Global Warming or Climate Change

Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, describes suggestions that climate change had slowed down or stopped as ‘delusional’ and ‘bunk’ Ian Johnston  Environment Correspondent  Friday 20 January 2017 86 comments 271 Click to follow The Independent Online A woman searches for dry land after a flood in Bangladesh, a country already affected by cyclones, floods and drought  Probal Rashid The idea that  global warming  “paused” has been comprehensively refuted by the  record warm temperatures over the last three years  – and the rate of increase could soon start to accelerate, a leading Nasa scientist has warned. Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said some people had been “confused” by temperatures that were below the average rate of increase, mistaking what was simply a blip as the sign of a long-term trend. ...

By  Marion Renault The Columbus Dispatch Scientists declared 2016 the warmest year on record last week, mostly blaming man-made global warming. It was the third straight record-breaking year. A majority of Americans - 61 percent - say they are "very" or "somewhat" worried about global warming, according to a national survey conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shortly after the presidential election in November. But the same Yale program found last year that about 1 in 5 Americans was doubtful or dismissive of global warming and tended to oppose climate action. President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, expressed doubt during testimony before a Senate committee this month about greenhouse-gas predictions. Trump has called global warming a "Chinese hoax." As for consensus, studies show that more than 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are responsible for ongoing c...

BY  HIMANSHU GOENKA   @HIMGOJOURNO   ON  01/28/17 AT 5:59 AM Erik Björn of Umeå University, Sweden, is injecting small amounts of isotopically enriched mercury to the sediments for the mesocosm experiment. By adding stable (not radioactive) isotopes of mercury the scientists could trace how methylmercury was formed and accumulated in plankton in the mesocosm systems.  Photo: Sofi Jonsson The ill-effects of mercury are now much better known than in times past, but the danger of a large number of people being affected by mercury poisoning is far from over. And according to a study published Friday, climate change could be making the problem a lot worse. Mercury, in many of its forms, is  toxic to humans  and other species. In humans, it affects the nervous, digestive and immune systems, as well as the lungs, kidneys and eyes. And it also negatively impacts the cognitive development of children. The element is released into the environm...

Polar bears, increasingly land-bound due to vanishing ice sheets in the Arctic, are a poignant example of climate refugees.     DUSTIN STEPHENS/CBS NEWS   422   Comment       Share       Tweet      Stumble     Email 2016 was a milestone year in the continued warming of the planet. From unstable agriculture to the drought in California to melting ice sheets to extreme weather events and heat waves, climate change has disrupted virtually every corner of the world. It’s impossible to exhaustively list all the ways in which  climate change  was felt in 2016, but here’s a guide to understanding the year that was for the planet: A carbon dioxide milestone “In the centuries to come, history books will likely look back on September 2016 as a major milestone for the world’s climate,” Brian Kahn of Climate Central  wrote  earlier this year. That’s because, duri...