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Category: Climate Change

Coral collapse signals Earth’s first climate tipping point

Coral collapse signals Earth’s first climate tipping point

Science News reports: Earth has entered a grim new climate reality. The planet has officially passed its first climate tipping point. Relentlessly rising heat in the oceans has now pushed corals around the world past their limit, causing an unprecedented die-off of global reefs and threatening the livelihoods of nearly a billion people, scientists say in a new report published October 13. Even under the most optimistic future warming scenario — one in which global warming does not exceed 1.5…

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Marine mammals are dying in record numbers along the California coast

Marine mammals are dying in record numbers along the California coast

The Los Angeles Times reports: On a spit of sand 12 miles north of Santa Cruz, a small, emaciated sea lion lay on its side. The only sign of life was the deep press of its flippers against its belly, relaxing for a few seconds, then squeezing again. “That’s a classic sign of lepto,” said Giancarlo Rulli, a volunteer and spokesperson with the Marine Mammal Center, pointing to the young animal’s wretched self-embrace. The corkscrew-shaped bacteria, leptospirosis, causes severe abdominal…

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Pope Leo denounces people, like Trump, who deny climate change

Pope Leo denounces people, like Trump, who deny climate change

Politico reports: Pope Leo XIV denounced people who deny climate change on Wednesday, arguing that they are contributing to the destruction of God’s creation. “Some have chosen to deride the increasingly evident science of climate change, to ridicule those who speak of global warming and even to blame the poor for the very thing that affects them the most,” Leo said. The pope’s comments come just a week after U.S. President Donald Trump, in a speech at the United Nations,…

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Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to its expanding banned words list

Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to its expanding banned words list

Politico reports: The Energy Department has added “climate change,” “green” and “decarbonization” to its growing “list of words to avoid” at its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, according to an email issued Friday and obtained by POLITICO. The words on the DOE list are at the heart of EERE’s mission: It is the government’s largest investor in technologies that help reduce heat-trapping emissions that cause climate change as well as the hazardous pollution from fossil fuels. It is…

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Is AI throwing climate change under the bus?

Is AI throwing climate change under the bus?

  Spoiler alert: Yes, AI is bad for the climate. AI’s computing power relies on massive data centers that use enormous amounts of electricity and water. The Trump administration wants that energy to come from burning fossil fuels, rather than renewable sources. Where does that leave the climate and communities caught in the crosshairs? Inside Climate News executive editor Vernon Loeb sits down with Dan Gearino, ICN’s clean energy reporter; Arcelia Martin, who covers renewable energy in Texas; and Alabama…

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Bill McKibben says cheap solar could topple Big Oil’s power

Bill McKibben says cheap solar could topple Big Oil’s power

Yale Climate Connections reports: Bill McKibben is like that old culture of yeast you revive when you want to start a new batch of sourdough. He makes movements rise. McKibben is a cofounder and senior adviser of climate activist group 350.org, the founder of Third Act – a climate and democracy group led by U.S. residents over the age of 60 – and the principal instigator behind Sun Day, a nationwide community celebration of solar energy on September 21. His…

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The math of climate change tipping points

The math of climate change tipping points

Gregory Barber writes: In the 1960s, the Soviet climatologist and mathematician Mikhail Budyko set out to investigate the potential future of a planet on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. He started by looking some 600 million years into the past. Back then, some scientists claimed, the ancient planet was an iced-over snowball. Most researchers considered that a crackpot theory. Ice over the equator? Please. But Budkyo developed a mathematical model to back it up. If sea ice had been able…

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Scientists transform plastic waste into efficient carbon dioxide capture materials

Scientists transform plastic waste into efficient carbon dioxide capture materials

University of Copenhagen: Chemists at the University of Copenhagen have developed a method to convert plastic waste into a climate solution for efficient and sustainable CO2 capture. This is killing two birds with one stone as they address two of the world’s biggest challenges: plastic pollution and the climate crisis. The work is published in the journal Science Advances. As CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere keep rising regardless of years of political intentions to limit emissions, the world’s oceans are…

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Climate experts extensively debunk the Department of Energy’s recent report

Climate experts extensively debunk the Department of Energy’s recent report

Bill McKibben writes: As I watch the Trump White House and its orbiting debris field of oddballs and charlatans, a single long-ago movie scene keeps returning to my mind. In “Annie Hall,” waiting in line in a movie theatre, Woody Allen’s character becomes irritated by a guy behind him, an academic blowhard pontificating to his date about the culture. When he mentions the Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan, Allen erupts and then, in a delightful spectacle of comeuppance, produces McLuhan…

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Trump team’s contentious climate report ‘makes a mockery of science’, leading experts agree

Trump team’s contentious climate report ‘makes a mockery of science’, leading experts agree

The Guardian reports: A group of the US’s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility. More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences…

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Climate.gov got shut down by the Trump regime. Its creators plan to bring it back to life

Climate.gov got shut down by the Trump regime. Its creators plan to bring it back to life

The Guardian reports: Earlier this summer, access to climate.gov – one of the most widely used portals of climate information on the internet – was thwarted by the Trump administration, and its production team was fired in the process. The website offered years’ worth of accessibly written material on climate science. The site is technically still online but has been intentionally buried by the team of political appointees who now run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now, a team…

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Collapse of critical Atlantic current is more likely than previously thought, study finds

Collapse of critical Atlantic current is more likely than previously thought, study finds

The Guardian reports: The collapse of a critical Atlantic current can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, a study has concluded, making deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions even more urgent to avoid the catastrophic impact. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system. It brings sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. The Amoc was already known to be…

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The new American inequality separating those who can or cannot escape from insufferable heat

The new American inequality separating those who can or cannot escape from insufferable heat

Jeff Goodell writes: Summer is not what it used to be. On a hot August day, an outdoor concert can feel like a picnic in Death Valley. A trip to Disney World is a roller-coaster ride through unshaded hell. The Beach Boys’ “All Summer Long” sounds like a love letter from another planet. In the hottest regions of the country, such as Texas, where I live, the climate crisis is not only changing our world; it is also dividing it….

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From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes – and we will all feel them

From sea ice to ocean currents, Antarctica is now undergoing abrupt changes – and we will all feel them

By Nerilie Abram, Australian National University; Ariaan Purich, Monash University; Felicity McCormack, Monash University; Jan Strugnell, James Cook University, and Matthew England, UNSW Sydney Antarctica has long been seen as a remote, unchanging environment. Not any more. The ice-covered continent and the surrounding Southern Ocean are undergoing abrupt and alarming changes. Sea ice is shrinking rapidly, the floating glaciers known as ice shelves are melting faster, the ice sheets carpeting the continent are approaching tipping points and vital ocean currents…

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Earth’s continents are drying out at an unprecedented rate, new study warns

Earth’s continents are drying out at an unprecedented rate, new study warns

Science Alert reports: All over the world, fresh water is disappearing, and a new analysis reveals that much of it is entering the ocean, with drying continents now contributing more to the alarming rise in global sea levels than melting ice sheets. The research team, led by Earth system scientist Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar from FLAME University in India, says that urgent action is required to prepare for much drier times ahead, thanks to climate change and human groundwater depletion. Using more…

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‘Sponge city’: How Copenhagen is adapting to a wetter future

‘Sponge city’: How Copenhagen is adapting to a wetter future

E360 reports: In just two hours on July 2, 2011, a torrential, once-in-a-millennium storm battered and flooded Copenhagen, pounding parts of Denmark’s capital with more than 5 inches of rain. Critical infrastructure at the city’s largest hospital was swamped, as were major roads, basements, and businesses. The city that had been engaged with advanced sustainability planning for decades, it turned out, was woefully unprepared for the fierce rainfall, which caused $1.8 billion in damages. Shaken by the calamity, the city…

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