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Category: Climate Change

More than two dozen cities and states are suing Big Oil over climate change – they just got a boost from the US Supreme Court

More than two dozen cities and states are suing Big Oil over climate change – they just got a boost from the US Supreme Court

By Patrick Parenteau, Vermont Law & Graduate School and John Dernbach, Widener University Honolulu has lost more than 5 miles of its famous beaches to sea level rise and storm surges. Sunny-day flooding during high tides makes many city roads impassable, and water mains for the public drinking water system are corroding from saltwater because of sea level rise. The damage has left the city and county spending millions of dollars on repairs and infrastructure to try to adapt to…

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World’s wheat supply at risk of a dangerous shock due to heat and drought, study warns

World’s wheat supply at risk of a dangerous shock due to heat and drought, study warns

NBC News reports: Extreme heat waves and drought due to climate change have the potential to shock the global food supply and send prices soaring, according to a new study. The research, published Friday in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, assesses a worst-case scenario in which extreme weather hits two breadbasket regions in the same year, hammering winter wheat crops in both the U.S. Midwest and northeastern China. Winter wheat is planted in the fall, goes dormant in…

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State Farm stops offering insurance in California because of ‘rapidly growing catastrophe exposure’

State Farm stops offering insurance in California because of ‘rapidly growing catastrophe exposure’

The New York Times reports: The climate crisis is becoming a financial crisis. This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state. Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes. “Risk has a price,” said Roy…

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You’ve never heard of him, but he’s remaking the pollution fight

You’ve never heard of him, but he’s remaking the pollution fight

The New York Times reports: This spring the Biden administration proposed or implemented eight major environmental regulations, including the nation’s toughest climate rule, rolling out what experts say are the most ambitious limits on polluting industries by the government in a single season. Piloting all of that is a man most Americans have never heard of, running an agency that is even less well known. But Richard Revesz has begun to change the fundamental math that underpins federal regulations designed…

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Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material

Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material

The Washington Post reports: Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution. The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon,…

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Drastic climate action is the best course for economic growth, study finds

Drastic climate action is the best course for economic growth, study finds

Yale Climate Connections reports: For decades, many economists’ analyses seemed to justify inaction on weaning the economy from fossil fuels, saying the astronomical cost of such rapid transformation would strangle economic growth. These experts were heeded over scientists who warned that acting too slowly would court climate catastrophe. But in recent years, more economists have begun to agree that the short-term costs of aggressive action are not as high as once thought, while the long-term costs of inaction are much…

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How Twitter became a haven for climate misinformation

How Twitter became a haven for climate misinformation

Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson write: On World Meteorological Day in March, the UN Climate Change Twitter account posted an anodyne tweet reminding people that “every bit of additional global warming worsens climate impacts.” But thanks to Elon Musk’s new paid blue checkmark system, the most prominent replies to it are flooded with nonsense like “these commies are doubling down” and calls to “stop globalist fake alarmism.” This is just one way in which Twitter is rapidly becoming a hellscape for climate scientists who…

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As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

Nicola Jones writes: Off the coast of southeastern China, one particular fish species is booming: the oddly named Bombay duck, a long, slim fish with a distinctive, gaping jaw and a texture like jelly. When research ships trawl the seafloor off that coast, they now catch upwards of 440 pounds of the gelatinous fish per hour — a more than tenfold increase over a decade ago. “It’s monstrous,” says University of British Columbia fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly of the explosion…

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Heat will likely soar to record levels in next five years, new analysis says

Heat will likely soar to record levels in next five years, new analysis says

The New York Times reports: Global temperatures are likely to soar to record highs over the next five years, driven by human-caused warming and a climate pattern known as El Niño, forecasters at the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday. The record for Earth’s hottest year was set in 2016. There is a 98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed that, the forecasters said, while the average from 2023 to ’27 will almost…

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The upper atmosphere is cooling, prompting new climate concerns

The upper atmosphere is cooling, prompting new climate concerns

Fred Pearce writes: There is a paradox at the heart of our changing climate. While the blanket of air close to the Earth’s surface is warming, most of the atmosphere above is becoming dramatically colder. The same gases that are warming the bottom few miles of air are cooling the much greater expanses above that stretch to the edge of space. This paradox has long been predicted by climate modelers, but only recently quantified in detail by satellite sensors. The…

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Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind

Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind

Shutterstock By Andrew Blakers, Australian National University Last year, the world built more new solar capacity than every other power source combined. Solar is now growing much faster than any other energy technology in history. How fast? Fast enough to completely displace fossil fuels from the entire global economy before 2050. The rise and rise of cheap solar is our best hope for rapidly mitigating climate change. Total solar capacity tipped over 1 terawatt (1,000 gigawatts) for the first time…

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Climate crisis deniers target scientists for vicious abuse on Musk’s Twitter

Climate crisis deniers target scientists for vicious abuse on Musk’s Twitter

The Observer reports: Some of the UK’s top scientists are struggling to deal with what they describe as a huge rise in abuse from climate crisis deniers on Twitter since the social media platform was taken over by Elon Musk last year. Since then, key figures who ensured “trusted” content was prioritised have been sacked, according to one scientist, and Twitter’s sustainability arm has vanished. At the same time several users with millions of followers who propagate false statements about…

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Is the GOP war on ‘woke finances’ delaying climate action?

Is the GOP war on ‘woke finances’ delaying climate action?

Inside Climate News reports: Republican-led states are asking federal regulators to block the world’s largest investment firm from imposing climate-related financial practices on utilities. While the GOP’s war on so-called “woke finances” has had limited success in stemming the flow of money into clean energy, there’s growing evidence the political pressure could be delaying climate action. On Wednesday, Republican attorneys general from 17 states filed a motion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking the agency to stop BlackRock from…

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Manchin attacked EPA’s new rules that could cost him millions

Manchin attacked EPA’s new rules that could cost him millions

Politico reports: When Sen. Joe Manchin upbraided EPA on Wednesday for requiring power plants to reduce their carbon emissions, he didn’t mention that the agency’s rules could threaten his personal income. The West Virginia Democrat vowed to oppose President Joe Biden’s EPA nominees because the agency’s rules being proposed Thursday could push coal- and gas-fired power plants “out of existence,” he said. The risk to one plant, in particular, could jeapordize a lucrative source of money for Manchin. His family…

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Chemical plants in China and U.S. emit climate super-pollutant that’s 273 times more potent than CO2

Chemical plants in China and U.S. emit climate super-pollutant that’s 273 times more potent than CO2

Inside Climate News reports: Twelve chemical plants in China and the United States emit a potent climate pollutant with collective emissions equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 31 million automobiles, according to a report published on Thursday by Global Efficiency Intelligence, an industrial decarbonization research and consulting firm based in Tampa. The emissions, which also deplete the earth’s protective ozone layer, could be effectively eliminated at little cost, the report’s authors conclude. The 11 Chinese plants and one U.S….

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Why fusion power won’t avert climate catastrophe

Why fusion power won’t avert climate catastrophe

Philip Ball writes: One look at your energy bills this winter might have convinced you that the 1950s idea that electricity would, in the near future, become “too cheap to meter” was not so much a false promise as a sick joke. That over-excited claim was prompted by hopes that nuclear fusion – the process triggered in an uncontrolled manner in hydrogen bombs – would soon be harnessed for power generation. In the type of nuclear power we have today,…

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