Humor4u

by Andrew Glikson Earth and climate scientist Australian National University Global warming and its disastrous consequences are now truly with us since the second part of 2019. At the moment a change in the weather has given parts of the country a respite from the raging fires, some of which are still burning or smoldering, waiting for another warm spell to flare up. The danger zones include the Australian Capital Territory, from where these lines are written. To date, 18.6 million hectares (186,000 square kilometers) were burnt, including native forests, native animals, homesteads and towns, and 24 people died. The firestorms betray harbingers of a planetary future , or a lack of such, under ever rising temperatures and extreme weather events inherent in fossil fuel driven global warming. Global heating As the atmospheric concentration of the well-mixed greenhouse gases rise (CO₂ > 411.76 ppm;  CH₄ > 1870.5 ppb ; N₂O > 333 ppb plus trace greenhouse gases) lan...

Andrew Glikson Earth and climate scientist Australian National University 15.11.2019 The effects of encroaching deserts and of fire storms on terrestrial forests originally developed under moderate conditions distinct from those emerging under rapid global warming and extreme weather events may have been underestimated. Average global temperatures do not tell the story — it is the increasingly frequent weather anomalies which do. Powerful psychological factors prevent many scientists from expressing their worst fears , a phenomenon dubbed as “ scientific reticence ”. As the tropical climate zones expand toward the poles , moderate climate zones shift polar-ward and are contracting where they clash with polar-derived cold air and ice melt water flow through weakened jet stream boundaries . As climate zones are shifting at a rate of 56-111 km per decade and ecosystems have only a short time to adapt, arid zones expand and droughts and fires consume the moderate-climate forests and forme...