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PostPosted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 11:19 am 
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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... al-systems

Climate change has already left its mark "on all continents and across the oceans", damaging food crops, spreading disease, and meltingglaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday.

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 2:34 pm 
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Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst Is Yet to Come
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/scien ... imate.html


Little time left to turn down the world's heat, U.N. says

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/30/world/un- ... index.html

http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/02/13-guide ... cc-report/

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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 3:00 pm 
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This deserves repetition;
If This Terrifying Report Doesn't Wake You Up to the Realities of What We're Doing to This Planet, What Will?
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... adaptation
"Here's what you need to know:

(1) We're already feeling the impacts of climate change. Glaciers are already shrinking, changing the courses of rivers and altering water supplies downstream. Species from grizzly bears to flowers have shifted their ranges and behavior. Wheat and maize yields may have dropped. But as climate impacts become more common and tangible, they're being matched by an increasing global effort to learn how to live with them: The number of scientific studies on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation more than doubled between 2005, before the previous IPCC report, and 2010. Scientists and policymakers are "learning through doing, and evaluating what you've done," said report contributor Kirstin Dow, a climate policy researcher at the University of South Carolina. "That's one of the most important lessons to come out of here."
(2) Heat waves and wildfires are major threats in North America. Europe faces freshwater shortages, and Asia can expect more severe flooding from extreme storms. In North America, major threats include heat waves and wildfires, which can cause death and damage to ecosystems and property. The report names athletes and outdoor workers as particularly at risk from heat-related illnesses. As the graphic below shows, coastal flooding is also a key concern.
risks chart
James West/Climate Desk
(3) Globally, food sources will become unpredictable, even as population booms. Especially in poor countries, diminished crop production will likely lead to increased malnutrition, which already affects nearly 900 million people worldwide. Some of the world's most important staples—maize, wheat, and rice—are at risk. The ocean will also be a less reliable source of food, with important fish resources in the tropics either moving north or going extinct, while ocean acidification eats away at shelled critters (like oysters) and coral. Shrinking supplies and rising prices will cause food insecurity, which can exacerbate preexisting social tensions and lead to conflict.
(4) Coastal communities will increasingly get hammered by flooding and erosion. Tides are already rising in the US and around the world. As polar ice continues to melt and warm water expands, sea level rise will expose major metropolitan areas, military installations, farming regions, small island nations, and other ocean-side places to increased damage from hurricanes and other extreme storms. Sea level rise brings with it risks of "death, injury, ill-health, or disrupted livelihoods," the report says.
(5) We'll see an increase in climate refugees and, possibly, climate-related violence. The report warns that both extreme weather events and longer-term changes in climate can lead to the displacement of vulnerable populations, especially in developing parts of the world. Climate change might also "indirectly increase" the risks of civil wars and international conflicts by exacerbating poverty and competition for resources.
(6) Climate change is expected to make people less healthy. According to the report, we can expect climate change to have a negative impact on health in many parts of the world, especially poorer countries. Why? Heat waves and fires will cause injury, disease and death. Decreased food production will mean more malnutrition. And food- and water-borne diseases will make more people sick.
(7) We don't know how much adaptation is going to cost. The damage we're doing to the planet means that human beings are going to have to adapt to the changing climate. But that costs money. Unfortunately, studies that estimate the global cost of climate adaptation "are characterized by shortcomings in data, methods, and coverage," according to the IPCC. But from the "limited evidence" available, the report warns that there's a "gap" between "global adaptation needs and the funds available."
(8) There's still time to reduce the impacts of global warming...if we cut our emissions. Here's the good news: The IPCC says that the impacts of climate change—and the costs of adaptation—will be "reduced substantially" if we cut our emissions of greenhouse gases."

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:11 pm 
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One thing about the IPCC, it is a political and scientific endeavor, and is overly conservative.

Then you have the denialists' garbage;

"Appalling Earth Day Video Actually Thanks Fracking For Reducing Carbon Emissions
Brandon Baker | April 22, 2014 12:16 pm | Comments

It would have been hard to miss the reports of earthquakes, explosions, lack of clean air, nosebleeds and more attributed to fracking.

These type of stories have been all over every form of media imaginable in recent years.

But according to Energy In Depth (EID), a campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, those stories have apparently been drowning out the real story—that fracking is somehow responsible for the drop in carbon dioxide emissions.

Yes, this group actually released a video on Earth Day thanking shale gas and fracking for decreasing emissions. You have to see it—and its out-of-context remarks and data—to believe it:"
http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/22/appallin ... -fracking/

Plus, the CO2 emissions only went down for a brief period before rising again with overpopulation and greed.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
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“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein


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PostPosted: Sun Apr 27, 2014 1:44 pm 
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My first visit to Phoenix was 1959 coming in from the Apache Trail in our '59 Ford with Teepee trailer.
The town seemed only a mile or two long on the main drag.
Then as a flight and ground instructor out of Glendale in 1972-3 I watched as it grew on night flights.
Back again as a carpenter then foreman in the late 70's and '80s. With my own "poor mans' P-51"
at Scottsdale. Places I used to dirt bike ride eaten up by over-development. It had been each Scottsdale house would be approved on at least an acre lot and not take up more than 10% to keep the desert views.
You know, and I know now, that the underground temperature there is a perfect 70*F year around without heat or cooling necessary. There is so much solar energy that each house could easily be powered by PV on the surface.
BUT NO!!!! Scottsdale started allowing R-6 (6 lots per acre), then tried to expand and side drill Carefree's aquifer.
They were stopped and had to use the new canal from the Colorado River that was made to save Tucson from sinking more than the 8' it already had.
Californians poured into AZ bringing their liberal ignorance with them. Turning the Valley of the Sun into Orange County.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... 72/?no-ist
excerpt;
"Phoenix glows even after 10 p.m. one April night in this image made with a camera sensitive to infrared light, which is generated by heat and invisible to the naked eye. Researchers call the city an “urban heat island.” (Brent C. Hedquist)"
"The Reality of a Hotter World is Already Here
As global warming makes sizzling temperatures more common, will human beings be able to keep their cool? New research suggests not

By Jerry Adler
Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe
May 2014
"The link between heat and anger—people are “fired up” or “steamed up,” or they “keep their cool”—is so deeply embedded in folk wisdom that it has gone mostly unquestioned. But it is increasingly a subject for psychologists and other social scientists concerned about the implications of a world in which 108 degrees may no longer be exceptional. Under one scenario studied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, by the end of the century, today’s North Carolina summers would become the norm for New Hampshire, while Louisiana’s climate would migrate up to Illinois. In Phoenix itself, “temperatures could regularly hit the 130s...by the second half of this century,” University of Arizona climatologist Jonathan Overpeck has predicted."
Remember, also, that over-crowding causes hostility, depression, and anxiety. Add that to the temperament of heat addled people.
When they say 130*F in Phx , the reality is reflective heat adds 50*F to that. The dependency on air conditioning is so great that a great many would die in a power failure, and solar power is NOT for A/C loads, and un-needed if the houses had been built right from the get go!
All the "great" desert metropolises that grew on other people's water will shrink to ghost towns gutted by thieves. :x

CAGW is already here, but may be able to be stopped with a 90% drop in human emissions by 2024. Delays caused by un-needed arguing the science are bringing us to a point of impossibility to stop the Arctic Death Spiral.

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"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.
“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle
“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 28, 2014 8:13 am 
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Corporations like Monsanto are acting like a bully. We are weaker than them, so we must be smart when fighting them. They have a hard punch, given the opening they are quite capable of breaking our ribs and bending our noses.

We must learn to fight them on OUR turf, using OUR weapons, OUR strategies.

The moral of the story is that although we can never completely defeat them, we CAN bloody them up and force them into dropping their over the top arrogance and begin to listen to us and our concerns.

If there is going to be any saving in this world we are going to be the savior . . .

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