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Don’t get spooked by the pro-fossil fuel lobby: when we abandon petrol and diesel, our whole world is going to change
When it comes to cars, I had a bit of luck this summer. No, I wasn’t loaned the new Tesla Model 3. My street underwent a pavement improvement scheme. All the parking bays were suspended and minicabs no longer idled their engines during the night. I found myself living in an accidental Low Emissions Zone. It was wonderful.
The best I can say about the anti-EV campaign is that it lacks imagination
Continue reading...Clouds cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back to space and also trap heat and radiate it back to Earth. In a Yale Environment 360 interview, physicist Kate Marvel discusses the double-edged effect clouds have on rising temperatures
Clouds perform an important function in cooling the planet as they reflect solar energy back into space. Yet clouds also intensify warming by trapping the planet’s heat and radiating it back to Earth. As fossil fuel emissions continue to warm the planet, how will this dual role played by clouds change, and will clouds ultimately exacerbate or moderate global warming?
Kate Marvel, a physicist at Columbia University and a researcher at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is investigating the mysteries of clouds and climate change. And while she and her colleagues would like to offer definitive answers on this subject, the fact is that few now exist. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, she discusses what is known about the behaviour of clouds in a warming world (they are migrating more toward the poles), why strict controls need to be imposed on geoengineering experiments with clouds, and why she is confident that science and human ingenuity will ultimately overcome the challenge of climate change.
One of the greatest things about science is that we can say, ‘We don’t know,’ or ‘We don’t know yet.’
Related: Fear of solar geoengineering is healthy – but don't distort our research
People ask me, ‘Are you just depressed all the time? How do you keep going?’ ... I have hope in human ingenuity
Continue reading...The small Louisiana town of Cameron could be the first in the US to be fully submerged by rising sea levels – and yet locals, 90% of whom voted for Trump, still aren’t convinced about climate change
In 50 years, the region near where I grew up, Cameron Parish in south-west Louisiana, will likely be no more. Or rather, it will exist, but it may be underwater, according to the newly published calculations of the Louisiana government. Coastal land loss is on the upswing, and with each hurricane that sweeps over the region, the timeline is picking up speed.
As a result, Cameron, the principal town in this 6,800-person parish (as counties are called in Louisiana), could be the first town in the US to be fully submerged by rising sea levels and flooding. So it’s here one would expect to feel the greatest sense of alarm over climate change and its consequences.
Continue reading...“Hope is essential – despair is just another form of denial,” Al Gore said last week, in an interview to promote the sequel to his 2006 climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. As well as the very bad news of Donald Trump’s science-denying presidency, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, which opens in the UK today, brings good news: the plummeting cost of renewable electricity and the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
In 2017, denial of the facts of climate change – and myriad linked dangers including air and ocean pollution, famine and a refugee crisis the likes of which we can hardly imagine – is in retreat, with the Trump administration the malignant exception. Virtually all governments know that climate change is happening, and polls show most people do too – with those living in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa particularly worried. The question is not whether global warming is happening, but what we are going to do about it. There are, and need to be, many answers to this. Gore believes the solutions to climate change are within reach, if people can only find the political will to enact them. Even if how to whip up sufficient zeal to make this happen remains a puzzle, his essential message is one of optimism.
Related: An Inconvenient Sequel review – Trump looms over Al Gore's urgent climate-change doc
Related: I’ve seen how perilous life in Sierra Leone can be. We cannot ignore this disaster | Hannah Mitchell
Continue reading...Malls and office complexes continue to spring up in Kuwait City, built by migrants often working illegally in soaring temperatures. But as oil and water reserves dwindle, the energy-guzzling citystate heads for an existential crisis
It is 9am and the temperature in Kuwait City is 45C and rising, but already people working outside. A row of litter-pickers are already hard at work along a coastal highway, their entire bodies covered to protect them from the sun. Outside one of the city’s many malls, valets hover beside the air-conditioned entrance, while two men in white hats huddle wearily next to their ice cream stands.
Other city residents are luckier. They can avoid the outdoors altogether, escaping the inferno by sheltering in malls, cars and office buildings, where temperatures are kept polar-cold.
Continue reading...The mainstay of the Swiss forestry industry is in danger of dying out this century because of warmer temperatures
The Swiss, who are more aware of climate change than the average Briton because of their disappearing glaciers and snow cover, are also worried about their trees, particularly the Norway spruce.
The Norway spruce is the mainstay of the Swiss forestry industry but is in danger of dying out this century because of warmer temperatures.
Related: The week in wildlife – in pictures
Continue reading...“We have lost everything,” my friend cried as we talked on the phone. I had last seen her the week before, after returning home after a year working as a doctor in Sierra Leone. She described water suddenly rushing through her house in the early hours of Monday. With her five children she managed to escape on to the roof, where she waited to be rescued. The flood took all of their possessions, apart from the clothes they wore. And she was one of the lucky ones.
Estimates of those who have perished in the mudslide and flash flooding that hit Freetown on Monday put the number at more than a thousand. As the enormous mudslide from Sugar Loaf mountain tore through Regent, the people sleeping had no chance: 400 corpses have already been retrieved by rescue teams; 109 of them were children. There are more than 600 people still missing. The Red Cross, which is working tirelessly at the scene of the disaster, estimates about 3,000 people are homeless.
Related: Sierra Leone mudslide: president calls for urgent help as search continues
Continue reading...Bureau of Meteorology climate outlook says higher temperatures most likely in the north and south-east
Australia is set for a warm and dry spring with above average temperatures expected for most parts of the country.
After a string of balmy winter weeks, the chance of higher spring daytime temperatures are greater in the north and south-east of the country, the Bureau of Meteorology’s climate outlook for September to November said on Thursday.
Related: Australia faces potentially disastrous consequences of climate change, inquiry told
Continue reading...New challenges – and a science-dismissing US President – make Gore’s sequel to his 2006 film feel both cinematic and compelling
Related: Al Gore: 'The rich have subverted all reason'
Eleven record-breaking summers on from An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore doubles down. Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s galvanising documentary accompanies the former US vice-president throughout 2015 and 2016, by which point he had pivoted from touring pro-bono slideshows to addressing the Climate Reality Leadership Corps programme initiated by the first movie’s success.
Continue reading...Proposals for one of the world’s largest mines in Queensland threaten not only the Great Barrier Reef, but also global efforts to reduce carbon emissions
Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine in Queensland would be the largest Australia has ever seen and the federal and state governments are keen to offer it financial support.
Related: Adani mining giant faces financial fraud claims as it bids for Australian coal loan
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