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The burning issue in climate change
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on March 5th, 2016
Irish Times: The idea of ethical investment has been around for several decades. High-profile campaigns saw charities withdraw their investments from the armaments and tobacco industries, for example, and from South Africa under the apartheid regime.
Ethical investment has had a new target in the past few years, as environmental campaigners have encouraged charities, universities and other public-interest organisations to exclude fossil-fuel industries from their investment portfolios. They see fossil-fuel...
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Climate change and mass migration
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on September 14th, 2015
Irish Times: Sir, – As the world watches, debates and, hopefully, responds to the refugee crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean, it may be worthwhile reflecting that this current wave of migration is simply a taste of things likely to come within the next few decades. Over 50 per cent of humanity now lives within a few kilometres of the sea, and most of the world’s major cities are on the coast and already liable to flooding. It is now overwhelmingly accepted that, as global climate change continues, many coastal...
Climate change will see parts of cities under water – Robinson
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on July 3rd, 2015
Irish Times: Many people living along the coast of cities could find their homes under water with even a moderate sea-level change, former president Mary Robinson has warned.
The United Nations special envoy for climate change said it was predicted 200 million people could be climate displaced people by the end of the century.
“And, if we are not careful, by 2050,” she said.
We won't solve climate crisis if we don't engage all the population - 50% are women. Empower women! Mary Robinson tells #planetimperative...
Climate change demands ‘national effort’ to protect Atlantic wild salmon
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on October 13th, 2014
Irish Times: Climate change impacts on Atlantic wild salmon are so severe that a “co-ordinated national effort” is required to protect the stock, according to Salmon Watch Ireland (SWIRL).
The non-governmental organisation, which is dedicated to conservation and “restoration to abundance” of wild salmon, has called on the Government to establish a national salmon conservation commission to deal with what it describes as a “crisis” in stock levels.
Changes in weather patterns including flash flooding and...
Melting glaciers a ‘climate tipping point,’ Bonn meeting told
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on June 14th, 2014
Irish Times: World leaders need to ensure that global warming is kept low enough to avoid “pulling the plug” on vast ice shelves in Antarctica, thereby causing a catastrophic sea level rise across the globe, a leading scientist warned yesterday.
Dr Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, noted last month’s major scientific report warning that a collapse of large sections of the west Antarctica ice shelf had already begun and was now “unstoppable”.
“We have entered a new era...
Ireland set for warmer, drier summers and wetter winters
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on September 27th, 2013
Irish Times: Ireland will become a balmier place as a result of climate change but the summertime benefits will come at a cost. The warmer, drier summers will be followed by wetter autumns and winters with floods an almost certainty, according to new climate research released last night.
International effortMet Éireann co-ordinated a major international study looking specifically at how climate change would alter the picture here. It draws on its own data sets collected over decades but also on expertise available...
Climate change or just a late spring: what to make of plant messages?
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on May 4th, 2013
Irish Times: Towards the end of the drought that struck the west for much of early spring, a university geography professor shared with me a photograph he had taken in Connemara. It showed a remarkable vista of bog and mountain dried and bleached to an eerie ash blond. On our side of the bay, too, even lowland tracts of moor grass offered this unreal platinum sheen.
All was caused by evapotranspiration, to use the professor’s term. With some 40 rainless days from mid February to mid April, the relentless and...