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Category: Climate Change

I’m a climate scientist. I’m not screaming into the void anymore

I’m a climate scientist. I’m not screaming into the void anymore

Kate Marvel writes: Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? The answer, legally, was yes: Congress mandates that the National Climate Assessment be updated every four years or so. But after four previous assessments and six United Nations reports since 1990, I was skeptical that…

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The world is ‘woefully off track’ on dozens of climate goals, scientists find

The world is ‘woefully off track’ on dozens of climate goals, scientists find

The Washington Post reports: Among the many dramatic ways society must transform to limit the worst effects of climate change, the world is only moving fast enough on one of them — the uptake of electric vehicles, according to a new report from seven climate organizations looking at 42 indicators of climate progress. On the other 41 points of transformation, change is either too slow, too hard to measure, or going in the wrong direction. For example, the global rate…

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Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met

Global News reports: Capping global temperature rise at two degrees Celsius over baseline is no longer seen as enough to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels that would decimate the earth’s coastlines and displace hundreds of millions of people, climate scientists warn. A report released Thursday by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, compiled by more than 60 scientists and policy experts, is sounding the alarm on new modelling data that indicates the 2015 Paris Agreement is woefully out-of-date. The…

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The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory

The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory

William J Ripple et al write in BioScience: Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly…

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Climate change is putting the health of billions at risk

Climate change is putting the health of billions at risk

Grist reports: Eight years ago, the medical journal the Lancet began compiling the latest research on how climate change affects human health. It was the first coordinated effort to highlight scientific findings on the health consequences of climate change, published in the hopes of making the topic more central to global climate negotiations. The Lancet’s annual reports on this topic, which summarize research conducted by dozens of scientists from leading institutions around the world, have become increasingly dire in tone….

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The climate cannot survive another Trump term

The climate cannot survive another Trump term

Michael Mann writes: Back in the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election, I stated that a second Trump term would be “game over for the climate.” That hasn’t changed in the years since. In fact, it’s become even more true. We are three years further down the carbon emissions highway, and the devastating consequences of the 1C (1.8F) warming we have already caused are now apparent in the form of unprecedented dangerous, damaging and deadly extreme weather events. As…

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Kew report: Five key extinction risks facing the world’s plants and fungi

Kew report: Five key extinction risks facing the world’s plants and fungi

Carbon Brief reports: Scientists’ understanding of how climate change and habitat loss could drive plant and fungi extinctions is being hamstrung by knowledge gaps in how many species currently exist, a new report warns. More than 90% of fungi have yet to be found and formally described by scientists, according to a new report from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The “State of the World’s Plants and Fungi” report, which is based on both peer-reviewed and preliminary studies, also says…

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Otis teaches a terrifying lesson in rapid hurricane intensification

Otis teaches a terrifying lesson in rapid hurricane intensification

John Morales writes: This is a scary new paradigm in the tropics. And we all need to worry. Hurricane Otis struck very near Acapulco, Mexico, on Tuesday night as a monster 165 mile-per-hour category 5 cyclone. On Monday night, about 24-hours before landfall, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) was predicting it would do so as 70 mile-per-hour tropical storm. With the energy content (and destructive potential) of the wind increasing with the cube of the windspeed, that means that Otis…

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Biden administration approves biggest offshore wind farm yet

Biden administration approves biggest offshore wind farm yet

The New York Times reports: The Interior Department on Tuesday approved a plan to install up to 176 giant wind turbines off the coast of Virginia, clearing the way for what would be the nation’s largest offshore wind farm yet. The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, to be built by Dominion Energy, is the fifth commercial-scale offshore wind project approved by the Biden administration. If completed, the 2.6-gigawatt wind farm would produce enough electricity to power more than 900,000 homes,…

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Climate crisis: Remaining carbon emissions budget is now tiny, scientists say

Climate crisis: Remaining carbon emissions budget is now tiny, scientists say

The Guardian reports: The carbon budget remaining to limit the climate crisis to 1.5C of global heating is now “tiny”, according to an analysis, sending a “dire” message about the adequacy of climate action. The carbon budget is the maximum amount of carbon emissions that can be released while restricting global temperature rise to the limits of the Paris agreement. The new figure is half the size of the budget estimated in 2020 and would be exhausted in six years…

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When idiot savants do climate economics

When idiot savants do climate economics

Christopher Ketcham writes: William Nordhaus, who turned 82 this year, was the first economist in our time to attempt to quantify the cost of climate change. His climate-modeling wizardry, which won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2018, has made him one of the world’s most consequential thinkers. His ideas have been adopted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, global risk managers, the financial services industry, and universities worldwide that teach…

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How climate change drives conflict and war crimes around the globe

How climate change drives conflict and war crimes around the globe

Inside Climate News reports: Drought, flooding and extreme weather are driving and amplifying violent conflict around the world. At the same time, warfare has devastated ecosystems, imperiled access to vital resources and left behind toxic legacies that sicken civilian populations. On Thursday, a coalition of human rights organizations and lawyers published an open letter urging the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, to begin assessing the links between climate change and crimes in the court’s remit. The letter…

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The great underappreciated driver of climate change: household food waste

The great underappreciated driver of climate change: household food waste

Alexandra Frost writes: Tens of millions of tons of food that leaves farms in the United States is wasted. Much of that waste happens at the industrial level, during harvesting, handling, storage, and processing, but a staggering amount of food gets wasted at home, scraped into the garbage can at the end of a meal or tossed after too long in the crisper drawer. According to a 2020 Penn State University study, almost a third of the food that American…

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A shadowy corner of international law is threatening climate action, UN expert warns

A shadowy corner of international law is threatening climate action, UN expert warns

Inside Climate News reports: Soon after Italy approved a ban on offshore oil drilling, in 2015, the country received some alarming news: A British oil company that had been planning to drill was suing the government, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. The company, called Rockhopper, brought its claim not in Italian courts but through a system of international arbitration that allows foreign investors to sue governments. Last year, the company won the case along with an order…

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Why is Britain retreating from global leadership on climate action?

Why is Britain retreating from global leadership on climate action?

Fred Pearce writes: In 1988, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher became the first world leader to take a stand on fighting climate change. Last month, exactly a quarter-century later, her successor Rishi Sunak tore up a cross-party consensus on the issue that had survived the intervening eight general elections and replaced it with a populist assault on what had been his own government’s environmental policies. Thatcher, who trained as a chemist before entering politics, took her stand at a packed…

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Lloyd’s of London warns extreme weather could incur $5tr of economic losses over five years

Lloyd’s of London warns extreme weather could incur $5tr of economic losses over five years

BusinessGreen reports: Extreme weather events could result in around $5tr of economic losses over five years as crops fail and water and food shortages escalate, insurer Lloyd’s of London has warned. A new data tool released by the insurance giant this week models the global economic impact of a “hypothetical but plausible increase” in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, leading to a series of food and water shocks over a five year period. The analysis predicts that…

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