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The planet’s 4 billion hectares of forest absorb a net 7.6 billion metric tons of carbon each year—about 30% of what the world emits.

Airlines know by now that carbon dioxide emissions aren’t their only planet-warming problem. Condensation trails , which form in an aircraft’s wake, can also contribute to climate change in outsize ways. Yet while companies say they’re working to curb CO 2 — including by developing cleaner fuels and more efficient…

Research Scientist Emre Gençer describes natural gas–based hydrogen production with carbon capture and storage, and the role hydrogen will play in decarbonizing our energy systems.

Researchers have discovered that trees are growing in size as a result of carbon dioxide. It is well known that trees absorb carbon dioxide from...

A new study puts some hard numbers on the climate impacts of California's worsening wildfires, finding that the state's 2020 blazes overwhelmed its recent emissions cuts.Driving the news: The study, published in Environmental Pollution, is among the first to quantify the carbon emissions from California's fires and the damage they are causing. Zoom in: The 2020 fire season was record-setting, with 4.3 million acres burned. Five of the top 20 largest fires in state history occurred that year, including one so-called "gigafire" that burned more than 1 million acres.Scientists used independent methods to estimate the wildfire-related carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions and found they were about double the state's emissions reductions from 2003-2019.With fire-related emissions included, there was a 30% state emissions jump between 2019 and 2020.The research also estimates the cost associated with the added CO2 emissions, calculating about $7 billion in damage from added warming.Currently, the state does not include wildfire-related emissions when tracking progress toward its climate goals, but if it did, the study suggests, there might be even more of an incentive to reduce wildfire activity.What they're saying: "Fire control policy can also be climate policy," said study coauthor Amir Jina of the University of Chicago, via email.Yes, but: While forests may eventually regrow, this takes decades and is not guaranteed to yield an equal or greater amount of carbon absorbed, Jina said.Plus, near-term emissions cuts are key to limiting the severity of global warming, Jina noted.

MIT Energy Initiative Annual Research Conference highlights both opportunities and obstacles in the race to a net-zero future.

‘Colossal amount’ of leaked methane, twice initial estimates, is equivalent to third of Denmark’s annual CO2 emissions or 1.3m carsScientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks.Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide. Continue reading...

California activists paved the way for defining climate change as an air pollution problem. Now it's federal law.

The best thing to do is to stop emitting carbon. However, preserving a safe climate will likely require us to go further.

President Biden is expected to announce a proposal for stronger regulations on the oil and gas sector aimed at controlling emissions of a planet warming gas called methane. The stronger methane regulations are part of a slew of climate-related actions that Biden is expected to announce during his trip to the COP27 global climate summit...

Environmental groups are calling on the White House to take more concrete steps to shield the nation's most important forests — the vast majority of which are on federal lands, and most of which have no formal protection. “It’s the large trees — the oldest trees in the forest — that are our best carbon...

Past Presentation | Permafrost, an icy expanse of frozen ground covering one-quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, is thawing. As it does, microscopic animals are waking up and feeding on the previously frozen carbon stored in plant and animal remains, releasing heat-trapping gases as a byproduct. These gases warm the atmosphere further, melting more permafrost in a dangerous feedback loop. With permafrost containing twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, its thaw could release 150 billion tons of carbon by the end of the century. Subtitled in 23 languages and narrated by Richard Gere, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops is a series of five short films, featuring twelve leading climate scientists, that explores how human-caused emissions are triggering nature’s own warming loops. We submit the five shorts to your festival (total 57:44) for screening of any or all of the films. The film series had its official launch with the Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg and world-renowned scientists in a webcast, “The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops. ”While scientists stay up worrying about this most dangerous aspect of climate change, the public has little awareness or understanding of feedback loops. Climate change discussion at all levels of society largely leaves out the most critical dynamic of climate change itself. It is urgent we remedy this. The first film in the series, Introduction (13:09), provides an overview of the feedback loop problem. The four other short films explore important climate feedback mechanisms: Forests (14:10), Permafrost (10:55), Atmosphere (8:45) and Albedo (10:35).Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the planet. This warming is then setting in motion dozens of feedback mechanisms, which then feed upon themselves, as well as interact with each other and spiral further out of control. These processes are rapidly accelerating climate change. An example of a climate feedback loop is the melting of the permafrost. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost makes up nearly 25% of the landmass. As heat-trapping emissions warm the Earth, this frozen tundra is melting. As it does, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released, which further warm the planet, melting more permafrost in a self-perpetuating loop. Human activity kicks off these feedback loops, but once set in motion, they become self-sustaining. The danger is that this process reaches a tipping point beyond which it is extremely difficult to recover. This is why it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can slow, halt and even reverse these feedbacks and cool the planet.

Simple measures such as plugging leaks of chemical refrigerants from existing air conditioners and refrigerators could curb greenhouse gas emissions equal to 91 billion tons of carbon dioxide by the end of the century, according to a report published Thursday by a trio of environmental organizations. That’s equal to nearly three years’ worth of carbon […]

Past Presentation | The world’s forests are responsible for removing a quarter of all human carbon emissions from the atmosphere and are essential for cooling the planet. But that fraction is shrinking as the three major forests of the world—tropical, boreal, and temperate—succumb to the effects of climate feedback loops. The resulting tree dieback threatens to tip forests from net carbon absorbers to net carbon emitters, heating rather than cooling the planet. Subtitled in 23 languages and narrated by Richard Gere, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops is a series of five short films, featuring twelve leading climate scientists, that explores how human-caused emissions are triggering nature’s own warming loops. We submit the five shorts to your festival (total 57:44) for screening of any or all of the films. The film series had its official launch with the Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg and world-renowned scientists in a webcast, “The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops.” While scientists stay up worrying about this most dangerous aspect of climate change, the public has little awareness or understanding of feedback loops. Climate change discussion at all levels of society largely leaves out the most critical dynamic of climate change itself. It is urgent we remedy this. The first film in the series, Introduction (13:09), provides an overview of the feedback loop problem. The four other short films explore important climate feedback mechanisms: Forests (14:10), Permafrost (10:55), Atmosphere (8:45) and Albedo (10:35).Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the planet. This warming is then setting in motion dozens of feedback mechanisms, which then feed upon themselves, as well as interact with each other and spiral further out of control. These processes are rapidly accelerating climate change. An example of a climate feedback loop is the melting of the permafrost. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost makes up nearly 25% of the landmass. As heat-trapping emissions warm the Earth, this frozen tundra is melting. As it does, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released, which further warm the planet, melting more permafrost in a self-perpetuating loop. Human activity kicks off these feedback loops, but once set in motion, they become self-sustaining. The danger is that this process reaches a tipping point beyond which it is extremely difficult to recover. This is why it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can slow, halt and even reverse these feedbacks and cool the planet.

Termites are about to experience a significant global expansion in their prime habitat, thanks to climate change. Here’s what that means for deadwood.

Now Playing | Joep van Dijk is a passionate climate scientist. He likes to search for extreme examples that show how life can be lived sustainably. This documentary follows Joep on his CO2-neutral journey from Amsterdam to the United States of America and shows how this choice inspires himself and others to live a climate conscious life.

Claim by academics, including former integrity chair of Australia’s carbon credit scheme, raises further doubts about systemGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastProjects meant to regenerate Australia’s outback forests to store carbon dioxide have been awarded millions of carbon credits – worth hundreds of millions of dollars – despite total tree and shrub cover in those areas having declined, a new analysis has found.It is the latest claim that raises doubts about the integrity of Australia’s carbon credit system, which the federal government and polluting businesses rely on to meet targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Continue reading...

Now Playing | The Carbon Chronicles: Who owns the air? The Carbon Chronicles is an experimental animated visualisation of the build-up of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses has radically altered the Earth’s atmosphere. It is a collaboration between artists from the Manifest Data Lab and scientists from the British Antarctic Survey. The animation maps from the industrial revolution to the present day the regions contributing most to the climate crisis, which can be traced through the stalagmite growths representing CO2 emissions growing out from the different countries. Beginning with the UK in the 1750s, emissions from coal start enveloping the planet, other regions soon follow. By the late 1800s through to the current period, growing industrial and extraction activity in the Global North is responsible for 92% of CO2 with 8% coming from the Global South. The spread of CO2 described in the animation mirrors the wider historic processes of power distribution visited on poorer countries and shows that the atmosphere is as contested a space as the territories beneath it. The work describes a living breathing planet, under the pressure of human produced exhalations of CO2. It attributes responsibility in ways that can inform the need for equitable solutions to the climate crisis that are mindful of the historic consequences of carbon exploitation and its impacts. The Carbon Chronicles informs the need for equitable solutions to the climate crisis that are mindful of the historic consequences of carbon exploitation to ask: Who Owns the Air?

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The top 1 percent of earners in the UK are responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year as the bottom 10 percent emit over more than two decades, new data has shown. The […]

The ruptures on the Nord Stream pipelines in recent days have produced likely the largest single release of methane into the atmosphere ever recorded, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Manfredi Caltagirone, the leader of the program’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, told Reuters on Friday that an analysis of satellite imagery detected a large...

Fresh data released at the COP27 climate summit show global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are soaring despite an energy crisis

Past Presentation | Fossil fuel emissions from human activity are driving up Earth’s temperature—yet something else is at work. The warming has set in motion nature’s own feedback loops which are raising temperatures even higher. The urgent question is: Are we approaching a point of no return, leading to an uninhabitable Earth, or do we have the vision and will to slow, halt, and reverse them? Subtitled in 23 languages and narrated by Richard Gere, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops is a series of five short films, featuring twelve leading climate scientists, that explores how human-caused emissions are triggering nature’s own warming loops. We submit the five shorts to your festival (total 57:44) for screening of any or all of the films. The film series had its official launch with the Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg and world-renowned scientists in a webcast, “The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops. ”While scientists stay up worrying about this most dangerous aspect of climate change, the public has little awareness or understanding of feedback loops. Climate change discussion at all levels of society largely leaves out the most critical dynamic of climate change itself. It is urgent we remedy this. The first film in the series, Introduction (13:09), provides an overview of the feedback loop problem. The four other short films explore important climate feedback mechanisms: Forests (14:10), Permafrost (10:55), Atmosphere (8:45) and Albedo (10:35).Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the planet. This warming is then setting in motion dozens of feedback mechanisms, which then feed upon themselves, as well as interact with each other and spiral further out of control. These processes are rapidly accelerating climate change. An example of a climate feedback loop is the melting of the permafrost. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost makes up nearly 25% of the landmass. As heat-trapping emissions warm the Earth, this frozen tundra is melting. As it does, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released, which further warm the planet, melting more permafrost in a self-perpetuating loop. Human activity kicks off these feedback loops, but once set in motion, they become self-sustaining. The danger is that this process reaches a tipping point beyond which it is extremely difficult to recover. This is why it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can slow, halt and even reverse these feedbacks and cool the planet.

How wishful thinking hampers the clean-energy revolution

Past Presentation | Global warming is altering Earth’s weather patterns dramatically. A warmer atmosphere absorbs more water vapor, which in turn traps more heat and warms the planet further in an accelerating feedback loop. Climate change is also disrupting the jet stream, triggering a feedback loop that brings warm air northward, and causes weather patterns to stall in place for longer. Subtitled in 23 languages and narrated by Richard Gere, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops is a series of five short films, featuring twelve leading climate scientists, that explores how human-caused emissions are triggering nature’s own warming loops. We submit the five shorts to your festival (total 57:44) for screening of any or all of the films. The film series had its official launch with the Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg and world-renowned scientists in a webcast, “The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops. ”While scientists stay up worrying about this most dangerous aspect of climate change, the public has little awareness or understanding of feedback loops. Climate change discussion at all levels of society largely leaves out the most critical dynamic of climate change itself. It is urgent we remedy this. The first film in the series, Introduction (13:09), provides an overview of the feedback loop problem. The four other short films explore important climate feedback mechanisms: Forests (14:10), Permafrost (10:55), Atmosphere (8:45) and Albedo (10:35).Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the planet. This warming is then setting in motion dozens of feedback mechanisms, which then feed upon themselves, as well as interact with each other and spiral further out of control. These processes are rapidly accelerating climate change. An example of a climate feedback loop is the melting of the permafrost. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost makes up nearly 25% of the landmass. As heat-trapping emissions warm the Earth, this frozen tundra is melting. As it does, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released, which further warm the planet, melting more permafrost in a self-perpetuating loop. Human activity kicks off these feedback loops, but once set in motion, they become self-sustaining. The danger is that this process reaches a tipping point beyond which it is extremely difficult to recover. This is why it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can slow, halt and even reverse these feedbacks and cool the planet.

Analysis examining carbon impact of billionaires’ investments published as Cop27 talks get under wayThe super-rich emit greenhouse gases at a level equivalent to the whole of France from their investments in carbon intensive businesses, according to analysis published on the opening of the Cop27 UN climate talks in Egypt.Examining the carbon impact of the investments of 125 billionaires, the research found they had a collective $2.4tn stake in 183 companies. On average each billionaire’s investment emissions produced 3m tonnes of CO2 a year; a million times more than the average emissions of 2.76 tonnes of CO2 for those living in the bottom 90% of earners. In total the 125 members of the super-rich emitted 393m tonnes of CO2 a year – equivalent to the emissions of France, which has a population of 67 million. Continue reading...

Past Presentation | The reflectivity of snow and ice at the poles, known as the albedo effect, is one of Earth’s most important cooling mechanisms. But global warming has reduced this reflectivity drastically, setting off a dangerous warming loop: as more Arctic ice and snow melt, the albedo effect decreases, warming the Arctic further, and melting more ice and snow. The volume of Arctic ice has already shrunk 75% In the past 40 years, and scientists predict that the Arctic Ocean will be completely ice-free during the summer months by the end of the century. Subtitled in 23 languages and narrated by Richard Gere, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops is a series of five short films, featuring twelve leading climate scientists, that explores how human-caused emissions are triggering nature’s own warming loops. We submit the five shorts to your festival (total 57:44) for screening of any or all of the films. The film series had its official launch with the Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg and world-renowned scientists in a webcast, “The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops. ”While scientists stay up worrying about this most dangerous aspect of climate change, the public has little awareness or understanding of feedback loops. Climate change discussion at all levels of society largely leaves out the most critical dynamic of climate change itself. It is urgent we remedy this. The first film in the series, Introduction (13:09), provides an overview of the feedback loop problem. The four other short films explore important climate feedback mechanisms: Forests (14:10), Permafrost (10:55), Atmosphere (8:45) and Albedo (10:35).Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the planet. This warming is then setting in motion dozens of feedback mechanisms, which then feed upon themselves, as well as interact with each other and spiral further out of control. These processes are rapidly accelerating climate change. An example of a climate feedback loop is the melting of the permafrost. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost makes up nearly 25% of the landmass. As heat-trapping emissions warm the Earth, this frozen tundra is melting. As it does, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released, which further warm the planet, melting more permafrost in a self-perpetuating loop. Human activity kicks off these feedback loops, but once set in motion, they become self-sustaining. The danger is that this process reaches a tipping point beyond which it is extremely difficult to recover. This is why it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can slow, halt and even reverse these feedbacks and cool the planet.

Global emissions of methane from existing gas infrastructure may be up to five times higher than had been believed, a new study has found. Existing measures to burn off the powerful greenhouse gas — which is dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide — allow far more to slip by than had been believed,...

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Week two at COP27 has begun. Last week closed with the announcement of the United States’ ambitious plan to track and cut methane emissions — a greenhouse gas that’s over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term — timed with a visit by President Biden. (Catch up on last…

Ammonia is predicted to become the leading fuel source for the world’s giant cargo ships by 2050. Yet no vessel actually runs on the pungent, carbonless compound today. In labs and shipyards around the world, companies are working to build the first ammonia-powered ships as the maritime industry scrambles to replace…

For years, meat producers have worked furiously behind the scenes to keep meat reduction out of discussions on climate policy. The first draft of the 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on climate change mitigation recommended shifting to plant-based diets and agricultural systems. Delegates dispatched by then-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro—who presided over a mass burning of the Amazon rainforest, in part by beef producers—helped get that phrase removed. The IPPC flinching in the face of lobbying meant that same ambivalence toward agriculture could carry over into that year’s Conference of the Parties for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was focused on establishing a framework to reduce methane emissions: Despite the fact that animal agriculture emits a third of global methane and that it is impossible to meet emissions targets without addressing the food sector, the question of the industry’s contribution to anthropogenic climate change was conspicuously left off the policy menu—even though food options offered to conference attendees were paired with a carbon calculator.The public is well aware, at this point, of fossil fuel lobbyists’ obstructionism on climate policy. We know, for instance, that there were more fossil fuel lobbyists than delegates for any country at COP26, and that the number has increased further at this year’s COP27. It’s harder to run the numbers on those representing the meat industry. Their influence, however, is evident.As criticism of animal agriculture and its contribution to climate change has ramped up in recent years, so has the industry’s counter-offensive.The plan President Biden announced on Friday at this year’s COP27—which to its credit is putting food on the agenda—set specific goals for energy, but was conspicuously vague on agriculture. The president merely said he intended to expand the country’s domestic programs for “climate-smart” agriculture globally—domestic programs that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has previously said would not require any reduction in meat production. This is in line with last year’s methane pledge, which set strict new standards for energy and waste sectors, but approached agriculture “through technology innovation as well as incentives and partnerships” with corporations like Bayer and JBS, a double standard celebrated by meat industry lobbyists.     As criticism of animal agriculture and its contribution to climate change has ramped up in recent years, so has the industry’s counter-offensive. Drawing on the playbook developed by the fossil fuel industry during its fifty-year campaign to sow doubt about the role of fossil fuels in climate change, the meat industry is now using dodgy science paired with savvy public relations  to convince everyone, from the public through to world leaders, that we should do anything other than the one thing scientists agree we need to do: scale down the meat sector.One of the most effective tactics employed by the meat lobby is the use of creative accounting methods to obscure its climate impact. Because some greenhouse gases are stronger than others, when quantifying emissions, climatologists use a quotient called global warming potential (GWP) to boil everything down to a single figure: carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Since gases like methane contribute to rapid heating but break down in the atmosphere, GWP changes depending on the time frame. For instance, while the global warming potential of methane over 100 years (GWP100) is 28 times that of CO2, over 20 years, methane is approximately 86 times as powerful as CO2. The 100-year figure is what’s typically cited, but many climatologists assert that this downplays the importance of reducing methane and nitrous oxide pollution in the immediate future, as we don’t have a century to stop climate change. Methane’s biggest emitters, including the meat industry, don’t stop there in downplaying methane’s damage. Rather than use the GWP100 figure, which already underestimates heating from methane, they prefer a different one: GWP*. GWP* was developed because although GWP is the universal tool for counting emissions from a country, industry, or company, it doesn’t work well for modeling, since it can’t capture the transience of gases like methane. The new quotient, GWP*, is instead a tool for predicting global temperature change. Since the planet doesn’t heat more when methane levels are stable, the GWP* of a constant methane level is zero. The meat industry quickly realized this meant that as long as methane emissions didn’t rise they could claim they weren’t contributing to global warming, and began lobbying for its use as an accounting metric—not what it was designed for at all. Funneling millions of dollars through backchannels, the animal agribusiness lobby has financed the promotion of GWP* as the new greenhouse gas accounting standard through groups ranging from U.C. Davis’ CLEAR Center to the lobbyists at COP. Challenging the conventional climate calculus not only helps the meat industry to downplay its emissions, but to seed the suspicion that IPCC statistics unfairly malign the industry. The second line of defense that the meat industry has been promoting are technological fixes for the environmental damage caused by livestock. In the case of methane, the industry has rushed to fund research into seaweed-based feed additives for cows, aimed at reducing the methane produced by their digestive systems. But while industry pilot studies estimated the emissions-reduction potential of such additives as high as 80 percent at the feedlot stage, they didn’t mention that this translates to life cycle emissions cuts of only around 9 percent. The industry is quick to drum up positive press to suggest that all it will take to make cows climate-friendly is some algae or methane-capturing masks for cows, but these fixes are far from being widely viable or scalable. In all these cases, the needed environmental improvements can’t be achieved by quick fixes. Yet by aggressively pushing their message to journalists and businesses, the meat industry has prolonged the debate over the environmental sustainability of meat by suggesting that the environmental impacts of animal agriculture aren’t fundamental features, just inconvenient bugs.But perhaps the most egregious tactic of the meat lobby is to sell itself as the solution to the problems it creates. Factory farms and industrial feedlots, by concentrating thousands of animals in confined spaces, also create massive manure lagoons that both generate methane and leech or are outright dumped into waterways, contributing to the so-called dead zones expanding from river deltas. But while scientists stress the need to reduce animal waste, the industry has succeeded in securing lucrative tax exemptions for increasing it, touting the ostensible environmental benefits of refining manure into methane biogas, turning waste into an income stream. Due to successful lobbying, methane digesters have been classified under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act as renewable energy generation, complete with huge tax credits incentivizing expansion of factory dairies, who have excitedly projected that “milk has become the byproduct of manure production!” Similarly, so-called carbon farming has become a cash cow for the ranching sector. While international panels of experts and even the industry’s own research shows that sequestering carbon in soil can’t persist for any meaningful time-scale, the industry still insists that ranching can become carbon negative with proper management. Carbon credits are now traded like stocks in speculative markets, with both agribusiness and oil backing them as a tool for emissions reduction. The USDA provides carbon credit calculators to assist ranchers in qualifying and buying in—helping them, or whomever buys their credits, to erase their emissions with carbon offsets based on sketchy assumptions and self-reported data. Like seaweed additives, carbon farming generates reams of good press for the industry. And by greenwashing their operations as climate solutions, the meat and dairy sectors can frame their critics as hostile not just to their industries, but to climate progress itself.In this battle over policy and public opinion, scientific claims are wielded as weapons and the industry is itself a weaponsmith, funding the research and scientists that fight in its corner. Both the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry have spent heavily on scientists and experts who would push out research and arguments to defend their interests—sometimes even using the same experts. The meat industry—which starts with the advantage of already having close links with land-grant university agriculture and animal science programs—invests in research under the banner of reducing its carbon footprint. Yet this research is also used—arguably, designed, in fact—to challenge critique in the court of public opinion. One recent bombshell investigation from Greenpeace Unearthed, for example, detailed how a livestock feed lobbying group conceived and financed a communications center at U.C. Davis and used it to spread disinformation on the meat industry’s impact on climate. On the global stage, the livestock sector wields considerable influence within international organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which promotes the industry pursuing public-private partnerships for agribusiness development, unlike other UN organizations’ approach to energy.In 2017, industry finance overtook public grants to fund the majority of research in the United States for the first time in almost a century.This problem goes beyond one single scholar or even one single academic center. In 2017, industry finance overtook public grants to fund the majority of research in the United States for the first time in almost a century. The corporate long game to supplant public science has succeeded in transforming not only the output, but the culture of academia. Researchers become reluctant to criticize even the most egregious science corruption scandals when they know their own grants come from private institutions as well. This pattern erodes public trust in scientific institutions, which in turn benefits industry: By creating space for uncertainty, corporations funding misinformation about their products can then demand seats at the political table and the representation of “both sides” in media.When the science became unequivocal that cigarettes and their second-hand smoke were carcinogenic, the tobacco industry sought to challenge these findings, funding its own research and lobbying to cast doubt on the emerging scientific consensus. This delay in meaningful regulation likely caused millions of avoidable deaths. These tactics of delay and agnotology—deliberate ignorance, rather than the organic absence of knowledge—were picked up by the fossil fuel industry, which has regularly employed lobbyists and scientists to challenge the consensus on the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change. These ongoing delay tactics have helped prevent binding regulation and set us on a course to miss the target of keeping warming to 1.5 degrees. The historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway dub those who challenge scientific consensus and muddy the public discussion on behalf of harmful industries “merchants of doubt.” Their game is not necessarily outright denial, but active, perpetual equivocation. The goal is to drag out the debate and introduce doubt where there shouldn’t be in order to defend the status quo.Amid global climate and extinction crises driven in part by animal agriculture, the meat merchants of doubt have thoroughly succeeded at this goal: Their interests have infiltrated the highest echelons of global politics and their ideas have taken root in public discussions about the food system. In recent years, activists have made progress identifying and abating the influence of the fossil fuel industry from media and academia—through campaigning for divestment, tracking political contributions, demanding news coverage, and more. Now we must do the same for meat. The good news is that we know their strategy. The bad news is that we’re running out of time.

Now Playing | China’s economic development and rapid urbanization has led to a dramatic rise in energy consumption due to excessive heating and air-conditioning causing carbon emissions of immense proportions. China’s government has set the ambitious target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40–45% by 2020 against the 2005 baseline. A UK/China-funded team working on how to solve the problem in some of the most extreme climate regions in China. The team discovers groundbreaking solutions using computational-fluid-dynamics simulations.

Although plant-based “beef” may reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it also threatens 1.5 million agricultural jobs.  The use of plant-based beef substitutes has the potential to...

A new version of California’s climate plan sets a more stringent — some say unrealistic — target for cutting greenhouse gases. It also relies more on controversial carbon capture projects.

Past Presentation | Carbon Nation is an optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, non-partisan, big tent film that shows tackling climate change boosts the economy, increases national & energy security and promotes health and a clean environment.

Past Presentation | A film about our love affair with carbon.

Now Playing | Planet Earth - a brief history - depicting the evolution of the planet from the Hadean period to the Anthropocene period. An evolutionary history of life on Earth. The Earth has undergone constant change in its 4.54 Billion year history with life evolving in response to those changes - in particular to the changing atmospheric compositions of carbon dioxide and oxygen. Species extinction has been a natural part of the evolutionary process of the planet however there are now thought to have been at least 8 mass extinction events in the history of the Earth - each of major consequence to life on the planet and of import to our modern understandings of climate change. This 6 minute animation has been created by paleoartist Bruce Currie and has been commissioned by the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum – Bathurst.

Up to one-third of the carbon consumed by Prochlorococcus may come from sources other than photosynthesis.

The agriculture and fossil fuel industries are the biggest sources of methane emissions in Australia. Here’s how signing the pledge may affect them.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed more stringent methane regulations for the oil and gas industry that would dramatically curb emissions of the potent greenhouse gas. The proposed rules, announced Friday at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, would strengthen and expand pending regulations that were first proposed in November 2021. Combined, the new rules […]

President Biden addresses the international COP27 summit. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency unveils its tighter methane rule, and Egypt’s government could risk the U.S.’ moral authority on climate. This is Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack...

Past Presentation | Meet Allen Williams, Gabe Brown and Neil Dennis - heroes and innovators! These ranchers now know how to regenerate their soils while making their animals healthier and their operations more profitable. They are turning ON their soils, enabling rainwater to sink into the earth rather than run off. And these turned ON soils retain that water, so the ranches are much more resilient in drought. It’s an amazing story that has just begun.

Past Presentation | A compelling documentary about the collision of climate change, the desperate search for firewood, dirty water, and the burdens placed on women and girls. The film has provoked environmental and green film audiences in Durban, South Africa at the COP-17 meetings, to the Planet in Focus Film Festival in Toronto, where it won "Best International Short." It has also been selected to screen at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival and is being considered to become part of the program at Rio+20

California likes to see itself as a leader in climate policy. But transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy also will mean a major reshuffling for workers.  What happens to workers in the oil and gas industry whose jobs may disappear? Will California have people with the right skills to fill new jobs in the […]

A new report finds per-acre revenue from offshore wind blows oil and gas out of the water

A new EPA proposal would allow third parties to catch methane "super emitters" red handed.

At least four countries have put a price on the cost of their climate emissions on society. The Biden Administration is months overdue.

Every year, the US Department of Agriculture spends billions of dollars propping up large-scale farming of commodities like corn and soybeans. These crops in turn suffuse the food system, fattening animals on America’s factory-scale meat farms and providing the bulk of sweeteners and fats in processed foods. This style of agriculture doesn’t just underwrite a […]

Past Presentation | A short documentary about the 2009-2010 Miss South Pacific Pageant in Suva, Fiji that tackles climate change, rising sea levels, and a beauty pageant. Contestants from all the major Pacific Island Nations implore audiences to reduce global carbon emission lest their island homes will be lost to rising seas.

On top of the IRA, the Senate just quietly ratified a major climate treaty.

A technique that transforms the metals’ microscopic structure may enable energy-efficient 3D printing of blades for gas turbines or jet engines.

This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now , a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Minneapolis, Minnesota became the third U.S. city to endorse a carbon-neutrality goal for shipping last week, joining the California cities of Los Angeles and…

MIT spinoff Takachar converts agricultural waste into clean-burning fuel, and wins Earthshot Prize.

At current levels of emissions, there is a 50% chance the planet will reach the 1.5℃ global average temperature rise in just nine years.

St. James Parish, located on a stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans dubbed “Cancer Alley” due to the high concentration of petrochemical plants, is home to the country’s largest producer of polystyrene — the foam commonly found in soft drink and takeout containers. Now, the owner of that plant wants to build a new facility in the same area that would break down used foam cups and containers into raw materials that can be turned into other kinds of plastic. While there’s limited data on what kinds of emissions this type of facility creates, environmental advocates are concerned that the new plant could represent a new source of carcinogens like dioxin and benzene in the already polluted area.The proposed plant comes as the U.S. federal and state governments and private companies pour billions into “chemical recycling” research, which is touted as a potential solution to anemic plastics recycling rates. Proponents say that, despite mounting restrictions on single-use packaging, plastics aren’t going away anytime soon, and that chemical recycling is needed to keep growing amounts of plastic waste out of landfills and oceans. But questions abound about whether the plants are economically viable — and how chemical recycling contributes to local air pollution, perpetuating a history of environmental injustices and climate change. Skeptics argue that chemical recycling is an unproven technology that amounts to little more than the latest PR effort from the plastics industry. The Environmental Protection Agency is deciding whether or not to continue regulating the plants as incinerators, with some lawmakers expressing concerns last month about toxic emissions from these facilities. “They’re going to be managing toxic chemicals…and they’re going to be putting our communities at risk for either air pollution or something worse,” Jane Patton, a Baton Rouge native and manager of the Center for International Environmental Law’s plastics and petrochemicals campaign, told EHN of the proposed new plant in Louisiana.The air of St. James Parish, where the new plant will be located, has among the highest pollution levels along the Mississippi River corridor dubbed “Cancer Alley.” A joint investigation in 2019 by ProPublica, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate found that most of the new petrochemical facilities in the parish –including the recycling plant– will be located near the mostly Black 5th District.What is chemical recycling?When most of us picture recycling, we picture what industry insiders call “mechanical recycling:” plastics are sorted, cleaned, crushed or shredded and then melted to be made into new goods. In the U.S., though, less than 10% of plastics are actually recycled due to challenges ranging from contamination to variability in plastic types and coloring. “No flexible plastic packaging can be recycled with mechanical recycling — the only real plastic that can be recycled are number one and number two water bottles and milk jugs,” George Huber, an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin and head of the multi-university research center for Chemical Upcycling of Waste Plastics, told EHN. Enter chemical recycling –– processes that use high heat, chemicals, or both to break used plastic goods down into their chemical building blocks to, in theory, make more plastics. Proponents say that chemical recycling can complement more traditional recycling by handling mixed and harder-to-recycle plastics. “An advantage of advanced recycling is that it can take more of the 90% of plastics that aren’t recycled today, including the hard-to-recycle films, pouches and other mixed plastics, and remake them into virgin-quality new plastics approved for medical and food contact applications,” Joshua Baca, vice president of the plastics division at the American Chemistry Council, told EHN. A long and winding historyThe technology has actually been around for decades, with an initial wave of plants built in the 1990s, but it didn’t take off then because of operational and economic challenges. Huber said some factors have changed, like a significant increase in plastic use and China’s refusal to accept other countries’ waste, that make chemical recycling more viable this time around. Yet a 2021 Reuters investigation found that commercial viability remains a major challenge for chemical recyclers due to difficulties like contamination of the incoming plastic, high energy costs, and the need to further clean the outputs before they can become plastic. “It's one thing in theory to design something on paper — it's a whole huge challenge to build a plant, get it operational, get the permits and for it to perform like you think it would,” Huber said. Tracking down just how many chemical recycling plants operate today in the U.S. is tricky — and depends in part on what one counts as “recycling.” Potential climate impacts Most of the plants in the U.S. are pyrolysis facilities, which use huge amounts of energy to heat plastics up enough to break their chemical bonds, raising concerns about their climate impacts if that energy comes from burning fossil fuels. An analysis from Closed Loop Partners found that, depending on the technology, carbon emissions from chemical recycling ranged from 22% higher to 45% lower than virgin plastics production. “It's a very promising technology to tackle the problem of (plastic) waste, but if you don't concurrently tackle the challenge of where the energy is coming from, there's a problem,” Rebecca Furlong, a chemistry PhD candidate at the University of Bath who has conducted life cycle assessments of plastics recycling technologies, told EHN. A life cycle assessment study prepared for a British chemical recycling company found that chemical recycling has a significantly lower climate impact than waste-to-energy incineration — but produced almost four times as many greenhouse gas emissions as landfilling the plastic. The American Chemistry Council, or ACC, says that there are at least seven plants in the U.S. doing plastics-to-plastics recycling, although many of those facilities also turn plastics into industrial fuel. For example, according to records reviewed by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, or GAIA, in 2018 a facility located in Oregon and owned by one of the companies planning to build the Louisiana plant, converted 216.82 pounds of polystyrene into the plastics building block styrene, sending roughly the same amount to be burned at a cement kiln. The ACC, European Union regulators and Furlong and her advisor, Matthew Davidson, say plastics to fuel shouldn’t count as recycling. “Clearly digging oil out of the ground, using it as a plastic, and then burning it is not hugely different from digging it out of the ground and burning it,” Davidson, director of the Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies at the University of Bath, told EHN.Unknowns about environmental health impacts Chemical recycling saw a boost under the Trump administration, including a formal partnership between the federal Department of Energy and the American Chemistry Council, which lobbies on behalf of the plastics industry, to scale up chemical recycling technologies. There’s limited information, however, on the environmental health impacts of chemical recycling plants. Furlong said she had not included hazardous waste generation in her life cycle assessments because of a lack of data. Tangri said there have been few studies outside the lab, in part because there are relatively few chemical recycling plants out there. Additionally, the ones that do exist are either too small to meet the EPA’s pollution reporting threshold, or are housed within a larger petrochemical complex and so don’t separately report out their air pollution emissions. Earlier this year, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report looking at eight facilities in the U.S. The environmental group found that one facility in Oregon sent around half a million pounds of hazardous waste, including benzene and lead, to incinerators in Washington, Colorado, Missouri and three other states. Hazardous waste incinerators can release toxic air pollution to nearby communities. Additionally, some hazardous waste incinerators in the U.S. have repeatedly violated air pollution standards and the EPA has recently raised serious concerns about a backlog of hazardous waste piling up due to limited incineration capacity. The Oregon facility, which is supposed to break down polystyrene into styrene, also sent more than 100,000 pounds of styrene in 2020 to be burned in waste to energy plants rather than recycled back into new plastics, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council’s report. Plastics contain a range of additives, like phthalates and bisphenols, that have serious health concerns. The European Chemicals Agency expressed concerns in a 2021 report about the extent to which chemical recycling could eliminate these chemicals, especially “legacy” additives like lead-stabilized PVC that the EU no longer allows, and prevent them from showing up in new plastic products. The agency also cautioned that, depending on the type of plastic waste the facilities are processing, pyrolysis and gasification plants can generate hazardous compounds such as dioxins, volatile organic compounds and PCBs. Dioxins are considered “highly toxic” by the EPA as they can cause cancer, reproductive issues, immune system damage and other health issues. Volatile organic compounds can cause breathing difficulties and harm the nervous system; and some, like benzene, are also carcinogens. The agency noted that companies are required to take measures, like installing flue gas cleaning systems and pre-treatment of wastewater, to limit emissions. Additionally, experts interviewed by the EU highlighted an overall lack of transparency about the kinds of chemicals used in some of the chemical recycling processes. The American Chemistry Council, or ACC, says that emissions from most chemical recycling plants are too low to trigger Clean Air Act permits, citing a recent report from consultant Good Company and sponsored by the ACC that found that emissions from four plants in the U.S. were on par with those from a hospital and food manufacturing plant. The trade group claims the plants are “designed to avoid dioxin formation with many interventions, the primary one being that the plastic material is heated in a closed, oxygen-deprived environment that is not combustion,” and that the facilities would be subject to violations or operating restrictions if dioxins were formed. Policy debateAs the EPA decides what to do about chemical recycling plants, 20 states — including Louisiana, where the new plant could be built — have already passed laws that would regulate the facilities as manufacturers rather than solid waste facilities, according to the American Chemistry Council — a move that environmental advocates say could lead to less oversight and more pollution. “Whenever I see a big push for exemptions from environmental statutes, I get a little concerned,” Judith Enck, director of the anti-plastics advocacy group Beyond Plastics, told EHN. Advocates in Louisiana fear the new law will exempt the new facility from being regulated by the state Department of Environmental Quality, something the ACC says won’t happen. However, it is unclear in the text of the law which state agency will oversee its environmental impacts (the state Department of Environmental Quality didn’t respond to our question). In a recent letter to the EPA, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and more than 30 other lawmakers requested that the agency continue to regulate pyrolysis and gasification plants as incinerators. Additionally, they also urged the EPA to request more information from these facilities on their air pollution and climate impacts. “Communities located near these facilities need to know what chemicals they are being exposed to, and they need the full protection that Congress intended the Clean Air Act’s incinerator standards to provide,” wrote the lawmakers. The American Chemistry Council contends that chemical recycling plants take in plastics waste that is already sorted, and that regulating these facilities as solid waste facilities, with measures like odor and rodent controls, does not make sense. The ACC adds that, like other manufacturing facilities, chemical recycling plants would still be subject to air and water pollution and hazardous waste regulations. Tangri, from GAIA, said that the U.S. should also follow in the footsteps of the EU and not count plastics to fuel as chemical recycling. Overall, environmental advocates would prefer to see stronger measures taken to reduce plastic use and require that manufacturers take more responsibility for plastic packaging — a concept known as “extended producer responsibility.” Enck suggested that there be mandatory environmental standards for packaging similar to auto efficiency standards. “We really need to move to a refillable, reusable economy,” she said. “Do we need all these layers of packaging on a product? Do we need multi-material packaging?”

Bitcoin's demand for electricity has led to huge carbon emissions, but a slump in the cryptocurrency's price and rising energy costs have slowed its energy use, at least temporarily

President Biden told a critical UN climate summit Friday that the U.S. is "on track" to meet its 2030 emissions-cutting pledge under the Paris Agreement while also touting efforts to help vulnerable nations harmed by global warming.Driving the news: "Thanks to the actions we've taken, I can stand here as president of the United States of America and say with confidence, the United States of America will meet our emissions targets by 2030," Biden told the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.The U.S. has pledged to cut emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.Biden cited the new climate law, energy and climate provisions in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, and executive policies like stronger draft rules unveiled this morning to cut emissions of methane from the oil-and-gas sector.Why it matters: The U.S. is the world's largest historical carbon emitter and is currently second behind China.In addition, emissions-cutting pledges under the Paris Agreement are nonbinding, so showing the U.S. pledge is backed up by tangible domestic policies could help prod other nations to do more.The big picture: A dominant theme at this year's summit is calls for rich industrial polluters to boost aid to help developing nations cut emissions, adapt to climate change, and compensate them for unavoidable climate harms.Biden's speech touted various new financial assistance efforts, such as an additional $150 million for Africa under the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, or PREPARE.However, the strong chances that Republicans will control at least one chamber of Congress create new barriers to meeting the White House's 2021 pledge to quadruple U.S. foreign climate aid to $11 billion annually by 2024.The intrigue: Biden repeatedly cited vulnerable nations' jeopardy, such as drought-fueled hunger in Africa. "The climate crisis is about human security, economic security, environmental security, national security, and the very life of the planet," he said.However, he did not spell out a specific U.S. commitment or posture on compensation known as "loss and damage."What they're saying: "Developing country negotiators are...eager to get more reassurance that the United States will throw its weight behind creating a collective funding stream to help them recover from devastating losses from climate disasters," Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement."If the United States continues to resist real progress on financing for loss and damage it could put the entire proceedings of this climate summit in jeopardy," Dasgupta said.Quick take: The White House entered this year's summit in a stronger position than last year, thanks to the big new climate law passed over the summer.Biden's speech looked to seize on the law to demonstrate U.S. commitment to tackling global warming, but with a twist — he argued the efforts would also help other nations."Our investments in technology from electric batteries to hydrogen are going to spark a cycle of innovation that will reduce the cost and improve the performance of clean energy technology that will be available to nations worldwide, not just the United States," he said."We're going to help make the transition to low carbon future more affordable for everyone, accelerate decarbonization beyond our borders," Biden added.Threat level: The summit and White House efforts come amid fresh evidence that global efforts to curb carbon emissions are badly out of step with steep cuts envisioned under the Paris Agreement goals.The Global Carbon Project, a respected research consortium, reported Friday that global carbon emissions from fossil fuels are rising by an estimated 1% this year."Many countries, cities, companies, and individuals have made pledges to reduce emissions, and it is a stark reminder that despite all this rhetoric, global fossil CO2 emissions are more than 5% higher than in 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement," said Glen Peters of Norway's CICERO Center for International Climate Research, which is part of the group.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Wet cat and dog food is far more environmentally damaging than dry pet food, according to a new study. It found that wet food results in eight times more climate-heating emissions than dry food. The analysis found that […]

Both approval and ranked choice voting put fire under the feet of elected officials to do the right thing for the environment — or risk being voted out. The post Reform Our Elections to Secure a Sustainable Future appeared first on The Revelator.

Can electric buses become batteries on wheels, ready to back up public buildings during wildfires, heat waves and other grid emergencies? A new project in Oakland, California intends to find out. It’s called the V2B Oakland project, and it’s backed by $3.2 million in California Energy Commission funding, another…