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Category: Climate Change

Major glaciers, including in Yosemite and Kilimanjaro, will be gone within 23 years due to climate change, UN report warns

Major glaciers, including in Yosemite and Kilimanjaro, will be gone within 23 years due to climate change, UN report warns

CBS News reports: One-third of the world’s most iconic glaciers have been “condemned to disappear” within 23 years, according to a new report by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The fate of these glaciers, which include those in Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Dolomites, is all but sure, UNESCO warned, as carbon emissions cause them to rapidly deteriorate. There are roughly 18,600 glaciers in 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites, spanning nearly 25,500 square-miles and making up about…

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Why Bolsonaro’s stunning loss should give humanity a glimmer of hope

Why Bolsonaro’s stunning loss should give humanity a glimmer of hope

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman write: One of the ugliest pathologies in global politics at the moment is the bizarre connection between climate denialism and right-wing authoritarianism. With some exceptions, authoritarian politicians are the ones most prone to spinning conspiracy theories and lies about climate change while resisting the transition to a green energy future. This is why Jair Bolsonaro’s stunning defeat in Brazil’s presidential race is a major global event. It should afford us a moment of hopefulness that,…

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World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

The Guardian reports: The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe. Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high. He said the world was coming “very, very close…

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Strongman politics remain a major threat to climate action, experts warn

Strongman politics remain a major threat to climate action, experts warn

Inside Climate News reports: It hasn’t been a great year for democracy. In February, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ironfisted leader, shocked the world by invading Ukraine, which sparked a global energy crisis and left Western democracies scrambling to respond. Weeks later in April, strongman politician Viktor Orbán was reelected as the president of Hungary, despite being accused of rigging the election and using his power to jail and intimidate journalists. Soon after, far-right leaders with neo-facist roots were also elected into…

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A new climate reality is coming into view

A new climate reality is coming into view

David Wallace-Wells writes: You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives. Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic…

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War in Ukraine likely to speed, not slow, shift to renewable and nuclear power, IEA says

War in Ukraine likely to speed, not slow, shift to renewable and nuclear power, IEA says

The New York Times reports: The energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is likely to speed up rather than slow down the global transition away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner technologies like wind, solar and electric vehicles, the world’s leading energy agency said Thursday. While some countries have been burning more fossil fuels such as coal this year in response to natural gas shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, that effect is expected to be short-lived,…

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Climate pledges are falling short as we head toward environmental catastrophe

Climate pledges are falling short as we head toward environmental catastrophe

The New York Times reports: Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing Earth toward a future marked by more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction, according to a report issued Wednesday by the United Nations. Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their climate actions have followed through with more ambitious plans. The world’s top two polluters, China and the United States,…

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Climate change and the threat to civilization

Climate change and the threat to civilization

Daniel Steel, C. Tyler DesRoches, and Kian Mintz-Woo write: In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster”. Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that…

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The Mediterranean has become so hot, it’s forming carbonate crystals

The Mediterranean has become so hot, it’s forming carbonate crystals

Matt Simon writes: If you stand on the coast of Israel and gaze out across the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll spy deep-blue, calm waters that have sustained humans for millennia. Beneath the surface, though, something odd is unfolding: A process called stratification is messing with the way the sea processes carbon dioxide. Think of this part of the Mediterranean as a cake made of liquid, essentially. Fierce sunlight heats the top layer of water that sits on cooler, deeper layers below….

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Why some countries are leading the shift to green energy

Why some countries are leading the shift to green energy

Berkeley News reports: Oil and gas prices skyrocketed following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in spring 2022, creating a global energy crisis similar to the oil crisis of the 1970s. While some countries used the price shock to accelerate the transition to cleaner sources of energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal, others have responded by expanding the production of fossil fuels. A new study appearing today in the journal Science identifies the political factors that allow some countries to…

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Pakistan’s ‘End of Days’ 2022 monsoon season

Pakistan’s ‘End of Days’ 2022 monsoon season

  “Terrible devastation.” With those two words, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif summed-up the 2022 monsoon season in Pakistan, home to one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable societies … and one having made only scant contributions to the mounting carbon dioxide emissions at the heart of human-caused climate change. On top of historically damaging flooding in 2010, this year brought a far worse monsoon season to the country, which has the most glaciers (7,253) of any country outside of the…

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What does sustainable living look like? Maybe like Uruguay

What does sustainable living look like? Maybe like Uruguay

Noah Gallagher Shannon writes: Let’s say you live in the typical American household. It doesn’t exist, not in any sense except in a data set, but it’s easy enough to imagine. Maybe it’s your aunt’s, or your neighbor’s, or a bit like your own. Since more than half of us live outside big cities, it’s probably in a middle-class suburb, like Fox Lake, north of Chicago. You picked it because it’s affordable and not a terrible commute to your job….

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Nord Stream’s sabotage was a climate disaster. What it signals could be worse

Nord Stream’s sabotage was a climate disaster. What it signals could be worse

Inside Climate News reports: A growing number of international officials and global security experts believe Russia sabotaged its own natural gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, resulting in the release of an estimated 300,000 metric tons of methane gas into the atmosphere. Researchers say that amounts to the largest-ever release of the potent greenhouse gas during a single event, with an impact similar to the annual emissions of 1 million cars. Because methane is 81 times more potent than carbon…

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Climate change threatens up to 100% of trees in Australian cities, and most urban species worldwide

Climate change threatens up to 100% of trees in Australian cities, and most urban species worldwide

Photo: Jaana Dielenberg, Author provided By Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, Western Sydney University; Jaana Dielenberg, Charles Darwin University; Jonathan Lenoir, Université de Picardie Jules Verne (UPJV); Mark G Tjoelker, Western Sydney University, and Rachael Gallagher, Western Sydney University To anyone who has stepped off a hot pavement into a shady park, it will come as little surprise that trees (and shrubs) have a big cooling effect on cities. Our study published today in Nature Climate Change found climate change will put 90-100%…

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Criticism intensifies after big oil admits ‘gaslighting’ public over green aims

Criticism intensifies after big oil admits ‘gaslighting’ public over green aims

The Guardian reports: Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs. The communications were unveiled as part of a congressional hearing held in Washington DC, where an investigation into the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis produced documents…

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Pakistan’s devastating floodwaters could take six months to recede

Pakistan’s devastating floodwaters could take six months to recede

HuffPost reports: Catastrophic floods in Pakistan have submerged large swaths of farmland, swallowed whole villages and turned some communities into islands ― and the water likely won’t be gone anytime soon. Floodwaters will take an estimated three to six months to fully recede, Sindh province’s chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said in a statement, according to CNN. As of late August, the southern province had already gotten almost six times as much rainfall as its 30-year annual average. Those…

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