Sadly, at the end of those four days, they were still Portugal.
Portugal is âbadâ? I donât remember Bush having it in his Axis of evil speech, but maybe it was in the small print notes? Iâve had some great holidays in Portugal btw (speaking as a damp sun-stareved brit!).
âIndia records its hottest day ever as temperature hits 51C (thatâs 123.8F)â:
that is really nasty, and going to be more common, heck even here in the uk iâve had recent summers hit into the high 30âs (might even have topped 40 degrees C upstairs), and that is very uncomfortable to work in, so nice clear examples of how global warming is affecting our lives already.
That Guardian report on Phalodi is just insane. This is not a place that people should live anymore.
And this is a major concern. This is soon going to be true of much of the Middle East and Africa. When we look at the worldâs inability to handle the Syrian refugee crisis, it should be a warning sign that we are in no way shape or form prepared to handle the mass migrations that may become necessary in the next decade or two.
The writing is on the wall for all to see.
And maybe as AGW (man made climate change) takes hold and we all start to feel and suffer from it, we might look in this kind of direction to lay blame (and litigation):
âOil company records from 1960s reveal patents to reduce CO2 emissions in carsâ:
The forerunners of ExxonMobil patented technologies for electric cars and low emissions vehicles as early as 1963 â even as the oil industry lobby tried to squash government funding for such research, according to a trove of newly discovered records.
Patent records reveal oil companies actively pursued research into technologies to cut carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change from the 1960s â including early versions of the batteries now deployed to power electric cars such as the Tesla.
Scientists for the companies patented technologies to strip carbon dioxide out of exhaust pipes, and improve engine efficiency, as well as fuel cells. They also conducted research into countering the rise in carbon dioxide emissions â including manipulating the weather.
Esso, one of the precursors of ExxonMobil, obtained at least three fuel cell patents in the 1960s and another for a low-polluting vehicle in 1970, according to the records. Other oil companies such as Phillips and Shell also patented technologies for more efficient uses of fuel.
However, the American Petroleum Institute, the main oil lobby, opposed government funding of research into electric cars and low emissions vehicles, telling Congress in 1967: âWe take exception to the basic assumption that clean air can be achieved only by finding an alternative to the internal combustion engine.â
And ExxonMobil funded a disinformation campaigned aimed at discrediting scientists and blocking government efforts to fight climate change for more than 50 years, before publicly disavowing climate denial in 2008.
The patent records were among a new trove of documents published on Thursday by the Center for International Environmental Law, and deepen the legal and public relations challenge for Exxon.
âWhat we saw was an array of patent technologies that demonstrated that these companies had the technologies they needed and could have commercialised to help address the problem of C02 pollution,â said Carroll Muffett, president of the Ciel. âThey then turned to Congress and said you donât need to invest in electrical vehicle research because the research is ongoing and itâs robust.â
The findings echo those in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which explored the deliberate destruction of GMâs first electric vehicles.
The real world costs for AGW is just going to be astronomical.
âWorld could warm by massive 10C if all fossil fuels are burnedâ:
The planet would warm by searing 10C if all fossil fuels are burned, according to a new study, leaving some regions uninhabitable and wreaking profound damage on human health, food supplies and the global economy.
The Arctic, already warming fast today, would heat up even more â 20C by 2300 â the new research into the extreme scenario found.
âI think it is really important to know what would happen if we donât take any action to mitigate climate change,â said Katarzyna Tokarska, at the University of Victoria in Canada and who led the new research. âEven though we have the Paris climate change agreement, so far there hasnât been any action. [This research] is a warning message.â
The carbon already emitted by burning fossil fuels has driven significant global warming, with 2016 near certain to succeed 2015 as the hottest year ever recorded, which itself beat a record year in 2014. Other recent studies have shown that extreme heatwaves could push the climate beyond human endurance in parts of the world such as the Gulf, making them uninhabitable.
In Paris in December, the worldâs nations agreed a climate change deal intended to limit the temperature rise from global warming to under 2C, equivalent to the emission of a trillion tonnes of carbon. If recent trends in global emissions continue, about 2tn tonnes will be emitted by the end of the century.
The new work, published in Nature Climate Change, considers the impact of emitting 5tn tonnes of carbon emissions. This is the lower-end estimate of burning all fossil fuels currently known about, though not including future finds or those made available by new extraction technologies.
Câmon man, we arenât going to burn all the fossil fuels. There will have be at least some we just canât get to.
Well, we could always find more, or find ways to extract more, if we tried! Never give up, never surrender:
The new work, published in Nature Climate Change, considers the impact of emitting 5tn tonnes of carbon emissions. This is the lower-end estimate of burning all fossil fuels currently known about, though not including future finds or those made available by new extraction technologies.
Itâs fine. Humanity will have all died out before we can burn it all.
âGlobal clean energy employment rose 5% in 2015, figures showâ:
A boom in solar and wind power jobs in the US led the way to a global increase in renewable energy employment to more than 8 million people in 2015, according to a report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).
More than 769,000 people were employed in renewable energy in the US in 2015, dwarfing the 187,000 employed in the oil and gas sector and the 68,000 in coal mining. The gap is set to grow further, with jobs in solar and wind growing by more than 20% in 2015, while oil and gas jobs fell by 18% as the fossil fuel industry struggled with low prices.
Across the world, employment in renewable energy grew by 5% in 2015, boosted by supportive government policies and subsidies including tax credits in the US, although jobs in renewables fell in Europe. The growth was despite renewable energy subsidies being far outweighed by subsidies for fossil fuels, where jobs were lost.
encouraging news :)
Forget alien invasions, climate change will be the threat attacking our cultural icons ;)
âStatue of Liberty and Venice among sites at risk from climate change, says UNâ:
Climate change now poses the single biggest threat to the worldâs most famous heritage sites â including the GalĂĄpagos islands, the Statue of Liberty, Easter Island and Venice â according to a UN sponsored report.
The researchers looked at 31 natural and cultural world heritage sites in 29 countries that are vulnerable to increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, rising seas, more intense weather, worsening droughts and longer wildfire seasons. They believe this number is the tip of the iceberg.
There is an urgent and clear need to limit temperature rises to protect key heritage, the study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the UN heritage body Unesco and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concludes.
The Statue of Liberty in New York is one of the sites at risk from rising sea levels and storms, illustrated by the devastating Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Global warming is raising sea levels and increasing the risk of floods, droughts and potentially fiercer storms, all of which can cause severe damage. The GalĂĄpagos islands, where Charles Darwin gained insights into evolution, and monuments and natural wonders from the port of Cartagena in Colombia to the Shiretoko national park in Japan, were also named as being under threat.
Other sites that bring in important tourism revenue could be particularly badly hit, such as Ugandaâs Bwindi Impenetrable national park, where rising temperatures could affect the habitat of endangered mountain gorillas.
Stonehenge, the 5,000-year-old stone circle whose original purpose remains mysterious, is another of more than 30 major world heritage sites under threat from local flooding linked to global warming and increased rainfall.
âClimate change is affecting world heritage sites across the globe,â said Adam Markham, the lead author of the report. âSome Easter Island statues are at risk of being lost to the sea because of coastal erosion.â He also pointed to coral reefs, which have been bleached owing to higher temperatures, and the threat to wildlife living in the affected areas, as well as tourism, which is an important source of income helping to preserve many of the sites.
This is a great step forward:
âG7 nations pledge to end fossil fuel subsidies by 2025â:
The G7 nations have for the first time set a deadline for the ending most fossil fuel subsidies, saying government support for coal, oil and gas should end by 2025.
The leaders of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the European Union encouraged all countries to join them in eliminating âinefficient fossil fuel subsidiesâ within a decade.
âGiven the fact that energy production and use account for around two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions, we recognise the crucial role that the energy sector has to play in combatting climate change,â said the leadersâ declaration, issued at the end their summit in Japan. The pledge first entered into G7 (then known as G8) declarations in 2009 but has until now lacked a firm timeline.
Shelagh Whitley, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, called it an âhistoric dayâ but said 2020 was a more appropriate date if governments were serious about their commitments to the global climate deal agreed in Paris in December.
Across the G7, subsidies are already falling, assisted by falling commodity prices. A notable exception is the UK, which increased subsidies by opening up new tax breaks for North Sea oil producers. Japan has been criticised for funding new coal projects, both at home and abroad.
âWe already see [some in] the G7 going in the wrong direction since Paris. Just because they are saying this [about fossil fuel subsidies], itâs not a fait accompli,â said Whitley. Canada also recently extended some subsidies for natural gas.
The G7 joins the leaders of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, who have previously called for an end to assistance for fossil fuel projects.
âMeteorologists are seeing global warmingâs effect on the weatherâ:
Whatever happened to normal weather? Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought, and biblical floods. But lately it seems the treadmill of disruptive weather has been set to fast-forward. Godâs grandiose Symphony of the Seasons, the natural ebb and flow of the atmosphere, is playing out of tune, sounding more like a talent-free second grade orchestra, with shrill horns, violins screeching off-key, cymbal crashes coming in at the wrong time. Something has changed.
My company, AerisWeather, tracks global weather for Fortune 500 companies trying to optimize supply chains, increase profitability, secure facilities, and ensure the safety of their employees and customers. Itâs my 4th weather-technology company. Our team is constantly analyzing patterns, providing as much lead-time of impending weather extremes as possible. As a serial entrepreneur I respond to data, facts and evidence. If I spin the data and only see what I want to see, I go out of business. I lay off good people. I canât afford to look away when data makes me uncomfortable.
I was initially skeptical of man-made climate change, but by the late 1990s I was witnessing the apparent symptoms of a warming climate. They were showing up on my weather map with greater frequency and ferocity. I didnât set out to talk about climate volatility and weather disruption, but by the turn of the 21st century this warming seemed to be flavoring much of the weather I was tracking, turning up the volume of extremes, loading the dice for weather weirding. Multiple strands of data confirm Earth has a low-grade fever, a warming trend that transcends periodic heat released from El Niño.
âCoral bleaching spreads to Maldives, devastating spectacular reefsâ:Coral bleaching spreads to Maldives, devastating spectacular reefs | Coral | The Guardian
The longest global coral bleaching event in history is now devastating reefs in the crystal clear waters of the Maldives, with images released exclusively to the Guardian powerfully illustrating the extent of the damage there.Photographed by the XL Catlin Seaview Survey, the images captured the event in May as it moved beyond the now devastated Great Barrier Reef and into waters further west.âThe bleaching we just witnessed in the Maldives was truly haunting,â said Richard Vevers, founder of the Ocean Agency.
Interesting read from Bill Gates.
Earth has always experienced epic storms,
Why sure.
Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought,
Yes of course.
Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought, and biblical floods.
Um, no.
He might (i hope!) not have meant that in a literal context, more as in âhugeâ floods, which we have (and nothing to do with the hand of God, sorry Noah!). Heck my own country that is going through an existential crisis over itâs actual identity, was physically connected to Europe around 5000 years ago (and uk people are all from the europe zone), a flood is responsible for the psychological island mentality that has gripped my people ever since.
Having said that, to try to underplay the role of the post industrial (my peoples fault, sorry!) activities on our current changing climate is a little like wishful thinking (in the sense iâm sure Bill would âlikeâ for it to have less of an effect than it is, his own clear conscience part of that in his newly âawakenedâ form (thanks to his wifeâs clearer/greener thinking)). The clear consensus of the best scientific minds our planet has to offer tells the truth about our impact.
This is a really great article on the great barrier reef and how the mass bleachings of the past few decades have grown in severity & size. As of this last year 22% of the great barrier reef is dead.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/07/the-great-barrier-reef-a-catastrophe-laid-bare
Itâs pretty shocking how quickly it has taken hold.
âCO2 turned into stone in Iceland in climate change breakthroughâ:
Carbon dioxide has been pumped underground and turned rapidly into stone, demonstrating a radical new way to tackle climate change.
The unique project promises a cheaper and more secure way of burying CO2 from fossil fuel burning underground, where it cannot warm the planet. Such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be essential to halting global warming, but existing projects store the CO2 as a gas and concerns about costs and potential leakage have halted some plans.
The new research pumped CO2 into the volcanic rock under Iceland and sped up a natural process where the basalts react with the gas to form carbonate minerals, which make up limestone. The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid â just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted.
âWe need to deal with rising carbon emissions and this is the ultimate permanent storage â turn them back to stone,â said Juerg Matter, at the University of Southampton in the UK, who led the research published on Thursday in the journal Science.
All excellent, but not to be âspunâ to say we carry on as normal in terms of energy production, that needs to go green and sustainable asap.