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Before the official talks at the UN climate change summit start next month in Paris, each nation was invited to submit a pledge in which it details how it plans to reduce its carbon emissions. The plan is for the world's leaders to reach a sensible agreement such that the climate might avert warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 past pre-industrial levels. The climate is already 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer. More than 155 countries have responded to the call, amounting to 128 Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Each country outlined the progress it wants to make differently, depending on how many resources they can dispose of and, of course, how serious they take the issue
Usually, when we hear something about IndieGoGo, we're excited; it's either an innovative product, a service, or something awesome. Not this time.
Cod fisheries around the US, and especially in the Gulf of Maine have reached catastrophic levels - only 3% of sustainable levels.
Of all the major conservative parties in the democratic world, the Republican Party stands alone in its denial of the legitimacy of climate science.
A recent study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that there is a strong functional relationship between a region's average recorded temperature and economic productivity -- further warning of the damage climate warming would inflict on our economy.
In 2006, the US court found the tobacco industry guilty of a decades-long racketeering enterprise in which it conspired to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. The tobacco companies were ordered to buy newspaper ads detailing smoking's health effects and to stop using such descriptions as "low tar," "light," ultra light," "mild" or "natural" that might imply that they are less dangerous than other cigarettes. They were also ordered to pay $10 billion in fines. Speaking for ThinkProgress, Sharon Y. Eubanks - the leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted the landmark lawsuit against big tobacco - says the Department of Justice should investigate Exxon and possibly other fossil fuel industry players (Koch *cough) for a similar claim, only much worse. The conspiracy isn't only against smokers' health, it's against all life on Earth.
By now, it's almost a statistical certainty: in January 2016, we will say that 2015 was the warmest year on record; for the moment, we can clearly say that this September was the hottest on record.
Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in the world in 2014, has for the past decade concentrated his efforts and resources into philanthropic projects aimed to transform the world. He's invested billions in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which concentrates on improving health and helping the world's poor access technology and basic services. Some of Gates' funded projects were covered by ZME Science, like the Omniprocessor that turns sludge into electricity and pure, clean water or the solar power toilets. As you can see, energy is key to meeting any humanitarian goal. It also matters how you get this energy. If we continue to burn fossil fuel at this rate, the planet might irreversibly warm by a couple degrees Celsius, with cataclysmic shifts. That's why Gates has pledged $2 billion strictly into energy R&D.
Bad news for us -- and fish.
A study assessed how sea level rise at the hand of global warming will affect coastal populations in the United States. The analysis made by Climate Central, a nonprofit news organization that analyzes and reports on climate science, found 20 million Americans’ homes might be flooded, and more than 1,500 U.S. cities and municipalities could have at least half of their residential area under water if the world emits under a 'business-as-usual' scenario. Unfortunately, there's a lot of damage that's already been done. Carbon emitted today will continue to warm the planet for hundreds of years and its effects on the climate are already locked in. Cities like Miami and New Orleans are 'already lost in the long run,' said Ben Strauss, vice president for sea level and climate impacts at Climate Central.
With the Paris summit being just around the corner, it's time to step back and look at who the big actors are.
Less than two months away, 200 governments will join the U.N. Paris talks where an international agreement might be reached seeking to limit the amount of greenhouse gas emissions for each country. The goal is to eventually level emissions significantly relative to 1990 levels for developed countries and cap emissions as soon as possible for developing countries like India and China. Each country, however, wants to get the best deal and many critics are weary that we're simply heading for another Copenhagen bust like six years ago, or worst even - another Kyoto which failed miserably.
The third largest emitter of carbon emissions, India, pledged it would reduce its emissions relative to its GDP between 33 and 35% by 2030 relative to 2005. India, a rapidly developing country, will continue its industrial expansion which includes, of course, building more coal plants and releasing more carbon emissions than it does today, however what the government, in fact, pledges is decoupling emissions from economic growth. It's a sound victory for the planet, but to achieve its goals India will require help from developed nations. Hopefully, this might be possible under a common climate-protection framework on a global level which will be discussed in Paris during the UN talks scheduled in November.
The Scandinavian nation has set its mind on ridding itself of fossils fuels. To this end, the government announced it will increase spending on climate-protection measures for the next year bringing it to $546 million. That might not sound like much but Sweden is a small country which already uses energy very efficiently. It also gets three quarters of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources, mainly nuclear and hydro.
Enticed by warming waters, king crabs might soon make a run for Antarctica's continental shelf where they haven't been seen for at least 10 million years. As such, the fragile wildlife comprised of creatures like sea stars, sea worms, sponges, sea anemones, sea lilies and feather stars - all lacking protection against the crushing claws of the king crab - could face rapid annihilation.
Six years ago, at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, things seemed to have taken a dire turn, with no solution in sight. Basically, no one really wanted to pledge anything significant. But then, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, brought forth a proposal.
A while ago I wrote about how the fossil fuel divestment movement is gathering a huge momentum, as more and more funds, universities and companies are choosing to migrate their financial assets away from fossil. The movement is spearheaded by Bill McKibben, one of the founders of the 350.org group, who first organized rallies and lobbied key partners. "Almost from the start, academics have called it the fastest growing such anti-corporate campaign in history, and it’s clearly accelerating by the day,” said McKibben. But I don't even think McKibben himself predicted how far divestment would go. It was launched more like an awareness campaign on the dangers of global warming. It's grown fast, for sure, but this fast? Let me run some numbers: according to a report released by Arabella Advisors, $2.6 trillion in assets have moved away from fossil portfolios or 50 times more than last year. That's not just a dent anymore - that's serious cash!
This Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker were engaged in a two hour long debate on CNN. In 120 minutes, climate change was only treated for three minutes, which to me is saddening since it shows the moderators care as little about the effects of climate change on this country and the world at large as the Republican Presidential candidates.
The Arctic is overrun with giant mosquitoes: larger, furrier versions of the mosquitoes we all know and hate. As temperatures in the Arctic continue to rise, these mosquitoes can not only brood for a longer period of time, but they can survive more, in higher numbers. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences this is a major problem, and one that will continue to grow as the planet gets hotter.
According to a new study published in Nature Climate Change, the snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains has reached the lowest levels in the past 500 years, underscoring the severe drought that is already affecting the state.
The world is heating up, that's no longer up for debate, but there are many ways through which we can discuss how much the planet has warmed. You can calculate global averages, chart rising levels, discuss freak weather events, but that's all difficult to understand and sometimes debatable.
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns among other things Fox News, also known as the most despicable garbage journalism outlet in the whole world, bought National Geographic.
As if the area wasn't tense enough socially and politically, Iran and Iraq are also facing major environmental concerns in the form of huge dust swirls. Iran’s capital city of Tehran is suffering most from an increasing amount of dust storms as winds at speeds of up to 80 kilometers broke trees and shattered the windows of houses, smashing power lines and filling up cities with dust.
A new studied explore the possibility of unprecedented catastrophic storms – storms so bad that there’s no recorded precedent in the past 10,000 years. According to the study, the chance for such an extremely rare event to occur in this century are drastically increased by climate change. ‘Black swans’ is an umbrella term for every event that […]
Right now the coal business is arguably living through its most dire days ever. Nearly 300 mines have closed in the past five years, 200 coal-powered plants have been scheduled for closure, and coal corporations are basically ruined. For instance Peabody Energy, the world's biggest coal company, sold stocks below $1 when it used to be $72 in 2011. And it could get worse. Alpha Natural Resources, the second biggest coal company in the US, filled for bankruptcy along with other smaller firms. Basically, investors wouldn't touch coal nowadays not even with a ten foot pole. Winter is coming, but apparently coal companies execs aren't all that stressed. While their employees have had their pays cut and thousands fired, managers and CEO have actually substantially increased their salaries. When the ship sinks, might as well grab what you can, I guess.
According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), there's now a mature El Niño present in the Pacific Ocean. As is the case with such events, the biggest sign of an El Niño shaping up is rising surface water temperatures. Right now, the east-central tropical Pacific Ocean waters are likely to exceed 2° Celsius above average, which suggests this could be one of the strongest since 1950, placing it along similar events like 1972-73, 1982-83 or 1997-98.
Thousands upon thousands of Pacific walrus were captured by photographer Gary Braasch as they came ashore on the northwest coast of Alaska last week, in an event believed to be triggered by global warming.
Littered with over 150 trees and boasting a stunning asymmetrical architecture, 25 Verde - an apartment complex in Turin, Italy - is not your typical residence. Though its roots may be made of steel and concrete, this apartment building rises like a forest or urban oasis.
One of the largest banks in the world says choosing not to invest in renewable energy and divest from fossil fuel might come at a significant financial cost. Up to $1.8 trillion through 2040 or $44 trillion by 2060, when compared to the business-as-usual model.
The Department of the Navy (DON) announced it will make the largest investment in renewable energy by an federal entity. Its plan is to install a huge 210 megawatt (MW) solar facility - enough to power 80,000 Californian homes - in the Arizona desert, which would serve electricity to 14 US Navy installations. The agreement was signed last month and marks the latest in a slew of measures meant to make the Department of Defense less dependent on oil - not just by the navy, but also the military or air force.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. In a bid to curb global emissions, the carbon credit scheme was introduced by the UN as an annex to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Apparently, this honestly good idea has backfired after some participants in the scheme, most notably from Russian and Ukraine, took advantage. Lack of international oversight means a couple of factories have turned in a huge profit while emissions have actually gone up to support the scheme. A classic case of perverse incentive or good idea gone bad. This time, at the global climate's expense.
The revolutionary wave that swept Arab nations beginning with 2011 displaced millions and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. On the bright side, the dampened economic activity caused a significant lapse in greenhouse emissions. In some extreme cases, nitrogen dioxide values have decreased by 40 to 50% over Damascus and Aleppo, according to a new study published by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
Did you notice something strange about this July? It was hot! Sure, July is supposed to be hot (at least for most of the world), but even by July standards it was hot. If you too have felt like this, you weren’t imagining things: the NOAA recently announced that this July was the hottest month […]
A team at George Washington University has found a way to hit two birds with one stone: mitigate climate change by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere and make a valuable material at the same time. The solar powered setup reacts a molten lithium carbonate in the presence of heat and an electrical current to produce carbon fibers, recently highly prized in engineering applications from cars and airplanes to wind turbines to tennis rackets.
For the first time, a group of researchers from Canada showed that the grime on buildings can emit ozone when exposed to light. Ozone is the main compound found in smog, a dangerous mixture to public health. Up until now, grimy urban buildings weren't included in models that assess how polluted an urban area is, but the new findings suggest their contribution is significant. Dirty buildings are thus not only unpleasant to look at, but also detrimental to your health.
Glaciers covering Asia's Tian Shan mountains have lost a quarter of their mass over the past 50 years, at a rate four times higher than the global average due to the particularly dry climate of the area. At this rate, by 2050 half of the remaining ice that covers the 2,500 kilometers long mountain rage could melt, threatening the water supply and affecting millions of people. If left unchecked, the situation might even turn into a conflict for the most basic resources (water and food).
Two of the biggest pension funds in California have lost $5 billion in assets last year by sticking to their fossil fuel investments. The report released by Trillium Asset Management suggests that the loss was due to the huge dip in oil and coal prices registered between July 2014 and June 2015.
Most people have an outdated belief that solar energy is too expensive. For most people living in the United States, this isn't true for some time and Google just released a new project to make a point of this. Called Project Sunroof, the tool uses extensive satellite imagery from Google Maps and superimposes sunlight energy flux data over them.
The food industry has become much more efficient in the last few decades as a result of globalization, but also a lot more vulnerable to shocks. Climate change will lead not only to increased temperatures, but the extreme weather it causes in North, South America and Asia are likely to also lead to global food shortages.
Every five years for more than a century, National Geographic releases an atlas of the world complete with the latest geographic and geologic cartographic representations. The latest edition of Atlas of the World can be quite terrifying if you move up north, in the Arctic, for it shows just how dramatic ice loss has been in the past decades. For comparison, the GIF above stitches three edition (7th and 10th) from 2000 to 2015. The latest caption shows the Arctic as it had been in 2012, during its record low ice extent.
Vidal Mendoza, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic technician, has been spending his past Tuesday scanning the upper Guadalupe River, looking for the right spot to measure the flow of the water. Perhaps more accurately, Mendoza has been spending his past Tuesday on a hot, mostly dry riverbed searching where the river should have been.
According to a new study conducted by German researchers, even somehow magically removing massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere won't solve our climate problems - we need to find ways to stop emitting.
On Wednesday, the Department of Defense issued a report in which it highlights the global security implications of climate change. In the report, the authors note that climate change will exacerbate current world problems like " poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries."
Boy, was this year a scorcher! Well, what can I say, apart from get ready for more. According to an exclusive info ran by New Scientist, all but one main tracker of global surface temperature will report that this year will mark the first full degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. I remind you that the International Panel on Climate Change warns that a two degree Celsius warming should be avoided on all costs if irreversible consequences like sea level rise, habitat loss and cataclysmic events are to be averted. This means that we're already halfway there, and the two degree mark might be reached by 2050. A four degree warming might end civilization as we know it.
A geological survey found Washington DC and the surrounding Chesapeake Bay region is gradually sinking. By the end of the century, the Chesapeake bay would be six inches lower than it is today. This is due to a natural phenomenon, not man-made global warming. But when the two add up, it could put the nation's capital a couple of feet under water, significantly affecting the lives of local residents and the city at large.
Chinese researchers sampled water from an underground aquifer in the Tarim Basin and found these store vast quantities of carbon dioxide as a result of human activities. If the same holds true for all the desert aquifers around the world, the trapped carbon would amount to about a quarter more than the amount stored in living plants on land. Previously, the carbon trapped in aquifers was thought to be negligible. Clearly, this isn't the case and these should not be disturbed so that the carbon doesn't wash up into the atmosphere.
Democrat Hillary Clinton is maybe the first presidential candidate to make tackling climate change a central point. Now we actually have specifics after Clinton released on Sunday a fact sheet detailing her plan for action. Her proposals are bold, for sure. For instance, if she's elected, Hilary promises that clean renewable energy will power every home in America within a decade. To achieve this goal, she plans on bringing the total number of solar panels installed nationwide to more than half a billion before the end of her first term. Should we believe her?
Scientists rely on a method called radiocarbon dating to determine the age of fossils or artifacts. With little or no other information available, the widely used method can accurately determine how old a sample is. This makes it one of the most powerful tools archaeologists, anthropologists and paleontologists have at their disposal. Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere are, however, artificially aging the atmosphere and this might drastically interfere with the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. According to a new paper published by a team at the Imperial College London, "by 2050 a new T-shirt would have the same radiocarbon date as a robe worn by William the Conqueror a thousand years earlier."
Three startups – Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat and Climeworks – are making machines capable of managing the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The new devices literally suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
The media is abuzz with disturbing headlines, warning us that even reduced levels of global warming will cause massive sea level rise, up to 20 feet (6 meters). Unfortunately, that’s true. But what’s almost as worrying is that everyone is treating this as news, when in fact, we’ve known for quite a while that this […]
