Who Dreamed the Dream?

mothernaturenetwork:

Ice shelf in Antarctica has shrunk by 85%
Images taken by a satellite show that the Larsen B ice shelf decreased from 4,373 square miles in 1995 to only 634 miles today.

discoverynews:

Mexico Passes Climate Change Law

As Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano continues to spew ash and greenhouse gases, the Mexican people themselves have resolved to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

A law recently passed by the Mexican legislature will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 30 percent below business-as-usual levels by 2020, and by 50 percent below 2000 levels by 2050, reported Nature. By 2024, Mexico will also derive 35 percent of its electricity from renewable resources, according to the new law.

keep reading

(via climateadaptation)

climateadaptation:

As ice cap melts, militaries vie for Arctic edge

- YOKOSUKA, Japan - To the world’s military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.

Nice. I used this same photo in my article for GOOD, which covered Obama’s climate adaptation policies.

(Source: sansastone)

teleological:

Rapid Climate Change Threatens World’s Rice Bowl

As Asia’s monsoon season begins, leading climate specialists and agricultural scientists warn that rapid climate change and intensified droughts and floods could devastate Southeast Asia’s global dominance in rice production, posing a significant threat to millions of people across the region and affecting global food security.

Last year’s record flooding in Thailand and Southeast Asia was preceded by a record drought in 2010. These and many other extreme weather events have hammered global food prices, stretching their impact beyond the immediate personal and ecological tragedies. Climate change in South and Southeast Asia is expected to reduce agriculture productivity by as much as 50 percent in the next three decades, with a dramatic impact on stability and livelihoods.

South and Southeast Asia is home to more than one-third of the world’s population and half of the world’s poor and malnourished. Agriculture is the backbone of most economies in the region, and such plunging yields would shake countries to the core.

Read more.

(via mothernaturenetwork)

discoverynews:

Venice Sinking More Than Previously Thought

Venice has begun sinking again and is even tilting slightly eastward, new satellite measurements have revealed.

Despite previous studies suggesting the subsidence had levelled off, new research indicates that the lagoon city continues to sink an average of one to two millimeters (0.04 to 0.08 inches) a year.  That’s more than researchers previously thought.

“It’s a small effect, but it’s important,” Yehuda Bock, a research geodesist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, Calif., said.

keep reading

(via climateadaptation)

mothernaturenetwork:

Shimizu designed the Green Float concept as “floating cities in the sky” that would be self-sufficient, allowing us to live harmoniously with nature. Each floating cell district has a radius of .62 miles that can house 10,000 to 50,000 people. Joining these districts would form a city of 100,000, and a group of modules would constitute a country. The towers in the center of each district are structured with residences and hospitals at the periphery, offices and commercial facilities in the center, and plants growing along the tower. Carbon dioxide and wastewater from the urban areas become nutrients for the plants, and grains, livestock and fish live along the base and ocean shallows of the tower.