Category: Climate

California Is Turning Back Into A Desert And There Are No Contingency Plans thumbnail Once upon a time, much of the state of California was a barren desert.  And now, thanks to the worst drought in modern American history, much of the state is turning back into one.  Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century that the state of California had seen in 1000 years.  But now weather patterns are reverting back to historical norms, and California is rapidly running out of water.  It is being reported that the state only has approximately a one year supply of water left in the reservoirs, and when the water is all gone there are no contingency plans.  Back in early 2014, California Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency for the entire state, but since that time water usage has only dropped by 9 percent.  That is […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California’s winter was as well. As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We’re not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we’re losing the creek too. Snow Drought Bad News For California  Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Sea-ice melt in the Arctic, Barents and Kara seas since 2004 has made more than twice as likely atmospheric circulations that suck cold Arctic air to Europe and Asia, a group of Japanese researchers led by the University of Tokyo’s Masato Mori said in a study published in 2014 in Nature Geoscience. Photographer: Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Images (Bloomberg) — The U.S., Europe and Russia face longer heat waves because summer winds that used to bring in cool ocean air have been weakened by climate change, German researchers said. Rapid Arctic warming disturbs air streams in ways that have “significantly” reduced summer storms, raising the likelihood of heat waves, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said in a report Thursday in the journal Science. Hot weather in Russia in 2010 devastated crop harvests and caused wildfires. “Unabated climate change will probably further weaken summer circulation patterns which could […]

Click here to view full article at www.bloomberg.com

LONDON— Royal Dutch Shell PLC Chairman Jorma Ollila is joining Chief Executive Ben van Beurden in backing efforts to limit carbon emissions ahead of international climate talks in Paris later this year. Mr. Ollila was set to tell employees Wednesday that society must find a “middle way” that “doesn’t threaten economic growth,” according to a transcript of a speech the company disseminated. “Shell has been open and firm in its advocacy of cleaner-burning natural gas, carbon capture and storage,” which takes carbon from combustion and stores it in places like underground reservoirs “and carbon pricing. And we’re hopeful that policy makers will recognize the value of all three at the gathering in Paris later this year,” the transcript says. Shell, which is heavily invested in big, long-lived natural gas projects, has been increasingly vocal in calling for energy companies to participate with policy makers in addressing climate change. Mr. […]

Click here to view full article at www.wsj.com

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California’s latest snow survey found on Tuesday that the Sierra Nevada snowpack is far below normal and could end up being the lowest on record in nearly 25 years. Snow supplies about a third of the water needed by state residents, agriculture and industry, and a higher winter snowpack translates to more water for California reservoirs to meet demand in summer and fall. Last weekend’s Sierra Nevada snowfall pleased skiers and snowboarders, but wasn’t enough to offset previous weeks in which no snow fell. The latest survey makes it likely that California’s drought will run through a fourth consecutive year. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency on Jan. 17, 2014, and his office continues to underline the need for sustained water conservation. Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program, said there were 6.7 inches of snow on the ground at the […]

Click here to view full article at hosted.ap.org

Flood water image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org iwth permission. This is the year the “dam of denial” will break and the momentum for climate action will become an unstoppable flood. It will be messy, confusing and endlessly debated but with historical hindsight, 2015 will be the year. The year the world turned, primarily because the market woke up to the economic threat posed by climate change and the economic opportunity in the inevitable decline of fossil fuels. That shift will in turn unlock government policy and public opinion because the previous resistance to action argued on economic grounds, will reverse to  favour  action on economic grounds. Before I argue for this conclusion, let me explain what I mean by the “dam of denial” and why the concept is so important to understanding what’s underway. Anyone who “gets” the urgency of the climate issue and the scale of economic […]

Click here to view full article at www.resilience.org