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Want to cut Arctic warming in half? Curb emissions now, study says
Posted by LA Times: Tony Barboza on February 1st, 2014
LA Times: Global warming is changing the Arctic so quickly that experts say we should expect an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer within just a few decades.
But a group of scientists says there is a way to spare the Arctic from more disastrous climate change. In a new paper, they say that reducing global carbon emissions now could cut Arctic warming nearly in half by century's end.
Society already has released enough carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere that over the next few decades temperatures...
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Report on climate change depicts a planet in peril
Posted by LA Times: Tony Barboza on November 11th, 2013
LA Times: Climate change will disrupt not only the natural world but also society, posing risks to the world's economy and the food and water supply and contributing to violent conflict, an international panel of scientists says.
The warnings came in a report drafted by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 29-page summary, leaked and posted on a blog critical of the panel, has been distributed to governments around the world for review. It could change before it is released...
National Park Service director gets firsthand look at the Rim fire
Posted by LA Times: Tony Barboza on August 31st, 2013
LA Times: As the Rim fire has burned into Yosemite National Park and into the record books, it has been watched around the world. From Washington, D.C., National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said he monitored the blaze's progress daily as flames threatened Sierra Nevada communities, ancient sequoia groves and the reservoir that holds San Francisco's water supply.
On Saturday, he went to see the blaze firsthand.
"This is a gnarly fire," Jarvis told firefighters at a morning briefing. "It's got high...
United States: Coastal cities prepare for rising sea levels
Posted by LA Times: Tony Barboza on March 5th, 2011
LA Times: Cities along California's coastline that for years have dismissed reports of climate change or lagged in preparing for rising sea levels are now making plans to fortify their beaches, harbors and waterfronts.
Communities up and down the coast have begun drafting plans to build up wetlands as buffers against rising tides, to construct levees and seawalls to keep the waters at bay or to retreat from the shoreline by moving structures inland.
Among them is Newport Beach, a politically conservative...
California’s ‘big one’ might be a megastorm
Posted by LA Times: Tony Barboza on January 23rd, 2011
LA Times: California's "big one" may not be an earthquake at all, but a devastating megastorm that would inundate the Central Valley, trigger widespread landslides and cause flood damage to 1 in 4 homes in the state.
The prospect of such a storm was raised this month by scientists predicting the consequences of an "atmospheric river" of moisture from the tropical Pacific hitting California with up to 10 feet of rain and hurricane-force winds over several weeks.
A team of more than 100 scientists, engineers...