18 August 2016, New Internationalist, Climate change and colonial history make a toxic combination. New research points to a powerful link between climate change and armed conflict. It also finds that countries that are ethnically mixed are more likely to experience this kind of conflict. But their results may actually tell us more about the consequences of colonialism than ethnic diversity. This new research joins a raft of existing research on climate change and conflict – often reaching competing conclusions. What is the link between climate change and conflict? This isn’t an issue that can be solved with one study. There are in fact hundreds of studies looking at this issue. And they don’t all reach the same conclusion. Some studies do show that climate impacts lead to increased violence. But some studies find that there was actually no connection at all. Being hit by a disaster or climate change impacts didn’t make any difference to levels of violence. Some studies even found the opposite. Climate change impacts actually reduced some kinds of violence. So what happens when we look at all this research as a whole? Yes, some of the studies point in different directions. But what about when we consider all the research together? Does it point to powerful climate – conflict connection, or not? It still isn’t clear. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
16 August 2016, Yale Climate Connections, TV Meteorologists Seen Warming to Climate Science. This month’s video reports on a continuing evolution in recent years in TV weathercasters’ willingness to put their forecasts in the context of a warming climate. is month’s “This is Not Cool” Yale Climate Connections video reports several leading TV weathercasters’ views on discussing climate in the context of weather forecasting.
Through their own words in a series of in-person and Skype interviews, plus clips from some recent broadcasts on extreme weather events, independent videographer Peter Sinclair’s video describes the rapidly evolving perspectives: prominent national and local broadcast meteorologists saying they now see it as their responsibility to keep certain weather events in the context of the changing climate. The TV weathercasters featured in the video relate how their views on the science of climate change have evolved in recent years. “I think you’re seeing more and more TV meteorologists understand that responsibility,” says Washington Post meteorologist Jason Samenow. Raleigh, N.C., WRAL-TV meteorologist Greg Fishel points to TV weathercasters being a principal link between the science community and the public, placing a “tremendous responsibility to make sure that we are not letting any ideology into our science reporting, that we are dealing with facts and relaying them as accurately as we can to the public.” Phoenix ABC 15 chief meteorologist Amber Sullins points to “a definite increase in the amount of extreme heat just in my life time there in the City of Phoenix.”“It’s irresponsible if you don’t put the current weather trends into some sort of climate context,” Samenow says. “There are some people who don’t want to hear about that, but you’re not telling the entire story if you just report the weather and you don’t explain how this weather fits into changes which are happening.” Read More here
18 August 2016, Reuters, Scientists to probe ways of meeting tough global warming goal. Scientists on Thursday set the outlines of a report on how to restrict global warming to a limit agreed last year by world leaders – even though the temperature threshold is at risk of being breached already. The U.N.-led study, due to be published in 2018 as a guide for governments, will look into ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to cap the rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. It will examine impacts of a 1.5C rise on vulnerable parts of the world including Greenland’s ice sheet and coral reefs. Thelma Krug, a Brazilian scientist who led the four-day meeting in Geneva, said it will also cast the fight against climate change as part of a wider struggle to end poverty and ensure sustainable growth. “Rapid changes are needed for (no rise above) 1.5C,” she told Reuters.World leaders agreed to work towards that target at a meeting in Paris in December, also requesting the report as part of a global agreement to phase out greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, in the second half the century. The global rise reached 1.3C in the first half of 2016, which is almost certain to be the warmest year since records began in the 19th century, beating 2015. Some studies indicate emissions could breach levels consistent with 1.5C within about five years. Many show temperatures overshooting that limit and then being reduced later by extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere with yet-to-be developed technology. “It will be difficult, but there are also opportunities,” said Sabine Fuss, a delegate at the Geneva meeting from the Mercator Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. Costly action now could help avert even more expensive damage from floods, heat waves, extinctions and rising ocean levels, she said. Read More here
18 August 2016, The Telegraph, Alaskan village votes in favour of relocating due to climate change. tiny Alaskan village has voted to abandon their ancestral home to the rising seas, becoming possibly the first settlement in the United States forced to relocate due to climate change. Shishmaref’s 650 residents voted 89-78 in favour of a long-discussed proposal to move the entire village, to an as-yet-undecided new location, according to an unofficial count by the city clerk. Official results are expected on Thursday. In March a Native American community in Louisiana announced that it, too, was relocating – thus the Alaska village and the residents of the Isle de Jean Charles are vying to be the first to move. The remote Alaskan village, on a mile-wide island 600 miles from Alaska’s biggest city Anchorage, is described as being on the frontline of the climate change battle. Home for generations of seal hunters and fishermen, the island has lost 3,000 feet of coastline in the past 35 years. Rising temperatures have shrunk the sea ice, which buffered Shishmaref from storm surges. At the same time, the permafrost that the village is built on has begun to melt, with the shore receding at an average rate of up to 10 feet a year. Warmer waters allow more commercial ships to pass, polluting the seas and disturbing their fragile ecosystem. Thinner ice has led to a surge in fatalities among the hunters, who plunge to their deaths through the cracks. Read More here