Category Archives: Global Warming

Extreme weather increasing level of toxins in food, scientists warn | The Financial Express

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GR:  With increasing levels of pesticides and natural toxins, the Earth factory farm won’t be producing healthy food.  Shortened life spans in the human future?

“As they struggle to deal with more extreme weather, a range of food crops are generating more of chemical compounds that can cause health problems for people and livestock who eat them, scientists have warned.

“A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that crops such as wheat and maize are generating more potential toxins as a reaction to protect themselves from extreme weather.But these chemical compounds are harmful to people and animals if consumed for a prolonged period of time, according to a report released during a United Nations Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi.

“Crops are responding to drought conditions and increases in temperature just like humans do when faced with a stressful situation,” explained Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist and director of the Division of Early Warning and Assessment at UNEP.

“Under normal conditions, for instance, plants convert nitrates they absorb into nutritious amino acids and proteins. But prolonged drought slows or prevents this conversion, leading to more potentially problematic nitrate accumulating in the plant, the report said.”  Source: Extreme weather increasing level of toxins in food, scientists warn | The Financial Express

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New Extreme Climate to Hurl More Rain Bombs at Texas, Light off Another Record West Coast Heatwave | robertscribbler

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More Severe Storms

They call them rain bombs. A new breed of severe storm fueled by a record hot atmosphere. One capable of dumping 2-4 inches of rainfall an hour and generating voracious flash floods that can devour homes and cars in just minutes. And in southeast Texas, the rain bombs have been going off like gangbusters.

In this week’s most recent iteration of flaring, climate change induced, storms, a region north of Houston and South of Dallas saw flood after flood after flood. Now, hundreds of people have been forced to abandon inundated homes, thousands of cars have been submerged, and seven people are dead. Rainfall totals for the region over the past seven days have averaged between 7 and 10 inches. But local amounts in the most intense bombification zones have come in at 16, 19, and even as high as 30 inches in Washington County. All time record rainfall totals that might be associated with a powerful hurricane. Floods that would typically happen only once every 500 years. But in the new moisture-laden atmosphere of a record warm world, a garden variety thunderstorm now has enough atmospheric oomph to frequently set off what were once multi-century floods.

Source: New Extreme Climate to Hurl More Rain Bombs at Texas, Light off Another Record West Coast Heatwave | robertscribbler

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Record Rain Events a Global Pattern | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

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GR:  As predicted by scientists more than 30 years ago, the storms are growing stronger.  As the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans warm, the storms will continue to grow.

Climate denial:  “This weekend’s record flooding in Germany was a reminder of one of the most basic, first-order-physics predictions of climate science – warmer air holds more moisture. The pattern of increase in record breaking precipitation events is well documented and global, as my friend Stephan Rahmstorf reminded me this morning with a graph from a recent study of similar events.”

Potsdam University: Heavy rainfall events setting ever new records have been increasing strikingly in the past thirty years. While before 1980, multi-decadal fluctuations in extreme rainfall events are explained by natural variability, a team of scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research detected a clear upward trend in the past few decades towards more unprecedented daily rainfall events. They find the worldwide increase to be consistent with rising global temperatures which are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Short-term torrential rains can lead to high-impact floodings.

More at: Record Rain Events a Global Pattern | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

Dishonest Donald Denies The Ongoing California Drought as Lake Mead Hits New All-Time Record Low | robertscribbler

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We now find that under the current amount of warming, the probability of a severe drought year has approximately doubled. — Park Williams, assistant research professor at Columbia University’…

Source: Dishonest Donald Denies The Ongoing California Drought as Lake Mead Hits New All-Time Record Low | robertscribbler

Abrupt Sea Level Rise Looms As Increasingly Realistic Threat by Nicola Jones: Yale Environment 360

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Ninety-nine percent of the planet’s freshwater ice is locked up in the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps. Now, a growing number of studies are raising the possibility that as those ice sheets melt, sea levels could rise by six feet this century, and far higher in the next, flooding many of the world’s populated coastal areas.

Last month in Greenland, more than a tenth of the ice sheet’s surface was melting in the unseasonably warm spring sun, smashing 2010’s record for a thaw so early in the year. In the Antarctic, warm water licking at the base of the continent’s western ice sheet is, in effect, dissolving the cork that holds back the flow of glaciers into the sea; ice is now seeping like wine from a toppled bottle.

The planet’s polar ice is melting fast, and recent satellite data, models, and fieldwork have left scientists sobered by the speed of the sea level rise we should expect over the coming decades. Although researchers have long projected that the planet’s biggest ice sheets and glaciers will wilt in the face of rising temperatures, estimates of the rate of that change keep going up. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put out its last report in 2013, the consensus was for under a meter (3.3 feet) of sea level rise by 2100. In just the last few years, at least one modeling study suggests we might need to double that.

Source: Abrupt Sea Level Rise Looms As Increasingly Realistic Threat by Nicola Jones: Yale Environment 360

Report eyes global warming threats to World Heritage sites | Summit County Citizens Voice

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United Nations leaders say that famed World Heritage sites around the world are facing a significant threat from climate change. Increasing floods, melting glaciers and more wildfires are among the risks cited in a new report from UNESCO’s World Heritage Center.“Globally, we need to better understand, monitor and address climate change threats to World Heritage sites,” said the center’s director, Mechtild Rössler. “As the report’s findings underscore, achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to a level well below 2 degrees Celsius is vitally important to protecting our World Heritage for current and future generations.”The report, “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate” was jointly released by UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Program, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Source: Report eyes global warming threats to World Heritage sites | Summit County Citizens Voice

G7 nations pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 | Environment | The Guardian

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Leaders of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the EU urge all countries to join them in eliminating support for coal, oil and gas in a decade.

The statement did not define precisely what the G7 consider to be a subsidy. The word “inefficient” in the G7 text indicates subsidies that distort energy markets. The OECD estimates that this type of support for fossil fuels within its member states is $160-200bn (£109-136bn) each year.

But when the cost of damage from pollution and climate change is factored in, the International Monetary Fund has estimated that support increases to a staggering $5.3tn a year, or $10m per minute. This is more than the total global spend on human health.

Source: G7 nations pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025 | Environment | The Guardian

Africa’s Most Vulnerable Face an Even Hotter Future | Climate Central

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Heat waves will be more intense and happen more often in Africa, home to some of the most vulnerable populations on the planet.

Source: Africa’s Most Vulnerable Face an Even Hotter Future | Climate Central

Battle lines drawn over new fossil fuel infrastructure

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GR: We need Clinton to follow Sanders’ stance on fracking.

Bob Berwyn's avatarSummit County Citizens Voice

Signs of oil and gas development are visible on a landscape level from 35,000 feet in the air. Signs of oil and gas development are visible in eastern on a landscape level from 35,000 feet in the air. @bberwyn photo.

Broad coalition of conservation groups oppose measure that could speed approval of natural gas export terminals

Staff Report

Pro-fossil fuel legislators in Congress hope they can help their campaign donors by putting the cart before the fracking horse. An amended version of the Senate’s Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 (S. 2012) includes provisions that would speed up the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of liquefied natural gas export terminals.

According to critics of the measure, that artificially increases the demand for U.S. natural gas and hits communities with additional health and climate risks. More than 370 organizations are urging the Senate to reject provisions in the bill that would encourage oil and gas fracking.

The groups delivered a letter to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee…

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