Browsed by
Category: Climate Change

Trump rule would exclude climate change in infrastructure planning

Trump rule would exclude climate change in infrastructure planning

The New York Times reports: Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken one of the benchmark environmental laws of the modern era. The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when…

Read More Read More

Australia, your country is burning – dangerous climate change is here with you now

Australia, your country is burning – dangerous climate change is here with you now

Michael Mann writes: After years studying the climate, my work has brought me to Sydney where I’m studying the linkages between climate change and extreme weather events. Prior to beginning my sabbatical stay in Sydney, I took the opportunity this holiday season to vacation in Australia with my family. We went to see the Great Barrier Reef – one of the great wonders of this planet – while we still can. Subject to the twin assaults of warming-caused bleaching and…

Read More Read More

Global apathy toward the fires in Australia is a scary portent for the future

Global apathy toward the fires in Australia is a scary portent for the future

David Wallace-Wells writes: Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in which the public seemed finally to wake up to the dramatic threat from global warming, a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two full months, and the rest of the world is hardly paying attention. The New South Wales fires have been burning since September, destroying fifteen million acres (or more than two thousand…

Read More Read More

Everything is connected, and everything is changing

Everything is connected, and everything is changing

Kate Marvel writes: It rains in the Amazon because the trees want it to. There is plenty of moisture in the oceans that surround the continent, but there is also a hidden reservoir on the land feeding an invisible river that flows upward to the sky. The water held in the soil is lifted up by the bodies of the trees and lost through the surfaces of their leaves to the atmosphere. The local sky plumps with moisture, primed for…

Read More Read More

Apocalyptic scenes at end of warmest decade on record in Australia

Apocalyptic scenes at end of warmest decade on record in Australia

The New York Times reports: As the fire stalked the east coast of Australia on Tuesday, the daytime sky turned inky black, then blood red. Emergency sirens wailed, followed by the thunder of gas explosions. Thousands of residents fled their homes and huddled near the shore. There was nowhere else to go. Apocalyptic scenes like these in Mallacoota, a vacation destination between Sydney and Melbourne, came on the last day of the warmest decade on record in Australia. The country…

Read More Read More

Russia rubs its hands at the prospect of profit from climate change

Russia rubs its hands at the prospect of profit from climate change

RFE/RL reports: When it wasn’t burning, Siberia was flooding. The permafrost in the Far North continued to melt, and the Arctic ice kept breaking up. But as a year that underscored the troubles in store for Russia from global warming comes to a close, Moscow is making plans to “adapt” to climate change — and seek to profit from it. At his annual press conference, on December 19, President Vladimir Putin said that climate change poses “very serious” challenges for…

Read More Read More

Why we need to branch out to solve global warming

Why we need to branch out to solve global warming

Summer Praetorius writes: As a paleoclimatologist, I often find myself wondering why more people aren’t listening to the warnings, the data, the messages of climate woes—it’s not just a storm on the horizon, it’s here, knocking on the front door. In fact, it’s not even the front door anymore. You are on the roof, waiting for a helicopter to rescue you from your submerged house. The data is clear: The rates of current carbon dioxide release are 10 times greater…

Read More Read More

Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires

Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires

InsideClimate News reports: Deadly heat waves, wildfires and widespread flooding punctuated a decade of climate extremes that, by many scientific accounts, show global warming kicking into overdrive. As the year drew to a close, scientists were confidently saying 2019 was Earth’s second-warmest recorded year on record, capping the warmest decade. Eight of the 10 warmest years since measurements began occurred this decade, and the other two were only a few years earlier. Arctic sea ice melted faster and took longer…

Read More Read More

Were the predictions we made about climate change 20 years ago accurate? Here’s a look

Were the predictions we made about climate change 20 years ago accurate? Here’s a look

USA Today reports: [Penn State University meteorologist Michael] Mann told USA TODAY that we “underestimated the dramatic increase in persistent weather extremes like the unprecedented heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods we’ve witnessed in recent years.” Since 1993, there have been 212 weather disasters that cost the United States at least $1 billion each, when adjusted for inflation. In total, they cost $1.45 trillion and killed more than 10,000 people. That’s an average of 7.8 such disasters per year since…

Read More Read More

The climate movement is gaining momentum in spite of Trump

The climate movement is gaining momentum in spite of Trump

Katrina vanden Heuvel writes: The selection of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg as Time magazine’s Person of the Year seemed to trigger many on the political right, led by President Trump, who called the choice “ridiculous” and mocked Thunberg for supposedly having an “Anger Management problem.” The episode was a disgraceful yet fitting end to a year that saw bold new ideas to fight climate change meet with inaction, ignorance and worse. This month, world leaders held global climate talks…

Read More Read More

Soil is our best ally in the fight against climate change – but we’re fast running out of it

Soil is our best ally in the fight against climate change – but we’re fast running out of it

What lies beneath? Not a lot. Dan Evans, Author provided By Dan Evans, Lancaster University Take a handful of soil and hold it up to your nose. That fresh, earthy aroma is organic matter, part of which is carbon. What you can smell is the whiff of a solution for dealing with climate change. Global soil resources contain more organic carbon than the world’s atmosphere and all of its plants combined. When plants photosynthesise, they take carbon out of the…

Read More Read More

The dangers of depicting Greta Thunberg as a prophet

The dangers of depicting Greta Thunberg as a prophet

Climate activist Greta Thunberg listens during a meeting with climate scientists at the COP25 summit in Madrid, Spain. AP Photo/Paul White By Ellen Boucher, Amherst College She came from obscurity and ignited a global movement. Beginning with a small but persistent act of protest outside the Swedish parliament, she inspired millions to join her. Her fiery speech to the United Nations in September 2019 warned of the end of the world. Her unfailing determination and passion makes her appear otherworldly,…

Read More Read More

Mike Bloomberg has a plan to clean up electricity and it doesn’t need Congress

Mike Bloomberg has a plan to clean up electricity and it doesn’t need Congress

David Roberts writes: Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is a problematic presidential candidate for all sorts of reasons. Progressives are irritated that he is attempting to brute-force his way into the Democratic primary by spending more on ad campaigns than the rest of the primary field combined. .@MikeBloomberg has officially passed the $100 million mark. In total, we have tracked $100,407,009 in advertising from Bloomberg since November 25. That's an average of $3,718,778 per day. #Election2020 — Advertising Analytics (@Ad_Analytics) December 10,…

Read More Read More

Zero-carbon ships on horizon under fuel levy plan

Zero-carbon ships on horizon under fuel levy plan

The Guardian reports: Shipping companies would have to pay a small levy on every tonne of fuel they use under proposals aimed at developing zero-carbon vessels within 10 years, transforming the high-carbon global shipping business. Ships running on hydrogen or ammonia as fuel are thought to be technically possible, but more research and development is needed to bring forward the development of prototypes. The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), which represents 80% of the global shipping industry, is proposing a…

Read More Read More

The eastern Mediterranean is dying

The eastern Mediterranean is dying

Peter Schwartzstein writes: Most of the world’s seas are in some kind of environmental trouble, but few have declined as quickly or from such precipitous heights as the Mediterranean’s eastern edge. Although it midwifed some of history’s greatest civilizations, the eastern Med has become a grubby embodiment of the current littoral states’ failures. Where the ancients sailed, many of their successors now junk industrial waste. The accomplishments of the Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, and pharaonic Egyptians, among others, have only accentuated…

Read More Read More

Swiss central bank’s $800 billion could be enlisted in climate push

Swiss central bank’s $800 billion could be enlisted in climate push

Reuters reports: The Swiss central bank could be required to pull its $800 billion balance sheet out of investments in fossil fuel companies in a move by one of the world’s biggest reserve banks to tackle climate change. Swiss lawmakers are preparing a campaign that would make targeting climate change one of the policy objectives of the Swiss National Bank, alongside the traditional monetary targets of ensuring price stability and fostering economic growth. The drive will begin this month with…

Read More Read More