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Climate Change Working Group

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The mission of this working group is to explore the evidence regarding points of leverage assisting human groups in coping with or reducing the risk of global climate change.

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This working group is focused on issues of Global Climate Change.
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admin Albert Gomez Amanda Cole Anthony ChrisAllen david hastings
fosternt Kathy Gilbeaux Maeryn Obley mashalshah mdmcdonald MDMcDonald_me_com
Nguyen Ninh StarDart

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Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement

           

nytimes.com - by Michael D. Shear - June 1, 2017

President Trump announced Thursday that he will withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord, weakening global efforts to combat climate change and siding with conservatives who argued that the landmark 2015 agreement was harming the economy.

But he will stick to the withdrawal process laid out in the Paris agreement, which President Barack Obama joined and most of the world has already ratified. That could take nearly four years to complete, meaning a final decision would be up to the American voters in the next presidential election.

Still, Mr. Trump’s decision is a remarkable rebuke to fellow heads-of-state, climate activists, corporate executives and members of the president’s own staff, all of whom failed this week to change Mr. Trump’s mind with an intense, last-minute lobbying blitz.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

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What Happens to Earth if the US Exits the Climate Deal?

           

Credit:  AP Photo/Jim Cole, File

washingtonpost.com - Associated Press - May 27, 2017

 . . . In an attempt to understand what could happen to the planet if the U.S. pulls out of Paris, The Associated Press consulted with more than two dozen climate scientists and analyzed a special computer model scenario designed to calculate potential effects.

Scientists said it would worsen an already bad problem, and make it far more difficult to prevent crossing a dangerous global temperature threshold.

 . . . “The U.S. matters a great deal . . . That amount could make the difference between meeting the Paris limit of two degrees and missing it” . . . 

While scientists may disagree on the computer simulations they overwhelmingly agreed that the warming the planet is undergoing now would be faster and more intense.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

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Scientists Say the Pace of Sea Level Rise Has Nearly Tripled Since 1990

           

An iceberg is pictured in the western Antarctic peninsula in March 2016. (Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images)

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - PNAS - Reassessment of 20th century global mean sea level rise

washingtonpost.com - by Chris Mooney - May 22, 2017

A new scientific analysis finds that the Earth’s oceans are rising nearly three times as rapidly as they were throughout most of the 20th century, one of the strongest indications yet that a much feared trend of not just sea level rise, but its acceleration, is now underway.

“We have a much stronger acceleration in sea level rise than formerly thought,” said Sönke Dangendorf, a researcher with the University of Siegen in Germany who led the study along with scientists at institutions in Spain, France, Norway and the Netherlands.

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Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts

The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters. Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP

Image:  The Svalbard ‘doomsday’ seed vault was built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters. Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP

theguardian.com - May 19th 2017 - Damian Carrington

It was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever. But the Global Seed Vault, buried in a mountain deep inside the Arctic circle, has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

The vault is on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and contains almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop. 

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Chicago Just Posted All the Climate Data Deleted by Trump’s EPA

CLICK HERE - City of Chicago - Climate Change - United States Environmental Protection Agency

grist.org - by Kate Yoder - May 8, 2017

The EPA’s climate change webpage was taken down for revisions last month to “reflect EPA’s priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt.” It’s apparently still being updated. (We checked, so you don’t have to.)

The page — which explained the basics of climate science and how it affects us — now has a new home: The City of Chicago’s website.

“Here in Chicago, we know climate change is real, and we will continue to take action to fight it,” reads a statement city officials added to what is essentially a direct facsimile of what was once on the EPA’s site.

An archived “Jan. 19 snapshot”  of the climate science page is still linked on the EPA site, but there’s one tiny problem: As Climate Central reported, the archive is missing information.

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Here’s the Ideal Temp for Mosquito-Borne Diseases

           

(Credit: budak/Flickr)

CLICK HERE - PLOS - Detecting the impact of temperature on transmission of Zika, dengue, and chikungunya using mechanistic models

futurity.org - Stanford University - May 5, 2017

New research shows how rising temperatures might influence mosquito behavior and disease risk around the world. The researchers also calibrated their model with field data on human infections of mosquito-borne diseases.

Scientists have known for some time that climate change has caused the extension of mosquito season beyond the summer months, but the ways in which climate change affects the risk of mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika has remained somewhat mysterious . . .

 . . . The group found that mosquito traits favorable to spreading disease peaked when temperatures reached 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit), but were lower when temperatures were cooler or warmer.

(CLICK HERE - READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

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Why the Menace of Mosquitoes Will Only Get Worse

Aedes aegypti. Credit Andrew Bettles for The New York Times

Climate change is altering the environment in ways that increase the potential for viruses like Zika.

nytimes.com - by Maryn McKenna - April 20, 2017

 . . . Climate change is turning abnormal weather into a common occurrence: Last year was the warmest year on record, the third in a row, and there were more heat waves, freezes and storms in the United States that caused $1 billion or more in damage just in 2016 than in the years 1980 to 1984 combined. Anything that improves conditions for mosquitoes tips the scales for the diseases they carry as well: the West Nile virus that flattened Dallas, the dengue that returned to Florida in 2009 after 63 years and the newest arrival, Zika, which gained a toehold in the United States last year and is expected to surge this summer . . .

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How a Warming Planet Drives Human Migration

           

           

Climate displacement is becoming one of the world’s most powerful — and destabilizing — geopolitical forces.

CLICK HERE - NASA - Common Sense Climate Index

CLICK HERE - UNHCR - Global Forced Displacement

CLICK HERE - REPORT - UNHCR - Global Trends - Forced Displacement in 2015 (68 page .PDF report)

nytimes.com - by Jessica Benko - April 19, 2017

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Receding Glacier Causes Immense Canadian River to Vanish in Four Days

       

A view of the ice canyon that now carries meltwater from the Kaskawulsh glacier, seen here on the right, away from the Slims river and toward the Kaskawulsh river. Photograph: Dan Shugar/University of Washington Tacoma

First ever observed case of ‘river piracy’ saw the Slims river disappear as intense glacier melt suddenly diverted its flow into another watercourse

theguardian.com - by Hannah Devlin - April 17, 2017

An immense river that flowed from one of Canada’s largest glaciers vanished over the course of four days last year, scientists have reported, in an unsettling illustration of how global warming dramatically changes the world’s geography.

The abrupt and unexpected disappearance of the Slims river, which spanned up to 150 metres at its widest points, is the first observed case of “river piracy”, in which the flow of one river is suddenly diverted into another.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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'It Scares Me': Permafrost Thaw in Canadian Arctic Sign of Global Trend

           

Jim McDonald, the mayor of Inuvik, stands in front of a warehouse that’s slated for demolition due to melting permafrost, which has shifted the building's foundation. (David Michael Lamb/CBC)

cbc.ca - by David Michael Lamb - April 17, 2017

Canada is melting.

Like a popsicle taken out of the freezer and left on the counter, the permanently frozen ground in the northern reaches of this country is thawing at an ever faster rate . . .

 . . . For years now, buildings in Inuvik have been gradually sinking into the ground as it softens. Others are so unstable, they are literally sliding off their foundations . . . 

 . . . This is where a local problem becomes a global concern.

Scientists in the Northwest Territories, Alaska and Siberia are now realizing that as the ground under them melts, it will not only make life harder for the people living in the Arctic, but will in fact speed up climate change around the globe.

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