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Category: Climate Change

Amazon protector: the Brazilian politician who turned the tide on deforestation

Amazon protector: the Brazilian politician who turned the tide on deforestation

Nature reports: In a year that brought unrelenting bad environmental news, with record global warming, searing heatwaves and fires, Marina Silva delivered a hopeful message on 3 August. Brazil’s environment and climate-change minister announced that there had been a 43% drop in deforestation alerts on the basis of satellite images of the Amazon rainforest between January and July 2023, compared with the same period in 2022. This was a sharp shift from the previous four years, which had seen a…

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Amazon drought: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’

Amazon drought: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’

BBC World Service reports: The Amazon rainforest experienced its worst drought on record in 2023. Many villages became unreachable by river, wildfires raged and wildlife died. Some scientists worry events like these are a sign that the world’s biggest forest is fast approaching a point of no return. As the cracked and baking river bank towers up on either side of us, Oliveira Tikuna is starting to have doubts about this journey. He’s trying to get to his village, in…

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Is climate change speeding up? Here’s what the science says

Is climate change speeding up? Here’s what the science says

The Washington Post reports: For the past several years, a small group of scientists has warned that sometime early this century, the rate of global warming — which has remained largely steady for decades — might accelerate. Temperatures could rise higher, faster. The drumbeat of weather disasters may become more insistent. And now, after what is poised to be the hottest year in recorded history, the same experts believe that it is already happening. In a paper published last month,…

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The relentless growth of degrowth economics

The relentless growth of degrowth economics

Jessi Jezewska Stevens writes: The ninth International Degrowth Conference, held in August this year in Zagreb, Croatia, opens with a provocation. Keynote speaker Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, the newly elected vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has two requests to make of the audience. The first is to figure out how to coordinate with governments of all stripes, since the climate crisis requires global unity. The second? “Maybe consider a different word.” It’s about as close to blasphemy…

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Oil companies are fine with call to transition away from fossil fuels

Oil companies are fine with call to transition away from fossil fuels

The New York Times reports: Oil industry executives on Wednesday said they more or less backed the agreement coming out of the United National climate summit in Dubai, despite its language calling for “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” “We support the outcome of COP28,” said a spokesman for Shell, Europe’s largest energy company. Eni, the Italian energy giant, praised the “great pragmatism” of the meeting. Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, which had raised objections to an early…

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Oil nations’ commitment to destroying planet threatens climate summit

Oil nations’ commitment to destroying planet threatens climate summit

Rolling Stone reports: Climate activists say the 2023 UN Climate Conference is on “the verge of complete failure” after oil-producing nations secured the removal of language calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels from the summit’s draft agreement. COP28, held in Dubai and headed by Sultan al-Jaber — the CEO of the United Arab Emirates state-run energy company ADNOC — has already been criticized for overemphasizing the desires of fossil fuel economies and energy corporations rather than the need to…

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This disagreement between two climate scientists will decide our future

This disagreement between two climate scientists will decide our future

Vladi333/Shutterstock By Robert Chris, The Open University and Hugh Hunt, University of Cambridge Getting to net zero emissions by mid-century is conventionally understood as humanity’s best hope for keeping Earth’s surface temperature (already 1.2°C above its pre-industrial level) from increasing well beyond 1.5°C – potentially reaching a point at which it could cause widespread societal breakdown. At least one prominent climate scientist, however, disagrees. James Hansen of Columbia University in the US published a paper with colleagues in November which…

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Climate change is already forcing lizards, insects and other species to evolve – and most can’t keep up

Climate change is already forcing lizards, insects and other species to evolve – and most can’t keep up

Temperature sensitivity makes western fence lizards vulnerable to climate change. Greg Shine/BLM, CC BY By Michael P. Moore, University of Colorado Denver and James T. Stroud, Georgia Institute of Technology Climate change is threatening the survival of plants and animals around the globe as temperatures rise and habitats change. Some species have been able to meet the challenge with rapid evolutionary adaptation and other changes in behavior or physiology. Dark-colored dragonflies are getting paler in order to reduce the amount…

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We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights

We won’t stop speaking out about Gaza’s suffering – there is no climate justice without human rights

Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Sweden write: More than 15,000 people, of whom at least 6,000 were children. That’s how many people Israel has reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip in a matter of weeks – and those numbers are still rising. Israel has bombed basic societal infrastructure and civilian targets such as hospitals, schools, shelters and refugee camps. Israel has imposed a siege, preventing food, medicine, water and fuel from reaching the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in the occupied Gaza…

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Open secret at climate talks: The top temperature goal is mostly gone

Open secret at climate talks: The top temperature goal is mostly gone

Politico reports: Leading scientists worldwide delivered a striking dose of reality to the United Nations on Sunday: it’s “becoming inevitable” that countries will miss the ambitious target they set eight years ago for limiting the warming of the Earth. The ominous estimate points to the growing likelihood that global warming will shoot past 1.5 degrees Celsius before the end of this century, inflicting what scientists describe as an overwhelming toll from intensifying storms, drought and heat on people and the…

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Al Gore slams COP28 climate summit host UAE, says its emissions soared

Al Gore slams COP28 climate summit host UAE, says its emissions soared

Reuters reports: Climate advocate and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Sunday slammed the UAE – host of the COP28 climate summit – saying its position as overseer of international negotiations on global warming this year was an abuse of public trust. The comments, made to Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the conference in Dubai, reflected skepticism among some delegates that COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, head of the UAE’s national oil company ADNOC, can be an…

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UAE’s Cop28 president claims there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

UAE’s Cop28 president claims there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels

The Guardian reports: The president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal. Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”. The comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate denial”, scientists said, and they were…

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Biden’s EPA launches crackdown on planet-warming methane

Biden’s EPA launches crackdown on planet-warming methane

Politico reports: The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled sweeping new regulations targeting methane emissions from the oil and gas sector on Saturday, a significant milestone for President Joe Biden’s strategy for curbing the pollution driving up the Earth’s temperatures. The rule’s 3 a.m. rollout was timed to coincide with the ongoing U.N. climate talks in Dubai, where the U.S. has sought to play a leading role in global efforts to reduce emissions of the powerful planet-heating gas. But its biggest test…

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Climate change imperils Indigenous ecosystems, food security, knowledge bases and ways of life

Climate change imperils Indigenous ecosystems, food security, knowledge bases and ways of life

Inside Climate News reports: As world leaders gather in Dubai for the 28th United Nations climate talks, Indigenous representatives from seven socio-cultural regions are calling for a moratorium on “false solutions” that ignore the roots of the climate crisis and urging a drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The Indigenous peoples’ caucus, called the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change, or IIPFCC, had two minutes during COP28’s opening plenary Thursday to lay out their core concerns and assert their…

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U.S. oil and gas production set to break record in 2023 despite UN climate goals

U.S. oil and gas production set to break record in 2023 despite UN climate goals

The Guardian reports: The United States is poised to extract more oil and gas than ever before in 2023, a year that is certain to be the hottest ever recorded, providing a daunting backdrop to crucial United Nations climate talks that hold the hope of an agreement to end the era of fossil fuels. The US’s status as the world’s leading oil and gas behemoth has only strengthened this year, even amid warnings from Joe Biden himself over the unfolding…

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Biden calls climate change ‘the ultimate threat to humanity’ but won’t be attending latest UN summit

Biden calls climate change ‘the ultimate threat to humanity’ but won’t be attending latest UN summit

The New York Times reports: President Biden will not attend a major United Nations climate summit that begins Thursday in Dubai, skipping an event expected to be attended by King Charles III, Pope Francis and leaders from nearly 200 countries, a White House official said Sunday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, did not give a reason Mr. Biden will not make an appearance at the two-week summit, known as COP28. But senior White…

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