Category: Climate

The release of the latest assessment of the IPCC on the future of the planet, failing their push to cut greenhouse gas emissions, has brought forth headlines and supportive editorials in papers around the world. Yet I could not help but note a couple of things that form the basis for this tech talk. The first was that the report discussed the impacts of climate change (for which I suspect in this case they mean global warming) on agricultural production. They stress the negative impacts on crops such as wheat, and so, being curious, I went to the Wikipedia page that provides a table of wheat production over the past eighteen years, and plotted the data. Figure 1. Global wheat production in millions of metric tons (after the Food and Agricultural Organization via Wikipedia ) Clearly wheat production is growing rather than, as the IPCC report implies, declining with […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

High tide in Kiribati, an island nation seen as especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, like rising sea levels. WASHINGTON — A sweeping new study on the effects of climate change — which the report says is already disrupting the lives and livelihoods of the poorest people across the planet — creates a diplomatic challenge for President Obama, who hopes to make action on both climate change and economic inequality hallmarks of his legacy. The report, published this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, concludes that the world’s poorest people will suffer the most as temperatures rise, with many of them already contending with food and water shortages, higher rates of disease and premature death, and the violent conflicts that result from those problems. Countries like Bangladesh and several in sub-Saharan Africa that are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change […]

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

Exxon Mobil Corp, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said on Monday that risks related to climate change pose little risk to its oil and gas reserves because the resources will be needed to meet expected growth in energy demand. Responding to queries from shareholder activists, the company also said it is "confident" that none of its oil and gas reserves will lose value or become "stranded" if governments act to slash carbon emissions. "We believe producing these assets is essential to meeting growing energy demand worldwide, and in preventing consumers – especially those in the least developed and most vulnerable economies – from themselves becoming stranded in the global pursuit of higher living standards and greater economic opportunity," Exxon said in a report released in response to call from activist shareholders. Earlier this month, the Irving, Texas-based company agreed to detail the […]

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

Greenland’­s immense ice sheet is melting as a result of climate change. YOKOHAMA, Japan — Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported on Monday, and they warned that the problem was likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct. The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants, […]

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

Two of the world’s leading climate researchers have clashed over a report on the impact of global warming and rising sea levels. The chief author of the study by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change challenged the views of an economist drafting a key chapter. Chris Field, professor of environmental studies at Stanford University in California, made the comments about Professor Richard Tol of the University of Sussex in the UK, a senior author of the report’s chapter on climate change’s economic impacts. More video Professor Tol revealed last week that he had asked for his name to be removed from the study’s summary – the most widely read section of the IPCC report – because he believed it was too “alarmist” and included “silly” statements about the vulnerability of people in war zones to climate change. However, Professor Field, co-chair of the IPCC working group that produced […]

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

Global warming is depleting fresh water and crops, destroying coral reefs and melting the Arctic, the said today in a report that concludes the world is ill-prepared to face many new threats. Climate change has brought “key risks” that endanger lives and health worldwide, including storm surges and coastal flooding worsened by rising sea levels; infrastructure destruction and the disruption of power networks, communications and health services by extreme weather, and the depletion of crop production due to droughts and floods, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. “If you look around the world today, people, cities, businesses and nations aren’t prepared for the climate-related risk we face now,” Chris Field , the U.S. professor who co-chaired the 309 scientists drafting today’s report, said in a phone interview from Yokohama, Japan . “The climate changes that have already occurred have been widespread and have really had consequences. It’s […]

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

Global warming poses a mounting threat to the health, economic prospects, and food and water sources of billions of people, a report by top scientists said, in a call for urgent action to counter the effects of carbon emissions. The latest report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), places an emphasis on the risks and may make the case for cutting greenhouse gas emissions clearer both to policymakers and the public by placing it in the category of an insurance policy for the planet. "Climate change is really a challenge of managing risks," Christopher Field, co-chair of the IPCC group preparing the report, told Reuters before its release on Monday. "One critical way is in decreasing the amount of climate change that occurs, and the other is finding a way to cope as effectively as we can with the climate changes that […]

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

The Obama administration says it will propose rules to cut methane emissions at landfills and coal mines and conduct a study that may result in regulations to plug leaks from oil and gas production. A 15-page plan released today pledges to work with utilities on curbing leaks in transport and distribution of natural gas and calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to study methane emissions from drilling to determine whether rules are needed. If it decides to regulate, the standards would be issued in 2016. “Today’s announcement is a big step in the right direction,” David Doniger , director for climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council , said in a statement. “But more needs to be done.” Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and climate advocates have warned that without efforts to curb emissions from the nation’s booming oil and gas […]

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

The draft of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the world faces serious risks from warming and that the poor are especially vulnerable. But it avoids the kinds of specific forecasts that have sparked controversy in the past. Batten down the hatches; fill the grain stores; raise the flood defenses. We cannot know exactly what is coming, but it will probably be nasty, the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will warn next week. Global warming will cause wars, displace millions of people, and do trillion-dollar damage to the global economy. But careful readers will note a new tone to its discussion of these issues that is markedly different from past efforts. It is more humble about what scientists can predict in advance, and far more interested in how societies can make themselves resilient. It also places climate […]

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