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Living within a living, loving planet
Summer weather becomes more persistent in a 2 °C world
1 day
Summer weather becomes more persistent in a 2 °C world
- Peter Pfleiderer, peter.pfleiderer@climateanalytics.org
- Carl-Friedrich Schleussner,
- Kai Kornhuber &
- Dim Coumou
Nature Climate Change
Published: 19 August 2019
Abstract
Heat and rainfall extremes have intensified over the past few decades and this trend is projected to continue with future global warming1,2,3. A long persistence of extreme events often leads to societal impacts with warm-and-dry conditions severely affecting agriculture and consecutive days of heavy rainfall leading to flooding. Here we report systematic increases in the persistence of boreal summer weather in a multi-model analysis of a world 2 °C above pre-industrial compared to present-day climate. Averaged over the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude land area, the probability of warm periods lasting longer than two weeks is projected to increase by 4% (2–6% full uncertainty range) after removing seasonal-mean warming. Compound dry–warm persistence increases at a similar magnitude on average but regionally up to 20% (11–42%) in eastern North America. The probability of at least seven consecutive days of strong precipitation increases by 26% (15–37%) for the mid-latitudes. We present evidence that weakening storm track activity contributes to the projected increase in warm and dry persistence. These changes in persistence are largely avoided when warming is limited to 1.5 °C. In conjunction with the projected intensification of heat and rainfall extremes, an increase in persistence can substantially worsen the effects of future weather extremes.
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I still cannot understand how such detailed probability figures can emerge from a model when the increase of CO2 in the troposphere is increasing at an increasing rate and this rate is not constant. Please see: http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
Tipping point with CO2
2 days
| Feeding the future: Fixing the world’s faulty food system |
| Josh Wilson, The Daily Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/feeding-the-future/
“The world is also facing an unprecedented climate emergency, with temperatures hurtling towards a dangerous tipping point.”
We are already suffering from having reached a tipping point with CO2. Our crisis is not “coming.” It is here!
“Year by year readings since 1959 taken from the NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. These readings show that the amount of C02 per decade almost tripled in nearly 60 (59) years.”
http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
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Social Infrastructure
1 week
by sky
in Social Infrastructure
Britain’s Social infrastructure is breaking down
Wed 14 Aug 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/14/britain-social-infrastructure-money-national-grid
Aditya Chakrabortty
“Britain is being stripped of the buildings and spaces that host friends and gently push strangers together”
“Britain is being stripped of its social infrastructure: the institutions that make up its daily life, the buildings and spaces that host friends and gently push strangers together. Public parks are disappearing. Playgrounds are being sold off. High streets are fast turning to desert. These trends are national, but their greatest force is felt in the poorest towns and suburbs, the most remote parts of the countryside, where there isn’t the footfall to lure in the businesses or household wealth to save the local boozer.”
“Politicians bemoan the loss of community, but that resonant word is not precise enough. A large part of what’s missing is social infrastructure.”
“In ripping out our social infrastructure, we are outraging a wisdom that goes back centuries and spans countries.”
“But parks and libraries don’t generate cash. Social infrastructure has no lobby, no registry of assets and certainly no government agency. No Whitehall official monitors how much of it has closed or withered away – that relies on civil society groups to file freedom of information requests or badger town halls with survey.”
“The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can’t otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognise it in them too.”
“Our people deserve palaces.”
Court ruled that ICWA is constitutional
2 weeks
by sky
in Native American Justice
Court ruled that ICWA is constitutional
Earth Flag
Beautiful Child
“Updated: 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturns lower court decision
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously voted to uphold the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act; overturning a lower district court’s decision in a late decision Friday afternoon…. Passed in 1978, the Indian Child Welfare Act has been praised as the “gold standard” for by national child welfare organizations. The law states when a Native child is up for adoption, homes of family or tribal members are prioritized for placement.
Research has also shown that Native and non-Native children alike have better outcomes when they are raised in their communities rather than foster homes or state child welfare systems.
Sarah Kastelic, executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, said that the decision was in the best interest of Native children.”
Why So Little Gets Done About the Climate Crisis
1 month
by sky
in Climate Crisis In action
Why So Little Gets Done
“The planetary future is hostage to myopic national self-interest. Action is delayed on the assumption that as yet unproven technologies will save the day, decades hence. The risks are existential, but it is “alarmist” to say so.”
What Lies Beneath Breakthroughline.org.au
A Nationwide Scandal
1 month
The Nationwide Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-nationwide-crisis-hiding-in-plain-sight/
“While the investigation mostly focused on California care homes, what Gollan discovered is a nationwide problem hiding in plain sight, “blend[ing] in to neighborhoods. What’s worse is that the proliferation of these homes, made possible through lax regulations is leading people to join what many see as a get-rich-quick scheme by opening and operating an elderly care facility.
“[Operators] know they can suppress workers’ wages, and then take in $4,000 a month from seniors and make up the difference,” the journalist tells Scheer on the latest installment of his podcast. “There are many, many entrepreneurs on YouTube promoting this business in particular as a money-making machine, and a place where you can get into the business, the real estate end of the business, flip a house, make a few adjustments, and care for a bunch of seniors, open a care home and make a lot of money.”
“JG: Well, so that’s the median cost per resident to stay in one of these care homes per month. So these care homes can often make, from six residents, about $250,000 a year. And so you can see why it would be quite lucrative. And they’re basically promising to provide all of the care that many, you know, working parents cannot provide to their parents, because they’re caring for their children, for example. So they’re filling a need, and the industry has grown incredibly over the last decade, and they’re taking on these increasingly ill patients.”
This reminds me of the “Grapes of Wrath” John Steinbeck, 1939. Could it really be that these kinds of exploitative practices have been going on for centuries? Capitalism has matured and become the most exploitative institution the world has ever known. Married to materialism, this union has established a worldview that will take this civilisation down.
Ban Chlorpyrifos
1 month
by sky
in Government
E.P.A. Won’t Ban Chlorpyrifos, Pesticide Tied to Children’s Health Problems
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/epa-chlorpyrifos-pesticide-ban.html
July 18, 2019
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration took a major step to weaken the regulation of toxic chemicals on Thursday when the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would not ban a widely used pesticide that its own experts have linked to serious health problems in children.
Chlorpyrifos
Chlorpyrifos (CPS) is an organophosphate pesticide used on crops, animals, and buildings, and in other settings, to kill a number of pests, including insects and worms. It acts on the nervous systems of insects by inhibiting the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos
Researchers studied the blood of women who were exposed to chlorpyrifos and the blood of their children from birth for three years. Children who had chlorpyrifos in their blood had more developmental delays and disorders than children who did not have chlorpyrifos in their blood. Exposed children also had more attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity disorders.
In general children may be more sensitive to pesticides than adults. One reason for this is that their bodies may break down pesticides differently. Children are also more likely to be exposed to pesticides when playing and may put their hands in their mouths more often than adults. Children may also be more sensitive to exposures because they have more surface area of skin for their body size than adults.
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/chlorpgen.html
Millions raised for climate activists
1 month
US philanthropists vow to raise millions for climate activists
Matthew Taylor, The Guardian
“The Guardian reports that “a group of wealthy US philanthropists and investors have donated almost half a million pounds to support the grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups – with the promise of tens of millions more in the months ahead”. It adds: “Trevor Neilson, an investor and philanthropist who has worked with some of the world’s richest families, has teamed up with Rory Kennedy – daughter of Robert Kennedy – and Aileen Getty, whose family wealth comes from the oil industry, to launch the Climate Emergency Fund. Neilson, who has worked with figures such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, said the fund was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion protesters in the UK in April.” The report continues: “Neilson said the three founders were using their contacts among the global mega-rich to get ‘a hundred times’ more in the weeks and months ahead. ‘This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,’ he told the Guardian.”
Carbon Brief Daily | 12/07/2019 Leo Hickman