Maybe We’re Not Doomed After All

As the effects of a warming climate intensify and a sense of impending catastrophe grows stronger, it’s becoming easier to give in to environmental despair. Having spent the past five years studying the Arctic and traveling around Greenland, I feel the pull as well. 

We have the technology to deal with the climate crisis, we just need the will.

Glaciers and sea ice are melting at an alarming rate; temperatures are rising at a steady clip. To make matters worse, the Trump administration’s recent efforts to ignore a fact-based, scientific approach — rejecting, for instance, the use of computer projections to assess how a warming world might look after 2040 — leads me to worry that climate denialism is moving from the scientific fringes to the institutional center.

Still, it’s worth considering that things may not be as bad as they appear. I say this with a full understanding that most indicators are pointing in the wrong direction. Yet I also feel we’re in danger of losing sight of two crucial and encouraging aspects of our predicament.

The first is the extraordinary value of the climate knowledge we’ve amassed over the past 100 years — a vast archive of data and wisdom that gives us a fine-grained understanding of how the planet is warming and how we can change the trajectory we’re on.

Read the story from The New York Times by John Gertner - “Maybe We’re Not Doomed After All.”

‘Not very happy': Tasman Sea warmth puts the heat on key fisheries

Back-to-back summer heatwaves in the Tasman Sea that have affected marine life and seafood industries in Australia and New Zealand could be another sign of the warming climate, scientists say.

The Tasman Sea has endured back-to-back summer
marine heatwaves - with consequences that could
take time to play out.CREDIT

Australia has just had its warmest summer by far, with the role of so-called blocking highs in the Tasman seen by meteorologists as key to the build-up of record-breaking heat over the country's south-east.

Read the story from The Age by Peter Hannam - “‘Not very happy': Tasman Sea warmth puts the heat on key fisheries.”

What the ‘New York Times’ Climate Blockbuster Missed

A warming climate strongly suggests the answer is yes. But we had a chance to fix it, Nathaniel Rich argues in “Losing Earth,” his epic New York Times Magazine feature released on Wednesday.

A protester outside Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, on March 28, 2017.

Rich argues that when climate change first entered the American political imagination some 40 years ago, politicians in the United States were keen to confront the problem head-on. Obviously, they did no such thing.

Rich narrates the period that led up to that failure from 1979 through 1989 through the trajectories of climate scientist James Hansen and environmental lobbyist Rafe Pomerance, who went to great lengths to convince politicians and the public that the threat of global warming needed to be acted upon immediately to prevent civilizational collapse. Al Gore, then a young congressman, features prominently, too.

Read The Nation story by Kate Aronoff - “What the ‘New York Times’ Climate Blockbuster Missed.”

Climate change to worsen urban air quality, lifting death toll

Days of severe pollution in Australia's biggest cities will worsen in coming decades as a warming climate triggers more intense temperature inversion events, exacerbating health issues, according to new research.

Fog and smog across the Sydney Basin on the coldest morning of the year so far.

With more than 3000 premature deaths a year in Australia already linked to urban air pollution, worsening low-level air quality could increase the toll, said Jason Evans, a professor at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and a co-author of the report published recently in the Climate Dynamics journal.

Read the story from The Age by Peter Hannam - “Climate change to worsen urban air quality, lifting death toll.”

A warmer climate could make your dog sick

Canine heartworm disease is caused by long worms that live in a dog’s heart and blood vessels. It can be fatal. And a warming climate could make this disease more common.

A warmer climate could make your dog sick.

Heartworm is transmitted by mosquitoes. So it’s most common in warm, moist areas such as the southeastern United States.

But as the climate changes, other parts of the country may see more mosquitoes, and the mosquito season may get longer.

Read the Yale Climate Connections story by Samantha Harrington - “A warmer climate could make your dog sick.”

Inaction on climate change is costing lives

As we head into another scorching summer, many health professionals anxiously anticipate a surge in heat-related and respiratory illnesses, driven by our warming climate. As temperatures rise, so too does the amount of ground level ozone in our cities and neighbourhoods. The biggest risk this poses for us is the irritation to our airways, making it harder for many people to breathe easily. 

It’s not just a problem for children and the elderly – even healthy young people can experience respiratory difficulties from ground level ozone. But the most threatening components of air pollution are those we cannot see. Tiny dirty particles – measuring about 1/30 of a human hair in diameter – can pass into our bloodstream via our lungs, where they risk causing heart attacks and strokes in otherwise healthy people.

While our politicians continue to delay effective action on climate change, people’s health and well-being is being put at risk. Lives are being lost. 

Read The Border Mail story by Fiona Armstrong - “Inaction on climate change is costing lives.”

Snowy retreat: Climate change puts Australia's ski industry on a downhill slope

Australia's ski resorts face the prospect of a long downhill run as a warming climate reduces snow depth, cover and duration. The industry's ability to create artificial snow will also be challenged, scientists say.

Thredbo's looking good for now but the
longer term outlook is less appealing.

Resorts are also going to become more reliant on big snow dumps such as this weekend's blizzard – after a poor start to the season – as the frequency of smaller, top-up snowfalls diminish.

A snow retreat has been observed for half a century, with rising temperatures rather than reduced precipitation to blame, according to a major CSIRO-Bureau of Meteorology report. Under high greenhouse gas emissions pathway, snow at lower-elevation sites such as Mt Buffalo could all but disappear by 2050.

Warming springs have led to stark impacts at the end of the ski season. Early October snow depths fell 30 per cent during the 2000-13 period compared with 1954-99, a separate study in 2015 found.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in the Melbourne Age - “Snowy retreat: Climate change puts Australia's ski industry on a downhill slope.”

Our warming climate will soon claim another species

The American pika, which evolved to survive its cold
 mountain habitat, is disappearing as the climate warms.

Scientists have warned for years that a warming climate will threaten many of the world's species. But for one diminutive alpine creature, the threat has already arrived.

The American pika is disappearing from much of its mountain habitat across the western United States, with rising temperatures a driving factor, a new study says. The findings, said lead author Erik A. Beever, a research ecologist with the United States Geological Survey, also point to a much larger problem.

"This is kind of an indication of what's happening in our mountain ecosystems," Beever said, pointing out that the rivers that feed the West's cities have their origins in the pika's habitat. The findings, published last week in Mammalogy, paint a troubling picture.

Read Nicholas Kusnetz’s story on Inside Climate News – “The American 'Fur Ball' Being Threatened by a Warming Climate.”

Jonas: Winter Storms in an Era of Global Warming

Every winter when there is a cold snap, or a big snow storm, climate contrarians claim that it disproves global warming.

What does the science say on this? How might global warming effect winter storms? How can there be record cold temperatures in a warming climate?

Watch this YouTube clip to find out “Jonas: Winter Storms in an Era of Global Warming.”

A warming climate looks and sounds good, but is a harbinger of death

Those who welcome our warming climate arguing they enjoy the warmer weather are either ignorant or sadly grossly misinformed.

All earth’s species, including humans, have adapted to live in what exists.

The Snow Leopard is one species
threatened by climate change.

Change the climate too quickly and many of earth’s species, including most humans, will die.

The speed of evolution among species varies, but even those which change the quickest are locked in a life and death struggle with a shifting environmental landscape arising from human-induced climate change.

The Guardian reports, in a story headed: “Climate change is happening too quickly for speciesto adapt”, that the speed of evolutionary change is far outstripped by the rate of global warming, meaning many species will face extinction.

“Past transformations that saw planetary temperatures soar took millions of years to occur,” The Guardian said.

“The one we are creating will only take a few generations to take place. Either evolution speeds up 10,000-fold, which is an unlikely occurrence, of there will be widespread extinctions,” the newspaper reported