Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, shown here on Capitol Hill in April 2019, announced in June 2019 that most staff from two USDA research agencies were being relocated to the Kansas City region. The American Federation of Government Employees said of the move, “Evidence suggests that the relocation of these agencies is an attempt to hollow out and dismantle USDA science that helps farmers and protects our food supply.” Photo: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Scientists desert USDA as Trump admin relocates agency to Kansas City area – “The relocation of these agencies is an attempt to hollow out and dismantle USDA science that helps farmers and protects our food supply”

By Merrit Kennedy 17 July 2019 (NPR) – Two vital research agencies at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are hemorrhaging staff as less than two-thirds of the researchers asked to relocate from Washington to the Kansas City area have agreed to do so. When U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the planned new location […]

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 […]

President Jair Bolsonaro is framed by the national flag of Brazil. Recently, his “popularity is falling because people feel baffled by the things he is doing and saying”, according to one conservative columnist. Photo: Mauro Pimentel / AFP / Getty Images

Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro declares “the Amazon is ours” and accuses scientists of lying about deforestation data

By Dom Phillips 19 July 2019 BRASÍLIA (The Guardian) – The Amazon belongs to Brazil and European countries can mind their own business because they have already destroyed their own environment, said Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who also described his own government’s satellite data showing an alarming rise in deforestation as “lies”. “You have to understand […]

Combined land and ocean temperature anomalies in June in Europe, 1910-2019. 26–30 June 2019 brought the greatest June heat wave in European history. Hundreds of stations with a long-term period of record (POR) set their all-time June maximum temperature records. Graphic: James P. Galasyn / NOAA

June 2019: Earth’s hottest June on record and greatest June heat wave in European history

By Dr. Jeff Masters 18 July 2019 (Weather Underground) – June 2019 was the planet’s warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Tuesday. NASA also rated June 2019 as the warmest June on record, well of ahead of the previous record set in 2015. The global heat in June […]

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 […]

Coverage of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV3) vaccine, in the high income group, 2008-2018. Data: WHO/UNICEF national immunization coverage estimates, 2018 revision. Graphic: WHO/UNICEF

Global vaccination rates stalled in 2018 due to conflict, inequality, and complacency – Measles cases more than doubled to almost 350,000 – 20 million children missed out on lifesaving measles, diphtheria, and tetanus vaccines

NEW YORK/GENEVA, 15 July 2019 (UNICEF) – 20 million children worldwide – more than 1 in 10 – missed out on lifesaving vaccines such as measles, diphtheria and tetanus in 2018, according to new data from WHO and UNICEF. Globally, since 2010, vaccination coverage with three doses of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) and one […]

Number of undernourished people and prevalence of undernourishment globally, 2005-2018. The number of undernourished people in the world has been on the rise since 2015 and is back to levels seen in 2010–2011. Graphic: FAO

Over 820 million people suffer from hunger, with number increasing for third straight year – Overweight and obesity rising in almost all countries

15 July 2019 (UN News) – After nearly a decade of progress, the number of people who suffer from hunger has slowly increased over the past three years, with about one in every nine people globally suffering from hunger today, the United Nations said in a new report released on Monday. This fact underscores “the […]

Energy consumption and income inequality in the Philippines, 1990-2015. Data: McGee and Greiner, 2019 / Energy Research and Social Science. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

Shifts to renewable energy can drive up energy poverty, study finds – “We don’t think of energy as a human right when it actually is”

By Cristina Rojas 12 July 2019 (PSU) – Efforts to shift away from fossil fuels and replace oil and coal with renewable energy sources can help reduce carbon emissions but do so at the expense of increased inequality, according to a new Portland State University study. [Data available here: Renewable energy injustice McGee and Greiner […]

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