Professor Brian Cox clashes with Australian climate sceptic Professor Brian Cox has verbally sparred with a newly elected Australian politician who believes climate change is a global conspiracy. The British physicist behind BBC's Wonders of the Universe was a guest on the adversarial panel show Q&A. Also on the Australian TV show was senator-elect Malcolm Roberts from the anti-immigration One Nation party. The celebrity scientist was dumbfounded by Mr Roberts' claim that climate change data was manipulated by Nasa. The Australian Broadcasting Corp. panel show puts politicians, commentators and experts from different fields in front of a live studio audience to face questions about the issues of the week. Mr Roberts has previously claimed that the United Nations is using climate change to lay the foundations for an unelected global government. Six graphics that explain climate change Image copyright ABC TV's Q&A 'Blue in the face' A member of the audience asked Prof Cox to address Mr Roberts' request for proof of a human element in climate change.
Melting Arctic enables new tourist routes Geographical’s regular look at the world of climate change. This month, Marco Magrini looks at the future of sea levels This summer, a 1,700-person cruise ship will navigate where no tourist has ever dared. Crystal Cruises’ Serenity will connect Alaska to New York City, through the gelid waters of the legendary Northwest Passage. The voyage, already sold-out, comes courtesy of climate change. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado, Arctic sea ice was at a record low yet again in 2015. “The 20th century sea level rise was extremely likely faster than during any of the 27 previous centuries” The oceans are not only our clear-sounding alarm bell, they are also our saviours. Climate change is projected to grow unabated and the seas are in trouble of oceanic proportions.
Scotland's rare mountain plants disappearing as climate warms, botanists find | Environment There is clear evidence that some of Britain’s rarest mountain plants are disappearing due to a steadily warming climate, botanists working in the Scottish Highlands have found. The tiny but fragile Arctic plants, such as Iceland purslaine, snow pearlwort and Highland saxifrage, are found only in a handful of locations in the Highlands and islands, clustered in north-facing gullies, coires and crevices, frequently protected by the last pockets of late-lying winter snow. A series of studies by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), the historic building and landscape charity, has found these plants – relics from the last period of glaciation, are retreating higher up the mountainside or disappearing entirely. In some cases they are being replaced by grasses previously found at lower, warmer altitudes. On Bidean nam Bian next to Glencoe in Argyll, the latest field surveys found a 50% decline in Highland saxifrage at lower altitudes compared to the numbers detected in 1995.
World's hottest month shows challenges global warming will bring | Environment In Siberia, melting permafrost released anthrax that had been frozen in a reindeer carcass for decades, starting a deadly outbreak. In Baghdad, soaring temperatures forced the government to shut down for days at a time. In Kuwait, thermometers hit a record 54C (129F). July was the hottest month the world has endured since records began in 1880, scientists have said, and brought a painful taste of the troubles people around the world may have to grapple with as global warming intensifies. Results compiled by Nasa showed the month was 0.84C hotter than the 1951-1980 average for July, and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015. The temperature increase last month was not all due to climate change. But scientists said the July record, which came after a string of new month-high temperatures, was particularly striking because it came as the impact of El Niño faded, and added weight to fears that 2016 will go down in history as the hottest year since records began.
Alaskan village votes on whether to relocate because of climate change | Environment The residents of an Alaskan coastal village have begun voting on whether to relocate because of rising sea levels. If they vote to move, the village of Shishmaref, just north of the Bering Strait, and its population of 650 people, could be the first in the US to do so because of climate change. The village would be relocated at an estimated cost of $180m to a new location less threatened by rising waters and melting sea ice. Where it would move would be decided later in a town meeting, according to the city clerk’s office. The results of the vote will be announced on Wednesday, the city clerk said. The sea ice used to protect Shishmaref, which is built on a barrier island and largely inhabited by members of the Inupiat Inuit tribe. “Over the past 35 years, we’ve lost 2,500 to 3,000 feet of land to coastal erosion,” wrote Esau Sinnok, a Shishmaref native and Arctic Youth Ambassador, in an essay for the Department of the Interior in 2015.
Climate scientists make a bold prediction about sea level rise | John Abraham | Environment One of the great things about science is that it allows you to make predictions. Three top climate scientists just made a very bold prediction regarding sea level rise; we should know in a few years if they are correct. As humans emit greenhouse gases, it’s causing the Earth to warm. That’s indisputable and proven. We can actually measure the amount of extra heat. For instance, the oceans are rising. Part of the rise is from ocean warming – warm water is less dense so the sea level rises as temperatures increase. The three ways we know sea levels are rising are from physical tide gauges, from satellites that measure the water height, and from satellites that measure where ice is stored across the globe. Satellites, on the other hand, are much more capable of taking global measurements. A very recent paper published in Nature has evaluated the history of sea level rise, and what they find is really interesting. Using satellite data, the authors found little evidence of an acceleration.
Early Human Evolution: Climate Change and Human Evoluti The evolutionary surge that led to Homo habilis began during the transition between the Pliocene and Pleistocene Epochs around 2.5 million years ago when climates were becoming cooler and drier. All later species of Homo evolved during the Pleistocene (2,600,000-11,700 years ago). This was generally a time of more extreme world cooling and recurrent glaciations (ice ages). During the coldest periods, global temperatures dropped by about 9º F. (5º C.) and long-lasting ice sheets spread out from the poles and high mountains. NOTE: Global cooling events that result in ice ages have occurred a number of times during the earth's history.
Decline of fishing in Lake Tanganyika 'due to warming' Image copyright Getty Images New research blames rising temperatures over the last century as the key cause of decline in one of the world's most important fisheries. Lake Tanganyika is Africa's oldest lake and its fish are a critical part of the diet of neighbouring countries. But catches have declined markedly in recent decades as commercial fleets have expanded. However this new study says that climate warming and not overfishing is the real cause of the problem. Estimated to be the world's second-largest freshwater lake, Tanganyika is an important resource for the countries that border it: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Zambia. As well fish from the lake providing up to 60% of the animal protein consumed in the region, it is also an important biodiversity hotspot. But there have been growing concerns about the impact of overfishing, land use change and changes in climate on this key ecosystem. Other researchers are alarmed about the future of the lake.
Nasa: Earth is warming at a pace 'unprecedented in 1,000 years' | Environment The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it “very unlikely” that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa’s top climate scientist. This year has already seen scorching heat around the world, with the average global temperature peaking at 1.38C above levels experienced in the 19th century, perilously close to the 1.5C limit agreed in the landmark Paris climate accord. July was the warmest month since modern record keeping began in 1880, with each month since October 2015 setting a new high mark for heat. But Nasa said that records of temperature that go back far further, taken via analysis of ice cores and sediments, suggest that the warming of recent decades is out of step with any period over the past millennium. “In the last 30 years we’ve really moved into exceptional territory,” Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said.
Unnatural Climates Whether anthropogenic climate change began over 8,000 years ago or within the last few centuries, our inadvertent experiment in climate geoengineering is now not only discernible in its effects, but is also providing major challenges for ourselves and future generations Whatever action we take, from managing greenhouse gas emissions to active solar radiation management, it will have climate consequences. It’s therefore appropriate to ask two fundamental questions related to climate as a context for current and future actions: 1. What is or would be ‘natural’ climate, without human interference? 2. Establishing the character of ‘natural’ climate is made difficult by our potential influence over the Holocene, especially if we have indeed had a long Anthropocene with human changes in greenhouse gas emissions over several millennia. Defining ‘natural’ climate is however tricky in deciding what criteria to use.
Global sea levels are rising fast, so where does that leave the cities most at risk? | Cities Current projections of global average sea level rise are now expected to double by 2100, which would be severely damaging – if not disastrous – for many of the world’s coastal cities, from Ho Chi Minh City and Mumbai to New Orleans and Miami. Yet the upcoming United Nations conference on sustainable urban development, Habitat III, is unlikely to create the international platform needed to tackle such a global threat, according to Dan Lewis, head of UN Habitat’s urban risk reduction unit. “The communication of risk is something that most UN member states are not prepared to openly discuss, unless they happen to be Tuvalu or the Maldives or other South Pacific or Caribbean islands,” Lewis told the Guardian. “Massive [climate-induced] displacement is a big problem that a lot of member states have dressed up as other kinds of issues. But when it comes to the real nuts and bolts of ‘how do you accommodate 100,000 people from Kiribati in the next decade or so?’
Climate change: global deal reached to limit use of hydrofluorocarbons | Environment A global deal to limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the battle to combat climate change is a “monumental step forward”, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has said. The agreement, announced on Saturday morning after all-night negotiations in Kigali, Rwanda, caps and reduces the use of HFCs – a key contributor to greenhouse gases – in a gradual process beginning in 2019, with action by developed countries including the US, the world’s second worst polluter. More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world’s top carbon dioxide emitter, will start taking action in 2024, sparking concern from some groups that the action would be implemented too slowly to make a difference. A small group of countries, including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states, also pushed for and secured a later start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That is three years earlier than India, the world’s third worst polluter, had first proposed.
UK must focus on carbon removal to meet Paris goals, climate advisers urge | Environment The UK government needs to kickstart technologies to suck carbon dioxide from the air if it is to play its part in meeting the goals of the Paris climate change agreement, according to the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the government’s official advisers. The global climate deal, which the prime minister, Theresa May, says the UK will ratify by the end of 2016, pledges net zero emissions by the second half of the century, in order to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. Given that some emissions, such as those from aviation and agriculture, will be very difficult to reduce to zero, that means removing some carbon from the atmosphere. Planting trees is the simplest solution but is limited by the land available, meaning more radical technologies need to be developed, such as chemically scrubbing CO2 from the air and burying it. Hydrogen has the advantage of using the existing gas network, but is as yet untested.
Hurricane Sandy-level flooding is rising so sharply that it could become normal | Environment The frequency of floods of the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated parts of New York City in 2012, is rising so sharply that they could become relatively normal, with a raft of new research laying bare the enormous upheavals already under way in the US due to climate change. These findings and two other fresh pieces of research have highlighted how the US is already in the grip of significant environmental changes driven by warming temperatures, albeit in different ways to the processes that are fueling hurricanes. An analysis of past storms and models of future events as the planet warms has shown that Sandy-like floods have become three times more common in the New York area since 1800. This frequency is set to climb further, from once every 400 years to once every 90 years by 2100, due to the effects of sea level rise alone. “Sandy was a wake-up call, and New York has been starting to do things, such as coastal defences and some mitigation.