California Drought Getting Worse- Linked to Global Warming

Native Americans Speak Out Against Tarsands

Updated April 28th. It is all connected.



And where was Obama? In Malaysia pushing the TPP. Our voices being heard has never been more needed!

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California Drought Linked To Global Warming

By SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — While researchers have sometimes connected weather extremes to man-made global warming, usually it's not done in real time. Now a study is asserting a link between climate change and both the intensifying California drought and the polar vortex blamed for a harsh winter that mercifully has just ended in many places.

The Utah State University scientists involved in the study say they hope what they found can help them predict the next big weird winter.

snip

The United States just came out of a two-faced winter — bitter cold and snowy in the Midwest and East, warm and severely dry in the West. The latest U.S. drought monitor says 100 percent of California is in an official drought.

The new study blames an unusual "dipole," a combination of a strong Western high pressure ridge and deep Great Lakes low pressure trough. That dipole is linked to a recently found precursor to El Nino, the world-weather changing phenomenon. And that precursor itself seems amplified by a build-up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the study says.

It's like a complex game of weather dominos that starts with cold water off China and ends with a devastating drought and memorable winter in the United States, said study author Simon Wang, a Utah State University climate scientist.

Wang was looking at colder water off China as a precursor to an El Nino. The colder water there triggers westerly winds in the tropical Pacific. Those westerly winds persist for several months and eventually push warmed up water and air to the central Pacific where an El Nino forms, Wang said.

An El Nino is a warming of the central Pacific once every few years, from a combination of wind and waves in the tropics. It shakes up climate around the world, changing rain and temperature patterns. Wang saw the precursors and weather event coming months before federal weather officials issued an official El Nino watch last month.

Then Wang noticed the connection between that precursor — cold water off China, Vietnam and Taiwan — and the recent wild winter. He tracked similar combinations of highs and lows in North America. And he found those combination extremes are getting stronger.

Wang based his study, soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, on computer simulations, physics and historical data. It is not as detailed and doesn't involve numerous computer model simulations as more formal attribution studies. Still, Wang said his is a proper connection.

Wang compared computer simulations with and without gases from the burning of fossil fuels. When he included carbon dioxide from fossil fuel use, he got a scenario over the past few decades that mirrored what has happened, including this past weird winter and other worsening dipole conditions. When he took out the greenhouse gases, the increasing extremes actually went down — not what happened in real life.

"We found a good link and the link is becoming stronger and stronger," Wang said.

End of excerpt



The Explosive Growth Of California's Drought In One Chart

It didn’t seem possible, but California's drought just got worse. On Thursday, the U.S. Drought Monitor released new data that show every single inch of the state is now experiencing some form of drought.

Since mid-March, a sliver of California on its southeastern border was the lone drought holdout for the state. Even then, that section of the state was still considered abnormally dry according to the Drought Monitor. The section finally tipped into drought this week, and for the first time in 15 year-history of the Drought Monitor, the entire state is now in drought.

The growth of the drought is clearly on display in the graphic above. While some form of drought covered much of the state through 2013, this winter led to an explosion of drought across the entire state. Extreme drought covered roughly a quarter of the state in early January 2014. But by mid-January, the percentage of the state in extreme drought jumped to nearly 65 percent as winter rains and snows failed to materialize and hot weather baked the state.

snip

A persistent blocking ridge of high pressure is what kept California hot and dry all winter, which is typically the state’s wet season. What little snow that fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which acts as a natural reservoir through spring, declined precipitously in the past 10 days and could create further drought woes for the state. Melting snow can also contribute to tumultuous wildfire seasons by drying out the ground and vegetation that can feed blazes. That’s a daunting prospect for Californian’s and visitors to Yosemite National Park with last year’s Rim Fire still fresh on their minds.

Though parts of the state are receiving rain and snow on Friday, it’s unlikely to dent the drought. And with the rainy season basically done until late fall, the prospects for relief are scarce. That means drought conditions are likely to persist or could even worsen through the summer.

End of excerpt

In California drought, big money, many actors, little oversight

This can no longer be just about the money!

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As the dots continue to be connected we see the drought getting worse to the point where 100% of California is now in moderate to extreme drought. What will it take? A mass exodus of climate refugees from California as has already happened in Syria due to their current climate change induced drought and civil war? Think it can't happen here?

Humans also aren't the only species at risk:

California drought putting fish, birds and tree species at risk, scientists say

By Edward Ortiz

California’s drought is imperiling tricolored blackbirds, large trees and native fish, with some of the affected species already on the state’s endangered list and others likely headed there because of rapidly declining numbers, scientists say.

“The problems created by the drought are just a harbinger of things to come,” said Peter Moyle, a professor at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, which hosted a daylong Capitol summit Friday on economic and environmental costs of the drought.

“Native fishes and the ecosystems that support them are incredibly vulnerable to drought,” Moyle said. “There are currently 37 species of fish on the endangered species list in California – and there is every sign that that number will increase,” he said.

Eighty percent of those species face extinction by the year 2100 if present trends continue, Moyle said.

Native fish are able to weather natural drought years, but the development of the state’s water system has created the equivalent of perpetual drought conditions for many species, he said.

The state has 47 animal species on its endangered list, another 36 listed as “threatened,” plus six that are candidates for inclusion on one of the lists, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

One species that could end up on the candidate list is the tricolored blackbird, said Robert Meese, of UC Davis’ Department of Environmental Science and Policy.

“The tricolored blackbird may not be on the endangered list yet, but the drought is definitely having an effect,” Meese said. “The birds have not been reproducing.”

Reproduction declines have been noticed since 2007, before the drought, Meese said, but recent counts have shown even steeper declines. A statewide survey of tricolored blackbirds, known for their red shoulder patch with a bright white stripe, was recently concluded and the results are due out in three weeks.

“I suspect that survey will be on the order of 120,000 birds,” Meese said. “That is less than half of what was seen in 2011, and about 75 percent less than what was seen in 2008.”

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The day this Earth goes silent with the song of birds we will know it is finished. This is beyond sad and criminal. I believe it is one reason why man continues to be out of balance- because we have forgotten our connection to all other species and that we are just one among millions. Saving water is a matter of survival for ALL LIFE. We are constantly told we need to stop burning fossil fuels, but like spoiled children we continue to do what we know will bring on the silence. This is not just a human crisis and it is arrogant to say that. This is about all species on Earth. Once the chain is broken it is only a matter of time before it all unravels.



Don't be silent.

Also see:

California Drought: San Joaquin Valley Sinking As Farmers Race To Tap Aquifer

California Drought: 17 Communities Could Run Out of Water Within 60 To 120 days/Updates

The "Polar Vortex" Freezing Us Today Due In Part To Global Warming

1 In 10 People To Face Water Scarcity If Greenhouse Gas Emissions Continue

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World Bank Wants Water Privitized, Despite Risks

WORLD BANK WANTS WATER PRIVATIZED, DESPITE RISKS

The World Bank Group pushes privatization as a key solution to the water crisis. It is the largest funder of water management in the developing world, with loans and financing channeled through the group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC). Since the 1980s, the IFC has been promoting these water projects as part of a broader set of privatization policies, with loans and financing tied to enacting austerity measures designed to shrink the state, from the telecom industry to water utilities.

But international advocacy and civil society groups point to the pockmarked record of private-sector water projects and are calling on the World Bank Group to end support for private water.

In the decades since the IFC’s initial push, we have seen the results of water privatization: It doesn’t work. Water is not like telecommunications or transportation. You could tolerate crappy phone service, but have faulty pipes connecting to your municipal water and you’re in real trouble. Water is exceptional.

Private sector priorities

“Water is a public good,” Shayda Naficy, the director of the International Water Campaign at Corporate Accountability International (CAI), told me, “for which inequality has to fall within a certain range — or it means life and death.” When the private sector engages in water provision, greater disparities in access and cost follow.

End of excerpt

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It is criminal to privatize water as water is a natural substance free to all who inhabit the Earth. Privatizing this exceptional resource brings social, economic and environmental stress to regions already afflicted with water scarcity as well as decreases in water quality as profits are used to benefit the company not the users. It brings thirst and death to the poor in developing countries who cannot afford it. Water should never be an elitist commodity only for the rich to exploit.

The World Bank has been involved in the privatization of water for years even while it now touts being concerned about climate change. The two are not mutually exclusive-you cannot say you are concerned about climate change while pushing privatization of water resources...unless of course, you are using climate change to benefit yourself through water privatization. Subsistence farmers depend on access to water in order to grow food and live. Water is the life blood of our world. To seek to keep it accessible only to those who can afford your price especially in an age of extreme drought and climate change when more are at risk is evil in the extreme.

"No problem can be solved with the same level of consciousness that created it." Albert Einstein.

Dried Up, Sold Out (How the World Bank’s Push for Private Water Harms the Poor)

We the people must continue to fight for water access to all, free of corporate interference.

Remember, who controls the water then controls the seeds and then your life.

NEVER FORGET COCHABAMBA.





Take Action:

Tell the World Bank: Divest From Private Water

Make no mistake. This is a war.

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Fifty Years On, Rachel Carson Still Speaks To Us

Breaking the waves: Carson in 1962. Photo: Getty Images

Fifty years on, we should celebrate the sea writings of Rachel Carson

Fifty years on, we should celebrate the sea writings of Rachel Carson

With Silent Spring, Rachel Carson helped to launch the modern ecology movement – but it is her sea trilogy that captures her spirit.

BY JOHN BURNSIDE PUBLISHED 14 APRIL, 2014 - 17:24

It is 50 years since Rachel Carson died, her indomitable spirit finally exhausted by a long struggle with cancer and by a necessary but disheartening battle against the smear campaigns, misinformation and outright lies of the chemical industry she had challenged in her book Silent Spring. In 1964, it must have seemed that she had died victorious: the blanket spraying of DDT had ceased and a new wave of environmental awareness had taken hold, first in the United States and then worldwide. Indeed, many date the beginnings of the modern ecology movement to 1962, when Silent Spring first appeared, and although far too many compromises have been made since then a strong current of committed “dark green” or deep ecological thinking has developed out of her work and that of others.

The irony is that Carson would probably not have considered her role as anything like as important as has been made out (she saw herself as a nature writer who, somewhat unwillingly, got caught up in an environmental campaign), and in terms of her place in literary history the success of that campaign overshadowed the work she would have considered more her own – the great “sea trilogy”, comprising Under the Sea Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951) and The Edge of the Sea (1955). The commercial success of these books drove a concerned public to seek Carson out as a spokesperson on DDT, which led to Silent Spring. Yet it is the sea trilogy that ought to stand as her true legacy and finest achievement, both artistic and scientific, for it was in these books that she set a standard for nature writing that has rarely, if ever, been surpassed.

A marine biologist by education and employment, Carson was never far from the sea and treasured the shore, the ever-shifting line between land and water, as a place where we sense “that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings”. It was that intricacy – a sense of continuity, rather than connectedness; of inter-animation, even – that she sought to convey in her writing, an intricacy that offers us an intimation of meaning, however difficult it may be to pin down.

“The meaning haunts and ever eludes us,” she writes, in the concluding lines of the trilogy, “and in its very pursuit we approach the ultimate mystery of Life itself.” As the origin of that life, the sea became, inevitably, a source of infinite study and infinite wonder – a word that features strongly in her work, along with unashamed invocations of “mystery” and “beauty”. Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of, her commitment to such seemingly unscientific experiences, she never forgot to ground them in rigorous observation.

End of excerpt

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Rachel Carson was my first inspiration at twelve years old. It is because of her writing and her love of life and concern for the world we were making then that I became aware of the responsibilty we all have to be good stewards of this planet. For what we do to her we do to ourselves. I celebrate her life but am sad at what she would think of how we have totally abused our oceans. She wrote of them so beautifully relaying to us that a true understanding of ourselves can only occur when we look to the sea. Thank you Rachel Carson for opening my eyes so young.

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Thousands Remain Homeless Following Solomon Islands Flash Floods

ADDED 4-14-14: IPCC Report Released Today

How many more will now be doomed to rising seas, extreme storms, droughts and floods because we refuse to face our addiction?

Death Toll Rises in Flood Hit Solomon Islands

Disease is now an urgent concern with 2 toilets for 2000 people in one camp! Misery follows this lack of preparation as heavy rains are too much for infrastructure. These are exactly the conditions that we can expect to intensify as climate change becomes more severe. These disasters are what is happening now while people concern themselves with FOX NEWS. We no longer have time to care what FOX NEWS is saying. The reality of this and the science behind why these events are so much more severe has been known for years. We now need to ask this question: What is more important? Getting the Earth prepared for the catastrophe of our making as we certainly will continue to behave against our own survival or constantly arguing with someone who will never understand or care? As with the entry I placed here about Colombia as all the other entries about the loss of life, culture and the systems that sustain us due to climate change, this is becoming too overwhelming to continue business as usual.

Thousands Remain Homeless Following Solomon Islands Flash Floods

By Ika Koeck, IFRC

On 3 April, flash flooding triggered by prolonged heavy rainfall swept through the Solomon Islands, killing at least 17 people and leaving more than 20 missing. An initial assessment estimated that 12,000 people in the capital city of Honiara were affected. Another 37,000 people across Guadalcanal province were displaced when the Mataniko River burst its banks and carried entire riverside communities away.

The flooding in Honiara forced staff from The Solomon Islands Red Cross to evacuate from their headquarters and establish an Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) at the Honiara Hotel from where they have been coordinating relief efforts. More than 10,000 people remain sheltered in 26 evacuation centres set up around the city. Red Cross teams assisted in the evacuation of vulnerable communities along the Mataniko River and registered people in shelters. Emergency response teams deployed to the main evacuation centres have been working with other relief agencies and the National Disaster Management Office to distribute food and non-food relief items.

Electricity and water supplies to the city have been disrupted, and there are growing concerns for the health of the local population.

"We really need to get on top of helping these people live comfortably and hygienically, and ensure they are being fed and looked after well. That's our greatest concern now here in Honiara," says Joanne Zoleveke, secretary general of the national Red Cross society."

End of excerpt.



Solomon Island Floods:Photos

"At least 19 people are dead and another 40 remain missing after devastating flash floods struck the Solomon Islands late last week. Another 49,000 people have been left homeless by the rising waters and over a dozen bridges have been washed out.

The floods were caused by a slow moving low pressure weather system that dumped rain on the islands on Thursday, causing major rivers in cities to burst their banks and inundate surrounding areas. The Mataniko River, which runs through the heart of the capital city, Honiara, pulled dozens of houses into the floodwaters and brought down a bridge as it overflowed its banks.

That weather system has since been upgraded to tropical cyclone Ita and could bring severe weather to parts of the Philippines still rebuilding after Hurricane Haiyan. To add to the misery of islanders and the difficulty of the recovery effort a 6.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the region late Friday.

“This is unprecedented, and I’ve seen earthquakes and tsunamis and other very bad flooding incidents,” Katie Greenwood, country director of Oxfam told the Guardian.“But this flash flooding is unlike anything that I’ve seen previously here in the country.”

End of excerpt

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Global Flood Map/Solomon Islands

Cyclone Ita: Queensland hit by 'very destructive' storm

Destructive Cyclone Ita mentioned above has now hit Queensland, Australia rapidly intensifying from a strong Category 1 to a Category 4 equivalent cyclone in just 12 hours Thursday.

SST/Australia

So again, we know cyclones hit this area of Australia. It is not about that but the amplififcation of severity and ferocity that leads to what we now see happening with more frequency throughout the world. Take a look at current SST (Sea Surface Temperature) off Eastern coast Of Australia.

The heartbreaking disasters culminating from our fossil fuel addiction continue. The longer we wait to take adequate global action the worse it is going to get.

NASA GISS Shows March 2014 Was Third Hottest on Record as Arctic Heatwave Spurs Siberian Fire Season to Early Start



This is April 12, 2014. Notice the Arctic red. Methane?

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A Voice From The Future

Dateline: 2050.

I write to you from the future. I think it is necessary for me to do so considering that many living in your present 2014 still do not comprehend the true urgency of what is now taking place due to mankind's insistence that it either has little to no effect on the systems of the Earth that sustain it or that what is occurring is not going to come to full catastrophe in its lifetime so it just doesn't care. As a voice from the future I am writing to tell you how so very wrong and immoral that assumption is.

I am writing from a place where water is now not something we see everyday though it was once flowing. We once had prosperity here which allowed us to grow a number of crops that brought us great wealth. However, we truly did not understand the definition of true wealth until the drought of 2020. We had thought the drought of 2014 was bad but it was nothing like the one to follow six years later and by then we had drilled so far down into the ground that most of the water had already been used with little being replenished due to changing rain patterns and snow melt that left us next to nothing. It was only then that we realized where our wealth was and that we had squandered it.

Many people left after that and moved inland, though it wasn't much better there as the main aquifer as well was running too low to sustain the huge thirst and hunger of a growing population. Many of us now are doing what we can to adapt (tapping the declining table of the Great Lakes in a tenuous agreement with Canada) and asking this question: Where were you all in 2014?

If you recall, in 2014 and in all the years before it back to the 1950s (which is about one hundred years ago now) scientists warned that if humans continued on the path they were on there would be a time when they would push Earth's systems to a place they had never been before. As more scientific data came forward and these effects began manifesting themselves at a greater pace it was obvious these warnings were correct. Yet, people continued to place power in the hands of the very entities and governments of the world proliferating the crisis and continued to burn fossil fuels, deforest land and pollute the water and air denying that the cumulative effects would do much if any harm. Even countries that signed that so called climate treaty in Paris in 2015 signed in name only because they knew that even in 2015 it was too late- that they had waited too long- perhaps by design.

Well, I now ask you from the future: Is this not harm?

Our oceans are acidic, our marinelife dying. A combination of climate change with other human factors as well as erosion and sea level rise are now laying waste to many low lying areas of the world. Some species of fish are no more because they were all fished out of the ocean with areas of the Atlantic and Pacific now cordoned off and designated as no entry zones due to the amount of waste and pollutants.

We now have seen the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, the Maldives, the Carteret Islands, Vanuatu, much of Bangladesh and many other island nations under the rising waters as continued logging and oil excavation also led to greater subsidence in concert with sea level rise due to anthropogenic climate change. Many were evacuated years ago yet still suffer from the injustice of being given no citizenship and no place to call their own. Many indigenous people were pushed off their land to make way for mega-dams that did nothing but provide limited power to the rich while ignoring the plight of the poor as their lands were flooded, their agriculture destroyed and their cultures decimated. This led to conflict in concert with the effects of climate change with many dying.

On the continents, heatwaves have increased in severity and global food output has decreased. North America has become much like a desert in the Southwest US with many species dying due to drought. The Midwest as I mentioned before is not faring too much better as people moving inland from both coasts now fight over remaining water supplies and resources to sustain a growing population. Sea level rise on the East Coast is now encroaching on many shore areas and salt water intrusion also affecting agriculture. The East Coast also was lulled into a false sense of security after Hurricane Sandy when it had not seen another storm for the next couple of years. However, the hurricane that hit the coast in 2019 was even stronger than Sandy as many shore areas were totally taken by the sea. The huge storm caused great economic turmoil and the emotional and psychological effects are still being felt today. Yet, fossil fuels continued to be burned.

There was a great insurgence started in 2014 to bring about an end to what was called "fracking" in order to save water with more civil disobedience leading to a renewed hope. Then the KXL pipeline was approved and that started massive resistance but to no avail. I visited the memorial dedicated to those who fought and died in fighting to stop it. Brave people. It was however, the administration in place at the time like all before it that bowed to the fossil fuel industry instead of putting principle first even in light of these warnings that precipitated all this by continuing to allow tarsands.

Their "All Of The Above" policy did little to help solve anything as continued forcing and feedbacks on the system made the increases in renewable energy though promising not enough to stave off the effects of what was happening in the Arctic which was virtually all but ignored except for a few who rang the alarm bell.

Then the Arctic War began in 2025 as governments of the world continued to loot the planet of its fossil fuel resources in order to control the energy markets thus leading to more casualties once again of our young people fighting for a false choice that has done nothing but lead us to more conflict. It was the people in Congress then who denied all this because it brought them oil money as well who have much blood on their hands.

South America is in what seems to be perpetual drought and flood stages with much of its wildlife suffering as many more have died and resource wars rage there. It is a constant struggle to keep the Amazon from being totally deforested as illegal loggers and crime lords wage war against indigenous people to land grab. Monoculture as well has not lent to prosperity for anyone but industrial agriculture/biotech companies with effects manifesting themselves across the environmental sphere with great losses to biodiversity.

In Europe, Asia and Africa there were great uprisings by the people as well, however the effects of climate change now overtake many poor areas of the world with constant conflict over resources raging with military control of many areas. Australia has seen the worst effects as the Great Barrier Reef is dying and coal and oil exploration has brought Australia to the point of being the focal point of climate change effects. This once again due to government apathy to principle.

While some good has come from all this in that many more people have awakened and mobilized it has been too late in many places to forge a real change as the Anthropocene era is bringing us full circle regarding our species. We are now in a stage called "peak oil" as we see the end of the carbon age upon us as we now have no choice but to transition, but now knowing it will not help stop what has already been put into motion. Since we collectively did not heed the warnings of those voices from the past regarding the consequences of our addiction nor answer the call with our moral voices we in this world now in 2050 face the turning point of our existence as a civilization as we see our cherished places being lost to us forever. It could all have been avoided if only those living in 2014 and before had put aside their pettiness, hubris, selfishness, political hatred, pride and greed to understand that what they did then effected now.

Therefore, while you still live in 2014, heed the warnings of my voice from the future: Water is your wealth. It is your life. Unless you see that in concert with finding your humanity the events described because you did not will play out.

It is your time now to save what you can and to prepare to adapt to the world you have the power to make. Use it wisely.

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I don't think this is even half of what we will experience by 2050. However, I think sometimes people need to see a glimpse into the future which is really now in order to appreciate the time we have in the present to make the right choices, because time is running out... and believe me, it took great restraint on my part to not be more emotional in writing this. Our children do not deserve this!

Perspective is now imperative and we can no longer claim ignorance.

Also see:

IPCC: Climate Change Increasing Risk of Hunger, Thirst, Disease, Refugees and War

New IPCC Report More Sure Of What We Were Already Sure About

The Oceans Warmed Up Sharply in 2013

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Extreme Drought Causes Environmental Crisis In Colombia

Extreme Drought Causes Environmental Crisis In Colombia

On World Water Day, March 22, Colombian news reports were released with horrific photos of scores of dead wildlife. A devastating drought has created an environmental crisis, threatening public health and killing more than 20,000 fish and animals in the Paz de Ariporo municipality of Casanare, Colombia. This water shortage rings the alarm that we need to adjust environmental policies regarding our water resources from the local to the international level.

SLIDESHOW ► Slideshow

The three Waterkeeper organizations in Casanare, Colombia—Rio Meta Waterkeeper, Rio Pauto Waterkeeper and Rio Cravo Sur Waterkeeper—have spent years fighting for access to clean water as a basic human right, advocating for industry compliance with Colombian law and educating citizens about the detrimental effects of industrial hydrocarbon exploitation, and the uncontrolled expansion of thirsty agriculture and livestock industries at the expense of small farmers, rural communities and the environment. It is clearly time for Colombian environmental policy and institutions to be strengthened, and for all world citizens to reconsider placing economic interests, dirty energy and unsustainable technologies before the environment and our public health. Global water resources need to be a priority in all political and policy conversations, and as citizens we need to organize our communities to defend and conserve our water.

The Orinoquia region of Colombia is seasonably vulnerable to environmental pressures because it is an expansive savannah with submerged wetlands during the wet season, April to December, and desert-like conditions with temperatures consistently above 100° Fahrenheit from January to March. Historically, the principal industry is cattle farming, and it is rich in wildlife, including rare animals like capybaras, as well as turtles, alligators, foxes, jackals, wild pigs, deer and many species of fish.

The last three months have brought one of the worst dry seasons in Colombia’s history, drying up the reservoirs that already handle excessive demand from cattle farms, exploratory oil drilling and exploitation, and unsustainable land use for commercial crops. We are now seeing the devastating consequences of these unregulated industries, with widespread loss of wildlife from dehydration.

Public statements that this is an abstract consequence of climate change are simplistic and do not attribute responsibility to the multinational industries directly causing environmental damage through water overuse and indirectly by contributing to greenhouse gas emissions as evidenced in the new IPCC report Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. As Waterkeepers we are calling on the Colombian Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Mines and Energy and National Authority of Environmental Licensing to fulfill their legal responsibility to prevent large-scale environmental disasters and protect public health and key ecosystems.

SNIP

Clearly, an environmental disaster of this magnitude has several causes, as our ecosystems are delicate, complex and interconnected. It is important that we use our developing knowledge of climate change in assessing and improving our current economic and environmental strategies from the local to the international level. To effect real change we need to pressure the appropriate governmental bodies to hold the oil, agriculture and livestock industries accountable, and to protect their citizens.

SNIP

Today, climate change strikes Casanare, Colombia with extreme drought and thousands of wildlife deaths. Nearly every month we hear of another environmental disaster caused by extreme weather events around the world. If we do not heed recommendations to adapt our behavior and mitigate the disastrous consequences of climate change immediately, how many will be affected tomorrow, and where?

End of excerpt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."

Albert Einstein.



20K Wildlife/Livestock Dead Due To Brutal Drought

It is very hard to write about these horrible events especially knowing what is to come. There are not many more ways to express the urgency of this and hard to have hope as well especially among the silence. This is beyond heartbreaking and cruel. The quote above from Albert Einstein says it all. How can this not touch your very soul?!

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Arctic Ice Extent Fifth Lowest On Record

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced on March 21 that the total amount of ice cover for the Arctic peaked at 5.7 million square miles, or 282,000 square miles below the 1981-to-2010 average. This is the fifth-lowest winter ice cover extent since satellite records began in 1978. The lowest maximum extent recorded was in 2011 at 5.65 million square miles of ice cover. In September 2012 an 18 percent loss over previous years left it covered by less ice than ever before. In the latest IPCC report, the world’s leading climate scientists confirmed that Arctic summer sea ice was declining at rates much faster than predicted by most models. Arctic sea ice extent has been trending dramatically downwards for the last four decades as the scientific consensus confirms anthropogenic causes as the catalyst.



Per NSIDC this is explanation of late season surge in extent and slight increase in volume:

"The late-season surge in extent came as the Arctic Oscillation turned strongly positive the second week of March. This was associated with unusually low sea level pressure in the eastern Arctic and the northern North Atlantic. The pattern of surface winds helped to spread out the ice pack in the Barents Sea where the ice cover had been anomalously low all winter. Northeasterly winds also helped push the ice pack southwards in the Bering Sea, another site of persistently low extent earlier in the 2013 to 2014 Arctic winter. Air temperatures however remained unusually high throughout the Arctic during the second half of March, at 2 to 6 degrees Celsius (4 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1981 to 2010 average."

Another explanation of the low extent was an overall milder winter in the Arctic (with record breaking temperatures seen in Alaska) as colder air was pushed into the South to Canada and the United States. In February, temperatures were 7.2° to 14.4°F above normal for much of the Arctic.

This then also brings attention to the increased amounts of methane over the Arctic Ocean and the positive feedbacks put into motion from the continued overall decline in Arctic sea ice:



Earthquakes In The Arctic Ocean

Excerpt:

"As discussed in many previous posts, the Arctic has become warmer than it used to be and temperatures in the Arctic are rising several times faster than global temperatures. This decreases the temperature difference between the areas to the north and to the south of the Jet Stream, which in turn decreases the speed at which the Jet Stream circumnavigates the globe, making the Jet Stream more wavier and increasing opportunities for cold air to descend from the Arctic and for warm air to enter the Arctic.

Snip



These wild temperature swings may be causing even further damage, on top of the methane eruptions from the heights of Greenland. Look at the above map, showing earthquakes that hit the Arctic in March 2014.

BTW, above map doesn't show all earthquakes that occured in the Arctic Ocean in March 2014. An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.5 on the Richter scale hit the Gakkel Ridge on March 6, 2014.

Importantly, above map shows a number of earthquakes that occurred far away from faultlines, including a M4.6 earthquake that hit Baffin Bay and a M4.5 earthquake that hit the Labrador Sea. These earthquakes are unlikely to have resulted from movement in tectonic plates. Instead, temperature swings over Greenland may have triggered these events, by causing a succession of compression and expansion swings of the Greenland ice mass, which in turn caused pressure changes that were felt in the crust surrounding the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Glaciers could be the key to make this happen. Glaciers typically move smoothly and gradually. It could be, however, that such wide temperature swings are causing glaciers to come to a halt, temporarily, causing pressure to build up over a day or so, to then suddenly start moving again with a shock. Intense cold can literally freeze a glacier in its track, to be shocked into moving again as temperatures rise abruptly by 40°C or so. This can send shockwaves through the ice sheet into the crust and trigger earthquakes in areas prone to destabilization. The same mechanism could explain the high methane concentrations over the heights of Greenland and Antarctica.

Ominously, patterns of earthquakes can be indicators of bigger earthquakes yet to come.

This situation looks set to get a lot worse. Extreme weather events and wild temperature swings look set to become more likely to occur and hit Greenland with ever greater ferocity. Earthquakes could reveberate around the Arctic Ocean and destabilize methane held in the form of free gas and hydrates in sediments underneath the Arctic Ocean.

Meanwhile, as pollution clouds from North America move (due to the Coriolis Effect) over the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf Stream continues to warm up and carry warmer water into the Arctic Ocean, further increasing the likelihood of methane eruptions from the Arctic seafloor."

End of excerpt.

My thanks to Arctic News for these informative and necessary reports. It is obvious this is not going to be covered by the US media.

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Also see:

Scientists Sound Alarm On Climate

Methane Levels Continue To Destabilize-Yet Silence

Arctic Ice Reaches Annual Mimimum

The "Polar Vortex" Freezing Us Today Due In Part To Global Warming

Arctic Ocean Leaking Methane At Alarming Rate

Methane Feedback and Abrupt Climate Change: How Far Are We From It?

Methane Feedback and Abrupt Climate Change (Part 2)

The Arctic, Humanity's Barometer

Major Loss In Arctic Sea Ice Volume-It Does Effect You

Arctic Melting-Tipping Point That Should Matter To All Of Us

And yet, millions upon millions of barrels of oil are excavated each day - and we continue to burn it even knowing the consequences. Talk about living in denial.

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California Drought: San Joaquin Valley Sinking As Farmers Race To Tap Aquifer

California Drought: San Joaquin Valley sinking as farmers race to tap aquifer

"PIXLEY – So wet was the San Joaquin Valley of Steve Arthur's childhood that a single 240-foot-deep well could quench the thirst of an arid farm.

Now his massive rig, bucking and belching, must drill 1,200 feet deep in search of ever-more-elusive water to sustain this wheat farm north of Bakersfield. As he drills, his phone rings with three new appeals for help.

"Everybody is starting to panic," said Arthur, whose Fresno-based well-drilling company just bought its ninth rig, off the Wyoming oil fields. "Without water, this valley can't survive."

When water doesn't fall from the sky or flow from reservoirs, there's only one place to find it: underground. So, three years into a devastating drought, thirsty Californians are draining the precious aquifer beneath the nation's most productive farmland like never before, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a perverse race to the bottom.

The rush to drill is driven not just by historically dry conditions, but by a host of other factors that promote short-term consumption over long-term survival -- new, more moisture-demanding crops; improved drilling technologies; and a surge of corporate investors seeking profits for agricultural ventures.

Now those forces are renewing an age-old problem of environmental degradation: Decades ago, overpumping sunk half of the entire San Joaquin Valley, in one area as much as 28 feet. Today new areas are subsiding, some almost a foot each year, damaging bridges and vital canals.

Yet in California, one of the few states that doesn't regulate how much water can be pumped from underground, even this hasn't been enough to create a consensus to stop.

"It's our savings account, and we're draining it," said Phil Isenberg of the Public Policy Institute of California, a former Sacramento mayor and assemblyman. "At some point, there will be none left."

End of excerpt



snip

"The trends are alarming, the politics complex, but the science is rather simple: The Central Valley -- from Redding to Bakersfield -- is consuming twice as much groundwater as nature is returning through rain and snow.

The rate of water loss over the past two years is the largest since the University of California started using NASA satellites to measure underground water reserves in 2003. The Central Valley's reserves are shrinking by 800 billion gallons a year -- enough to supply every resident of California with water for seven months, according to Jay Famiglietti, director of the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling.

"We may only be a few decades away from hitting bottom," said Famiglietti, considered one of the leading experts on state water policy.

However, little is being done to control it. States such as Kansas and even Texas prevent unlimited pumping of groundwater. But California has failed to regulate how much groundwater is pumped, leaving it up to the courts to settle disputes over excessive use, according to Barton H. "Buzz" Thompson Jr., professor of natural resources law at Stanford University.

Overpumping not only lowers the water table and collapses land at the surface, but it also lowers water quality and requires more power to pump. River flows are lower, and shallow wells are exhausted.

Farmers have long relied on the government's engineering marvel of aqueducts to bring surface water from giant reservoirs in the north to the south. However, the federally run Central Valley Project allotted farmers only 20 percent of their share last year -- and none this year. Officials who manage the State Water Project, California's other major water system, have also said that they will not be releasing any water for farmers, a first in the system's 54-year history.

So with the drought cutting off their deliveries, farmers say they must rely on the only source left. Those who can afford the $200,000 to $600,000 price tag are digging deeper and deeper to tap into a once-unreachable aquifer. Many are taking out loans, betting on crop yields to break even.

"I've got some of the best land in the nation -- 50 feet of topsoil -- that is sitting vacant if I can't get water," said Thomas Kaljian, of Los Banos, who owns almond orchards on the San Joaquin Valley's west side. "This is the breadbasket of the nation, and we're strangling it."

End of excerpt



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"It's our savings account, and we're draining it," said Phil Isenberg of the Public Policy Institute of California, a former Sacramento mayor and assemblyman. "At some point, there will be none left."

And some dare say this is not a manmade crisis? Greed, selfishness, consumption will be the undoing of California. Can you even imagine a Silicon Valley company "agricultural" venture to open up an ALMOND farm? Do you really feel sorry for greedy opportunists like this who now think they should get first dibs on water with this mindset? : Rain...gone. Surface water...gone. Aquifers...going...but let's just keep overpumping to maintain OUR lifestyle without giving a damn for anyone else and to hell with climate change or any other considerations, you know, like the future.

How about people try to do without almonds now in exchange for perhaps saving some water for our children to drink? For fish to live in? How about growing something not so water intensive? How about smart irrigation and having the moral will to just take your share? Talk about the need for a paradigm shift in perception.

It is coming to a full head here. When you drill for water, you take ALL OF IT, not just the water directly under your land! The deeper you go the worse it gets for everyone...and then...it all sinks. This is also a primer for a world in climate change induced drought. Take a good look and hope that when the end of the water is near we don't start hearing gunshots...but then of course, Agent Orange DOW Chemical (that is big into reverse osmosis and probably applauding this) can come to the rescue and make the population pay through the nose for some desalinated Pacific Ocean water that hopefully hasn't then been irradiated or FRACKED. Tell me again how we humans have "evolved."

Also see:

Devastating Drought Continues To Plague California

California Drought: 17 Communities Could Run Out of Water Within 60 To 120 days/Updates

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