Pope Francis isn’t the only old Catholic who believes in climate change

Hot Blob #2 Takes Aim at Sea Ice — Abnormally Warm Waters Invading the Arctic Through Bering and Chukchi

robertscribbler

A lot of attention has been paid to a ‘Blob’ of unusual warmth at the ocean surface in the Northeastern Pacific. And for good reason, for that Blob of human-warmed water has had wide-ranging negative impacts on both weather and sea life. Now there’s a second hot Blob forming in the Bering and Chukchi seas. One that may also have some rather significant effects as the summer of 2015 continues.

Abnormally Warm Waters Running Toward the Sea Ice

Hot Blob #2 is a vast stretch of warm water covering the Bering and Chukchi seas between Alaska and Kamchatka (Neven, in his most recent sea ice summary, touched on this building warm water zone here). It encompasses surface waters in an usually frigid region that now feature temperatures ranging from 3 to 5.5 degrees Celsius above normal. Covering an area roughly 800 miles in diameter, this pool of outlandishly…

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NASA wants to get rid of that flying pollution factory you took to Florida

New Research Warns Of Catastrophic Food Shortages Due To Climate Change

New research supported by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office and insurer Lloyd’s of London finds that, absent major changes, humanity risks a catastrophic collapse in its ability to feed itself by mid-century, due in significant part to human-caused climate change.
Last year, the United Nations’ “highly conservative” IPCC climate panel warned that humanity is risking a “breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes” on its current path of unrestricted carbon pollution. Many studies in the last 12 months have strengthened the scientific case (see this, for instance).

The new research is from the Global Resource Observatory, a project of Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (GSI) partnering with the UK government’s Foreign Office; Lloyds of London; a “coalition of leaders from business, politics and civil society”; the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries; and both the Africa and Asian Development Banks.

The GSI group does business-as-usual forecasting using system dynamics modeling — arguably the only type of modeling that treats feedbacks and time delays well enough to even approximate what is coming. GSI Director Aled Jones explains that the group “ran the model forward to the year 2040.” The results were stunning:

“The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots. In this scenario, global society essentially collapses as food production falls permanently short of consumption.”

The “good” news: That only happens if humanity doesn’t actually do any serious planning for this outcome — and doesn’t do any serious reacting as it plays out. But homo sapiens isn’t a “brainless frog,” are we?

Press link for more: Joe Romm | thinkprogress.org

Millennial Faith Leaders Offer A Vision For The Future Of The Environmental Movement

To many religious climate activists, caring for the environment isn’t just a good idea — it’s a moral responsibility.
Pope Francis released an encyclical, or papal letter, on the environment last Thursday — a move that has called attention to the role many faith leaders are playing in the battle against climate change. The pontiff has stood firm on ecological issues, calling the environment’s decline “one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
He is in good company among people of faith. On Sept. 21, 2014, some 10,000 people joined the the interfaith contingent of the People’s Climate March in New York City to demand that world leaders take action to protect the environment.
The Huffington Post spoke with six millennials who are helping to usher in a generation of faith leaders deeply involved in environmental activism. In their emailed responses, these six young people offered their stories, prayers and visions of the movement’s future.

  
In the United States, where religious polarization runs parallel to political polarization, I think we need a language that transcends not only religion but also politics. Environmental values are certainly held across the aisle, but I think that the value of community development is significantly more universal.
I believe that the most important way for faith-based environmentalism to succeed is to translate our work into the language of community development, which I firmly believe is the strongest language for cooperation. I envision a robust movement where people work together across religion and politics to bring great change. I hope for a world defined by equality, sustainability, and opportunity.
Press link for more: Antonia Blumberg | huffingtonpost.com

Climate change poses a severe risk to global health. #Auspol

Climate change could pose a major health risk to the planet’s human population over the course of the 21st century, says a major new report from the medical journal the Lancet’s Commission on Health and Climate Change. But at the same time, the document adds, addressing the problem could confer a vast health benefit.
The report, which lists 45 authors from Europe and China, follows on a similar 2009 study by another Lancet commission, which had found that a warming climate would pose “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” That conclusion hasn’t changed — but the science has been considerably updated in the new report, and the health benefits of climate change mitigation become a chief focus.
“The implications of climate change for a global population of 9 billion people threatens to undermine the last half century of gains in development and global health,” says the new document, noting further that “future projections represent an unacceptably high and potentially catastrophic risk to human health.” But it also adds that “tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of this century.”
The report emerges just before a Tuesday White House summit on climate change and public health, to be attended by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and EPA administrator Gina McCarthy. In rolling out a new initiative to highlight the links between climate and health in April — of which the summit is part — President Obama commented that “there are a whole host of public health impacts that are going to hit home. So we’ve got to do better in protecting vulnerable Americans. Ultimately, though, all of our families are going to be vulnerable. You can’t cordon yourself off from air or from climate.”
The most obvious health impact of a warming climate is, of course, more dangers from extreme heat. The new Lancet Commission report finds a “a well-established relationship between extreme high temperatures and human morbidity and mortality,” adding that there’s “strong evidence that such heat-related mortality is rising as a result of climate change impacts across a range of localities.” In particular, it cites the summer of 2010 Russian heat wave, which — in addition to the compounding effects of poor air quality — caused 11,000 additional heat-related deaths, compared with those that occurred in the region the previous summer.

Press link for more: Chris Mooney | washingtonpost.com

Mobilization to Save Civilization #Auspol #ClimateChange crisis.

Lester Brown’s Plan B is subtitled Mobilizing to Save Civilization. To save civilization, he explained, would mean moving it from fossil fuels to clean energy. In another book, Brown said that this effort “will take a massive mobilization – at wartime speed.” What would this mean?
Americans are most naturally led by this language to think of the mobilization for World War II. Joe Romm, speaking of the need for industry to switch to clean energy, wrote: “This national (and global) re-industrialization effort would be on the scale of what we did during World War II, except it would last far longer.”
How much longer? Although many writers suggest that this transition would take 50 or even 100 years, Romm said:
If humanity gets truly serious about emissions reduction — and by serious I mean “World War II serious” in both scale and urgency — we could go to near-zero global emissions in, say, 2 decades and then quickly go carbon negative.
“[W]e need to mobilize like the WW II mobilization,” added Ross Gelbspan, “but worldwide and even more thorough.” The mobilization must be unprecedented, Brown agrees, “because the entire world has never before been so threatened.”
It could be said that carrying out a worldwide transformation in a few decades is unreasonable; such a major transformation should be carried out in a less hurried way. That is correct. But now the transformation must be very rapid because the international community, led by the United States, failed to achieve it earlier.
Evidence that CO2 emissions will cause global warming began appearing in the 1980s; by 1988, scientists were sufficiently certain to form the IPCC; and in 1990, the IPCC said that to avoid an intolerable increase in the planet’s temperature, CO2 levels needed to be stabilized at 1990 levels. This statement should have put politicians into action, because they, like military leaders, usually operate on the “precautionary principle,” according to which, in matters in which carelessness could lead to disaster, we should choose to err on the side of caution. After the nations of the world failed to begin reducing CO2 emissions in 1995, they clearly should have done so in 1998, when the IPCC stated that it had detected a human “fingerprint.” However, rather than following the precautionary principle, the political world did the opposite: Instead of working to stabilize the planet’s CO2 level, it began increasing it more rapidly.
Because of this potentially suicidal behavior, the world now needs to reduce its emissions with extreme rapidity. In the words of IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri, “We have five minutes before midnight.” This is why the United States, China, and the rest of the world must now act with unreasonable haste, working together as if — in the words of the Economist – “some huge rocky projectile, big enough to destroy most forms of life, was hurtling towards the earth, and it seemed that deep international co-operation offered the only hope of deflecting the lethal object.”
Although it will not produce its effects as suddenly as a giant asteroid, unabated global warming will be equally deadly. Worldwide mobilization is necessary, and if such mobilization is to succeed, the United States, China, and other countries will need to provide leadership. However, the discussion of leadership in this chapter is carried out almost entirely in terms of the United States.
For America to mobilize with sufficient speed and thoroughness, leadership will be needed by people and institutions of various levels. The two levels that are most crucial are the presidency and the media. (Congress could also provide crucial leadership, but it appears to be hopeless.)

Press link for more: David Grifin | opednews.com

“Worst Fire Conditions On Record” — As Heatwaves, Drought Bake North American West, Wildfires Erupt From California to Alaska

robertscribbler

There are 146 wildfires burning in Alaska today. A total that is likely to see at least another dozen blazes added to it by midnight. A total that has already absorbed the entire firefighting capacity of the State and has drawn hundreds of firefighters from across the country in places as far away as Pennsylvania.

For Alaska, it’s a case of record heat and dryness generating fuels for wildfires.

(MODIS satellite shot of wildfires erupting over a sweltering Southwestern Alaska on Sunday, June 21. Wildfires in permafrost regions of the Arctic like Alaska are particularly concerning as they are one mechanism that returns ancient sequestered carbon to the Earth atmosphere. A sign of a feedback set off by human warming that will worsen with continued fossil fuel emissions. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

Deadhorse, at the center of North Slope oil fields above the Arctic Circle set an…

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Climate mitigation – the greatest public health opportunity of our time #Auspol

Tackling climate change is the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century, a team of 60 international experts today declared in a special report for The Lancet medical journal.
The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate report comes six years after the groundbreaking first Commission report – a collaboration between The Lancet and University College London – which described climate change as the “biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.
The latest report shows many mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change can directly reduce the burden of ill health, boost community resilience, and lessen poverty and inequity.
In particular, switching to clean renewable energy sources, energy-efficient buildings and active transport options will reduce air pollution and have flow-on health benefits. This includes reducing rates of heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, mental illness and respiratory disease.
The commission also reveals these health co-benefits associated with emissions reduction strategies offer extraordinary value for money. The financial savings associated with avoided ill-health and productivity gains can outstrip the costs of implementing emissions-reduction strategies – if they are carefully designed.
What if we wait?
The commission makes it plain we cannot afford to wait. There are limits to the level and rate of warming humans and other species can adapt to.
With “just” 0.85°C warming since the pre-industrial era, many predicted health threats around the world have become real. Long, intense heatwaves and other extreme weather events such as storms, floods, fires and drought are having direct health impacts. The impacts on ecosystems affects health indirectly, through agricultural losses, as well as contributing to spread of disease.

Climate change is affecting economies and social structures, which also cause health impacts, particularly when associated with forced migration and conflict. Given the risks of climate change-induced “regional collapse, famine and war”, the commission notes mitigation-focused investment “would seem to be the prudent priority at a global level”.
How does this affect Australians?
Climate change is driving record temperatures in Australia, with heatwaves now hotter, longer and more frequent. People die from heat exposure during these events. Many others seek medical attention, leading to massive surges in demand for ambulances, emergency services, and health-care services. Deaths from heatwaves in Australian cities are expected to double in the next 40 years.
Hotter summers are leading to more bush fires, which cause injuries and fatalities. People lose their homes and businesses. Communities lose schools and health care. After bush fires, communities also face a higher rate of general illness, increased in alcohol and drug abuse, and more mental illness.
Extreme rainfall and cyclones cause direct fatalities and injuries. Floods and cyclones can severely affect health care services. In 2011, floods in Queensland caused the cancellation of 1,396 surgical cases, increasing waiting times for vital procedures by 73%.
Rising temperatures are leading to increases in deadly foodborne illnesses, disruptions to food production and water security, and worsening air quality, increasing respiratory illnesses.
Finally, infectious diseases are becoming more common, as are vector-borne diseases such as Ross River fever and zoonotic diseases, which are spread from animals to humans.

Press link for more: Fiona Armstrong | theconversation.com

Climate Change Is a Crisis We Can Only Solve Together #Auspol

But that doesn’t mean that climate change trumps everything else. It means we need to create integrated solutions—ones that radically bring down emissions, while closing the inequality gap and making life tangibly better for the majority.
This is no pipe dream. We have living examples from which to learn. Germany’s energy transition has created 400,000 jobs in just over a decade, and not just cleaned up energy but made it fairer—so that energy systems are owned and controlled by hundreds and hundreds of cities, towns, and cooperatives. The mayor of New York just announced a climate plan that would bring 800,000 people out of poverty by 2025, by investing massively in transit and affordable housing and raising the minimum wage.
The holistic leap we need is within our grasp. And know that there is no better preparation for that grand project than your deeply interdisciplinary education in human ecology. You were made for this moment. No, that’s not quite right: You somehow knew to make yourselves for this moment.
But much rests on the choices we make in the next few years. “Don’t be afraid to fail” may be a standard commencement-address life lesson. Yet it doesn’t work for those of us who are part of the climate-justice movement, where being afraid of failure is perfectly rational.
Because, let’s face it: The generations before you used up more than your share of atmospheric space. We used up your share of big failures too. The ultimate intergenerational injustice. That doesn’t mean that we all can’t still make mistakes. We can and we will. But Alicia Garza, one of the amazing founders of Black Lives Matter, talks about how we have to “make new mistakes.”

Press link for more: Naomi Klein | thenation.com