Climate: LNG in B.C. vs Alberta tarsands
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https://nplcc.blob.core.windows.net/media/Default/About/KeyDocuments/ResourcesMngrInfoNeeds-USGS.pdf
Resource Manager Information Needs Regarding Hydrologic Regime Shifts for the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative
Resource Manager Information Needs Regarding Hydrologic Regime Shifts for the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative
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Broadcast Networks Provided The Most Climate Coverage In Five Years. During 2014, the major broadcast networks' evening and Sunday news programs aired a total of 154 minutes of coverage of climate change. This was an increase from the previous year's 129 minutes and was significantly above the six-year average of about 108 minutes, but remained below the 205 minutes of coverage in 2009.
Broadcast Networks Provided The Most Climate Coverage In Five Years. During 2014, the major broadcast networks' evening and Sunday news programs aired a total of 154 minutes of coverage of climate change. This was an increase from the previous year's 129 minutes and was significantly above the six-year average of about 108 minutes, but remained below the 205 minutes of coverage in 2009.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...id=rss1&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Faculty urge UBC to stop all new fossil fuel-related investments
Faculty urge UBC to stop all new fossil fuel-related investments
OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
10 Global warming lies, that may shock you.
Global warming alarmists frequently make false and deplorable assertions (see, for example, my recent column debunking false claims that global warming is causing a decline in wheat production), but the Environmental Defense Fund’s recent fund-raising mailer, “10 Global Warming Effects That May Shock You,” may well set a new low. However, climate realists can make lemonade from EDF’s preposterous mailer by using it to show open-minded people the difference between global warming alarmists and global warming truth-tellers.
EDF has assembled what it believes to be the 10 most powerful global warming assertions in the alarmists’ playbook, yet each assertion either backfires on alarmists or has been proven false. While reading how flawed EDF’s assertions are, remember these are the very best arguments global warming alarmists can make. Open-minded readers should have very little difficulty dismissing the mythical global warming crisis after examining the top 10 assertions in the alarmist playbook.
Alarmist Assertion #1
“Bats Drop from the Sky – In 2014, a scorching summer heat wave caused more than 100,000 bats to literally drop dead and fall from the sky in Queensland, Australia.”
The Facts
Global warming alarmists’ preferred electricity source – wind power – kills nearly 1 million bats every year (to say nothing of the more than 500,000 birds killed every year) in the United States alone. This appalling death toll occurs every year even while wind power produces just 3% of U.S. electricity. Ramping up wind power to 10, 20, or 30% of U.S. electricity production would likely increase annual bat kills to 10-to-30 million every year. Killing 30 million bats every year in response to dubious claims that global warming might once in a great while kill 100,000 bats makes no sense.
Just as importantly, alarmists present no evidence that global warming caused the summer heat wave in a notoriously hot desert near the equator. To the contrary, climate change theory and objective data show our recent global warming is occurring primarily in the winter, toward the poles, and at night.
Australia’s highest recorded temperature occurred more than half a century ago, and only two of Australia’s seven states have set their all-time temperature record during the past 40 years. Indeed, Queensland’s 2014 heat wave paled in comparison to the 1972 heat wave that occurred 42 years of global warming ago. If global warming caused the 2014 Queensland heat wave, why wasn’t it as severe as the 1972 Queensland heat wave? Blaming every single summer heat wave or extreme weather event on global warming is a stale and discredited tactic in the alarmist playbook. Objective science proves extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and droughts have become less frequent and less severe as a result of the Earth’s recent modest warming.
Alarmist Assertion #2
“Lyme Disease Spreads” – Warmer temperatures are contributing to the range expansion and severity of tick-borne Lyme disease.”
The Facts
Lyme Disease is much more common in northern, cooler regions of the United States than in southern, warmer regions. Asserting, without any supporting data or evidence, that a disease that prospers in cool climates will become more prevalent as a result of global warming defies objective data and common sense. Moreover, a team of scientists extensively researched Lyme Disease climate and habitat and reported in the peer-reviewed science journal EcoHealth, “the only environmental variable consistently association with increased [Lyme Disease] risk and incidence was the presence of forests.”
Granted, alarmists can argue that forests are thriving under global warming, with the result that forest-dwelling ticks will also benefit. However, expanding forests are universally – and properly – viewed as environmentally beneficial. Alarmist attempts to frame thriving forests as harmful perfectly illustrate the alarmists’ proclivity to claim anything and everything – no matter how beneficial – is severely harmful and caused by global warming.
Moreover, even if global warming expanded Lyme Disease range, one must look at the totality of global warming’s impact on the range of viruses and diseases. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports Lyme Disease “is rare as a cause of death in the United States.” According to the CDC, Lyme Disease is a contributing factor to less than 25 deaths per year in the United States. Indeed, during a recent five-year span examined by the CDC, “only 1 [death] record was consistent with clinical manifestations of Lyme Disease.” Any attempts to claim global warming will cause a few more Lyme Disease deaths must be weighed against the 36,000 Americans who are killed by the flu each year. The U.S. National Institutes of Health have documented how influenza is aided and abetted by cold climate. Any attempt to connect a warmer climate to an increase in Lyme Disease must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of a warmer climate’s propensity to reduce influenza incidence and mortality. The net impact of a warmer climate on viruses and diseases such as Lyme Disease and influenza is substantially beneficial and life-saving.
Alarmist Assertion #3
“National Security Threatened – The impacts of climate change are expected to act as a ‘threat multiplier’ in many of the world’s most unstable regions, exacerbating droughts and other natural disasters as well as leading to food, water and other resource shortages that may spur mass migrations.”
The Facts
The alarmists’ asserted national security threat depends on assertions that (1) global warming is causing a reduction in food and water supplies and (2) migrations of people to places with more food and water will increase risks of military conflict. Objective facts refute both assertions.
Regarding food and water supplies, global crop production has soared as the Earth gradually warms. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is essential to plant life, and adding more of it to the atmosphere enhances plant growth and crop production. Longer growing seasons and fewer frost events also benefit plant growth and crop production. As this column has repeatedly documented (see articles here, here, and here, for example), global crops set new production records virtually every year as our planet modestly warms. If crop shortages cause national security threats and global warming increases crop production, then global warming benefits rather than jeopardizes national security.
The same holds true for water supplies. Objective data show there has been a gradual increase in global precipitation and soil moisture as our planet warms. Warmer temperatures evaporate more water from the oceans, which in turn stimulates more frequent precipitation over continental land masses. The result of this enhanced precipitation is an improvement in soil moisture at almost all sites in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank. If declining precipitation and declining soil moisture are military threat multipliers, than global warming is creating a safer, more peaceful world.
Alarmist Assertion #4
“Sea Levels Rising – Warmer temperatures are causing glaciers and polar ice sheets to melt, increasing the amount of water in the world’s seas and oceans.”
The Facts
The pace of sea level rise remained relatively constant throughout the 20th century, even as global temperatures gradually rose. There has similarly been no increase in the pace of sea level rise in recent decades. Utilizing 20th century technologies, humans effectively adapted to global sea level rise. Utilizing 21st century technologies, humans will be even better equipped to adapt to global sea level rise.
Also, the alarmist assertion that polar ice sheets are melting is simply false. Although alarmists frequently point to a modest recent shrinkage in the Arctic ice sheet, that decline has been completely offset by ice sheet expansion in the Antarctic. Cumulatively, polar ice sheets have not declined at all since NASA satellite instruments began precisely measuring them 35 years ago.
Alarmist Assertion #5
“Allergies Worsen – Allergy sufferers beware: Climate change could cause pollen counts to double in the next 30 years. The warming temperatures cause advancing weed growth, a bane for allergy sufferers.”
The Facts
Pollen is a product and mechanism of plant reproduction and growth. As such, pollen counts will rise and fall along with plant health and vegetation intensity. Any increase in pollen will be the result of a greener biosphere with more plant growth. Similar to the alarmist argument, discussed above, that expanding forests will create more habitat for the ticks that spread Lyme Disease, alarmists here are taking overwhelmingly good news about global warming improving plant health and making it seem like this good news is actually bad news because healthier plants mean more pollen.
Indeed, NASA satellite instruments have documented a spectacular greening of the Earth, with foliage gains most prevalent in previously arid, semi-desert regions. For people experiencing an increase in vegetation in previously barren regions, this greening of the Earth is welcome and wonderful news. For global warming alarmists, however, a greener biosphere is terrible news and something to be opposed. This, in a nutshell, defines the opposing sides in the global warming debate. Global warming alarmists claim a greener biosphere with richer and more abundant plant life is horrible and justifies massive, economy-destroying energy restrictions. Global warming realists understand that a greener biosphere with richer and more abundant plant life is not a horrible thing simply because humans may have had some role in creating it.
Global warming alarmists frequently make false and deplorable assertions (see, for example, my recent column debunking false claims that global warming is causing a decline in wheat production), but the Environmental Defense Fund’s recent fund-raising mailer, “10 Global Warming Effects That May Shock You,” may well set a new low. However, climate realists can make lemonade from EDF’s preposterous mailer by using it to show open-minded people the difference between global warming alarmists and global warming truth-tellers.
EDF has assembled what it believes to be the 10 most powerful global warming assertions in the alarmists’ playbook, yet each assertion either backfires on alarmists or has been proven false. While reading how flawed EDF’s assertions are, remember these are the very best arguments global warming alarmists can make. Open-minded readers should have very little difficulty dismissing the mythical global warming crisis after examining the top 10 assertions in the alarmist playbook.
Alarmist Assertion #1
“Bats Drop from the Sky – In 2014, a scorching summer heat wave caused more than 100,000 bats to literally drop dead and fall from the sky in Queensland, Australia.”
The Facts
Global warming alarmists’ preferred electricity source – wind power – kills nearly 1 million bats every year (to say nothing of the more than 500,000 birds killed every year) in the United States alone. This appalling death toll occurs every year even while wind power produces just 3% of U.S. electricity. Ramping up wind power to 10, 20, or 30% of U.S. electricity production would likely increase annual bat kills to 10-to-30 million every year. Killing 30 million bats every year in response to dubious claims that global warming might once in a great while kill 100,000 bats makes no sense.
Just as importantly, alarmists present no evidence that global warming caused the summer heat wave in a notoriously hot desert near the equator. To the contrary, climate change theory and objective data show our recent global warming is occurring primarily in the winter, toward the poles, and at night.
Australia’s highest recorded temperature occurred more than half a century ago, and only two of Australia’s seven states have set their all-time temperature record during the past 40 years. Indeed, Queensland’s 2014 heat wave paled in comparison to the 1972 heat wave that occurred 42 years of global warming ago. If global warming caused the 2014 Queensland heat wave, why wasn’t it as severe as the 1972 Queensland heat wave? Blaming every single summer heat wave or extreme weather event on global warming is a stale and discredited tactic in the alarmist playbook. Objective science proves extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and droughts have become less frequent and less severe as a result of the Earth’s recent modest warming.
Alarmist Assertion #2
“Lyme Disease Spreads” – Warmer temperatures are contributing to the range expansion and severity of tick-borne Lyme disease.”
The Facts
Lyme Disease is much more common in northern, cooler regions of the United States than in southern, warmer regions. Asserting, without any supporting data or evidence, that a disease that prospers in cool climates will become more prevalent as a result of global warming defies objective data and common sense. Moreover, a team of scientists extensively researched Lyme Disease climate and habitat and reported in the peer-reviewed science journal EcoHealth, “the only environmental variable consistently association with increased [Lyme Disease] risk and incidence was the presence of forests.”
Granted, alarmists can argue that forests are thriving under global warming, with the result that forest-dwelling ticks will also benefit. However, expanding forests are universally – and properly – viewed as environmentally beneficial. Alarmist attempts to frame thriving forests as harmful perfectly illustrate the alarmists’ proclivity to claim anything and everything – no matter how beneficial – is severely harmful and caused by global warming.
Moreover, even if global warming expanded Lyme Disease range, one must look at the totality of global warming’s impact on the range of viruses and diseases. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports Lyme Disease “is rare as a cause of death in the United States.” According to the CDC, Lyme Disease is a contributing factor to less than 25 deaths per year in the United States. Indeed, during a recent five-year span examined by the CDC, “only 1 [death] record was consistent with clinical manifestations of Lyme Disease.” Any attempts to claim global warming will cause a few more Lyme Disease deaths must be weighed against the 36,000 Americans who are killed by the flu each year. The U.S. National Institutes of Health have documented how influenza is aided and abetted by cold climate. Any attempt to connect a warmer climate to an increase in Lyme Disease must be accompanied by an acknowledgement of a warmer climate’s propensity to reduce influenza incidence and mortality. The net impact of a warmer climate on viruses and diseases such as Lyme Disease and influenza is substantially beneficial and life-saving.
Alarmist Assertion #3
“National Security Threatened – The impacts of climate change are expected to act as a ‘threat multiplier’ in many of the world’s most unstable regions, exacerbating droughts and other natural disasters as well as leading to food, water and other resource shortages that may spur mass migrations.”
The Facts
The alarmists’ asserted national security threat depends on assertions that (1) global warming is causing a reduction in food and water supplies and (2) migrations of people to places with more food and water will increase risks of military conflict. Objective facts refute both assertions.
Regarding food and water supplies, global crop production has soared as the Earth gradually warms. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is essential to plant life, and adding more of it to the atmosphere enhances plant growth and crop production. Longer growing seasons and fewer frost events also benefit plant growth and crop production. As this column has repeatedly documented (see articles here, here, and here, for example), global crops set new production records virtually every year as our planet modestly warms. If crop shortages cause national security threats and global warming increases crop production, then global warming benefits rather than jeopardizes national security.
The same holds true for water supplies. Objective data show there has been a gradual increase in global precipitation and soil moisture as our planet warms. Warmer temperatures evaporate more water from the oceans, which in turn stimulates more frequent precipitation over continental land masses. The result of this enhanced precipitation is an improvement in soil moisture at almost all sites in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank. If declining precipitation and declining soil moisture are military threat multipliers, than global warming is creating a safer, more peaceful world.
Alarmist Assertion #4
“Sea Levels Rising – Warmer temperatures are causing glaciers and polar ice sheets to melt, increasing the amount of water in the world’s seas and oceans.”
The Facts
The pace of sea level rise remained relatively constant throughout the 20th century, even as global temperatures gradually rose. There has similarly been no increase in the pace of sea level rise in recent decades. Utilizing 20th century technologies, humans effectively adapted to global sea level rise. Utilizing 21st century technologies, humans will be even better equipped to adapt to global sea level rise.
Also, the alarmist assertion that polar ice sheets are melting is simply false. Although alarmists frequently point to a modest recent shrinkage in the Arctic ice sheet, that decline has been completely offset by ice sheet expansion in the Antarctic. Cumulatively, polar ice sheets have not declined at all since NASA satellite instruments began precisely measuring them 35 years ago.
Alarmist Assertion #5
“Allergies Worsen – Allergy sufferers beware: Climate change could cause pollen counts to double in the next 30 years. The warming temperatures cause advancing weed growth, a bane for allergy sufferers.”
The Facts
Pollen is a product and mechanism of plant reproduction and growth. As such, pollen counts will rise and fall along with plant health and vegetation intensity. Any increase in pollen will be the result of a greener biosphere with more plant growth. Similar to the alarmist argument, discussed above, that expanding forests will create more habitat for the ticks that spread Lyme Disease, alarmists here are taking overwhelmingly good news about global warming improving plant health and making it seem like this good news is actually bad news because healthier plants mean more pollen.
Indeed, NASA satellite instruments have documented a spectacular greening of the Earth, with foliage gains most prevalent in previously arid, semi-desert regions. For people experiencing an increase in vegetation in previously barren regions, this greening of the Earth is welcome and wonderful news. For global warming alarmists, however, a greener biosphere is terrible news and something to be opposed. This, in a nutshell, defines the opposing sides in the global warming debate. Global warming alarmists claim a greener biosphere with richer and more abundant plant life is horrible and justifies massive, economy-destroying energy restrictions. Global warming realists understand that a greener biosphere with richer and more abundant plant life is not a horrible thing simply because humans may have had some role in creating it.
OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
Alarmist Assertion #6
“Beetles Destroy Iconic Western Forests – Climate change has sent tree-killing beetles called mountain pine beetles into overdrive. Under normal conditions those beetles reproduce just once annually, but the warming climate has allowed them to churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year.”
The Facts
Alarmists claim warmer winters are causing an increase in pine beetle populations. This assertion is thoroughly debunked by objective, real-world data.
As an initial matter, alarmists have responded to recent bitterly cold winters by claiming global warming is causing colder winters. One cannot claim global warming is causing colder winters and then turn around and simultaneously claim global warming is causing warmer winters. Global warming activists’ propensity for doing so shows just how little value they place in a truthful debate.
Objective scientific data verify winters are not getting colder, which counters the key prerequisite to EDF’s pine beetle claim. NOAA temperature data show winter temperatures in the United States have been getting colder for at least the past two decades. Pine beetles cannot be taking advantage of warmer winters if winters are in fact getting colder. Moreover, recent U.S. Forest Service data show pine beetle infestations have recently declined dramatically throughout the western United States.
Forests and plant life are expanding globally, and particularly in the western United States. Pine beetles are a natural part of forest ecosystems. Expanding pine forests can support more beetles. The predictable increase in pine beetles is largely a product of, rather than a foil against, expanding pine forests. One can hardly argue that western pine forests are “destroying iconic Western forests” when western forests are becoming denser and more prevalent as the planet warms.
Also, beetles have bored through North American forests for millennia, long before people built coal-fired power plants and drove SUVs. Beetles are not dependent on warm winters, as evidenced by their historic prevalence in places such as Alaska.
Finally, pine beetles tend to target dead, unhealthy, more vulnerable pine trees rather than healthy trees. Decades of over-aggressive fire suppression policies have caused an unnatural buildup of older, denser, more vulnerable pine forests. These conditions predictably aid pine beetles.
Alarmist Assertion #7
“Canada: The New America – ‘Lusher’ vegetation growth typically associated with the United States is now becoming more common in Canada, scientists reported in a 2012 Nature Climate Change study.”
The Facts
Only global warming alarmists would claim that lusher vegetation and more abundant plant life is a bad thing. Playing on a general tendency for people to fear change, EDF and global warming alarmists argue that changes in the biosphere that make it richer, lusher, and more conducive to life are changes to be feared and opposed. If barren ecosystems constitute an ideal planet, then the alarmist fears of more plant life make sense. On the contrary, global warming realists understand a climate more conducive to richer, more abundant plant life is beneficial rather than harmful.
Alarmist Assertion #8
“Economic Consequences – The costs associated with climate change rise along with the temperatures. Severe storms and floods combined with agricultural losses cause billions of dollars in damages, and money is needed to treat and control the spread of disease”
The Facts
Severe storms, floods and agricultural losses may cost a great deal of money, but such extreme weather events – and their resulting costs – are dramatically declining as the Earth modestly warms. Accordingly, EDF’s asserted economic costs are actually economic benefits.
As documented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and here at Forbes.com, severe storms are becoming less frequent and severe as the Earth modestly warms. This is especially evident regarding hurricane and tornado activity, which are both at historic lows. Similarly, scientific measurements and peer-reviewed studies report no increase in flooding events regarding natural-flowing rivers and streams. Any increase in flooding activity is due to human alterations of river and stream flow rather than precipitation changes.
Also, the modest recent warming is producing U.S. and global crop production records virtually every year, creating billions of dollars in new economic and human welfare benefits each and every year. This creates a net economic benefit completely ignored by EDF.
Regarding “the spread of disease,” as documented in “Alarmist Assertion #2,” objective evidence shows global warming will thwart deadly outbreaks of influenza and other cold-dependent viruses.
Additionally, the alarmists’ desired means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions – more expensive energy sources – make economic conditions even worse. Forcing the American economy to operate on expensive and unreliable wind and solar power will have tremendous negative economic consequences. President Obama acknowledged this fact when he promised that under his global warming plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” The economic consequences of Obama’s global warming policies can already be seen in electricity prices, which are currently the highest in U.S. history. Remarkably, Obama’s global warming policies are increasing electricity prices even while new natural gas discoveries, revolutionary advances in natural gas production technologies, and a dramatic resultant decline in natural gas prices would otherwise spur a dramatic decline in electricity prices.
Alarmist Assertion #9
“Infectious Diseases Thrive – The World Health Organization reports that outbreaks of new or resurgent diseases are on the rise and in more disparate countries than ever before, including tropical illnesses in once cold climates.”
The Facts
Outbreaks of “new or resurgent diseases” are occurring precisely because governments have caved in to environmental activist groups like EDF and implemented their anti-science agendas. For example, DDT had all but eliminated malaria in the United States and on the global stage during the mid-20th century. However, environmental activists championed false environmental accusations against DDT and dramatically reduced use of the life-saving mosquito killer throughout much of the world. As a result, malaria has reemerged with a vengeance and millions of people die every year as a result.
Also, as documented above in “Alarmist Assertion #2,” global warming will reduce the impact and death toll of cold-related viruses such as influenza. In the United States alone, influenza kills 36,000 people every year, which dwarfs all heat-dependent viruses and diseases combined. Few people other than global warming alarmists would argue that it is better to have 36,000 people die each year from influenza than have a few people die each year from Lyme Disease (which, as documented above, isn’t even related to global warming).
Alarmist Assertion #10
“Shrinking Glaciers – In 2013, an iceberg larger than the city of Chicago broke off the Pine Island Glacier, the most important glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And at Montana’s Glacier National Park glaciers have gone from 150 to just 35 over the past century.”
The Facts
Calling attention to anecdotal incidents of icebergs breaking off the Antarctic ice sheet, while deliberately ignoring the overall growth of the Antarctic ice sheet, is a misleading and favorite tactic of global warming alarmists. Icebergs break off the Antarctic ice sheet every year, with or without global warming, particularly in the Antarctic summer. However, a particular iceberg – no matter how large – breaking off the Antarctic ice sheet does not necessarily result in “Shrinking Glaciers” as EDF alleges. To the contrary, the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been growing at a steady and substantial pace ever since NASA satellites first began measuring the Antarctic ice sheet in 1979. Indeed, during the same year that the EDF claims “an iceberg larger than the city of Chicago” broke off the Antarctic ice sheet and caused “Shrinking Glaciers,” the Antarctic ice sheet repeatedly set new records for its largest extent in recorded history. Those 2013 records were repeatedly broken again in 2014. The Antarctic ice sheet in 2013 and 2014 was more extensive than any time in recorded history, and yet the EDF pushes the lie that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is shrinking.
The EDF’s assertion about Glacier National Park is also misleading. Alpine glaciers at Glacier National Park and elsewhere have been receding for over 300 years, since the Earth’s temperature bottomed out during the depths of the Little Ice Age. The warming of the past 300 years and the resulting recession of alpine glaciers predated humans building coal-fired power plants and driving SUVs. Moreover, opening up more of the Earth’s surface to vegetation and plant and animal life would normally be considered a beneficial change, if global warming alarmists had not so thoroughly politicized the global warming discussion.
***************
There you have it. These are the 10 best arguments global warming activists like EDF can make, along with the objective scientific facts that prove them wrong.
No wonder global warming alarmists are so terrified of people having access to both sides of the debate.
“Beetles Destroy Iconic Western Forests – Climate change has sent tree-killing beetles called mountain pine beetles into overdrive. Under normal conditions those beetles reproduce just once annually, but the warming climate has allowed them to churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year.”
The Facts
Alarmists claim warmer winters are causing an increase in pine beetle populations. This assertion is thoroughly debunked by objective, real-world data.
As an initial matter, alarmists have responded to recent bitterly cold winters by claiming global warming is causing colder winters. One cannot claim global warming is causing colder winters and then turn around and simultaneously claim global warming is causing warmer winters. Global warming activists’ propensity for doing so shows just how little value they place in a truthful debate.
Objective scientific data verify winters are not getting colder, which counters the key prerequisite to EDF’s pine beetle claim. NOAA temperature data show winter temperatures in the United States have been getting colder for at least the past two decades. Pine beetles cannot be taking advantage of warmer winters if winters are in fact getting colder. Moreover, recent U.S. Forest Service data show pine beetle infestations have recently declined dramatically throughout the western United States.
Forests and plant life are expanding globally, and particularly in the western United States. Pine beetles are a natural part of forest ecosystems. Expanding pine forests can support more beetles. The predictable increase in pine beetles is largely a product of, rather than a foil against, expanding pine forests. One can hardly argue that western pine forests are “destroying iconic Western forests” when western forests are becoming denser and more prevalent as the planet warms.
Also, beetles have bored through North American forests for millennia, long before people built coal-fired power plants and drove SUVs. Beetles are not dependent on warm winters, as evidenced by their historic prevalence in places such as Alaska.
Finally, pine beetles tend to target dead, unhealthy, more vulnerable pine trees rather than healthy trees. Decades of over-aggressive fire suppression policies have caused an unnatural buildup of older, denser, more vulnerable pine forests. These conditions predictably aid pine beetles.
Alarmist Assertion #7
“Canada: The New America – ‘Lusher’ vegetation growth typically associated with the United States is now becoming more common in Canada, scientists reported in a 2012 Nature Climate Change study.”
The Facts
Only global warming alarmists would claim that lusher vegetation and more abundant plant life is a bad thing. Playing on a general tendency for people to fear change, EDF and global warming alarmists argue that changes in the biosphere that make it richer, lusher, and more conducive to life are changes to be feared and opposed. If barren ecosystems constitute an ideal planet, then the alarmist fears of more plant life make sense. On the contrary, global warming realists understand a climate more conducive to richer, more abundant plant life is beneficial rather than harmful.
Alarmist Assertion #8
“Economic Consequences – The costs associated with climate change rise along with the temperatures. Severe storms and floods combined with agricultural losses cause billions of dollars in damages, and money is needed to treat and control the spread of disease”
The Facts
Severe storms, floods and agricultural losses may cost a great deal of money, but such extreme weather events – and their resulting costs – are dramatically declining as the Earth modestly warms. Accordingly, EDF’s asserted economic costs are actually economic benefits.
As documented by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and here at Forbes.com, severe storms are becoming less frequent and severe as the Earth modestly warms. This is especially evident regarding hurricane and tornado activity, which are both at historic lows. Similarly, scientific measurements and peer-reviewed studies report no increase in flooding events regarding natural-flowing rivers and streams. Any increase in flooding activity is due to human alterations of river and stream flow rather than precipitation changes.
Also, the modest recent warming is producing U.S. and global crop production records virtually every year, creating billions of dollars in new economic and human welfare benefits each and every year. This creates a net economic benefit completely ignored by EDF.
Regarding “the spread of disease,” as documented in “Alarmist Assertion #2,” objective evidence shows global warming will thwart deadly outbreaks of influenza and other cold-dependent viruses.
Additionally, the alarmists’ desired means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions – more expensive energy sources – make economic conditions even worse. Forcing the American economy to operate on expensive and unreliable wind and solar power will have tremendous negative economic consequences. President Obama acknowledged this fact when he promised that under his global warming plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” The economic consequences of Obama’s global warming policies can already be seen in electricity prices, which are currently the highest in U.S. history. Remarkably, Obama’s global warming policies are increasing electricity prices even while new natural gas discoveries, revolutionary advances in natural gas production technologies, and a dramatic resultant decline in natural gas prices would otherwise spur a dramatic decline in electricity prices.
Alarmist Assertion #9
“Infectious Diseases Thrive – The World Health Organization reports that outbreaks of new or resurgent diseases are on the rise and in more disparate countries than ever before, including tropical illnesses in once cold climates.”
The Facts
Outbreaks of “new or resurgent diseases” are occurring precisely because governments have caved in to environmental activist groups like EDF and implemented their anti-science agendas. For example, DDT had all but eliminated malaria in the United States and on the global stage during the mid-20th century. However, environmental activists championed false environmental accusations against DDT and dramatically reduced use of the life-saving mosquito killer throughout much of the world. As a result, malaria has reemerged with a vengeance and millions of people die every year as a result.
Also, as documented above in “Alarmist Assertion #2,” global warming will reduce the impact and death toll of cold-related viruses such as influenza. In the United States alone, influenza kills 36,000 people every year, which dwarfs all heat-dependent viruses and diseases combined. Few people other than global warming alarmists would argue that it is better to have 36,000 people die each year from influenza than have a few people die each year from Lyme Disease (which, as documented above, isn’t even related to global warming).
Alarmist Assertion #10
“Shrinking Glaciers – In 2013, an iceberg larger than the city of Chicago broke off the Pine Island Glacier, the most important glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. And at Montana’s Glacier National Park glaciers have gone from 150 to just 35 over the past century.”
The Facts
Calling attention to anecdotal incidents of icebergs breaking off the Antarctic ice sheet, while deliberately ignoring the overall growth of the Antarctic ice sheet, is a misleading and favorite tactic of global warming alarmists. Icebergs break off the Antarctic ice sheet every year, with or without global warming, particularly in the Antarctic summer. However, a particular iceberg – no matter how large – breaking off the Antarctic ice sheet does not necessarily result in “Shrinking Glaciers” as EDF alleges. To the contrary, the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been growing at a steady and substantial pace ever since NASA satellites first began measuring the Antarctic ice sheet in 1979. Indeed, during the same year that the EDF claims “an iceberg larger than the city of Chicago” broke off the Antarctic ice sheet and caused “Shrinking Glaciers,” the Antarctic ice sheet repeatedly set new records for its largest extent in recorded history. Those 2013 records were repeatedly broken again in 2014. The Antarctic ice sheet in 2013 and 2014 was more extensive than any time in recorded history, and yet the EDF pushes the lie that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is shrinking.
The EDF’s assertion about Glacier National Park is also misleading. Alpine glaciers at Glacier National Park and elsewhere have been receding for over 300 years, since the Earth’s temperature bottomed out during the depths of the Little Ice Age. The warming of the past 300 years and the resulting recession of alpine glaciers predated humans building coal-fired power plants and driving SUVs. Moreover, opening up more of the Earth’s surface to vegetation and plant and animal life would normally be considered a beneficial change, if global warming alarmists had not so thoroughly politicized the global warming discussion.
***************
There you have it. These are the 10 best arguments global warming activists like EDF can make, along with the objective scientific facts that prove them wrong.
No wonder global warming alarmists are so terrified of people having access to both sides of the debate.
10 Anti - Global warming lies, that may shock you.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #1
“Bats change the warming power of the sun" – Ya - we all know these are evil creatures. It's a little advertised FACT that there are so many bats out there - and they are all black - that they are responsible for the reason we have global warming. Please do not tell us that they come out at night - because if you do - you are one of those cappuccino-slurping West Coast Hippie Lefie Commie Freaks who only want to kill every job on the planet. PS. God hates you.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #2
“Lyme Disease Spreads” – Lymes - when added to California Lemonade, a Daiquiri, or a Salty Dog Collins - are good for you. More global warming means more Lymes. It's all a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #3
“National Security is not Threatened – Global warming means shorts. There's less places to hide swords. So less terrorists. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #4
“Sea Levels Rise" – but it's a good thing. We all get waterfront property. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #5
“Allergies Worsen" – So there's more particulate matter. Who cares. It's all in China anyways. The more sick days they take - the more our manufacturing industries take up the slack. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #6
“Beetles Destroy Iconic Western Forests" – So what - we loose a few trees. More room for drilling rigs that way - and we get dunnage to place under our machines in the process. It's a good thing. Damn trees destroys the view anyways. How did you think we got these here prairies anyways? It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #7
“Canada: The New America" – Well it kinda already is - isn't it? It's a good thing. Just ask Harper.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #8
“Economic Consequences" – Ya - but only for those industries that depend upon unaltered ecosystems - and that would be - give me a minute - I'll think of one - oh ya! - the stock market. It's a good thing. Or wait - Ya I think so. hmm. maybe i'd better think about this. Call me back next election.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #9
“Infectious Diseases Thrive" – ya - but I got stock in the pharmaceutical industry - so I'm good. F*ck you though. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #10
“Shrinking Glaciers" – Oh come on! Have you ever even been to one? Damn cold things. They are of no practical value except for ice in my rye - and the fridge is closer for that. It's a good thing.
There you have it. Nothing to worry about. Just ask my benefactors - the Kochs.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #1
“Bats change the warming power of the sun" – Ya - we all know these are evil creatures. It's a little advertised FACT that there are so many bats out there - and they are all black - that they are responsible for the reason we have global warming. Please do not tell us that they come out at night - because if you do - you are one of those cappuccino-slurping West Coast Hippie Lefie Commie Freaks who only want to kill every job on the planet. PS. God hates you.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #2
“Lyme Disease Spreads” – Lymes - when added to California Lemonade, a Daiquiri, or a Salty Dog Collins - are good for you. More global warming means more Lymes. It's all a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #3
“National Security is not Threatened – Global warming means shorts. There's less places to hide swords. So less terrorists. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #4
“Sea Levels Rise" – but it's a good thing. We all get waterfront property. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #5
“Allergies Worsen" – So there's more particulate matter. Who cares. It's all in China anyways. The more sick days they take - the more our manufacturing industries take up the slack. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #6
“Beetles Destroy Iconic Western Forests" – So what - we loose a few trees. More room for drilling rigs that way - and we get dunnage to place under our machines in the process. It's a good thing. Damn trees destroys the view anyways. How did you think we got these here prairies anyways? It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #7
“Canada: The New America" – Well it kinda already is - isn't it? It's a good thing. Just ask Harper.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #8
“Economic Consequences" – Ya - but only for those industries that depend upon unaltered ecosystems - and that would be - give me a minute - I'll think of one - oh ya! - the stock market. It's a good thing. Or wait - Ya I think so. hmm. maybe i'd better think about this. Call me back next election.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #9
“Infectious Diseases Thrive" – ya - but I got stock in the pharmaceutical industry - so I'm good. F*ck you though. It's a good thing.
Denier Alarmist Assertion #10
“Shrinking Glaciers" – Oh come on! Have you ever even been to one? Damn cold things. They are of no practical value except for ice in my rye - and the fridge is closer for that. It's a good thing.
There you have it. Nothing to worry about. Just ask my benefactors - the Kochs.
Last edited by a moderator:
OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
In China, the true cost of Britain's clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale
By SIMON PARRY in China and ED DOUGLAS in Scotland
Created: 19:32 GMT, 26 January 2011
This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what's left behind after making the magnets for Britain's latest wind turbines... and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem
The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background
The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background
On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.
Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.
‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’
Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.
Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.
The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.
Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.
This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.
Wind turbines in Dun Law, Scotland
Wind power's uncertainties don't end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce (Pictured above, wind turbines in Dun Law, Scotland)
Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.
The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.
For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.
Retired farmer Su Bairen, 69, who led us to the lake, says it was initially a novelty – a multi-coloured pond set in farmland as early rare earth factories run by the state-owned Baogang group of companies began work in the Sixties.
‘At first it was just a hole in the ground,’ he says. ‘When it dried in the winter and summer, it turned into a black crust and children would play on it. Then one or two of them fell through and drowned in the sludge below. Since then, children have stayed away.’
As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.
‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’
People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.
Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.
Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.
There are 17 ‘rare earth metals’ – the name doesn’t mean they are necessarily in short supply; it refers to the fact that the metals occur in scattered deposits of minerals, rather than concentrated ores. Rare earth metals usually occur together, and, once mined, have to be separated.
By SIMON PARRY in China and ED DOUGLAS in Scotland
Created: 19:32 GMT, 26 January 2011
This toxic lake poisons Chinese farmers, their children and their land. It is what's left behind after making the magnets for Britain's latest wind turbines... and, as a special Live investigation reveals, is merely one of a multitude of environmental sins committed in the name of our new green Jerusalem
The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background
The lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China, which as been dumped by the rare earth processing plants in the background
On the outskirts of one of China’s most polluted cities, an old farmer stares despairingly out across an immense lake of bubbling toxic waste covered in black dust. He remembers it as fields of wheat and corn.
Yan Man Jia Hong is a dedicated Communist. At 74, he still believes in his revolutionary heroes, but he despises the young local officials and entrepreneurs who have let this happen.
‘Chairman Mao was a hero and saved us,’ he says. ‘But these people only care about money. They have destroyed our lives.’
Vast fortunes are being amassed here in Inner Mongolia; the region has more than 90 per cent of the world’s legal reserves of rare earth metals, and specifically neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in the most striking of green energy producers, wind turbines.
Live has uncovered the distinctly dirty truth about the process used to extract neodymium: it has an appalling environmental impact that raises serious questions over the credibility of so-called green technology.
The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.
Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.
This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.
Wind turbines in Dun Law, Scotland
Wind power's uncertainties don't end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce (Pictured above, wind turbines in Dun Law, Scotland)
Rusting pipelines meander for miles from factories processing rare earths in Baotou out to the man-made lake where, mixed with water, the foul-smelling radioactive waste from this industrial process is pumped day after day. No signposts and no paved roads lead here, and as we approach security guards shoo us away and tail us. When we finally break through the cordon and climb sand dunes to reach its brim, an apocalyptic sight greets us: a giant, secret toxic dump, made bigger by every wind turbine we build.
The lake instantly assaults your senses. Stand on the black crust for just seconds and your eyes water and a powerful, acrid stench fills your lungs.
For hours after our visit, my stomach lurched and my head throbbed. We were there for only one hour, but those who live in Mr Yan’s village of Dalahai, and other villages around, breathe in the same poison every day.
Retired farmer Su Bairen, 69, who led us to the lake, says it was initially a novelty – a multi-coloured pond set in farmland as early rare earth factories run by the state-owned Baogang group of companies began work in the Sixties.
‘At first it was just a hole in the ground,’ he says. ‘When it dried in the winter and summer, it turned into a black crust and children would play on it. Then one or two of them fell through and drowned in the sludge below. Since then, children have stayed away.’
As more factories sprang up, the banks grew higher, the lake grew larger and the stench and fumes grew more overwhelming.
‘It turned into a mountain that towered over us,’ says Mr Su. ‘Anything we planted just withered, then our animals started to sicken and die.’
People too began to suffer. Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.
Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.
Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.
There are 17 ‘rare earth metals’ – the name doesn’t mean they are necessarily in short supply; it refers to the fact that the metals occur in scattered deposits of minerals, rather than concentrated ores. Rare earth metals usually occur together, and, once mined, have to be separated.
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OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
Villagers Su Bairen, 69, and Yan Man Jia Hong, 74, stand on the edge of the six-mile-wide toxic lake in Baotou, China that has devastated their farmland and ruined the health of the people in their community
Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.
In the pollution-blighted city of Baotou, most people wear face masks everywhere they go.
‘You have to wear one otherwise the dust gets into your lungs and poisons you,’ our taxi driver tells us, pulling over so we can buy white cloth masks from a roadside hawker.
Posing as buyers, we visit Baotou Xijun Rare Earth Co Ltd. A large billboard in front of the factory shows an idyllic image of fields of sheep grazing in green fields with wind turbines in the background.
In a smartly appointed boardroom, Vice General Manager Cheng Qing tells us proudly that his company is the fourth biggest producer of rare earth metals in China, processing 30,000 tons a year. He leads us down to a complex of primitive workshops where workers with no protective clothing except for cotton gloves and face masks ladle molten rare earth from furnaces with temperatures of 1,000°C.
The result is 1.5kg bricks of neodymium, packed into blue barrels weighing 250kg each. Its price has more than doubled in the past year – it now costs around £80 per kilogram. So a 1.5kg block would be worth £120 – or more than a fortnight’s wages for the workers handling them. The waste from this highly toxic process ends up being pumped into the lake looming over Dalahai.
The state-owned Baogang Group, which operates most of the factories in Baotou, claims it invests tens of millions of pounds a year in environmental protection and processes the waste before it is discharged.
According to Du Youlu of Baogang’s safety and environmental protection department, seven million tons of waste a year was discharged into the lake, which is already 100ft high and growing by three feet each year.
In what appeared an attempt to shift responsibility onto China’s national leaders and their close control of the rare earths industry, he added: ‘The tailing is a national resource and China will ultimately decide what will be done with the lake.’
Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste.
‘There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground, and then they are processed using more acid and chemicals.
Inside the Baotou Xijun Rare Earth refinery in Baotou, where neodymium, essential in new wind turbine magnets, is processed
Inside the Baotou Xijun Rare Earth refinery in Baotou, where neodymium, essential in new wind turbine magnets, is processed
Finally they are dumped into tailing lakes that are often very poorly constructed and maintained. And throughout this process, large amounts of highly toxic acids, heavy metals and other chemicals are emitted into the air that people breathe, and leak into surface and ground water. Villagers rely on this for irrigation of their crops and for drinking water. Whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities.’
The fact that the wind-turbine industry relies on neodymium, which even in legal factories has a catastrophic environmental impact, is an irony Ms Choi acknowledges.
‘It is a real dilemma for environmentalists who want to see the growth of the industry,’ she says. ‘But we have the responsibility to recognise the environmental destruction that is being caused while making these wind turbines.’
It’s a long way from the grim conditions in Baotou to the raw beauty of the Monadhliath mountains in Scotland. But the environmental damage wind turbines cause will be felt here, too. These hills are the latest battleground in a war being fought all over Britain – and particularly in Scotland – between wind-farm developers and those opposed to them.
Cameron McNeish, a hill walker and TV presenter who lives in the Monadhliath, campaigned for almost a decade against the Dunmaglass wind farm before the Scottish government gave the go-ahead in December. Soon, 33 turbines will be erected on the hills north of the upper Findhorn valley.
McNeish is passionate about this landscape: ‘It’s vast and wild and isolated,’ he says. Huge empty spaces, however, are also perfect for wind turbines and unlike the nearby Cairngorms there are no landscape designations to protect this area. When the Labour government put in place the policy framework and subsidies to boost renewable energy, the Monadhliath became a mouth-watering opportunity.
People have been trying to make real money from Scottish estates like Jack Hayward’s Dunmaglass. Hayward, a Bermuda-based property developer and former chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers, struck a deal with renewable energy company RES which, campaigners believe, will earn the estate an estimated £9 million over the next 25 years.
Each of the turbines at Dunmaglass will require servicing, which means a network of new and improved roads 20 miles long being built across the hills. They also need 1,500 tons of concrete foundations to keep them upright in a strong wind, which will scar the area.
Dunmaglass is just one among scores of wind farms in Scotland with planning permission. Scores more are still in the planning system. There are currently 3,153 turbines in the UK overall, with a maximum capacity of 5,203 megawatts.
How the latest wind turbines work
Around half of them are in Scotland. First Minister Alex Salmond and the Scottish government have said they want to get 80 per cent of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, which means more turbines spread across the country’s hills and moors.
Many environmental pressure groups share Salmond’s view. Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.
‘No way of generating energy is 100 per cent clean and problem-free,’ says Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth.
‘Wind energy causes far fewer problems than coal, gas or nuclear. If we don’t invest in green energy, business experts have warned that future generations will be landed with a bill that will dwarf the current financial crisis. But we need to ensure the use of materials like neodymium and concrete is kept to a minimum, that turbines use recycled materials wherever possible and that they are carefully sited to the reduce the already minimal impact on bird populations.’
But Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, a small but feisty campaign group dedicated to protecting Scotland’s wild lands, also points out that leaving aside the damage to the landscape, nobody is really sure how much carbon is being released by the renewable energy construction boom. Peat moors lock up huge amounts of carbon, which gets released when it’s drained to put up a turbine.
Environmental considerations aside, as the percentage of electricity generated by wind increases, renewable energy is coming under a lot more scrutiny now for one simple reason – money. We pay extra for wind power – around twice as much – because it can’t compete with other forms of electricity generation. Under the Renewable Obligation (RO), suppliers have to buy a percentage of their electricity from renewable generators and can hand that cost on to consumers. If they don’t, they pay a fine instead.
Neodymium is commonly used as part of a Neodymium-Iron-Boron alloy (Nd2Fe14B) which, thanks to its tetragonal crystal structure, is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism, and the stronger the magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. It’s been used in small quantities in common technologies for quite a long time – hi-fi speakers, hard drives and lasers, for example. But only with the rise of alternative energy solutions has neodymium really come to prominence, for use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A direct-drive permanent-magnet generator for a top capacity wind turbine would use 4,400lb of neodymium-based permanent magnet material.
In the pollution-blighted city of Baotou, most people wear face masks everywhere they go.
‘You have to wear one otherwise the dust gets into your lungs and poisons you,’ our taxi driver tells us, pulling over so we can buy white cloth masks from a roadside hawker.
Posing as buyers, we visit Baotou Xijun Rare Earth Co Ltd. A large billboard in front of the factory shows an idyllic image of fields of sheep grazing in green fields with wind turbines in the background.
In a smartly appointed boardroom, Vice General Manager Cheng Qing tells us proudly that his company is the fourth biggest producer of rare earth metals in China, processing 30,000 tons a year. He leads us down to a complex of primitive workshops where workers with no protective clothing except for cotton gloves and face masks ladle molten rare earth from furnaces with temperatures of 1,000°C.
The result is 1.5kg bricks of neodymium, packed into blue barrels weighing 250kg each. Its price has more than doubled in the past year – it now costs around £80 per kilogram. So a 1.5kg block would be worth £120 – or more than a fortnight’s wages for the workers handling them. The waste from this highly toxic process ends up being pumped into the lake looming over Dalahai.
The state-owned Baogang Group, which operates most of the factories in Baotou, claims it invests tens of millions of pounds a year in environmental protection and processes the waste before it is discharged.
According to Du Youlu of Baogang’s safety and environmental protection department, seven million tons of waste a year was discharged into the lake, which is already 100ft high and growing by three feet each year.
In what appeared an attempt to shift responsibility onto China’s national leaders and their close control of the rare earths industry, he added: ‘The tailing is a national resource and China will ultimately decide what will be done with the lake.’
Jamie Choi, an expert on toxics for Greenpeace China, says villagers living near the lake face horrendous health risks from the carcinogenic and radioactive waste.
‘There’s not one step of the rare earth mining process that is not disastrous for the environment. Ores are being extracted by pumping acid into the ground, and then they are processed using more acid and chemicals.
Inside the Baotou Xijun Rare Earth refinery in Baotou, where neodymium, essential in new wind turbine magnets, is processed
Inside the Baotou Xijun Rare Earth refinery in Baotou, where neodymium, essential in new wind turbine magnets, is processed
Finally they are dumped into tailing lakes that are often very poorly constructed and maintained. And throughout this process, large amounts of highly toxic acids, heavy metals and other chemicals are emitted into the air that people breathe, and leak into surface and ground water. Villagers rely on this for irrigation of their crops and for drinking water. Whenever we purchase products that contain rare earth metals, we are unknowingly taking part in massive environmental degradation and the destruction of communities.’
The fact that the wind-turbine industry relies on neodymium, which even in legal factories has a catastrophic environmental impact, is an irony Ms Choi acknowledges.
‘It is a real dilemma for environmentalists who want to see the growth of the industry,’ she says. ‘But we have the responsibility to recognise the environmental destruction that is being caused while making these wind turbines.’
It’s a long way from the grim conditions in Baotou to the raw beauty of the Monadhliath mountains in Scotland. But the environmental damage wind turbines cause will be felt here, too. These hills are the latest battleground in a war being fought all over Britain – and particularly in Scotland – between wind-farm developers and those opposed to them.
Cameron McNeish, a hill walker and TV presenter who lives in the Monadhliath, campaigned for almost a decade against the Dunmaglass wind farm before the Scottish government gave the go-ahead in December. Soon, 33 turbines will be erected on the hills north of the upper Findhorn valley.
McNeish is passionate about this landscape: ‘It’s vast and wild and isolated,’ he says. Huge empty spaces, however, are also perfect for wind turbines and unlike the nearby Cairngorms there are no landscape designations to protect this area. When the Labour government put in place the policy framework and subsidies to boost renewable energy, the Monadhliath became a mouth-watering opportunity.
People have been trying to make real money from Scottish estates like Jack Hayward’s Dunmaglass. Hayward, a Bermuda-based property developer and former chairman of Wolverhampton Wanderers, struck a deal with renewable energy company RES which, campaigners believe, will earn the estate an estimated £9 million over the next 25 years.
Each of the turbines at Dunmaglass will require servicing, which means a network of new and improved roads 20 miles long being built across the hills. They also need 1,500 tons of concrete foundations to keep them upright in a strong wind, which will scar the area.
Dunmaglass is just one among scores of wind farms in Scotland with planning permission. Scores more are still in the planning system. There are currently 3,153 turbines in the UK overall, with a maximum capacity of 5,203 megawatts.
How the latest wind turbines work
Around half of them are in Scotland. First Minister Alex Salmond and the Scottish government have said they want to get 80 per cent of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, which means more turbines spread across the country’s hills and moors.
Many environmental pressure groups share Salmond’s view. Friends of the Earth opposes the Arctic being ruined by oil extraction, but when it comes to damaging Scotland’s wilderness with concrete and hundreds of miles of roads, they say wind energy is worth it as the impact of climate change has to be faced.
‘No way of generating energy is 100 per cent clean and problem-free,’ says Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth.
‘Wind energy causes far fewer problems than coal, gas or nuclear. If we don’t invest in green energy, business experts have warned that future generations will be landed with a bill that will dwarf the current financial crisis. But we need to ensure the use of materials like neodymium and concrete is kept to a minimum, that turbines use recycled materials wherever possible and that they are carefully sited to the reduce the already minimal impact on bird populations.’
But Helen McDade, head of policy at the John Muir Trust, a small but feisty campaign group dedicated to protecting Scotland’s wild lands, also points out that leaving aside the damage to the landscape, nobody is really sure how much carbon is being released by the renewable energy construction boom. Peat moors lock up huge amounts of carbon, which gets released when it’s drained to put up a turbine.
Environmental considerations aside, as the percentage of electricity generated by wind increases, renewable energy is coming under a lot more scrutiny now for one simple reason – money. We pay extra for wind power – around twice as much – because it can’t compete with other forms of electricity generation. Under the Renewable Obligation (RO), suppliers have to buy a percentage of their electricity from renewable generators and can hand that cost on to consumers. If they don’t, they pay a fine instead.
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OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
There’s a simple beauty about RO for the government. Even though it’s defined as a tax, it doesn’t come out of pay packets but is stuck on our electricity bills. That has made funding wind farms a lot easier for the government than more cost-effective energy-efficiency measures.
‘If you want a grant for an energy conservation project on your house,’ says Helen McDade, ‘the money comes from taxes. But investment for turbines comes from energy companies.’
Already, RO adds £1.4 billion to our bills each year to provide a pot of money to pay power companies for their ‘green’ electricity. By 2020, the figure will have risen to somewhere between £5 billion and £10 billion.
When he was Chancellor, Gordon Brown added another decade to these price guarantees, extending the RO scheme to 2037, guaranteeing the subsidy for more than a quarter of a century.
It’s not surprising there’s been an avalanche of wind-farm applications in the Highlands. Wind speeds are stronger, land is cheaper and the government loves you.
‘You go to a landowner,’ McDade says, ‘and offer him what is peanuts to an energy company yet keeps him happily on his estate so they can put up a wind farm, which in turn raises ordinary people’s electricity bills. There’s a social issue here that doesn’t get discussed.’
By 2020, environmental regulation will be adding 31 per cent to our bills. That’s £160 green tax out of an average annual bill of £512. As costs rise, more people will be driven into fuel poverty. When he was secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband decreed that these increases should be offset by improvements in energy efficiencies.
It’s a view shared by his successor Chris Huhne, who says inflation due to RO will be effectively one per cent. Britain’s low-income families, facing hikes in petrol and food costs, will hope he’s right.
Individual households aren’t the only ones shouldering the costs. Industry faces an even bigger burden. By 2020, environmental charges will add 33 per cent to industry’s energy costs.
Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, says that, ‘Industry is getting the worst of both worlds. Around 80 per cent of the contracts for the new Thanet offshore wind farm (off the coast of Kent) went abroad, but the expensive electricity will be paid for here.’
Our current obsession with wind power, according to John Constable of energy think-tank the Renewable Energy Foundation, stems from the decision of the European Union on how to tackle climate change. Instead of just setting targets for reducing emissions, the EU told governments that by 2020, 15 per cent of all the energy we use must come from renewable sources.
Because of how we heat our houses and run our cars with gas and petrol, 30 per cent of electricity needs to come from renewables. And in the absence of other technologies, that means wind turbines. But there’s a structural flaw in the plan, which this winter has brutally exposed.
Study a graph of electricity consumption and it appears amazingly predictable, even down to reduced demand on public holidays. The graph for wind energy output, however, is far less predictable.
Take the figures for December, when we all shivered through sub-zero temperatures and wholesale electricity prices surged. Peak demand for the UK on 20 December was just over 60,000 megawatts. Maximum capacity for wind turbines throughout the UK is 5,891 megawatts, almost ten per cent of that peak demand figure.
Yet on December 20, because winds were light or non-existent, wind energy contributed a paltry 140 megawatts. Despite billions of pounds in investment and subsidies, Britain’s wind-turbine fleet was producing a feeble 2.43 per cent of its own capacity – and little more than 0.2 per cent of the nation’s electricity in the coldest month since records began.
The problems with the intermittency of wind energy are well known. A new network of cables linking ten countries around the North Sea is being suggested to smooth supply and take advantage of 140 gigawatts of offshore wind power. No one knows for sure how much this network will cost, although a figure of £25 billion has been mooted.
The government has also realised that when wind nears its target of 30 per cent, power companies will need more back-up to fill the gap when the wind doesn’t blow. Britain’s total capacity will need to rise from 76 gigawatts up to 120 gigawatts. That overcapacity will need another £50 billion and drive down prices when the wind’s blowing. Power companies are anxious about getting a decent price. Once again, consumers will pay.
Wind power’s uncertainties don’t end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce. Many developers claim their installations will achieve 30 per cent of their maximum output over the course of a year. More sober energy analysts suggest 26 per cent. But even that figure is starting to look generous. In December, the average figure was less than 21 per cent. In the year between October 2009 and September 2010, the average was 23.6 per cent, still nowhere near industry claims.
Then there’s the thorny question of how many homes new installations can power. According to wind farm developers like Scottish and Southern Electricity, a house uses 3.3MWh in a year. Lobby group RenewablesUK – formerly the British Wind Energy Association – gives a figure of 4.7MWh. In the Highlands electricity usage is even higher.
Last year, a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering warned that transforming our energy supply to produce a low-carbon economy would require the biggest investment and social change seen in peacetime. And yet Professor Sue Ion, who led the report, warned, ‘We are nowhere near having a plan.’
So, against the backdrop of environmental catastrophe in China and these less than attractive calculations, could the billions being thrown at wind farms be better spent? Undoubtedly, says John Constable.
‘The government is betting the farm on the throw of a die. What’s happening now is simply reckless.’
NUCLEAR, COAL, SOLAR, HYDRO, WIND: HOW THE ENERGY OPTIONS STACK UP
Enlarge
Nuclear, coal, solar, hydro, wind: How the energy options stack up
The British energy market is a hugely complicated and ever-changing landscape. We rely on a number of different sources for our energy - some more efficient than others, some more polluting than others.
Here, you can see how much energy each type contributes, how much they are predicted to contribute in 2020, how much carbon dioxide they generate and how efficient they are.
Renewable energy sources receive varying subsidies - which are added to our energy bills - as a result of the government's Renewables Obligation, whereas 'traditional' sources do not.
Critically, government cost figures do not include subsidies, whereas our measure shows precisely how much money a power station receives for each megawatt-hour (MWh) it produces, which includes the price paid for the energy by the supplier and any applicable subsidy. This is an instant measure of an energy supply's cost-efficiency; the lower the figure, the less that energy costs to produce.
Note: figures relate to UK energy production. Approximately seven per cent of our electricity comes from imports or other sources
‘If you want a grant for an energy conservation project on your house,’ says Helen McDade, ‘the money comes from taxes. But investment for turbines comes from energy companies.’
Already, RO adds £1.4 billion to our bills each year to provide a pot of money to pay power companies for their ‘green’ electricity. By 2020, the figure will have risen to somewhere between £5 billion and £10 billion.
When he was Chancellor, Gordon Brown added another decade to these price guarantees, extending the RO scheme to 2037, guaranteeing the subsidy for more than a quarter of a century.
It’s not surprising there’s been an avalanche of wind-farm applications in the Highlands. Wind speeds are stronger, land is cheaper and the government loves you.
‘You go to a landowner,’ McDade says, ‘and offer him what is peanuts to an energy company yet keeps him happily on his estate so they can put up a wind farm, which in turn raises ordinary people’s electricity bills. There’s a social issue here that doesn’t get discussed.’
By 2020, environmental regulation will be adding 31 per cent to our bills. That’s £160 green tax out of an average annual bill of £512. As costs rise, more people will be driven into fuel poverty. When he was secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband decreed that these increases should be offset by improvements in energy efficiencies.
It’s a view shared by his successor Chris Huhne, who says inflation due to RO will be effectively one per cent. Britain’s low-income families, facing hikes in petrol and food costs, will hope he’s right.
Individual households aren’t the only ones shouldering the costs. Industry faces an even bigger burden. By 2020, environmental charges will add 33 per cent to industry’s energy costs.
Jeremy Nicholson, director of the Energy Intensive Users Group, says that, ‘Industry is getting the worst of both worlds. Around 80 per cent of the contracts for the new Thanet offshore wind farm (off the coast of Kent) went abroad, but the expensive electricity will be paid for here.’
Our current obsession with wind power, according to John Constable of energy think-tank the Renewable Energy Foundation, stems from the decision of the European Union on how to tackle climate change. Instead of just setting targets for reducing emissions, the EU told governments that by 2020, 15 per cent of all the energy we use must come from renewable sources.
Because of how we heat our houses and run our cars with gas and petrol, 30 per cent of electricity needs to come from renewables. And in the absence of other technologies, that means wind turbines. But there’s a structural flaw in the plan, which this winter has brutally exposed.
Study a graph of electricity consumption and it appears amazingly predictable, even down to reduced demand on public holidays. The graph for wind energy output, however, is far less predictable.
Take the figures for December, when we all shivered through sub-zero temperatures and wholesale electricity prices surged. Peak demand for the UK on 20 December was just over 60,000 megawatts. Maximum capacity for wind turbines throughout the UK is 5,891 megawatts, almost ten per cent of that peak demand figure.
Yet on December 20, because winds were light or non-existent, wind energy contributed a paltry 140 megawatts. Despite billions of pounds in investment and subsidies, Britain’s wind-turbine fleet was producing a feeble 2.43 per cent of its own capacity – and little more than 0.2 per cent of the nation’s electricity in the coldest month since records began.
The problems with the intermittency of wind energy are well known. A new network of cables linking ten countries around the North Sea is being suggested to smooth supply and take advantage of 140 gigawatts of offshore wind power. No one knows for sure how much this network will cost, although a figure of £25 billion has been mooted.
The government has also realised that when wind nears its target of 30 per cent, power companies will need more back-up to fill the gap when the wind doesn’t blow. Britain’s total capacity will need to rise from 76 gigawatts up to 120 gigawatts. That overcapacity will need another £50 billion and drive down prices when the wind’s blowing. Power companies are anxious about getting a decent price. Once again, consumers will pay.
Wind power’s uncertainties don’t end with intermittency. There is huge controversy about how much energy a wind farm will produce. Many developers claim their installations will achieve 30 per cent of their maximum output over the course of a year. More sober energy analysts suggest 26 per cent. But even that figure is starting to look generous. In December, the average figure was less than 21 per cent. In the year between October 2009 and September 2010, the average was 23.6 per cent, still nowhere near industry claims.
Then there’s the thorny question of how many homes new installations can power. According to wind farm developers like Scottish and Southern Electricity, a house uses 3.3MWh in a year. Lobby group RenewablesUK – formerly the British Wind Energy Association – gives a figure of 4.7MWh. In the Highlands electricity usage is even higher.
Last year, a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering warned that transforming our energy supply to produce a low-carbon economy would require the biggest investment and social change seen in peacetime. And yet Professor Sue Ion, who led the report, warned, ‘We are nowhere near having a plan.’
So, against the backdrop of environmental catastrophe in China and these less than attractive calculations, could the billions being thrown at wind farms be better spent? Undoubtedly, says John Constable.
‘The government is betting the farm on the throw of a die. What’s happening now is simply reckless.’
NUCLEAR, COAL, SOLAR, HYDRO, WIND: HOW THE ENERGY OPTIONS STACK UP
Enlarge
Nuclear, coal, solar, hydro, wind: How the energy options stack up
The British energy market is a hugely complicated and ever-changing landscape. We rely on a number of different sources for our energy - some more efficient than others, some more polluting than others.
Here, you can see how much energy each type contributes, how much they are predicted to contribute in 2020, how much carbon dioxide they generate and how efficient they are.
Renewable energy sources receive varying subsidies - which are added to our energy bills - as a result of the government's Renewables Obligation, whereas 'traditional' sources do not.
Critically, government cost figures do not include subsidies, whereas our measure shows precisely how much money a power station receives for each megawatt-hour (MWh) it produces, which includes the price paid for the energy by the supplier and any applicable subsidy. This is an instant measure of an energy supply's cost-efficiency; the lower the figure, the less that energy costs to produce.
Note: figures relate to UK energy production. Approximately seven per cent of our electricity comes from imports or other sources
Attachments
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-climate-change-made-humans-who-we-are-1.2953660
How climate change made humans who we are
The Great Human Odyssey documentary debuts on The Nature of Things Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. on CBC-TV
By Emily Chung, CBC News Posted: Feb 12, 2015 5:00 AM ET| Last Updated: Feb 12, 2015 10:13 AM ET
The Great Human Odyssey - Promo
Rise of a Species - The Great Human Odyssey
Evolution of the Mind - the Great Human Odyssey 8:16
Humans are unlike any other species on Earth. But it wasn't always that way, says Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson.
Planet Earth, he says, was once like the fictional Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.
"At the beginning, there were a lot of other kinds of humans … other intelligent walking apes just like us. Over that space of time they all went extinct and only one survived.
"It's a wonderful starting point for a story. What is it that makes us the great survivor?"
■Read Niobe Thompson's director's statement about the film
■Ask him questions during a live Twitter chat with @cbcdocs on Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. ET using the hash tag #humanodyssey
It's a story that Thompson tells in a new three-part documentary series called The Great Human Odyssey, which debuts tonight on CBC-TV's The Nature of Things.
Niobe Thompson
Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson is the director and host of The Great Human Odyssey. You can ask him questions during a live web chat with The Nature of Things host David Suzuki Feb. 17 at noon ET. (CBC)
In it, Thompson visits anthropologists at archaeological sites and laboratories around the world, and explores the latest research about human origins. He also visits traditional cultures who still live the way our ancestors once lived in an effort to uncover how they survived when all our hominin cousins went extinct.
One of the big surprises for him was that in the past million years, humans evolved not in a lush, Eden-like Africa but one with a wildly unstable climate, swinging quickly between floods and droughts, heat and cold within the span of a human lifetime.
Thompson thinks that fluctuation played a big role in the natural selection that made humans what they are today.
"What I'm convinced by is climate shifts were a really important forcer. They forced our evolution rapidly and in certain directions," he said in an interview.
DNA evidence shows that during that period of time, humans came close to going extinct — our population may have dropped as low as 600 individuals.
'Incredibly expensive brain'
At the same time, we evolved what Thompson calls our "incredibly expensive brain" — one that uses 20 per cent of our oxygen even though it makes up only two per cent of our mass.
Badjao
The Badjao of the Philippines are the last free-diving nomadic culture in the world. They can spend several minutes at a time holding their breaths 100 metres underwater as they gather food from the sea floor. They were captured on film for the first time in The Great Human Odyssey. (CBC)
The documentary suggests that this brain, which gives us the ability to learn and adjust our behaviour in ways that other animals can't, may have been key to our survival.
We can't know for sure that climate shifts are what made Neanderthals and other African hominins go extinct, Thompson concedes, "but it is pretty suggestive when you look at the climate record."
To see how ancient humans survived conditions that likely wiped out their hominin cousins, Thompson and his crew spent time among traditional cultures including:
■The Kalahari bushmen, who still live a hunter gatherer lifestyle in an African desert with almost no water.
■The Crocodile People of Papua New Guinea, whose rare, secret skin-cutting initiation ritual was captured on film for the series.
■The Badjoa of the Philippines, the last remaining free-diving nomads in the world, who can spend several minutes at a time holding their breath 100 metres underwater as they gather food from the sea floor.
Papua New Guinea male initiation ceremony
The film crew witnessed a rare male initiation ceremony among the Crocodile People in remote Papua New Guinea. (CBC)
In the process, Thompson sampled and tasted many unusual delicacies, from sausage-sized beetle larvae in Papua New Guinea to mangeti nuts pulled undigested out of elephant dung in the Kalahari Desert. Returning to the Kalahari bushmen's village, he also tried what he called a delicious paste of mushed-up grass and asked the women of the village about the recipe.
"They said, 'Well, you get a bunch of the grass and you put it into the mortar and pestle — and then you spit into it,'" he recalled with a grimace and a laugh.
■Explore the world of the Badjao, the Kalahari bushmen, and reindeer-herding Arctic nomads through an interactive web app
■Niobe Thompson shares stories from behind the scenes of The Great Human Odyssey
The crew filmed in some places that were extremely dangerous. The Badjao had never been filmed before because they are surrounded by a violent civil war. Thompson and his crew arranged for the Philippine military to protect them.
"At the end of our shoot, the captain of the Navy Seals brigade who was protecting us said, 'We think you're the first foreigners who have come to this region since 2000 who haven't been kidnapped.'".
New discovery on Easter Island
Over the course of the filming, Thompson had the opportunity to witness some fascinating scientific discoveries in the making.
In one case, scientists revealed through DNA studies that the Rapa Nui people on remote Easter Island in the South Pacific interbred with native South Americans long before Europeans reached the continent. That suggested that they had made the sea journey of more than 3,500 kilometres to South America, and then returned.
Easter Island
During the course of filming, scientists discovered that the Rapa Nui people on remote Easter Island in the South Pacific interbred with native South Americans long before Europeans reached the continent. That suggested that they had made the sea journey of more than 3,500 kilometres to South America, and then returned. (CBC)
The Human Odyssey showcases humans' remarkable adaptability, which has allowed them to spread throughout the world into even harsh and extreme environments. But while it suggests that climate change helped bring about the inventiveness that made that possible, Thomson isn't confident that it means we're well positioned to weather the climate change that we are bringing about today.
"I think we are in trouble… I think one of our greatest tricks in the deep past was moving on," he said. "We don't really have that trick anymore because the planet is full."
But having seen the tricks that humans all over the world have come up with to survive and thrive, Thompson does have some optimism in ability of humans to tackle this new problem.
"What we do have that I think is probably unprecedented," he said, "is the ability to consider the future and modify our behaviour in the present."
The Great Human Odyssey debuts on Thursday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. on CBC-TV's The Nature of Things
How climate change made humans who we are
The Great Human Odyssey documentary debuts on The Nature of Things Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. on CBC-TV
By Emily Chung, CBC News Posted: Feb 12, 2015 5:00 AM ET| Last Updated: Feb 12, 2015 10:13 AM ET
The Great Human Odyssey - Promo
Rise of a Species - The Great Human Odyssey
Evolution of the Mind - the Great Human Odyssey 8:16
Humans are unlike any other species on Earth. But it wasn't always that way, says Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson.
Planet Earth, he says, was once like the fictional Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.
"At the beginning, there were a lot of other kinds of humans … other intelligent walking apes just like us. Over that space of time they all went extinct and only one survived.
"It's a wonderful starting point for a story. What is it that makes us the great survivor?"
■Read Niobe Thompson's director's statement about the film
■Ask him questions during a live Twitter chat with @cbcdocs on Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. ET using the hash tag #humanodyssey
It's a story that Thompson tells in a new three-part documentary series called The Great Human Odyssey, which debuts tonight on CBC-TV's The Nature of Things.
Niobe Thompson
Canadian anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson is the director and host of The Great Human Odyssey. You can ask him questions during a live web chat with The Nature of Things host David Suzuki Feb. 17 at noon ET. (CBC)
In it, Thompson visits anthropologists at archaeological sites and laboratories around the world, and explores the latest research about human origins. He also visits traditional cultures who still live the way our ancestors once lived in an effort to uncover how they survived when all our hominin cousins went extinct.
One of the big surprises for him was that in the past million years, humans evolved not in a lush, Eden-like Africa but one with a wildly unstable climate, swinging quickly between floods and droughts, heat and cold within the span of a human lifetime.
Thompson thinks that fluctuation played a big role in the natural selection that made humans what they are today.
"What I'm convinced by is climate shifts were a really important forcer. They forced our evolution rapidly and in certain directions," he said in an interview.
DNA evidence shows that during that period of time, humans came close to going extinct — our population may have dropped as low as 600 individuals.
'Incredibly expensive brain'
At the same time, we evolved what Thompson calls our "incredibly expensive brain" — one that uses 20 per cent of our oxygen even though it makes up only two per cent of our mass.
Badjao
The Badjao of the Philippines are the last free-diving nomadic culture in the world. They can spend several minutes at a time holding their breaths 100 metres underwater as they gather food from the sea floor. They were captured on film for the first time in The Great Human Odyssey. (CBC)
The documentary suggests that this brain, which gives us the ability to learn and adjust our behaviour in ways that other animals can't, may have been key to our survival.
We can't know for sure that climate shifts are what made Neanderthals and other African hominins go extinct, Thompson concedes, "but it is pretty suggestive when you look at the climate record."
To see how ancient humans survived conditions that likely wiped out their hominin cousins, Thompson and his crew spent time among traditional cultures including:
■The Kalahari bushmen, who still live a hunter gatherer lifestyle in an African desert with almost no water.
■The Crocodile People of Papua New Guinea, whose rare, secret skin-cutting initiation ritual was captured on film for the series.
■The Badjoa of the Philippines, the last remaining free-diving nomads in the world, who can spend several minutes at a time holding their breath 100 metres underwater as they gather food from the sea floor.
Papua New Guinea male initiation ceremony
The film crew witnessed a rare male initiation ceremony among the Crocodile People in remote Papua New Guinea. (CBC)
In the process, Thompson sampled and tasted many unusual delicacies, from sausage-sized beetle larvae in Papua New Guinea to mangeti nuts pulled undigested out of elephant dung in the Kalahari Desert. Returning to the Kalahari bushmen's village, he also tried what he called a delicious paste of mushed-up grass and asked the women of the village about the recipe.
"They said, 'Well, you get a bunch of the grass and you put it into the mortar and pestle — and then you spit into it,'" he recalled with a grimace and a laugh.
■Explore the world of the Badjao, the Kalahari bushmen, and reindeer-herding Arctic nomads through an interactive web app
■Niobe Thompson shares stories from behind the scenes of The Great Human Odyssey
The crew filmed in some places that were extremely dangerous. The Badjao had never been filmed before because they are surrounded by a violent civil war. Thompson and his crew arranged for the Philippine military to protect them.
"At the end of our shoot, the captain of the Navy Seals brigade who was protecting us said, 'We think you're the first foreigners who have come to this region since 2000 who haven't been kidnapped.'".
New discovery on Easter Island
Over the course of the filming, Thompson had the opportunity to witness some fascinating scientific discoveries in the making.
In one case, scientists revealed through DNA studies that the Rapa Nui people on remote Easter Island in the South Pacific interbred with native South Americans long before Europeans reached the continent. That suggested that they had made the sea journey of more than 3,500 kilometres to South America, and then returned.
Easter Island
During the course of filming, scientists discovered that the Rapa Nui people on remote Easter Island in the South Pacific interbred with native South Americans long before Europeans reached the continent. That suggested that they had made the sea journey of more than 3,500 kilometres to South America, and then returned. (CBC)
The Human Odyssey showcases humans' remarkable adaptability, which has allowed them to spread throughout the world into even harsh and extreme environments. But while it suggests that climate change helped bring about the inventiveness that made that possible, Thomson isn't confident that it means we're well positioned to weather the climate change that we are bringing about today.
"I think we are in trouble… I think one of our greatest tricks in the deep past was moving on," he said. "We don't really have that trick anymore because the planet is full."
But having seen the tricks that humans all over the world have come up with to survive and thrive, Thompson does have some optimism in ability of humans to tackle this new problem.
"What we do have that I think is probably unprecedented," he said, "is the ability to consider the future and modify our behaviour in the present."
The Great Human Odyssey debuts on Thursday, Feb. 12 at 8 p.m. on CBC-TV's The Nature of Things
ClayoquotKid
Active Member
Priceless.
Alarmism, leading to "warmists", have skewed the focus in climate research from seeking an understanding of the entire system to primarily seeking out human impact.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/02/Lamb.pdf
Anthropogenic global warming isn't a, "mass hoax to kill jobs" - it is simply one more alarmist claim in a long line of the same made by people who seek to understand the world. (Scientists)
Some examples here: http://climatechangepredictions.org/
The thing is, the idea is supported by governments (through research grants http://joannenova.com.au/2009/07/massive-climate-funding-exposed/ ) who seek more control, and of course the environmental movement loves it (under the guise of "Saving the Planet"), and then of course there is the Socialist/Communist movement who jumps on board seeing a way to tear down the evil corporations while re-distributing wealth.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/11/vilifying-realist-science-and-scientists/
There's also the deeply disturbing "Agenda 21" element, and the fact that most of the people who will suffer most under strict energy regimes live in undeveloped countries - regardless of the amount transferred from the wealthy ones...
AGW isn't a hoax, it is a hypothesis that has been scientifically falsified, yet kept alive politically in the form of "Climate Change" - Which is unfalsifiable as a global constant, and remarkably serves to support the claim with any and all weather events - despite the fact that "Weather is not Climate" which is also used to counter any mentions that - aw hell never mind.
Last edited by a moderator:
tincan
Well-Known Member
Inside the Koch Brothers' Toxic Empire
Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world's largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don't want you to know is how they made all that money
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world's largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don't want you to know is how they made all that money
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
Yesterday, a Big Oil PR group released this cartoon video as an attack against Global Divestment Day.
<iframe width="630" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6A6j1r3Kbuo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Breaking Up With Fossil Fuels is Easy to Do
The Environmental Policy Alliance is a front group for Big Oil that pushes out specious and inaccurate opposition research on individuals and organizations who fight climate change. The group is led by Rick Berman, who was taped by the New York Times as saying in a talk to oil executives that “you have to play dirty to win.”
<iframe width="630" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6A6j1r3Kbuo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Breaking Up With Fossil Fuels is Easy to Do
The Environmental Policy Alliance is a front group for Big Oil that pushes out specious and inaccurate opposition research on individuals and organizations who fight climate change. The group is led by Rick Berman, who was taped by the New York Times as saying in a talk to oil executives that “you have to play dirty to win.”
OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
Look , MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING? WHO KNEW?
One of the big surprises for him was that in the past million years, humans evolved not in a lush, Eden-like Africa but one with a wildly unstable climate, swinging quickly between floods and droughts, heat and cold within the span of a human lifetime.
One of the big surprises for him was that in the past million years, humans evolved not in a lush, Eden-like Africa but one with a wildly unstable climate, swinging quickly between floods and droughts, heat and cold within the span of a human lifetime.
OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
Biggest Science Scandal: Official Temperature Records Were Systematically Adjusted By Climate Scientists
arcticA new article written by Christopher Booker titled ‘The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever’ published in The Telegraph claims that official temperature records were systematically adjusted to show that the earth has warmed much more than the actual data justified.
The article’s theme is that scientists manipulated the data on purpose to exaggerate global warming.
In the article, Booker claims that readings from thermometers in Paraguay were adjusted by climate scientists to make them look like the temperature is increasing, when the measurements off the detectors actually show the opposite.
Paul Homewood, anti-climate change activist stated that changes were made in published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay.
Homewood checked other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the suspicious “adjustments”.
First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC).
These institutes use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Homewood added that world relies on these records for its understanding of global warming.
Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada and the heart of Siberia.
He again found the same one-way adjustments made by scientists to show warming up to 1 degree C or higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded.
Traust Jonsson, who formerly ran Iceland's climate research, was shocked to see how the new version records completely ‘disappears’ Iceland's ‘sea ice years’ around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country's economy
arcticA new article written by Christopher Booker titled ‘The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever’ published in The Telegraph claims that official temperature records were systematically adjusted to show that the earth has warmed much more than the actual data justified.
The article’s theme is that scientists manipulated the data on purpose to exaggerate global warming.
In the article, Booker claims that readings from thermometers in Paraguay were adjusted by climate scientists to make them look like the temperature is increasing, when the measurements off the detectors actually show the opposite.
Paul Homewood, anti-climate change activist stated that changes were made in published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay.
Homewood checked other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the suspicious “adjustments”.
First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC).
These institutes use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Homewood added that world relies on these records for its understanding of global warming.
Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada and the heart of Siberia.
He again found the same one-way adjustments made by scientists to show warming up to 1 degree C or higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded.
Traust Jonsson, who formerly ran Iceland's climate research, was shocked to see how the new version records completely ‘disappears’ Iceland's ‘sea ice years’ around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country's economy
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150212154527.htm
Warming pushes Western US toward driest period in 1,000 years: Unprecedented Risk of Drought in 21st Century
Date: February 12, 2015
Source: The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Summary: During the second half of the 21st century, the US Southwest and Great Plains will face persistent drought worse than anything seen in times ancient or modern, with the drying conditions 'driven primarily' by human-induced global warming, a new study predicts.
Soil moisture 30 cm below ground projected through 2100 for high emissions scenario RCP 8.5. The soil moisture data are standardized to the Palmer Drought Severity Index and are deviations from the 20th century average.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
[Click to enlarge image]
During the second half of the 21st century, the U.S. Southwest and Great Plains will face persistent drought worse than anything seen in times ancient or modern, with the drying conditions "driven primarily" by human-induced global warming, a new study predicts.
The research says the drying would surpass in severity any of the decades-long "megadroughts" that occurred much earlier during the past 1,000 years -- one of which has been tied by some researchers to the decline of the Anasazi or Ancient Pueblo Peoples in the Colorado Plateau in the late 13th century. Many studies have already predicted that the Southwest could dry due to global warming, but this is the first to say that such drying could exceed the worst conditions of the distant past. The impacts today would be devastating, given the region's much larger population and use of resources.
"We are the first to do this kind of quantitative comparison between the projections and the distant past, and the story is a bit bleak," said Jason E. Smerdon, a co-author and climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "Even when selecting for the worst megadrought-dominated period, the 21st century projections make the megadroughts seem like quaint walks through the Garden of Eden."
"The surprising thing to us was really how consistent the response was over these regions, nearly regardless of what model we used or what soil moisture metric we looked at," said lead author Benjamin I. Cook of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It all showed this really, really significant drying."
The new study, "Unprecedented 21st-Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains," will be featured in the inaugural edition of the new online journal Science Advances, produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which also publishes the leading journal Science.
Today, 11 of the past 14 years have been drought years in much of the American West, including California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona and across the Southern Plains to Texas and Oklahoma, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a collaboration of U.S. government agencies.
The current drought directly affects more than64 million people in the Southwest and Southern Plains, according to NASA, and many more are indirectly affected because of the impacts on agricultural regions.
Shrinking water supplies have forced western states to impose water use restrictions; aquifers are being drawn down to unsustainable levels, and major surface reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at historically low levels. This winter's snowpack in the Sierras, a major water source for Los Angeles and other cities, is less than a quarter of what authorities call a "normal" level, according to a February report from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. California water officials last year cut off the flow of water from the northern part of the state to the south, forcing farmers in the Central Valley to leave hundreds of thousands of acres unplanted.
"Changes in precipitation, temperature and drought, and the consequences it has for our society -- which is critically dependent on our freshwater resources for food, electricity and industry -- are likely to be the most immediate climate impacts we experience as a result of greenhouse gas emissions," said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Anchukaitis said the findings "require us to think rather immediately about how we could and would adapt."
Much of our knowledge about past droughts comes from extensive study of tree rings conducted by Lamont-Doherty scientist Edward Cook (Benjamin's father) and others, who in 2009 created the North American Drought Atlas. The atlas recreates the history of drought over the previous 2,005 years, based on hundreds of tree-ring chronologies, gleaned in turn from tens of thousands of tree samples across the United States, Mexico and parts of Canada.
For the current study, researchers used data from the atlas to represent past climate, and applied three different measures for drought -- two soil moisture
measurements at varying depths, and a version of the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which gauges precipitation and evaporation and transpiration -- the net input of water into the land. While some have questioned how accurately the Palmer drought index truly reflects soil moisture, the researchers found it matched well with other measures, and that it "provides a bridge between the [climate] models and drought in observations," Cook said.
The researchers applied 17 different climate models to analyze the future impact of rising average temperatures on the regions. And, they compared two different global warming scenarios -- one with "business as usual," projecting a continued rise in emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming; and a second scenario in which emissions are moderated.
By most of those measures, they came to the same conclusions.
"The results … are extremely unfavorable for the continuation of agricultural and water resource management as they are currently practiced in the Great Plains and southwestern United States," said David Stahle, professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas and director of the Tree-Ring Laboratory there. Stahle was not involved in the study, though he worked on the North American Drought Atlas.
Smerdon said he and his colleagues are confident in their results. The effects of CO2 on higher average temperature and the subsequent connection to drying in the Southwest and Great Plains emerge as a "strong signal" across the majority of the models, regardless of the drought metrics that are used, he said. And, he added, they are consistent with many previous studies.
Anchukaitis said the paper "provides an elegant and convincing connection" between reconstructions of past climate and the models pointing to the risk of future drought.
Toby R. Ault of Cornell University is a co-author of the study. Funding was provided by the NASA Modeling, Analysis and Prediction Program, NASA Strategic Science, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference: Benjamin I. Cook, Toby R. Ault, Jason E. Smerdon. Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains. Science Advances, 12 February 2015 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400082 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1400082
Warming pushes Western US toward driest period in 1,000 years: Unprecedented Risk of Drought in 21st Century
Date: February 12, 2015
Source: The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Summary: During the second half of the 21st century, the US Southwest and Great Plains will face persistent drought worse than anything seen in times ancient or modern, with the drying conditions 'driven primarily' by human-induced global warming, a new study predicts.
Soil moisture 30 cm below ground projected through 2100 for high emissions scenario RCP 8.5. The soil moisture data are standardized to the Palmer Drought Severity Index and are deviations from the 20th century average.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
[Click to enlarge image]
During the second half of the 21st century, the U.S. Southwest and Great Plains will face persistent drought worse than anything seen in times ancient or modern, with the drying conditions "driven primarily" by human-induced global warming, a new study predicts.
The research says the drying would surpass in severity any of the decades-long "megadroughts" that occurred much earlier during the past 1,000 years -- one of which has been tied by some researchers to the decline of the Anasazi or Ancient Pueblo Peoples in the Colorado Plateau in the late 13th century. Many studies have already predicted that the Southwest could dry due to global warming, but this is the first to say that such drying could exceed the worst conditions of the distant past. The impacts today would be devastating, given the region's much larger population and use of resources.
"We are the first to do this kind of quantitative comparison between the projections and the distant past, and the story is a bit bleak," said Jason E. Smerdon, a co-author and climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "Even when selecting for the worst megadrought-dominated period, the 21st century projections make the megadroughts seem like quaint walks through the Garden of Eden."
"The surprising thing to us was really how consistent the response was over these regions, nearly regardless of what model we used or what soil moisture metric we looked at," said lead author Benjamin I. Cook of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "It all showed this really, really significant drying."
The new study, "Unprecedented 21st-Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains," will be featured in the inaugural edition of the new online journal Science Advances, produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which also publishes the leading journal Science.
Today, 11 of the past 14 years have been drought years in much of the American West, including California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona and across the Southern Plains to Texas and Oklahoma, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a collaboration of U.S. government agencies.
The current drought directly affects more than64 million people in the Southwest and Southern Plains, according to NASA, and many more are indirectly affected because of the impacts on agricultural regions.
Shrinking water supplies have forced western states to impose water use restrictions; aquifers are being drawn down to unsustainable levels, and major surface reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at historically low levels. This winter's snowpack in the Sierras, a major water source for Los Angeles and other cities, is less than a quarter of what authorities call a "normal" level, according to a February report from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. California water officials last year cut off the flow of water from the northern part of the state to the south, forcing farmers in the Central Valley to leave hundreds of thousands of acres unplanted.
"Changes in precipitation, temperature and drought, and the consequences it has for our society -- which is critically dependent on our freshwater resources for food, electricity and industry -- are likely to be the most immediate climate impacts we experience as a result of greenhouse gas emissions," said Kevin Anchukaitis, a climate researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Anchukaitis said the findings "require us to think rather immediately about how we could and would adapt."
Much of our knowledge about past droughts comes from extensive study of tree rings conducted by Lamont-Doherty scientist Edward Cook (Benjamin's father) and others, who in 2009 created the North American Drought Atlas. The atlas recreates the history of drought over the previous 2,005 years, based on hundreds of tree-ring chronologies, gleaned in turn from tens of thousands of tree samples across the United States, Mexico and parts of Canada.
For the current study, researchers used data from the atlas to represent past climate, and applied three different measures for drought -- two soil moisture
measurements at varying depths, and a version of the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which gauges precipitation and evaporation and transpiration -- the net input of water into the land. While some have questioned how accurately the Palmer drought index truly reflects soil moisture, the researchers found it matched well with other measures, and that it "provides a bridge between the [climate] models and drought in observations," Cook said.
The researchers applied 17 different climate models to analyze the future impact of rising average temperatures on the regions. And, they compared two different global warming scenarios -- one with "business as usual," projecting a continued rise in emissions of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming; and a second scenario in which emissions are moderated.
By most of those measures, they came to the same conclusions.
"The results … are extremely unfavorable for the continuation of agricultural and water resource management as they are currently practiced in the Great Plains and southwestern United States," said David Stahle, professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas and director of the Tree-Ring Laboratory there. Stahle was not involved in the study, though he worked on the North American Drought Atlas.
Smerdon said he and his colleagues are confident in their results. The effects of CO2 on higher average temperature and the subsequent connection to drying in the Southwest and Great Plains emerge as a "strong signal" across the majority of the models, regardless of the drought metrics that are used, he said. And, he added, they are consistent with many previous studies.
Anchukaitis said the paper "provides an elegant and convincing connection" between reconstructions of past climate and the models pointing to the risk of future drought.
Toby R. Ault of Cornell University is a co-author of the study. Funding was provided by the NASA Modeling, Analysis and Prediction Program, NASA Strategic Science, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Story Source: The above story is based on materials provided by The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference: Benjamin I. Cook, Toby R. Ault, Jason E. Smerdon. Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains. Science Advances, 12 February 2015 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400082 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1400082
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