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Category: Climate Change

‘Smoking gun proof’: Fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show

‘Smoking gun proof’: Fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show

The Guardian reports: The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called “Keeling curve” that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels. A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western…

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Biden still wants to look like the climate president

Biden still wants to look like the climate president

The Atlantic reports: All of a sudden, the U.S. has become the biggest liquid-natural-gas exporter in the world. Supplied by a souped-up hydraulic-fracturing industry, and spurred by Russia’s war on Ukraine, which has hampered European gas access, LNG export terminals are being built on a monumental scale throughout the U.S. Gulf Coast, in places so beset by climate disasters that homes there are now deemed uninsurable. Shipping LNG abroad could be its own climate disaster, with questionable benefits: Recent research found that it may be worse for…

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Many but not all of the world’s aquifers are losing water

Many but not all of the world’s aquifers are losing water

Science News reports: The world’s precious stash of subterranean freshwater is shrinking — and in nearly a third of aquifers, that loss has been speeding up in the last couple of decades, researchers report in the Jan. 25 Nature. A one-two punch of unsustainable groundwater withdrawals and changing climate has been causing global water levels to fall on average, leading to water shortages, slumping land surfaces and seawater intrusion into aquifers. The new study suggests that groundwater decline has accelerated…

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Greenland losing 30 million tonnes of ice an hour, study reveals

Greenland losing 30 million tonnes of ice an hour, study reveals

The Guardian reports: The Greenland ice cap is losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice an hour due to the climate crisis, a study has revealed, which is 20% more than was previously thought. Some scientists are concerned that this additional source of freshwater pouring into the north Atlantic might mean a collapse of the ocean currents called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is closer to being triggered, with severe consequences for humanity. Major ice loss from Greenland…

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‘It’s not game over – it’s game on’: why 2024 is an inflection point for the climate crisis

‘It’s not game over – it’s game on’: why 2024 is an inflection point for the climate crisis

By Wesley Morgan, Griffith University In 2024, global climate trends are cause for both deep alarm and cautious optimism. Last year was the hottest on record by a huge margin and this year will likely be hotter still. The annual global average temperature may, for the first time, exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – a threshold crucial for stabilising the Earth’s climate. Without immediate action, we are at grave risk of crossing irreversible tipping points in the Earth’s climate system….

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How YouTube’s climate deniers turned into climate doomers

How YouTube’s climate deniers turned into climate doomers

Grist reports: Imagine if you could walk from your house to anywhere you needed to go in less than 15 minutes: the pharmacy, the bakery, the gym, and then back to the bakery. In a certain, conspiracy-addled corner of the internet, this urban planning concept of “15-minute cities” gets a shady, sinister gloss. Conspiracy theorists evoke COVID restrictions and tout efforts to create walkable cities as steps toward “climate lockdowns.” They warn of a plot by the World Economic Forum…

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Team Trump hopes to decimate both climate policy and regulations on fossil fuels

Team Trump hopes to decimate both climate policy and regulations on fossil fuels

Politico reports: Former President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, staffed his environmental agencies with fossil fuel lobbyists and claimed — against all scientific evidence — that the Earth’s rising temperatures will “start getting cooler.” Expect a second Trump presidency to show less restraint. Trump’s campaign utterances, and the policy proposals being drafted by hundreds of his supporters, point to the likelihood that his return to the White House would bring an all-out war on…

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Poland presses for ambitious 2040 EU climate target, signaling U-turn

Poland presses for ambitious 2040 EU climate target, signaling U-turn

Politico reports: Poland’s new government will urge the European Union to “embrace” a plan to slash 90 percent of the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, a senior government official said on Monday — reflecting the country’s massive shift in climate policy. The European Commission is set to publish a roadmap toward the bloc’s next climate target on February 6, and the EU’s Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change has recommended an emissions cut of 90-95 percent by 2040 compared…

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Climate change threatens global forest carbon sequestration, study finds

Climate change threatens global forest carbon sequestration, study finds

University of Florida: Climate change is reshaping forests differently across the United States, according to a new analysis of U.S. Forest Service data. With rising temperatures, escalating droughts, wildfires, and disease outbreaks taking a toll on trees, researchers warn that forests across the American West are bearing the brunt of the consequences. The study, led by UF Biology researchers J. AARON HOGAN and JEREMY W. LICHSTEIN was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study reveals…

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Bill McKibben explains what individuals can do to win the climate fight — together

Bill McKibben explains what individuals can do to win the climate fight — together

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Jessica McKenzie: I was wondering if we could start just by taking stock of the global climate movement. How do you think things are going? Bill McKibben: The success or failure of the global climate movement is obviously measured by how high the temperature is. And the temperature is higher than it’s been in 125,000 years, at least, this year. So I think you’d have to say from that, we’re not exactly triumphant. In the…

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NASA scientist on 2023’s record-breaking temperatures: ‘We’re frankly astonished’

NASA scientist on 2023’s record-breaking temperatures: ‘We’re frankly astonished’

Ars Technica reports: Earlier this week, the European Union’s Earth science team came out with its analysis of 2023’s global temperatures, finding it was the warmest year on record to date. In an era of global warming, that’s not especially surprising. What was unusual was how 2023 set its record—every month from June on coming in far above any equivalent month in the past—and the size of the gap between 2023 and any previous year on record. The Copernicus dataset…

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Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

The Guardian reports: The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, new research reveals. The vast majority (over 99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza,…

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New research explores a restorative climate path for the Earth

New research explores a restorative climate path for the Earth

Inside Climate News reports: With Earth’s average annual temperature speeding toward 1.5 degrees Celsius faster than expected and global climate policy on a treadmill, an increasing number of researchers say it’s time to consider a “restorative pathway” to avoid the worst ecological and social outcomes of global warming. In a study published today in Environmental Research Letters, an international team of scientists wrote that reaching global goals could require focusing on ways to drive rapid changes in the way people…

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Evolution might stop humans from solving climate change, says new study

Evolution might stop humans from solving climate change, says new study

University of Maine: Central features of human evolution may stop our species from resolving global environmental problems like climate change, says a new study led by the University of Maine. Humans have come to dominate the planet with tools and systems to exploit natural resources that were refined over thousands of years through the process of cultural adaptation to the environment. University of Maine evolutionary biologist Tim Waring wanted to know how this process of cultural adaptation to the environment…

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Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Dying in the fields as temperatures soar

Liza Gross and Peter Aldhous report: For most of July 2019, stifling heat hung over the agricultural fields of California’s Central Valley, as farmworkers like William Salas Jiminez labored under the sun’s searing rays. Temperatures had dipped from 99 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit the last day of the month, when the 56-year-old Puerto Rico native was installing irrigation tubing in an almond orchard near Arvin, at the valley’s southern edge. Around 1:30 that afternoon Salas sat down to rest. When…

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The climate future arrived in 2023. It left scars across the planet

The climate future arrived in 2023. It left scars across the planet

Chico Harlan writes: By the time the flames were barreling down the slope, heading for 40 miles of parched forest, the fire chief said he already knew: This was the big one. His part of Greece had gone two months without rain. A record heat wave had baked the area for weeks. Within hours, the fire had sprinted through acres of pines, hissing and spouting 120-foot flames, reaching the brink of a village where a single home — belonging to…

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