By Mary Kate Brogan 26 November 2019 (Virginia Commonwealth University) – Mortality rates among working-age Americans continue to climb, causing a decrease in U.S. life expectancy that is severely impacting certain regions of the United States, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University study set to publish Tuesday in JAMA. The report, “Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in […]
BOGOTÁ, 9 December 2019 – The demonstrations sweeping across the world today signal that, despite unprecedented progress against poverty, hunger, and disease, many societies are not working as they should. The connecting thread, argues a new report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is inequality. “Different triggers are bringing people onto the streets — […]
By Annie Kelly 16 December 2019 (The Guardian) – A landmark legal case has been launched against the world’s largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal. Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla […]
By Robert Sanders 4 December 2019 (Berkeley News) – Climate skeptics have long raised doubts about the accuracy of computer models that predict global warming, but it turns out that most of the early climate models were spot-on, according to a look-back by climate scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology […]
By Frank Jordans and Aritz Parra 15 December 2019 MADRID (AP) – Marathon international climate talks ended Sunday with major polluters resisting calls to ramp up efforts to keep global warming at bay and negotiators postponing the regulation of global carbon markets until next year. Those failures came even after organizers added two more days […]
By Carolyn Gramling 10 December 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (Science News) – A mesmerizing new series of images shows the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia glacier over the last 47 years in gorgeous, excruciating detail. The images were presented December 10 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting. Landsat satellites operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological […]
By Laurel Wamsley 10 December 2019 (NPR) – A judge has handed Exxon Mobil a victory in only the second climate change lawsuit to reach trial in the United States. The decision was a blow for the New York Attorney General’s Office, which brought the case. Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York State Supreme […]
10 December 2019 (Utrecht University) – Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, which would see 40 million more people exposed to coastal flooding by 2100. The findings, published in Nature today, show that Greenland has lost 3.8 trillion tonnes of ice […]
By Frank Jordans 14 December 2019 MADRID (AP) – Chilean officials presiding over this year’s U.N. climate talks said Saturday they plan to propose a compromise to bridge yawning differences among countries that have been deadlocked on key issues for the past two weeks. With the meeting already into extra time, draft documents presented overnight […]
By Charlotte Alter, Suyin Haynes, and Justin Worland 11 December 2019 (TIME) – Greta Thunberg sits in silence in the cabin of the boat that will take her across the Atlantic Ocean. Inside, there’s a cow skull hanging on the wall, a faded globe, a child’s yellow raincoat. Outside, it’s a tempest: rain pelts the boat, ice […]
