Going vegetarian can cut your diet’s carbon footprint in half. The agricultural industry is a heavy global warmer, responsible for a tenth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. But not all farm bounties are climatically equal. New research reveals that the diets of those who eat a typical amount of meat for an American, about four ounces or more per day, are responsible for nearly twice as much global warming as vegetarians’ diets, and nearly 2.5 times as much as vegans’. That’s because directly eating vegetables and grains, instead of inefficiently funneling them through livestock to produce meat, reduces the amount of carbon dioxide produced by farms and farm machinery. It also cuts back on the amount of climate-changing nitrous oxide released from tilled and fertilized soils, and, of course, it eliminates methane belching and farting by cows and other animals.
A team of British researchers scrutinized the diets of 2,041 vegans, 15,751 vegetarians, 8,123 fish eaters, and 29,589 meat eaters, all of them living in the U.K. Pass the veggies? Iguazu waterfall records biggest ever flow. If you think climate politics in the U.S. are crazy, wait till you see what just happened in Australia. Hold on to your hats! Australia’s already-bizarre carbon price adventures veered into the utterly surreal overnight. Picture this: An eccentric billionaire mining baron, most famous outside Australia for commissioning a replica of the Titanic, appearing alongside the world’s most recognizable climate campaigner and former U.S. vice president, Al Gore, to announce Australia’s relatively new carbon tax will be scrapped, and a new emissions trading scheme proposed, effectively screwing over the sitting conservative prime minister, Tony Abbott, who is hell-bent on getting rid of carbon legislation altogether.
It’s a big blow to a prime minister who said recently in Canada that he has “always been against” an emissions trading scheme, and believes fighting climate change will “clobber the economy.” For watchers of Aussie politics, it was a visual feast of weirdness. But at this week’s performance, he made an incredible about-face: Meteo-tsunami hits several cites along Adriatic co... - The Watchers.
A meteorological tsunami or meteo-tsunami event was observed today in several Croatian cities along the Adriatic coast. In some places sea levels rose up to 2 meters. According to Darko Dragojević, a member of independent Croatian meteorological organization Crometeo, who observed and reported the event in Vela Luka (Korčula), sea levels sharply rose for about 1.5 meters around 08:30 local time/CET (06:30 UTC).
Although the water did not enter nearby houses, several boats were damaged. "The damage would be much higher had this happen during the night. People realized what was happening and reacted quickly," Dragojević said. The event, which lasted for about 3 hours, was also observed in Stari Grad (Hvar) and Rijeka Dubrovačka where sea levels rose for 2 meters (6.5 feet). Images courtesy of Darko Dragojević, Crometeo See the video here. Meteo-tsunami is rare, tsunami-like, wave phenomenon of meteorological origin. Image and data by Crometeo.hr Image credit: Sat24/EUMETSAT.
Cargo ships carry a lot of climate baggage. Buying local has become a bit of a mantra. We understand that it takes a heck of a lot of climate-killing carbon to get that hula hoop from China to Chicago, but it’s easy to let the details slip. Here’s some perspective: Maersk Triple E’s, the world’s largest container ships, measure 1,312 feet from stem to stern and contain 55,000 tons of steel alone. To put that into more relatable terms, that’s 196 LeBron James long and more than a million Rottweilers in weight.
These giant vessels are giant polluters. The largest vessels burn around 16 tons of low-grade, high-sulphur diesel fuel per hour as they ceaselessly plow the world’s oceans at over 25 knots. One study estimates just one of these gigantic ships spews out as much cancer-causing pollutants as 50 million cars every year, and there are an estimated 90,000 cargo ships around the world. A recent study from the University of Manchester’s Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research comes with a dire warning: Oh wait. Thanks to shrinking sea ice, National Geographic puts global warming on the map. Every once in awhile, we reach a moment in history that so radically changes our concept of the world it forces us to redraw our maps — events like Columbus rediscovering America or the Soviet Union collapsing.
Now we can add global warming to the list. For the upcoming 10th edition of the National Geographic Atlas of the World, its cartographers say they have made one of the most visible changes in the publication’s history: it’ll show a lot less Arctic ice. The loss of Arctic sea ice has been a glaring sign of climate change for the last thirty-some years. Rising temperatures have caused the ice to retreat by 12 percent per decade since the 1970s, with particularly notable setbacks in 2007 and 2012. None of which bodes well for the Arctic’s icy future. National Geographic’s mapmakers drew their new rendition based on how the Arctic looked in 2012, using sea ice data collected by NASA and NSIDC. The new Atlas will be available on September 30. Massive malnutrition may come with climate change.
Israelis were part of a multicenter study that tried to understand the potentially devastating effects of climate change on the world’s poor and hungry, and the crops they eat for basic sustenance. Their conclusions paint a grim picture. Writing about their results in Nature, one of the world’s most prominent science journals, the study leaders predict that as climate change progresses, crops grown in the second part of this century will become “hollow.” There will be lower levels of iron, protein and zinc in mainstay crops such as wheat, peas, rice and soybeans. In some cases, the scientists say, nutrients will plummet by more than nine percent. According to the recent study — led by Harvard University with prominent contributions by Itai Kloog from Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva, Israel –climate change and an increasingly carbon dioxide (CO2) rich environment affects the zinc, protein and iron levels in important crops.
Need to breed CO2-resistant crops The silver lining of the study? Siberian Global Warming Meets Lukewarm Reaction in Russia. Biodiversity, Climate Change, Editors' Choice, Energy, Environment, Featured, Food & Agriculture, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Natural Resources Climate change will cause the Siberian permafrost to thaw. Credit: Softpedia/Celsias - People in Siberia must prepare to face frequent repeats of recent devastating floods as well as other natural disasters, scientists and ecologists are warning, amid growing evidence of the effects of global warming on one of the world’s most ecologically diverse regions.
More than 50,000 people were affected by floods in the Altai region and Khakassia and Altai republics in southern Siberia at the end of May and early June. But while floods caused by snowmelt are not uncommon to Siberia, these most recent ones were caused by excessive rainfall – a phenomenon global warming is expected to make much more frequent in future. Siberia is home to some of the richest diversity of flora and fauna in the world, including endangered species such as the Amur tiger. Al Gore thinks there’s hope for humanity after all. In the current rolling debate over whether we’re already the walking dead, given our presumptive too little, too late actions on climate change, Al Gore is boldly predicting victory in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. “The forward journey for human civilization will be difficult and dangerous, but it is now clear that we will ultimately prevail,” writes Gore in his article, “The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate.”
“The truly catastrophic damages that have the potential for ending civilization as we know it can still — almost certainly — be avoided.” That’s a lot of clarity and certainty, especially for a magazine that just two years ago terrified us with an article by climate activist (and Grist board member) Bill McKibben called “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” That math pointed at fossil fuel companies as the primary culprits for coming destabilization. As for building a campaign against those companies, McKibben wrote, “we may have waited too long to start it.” 1. 2. Everything you need to know about El Niño — and more. Stuck at a standstill between blaring horns on a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway through Long Beach, Calif., my 9-year-old self felt pretty sure our car was about to get swept away by the torrent of water pouring from the sky.
“Mom, what’s going on?” I asked. “It’s El Niño,” she growled. Whoever this El Niño was, I could tell that should he and my mom ever meet face to face, it’d be best to get out of their way. Many people who lived in California between December 1997 and May 1998 probably had similar feelings. It rained nearly continuously for the whole of February. The first two months of 1998 were the warmest and wettest the contiguous U.S. had ever seen for that period.
Well, brace yourselves: Word on the street is that the kid has spent the last 16 years gathering up his gusto – and he’ll soon be back in town. Could is the operative word in all of this. So, what is going to happen this year? But whether the boy is coming this year or not, we haven’t seen the last of him. The Kochs are cooking up a new dirty-energy political scheme. The Koch brothers have seen Tom Steyer’s $100 million bet and they’re raising it by almost $200 million more. Steyer, billionaire hedge-fund manager turned climate activist, set a goal earlier this year of spending $100 million in the 2014 midterm elections to support candidates who care about climate change. So far fundraising for his super PAC has been weak, but the Kochs aren’t taking any chances. The Daily Beast reports that “the billionaire Koch brothers and scores of wealthy allies have set an initial 2014 fundraising target of $290 million which should boost GOP candidates and support dozens of conservative groups – including a new energy initiative with what looks like a deregulatory, pro-consumer spin.”
Here’s more: A few Koch network-backed nonprofit groups including [Americans for Prosperity] have long fought against climate change regulations, a carbon tax, and subsidies for renewable energy. We’re massively underestimating climate costs, experts warn. Crank up global temperatures by 30-odd degrees and humans could plummet toward extinction. Yet one of the world’s most cited economic models on climate-change effects projects just a 50 percent reduction in global economic output if temperatures rise that much. That’s an example of how substantially we’ve been underestimating the costs of climate change. So argues a new peer-reviewed paper in The Economic Journal written by Nicholas Stern, author the famed 2006 Stern report on the economics of climate change, and Simon Dietz, both of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. And, in part because we’re relying on an outdated economic model, carbon-trading programs are woefully undercharging polluters for their climate-wrecking emissions.
The new paper critiques a model developed in the early ’90s — the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy, or DICE model – and a related paper, “To slow or not to slow,” by Yale economist William Nordhaus. Make Me Care: Why not just call ‘Game Over’ on climate change? Refreezing Water Causes Weird Warps in Greenland’s Ice. The flat, glistening, white expanse of the Greenland Ice Sheet, stretching out across hundreds of thousands of square miles, appears placid, unchanging … boring even. But this tranquil surface belies the turmoil taking place below, at the base of the ice sheet.
There, scientists have discovered sections of ice up to a kilometer thick and tens of kilometers long where meltwater has refrozen to the base of the ice sheet, setting off a dynamic process that causes the layers of ice to build up over the eons and contort into sinuous folds. Melting and refreezing at the bottom of ice sheets warps the layer-cake structure of the ice above, as seen in this radar image from Greenland. Credit: Mike Wolovick The refreezing and folding heats the surrounding ice, which impacts how it flows on its journey from the ice sheet’s interior out to the ocean.
Peering Inside an Ice Sheet ‘Tortured Ice’ The basal units start with meltwater — a key influence on the flow of glaciers and ice sheets. Next Steps. Climate change threatens America’s ‘king corn’ The days of “king corn” could be numbered as climate change brings higher temperatures and water shortages to America’s farmland, a new report warned on Wednesday. Nearly one third of U.S. farmland is devoted to raising corn and the country produces about 40 percent of the world’s corn crop. But the $1.7 trillion industry — the equivalent of Australia’s GDP — is under threat from water shortages, heat waves, and unpredictable rainfall caused by climate change.
“Corn is an essential input to our economy, and climate change, water scarcity, and pollution are a critical threat to that sector going forward,” said Brooke Barton, director of the water program at the Ceres green investor network and author of the report. In the case of corn, however, there are potentially trillions at stake because the industry now touches on almost every aspect of the American economy.
Corn production has doubled over the past 20 years and on its own was worth $65 billion last year. Who would win the World Cup of climate change? There are lots of reasons for the green-inclined to give the World Cup a red card. The list of contentious points may include: those enormous construction projects in the Amazon, this endangered armadillo, and, of course, the colossal pyre of carbon emissions that come from flying thousands of soccer fans to the Southern Hemisphere. But some of us can’t help it — we love to watch teams of grown men crying on the world stage, never mind the sordid backstage.
If you want a better reason to root for a team than the color of their jersey (what, isn’t that how you guys pick your favorites? #sporps) here’s a bracket for you! We set World Cup competitors against each other based on who can get the farthest on the least carbon emissions. The logic being, if you are going to pollute the atmosphere, you should make sure you get a lotta buck for your bang — that is, wealth for your combustive energy. One thing that, sadly, did not surprise us was how dismally the U.S. performed overall. Mass Animal Deaths 2014 - Updated List of Worldwide Die Offs. If the information on this page causes you concern regarding the future, then see what must I do to be saved?
Below is a list of worldwide mass animal deaths for 2015, with pages also for mass die offs from the previous 4 years. There are animals dying all over the world today in huge numbers, due to the polluted state of the sea and air. Millions of Fish and massive numbers of whales and dolphins are washing ashore dead. Birds are falling dead out of the sky, and millions of poultry are dying from avian flu. The animals of the land like cattle are also dying in large numbers from disease. Although animals and fish have been dying all throughout history, we have not seen the massive consistant numbers that we are seeing today. In many of these events people from all walks of life are saying that they have "never seen anything like this before".
INFO: MASSIVE die off that went unreported in 2011. Hosea 4:1-3 ...' Revelation 11:18 ...' , Mexico. Island, Russia. Ireland. America. Bulgaria. Millions of fish around the world are mysteriously... - The Watchers. These illustrations make climate change palpable — and hilarious. Red states pump out more carbon pollution than blue ones. Three reasons you shouldn’t lose hope on climate change. New Case of Chikungunya Virus Hits Florida : News.
American Southwest heating faster than rest of nation. Here’s how enviros plan to push for stronger EPA climate rules. China to limit carbon emissions for first time, climate adviser claims | Environment. Massive thunderstorm backed by dry dusty winds hit... - The Watchers.