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Leading Scientists Explain: http://crowncapitalmngt.com/ Scientists have long predicted that climate change would bring on ever-worsening droughts, especially in semi-arid regions like the U.S. Southwest. As climatologist James Hansen, who co-authored one of the earliest studies on this subject back in 1990, told me this week, "Increasingly intense droughts in California, all of the Southwest, and even into the Midwest have everything to do with human-made climate change." Why does it matter if climate change is playing a role in the Western drought? As one top researcher on the climate-drought link reconfirmed with me this week, "The U.S. may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999." If his and other projections are correct, then there may be no greater tasks facing humanity than 1) working to slash carbon pollution and avoid the worst climate impact scenarios and 2) figuring out how to feed nine billion people by mid-century in a Dust-Bowl-ifying world. Remarkably, climate scientists specifically predicted a decade ago that Arctic ice loss would bring on worse droughts in the West, especially California. As it turns out, Arctic ice loss has been much faster than the researchers - and indeed all climate modelers - expected. And, of course, California is now in the death-grip of a brutal, record-breaking drought, driven by the very change in the jet stream that scientists had anticipated. Is this just an amazing coincidence - or were the scientists right? And what would that mean for the future? Building on my post from last summer, I talked to the lead researcher and several other of the world's leading climatologists and drought experts. First, a little background. Climate change makes Western droughts longer and stronger and more frequent in several ways, as I discussed in my 2011 literature review in the journal Nature: Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. Wha

Advocates of alternative energy have sustained that on a global rate, increasing energy consumption is connected to the renewed hostile extraction of natural resources from Africa to reach the target increasing demand in North America, Europe and the BRICS countries namely: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. They compete that despite of the growing demand for energy, more than 1.6 billion people has no electricity and about 2.4 rely only on fuel wood. According to the Executive Director, ERA/FoEN, Dr. Godwin Ojo, the event was conceived to deepen understanding of energy issues. It is the effort to find substitute to this irregularity that the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) working in concert with over 50 civil societies, community groups and energy experts organized the Africa Alternative Energy Transition forum recently. Ojo said the event that attracted participants from across Africa was organised to coincide with the Global Month of Action on Energy by a coalition of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Actionaid, International Rivers, 350.org, and some other international Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) to reclaim power by resisting dirty and harmful energy and affirming the need for transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy. He said in Nigeria, about 70 percent of the population depend solely on fuel wood for energy, a development, which has put the country in the ranking of the countries with the highest deforestation rate. He stated that the country is said to be losing 3.5 percent of her forest annually. "The rising energy demand is also leading to violent resource conflicts at the site of extraction. The energy expansions to dirty energy frontiers and technologies such as coal, shale gas fracking, or energy from biofuels have deleterious consequences on farmers and fragile ecosystems. "It is also important to note that the newly released Intergovernmental Panel on C