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Category: Climate Change

They defied Trump on climate change. Now, it’s their moment of truth

They defied Trump on climate change. Now, it’s their moment of truth

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The New York Times reports: Hours after President Trump announced last year that the United States would exit the Paris climate deal, a broad group of governors, mayors and business executives declared that they would uphold the agreement anyway and continue tackling global warming on their own. It was a striking move for a coalition of local leaders: Making a case to the rest of the world that they, and not the president, spoke for the nation on climate policy….

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Zinke attends Pacific Islands Forum, ignores their biggest concern

Zinke attends Pacific Islands Forum, ignores their biggest concern

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Joel Clement writes: This week, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke heads the United States delegation to the Pacific Islands Forum Leader’s Session on the Island of Nauru on September 4, 2018, an annual gathering of dozens of Pacific Island leaders and partners. In the Interior Department press release, Zinke noted that the Pacific Islands are strategically important and he wants to discuss trade and the rule of law. He did not indicate any interest in discussing the impacts of climate change…

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As temperatures rise, so do insects’ appetites for corn, rice and wheat

As temperatures rise, so do insects’ appetites for corn, rice and wheat

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Science News reports: With temperatures creeping up as the climate warms, those very hungry caterpillars could get even hungrier, and more abundant. Crop losses to pests may grow. Insects will be “eating more of our lunch,” says Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington in Seattle. Based on how heat revs up insect metabolism and reproduction, he and his colleagues estimate that each degree Celsius of warming temperatures means an extra 10 to 25 percent of damage to wheat, maize…

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The Gulf Coast is most at risk and least prepared for climate change

The Gulf Coast is most at risk and least prepared for climate change

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Eric Holthaus writes: There’s been a recent lull of high-profile hurricanes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, but the Gulf Coast’s vulnerabilities go far beyond the attention-getting late summer storms. By many metrics, it’s the region most at risk — and least prepared — for climate change. A study published last year in Science magazine showed that for the country’s poorest counties, largely located in the Southeast, climate change could exacerbate already-pervasive economic inequality. If the region continues along a business-as-usual…

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How can China satisfy surging demand for meat without undermining the country’s commitment to combating climate change?

How can China satisfy surging demand for meat without undermining the country’s commitment to combating climate change?

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Marcello Rossi reports: Fueled by rising incomes rather than urbanization, meat consumption in China grew sevenfold over the last three decades and a half. In the early 1980s, when the population was still under one billion, the average Chinese person ate around 30 pounds of meat per year. Today, with an additional 380 million people, it’s nearly 140 pounds. On the whole, the country consumes 28 percent of the world’s meat — twice as much as the United States. And…

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Arctic permafrost may be thawing much faster than expected

Arctic permafrost may be thawing much faster than expected

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National Geographic reports: Nikita Zimov was teaching students to do ecological fieldwork in northern Siberia when he stumbled on a disturbing clue that the frozen land might be thawing far faster than expected. Zimov, like his father, Sergey Zimov, has spent years running a research station that tracks climate change in the rapidly warming Russian Far East. So when students probed the ground and took soil samples amid the mossy hummocks and larch forests near his home, 200 miles north…

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Climate change is not only hiking up temperatures, but changing the dynamics of weather itself

Climate change is not only hiking up temperatures, but changing the dynamics of weather itself

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Stefan Rahmstorf writes: We’ve all become increasingly used to reports of extreme weather over the past few years. But this summer’s raft of dramatic weather events is significant: Not only does it show what warming can do, it points to the potential large-scale trouble that lurks in the disruption of the planet’s winds and ocean currents. In the past few months alone, we’ve seen extreme heat in Western Europe, Canada, Alaska, the western United States, Texas, Japan and Algeria, which…

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Crop losses to pests will soar as climate warms, study warns

Crop losses to pests will soar as climate warms, study warns

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The Guardian reports: Rising global temperatures mean pests will devour far more of the world’s crops, according to the first global analysis of the subject, even if climate change is restricted to the international target of 2C. Increasing heat boosts both the number and appetite of insects, and researchers project they will destroy almost 50% more wheat than they do today with a 2C rise, and 30% more maize. Rice, the third key staple, is less affected as it is…

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As wildfires rage, smoke chokes out farmworkers and delays some crops

As wildfires rage, smoke chokes out farmworkers and delays some crops

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NPR reports: On Mike Pink’s potato farm at dawn, the sun is an angry red ball low in the sky. This summer, wildfire smoke has blanketed much of the West for days and weeks. And that smoke has come between the sun and ripening crops. Pink watches as his year’s work tumbles onto a fast-moving belt and into a waiting semi truck. He’s got most of his 1,600-acre potato fields yet to harvest on his 3,000-acre farm, spread over about…

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Fires rage from British Columbia to California as the Trump administration’s shortsighted climate policies make things worse

Fires rage from British Columbia to California as the Trump administration’s shortsighted climate policies make things worse

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Rob Jackson writes: I woke to a blood-red sky and air choked with smoke last week in the British Columbia wilderness. The Shag and Tweedsmuir fires burning just eastward may have been the closest, but I’d seen a dozen others from a float plane over the Coast Range the day before. Five-hundred-plus fires are torching British Columbia, which has declared a state of emergency. Fires are raging in Montana, Oregon and California, too. As someone who studies the earth for…

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California advances an ambitious climate policy that should be a model for the world

California advances an ambitious climate policy that should be a model for the world

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MIT Technology Review reports: California is accelerating its rollout of clean energy, even as the White House is racing to unravel climate regulations. On Tuesday evening, the California Assembly passed a bill requiring 100 percent of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by the end of 2045, putting one of the world’s most aggressive clean-energy policies on track for the governor’s desk. Given the size of California’s economy and the bill’s ambitions, it “would be the most important…

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Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

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The Guardian reports: Rising levels of carbon dioxide could make crops less nutritious and damage the health of hundreds of millions of people, research has revealed, with those living in some of the world’s poorest regions likely to be hardest hit. Previous research has shown that many food crops become less nutritious when grown under the CO2 levels expected by 2050, with reductions of protein, iron and zinc estimated at 3–17%. Now experts say such changes could mean that by…

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Death toll from Hurricane Maria higher than 9/11

Death toll from Hurricane Maria higher than 9/11

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CBS News reports: Hurricane Maria killed far more people in Puerto Rico than initially thought, accounting for an estimated 2,975 deaths on the island from September 2017 through February 2018, according to a new analysis. The study found that those in low-income areas, and elderly men, were at greatest risk of dying. The independent analysis was commissioned by the governor of Puerto Rico and conducted by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. CBS News obtained…

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Big oil asks government to protect it from climate change

Big oil asks government to protect it from climate change

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The Associated Press reports: As the nation plans new defenses against the more powerful storms and higher tides expected from climate change, one project stands out: an ambitious proposal to build a nearly 60-mile “spine” of concrete seawalls, earthen barriers, floating gates and steel levees on the Texas Gulf Coast. Like other oceanfront projects, this one would protect homes, delicate ecosystems and vital infrastructure, but it also has another priority — to shield some of the crown jewels of the…

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Wildfires causing air quality to worsen across much of the western United States

Wildfires causing air quality to worsen across much of the western United States

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Vox reports: Ash and smoke are choking Seattle’s air for the second week in a row, as wildfires smolder in the Cascades and in British Columbia. The air quality in Seattle this week has been worse than in Beijing, one of the world’s most notoriously polluted cities. As of Wednesday morning, the Air Quality Index in Seattle was at 190, a rating classified as “unhealthy.” In parts of the city, the index rose as high as 220, which is “very…

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Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record

Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record

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The Guardian reports: The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer. This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere. One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of…

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