Don’t know how I missed this back when the old man was with us and singing it. Amy Goodman played it today on her Democracy Now one-year review of the Gulf Oil disaster.
PDF
Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Don’t Go Near the Water — Johnny Cash
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011Food, Floods and Drought
Monday, February 7th, 2011Krugman looks at Egypt, food prices and the fast changing world climate:
We’re in the midst of a global food crisis — the second in three years. World food prices hit a record in January, driven by huge increases in the prices of wheat, corn, sugar and oils. These soaring prices have had only a modest effect on U.S. inflation, which is still low by historical standards, but they’re having a brutal impact on the world’s poor, who spend much if not most of their income on basic foodstuffs…
While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.
The question then becomes, what’s behind all this extreme weather?
To some extent we’re seeing the results of a natural phenomenon, La Niña — a periodic event in which water in the equatorial Pacific becomes cooler than normal. And La Niña events have historically been associated with global food crises, including the crisis of 2007-8.
But that’s not the whole story. Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.
Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Fast
Monday, January 31st, 2011New research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades.
“This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average,” said Dr. Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at The City College of New York (CCNY – CUNY), who is leading a project studying variables that affect ice sheet melting.
“Melting in 2010 started exceptionally early at the end of April and ended quite late in mid- September.”
… in 2010, summer temperatures up to 3C above the average were combined with reduced snowfall.
The capital of Greenland, Nuuk, had the warmest spring and summer since records began in 1873.
Bare ice was exposed earlier than the average and longer than previous years, contributing to the extreme record.
Environmental Research Letters
GOP Wants to Withdraw from Climate Panel
Monday, January 24th, 2011The Republican Study Committee last week released a list of proposed budget cuts totaling $2.5 trillion, including a recommendation to withdraw U.S. funding from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the proposal points to a disturbing level of climate denial in Congress and it is not clear that the Study Committee is accurately projecting U.S. contributions to the IPCC.
“It’s bad enough that some of these policymakers have chosen to put on blinders when it comes to climate science and protecting Americans from climate change,” said Lexi Shultz, UCS’s Climate and Energy Legislative Director. “Now they’re trying to cut funding from a distinguished panel that sheds light on these issues for the entire world. The IPCC gives us a lot of bang for our buck and it would be a mistake to withdraw funding.”
From Union of Concerned Scientists
2010 Wettest Year on Record – and Tied for Hottest
Thursday, January 13th, 20112010. What more can be said? Queensland, Australia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil are being swamped from unprecedented rains. In Australia, the moisture is rising from an unprecedentedly warmer ocean. Meanwhile. mankind — at least those with money and power– dithers.
Weather Weather Everywhere and Not A Plan in Sight
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011It is hard to get people impressed with the size of the disaster flooding over Australia’s north east province of Queensland. Should Texas and California be similarly flooded Americans would think the world was coming to an end. That’s about the equivalence in territory affected, some 350,000 square miles, or half of the entire province.
Weeks of rain destroyed cotton crops, halted coal deliveries, shut mines and prompted BHP Billiton Ltd., Xstrata Plc, Rio Tinto Group and Peabody Energy Corp. to declare force majeure, a legal clause allowing them to miss contracted deliveries.
Missed Royalty Payments
In addition to the rebuilding cost, the state will miss royalty payments from those mines, with Fraser estimating it may take three months for some to resume normal production.
Queensland, which accounts for about 20 percent of Australia’s A$1.3 trillion ($1.3 trillion) economy, expects the impact on the state’s finances to eclipse the A$800 million it spent on natural disasters last year, Fraser said on Jan. 1.
Maybe flooding of such proportions is too abstract? Maybe it’s just water? How about this to get some reality embedded?
Stranded Kangaroo in Queensland Flooding
From Climate Progress
One of the most basic predictions of climate science is that global warming will cause more intense precipitation. As Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained it, “there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.”
Last year appears to have been the hottest year on record — and it saw an astonishing amount of intense rainfall from Nashville’s ‘Katrina’ to the great Pakistani deluge.” And so it should be no surprise that the year ends with another unprecedented deluge of “biblical proportion.”
Oh, and by the way, New Zealand is not doing so well, either. The north end of the South Island has had it’s worst flooding in 150 years.
Motueka River in New Zealand five hours apart on December 28, 2010
More Warmth More Snow
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010From Wunderground:
The remarkable Post-Christmas blizzard of 2010 has ended for the United States, as the storm has trekked northeastward into Canada. The blizzard dropped epic amounts of snow during its rampage up the U.S. Northeast coast Sunday and Monday, with an incredible 32″ falling in Rahway, New Jersey, about 15 miles southwest of New York City. The highest populated areas of New Jersey received over two feet of snow, including the Newark Airport, which received 24.1″. Snowfall amounts were slightly lower across New York City. The blizzard of 2010 dumped 20.0″ inches on New York City’s Central Park, making it the 6th largest snowstorm for the city in recorded history, and the second top-ten snowstorm this year. Remarkably, New York City has had four of its top-ten snowfalls in the past decade (highlighted in the list below.) According to the National Weather Service, the top ten snowstorms on record for New York City’s Central Park since 1869 should now read:
1) 26.9″ Feb 11-12, 2006
2) 26.4″ Dec 26-27, 1947
3) 21.0″ Mar 12-14, 1888
4) 20.8″ Feb 25-26, 2010
5) 20.2″ Jan 7-8, 1996
6) 20.0″ Dec 26-27, 2010
7) 19.8″ Feb 16-17, 2003
8 ) 18.1″ Mar 7-8, 1941
9) 17.7″ Feb 5-7, 1978
10) 17.6″ Feb 11-12, 1983
- Snow in Manhattan’s East Village December 27, 2010
But what does this say about Climate Change?
Changnon et al. (2006) found that for the contiguous U.S. between 1900 – 2001, 61% – 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. The authors also found that 61% – 85% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than average. The authors conclude, “a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 – 2000.”
Interesting map of such storms in the link.
