A round-up of the top climate and energy news.
Millions of people learned a new word over the weekend: “derecho.” It was not a happy lesson. [New York Times]
If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. [Washington Post]
After several years of relatively benign fire seasons, the West is headed into a hot, dry summer of potentially ferocious blazes like the ones that have scorched Colorado in recent weeks. [Los Angeles Times]
Hotter and drier beaches all but wipe out eastern Pacific populations of leatherback sea turtles by the end of the century, according researchers from Drexel University. [Citizens Voice]
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office finds that Congress has authorized $6.9 billion for developing carbon capture since 2005 — but, so far, there’s little to show for it. [Washington Post]
Not long ago, grid operators only had to worry about coal, nuclear, natural gas and big hydro as sources of electricity generation. Except for the pollution, the threat of radioactive disaster, and blocking rivers, it was a simpler, more innocent time. [Greentech Media]
The new chief of the federal Energy Information Administration wants to add some spice to the agency known for detailed — if dry — reports and analyses. [The Hill]
Canada’s pristine image — and more importantly its environment — is not likely to recover from what critics across the political spectrum say is an unprecedented assault by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on environmental regulation. [Guardian]
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
An additional roundup of energy and climate news is posted at http://www.marcaccicomms.com/news/energy-and-environment-news-roundup-7-3-12/
Utah weather conditions perfect for ‘explosive fire growth’
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/54423430-78/expected-degrees-tuesday-utah.html.csp
I keep reading “the worst of global warming” all over the place this morning.
Except that this is actually just the beginning of global warming. Just like all you climate scientists have been predicting.
Imagine that….
‘This is not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end’.
Feeling The Heat: It’s Too Hot To Be A Global Warming Skeptic
http://news.investors.com/article/616848/201207021831/heat-storms-support-scientists-on-global-warming.htm
The skeptics taking over the comment section in full force again.
“Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives”
The Washington Post, along with the rest of the mainstream media, has failed us spectacularly on the most important issues of my lifetime, and of the millennium. Better late than never, Eugene Robinson’s piece today was spot on.
Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post: http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/03/welcome-to-the-rest-of-our-lives/
this is the human hair of energy dependence we are currently suspended from
Joe,
OT, but Democracy Now! had an excellent segment today discussing climate change and recent extreme weather. They have Dr. Jeff Masters on. It’s well worth watching, if anything to compare their piece to the other media coverage. Cheers.
War-related climate change would substantially reduce crop yields
July 2, 2012 by Jill Sakai
Though worries about “nuclear winter” have faded since the end of the Cold War, existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still hold the potential for devastating global impacts
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Rutgers University have found that the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan would greatly reduce yields of staple crops, even in distant countries.
The work, by Mutlu Ozdogan and Chris Kucharik of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW–Madison and Alan Robock of Rutgers’ Center for Environmental Prediction, will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Climatic Change.
Robock used global climate models to calculate the climate impacts of a conflict between India and Pakistan, each using 50 nuclear weapons.
“This is essentially a climate change experiment, but instead of running a climate change model under a global CO2 scenario, you run it under a soot scenario, where the soot comes from fires from cities and industrial areas burning as a result of the war,” explains Ozdogan, a UW–Madison professor of forest and wildlife ecology.
The soot and smoke can travel around the world in the atmosphere and block some of the sunlight that would normally reach the Earth. That leads to cooler temperatures, altered weather and precipitation patterns, and shorter growing seasons.
“We were surprised that there was such a large climate change – climate change unprecedented in recorded human history – even from a war with 50 small nuclear weapons per side, much, much less than one percent of the current nuclear arsenal,” says Robock. He adds that the changes also lasted a full decade, much longer than he expected. “The question is, what impact does that have on things that matter to humans, and the most important is our food supply.”
The researchers used the climate changes predicted for the Midwest to calculate potential effects on corn and soy production in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri. Using climate-based agricultural output models, they compared yields under modern weather patterns and under the war scenario.
They found that the climate effects of nuclear war led to decreases in corn yields of 10 to 40 percent and soy yields of 2 to 20 percent, with the reductions gradually declining over the course of the decade following the war.
“Those changes – in any year – are much larger than the natural variation we might see” due to weather fluctuations alone, Ozdogan says. And unlike gradual environmental changes associated with greenhouse gas accumulation, the rapid onset of a war would not permit farmers or the global economy any time to adapt.
A companion study by Robock and Lili Xia of Rutgers University, also published in Climatic Change, calculated that the same scenario would dramatically reduce rice production in China: an average decrease of 21 percent during each of the first four years after the war and 10 percent less for the next six years.
Such losses add up to a huge impact on regional food supplies that could escalate into wider food shortages and trade breakdowns with dire economic and political consequences, Robock says.
The take-home message, Ozdogan says, is that localized events can have disproportionately large global impacts.
“Hopefully this will never happen,” he says, “but if it happens, if the prospect is there, these are some of the results that people could expect.”
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-war-related-climate-substantially-crop-yields.html
Greenland Something Less than Snow White http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/03/greenland-something-less-than-snow-white/
Very good article / must read
Ofc, this has nothing todo with the root story… posted in wrong hierarchy
2012 US Biochar Conference
The United States Biochar Initiative (USBI) selected the Sonoma Biochar Initiative (SBI) in partnership with the Sonoma Ecology Center to host the 2012 US Biochar Conference in Sonoma County, California from July 29 to August 1, 2012. Conference Details http://biochar.us.com/
Morell Biochar Comcast Interview June 22, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-rX4c3TTg&feature=player_embedded#!
CAP should also do something Biochar.
A delegation from China is attending…
Good post, but this is far from the worst of global warming. By mid-century, this weather will be considered mild. Stanford released a study just last year that predicted by 2050 every summer in the U.S. will be warmer than the current hottest summer. Last summer was very nearly the hottest on record, finishing just 0.1F below the Dust Bowl summer of 1936. So if the science is to be believed, by 2050, last summer will be considered unusually cool. Suffice it to say, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Does Arctic Amplification Fuel Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes?
http://climateprogress.net/item/does-arctic-amplification-fuel-extreme-weather-in-mid-latitudes.html
The June 2012 U.S. heat wave: one of the greatest in recorded history http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2144
We require Mandatory actions, the heatwaves WHICH ARE ALREADY IN THE PIPELINE will make the current one look “cool” … Our entire civilization is as risk – the greatest threat.
…Congress has authorized $6.9 billion for developing carbon capture since 2005 — but, so far, there’s little to show for it.
No, don’t look at that! You’re supposed to be chanting “Solyndra, Solyndra…” so please do not pay any attention to money wasted on useless “clean coal” gimcracks.
SUV goes airborne from heat buckled highway in Wisconsin http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=J8FaXdsg558#!
WHY WE REQUIRE A WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS http://climateprogress.net/item/why-we-require-a-war-on-fossil-fuels.html
Satellite Sees Smoke from Siberian Fires Reach the US Coast
Fires burning in Siberia recently sent smoke across the Pacific Ocean and into the U.S. and Canada. Images of data taken by the nation’s newest Earth-observing satellite tracked aerosols from the fires taking six days to reach America’s shores.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120612101605.htm