Attention to the Unseen

Engine No. 1 wants Exxon to focus less on fossil fuels. AP Photo/Matthew Brown By Mark DesJardine, Penn State and Tima Bansal, Western University One of the most expensive Wall Street shareholder battles on record could signal a big shift in how hedge funds and other investors view sustainability. Exxon Mobil Corp. has been fending off a so-called proxy fight from a hedge fund known as Engine No. 1, which blames the energy giant’s poor performance in recent years on…

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By Mojtaba Sadegh, Boise State University; John Abatzoglou, University of California, Merced, and Mohammad Reza Alizadeh, McGill University The Western U.S. appears headed for another dangerous fire season, and a new study shows that even high mountain areas once considered too wet to burn are at increasing risk as the climate warms. Nearly two-thirds of the U.S. West is in severe to exceptional drought right now, including large parts of the Rocky Mountains, Cascades and Sierra Nevada. The situation is…

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NPR reports: The average temperature on Earth is now consistently 1 degree Celsius hotter than it was in the late 1800s, and that temperature will keep rising toward the critical 1.5-degree Celsius benchmark over the next five years, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. Scientists warn that humans must keep the average annual global temperature from lingering at or above 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the most catastrophic and long-term effects of climate change. Those include…

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The big wildcard for sea level rise is Antarctica. James Eades/Unsplash By Julie Brigham-Grette, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Andrea Dutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken draws attention to climate change in the Arctic at meetings with other national officials this week in Iceland, an even greater threat looms on the other side of the planet. New research shows it is Antarctica that may force a reckoning between the choices countries make today about greenhouse…

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Inside Climate News reports: Fossil fuel companies’ messaging on climate change has revolved around some common refrains: Energy demand must grow to alleviate global poverty, so fossil fuels are critical to economic growth. Technological innovation is key to limiting emissions, and consumers can do their part by using energy efficiently. New research shows that these arguments were carefully cultivated over the course of decades by ExxonMobil, which beginning in the early 2000s shifted away from outright obfuscation of climate science…

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The Guardian reports: Humanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases are shrinking the stratosphere, a new study has revealed. The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 metres since the 1980s, the researchers found, and will thin by about another kilometre by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and radio communications. The discovery is the latest to show the profound impact of humans on the planet….

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Bill McKibben writes: We’re used to the idea that CO2—one carbon atom, two oxygen atoms—is a dangerous molecule. Indeed, driving down carbon-dioxide emissions has become the way that many leaders and journalists describe our task. But CH4—one carbon atom combined with four hydrogen atoms, otherwise known as methane—is carbon dioxide’s evil twin. It traps heat roughly eighty times more efficiently than carbon dioxide does, which explains why the fact that it’s spiking in the atmosphere scares scientists so much. Despite…

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