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Tag Archives: Global warming

Carbon dioxide levels in Atmosphere hit record high in May

09 Sunday Jun 2019

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

≈ 50 Comments

Tags

Carbon dioxide levels, Climate Change, Climate Data, Climate disruption, Global warming

Source: Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA

 

Atmospheric carbon dioxide continued its rapid rise in 2019, with the average for May peaking at 414.7 parts per million (ppm) at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory.

The measurement is the highest seasonal peak recorded in 61 years of observations on top of Hawaii’s largest volcano and the seventh consecutive year of steep global increases in concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to data published June 4, 2019, by NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Learn more.

The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption by Dahr Jamail

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Recommended Reading

≈ 68 Comments

Tags

Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), Climate disruption, Coral Bleaching, Global warming, Great Barrier Reef, Great Barrier Reef Legacy, Melting Alaskan Glaciers, Sea level rise, The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail

The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption is a work of investigative journalism by Dahr Jamail, conducted during the period April 2016 to July 2017 on the front lines of human-caused climate disruption. Having lived in Alaska for ten years (1996-2006), Jamail had witnessed the dramatic impact of global warming on the glaciers there.

Jamail’s original aim was to alert readers about “the urgency of our planetary crisis through firsthand accounts of what is happening to the glaciers, forest, wildlife, coral reefs, and oceans, alongside data provided by leading scientists who study them.” His reporting took him to climate disruption hot spots in Alaska, California, Florida, and Montana in the United States; Palau in the Western Pacific Ocean; Great Barrier Reef, Australia; and the Amazon Forest in Manaus, Brazil. His grief at what was happening to nature made him realize that “only by having this intimacy with the natural world can we fully understand how dramatically our actions are impacting it.”

Below are excerpts of assessments expressed to the author by scientists and other professionals working on the front lines.

Gulkana Glacier – Alaska – USA
Photo Credit: U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

The magnitude of change in Alaska is easy to miss because Alaska is such a massive state, and largely undeveloped. That is why you’ve had no idea that Alaska’s glaciers are losing an estimated 75 billion tons of ice every year.
~ Dr. Mike Loso, a physical scientist with the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska.

[The rate of melting of Montana’s glaciers] is an explosion, a nuclear explosion of geologic change. This is unusual, it is incredibly rapid and exceeds the ability for normal adaption. We’ve shoved it into overdrive and taken our hands off the wheel.”
~ Dr. Dan Farge, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research ecologist and director of the Climate Change in Mountain Ecosystems Project, Montana.

This last summer [2015], the Gulf [of Alaska] warmed up 15℃ [59℉] warmer than normal in some areas… And it is now, overall, 5℃ [41℉] above normal in both the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, and has been all winter long.
~ Bruce Wright, a senior scientist with the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association (APIA) and former section chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for eleven years.

St. Paul Island – Pribilof Islands – Bering Sea – Alaska
Photo Credit: St. Paul Island Tour

We hardly eat seals anymore, or the birds, and people now get food stamps and social handouts and welfare and shop at the store. When I grew up, we didn’t need any of that because we always had seals and birds and fish to eat. If the fur seals aren’t here, neither will we be.
~Jason Bourdukofsky Sr., the president of TDX, Alaska’s native corporation on St. Paul Island, Pribilof Islands, Bering Sea.

Bleached Coral – Great Barrier Reef – Australia
Photo Credit: Great Barrier Reef Legacy

The warming [of the oceans] we’re seeing now is happening far too fast to allow for [coral] evolution…. So what we’re seeing now is death. That’s what [coral] bleaching is…. Right now the largest ecosystem on Earth is undergoing its death throes and no one is there to watch it.
~ Dr. Dean Miller, a marine scientist and director of science and media for Great Barrier Reef Legacy, Australia.

Even if your home [in South Florida] may be elevated, all the infrastructure and freshwater and sewage treatment and getting rid of the sewage…all of this infrastructure is critically vulnerable to sea level rise.
~ Dr. Ben Kirtman, one of the leading sea level experts in the world and program director for the Climate and Environmental Hazards program at the University of Miami’s Center for Computational Science.

Sea level rise is going to accelerate faster than the models, and it’s not going to stop. So the government [of the State of Florida] has to have a plan that includes buyouts. It’s cheaper to buy this area [Coral Gables] out than it is to maintain the infrastructure.
~ Dr. Harold Wanless, professor and chair of the Department of Geological Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables campus.

Sea Level Rise – Matheson Hammock Park – Coral Gables – Florida (2016)
Photo Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCSUSA)

You know what the burden is? It’s looking up through the political hierarchy above me to the state legislature, to the governor, U.S. Congress, U.S. Senate, the White House, and you ask, Who is minding the shop? Who else knows what I know?… What kind of morality allows them to ignore what is going to happen?
~ Dr. Philip Stoddard, mayor of South Miami and a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University.

We need to educate people about what is really going on with climate disruption…. I made a personal decision to not have kids, because I don’t have a future to offer them. I don’t think we are going to win this battle. I think we are really done.
~ Dr. Rita Mesquita, a biologist and researcher with Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA), Manaus, Amazonas.

The dire position we’re in now is solid evidence of the fact that the predominant civilization does not have a handle on all the interrelationships between humans and what we call the natural world. If it did, we wouldn’t be facing this dire situation.
~ Stan Rushworth, elder of Cherokee descent who has taught Native American literature and critical thinking classes focused on Indigenous perspectives.

Jamail concludes that we are already facing mass extinction. We can’t remove the heat now stored in the oceans, yet we keep on pumping 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Our future is uncertain. Writing this book was his attempt to bear witness to what we have done to the Earth. “I am committed in my bones to being with the Earth,” he writes, “no matter what, to the end.”

DAHR JAMAIL

Dahr Jamail, a reporter for Truthout, is the author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, and The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Disintegration of a Nation (co-authored with William Rivers Pitt). Over the past fifteen years, Jamail has also reported from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. An accomplished mountaineer who has worked as a volunteer rescue ranger on Denali, Alaska, he won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism and is a 2018 winner of the Izzy Award for excellence in independent journalism. Jamail is also the recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, and five Project Censored Awards. 

Quote

The basic science for how climate change triggers severe cold weather in wintertime — The Secular Jurist

17 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Atmospheric Circulation, Global warming, Jet Stream, Polar Ice Loss, Polar Vortex

By Robert A. Vella. It may seem paradoxical to laypeople that we would have severe cold weather spells in wintertime given that the world is rapidly warming up due to manmade climate change; and, climate change deniers are quick to exploit this paradox for political reasons.  But, it is true.  Global warming is increasing the incidence of extreme weather events of every kind from prolonged droughts and powerful storms to deadly heat waves and brutal cold snaps.  The following details the basic science behind the phenomenon popularly, though inaccurately, known as the “polar vortex.” The real polar vortex is something else altogether…

via The basic science for how climate change triggers severe cold weather in wintertime — The Secular Jurist

Why should I care about rising sea levels?

16 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

Chronic coastal flooding, Coastal real estate market, Global warming, High-risk coastal cities, Sea level rise, Underwater: Rising Seas Chronic Floods and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate June 2018

Price Reduced Waterfront Property

Price Reduced Waterfront Property – East Coast USA
Photo Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) June 2018 Report

 

On September 14th, Hurricane Florence hit the North Carolina coast. With warmer oceans driven by climate change, the massive, slow-moving storm dumped more than 20 inches of rain on its arrival. The storm surge reached levels of 9 to 13 feet. Hundreds of inundated home owners may never recover from the damages.

Ten years ago, on September 15, 2008, another kind of disaster struck our nation with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the insurance giant AIG. The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression sent rogue waves across our nation and worldwide. The fallout—foreclosures, shrinking home values, and millions of job losses—battered Americans.

With rising sea levels—the result of ongoing heating of our oceans and atmosphere—another massive, slow-moving crisis is brewing. Hundreds of thousands of coastal properties will increasingly face chronic high-tide flooding. Their falling property values will threaten local and regional real estate markets that could cascade nationwide into a coastal real estate bust. Continue reading →

Extreme Weather and the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 58 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Climate Reality Project, Climate-related natural disasters, Extreme Weather & the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know, Global warming, Jet Stream, NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS)

US 2017 Billion-Dollar Disaster Map - NOAA

U.S. 2017 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
Photo Credit: NOAA

 

Earlier this month, while the Trump administration quietly cancelled NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), concentrations of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory averaged above 410 parts per million (ppm) throughout April. With such irresponsible action, we-the-people must prepare ourselves for more extreme weather.

Extreme Weather & the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know, published by the Climate Reality Project (March 2018), helps us to understand the challenges we now face. As the captioned NOAA chart shows, climate-related and other natural disasters are costly. Total damages in 2017 left the U.S. with a bill of $306 billion. Families who were hit are still recovering from their loss. Families in poor communities may never recover.

Here’s what we need to know about our extreme weather and the climate crisis. Bear in mind that weather refers to short-term atmospheric changes in temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, cloud cover, and visibility. Climate is the average of weather patterns over a longer period of 30 or more years.

Hurricanes – With average global sea surface temperatures becoming warmer, hurricanes can become more powerful. A warmer ocean also means an increase in evaporation, thereby feeding hurricanes with much more water to dump on those of us who live in their path. It gets worse. As melting ice caps and glaciers raise sea levels, storm surges caused by hurricanes will be stronger and carry water farther and farther inland.

Flooding – As air temperatures increase, more water evaporates into the atmosphere. Because warmer air holds more water vapor, some places get more rain and snow than their average annual amounts; other places may experience intense rainstorms. At the same time, rising sea levels are worsening coastal flooding worldwide.

Drought – Soils dry out when evaporation increases over land. When the rain comes, the hard, cracked ground absorbs little water. The run-off carries pollutants in the dry soil into our streams, rivers, and lakes. Drought also worsens forest fires.

Wildfires – Droughts kill plant life. Dried out, dead vegetation can ignite with a spark. Once started, these fires are harder to contain. With warm weather arriving earlier and extending further into the fall, we now face longer fire seasons. To make matters worse, pests like the mountain pine beetle thrive in the warm, dry weather. The dead trees dry out, adding to the fury of our forest fires.

Extreme Heat – Of the 18 hottest years on record, 17 have occurred this century. If we don’t reduce the greenhouse gases heating up our atmosphere, more and more of us will face the deadly threshold of extreme heat on our fragile human bodies.

Extreme Cold – As global temperatures rise and the Arctic continues to warm, the jet stream is slowing and becoming more wavy. This causes bone-chilling Arctic air to linger longer in northern regions and spread much farther south than usual.

While we cannot prevent climate-related natural disasters from occurring, it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent the worst of it. And it certainly could get much worse.

Climate Science Special Report

21 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 68 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Climate Science Special Report November 2017 (CSSR), Global warming, U.S. Global Change Research Program

Thomas Fire - Santa Barbara County - Southern California - 12 December 2017

Thomas Fire – Santa Barbara County – Southern California – December 12, 2017
Photo Credit: Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department

 

Here in California, after years of drought, ferocious wildfires have consumed the tinder and everything in their path. Ignited on December 4, 2017, the Thomas Fire was not fully contained until January 12, 2018. Now ranked as the largest fire in California’s modern history, it burned about 281,900 acres, equivalent to the size of Dallas and Miami combined. It destroyed 1,063 structures and damaged another 280.

Torrential rainfall on January 9, a welcome respite for firefighters, brought more distress to residents in the area. Mudslides roared down fire scarred slopes, destroying and damaging hundreds of homes, as well as commercial property. Twenty people lost their lives; three are still missing.

A home on Glen Oaks Road damaged by mudslides in Montecito

Home damaged by mudslides – Montecido – Santa Barbara County – Southern California
January 10, 2018
Photo Credit: Kenneth Song/Santa Barbara News

 

Meanwhile, extreme winter weather on America’s East Coast provides vindication for climate change deniers. But, as world-renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains, this is “an example of precisely the sort of extreme winter weather we expect because of climate change.” What’s happening is the collision of increasingly warm Atlantic Ocean waters with cold Arctic air masses. To make matters worse, the warmer oceans also mean more moisture in the atmosphere to fuel the storm and produce larger snowfalls.

Woman walks down street in East Boston - Massachusetts - 4 January 2018

Woman walks down street in East Boston – Massachusetts – January 4, 2018
Photo Credit: Michael Dwyer/AP

 

In November 2017, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released its 477-page Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), in compliance with regulations issued by the Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The CSSR is “designed to be an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States, to serve as the foundation for efforts to assess climate-related risks and inform decision making about responses.”

Continue reading →

The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope and Survival with Robert Jay Lifton and Bill Moyers

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

Environment, Global warming, Hiroshima/Japan, Hurricane Irma, Nagasaki/Japan, Nuclear weapons, Survival of Man, The Climate Swerve

Atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki - Japan

Dotard & Rocket Man
play nuclear war games
while Frankenstorms rage.

 

Bill Moyers, managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, recently sat down with 91-year-old Robert Jay Lifton, a renowned American psychiatrist and historian. They talked about his just published book, The Climate Swerve: Reflections of Mind, Hope, and Survival. Lifton borrowed the term “swerve” from Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt who used the term to describe a major historical change in human consciousness. Lifton has turned his attention to climate change, which, he says, “presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind.”

I share with you some excerpts from Lifton’s responses to Moyers during the interview. Continue reading →

Climate Change & the Water Cycle

11 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

≈ 52 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Climate change and the water cycle, Climate change education, Global warming, High school geography teacher, High school science teachers

The Water Cycle

As a geographer and former high school geography teacher, I must confess that I take some scientific facts for granted, such as climate and the water cycle. A recent post “Climate Science Meets a Stubborn Obstacle: Students” by fellow blogger Robert Vella brought to my attention the challenges some of our high school science teachers face in regions of America where climate change denial creates havoc in the minds of our youth.

When your father has raised you to believe that the coal they once mined, or still mine, can in no way affect our climate, it’s difficult to have an open mind to scientific consensus on the issue.

Geography lessons in high school expanded my curious mind to our relationship with our world: land, oceans, atmosphere, and all the in-between. When taking a climatology course at university, I found myself at a disadvantage for having chosen to study art instead of physics in high school. I had lots of catching up to do. Our course in biogeography alerted me to the ways that we humans are degrading our ecosystems. Those were the days before the Internet and Wikipedia. Continue reading →

Caught in a Storm Surge

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Poetry by Rosaliene Bacchus, United States

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Aleppo/Syria, Global warming, Hurricane Matthew 2016, Threat of nuclear war, USA 2016 Presidential Elections

hurricane-matthew-storm-surge-threatens-u-s-eastern-seaboard-october-2016

Hurricane Matthew – Storm Surge Threatens U.S. Eastern Seaboard – October 2016
Photo Credit: NBC Nightly News

 

Warmer oceans
Fearsome winds drive clouds of water bombs
Caught in a storm surge

In Aleppo
Lives mean nothing to take out Assad
Caught in a storm surge

Video tape
Unmasks groping billionaire
Caught in a storm surge

Hacked email files
Reveal deception of Favored One
Caught in a storm surge

U.S. & Russia
In stalemate over Syria
Caught in a storm surge

Temperatures rise
War drums roll between nuclear powers
Caught in a storm surge

Whatever our choice
Come November at the polls we are
Caught in a storm surge

Winds gather force
I hold onto Wisdom to save us
Caught in a storm surge

Turning Point in Climate Fight as AGs Unite to Target Exxon Crimes

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Climate disruption, ExxonMobil, Global warming

Exxon knew all about climate change

Photo Credit: CommonDreams

In a move many are hailing as a “turning point” in the climate fight, 20 state Attorneys General on Tuesday launched an unprecedented, multi-state effort to investigate and prosecute the “high-funded and morally vacant forces” that have stymied attempts to combat global warming—starting with holding ExxonMobil and other industry giants accountable for fraud and suppression of key climate science.

Source: Turning Point in Climate Fight as AGs Unite to Target Exxon Crimes

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