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Category: Climate Change

Native seed banks in the U.S. have insufficient supplies to mitigate the effects of climate change

Native seed banks in the U.S. have insufficient supplies to mitigate the effects of climate change

NPR reports: In the wake of wildfires, floods and droughts, restoring damaged landscapes and habitats requires native seeds. The U.S. doesn’t have enough, according to a report released Thursday. “Time is of the essence to bank the seeds and the genetic diversity our lands hold,” the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) report said. As climate change worsens extreme weather events, the damage left behind by those events will become more severe. That, in turn, will create greater…

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Elephants, the gardeners of Africa’s rainforests, play a vital role in promoting carbon retention

Elephants, the gardeners of Africa’s rainforests, play a vital role in promoting carbon retention

Anthropocene magazine reports: Elephants been called a lot of things: the world’s largest land creatures, imperiled, majestic, charismatic. Now scientists have a few more terms for describing them: foresters and climate champions. In the jungles of equatorial Africa, scientists report that forest elephants play an important role in shaping the forest around them as they vacuum up as much as 200 kilograms worth of plants every day. Their appetites influence not just what trees survive but how much carbon the…

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Could independents upend U.S. climate politics?

Could independents upend U.S. climate politics?

Alexander Burns writes: A small band of political strategists gathered last September in a restaurant near Dupont Circle to meet a visitor from the other side of the world. Everyone at the table was immersed in the battle against climate change; nearly all had been involved in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the clean-energy law Democrats enacted over the summer. Their guest was Byron Fay, an Australian operative who had arrived in Washington with an exotic political scheme in mind….

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How wind, sun and water can power the world

How wind, sun and water can power the world

The Guardian reports: “Combustion is the problem – when you’re continuing to burn something, that’s not solving the problem,” says Prof Mark Jacobson. The Stanford University academic has a compelling pitch: the world can rapidly get 100% of its energy from renewable sources with, as the title of his new book says, “no miracles needed”. Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and…

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Changing the language of climate change

Changing the language of climate change

Scientific American reports: Climate change is already disrupting the lives of billions of people. What was once considered a problem for the future is raging all around us right now. This reality has helped convince a majority of the public that we must act to limit the suffering. In an August 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of Americans said they had experienced at least one heat wave, flood, drought or wildfire in the past year. Among…

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An ancient farming technique could stabilize crop yields under changing conditions

An ancient farming technique could stabilize crop yields under changing conditions

Science Alert reports: As climates around the world grow harsher and increasingly unpredictable, concerns are increasing over our world’s food security. Already, yields of staple crops like maize and wheat are dropping in low-latitude tropical regions and in dry and drying regions such as African drylands and parts of the Mediterranean. Wealthy countries are far from immune. Australia experienced almost a 30 percent crop yield decline between 1990 and 2015 due to reduced rainfall. While studying food diversity in 2011,…

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Forests managed by Indigenous peoples are some of the Amazon’s last remaining carbon sinks

Forests managed by Indigenous peoples are some of the Amazon’s last remaining carbon sinks

Inside Climate News reports: Forests managed by Indigenous peoples and other local communities in the Amazon region draw vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere while the rest of the rainforest has become a net source of the greenhouse gas, a new report has found. The discrepancy results from differences in deforestation rates between the two types of land. The study from the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit global research organization focused on solving environmental challenges, adds…

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Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023

Warning of unprecedented heatwaves as El Niño set to return in 2023

The Guardian reports: The return of the El Niño climate phenomenon later this year will cause global temperatures to rise “off the chart” and deliver unprecedented heatwaves, scientists have warned. Early forecasts suggest El Niño will return later in 2023, exacerbating extreme weather around the globe and making it “very likely” the world will exceed 1.5C of warming. The hottest year in recorded history, 2016, was driven by a major El Niño. It is part of a natural oscillation driven…

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Europe is winning the energy war with Putin, but food prices are likely to rise

Europe is winning the energy war with Putin, but food prices are likely to rise

Politico reports: Halfway through the first winter of Europe’s energy war with Russia, only one side is winning. When Vladimir Putin warned in September that Europeans would “freeze” if the West stuck to its energy sanctions against Russia, Moscow’s fossil fuel blackmail appeared to be going exactly to plan. European wholesale gas prices were north of €200 per megawatt hour, around 10 times higher than they had been for most of 2021. Plans were drawn up to cut gas demand…

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Exxon knew: Its scientists predicted global warming, even as company cast doubts, study finds

Exxon knew: Its scientists predicted global warming, even as company cast doubts, study finds

The New York Times reports: In the late 1970s, scientists at Exxon fitted one of the company’s supertankers with state-of-the-art equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and in the air, an early example of substantial research the oil giant conducted into the science of climate change. A new study published Thursday in the journal Science found that over the next decades, Exxon’s scientists made remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet….

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Rare earth mining may be key to our renewable energy future. But at what cost?

Rare earth mining may be key to our renewable energy future. But at what cost?

Carolyn Gramling writes: In spring 1949, three prospectors armed with Geiger counters set out to hunt for treasure in the arid mountains of southern Nevada and southeastern California. In the previous century, those mountains yielded gold, silver, copper and cobalt. But the men were looking for a different kind of treasure: uranium. The world was emerging from World War II and careening into the Cold War. The United States needed uranium to build its nuclear weapons arsenal. Mining homegrown sources…

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Relentless rise of ocean heat content drives deadly extremes

Relentless rise of ocean heat content drives deadly extremes

Inside Climate News reports: Ocean heat content reached a new record high for the fourth year in a row, scientists said Wednesday as they released their annual measurements of ocean heat accumulating down to a depth of more than a mile. The findings published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science show that just in the past year, the planet’s seas absorbed about 10 Zetta joules of heat—equivalent to 100 times the world’s total annual electricity production. The scientists found…

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Energy firms’ fossil fuel investments radically conflict with climate change obligations

Energy firms’ fossil fuel investments radically conflict with climate change obligations

Byline Times reports: The world’s largest fossil fuel firms are spending huge sums of money on new projects that will accelerate the likelihood of climate catastrophe, according to a new report released by the financial think tank, Carbon Tracker Initiative. The report examined the future investment plans of major fossil fuel companies, assessing their compatibility with international climate obligations set at the 2015 Paris Agreement – finding that future investments were significantly misaligned with the 1.5°C target. Under the net…

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Scientists report a dramatic drop in the extent of Antarctic sea ice

Scientists report a dramatic drop in the extent of Antarctic sea ice

Inside Climate News reports: The new year started with the familiar refrain of climate extremes, as scientists with the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported Jan. 3 that the sea ice around Antarctica dropped to its lowest extent on record for early January. “The current low sea ice extent … is extreme, and frankly we are working to understand it,” said Antarctica expert Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist with the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University…

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John Kerry: Rich countries must respond to developing world anger over climate

John Kerry: Rich countries must respond to developing world anger over climate

The Guardian reports: People in developing countries are feeling increasingly angry and “victimised” by the climate crisis, the US climate envoy John Kerry has warned, and rich countries must respond urgently. “I’ve been chronicling the increased frustration and anger of island states and vulnerable countries and small African nations and others around the world that feel victimised by the fact that they are a minuscule component of emissions,” he said. “And yet [they are] paying a very high price. Seventeen…

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80% of new cars sold in Norway are now electric vehicles

80% of new cars sold in Norway are now electric vehicles

CBS News reports: Electric vehicles accounted for almost four out of every five new car registrations in Norway last year, setting a new record, according to figures released Monday. Led by U.S. carmaker Tesla, which topped the list with a 12.2% market share, 138,265 new electric cars were sold in the Scandinavian country last year, representing 79.3% of total passenger car sales, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said in a statement. In doing so, Norway, which is both a major…

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