By Damian Carrington 8 November 2023 (The Guardian) – The world’s fossil fuel producers are planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over, a UN report has found. Experts called the plans “insanity” which “throw humanity’s future into question”. The energy plans of the petrostates contradicted their climate policies and pledges, the report said. […]
By Alec Luhn 24 December 2023 (Scientific American) – It was a cloudy July afternoon in Alaska’s Kobuk Valley National Park, part of the biggest stretch of protected wilderness in the U.S. We were 95 kilometers (60 miles) from the nearest village and 400 kilometers from the road system. Nature doesn’t get any more unspoiled. […]
20 December 2023 (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) – Traces of sunscreen agents were found at the North Pole, on the glaciers of the Svalbard archipelago. They were mainly deposited in winter, when night falls over the Arctic. A study conducted by researchers from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Institute of Polar Sciences – National […]
By Oliver Franklin-Wallis 29 November 2023 (The New York Times) – It happened again the other night: Washing up after dinner, I went to throw out a packet of just-eaten instant tortellini and was flummoxed. It was plastic, sure. But what kind? There was no resin code or recycling symbol on the package. Nothing on […]
By Leah Douglas 27 November 2023 (Reuters) – Technologies that capture carbon dioxide emissions to keep them from the atmosphere are central to the climate strategies of many world governments as they seek to follow through on international commitments to decarbonize by mid-century. But they are also expensive, unproven at scale, and can be hard […]
By Hayley Smith 25 October 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – One March morning in the small Central Valley town of Woodlake, Joshua Diaz was getting out of bed when he noticed that his carpet was bubbling and that his tile floor had grown slick. He tried to open his front door but felt pressure and […]
By JoAnn Adkins 4 October 2023 (FIU) – Amphibians are in trouble and in desperate need of conservation action, according to a new global assessment of the world’s amphibian population. Salamanders are experiencing the greatest decline in numbers, but frogs, toads, newts, and salamanders throughout the Neotropics — extending from South Florida and Caribbean islands […]
By David Wallace-Wells 6 September 2023 (The New York Times) – Canadian wildfires have this year burned a land area larger than 104 of the world’s 195 countries. The carbon dioxide released by them so far is estimated to be nearly 1.5 billion tons — more than twice as much as Canada releases through transportation, […]
By Stephen Trimble 3 September 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – Christopher Nolan believes J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived. “By unleashing nuclear power,” the film director concludes, “he gave us the power to destroy ourselves.” Nolan might exaggerate, but Oppenheimer, the subject of Nolan’s hit movie, is surely worthy of the […]
By Liny Lamberink 28 August 2023 (CBC News) – Wildfires in the N.W.T have emitted 97 megatonnes of carbon into the air so far this year — 277 times more than what was caused by humans in the territory back in 2021. Mark Parrington, a senior scientist working at the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), […]