Climate Change

07/04/14
Author: 
Rebecca Solnit

That's a tired phrase, the destruction of the Earth, but translate it into the face of a starving child and a barren field – and then multiply that a few million times. Or just picture the tiny bivalves: scallops, oysters, Arctic sea snails that can't form shells in acidifying oceans right now. Or another superstorm tearing apart another city. Climate change is global-scale violence, against places and species as well as against human beings. Once we call it by name, we can start having a real conversation about our priorities and values.

Category: 
03/04/14
Author: 
Joe Romm

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued its second of four planned reports examining the state of climate science. This one summarizes what the scientific literature says about “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability” (big PDF here). As with every recent IPCC report, it is super-cautious to a fault and yet still incredibly alarming.

Category: 
02/04/14
Author: 
Emily Atkin

Two days after a U.N. report warned of increased famine, war, and poverty from unmitigated carbon emissions, the Republican-led House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would require the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to focus less on studying climate change, and more on predicting storms. The bill, introduced last June by Rep.

Category: 
30/03/14
Author: 
Ivan Semeniuk

Violent conflicts and threats to the territorial integrity of some of the world’s most vulnerable countries are among the more ominous risks posed by an ever-warming planet, according to the UN organization given the task of assessing the impacts of climate change.

24/03/14
Author: 
Niko Block

There is much to be desired in the mainstream media's coverage of energy politics and climate change, but perhaps the single most important fact that gets consistently overlooked -- that is scarcely apprehended by the general public and yet comes to mind for me every time a new pipeline or oil field gets approved -- is that greenhouse-driven warming operates on an extremely delayed timescale.

25/03/14
Author: 
Tony Barboza

Air pollution kills about 7 million people a year and is linked to 1 in 8 deaths worldwide, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Health Organization. The finding more than doubles previous estimates “and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk,” the agency said.

24/03/14
Author: 
Shawn McCarthy

Exxon Mobil Corp. is leading a parade of energy companies that will confront the issue of the so-called “carbon bubble” – the idea that fossil-fuel assets such as Canada’s oil sands are overvalued and risky for investors in a world that must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. In an agreement with institutional shareholders, Exxon has agreed to disclosure by the end of March of how climate change regulations could affect the value of its worldwide assets, including its major holdings in Alberta’s oil sands.

23/03/14
Author: 
Ted Hamilton

When faced with intractable problems, we often make up stories to console ourselves. The boat’s not really sinking, we say: We’re just going through a rough patch. We’re not headed for disaster; we’ve just been blown off course. Better to keep a bright outlook on things, we presume, than to acknowledge our desperate situation.

Category: 
22/03/14
Author: 
Nick Cohen

The American Association for the Advancement of Science came as close as such a respectable institution can to screaming an alarm last week. "As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do," it said as it began one of those sentences that you know will build to a "but".

Category: 
20/03/14
Author: 
Barry Saxifrage

Last year BP projected global climate pollution would "most likely" surge 26% by 2030. As I reported at the time, this would crank up the Earth's thermostat a disastrous +4C according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That is twice the +2C threshold for "dangerous climate change" that all major nations have promised to stay below.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Climate Change