How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Luther Blissett]

I am being a bit hyperbolic, which is not all that fair on this thread. Most of the Arctic has stayed below freezing this winter. I was specifically referencing December 30, when temperatures were above freezing at the North Pole. There have been a few similar spikes here and there, and overall January was way above normal temperatures - but still mostly below freezing.

[fruhmenschen]

heatisonline.org


Experts see climate change prompting an increase in mental illness
Climate change is wreaking havoc on our mental health, experts
Climate change is causing chaos in the environment and beyond; experts are warning we’re “not even close to being prepared” for the damage it does to our mental health.
The Toronto Star, Feb. 28, 2016

As a provincial coroner and past palliative care physician, Dr. David Ouchterlony has seen suffering and death up close, experiences that have occasionally led to brief moments of sadness. But Ouchterlony describes such emotions as “trivial” compared to the dread he feels when thoughts about climate change linger, as they often do. He worries almost obsessively about a future he won’t see. How will younger generations be affected? Why are we failing to act on the threat?

“I was completely blind to it, and then five years ago it just hit me,” Ouchterlony, 74, said. “Iwent through this stage of losing sleep, thinking about my grandchild, wondering what I could do.”

He described the feeling as an “absence of hope” characterized by despair and, at times, exhausting guilt. Some researchers have called it a “pre-traumatic” stress disorder that, in some, is feeding anxiety and depressive thoughts.

Ouchterlony isn’t alone. Signs of mental distress related to climate change have appeared in vulnerable populations, from drought-stricken prairie farmers to isolated aboriginal communities and the scientists who crunch climate data.

Our fast-changing climate has long been identified as a threat to physical health, but more psychologists are warning that the mental health impacts and the economic toll they take are real, likely to spread and need closer study.

“We may not currently be thinking about how heavy the toll on our psyche will be, but, before long, we will know only too well,” warned a 2012 report from the U.S. National Wildlife Federation.

It predicted that cases of mental and social disorders will rise steeply as the signs of climate change become clearer and more frequent, and as more people are directly affected by heat waves, drought and other extreme events that put pressure on clean water resources, food prices and public infrastructure.

“These will include depressive and anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, substance abuse, suicides and widespread outbreaks of violence,” predicted the report. It singled out children, the poor, the elderly and those with existing mental health problems as those likely to be hardest hit.

“At roughly 150 million people, these groups represent about one half of the American public,” it calculated. In addition, the mental health profession is “not even close to being prepared” and the report warned the existing problem is likely being underestimated because most research is based on self-reporting.

“People may, indeed, suffer from anxiety about climate change but not know it. They will have a vague unease about what is happening around them, the changes they see in nature, the weather events and the fact that records are being broken month after month. But they won’t be sufficiently aware of the source, and furthermore, we all conflate and layer one anxiety upon another.”

Jennie Ferrara, an American expat living in Copenhagen, began having episodes of climate-related anxiety and depression shortly after the first of her two children were born.

Life comes with all sorts of stresses, “but this one really broke the camel’s back for me,” said Ferrara, who as a therapeutic exercise started the blog Confessions of a Climate Worrier in 2011. “I’m convinced hordes of people are filing their mental malaise under divorce, the economy, or whatever, when it’s actually the slow drip of climate reality.”

The drips show up daily on social and mainstream media. We now know that 2015 was the hottest year on record. In the past few months alone, we have heard about snow in Saudi Arabia in January, back-to-back late-season cyclones in the Arabian Peninsula, a 500-year drought in California, the hottest ever Christmas Eve in Toronto and end-of-year temperatures in the North Pole that were warmer than parts of California — all extremely rare or unprecedented events being filed in our subconscious.

Behind the scenes, the 122,000-member American Psychological Association (APA) is taking the issue seriously. It set up a task force in 2008 to survey the limited research. A comprehensive report followed, leading to a member resolution in 2011 to recognize “the current and anticipated psychosocial impacts of climate change.” It also encouraged more awareness of this nascent field of study.

“I see parallels to the fears we went through in the 1950s about the world ending because of atomic war. There was this general dread among people, and this fear of annihilation,” said University of Victoria psychology professor Robert Gifford, who calls himself the “token Canadian” on the APA task force.

In Canada, the issue has barely landed on the radar. Karen Cohen, chief executive of the Canadian Psychological Association, said the organization had “no plans at present” to develop a position. Last year, the Mental Health Commission of Canada released a major report detailing 55 indicators that will be used to track mental illness and well-being among Canadians. There was no mention of climate change.

“I don’t know why the Canadian Psychology Association hasn’t been more active,” said Gifford, who speculates that most in the profession likely see it as a fringe issue. “We should do more.”

Australian Joe Duggan began asking climate scientists in 2014 how they felt being on the front lines of climate science. The responses showed a level of emotion and concern the public never sees: “It makes me feel sick,” read one. “I feel exasperation and despair in equal measure,” says another. Scientists wrote of being “nervous,” “worried,” “anxious” and “depressed” by what they know. Duggan posted the letters on the website Is This How You Feel? and has been receiving submissions ever since. “These people write complex research papers, unpacking every aspect of climate change, analyzing it thoroughly and clinically,” Duggan writes. “But they’re not robots. These scientists are mothers, fathers, grandparents, daughters. They are real people. And they’re concerned.”

A “sleeping giant”

Environmentalists also struggle. Many describe an epidemic of depression in their profession that can lead to broken marriages, mental breakdown and even suicide. “I’ve become aware of it with a lot of the young people I work with,” said Glen Murray, Ontario’s minister of environment and climate change.

Lawyer David Boyd describes it as “sleeping giant of a problem.” He wrote The Optimistic Environmentalist to counter the “relentless” bad news by highlighting the real progress. “For me, writing this was a voyage of recovery.”

After the storm — Calgary’s historic flood

The historic Calgary flood of 2013 took the lives of five people and displaced tens of thousands. When the waters retreated the city looked like a war zone. Cars and waste were strewn everywhere and the Calgary Stampede grounds and the Saddledome arena were closed

Calgary real-estate agent Emma May remembers June 19, 2013, as the day her community was under water. “We’re still seeing the impacts — the divorces, the stress placed on families, some with PTSD,” says May. “There are kids in families who don’t want to live near the river ever again. Some cry when it begins to rain.”

Distress Centre Calgary, which provides 24-hour crisis support, says that since the 2013 flood call volumes have risen 30 per cent, including an increase in calls related to suicide ideation and domestic violence. “The emotional and mental well-being of those affected by the flood needs to be addressed and is likely to need support well into the future,” according to the centre.

“No one can argue our weather isn’t getting more severe,” says Catherine Bell, a board member with the centre. “We need to absolutely be doing something on all fronts as it relates to climate change and mental health.”

The British medical journal Lancet estimated in June that we are four times more likely to be exposed to extreme rainfall later this century compared to 1990 levels.

Increased flooding — more frequent and more extreme — is probably the most visible impact of climate change, at least for city dwellers. We saw it in South Carolina last October and in the United Kingdom in December. A report in the British medical journal The Lancet last June estimated we are four times more likely to be exposed to extreme rainfall later this century compared to 1990 levels.

A July 2015 study from Rutgers University and NYU found that the emergence of mould in waterlogged houses after Hurricane Sandy was “significantly associated” with the rate of mental health distress. It also found that children living in hurricane-damaged homes were four times more likely to feel depressed and twice as likely to develop sleeping disorders. It caught public health officials off guard.

The already vulnerable

Members of a New York Police Department tactical team rescue Haley Rombi, 3, in the Dongon Hills neighborhood of the Staten Island borough of New York, Oct. 30, 2012. As Hurricane Sandy churned inland as a downgraded storm, residents up and down the battered mid-Atlantic region woke on Tuesday to lingering waters, darkened homes and the daunting task of cleaning up from storm surges and their devastating effects.

New immigrants, small children, the elderly and disabled and sufferers of existing mental health conditions, particularly those living in poverty, are more prone to experience psychological distress from the impacts of climate change, according to the American Psychological Association.

They are also more likely to live in low-income housing without air conditioning and in communities with poor infrastructure and access to services, making them vulnerable to flooding, heat waves and storms. Indirectly, rising food prices as a result of climate-related disruptions will put pressure on struggling low- and fixed-income households. “There are clear relationships between environmental risk, poverty and vulnerability,” wrote psychologists Thomas Doherty and Susan Clayton in a 2011 article in American Psychologist. “Paradoxically, the people that face the highest risk of impacts are the least well-prepared.”

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/ ... perts.html

[Luther Blissett]

Shrooms will help.

[Iamwhomiam]

Unfortunately, many who will suffer the worst effects from our changing climate already have little more to hope for than a few crumbs of food to get them through this day.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Shrooms will help.

Or make things infinitely worse.

What you said about over egging that arctic heat .... the thing is if it happens once there a fair chance it will happen again, then again with increasing frequency.

Regarding what fruh posted. Since I finished high school (in the 80s) things have been getting worse. Heating increases, species deceases. All sort of environmental catastrophes are taking place. We are an extinction level event. There has been an endless parade of news stories reinforcing this narrative as background noise in Australia yet still we debate about whether the weather is changing. About whether the planet is heating. About whether the great barrier reef has more intrinsic value than letting Adani or their subsidiaries dig up the Galilee basin and burn it - an act which blow the 2 deg Carbon budget on its own - for a few billion dollars. Then ship the coal from abbot point and further wreck the reef.

Its no wonder mental illness rates are increasing esp depression. The world is ending and we ignore it cos its happening in slow motion. But our brains still pick the information up.

Unfortunately, many who will suffer the worst effects from our changing climate already have little more to hope for than a few crumbs of food to get them through this day.

That's true. Look at what just hit Fiji. But it won't just be them. People burn in bushfires every year or two in Australia. Sometimes lots of people do, like 2009 in the mountains north of Melbourne. Whatever other people say climate change contributes to those deaths. Ultimately privilege will be no defense.

[tapitsbo]

but climate change is good - it's accelerationist

are you trying to stop progress or something?

[Luther Blissett]

Oi. I actually wasn't expecting this from this month. Slate, but whatever:

“The Old Normal Is Gone”: February Shatters Global Temperature Records

Our planet’s preliminary February temperature data are in, and it’s now abundantly clear: Global warming is going into overdrive.

There are dozens of global temperature datasets, and usually I (and my climate journalist colleagues) wait until the official ones are released about the middle of the following month to announce a record-warm month at the global level. But this month’s data is so extraordinary that there’s no need to wait: February obliterated the all-time global temperature record set just last month.

Using unofficial data and adjusting for different base-line temperatures, it appears that February 2016 was likely somewhere between 1.15 and 1.4 degrees warmer than the long-term average, and about 0.2 degrees above last month—good enough for the most above-average month ever measured. (Since the globe had already warmed by about +0.45 degrees above pre-industrial levels during the 1981-2010 base-line meteorologists commonly use, that amount has been added to the data released today.)

Keep in mind that it took from the dawn of the industrial age until last October to reach the first 1.0 degree Celsius, and we’ve come as much as an extra 0.4 degrees further in just the last five months. Even accounting for the margin of error associated with these preliminary datasets, that means it’s virtually certain that February handily beat the record set just last month for the most anomalously warm month ever recorded. That’s stunning.

It also means that for many parts of the planet, there basically wasn’t a winter. Parts of the Arctic were more than 16 degrees Celsius (29 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than “normal” for the month of February, bringing them a few degrees above freezing, on par with typical June levels, in what is typically the coldest month of the year. In the United States, the winter was record-warm in cities coast to coast. In Europe and Asia, dozens of countries set or tied their all-time temperature records for February. In the tropics, the record-warmth is prolonging the longest-lasting coral bleaching episode ever seen.

The northernmost permanent settlement, Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, has averaged 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal this winter, with temperatures rising above the freezing mark on nearly two dozen days since Dec. 1. That kind of extremely unusual weather has prompted a record-setting low maximum in Arctic sea ice, especially in the Barents Sea area north of Europe.

The data for February is so overwhelming that even prominent climate change skeptics have already embraced the new record. Writing on his blog, former NASA scientist Roy Spencer said that according to satellite records—the dataset of choice by climate skeptics for a variety of reasons—February 2016 featured “whopping” temperature anomalies especially in the Arctic. Spurred by disbelief, Spencer also checked his data with others released today and said the overlap is “about as good as it gets.” Speaking with the Washington Post, Spencer said the February data proves “there has been warming. The question is how much warming there’s been.”

Of course, all this is happening in the context of a record-setting El Niño, which tends to boost global temperatures for as much as six or eight months beyond its wintertime peak—mainly because it takes that long for excess heat to filter its way across the planet from the tropical Pacific Ocean. But El Niño isn’t entirely responsible for the absurd numbers we’re seeing. El Niño’s influence on the Arctic still isn’t well-known and is likely small. In fact, El Niño’s influence on global temperatures as a whole is likely small—on the order of 0.1 degree Celsius or so.

So what’s actually happening now is the liberation of nearly two decades’ worth of global warming energy that’s been stored in the oceans since the last major El Niño in 1998.

Numbers like this amount to a step-change in our planet’s climate system. Peter Gleick, a climate scientist at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, said it’s difficult to compare the current temperature spike: “The old assumptions about what was normal are being tossed out the window … The old normal is gone.”

Almost overnight, the world has moved within arm’s reach of the climate goals negotiated just last December in Paris. There, small island nations on the front line of climate change set a temperature target of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius rise by the year 2100 as a line in the sand, and that limit was embraced by the global community of nations. On this pace, we may reach that level for the first time—though briefly—later this year. In fact, at the daily level, we’re probably already there. We could now be right in the heart of a decade or more surge in global warming that could kick off a series of tipping points with far-reaching implications on our species and the countless others we share the planet with.

[Joe Hillshoist]

So what’s actually happening now is the liberation of nearly two decades’ worth of global warming energy that’s been stored in the oceans since the last major El Niño in 1998.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

[KUAN]

.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Yes, I hope it happens sooner, or later, depending on my mood

[Joe Hillshoist]

.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Yes, I hope it happens sooner, or later, depending on my mood

Unfortunately its happening now.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Thanks Luther. This link not only corroborates what Slate is saying, but looks like it might be even worse:

The Roof is On Fire — Looks like February of 2016 Was 1.5 to 1.7 C Above 1880s Averages

Before we go on to explore this most recent and most extreme instance in a long string of record-shattering global temperatures, we should take a moment to credit our climate change denier ‘friends’ for what’s happening in the Earth System.

For decades now, a coalition of fossil fuel special interests, big money investors, related think tanks, and the vast majority of the republican party have fought stridently to prevent effective action to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. In their mad quest, they have attacked science, demonized leaders, gridlocked Congress, hobbled government, propped up failing fossil fuels, prevented or dismantled helpful regulation, turned the Supreme Court into a weapon against renewable energy solutions, and toppled industries that would have helped to reduce the damage.

Through these actions, they have been successful in preventing the necessary and rapid shift away from fossil fuel burning, halting a burgeoning American leadership in renewable energy, and in flooding the world with the low-cost coal, oil, and gas that is now so destructive to Earth System stability. Now, it appears that some of the more dangerous impacts of climate change are already locked in. So when history looks back and asks — why were we so stupid? We can honestly point our fingers to those ignoramuses and say ‘here were the infernal high priests who sacrificed a secure future and our children’s safety on the alter of their foolish pride.’

Worst Fears For Global Heating Realized

We knew there’d be trouble. We knew that human greenhouse gas emissions had loaded the world ocean up with heat. We knew that a record El Nino would blow a big chunk of that heat back into the atmosphere as it began to fade. And we knew that more global temperature records were on the way in late 2015 and early 2016. But I have to say that the early indications for February are just staggering.



(The GFS model shows temperatures averaged 1.01 C above the already significantly hotter than normal 1981-2010 baseline. Subsequent observations from separate sources have confirmed this dramatic February temperature spike. We await NASA, NOAA, and JMA observations for a final confirmation. But the trend in the data is amazingly clear. What we’re looking at is the hottest global temperatures since record keeping began by a long shot. Note that the highest temperature anomalies appear exactly where we don’t want them — the Arctic. Image source: GFS and M. J. Ventrice.)

Eric Holthaus and M. J. Ventrice on Monday were the first to give warning of an extreme spike in temperatures as recorded by the Global satellite record. A slew of media reports followed. But it wasn’t until today that we really began to get a clear look at the potential atmospheric damage.

Nick Stokes, a retired climate scientist and blogger over at Moyhu, published an analysis of the recently released preliminary data from NCAR and the indicator is just absolutely off the charts high. According to this analysis, February temperatures may have been as much as 1.44 C hotter than the 1951 to 1980 NASA baseline. Converting to departures from 1880s values, if these preliminary estimates prove correct, would put the GISS figure at an extreme 1.66 C hotter than 1880s levels for February. If GISS runs 0.1 C cooler than NCAR conversions, as it has over the past few months, then the 1880 to February 2016 temperature rise would be about 1.56 C. Both are insanely high jumps that hint 2016 could be quite a bit warmer than even 2015.

It’s worth noting that much of these record high global temperatures are centered on the Arctic — a region that is very sensitive to warming and one that has the potential to produce a number of dangerous amplifying feedbacks. So we could well characterize an impending record warm February as one in which much of the excess heat exploded into the Arctic. In other words — the global temperature anomaly graphs make it look like the world’s roof is on fire. That’s not literal. Much of the Arctic remains below freezing. But 10-12 C above average temperature anomalies for an entire month over large regions of the Arctic is a big deal. It means that large parts of the Arctic haven’t experienced anything approaching a real Arctic Winter this year.

Looks Like The 1.5 C Threshold Was Shattered in the Monthly Measure and We May Be Looking at 1.2 to 1.3 C+ Above 1880s For all of 2016

Putting these numbers into context, it looks like we may have already crossed the 1.5 C threshold above 1880s values in the monthly measure during February. This is entering a range of high risk for accelerating Arctic sea ice and snow melt, albedo loss, permafrost thaw and a number of other related amplifying feedbacks to a human-forced heating of our world. A set of changes that will likely add to the speed of an already rapid fossil fuel based warming. But we should be very clear that monthly departures are not annual departures and the yearly measure for 2016 is less likely to hit or exceed a 1.5 C departure. It’s fair to say, though, that 1.5 C annual departures are imminent and will likely appear within 5-20 years.

If we use the 1997-1998 El Nino year as a baseline, we find that global temperatures for that event peaked at around 1.1 C above 1880s averages during February. The year, however, came in at about 0.85 C above 1880s averages. Using a similar back of napkin analysis, and assuming 2016 will continue to see Equatorial sea surface temperatures continue to cool, we may be looking at a 1.2 to 1.3 C above 1880s average for this year.



(El Nino is cooling down. But will it continue to linger through 2016? Climate Prediction Center CFSv2 model ensembles seem to think so. The most recent run shows the current El Nino restrengthening through Fall of 2016. Such an event would tend to push global annual temperatures closer to the 1.5 C above 1880s threshold. It would also set in place the outside potential for another record warm year in 2017. It’s worth noting that the NOAA consensus is still for ENSO Neutral to weak La Nina conditions by Fall. Image source: NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.)

NOAA is currently predicting that El Nino will transition to ENSO neutral or a weak la Nina by year end. However, some model runs show that El Nino never really ends for 2016. Instead, these models predict a weak to moderate El Nino come Fall. In 1998, a strong La Nina began to form — which would have helped to suppress atmospheric temperatures by year-end. The 2016 forecast, however, does not seem to indicate quite as much atmospheric cooling assistance coming from the world ocean system. So end 2016 annual averages may push closer to 1.3 C (or a bit higher) above 1880s levels.

We’ve Had This Warming in the System for a While, It was Just Hiding Out in the Oceans

One other bit of context we should be very clear on is that the Earth System has been living with the atmospheric heat we’re now seeing for a while. The oceans began a very rapid accumulation of heat due to greenhouse gas emissions forcing during the 2000s. A rate of heat accumulation in the world’s waters that has accelerated through to this year. This excess heat has already impacted the climate system by speeding the destabilization of glaciers in the basal zone in Greenland and Antarctica. And it has also contributed to new record global sea ice losses and is a likely source of reports from the world’s continental shelf zones that small but troubling clathrate instabilities have been observed.



(Global ocean heat accumulation has been on a high ramp since the late 1990s with 50 percent of the total heat accumulation occurring in the 18 years from 1997 though 2015. Since more than 90 percent of the greenhouse gas heat forcing ends up in the world ocean system, this particular measure is probably the most accurate picture of a rapidly warming world. Such a swift accumulation of heat in the world’s oceans guaranteed that the atmosphere would eventually respond. The real question now is — how fast and far? Image source: Nature.)

But pushing up atmospheric heating will have numerous additional impacts. It will put pressure on the surface regions of global glaciers — adding to the basal melt pressure jump we’ve already seen. It will further amplify the hydrological cycle — increasing the rates of evaporation and precipitation around the world and amplifying extreme droughts, wildfires and floods. It will increase peak global surface temperatures — thereby increasing the incidence of heatwave mass casualty events. It will provide more latent heat energy for storms — continuing to push up the threshold of peak intensity for these events. And it will help to accelerate the pace of regional changes to climate systems such as weather instability in the North Atlantic and increasing drought tendency in the US (especially the US Southwest).

Entering the Climate Change Danger Zone

The 1-2 C above 1880s temperatures range we are now entering is one in which dangerous climate changes will tend to grow more rapid and apparent. Such atmospheric heat has not been experienced on Earth in at least 150,000 years and the world then was a much different place than what human beings were used to in the 20th Century. However, the speed at which global temperatures are rising is much more rapid than anything seen during any interglacial period for the last 3 million years and is probably even more rapid than the warming seen during hothouse extinction events like the PETM and the Permian. This velocity of warming will almost certainly have added effects outside of the paleoclimate context.



(Anyone looking at the temperature anomaly graph on the top of this post can see that a disproportionate amount of the global temperature anomaly is showing up in the Arctic. But the region of the High North above the 80 degree Latitude line is among the regions experiencing global peak anomalies. There, degree days below freezing are at the lowest levels ever recorded — now hitting a -800 anomaly in the Arctic record. In plain terms — the less degree days below freezing the High Arctic experiences, the closer it is to melting. Image source: CIRES/NOAA.)

One final point to be clear on is then worth repeating. We, by listening to climate change deniers and letting them gum up the political and economic works, have probably already locked in some of the bad effects of climate change that could have been prevented. The time for pandering to these very foolish people is over. The time for foot-dragging and half-measures is now at an end. We need a very rapid response. A response that, at this point, is still being delayed by the fossil fuel industry and the climate change deniers who have abetted their belligerence.

[seemslikeadream]

Published on
Thursday, March 03, 2016
byCommon Dreams
'Moment of Judgment' Welcomed as Exxon Cover-Up Investigation Goes to FBI
'Exxon has already cost us decades of meaningful climate action and policy thanks to its colossal climate denial operation. This development is a step in the right direction to holding it legally accountable.'
byNadia Prupis, staff writer

Exxon Corp. president and former CEO Lee Raymond addresses shareholders during an annual meeting. (Photo: AP)
Environmental groups on Thursday welcomed news that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) had referred the federal investigation into ExxonMobil's decades-long suppression of climate science to the FBI's criminal division.

"Exxon has already cost us decades of meaningful climate action and policy thanks to its colossal climate denial operation. This development is a step in the right direction to holding it legally accountable," said Naomi Ages, a climate liability campaigner with Greenpeace. "We expect the FBI and the Department of Justice to give this investigation the attention demanded by the American public."

The DOJ's referral, reported late Wednesday night by Inside Climate News, comes as a response to growing evidence that ExxonMobil covered up the role of fossil fuels in climate change and interfered in government efforts to take action on global warming, fearing that it would limit the company's profits. The extent of the campaign was revealed late last year through two separate investigations by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times.

In response to the reporting, U.S. Representatives from California Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier requested the DOJ investigation to determine whether the company had violated federal laws by "failing to disclose truthful information" about climate change.
"The legal risks facing Exxon and other fossil fuel producers are real, they are significant, and they are now imminent."
—Carroll Muffett, Center for International Environmental Law

"There is going to be a moment of judgment both politically and legally," DeSaulnier told Inside Climate News on Wednesday. "I think a moment of judgment will be quite critical of the fossil fuel industry in terms of obfuscating the scientific facts and for not adhering to their moral and legal responsibility to the public."

There's something in the air...

Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said on Thursday, "The formal referral by the Department of Justice means that the FBI must now take real steps to evaluate the serious allegations against ExxonMobil....The referral demonstrates for both the public and investors that the legal risks facing Exxon and other fossil fuel producers are real, they are significant, and they are now imminent."

"The bad news for Exxon is that the disclosures to date are only the tip of what is almost certainly a very large iceberg of documentary evidence," Muffett said.

Others agreed.

"This is turning into a nightmare for Exxon. No company wants to hear their name and 'criminal' in the same sentence. This FBI investigation must quickly lead back to a full Department of Justice inquiry and, ultimately, legal action," said Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org. "Exxon knew about climate change, they misled the public, and it’s time for them to be held to criminal account."

The FBI probe is only the latest measure taken against the company, with individual investigations into the cover-up also underway in California and New York. Ben Schreiber, climate and energy program director at Friends of the Earth U.S., noted that the action follows growing scientific evidence that the vast majority of fossil fuels must remain untouched in order to prevent catastrophic climate change.

"With the latest science telling us that the world needs to keep more than 80 percent of its fossil fuels in the ground it is clear that this business model must end," Schreiber said. "What’s also becoming clear is that ExxonMobil has known this for decades and they lied to the American people about climate change in order to protect their ill-gotten gains. We welcome the FBI’s criminal investigation into ExxonMobil’s misconduct."

[Iamwhomiam]

"Sediments underneath the Arctic Ocean hold vast amounts of methane. Just one part of the Arctic Ocean alone, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS, see map below), holds up to 1700 Gt of methane. A sudden release of less than 3% of this amount could add 50 Gt of methane to the atmosphere, and experts have warned for many years that they consider such an amount to be ready for release at any time."



The Arctic is experiencing a heatwave in winter, with temperature anomalies on February 23, 2016, averaging 7.84°C or 14.11°F higher than what was common 1979-2000.



The forecast for 6:00 UTC on February 23, 2016, shows an anomaly of 8.17°C or 14.71°F.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Lethal threat of lower fruit and vegetable yields
As many governments seek to promote healthy diets, scientists warn that climate-related reductions in fruit and vegetable production could have deadly consequences for millions of people.

Climate change could bring about more than 500,000 extra adult deaths a year by 2050 – simply by reducing the supply of fruit and vegetables available to millions.

Although restricted food production could reduce health risks linked to the growing epidemic of obesity worldwide, any such benefits will be wiped away by the greater toll of undernourishment, according to new research that says three out of four of those extra deaths could happen in China and India.

Marco Springmann, post-doctoral researcher in population health at the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at Oxford University, UK, and colleagues report in The Lancet that their study of the impact of climate change on diet and bodyweight is the first of its kind, and the first to estimate the possible number of deaths in 155 countries.

“Much research has looked at food security, but little has focused on the wider health effects of agricultural production,” Dr Springmann says.

www.eco-business.com/news/lethal-threat ... le-yields/

Study Reveals Stunning Acceleration of Sea Level Rise

The oceans have heaved up and down as world temperatures have waxed and waned, but as new research tracking the past 2,800 years shows, never during that time did the seas rise as sharply or as suddenly as has been the case during the last century.

The new study, the culmination of a decade of work by three teams of farflung scientists, has charted what they called an “acceleration” in sea level rise that’s triggering and worsening flooding in coastlines around the world.

The findings also warn of much worse to come.

The scientists reported in a paper published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have greater than 95 percent certainty that at least half of more than 5 inches of sea level rise they detected during the 20th century was directly caused by global warming.

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/stud ... rise-20055

Climate projections show (with high confidence) that Australia will experience more extreme heat events in the future as a result of climate change.

Extreme heat events, or heatwaves, have killed more Australians in the past 200 years than any other climate hazard, and have caused major economic disruptions. Climate change will increase the exposure of Australian communities, buildings and infrastructure to longer and more intense heatwaves. Without effective adaptation, future climate change is very likely to increase the number of deaths and amount of economic disruption due to heatwaves.
Heatwaves cause multiple impacts – to people, the buildings they live in and the infrastructure and services they rely on (transport, electricity and heath services). They can have critical flow-on effects through increased bushfire risk. For city dwellers, these effects are exacerbated by the urban heat island effect.

https://www.nccarf.edu.au/sites/default ... ebview.pdf

[divideandconquer]

Ivar Giaever