Archive for November 2nd, 2013

Leaked Climate Change Report Predicts Violent, Poorer, Sicker Future

Associated Press: Starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, war and disease already lead to human tragedies. They're likely to worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change, a leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report next March on how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income. A leaked copy of a...

Warming report sees violent, sicker, poorer future

Associated Press: A leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts that man-made global warming likely will worsen already existing human tragedies of war, starvation, poverty, flooding, extreme weather and disease. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report next March on how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income. A leaked copy of a draft of the report's summary...

North Dakota oil boom brings worry to Theodore Roosevelt National Park

LA Times: On a stretch of ranchland nestled in the North Dakota Badlands, under dark, star-filled night skies, serene landscape and solitude, Theodore Roosevelt formed his strong conservationist ideals more than a century ago. But the night skies around the former president's Elkhorn Ranch, referred to as the "cradle of conservation" by environmentalists and historians, now glow orange. From some of the highest points in what is now Theodore Roosevelt National Park, dozens of natural gas flares are visible...

Off the Shelf: ‘The Frackers’ and the Birth of an Energy Boom

New York Times: One could argue that, except for the Internet, the most important technological advance of the last two decades has been hydraulic fracturing, widely known as fracking. Practically overnight, it seems, this drilling technique has produced so much oil and gas beneath American soil that we are at the brink of something once thought unattainable: true energy independence. And its repercussions, for geopolitics, the environment and other areas, are only now being grasped. In “The Frackers,” Gregory...

Protecting Rivers, Reducing Climate Vulnerability

Huffington Post: The mountain valleys of the North Indian state of Uttarakhand have been heavily developed with hydropower projects, tourism resorts and other infrastructure. When a cloudburst hit the state in June 2013, the choked rivers were unable to cope with the ravaging floods. Flashfloods washed away hundreds of buildings, bridges and dams, claimed more than 5,000 lives and caused an estimated damage of $50 billion. Climate change will bring more extreme weather events such as droughts and the cloudburst...

Global warming to pinch Salt Lake City water supply

Summit County: By now it’s no secret that global warming will have a significant impact on water supplies in parts of the world, and regions where water is already scarce will be first to feel the pinch That includes the interior West, where winter snowpack provides critical water storage. Already, projections show that spring runoff is coming much earlier than just a few years ago, and that, in many areas, more of the total annual precipitation is falling as rain. In a new study, a team of researchers tried...

Study to focus on Arctic after Greenland Sea found have warmed 10 times faster than global ocean

Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Scientists have revealed plans to examine temperature changes in the Arctic Ocean after a long-term study found the Greenland Sea is warming 10 times faster than the global ocean. Scientists from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) analysed temperature data from the Greenland Sea between 1950 and 2010. Their results show that during the past 30 years water temperatures between two kilometres deep and the ocean floor have risen by 0.3 degrees Celsius. Dr Raquel Somavilla Cabrillo, AWI...

What’s in a name? Would ‘the pause’ by any other name help climate scientists communicate?

ClimateWire: In a recent edition of NASA's "Ask a Climate Scientist" video series, scientist Joshua Willis stands in front of a black screen, makes a few goofy faces and gives a brief answer to what has become a common question about climate science. "A lot of people ask me: 'Has there been a pause in global warming because, like, temperatures aren't increasing as fast as they were a decade ago?'" Willis says. "And I always say, you know, paws are for kittens and puppies, because global warming is definitely...

Global food supply threatened by climate change

GMA: Harvest time may not be quite as abundant as in previous years. The culprit? Climate change. Scientists have concluded that global warming makes it more difficult for crops to thrive in many parts of the world, posing a very real threat to the overall food supply, a “New York Times” report said. While rising temperatures have beneficial effects on crops planted in a few locales, in the coming decades global production of crops may be reduced by as much as two percent each decade, for the...

Hurricane Sandy exposes New Jersey’s marsh mistakes

LiveScience: When Hurricane Sandy's powerful storm tide pummeled New Jersey, 70 percent of the state's old submerged marshes flooded, researchers reported Monday (Oct. 28) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver. About 25 percent of those marshes were developed, and two-thirds of that development took place between 1995 and 2007, said Joshua Galster, a geomorphologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey. "A lot of these areas were being developed when we really should have known...