Archive for November 19th, 2012

Iowa scientists: Drought a sign of climate change

Associated Press: This year's drought is consistent with predictions that global climate change would bring about weather extremes including more frequent droughts, said a report released Monday. The Iowa Climate Statement updates the 2010 report, reflecting the year's lingering drought and the belief that it signifies what many scientists have predicted -- increasing instability in weather patterns will lead to extremes during both wet and dry years. Iowa has experienced such extremes in recent years; in 2008,...

World Bank: Climate change could cause massive damage

USA Today: The world is on course to warm as much as 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit, by 2100, prompting extreme heat-waves, severe drought and major floods as sea-level rises, warns the World Bank in a new report. All regions would suffer, but the tropics and subtropics are among the most vulnerable and the planet's poorest people would be hit the hardest, according to the study, "Turn Down the Heat," released Sunday. The study says current global efforts, aimed at keeping warming to below a...

United States: UB President Shuts Down Controversial Shale Institute

EcoWatch: Today, SUNY Buffalo closed the doors of its Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), what we at DeSmog have described as an epicenter for "frackademia" and a public relations front for the oil and gas industry to promote hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") under the guise of scientific legitimacy that a university offers. A letter from SUNY Buffalo President Satish K. Tripathi said that the nail in the coffin for SRSI was what we coined its "shill gas study," the first paper published by SRSI....

Iowa scientists: Climate change caused the drought

CBS News: More than 130 scientists from Iowa colleges and universities said in a statement on Monday that this year's drought is consistent with a warmer climate predicted as part of global climate change, and more droughts can be expected. "In a warmer climate, wet years get wetter, and dry years get dryer," Christ Anderson, research assistant professor at the Climate Science Program at Iowa State University, said in a press release. "And dry years get hotter -- that is precisely what happened in Iowa this...

Iowa scientists warn of need for climate change action

Reuters: A group of scientists in the top U.S. grain-growing state of Iowa said on Monday that this year's harsh drought was a sign of things to come and should spur more action to prepare for the challenges of a warming climate. "Weather varies too much and has too many drivers to attribute any particular event to a single cause like climate change, but there is a clear pattern of crop loss and property damage from increasingly frequent events such as flooding, drought and dangerous storms," said Dave...

Climate activists march on White House again to oppose Keystone XL pipeline

Mongabay: Yesterday, climate activists marched around the White House in opposition against the Keystone XL pipeline, which if built will carry tar sands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and an international market. The protest, which included over 3,000 people according to organizing groups, is an opening salvo in activists' battle to convince the Obama Administration to turn down the pipeline for good. "It's time to start holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for the wholesale damage they’re doing...

DGR Great Basin demonstrates in solidarity with Tar Sands Blockade

Deep Green Resistance: The Great Basin Chapter of Deep Green Resistance participated in a demonstration in solidarity with the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade today in Salt Lake City. The Tar Sands blockade has been obstructing the construction of the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would eventually carry oil from the Tar Sands in Alberta to the refineries of the Gulf Coast. Working primarily in rural areas of Texas in collaboration with locals, activists from Tar Sands Blockade have been suspended high...

World Bank report warns of “devastating” climate change effects

Salon: A new report issued by the World Bank warned that, based on current climate models, the world can expect extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise. The report says today’s climate could "warm from the current global mean temperature of 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels, to as high as 4°C by 2100, even if countries fulfill current emissions-reduction pledges." "A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided -- we...

In All Probability: Climate Change and the Risk of More Storms Like Sandy

The Atlantic: Earlier this year, the journal Nature Climate Change published a paper that measures hurricane behavior in our warming world. The study was as innovative as it was prescient. Combining models to simulate thousands of hurricanes in likely future climates, the authors discovered that New York City, their test case, was at risk. And increasingly so. The city's most severe storm flooding events historically have been quite rare. According to the paper, hurricane storm surge -- roiling coastal waters...

Planet on Path to Four C Warming, World Bank Warns

Inter Press Service: Coal, oil and gas companies and their backers in the financial and investment industry must stop putting billions of dollars into finding and extracting new sources of fossil fuels. If they don`t shift their investments, temperatures will soar four to 10 degrees C higher, devastating many parts of the world, the World Bank said Monday. The world is on track to a "four-degree C world" marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening...