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– The paragraph at the end of this article is the kicker. It refers to the Yangtze River which begins in the Tibetan highlands. And it says,

“The Yangtze River rises in the mountains of Qinghai Province on the Tibetan plateau and flows 6,300km to the East China Sea, opening at Shanghai. The Yangtze river basin accounts for 40% of China’s freshwater resources, more than 70% of the country’s rice production, 50% of its grain production, more than 70% of fishery production, and 40% of the China’s GDP.”

– What this article doesn’t say is that as high altitude glaciers and summer snowpacks diminish, those downsteam who depend on these sources for melt water to supply their summer needs are going to experience serious water shortages in the future. This is true in the western US, in India south of the Himalayas, in South America west of the Andes and, now we see, in some of the most populated areas of mainland China. It doesn’t bode well.

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Science Daily — “If I compare this land to what it used to be in the 1960s, it is difficult for me to recognize it,” recalls Qi Mei Duo Jie, a 71-year-old nomadic herder from Yanshiping in China’s central-western Qinghai Province. “Glaciers are melting, temperatures are rising and rainy seasons have become unpredictable.”

Yanshiping is the last town on the Qinghai-Tibet Highway before entering Tibet. At an altitude of 4700 metres, its landscape in summer is marked by shaggy yaks grazing in the green alpine pastures and the transparent blue waters of Buqu River – a tributary of the Yangtze. Winters are white and freezing, with temperatures reaching as low as -20°C.

It is no surprise that people welcome a warmer, more comfortable climate in this remote region. But there is another side to the changing climate story.

Pressure on the plateau

Nomadic groups of Tibetans have been moving around this area for time immemorial, following the natural rhythm of the seasons and availability of grassland to raise their livestock.

Qi Mei Duo Jie’s family has been raising yaks for at least three generations.

“This year has been very dry, and with less grassland it will take longer to properly feed and raise livestock,” he says. “This will mean a lower income for us.”

To compound the situation, warmer climate conditions are attracting more cattle and sheep farmers to this harsh but beautiful high-altitude area, putting additional pressure on the already fragile alpine landscape. This pressure is also starting to squeeze out local wildlife, such as Tibetan antelopes, that depend on the grasslands too. There have even been reports of brown bears wandering close to villages in search of food.

And if bears roaming around town aren’t enough to lose sleep over, the remote rural region is experiencing pollution from greenhouse gases that have been emitted from big cities as far away as Beijing and Shanghai.

These are some of the consequences of climate change on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

More… ➡

This year could see the biggest “dead zone” since records began form in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists say conditions are right for the zone to exceed last summer’s 6,662 sq miles (17,255 sq km).

The dead zone is an area of water virtually devoid of oxygen which cannot support marine life.

It is caused by nutrients such as fertilisers flowing into the Gulf, stimulating the growth of algae which absorbs the available oxygen.

The volume of nutrients flowing down rivers such as the Mississippi into the Gulf has tripled over the last 50 years.

The annual event has been blamed for shark attacks along the Gulf coast, as sharks, along with other highly mobile species, flee the inhospitable waters.

Animals which cannot move simply die.

More… ➡

– There are certain arguments I get from climate crisis doubters that on first blush, I have trouble refuting. “There!“, they say, “That proves all this global climate crisis stuff is bogus.”

– “The Great Global Warming Swindle” video shown first on British TV back on March 8th of this year was one such. Just packed full of scientists testifying and with flashy charts and data, it seemed to show that global warming was just a contrived crisis. But, as the days and weeks followed showed, the only thing that was ‘full of it’ was the show itself. See: ➡ & ➡ & ➡ & ➡.

– Another theory the climate deniers have grabbed onto and pointed at as having ‘disproved’ the idea that global climate change is being caused by mankind it the ‘Sun did it theory‘. They ran with that one for awhile but recently articles have come out from the scientific community putting the lie to that refuge as well. See: ➡ & ➡ & ➡

– Then there’s the ‘Cosmic Rays are doing it theory‘. A sample proponent of the theory: ➡ and a sample rebuttal: ➡.

– Sometimes the climate change deniers go back in time to find their material. One issue I’ve had tossed at me more than once involves research done in the 70’s that suggested that the world was on the brink of an ice-age. Some high-profile people like Carl Sagan pushed this idea and that gave the public the impression that it was the consensus opinion of the climate science community in general, which wasn’t true. Reasic has taken the time to publish a nice piece, called Green Myth-Busting 70’s Ice Age Predictions, placing this fiasco in perspective here: ➡.

– Now, let’s turn our attentions towards the future of climate denial as in, ‘What’s next’?

– Well, the other day I saw several interesting stories about an ice core that they drilled in Greenland some five hundred miles north of the island’s southern tip. The expectation was, that when they got to the bottom of the ice and found the materials and DNA there from whatever lived there the last time the ice had melted, they would be looking at stuff from the last big melt which was about 125,000 years ago. But, in fact, the materials they found there were from about 450,000 years ago which strongly implies that during the big melt 125,000 years ago, this part of Greenland remained covered with ice. Here are links to some of the articles: ➡ & ➡

– So, what might all of this mean to the climate deniers? Well, the fact that the scientists didn’t find what they expected at the bottom of the hole means that their theories are obviously wrong. You can probably expect to see a series of such claims soon. But, in fact, it means that the existing theories need to be adjusted and that is the normal and reasonable course that science aways follows. Skeptics expect science to be 100% accurate or they say it is all wrong. Scientists know that science is a self-correcting entity and they welcome new data and the changes those data cause. Each change means the picture has grown a bit clearer.