Researchers predict that temperatures will continue to increase, making 2015 the hottest year the Earth has ever experienced.

Despite claims from climate change contrarians, global warming is not under control.

Scientists measuring the worldwide increase in temperature predict that 2015 will exceed the record-breaking heat wave that took place last year.

Tracking Temperature Changes

Multiple countries experienced the warmest temperatures on record during the month of September.
Image: NCDC

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks temperatures across the world. The agency recently concluded that last month was the hottest September on record.

The temperature difference between September 2014 and 2015 has seen the biggest jump since 1880. In addition, the nine months between January and September has been the hottest period on record.

Effects of El Niño

El Niño is a notoriously warm ocean phase the begins in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and sends intense heat into the atmosphere. The weather pattern then transports the heat throughout the entire ocean.

Scientists have compared the most recent El Niño phase with the temperatures in 1997 and 1998, which shows how much damage greenhouse gases have done.

Increased heat in bodies of water causes severe, widespread effects. El Niño is associated with dry air and forest fires in Indonesia, droughts in Australia and Ethiopia and food emergencies across Africa. These patterns will continue to worsen as El Niño reaches its peak in the next few months.

Scientists predict that El Niño will cause unusual amounts of rain and snow to hit the American Southwest and California. While the rain will help to curb the drought, it may cause other dangerous natural occurrences such as floods and mudslides.

Although climate change isn’t responsible for each issue on its own,  the combination of global warming and a strong El Niño has caused disastrous effects.

Combating The Heat

Individuals in high-risk areas should stay out of the heat and keep hydrated to avoid the life-threatening effects of global warming.
Image: Newsweek

As the frequency of natural disasters increases throughout the world, politicians attempt to find a global solution to slow the temperature increase. In December, world leaders will convene in Paris to address the effects of climate change and actions to stop it.

The United Nation’s World Food Program will bring aid to Africa where food sources are greatly affected by the heat. The organization is asking for assistance to help the thousands of starving individuals in Ethiopia and other African nations.

Scientists claim that those who negate the existence of global warming are picking and choosing certain facts while ignoring others. The record-setting warmth of 2014 and 2015 has proven that climate change is still underway no matter how many politicians choose to ignore it.

The post Record-Breaking Temperatures Confirm Earth’s Hottest Year Yet appeared first on Citizens Report.

By studying historical wildfire patterns, researchers linked the increase in burning in the Western hemisphere to even the slightest instances of global warming.

Wildfires in the Western part of America have been doing more damage in recent years than ever before. Scientists have discovered a reason for the spike.

A recent University of Wyoming study shows the increase in expansiveness, frequency and intensity of wildfires is caused by the effects of global warming.

The Study

The study analyzes the history of wildfires across a subalpine forest in northern Colorado over the past two millennia.
Image: Science Blogs

The study was conducted at the University of Wyoming and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It proves that the small instances of warming are linked to the monumental increase in wildfires.

The researchers evaluated charcoal samples from 2,000 years of wildfires that were taken from lake beds in a subalpine forest, which is located above 8,000 feet in northern Colorado’s Mount Zirkel Wilderness. They measured an increase in wildfire frequency throughout history and compared the results to the circumstances of warming today.

The Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) was 1,100 to 1,200 years ago at a time when the warming was similar to present day. The average temperatures in Northern Colorado were 0.5°C warmer than they were a century before.

Before this period, about 50 percent of the sample sites burned each century, increasing to 83 percent during the MCA and declining to 33 percent afterward. The majority of sites burned every 360 years prior to the MCA before burning every 120 years during the warm period at a 260 percent increase.

The temperatures cooled, but only after the fires began to stop. Researchers attribute this to a lack of forest left to burn.

They found that even a minimal increase in average temperature, about 0.5°C (0.9°F),  could alter wildfire activity at higher elevations. The study shows that the planet may be entering into a new era of high-elevation wildfires incomparable to the last 1,000 years.

Record-breaking droughts and sweltering heat have caused more than 50,000 wildfires affecting more than 9 million acres in the West and Alaska in 2015. Since 2006, the recent warming-induced wildfires have destroyed the most land.

Alaska temperatures have risen by 3°F in the last 50 years which is the estimated cause of wildfires. The study suggests that every 1°C (1.8°F) of warming causes an area burned by wildfire in the West that could quadruple.

Drawing Conclusions

“The large increase in the number of sites burned by fires highlights the risk that large portions of individual landscapes may burn as climates continue to warm today,” according to the study.
Image: Emergency Journalism

The study is the first to discover how much land across an entire mountain range burned over a period of 2,000 years. This shows that large wildfires similar to those burning today occurred during a temperatures increase, the study’s lead author, the University of Wyoming Ph.D. candidate John Calder, said.

“When we look into the past for evidence of these large wildfires we only see them one time when temperatures rose about 1°F,” he said.

“Our study then adds more evidence that the recent increase in large wildfires is related to climate change because the only time we see these types of large wildfires in the last 2,000 years was when we had a similar amount of warming.”

However, the information is only relevant to dense, high elevation forests whereas the Colorado wildfires that burned at lower elevations are not included.

“We don’t know how the other mountain ranges burned in the region, but expanding this study into other mountain ranges is something I would like to do,” Calder said.

The study provides evidence that the West may be entering into a new phase of catastrophic wildfire at high elevations, where severe fires typically burn less often because of cooler temperatures and greater moisture.

Tania Schoennagel, a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, believes the study provides an important link between wildfires and climate change. It sheds light on the fact that scientists can expect what will happen with current and future warming.

“The MCA is a good analog for recent warming, and a larger proportion of the study area burned during the beginning of the MCA than we have witnessed recently in similar subalpine landscapes,” she said.

“However, the regional trends in wildfire across the West this year reflect the study’s findings of wildfire increases in response to warming,” Schoennagel said. “We should expect more of the same to come.”

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Residue from carbon dioxide can be converted to carbon nanofibers to slow the progression of global warming and benefit industrial science.

Climate change predictions are pretty grim, but a new invention could help to change that bitter future.

Researchers from George Washington University have invented a solar-powered process that could convert carbon dioxide pollution into carbon residue, which could then be used to create carbon nanofibers.

Carbon nanofibers are lightweight structures that are commonly used in technologies like iPhones. Ideally, if the materials were less expensive, they could be beneficial to building larger innovations such as spaceships and airplanes.

The overall hope is to be able to grow the system to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which would slow climate change and progress industrial science forward.

According to the EPA, the extent of future climate change will depend on what we do now to reduce the effects of global warming.

Check out the detailed description of the process from Discovery News.

The post Could Carbon Nanofibers Slow Climate Change? appeared first on Citizens Report.

Environmental experts examined 38 contrarian climate science papers that are frequently cited in arguments against global warming. They found common errors present throughout climate change denial.

A contrarian is defined as “one who takes an opposing view.” When trying to denounce the idea of climate change, contrarians often refer to Galileo Galilei, a famed astronomer who often rejected the consensus.

Today, 97 percent of experts have reached a consensus about the existence of global warming, whereas about 2-3 percent disagrees with the majority. When scientists decided to explore contrarian theories, they found common errors across 38 research papers that deny climate change.

Examining Contrarian Papers

Contrarian science cites the sun, planetary cycles or ocean cycles, but there’s no consistent alternative reasoning that has been agreed on by all contrarians.
Via:ZME Science

Researchers compared contrarian climate science conclusions in a study published in the journal of  Theoretical and Applied Climatology. They attempted to replicate contrarian findings, but ended up realizing that many of the same mistakes appeared throughout the research.

The research was conducted by Rasmus Benestad, Dana Nuccitelli, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland and John Cook. The scientists used a tool to analyze the most popular research papers that was based on an R programming language.

“We specifically chose a targeted selection to find out why they got different answers, and the easiest way to do so was to select the most visible contrarian papers … Our hypothesis was that the chosen contrarian paper was valid, and our approach was to try to falsify this hypothesis by repeating the work with a critical eye.

If we could find flaws or weaknesses, then we would be able to explain why the results were different from the mainstream. Otherwise, the differences would be a result of genuine uncertainty,” according to Benestad, a lead study author. 

The tool checked research methods and results and found a few common themes:

• Cherry picking. To confirm their point, contrarians would often pick and choose certain pieces of data. They would round it or make conclusions based on vague ideas. The statements weren’t contextualized and didn’t properly portray the findings because key information was left out.
• Models couldn’t be reproduced. Climate contrarians argue their models can predict future climate change but were unable to show temperature changes in the past.
•  Curve fitting. If the data didn’t fit the theory, researchers stretched it out by taking different variables and making them fit a given curve. These curves didn’t represent physical reality.
• Reviving myths. Contrarians have brought back false research to revive climate change myths that have already been disproved.

Conclusions About Contrarian Research

Many world leaders continue to pump pollution into the atmosphere, using contrarian research to deny the effects of climate change.
Via: Church Militant

The study only examined the most popular contrarian papers, which means more errors could potentially be found if the study was expanded. Although these kind of methodological errors could also occur in research that supports climate change, the study concludes that these mistakes were the norm and not the exception.

Perhaps one of the most interesting arguments against contrarian research is that there is no other concise theory for what is happening to the planet. Contrarian science cites the sun, planetary cycles or ocean cycles, but there’s no consistent alternative reasoning that has been agreed on by all contrarians.

Human-caused global warming has a 97 percent expert consensus. Contrarians have contradicting theories and flawed methodologies.

“After all this, the conclusions were surprisingly unsurprising in my mind. The replication revealed a wide range of types of errors, shortcomings, and flaws involving both statistics and physics,” Benestad said.

The post Finding Common Flaws In Climate Change Denial Research appeared first on Citizens Report.

Alexis Benter

The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has issued its latest recommendations, with some coming as a surprise to many consumers. For the first time the committee is urging Americans to consider “the impact of food production, processing, and consumption on environmental sustainability.” “Linking health, dietary guidance, and the environment will promote human health and the sustainability of natural resources and ensure current and long-term food security,” the committee says.

Eat Green

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has iterated that our everyday food choices affect global warming and the environment. They urge consumers to make better choices when grocery shopping because even small changes to what we buy and eat can help reduce global warming emissions, preserve our ocean resources and reduce toxic chemicals in the air, soil and water.

The NRDC offers its own guidelines to help consumers make healthier and smarter food choices.

Eat Lower on the Food Chain

Like the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the NRDC also recommends we eat less meat. Foods that come from higher on the food chain require extensive processing, which uses more energy and releases more pollution. The NRDC estimates that if we all eliminated just a 1/4 lb serving of red meat each week, the reduction in gas emissions would be the same as getting 4 million to 6 million cars off the road.

Buy Organic

Organic farming is safer for people and the environment because it uses no synthetic pesticides and fertilizers which contaminate the air, soil and water supply.

Compost Don’t Waste Studies estimate that the average household wastes 14 percent of the food it purchases, which inevitably ends up in landfills where it releases methane into the atmosphere as it decomposes. The NRDC urges consumers to only purchase foods they know they can eat before the expiration date, and to compost food waste instead of tossing it into the garbage can.

Buy Local

The Burberry Company

Buying local is not just about supporting local farmers. Although that’s great, it’s also about reducing the pollution and energy used to transport foods domestically and internationally.

The Meat Industry Weighs In

Beyond the fact that certain politicians have made it clear they oppose the new dietary guidelines, which fuse nutrition advice with environmental advocacy, heavyweights in the meat industry have also chimed in with their objections. They suggest that a dialogue about environmental sustainability was “outside the committee’s charter.”

The post New Dietary Guidelines Ask Americans to Start Thinking of the Environment appeared first on Citizens Report.

The lack of action has caused environmental conditions to worsen, permanently altering our planet and it’s ability to sustain life. Among the effects that are predicted to worsen are the massive extinction of forests, the melting of land ice, the rising of sea levels leading to coastal flooding, the destruction of crops decreasing the food supply, and an immeasurable death toll due to by severe heat waves.

In addition, extreme weather conditions and lack of adaptive survival methods to these natural disasters will lead to unpredictable amounts of human injury and fatality, disproportionately affecting the poor, the underprivileged and the uneducated. According to the U.N. and the World Bank, governments do not have the luxury to delay implementing serious policy changes any longer.

On Sunday, Dec. 14, 190 nations met to discuss a pragmatic way to address climate change, but the effectiveness of the new-style plan is heavily debated. The stark difference between the financial agency of developing and developed nations is creating the doubt. In some cases, it is believed that not all countries will hold their end of the bargain without the aid of wealthier countries. 

In November 2014, the U.N. released its most severe warning on climate change to date, according to an article from the New York Times. The 175-page summary report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts that global warming is no longer a future issue; it is happening now and needs to be addressed.

The World Bank issued a similar warning, which claims that extreme weather events will become the “new climate normal.” The Earth’s atmospheric system is now locked into a fixed warming, and even if strict action were to be taken immediately, this would not be reversed, according to the World Bank report. The World Bank article believes that this will affect poorer communities, stunting the development of these groups now that the World Bank must restructure their budget in order to adapt to the changes.

Although each country has agreed to restrict its emission of fossil fuels to insure that the planet heats to no higher than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level, energy companies have continued to invest billions of dollars in fossil fuel collection with the help of government subsidies. The U.N. report illustrates that only a fraction of the necessary funding is going toward reducing fossil fuel emissions, despite previously made agreements, according to an article by the New York Times.

The new-style deal to create a stricter plan for 2015 was made in Lima, Peru, with each nation agreeing to submit a finalized order by March 31, 2015 that will serve as the basis for a new national agreement to be presented during a Paris summit sometime next year.

The plan is attempting to place equal responsibility on developing countries, although some countries claim it will be more of a hardship for their emerging economies. China, ahead of the U.S., the E.U. and India, is the largest polluter, and although they were excused from cutting emissions in a previous climate agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, they have made a new deal with the U.S. to help bridge the gap. This deal is hopefully leading the way for a partnership between rich and poor countries. However, the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat believes the suspected contributions in Paris will not add up to enough effort to make a difference.

It has become clear that politics, not factual evidence, is driving the fight against global warming. Experts suggest that in addition to an increase in political commitment, universal education is also necessary to safeguard survival, according to a study conducted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) that analyzes natural disaster data in over 167 countries across four decades. 

The study, which was published in a special issue of the journal Ecology and Society, indicates that the answer to reducing the amount of fatalities caused by climate change is universal education. The findings assert that a proper education on natural disasters, with a regional focus, will greater outweigh the benefits of building preventative infrastructure, such as sea walls, dams, irrigation systems, and so on. However, these changes along with cleaner and more efficient energy sources should not be ignored.

“Education directly improves knowledge, the ability to understand and process information, and risk perception. It also indirectly enhances socioeconomic status and social capital. These are qualities and skills useful for surviving and coping with disasters,” said Raya Muttarak, one of the researchers who co-authored the IIASA study.

For humans to adapt to the inevitable effects of global warming, every single individual must possess a greater understanding of the shifts in environmental stability. For humans to survive climate change, the reality of the problem must be admitted, and that has been done. The next step involves a combination of realistic and effective policy changes, legitimate effort from dependable world leaders, and adaptive education of the masses.

“The report makes crystal clear that we cannot continue down the current path of unchecked, growing emissions. Leaders must step up and take the necessary decisions on how we manage our economies towards clean growth and resilient development,” said Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change. “Urgent and substantial technological, economic, institutional and behavioral change is needed to reverse present trends. Economic development and climate protection can be complementary. We need the political will to make this happen.”

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