Posted on 06/16/2009 11:14:27 AM PDT by FromLori
Heatwaves, storms, erosion, droughts, no fish, and 120 days of 90+ degree weather in Kansas. Lordy!
A new report on climate change details how awful global warming will be.
The United States Global Change Research Program, a joint scientific venture of 13 federal agencies and the White House conducted the report, which will be released this afternoon at 1:30 pm. The New York Times was given an advanced look:
Here's what we have to look forward to:
powerful tropical storms erosion of ocean coastlines caused by melting Arctic ice, increase in drought in the Southwest, more intense heat waves in the Northeast Reduced mountain snowpack Earlier melt-offs and reduced stream volumes across the West and Northwest, affecting residential and agricultural water supplies, habitats for spawning fish and reduced hydroelectric power generation. The lead author of the report says "What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives.”
Joe Romm at Climate Progress has been looking over the draft versions of the report, which have been online, and posted the graphic on the right:
Cimate Progress: Look at Kansas. By 2090, it’ll be above 90°F some 120 days a year — more than the entire summer. Much of Florida and Texas will be above 90°F for half the year. These won’t be called heat waves anymore. It’ll just be the “normal” climate.
While the change is striking, it's up for debate how damaging all this will be to human lives.
Dr. Karl said the section of the 188-page report dealing with human-health effects generated the most discussion and uncertainty among the agencies. The study said rising average temperatures would cause more heat-related illnesses and deaths, along with some reduction in deaths from extreme cold.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Crops under stress as temperatures fall
For the second time in little over a year, it looks as though the world may be heading for a serious food crisis, thanks to our old friend “climate change”. In many parts of the world recently the weather has not been too brilliant for farmers. After a fearsomely cold winter, June brought heavy snowfall across large parts of western Canada and the northern states of the American Midwest. In Manitoba last week, it was -4ºC. North Dakota had its first June snow for 60 years.None of this has given much cheer to farmers. In Canada and northern America summer planting of corn and soybeans has been way behind schedule, with the prospect of reduced yields and lower quality. Grain stocks are predicted to be down 15 per cent next year. US reserves of soya – used in animal feed and in many processed foods – are expected to fall to a 32-year low.
There are obviously various reasons for this concern as to whether the world can continue to feed itself, but one of them is undoubtedly the downturn in world temperatures, which has brought more cold and snow since 2007 than we have known for decades.
Three factors are vital to crops: the light and warmth of the sun, adequate rainfall and the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis. As we are constantly reminded, we still have plenty of that nasty, polluting CO2, which the politicians are so keen to get rid of. But there is not much they can do about the sunshine or the rainfall.
It is now more than 200 years since the great astronomer William Herschel observed a correlation between wheat prices and sunspots. When the latter were few in number, he noted, the climate turned colder and drier, crop yields fell and wheat prices rose. In the past two years, sunspot activity has dropped to its lowest point for a century. One of our biggest worries is that our politicians are so fixated on the idea that CO2 is causing global warming that most of them haven’t noticed that the problem may be that the world is not warming but cooling, with all the implications that has for whether we get enough to eat.
It is appropriate that another contributory factor to the world’s food shortage should be the millions of acres of farmland now being switched from food crops to biofuels, to stop the world warming, Last year even the experts of the European Commission admitted that, to meet the EU’s biofuel targets, we will eventually need almost all the food-growing land in Europe. But that didn’t persuade them to change their policy. They would rather we starved than did that. And the EU, we must always remember, is now our government – the one most of us didn’t vote for last week.
http://bluelori.blogspot.com/2009/06/control-food-control-people.html
They sure know how to capitalize on the ignorance and stupidity of half of the American electorate....
Right, Just TAX global warming and it will stop.
I know if they TAX me enough I will come to a screeching halt, for sure.
Government reports of today have no meaning. People are fast learning they made one huge mistake in the last election. Now they are learning how to control this government instead of them controlling the people.
And I couldn't agree with you more: it's a really, really, dumb idea to start burning our food in our autos to "save the planet." Not.
Global warming my ass.
Good stuff on there thanks!
No mention, though, of whether poor and minorities will be hardest hit.
my garden plants are not growing because it is to cold out side, 3 years ago everything was growing great now - nothing.
and its the middle of june
Someone should ask the great One, the Mighty O, what he plans to do to protect Washington DC, his seat of power.
Surely we should be building giant sea walls to protect our capital city. Or raise all the monuments up on stilts.
We have to do something, anything, before it’s all too late.
Don’t they realize we’re all DOOOMED? Dooooomed, I say!
Global Warming my a$$.
Down here in Yuma Az we should be having high temps between 104 to 108 with lows in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s this time of year. For the last 3 weeks we have yet to break 100. Our high yesterday was 92 with a low of 64.
GLOBAL WARMING MUST BE REAL!!
Here is has been so chilly at night we have had the heat on and NO RAIN!
Expect more of these propganda pieces the closer we get to when congress starts considering some kind of Global Warming legislation.
Wheat price sunspot BTTT
Not all of us.
My crap is perfectly safe and is likely to remain that way, thankyouverymuch.
I can't speak for children, the insane, liberals (but I repeat myself), the feeble-minded, the ignorant, the illiterate and the neurotic.
But you probably already knew that.
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