Don’t Worry, it’s Only Earth

A Herculean task, significant impact on physical and biological systems globally, worst cases in 800,000 years

One species disappears every 20 minutes, UN Experts

“In my view, climate change and the loss of biodiversity are the most alarming challenges on the global agenda,” Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said at the opening of a U.N. biodiversity conference on Monday.

Some of the biodiversity of a coral reef. Reproduced under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license, ersion 1.2 or any later version. (author: Richard Ling)

“In my view, climate change [Germany is the world’s 6th largest pollutor] and the loss of biodiversity are the most alarming challenges on the global agenda […] It will be a Herculean task to get the world community and each individual country on the right path to sustainability [still talking about ‘Tending Our Goats at the Edge of Apocalypse’] … The truth today is that we are still on the wrong track. If we follow this path we can foresee that we will fail to meet the target … Business as usual is no more an option if humanity is going to survive. Losing biodiversity is not just losing trees and species, it is an economic and security loss. [Thanks for reading our blogs, Mr Gabriel!]” (Source)

Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change

Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans, with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the direction expected with warming temperature. Here we show that these changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone. Given the conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely to be due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, and furthermore that it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent except Antarctica, we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents. (Source)

Instrumental Temperature record of the last 150 years. (Author: Robert A. Rohde) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License Version 2.5

Greenhouse gases highest in 800,000 years

Atmospheric greenhouse gases are now at the highest levels in 800,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice, which provides additional evidence that human activity is disrupting the climate.

“Shanghai at sunset, as seen from the observation deck of the Jin Mao tower. The sun has not actually dropped below the horizon yet, rather it has reached the smog line.” This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (Photo: Suicup; via: Wikimedia Commons. )

“We can firmly say that today’s concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane are 28 and 124 percent higher respectively than at any time during the last 800,000 years,” said Thomas Stocker, a researcher at the University of Berne. (Source)

Related Links:

• Failing Ecosystems
• State of the World
• First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
  
• Nuking Earth for Lifestyle

• Giga Trends
• Tipping Point
• Future Scenarios
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix

Disgrace, Disgrace, You’re Such an Ugly Disgrace …

White House “pivotal” in Calif. Emissions Control

White House pressure may have influenced the Environmental Protection Agency to reject a bid by California to impose strict limits on emissions from new cars and trucks.

Stephen Johnson, EPA Administrator [and former junk “scientist”] rejected California’s plan to impose a tough limits on emissions from new cars and trucks last year, despite warnings from agency experts that “rejecting the limits could prompt lawsuits that the agency would lose,” a Democratic staff said in memo after extensive investigation.

Does he pray to the same ‘God’ as Cheney?

Johnson had initially agreed, in part, with the proposed tougher emissions standards, but “reversed his position after communications with officials in the White House.”

“The record before this committee suggests that the White House played a pivotal role in the decision to reject the California petition, but it does not explain the basis for the White House intervention,” the memo said. (Source)

Should the top EPA job go to a White House “yes man” or woman?

Related Links:

• EPA official no match for Dow
• 60 Percent of EPA Staff Have ‘Personally Experienced’ ‘Political Interference
  
• Washington waste site: Recent reports confirm that the EPA needs a major cleanup

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