My Climate Change News

Only between 2% and 3% of the Earth's terrestrial surface can be considered ecologically intact, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. This percentage is drastically lower than past assessments, which estimated it to be between 20% and 40%, because it factored in loss of species from intact habitat as well as reduced populations of species. A restoration focus of specific species in intact habitat could recover ecological integrity to about 20% of land. More than 30 years ago, wilderness areas - natural areas that have not been considerably modified by humans - were identified as priorities of conservation and protection actions. Only recently has there been a push to define how to measure wilderness, with a focus on intact habitats. The integrity of natural ecosystems has also been recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity as an important goal in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. "We know intact habitat is ...

Reliance on petroleum fuels and raging wildfires: Two separate, large-scale challenges that could be addressed by one scientific breakthrough. Teams from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Sandia National Laboratories have collaborated to develop a streamlined and efficient process for converting woody plant matter like forest overgrowth and agricultural waste - material that is currently burned either intentionally or unintentionally - into liquid biofuel. Their research was published recently in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

"According to a recent report, by 2050 there will be 38 million metric tons of dry woody biomass available each year, making it an exceptionally abundant carbon source for biofuel production," said Carolina Barcelos, a senior process engineer at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU).

However, efforts to convert woody biomass to biofuel are typically ...

Genomes from University of Liverpool excavations of burials around some of the earliest houses in history contributed to a major study by an international team of geneticists, anthropologists and archaeologists, revealing more about the remarkable diversity of kinship types in ancient human societies. The first villagers in history were Middle Easterners who adopted a sedentary lifestyle roughly 12,000 years ago. These people not only built houses, but also buried their dead, young and old, within and around these buildings, while they continued living in them.

Although this subfloor burial tradition is well-known, the underlying social relations among these co-burials have remained a mystery. Many assumed these burials were biological family members, while others suggested that households and their burials represented more complex social groupings, organized through non-biological forms of kinship.

Senior co-author, Hacettepe University's Professor Füsun Özer, ...

As you bite into a peach, remember farmers are harvesting the fruit this month and next in Florida. Those growers and University of Florida scientists are always concerned about flooding because it can damage peach trees permanently and cause trees to die. As a result of Hurricane Irma in 2017, a few hundred acres of Florida peaches were lost due to flooding in orchards.

Flooding poses an issue for all crops, not just peaches. Beyond Florida, 20 million acres of farmland suffered losses nationwide due to floods in 2019, and studies show that floods will increase as climate change continues to challenge growers around the globe, said Ali Sarkhosh, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of horticultural sciences.

"If peach farmers experience flooding, the fruit size and quality can be adversely affected, and the tree may prematurely drop fruit yield," Sarkhosh said. "We're searching for flooding tolerance for peaches before a storm wipes out any farms."

UF/IFAS ...

Sir David Attenborough has urged people to remember their impact on the natural world, ahead of his new documentary on the impacts of lockdown on nature.

He spoke to the BBC's David Shukman about his hopes for the project, the upcoming global climate summit and his young fan base.

'The Year Earth Changed' airs Friday 16 April on Apple TV+.

Recommended

Celebrate Math Awareness Month

The president should commit to cutting U.S. emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030

Science has a stark message for us all. In this decade, we could lose the fight for the Paris Agreement climate goals, with profound consequences for life on Earth, now and in the future. On our current emissions trajectory—with global heat-trapping emissions continuing to rise except for a brief dip due to last year’s economic crisis—we’re at grave risk of doing so. Global average temperatures keep increasing too, with 2020 ending the hottest decade on record. It’s time we own the gravity of the science, recognize that this is a fight for our collective future, and make the only moral choice: break with the fossil-fueled past and go all-in for a clean energy future.

After promising to be guided by climate science and quickly rejoining the Paris Agreement, President Biden must now lead the United ...

Celebrate Math Awareness Month

But environmental groups remain wary

Executives from oil companies, utilities and some of the world’s biggest companies are meeting with senators and staff this week to push a carbon-fee-and-dividend proposal.

The Climate Leadership Council has organized virtual meetings with members of both parties and executives from ConocoPhillips, Exelon Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co., Hannon Armstrong, IBM and several other companies.

The advocacy push comes as Congress prepares to consider President Biden’s infrastructure plan, widely seen as a possible conduit for climate policy.

“The United States is locked in a global race to own the future of clean energy, and that’s a race we can win if we employ sound economic policies that incentivize investment in new and existing clean energy technologies,” Exelon CEO Chris Crane said in a statement.

CLC proposes a ...

Inside Clean Energy:

The plummeting price of electricity from solar panels is one of the driving forces aiding the transition to clean energy.

Government policies and scientific innovation around the world have helped to reduce the average cost of utility-scale solar power by more than 80 percent since 2010, making it the least expensive power source in many, if not most, places.

Now the Department of Energy has set a target of reducing the cost by more than half again by 2030, to an unsubsidized average of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. That cost, which takes into account the price of construction and operation, would have seemed like a fantasy not long ago.

By taking the least expensive power source and making it much cheaper, the government would shake the foundation of many energy debates and help to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels.

But is the new goal achievable? To answer that, I went to Greg Nemet, a University of Wisconsin public ...

A constellation of satellites will be flown this decade to try to pinpoint significant releases of climate-changing gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane. The initiative is being led by an American non-profit organisation called Carbon Mapper. The prototypes will launch in 2023, with the rest of the constellation of 20 or so spacecraft going up from 2025. This animation shows how the satellites will circle the globe.

Recommended

Aerial view of thermal power plant in China's Shandong Province.

China’s National People’s Congress meetings, which ended in March, were shrouded in both a real and figurative haze about how strong its climate ambitions really are and how quickly the country can wean itself from its main source of energy - coal.

During the Congress, air pollution returned to Beijing with a vengeance, hitting the highest levels since January 2019, as the economy hummed out of the pandemic. Steel, cement and heavy manufacturing, predominantly backed by coal power, boosted China’s carbon dioxide emissions 4 percent in the second half of 2020 compared to the same pre-pandemic period the year before. At the same time, the goals in the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan on energy intensity, carbon intensity and renewables were hazy as well, little more than vague commitments to tackle carbon dioxide emissions.

Coal remains at the heart of China’s flourishing economy. In 2019, 58 percent ...

Ethiopia may produce less specialty coffee and more rather bland tasting varieties in the future. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers that looked at the peculiar effects climate change has on Africa's largest coffee producing nation. Their results are relevant both for the country's millions of smallholder farmers, who earn more on specialty coffee than on ordinary coffee, as well as for baristas and coffee aficionados around the world.

"Climate change has conflicting impacts on coffee production in Ethiopia. The area that is suitable for average quality coffee might actually increase gradually until the 2090s, according to our computer simulations," says lead author Abel Chemura from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "Yet more is not necessarily better. Because on the flipside, the suitable area for high quality specialty coffee types which are valued for their floral, fruity and spicy notes, will likely ...

Coral Sea’s Missing Coral

Back-to-back coral bleaching events on isolated atolls in the Coral Sea:

Abstract

Severe bleaching events caused by marine heat waves over the past four decades have now affected almost every coral reef ecosystem in the world. These recurring events have led to major losses of coral cover, with adverse consequences for tropical reef ecosystems and the people who depend on them. Here, we document two consecutive and widespread coral bleaching events on remote atolls in the Coral Sea in 2016 and 2017. In each year, the proportion of colonies that bleached was strongly related to heat exposure (measured as degree heating weeks, DHW, °C-weeks), depth and coral assemblage structure. Bleaching was more severe at higher DHW exposure and at sites with a higher proportion of susceptible taxa. Bleaching was also lower at 6 m than at 2 m depth. Despite the severe bleaching in 2016 on reefs in the central section of the Coral Sea Marine ...

A council has called for heavier fines for fly-tippers and "potential prison time for the worst offenders".

It comes after Dorset Council received 1,501 reports of fly-tipping from April 2020 to January.

The local authority said the cost of clearing dumped rubbish over the 10-month period was almost £61,000.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said councils had been given greater powers to tackle the issue.

Councillor Jill Haynes, of Dorset Council, said although punishments of unlimited fines and up to five years in prison were a "sufficient deterrent for most", seasoned fly-tippers were "unlikely to be dissuaded".

"We would also welcome courts imposing heavier fines for fly-tipping and potential prison time for the worst offenders," she added.

Although there were 252 investigations over the 10-month period, just 10 fixed penalties were handed down for fly-tipping, with 47 fines for other environmental ...

Lockdowns last year in response to COVID-19 resulted in drastic cuts to emissions, especially from vehicle tailpipes, and yet some urban areas saw a paradoxical spike in ozone air pollution. A new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) used a sophisticated computer model to disentangle the complicated web of atmospheric chemistry and meteorology to determine the causes of poor air quality. The research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, finds that for some regions of the world, including northern China, the increase in ozone pollution was directly linked to the decrease in emissions, while in other regions, including Europe, unusual weather conditions played a larger role.

"The COVID-19 pandemic provided us with an unanticipated global air quality experiment," said NCAR scientist Benjamin Gaubert, who led the study. "With our Earth system model, we were able to investigate how the atmosphere responded to a change in ...

Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes. Oregon's governor said the prolonged drought in the region has the "full attention of our offices," and she is working with congressional delegates, the White House and federal agencies to find relief for those affected.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation briefed irrigators, tribes and environmental groups early Wednesday after delaying the decision a month. The federally owned irrigation project will draw 33,000 acre-feet of water from Upper Klamath Lake, which farmers said was roughly 8% of what they need in such a dry year. Water deliveries will also start June 1, two months later than usual, for ...

If you’re a conservative, Exxon has a very different message: “The oil and gas industry is THE engine that powers America’s economy,” reads one ad targeted at conservatives. “Help us make sure unnecessary regulations don’t slow energy growth.”

The Markup found 18 Exxon ads on Facebook targeted to political liberals and 15 to conservatives - many with messages implying a contradictory attitude toward the urgency of adapting to climate change. The ads - and information about their targeting - came from the Ad Observatory at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy project.

Exxon is one of a handful of companies The Markup found targeting specific, and sometimes conflicting, Facebook ads to people of different political beliefs. Facebook offers a wide array of options for advertisers looking to hit specific groups of people with their messages - from things like “Engaged shopper” to “Friends of Soccer fans” - including several political options like “Likely engagement with ...

In the Swiss Alps, some ski resorts and glacial tourist attractions are using reflective blankets known as geotextiles to protect parts of glaciers from accelerated summer melt caused by global warming. These businesses' stable winter incomes enable them to fund the use of expensive geotextiles during summers. If geotextiles are able to save small portions of glaciers in the Swiss Alps, could they be employed on entire glaciers on a global scale? A study published earlier this year argues that this strategy would inevitably fail. Researchers at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland looked at nine different Swiss sites currently using geotextiles to reduce glacial melt, and analyzed the possibility of using geotextiles on a larger scale. While the data in the study showed that these fabrics were able to locally reduce glacial melt by 59%, it also revealed that this strategy is too expensive to protect the more than 450,000 square miles of glaciers around the ...

Google has drawn on satellite images dating back 37 years to introduce a time-lapse feature to its tool that lets users explore view of the Earth from above.

The tech firm says it hopes the feature will highlight the impacts of climate change as well as the many other ways that humans are leaving their marks on the planet.

Recommended

Johnny Gogan’s documentary highlights the misconceived plans of corporations that hoped to avoid protesters

In 2010, the American film-maker Josh Fox released something that in retrospect looks like one of the most influential and original documentaries of recent times: GasLand. It was about something new to many at the time: fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, under the earth to release natural gas from shale rock, at the risk of polluting the water table and turning areas of natural beauty into sludge dumps – and that is aside from the existing larger implications of gas consumption.

The film alerted many to a new environmental menace, and it plays its historic role in this new film from Johnny Gogan about the anti-fracking campaign in Ireland, often by people who were energised by seeing GasLand and determined to resist what one campaigner calls the new way of “scraping the bottom of the fossil-fuel barrel”. Exactly so. The coronavirus pandemic has, ...

Thousands of abandoned oil wells dot the Permian Basin in west Texas and New Mexico, endangering humans and wildlife. With oil costs plummeting, they’re likely to proliferate. Who is going to cover the cleanup costs?

When Laura Briggs and her husband finally found their dream home in west Texas, they knew they’d be sharing space with the oil industry. The Pecos county ranch’s previous owner, local attorney Windel “Hoot” Gibson, died there when a rickety old pumpjack teetered over and fell on top of him.

But sharing 900 acres with a handful of old oil wells seemed like a fair trade for a spacious ranch where the Briggs family could raise four kids and a mess of farm animals. The property is smack dab in the middle of the Permian Basin, an ancient, dried-up sea that streaks across Texas and New Mexico and is the most productive oil field in the United States. Approximately 3 million barrels of the Permian’s monthly crude production happens in Pecos County; there is ...