Polar bears have invaded an island town. Locals are terrified of them and climate change

"The US Geological Survey warned in 2007 that two-thirds of the global population of polar bears could be wiped out by 2050 because of thinning sea ice.

That prediction has periodically found stark visual expression. In December 2017, the world's attention was briefly focused on a video of an emaciated polar bear, struggling to stand in the Canadian Arctic.

"This is what starvation looks like," Paul Nicklen, the photographer who captured the scene, wrote on social media. "The muscles atrophy. No energy. It's a slow, painful death. When scientists say polar bears will be extinct in the next 100 years, I think of the global population of 25,000 bears dying in this manner.""

Read the SMH article 

#polarbears  #polar bear   #human driven mass extinction  #extinction  #global heating

See also: New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a 'Risky Distraction': Desmog

'Climate-change refugees' quit mainland farming in search of greener pastures in Tasmania: ABC News

See ABC story

"This week, farmers in parts of western Queensland saw their stock drown and die from exposure in disastrous flood conditions which Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said will likely claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of cattle.

The floods come after an extended period of drought, when many paddocks across the region were reduced to dust.
But for some farmers, these hellish conditions are a distant dream.

Rob and Sally McCreath quit mainland Australia to farm in Tasmania in 2016, where they foresaw an easier life.
They call themselves "climate-change refugees"."

Read the ABC News Story

FUEL TO THE FIRE HOW GEOENGINEERING THREATENS TO ENTRENCH FOSSIL FUELS AND ACCELERATE THE CLIMATE CRISIS

climate action now

"Executive Summary 

The present report investigates the early, ongoing, and often surprising role of the fossil fuel industry in developing, patenting, and promoting key geoengineering technologies. 

It examines how the most heavily promoted strategies for carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation modification depend on the continued production and combustion of carbon-intensive fuels for their viability. 

It analyzes how the hypothetical promise of future geoengineering is already being used by major fossil fuel producers to justify the continued production and use of oil, gas, and coal for decades to come. 

It exposes the stark contrast between the emerging narrative that geoengineering is a morally necessary adjunct to dramatic climate action, and the commercial arguments of key proponents that geoengineering is simply a way of avoiding or reducing the need for true systemic change, even as converging science and technologies demonstrate that shift is both urgently needed and increasingly feasible. 

Finally, it highlights the growing incoherence of advocating for reliance on speculative and risky geoengineering technologies in the face of mounting evidence that addressing the climate crisis is less about technology than about political will."

Read the original CIEL document 

See also  New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a 'Risky Distraction': Desmog

climate change quote

" A new report makes the case that the fossil fuel industry prefers geoengineering as an approach for addressing climate change because it allows the industry to keep arguing for continued fossil fuel use.
 
In Fuel to the Fire: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis, the Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL) warns that geoengineering, which includes technologies to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide and to shoot particles into the atmosphere to block sunlight, potentially offers more of a problem for the climate than a solution.

“Our research shows that nearly all proposed geoengineering strategies fail a fundamental test: do they reduce emissions and help end our reliance on fossil fuels?” said CIEL President Carroll Muffett, who co-authored the report with the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation.

If you've ever wondered about geoengineering, @ciel_tweets has a new report–you should definitely read it, and then you should get to work repowering our planet with renewable energy!https://t.co/XoRXOW73ap

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) February 13, 2019"

Read the DeSmog Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science article

Read time: 7 mins

By Justin Mikulka • Wednesday, February 13, 2019

#Bill McKibbon  #geoengineering  #carbondioxide  #climatechange  #climate action  # fossilfuels

Global warming is increasing the chances of worldwide harvest failure on the scale of the tragic 19th century drought and famine that claimed 50 million lives.

Awaiting aid in drought-ravaged Somalia in 2011. Image: Stuart Price/UN Multimedia

"LONDON − Climate change driven by human-induced global warming could recreate the conditions for a re-run of one of the most tragic episodes in human history, the Great Drought and Global Famine of 1875 to 1878.

Those years were marked by widespread and prolonged droughts in Asia, Brazil and Africa, triggered by a coincidence of unusual conditions in the Pacific, Indian, and North Atlantic Oceans.

The famine – made more lethal by the political constraints linked to 19th-century colonial domination of three continents – is now thought to have claimed up to 50 million lives.

And the message contained in new research published in the Journal of Climate is stark: what happened before could happen again."

Read the Climate Change blog article

#foodshortages  #famine  #global heating  #climate action  #asia  #brazil  #africa  

See also  New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

Be a patriot, eat less beef: grist

click to enlarge

As Josh Harkinson noted this week, cows are the United States’ single biggest source of methane — a potent gas that has 105 times the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide. That’s one major reason why beef’s greenhouse gas footprint is far higher than that of most other sources of protein, according to an EWG study. (Though it’s consumed at a fraction of the rate of beef or chicken, lamb is by far the most carbon intensive of the major meats, according to EWG, since the animal’s smaller body produces meat less efficiently but still produces a lot of methane.)

And EWG’s estimate of beef’s impact may actually be on the conservative side: A study released this week found the greenhouse gases associated with beef to be even higher.



So what should you eat instead of beef? One answer: Chicken, which has a carbon footprint roughly a fifth the size of beef’s.
Read grist article 

#veganism  #vegetarianism  #carbon footprint  #greenhouse gases  #meat  #chicken  #methane 

See also New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...

Ecocidal Maniacs: How Complacent, Fact-resistant Humans are Destroying the World: Fractal Enlightenment

Gas nozzle ecocide

"We all intuitively sense that there is something fundamentally unhealthy and unsustainable with the way our human cultures pollute and destroy the planet, but most of us do not have the moral courage to admit that we’re part of the problem. Cognitive dissonance too easily slips in and pacifies us against the discomfort. And so the vicious cycle continues.

This dissonance is so powerful that it compels people to remain ignorant to a great many things. The majority of us think we know the way the world works, when really we have forgotten that everything is connected. This can be extremely dangerous."

Read the original Fractal Enlightenment article

Image source:

Gas nozzle ecocide
Frantz Fanon quote
Brittany Jackson art

#ecocide  #climate change  #global heating  #cognitive dissonance  #climate change deniers

  See also: New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...