One editorial headline states the news of the week - Global warming evidence raining down on everyone, asking the question:
How much more proof is needed to persuade skeptics that humans are warming the planet to dangerously high temperatures?
When will the public realize that climate denier arguments that climate change is a "victimless crime" are proven false with each new study and report of impacts happening today that will only worsen over time with both frequency and intensity?
From this week alone:
Extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown substantially stronger, two studies suggest, with scientists for the first time finding the telltale fingerprints of man-made global warming on downpours that often cause deadly flooding.
Global warming made the floods that devastated England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, costing £3.5bn, between two and three times more likely to happen, new research has found. This is the first time scientists have quantified the role of human-induced climate change in increasing the risk of a serious flood and represents a major development in climate science.
The parts of the country that will be hit hardest are the southern Atlantic coast and the Gulf coast. Cities like Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, and Virginia Beach could lose over 10 percent of their land area by the turn of the century. Scientific projections call for sea levels to rise by one meter by then, and this area is particularly flat and low-lying, much like the Netherlands.
Alaskan forests used to be important players in Mother Nature's game plan for regulating carbon dioxide levels in the air. It's elementary earth science: Trees take up carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.
But now, American and Canadian researchers report that climate change is causing wildfires to burn larger swaths of Alaskan trees and to char the groundcover more severely, turning the black spruce forests of Alaska from repositories of carbon to generators of it. And the more carbon dioxide they release, the greater impact that may have in turn on future climate change.
He was not alone. Kentucky lawmakers pass bills in attempt to shield coal mining from federal environmental rules.
Lawmakers acknowledged that it's unclear what legal weight their measures would carry beyond "sending a message" to Washington. Federal law usually trumps state law, especially in regards to environmental protection and interstate commerce. But lawmakers said they're trying to make a point for states' rights.
Senate Natural Resources and Energy Chairman Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, said he got the idea for Senate Joint Resolution 99 after hearing about "sanctuary cities" declaring themselves exempt from federal immigration law.
If cities can ignore federal law to protect illegal immigrants, Smith said Wednesday, then why can't Kentucky do it for coal companies?
The report focused in on one region in the counry, Appalachia, but its conclusions were national. For example, it showed that accidents since 1900 have killed over 100,000 U.S. miners and more than 200,000 have died from black lung disease, with long-term support of them dependent on state and federal funds. Mountaintop removal was examined -- some 500 Appalachian summits have been removed, transforming 1.4 million acres -- to extrapolate costs of polluted and buried streams, drinking water contamination, and methane and carbon releases due to disturbed lands.
The report examined sludge, slurry and fly ash ponds left over from coal mines and processing plants, air pollution from coal burning power plants, ecological impacts, and even deaths in railroad accidents from the transport of coal.
It also examined carbon capture and storage to note that it would almost double the cost of electricity at plants and pose dangers such as leaching heavy metals into ground water and the unintended release of highly-concentrated carbon dioxide into the air that can harm plants, animals, and humans.
The Environmental Protection Agency set the value of a life at $9.1 million last year in proposing tighter restrictions on air pollution. The agency used numbers as low as $6.8 million during the George W. Bush administration.
The work makes lawsuits against major polluters more likely, said barrister Richard Lord QC, an expert on climate litigation at Brick Court Chambers in London: "Showing that the chance of an event occurring has increased by say 100% or 200% gives you a much better chance of showing causation. It gets you around one of the legal obstacles."
More news from this week for tonight's Climate Change News Roundup
CLIMATE CHANGE POLITICS AND FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY