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Category: Climate Change

Himalayan glacier melting doubled since 2000, research finds

Himalayan glacier melting doubled since 2000, research finds

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The Guardian reports: The melting of Himalayan glaciers has doubled since the turn of the century, with more than a quarter of all ice lost over the last four decades, scientists have revealed. The accelerating losses indicate a “devastating” future for the region, upon which a billion people depend for regular water. The scientists combined declassified US spy satellite images from the mid-1970s with modern satellite data to create the first detailed, four-decade record of ice along the 2,000km (1,200-mile)…

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How the Sunrise Movement changed the Democratic conversation

How the Sunrise Movement changed the Democratic conversation

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Ruairí Arrieta-Kenna writes: “When we were taught about the civil rights movement as kids, it was told to us as if a few big marches just happened and then the laws changed,” Emily LaShelle told me last weekend as she smoked a cigarette. Behind her, a group of her peers played Frisbee in a field while the sun set behind them. “But there was so much more work and effort by activists behind the scenes,” she said. “And that’s the…

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Trump’s relentless war against science

Trump’s relentless war against science

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The Hill reports: President Trump is directing all agencies to cut their advisory boards by “at least” one third. The executive order issued Friday evening directs all federal agencies to “evaluate the need” for each of their current advisory committees. The order gives agencies until Sept. 30 to terminate, at a minimum, one-third of their committees. Committees that qualify for the chopping block include those that have completed their objective, had their work taken up by other panels or where…

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Greenland just lost 2 billion tons of ice

Greenland just lost 2 billion tons of ice

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CNN reports: Over 40% of Greenland experienced melting yesterday, with total ice loss estimated to be more than 2 gigatons (a gigaton is equal to 1 billion tons). While Greenland is a big island filled with lots of ice, it is highly unusual for that much ice to be lost in the middle of June. The average “melt season” for Greenland runs from June to August, with the bulk of the melting occurring in July. To visualize how much ice…

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Pope Francis declares ‘climate emergency’ and urges action

Pope Francis declares ‘climate emergency’ and urges action

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The Guardian reports: Pope Francis has declared a global “climate emergency”, warning of the dangers of global heating and that a failure to act urgently to reduce greenhouse gases would be “a brutal act of injustice toward the poor and future generations”. He also endorsed the 1.5C limit on temperature rises that some countries are now aiming for, referring to warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of “catastrophic” effects if we crossed such a threshold. He said a…

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Climate change poses major risks to financial markets, regulator warns

Climate change poses major risks to financial markets, regulator warns

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The New York Times reports: A top financial regulator is opening a public effort to highlight the risk that climate change poses to the nation’s financial markets, setting up a clash with a president who has mocked global warming and whose administration has sought to suppress climate science. Rostin Behnam, who sits on the federal government’s five-member Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a powerful agency overseeing major financial markets including grain futures, oil trading and complex derivatives, said in an interview…

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Carbon emissions from energy industry rise at fastest rate since 2011

Carbon emissions from energy industry rise at fastest rate since 2011

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The Guardian reports: Carbon emissions from the global energy industry last year rose at the fastest rate in almost a decade after extreme weather and surprise swings in global temperatures stoked extra demand for fossil fuels. BP’s annual global energy report, an influential review of the market, revealed for the first time that temperature fluctuations are increasing the world’s use of fossil fuels, in spite of efforts to tackle the climate crisis. The recorded temperature swings – days which are…

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Planet is entering ‘new climate regime’ with ‘extraordinary’ heat waves intensified by global warming, study says

Planet is entering ‘new climate regime’ with ‘extraordinary’ heat waves intensified by global warming, study says

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The Washington Post reports: Simultaneous heat waves scorched land areas all over the Northern Hemisphere last summer, killing hundreds and hospitalizing thousands while intensifying destructive and deadly wildfires. A study published this week in the journal Earth’s Future concludes that this heat wave epidemic “would not have occurred without human-induced climate change.” The alarming part? There are signs record-setting heat waves are beginning anew this summer — signaling, perhaps, that these exceptional and widespread heat spells are now the norm….

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‘Hell on Earth’ scenario predicted if climate crisis doesn’t trigger immediate drastic action

‘Hell on Earth’ scenario predicted if climate crisis doesn’t trigger immediate drastic action

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Al Jazeera reports: A climate change paper grabbed headlines this week with its terrifying prediction of what the world will be in 30 years’ time – absent drastic and immediate change to human societies. “World of outright chaos,” “Climate apocalypse,” “We’re all gonna die,” the media banners blared. The sobering headlines and equally disconcerting stories beneath described a “scenario analysis” by an Australian think-tank, Breakthrough National Center for Climate Restoration. The paper portrayed what the year 2050 will look like…

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White House blocked intelligence agency’s written testimony warning about ‘catastrophic’ climate change

White House blocked intelligence agency’s written testimony warning about ‘catastrophic’ climate change

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The Washington Post reports: White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change could be “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change. The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best…

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Trump is giving Americans dirty water, dirty air, and a very dirty climate

Trump is giving Americans dirty water, dirty air, and a very dirty climate

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Michael E. Mann writes: To say that Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping display of environmental ignorance while in the United Kingdom is an embarrassment to all Americans would be an understatement. But the worst part of his ramblings about how we have “among the cleanest climates there are based on all statistics” isn’t that it sounds like the ramblings of a Fox News addict. It’s that his administration is doing everything it can to work towards the opposite: dirty water, dirty air,…

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Trump’s obfuscation on the climate crisis

Trump’s obfuscation on the climate crisis

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Following Donald Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan on Wednesday where he talked about the weather changing “both ways,” noted that “it used to be called global warming,” then “climate change,” and now “it’s actually called extreme weather,” Eugene Robinson wrote: “it’s breathtaking that anyone could pack so much ignorance into so few words.” Robinson is doing what so many others do: treat Trump’s statements on the climate crisis as though they merely reflect his ignorance on the issue. The remedy…

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The end of the Arctic as we know it

The end of the Arctic as we know it

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Jonathan Watts writes: The demise of an entire ocean is almost too enormous to grasp, but as the expedition sails deeper into the Arctic, the colossal processes of breakdown are increasingly evident. The first fragment of ice appears off the starboard bow a few miles before the 79th parallel in the Fram strait, which lies between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. The solitary floe is soon followed by another, then another, then clusters, then swarms, then entire fields…

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Can soil solve the climate crisis?

Can soil solve the climate crisis?

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Kenneth Miller writes: When Rattan Lal was awarded the Japan Prize for Biological Production, Ecology in April—the Asian equivalent of a Nobel—the audience at Tokyo’s National Theatre included the emperor and empress. Lal’s acceptance speech, however, was down-to-earth in the most literal sense. “I’d like to begin, rather unconventionally, with the conclusion of my presentation,” he told the assembled dignitaries. “And the conclusion is four words: In soil we trust.” That statement could serve as the motto for a climate…

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Climate crisis seriously damaging human health, report finds

Climate crisis seriously damaging human health, report finds

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The Guardian reports: A report by experts from 27 national science academies has set out the widespread damage global heating is already causing to people’s health and the increasingly serious impacts expected in future. Scorching heatwaves and floods will claim more victims as extreme weather increases but there are serious indirect effects too, from spreading mosquito-borne diseases to worsening mental health. “There are impacts occurring now [and], over the coming century, climate change has to be ranked as one of…

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