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Wars in prospect as climate change stirs unrest, UN told
Imagine India in 2033. It has overtaken China as the most populous nation. Yet with 1.5 billion citizens to feed, it’s been three years since the last monsoon. Without rain, crops die and people starve.
The seeds of conflict take root.
This is one of the scenarios Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, presented today to members of the United Nations Security Council in New York to show the connection between climate change and global security challenges.
Either rich nations will find a way to supply needy nations suffering from damaging climate effects “or you will have all kinds of unrest and revolutions, with the export of angry and hungry people to the industrialised countries,” Schellnhuber said in an interview.
In the Marshall Islands — site of US nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s and now being lost to Read more…
Physics professor: Past decade ‘hottest ten years ever recorded’
On CBS This Morning on Thursday, Kaku discussed 2012′s “wacky weather” and how global warming, which creates more energy circulating on the planet, exacerbates destructive tornadoes, storms, hurricanes and even forest fires.
“You look at the weather patterns over the last year, and they all seem wild, extreme. What was driving that?” asked anchor Rebecca Jarvis.
“Well, when you look outside you say, ‘The weather’s on steroids,’” Kaku said. “But there’s no single aha moment where you can say, ‘Aha, this is what’s driving the whole thing.’ But what you can say is that the Earth is heating up. Which means more moisture going into Read more…
And there shall be signs in the Sun, Moon, and Stars – 2012
Luke 12:56 (KJV) Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?
MATTHEW 24-8 (KJV) All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Repent of your sins and come to Christ, the Kingdom of God is near!!!
2011 Was A Year of Weather Extremes, With More to Come
The global average temperature in 2011 was 14.52 degrees Celsius (58.14 degrees Fahrenheit). According to NASA scientists, this was the ninth warmest year in 132 years of recordkeeping, despite the cooling influence of the La Niña atmospheric and oceanic circulation pattern and relatively low solar irradiance. Since the 1970s, each subsequent decade has gotten hotter — and 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the twenty-first century.
Each year’s average temperature is determined by a number of factors, including solar activity and the status of the El Niño/La Niña phenomenon. But heat-trapping gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, have become a dominant force, pushing the Earth’s climate out of its normal range. The planet is now close to 0.8 degrees Celsius warmer than it was a century ago. Hidden within Read more…
Austin-area wildfire burns a record 476 homes in Texas
Ashes float through the air as a wildfire burns out of control near Bastrop, Texas September 5, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Mike Stone
By Karen Brooks
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A massive wildfire east of the Texas state capital of Austin has destroyed 476 homes since Sunday and is still burning out of control, state officials said on Monday.
“I’m still seeing no containment,” said April Saginor, public information officer for the Texas Forest Service, who confirmed that the Bastrop County Complex Fire has scorched more than 25,000 acres and burned 476 residences so far.
“That’s a record in Texas for a single fire,” she said of the homes destroyed.
The Bastrop fire is one of more than sixty fires which have kindled across Texas since Sunday afternoon, fueled by the gusty winds generated as Tropical Storm Lee pushed by Read more…
Texas: From droughts to extreme heat to blazing fires
Winds fuel flare-ups in Palo Pinto County, across state
Strong north winds fueled wildfire flare-ups around Possum Kingdom Lake on Sunday and firefighters managed to contain most of them, but the rest of Texas wasn’t as lucky as thousands of acres and hundreds of homes burned in another day of the worst wildfire season in the state’s history.
A wildfire estimated to be 16 miles long near the Austin suburb of Bastrop charred about 14,000 acres Sunday, destroying or damaging an estimated 300 homes.
“It’s catastrophic,” Mark Stanford, fire chief of the Texas Forest Service, said Sunday. “It’s a major natural disaster.”
More than 40 new wildfires were reported to the Texas Forest Service on Sunday as strong winds, low humidity and very dry vegetation left firefighters scrambling to extinguish blazes throughout the state.
“We’re very stretched right now,” Tom Berglund of the Texas Forest Service said Sunday.
As of Sunday afternoon, firefighters Read more…
Extreme 2010 Russian fires and Pakistan floods linked meteorologically
Floods covered at least 14,390 square miles (37,280 square km) of Pakistan between July 28 and September 16, 2010. For more information about this image, please visit this NASA Earth Observatory page Credit: NASA/Earth Observatory GREENBELT, Md. — Two of the most destructive natural disasters of 2010 were closely linked by a single meteorological event, even though they occurred 1,500 miles (2,414 km) apart and were of completely different natures, a new NASA study suggests.
The research finds that the same large-scale meteorological event — an abnormal Rossby wave — sparked extreme heat and persistent wildfires in Russia as well as unusual downstream wind patterns that shifted rainfall in the Indian monsoon region and fueled heavy flooding in Pakistan. Although the heat wave started before the floods, both events attained maximum strength at approximately the same time, the researchers found Read more…
About 100 evacuated as fire burns outside Yosemite
About 100 people have been ordered to leave their homes as a wildfire burns outside Yosemite National Park, fire officials said Sunday.
Residents of the community of Rancheria were told to evacuate Saturday, while residents of the nearby communities of Yosemite West, Old El Portal, Incline and Jerseydale have also been told they may have leave their homes.
The blaze, which is burning in a steep and rugged area of thick forests along Highway 140, has also forced the indefinite closure of the roadway. The highway, one of the main entrances into the park, is shut down for nearly a 15-mile stretch from just east of the town of Mariposa to about two miles outside of the park’s entrance.
Park officials are suggesting Read more…
The nine billion-dollar weather disasters of 2011 (so far); Invest 90L rises again
It’s been an unprecedented year for weather disasters in the United States, with the dangerous portion of hurricane season still to come. We’ve already seen nine billion-dollar weather disasters so far in 2011. The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) June disaster report estimates that, through May, 2011 is the costliest year since they began tracking billion-dollar disasters in 1980. The cost of the disasters through May could be as high as $32 billion, compared to a typical year-to-date cost of $6 billion. 2011 to-date now ties the entire year of 2008 for the most billion-dollar weather disasters in one year. Of course, this number could go up if we see some hurricane landfalls this year.
Here are NCDC’s estimates of the top-end damages from 2011′s billion-dollar weather disasters so far:
Missouri River Flooding
Snowfall was abnormally heavy in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming this past winter (over 200% of average), and record rains fell over the Upper Read more…
Russia wildfires cover above 21,500 hectares
The emergencies ministry officials have said that some 3,000 hectares of land has been covered by wildfires since Wednesday, making the total area of burning land more than 21,500 hectares, AFP reported on Thursday.
According to environmental campaigners, with the large number of wildfires producing tons of smoke this year, Russians should expect the return of the noxious smog which enveloped Moscow last summer, making the environmental disaster even more horrifying, but no Read more…
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