Climate Change: Toxic Trespassing In Texas | The Daily 360 | The New York Times

Trump’s Daughter-In-Law Launches “Real News” Venture To Spread Republican Propaganda

Climate Action MOOC | Jeffrey Sachs | 3 August 2017

NASA | IPCC Projections of Temperature and Precipitation in the 21st Century

NASA Goddard

Published on Sep 27, 2013

New data visualizations from the NASA Center for Climate Simulation and NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio show how climate models — those used in the new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — estimate how temperature and precipitation patterns could change throughout the 21st century.
For the IPCC’s Physical Science Basis and Summary for Policymakers reports, scientists referenced an international climate modeling effort to study how the Earth might respond to four different scenarios of how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would be emitted into the atmosphere throughout the 21st century.

The Summary for Policymakers, the first official piece of the group’s Fifth Assessment Report, was released Fri., Sept. 27.

That modeling effort, called the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5), includes dozens of climate models from institutions around the world, including from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

To produce visualizations that show temperature and precipitation changes similar to those included in the IPCC report, the NASA Center for Climate Simulation calculated mean model results for each of the four emissions scenarios. The final products are visual representations how much temperature and precipitation patterns would change through 2100 compared to the historical average from the end of the 20th century. The changes shown compare the model projections to the average temperature and precipitation benchmarks observed from 1971-2000. This baseline is different from the IPCC report, which uses a 1986-2005 baseline. Because the reference period from 1986-2005 was slightly warmer than 1971-2000, the visualizations are slightly different than those in the report, even though the same model data is used.

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How Will Earth Change If All the Ice Melts?

RealLifeLore

Published on Jul 28, 2017

Seeing An Inconvenient Sequel is taking action, get tickets to see it in select theaters now & everywhere Aug. 4th: https://fandan.co/2ucigMW #BeInconvenient

Earth to warm 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, studies say

NEWS BEAT

Published on Jul 31, 2017

Earth to warm 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, studies say
By the end of the century, the global temperature is likely to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

This rise in temperature is the ominous conclusion reached by two different studies using entirely different methods published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday.
One study used statistical analysis to show that there is a 95% chance that Earth will warm more than 2 degrees at century’s end, and a 1% chance that it’s below 1.5 C.
“The likely range of global temperature increase is 2.0-4.9 [degrees Celsius] and our median forecast is 3.2 C,” said Adrian Raftery, author of the first study. “Our model is based on data which already show the effect of existing emission mitigation policies. Achieving the goal of less than 1.5 C warming will require carbon intensity to decline much faster than in the recent past.”
Scientists highlight deadly health risks of climate change
Scientists highlight deadly health risks of climate change
The second study analyzed past emissions of greenhouse gases and the burning of fossil fuels to show that even if humans suddenly stopped burning fossil fuels now, Earth will continue to heat up about two more degrees by 2100. It also concluded that if emissions continue for 15 more years, which is more likely than a sudden stop, Earth’s global temperature could rise as much as 3 degrees.
“Even if we would stop burning fossil fuels today, then the Earth would continue to warm slowly,” said Thorsten Mauritsen, author of the second study. “It is this committed warming that we estimate.”
Taken together, the similar results present a grim reality.
“These studies are part of the emerging scientific understanding that we’re in even hotter water than we’d thought,” said Bill McKibben, an environmentalist not affiliated with either study. “We’re a long ways down the path to disastrous global warming, and the policy response — especially in the United States — has been pathetically underwhelming.”
Because both studies were completed before the United States left the Paris Agreement under President Trump earlier this year, that has not been accounted for in either study.
“Clearly the US leaving the Paris Agreement would make the 2 C or 1.5 C targets even harder to achieve than they currently are,” said Raftery.
Why two degrees?
The 2 degree mark — that’s 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — was set by the 2016 Paris Agreement. It was first proposed as a threshold by Yale economist William Nordhaus in 1977. The climate has been warming since the burning of fossil fuels began in the late 1800s during the Industrial Revolution, researchers say.

Earth likely to warm 2°C by end of this century

IBTimes UK

Published on Aug 2, 2017

Global temperature is likely to rise more than 2°C by 2100, and we have only a 5% chance of avoiding the temperature rise, according to a new study.

How the Republican Party turned against climate science

Vox

Published on Aug 22, 2016

A brief history of American inaction on climate change

How Trump is empowering this governor’s climate change agenda

Washington Post

Published on Aug 2, 2017

With President Trump doubling down on his anti-climate views, California’s governor, Jerry Brown, vows to aggressively battle climate change.

Which Country is the Most Sustainable? – Food Tank

The Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (BCFN) Foundation, ranks countries on food system sustainability based off of three pillars: food loss and waste, sustainable agriculture, and nutritional challenges.

“A food system does not sit in isolation, and a large number of stakeholders act together according to dynamics created by specific drivers,” say researchers Francesca Allievi, Marta Antonelli, and Katarzyna Dembska, who worked on the Food Sustainability Index with the BCFN Foundation. This causes increasing complexity at the regional, national, continental, and global level, they explain. Trying to assess the interaction among its parts creates a high level of these creating a high level of uncertainty when trying to assess the interaction among its parts.”

Released in 2016, the FSI aims to encourage policymakers to place food and its production issues as high-priority items in their policy agendas. BCFN has since released two Food Sustainability Reports: “Climate Change and Famine: Issues at the Heart of International Awareness,” which focused on climate change, food security, and food safety; and “Environmental, Food and Migration Sustainability: Three Challenges To Overcome Together,” raising awareness about crucial issues surrounding food and sustainability. Both reports were a joint effort between BCFN and the Milan Center for Food Law and Policy.

According to the FSI, The world population is projected to reach 8.1 billion by 2025. Ninety-five percent of this growth will come from developing countries, many of which are dealing with the double burden of hunger and rising obesity. Meanwhile, climate change is presenting new challenges to the agriculture sector. By highlighting performance of different countries and identifying best practices, the index establishes a comparable benchmark for leaders around the world to reference and measure their progress in establishing a sustainable food system.

The FSI is publicly available. Data can be accessed in the form of a map or a country ranking, and the full dataset can be downloaded. Through this approach, the FSI can serve as a tool for policymakers and experts to take action, students to be educated, and the public to adjust their behavior for the well-being of our health and our planet.

“The objectives
 of the FSI are not only to highlight the performance of countries, but to establish a comparable benchmark, to offer examples of best practices at the national and city levels, and to measure progress over time,” say the researchers.

…(read more).