Salon.com > climate

Climate change means mutant poison ivy

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:47:00 +0000

Back in college, I developed an oozing poison ivy rash all over my neck and arms and had to go on steroids -- just because I inadvertently grazed the clothes of a friend who had gone tromping through the woods earlier that day. What’s worse, it happened right before the Dalai Lama visited my school. While my classmates were leaning forward in their folding chairs to capture his every syllable, I was shifting in my seat, clutching a bottle of calamine lotion, and desperately trying to look calm while the Lama talked about peace of mind -- something I only know from reading the transcript. It’s hard to listen while your skin is on fire.

So yeah, I’m pretty allergic to poison ivy. But a lot of people are -- 80 percent of the population reacts to the vine with welts and maddeningly itchy rashes. So the fact that poison ivy plants are getting bigger and more poisonous due to climate change isn’t exactly welcome news. But that’s precisely what’s happening; scientific research indicates that with higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the poison ivy plant grows larger, and its “oil” (a.k.a. the awful poisonous stuff) becomes more potent.

Australia breaks hottest summer record

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:13:00 +0000

Australia weather bureau has confirmed that this country — like many others — has just sweltered through its hottest summer on record.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported that records were broken for the average temperature and average daytime temperature between December and February.

A record was also set for the number of consecutive days in which the average maximum was more than 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Farenheit) — namely the seven days from Jan. 2 to 8. The previous record was four days.

The Australian Associated Press quoted the bureau's climate change program manager, Tony Mohr, as saying:

"If you're 27 years old, you've never experienced an 'average' month's temperature — it's all been above average."

January 2013 was the hottest month recorded since 1910, Blair Trewin and Karl Braganza bureau wrote in a report, while records were also set for the hottest daytime temperatures averaged over the whole of Australia.

In a year that saw several deadly wildfire outbreaks across the country, 14 locations deployed by the weather bureau to monitor the long-term climate registered individual record temperatures.

Australia's Fairfax media quoted Trewin, a senior climatologist with the weather bureau, as saying:

"It was hot just about everywhere. It was in the top 10 for every mainland state. Six of the hottest 10 summers [nationally] have happened in the last decade."

The summer heat came despite much of Australia's eastern seaboard experienced flooding from two major storm systems, Fairfax noted.

It cited Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University's Climate Change Institute, and a member of the Australian Climate Commission, as saying:

"It’s been a pretty amazing summer as far as extremes go. We had record high sea-surface temperatures along the east coast, leading to more evaporation and more moisture in the atmosphere available for rainfall."

The bureau said the summer followed a pattern of extremely hot summers around the world in recent years.

Could any broader trend be drawn from the record-breaking Down Under summer of 2012-13?

Trewin and Braganza wrote that the extremes fit with a well established trend in Australia:

"It’s getting hotter, and record heat is happening more often."

Two dead in massive Southeast storm

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:22:00 +0000

(AP) — A massive storm system raking the Southeast hammered a Georgia town on Wednesday, overturning cars on an interstate and killing at least one person there, authorities said.

Bartow County Fire Chief Craig Millsap said the body was found in the storm damage but did not have further details on how the person died. The same system also was blamed for a death in Tennessee. Most dangerous were powerful wind gusts that in several places were powerful enough to overturn tractor-trailers.
There were reports that people were trapped in homes and businesses, and television footage showed large sections of a sprawling manufacturing plant had been destroyed.
Footage also showed a funnel cloud roaring through the downtown area of Adairsville, about 60 miles northwest of Atlanta, flipping cars and demolishing a home. Interstate 75 was closed in both directions after the storm flipped cars onto their roofs and tossed them onto the grassy shoulder.
At least two tornadoes were confirmed and several more suspected, and conditions remained ripe for more. Since Tuesday, the system had caused damage across a swath from Missouri to Georgia.
In recent days, people in the South and Midwest had enjoyed unseasonably balmy temperatures in the 60s and 70s. A system pulling warm weather from the Gulf of Mexico was colliding with a cold front moving in from the west, creating volatility.
Police said high winds toppled a tree onto a shed in Nashville, Tenn., where a man had taken shelter, killing him.
Across the region, downed power lines, trees and tree limbs were making it difficult to reach people who needed help.

Carbon pollution up to 2 million pounds per second

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 18:04:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The amount of heat-trapping pollution the world spewed rose again last year by 3 percent. So scientists say it's now unlikely that global warming can be limited to a couple degrees, which is an international goal.

The overwhelming majority of the increase was from China, the world's biggest carbon dioxide polluter. Of the planet's top 10 polluters, the United States and Germany were the only countries that reduced their carbon dioxide emissions.

Last year, all the world's nations combined pumped nearly 38.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, according to new international calculations on global emissions published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change. That's about a billion tons more than the previous year.

The total amounts to more than 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide released into the air every second.

Because emissions of the key greenhouse gas have been rising steadily and most carbon stays in the air for a century, it is not just unlikely but "rather optimistic" to think that the world can limit future temperature increases to 2 degrees, said the study's lead author, Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway.