Government 'tried to bury' its own alarming report on climate change | The Independent The Government has been accused of trying to bury a major report about the potential dangers of global warming to Britain – including the doubling of the deaths during heatwaves, a “significant risk” to supplies of food and the prospect of infrastructure damage from flooding. The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment Report, which by law has to be produced every five years, was published with little fanfare on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) website on 18 January. But, despite its undoubted importance, Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom made no speech and did not issue her own statement, and even the Defra Twitter account was silent. No mainstream media organisation covered the report. One leading climate expert accused the Government of “trying to sneak it out” without people noticing, saying he was “astonished” at the way its publication was handled. It said it largely agreed with experts’ warnings about the effects of climate change on the UK. Reuse content
Don’t Panic – How Humanity Might Survive the Next Million Years Our species is going to go extinct. We may have descendants – a new species, or some sort of post-human meld that we construct ourselves – but the long roll of lost creatures preserved in the fossil record leaves no doubt that extinction is inevitable. But just as the survival of the human lineage is only a vague possibility at this point, our eventual downfall also remains in the realm of the unknown. So far, there have been five absolutely devastating mass extinctions in the history of life on Earth (with a smattering of lesser, but still calamitous, events scattered through time). We’ve drastically altered the Earth’s climate and seas through greenhouse gas emissions, we are spreading invasive species around the world, and we’ve taken a horrifyingly active role in directly destroying a variety of species and ecosystems. Learning from prehistory is one way to outline possibilities of what the future might hold. Some of these examples in the middle section don’t entirely fire. Related
SEPA makes real-time rainfall data available online Real-time Scottish rainfall data is now available on SEPA’s website. The site provides rainfall information for over 270 locations across Scotland. This may be helpful for a wide range of uses such as flood forecasting, farming, angling and canoeing. Each gauge is represented by a dot on a map which can be clicked to reveal the gauge name and rainfall amounts in a range of hourly, daily, monthly and annual formats. There is also the ability to search by station name. In addition to running these intensity gauges linked by telemetry, SEPA also manages a network of manually read storage gauges operated by public volunteers. Richard Brown, SEPA’s Head of Hydrology, said: “We’re releasing this rainfall beta test site so people can look at the data, use it, and give us feedback on how useful it is and what we could do to improve it.
Sorry, Y’All—Humanity’s Nearing an Upgrade to Irrelevance Humanity has had astonishing success alleviating famine, disease, and war. (It might not always seem that way, but it’s true.) Now, Homo sapiens is on the brink of an upgrade—sort of. wired: In your book you predict the emergence of two completely new religions. Harari: Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe. Dataism is a new ethical system that says, yes, humans were special and important because up until now they were the most sophisticated data processing system in the universe, but this is no longer the case. How so? Take Google Maps or Waze. What does this mean for Homo sapiens? We become less important, perhaps irrelevant. Does the shift toward Dataism matter for politics? In the 20th century, politics was a battleground between grand visions about the future of humankind. Who can make sense of it? Can we opt out?
Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts | Environment It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel. The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”. But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world’s hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. But the breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes.
Study Concludes When Civilization Will End, And It's Not Looking Good for Us By Tom McKay / policymic.com Update: NASA is now clarifying its role in this study. NASA officials released this statement on the study on March 20, which seeks to distance the agency from the paper: "A soon-to-be published research paper, 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota's Jorge Rivas, was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity. Civilization was pretty great while it lasted, wasn't it? The report, written by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center along with a team of natural and social scientists, explains that modern civilization is doomed. Science will surely save us, the nay-sayers may yell.
What the World Will Look Like 4°C Warmer Micronesia is gone – sunk beneath the waves. Pakistan and South India have been abandoned. And Europe is slowly turning into a desert. This is the world, 4°C warmer than it is now. But there is also good news: Western Antarctica is no longer icy and uninhabitable. This map, which shows some of the effects a 4°C rise in average temperature could have on the planet, is eight years old, but it seems to get more contemporary as it ages (and the planet warms). Few serious scientists doubt that climate change is happening, or that it is man-made. Those on the fact-based side of this argument should realise that continuously bombarding the opposition with doom and gloom is likely to reinforce their resistance to accepting the new paradigm. This map offers an alternative: lots of misery and disaster, but also plenty of hope and solutions. First, the bad news. Orange is not much better: 'Uninhabitable desert'. But there is a flipside. Map found here at Parag Khanna. Strange Maps #842
Veckans fråga: Vad blir slutet för mänskligheten? | ETC I vintras ställde forskarna bakom Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist fram sin domedagsklocka till två och en halv minut i midnatt. Det är det närmsta klockan varit tolv, som representerar en stor global katastrof, sedan början av 1980-talet. Anledningen var den ökande nationalismen, spänningar mellan kärnvapenmakterna och det långsamma klimatarbetet. Inom forskarprogrammet ”Existential risk to humanity” försöker en grupp forskare ta ett helhetsgrepp runt stora arthotande frågor. Gillar du det vi gör? – Det är ett dussin forskare på plats från olika länder, som företräder väldigt olika ämnesområden, bland annat filosofi, matematik, datavetenskap och fysik. Bland de existentiella hot som nämns finns syntetisk biologi och biologisk krigföring, pandemier, supervulkanutbrott, asteroidnedslag och urspårad artificiell intelligens. Är det rimligt att förbereda oss på allt detta? – Det ingår i det vi vill undersöka. Det är ju ett gammalt dilemma. Är något av de här hoten större än andra?
Life on Earth is getting a major redistribution, and the consequences are serious Last year in Paris, for the very first time, English sparkling wine beat champagne in a blind tasting event. Well established French Champagne houses have started buying fields in Britain to grow grapes, and even the royal family is investing in this new venture. At the same time, coffee-growing regions are shrinking and shifting. Farmers are being forced to move to higher altitudes, as the band in which to grow tasty coffee moves up the mountain. The evidence that climate change is affecting some of our most prized beverages is simply too great to be ignored. So while British sparkling wine and the beginning of the “coffeepocalypse” were inconceivable just a few decades ago, they are now a reality. Dramatic examples of climate-mediated change to species distributions are not exceptions; they are fast becoming the rule. These changes are already having serious consequences for economic development, livelihoods, food security, human health, and culture. Species on the move Knock-on effects
Communalism: a Liberatory Alternative to the Present System Ecocity illustration by Richard Register. By Marcus Amargi and Stephanie Amargi / communalismpamphlet.net/ Jul 19, 2016 Communalism is the all encompassing term given to a comprehensive theory and practice that seeks to reconstruct society along ecological lines. Communalism holds an objective set of social ethics that reflect the most developmental trends in evolution, including greater choice, dynamic stability, and diversity. These ideas also works within a historical framework that recognizes that society has not always maintained the irrational form that we live in today. This pamphlet is primarily focused on discussing this reconstructive vision, as well as exploring practical steps for engaging in an educational and political process that can bridge where we are today with the society we hope to achieve. Ecological Ethics Communalism holds a set of social ethics that reflect the developmental trends in evolution. To begin, let us first define what is meant by “nature”. Hierarchy
What's Really Warming the World? Climate deniers blame natural factors; NASA data proves otherwise Climate scientists tend not to report climate results in whole temperatures. Instead, they talk about how the annual temperature departs from an average, or baseline. They call these departures "anomalies." They do this because temperature anomalies are more consistent in an area than absolute temperatures are. The simulation results are aligned to the observations using the 1880-1910 average.