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Category: Climate Change

New York City’s gas ban takes fight against climate change to the kitchen

New York City’s gas ban takes fight against climate change to the kitchen

The New York Times reports: New York City is set to ban gas-powered stoves, space heaters and water boilers in all new buildings, a move that would significantly affect real estate development and construction in the nation’s largest city and could influence how cities around the world seek to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which drives climate change. The City Council is expected on Wednesday to approve a bill banning gas hookups in new buildings — effectively requiring all-electric…

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Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years

Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years

Science News reports: The demise of a West Antarctic glacier poses the world’s biggest threat to raise sea levels before 2100 — and an ice shelf that’s holding it back from the sea could collapse within three to five years, scientists reported December 13 at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in New Orleans. Thwaites Glacier is “one of the largest, highest glaciers in Antarctica — it’s huge,” Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the Boulder, Colo.–based Cooperative Institute for Research…

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When did scientists first warn humanity about climate change?

When did scientists first warn humanity about climate change?

Live Science reports: Climate change warnings are coming thick and fast from scientists; thousands have signed a paper stating that ignoring climate change would yield “untold suffering” for humanity, and more than 99% of scientific papers agree that humans are the cause. But climate change wasn’t always on everyone’s radar. So when did humans first become aware of climate change and the dangers it poses? Scientists first began to worry about climate change toward the end of the 1950s, Spencer…

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A PR giant is caught between climate pledges and fossil fuel clients

A PR giant is caught between climate pledges and fossil fuel clients

The New York Times reports: After last month’s United Nations-sponsored environmental conference in Glasgow, the public relations giant Edelman praised the participants for reaching “a new level of international consensus that climate change is an existential threat to humanity.” In a statement posted on its website, Edelman also called for “more scrutiny on corporate climate lobbying efforts” and argued that many of the pledges that resulted from the conference “fall far short of what is necessary to avert global climate…

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How the oil and gas industry rigs the system to keep winning

How the oil and gas industry rigs the system to keep winning

Naomi Oreskes and Jeff Nesbit write: Despite countless investigations, lawsuits, social shaming, and regulations dating back decades, the oil and gas industry remains formidable. After all, it has made consuming its products seem like a human necessity. It has confused the public about climate science, bought the eternal gratitude of one of America’s two main political parties, and repeatedly out-maneuvered regulatory efforts. And it has done all this in part by thinking ahead and then acting ruthlessly. While the rest…

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The threats to mountain ecosystems

The threats to mountain ecosystems

Mountain ecosystems are threatened by: 🚜Expansion of agriculture & settlements upslope🌳Logging for timber & fuel⛰️Replacement of alpine systems by highland pastures🌱#InvasiveSpecies💦#ClimateChange —@IPBES #GlobalAssessment#InternationalMountainDay pic.twitter.com/bqLcVFpJNq — ipbes (@IPBES) December 8, 2021

Carbon inheritance

Carbon inheritance

James Balog writes: Do any of us really have a right to be angry or frustrated about the climate- and-energy crisis without considering how we ourselves have contributed to it? Honestly? Truly? With eyes wide open? I don’t think so. We all play a role in producing the problem. No one inhabits a righteous, pure-and-holy aerie above the human condition. Not me, not you, not anybody. We all drive our chariots of carbon fire. We all rely on carbon fuels…

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A billion shellfish and other marine animals baked to death

A billion shellfish and other marine animals baked to death

Julia Rosen writes: During this summer’s stifling heat wave, Robin Fales patrolled the same sweep of shore on Washington’s San Juan Island every day at low tide. The stench of rotting sea life grew as temperatures edged toward triple digits—roughly 30 degrees above average—and Fales watched the beds of kelp she studies wilt and fade. “They were bleaching more than I had ever seen,” recalls Fales, a Ph.D. candidate and marine ecologist at the University of Washington. She didn’t know…

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Snow may vanish for years at a time in Mountain West with climate warming

Snow may vanish for years at a time in Mountain West with climate warming

The Washington Post reports: A new study provides a glimpse into the future of Western U.S. snow and the picture is far from rosy: In about 35 to 60 years, mountainous states are projected to be nearly snowless for years at a time if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked and climate change does not slow. Due to rising temperatures, the region has already lost 20 percent of its snowpack since the 1950s. That’s enough water to fill Lake Mead, the…

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At COP26, a consensus that developing nations need far more help countering climate change

At COP26, a consensus that developing nations need far more help countering climate change

Inside Climate News reports: When the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference ended in overtime two weeks ago, there was recognition that developing nations—which have contributed least but suffer most from climate change—need far greater funding to adapt. At COP15, held in 2009 in Copenhagen, the world’s wealthiest countries pledged to give poorer nations yearly climate funding, to reach an amount of at least $100 billion a year from 2020 through 2025. The $100 billion figure was a nice, round…

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Calling climate change a ‘crisis’ doesn’t do what you think

Calling climate change a ‘crisis’ doesn’t do what you think

Grist reports: The way people talk about our overheating planet has been getting pretty spicy. Bland, neutral-sounding phrases like global warming are out; evocative words like crisis and emergency are in. Some activists have argued that more urgent language will jolt people into realizing that climate change is already here, prompting a speedier effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions. As an opinion piece in the Guardian once put it: “Our planet is in crisis. But until we call it a…

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Ten million deaths a year

Ten million deaths a year

David Wallace-Wells writes: Not​ all deaths are created equal. In February 2020, the world began to panic about the novel coronavirus, which killed 2714 people that month. This made the news. In the same month, around 800,000 people died from the effects of air pollution. That didn’t. Novelty counts for a lot. At the start of the pandemic, it was considered unseemly to make comparisons like these. But comparing the value of human lives is one thing the machine of…

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How record wildfires are harming human health

How record wildfires are harming human health

Nature reports: On a cool September morning in San Francisco, a group of firefighters packed their gear into a bright red van. The sickly sweet odour of pine resin from a distant blaze hung in the air as the crew prepared to battle the rapidly growing Dixie fire, on its way towards becoming the largest single wildfire in California’s history. Sweeping across the Sierra Nevada mountains, it would come to scorch more than 3,900 square kilometres before crews fully contained…

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Canada’s tar sands: Destruction so vast and deep it challenges the existence of land and people

Canada’s tar sands: Destruction so vast and deep it challenges the existence of land and people

Inside Climate News reports: The first mine opened when Jean L’Hommecourt was a young girl, an open pit where an oil company had begun digging in the sandy soil for a black, viscous form of crude called bitumen. She and her family would pass the mine in their boat when they traveled up the Athabasca River, and the fumes from its processing plant would sting their eyes and burn their throats, despite the wet cloths their mother would drape over…

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Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary

Climate denial is waning on the right. What’s replacing it might be just as scary

The Guardian reports: Standing in front of the partial ruins of Rome’s Colosseum, Boris Johnson explained that a motive to tackle the climate crisis could be found in the fall of the Roman empire. Then, as now, he argued, the collapse of civilization hinged on the weakness of its borders. “When the Roman empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration – the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and…

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How the U.S. lost ground to China in the contest for clean energy

How the U.S. lost ground to China in the contest for clean energy

The New York Times reports: Tom Perriello saw it coming but could do nothing to stop it. André Kapanga too. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched helplessly as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines. It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which now…

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