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Category: Climate Change

Terrified by ‘hothouse Earth’? Don’t despair, do something

Terrified by ‘hothouse Earth’? Don’t despair, do something

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Eric Holthaus writes: A team of international researchers released what looks like a blueprint for catastrophe this week. On our current path, they warned, humanity might push the planet into an entirely new, hellish equilibrium, unseen since before the emergence of our species millions of years ago. This doomsday scenario, which they dubbed “hothouse Earth,” could render large swaths of our planet uninhabitable. Their conclusion: “Humanity is now facing the need for critical decisions and actions that could influence our…

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Carmakers speed toward electric future despite Trump rollback

Carmakers speed toward electric future despite Trump rollback

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Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration wants to try to limit California’s special ability to require increasing purchase of electric vehicles in the state—but major automakers say they have no intention of reversing course on their electric vehicle plans. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department are targeting California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to set stricter tailpipe emissions limits and zero emission vehicle requirements than the federal government. The agencies, as part of a larger Aug. 2 proposal…

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Scorching summer in Europe signals long-term climate changes

Scorching summer in Europe signals long-term climate changes

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The New York Times reports: In Northern Europe, this summer feels like a modern-day version of the biblical plagues. Cows are dying of thirst in Switzerland, fires are gobbling up timber in Sweden, the majestic Dachstein glacier is melting in Austria. In London, stores are running out of fans and air-conditioners. In Greenland, an iceberg may break off a piece so large that it could trigger a tsunami that destroys settlements on shore. Last week, Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise mountain,…

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Trump administration unveils its plan to relax car pollution rules

Trump administration unveils its plan to relax car pollution rules

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration on Thursday put forth its long-awaited proposal to freeze antipollution and fuel-efficiency standards for cars, significantly weakening one of President Barack Obama’s signature policies to combat global warming. The proposed new rules would also challenge the right of states, California in particular, to set their own, more stringent tailpipe pollution standards. That would set the stage for a legal clash that could ultimately split the nation’s auto market in two. The administration’s…

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Mexican president-elect vows to end use of fracking

Mexican president-elect vows to end use of fracking

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The Associated Press reports: Mexico’s president-elect said Tuesday that he will end fracking, the oil and gas extraction method that has just begun to take root in areas of the country’s north. Asked about the potential risks of fracking at a news conference, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, “We will no longer use that method to extract petroleum.” Mexico has a huge potential shale formation in the Burgos basin, similar to the Texas Eagle Ford fields. But while a few…

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Scientists aren’t impressed with New York Times’ new feature story on climate change

Scientists aren’t impressed with New York Times’ new feature story on climate change

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Joe Romm writes: The New York Times Magazine is hyping a massive new story claiming that the period from 1979 to 1989 was “The decade we almost stopped climate change.” But the just-released, roughly 30,000 word article by Nathaniel Rich is already being widely criticized by leading scientists, historians, and climate experts. As physicist Ben Franta, who studies the history of climate politics, put it, “Rich’s exoneration of fossil fuel producers as well as the Republican party seem based on…

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Global greening’ sounds good. In the long run, it’s terrible

Global greening’ sounds good. In the long run, it’s terrible

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Carl Zimmer writes: “Global greening” sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe. Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are…

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Coastal communities struggling to adapt to climate change are beginning to do what was once unthinkable: retreat

Coastal communities struggling to adapt to climate change are beginning to do what was once unthinkable: retreat

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Jen Schwartz writes: Retreating from the coasts, in concept or practice, is not popular. Why would people abandon their community, the thinking goes, unless no better alternatives remained? To emergency responders, retreat is a form of flood mitigation. To environmental advocates, it’s ecological restoration. To resilience planners, it’s adaptation to climate change. Everyone agrees, however, that retreat sounds like defeat. It means admitting that humans have lost and that the water has won. “American political institutions, even our national mythology,…

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California’s longer, hotter summers spark deadly, destructive fire season

California’s longer, hotter summers spark deadly, destructive fire season

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The Ventura County Star reports: California wildfires tore through mountains and foothills and into neighborhoods this week as record-breaking heat combined with increasingly dry conditions in the Golden State. On Friday, fires burned out of control, stretching resources thin in areas and forcing thousands to leave their homes. “We have a number of big destructive wildfires burning in very different parts of the state,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “There’s a lot going on right now in…

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Actually, Republicans do believe in climate change

Actually, Republicans do believe in climate change

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Leaf Van Boven and David Sherman write: It is widely believed that most Republicans are skeptical about human-caused climate change. But is this belief correct? In 2014 and 2016, we conducted two national surveys of more than 2,000 respondents on the issue of climate change. We found that most Republicans agreed that climate change is happening, threatens humans and is caused by human activity — and that reducing carbon emissions would mitigate the problem. To be sure, Democrats agreed more…

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Extreme global weather is ‘the face of climate change’ says leading scientist

Extreme global weather is ‘the face of climate change’ says leading scientist

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The Guardian reports: The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time”. Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to on the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern…

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The media’s failure to connect the dots on climate change

The media’s failure to connect the dots on climate change

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Emily Atkin writes: A record-breaking heat wave killed 65 people in Japan this week, just weeks after record flooding there killed more than 200. Record-breaking heat is also wreaking havoc in California, where the wildfire season is already worse than usual. In Greece, fast-moving fires have killed at least 80 people, and Sweden is struggling to contain more than 50 fires amid its worst drought in 74 years. Both countries have experienced all-time record-breaking temperatures this summer, as has most…

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Trump to seek repeal of California’s smog-fighting power

Trump to seek repeal of California’s smog-fighting power

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Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration will seek to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions — including its mandate for electric-car sales — in a proposed revision of Obama-era standards, according to three people familiar with the plan. The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s…

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Fueled by climate change, wildfires erode air quality gains

Fueled by climate change, wildfires erode air quality gains

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E&E News reports: Fourteen years ago, University of Washington researcher Daniel Jaffe installed an air pollution monitor on a mountainside outside Eugene, Ore. His intention was to measure pollution levels, with a particular focus on tracking emissions from China that drift into the United States in the spring. But in recent years, the monitor has unexpectedly produced a second and more urgent data set: tracking fine particle pollution from wildfires in the western United States. “We spend more of our…

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Trump and Putin are clearly in cahoots — over propping up fossil fuels

Trump and Putin are clearly in cahoots — over propping up fossil fuels

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Eric Holthaus writes: Whether Russia meddled in the U.S. presidential election in 2016 is not up for serious debate — numerous intelligence agencies, both foreign and domestic, concluded it did. During a joint press conference with President Donald Trump in Helsinki on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin went a long way toward answering why. “I did [want Trump to win] because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal,” Putin said. That statement was widely covered, but I’m…

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