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Category: Climate Change

Climate change warriors’ latest weapon of choice is litigation

Climate change warriors’ latest weapon of choice is litigation

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Bloomberg reports: In the global fight against climate change, one tool is proving increasingly popular: litigation. From California to the Philippines, activists, governments and concerned citizens are suing the biggest polluters and national governments over the effects of climate change at a break-neck pace. “The courts are our last, best hope at this moment of irreversible harm to our planet and life on it,” said Julia Olson, an attorney for Our Children’s Trust, a legal challenge center in the U.S….

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Hemp legalization poised to transform agriculture in arid West

Hemp legalization poised to transform agriculture in arid West

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Amid all the excitement around marijuana legalization in America, another newly legal crop has received comparatively little attention: hemp. And yet hemp may prove to be even more transformative, especially in the West’s arid landscapes. Hemp is a variety of the cannabis sativa plant that is not psychoactive. Whereas marijuana plants can produce both the psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and the non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) extracts, hemp produces only the latter. And while marijuana is generally grown in small quantities under tightly…

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NASA head Jim Bridenstine, once doubtful, confirms he believes humans are the leading cause of climate change

NASA head Jim Bridenstine, once doubtful, confirms he believes humans are the leading cause of climate change

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The Washington Post reports: NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who previously questioned whether humans are primarily responsible for climate change, left no doubt Wednesday that his position has changed. Signifying a striking conversion, he confirmed that he now accepts that humans are, in fact, the leading cause. During testimony before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice, science and related agencies, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) asked Bridenstine whether he believes greenhouse gases are the primary cause of climate change. Bridenstine quickly…

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In an internal memo, the White House considered whether to simply ‘ignore’ federal climate research

In an internal memo, the White House considered whether to simply ‘ignore’ federal climate research

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The Washington Post reports: White House officials last year weighed whether to simply “ignore” climate studies produced by government scientists or to instead develop “a coherent, fact-based message about climate science,” according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post. The document, drafted Sept. 18 by Michael Catanzaro, President Trump’s special assistant for domestic energy and environmental policy at the time, highlights the dilemma the administration has faced over climate change since Trump took office. Even as Trump’s deputies have…

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Data centers, the factories of the digital age, emit as much CO2 as the airline industry

Data centers, the factories of the digital age, emit as much CO2 as the airline industry

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Yale Environment 360 reports: The cloud is coming back to Earth with a bump. That ethereal place where we store our data, stream our movies, and email the world has a physical presence – in hundreds of giant data centers that are taking a growing toll on the planet. Data centers are the factories of the digital age. These mostly windowless, featureless boxes are scattered across the globe – from Las Vegas to Bangalore, and Des Moines to Reykjavik. They…

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Bitcoin consumes more energy than Switzerland

Bitcoin consumes more energy than Switzerland

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Eric Holthaus writes: Bitcoin’s energy footprint has more than doubled since Grist first wrote about it six months ago. It’s expected to double again by the end of the year, according to a new peer-reviewed study out Wednesday. And if that happens, bitcoin would be gobbling up 0.5 percent of the world’s electricity, about as much as the Netherlands. That’s a troubling trajectory, especially for a world that should be working overtime to root out energy waste and fight climate…

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Climate change on track to cause major insect wipeout, scientists warn

Climate change on track to cause major insect wipeout, scientists warn

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The Guardian reports: Global warming is on track to cause a major wipeout of insects, compounding already severe losses, according to a new analysis. Insects are vital to most ecosystems and a widespread collapse would cause extremely far-reaching disruption to life on Earth, the scientists warn. Their research shows that, even with all the carbon cuts already pledged by nations so far, climate change would make almost half of insect habitat unsuitable by the end of the century, with pollinators…

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Costa Rica to ban fossil fuels and become world’s first decarbonised society

Costa Rica to ban fossil fuels and become world’s first decarbonised society

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The Independent reports: Costa Rica’s new president has announced a plan to ban fossil fuels and become the first fully decarbonised country in the world. Carlos Alvarado, a 38-year-old former journalist, made the announcement to a crowd of thousands during his inauguration on Wednesday. “Decarbonisation is the great task of our generation and Costa Rica must be one of the first countries in the world to accomplish it, if not the first,” Mr Alvarado said. “We have the titanic and…

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Climate denial is a form of American exceptionalism

Climate denial is a form of American exceptionalism

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Brian Kahn writes: America is already great, my friends, at least when it comes to climate denial. New research published this week in Nature Climate Change shows the U.S. is without peers when it comes to denying the basic science of climate change. Scientists surveyed people in 25 countries around the world, and found there’s no country quite like the U.S, where climate denial is much more closely tied to one’s political persuasion than any other country. The researchers say…

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Look, a federal agency is pushing for urgent climate action

Look, a federal agency is pushing for urgent climate action

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Eric Holthaus writes: It’s well-understood at this point that the Trump Administration is no friend to science-based governance. But there’s one federal agency bucking that trend. The Bureau of Reclamation, a division of the Department of Interior, raised fresh alarm in a press release this week about the dire drought in the Southwest. “We need action and we need it now,” said Trump appointee Brenda Burman, who runs the bureau, in the release. “We can’t afford to wait for a…

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New record carbon dioxide levels show ‘humans are overwhelming nature’

New record carbon dioxide levels show ‘humans are overwhelming nature’

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KQED reports: For the first time in human history, the monthly average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has surpassed the threshold of 410 parts per million. That’s the finding of the Scripps CO2 Program, which tracks carbon dioxide measurements in the Earth’s atmosphere every 10 minutes. That data is then plotted onto the Keeling Curve, a graph that illustrates the rise in carbon dioxide levels. The information is based on continuous measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory…

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Are we ready for an epidemic this summer?

Are we ready for an epidemic this summer?

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Ronald A. Klain writes: Summer is coming. And if you think a warm-weather surge of mosquitoes and ticks is not as frightening as the fictional winter’s White Walkers from “Game of Thrones,” you haven’t read this week’s report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the rapidly escalating danger of infectious diseases spread by insects. The CDC’s key findings: The number of Americans infected with such diseases, including Zika, West Nile and Lyme, has more than tripled in…

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Alaskan sea ice just took a steep, unprecedented dive

Alaskan sea ice just took a steep, unprecedented dive

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Scientific American reports: April should be prime walrus hunting season for the native villages that dot Alaska’s remote western coast. In years past the winter sea ice where the animals rest would still be abundant, providing prime targets for subsistence hunters. But this year sea-ice coverage as of late April was more like what would be expected for mid-June, well into the melt season. These conditions are the continuation of a winter-long scarcity of sea ice in the Bering Sea—a…

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The water war that will decide the fate of 1 in 8 Americans

The water war that will decide the fate of 1 in 8 Americans

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Eric Holthaus writes: Lake Mead is the country’s biggest reservoir of water. Think of it as the savings account for the entire Southwest. Right now, that savings account is nearly overdrawn. For generations, we’ve been using too much of the Colorado River, the 300-foot-wide ribbon of water that carved the Grand Canyon, supplies Lake Mead, and serves as the main water source for much of the American West. The river sustains one in eight Americans — about 40 million people…

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Worldwide catastrophe as shorebirds face extinction

Worldwide catastrophe as shorebirds face extinction

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  John W. Fitzpatrick and Nathan R. Senner write: A worldwide catastrophe is underway among an extraordinary group of birds — the marathon migrants we know as shorebirds. Numbers of some species are falling so quickly that many biologists fear an imminent planet-wide wave of extinctions. These declines represent the No. 1 conservation crisis facing birds in the world today. Climate change, coastal development, the destruction of wetlands and hunting are all culprits. And because these birds depend for their…

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Should scientists advocate on the issue of climate change?

Should scientists advocate on the issue of climate change?

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Ingfei Chen writes: I was recently chatting with a friend who specializes in science education when we touched upon a conundrum: Researchers who study climate change grasp the dire need to cut planet-warming carbon emissions that come from burning fossil fuels, yet many of them shrink from voicing their views at public events or to the press. The stock-in-trade of scientists is their objectivity, my friend explained. The worry is that advocating for an agenda may diminish their credibility, hurt…

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