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It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

Started by The Enigmatic Dr X, 24 July, 2019, 09:35:09 AM

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sheridan

I'd not heard of the Blowfish Fallacy before - here's more information (apparently by the person who invented the term).

shaolin_monkey

Quote from: sheridan on 12 March, 2020, 12:46:45 PM
I'd not heard of the Blowfish Fallacy before - here's more information (apparently by the person who invented the term).

That article is written by the dude who wrote and drew [b[Cranky Uncle vs Climate Change[/b] - John Cook!

shaolin_monkey


shaolin_monkey

Professor Katharine Hayhoe is in Edinburgh, and will be in a panel live-streamed at 7pm tomorrow.

Prof. Hayhoe is one of the world's greatest communicators off climate science, so this will be worth a watch.

Quote

The Let's Talk Climate Action at Edinburgh Castle on Sunday 15 March is now going to be livestreamed only.

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Over the past 18 months, the dialogue on climate change has fundamentally shifted. Scotland has declared a climate emergency and we know that widespread action is required, across all of society.

But how do we inspire and encourage people to change the habits of a life time?

Historic Environment Scotland are delighted to welcome one of the world's leading climate change communicators, Professor Katharine Hayhoe, and a panel of experts to Edinburgh Castle to hear their experiences of finding effective ways of communicating the climate crisis.

- Professor Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
- Matt Winning, UCL (University College London)
- Sara Crofts, The Institute of Conservation (Icon)
- Ewan Hyslop, Historic Environment Scotland

Following on from the launch of our own Climate Action Plan, join us in learning from these experts how they have used their areas of expertise to reach new audiences, changing hearts and minds along the way.

The event is free and will be livestreamed on the Historic Environment Scotland Facebook Page so you can tune in wherever you are!



https://facebook.com/events/s/lets-talk-climate-action/501100057475564/?ti=icl

shaolin_monkey

The above starts in ten minutes!

She can tune in without a Facebook account on this link: https://www.facebook.com/HistoricEnvScotland/videos/199496484660638/

shaolin_monkey

Nuts - it sounds like it has started already!

shaolin_monkey

Well well well.   

I reminded folk not to take their eyes off the ball re climate change, and someone commented "One apocalypse at a time please".  What neither of us knew at the time is that a study shows climate change increases the risk of influenza outbreaks!

"It is believed that the continuing change in the Earth's climate will affect the viral activity andtransmission of influenza over the coming decades. However, a consensus of the severity of the risk ofan influenza epidemic in a warming climate has not been reached. It was previously reported that thewarmer winter can reduce influenza epidemic caused mortality, but this relation cannot explain thedeadly influenza epidemic in many countries over northern mid-latitudes in the winter of 2017–2018,one of the warmest winters in recent decades. Here, we reveal that the widely spread 2017–2018influenza epidemic can be attributed to the abnormally strong rapid weather variability. Wedemonstrate, from historical data, that the large rapid weather variability in autumn can preconditionthe deadly influenza epidemic in the subsequent months in highly populated northern mid-latitudes;and the influenza epidemic season of 2017–2018 was a typical case. We further show that climatemodel projections reach a consensus that the rapid weather variability in autumn will continue tostrengthen in some regions of northern mid-latitudes in a warming climate, implying that the risk ofan influenza epidemic may increase 20% to 50% in some highly populated regions in the later 21st century."

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab70bc/pdf  

shaolin_monkey

There's a fantastic thread on Twitter from Prof. Hayhoe re climate change and how it affects the risk of influenza outbreaks like COVID-19.

https://twitter.com/khayhoe/status/1239583948126093312?s=21

TL:DR? Climate change is a threat/risk multiplier.


shaolin_monkey

Climate change - the rich are to blame.  A new study out shows the more well off we get, the more energy we consume, and the more emissions we cause:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51906530

Incidentally, the project leader of this study is well worth a follow on Twitter, particularly if you'd like direct access to the papers (which are normally behind an academic paywall) - @JKSteinberger.

shaolin_monkey

Meanwhile, locusts swarms have been seen in ten African countries, the largest the size of Luxembourg, as climate change creates exponential growth through breeding conditions, threatening food security of 25 million people:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/20/locust-crisis-poses-a-danger-to-millions-forecasters-warn

shaolin_monkey

Here's a really good breakdown of the drive to plant trees in the UK from Carbon Brief - pros and cons, positives and pitfalls, and how this will affect climate change:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-how-will-tree-planting-help-the-uk-meet-its-climate-goals

shaolin_monkey

Warmest January on record, Feb and March not far off. 2020 likely to be hottest year on record.

https://mashable.com/article/climate-change-2020-records/?europe=true

shaolin_monkey

Earlier this year, scientists warned that the Great Barrier Reef could be on the brink of its most widespread bleaching event ever recorded. That fear has been realized.

Surveys conducted by scientists at Australia's James Cook University and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority show that a summer of extreme heat has caused the reef, which is a World Heritage Site, to suffer a mass bleaching of unprecedented scale. Corals from the far north to the southern tip of the 1,400 mile-long ecosystem are experiencing severe impacts.

It was also one of the reef's worst mass bleaching episodes in terms of intensity, second only to 2016, which killed half of all shallow-water corals on the northern Great Barrier Reef.

- Maddie Stone, Capital Weather Gang, Washington Post, Apr 6, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/04/06/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching/

shaolin_monkey

COVID and Climate Change:

Q&A: A Harvard Expert on Environment and Health Discusses Possible Ties Between COVID and Climate

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11032020/coronavirus-harvard-doctor-climate-change-public-health

shaolin_monkey