the pathogen with the highest sensitivity to climate factors was Vibrio cholera, the microbe that causes the serious, and often deadly, diarrheal disease, cholera. Cholera had nine climate drivers, indicating high volatility in the face of climate change.
These Infections Are Likely to Get Worse as the Climate Changes, Invisiverse, BY CYNTHIA WALLENTINE, 08/23/2017
When the climate changes, so do all the things that rely on the climate, including people, plants, and pathogens. A European study recently took a broad look at what kind of microorganisms are most likely to be affected as climate change heats, cools, dries, and wets the world around us.
In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, a research team from the University of Liverpool performed a broad assessment of how factors of climate change impact pathogens that make humans and animals sick. By understanding which microorganisms are more sensitive to environmental change, we have a better idea of how infection rates might change as the environment grows progressively less stable.
What Are Climate Drivers?
In the study, the authors note there is evidence that climate shifts are already causing changes in the incidence of disease — allowing some to appear at higher or lower altitudes and latitudes. The authors note modeling is frequently used to predict which pathogens could advance, but this study uses climate variables, along with data on selected pathogens, to get an idea of which pathogens we should worry about the most.
Climate variables that affect these pathogens are an important part of this study. The research team refers to these variables as “climate drivers” that include:
Secondary drivers: Altitude, salinity, particulate matter, and vegetation.
The team chose to analyze 101 pathogens considered “high impact” to humans and animals in Europe and categorized them by how sensitive they are to these factors. These pathogens included bacteria, fungi, helminths, protozoa, and viruses. Overall, there are 157 pathogens categorized because some pathogens are affected by both primary and secondary variables.
Which Pathogens Are Set to Be Destabilized by Climate Change?
Humans, animals, plants, and microorganisms rely on climate variables that are always in some local flux. When climate drivers swing far enough beyond the expected spectrum, larger change is bound to happen.
When comparing pathogens to climate drivers, the study team found that 99, or 63% of the pathogens were likely to respond to at least one climate driver. Fifty-eight, or 37%, of the pathogens, like HIV, did not show sensitivity to climate variables. That narrows the field of pathogens likely to go askew because of environmental change.
More than 90% of that initial group of 99 pathogens were sensitive to between one and five climate drivers. Other statistical findings on the numbers of pathogens likely to be affected by climate change include:
81 of 99 pathogens were affected by primary climate drivers
56 of the 99 pathogens also had secondary climate drivers
18 of the 99 agents had sensitivity to secondary, but not primary climate drivers
Overall, pathogens were found to be most sensitive to climate drivers (primary and secondary) that include rainfall, temperature, moisture, and particulate matter.
The pathogen with the highest sensitivity to climate factors was Vibrio cholera, the microbe that causes the serious, and often deadly, diarrheal disease, cholera. Cholera had nine climate drivers, indicating high volatility in the face of climate change.
First runner up was the helminth, a parasite known as the “liver fluke” found throughout the world where sheep and cattle are present. A “helminth,” is the term for any parasitic nematode, worm, or fluke.
Next up is anthrax, Bacillus anthracis, a naturally occurring bacteria that can prove fatal depending on infection type, and available treatment.
Climate change is real. Maybe once it comes for our vino, more people will get on board with trying to slow it.
Climate change is about to mess with your wine supply, so yes, things are very serious http://hellogiggles.com/climate-change-is-about-to-mess-with-your-wine-supply/Karen Fratti August 24, 2017 Most of us know that climate change is an ongoing problem, but it can be hard to see the direct effects of it in our daily lives. Unless you study the populations of animals that are suffering due to it or are a farmer, the change is definitely incremental enough to ignore. But climate change is already affecting wine production, so maybe more people will notice what is going on a little sooner than expected. Because whether you can experience the effects of climate change or not, it’s happening.
European wine crops are suffering under climate change.Which means it’s going to be harder — and more expensive — to order an oaky Tuscan red or sparkly Champagne very, very soon. Because of warming temperatures, more and more crops of grapes are suffering. There’s just not enough of a harvest since the plants die before they’re able to pull water from underground during a climate change-induced drought. Producers are picking the grapes earlier, which inevitably changes the taste and quality of the wine. Winemaker Michele Reverdito, an Italian winemaker, told The New York Times, “Nebbiolo [the grape used to make barolo] means ‘the wine of the fog’ because you picked the grapes in November. Now we pick in September! The world is changing.”
European winemakers are worried for a few reasons. The least serious is that if all of the studies on climate change are true, they’re going to have to start cultivating grapes that are meant for hotter temperatures. Which means that the old school wines that they’re so proud of in certain regions will have to be changed. Imagine a Bordeaux, France without a cabernet franc! Or if Champagne, France is no longer the capitol of sparkly wine?
This is all an issue if you’re really concerned about heritage. But it’s not just about “never changing.” Because of this year’s drought, production of Piemontese franciacorta (which is just an Italian version of champagne, really) will be down 15 percent. That means fewer profits for the small wine producers and families who depend on their business as a primary source of income. And it means less imported wine on our shelves, and higher price tags when it is in stock.
This is not good on so many levels. Obviously, there are far more important and severe reasons to pay attention to climate change than what kind of wine we prefer to drink. But there are tons of economic consequences, too, like small European winemakers going out of business. Climate change is real. Maybe once it comes for our vino, more people will get on board with trying to slow it.
How off the rails was President Donald Trump’s rally speech in Phoenix Tuesday night? He spouted utter nonsense on clean coal, and it didn’t even make CNN’s story, “Donald Trump’s 57 most outrageous quotes from his Arizona speech.”
Trump appears to believe that clean coal — which, it must always be pointed out, doesn’t actually exist — is when workers mine coal and then physically “clean it.” That does not happen, but facts have never stopped Trump.
“We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal, and it’s just been announced that a second, brand-new coal mine,” said Trump, “where they’re going to take out clean coal — meaning, they’re taking out coal. They’re going to clean it — is opening in the state of Pennsylvania, the second one.” nia, the second one.”
There are many misstatements or outright lies in those brief lines. First and foremost, “clean coal” is a fantasy. You can’t “clean it.” In terms of carbon pollution, coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, so you couldn’t clean coal unless you could remove or capture all the carbon and bury it.
The phrase “clean coal” refers to expensive and mostly non-commercial technologies that reduce pollution and capture carbon dioxide when coal is burned.
Even Robert Murray, CEO of the country’s largest privately held coal-mining company, doesn’t believe in that. “Carbon capture and sequestration does not work,” he said last month. “It is neither practical nor economic.”
Second, there never was a “war on coal.” Indeed, as we reported last month, a leaked draft of the Department of Energy’s electric grid study concluded that factors like environmental regulations and renewable energy subsidies “played minor roles” in the shutdown of big coal plants.
Instead, coal has simply become uneconomic. “[Coal] plants that have retired are old and inefficient units that were not recovering their operations and fuel costs, much less capital cost recovery,” the draft report says.
The increase in the metallurgical coal market is largely being driven by China’s steel industry, not by any policies from Trump, as the Washington Post fact checker explained in June. The mine project will create, at most, dozens of jobs.
The Post gave Trump three Pinocchio’s for lying about the first coal plant back in June. These new statements deserves a lot more.
As the name suggests, the NIEHS’ site links to research summariesdetailing how the environment affects personal health. Since it began tracking changes to the site in April, the EDGI report found that the NIEHS has deleted dozens of references to climate change or edited them to simply say “climate.”
Obviously, “climate” is not the same as human-driven climate change. But eliding that difference casts climate change as something abstract or distant. It’s not. It’s real, it’s tangible and its effects have an enormous impact on people’s health. Unfortunately, the NIEHS is failing in its mission to inform people of this. Among the removals is a fact sheet, “Climate Change and Human Health” that lists the immediate health impacts of climate change. Though still hosted on the site, the links have been removed and its no longer listed on the NIEHS’ Brochures and Fact Sheet page.
The fact sheet regionalizes weather effects like extreme heat, flooding and poor air quality and connects them to climate change, summarizing how climate change has an outsized impact on specific vulnerable populations—the elderly, pregnant women, low income and indigenous groups. These groups are both the most vulnerable to the effects of climate and are the clear targets of campaigns meant to mislead on the dangers of climate change.
The latests revisions in the NIEHS only compound with similar deletions on the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency websites. They’re falling in line with the Trump administration’s stance on climate change: deflection (senior officials admitting they “haven’t asked” if the President believes in climate change,) and casting the consensus as a “both sides” debate. Further, it works against the newer, soft rebranding of climate denial employed by EPA head Scott Pruitt—this pernicious idea that the science of climate change is unsettled and no cause for alarm.
But if climate change doesn’t pose a threat, then why are they so afraid of it?
Old men in the East Midlands are less likely to accept scientists’ evidence than young women in the South-east, The Independent, Ian Johnston Environment Correspondent @montaukian , 24 Aug 17, About 13 per cent of people in Britain do not accept the science of climate change, according to a new poll.
The survey of 1,200 adults in the UK by Censuswide found men (17 per cent) were significantly more likely than women (11 per cent) to deny the widespread evidence of global warming – from melting sea ice and glaciers and rising sea levels to animals and plants heading for the poles.
Climate Migrants Might Reach One Billion by 2050 http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/08/climate-migrants-might-reach-one-billion-by-2050/, By Baher Kamal, ROME, Aug 21 2017 (IPS) – Imagine a world with as many as one billion people facing harsh climate change impacts resulting in devastating droughts and/or floods, extreme weather, destruction of natural resources, in particular lands, soils and water, and the consequence of severe livelihoods conditions, famine and starvation.
Although not yet based on definite scientific projections, the proven speed with which the process of climate change has been taking place, might lead to such a scenario by 2050. If so, 1 in 9 human beings would be on the move by then.
Other specialised sources estimate that “every second, one person is displaced by disaster.” On this, the Oslo-based Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reports that in 2015 only, more than 19.2 million people fled disasters in 113 countries. “Disasters displace three to ten times more people than conflict and war worldwide
One Person Displaced Every Second
As climate change continues, adds NRC, it will likely lead to more frequent and severe natural hazards; the impact will be heavy, warns this independent humanitarian organisation providing aid and assistance to people forced to flee.
For its part, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) also forecasts 200 million environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis. Many of them would be coastal population.
In an interview to IPS, the IOM Director General William Lacy Swing explained that political crises and natural disasters are the other major drivers of migration today.
“We have never had so many complex and protracted humanitarian emergencies now happening simultaneously from West Africa all the way to Asia, with very few spots in between which do not have some issue.”
The UN specialised body’s chief added “We have today 40 million forcibly displaced people and 20 million refugees, the greatest number of uprooted people since the Second World War.” See: Q&A: Crisis and Climate Change Driving Unprecedented Migration
Up to 12 million hectares of productive land become barren every year due to desertification and drought alone, which is a lost opportunity to produce 20 million tons of grain, adds the Bonn-based Convention secretariat.
Meantime, the increase in droughts and flash floods that are stronger, more frequent and widespread is destroying the land – the Earth’s main fresh water store, according to UNCCD.
“Droughts kill more people than any other single weather-related catastrophe and conflicts among communities over water scarcity are gathering pace. Over 1 billion people today have no access to water, and demand will increase by 30 per cent by 2030.”
On the other hand, getting sustainable energy to all represents one of the biggest development challenges of the 21st century, it continues.
“Research suggests that 1.4 billion people — over 20 per cent of the global population — lack access to electricity, and that at least 2.7 billion people — some 40 cent of the global population — rely on the traditional use of biomass for cooking.”
In short, land, water and energy as resources are all pillars of our survival and of sustainable development.
“They stand or fall together. To be sustainable and in particular to reach poor rural populations, we need to enhance supply, access and security across all three pillars, at the same time, while supporting global climate ambitions.”
National Security, Migration
On this, based on the UN Environment Programme’s 2009 study “From Conflict to Peace-building. The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment,” UNCCD reminds that 40 per cent of all intrastate conflicts in the past 60 years are linked to the control and allocation of natural resources.
“The exposure of more and more poor people to water scarcity and hunger opens the door to the failure of fragile states and regional conflicts. Non-state actor groups are increasingly taking advantage of large cross-border migration flows and abandoned lands.”
Where natural assets including land are poorly managed, warns the Convention, violence might become the dominant means of resource control, forcing natural resource assets out of the hands of legitimate government.
Meanwhile, the number of international migrants worldwide has been on the rise. According to the International migration report (2015), their number has continued to grow rapidly over the past fifteen years reaching 244 million in 2015, up from 222 million in 2010 and 173 million in 2000.
Losing productive land is driving people to make risky life choices, says UNCCD, adding that in rural areas where people depend on scarce productive land resources, land degradation is a driver of forced migration.
Africa is particularly susceptible since more than 90 per cent of economy depends on a climate-sensitive natural resource base like rain-fed, subsistence agriculture.
“Unless we change the way we manage our land, in the next 30 years we may leave a billion or more vulnerable poor people with little choice but to fight or flee.”
Other specialised sources estimate that “every second, one person is displaced by disaster.” On this, the Oslo-based Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) reports that in 2015 only, more than 19.2 million people fled disasters in 113 countries. “Disasters displace three to ten times more people than conflict and war worldwide
One Person Displaced Every Second
As climate change continues, adds NRC, it will likely lead to more frequent and severe natural hazards; the impact will be heavy, warns this independent humanitarian organisation providing aid and assistance to people forced to flee.
For its part, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) also forecasts 200 million environmental migrants by 2050, moving either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis. Many of them would be coastal population.
In an interview to IPS, the IOM Director General William Lacy Swing explained that political crises and natural disasters are the other major drivers of migration today.
“We have never had so many complex and protracted humanitarian emergencies now happening simultaneously from West Africa all the way to Asia, with very few spots in between which do not have some issue.”
The UN specialised body’s chief added “We have today 40 million forcibly displaced people and 20 million refugees, the greatest number of uprooted people since the Second World War.” See: Q&A: Crisis and Climate Change Driving Unprecedented Migration
Up to 12 million hectares of productive land become barren every year due to desertification and drought alone, which is a lost opportunity to produce 20 million tons of grain, adds the Bonn-based Convention secretariat.
Meantime, the increase in droughts and flash floods that are stronger, more frequent and widespread is destroying the land – the Earth’s main fresh water store, according to UNCCD.
“Droughts kill more people than any other single weather-related catastrophe and conflicts among communities over water scarcity are gathering pace. Over 1 billion people today have no access to water, and demand will increase by 30 per cent by 2030.”
On the other hand, getting sustainable energy to all represents one of the biggest development challenges of the 21st century, it continues.
“Research suggests that 1.4 billion people — over 20 per cent of the global population — lack access to electricity, and that at least 2.7 billion people — some 40 cent of the global population — rely on the traditional use of biomass for cooking.”
In short, land, water and energy as resources are all pillars of our survival and of sustainable development.
“They stand or fall together. To be sustainable and in particular to reach poor rural populations, we need to enhance supply, access and security across all three pillars, at the same time, while supporting global climate ambitions.”
National Security, Migration
On this, based on the UN Environment Programme’s 2009 study “From Conflict to Peace-building. The Role of Natural Resources and the Environment,” UNCCD reminds that 40 per cent of all intrastate conflicts in the past 60 years are linked to the control and allocation of natural resources.
“The exposure of more and more poor people to water scarcity and hunger opens the door to the failure of fragile states and regional conflicts. Non-state actor groups are increasingly taking advantage of large cross-border migration flows and abandoned lands.”
Where natural assets including land are poorly managed, warns the Convention, violence might become the dominant means of resource control, forcing natural resource assets out of the hands of legitimate government.
Meanwhile, the number of international migrants worldwide has been on the rise. According to the International migration report (2015), their number has continued to grow rapidly over the past fifteen years reaching 244 million in 2015, up from 222 million in 2010 and 173 million in 2000.
Losing productive land is driving people to make risky life choices, says UNCCD, adding that in rural areas where people depend on scarce productive land resources, land degradation is a driver of forced migration.
Africa is particularly susceptible since more than 90 per cent of economy depends on a climate-sensitive natural resource base like rain-fed, subsistence agriculture.
“Unless we change the way we manage our land, in the next 30 years we may leave a billion or more vulnerable poor people with little choice but to fight or flee.”
The damage for such a poor country sitting at the forefront of a growing climate-change-based destruction from the recent extreme rain event has been tremendous. At least 115 people have died. Nearly six million have been impacted. The government has run out of medicine, water purification tablets, and temporary shelters for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced. More than 400,000 hectares of crops have been destroyed. Fully half a million homes have been damaged or lost. And there is not enough food or water to go around.
Fears of water-borne illness such as cholera are running high and calls for international aid in the flood-stricken state have grown more and more urgent. But the worst is not yet over as floodwaters from Nepal and India continue to swell Bangladesh’s multiple waterways over banks and into communities through central and southern parts of the country. And more rain may be on the way as another powerful storm system gathers.
(This is what happens if you keep burning fossil fuels. According to recent scientific reports, the global number of record-breaking rainfall events has increased dramatically during recent years. This increase has coincided with global temperatures exceeding the 1 C warmer than 1880s temperature threshold. Higher global temperatures amp up the hydrological cycle by squeezing more moisture out of land and ocean surfaces. A warmer atmosphere that’s more heavily loaded with moisture adds move convective energy to thunderstorms which tends to spike rainfall potentials for the strongest storms to higher levels. Image source: Increased Record-Breaking Precipitation Events Under Global Warming.)
In the Indian States of Bahir and Assam more than 430 people have lost their lives as schools have been buried under 8 feet of water, crops have been destroyed, roads have been washed out and power has been disrupted. As with Bangladesh, concern over contaminated water supplies has brought with it fears of water-borne illness as a gargantuan disaster relief effort gets underway.
Nepal has likewise seen its share of the pain and heartbreak. There, more than 140 people have perished in the floods as 40,000 families have been severely impacted.
(This is what happens if you keep burning fossil fuels. According to recent scientific reports, the global number of record-breaking rainfall events has increased dramatically during recent years. This increase has coincided with global temperatures exceeding the 1 C warmer than 1880s temperature threshold. Higher global temperatures amp up the hydrological cycle by squeezing more moisture out of land and ocean surfaces. A warmer atmosphere that’s more heavily loaded with moisture adds move convective energy to thunderstorms which tends to spike rainfall potentials for the strongest storms to higher levels. Image source: Increased Record-Breaking Precipitation Events Under Global Warming.)
In the Indian States of Bahir and Assam more than 430 people have lost their lives as schools have been buried under 8 feet of water, crops have been destroyed, roads have been washed out and power has been disrupted. As with Bangladesh, concern over contaminated water supplies has brought with it fears of water-borne illness as a gargantuan disaster relief effort gets underway.
Nepal has likewise seen its share of the pain and heartbreak. There, more than 140 people have perished in the floods as 40,000 families have been severely impacted.
Independent 21st Aug 2017,The world has missed the chance to avoid dangerous global warming – unless
we start geo-engineering the atmosphere by removing greenhouse gases,
according to new research. Scientists used computer models to assess what
needs to be done to restrict global warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees
Celsius, the limits adopted by the Paris Agreement on climate change.
They found that the world was likely to overshoot this temperature but could
bring it back down to 1.2C by the end of this century by using techniques
to remove carbon dioxide from the air. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/world-global-warming-avoid-geo-engineering-planet-climate-change-man-made-a7904966.html
CLIMATE CHANGE MAY SHRINK THE WORLD’S FISH, National Geographic, BY CRAIG WELCH 21 AUGUST 2017, A new study suggests warming sea temperatures could result in smaller fish sizes. Warming temperatures and loss of oxygen in the sea will shrink hundreds of fish species—from tunas and groupers to salmon, thresher sharks, haddock and cod—even more than previously thought, a new study concludes.
Because warmer seas speed up their metabolisms, fish, squid and other water-breathing creatures will need to draw more oxygen from the ocean. At the same time, warming seas are already reducing the availability of oxygen in many parts of the sea.
A pair of University of British Columbia scientists argue that since the bodies of fish grow faster than their gills, these animals eventually will reach a point where they can’t get enough oxygen to sustain normal growth.
“What we found was that the body size of fish decreases by 20 to 30 percent for every 1 degree Celsius increase in water temperature,” says author William Cheung, director of science for the university’s Nippon Foundation—Nereus Program.
These changes, the scientists say, will have a profound impact on many marine food webs, upending predator-prey relationships in ways that are hard to predict.
Lab experiments have shown that it’s always the large species that will become stressed first,” says lead author Daniel Pauly, a professor at the university’s Institute for the Ocean and Fisheries, and principal investigator for the Sea Around Us. “Small species have an advantage, respiration-wise.”
Trump’s attack on science isn’t going very well, WP, By Robert B. RichardsonAugust 10 2017, Robert B. Richardson is an ecological economist and an associate professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Community Sustainability. He served on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Board of Scientific Counselors from 2014 to 2017.
The first 200 days of the Trump administration have been marked by direct and consistent confrontations with the scientific community, and no area of science has been targeted more explicitly than climate science. The administration has proposed drastic cuts in the budget to federal climate change programs; removed climate-related information from government websites; and refused to renew the appointments of more than 30 members of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Board of Scientific Counselors — including me.
Scientists know that these actions are dangerous to public health, the economy and our national security. Thankfully, some government workers concerned about climate change are pushing back on the administration’s attempts to muzzle them, finally speaking out — or, in some cases, leaking out — against threats to academic freedom.
This week, The New York Times published a draft report written by scientists from 13 federal agencies. The draft, completed this year under congressional mandate as a special science section of the National Climate Assessment, states that “evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans.” It goes on to say that “many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change.”
The document was publicized before the Trump administration signed off on the release of the final draft. As the Times reported, scientists who worked on the draft feared that the Trump administration would not approve the document or might tamper with the report.
Fears of censorship are not unfounded. Staff members at the Agriculture Department’s Natural Resource Conservation Service must “avoid” using the phrase “climate change” in agency documents, according to a series of emails leaked to the Guardian this week. The phrase “weather extremes” is now the prefered language. Other phrases on the blacklist: “climate change adaptation,” “reduce greenhouse gases” and “sequester carbon.”
Such phrases are part of the language and lexicon of science, and instructing federal scientists to avoid using particular words is an affront to the pursuit of knowledge. This is censorship, and it is dangerous to both science and democracy…….
The United States previously served as a world leader in global environmental responsibility, but tragically that’s no longer the case. The administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and President Trump’s refusal to budge on the issue at the recent Group of 20 conference confirms that the United States is denying science and dangerously ignoring the threat of climate change.
The Trump administration just disbanded a federal advisory committee on climate change, WP, By Juliet EilperinAugust 20The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel.
The National Climate Assessment is supposed to be issued every four years but has come out only three times since passage of the 1990 law calling for such analysis. The next one, due for release in 2018, already has become a contentious issue for the Trump administration.
Administration officials are currently reviewing a scientific report that is key to the final document. Known as the Climate Science Special Report, it was produced by scientists from 13 different federal agencies and estimates that human activities were responsible for an increase in global temperatures of 1.1 to 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit from 1951 to 2010.
The committee was established to help translate findings from the National Climate Assessment into concrete guidance for both public and private-sector officials. Its members have been writing a report to inform federal officials on the data sets and approaches that would best be included, and chair Richard Moss said in an interview Saturday that ending the group’s work was shortsighted……
While many state and local officials have pressed the federal government for more concrete guidance on how to factor climate change into future infrastructure, President Trump has moved in the opposite direction.
Last week, the president signed an executive order on infrastructure that included language overturning a federal requirement that projects built in coastal floodplains and receiving federal aid take projected sea-level rise into account. Some groups, such as the National Association of Home Builders, hailed the reversal of that standard from the Obama administration on the grounds that stricter flood requirements would raise the cost of development and “could make many projects infeasible.”
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) said in an interview Saturday that the move to dissolve the climate advisory committee represents “an example of the president not leading, and the president stepping away from reality.” An official from Seattle Public Utilities has been serving on the panel; with its disbanding, Murray said it would now be “more difficult” for cities to participate in the climate assessment. On climate change, Trump “has left us all individually to figure it out.”…..
Coral bleaching: Researchers struggle to find anywhere in Pacific Ocean untouched, ABC News, By Nadia Daly,20 Aug 17 Scientists aboard a French research ship say they have been shocked to see the extent of coral bleaching across the Pacific Ocean, just halfway through their two-year voyage around the world.
The vessel Tara has been sailing around the globe for more than a decade to study the effects of climate change on the ocean.
Its current expedition will cross 11 time zones and span 100,000 kilometres from Europe to Asia and back again, and the group claims it is the biggest study of this scale across coral reefs.
The focus is how coral reefs in the Pacific are adapting to climate change, and on a stopover in Sydney, captain Nicolas De La Brosse said the extent of damage is already deeply troubling.
“What we’ve seen in really isolated spots like Samoa for example, even though it’s very far away from [developed] countries with pollution, we struggled to find any coral life,” he said.
Mr De La Brosse said nowhere was immune to the effects of global warming.
“It doesn’t matter where you are in the Pacific, coral is starting to bleach.”
He said data was still being collected and analysed and the final results would be released at the end of 2019……http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-19/researchers-shocked-by-coral-bleaching-in-pacific/8822126
More GOP lawmakers bucking their party on climate change, But if the Republican Party is undergoing a shift on climate, it is at its earliest, most incremental stage. Politico, By DAVID SIDERS. 08/19/2017
LOS ANGELES — While President Donald Trump continues to dismantle Obama-era climate policies, an unlikely surge of Republican lawmakers has begun taking steps to distance themselves from the GOP’s hard line on climate change.
The House Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan backwater when it formed early last year, has more than tripled in size since January, driven in part by Trump’s decision in June to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.
And last month, 46 Republicans joined Democrats to defeat an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would have deleted a requirement that the Defense Department prepare for the effects of climate change.
The willingness of some Republicans to buck their party on climate change could help burnish their moderate credentials ahead of the 2018 elections. Of the 26 Republican caucus members, all but five represent districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee next year.
Greenland is an important cog in the global climate system. The ice sheet which covers 80% of the island reflects so much of the sun’s energy back into space that it moderates temperatures through what is known as the “albedo effect”. And since it occupies a strategic position in the North Atlantic, its meltwater tempers ocean circulation patterns.
But Greenland is especially vulnerable to climate change, as Arctic air temperatures are currently rising at twice the global average rate. Environmental conditions are frequently setting new records: “the warmest”, “the wettest”, “the driest”.
Despite its size, the fire itself represents only a snapshot of Greenland’s fire history. It alone cannot tell us about wider Arctic climate change.
But when we superimpose these extraordinary events onto longer-term environmental records, we can see important trends emerging.
The ice sheet is melting
Between 2002 and 2016 the ice sheet lost mass at a rate of around 269 gigatonnes per year. One gigatonne is one billion tonnes. One tonne is about the weight of a walrus. During the same period, the ice sheet also showed some unusual short-term behaviour. The 2012 melt season was especially intense – 97% of the ice sheet experienced surface melt at some point during the year. Snow even melted at its summit, the highest point in the centre of the island where the ice is piled up more than 3km above sea level.
In April 2016 Greenland saw abnormally high temperatures and its earliest ever “melt event” (a day in which more than 10% of the ice sheet has at least 1mm of surface melt). Early melting doesn’t usher in a period of complete and catastrophic change – the ice won’t vanish overnight. But it does illustrate how profoundly and rapidly the ice sheet can respond to rising temperatures.
Permafrost is thawing
Despite its icy image, the margins of Greenland are actually quite boggy, complete with swarms of mosquitoes. This is the “active layer”, made up of peaty soil and sediment up to two metres thick, which temporarily thaws during the summer. The underlying permafrost, which can reach depths of 100m, remains permanently frozen.
In Greenland, like much of the Arctic, rising temperatures are thawing the permafrost. This means the active layer is growing by up to 1.5cm per year. This trend is expected to continue, seeing as under current IPCC predictions, Arctic air temperatures will rise by between 2.0°C and 7.5°Cthis century.
Arctic permafrost contains more than 1,500 billion tonnes of dead plants and animals (around 1,500 billion walrus equivalent) which we call “organic matter”. Right now, this stuff has been frozen for thousands of years. But when the permafrost thaws this organic matter will decay, releasing carbon and methane (another greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.
With this in mind, it is clear to see why the recent wildfire, which was burning in dried-out peat in the active layer, was especially interesting to researchers. If Greenland’s permafrost becomes increasingly degraded and dry, there is the potential for even bigger wildfires which would release vast stores of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Species are adapting to a changing ecosystem
Major changes in the physical environment are already affecting the species that call Greenland home. Just look at polar bears, the face of Arctic climate change. Unlike other bears, polar bears spend most of their time at sea, which explains their Latin name Ursus maritimus. In particular they rely on sea ice as it gives them a deep-water platform from which to hunt seals.
However, since 1979 the extent of sea ice has decreased by around 7.4% per decade due to climate warming, and bears have had to adjust their habitat use. With continued temperature rise and sea ice disappearance, it’s predicted that populations will decline by up to 30% in the next few decades, taking the total number of polar bears to under 9,000.
I have considered only a handful of the major environmental shifts in Greenland over the past few decades, but the effects of increasing temperatures are being felt in all parts of the earth system. Sometimes these are manifest as extreme events, at others as slow and insidious changes.
The different parts of the environmental jigsaw interact, so that changes in one part (sea ice decline, say) influence another (polar bear populations). We need to keep a close eye on the system as a whole if we are to make reliable interpretations – and meaningful plans for the future.
Kuwait’s inferno: how will the world’s hottest city survive climate change?
Malls and office complexes continue to spring up in Kuwait City, built by migrants often working illegally in soaring temperatures. But as oil and water reserves dwindle, the energy-guzzling citystate heads for an existential crisis, Guardian, Ruth Michaelson.18 Aug 2017,
It is 9am and the temperature in Kuwait City is 45C and rising, but already people working outside. A row of litter-pickers are already hard at work along a coastal highway, their entire bodies covered to protect them from the sun. Outside one of the city’s many malls, valets hover beside the air-conditioned entrance, while two men in white hats huddle wearily next to their ice cream stands.
Other city residents are luckier. They can avoid the outdoors altogether, escaping the inferno by sheltering in malls, cars and office buildings, where temperatures are kept polar-cold.
For years, Kuwait’s climate has been steadily heating up. In the summer months, the Gulf state now frequently touches 50C, and was last year awarded the grim prize of being the hottest place on earth, when temperatures reached a staggering high of 54C.
But while the capital is making plans to prepare for climate change and the rising heat, there are growing concerns for those residents who cannot afford to shelter inside, and mounting questions about how such an energy-intensive city can survive as resources such as water and oil dwindle.
Nearly 70% of Kuwait’s population is made up of migrant workers, many of whom power the near-constant construction of new office complexes and malls across the state. Though labour legislation now bans work outdoors between 12pm and 4pm, many are seen toiling through the hottest hours of the day regardless………
The conditions for those men and women forced to work outside are set to worsen: between 2010 and 2035, Kuwait’s annual average temperature will increase by 1.6% to 28.7C , according to the country’s Environmental Public Authority (EPA), making for increasingly sweltering summer temperatures and more of the dust storms that already plague Kuwait City and beyond.
“Yes, we’re under pressure,” says Shareef al-Khayat, head of the climate change division at the EPA. “Not just from rising temperatures, but sea level rises – the demand for electricity and water will also be harder in the future.”……..
Adapting to rising temperatures will require a radical shift in thinking in Kuwait, especially concerning the most vulnerable. “We can’t manage the way these companies work,” says the construction manager, referring to the contractors who incentivise labourers to work outside in punishing conditions. “Of course, when I see labourers working after midday in this heat, it’s horrible. But what can we do? It’s their rules.” https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/aug/18/kuwait-city-hottest-place-earth-climate-change-gulf-oil-temperatures
