When Your Entire Planet is a "Heat Island."


In an amazingly brief period of time, the Earth is retaining more of the man-generated heat, double the amount in 2005.


The amount of heat Earth traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land, according to new research from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented,” said Norman Loeb, a NASA scientist and lead author of the study, which was published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The Earth is warming faster than expected.”

Is Anyone Listening?

When there is a positive imbalance — Earth absorbing more heat than it is losing — it is a first step toward global warming, said Stuart Evans, a climate scientist at the University at Buffalo. “It’s a sign the Earth is gaining energy.”

Did you get that? The Earth is "gaining energy." How many wake-up calls do we need?  

The United Nations now warns of another pandemic-size disaster - global drought.  

Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, said: “Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic and there is no vaccine to cure it. Most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years. Demand will outstrip supply during certain periods. Drought is a major factor in land degradation and the decline of yields for major crops.”

...Developed countries have not been immune. The US, Australia and southern Europe have experienced drought in recent years. Drought costs more than $6bn a year in direct impacts in the US, and about €9bn (£7.7bn) in the EU, but these are also likely to be severe underestimates.

Population growth is also exposing more people in many regions to the impacts of drought, the report says.

Drought also goes beyond agriculture,said Roger Pulwarty, a senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a co-author of the report.

He pointed to the Danube in Europe, where recurring drought in recent years has affected transport, tourism, industry and energy generation. “We need to have a modernised view of drought,” he said. “We need to look at how to manage resources such as rivers and large watersheds.”

Comments

  1. LorneJune 17, 2021 at 5:13 PM

    What kind of world are we leaving to our children and grandchildren, Mound? It is sad when people reach the stage in their lives when they start seeing their demises that are on the horizon as escape from the horrors to come on earth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJune 17, 2021 at 10:03 PM

      Most of us avoid that question as much as we can, Lorne. Imagine a press conference to discuss the latest progress with the Trans-Mountain pipeline. A reporter stands up and asks "what kind of world are we leaving to our children and grandchildren?" You never hear that and you probably never will. In these times the hard questions go unasked.

      Delete
  2. Northern PoVJune 18, 2021 at 7:41 AM

    "unprecedented” ... "amazingly brief period of time"

    Indeed. It seems that humans (playing sorcerer's apprentice) are capable of causing planetary changes within the spans of their lifetimes (or faster) that previously took millennia to occur.

    "Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9gKyRmic20

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibJune 18, 2021 at 7:52 AM

      Mankind has shown itself capable of exponential growth, NPoV. Given the opportunity to increase in numbers or in material wealth, we'll take it despite the knowledge of what that portends.

      Some hotly dispute the idea that intelligent life is self-extinguishing when the only example of intelligent life we currently have is corroborating that theorem.

      Delete

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