Tag Archives | Global Warming

Four Lectures on Climate Change: Kevin Anderson, Andrew Simms, Gwynne Dyer, and Daniel Nocera

By on November 28, 2012 in News 24

via chycho

We have treated the world as a garbage dump. The damage we have done has been devastating and the repercussions unimaginable.

From the disappearing bees to plastic waste vortex’s in the oceans, from the commodification of water to increasing CO2 emissions for cheap gasoline, from deforestation (pdf) to the melting ice caps, from fracking to the oil sands, our politics, our economics, and our way of life are devastating ecosystems across the globe.

The simple fact is that even though it is our technological evolution that is bringing about an economic metamorphosis that we see manifesting itself as a global financial crisis, it will be the environmental revolution forcing our civilization to implement the concept of sustainability that will finally transform our society. In essence, we need to seriously rethink our current economic system.

There are positive changes taking place on the political front, and then some, but we are losing the battle:

“Humans must immediately implement a series of radical measures to halt carbon emissions or prepare for the collapse of entire ecosystems and the displacement, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of the globe’s inhabitants, according to a report commissioned by the World Bank.

… Read the rest

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Climate Alarmism – Using Our Fear of Hurricanes

By on November 6, 2012 in News 62

Via Wattsupwiththat.com

Climate alarmists excel at gathering government funding to “fight” climate change. Today, the U.S. government is spending almost $9 billion each year in grants to study man-made climate change. Tens of billions more are spent for green energy subsidies, grants and loans. The world is spending over $250 billion each year to try to “decarbonize” national economies. Yet, mounting evidence shows that climate change is natural and man-made influences are very small. Suppose we shift efforts away from misguided efforts to control climate and toward solving the real problems of our nation and the world?

Guest post by Steve Goreham

Hurricane Sandy has come and gone, leaving a path of destruction. More than 100 people have been killed and 8.5 million lost power. Nineteen states from Maine to Tennessee were impacted, with deaths reported in 10 states. Widespread flooding and fires caused extensive damage in New Jersey and New York.

… Read the rest

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The Climate Change Denier Who Became The Voice Of Hurricane Sandy On Wikipedia

By on November 4, 2012 in News 26

We all rely far too much on Wikipedia without questioning the veracity of the source. As a reminder of the fallibility of the user-generated entries, Dan Nosowitz exposes the climate change denier Ken Mampel at PopSci:

“All I am is a contributor. I have no title, I’m just a Joe Blow,” says Ken Mampel, a currently unemployed 56-year-old living in Ormond Beach, Florida. He’s also largely responsible for the Wikipedia article about Hurricane Sandy. If it isn’t already, that article will eventually become the single most-viewed document about the hurricane. On the entire internet.

In an unpaid but frenzied fit of news consumption, editing, correction, aggregation, and citation, Mampel has established himself as by far the most active contributor to the Wikipedia page on Hurricane Sandy, with more than twice the number of edits as the next-most-active contributor at the time this article was written.

And Mampel made sure that the Hurricane Sandy article, for four days after the hurricane made landfall in New Jersey, had no mention of “global warming” or “climate change” whatsoever.

… Read the rest

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It’s Global Warming, Stupid

By on November 1, 2012 in News 20

We’re going to be seeing a lot of headlines like this one (from BusinessWeek), but is it really so simple?

Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.

Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.

An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change?

… Read the rest

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Arctic Ice Melt is ‘Decades Ahead’ of Previous Models

By on October 7, 2012 in News 21

Picture: Stefan Lins (CC)

The climate scientists are wrong again!  Via Common Dreams:

In lieu of recent statistics showing ‘unprecedented’ and ‘amazing’ Arctic sea ice melt at record levels, leading climate scientist Michael Mann stated this week that rising water levels are “decades ahead of schedule” and that “Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu, may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade or so.”

Arctic sea ice is “declining faster than the models predict,” Mann, who is the director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center, told the Guardian this week.

“When you look at the major Greenland and the west Antarctic ice sheets, which are critical from the standpoint of sea level rise, once they begin to melt we really start to see sea level rises accelerate.”

“The models have typically predicted that will not happen for decades but the measurements that are coming in tell us it is already happening so once again we are decades ahead of schedule.”

“Island nations that have considered the possibility of evacuation at some point, like Tuvalu, may have to be contending those sort of decisions within the matter of a decade or so.”

Perhaps the AGW denial psy-op is part of the Illuminatis’ depopulation plan?

… Read the rest

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Global Warming May Shrink Size Of Fish 24% By 2050

By on October 1, 2012 in News 12

Should we expect fishermen to try to find ways to stop greenhouse gas emissions from their boats? Doubtful, but if the warming trend continues, the average size of their catch is going down, down, down. Via Live Science:

Warming temperatures could lead to smaller fish in the world’s oceans, according to new research.

Based on a study of more than 600 species from around the globe, researchers from the University of British Columbia found that many fish won’t be able to keep up their body weight as the water warms. The scientists projected that the average maximum body size for the world’s fish could decline by up to 24 percent by 2050.

Smooth lanternshark nmfs

“We were surprised to see such a large decrease in fish size,” the study’s lead author, William Cheung, said in a statement. “Marine fish are generally known to respond to climate change through changing distribution and seasonality. But the unexpectedly big effect that climate change could have on body size suggests that we may be missing a big piece of the puzzle of understanding climate change effects in the ocean.”…

[continues at Live Science]… Read the rest

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Global Warming Costs $1.2 Trillion Per Year, 1.6% Of World GDP

By on September 27, 2012 in News 13

US Navy 071120-M-8966H-005 An aerial view over southern Bangladesh reveals extensive flooding as a result of Cyclone SidrThe bill is only going to go up, methinks. From The Guardian:

Climate change is already contributing to the deaths of nearly 400,000 people a year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, wiping 1.6% annually from global GDP, according to a new study.

The impacts are being felt most keenly in developing countries, according to the research, where damage to agricultural production from extreme weather linked to climate change is contributing to deaths from malnutrition, poverty and their associated diseases.

Air pollution caused by the use of fossil fuels is also separately contributing to the deaths of at least 4.5m people a year, the report found.

The 331-page study, entitled Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of A Hot Planet and published on Wednesday, was carried out by the DARA group, a non-governmental organisation based in Europe, and the Climate Vulnerable Forum. It was written by more than 50 scientists, economists and policy experts, and commissioned by 20 governments.

… Read the rest

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Catholic Church’s Anti-Glacier Prayers ‘Worked Too Well’

By on August 15, 2012 in News 5

Could this whole “global warming” thing which has wrought landscape change, weather disasters, and wildfires be the result of a 300-year-old prayer from the Vatican imploring God to melt the icy peaks? Via National Geographic:

About 50 people set out on foot from the Swiss village of Fiesch at dawn on July 31. “Glacier is ice, ice is water, water is life,” intoned priest Toni Wenger, before beseeching God to stop the glaciers high above them from melting.

By changing a few, crucial words in the liturgy, Father Wenger reversed a Catholic ritual that for 350 years had implored the heavens to push back the glaciers. The Vatican had approved the change as the effects of global warming became all too tangible in the Alps.

The people of devoutly Catholic Fiesch and Fieschertal have made the annual pilgrimage since 1674, when Europe was in the grip of the Little Ice Age.

… Read the rest

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U.S. Heat Waves of 2011 Linked Directly to Man-Made Climate Change

By on August 8, 2012 in News 15

New-York-City---Times-Square---Naked-Cowboy---1---(Gentry)Lauren Morello and ClimateWire report that new analysis shows there is “virtually no explanation other than climate change” for extreme heat events including last year’s scorching weather in Texas and Oklahoma, via Scientific American:

Yes, it really is that hot.

Extreme summer heat — like the sizzling temperatures that hit Texas and Oklahoma last year and Moscow in 2010 — occurs far more frequently now than it did 30 years ago, according to a new study from NASA climatologist James Hansen.

Between 1951 and 1980, just 0.2 percent of Earth’s land areas experienced that kind of scorching summer, on average. Today, that number has soared to 10 percent, according to Hansen’s statistical analysis of global temperature data. And the likely cause is man-made climate change.

“We can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small,” Hansen and his co-authors wrote in a study that will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

… Read the rest

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