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Category: Climate Change

A $7 trillion climate change warning to the stock market from its biggest shareholder

A $7 trillion climate change warning to the stock market from its biggest shareholder

CNBC reports: The evidence of climate change — from global temperature records to Arctic ice melt, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding — is accelerating. So is investment pressure on corporations. In the past week, Exxon Mobil was targeted by activist investors, as well as CalSTRS, one of the nation’s largest pension funds. New York State’s $226 billion pension fund announced a plan to potentially divest from oil and gas stocks in the years ahead. The world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, issued…

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Biden picks former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as White House climate czar

Biden picks former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as White House climate czar

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Gina McCarthy, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and now leads a major advocacy group, to coordinate the new administration’s domestic climate agenda from a senior perch at the White House. Three individuals familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the decision had not been publicly announced, confirmed that the final decision had been made to tap McCarthy for the post. McCarthy is…

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How climate change is ushering in a new era of pandemics

How climate change is ushering in a new era of pandemics

Jeff Goodell writes: Jennifer Jones spent most of her summer at home, as so many of us did, trying to avoid the plague. Jones, 45, lives in Tavernier, a community in the Florida Keys just south of Key Largo, and passed a lot of time in her yard, puttering around with plants. At some point, a mosquito landed on her. That’s not unusual in Florida, and Jones doesn’t remember this mosquito bite in particular. But it was not a garden-variety…

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Al Gore: Where I find hope

Al Gore: Where I find hope

Al Gore writes: This weekend marks two anniversaries that, for me, point a way forward through the accumulated wreckage of the past year. The first is personal. Twenty years ago, I ended my presidential campaign after the Supreme Court abruptly decided the 2000 election. As the incumbent vice president, my duty then turned to presiding over the tallying of Electoral College votes in Congress to elect my opponent. This process will unfold again on Monday as the college’s electors ratify…

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The hidden carbon footprint of influence-peddling businesses

The hidden carbon footprint of influence-peddling businesses

Bloomberg reports: For an invisible, odorless gas, carbon dioxide turns out to be somewhat straightforward to track. Businesses now routinely report their carbon dioxide emissions in three categories: Scope 1 for the direct burning of fossil fuels in generators, facilities, and vehicles; Scope 2 for purchased energy, such as electricity or heat; and Scope 3, the most complicated, for supply chains and customers. For as much CO₂ as that system covers, it’s still incomplete. Many businesses pollute very little themselves…

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Google’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models — then she got forced out

Google’s star ethics researcher highlighted the risks of large language models — then she got forced out

MIT Technology Review reports: On the evening of Wednesday, December 2, Timnit Gebru, the co-lead of Google’s ethical AI team, announced via Twitter that the company had forced her out. Gebru, a widely respected leader in AI ethics research, is known for coauthoring a groundbreaking paper that showed facial recognition to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color, which means its use can end up discriminating against them. She also cofounded the Black in AI affinity group,…

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The climate debt the U.S. owes the world

The climate debt the U.S. owes the world

Bill McKibben writes: Central America has been through a wet version of Hell these past few weeks, as first a Category 4 and then a Category 5 hurricane crashed into the same part of Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, dumping crippling amounts of rain on that country, Guatemala, and Honduras. Delphine Schrank opened an account of the toll on Honduras’s second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, for the Washington Post with this anecdote: “Blanca Costa crouched on a wooden cart with her three…

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When ‘creatives’ turn destructive: Image-makers and the climate crisis

When ‘creatives’ turn destructive: Image-makers and the climate crisis

Bill McKibben writes: Past sins are past no more: an overdue historical recalibration is under way, with monuments being pulled down, dorms renamed, restitution offered. People did things, bad things; even across the span of centuries, they’re being held to account, and there’s something noble about that. The Reverend Robert W. Lee IV, for instance, recently backed the removal of his famous ancestor’s statue from Richmond, Virginia. The memorial, he wrote, “is a hollow reminder of a painful ideology and…

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As winters warm, fields left fallow are becoming a major source of greenhouse gas emissions

As winters warm, fields left fallow are becoming a major source of greenhouse gas emissions

National Observer reports: Each September, Ashala Daniel sows her fields with winter rye, hoping the seed takes root before the first snows fall. It’s a ritual that could help save the planet. Fields are among Canada’s largest emitters of agricultural greenhouse gases (GHGs), emissions that are at their highest levels in winter. During the freeze-thaw cycle, increased levels of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane, both potent GHGs, are pumped from barren fields into the atmosphere. The natural phenomenon is expected…

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Renewable energy defies Covid-19 to hit record growth in 2020

Renewable energy defies Covid-19 to hit record growth in 2020

The Guardian reports: Global renewable electricity installation will hit a record level in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency, in sharp contrast with the declines caused by the coronavirus pandemic in the fossil fuel sectors. The IEA report published on Tuesday says almost 90% of new electricity generation in 2020 will be renewable, with just 10% powered by gas and coal. The trend puts green electricity on track to become the largest power source in 2025, displacing coal, which…

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Gobal warming by the numbers because this week the reality is too much

Gobal warming by the numbers because this week the reality is too much

Bill McKibben writes: Sometimes the human trauma of the climate crisis is too painful to recite, and this is one of those times: the busiest hurricane season ever recorded is continuing on into the late fall, with consequences so horrifying one can hardly stand to look. Right now, Hurricane Iota is mashing Central America; it will likely be a few days before we know the precise results. So let’s talk about what has already happened in Honduras, when Hurricane Eta…

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‘Sleeping giant’ Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

‘Sleeping giant’ Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find

The Guardian reports: Scientists have found evidence that frozen methane deposits in the Arctic Ocean – known as the “sleeping giants of the carbon cycle” – have started to be released over a large area of the continental slope off the East Siberian coast, the Guardian can reveal. High levels of the potent greenhouse gas have been detected down to a depth of 350 metres in the Laptev Sea near Russia, prompting concern among researchers that a new climate feedback…

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As election nears, Trump administration takes new steps to suppress climate science

As election nears, Trump administration takes new steps to suppress climate science

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier scientific agency, installed new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the agency. The moves threaten to stifle a major source of objective United States government information about climate change that underpins federal rules on greenhouse gas emissions and offer an indication of the direction the…

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Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing at latest date on record

Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing at latest date on record

The Guardian reports: For the first time since records began, the main nursery of Arctic sea ice in Siberia has yet to start freezing in late October. The delayed annual freeze in the Laptev Sea has been caused by freakishly protracted warmth in northern Russia and the intrusion of Atlantic waters, say climate scientists who warn of possible knock-on effects across the polar region. Ocean temperatures in the area recently climbed to more than 5C above average, following a record…

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As the world gets hotter, the divide between rich and poor gets bigger

As the world gets hotter, the divide between rich and poor gets bigger

Vann R. Newkirk II writes: Consider the cantaloupe. It’s a decent melon. If you, like me, are the sort who constantly mixes them up, cantaloupes are the orange ones, and honeydews are green. If you, like me, are old enough to remember vacations, you might have had them along with their cousin, watermelon, at a hotel’s breakfast buffet. Those spreads are not as bad as you remember, especially when it’s hot out; add a couple of cold bagels and a…

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