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Monthly Archives: February 2017

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19 February 2017, Bloomberg Fears Grow That Climate Conflicts Could Lead to War. Among the 21st-century threats posed by climate change — rising seas, melting permafrost and superstorms — European leaders are warning of a last-century risk they know all too well: War. Focusing too narrowly on the environmental consequences of global warming underestimates the military threats, top European and United Nations officials said at a global security conference in Munich this weekend. Their warnings follow the conclusions of defense and intelligence agencies that climate change could trigger resource and border conflicts. “Climate change is a threat multiplier that leads to social upheaval and possibly even armed conflict,” the UN’s top climate official, Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, said at the conference, which was attended by the U.S. secretaries of defense and homeland security, James Mattis and John Kelly. Even as European Union countries struggle to assimilate millions of African and Middle Eastern migrants and refugees, security officials are bracing for more of the same in the future. Secretary General Antonio Guterra named climate change and population growth as the two most serious “megatrends” threatening international peace and stability. Read More here

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17 February 2017, Climate News Network, Canada’s glacial ice loss raises sea level. Dramatic increase in ice loss from the Arctic glaciers of Canada’s northernmost archipelago is now a major contributor to sea level rise. \Glaciers on Canada’s Queen Elizabeth Islands are melting at an ever faster rate. Between 2005 and 2015, ice loss accelerated massively from three billion tonnes a year to 30 billion, according to new research. The islands, which make up Canada’s northernmost archipelago, are home to a quarter of all the Arctic ice − second only to Greenland. And the flow of meltwater there from what once were frozen rivers is now a major contributor to sea level rise. Scientists report in Environmental Research Letters journal that they used satellite data from 1991 to 2015, and ice thickness data from a separate NASAstudy, to calculate ice loss from the Queen Elizabeth Islands. Ice covers 105,000 square kilometres of the archipelago. There are eight ice caps, and altogether 254 glaciers flow into the sea. Glaciers everywhere in the world are in retreat, and researchers warned two years ago that Canada could eventually lose many of its frozen rivers. Read More here

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17 February 2017, New York Times, Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis. Climate change is threatening to push a crowded capital toward a breaking point. MEXICO CITY — On bad days, you can smell the stench from a mile away, drifting over a nowhere sprawl of highways and office parks. When the Grand Canal was completed, at the end of the 1800s, it was Mexico City’s Brooklyn Bridge, a major feat of engineering and a symbol of civic pride: 29 miles long, with the ability to move tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater per second. It promised to solve the flooding and sewage problems that had plagued the city for centuries. Only it didn’t, pretty much from the start. The canal was based on gravity. And Mexico City, a mile and a half above sea level, was sinking, collapsing in on itself. It still is, faster and faster, and the canal is just one victim of what has become a vicious cycle. Always short of water, Mexico City keeps drilling deeper for more, weakening the ancient clay lake beds on which the Aztecs first built much of the city, causing it to crumble even further. As Arnoldo Kramer, Mexico City’s chief resilience officer, put it: “Climate change has become the biggest long-term threat to this city’s future. And that’s because it is linked to water, health, air pollution, traffic disruption from floods, housing vulnerability to landslides — which means we can’t begin to address any of the city’s real problems without facing the climate issue.” Read More here

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16 February 2017, The Conversation, Climate change doubled the likelihood of the New South Wales heatwave. The heatwave that engulfed southeastern Australia at the end of last week has seen heat records continue to tumble like Jenga blocks. On Saturday February 11, as New South Wales suffered through the heatwave’s peak, temperatures soared to 47℃ in Richmond, 50km northwest of Sydney, while 87 fires raged across the state amid catastrophic fire conditions. On that day, most of NSW experienced temperatures at least 12℃ above normal for this time of year. In White Cliffs, the overnight minimum was 34.2℃, a new record for the state’s highest observed minimum temperature. On Friday, the average maximum temperature right across NSW hit 42.4℃, beating the previous February record of 42.0℃. The new record stood for all of 24 hours before it was smashed again on Saturday, as the whole state averaged 44.0℃ at its peak. At this time, NSW was the hottest place on Earth. A degree or two here or there might not sound like much, but to put it in cricketing parlance, those temperature records are the equivalent of a modern test batsman retiring with an average of over 100 – the feat of outdoing Don Bradman’s fabled 99.94 would undoubtedly be front-page news. And still the records continue to fall. Mungindi, on the border with Queensland, broke the NSW record of 50 days in a row above 35℃, set just four years ago at Bourke Airport, with the new record now at 52 days. Meanwhile, two days after that sweltering Saturday we woke to find the fires ignited during the heatwave still cutting a swathe of destruction, with the small town of Uarbry, east of Dunedoo, all but burned to the ground. Read More here

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