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Category: Climate Change

One year later: The Texas freeze revealed a fragile energy system and inspired lasting misinformation

One year later: The Texas freeze revealed a fragile energy system and inspired lasting misinformation

Inside Climate News reports: Texas is recovering from this week’s winter storm, nearly a year after a much more severe set of storms led to a devastating failure of the electricity system and about 250 deaths. The February 2021 storms showed the fragility of the grid at a time when climate change is contributing to an increase in extreme weather. But the most enduring legacy of the 2021 blackouts may be the spread of a falsehood: the idea that the…

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Biden officials mount last-minute push for electric Postal Service trucks

Biden officials mount last-minute push for electric Postal Service trucks

Bloomberg reports: Biden administration officials are pushing the U.S. Postal Service to buy more electric vehicles instead of spending billions on gas-powered models as it replaces its aging fleet. The efforts, mounted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, follow separate warnings by activists that the Postal Service’s plan to buy mostly conventional delivery trucks downplayed the potential climate benefits of a shift to electric, non-emitting alternatives. The Postal Service’s plan “represents a crucial…

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Extreme heat in oceans ‘passed point of no return’ in 2014

Extreme heat in oceans ‘passed point of no return’ in 2014

The Guardian reports: Extreme heat in the world’s oceans passed the “point of no return” in 2014 and has become the new normal, according to research. Scientists analysed sea surface temperatures over the last 150 years, which have risen because of global heating. They found that extreme temperatures occurring just 2% of the time a century ago have occurred at least 50% of the time across the global ocean since 2014. In some hotspots, extreme temperatures occur 90% of the…

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The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is turning public land private, clearing the way for deforestation

The great Amazon land grab – how Brazil’s government is turning public land private, clearing the way for deforestation

A satellite captured large and small deforestation patches in Amazonas State in 2015. The forest loss has escalated since then. USGS/NASA Landsat data/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images By Gabriel Cardoso Carrero, University of Florida; Cynthia S. Simmons, University of Florida, and Robert T. Walker, University of Florida Imagine that several state legislators decide that Yellowstone National Park is too big. Also imagine that, working with federal politicians, they change the law to downsize the park by a million acres, which they…

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Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance

Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance

The Guardian reports: With a crucial vote pending over filibuster rules that would have made strong voting rights legislation feasible, Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema flew into Houston, Texas, for a fundraiser that drew dozens of fossil fuel chieftains, including Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm and ConocoPhillips chief executive Ryan Lance. The event was held on 18 January at the upmarket River Oaks Country Club. One executive told the Guardian that Sinema spoke for about half an hour and informed a…

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Climate change divides along racial lines. Can tackling it help address longstanding injustices?

Climate change divides along racial lines. Can tackling it help address longstanding injustices?

Jeremy Williams writes: When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, it was the city’s black neighbourhoods that bore the brunt of the storm. Twelve years later, it was the black districts of Houston that took the full force of Hurricane Harvey. In both cases, natural disasters compounded issues in neighbourhoods that were already stretched. Climate change and racism are two of the biggest challenges of the 21st Century. They are also strongly intertwined. There is a stark divide between…

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Rare and ancient trees are key to a healthy forest

Rare and ancient trees are key to a healthy forest

Science reports: About 800 years ago, a giant oak tree in England’s Sherwood Forest helped shelter Robin Hood from the corrupt sheriff of Nottingham. Though the tale is likely a myth, the tree is not: It still stands as one of the world’s oldest oaks. Such ancient trees—some dating back more than 3000 years—are key to the survival of their forests, new research shows. Rare trees—some so scarce scientists have yet to find them—are also critical to forest health, another…

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How climate change and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline undergirds the Ukraine-Russia standoff

How climate change and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline undergirds the Ukraine-Russia standoff

Inside Climate News reports: As tensions simmer on the Ukraine-Russia border, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has become an emblem of the energy and climate issues underlying the conflict—even though it has yet to deliver a molecule of natural gas. Last week, the U.S. State Department vowed that Gazprom’s $11 billion conduit beneath the Baltic Sea to Germany would never open if Russia invades Ukraine. Much of eastern Europe, the environmental movement and even the U.S. oil industry opposed Nord…

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Coffee may become more scarce and expensive thanks to climate change – new research

Coffee may become more scarce and expensive thanks to climate change – new research

Colombia’s coffee region: the country could lose two thirds of its best coffee-growing land. Javier Crespo / shutterstock By Denis J Murphy, University of South Wales The world could lose half of its best coffee-growing land under a moderate climate change scenario. Brazil, which is the currently world’s largest coffee producer, will see its most suitable coffee-growing land decline by 79%. That’s one key finding of a new study by scientists in Switzerland, who assessed the potential impacts of climate…

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A federal judge canceled major oil and gas leases over climate change

A federal judge canceled major oil and gas leases over climate change

NPR reports: Late last year, just days after pledging to cut fossil fuels at international climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, the Biden administration held the largest oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. On Thursday, a federal judge invalidated that sale in the Gulf of Mexico, saying the administration didn’t adequately consider the costs to the world’s climate. The administration used an analysis conducted under former President Donald Trump that environmental groups alleged was critically flawed. The decision represents…

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Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary

Earth is now a coalmine, and every wild bird is a canary

Kim Heacox writes: When the poet Mary Oliver wrote “Instructions for living a life,” she reminded us: “Pay attention. Be astounded. Tell about it.” This past autumn, wildlife officials announced that a bird, a male bar-tailed godwit, flew nonstop across the Pacific Ocean 8,100 miles from Alaska to Australia in just under 10 days. Fitted with a small solar-powered satellite tag, the godwit achieved “a land bird flight record”. But of course godwits have been doing this for centuries. Come…

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Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago?

Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago?

Nature reports: The missing earthworms were a sign. As archaeologist Harvey Weiss and his colleagues excavated a site in northeast Syria, they found a buried layer of wind-blown silt so barren there was hardly any evidence of earthworms at work during that ancient era. Something drastic had happened thousands of years ago — something that choked the land with dust for decades, leaving a blanket of soil too inhospitable even for earthworms. The drought hit in roughly 2200 BC, when the…

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Oil firms accused of scare tactics after claiming climate lawsuits ‘a threat to U.S.’

Oil firms accused of scare tactics after claiming climate lawsuits ‘a threat to U.S.’

The Guardian reports: US oil firms have been accused of using scare tactics after telling a federal court on Tuesday that lawsuits alleging fossil fuel companies lied about the climate crisis could threaten America’s oil supply. At a closely watched appeals court hearing to decide whether a lawsuit by the city of Baltimore should be heard in state or federal court, an attorney for BP, Exxon, Shell and other energy firms painted the case as a threat to America’s energy…

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Scientists target PR and ad firms they accuse of spreading disinformation on climate change

Scientists target PR and ad firms they accuse of spreading disinformation on climate change

Reuters reports: More than 450 scientists on Wednesday called on the executives of major advertising and public relations firms to drop their fossil fuel clients and stop what the scientists said was their spread of disinformation around climate change. They sent a letter to the executives of major global public relations and advertising firms, including conglomerate WPP, Edelman and IPG, as well as the CEOs of their clients who tout sustainability goals including Unilever, Amazon and Microsoft. “As scientists who…

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U.S. military emits more CO2 into atmosphere than entire countries like Denmark or Portugal

U.S. military emits more CO2 into atmosphere than entire countries like Denmark or Portugal

Sonner Kehrt reports: In the fall of 2018, Neta C. Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University, prepared to teach a class on climate change designed to help students think about the issue in a big-picture way. Crawford’s research expertise is in war, so she wanted to include a statistic on the military’s contribution to greenhouse gases. “I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should just tell them what the emissions are for the U.S. military,’” Crawford says. “It was meant…

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Inspired by King’s words, experts say the fight for climate justice anywhere is a fight for climate justice everywhere

Inspired by King’s words, experts say the fight for climate justice anywhere is a fight for climate justice everywhere

Inside Climate News reports: Terms like “environmental racism” or “environmental justice” were not yet part of the national lexicon when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. And while insider records reveal that the nation’s oil and gas lobby was being briefed that same year on the dangers of rising greenhouse gas emissions, the term “global warming” wasn’t credited with being coined until 1975, seven years after the civil…

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