This special comes under the heading "DD Dose of Doom", but again it's reality noone is telling you. Just remember, knowledge is power and at the very least you won't be surprised when things slowly start to unravel, hopefully later rather than sooner.....
This TED talk is one you should watch.....
David Roberts is an environmental blogger for Grist magazine, and gave a TED talk on climate change in August to an audience of University students. It's 15 minutes, and is an incredibly good summary of what climate change is, what is making it worse and where we are going if nothing is done. He explains some of the science of our atmosphere, and the meaning of the 0.8 C rise in temperature over the last 100 years, and the possible implications of what the 2.0 C projected rise could possibly mean, and beyond.
He is a decent speaker, and the talk starts slowly but is riveting towards the end. Even if you are familiar with what is happening to our climate, this will still be educational - it is also the best 15 minutes you have spent this year.
After you watch the clip, look at the three weather events from this month driven by the 0.8 C rise in temperature mentioned in the video, and then I have some thoughts at the end......
Australia is experiencing record breaking heat.....one of their cities had a 48.1 C [119.0 F] day of heat last week, and in the interior the temperature reached 50.0 C [122.0 F].
And by the way the Australian conservative government totally denies climate change, and because a lot of their media is owned by Rupert Murdoch ozzies aren't hearing any different.
Brisbane residents will be searching for a place to keep cool on Friday and Saturday.
Searing temperatures that have set new heat records in central Queensland are heading to the state’s southeast.
Four weather stations recorded their highest ever January temperatures on Thursday as a stagnant mass of hot air in central Australia continued to affect inland Queensland.
In the state’s northwest, Century Mine reached 44.5C and 45.6C in Camooweal, while further south temperatures at the Monument hit 45.5C, and 46C in Bedourie.
However, it was Birdsville residents in southwest Queensland who endured the hottest temperatures in Queensland when the mercury reached a scorching 48.1C at 4pm.
Forecasters say a trough coming from the west is pushing the hot air southeast, and Brisbane and surrounding districts will be affected in coming days.
The temperature in Brisbane is predicted to soar to 37 degrees on Friday and 41 on Saturday.
West of the capital, residents of Ipswich and Gatton are set to endure 43-degree heat on Saturday.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Pradeep Singh said Queensland’s wet season was unusually late in arriving for the second year in a row.
‘‘Normally the monsoon starts affecting northern Australia around late December/January but it didn’t happen last year and it hasn’t happened this year, so the heat’s just been building up over inland parts of Australia,’’ he said.
The senior meteorologist said a high pressure ridge that was suppressing cloud and thunderstorm activity would be replaced by a trough next week.
‘‘Consequently we’ll see some showers and storms developing over eastern Queensland, and of course it will also bring cooler temperatures,’’ Mr Singh said.
The heatwave is bad news for firefighters battling a blaze on Stradbroke Island off the southeast coast.
The Bureau of Meteorology has warned there is a very high fire danger in the southeast which will probably be upgraded to severe on Saturday.
There is also a high to severe fire danger warning current in the state’s southwest.
Earlier
Brisbane is set to endure one of its hottest-ever days, as a weather system that nudged temperatures near 50C in western Queensland moves towards the coast.
The mercury will reach a rare 41C in the river city on Saturday, forecasters say.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.
Today and Tuesday the northeast and midwest US will have incredibly cold weather.......record breaking cold.....
Cold U.S. Temperatures Expected To Break Records As 'Polar Vortex' Blasts Midwest
FOLLOW:
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The weather warnings are dire: Life threatening wind chills. Historic cold outbreak. Bitter cold temperatures.
Winter is normally cold, but starting Sunday tundra-like temperatures are poised to deliver a rare and potentially dangerous sledgehammer blow to much of the Midwest, driving temperatures so far below zero that records will shatter.
One reason? A "polar vortex," as one meteorologist calls it, which will send cold air piled up at the North Pole down to the U.S., funneling it as far south as the Gulf Coast.
The temperature predictions are startling: 25 below zero in Fargo, N.D., minus 31 in International Falls, Minn., and 15 below in Indianapolis and Chicago. At those temperatures, exposed skin can get frostbitten in minutes and hypothermia can quickly set in because wind chills could hit 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.
Temperature records will likely be broken during the short, yet forceful deep freeze that will begin in many places on Sunday and extend into early next week. That's thanks to a perfect combination of the jet stream, cold surface temperatures and the polar vortex — a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, said Ryan Maue, of Tallahassee, Fla., a meteorologist for Weather Bell.
"All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak," he said. "If you're under 40 (years old), you've not seen this stuff before."
Snow already on the ground and fresh powder expected in some places ahead of the cold air will reduce the sun's heating effect, so nighttime lows will plummet thanks to strong northwest winds that will deliver the Arctic blast, Maue said. And there's no warming effect from the Gulf to counteract the cold air, he said.
Flooding in Great Britain - my cousins in the UK are all saying on Facebook this is the worst flooding they can remember........yes conclusions like that are anecdotal, but I lived in England in the 60's and 70's and don't remember problems over the whole country like this.......
Massive waves pound against the promenade and harbour in Aberystwyth, Wales. Environment agencies have warned of the dangers of watching waves from coastal paths. Photograph: Keith Morris/Barcroft Media
People are being strongly advised not to walk on coastal paths and promenades or near floodwater as high winds continued to batter southern and western parts of the UK.
The rivers Stour in Dorset and Severn in Gloucestershire burst their banks, sandbag defences were set up near Belfast docks and Scotlandis bracing itself for blasts of up to 80mph as storm surges that flooded towns and villages in England move northwards.
People look at the high tide flood water that still remains on the seafront at Lynmouth in North Devon, England. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Another bout of severe weather was expected in the south-west, already hit by floods earlier on Friday, as high spring tides combined with low pressure and strong winds returned. Rivers swollen with rain and floodwater from recent days continued to threaten properties.
The Environment Agency currently has nine severe flood warnings – which indicate a threat to life – in place in Wales, the Midlands and the south-west. This is down from 13 earlier in the day as conditions eased.
Another 115 flood warnings and 223 less severe flood alerts were in place. In Scotland, authorities said there were 19 flood warnings and 16 alerts.
A man looks out from the seafront at West Bay during stormy weather in Dorset. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Looe in Cornwall, Ilfracombe, Barnstable, Plymouth in Devon and Caernarfon in Wales were among towns with parts under floodwater. Yalding in Kent was also hit.
Train services were disrupted and there were extra delays on roads. Ferry sailings from Plymouth to Roscoff, France, and Portsmouth to Santander in Spain were cancelled. Services from Belfast and Larne to Scottish ports as well as Liverpool were cancelled for the day.
The year 2013 was globally the hottest on record, with some record breaking weather.......the Philippine cyclone, Hurricane Sandy, the drought in the Western US and lots more weather events. This is with a 0.8 C rise in temperature, so I can't begin to imagine what 2.0 C will be like. Not good.
If there is a crumb of comfort for people in their 50's/60's who watched the David Roberts video, it's that the present weather is the result of the the 1800's Industrial Revolution and first half of the 19th century, up to the 1960's [I think] because the warming trends are slow moving. This means [I think] our weather 2014 to 2040 will be what we have done to CO2 levels globally from the 1960's to 2000, and what we are doing now and going forward will affect the second half of this century, which unfortunately includes the explosion in dirty coal power plants all over China and India in the early 00's.
This means [again, I think] for the next 20 years or so weather will gradually become more extreme, but our society will hold together because we will still be able to grow enough food, just in different places.
The wild cards are the feedback loops of methane from the melting of Arctic sea ice, and the Siberian permafrost that has some scientists are worried, but who knows.......
So there it is.....predictions noone else is telling you about.
Scientists won't - they are a cautious breed, and without scientific proof very few will go out on a limb.
Corporate media won't - most Americans don't want to hear this depressing news and a substantial minority don't believe it, and since all of our media is owned by large corporations who just want to keep you entertained, climate change ain't on TV.
The gumment won't - the Republican party denies the existence of CC, and Democrats are too timid to take a stand.....and anyway it doesn't poll well which is what our scum in Congress live by.
Big business won't, which is the one piece of this that puzzles me. You know the oligarchs know exactly what is happening, because they have access to the best and most up to date information....but they are not only not acting, they are trying to sabotage any chance of making even tentative starts to reign in our emissions so the profits can continue to roll in till we go off the cliff. I suppose this makes sense because it won't be in the current crop of CEO's and billionaire oligarch's lifetimes, so they really don't care.
Just as an FYI after David Roberts made this video he took a year off from exhaustion.....
Truth-telling might also sound at least a little like these parting words from Dave Roberts of Grist, in his farewell post at the end of August, as he prepared to take a year off, exhausted from writing about climate and needing to unplug entirely. (I’m glad Dave had the wisdom to pull back and take care of himself, but his absence has been the most conspicuous feature of the climate conversation these last few months of 2013.
A good three minute clip from Chris Hayes on the climate denial industry and how they are using the record cold snaps and the Antarctic ice to laugh at Al Gore and global warming in general....
This Fox News based campaign is bankrolled by the energy barons, and it's working too. One of the facts Hayes presents is that in 2006 59% of Republicans believed in global warming - in 2013, that number is down to 50%, but it's worse than just the percentages. Over the last seven years without the right wing media assault on climate change science that number could have been higher, maybe 65-70%.....who knows.
The last article is an honour roll of truth tellers......and a pretty good summary of how very few people are telling you the truth......
An excellent story in it's own right.
A Climate Truth-Tellers Honor Roll of 2013
Wen Stephenson on December 23, 2013 - 7:58 PM ET
350.org founder Bill McKibben with other activists at the Forward on Climate Rally in Washington, DC, 2013. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
It’s the closing weeks of 2013 and The Boston Globe, the recently acquired real estate of proud Red Sox owner John W. Henry, still publishes climate denial on its Opinion page. This puts Mr. Henry in fine company, so to speak, as shown in an important new study of the climate-denial funding machine from Drexel University’s Robert J. Brulle and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Of course, Henry’s funding of his op-ed page can’t be compared with the billion-dollar ocean of right-wing anti-science money. But still.
If it’s hard to accept—at this late date, given what we know about the imminent threat ofcatastrophic warming—that one of America’s great newspapers still runs columns denying the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, consider for a moment some of the other forms that denial still takes, many of them far more subtle and yet, perhaps, no less dangerous.
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