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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

As climate change worsens, scientists feel increasing pressure to speak out

By Elizabeth Grossman, InsideClimate News29 December 2011 Factors contributing to climate change are moving faster than predicted and pushing us toward planetary conditions unlike any humans have ever known—this was one of the salient themes to emerge from this month’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest gathering of earth and space scientists. […]

Extreme weather events of 2011

By Jeff Masters30 December 2011 A remarkable blitz of extreme weather events during 2011 caused a total of 32 weather disasters costing at least $1 billion worldwide. Five nations experienced their most expensive weather-related natural disasters on record during 2011 – Thailand, Australia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. According to insurance broker AON Benfield’s November […]

Chicago’s 2011 pothole tally hits record – Illinois state roads wear out 33 percent faster than repair rate

By Jon Hilkevitch2 January 2012 The tally on Chicago’s rutted streets and alleys is in, and it’s a record: Crews filled more than 600,000 potholes in 2011, or about 25 percent more than in 2010, according to the Chicago Department of Transportation. In a city notorious for aging asphalt and unpredictable winters, 2012 threatens to […]

Gingrich kills chapter on climate change in upcoming book

[Apologies in advance for the ad.] By Sarah Huisenga 30 December 2011 DES MOINES – Newt Gingrich says he has killed a chapter on climate change in a post-election book of essays about the environment. But the intended author of the chapter, who supports the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change, says that’s […]

Video: As Siberian permafrost melts, methane seeps out

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy December 30 (MSNBC) – Jim Maceda travels to Siberia to interview Sergei Zimov, who has published a series of scientific papers exposing the importance of permafrost and high-latitude carbon dioxide and methane emissions in the global carbon cycle. Zimov initiated the Pleistocene Park […]

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