Category: Climate science

Catch a fire (worst year since 1816)

The extraordinary sequence of extreme weather events during the last 18 months is probably the worst run of natural disasters since 1816, when a huge volcanic eruption at Mt Tambora cooled the earth enough to cause the famous “year without a summer“, according to a powerful blog post by Weather Underground founder Jeff Masters. He runs through the list, giving details of each:

  • Earth’s hottest year on record
  • Most extreme winter Arctic atmospheric circulation on record
  • Arctic sea ice: lowest volume on record, 3rd lowest extent
  • Record melting in Greenland, and a massive calving event
  • Second most extreme shift from El Niño to La Niña
  • Second worst coral bleaching year
  • Wettest year over land
  • Amazon rainforest experiences its 2nd 100-year drought in 5 years
  • Global tropical cyclone activity lowest on record
  • A hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season: 3rd busiest on record
  • A rare tropical storm in the South Atlantic
  • Strongest storm in Southwestern U.S. history
  • Strongest non-coastal storm in U.S. history
  • Weakest and latest-ending East Asian monsoon on record
  • No monsoon depressions in India’s Southwest Monsoon for 2nd time in 134 years
  • The Pakistani flood: most expensive natural disaster in Pakistan’s history
  • The Russian heat wave and drought: deadliest heat wave in human history
  • Record rains trigger Australia’s most expensive natural disaster in history
  • Heaviest rains on record trigger Colombia’s worst flooding disaster in history
  • Tennessee’s 1-in-1000 year flood kills 30, does $2.4 billion in damage

Continue reading “Catch a fire (worst year since 1816)”

More lunacy from Lomborg

Lomborg.jpgNewsweek recently carried an article by Bjorn Lomborg entitled “A Roadmap for the Planet.” His basic thesis, by now familiar to all, is that “exaggerated environmental worries—and the willingness of so many to believe them—could ultimately prevent us from finding smarter ways to actually help our planet and ensure the health of the environment for future generations.” This is because we have successfully dealt with similar issues before. “Although Westerners were once reliant on whale oil for lighting, we never actually ran out of whales. Why? High demand and rising prices for whale oil spurred a search for and investment in the 19th-century version of alternative energy.”

According to Lomborg, we have for generations “consistently underestimated our capacity for innovation.” The fact is that “would-be catastrophes have regularly been pushed aside throughout human history, and so often because of innovation and technological development. We never just continue to do the same old thing. We innovate and avoid the anticipated problems.”

Continue reading “More lunacy from Lomborg”

Al Gore: denial derails the democratic conversation

Al Gore’s book The Assault on Reason, which followed An Inconvenient Truth, was published in 2007 and revealed an impressive intelligence in its analysis of how America was losing the rule of reason in democratic discourse, the Enlightenment ideal which was a founding principle of the new republic in the 18th century.  America’s people were not participating in the conversation of citizens essential to functioning democracy, with a consequent diminishment of reason, logic and truth in decision making.  Television and advertising had been appropriated and used to make for a passive citizenry which expects no engagement in the political process.

Gore pointed to the results apparent in the Bush administration. The invasion of Iraq was justified by deliberate falsehood and deception.  Twisted values were promoted in the shocking use of torture.  The threat of terrorism was exploited for purposes well beyond the needed response, giving unnecessary powers to the executive. The careful work of climate scientists was treated with dismissive contempt and the climate crisis threatening humanity ignored in the perceived interests of big corporations.  “Greed and wealth now allocate power in our society.”

Continue reading “Al Gore: denial derails the democratic conversation”

The state of the ocean (dire)

[youtube]sup3XxHmBoo[/youtube]

Alex Rogers, Professor of Conservation Biology at the Department of Zoology at Oxford, and scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean describes the main problems affecting the global ocean — and discusses some of the things we could do to address them in this new video. The IPSO has just launched the summary of its forthcoming report on the state of the oceans ((Rogers, A.D. & Laffoley, D.d’A. 2011. International Earth system expert workshop on ocean stresses and impacts. Summary report. IPSO Oxford, 18 pp)) — PDF here. The key findings make sobering reading:

  • Human actions have resulted in warming and acidification of the oceans and are now causing increased hypoxia.
  • The speeds of many negative changes to the ocean are near to or are tracking the worst case scenarios from IPCC and other predictions. Some are as predicted, but many are faster than anticipated, and many are still accelerating.
  • The magnitude of the cumulative impacts on the ocean is greater than previously understood.
  • Timelines for action are shrinking.
  • Resilience of the ocean to climate change impacts is severely compromised by other stressors from human activities, including fisheries, pollution and habitat destruction.
  • Ecosystem collapse is occurring as a result of both current and emerging stressors.
  • The extinction threat to marine species is rapidly increasing.

The bottom line is not pretty:

[…] we now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation. Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effect of climate change, over exploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean.

The report recommends immediate action on reduction of CO2 emissions, calls for a long list of actions to restore and protect marine ecosystems, and the formation of a new Global Ocean Compliance Commission to establish rules and regulations for the protection of the “high seas” — the ocean beyond national jurisdictions.

This is a cri du coeur from the world’s ocean scientists. We ignore it at our peril…

[See also Climate Progress, and the NZ Herald. The IPSO site also has more videos from workshop participants, and a great ocean cycles graphic.]

Oxfam on food justice: clearheaded and admirable

I thought of Oxfam’s recent report on food justice while I was reviewing Christian Parenti’s book Tropic of Chaos. He wrote of how climate change impacts are compounding the existing economic and political problems of many poorer populations. This is also very evident in Oxfam’s report on the alarming new surge in hunger as higher food prices hit poor countries. Time for a post on the report, I thought.

The message that climate change is already having bad effects on the welfare of poor populations needs to be hammered home. The fact that it intertwines with other causes doesn’t mean that it can be downplayed. It is clearly a significant part of the combination of factors threatening the food supply of many.

Continue reading “Oxfam on food justice: clearheaded and admirable”