Red Bluff Daily News

November 06, 2015

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BySethBorenstein TheAssociatedPress WASHINGTON New scien- tific analysis shows the fin- gerprints of man-made cli- mate change on 14 extreme weather events in 2014, hit- ting every continent but Antarctica. Dozens of scientists from the National Oce- anic and Atmospheric Ad- ministration and across the world examined 28 strange weather condi- tions last year to see if global warming partly in- creased their likelihood or their strength. In a series of papers in a 180-page, peer-reviewed report, the scientists spotted some ef- fects of climate change in half of them. In other weather events, scientists found no evidence of climate change making conditions more likely or stronger. Researchers found cli- mate change fingerprints on Hawaii's tropical cy- clones and heat in Argen- tina, Europe, South Ko- rea, China, and repeatedly in Australia. The studies also found global warm- ing partly to blame for heavy rain and flooding in Canada and New Zealand, winter storms in Nepal and drought in Africa and the Middle East. In the case of the Cali- fornia wildfires, they found that global warming has in- creased the likelihood of fires and should increase with time; the cause of the 2014 wildfire situation is a bit harder to assess. In a record hot year, heat stood out. Hundreds of mil- lions of people live in ar- eas where 2014 extreme heat was linked to climate change. "Globally, extreme heat is becoming more com- mon," said NOAA climate scientist Stephanie Her- ring, lead editor of the re- port published Thursday in the Bulletin of the Amer- ican Meteorological Soci- ety. One study looked at a gi- ant swath of Europe and found it was unusually warm because of climate change. The study found 12 percent of the large area set warm records in 2014, but no records for cold were es- tablished. The studies varied in how much influence cli- mate change had on those events, but it was never the sole cause, scientists said. "This series of papers makes it more clear than ever that human-caused cli- mate change is increasing both the severity and fre- quency of an increasing va- riety of climate extremes," said University of Arizona climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn't part of the report. The researchers used sta- tistical analysis and com- puter simulations to show what would happen with- out man-made warming and compare that to what did happen. Scientists could not find a climate fingerprint on 13 events, including win- ter storms in the United States, heavy rain in Eng- land and France, tropical cyclone Gonzalo, the Sin- gapore drought and an in- crease in Antarctica's sea ice. Climate change's influ- ence would make a cold snap such as the one that occurred in the U.S. upper Midwest 20 to 100 times less likely, but it happened anyway, Herring said. CLIMATE Report: 14 wild weather events last year goosed by warming By Juliet Williams and Paul Elias The Associated Press MERCED He attacked with a smile on his face. Faisal Mohammad, 18, burst into an early-morn- ing University of Califor- nia, Merced, classroom on Wednesday with a knife and started stabbing a stu- dent, authorities said. By- ron Price, the construction worker credited with pre- venting Mohammad from killing, said the teen looked scared. "He also looked like he was having fun," Price told the Merced Sun Star. "His eyes, I could see fear in his eyes. He was smiling." Authorities Thursday were investigating why the quiet student from Santa Clara carried out the cam- pus attacks that wounded four people, all of whom are expected to survive. His college roommate called him an anti-social loner. But a high school buddy expressed shock that Mohammad is suspected of stabbing four people. "He was quiet, but he was really friendly," Ish Pa- tel said. "He was intelligent too, he performed well aca- demically." Patel said Mohammad enjoyed basketball, going to the mosque to pray and playing video games with his friends. Patel said he lost contact with Mohammad after high school graduation in June. "I'm def- i n i t e l y sho cke d ," Patel said. Moham- mad's suite- mate at col- lege, how- ever, paints another por- trait. Andrew Velasquez told KSFN-TV in Fresno that Mohammad kept to himself. "(Mohammad) didn't talk much. And I never saw him walk with anybody. Walk- ing to class, I never saw him walk with anybody," Velas- quez said. Mohammad was major- ing in computer science and engineering. One student still was hos- pitalized Thursday, and a staff member who suffered a collapsed lung was re- covering after surgery, the school said in a statement. Price and another student were treated and released. Student Lensy Maravilla, 19, said she was in a biology class on the second floor of the same building when a student ran in. Maravilla said the stu- dent "was crying hysteri- cally and came in and said that she had seen somebody get stabbed, or slashed, in the throat and she ran." Classes were canceled until Friday at the univer- sity about 120 miles south of Sacramento in the farm- rich San Joaquin Valley. LarryandYenLittledrove about 110 miles from Elk Grove to get their daughter Dana. Larry Little said he knows incidents of campus violence are rampant. "I knew someday it might, but I was just hop- ing it wouldn't happen here. It's a small campus out in the country," Little said. "Thank God the guy didn't have a gun, shooting peo- ple, killing them." Stabbings involving mul- tiple victims on college campuses have not raised as much alarm as mass shootings because the at- tacks do not usually result in as many deaths or inju- ries. Several U.S. colleges have been the site of knife attacks. A student at Morgan State University in Mary- land was charged in March with slashing two other students with a pocket- knife outside a campus din- ing hall. In 2013, a 20-year- old student at a Texas com- munity college wounded at least 14 people during a building-to-building at- tack. UC Merced has about 6,000 students and opened a decade ago in the state's farm belt in response to the burgeoning enrollment in the nine other UC cam- puses. Regents also felt the mainly agricultural re- gion was unrepresented by higher education. Chancellor Dorothy Le- land sought to reassure families that their children would be safe at UC Merced. "This was a tragic acci- dent, a tragic event, OK? But the person who caused this event will no longer be able to cause an event in the future," she said. UC-MERCED University stabber 'looked like he was having fun' Mohammad The Associated Press BERKELEY At least 2,000 of Berkeley High School students walked out of class Thursday in protest of a racist message left on a computer screen a day ear- lier, district officials said. The message referred to the Ku Klux Klan, using derogatory language re- lated to African Americans and threatening a "public lynching" on Dec. 9. The message was dis- covered Wednesday after- noon. Principal Sam Pas- arow said in an email to the school community late Wednesday that the school is giving the inves- tigation the "utmost atten- tion," and it has filed a re- port with Berkeley Police Department. District officials say the message appeared to be a modified screen shot of the school's library web page that was left on one com- puter in the library. It did not appear that the system had been hacked and the website altered. District spokesman Marc Coplan told the San Francisco Chronicle that an estimated 2,000 of the school's 3,000 stu- dents had left school grounds to participate in a march, which moved to the University of Califor- nia, Berkeley campus late Thursday morning. "We really understand the students' pain, their an- guishandtheirfearandare doing everything we can to work with Berkeley police and other agencies to fig- ure out what happened," Coplan told the newspa- per."Ourstudentsarehurt- ing tremendously. They're weeping. They're crying." The threat was the third racist incident at the school in the last year. InDecember,overwinter break, a noose made from string was found hanging from a tree on the cam- pus. In the spring, the year- book was altered just prior to printing, identifying an academy within the high schoolthatservesprimarily students of color as "trash collectors of tomorrow," the newspaper reported. Berkeley High students walk out over racist post MESSAGE ON COMPUTER RICHPEDRONCELLI—THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE Firefighters battle the King fire near Fresh Pond. By Martha Irvine The Associated Press Are you happy? Very happy? If you're in your 30s or older, a new study has found that you're less likely to answer "yes" than your parents were. The findings, being pub- lished online Thursday in the journal Social Psycho- logical and Personality Sci- ence, come on the heels of another recent report that found that death rates of middle-aged white Amer- icans have been rising, largely due to suicide and substance abuse. "Age is supposed to bring happiness and con- tentment. For that not to be true anymore is some- what shocking," says Jean Twenge, a professor at San Diego State University who is the study's lead author. She also wrote the book "Generation Me," a look at young adults and the atti- tudes and influences that have helped shape them. Starting with data in the early 1970s, Twenge and her colleagues found that adults 30 and older used to be happier than younger adults and teens. But that "happiness advantage" has steadily declined as the older adults have expressed less satisfaction with their lives and the younger co- hort has gotten a little hap- pier. Other experts who study happiness say the findings fit with their own research. They attribute the shift to everything from growing financial pressures — and what some call "economic insecurity" — to the fact that real life has been a rude awakening for a gen- eration of young adults who were told they could do any- thing and are discovering that often isn't true. Geena Kandel, a senior at Washington University in St. Louis, says she and her peers already worry that even a good college ed- ucation won't be enough to help achieve what their par- ents have. "It puts a lot of pressure on people my age," the 21-year-old says. Before you get too bummed out, consider an- other finding of the study: One in three of all Ameri- can adults still report being "very happy." Twenge and her col- leagues found, for instance, that 30 percent of those in the 18- to 29-year-old range gave that response in the 2010s, compared with 28 percent in the early 1970s. There's also been a nota- ble uptick in "very happy" teens. In the 1970s, for in- stance, 19 percent of 12th graders chose that re- sponse, compared with 23 percent in the 2010s. Adults age 30 and older, however, have seen a five- percentage-point drop, from 38 percent in the early 1970s to 33 percent today. Some say the onslaught of information at our fin- gertips every day is one factor making us feel over- whelmed. "I think we are no lon- ger keeping up with the Joneses but rather keeping up with the world," says Satu Halpin, a 37-year-old mother in Olympia, Wash- ington, who tunes out to stay happier. It is, of course, also im- possible to ignore the eco- nomic downturn in the last decade. Shigehiro Oi- shi, a researcher at the University of Virginia, has documented a grow- ing dissatisfaction with the widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else. Others have linked un- happiness to "income in- security." Twenge, the study's au- thor, also said that, beyond income factors, people who were single parents, and presumably had fewer so- cial supports, said they were less happy. She and her co-authors also spec- ulated that young people were less stressed by eco- nomic factors until they hit adulthood. In addition, Tim Bono, a psychologist at Washington University who teaches and studies happiness, thinks there's something to that "rude awakening" theory for his generation of young adults. A while back, the 32-year- old professor came across a box of school papers and other relics from his past — worksheets, assignments and notes sent home that all reinforced "how special I was and how I could do anything I set my mind to." He also found many of the ribbons and trophies he'd received as a kid, not only for winning but for simply participating in sports. "My generation has been bathed in messages of how great we are and how any- thing is possible for us," Bono says, noting that that mindset can easily lead to disappointment. PSYCHOLOGY 'Happiness advantage' over age 30 is vanishing, new study suggests PHOTOS BY JEFF ROBERSON — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Psychologist Tim Bono poses with childhood awards in his office in St. Louis. Bono, 32, discovered the relics from his past that reinforced what so many in his generation were told, that they were special and could do anything. Student Geena Kandel, 21, is seen at Washington University in St. Louis. 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