Abrupt Climate Change Is Happening Faster Than Before

By: Bruce Melton, Truthout | Report

In about the last 100,000 years, there have been 23 abrupt temperature changes in Greenland ice cores. In those moments, the temperature abruptly jumped or fell 9 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit across the planet and 25 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in Greenland. The changes typically took decades to generations, but at their most extreme, they only took two to three years.

Counterintuitively, published consensus statements on climate change do not factor in abrupt change -- an omission that seriously affects how climate policy is made. The reason is that we do not yet have the skill to model abrupt changes, even though ample robust evidence exists of the common occurrence of abrupt change in prehistory. It may seem unimaginable that these most important of all climate changes have been disregarded in climate policy, but this is the way the culture of the climate science consensus works. Policy is based upon impacts that we project to happen in the future through modeling.

Weather Models Are Not Climate Models  It's not that modeling cannot project the future. Climate modeling is actually quite accurate. It's weather modeling that goes awry after about five days. Read more

Climate Discovery

Climate Discovery Knowledge Base

The Great Nutrient Collapse

Irakli Loladze is a mathematician by training, but he was in a biology lab when he encountered the puzzle that would change his life. It was in 1998, and Loladze was studying for his Ph.D. at Arizona State University. Against a backdrop of glass containers glowing with bright green algae, a biologist told Loladze and a half-dozen other graduate students that scientists had discovered something mysterious about zooplankton - Read more

When food turns junk

Rising carbon dioxide levels lead to crops poor in mineral nutrients. In a country with such high levels of malnutrition this calls for a major policy intervention - by Irakly Loladze - Read more 

Global Climate Change

Vital Signs of the Planet | Scientific Consensus

"Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "~ Nasa

Polar bears across the Artic face shorter sea ice season 

~Vital Signs of The Planet, NASA

Polar bears are among the animals most affected by the seasonal and year-to-year decline in Arctic sea ice extent, because they rely on sea ice for essential activities such as hunting, traveling and breeding.

A new study by University of Washington researchers, funded by NASA and using satellite data from NASA and other agencies, found a trend toward earlier sea ice melt in the spring and later ice growth in the fall across all 19 polar bear subpopulations, which can negatively impact the feeding and breeding capabilities of the bears. The paper, published on Sept. 14 in the journal The Cryosphere, is the first to quantify the sea ice changes in each polar bear subpopulation across the entire Arctic region using metrics that are specifically relevant to polar bear biology Read more

Physicians for social responsibility

"Climate change is one of the greatest health threats facing humanity in the 21st century. As worldwide patterns of temperature, precipitation and weather events change, the delicate balance of climate and life is disrupted, with serious impacts on food and agriculture, water sources, and health.

Climate impacts affecting health include potentially lethal heat waves, worsening air quality, extreme storms, and the spread of insect-borne diseases to previously unaffected regions." Read more

 Shishmaref, Alaska

"The effect of global climate change upon Shishmaref is sometimes seen as the most dramatic in the world. Rising temperatures have resulted in a reduction in the sea ice which serves to buffer Shishmaref from storm surges. At the same time, the permafrost that the village is built on has also begun to melt, making the shore even more vulnerable to erosion. In recent years the shore has been receding at an average rate of up to 10 feet (3.3 m) per year. Although a series of barricades has been put up to protect the village, the shore has continued to erode at an alarming rate. The town's homes, water system and infrastructure are being undermined.  Currently, Shishmaref has obtained funds to construct seawalls that protect some of the shoreline." ~ Wikipedia

The Last Days of Shismaref

Documentary (Trailer)