Search results

But depending on which study you read, the annual carbon emissions from the electricity required to mine Bitcoin and process its transactions are equal to the amount emitted by all of New Zealand. Or Argentina.

From severe drought and fires to rising seas and eroding coastlines, warnings from decades ago have already become a reality. But experts say it's not too late to take action against the most devastating impacts of this phenomenon. What follows is an album of photos that illustrate the state of the planet and our climate over the past decade.

“I am ‘report fatigued.’ We need action,” Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, wrote at Forbes this month. He called for more planning from local and federal governments for a transition to “a renewable energy economy,” and urged leaders to “address the disproportionate burden” of climate disasters on “vulnerable, poor, and marginalized populations.” The experts HuffPost spoke to all had the same antidote to climate dread: Take action. The climate crisis is urgent, the changes needed are at a massive scale, but it doesn’t mean individuals can’t make a difference.“We are now in an all-hands-on-deck moment,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s program on climate change communication. “We need everybody doing everything they can, at the individual level, community level, national government and business level. This is all of society.”

The shrinking stratosphere is a stark signal of the climate emergency and the planetary-scale influence that humanity now exerts, according to Juan Añel, at the University of Vigo, Ourense in Spain.

The world is facing a climate change problem, and climate change is facing a communication problem. The complexities and hypotheticals of climate science do not translate well to an audience who just wants to know whether the dress was blue or white. And yet, on TikTok, one of the world’s most active communication platforms, climate change is a rapidly growing topic.

The University of Florida is hosting a Hackathon in collaboration with IBM that began Sep. 13 until Nov. 29. Teams will present technology solutions to address one of six environmental challenges, including power consumption and agriculture.

“The biggest challenges we face are not about science, they are about people.”

Nicholas Vazquez is bringing his 800-mile journey to Gainesville Tuesday to Florida’s protest climate change in Florida.The 23-year-old climate pilgrim is a member of Extinction Rebellion America began his walk in Miami on April 22. From there he’s traveled on foot to cities across Florida like West Palm Beach, Tampa, and Orlando as an act of political rebellion. His goal is to catch the attention of Governor Ron DeSantis and have him issue an executive order declaring a climate emergency for the state of Florida.

… the heat softened power lines, causing them to droop and increasing the risk of fire or outages. That heat wasn’t simply one of the random weather events that can happen in any given place in any given year. It was, instead, almost certainly a function of global warming.

Posing as the international wind travel station, the Greek island of Antikythera stands where three sea’s converge and where African, American, Asian and European continental winds pass through. Antikythera is a climate scientist’s Disneyland, as the island accumulates dust from winds that span across the globe containing the data that tell today’s climate story. Read this fascinating BBC piece on how this research may change the way we think about the climate by the end of next year.

The film shows the island of Rab and its peculiarities in two completely different climatic characteristics. The first part of the film shows the beauty of the landscape nature and the Mediterranean climate of the island in the period from April to October. The second part of the film shows the island from November to March. In these months, the Mediterranean climate changes into a completely different climate and shows its other face, i.e. the island of Rab then changes into a different beauty. It is up to the guests to experience the island in those months and feel the way of life on the island in those conditions and not just in the summer months.

The researchers, part of a group of more than 14,000 scientists who have signed on to an initiative declaring a worldwide climate emergency, said in an article published in the journal BioScience on Wednesday that governments had consistently failed to address “the overexploitation of the Earth”, which they described as the root cause of the crisis.

A new analysis forecasts the number of U.S. outdoor sector workdays and annual earnings that could be lost if the world fails to slow global warming.

The Defense Department has hired eight climate change experts from the Army Corps of Engineers; Mr. Biden’s budget calls for 17 more. “The impacts of climate change on the department’s mission are clear and growing,” Richard Kidd, deputy assistant secretary of defense for energy, environment and resilience, said in a statement. “We need a work force that reflects that fact.”

Leading climate scientists will give their starkest warning yet – that we are rushing to the brink of climate catastrophe – in a landmark report on Monday. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will publish its sixth assessment report, a comprehensive review of the world’s knowledge of the climate crisis and how human actions are altering the planet. It will show in detail how close the world is to irreversible change.That means the immediate effect of cutting coal use could be to increase warming, although protecting the Earth in the medium and long term. Zaelke said cutting methane could offset that. “Defossilisation will not lead to cooling until about 2050. Sulphur falling out of the atmosphere will unmask warming that is already in the system,” he said.

"It’s a threat multiplier that amplifies and accelerates existing inequities," she said during "gender day" at the summit, according to the New York Times. "Eighty percent of people displaced by climate change globally are women." The United Nations, which organized the summit, said women are more vulnerable to climate change due to social, economic and cultural factors.

The U.S. Senate has taken a step toward more vigorously regulating climate-warming methane leaks from the oil and gas industry, a move supporters say is key to achieving President Biden's ambitious climate goals.

In Napa Valley, the lush heartland of America’s high-end wine industry, climate change is spelling calamity. Not outwardly: On the main road running through the small town of St. Helena, tourists still stream into wineries with exquisitely appointed tasting rooms. But drive off the main road, and the vineyards that made this valley famous — where the mix of soil, temperature patterns and rainfall used to be just right — are now surrounded by burned-out landscapes, dwindling water supplies and increasingly nervous winemakers, bracing for things to get worse.

During the call, Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations for Exxon Mobil, described how the oil and gas giant targeted a number of influential United States senators in an effort to weaken climate action in President Biden’s flagship infrastructure plan. That plan now contains few of the ambitious ideas initially proposed by Mr. Biden to cut the burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.

Governments must halve emissions by 2030 if they intend the Earth to stay within the 1.5C “safe” threshold. But the latest set of national policies submitted to the UN shows emissions will merely be stabilised by 2030.

After the hottest June in recorded history obliterated temperature records not only in Death Valley (130 degrees) but also in usually mild locales like Seattle (108) and British Columbia (121), supercharged rainstorms created massive flooding in central Europe and China, turning streets into raging rivers and killing hundreds. Forest fires are now ravaging Siberia (Siberia!), Canada, and the Pacific Northwest, where Oregon's historic Bootleg Fire has so far consumed a staggering 400,000 acres of woodland, in a blaze so intense it has its own weather system — including lightning storms that start more fires. The inferno has also created a continent-wide plume of smoke now reddening sunsets and making it hard to breathe as far away as New York.

Poor countries say climate change is impacting on communities with such intensity that they can no longer adapt, but instead need financial support to rebuild, or to move away.

The line calling for the "phase-down of unabated coal" and an end to "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies is unprecedented in a COP agreement, experts say, even if it was weakened.

The multibillion-dollar plan, known as Willow, by the oil giant ConocoPhillips had been approved by the Trump administration and legally backed by the Biden administration. Environmental groups sued, arguing that the federal government had failed to take into account the effects that drilling would have on wildlife and that the burning of the oil would have on global warming.

We know that soil feeds plants, but do we know how it got there in the first place? Soil forms via the interaction of five factors: parent material, climate, living beings, a land’s topography, and a “cooking” time that occurs on a geologic scale. Variations in these 5 factors make the world’s soils unique and extremely diverse. Soil acts as a carbon sink in the global carbon cycle because it locks away decomposed organic matter. But deforestation, various agricultural practices, and a changing climate are releasing it back into the atmosphere and oceans as carbon dioxide, resulting in an imbalance in global carbon budgets.

Only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases in this decade can prevent such climate breakdown, with every fraction of a degree of further heating likely to compound the accelerating effects, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate science.

“When you start up a company or group, you are quite alone,” says Fernando. “So if you have a community around you that can offer help – HR, finance, tools – that is incredibly helpful. And then, once that group gets on their feet, they can then start to help other startup entrepreneurs wanting to open new avenues in order to help fight climate change.”

There have been some positive moves in recent days, with China saying it will end its financing for highly polluting coal-fired power stations abroad – though not at home – and the US doubling its climate finance to vulnerable nations.

"We must try to keep the Earth's temperature to an increase of 1.5C. The world beyond 1.5 degrees means more frequent and intense fires, floods, droughts, heatwaves and hurricanes - tearing through communities, ripping away lives and livelihoods."

President Biden warned Americans on Tuesday that Hurricane Ida’s lethal destruction was the sure sign of a nation and world “in peril” from climate change and said drastic action would be needed to prevent extreme weather patterns from worsening. “They all tell us this is code red,” Mr. Biden said

The string of U.S. floods comes about a month after catastrophic flooding in Germany and Belgium, which left a trail of destruction and killed nearly 200 people. Megadroughts and megafloods might seem like opposites, but they are in fact two sides of the same deadly coin. As human greenhouse gas emissions drive up global temperatures, the world can expect both extreme events to become more frequent and severe, warned a recent landmark report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.“There’s increasing evidence for an overintensification of the water cycle,” said Alex Ruane, a NASA scientist and a lead author of the IPCC report’s chapter on regional impacts. “Water is moving through the climate system faster than it used to. That means it is being evaporated into the air faster, it’s being moved around, and it’s raining down harder when it does rain. All of these things are actually connected to the same factor, which is that warmer air has a tendency to hold more moisture.”

Working- and middle-class people must stop blaming themselves for the climate crisis. Instead, it’s time to band together to seek justice and hold these profiteers accountable. Only in calling out their power and culpability is it possible to reclaim the world that belongs to all of us, together.

“US beef and dairy companies appear to act collectively in ways similar to the fossil fuel industry, which built an extensive climate change countermovement,” write the authors of the study, published in the journal Climatic Change.

The report is the first to combine high-resolution maps of climate and environmental impacts with maps of child vulnerability, such as poverty and access to clean water, healthcare and education. “It essentially [shows] the likelihood of a child’s ability to survive climate change,” said Nick Rees, one of the report’s authors.

A new study found that converting agricultural land to forest would boost summer rains by 7.6% on average.The researchers also found that adding trees changed rainfall patterns far downwind of the new forests.

This film reveals how diverse environmental problems, from climate change to species extinction to ruined ecosystems, are all ultimately rooted in the “growth at all costs” attitude that pervades modern industrial society. Through beautiful and disturbing images and interviews with ecological scholars, spiritual leaders and activists, The Wisdom to Survive argues that the survival of humanity and most living beings on the planet. will not come from technology, but from a profound raising of consciousness and deep spiritual transformation of humans who finally realize that we must live differently on planet earth.

It’s clear that despite all the warnings, many people still think of lasting global warming as passing weather and any noteworthy consequences as a kind of hyperreal entertainment.“Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from,” Susan Sontag observed back in the 1970s. “Now nature—tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.”

The Exxon lobbyist compared the influence campaign to fishing, where the company tries to "kind of reel them in." "Because they're a captive audience. They know they need you and I need them," McCoy said. McCoy identified 11 US senators he says are "crucial" to Exxon, singling out Senator Joe Manchin, the moderate Democrat from West Virginia, as particularly important.

Three-quarters of cities surveyed by CDP were already working with businesses on sustainability issues, or had plans to do so within the next two years.

Democrats say the tools exist now to stave off a hotter planet: rapidly expand wind and solar energy, beef up energy storage and the electric grid, electrify transportation, and make buildings energy efficient. Many of those elements are tucked into a $3.5 trillion budget package that Democrats hope to pass in the fall.

The International Energy Agency reports that over the next 30 years, air conditioning may be one of the top drivers of electricity demand. “Without action to address energy efficiency, energy demand for space cooling will more than triple by 2050 — consuming as much electricity as all of China and India today,” the agency reports.That makes the need for high-efficiency cooling extremely vital. Not to mention more widespread use of renewable energy and, of course, drastically curbing climate emissions.

“The Southwest is getting hammered by climate change harder than almost any other part of the country, apart from perhaps coastal cities,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan. “And as bad as it might seem today, this is about as good as it’s going to get if we don’t get global warming under control.” With temperatures expected to keep rising as nations struggle to rein in their planet-warming emissions, the Western United States will need to take difficult and costly measures to adapt. That includes redesigning cities to endure punishing heat, conserving water, and engineering grids that don’t fail during extreme weather.

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

US climate change envoy John Kerry has urged the world's top 20 polluters which create 81% of emissions between them to reduce CO2 immediately.

Human activity and wildfires have turned highly protected forests into net sources of carbon, a study suggests. 10 protected forests had emitted more carbon than they locked away over the past 20 years.

Don’t buy it… fortunately, people are better informed now. They won’t fall for lies anymore. - tr*

That we cannot see all the way to the transformed society we need does not mean it is impossible. We will reach it by not one great leap but a long journey, step by step.

Mr Xie was followed by John Kerry, the US climate envoy, who said the US and China "have no shortage of differences, but on climate, co-operation is the only way to get this job done". "Every step matters right now and we have a long journey ahead of us," he said.

It’s the governmental and capitalist systems that have made life on the planet untenable. It’s abhorrent that the burden of environmental collapse falls first on the shoulders of young people and the global south, when oil corporations and countries like the United States carry an outsized responsibility for the crisis.

The move appears at odds with the royal family’s public commitment to tackling the climate crisis, with Prince William recently joining his father, Charles, in campaigning to cut emissions and protect the planet.

American schools are the second-largest public infrastructure investment. But what most people don’t know is that they are also among the biggest energy consumers in the public sector. K-12 schools consume about 8% of all the energy used in commercial buildings. In turn, they emit as much carbon dioxide as 18 coal-powered power plants. This not only burdens the environment, but children themselves – students suffer from heatstroke, affected hormone and sleep cycles, as well as respiratory issues. Many schools have started redesigning their infrastructure with the climate crisis in mind. From installing more solar panels to replacing old heating, cooling and ventilation systems, or HVAC systems, with more sustainable ones, school districts are increasingly transitioning to cheaper and greener options. But old building habits and funding constraints can pose a challenge.

Agriculture has not been a central part of U.S. climate policy in the past, even though climate change is altering weather patterns that farmers rely on. Now, however, President Biden has directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a climate-smart agriculture and forestry strategy. When I think of climate-smart agriculture, I picture farmlands with lots of perennial vegetation smartly integrated as prairie strips, wetlands and crops. Federal policies and programs that can make such landscapes a reality are already in place. With concerted efforts and investments, they could be expanded to achieve a pace and scale that will help address climate change.

Montana’s Republican governor has made it clear his state won’t be bothered to help in the fight against climate change. But he still wants federal assistance to deal with the climate impacts at Montana’s door. Last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte withdrew Montana from a bipartisan coalition of more than two dozen states committed to upholding the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which include net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Brooke Stroyke, a spokesperson for Gianforte, told Montana Public Radio that the governor believes innovation, not government regulation, is the solution to climate change.Two days later, Gianforte called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare a drought emergency across his state, which would make emergency funds available to farmers who have suffered losses.

Climate change may not be as gradual as scientists previously assumed. In fact, recent evidence points to an environmental "tipping point" that could drastically change the climate and appearance of the continents.

Climate scientists have long predicted that human-caused climate disruption would lead to more flooding, heatwaves, droughts, storms and other forms of extreme weather, but even they have been shocked by the scale of these scenes.

Kerry, the president’s special envoy for climate, also criticized Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement “without any facts, without any science, without any rationale that would be considered reasonable".

Kiss the Ground reveals that, by regenerating the world’s soils, we can completely and rapidly stabilize Earth’s climate, restore lost ecosystems and create abundant food supplies. Using compelling graphics and visuals, along with striking NASA and NOAA footage, the film artfully illustrates how, by drawing down atmospheric carbon, soil is the missing piece of the climate puzzle. This movie is positioned to catalyze a movement to accomplish the impossible – to solve humanity’s greatest challenge, to balance the climate and secure our species future.

It turns out that the Senator wielding this awesome power – America’s climate decider-in-chief, one might call him – has a massive climate conflict of interest. Joe Manchin, investigative journalism has revealed, is a modern-day coal baron.

The dangerously sluggish pace of decarbonization, made plain just days before the start of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland, further highlights how the world is badly off track in its attempts to curb climate breakdown.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III declared global warming an existential threat to U.S. national security at a White House climate summit earlier this year. Using language normally applied to conventional adversaries like China and Russia, Austin described the climate crisis as “a profoundly destabilizing force for our world,” generating widespread havoc and bloodshed. If we take his assessment at his word, the Department of Defense will have to mobilize its capabilities as if preparing for a major war — altering its priorities and operations and hardening its military bases against extreme climate effects.