2061

Maybe, just maybe, the GOP will say, great idea!

2062

Nah, it’s just a way for the socialistas to more effectively beam gay marriage into the UN-controlled housing projects they force people to live in.

2063

15,000 sq km of coral reef could be lost in current mass bleaching, say scientists:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/07/six-percent-of-worlds-coral-could-be-lost-in-current-mass-bleaching-say-scientists

A massive coral bleaching event currently ravaging coral reefs across the globe could destroy thousands of square kilometres of coral cover forever, US government scientists have said.

In figures exclusively released to the Guardian, scientists from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said about 12% of the world’s reefs have suffered bleaching in the last year. Just under half of these, an area of 12,000 sq km of coral, may be lost forever.

But the devastation is only getting started. The event could continue well into 2016. Noaa announced on Monday that the western Atlantic is about to heat up, turning the corals of the Caribbean bone white. When this occurs, bleaching will have hit every tropical ocean basin on Earth since June last year.

2064

Liberals’ attack on climate science is ‘embarrassing’, say scientists:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/jul/08/liberals-attack-on-climate-science-is-groundless-ignorant-and-embarrassing-say-scientists

Now is probably not the best time – if there ever was one – for a minority within Australia’s Liberal party to be excreting climate science denialist brain farts.

The government is expected to announce within a week or two its proposed target to cut greenhouse gas emissions beyond the year 2020.

This will be the target Australia takes to December’s international climate talks in Paris and it will further put the Australian government under international scrutiny.

So far, there is a substantial gap between the supposed agreement to keep global warming below 2C and the levels of cuts governments say they’re willing to make to get there.

But one smallish rump of the Liberal party – a rump some within the party might like to have removed – thinks the whole climate science thing needs a review before Australia signs anything in France.

2065

Very interesting:

Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/08/exxon-climate-change-1981-climate-denier-funding

ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil company, knew as early as 1981 of climate change – seven years before it became a public issue, according to a newly discovered email from one of the firm’s own scientists. Despite this the firm spent millions over the next 27 years to promote climate denial.

The email from Exxon’s in-house climate expert provides evidence the company was aware of the connection between fossil fuels and climate change, and the potential for carbon-cutting regulations that could hurt its bottom line, over a generation ago – factoring that knowledge into its decision about an enormous gas field in south-east Asia. The field, off the coast of Indonesia, would have been the single largest source of global warming pollution at the time.

“Exxon first got interested in climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas field off Indonesia,” Lenny Bernstein, a 30-year industry veteran and Exxon’s former in-house climate expert, wrote in the email. “This is an immense reserve of natural gas, but it is 70% CO2”, or carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.

However, Exxon’s public position was marked by continued refusal to acknowledge the dangers of climate change, even in response to appeals from the Rockefellers, its founding family, and its continued financial support for climate denial. Over the years, Exxon spent more than $30m on thinktanks and researchers that promoted climate denial, according to Greenpeace.

Exxon said Wednesday that it now acknowledges the risk of climate change and does not fund climate change denial groups.

Some climate campaigners have likened the industry to the conduct of the tobacco industry which for decades resisted the evidence that smoking causes cancer.

The first proper ‘smoking gun’ in the future litigations against the Energy Corporations. Good stuff.

2066

When was that email written? It seems recent and no site I can find it referenced on has any info on when he wrote it. Hardly a smoking gun as it contains mostly speculation as to Exxon’s/Mobil’s motives (despite the fact the writer worked there, it is not that clear as to his involvement in decisions to act on the data he is working on). It is not actually an email from internal correspondence at the time. Not that he is wrong, but it seems a pretty thin smoking gun in and of itself.

2067

To make it worse, smoking guns also contribute to anthropogenic climate change.

2068

I hope it is not the tipping point! And it will be an interesting story to follow, as Sharaleo points out the info is pretty thin so far, but i expect that to get more detailed, especially for those interested in the current climate change CO2 issue. I hope the sources have seen The Insider and taken note on how large corporations nearly always play (roughly), caution before valour etc!

2069

Only in Zak’s soft noggin do corporations murder more than governments.

2070

Well governments often do it as proxies for the Corporations, your a man of the world i thought? You should know this? Iraq War? that little thing that became a something else, hundereds of thousands dead for cold profit (Haliburtons etc). It’s all clearly documented all over the place, and there are many other examples like it all through the South America’s, Asia (John Pilger did many great documentaries on some of these), you name it. Great Britain and it’s East India Company is a classic historic example of Corporations paying to wear a countries clothes, and doing all and anything in the name of profit.

I’d go as far as to say more deaths have come from companies investment and interest in killing (for their profit) than for pure ‘national’ interests. WWI and WWII had an interesting back story about that etc. History is pretty handy often. It would be an interesting study at any rate to see how the numbers stack up.

2071

Ice Age after all? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

2072

You’re really unhinged. Even you must realize that, on some level.

2073

@ Desslock, the dailymail is a known front for climate change denial, so there articles sadly have little actual scientific credibility outside of the small group of denial groups (that are in the pay of Big Oil etc). It would need the other 99% of scientific opinion to give it weight sadly.

2074

A pretty cool green energy story here, Wind power generates 140% of Denmark’s electricity demand:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/10/denmark-wind-windfarm-power-exceed-electricity-demand

So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.

On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am on Friday, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.

Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. Sweden took the remaining fifth of excess power.

“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy,” said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for trade body the European Wind Energy Association. “Wind energy and renewables can be a solution to decarbonisation – and also security of supply at times of high demand.”

The technology exists (and gets better all the time we invest in it), we could have a world running energy from natures free gifts if we could throw off the shackles of Big Oil. We can do that, and your grand kids will thank you for it, there is just enough time to save that future.

2075

Interesting to think about, however. If true, would it be desirable to reopen coal plants worldwide in order to try to desperately accelerate heating in order to mitigate these effects? You might might be forced to tell your grandchildren that your electric car helped destroy their world.

2076

Well, unlike the Dailymail (and other right-wing rags (The Sun etc) or media (Fox etc)) i simply believe in the actual science that is peer reviewed (and just happens to be the global scientific consensus), and not some fringe fantasy that simply follows the will of those Big Oil(CO2 emitting) chaps that pay for right-wing media.

So no, until the actual scientific consensus says otherwise i have no concerns over what i’ll be telling my grandchildren in the part i played in their future (or lack off one).

You are a ‘markets’ man right? As in all for that kind of thing etc. Well ‘maybe’ this Forbes article might help you see through the propoganda you get fed when reading the Daily Mail (and other sources like it)?

The Daily Mail Is Wrong: The Earth Keeps Warming:

Obviously you wouldn’t give any credence to anything a paper like the Guardian might have to say, but it does have this interesting article in which the Daily Mail had to give evidence before MP’s and stated that yes Climate Change was human driven, so here is that article for you:

‘Telegraph and Mail concede on climate change’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/apr/01/telegraph-and-mail-concede-on-climate-change

My actual big beef with the Daily Mail is that it was fully supportive of fascism back in the day:

Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail’s editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s.[32][33] Rothermere’s 1933 leader “Youth Triumphant” praised the new Nazi regime’s accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them.[34] In it, Rothermere predicted that “The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany”. Journalist John Simpson, in a book on journalism, suggested that Rothermere was referring to the violence against Jews and Communists rather than the detention of political prisoners.[35]

Rothermere and the Mail were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists.[36] Rothermere wrote an article titled “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” in January 1934, praising Mosley for his “sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine”,[37] and pointing out that: “Young men may join the British Union of Fascists by writing to the Headquarters, King’s Road, Chelsea, London, S.W.”[38]

The Spectator condemned Rothermere’s article commenting that, “…the Blackshirts, like the Daily Mail, appeal to people unaccustomed to thinking. The average Daily Mail reader is a potential Blackshirt ready made. When Lord Rothermere tells his clientele to go and join the Fascists some of them pretty certainly will.”[39]

The paper’s support ended after violence at a BUF rally in Kensington Olympia later that year.[40] Mosley and many others thought Rothermere had responded to pressure from Jewish businessmen who it was believed had threatened to stop advertising in the paper if it continued to back an anti-Semitic party.[41]

Of course that sits perfectly comfortably alongside blind obedience to Climate Change denial (and they run a lot of those articles!), and all the other very right-wing junk they pedal. Pure toxic propaganda much of the time, and demonstrably so. So yeah, no - any links about climate change from the Daily mail is like trying to get an objective view (of anything) by watching Fox News ('This is what i think’™).

2077

Ignoring the whole DailyMail foofraw, it does appear as if Professor Zharkova’s assumptions are that there is no human-caused climate change, which (if she is incorrect about that assumption) could change her entire conclusion:

A new model of solar activity cycles predicts that the Sun’s surface will be unusually calm in the 2030s—conditions that last occurred four centuries ago and coincided with a “mini ice age.”

The scientists behind the model indeed predict a similar cold spell, but only if they’re right about something else too: that solar, and not human, activity is causing global warming today. Most climatologists believe the opposite.

I haven’t found much else regarding this claim however, so YMMV.

2078

The Suns cycles are indeed important, but i understand the main problem with this theory to explain the current situation re a warming planet (even when ‘paused’ a couple of years back it was still warming apparently, with some El-Nino effects and thinning of Antarctic and of Arctic ice etc) is that historically speaking you can plot those previous solar cycles and their effects and the current trend we are seeing, even in low activity cycles from the sun, is a global increase in temps. It’s why most of the scientists back the CO2 as driver thing (there are other aspects too, which i think we have covered in this thread before).

2079

‘Climate change threat must be taken as seriously as nuclear war – UK minister’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/13/climate-change-threat-serious-as-nuclear-war-uk-minister

The threat of climate change needs to be assessed in the same comprehensive way as nuclear weapons proliferation, according to a UK foreign minister.

Baroness Joyce Anelay, minister of state at the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, said the indirect impacts of global warming, such as deteriorating international security, could be far greater than the direct effects, such as flooding. She issued the warning in a foreword to a new report on the risks of climate change led by the UK’s climate change envoy, Prof Sir David King.

The report, commissioned by the Foreign Office, and written by experts from the UK, US, China and India, is stark in its assessment of the wide-ranging dangers posed by unchecked global warming, including:

very large risks to global food security, including a tripling of food prices
unprecedented migration overwhelming international assistance
increased risk of terrorism as states fail
lethal heat even for people resting in shade

The world’s nations are preparing for a crunch UN summit in Paris in December, at which they must agree a deal to combat climate change.

Monday’s report states that existing plans to curb carbon emissions would heighten the chances of the climate passing tipping points “beyond which the inconvenient may become intolerable”. In 2004, King, then the government’s chief scientific adviser, warned that climate change is a more serious threat to the world than terrorism.

“Assessing the risk around [nuclear weapon proliferation] depends on understanding inter-dependent elements, including: what the science tells us is possible; what our political analysis tells us a country may intend; and what the systemic factors are, such as regional power dynamics,” said Anelay. “The risk of climate change demands a similarly holistic assessment.”

The report sets out the direct risks of climate change. “Humans have limited tolerance for heat stress,” it states. “In the current climate, safe climatic conditions for work are already exceeded frequently for short periods in hot countries, and heatwaves already cause fatalities. In future, climatic conditions could exceed potentially lethal limits of heat stress even for individuals resting in the shade.”

It notes that “the number of people exposed to extreme water shortage is projected to double, globally, by mid century due to population growth alone. Climate change could increase the risk in some regions.”

In the worst case, what is today a once-in-30-year flood could happen every three years in the highly populated river basins of the Yellow, Ganges and Indus rivers, the report said. Without dramatic cuts to carbon emissions, extreme drought affecting farmland could double around the world, with impacts in southern Africa, the US and south Asia.

Areas affected by the knock-on or systemic risks of global warming include global security with extreme droughts and competition for farmland causing conflicts. “Migration from some regions may become more a necessity than a choice, and could take place on a historically unprecedented scale,” the report says. “It seems likely that the capacity of the international community for humanitarian assistance would be overwhelmed.”

“The risks of state failure could rise significantly, affecting many countries simultaneously, and even threatening those that are currently considered developed and stable,” says the report. “The expansion of ungoverned territories would in turn increase the risks of terrorism.”

The report also assesses the systemic risk to global food supply, saying that rising extreme weather events could mean shocks to global food prices previously expected once a century could come every 30 years. “A plausible worst-case scenario could produce unprecedented price spikes on the global market, with a trebling of the prices of the worst-affected grains,” the report concludes.

The greatest risks are tipping points, the report finds, where the climate shifts rapidly into a new, dangerous phase state. But the report also states that political leadership, technology and investment patterns can also change abruptly too.

The report concludes: “The risks of climate change may be greater than is commonly realised, but so is our capacity to confront them. An honest assessment of risk is no reason for fatalism.”

Wow, a politician actual seems to get it! We might have a small glimmer of a chance of surviving the next 200-300 years :)

2080

‘Nearly 9,500 people die each year in London because of air pollution – study’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/15/nearly-9500-people-die-each-year-in-london-because-of-air-pollution-study

I wonder how that compares to big cities, and China currently(!), around the world?