Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Last Month Was the Hottest June Recorded Worldwide, Figures Show
US government climate data suggests 2010 on course to be warmest year since records began
Last month was the hottest June ever recorded worldwide and the fourth consecutive month that the combined global land and sea temperature records have been broken, according to the US government's climate data centre.
Residents of the Brooklyn borough of New York City use a fire hydrant to cool off on one of the hottest days of the year July 6, 2010. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson) The figures released last night by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggest that 2010 is now on course to be the warmest year since records began in 1880.
The trend to a warmer world is now incontrovertible. According to NOAA, June was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average. The last month with below-average temperatures was February 1985. Each of the 10 warmest average global temperatures recorded since 1880 have occurred in the last 15 years with the previous warmest first half of a year in 1998.
Temperature anomalies included Spain, which experienced its coolest June temperature since 1997, and Guizhou in southern China, which had its coolest June on record. According to Beijing Climate Center, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, and Jilin experienced their warmest June since their records began in 1951.
Scientists expressed surprise that the June land surface temperature exceeded the previous record by 0.11C (0.20F). "This large difference over land contributed strongly to the overall global land and ocean temperature anomaly", said John Leslie, a spokesman for NOAA.
Seperate satellite data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic was at its lowest for any June since satellite records started in 1979. The icy skin over the Arctic Ocean grows each winter and shrinks in summer, reaching its yearly low point in September. The monthly average for June 2010 was 10.87 km sq. The ice was declining an average of 88,000 sq km per day in June.
In a further sign of a warming world, the Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier, one of the largest in Greenland, lost a 2.7-square mile chunk of ice between 6-7 July – one of the largest single losses to a glacier ever recorded.
93 Comments so far
Show AllWe need action NOW!
The quickest action we can take immediately to reduce the 70% of our oil usage and 38% of greenhouse emissions from transportation is to run the trains and buses we already have.
Transit systems all over the country frequently have no weekend service, infrequent off-peak service and actual trains, buses and vans are being cut.
We do not have to wait years for electric cars, we do not even have to build anything. Just run the trains, buses and vans we already have with frequent service over existing tracks and routes. This will create permanent fulltime jobs for engineers, conductors, drivers, ticket agents etc immediately.
Next the Federal govt subsidizes purchases of van and minibus fleets to connect existing transit stops.
Next which takes a little longer is to turn transit parking lots which currently have waits of 5-10 years (!!) for monthly parking spots to parking garages with newspaper, coffee, food available rented by private entrepreneurs.
This provides train/transit riders with amenities, entrepreneurs with income, and offsets the costs of parking garage expansion.
Next we start reviving idle rails all over the country and running trains or light rail on them.
We can fund it by taking the $79 Billion in annual oil tax breaks and providing it to public transit.
In a year we can probably cut auto miles by 20% and in a few years cut auto miles by 50%.
Studies show urban dwellers have 1/3rd the carbon footprint of auto suburbanites primarily because of transit access instead of car dependence.
See http://t4foramerica.org for transit cuts and more info ...
Very good points. When I moved to the a city neighborhood with a job in nearby downtown, I learned how much it reduced my carbon footprint first hand. And there were no compromises - my quality of life was improved in every way.
Regarding transit, and the frequent excuse people give that their precious time is too important (self-important) to wait at a bus stop. I always do this simple experiment.
Stand by a typical suburban collector street - of the sort that is a 3 minute walk from 80% of the residences, and count how long it takes for 40 cars to go by. A minute at the very longest - or less than 15 seconds for a main drag? One could replace these with a bus - every 15 seconds to one minute. Even accounting for multiple routes, the headway would still be no more than a few minutes for any particular route. And the effciency of such a system in resounrce use would be a few percent of that needed for all those single-occupant cars. "Efficiency" of free markets my ass.
What seems like long ago, but hardly a second of time to me I was walking in Seattle thinking how beautiful the area must of been when the land belonged to the Tribes.
A couple girls passed me in a car. One yelled out the window, What are so happy about?
As if it was any of their nosy business what I was happy about at all. I had no idea what they thought their lives had to with mine outside of nothing at all? On my way for morning coffee. Large coffee. Included two refills. If no one was there see if some European had left one of the newspapers of their world laying around. Read the news of their world. Always like letters to editors where they are complaining about everything.
And their complaining about everything the Europeans were complaining about in the last burg, city or town where I resided. So if no one I knew was there, read the Seattle paper. Think, well maybe someday they'll get all problems of their city solved. And maybe not.
Sure knew the area was a lot more expensive to live in than in the days of the Tribes. Went from 0 to sky high. Talk about inflation. From 0 to sky high.
Nothing I can do about that at all.
My friends at that time was a Cherokee woman, a man of Native heritage from Canada. Don't know what Tribe. Didn't matter. Just a part of our Tribe there. His wife who was from a Rez in Washington State. Knew quite a few of the homeless people of all races. Hang out with them some in my free time as they were all dressed up and had nowhere to go.
Re-met a friend of European heritage that was a friend from living in Seattle before. He eventually got a girlfriend who was a lot older than him so he found a mommy to take of him. He tried latching onto me but I am not a nursemaid. Tell him, no, I am your friend, but I am not your nursemaid. You have to solve your own problems in life. I don't care what your problems are or how you solve them but I am not a nursemaid.
So he found him an older woman mommy to take care of him. Good for him.
Never worried about my "Carbon Footprint" a day in my life. Haven't worried a second about the oil gushing out of the Gulf. Haven't worried about Global Warming, or Ozone layer depletion at all.
Just laughed when a woman of European heritage started talking to me about something she called, Saving the Earth some 23 years ago. That was 23 years ago and the earth is still here.
Don't know that the European's are any closer yet to Saving The Earth or not, and I am not worried about it at all.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
ShadowDancer -
You seem to be the same type of nonsensical, William Blake-bullshit spouting "Injun" from Jarmusch's "Dead Man", named "Nobody".
Your pseudo- mystical bullshit is very tiresome. You have no more to offer on the state of the Universe than a homeless baglady - just non-sequeter bullshit in a pseudo-mystical candy wraper to make it seem desireable.
Whatever your so-called Tribe once had is long gone and has been replaced by the white mans whisky bottle and sugary snack foods to keep you depressed and diabetic. When you come out of your alcoholic stupor and have something cogent to say, perhaps listeners will take you seriously.
If you don't like me go back to Europe or wherever your Ancestors came from and see if I miss you at all. Your whining, complaining, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of your teeth about all the problems you caused in this land is very long and tiresome.
Boo-hoo all the problems of your Nation day in and day out. Oh, we have to save the earth now. Yeah, right. Babble on and babble on Babylon. Day and night they weep, wail, and gnash their teeth about the problems of the Their Nation.
Well don't crawl in a barrel of your nuclear waste because that will really burn you up. Your just another complete bore to me in your boring predictable Mickey Mouse cash register world.
Gold mine some gold so you can dance around the Golden Calf.
Life is good. What an experience. It's always best to forgive.
That's right. We do dwell too much on these problems. Probably from guilt and the same sense of superiority over nature that we can do something about it. And this is from someone who majored in Environmntal Studies. We are as helpless as the deer populations who eat too much vegetation and then their populations crash. Even though we are destroying nature it was our environment that created all the dynamics to cause this to happen. Not really anyone in particular. But that doesn't make it good. But it is all part of the lifestyle and culture we have and it isn't healthy for us or the planet. This is not the way humans were supposed to live and not the Earth was supposed to be lived on. But being bogged down in it and concentrating on it as more important than yourself isn't good. You talking about your own issues in your life. That's real. These mass issues that are real but we can't do anything about them. Living with the Earth is generally better just personally as much as you can but don't get a complex about it because they will burn the oil some other place or a little later if you ride your bike. Do it because you want to. That's why I'm a vegan and I ride my bike. You were born in a sad time if you concentrate on the times. But you are alive and life is good.
I said to a woman of European heritage I sort of knew, Hunting, fishing, living with nature, growing and gathering a little food, living simply with earth is pretty much all people ever needed to know.
I was amazed at her reply as she said, That's what it says in the Bible.
I just smiled. As I said there are stories from within Tribes that Jesus lived here long ago in this land with them. The Mormon's in their book say he lived in this land, too, with Tribes.
But if the stories are true that means the Graveyards of Time that assign all other men to them didn't quite assign old Mr. Power of Life over Death to the Graveyard.
Just as when Jesus was asked if John the Baptist was the Prophet Elijah returned and Jesus said, Yes.
So Elijah was taken from the earth into the Kingdom, and his Spirit was returned within John at a later time.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Are you something above a homeless bag lady? Are you a real important somebody on the earth. Got some of your god of green paper in your pocket so your really powerful upon the earth. Your really somebody. Your something more than the homeless bag lady, and other homeless people in the streets.
My aren't I just impressed with how important your are upon the earth. Your just so much more important than other people. Are you a Big Boss Man upon the earth? If you have the money we can travel around to some Rez's and you can tell everyone on the Rez what an important person you are upon the earth. How much more important you are than a homeless baglady.
We'll just all bow down and worship you like you deserve to be worshiped upon the earth because your just so important. I've never read William Blake's book. Don't even know if I've ever heard of him.
But I am dead Indian, and I am nobody.
And I have the emails to a woman I've been discussing prophecy with for over a year where I told her by the time I was 8 or 9 I was telling people, I am nothing. I am nobody.
But a man in Nevada I had never seen in my life who just passed me walking down the sidewalk. He looked at me and thought I was somebody. But you don't know that story. He thought I was the same person a person who passed me by in Yuma, Az, thought I was several years before. You don't know that story either.
It's ok because no matter how important you think you are upon the earth, nor no matter how powerful you think you are upon the earth Old Mr. Death just waits to assign you to the Graveyards of Time old Mr. Death's way.
Therefore all I have to do is nothing.
Creator watches. Creator listens. Creator knows the exact number of your days, and the exact amount of time since Creator Ushered in Creation until this time that is now. Creator knows you aren't going anyone at all. Creator knows your on the earth. Creator knows the exact number of days Creator has given this world.
Therefore all I have to do is nothing.
Except pay my bills and die in you pay your bills and die world.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Damn it gold mansack and shadowdancer. We don't have time to attack each other. Save it up. We're going to need that energy for the class war. You two will be on the same side. Lets get ready to kick some A$$!!!!!
When I lived in Seattle I knew most all of the homeless people who lived in something the Europeans called my district. I knew most of the homeless people in the downtown area of Seattle. I love the homeless people as my friends. I love my enemies, too.
Once in a great while someone would pass by a homeless person while I was there and insult them like they were some real big somebody on the earth. I can go from the most mellow person you ever met to the meanest junkyard Indian dog you never want to meet in a moment.
I'd start saying to them, what are you some really big important person upon earth because you have a little of your god of green paper in your pocket so your really somebody upon the earth. I'd get right in their face and look them in the eyes.
Maybe Mr. Big Reader read the story of the Rich man and the beggar Lazarus. Rich man had his god of green paper in his pockets. Thought the beggar was beneath him and he was a real somebody upon Creator's planet.
But the beggar Lazarus ended up in the Bossom of Abram that is symbolic of the Kingdom of God while the rich man ended upon in the fire begging for a drink.
So how Creator looks at the baglady, and the homeless of the earth and how other people look at them can be two different things altogether.
At a Native site we discuss prophecy quite a bit. There is man of European heritage there discussing with me your Nation being Mystery Babylon. If your Nation is Mystery Babylon then Creator knows the fate of your Nation already so all I have to do is nothing.
But the fate of Mystery Babylon is around 99.9 percent similar to the final Hopi prophecy for this land.
I have lived with the Hopi. I love the Hopi as my friends. I love my enemies, too.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
Shadow Dancer, We are ALL originally from Africa. People found anywhere else in the world migrated there, your people were not always on this continent, they just migrated here before Europeans did.
As far as the evils of the Europeans you speak of goes, they were just better at doing the evil things that all other cultures do because of technology. People have been fighting with each other, murdering each other, sacrificing each other, for thousands of years on every continent of the planet with the exception of Antarctica.
Yes the Europeans have killed many with guns and bombs, but look at Rwandans recent civil war where they were quite happy to hack each other up with machetes. Humans as a species, have a pretty violent streak in them, and it appears to be genetic. This tendency for violence runs in the blood of my ancestors and it runs in the blood of yours too, because if you go back far enough we all have the same African blood running through our veins.
That is theory. Just because someone states that as a theory doesn't mean I accept their theory as some kind of truth. Don't worry, though, I know European's love all sorts of theories. I don't actually have any need for a history lesson from you, nor any insight into human nature from you.
I am only passing through your pay your bills and die world. The Hopi are estimated to be a Tribe of some 35,000 years but that is only an estimate of someone's theory.
How many Nation States have risen and fallen in just 35,000 years.
Within just that 35,000 years any human alive as been assigned to the Graveyards of Time. All the people that were at the Battle of Little Big Horn are all dead now.
They are all in the Graveyards of Time.
This is just a "Time Frame" anyone posting here will eventually be assigned to the Graveyard's of Time. Creator knows exactly their exact number of days before Old Mr. Death takes them. Therefore all I have to do is nothing.
Just pay my bills and die in the Europeans pay your bills and die world.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
"I don't actually have any need for a history lesson from you, nor any insight into human nature from you."
If that his how you feel then why on Earth do you think we need history lessons or insight into human nature from you either? Seriously...
Amherst, Massachusetts, is a small town dominated by a state university. The university initiated the world's largest free bus service thirty years ago. College students drive 8 ton city buses.
I've seen buses come down the town's main drag at a rate of one every 60 seconds during busy periods. Without fares, bus loading is fast. Without fares, robberies of the fare boxes aren't a problem.
Socialist and cooperative programs abound in the USA, just the news of them does not tickle the greed bone. So nobody can see them. It says a lot about human nature, and the parameters needed to build the alter-institutions that will replace the imploding capitalism.
Thank you for this wonderful information.
Over the past 100 years the world population has increased exponentially to 7 billion people and the average temperature which has stayed relatively stable over the preceding 10,000 years has also risen exponentially over the past 100 years. Global temperature is tracking the world population.
Since 1989 Cuba has reduced their annual oil consumption by over 50% by changing to local organic farming.
They have restored the trees which was decimated from 90% of the island in 1942 to 10% of the island in 1959, thus adding more oxygen to the atmosphere.
Their population is gradually decreasing further reducing the carbon footprint.
They are doing all the things necessary to reverse gobal warming.
This is in addition to sending army of doctors to Haiti, Pakistan after their devastating earthquakes.
To cook temperature data and warm the earth artificially, NASA and NOAA have whipped up a nifty recipe. Here are the not-so-secret ingredients for global warming:
1) Reduce temperature reporting stations across the globe from nearly 6,000 in 1970 to 1,500 or less today.
2) Drop out reporting stations in higher latitudes (colder), higher elevations (colder) and mainly rural locations (colder).
3) Cool early temperature records through data “adjustments” to create the impression of a current warming trend.
4) Fail to compensate, or under-compensate, for urban growth and land-use changes that can produce localized warming known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect.
5) Cherry-pick thermometers from reporting stations sited at busy airports and other warm locales (e.g. near the coast or at lower elevations).
6) Fill gaps in the shrunk-down thermometer network by estimating temperatures using a system of global grid boxes. Then “populate” the grids with thermometers stationed at lower latitudes and altitudes, or near the coast and in other warm spots.
7) If there are no temperature stations inside the grid box, use the closest station in a nearby box (for example, at the bottom of a mountain plateau or on the coast).
8) Adjust the final temperature dataset using “homogenization,” a blending process that effectively spreads a warm bias to all surrounding stations.
9) Voila, global warming made easy!
Wow, thank you for all those facts! Now, how do they fake the disappearing sea ice and the glacier calving?
A really great debt of gratitude is due you and all the other members of the flat earth society. Without your keen insight the status of the human race might be about 200 years more advanced.
Good one!
This jskinner must be part of an internet based flat-earth rapid-response network. I wonder how much Exxon-Mobil is paying him.
Because global climate change is real does not mean jskinner is incorrect. I have not found, in a few minutes of searching, substantive data one way or the other, merely a passing reference to "downsizing and modernizing by NWS in the 1990's resulted in the Augusta [Columbia SC] office being closed."
NWS forecasting in my area differs dramatically from Weather Underground's which proves nothing, but it's certainly plausible that NWS was downsized and now relies heavily on more computer model-generated information and less localized human-operated data gathering.
You are confusing weather forecasting and climate.
The loss of data stations should make little difference in the accuracy of the data - only the precision. Jskinner, lile most scientifically illiterate denialists, is quite confused as to how the data is analysed - he seems to think that they are simply taking readings of stations all over the world and averaging them toghether. This is not how they do it. They are looking at the deviations from the historical data at each station, then averaging the deviations. Since warming will affects a station on a cold area the same as a station in warm area, removing a station does NOT in itself introduce a statistical bias. Or actually it does; since the warming is expected to be greatest at high latitudes and altitudes, the removal of these stations will cause the warming to be understated! So much for jskinners nutty conspiracy theory.
As far as Wunderground.com and the NWS shouldn't see a difference - Weather Underground uses NWS forecasts, but perhaps your town is on a border between forecast zones.
Thank you for this interesting clarification.
And how do they manage to melt the glaciers and the arctic shelves? The other question is why would "they" do this? How does this explain the heat waves in Russia and Europe and China? Or the intense weather anomalies of the US? Weird.
10) They also shifted their satellite temperature collections from satellites in high earth orbit to ones in low earth orbit (the temperature is higher in low earth orbit).
And, I'm going to identify that as sarcasm because I likely confused you.
Yeah, but the pesky little details of melting ice caps, and dramatic loss of ice all over the Arctic... not so easy to explain with your little Exxon-financed bullshit.
What an idiot you are.
If the Arctic methane feedback loop is taking place, it should be rather measurable this fall. We have had record-low ice cover on the Arctic Ocean during the critical June and July solar peak. In general this should translate into record ocean heat absorption and record methane releases, which will further fuel Northern Hemisphere temperatures this fall and world temperatures once the methane filters down to the tropics.
And the methane feedbacks are not even considered in the scientists IPCC predictions. What efforts the IPCC has recommended to address AGW are based only what the scientists are fairly certain will happen. This is the nature of science -the layers of skeptical peer-review assure that the scientists will predict only something they have a high degree of confidence, not the really catastrophic scenarios that have a low probability of happening. Scientists call this "conservatism".
As a civil engineer, I find this an insane way to approach the problem. In engineering, we define "conservative" in exactly the opposite way. "Conservative" means assuming very remote-probability events - maximum credible storms and earthquakes, WILL happen, and designing against them.
If a civil enginer designed a dam the way the IPCC recommends AGW policy, the dam would have a 50% probability of failure over its lifetime.
This means that even the best of our politicians are rolling dice on the fate of all life on earth, while the worst are like a junkie - working diligently to make sure thay continue to get their money-and-power fix while they sacrifice themselves and those around them.
Excellent posts SaboCat. You are a real asset to this board.
Good clarifications and overall comments there, Sabocat.
Trouble is, you're probably right - as a technical description - about how politicians "make sure th[e]y continue to get their money-and-power fix while they sacrifice themselves and those around them". And anyone getting to those positions get addicted rapidly. I've seen it happen. Plus withdrew myself in the nick of time. In the game of politics, the feeling of importance about what one does and is, quickly muddles the values one does it for. As the world is (money ruling as the only reason allowed to strive for), I don't know how that can be countered. Except with everyone starting to think for ourselves more.
As far as economic electricity production without carbon emissions, the "fix" is already in folks, the Atmospheric Vortex Engine.
How much longer will we continue to just whine, when instead, we could be building a mid-sized prototype to quantify essential parameters.
Within a decade, we could replace half the current electrical generation capacity in this country which is now based on coal.
More importantly, within a few years, in other countries, ALL new electrical generation capacity could be based on this "Messiah" technology.
Ref-- http://vortexengine.ca
Wow, I checked out the Vortex Engine and I'm very impressed.
I think I might have to build a small one... Simple concept, huge potential.
It's about as cool as the technology these folks produce www.startech.net turning trash into reusable resources and energy.
You're probably not going to get much information, or impress too many people unless it has a "footprint" at least the size of house. Remember, in addition to the "spin" you're able to impart to it, which is easy, the "buoyancy" of the air rising in the vortex also matters.
I would further recommend that it be placed on a small hill or rise, surrounded by mixed flat and vegetative surface from which more humidity and warmth can be added to air before it enters the device.
Your "output" is also going to be very sensitive to the prevailing weather, time of day, etc. Be careful if thunderstorms are imminent, because the device might rip itself apart, unless it is sturdily constructed.
A 100 foot diameter one, bathed with light at night, could made a great tourist attraction in Las Vegas, for example. They should have enough money to make a real nice one.
I have quite a number of tools for increasing the vortex's power, storing latent heat for use in the vortex during early evening and late afternoon peak power periods, and otherwise lowering the device's cost per kilowatt-hour. I've been pursuing my own independent solar power generation system. Without the vortex, I'm aiming at about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. Many of my ideas happen to fit quite well with the vortex.
I regret that there's little or no "free" market for a poor inventor to fully develop a new technology. I could give all the secrets away and still be poor, but how would that action encourage the next 100 inventors? Interesting sticking point.
I don't really want to die with these secrets.
You are on the right track. In times of surplus electricity, this can be converted efficiently to thermal energy (50-75 C) for underground storage by using "heat pumps" to increase the temperature. Later, in times of low "natural" Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), you can withdraw the hot fluid from storage to heat the air, enabling the creation of a strong vortex.
For a tutorial on CAPE see tornadochaser.net/capeclass.html
We're Fucked!!!
My Grandfather put this kind of manure on the corn field as did his father before him. I did my grocery shopping on my bicycle this morning. We all gotta do something useful- not blather de-bunked fertilizer endlessly. Two wheels- that's the way to go.
NO MO BABIES!!!!!!!
For the last ten years even longer, they've been spraying the upper atmosphere with Chemtrails. That is a FACT.
The question I'm asking, what affect is that having on the weather (more importantly our health) here on Earth.
Stop this video at 1:10, and if you can tell me that this is normal jet traffic, then I've got some land to sell you along the Gulf of Mexico
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Psdg3OAw_a8
ok. i watched the video. and i've witnessed these 'chemtrails' here in southern europe, where, as you say, it's not normal jet traffic. so can you/anyone, please tell me exactly what they are doing/achieving with this? what is the purpose? i'm asking a pertinent question, cos i've yet to discover actually what they do/people think they do..............
thank you.
Coco, it is never going to be explained to us why they are spraying the upper atmosphere. The mendacity continues.
We're also breathing this crap in, everyone is. No one is immune. This spraying could also be trapping the heat.
Perhaps this can better explain what is occuring.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IaJwpdpEWY&feature=related
The chemtrail thing always seemed like bullshit for a really simple reason, to me... You don't see rich businessmen and senators walking around with gas masks or anything.. so why would they subject themselves to the chemtrails' effects? That whole issue seems embarrassingly paranoid, and it distracts from real conversation about any real solutions that could potentially be implemented.
"That whole issue seems embarrassingly paranoid?"
Elfmachine, keep your head in the sand lad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wynpGOWb80&feature=related
Good comment by SaboCat.
Creator watches while heteros screw each other and the population of the planet increases at three people per second.
Creator watches as these people shop for all the wants and needs that money can buy.
Creator watches while we fry our asses from the carbon footprint of all this breeding and shopping.
Creator is a psychopathic sadist.
Oh my! What a terrible thing to even suggest about God the father our creator.
Yes, so it's a good thing such a being doesn't exist, outside of fairy tales and the deranged imaginations of some humans.
We can do without your arrogance & ignorance.
We? Go away.