The Peak Oil Crisis: The Summer of 2012

By Tom Whipple    11 July 2012 One has to go back to the 1930’s to find a time when so much of civilization was in turmoil at once. The 30’s ended with World War II, tens of millions dead, and much of the industrialized world in ruins. It is not hard to argue that the […]

Texas drought and British heat of 2011 linked to climate change

By Deborah Zabarenko; Editing by Bill Trott10 July 2012 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Climate change increased the odds for the kind of extreme weather that prevailed in 2011, a year that saw severe drought in Texas, unusual heat in England and was one of the 15 warmest years on record, scientists reported on Tuesday. Overall, 2011 […]

U.S. experiences warmest 12-month period on record, again – One-in-1.6 million event

[UPDATE: Probably not as unlikely as 1-in-1.6 million; more like 1-in-134000.] By Dr. Jeff Masters9 July 2012 Thanks in part to the historic heat wave that demolished thousands of high temperature records at the end of June, temperatures in the contiguous U.S. were the warmest on record over the past twelve months and for the […]

How forest fires are changing the landscape of the U.S. West

By Brandon Keim6 July 2012 The vast wildfires of this summer and last represent a new normal for the western United States. They may signal a radical landscape transformation, one that will make the 21st century West an ecological frontier. “These transitions could be massive. They represent the convergence of several different forces,” said Donald […]

Graph of the Day: Discarded, Lost, and Wasted Seafood Catch for Different Regions, 2011

Discards, the proportion of total catch that is returned to the sea (in most case dead, dying, or badly damaged), represent a significant part of the world’s marine catches and are generally considered to be a wasteful misuse of marine resources. The first global assessment was published in 1994 and it identified a total discard […]

Arctic warming linked to combination of reduced sea ice and global atmospheric warming

Contact: Louise Bennet, Media Unit, +613 9035 3372, +61 412 975 350, ebennet@unimelb.edu.au 6 Jul 2012 The combination of melting sea ice and global atmospheric warming are contributing to the high rate of warming in the Arctic, where temperatures are increasing up to four times faster than the global average, a new University of Melbourne […]

U.S. Drought Monitor shows record-breaking expanse of drought

By Kelly Helm Smith, National Drought Mitigation Center; Steve Smith, University Communications5 Jul 2012 (UNL) – More of the United States is in moderate drought or worse than at any other time in the 12-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor, officials from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said today. […]

Society not ready for heat waves coming with climate change – ‘The power grid can’t handle it’

By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY6 July 2012 Health officials are better prepared for heat waves than they used to be, but they have more to do in the face of climate change, experts say. “Nationally and internationally we are much more aware of the danger of extreme heat than we were in 1995,” says sociologist […]

U.S. heat wave breaks more all-time records in Midwest – Indiana drought worse than Dust Bowl

By Dr. Jeff Masters7 July 2012 The extraordinary heat wave of late June/early July 2012 toppled more Dust Bowl-era records on Friday, with three cities in Michigan hitting their hottest temperatures ever recorded. Lansing hit 103°, the hottest day in Michigan’s capital city since record keeping began in 1863. Lansing has hit 102° four times, […]

Graph of the Day: Greenland Reflectivity Anomaly, June 2012

Satellite data of Greenland reflectivity 1-22 June 2012 versus the same periods in previous Junes back to 2000. The blue colors indicate a decrease in reflectivity compared to previous Junes. In a new study, Box and a team of researchers describe the decline in ice sheet reflectivity and the reasons behind it, noting that if […]

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