Crikey, mate.

From BBC "The agency's flood expert, Phil Rothwell, said: "We've had a sixth of the annual rainfall in 12 hours.
"Climate change experts tell us that this is the sort of thing we need to expect for the future..."

From The Times Online "Torrential rain swept across Britain yesterday bringing flooding, tornados and death on the wettest June day on record.
A 28-year-old man died trying to unblock a drain in Hull despite the efforts of emergency services. In Sheffield, a 13-year-old boy who was swept into a swollen river near a playground was feared dead and a 68-year-old man died while attempting to cross a flooded road..."

No hope, duuude. No hope, duuude.

Declines in biodiversity are nothing new, but a new tally of bird species is depressing the hell out of bird watchers, who are calling what is happening a "walmartization of the skies."

"Also, it points to the same conclusion as the breeding census: The nation is losing vast numbers of birds - about 432-million among the 20 common declining species - and from every type of habitat.
Northern pintail ducks breed in "America's duck factory, " Butcher said, the small lakes and ponds in Canada and the northern United States.

These have been drained to make room for wheat and corn fields, he said, and the pintail population has dropped 77 percent in the United States and 96 percent in Florida since 1967.
Another duck species in decline, the greater scaup, summers in tundra degraded by global warming. The black skimmer's population has fallen because the birds nest on increasingly crowded Florida beaches.

Pasture species seem especially vulnerable, Butcher said. Pesticides and herbicides have killed the insects and weeds these birds eat. Frequent mowing leaves them without enough time to raise their brood, Butcher said, and "a lot of eastern meadowlark nests get cut down while they are still full of either eggs or young."

About collared doves, an introduced species that is thriving, Butcher says ""They have sort of a mournful, three note call ... What I think of is: 'No hope, duuude. No hope, duuude.' "

LINK

Texans: Unbelievably stupid.

This is great.

"GALVESTON, TEXAS — Leaders of this fast-eroding barrier island — the scene of the deadliest hurricane in American history — are about to approve nearly 4,000 new homes and two midrise hotels despite geologists' warnings that the massive development would sever a ridge that serves as the island's natural storm shield.

The three geologists who conducted the study cautioned against building along beaches that are likely to be erased by erosion within 20 years. They warned that artificial lakes and boat channels could help surging waters pierce the island during a major hurricane, possibly even splitting it in two.

And above all, they recommended that the city preserve a low-lying ridge hundreds of feet inland, saying that although the rise may look meaningless to untrained eyes, it has helped the island withstand centuries of storms.

During recent public hearings on the new development, called Preserve at West Beach, city planners did not share copies of the hazard maps the geologists had been hired to prepare. But a skeptical planning commissioner superimposed the blueprints with the map on her own. The hotels were in the areas designated at highest risk."

LINK

this one goes out to the one i love

....And I feel fine....

When one reads that civilization itself is threatened by human-caused climate change, it's no surprise. The only surprise is the impatience I feel reading that. Let's call it a day. Humans, unfortunately, are not improving our baser natures.

Civilization- thousands of years of creating, building, storytelling, writing, reading, studying- and what have we got to? A point where the children of the wealthiest nations are simultaneously spoiled and deprived, while the children of the poorest nations are literally left to rot. A world where people still kill each other over primitive fairy tales.

A few days ago, I read a fucking condescending article about a group of pacific islanders who 'worship' Prince Philip as a god. This article couldn't have been written with a shittier tone, a real, 'hey, how about these ignorant native peoples?' way about it. Well, I say, cheers to the native islanders. At least Prince Philip, as loathsome as he may be, can presumably be proved to exist.

Well, anyway, just a little more consensus-building, more of the best research finding the same results, more of the same and the same and the same. I haven't been updating as much as I want to, but make no mistake: DOOMED.

"Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilisation itself is threatened by global warming.
They also implicitly criticise the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets.
Instead of sea levels rising by about 40 centimetres, as the IPCC predicts in one of its computer forecasts, the true rise might be as great as several metres by 2100. That is why, they say, planet Earth today is in "imminent peril".
...
Dramatic flips in the climate have occurred in the past but none has happened since the development of complex human societies and civilisation, which are unlikely to survive the same sort of environmental changes if they occurred now.
"Civilisation developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure, during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12,000 years in duration. That period is about to end," the scientists warn. Humanity cannot afford to burn the Earth's remaining underground reserves of fossil fuel. "To do so would guarantee dramatic climate change, yielding a different planet from the one on which civilisation developed and for which extensive physical infrastructure has been built," they say."
Link

Hey, lawn daddies, there's a new kudzu in town. Look out for this stuff in the south.

"One of the world's worst weeds is thriving in the southern summer and it's not kudzu. It's called cogongrass. The invasive weed has already infested about a million acres in the southeast and continues to spread....If the grass is not contained, experts say the weed could eventually turn the southeast into a grassy savanna devoid of all native species. "

LINK to story

So long, and thanks for all the... wait, where's the fish?

Sorry, fish.
Right, so everyone knows that fish are out around 2050, right? Well, some guy wrote a book about it, ( actually , Charles Clover wrote The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat) which is being roundly ignored, but there are some gems from this Salon interview with him. Check it out.
"I didn't say in my book, "Don't eat fish." I say, "Don't eat certain fish, don't eat endangered fish." If a fish takes 20 years to double its population, that's a long time. If it takes 30 years before it breeds, don't touch it. But if you eat something that's fast reproducing and not overfished, you should be all right. And there's quite a lot of those species out there. You can eat a hell of a lot of shellfish, a huge amount of mussels and oysters, and your deep-water scallops, with a clear conscience. You can have a really nice fish stew, it's not a problem. But why eat endangered fish? And the slow-reproducing ones are probably going to have mercury in them anyway, so it's a win-win.
I think [cutting back on endangered fish] would be enough of a message to the fishermen of the world and the industries. God knows we're eating a lot of them at the moment. If you go to New York, restaurants seem actively to encourage it. "

Fucking New York.
LINK to great interview

Get a few folks together and perform the Rain Dance of Zuni or the Snake Dance in the front lawn.

Indianapolis outdoor water use ban. Hot, dry weather has forced cities in Indiana to issue watering bans.

No rain, no hay, Georgia farmers can't feed their cattle. The drought, coupled with rampant forest fires in south Georgia, has prompted Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue to declare the state’s agricultural industry a disaster.

Alabama is suggesting people dance for rain, or pray. Seriously. "Get a few folks together and perform the Rain Dance of Zuni or the Snake Dance in the front lawn. If your neighbors happen to pass by, tell them not to laugh at this sacred ritual and invite them to join in. There is strength in numbers."

North Carolina
N.C. Gov. Mike Easley added state agencies in four western counties today to a list of agencies in 17 counties he's already ordered to halt all nonessential water use, concerned that an ongoing statewide drought is depleting streams and groundwater.


Hawaii Mayor Harry Kim declared a state of emergency because of drought conditions.

huh.

"It's Friday - a good time for a little odd global warming news. Seems the number of cats and kittens being brought to animal shelters in the United States has spiked by about 30 percent over the past couple of years.

Why? Kathy Warnick, president of a national adoption organization called Pets across America says "Cats are typically warm-weather, spring-time breeders. However, states that typically experience primarily longer and colder winters are now seeing shorter, warmer winters, leading to year-round breeding."

With no "reproductive lull," more kittens are being brought to animal shelters during the winter months. "
LINK

oh, those floods in China? Only affecting 2 million people. Don't worry about it- how do you think Paris Hilton is doing in jail?

"Death toll in torrential floods in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has reached 13 and one remained missing by Sunday, according to local civil affairs authority.

More than 1.97 million people have been affected after the floods triggered by continuous heavy rains hit some 40 counties since Wednesday.

According to the local civil affairs bureau, 9,200 houses were knocked down and 75,181 hectares of crops were affected, incurring529 million yuan (about 70 million U.S. dollars) in direct economic losses. "
LINK

No rain, no grain.

"From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.

In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles."
LINK

the bees- wtf? scary stuff

"Several researchers, including entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Penn State and Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at Columbia University, have been sifting through bees that have been ground up, looking for viruses and bacteria.

"We were shocked by the huge number of pathogens present in each adult bee," Cox-Foster said at a recent meeting of bee researchers convened by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.The large number of pathogens suggested, she said, that the bees' immune systems had been suppressed, allowing the proliferation of infections.

The idea that a pathogen is involved is supported by recent experiments conducted by VanEngelsdorp and USDA entomologist Jeffrey S. Pettis.One of the unusual features of the disorder is that the predators of abandoned beehives, such as hive beetles and wax moths, refuse to venture into infected hives for weeks or longer.

According to the Apiary Inspectors of America, 24% of 384 beekeeping operations across the country lost more than 50% of their colonies from September to March. Some have lost 90%."
LINK