Climate change news - 05/16/2015

May CO2 Peak Shows Trend Is Up, Up, Up

Any day now, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will reach their annual peak in a cycle driven by the collective inhale and exhale of the world’s plant life. But because of the extra CO2 pumped into the air by human activities, this year’s peak will be higher than last year’s, which was higher than the year before that — a sign of the unabated emissions that are driving the Earth’s temperature ever upward.

Permafrost Thaw Would Have Runaway Effect on Carbon Release

    A bank of thawing permafrost near the Kolyma River in Siberia. (Skidaway Institute of Oceanography)

An international team of scientists has settled one puzzle of the Arctic permafrost and confirmed one long-standing fear: the vast amounts of carbon now preserved in the frozen soils could one day all get back into the atmosphere.

Since the Arctic is the fastest-warming place on the planet, such a release of greenhouse gas could only accelerate global warming and precipitate catastrophic climate change.

That the circumpolar regions of the northern hemisphere hold vast amounts of deep-frozen carbon is not in question.

The latest estimate is 17 billion tonnes, which is twice the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and perhaps 10 times the quantity put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels since the start of the Industrial Revolution 

Rapid climate change makes the British tabloid press

Carbon time-bomb in Siberia threatens catastrophic climate change

A DEVASTATING and sudden acceleration of climate change which is currently being sparked could result in "awful consequences", a leading scientist has warned

Permafrost thaw’s runaway effect on carbon release

The thawing peat and ancient leaf litter of the warming permafrost in the Arctic is being metabolised by microbes and released swiftly into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.Image: Shutterstock

Arctic warming is causing organic carbon deep-frozen in the soil for millennia to be released rapidly into the air as CO2, with potentially catastrophic impacts on climate.

But definitely NOT  the American Senate

“Man can’t change climate,” only God can, says Senate chair of Environment & Public Works

NASA Budget Cuts Impact Earth-Based Science

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology passed a bill that would cut NASA’s earth science budget by roughly 20 percent. L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzick explains the political battle behind the bill, and atmospheric scientist J. Marshall Shepherd discusses what projects could be impacted by a decrease in earth science funding.

While Alex Jones' Info Wars leads the charge in climate change denial

"Global warming" proponents disproven by thunderstorms

China’s Amazonian railway ‘threatens uncontacted tribes’ and the rainforests

CREDIT: shutterstock

It Only Took Four Months For China To Achieve A Jaw-Dropping Reduction In Carbon Emissions

Shot in 2013

Amazing video of walrus island in the Chukchi Sea..dont miss it..

_{Extraordinary pictures capture scores of walruses crammed onto a chunk of ice floating in the Chukchi Sea off the coast of Alaska. American photographer Steven Kazlowski said he was 'amazed' to see the mammals crowded onto the iceberg surrounded by open water. He said the island pr}

U.S. honeybee losses soar over last year, USDA report finds

Honey bees, critical agents in the pollination of key U.S. crops, disappeared at a staggering rate over the last year, according to a new government report that comes as regulators, environmentalists and agribusinesses try to reverse the losses.