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Category: Climate Change

‘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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Climate change is our World War III. It needs a bold response

Climate change is our World War III. It needs a bold response

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Joseph Stiglitz writes: Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with climate change and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II. Critics ask, “Can we afford it?” and…

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My green manufacturing plan for America

My green manufacturing plan for America

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Elizabeth Warren writes: While much of the debate around the Green New Deal has focused on the path to aggressive reductions in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, the science is clear: even if we reduce America’s emissions so that they are net-zero by 2030, we will still fall far short of the reduction in global emissions needed to avert a climate crisis. To satisfy this global need, we need rapid innovation on par with the space race along with widespread domestic…

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UK and Trump are diametrically opposed on the necessity of tackling the climate crisis

UK and Trump are diametrically opposed on the necessity of tackling the climate crisis

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Mark Lynas writes: Fresh from the latest disasters on Brexit, surely the last thing the UK needs is a state visit from the world’s provocateur-in-chief, Donald Trump. Trump’s position on Brexit — bring it on — may be divisive, but his denialist and pro-coal view on global heating and the climate crisis is even more extreme and makes him particularly unwelcome at this moment in Britain. The British parliament declared a ‘climate emergency’ in May, while a day later the…

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Kids suing the U.S. over climate crisis are getting global support

Kids suing the U.S. over climate crisis are getting global support

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Quartz reports: In 2015, when a group of 21 children and teens first sued the US government over climate change, their claim in Juliana v. US was not totally new—youth in Uganda and the Netherlands had filed somewhat similar environmental suits—but it seemed a little strange. Shouldn’t these kids be playing video games or something, doing pretty much anything but litigating to save the planet? Now, the plaintiffs in Juliana v. US are part of an increasingly vocal global movement…

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Facebook is an enemy of the effort to avert catastrophic climate change, scientists say

Facebook is an enemy of the effort to avert catastrophic climate change, scientists say

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Joe Romm reports: ThinkProgress asked some experts what Facebook’s latest actions mean for the national conversation on climate change. “Facebook is complicit in spreading outright falsehoods and misinforming the public about matters of public concern,” environmental sociologist Robert Brulle wrote in an email. The company’s “refusal to take down this blatant distortion of Speaker Pelosi shows that they are an irresponsible actor, and contributing to the decline of public discourse.” Brulle explained that Facebook’s actions are particularly disastrous since there…

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Puffins are starving to death because of climate change

Puffins are starving to death because of climate change

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New Scientist reports: Hundreds of “severely emaciated” puffin carcasses have washed ashore on an Alaskan island, and researchers believe thousands more have died at sea as warming waters continue to shrink their food supply. Between October 2016 and January 2017, inhabitants of St Paul Island in the Bering sea found the starved bodies of more than 350 seabirds, primarily tufted puffins. Analysing the location of bird carcasses and wind data, Timothy Jones at the University of Washington in Seattle and…

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Influential panel votes to recognize Earth’s new epoch: The Anthropocene

Influential panel votes to recognize Earth’s new epoch: The Anthropocene

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Nature reports: A panel of scientists voted this week to designate a new geologic epoch — the Anthropocene — to mark the profound ways in which humans have altered the planet. That decision, by the 34-member Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), marks an important step towards formally defining a new slice of the geologic record — an idea that has generated intense debate within the scientific community over the past few years. The panel plans to submit a formal proposal for…

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