“We are treading a thin line on whether it’s possible to avert major climate change, and it is absolutely imperative that we do everything we can.”
huffingtonpost.com - byMollie Reilly - January 31, 2017
More than 2,300 faculty members from California public universities signed a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to take the threat of climate change seriously.
The letter, signed by faculty members from the University of California and California State University systems and released on Tuesday, asks Trump to maintain the U.S. commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as specified in the Paris climate change agreement President Barack Obama signed last year. Trump, who has characterized climate change as a hoax, has promised to pull out of that agreement.
theguardian.com - by Dana Nuccitelli - January 30, 2017
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – which summarizes the latest and greatest climate science research – was quite clear that humans are responsible for global warming . . .
. . . In fact, the report’s best estimate was that humans are responsible for all of the global warming since 1951, and greenhouse gases for about 140%. That’s because natural factors have had roughly zero net effect on temperatures during that time, and other human pollutants have had a significant cooling effect.
An important message to President Donald J. Trump regarding his pending decision to remove the “Climate Change” page from the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) website, as reported by Reuters on January 25, 2017 . . .
If you order the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the “Climate Change” page from its website in an effort to sideline scientific research on climate change, you will not succeed. Thankfully, most of the important climate change research has already been archived within websites not under your control where scientists and interested citizens can easily access this important information (links to two such websites will be provided below).
As President, you should do your homework before making such crucial decisions, as the future of our children and grandchildren will depend on the decisions you make. Please do not prioritize money and economic gain ahead of health and human security.
When international leaders met in the Bangladeshi capital last month for ongoing discussions about a new global migration policy, they glossed over what experts say will soon become a massive driver of migration: climate change . . .
. . . Groups like the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, and the International Organization for Migration, are well aware of the risks, and say they are working to bring climate change to the forefront of policy discussions . . .
. . . It’s difficult to say exactly how many people around the world will be forced to move as the effects of climate change grow starker in the coming decades. But mass displacement is already happening as climate change contributes to natural disasters such as desertification, droughts, floods, and powerful storms.
The global need for humanitarian aid has reached a level not seen since World War II. More than 128 million people in 33 countries are now affected by crises, including conflict and natural disaster.
Image: A wind farm in Pomeroy, Iowa. The wind power industry is booming in the United States, with wind-farm technician projected to be the country’s fastest-growing occupation over the next decade. Credit Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
nytimes.com - January 2nd 2017 - Justin Gillis
With Donald J. Trump about to take control of the White House, it would seem a dark time for the renewable energy industry. After all, Mr. Trump has mocked the science of global warming as a Chinese hoax, threatened to kill a global deal on climate change and promised to restore the coal industry to its former glory.
So consider what happened in the middle of December, after investors had had a month to absorb the implications of Mr. Trump’s victory.
. . . Mexico’s climate story reflects a growing global problem. Worsening droughts, floods, wildfires, and rising seas will drive millions from their homes, all around the world.
From Mexico to China, Bangladesh to Senegal, climate migrants everywhere will relocate to the nearest safe place, says sociologist Cristina Bradatan, also of Texas Tech. Sometimes that means crossing borders . . .
Image: Cows graze in a farm near Chascomus, Argentina, on Nov. 10. (Marcos Brindicci/Reuters)
washingtonpost.com - Chris Mooney - December 11th 2016
The best news about climate change that we’ve heard lately is that for three years straight, the world’s energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas, have been flat. The gas has continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, but emissions haven’t gone up, even as economies have continued to grow.
But now we learn that there’s a major dose of bad news to accompany that: What’s true for carbon dioxide is not at all true for methane, the second most important greenhouse gas. Atmospheric concentrations of this gas — which causes much sharper short-term warming, but whose effects fade far more quickly than carbon dioxide — are spiking, a team of scientists reports in an analysis published Sunday in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
scientificamerican.com - by Kavya Balaraman - December 21, 2016
Mosquito-borne diseases like Zika can be extremely sensitive to climatic changes
The combination of climate change and last year’s El Niño phenomenon likely created the perfect playground for the Zika virus to spread rapidly across South America, a new study finds.
Both the Zika virus and the mosquitoes that carry it have been present in different parts of the world for a while. But several factors, including specific climatic conditions, could have catapulted the disease to public health emergency status, according to researchers from the University of Liverpool.
Hundreds of kayaktivists protest drilling in the Arctic and the Port of Seattle being used as a port for the Shell Oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer (Daniella Beccaria/seattlepi.com via Associated Press)
washingtonpost.com - by Darryl Fears and Juliet Eilperin - December 20, 2016
President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.
Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.
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