Utter insanity: they’ll outlaw gravity next

As if a planetary system is going to pay an iota of attention to what Iowa thinks. New law says state regulations must ignore climate change!

The only people who will suffer will be those harmed by and dying from increasingly extreme weather events as a consequence of global warming from the fossil fuel industry’s continued contributions to Earth’s greenhouse layer.

Blind stupidity driven by boundless greed! You have to read the article to understand just how stupid and greedy some American legislators can be…

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Global warming in action melting our ice-cap

As long as our world continues to warm and there is till ice left perched on mountain sides catastrophic glacier collapses will probably grow in frequency

Climate Sentinel News is still here, and I will begin posting more on our still catastrophically warming planet as I make more progress on my analysis of the Federal Election and the spectacular rising tsunami of the Teal Community Independents. Non-linear systems of all kinds fascinate me (glacier collapses, runaway global warming, political revolutions, etc.). Hopefully the Teal Tsunami will help stimulate and supercharge action on climate change.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

On the road to runaway warming & mass extinction

Tropical warming is cutting life-spans of Australian and other rainforest trees in half by robbing them of moisture they need for survival

A 50-year study revealed tree deaths are on the rise in the tropical forests of Queensland. Alexander Schenkin, Author provided (from the article)

by Lucas Cernusak & Susan Laurance, 19/05/2022 in The Conversation

Climate change is killing trees in Queensland’s tropical rainforests

In recent years, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s northeast coast has seen multiple events of mass coral bleaching as human-caused global warming has driven sustained high temperatures in the ocean.

Alongside the Coral Sea is another spectacular natural wonder: the rainforests of the World Heritage-listed wet tropics of Queensland.

It turns out the same climate change forces contributing to coral bleaching have also taken a toll on the trees that inhabit these majestic tropical rainforests.

In new research, we and our co-authors found that mortality rates among these trees have doubled since the mid 1980s, most likely due to warmer air with greater drying power. Like coral reefs, these trees provide essential structure, energy and nutrients to their diverse and celebrated ecosystems.

Featured Image: Alexander Schenkin, Author provided (from the article). / I’m fascinated by this pic. Each tree totally controls its air space with little or nothing left to waste (or share), leaving a tiny but distinct gap between the spaces controlled by its neighbors.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Guardian editorial: COALition forfeited right to govern

After “a decade of inaction on confected, time-wasting ‘climate wars’ for political” gain, scandal and indecency, the COALition should go!

The two men vying to be prime minister in the 2022 Australian federal election, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP / from the article

Editorial, 19/05/2022 from the Guardian

The Guardian view on the Australian federal election: say no to spin and inaction: Given the Coalition’s policy vacuum, Labor offers the best hope the country will be able to rise to the challenges ahead

Scott Morrison’s re-election pitch is built on a mirage – the false hope that the havoc of three years of fires, pandemics and floods is over and we are entering a “time of opportunity” when he can be a nicer version of himself and we, with a collective sigh of relief, can return to pursuing our personal aspirations.

But the pandemic isn’t over. More than 5,600 Australians with Covid-19 have died this year, more than twice the number who died in the previous 24 months.

And it exposed disturbing fissures in Australian society; the underfunded hospitals and public schools, the underpaid care workers, the shockingly inadequate aged care system, and the desperate need for an unemployment payment at a livable rate.

The polls tell us that many voters, disillusioned by [the choices between major parties], are turning to smaller parties and independents.

Some support the Greens, who are campaigning on ending new coal and gas projects, adding dental care to Medicare, offering affordable homes and abolishing student debt – instead of proceeding with the next round of personal income tax cuts.

Many have been inspired by the grassroots “voices of” independents movement, joining, with renewed hope that politics can be different, campaigns in the inner-city “teal” electorates and also in some seats in the regions. The teals have stared down increasingly hysterical criticisms from the Coalition that their election would cause chaos. (We would point to the demonstrated productivity of the last hung parliament elected in 2010.) If these independents, alongside the Greens, were to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament, Guardian Australia believes policy could be influenced for the better. [italics added]

Read the complete article….

Featured Image: Captain Humbug (A.K.A. Scotty from Marketing) showing the parliamentary puppet troop what it is all about behind his then PM, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared, it won’t hurt you. It’s coal.” With these words Australia’s Treasurer Scott Morrison taunted the Opposition, attempting to ridicule its commitment to renewable energy.” – Picture from The Conversation (15-02-2017). See also Katherine Murphy in The Guardian on 09/02/2017 for the live video — “Scott Morrison brings coal to question time: what fresh idiocy is this? What a bunch of clowns, hamming it up – while out in the real world an ominous and oppressive heat just won’t let up.”

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Foretaste of what Australia may see next summer?

Is this the beginning of the kind of multi-year drought that caused the US ‘dust bowl‘, famine and social disruption in the 1930s?

Concatenating catastrophes, where two different disasters join to make even worse chaos. NOAA/NASA via the New York Times

by Maggie Astor, 0v/05/2022 in New York Times

Smoke and Sandstorm, Seen From Space: A time-lapse image of smoke from wildfires in New Mexico and dust from a storm in Colorado illustrates the scope of Western catastrophe.

The video is mesmerizing: As three whitish-gray geysers gush eastward from the mountains of New Mexico, a sheet of brown spills down from the north like swash on a beach.

What it represents is far more destructive.

The image, a time-lapse captured by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite, shows two devastating events happening [at the same time] in the Western United States. The first is a wildfire outbreak in northern New Mexico that started last month and has intensified in the past two weeks, fueled by extreme drought and high winds. The second is a dust storm caused by violent winds in Colorado.

Both are examples of the sorts of natural disasters that are becoming more severe and frequent as a result of climate change.

Read thee complete article….

Featured Image: A dust storm approaching Spearman. In: Monthly Weather Review, Volume 63, April 1935, p. 148. Date: 1935 April 14 Location: Texas, Spearman …an excellent view of a dust storm that occurred at Spearman, Tex., on April 14, 1935. The photograph was submitted by the official in charge, Houston, Tex., and was taken by F. W. Brandt, cooperative observer at Spearman, Tex. Credit: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service / Public Domain / Wikipedia

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Famine is a likely result if global warming not stopped

Genetically restricted cultivars of major food crops likely to be early casualties of extreme temps and weather as world continues warming

Top: Cavendish banana plants infected with Panama 4 in the Philippines where the fungus has destroyed tens of thousands of acres of plantations. Below: on the left is the Cavendish plant root infected with the pathogen Panama 4, on the right is a healthy root. Photographs: Fernando Garcia-Bastidas / from the article

by Nina Lakhani, et al., 14/04/2022 in The Guardian

Our food system isn’t ready for the climate crisis: The world’s farms produce only a handful of varieties of bananas, avocados, coffee and other foods – leaving them more vulnerable to the climate breakdown

The climate breakdown is already threatening many of our favorite foods. In Asia, rice fields are being flooded with saltwater; cyclones have wiped out vanilla crops in Madagascar; in Central America higher temperatures ripen coffee too quickly; drought in sub–Saharan Africa is withering chickpea crops; and rising ocean acidity is killing oysters and scallops in American waters.

All our food systems – agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture – are buckling under the stress of rising temperatures, wildfires, droughts, and floods. 

Even in the best-case scenario, global heating is expected to make the earth less suitable for the crops that provide most of our calories. If no action is taken to curtail the climate crisis, crop losses will be devastating. 

Read the complete article….

Featured Image: A corn crop blighted with Southern corn leaf blight and stalk rot (Bipolaris maydis), by J.C. Wells, North Carolina State University, Bugwood.org / Creative Commons License   licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License. / via Forestry Images

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

History: First real evidence for abrupt climate change

1969 Greenland ice cores provide convincingly accurately timed evidence for abrupt major changes in Earth temperatures and global warming.

Wally Broecker, shown here in 1997, proposed that the shutdown of a major ocean circulation pattern could lead to abrupt climate change. Jean-Louis Atlan/Paris Match via Getty Images / from the Article

by Alexandra Witze, 29/03/2022 in Science News

Wally Broecker divined how the climate could suddenly shift: The shutdown of an ocean conveyor belt could cause abrupt climate change

It was the mid-1980s, at a meeting in Switzerland, when Wally Broecker’s ears perked up. Scientist Hans Oeschger was describing an ice core drilled at a military radar station in southern Greenland. Layer by layer, the 2-kilometer-long core revealed what the climate there was like thousands of years ago. Climate shifts, inferred from the amounts of carbon dioxide and of a form of oxygen in the core, played out surprisingly quickly — within just a few decades. It seemed almost too fast to be true.

Read the complete article….

Editor’s note: See Broecker’s 1975 paper, Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming? in Science, that gave us early warning 47 years ago on what might be happening. How different our future might have been if humanity took that warning seriously.

Leland_McInnes at en.wikipedia(red) GRIP data: http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/data/grip-ss09sea-cl-50yr.stp (blue) NGRIP data:http://www.glaciology.gfy.ku.dk/data/NGRIP_d18O_50yrs.txt / License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Rising crescendos: clusters of climate catastrophes

In a warming climate extreme weather events may encourage other extreme events to closely follow, e.g., fires followed by floods & landslides

Debris from a mudslide covers a home on January 10, 2018 in Montecito, California. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / from the article.

by Andrea Thompson, on 01/04/2022 in Scientific American

Double Disaster: Wildfires Followed by Extreme Rainfall Are More Likely with Climate Change: These events can cause devastating landslides and flash floods

At 3:30 A.M. on January 9, 2018, half an inch of rain poured down on the charred slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains in coastal southern California. The flames of the Thomas Fire—at the time the largest wildfire in state history—had swept through the previous month, leaving the soil and vegetation scorched and unable to soak up the onslaught of water. The destabilized ground gave way in a devastating landslide. Boulders crashed into houses in the town of Montecito, Calif., and a highway was buried under several feet of mud. The disaster killed 23 people and caused an estimate of around $200 million in damage.

Read the complete article….

See the scientific report that is the source of this article: Touma et al., 01/04/2022, Climate change increases risk of extreme rainfall following wildfire in the western United States in Science Advances

Featured Image: This image from a rescue helicopter records the burn scar from the Thomas Fire, as well as the path of a deadly mudslide in Montecito, Calif., in January 2018. Credit: California National Guard, CC BY 2.0 / from No Relief from Rain: Climate Change Fuels Compound Disasters: Climate change is increasing the risk of fire-rain events, raising mudslide concerns in fire-prone communities. by Leah Campbell, 12/12/2021 in EOS.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

Great govt. planning! Boost fossils not renewables

COALition continues funding fossil fuel patrons while neglecting/cutting 21st Century green/ renewable growth industry sector. Who benefits?

Renewable energy generates 1.6 times the electricity used by Australian households, with 2021 the fifth year in a row of record new capacity. Photograph: SolStock/Getty Images / from the article

Australia’s renewables boom fading as investors lose confidence, energy council says: Clean Energy Council says Morrison government’s lack of ‘meaningful policies’ and leadership on climate could mark start of downturn

Australia’s boom in rooftop solar and large-scale renewables is fading as investors lose confidence, with the lack of coordination by the Morrison government partly to blame, according to the Clean Energy Council.

The warning comes as the industry marked its latest record year for household solar, wind and solar farms, and big batteries. Renewable energy’s share of the electricity supply reached 32.5%, doubling since 2017, the council said in its annual report.

Read the complete article….

Featured Image: Logo Renewable Energy by Melanie Maecker-Tursun V2 green. Melanie Maecker-Tursun Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

A massive IPCC report out soon – What can we do?

Representatives of most nations of the world are now sign-off on the overview of IPCC’s Mitigation of Climate Change report due out April 4.

Current carbon-cutting commitments still put us on a catastrophic path toward 2.7C of warming by 2100. (From the article)

by Amélie Bottollier-Depois, 18/03/2022 in PhysOrg

UN report to lay out options to halt climate crisis: Nearly 200 nations gather on Monday to confront a question that will outlive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: how do we stop carbon pollution overheating the planet and threatening life as we know it?

Featured image: AR6 Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change — IPCC / via https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.