The overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change documents both current impacts with significant costs and extraordinary future risks to society and natural systems. The scientific community has convened conferences, published reports, spoken out at forums and proclaimed, through statements by virtually every national scientific academy and relevant major scientific organization — including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — that climate change puts the well-being of people of all nations at risk.
Surveys show that many Americans think climate change is still a topic of significant scientific disagreement.i Thus, it is important and increasingly urgent for the public to know there is now a high degree of agreement among climate scientists that human-caused climate change is real. Moreover, while the public is becoming aware that climate change is increasing the likelihood of certain local disasters, many people do not yet understand that there is a small, but real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people in the United States and around the world.
cnn.com - by Christabelle Fombu and Susanna Capelouto - March 23, 2014
(CNN) -- An Ebola outbreak has killed at least 59 people in Guinea, UNICEF said, as the deadly hemorrhagic fever has quickly spread from southern communities in the West African nation.
Experts in the country had been unable to identify the disease, whose symptoms -- diarrhea, vomiting and fever -- were first observed last month.
Health Minister Remy Lamah said Saturday initial test results confirm the presence of a viral hemorrhagic fever, which according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention refers to a group of viruses that affect multiple organ systems in the body.
Today, we are burning fossil carbon one million times faster than it was naturally put in the ground, and carbon dioxide is increasing 14,000 times faster than anytime in the last 610,000 years (1,2). Climate is now changing faster than it has during any other time in 65 million years - 100 times faster than the Paleocene/Eocene extinction event 56 million years ago see here.(3) However, "climate change" is not the most critical issue facing society today; abrupt climate change is.
The Doomsday scenario we should have been worrying about
theregister.co.uk - by Iain Thomson - March 19, 2014
Video - A new analysis of data from NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) by Chinese and Berkeley helioboffins shows that a July 2012 solar storm of unprecedented size would have wiped out global electronic systems if it had occurred just nine days earlier.
"Had it hit Earth, it probably would have been like the big one in 1859, but the effect today, with our modern technologies, would have been tremendous," said UC Berkeley research physicist Janet Luhmann.
The 1859 storm, also known as the Carrington Event, after the British astronomer who recorded it, swept over the Earth at the end of August and is the largest recorded solar storm in history.
Open water in northeast Greenland, where ice loss is accelerating. Photo by Finn Bo Madsen, courtesy of The Ohio State University.
All margins of ice sheet now unstable—and contributing to sea level rise
osu.edu - March 17, 2014
COLUMBUS, Ohio—An international team of scientists has discovered that the last remaining stable portion of the Greenland ice sheet is stable no more.
The finding, which will likely boost estimates of expected global sea level rise in the future, appears in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change [DOI:10.1038/NCLIMATE2161].
Image: “No standard in Europe will be lowered because of this trade deal; not on food, not on the environment, not on social protection, not on data protection,” EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said in February, before meetings this week in Brussels to negotiate the details of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Photograph: Georges Gobet/AFP
theguardian.com - March 14th, 2014 - Karl Mathiesen
Both the EU and US are adamant TTIP will not affect both regions’ environmental protection standards. But green groups, forewarned by past experiences of free trade agreements, are incredulous.
Image: Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
washingtonpost.com - March 14th, 2014 - Craig Timberg
U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move that pleased international critics but alarmed some business leaders and others who rely on the smooth functioning of the Web.
Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash last year to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.
This map compares each country's total consumption Footprint with the biocapacity available within its own borders.
Many countries rely, in net terms, on the biocapacity of other nations to meet domestic demands for goods and services. For example: Japan imports Ecuadorian wood to make paper; Europe imports meat fed on Brazilian soy; the United States imports Peruvian cotton; and China obtains lumber from Tanzania.
World Total Biocapacity: 1.78 gha per capita
World Ecological Footprint of Consumption: 2.7 gha per capita (i.e. we are using more resources than the Earth can provide.)
Currently less than 20 percent of the world's population living in countries that can keep up with their own demands.
What is a global hectare (gha)?
A global hectare is a common unit that encompasses the average productivity of all the biologically productive land and sea area in the world in a given year. Biologically productive areas include cropland, forest and fishing grounds, and do not include deserts, glaciers and the open ocean.
Data source: Global Footprint Network's 2010 Edition.
This Nasa Earth Observatory image shows a storm system circling around an area of extreme low pressure in 2010, which many scientists attribute to climate change. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel global system
(SEE LINKS TO SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION BELOW)
theguardian.com - by Nafeez Ahmed - March 14, 2014
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."
ewea.org triplepundit.com - by Jan Lee - March 13, 2014
Just in time for World Water Day: The European Wind Energy Association has released a report examining the role that water plays in energy production. And the numbers are staggering.
According to the report, 44 percent of water usage in the European Union goes to energy production.
ewea.org
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