Climate Change

Understand faulty thinking to tackle climate change
http://www.newscientist.com/article...faulty-thinking-to-tackle-climate-change.html

DANIEL KAHNEMAN is not hopeful. "I am very sorry," he told me, "but I am deeply pessimistic. I really see no path to success on climate change."

Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics for his research on the psychological biases that distort rational decision- making. One of these is "loss aversion", which means that people are far more sensitive to losses than gains. He regards climate change as a perfect trigger: a distant problem that requires sacrifices now to avoid uncertain losses far in the future. This combination is exceptionally hard for us to accept, he told me.

Kahneman's views are widely shared by cognitive psychologists. As Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University says: "A psychologist could barely dream up a better scenario for paralysis."
 
Greenland ice loss doubles from late 2000s
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28852980

A new assessment from Europe's CryoSat spacecraft shows Greenland to be losing about 375 cu km of ice each year.

Added to the discharges coming from Antarctica, it means Earth's two big ice sheets are now dumping roughly 500 cu km of ice in the oceans annually.

"The contribution of both ice sheets together to sea level rise has doubled since 2009," said Angelika Humbert from Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute.



 
Climate Change and Implications for National Security
http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2014/08/22/climate-change-implications-national-security/

The release of this carbon – however – is changing our climate at such a rapid rate that it threatens our survival and presence on earth. It defies imagination that so much damage has been done in such a relatively short time. The implications of climate change are the single most significant threat to life on earth and, put simply, we are not doing enough to rectify the damage.
 
The Climate Swerve
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/opinion/sunday/the-climate-swerve.html

AMERICANS appear to be undergoing a significant psychological shift in our relation to global warming. I call this shift a climate “swerve,” borrowing the term used recently by the Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt to describe a major historical change in consciousness that is neither predictable nor orderly.

The first thing to say about this swerve is that we are far from clear about just what it is and how it might work. But we can make some beginning observations which suggest, in Bob Dylan’s words, that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is.” Experience, economics and ethics are coalescing in new and important ways. Each can be examined as a continuation of my work comparing nuclear and climate threats.

The experiential part has to do with a drumbeat of climate-related disasters around the world, all actively reported by the news media: hurricanes and tornadoes, droughts and wildfires, extreme heat waves and equally extreme cold, rising sea levels and floods. Even when people have doubts about the causal relationship of global warming to these episodes, they cannot help being psychologically affected. Of great importance is the growing recognition that the danger encompasses the entire earth and its inhabitants. We are all vulnerable.

This sense of the climate threat is represented in public opinion polls and attitude studies. A recent Yale survey, for instance, concluded that “Americans’ certainty that the earth is warming has increased over the past three years,” and “those who think global warming is not happening have become substantially less sure of their position.”

Falsification and denial, while still all too extensive, have come to require more defensive psychic energy and political chicanery.
 
Skarke A, Ruppel C, Kodis M, Brothers D, Lobecker E. Widespread methane leakage from the sea floor on the northern US Atlantic margin. Nature Geosci;advance online publication. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2232.html

Methane emissions from the sea floor affect methane inputs into the atmosphere, ocean acidification and de-oxygenation, the distribution of chemosynthetic communities and energy resources. Global methane flux from seabed cold seeps has only been estimated for continental shelves, at 8 to 65 Tg CH4 yr−1, yet other parts of marine continental margins are also emitting methane. The US Atlantic margin has not been considered an area of widespread seepage, with only three methane seeps recognized seaward of the shelf break. However, massive upper-slope seepage related to gas hydrate degradation has been predicted for the southern part of this margin, even though this process has previously only been recognized in the Arctic. Here we use multibeam water-column backscatter data that cover 94,000 km2 of sea floor to identify about 570 gas plumes at water depths between 50 and 1,700 m between Cape Hatteras and Georges Bank on the northern US Atlantic passive margin. About 440 seeps originate at water depths that bracket the updip limit for methane hydrate stability. Contemporary upper-slope seepage there may be triggered by ongoing warming of intermediate waters, but authigenic carbonates observed imply that emissions have continued for more than 1,000 years at some seeps. Extrapolating the upper-slope seep density on this margin to the global passive margin system, we suggest that tens of thousands of seeps could be discoverable.
 
Lifestyles of the Rich and Parched
How the Golden State’s 1 percenters are avoiding the drought.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/08/california-drought-lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-parched-110305.html
 
Good Luck!!! Fat, Slim, & No Chance!

Greenhouse gas fear over increased levels of meat eating
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29007758

Would you reduce meat consumption to help fight climate change?
Greenhouse gases caused by meat production will go up 80% if meat and dairy consumption continues to rise, according to a new report. Would you ration your consumption to help meet global emissions targets?
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...at-consumption-climate-change-poll?CMP=twt_gu



Changing global diets is vital to reducing climate change, researchers say
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140831150209.htm

 
Last edited:
Back
Top