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Showing posts from October, 2018

Global Warming is Worse Than Thought

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I have posted before about how most of the heat from greenhouse gases is going into the oceans , and I've posted before about how  global warming may be nonlinear and accelerating rather than linear as most forecasts are.  A new study supports the nonlinear change in global warming.  [A] study published Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests that oceans are warming far faster than the estimates laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global organization for climate data. In October, the panel released a major report predicting that some of the worst effects of climate change, including coastal flooding, food shortages and a mass die-off of coral reefs, could come to pass as soon as 2040 if human greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels. The I.P.C.C. report showed that scientists may have been underestimating the severity of the world’s present climate trajectory. The new ocean temperature estimates, if proven accurat...

Young People's Lawsuit on Global Warming

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I've posted before about this lawsuit, The young plaintiffs have demanded, among other things, that the courts force the government to “implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions” in an effort to “stabilize the climate system.” The courts could then supervise the government’s efforts. Young people have the most at stake.  If nothing done about climate change, their future could turn grim.  The lawsuit is proceeding . But Judge Ann Aiken, who is scheduled to preside over the trial on Monday, has been receptive to the plaintiffs’ theory of the case. “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society,” she said in a November 2016 decision allowing the case to go forward .  Since then, the case has rumbled toward trial. In an earlier order in July, the Supreme Court denied a government request to intervene , but wrote that the breadth of the plain...

Beer Supply Threatened by Global Warming

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A new study says a warming globe will be bad news for barley, an essential ingredient in the world’s most popular alcoholic beverage. A small international team of scientists considered what the effect of climate change would be for this crop in the next 80 years, and they are raising an alarm they hope will pierce the din of political posturing. They are predicting a beer shortage.  In a report in Nature Plants , researchers in China, Britain and the United States say that by the end of the century, drought and heat could hurt barley crops enough to cause intense pain to beer drinkers. Imagine a worst case of a 20 percent drop in supply in the United States, or a doubling of prices per bottle in Ireland. That’s no abstract end of civilization talk; that’s an empty display case at the Stop ’N Go. It won't disappear entirely, just get a lot more expensive With particularly bad droughts, for example, the price of a bottle of beer in Ireland might double. In the Czech ...