Gaia Tahoe

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Al Jazeera America California could experience ‘historic’ drought in 2014 Al Jazeera America California water authorities told Al Jazeera Friday that barring a series of heavy storms, California faces a drought next year that would restrict…

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One of the key indicators and consequences of global warming is ice loss at the Earth’s poles. As the planet warms, on average and over time, every summer more ice melts.

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We are in the midst of an era of frightening contradictions, when it comes to public understandings of climate change. While climate changes are occurring more quickly than scientists have ever predicted, most people’s knowledge of these realities remains hazy and clouded by political overtones.

Because of both the counter-intuitive nature of climate change and the massive misinformation campaigns created by the fossil fuel industry, the general population is 20 years behind most climate scientists when it comes to the straightforward fact of “believing in” climate change.

This is an ominous statistic: Now that scientists are predicting that even worse impacts than previously understood will happen significantly sooner, a rapid global response will be necessary for any attempt to stave them off. We are likely closer to irreversible dangerous climate change – if it has not begun already – and to take action, there must be a basic public consensus. There is, however, some hopeful news on the technological front if action is taken soon.

In 1976, Wallace Broeker was one of the first to suggest climate change could alter our planet harmfully within our lifetimes. Even though a few scientists said in the ’70s we could be headed for an ice age, Broeker had already made the connection, and those few climate scientists have not talked about a coming ice age in nearly 40 years. Broeker is arguably the grandfather of climate science: He’s been at it for 55 years.

One of his first jobs was under Willard Libby, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for discovering carbon-14 dating. This rare but predictable form of carbon is radioactive, and it completely decays in about 55,000 years. It is because of carbon-14 dating that we know for absolutely certain that the extra carbon dioxide in our atmosphere came from burning fossil fuels.

There are many other ways that we know for sure. The physics of the greenhouse effect are easily demonstrated in the lab, and even the simplest models from the early 1980s prove their effect. Surprisingly, the complicated high resolution climate models of today yield results that are quite similar to those of the simplest models of the early 1980s.

But how are we supposed to trust the models when weather people can’t even get the seven-day forecast correct?

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California is enduring its driest calendar year on record, with no signs of relief coming anytime soon. In San Francisco, the city is seeing its driest year since records began during the Gold Rush year of 1849.

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Infosurhoy
Argentina: ‘state of emergency’ declared as power and water supplies fail …
euronews
Officials in Buenos Aires have declared a state of emergency during a heatwave where temperatures are averaging 36 degrees Celsius.

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Asia-Pacific leaders warn of water conflict threat
AFP
CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Fierce competition for water could trigger conflict unless nations cooperate to share the diminishing resource, leaders from Asia-Pacific nations warned on Monday.

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Prompted by one less hard freeze a year, protected mangrove trees risk becoming an invasive species as they expand northward along the Atlantic coast of Florida. Florida’s climate has seemingly led…

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Gloucester Point, VA (SPX) Dec 09, 2013 –
Left to themselves, coastal wetlands can resist rapid levels of sea-level rise.

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http://www.HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org University of California

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Mayor Becker Begins Work on White House Climate Change Task Force Utah Policy Mayor Becker said that while the current impacts of climate change very widely by region-from east coast mega-storms to increased tornado activity in the Midwest to salt…

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