A NOAA-led study published in September projects increases in “the number and occurrence days of very intense category 4 and 5 storms” by the end of the century, and, more generally, NOAA projects an increase in the average intensity of tropical cyclones.
Washington Post
Record warm oceans have spawned scary slate of monster tropical cyclones
In the past six months, the Earth has witnessed several of the freakiest, most intense storms in recorded history.
Spurred by the highest ocean temperatures observed to date, record-breaking tropical cyclones — the class of storms that includes hurricanes and typhoons — have explosively developed in three regions: the northeast Pacific Ocean, the south Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.
These storms may be a harbinger of increasingly severe tropical cyclones in future decades as the Earth continues warming.
The most recent vicious storm, Tropical Cyclone Fantala, attained peak winds of 173 mph north of Madagascar this past weekend. According to meteorologist Bob Henson at Weather Underground, it became the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Indian Ocean. Fantala has since lost some steam andis forecast to weaken to a tropical storm over the southern Indian Ocean by early next week. Fortunately, it has avoided any land areas.
A Harbinger of the End of the Fossil Fuel Era
Coal production as Peabody Energy Declares Bankruptcy, as an end becomes more and more visible in an ongoing global coal industry collapse and retrenchment. In three of the world’s largest coal producing and consuming regions (India, China, and the US) production, imports and exports are down. In the US, coal production has fallen by more than 50% since 2008.
4 Things to Know About the Peabody Energy Bankruptcy
In the last couple of years, more than 50 coal companies have declared bankruptcy. Activists in the US have halted the construction of more than 150 new coal-fired power plants since the early 2000s.
Here’s What Science Has To Say About Convincing People To Do Something About Climate Change
The best way to motivate people to support action to limit climate change is to explain the dangers of not taking action. While that may not seem surprising, it is only recently that the immorality of inaction have been a key focus of top US politicians.
http://thinkprogress.org/
It is a widely-known fact that the more educated and financially stable a woman becomes, the more likely she is to practice family-planning and have her children at a later age. Educated women are also more likely to have fewer children than their uneducated and impoverished female counterparts.
Why Organized Religion Fears Educated Women
Educating women improves the welfare of families as they become empowered to contribute to the financial success of their household—which in turn creates more opportunities and resources available for their children.
For thousands of years women have been defined only in correlation to their relationship to men. They have been kept hidden, prohibited from speaking, forced into submission and treated as the “unclean” gender whose existence is that of mental and physical servitude to her human counterpart. Why has so much emphasis been placed upon the mind and actions of women? What does organized religion fear about the mind of an educated and logically-thinking woman?
Here are 5 reasons why organized religion fears educated women:
The loss of patriarchal control
It is a widely-known fact that the more educated and financially stable a woman becomes, the more likely she is to practice family-planning and have her children at a later age. Educated women are also more likely to have fewer children than their uneducated and impoverished female counterparts.
Furthermore, educated women are more likely to cultivate their own worldview, rather than simply following their traditional familiar teachings; and may contribute no followers to a religion when they do finally decide to start a family.
This is a problem for religion because women who choose the timing and size of their household don’t typically contribute the same amount of future-followers to a religion as those women who are restricted from pursuing an education and career. If a woman leaves the religion altogether as a direct result of becoming well-informed and financially stable and no longer needs the “comforts” that her religion once provided, she has not only removed herself from the ranks, but her children as well. For religion to perpetuate itself, it must have followers, or it ceases to exist.
