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The Climate-Change Wars Begin This Summer

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Jonathan Chait - May. 22 (Special Report) - The biggest piece of President Obama’s second-term agenda is his widely expected plan for the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new carbon regulations for power plants, a move that could bring the United States in line with the greenhouse-gas-redu

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Frog, toad and salamander populations plummeting, U.S. survey finds

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:46:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Darryl Fears - May. 22 (News Report) - Frogs, toads and salamanders continue to vanish from the American landscape at an alarming pace, with seven species — including Colorado’s boreal toad and Nevada’s yellow-legged frog — facing 50 percent drops in their numbers within seven years if the current rate of decline continues, according to new government research . ...

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Oklahoma Senators Jim Inhofe, Tom Coburn, Face Difficult Options On Disaster Relief

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Christina Wilkie - May. 21 (News Analysis) - Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, both Republicans, are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly voted against funding disaster aid for other parts of the country. They also have opposed increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers federal disaster relief. Late last year, Inhofe and Coburn both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Coburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained "wasteful spending," and identified a series of items he objected to, including "$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies."

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Climate Warnings, Growing Louder

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - May. 18 (Opinion) - Given new evidence on carbon pollution, President Obama should get moving on global warming.

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Population growth and climate change explained by Hans Rosling

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Claire Provost, Claudine Spera - May. 17 (News Report) - Han Rosling demonstrates the dynamics of population growth, child mortality and carbon dioxide emissionsClaire ProvostClaudine Spera

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UK's climate change adaptation team cut from 38 officials to just six

Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Fiona Harvey - May. 17 (News Report) - Former senior official John Ashton attacks government for 'spooking potential investors' in energy infrastructure The number of people employed by the government to work on the UK's response to the effects of climate change has been cut from 38 officials to just six, triggering accusations that David Cameron's promise to be the greenest government has been abandoned. The UK is facing a multi-billion pound bill over the next few years for the costs of adapting to the effects of climate change – including flooding , much fiercer storms, droughts, heatwaves and more extreme weather. The government's advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, have warned that the measures needed to prepare the UK's infrastructure will include defences for power stations, transport and communication networks, changes to how buildings are constructed, and new ways of trying to prevent flooding, such as an upgrade to the Thames Barrier. But the number of officials charged with dealing with the issue within the ...

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Survey finds 97% climate science papers agree warming is man-made

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 16 (News) - Overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed papers taking a position on global warming say humans are causing it Our team of citizen science volunteers at Skeptical Science has published a new survey in the journal Environmental Research Letters of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers, as the Guardian reports today . This is the most comprehensive survey of its kind, and the inspiration of this blog's name: Climate Consensus – the 97%. The survey In 2004, Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of 928 peer-reviewed climate papers published between 1993 and 2003, finding none that rejected the human cause of global warming. We decided that it was time to expand upon Oreskes' work by performing a keyword search of peer-reviewed scientific journal publications for the terms 'global warming' and 'global climate change' between the years 1991 and 2011. Our team agreed upon definitions of categories to put the papers in: explicit or implicit endorsement of human-caused global warming, no ...

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The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

National Journal - May. 15 (Opinion) -

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China joins Arctic 'coldrush club'

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - May. 15 (News Report) - Several countries gain permanent observer status on the Arctic Council but there is dissent over the EU.

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Climate Tipping Point? Concentration of Carbon Dioxide Tops 400 ppm For First Time in Human History

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - May. 13 (News Report) - The 400 ppm threshold has been an important marker in U.N. climate change negotiations, widely recognized as a dangerous level that could drastically worsen human-caused global warming. We speak to leading climate scientist Michael Mann, distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University and author of the recent book, "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines." Mann warns, "We have to go several million years back in time to find a point in Earth’s history where CO2 was as high as it is now.

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Is Climate Change Fueling a Deadly Disease in California and Other Parched States?

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Tara Lohan - May. 13 (News Report) - If you haven’t heard of valley fever, you’re not alone. Although cases in states like California are rising, public awareness is low and misdiagnoses from doctors are sadly high. The AP reported an 850 percent spike in cases across the country from 1998 to 2011, with California and Arizona being the worst states.

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European energy chief puts forward case for funding coal

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Terry Macalister - May. 13 (News) - EBRD chief Riccardo Puliti warns Europe not to be hasty in adopting 'ideological' policy on carbon intensity funding One of Europe's most influential government-owned investors in the energy industry has hinted it may expand funding of high-carbon coal projects despite mounting pressure from climate change campaigners to rule out such investments. Riccardo Puliti, energy chief at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), warned against an "ideological" policy on carbon intensity in funding decisions without giving weight to other considerations. The EBRD, which is based in London and owned by more than 60 countries, including the UK, is reviewing its energy policy. It has a €37.5bn (£32bn) loan book, with 41% of its investments last year channelled into the energy and infrastructure sectors. Puliti's comments came as scientists declared the highest day-long concentration of C0 2 in human history and a line of global institutions such as the International Energy ...

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Climate change 'will make hundreds of millions homeless'

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Robin McKie - May. 12 (Comment) - Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm). Massive movements of people are likely to occur over the rest of the century because global temperatures are likely to rise to by up to 5C because carbon dioxide levels have risen unabated for 50 years, said Stern, who is head of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. "When temperatures rise to that level, we will have disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts," he said. "Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will ...

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Climate change: swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 12 (Editorial) - Carbon dioxide levels have reached an all-time high. But there is some hope if governments take the figures seriously The news that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere reached a level of 400 parts per million last week might not appear to have immediate significance. The level is only a couple of units higher than last year, after all. Yet the development has undoubted importance. With the realisation that carbon dioxide levels have achieved that symbolic 400ppm figure, it is now clear that two decades of warnings from scientists have fallen on deaf ears and that our leaders have failed completely to curtail rising outputs of greenhouse gases across the world. Indeed, they have allowed them to accelerate. In the 1960s, levels rose at 0.7ppm a year. Today, they rise at 2.1ppm, as more and more nations become industrialised and increase outputs from their factories and power plants. As a result, the most conservative of scientific calculations suggest Earth now faces a 50-50 ...

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Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels hit troubling milestone, scientists say

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Brian Vastag, Jason Samenow - May. 11 (News Report) - Human influence on the Earth’s atmosphere touched what climate scientists called a dire milestone Friday as concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide nudged up to a level unseen in about 3 million to 5 million years — long before modern humans.

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This Crater in Siberia Reveals the Future of a Globally Warmed Planet

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Damian Carrington - May. 10 (News Report) - This story originally appeared in The Guardian . The future of a globally warmed world has been revealed in a remote meteorite crater in Siberia, where lake sediments recorded the strikingly balmy climate of the Arctic during the last period when greenhouse gas levels were as high as today. Unchecked burning of fossil fuels has driven carbon dioxide to levels not seen for 3 million years when, the sediments show, temperatures were 46 degrees higher than today, lush forests covered the tundra and sea levels were up to 40 meters higher than today. "It's like deja vu," said Prof Julie Brigham-Grette, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the new research analyzing a core of sediment to see what temperatures in the region were between 3.6 and 2.2 million years ago. "We have seen these warm periods before. Many people now agree this is where we are heading." Continue Reading ...

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'Climate change sceptics are turning Earth into dying patient'

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Fiona Harvey - May. 10 (News Report) - Heir to throne intervenes on issue dividing coalition, making outspoken criticism of attempts to tackle global warming Prince Charles has attacked corporate lobbyists and climate change sceptics for turning the Earth into a "dying patient", making his most outspoken criticism yet of the world's failure to tackle global warming just when the heir to the throne is assuming a growing number of the duties of what is supposed to be an apolitical monarchy. Hosting a two-day conference for forest scientists at St James's Palace in London, the Prince of Wales satirised those who stand in the way of climate action, characterising them as "the confirmed sceptics" and "the international association of corporate lobbyists". Faced with these forces of opposition, "science finds itself up the proverbial double blind gum tree", he added. At the debate on environmental issues, hours after the prince attended the Queen's speech, Charles attacked businesses which failed to care for the environment and ...

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The Most Controversial Chart in History, Explained

Thu, 09 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Chris Mooney - May. 09 (Opinion) - Back in 1998, a little known climate scientist named Michael Mann and two colleagues published a paper that sought to reconstruct the planet's past temperatures going back half a millennium before the era of thermometers—thereby showing just how out of whack recent warming has been. The finding: Recent northern hemisphere temperatures had been "warmer than any other year since (at least) AD 1400." The graph depicting this result looked rather like a hockey stick: After a long period of relatively minor temperature variations (the "shaft"), it showed a sharp mercury upswing during the last century or so ("the blade"). The report moved quickly through climate science circles. Mann and a colleague soon lengthened the shaft of the hockey stick back to the year 1000 AD—and then, in 2001, the UN's ...

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Why Are These Turtles Turning Female?

Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Nick Visser - May. 07 (News Analysis) - If you're a male painted turtle, global warming might sound great at first: A new study suggests it will mean more females to mate with and fewer male rivals to fend off. But, as usual with climate change, every silver lining has a cloud. In this case, too many females could render the species incapable of reproducing by century's end.

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Does Shale Gas Production Alter Climate Change?

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Ken Silverstein, Contributor - May. 05 (Opinion) - The shale gas industry has long thought that the Environmental Protection Agency may undercut its possibilities. But the regulator’s latest unveiling is now fueling the unconventional natural gas, noting that its heat-trapping emissions are much less than originally thought.

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Striking Visions of Our Flooded Future

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 03 (News) -

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As Honey Bee Numbers Drop, U.S. Sees Threat to Food Supply

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 02 (News) - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Honey bees, which play a key role in pollinating a wide variety of food crops, are in sharp decline in the United States, due to parasites, disease and pesticides, said a federal report released on Thursday. Genetics and poor nutri

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Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers. - Grist

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By John Upton - May. 02 (News Report) - Women in the developing world, many of whom work in agriculture, are vulnerable to climate change. Apparently the idea of girls being sold off into early marriage and women being pushed into prostitution is fucking hilarious.

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Global CO2 Levels Approach Worrisome Milestone

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 02 (News) - Near the moonscape summit of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, an infrared analyzer will soon make history. Sometime in the next month, it is expected to record a daily concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of more than 400 parts per million (p.p.m.), a value not reached at this key surveillance point for a few million years. ...

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Would we give up burgers to stop climate change?

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - May. 02 (Opinion) - In case you missed the news, humanity spent the Earth Day week reaching another sad milestone in the history of catastrophic climate change: For the first time, measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million, aka way abo

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