Global Warming or Climate Change

OSLO — Global warming will reduce average wheat yields by 6 percent for every 1.8-degree increase in temperature, a study by a U.S.-led team of scientists said today. That would be a bigger-than-expected brake on food production. The decrease would be 46.2 million tons from a harvest of 771 million tons of wheat worldwide in 2012, highlighting a need to breed more heat-tolerant crops. In recent decades, wheat yields have declined in hotter sites such as India, Africa, Brazil and Australia, more than offsetting yield gains in some cooler places, including parts of the United States, Europe and China, the study showed. “Global wheat production is estimated to fall by 6 percent for each degree Celsius — 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — of further temperature increase,” according to the scientists, who used wheat-crop computer models and field experiments. They said there are many options to limit the damage from higher temperatures involving the development of wheat types that toler

First it was beavers. Now climate scientists are criticizing squirrels for their contribution to global warming. Researchers presented findings to the American Geophysical Union at a fall meeting in San Francisco, Calif., that squirrels are causing vast greenhouse gas reserves in permafrost to be released, which is contributing to global warming. “We know wildlife impacts vegetation, and we know vegetation impacts thaw and soil carbon,” said Dr. Sue Natali of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts,  according to BBC News . “It certainly has a bigger impact than we’ve considered and it’s something we will be considering more and more going into the future.” Vast amounts of carbon dioxide accumulates in the Arctic permafrost and remains frozen in the soil year-round. That is, until squirrels dig it up and release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, driving temperature rises, according to scientists. Natali and fellow researcher Nigel Golden of the University o

The past couple weeks have given climate change skeptics plenty of events that  seem like reasons  to dispute global warming. An  inundation of wintry weather  across the country carried snowstorms and freezing temperatures  everywhere from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast . Most recently,  snowstorms in Buffalo, NY  have made travel impossible, caused roofs to buckle, and left at least a dozen people dead. If it's so cold and there's a dangerous amount of snow, then how could the Earth possibly be warming? Derek Gee/Buffalo News Buffalo, NY is being crushed with snow. Read more:  http://uk.businessinsider.com/cold-weather-doesnt-discredit-climate-change-2014-11?r=US#ixzz3LtisV0Em Part of the confusion comes down to our understanding of weather and climate. People question the scientific reality of global warming because they don't know the difference between the two. Weather is what we see day-to-day. It explains changes in the atmosphere over short p

One hates to be skeptical, particularly about international cooperation, particularly about addressing a problem that will drastically alter life on earth. The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is seen in this undated NASA image But really. Another international meeting on climate change? Wasn’t there just one in New York in September? And wasn’t there one last November in Poland and the year before that in Qatar? And in each of the 17 previous years in some other city? There was Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 which produced a protocol that the United States wouldn’t sign. There was the Copenhagen Accord of 2009, which said basically that yup, climate change was still a big problem. Is this really the best that the international community can do to preserve the planet? We’re now on Big International Meeting No. 20, in Lima, Peru, the main point of which seems to be getting things ready for next year’s big international meeting in Paris. By then another 10 billion metric tons of carb

Washington: Providing a modified approach to the relationship between global warming and extreme weather conditions, a new study focuses on weather events that - at the time they occur - are more extreme than any other factor. Since high-quality weather records are found to be only 100 years old, most scientists have been reluctant to say if global warming affected particular extreme events. "Understanding whether the probability of those high impact events has changed can help us to plan for future extreme events, and to value the costs and benefits of avoiding future global warming," said Noah Diffenbaugh, associate professor at the Stanford University in the US. "The media are often focused on whether global warming caused a particular event," Diffenbaugh said. In a paper to be presented at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Diffenbaugh outlines three elements: a long record of climate observations; a large colle

In the time since the Al Gore global warming movie “An Inconvenient Truth” came out, scientists and other experts have analyzed its claims. While most do not deny the legitimacy of global warming as a reality, there are questions about the extreme consequences Gore predicted.  A British judge summed up these concerns about the movie in 2007, when considering whether or not it should be a part of a public school curriculum.  The Guardian  reported. About the sensationalism in the global warming movie, high court judge Justice Michael Burton said, “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr. Gore’s wake-up call.”  ALERT:  Is Global Warming a Hoax? Vote Now  Here are 10 facts as presented by Al Gore that the judge and others have questioned in the movie.  1.  The expected 20-foot rise in sea levels caused by melting ice caps: The judge accepted that this rise might happen, but only over the course of thousands of years. 2. The “shutting down of the ocean conveyor”: The judge claimed the

A  global deal to combat climate change lurches toward reality in Lima, Peru, this week—and yet any politically feasible agreement will be insufficient to restrain continued warming of global average temperatures, perhaps uncomfortably high. Although recent pledges by China, the 28 countries of the European Union and the U.S. are the first signs of the possibility of restraining the endless growth of greenhouse gas pollution  on a long-term basis, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have crossed the threshold of  400 parts per million —and will reach 450 ppm in less than two decades at present growth rates. The estimated  one trillion metric tons of carbon  the atmosphere can absorb could be burned through in even less time, particularly if India, as it develops, picks up where China leaves off by burning coal without any attempt to capture the CO2 before the greenhouse gas spews from smokestacks.   ARTIFICIAL VOLCANO:  Could mimicking a massive volcanic eruption, like that

This year is in the running to be the hottest globally and for the UK since records began, early estimates show. (from BBC) In the first 10 months of 2014, global average air temperature was about 0.57 Celsius above the long-term average. And the first eleven months in the UK have produced an average temperature 1.6C above the long-term. A separate study by the UK Met Office says the observed temperatures would be highly unlikely without the influence of greenhouse gases produced by humans. The global figures come in estimates from the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). If this year's current global trend continues for the next two months, the previous record years of 1998, 2005 and 2010 will be overtaken by a narrow margin. The Secretary-General of the WMO, Michel Jarraud, said the preliminary data for 2014 was "consistent with what we expect from a changing climate." In comments released with the new figures, he said: "The provisi

World Meteorological Organisation report says CO2  concentrations  grew at the fastest rate since reliable  global  records began in 1984 Experts say the rise in CO2 levels is outpacing fossil fuel use, so the planet's natural ability to soak up emissions of the gas may be slowing down The  biosphere (plants and soil)  and oceans may be absorbing less of the gas The longer fossil fuel use grows, the harder it will be to reverse the warming effect, the organisation warned Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2013 driven by a surge in the level of carbon dioxide, a study claims. Experts say carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations grew at the fastest rate since reliable global records began and have called for international action to combat climate change. The rise in CO2 levels is outpacing fossil fuel use, suggesting that the planet's natural ability to soak up emissions of the gas may be slowing down. ‘We know without any doubt that our

Myth of arctic meltdown Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has  expanded for second year in row.  An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice.  These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’ Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012. To put it anoth