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Category: Climate Change

Glaciers and Arctic ice are vanishing. Time to get radical before it’s too late

Glaciers and Arctic ice are vanishing. Time to get radical before it’s too late

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Bill McKibben writes: Forget “early warning signs” and “canaries in coalmines” – we’re now well into the middle of the climate change era, with its epic reshaping of our home planet. Monday’s news, from two separate studies, made it clear that the frozen portions of the Earth are now in violent and dramatic flux. The first, led by the veteran Greenland glaciologist Jason Box, looked across the Arctic at everything from “increased tundra biomass” to deepening thaw of the permafrost…

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It’s time to confront the major factor fueling global migration: climate change

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It’s time to confront the major factor fueling global migration: climate change

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Newsweek reports: New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter on Tuesday to highlight one of the driving factors behind global migration that, more often than not, goes ignored by those seeking to quell it: climate change. “The far-right loves to drum up fear & resistance to immigrants,” said Ocasio-Cortez, whose own Green New Deal proposal aims to address climate change and economic inequality. “But have you ever noticed they never talk about what’s causing people to flee their homes…

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Climate change is already battering this West African city

Climate change is already battering this West African city

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Peter Yeung writes: According to the United Nations Development Program, by 2050, some 200 million people around the world could be displaced due to shoreline erosion, coastal flooding, and agricultural disruption. From Lisbon to Mumbai and Miami, cities across the planet are under threat. Loïc Brüning, a Ph.D. candidate at Switzerland’s University of Neuchâtel, has been researching the effects of climate change on Saint-Louis since 2016. “It’s a huge problem for developing countries because they don’t have the resources to…

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Most U.S. coal power plants would save money by switching to wind or solar

Most U.S. coal power plants would save money by switching to wind or solar

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Fast Company reports: As wind and solar power keep getting cheaper, coal power–which was the cheapest source of electricity for decades–is no longer economical in much of the U.S. A new analysis looked at every coal plant in the country and compared the cost of running those plants to the cost of operating a new wind or solar plant. As of 2018, 74% of existing coal plants cost more to operate than new local wind or solar. “Our hypothesis was…

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Coral reproduction on the Great Barrier Reef falls 89% after repeated bleaching

Coral reproduction on the Great Barrier Reef falls 89% after repeated bleaching

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By Morgan Pratchett, James Cook University The severe and repeated bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef has not only damaged corals, it has reduced the reef’s ability to recover. Our research, published today in Nature, found far fewer baby corals are being produced than are needed to replace the large number of adult corals that have died. The rate at which baby corals are settling on the Great Barrier Reef has fallen by nearly 90% since 2016. While coral does…

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Al Gore is near the end of his quest to save the Earth. Nina Barrett just got started

Al Gore is near the end of his quest to save the Earth. Nina Barrett just got started

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Dan Zak reports: The man in the pulpit had the posture of a preacher who had not tired of tribulation. “Half of all the living species on this planet will disappear on our watch when we’re assigned responsibility,” the man said, voice starting to thunder. “How do we take on board the meaning of that?” The church was hot. The choir members fanned themselves with their programs, which read “A Moral Call to Action on the Climate Crisis.” The man…

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Climate preparation report released by panel previously disbanded by Trump

Climate preparation report released by panel previously disbanded by Trump

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ClimateWire reports: A climate science advisory panel disbanded by the Trump administration released a report today outlining the steps communities can take to prepare for climate change. In 2017, the Trump administration dissolved the federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment. Its purpose was to translate climate science in the National Climate Assessment into usable guidance for local governments and private companies. The panel was reconstituted by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and includes members from academia,…

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Trump is using Stalinist tactics to discredit climate science

Trump is using Stalinist tactics to discredit climate science

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Michael Mann and Bob Ward write: Americans should not be fooled by the Stalinist tactics being used by the White House to try to discredit the findings of mainstream climate science. The Trump administration has already purged information about climate change from government websites, gagged federal experts and attempted to end funding for climate change programmes. Now a group of hardcore climate change deniers and contrarians linked to the administration is organising a petition in support of a new panel…

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The natural world can help save us from climate catastrophe

The natural world can help save us from climate catastrophe

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George Monbiot writes: I don’t expect much joy in writing about climate breakdown. On one side, there is grief and fear; on the other side, machines. I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering. Technological change is essential, but to a natural historian it often feels cold and distancing. Today, however, I can write about something that thrills me: the most exciting field…

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Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole

Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole

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The Guardian reports: Trees growing near the South Pole, sea levels 20 metres higher than now, and global temperatures 3C-4C warmer. That is the world scientists are uncovering as they look back in time to when the planet last had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it does today. Using sedimentary records and plant fossils, researchers have found that temperatures near the South Pole were about 20C higher than now in the Pliocene epoch, from 5.3m to 2.6m…

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While the rich world braces for future climate change, the poor world is already being devastated by it

While the rich world braces for future climate change, the poor world is already being devastated by it

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CNN reports: “Upside down” are the only words Manush Albert Alben has to describe life after the powerful Cyclone Idai. Nearly two weeks since the powerful cyclone destroyed most of the city of Beira, Mozambique, it is a long way from normal. “There’s no money, no groceries,” Alben, a fisherman, said while sitting in his wooden pirogue on a local beach. “We are suffering but trying to hold on.” Known for its busy port and views of the Indian Ocean,…

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Insects have ‘no place to hide’ from climate change, study warns

Insects have ‘no place to hide’ from climate change, study warns

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The Guardian reports: Insects have “no place to hide” from climate change, scientists have warned, following an analysis of 50 years of UK data. The study showed that woodlands, whose shade was expected to protect species from warming temperatures, are being just as affected by climate change as open grasslands. The research examined the first springtime flights of butterflies, moths and aphids and the first eggs of birds between 1965 and 2012. As average temperatures have risen, aphids are now…

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Across the Middle East and North Africa, environmentalists are coming under attack like never before

Across the Middle East and North Africa, environmentalists are coming under attack like never before

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Peter Schwartzstein writes: Conservation NGOs have been closed or so suffocated that they’re as good as dissolved. Activists and experts have been threatened into silence—or worse. A community that had until recently mostly escaped the fate of much of the region’s civil society has suddenly fallen afoul of the authorities. Its plight mirrors the difficulties faced by environmentalists worldwide. Globally, 197 environmental defenders were killed in 2017, according to the UN Environment Programme, a fivefold increase from a decade ago….

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to the concerns of ordinary Americans

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to the concerns of ordinary Americans

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Chris Cillizza writes: On the day that the Senate rejected — by a vote of 0-57 — the broad strokes of the so-called “Green New Deal,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), one of the leading voices for the legislation, went off on those who mock the effort as nothing more than an elitist fantasy. It began when Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy (R) introduced an amendment in a meeting of the Financial Services Committee that would force a homelessness bill…

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Republicans may come to regret their mockery of the Green New Deal

Republicans may come to regret their mockery of the Green New Deal

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Sean McElwee writes: Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, brought the Green New Deal to a vote in the Senate on Tuesday. He defeated consideration of the plan 57-0, winning over three Democratic senators and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats. The rest of the Democratic caucus voted “present,” in an attempt to confound Mr. McConnell’s strategy, which was to tie down the Democratic Party to an ambitious proposal from its progressive wing. In his mind, this would clearly…

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The Republican party is the political arm of the fossil fuel industry

The Republican party is the political arm of the fossil fuel industry

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Kate Aronoff writes: For Republicans, the climate crisis is a joke. On Tuesday in the Senate, Mike Lee, a Republican senator for Utah, spent several minutes on the floor showing pictures of Luke Skywalker on Hoth, giant seahorses and Ronald Reagan shooting off a machine gun whilst mounted atop a dinosaur. This was his bid to “treat the Green New Deal”, which came up for a vote in that body on Tuesday, “with the seriousness it deserves”. For a growing…

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