African farmers and climate change are combining to damage soil at a rate that may plunge the continent, home to about 1 billion people, into chaos as food production declines.
"The situation is very severe and soil fertility is declining rapidly," Jeroen Huising, a scientist who studies soils at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, or CIAT, said today in an interview. "Many countries like Kenya already don't have enough food to feed their population and soil degradation is worsening an already critical situation."
Earth Changes
The Chinese government brought out the big guns over the weekend to help fight its worst drought in 50 years.
Soldiers loaded rockets with cloud-seeding chemicals over the weekend and fired them into the sky over drought-stricken areas.
The clouds opened and it rained briefly in some of the hardest hit provinces in northern and central China, but not enough end to the drought. The clouds were too thin and moving too fast to do much good.
Soldiers loaded rockets with cloud-seeding chemicals over the weekend and fired them into the sky over drought-stricken areas.
The clouds opened and it rained briefly in some of the hardest hit provinces in northern and central China, but not enough end to the drought. The clouds were too thin and moving too fast to do much good.
Severe windstorms left hundreds of thousands of homes without power across parts of France on Tuesday and forced authorities to shut down Paris' two main airports while Britain went on flood alert.
Hurricane-force gusts of up to 140 kilometres (87 miles) per hour battered France's west coast late Monday as the second major storm in two weeks barrelled in from the Atlantic.
Bracing for severe winds, authorities shut down Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports overnight for the first time in 34 years, cancelling more than 200 flights.
The airport reopened at 10:00 am (0900 GMT) but Air France reported major delays for all incoming and outgoing flights.
The storm left some 900,000 homes without electricity late Monday and by midday Tuesday 400,000 households were still without power in central, eastern and northern France, the grid operator ERDF said.
Hurricane-force gusts of up to 140 kilometres (87 miles) per hour battered France's west coast late Monday as the second major storm in two weeks barrelled in from the Atlantic.
Bracing for severe winds, authorities shut down Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports overnight for the first time in 34 years, cancelling more than 200 flights.
The airport reopened at 10:00 am (0900 GMT) but Air France reported major delays for all incoming and outgoing flights.
The storm left some 900,000 homes without electricity late Monday and by midday Tuesday 400,000 households were still without power in central, eastern and northern France, the grid operator ERDF said.
© Unknown
Sheep search for any patch of fresh grass left after a fire raged through the community of Kinglake, northeast of Melbourne on February 9, 2009.
Sheep search for any patch of fresh grass left after a fire raged through the community of Kinglake, northeast of Melbourne on February 9, 2009.
Overlooked amidst the human tragedy, thousands of animals -- kangaroos and koalas as well as cattle and sheep -- also perished in the scorching fires that have swept through southeast Australia.
At least 130 people died in the flames, official figures showed, but nobody was prepared to venture an estimate on the animal losses.
"It's been absolutely devastating," the president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia, Pat O'Brien, told AFP.
"We've lost huge numbers of wildlife in the forest. By all reports we've got animals dying even before the flames reach them.
"Kangaroos, wallabies, all the animals that live in the trees -- the possums, koalas -- just gone, it's been a terrible, terrible thing for wildlife, total devastation," he said.
"There have been huge losses of farm animals as well, but those reports are still coming in."
It's time for some straight talk. No more beating around the bush. I no longer want to evade an issue around whose edges I've been skirting for 12 years. So I'll come right and say it loud and clear: In all probability, we've come to the end of the line.
Unless I'm grievously mistaken, we are about to go extinct. Soon. In 1997 I warned that we are approaching the onset of a new ice age. I wrote that the record shows that ice ages are preceded by a period of about 20 years, and things get very unpleasant as the end of that period approaches.
Contrary to poor Al Gore's alarmist prediction that the planet is approaching the boiling point, it's getting colder - a lot colder. And it's going to get even colder. Spring and fall will disappear, summers will be short and winters longer and increasingly more frigid.
Unless I'm grievously mistaken, we are about to go extinct. Soon. In 1997 I warned that we are approaching the onset of a new ice age. I wrote that the record shows that ice ages are preceded by a period of about 20 years, and things get very unpleasant as the end of that period approaches.
Contrary to poor Al Gore's alarmist prediction that the planet is approaching the boiling point, it's getting colder - a lot colder. And it's going to get even colder. Spring and fall will disappear, summers will be short and winters longer and increasingly more frigid.
Northern Ireland's environment minister came under fire Monday after he banned a climate change ad campaign, saying it was "nonsense" to suggest people could save the world by turning off their lights.
Sammy Wilson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party which shares power with Sinn Fein in the British-ruled province, believes mankind is not to blame for global warming.
He refused to allow an advertising campaign produced in London, which urges people to use less energy in the home, to be broadcast in Northern Ireland, saying it was simply "propaganda".
He argued the ads gave people "the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40 feet of water", according to the BBC. "That is patent nonsense," Wilson added.
Sammy Wilson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party which shares power with Sinn Fein in the British-ruled province, believes mankind is not to blame for global warming.
Comment: It's interesting that he does not believe mankind is responsible for global warming. Have you read Climate Change Swindlers and the Political Agenda?
He refused to allow an advertising campaign produced in London, which urges people to use less energy in the home, to be broadcast in Northern Ireland, saying it was simply "propaganda".
He argued the ads gave people "the impression that by turning off the standby light on their TV they could save the world from melting glaciers and being submerged in 40 feet of water", according to the BBC. "That is patent nonsense," Wilson added.
More than 200 dolphins have beached themselves on Manila Bay, officials in the Philippines said Tuesday as they tried to work out why the marine mammals had come ashore.
Residents saw huge pods of dolphins near the towns of Pilar and Abucay on the Bataan peninsula west of Manila.
Bataan governor Enrique Garcia said at least three have died.
"This is an unusual phenomenon," Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources director Malcolm Sarmiento told local radio, estimating the number of dolphins at "more than 200."
He said they could be reacting to a "heat wave or disturbance at sea" such as a possible major underwater earthquake.
Residents saw huge pods of dolphins near the towns of Pilar and Abucay on the Bataan peninsula west of Manila.
Bataan governor Enrique Garcia said at least three have died.
"This is an unusual phenomenon," Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources director Malcolm Sarmiento told local radio, estimating the number of dolphins at "more than 200."
He said they could be reacting to a "heat wave or disturbance at sea" such as a possible major underwater earthquake.
An unusual bout of warm winter weather turned snow into freezing rain on Monday in western Canada, coating much of Manitoba and Saskatchewan provinces in ice, snapping power lines and stopping travel.
Federal police described the storm as one of the worst to strike the region in decades, with hundreds of vehicles sliding off slick roads.
"We've had emergency vehicles in the ditch, we had a fire truck in the ditch, and even one of the highway sanders was in the ditch," Corporal Larry Dahlman of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) told public broadcaster CBC.
Federal police described the storm as one of the worst to strike the region in decades, with hundreds of vehicles sliding off slick roads.
"We've had emergency vehicles in the ditch, we had a fire truck in the ditch, and even one of the highway sanders was in the ditch," Corporal Larry Dahlman of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) told public broadcaster CBC.
You may have noticed that some of President Obama's most ardent supporters speak of him in almost messianic terms. But there's one public figure who apparently means it literally: James Hansen of NASA.
Hansen, who is the "father" of the global warming movement, recently told the U.K. Guardian that the new President "has only four years to save the world." Unless we implement drastic measures like a "moratorium on new power plants that burn coal" and a hefty "carbon tax," we face an apocalyptic future - "global flooding, wide-spread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns."
Of course, Hansen's warnings made headlines around the world. Not only because "doom and gloom" sells, but because the mainstream media treats any claim about man-made global warming with the utmost credulity.
Hansen, who is the "father" of the global warming movement, recently told the U.K. Guardian that the new President "has only four years to save the world." Unless we implement drastic measures like a "moratorium on new power plants that burn coal" and a hefty "carbon tax," we face an apocalyptic future - "global flooding, wide-spread species loss and major disruptions of weather patterns."
Of course, Hansen's warnings made headlines around the world. Not only because "doom and gloom" sells, but because the mainstream media treats any claim about man-made global warming with the utmost credulity.
It seems that folks are all "wild about Harry" over at Climate Audit, with the revelations occurring there, and no good kerfluffle would be complete without some pictures of the weather stations in question. It seems a weather station used in the Steig Antarctic study , aka "Harry", got buried under snow and also got confused with another station, Gill, in the dataset. As Steve McIntyre writes:
Gill is located on the Ross Ice Shelf at 79.92S 178.59W 25M and is completely unrelated to Harry. The 2005 inspection report observes:So not only is there a splice error, but the data itself may have been biased by snow burial.2 February 2005 - Site visited. Site was difficult to locate by air; was finally found by scanning the horizon with binoculars. Station moved 3.8 nautical miles from the previous GPS position. The lower delta temperature sensor was buried .63 meters in the snow. The boom sensor was raised to 3.84 m above the surface from 1.57 m above the surface. Station was found in good working condition.I didn't see any discussion in Steig et al on allowing for the effect of burying sensors in the snow on data homogeneity.
The difference between "old" Harry and "new" Harry can now be explained. "Old" Harry was actually "Gill", but, at least, even if mis-identified, it was only one series. "New" Harry is a splice of Harry into Gill - when Harry met Gill, the two became one, as it were.
Considered by itself, Gill has a slightly negative trend from 1987 to 2002. The big trend in "New Harry" arises entirely from the impact of splicing the two data sets together. It's a mess.
