Mar 31, 2014 8:05pm
It’s not the future: It’s here now.
Climate Change Is Here Now, Says UN Report
It’s not the future: It’s here now.
Lower Manhattan underwater from rising seas during hurricane Sandy; wildfires — many more of them like the one in Colorado; droughts in the American West; and wicked hurricanes and typhoons like Haiyan, the one in the Philippines last year: All these, according to a new report from the UN’s climate panel released today, are signs of the impact of climate change.
“We are experiencing the impact here and now; Global warming is occurring,” Noah Diffenbaugh, associate professor Stanford University and coauthor of the report told ABC News. “The impact of global warming is already being felt. It is being felt across the continents; they are being felt in the ocean. This is not just about the risk of climate change a century from now but it’s really about managing the risk of the current climate.”
And while global warming is easiest to see at the poles, with ice caps being drastically reduced over the past 10 years, this new report by a United Nations sanctioned science panel says there is no more debate: Global warming is real, here now, wreaking havoc worldwide and caused by humans.
The first sentence of the report lays it pretty simply: “Human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems.”
Last year alone, the U.S. suffered seven weather disaster events, costing the country $7 billion and 109 lives, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“We have very clear observations of global warming, we know it is happening. We also know that is not consistent with the natural variations in the climate system,” Diffenbaugh said. “It is consistent with human activity, particularly the emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”
(Michael S. Nolan/Getty Images/age fotostock RM)
While those living in the northeast corridor of the United States might find it hard to believe after a winter with record snowfall, around the world 2013 was one of the warmest years on record.
“It’s very easy to look outside one’s doorway and draw conclusions about whether the temperature is going up or down,” Diffenbaugh said. “The reality is that globally, 2013 was one of the hottest years on record, and the winter of 2014, while it was extremely cold in parts of the United States, it was actually one of the warmest Januaries on record.”
According to NOAA, Anchorage, Alaska’s above average January temperature of 29.4 degrees F was slightly warmer than the below average temperatures seen in Philadelphia (28°) and New York City (29 ºF).
And what the current and future global warming means is real risk of climate extremes impacting lives, livelihoods, security, and crops.
“It’s very likely that if global warming continues along the current pathway, that we are likely to see more of the extreme heat that can be damaging to crops in the United States. In terms of water supply; we now know that further global warming is likely to increase how many extremely low snow years we experience in the western United States — this has important impacts for water supply in the western united states; When we look at sea level over the coming decade, this suggests we are likely to see increased risk of extremely strong storm surges in land falling storms and extremely large flooding events.”
The good news is, if we caused it, the report says, we can fix it. In fact, fossil fuel use is dropping in the United States, but unfortunately China and India more than make up for the difference.
“There are a lots of ways I know I can improve how much I am impacting the climate system, certainly the air travel, whether or not I leave my lights on, whether or not I ride my bike or take a short trip in the car, I know that all of these activities that I engage in end up contributing CO2 to the atmosphere and when we add all that up all over the world, that is what’s causing the global warming that we are very clearly observing,” Diffenbaugh said.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/03/climate-change-is-here-now-says-un-report/
everything from Politics and dirty politics,Power, Coruption, Greed,The World Family Group,Oil,Sock puppet's paid by businesses with self serving interests (ie;more money to them without having to give a toss about how they go about it),Mining,Big Business,Power, disimpowerment of the people,distruction of our environment and our way of life,the CO2 and Mining Tax,Murdoch media,our Governments urgent need to push their anti climate change message (in order to remove the Carbon tax and remove the red and green tape),ethics,morals,92 year old Aussie diiggers being arrested trying to save his part of Australia from destruction from mining magnates,Foreign trade deals and agreements,reduction in our rights as Australians as well as our rights at work and much more fits with this topic.
I do hope that can be respected here.
Who stands to win out of the anti science propaganda ? The filthy rich
Some may call this alarming.....
Hybrid cars
Welcome to Global Anti-Corruption & Compliance in Mining
*Now CPD Certified* Pre-Conference Workshop: 27th May
Main Conference Days: 28th & 29th May
Post-Conference Workshop: 30th May
International anti-corruption and compliance regulations are evolving. Enforcement agencies are becoming more powerful and their reaches are extending. Mining companies need to adapt to the new climate by creating compliance programmes and effective due-diligence standards which suit their business requirements and which apply to international regulations often in high-risk jurisdictions. Implementing cost-effective strategies to do so is difficult. Creating an organisational compliance programme which is followed and understood by all it reaches is challenging to implement. The thoroughness required to undertake due diligence of all third-parties and affiliates is complex. Teaching national workforces on international and local regulations present mining companies with a daunting and sensitive task.
Global Anti-Corruption & Compliance in Mining is designed to provide cost-efficient solutions to these challenges by pooling the knowledge of the mining industry’s compliance and legal experts and offering thought-provoking presentations and panel discussions.
http://www.anticorruptionminingsummit.com/
I call it clear thinking common sense
The “Big 4″ Australian Banks are Financing the Destruction of the Great Barrier Reef
A new report released today by Market Forces and 350.org Australia shows how Australia’s ‘big four’ banks, supported by international investors, are literally Financing Reef Destruction.
The report makes it clear that the ‘big four’ Australian banks – ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB and Westpac – play a critical role in enabling major fossil fuel projects. Combined, these banks lent $3.8 billion to coal ports and LNG terminals in the Great Barrier Reef Word Heritage Area since January 2008.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef literally sits in the way of the fossil fuel industry and its massive expansion plans. Of the many new coal terminals planned just one port, Abbot Point, near Mackay, could increase almost nine-fold in capacity to become by far the biggest coal export port ever in the world.
350.org Australia and Market Forces are calling on customers of those banks to tell them to stop financing reef destruction or they will pull out their funds and go elsewhere.
Bill McKibben, coming to Australia in June for a “Global Warming: Do the Maths” tour, said “When you do the maths on avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, there simply isn’t enough room in the carbon budget for new fossil fuel projects.
“We’ve got to wind down the fossil fuel era with great haste if we’re going to keep the planet from overheating,” McKibben said. “This report provides Australians with the information they need to make hard decisions about where their money is invested and if it’s helping or destroying the planet.”
did our PM help our poor banks out with some tax cuts too ?
changes to rules re financial advice ?
Did Dr Roy Spencer say this ?
I was struck by the unity of the Bible’s message – the way it agreed with itself even though it was written by 40 different authors over a period of 1,600 years. I realised that the gospel records were free of comment from the writers. They merely recorded what they saw without exaggerating the events, without covering up the faults and failings of the followers of Jesus and without trying to present the story in exactly the same way. There were enough differences between the four gospels to prove they had not collaborated, but not enough differences to stray into the area of outright contradictions and errors.
oh Dear
