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
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
Abrupt glacier melt causes Canadian river to vanish in four days Updated A vast glacier-fed river which flowed from Canada's Yukon territory across Alaska to drain into the Bering Sea has disappeared in just four days, in what scientists believe is the first observed case of "river piracy". High average temperatures in the first three months of 2016 caused a dramatic spike in the amount of meltwater flowing from the Kaskawulsh glacier, carving a deep canyon in the ice and redirecting the flow toward the Alsek River in the south, rather than the north-flowing Slims River. That changed the Slims River from a three-metre-deep, raging torrent to a place where "massive afternoon dust storms occurred almost daily", according to a scientific paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience. "We were really surprised when we got there and there was basically no water in the river," lead author Daniel Shugar said of the Slims River. "We could walk across it and we wouldn't get our shirts wet."
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?
11 Meaningful Earth Day Activities for Every Grade Level Our students are the future caretakers of our Earth. These fun Earth Day activities help empower kids to have a positive impact on the planet. From recycled art projects to farming simulations, here’s how to roll out the green carpet in your classroom on Earth Day this year. 1. Your middle schoolers know that drinking plenty of H2O is good for them, but they may not realize the impact all those plastic water bottles have on the environment. In this project-based learning unit, they’ll design their own solutions for this issue by using engineering. Bonus: The lessons are aligned with the NGSS Engineering Design Standards. 2. In this art activity, students learn how to take their ideas from paper to reality. Through videos, activities, and lessons, students learn about the importance of recycling. 3. This lesson helps kids understand what could happen to plants and animals if they don’t adapt when their environment changes. 4. How much energy do we consume simply by living our daily lives?
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.
Volcanoes: How often do they erupt and what happens when they do? - Science News - ABC News Planet Earth is covered in hundreds of volcanoes, many of which will be erupting at any one time. Many of us only notice volcanoes when they are about to explode or disrupt our travel plans, but these spectacular forces of nature can have a significant impact on people living in the local area. While volcanoes can be destructive, they are also responsible for creating rich agricultural soil, minerals like gold and silver, diamonds, hot springs and geothermal energy. So how do these iconic wonders form, and what risks do they really pose? What is a volcano? A volcano is like a chimney that allows hot liquid rock, called magma, to flow from a layer within the Earth and erupt onto the surface. As magma rises through many kilometres to the Earth's surface, dissolved gases contained within it form expanding bubbles. These bubbles increase the pressure of the magma and, if this pressure is great enough, the volcano will erupt. Strato volcanoes Anatomy of a strato volcano such as Mt Agung And travel?
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