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Category: Climate Change

Why Biden’s pause on new LNG export terminals is a BFD

Why Biden’s pause on new LNG export terminals is a BFD

Yale Climate Connections reports: Natural gas has long been touted as a “bridge fuel” to a clean energy future that gets all its power from renewable sources like wind, solar, and geothermal power. That’s because natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide as coal when burned to generate electricity. But researchers have warned for years that natural gas — whose main ingredient is climate-warming methane — is not the trouble-free substitute for coal that the oil and gas…

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EU climate policy is dangerously reliant on untested carbon-capture technology

EU climate policy is dangerously reliant on untested carbon-capture technology

An editorial in Nature says: Last week, the European Commission published its long-awaited recommendations for climate targets for 2040. The commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, is recommending that EU member states cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 90% by 2040, compared with 1990 levels. If countries agree, this would be an interim milestone, ahead of the European Climate Law, which sets out a legally binding target for net-zero emissions by 2050. A target cut of 90% is…

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Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows

Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point − once melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we would see extreme climate change within decades, study shows

Too much fresh water from Greenland’s ice sheet can slow the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation. Paul Souders/Stone via Getty Images By René van Westen, Utrecht University; Henk A. Dijkstra, Utrecht University, and Michael Kliphuis, Utrecht University Superstorms, abrupt climate shifts and New York City frozen in ice. That’s how the blockbuster Hollywood movie “The Day After Tomorrow” depicted an abrupt shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean’s circulation and the catastrophic consequences. While Hollywood’s vision was over the top, the 2004 movie raised…

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Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists

Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse, prompting warning from scientists

CNN reports: A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others. Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as…

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Climatologist Michael Mann wins defamation case. What this means for scientists

Climatologist Michael Mann wins defamation case. What this means for scientists

Nature reports: US climate scientist Michael Mann has prevailed in a lawsuit that accused two conservative commentators of defamation for challenging his research and comparing him to a convicted child molester. A jury awarded Mann, who is based at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, more than US$1 million in a landmark case that legal observers see as a warning to those who attack scientists working in controversial fields, including climate science and public health. “It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize…

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Earth breached a feared level of warming over the past year. Are we doomed?

Earth breached a feared level of warming over the past year. Are we doomed?

The Washington Post reports: It’s official:For the past 12 months, the Earth was 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than in preindustrial times, scientists said Thursday, crossing a critical barrier into temperatures never experienced by human civilizations. According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, the past 12 months clocked in at a scorching 1.52 degrees Celsius (2.74 degrees Fahrenheit) higher on average compared with between 1850 and 1900. At some level, that’s not surprising — the past 12 months have…

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Sponge skeletons indicate climate change might be worse than thought

Sponge skeletons indicate climate change might be worse than thought

The New York Times reports: Since the dawn of the industrial age, our species has warmed the planet by considerably more than today’s most widely accepted estimates imply, according to a team of scientists who have gleaned detailed new information about Earth’s past climate from an unusual source: centuries-old sponges living in the Caribbean Sea. Networks of satellites and sensors have measured the rising temperatures of recent decades with great precision. But to assess the full arc of global warming,…

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Trump allies plan to gut climate research if he is reelected

Trump allies plan to gut climate research if he is reelected

Climatewire reports: Former President Donald Trump’s second term could begin with a clear direction on climate policy: Trash it. Dozens of conservative organizations have banded together to provide Trump a road map — known as Project 2025 — if he prevails in November. It outlines a series of steps that the former president could take to reverse the climate actions taken by the Biden administration. Trump has already said that boosting fossil fuels would be one of his top priorities….

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‘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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