Report from the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun.
global warming
Connecting local weather and global climate change
Our daily weather reports, cheerfully presented with flashy graphics and state-of-the-art animation, appear to relay more and more information.
And yet, no matter how glitzy the presentation, a key fact is invariably omitted. Imagine if, after flashing the words "extreme weather" to grab our attention, the reports flashed "global warming." Then we would know not only to wear lighter clothes or carry an umbrella, but that we have to do something about climate change.
I put the question to Jeff Masters, co-founder and director of meteorology at Weather Underground, an Internet weather information service. Masters writes a popular blog on weather, and doesn't shy away from linking extreme weather to climate change:
December 16, 2011 |
The Harper government's decision to pull Canada out of the Kyoto Protocol will further hamper the creation of good, value-added jobs in green energy and energy conservation industries.
December 14, 2011 |
Scientists and environmental groups have warned the delay to 2020 puts the planet, and people at great risk of irreversible damage from rising temperatures.
Tropic of Chaos: An evening with Christian Parenti
Dec 2 2011 - 7:00pm
Dec 2 2011 - 9:00pm
Location
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
149 West Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 1G8Canada
49° 16' 56.3592" N, 123° 6' 31.5648" W
See map: Google Maps
Christian Parenti talks about his latest book, 'Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence', a "brilliant weather report from the near future of world politics".
Weather, cheap politics and the power of nature
Last weekend American politics reached a bizarre point: in order to justify their existence, government leaders decided to do something about what human beings have always agreed you can't do anything about: the weather. So we had their frenetic reactions to Hurricane Irene.
Opposition to Keystone XL pipeline grows
The White House was rocked Tuesday, not only by a 5.9-magnitude earthquake, but by the protests mounting outside its gates. More than 2,100 people say they'll risk arrest there during the next two weeks. They oppose the Keystone XL pipeline project, designed to carry heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
A "keystone" in architecture is the stone at the top of an arch that holds the arch together; without it, the structure collapses. By putting their bodies on the line -- as more than 200 have already at the time of this writing -- these practitioners of the proud tradition of civil disobedience hope to collapse not only the pipeline, but the fossil-fuel dependence that is accelerating disruptive global climate change.
