NewsRack: demo/Climate-Change/Impacts/Storm

Proposals to ship coal by train through Northwest ports - Seattle Times: Opinion

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Keep the coal in the ground Roger McClellan expresses discomfort with the way activists are using anecdotal evidence of health impacts of coal dust to justify the coal-train protests. [“Let science, not conjecture, guide discussion of coal-train dangers,” Opinion, May 10.] As a climate s

Climate disasters displace millions of people worldwide - The Guardian -- World Latest

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes

Overheated rhetoric on climate change doesn’t make for good policies - Washington Post

Lamar Smith — Sun, 19 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Climate change is an issue that needs to be discussed thoughtfully and objectively. Unfortunately, claims that distort the facts hinder the legitimate evaluation of policy options. The rhetoric has driven some policymakers toward costly regulations and policies that will harm hardworking American families and do little to decrease global carbon emissions. The Obama administration’s decision to delay, and possibly deny, the Keystone XL pipeline is a prime ...

Letter: Cutting Carbon Emissions - NY Times: Editorials

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Letter: Cutting Carbon Emissions

Climate change meltdown unlikely but human disaster looms, claims new research - Guardian: Environment

Fiona Harvey — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

But forecast global temperature rise of 4C heralds disaster for large swaths of planet with oceans absorbing most global warming Some of the most extreme predictions of global warming are unlikely to materialise, new scientific research has suggested, but the world is still likely to be in for a temperature rise of double that regarded as safe. The researchers said that warming was most likely to reach about 4C above pre-industrial levels if the past decade's readings were taken into account. That would still lead to catastrophe across large swaths of the Earth, causing droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves and with drastic effects on agricultural productivity leading to secondary effects such as mass migration. Some climate change sceptics have suggested that because the highest global average temperature yet recorded was in 1998, climate change has stalled. The new study, which is published in the journal Nature Geoscience , shows a much longer "pause" would be needed to suggest ...

Barack Obama must act like a true leader | Observer editorial - Guardian: Comment is Free

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

It is always hard for an American president in the second term, but both his country and the world need Obama to show strength and courage and put scandal behind him It is a simple fact of American politics that power starts to fade away from a second-term president almost from the moment they are sworn in. Theoretically freed from the chains of having ever to seek re-election, they soon find that America's all too self-interested professional politicians are suddenly aware that the current occupant of the Oval Office will not be around in four years. The ability to cajole and bully Congress – and even members of their own party – and get them to pass laws – starts to evaporate. Add to that the propensity of second terms to see presidency-defining scandal – think Monica Lewinsky, think Iran-Contra – and it is no wonder that many re-elected presidents seem simply to be waiting around for the term "lame duck" to be applied. But even by the super-charged standards of the modern news cycle, ...

Impossible Choice Faces America's First 'Climate Refugees' - NPR News

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the tiny town of Newtok, Alaska, could be completely underwater by 2017. Its 350 residents must relocate or stay to face the floods, but a move is easier said than done.

State Of the Beaches: Rebuilding the Coastline, but at What Cost? - NYT > Environment

By JENNY ANDERSON — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

State Of the Beaches: Rebuilding the Coastline, but at What Cost?

UK's climate change adaptation team cut from 38 officials to just six - Guardian: Environment

Fiona Harvey — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Former senior official John Ashton attacks government for 'spooking potential investors' in energy infrastructure The number of people employed by the government to work on the UK's response to the effects of climate change has been cut from 38 officials to just six, triggering accusations that David Cameron's promise to be the greenest government has been abandoned. The UK is facing a multi-billion pound bill over the next few years for the costs of adapting to the effects of climate change – including flooding , much fiercer storms, droughts, heatwaves and more extreme weather. The government's advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, have warned that the measures needed to prepare the UK's infrastructure will include defences for power stations, transport and communication networks, changes to how buildings are constructed, and new ways of trying to prevent flooding, such as an upgrade to the Thames Barrier. But the number of officials charged with dealing with the issue within the ...

Flooding threatens one in four London properties, warns Environment Agency - Guardian: Environment

Damian Carrington — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Almost £250bn worth of housing in capital at risk as flood defence budget cuts threaten homes and insurance policies across UK One in four London properties – collectively worth around £250bn – are at risk of flooding, according to official assessments of the flood dangers now facing homes in England and Wales. Ten of the top 25 most at-risk local authority areas across England and Wales are now London boroughs. The Environment Agency's 2013 National Flood Risk Assessment, unpublished but seen by the Guardian, shows that London boroughs now dominate the local authorities with most properties in jeopardy from river and tidal flooding, with only the city of Hull and the surrounding East Riding region with comparable numbers. THammersmith and Fulham, Southwark and Wandsworth are among the most threatened. Meanwhile, there was a 26% year-on-year drop in investment in flood defences between 2010 and 2011, with disproportionately high cuts in the capital. Separate figures compiled by the ...

Letter: Mold After the Hurricane - NY Times: Editorials

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Letter: Mold After the Hurricane

Meet the Alaskans poised to become 'America's first climate refugees' - MinnPost

Ron Meador — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

If we think of them at all, Americans still tend to think of "climate refugees" as remote —far away and off in the future somewhere, driven by rising sea levels to flee Pacific islands or the plains of south Asia, places of which we know next to nothing. The 100,000 people of Kiribati, say, who are imploring Australia and New Zealand ( so far without success ) to accept them as displaced persons before the ocean erases the 10 feet now separating their homes from sea level. A crisis much closer to home, in both time and territory, is documented in a remarkable series published this week in Britain's Guardian: Climate-driven havoc in nearly 200 native villages across Alaska, whose residents are positioned to become, probably within the decade, "America's First Climate Refugees." Richly illustrated and highly interactive, the project portrays the communities' approaching doom with an intimacy that may border on unbearable for some. But it's a story we need to know. Suzanne Goldenberg, ...

Alaska's erosion accelerated by climate change - Guardian: Environment

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Warmer temperatures, heavy rain, flooding, sea-level rise and retreating sea ice are stealing the ground from beneath Alaskans' feet

Guardian US interactive team

Move to safer ground is going too slowly - Guardian: Environment

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Tensions are running high in an Alaskan village immediately threatened by climate change

Guardian US interactive team

Economic Scene: Insurers Stray From the Conservative Line on Climate Change - NYT > Environment

By EDUARDO PORTER — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Economic Scene: Insurers Stray From the Conservative Line on Climate Change

Christie’s broken promise - Washington Post: Op-Eds

Katrina vanden Heuvel — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Last week, as news circulated of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s weight-loss surgery, so did a video in which Christie parodied his own brand — and the fleece he wore day and night during the Hurricane Sandy crisis. In the video, he asks everybody from Morning Joe to Jon Bon Jovi if they’ve seen his now-missing fleece, without which he is powerless, like Iron Man without his suit. ...

Alaska's villages on the frontline of climate change - Guardian: Environment

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

As the ice melts, erosion, flooding and extreme storms are threatening a way of life for many indigenous communities

Guardian US interactive team

Floods could 'overwhelm Thames Barrier by end of century' - Guardian: Environment

Fiona Harvey — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Sea-level rises could send storm floods over the barrier if nothing is done to bolster the UK's flood defences Sea-level rises could send floods driven by storm surges over London's Thames Barrier regularly by the end of the century, if nothing is done to bolster the UK's flood defences, scientists warned on Tuesday. But around the world sea level rises from melting ice alone are likely to be "in the tens of centimetres" rather than several metres by 2100, as some outlying estimates had predicted, according to Ice2Sea , a project bringing together scientists from around Europe in order to improve predictions of sea level rises under climate change. The scientists also said there was only a one-in-20 chance that melting ice would contribute more than 84cm to sea level rises by 2100. Their work has helped to narrow down some of the vast differences in estimates of sea level rises. But their central estimate range is still large – that ice melting is likely to contribute between 3.5 to ...

Politics and climate change go hand-in-hand - Guardian: Environment

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Though Sarah Palin has reversed her policy since she was governor, it is undeniable that Alaska is changing fast

Guardian US interactive team

Newtok's residents race to stop village falling into sea - Guardian: Environment

Guardian US interactive team, Suzanne Goldenberg — Sun, 12 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Newtok is losing ground to the sea at a dangerous rate. Unless its population can be relocated in time, an entire community will cease to exist and the villagers will become America's first climate refugees

Guardian US interactive team

Suzanne Goldenberg

Doha deadlock on climate finance can be broken next week - Oxfam International RSS main feed

Laurent Le Gouanvic — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Governments must move quickly at this year’s first UN climate change meeting to plug the gaping deficit of funds to help developing countries adapt to climate change and lower their emissions. Bonn, Germany – Governments must move quickly at this year’s first UN climate change meeting to plug the gaping deficit of funds to help developing countries adapt to climate change and lower their emissions, international aid agency Oxfam said today. The meeting, starting in Bonn, Germany on Monday April 29, will be the first time governments meet to discuss collective climate change action since last year’s Doha summit, where they failed to agree on any climate finance plans for this year and beyond after the end of the ‘Fast Start Finance’ arrangement in 2012. A new funding period 2013 is a critical year for climate finance. It marks a new funding period when pledges need to be boosted significantly if governments are to honor their 2009 promise to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 ...

Climate change 'will make hundreds of millions homeless' - The Guardian -- World Latest

Robin McKie — Sat, 11 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm). Massive movements of people are likely to occur over the rest of the century because global temperatures are likely to rise to by up to 5C because carbon dioxide levels have risen unabated for 50 years, said Stern, who is head of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. "When temperatures rise to that level, we will have disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts," he said. "Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will ...

Prince Charles is a danger to democracy – even when I agree with him | Peter Wilby - Guardian: Comment is Free

Peter Wilby — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

I support Charles's views on climate change, but still believe he should stay silent – as the Queen probably does It is sometimes tempting, even for a republican like me, to applaud Prince Charles. Talking about climate change at a conference in London this week, he mocked "the Incorporated Society of Syndicated Sceptics and the International Association of Corporate Lobbyists", and urged politicians "to face down a storm of opposition from all sides". The risk was too great to wait for more scientific tests, he argued; like doctors treating a fever, politicians should "act on what is there". Well said, sir! But no matter how much you and I agree, the prince should have remained silent. True, global warming is accepted as a fact by every party in the Commons, and nearly all climate scientists think it no more controversial than the roundness of the planet. Charles, however, strays into areas of political dispute over what should be done. He is not even helping the green cause: he feeds the ...

Kerala coast vulnerable to tsunami inundation - Hindu: Home

T. Nandakumar — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The entire stretch of the Kerala coast could be vulnerable to inundation caused by tsunami waves originating from different sources, a numerical modelling study of tsunami propagation in the South...

Schmitt and Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide - Wall St. Journal: Opinion

Wed, 08 May 2013 18:30:00 GMT

The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature.