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James Hansen: Dangerous Sea Level Rise Will Occur in Decades, Not Centuries
Posted by EcoWatch: Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams on March 23rd, 2016
EcoWatch: Dr. James Hansen, the former NASA scientist who is widely credited with being one of the first to raise concerns about human-caused global warming, is a co-author of a new report predicting that the world will undergo devastating sea level rise within mere decades—not centuries, as previously thought. The report, published Tuesday in the open-access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, paints an even bleaker picture of the planet’s future, positing that continued high fossil fuel emissions...
Feds Defend Fracking Rule Against Judicial Hold
Posted by Hill: Timothy Cama on March 23rd, 2016
Hill: The Obama administration is fighting in federal court to defend its hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule, saying a lower court committed a “legal error” when it put the regulation on hold. Lawyers representing the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) are asking the Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver to overturn a Wyoming-based court’s decision last year to halt the rule and allow regulators to enforce it. That judicial injunction stemmed from the arguments from various...
Could fungi help pine forests withstand climate change?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 23rd, 2016
PhysOrg: Arthur Conan Doyle's famous literary detective Sherlock Holmes once noted that "the little things are infinitely the most important." It's a belief that investigators at the University of Alberta obviously share. Whether they're seeking to understand the tiniest forms of life, taking small steps toward major breakthroughs or influencing students in subtle but profound ways, U of A researchers and educators are proving that little things can make a big impact. The lodgepole pine is one of the most...
Scientists Warn of Climate Shift Within Decades, Research
Posted by Canada Journal: None Given on March 23rd, 2016
Canada Journal: The warning was made in a paper released on Tuesday citing research led by retired NASA scientist James E. Hansen, according to The New York Times.
Co-authored by 18 other scientists, the paper apparently suggests the world’s nations were wrong in believing they could bring the crisis to a non-hazardous level with previously suggested limits to global warming.
By the end of the century, climate change could produce storms and a rise in sea level that would obliterate much of the world’s coastal...
Human carbon release rate is unprecedented in the past 66 million years of Earth’s history
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2016
ScienceDaily: The earliest instrumental records of Earth's climate, as measured by thermometers and other tools, start in the 1850s. To look further back in time, scientists investigate air bubbles trapped in ice cores, which expands the window to less than a million years. But to study Earth's history over tens to hundreds of millions of years, researchers examine the chemical and biological signatures of deep sea sediment archives.
New research published today in Nature Geoscience by Richard Zeebe, professor...
Climate Change Accelerating At ‘Unprecedented’ Rate
Posted by HNGN: Samantha Mathewson on March 21st, 2016
HNGN: A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) suggests global climate change is advancing at an alarming and "unprecedented" rate.
Last year's extreme weather broke a series of records, including global temperatures, exceptional rainfall, devastating droughts, unusual cyclone activity and intense heat waves. And while 2015 proved to be the warmest year worldwide, 2016 is expected to far exceed those records.
"The year 2015 will stand out in the historical record of the global...
Solar fuels: Refined protective layer for the ‘artificial leaf’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2016
ScienceDaily: The team was able for the first time to produce a hybrid structure that converts 12 per cent of the incident solar energy into the form of hydrogen. The results have now been published in Advanced Energy Materials.
The "artificial leaf" consists in principle of a solar cell that is combined with further functional layers. These act as electrodes and additionally are coated with catalysts. If the complex system of materials is submerged in water and illuminated, it can decompose water molecules....
Eat less meat to avoid dangerous global warming, scientists say
Posted by Guardian: Fiona Harvey, on March 21st, 2016
Guardian: Growing food for the world’s burgeoning population is likely to send greenhouse gas emissions over the threshold of safety, unless more is done to cut meat consumption, a new report has found.
A widespread switch to vegetarianism would cut emissions by nearly two-thirds, it said.
In three decades, emissions related to agriculture and food production are likely to account for about half of the world’s available “carbon budget” - the limited amount of carbon dioxide and its equivalents that can...
Forests Help Quench Urban Thirst
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 21st, 2016
Inter Press Service: The next time you turn on the tap to fill the kettle, you might want to spare a thought for the forest that made it possible. It may be a hundred kilometres away or more from where you are sitting, but the chances are that you owe your cup of tea, in part at least, to the trees that helped to capture the water, and to filter it on its long journey to you the consumer.
The importance of forests to the water cycle cannot be overstated. They slow down the flow of water, percolating it gently through...
Rougher Atlantic storms to pound Western Europe – study
Posted by Climate Home: Tim Radford on March 21st, 2016
Climate Home: The Atlantic seas could be getting rougher, with winter storms capable of causing dramatic changes to the beaches of Western Europe. And new research shows that the pounding delivered to the shorelines of the UK and France in the winter of 2013-2014 was the most violent since 1948. Gerd Masselink, professor of coastal geomorphology at Plymouth University School of Marine Science and Engineering, UK, and colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters that they decided to switch focus from sea...