News Ireland daily BLOG by Donie

Saturday 22nd March 2014

AIB bites the bullet and its time for other banks to wake up?

  

AIB has taken a refreshing approach to the problem of mortgage arrears

For five years, politicians have been carping about the slow learning banks not writing off mortgage debt for homeowners in arrears. Now AIB is doing just that. But its actions are not being met with universal approval from public representatives.

Fianna Fáil’s Michael McGrath said whether a family gets a sustainable solution to its mortgage headache depends on which bank provided them with their loan.

Independent TD Stephen Donnelly said he “welcomed” the development but called for a more “systemic” approach. He remarked that although AIB restructured their mortgage, in one case the family involved still had problems with other unsecured debts to credit card companies or credit unions.

This was what the Insolvency Service of Ireland was originally established to achieve – agreements to deal with all debts. Next month the organisation will produce figures for the numbers of people who have gone down the insolvency route. The figures will be low but the organisation is likely to stress that the pipeline of deals is growing.

The individuals who have secured Personal Insolvency Arrangements (which cover mortgages and unsecured debt) have won significant write-offs. The problems is that numbers using the service remain very low. But the service’s existence may be forcing banks to become more realistic.

One answer is for the Central Bank to introduce a uniform system for dealing with mortgages arrears and force the banks and unsecured lenders to implement it. But the Central Bank’s policy has been to leave it to the banks to decide how they will solve the problem.

AIB has taken a refreshing approach, bitten the bullet and put the rest of the banks to shame. Its split mortgage sees a portion of debt written off and a second part of the mortgage being put to one side or warehoused. This leaves the borrowers with a new loan which is no more than 80% of the current value of the home.

If the borrowers make an attempt to pay off some of the warehoused portion of the loan, the bank will write off more money from that loan. The smart part of this arrangement is that while AIB does write down some debt there is a clear incentive for people to make a contribution to the warehoused portion of their loan. These arrangements will only apply in a minority of cases where borrowers are in arrears.

The bank has broken away from other members of the Irish Banking Federation which has remained curiously silent on AIB’s innovation.

The attitude of the remaining members of the industry is that the danger of write-offs being exploited by unscrupulous borrowers is so large as to justify not writing off debt as a policy. That has resulted in the problem dragging on for years.

The Governor of the Central Bank. Patrick Honohan. does not want to micro manage the lenders – instead he wants them to come up the solutions. So the Central Bank has ordered the banks to sort out 25% of mortgage accounts which are in arrears by the end this month.

AIB’s mortgage book is not the worst in the Irish market, but it still has decided that writing off debt is one possible solution to take to clean up the mess.

How long will it be before the other banks stop wasting time and follow suit?

50% of European women have needless operations for early breast cancer?

 A European study finds

   

‘Needless surgery’ for half of women who have mastectomies for early breast cancer

50% European women having mastectomies for early signs of cancer & who have to endure needless surgery, a major study suggests.

Experts said the figures from a national audit of UK care were a “terrible” indictment of the treatment received by patients – with too many enduring extra procedures or unnecessary mastectomies because the extent of disease was not detected accurately.

The study presented to the European Breast Cancer Conference in Glasgow examined the treatment of women with Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) – an early sign of cancer.

Of more than 8,000 patients, about 2,500 ended up having a procedure to remove their breast.

  However, the study found that in 49% of such cases, the mastectomy was either unnecessary or was being carried out because a previous operation had failed.

Researchers said the failure to accurately chart the extent of disease meant doctors were carrying out too many mastectomies when women did not need them – while carrying out more minor procedures on those who needed full breast removal.

The study found that in almost one third of cases, the women undergoing mastectomies had already undergone a lumpectomy, which is a more minor procedure which should only be used for small lumps.

In most of those cases, further surgery was required because the extent of disease had been underestimated, researchers said.

Conversely, 21% of the mastectomies were carried out on women whose lumps were small enough that such major surgery could have been avoided, the study found.

Researchers said the figures provided a “stark” warning that thousands of women were receiving the wrong treatment, and highlighted enormous variations between hospitals.

Experts said that the problems arose when pathologists and radiologists failed to accurately plot the spread of disease – over and under-estimating the extent of disease.

Dr Jeremy Thomas, a consultant pathologist at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, UK, who led the study, said “It is a terrible figure, and it is quite clear that there is significant variation between hospitals.”

He said it appeared that the extent of disease was not being properly mapped by some teams, while others might benefit from taking more biopsies to measure the size of tumours more accurately.

“It would appear from our data that, in some hospitals, the discussions in the multi disciplinary teams are not looking in enough detail at the results from the mammograms and pathology in order to make the right decision about the best surgical treatment for these women,” Dr Thomas said.

Each year, around 5,000 women in the UK are diagnosed with Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS) – a condition where non-invasive cancerous cells are contained within the milk ducts of the breast.

Without treatment, around half of cases are likely to develop invasive breast cancer .

However, doctors are unable to accurately identify which of the patients will do so, meaning all are offered treatment, the scale of which varies depending on the size of tumours.

Researchers said the study uncovered “very wide variations” in practice between different hospitals.

At some, no mastectomies were carried out on women found to have only small tumours. In others as many as 60% of operations were found to involve small lumps which could have been safely removed without a mastectomy, the research found.

Experts said that in some cases, women might opt for mastectomy, even if they were told a lumpectomy was sufficient, but said the scale of the differneces could not be put down to patient preferences.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, Chief Executive of Breast Cancer Campaign, said: “These results highlight a variation in practice which needs to be addressed to ensure that all patients who are given a diagnosis of DCIS receive the highest possible standard of care and most appropriate treatment, regardless of the hospital they are in. We look forward to seeing how these results can inform practice to ensure that these variations are no longer an issue.”

DCIS accounts for around 20 per cent of cancers which are detected by breast screening.

The study’s authors said that management of DCIS was “one of the most challenging parts of breast screening practice” and pointed out that 80 per cent of all mastectomies are carried out on larger tumours, which cannot be managed via lumpectomy.

Activist Margaretta D’Arcy the 79 year old warrior released from Mountjoy prison on Friday

 

Margaretta D’Arcy is seen during her release from Mountjoy prison in Dublin today.

Aosdána member served nine-and-a-half weeks of her three month jail term.

Activist and Aosdána member Margaretta D’Arcy (79), who was released from prison in Dublin this morning, described Shannon airport as “a place of murder, assassination and complicity”.

Speaking at a press conference in the city-centre, she said the Government, by allowing US military planes to land in Shannon airport, was complicit in murder and asssination.

M/s D’Arcy served nine and a half weeks of a 12-week sentence for refusing to sign a bond to uphold the law and keep away from unauthorised zones at Shannon airport. She was arrested in Galway on January 15th and taken to Limerick to serve a three month sentence for illegal incursion of the runway at Shannon airport on October 7th, 2012.

The sentence had been suspended when served at Ennis District Court last December, but was activated when she refused to sign the bond.

She said today she could not have signed the bond stipulating she keep away from Shannon, she said, because to do so would have enabled the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter to say: “Oh she is just like us, we knew in the end.”

She explained today that by going onto the runway “we alerted the aviation world that Shannon is not a proper airport but a place of murder, assassination and complicity”.

She said she had received “thousands of letters of support from all across the world. Somehow all over the world it has triggered something.

“The Government is willing to put somebody who speaks the truth in to jail. There is a growing awareness of truth. We have to speak the truth. We cannot be complicit, we cannot compromise with the truth. If something is wrong we have to go and say it is wrong. And it is completely wrong for the Government to allow a civilian airport to be used as a military airport. It is a crime for the military to be able to hide behind a civilian airport. It is something that we should not tolerate.”

Referring to the vindication of Garda whistle-blowers Sergeant Maurice McCabe and retired Garda John Wilson, along with the support she has received for her actions, she said she had a sense that things were changing in Ireland.

“I don’t think we are going to put up anymore with complicity. We can change the world. The world is changing.”

She plans to return home to Galway tomorrow, and is due to be admitted to hospital early next week, where she has been treated for bladder cancer.

During her detention, she was visited by close friend Sabina Coyne, wife of President Michael D Higgins, and by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. Mr Arden said that his mother had received many messages of support.

She is due to appear in court again on June 24th in relation to a separate charge of an incursion on Shannon airport’s runway on September 1st, 2013.

During her detention, she was visited by close friend Sabina Coyne, wife of President Michael D Higgins, and by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. Mr Arden said that his mother had received many messages of support.

Limerick tot Theo meets the hero who found him wandering on a roadway

  

Explorer Theo Costelloe with his mother, Christine, and dad, Keif, at the Castletroy Park Hotel, Limerick, yesterday with UL student James Ryan who found him wandering along the roadway in the early hours of the morning.

A two-year old boy has met his hero who found him wandering along a roadway in the early hours of the morning after the toddler walked out of his home while his family slept in their beds.

Theo Costelloe gave student teacher James Ryan a high-five after meeting up with him along with his mother, Christine, and father, Keif.

Theo climbed out of his cot at 2am last Wednesday, walked down his stairs and managed to open his front door before being found a mile away by Mr Ryan.

The intrepid toddler was clutching his baby sister’s pink sleep blanket and was only wearing a blue one-piece sleep suit when he was found “shivering” by gallant James.

Kilkenny native James Ryan, who’s studying Irish and French in University of Limerick, was walking home from his nightclub job when he saw Theo crossing the Dublin Road in the dead of night.

James said: “He’s the nicest child. To be honest he was happy out. He wasn’t phased at all. He was a little nervous after first meeting him, but then after a few seconds he was grand. When the Gardaí pulled up he hid between my legs.”

Theo and his parents were thrilled to meet the man who saved their son from possible death or serious injury.

“When the Gardaí pulled up . . . He was saying ‘Nana’ and stuff like that. I thought he was staying at his granny’s house because he was saying ‘Nana’ over and over, and I thought maybe something had happened to his granny. So I tried to walk him back towards the house and he seemed like he knew where he was going to be honest. So, he more or less led me to where he was going.”

Keif Wynne, 35, praised James for his gallantry: “He’s an absolute legend. You can tell he’s a gentleman. The right man found him, being honest. The right man did find him. It could have ended so nasty.”

Looking at Theo, he added: “Just look at him. He went from such a tiny child and now look at him . . . he’s just a lunatic running everywhere. He’s always been a small bit shy, but obviously he’s pushing the boundaries now.”

Asked if the family would be investing in a new bolt lock, he joked: “Don’t mind buying a lock, we’ll be buying a new door.”

Christine Theo’s mother, who was panic -stricken when Gardaí called to her home at Aspen Gardens to inform her that Theo had been found a mile away, threw her arms around James as they met for the first time.

James had flagged down taxi driver, Noel Flanagan, who waited with him and Theo until Gardaí arrived.

James added: “Noel deserves praise too because he was half of it too.”

He said: “I hailed a taxi and Noel stopped. Theo was cold so we just sat into the front seat. It turned out I knew Noel because he has dropped me home from work once or twice.”

After giving his hero a high five, little Theo presented James with a ‘thank you’ card and returned the T-shirt he had given him on his first unforgettable trip away from home alone.

Wild bee hives hit by killer bug parasite to Ireland

 

Hives for wild bees have been decimated by a bug the Varroa parasite (pic above right) introduced to Ireland accidentally.

The varroa parasite, nicknamed ‘destructor’ because of its impact on bee colonies, attaches itself to a bee’s body and then feeds on its blood.

Between 2011 and 2012, Irish honey production was slashed by almost 70pc due to the combination of bad weather and the damaging impact of the varroa mite.

If it is left untreated it can wipe out a hive in a matter of weeks, according to the international federation of beekeepers, Apimondia.

The parasite was first introduced 20 years ago. But now, struggling honey producers have received a major boost in the form of a temporary EU ban on three controversial crop chemicals.

And Ireland’s 3,000 beekeepers are hoping that record numbers of queen bees produced last summer will help kick-start honey production this season.

“Irish beekeepers really didn’t have a decent honey crop for a number of years,” Apimondia chairman Philip McCabe said.

“But this year will hopefully tell a lot if we can get some decent weather and we see just what impact the ban will have.”

Ripples of Big Bang open new theories and questions

    

Scientists, from left, Clem Pryke, Jamie Bock, Chao-Lin Kuo and John Kovac smile during a news conference at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., Monday, March 17, 2014, regarding their new findings on the early expansion of the universe. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

No one was around 14 billion years ago when all of existence was compressed into a single point so small that it would not have been visible to the human eye.

Most scientists believe that pressure within this single dot built to such an extent that, when it exploded, the resulting wave of super-heated particles spread out like a hot, dense soup trillions of times hotter than anything that can be manufactured on Earth. Space, time and the laws of physics came into existence after the Big Bang.

It took roughly 380,000 years for the hot particles from that primordial explosion to cool down enough to form atoms, the building blocks for everything from dust to stars and galaxies. Planets began to form from the gas and dust that circled the stars a few billion years later.

Flash forward to the 21st century, and scientists who have been working together for three years and using a telescope at the South Pole to look for a specific pattern of light waves within the faint microwave glow left from the Big Bang announced Monday that they’ve uncovered evidence of this cosmic expansion.

Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, the California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are confident that they have spotted ripples in the fabric of the cosmos that followed the Big Bang.

Like all big scientific claims, it has to be confirmed by other teams of scientists following their methodology. If it turns out to be correct, as many suspect it will, it will be celebrated as one of the most momentous discoveries in astronomy.

Even so, finding evidence of what happened a split second after the Big Bang doesn’t mean that there are not other big questions to be answered. Humans have only begun to understand the nature of the universe. This discovery represents the first step in a long march to understanding far more.

News Ireland daily BLOG by Donie

Monday (St. Patricks day) 17th March 2014

Social welfare fraud tip-offs to office hit 2,000 every month

 

An average of 2,000 people every month reported a suspected case of welfare fraud to the authorities last year, new figures show.

The news comes as the Social Protection department is preparing a new anti-fraud strategy and is also going ahead with plans to add 20 Gardai to its fraud investigation team of 91 inspectors.

The recruitment of Gardai, who will retain their policing powers, drew widespread criticism of Social Protection Minister Joan Burton when it was announced last October.

But she said the fight against welfare fraud is a priority to safeguard taxpayers’ money and ensure fairness for all.

The secondment of Gardai is a trial scheme and the closing date for applications is next Monday, March 24.

It is expected the gardai will be deployed in Dublin, Dundalk, Letterkenny, Monaghan, Longford, Galway, Cork, Limerick, Navan and Sligo.

The latest statistics from the Department of Social Protection show that it received almost 25,000 anonymous tip-offs about suspected welfare fraud in 2013. This is down from the high point of over 28,000 anonymous reports in 2012 but still up markedly on the 16,000-plus reports received in 2011.

Officials stress that an anonymous tip-off is only the start of an investigation process and nobody is cut off until a clear breach of the welfare rules is established.

“In some cases the reports involve people not breaking any rules – for example, somebody receiving a one-parent family allowance and working a set number of hours as permitted by the rules,” one official said.

The Social Protection department does not want to publicise just how many anonymous tip-offs lead to the detection of welfare cheating.

But officials insist that the anonymous tip-offs are an important part of the battle against welfare fraud.

The department is currently updating its 2011-2013 anti-fraud strategy and a new plan is due for publication shortly.

Attention

The staff at the department’s ‘Special Investigations Unit’ already work closely with the Revenue Commissioners and Gardai.

Officials say they pay particular attention to schemes deemed most likely to be abused and also to sectors where casual work is most prevalent.

Irish customers of our banks have more problems than other countries have

  

Irish customers experience more problems with their banks than any other country in the world, a new research has found.

Irish banking customers, along with those living in Denmark and Spain, reported more incidents with banks per customer than in any of the 42 countries surveyed in a global banking study of more than 32,000 people by accounting giant Ernst & Young (EY).

The Irish were also among the most dissatisfied in the world with how banks resolved their complaints – half of people surveyed said complaints had not been resolved to their satisfaction.

The results come just weeks after the country’s banks were named and shamed by the Financial Services Ombudsman for the first time for their poor handling of customer complaints.

The banks publicly identified by the Financial Services Ombudsman included AIB, Permanent TSB, Ulster Bank, Bank of Ireland, Bank of Scotland and Danske Bank.

The damning findings in this latest research are particularly surprising because they contradict global trends.

On average, the survey found, confidence in the banking industry is on the rise, trust in banks is high and most customers are satisfied enough to recommend their main banking provider.

In Ireland, by contrast, 62pc said confidence had fallen in the past year.

Loan application refusals and charges for making a purchase were the biggest sources of complaints.

Transparency about fees and guidance on how to avoid them was the third most common source of dissatisfaction.

The Irish results were surprising, said EY financial services director Patricia Stack, given that Ireland’s banks have been investing heavily in customer service of late. “Consumer confidence globally has gone up but the results for Ireland are less positive, with confidence and trust levels decreasing the most since 2012,” said Ms Stack.

“Banks have some way to go to improve this – for example, increasing transparency around fees and charges. Additionally, improving how they deal with resolving problems or complaints will be critical if banks are to continue to win confidence and build trust.”

“The high level of customer complaints is a strong signal that banks need to get better at communicating their fees and charges with their customers.

“The good news is that solving a problem or addressing a complaint creates a critical customer interaction, which, if done well, can actually increase a customer’s business,” said Ms Stack.

Customers are increasingly on the move, the survey also found. Globally, half of respondents had opened or closed at least one product in the past year and two fifths planned to in the coming year.

Of the 60pc who were not planning to close or move their accounts, confidence in their provider was not the motivator. Nearly a fifth said it was just too difficult or time-consuming to change.

“Bank customers are not being actively retained; they simply remain with their current provider through inertia and are therefore vulnerable to competitors.

Meanwhile, new types of financial services providers with new technologies and customised services are penetrating the global marketplace and cannot be ignored” said Ms Stack.

Links & reports of stroke-drug related deaths entirely incorrect

     

There has been links between certain stroke medications and deaths.

Medical experts have urged people who take medication for strokes to continue to do so despite revelations that 19 deaths were associated with the drugs.

Some 19 deaths over the past two years were associated with the consumption of two blood-thinning drugs known as Xarelto and Pradaxa, which are used to prevent strokes.

However, the Irish Medicine Board (IMB) has said that all of the people who died had “very serious underlying conditions” and said that none of the deaths were linked to either forms of stroke medication.

It added: “The IMB continually advises that people should not cease taking any medicine without seeking medical advice and would advise anyone who has any concerns to talk to their doctor.”

The reported deaths were said to be three times higher than those linked to the older standard stroke drug, known as Warfarin.

In a statement, the IMB claimed elements of the story published in yesterday’s edition of ‘The Sunday Business Post’ were “entirely incorrect”.

It stated: “Assumptions based on comparing reports received for Warfarin with Pradaxa and Xarelto would be entirely incorrect as it is not comparing like with like. Medicine reporting rates are influenced by many factors, including the age of the medicine (with more reports received for newer medicines), the nature of the medicine and publicity about a medicine.

“Thus the reports of fatalities associated with the use of a medicine are not directly attributable to the usage of that medicine; it’s down to a number of factors including proactive calls for reporting on a medicine; the patients having significant underlying illness and treated with multiple medicines and/or surgery.”

The IMB also defended the 188 reports of suspected adverse reactions associated with the Xarelto and Pradaxa it had received in the past two years.

“Numerical comparisons cannot be made on the basis of reports received for Pradaxa, Xarelto and Warfarin and would be misleading.

“Adverse reaction reporting rates for Warfarin, which is a well-established medicine and has been available for over 50 years, would be expected to be lower than those for the newer drugs, where there is a significant effort to remind and request healthcare professionals and members of the public to report all reactions – including those suspected and expected.”

Honey could be a great antibiotic hope

  

Honey has long been known to have anti-bacterial properties

Honey could be the key in the battle against antibiotic resistance, experts have said. As well as being a tasty treat, honey could be used to help fight infections, they said.

Scientists at Salve Regina University in the US said that honey has a combination of weapons to beat infection including hydrogen peroxide, acidity, high sugar concentration and polyphenols – all of which actively kill bacterial cells.

CORBETT HOSPITAL DASH

COMEDIAN Ronnie Corbett was rushed to hospital suffering from chest pains, his wife said.

The 83-year-old underwent tests for several days last week before being discharged in time to attend the memorial of close friend Sir David Frost.

SNAIL VENOM PAINKILLER

EXPERTS are attempting to create a pain relief drug derived from snail venom used to paralyse their prey.

Scientists have reported creating five new “experimental substances” based on a tiny protein found in the venom of a cone snail. The substances, which could potentially be stronger than morphine, could one day lead to the development of a drug to treat chronic nerve pain, the scientists at the University of Queensland, Australiasaid.

MALE MINDS AND SEX

MEN would spend more than four hours having sex and barely three-and-a-half hours working during an “ideal day”, a survey has found.

Research conducted for Unilever Compressed deodorants also found 64pc of men confessed to regularly using their smartphones and tablets while on the toilet – while 26pc planned a to-do list while being intimate with their partner.

$1M FOR A TREEHOUSE

A US man has been told he can keep a treehouse he built for his sons – if he takes out a $1m insurance policy.

Two months after moving into a house in Wenatchee in Washington state, Zeb Postelwait received his first notice from the city to tear it down. Officials reportedly said the treehouse overhangs the public pavement. But Mr Postelwait disagrees and said he would not take out the insurance policy.

FOSSIL FIND AT SUBWAY

SCIENTISTS have long known that years before tourists were trekking Los Angeles’s Miracle Mile, dinosaurs were doing so.

A subway dig at the La Brea Tar Pits has reportedly uncovered a treasure trove of prehistoric artefacts including molluscs, asphalt-saturated sand dollars – and possibly the mouth of a sea lion.

Global sea levels could rise much faster than scientists previously imagined

  

Scientists say that the Greenland ice sheet has contributed more than any other ice mass to sea level rise over the past two decades and has the potential to raise global sea level by more than 7 metres

North-east corner of Greenland ice sheet, excluded from computer simulations predicting sea rise as it was considered ‘stable’, has lost 10 billion tonnes of ice a year since 2003.

Sea levels across the world are set to rise much faster than previously imagined as the Greenland ice sheet, which has been stable up to now, has started to melt.

Regional warming has triggered a sudden and sustained mass loss in Northeast Greenland ice sheet.

Scientists found that the northeast Greenland ice sheet lost about 10 billion tons of ice a year from April 2003 to April 2012.

The Greenland ice sheet is thought to be one of the largest contributors to global sea level rise over the past 20 years, accounting for 0.5 millimetres of the current total of 3.2 millimetres of sea level rise per year.

According to previous measurements and aerial photographs, the northeast Greenland ice sheet margin appeared to be stable for 25 years – until 2003.

Northeast Greenland, where the glacier is found, is of particular interest as numerical model predictions have suggested there is no significant mass loss for this sector, leading to a probable underestimation of future global sealevel rise from the region.

An international team of scientists, including Professor Jonathan Bamber from the University of Bristol, studied the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream which extends more than 600 km into the interior of the ice sheet: much further than any other in Greenland.

Professor Bamber said “The Greenland ice sheet has contributed more than any other ice mass to sea level rise over the past two decades and has the potential, if it were completely melted, to raise global sea level by more than seven metres. About half of the increased contribution of the ice sheet is due to the speed up of glaciers in the south and northwest. Until recently, Northeast Greenland has been relatively stable. This new study shows that is no longer the case”.

The international team of scientists discovered that the last remaining stable portion of the Greenland ice sheet is stable no more.

The new result focuses on ice loss due to a major retreat of an outlet glacier connected to a long river of ice – known as an ice stream – that drains ice from the interior of the ice sheet.

The Zachariae ice stream retreated about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) over the last decade, the researchers concluded.

For comparison, one of the fastest moving glaciers, the Jakobshavn ice stream in southwest Greenland, has retreated 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) over the last 150 years.

Ice streams drain ice basins, the same way the Amazon River drains the very large Amazon water basin.

“Northeast Greenland is very cold. It used to be considered the last stable part of the Greenland ice sheet,” explained lead investigator Michael Bevis of The Ohio State University. “This study shows that ice loss in the northeast is now accelerating. So, now it seems that all of the margins of the Greenland ice sheet are unstable”.

Study leader Shfaqat Abbas Khan, a senior researcher at the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, said that the finding is cause for concern.

“The fact that the mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet has generally increased over the last decades is well-known but the increasing contribution from the north-eastern part of the ice sheet is new and very surprising,” Khan said.

Climate change could lead to famines sooner & by the 2030’s

    

Crop yields could be in danger sooner than we thought.

New research suggests that from the 2030’s onwards man-made climate change will significantly reduce crop yield in temperate and tropical regions.

“Our research shows that crop yields will be negatively affected by climate change much earlier than expected,” Professor Andy Challinor, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study, said in a news release. “Furthermore, the impact of climate change on crops will vary both from year-to-year and from place-to-place – with the variability becoming greater as the weather becomes increasingly erratic.”

The researchers created a new data set by looking at 1,700 published assessments on how climate change will affect rice, maize and wheat crops. The team was able to gather the largest-ever dataset on crop responses.

In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report researchers reported that regions such as Europe and the majority of North America would be able to deal with a few degrees of warming without seeing it affect seasonal harvests. These new findings will be incorporated into the panel’s fifth report set to be published in the near future.

“As more data have become available, we’ve seen a shift in consensus, telling us that the impacts of climate change in temperate regions will happen sooner rather than later,” Professor Challinor said.

The research team concluded the world would see crop consequences after a warming of only two degrees Celsius, or by the 2030s. In the second half of the century decreases of over 25 percent could be even more common.

In some regions farmers have already been forced to adjust their planting dates or crop variety in order to adapt to warming temperatures.

“Climate change means a less predictable harvest, with different countries winning and losing in different years. The overall picture remains negative, and we are now starting to see how research can support adaptation by avoiding the worse impacts,” Professor Challinor said.