Browsed by
Category: Climate Change

As Trump dismantles clean air rules, an industry lawyer delivers for ex-clients

As Trump dismantles clean air rules, an industry lawyer delivers for ex-clients

Comments 0 Comment

The New York Times reports: As a corporate lawyer, William L. Wehrum worked for the better part of a decade to weaken air pollution rules by fighting the Environmental Protection Agency in court on behalf of chemical manufacturers, refineries, oil drillers and coal-burning power plants. Now, Mr. Wehrum is about to deliver one of the biggest victories yet for his industry clients — this time from inside the Trump administration as the government’s top air pollution official. On Tuesday, President…

Read More Read More

EPA is set to roll back restrictions on coal-burning power plants

EPA is set to roll back restrictions on coal-burning power plants

Comments 0 Comment

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Trump administration is escalating an effort to revive the flagging U.S. coal industry with a planned move next week to replace restrictive Obama-era climate policies with new rules designed to help coal-burning plants run harder and stay open longer. The proposed new rules, which the Environmental Protection Agency plans is expected to release within days, would be the latest in a series of reversals of policies the Obama administration adopted to slow climate change….

Read More Read More

Trump administration says conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative

Trump administration says conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative

Comments 0 Comment

The Associated Press reports: Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs. The position was outlined in a memo released last month in support of the administration’s proposal to relax fuel mileage standards. The government released the memo online this month without fanfare. Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum…

Read More Read More

Interior secretary’s school friend crippling climate research, scientists say

Interior secretary’s school friend crippling climate research, scientists say

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: Prominent US climate scientists have told the Guardian that the Trump administration is holding up research funding as their projects undergo an unprecedented political review by the high-school football teammate of the US interior secretary. The US interior department administers over $5.5bn in funding to external organizations, mostly for research, conservation and land acquisition. At the beginning of 2018, interior secretary Ryan Zinke instated a new requirement that scientific funding above $50,000 must undergo an additional review…

Read More Read More

More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

Comments 0 Comment

Science News reports: Freshwater is crucial for drinking, washing, growing food, producing energy and just about every other aspect of modern life. Yet more than 2 billion of Earth’s 7.6 billion inhabitants lack clean drinking water at home, available on demand. A major United Nations report, released in June, shows that the world is not on track to meet a U.N. goal: to bring safe water and sanitation to everyone by 2030. And by 2050, half the world’s population may…

Read More Read More

The next five years will be ‘anomalously warm,’ scientists predict

The next five years will be ‘anomalously warm,’ scientists predict

Comments 0 Comment

The Washington Post reports: The past four years have been the four warmest ever recorded — and now, according to a new scientific forecast, the next five will also probably be “anomalously warm,” even beyond what the steady increase in global warming would produce on its own. That could include another record warmest year, even warmer than the current record year of 2016. It could also include an increased risk of heat extremes and a major heat event somewhere in…

Read More Read More

California burning

California burning

Comments 0 Comment

William Finnegan writes: On the northwestern edge of Los Angeles, where I grew up, the wildfires came in late summer. We lived in a new subdivision, and behind our house were the hills, golden and parched. We would hose down the wood-shingled roof as fire crews bivouacked in our street. Our neighborhood never burned, but others did. In the Bel Air fire of 1961, nearly five hundred homes burned, including those of Burt Lancaster and Zsa Zsa Gabor. We were…

Read More Read More

Heat — the next big inequality issue

Heat — the next big inequality issue

Comments 0 Comment

The Guardian reports: When July’s heatwave swept through the Canadian province of Quebec, killing more than 90 people in little over a week, the unrelenting sunshine threw the disparities between rich and poor into sharp relief. While the well-heeled residents of Montreal hunkered down in blissfully air conditioned offices and houses, the city’s homeless population – not usually welcome in public areas such as shopping malls and restaurants – struggled to escape the blanket of heat. Benedict Labre House, a…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

Carmakers speed toward electric future despite Trump rollback

Carmakers speed toward electric future despite Trump rollback

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

Scorching summer in Europe signals long-term climate changes

Scorching summer in Europe signals long-term climate changes

Comments 0 Comment

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,…

Read More Read More

Trump administration unveils its plan to relax car pollution rules

Trump administration unveils its plan to relax car pollution rules

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

Mexican president-elect vows to end use of fracking

Mexican president-elect vows to end use of fracking

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

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

Comments 0 Comment

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,…

Read More Read More