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Using the metric of the number of comments garnered, the following articles were the most popular of those posted on SkS during the past week:
The international community must boost efforts to build the capacity for disaster risk management and readiness to prevent El Niño weather extremes from causing humanitarian crises in affected countries and impeding their development, the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) said today.
“We must remember that El Niño is not a one-off event but recurring global phenomena that we must address for future generations and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” said ECOSOC President Oh Joon at the opening of a special meeting on Impacts of the 2015/16 El Niño phenomenon: Reducing risks and capturing opportunities at UN Headquarters in New York.
“All partners, the United Nations, international and regional organizations, civil society, the private sector and the scientific community, need to take coordinated and fortified action to tackle El Niño risks,” he added.
‘El Niño is not a one-off event,’ UN says, calling for action to address phenomenon’s impacts, UN News Center, May 6, 2016
Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists
The effects may extend far beyond Canada and Alaska, because of the frozen organic matter under the forest permafrost. Wildfires can strip away the protective vegetative blanket and release all that stockpiled carbon into the atmosphere, says Merritt Turetsky, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. The thawing soil could also trigger microbial activity, releasing more carbon dioxide and methane.
In other words, more wildfires can mean more greenhouse gases, accelerating the very climate change that may have helped kick off the fires in the first place — not to mention changing the equation for rest of the globe.
“This is carbon that the ecosystem has not seen for thousands of years and now it’s being released into the atmosphere,” says Turetsky. “We need to start thinking about permafrost and we need to start thinking about deep carbon and everything we can do to inhibit the progression of climate change.”
Canada’s huge wildfires may release carbon locked in permafrost by Aviva Rutkin, New Scientist, May 6, 2016
An independent TD (member of the Irish parliament) has denied there is a human impact on climate change.
Speaking in the Dail (Irish parliament), on Wednesday, Danny Healy-Rae said "God above" controlled the weather.
During a debate on the issue, he denied the burning of fossil fuel was the main cause of global warming.
Danny Healy-Rae: TD denies there is a human impact on climate change, BBC News, May 5, 2016
Communicating climate change is hard. Debunking climate myths is even harder.
Take it from me, I’ve spent the last decade researching climate communication and the psychology of misinformation. So let me express my expert opinion on a Jimmy Kimmel comedy segment on climate change.
It’s one of the better pieces of climate communication I’ve encountered.
Jimmy Kimmel, Expert Climate Communicator — Who Knew?! by John Cook, Huffington Post, May 6, 2016
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James Byrne's bio page & Quote source
Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 8 May, 2016
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