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Category: Climate Change

Oil companies wonder if it makes economic sense to continue oil exploration

Oil companies wonder if it makes economic sense to continue oil exploration

Bloomberg reports: A few dots near the bottom corner of the world map in the southern Atlantic, the Falkland Islands were once at the forefront of a new era for the oil industry as companies scoured the planet for resources. Yet a decade after the discovery of as much as 1.7 billion barrels of crude in surrounding waters, the British overseas territory known for sheep rearing and tension with Argentina looks as remote as ever. Rather than the next frontier,…

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Baghdad’s record heat offers glimpse of world’s climate change future

Baghdad’s record heat offers glimpse of world’s climate change future

The Washington Post reports: This city roars in the summertime. You hear the generators on every street, shaking and shuddering to keep electric fans whirring as the air seems to shimmer in the heat. Iraq isn’t just hot. It’s punishingly hot. Record-breakingly hot. When one of us returned here last week, the air outside felt like an oven. The suitcase crackled as it was unzipped. It turned out that the synthetic fibers of a headscarf had melted crispy and were…

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Alaskan megaeruption may have helped end the Roman Republic

Alaskan megaeruption may have helped end the Roman Republic

Science reports: For ages, the shadow of a volcano has hung over the fall of the Roman Republic. Ancient historians told of the Sun’s mysterious disappearance after Julius Caesar’s murder in 44 B.C.E., which was followed by bouts of cold and crop failures. Now, a team of scientists and historians has discovered that one of the largest known eruptions in history struck in 43 B.C.E.—potentially contributing to 2 years of weird weather and famine as the republic dissolved and the…

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To rebuild our world, we must end the carbon economy

To rebuild our world, we must end the carbon economy

Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, Mariana Mazzucato, Clair Brown, Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Robert Reich, Gabriel Zucman and others write: From deep-rooted racism to the Covid-19 pandemic, from extreme inequality to ecological collapse, our world is facing dire and deeply interconnected emergencies. But as much as the present moment painfully underscores the weaknesses of our economic system, it also gives us the rare opportunity to reimagine it. As we seek to rebuild our world, we can and must end the carbon economy. Even…

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BP will slash oil production by 40% and pour billions into green energy

BP will slash oil production by 40% and pour billions into green energy

CNN reports: BP is planning to slash oil and gas production and pour billions of dollars into clean energy as part of a major strategic overhaul unveiled on Tuesday, alongside a huge second quarter loss and dividend cut. The London-based company said that it plans a 10-fold increase in annual low carbon investments to $5 billion by 2030 as it tries to deliver on its promise of net zero emissions by 2050 and prepares for a world that uses much…

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A hopeful vision of our planet’s future

A hopeful vision of our planet’s future

By Ramin Skibba, July 31, 2020 In a remote pocket of the Pacific Ocean lie the Marshall Islands, which nearly 60,000 people call home. But the islanders are facing the grim and very real prospect of losing their entire country in their lifetimes. One resident, Selina Leem, spoke at the Paris climate summit in 2015, passionately arguing that she refuses to lose her homeland, which will be inexorably enveloped by the seas unless governments worldwide take dramatic and rapid action…

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Hot ocean waters along East Coast are drawing in ‘weird’ fish and supercharging hurricane season

Hot ocean waters along East Coast are drawing in ‘weird’ fish and supercharging hurricane season

The Washington Post reports: Ocean temperatures along the East Coast are near or above their warmest levels on record for this time of year, and they are not only drawing in unusual sea creatures but also helping to fuel the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record to date. Now, Hurricane Isaias is poised to draw energy from these abnormally toasty waters as it rides up the East Coast and, depending on its course and speed, the consequences could be severe…

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A new solution to climate science’s biggest mystery

A new solution to climate science’s biggest mystery

Robinson Meyer writes: The project began, in one telling, five years ago, in a castle that overlooks the Bavarian Alps, where three dozen of the world’s most successful and rivalrous earth scientists came together for a week of cloistered meetings. They gathered, in part, out of embarrassment. For the past four decades, their field—the study of Earth’s natural phenomena, including its land, ocean, and climate—had boomed. Generations of young researchers who once would have become nuclear physicists or oil geologists…

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How Biden’s climate plan makes clean energy by 2035 ‘very doable’

How Biden’s climate plan makes clean energy by 2035 ‘very doable’

NBC News reports: When Hillary Clinton proposed a climate plan in the run-up to the 2016 election that included $60 billion for clean energy infrastructure and $30 billion more to redevelop coal-mining communities, it was met with mixed reviews: an “ambitious” plan but one with “holes.” The plan proposed some of the largest investments in clean energy tech put forward by a major presidential candidate, a sign of how far the topic of climate change had come in politics but,…

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How Earth’s climate changes naturally (and why things are different now)

How Earth’s climate changes naturally (and why things are different now)

Howard Lee writes: Earth has been a snowball and a hothouse at different times in its past. So if the climate changed before humans, how can we be sure we’re responsible for the dramatic warming that’s happening today? In part it’s because we can clearly show the causal link between carbon dioxide emissions from human activity and the 1.28 degree Celsius (and rising) global temperature increase since preindustrial times. Carbon dioxide molecules absorb infrared radiation, so with more of them…

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Trump weakens environmental law to speed up permits for pipelines and other infrastructure

Trump weakens environmental law to speed up permits for pipelines and other infrastructure

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump on Wednesday finalized a rollback to the country’s landmark environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act, by speeding up approval for federal projects like pipelines, highways and power plants. NEPA was signed into law by President Richard Nixon 50 years ago and requires federal agencies to consider the environmental consequences of infrastructure projects before they are approved. The law has also been vital in allowing communities to weigh in on how such projects impact climate…

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Methane rises to highest level on record

Methane rises to highest level on record

The Guardian reports: Animal farming and fossil fuels have driven global emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane to the highest level on record, putting the world on track for dangerously increased heat levels of 3C to 4C. Since 2000 discharges of the odourless, colourless gas have risen by more than 50m tonnes a year, equivalent to 350m cars or double the total emissions of Germany or France, according to the latest Methane Budget study by a global team of…

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New Biden plan sees millions of jobs in aggressive climate action

New Biden plan sees millions of jobs in aggressive climate action

The Verge reports: On Wednesday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden revealed a revamped climate and energy plan that raises spending, expands efforts to address racial disparities, and sets an earlier deadline for cutting greenhouse gases. Biden’s plan aims to eliminate carbon pollution from the power sector by 2035. Biden had previously committed to reaching a 100 percent “clean energy economy” by 2050. The plan comes with a $2 trillion price tag over four years, higher than his previous ten-year…

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I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

Farhad Manjoo writes: As coronavirus lockdowns crept across the globe this winter and spring, an unusual sound fell over the world’s metropolises: the hush of streets that were suddenly, blessedly free of cars. City dwellers reported hearing bird song, wind and the rustling of leaves. (Along with, in New York City, the intermittent screams of sirens). You could smell the absence of cars, too. From New York to Los Angeles to New Delhi, air pollution plummeted, and the soupy, exhaust-choked…

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Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes: The Black Lives Matter movement is not a distraction from saving the planet. We can’t solve the climate crisis without people of color, but we could probably solve it without racists. Whether it’s Hurricane Katrina or air pollution, storms and exposure to toxins cause much greater harm to communities of color. (Although, yes, in the longer term, climate change is coming for us all, even if you have a bunker in New Zealand.) So it follows…

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Rapid Arctic meltdown in Siberia alarms scientists

Rapid Arctic meltdown in Siberia alarms scientists

The Washington Post reports: Alexander Deyev can still taste the smoke from last year’s wildfires that blanketed the towns near his home in southeastern Siberia, and he is dreading their return. “It just felt like you couldn’t breathe at all,” said Deyev, 32, who lives in Irkutsk, a Siberian region along Lake Baikal, just north of the Mongolian border. But already this year, fires in the spring arrived earlier and with more ferocity, government officials have said. In the territory…

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