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Category: Climate Change

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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Oil, gas exploration and deforestation threaten Africa’s great carbon sink

Oil, gas exploration and deforestation threaten Africa’s great carbon sink

Olivia Rosane writes: In the center of the African continent, an immense and vital forest currently thrives. As the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest, the Congo Basin covers six countries and around 500 million acres–an area one-fourth the size of the contiguous U.S. It is a haven for both human and natural diversity, hosting more than 150 different ethnic groups and one-fifth of all Earth’s species. It directly supports the livelihoods of the 60 million people who live in or near…

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The year the U.S. became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas

The year the U.S. became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas

Inside Climate News reports: When environmentalists look back on 2022, they might remember it as the year the United States finally passed a major climate change law. Some advocates worry, however, that this significant victory is being undermined by a long-term trend that accelerated while that law—the Inflation Reduction Act—was being negotiated. In the first half of the year, the United States became the world’s top exporter of liquified natural gas, or LNG. Then, in September, crude oil exports hit…

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These lies about climate change just wouldn’t die in 2022

These lies about climate change just wouldn’t die in 2022

USA Today reports: There was a time – a recent time – when concern about the environment was relatively bipartisan, not a cultural flashpoint. A Republican, President Richard Nixon, established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. In the 1980s and 1990s, bipartisan majorities voted to strengthen the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, led by a Republican – Rhode Island’s Sen. John Chafee. Those days are gone, and today a wide range of misleading statements and outright lies…

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Brazil’s Lula picks Amazon defender for environment minister

Brazil’s Lula picks Amazon defender for environment minister

The Associated Press reports: Brazil´s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Thursday that Amazon activist Marina Silva will be the country´s next minister of environment. The announcement indicates the new administration will prioritize cracking down on illegal deforestation even if it means running afoul of powerful agribusiness interests. Both attended the recent U.N. climate conference in Egypt, where Lula promised cheering crowds “zero deforestation” in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key to fighting climate change, by…

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