Tag Archives: global warming

1,000 Risk Experts say: Brace for Impact

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Superstorms, such as this 2012 typhoon photographed from the International Space Station, are according to risk analysts the new normal.

Superstorms, such as this 2012 typhoon photographed from the International Space Station, are according to risk analysts the new normal.

More than 1,000 experts on risk, consulted by the World Economic Forum for an upcoming annual meeting, agree that a perfect storm of rising risk, primarily driven by global climate change, and declining economic resilience pose mortal threats to governments, businesses and society in the near future. Continue reading →

Superstorm Sandy: Tasting Apocalypse Now

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Lower Manhattan, lights out (except for that one building) watches Sandy approach and Braces for Impact. photo by Stefan Leijon/Flickr

Sandy has done us a great favor by giving us a preview of our new normal — a future in which storms assume the size of continents, “waterfront home” becomes an oxymoron and life — even the lives of the rich and famous — becomes much more tenuous.

Here’s what should happen now. First, there should be a national day of thanks for the climate scientists who braved our scorn and disbelief to insist we look at the reality and realize that superstorms like Sandy were going to be frequent from now on. Sandy has shown us in terms not up for argument, nor adjustable by one belief system or another, that those men and women of science were not Chicken-Little Climate Hawks,  they were American Eagles, harbingers of a bitter future we are bringing on ourselves. But wait there’s more. Continue reading →

China Government Report: Brace for Impact

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Shanghai slowly strangles in the exhaust of its prosperity. Seven years after this photo was taken, China sees a problem. (Photo by thraxil/Flickr)

While the American president doesn’t discuss it, and the candidates vying to replace him swear it doesn’t exist, scientists working for, and under the supervision of, the government of China are warning their people in an official report that “China faces extremely grim ecological and environmental conditions under the impact of continued global warming.” This is the judgment of the “Second National Assessment Report on Climate Change” released for public consumption this week. Continue reading →

“One Simple Trick” for Global Warming

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Industry doesn’t even have to bait the hook any more, we and our journalists take it with the line and the sinker. (Photo by ToastyKen/Flickr)

If you’re on the Internet — and of course you are — the ads are all around you: “One simple trick” for losing belly fat; “one weird trick” drops your car insurance costs to near zero; “housewife discovers simple trick for white teeth;” and on, and on. If you respond to those ads, and buy whatever it is they’re selling, then you will also buy the new kind of headlines we’re seeing about climate change. Just one simple trick, they suggest (perhaps discovered by a housewife!), and the problem is solved.

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World’s Top Energy Economist: Brace for Impact

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According to the chief economist of the IEA, this is where we’re headed. (Photo by Cherryllynx/Flickr)

Fatih Birol is the chief economist for the International Energy Agency. Throughout most of its history, the Agency (like its American counterpart, the U.S. Energy Information Administration) gave short shrift to alarms about peak oil and global climate change. But now its top analyst says (in a recent talk to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)  that “the world is perfectly on track to six degrees Celsius [warming due to global climate change]…which is very bad news. And everybody, even school children, know[s] this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.” In other words, Brace for Impact.

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UN, Oxfam Reports: Brace for Impact.

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Oxfam volunteers demonstrate for non-readers the combined effects of rising seawater (climate change) and rising food prices. (AFP Photo/Alexander Joe)

The drumbeat of dire warnings continues about the inevitable and imminent collapse of the world’s food supply before the combined onslaughts of industrial agriculture and climate change. Despite the increasing number of scientific reports documenting ever more ominous conditions and prospects worldwide, the response from the people who could conceivably do something about it has been a collective yawn. The two latest cries of “fire” in our crowded theater came this week: Continue reading →

Experts Shout “Fire!” in Crowded Planet. Crowd Ignores Them

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Some experts believe, although not without contradiction from other experts, that increased temperatures in the place where we live may be a cause for some level of concern. (Photo by Ada Be/Flickr)

A conference in London this past weekend on climate and health concluded that the “alarming speed” of the depletion of natural resources around the world, now being accelerated by climate change, poses “an immediate, growing and grave threat” to health and security everywhere. The medical, academic and military experts predicted imminent increases in hunger, conflict, social unrest and species extinction worldwide. Continue reading →

Three Media Home Runs. No, Seriously.

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If they gave Oscars for journalism, these would be our nominees for this year in the categories newspaper, radio and TV. (Photo by Cliff1066/Flickr)

The Lamestream (news) Media (thank you, Sarah) don’t get much respect here or anywhere else these days, because they mostly do not deserve any. But now and again, traditional journalism rears its gorgeous head, and uses words and images to reveal and explain the realities of our world in riveting and memorable ways. Typically, such works sink from sight and remembrance like stones tossed in a polluted river, so let us remove our hats and mumble a few respectful words over three masterful works that appeared in the past few days — one in a newspaper, one on the radio (remember radio programs?) and, yes, even one on TV.   Continue reading →

Fire and Rain: While Some States Drown, Others Parch

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While the Mississippi River rises in historic floods a few hundred miles to the east. extreme heat and drought continue to afflict Texas with wildfires that so far have seared a thousand square miles. And there's more to come. (U.S. Air Force Photo/Staff Sgt. Eric Harris)

While the central and southern states are disappearing under floodwaters of historic immensity, a searing, lengthening drought is crisping the prospects of the American West and Southwest. Two recent major reports — one of them from the Department of the Interior — sounded strident alarm bells about the coming Big Thirst, while the loudest voices in Congress continue to decry climate change as a “hoax.” Continue reading →

Come, Apocalypse: Now It’s Peak Coffee

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(Photo by Stepheye/Flickr)

Wait a minute. I have accustomed myself to the prospects that, approaching and after the Fall, I will have to give up gasoline, electricity, lettuce in the winter, thermostats, my cell phone, 20-minute showers and even — sob! — the Internet. I can handle that. I can stay home, tend my solar panels, grow my own food and cut wood for heat until I’m too hot and tired to take a shower. But Peak Coffee? It’s too much. Continue reading →