’t have been so wet that new trees couldn’t get established and replace the dead ones. That’s a big part of where sea level rise comes in.”
Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
Climate denial in charge in USA government
Dahr Jamail | Scientists Warn of “Biological Annihilation” as Warming Reaches Levels Unseen for 115,000 Years, July 31, 2017 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report“…..Denial and Reality
There’s never a dull moment in the denial world these days.
In Florida, that state’s extremist ACD-denying Gov. Rick Scott signed legislation making it easier for Florida residents to challenge science that is taught in public schools, so if an ACD-denying parent doesn’t like a science textbook that teaches the basic physics of how greenhouse gases work, the book could end up being banned.
Trump-appointed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, an ACD denier and pink slipped 38 members of the EPA’s Board of Scientific advisors, which is merely a drop in the bucket compared to dozens of other major environmental roll-backs the Trump administration has pulled off thus far, including forcing NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to erase human activity references to greenhouse gases in its Annual Greenhouse Gas Index.
Thankfully, reality continues to thrive in other parts of the world: …..http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41425-biological-annihilation-trillion-ton-icebergs-warming-levels-unseen-for-115-000-years
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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