global warming

Aussie coal industry "ripe for financial implosion"

Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock interviews John Connor, Exec. Dir. of the Climate Institute in Sydney. Their new report shows the Australian coal industry can only burn a fraction of their reserves before the climate spins out of control. The big coal companies are over-valued, based on reserves that are "unburnable" - a big risk for the Australian economy. Listen to/download this 19 minute interview here: http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate2013/ES_JConnor_LoFi.mp3

Related articles: Coal ship boarded by Greenpeace activists off the Great Barrier Reef | Philippine climate activists expose risks of dirty coal | Australian based company Ambre Energy pushing coal export in Oregon | Coal dust and climate change: Newcastle residents march against proposed T4 coal loader | Time to cease expansion of coal to reduce climate change says Ad

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Burying the future: Pipelines, Arctic melt, southern hemisphere weather

Canadian scientist Paul Beckwith explains how the Arctic warming emergency is changing your weather. First, story of anti-pipeline media warrior, John Bolenbaugh. The leaks, scandals and deaths behind Tar Sands pipelines.

Download/listen to Radio Ecoshock 130424 here: http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock13/ES_130424_Show_LoFi.mp3

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says an ice-free Arctic is no longer a matter of "if" but "when".

Winter Chill: Fruit and nut trees feeling the heat of global warming

Climate change affecting safe winter chill for orchard trees.

A new study says that global warming will impact fruit and nut tree productivity in Australia and globally. Most fruit and nut trees have evolved in cool temperate climates and go through a dormant winter phase and require a certain amount of winter chill to trigger their spring growth and fruit production. But with strong trends in many regions for warming winter minimum temperatures and reduced number of 'winter chill' days, the heat is on our orchards.

Antarctic Peninsula: nonlinear intensification of melt unprecedented in last 1000 years

A new study analysing an Antarctic Peninsula ice core has determined that there has been a ten fold increase in melt intensity over the last 600 years. I reported recently that the Antarctic Peninsula summer melt season prolonged by global warming according to research from the British Antarctic Survey.

Coping with Climate Despair: Rosemary Randall

What if you woke up one morning and realized humans really have changed the world's climate? We show no signs of stopping this unfolding catastrophe. Maybe you already see it, and cannot bear knowing.

We need help. And a pioneering psychotherapist from Britain says we can help each other. Starting in 2005, Rosemary Randall was was part of a team founding a movement called "Carbon Conversations".

http://www.carbonconversations.org

We have a conversation with her now on Radio Ecoshock.
Listen to/download that 29 minute interview here.

Moringa tree as a climate change mitigation strategy?

For hundreds of millions of people the threat of famine is connected to the change of the climate. The planting of trees, including the planting of the Moringa tree, can play one important role in mitigating the effects of climate change.There has been a time in history when humans used tens of thousands of vegetables, cereals, etc but today we rely on just a few cereals.

Kevin Trenbeth on the 2011 sea level bump and Australia's wettest 2 year period

Did you know that during 2011 sea level rise went into reverse and lost 5mm from the global oceans? No? How about that since then, much to the chagrin of climate deniers, sea level rise has accelerated from 3.18mm per year - the rate from 1993 to 2010 - to increase to 10mm per year over the last two years. This acceleration more than makes up for the pothole. The primary cause of this sea level 'speed bump' was the back to back La Nina which moved a phenomenal amount of water from the global oceans to the land. The water has since been making its way back into the world's oceans.

The question arises, does this explain the 10mm per year increase in sea level rise over the last 2 years? Is ocean thermal expansion or ice sheet melting perhaps contributing more? This may also be the start to an exponential sea level rise which NASA climatologist James Hansen has argued is a possibility. Rob Painting on Skeptical Science says that there is no evidence yet to suggest that ice loss from Greenland or Antarctica has added to the speed bump in any significant manner. We will have to wait and see what the impact of future El Nino or La Nina (ENSO) will be on sea level rise, and keep watching the rate of mass loss from the ice sheets.

Antarctic Peninsula summer melt season prolonged by global warming

The melt season on the Antarctic Peninsula has been getting much longer over the last 60 years, at some locations doubling in length according to the research lead by Dr Nick Barrand of the British Antarctic Survey. Increased melting season increases the melting stress of ice shelves which hold back significant glacier discharge and sea level rise.

Coral reefs being pushed to extinction by global warming

Increasing sea surface temperatures are imperilling coral reef ecosystems say Australian marine and climate scientists. A new scientific paper reveals that atmospheric warming of 2 degrees celsius is too much for nearly all the world's coral reef ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef. The scientists argue that to preserve greater than 10 per cent of coral reefs worldwide would require limiting global warming to below 1.5 °C. This equates to the goal of reducing carbon in the atmosphere to 350ppm, rather than a 2 degree rise or 450ppm that the UN Framwework Convention on Climate Change has adopted as the safe limit at several meetings.

Atmospheric concentration of CO2 currently stands at 392.41ppm. With current pledged reduction in emissions we are heading for 4.4 °C of warming by the end of the century according to the Climate Scoreboard.

Related: The True Cost of Australia's Coal Boom | Greenpeace report: Boom Goes the Reef: Australia's coal export boom and the industrialisation of the Great Barrier Reef (PDF) | The Conversation: - Climate change guardrail too hot for coral reefs?

Climate Commission comes to Melbourne - climate risks for Victoria

I attended the Climate Commission public forum in Melbourne last Tuesday night with my daughter. I felt that it was important that she came along to see the charts on the screen, to hear from the Climate Commissioners and climate scientists directly, and perhaps question them about her future. Because global warming will have an increasing impact on the climate of the future, and the life of the kids of today, and eventually their children and future generations.

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