Solomons sinking: Five Pacific reef islands swallowed by rising sea levels

572df201c36188f7118b45bfFive reef islands have disappeared from the Pacific’s Solomon Islands and six more have been severely damaged due to rising sea levels and coastal erosion, according to new research.

Studying the relationship between sea level rise and wave exposure in the “global sea-level rise hotspot,” a team of Australian researchers found rising waters are taking a significant toll on the islands.

“At least 11 islands across the northern Solomon Islands have either totally disappeared over recent decades or are currently experiencing severe erosion,” according to the study published in Environmental Research LettersSource

Senate Democrats push climate change bond bill

climatechange02102015gettyTwo Senate Democrats have introduced a bill to create a new climate change adaptation fund to be paid for through new federal bonds.

The bond program — from Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — would provide up to $200 million annually for a Commerce Department grant program to fund climate change adaptation work around the country.

Introducing the bill on Wednesday, Boxer and Durbin compared the climate change bond program to the war bonds sold by the federal government during the World Wars. Source

Why Thousands Of Pagans Are Standing Up For The Environment

571935391600002a0031c5e7In the months leading up to last year’s Earth Day, a group of roughly 50 pagans gathered in a closed Facebook group to draft a collective call to action. On April 22, 2015, they published the “Pagan Community Statement on the Environment,” which framed climate change as a global moral dilemma to which pagans and other people of faith must respond…

“There are Witches, Wiccans, Druids, Shamans, Goddess Worshipers, Pantheists, Animists, Humanistic Pagans, Atheistic Pagans, Heathens, Polytheists, Reconstctionists, Buddho-Pagans, Christo-Pagans, Quaker Pagans, Unitarian Universalist Pagans, and many more,” Halstead told The Huffington Post…

“Speaking in harmony does not mean everyone being of one mind or agreeing on every point,” Halstead said. “It means temporarily setting aside our egos and prioritizing our individual disagreements when a collective voice is urgently needed, as it is now.”

“I hope that this helps demonstrate to the interfaith activist community that Pagans are serious and worthy partners in the fight to turn the tide of global climate change.  Source

Revealed! Feds’ demands to manipulate global-warming data

climate_change4It’s something climate skeptics have long suspected: Government involvement in science has skewed data to reflect the government’s agenda.

“Many have suspected that U.S. political intervention in climate science has corrupted the outcome,” notes Ron Arnold in an essay posted on CFact.org. “The new emergence of an old 1995 document from the U.S. State Department to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms those suspicions, or at least gives the allegation credence enough to ask questions.”…

“Among the more revealing tidbits is a remark scolding a scientist for being honest about the weakness of aerosol forcing data: ‘We clearly cannot use aerosol forcing as the trigger of our smoking gun, and then make a generalized appeal to uncertainty to exclude these effects from the forward-looking modeling analysis.’ One instruction was to change a correct statement about warming rates into a flat lie: ‘Change “continue to rise” to “rise by even greater amounts” to provide a sense of magnitude of the extended change.  Source

16 Democrat AGs Begin Inquisition Against ‘Climate Change Disbelievers’

160404_ag_rk-385x200Beginning in 1478, the Spanish Inquisition systematically silenced any citizen who held views that did not align with the king’s. Using the powerful arm of the government, the grand inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, and his henchmen sought out all those who held religious, scientific, or moral views that conflicted with the monarch’s, punishing the “heretics” with jail sentences; property confiscation; fines; and in severe cases, torture and execution. Source