“Australian heatwave: weather bureau upgrades temperature scale with new colours”
Courtesy: UK’s The Telegraph

– Australia and USA break heat records – in news on same day, January 8, 2013:

“Australia’s hottest day on record hampers wildfire fight”
“Firefighters battled scores of wildfires raging across southeast Australia on Tuesday [Jan. 8] as authorities evacuated national parks and warned that record-level, blistering temperatures and high winds had led to “catastrophic” conditions in some areas.

‘We are shaping up for one of the worst fire danger days on record,’ New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said. ‘You don’t get conditions worse than this. We are at the catastrophic level and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option.’

Catastrophic threat level is the most severe rating applicable,” quoting NBC News.
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“NOAA: 2012 was warmest year ever for US, second most ‘extreme'”
“If you found yourself bundling up in scarves, hats, and long underwear less than usual last year, you weren’t alone: 2012 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, according to scientists with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.”

“The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3 degrees Farenheit, 3.2 degrees above normal and a full degree higher than the previous warmest year recorded — 1998 — NOAA said in its report Tuesday [Jan. 8].
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– UPDATE: January 10, 2013
“A warning: Climate could be ‘hijacked'”
“The global climate may already be changing faster than humans are prepared to adapt to, heralding a shift in the climate change debate from who to blame to how to cope, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum,” quoting John Roach, NBC News Digital.
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– Update: January 15, 2013
“2013 Already a Drought Disaster”
“The first month of 2013 is already a disaster for many farmers. Last week, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared 507 counties in 14 states natural disasters due to the ongoing drought.

America’s first official disaster areas of 2013 were designated because the 597 have experienced severe drought conditions for eight consecutive weeks, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor,” by Tim Wall in Discovery News.
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– UPDATE: January 18, 2013
“Sydney’s Hottest Day: Heat Record For New South Wales Capital Broken On January 18”
“A day after the mercury reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit in Melbourne, the extreme heat pushed into Sydney on Friday, leading to the hottest day on record for the capital of New South Wales.

The population of over 4.5 million suffered through the scorching heat that peaked at 114.4 degrees Fahrenheit (45.8 degrees Celsius) at the Observatory Hill. This broke the previous all time high of 113.5 degrees F (45.3 degrees C) set in 1939. The temperature rose even higher, reaching 115.5 degrees F (46.4 degrees C) at Sydney Airport,” quoting the AccuWeather’s Eric Leister in the Huffington Post.
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– UPDATE: February 12, 2013
“NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East”
“A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.

The findings, to be published Friday, Feb. 15, in the journal Water Resources Research, are the result of one of the first comprehensive hydrological assessments of the entire Tigris-Euphrates-Western Iran region,” quoting the JPL.
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– UPDATE: March 8, 2013
“Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years”
“Global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years, scientists reported Thursday [March 7], and over the coming decades are likely to surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age.”

“In the new research, scheduled for publication on Friday [March 8] in the journal Science, Shaun Marcott, an earth scientist at Oregon State University, and his colleagues compiled the most meticulous reconstruction yet of global temperatures over the past 11,300 years, virtually the entire Holocene. They used indicators like the distribution of microscopic, temperature-sensitive ocean creatures to determine past climate,” quoting Justin Gillis.
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– UPDATE: January 3, 2014
“2013 was hottest year on record in Australia”
“Australia has just sweltered through its hottest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Average temperatures were 1.20 degrees Celsius above the long-term average of 21.8C, breaking the previous record set in 2005 by 0.17C, the bureau said in its Annual Climate Statement,” quoting Australia’s ABC News.
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– UPDATE: January 22, 2014
“NASA: 2013 Tied for the 7th-Hottest Year on Record”
By Chris Mooney in Mother Jones.
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– UPDATE: February 5, 2014
“Queensland town of Cloncurry mulls evacuation as water supplies sink”
Scroll down for map of “Big dry spreads over eastern Australia during the past 16 months”
By Marissa Calligeros, Sydney Morning Herald.
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– Ramtha & JZ Knight have spoken for years about humanity’s impact on the environment
– “One questions why the world is in such a sad and remorseful place. The Americas are Christian-oriented. They believe, to the joy of corporations, that human beings were given control of the Earth and that they can do with it as they please: drill all of its oil out, burn it, burn up its pure atmosphere, kill all the fields, do away with creatures, because that is their doctrine. Where is the benevolence of life? Where is the love of the Earth? Earth is a beautiful place and has been for millions and millions of years. Silly man and silly woman destroy it over and over and over, and they can never get beyond that addiction towards lethargy. It has got the seeds of destruction in it.”
– Ramtha
March 25, 2006
New York
Excerpt from: Ramtha, The Power Is In You Tour

– JZ on climate change 5 years ago
“The climate change and its catastrophic results have been created by humanity.
Never before in human reckoning have we stood upon the precipice of our own demise.
Global warming is here today — no longer fiction, but fact.”
– JZ Knight, 2007
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– Ramtha’s video on climate change
Click here for a video excerpt from Ramtha.
From: UPDATE ON CHANGE
Date: 14 April 2007
Click here to purchase the audio CD.