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Category: Climate Change

Biden tours Florida hurricane damage: ‘Nobody can deny impacts of climate crisis’

Biden tours Florida hurricane damage: ‘Nobody can deny impacts of climate crisis’

The Guardian reports: Joe Biden said that no one can deny the impacts of the climate crisis anymore after he visited Florida on Saturday and surveyed the damage left behind by Hurricane Idalia. Speaking to reporters in front of fallen trees and debris, the US president pointed to this year’s extreme weather events and disasters, saying: “Nobody can deny the impact of climate crisis. There’s no real intelligence to deny the impacts of the climate crisis anymore.” “Just look around…

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What your insurer is trying to tell you about climate change

What your insurer is trying to tell you about climate change

Juliette Kayyem writes: Having worked for decades in conservation nonprofits, Beth Pratt, who lives high in the Sierra Foothills in Midpines, California, understands how climate change is putting her home at ever greater risk. Her community is experiencing what she calls “climate whiplash”: forest fires, record heat, massive snow dumps, mudslides, rockslides, and even a tornado. When Pratt, now 54, bought her 1,400-square-foot house in 1999, she thought the setting was ideal: on a big lot near Yosemite National Park….

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Teaching endangered ibises a new and safer migration path

Teaching endangered ibises a new and safer migration path

The New York Times reports: Johannes Fritz, a maverick Austrian biologist, needed to come up with a plan, again, if he was going to prevent his rare and beloved birds from going extinct. To survive the European winter, the northern bald ibis — which had once disappeared entirely from the wild on the continent — needs to migrate south for the winter, over the Alps, before the mountains become impassable. But shifting climate patterns have delayed when the birds begin…

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Human activities — not volcanic eruptions — are the primary cause of climate change

Human activities — not volcanic eruptions — are the primary cause of climate change

Patrick Pester writes: The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption in January 2022 was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Detonating underwater with the force of 100 Hiroshima bombs, the blast sent millions of tons of water vapor high into the atmosphere. Some commentators have speculated in recent weeks that the volcano is to blame for searing summer temperatures and are even using the volcano to cast doubt on the role humans are playing in climate change, as reported…

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‘Catastrophic’ loss: Huge colonies of emperor penguins saw no chicks survive last year as sea ice disappears

‘Catastrophic’ loss: Huge colonies of emperor penguins saw no chicks survive last year as sea ice disappears

CNN reports: As rapidly warming global temperatures help push Antarctica’s sea ice to unprecedented lows, it’s threatening the very existence of one of the continent’s most iconic species: emperor penguins. Four out of five emperor penguin colonies analyzed in the Bellingshausen Sea, west of the Antarctic Peninsula, saw no chicks survive last year as the area experienced an enormous loss of sea ice, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment. This widespread “catastrophic…

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What happens when the heat repeats?

What happens when the heat repeats?

Kylie Mohr writes: For two years now, scientists, shellfish managers, and tribes have been working to understand how the heat dome that settled over the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2021 affected the places where the ocean and land meet. That heat wave was like nothing in memory. Temperatures soaring as high as 121 degrees Fahrenheit buckled roads, melted power cables, and scorched forests. By the time the heat subsided, 650 people had died in the U.S. and Canada,…

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Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’

Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as offsets deemed ‘worthless’

The Guardian reports: Carbon credit speculators could lose billions as scientific evidence shows many offsets they have bought have no environmental worth and have become stranded assets. Amid growing evidence that huge numbers of carbon credits do nothing to mitigate global heating and can sometimes be linked to alleged human rights concerns, there is a growing pile of carbon credits equivalent to the annual emissions of Japan, the world’s fifth largest polluter, that are unused in the unregulated voluntary market,…

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‘Climate change agenda is a hoax,’ says surging GOP candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, at debate

‘Climate change agenda is a hoax,’ says surging GOP candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, at debate

Rolling Stone reports: Vivek Ramaswamy presents himself as a man for this political moment — a 38-year-old entrepreneur without the baggage of a politician, who is not a “SuperPAC puppet” (as he calls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) and can tell the truth. But faced with an unexpected question about climate change at the first GOP presidential primary debate, Ramaswamy chose to lie. “The climate-change agenda,” he declared, “is a hoax.” Republicans being wrong on climate change is nothing new, of…

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How bad do things have to get for Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency?

How bad do things have to get for Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency?

Eric Lutz writes: A summer of extreme weather in the United States is coming to a close with a one-two punch of historic disasters: the Maui wildfires, which have displaced thousands, killed more than a hundred, and left more than 800 still missing; and Hilary, the hurricane-turned-tropical storm that is bringing catastrophic flooding to Southern California and the desert southwest. The devastation from both is ongoing, but they carry the same message as the hazardous heat and stinging smoke that…

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White House is torn over Joe Manchin’s fury at climate law he crafted

White House is torn over Joe Manchin’s fury at climate law he crafted

The Washington Post reports: The obscure federal agency that oversees the nation’s immense tangle of pipelines, power lines and transfer stations is unfamiliar to most Americans. But it has very much been on Sen. Joe Manchin III’s mind. By the end of last year, the West Virginia Democrat had become deeply displeased with how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was helping the Biden administration advance its aggressive climate goals. Manchin, a staunch ally of fossil fuel interests, was particularly critical…

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Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

Dead trees around the world are shocking scientists

Katarina Zimmer writes: As we hang far above the ground on a sunny October day, it would be easy to focus on the blue crests of hills and the small towns tucked in between. But Richard Peters, who’s with me inside a metal gondola mounted onto the maneuverable arm of a crane, points me instead to the tree canopy below, flushed with the gold and copper shades of fall. “That guy is definitely on his way to die,” he says…

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Ancient fires, spurred by human activity, drove large mammals extinct, study suggests

Ancient fires, spurred by human activity, drove large mammals extinct, study suggests

The New York Times reports: Wildfires are getting worse. Parts of the United States, scientists say, are experiencing wildfires three times as often — and four times as big — as they were 20 years ago. This summer alone, smoke from Canadian blazes turned North American skies an unearthly orange, “fire whirls” were seen in the Mojave Desert and raging flames in Maui led to disaster. Records of the distant past can reveal what once drove increased fire activity and…

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Texas and others create ‘punitive’ barriers to EV transition

Texas and others create ‘punitive’ barriers to EV transition

Politico reports: Electric vehicle drivers in Texas have started to get some bad news in the mail. Starting in September, they’ll have to pay the state an extra $200 each year to register their climate-friendly cars and trucks. And if they want to buy a new EV, that will cost $400 upfront. State lawmakers imposed the new fee on EVs this spring to replace gasoline taxes lost to the switch to battery-powered vehicles. Supporters say it ensures every driver pays…

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Canada’s raging fires have burned an area larger than Greece

Canada’s raging fires have burned an area larger than Greece

The Washington Post reports: Wildfires continue to rage in Canada, burning twice as much land as any previous season, an area equivalent to Alabama or nine Connecticuts. The blazes have charred nearly 33 million acres (13.3 million hectares) across the country, with hundreds of large fires still burning. The situation is not improving. Fires from coast-to-coast have stretched firefighting forces thin, requiring help from the Canadian military. Several massive conflagrations in the Northwest Territories have imperiled a number of towns…

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The dawn of a new climate industry

The dawn of a new climate industry

Robinson Meyer writes: What does the new American climate policy look like? Last week, we got a better sense. On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled a massive investment — more than $1.2 billion — that aims to create a new industry in the United States out of whole cloth that will specialize in removing carbon from the atmosphere. As President Joe Biden’s climate law hits its one-year anniversary, the investment shows the audacity, the potential, and — ultimately — the…

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The clean energy future is arriving faster than you think

The clean energy future is arriving faster than you think

The New York Times reports: Delivery vans in Pittsburgh. Buses in Milwaukee. Cranes loading freight at the Port of Los Angeles. Every municipal building in Houston. All are powered by electricity derived from the sun, wind or other sources of clean energy. Across the country, a profound shift is taking place that is nearly invisible to most Americans. The nation that burned coal, oil and gas for more than a century to become the richest economy on the planet, as…

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