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Category: Climate Change

A military perspective on climate change could bridge the gap between believers and doubters

A military perspective on climate change could bridge the gap between believers and doubters

A soldier stands guard at the damaged entrance to Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida, Oct. 11, 2018, after Hurricane Michael. AP Photo/David Goldman By Michael Klare, Hampshire College As experts warn that the world is running out of time to head off severe climate change, discussions of what the U.S. should do about it are split into opposing camps. The scientific-environmental perspective says global warming will cause the planet severe harm without action to slow fossil fuel…

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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos launches $10-billion Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change — employees respond

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos launches $10-billion Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change — employees respond

USA Today reports: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced Monday that he was committing $10 billion of his personal fortune to fight climate change with the creation of the Bezos Earth Fund. The announcement was made on Instagram. “Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want to work alongside others both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share,” Bezos posted. No details…

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Planting trees won’t save the planet from climate change

Planting trees won’t save the planet from climate change

Erle C. Ellis, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis write: One trillion trees. At the World Economic Forum last month, President Trump drew applause when he announced the United States would join the forum’s initiative to plant one trillion trees to fight climate change. More applause for the decision followed at his State of the Union speech. The trillion-tree idea won wide attention last summer after a study published in the journal Science concluded that planting so many trees was “the…

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The world we are heading towards if we fail to reverse climate change

The world we are heading towards if we fail to reverse climate change

Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac write: It is 2050. Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions. We are heading for a world that will be more than 3C warmer by 2100 The first thing that hits you is the air. In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy and, depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear. You think…

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Tackling the climate crisis is a human rights issue

Tackling the climate crisis is a human rights issue

Andrew Gilmour writes: Every society in the world is going to pay a price for global warming. But it’s the poorest countries and communities who will suffer the most from rising seas and burning lands — and likely also from any drastic measures taken to prevent climate change. The environmental crisis is closely linked to the humanitarian one, and requires the joint action of climate and human rights activists. They’d seem to be natural allies. They both regard (with good…

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The climate crisis is a threat to mental health, especially for young people

The climate crisis is a threat to mental health, especially for young people

The Guardian reports: Over the past few weeks Clover Hogan has found herself crying during the day and waking up at night gripped by panic. The 20-year-old, who now lives in London, grew up in Queensland, Australia, cheekbyjowl with the country’s wildlife, fishing frogs out of the toilet and dodging snakes hanging from the ceiling. The bushfires ravaging her homeland over the past few weeks have taken their toll. “I’ve found myself bursting into tears … just seeing the absolutely…

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Global financial giants stop funding production from destructive oil sands

Global financial giants stop funding production from destructive oil sands

The New York Times reports: Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have stopped putting their money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world’s most extensive, and also dirtiest, oil reserves. In December, the insurance giant The Hartford said it would stop insuring or investing in oil production in the province, just weeks after Sweden’s central bank said it would stop holding Alberta’s bonds. And on Wednesday BlackRock, the worlds largest asset…

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UK could ban sale of combustion-engine powered cars in 12 years, says transport minister

UK could ban sale of combustion-engine powered cars in 12 years, says transport minister

The Guardian reports: The government could ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars in 2032, three years earlier than previously suggested, the transport secretary has said. A consultation launched last week suggested all cars with internal combustion engines could be banned from 2035 but Grant Shapps told BBC radio on Wednesday the ban could come within 12 years. The ban would happen by 2035 – or even 2032, subject to consultation, he said. The comments will add to the…

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Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming

Iceberg twice the size of Washington cleaves off Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, in a sign of rapid warming

The Washington Post reports: An iceberg about twice the size of the District of Columbia broke off Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica sometime between Saturday and Sunday, satellite data shows, confirming yet another in a series of increasingly frequent calving events in this rapidly warming region. The Pine Island Glacier is one of the fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica, and along with the Thwaites Glacier nearby, it’s a subject of close scientific monitoring to determine whether these glaciers are in…

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Rapid permafrost collapse is underway, disintegrating landscapes and our predictions

Rapid permafrost collapse is underway, disintegrating landscapes and our predictions

AFP reports: Permafrost in Canada, Alaska and Siberia is abruptly crumbling in ways that could release large stores of greenhouse gases more quickly than anticipated, researchers have warned. Scientists have long fretted that climate change – which has heated Arctic and subarctic regions at double the global rate – will release planet-warming CO2 and methane that has remained safely locked inside Earth’s frozen landscapes for millennia. It was assumed this process would be gradual, leaving humanity time to draw down…

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Antarctica just hit 65 degrees, its warmest temperature ever recorded

Antarctica just hit 65 degrees, its warmest temperature ever recorded

The Washington Post reports: Just days after the earth saw its warmest January on record, Antarctica has broken its warmest temperature ever recorded. A reading of 65 degrees was taken Thursday at Esperanza Base along Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula, making it the ordinarily frigid continent’s highest measured temperature in history. The Argentine research base is on the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Randy Cerveny, who tracks extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, called Thursday’s reading a “likely record,” although the…

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Insurers should support people, not the fossil fuel industry

Insurers should support people, not the fossil fuel industry

Tony Dunn writes: On November 8, 2018, I was trapped in my car as embers fell all around me in Paradise, California, and the thought that kept going through my head was, “This can’t be the same fire [that had been reported 10 miles away only two hours before]. Fires can’t move like that.” I should know: I spent nearly a decade studying wildland fire history, fire ecology and fire behavior in southern California for the U.S. Forest Service and…

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Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

Bumblebees’ decline points to mass extinction, scientists say

PA Media reports: Bumblebees are in drastic decline across Europe and North America owing to hotter and more frequent extremes in temperatures, scientists say. A study suggests the likelihood of a bumblebee population surviving in any given place has declined by 30% in the course of a single human generation. The researchers say the rates of decline appear to be “consistent with a mass extinction”. Peter Soroye, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and the study’s lead author,…

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Trump withholding $823 million for clean energy, Democrats say

Trump withholding $823 million for clean energy, Democrats say

Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration is withholding nearly a billion dollars for a clean energy program it has unsuccessfully tried to cut, congressional Democrats said Wednesday, raising the specter of political interference. The unspent funds now amount to $823 million in the Energy Department’s office that provides grants and other financial assistance for alternative energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency, according to Democrats on the House Science Committee, which is holding a joint subcommittee hearing on the topic. The Office…

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Once again, why fossil fuels are on the wrong side of history

Once again, why fossil fuels are on the wrong side of history

Jim Cramer writes: Tesla plus 80, Exxon Mobil minus a dollar and a half. On a huge up day, doesn’t that say it all? I’ve gotten a lot of blowback about my stand on fossil fuels. It’s been roundly criticized by many even as so many others are grateful for my new stand. The funny thing is that the stance itself is often poorly described by others so let’s unpack my comments. First, I have spent a great deal of…

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Climate models used to forecast warming have suddenly started giving us less time

Climate models used to forecast warming have suddenly started giving us less time

Bloomberg reports: There are dozens of climate models, and for decades they’ve agreed on what it would take to heat the planet by about 3° Celsius. It’s an outcome that would be disastrous—flooded cities, agricultural failures, deadly heat—but there’s been a grim steadiness in the consensus among these complicated climate simulations. Then last year, unnoticed in plain view, some of the models started running very hot. The scientists who hone these systems used the same assumptions about greenhouse-gas emissions as…

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