Sizzling Midwest Previews a Hotter Future Climate

From:  Inside Climate News

By Bob Berwyn, InsideClimate News

Jul 22, 2016

'Climate change is putting heat waves on steroids,' says prominent climate scientist, with dire consequences for public health.

 

This June was the hottest ever, and July has brought even more heat, particularly in the Midwest. Credit: NOAA

Extreme heat waves like the current string of scorching days in the Midwest have become more frequent worldwide in the last 60 years, and climate scientists expect that human-caused global warming will exacerbate the dangerous trend in coming decades. It comes with potentially life-threatening consequences for millions of people.

Research has shown that overall mortality increases by 4 percent during heat waves compared to normal days in the U.S. A study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in 2011 suggested that rising summer temperatures could kill up to 2,200 more people per year in Chicago alone during the last two decades of the 21st century.

"The climate is changing faster than we've ever seen during the history of human civilization on this planet, and climate change is putting heat waves on steroids," Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, said during a news conference on Thursday. "Heat waves are getting more frequent and stronger."  MORE

 

 

Is the DNC eating its young?

From:  Stillwater Runs Deep 

  By Jane Stillwater  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2016/07/is-dnc-eating-its-young-ah-democratic.html

    Ah, the Democratic National Committee -- they have just overstepped their mandate.  Again.

      Ever since the Repubs blatantly stole the 2000 election for George W. Bush and his posse of snobby elites, we've totally come to expect all sorts of flat-out shameless hanky-panky from the Grand [snake-Oil] Party.  But to see hanky-panky coming from the Dems as well?  Not so much.  Those were our guys, playing for the home team, supporting the salt of the earth, defending the working class.  We used to think that the Democratic Party was above that kind of stuff.

      But not any more.  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45092.htm

      Now we've got the DNC fudging up elections from New York to California just like they were GOP corporate-fascist shills riding into town on elephants instead of donkeys.  Who would have thought? 

      "But give us an example, Jane," you might say.  Here's a good one.  The guy in charge of voting in San Diego has just admitted that ballots cast for Bernie Sanders have been changed to ballots cast for Hillary Clinton -- and they were changed by using White-Out.  Yes, you read that correctly.  White-Out.  Really?  http://sourceplanet.net/politics/sanders-ballots-covered-with-white-out-confirmed/

      And then there is the strange case of Congressman Alan Grayson, the people's choice for Senate in Florida.  Grayson does all the things that we Democrats love -- stuff like supporting America's working class and keeping Wall Street from throwing us out of our homes.  Booyah for him!  But does the DNC support him?  Hell, no.  That would be too obvious.  Instead it supports his rival in the primary, Patrick Murphy.  Even President Obama is now campaigning for Murphy.  Huh?  http://trofire.com/2016/07/20/dem-establishment-afraid-alan-grayson-potus-makes-campaign-ad-opponent/

      Murphy used to be a Republican until he re-registered as a Democrat in order to run against Grayson.  No wonder the DNC loves Murphy!

     Not to mention all those WikiLeaks e-mails detailing how the DNC eats Bernie Babies for lunch.  http://observer.com/2016/07/wikileaks-proves-primary-was-rigged-dnc-undermined-democracy/

      And now we are going to be stuck with either a Clinton Dynasty for president or Donald Trump.  Greatest nation in the world?  I think not.

       But by far the worst of all this Democrat hanky-panky is that the DNC apparently is now eating its young -- happily chomping down on the Millennials like they were gummy bears or Fritos.  All we had to do was watch its convention to know that.  Bon appetite, DNC.  https://news.vice.com/article/new-york-lawsuit-voter-registration-problems-primary

     And now the Millennials also hate you, DNC -- as well they should after the DNC has done everything it can to disenfranchise the "Bernie Babies".  But twenty years from now, when the Democratic National Committee is some sort of decrepit non-relevant dinosaur and all alone, only then will it be sorry that it ate its young.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/14/dont-call-him-bernie-anymore-the-sanders-sell-out-and-the-clinton-wars-to-come/  

PS:  The DNC isn't the only one to be eating its young these days.  Congress, NATO, bankers, Israeli neo-colonialists, US-backed ISIS, Exxon, etc. are also really good at eating our young too.  Did you know that Exxon was aware of the dangers of climate change as far back as 1968?  To these elites, our children are just so many gummy bears.  http://usatoday.ddns.net/news/brave-pols-take-the-right-stand-20-lawmakers-demand-human-rights-and-justice-for-palestinian-children

PPS:  In early August, I'll be attending the American Bar Association convention in San Francisco.  Which reminds me that a hecka lot of young lawyers newly minted from law school are Millennials too -- and they are devoted to upholding the Constitution.  So, DNC, you had better watch out.  And, GOP, you too have been warned.  No more free lunch for either of you.  http://www.americanbar.org/calendar/annual.html

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        Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.

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The global philosopher: Who should pay for climate change?

From:  BBC

Most climate scientists think the world is getting warmer and that humans are at least in part responsible. Almost every country in the world has pledged to make efforts to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere in order to prevent dangerous "interference with the climate system". But exactly how to do this raises interesting questions about fairness.

To discuss them, we put Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel in a state-of-the-art digital studio - connected to 60 people in 30 countries. Here producer David Edmonds outlines three key puzzles.

Who is responsible?

We have been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in ever increasing quantities since the industrial revolution. Some countries in the developed world are, of course, responsible for the bulk of this. Since 1850 the US and the nations which are now the EU have been responsible for more than 50% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

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This heat wave was planned in a board room.

From:  350 Org 

Last Friday, President Obama and various national and local government agencies issued statements about an impending heatwave, directing people to stay inside, drink plenty of water, and watch for signs of heat stroke. Over the weekend, 26 states issued heat advisories, and press swarmed to public parks to photograph people sunbathing and cooling off in fountains. All across the country people are mopping their brows and greeting each other with looks of exhausted recognition. It’s too hot.

Heatwaves are familiar —  we like to think of them as intense and uncomfortable, but temporary. Except this year’s heat wave is something more. It covers nearly all 50 states, and is occurring simultaneously with heat waves in Europe, China, and the Middle East [Kuwait broke the record temperature for the Eastern Hemisphere at 129.4 degrees this week]. It follows on the heels of a hot streak in India last year that is responsible for 2500 deaths. According to NASA, every month of 2016 is the hottest on record, and this last week has been no exception. And even with all the government warnings, somewhere around 6-8 people have died due to heat this week in Arizona and Detroit, and we’ve got at least one more day of scorching temperatures. 

This intensified heat wave is part of the unfolding crisis of climate change, and all the impacts — the wildfires, the drought, the crop failures, the public health emergencies — were choices. The people dying today from climate impacts were killed in a board room 20 years ago by executives who decided that it was worth it to squeeze another few decades of profit out of the fossil fuel industry.  MORE

For the first time, forecast predicts hotter-than-normal in every square inch of the USA

From:  USA Today

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY  
7:50 a.m. EDT July 26, 2016

For the first time on record, every square inch of all 50 states is forecast to see above-average temperatures for the next three months, according to a forecast map from the federal government's Climate Prediction Center.

An entire forecast map awash in the red and orange colors of unusually warm temperatures for a 3-month period is unprecedented, according to Dan Collins, a meteorologist with the prediction center. Typically parts of the map register blue, depicting the likelihood of cooler-than-normal air, or white for equal chances of cool and warm.

The archives for the center's climate predictions go back to 1995, Collins said. MORE

Wildfire shifts could dump more ice-melting soot in Arctic

From: Science News

By Thomas Sumner

6:00am, April 18, 2016

In some areas, black carbon emissions from blazes will double, simulations predict

FIRE STARTER  Wildfires will spew more soot into the air in many regions by the end of the century, new research predicts. That soot could darken Arctic ice and accelerate melting.

Raging wildfires could burn away efforts to reduce Arctic-damaging soot emissions. Soot produced by burning fossil fuels and plants, also called black carbon, can cause respiratory diseases and greenhouse warming, and can accelerate the melting of ice.

Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns will shift where and how fiercely wildfires burn and spew soot, new simulations show. Outside of the tropics, fire seasons will last on average one to three months longer during the 2090s than they do currently, researchers report online April 8 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Soot emissions from wildfires will as much as double in regions that border the Arctic and counteract projected reductions in soot from human activities, the researchers predict.

“Humankind would do well to proactively develop adequate land and fire management strategies to have at least some control on future wildfire emissions,” says study coauthor Andreas Veira, an earth system scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg.

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Get all your outdoors work done by 2030, before it's too hot to work outside

From:  Deseret News 

Compiled by Sarah Anderson, For the Deseret News

Published: Mon, July 25, 2016, 8:10 a.m. MDT

United Nations research indicates rising temperatures may cost the global economy more than $2 trillion by 2030 in reduced productivity, as well as cut down working hours in the poorer areas of the globe.(, Adobe Stock)

By 2030, we may have a new reason to call in sick to work — research suggests that by then it will be too hot to work in parts of the world, particularly for those whose jobs consistently expose them to the heat.

Bloomberg stated that United Nations research indicates this heat onslaught may cost the global economy more than $2 trillion by 2030 in reduced productivity, as well as cut down working hours in the poorer areas of the globe. With low-paid and heat-exposed professions such as construction and farming taking the brunt of it, Quartz noted.

Forty-three countries are expected to see a fall in their gross domestic product from heat stress, in particular Asiatic countries such as China, Indonesia and Malaysia, as Tord Kjellstrom, a director at the Health and Environment International Trust, told Bloomberg. India and China’s GDP losses alone could total $450 billion in 2030, Kjellstrom added. MORE