Browsed by
Category: Climate Change

The climate change lawsuit that could stop the U.S. government from supporting fossil fuels

The climate change lawsuit that could stop the U.S. government from supporting fossil fuels

Comments 0 Comment

60 Minutes reports: Of all the cases working their way through the federal court system none is more interesting or potentially more life changing than Juliana v. United States. To quote one federal judge, “This is no ordinary lawsuit.” It was filed back in 2015 on behalf of a group of kids who are trying to get the courts to block the U.S. government from continuing the use of fossil fuels. They say it’s causing climate change, endangering their future…

Read More Read More

Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’, scientists reveal

Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’, scientists reveal

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: The number of heatwaves affecting the planet’s oceans has increased sharply, scientists have revealed, killing swathes of sea-life like “wildfires that take out huge areas of forest”. The damage caused in these hotspots is also harmful for humanity, which relies on the oceans for oxygen, food, storm protection and the removal of climate-warming carbon dioxide the atmosphere, they say. Global warming is gradually increasing the average temperature of the oceans, but the new research is the first…

Read More Read More

With climate science on the march, an isolated Trump hunkers down

With climate science on the march, an isolated Trump hunkers down

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: New efforts by President Trump and his staff to question or undermine the established science of climate change have created a widening rift between the White House on one side, and scientific facts, government agencies, and some leading figures in the president’s own party on the other. The president’s senior advisers are exploring the idea of creating a panel aimed at questioning the National Climate Assessment. According to a White House memo, the group would…

Read More Read More

The 2020 election now has a climate-action candidate

The 2020 election now has a climate-action candidate

Comments 0 Comment

  In January, The Atlantic reported: If there is a new Democratic president come 2021, he or she will get pulled in all sorts of policy directions. [Washington State Governor, Jay] Inslee [who announced his presidential candidacy today] says he has one priority: global warming. It’s not theoretical, or a cause just for tree huggers anymore. Putting off dealing with it for a year or two or kicking it to some new bipartisan commission won’t work, he says. He plans…

Read More Read More

The ocean is running out of oxygen, scientists warn

The ocean is running out of oxygen, scientists warn

Comments 0 Comment

Laura Poppick writes: Escaping predators, digestion and other animal activities—including those of humans—require oxygen. But that essential ingredient is no longer so easy for marine life to obtain, several new studies reveal. In the past decade ocean oxygen levels have taken a dive—an alarming trend that is linked to climate change, says Andreas Oschlies, an oceanographer at the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, whose team tracks ocean oxygen levels worldwide. “We were surprised by the intensity of…

Read More Read More

Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. We need to tax it, now

Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. We need to tax it, now

Comments 0 Comment

John Vidal writes: Cement, the key component of concrete and one of the most widely used manmade materials, is now the cornerstone of global construction. It has shaped the modern environment, but its production has a massive footprint that neither the industry nor governments have been willing to address. Because of the heat needed to decompose rock and the natural chemical processes involved in making cement, every tonne made releases one tonne of C02, the main greenhouse warming gas. Including…

Read More Read More

A world that neglects to save its children can’t hope to be saved by its children

A world that neglects to save its children can’t hope to be saved by its children

Comments 0 Comment

  The New York Times reports: It’s complicated being Greta. Small, shy, survivor of crippling depression, Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish girl skipping school to shame the world into addressing climate change, drew a parade of fans one Friday in February on a frozen square in Stockholm. Six Swiss students had traveled 26 hours by train to seek her support for their petition for a tougher Swiss carbon emissions law. An Italian scientist told her she reminded him of his…

Read More Read More

Feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss may push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point

Feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss may push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point

Comments 0 Comment

Natalie Wolchover writes: Clouds currently cover about two-thirds of the planet at any moment. But computer simulations of clouds have begun to suggest that as the Earth warms, clouds become scarcer. With fewer white surfaces reflecting sunlight back to space, the Earth gets even warmer, leading to more cloud loss. This feedback loop causes warming to spiral out of control. For decades, rough calculations have suggested that cloud loss could significantly impact climate, but this concern remained speculative until the…

Read More Read More

Costa Rica lays out ground-breaking decarbonisation plan

Costa Rica lays out ground-breaking decarbonisation plan

Comments 0 Comment

Renew Economy reports: The Central American nation of Costa Rica has laid out its long-term decarbonisation plans to become one of the world’s first, if not the first, zero-emissions nations. Costa Rica’s Decarbonization Plan includes both short-term goals out to 2022 which are intended to support the country’s longer-term 2050 goals and also serves as the basis for Costa Rica’s plans to update its Nationally Determined Contributions in line with the Paris Agreement in 2020. With a population of nearly…

Read More Read More

Pay attention to the growing wave of climate change lawsuits

Pay attention to the growing wave of climate change lawsuits

Comments 0 Comment

Vox reports: In 1998, 46 states and the District of Columbia signed on to the largest civil litigation settlement in US history, the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. Stunning in its scope and scale, the agreement forced the four largest tobacco companies to stop advertising to youth, limit lobbying, restrict product placement in media, and fund anti-smoking campaigns. It also required them to pay out more than $206 billion over 25 years. Tobacco companies had in previous decades successfully swatted down…

Read More Read More

White House plans to set up panel whose mission is to disrupt climate science and promote fossil fuel use

White House plans to set up panel whose mission is to disrupt climate science and promote fossil fuel use

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: The White House plans to create an ad hoc group of select federal scientists to reassess the government’s analysis of climate science and counter conclusions that the continued burning of fossil fuels is harming the planet, according to three administration officials. The National Security Council initiative would include scientists who question the severity of climate impacts and the extent to which humans contribute to the problem, according to these individuals, who asked for anonymity to discuss…

Read More Read More

Youth carry the moral authority in dealing with climate change

Youth carry the moral authority in dealing with climate change

Comments 0 Comment

Bill McKibben writes: One imagines that Senator Dianne Feinstein would like a do-over of her colloquy with some young people on Friday afternoon. A group of school students, at least one as young as seven, went to the senator’s San Francisco office to ask her to support the Green New Deal climate legislation. In a video posted online by the Sunrise Movement, she tells them that the resolution isn’t a good one, because it can’t be paid for, and the…

Read More Read More

85-year-old Sen Feinstein responds to children imploring her to support the Green New Deal: ‘I know what I’m doing… I just won a big election’

85-year-old Sen Feinstein responds to children imploring her to support the Green New Deal: ‘I know what I’m doing… I just won a big election’

Comments 0 Comment

This is how @SenFeinstein reacted to children asking her to support the #GreenNewDeal resolution — with smugness + disrespect. This is a fight for our generation's survival. Her reaction is why young people desperately want new leadership in Congress. pic.twitter.com/0zAkaxruMI — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) February 22, 2019

White House forms panel to look at national security threat posed by climate change led by adviser who claims climate science is a ‘cult’

White House forms panel to look at national security threat posed by climate change led by adviser who claims climate science is a ‘cult’

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office. The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which would be established by executive order, is being spearheaded by William Happer, a National Security Council senior director. Happer, an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton…

Read More Read More

January was one of the warmest in all of recorded history

January was one of the warmest in all of recorded history

Comments 0 Comment

Eric Holthaus writes: January 2019 was the third-warmest January in the history of global weather record-keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The only warmer global Januarys in the instrumental record, which dates back to the 1880s, were 2016 and 2017, and there’s evidence that the planet hasn’t been this warm in a very long time. The last time January global temperatures were below average was in 1976 — before millennials were even a thing. So here’s the…

Read More Read More

Surge in U.S. economists’ support for carbon tax to tackle climate change

Surge in U.S. economists’ support for carbon tax to tackle climate change

Comments 0 Comment

The Financial Times reports: US economists led by former US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen are uniting in record numbers to back the idea of a carbon tax as the most effective and immediate way of tackling climate change. At a time when Democrats including New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are pushing a sweeping “Green New Deal” programme to reduce greenhouse emissions, climate change is shaping up to be a major 2020 election issue. The US is the world’s second-biggest…

Read More Read More