Global Warming or Climate Change

The US and India have signed a deal to "enhance cooperation" on cutting emissions and investing in low carbon energy sources. The countries agreed the deal during President Obama's   state visit   to meet India's prime minister Narendra Modi this weekend. Last time the president visited one of the world's foremost developing economies, China, he signed an  historic deal  on climate change. As the world's third largest emitter, India is coming under increasing pressure to  follow suit . The new US-India pact is weaker than the agreement Obama signed in Beijing. But there are a number of good reasons India is reluctant to take strong action to curb its emissions in the short term. Carbon Brief takes a look at the factors likely to shape India's energy and climate choices in the coming years, and what it means for the world's efforts to tackle climate change. Credit: Rosamund Pearce / Carbon Brief Population and poverty India has become no...

from washingtonpost.com

SCIENCE Is it warm in here, or is it just us? The debate surrounding climate change, and specifically  global warming , will rage on for years to come. There are certainly plenty of arguments on both sides of the fence, and neither side wants to concede any of its key talking points. The simple truth, however, is that numbers don’t lie… and these are some pretty horrifying numbers. We recently showed you  a shocking little image that packed 63 years of global warming into one GIF , and now there’s some new imagery to help us visualize just how significant climate change really is. It’s impossible to argue with numbers, and an animated chart created recently  by Bloomberg  shows the peak monthly global temperature each year for the past 135 years, as well as the average annual temperatures. Once we get into the 20th century, it’s positively terrifying to watch as the average temperature climbs continuously until it hits a new record...

Global Warming Worse Than Nuclear Weapons? Doomsday Clock Time Set Three Minutes To Midnight image: http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/global-warming1-665x385.jpg When the Doomsday Clock time is set to three minutes to midnight in 2015, the prevailing message seems to be that the politics of climate change is worse of a threat than the possibility of  nuclear weapons being used during World War III . In a related report by the  Inquisitr , one of our predictions for 2015 claims it’s possible  Vladimir Putin’s claim over Arctic oil  could be a trigger for disaster. The reason a coming confrontation is predicted is due to the large amount of oil found near the North Pole, with some estimates putting it close to a third of all oil left on the Earth. The  Bulletin of Atomic Scientists  (BAS) has run the Doomsday Clock since 1947 as a visual reminder of pending global catastrophe. The board set the time at 17 minutes to midnight ...

REVIEW from science Marine defaunation: Animal loss in the global ocean Douglas J. McCauley 1 , * ,  Malin L. Pinsky 2 ,  Stephen R. Palumbi 3 ,  James A. Estes 4 ,  Francis H. Joyce 1 , Robert R. Warner    BACKGROUND Comparing patterns of terrestrial and marine defaunation helps to place human impacts on marine fauna in context and to navigate toward recovery. Defauna­tion began in earnest tens of thousands of years later in the oceans than it did on land. Although defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact. Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems. ADVANCES Humans have profoundly decreased the abundance of both large (e.g., whales) and small (e.g., anc...

Which fossil fuel companies are most responsible  for climate change? – interactive http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/nov/20/which-fossil-fuel-companies-responsible-climate-change-interactive All but seven of the  90 companies found to have caused the climate crisis  deal in oil, gas and coal – and half of the estimated emissions were produced just in the past 25 years. Some of the top companies are also funding climate change denial campaigns

Last year, 2014, happened to be the hottest year in global temperatures since scientists started keeping global heat records in 1880. This establishes the fact that the world is facing global warming issues as canvassed by climate groups and world leaders; underscoring their efforts to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and put a cap on human activities that endanger the earth. According to scientists, much of western United States and Alaska witnessed extreme heat much of 2014, and ocean surface warmed much more than usual the world over except near the Antarctica – and this contributed to atmospheric energy that fueled Pacific storms. The era for the warmest years started since 1997, and the 10 warmest years have occurred within this period to the present – underpinning the fact that human activities and industrial processes are contributing to planetary warming in a race to destroy nature and human civilization. “Climate change is perhaps the major challenge of our...