NOAA: Fourth warmest May on record

Computer model predicts a long and strong El Niño June 17, 2009 - Fast on the heels of the fifth warmest April on record, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports: Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the fourth warmest on record for May, the fifth warmest for boreal spring (March-May), and tied with 2003 as the sixth warmest January-May year-to-date period.

And no, I don’t think the monthly data tell us much about the climate. But I know reporting it annoys the deniers. More seriously, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) seems to be heating up, although I’m told it takes a few months before El Niño conditions would translates into warmer global temperatures.

You may recall that earlier this month, NOAA put out an “El Niño Watch,” so record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record. Nore >>>

World disaster toll faces new threat from global warning: Red Cross

GENEVA - Natural and man-made disasters killed nearly a quarter of a million people in 2008 and warnings about looming disasters, particularly climate change, are not being heeded, the Red Cross said Tuesday.

In 2008, disasters ranging from the Chinese earthquake to a devastating cyclone in Myanmar wrought the second most devastating annual toll of the past decade, 242,662 deaths, according to a report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. More >>>

The Peak Oil Crisis: A Letter From Baghdad

10 JUNE 2009 20:27 - A couple of weeks back the peak oil community received a letter from an officer serving with our forces in Iraq.
Despite numerous distractions in Iraq these days, this officer is so concerned that peaking world oil production will soon become a serious problem that he began discussing the future of America's energy supply with soldiers in his unit. What he concluded has a message for us all.

He found that most people have no trouble accepting the premises of peak oil- that there is a finite amount of crude underground, that the easy and cheap to extract oil is nearly gone and that world production will go into an unstoppable decline. The disconnect from reality, however, comes when contemplating the consequences of this event, for nearly all believe there are many obvious alternatives to oil. We know what they are: nuclear, solar, wind, waves, tides, shale, oil sands, coal-to-liquid, biomass, etc., etc. In the mind of most, it is a rather simple matter of switching from oil to any or all of the alternatives so that life-as-we-know-it can continue without missing a beat. More >>>