Articles Tagged &quot;You could not make it up&quot;

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You Could Not Make It Up: Time to blame climate change for extreme weather? by Anil Ananthaswamy: Updated with Comments by Piers Corbyn

Thursday, August 26th 2010, 5:27 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

IT IS time to start asking the hard questions. Countless people in flood-stricken Pakistan have lost families and livelihoods. Who can they hold responsible and turn to for reparations?

Less than a decade ago, these questions would have been dismissed outright. "Many scientists at the time said that you can never blame an individual weather event on climate change," says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. But a small meeting of scientists in Colorado last week - organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, among others - suggests the tide is turning.

The aim of the Attribution of Climate-Related Events workshop was to discuss what information is needed to determine the extent to which human-induced climate change can be blamed for extreme weather events - possibly even straight after they have happened.

Assigning blame in this way is not without precedent. In 2004, Allen and his colleagues showed to a high level of confidence that human greenhouse gas emissions had at least doubled the risk of the European heatwave of 2003 occurring.

Updated below with comments by Piers Corbyn

Source Link: newscientist.com

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You Could Not Make It Up: The Lessons to be Learned From Russia's Fires by David Gordon, Executive Director, Pacific Environment

Thursday, August 19th 2010, 12:21 PM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Russia is burning. The record-breaking temperatures that are gripping Russia have fueled hundreds of fires and caused a mounting number of deaths. The most intense heat wave in the country's 130 years of record keeping has destroyed thousands of homes, decimated over 30 percent of Russia's wheat crop, ravaged the environment and infrastructure of many cities, and led to states of emergency in 35 regions.

The air is so choked with soot that one of the country's chief medical authorities estimates that walking around Moscow for a few hours was the equivalent of smoking a pack or two of cigarettes, causing Moscow's daily death rate to double. Officials from Russia's Federal Forest Protection Service express concern about the potential release of radioactive smoke in regions that were coated by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. And as thick smoke sends soot drifting to the Arctic, black carbon settles on already dwindling sea ice, which accelerates melting and intensifies global warming.

The raging fires are being fueled by Russia's woefully inadequate Forestry Code, which was drastically rewritten in 2006. The change was fiercely opposed by Pacific Environment's partners, who said it would expose Russia's pristine forests to unchecked logging and sharply raise the chance of wildfires.

Source Link: huffingtonpost.com

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You Could Not Make It Up: Global temperatures warmest on record by Steve Oliver, NOAA Headlines Examiner

Wednesday, August 18th 2010, 12:35 PM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their monthly report on global climate. The findings show that July 2010 was the 2nd warmest July on record, second only to July of 1998.Also from the period of January through July had the warmest average ever recorded. NOAA also found that the global sea surface temperatures were the fifth warmest on record for the month of July and for the period of January through July 2010 it was the 2nd warmest period, the warmest was recorded in 1998. July was the 305th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average.

Couple of interesting facts from the data shows we had a very wet July on a global scale which includes the monsoon season in Pakistan that has caused deadly flooding over a very wide spread region of the Peshawar province. The flooding in Pakistan is the worst since 1929. Also the Arctic ice shelve was 16.9 percent below the average from 1979 to 2000 and was the second lowest on record. The record low for the month of July was in 2007. However we had a reversal of melting ice on the Antarctic ice shelve with a record 4.8 percent growth, which is the largest, recorded for the month of July.

Source Link: examiner.com

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You Could Not Make It Up: Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050 by John Vidal

Tuesday, August 17th 2010, 3:00 PM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Leading scientists say meat grown in vats may be necessary to feed 9 billion people expected to be alive by middle of century

Artificial meat grown in vats may be needed if the 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2050 are to be adequately fed without destroying the earth, some of the world's leading scientists report today.

But a major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, suggests that even with new technologies such as genetic modification and nanotechnology, hundreds of millions of people may still go hungry owing to a combination of climate change, water shortages and increasing food consumption.

In a set of 21 papers published by the Royal Society, the scientists from many disciplines and countries say that little more land is available for food production, but add that the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable.

Although more than one in seven people do not have enough protein and energy in their diet today, many of the papers are optimistic.

Source Link: guardian.co.uk

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You Could Not Make It Up: Will this summer of extremes be a wake-up call? by Stefan Rahmstorf

Monday, August 16th 2010, 3:19 PM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

This decade has been marked by a number of weather extremes – which show how vulnerable our societies are

This summer has been one of weather-related extremes in Russia, Pakistan, China, Europe, the Arctic – you name it. But does this have anything to do with global warming, and are human emissions to blame?

While it cannot be scientifically proven (or disproven, for that matter) that global warming caused any particular extreme event, we can say that global warming very likely makes many kinds of extreme weather both more frequent and more severe. For weeks, central Russia has been in the grips of its worst-ever heatwave, which has caused probably thousands of fatalities. As a result of drought and heat, more than 500 wildfires have raged out of control, smothering Moscow in smoke and threatening several nuclear facilities. Russia's government has banned wheat exports, sending world grain prices soaring.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is struggling with unprecedented flooding that has killed more than a thousand people and affected millions more. In China, flash floods have so far killed more than a thousand people and destroyed more than a million homes. On a smaller scale, European countries like Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic have also suffered serious flooding.

Source Link: guardian.co.uk

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You Could Not Make It Up: Climate scientists in race to predict where natural disaster will strike next by Robin Mckie

Sunday, August 15th 2010, 7:16 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

If only these FOOLS could make contact with Piers Corbyn

Conference in Boulder will step up world's efforts to establish an early warning system for extreme weather events.

The world's leading climate scientists will gather this week in the United States to hammer out plans to set up an early warning system that would predict future meteorological disasters caused by global warming.

The meeting, in Boulder, Colorado, has been arranged at diplomatic level amid fears that storms, hurricanes, droughts, flooding and other extreme weather events now threaten to trigger widespread devastation in coming decades. A series of meteorological catastrophes have dominated headlines in recent weeks, while scientists have warned that figures so far for this year suggest 2010 will be the hottest on record.

Recent events include a record-breaking heatwave that has seen Moscow blanketed with smog from burning peatlands, the splintering of a giant island of ice from the Greenland ice cap, and floods in Pakistan that have claimed the lives of at least 1,600 people and left 20 million homeless.

Source Link: guardian.co.uk

You Could Not Make It Up: Climate Ostriches: Why Russia's and Pakistan's Extreme Weather Is About To Become the Norm by Erich Pica President, Friends of the Earth

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Thursday, August 12th 2010, 6:25 PM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Record-setting temperatures in Russia, floods in Pakistan: it's tempting to categorize these as simply fluke weather events. And many media outlets are doing just that. But to do so is a disservice to the public. Acting like ostriches won't help us solve the problem. The media should be helping to connect the dots: what seems extreme now will be tomorrow's norm if we continue to ignore that these events are harbingers of climate change, and they're patterns with real human consequences.

If Moscow were in the United States, it would be located somewhere just south of Juneau, Alaska. Yet since July 29, Muscovites have endured at least five days that have been hotter than the previous record of 99 degrees, set back in the 1920s. Prior to this summer, Moscow had never seen a day with triple-digit temperatures. Now, it's seen several.

These are more than just a few hot days that can be endured by camping out near an air conditioner. The extreme heat -- the worst weather to occur in Russia in 1,000 years -- and the resulting acute air pollution, have caused the death rate in Moscow to double. Over 15,000 people are likely to have died in this summer's heat wave. Wildfires are burning rampantly, releasing more carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas that does the most to cause climate change, into the air. A section of the Siberian tundra one-and-a-half times the size of Texas continues to thaw out.

Potentially more devastating is the effect the heat has had on Russia's grain harvest. Nearly a third of it will be lost from drought and wildfires. This loss will be felt globally; Russia is currently the world's third-largest exporter of grain, and some analysts expect its export to be halved this year, causing prices to skyrocket.

Source Link: huffingtonpost.com

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You Could Not Make It Up: Pakistan floods: Climate change experts say global warming could be the cause by Louise Gray

Wednesday, August 11th 2010, 5:10 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

The world weather crisis that is causing floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China is evidence that global warming predictions are correct, according to climate change experts

Almost 14 million people have been affected by the torrential rains in Pakistan, making it a more serious humanitarian disaster than the South Asian tsunami and recent earthquakes in Kashmir and Haiti combined.

The disaster was driven by a ‘supercharged jet stream’ that has also caused floods in China and a prolonged heatwave in Russia.

It comes after flash floods in France and Eastern Europe killed more than 30 people over the summer.

Experts from the United Nations (UN) and universities around the world said the recent “extreme weather events” prove global warming is already happening.

Source Link: telegraph.co.uk

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You Could Not Make It Up: Climate change talks 'backslide' at Bonn, BBC News

Saturday, August 7th 2010, 6:19 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Global climate change talks have moved backwards since last year, say negotiators from both rich and poor nations at discussions in Germany.

The US envoy said some countries had "walked away" from commitments made at Copenhagen last year to contain greenhouse gas emissions. But the top UN climate official, Christiana Figueres, said progress had been made towards an eventual deal.

Negotiators are working towards the next climate summit in November. There is one last preparatory meeting, in Tianjin, China, in October, to draft a negotiating text before the summit in Cancun, Mexico.

"At this point, I am very concerned," said chief US negotiator Jonathan Pershing at the conclusion of a week of talks in Bonn.

"Unfortunately, what we have seen over and over this week is that some countries are walking back from progress made in Copenhagen, and what was agreed there." Mr Pershing said some of the major developing countries were backing away from commitments to slow the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions, saying such controls should only apply to industrialised countries.

He warned that record global temperatures, devastating floods in Pakistan and forest fires in Russia were "consistent with the kind of changes we could expect from climate change, and they will get worse if we don't act quickly".

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Source Link: bbc.co.uk