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1955, 1976 and 2018 – the weeks of sun that were once an innocent pleasure, I now see in the context of climate change
The sun shone and shone over County Cork last week, just as it did over most of Britain. When we came last year, to the same place in the same week, the steep banks of the lanes grew thick with wild roses, fuchsia and foxgloves; now the vegetation looked limper and dustier, the roses drier, the foxgloves solitary and stooped. But a poorer foreground view had its compensation in the background, where the lack of drizzle, cloud and mist revealed a rolling landscape of hills and woods that was unexpectedly Tuscan in its clarity. By four in the afternoon, the airless main streets of the small towns felt like ovens.
Related: This heatwave is just the start. Britain has to adapt to climate change, fast | Simon Lewis
Continue reading...Like opposing civil rights and gay marriage, climate denial will drive voters away from the GOP
The Republican Party is rotting away. The problem is that GOP policies just aren’t popular. Most Americans unsurprisingly oppose climate denial, tax cuts for the wealthy, and putting children (including toddlers) in concentration camps, for example.
The Republican Party has thus far managed to continue winning elections by creating “a coalition between racists and plutocrats,” as Paul Krugman put it. The party’s economic policies are aimed at benefitting wealthy individuals and corporations, but that’s a slim segment of the American electorate. The plutocrats can fund political campaigns, but to capture enough votes to win elections, the GOP has resorted to identity politics. Research has consistently shown that Trump won because of racial resentment among white voters.
The modern GOP is basically Steve Bannon, Steve King and Stephen Miller on one side engaged in a project to preserve and enshrine dominance for its ethnic/racial base, and Paul Ryan and John Roberts on the other who pretend they have no idea what they’re up to.
we came here to talk about a crisis. Your job is to inform the American people, our job is to provide solutions. ... God help us if we don’t solve this debt crisis. This is the No. 1 topic in America today … I want to make sure that the few minutes that we have didn’t get hijacked by the current shiny object of the day. [The national debt] is the current crisis in America.
Continue reading...We’re running out of time to deal with issues like climate change. Researchers must work at a local level to effect change
Sometimes, the sheer weight of the social, economic and environmental “wicked problems” in our world can leave us feeling frozen, unable to take any kind of action. But these are exactly the kinds of problems that researchers everywhere can help with – especially if we use methods that include and draw attention to the communities most affected by them.
First, let’s define our terms: the concept of a wicked problem dates to the 1970s, when two researchers used it to describe problems with no obvious or clear solution. Today, they’re also thought of as problems for which time to find a solution is running out.
Related: To understand our post-Brexit and Trump world, we need academic inquiry
We need to understand the history and not treat our participants like animals in the zoo that we have come to observe
Related: Is competition driving innovation or damaging scientific research? | Anonymous academic
Continue reading...National Farmers’ Federation head Fiona Simson says people on the land can’t ignore what is right before their eyes
• Podcast: Why farmers are getting behind the science on climate change
Out in the bush, far from the ritualised political jousting in Canberra, attitudes are changing. Regional Australia has turned the corner when it comes to acknowledging the reality of climate change, says the woman now charged with safeguarding the interests of farmers in Canberra.
Related: Farmers' federation lines up against Tony Abbott on national energy guarantee
People are really frustrated at the moment with the politics
Related: Energy minister would welcome new coal-fired power plant
Continue reading...Saddleworth fires will also exacerbate problems as the UK’s peatlands store huge amounts of carbon that they will release
Northern Europe should brace itself for more upland fires like the one on Saddleworth Moor this week as the climate changes and extreme weather events become more common, scientists have warned.
As the army joined firefighters to tackle the blaze near Manchester and a second fire was reported on nearby upland, scientists said similar events are increasingly likely in future, with potentially devastating consequences for the environment and human health.
Continue reading...Lake Palcacocha is swollen with water from melting ice caps in the Cordillera Blanca mountains. Below, 50,000 people live directly in the flood path
Nestled beneath the imposing white peaks of two glaciers in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the aquamarine Lake Palcacocha is as calm as a millpond. But despite its placid appearance it has become a deadly threat to tens of thousands people living beneath it as a result of global warming.
A handful of residents of Huaraz, the city below the lake, can recall its destructive power. In 1941 a chunk of ice broke away from the glacier in an earthquake, tumbling into the lake. The impact caused a flood wave which sent an avalanche of mud and boulders cascading down the mountain, killing about 1,800 people when it reached the city.
Continue reading...The creatures we feared our grandchildren wouldn’t see have vanished: it’s happened faster than even pessimists predicted
It felt as disorienting as forgetting my pin number. I stared at the caterpillar, unable to attach a name to it. I don’t think my mental powers are fading: I still possess an eerie capacity to recall facts and figures and memorise long screeds of text. This is a specific loss. As a child and young adult, I delighted in being able to identify almost any wild plant or animal. And now it has gone. This ability has shrivelled from disuse: I can no longer identify them because I can no longer find them.
Related: A world without puffins? The uncertain fate of the much-loved seabirds
Related: Britain’s national parks are a farce: they’re being run for a tiny minority | George Monbiot
Continue reading...Conservation scientists believe our current mass extinction crisis requires a far more ambitious agreement, in the style of the Paris Climate Accord. And they argue that the bill shouldn’t be handed just to nation states, but corporations too.
Let’s be honest, the global community’s response to the rising evidence of mass extinction and ecological degradation has been largely to throw crumbs at it. Where we have acted it’s been in a mostly haphazard and modest way — a protected area here, a conservation program there, a few new laws, and a pinch of funding. The problem is such actions — while laudable and important — in no way match the scope and size of the problem where all markers indicate that life on Earth continues to slide into the dustbin.
But a few scientists are beginning to call for more ambition — much more — and they want to see it enshrined in a new global agreement similar to the Paris Climate Accord. They also say that the bill shouldn’t just fall on nations, but the private sector too.
Related: Could we set aside half the Earth for nature?
Related: Biodiversity is the "infrastructure that supports all life"
Continue reading...In this extract from Rising, Elizabeth Rush explains ‘sunny day flooding’ – when a high tide can cause streets to fill with water
Rising seas: ‘Florida is about to be wiped off the map’I spend the afternoon in Shorecrest, a neighborhood a couple of miles north of downtown Miami. To get there I leave the beach behind and drive past Arky’s Live Bait & Tackle, Deal and Discounts II, Rafiul Food Store, Royal Budget Inn, Family Dollar and Goodwill. As I continue north, the buildings all lose their mirrored glass and their extra floors, until most are single story and made from stucco.
Related: Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300,000 US coastal homes – study
Related: Ex-Nasa scientist: 30 years on, world is failing 'miserably’ to address climate change
Continue reading...Failure to build energy-efficient homes and clean cars risks UK missing its carbon targets, says government’s climate adviser
The homebuilding and carmaking industries “should be ashamed” of their efforts to tackle global warming, according to the UK government’s official climate change adviser.
Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said housebuilders were “cheating” buyers with energy-inefficient homes and that motor companies were holding back the rollout of clean cars.
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