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Climate Disruption

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Gore launches new Climate Reality Project, tells Grist all about it. The Goracle strikes again.Photo: Center for American ProgressTuesday, Al Gore launched a new campaign that will involve, among other things, a new name for his climate change group: the Alliance for Climate Protection will henceforth be known as the Climate Reality Project. I chatted with him about it Monday and got a rundown on the thinking behind it.

All of the group’s efforts will be devoted to spreading the truth about the climate crisis and the solutions to it, making use of the thousands of slideshow presenters that Gore has trained over the last few years. It sounds like the group’s political lobbying will more or less fall by the wayside. The project will kick off on Sept. 14-15 with a “24 Hours of Reality” event, the first of several global events. There will be one hour of presentation and discussion airing at 8:00 p.m. in each time zone around the world, one time zone at a time. Two things are interesting to me about Gore’s new effort. Gore obviously disagrees!

Cellular & DNA

Himalayan glaciers are 'not just melting, they are dying' - Investigations. Perhaps it is not a place that many climate sceptics visit. Though standing on Gokyo Peak, the view before you is spectacular and according to glaciologists - quite worrying. For the giant 22km long Ngozumpa Galcier that dominates the Gokyo valley in the Everest Himalaya is dead, glaciologists claim. For Jason Gulley, a Karst Hydrogeologist at the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida, their demise is certain. 'The debris-covered areas of the glaciers [in the Mount Everest region] are dead and no longer flowing,' he says.

In effect this means the glacier has stopped grinding its way innorexably through the Gokyo valley as it should and is now in a state of terminal decline. The same is true of many of the great glaciers of the Great Himalayan Range - which stretches from northeastern India some 2,500 km across to the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. The ice has gone High up in the Everest Himalaya, several mountains have lost their glaciers entirely. The Significant Role of Forests in Regulating Global Climate. A new study published in the journal, Science, has quantified the forests' role in regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere. Because plants absorb CO2 as part of their metabolism, the greater the forest, the more CO2 is removed, and the impact of global climate change is decreased.

The study found that the world's established forests remove 8.8 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per year. This equates to nearly one third of all annual fossil fuel emissions from humans. Forests are areas with a high density of trees which hold a diverse ecosystem. They cover about 30 percent of all land area on Earth. Before the spread of agriculture and human development, they covered up to 50 percent of the land. Much of the woodland is found in a tropical band around the equator, and in the northern latitudes. In the tropics, where plant life is most abundant, changes to the forest have a dramatic effect. The researchers, led by Dr. Economic Indicators Point Toward Growth in Renewable Energy. While scanning the horizon in sea of mostly grim economic news, I found three gems - - - news reports or economic indicators, if you will, that point to solid and profitable growth in the renewable energy sector of the economy in the near, 3-5 year term.

These indicators point toward a shift in the financing, production, consumption and distribution of alternative energy, predicated on advances in technology that will bring the productions costs down to a competitive plateau with conventional fossil fuels. I suspect the time it takes from "innovation in the laboratory" to diffuse into the commercial market place has to be reduced from years to months or less, in order for this to work. When investors like General Electric, Google, and MIT, direct research and investment on this scale - - - it just might tip the balance. The cost benefit ratio of "coal fired" electricity vs "solar" will equalize or fall in favor of solar. In a recent report from Bloomberg news, Mr. Reclaiming skepticism: Scientists fight back against climate change deniers. - By Andrew Jack.

Emily Shuckburgh spends much of her time wrapped up against the cold on the far side of the world, measuring atmospheric and ocean eddies for the British Antarctic Survey. But over the past few months she has been rolling up her sleeves and travelling across the UK to confront the public heat over climate change. With support from Living With Environmental Change, a partnership between government departments and funding agencies, she has run a series of focus groups exploring people's views on media coverage of science.

She endorses projects such as oldweather.org, an attempt to engage the public directly in analysing historical sea temperature data. On secondment to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, she has also been posting videos on YouTube and engaging with "sceptics" via blogs. "It's quite clear there has been a breakdown of trust between scientists and the public, and it's important that we try to articulate more clearly what our processes are," she says. The 1847 lecture that predicted human-induced climate change | Leo Hickman | Environment. When we think of the birth of the conservation movement in the 19th century, the names that usually spring to mind are the likes of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau, men who wrote about the need to protect wilderness areas in an age when the notion of mankind's "manifest destiny" was all the rage.

But a far less remembered American - a contemporary of Muir and Thoreau - can claim to be the person who first publicised the now largely unchallenged idea that humans can negatively influence the environment that supports them. George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) certainly had a varied career. Here's how Clark University in Massachusetts, which has named an institute in his memory, describes him: Throughout his 80 years Marsh had many careers as a lawyer (though, by his own words, "an indifferent practitioner"), newspaper editor, sheep farmer, mill owner, lecturer, politician and diplomat. In other words, he kept himself busy. Carbon President: Why does Obama keep OK’ing big fossil-fuel projects? The future’s looking hot.Photo: The White HouseThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission.

In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades — those seem so 19th century. The Earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying. But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those decisions are intimately tied to this continent’s geography. There’s a pickaxe in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, one of the world’s richest deposits of coal. Doing so, however, would cost someone some money. As Eric de Place of the Sightline Institute put it, “That’s more carbon pollution than all the energy — from planes, factories, cars, power plants, etc. — used in an entire year by all 44 nations in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean combined.”

Ocean acidification leaves clownfish deaf to predators. Baby clownfish use hearing to detect and avoid predator-rich coral reefs during the daytime, but new research from the University of Bristol demonstrates that ocean acidification could threaten this crucial behavior within the next few decades. Since the Industrial Revolution, over half of all the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels has been absorbed by the ocean, making pH drop faster than any time in the last 650,000 years and resulting in ocean acidification. Recent studies have shown that this causes fish to lose their sense of smell, but a new study published in Biology Letters shows that fish hearing is also compromised. Working with Professor Philip Munday at James Cook University, lead author Dr Steve Simpson of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol reared larvae straight from hatching in different CO2 environments. This study demonstrates that ocean acidification not only affects external sensory systems, but also those inside the body of the fish.

The planet strikes back: Why we underestimate the Earth and overestimate ourselves. The Earth may look glum, but it’s not to be messed with.Photo: John LeGearThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. In his 2010 book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, environmental scholar and activist Bill McKibben writes of a planet so devastated by global warming that it’s no longer recognizable as the Earth we once inhabited. This is a planet, he predicts, of “melting poles and dying forests and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat.” Altered as it is from the world in which human civilization was born and thrived, it needs a new name — so he gave it that extra “a” in “Eaarth.”

The Eaarth that McKibben describes is a victim, a casualty of humankind’s unrestrained consumption of resources and its heedless emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases. It’s not enough to think of Eaarth as an impotent casualty of humanity’s predations. Overestimating ourselves. In the News: American pika falling victim to climate change. The 2014 Atlantic Cup presented by 11th Hour Racing, now entering its fourth year as the United States premiere class 40 yacht race, continues to lead the way in clean sailing and increasing ecologically awareness in the sailing community. In 2012, the Atlantic Cup became the first carbon-neutral sailing race in the country by offsetting an estimated 23,030 pounds (10.45 metric tons) of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.

Last year, in partnership with 11th Hour Racing and Green Mountain Energy Company, the Atlantic Cup was chosen as the first event to meet all the requirements to earn Sailors for the Sea Clean Regatta Platinum Level Status. The Atlantic Cup will once again maintain its commitment to being the most environmentally responsible sailing race in the U.S. by using biodiesel hydro generators, solar panels and fuel cells to limit the use of fuel during competition, recycling waste, and becoming a plastic water bottle free event. When a monster came to Alabama. Kyle Whitmire says the Alabama tornado was huge, turning houses into airborne flakesHe says tornadoes are part of life in Alabama; kids learn early how to prepare for themThis week's storm was devastating -- the worst anyone had ever seen, he saysWhitmire: People talk of God afterward, less of doubts that follow, but support heals loss Editor's note: Kyle Whitmire is an Alabama native who lives in Birmingham, where he is new media editor and senior writer at WELD for Birmingham.

He blogs at the news and politics site Second Front (CNN) -- We knew the threat was real when little pieces of Tuscaloosa began to drop on Birmingham. For such a violent storm, there was very little rain. Instead, paper receipts from businesses 50 miles away and strangers' family photos flitted through the air. Roofing shingles, wood paneling and strips of insulation littered yards, sidewalks and streets. All of this, and the tornado itself was still 10 minutes away. It was enormous. Neighbors left speechless. What's Up With All These Tornadoes? No One Really Knows - Alexis Madrigal - Technology. While we're not sure why this month has seen a record number of tornadoes, we should prepare for the worst Time's Bryan Walsh has a good, subtle piece on the difficulties of figuring out what's causing the record month for tornadoes in the South. The toughest question, of course, is what role climate change is playing in the devastation. On the one hand, increased greenhouse gas levels mean higher temperatures and more moisture in the air, which as Walsh puts it, is "like adding nitroglycerin to the atmosphere.

" There is more energy for storms to play with. On the other hand, some models forecast that wind shear will decrease, cutting down on the number of destructive tornadoes. It's far from clear what the impact of burning gigatons of fossil fuels will have on extreme weather of this type in the South. Climate skeptics use that uncertainty to argue that we shouldn't do anything about climate change. Image: AP Photo/Butch Dill. Global Warming is Affecting Weather. Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe. This intensification of weather and climate extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives.

It is also causing dangerous changes to the landscape of our world, adding stress to wildlife species and their habitat. How is Climate Change Impacting Weather-Related Events? Ripple Effects {*style:<ul>*} {*style:<li>*} {*style:<br>*}{*style:<a href=' Infrastructure{*style:</b>*}{*style:</a>*} - More weather and climate extremes are likely to {*style:<a href=' U.S. energy security{*style:</a>*} in ways that have not been adequately considered. Ozone hole linked to climate change all the way to the equator. In a study to be published in the April 21st issue of Science, researchers at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science report their findings that the ozone hole, which is located over the South Pole, has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator.

While previous work has shown that the ozone hole is changing the atmospheric flow in the high latitudes, the new Columbia Engineering paper demonstrates that the ozone hole is able to influence the tropical circulation and increase rainfall at low latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. This is the first time that ozone depletion, an upper atmospheric phenomenon confined to the polar regions, has been linked to climate change from the Pole to the equator. "The ozone hole is not even mentioned in the summary for policymakers issued with the last IPCC report," noted Lorenzo M. This study was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Columbia University. Earth recovered from prehistoric global warming faster than previously thought. Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought, according to evidence from a prehistoric event analyzed by a Purdue University-led team.

When faced with high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising temperatures 56 million years ago, Earth increased its ability to pull carbon from the air. This led to a recovery that was quicker than anticipated by many models of the carbon cycle -- though still on the order of tens of thousands of years, said Gabriel Bowen, the associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the study. "We found that more than half of the added carbon dioxide was pulled from the atmosphere within 30,000 to 40,000 years, which is one-third of the time span previously thought," said Bowen, who also is a member of the Purdue Climate Change Research Center.

Bowen and Zachos examined samples of marine and terrestrial sediments deposited throughout the event. 'Green energy' advance: Tandem catalysis in nanocrystal interfaces. Possible Fix For Global Warming? -- Environmental Engineers Use Algae To Capture Carbon Dioxide. Global Warming Causing Tornadoes???? FACTS, not Feelings State Otherwise.