Global Warming

Potential Impacts of Climate Change

America’s Red Snow: Hottest Winter on Record, Largest Wildfires in Texas History (3/9/2024) Juan Cole

‘Paying in lives’: health of billions at risk from global heating, warns report (11/14/2023)

Heat-related deaths in 2022 hit highest level on record in England (9/22/2023)

Racism at heart of US failure to tackle deadly heatwaves, expert warns (8/6/2023)

WMO: July to be Hottest month on Record, as World enters era of Global Boiling, Global Burning (7/30/3023)

Global Temperature to 2021 (NASA) see the animation.

The greenhouse gases we release today shape the world of the future. We don't have the luxury of waiting for devastating disasters to scare us into action. Forecast, The Consequences of Climate Change from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley by Stephan Faris (2009)

. . . anthropogenic climate change is a matter of basic physics: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means it traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. So if you put additional CO2 into that atmosphere, above and beyond what’s naturally there, you have to expect the planet to warm. Basic physics. And guess what? We’ve added a substantial amount of CO2 to the atmosphere, and the planet has become hotter. We can fuss about the details of natural variability, cloud feedbacks, ocean heat and CO2 uptake, El Nino cycles and the like, but the answer that you get from college-level physics -- more CO2 means a hotter planet -- has turned out to be correct. The details may affect the timing and mode of climate warming, but they won’t stop it." Naomi Oreskes

As Global Heat Waves Break Records in Mideast and Elsewhere, How Hot is too Hot for us Humans? (7/20/2023)

America's hottest city is nearly unlivable in summer. Can cooling technologies save it? (1/27/2022) Guardian

A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us. (8/9/2021)

Extreme heat waves in a warming world don't just break records - they shatter them (7/27/2021)

German Scientists: Without Drastic Climate Action, World could be headed to Dangerous 7.2 F. extra Heating (3/14/2021)

This image breaks me. At 2.7 degrees of warming, which is our present policy trajectory, two billion people will be exposed to extreme heat.

99.7% of those people live in the global South. People who have done nothing to cause this crisis. The injustice is staggering. pic.twitter.com/ncL3IOVyvb

— Jason Hickel (@jasonhickel) August 6, 2023

Watching Earth Burn (12/28/2020)

The following is from Greta Thunberg Speaks the Horrific Truth of Humanity's Fate

At 412 ppm and rising, experts said temperature rises of 3-4C are likely now locked in. What does any honest scientist have to say about mankind's prospects in a 4 degree C world:

"There is a widespread view that a +4 degree C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond adaptation, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems and has a high probability of not being stable." Professor Kevin Anderson, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (Video, 58:00)

"We have already observed impacts of climate change on agriculture. We have assessed the amount of climate change we can adapt to. There's a lot we can't adapt to even at 2C. At 4C the impacts are very high and we cannot adapt to them." Rachel Warren, University of East Anglia

"There is a growing sense of panic in those who really understand what a 4 degree C world might be like." Prof. Will Steffan, Director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute

"Thinking through the implications of 4 degrees of warming shows that the impacts are so significant that the only real adaptation strategy is to avoid that at all cost because of the pain and suffering that is going to cost." Prof. Neil Adger, University of Exeter

"there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4 degree C world is possible. A 4 degree C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4 degree C warming simply must not be allowed to occur." World Bank report (2012) Turn down the heat: why a 4 degree C warmer world must be avoided

"If we don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately stabilize CO2 - and we also have to draw down a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. If we don't achieve that, there's no real prospect for a stable society or even a governable society." Jason Box, Prof in glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland

To solve everything, solve climate (9/1/2020)

(8/7/2022 Washington Post) In Iraq the temperature is 125, the electricity failed so no air conditioning. Heat is rising everywhere, seems humanity is much like the frog in slowly boiling water. Too paralyzed to do anything about it.

“When I was a graduate student, I wrote to Carl Sagan, then an assistant professor at Harvard University, who sent me a stack of his papers on the atmosphere of Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor. We all still hoped that beneath the ubiquitous, pale lemon-yellow clouds that shrouded Venus lay a hospitable landscape with oceans or at least large lakes. Even if we found no dancing nymphs, at least Venus could be a second home for refuge, if we should mess up our home planet.

Cold-hearted scientific inquisition, spearheaded by Soviet Venera spacecraft, drew back the veil of Venus and exposed the awful truth — a scorching surface, hot enough to melt lead. Isotopic remnants of water in the Venus stratosphere revealed that the ocean on Venus had boiled away to space in a runaway greenhouse effect.”
James Hansen

‘Earth might end up like Venus! Temperatures here may rise to 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid!’ It is said by one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists, and cannot be ignored. Steven Hawking warned this in a recent talk in China, stating that he is ‘very worried about global warming.”

We just had the warmest November on record, per @NASAClimate and @CopernicusECMWF, and 2nd warmest per @NOAA (after 2015).
WMO consolidates 5 datasets for the final end of year figure.
Long-term trend is more important than ranking of individual months or years.#ClimateChange pic.twitter.com/Fuxx8ir01Y

— World Meteorological Organization (@WMO) December 15, 2020

New record again. This will of course be broken time and time again as the accumulated concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will keep increasing.
The real worry is the increasing speed. We're closing in on 420ppm... The considered "safe level" is 350ppm-which we passed in 1987. https://t.co/3M5ziv9dAN

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) May 5, 2020

Killer Heat in the United States: Climate Choices and the Future of Dangerously Hot Days (2019)

This Map Shows How Unbearably Hot It Will Be in Your Town When You’re Old (7/20/2019)

Global Warming: How Hot, Exactly, Is it Going to Get? (5/12/2019)

An unprecedented number of fires are burning north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland, Russia, Canada and Alaska. https://t.co/fytSy7rhmH

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) August 12, 2019

Climate change is a global injustice. A new study shows why. (9/26/2018)

Thirty years later, what needs to change in our approach to climate change (6/27/2018)

The 10 Hottest Global Years on Record (1/18/2018)

United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

As our world burns, here are the top recipients of oil and gas industry cash:

-Mitt Romney: $7.4 million

-John Cornyn: $3.5 million

-Ted Cruz: $3.4 million

-Mitch McConnell: $2.2 million

-Jim Inhofe: $2 million

-Kevin Brady: $1.8 million

-Lisa Murkowski: $1.5 million https://t.co/dO9G7N35nQ

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) July 5, 2019

The task of achieving a reduction of atmospheric CO2 is formidable, but not impossible. Rapid transition to abundant affordable carbon-free electricity is the core requirement, as that would also permit production of net-zero-carbon liquid fuels from electricity. The rate at which CO2 emissions must be reduced is about 6 % yr to reach 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 by about 2100, under the assumption that improved agricultural and forestry practices could sequester 100 GtC (Hansen et al., 2013a). The amount of CO2 fossil fuel emissions taken up by the ocean, soil and biosphere has continued to increase (Fig. S23), thus providing hope that it may be possible to sequester more than 100 GtC. Improved understanding of the carbon cycle and non-CO2 forcings are needed, but it is clear that the essential requirement is to begin to phase down fossil fuel CO2 emissions rapidly. It is also clear that continued high emissions are likely to lock-in continued global energy imbalance, ocean warming, ice sheet disintegration, and large sea level rise, which young people and future generations would not be able to avoid. Given the inertia of the climate and energy systems, and the grave threat posed by continued high emissions, the matter is urgent and calls for emergency cooperation among nations." James Hansen et al. (7/23/2015)

The conclusion is inescapable. However desirable it may be to protect the Earth from the dire consequences of a runaway climate the chances that the world will agree to cut its emissions quickly enough to stay below the 2C threshold are somewhere between zip, zilch and zero." Roger Andrews (12/29/2014)

The Weather Channel used to have an environmental reporting team, including a weekly show called 'Forecast Earth' that focused on climate change - but they were all laid off as one of NBC's first cost-cutting moves after purchasing the channel. (Washington Post, 11/21/08)

The U.S. based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), prepared a lengthy report in 2006 showing that "ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science. From Al Gore's Assault on Reason

A scientific consensus on climate change does indeed exist. Here is a study about the consensus itself: http://tinyurl.com/35jed2s http://tinyurl.com/2d7f3ft

At this point, no skeptic is likely to change their position via rational debate -- with me or anyone else -- because their skepticism is based on ideology and/or belief in conspiracies. Here are two studies about those skeptics: http://tinyurl.com/9q4xw6o and http://tinyurl.com/bl52u57

This gets back to the "human nature" discussions we have had in the past. Biology tells us that the human mind was primary designed to win arguments instead of discovering the truth. For example, see http://tinyurl.com/8ossqd6

Jay Hanson

With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate - including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning - accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warning. New York Times editorial 10/18/2010.

We can no longer sit on our hands while our world burns. https://t.co/pfmSZwjwIv

— Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) July 19, 2019

Antarctica Is Melting Three Times as Fast as a Decade Ago (6/13/2018)

An overview of "resilience" and climate change (2/19/2018)

Averting a World of Failed States and Resource Wars (11/3/2015)

Ten Clear Indicators Our Climate is Changing (8/18/2015)

Ocean Heat Invades Arctic Ocean (8/21/2015)

Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry (2/21/2015)

What if the World Can't Cut Its Carbon Emissions ? (12/29/2014)

Warming Has been "Hugely underestimated" (10/20/2014)

Global Warming Silence On Sunday TV (11/5/2012)

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math (7/19/2012)

NOAA: Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries (7/2010)

“Climate dice,” describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons, have become more and more “loaded” in the past 30 years, coincident with rapid global warming. The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased. An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than the climatology of the 1951–1980 base period. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth’s surface during the base period, now typically covers about 10% of the land area. It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small. We discuss practical implications of this substantial, growing, climate change..." James Hanson, Makiko Sato , and Reto Ruedy

2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade (1/21/2010)

We can observe rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; warming, shrinking arctic ice, acidic oceans; retreating glaciers; record breaking droughts; massive forest fires; unrecoverable species extinction; permafrost thaws, severe storms, fisheries collapse, desertification. These are the consequences of using the atmosphere as a dump for burning fossil fuels. The national science academies of all the G8 nations, including the United States, along with the science academies of China, India, and Brazil, issued a remarkable joint statement calling on world leaders to "acknowledge that the threat of climate change is clear and increasing".

Bush ignored that. Instead his staff edited reports to get the results he wanted. The White House deliberately censored climate science. Detailed accounts are in Mark Bowen's book "Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming." Conservative media (which includes most US media) stayed on message and spread Republican misinformation. Here is Full Version of White House "Edited" CDC Climate Report - with highlights! (10/26/2007- Note the date. This came from the Bush WH.)

Big media, with massive funding from industry, campaigned to cast doubt on the science. (See the Climate Cover-up by James Hoggan). This is another, perhaps fatal, battle in the Republican war on science. Like Jim Jones, U.S. media is delivering the cool aid ... only on a global scale.

Fox news owner, Rupert Murdoch, who has many leading Republicans on his payroll, broadcasts a powerful message denying the problem. Clearly, his corporate advertisers are using him to broadcast their propaganda.

Republicans, being willfully ignorant in their war on science, attack Al Gore as if that somehow is a valid argument. They would explain it is not cost effective to save the planet.

About the global climate change lobby.

Scientific Consensus on Global Warming

Global Warming FAQ Video

The Road From Copenhagen

media's, falsely claimed, climate change deniers (1/25/2010)

Copenhagen: Getting Past the Urgency Trap (11/28/2009)

U.S. government's 2009 report on climate change impacts

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change

Ex-EPA Chiefs blame Bush on Global Warming

A real conservative would want to mitigate any possible damage that we might be causing, but there is considerable denial, and the damage to the environment is worse than simply warming. Instead so-called conservatives are spreading disinformation.

The 'Inhofe 400'

Exxon Secrets

New Cracks Appear in Greenland Glacier

America's newest security threat: Global warming

Scientist to Congress: Oil Execs Commit High Crimes

The Guardian UK, says: "James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer."

George Monbiot is alarmed at Hansen's report.

"The United States, having failed to defeat Kyoto, may be in the process of doing something even more damaging: ruining the chances of reaching a post-Kyoto agreement." ...from Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert.

The IPCC. has released its 2007 report. You can watch a video from MIT AGS (Alliance for Global Sustainability meeting presentation lasts about 45 minutes).

If you are really interested in what we know about climate change, go to realclimate.org.

3564 articles about climate change from The Guardian. Compare with US press coverage.

Wikipedia on Global Warming.

Al Gore's Nobel prize acceptance speech (12/11/07)

House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming

The Stern Report warns that we cannot wait to mitigate damage.

Climate scientists warning

Download a report on climate change.

Global Warming Nears "Dangerous" Level
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2726276/

Remember 350 parts per million: Bill McKibbon (12/28/2007)

One degree and we're done for
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2739792/

Global Temperature Highest in Millennia
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2721688/

Coal Will Be Top Enemy in Fighting Global Warming
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/2742216

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Climate Change: a window to act.

The Earth today stands in imminent peril ...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. 19 Jun 2007 Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilization itself is threatened by global warming. They also implicitly criticize the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets... That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in "imminent peril".

Arctic spring's 'rapid advance' 18 Jun 2007 Spring in the Arctic is arriving "weeks earlier" than a decade ago, a team of Danish researchers have reported. Ice in north-east Greenland is melting an average of 14.6 days earlier than in the mid-1990s, bringing forward the date plants flower and birds lay eggs.

U.K. has the second warmest winter since records began 01 Mar 2007 The U.K. experienced the second warmest winter on record this year with mean temperature touching 5.47 degrees Celsius, according to the Met Office. January was also the second-warmest January on record with a mean of 6 degrees Celsius... The office has been maintaining national records of temperatures since 1914.

Netherlands experiences warmest winter on record 01 Mar 2007 The winter of 2006-2007 was the warmest since measurements began in 1706, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) said on its website Wednesday. The average temperature this winter was 6.5 degrees Celsius, much higher than the average temperature of 3.3 degrees for the winter months, said the KNMI.

Shanghai has warmest winter on record 01 Mar 2007 Shanghai, China's largest city, has experienced its warmest winter since records began in 1873, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday. The average temperature over the past three months was 8.1 degrees Celsius (46.6 Fahrenheit), 2.6 degrees warmer than the previous average, Xinhua quoted the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau as saying.

Taiwan sees 2nd warmest winter of last 30 years: CWB 03 Mar 2007 As the spring season has come, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said that Taiwan experienced warmer than average temperatures this past winter. Taiwan's average temperature between this past December and February in the flatlands was 19.49 degrees Celsius, some 1.45 degrees higher than the annual winter average of 18.04 degrees, the CWB said.

Climate Change Impact More Extensive than Thought 02 Mar 2007 Global climate change is happening faster than previously believed and its impact is worse than expected, information from an as-yet unpublished draft of the long-awaited second part of a United Nations report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE reveals. No region of the planet will be spared and some will be hit especially hard.

The Weather Channel

National Geographic on the movie, An Inconvenient Truth

algore.com (see his Nobel Prize acceptance speech)

Report from the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.

ClimateProgress.org

Top 50 Twitter climate accounts to follow

Global Warming Hits Tipping Point

The Telegraph (UK) news about Siberia's forest fires

Junketing Judges: A Case of Bad Science

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/25351/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1546824,00.html
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18725124.500

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article362549.ece

Video

Greedy Lying Bastards

Bibliography

Nomad Century, How Climate Migration will Reshape Our World by Gaia Vince

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future: David Wallace-Wells

Storms of My Grandchildren: James Hansen

Merchants of Doubt: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Climate Wars: Gwynne Dyer

Hockey Stick: Michael E Mann

Under a Green Sky:- Peter D. Ward Ph.D (See Ward's video message.)

Deep Future, the Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth: Curt Stager

The Emissions Gap Report: UNEP November 2012

Climate Cover-up, the Crusade to Deny Global Warming: James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore

Weather of the Future: Heidi Cullen

The Climate War: Eric Pooley

With Speed and Violence: Fred Pearce speculates on many possible non-linearities in climate change. Beacon Press 2007.

The Bridge at the End of the World: Gus Speth (2008)

The Heat is On: Ross Gelbspan

Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning: George Monbiot

The Next One Hundred Years: Jonathan Weiner

The Creation, An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, E. O. Wilson

Censoring Science: Inside the political attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. Mark Bowen.

Fight Global Warming: Bill McKibben

Hell and High Water: Joseph Romm

Straight Up: Joseph J. Romm

IPCC report (January 2007), dissed by US media, "says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought".

Connecticut Fund for the Environment on Global Warming.

Berkley Earth Surface Temperature

Pew Center on Global Climate Change

Christopher Flavin

Mark Hertsgaard

Ross Gelbspan

Bill McKibben

American Meteorological Society

See Environment also

Get a free book from Consumer Reports.

http://www.ecobridge.org/content/g_evd.htm

Blurtit on Global Warming

Be part of the "Virtual March on Washington" that allows individuals to sign up and express their commitment to stop global warming. See the warning at the Global Warming Action Network.

Take Part.