Category: Climate Change

Climate is a matter of justice, peace and faith, world churches leader tells Lutherans

lutheranShanghai, Kolkata, Jakarta, Tokyo, New York City, Hong Kong, Miami and New Orleans are not cities linked to the geography of the Reformation that was happening 500 years ago in Wittenberg.

“These are among the thousands of cities around the world that will be hit by rising sea levels as a consequence of climate change,” said World Council of Churches general secretary, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit.

He was speaking at the meeting of the main governing body of the Lutheran World Federation, its council, in Wittenberg, Germany, where 500 years ago “waves of change reaching every country on earth were created”.  Continue reading…

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Cloud seeding flight approved for day before fatal Tasmania flooding

575aaac8c4618882388b45b8Tasmania’s government-owned energy company has been asked to explain why it conducted cloud seeding over the Australian island shortly before heavy rains which caused catastrophic flooding.

Cloud seeding is a process which involves dropping ice crystals into clouds to cause rain and is used as a technique to maintain water levels in dams.

Despite heavy rain being forecast, Premier of Tasmania Will Hodgman said Hydro Tasmania gave the seeding go-ahead on Sunday morning.  Continue reading…

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Heat wave hits San Diego County

heatwaveVIDEO Source: SAN DIEGO (CNS) – The first major heat wave of the season is poised to hit San Diego County Friday and send temperatures soaring up to 20 degrees above normal and into the triple digits in several locales.

High temperatures expected today amid mostly sunny skies following dense morning fog were of 73 to 78 degrees at the beaches, 83 to 88 degrees inland, 86 to 91 degrees in the western valleys, 93 to 98 degrees near the foothills, 93 to 100 degrees in the mountains and 109 to 114 degrees in the deserts, according to the National Weather Service. Source

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Lake Mead hits all-time low amid ongoing drought

Capture1LAS VEGAS – The surface level at Lake Mead has dropped as planned to historic low levels, and federal water managers said Thursday the vast Colorado River reservoir is expected to continue to shrink amid ongoing drought.

The closely controlled and measured lake shrunk Wednesday to its lowest point since Hoover Dam was completed in 1936 – with a surface level of 1,074.68 feet above sea level.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to let it drop another few feet by the end of next month. Then, it will be refilled enough by the end of the year to pass a crucial water-level mark to avoid cuts in water deliveries to residents, farms, tribes and businesses in Arizona, Nevada and California.  Continue reading…

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From rape to disasters, climate change a threat to women – funders

CaptureCOPENHAGEN, May 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Carla Lopez remembers the first time she heard a suggestion that climate change was a factor leading to the rape of young girls.

“I was in Santa Maria Xalapan of Guatemala when a group of women said young girls were being kidnapped and raped because there was a water crisis. It was a revelation,” said the executive director of the Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres, a women’s fund based in Central America.

In the indigenous Xinca society of Xalapan, men often kidnap and rape young girls before marrying them, Lopez said, and for about a decade, the local women’s group had been campaigning to end this trend.  Continue reading…

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Portland school board bans climate change-denying materials

00003546518539In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools.

“It is unacceptable that we have textbooks in our schools that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis,” said Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux in board testimony. “Climate education is not a niche or a specialization, it is the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”  Continue reading…

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‘Volcano of Fire’ erupts in Guatemala, prompting evacuations (PHOTOS)

573cb45dc46188611d8b459bGuatemala’s National Institute for Seismology and Vulcanology are reporting that an ash column reaching 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) above sea level has emerged, while “moderate” lava flow is pouring out of the mountain.

“This pyroclastic flow was accompanied by moderate rumble of the volcano [and] fallen ash is reported in the villages of El Rodeo, La Rochelle, Osuna, Panimache, Morelia, Sangre de Cristo and Yepocapa,” a statement by the government agency confirmed.  Continue reading…

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‘Peak absurdity’: Islamophobia accelerating global warming?

islamophobia-and-global-warming-5-15-16-posterIn what some are calling “peak absurdity,” last week MIT’s Department of Global Studies and Languages sponsored a lecture entitled – really – “Is Islamophobia accelerating global warming?”

The lecture was given by “future generation professor” at Melbourne University named Ghassan Hage whose academic credentials included authorship of such tomes as “White Nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society” and “Against Paranoid Nationalism.”

The lecture description was as follows:

This talk examines the relation between Islamophobia as the dominant form of racism today and the ecological crisis. It looks at the three common ways in which the two phenomena are seen to be linked: as an entanglement of two crises, metaphorically related with one being a source of imagery for the other and both originating in colonial forms of capitalist accumulation. The talk proposes a fourth way of linking the two: an argument that they are both emanating from a similar mode of being, or enmeshment, in the world, what is referred to as ‘generalised domestication.’

Source

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Great Barrier Reef: devastating images tell story of coral colonies’ destruction

2638Devastating images showing the complete destruction of coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef have been obtained by Guardian Australia and illustrate what is happening to coral there that would fill an area the size of Scotland.

They reveal the rapid death of coral impacting much of the Great Barrier Reef, with estimates that as much as half of the coral in the northern third of the 2000km reef had this fate.  Source

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