Extreme El Nino events set to double
Extreme bushfires in Australia are just one of the side effects of this climatic phenomenon (Reuters: Daniel Munoz )
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- Looming El Nino sets up gloomy forecast, Science Online, 20 Oct 2009
Global warming could double the frequency of catastrophic events linked to extreme El Niños, say scientists.
The findings mean not just a rise in the number of devastating droughts and fires in Australia and Indonesia, and major floods in the normally cold and dry Peru and Ecuador, but also a rise in extreme weather events around the world.
"The influence of extreme El Niños reaches every continent," says Dr Wenju Cai, of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, who is lead author on a new paper published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Cai says the last extreme El Niño in 1997/98 led to 23,000 deaths and $50 billion worth of losses globally.
Under the El Niño weather pattern, the ocean in the eastern Pacific heats up more than normal, bringing more rain to that area and less rain to the western Pacific.
When the warming in the eastern Pacific passes a certain temperature, an extreme El Niño results. This causes extreme droughts in the western Pacific and a 10-fold increase in rain in the eastern equatorial Pacific region.
"Imagine an average of 5 millimetres a day everyday for three months," says Cai.
Climate models
read more: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/01/20/3927497.htm
Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks
Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate change science
• How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups
• How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network
I'm over the self motivated ..... they should imo consider spreading harmful information illegal
Are most Australians really climate 'agnostics'?
Former Prime Minister John Howard claimed Australians had "settled into a state of sustained agnosticism" on climate change. Is this true?
The results are shown in the graph below, tracking along with the two-party preferred vote.
Graphic: Polling of Australian attitudes to climate change, including two-party preferred polling numbers. Graph by Alex White. Poll numbers by Essential Research.
This shows that although acceptance of man-made climate change fell in 2010 after the federal election, it has remained fairly consistently a majority.
Similarly, while belief in "natural fluctuation" rose during the three year scare campaign run by Tony Abbott against the carbon price, but fell sharply in May 2013.
John Howard ended his speech with a clarion call for increased drilling of shale oil and gas, incredibly under the rubric of "energy independence". It looks like his protégé Tony Abbott wants to take Australia down areckless path of fossil fuel addiction, and to make Australia an utterly dependent charco-state.
