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New findings contrast with some climate models that indicate aerosols make clouds ‘wetter’
What’s in a cloud? Water, certainly, but also tiny particles known as “aerosols”. Whether they originate from wildfires, volcanoes, sandstorms, ship emissions or power stations, aerosols alter the properties of a cloud. By providing a surface for water to condense on to, they can help water droplets to form. But exactly how aerosols alter clouds is not clear. Now a new satellite study is helping scientists to see inside a cloud.
Continue reading...Official data shows forest-clearing released 160m tonnes of carbon dioxide since 2015
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More than $1bn of public money being spent on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees and restoring habitat under the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy will have effectively been wiped out by little more than two years of forest-clearing elsewhere in the country, official government data suggests.
The $2.55bn emissions reduction fund pays landowners and companies to avoid emissions or store carbon dioxide using a reverse auction – the cheapest credible bids win. The government says it has signed contracts to prevent 124m tonnes of emissions through vegetation projects – mostly repairing degraded habitat, planting trees and ensuring existing forest on private land is not cleared.
Related: Cape York traditional owners call for land-clearing halt to protect burial sites
Related: Exclusive: legal concerns over plan to roll over forestry agreements without reviews
Continue reading...Judges ordered a 25% carbon emissions cut by 2020 in the first successful lawsuit against a government’s climate policy
The Dutch government has launched a bid to overturn a landmark climate ruling, arguing that judges in The Hague “sidelined democracy” when they ordered a 25% cut in carbon emissions by 2020.
Government plans for a lesser 17% cut in CO2 pollution were deemed unlawful three years ago, in the first successful lawsuit against a government’s climate policy.
Related: 'We can't see a future': group takes EU to court over climate change
Continue reading...Government advisers call for changes to Direct Action policy to end investment in schemes that do not reduce emissions• Sign up to receive the top stories every morning
Independent experts advising the Turnbull government have called for changes to the Coalition’s Direct Action climate policy to prevent tens of millions of dollars of public money going to projects that would have gone ahead anyway.
The recommendation is in a review of the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund, the central plank of Direct Action, which pays landowners and companies to avoid emissions or sequester carbon dioxide in plants at the lowest cost. The fund is supposed to support projects that would reduce Australia’s carbon pollution below what it would otherwise have been.
Related: Greg Hunt hasn't a lot to show for $660m spent on reducing greenhouse emissions
Related: Bin liners to takeaway containers – ideas to solve your plastic conundrums
Continue reading...Litigants from eight countries claim EU institutions are not protecting fundamental rights
Lawyers acting for a group including a French lavender farmer and members of the indigenous Sami community in Sweden have launched legal action against the EU’s institutions for failing to adequately protect them against climate change.
A case is being pursued in the Luxembourg-based general court, Europe’s second highest, against the European parliament and the council of the European Union for allowing overly high greenhouse gas emissions to continue until 2030.
Related: Air pollution worse inside London classrooms than outside, study finds
Continue reading...Holyrood says ‘net-zero’ carbon emissions are ultimate aim but climate campaigners say target is disappointing
New targets will set Scotland on course to become one of the first countries in the world to achieve a 100% reduction in carbon emissions, the Scottish government has claimed, although it has stopped short of committing to becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.
The draft climate change bill, published on Thursday morning, sets a target of a 90% reduction by 2050 – which the UK Committee on Climate Change states is currently “at the limit of feasibility” – with the aim of achieving 100% reduction, or “net-zero”, as soon as possible.
Related: Scotland's historic sites at high risk from climate change, report says
Continue reading...Despite vanishing sea ice and shorter winters, Labrador’s polar bear population is among the healthiest in the world – and it could be thanks to the harp seals
Guido Rich, 28, an Inuit hunter from Rigolet, Labrador, brings his Ski-Doo to a careful stop on the sea ice, mindful of the precious cargo it hauls: the body of an 800lb male polar bear. It takes Rich and two other men to roll the animal off the sled and on to the ice, while his wife and young children watch.
His sister, Natasha Pottle, who shot the bear the night before, hands her brother the plastic bags used to store liver, hair and fat samples that will be sent away for lab testing. The animal will provide valuable information for Labrador’s biologists, a small windfall for his family and meat for the community. Rich has barely begun cutting into the hide when a parade of people from the village start arriving to take pictures, offer observations or just watch respectfully.
They jumped on the harp seal boom ... we're seeing them further south than in the past
Related: Animal rights activists and Inuit clash over Canada's Indigenous food traditions
Related: Separating sick Inuit kids and parents is medical colonialism all over again
Continue reading...Almost all nations would benefit economically from keeping global warming to 1.5C, a new study indicates
Achieving the toughest climate change target set in the global Paris agreement will save the world about $30tn in damages, far more than the costs of cutting carbon emissions, according to a new economic analysis.
Most nations, representing 90% of global population, would benefit economically from keeping global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the research indicates. This includes almost all the world’s poorest countries, as well as the three biggest economies – the US, China and Japan – contradicting the claim of US president, Donald Trump, that climate action is too costly.
Related: Nicholas Stern: cost of global warming ‘is worse than I feared’
Continue reading...Hot oceans fueled Hurricane Harvey, generating intense rainfall
Last summer, the United states was pummeled with three severe hurricanes in rapid succession. It was a truly awesome display of the power of weather and the country is still reeling from the effects. In the climate community, there has been years of research into the effect that human-caused global warming has on these storms – both their frequency and their power.
The prevailing view is that in a warming world, there will likely be fewer such storms, but the storms that form will be more severe. Some research, however, concludes that there will be both more storms and more severe ones. More generally, because there is more heat, there is more activity, which can be manifested in several ways.
Continue reading...For decades our laws have been a death sentence for the environment. Now, from the Amazon to Australia, the tide is turning
The Amazon rainforest is often called the earth’s lungs, and generates 20% of the world’s oxygen. Yet in the past half-century nearly a fifth of it has been cut down. The felling and burning of millions of trees is releasing massive amounts of carbon, in turn depleting the Amazon’s capacity to be one of the world’s largest carbon sinks – the natural systems that suck up and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Related: Can climate litigation save the world?
In 2006 the first law recognising the legal rights of nature was enacted in the borough of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania
Related: Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth
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