RealClimate: An Arctic methane worst-case scenario

By David Archer7 January 2012 Let’s suppose that the Arctic started to degas methane 100 times faster than it is today. I just made that number up trying to come up with a blow-the-doors-off surprise, something like the ozone hole. We ran the numbers to get an idea of how the climate impact of an […]

West Coast shellfish farms impacted by ocean acidification

By Laine Welch, For the Alaska Journal of Commerce21 December 2011 West Coast shellfish growers have learned to work around upwellings of corrosive waters and save the lives of their bivalve stocks. Increased levels of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere are changing the chemistry of the oceans, making it more acidic. The CO2 […]

Tuvalu prepares for 2012 king tide season – ‘The major powers are not listening to our plight’

Presenter: Campbell CooneySpeaker: Tatuau Pese, secretary general, Tuvalu Red Cross 28 December 2011 Tuvalu and Kiribati will be amongst the island nations bracing for king tides. In January and February, the low lying atoll nations are hit by massive tides, which damage foreshore areas, destroy crops, and affect water supplies. Tuvalu is just recovering from […]

MV Rena salvors brace for break-up

January 6 (NZH) – The Rena is set to be battered this weekend by some of the largest sea swells to hit the cargo ship since it grounded on the Astrolabe Reef on October 5. However officials are confident they have plans to deal with the worst-case scenario of the ship breaking up, and crews […]

Tamino: What’s the probability that man-made global warming will lead to disastrous climate change?

Tamino poses the question: What’s the chance that if we continue with business-as-usual, man-made global warming will lead to disastrous climate change? It isn’t zero. It isn’t one. What is epsilon? Although one could quibble with the assumption that it isn’t 1 – why wouldn’t it be? – here’s what Des wrote in comments: Assumptions […]

Is Southern California finally getting serious about its water crisis?

By Jens Erik Gould / Los Angeles 3 January 2011 To quench the thirst of Southern California’s some 20 million people, water must be imported from hundreds of miles away, across a daunting array of deserts, valleys and mountains. For decades, Angelenos have muttered a doomsday refrain: our water supply isn’t sustainable, and we are […]

20 inches to disaster: U.S. coasts unprepared for higher seas

By Robert Lalasz3 Jan 2012 Let’s say the rise in sea level that climate change will bring us — from melting ice caps and expanding seas — won’t be “all that bad” by, oh, the year 2080. Maybe … just half a meter (a little under 20 inches). We can deal with half a meter, […]

Fukushima: A woman speaks out about health problems – ‘Until this summer, my teeth were healthy’

By arevamirpal::laprimavera2 January 2012 Teeth and toenails falling off and clumps of hair coming off, she reports in her blog. She doesn’t seem to care any more if people dismiss her as fabricating the story, and just tells as a matter of fact what’s been happening to her and her husband, probably both in their […]

‘Searing anger’ as Nigerians protest fuel price increase

By Stephanie Busari, CNN4 January 2012 (CNN) – Car tires were set on fire and gas stations blockaded as hundreds of Nigerians took to the streets to protest the removal of fuel subsidies that saw the price of petrol more than double virtually overnight. Angry Nigerians chanted anti-government slogans and brandished placards in a largely […]

Graph of the Day: Trend in Published Reports of Climate-related Forest Mortality, 1985–2009

ISI Web of Science search of the trend in published reports of climate-related forest mortality in the scientific literature, for the years 1985–2009. Plotted bars show the percent of references using the topic words “forest AND mortality AND drought”, relative to all “forest” references. Line represents the linear regression model fitted to the data (R2 […]

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