Trumped Up. Potentially fatal bouts of heat and humidity on the rise, study finds. Intolerable bouts of extreme humidity and heat which could threaten human survival are on the rise across the world, suggesting that worst-case scenario warnings about the consequences of global heating are already occurring, a new study has revealed.
Scientists have identified thousands of previously undetected outbreaks of the deadly weather combination in parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, South America and North America, including several hotspots along the US Gulf coast. Greta Thunberg hits back at Mnuchin criticism over climate crisis. DAVOS, Switzerland — Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg hit back at Steven Mnuchin on Thursday, after the Treasury Secretary suggested she needed to study economics at college before lecturing the U.S. on fossil fuel investments.
“My gap year ends in August, but it doesn’t take a college degree in economics to realise that our remaining 1,5° carbon budget and ongoing fossil fuel subsidies and investments don’t add up,” the 17-year-old said via Twitter. “So either you tell us how to achieve this mitigation or explain to future generations and those already affected by the climate emergency why we should abandon our climate commitments,” she added. The US won't be prepared for the next natural disaster. How prepared is the United States for the inevitable next disaster?
Hurricane Florence killed 50 and caused $22bn in damages last year; shortly after, Hurricane Michael killed 36 and left hundreds without homes. The California wildfires erupted the following month, destroying thousands of structures and leaving 89 dead. As climate change causes more intense superstorms and at a higher frequency, things are only likely to get worse. The World’s Oceans Are in Danger, Major Climate Change Report Warns. Want climate news in your inbox?
Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. WASHINGTON — Climate change is heating the oceans and altering their chemistry so dramatically that it is threatening seafood supplies, fueling cyclones and floods and posing profound risks to the hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts, according to a sweeping United Nations report issued Wednesday. The report concludes that the world’s oceans and ice sheets are under such severe stress that the fallout could prove difficult for humans to contain without steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Fish populations are already declining in many regions as warming waters throw marine ecosystems into disarray, according to the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders in policymaking. Earth's future is being written in fast-melting Greenland. HELHEIM GLACIER, Greenland (AP) — This is where Earth’s refrigerator door is left open, where glaciers dwindle and seas begin to rise.
New York University air and ocean scientist David Holland, who is tracking what’s happening in Greenland from both above and below, calls it “the end of the planet.” He is referring to geography more than the future. Himalayan glacier melting doubled since 2000, spy satellites show. The melting of Himalayan glaciers has doubled since the turn of the century, with more than a quarter of all ice lost over the last four decades, scientists have revealed.
The accelerating losses indicate a “devastating” future for the region, upon which a billion people depend for regular water. The scientists combined declassified US spy satellite images from the mid-1970s with modern satellite data to create the first detailed, four-decade record of ice along the 2,000km (1,200-mile) mountain chain. The analysis shows that 8bn tonnes of ice are being lost every year and not replaced by snow, with the lower level glaciers shrinking in height by 5 meters annually.
The study shows that only global heating caused by human activities can explain the heavy melting. In previous work, local weather and the impact of air pollution had complicated the picture. Scientists shocked by Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted. Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.
A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia. “What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“ With governments meeting in Bonn this week to try to ratchet up ambitions in United Nations climate negotiations, the team’s findings, published on 10 June in Geophysical Research Letters, offered a further sign of a growing climate emergency. 'Anthropocene Project' Artfully Captures How Humans Change Earth's Landscape : Goats and Soda : NPR. 'Single Most Important Stat on the Planet': Alarm as Atmospheric CO2 Soars to 'Legit Scary' Record High. India heatwave temperatures pass 50 Celsius.
Date created : 01/06/2019 - 22:45 New Delhi (AFP) Temperatures passed 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in northern India as an unrelenting heatwave triggered warnings of water shortages and heatstroke.
The thermometer hit 50.6 degrees Celsius (123 Fahrenheit) in the Rajasthan desert city of Churu on Saturday, the weather department said. All of Rajasthan suffered in severe heat with several cities hitting maximum temperatures above 47 Celsius. In May 2016, Phalodi in Rajasthan recorded India's highest-ever temperature of 51 Celsius (123.8 Fahrenheit). The Indian Meteorological Department said severe heat could stay for up to a week across Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh states.
Puffins found starving to death in mass die-off likely linked to climate change, study suggests. Thousands of tufted puffins in the Bering Sea are dead partly because of starvation and stress brought on by changing climate conditions, researchers say.
The puffins' food supply has been disrupted by changes in air and sea temperature, and in winter ice levels, according to a new study in the journal PLOS ONE. Residents win extension on oilfield pollution dump comment period. CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415 parts per million for the first time in human history. Killing off animals and plants now threatens humanity itself, UN experts to warn in urgent call for action. The future of humanity is under threat from the widespread destruction of the Earth’s plants and animals by people, leading scientists will warn in a dramatic report.
Loss of biodiversity threatens the human race just as much as climate change, the experts believe, with up to a million species facing extinction in the world’s sixth mass die-off. The UN’s global assessment on the state of nature – published on Monday, and the most comprehensive of its kind – is expected to say that without urgent action, the wellbeing of current and future generations of people will be at risk as life-support systems providing food, pollination and clean water collapse.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 USD 0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. Greenland is melting even faster than experts thought, study finds. Forty percent to 50% of the planet's population is in cities that are vulnerable to sea rise, and the study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is bad news for places like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Mumbai.
Researchers reconstructed the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet by comparing estimates of the amount of ice that has been discharged into the ocean with the accumulation of snowfall in the drainage basins in the country's interior for the past 46 years. The researchers found that the rate of ice loss has increased sixfold since then -- even faster than scientists thought. "We wanted to get a long precise record of mass balance in Greenland that included the transition when the climate of the planet started to drift off natural variability, which occurred in the 1980s," study co-author Eric Rignot wrote in an email. Greenland's ice sheets contain enough water to raise global sea levels by 23 feet, research shows. Sage grouse just lost important habitat protections: What it means.
How Humans Could Halt Climate Change By 2050 : Goats and Soda : NPR. Non-survivable humid heatwaves for over 500 million people – Climate Guide. Researchers at MIT warn that if climate change remains unchecked (Business As Usual-scenario = RCP 8.5) over half a billion people will, from 2070 onwards, experience humid heat waves that will kill even healthy people in the shade within 6 hours. The Wet Bulb Temperature (WBT) would exceed 35°C (95°F), at which the body – of any mammal – cannot cool itself, overheats and shuts down. Three regions were studied: China (2018), South Asia (2017) and the Persian Gulf (2015). The researchers predict (at RCP 8.5) WBT exceeding 35°C about once every decade for the Northern Plains in China (400+ million people), at locations in the Chota Nagpur plateau, northeastern India, and Bangladesh in South Asia (70+ million people). Persian Gulf regions that would be affected include cities such as Doha, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai (UAE) and Bandar Abbas (Iran).
The total number of people affected will be higher than 0.5 billion. Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'. The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.
More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century. The planet is at the start of a sixth mass extinction in its history, with huge losses already reported in larger animals that are easier to study. But insects are by far the most varied and abundant animals, outweighing humanity by 17 times. Insect population collapses have recently been reported in Germany and Puerto Rico, but the review strongly indicates the crisis is global. One of the biggest impacts of insect loss is on the many birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish that eat insects.
‘The devastation of human life is in view’: what a burning world tells us about climate change. I have never been an environmentalist. I don’t even think of myself as a nature person. I’ve lived my whole life in cities, enjoying gadgets built by industrial supply chains I hardly think twice about.
I’ve never gone camping, not willingly anyway, and while I always thought it was basically a good idea to keep streams clean and air clear, I also accepted the proposition that there was a trade-off between economic growth and cost to nature – and figured, well, in most cases I’d go for growth. Bloomberg - Are you a robot? Sea rise breaking Miami Dade FL septic tanks, report shows. Miami-Dade has tens of thousands of septic tanks, and a new report reveals most are already malfunctioning — the smelly and unhealthy evidence of which often ends up in people’s yards and homes. It’s a billion-dollar problem that climate change is making worse. As sea level rise encroaches on South Florida, the Miami-Dade County study shows that thousands more residents may be at risk — and soon.
Eu.usatoday. 'Complete Wiping Away of Clean Water Act': Trump EPA Rule Would Free Corporations to Pollute Nation's Water as Much as They Please. The Planet Has Seen Sudden Warming Before. It Wiped Out Almost Everything. Portrait of a planet on the verge of climate catastrophe. On Sunday morning hundreds of politicians, government officials and scientists will gather in the grandeur of the International Congress Centre in Katowice, Poland. Trump to Planet: Drop Dead - by Stats. Americans Will Pay Billions More For Climate Change, and That’s the Best Case. Photographer: The Washington Post/The Washington Post The Trump administration just published a major report documenting the advance of climate change, weeks earlier than expected and on a day many Americans are occupied with family and holiday shopping.
Bayer faces billion-dollar losses to deadly herbicide Roundup. Trump's EPA: President to name Andrew Wheeler as permanent chief. Big Oil claims it's doing its part on climate change. It's not even close. Despite years of claims and commitments about clean investment and alleviating climate change, the world's largest oil companies have contributed just 1% of their spending budgets to green energy in 2018. Why everything will collapse. Thousands of ships could dump pollutants at sea to avoid dirty fuel ban. War on the wildest places: US bill may open pristine lands to development. The Big Snowy Mountains wilderness study area in Montana represents 91,000 acres of the wildest land left in America. Outrage ensues as Michigan grants Nestlé permit to extract 200,000 gallons of water per day. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) granted Nestlé Waters North America, Inc.
Trump White House quietly cancels NASA research verifying greenhouse gas cuts. You can't manage what you don't measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases, which are crucial to manage—and challenging to measure. In recent years, though, satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon. Stop biodiversity loss or we could face our own extinction, warns UN. The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief.
Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pașca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that are vital for global food production, clean water and carbon sequestration. Choice page. A WILDERNESS “HORROR STORY” > Newsroom.
Choice page. Climate change: Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated' 93% of world's children breathing toxic air which 'stunts brains' and causes deadly disease, WHO warns. 'We've never seen this': massive Canadian glaciers shrinking rapidly. Animal species becoming extinct in Haiti as deforestation nearly complete. WWF report: Mass wildlife loss caused by human consumption. Humanity has wiped out 60% of animals since 1970, major report finds.
Choice page. Earth's Water Cycle. More acidic oceans 'will affect all sea life'. Ocean Circulation Plays an Important Role in Absorbing Carbon from the Atmosp... Climate change dials down Atlantic Ocean heating system. Gulf Stream current at its weakest in 1,600 years, studies show. Air pollution is the ‘new tobacco’, warns WHO head. 'We have a duty to act': hundreds ready to go to jail over climate crisis. New study links common herbicides and antibiotic resistance. It's too late for Earth. Trump Budget Legalizes Wild Horse Slaughter For Food. Egged on by industry lobbyists, Interior Dept. weakens bird protections.
Trump stalls controversial decision on big-game hunting. Exclusive: US official appeared to delay protections for endangered species at behest of oil group. Hurricane Will Likely Cover North Carolina in Hog Feces, As Manure "Lagoons" at Factory Farms Overflow. Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. Climate Change Impacts in Europe click 2x. Europe's heat record could be broken in Spain and Portugal. Heatwave Europe on verge of 48C record as temperatures put Britain in the shade. Trump administration lifts ban on pesticides linked to declining bee numbers.