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Category: Climate Change

Would you feel more urgency about climate change if all you could see was smoke?

Would you feel more urgency about climate change if all you could see was smoke?

Charlie Warzel writes: The American West does not have a monopoly on climate-related disasters. Hurricane seasons grow worse each year and devastating earthquakes loom. The flooding in the Midwest and storms like the recent derecho in Iowa are calamities that deserve equal attention. They’re also urgent alarm bells. Everyone on earth right now is experiencing unpredictable and dire weather. No region is alone in experiencing the tragedy of our dying planet. I’m not so naïve as to think that all…

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Huge cavities threaten Antarctica glacier larger than Great Britain

Huge cavities threaten Antarctica glacier larger than Great Britain

The Guardian reports: British scientists have mapped cavities half the size of the Grand Canyon that are allowing warm ocean water to erode the vast Thwaites glacier in the Antarctic, accelerating the rise of sea levels across the world. Like decay in a tooth, the channels of warm water are melting the ice from below, threatening the stability of a glacier that is larger than Great Britain. Using an aircraft, ship and robot submarine, the British Antarctic Survey and a…

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Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Redirect military budgets to tackle climate change and pandemics

Denise Garcia writes: Despite threats to human existence from climate change, biodiversity loss and a pandemic that’s devastating economies and paralysing societies, countries still spend recklessly on destructive weapons for wars they will never fight. As an academic who advises the United Nations on arms control and the military uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, I have long argued that nations should prioritize ‘human security for the common good’ over military spending. That means ensuring people can live to…

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Groups pressure Biden to exclude fossil fuel execs from team

Groups pressure Biden to exclude fossil fuel execs from team

The Hill reports: More than 100 climate and advocacy groups are asking Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to commit to blocking fossil fuel representatives from its transition team or administration should the former vice president win the election. “We urge you to ban all fossil fuel executives, lobbyists, and representatives from any advisory or official position on your campaign, transition team, cabinet, and administration,” the groups wrote in a letter to the campaign, which was signed by a mix of 145…

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Big Oil is in trouble. Its plan: Flood Africa with plastic

Big Oil is in trouble. Its plan: Flood Africa with plastic

The New York Times reports: Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste. The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa. According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers…

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On climate change, we’ve run out of presidential terms to waste

On climate change, we’ve run out of presidential terms to waste

Bill McKibben writes: The working definition of the ongoing brain seizure that is 2020 is either that Coloradans are being told by state authorities to install smoke-resistant “safe rooms” in their houses, or that Californians now must weigh what kind of mask to wear. An N95 mask helps to filter out harmful particulates from the wildfire smoke that is overwhelming the Golden State, but many come with an exhalation valve to keep the wearer from overheating—and that valve can spread…

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Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

Population panic lets rich people off the hook for the climate crisis they are fueling

George Monbiot writes: When a major study was published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse. Next week the BirthStrike movement – founded by women who, by announcing their decision not to have children, seek…

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Number of voters who are deeply engaged on issue of climate change is rising sharply

Number of voters who are deeply engaged on issue of climate change is rising sharply

The New York Times reports: The number of Americans who feel passionately about climate change is rising sharply, and the issue appears likely to play a more important role in this year’s election than ever before, a new survey shows. What’s more, despite the turmoil caused by overlapping national and global crises, support for action to curb climate change has not diminished. Backing for government to do more to deal with global warming, at 68 percent in May of 2018,…

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Climate emergency

Climate emergency

Bill McKibben writes: So now we have some sense of what it’s like: a full-on global-scale crisis, one that disrupts everything. Normal life—shopping for food, holding a wedding, going to work, seeing your parents—shifts dramatically. The world feels different, with every assumption about safety and predictability upended. Will you have a job? Will you die? Will you ever ride a subway again, or take a plane? It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The upheaval that has been caused by Covid-19…

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Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years

Earth has lost 28 trillion tonnes of ice in less than 30 years

The Observer reports: A total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994. That is stunning conclusion of UK scientists who have analysed satellite surveys of the planet’s poles, mountains and glaciers to measure how much ice coverage lost because of global heating triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions. The scientists – based at Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London – describe the level of ice loss as “staggering” and…

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How can we plan for the future in California?

How can we plan for the future in California?

Leah C. Stokes writes: When I moved to California five years ago, I planted a tree in my yard. It was a Red Baron peach, chosen for its showy, bright-pink blossoms and its ability to grow fruit with few cool nights. For the past nine centuries, Southern California has been perfect for this tree, with mild winters and mild summers. I planted the Red Baron for the climate we once had. That climate is no more. My neighborhood has already…

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U.S. cities may face 30 times more exposure to extreme heat by 2100 compared to the early 2000s, study finds

U.S. cities may face 30 times more exposure to extreme heat by 2100 compared to the early 2000s, study finds

CNN reports: As triple-digit heat tests the limits of California’s electrical grid to keep millions of people cool, it is clear the effects of human-caused global warming are already here. But the extreme heat baking the Western US is a mere preview of what could be coming: A new study finds that in the future, the heat risk facing the country’s biggest cities could be far greater than previously thought. Without cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, major US cities could…

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Democrats drop demand to end fossil fuel subsidies from party platform

Democrats drop demand to end fossil fuel subsidies from party platform

HuffPost reports: The Democratic National Committee this week quietly dropped language calling for an end to fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks from its party platform, HuffPost has learned. On July 27, officials added an amendment to the Manager’s Mark, a ledger of party demands voted on as one omnibus package, stating: “Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy.” The amendment was…

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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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