Video - Years of Living Dangerously (Premiere Full Episode)

Watch the world premiere of the new series, "Years of Living Dangerously" which involves celebrities and respected journalists as they span the globe to explore the issues of climate change and cover intimate stories of human triumph and tragedy. The "Years of Living Dangerously" takes you directly to the heart of climate change issues in an awe-inspiring, cinematic documentary series event.

Infographic - Climate Change: Threat or Opportunity

Senators All Night Vigil Urging Action on Climate Change

Starting on Monday, March 10 and concluding on Tuesday, March 11, 28 Senators (26 Democrats and two independents) will be speaking all night to urge action on climate change. Immediately following votes on the evening of Monday, March 10 until approximately 9 am ET Tuesday, March 11, Senators from the Senate Climate Action Task Force will be holding the Senate floor to urge action on climate change.

Tornadoes and Floods Underscore the Costs of Global Warming

This article was originally written in the spring of 2011 after an unusual number of killer tornadoes and floods ravaged the US, it reviews the increasing costs of extreme weather in a warming world. Tornadoes along with Hurricane Irene and most recently Hurricane Sandy, make a powerful case for aggressive efforts to address climate change.
_______________________________________

The wave of tornadoes and floods in the spring of 2011 are a small preview of what life will look like in a world ravaged by global warming. The US Global Change Research Program has warned of more extreme weather events in the future as the planet gets warmer.

When it comes to tornadoes, Spring 2011 was one of the deadliest and most destructive seasons in American history. The tornado that hit Joplin on May 22 was one of the deadliest tornadoes ever. The EF-5 wedge tornado, that swept thru Joplin was over a mile wide, it completely destroying about 20% of the town, killing 160 people and causing $2.8 billion in damage. The southern state tornadoes that touched down between April 22 and 28 are likely to surpass 2004’s Hurricane Ivan as the costliest natural disaster in Alabama’s history.

A New Study Indicates We Are Reaching a Tipping Point

According to a new study we are on the verge of an environmental tipping point. We are heading towards an imminent, irreversible collapse. The researchers indicate that the planet’s ecosystems could quickly and irreversibly collapse this century. These conclusions were arrived at by 18 scientists using a combination of scientific theories, ecosystem modeling and paleontological evidence.

As reviewed in SFU News Online, these scientists reviewed the Earth’s worsening trends in biodiversity and extreme weather. This was factored in the context of the Earth's interconnected ecosystems. Their results were contained in an article titled "Approaching a State-Shift in Earth’s Biosphere," a paper recently published in Nature.

Environmental Tipping Points

We must act now to avoid the tipping points of runaway global warming. A tipping point occurs when climate changes pass a "critical threshold at which a small change in human activity can have a large, long-term consequence for the Earth's climate system." As opposed the gradual, long-term warming trend, such a tipping point could accelerate or change the effects already being perceived due to global warming. Researchers have identified nine possible tipping points: The Indian summer monsoon; Arctic sea ice, the Sahara and Sahel in Africa could change dramatically, the Amazon rainforest could die back significantly, the Boreal Forest could die back, the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, the El Nino Southern Oscillation, he Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet.