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California Drought Tests History of Endless Growth

By, Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy, and Nelson D. Schwartz, New York Times LOS ANGELES — For more than a century, California has been the state where people flocked for a better life — 164,000 square miles of mountains, farmland and coastline, shimmering with ambition and dreams, money and beauty. It was the cutting-edge symbol of possibility: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, aerospace, …

Ocean

Oxygen-depleted oceans had key role in mass extinction over 200M years ago

Changes in the biochemical balance of the ocean were a crucial factor in the end-Triassic mass extinction, during which half of all plant, animal and marine life on Earth perished, according to new research involving the University of Southampton. The study, published in the upcoming edition of Geology, reveals that a condition called ‘marine photic zone euxinia’ took place in …

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Canadian glaciers face drastic demise

By, Thomas Sumner  April 6, 2015 Science News   The Great White North may lose its glaciers faster than previously thought. A detailed physics simulation of how glaciers melt in a warming world show that Western Canada’s glaciers will shed 70 percent of their ice by 2100 relative to their 2005 volumes, researchers report online April 6 in Nature Geoscience. …

Global-Warming-3845

The price to be paid for not cutting emissions of greenhouse gases could mean driving the planet across planetary boundaries, or “tipping points”.

An international team of scientists has tried a new approach to addressing the complex argument about the costs of climate change – and, once again, the prediction is that the costs of inaction will be so much greater than paying the bills now. The researchers − from the UK, Switzerland and the US − conclude that policy-makers must apply the …

Ocean

How Long Can Oceans Continue To Absorb Earth’s Excess Heat?

For decades, the earth’s oceans have soaked up more than nine-tenths of the atmosphere’s excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. By stowing that extra energy in their depths, oceans have spared the planet from feeling the full effects of humanity’s carbon overindulgence. But as those gases build in the air, an energy overload is rising below the waves. A raft of …

A “Climate Movement Across the Movements”

Looming ahead in eight months’ time is another Conference of Polluters, or COP (technically, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). The last twenty did zilch to save us from climate catastrophe. Judging by early rough drafts of the Paris COP21 agreement recently leaked, another UN fiasco is inevitable. The ‘Coalition Climat21’ strategy …

Global-Warming-3845

US Climate Plan ‘Treats the Wound But Does Not Stop the Bleeding’

With bold language and take-charge rhetoric, the White House on Tuesday unveiled its plan to cut U.S. carbon emissions by roughly one third over the next decade, a goal that environmentalists say is commendable but is not enough to keep global warming beneath the critical 2°C threshold. Submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ahead of a midnight …

Antarctica

Apocalyptic Meltdown: The Nightmare is Underway

It’s happening! Humanity’s greatest nightmare is already well underway. Wherever ice is found, appreciable melt is deep-seated, out of control, cascading into the seas shore-to-shore all across the planet. It’s all about too much heat! The trend is in place, and it is accelerating. Global warming is very real. Thus, the most pertinent questions going forward are: How fast it …

weather-chaos

Changing climate causes weather chaos in Chile

The Atacama desert region of northern Chile, one of the driest areas on Earth, has been hit in recent days by torrential rains and floods that have caused deaths, swept away homes and left much of the region without power. Meanwhile, in the usually lush southern parts of the country, wildfires are raging across lands and forests parched by the …

Shell

Shell’s Climate Change Strategy: Narcissistic, Paranoid, And Psychopathic

In an open letter to Shell’s Ben Van Beurden, the UK’s former top climate envoy says now is the time for him to show leadership Dear Mr. van Beurden – one month ago, at the IP Week dinner in London, you gave a speech calling on your peers, as you put it in your title, to be “Less Aloof, More …