Total Summer Arctic Ice Loss Is Likely Before 2026, and will likely double the pace of global warming, a reputable climate scientist has calculated, possibly tripling it or more if the projected feedbacks of carbon release from the melting Arctic kick in, reports Ramez Naam at Climate Progress. The summer ice cap is an important thermal shield for the planet.
Peter Sinclair's new, short 2012 Arctic ice melt video includes the time lapse satellite imagery illustrating the rapid, dramatic shrinkage of this ice cap. In just the past 12 years alone, 70 percent of the September summer ice cap has disappeared.
Ceviche, Anyone? Oceans Are Acidifying 10x Faster than the fastest prehistoric ocean acidification event in the past 300 million years say scientists, reports Allison Winter at ENN.Bad news, since rising acidity makes it difficult for marine life to grow shells and skeletons. It's so fast that species in the oceans 30 years from now will be experiencing significantly more acidity than they do now. This is much faster than most species can evolve adaptations, scientists fear. Jellyfish, unite!
Fossil Fuels Cost World Economy Over One Trillion Dollars Yearly, according to a new internationally commissioned study, reports Fiona Harvey at the UK Guardian. It also is responsible for close to one million deaths yearly from climate change and pollution. This yearly cost should double by 2030. If you think life is expensive now...
Wily FOX and WSJ Almost Always Mislead on Climate Change, a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists finds, reports Stephanie Pappas at Live Science. Alright, only 93 percent and 81 percent (WSJ op-eds) of the time, respectively, that is. Too bad they don't listen to their owner, Rupert Murdoch, who has declared global warming a serious environmental threat. More important, why does he let them get away with it?
Yo, Dems! Searching for independent votes? Talk Climate Change! Is the message from several national 2011 and 2012 polls, notes Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication, reports Mark Clayton at the Christian Science Monitor. Independents respond to the issue of addressing climate change much more like Democrats than Republicans.
And from John Cook at skepticalscience.com comes this great graphic that should be made into posters and plastered in classrooms throughout the country, AND the halls of Congress:
Do you know of a good video or graphic connected with climate change? Do you have a cool "Every day is Earth Day" nature picture of yours you'd like to share with us? Put a weblink to it in the comments section below, and we'll see if we can post it.
Every day is Earth Day, folks, as I was reminded by this swallowtail butterfly on a past summer day. Making the U.S. a global clean energy leader will ensure a heck of a lot more jobs, and a clean, safe future, despite what Mitt Romney thinks. If you'd like to tell Congress you'll VOTE for clean energy you can join the increasing numbers of people doing so here. For more detailed summaries of the above and other climate change items, audio podcasts and texts are freely available.
unfortunately it's very clear that nothings going to change until someone pry's our self serving ways out of our warm dead fingers..
Rising sea level is different than sporadic risks like hurricanes and even tsunamis. Sea level goes up and down almost 400 feet with each ice age, about every hundred thousand years. We just have been caught off guard because it has barely changed in the last six thousand years. But now that the ice sheets are melting, sea level will rise for centuries, for at least five hundred years. Sea level will eventually be at least fifty feet higher than today, moving the shoreline thousands of feet, or miles inland. That will effectively devastate every coastal community in the world. It will be sporadic, but will affect rich and poor. Maybe not for a century or two, but the trend has started. No government has the resources to reimburse for all the coastal land, buildings, and infrastructure that will be lost over the coming decades. That could happen a lot sooner that anyone expects -- perhaps the next decade or two.
See my forthcoming book "High Tide On Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis" out later this month.
Three great animations/graphics: http://getenergysmartnow.com/2012/09/11/hot-graphics-global-warming-in-images/