It's Hot Ouside!

No, not here in Canada.  In Australia.  (Although folks in Toronto might be excused for thinking 8 is a tad warm for a winter day.)

It has been so hot in Australia that the Bureau of Meteorology added new colours and mew maximums  to their predictions.


54 degrees Celsius is HOT!  So Australians are waking up to the alarming possibilities inherent in climate change, right?  Well, not the acting opposition leader.

"Australia's climate, it's changing, it's changeable. We have hot times, we have cold times...
 'The reality is that it's utterly simplistic to suggest that we have these fires                              because  of climate change.'' acting Opposition Leader Warren Truss says.  
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/climate-change-link-to-heat-fires-utterly-simplistic-says-warren-truss/story-fndo317g-1226550415035

Never mind the facts!  Or the government's Climate Commission!

No deaths have been reported from the bushfires, which have flared during extreme summer temperatures, but the unprecedented heatwave has prompted the government’s Climate Commission to issue a new report on the weather event.
It says that climate change has contributed to making the extreme heat conditions — in which record-breaking temperatures in parts of the country have topped 45ºC — and bushfires worse.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/01/13/2003552448

Meanwhile, some questions from Global Risks 2013: Eighth Edition.  http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/

1.  How will we reconcile climate change mitigation and adaptation with the desire for prosperity given current demographic trends?

2.  How can like-minded municipalities, companies and communites drive forward a new set of climate-smart approaches that avoid cognitive biases?

What are the answers?

From Al Jazeera

Remember those floods and droughts in  2010?  Wildfires around Moscow?  Flooding in Pakistan and Oz?  So does this writer from Al Jazeera.

2010 proved to be a model year for what the planet can expect as the result of climate change. Huge floods occurred in Pakistan, Australia, and California. A record-breaking heat wave in Russia, and the severe die-offs of coral reefs underscored the acceleration of the global trends in Climate Change. Last year was also the 34th consecutive year that global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average, and nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 due to what scientists attribute to a 40 per cent increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began....On February 16 two new studies published in the journal Nature confirmed the link between climate change and more extreme precipitation events. Based on measurements taken from over 6,000 weather stations, results revealed that human-induced heating of the planet has already made rainfall more intense, which has led to more severe floods.  The studies suggest that the planet's climatic system may well be more sensitive to small temperature increases than was previously believed....Warmer atmospheric temperatures means increasing moisture in the air, and thus greater amounts in precipitation events.

But isn't this nasty winter proof that the climate isn't warming?  In a word, no.

The current string of harsh winters around much of the globe for the last decade is also attributed to climate change, according to scientists who published a report in December.

"Recent severe winters [in Europe] like last year’s or the one of 2005-2006 do not conflict with the global warming picture, but rather supplement it," Vladimir Petoukhov, lead author of the study and a physicist at the Potsdam Institute reported.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/03/201132141536987194.html

We're going to have wilder, more extreme weather events as cliame change continues.

Extreme Weather

Unlike northern China, Queensland, Australia has no shortage of precipiation.  Are flooding and violent cyclones connected to climate change?  Cliamte change models predict extreme weather events ......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/16/climate-change-extreme-weather

....we begin to see trends which suggest that rising temperatures are making a particular kind of weather more likely to occur. One such trend has now become clearer. Two new papers, published by Nature, should make us sit up, as they suggest for the first time a clear link between global warming and extreme precipitation (precipitation means water falling out of the sky in any form: rain, hail or snow.)

Maybe we should worry ......