As Global Temperature Rises, So Do Food Prices
As concerns mount over extreme weather hitting global food systems this year, governments are no closer to forging a pact to fight climate change. The effects of extreme weather on crops are only beginning to be understood.
For decades scientists studied the effect of global warming on crops by simply raising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in greenhouses. They did not take into account the effects of floods and droughts, or reduced yields that result from higher temperatures.
James Hansen: What Global Warming Looks Like
Global warming on decadal time scales is continuing without letup, leading to the conclusion that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.
Climate data shows June 2010 to be Earth’s hottest month on record
Last month was the hottest June recorded worldwide, figures show. US government climate data suggests 2010 on course to be warmest year since records began
World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth
The Summit on Climate Change currently underway in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba is a ray of light and hope for those concerned with the environmental situation on the planet. It is also an alternative to the meeting that took place in Copenhagen, where rich countries conspired to come up with an agreement that exempts them of any responsibility regarding the climate world situation.
This meeting showed the world the true face of industrialized countries when it comes to issues related to the environment. In Cochabamba, civil society sectors are meeting to design a strategy to fight for the survival of mother Earth.
Why has the surface of the Arctic sea ice remained frozen this March?
Yesterday morning, March 30, I emailed James Overland with the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory/NOAA in Seattle asking him about the slow melt of visible Arctic sea ice, adding that this was certain to stoke the fires of the army of climate skeptics.
This morning Dr. Overland replied that “the winds on the Atlantic [...]
Solar Minimum Induced Global Cooling? Don’t Bet On It
Will the media continue to ignore all the extreme weather that scientists have been predicting for years would become more common as we pour more heat trapping gases into the atmosphere? Given that we’ve only warmed about a degree Fahrenheit in the past half century and much of this country projected to warm 9°F or more on our current emissions path, it’s hard to imagine the kind of extreme weather we will ultimately be seen.
Can you sit in a snowstorm and imagine a warming world?
The weird and disruptive weather patterns around the world are pretty much exactly what you’d expect as the planet warms. Here’s how it works: In most places, winter is clearly growing shorter and less intense. We can tell, because Arctic sea ice is melting, because the glaciers on Greenland are shrinking and because a thousand other signals send the same message. Here in the mountains of the Northeast, for instance, lakes freeze later than they used to, and sometimes not at all: Lake Champlain remained open in winter only three times during the 19th century, but it did so 18 times between 1970 and 2007.
But rising temperature is only one effect of climate change. Probably more crucially, warmer air holds more water vapor than cold air does. The increased evaporation from land and sea leads to more drought but also to more precipitation, since what goes up eventually comes down. The numbers aren’t trivial — global warming has added 4 percent more moisture to the atmosphere since 1970. That means that the number of “extreme events” such as downpours and floods has grown steadily; the most intense storms have increased by 20 percent across the United States in the past century.
Pentagon Will Factor Global Warming into Long Term Strategic Planning
he Pentagon will for the first time rank global warming as a destabilizing force, adding fuel to conflict and putting US troops at risk around the world, in a major strategy review to be presented to Congress tomorrow. The Quadrennial Defense Review, prepared by the Pentagon to update Congress on its security vision, will direct military planners to keep track of the latest climate science, and to factor global warming into their long term strategic planning.
“While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world,” said a draft of the review seen by the Guardian.
Revised Essay on Regional Cold Anomalies by Dr. James Hansen, With New Graphs and Photos
The Earth has been in a period of rapid global warming for the past three decades. The assertion that the planet has entered a period of cooling in the past decade is without foundation. On the contrary, we find no significant deviation from the warming trend of the past three decades. Weather fluctuations exceed the magnitude of average global warming over the past half century. However, the perceptive person should be able to notice that climate is warming on decadal time scales. The global temperature trend over the past few decades has been strong enough that there is a noticeable “loading” of the climate dice that define the probability of unusually warm or cool seasons.
Where in the World is the Worst Place for Cold Weather?
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world.
