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Category: Climate Change

How many Americans believe in climate change? Probably more than you think, research in Indiana suggests

How many Americans believe in climate change? Probably more than you think, research in Indiana suggests

Concern about climate change is broader than many Hoosiers think. Katherine Welles/Shutterstock By Matthew Houser, Indiana University Indiana certainly doesn’t look like a state that’s ready to confront climate change. Its former governor, Vice President Mike Pence, has questioned whether human actions affect the climate. In 2016 the majority of Indiana residents voted for Donald Trump, who rejects mainstream climate science. And the state ranks first in the proportion of its population that identifies as conservative – a position that…

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15 things a president can actually do to tackle the climate crisis

15 things a president can actually do to tackle the climate crisis

Zachary B. Wolf writes: Here are some things any president could do on Day One in office: 1. Rejoin the Paris climate agreement Promising to withdraw the US from the landmark 2015 climate agreement was Trump’s benchmark action rebutting the responsibility to act on climate change. He said, without much evidence, that it was a demeaning failure for American workers, who would be expected to do more than those in other countries. The result is the US is one of…

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Global heating made Hurricane Dorian bigger, wetter – and more deadly

Global heating made Hurricane Dorian bigger, wetter – and more deadly

Michael Mann and Andrew E Dessler write: The Bahamas, for those who live there, is simply a place to call home. For many Americans, it’s a dream vacation spot. But Hurricane Dorian turned that dream into a nightmare. And the worst part is this is only the beginning. Because unless we confront the climate crisis, warming will turn more and more of our fantastic landscapes, cities we call paradise and other dream destinations into nightmarish hellscapes. While the science has…

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How has climate change affected Hurricane Dorian?

How has climate change affected Hurricane Dorian?

The New York Times reports: The links between hurricanes and climate change are complex, but some aspects are getting clearer. Tropical storms draw their energy from ocean heat — and more than 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is being stored in the ocean. Storms that survive the cradle of formation can intensify quickly and become immensely powerful. While it’s common to hear the question, “Was it caused by climate change?” scientists argue that this is…

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The misogyny of climate deniers

The misogyny of climate deniers

Martin Gelin writes: Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, which recently launched the world’s first academic research center to study climate denialism, have for years been examining a link between climate deniers and the anti-feminist far-right. In 2014, Jonas Anshelm and Martin Hultman of Chalmers published a paper analyzing the language of a focus group of climate skeptics. The common themes in the group, they said, were striking: “for climate skeptics … it was not the environment that was…

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Australian Medical Association declares climate change a health emergency

Australian Medical Association declares climate change a health emergency

The Guardian reports: The Australian Medical Association has formally declared climate change a health emergency, pointing to “clear scientific evidence indicating severe impacts for our patients and communities now and into the future”. The AMA’s landmark shift, delivered by a motion of the body’s federal council, brings the organisation into line with forward-leaning positions taken by the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association and Doctors for the Environment Australia. The American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians…

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What does ’12 years to act on climate change’ (now 11 years) really mean?

What does ’12 years to act on climate change’ (now 11 years) really mean?

InsideClimate News reports: We’ve been hearing variations of the phrase “the world only has 12 years to deal with climate change” a lot lately. Sen. Bernie Sanders put a version of it front and center of his presidential campaign last week, saying we now have “less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable.” But where does the…

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Vegans are right about ethics and the environment

Vegans are right about ethics and the environment

Farhad Manjoo writes: Many of us, myself included, engage in painless, performative environmentalism. We’ll give up plastic straws and tweet passionately that someone should do something about the Amazon, yet few of us make space in our worldview to acknowledge the carcass in the room: the irrefutable evidence that our addiction to meat is killing the planet right before our eyes. After all, it takes only a few minutes of investigation to learn that there is one overwhelming reason the…

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Climate silence: Why we need to all start talking about climate change

Climate silence: Why we need to all start talking about climate change

Joe Romm writes: Americans rarely talk about climate change with family and friends. Tragically, research shows that this climate silence reinforces the dangerously wrong belief that climate change isn’t an existential threat requiring urgent action. But a major new study led by Yale researchers finds that just discussing the issue with friends and family leads them to learn more facts about the climate crisis, which in turn leads to greater understanding and concern about the issue. The study, titled “Discussing…

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Educators must join students in demanding climate justice

Educators must join students in demanding climate justice

Jonathan Isham and Lee Smithey write: Sometimes it’s the students who teach. This week, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg arrived in New York City in a zero-emissions yacht, en route to the United Nations climate change summit. The purpose of the trip? Let’s call it a teachable moment. Over the past year, Greta and more than 2 million teens around the world have led school strikes for climate justice, demanding that their leaders end the age of fossil fuels. Now these young…

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A new strategy on climate: Try to outlast Trump

A new strategy on climate: Try to outlast Trump

Politico reports: World leaders and major companies intent on dealing with climate change have settled on a strategy for handling President Donald Trump: snub him. When Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency this week proposed withdrawing Obama-era rules to limit emissions of methane from oil and gas wells or pipelines, major oil companies said they wanted the rules to remain. Some of the world’s largest automakers are ignoring the administration’s attempt to do away with rising fuel efficiency mandates. And when Trump…

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How Brazil’s nationalist leader built a bond with Trump and won his support in the Amazon fires dispute

How Brazil’s nationalist leader built a bond with Trump and won his support in the Amazon fires dispute

The Washington Post reports: President Trump was preparing for the Group of Seven summit in France when he learned that one of his most ardent suitors was trying to reach him. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro needed a favor, and Trump told aides to patch the call through. Bolsonaro got right to the point: The powerful G-7 countries, including France and Canada, were unfairly ganging up on Brazil over their criticism of his government’s response to massive fires ravaging the Amazon…

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Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN

Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN

The Guardian reports: The fires in the Amazon are “extraordinarily concerning” for the planet’s natural life support systems, the head of the UN’s top biodiversity body has said in a call for countries, companies and consumers to build a new relationship with nature. Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach was needed to stabilise the climate and prevent…

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Europe is warming even faster than climate models predicted

Europe is warming even faster than climate models predicted

Gizmodo reports: Over the past seven decades, the number of extreme heat days in Europe has steadily increased, while the number of extreme cold days has decreased, according to new research. Alarmingly, this trend is happening at rates faster than those proposed by climate models. For most Europeans, this new study will hardly come as a surprise. This summer, for example, temperatures in southern France reached a record 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit), with similar temperature extremes happening at…

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EPA to remove regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas

EPA to remove regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration laid out on Thursday a far-reaching plan to cut back on the regulation of methane emissions, a major contributor to climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency, in its proposed rule, aims to eliminate federal requirements that oil and gas companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from wells, pipelines and storage facilities. It will also reopen the question of whether the E.P.A. even has the legal authority to regulate methane…

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Hurricanes and the climate crisis: What you need to know

Hurricanes and the climate crisis: What you need to know

Climate Reality reports: Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas is warming our planet and driving climate change. It’s throwing natural systems out of balance – to often devastating effect. One result among many is that average global sea surface temperatures are rising – and when sea surface temperatures become warmer, hurricanes can become more powerful. “For a long time, we’ve understood, based on pretty simple physics, that as you warm the ocean’s surface, you’re…

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