Latest news

Current temperatures are hotter than at any time in the history of human civilization

In order to understand today’s global warming, we need to understand how Earth’s temperatures varied in the past. How does the rapid warming we see now compare with past natural climate changes? Also, how long have humans been having an impact on the climate? These are some questions that can be answered through paleoclimate studies. Paleoclimate research uses natural measurements of the Earth’s temperature. Clever scientists are able to estimate how warm or cold the Earth was far back in time, way before we had thermometers.

Readers of this column are probably familiar with some of these paleoclimate techniques that may use ice cores or tree rings to infer temperature variations. A different method that uses plant distribution was a technique used in a very recent study published in Nature. That technique used pollen distribution to get an understanding of where plant species thrived in the past. Those distributions gave them insights about the temperatures. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward. Tropical plants differ in major ways from plants that live in, say, the tundra. In fact, plants that thrive where I live (Northern USA) differ from plants that populate landscapes further south.

Pollen works well as a temperature recorder because plants have specific temperature ranges that they can tolerate. By combining the temperature requirements for dozens of different plants that we can recognize from their pollen, we are able to narrow down the possible temperatures at the location where the pollen was collected.

We use pollen rather than other plant fossils because pollen is widespread each spring and settles to the lake bottom where it is surprisingly resistant to degradation. We wash the samples of lake bottom mud with acids that can dissolve minerals, but the pollen can tolerate it. It lasts up to millions of years with degrading.

The major significance here is temperature across two continents over the last 11,000 years. The paper provides a geologically long-term perspective on recent temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere and the ability of climate models, such as the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) models used in the study, to predict the changes. Climate simulations do a strikingly good job of forecasting the changes.

I would say it is significant that temperatures of the most recent decade exceed the warmest temperatures of our reconstruction by 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit, having few -- if any -- precedents over the last 11,000 years. Additionally, we learned that the climate fluctuates naturally over the last 11,000 years and would have led to cooling today in the absence of human activity.

Exclusive: Nearly 60 industrial sites get green light to increase emissions, cancelling out cuts paid for by Coalition using public money

Nearly 60 Australian industrial sites have been given the green light to increase greenhouse gas pollution, potentially cancelling out hundreds of millions of dollars of public spending on emissions cuts under the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy.

The increases have been quietly approved under the “safeguard mechanism”, which was introduced as part of Direct Action to ensure cuts paid for using the main part of the policy – the emission reduction fund – were not undone by emissions increasing in other parts of the economy.

Related: Electricity retailers could defer emissions reductions under Coalition plan

Emissions growth is outpacing the abatement from the emissions reduction fund, so what has been the point?

Related: A great year for clean energy in Australia ends, while bad news for coal continues | Simon Holmes à Court

Related: Coalition's climate policy review reveals it will loosen pollution safeguard

Australia sells South Korea $6bn of coal a year, so Canberra unease over the governor’s anti-coal message is unsurprising

For a South Korean presidential hopeful, Ahn Hee-Jung is not what you would expect.

Related: Energy economics group says export market for Australian coal will decline

Meeting South Korea's Governor An Hee-jung to discuss working together to meet regional challenges & #WinterOlympics2018 ~❄️ pic.twitter.com/nnGrchOsSo

But the networks need to improve reporting on climate events unrelated to Trump

In 2016, US TV network news coverage of climate change plummeted. News coverage was focused on the presidential election, but the corporate broadcast networks didn’t air a single segment informing viewers how a win by Trump or Hillary Clinton could affect climate change or climate policy. That followed a slight drop in news coverage of climate change in 2015, despite that year being full of critical events like the Paris climate accords, Clean Power Plan, and record-breaking heat.

The good news is that the annual analysis done by Media Matters for America found that in 2017, network news coverage of climate change soared.

The president believes the climate is changing, and he does know that pollutants are a part of that equation.