climate change impacts

Study: Climate-related events cost the health-care system $14 billion

A new study, spearheaded by the Natural Resources Defense Council and published in the current issue of Health Affairs, puts a price tag on climate-related health effects — and it is steep. All told, the study says, climate change-related events have burdened the U.S. health-care system with $14 billion in costs, and accounted for 1,689 premature […]

Texas drought threatens to take away pecan pie

First it came for the wine and bacon. Then it came for the coffee and chocolate. Now, climate change (or, to be specific, the drought in Texas that's consistent with weather patterns that climate scientists have predicted) is threatening to take away pecan pie and RUIN THANKSGIVING. According to the Southwest Farm Press, early reports […]

Watch a climate satellite get launched

NASA's new weather satellite — which in typical NASA acronym-happy fashion, is called the NPP, standing for NPOESS Preparatory Project, standing for National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System — is a state-of-the-art way to measure climate impacts. The satellite will monitor ozone levels, temperatures, vegetation cover, ice cover, air pollution, and other effects of climate change, […]

Developing countries take the climate change bullet for the rest of us

Here's the 2012 Climate Change Vulnerability Index, produced by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, which shows the areas of the world that are most at risk from the impacts of climate change. Does it remind you of anything? Maybe a reverse map of the biggest climate change offenders? (This isn't the first time people have put […]

Climate change is making plants and insects shrink

Here's a novel weight loss tip: Live on a planet whose global warming trend is so severe that you need to shrink in order to adapt. Oh, and it helps to be an insect, spider, plant, or marine creature. (Or a sheep. Evidently we already knew sheep were shrinking.) If you can manage that, you could be on your way to losing up to 22 percent of your body size, just from climate change!

Australia is so, so screwed

It's possible that the 19th century British powers-that-be were just running a really, really long con when they sent their convicts to settle Australia, because anyone who lives there now is royally screwed. In Rolling Stone, Jeff Goodell chronicles exactly how screwed. (Answer: Royally.)

In the few weeks he was there, Goodell encountered:

a record heat wave, a crippling drought, bush fires, floods that swamped an area the size of France and Germany combined, even a plague of locusts.

And in the longer term,

What water is left is becoming increasingly salty and unusable, raising the question of whether Australia, long a major food exporter, will be able to feed itself in the coming dec­ades. The oceans are getting warmer and more acidic, leading to the all-but-certain death of the Great Barrier Reef within 40 years. Homes along the Gold Coast are being swept away, koala bears face extinction in the wild, and farmers, their crops shriveled by drought, are shooting themselves in despair.

U.K. plants think it's spring again

Anyone who was sighing "Oh, to be in England, now that spring is here" back in April get another shot now. The weather has been so unseasonably warm that flowers are starting a second blooming season. Robert Browning would be psyched.

Canada probably didn’t NEED that ice sheet, right?

If you thought you were melting over the summer, just be glad you're not an ice sheet that's been chilling out since before Europeans settled in Canada. Over the summer, two huge Canadian ice shelves in the Arctic shrunk down precipitously, report scientists from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. One sheet had already split into two sections and just kept getting smaller; the other broke in half this year. Icebergs are breaking away and "pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes," reports the Associated Press. "Since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times to the size of Manhattan Island have broken off."

This is not normal behavior for an ice shelf this large and old, says the AP:

Pumpkin shortage slams Northeast

If you're going to want pumpkins for this season's jack-o-lanterns, pies, horseman head substitutes, or transportation to the ball, better start stocking up now. This year's weird weather has meant a smaller pumpkin crop, and existing pumpkins are selling for much more than usual. Thanks, climate change, you buzzkill.