Percentage change in Australia carbon emissions, by sector, since year to March 1990. Graphic: Department of the Environment and Energy

Australia greenhouse emissions set new seven-year highs on natural gas boom – “Australia is on a collision course with climate catastrophe”

By Peter Hannam 30 August 2019 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen to the highest annual rate since the 2012-13 financial year, driven higher by surging gas production that has made the country the world’s biggest exporter of the fossil fuel. Greenhouse gas figures [pdf] for the March quarter of 2019, […]

Projected share of production from new oil and gas fields, 2020-2029. The majority of the world’s new oil and gas set to come from the U.S. Graphic: Global Witness

U.S. set to drown the world in oil – “The sheer scale of this new production dwarfs that of every other country in the world”

20 August 2019 (Global Witness) – A staggering 61 percent of the world’s new oil and gas production over the next decade is set to come from one country alone: the United States. The sheer scale of this new production dwarfs that of every other country in the world and would spell disaster for the […]

Super yacht the “Rising Sun” at the harbor of Santa Margherita Ligure, 24 June 2016. The “Rising Sun” is owned by billionaire and film producer David Geffen, filmed by a drone. The yacht is the 10th largest in the world. Photo: Fly View

A-listers flock to Google summit in private jets, mega yachts to talk climate change – Greta Thunberg will travel to UN summit by sail

By Emily Smith and Ebony Bowden 30 July 2019 (NY Post) – The world’s rich and famous have flocked to a posh Italian resort to talk about saving Mother Earth — but they sure are punishing her in the process. The billionaire creators of Google have invited a who’s who of A-list names— including former […]

Table showing how many Earths humanity would require if everybody in the world lived like the citizens of selected nations, according to Global Footprint Network in 2019. For the U.S., five Earths would be required. For India, 0.7 Earths would be required. Graphic: Global Footprint Network

Earth Overshoot Day 2019 is July 29, the earliest ever

OAKLAND, California, 23 July 2019 – On 29 July 2019, humanity will have used nature’s resource budget for the entire year, according to Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability organization that has pioneered the Ecological Footprint. It is Earth Overshoot Day. Its date has moved up two months over the past 20 years to the […]

Smoke rises from the Swan Lake Fire, southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, on 18 June 2019. Photo: Alaska DNR

It is probably too late to stop dangerous global warming – “The hard truth is that we are not on track”

By Sam Arie 17 July 2019 (Financial Times) – Few things should make you as optimistic — or as pessimistic — as the rise of renewable energy. Optimism comes from a new sense of urgency as the UK, Germany, and Spain set record highs for use of wind and solar power, and record lows for […]

An array of Direct Air Capture (DAC) fans for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Photo: Carbon Engineering, Ltd

Can direct air capture technology save us from global warming? “By the end of the century, DAC could require the equivalent of over half of today’s global energy needs”

By Simon Levey 22 July 2019 (Grantham Institute) – “We’ve fallen in and out of love with outlandish technologies in the hope that they might save us from climate change,” says Dr Ajay Gambhir, Senior Research Fellow at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “Some are just unicorns; […]

Impact of the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) pledges. To keep global warming within 1.5 °C of pre-industrial levels, there needs to be a substantial decline in the use of coal power by 2030 and in most scenarios, complete cessation by 2050. Graphic: Jewell, et al., 2019 / Nature Climate Change

Current coal phase-out pledges are insufficient to hit Paris climate goal

27 June 2019 (Chalmers University of Technology) – ​The Powering Past Coal Alliance, or PPCA, is a coalition of 30 countries and 22 cities and states that aims to phase out unabated coal power. But analysis led by Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, published in Nature Climate Change, shows that members mainly pledge to close […]

Schematic of factors contributing to the quantification of a remaining carbon budget. Graphic: Rogelj, et al., 2019 / Nature

Humanity’s climate “carbon budget” dwindling fast – At current CO2 emission rates the budget will be exhausted in less than 14 years – “The trillion-dollar question is how much of a carbon budget do we have left?”

17 July 2019 (AFP) – The concept of a carbon budget is dead simple: figure out how much CO2 humanity can pump into the atmosphere without pushing Earth’s surface temperature beyond a dangerous threshold. [cf. What Counts for Our Climate: Carbon Budgets Untangled and Budgeting for our future climate. –Des] The 2015 Paris climate treaty […]

Committed CO2 emissions from existing and proposed energy infrastructure. Estimates of future CO2 emissions by industry sector and country/region Emissions from existing infrastructure are shown by darker shading, and emissions from proposed power plants (i.e. electricity) are more lightly shaded. Graphic: Tong, et al., 2019 / Nature

“Committed” CO2 emissions jeopardize international climate goals – Existing, planned fossil fuel-burning infrastructure must be retired early, replaced – “Without such radical changes, we fear the aspirations of the Paris agreement are already at risk”

IRVINE, California, 1 July 2019 (UCI News) – The nations that have signed agreements to stabilize the global mean temperature by 2050 will fail to meet their goals unless existing fossil fuel-burning infrastructure around the world is retired early, according to a study [pdf] – published today in Nature – by researchers at the University […]

World map showing risk assessment of future changes in potential tree cover. (A) Illustration of expected losses in potential tree cover by 2050, under the “business as usual” climate change scenario (RCP 8.5), from the average of three Earth system models commonly used in ecology (cesm1cam5, cesm1bgc, and mohchadgem2es). (B) Quantitative numbers of potential gain and loss are illustrated by bins of 5° along a latitudinal gradient. Graphic: Bastin, et al., 2019 / Science

Expert reaction to study looking at trees, carbon storage, and climate change – “It is time to stop suggesting there is a ‘nature-based solution’ to ongoing fossil fuel use. There isn’t. Sorry.”

4 July 2019 (Science Media Centre) – A new study, published in Science, reports on the capacity for trees to reduce atmospheric carbon levels. Dr James Borrell, Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, said: “Global forest restoration clearly has remarkable potential to address climate change, but restoring forest on this scale is a significant […]

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